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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/09/more-bullets-more-bloodshed-haiti-aid-groups-warn-against-request-for-foreign-forces

World news

2022-10-09T10:45:55.000Z

Luke Taylor

‘More bullets, more bloodshed’: Haiti aid groups warn against request for foreign forces

Medical NGOs and civil society groups in Haiti have warned that the government’s plan to request foreign military intervention to restore order will only cause more bloodshed in the beleaguered nation. On Friday, the government formally authorized the prime minister, Ariel Henry, to request “specialised armed forces” to take back control of Port-au-Prince from the hundreds of gangs who have tightened their grip over the capital in recent weeks. Haiti government prepares to ask for ‘specialized armed force’ from abroad Read more Foreign assistance is also needed to neutralise the gangs and tackle a series of acute humanitarian crises, including the return of cholera, the document signed by Henry and his ministers read. But activists and aid groups said that calling in foreign forces risks escalating the brutal violence that has engulfed the capital while offering no long-term solution. “Our immediate reaction, as a medical organisation, is that this means more bullets, more injuries and more patients,” said Benoît Vasseur, Doctors Without Borders’ head of mission in Haiti. “We are afraid there will be a lot of bloodshed.” Haiti has plunged deeper into socioeconomic chaos since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. ‘They have no fear and no mercy’: gang rule engulfs Haitian capital Read more Conditions have become particularly dire in recent months as the 150 to 200 gangs warring for control of Port-au-Prince have taken control of the capital and blockaded the country’s fuel terminals. Amid severe food and water shortages, the country’s economy has been paralysed and hospitals forced to close just as cholera has returned. The overlapping crises have prompted angry protests against the unpopular government. “The whole country has been taken hostage,” Henry said in a speech requesting international support on Wednesday. Haitian diplomats have requested the creation of a humanitarian corridor to free up fuel supplies. With Haiti’s army outnumbered and outgunned, experts say the country would need international support to take down the gangs with force, but the Caribbean nation has a long and troubled history of foreign intervention – which Haitians fear is repeating itself. UN peacekeepers sent to respond to an earthquake in 2010 left behind hundreds of fatherless children and were accused of systematic sexual abuse and exploitation of Haitian women. The UN mission also introduced a cholera outbreak which killed 10,000 and took nine years to eradicate. The UN has apologised for sparking the deadly outbreak but never formally accepted responsibility for releasing contaminated faecal matter. Haitians fear the history of human rights abuses will repeat itself and will probably protest against any intervention, the head of an aid organisation in Port-au-Prince who requested not to be named said. Foreign forces would not address the corruption and inequity at the root of Haiti’s myriad crises, he added. “They come for years and things improve slightly but then they leave and it’s worse than when they came to begin with,” he said. “Any sustainable solution to Haiti’s problems needs to come from within.” Henry said that if the cholera outbreak detected on 1 October is to be beaten, the gangs – who are the de facto authorities in much of the capital – must be confronted first. Crisis-hit Haiti braces for new cholera outbreak as gangs hamper relief efforts Read more In gang-run slums, 111 suspected cholera cases have been detected and at least seven have died from the new outbreak. The fragile accommodations NGOs have been forced to strike with the bandits in order to carry out their work could be jeopardised by foreign intervention, making the task of tracing the source of the outbreak and chlorinating the water supply impossible, Benoit said. “Access to the slums is already complicated enough, without military intervention. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like if foreign forces were sent here. It will be total chaos,” he said. Details on what the international forces would look like are scarce but a Haitian government official told reporters on Friday that it would be a special police force. A UN spokesperson told journalists it had not received an official request from the Haitian government. “That being said, we remain extremely concerned about the security situation in Haiti” Stephane Dujarric said. A spokesperson for the US state department said it was aware of a request to establish a humanitarian corridor to alleviate fuel shortages but did not comment on the prospect of sending boots on the ground. Civil society groups said that any international efforts to restore order to Haiti should be accompanied with a change of administration and not prop up the current, illegitimate government. Haiti has not held presidential elections since 2016 and analysts say the political elite are tied to the very gangs holding the country to ransom. They also questioned what would be different this time given that repeated intervention has failed to create lasting change. “We have had foreign intervention in 1915, 1994, 2004 and yet here we are again today in the same situation,” said Louis-Henri Mars, the director of Haitian peacebuilding non-profit Lakou Lapè. “Every time there’s intervention the same system stays in place. “We will be back to square one with illegitimate leaders that are there just to suck up the country’s money.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/12/the-mother-review-jennifer-lopez-netflix

Film

2023-05-12T01:00:39.000Z

Peter Bradshaw

The Mother review – Jennifer Lopez goes kick-ass in abject kidnap thriller

There’s some real ChatGPT film-making here in this abjectly formulaic and inert Netflix thriller from director Niki Caro, although ChatGPT would have made a better, clearer job of the muddled story. This one has Jennifer Lopez rescue her 12-year-old daughter from the bad guys on a number of separate occasions, with one villain (Gael García Bernal) vanishing from the plot about halfway in, presumably left on the cutting-room floor. It’s a script which shows every sign of having had plenty of rewrites, though perhaps it could have done with a few more. Lopez is ex-special forces, skilled in guns and knives and unarmed combat, with what an official calls an impressive number of “confirmed kills”; she bitterly regretted being drawn into gun-running and people-trafficking after leaving the army, and getting involved with creepy bad guys Hector Álvarez (Bernal) and former SAS Brit Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes). She gets pregnant by one of them – the identity of the father is a fantastically uninteresting mystery which the film shows no interest in solving – and this personal event, combined with the horror of what she’s doing induces Lopez’s character to try getting out of the filthy trade. Lovell tries to kill her, and the FBI offers her an amnesty only on condition that she hands over her baby to foster-care authorities and takes up a new identity in Alaska. But when she discovers, some time later, from a friendly bureau guy called Cruise (Omari Hardwick) that her sinister former colleagues are interested in kidnapping her now 12-year-old daughter, Lopez realises that she is going to have kick some ass and be a real mom to this adorable tween. The Mother might have been entertaining, but the screenplay clunks and everyone is phoning it in, especially Fiennes who looks understandably bored and irritated by the whole tiring business. The Mother is released on 12 May on Netflix.

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jan/10/don-warrington-king-lear-interview

Stage

2016-01-10T15:00:28.000Z

Stuart Jeffries

Don Warrington: 'I can be angry. I can want to kill'

Don Warrington is remembering crying in London’s Old Vic when he was a drama student. “I hadn’t seen much Shakespeare. I didn’t know anything about anything really.” On stage was Eric Porter as King Lear. “I sat there and I thought, ‘That miserable old git,’ but he was breaking my heart.” Nearly half a century later, Warrington is to play the heartbreaking old git in a production directed by Michael Buffong, artistic director of Talawa, Britain’s leading black theatre company. As we chat over samosas and deep-fried okra in an Indian restaurant, Warrington looks serene and sartorially elegant. But nearly everything he says speaks of his trepidation about taking on the role. I can feel my blood pressure rising. At the time it seemed crazy to say no. Now I wonder if I'm just crazy “The nicest thing about any job is being offered it,” he says. “Then the reality begins to dawn. Suddenly we have dates! I can feel my blood pressure rising.” He was offered the part after his critically hailed performance in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Manchester’s Royal Exchange two years ago. “At the time it seemed crazy to say no. Now I wonder if I’m just crazy.” He and Buffong recently went to see Simon Russell Beale play Lear at the National. “I thought ‘Is this for me?’ Those are big shoes...” He won’t be drawn on whether playing Lear is a bigger challenge than Strictly Come Dancing in 2008 (he went out in week five after losing a dance-off with Heather Small) but both clearly put him out of his comfort zone. Don Warrington Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Warrington is only 63 and Lear, he points out, is supposed to be 80. Did he wonder what they were thinking when they cast him? “I always feel, ‘What were they thinking?’ In this case, though, I don’t think it’s a matter of age, because lots of young actors have played him. Paul Scofield was in his 40s. The energy it requires is not necessarily an old man’s energy. I’m not an old man.” Warrington has previous played disempowered, ageing men. He made his well-received directorial debut at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds with Mustapha Matura’s Rum and Coca Cola, a comedy about the three times winner of Trinidad’s coveted Calypso King crown reduced to busking on beaches. And two years ago, he was Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, an industrialist whose firm was accused of knowingly supplying faulty aircraft parts to the military during the second world war. Let’s not forget either Warrington’s turn on BBC2’s Grumpy Old Men. You’ve long been in training to play Lear, I tell him. “You see none of this has occurred to me! He [Keller] was king of his castle or he wanted to be. But he had committed a sin. You could say that Lear commits a sin in that he does a very stupid thing – giving his kingdom away as a test to his children. “The big question is why does he do it? And I don’t know the answer to that yet. Maybe he’s got Alzheimer’s – which makes him speak to us now because it’s what most of us dread. And then why does he insist his daughters say they love him as a condition for getting their share of his kingdom? He’s putting himself in a position where they might say, ‘We don’t love you, you’re a fucking old tyrant’.” Does any of it resonate as a father of two sons? “Am I an old tyrant? Well, you’d have to ask my family about that. I’m sure they’ll have a whole variety of opinions. No, I don’t think so. He’s not me but he can be some of me. I can be angry, I can want to kill people.” Don Warrington in All My Sons at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2013. Photograph: Jonathan Keenan Don Warrington was born in Trinidad, and might still be there but for the fact that his father, Basil Kydd, a local politician, died suddenly aged 48 in 1958 when Don was six. His mother, Shirley, decided to make a new life in England. It took three weeks to cross the Atlantic. “England was a real disappointment if I’m honest. It was painted in the colonies as this beautiful, golden, bright place and it was absolutely the opposite.” In Newcastle, he and his brother were the only black kids in school: “I got called rude names but I’d stand up for myself. I became a Geordie and got nicknamed the Young Pele because I was good at football. The teachers were worse. One teacher thought he should stop me being left handed and asked if I’d learned to write up a tree.” Being uprooted from his birthplace has given him a lifelong sense of loss. “My mother’s generation had protection their children didn’t have because they were adults when they left. We didn’t have a map, we had to make a new one, a new map of how to exist.” So that’s what he did. “I saw On the Waterfront and wanted to be Marlon Brando. I thought I looked like him and I wanted to be just like that.” Rising Damp: Frances de la Tour, Leonard Rossiter and Don Warrington in the much-loved sitcom, 1978. Photograph: ITV / Rex Features Aged 17, he got his first job at Flora Robson Playhouse as an assistant stage manager, then moved to London to train at the Drama Centre. Soon after graduation he landed the role of town planning student Philip Smith in Eric Chappell’s play The Banana Box. By this stage, he had discovered there was another actor called Don Williams (he used his mother’s maiden name) – and so named himself after Newcastle’s Warrington Road, where he was raised. In The Banana Box, he starred opposite seedy landlord Rupert Rigsby played by Leonard Rossiter. When Chappell adapted his play as the TV sitcom Rising Damp in 1974, the two men reprised their roles, and Warrington became one of the most prominent black actors on British TV. At the time, Eric Chappell’s sitcom was a departure. In the 1970s there were scarcely any black performers on television. This was the era in which Lenny Henry performed with the Black and White Minstrels and Rudolf T Walker was called “sambo” by Jack Smethurst in Love Thy Neighbour. Warrington’s role was a breakthrough because Smith was enviable rather than ridiculous. Indeed, Smith was everything the landlord wanted to be – suave, well spoken and, most importantly, desirable to fellow tenant Miss Jones. “I knew the world of Rising Damp because I grew up surrounded by white people and was used to prejudice,” Warrington says now. “But I never expected it to catch fire like that.” If Warrington hasn’t quite emerged from the long shadow cast by the sitcom, it’s not for want of trying. His TV credits include, C.A.T.S Eyes, Morse, New Street Law, Trial and Retribution, Manchild, Holby City, Casualty and Doctor Who. On stage he has worked a great deal with Talawa, and has also starred in two fine National Theatre productions of plays by Kwame Kwei-Armah, Elmina’s Kitchen and Statement of Regret. He has been one face of Kenco coffee in TV ads, but let’s not hold that against him. In 2008, he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to drama. I didn't go back to Trinidad for a long time. When I did, I remembered tastes, smells … my senses carried that memory Are you glad your mother brought you to England? “That’s a tricky one. I can’t honestly say that I feel that. Because that journey she made with her children has had the most profound effect. I wonder what I left behind.” Do you go back to Trinidad to find out? “I didn’t for a long time, I didn’t want to because I was scared about what it would do. When I did, I remembered things – tastes, smells. So at a very basic level, the body had carried that sense memory.” He has a sister who remained in Trinidad. “When I see her I recognise something in her I would like to be. I feel a kind of loss, which is her absolute sense of knowing the ground on which she stands.” You don’t feel that in England? “I don’t. Until we can all believe that England is ours, until we can feel part of the fabric, we will feel this slight distance between us and where we live. There will always be another place that is home.” Don Warrington plays King Lear from 1 April at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and from 19 May at Birmingham Repertory Theatre

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/02/michigan-republican-party-convention-donald-trump-victory

US news

2024-03-02T22:44:14.000Z

Alice Herman

Donald Trump sweeps Michigan’s Republican party convention

Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination at the Michigan Republican party convention on Saturday, sweeping all 39 delegates. A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers Read more The delegates awarded will fuel the former president ahead of Tuesday, 5 March, when 15 states will hold primaries and Trump’s nomination could be all but decided. The Michigan state party delegates met on Saturday at the sprawling Amway Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, huddling in 13 separate meeting rooms representing the state’s 13 congressional districts. Their near-uniform support for Trump at the convention eclipsed the support he earned in the primary, when former UN ambassador Nikki Haley garnered about 26% of the vote. She did not win any delegates awarded on Saturday for the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where the party in July will officially nominate a candidate for the November presidential election. The Michigan Republican party’s process for awarding delegates to the national committee was complicated this year: the Democratic-controlled state legislature decided to hold the presidential primaries early. This prompted the state Republican party to create a “hybrid” model, holding a primary on 27 February and a convention four days later to remain in compliance with the national party’s rules. The convention on Saturday at times took on the tone of a campaign rally. “President Trump, I’m going to help you win Michigan,” exclaimed Bernadette Smith, a Michigan Republican party activist running to be Michigan’s Republican national convention committeewoman, during a speech at the convention Saturday. “I’m from Detroit – I was raised in Detroit,” said Smith, to cheers. “Detroit is red, they just don’t know it yet.” But if delegates found common cause today, it was only in their unyielding support for Trump. The Michigan Republican party has been split for months over interpersonal feuds in the county chapters, the role of Christian nationalism in the party at large and questions about how to salvage the party from financial collapse. The divisions fomenting in the party broke into the open this year in a leadership dispute when a group opposing the former Michigan GOP chair, Kristina Karamo, voted to oust her in January. The Republican national committee in February recognized Pete Hoekstra, a close Trump ally whom Karamo’s opponents elected to chair the party, as the rightful leader of the Michigan GOP. Karamo and her allies refused to accept defeat, vowing to hold a separate convention in Detroit – which fell apart only after a judge ruled on Tuesday that Karamo had been properly removed from her seat and forbade her from using official Michigan GOP social media accounts or accessing its finances. Before she was elected last year to chair the Michigan Republican party, Karamo made a name for herself as a vocal proponent of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election in Michigan. Karamo went on to run for Michigan secretary of state, the office overseeing elections in the state, in 2022. She lost by 14 points but never conceded. Karamo, who has developed a reputation for floating outlandish conspiracy theories and who embraces Christian nationalism, has referred to the split within the party as a form of “spiritual warfare” and her political opponents as “demonic” – rhetoric embraced by sections of the growing rightwing Pentecostal movement in the US. Republicans in the party were willing to look past the stranger aspects of their eccentric chair, but when she failed to salvage the party’s struggling finances – even splurging on a $100,000 fee to bring Jim Caviezel, the QAnon-affiliated star of The Passion of Christ, to speak at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference – many grew frustrated with her. But she has retained loyalists in the party, many of whom planned to attend Karamo’s alternate GOP convention in Detroit before it was canceled. Without a convention of their own, some supporters of the former chair changed course at the last minute, opting instead to attend the official one and lobbying – mostly successfully – for recognition in Grand Rapids. Others abandoned the convention entirely, choosing to stay home or decamp to various alternative meetings held around the state on the same day. Republican party leaders from the 1st congressional district, which contains 15 counties in the Upper Peninsula, informed members Friday that their district would be caucusing separately amid concerns that the official convention would not accept their delegates. “The newly declared administration of [the Michigan Republican party] appears to be inviting dissent and disregarding rules with the consent of their Michigan Republican party allies,” said district chair Daire Rendon, in a statement. “We will not play that game by falling into their confusing messaging and backtracking.” Sign up to First Thing Free daily newsletter Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “Daire Rendon did us a favor,” said Tom Stilling, a Michigan GOP activist and former chair of the Antrim county Republican party, which is in the first congressional district. “All the extremists were out there, and the fear was that they would be here.” Without many of their delegates, the 1st congressional caucus room sat mostly empty. But rifts in the Michigan GOP cut deeper than the crisis of leadership that the party has faced this year, often playing out at the county level. In the Republican party of Hillsdale, for example, a small and conservative county in southern Michigan, party activists have been embroiled in a parallel dispute for years – one that’s been fought between the party and a faction of the party dubbed the America First Republican party. A judge in April 2023 ruled that the America First faction were not the legal leaders of the party and in January found numerous activists, including Karamo, in contempt of court for failing to recognize the ruling. Party activists in the 5th congressional district, which stretches across the south of the state and represents Hillsdale county, tried to tamp down that dispute on Saturday. “We all want to prevent a revolt,” said Suzy Avery, a prominent Michigan conservative who sits on the board of the Michigan Republican Party Trust and who resides in Hillsdale. Avery, who caucuses with the Hillsdale county Republican party, helped broker a deal with the America First activists, granting that faction nine of the county party’s 13 delegates. A similar split grew last year in Kalamazoo county, leading to a physical altercation during a state GOP meeting last year. Leaders in the Michigan Republican party downplayed intraparty tensions on Saturday, viewing their ability to shepherd delegates through the Saturday convention as a success. “Today was relatively uneventful – it’s exciting that we can maybe move on,” said Vance Patrick, the chair of the Oakland county Republican party, the largest chapter of the Michigan GOP. “The crazy part about all this is everyone here is for Trump.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/02/chris-froome-tour-de-france-2015

Sport

2014-12-02T11:31:21.000Z

Ed Aarons

Team Sky’s Chris Froome confirms he will ride the 2015 Tour de France

Chris Froome has confirmed he will make winning next year’s Tour de France his main target despite initially hinting that he may concentrate his efforts elsewhere. In October, the 2013 winner Froome had suggested he may miss the 2015 edition in favour of a possible attempt at the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, which he feels may offer more balanced routes that are more suitable to his blend of time trial and climbing skills. Next year’s race will include only 14 kilometres of individual time trial, on the opening day in the Dutch city of Utrecht. However, the Team Sky rider has now confirmed on his personal website that he has now had a change of heart. “Of course, together with the team, we’ve had to prioritise some events over others, but the Tour will remain my main focus for 2015,” wrote Froome. “The concept of doing all three Grand Tours in a season has got appeal but having said that, I know how hard it is to do two Grand Tours while targeting the overall win. At this point in my career I feel that the Tour takes priority. There may come a time at some point down the line where other races may take preference, but for 2015, it’s the Tour. “There is no doubt that this Tour de France is going to be a tough test, but I enjoy the challenge and there’s no reason why I would be any worse off than any of the other contenders. It is our responsibility as a team to adapt accordingly so that we can be as competitive as possible there,” Froome added. “It’s a climber’s Tour next year so I’m going to have to work extra hard in the mountains and spend less time on practising time trialling. It’s also going to be important to be as light as possible, so our nutrition will play a key role. There will be new tests for me as an individual, that’s what I’m looking forward to.” Froome was unable to defend his title last year after withdrawing during the fifth stage following a series of crashes which caused hand and wrist fractures. Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali went on to take the Tour in Paris. Having returned to finish second behind Spain’s Alberto Contador at the Vuelta in August, he is now back in training before the new season and is targeting the Ruta del Sol on 18 February as his first race of the new year. He said: “I’ve enjoyed my time off, and now I am concentrating on preparing myself mentally and physically for the season ahead. I’ve started training in the warm weather in South Africa where I have been able to get some decent miles in on the bike.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/08/the-guardian-view-on-shootings-in-the-us-time-to-tackle-problems-shamefully-ignored

Opinion

2016-07-08T18:17:08.000Z

Editorial

The Guardian view on shootings in the US: time to tackle problems shamefully ignored | Editorial

Before Barack Obama went to bed in the early hours of Friday – he had just arrived in Poland for a Nato summit – he delivered a statement about two fatal shootings this week by the police that were caught on video, heightening racial tensions. When the president woke, he had to deliver another statement, about five policemen shot dead in Dallas, Texas. Such is the alarming and dangerous speed of events in America as it confronts some of the most racially charged incidents for decades. In the years after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, race in the US dropped down the news agenda, at home and abroad. But the changes won in legislation and court rulings were not matched by conditions on the ground. There were improvements for some in education and employment, but life was not visibly different for the bulk of the African-American and Latino populations. In too many major cities, segregation remained a reality. Even the capital, Washington DC, where politicians spoke grandly of freedom, equality and tolerance, remained deeply divided. It is America’s dirty little secret. Race went back on to the news agenda in 2013 with George Zimmerman’s acquittal over the fatal shooting of the African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, and it has stayed there ever since. The police shooting of Michael Brown was followed by the deaths of other unarmed black Americans in encounters with the police. There was the appalling shooting of nine black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. And this week the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile; and on Friday five policemen shot dead by sniper fire, with a suspect reportedly saying he was upset about recent shootings and wanted to kill white officers. Such cases risk inflaming racial tensions, with no end in sight until America tackles the underlying causes. It is a terrifyingly huge challenge, dodged for too long. First, there is the segregation in the cities. Second, vast inequality: in Detroit, 10% of white people live in poverty but 33% of black people. And third, the country’s stubborn attachment to guns. President Obama, in his statement about deaths at the hands of the police, cited statistics showing minorities are more likely to be pulled over, searched or shot by officers. It was incumbent on the country to root out deep-seated racial biases, he said. Last month’s Pew Centre survey on attitudes towards race in the US highlights the gulf in views. It found 88% of blacks said the country needed to continue making changes for blacks to have equal rights with whites, with 43% sceptical that such changes would ever occur. Only 53% of whites said the US still had work to do and only 11% expressed such scepticism. A White House led by Hillary Clinton offers a better chance of at least attempting change than one led by Donald Trump. The question is whether, against a backdrop of austerity, she has the courage to devote the billions that would be needed to make a start in addressing inequality. On guns, she has been surprisingly outspoken in saying that as president she would seek reforms. There is scope for some restrictions short of the kind of sweeping changes that happened in the UK after the Dunblane school massacre. There could be tighter checks on gun ownership, a campaign to replace the unbending leadership of the National Rifle Association and a ban on powerful automatic weapons. Why did anyone need such guns, President Obama asked on Friday. In his late-night statement, he referred to the Black Lives Matter campaign in words that seemed prescient next day: “When people say ‘black lives matter’, it doesn’t mean that blue lives don’t matter. But right now, the data shows that black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.” The imperative for America is to transform that “data”, tackle problems shamefully ignored after the civil rights movement and try finally to end a centuries-old racial divide.

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/24/channel-4-skint-poverty-porn

Media

2014-11-24T16:51:00.000Z

Tara Conlan

Channel 4 asked to cut woman from Skint series over fears for children

The family of a woman who is due to appear in the second series of Skint has called on Channel 4 to cut her out of the show to protect her children. Relatives of a contributor called Kayleigh say they have asked the broadcaster to edit her appearance because of the impact of her appearance in “poverty porn” television on her children. The new series of Skint is based in Grimsby and a number of residents have been filmed over the past year. Following a letter from the family’s lawyer, changes have already been made to the programme, which is due to air on Monday night, with some details removed about Kayleigh’s life. An email from Channel 4 head of documentaries Nick Mirsky to a lawyer acting on behalf of her concerned family has been seen by the Guardian and confirms some elements of the programme about her personal history have changed. Mirsky also assures them that Kayleigh is referred to only by her first name. Kayleigh’s family are furious that they were only informed of her contributions in the show in a letter from Keo Films which was sent just 12 days before transmission. “It’s poverty porn. I feel our family has been manipulated for profit,” claimed one family member, who said relatives are concerned about the impact the programme will have on Kayleigh and her children. The family say they have spent years trying to help Kayleigh, whose life they say has been in “turmoil”. They argue that although her surname is not mentioned, once she is seen on screen, she may be identified and talked about on social media. In a statement, Channel 4 said: “We take issues regarding contributor and child welfare extremely seriously and have ensured that, in the episodes which Kayleigh’s story features, her children and their current living and carer arrangements are unidentifiable. We have replied to reassure the children’s carers of the measures we have taken. We feel there is strong public interest in allowing Kayleigh, the children’s mother, to tell her story about her struggle with poverty. She wishes to appear in Skint and we therefore intend to include her in the series.” Filmed over a year, the observational documentary series tells the intimate stories of some people living in areas suffering the devastating effects of de-industrialisation The family also say that having seen the impact programmes like Benefits Street have had on some contributors, her children have, “the right to a life free of stigma.” After Benefits Street aired earlier this year, some residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham where the programme was filmed, said their children had been bullied at school. It is not known exactly what Kayleigh has signed, but usually people appearing on television sign release forms allowing their contribution to be shown. A letter from Channel 4’s lawyers argues that, “we believe there remains a strong public interest” in Kayleigh being able to tell her story and it “would not be possible” to tell her story “if her face or voice were changed or edited out.” A Channel 4 spokesman said: “We take issues regarding contributor and child welfare extremely seriously. We are in ongoing discussions with the family about this matter and the programme will be broadcast in full compliance with our obligations under the Ofcom Broadcasting Code”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/12/cobain-montage-of-heck-observer-film-review

Film

2015-04-12T07:00:01.000Z

Jonathan Romney

Cobain: Montage of Heck review – romanticised portrait of Nirvana singer

Named after a nerve-jangling sound collage that he once created, Montage of Heck is a portrait of Nirvana leader and grunge idol Kurt Cobain, who killed himself in 1994. Directed by Brett Morgen, who made the Robert Evans documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture, the film benefits not least from the fact that Cobain must have been caught as a child in home movies more than any other cultural icon. His story is illustrated by sometimes revealing interviews with his parents (especially mother Wendy O’Connor), widow Courtney Love and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic. It’s also padded out to excessive length by animations illustrating Cobain’s reminiscences of a singularly bleak youth, and by impressionistic sequences that animate his sour solipsistic jottings – an overworked effect that only serves to romanticise his mental problems. Home videos of Cobain and Love are as depressing as you’d expect, and while a producer credit for the couple’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain suggests a fond celebration of the film’s subject, he doesn’t emerge as a hugely compelling character. The argument for Cobain’s brilliance never quite convinces until towards the end, with his MTV Unplugged performance, in which a whole new compelling register to his talent emerges – too late for the film, and alas, for the singer himself.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/05/fat-girl-dancing-by-kris-kneen-review-the-intimacies-and-indignities-of-living-in-a-fat-body

Books

2023-05-04T15:00:15.000Z

Bec Kavanagh

Fat Girl Dancing by Kris Kneen review – the intimacies and indignities of living in a fat body

In the first pages of Fat Girl Dancing, Kris Kneen’s newest memoir about their shifting relationship with their body, they write: “When you are told to draw a woman’s body your mind sketches what it has been taught, the hourglass of femininity, your true sight complicated by years of seeing one thing repeated: the memory of bodies, the imagined flesh.” I love this idea – “your true sight complicated” – because it immediately invites us to consider what our perceptions of our bodies might be if they were untroubled by the dominant ideologies and beauty standards, and the tsunami of fitspo and wellness ideals presented by advertising and most mainstream media. While the task of uncomplicating things enough to find a kind of “true sight” is undoubtedly too large for any one writer to achieve in a single book, Kneen makes a significant contribution with Fat Girl Dancing. Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright review – how can one novel contain so much? Read more This is a memoir of the body – Kneen’s own body, but also all bodies that have been othered by thin, cis, white ideals. “I start with me,” they write early on, their vulnerable tone creating a deep narrative intimacy. There are so many lives in this body – an adult, a child, a diver, a lover, a painter, a dancer, a writer – and yet Kneen writes about the anticipation of “sloughing” off their body and emerging from it, better, smaller. It’s an image that so many readers will relate to, our culture caught up as it is in the myth of the thin goddess hidden within the flesh of every fat woman. Kneen, whose motto “has always been to run quickly and blindingly towards the subjects that scare you”, does so here, rejecting the simplicity of body positivity and opting instead to explore feelings of confidence and desirability alongside shame and their occasional yearnings to be thin. This commitment to truth is compelling, sometimes heartbreaking. Why do we make it so difficult for people to live in their bodies, in the world? Why are we so cruel? Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Kneen recalls themself as a young girl who gave up the “exotic” sports – shot put, discus, javelin – she loved and excelled in, who threw her medals in the bin because older kids mockingly told her those sports were for fat kids. As an adult, Kneen reflects on the ways that shame is rewarded, even expected from people in fat bodies, because it indicates they recognise their aberrance: fatness is a choice, a health issue, a drain on public funding; fatness is up for debate. Kneen chases the truth through shame and into discomfort, baring the intimacies and indignities of living in a fat body in the world. Their critique of the ways in which anti-fat messaging manifests (from a lack of clothing options to medical stereotyping and misdiagnoses) is balanced in how they write about finding pleasure in their body. Kneen, who is no stranger to writing sensual, erotic fiction, is the perfect narrator as they describe the fluid, tantalising freedom of the ocean, or how they capture fleeting glimpses of their own naked body in words, photographs and paint. Sign up to Five Great Reads Free weekly newsletter Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday 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. The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen by Krissy Kneen review – memoir as both fairytale and defiant truth Read more Like Kneen’s earlier work, including their last memoir The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen, Fat Girl Dancing experiments with form, using life writing as a broad frame to capture surreal imaginings, thought experiments, dreams and theory. Kneen is playful and displays an openness, even as the subject of the memoir, that leads them down such interesting roads. Who else would allow themselves to be swept out to sea by an amorous dugong who has identified them as “something like itself”? Who else would commit themselves so fully to this project of radical self-reflection? Their commitment to run blindingly towards the subjects that scare them is evident in writing as in life, as they run blindingly towards exposing the body (literally) that they’re simultaneously afraid of having exposed. Given all this, it is unsurprising really that Kneen finally finds their way to reconnect with their body through burlesque, which blends sex, play and truth in the same way that Kneen does. Fat Girl Dancing is a fresh, vital call to arms for all those who have had a gutful of being told their body isn’t good enough, when, as Kneen makes so evident here, it absolutely, spectacularly, is. Fat Girl Dancing by Kris Kneen is published in Australia by Text Publishing ($34.99)

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/04/norman-jay-soundtrack-my-life

Music

2011-09-03T23:05:00.000Z

Gareth Grundy

Norman Jay: Soundtrack of my life

Born Norman Joseph, Norman Jay rose to prominence as a DJ at influential clubs such as Shake 'n' Fingerpop in the 80s, helped found key pirate radio station Kiss FM and for many years has been an integral part of Notting Hill carnival with his Good Times sound system. When he received an MBE in 2002 for services to music, you had to wonder what took them so long. "British youth culture, especially working-class culture – music, art, football – is a lifelong interest," he says. "And music's been part of my life since I was a toddler." WHEN I FIRST STARTED BUYING RECORDS "Israelites", Desmond Dekker & the Aces (1968) I was about nine or 10 years old when I first heard this. My family was living in Ladbroke Grove and I had just started buying records on my own. I'd go to what was then Webster's record store on Shepherd's Bush market, underneath the arches of the Metropolitan line. It's still there today under a different name, but selling African music. Back then it was the hippest place to buy records. Nine years old sounds young, but whenever my family had parties, my dad used to let me buy the music for it. He'd give me some money, as well as a list of a few records that he wanted. But I was always allowed to choose some things that I wanted too. At that time, ska was the prevailing music for the first generation of black kids born in England. I also had a couple of older friends who were early mods so they loved black music. It was through them, and my dad's impeccable taste, that I learned about music. THE ONE THAT REMINDS ME OF GOING TO FOOTBALL MATCHES "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye", Steam (1969) Every time I'd go to watch Spurs or QPR this was the big singalong chant on the terraces. I was around 13 or 14 years old at this point and was travelling all over the country to see football matches. By the mid-70s, I'd been to every ground in the old first division. I've still got all the old match programmes. My dad worked as a civil engineer on London Transport and back then families of workers got cheap rail travel – it was just a nominal fee. I'd travel there and back from wherever the game was in a day, before my parents realised I was missing. I had to tell the odd white lie about why I was leaving the house at seven on Saturday morning and getting back at night, just in time for Match of the Day. When my dad eventually found out he was cool about it. My mum went mad. But it was a fantastic adventure. WHEN I BECAME A SOULBOY Love is the Message, MFSB (1973) When ska ended and reggae moved into its Rastafarian phase, I didn't listen to it as much. I was born here and didn't relate to the struggle that they were talking about. My younger brother did. He grew his hair into dreadlocks but I shaved off my afro, put on a bowling shirt and wore red jeans. I was a soulboy, basically. Soul was the music I naturally gravitated towards because I liked clothes, going out, escapism, plus I enjoyed the soundtrack that went with it. I'd travel the country to go to northern soul clubs such as the Wigan Casino and Blackpool Mecca. I wasn't DJing properly at this point but whenever there was a party, someone always said: "Get Norman to do the music, he's got loads of records." So I was always busy and never got the girl. THE ONE THAT REMINDS ME OF MY PIRATE RADIO YEARS "Windy City Theme", Carl Davis and the Chi-Sound Orchestra (1976) By the 80s, I was DJing at warehouse parties around London and involved in starting a pirate radio station called Kiss. I was one of the original gang of three on the station. My job was to recruit the DJs and I did the Original Rare Groove Show. This track always reminds me of that era. We started in October 1985 and by the summer of the following year, I realised it was getting big. I would put out a coded message on my show about a party that I was playing that night and two or three thousand people would show up. We didn't get too much trouble from the authorities. We were on first-name terms with the guys from the Home Office – there was even someone who worked for them during the day and set up our transmitters at night. We were tolerated. And we were careful not to be overtly political. It's not like we were inciting people to riot: we realised we had some social responsibility. THE ONE THAT REMINDS ME OF NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL "Dooms Night" (Norman Jay's Doomsday Club Edit), Azzido Da Bass (2000) This was a mix that didn't come out initially but it became a favourite at carnival. I still remember the first time I played it there – I've never seen a street go so mad – and I'd always play it during the last hour on Monday. I have this idea to do a Good Times festival, like Glastonbury or Big Chill. There's no black-owned music festival in this country. There's no platform for our artists or our performers. It's partly red tape and restriction, and partly resources. No one wants to put money into an untried concept. Money's never been my motivation. I chose not to make it a priority. DJing affords me a living but I still have the same love for music I always had. Listen to this playlist on Spotify

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/10/bees-supermarket-giant-company-pennsylvania

US news

2022-02-10T15:13:52.000Z

Maya Yang

Nearly 60,000 bees stolen from US supermarket’s headquarters

Nearly 60,000 bees have been stolen from a supermarket chain’s headquarters in Pennsylvania. The bees were stolen from the Giant Company’s corporate field on the Harrisburg Pike in Carlisle some time between 28 and 30 January. “Bees are an essential part of our food supply chain and having these beehives were one way we were helping to address the declining bee population here in our hometown community,” said Jessica Groves, community impact manager with Giant, in a press release. “We are extremely disappointed that this happened and are continuing to cooperate with Middlesex Township police department,” she went on to add. In 2020, the Giant Company introduced a seven-acre solar field at its corporate headquarters to support bees, along with birds and small wildlife. Bee populations have been dwindling in recent months, with beekeepers reporting an estimated loss of 45.5% of their colonies from April 2020 to April 2021, according to the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership led by the University of Maryland. In Pennsylvania, beekeepers lost approximately 41% of their colonies between that time period, marking a slightly lower loss than the national average. Beekeepers in Iowa took the hardest hit from April 2020 to April 2021, losing 58.4% of their colonies. Associated Press contributed to this report

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/27/justice-suella-braverman-windrush-scandal-broken-pledges

Opinion

2023-01-27T15:45:01.000Z

Judy Griffith

Where is the justice, Suella Braverman, for me and the others whose lives were ruined by the Windrush scandal? | Judy Griffith

It has been clear for a long time that this government is not interested in learning lessons from the Windrush scandal that ruined so many lives, including my own. So I’m not surprised that the home secretary, Suella Braverman, has decided not to implement key reforms that had previously been accepted. Among the changes that have been abandoned is a commitment to hold reconciliation events in which the people affected would have had the chance to talk to ministers and Home Office staff about the impact of the scandal on their lives. This is a huge missed opportunity – for the government to show that it is truly sorry, and for us to come together and have our experiences acknowledged. Like so many others, when this nightmare started, I felt as if I was the only one. Everyone was hiding, keeping it secret, not knowing what to do or who to turn to. Even people who were close friends were hiding it from each other. Gathering people together would have helped them to feel less alone, and that yes, this is going to be with us for the rest of our lives, but at least we have a forum to talk about how we feel and how we’ve been able to move on. It would have been a form of therapy. In also abandoning a commitment to create the post of a migrants’ commissioner to identify problems with the immigration system as well as a pledge to increase the powers of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, Braverman is making it very clear that the government does not care about immigrants – past, present, or future. The experience of being told that I wasn’t a citizen of this country left me terrified. I came here from Barbados in 1963, when I was eight years old. I’ve been working here since I got my first paper round near our home in Bedford, at the age of 12. I spent my teenage years listening to the new sounds that were coming over from the US and the Caribbean; seeing Mary Quant and the miniskirt and all that. I had my three children here, and have paid taxes all my working life. Jamaican immigrants being greeted by RAF officials from the Colonial Office after the Empire Windrush landed them at Tilbury. Photograph: PA Then, after 52 years, to have to prove that I had the right to be here, and to know that I could be sent to Yarl’s Wood detention centre and deported any day – it’s not something you recover from. It leaves a wound that is there continually, and that keeps being reopened with every new thing that happens. This latest announcement just confirms that the government has no real understanding of what people like me have been through. In my case, after losing my job and applying for others in 2014, it came to light that I was officially classed as an “illegal immigrant”. It was an enormous shock. My Barbados passport, which had my stamp showing I had indefinite leave to remain, had been lost in the post a few years earlier. I used up all my savings getting lawyers to prove my status. I was unable to work or travel, which meant I could not visit my mother in Barbados or attend her funeral. I got into rent arrears and narrowly avoided eviction. And, because of all the stress, I have developed a long-term health condition. Despite everything I’ve been through, I still consider myself one of the lucky ones. I’ve been able to come out on the better side of this, thanks to my faith in God. I have received compensation, and I do now have a British passport – although it’s only dated from 2018, as though I dropped out of the sky into this country. Windrush inquiry head disappointed as Braverman drops ‘crucial’ measures Read more But a lot of people are still waiting for compensation – many of them died without ever receiving it, or after being deported. What about all of them? I’m very aware that if I hadn’t had boxes of paperwork going back to the 1970s, I might not be here at all. Whether it’s Grenfell or Windrush, this is a government that seems to like writing reports, but not actually implementing what comes out of them. They need to have more consideration for the citizens of the UK. It’s pointless saying you want to learn lessons and then reneging on every promise. It feels as though there’s no justice. I always loved England, and I do still love it, as bad as things have been. But I don’t feel safe here any more. This whole experience has left me feeling very vulnerable. And the stress doesn’t go away. My right to stay here has to be renewed next year, and I don’t know what will happen. How can any of us trust a system that shows us its true colours like this time and time again? The only thing I feel sure of is that you cannot rely on anything they say. Judy Griffith is a retired healthcare worker from north London Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/10/leicester-bid-gabriel-gabigol-barbosa-brazil-santos

Football

2016-08-10T08:49:44.000Z

Fabrizio Romano

Leicester make £23m offer for Brazil forward Gabriel Barbosa

Leicester City have made a €27m (£23.2m) offer for the Santos forward Gabriel Barbosa. The 19-year-old, also known as Gabigol, is playing for Brazil at the Rio Olympics and his future is likely to be decided after the Games. Brazil’s caravan of angst totters under burden of Olympic obsession Barney Ronay Read more The Premier League champions, however, had hoped to receive an answer before the tournament ends with the season starting this weekend. The two Italian clubs, Juventus and Internazionale, have also made bids, although they have been lower, at €25m. The player has a contract at Santos until 2019. It was recently announced that he had signed a new deal until 2021 but that is not the case, the player and his family wanting to see which clubs are interested in signing him. Gabriel made his debut for Brazil’s senior team in May and his agent, Wagner Ribeiro, told the Brazilian publication Lance last weekend: “Inter’s is the third official offer that Santos have received for Gabigol. For now we want to leave Gabriel in peace. Premier League 2016-17 preview No8: Leicester City Read more “When the Olympics finish – with the gold medal, God willing – we will sit round the table and resolve his future. We are calm. When the Olympics finish I will sit down with Gabigol and his family and decide his future.” Leciester City have already signed the Nigerian forward Ahmed Musa for £16m this summer from CSKA Moscow and have retained Jamie Vardy, Leonardo Ulloa and Shinji Okazaki.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/05/us-warns-france-business-iran-trade-tehran

World news

2014-02-05T13:09:10.000Z

Kim Willsher

US warns France against business with Iran after trade trip to Tehran

The US has warned France against doing business with Iran after a large trade delegation representing more than 100 French companies travelled to Tehran this week. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, called the French foreign secretary, Laurent Fabius, to say the visit was "not helpful" in backing up America's preferred message to Tehran: that while sanctions have been eased, they have not been dropped, and "it is not business as usual", a US official said. "Secretary Kerry has talked directly to Foreign Minister Fabius about the trade delegation … about how this is not helpful," the under-secretary of state for political affairs Wendy Sherman told US lawmakers in Washington. "Tehran is not open for business because our sanctions relief is quite temporary, quite limited and quite targeted," she said. Last month, Iran and six world powers including France and the US made the first step in implementing the historic nuclear deal struck in Geneva in November. As part of the agreement, Tehran agreed to roll back its nuclear programme and accept more scrutiny of its activities, in exchange for partial relief from sanctions. As Iranian scientists halted all enrichment of uranium to 20% inside the country, the EU reciprocated by announcing moves to ease restrictions on trade in petrochemicals, precious metals and the provision of insurance for oil shipments. This week, the US released $550m to Iran, the first instalment in $4.2bn worth of frozen oil revenues which the Islamic republic is expected to receive over a period of time as part of the Geneva deal. Despite these developments, the US has warned France that it will seek fines against any country – ally or not – that breaks the US and EU sanctions. The 116-strong French business delegation represented many major French international companies, including Total, Peugeot, Citroën, Lafarge, GDF Suez and Alstom. There was even a representative from the football club AJ Auxerre, offering French savoir-faire over the training of players. Thierry Courtaigne, vice-president of the French employers' organisation Medef, said the delegation, which arrived in Tehran on Monday, wanted to assess the commercial opportunities there. The French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, said at the weekend that France would have "significant commercial opportunities" in Iran if sanctions were lifted. Moscovici said the visit was intended to "convey the message that, if the situation improves, there will be significant commercial opportunities for France in Iran". Iranian leaders gave the French delegation a warm welcome, promising new measures to encourage foreign investment, particularly in oil and gas. Iranian newspapers have given the French visit significant coverage during the past week. "Tehran's lucrative offer to Paris," read the Tuesday headline of the reformist daily Shargh. According to Shargh, Mohammad-Reza Najafimanesh, of the Iranian auto parts manufacturer association, said the visit showed French investors and businessmen were opposed to the French government's record of a harsh approach to sanctions. Mohammad Nahavandian, the head of the Iranian president's office, said Tehran's relations with the international community had been upgraded to a "win-win" situation. "It's a reasonable decision on their part to become a partner of a strong economy [like Iran]," he said. "There's a unique opportunity." As the EU relaxed punitive measures on Iran as a result of the interim deal, Renault said last week it had resumed exports of spare parts to Iran and that it was hoping production of the Tondar, an Iranian version of the company's cheap Logan model, would increase slowly through the first six months of 2014. Medef has defended the visit, saying the Austrians, Germans, Portuguese, Italians, Chinese and even the Americans have been on the business trail to Iran before. Pierre Gattaz, the head of Medef, said the delegation had not violated the terms of the interim nuclear accord. "We faultlessly respected the Geneva convention of last November. We're familiar with this framework. There are other European country delegations who were in Iran," he said. Last month, the US Treasury received $152m (£93m) from Luxembourg after the financial house Clearstream Banking was found to have illegally helped Iran's central bank to access the US finance system in 2007 and 2008 in violation of US sanctions. Iran and the world's major powers have announced they will continue talks on 18 February in Vienna over a comprehensive agreement aimed at settling the decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear activities and the complete lifting of the nuclear-related sanctions. But those talks are threatened by hardliners both in the US and Iran. A significant number of US senators want more sanctions while hawks in Iran criticise the president, Hassan Rouhani, for agreeing to the interim deal. The US president, Barack Obama, however, has made clear he will veto any new sanctions bill as long as talks have not failed.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/oct/08/bosnia-herzegovina-elections-the-worlds-most-complicated-system-of-government

News

2014-10-08T11:58:30.000Z

Alberto Nardelli

Bosnia and Herzegovina: the world's most complicated system of government?

Bosnia and Herzegovina holds its seventh general elections on 12 October. Since the end of the war, political allegiance has been usually based on ethnic identity. Ethnic politics will play its role in Sunday’s elections too, but there are other issues too. The debate, following protests earlier this year, has centred most on economic and social issues, allegedly corrupt politicians, stagnation and jobs - at 27.5%, the unemployment rate in Bosnia is consistently among the highest in the Balkans. The employment rate remains below 40%, and two-thirds of young people are jobless. Meanwhile, the salary of lawmakers is six times the country’s average wage - a rarely lopsided difference, making Bosnia’s MPs, relatively speaking, among the richest in Europe. An additional blow to the economy were the devastating floods in May, which inflicted damages of €2bn (about 15% of the country’s GDP). The aerial view of homes and land submerged due to heavy rain fall in 24 hours in Doboj, central Bosnia. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Bosnia is home to what is most probably the world’s most complicated system of government. Any understanding of this rather unique constitutional and institutional set up needs to begin with the Dayton Peace Accords. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia on 1 March 1992, triggering a secessionist bid by the country’s Serbs backed by Belgrade, and a war that left about 100,000 dead. April 6, 1992: A Bosnian paramilitary returns fire in downtown Sarajevo as he and civilians come under fire from Bosnian Serb snipers. Photograph: Mike Persson/AFP/Getty Images The Dayton Peace Accords were signed in late 1995 and ended the conflict. The agreement achieved its immediate purpose of putting an end to the bloodshed, but it froze its ethnic divisions in place. The accords also bequeathed an extremely complex system of government, which has made governance extremely difficult. President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia (L), President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (C) and President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia sign the Dayton Agreement peace accord at the Hope Hotel inside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, November 21, 1995. Photograph: Eric Miller/Reuters One country, two entities Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska. The main cities in the Federation are the capital Sarajevo, and the cities of Mostar, Tuzla, Bihac and Zenica, while in the Republika Srpska entity the main cities are Banja Luka, Bijeljina, Prijedor and Trebinje. Formally part of both entities is the Brčko District, a multi-ethnic self-governing administrative unit. Within this system there is the constant backdrop of different aspirations: Republika Srpska seeking greater autonomy, Croat parties angling for a third entity, and several Bosniak parties hoping for a more centrally governed country. Milorad Dodik, newly elected President of the Republic of Srpska(R) speaks after an official inauguration ceremony at the National Assembly in Banja Luka, Bosnia. Photograph: Radivoje Pavicic/AP The Federation is predominantly Bosniak (Muslims) and Croat (Catholics), while the Republika Srpska is Serb (Orthodox). The largest minorities are the Roma and Jewish communities. According to a 2013 census, Bosnia and Herzegovina has a population of about 3.8 million people. A demographic breakdown remains difficult as the 2013 census has yet to be fully completed, but according to the CIA Factbook the composition of the population is 48% Bosniak, 37.1% Serb, 14.3% Croat and 0.6% “others”. A very complicated system of government 1. A directly elected tripartite Presidency, which is in charge of foreign, diplomatic and military affairs, and the budget of state-level institutions. The three presidency members are from the three constituent nations - one Bosniak, one Serb, one Croat. Quite controversially, the candidates are “self-defined” as such and must only claim one identity, so you cannot have someone standing (or voting) for both the Bosniak and Croat member, or identifying outside these pre-constituted groups - for example, anyone who considers themselves as simply Bosnian, Roma or Croat and Jewish, is ineligible. Each member is separately elected by plurality vote (the candidate with most votes, but not necessarily a majority, wins). Members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zeliko Komsic (L), Nebojsa Radmanovic (C), and Bakir Izetbegovic. Photograph: ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images 2. The Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina encompasses a House of Representatives and a House of Peoples. The 42 members of the house of representatives are directly elected via a system of proportional representation. 28 members are elected in the Federation, 14 in the Republika Srpska. The 15 members of the house of peoples are indirectly elected by the entities’ parliaments, with two-thirds of members from the Federation (five Croats and five Bosniaks) and one-third from the Republika Srpska (five Serbs). 3. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina is nominated by the Presidency and approved by the House of Representatives - s/he is effectively the Prime Minister, and nominates ministers. The state government is in charge of security and defence (so enacting through legislation the decisions of the presidency), customs and immigration, fiscal and monetary policy, and facilitating inter-entity coordination and regulation. 4. At an entity level, both the Federation and the Republika Srpska have significant autonomy. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a directly-elected 98-member house of representatives. The Republika Srpska has an 83-member national assembly. Entities’ parliaments have jurisdiction over healthcare, education, agriculture, culture, veteran issues, labour, police and internal affairs. 5. At both state and entity levels, delegates to the upper houses have the primary duty of ensuring that there is agreement between constituent nations, and representatives of minorities, when confirming legislation. 6. Both entities have a Prime Minister and 16 ministries. The Federation is furthermore divided into 10 cantons, each with its own administrative government and relative autonomy on local issues such as education and health care. The voting system (for elections taking place on Sunday) Members of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s parliament are elected through open lists and via proportional representation. At a state level, Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into eight electoral units, three in the Republika Srpska and five in the Federation. Each presidency member is separately elected by plurality vote with each voter in the Federation choosing either a Bosniak or Croat candidate, and those in the Republika Srpska electing a Serb candidate. The Central Electoral Commission reports an electorate of 3.2 million voters. A man walks past a wall decorated with posters of political parties and candidates for the parliamentary elections in central Sarajevo September 28, 2010. Photograph: Danilo Krstanovic/Reuters The main parties 65 parties, 24 independent candidates and 24 coalitions are eligible to run in Sunday’s election. These are the main parties: Social Democratic Party SDP - centre-left Party of Democratic Action SDA - centre-right Alliance for a Better Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina SBB BiH -centre-right Croatian, Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina HDZ BiH - centre-right Croatian Democratic Union 1990 HDZ 1990 - centre-right Alliance of Independent Social Democrats SNSD - centre-left (though in reality, nationalist) Serb Democratic Party SDS - right-wing Party positioning is indicative and to be viewed in the context and framework of the country’s politics. There are 10 candidates for the post of Bosniak member of the three-member Presidency. Croats will be choosing between four candidates, while there are three candidates for the Serb seat. The 2010 election The last general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina were held in 2010. Turnout was 56%. The clear winner in Republika Srpska entity was the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, with 43.3%, nearly twice as much as the SDS. In the Federation, the Social-democratic party, SDP, and the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, won 26% and 19.5% of the vote respectively. The largest Bosnian Croat political force was the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, with 11%. A six-party government (between the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Party of Democratic Action(SDA), the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ), the Croatian Democratic Union 1990, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD)) was eventually formed 15 months after the election. The outgoing government and parliament have been dubbed the worst ever. 106 laws were adopted by parliament in the past four years, down from the 180 between 2006-2010. As a comparison, over the same period the Montenegrin government adopted about 350 laws, Serbia 500 and Croatia about 750. In the tripartite presidency vote, the SNSD candidate Nebojsa Radmanovic was the clear winner among Serb voters, while the SDA candidate Bakir Izetbegovic prevailed as the Bosniak member of the Presidency, and the SDP candidate Zeljko Komsic emerged as the Croat member of the Presidency. The latter result was not welcomed among several right-wing Croat parties who accused Komsic of being elected by Bosniak voters. A country’s constitution and institutions are always a consequence of its history. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the divisions of the past may have been frozen, but their complexity and scars remain deeply enshrined in how the country’s parliament and government are elected and organised.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jun/15/frank-and-percy-review-ian-mckellen-roger-allam-theatre-royal-windsor

Stage

2023-06-15T11:19:15.000Z

Ryan Gilbey

Frank and Percy review – McKellen and Allam’s banter meanders into romance

Walking their dogs on Hampstead Heath, the widowed Frank (Roger Allam) and the blithely single Percy (Ian McKellen) hit it off, their pattering small-talk about hip ops and hearing aids getting bigger as they share confidences as well as umbrellas. That’s essentially all there is to Ben Weatherill’s two-hander, Frank and Percy, an undemanding, over-extended meander through a friendship that blossoms into romance. Lessons in love … Percy (Ian McKellen) and Frank (Roger Allam) in Frank and Percy. Photograph: Jack Merriman Each man has something to teach the other. Frank, with his unquestioning liberalism and his dubious statistics gleaned from Facebook, is shown to be more complacent than the proudly XR-loathing Percy. At least the older man has nuance and research on his side, as well as a lifetime’s wisdom from the LGBTQ+ struggle, though he is also prone to shutting down. From Frank, he learns openness while their pets supply a soundtrack of offstage barks and yelps. Allam, previously seen with McKellen under Sean Mathias’s direction in Aladdin, is sweetly bumbling, though given what we discover about Frank’s past, he rather overdoes his initial surprise about Percy’s sexuality. McKellen is better when flashing his claws than in, say, a monologue about watermelons that recalls Peter Cook’s EL Wisty. A high point is his on-stage, pre-Pride costume change performed with a flourish. Mathias prods the actors vaguely this way and that on Morgan Large’s ridged wooden set, which rotates so that its steps and levels can double as the seats in a restaurant where the men bicker over Percy’s contentious views. The backdrop is dominated by images of the verdant heath until Nick Richings’ lighting transforms the space into a karaoke bar or a hospital waiting room. Not all Weatherill’s attempts at topicality pan out: an entire scene is lost to a dead-end digression on no-platforming. But there are instances of genuine pathos, such as when each man reflects on how long he was married: “Too long,” for Percy; “Not long enough,” for Frank. And it’s heartening to find an unembarrassed depiction of desire after middle-age. Even as mortality and ideological differences impinge on the men’s happiness, however, the play doesn’t build, leaving it with the cosy air of a hug-a-gay event for anyone still on the fence. At Theatre Royal, Windsor, until 22 July

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/07/dheepan-review-jacques-audiard-palme-d-or

Film

2016-04-07T14:00:27.000Z

Peter Bradshaw

Dheepan review – a crime drama packed with epiphanic grandeur

Jacques Audiard: ‘I wanted to give migrants a name, a shape… a violence of their own’ Read more There is such exhilarating movie mastery in this powerful new film about Tamil refugees in France from director Jacques Audiard, who gave us A Prophet, Rust and Bone and The Beat That My Heart Skipped. It’s bulging with giant confidence and packed with outbursts of that mysterious epiphanic grandeur, like moments of sunlight breaking through cloud-cover, with which Audiard endows apparently normal sequences and everyday details. There is also something not always found in movies or books or TV drama – that is to say, intelligent and sympathetic interest in other human beings. Every scene, every line, every frame has something of interest. All of it is impeccably crafted and the work of someone for whom making films is as natural as breathing. But it is not his best work. Dheepan comes close to unravelling in its final rather overblown action sequence, which fudges one of its own conditions of suspense: someone with a gun held to the head in one scene, but not the next. There is also a self-consciously demure and downbeat coda. The Cannes jury caught everyone by surprise last summer by giving the Palme d’Or to Dheepan; it looked like more of a career tribute to Audiard, more or less confirming him as the Jean-Pierre Melville of his day, the prince of French cinema. The action moves with absolute assurance from Sri Lanka to a tough French housing estate. It periodically returns to Sri Lanka, as if in a dream or memory; the image of an elephant will stir, enigmatically, from the darkness of sleep or forgetting, like an ambiguous call to arms. Marc Zinga, Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Antonythasan Jesuthasan. A Liberation Tiger warrior in the Sri Lankan civil war is forced in the bitterness of defeat to abandon his dreams and also his identity in the chaos of a refugee camp. He is very well acted by a non-professional, former Tamil soldier turned novelist Antonythasan Jesuthasan. His character’s eyes glitter compellingly with rage and pride. Some human traffickers have a dead family’s trio of passports for sale, so he makes common cause with a woman (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) who is a complete stranger to him and who has recruited a 9-year-old orphan (Claudine Vinasithamby). Posing as a family, they claim asylum in France. Dheepan’s Antonythasan Jesuthasan: from Tamil Tiger to star of a Palme d’Or winner Read more They reinvent themselves as phoney husband, wife and daughter – Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal, invisible mendicants of the French welfare state – and Dheepan gets a publicly funded job as a caretaker in an apartment block which is basically a meeting place for drug-dealers. The trio are tense and terrified, as alien to each other as they are collectively to the French-speakers by whom they are surrounded. They can survive if they can just keep their heads down, but keeping his head down does not come easily to Dheepan, this former revolutionary and alpha male – though he comes to see how the role play of family could easily become a comfortable and agreeable reality, until Yalini gets a job as housekeeper to the ailing father of a local gangster, Brahim (Vincent Rottiers). Dheepan finds that his need to be a warrior and a defender of territory is transferred intact to the banlieues. Inexorably, his vocation for military discipline, for organisation, for working undercover behind enemy lines rises to the surface: he gets things done, he works efficiently with machines, he starts work on trying to repair the static lift in the tower block. Much of the film’s fascination lies simply in the everyday lives of Dheepan and his family, and how they fabricate normality in the midst of chaos. There is a great scene when Illayaal comes back from school after a day of being bullied. She reads aloud an angry, heartwrenching poem about how your life is nothing without friends. Her quasi-mother hits her in an ambiguous rage: rage at her quasi-child’s insubordination and implied blame, and at the indiscipline of complaining when it is only by silence and invisibility that they can get through this. Perhaps misguidedly, I wanted the rest of the film to continue on this level of subtlety and accessibility. Instead, it rears up in a great big gangster rage to the generic level of crime drama, or maybe crime melodrama, as Dheepan makes his last stand. Of course it is handled with flair. Audiard styles it out, and what style he always has.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/27/rishi-sunak-protecting-treasury-from-inflation-at-families-expense

UK news

2022-03-27T07:45:19.000Z

Phillip Inman

Rishi Sunak ‘protecting Treasury from inflation at families’ expense’

Rishi Sunak has battled to protect the Treasury from rising prices while allowing inflation to ravage the finances of low and middle-income households. That is the accusation levelled at the chancellor after a spring budget statement that put government debt reduction ahead of calls for extra welfare support for hard-pressed families. Sunak’s dilemma, as inflation heads towards 8% and possibly beyond, is whether he can afford to increase the Treasury’s outlay on welfare and public services, including public sector pay. His team believes that the Treasury needs to keep a large fund in reserve to pay higher debt costs, much of which is linked to inflation. A proportion of the UK’s debt is held by lenders in the form of index-linked bonds. The more inflation rises, the higher the interest rate the government must pay. Then there is the £875bn of government debt held by the Bank of England – equal to more than a third of the total – which until last year carried an interest rate of just 0.1%. Central bank officials are attempting to limit the rise in inflation by increasing borrowing costs. Two rate rises later, and the annual interest rate stands at 0.75%, raising Sunak’s debt bill further. Figures covering the public finances in February show inflation pushed up interest payments on government debt by more than 50% to £8.2bn, the highest February figure on record. Yet debts costs remain at historic lows as a proportion of the government’s budget, which is a better measure of its ability to pay. In the 1980s, debt interest cost the government about 10% of annual revenues. Today that figure is below 3%, despite a debt mountain that has more than doubled in relation to national income over that time. The offices of HM Treasury in Whitehall. UK government debt is highly sought after by international investors. Photograph: Alamy In addition, UK government debt is still highly sought after by international investors, meaning they are prepared to accept low returns over long periods. And there is little prospect of recent increases in inflation being sustained over the longer time horizons used by the Treasury to judge the nation’s financial stability. Inflation will fall back this year and next because fuel prices are the biggest impetus for rising prices. Inflation is also kinder to the chancellor than it is to businesses or households. It increases his income from VAT. There is also a boost from wage rises that are slightly larger than forecast a year ago, which generates more income tax. Adding an estimated £21bn to his stockpile is a freeze on income tax thresholds set to last four years. Adding fuel to the fire: customers at the forecourt react to Sunak’s statement Read more In the meantime, soaring gas prices and the higher cost of petrol and diesel will eat into business and household incomes with only limited compensation from higher incomes or government support. In truth, much of the Treasury reserve fund is being kept back to fund tax cuts ahead of the next election, when much of it could be used to prevent more than 1.3 million people – including half a million children – from being pushed below the poverty line next year.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/27/russian-man-trapped-chinese-reality-tv-show-voted-out-lelush-vladislav-ivanov-produce-camp

World news

2021-04-27T08:39:09.000Z

Helen Davidson

Russian man 'trapped' on Chinese reality TV show finally voted out after three months

A Russian man who joined a boyband competition show on Chinese TV on a whim but quickly regretted his decision has finally been released from his ordeal after making it all the way to the final. Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old part-time model from Vladivostok, was working on the show Produce Camp 2021 as a translator when producers reportedly noticed his good looks and asked him to sign up as a contestant. Ivanov told the programme he had been asked “if I’d like to try a new life” and agreed, but quickly came to regret the decision. Unable to leave on his own without breaching his contract and paying a fine, he instead begged viewers to send him home and deliberately performed poorly in the hope of being voted off. The programme concept, which originated in Korea, pits young performers against each other to train and eventually form an 11-member international boyband, chosen by a voting public. Ivanov and his fellow contestants were sequestered in dorm rooms on Hainan island and their phones reportedly confiscated. Using the stage name Lelush, Ivanov told viewers “don’t love me, you’ll get no results”, and repeatedly pleaded with people not to vote for him. His first song was a half-hearted Russian rap, in stark contrast to the high-pop of his competitors. “Please don’t make me go to the finals, I’m tired,” he said in a later episode. “I hope the judges won’t support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom,” the South China Morning Post reported him as saying. His pleas went unanswered, however, and he was propelled through three months of competition and 10 episodes, plus supplemental digital content. A fanbase which had taken to his grumpy, anti-celebrity persona, or were perhaps driven by schadenfreude, urged each other to vote for him and “let him 996!” in reference to China’s digital industry culture of chronic overwork - 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Others called him “the most miserable wage slave”, and celebrated him as an icon of “Sang culture”, a Chinese millennial concept of having a defeatist attitude toward life. After making it to the final, Ivanov grumpily ate a lemon on camera, and said he hoped people would not support him again. “I’m not kidding,” he said, deadpan. He was eventually voted out in the final episode, which aired on Saturday. “I’m finally getting off work,” he posted on his Weibo account the next day. A Weibo hashtag related to his departure was viewed more than 180m times and reposted more than 59,000 times, including by the Russian embassy. “Congrats, have a good rest,” the embassy said. Russian media reported that Ivanov had been mobbed at Beijing airport as he left the country, defying rumours he would stay to build a modelling career. Reports of a captive Russian from Vladivostok being held prisoner on a Chinese reality show had led to an online campaign at home for Ivanov to be released from his contract, which bloggers coined #FreeLelush or #СвободуЛелушу. State media began reporting on Ivanov’s predicament about a week ago after popular Russian bloggers posted about the interpreter’s unlikely run. “It’s not funny any more, let Vlad go home!” wrote one.“I am very sad and disturbed. It might have been amusing for some time, but the situation is becoming absurd.” Popular blogger Ruslan Usachev said Ivanov’s high profile, if reticent, participation had boosted Produce Camp’s aura of an international competition – no doubt pleasing Tencent, the Chinese tech giant that runs it. “Suddenly a real live person appeared on this show and people started to vote for him,” Usachev said. “Partially because he stands out [from the other contestants.] But mainly because it’s just kek” - a term, adopted by gamers, that refers to an amusing incident. Ivanov’s story, which has gained him millions of viewers and fans on social media, has drawn accusations of being a publicity stunt, but his friend, the agency executive Ivan Wang, who had hired him to chaperone and translate for his two Japanese clients on the show, said he really disliked being in front of the camera. “One time, I got him a modelling job in Hong Kong, he sent me a SOS message saying he couldn’t stand it five minutes after arriving on set,” Wang told a Chinese entertainment blog. “He declined repeated participation requests by the director of Produce Camp 2021. He just said yes after getting bored on the island. He thought joining the show might help his introverted personality.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/01/maurizio-sarri-europa-league-chelsea

Football

2019-05-01T19:33:38.000Z

Dominic Fifield

Maurizio Sarri targets top-four spot over Europa League as Chelsea injuries grow

Maurizio Sarri has admitted Chelsea will prioritise a top-four finish ahead of winning the Europa League as a means of restoring the club to the Champions League next season, with the Italian’s defensive options to be severely depleted over the final few weeks of the campaign. Victories in the last two league games, against Watford and Leicester, would almost certainly secure a return to Europe’s elite club competition after a season’s absence. Relatively inconsistent domestic form, particularly away from home, since the turn of the year meant Sarri had previously publicly targeted success in the Europa League, which also carries the carrot of Champions League qualification. However, on the eve of his side’s daunting semi-final against Eintracht Frankfurt, a sense of pragmatism appeared to have taken hold. ‘He’ll be the best striker in Europe’ – the stunning emergence of Luka Jovic Read more “I have a good feeling for this competition, and had one also while at Napoli, but, at the moment, we need to finish in the top four in the Premier League,” said Sarri, who has never won a major honour as a head coach. “We want to play next season in the Champions League. Of course the Europa League is important – it’s a very important trophy. But we need to think about the Premier League. We want to get into the Champions League through the Premier League.” Sarri is still expected to field a strong side in Frankfurt, with Eden Hazard likely to start, but there is concern over the lack of options at centre-half. Antonio Rüdiger has undergone surgery in Rome on a torn meniscus in a knee – an injury originally sustained in the loss at Liverpool and aggravated in Sunday’s draw at Manchester United – and faces at least three months on the sidelines, while Gary Cahill has suffered an achilles tendon complaint and has not travelled. César Azpilicueta, who operated on the right of a back three under Sarri’s predecessor, Antonio Conte, has trained at centre-back and will stand in if either Andreas Christensen or David Luiz is ruled out. The young Dane, who featured heavily under Conte last term, has been a regular in the Europa League this season. “We are in trouble with the centre-backs,” said Sarri. “In the last two training sessions we played with Azpilicueta as a centre-back in case. He’s the only one who can play there. We’ve played 58 matches this season and, in the past, we’ve been lucky with injuries. In the last 10 days, not so lucky.” The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. “Antonio is a very important player for us and to miss any player at this stage is not the best news we could have,” said Azpilicueta, a winner of this competition with Chelsea in 2013. “But he is a strong man. We know he’ll be back as soon as possible, and fit enough to keep his level. I’m ready to play wherever the manager asks me to play. I’ve played centre-back for Chelsea and the national team. I’m ready for whatever.” Iker Casillas recovering in hospital after suffering heart attack Read more Eintracht are imposing hosts enjoying a fine season, but local concerns centre on the absence of the suspended Ante Rebic and the loss of Sébastien Haller to injury, denying them two of their rampaging front three and heaping more pressure on Luka Jovic to add to his tally of eight goals in this competition. There are fears, too, that a slog of a season has finally caught up with Adi Hütter’s side. They have failed to win any of their last three Bundesliga matches in their own pursuit of the Champions League and now hover three points clear of fifth place and the chasing pack. Yet the Europa League has tended to coax the best from them. Eintracht have never lost at home to English opposition, and emerged from a group ahead of Lazio and Marseille, then eliminated Shakhtar Donetsk, Internazionale and Benfica in the knockout phase. “But Chelsea are a powerhouse, a pure Champions League team,” said Hütter before rattling off the opposing players he expects to face. “Azpilicueta, David Luiz, Giroud, Higuain – they have lots of experience – Hazard, Pedro who played in Barcelona... Most of our players are playing their first European season. But we’ve been brave and deserve to be here. On a special day, we can hurt even a special opponent.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/08/showgirls-the-90s-flop-is-a-misunderstood-gem-goddess-the-fall-and-rise-of-showgirls-you-dont-nomi

Film

2020-06-08T08:00:14.000Z

Steve Rose

The naked truth about Showgirls: the 90s flop is a misunderstood gem

Showgirls is one of those movies that doesn’t so much divide opinion as defy it. Critical vocabulary breaks down in the face of its transcendent vulgarity. Is it deliberately bad? Unintentionally bad? So bad it’s good? Or just actually … good? Whatever the case, where other movies of a similar vintage have slid into obscurity, we’re still talking about it 25 years later. The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Read more You can’t engineer cult status, but Showgirls accidentally hit upon the perfect formula: big budget yet inherently trashy premise; quotably absurd dialogue (“It must be weird not having anybody cum on you”); ridiculous characters; lavish musical numbers; salacious yet utterly unsexy nudity; and showbiz melodrama played dead straight. Everything about it is over the top, even the toplessness, but especially memorable is Elizabeth Berkley’s wildly overcommitted performance as striving stripper/dancer Nomi, who gyrates and schemes her way up (or is it down?) the greasy pole of Vegas stardom, licking it along the way for good measure. Another key factor in Showgirls’ cult status was the way it bombed so spectacularly, commercially and critically. Nothing breeds cult success like failure. Showgirls became a hit on home video. It was embraced by trash aficionados. Ironic fan screenings were held. Film-makers, including Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, praised it. The rehabilitation really got going in 2003, when Film Quarterly published a roundtable discussion of the movie, assessing its artistic merits, its handling of gender, class and sexual issues, the way it “takes mass culture seriously, as a site of both fascination and struggle”. Now we have two new docs: Goddess: The Fall and Rise of Showgirls, from the makers of I Am Divine, and the entertaining You Don’t Nomi (released on streaming this Friday), which charts the movie’s chequered history and puts it in the context of Verhoeven’s recurring “themes”, including sex, violence, and, more problematically, sexual violence; he’s barely made a movie that doesn’t feature a rape scene. Showgirls’ is one of the worst, but at least it has meaningful consequences, and is avenged in its own twisted way. People loved Verhoeven’s movies when they took aim at hardline law enforcement (RoboCop) or US militarism (Starship Troopers), or even male fragility (Basic Instinct), but with Showgirls, the target was the American dream itself – and the dishonest “star is born” narratives churned out to sustain it. If Showgirls has a message, it’s that the game is rigged for women like Nomi. She thinks she’s climbing the pole but really she’s just spinning round it. The real power lies with the men running the racket. Nobody wanted to hear that at the time; maybe they’re ready to now. In its own messy way, Showgirls is a #MeToo story with a male gaze.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/16/fight-for-justice-bosnia

Opinion

2010-08-16T10:59:01.000Z

Rob Miller

The fight for justice in Bosnia goes on | Rob Miller

In northeastern Bosnia, nestled in the Dinaric Alps on the border with Serbia, there lies a small lake. Formed in the 1960s, when the Drina was dammed to build a hydroelectric power station, Lake Perucac seems unremarkable – just one of many artificial lakes in a mountainous region whose hydroelectric power is a major economic asset. Its significance, though, lies in its location downstream of Visegrad, the small eastern Bosnian village most famous before the 1990s for its beautiful 16th-century Ottoman bridge. Since then, though, it has developed a far more macabre reputation, second only to Srebrenica as a byword for ethnic cleansing and for humanity at its cruellest. Three thousand Bosniak Muslims were killed here in the spring of 1992; not in one organised operation, as in Srebrenica, but over weeks and months, killed almost for sport by the police and the army. Their bodies were dropped from the famous bridge and into the sparkling blue-green Drina, where the current took them downstream to Perucac. Given the town's reputation, then, the discovery in the last month of more than 50 bodies – found by investigators who are trawling the lake while it is half-drained for maintenance reasons – comes as little surprise. Nobody expected the search to be fruitless. The surprise, to many outside Bosnia at least, has been to learn how difficult the investigators' jobs have been. At every level, the investigation has been met with resistance. Shunned by locals in the now wholly Serb town, a wall of silence meets even the simplest inquiries, and sometimes the reception is one of outright hostility. Two weeks ago, an unknown attacker shot at a forensic team's boat. Nobody was hurt, but the message was clear: be careful what you look for. The veiled and not-so-veiled threats are just part of a culture of silence that has been the biggest obstacle in Bosnia's attempts to find justice and settle the historical record. A shadowy network of former and current figures from the government, police and organised crime – the so-called "Preventiva" – protects those who were responsible for some of the worst crimes in the 1992–95 war, and silences those who threaten to speak. Responsible for protecting the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, while he was in hiding, the Preventiva has been successful at derailing or disrupting legal proceedings even when its subjects are caught. Testifying is strongly discouraged; witnesses are intimidated, or worse. Whether through fear or through loyalty, few in Visegrad will talk; those who do are often silenced. In war crimes trials witness testimony is essential. It is typically straightforward to prove that a crime has taken place: there is, distressingly, no shortage of mass graves in Bosnia. But to place an individual or a military unit at the scene, to prove their responsibility, almost always requires witnesses – something of which the Preventiva and their ilk are well aware. In 2005 a former police inspector from Visegrad, Milan Josipovic, testified at the trial of Novo Rajak, a member of the Visegrad police force who had participated in the mistreatment of Bosniak civilians. To testify at all was grounds enough to rile the Preventiva, but when rumours emerged that Josipovic would be prepared to give evidence at a trial of higher-level officials the situation became urgent. Josipovic was shot and killed; his attackers have, unsurprisingly, never been caught. The future, though, is not without hope. Investigators continue to find more material evidence and cracks have appeared in the formerly watertight seal around the Preventiva and its membership. An internal feud is widely believed to have led to the arrest of Milan Lukic, a Preventiva member and the former head of the White Eagles paramilitary organisation that was responsible for some of the worst crimes in Visegrad; last year he was sentenced by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to life imprisonment. It remains to be seen whether the shroud of secrecy will fall completely. If Bosnia is ever to bring to justice those who haunt her past, though, then it surely must. This article was amended at 12.45

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/may/12/martin-kaymer-wins-players-championship-sawgrass

Sport

2014-05-12T00:51:33.000Z

Ewan Murray

Martin Kaymer back on form with victory at Players Championship

Martin Kaymer has waited so long to re-enforce his standing as one of the finest talents in golf that he probably shouldn’t have been expected to do it the easy way. And he duly didn’t. Kaymer stepped back on to the Players Championship course after a 90-minute weather delay at Sawgrass on Sunday evening holding a three-stroke lead. A double bogey on the 15th immediately followed; Kaymer had to hole a treacherous 3ft 7in putt, in semi-darkness, on the last to clinch victory at 13 under par. Kaymer did precisely that, with the same display of nerve that he displayed to seal Europe’s Ryder Cup victory in 2012. One hole earlier, Kaymer had holed a crucial 28ft putt for par at the very juncture where he appeared to be rocking. Make no mistake, this was highly dramatic stuff when it eventually reached a denouement. With this win, the 29-year-old German has made himself part of the Ryder Cup narrative once again. Kaymer, a major champion and former world No1, is back at golf’s top table after a period in which his struggles were routinely hard to fathom. Jim Furyk, so often golf’s nearly man, finished second at 12 under. Sergio Garcia claimed third on his own at 11 under. “I gave it my best effort and unfortunately that fell a little short,” said Garcia. Jordan Spieth had been level with Kaymer at the start of play but, once again, the 20-year-old endured Sunday struggles. For all Spieth’s undoubted talent, he has already displayed a weakness on closing stretches. Time, at least, is well on his side with a view to curing that ailment. Spieth failed to properly recover from the bogey on the eighth which knocked him back to level par for the day. Immediately after the weather break, he three-putted the 14th green for another dropped shot. Spieth ultimately tied for fourth with Justin Rose. For Rose, Sunday had started in curious fashion and ended on a high note. The Englishman had his two stroke penalty from round three rescinded, after the PGA Tour acknowledged they were wrong to use high-definition footage to determine that Rose’s ball had moved upon address at the 18th. When playing 18 for a final time, Rose holed out from 45ft for birdie and a total of 10 under par. “I'm certainly surprised it was overturned,” Rose said of his sanction. “Very rarely is that ever the case. Maybe never the case, I’m not sure. “But the only thing that now makes sense is that when I was at home last night and I read that snippet of the rule, I kind of thought, ‘God, that's exactly what happened today’. It has just been very interesting to be on the wrong side of a ruling and then the right side of a ruling within sort of 12, 15 hours.” Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood finished one shot worse off than Rose. McIlroy played the back nine in an astonishing 17 under par over the four tournament days, leaving him to rue troubles on the front half of the course. McIlroy headed straight for London on Sunday night, where he will spend time with his fiancee Caroline Wozniacki before appearing at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on Thursday week. “Overall, it's been another solid week,” said McIlroy. “Another top‑10, another back door top‑10 as I like to call them, but it's getting close. If only I could get myself in better positions after two days. “I'm playing really well. I equalled my lowest round ever here at Sawgrass today with a 66 so things are heading in the right direction.” Adam Scott, who had been chasing the world No1 spot along with Matt Kuchar, Bubba Watson and Henrik Stenson, finished in 38th place. That meant Tiger Woods retains his place at the top of the rankings.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/21/red-packets-shredded-lettuce-and-1000-buddhas-the-countdown-to-lunar-new-year

Life and style

2023-01-20T14:00:42.000Z

Yvonne C Lam

Red packets, shredded lettuce and 1,000 Buddhas: the countdown to lunar new year

The 24 hours after the first moon of the lunisolar calendar are a chaotic multi-stop itinerary for Junda Khoo, chef and co-owner of Sydney’s Ho Jiak restaurants. On Sunday 22 January (lunar new year) he will juggle duties as a father, husband, chef, employer … and lion tamer. It begins at home, where his three children kneel before Khoo and his wife, Sharon, to wish them a healthy and happy new year. In return, the kids receive lucky red envelopes filled with cash. “We kiss, we hug, and then I’ll make breakfast,” says Khoo. Chef Junda Khoo in his home kitchen with his wife Sharon, and their daughters Danielle and Deanne. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian At lunchtime, he visits his Chinatown restaurant to give more red packets to staff and oversee the booked-out lunch service for 110 diners. That is, until a three-person Chinese lion dance bursts into the kitchen, running riot between the pots and pans, and spraying the place with chewed-up iceberg lettuce. “If you catch it, then your dreams and wishes will come true,” says Khoo. In the late afternoon, he heads home where his children are hosting a kids’ lunar new year party, before winding down with a dinner banquet with family – yes, he’s cooking that too. “After dinner, then I get to chill.” Sunday is normally his day off. But the rush is worth it. “You only do it once a year and I love it. It’s my favourite time of the year,” Khoo says. At lunchtime, Khoo visits his Chinatown restaurant to give red packets to staff and oversee the booked-out lunch service. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian At Nan Tien Temple near Wollongong, a 90-minute drive south of Sydney, Venerable Miao You is preparing for thousands of visitors to descend upon the temple. Not all Buddhists observe lunar new year. Buddhism was founded in the late sixth century in the land we now call India, but Chinese Buddhists have long incorporated the cultural festival into their faith. “It becomes a custom, a culture, enmeshed with religion as well,” says Venerable Miao You. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning On Saturday night – lunar new year’s eve – the temple holds two evening prayer ceremonies farewelling the old year, and welcoming the new. The Venerable’s duties don’t finish until about 2am. They recommence just hours later when the temple gates open at 8am. A highlight of her morning is the new year blessing ceremony in the main shrine. The abbess (the “CEO of the temple”) leads a congregation, chanting 1000 names of past, present and future Buddhas. “It helps remind us that we too one day could be enlightened and be a Buddha,” she says. “When we chant the names of the Buddhas and pray to the Buddhas … it helps remind us that we too one day could be enlightened and be a Buddha.” ‘If you fill yourself up with positive energy, then you know the positive things will come to your life’: for Venerable Miao You of Nan Tien Temple, the new year brings new beginnings. Photograph: Anna Warr/The Guardian The new year symbolises new beginnings, she says. “If you approach the year with positiveness, positive things will emerge in your life. You know, it’s kind of the law of attraction, isn’t it?” “This is what the Buddha says: what you think, you become. So if you fill yourself up with positive energy, then you know the positive things will come to your life.” The celebrations continue for 16 days in total, concluding with a light-offering ceremony. Visitors place lit candles, symbolising clear-mindedness and wisdom, at the base of the Buddha statue. The candle, “is to light up your own life”, says the Venerable. “Buddha doesn’t need that offering from you, because Buddha is already enlightened, right?” A family tossing a yee sang lo hei (prosperity toss salad) at Sydney’s Ho Jiak Town Hall. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian There is no singular way to mark lunar new year, but food is a fixture of many celebrations. At Nan Tien, Buddhist visitors typically won’t eat until noon, after a food offering has been made to Buddha, but the Venerable says in the interests of inclusivity and hospitality, vegetarian food is available to visitors from 10am. “A lot of people that come to the temple, they are not Buddhists … Maybe they’ve just come for the first time in their lives, [to] see what it’s like.” In Sydney’s inner-west, university student Nina Nguyen skips breakfast – “it’s just too chaotic in the morning” – anticipating the long lunch she will co-host for her extended family. Nguyen was raised Catholic, though she no longer practises. Compared to Christmas, lunar new year resonates more strongly with her identity as a Vietnamese Australian. Sign up to Saved for Later Free newsletter Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips 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. By 1pm, the Marrickville home she shares with her brother, father and grandfather becomes a multi-generational hub of activity. Children playing on the floor, cousins chopping ingredients in the kitchen; her brothers are “smashing up the ice” in the back yard while uncles cradle Coronas, “gathered around talking shit”. Nguyen’s father – who migrated to Australia from Vietnam in the 90s – sets up the outdoor wok-burner. His “pride and joy” dish is lobster XO noodles. Everyone dresses in red. “It’s for the aesthetic, for the photos,” says Nguyen. “Also it makes us feel more connected when we’re dressed in the same colour.” By 2.30pm, the feast will be laid out on red-clothed tables: platters of sashimi and oysters, fried crab claws, chicken feet salad, crisp roast pork belly, and bánh cuốn (rice noodle rolls filled with pork mince). ‘We feel more connected when we dress in the same colour’: Nina Nguyen. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian To drink – tequila. “Previously we’d go through Hennessy and Martell and right now we’re into our Don Julio phase,” says Nguyen. After lunch the family plays Vietnamese traditional games including lô tô (similar to bingo), and bầu cua cá cọp, a novelty gambling game with dice and coins, and “lots of yelling and screaming”. When the families with children have gone home, Nguyen and her brothers’ friends come around. “They’ll come expecting to eat but somehow get lured into drinking.” The party wraps by 10pm so Nguyen’s grandfather can go to bed. Khoo has fond childhood memories of celebrations in Malaysia, where he was born. “[It was] family time: eating, bonding, drinking, gambling, fireworks, red packets, getting new clothes – all that stuff.”. But his first lunar new year in Australia was anything but festive. Khoo and his brother moved to Sydney as teenagers for their high school education – without parents or extended family to celebrate with. “I felt very sad and depressed … I had PTSD from that first new year,” he says. It’s why Khoo feels a responsibility to go all-out at his restaurants with a lion dance, and a luxurious seafood-heavy menu, where the yee sang lo hei (prosperity toss salad) is the headline act. His celebrations at work and home are a way of honouring his late amah (Khoo’s paternal grandmother), the family matriarch. Growing up “she was the one doing all the work, she was the one doing all the cooking. She [got] enjoyment from serving others,” says Khoo. “That’s how my Chinese new year has evolved, from enjoying it as a kid to now wanting to provide that enjoyment to other people.” Nguyen’s celebrations also make her proud of her heritage. It fortifies her sense of community with her Asian Australian friends who celebrate. More than any other day, “lunar new year is … special to us”, she says. “Because it’s like our own holiday.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/18/dry-cleaning-oumou-sangare-review-stars-of-grace-joness-meltdown

Music

2022-06-18T13:00:19.000Z

Kitty Empire

Dry Cleaning; Oumou Sangaré review – stars of Grace Jones’s Meltdown

There are many ways a festival curated by Grace Jones might have played out. Jones’s musical playground was the club, her crucible the disco era. When she began making waves in the early 80s, her music boasted a stern electronic undercurrent and no little funk. She covered too many artists to count. Her Meltdown festival lineup, on ice for two years, is as eclectic as Jones’s pedigree implies. It is, however, busy with up-and-coming talents rather than marquee acts (Solange had to pull out). Leading voices from the African continent outweigh Jones’s own sources or contemporaries. Oumou Sangaré’s songs span entreaties and takedowns; they are full of sage advice or exasperated rage The early half of the week has much to commend it. The threads linking Jones to Dry Cleaning are thin but tensile: the drum-machine edge of drummer Nick Buxton and the stentorian, deadpan manner of frontperson Florence Shaw, who gives nothing away but her scorn. You could easily imagine this south London post-punk outfit covering the Normal’s new-wave cult hit Warm Leatherette, with all its sprechgesang and anomie, as Jones once did. Dry Cleaning’s 2021 debut, New Long Leg, was basically all sprechgesang and anomie, with Shaw’s cut-up-style lyrics built from slices of life so fleeting and unanchored they sounded as if she was staring out of the window of a speeding car – their early track Traditional Fish basically lists shop frontages – or flicking past memes on her social media feed. Somehow, it all holds together, rather like this Meltdown, and so it proves tonight in a seated venue where inhibitions prevent dancing as the rhythm section intended. Live, the band very much have the upper hand, with Shaw’s bored delivery often no match for the bobble of the bass or the pranging punk-funk of guitarist Tom Dowse, as active on his feet as Shaw is stony. But the elliptical phrases that do escape the band’s churn seem all the more significant. “I just wanted to tell you I’ve got scabs on my head,” Shaw intones, staring down the crowd during the excellent Strong Feelings, listlessly lifting up a bit of hair, the closest this intentionally blank band member comes to stagecraft. Some “da, da da”s are dangled for comfort on songs such as the wistful More Big Birds, but Dry Cleaning’s approach is stirringly radical. Even the Fall, high priests of oblique poetics, had vocal melodies and choruses. An entire new album’s worth of bone-dry aperçus is coming in October, they announce, called Stumpwork – “Look it up!” (an embroidery technique, it turns out). The good news is that the new song they play – Don’t Press Me – has a great one-liner: “Don’t touch my gaming mouse, you rat.” The bad news? Shaw dilutes their USP by singing a little. Two nights later, there is dancing in the aisles. On the evening Dry Cleaning played, it was touch and go whether the Malian superstar of 30 years’ standing, the Grammy-winning Oumou Sangaré and her seven-strong band, would get their visas in time, a problem that seems to continue to dog international acts that have the audacity to want to entertain British audiences. But Sangaré sashays on unperturbed, imperious and warm at once. Despite the language barrier – she sings in Bambara – her music is all about communication. Her songs span entreaties and takedowns; they are full of sage advice or exasperated rage against the folly of war on songs such as Kêlê Magni , a joyous shakedown, ironically enough. Sangaré’s gestures are conversational, carrying her meaning; she waggles a finger or widens her arms as though to say: “Come on!” The set list goes hard on her most recent album, the superb Timbuktu, one unexpectedly conceived in Baltimore where Sangaré got stuck as Covid hit. But it is full of pride in her native Wassoulou region, tinged with wistfulness and emotional authority; more so than before in her work, it subtly explores the links between west African music and American forms. ‘Emotional authority’: Oumou Sangaré and her band at Meltdown. Photograph: Burak Cingi Tonight, that means the arpeggios of Abou Diarra’s n’goni are offset by the slide guitar of Julien Pestre. Sometimes, the ratio skews just a little too far towards the latter, but a luminous keyboard solo by Alex Millet hangs perfectly over on Degui N’Kelena. Best of all is Sangaré herself, who, from out of nowhere, can hit a note like a mallet, abetted by two spirited backing vocalists on call and response. Dily Oumou finds Sangaré at her loudest and most pained, singing about resilience in the face of her enemies. It’s hard to imagine this woman having enemies, but as a feminist, entrepreneur and activist, she is bound to have made some. Here, though, in dribs and drabs, then in flows, people pour out of their seats to film themselves dancing in front of her. Some fans present her with a painting. Sangaré dispenses hugs and three of her bracelets before scurrying offstage, her dress coming undone from all the ebullience. This article was amended on 19 June 2022 to remove a reference to Moonchild Sanelly, who was not in the Meltdown lineup.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/22/thanks-to-nadhim-zahawi-the-tories-bar-of-shame-has-reached-new-depths

Opinion

2023-01-22T10:00:34.000Z

Stewart Lee

Thanks to Nadhim Zahawi, the Tories’ bar of shame has reached new depths | Stewart Lee

Iwas extremely surprised last week to learn that the Tory chair, Nadhim Zahawi, who famously used public money to warm the stables of his chilly horses, had finally tasted the fist of justice. Last year, Zahawi said: “I’ve always declared my financial interests and paid my taxes in the UK.” In fact, it seems, Zahawi has had to cough up millions of pounds he owed in tax after a dispute with HMRC over an offshore family trust. Last week, his spokesperson said of his boss: “He is proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the world.” The spokesperson said this when asked whether Zahawi was paying millions to HM Revenue and Customs. The answer is the answer to a different question, a British question admittedly, but one that was not asked. When asked a question, politicians, you can’t just say any words as a reply. There has to be some relationship. Is it any wonder examination standards declined so sharply when Zahawi was education secretary. “Explain how Adolf Hitler justified the annexation of the Sudetenland.” “Sartana is coming so trade your pistols for a coffin.” Will that do? As well as being chair of the Conservative party, Zahawi is also currently the minister without portfolio. But maybe he is confused about that too. Maybe he’s got shitloads of portfolios, with portfolios coming out of his arse, but maybe they’re all hidden in the Zahawi family trust in Gibraltar. From now on, Zahawi must be referred to as the minister who claims to have no portfolios. Like the tax coffers that suffered so terribly at the hands of cruel Zahawi, I personally have been the victim of many indignities: three muggings, the theft of four bikes, one phone, numerous car radios and the T-shirt from Nirvana’s first British tour, massive identity fraud and losing the 2014 British comedy award for best entertainment programme to Graham Norton. And, as is so often the case, none of the perpetrators has ever been brought to justice. Indeed, Norton’s career has continued to flourish, as he shamelessly parades the injustice in public. Most wrongdoers are left unpunished. Partying through lockdown? Talking about migrants in terms a Holocaust survivor recognises? Nothing sticks it seems For example, on Tuesday I saw some men fighting in the street by a Victorian beam engine north of Finsbury Park, so I of course got out of the car and tried to get involved. As a “so-called” standup “comedian” and “funny” columnist, I need a constant stream of extreme experiences to fuel the furnaces of my material, so I always throw myself into difficult scenes under the pretence of trying to help, often making the situations worse quite deliberately. Indeed, the recent damage to the central section of Exmoor’s bronze age clapper bridge Tarr Steps was as a result of a suggestion I made to some men arguing in a Premier Inn upstream about whether the lifesize model of Lenny Henry in reception would float. And last year I exacerbated a physical altercation in a square north of Oxford Street by pretending I thought the two men involved were doing some kind of folk dance and then trying to join in. I realised, to my shame, that I was being observed by the bewildered standup comedian Jamali Maddix, who was sitting outside a cafe nearby. I went over to him and said: “We all do that, don’t we, Jamali Maddix? Get involved in stuff to see if you get some material out of it?” He said he didn’t and looked confused and worried. By the beam engine some men in cheap red tracksuits were restraining a small man, and one of them had punched him in the face. When I approached, one of the tracksuit men stopped his friend punching the small man, explained that they were delivery drivers, that they thought the small man had been trying to remove stuff from their van, and that the police had been called. In the excitement the small man wriggled free and ran away through six lanes of traffic, chased by the tracksuit men, whom he swiftly evaded. Later on I saw him lying on a bench in Finsbury Park. I asked him why he had fled the scene and he said he “was proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the Tottenham area” and that he considered the matter closed. Of course, the light that has been shone on Zahawi’s doings will make no difference. Not long ago, it would have been a resignation matter, but the bar of shame has been lowered so significantly by this current incarnation of the Conservative party that it is now obstructing the Mariana Trench. Partying through lockdown? Giving public money to your American mistress? Talking about migrants in terms a Holocaust survivor recognises? Nothing sticks it seems. That’s why it’s so odd that Amazon is finally severing its business relationship with the bants-bearing bulldozer that is Jeremy Clarkson. Amazon had some kind of ethical standards all along it seemed, it’s just that they didn’t extend to workers’ rights, tax payment, packaging policies and competition. At least that rude old man is gone, sacked for creating, albeit at the Sun in this instance, exactly the kind of Clarkson-style content the content-platform signed Clarkson up to create. But it’s odd, isn’t it? Clarkson is banished from a business that has no moral standards whatsoever and rationalises everything in terms of disrupting the market. But Zahawi continues as chair of the Conservatives, brandishing as few portfolios as he cares to admit to, while working in the heart of government, a place where morality ought to matter more than at Amazon. Yes, we have no portfolios! Stewart Lee’s shows Snowflake and Tornado are available on BBC iPlayer. Basic Lee tour dates are booking now. Stewart will appear in Stand Up for Ukraine at the Leicester Square theatre, London, on 28 January

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/aug/16/popandrock.artsfeatures5

Music

2002-08-16T00:17:44.000Z

John Aizlewood

Pop releases: Sleater-Kinney: One Beat

The rather inglorious tradition of shouty punk women began with the Slits, but trio Sleater-Kinney take their cue from long-forgotten compatriots Ut, whose celebration of discord and amateurism inadvertently blazed some sort of trail for grunge. Six albums in, Sleater-Kinney still exhibit most shouty-punk touchstones. Corin Tucker has a screechy howl of a voice, they don't produce their records properly and their guitars are often alienating and angular where even Kurt Cobain understood that something less slothful is always required. So far, so horrid, yet there is a problem. Sleater-Kinney simply cannot stop their songs peeking through. And, curiouser yet, what life-enhancing songs they are. The opening title track is sparse pop writ large; 02 is a sweeping anthem, propelled by Janet Weiss's drums, and Prisstina is as poppy as a Blondie demo tape. There is even a hint of synthesiser on the jolly Funeral Song ("Nothing says 'for ever' like our very own grave"). Perhaps they are really ready to go for it: on this evidence, they have the ammunition.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/01/top-10-best-dressed-characters-in-fiction-amanda-craig-the-golden-rule

Books

2020-07-01T13:18:54.000Z

Amanda Craig

Top 10 best-dressed characters in fiction | Amanda Craig

The first clothes in western literature, Adam and Eve’s fig leaves, performed their essential fictional function in drawing attention to the protagonists’ moral failings. Clothes in contemporary fiction seem to me to be an underused trope, perhaps because fast fashion has made individual garments less emblematic. When my own heroine Hannah is persuaded into a double murder plot by the rich Jinni on the London to Penzance train in The Golden Rule, it is no accident that her co-conspirator is wearing green. The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig review – a rollicking summer read Read more Jinni’s exquisite emerald garb is alluring, but she is not what she seems. Hannah, a millennial Cinderella and single mother who has attempted to escape her impoverished Cornish background through a university degree, spends most of the novel in old jeans and T-shirts. Only when loaned a Dior dress can she step out of failure and despair – though she reduces it to shreds. 1. The Silver Chair by CS Lewis This novel is packed with clothes, but especially green ones symbolising nature, lust, magic and death. The seductive Lady of the Green Kirtle who bewitches and kidnaps Prince Rilian first appears to him in “a thin garment as green as poison”. It’s a great quest story, both funny and touching, and it takes two bullied children from a progressive public school in our world into the frozen north of Narnia, climaxing underground in a struggle that dramatises the nature of religious faith in a Platonic cave as the witch’s green dress turns into the coiling body of a gigantic serpent. Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre in the 2011 film version. Photograph: Allstar/BBC Films 2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Jane is so fiercely attached to her Puritan dress that even when about to marry the rich Mr Rochester she rejects bright colours for “sober black satin and pearl grey silk”. Paradoxically, this makes her passionate originality flame brighter to him – and us – an original touch that makes this poor, plain, intelligent and brave young woman eternally beloved by readers. When happily reunited with Mr Rochester, we learn through him that her dress is blue – the colour of heaven and happiness. 3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Anna’s sumptuous black velvet ballgown, though revealing of her arms and bosom, is understood by the admiring Kitty to be “just a frame” because her “loveliness consisted precisely in always standing out from what she wore.” Tolstoy hardly describes Anna’s looks but makes us see her beauty and femininity in describing her ballgown, whose seductive colour foreshadows her eventual fate. She is the greatest tragic heroine in literature, and one I return to repeatedly. 4. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien The greatest fantasy novel of the 20th century uses clothes to both reveal and conceal the true nature of protagonists. Frodo’s hidden mithril coat, “harder than steel … like moonlit silver”, is important not just because it is a gift that saves his life but because it represents the indomitable purity of his soul and will. When Sauron taunts the allies by bringing his coat out as a trophy before the Black Gate, they believe him to be dead; but snatch it back to remember him by. It saves his life a second time in the final return to the Shire. Doomed passion … Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film of The Great Gatsby . Photograph: Warner Brothers/Everett/Rex 5. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Daisy’s “rippling and fluttering” white dress gives an airy impression of her essential lack of gravity when the narrator first sees her at home. The ultimate Jazz Age novel about doomed passion and the love of money, written in matchless prose, we soon see that the only thing that makes Daisy weep are Gatsby’s tailor-made “beautiful shirts”, possibly because they underline the materialism that has led her to marry a less rich man. 6. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith The impoverished teenage Mortmain sisters are obsessed by clothes (which their eccentric ex-model stepmother, Topaz, often forgets to wear at all). One especially farcical scene occurs when Cassandra’s beautiful sister Rose is so embarrassed by her inept flirtation with the rich Cotton brothers that she runs away from them in a “long shaggy black” fur coat and pretends to be a bear. Dressing in furs often symbolises the truth of our animal nature, and it later transpires that the bearskin coat escapade has given Rose a secret opportunity for more serious courtship in a delicious romp about innocence and youth. 7. Monsieur Ka by Vesna Goldsworthy The ache of poverty is keenly conveyed in this outstanding novel making deft use of an earlier novelist’s characters. Set in freezing postwar London, its Jewish heroine Albertine is the daughter of a tailor. She becomes drawn to Anna Karenina’s son Sasha, now an elderly emigre with his own family. As a refugee herself, Albertine has just one respectable dress whose silk can change in the light from grey-pink to red. Its ambiguity recalls Madame Bovary’s famous “gorge de pigeon” dress and slyly suggests that Albertine, too, is vulnerable to adulterous passion. Elegant, witty and sophisticated, Goldsworthy channels Tolstoy with complete assurance. Girl on Fire … Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in the 2012 film of The Hunger Games. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar 8. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins The tomboyish Katniss must compete for her life in a dystopian TV contest. Her sympathetic costume designer Cinna puts her into “a simple black unitard… and a fluttering cape made of streamers of orange, yellow and red” that bursts into synthetic flames during the initial parade, instantly transforming her from dull representative of Panem’s despised coal-mining District to the public’s “Girl on Fire” heroine. Collins’s trilogy came to us before Trump’s America, but its satire on the kind of cruelly divisive populist culture that led to his victory looks increasingly prescient. Katniss’s costume is especially thrilling because she will indeed become the fiery rebel leader of a revolution against the Capitol. 9. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins A middle-class Mexican bookshop owner, Lydia has left “her good church shoes” in the shower cubicle where she hides with her small son after her family has been murdered. To flee, she puts on her dead mother’s gold trainers, a magical detail because those shoes carry her as she jumps off bridges on to fast-moving goods trains going north. Only when finally crossing the desert into the US must she abandon them for tough, heavy boots and a grim new reality as an illegal migrant. A thrillingly propulsive, compassionate novel for our times. 10. The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson Whenever I feel depressed, I reach for Ibbotson’s peerless romantic comedies (a cross between PG Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford), but this is my favourite. Anna, its idealistic young Russian refugee heroine is determined to earn her living as a “tweeny” in the dilapidated home of an earl. He has returned from the first world war believing he is engaged to the rich and revolting Muriel, who has a wardrobe of magnificent clothes and the heart of a Nazi. Anna must conceal both her aristocratic family and her humble occupation; when her younger brother turns up as an unexpected guest, she pretends her maid’s uniform is a fancy-dress costume and her roughened hands due to method acting. However, the earl first sees Anna when she is washing herself in his lake and dressed only in her gloriously long brown hair. In a novel that is all about looking beyond appearances, not even a fig leaf is needed. The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig is published on 2 July by Little, Brown. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/oct/22/the-golden-notebook-hard-work-doris-lessing-reading-group

Books

2019-10-22T12:08:09.000Z

Sam Jordison

Struggling with The Golden Notebook? The hard work is worth it

In my edition of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, the text that forms the titular volume arrives on page 531. These climactic thoughts, supposedly recorded by the novel’s central character, Anna Wulf, take up only 26 pages. That’s not to say Lessing’s title is a misnomer. The story builds towards these 26 pages and finds a kind of resolution within them. Lessing’s decision to divide her novel into many sections is crucial to the book’s power. She very deliberately split her novel across different aspects of Anna’s personal story and her fractured psychology. The result still seems unique in fiction – it makes for a strange, troubling and difficult reading experience. Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is our Reading group book for October Read more The black, red, yellow and blue notebooks of the novel are Anna’s different approaches to making sense of herself. In the black one, she reflects on her writing life. In the red, she tracks her political development. Yellow contains her attempts to write (highly autobiographical) fiction, while blue is a diary of her daily life. Meanwhile, the Free Women sections describe Anna in the third person, taking us outside her head in an attempt to record her scattered thoughts. It would be impossible to discuss everything in these sections in a single article. The book features hilarious pastiches about mid-20th-century literary London and bitter satires of film and television producers. There are agonised accounts about the end of the communist dream, and frank commentaries on sex, male impotence and female desire. There are shocking descriptions of the racist politics of white colonialists in Africa. There are insights into both inequality and the privileged bohemian lives of Anna and her friends. (It’s bewildering to read the book in 2019, and encounter all those young artists who have spurned regular employment but live in huge houses in London – that they own!) Sections from each notebook are interspersed throughout the novel, providing numerous cliffhangers and sometimes keeping readers waiting for dozens, even hundreds, of pages before there is a resolution. At the end of the second section, comes one of the biggest shocks I’ve encountered in fiction for a long time. We learn, via a frantic, confusing phone call, that something dreadful has happened. Then we’re cut off, and because of the way the book is set out, if feels only natural that we should have to wait before we get answers. But this just gives Lessing another opportunity to set up more surprises. Alongside this high drama, there are also sections of intense tedium. Even once I was fully invested in the story it could be hard work. Reading the section entitled The Golden Notebook often felt like chewing concrete. But this book is meant to be hard work. There would be something wrong with an entirely enjoyable account of a nervous breakdown. The novel’s longueurs are also partly why it works: Lessing makes us slowly climb this mountain of a story so we can better appreciate the view from the top. Sometimes, I needed to be reminded that there’s a real person writing this story. As we watch Anna writing about her fictional character, Ella, we are reminded of Lessing writing about Anna (and, I suppose, Ella). How much of Lessing’s life feeds into Anna’s, in the same way that Anna’s life feeds into Ella’s’? We can’t know. It seems prurient to demand the exact correspondences between events in Lessing’s life and scenes in her novel. But it would be equally wrong to ignore the importance of the actual world to this fiction. And that isn’t interesting only because of the natural curiosity we have about the author’s life. It is because it raises the stakes, and makes the politics, the madness, the emotion, all more feel more real. Anna’s suffering is not confined only to this novel. It also happens out in the world, to people like Ella, Anna, Lessing – or you and me.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/05/rishi-sunak-and-wife-donate-over-100000-to-winchester-college

Politics

2022-04-05T15:51:53.000Z

Rowena Mason

Rishi Sunak and wife donate over £100,000 to Winchester college

Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murthy, have donated more than £100,000 to the chancellor’s old private school, Winchester college. The private boys’ boarding school, which costs £43,335 a year to attend, revealed the donation in its annual journal. A spokesperson for Sunak said: “Rishi and his wife have donated to numerous charities and philanthropic causes for many years and will continue to do so. These donations are made to help fund scholarships for children who would not otherwise have the opportunity to go to Winchester.” The school’s journal from 2020 also put him in the list of benefactors who have donated more than £100,000 in total, suggesting he has been a regular donor. Speaking of his private education at Winchester, where he was head boy, Sunak told Sky last month: “I was really lucky to have that opportunity. It was something that was really extraordinary, it certainly put my life on a different trajectory. “As I said, it’s part of the reason I’m sitting here and I’m really grateful to have had that opportunity. And I look back on that time. It’s helped make me who I am as a person, and it helps me do the job in the way that I do it. And it confirms to me that education is one of the best tools at our disposal in politics to spread opportunity.” Labour highlighted Sunak’s previous claim that he had “maxed out” on how much support he could give state schools, while continuing to hand subsidies to “elitist private schools” through tax breaks. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “Britain should have the best state schools in the world. But after 12 years of Tory neglect four in 10 of our children leave school without the qualifications they need. “Labour would end the tax giveaway Rishi Sunak hands out to his old boys’ network and use the money to improve every state school instead, ensuring everyone leaves education ready for work and ready for life.” Sunak’s personal wealth has recently come under scrutiny over investments his wife holds in Infosys, which had business in Russia. Murthy holds an estimated £690m stake in the Indian IT services company and collects about £11.5m in annual dividends. The Guardian reported last week that it was “urgently” closing its office in Russia. Pressure had been mounting on Sunak to answer accusations that his family was collecting “blood money” dividends from the firm’s continued operation in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, called on the chancellor to reveal whether his family had been “benefiting from money made in Russia when the government has put in place sanctions” on firms and individuals. After scrutiny of his wife’s holding in Infosys, Sunak told the BBC’s Newscast that it was “very upsetting and … wrong for people to try and come at my wife”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/19/telegraph-brexit-mutineers-barclays-tony-gallagher-sun

Politics

2017-11-19T06:59:54.000Z

Peter Preston

‘Brexit mutineers’ headline telegraphs what sort of paper the Barclays run

Supreme court judges are “Enemies of the people” (Daily Mail) and Brexit rebel MPs are “mutineers”, with front-page pictures added for identification and vilification purposes (the Telegraph). But such problems, of course, are not just about the nature of the assault: they also tell us something about the newspapers that launch them. Tony Gallagher, editor of the Sun, rowed swiftly to tweet rescue of the Telegraph’s mutinous editorial crew last week. He couldn’t see that anything they had done was wrong – which is interesting because Tony went from the Mail to edit the Telegraph before emerging on top of the Bun. In short, either he’s covered the spectrum – or the spectrum itself has begun to fold into a single snarl. There once was a time when the Telegraph gave readers a unique insight of the manners, preoccupations and mindset of the Conservative party. No more. Now, seemingly, it’s a bludgeon seeking to impose uniformity in the distant, disconnected name of the brothers Barclay.

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https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/06/aziz-ansari-master-of-none-netflix

Television & radio

2015-11-06T15:20:38.000Z

Brian Moylan

Master of None: Aziz Ansari makes a sitcom with soul

Aziz Ansari’s new comedy does not operate in the sitcom world. On Master of None, which is currently streaming all 1o episodes on Netflix, you will not find a wacky neighbour, a group of friends that spends every waking moment hanging out together, or an unimaginably large Manhattan apartment. Everyone has a proper job rather than being an architect or magazine editor, those professions that appear far more in network shows than they do in real life. Sure the main character, Dev (Ansari) is an actor – and we need another story about them like David Cameron needs a bacon sandwich – but this show is so real that Dev’s parents are played by Ansari’s actual parents. It’s a huge change in tone from Ansari’s famous role as the almost obnoxiously energetic Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation. His role here is much closer to the persona he presents in his standup sets (the last several produced for Netflix) or his book Modern Romance: An Investigation, which was published this summer. Aziz Ansari's Master of None – watch the first trailer Read more On Master of None, which he created with Alan Yang, Ansari is much more sedate, a mood that meshes well with the series’ loosey-goosey format. Each episode is themed around a topic like parents, old people or Indians on TV and in each one, Dev finds himself in a strange or extreme scenario that makes him examine the way he thinks about these issues. On these adventures he has a revolving cast of friends and co-conspiritors, none of whom are simple character tropes and none of the actors are movie-star beautiful (except when Claire Danes stops by for a guest role). In this respect the show is very reminiscent of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, which put Larry David in a series of compromising positions and then followed the insufferable ways he and everyone around him end up looking like asses. However, what makes Master of None such a joy to watch, is that it is also the complete opposite of Curb. Even in an episode where Dev sleeps with a woman (Danes) because her husband cuts him in line at an ice cream shop, it has a very humane and heartfelt ending considering the scenario. In the Seinfeldian wake of David and all his imitators, watching a modern comedy (think Louie, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Veep or Girls) has become an exercise in waiting for something awful to happen, like a zombie leaping out from behind a car on The Walking Dead. Just as a sitcom character gets close to a girlfriend’s grandmother, as Dev does in one episode, you’re bracing yourself for her to die, be a racist or have some sort of bizarre sexual perversion. I felt the same sense here, just waiting for whatever twist was coming to kick me in the gonads. The surprise eventually comes, but its impact is emotional and intellectual rather than visceral. The episode don’t set out to examine how awful and conceited people are but instead explore the misunderstandings that happen on the way to human connection. If you were to pick one adjective to describe the show, it would be humane. Yes, the show says, sometimes people kind of behave like jerks, but deep down they are generally pretty worthy. Like Seinfeld and its famous “no hugging, no lessons” policy, the episodes don’t have a didactic moral, but the characters are all searching for something meaningful in this sometimes crummy life. If that makes the show sound treacly or full, it isn’t. There is plenty of absurd humor like Dev’s Skype audition for a role, which he has to do in a coffee shop because the Wi-Fi in his house sucks, or his fitness-minded friend who continues to do burpees while waiting for Dev to finish a conversation with someone else. Scene and heard: directors of photography spill the beans on TV's biggest shows Read more It’s also refreshing to see a show that features so few white people. Sure, they’re around, but the focus is on Dev and his friends, most of whom are people of colour. The best episode is Indians on TV, when Dev and another Desi friend, Ravi (Ravi Patel), both go out for the same sitcom audition only to find out that a network won’t cast two Indian guys on the same show because they’re afraid it will become an “Indian show”. “We’re just the set decoration,” Dev laments. “We’re not doing the main stuff. We’re not fucking the girls and all that stuff.” It is the most insightful, funny and honest episode of television tackling race and popular culture since Blackish pondered “the N-word” earlier this season. By the end of the episode, Dev has come to some conclusions about what is wrong with the way Hollywood operates and how he can be a real agent of change in the world. It’s not like Bill Cosby sitting his kids down on a bed for a heart-to-heart (which has rather different connotations these days in any case), but Master of None never betrays its kind soul. It is the rarest gem of all: a finely calibrated, amazingly subtle, and totally unique piece of television that everyone can enjoy. Ansari may not think he’s master of anything, but he sure is doing a hell of a lot right here.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/mar/28/guardianobituaries.politics

Politics

2005-03-28T08:08:59.000Z

David McKie

Obituary: Lord Callaghan

It was a matter of quiet satisfaction to James Callaghan, who has died aged 92, that his record contained one achievement that none of the most celebrated 20th-century prime ministers - Lord Salisbury, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher - could match. He had held all four of the great offices of state: chancellor of the exchequer from 1964 to 1967, home secretary from then until 1970, and the job he most coveted, foreign secretary, from 1974 to 1976, when Wilson's unexpected resignation opened the door to the premiership for him. In the light of that long, comprehensive record, it seems unjust that the moment for which he is still perhaps best remembered was one of his bleakest. In January 1979, Callaghan returned from a week of sun and statesmanship in the Caribbean to a chilly London. At the Guadeloupe summit he had been working on relaxed and equal terms with President Jimmy Carter of the United States, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, great men communing with great men. Afterwards he took a few days' rest in Barbados. The descent from this high world stage to the baying press pack at Heathrow airport was painful and galling. This was the winter of discontent, in which strike followed strike, essential services foundered, uncollected rubbish littered the streets, and at one point, a strike in Liverpool meant that the dead went unburied. "Crisis, what crisis?" was how the Sun's headline reported the prime minister's press conference. In fact, though that phrase would be hung round his neck for the rest of his life, he had never said it. Yet what he did say was trouble enough. "I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos," he growled at reporters. For once, his sure political touch had deserted him. That maladroit afternoon at Heathrow, followed by electoral defeat and his party's long spell in the wilderness, left a persisting stamp of failure on the Callaghan premiership. And to make it worse, the origins of the episode had been very much Callaghan's doing. It was his decision, in 1978, against the advice of his chancellor Denis Healey, to try to impose a further pay norm of just 5%. It was he who deferred the expected election of October 1978 to the following spring. He hoped for some economic recovery, but above all, he feared that an October election would produce another hung parliament leaving Labour still dependent on fixes and deals. As it transpired, the winter of discontent and a general sense that Labour's allies and paymasters in the unions were running the country did for his party and opened the way to 18 years of Conservative rule. Leaving power on that note tarnished his record. Subsequent reassessments have largely agreed that Labour's fourth prime minister deserved better than that. Healey, who worked more closely with him than most, rated him second only to Attlee among Labour leaders. Leonard James Callaghan - still Leonard or Len when he entered the Commons - was born in Portsmouth. His father, who had been a chief petty officer in the Royal Navy, died suddenly when the boy was nine, of a heart attack, leaving his mother to struggle on without the aid of a pension. His education, culminating at the Portsmouth Northern secondary school, was patchy and inadequate, a fact of which he sometimes spoke bitterly and which made the right to a decent education one of his great political passions. That, for purely financial reasons, he never went to university was one of the blights of his life. The Callaghans were Baptists. It was through his Sunday school teaching that he met his wife Audrey in Maidstone, Kent, where in 1929 he had found a job as a clerk in an Inland Revenue office. Here he became a smart, enthusiastic and disputatious trade unionist. In 1936 he gave up his job in the Inland Revenue and became a full-time union official. He was also now increasingly involved with the Labour party. In June 1940, he volunteered for the Royal Navy, though the union contrived for a while to hang on to his services, and even thereafter he was disappointingly far from the thick of the action. By now he hoped to make his future in parliament. In the 1945 Labour landslide he took Cardiff South off the Conservatives. By 1947 he was on the front bench as parliamentary secretary for transport; after Labour's narrow election victory three years later, he was parliamentary and financial secretary to the Admiralty. That ended with Labour's defeat the following year, but he prospered in opposition, as opposition spokesman on transport from 1951 to 1953, and on fuel and power until 1955. Then, following Labour's defeat in the 1955 general election, in 1956 he became shadow colonial secretary and developed a useful sideline as a fluent and personable TV performer. Labour went down to a third successive election defeat in 1959 and he remained with colonial affairs until 1961, when he became shadow chancellor. When Labour had lost in 1951, Callaghan was just short of 40. By the time the party returned to power, Callaghan was well into middle age. He had run without much success in 1960 as a compromise candidate for the deputy leadership, and, though promoted by the then Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell to shadow chancellor, he was very much the outsider in the leadership contest with Wilson and George Brown which followed Gaitskell's death in 1963. With Labour back in office in 1964 with a tiny majority, Wilson installed him as chancellor. He inherited a negligently managed economy and a balance of payments deficit of £800m, a frightening sum in those days and requiring an emergency budget with stringent public spending cuts and a hike in interest rates to stem a panic selling of sterling. In 1966, Labour was re-elected with a 100-seat majority. Callaghan returned to the Treasury - slightly sadly perhaps, as his deepest interest was always in foreign affairs - and again was soon engulfed in a crisis that led to devaluation in October 1967. Labour had long been taunted by the Tories as the party of devaluation, which made them delay the decision far longer than was advisable, and Callaghan was deeply upset at being its agent now. He offered his resignation, which Wilson refused, but insisted on leaving the Treasury. A straight swap with Roy Jenkins made him home secretary. Jenkins's term in that office had done much to establish what was later tagged "the permissive society". But Callaghan was never a man for permissive societies: his background in working-class Portsmouth, his bent for the practical rather than the philosophical, and a sense of nonconformist morality which persisted when his churchgoing days were over, marked him down as conservative rather than as progressive. His inclinations on law and order were cautious too, all the more so since he had served while in opposition as the adviser to the Police Federation. But his biggest preoccupation was Northern Ireland, to which he dispatched British troops in August 1969. (Some ministers gloomily predicted they might need to stay for as long as six months.) His calm, constructive approach won him admirers in disparate political camps. "Jim Callaghan," said Healey in his memoirs The Time Of My Life, first published in 1989, "handled the situation with incomparable skill and understanding, both on the spot and in Westminster." Earlier that year his edgy relations with Wilson spilled into outright hostility when he felt himself bound to oppose the plans for trade union reform in Barbara Castle's white paper called In Place Of Strife. Callaghan, the old union hand, was opposed to the use of new laws to shackle unions. He wasn't against reform, but was certain that those specific reforms were not going to work. Additionally, as the party's treasurer, he feared the loss of union funding. Accordingly, to his leader's fury he spoke and voted against the white paper when it came up for debate at the party's national executive council. He bore, with his usual fortitude, his consequent expulsion from Wilson's inner cabinet, though much later, reflecting perhaps on the calamitous winter of 1978-79 he came to believe that he might have been wrong on this issue. Labour's unexpected defeat at the 1970 election at the hands of Edward Heath's Conservatives pitched Callaghan, now 58, back into the impotent opposition, with a sense by now that time might be running out. At one point it seemed he might leave British politics to run the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but he didn't. He was shadow home secretary from 1970 to 1971, opposition spokesman on employment from 1971 to 1972 and shadow foreign secretary from 1972 to 1974. And when Labour returned to office in 1974, a reconciled Wilson gave him the foreign secretaryship, and the chance to develop his interests: especially Africa, the Atlantic alliance, and its changing nature as Britain grew closer to Europe, and other causes from defence and security to third world poverty. He engineered the successful result of the 1975 referendum which was supposed to settle for good Britain's place in the European community; it was he who, by inviting West Germany's Social Democrat chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, to address a Labour party special conference on the issue swung Labour out of its long coolness on Europe to positive support. And with Wilson's surprise resignation in March 1976, he became the overwhelming favourite for the succession. He won the deciding round on April 5 -nine days after his 64th birthday. "Prime minister! And I never went to university!" he is said characteristically to have exclaimed when he heard the result. But, just as when he had arrived at the Treasury nine years earlier to face a burgeoning balance of payments crisis, his prospects now were unenviable. Inflation had broken all records under the Wilson government. The scandal around the former Labour minister John Stonehouse and his defection and imprisonment obliterated Labour's majority as he arrived. The left was perpetually restive with a new leader too closely identified for their tastes with the party's right - all the more so when in his opening reshuffle Callaghan sacked one of those it loved most, Barbara Castle. And once again the economy was running into deep trouble - so deep that Callaghan's chancellor Healey was forced in the autumn of Callaghan's first year in office to turn to the IMF for help and to pay the alarming price, in terms of severe public spending cuts, which the IMF demanded. But Callaghan adroitly pulled together a majority within the cabinet in support of the chancellor. "The consummate skill with which he handled the Cabinet was an object lesson for all prime ministers," a grateful Healey wrote later. The polls at this stage were putting the Tories more than 20 points in the lead, with fewer than 20% of voters approving the government's record. But as time went on the old navy man, as true as his father to the motto "steady as she goes", began to turn things around. Conscious, as others sometimes all too obviously and woundingly were, of his lack of intellectual firepower, Callaghan had surrounded himself with shrewd academic advisers, while Nuffield College, Oxford, had perceptively made him a visiting fellow. Now, as prime minister, he continued that practice, recruiting bright young people who furnished some of his more offbeat ideas and drafted some of his most telling speeches. He might sometimes rail at the other foibles of middle-class intellectuals, but he saw the value of having such people around. His call in a speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, for a radical lifting, across the board, of educational standards and the reinstatement of traditional values like a knowledge of the three Rs, reflected both his own instincts and sense of the deprivation he had suffered from incompetent teaching, and the guidance of close advisers. His then son-in-law Peter Jay closely influenced his near-repudiation of some favourite Keynesian teaching in a speech which was later seen by some as a foretaste of Thatcherite economics. His choice after Anthony Crosland's early death in 1977 of the young David Owen as foreign secretary hardly fitted Callaghan's reputation for playing safe; his appointment of Jay as ambassador to Washington in 1977 was even more unexpectedly dashing and controversial. But Labour was making progress under his stewardship. The carefully crafted pay policy agreed with trade union leaders, his characteristically consensual response to runaway inflation, was bringing inflation back under control. By January 1978 the rate was down to single figures for the first time since October 1973. The pact with David Steel's Liberals had disposed of the constant threat that the government might collapse at any moment. And the people were coming to like their new prime minister. They liked his straightness after the twists and turns of the Wilson years. They liked his candour. Where Wilson seemed to aspire to omniscience, Callaghan was humanly fallible. "I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that," he would sometimes say to some hopelessly detailed Commons question. By the autumn of 1977, Labour's recovery looked quite astonishing, with the party now level pegging on the polls with the Tories, its record approved by 41% of electors, and the prime minister's own popularity ratings topping 50%. A year later, after he had turned down the option of an October election, Labour were well ahead on the polls, with the PM's rating pushing up towards 60%. And then the dam burst, and Callaghan and his government, along with the gentler, consensual, non-confrontational approach that he represented, were swept away for good by the tide of triumphal Thatcherism. He stayed on as leader after his defeat in May 1979, while the party indulged in a bout of vindictive blood-letting which came very close to breaking it. Callaghan himself was the target of much of the vitriol. "Why does the Guardian keep running headlines saying I've been humiliated at the NEC?" he once complained to this newspaper. "Just look at the numbers: I'm certain to be humiliated." He seems to have hoped that by staying in post and taking the flak he could boost the prospects of Healey, the obvious choice as leader when passions abated. But his hand was forced by the party's decision to switch the choice of leader from the party's MPs to an electoral college, where the unions would command 40% of the vote, the constituency parties 30% and the parliamentary party 30% also. So he stepped down to ensure a contest under the old system, not the new. But the tactic failed: on November 4 1980 the party's MPs chose Michael Foot rather than Healey. Jim Callaghan remained in the Commons for a further seven years. He was Father of the House - its respected Oldest Inhabitant - through the 1983 parliament. After that he gave up the seat he had represented in Cardiff for more than 40 years and went to the Lords. Now he could spend more time, as he had long dreamed of doing, on his Sussex farm and with his family. He began to display a new serenity which justified at last the affectionate term "Sunny Jim". It had been a description which surprised those around him over the years who had frequently found him to be tetchy and even bruising: "A bit of a bully,"his victims sometimes said. He spoke rarely, though tellingly. During the 1987 election campaign he surprised and dismayed his successors in the party leadership with a full-blooded speech against Labour unilateralism on defence. He celebrated his 80th birthday, then his 90th. He still appeared at Westminster for both formal and informal occasions, often supported by Margaret, Baroness Jay, his elder daughter, who was the party's leader in the Lords. These late days were clouded, though, by the illness of his wife Audrey, to whom he remained incomparably devoted, as she was to him. Her death on March 15 after a long and distressing illness seemed to knock the remaining fight out of him. He is survived by his two daughters, Margaret and Julia, and his son Michael. · Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, statesman, born March 27 1912; died March 26 2005

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/jan/24/doc-rivers-milwaukee-bucks-head-coach-hiring

Sport

2024-01-24T16:55:32.000Z

Guardian sport

Doc Rivers reportedly agrees to deal to become Milwaukee Bucks head coach

Doc Rivers has accepted an offer to become the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks following Tuesday’s dismissal of Adrian Griffin only 43 games into his first season with the team, according to multiple reports. CNN was first to report the news of Rivers’ agreement to a deal in principle late Tuesday night. ESPN, where Rivers has worked this season an on-air analyst, confirmed that reporting on Wednesday morning. How the once-derided Minnesota Timberwolves became contenders Read more ESPN’s public relations department released a statement on social media from head of event and studio production David Roberts saying, “We wish Doc well and we look forward to documenting the next chapter of his coaching career.” Interim coach Joe Prunty will coach the Bucks on Wednesday night when they host the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Bucks fired Griffin on Tuesday despite owning a 30-13 record that matches the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves for the second-best mark in the league. Milwaukee are three and a half games behind the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference standings. Griffin had never been a head coach until the Bucks hired him last summer, though he had spent 16 years as an assistant. The Bucks would be replacing him with someone who has nearly a quarter-century of head coaching experience. The 62-year-old Rivers finds himself back in the coaching ranks eight months after he was fired by the Philadelphia 76ers following the team’s third straight exit in the second round of the playoffs – and the second time over that span he lost a series lead and a Game 7. Rivers led the Sixers to their second straight 50-win season behind NBA MVP Joel Embiid but again failed to lead them to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2001. He has plenty of Milwaukee ties, as he played for Marquette from 1980 through 1983 and his No 31 jersey hangs from the Fiserv Forum rafters. He also has a championship background after leading Boston to a title in 2008. He was 154-82 in three years with the Sixers. Rivers also had stints with the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Clippers. Altogether, he’s amassed a win-loss record of 1,097-763 over a career that dates to the 1999-2000 season. His 1,097 regular-season wins put him one shy of Larry Brown for eighth most in NBA history. Rivers’ task at Milwaukee would be to upgrade a defense that performed poorly enough under Griffin to cast doubt on the Bucks’ chances of seriously contending for a title. The Bucks rank 21st in defensive rating, down from fourth last season.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/31/prisoner-stabbed-to-death-at-wormwood-scrubs-in-london

Society

2018-01-31T19:17:15.000Z

Alan Travis

Prisoner stabbed to death at Wormwood Scrubs in London

A prisoner has been stabbed to death at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, prison and police sources have confirmed. Police were called to the west London jail at 3.19pm on Wednesday in response to reports of a male prisoner with stab injuries. He was later pronounced dead at the scene, despite the efforts of paramedics to save him. The fatal stabbing follows a recent decision to draft extra patrol dogs, body-worn cameras and CCTV into Wormwood Scrubs because of the high levels of serious violence, with more than 90 attacks on staff over the space of six months. The Metropolitan police said that the homicide and major crime command was supporting local officers, no arrests had been made and inquiries were ongoing. Next of kin have been informed and a postmortem will be held in due course. The potential homicide follows three murders inside jails in England and Wales in 2017 as violence inside prisons reaches levels not seen for 25 years. It also follows the decision by the chief inspector of prisons two weeks ago to issue the first ever “urgent notification” notice demanding the justice secretary, David Gauke, intervene at Nottingham prison which inspectors had found to be “fundamentally unsafe”.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/08/patrice-chereau-by-barry-millington

Music

2013-10-08T17:25:37.000Z

Barry Millington

Patrice Chéreau and the bringing of dramatic conviction to the opera house

Patrice Chéreau had had very little experience of directing opera when he was invited in 1976 to stage a new Ring at Bayreuth, conducted by Pierre Boulez, to mark the centenary of the first production there. The result, though deeply controversial at the time, proved to be a landmark in the history of Wagner production. Two aspects of the staging deserve particular attention. In the first place, Chéreau attempted, and successfully achieved, a daring interplay of the mythological and contemporary planes on which the work is constructed. He set the action in an industrialised society, with a hydro-electric dam taking the place of the free-flowing Rhine; there were also occasional 20th-century costumes and props. He was not the first to invoke a modern setting for the action – roughly the century framed by the history of the work to date, 1876–1976 – but the incisive social critique of Chéreau's production was regarded by some of the ultra-faithful as an outrage, and created a scandal of unprecedented proportions. Performances were disrupted by jeering and whistling, and confrontations between supporters and opponents spilled over from the foyer to the grounds of the Festspielhaus and even to local guesthouses. The second revolution initiated by Chéreau lay in the degree of naturalism he brought to the acting style. His staging of the incestuous love scene of Die Walküre, for example, with Peter Hofmann and Jeannine Altmeyer as the stunningly attractive libidinous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, was sexually charged to a degree not previously experienced on the opera stage. Since then, new generations of directors have built on this advance, with the result that audiences have come to expect dramatic conviction as well as vocal expertise from singers. Chéreau's own considerable acting skills were drawn upon in this production on one occasion in 1977 when René Kollo, playing Siegfried, broke his leg and was obliged to sing his part from the wings. The director acted the role on stage, a performance that few who witnessed it will forget. By the end of the run in 1980, enthusiasm for the production vastly outweighed disapproval, the audience's thunderous ovations after the final Götterdämmerung lasting longer than the third act had done. The staging was subsequently released on DVD and broadcast on television in both Britain and America. When the DVD was screened at the Barbican in May of this year, in the presence of Dame Gwyneth Jones, who starred as the Brünnhilde, many marvelled at how fresh and undated the production still seemed more than three decades later. In 1979 Chéreau staged the world premiere of the Friedrich Cerha completion of Berg's Lulu at the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, but then, apart from Mozart's Lucio Silla in Nanterre (in a co-production with La Monnaie, Brussels, and La Scala, Milan, in 1984), did not work in the medium for some years. Perhaps fearing that nothing could match the ambition or éclat of the Bayreuth Ring, he avoided Wagner, eventually tackling Berg's Wozzeck (Paris, 1993) and Don Giovanni (Salzburg, 1994) and then, after another long gap, Così Fan Tutte (Aix-en-Provence, 2005). If the last of these was indeed a disappointment, the reuniting of Chéreau and Boulez for a production of Janáček's From the House of the Dead at the Vienna Festival in 2007 (subsequently also at the Holland and Aix festivals, as well as the Met and La Scala) was welcomed with unbridled approbation. Chéreau's meticulously detailed direction drew exceptional performances from the entire cast. His long-delayed return to Wagner, a Tristan und Isolde for La Scala (2007), also offered a far from radical approach. It was an opera he had balked at directing for many years (it was originally intended to follow the Ring at Bayreuth) on the grounds that it was predominantly a musical rather than a theatrical work, but his sombre, subtle direction – with Waltraud Meier an acutely vulnerable Isolde – was intensely moving nonetheless. Chéreau's last production, Richard Strauss's Elektra at Aix this year (due to travel widely), designed by his longstanding collaborator Richard Peduzzi, was another powerful piece of theatre. It featured in small roles Franz Mazura and Donald McIntyre, veterans of the 1976 Ring – a touching acknowledgment that Chéreau's greatest success was to haunt his work until the end of his days.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/24/harvey-weinstein-rape-trial-brought-down

World news

2020-02-24T16:49:45.000Z

Lucia Graves

‘His reputation will never recover’: the rape trial that took down Harvey Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein’s career in the movie business has risen and fallen as markedly as his famous temper. Long before he faced harassment and assault charges from scores of women he worked with over the years, and before he was the symbolic villain of the #MeToo movement paying top-dollar to fend off rape charges, Weinstein was busy defending himself from something much more ordinarily Hollywood: the notion he was a gigantic jerk. Matt Damon once compared him to a scorpion, saying “it’s his nature” to sting people. Meryl Streep, accepting an award for best actress in 2012, thanked, “God, Harvey Weinstein, the punisher, Old Testament, I guess.” Streep’s metaphor was apt. 1:46 Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape – video At the time he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood as co-founder of Miramax and the Weinstein Company, and as producer of some of the previous decade’s top movies. He was a kingmaker helping to shape the careers of top directors like Quentin Tarantino and A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow. He could make careers, and he could break them. But Pulitzer prize-winning reporting from the New York Times and the New Yorker that exposed decades of sexual harassment and assault allegations against him, and culminated this year in a criminal trial in New York, saw Weinstein become a virtual untouchable – toxic to most of those who formerly feted him with a surname that has become a byword for abuse, not Oscars. Weinstein is unlikely to ever return to the top. That’s according even to people whose job it is to redeem the reputation of the seemingly irredeemable. “His reputation will never recover,” said Shannon Wilkinson, a New York-based reputation management consultant. Ken Auletta, an early profiler of Weinstein now at work on a biography of the mogul that is due out in 2021, agreed. “Who’s going to want to act in a Harvey movie? What studio is going to recruit him?” American film producers Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein, left, of Miramax Films at their offices in New York City, in 1989. Photograph: Barbara Alper/Getty Images The early years Weinstein grew up in Queens and from a young age his father Max would take him and his brother Bob to the movies every Saturday. They went to see foreign films, dramas, everything – and though his father would sometimes fall asleep, the boys relished the outings and promptly became cinephiles. Weinstein took readily to the role of movie historian, incorporating things he learned in his weekend movie sojourns to what he was learning in school. An old classmate, Jeff Malek told the Hollywood Reporter that Weinstein “knew the entire cast of every movie” and that when he tested him with questions about The Wizard of Oz, Weinstein “proceeded to list the cast and crew, including gaffers, wardrobe, etc, by memory”. Not everything the Weinsteins learned at home was so helpful. In a 2011 tribute piece to his dad, Bob Weinstein recalled how once after his mom received an unflattering haircut at the beauty salon, she demanded her husband seek revenge. “‘Have the hairstylist fired and sue the beauty parlor for everything they’ve got,’” Bob recalled his mother saying in the piece he penned in Vanity Fair. Bob meant to relay it as a playful anecdote, writing: “Max and his sons learned a valuable lesson that day. No matter what, the hair always looks great.” But looking back at Weinstein’s career, and the long list of claims that he was explosive and abusive to underlings, it’s hard not to wonder if he didn’t have a different takeaway. Weinstein first started to leverage his bold personality into a career while attending school at the Buffalo branch of the State University of New York, where he founded a concert promotion business, Harvey & Corky Presents, with his friend Corky Burger, and quickly made a name for himself by bringing big names like the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan up to Buffalo. By 1973 he had dropped out of school, and was running a local theater where he showed three movies for the price of one on Saturday nights, according to Auletta’s New Yorker profile in 2002. He and Bob wanted to get into the movie business though, so in 1979 he used the proceeds made from Harvey & Corky Presents to, along with his brother, found Miramax, an independent film distribution and production company named for their parents, Miriam and Max. “It wasn’t very expensive to do that,” Auletta said. “Distribution was really cheap to do, and they had a good eye and they spotted movies like Sex, Lies and Videotape, which was their first major hit.” Other successes followed and in June of 1993, Miramax was bought by The Walt Disney Company for $80m in a deal that allowed the brothers to stay on creatively. Director Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic movie Pulp Fiction, which was backed by Miramax, came out a year later and was awarded the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1997, The English Patient landed Miramax its first Academy Award for best picture. And in 1999, Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including a best actress award for Gwyneth Paltrow. Shakespeare in Love Best Actress winner Gwyneth Paltrow (center) is joined by Harvey Weinstein (center left) backstage as they celebrated their win of Best Picture at the 1999 Academy Awards. Photograph: Bob Riha Jr/Getty Images The setback But even in his heyday, Weinstein was developing a reputation as difficult to work with, even against the high bar of Hollywood where dictatorial directors and arrogant studio heads are the norm. After a string of successes, he hit a rough patch in 2005. Disney divorced the Weinstein brothers that year following disputes about budget and creative control. The brothers launched their own independent studio, the Weinstein Company, the same year. But they struggled initially to repeat earlier successes. Films released in the first few years included a number of duds, and rumors about his temper were starting to catch up with him in the insular circles in which he moved. As early as the 1990s, the New York Times was reporting settlements he had made with various women – among them Rose McGowan in 1997 and numerous assistants. “It’s a recurring theme with him,” said Auletta, who wrote the groundbreaking New Yorker profile of Weinstein in 2002 highlighting his abusive behavior and hinting at his sexual misconduct, though Auletta was not able to confirm it with women going on the record at the time. “He apologizes and says, I want to change,” Auletta continued. “He’s done that all through his adult life. But in my experience, he hasn’t changed. He couldn’t control his temper.” The comeback and the fall But by 2011, Weinstein was back on top again, as changing audience tastes caught up with his aesthetic. That year The King’s Speech was nominated for a dozen Oscars and awarded best picture. The following year he racked up a pile of Golden Globe awards for films including My Week with Marilyn, Iron Lady, and The Artist – an ode to the golden era of silent films which would go on to win best picture at the Academy Awards. A spate of glowing profiles portrayed Weinstein as the quintessential “comeback kid” of Hollywood, including one by the New York Times media writer David Carr entitled A Mistake to Write Off the Weinsteins. Another piece in Gawker described him as rising from the grave to “feast on the bones of his enemies”. Weinstein was back near the height of his powers when he heard that reporters were snooping around allegations of rape and sexual assault that had long been simmering. Actresses who have accused Harvey Weinstein of assault. (Top L-R) Léa Seydoux, Emma de Caunes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Asia Argento, Ashley Judd (bottom L-R) Cara Delevingne, Rosanna Arquette, Judith Godrèche, Angelina Jolie and Rose McGowan. Photograph: N Prommer/G Horcahuelo/S Nogier/ A Gombert/Peter Fole/EPA In response he used the full breadth of his connections, money and ruthless self-interest, to try to quash them. He hired lawyers, private investigators and even an intelligence firm founded by ex-Israeli spies called Black Cube, which counter-investigated the reporters who were investigating him. He also leaned on longstanding relationships at NBC News and tapped relationships at other media outlets, including David Pecker, the now notorious head of the National Enquirer who also kept secrets and killed stories for Donald Trump. But Weinstein couldn’t hold back the tide. In the fall of 2017, the New York Times and the New Yorker published stories documenting years of alleged abuse and kicking off what would become the #MeToo movement, a worldwide reckoning around sexual harassment and assault by powerful men in countless industries. Weinstein ended up in court, a powerful symbol for women worldwide of powerful men abusing their position for sex. Civil attorney Ari Wilkenfeld, a partner at the DC-based firm Wilkenfeld, Herendeen & Atkinson, who specializes in discrimination, said Weinstein’s trial has triggered important changes. For one thing, Wilkenfeld – who has represented female clients in a number of high-profile #MeToo cases, including Brooke Nevils when she accused Matt Lauer of rape and Linda Vester when she accused Tom Brokaw of sexual harassment – has seen a renaissance in people caring about sexual harassment law. “We’re finally getting somewhere,” he said. He also noted the Weinstein trial has been important in highlighting the defense’s line of argument that if women had really been raped or assaulted they wouldn’t continue to have any kind of relationship with their abuser. Wilkenfeld said that’s not the case. “People behave in ways that seem antithetical to members of the jury. They might delay in reporting; they might deny that the rape occurred. They might have a romantic relationship with the person after the assault or rape; they might do any number of things that, to an ordinary person, don’t make sense. And the challenge is to explain the psychology of what a victim and survivor goes through and how there’s no straight line and no one way a person reacts,” he said. Similar legal defenses were mounted on behalf of rapist college football coach Jerry Sandusky, Wilkenfeld noted, and the prosecution was ultimately able to overcome predictable skepticism. In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673 or by chat at Rainn.org. In the UK, the rape crisis national freephone helpline is at 0808-802-9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800-737-7328) or 1800respect.org.au. Other international helplines can be found at Ibiblio.org.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/dec/07/broadcasting.comment

Media

2004-12-07T01:31:26.000Z

Jeremy Dear

Jeremy Dear: The future of the BBC is now at stake

Broadcasting is in crisis. Today the BBC's director general Mark Thompson will announce the cutting of thousands of jobs across the corporation. His announcement comes a week after a government-backed inquiry floated the idea of scrapping the licence fee, thereby threatening the BBC's universality. It is also only days since ITV companies welcomed proposals to allow them to scrap half their non-news regional programming and ditch regional news and current affairs where it is too costly for shareholders. Of course, you would expect media unions to be up in arms. But for us, as well as for the public, this is about a great deal more than jobs. For decades, Britain has been served by one of the best broadcasting systems in the world. We can all find fault with it, but crucially, it has allowed news and information to be treated not as just another commodity to be bought and sold - but as a public good, with public service at its heart. It is a model envied around the world, provided by a range of players - BBC, ITV, C4, S4C and Channel Five - with a variety of funding sources and public service requirements. But under commercial pressure, from BskyB, ITV's shareholders and newspaper owners - the very people who stand to gain the most - the government has changed the law. It has also scrapped the system of regulation underpinning that successful model with what it absurdly calls "light touch regulation". What we are faced with is an increasingly free market approach which sees public service broadcasting as a financial burden on commercial companies. The result in ITV has been local and regional programming moved to dead of night slots, budgets cut so drastically that one regional drama series has become nothing more than an adult version of Jackanory, and popular programmes forced out of peak-time slots. Five has been allowed to reduce its commitment to news and current affairs to the point where it now represents just 2.6% of peak-time programming across the commercial sector. For shareholders, the result of the regulator 's proposals to cut public service requirements was an immediate rise in ITV's share price and a forecast of a £20m boost to profits. Experience shows that greater commercialisation delivers not better quality and more choice but conformity, less choice and fewer jobs. There could be no more important time for the BBC to demonstrate its commitment to public-service values and core principles: impartial news, high-quality broadcasting free from commercial and political pressure, catering for all. Mark Thompson will today outline an enticing vision. All the key Reithian buzz words will be there. He will commit the BBC to building public value into everything it does. But with the licence fee under threat and the jobs axe swinging, it will be a utopian dream unless the government properly funds the BBC. When staff meet him, they will have many questions. How he plans to meet his commitment to 60 new local news services when he is cutting jobs in existing news operations. How he intends to expand the BBC's online services to meet the needs of an informed citizenship when he is bowing to commercial pressure and shutting websites. How radio services - local and national - will be improved by squeezing staff and budgets. How the BBC will pursue the rigorous investigative journalism it pledged to continue after its conflict with the government over Andrew Gilligan's reports with 350 job losses already rumoured in news and current affairs, and more to come. Good journalism - digging, checking, verifying - requires more resources, not less. At a time when hundreds of commercial operators are vying to cut costs and bundle high-spending audiences to advertisers, we need broadcasters who can take risks, but also provide the information we need as citizens to make decisions about our lives and understand the world without putting shareholders' needs first. At a time when the public distrusts the media more than ever, we need news services that can perform the key task of holding government and local authorities to account. We need a publicly funded, accountable BBC - not as a lone public service broadcaster, but as part of a mix of public service providers. All that is under threat. Those who care who their information is provided by and whose interest such people serve, who value programmes about local issues, and who want high-quality broadcast services rather than blatantly biased, advertiser-driven lowest common denominator TV and radio, need to act to ensure the government provides the necessary funding. The future of the best broadcasting system in the world is at stake. · Jeremy Dear is the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/08/is-everything-johann-hari-knows-about-depression-wrong-lost-connections

Science

2018-01-08T16:54:58.000Z

Dean Burnett

Is everything Johann Hari knows about depression wrong?

I do not know Johann Hari. We’ve never crossed paths, he’s done me no wrong that I’m aware of, I have no axe to grind with him or his work. And, in fairness, writing about mental health and how it’s treated or perceived is always a risk. It’s a major and often-debilitating issue facing a huge swathe of the population, and with many unpleasant and unhelpful stigmas attached. In recent years there have been signs that the tide is perhaps turning the right way, but a lot of work remains to be done. However, if you’re going to allow an extract from your book to be published as a standalone article for mainstream media with a title as provocative as “Is everything you know about depression wrong?”, you’d best make sure you have impeccable credentials and standards to back it up. Let’s address the elephant in the room: Johann Hari does not have a flawless reputation. He has been absent from the spotlight for many years following a plagiarism scandal, compounded by less-than-dignified behaviour towards his critics. Admittedly, he has since shown remorse and contrition over the whole affair, but even a cursory glance online reveals he’s a long way from universal forgiveness. Logically, someone with a reputation for making false claims should be the last person making high-profile, controversial, sweeping statements about something as sensitive as mental health. And yet, here we are. It’s 2018 after all. But let’s take the whole thing at face value and assume Hari has written this article with 100% good intentions and practices. Do his arguments and claims hold water? Hari does make several valid points, in his defence. The claim that depression is purely a result of lowered serotonin levels is indeed one that can and should be challenged. Antidepressant use isn’t effective for everyone, and even if you’re taking them the problem they’re supposed to be addressing can often return or eventually get worse. External factors in your life can be a big part, if not the main part, of an eventual depression diagnosis. This is all true. However, despite Hari’s prose suggesting he’s uncovered numerous revelations, pretty much everything he “reveals” is well known already. There’s this part: All over the world, [doctors] were being encouraged to tell patients that depression is, in fact, just the result of a spontaneous chemical imbalance in your brain – it is produced by low serotonin, or a natural lack of some other chemical. It’s not caused by your life – it’s caused by your broken brain. This may strike some as odd, the idea that there’s only one accepted cause of depression, because there are several factors widely considered to be important. And that’s not based on some jargon-heavy little-known medical text: it’s according to the Wikipedia page about depression. I found there is evidence that seven specific factors in the way we are living today are causing depression and anxiety to rise – alongside two real biological factors (such as your genes) that can combine with these forces to make it worse. Personally, I’d always assumed the role of life events was widely accepted, and has been for decades. In psychiatry/medicine/psychology, this is often known as the Biopsychosocial model, and any decent professional will be very aware of it. Far from being a revelation of Hari’s, it was mooted back in the 70s, and has been part of standard teaching for at least 20 years. Hari also condemns the reliance on antidepressants, and the fact that they’re relied upon exclusively. At the moment, we offer depressed people a menu with only one option on it. The NHS, whose website lists several possible therapeutic options for depression, may disagree with this. Also, Ben Goldacre was addressing the problem with SSRIs and the serotonin model of antidepressants 10 years ago. And yours truly summarised the many factors and variables of antidepressants in this very section of the Guardian not too long ago. And then there’s this unsettling element: Now, if your baby dies at 10am, your doctor can diagnose you with a mental illness at 10.01am and start drugging you straight away. While this is meant as an attack on the modern absence of the “grief exception”, where grief reactions are used to rule out depressive symptoms, it’s at best a staggering exaggeration, at worst an active fabrication to support a narrative. Grief is complex and the medical community is still not agreed on how to deal with it, but the idea that you can be diagnosed with a mental health issue after showing symptoms for one minute is ludicrous. People typically require weeks of symptoms to be officially diagnosed, to suggest otherwise can only damage the perception of medical professionals. Perhaps these criticisms (and there are many more, but I’ve only got so much space) are unfair? I’m a trained neuroscientist who’s worked teaching psychiatry for many years; what I know and what the average person knows are going to be wildly different, and Hari’s article is almost certainly aimed at the latter. You could argue that a more personal account of the issues is more helpful when communicating with those who don’t now the full facts. I’d argue the opposite though; if you’re targeting people who don’t know the full story of depression, then it’s far more important to get it right according to the evidence, not compromise for the sake of an easy narrative. Hari’s piece repeatedly presents well-known concepts and ideas (even to those outside the medical field) as fringe ideas that he’s discovered through his own efforts. There are alternative, and more likely, explanations. Perhaps reliance on antidepressants is due to incredible pressures of time, money and workload on medical professionals, and alternative treatments require many hours of one-on-one interaction with trained experts, rather than swallowing a few capsules a week? The majority of the medical community could do without further criticism given all they’ve had to deal with lately. But no, Hari portrays the medical/psychiatric/scientific establishment as some shadowy monolithic organisation, in thrall to the drug industry and unwilling to consider new approaches and ideas that challenge entrenched behaviours. This is unless they’re ones that support his position though, like Irving Kirsch, who gets unwavering support from Hari, despite not getting it from the wider psychiatric community. It’s possible Hari addresses my concerns, and many others, in the full book. I’ve not read it yet. But then, neither have the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve read the extract at this point, and so it should be addressed as standalone piece and appraised as such. I would never dream of taking issue with Hari’s own experiences with depression. I’m sure he’s dealt with discomfort and pain that someone who’s never experienced a clinical mood disorder can only speculate about. However, everyone experiences and deals with depression differently. The very arguments Hari puts forward about the importance of life events in depression means everyone experiences different events and consequences, develops depression in their brain’s own special way, and thus it’ll need to be tackled differently from person to person too. Antidepressants are a godsend to many people, but don’t work (or actually make things worse) for others. That’s the brain for you, no two are alike. By condemning antidepressants with such apparent enthusiasm in such a high-profile way, Hari can only risk increasing the stigma attached to those who may be taking them for all the right reasons. And that’s not something anyone needs. Hari may have the best intentions when it comes to addressing mental health problems like depression, but this doesn’t seem like a good way to go about it. Asserting yourself as a maverick expert and backing your arguments up with suspect cherry picking of evidence and at-the-very-least exaggerated claims? Such a sensitive subject that affects millions surely requires a more thorough, thoughtful and specific approach than this? But hey, what do I know? Dean Burnett’s own book, The Idiot Brain is available now, in the UK and US and elsewhere. In it, he makes no claims to be able to fix anything. Note by readers’ editor, Paul Chadwick, added 7 February 2018: After publication, I considered a complaint relating to Guardian and Observer coverage of the book: an extract; Q&A with the author; review; this blogpost; and blogpost on 24 January. I concluded that the book’s author, Johann Hari, and his critic, Dean Burnett, were entitled to their differing views, and that the Guardian and Observer editorial standards had been met. Due to the sensitivity of the issue involved - namely, the causes and treatment of mental illness - I also concluded that it was appropriate to emphasise for readers that the author and his critic have both expressed the view that people taking anti-depressants should not stop taking their medication abruptly or without seeking professional advice.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/21/mass-covid-testing-government-england-schools

Opinion

2020-12-21T13:56:11.000Z

Melissa Benn

Mass Covid testing at the drop of a hat is the latest bad idea for England's schools | Melissa Benn

It is hard to believe just how badly the government is handling the schools element of this Covid-induced crisis. Last week’s decision to threaten Greenwich council with legal action over its attempts to curb galloping infection rates looked heavy-handed from the start. Given that those same alarming numbers were acknowledged by the prime minister in his announcement on Saturday of the cancellation of Christmas relaxation plans, such threats now appear both absurd and rankly hypocritical. Yet even this misjudgment is overshadowed by the chaos threatened by the government’s latest wacky idea: schools returning in early January must provide for the mass testing of pupils, turning themselves into the equivalent of a field hospital. Even the most politic of school leaders have called this announcement “shockingly chaotic”, “last-minute” and “a new low”. While Scotland has sensibly delayed pupils’ physical return to schools by two weeks, here in England heads and governors must supposedly spend their Christmas break sorting out staggered starting times from early January, erecting or otherwise creating special testing centres and coordinating the staff to administer the tests (a medical not an educational task), with only vague offers of “reimbursement costs” and the involvement of the army. Few need reminding that this is not the first such fiasco of the past nine months. The disaster over last summer’s exams, when the government was adamant that it would rely on official algorithms to predict results, until forced by public outrage to back down, remains deeply etched on the public mind. Yet it looks as if we are heading for similar problems next summer as the government is, once again, stubbornly sticking to its line that there will be exams-as-usual, albeit with minor concessions over timings and course content. In a pattern now becoming typical of the Johnson government, most nervously expect a late U-turn, and more chaos like we saw in August. Only this time, it could have been entirely preventable, with the introduction of moderated assessment in many, if not all, subjects. Talking to teachers, heads and union leaders, I hear rising fury and despair at recent government actions and policies, many of them unworkable, un-costed and pushed out at the very last minute. Above all, there has been a lamentable failure in human tone. A London head told me that she had received a recent communication from the government promising that it “would not sue” schools if they failed to roll out mass testing. She then added wearily: “Anyway what would they sue us for? We have no money.” The autumn term could also have looked very different if the government had approached this crisis in a spirit of “collaboration, not conflict” and adopted the kinds of measures outlined by Independent Sage in its report An Urgent Plan for Safer Schools. These include: earlier testing of asymptomatic pupils and teachers; the introduction of smaller bubbles (preventing the situation where whole year groups were sent home as the result of a single case); more thought-through plans for ventilation and social distancing; the creation of local public health teams to oversee the right health measures; and, of course, provision for the neediest families, including the efficient rollout of laptops and free school meals during the holidays. There should have been much greater reliance on, and support for, a sustainable system of blended learning, a mix of on-site and online lessons. According to one senior school leader, “on every count the government has been behind the curve” and has failed to halt the spread of infection in schools, recently confirmed by Independent Sage as a key source of rising rates among the general population. School leaders support the introduction of mass testing, but think it can only be done by returning to remote learning for most pupils for at least a couple of weeks in January, with the vulnerable and children of key workers taught on-site as happened last March, while the plan is carefully implemented. Testing should be supervised through national or local health teams, with schools providing the venue and appropriate administrative support. It is hard not to see the legal threats to councils and the crazy January scheme as the extreme and farcical culmination of a decade of arrogance and incoherent decision-making by the Tories on education. Over the past 10 years, diktat has followed diktat, from the 2010 Academies Act, rushed through with unprecedented haste, to the ministerial rewriting of primary and secondary curriculums with scant consultation. Austerity measures pared school funding to worryingly low levels leaving many schools to handle the enormous demands of the pandemic on deficit budgets. Despite the faux-egalitarian rhetoric of key figures such as the former education secretary Michael Gove, this ruthless agenda deliberately cut out consultation with the majority of the profession from the outset, relying instead on a few favoured school leaders and some special advisers with eccentric ideas. The teacher unions were treated as a marginal special interest group and local councils declared the useless remnants of a failed collectivist past, while mass academisation decisively broke the link between rich local knowledge and public education. The pandemic has brought out the very worst of this on-high, out-of-touch style in the party that has been in government for 10 years. According to Independent Sage, the situation in “the worst affected schools and communities is (now) characterised by confusion, secrecy, mistrust, fear, demoralisation and exhaustion”. If the government wants to avoid further chaos, it needs urgently to acquire some genuine respect for the experience and knowledge of educators on the ground, those who know what’s best for the children they teach, and to listen and consult more widely, including with local representatives who understand their communities. If it cannot quickly rebuild trust with heads, teachers, unions and councils it risks tipping an already beleaguered public service into justified outright rebellion. Melissa Benn is a founder of the Local Schools Network, and author of Life Lessons: The Case for a National Education Service

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/the-ego-has-landed-george-galloway-basks-in-his-swearing-in-as-mp

Politics

2024-03-04T18:47:39.000Z

John Crace

The Ego has Landed: George Galloway basks in his swearing in as MP

It’s a grubby job, but someone has to do it. There’s a House of Commons resolution dating back to 1688 that requires a new MP to be introduced by two current MPs at their swearing in. So all eyes were on who had drawn the short straw to stand with George Galloway. One early contender had been the Tory MP David Davis, who takes his libertarian principles seriously. He may not like what you say, but he believes in your right to say it. But even he melted away after the prime minister’s deranged rant outside Downing Street on Friday evening. These days you can be found guilty of crimes against humanity in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party for even thinking of observing parliamentary convention by coming to someone like Galloway’s aid. Davis has now been sent to the gulags for 20 years re-education. The other MP who had been in the frame was Jeremy Corbyn. He and Galloway go back decades. Old muckers from way back. What could possibly go wrong? “Oh, you meant this Monday at 2.30pm? I could have sworn you said next Monday. I am so, so sorry but I seem to be double booked.” That was more or less the message Jezza sent Galloway some time over the weekend. George didn’t seem entirely convinced by the sincerity of the apology. It seems that even long-term critics of Starmer’s Labour party have their breaking point. Being seen to endorse Galloway might not help Corbyn’s chances of re-election. George was doing his best not to let it get to him. He wasn’t a man who held grudges. Much. Back to square one then. Wanted. Two MPs prepared to put principle before party. Step forward the Conservative MP Peter Bottomley. He had no skin in the game and as father of the house it fell to him to take one for the team. He would do it in the interests of democracy. Just so long as no one imagined he derived any pleasure from it. The Alba MP Neale Hanvey was a little more forthcoming. He had never met Galloway before. Might never speak to him again in the future. But the people of Rochdale had a right to be represented in parliament. So straight after prayers, the three men stood in a line at the bar of the house. The clerk summoned Galloway, and Bottomley and Hanvey drifted back to the seats. Everyone else in the Commons waiting for the start of the levelling up departmental questions studied their phones diligently. Or put on the expression of someone doing their best to look as if they weren’t really there. This was dirty business. Something far, far beneath them. Galloway strode forward. Without his trademark Fedora. He insists that he only wears the hat to hide the injuries he received when he was attacked in the street by a man wearing a T-shirt with an Israel Defense Forces logo. But the doctors have done a good job on him and there were no scars on show. So it’s just possible that the hat is also an affectation. George wouldn’t be the first MP to suffer from a surfeit of vanity. Wherever he goes, his giant ego is there before him. Like most narcissists, the only fool for whom he makes allowances – for whom he has a total blindspot – is himself. It was all over in a matter of seconds. Galloway held the Bible in one hand and swore allegiance to the king. No cameo winks for the cameras. Just straightforward as if he meant it. Then he’s had a lot of practice. Over a 37-year political career he’s been MP for Glasgow Hillhead, Glasgow Kelvin, Bethnal Green and Bow, Bradford West and Rochdale. For three different parties. He is a man forever looking forward. Not one to indulge in remorse. Il ne regrette rien. Nor does he feel the need to make amends. Just move on and leave the wreckage to whoever follows. His primary loyalty always has been to himself. For Sunak, Galloway’s byelection victory had been the end of days. Kiss goodbye to democracy. Though you might have thought he would have been thrilled. Finally he had a Public Enemy Number One. Someone on whom to pin all his extremist hate. George was Rish!’s acceptable face of Islamophobia. Dislike George and you would be given a free pass – a papal indulgence – on your hatred of all Muslims. Sunak’s pleas for a more open, inclusive society have always been decidedly one-sided. We all get to hate the foreigners Sunak wants us to hate. And the thing is, there is a lot about Galloway to dislike. His self-importance is breathtaking. Most MPs suffer from an excess of self-regard, but George is off the scale. It has never crossed his mind that he is not right about everything. If there are angels – and George is Catholic so there certainly are – then they are on his side. Getting the order of primacy here is vital. In all things political – in all things spiritual – it is George who is doing God the favour here. Not the other way round. He’s barely even got time for the angels. Speak to the hand and all that. But the reality is that Galloway owes his election to the success of the democratic system. Not its failure. Labour screwed up big time – they are the real villains here – and Rochdale would rather have Galloway or an independent than a Tory. Who could blame them. Democracy did not come undone. It triumphed. No one died. Rochdale got what it asked for. As it will at the next election when Galloway will probably be just a little wrinkle in history. In search of yet another constituency to disappoint. 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. Writing off George Galloway ignores his dangerous appeal to both far left and right Michael Chessum Read more Until then, it’s George Time. And he’s going to make the most of it. Worried he may not be able to get many opportunities to speak in parliament, he chose to hold court for a gaggle of hacks looking for a story on a slow news day. So the Ego had Landed. Was in its element. First boasting about how he was far brighter and had served far longer than either Sunak or Starmer. He may be right, though he should aim higher. Then setting out his campaign to get Rochdale its own postcode. That’s the last anyone will hear of this. Next it was on to questions from the media. Here was his opportunity to settle scores and gratuitously insult whoever he liked. This was George living the dream. Sometimes he even forgets which side he’s on. Other than his own. He offers something for everyone on the extremes. Both the far right and far left can find something to love. His party – the Workers’ Party of Britain (current membership into at least two figures) – would take out Angela Rayner and the Labour elite. He alone could save the UK in its hour of need. All other MPs were intellectual minnows. Israel had no right to exist in perpetuity. Neither did the UK. He alone was blessed with the truth. He wouldn’t admit to past mistakes because he had never made any. Cue a couple of sideswipes at the BBC and GB News. Also Richard Tice. With Galloway you’re only ever a couple of law suits away from martyrdom. He was loving this. The presence of the media proved he still had it. He mattered. He was back. Though whether he would notice if there was no one there is another matter. For George the song always remains the same. My Song.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/15/name-mohamed-mo-farah-career

Opinion

2017-08-15T15:50:08.000Z

Mohammed Hanif

Hang on a Mo: what’s in a name, anyway? | Mohammed Hanif

As he says farewell to the track and hits the road, Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah now wants to be called by his full first name instead of Mo. It’s his name. It’s his career. He can call himself what he wants. Kings, popes, rockstars and poets take on new names. He is all of that, and a bit mo’. Why did he shorten it in the first place? To make life easier for the British, I assume. Maybe it was a family nickname, or maybe it came in handy for branding later, but before he became a brand he was Mohamed – and British people have a slight problem with a full-on Mohamed. Not just with the historical association, but they find it hard to spell (yes, there are one or two variations, but the basics aren’t difficult). Like most expats in the UK, I spent a significant part of my life telling people on the phone, “Yes it’s M O H, no not an S … Yes it’s M O H … ” And this after a silly story appearing every couple of years claiming that Mohamed is becoming the most common name in the UK. Really? Why can’t you spell it then? I have never asked you how you spell David. Call me Mohamed: Mo Farah to change brand for road racing career Read more I know the joys of being abbreviated to Mo. I was occasionally called Mo by my London friends. It felt great. Suddenly I wasn’t a mid-level BBC hack but some DJ on his way to do a gig at Notting Hill Arts Club. Mo is a rude boy, a gangster, someone who backslaps a bouncer and walks in. Mohamed stands in the queue and wonders whether the price of a pint is worth it, or when the next night bus home will come along. But I was no Mo. I’m not really even a Mohamed. It’s part of my name but not my name, you see. Have you ever noticed how they design the forms that you have to fill out throughout your life? It’s atrocious. It’s not really slavery or starving a few million Bengalis to death but still atrocious. Your name is divided into given and family name. And yes, if you are really lucky, a middle name. Now what if one doesn’t have a family name? What if one’s family was not presumptuous enough to think that such a thing mattered? What if they thought, “let’s give every sibling a different name, and see if they’ll get along”. So my name is Hanif. Then why Mohammed? It’s just thrown in for some good vibes, here and in the afterlife. So maybe we are part of a global tribe of Mohameds whose parents added it on in the hope that we’d inherit some characteristics of our great prophet. Mostly, it doesn’t work. Some try a more worldly route. I know a Muslim father who named his son Bertrand Russell. That didn’t turn out very well either. In some parts of India, Muslims name their sons Stalin. Parenting is always hope waging a losing battle against experience. I am sure it’ll all work out fine in the afterlife, but there really are no advantages in being called Mohamed in this one. It used to be a problem before airports all over the world adopted the tighter security model, where they start by questioning your long-dead grandmother’s hobbies. Before 9/11 I waited at a European immigration desk as the official tried to match me with a namesake on his computer. That could take a lifetime, I suggested: half the world is called Mohamed. These days it’s not simply the name that matters. If you are a Muslim or come from one of those evil Muslim countries, you’ll get the Tel Aviv treatment. You could be called David, but if you are Muslim you are pretty much the designated enemy in any airport in the world. In fact, if you are David and happen to be Muslim, you will have a much worse time than if you were called Mohammed. I know the joys of being abbreviated to Mo. I was occasionally called Mo by my London friends. It felt great One advantage to Mo is obvious: even the British can pronounce it. When I worked at the BBC World Service, there used to be a small dedicated pronunciation unit, where they tried to correct our pronunciation of the names of eastern European war criminals. Some of us would grumble that John Simpson, who had a god-like job title, could never pronounce Kabul properly. Some corporation sage put an end to that debate by saying it didn’t matter how close he got to the true pronunciation of Kabul, it would still end up getting the hell bombed out of it. We named our second son Changez, a variation on Genghis. One of our family members was livid. How can you give him such a name? He killed so many people! What do you suggest, I asked. Why don’t you call him Mohamed, I was told. Most famous people have had to kill some people, I pleaded, and many others cheer them on. And I can’t possibly name my son after some op-ed writer. Maybe, by reclaiming his full name, Sir Mohamed is saying to British people: I was just about the best athlete in the history of this country – have I pleased you enough? Are you satisfied? Now can you start calling me by my proper name? As a Muslim, when you use the prophet’s name, you have to say afterwards “peace be upon him”. Sir Mohamed: may peace, speed, endurance and even more coolness be upon you with your “new” name. Mohammed Hanif is a journalist and author

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/30/the-fate-of-sir-philip-greens-empire-hanging-in-the-balance

Business

2019-04-30T18:25:09.000Z

Sarah Butler

Philip Green’s empire at risk as directors debate rescue plan

The future of Sir Philip Green’s empire is hanging in the balance as industry insiders say a planned rescue may struggle to win approval from landlords. Board directors of Green’s Arcadia group, which owns a string of high-street chains including Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis, were locked in an all-day meeting on Tuesday attempting to agree a way forward for the group. Arcadia’s advisers at Deloitte are understood to be pushing ahead with plans for an insolvency process that would involve rent cuts and the closure of about 50 of the group’s 570-plus stores. Details could be announced within days. But industry sources said Arcadia may struggle to secure enough support for the restructure, known as a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), which requires approval from 75% of landlords. Arcadia is likely to want to gain approval for changes before its next quarterly rent day at the end of June. Green has reportedly offered to give landlords a stake in the business and to invest about £100m in revamping remaining stores if they back a deal. One source said: “With a business backed by a high net worth individual people think: ‘Why should I take a haircut?’ It’s a tougher sell with a high-profile figure.” Another source said Green was facing a backlash from property owners who had already been forced to swallow rent cuts and store closures after CVAs by a string of high-street chains including New Look, Carpetright and Mothercare. “Landlords are sick of CVAs … Particularly with Green, they are not going to look kindly on him saying: ‘I can’t afford the rent’ when he is sailing around in a £100m yacht.” Another expert source agreed Arcadia was unlikely to be able to secure the backing of enough landlords. He suggested the group might nevertheless risk putting a CVA forward as the likely alternative was administration. Arcadia has bought back a 25% stake in its Topshop chain from the US private equity firm Leonard Green and is aiming to halve annual payments into its pension fund from £50m to £25m in a rescue plan designed to cut costs, and update to cope with online competition. Green’s retail empire has suffered falling sales as it struggles against online competition from Asos and Boohoo, while shoppers have switched from buying clothes to other pursuits. The restructuring experts Jamie Drummond Smith and Peter Bloxham recently joined the boards of Topshop, Arcadia Group and Green’s holding company Taveta Investments to help devise a rescue plan. But Green faces an uphill battle in his attempt to put Arcadia on a firmer footing. Regulators are scrutinising the attempt to cut pension contributions just two years after Green agreed to increase annual payments from £25m to £50m in order to tackle a pension deficit which stood at £727m last year. Landlords, regulators and pension fund trustees have also been sceptical about taking a haircut as Arcadia’s parent company, Taveta, paid £25m in 2017 to Green’s wife, Tina Green, the group’s owner who is based in the tax haven of Monaco, in relation to loan notes linked to the collapsed department store chain BHS. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk In 2005, the Green family also banked a £1.2bn dividend from Arcadia, the biggest payout in corporate history at the time. Green’s reputation was shredded by the high-profile collapse of BHS, which led to the loss of 11,000 jobs. He put more than £300m into the the department store’s pension fund after widespread public pressure, including a threat to withdraw his knighthood. More recently, Green has faced scrutiny over accusations of inappropriate behaviour by former staff members, which he denies.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/17/britons-drink-plant-based-milk-demand

Business

2021-09-16T23:01:28.000Z

Zoe Wood

One in three Britons drink plant-based milk as demand soars

One in three Britons drink plant-based milk, according to a report that suggests they have become a mainstream choice for consumers. Shoppers spent £100m more in 2020 on alt-milks, made from oats, almonds or soya, turning it into a near £400m-a-year market. The research, from Mintel, said 32% of those polled drank plant-based milk, which was up from 25% in 2020. The uptake is even higher among 25- to 44-year-olds at 44%. Amy Price, a senior food and drink analyst at Mintel, said demand for alt-milk was being driven by environmental and health considerations. That almost a third of adults were consuming plant-based milk was “evidence of its firmly mainstream status and appeal far beyond the vegan or vegetarian populations”, she added. A quarter of the 2,000 people polled said the pandemic had made eating vegan or plant-based food and drink more appealing to them. For the under-35s that figure rose to 38%. The report also revealed that oat milk had become the plant-based milk of choice, overtaking almond to become the biggest seller in 2020. Shoppers spent £146m on oat milk in 2020, up from £74m in 2019. By contrast, consumers spent £105m on almond milk up slightly from £96m. The rise of oat milk can be laid at the door of the fashionable Swedish brand Oatly, which has enjoyed runaway success thanks to a combination of quirky marketing and good timing. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk It listed on the US stock market this year and is using the cash raised from investors to open factories, including a large site in Peterborough, East Anglia. Price said oat milk was the main beneficiary of the growing interest in plant milks, with sales also boosted by new barista-style varieties that could be foamed and used to make popular coffees such as cappuccinos. Overall, the total spend on plant-based milk reached £394m in 2020, up 32% on 2019. Nonetheless cow’s milk remains a far bigger market, worth more than £3bn. The average person’s milk consumption in the UK has fallen 50% since the 1950s, however it soared on the back of pandemic lifestyle changes, with sales up by £100m to £3.2bn.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/09/dead-right-match-the-zombie-to-the-movie

Film

2016-02-09T16:13:16.000Z

Benjamin Lee

Dead right? Match the zombie to the movie - quiz

1Night of the Creeps Pet Sematary 2 Creepshow Night of the Comet 2 28 Weeks Later Pontypool The Crazies Planet Terror 3 Night of the Living Dead Braindead Slither Burial Ground 4 Shaun of the Dead Cockneys vs Zombies Doghouse Maggie 5 The Return of the Living Dead Dawn of the Dead The Dead Re-Animator 6 Resident Evil: Apocalypse Blood Creek Zombieland Dead Snow 7 I Walked with a Zombie White Zombie Voodoo Man Revenge of the Zombies 8 Deadly Friend City of the Living Dead The Serpent and the Rainbow Day of the Dead 9 Warm Bodies Cabin in the Woods Doom World War Z 10 REC REC 2 REC 3: Genesis REC 4

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/hillary-clinton-first-public-appearance-bernie-sanders

US news

2016-11-17T15:58:28.000Z

Lauren Gambino

Clinton: 'There have been times when I wanted never to leave the house again'

Hillary Clinton has made her first public appearance since conceding the election to Donald Trump a week ago, challenging supporters to continue the fight for a country that is “hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted”. “I will admit coming here tonight wasn’t the easiest thing for me,” Clinton told the audience in Washington on Wednesday night. “There have been a few times this past week when all I’ve wanted to do was just to curl up with a good book or our dogs and never leave the house ever again.” Donald Trump renews war with media as transition chaos continues Read more Clinton was scheduled to appear at the event – a gala for the Children’s Defense Fund, where she began her career more than four decades ago – before her stunning defeat. The organization’s founder, Marian Wright Edelman, a longtime friend, introduced Clinton to the predominantly female audience as “the people’s president”, noting that she was leading the popular vote by more than 1 million votes. “I know that over the past week a lot of people have asked themselves whether America is the country we thought it was,” Clinton said. “The divisions laid bare by this election run deep. But, please, listen to me when I say this: America is worth it. Our children are worth it. Believe in our country and fight for our values and never, ever give up. “The words of Dr King, often repeated by President Obama: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’ I know sometimes it can feel awfully long – believe me, I know. But I also know it does bend.” Clinton chose to honor the commitment to address the gala, an aide said, describing the event as a “homecoming”. In 1969, as a first-year law student, Clinton heard Edelman speak at Yale University and approached her to inquire about an internship. Edelman said the organization had no money to hire her, but if she could find a way, she was welcome. “And she did,” Edelman said on Wednesday. “She has always been able to figure out how to get done whatever had to be done.” Hillary Clinton receives a standing ovation at the Children’s Defense Fund gala at the Newseum in Washington. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images In closing, Clinton invoked her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, whose resilience in the face of a difficult childhood was a central part of her message on the campaign trail. “I dream of going up to her and taking her in my arms and saying: ‘Look, look at me and listen. You will survive,’” Clinton said, her voice wavering. “‘You will have a family of your own – three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up to be a United States senator, represent our country as secretary of state and win more than 62 million votes for president of the United States.’” Clinton spoke shortly after her rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, vehemently denied claims that he had contributed to her defeat. In a letter to the New York Times, Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard University, claimed Clinton’s campaign had been undermined by Sanders during a bruising primary contest: “Mr Sanders’ refusal to concede in a timely way as Hillary Clinton won many millions more votes and his constant harping that she was ‘corrupt’ furthered Mr Trump’s message and contributed to the conman’s catastrophic victory.” Sanders told an audience at a Politics and Prose event at George Washington University on Wednesday: “My campaign brought millions of people into the process, I suspect the overwhelming majority of whom ended up voting for Hillary Clinton.” Noting emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, published by WikiLeaks, Sanders added: “To say the very least, the DNC [Democratic National Committee] was not a neutral force in the campaign and we had to take on virtually the entire Democratic establishment. Do I think our campaign in a sense made Hillary Clinton a better candidate? Yeah, I do.” By the end of the primary contest, he said, Clinton was against the Keystone pipeline and Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and supported free college tuition. The Democratic platform is now the “most progressive” in US history, Sanders added. Despite losing the nomination, Sanders received 18,183 write-in votes on election day in Vermont, according to its secretary of state’s office, putting him third behind Clinton and Trump with nearly 5.7% of the vote. On Wednesday Sanders was appointed to a junior role in the Senate Democrats’ leadership team, responsible for outreach. During his speech, part of a book tour, he said the party should move away from centrist Clinton territory. “Can you go out and raise substantial amounts of money from the wealthy and Wall Street and other powerful special interests and then convince the American people that you are on the side of workers and the middle class, or do you finally have to say that we are going to take on the oligarchs, we are going to take on Wall Street and the drug companies and the insurance companies and the corporate media, and we are going to bring millions of people together to create a very different type of party than currently exists? That is a fundamental difference that exists between Bill and Hillary Clinton and myself.” Clinton and Obama urge Democrats to rebuild party after election defeat Read more Sanders – who, like Trump, beat Clinton in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin – said Senate Democrats would be willing to work with the new president on economic issues that benefit working families. “Towards the end of the campaign he was actually using the term that many Democrats don’t use. He was saying that he was going to be the champion of the American working class. Well, Mr Trump, we have a list of everything that you said, and we are going to hold you to account.” But Sanders vowed to oppose bigotry, earning a huge cheer from the audience, many of them students. He called on Trump to rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon of the far-right Breitbart News as chief strategist, saying: “The president of the United States should not have a racist at his side. Unacceptable.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/archaeologists-find-two-lost-cities-deep-in-honduras-jungle

World news

2015-03-06T00:30:45.000Z

Alan Yuhas

Archaeologists find two 'lost cities' deep in Honduras jungle

Archaeologists have discovered two lost cities in the deep jungle of Honduras, emerging from the forest with evidence of a pyramid, plazas and artifacts that include the effigy of a half-human, half-jaguar spirit. The team of specialists in archaeology and other fields, escorted by three British bushwhacking guides and a detail of Honduran special forces, explored on foot a remote valley of La Mosquitia where an aerial survey had found signs of ruins in 2012. Chris Fisher, the lead US archaeologist on the team, told the Guardian that the expedition – co-coordinated by the film-makers Bill Benenson and Steve Elkins, Honduras and National Geographic (which first reported the story on its site) – had by all appearances set foot in a place that had gone untouched by humans for at least 600 years. “Even the animals acted as if they’ve never seen people,” Fisher said. “Spider monkeys are all over place, and they’d follow us around and throw food at us and hoot and holler and do their thing.” “To be treated not as a predator but as another primate in their space was for me the most amazing thing about this whole trip,” he said. Fisher and the team arrived by helicopter to “groundtruth” the data revealed by surveying technology called Lidar, which projects a grid of infrared beams powerful enough to break through the dense forest canopy. The dense jungle of Honduras. Photograph: Dave Yoder/National Geographic That data showed a human-created landscape, Fisher said of sister cities not only with houses, plazas and structures, but also features “much like an English garden, with orchards and house gardens, fields of crops, and roads and paths.” In the rainforest valley, they said they found stone structural foundations of two cities that mirrored people’s thinking of the Maya region, though these were not Mayan people. The area dates between 1000AD and 1400AD, and while very little is known without excavation of the site and surrounding region, Fisher said it was likely that European diseases had at least in part contributed to the culture’s disappearance. He also said it’s unclear whether the people could be related to the region’s indigenous communities who still live in the area. The expedition also found and documented 52 artifacts that Virgilio Paredes, head of Honduras’s national anthropology and history institute, said indicated a civilisation distinct from the Mayans. Those artifacts included a bowl with an intricate carvings and semi-buried stone sculptures, including several that merged human and animal characteristics. The cache of artifacts – “very beautiful, very fantastic,” in Fisher’s words – may have been a burial offering, he said, noting the effigies of spirit animals such as vultures and serpents. Fisher said that while an archaeologist would likely not call these cities evidence of a lost civilisation, he would call it evidence of a culture or society. “Is it lost? Well, we don’t know anything about it,” he said. The exploratory team did not have a permit to excavate and hopes to do so on a future expedition. “That’s the problem with archaeology is it takes a long time to get things done, another decade if we work intensively there, but then we’ll know a little more,” Fisher said. “This wasn’t like some crazy colonial expedition of the last century,” he added. Despite the abundance of monkeys, far too little is known of the site still to tie it to the “lost city of the monkey god” that one such expedition claimed to have discovered. In about 1940, the eccentric journalist Theodore Morde set off into the Honduran jungle in search of the legendary “white city” that Spanish conquistadors had heard tales of in the centuries before. Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you Read more He broke out of the brush months later with hundreds of artifacts and extravagant stories of how ancient people worshipped their simian deity. According to Douglas Preston, the writer National Geographic sent along with its own expedition: “He refused to divulge the location out of fear, he said, that the site would be looted. He later committed suicide and his site – if it existed at all – was never identified.” Fisher emphasised that archaeologists know extraordinarily little about the region’s ancient societies relative to the Maya civilisation, and that it would take more research and excavation. He said that although some academics might find it distasteful, expeditions financed through private means – in this case the film-makers Benenson and Elkins – would become increasingly commonplace as funding from universities and grants lessened. Fisher also suggested that the Lidar infrared technology used to find the site would soon be as commonplace as radiocarbon dating: “People just have to get through this ‘gee-whiz’ phase and start thinking about what we can do with it.” Paredes and Fisher also said that the pristine, densely-wooded site was dangerously close to land being deforested for beef farms that sell to fast-food chains. Global demand has driven Honduras’s beef industry, Fisher said, something that he found worrying. “I keep thinking of those monkeys looking at me not having seen people before. To lose all this over a burger, it’s a really hard pill to swallow.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2024/apr/25/australia-inflation-rate-cpi-figures-hecs-debt-help-student-loan-debts

Business

2024-04-24T15:00:12.000Z

Greg Jericho

The government shouldn’t boast about the latest CPI figures, but they shouldn’t panic either | Grogonomics

Despite what the fearmongers would have you believe, the latest inflation figures showed that inflation remains well under control. Not only is there no need for any more rate rises, but doing so would only increase the likelihood of unemployment rising, with little actual impact on inflation. There’s always danger with reporting on inflation figures because there’s more than enough figures flying around to enable commentators and politicians to push out a scare quote that has people thinking inflation is running rampant and, God help us, we’ll be soon carting around our money in wheelbarrows. I say calm down. Australia’s inflation rate slows less than expected to 3.6%, dimming hopes of interest rate relief Read more We were once told that the “non-accelerating rate of unemployment” – the level of unemployment needed to stop inflation from rising – was around 4.5%. Right now unemployment is at 3.8% and yet annual inflation actually fell (or “decelerated”) from 4.1% to 3.6%. That is fantastic news. The 3.6% means inflation has fallen from the peak of 7.8% at much the same pace it rose to those heights: If the graph does not display click here The expectations were for a lower figure, and certainly the 1% March quarter increase is higher than we would get in normal times. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup But let us look at what drove that increase. We know the Reserve Bank likes to worry about the rise in services prices, because services are generally labour intensive and therefore price rises can mean that wages are rising faster than the RBA would like. And yes, services did account for a large proportion of the 1% rise in the March quarter. But what type of services? Rent for example is classed as a service, and that was the biggest contributor to total inflation growth: If the graph does not display click here Just after rents came other service price rises like education (which always rises in March) and medical services. Down at the 10th biggest contributor to inflation growth came the service price rises of insurance. I look forward to being told by those thinking the RBA should raise rates to explain how a rate rise will slow the cost increases of rents, education, hospital services and insurance. The inflation growth of 3.6% does however mean real wages are now growing. The only problem is, although they have increased about 0.5% over the past year, they are still 6% below where they were three years ago: If the graph does not display click here Non-discretionary items also continue to rise faster than those items which people can do without (or at least can put off buying until some later date). That means those on lower incomes are still hit harder by price rises than those in wealthier households. Rent rises have been particularly tough for people across most of the country. Perth in particular has borne a massive hit. The 9.9% rent rise over the past year is the fastest rise there since the peak of the mining boom in 2008: 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. If the graph does not display click here Earlier this month I suggested the RBA is unlikely to either cut or raise rates, and these latest figures do nothing to change my views on that. The RBA won’t cut rates unless unemployment rises sharply (which it hasn’t) or until inflation is well into the 2% to 3% range. What we are seeing is that the share of prices of the 87 items in the CPI basket of goods and services that are increasing by more than 5% is dropping. At the end of 2022, two-thirds of all items in the CPI basket were rising in price by more than 5% a year; now that is back to one-third of all items: If the graph does not display click here But the March quarter CPI figures are one of those odd economic numbers that actually have real consequences for people. The March figure is the last determinant of how much Hecs/Help debt will rise on 1 June. The formula sees an indexation on debt of 4.75% (which probably will be rounded up to 4.8%). That means those in their 20s with an average Hecs/Help debt will see their debt rise even after they make their compulsory repayments: If the graph does not display click here That was not how the system was meant to work. It is a consequence of the lowering of the repayment thresholds, the strong rise in prices that means indexation rises much more than anyone would have planned when undertaking their degree and also the increase in the cost of a degree that now mean people have much more Hecs/Help debt than in the past. Hecs/Help debt to rise by 4.8% in June as indexation lifts average loan by more than $1,200 Read more The government will not be crowing about the latest CPI figures, but neither should it be panicking. There is no sign of anything other than a steady, if slow return to inflation below 3%. If it takes slightly longer than hopes for that to occur, so long as inflation is not accelerating there is little cause for great concern. Indeed, given unemployment is at 3.8%, it is clear that there is no need for unemployment to rise to 4.5% as the RBA had once suggested to stop inflation rising. But for those with Hecs/Help debts, the concern is very much present, and the pressure is on the government to deliver in the budget a fix to the Hecs/Help system that now looks quite broken. Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/02/delhi-bus-rape-future-india

World news

2013-01-03T08:52:00.000Z

Jason Burke

In the wake of the Delhi bus rape, what is the future for India?

Mahipalpur is not a place you will find on many tourist guides to India. Once a village, now a cluster of cheap hotels, roadside restaurants and bus stops around a major road junction on the outskirts of Delhi, it is a place many pass by but few seek out. The huge, new billion-dollar international airport terminal lies a mile or so away, across construction sites, wasteland and rubbish tips, obscured now by a thick winter fog, a mixture of smoke from wood fires and pollution. Concrete pillars of a recently constructed metro link, which worked for a few months but has been out of commission for many more, loom. Tens of thousands of people pass Mahipalpur every day. Few stop. It was here, in the dirt beside a ramp leading to the flyover carrying an eight-lane highway, at 10.20pm on 16 December, that a bus briefly stopped and a semi-conscious woman and her male companion were dumped, naked and badly injured, on the ground. This being India, a crowd quickly gathered. Passing cars slowed. After 40 minutes, someone called the police, who fetched sheets from one of the nearby hotels to cover the couple and took them to hospital. Arrive at almost any of the new airports being built across India outside its major cities, and head to the heritage sites or the better, long-established hotels, and you will pass through a Mahipalpur. These are the grey zones around India's rapidly expanding urban centres. Little happens here that makes it into the local newspapers, let alone the western press. Yet India's myriad Mahipalpurs may hold the key to the country's future. In the three weeks since the gang rape and murder of the as-yet-unnamed 23-year-old woman by six men on a moving bus in south Delhi, there has been a great deal of comment in the western media about the nature of modern India. Many appear surprised to have suddenly discovered something that appears to contradict the "booming India" story. When Boris Johnson visited India last year, he described two sights on his journey into Delhi from the airport that, for him, encapsulated the country. One was a Jaguar car, symbol of India's economic success, overseas clout and potential as a market. The second was an elephant being washed by its mahout, representing traditional, exotic India, unchanged and, happily, unchangeable. This week it is difficult to imagine anyone being quite so blithely inattentive to the complex realities of this vast and varied nation. One of the first stories I covered on my return to India three years ago was the violence between Maoist guerrillas, Communist party thugs and various other factions in the desperately poor district of West Midnapore, in the vast state of West Bengal. This appeared to be old India at its worst, a combination of grinding poverty and brutal killings. I interviewed a woman whose husband had just been executed by Maoist guerillas who accused him of being a spy for the police. Nearby, other villagers complained of militia, run by the local government, who burned homes down and raped, apparently at will. Although the catalyst for the wave of violence in West Midnapore was imminent state elections, the killings had started years earlier, when a major steel project was announced in the area. Such a project would have created jobs, wealth – and much opportunity for whoever controlled the area to indulge in immensely profitable racketeering. It was rooted not in the lack of change – but in the coming of change. A few months later, I reported a particularly egregious "honour killing", one of the hundreds, if not thousands, that take place each year in India. The male teenage relatives of a young woman had killed her and her supposed lover with an unlicensed "country" pistol before fleeing. They lived not in a remote village but in the north-west of Delhi. All of those involved in the murders lived nonetheless on frontiers: between Wazirpur, their working-class neighbourhood, and Ashok Vihar, the adjacent upmarket suburb; between the increasingly cosmopolitan Indian capital and its deeply conservative hinterland; between the crushing poverty of their parents' childhoods and the relative wealth of their own. In 2011, an investigation into a hitman who bragged of killing a hundred or more people took me to a small village an hour from Delhi, to Ghaziabad, a rough and violent town that is now part of the Indian capital's urban sprawl, and to Gurgaon, another satellite city just a 10-minute drive from Mahipalpur. Jaggu Pehelwan had grown up in the village, was part of a gang based in Ghaziabad and found most of his targets and clients in Gurgaon, among businessman and criminals based among the call centres, multinational corporations, five-star hotels and luxury malls. Demonstrators in Delhi march in memory of the 23-year-old who was raped and murdered, 2 Jan. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee It was the opportunity, the wealth, the corruption and the chaos of new India that had made Pehlawan, who otherwise would have been a small-time thug in his village, what he was. Pehlewan existed in a world of Mahipalpurs – cheap hotels, cheap restaurants, parties fuelled by locally made foreign liquor and escorts. He had taken holidays to Goa and Kashmir, the two classic middle-class Indian destinations, and had bought a big four-wheel drive, a classic Indian middle-class acquisition that he drove, for fun, on the new expressways near his village homes. One of these leads to Noida and the new Formula One circuit, a $400m project. Beyond the half-built apartment blocks around the track are the villages of farmers who had once tilled the ground beneath the Tarmac. Many have received huge sums as compensation for their land. Others have not. This too has generated tension. All these places – Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Noida, even Mahipalpur – will grow in the coming years. This urban sprawl will not just be limited to Delhi and its environs, where around 17 million people already live. Most experts say that further urbanisation is necessary for India's economic growth to continue; the new middle classes will want apartments and parks and roads and schools. There is a huge youth bulge pushing through. Some 290 million people were living in cities in India in 2001, a figure that rose to 340 million in 2008 and is set to reach 590 million, around 40% of the population, by 2030. By that year, business consultant McKinsey and Co predicts, there will be 68 Indian cities of more than a million people, 13 with more than 4 million and six megacities with populations of 10 million or more. More than 30 million people will live in Mumbai and 26 million in Delhi. By then the dominant feature of modern India may well not be the rural village or the picturesque forts and saris of the tourist brochures but the nondescript, semi-finished, ragged-edged, semi-urban, semi-rural world that is simultaneously neither and both of them. The six suspected rapists certainly inhabited this "inbetween" world. All grew up in poor, socially conservative rural communities in some of the most backward, violent parts of the country and frequently returned to their villages. Ram Singh, the 35-year-old bus driver who is alleged to be the ringleader, and his younger brother Mukesh, came from Karauli in Rajasthan. The district may be only a few hours drive from the Taj Mahal but honour killings, banditry and violence between castes, the tenacious millennia-old social hierarchy, are endemic there. Another of the suspects came from southern Bihar, as poor and lawless a spot as anywhere in India. A fourth was from Basti, a small town near the border with Nepal, a bad place in a state, Uttar Pradesh (UP), that has socio-economic indicators worse than many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Bihar and UP, along with the more prosperous Haryana and Punjab, are states in which the killing of female foetuses and girls is common practice. But all were living in Delhi, in an unregistered semi-legal squatters' "colony" or "camp" in the south of the city that itself is a halfway house between village and urban life. In Ravi Dass colony, named after a 15th-century saint, children return from classes in fashion design or medicine at local colleges to mothers cooking on open wood-fired clay stoves. It too is a zone of transition, barely policed, where, as they would do in a village, neighbours enforce order and the authorities are rarely seen. "We are good people," one inhabitant said this weekend. There was little "eve-teasing" – as sexual harrassment is often euphemistically called in India – because fathers would unite to ensure anyone troubling their daughters stopped. But beyond the colony, there were no such constraints. Out on the streets of Delhi, there were no neighbours, no angry fathers a few yards away, and, as with most Indian cities, only rare, inefficient and often corrupt police. The victim too lived on the fringes of Delhi: in Dwarka, a sprawl of flats and construction sites developed in phases since the mid-1960s to the south-west of the city. It too is a place of constant change as it expands into the semi-rural hinterland. Her father, from a small provincial town, had got a job as a loader at Delhi airport. His daughter's recent qualification as a physiotherapist meant her family was thus well on the way to fulfilling its aspirations of respectability, relative economic comfort and broader opportunity for the next generation. On the evening of the assault, she and her friend were returning from a cinema in Saket, one of two multiplexes at a well-known and extremely popular modern shopping mall. The moment they climbed into the unlicensed private bus driven by their attackers the good and the bad elements of India's ongoing transformation collided. In India this week the protests are now beginning to die away and the media coverage is diminishing. The charge sheet against the six accused – 1,000 pages long – will be entered formally in court tomorrow. Police have said they will seek a death sentence. Some legislation will be passed. There will be fast-track courts set up, harsher penalties for rape introduced and a few other measures. The issue will not be forgotten but the rapes that currently appear on the front of local newspapers will slide inexorably towards less-prominent pages. Three demonstrators call for calm in Delhi. Photograph: Adnan Abidi The deeper question is which part of India's transition wins in the long run; is Mahipalpur a zone of chaos and lawlessness where the badly injured are dumped, or something better? If there is hope it is because, beyond the scale of violence to women in India and a myriad other social problems, something else has been revealed: a vast gulf between many in this huge country and the people who rule them, at least at a national level. And importantly, recent weeks have seen the mobilisation of a new political force. For decades, politics in India has involved deference, hierarchy and handouts, or archaic ideologies unchanged since the cold war. It is likely that elderly men dependent on hundreds of thousands of carefully marshalled votes in conservative rural areas will hold on to power for some time to come. But the largely unplanned, spontaneous protests, and the media attention they have commanded, have demonstrated something new: the existence of large numbers of young, educated, urban potential voters who will no longer tolerate a largely unaccountable, unresponsive political elite and bureaucracy incapable of performing the most fundamental tasks. As the cities grow so, one can reasonably hope that such voices will grow more numerous. Brinda Karat, a Communist member of parliament, said last week that "a turning point had been reached" now that young women had "sensed and seen" the power that they could have when united. This may be premature but yesterday protesters at the dwindling demonstrations across Delhi were adamant that change would indeed come. Ayesha Bhatt, a 22-year-old student who had travelled to Delhi from the city of Moradabad, five hours to the north, to light a candle at the site where the victims of the attack mounted the bus, said it was "impossible to imagine that the country will sit back and say chalta hai [all is going to be fine]." "We are not a chalta hai generation," she said. But down at Mahipalpur in the winter fog, snarling, honking traffic crawled past the roadside wasteland where the victim and her friend had been dumped. Commuters queued for crowded, unlicenced buses. A beggar tapped on the window of a stationary Mercedes. A plane roared overhead. Two women argued over a spilled basket of bruised and blackened bananas. A weak string of streetlights flickered into life, sent a brief wavering light into the gloom and then went out.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/02/muslim-mayor-blocked-white-house-eid-event-mohamed-khairullah

US news

2023-05-02T15:14:40.000Z

Edwin Rios

Muslim mayor turned away from White House Eid event: ‘There is a secret list’

The US Secret Service denied security clearance for Mohamed Khairullah, the longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey, and prevented him from attending a White House Eid al-Fitr event on Monday afternoon marking the end of Ramadan. Khairullah, who was critical of the Trump administration’s travel ban in 2017 that restricted entry to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries, received the call from the Secret Service while he was en route to the White House. President Joe Biden revoked that ban in 2021. Eid al-Fitr celebrations around the world – in pictures Read more “It’s disappointing and it’s shocking that this continues to happen under our constitution which provides that everyone is innocent unless proven guilty,” Khairullah, 47, told NewJersey.com. “I honestly don’t know what my charge, if you want to put it that way, is at this point, to be treated in such a manner.” In a statement to the newspaper, United States Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was denied entry to the event on Monday night, regretting “any inconvenience this may have caused” and noting that they were unable to “comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House”. Two days earlier, Khairullah, who has been mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, a small town of 6,000 people, for more than 17 years, appeared alongside the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, at the gubernatorial mansion for an Eid celebration. Khairullah, who was born in Syria before fleeing persecution as a teenager and moving to the United States with his parents in the 1990s, served as a volunteer firefighter and delivered humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria and Bangladesh for the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation. In 2019, Khairullah had been detained for three hours at John F Kennedy international airport after he returned from a trip to Turkey with his family. Khairullah told NewJersey.com that he sought out more information from federal officials on why he was detained but they would not disclose their reasoning. After he informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of what happened, the group reviewed a leaked copy of the federal terrorist screening dataset, which contains details on more than 1 million people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, and informed him that his name and birthdate appeared in it. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the list for containing “almost entirely lists of Arabic and Muslim names” and called on the Biden administration to stop the FBI from spreading information from that terrorism dataset. Representatives for the group condemned the White House’s denial of entry to Khairullah, with the New Jersey chapter’s executive director, Selaedin Maksut, describing it as “wholly unacceptable and insulting”. “If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut told the local New Jersey news outlet. Khairullah lamented that he could not enter the “People’s House”, telling NewJersey.com that “there is a secret list I can’t clear my name from and it still haunts me and follows me where I go”. “It’s not a matter of ‘I didn’t get to go to a party.’ It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity,” Khairullah added to Al Jazeera. “And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/01/naomie-harris-interview-our-kind-of-traitor-bond-moneypenny

Film

2016-05-01T10:00:52.000Z

Tim Lewis

Naomie Harris: ‘I portray strong women because that’s what I know’

“O h gosh, someone’s had an accident there,” says actor Naomie Harris, sounding concerned. She’s in a car en route to the Dior show at Paris fashion week; such invitations have tumbled in since she played Winnie Mandela in 2013’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and updated Eve Moneypenny in the Bond films Skyfall and Spectre. Harris, 39, began acting professionally aged nine, and after university (Cambridge) and drama school (Bristol Old Vic) she was cast by Danny Boyle in the dystopian 28 Days Later. Her new movie is Our Kind of Traitor, an adaptation of the John le Carré novel, in which she and Ewan McGregor are an ordinary couple caught up with the Russian mafia while on holiday in Marrakech. Is going to fashion shows fun or professional obligation? I love fashion and I have a great stylist who introduced me to it, because I didn’t know anything about fashion before. Now we go every year to these shows and it’s just a fun thing to do. But it’s just for the red carpet, not everyday life. With Our Kind of Traitor – and the BBC’s recent The Night Manager – are we seeing Le Carré being adapted in more opulent, glamorous style? I’d say Our Kind of Traitor has got the real Le Carré feel to it, but maybe a difference would be the emphasis on the romantic relationship. It’s a spy thriller and all of that, but at the heart of it, it’s about love and family and you don’t generally see that at the centre of Le Carré films. It used to be that Le Carré heroes were the cynical, anti-James Bonds. As someone who has worked on film versions of both, do you think they are coming closer together? If anything, Bond is moving closer to Le Carré’s world in that, with Daniel [Craig] playing Bond, it’s become much grittier and less fantastical. So yeah, there’s some movement but they are still fundamentally going to be very different. Watch the trailer for Our Kind of Traitor With two regular people at the centre of Our Kind of Traitor, it encourages the audience to think what we might do if, say, a kingpin money launderer for the Russian mafia asked for our help. How did you answer that personally? Oh, I’d react incredibly badly. I’m such a scaredy-cat, so I don’t think I’d be going on any of those adventures. I’d be like my character, Gail, not wanting to go. That she goes along with it is solely because of her depth of love for Perry [McGregor] – and I don’t think I would be brave enough to do that for anyone. A woman who waits around for a man, pines after them… I don’t have any experience of that kind of woman Naomie Harris Our Kind of Traitor is directed by Susanna White, who made Generation Kill, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang and the BBC’s Jane Eyre. Is it a different experience being directed by a woman in an action film like this one? It’s not really a different experience – as in, if you have a great director then they have great sensitivity and understand how to speak to you to get you into a specific emotional state. The difference in having a female director – and also Gail Egan as a producer – is just a sense of reassurance on set. So often when you’re on a film set, you do feel isolated, because you’re often the only woman. I’m so used to it that I just accept it, but there’s some part of it that’s alienating, and when you have an experience like working with Susanna and Gail, it makes you feel much more part of the process than you normally do. You feel like you belong a lot more. You famously asked for press material to refer to “Bond woman” not “Bond girl” – do you specifically seek out strong female roles? I’m not interested in playing roles that stereotype me as a woman or as a black woman. I grew up with incredibly strong, powerful women around me who were highly intelligent and doing their own thing, and those are the women I’m interested in portraying because that’s what I know to be the truth. A woman who waits around for a man, pines after them… I don’t have any experience of that kind of woman, so I don’t think I’d be very good at playing that kind of character. You landed the Moneypenny part after Sam Mendes saw you on stage in Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein. But is it true that you don’t find theatre acting wholly enjoyable? I’m not a theatre animal. It’s not my thing at all. I went to the Bristol Old Vic theatre school, so I’ve trained to be a theatre actor, but in every performance I felt like I was going to throw up. I don’t think that level of nerves is particularly healthy. I suppose the challenge is to channel those nerves into energy, excitement and things that help your performance, but I didn’t manage to find a way to do that. Harris alongside Idris Elba in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Photograph: Pathe/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar You played the role for a few months – it didn’t get better? It didn’t get easier at all; every night was the same. Like Groundhog Day. Arrgh! Can you do anything to overcome nerves? I do something called EFT, which is emotional freedom technique, otherwise known as tapping, which really helps me. Is that where you use your fingers to stimulate acupuncture points? Yes, so I’ll do that before a first day of filming. And if there’s a particularly tricky scene I’m worried about, I’ll do it before then as well. Film Weekly podcast: Jason Solomons meets Naomie Harris Read more Will anything positive come out of the #OscarsSoWhite debate about the Academy Awards’ lack of diversity? I hope it does, because I wanted the debate to be more focused on solutions rather than venting about where we’re at. The stats speak for themselves – the Oscars voters are 94% white, 76% male – so it just seems right, fair and inevitable that there should be some kind of change in the voting system. But if you just say, “This is unfair, we’re going to boycott it,” it doesn’t force people into action. However, if you show the injustice of the system and say, “Look, here’s a way forward”, it makes it more difficult for people to ignore. Idris Elba, your co-star in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, complained recently that there’s no British equivalent of the American Dream, and that’s why he left to find more interesting work in the US. Would you agree with that? I understand what he’s talking about with the American Dream: the notion that you can achieve anything. And I love the can-do mentality, in LA especially, the hunger. But there are negative sides to that as well, because I don’t think this insatiable appetite for success at all costs is particularly healthy or balanced. And I think there’s a fallacy in the dream, in that success doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. The things that you want aren’t necessarily the things that are best for you. So I agree with him in some ways and in some ways not. As someone who was raised in a single-parent household in Finsbury Park, London, and went to state schools, are you surprised by the middle-class dominance of acting? It doesn’t surprise me in the sense that it’s an expensive profession to enter if you want to train, because now there aren’t really the grants. So everybody has got to raise their own money to get to drama school, which is a huge hurdle if you don’t have parents who have got money. And if you don’t have any financial support and back-up it’s a very scary profession, because there are always these huge intervals when you’re not earning. That’s just the nature of the business. Harris with Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein at the National Theatre in 2011: ‘In every performance I felt like I was going to throw up.’ Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Has that been difficult for you personally? I was very lucky because I started earning at nine and I saved all my income so that when I turned 18 and needed to go to university, it was all there. I always had a really strong work ethic. I didn’t need to rely on anybody else financially and I couldn’t anyway – that was never really an option – but I had a strong belief in myself that I could do it on my own. And that’s what got me through. You wrote a novel aged 13 – what was the plot? It was about a middle-class girl whose parents get taken ill and she has to go and live on a council estate with her aunt. It was about the escapades she gets into and the culture shock, being from a very middle-class background and ending up on a council estate. Naomie Harris interview: 'Playing Winnie is the hardest thing I've done' Read more Have you reread it recently? How does it hold up? I did reread it about two or three years ago and I was really impressed! It’s so dated, because I talk about cassette players and Walkmans, so if I ever try to rewrite it and bring it up to date, it would need quite a bit of work. But I was like, “Oh my gosh!” Then of course I shoved it back in a drawer. Is it true that you’ve never drunk alcohol? Well, I’ve had a sip of wine and I do love Bailey’s at Christmas. The most girly drink possible. But other than that, no. I hate the taste and smell of it. What’s the most useful and useless skill that you’ve had to learn for a movie? Most useful: the physical training I had to do for Skyfall because it really kicked my butt and got me in shape. I’m usually quite lazy about things like that but it’s given me a lifelong healthy habit. The most useless was probably learning to scuba dive [for After the Sunset], because I absolutely hated it. I won’t be doing that again in a hurry. Our Kind of Traitor is out 13 May

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/17/usc-valedictorian-speech-canceled-palestine

US news

2024-04-17T18:08:34.000Z

Arwa Mahdawi

Will the ‘cancel culture’ crowd speak up about the silencing of Asna Tabassum? Don’t hold your breath

If you want to get ahead in life then I have some advice: keep your mouth shut about Palestine. Or, if you must say something, then make sure it is nuanced like – I’m just paraphrasing a former Mossad agent here – no Palestinian over the age of four is an innocent civilian and they all deserve to be starved to death. Certainly make sure you don’t use controversial words like “genocide” or “occupation”, even if those are accurate descriptions according to international law and UN human rights experts. Best to avoid considering Palestinians as humans altogether, rather think of them as Israel’s defense minister does – “human animals” – if you want to avoid unpleasantness. Asna Tabassum, a first-generation south Asian American Muslim from near Los Angeles, is the latest person to learn this lesson the hard way. Tabassum, who is graduating from the University of Southern California (USC) with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide, was recently named her class valedictorian and due to give a speech at her May graduation. Giving a valedictorian address, in which a student reflects on shared experiences and imparts wisdom about the future, is a major honour. It would have been a high point in Tabassum’s academic life. Funnily enough, conservative free speech warriors don’t seem particularly concerned about censorship when it comes to Palestine Then on Monday, USC abruptly cancelled her speech. Instead of being recognized for her academic achievements, Tabassum found herself in the middle of a controversy which brings together some of the most emotive issues of the moment: the war on college campuses, the anti-Palestinian assaults on free speech, and the one-sided nature of “cancel culture”. USC, I should note, didn’t specifically mention Palestine or Israel when they took the unprecedented decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech. Instead Andrew Guzman, provost and senior vice-president for academic affairs, cited safety concerns. “[O]ver the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor,” Guzman explained. “The intensity of feelings … has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement. We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses.” Backlash as USC cancels valedictorian’s speech over support for Palestine Read more It’s not clear whether Guzman was talking about Tabassum’s safety or the safety of other students. USC declined my request to clarify their official statement. But here’s a somewhat more straightforward description of what appears to have happened: campus pro-Israel groups trawled through Tabassum’s social media history in order to find posts that were sympathetic to Palestine and then proceeded to smear her with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism. Instead of standing up for a student that USC had recognized as exemplary, the university caved into pressure to silence her. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called the decision to cancel the speech “cowardly” and the reasoning around safety concerns “disingenuous”. What exactly did Tabassum say on social media? The issue appears to be a link on her Instagram page – which the student says she posted five years ago – to a slideshow written by someone else urging people “to learn about what’s happening in Palestine”. Part of this document – which, again, is not written by Tabassum –describes Zionism as “a racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a Jewish ethnostate built on Palestinian land”. Another part of the presentation argues that the only way towards justice is the abolition of the state of Israel and the creation of one Palestinian state where “both Arabs and Jews can live together without an ideology that specifically advocates for the ethnic cleansing of one of them”. It’s perfectly valid to debate, and take offence, at the substance of the content Tabassum linked to. But cancelling her speech under the vague pretext of “safety” is disingenuous. Let’s be very clear: if Tabassum were pro-Israel and her Instagram linked to any of the very many genocidal things that the Israeli government had said about Palestinians, there is little chance her speech would have been cancelled. Jared Kushner, let’s not forget, was just at Harvard advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. (Kushner said that he thought Israel should move civilians out of Gaza into the desert while it “cleans up” the strip. He added that the Palestinians should absolutely not have their own state and mused that waterfront property in Gaza could be very valuable.) Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest in Los Angeles, home of USC. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images As Tabassum has noted, if this was about her safety, USC could have just hired security guards. Rather, she said in a statement, cancelling her speech seems to be about silencing her voice lest she – who, again, is a student minoring in the resistance to genocide program USC offers – say anything about the continuing genocide in Gaza. “I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred,” Tabassum said in the statement. “I am surprised that my own university – my home for four years – has abandoned me.” I am not surprised. While Palestine has always been a fraught issue, the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices has gone into overdrive after the Hamas attack on 7 October. Speak up about the genocide in Gaza, and you are likely to lose a job, an opportunity, or find yourself smeared as an extremist. In November, the artist Ai Weiwei, who had a show in London cancelled after tweeting about the war in Gaza, wryly noted that censorship in the west was “sometimes even worse” than what he faced growing up in Mao Zedong’s China. “Today I see so many people by giving their basic opinions, they get fired, they get censored,” he told Sky News. “This has become very common.” People who support the attacks on Gaza seem free to say the most depraved and racist things possible about Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians without facing any consequences whatsoever. The comedian Sarah Silverman, for example, shared (and later deleted) an online post arguing that it was OK to cut off water to the entire population of Gaza, which is very much a war crime. Her career has faced no consequences. A long list of American politicians have openly called for Palestinians to be slaughtered without seeing any real pushback to their speech. The British TV presenter Rachel Riley recently falsely blamed Palestinians for the stabbing attack in Sydney and has faced no career consequences at all. In the current climate, a US politician can call for Gaza to be “nuked” without being censured The proliferation of dehumanizing language about Muslims and Palestinians has had violent consequences: there has been a rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the US, including reported offenses on college campuses. There has also been a rise in antisemitism: a very real problem that shouldn’t be minimized or tolerated. What also shouldn’t be tolerated are the dangerous attempts by pro-Israel extremists to label any remotely pro-Palestinian speech, or any criticism of Israel’s actions, as automatically antisemitic. Conflating the actions of the Israeli state with the Jewish people is dangerous and wrong, and yet this is precisely what many pro-Israel voices are doing in an attempt to suppress any support of Palestine. And this strategy is working. In the current climate, a US politician can call for Gaza to be “nuked” without being censured. Dare to do so much as wear a keffiyeh (a traditional Palestinian scarf) on a college campus, however, and pro-Israel voices will go on primetime television and accuse you of being a Nazi. Jonathan Greenblatt, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recently told Morning Joe (and faced no pushback from the hosts) that wearing a keffiyeh was the same as wearing a swastika. Even those who don’t give a damn about Palestinians should care about the suppression of free speech and the attempts to eradicate any mention of the P-word on college campuses. Certainly you’d think conservatives would care: the right are constantly going on about censorship in universities and campus safety. It’s a nonstop talking point on Fox News. Funnily enough, however, these free speech warriors don’t seem particularly concerned about censorship when it comes to Palestine. What’s left out of these nonstop discussions of campus safety is this: there isn’t a single safe campus left in Gaza. Israel, with the unconditional aid of the US, has destroyed almost every kindergarten, school, and university in Gaza. It has killed at least 100 Palestinian academics. It has decimated every cultural institution. There are over 13,000 dead children in Gaza who will never have the opportunity of an education. You should not be able to talk about campus safety without mentioning the fact that, thanks to US-backed Israeli air strikes, every campus in Gaza is now a graveyard.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/04/london-tube-maps-underground-reimagined-alternative-in-pictures

Cities

2016-05-04T11:15:54.000Z

Athlyn Cathcart-Keays

London, reimagined: alternative tube maps – in pictures

Cost of living. This map reveals the average monthly cost of renting a one-bedroom flat at every stop on the London Underground network. Hyde Park is the most expensive at £2,920m, and Hatton Cross comes in cheapest at £324. Photograph: Thrillist Geographically accurate. This map shows the accurate layout of the tube network, and the real distances between each stop. Photograph: Transport for London Life expectancy. In the Lives on the Line project, academics at UCL have mapped the average length of life of residents at each tube stop on the Underground network. See the full version here. Photograph: James Cheshire Disabled use. The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the Bartlett, UCL used TfL data of Disabled Freedom Pass Card journeys to create real-time visualisations of tube use by disabled people. Art nouveau. A map produced in the style of Glaswegian architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The map displays the Underground network as it would have been at the time of his death in 1928. Photograph: Max Roberts The tube in 3D. Brazilian web developer Bruno Imbrizi has used publicly available data from TfL to create this three-dimensional visualisation of the tube system, with each dot representing a station. View the interactive version here. Photograph: Bruno Imbrizi Everything in one map. Created by cartographer Franklin Jarrier, this map combines detailed track diagrams with the geographical layout of the entire network, showing every platform, line and interchange. Photograph: Franklin Jarrier The Night Tube. Despite various initial launch dates, the most recent being January 2016, strike action means the after-hours service – which currently runs in cities like Berlin, Sydney and Copenhagen – has been delayed. The Night Tube map, released by TfL, simply used a normal tube map and removed the lines not included – but Max Roberts has created this new, contextualised version. Photograph: Max Roberts London plays New York. The London Underground in the style of the Big Apple’s subway map from 1972. Photograph: Max Roberts The future, as seen in 2004. Twelve years ago, based on developments in the pipeline, TfL created a map of what the transport network would look like in 2016. It looks relatively the same as the real thing today, with the major difference being Crossrail, which has faced several delays since this optimistic map was published. Photograph: Transport for London Allow content provided by a third party? This article includes content hosted on simonrogers.cartodb.com. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Allow and continue The pedestrian tube. This map shows the time on foot between each station. The shortest gap is the 300 metres between Leicester Square and Covent Garden ... which even TfL recommends you walk. Photograph: Transport for London

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/15/isle-of-man-grow-cannabis-business-diversify-economy

UK news

2023-05-15T07:00:17.000Z

Jasper Jolly

Isle of Man to grow cannabis business to diversify economy

The Isle of Man has for decades been dominated by offshore financial services, but now its government is planning a push for a new kind of economic growth: medicinal cannabis. The British crown dependency is hoping to license as many as 10 firms by the end of 2025 to grow and export medicinal cannabis products from the island as part of a strategy to spur development. Tim Johnston, the Isle of Man’s minister for enterprise, said the island’s government was “really looking to diversify our economy”, and that encouraging a medicinal cannabis industry was one aspect of a plan to nearly double GDP by 2032, create 5,000 more jobs, and give younger Manx opportunities on the island. Johnston said: “We recognise we’ve got an older population. We’re keen to see that change.” The island in the middle of the Irish Sea has a population of 84,000, and an economy that has long left behind sectors such as fishing in favour of financial services. Insurance is the largest sector of its economy, accounting for nearly a quarter of the £5bn annual output, while the next largest is gambling: island firms offer “white label” services to essentially lend their licences to non-UK companies. It is also judged as a tax haven and a financial secrecy jurisdiction by tax campaigners. The Tax Justice Network judges that financial flows through the territory cost other countries billions of pounds every year in lost revenues. Former Isle of Man chief medic sacked for whistleblowing is awarded £3.2m Read more Johnston rejected criticisms of the role of the Isle of Man’s financial services industry in the global economy, saying the island has strong regulation and transparency. However, he said there was overwhelming support for looking towards medicinal cannabis and other industries as the government seeks to increase the island’s population to 100,000 over the next 15 years. He said: “As a high-value, low-volume manufacturing business it fits well into what we need to do on the island. We need to make sure when things are exported they are high value.” The government issued its first conditional licence to the startup GrowLab Organics last year. One oddity is that licensing is being handled by officials sitting under the island’s gambling regulator, as the government decided it would be quicker than setting up a new body. Cannabis-based medicinal products – which are mainly prescribed for chronic pain – were legalised in the UK in 2018, after similar moves in much of Europe, Canada and several US states. There is no sign yet of recreational cannabis being legalised in the UK, although it is legal in some US states, Canada, Uruguay and the Netherlands – a list soon to include Germany. Only specialist doctors can prescribe the drug in the UK and all companies selling it have to meet the exacting requirements of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The Isle of Man producers will not have a free run at the UK market. The island is following in the footsteps of Jersey and Guernsey, two other crown dependencies, in legalising medicinal cannabis cultivation. Growers will also be up against rivals in regions where the drug has been legalised, including California and Canada, where the industry boomed before a spectacular bust. 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. Producers will also compete with a handful of UK companies which have gone through the arduous process of gaining Home Office approval to produce medicinal cannabis. GW Pharmaceuticals was the UK pioneer before being bought for $7.2bn (£5.7bn), while Celadon Pharmaceuticals this year won the ability to sell cannabis oil in the UK. Phytome, based in Cornwall, is focusing on researching and extracting compounds from cannabis plants, rather than selling to pharmacies. Another UK startup is Dalgety, which is part way through the 14-week growing period for its first batch of plants in Staffordshire. James Leavesley, Dalgety’s operations director, cited a recent poll by YouGov – commissioned by a medicinal cannabis clinic – that estimated 1.8 million people in the UK use illegal cannabis for medicinal purposes such as pain management or anxiety. Dalgety wants to give those people an option to buy a safer, consistent, regulated product rather than relying on street dealers, he said. Dalgety said: “The key challenge for the industry is to let people know that there are legitimate routes and safe routes. The bottleneck is the awareness for doctors as well, to know there are a lot of people choosing to self-medicate for it. They have only ever known it as a bad thing.” GrowLab Organics on the Isle of Man hopes to export 15 tonnes each year. It has applied for planning on the island to build a growing facility. Once that facility is built it will qualify for a full licence, provided it meets defined criteria. The dried cannabis flowers would largely be used in vaporisers, to be inhaled by patients. One of the island’s main advantages was “to be legislatively agile”, said Alex Fray, one of GrowLab’s founders and an Isle of Man resident for almost a decade. “It has to keep reinventing itself to survive.” “This is a really unique scenario where you have a very deep, liquid market for something, but it’s illegal,” he said. “That transition from illegal to legal is very, very rare.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jul/09/romelu-lukaku-manchester-united-transfer-biggest-club-world

Football

2017-07-09T10:05:22.000Z

Paul Wilson

Romelu Lukaku confirms Manchester United move as Wayne Rooney rejoins Everton

Wayne Rooney rejoined his old club as Romelu Lukaku travelled in the opposite direction to his new one. Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, saluted the Everton-bound Rooney as “our greatest-ever goalscorer” while Lukaku revealed he would never have been able to turn down an offer from Old Trafford, describing his new employers as “the biggest club in the world”. In his first interview since his move from Everton was confirmed, for a fee of £75m rising to £90m with add-ons, the Belgium striker neglected to express any sort of gratitude for his time on Merseyside and suggested slightly provocatively that he was joining the side with the best fans in the country. “This is an opportunity I’ve always wanted since I was a child,” Lukaku told ESPN. “When Manchester United came calling I didn’t have to think twice. I’m really delighted to be part of their history. Who would say no to the biggest club in the world? This is the perfect opportunity. Best stadium in England, the best fans. My mind was already set, I gave my word and I don’t look back.” Lukaku is already in the United States, where he will now have to return for a court appearance in October after receiving a police misdemeanour citation for making excessive noise while on holiday in Los Angeles, and will join the rest of the United squad who have flown out for a four-match pre-season tour. The player completed a medical over the weekend and is expected to be unveiled in a United shirt in Los Angeles in the next couple of days. Lukaku is thrilled to be joining up with his close friend Paul Pogba and, like the Frenchman with whom he shares an agent in Mino Raiola, appears to have been convinced that United are on an upward curve despite missing out on a top-four finish last season. “I think United at the minute want to be the dominant team, that dominant force,” he said . “If you look at their history, it says enough. To become part of a club like them is something that I really wanted. I’m thankful for the opportunity they have given me; I always said I wanted to play for a team that’s challenging for every trophy there is.” Chelsea were willing to match the package that took Lukaku to Old Trafford and were initially confident they could revive a deal for a long-term transfer target even after United’s coup had been announced, but the London club must have finally given up hope once the player began posting pictures of his medical on social media and enthusiastically signing the shirt of a young United fan. Chelsea are now expected to switch their attention to Real Madrid’s Álvaro Morata, a striker said to be stunned at how quickly his projected move to Manchester United broke down, and may even consider a move for his team-mate James Rodríguez, similarly disillusioned by the lack of first-team opportunities at the Bernabéu. Antonio Conte did manage to land one of his summer targets on Sunday, with Roma’s Germany defender Antonio Rüdiger in London for a medical ahead of a £34m move. Ronald Koeman has been considerably more successful in the transfer window so far and was proud to announce Rooney’s capture on a two-year deal for an undisclosed fee. United’s record goalscorer and erstwhile captain was finding it difficult to get into the team at Old Trafford or make any significant impact as a substitute, though the Everton manager remains confident he still has what it takes. “Wayne has shown me the ambition that we need and that winning mentality – he knows how to win titles and I’m really happy he’s decided to come home,” Koeman said. “He loves Everton and he was desperate to come back. He is still only 31 and I don’t have any doubts about his qualities. It’s fantastic he’s here.” Rooney made his Everton debut in 2002 aged 16 and, before leaving for United in 2004, scored 17 goals for the club in 77 appearances. In his 13 years at Old Trafford he won every available club honour, culminating with a Europa League medal in his final appearance as a substitute in Stockholm in May. In addition to the Champions League, Europa League, five Premier League titles, an FA Cup and three League Cups, Rooney broke Sir Bobby Charlton’s scoring records both for United and for England. His combined goal tally for club and country stands at 323 and he is England’s most capped outfield player. Paying tribute to his departing striker before leaving for America, José Mourinho said Rooney’s records would remain in the history books for many years to come. “It is no secret I have long been an admirer of Wayne. He has been a model professional throughout his time at the club,” the United manager said. “It is never easy to see a great player playing less football than he would like and, when he asked to go back to Everton, I could not stand in his way. His experience, focus and determination will be missed and I wish him well for the future.” Woodward added: “Wayne goes having created some of the most magical moments in some of the most successful years in the club’s history, he has been a fantastic servant to United. On behalf of the club and millions of fans around the world we wish him the very best for the next phase of his incredible career.” Chelsea winded by Romelu Lukaku blow and Antonio Conte will demand answers Read more Wayne Rooney back at Everton would be a fairytale – but it may well end in tears Paul Wilson Read more

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/16/labor-emergency-immigration-detention-bill-strict-visa-conditions-electronic-monitors-curfews

Australia news

2023-11-16T11:42:58.000Z

Paul Karp

Labor accused of caving to Dutton as ‘draconian’ bill restricting released detainees is passed

Labor has been accused of caving to Peter Dutton after it agreed to a slate of Coalition amendments to toughen restrictions on people released from detention so as to pass “draconian” emergency legislation on bridging visas. The bill, introduced on Thursday by the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, adds conditions, including electronic monitoring and curfews, to bridging visas issued to those who are required to be released due to the high court’s ruling on indefinite detention. It creates criminal penalties for their breach, toughened by the Coalition to include mandatory minimum sentences, despite these being prohibited by Labor’s national platform. The bill passed on Thursday evening, as the result of a Labor-Coalition deal announced at the start of question time by the acting prime minister, Richard Marles, who said Labor had agreed to six amendments. Giles said the bill, as amended, provided “appropriate and proportionate monitoring” of those released into the Australian community. The deal sparked bitter rebukes in the Senate by the Greens. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Greens senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, said the deal was “the Dutton tail wagging the Labor dog” and the government had made its bill “even worse” because the opposition leader “demanded it must be tougher, must be nastier”. “Where is the guts,” she questioned. “Where is the political spine to stand up for the basic principles you believe in?” Peter Dutton accused of ‘weaponising antisemitism’ during fiery debate in parliament Read more “I can’t count how many times this chamber has had to sit late into the evening because both the Labor party and the Liberal party decide that it’s time to ram through some draconian law that limits freedoms, the rights and the human right protections of refugees in this country.” The bill responds to the high court’s ruling that detaining a person indefinitely in immigration detention is unlawful in cases where it is not possible to deport them. The decision has so far resulted in the release of 84 people, with the legality of the detention of a further 340 people in detention for more than a year also in doubt. ‘Detention by another name’ Under the new regime all people released from immigration detention as a result of the decision must report their location and associations to authorities, to obey curfews and wear electronic monitoring ankle bracelets. Labor had originally intended curfews and monitoring to be at the discretion of the minister, but Marles revealed it had agreed with the Coalition to make this mandatory. The amendment enacted opted instead for a presumption the conditions would be applied. The other Coalition proposals included: create a mandatory minimum sentence for breach of visa conditions, with each day of breach considered a separate offence; stipulate that people can’t go within 150 metres of a school or childcare centre; create a power to prohibit people convicted of violent or sexual crimes contacting victims or their families and a prohibition on working with or activities with children. Earlier, in a heated lower house debate, Dutton said the bill was “inadequate” in its original form and criticised Anthony Albanese for travelling to Apec instead of guiding the government response on what he labelled a “dark day”. “The prime minister has taken a decision not to re-detain these serious criminals,” Dutton claimed, despite the court’s clear ruling that indefinite detention by the executive of those who can’t be deported is unlawful. None of the Coalition amendments amount to automatic re-detention, which the shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, claimed on Wednesday, without evidence, might be possible. The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, accused Dutton of a “consistent falsehood” that the government had a choice to re-detain people freed by the court, claiming he knew this to be “untrue”. “If I had any legal power to keep these people in detention, I would … We do not have that, that is what the high court has told us.” 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. Tehan revealed that in opposition Labor received a briefing in 2021 that “this decision was possible”. Labor seized on this, arguing it proved the Coalition had failed in government to fortify the detention regime against constitutional challenge. ‘None’ of 81 people released from immigration detention arrived during Albanese government, Labor says Read more Shortly after noon, the Liberal leader in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, confirmed that the Coalition would help Labor pass the bill. The shadow home affairs minister, James Paterson, argued the original bill did “nothing really” to protect the Australian community. During daylight hours “these people have completely unrestricted movement in the community”, he told the Senate. The Greens senator, Nick McKim,said the conditions are “detention by another name” because curfews are “effectively house arrest” and electronic surveillance amounts to “electronic detention”. “They are going to set people up to fail, by putting in place punitive almost impossible conditions … when people inevitably fail … they will be charged and potentially imprisoned.” Labor’s Murray Watt rejected the contention that the conditions amounted to imprisonment, because the bill states curfews can only be eight hours at a time. Watt acknowledged amendments “add constitutional risk”. He said the government believes they are lawful, but there may need to be “adjustments” after the high court’s reasons. The executive director of Refugee Legal, David Manne, said the powers the government had created were “akin to control orders” which “are usually reserved for the most serious and extreme situations where there has been a conviction of terrorism”. Despite Dutton’s description of those released as “hardcore” criminals, refugee advocates have noted that there does not need to have been a conviction for a visa to be cancelled using character provisions. Manne labelled the bill “government overreach”, suggesting it was seeking “to impose extreme, severe restrictions on a person’s liberty” which might be found to be extra-judicial punishment. The acting legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, said the government “is substituting one form of punishment for another”. “Every single day, Australian citizens who have been convicted of an offence re-enter the community after serving their time,” she said. “For the government to suggest that migrants and refugees in the same position pose a different or greater risk is dangerous dog-whistling.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/02/cristiano-ronaldo-real-madrid-champions-league-atletico-madrid

Football

2017-05-02T21:28:41.000Z

Jacob Steinberg

Cristiano Ronaldo continues to make fools of those trying to write him off | Jacob Steinberg

It happens to every player when they accelerate past the wrong side of 30. Suddenly the legs are heavier. The pace starts to go, younger opponents whizz by as though they are riding on invisible motorbikes and the body begins to rebel. The old magic starts to disappear and naysayers line up to say that you’re in the throes of irreversible decline. There are two options. Either you accept the inevitable and learn to live with the surprisingly welcome human reality of growing old. Or you rebel. Cristiano Ronaldo chose the latter. Bowing down to time simply is not his style, not when there are so many goals still to be scored, awards to win and mirrors to glance at admiringly, and while he might not be as blisteringly quick as he was a year or two ago, Ronaldo shows no sign of slowing down in other ways. Cristiano Ronaldo hat-trick ensures Real Madrid turn the screw on Atlético Read more Still so driven, so focused, so utterly and unforgivingly relentless, Ronaldo did not need long to leave his mark on Atlético Madrid at the start of this Champions League semi-final. There were only 10 minutes on the clock when Casemiro sent a bouncing cross into the middle from the right and Ronaldo towered over Stefan Savic, who has matured into a forceful centre-back since his torrid spell at Manchester City, and thumped a low header past the Atlético goalkeeper Jan Oblak. Even a team as tough and resolute as Diego Simeone’s Atlético were powerless to stop him and Ronaldo’s early goal gave Real control. His second strike, a brutal volley from 18 yards late in the second half, gave Zinedine Zidane’s team precious breathing space. His third with four minutes to go means that they are within touching distance of next month’s final in Cardiff. Another big match, another Ronaldo hat-trick. It is strange, this eagerness to doubt him. More than anything else, it feels like a dangerous game to write him off bearing in mind the astonishing consistency of his cold ruthlessness in front of goal. Booed by his own fans during Real’s previous Champions League outing at the Bernabéu against Bayern Munich, he shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders and promptly made the most of a couple of generous offside decisions by scoring the hat-trick that sent the German side tumbling out of Europe. It wasn’t a bad night’s work for a busted flush. The best footballers have always been capable of tweaking and refining their games as the years pass by. Those who fail to adapt struggle to replicate former glories, so criticising Ronaldo for not flying down the wing and tying full-backs up in knots misses the central point. Real have Marco Asensio, a jinking 21-year-old Spaniard, to weave and scheme on the flanks these days. Marcelo provides wonderful thrust from left-back. Instead of using up his energy on needless endeavours, Ronaldo lurks in other areas of the pitch. He has become a deluxe poacher, an elite goalscorer, and he does his job with devastating efficiency. There were occasions when Ronaldo crept into the wide areas. Shortly after his first goal, he teased Atlético on the left, his feet twinkling, and he crossed for Karim Benzema to hook his effort just wide. Early in the second half, Ronaldo ripped past Diego Godín on the right and tried to set up Benzema once again. Cristiano Ronaldo heads off to celebrate scoring. Photograph: Oscar Del Pozo/AFP/Getty Images But his best work is done in the penalty box. Goals are his elixir. Ronaldo began the game by walloping over from 25 yards when he might have passed to a team-mate in a better position. He did not let that put him off. Instead he kept coming back for more, forcing Oblak to make a superb save with a downward header. ‘Unique’ Cristiano Ronaldo benefits from Zinedine Zidane’s guidance Read more Ronaldo drifted out of the game for a while. He is not as pure a player as Lionel Messi, who bends matches to his will for Barcelona. But he was just biding his time. The 32-year-old’s second goal was a swaggering show of force and it took Real closer to their third Champions League final in the past four years. The second leg is likely to be a formality at the Vicente Calderón. Real are excellent value for the 3-0 lead that they will take across the capital next Wednesday. It was a complete performance from Zidane’s men, who overwhelmed Atlético in midfield and restricted them to few clear chances. An away goal was never on the cards for Simeone’s team, save for the moment when Kévin Gameiro burst behind Sergio Ramos and Raphaël Varane in the first half. With Ronaldo in this mood, Real will take some stopping. There were no jeers at the Bernabéu this time.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/04/paralympics-roundup-football-brazil-paracanoe-badminton

Sport

2021-09-04T16:19:23.000Z

Martin Belam

ParalympicsGB roundup: Henshaw and Sugar strike gold after switches pay off

Paralympics GB enjoyed a dominant final day at the Sea Forest Waterway as they took two of the five gold medals available, as well as a silver and bronze, in the paracanoeing events. Charlotte Henshaw switched to paracanoe after winning bronze and silver medals as a swimmer at the London and Rio Games and it paid dividends when she won her first gold medal in the women’s kayak single 200m KL2. The 34-year-old beat her British compatriot and defending champion, Emma Wiggs. Wiggs finished 0.649sec behind Henshaw, having won gold in the women’s Va’a singles 200m on Friday. Hungary’s Katalin Varga claimed bronze. Dutch delight in women’s wheelchair doubles, Reid wins British bronze battle Read more “It’s amazing. I feel a real sense of gratitude that I got the opportunity that I was able to race for this medal,” Henshaw said. “The first and biggest thanks needs to go to Japan for putting on an incredible Games in such difficult circumstances and allowing us to showcase our hard work from over the last five years.” There was a second British gold and first medal for Laura Sugar, who won the women’s kayak single KL3 200m. As a track athlete she finished fifth in the women’s T44 200m final in Rio, but she switched to paracanoe in 2018. The 30-year-old finished nearly two seconds ahead of France’s Nélia Barbosa. There was a bronze medal for Stuart Wood in the men’s Va’a VL3 final, in a race won by Australia’s double-gold medallist Curtis McGrath. The British canoeists won seven medals in total, including three golds, making them the most successful paracanoe team in Tokyo. Daniel Bethell lost his badminton gold medal match 2-0 to India’s Pramod Bhagat. The sport is being played at a Paralympics for the first time. It was a repeat of the 2019 World Championship final that also ended in silver for Bethell. Britain’s Krysten Coombs lost his semi-final in the men’s singles SH6 competition and will play Vitor Gonçales Tavares of Brazil for the bronze medal on Sunday. Daniel Bethell competing in the Paralympic badminton contest. Photograph: Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images The British sprinter Jonnie Peacock has called for equal pay for para-athletes, saying that disabled athletes are being included in publicity for athletic meets, but not being paid anything like that of their counterparts. “Meet organisers are going: ‘Aren’t we great for equality having a race on? But you should be grateful that you have a race so don’t dare come and ask for prize money.’ “I would love to see equal pay. That would be the next step. We have Lottery funding but British sport needs to recognise the value that Paralympic and disabled athletes bring.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/27/uk-students-launch-barclays-career-boycott-over-banks-climate-policies

Business

2023-12-27T07:55:10.000Z

Kalyeena Makortoff

UK students launch Barclays ‘career boycott’ over bank’s climate policies

Hundreds of students from leading UK universities have launched a “career boycott” of Barclays over its climate policies, warning that the bank will miss out on top talent unless it stops financing fossil fuel companies. More than 220 students from Barclays’ top recruitment universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London, have sent a letter to the high street lender, saying they will not work for Barclays and raising the alarm over its funding for oil and gas firms including Shell, TotalEnergies, Exxon and BP. “Your ambitious decarbonisation targets are discredited by your absence of action and the roster of fossil fuel companies on your books,” the letter said. “You may say you’re working with them to help them transition, but Shell, Total and BP have all rowed back.” Large oil firms have started to water down climate commitments, including BP, which originally pledged to lower emissions by 35% by 2030 but is now aiming for a 20% to 30% cut instead. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil quietly withdrew funding for plans to use algae to create low-carbon fuel, while Shell announced it would not increase its investments in renewable energy this year, despite earlier promises to slash its emissions. The letter calls on Barclays to end all financing and underwriting of oil and gas companies – not only their projects – and to boost funding of firms behind wind and solar energy significantly. In May, more than 500 students and recent graduates made a similar pledge aimed at insurers that they said supported controversial fossil fuel projects. That letter was directed at the world’s largest insurance market, Lloyd’s of London, and addressed to individual firms including Beazley, Hiscox, Chaucer and Tokio Marine Kiln. “New recruitment of the younger generation will be another headache for Barclays as long as it continues to finance companies building new oil and gas infrastructure, since it relies heavily on Stem [science, engineering, technology and mathematics] applicants from Oxbridge and other top universities,” said Michelle Hemmingfield, a representative of Students Organising for Sustainability UK, which spearheaded the letter. The career boycott is the latest headache for Barclays, which was targeted by climate campaigners at its AGM in May and faced pressure over its sponsorship of Wimbledon, as well as over its ties to the National Trust. The lender has also been hit by grassroots campaigns, including by a pensioner who refused to pay her council tax because of a link to the bank. A Barclays spokesperson said: “Aligned to our ambition to be a net zero bank by 2050, we believe we can make the greatest difference by working with our clients as they transition to a low-carbon business model, reducing their carbon-intensive activity whilst scaling low-carbon technologies, infrastructure and capacity. 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. “We have set 2030 targets to reduce the emissions we finance in five high-emitting sectors, including the energy sector, where we have achieved a 32% reduction since 2020. In addition, to scale the needed technologies and infrastructure, we have provided £99bn of green finance since 2018, and have a target to facilitate $1tn in sustainable and transition financing between 2023 and 2030.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/sep/23/fatoumata-diawara-singer-weekender-paris

Fashion

2011-09-23T21:59:00.000Z

Becky Barnicoat

Weekender: Fatoumata Diawara, singer, 29

I was born in Ivory Coast to Malian parents. When I refused to go to school, my parents sent me to be disciplined by my aunt in Bamako. I didn't see them again for more than 10 years. That sort of thing happens a lot in Mali. I found comfort in singing, and still sing whenever I'm alone to keep myself company. In the end, when I was 19, I ran away from home to act with Royale de Luxe in Paris. They are one of the best theatre companies in France – similar to Cirque du Soleil. I'm often away at weekends, performing in other countries, so on the rare occasions I'm at home in Paris, it's a treat to sleep late on Saturdays and have breakfast with my husband, Nicolo. Then we'll wander to Bastille, which is a really vibrant area. I don't drink alcohol or coffee, so I meet friends for juice at Le Paradis du Fruit. I love watching films and live music at weekends. The Cinema La Bastille shows art-house films and the New Morning in Château d'Eau is an intimate music venue playing mainly jazz and world music – I saw Clint Eastwood's son Kyle play there. It's a bit rough around the edges – the paint is peeling and the furniture is creaky – but it's charming. Sundays are quiet. I love to be at home, playing guitar, writing songs and tending to my window box. I mostly grow geraniums, because I love the colour red. The only other thing I like to do on Sunday is sleep. I sleep a lot. Are you a Weekender? Email a photo and a brief description of how you spend your weekends to weekender.theguardian.com.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/nov/25/diego-maradona-obituary

Football

2020-11-25T18:59:29.000Z

Julie Welch

Diego Maradona obituary

Religious faith is a psychological prop for many a footballer, but Diego Maradona, who has died aged 60 after suffering a heart attack, took things further and came to believe in his own divinity. His multiple skills as creator, organiser and striker brought him worldwide acknowledgement as one of the best players ever known, an accolade tempered, in English minds at least, by the goal he scored for Argentina after 51 minutes of their quarter-final against England in the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico. Deemed by the referee to have been headed, the ball was actually punched over the line and the foul went unpunished. It was, said its scorer, “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”. Four minutes later Maradona scored what would turn out to be the match-winner, a goal acclaimed as one of the greatest ever scored, a matter of 10.8 seconds, 44 strides and 12 touches, during which he dribbled past five England players, upended the goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, with a feint, and slipped the ball into the net. “I felt like applauding,” was the rueful comment of the England striker Gary Lineker. With Maradona as captain and scorer of five of their 14 goals, Argentina went on to become world champions, beating West Germany in the final. Diego Maradona’s contentious goal for Argentina during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England was scored, he said, ‘a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God’. Photograph: Popperfoto A diminutive attacking midfielder who played in the No 10 position and who combined great acceleration, unrivalled vision, and a touch and ball control that he ascribed to the abnormal rotational capability of his ankles, Maradona captained Argentina to two World Cup finals, winning one, and gained numerous honours that included South American Footballer of the Year in 1979 and 1980 and the World Cup Golden Ball in 1986 and Fifa Goal of the Century in 2002. In a career marked by glory, drama, indiscipline and a long-running cocaine habit, he was a controversial figure at Barcelona, worshipped as a god in Napoli, and kicked out of the 1994 World Cup finals in disgrace. He was also exploited commercially by clubs, associates, hangers-on and his national governing body, as well as by Argentina’s military regimes. According to Settimio Aloisio, the vice-president of Argentinos Juniors: “Maradona was a good diversion when things were difficult for the regime. He kept people happy. The Romans used the circus, our military used the football stadiums.” Maradona was born in Lanús, Buenos Aires, and his childhood home was a shack in Villa Fiorito, a shanty town with a reputation as one of the most dangerous in the city. His father, Diego Sr, a low-paid worker in a bone-meal factory, was from Guaraní Indian stock; his mother, Dalma (nee Franco), known as Tota, was the descendant of poor immigrants from southern Italy. As her first boy after three daughters, Diego Jr was doted on by Tota and his grandmother Salvadora, who drummed into him their Roman Catholic faith and reminded him of his responsibilities as the eldest son. Put to work early, he sold small items of scrap and discarded tinfoil from cigarette packets, but it was the leather football given to him for his third birthday by his uncle Cirilo that provided his route out of poverty. Aged eight, Maradona’s prodigious skills brought him a trial with Francisco Cornejo, the trainer of Cebollitas, the youth team of the first division side Argentinos Juniors. Cornejo was left open-mouthed: “He seemed to come from another planet.” He had never seen a young boy display such talent. Given Maradona’s puny physique and strangely large head, at first he thought he was lying about his age and demanded to see his identity card. Reassured, Cornejo took him on and became his mentor at Cebollitas, with whom, in 1974, Maradona won the youth championship in Córdoba. Soon after he had his first contract with Argentinos Juniors, who promoted him to the main team. He made his professional debut in 1976, 10 days before his 16th birthday, scored his first top-flight goal 25 days later and immediately became a teenage sensation. During his five years at the club he contributed 116 goals in as many appearances and was their leading scorer in every full season. In 1979 he was the key man in Argentina’s victory in the World Youth Championship final against the Soviet Union, and at 20 he moved to Boca Juniors, where his 28 goals in 40 appearances helped the club win the Argentina Primera División Metropolitano in 1982, the same year he appeared in his first World Cup, in Spain. Small wonder that Barcelona promptly paid a world record fee of £5m for him; still only 21, he went to Spain in the face of the whole of Argentina protesting at his departure. His turbulent two years at Barcelona brought him 38 goals and a 1983 Copa del Rey winner’s medal, as well as financial difficulties, the beginnings of his cocaine use and heavy drinking, a career threatening ankle injury inflicted by Andoni Goikoetxea of Athletic Bilbao, and increasingly frequent disputes with the club president, Josep Lluís Núñez. He was also the instigator of a mass brawl in front of King Juan Carlos of Spain in the 1984 Copa del Rey final after Barcelona lost to Athletic Bilbao. It was his last game for the club. A £6.9m transfer fee that surpassed his own record took him to Napoli, and brought about a seven-year love affair during which time he inspired them to end the footballing hegemony of northern Italy; in 1987 they became the first southern club to win Serie A. The following season he was Serie A’s leading scorer. In 1989 Napoli won their first European trophy, the Uefa Cup, and a second league title followed in 1990. To the Neapolitans he possessed a godlike status in which he himself was prepared to believe; his image appeared in murals and shrines on city walls. The reality was darker; a cocaine addiction, connections with the Camorra – the Naples mafia – and a son, Diego Sinagra, the result of an extramarital affair, whom he refused for many years to acknowledge. Diego Maradona in action for Napoli during a Serie A match between Napoli and Juventus in the mid-1980s. Photograph: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images When he left in 1992, Napoli officially retired the No 10 shirt in recognition of his contribution to the club, even though his record was by then tarnished by a failed drug test for cocaine. By now in a precarious physical and psychological state, after a 15-month ban from football he spent a year playing for Sevilla FC in Spain before returning to Argentina, where first Newell’s Old Boys and then Boca Juniors handed him much needed lifelines. Diego Maradona being carried by fans after winning the local championship with Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires in 1981. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Maradona’s international career never again hit the peak of Mexico 86. In Italy in 1990, sapped by an ankle injury, he was not the dominant force of four years previously, though he captained Argentina to the final, in which they lost 1-0 to West Germany. Four years later, in the US, he played only two games before testing positive for the proscribed drug ephedrine. Expulsion in disgrace terminated his international career, during which he had appeared 91 times for Argentina, scoring 34 goals. After his retirement from football in 1997 (having scored 259 goals in 491 league matches for his various club sides), the body that had suffered years of physical abuse became bloated and grossly overweight, and in 2004 he was hospitalised with a suspected heart attack following excessive cocaine use. Two years later he underwent gastric bypass surgery to reverse his obesity and, in 2008, after the resignation of the Argentina head coach, Alfio Basile, he was asked to take his place. Qualification was secured to the 2010 World Cup finals despite a 6-1 defeat, Argentina’s second worst ever, by Bolivia and a two-month Fifa ban given to Maradona for exploding into abusive language at the live post-match press conference. After Argentina were eliminated 4-0 in the quarter-finals by Germany, his contract was not renewed. Diego Maradona as head coach of the Argentinian national team celebrating a goal during a Round of 16 match between Argentina and Mexico at the 2010 World Cup. Photograph: Kerim Ökten/EPA In 2011 he became manager of the Dubai club Al Wasl in the United Arab Emirates before being sacked after just over a year in the job. Following a five year interregnum, in 2017 he was appointed head coach of Al-Fujairah in the UAE’s second division, moving the following year to the Mexican club Dorados de Sinaloa and in 2019 back to Argentina, to Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata. Despite his many misdemeanours and complicated personality, Maradona remained a hero in Argentina. “He offered to Argentinians a way out of their collective frustration and that’s why people love him,” said his former team-mate Jorge Valdano. “[That’s why he] is a divine figure.” He married Claudia Villafañe in 1984; they divorced in 2004. He is survived by their two daughters, Dalma and Giannina, and his son, Diego. Diego Armando Maradona, footballer, born 30 October 1960; died 25 November 2020

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/19/rochdale-sex-grooming-gangs-police-errors

UK news

2013-12-19T20:37:32.000Z

Rajeev Syal

Rochdale sex-grooming gangs able to flourish due to police errors says report

A catalogue of police failures allowed sex-grooming gangs to flourish in Rochdale, according to a damning, leaked report that is published on Friday. Among the failings identified in the 300-page report, untrained detectives were used to investigate child exploitation and there was a lack of resources and oversight. The serious case review was announced by Rochdale Council last year after nine Asian men were convicted of the systematic grooming and sexual abuse of white girls in Greater Manchester. The findings of the review have resulted in an acknowledgement by Greater Manchester police [GMP] that the force has let down a number of vulnerable girls who were groomed by gangs for sexual abuse. An internal police investigation, highlighted in the serious case review, also found a failure to recognise abuse. The internal police review found that: Officers failed to challenge a Crown Prosecution Service decision not to prosecute. There was a lack of resources and managerial support for the investigations, initially led by CID, despite formal requests. Detectives without training in child sexual exploitation were used to interview potential victims. There was a lack of managerial oversight for investigations in 2008 and 2009. There was a lack of strategies to respond to frequent "runaways", which allowed them to return to their abusers. There was a recognition that there may have been discriminatory attitudes among police officers towards the victims. But despite the list of acknowledged problems, the police made just one recommendation – that the force's public protection division should ensure continued participation in Project Phoenix, which has been set up to direct a multi-agency approach to child sexual exploitation in the region. The serious case review panel raised questions about the police response and made two further recommendations: that GMP should establish a system to monitor and review how it escalates safeguarding cases, and that it commits to maintaining a child sexual exploitation team and to working proactively with Rochdale council. Police also admitted that of 40 meetings to discuss child protection for one of the victims, there is no record of police attendance or involvement at any of them. The report argues that "this represents a serious weakness for the police" and that concerns about police attendance were raised in 2009. "As a result, the review has been left with an incomplete and unsatisfactory picture of the involvement of the police in the routine child protection processes," it concludes. Simon Danczuk, the local Labour MP, said police need to show better leadership. "Senior police officers keep talking about deploying more resources, but they're sending out untrained officers who cannot win the trust of victims. We need better leadership on this issue," he said. The serious case review was announced in September 2012, four months after the grooming gang was convicted. The men were jailed for between four and 19 years for the abuse of five girls, some as young as 13. It is believed there may be up to 50 victims in all. The trial resulted in a national debate over the role of gangs of largely Pakistani men in grooming white girls. The police and local authority in Rochdale came in for heavy criticism when details emerged of what had been happening. The men, aged between 24 and 59, plied victims, who hung around two takeaways in the area, with drink and drugs before the girls were "passed around" for sex. One girl, aged 15 at the time and who was repeatedly raped, said in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour that after she became pregnant, local social services told her parents she was a "prostitute" and that she had simply made a "lifestyle choice". The girl had also reported the abuse to a police officer – who simply yawned. One police whistleblower welcomed the report but commented that it had only scratched the surface of problems in the force. Margaret Oliver, a detective constable within GMP who worked on the Rochdale grooming cases but resigned last year over the way the police treated the victims, said the report went only part of the way to exposing the mistakes within the force. She said: "I have spoken to victims in the last week who still come face to face with their abusers in Rochdale because the police have failed to pursue them. "If GMP had done its job properly, they would not be walking the streets. It was my job to persuade some of these young girls to come to trust the police to being on their side. "But one of those who came forward – who was subjected to multiple rapes and was brave enough to identify her abusers in an ID parade – was added to the indictment as an offender as a tactical 'option' by the force," she said. Sir Peter Fahy, the chief constable for Greater Manchester, said: "I think we all know that [child sexual exploitation] is the most complex and challenging area of policing right now and we are near the very beginning of a long journey in our understanding of it. It is GMP's top priority, and the welfare of these victims should now be at the very forefront of everything we do. "The failings detailed in this report are unacceptable, and we should never lose sight of the fact that we have let down some innocent victims."

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/19/emiliano-martinez-shootouts-controversy-and-world-cup-success

Football

2022-12-19T17:10:52.000Z

Barry Glendenning

Emiliano Martínez: shootouts, controversy and World Cup success

Only Aurelién Tchouaméni knows for certain whether Emiliano Martínez got into his head. With France on the back foot after the Argentina goalkeeper had saved from Kingsley Coman, it was the 22-year-old midfielder’s turn in the shootout to determine the winners of the World Cup. Alone with his thoughts, Tchouaméni made the long walk from the centre-circle while Martínez stood in wait, ball in hand as he whipped the crowd behind the goal into a frenzy. Rather than hand the ball to Tchouaméni, he tossed it to one side, forcing the youngster into an unwanted detour as he reached the penalty spot. As if to say: “I’m calling the shots here but you have to take one.” Well, Emiliano Martinez's tactics worked!#BBCFootball #BBCWorldCup pic.twitter.com/stwAJ4aDyR — BBC Sport (@BBCSport) December 19, 2022 Tchouaméni’s spot-kick was poor, pulled wide to leave France needing snookers they would not get. In the spirit of the unfair play that had preceded it, Martínez riffed on his opponent’s obvious pain with a celebratory sashay across his six-yard box, rolling his shoulders in an exaggerated manner reminiscent of that famous Harry Enfield sketch in which truculent teenager Kevin’s best friend Perry returns from Manchester having morphed into a mini-Liam Gallagher. The World Cup finally won, the man they call “Dibu” would later provoke more controversy with his lewd celebration involving the aesthetically hideous Golden Glove award and his crotch, while standing alongside a Qatari dignitary who looked deeply disappointed. Martínez was clearly playing to the gallery for yuks but, as visual metaphors for this stained tournament went, one could argue it could scarcely have been more inappropriately appropriate. Quick Guide Qatar: beyond the football Show Argentina’s goalkeeper has no shortage of previous in the field of gamesmanship and it could be seen on Sunday even before he tried to mess with Tchouaméni’s mind. As first Kylian Mbappé then Coman placed the ball for their kicks, Martínez brazenly attempted to disrupt their preparations by insisting the referee, Szymon Marciniak, check each one was definitely on the spot. Last year, during his side’s semi-final shootout against Colombia at the Copa América, a tournament Argentina would go on to win, Martínez subjected each opposition penalty taker to a barrage of trash talk, the kind of taunting that almost certainly played a part in three Colombians missing. Emiliano Martínez holds the World Cup trophy alongside Geronimo Rulli outside the stadium. Photograph: Michael Regan/Fifa/Getty Images A couple of months later Martínez played a crucial role in helping Aston Villa to a rare victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford, repeatedly begging Cristiano Ronaldo to take a spot-kick the home side had been awarded in added tim e as the designated penalty taker, Bruno Fernandes, was forced to stand and wait. It was Fernandes, not Ronaldo, who sent the ball sailing high over the bar, prompting an inflammatory Martínez jig in front of the Stretford End. After Argentina’s shootout win over the Netherlands in the World Cup quarter-final, Martínez was at it again, celebrating wildly in front of his own fans after saving from Steven Berghuis and giving Louis van Gaal and the referee both barrels in a post-match interview that somehow did not earn him a semi-final ban. 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. For all Martínez’s gamesmanship, it has not gone unobserved that Tchouaméni could have been spared any potential torment if his own side’s goalkeeper and captain, Hugo Lloris, had retrieved the ball after each Argentina penalty and handed it to whichever of his teammates was next up. The World Cup, game by game: remarkable photos from Qatar 2022 Read more Although a subsequent attempt by Martínez to put off Randal Kolo Muani earned a booking, the yellow card was produced too late, long after the psychological damage had been done. Kolo Muani, despite scoring, would end up being the losing side’s final penalty taker. “I did my thing, what I dreamed of,” Martínez said of his shootout chicanery. “There could not have been a World Cup that I have dreamed of like this. I was calm during the penalties.” One man’s dream, another nation’s nightmare. It will be intriguing to see whether football’s lawmakers crack down on the kind of shenanigans for which the name “Martínez” has in recent years become a byword. Although his antics during these deciders may not be to everyone’s taste, it is worth remembering that we got to witness them on Sunday only because of his remarkable save from Kolo Muani in the final minute of extra time. While he is an undeniably massive shithouse, Argentina’s goalkeeper can certainly play.

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/20/chvrches-we-could-have-sold-200000-more-records-if-we-hid-the-boys-out-of-view

Music

2015-08-20T17:05:17.000Z

Rebecca Nicholson

Chvrches: ‘We could have sold 200,000 more records if we hid us boys out of view’

Lauren Mayberry’s hamster is dead. The Chvrches singer is grateful for the pictures she gets, from fans, of hamsters that look similar to the recently departed Gilbert, and for the messages asking how he is. She was pleased with the stuffed hamster dressed as a dragon that a fan brought her in Japan. But she doesn’t quite know how to break the big news. “People bring him up and I don’t want to be like, [whispers] ‘He’s dead.’ But he is now deceased. He had a good innings. He had a long, fruitful life.” Her bandmate Martin Doherty, known as Dok, adds his own tribute. “That fucker lived like a king. King Gilbert I.” The group’s third member, Iain Cook, nods gravely. The electro-pop trio are sitting on a hill in a Glasgow park known locally as “the beach”. Or “the jakey”, depending on who you ask. Doherty explains that it’s where local drinkers spend their afternoons. “Don’t be alarmed,” he says. “Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.” But it turns out what we’re getting into is a picture-postcard version of Scotland: there are no drinkers, just teenage bagpipers, all over the park, playing their own individual tunes. Not that people see Chvrches as a Scottish band, necessarily. “People bring it up in America, where a lot of people have Scottish roots,” Mayberry says. “But in the UK, not so much.” “I certainly felt like a Scottish band when we didn’t announce a Glasgow show the other day,” Doherty smiles. (They say there will be one soon.) Time in their hometown is increasingly rare for Chvrches. They’ve spent the past three years slowly and steadily building towards remarkable success. Their debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, which came out in 2013, is edging towards a million copies sold (“But if we bust a million, I’ve got to get a tattoo, so I don’t want to do that,” Doherty says). The irrepressible single The Mother We Share was everywhere in the UK and went gold in the US, where the band are touring relentlessly, packing out increasingly large venues. They are so big in Japan that fans bring them gifts of toy hamsters. They’re officially a massive pop band. But what’s more remarkable is that they have done it in a relatively old-fashioned way: by working hard, sticking to their guns and refusing to take compromising shortcuts. “We could have sold 200,000 more albums if we’d hidden Iain and I from view and put Lauren on the cover of every magazine. But there’s 100 of those acts and that stuff goes away,” Doherty says, firmly. “We ended up doing it in an indie band style. We broke through via word of mouth. It was about doing it in an honest, right way.” That way involved learning the power of saying “no”: to the photoshoots that wanted to push the men to the back, to co-writers, to outside producers, to the women’s magazines who wanted to interview Mayberry on her own. “We were making music that was slightly poppier than any of us had done previously,” she explains. “I didn’t want us to fit into a cookie-cutter mould of what that kind of band is meant to be like. I don’t want to be the front for somebody else’s creativity and sell that day in, day out.” But now, as they prepare to release their second album, Every Open Eye, they are relaxing the rules. Last month, Mayberry was interviewed by New York magazine alone, away from the two men. Their latest video, for Leave a Trace, is a glossy, expensive-looking beast, largely focusing on the singer, with Doherty and Cook looking, well, slightly blurry. “We wanted to establish [Chvrches] as a band first and foremost, and have that base,” Mayberry explains. “Then you can move on from that. We’ve done a couple of women’s mags but we tend to talk about feminism and women in the industry, which I feel more comfortable talking about. It’s a more valuable discussion than, ‘Oh, you’re a girl in a band, what hair conditioner do you use?’ I use hair conditioner, and I like talking about it. But I don’t want that to be the question.” Surprisingly, one of the catalysts for Mayberry’s determination to do it the right way is a bruising early adoration for a certain Canadian pop-punk. “When I was growing up, there were things that were sold to you in a certain way …” she begins. “Are we talking about Avril Lavigne?” Doherty asks, in a tone that suggests he has heard this before. “I was totally the target audience when that came out,” she continues. “The marketing campaign was: ‘She’s just like you. She writes the songs.’ To a teenage girl writing songs in her bedroom, that’s amazing. And then I woke up one day and realised it was all written by the Matrix [songwriting and production team]. Teenage me still loves that record [Let Go], but why did they sell it like that? I was pissed off that it was being sold as real.” It’s easy to imagine the teenage Mayberry being outraged by the Lavigne deception; she’s driven by an obvious fighting spirit. There can’t be many artists on the Billboard charts, for example, who founded a feminist collective called TYCI (it stands for Tuck Your Cunt In, and she still edits many of the pieces that run on its site and in its zine). In 2013, she wrote a piece for the Guardian, exasperated by the amount of sexually violent threats thrown her way on social media. “Why should I feel violated, uncomfortable and demeaned? Why should we all keep quiet?” it read. “It was weird to see how it spread,” she says now. “It was reposted on most music websites and news outlets. It was mad.” Did it make a difference to the level of abuse she received? “Erm ...” She pauses. “I guess we figured out how to switch off the DM function. The community self-polices a bit more. I operate a pretty strict muting and blocking policy on Twitter. If I get one that’s especially aggressive and I don’t feel emotionally equipped to deal with it, then I don’t get upset about it. I think: ‘What would Lauren from Chvrches do, as opposed to me?’ Then I think: ‘Cool, fuck you,’ block that person, carry on.” She likens this ruthless, efficient alter ego to a superhero. “My band persona is 25% tougher than I am. In that moment, I can step it up.” Depressingly, in the days after we talk, she proves the abuse is still coming when she tweets a link to a disgusting 4chan thread about their latest video. “Dear anyone who thinks misogyny isn’t real. It is and this is what it looks like.” The band took some much needed time out at the start of the year, recording their second album in the Glasgow studio they’ve always worked in, which used to be Cook’s, and now belongs to all of them. “Same shite studio, with slightly nicer paint and more synthesisers,” Doherty says. “It’s a nice studio now,” Cook protests. (They’ve sold a lot of records in the US, after all.) “I would describe it as decent now,” says Doc. “Before, it was kind of a shite studio. No offence!” They came up with Every Open Eye quickly; so quickly that it took them by surprise. “There’s always a danger of overthinking a second record but it wasn’t something we discussed either stylistically or thematically beforehand,” says Cook. “We wanted it to sound and to feel spontaneous. We wanted to go with our noses, the way we did on the very first day we started working together.” It sounds like a natural successor to their debut: still recognisably Chvrches, mixing sweet pop synths with deceptively barbed lyrics, but bigger in every way – it feels built to fill the increasingly sizeable venues the band have found themselves headlining. “I’m not bullshitting,” Doherty says, “we weren’t out to write those songs. You can’t come in and go, we absolutely need a We Found Love. We’ve tried that – not in a cynical way, just as an experiment.” He shrugs. It’s not for them. “Whenever anyone says let’s write a banger or let’s write a hit, you can absolutely guarantee that it’s the opposite of what you’re going to get.” But, I say, the album is full of bangers. “Accidental bangers!” says Mayberry. “That’s album No 3,” Cook laughs. This article was corrected on 20 August 2015. An earlier version referred to Chvrches’ album title Every Open Eye as Every Eye Open.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/28/the-men-of-1924-britains-first-labour-government-peter-clark-the-wild-men-david-torrance-review-remarkable-story-first-labour-government-ramsay-macdonald

Books

2024-01-28T07:00:02.000Z

Andrew Rawnsley

The Men of 1924 by Peter Clark; The Wild Men by David Torrance review – Labour’s first taste of power

One pearl-clutching countess shuddered that they would “cut the throats of every aristocrat and steal all their property”. The septuagenarian Tory MP for the City of London, Sir Frederick Banbury, declared that he would personally lead the Coldstream Guards to Westminister to protect the constitution. An apprehensive George V wrote in his diary: “Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama [Queen Victoria] died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!” Fear and fury trembled through the traditional ruling classes when Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour prime minister a hundred years ago this month. There was also much disdain. The former Liberal prime minister, Herbert Asquith, sniffily thought them “for the most part a beggarly array”. There was incredulity at this shock turn of events within the new cabinet, many of them men from humble backgrounds. MacDonald’s deputy, John Clynes, expressed feelings of awe when Labour ministers were sworn in as privy counsellors at Buckingham Palace. “Amid the gold and crimson of the Palace, I could not help marveling at the strange turn of fortune’s wheel, which had brought MacDonald, the starveling clerk, Thomas, the engine driver, Henderson, the foundry labourer, and Clynes, the mill hand, to this pinnacle.” Philip Snowden, the chancellor, wrote: “It had come at last! Few of us who had toiled through the years to achieve this object had expected to see it realised in our lifetime.” Euphoria was heavily tempered with trepidation. However awful the inheritance the Tories may bequeath to Keir Starmer, it won’t be as grisly as the situation that confronted Labour in 1924. Britain had not fully recuperated from the ravages of the first world war and there was scant fulfilment of David Lloyd George’s promise of “homes fit for heroes”. Unemployment stood at around 10%. Strikes in key industrial sectors were rife. The international climate was fraught. The vast majority of the press was owned by rightwing newspaper barons who were intensely hostile. Arthur Henderson, Ramsay MacDonald and James Henry Thomas in 1931. Photograph: Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Worse, Labour was a minority government in a hung parliament in which it was not even the largest party. The Conservatives, trading at this time as the Unionist party, had thrown away their majority at the December 1923 election thanks to Stanley Baldwin’s misconceived gambit to fight it on the issue of protection. They remained the largest contingent in the Commons, but lacked the moral authority or support from other parties to carry on in government. The Liberals, the third largest grouping, decided to acquiesce to a Labour government on the calculation that its fragile grasp on power meant that it could be removed at the pleasure of its opponents. “If a Labour government is ever to be tried in this country,” Asquith told his fellow Liberals, “it could hardly be tried under safer conditions.” With just 191 MPs, Labour had less than a third of the seats in the Commons. Many were anxious about finding themselves “in office, but not in power”. MacDonald had previously said that forming a government without a majority would be insanity. With the prospect of power dangled before him, he changed his mind on the grounds that Labour needed to prove its fitness to govern to pursue his strategic ambition to permanently supplant the Liberals as the principal rival to the Tories. This was the sharpest ever inflection point in the social complexion of Britain’s rulers. Peter Clark’s highly engaging and illuminating account is at its best when describing how vividly the new cabinet differed from all its predecessors. It was a stark rupture with previous Conservative and Liberal governments dominated by the landed aristocracy and the professional middle classes. MacDonald was the illegitimate son of a ploughman and a maidservant. A majority of his cabinet had left full-time education by the time they were 15. One was a foundling, three were of working-class Irish immigrant descent, five of them had started work by the time they were 12 years old, three of those in coal mines. A stunning contrast with the outgoing Baldwin cabinet, six of whom had been to one school, Eton, and a further five who had been to another, Harrow. The break with the past did not extend to including any women in the cabinet, but the junior minister Margaret Bondfield smashed a glass ceiling for her gender by becoming the first female minister in a British government. It was a stunning contrast with the outgoing Baldwin cabinet, six of whom had been to Eton Opponents who suspected them to be fellow travellers of the Bolsheviks who had seized power in Russia in 1917 were particularly wrong about MacDonald. The new prime minister had a weakness for the company of aristocrats, while he and the monarch developed a mutually admiring relationship. The king thought it would be dangerous to deny Labour a fair chance at governing, while MacDonald was animated by the idea that his party needed to look “respectable” to secure and sustain the support of middle-ground opinion. That put him at odds with the “Clydesiders” and other radical elements of his party. An early sign of that tension was arguments about the attire to be worn when members of the government were in the presence of the king. George V being a stickler about matters ceremonial, his new ministers were expected to wear court dress. For calling on the palace, the minimum requirement was a frock coat and a silk hat. The king’s secretary wrote to the Labour chief whip to say that the gear could be bought for £30 at Moss Bros, a lot of money to some of the Labour men. A socialist journal based in Glasgow published a photo of Labour ministers wearing top hats with the mocking caption: “Is this what you voted for?” Labour’s first taste of power has largely been neglected by historians, much more attention being paid to MacDonald’s second government formed in 1929 and his subsequent decision to go into a “national” coalition with the Conservatives, the act which has for ever cast him as enemy number one in Labour’s rogues gallery of traitors to the cause. The 1924 government receives the attention that its significance deserves with these two engrossing books. David Torrance’s lucid account tells a lot of the story through a series of well-crafted and elegantly written mini-biographies of the leading players, a good device for navigating a turbulent period of complex events and issues. MacDonald’s personal high point was the summer of 1924. Foreign secretary as well as prime minister, he scored a diplomatic success at the London conference to defuse tensions over German war reparations. Despite their lack of experience, most of the cabinet had performed well enough to earn the respect of their officials and political opponents. While there was no scientific method of measuring a government’s popularity in those days, it had delivered a well-received budget and seemed in good favour with much of the country. And then, quite suddenly, everything fell apart. Tory and Liberal rivals had grown intolerant of Labour government and seized on opportunities to exploit the “red bogey” to bring it to an end. A loan to the USSR, in part designed to induce Russia to pay compensation to the owners of British assets seized after the revolution, was fiercely attacked. The ultimate blow was the “Campbell Case”. Having embarked on a foolish prosecution for sedition of a communist journalist with a fine war record, the government then messily abandoned it. Crying scandal, the Tories and Liberals combined to turn them out after just nine months in power. At the resulting election, the “red scare” was further amplified by the fraudulent Zinoviev letter, published and sensationalised by the Daily Mail, purportedly from a Soviet leader urging a Bolshevik-style revolution in Britain. The Conservatives returned to power with a colossal majority. ‘Exploiting the red bogey’: a 1924 poster depicting MacDonald. Illustration: Harry Woolley/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images Had it all been a waste of time? The disgruntled Scottish leftwinger James Maxton complained that “every day they were in [office] led us further from socialism”. The habitually snarky Beatrice Webb damned MacDonald for pursuing nothing more than “reformist conservatism”. Those historians who have previously troubled to examine this period have concluded that the achievements of the 1924 government were as slight as its time in office was brief. Torrance makes a persuasive case that this is much too harsh. Full-fat socialism, such as a wealth tax and nationalisation of the mines and railways, had to be abandoned for the lack of a parliamentary majority. The “wild men” of 1924 did succeed in making Britain a bit more civilised by improving the previously dire wages of farm workers and pointing the way to better schooling for the children of the less affluent. Its most enduring legacy was John Wheatley’s ambitious programme to help working-class families escape the misery of the slums by building homes for rent. This was continued by subsequent governments and established a cross-party consensus that the state had a duty to provide public housing, which lasted for half a century. The Labour vote increased by more than a million at the 1924 election. The Conservatives got back in because their vote rose by double that. The standout feature of the election was the collapse in support for the Liberals. Whatever else may be said about him, MacDonald fulfilled the strategic goal of turning Labour into the alternative party of government to the Tories, though they’d have to wait more than 20 years for the Attlee government to have the power to radically reform Britain. The 1924 government was important not just for what it achieved, but even more so as a signpost to the future. Andrew Rawnsley is the Chief Political Commentator of the Observer The Men of 1924: Britain’s First Labour Government by Peter Clark is published by Haus (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain’s First Labour Government by David Torrance is published by Bloomsbury (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/19/im-not-just-faster-but-taller-how-i-learned-to-walk-properly-and-changed-my-pace-posture-and-perspective

Life and style

2023-06-19T09:00:08.000Z

Tim Dowling

‘I’m not just faster, but taller’: how I learned to walk properly – and changed my pace, posture and perspective

In all the time I spent with Joanna Hall, she barely stopped walking. I would see her coming towards me in Kensington Gardens, London, gliding past the other strollers as if she alone were on a moving walkway. When she reached me, I would fall into step and off we would walk, for an hour. At the end, Hall would stride into the distance and keep walking, for all I knew, until we met the following week. Hall’s WalkActive system, a comprehensive fitness programme based around walking, aims to improve posture, increase speed, reduce stress on joints and deliver fitness, turning a stroll into a workout and changing the way you walk for ever. She says she can teach it to me, and we have set aside four weeks for my education. It is easy to be sceptical when someone claims you can reap huge health benefits simply by learning to walk better. You think: I’m already good at walking. And sometimes, I walk a long way. But according to Hall, a fitness expert who enjoyed a three-year stint on ITV’s This Morning, almost nobody is good at walking: not you, not me and not all the other people in the park, who provide endless lessons in poor technique. I notice they are still managing to get where they are going. Are we not in danger of overthinking something people do without thinking? Hall tells me: “If you ask someone, ‘When you go for a walk, do you enjoy it?’, they will say, ‘Yes’, but if you ask, ‘Do you ever experience discomfort in your lower back?’, quite a few people will say, ‘Yeah, I do get discomfort in my back, or I feel it when I get out of bed, or I’m tight in my achilles or stiff in my shoulder.’ And those are all indicators that an individual is walking sub-optimally.” ‘I thought I was already good at walking … Dowling with Hall. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian What are we doing wrong? Most of us, she says, tend to walk by stepping into the space in front of us. “I want you to think about walking out of the space behind you.” If that sounds a bit abstract to you – as it did to me, at first – think about it this way: good walking is an act of propulsion, of pushing yourself forward off your back foot. Bad walking – my kind of walking – is overly dependent on traction: pulling yourself along with your front foot. This shortens your stride, relies too much on your hip flexors and puts unnecessary stress on your knees. The struggle to get me to absorb this basic concept takes up most of our first hour together. My opening question about optimal walking was: “Will I look mad?” I imagined great loping strides and pumping arms. “I promise you, you won’t look mad,” Hall said. But when you stroll haltingly through a public park while someone instructs you on heel placement, you do attract a certain amount of attention. People think: poor man, he’s having to learn to walk all over again. They are not wrong. It takes a tremendous amount of concentration to do something so basic, and so ingrained, in a different way. It begins with the feet: I am trying to maintain a flexible, open ankle, to leave my back foot on the ground for longer, and to peel it away, heel first, as if it were stuck in place with Velcro. “Feel the peel,” says Hall. “Feel. The. Peel.” Second come the hips: I need to increase the distance between my pelvis and my ribs, standing tall and creating more flexibility through my torso. Then my neck: there needs to be more distance between my collarbone and my earlobes. I need to think about maintaining all of these things at the same time. Hall acknowledges that, for beginners, there will be what she calls “Buckaroo! moments” – named after the children’s game featuring a put-upon, spring-loaded mule – when too much information causes a system overload. This happens to me when, while I’m busy monitoring my feet, my stride, my hips and my neck, Hall suggests that the pendular arc of my arms could do with a bit more backswing. “What?” I ask. My rhythm collapses. My shoulders slump. My ribs sink. My right heel scuffs the pavement. I can feel, for the first time, just how not good my normal walking is. How did I get like this? Hominids have been walking on two legs for more than 4m years. It is more energy efficient than walking on all fours, and it keeps your hands free for other tasks, but this advance came with its own problems. Studies suggest that some common human back problems may stem from spinal characteristics inherited from our knuckle-walking ancestors. Your walk can also be affected by the way you sit, especially when you sit a lot: favouring one hip over another at your desk, or in your car. “Small things we’re doing consistently create that default neuromuscular pattern, which is just a little bit out of sync,” says Hall. “And it may not translate into anything, but over a period of time it can manifest itself as discomfort.” Also, she tells me, my shoes are wrong. Sign up to Well Actually Free weekly newsletter Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life 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’m not just faster, but taller, and my arms swing with a natural, easy rhythm’ … Dowling with Hall. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Between our meetings, I work my way through Hall’s WalkActive app, a mix of instructional videos, audio coaching sessions and timed walks set to music of varying speeds. At this stage, I’m still perfecting my technique. “Imagine that maybe you have a Post-it note on the sole of your foot,” Hall says in my headphones as I turn the corner at the end of my road. “And you want to show the message on the Post-it note to the person behind you.” Feel the peel, I think. Read my heel. Hall conceived the WalkActive system more than a decade ago, during the double whammy of pregnancy and appendicitis. “As soon as I was pregnant, even prior to having the appendicitis challenge, I never felt I wanted to do high-impact activity,” she says. “So walking was a natural thing for me to focus on.” She later applied the techniques to her clients, but the regime she developed was originally for herself. She says: “It came from a personal space of wanting to rehab myself, to try to walk myself through rehab and walk myself through a fit pregnancy.” Hall’s programme may be low-impact, but it is not low energy. By the end of our second session together, I am exhausted, because of the concentration required and the distance we have covered. A study that Hall commissioned showed that participants who completed a month of WalkActive training increased their walking speed by 24%. This alone amounts to a pretty big lifestyle adjustment – and you suddenly find that everyone is in your way. I’m not just faster, but taller, and my arms swing with a natural, easy rhythm, exuding a confidence wholly at odds with the rest of my personality. It feels, frankly, amazing. One Friday morning, just before 7am, I join Hall’s twice-weekly WhatsApp group, along with several dozen other people also dialling in from around the country. I can hear birdsong in my earbuds as I walk out through my front door, while Hall guides us all through 30 minutes of brisk, optimal walking in real time. “Leave that back foot on the floor,” she says, “so it’s a really sticky foot. Feel the peel.” I can feel it, I think, although I’m actually stuck at a level crossing. By our fourth and final meeting I have the right shoes, as recommended by Hall. They are ugly, but they have a flexible sole and enough width to allow the toes to spread when the foot is on the ground. Today, we are concentrating not on speed but on varying our pace, slowing it down and shortening the stride, without compromising technique. This is because, during our third meeting, I mentioned that on ordinary walks I found myself outpacing the people I was with. “I like to say the technique has a dimmer switch,” Hall tells me as we glide past the Albert Memorial. “You can turn it up or down, but it’s always on.” She has mistaken my boast for a complaint. I didn’t mean that I feel bad for leaving my friends behind. I meant that I am done with those people. Perhaps the most significant claim Hall makes is that, in terms of fitness, walking can be enough. It can complement other forms of exercise, such as yoga and pilates, but if you don’t do anything else, improving your walk can still confer major health benefits. “I’m not anti-running, I’m not anti-gyms, I think they all have a role to play,” she says. “But I also think, sometimes, if we just think about the simplest thing that we could all do, and just get people to do it better, even if someone doesn’t necessarily feel as if they want to walk for longer, even if they just looked at changing their walking technique and applied it to their commute, that can be powerful.” This is the real question: whether, after four weeks of training and new £70 shoes, I will continue to walk like this for ever. But after I leave Hall in the park, I cross the street with my head high, feeling the peel with every step, all the way to my train, in case she is behind me, watching.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/katine/2009/jul/01/amref-six-month-review-highlights

Katine

2009-07-01T08:57:07.000Z

Madeleine Bunting

At a glance: Amref six-month report

SuccessesHealth: immunisation of under-fives has increased from 43% to 89.3% diarrhoea cases fallen from 38% at the start of the project to 6% for children below five years number of women attending antenatal clinics has increased from 36% to 92%; women choosing to give birth at the health centre up from 33% to 53%. No still births were reported a new laboratory at Ojom health centre has been renovated with new equipment and supplies to diagnose malaria, TB, HIV: 790 patients used the Ojom lab for tests in the first six weeks of operation (mainly for malaria and HIV) Education: 2,000 more children attending school desk ratio improved from 1:10 to 1:3 1,161 new textbooks to nine schools 10 classrooms were renovated in three schools Water and sanitation: hygiene and sanitation cover in schools has improved from 25% to 75% 43% of households now have a decent latrine Livelihoods: farmers' groups organised to harvest and market cassava Seven para-vets trained in community based animal health services Governance: 100 community members trained in IT skills training for parish development committees Key challenges shortage of Coartem to treat malaria annual teacher transfers so that staff who have been trained move huge demand for more water resources, but current funding is exhausted project has to deal with very high community and government expectations ratios of children to classrooms is still very high, typically more than 100 children in each class.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/14/pope-francis-ukraine-war-provoked-russian-troops

World news

2022-06-14T11:20:02.000Z

Angela Giuffrida

Pope Francis says Ukraine war was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’

Pope Francis has said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps somehow provoked” as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned Nato was “barking at the gates of Russia”. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, conducted last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff condemned the “ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops” while warning against what he said was a fairytale perception of the conflict as good versus evil. “We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one,” he said. “Something global is emerging and the elements are very much entwined.” Francis added that a couple of months before the war he met a head of state, who he did not identify but described as “a wise man who speaks little, a very wise man indeed … He told me that he was very worried about how Nato was moving. I asked him why, and he replied: ‘They are barking at the gates of Russia. They don’t understand that the Russians are imperial and can’t have any foreign power getting close to them.’” He added: “We do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was, perhaps, somehow either provoked or not prevented.” Shortly before the invasion, Vladimir Putin had demanded Nato rule out allowing Ukraine, which borders Russia, into the military alliance. The pope said he was not “pro-Putin” and that it would be “simplistic and wrong to say such a thing”. He also said Russia had “miscalculated” the war. “It is also true that the Russians thought it would all be over in a week. They encountered a brave people, a people who are struggling to survive and who have a history of struggle.” On Tuesday morning, the pontiff published a message saying the invasion of Ukraine was a violation of a country’s right to self-determination. “The war in Ukraine has now been added to the regional wars that for years have taken a heavy toll of death and destruction,” he said in a message for the Roman Catholic church’s World Day of the Poor, which will be marked in November. “Yet here the situation is even more complex due to the direct intervention of a ‘superpower’ aimed at imposing its own will in violation of the principle of the self-determination of peoples.” Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BST Meanwhile, he told La Civiltà Cattolica that he hoped to meet the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Kirill, a close ally of Putin who supports the war in Ukraine, at an interreligious event in Kazakhstan in September. Kirill scolded Francis after the pontiff urged him not to become the Kremlin’s “altar boy” in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Kirill accused the pope of choosing an “incorrect tone” to convey his message, adding that such remarks would damage dialogue between the two churches. The pair had been due to meet in Jerusalem in June but the trip was cancelled due to the war.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/oct/09/quick-and-easy-rukmini-iyer-five-kitchen-rules

Food

2023-10-09T11:59:09.000Z

Rukmini Iyer

Quick and easy: Rukmini Iyer’s five kitchen rules for hassle-free midweek cooking | Quick and easy

Aminimum fuss, maximum flavour dinner is the post-work holy grail, and in my new column you’ll find everything from quick-cook, quick carb dinners (less than 15 minutes, with your sauce or stir-fry cooked in the time it takes to boil pasta, noodles or rice, say) to easy dinners in half an hour (think no-fuss roasting-tin dishes or stovetop one-pots). You can also expect budget-friendly, cook once, eat twice dishes for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunchboxes. To get you started, here are my top five rules for hassle-free midweek cooking. 1 Audit your fridge (and freezer) Quick flavour fixes include jars of harissa, fresh or jarred tubs of pesto, miso, tamarind paste, artichokes, olives and capers. If you store open packets of nuts in airtight containers in the fridge (or just seal the packet with a rubber band before stashing in the fridge door), it will improve their shelf life no end. Frozen sweetcorn and spinach are a welcome and budget-friendly addition to frozen peas, and I’ll often make more (wholewheat) pasta than needed when cooking for my daughter, then bag, label and freeze individual portions for future emergency toddler meals (I do the same with leftover plain cooked rice for me). Lemons and limes look lovely in a bowl on the counter, but I keep them in the fridge, where they seem to have an almost infinite shelf life. (Unlike spring onions, which are a marvellous standby, but tend to look tragic within mere minutes. I peel off the wilted bits and use them anyway.) Citrus is, of course, an instant flavour enhancer – if your pasta sauce needs something a little extra other than salt, it’s almost always improved by a judicious squeeze of lemon; lime juice will do the same for a noodle dish (see rule five below). 2 Stock your store-cupboard Straight-to-wok noodles? Check. Several types of pasta? Check. White rice, brown rice, lentils, tinned tomatoes, tinned beans, coconut milk, a rainbow of spices, nuts, dried fruit, oils, vinegars, soy sauce and fish sauce will give you enough to make a complete meal even without nipping to the supermarket for fresh produce. And if you buy in bulk, it’s a cost-effective backbone for your everyday meals – I use 5kg or 10kg bags of brown basmati or white rice, while my mum never buys less than a 20kg bag of basmati. Photograph: Marko Jan/Getty Images/iStockphoto Think in terms of flavour families. If you have room and budget, keep olive oil, extra-virgin olive oil, wine or apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar for Mediterranean dishes; and toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce and fish sauce for south-east Asian-inspired dishes, which will mean you have everything to hand for an almost infinite variety of recipes. But a neutral olive oil will do you for most dishes in a pinch; I use it in curries, too, rather than buying yet another bottle of oil. Ambient fresh things to keep on the side in a bowl include ginger and garlic, so you can easily see when you’re running out of either (a nightmare), and you’ll never regret having potatoes, sweet potatoes, and red and brown onions in cloth bags or bowls in a cool, dark cupboard. You can use flaky sea salt to finish off dishes and fine sea salt for cooking, but I tend just to buy giant tubs of Maldon and use it for everything (except salting the front path in winter, which would be excessive and which I have certainly never, ever done in an emergency). 3 Give your windowsill a makeover It’s frankly a pain buying a whole packet of tarragon for one recipe, then watching it wilt in the salad crisper because you needed only two stems. Are three stems ever necessary? They are not, so strip the leaves (this applies to thyme and rosemary, too) and freeze in mini bags for future use, or, even better, grow your own. Living herb pots from the supermarket will thrive if you immediately repot them in larger containers. The root balls are too tightly packed for them to survive much longer than a week without repotting, but, with plenty of fresh soil and a sunny windowsill or spot by the back door, they’ll thrive; they look cheery, too. Photograph: SilviaJansen/Getty Images Herbs that I have successfully repotted include basil, rosemary, sage, the aforementioned tarragon and flat-leaf parsley, though if you have a bit of outdoor space and can sow flat-leaf parsley from seed in the ground, rather than in a pot, it will shoot up into the most extraordinary, vigorous parsley carpet. (I like Gigante di Napoli from Real Seeds.) Mint will take over your garden like an army of diminutive if aromatic triffids, so always keep it contained in pots. The slugs inexplicably ate all my lemon thyme (why?!), and I have never successfully repotted living coriander or got it going from seed; please do let me know if you have had any success, and send tips. Finally, take frequent harvests from the top parts of your herbs – this will encourage them to grow back bushily and not go leggy. (Why, yes, now you ask, I do have a monthly column in Gardener’s World Magazine, albeit on small-space harvests for absolute novices, which I am.) 4 Make a meal plan What’s the best way to ensure you don’t end up with two aubergines, three courgettes, six types of cheese and a grapefruit in the fridge, and no idea what to make on a Wednesday night? Make a meal plan. When we first started living alone, both my sister and I made the mistake of buying enough vegetables for a large family, then wondering why everything went off. We were inadvertently replicating my mother’s shopping trolley from memory, but she was feeding four and has a mental Rolodex of meal plans (which I haven’t inherited). Make a list of all the things you feel like eating that week (on nice stationery, if it helps), take stock of your store-cupboard top-ups and fresh ingredients, then go forth and shop. Try not to be seduced by off-plan novelty ingredients. Some meal plans are fairly prescriptive, but the beauty of having four or so days of ingredients in the house with specific recipes in mind is that if you don’t fancy kimchi fried rice on Tuesday night, you can sub Wednesday’s crisp gnocchi, because you already have everything to hand. And there’s far less food waste, which is always a good thing. (If you do end up with random leftover fresh vegetables, you could do worse than roast them with olive oil, garlic and herbs and run them through pasta.) 5 Taste it! The number-one rule, not just for successful midweek cooking but for all cooking, is to taste your dish, season it, then taste again before serving. Use sea salt flakes and lemon juice, soy sauce, lime juice or rice vinegar where appropriate, so the dish tastes just right to you. Pasta or noodles may need an extra splash of cooking water, boiling water or a little oil to make the sauce silky, in which case you’ll need to check the seasoning again. It’s too late by the time the plate is on the table (she says bossily), and I promise that tasting and adjusting it before you serve will lift your food from ordinary to extraordinary. Rukmini Iyer is the bestselling author of the Roasting Tin series.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/23/eat-the-buddha-by-barbara-demick-review-voices-from-a-forbidden-culture

Books

2020-08-23T06:00:49.000Z

Tania Branigan

Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick review – voices from a forbidden culture

Reincarnation of all living Buddhas “must comply with Chinese laws”, Beijing reminded Tibetans last spring. At stake, of course, is the identity of the next Dalai Lama. Inconveniently for China, which sees the Tibetan spiritual leader as “a jackal in monk’s robes” and would prefer someone more pliant, he insists he will be reborn in exile. The determination of the avowedly atheist Communist party to assert its primacy in the spiritual realm, as much as every other, illustrates a collision with Tibetan life that can be glimpsed through such incongruous official announcements but is rarely fully witnessed. Eat the Buddha is a powerful exception: a deeply textured, densely reported and compelling exploration of Ngaba, Sichuan, a “nothing little town that had just gotten its first traffic light” but that became, horrifyingly, “the undisputed world capital of self-immolations”. More than 150 Tibetans, and at least 42 in Ngaba, have set fire to themselves in just over a decade. While the eastern side of the Tibetan plateau can be visited somewhat more easily than the Tibet region (for which foreigners need special travel permission, not often granted to journalists), the cases led to intense security around Ngaba. At their height, communications to the town were almost severed and reporters hid in the boots of cars to document paramilitaries armed with semi-automatic weapons and fire extinguishers. It takes a certain kind of reporter to embark on an in-depth account of such a place, and Barbara Demick has form. Her last book, Nothing to Envy, was an extraordinarily intimate, detailed and moving account of life in North Korea. Here, surreptitious trips to Ngaba supplement the same technique of interviewing exiles. A teenage girl with a soft spot for handsome soldiers begins to feel 'like a double agent' As in Nothing to Envy – and her first book Logavina Street, on the siege of Sarajevo – she captures crushing historical events through the stories of individuals: the novice who thrives on the monastery’s intellectual debates but is also thrilled to find it “an oversized playground” where he can slide down a heap of dirt; the teenage girl with a soft spot for handsome soldiers who begins to feel “like a double agent”; the young man who relishes his job entertaining Chinese tourists with songs and dances but becomes disenchanted and turns to activism. Beijing says life in Tibet was “hell on earth” before it became part of the People’s Republic of China in 1951. But if Tibetans in some places welcomed reforms and social changes, for vast numbers the encounter was devastating. The traumatic history of modern China has proved especially punitive for those who are not ethnically Chinese. Demick brilliantly unpicks the connections between the self-immolations and Tibetans’ past. Ngaba is where Chinese communists were first encountered in 1934, as they fled nationalist foes in the retreat now commemorated as the Long March. The soldiers’ desperation led them to eat votive offerings moulded from butter (hence the book’s title) and drove residents too into famine conditions, prompting Tibetans into battle. Many of the self-immolators are descendants of those fighters. Having absorbed the Dalai Lama’s teachings on non-violence, they hurt only themselves – despite the taboo on suicide. The grim early encounters chillingly prefigured the disasters to come, including the Democratic Reforms of the 1950s: forced collectivisations and brutal political campaigns that saw perhaps 300,000 people die. The recent turn towards increasing repression, intensified under Xi Jinping’s leadership, has been expressed most ruthlessly in minorities policy. Demick notes that, while the first of the self-immolations in Ngaba happened in 2009, they gathered pace in 2011, shortly after the Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself and triggered the Arab spring, one likely factor in China’s political tightening. While the Uighurs have suffered most shockingly, Tibetans, too, have seen the greater degree of freedom allowed in the 1980s and early 90s swiftly curtailed. The richness of this book lies in its nuance as much as its extraordinary detail. Ngaba’s residents are ambivalent towards the self-immolators: “I feel like there has to be a better way to express oneself,” the brother of one says. Many of those Demick interviews appreciate the material benefits the party has bought. But Han Chinese newcomers are doing better; inequalities rankle. And economics alone cannot compensate for the loss of culture and community, and the indignities of being treated as second class and suspect. A wealthy entrepreneur unable to obtain a passport tells her: “I have everything I might possibly want in life but my freedom.” The scholar Robert Barnett, in his introduction to Tsering Woeser’s recent book Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution, notes that 30 years ago “protests called for independence, or China to leave Tibet; today such protests typically ask that the Dalai Lama be allowed to return and call for culturally sympathetic policies, support for Tibetan-medium education in schools, and environmental protection”. The Dalai Lama himself insists that he seeks only real autonomy for the Tibetan people, though China calls him a “splittist”. As Demick notes, China’s vilification of the Dalai Lama perversely reinforces his importance. But he is already 85. And although he has handed political leadership to the Tibetan government-in-exile, he has yet to formalise arrangements for identifying his next incarnation. As bizarre as the party’s insistence on policing the matter may appear to outsiders, she writes, the consequences could be deadly. It now seems almost certain that Tibetan exiles will select one Dalai Lama and Beijing another – as happened with the Panchen Lama in 1995. The six-year-old recognised by the Dalai Lama has not been seen in public since. The Tibetans’ next spiritual leader, she suggests, might not be as persuasive in conveying the message of non-violence. Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick is published by Granta (£18.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/mar/27/taylor-hawkins-drugs-found-in-body-of-foo-fighters-drummer

Music

2022-03-27T15:07:44.000Z

Tom Phillips

Taylor Hawkins: drugs found in body of Foo Fighters drummer

The Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins had at least 10 substances in his body when he died suddenly in Bogotá, according to a preliminary toxicology test carried out by Colombian authorities. The 50-year-old musician was found dead in his hotel room on Friday afternoon, hours before the band was due to perform at Colombia’s Estéreo Picnic festival as part of its South American tour. The Grammy award-winning group had then been due to headline one of Brazil’s biggest music festivals on Sunday night. On Saturday, Colombia’s attorney general’s office said analysis of Hawkins’ urine found traces of marijuana, opioids, tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines, which can be used to treat insomnia or anxiety. The Colombian magazine Semana claimed Hawkins died after a sudden cardiac arrest caused by an overdose of heroin, antidepressants and benzodiazepines. The magazine said forensic medical experts had been shocked by how swollen the musician’s heart had become. Taylor Hawkins: a joyous presence whose true allegiance was always to Foo Fighters Read more Hawkins’ death sparked an outpouring of grief in Bogotá, where the news was broken to tearful festivalgoers by the Black Pumas singer Eric Burton, who asked the audience to observe a moment of silence. Fans gathered outside the Four Seasons hotel, where the musician died, to light candles, leave flowers and sing some of the band’s songs. There was applause as Hawkins’ body was removed from the building by police. Some of the world’s most famous musicians paid tribute to the drummer, who decided to pick up the sticks after his mother took him to see a Queen rock concert in 1982. Hawkins played with Alanis Morissette for two years before joining the Foo Fighters in 1997. “No. It cannot be,” the Queen guitarist Brian May wrote on Instagram. “Heartbroken. Taylor, you were family to us. Our friend, our brother, our beloved child. Bless you. We will miss you so bad.” “So incredibly sad to hear of the passing of Taylor Hawkins,” tweeted Mick Jagger. “My thoughts are with his family and the band at this time.” Ozzy Osbourne called Hawkins – who is survived by his wife, Alison, and three children – “a truly a great person and an amazing musician”. “My heart, my love and my condolences go out to his wife, his children, his family, his band and his fans. See you on the other side,” Osbourne said. In a statement, the Foo Fighters said they were devastated “by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins. His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live with us forever. Our hearts go out to his wife, children, and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.” 1:26 Taylor Hawkins: Foo Fighters drummer dies at 50 – video The band’s singer, Dave Grohl, the former Nirvana drummer, has spoken frequently of his close relationship with a musician he once called “the love of my life”. “Upon first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we played together,” Grohl, who lost his friend and Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain in 1994, wrote in his 2021 memoirs. “I am not afraid to say that our chance meeting was a kind of love at first sight … Together, we have become an unstoppable duo, onstage and off, in pursuit of any and all adventure we can find.” Top South American artists also mourned the premature death of Hawkins, who was born in Texas in 1972 and raised in California. In Brazil, where the Foo Fighters had been scheduled to headline the last night of the Lollapalooza festival on Sunday, the rapper Emicida used his performance at the same event to lament the passing of “our brother”. “Our hearts are broken because all of us looked up to the Foo Fighters in some way,” Emicida told fans, announcing a special tribute to “one of the greatest drummers of all time” on Sunday night featuring artists including fellow rapper Criolo and the band Planet Hemp. The singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus broke down on stage as she remembered her friend. “We lost a legend in rock music … and I just want to send my most peaceful wishes to the Foo Fighters family and the Hawkins family,” she told Lollapalooza. There were also onstage tributes in the UK, where the former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher dedicated one of the group’s biggest hits to Hawkins. “You and I are gonna live forever, Gonna live forever,” Gallagher sang on Saturday night as the drummer’s image was projected on to a screen behind him. “I dedicate this last song to the one and only Taylor fucking Hawkins who has sadly passed away,” Gallagher told the audience at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said: “God bless Taylor peace and love to all his family and the band peace and love.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/oct/07/doctor-who-review-great-jodie-whittaker-debuts-in-new-series-with-hearts-and-soul

Television & radio

2018-10-07T18:43:17.000Z

Lucy Mangan

Doctor Who review: great Jodie Whittaker debuts in new series with heart(s) and soul

If you’re reading this, the world did not end. No galaxies collapsed. No universes imploded. All is as it was – and, possibly, even a little better. Which is to say that, on Sunday night on BBC One, the 13th Doctor – and first female in the role – made her full-episode debut and everyone survived. Peter Capaldi had reincarnated as Jodie Whittaker – arguably best known for her role as the grieving mother Beth Latimer in Broadchurch, new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall’s ratings-smashing ITV drama – in last year’s Christmas special amid a welter of controversy. How, argued some, mostly on red pill Reddit and other ragey parts of social media, could you have a Time Lord sans penis? Others replied spiritedly that you can have a Time Lord with an extra heart, the gift of immortality and the ability to break every law of physics under this or any other sun. You just suspend your disbelief and … make it so. But – to quote from a recent comment from what we will call the Enraged Community that I came across – it would turn Doctor Who into “joyless, resentful, bitter, intersectionalist, feminist/LGBT propaganda!” “No,” replied the unenraged cheerily, “it won’t! At most, it’ll redress the representational balance in the cultural universe an infinitesimal fraction, but there’ll be no real disturbance in the force” – before realising that their references had strayed into the wrong sci-fiverse and beating a hasty retreat. TV history was made when Whittaker became the first woman to play the title role since Doctor Who began 55 years ago. Photograph: Sophie Mutevelian/PA There were also pockets of quiet sadness at what amounts for long-time fans to a breaking of some kind of link with childhood. There was also some grief among those for whom the Doctor was the only pacifist, brains-over-brawn role model they had to show their sons. But overall there was jubilation or at least recognition that the time had surely come. Plus, as the Doctor says in the first episode as one of her new team struggles to process the spooky happenings: “All of this is new to you and new can be scary. Don’t be scared. I understand.” Can the Jodie Whittaker era secure the future of Doctor Who? Read more Whittaker was great and will surely become even more so as the series goes on. At the moment she is a (deliberately calculated, I mean, not accidentally imitative) mixture of Capaldi and something new, as the doctor has not yet fully completed regeneration when the latest dastardly alien plot unfolds. She arrives on Earth without (ahem) a sonic screwdriver, but this lack of vital appendage is – and let this be the show’s wordless lesson to Redditors all – rectified by the end of the first half of this two-parter. Strict warnings about story spoilers have been issued – and who would want to ruin it anyway? – so let’s just say it involves a missing girl, an interplanetary hunt, daffodil-bulb-shaped travelling pods, a ball of writhing tentacles, glowing collarbones and a daring rescue, all set in Sheffield and all bound together by a sense of shared love, fun and joy. And it’s this, not the Doctor’s chromosomal arrangement, that is actually the most crucial difference between this series and its immediate predecessors. By the end of the last series – after eight years under Steven Moffat’s aegis – the show had become so narratively bloated and intricately self-involved that any newcomers were in effect shut out. Viewing figures more or less halved from re-inventor Russell T Davies’ showrunning peak. Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who. Photograph: Ben Blackall/PA Last night’s opener from Chibnall was different. It had a webby but comprehensible plot, working on a human scale and with recognisable emotions conducted at a reasonable volume (I know I’m 108 years old, but why have all recent doctors – save the extraordinary and underexploited Matt Smith – been so SHOUTY?) and it was accessible to all. The new Doctor and her team – 19-year-old Ryan, his old schoolmate turned police probationer Yasmin, and Ryan’s step-grandfather Graham (Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh respectively) – have heart and soul, and are set against a comforting background of South Yorkshire women – especially Ryan’s nan – talking common sense as alien life and electrical pulses erupt around them. Think of it as Happy Uncanny Valley. I hope intersectionalist feminist propaganda is always this much fun.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/18/guardian-film-awards-shortlist-news

Film

2014-02-18T23:59:00.000Z

Catherine Shoard

12 Years a Slave joins Gravity, The Great Beauty … and Alan Partridge on the Guardian Film Awards shortlist

Its Oscar prospects may be looking shakier following Gravity's triumphant haul at Sunday's Baftas, but 12 Years a Slave does dominate the shortlist for the Guardian Film Awards. Steve McQueen's slavery drama has converted every one of its longlist mentions into a place among the final five in each category, meaning it's in the running for best film, best director, best scene, best line of dialogue and biggest game-changer. It also scores two nominations in the best supporting actor group - for Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o. The Guardian Film Awards, currently in their inaugural year, differ from traditional awards ceremonies both in criteria and eligibility. The best director and best film categories are open to fact, fiction and foreign language, while the best actor and best supporting actor categories follow Guardian style in referring to both genders by the term, and so are open to men and women. This year, Cate Blanchett and Adèle Exarchopoulos join Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bruce Dern in the race for best actor, while documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer is up for best director alongside Steve McQueen, Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne and Paolo Sorrentino. A Field In England, up for biggest gamechanger Oppenheimer's film, The Act of Killing, is also in contention for best film and biggest game-changer - a category which seeks to celebrate innovation in cinema, whether it be technical, creative or financial. It's up against Gravity, Spike Jonze's Her, 12 Years a Slave, The Act of Killing, and Ben Wheatley's A Field in England. The shortlist was entirely voted for by Guardian readers who chose their favourites from a longlist of 10. The top reader vote also becomes the casting vote in the final round, joining judges including the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger and Peter Bradshaw, the documentary maker Adam Curtis and host of the BBC's Film 2014, Claudia Winkleman. The shortlist in full Best film 12 Years a Slave Gravity The Great Beauty The Act of Killing Blue is the Warmest Colour Best actor Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine Bruce Dern, Nebraska Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Colour Best supporting actor Matt Damon, Behind the Candelabra Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave Jared Leto, The Dallas Buyers Club Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave June Squibb, Nebraska Best director Spike Jonze, Her Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty Alexander Payne, Nebraska Best scene Alan Partridge lip-synching to Roachford in the car in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa The opening scene of Gravity The first party in The Great Beauty Patsy returning with the soap in 12 Years a Slave The struggle back to the car while overdosing in The Wolf of Wall Street Best line of dialogue She was the Picasso of passive-aggressive karate. Irving (Christian Bale) in American Hustle Something to eat and some rest; your children will soon enough be forgotten. Mistress Ford (Liza J Bennett) in 12 Years a Slave Anxiety, nightmares and a nervous breakdown, there's only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming. Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) in Blue Jasmine I think if Jesus was here now he'd tip you out of that fucking wheelchair and you wouldn't get up and walk. Martin (Steve Coogan) in Philomena What a story; everything but a fire in the orphanage. Liberace (Michael Douglas) in Behind the Candelabra Best film festival Cannes Sundance London Sheffield Doc/Fest Toronto Best marketing campaign Philomena Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa Anchorman: The Legend Continues Blue is the Warmest Colour World War Z Biggest game-changer The Act of Killing Gravity Her 12 Years a Slave A Field in England Best cinema Free readers' vote. So-bad-it's-good film Free readers' vote. Lifetime achievement Judges' vote. More information on this year's Guardian Film Awards

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/26/nigel-harman-shrek-the-musical

Stage

2014-08-26T10:47:40.000Z

Nancy Groves

Nigel Harman: 'Shrek is in my blood'

So, Nigel, how did you become a musical theatre director? I’ve been lucky – I’ve worked quite consistently as an actor. But I’ve been talking about directing for a while now ... I went to the closing night of Shrek at Drury Lane and loved it as much as I did when I was in the show [Harman played Lord Farquaad when Shrek the Musical opened in the West End in 2011]. Then I bumped into producer Caro Newling at a party. She said: “I heard you were looking at directing” and gave me one of her looks ... “I want you to direct the tour.” It was a case of carving out some time and with I Can’t Sing [the X Factor musical in the West End] finishing, it all fell into place. Shrek is quite a big first bite to take. You weren’t tempted to go in with a play above a pub? As is my wont, this is a multi-million pound lavish musical spectacular. It’s got a cast of nearly 30 and the size of it is breathtaking. [Producers] Neal Street and Playful and Dreamworks have pretty much taken the London show on the road. Bar a couple of things we couldn’t fit in the van, everything is here. It’s a dream job. How does directing differ from performing so far? The big difference is that I’ve got my finger in all the pies, whereas Lord Farquaad only thought he did. Everyone asks me the questions now: “What do you think we should do here?” But I love it. I’m loving all the decision making, the production meetings, the backstage stuff. You’ve got to know your material though. If you make a wrong decision… Shrek’s writer David Lindsay-Abaire is having quite a moment. It definitely feels that way, yes. David is a universal speaker. He doesn’t just do one voice. You’ve got Good People with that working-class Boston element, Shrek and Rabbit Hole which won him the Pulitzer [a London production of Rabbit Hole, directed by Harman and starring Joanne Froggatt has just been postponed]. What they all have in common are characters that transcend where they come from. What changes or tweaks, if any, have you made for the Shrek tour? Look, it’s not going to be done in Swahili. It’s quite a simple job. At least I see it as simple. It’s about understanding the parameters of the thing. It was successful on Broadway, even more successful in London. I’m keeping the spirit of things alive and polishing it up a bit. I was there every night for a year, so it’s very much in my blood. I can feel where every moment should be. You say successful but Shrek didn’t wow the critics in the West End. Why do you think that was? It’s one of those things. I think musicals can be quite hard to grasp at first sitting. It’s not a job I envy, being a critic. Sometimes you come out of one of those shows that shall remain nameless, singing all the songs, and that’s mistaken for a good sign. When, really, watching them can be a bit like water torture. Jeanine [Tesori, Shrek’s composer] barely repeats a tune in two hours. Shrek, Fiona and Donkey’s trio at the end of the first half of Shrek is one of the great musical songs. I love Freak Flag, too. “Let your freak flag fly” – that’s the message of Shrek then? Shrek has a very simple message. It doesn’t matter who you are in life, whether you’re a pig or a donkey or a maiden locked in a tower, stop striving to be this perfect image of someone else. That was what we all loved about the original film, wasn’t it. That this 6ft tall ogre with a body odour problem got the princess – and she turned out to be an ogre too. We’re all obsessed with image and how we fit in. Let’s step away from that. Is that how 4ft tall Lord Farquaad came to steal the show and bag you an Olivier award? There’s a throwback vaudeville style to Farquaad: the actor who is playing a character who is himself playing a character: the man he’d really like to be. It’s that duality of humour the British love. People used to ask: “Are you on wheels?” They couldn’t believe I did the whole thing on my knees. When I was first approached I said: “He does what? That sounds nuts but I’ll give it a go.” I got down on my knees in rehearsals to show our current Farquaad, Gerard, and thought: “Oh my god, I can’t believe I did this for a year.” I mean, I had physio twice a week but two hours of physio a week for eight shows? It’s an unnatural thing for your body to be doing, with or without kneepads. You’ve not gone for big name casting this time round. Do you miss your West End co-stars Nigel Lindsay, Amanda Holden and Richard Blackwood? Shrek is a big enough name in itself. We all know the film. To get it on the road, we didn’t need to have recognisable people. Dean [Chisnall, Lindsay’s understudy who took over the role] is an incredible talent. Straight away I told him: “I’d like you play Shrek.” Our guy playing Donkey is 18 and 5ft 5in. It’s incredible directing him alongside a 6ft 4in ogre – it gives a completely different reading. There was a lot of professionalism in that original cast. Amanda was flawless in her approach; so were the boys. We had fun and I really liked Amanda for mucking in, no airs or graces. And then we had Kimberley Walsh – you’d never have guessed she was a million-record selling pop star. So sometimes I miss our little family. But we have a whole new family now. And even the White Rabbit texted me to say good luck. How disappointed were you by the early demise of I Can’t Sing? I don’t feel personally disappointed. I’m really glad I took it on and I had a brilliant time. We just didn’t sell enough tickets. It’s a shame it went the way it did. People who came said they loved it. And Simon Cowell? Well, he was quoted in the press interviews saying: “Just go out there and be a dick every night.” And that’s pretty much what I did. Shrek – the Musical is at Bristol Hippodrome until 7 September 2014 and is on tour until September 2015

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/08/the-guardian-view-on-faltering-brexit-talks-a-no-deal-election-is-on-the-cards

Opinion

2019-10-08T18:25:49.000Z

Editorial

The Guardian view on faltering Brexit talks: a no-deal election is on the cards | Editorial

European governments have been justifiably sceptical about Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit negotiations. After Tuesday’s extraordinary developments, scepticism may have hardened into the certainty that they are dealing with a government willing to risk a no-deal future in order to win a general election. According to a briefing from a No 10 aide, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, told the prime minister that “the UK cannot leave [the EU] without leaving Northern Ireland behind in a customs union and in full alignment for ever”. The source added that this made a deal look impossible now and in the long term. Earlier, another off-the-record steer from Downing Street had suggested that if negotiations broke down, the Conservative party would fight an election on a no-deal ticket. In Berlin, a government spokesman refused to comment on the Merkel-Johnson phone call. In Brussels, officials said they did not recognise the comments attributed to Ms Merkel as EU policy. The European council president, Donald Tusk, was more forthright, tweeting directly to the prime minister: “What’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game.” Whatever was actually said, this crunch week of negotiations has morphed into precisely that, because of Downing Street’s decision to brief in such incendiary fashion. It will be hard to row back from here, as evidence mounts that a breakdown in negotiations is something Mr Johnson and his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, are ready to actively seek, as long as they can pin it on the perfidy of the EU. The truth is that the government probably still wants a deal, not least to avoid the chaotic and dangerous consequences that its own plan, Operation Yellowhammer, identified. But its “two borders for four years” plan – requiring single-market checks between Britain and Northern Ireland, and customs checks on the island of Ireland – is almost certainly not going to be the basis for one. As has been made clear from the outset of negotiations, the EU will not countenance the physical infrastructure that would necessarily accompany such checks in Ireland, creating a de facto border and undermining the Good Friday agreement. Given this reality, Mr Johnson may be refocusing on what has been his overwhelming priority all along: winning a general election. If negotiations break down, Mr Johnson is obliged by the Benn act to seek an extension to the 31 October deadline. In any subsequent election, he will need to convince furious leave voters that it wasn’t his fault he failed to deliver. It may well serve this purpose for the meltdown to be as acrimonious as possible, with the EU, as well as parliament, in the dock. That would allow an election to be fought on a no-deal platform, neutralising the threat from Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, in the expectation that the remain vote will stay split. On Tuesday night parliament was again prorogued – lawfully on this occasion – ahead of the Queen’s speech next week. When it reconvenes on Monday, it will still be true that a majority in the House of Commons opposes no deal. It will still be true that a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is illegal. If talks on a deal do collapse this week, MPs must ensure that parliamentary sovereignty over the process is upheld. That is the first task. But given Tuesday’s developments, which once again revealed this government’s dangerous disregard for the national interest, that seems likely to be only the beginning of the battle to prevent no deal.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/01/how-do-you-tell-when-a-politician-is-lying-the-tics-tells-and-tricks-to-watch-for

Australia news

2024-02-01T14:00:25.000Z

Tory Shepherd

How do you tell when a politician is lying? The tics, tells and tricks to watch for

They may exaggerate, evade or embellish the truth. They may bloviate, or bluster or blame their memory. But, experts say, smart politicians rarely outright lie. “People tell each other lies,” the former cabinet minister Christopher Pyne said this week at the start of the ABC documentary Nemesis. The first of a three-part series, it covered Australia’s Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years between 2013 and 2022. And scattered among the various insults lobbed were many striking examples of politicians directly contradicting each other’s versions of events. Power, politics and the f-word: ABC series reveals inner workings of Coalition’s decade in power Read more Meanwhile, accusations of lying are being levelled against Labor after it rejigged the stage-three tax cuts. Perceptions of dishonesty can mean political death, but – as “truth coach” Elly Johnson points out – there is a vast and complicated continuum between “the truth” and “a lie”. Johnson, who trains people – including in government agencies – in security vetting, is working on a book documenting the 50 (or 60) shades of grey between truth and lies. “The purpose is to really understand how complex the topics of truth and lies are and how nuanced are the ways that we avoid telling the truth,” she says. Everyone thinks they’re fundamentally honest, even if they lie, she says. And most prefer to tell the truth – unless it gets in the way of achieving their goals. Then they venture into the grey zone. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup “It might not be a blatant lie,” Johnson says, but it will fall into two main types of mistruths – concealment and fabrication. And there are plenty of subtypes. “It could be ambiguity, embellishing, being evasive, exaggerating, glossing over, misleading, even things like partial truths. It might be selective amnesia (‘I just can’t recall’).” Other categories “that can happen in politician land”, she says, include: Deliberate confusion (a deliberate tactic to create confusion, intentionally creating a state of uncertainty or misunderstanding. “Detailed programmatic specificity”, anyone? ). Diverting attention (redirecting focus away from a specific topic or issue). Exaggeration (overstating or magnifying the truth to make something appear more significant). False emotions (displaying an emotion to display or mask the true emotion). Telling the truth falsely (by accepting an outcome but blaming the wrong thing for it). “They do exist on a continuum,” says the University of Western Australia cognitive psychology professor Ullrich Ecker. “There are objective truths … but in the middle there’s a lot of grey.” His research has shown that, at least in the 2018 pre-election prime ministerial contest between Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull, it was hard to find actual lies. “Australian politicians don’t tend to do that, compared to Trump,” he says. Lying is politically stupid and will catch up with you eventually Damon Hunt, former Liberal adviser “They’re pretty good at dancing around the actual question, dodging things and not saying things that can be factchecked.” There’s also a distinction between lying and being a bullshitter – the liar knows the truth or could work it out and chooses not to. The bullshitter simply doesn’t care. The former prime minister John Howard had core and non-core promises. Abbott once said that the statements of his that should be “taken absolutely as gospel truth” were “those carefully prepared, scripted remarks”. Political observers often note that politicians answer the question they wish they were asked instead of the one they were actually confronted with. This can lead to awkward non sequiturs, while others might try “bridging”; glossing over the initial question to get to what you want to talk about. The federal MP Bob Katter gave a memorable example of this in 2017. When asked about same-sex marriage, he replied: “Let there be a thousand blossoms bloom, as far as I’m concerned, you know. “But I ain’t spending any time on it because, in the meantime, every three months a person’s torn to pieces by a crocodile in north Queensland.” The consultant and former Liberal adviser Damon Hunt says, done properly, bridging is an “art form”. “Smart, experienced politicians do not outright lie,” he says. “The consequences are too dire if they get caught, and it’s too easy to check information these days. 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. “Lying is politically stupid and will catch up with you eventually, whether it’s the media doing the background checking, or advisers, or the opposition. “That said, there are lots of other ways of getting your message across, including negative and difficult messaging. “Bridging is a media technique where you acknowledge the question that has been asked but answer it in a way where you’re really talking about what you want to talk about. You can see experienced politicians do it very well. Hunt also says that whenever multiple people recount an event, they are likely to all report slightly different versions of what happened. But saying “I can’t recall” doesn’t go down particularly well with the public. “The advice I give clients is that most of the time the truth comes out,” he says. “If you tell a porky pie, chances are you’ll get caught out and make things worse. Tell your story, and tell it as strongly as you can, but there are certain parameters you have to work within and being truthful is one of them.” 0:29 'I don’t think, I know': Macron accuses Scott Morrison of lying about submarine contract – video Ecker says there is plenty at stake with untruthfulness. Globally there are leaders who blatantly lie and some who dispute the very existence of objective truth. “It threatens the whole fabric of democracy, which relies on candid debate in good faith,” he says. So can we spot a political liar? Brits, take it from an Aussie: If Tony Abbott is your solution, you've got big problems Van Badham Read more A psychologist, an ex-FBI agent and a fraud investigator have given their top tips for spotting a liar. The list includes looking out for self-soothing gestures such as facial touching; odd noises or random words; nervous tells. But they also warned that most people can’t spot deception. Ecker says to watch for politicians avoiding questions, using emotive language and fearmongering. “Look out for [where] it’s quite obvious that they’re being fed a narrative that is meant to instil fear of a potentially negative outcome or a group of people … where the argument is divisive and pits one group against another,” he says. Johnson says to look out for “incongruency”, where somebody’s movements don’t reflect their words. Liars might display “deception stress” such as a shaky voice, or avoiding eye contact – but she warns that people shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Someone looking stressed doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying. And somebody whose words and actions look congruent could be. “A liar can still pull that off,” she says. “They can mislead you. “Especially if they’re practised at it.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/24/ben-stokes-england-cricket-one-year-central-contract

Sport

2023-10-24T17:10:12.000Z

Simon Burnton

Ben Stokes signs one-year England deal after turning down multiyear contract

Rob Key has insisted that Ben Stokes’s decision to turn down one of the England & Wales Cricket Board’s inaugural multiyear central contracts does not mean he is not fully committed to representing his country. England’s Test captain was offered a three-year deal, which would have tied him to the national side for the next Ashes series in Australia in 2025-26 and beyond, but eventually signed on for just one, gambling that he will benefit when he negotiates an extension in 12 months. Joe Root calls for increase in 50-over cricket if England are to thrive again Read more Stokes was one of six players offered three-year deals, of whom only three accepted them. Jos Buttler and Jofra Archer both agreed two‑year contracts instead, leaving Harry Brook, Joe Root and Mark Wood as the only players to commit themselves until 2026. A further 15 have signed two-year deals and eight players, who with the exception of Stokes can largely be categorised as older, injury-prone or peripheral, have signed for a single year. Seven players – Gus Atkinson, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Ben Duckett, Matthew Potts and Josh Tongue and Rehan Ahmed – receive an England deal for the first time, with Ahmed, still just 19, the first teenager to do so. The deals allow the ECB to control which franchise tournaments contracted players appear in, though Key, the managing director of England men’s cricket, was clear that they intend to do so only when there is a clear scheduling clash. “I don’t want a world where you see your best players going off and playing franchise cricket,” he said. “I want to see them playing for England.” One factor in Stokes’s decision is the new memorandum of understanding (MOU) which is due to be negotiated between the ECB and the players next year, and which may significantly change the amounts on offer when the next round of contracts are negotiated. The ECB would ordinarily have waited until then to rip up their system but feared that with franchise owners circulating it might have been too late, and in the end every player who was offered a contract signed one. “I think for the first time in this changing landscape for cricket we start to see what players really think, and we’ve seen that everyone’s committed to English cricket,” Key said. “I’m surprised in a way – I thought more people might not have taken the multiyear element of it. That’s been a credit to the players, that they are prepared to commit to English cricket when for the first time ever they have so many more opportunities. “Ben, quite rightly, feels when the next MOU starts and the contract cycle changes he’ll be in a stronger position. Other players have gone for security. By no means is it Ben Stokes saying: ‘I don’t want to play for England.’ All he talks about is being completely committed to playing for England. I don’t think it has crossed his mind not playing for England for the next four, five, six years.” Quick Guide England contracts Show When Stokes was asked about his international future last week, when he would already have been aware of his contract situation, he said: “I’ve spoken a lot about the landscape of cricket changing. I think now that’s coming into people’s decisions. I want to play as much cricket as I possibly can for England. That’s where it is for me. I love representing the badge and I want to do that for as long as I possibly can and play as many games as I possibly can. There’s a new MOU coming up and all that sort of stuff … we’ll just see. I want to play as much cricket as I can for England until I can’t any more.” Every player who appeared in this summer’s Ashes, except the retired Stuart Broad, has signed a contract, as well as every member of the squad currently at the World Cup with the solitary exception of David Willey. “I think it’s fair to say he wasn’t best pleased, as you can understand, being the only one not to get a contract,” Key said of Willey. “And it’s bloody tough, to be honest. We’d love to live in a world where we have a lot of extra cash and you can just give him [something] because he’s out here.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/30/uk-and-china-wont-always-see-eye-to-eye-says-may-before-trade-trip

Politics

2018-01-30T22:30:25.000Z

Jessica Elgot

UK and China 'won't always see eye-to-eye', says May before trade trip

The UK and China will “not always see eye-to-eye”, Theresa May said on the eve of a three-day trade visit where she said she would underline the importance of a “rules-based” approach to economic expansion. The prime minister’s warning before her visit to Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai suggests she will attempt to walk a tightrope between championing a new post-Brexit era of free trade alongside coded suspicion of President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road initiative, a $900bn (£636bn) global infrastructure project which has political designs to bring neighbouring countries closer into Beijing’s orbit. Her visit, accompanied by 50 business leaders, also comes amid a deteriorating human rights situation in mainland China, growing alarm over the erosion of Hong Kong’s political autonomy and domestic pressure to take a stand against Chinese steel dumping which is threatening the survival of the British industry. Speaking before the trip, May said: “China is opening up to the world. The sheer economic weight of China means that the way in which this happens will have a huge role in shaping the future of the world in which we live. “The UK and China will not always see eye-to-eye. But as partners committed to global free trade we can work together to confront and tackle challenges that affect all of our economies.” Without directly blaming China, May said she would “continue to look at what more can be done to tackle global overcapacity in sectors such as steel”. Her visit comes amid worsening trade tensions between the US and China. Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, raised the spectre of a tit-for-tat trade war between Washington and Beijing at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The US administration has accused China of unfair trade practices including intellectual property theft, recently suggesting that the terms of China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation in 2001 had been too lax. May said she would stress the importance of intellectual property rights during her visit which she said would “ensure that, as our companies innovate and develop new products, they are confident that their intellectual property and rights will be fully protected … and protect the rules-based approach that underpins and enables robust, sustainable, free-flowing global trade”. May said major economies had a special responsibility to demonstrate they “respect the rulebook” and said the UK wanted to step up trade with China in a way that “protects our values, ensures global security and advances the multilateral system and the rules for which we have fought so hard”. Jan Gaspers, head of the European China Policy Unit at Berlin’s Mercator Institute for China Studies, said May would arrive in China “between a rock and a hard place” as she attempted to plot a post-Brexit trade route for “Global Britain”. “She needs to show something at home in terms of economics and China obviously is a logical port of call in that respect … On the other hand she won’t get anything that is nearly as good as what the UK currently has with the EU.” He added that May would be widely criticised for failing to defend democratic values or human rights as she chased what would probably only ever be “a rather shallow economic agreement” with China. “The Chinese are very well aware that there is no chance of negotiating anything in terms of a free trade agreement or investment agreement on a bilateral level until the relationship with the EU is sorted out.” Asked what May could hope to achieve, he added: “I’m afraid, not much.” On Thursday, her first day in China, May is set to announce a new drive for English and Mandarin language teaching in Chinese and British schools. However, it will underscore cabinet divisions over international students in Britain. Visiting Wuhan, which has the largest student population of any city in the world, the prime minister will announce £550m of education deals, including the opening of British Busy Bees nurseries and the extension of the UK-China exchange for primary school maths teachers until 2020. She will also announce a new push for English language training in China, where proficiency is at the lowest levels in Asia. Downing Street said the prime minister would highlight educational partnerships, with 155,000 Chinese students currently in the UK worth an estimated £5bn annually and 9,000 young British people studying and interning in China, with numbers up 60% since 2013. However, May has historically been resistant to any further easing of student visa restrictions or to demands from some cabinet colleagues to exclude student numbers from the migration statistics. Before her visit, May said the ties between the two countries were “reflected in our relationship on education … by teaching children to speak our languages we will ensure that our golden era of cooperation will endure for generations to come”. The education secretary, Damian Hinds, said the UK placed great importance on learning Mandarin. “[It] is the most spoken language in the world, so this partnership will play a crucial role in teaching pupils the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in an increasingly global economy,” he said.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/16/regina-king-beale-street-watchmen-superhero-hbo-dc-comics-oscar-actor

Television & radio

2019-10-16T13:47:49.000Z

Emma Brockes

Regina King on fighting white supremacists in Watchmen: 'My community is living this story'

Regina King had a hard time convincing some of her friends about Watchmen, her new HBO series inspired by the DC comic book of the same name and featuring the kind of details that make some people run for the exits: time travel, kung-fu fighting, masks and thinly veiled political allegory. “Girl, don’t do this,” said one friend. King could only smile and agree. But we would all do well to watch King – in anything. At 48, she is in her prime. While filming Watchmen, King won the best supporting actress Oscar for If Beale Street Could Talk, based on the James Baldwin novel. For years, she has been turning out quietly devastating portraits – in the movies Jerry Maguire and Ray, in the TV show Southland – with little public recognition. Now she has her pick of roles. “I appreciate winning the Oscar,” she says, “but that’s not the ultimate goal. I should be able to use it as currency moving forward.” King was not familiar with the original Watchmen material, nor the 2009 Zack Snyder movie (her 23-year-old son Ian is more excited about this role than any of King’s previous parts). But once she read the script, she was enthused. In Damon Lindelof’s adaptation, the tale’s 1950s cold-war storyline is spun into a look at the rise of a white supremacist group in a parallel US. King plays Angela Abar, a cop with superhuman fighting skills and an amazing French Lieutenant’s Woman-style cape: not the kind of part she usually gets. Veiled threat … King as the superhero in Watchmen. Photograph: AP King, who in a New York hotel room is slight and smiling, powers through the series like a wrecking ball. She tuned into the fantasy landscape pretty quickly, even quibbling with wardrobe over the practicality of each costume. Originally, her mask was so cumbersome it seemed to defy even the tenuous reality of a comic-book tale. “I was like, ‘This is not good for the superhero peripheral! I can’t see if something’s coming – you have to tell me!’ So our wardrobe designer had a great idea: what if it was painted on?” It was hell on her skin, but it’s dynamite on screen. Lindelof was co-creator of Lost and the recent HBO hit The Leftovers. Watchmen has that same compelling narrative, the story of men with bamboo torches trying to eliminate black people. In the current climate, this parallel America feels very like the real thing. One of Lindelof’s triggers, says King, was Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 article for the Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, addressing the unacknowledged fall-out from slavery. She also cites “the way policing is happening here in the States with, particularly, black men.” To this end, Watchmen is, oddly, of a piece with Beale Street, Baldwin’s exposé of the split-screen reality in the US between white people and people of colour – although Watchmen doesn’t seem expressly political to King. With a laugh, she says: “Being black, it’s part of my life. What’s happened is that Trump has just emboldened people. They were always there, feeling the way they’ve been feeling, but now, oh my gosh. There are a lot of people – white friends I have – who have had this wedge in their families. They knew maybe a family member was a little less progressive, but whoa! Now they’re finding out their views were so far apart.” Trump has just emboldened people. They were always there, feeling the way they’ve been feeling, but now, oh my gosh Meanwhile, the idea of white supremacy as a guerrilla force is not exactly fantastical, given the extent such militias play in US history. “It’s easy to pretend that something didn’t exist if you’re not talking about it,” says King. “Within our community, yes, we’re talking about it all the time, because we’re living it generation to generation. But for a lot of white Americans, ignorance is bliss. For them.” King grew up in California, and wanted to be a dentist. This was not a passing phase. She loved going to her dentist so much, it seemed for many years to be the only possible career path. “I would always hear horror stories about the dentist, but not mine. His dental assistant was his wife, Babe, and she had this white hair that looked like cotton candy. I always looked forward to going. I’d floss to impress him. He made the experience fun. He made me understand how important your periodontal situation is.” She bursts out laughing. “He had a great set of teeth and Babe had a great set of teeth! So whenever I would see people without a great set of teeth I’d be like, ‘Ew!’” Don’t ever live in Britain, I say. “Yeah, I know.” Again she hoots with laughter. “Not a lot of good teeth there.” King had acted in school, but it wasn’t until she got to theUniversity of Southern California that it became clear to her not only that dental work wasn’t in her future, but that what she should do was drop out to act. It amazes her now that she made this decision with “no information to back it up”. She simply knew it was the right thing to do, a strong intuition foreshadowing a steeliness that would become apparent 30 years later in her most famous roles. Her parents weren’t happy. “My mom is a teacher and showed her disappointment,” she says, “but not enough that it made me decide to go back.” Quiet marvel … King giving her Oscar-winning turn in If Beale Street Could Talk. Photograph: Annapurna Pictures/Allstar She was so young and inexperienced that for years, in roles she took in movies such as Boyz N the Hood and Mighty Joe Young, she had no idea of pay scale, or whether she was receiving a fair income relative to others on set. “I wasn’t focused on that,” she says. “It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I even stopped to consider the wage gap. It was something as simple as hearing a male actor say something – either about his per diem, or something else – and I was like, ‘Wait! Hold up – my part is way bigger than yours.’” No one talked about it in the early days? “Well, things have been designed so that we don’t.” King has been a supporter of Time’s Up, the campaign to equalise pay and conditions for women in Hollywood. “That’s why this is a pretty exciting time. If I’m blessed enough to have a granddaughter, she’ll come in knowing this is how it’s going to be. I feel like it’s diminishing it by calling it a movement. It’s witnessing a shift, a life change. That’s how I look at it.” It’s hard to convince people there is an audience that wants quiet stories Crucially, she says, expectations have changed: there’s a suspicion that, just as sexual harassment will come back to bite you, so will pay differences. “No one wants their filthy past, their dirty little secret, to come out. A lot of people in these positions of power – white men – don’t even realise it was a problem, or something you should feel embarrassed about.” King is glad she had a lot of solid success before she won the Oscar, playing supporting roles in big movies. “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, you were robbed with Jerry Maguire, or Ray.’ But I don’t think I would’ve had an appreciation for the art, in the way I do, if it had happened earlier.” Watch a trailer for Watchmen Beale Street was a different experience. “Oh, gosh,” says King, who found it so personal that talking about it still makes her emotional. Astonishingly, it was the first movie adaptation of a Baldwin novel, a film that remained a quiet, literary piece despite the starriness of its cast – and of its director, Barry Jenkins, fresh from his Oscar win for Moonlight the previous year. For King, who played Sharon Rivers, the mother of a young woman whose fiance is wrongly imprisoned for rape, it was everything: a love story, an indictment of the criminal justice system, and part of the vast, untold history of black life in the US. “We’re in a time when film is so loud and the audience is looking for shocking. It’s hard to convince people that there is an audience out there that wants quiet stories.” Being in her 40s, she says, brings a confidence to go against the grain. She has started her own production company, vowing to staff all her projects with a minimum of 50% women. King wonders if she should have kept quiet about that, since she now gets asked about it every five minutes – and she has hardly hired anybody yet. “But at the end of the day, it’s holding my feet to the fire.” Beale Street's Regina King: 'Awards season is like a new full-time job!' Read more So does she feel in her prime? “For the most part, body-wise, I don’t feel different than when I was in my 20s,” she says. “Only when I hurt something, because it takes so long to get back. But the wisdom and regard for what’s important is different now. In my 20s, that I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude is great. It helps you go out on a ledge and let your feet dangle down and not even think about it.” Still, it is nothing compared with the thrill of having better judgment: “Being in your 40s and having the wherewithal to know, ‘Yeah, maybe not that ledge.’” She roars with laughter. Watchmen is on HBO in the US from 20 October and on Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK from 21 October.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/04/italian-student-found-dead-egypt-giulio-regeni-torture

World news

2016-02-04T18:41:07.000Z

Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Italian student Giulio Regeni found dead in Cairo 'with signs of torture'

Italian authorities are demanding a full investigation into the death of an Italian student whose body was found in Cairo bearing signs that he had been tortured. The body of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old who was pursuing a PhD at Cambridge, was found in a ditch in the suburbs outside Cairo on Wednesday night, days after the Italian government announced it was growing increasingly concerned about his disappearance. The Egyptian prosecutor leading the investigation team on the case said Regeni’s body had been found with marks on it, cuts to the ears and signs of beatings and a “slow death”. A source at the Giza public prosecutor’s office said Regeni’s body was found on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, on an overpass close to Cairo’s 6th October district and that his body appeared to have been dragged along the ground. Responding to earlier reports, the source added that the body did not have any noticeable stab wounds, but that other marks could have been cigarette burns. More details about Regeni’s body and possible cause of death will likely be clarified soon. An autopsy report was delivered to the Italian embassy in Cairo on Thursday evening. Ansa is reporting that Egyptian authorities have turned Regeni’s remains over to Umberto I Italian hospital in Cairo, citing anonymous sources. The Italian news agency also reported that a team of seven investigators - from the state police, carabinieri and Interpol, would be leaving for Cairo on Friday to closely follow the investigation. Reports in local media said he was found naked from the waist down. It is believed that he may have been killed days earlier. The Italian foreign ministry released no new details about the murder on Thursday. It summoned the Egyptian ambassador in Rome, Amr Mostafa Kamal Helmy, to express concern about Regeni’s death. “Helmy expressed profound condolences for Regeni’s death and assured us Egypt will cooperate fully in finding those responsible for this criminal act,” the Italian foreign ministry said. Italy has asked for Regeni’s body to be repatriated as soon as possible and has demanded that Egypt open a joint investigation to ascertain the truth about his death in conjunction with Italian experts. While Regeni was known to be an academic researcher, the Italian news agency Ansa on Thursday reported that he also wrote about his work on Egyptian labour unions for Il Manifesto, the Italian communist newspaper. Ansa reported that he used a pseudonym because he was allegedly concerned for his safety. His work for Il Manifesto was confirmed by Simone Pieranni, the newspaper’s foreign editor, who said it would be publishing Regeni’s previous works on Friday, including a piece written shortly before his death. Domani sul Manifesto ricorderemo #GiulioRegeni (anche) con un pezzo suo che ci mandò poco prima del 25.1 (e con particolari non da poco). — Simone Pieranni (@simopieranni) February 4, 2016 Regeni, from Fiumicello, near Udine in Italy’s north-east, had been a member of Girton college, Cambridge, but had been living in Cairo since September to pursue a doctoral thesis on the Egyptian economy. He was described in Italian reports as a passionate and gifted student. When he initially went missing on 25 January, the fifth anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, there were suspicions that Regeni could have been caught up in a police raid against demonstrators. One report said he had disappeared after leaving his home in an upper middle-class area to meet a friend. Anne Alexander, a research fellow at the centre for arts, social science and humanities department at Cambridge and, like Regeni, a fellow specialist in Egyptian labour movements, said she was concerned about what his death could mean for the safety of other researchers on Egypt, particularly those looking at sensitive topics. “Everyone I’ve spoken about this is shocked by the news coming out about the likely circumstances of his death. If these reports are confirmed we want to do all we can to ensure that those responsible are held accountable,” she said. Alexander added that concern for Regeni’s welfare had been fuelled in part by reports of forced disappearances and mass arrests that took place before 25 January. “Hundreds of Egyptian citizens have disappeared over the past few years, often turning up in police custody and frequently having experienced torture. A much smaller number are found dead,” she added. The Italian foreign ministry declined to comment when asked whether Egyptian authorities were respecting a demand that Italy and Egypt jointly investigate Regeni’s death, citing a desire to respect the family’s wish for privacy. Italy’s economic development minister, Federica Guidi, reportedly cut short an Italian business delegation’s trip to Cairo, in which the heads of Italian energy companies were meeting Egyptian officials. Guidi had reportedly met Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, on Wednesday morning – before Regeni was found – and was told the matter would receive the president’s personal attention. An official at the Egyptian embassy in Italy could not definitely confirm that the trip had abruptly ended. The meeting was a sign of the important business ties between the two countries, particularly following the discovery of a major natural gas field in Egypt by Eni, the Italian state-backed energy group, which was described by the company’s chief executive last year as a “game changer” for Egypt. Earlier, the deputy head of criminal investigations in Cairo’s twin province of Giza, Alaa Azmi, had said that an initial investigation had showed Regeni’s death to be a road accident, adding that the preliminary forensic report had not mentioned any burns. “We have to wait for the full report by forensic experts. But what we know is that it is an accident,” Azmi had said. Regeni’s death is not the first incident of a foreign national dying in suspicious circumstances on Egyptian soil. Frenchman Eric Lang died after being beaten by his fellow inmates while in police custody in September 2013. Egyptian security forces killed 12 people, including eight Mexican tourists who were travelling in the Western Desert in September 2015. The kidnap and beheading of Croatian national Tomislav Salopek by the Islamic State affiliate Sinai Province in August 2015 was seen as an unusual instance of kidnap of a foreign national in Egypt. In the days following his disappearance, Regeni’s friends had tried to find information about his whereabouts on Twitter using the hashtag #whereisgiulio. My friend PhD student from Cambridge is missing in #Cairo since 25Jan.Please help us to find him #whereisgiulio pic.twitter.com/mNERqBbNFl — galica (@Gala_dr) February 2, 2016 A Cambridge university spokesman said: “We’re deeply saddened to hear of the death of Giulio Regeni. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. “The vice-chancellor and mistress of Girton college has been in contact with Giulio’s family and we are in touch with the Italian authorities.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/14/welfare-state-unwound-services-communities

Society

2020-01-14T10:29:47.000Z

Ray Jones

The welfare state is being unwound as services are wrenched from communities | Ray Jones

It is more than 400 years since the advent of the Elizabethan Poor Law. One of its underlying principles was that parishes had the responsibility to provide for those who were destitute and desperate. It required people to return to their birth parish to get help. This 'bold' Queen's speech lacks the courage to fix society's urgent crises Richard Vize Read more The Poor Law had a long life with many iterations, and only ended with the introduction of the welfare state and the 1948 National Assistance Act. Parishes as the unit of local government have largely been replaced by local authorities and even where the welfare state reforms created national services, on-the-ground delivery was still intended to be local. No one should want to reintroduce the fear and threat of the Poor Law, even if since 2010 the government has chipped away at what used to be a rights-based system of social security by introducing punishing, stigmatising and deterrents, and tightening eligibility criteria. But there is still value in providing local services to residents. It makes services more accessible and more acceptable; drives economy and efficiency; and allows people to remain in their communities and within their family, friendship and neighbourhood networks. How shocking, then, that people must travel miles before they get the housing, welfare and health services they need. It has already happened with the closure of local benefits offices and courts. But it is now also rampant in housing, health and children’s social care, with vulnerable children and adults being moved not just miles but hundreds of miles. It is time not just to reflect but to start to revitalise what has recently been trashed It is happening to babies and children who need neo-natal and paediatric intensive care; to children and young people who need help from mental health services; to adults who need inpatient mental health care; to homeless families; and to children and young people in the care of local councils. What is driving this requirement to be itinerant in the search for housing, health and care services, with all the stress, strain, distress and demoralisation it creates? First, it reflects a failure in strategic service and workforce planning. Services are not being provided in the places and with the capacity required. It is partly a consequence of overly ambitious assumptions that, for example, outpatient care will compensate for the large scale reductions in hospital beds, or that foster care and family support services, which have been decimated in the past decade, will dramatically reduce the need for children’s residential care. Second, it reflects the commercialisation, privatisation and fragmentation of the welfare state and what were public services. Driven forward since the 1980s, but ramped up several levels by recent Conservative-led governments, the assumption that profit-driven markets will lead to sensible patterns of provision is no longer a view that can be rationally supported. The commercial and competitive free-for-all produces an incoherent and inconsistent patchwork quilt of services. In many areas it is threadbare. Third, the acceptance by senior public sector managers, and those governing services, that their role is as commissioners and purchasers, rather than direct providers, means they are at the mercy of the markets that have been created. Local authorities that no longer provide residential childcare, for example, are left buying places in children’s homes that are largely unknown and unseen by their social workers, leaving children stranded at a distance. Get Society Weekly: our newsletter for public service professionals Read more Fourth, politically-chosen austerity. What has in part driven the downsizing of local provision is the need to make quick savings under the cosh of big government cuts in funding and grants. The salami slicing of services over the past 10 years has led to cutting to the bone. And when services reduced beyond the core are still needed, they are bought from any provider in any location at any price and of any quality. It took almost 400 years to get rid of the Poor Law. It has taken little more than 40 years to unwind the welfare state and decimate local services. It is time not just to reflect but to start to rebuild and revitalise what has recently been trashed. Ray Jones is emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University and a social worker who was a director of social services for 14 years

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/oct/15/oden-oren-secret-ingredient-tahini

Food

2023-10-15T11:00:09.000Z

Holly O'Neill

Oden Oren’s secret ingredient – tahini

I eat tahini every day. There’s something about this paste of hulled sesame seeds that is addictive. A good tahini is sweet, not bitter, and silky. I come from Israel, where we eat a lot of tahini, in all kinds of salad, in hummus. I’d say in Israel and Palestine hummus is heavily tahini-based compared with other places – about 50% tahini, hence the silky smoothness of our hummus. It goes in sweet dishes, you can drizzle it over desserts, or use it in baking for cookies and cakes. You can make halva with it, perhaps with some chocolate. My favourite way to eat it is simple: I mix tahini with a little water, garlic and lemon to taste, so it’s quite clean and smooth. That goes very well with fish or salad. Gorgeous. People think that in a poor quality tahini the fat separates: not true. That’s quite natural and you just mix it in and it emulsifies quite easily back into a paste. When you travel to Israel, you can get loads of types, which are really good. In the UK, I like the ones from Belazu, Al Arz and Al Nakhil. Oded Oren is chef-owner of Oren and Oren Deli, London E8

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/may/18/the-world-watches-with-relief-as-bundesliga-makes-a-safe-return

Football

2020-05-18T13:41:06.000Z

Andy Brassell

World watches with relief as Bundesliga makes a safe return – for now

There was, said Thomas Müller, “a tingling sensation because it was starting again”. Not nervousness, he was quick to stress, but an opening day of the season feeling, as the Bundesliga got back out of the blocks. This time, it was with an atmosphere of the ultimate juxtaposition – in echoey stadiums, but with the whole world watching. “Gedämpfte Freude” – muffled joy – was how the headline in Monday’s edition of Kicker put it, set across a photo of Borussia Dortmund’s players saluting a cavernous, empty Südtribune after their emphatic 4-0 Revierderby win over Schalke on Saturday afternoon. “It was spontaneous,” said the midfielder Julian Brandt, and that was key to a weekend which was a string of unusual occasions. Eerie silence resounds as Germany ushers in football’s new abnormal Barney Ronay Read more It was Brandt’s teammate Erling Braut Haaland who had scored the first goal of the post-lockdown Bundesliga, a typically instinctive finish that was followed by an untypical, physically-distanced celebration by the corner flag in Signal Iduna Park’s south-west corner. Frankfurter Allgemeine’s Christian Kamp joked that Lucien Favre, BVB’s detail-driven coach, had even mapped out every move of his team’s formation for the moments immediately after scoring. Yes, even the manner of post-goal festivities were examined forensically – when does an elbow bump go too far up the forearm, some asked – with Hertha’s delight at their 3-0 win at Hoffenheim becoming a little bit too authentic. Their captain, Vedad Ibisevic, already implicated in the now-suspended Salomon Kalou’s infamous Facebook Live video, hugged the assist provider Maximilian Mittelstädt and his fellow forward Matheus Cunha after scoring the middle goal (which is discouraged by the DFL but not a punishable offence), with Dedryck Boyata forced into a social media apology for kissing Marko Grujic. “The emotions are part of [the game],” said Hertha’s debutant coach Bruno Labbadia. “I’ll certainly make sure I look after my team.” By Sunday evening Müller, when substituted towards the end of Bayern’s 2-0 win at Union Berlin, got away with planting a gentle kick on the backside of the head coach Hansi Flick as an improvised salutation on his way to sit down (substitutes sit in the stand, not on the bench, with three seats between each player). Müller also dryly remarked that there was a touch of “old men playing at 7pm” about a dialled-down occasion, particularly at a stadium “where the mood can tip the scales”, but even if Bayern’s victory required more attrition than Flick would have hoped, it seemed as if there was at least some sort of conditional new normal as the sun began to set in the capital. The global reaction to the Bundesliga’s return was generally positive, with Obrigado, Bundesliga from Portugal’s A Bola typical of the continent-wide relief that the raising of the curtain had passed relatively setback-free, though Spain’s El Mundo Deportivo commented that it “would have been good if a minute’s silence had been observed for the victims of coronavirus”. The aspect not just of being entertained – and the general standard of play was way better than might have been expected after 66 days of unscheduled stoppage – but of viewing possible best practice is clear. Hertha’s Matheus Cunha (centre) is congratulated by teammates Vedad Ibisevic (right) and Maximilian Mittelstädt after scoring in the 3-0 win at Hoffenheim. Photograph: Thomas Kienzle/EPA Eintracht Frankfurt’s sporting director Fredi Bobic, who called the restart “a historic day for the Bundesliga”, also told Sky that the league could be a litmus test for all sports. “We also received a tremendous number of calls from American clubs for information,” said the former Bolton striker. “Not only from football clubs but also baseball, basketball and ice hockey. They all want to know how we’re doing it and how we organised it. “ For beyond the wet-wiping of balls, electronic sensors to maintain a 1.5m distance between non-playing workers and the taking of journalists’ temperatures, this was a TV hit. Sky posted record viewing figures of more than six million on the restart, with 3.68 million watching the Saturday afternoon games on their subscriptions and another 2.45 million watching it for free on Sky Sport News HD (in the UK, Dortmund v Schalke attracted five times the highest Bundesliga audience this season). Whether this will continue in Germany is open to debate. DAZN is offering a free month’s subscription, and the DFL says it is “in talks” regarding forthcoming matches. Yet just as the league’s CEO, Christian Seifert, talked of “earning” another round of fixtures with each successfully rolled-out round under these hygiene measures, the Bundesliga has a long way to go to win many hearts and minds. “Football should not make the mistake of looking for the truth on the pitch alone,” Kamp wrote in Frankfurter Allgemeine. More protests against the Bundesliga’s restart: An actual sofa has been placed at FC Köln’s stadium. Text reads: “Stadium instead of sofa! Against ghost games!” Posters also seen across Cologne imitating #Effzeh’s adverts: “Money matters more to us than your health!”#KOEM05 pic.twitter.com/kjJrcWoVFq — Felix Tamsut (@ftamsut) May 16, 2020 The banner behind the goal at Augsburg which read “Der Fußball will leben – euer Business is krank!” (football will survive, your business is sick) spoke for many, with many fan groups’ distaste for the resumption clear. A sofa was placed in front of Köln’s Rhein-Energie Stadion before Sunday’s game against Mainz, daubed with “Gegen Geisterspiele” (against ghost games) and “Scheiss DFB!”, the message being that the front room is no substitute for the terraces. Fewer dives, a missing coach and subs in stand: inside Bundesliga's return Read more Seifert’s message has been that the country’s 36 professional clubs need the resumption to survive, but there are a proportion of fans who don’t believe him – or think that what football has become is not even worth saving. Some are seizing the opportunity to promote a favoured cause. In the aftermath of Schalke’s humbling in the derby, their chairman, Clemens Tönnies – who is lucky to still be in his role after a racism scandal last year – spoke to Sky again about the possibility of restructuring the club’s governance model, an idea which might find more eager ears in a time of financial uncertainty. The 50+1 rule is also likely be examined by those who wish to bring the Bundesliga more in line with the rest of Europe. The coming week will present new challenges, as the players return to their homes and families before the next fixtures. Beyond the hygiene protocol, the long-term health of the Bundesliga will also be under close scrutiny as it continues to spread its wings like never before. Talking points There was more good news for Bayern after they restored their lead to four points with their win in Berlin. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told Sky he was “cautiously optimistic” that contract talks with Manuel Neuer would reach a positive conclusion, a feeling reciprocated by the goalkeeper weeks after the two sides had been poles apart. There were some minor musical chairs in the top four, with Borussia Mönchengladbach moving above Leipzig into third with a 3-1 win at Frankfurt – Julian Nagelsmann’s team were held by Freiburg. Gladbach scored twice in the first seven minutes and their strike pair of Alassane Pléa and Marcus Thuram must have looked irresistible to at-home Premier League scouts. “Hitting the woodwork four times – I haven’t seen that in 30 years,” remarked an incredulous Uwe Rösler, with his Fortuna Düsseldorf side letting Paderborn escape with a rare clean sheet. It was even more costly after Mainz came back from two down to draw at Köln. Heiko Herrlich watched his team’s late defeat to Wolfsburg from a private box in the stands, after breaking quarantine earlier in the week to get face cream and toothpaste.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/greek-court-decision-to-drop-charges-against-aid-workers-accused-of-espionage-welcomed

World news

2024-05-01T08:34:56.000Z

Helena Smith

Greek court drops espionage charges against aid workers

A Greek court’s decision to drop criminal charges against dozens of international aid workers accused of espionage and facilitating the illegal entry of migrants into the country has been met with jubilation. A three-member judicial council convening on the north Aegean isle of Lesbos ruled there was insufficient proof to pursue the case against 35 mostly German nationals. “There is not enough evidence to support the accusations against the defendants,” the tribunal argued in documents released on Tuesday. Lawyers representing the accused described the decision as a good day for humanitarians at time when life-saving solidarity work had become increasingly criminalised. “It’s very encouraging,” said Zacharias Kesses, an attorney defending some of the aid workers. “The police narrative was based on assumption and speculation. It was pure fiction and the courts on Lesbos have, I think, finally understood that they can’t indict people for the crime of being humanitarian, that they can’t assume humanitarians are people smugglers.” The accused, who also included citizens from Norway, Austria, and Switzerland, were arrested in Lesbos in September 2020 after an inquiry by the Greek intelligence service and anti-terrorism units that allegedly linked them to traffickers moving people from the Turkish coast to the island. Police argued the aid workers used encrypted messaging apps to provide smugglers with the geographical coordinates of landing areas so they could circumvent Greek coastguard patrols. The NGO workers vigorously denied the claims. Scores of migrant solidarity workers, including Sarah Mardini, the Syrian refugee immortalised in the Netflix film The Swimmers, have faced similar charges in Greece. Mardini, a former competitive swimmer, made international headlines along with her sister, Yusra, after the pair rescued 18 fellow passengers in a sinking dinghy making the perilous crossing from Turkey. Returning to Lesbos, the island on the frontline of the refugee crisis as a search and rescue worker in 2016, she would spend more than three months in pre-trial detention indicted on charges ranging from spying to illegal interception of radio frequencies. Human rights groups unanimously described the accusations – levelled at 24 aid workers volunteering with the now-defunct Emergency Response Centre International – as “farcical”. While the espionage charge was dropped by a court in Lesbos in January 2023, the entire group still face felony charges of people smuggling, fraud and membership of a criminal organisation, crimes that under Greek law carry 25-year prison terms. Sean Binder, a German national raised in Ireland, who was arrested alongside Mardini and also spent more than 100 days in jail, said Tuesday’s ruling was “fantastic news” but suggested the case, like his own, should never have been brought in the first place. “It’s cause for optimism,” said the trainee lawyer who has since been called to the bar in London. “It’s the right outcome but only if you accept that there was a wrong in the first place.” International aid groups are widely attributed with having done immense good at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, when almost 1 million displaced Syrians traversed Lesbos and other Aegean isles en route to Europe. But when, years later, the flows continued and fatigue set in, they were increasingly accused of aiding and abetting migrant arrivals. “The logic underpinning the prosecutions has constantly been that bona fide search and rescue workers are doing illegal work when nothing can be further from the truth,” said Binder, speaking from London. “It’s cold comfort, at the end of months and years of waiting, to hear that you have done nothing wrong.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/08/artist-peter-doig-cezanne-renoir-monet

Art and design

2023-02-08T16:37:08.000Z

Stuart Jeffries

‘I’m going to get a beating’ – artist Peter Doig on taking on Cézanne, Renoir, Monet and more

‘I t could be a massive failure,” says Peter Doig with a laugh. The 63-year-old painter is worrying about his looming show at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Only very rarely is a living artist deemed worthy of having their works hang alongside the esteemed London gallery’s Cézannes, Gauguins, Manets, Monets and Renoirs. “I know Frank Auerbach showed his building site paintings there,” adds the Scotland-born artist. True, but that was 13 years ago. Since the Courtauld reopened, after a £57m revamp in late 2021, its temporary exhibition space – named the Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries after the billionaire founder of Bet365 – has exclusively hosted blockbuster shows by dead artists. First Van Gogh, then Edvard Munch and most recently Henry Fuseli. Doig will be the first living artist to exhibit there. No pressure then. Perhaps he shouldn’t worry. After all, say what you like about Van Gogh, Munch and Fuseli, not one of their paintings sold for £5.7m at auction while they were alive. This happened in 2007 when Doig’s painting White Canoe, which was expected to fetch £1m, went for a sum that made Doig, for a while, Europe’s most expensive living painter. Not that he saw the proceeds: the painting belonged to Charles Saatchi. To Doig, the sale seemed a symptom of an art market gone mad, yet it helped establish his reputation while also proving that rumours of painting’s death were exaggerated. ‘A painterly poet of snow’ … Alpinist, painted last year. Photograph: Peter Doig The jeopardy is ramped up further because Doig, an inveterate deadline surfer, hasn’t finished the paintings for the show. At his home-cum-studio in east London, he coughs and splutters his way through the interview, and looks as shattered as anyone who has been up working until 4am would be. He dispatched his second wife, Parinaz Mogadassi, and their three young children on a trip to Paris, so that he could better focus on the eight to 10 paintings he plans to exhibit. “I’m coughing all the time because of the fumes,” he says. Paint fumes have long been an occupational hazard: Doig’s sinuses are often clogged thanks to the thinners he uses, but working with the studio windows closed during a London winter makes matters worse. “It’s not,” he says, “a very healthy way to go about living.” Yet on he goes, often working through the night in order to, if not complete his works, then to meticulously make them shine next to the Courtauld jewels – from Seurat’s studies for La Grande Jatte to Cézanne’s bathers and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. “To put your work right next to paintings of that quality and that history is terrifying. You’re there for a beating basically.” I didn’t want to be a tourist or a voyeur in Trinidad. A lot of my work questions me being there Doig first saw these masterpieces as an art student in London in the 1980s. At the time he was toiling unfashionably at the easel while more eminent young British artists pickled sharks or embroidered tents. “I really enjoyed being a painter,” he says. “I was very happy outside the zeitgeist.” But there was a problem: he felt intimidated by the old masters he so admired. Only when he went on to do a master’s degree, aged 31, at Chelsea School of Art, did Doig make that anxiety work for him. “I had a strange epiphany,” he told me when I interviewed him 11 years ago. “I started making paintings influenced by artists I’d always admired but never dared encroach on.” This proved his making. In the seminal Milky Way he riffed on Van Gogh’s Starry Night, while Echo Lake self-consciously drew on Munch’s Ashes, in which a woman with red hair holds her hands over her head. But Doig didn’t just find inspiration from long-dead painters. His peripatetic childhood also proved an endless resource. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, he lived in Trinidad from the ages of two to seven, then in Canada until 19. He attended nine schools and never spent more than two years in one home. Encroaching on the greats … Night Bathers, from 2019. Photograph: Peter Doig, Courtesy Courtauld Institute Perhaps he should thank his father for catalysing his wanderlust and for the passionate fitfulness that marks his approach to painting. “My dad always had itchy feet,” says Doig. “He was always changing jobs and moving on.” Accountancy was David Doig’s profession but painting was a hobby that followed him like a shadow. “He was a good painter. It was frustrating because he had no real confidence in his work – in the sense that he didn’t really give it the time it merited. When he died, I published a book of his paintings and people were surprised at how interesting they were.” What did he paint? “Abstracted realities, quite unusual things. He always had a painting, or a few paintings, going. But sometimes he would stop work on one for six months or longer.” Like father, like son, I say. “Very much so. Like me, he was easily distracted.” Sign up to Art Weekly Free weekly newsletter Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions 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 don’t like finishing things. I like paintings that make you wonder if they’re finished Doig’s unfinished paintings, including some for the Courtauld, follow him around the world. “Some I started in New York, others in Trinidad. Often I’d do them in distemper paint, then roll them up and post them to myself, making sure they are fumigated so termites don’t eat through the canvas stretchers. I don’t like finishing things really. I like to have things on the go. Actually, I like paintings where you can question whether they’re finished.” Many of the Cézannes at Tate Modern’s current retrospective are like that, he says. “Some look like they were taken off the easel by someone else.” Doig enjoys returning to former homelands, especially his beloved Trinidad, which he visited in 2000 on a residency with fellow British painter Chris Ofili. It was supposed to last two months but Doig, along with his first wife, Bonnie Kennedy, stayed for more than a decade. They raised five children there together before separating a decade ago. Kennedy died in 2019. What was the allure of Trinidad? It’s easy for me to imagine that the Scottish-Canadian – among other things, a painterly poet of snow – found an invigorating sunburst of colour in Trinidad, just as Gauguin and Matisse did while travelling south. “There was something of that,” he says. “But I also had great childhood memories that drew me back. I was a bit anxious about what the reception would be for a white man going back to a former colony. I didn’t want to be a tourist, or a voyeur. A lot of my work questions me, or someone like me, being there.” ‘This painting is about being complicit, being involved in something terrible’ … Two Trees, from 2017. Photograph: Peter Doig/Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London That questioning surfaces in Two Trees, one of his best recent paintings. It’s another Trinidadian picture, originally commissioned by the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum to sit alongside its works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, most notably Hunters in the Snow. Like that famous scene, Doig’s painting is dominated by bare-limbed trees, but it goes way beyond the Flemish master’s vision, having been inspired by a view from his window in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. Three nocturnal figures stand before the sea, silhouetted by a setting moon like escapees from a Munch fjord. “To me,” Doig has said, “the painting is about being complicit, being involved in something terrible.” His conceit was that, in looking east through those trees, “you’re looking straight towards Africa. You think about that journey across the ocean, where so many people here came from.” Two Trees incarnates something that has haunted Doig: the problem of a white man engaging with a culture scarred by the slavery other white men visited on Africans. Doig had hoped to show Two Trees at the Courtauld, but sadly it can’t travel from the Met in New York. Shadow was a very different calypsonian, with his stage fright and shyness. He was such a lovable figure Trinidad, despite Doig’s fears, embraced him. “I found people very welcoming,” says the artist, who in turn embraced its culture, falling in love with calypso and soca music. Which brings us back to the Courtauld. Although Doig won’t let me see what he’s working on, an obliging press officer shows me a handful of low-res images depicting works in progress. One features the late, great Trinidadian calypsonian The Mighty Shadow, AKA Winston McGarland Bailey, a recurring figure in Doig’s work, whom he often depicts in his customary costume of skeleton suit, Borsalino hat and guitar slung over his shoulder. Even though The Mighty Shadow was a beloved figure, there is often something sinister in Doig’s portrayals – as if suggesting, as with his canoe motifs, death is at hand. What drew Doig to the musician? “Shadow was a real voice of the people. He sang about hardship, poverty, life, love. He was very different from other calypsonians. Shadow kept the catchiness while expressing things that made him vulnerable – his stage fright, his shyness. He was such a lovable figure.” When it comes to painting, Doig is a bit like The Mighty Shadow: self-doubting yet stalwart, embracing tradition yet remaking it on his own terms. I look sidelong at the artist, tired-eyed and sniffly. “The last couple of months before a show are always like this,” he says. “Overwhelming.” He’s not exactly nodding off, but it can’t be long before he does, doubtless while still picking over the massive failure he so fears. Not that there’s much chance of that. Peter Doig is at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 10 February to 29 May.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/27/rem-christine-and-the-queens-marilyn-our-favourite-interviews-2016

Music

2016-12-27T08:00:06.000Z

Michael Hann

REM, Christine and the Queens, Marilyn and more – our favourite interviews of 2016

REM by Michael Hann I had a startling October, during which I got to interview Bruce Springsteen and REM. The former was the one I had been waiting for – the chance to talk to the man who had soundtracked my early middle age. But the latter turned out to be the one I felt most deeply about. REM were one of the most important bands of my teens and early 20s – in my memory, at least, I fell asleep every night listening to either Murmur or Fables of the Reconstruction on headphones. I was awfully nervous about meeting Michael Stipe, not just because his music had meant so much to me, but also because so many latter-day interviews had turned out to be cantankerous affairs. In fact, he was delightful. You’re never going to mistake him for Peter Ustinov – there are no anecdotes beginning, “So, Zsa Zsa Gabor and I boarded the Orient Express with a case of very fine whisky, a pair of budgerigars and one passport between us… ” – but he was engaging and engaged company, forthright and as honest as a rock star will ever be. Before I travelled to the States to speak to him, my 16-year-old daughter had asked who I was going to meet. I told her. “Oh, they’re cool,” she said. I pointed out she had barely listened to REM; “Yeah, but people know they’re cool anyway.” I repeated that story to Stipe. “Cool? From a 16-year-old?” he said. “I’ll take that.” Then – to my astonishment and delight – he went hunting through REM HQ for memorabilia to sign for her. I have to admit, I was on the brink of tears. Rarely has an interviewee confounded me so completely. Read the interview here Jamie T by Rachel Aroesti Although I was an early Jamie T devotee, one thing I completely failed to pick up on as a teenage indie enthusiast was the way he wove the topic of anxiety into his music (you’d think the name of his debut, Panic Prevention, might have been a clue). Before I met him, I looked back at past reviews and interviews, and was reminded that it wasn’t just me – at that time so many things connected to mental health were simply glossed over by a confused public. Even if Jamie Treays didn’t know why he’d decided to bravely confront such a stigma, it was fascinating to hear how he’d done so in the face of a dismissive and largely unsympathetic response over the years – as well as how he now seemed determined to call the shots in his career in order to look after his mental health. Read the interview here Bon Iver by Laura Barton Bon Iver … red line fever. Photograph: Cameron Wittig There’s something very special about interviewing an artist over the course of their career – as if every few years you pick up the thread of a conversation and simply carry on. I think it can result in something quite unusual in terms of illumination and honesty, and bring a broader perspective on a musician’s career. I’ve been fortunate enough to have just such a long-running conversation with Justin Vernon since his debut in 2008. This summer in Minneapolis I met him again to discuss his third record, 22, A Million, and the despair, love, determination and fierce friendship that led to its making. Read the interview here Tony Conrad by Ben Beaumont-Thomas As social media calcifies debate into entrenched positions and Spotify sells your moods back to you, raise a glass to Tony Conrad, an artist who never let himself be neatly packaged up. In perhaps the last interview before his death in April, after suffering from prostate cancer, he reflected on a life that took in everything from giving the Velvet Underground their name, to meeting his wife dressed as a mummy for an erotic underground movie – and the creation of masterful drone music. Most important to him, though, was a project highlighting children’s academic achievements on local TV. “It wasn’t art, it wasn’t social service, it wasn’t teaching – it was nothing!” he said joyfully. “My whole life project, my whole art, had gone down into some kind of black hole.” We need more like him: people who grow in the cracks of a consumer culture, and split it apart. Read the interview here Patti Smith by Tim Jonze Whenever I get the chance to meet a rock’n’roll icon – and how could you possibly describe Patti Smith if not as a rock’n’roll icon – the initial excitement swiftly dissolves into anxiety. As I start to read up on them, the stomach knots usually increase: Patti Smith used to scream obscenities in the faces of boorish hecklers; she slept in graveyards; she took on the entire rock patriarchy. By the time I arrived at this interview and realised that, owing to a mixup, I’d kept her waiting an hour already, I accepted that we were going to be in for a testing time. Imagine my surprise then when she took me arm in arm, apologised for the delay to my day, and began rhapsodising about the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park. She was warm, maternal and extremely generous with her time – but she did take a minute to angrily admonish a group of people loitering nearby who were talking too loudly, which reassured me that this really was the correct Patti Smith I was talking to. Read the interview here Christine and the Queens by Laura Snapes Christine and the Queens … total candour. Photograph: Matthew Baker/Getty Images Over a two and a half hour lunch with Héloïse Letissier in Paris this August, we shared a very un-Parisian bottle of sparkling water. But when we parted ways – Letissier to a blood test to assuage her hypochondria – I felt drunk on her. I took a cab to Place des Vosges and walked aimlessly until I emerged from my daze a few hours later. Even though she was the one being grilled, Letissier makes you feel seen. “You are introverted as well,” she observed kindly, which might have knocked me off-guard if she hadn’t said it to a writer friend of mine a few months earlier. Not that she’s manipulative: Letissier is eloquent, intensely intelligent and warm with it. I’d read more than 300 French press clippings (and as many in English) as slightly anal interview prep. There’s always the danger that there’s nothing left to know when you go that far down the rabbit hole. But given Letissier’s total candour and apparent ability to discuss anything incisively, I could have talked to her for three times longer. Read the interview here Madness by Simon Hattenstone I thought I could cope with the full Madness. No way, said the publicist, two is more than you can handle. He was right, of course. An hour of Suggs and Kix talking at you in a Camden pub and you feel battered. Great fun, mind. Wonderful stories (if at times I wondered whether they indulged in the old poetic licence) from the Nutty Boys. My favourite bit is their nostalgia for the good old days when you got hit on the head with bicycle chains, which made me smile (not that I’m advocating it). And Suggs’s tale about seeing Amy Winehouse just before she died had me welling up. Read the interview here Marilyn by Alexis Petridis Like anyone who’s read Boy George’s autobiographies, I approached interviewing Marilyn with a degree of caution. Before, during and immediately after his brush with early 80s fame, he sounded like a bit of a nightmare: he happily described himself as “vile”. Furthermore, he’d subsequently spent decades in drug-addled seclusion. But I was also fascinated by him, not least the fact that, 30 years on, he looked like a very modern kind of pop star: more famous himself than the records he made, a bigger star than his commercial success suggested. He turned out to be a dream interviewee: charming, funny, self-aware, unflinching in telling his extraordinary story. The subsequent piece went viral: at one point it was the most-read thing on the entire Guardian website. “How would I know if people were still interested in me?” he snorted when I asked him if he was surprised that people still cared, 32 years after he’d last had a hit. “I was locked in a fucking room for years, taking drugs and watching Alien.” Read the interview here Teenage Fanclub by Jude Rogers The story of Teenage Fanclub is not a drama of epic proportions – if you’re looking for whiteouts and breakdowns, take your snarl elsewhere, sunshine – but a loving, gently evolving story of a band who’ve been together their whole adult lives, writing beautiful songs and taking their fans with them. Being asked to write about what a band means and feels to people was a particular delight; music’s often about the image and the narrative, of course, but it’s also about the endorphin surge when those chords start to chime. In the commercial-success stakes, nearly-men TFC will always be. For those of us who love them, that’s enough. Read the interview here Little Mix by Michael Cragg Little Mix … hair today. Photograph: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images Little Mix are a very modern pop band. Formed on The X Factor and born and raised under the scrutiny of a social-media world, they should, like their peers, be media-trained to within an inch of their lives. Brilliantly, almost miraculously, they still have absolutely no filter, which makes interviewing them a complete joy. Some parts of our chat – conducted over a heated game of Popstars Top Trumps and covering a stolen lamb shank, RuPaul and Syria – proved too scandalous to print, which is how I wish all pop-star interviews would go. Read the interview here Richard Ashcroft by Dave Simpson I first interviewed Richard Ashcroft in Wigan in his pre-supernova Verve days, when journalists dubbed him Mad Richard because of his tendency to offer such pronouncements such as “I can fly.” Nowadays, acid and grandiosity have given way to family life, wealth, sobriety and battles with depression, but he didn’t need more than a couple of mineral waters to turn back into Mad Richard. I’m sure his estranged former bandmates will have their own views on how superstardom affected him, but at least for a couple of hours in a pub on a sunny afternoon, he seemed to cherish the opportunity to become his old self. Read the interview here Endearing … Phil Collins. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images Phil Collins by Dorian Lynskey I had pursued an interview with Phil Collins because I was fascinated by his story. What I took for granted at the time now seemed like a very peculiar journey: one of the most admired drummers of the 70s becomes one of the biggest, most unlikely and, eventually, most divisive stars of the 80s, before entering an uneasy retirement. His career was extreme even though his music wasn’t. Many veteran stars are too smooth and complacent to be rewarding interviewees, but Collins is one of those unfortunate souls in whom minor slights take up far more headspace than major achievements. I found his intense vulnerability very endearing. Read the interview here Barry Hyde by Harriet Gibsone An interview with Barry Hyde, whose stark and elegant portrayal of bipolar disorder was the heart of his solo album Malody, was the piece I received the most feedback for. It was a feature I was proud to have been part of. Hyde, known by many as the frontman of the buoyant Sunderland art pop group the Futureheads, was open and articulate about his experience of mental-health problems, from his false awakening in the Arizona desert to his diagnosis and the trauma of the years that followed. Although keen not to be presented as a crusader, his message to men similar to him, men from Sunderland, or any working-class town who might not be expressive or open about their feelings, was a pertinent antithesis of the usual copy-shifting promo we normally encounter. Read the interview here Read more on the best music of 2016

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2022/may/26/peter-dutton-a-ferocious-partisan-is-now-trying-to-walk-both-sides-of-the-street

Australia news

2022-05-26T06:42:26.000Z

Katharine Murphy

Peter Dutton, a ferocious partisan, is now trying to walk both sides of the street | Katharine Murphy

Last time Peter Dutton wanted to be the leader of the Liberal party, he thought he might smile more. After the Queenslander’s right faction moved against Malcolm Turnbull in August 2018, ending a months-long proxy war for the prime ministership between himself and Scott Morrison, Dutton thought he’d have liked to bring asylum seekers back from offshore detention “on a charter flight overnight” if he wasn’t constrained by the hardman rules of his portfolio. During this brief hearts-and-minds tour, to the astonishment of many colleagues, Dutton continued with the extemporising and emoting. He felt consumer energy prices could be lower if he removed the GST from power bills. Bugger the states. Perhaps Australia also needed a royal commission into the power companies. Peter Dutton pledges to make Liberal party a ‘broad church’ as he confirms leadership tilt Read more The intermittent smiling and the rollercoaster pitch didn’t get him there. Morrison got the numbers, got the prime ministership, won an election, then failed upwards. Last Saturday, the Liberal party was trounced in its progressive metropolitan heartland because the personal brand Morrison cultivated had turned toxic. If the Liberal party had full control of its destiny, or if there were a suite of viable options, this political movement would not be presenting a fresh leadership team of Dutton and Barnaby Joyce as the answer to Saturday’s electoral rout, because – how can I put this politely? – that would be nuts. The next leader of the Liberal party was supposed to be Josh Frydenberg. Dutton would have wanted the opposition leadership, and fought Frydenberg for it, but I strongly suspect Frydenberg would have won. Senior moderates have been steeling themselves for the ascension of Dutton for weeks given the likelihood that Frydenberg would lose Kooyong. Colleagues have been telling themselves Dutton is more complicated than the performative absurdity he carries on with. Yes, Dutton can be a parody of a hardman, a Saturday Night Live sketch, but he’s actually bright, personable and competent when he clocks off from playing the role of Peter Dutton. He’s not sneaky. He’s straightforward. Colleagues also tell themselves and each other that Dutton will need to refashion himself into a plausible portrait of putative prime ministership, and that will be an automatic stabiliser to any wholesale lurch to the right. There are a couple of problems with this thesis. The first is this optimism overlooks recent history. Dutton is not going into the prime ministership, where prime ministerial tone is required; he’s going into opposition. The Coalition has craved high visibility contrast in opposition, alpha male swagger, burning the village to save the village. Perhaps Dutton has the credibility and clout within his faction to repudiate Tony Abbott’s playbook. Anything is possible. But this would be one hell of a shapeshift. Dutton, like Abbott, is a ferocious partisan. This cohort of politician tends to think that ends justify means. Dutton’s record in public life in fact speaks only to ferocious partisanship: Manchurian candidates, Chinese spy ships, late campaign boat arrivals. This reckless, destructive, self-serving caper might delight 2GB and the Sky News nightshift, but Canberra’s defence and intelligence establishment felt the need to distance themselves from Dutton’s ripping yarns in a way I’ve not seen in more than two decades of political reporting. Anthony Albanese did inject an ameliorating character assessment after Dutton finally confirmed on Thursday that his big moment had arrived. Albanese said Dutton was a trustworthy character; someone who kept counsel when necessary and did what they said they would do – an assessment that rings true. This quality certainly isn’t everything, but it is something in Australia’s tortured, brutal, half-unhinged politics. The test will be whether Dutton persists with these positive character traits when he’s on the path to the biggest prize in politics. Dutton has just watched Albanese (the former Tory fighter) win the prime ministership with a political strategy that wasn’t entirely about winner-takes-all. Dutton is human. Perhaps he can learn. In any case, Dutton’s got a huge job ahead. The remaining Liberal moderates have zero interest in being shackled to a doctrine of numpty populism espoused by the faux everyman of Australia’s Trump-lite political right – seeing that as a recipe for permanent opposition. They will want Dutton to grapple with hard electoral arithmetic – the reality that the Liberals can’t lose six or more heartland seats in major cities and then expect to form majority government in the future. Some rightwingers will want Dutton to push through with the strategy Morrison tried and failed to execute in the 2022 campaign: writing off metropolitan professionals and grabbing outer suburban and regional seats from Labor. They’ll think Dutton is a better frontman for that strategy, and that’s probably right in theory. Scott Morrison confirms he will remain in politics after election defeat Read more Dutton will also fancy his capacity to bounce off a new Labor government trying to avoid the crosshairs of a progressive parliament. Dutton’s experience will tell him just as the election of 2022 is a correction to the poll of 2019, 2025 can be a correction to the centrist progressivism of 2022 if Albanese can’t keep his agenda on an even keel. So there’s opportunity, and opportunity consistent with Dutton’s political brand. But managerially, Dutton has the significant challenge of keeping his own house in order. The remaining Liberal moderates want to refill the broad church rather than empty it, and if the new leader tacks too far right, he could easily split his own party. Dutton is opening by trying to walk all sides of the street. He told his old mate Ray Hadley on Thursday morning: “The Liberal party has to get back to being the Liberal party, the broad church, making sure we represent all Australians but with a particular focus on people out in the suburbs, people who are doing it tough, people who are struggling to fill up the cars at the moment, people who are working hard and getting nowhere.” A head pat for the right. A head pat for the left. Hadley tried to prompt him to declare a side. The Sydney shock jock thought the Liberals under Dutton might be a broad church with “a conservative leaning”. Dutton didn’t take the bait. He said he was a suburban guy who had remained true to his values, but he’d learned during the Howard era that things worked best when there was a fusion of views between wets and dries. On Thursday there was no reference to smiling more, or scratch royal commissions into power companies. Dutton said he wasn’t an extreme rightwinger. He wasn’t religious. He was the leader of the Liberal party, not the moderate conservative party or the conservative moderate party. Dutton’s locution this time was about showing Australian voters the complete character. Leadership furnished that opportunity. Well, Peter. By all means. We’re watching. Bring it on.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/21/uc-davis-health-and-safety

World news

2011-11-21T17:05:00.000Z

Joshua Clover

Who is the real 'health and safety risk' at UC Davis? | Joshua Clover

UC Davis campus police use pepper spray on students. Video: Guardian YouTube A spectre is haunting the United States – the spectre of tents. Apparently, they are the greatest threat to order, to education, and perhaps to capitalism, in a generation or more. The Occupy movement encampments have caused extraordinary repression.Two weeks ago, Occupy Cal returned the movement to the UC Berkeley campus – revitalising the wave of occupations, strikes and walkouts against privatisation and austerity that had spread rapidly throughout the University of California system in 2009-2010. In two separate showdowns with police, non-violent campers joined arms and stood their ground on a grubby knoll at the margin of Sproul Plaza, iconic home to campus militancy in the United States. The beatings that followed were immediate, unconscionable – and recorded. Some campers were thrown to the ground, dragged by their hair, hospitalised. The hurry and panic of the police insisted on a single, hysterical directive: not one tent should be raised. In response, the students called for a system-wide strike on 15 November. Strike day at the University of California's Davis campus (where I work) ended with a 20-hour occupation of the administrative bunker. Students were allowed to remain, a rare event in the United States – but Linda Katehi, the University's chancellor, has generally been thought among the administrative classes to have a light, deft touch in these situations. The protest was largely defused, and most students left of their own accord. But they also decided to start Occupy UCD on last Thursday, pitching 25 tents in the autumnal chill. The next morning, news came that they would not be allowed to maintain an encampment. "Health and safety risks" were cited, per the brutally ironic mantra of the powers that be. Promptly, at 3pm on Friday afternoon, riot police from three jurisdictions massed around the corner, and began shambling across the lawn clubs drawn, guns raised. The students are not experienced fighters, by and large. But they are serious people. They huddled together in a last flurry of decision, and decided to stay. They joined arms in front of the tents, which occupied a tiny fraction of the great quad and looked less like a health and safety risk than a nice advert for a wilderness supply shop. The pro forma order to disperse was given as the students endeavored to note they weren't violating any policy whatsoever. The cops advanced as the students chanted, made some quick arrests, charging in to grab a few kids and throw them to the ground, handcuffing them with zip ties. At this point, the growing crowd of protesters formed a very calm, even cheerful circle – facing outward – around the four dozen officers and sat down, arms linked here and there. They did not wish to see their comrades removed, and let this be known. What followed would shortly become the lead story in the national news. Although video shows police entering and leaving the circle without difficulty, joking and turning their backs on the protesters, they decided that they were trapped and under threat. A couple officers exited the ring of students led by one Lt John Pike who, with the demeanor of a bored groundkeeper, sprayed "pepper spray" directly in the faces of some 30 students, at the range of just a few inches. When this failed to disperse everyone, he went in closer, making sure to get the eyes if he hadn't on first pass and, when possible, to spray down the throats of young people sitting down on a lawn. People cried out in horror and pain. And the police seem to retreat before the growing fury of the amassed crowd. Pike was unleashed by the campus police chief Annette Spicuzza, who has now been placed on leave, but of course, the riot squads were summoned and set loose by Linda Katehi herself. Because of, well, the tents. She subsequently sent first one and then another email to the campus community that oscillated between contemptible and pathetic: "pepper spray was used", we learn. No mention that this mysterious passive use of pepper spray was in absolute violation of every single policy to hand, including the findings of the ACLU. Eventually, Katehi conceded that "the video is chilling to us all" – though, surely, the chill of the students sent to hospital differs from the chill of a chancellor who authored the health and safety risk herself. Following a call by assistant professor Nathan Brown, the Davis Faculty Association has called on Chancellor Kateh to resign. Letters of support pour in from around the globe; an online petition has received more than 50,000 signatures; academic boycotts of Davis are bruited. This may happen; when such administrated violence makes international news, heads sometimes roll. There is a move afoot as well to turn UC Davis and perhaps the wider university system into a series of sanctuary campuses, where police are not welcome. The evidence is incontrovertible: police pose a far greater risk to health and safety, let alone to free speech and civil rights, than do tents. They do not belong in our places of learning.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2024/apr/21/ryan-gravenberch-jurgen-klopp-midfield-liverpool

Football

2024-04-21T20:13:53.000Z

Simon Burnton

Gravenberch tries to make his case for Klopp’s midfield | Simon Burnton

Travelling across London for this game the trains seemed full of exhausted‑looking people carrying a medal and a slight limp. Liverpool’s own marathon approaches what they hope will be a similarly rewarded conclusion with only the tiredness guaranteed. They took another weary step towards a potentially positive outcome here, hauling themselves back to parity on points with Arsenal at the top of the table. It was the result they needed, with the team they had to play, and that was enough. With a nearly fit squad Jürgen Klopp said after the game that “the situation at the moment is as good as it has been all season”, superstitiously banging a table as he did so. It was not just the manager touching wood: he used the flexibility all those fit footballers afforded him to pack his bench with superstars: of the 10 players with the most minutes for Liverpool this season in all competitions seven were among the substitutes. “I hate thinking about the game after the one in front of us,” Klopp said, but with three away fixtures in a week and the second of those at Everton on Wednesday his hand was forced. “We made these changes,” he said, “because we were 100% convinced we had to.” Premier League weekend awards: Trent Alexander-Arnold returns in style Read more Some players will be looking forward to the end of the season more than others, and in some cases tiredness will not be a factor in this feeling. Ryan Gravenberch is 19th on the list of the players Klopp has called upon most across this campaign – in all this was just the sixth time the Dutchman has played as many as 70 minutes: three times now against Fulham, and three against everyone else. But for all that his goal was key in guiding Liverpool to victory he could not truly grasp this latest chance to demonstrate his suitability for a role in the German’s midfield. He has already been linked with a summer move away from Anfield, but if he is to stay perhaps he will feel a measure of relief that Klopp has only five more midfields to pick. This was a hard one for Gravenberch to shine in, with Wataru Endo’s role at the base of the triangle so clearly defined and Harvey Elliott’s on the right so loosely. The Dutchman floated around his left side of central midfield while notionally alongside him his fellow 21-year-old scampered constantly, on the right-wing one minute, offering support on the left the next, before dropping back to cover for one of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s excursions. Gravenberch has an unusual ability to appear still even when in motion, which while impressive in its way only emphasised the contrast with Elliott’s constant, frantic and very obvious action. Trent Alexander-Arnold was exceptional for Liverpool despite playing the most minutes he has in four months. Photograph: Ashley Western/Colorsport/Shutterstock Even so it is easy to see why Liverpool considered him worth the £34.3m that brought him to the club last summer. He is the kind of player who makes the game seem effortless, crowbarred uncomfortably, if only occasionally, into a side that demands extraordinary effort. There are teams, perhaps even this one on occasions, in which the bubble of complete calm that Gravenberch tends to inhabit would be more appreciated, but here he often seemed a spectator as his teammates bustled around him. When key moments were replayed he was often to be found on the fringes of the screen, slightly out of focus. Fulham’s equaliser was a case in point: he was one of two Liverpool players who found themselves just a couple of yards away as the ball ran to Timothy Castagne. The other, Andy Robertson, threw himself forwards in an effort to get in the way and beat the turf in frustration when it proved futile; Gravenberch remained a couple of yards away, watching him do it. They often seemed to be playing completely different games, but there were a couple of occasions when Elliott and Gravenberch combined convincingly. One was in the 53rd minute, when the Englishman cut off Alex Iwobi’s attempted crossfield pass and found his teammate in space on the edge of the D; the other was the complicated celebratory handshake routine that followed a few seconds later. With no defender on hand to pierce his bubble, Gravenberch turned before stroking a deliciously unhurried shot into the corner of the net, his first league goal for the club. He is young, and there is talent there, but perhaps Klopp, for all his genius, is not the man to find it. 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. Alexander-Arnold’s, meanwhile, is irresistible. It may be that in the early stages here a couple of his trademark crossfield passes were picked off by Fulham defenders – thereafter it was not so much that his accuracy improved as that he stopped trying – but for the 80 minutes he was on the pitch, the most he has played in more than four months, he, like the free-kick with which he opened the scoring, was exceptional. Beside the river, Trent flowed. Liverpool’s title challenge, unlike all those knackered athletes, is still up and running.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/nils-pratley-on-finance/2020/dec/16/heathrows-third-runway-has-always-been-rotten-idea-time-to-end-this-saga

Environment

2020-12-16T20:04:26.000Z

Nils Pratley

Heathrow third runway has always been rotten idea – time to end this saga | Nils Pratley

Cleared for takeoff? Of course not. The supreme court has ruled that Heathrow’s third runway can proceed, but the chances of the thing being built still look remote. The obstacle of legality – admittedly, a large obstruction – has been removed, but the list of problems remains long. One is whether demand still exists for an extra 700 flights a day. Even when the pandemic passes, who can really estimate the long-term impact of Zoom on the critical business traveller market? Heathrow handled 80 million passengers in 2018 and has seen only 20 million so far this year. Achieving 130 million in 2030, which is what the airport needs to support its enormous scheme, looks a stretch. Then there’s the question of how the consortium behind Heathrow would pay for a third runway. The airport, one of the most expensive in the world, is already in a state of war with airlines over landing fees to recover Covid costs. Even if the airlines and the Civil Aviation Authority could be bullied, giving fees a second crank to accumulate funds for a new runway would risk making the demand problem worse. And the most formidable hurdle, despite the supreme court’s ruling, is still the UK’s binding commitment to net zero emissions by 2050. The Climate Change Committee, the government’s official adviser, is wedded to the concept of “no net expansion of airports”, and David Joffe, its head of carbon budgets, spelled out what that means in practice last week. “Clearly the most high-profile potential increase in capacity is in the south-east, and if that expansion of capacity goes ahead, then that means not only no expansion of regional airports, but that some of them would have to restrict flights or would have to close,” he said. New technology and cleaner aviation fuel could change the emissions calculations, but those improvements lie over the horizon. Closing a regional airport or two, to allow more transatlantic travellers to change planes west of London sounds like an impossible demand in the age of “levelling up”. Heathrow is obliged to continue to whistle its happy tune about how a third runway would “allow Global Britain to become a reality” but one wonders whether its own executives even believe it. One suspects they wouldn’t mind terribly if the government pulled the plug, thereby improving the airport’s claim for compensation for the vast sums already spent on developing plans. Somebody, though, should put an end to this saga. A third runway at Heathrow was always a rotten idea – it’s the wrong place to expand. Dixons Carphone can wait but can’t forget to make a decision The morality of repaying business rates relief is straightforward in many cases. The big four supermarkets and B&M, with their doors open throughout lockdown, obviously had to do the decent thing and cough up. So, too, B&Q owner Kingfisher, now joined by Travis Perkins in respect of its Wickes and Toolstation businesses, equal beneficiaries of the DIY boom. But what about Dixons Carphone? On one hand, the electricals retailer was another lockdown winner. Wednesday’s half-year figures showed like-for-like sales growth of 16% and a tripling of topline profits to £95m in the UK and Ireland as punters summoned laptops and PlayStations by ordering online. On the other hand, the group’s stores were classed as non-essential and so had to close during lockdown, which is an important consideration when one’s talking about relief from a property-based tax. And look at what Dixons’ direct rivals are doing. The John Lewis Partnership takes the view that values are great, but only when they can be afforded, so won’t be returning anything for its Waitrose stores that were open. Sainsbury’s, when handing back £440m of relief for its supermarkets, kept Argos’s £40m, so it would seem a tad harsh to be angry with Dixons. And Amazon and AO.com, the other big players, are online-only and making hay. Dixons’ inelegant solution was to play for time. No sums will go to the Treasury immediately, but the board may take a different view in six months’ time when, one hopes, a jabbed-up world is functioning more normally. In truth, Dixons should probably repay something since it clearly needed no help to get through the pandemic, which was the other principle behind the Treasury’s relief scheme. So, yes, wait for the full-year numbers if you must. Just don’t forget to make a decision.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/sep/28/patrick-leigh-fermor-mani-peninsula-greece

Travel

2012-09-28T09:12:00.000Z

Kevin Rushby

On the trail of Patrick Leigh Fermor in Greece

Old Mr Fotis turned my question over in his mind while sipping his morning coffee. Below the veranda some youths had been playing noisily on the harbour wall, but now they all dived into the turquoise sea and set off on the long swim to the rocky island in the bay. It had a fragment of crenellated wall on top of it, the ruins of a Venetian fortress. Fotis watched them go, half-smiling. "We do seem to attract a lot of writers," said the old man eventually. "But that's a name I don't remember." "Bruce Chatwin, Baroose Chit-win, Chaatwing." I tried a few variations but none struck a chord. "His ashes are scattered somewhere in the hills." "No, I never heard of him." "What about Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor? You must know about him." I'd first heard of Kardamyli because of Leigh Fermor, who had made the place his home. I'd always hoped we might meet, but then the grand old man of British travel writing had died in June 2011 (leaving the literary world praying that he had finished the final volume of his Time of Gifts trilogy). I'd come to the Mani on a sort of literary homage, hoping to find a little of the magic that had attracted first Leigh Fermor and later Chatwin. The old man shook his head. "No, I don't think so. There was a writer called Robert. Now he was famous – cured himself of cancer by walking around Crete. [Former South Africa cricketer Bob Crisp wrote of his walk around Crete in the 1970s.] He was very famous." This felt all wrong. Was I in the right place? How annoying that the locals should raise this unknown above the two giants of travel literature. An orange tree in Greece's Mani region. Photograph: Kevin Rushby Fotis leaned back and shouted in Greek to his wife in the kitchen. She came through, cloth in hand. "Robert Crisp," she said, smiling. "What a wonderful man! So handsome! I remember him sitting up at Dioskouri's taverna drinking and talking with Paddy. They were always laughing." My ears pricked up. Fotis's face underwent a transformation. "Ah Paddy! That is him – your English writer. Of course, Paddy – or Michali we called him. Yes, Paddy was here for years and years. When I was young we used to say he was a British spy and had a tunnel going out to sea where submarines would come." It didn't surprise me. Leigh Fermor had been, by all accounts, extremely old school, endlessly curious and an accomplished linguist – all well-known attributes of British spies. He produced a clutch of good books and two classics of the genre, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, detailing his journey as an 18-year-old on foot to Constantinople. "Did you see a lot of him?" I asked. Fotis shrugged. "Sometimes. He liked to walk a lot. Now Robert Crisp – I used to see him. What a character!" "Is Paddy's house still empty?" I persisted. "I heard it was now a museum." Fotis shook his head. "No, no. He left it to the Benaki Museum in Athens (benaki.gr) and they're supposed to turn it into a writers' centre. My guess is nothing will happen for a while." I could hardly complain about Greek tardiness: Leigh Fermor himself had taken 78 years over his trilogy, and even then no one seemed very sure if he had completed the task. There was, I decided, only one way to get close to the spirit of these colossi of travel-writing: to walk. "Which paths did Paddy like best?" Fotis fetched a map and gave me directions. It was already hot when I left him on his veranda. I could see the youths lazing on the harbour wall again, tired by their long swim. Was this really the time of year for walking? I headed through the ruined village, as instructed, and found a narrow steep path rising up the hillside. Before too long I came across the stone tomb that locals say is the grave of Castor and Pollux, heavenly twins and brothers to Helen of Troy. Kardamyli is mentioned in Homer's Iliad as one of the seven towns that Agamemnon gave to Achilles. Sweat was pouring off me now, but I kept going. Scents of thyme and sage rose from the undergrowth. Fotis had said there were lots of snakes up here, but I didn't see any. The views of the bay below, however, were becoming more and more magnificent. The Mani is the middle finger of the three-pronged southern Peloponnese, a 40-mile long skeletal digit that was almost inaccessible, except by sea, until recently. When Leigh Fermor first came here in 1951, it was by a marathon mountain hike across the Taygetus range, whose slopes seem always to be either burned dry by summer sun, or weighted with winter snow. War tower in the Taygetus mountains. Photograph: Kevin Rushby The people here were different. For a start they had turned vengeance into a lifelong passion, building war towers to threaten their neighbours and generally making life on a stony mountain even grimmer than it needed to be and clinging to weird atavistic beliefs. No wonder that in the 1950s most of the younger people abandoned it for places not as badly infested with saltwater ghouls and blood-sucking phantoms – Melbourne and Tottenham were particularly popular. Fotis himself had been one of them, settling in Australia for many years before coming home and opening a hotel. Nowadays some parts of the Mani are thick with holiday homes and development, but Kardamyli remains delightfully quiet and understated, the sort of Greek village where old widows in black sit out every morning watching the world go by. Having reached a good height on the mountain I started to follow the contours, dipping in and out of the shade of walnut trees and cypress, drinking clear cold water from a spring. Further on I came to the village of Proastio, where Fotis had told me there was a church for every family, the ancestors having been sailors, and very superstitious. At the gorgeous little basilica of Agios Nikolaos in the main street I got the priest to come and unlock the door, revealing a gallery of perfect 17th-century Byzantine murals. Byzantine murals in Proastio church. Photograph: Kevin Rushby I tried the name Chatwin on him, and wondered how to mime death, cremation and scattering of ashes. But the Orthodox Church does not approve of cremation and his face told me I would not get far. Returning to Kardamyli by a steep cobbled donkey trail, a kalderimi, I passed Fotis's veranda once again. "Who was that writer?" he called. "My wife thinks she knows." Anna came out. "Paddy himself scattered the ashes of a writer friend of his, up in Exochori." That was where I had just been walking, only higher. Next morning I started much earlier and with a water bottle. Fotis was already up and about when I passed his house. "Exochori is my home village," he said. "But what you see now is just old people up there. The old Maniati culture is gone. We used to grow silkworms and our mothers made all our underclothes from it. Can you believe it? We were peasants in the most remote part of Europe, but we wore silk." He tried to give me directions to the church, but it got so confusing that I just pretended to understand and resolved to ask along the way. As it happened, this was a useless strategy since the few old people I bumped into spoke no English, and my phrasebook was inexplicably silent on the important line, "Where are scattered the remains of the travel writer?" In the end I came across a small white-washed shrine with a view of the sea. There was just room to enter, and inside a votive candle burned on a tray with some fresh flowers. A white dog appeared. I elected to call it the Chatwin Church. After a few minutes of contemplation I set off again, southwards past one of the war towers, a gorgeous forest monastery and finally the unspoilt hamlet of Castania, where the taverna owner marched me into the kitchen, pointed out the various dishes and then served a vast quantity of delicious food with a jug of rough wine. It took several strong coffees to get me moving again for the long tramp home. Back in Kardamyli late that afternoon, Fotis was keen to hear of my walk, but he scoffed at my description of the Chatwin Church. "No, no! That is not it. Come on – I'll take you there." "I'm a bit tired." "Good God, we're not walking! In my car." Soon we were on a longer, twisting route. Fotis pointed out landmarks and patches of land that his family owned. I asked about his ancestors. "The Mani was always where people came to hide," he said. "Our family are said to have arrived when Byzantium fell to the Ottomans in 1453." "They came from Constantinople?" He nodded. "Our family tradition is that we were clowns for the Byzantine emperor." He smiled. "But I've no idea if that is true." He slowed the car down. "Look. This is where you turn off the main road, between the school and the cemetery." We pulled up in the shade of two pine trees then set off walking. We picked our way through some old stone houses, their walls overgrown with vines, their shutters closed. "Holiday homes now," said Fotis. "Exochori people working in Athens." Sunset above Kardamyli. Photograph: Kevin Rushby Then we were on a grassy rill of land and I could see the church, a tiny Byzantine basilica, its rough stone walls and ancient pantiles crusted with lichens. Laid out before it was a wonderful tranquil panorama of the sea, its surface smooth as a sheet of silk. It was obvious why a traveller would want to come to rest here, overlooking the sea Homer's heroes had sailed. I stood there for a long time. Fotis was searching for the key to the church, normally left in a crack or niche, but there was no sign of it and we gave up. Back in the car, I asked Fotis to point out the house of Paddy Leigh Fermor and glimpsed a low pantiled roof almost submerged in trees on a crag next to the sea. "Is there no way to see it?" He shrugged. "It's all shut up." "Is there a beach?" "Yes – a tiny one." I memorised the spot. When Leigh Fermor came to the Mani he did some impressive wild swimming. To honour his adventurous spirit I felt I should swim around to his house and take a look. So next morning, before the heat of day, I entered the sea by the harbour and swam south down the rocky coast hunting for that tiny beach. I swam for what seemed a long time and had given up and turned back when I saw it: a little shingly beach with a single-storey house above. I swam closer until I could stand in the water. It was a lovely place: deep verandas and stone walls under a pantile roof. Mosaics of pebbles had been made on a flight of steps. I called out but got no answer. The house was shuttered and quiet as though still in mourning. I waded up the beach and sat at the foot of the pebble path. I could see a colonnade with rooms off it, then a larger living room. I thought of the years that Leigh Fermor had spent here: by all accounts he was a great host and storyteller. When I'd asked one old lady in the village if she had read any of his books, she'd laughed, "Why would any of us read his books? He told us all the stories himself!" The last story had been that third volume of his epic walk across Europe, but he had never finished it, perhaps never would have. And now a great peace had descended on the place, a peace I didn't want to disturb. I walked back down to the water and swam out into the bay. Without thinking, I found myself heading for the island of Meropi, the one that those youths had swum to. I would explore the ruins of that Venetian castle. How to do it The trip was provided by Sunvil (020-8758 4758, sunvil.co.uk/greece), which has seven nights self-catering in a studio at Liakoto Apartments in Kardamyli, including flights from Gatwick to Kalamata and transfers, from £699pp. Walking tours of the Mani with guide Anna Butcher can be booked through Sunvil, which also has a nine-day all-inclusive walking tour of the Mani for £1,755pp What to read Artemis Cooper's biography, Patrick Leigh Fermor, An Adventure, will be published by John Murray on 11 October, price £25. To buy a copy for £20, including shipping, go to guardianbookshop.co.uk. Leigh Fermor never did fully finish writing the third part of his epic walk across pre-second-world-war Europe but John Murray will publish an uncompleted version of the book in 2013 "I felt like staying there forever" – Patrick Leigh Fermor on the Mani peninsula Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor Photograph: Sophie Bassouls/Corbis Beyond the bars of my window the towers descended, their walls blazoned with diagonals of light and shade; and, through a wide gap, castellated villages were poised above the sea on coils of terraces. Through another gap our host's second daughter, wide-hatted and perched on the back of a wooden sledge and grasping three reins, was sliding round and round a threshing floor behind a horse, a mule and a cow – the first cow I had seen in the Mani – all of them linked in a triple yoke. On a bank above this busy stone disc, the rest of the family were flinging wooden shovelfuls of wheat in the air for the grain to fall on outstretched coloured blankets while the husks drifted away. Others shook large sieves. The sun which climbed behind them outlined this group with a rim of gold and each time a winnower sent up his great fan, for long seconds the floating chaff embowered him in a gold mist. The sun poured into this stone casket through deep embrasures. Dust gyrated along the shafts of sunlight like plankton under a microscope, and the room was full of the aroma of decay. There was a rusty double-barrelled gun in the corner, a couple of dog-eared Orthodox missals on the shelf, and, pinned to the wall above the table, a faded oleograph of King Constantine and Queen Sophia, with King George and the Queen Mother, Olga Feodorovna, smiling with time-dimmed benevolence through wreaths of laurel. Another picture showed King Constantine's entry into re-conquered Salonika at the end of the Balkan war. On a poster, Petro Mavromichalis, the ex-war minister, between a pin-up girl cut-out from the cover of Romantzo and a 1926 calendar for the Be Smart Tailors of Madison Avenue, flashed goodwill from his paper monocle. Across this, in a hand unaccustomed to Latin script, Long live Uncle Truman was painstakingly inscribed. I felt like staying there for ever. Extracted from Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, by Patrick Leigh Fermor (John Murray, £9.99) which is available from the Guardian Bookshop (guardianbookshop.co.uk) for £7.99, including P&P

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/05/names-of-uk-covid-business-loan-applicants-to-stay-secret-tribunal-rules

Business

2023-01-05T12:15:30.000Z

Kalyeena Makortoff

Names of UK Covid business loan borrowers to stay secret, tribunal rules

The British government has been given the go-ahead to keep concealing the names of companies that received in total more than £47bn in state-backed Covid loans, after a tribunal ruled in its favour. The tribunal case had been brought by campaign group Spotlight on Corruption, amid concerns fraudsters and organised criminals had exploited government-guaranteed loans intended for struggling firms during the pandemic. Spotlight claimed this fraud could have been prevented in part through greater transparency, particularly on which companies secured bounce-back loans, which had fewer checks in order to get funds to businesses at speed. However, the tribunal backed the government-owned British Business Bank (BBB), which administered the loan schemes and had argued that disclosure would breach commercial confidentiality and risked borrowers becoming fraud targets themselves. “We have found in relation to all schemes that there is a very strong public interest in preventing prejudice to commercial interest,” the tribunal ruled on Wednesday evening. “It is very clearly not in the public interest to release information that would lead to a really clear risk that borrowers would be exposed to targeting by fraudsters.” Although the tribunal conceded there was some value in allowing “civil society” groups such as journalists to assist in fraud detection work, by allowing them to trawl through public disclosures, it said sufficient scrutiny was already taking place. “The extent to which the release of a list of names adds to the detailed evaluation and scrutiny by, for example, the National Audit Office and the House of Commons public accounts committee is, in our view, extremely limited,” the tribunal said. “Although the public interest in detecting fraud is high, the public release of the names was not necessary to facilitate that,” it added The business department’s latest estimates suggest taxpayers could be forced to cover at least £1.1bn of losses due to fraud or error from the popular bounce-back loan scheme. However, that figure has been revised down from previous estimates of up to £5.5bn in losses. The bounce-back scheme alone totalled £47bn of loans, with affected business applicants able to borrow up to £50,000 each. The government is liable for 100% of the losses if borrowers fail to repay. In total, taxpayers are on the hook for about £15.8bn across the government’s four main Covid business loan schemes, due to fraud and the fact that some companies who borrowed money have since collapsed. Businesses took out £77.1bn in government-backed loans during the pandemic. 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. The BBB said it welcomed the ruling, which followed a three-day hearing in November. “We will continue our focus within the bank on supporting and helping to grow smaller businesses in the UK now, and in the future.” Spotlight on Corruption, which does not intend to appeal against the decision, said it was “disappointed that the tribunal’s emphasis on commercial confidentiality overshadowed wider considerations, particularly given that it recognised the extremely high public interest in transparency and scrutiny of the Covid loan schemes”. The campaign group said it still believed that billions of pounds worth of taxpayer funds could have been saved if the government had immediately released names of borrowers at the start of the pandemic. “The fraudsters who used these schemes to rip off billions of pounds from their fellow citizens at a time of national emergency face little chance of being investigated, let alone convicted,” Spotlight said. “The National Investigation Service has so far made only 49 arrests into bounce-back loan scheme fraud and opened investigations with a total value of £160m – a fraction of the amount lost to fraud.” “If we’re to stop the public purse from being similarly robbed in future state-aid schemes, the government needs to learn hard lessons from this debacle fast,” the campaign group added.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2021/mar/12/liverpool-slump-burnt-out-brilliance-jurgen-klopp

Football

2021-03-12T12:00:00.000Z

Barney Ronay

Liverpool's slump: a story of burnt-out brilliance and the need to go again | Barney Ronay

The story of Liverpool FC’s wild, thrillingly committed Premier League collapse has been told mainly in numbers so far. And to good effect. Deprived of crowds, staging or a wider emotional palette, that basic outline – 38 points down on last year; 68 home games unbeaten versus six defeats in six – has captured the starkness of a complete sporting immolation. This is a train that has simply stopped. Better to burn out than fade away, and it has to be said no one has ever won and then lost the Premier League title quite like this. It is easy to forget that 14 games and nine wins into the current season Liverpool were five points clear at the top of the table. Fabinho back in his rightful midfield role and all is well for Liverpool Read more After which, the meltdown. The next 14 have brought three wins and eight losses. Thirty-six goals in the first 14 games has shrunk to just 11 in the second. Jordan Henderson hadn’t lost in the league at Anfield since January 2017. In February he played in three defeats in three weeks. What kind of team does this? And more to the point, why? Over time the wider details of exactly what happened here will emerge. Our 12-volume Warren report awaits. What we have so far are ground-zero stills, our own live rolling Zapruder footage. One thing does stand out. A brilliant team built out of Jürgen Klopp’s own restless energy have come to resemble a band of hollow men limping from stage to stage, but the manager has been more or less silent on the causes. Instead he has looked uneasy, an ancient mariner stalking the fringes – a little haunted and hollow-eyed, but passing for now on the discharge of blame. This is significant in its own right. Klopp analyses, and overanalyses. He will have his own very clear version of events. But right now he just isn’t telling. Jürgen Klopp is not inclined to cast blame on others in order to preserve his own reputation. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters With good reason, too. Not just because Klopp is a fundamentally decent man, not naturally inclined to burn it all down in the hope of preserving his own reputation. But this is also a story that points into some difficult areas. It has been tempting to look for intangible causes, some kind of dark magic at play. In dank corners of the internet it has been suggested that ending that 30-year wait for a title has brought its own ill wind, strange humours, some kind of avenging emotional payback. In reality this has been a matter of structure and planning, of cause and effect. This was always a project built on the finest margins, a pared-back punkish setup, a team built to play in a way that would eventually stretch them to the edge of their own capacities. Not to mention a team built to feed on the synergy with their home crowd, and to chase the grail of another league title. What happens when both those things are wiped away at a stroke? This is why Klopp gets a pass here. What this season’s collapse tells us is that this model has built-in limits and brutally fine margins for error. In many ways it casts an even more favourable light on Klopp’s achievement in building that team in the first place. An unspoken truth about Klopp’s title-winning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals To get the clearest view it is worth going back to where this began. Klopp’s team found their definitive shape in the spring of 2018, not long after the departure of Philippe Coutinho and the arrival of Virgil van Dijk. That February Liverpool went to Porto and won 5-0, a giddy, gleeful kind of game where suddenly the front three, the full-backs, the midfield axis were all in place and it all looked thrillingly slick, a team fizzing with possibilities. A month later Mohamed Salah scored four in the 5-0 defeat of Watford. A month after that Liverpool went 3-0 up in half an hour against Manchester City, the acme of that attacking blitz style. From there a 97-point league season in 2018-19, with the Champions League won, bled straight into the title-winning year. A peak arrived with the World Club Cup victory and the breathless return, crown slung over one shoulder, to thrash Leicester City 4-0 on Boxing Day 2019. This was a team playing with a kind of light around them. Liverpool at their peak: James Milner is congratulated after scoring at Leicester in the swaggering 4-0 win at Leicester on Boxing Day 2019. Photograph: PA Wire/PA The real stutters and stumbles arrived just after Christmas this season. Injuries were the catalyst. The real issue is the lack of cover, those fine margins again. Liverpool began the season with three battle-hardened centre-backs, two of them prone to injury. Most teams at their level have four, or in Manchester City’s case six. Even Arsenal have five. What happens when your own three are suddenly unavailable? This is where Klopp blinked, where he will draw criticism for dismantling his champion midfield to fix his defence. What could he have done differently? Klopp saw the future in the draws against West Brom and Newcastle, in the FA Cup defeat by Manchester United when Rhys Williams, a non-league footballer the year before, was traumatised by Marcus Rashford. He was right to be spooked. The truth was out. Liverpool’s replacements are a very obvious step down. These are not players ready to chase the best in Europe. No planning, no succession had been laid down. Eight out of 10 starting outfield players in the 2018 Champions League final are still in Liverpool’s best team now. With Henderson and Fabinho jiggled into the centre-back roles, with Diogo Jota injured – a rare high-grade reinforcement – there was nowhere to go, no room to wriggle. The bizarro world arrived at the start of February with the current run of six defeats in seven league games. Klopp may be keeping his counsel, bruised by events beyond football, a little sad and tender on his touchline, with the sense that someone has shaved Aslan’s mane. But the peaks of the last two years are not diminished by this. The opposite, in fact. An unspoken truth about Klopp’s title-winning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals. Only three players in the squad – Van Dijk, Salah and Alisson – possess the kind of galáctico chops that might make them standalone stars at one of Europe’s mega-clubs. This is instead a feat of high-end coaching, shared commitment and a system perfectly geared to these parts. Very good footballers have been encouraged to reach out into the far limits of their talent. But the system also requires rest and reinforcement to sustain its levels. Neither of these came. Last season Van Dijk, Roberto Firmino and Trent Alexander-Arnold played in every league game. Georginio Wijnaldum played 37, Andrew Robertson 36, Sadio Mané 35, Salah 34. The entire first XI played at least 10 midweek games. The same happened the year before – and this in a team where the tempo is always superheated. Opponents found being on a pitch with those red shirts a horribly draining experience. Liverpool had to be Liverpool every week. Despair for Naby Keïta and teammates as Liverpool lose to Fulham. A relatively callow squad have struggled this season. Photograph: Matt West/BPI/Shutterstock Signings have been made in moments of need. But the fact remains Liverpool have spent £12m net in the past two seasons. Net spend on transfer fees – not wages and bonuses – in the last four years is £60m. This is excellent business. But it isn’t a recipe for resilience. In the long term you need more space to fail. Pep Guardiola has regeared his team brilliantly. He also has the resources to do this, because City spend around £100m net on new players every year, with the freedom to buy the ones you want, not just the ones you need because the red light that says panic is flashing. The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. And so we have this, a fine-margins project that reached a rare pitch because of the brilliance of the system, the first XI, the shared energy from the stands. But which has, in the past 14 league games, found its own edges. This can hardly come as shock to Liverpool’s owners, or indeed to Klopp. The refusal to gorge in the good times, to splurge on Timo Werner, is not neglect or poor husbandry. This is hard-nosed financial management. Assets will be sweated. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There will be no waste, no sop to chasing glory. If the team burn themselves out while creating one glorious, low-cost brand-burnishing mini-era, well, so be it. Plus, of course, that first XI is still on site. There was a glimpse of that power with Fabinho returned to midfield against RB Leipzig in midweek. The pieces could quite easily fall into their slots once again, the tempo resurrect itself, the habit of winning replace the habit of losing. But there can be no illusions now over what Klopp achieved with that high-functioning, high-wire group of fellow travellers; or what will be required to build it again.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/10/corbyn-ally-steve-rotheram-named-as-candidate-for-liverpool-city-region-mayor

Politics

2016-08-10T09:26:54.000Z

Frances Perraudin

Corbyn ally named as candidate for Liverpool city region mayor

The Labour party has selected the MP for Liverpool Walton, Steve Rotheram, as its candidate to fight the Liverpool city region mayoral election in May 2017. Rotheram, who is Jeremy Corbyn’s private parliamentary secretary, won a decisive victory over the mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, and the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger. The election was conducted under the alternative vote system. In the first round, Rotheram won 42%, Anderson won 34% and Berger 25%. In the second round, once Berger voters’ second preferences were redistributed, Rotheram won 55% and Anderson won 42%. Of Berger’s voters who named a second preference, 62% chose Rotheram and 38% chose Anderson. A total of 4,872 local party members placed a vote, a turnout of 72.6%. Rotheram, a vocal supporter of the Labour leader, is a former bricklayer and lord mayor of Liverpool, and has won fans locally with his active role in the campaign to get justice for the families of those killed in the Hillsborough disaster. The Liverpool city region has a population of 1.5 million and covers five Merseyside councils – Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral – plus Halton in Cheshire. The area’s new mayor – a role created as part of the region’s devolution deal – will oversee transport, planning and post-16 education, as well as a £900m, 30-year investment fund. As with the race to be Labour’s candidate in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, polling closed on Friday at 12pm. On Tuesday the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, was declared the party’s candidate in Greater Manchester and the local MEP Siôn Simon was announced for the West Midlands. “I want to send a strong message to Theresa May,” said Rotheram following the announcement. “Prime minister, you may have backtracked on the idea of a northern powerhouse, but with Andy Burnham as the mayor of Greater Manchester and me as the metro mayor of the Liverpool city region, it’s our intention to create a north-west powerhouse.” Rotheram acknowledged that his support for the Labour leader had helped him in the race. “When we phoned people I think what potentially did have an impact was this underused and rare commodity in politics at the moment and that is loyalty,” he said. “I didn’t support Jeremy Corbyn [in the last leadership election]. I supported my best mate Andy Burnham and I did everything that I could to get Andy elected. But when the result came out in September 2015, we got whacked. There was an overwhelming support for Jeremy and, therefore, I think it’s right that we get behind the leader of the Labour party.” Of the 17 MPs representing constituencies in the Liverpool city region, 15 are Labour, one is a Liberal Democrat and one is a Conservative. The dominance of the Labour party in the area means that Rotheram will be the odds-on favourite to win. Anderson, a prominent local government figure in Liverpool who campaigned for the creation of the metro mayor role, was initially the favourite to win the race and said he was heartbroken at the result. His role as mayor of the city of Liverpool is unaffected by the new metro mayor role and he will stay in post until May 2020 after winning a second term in this year’s local elections. He has previously criticised Westminster politicians for standing for the metro mayor nominations, describing Burnham’s assertion that the role of metro mayor was a “cabinet-level job requiring cabinet-level experience” as “ignorant and insensitive” and “disrespectful to every local government leader who has worked hard for their area”. Berger, a former shadow minister for mental health, was the last person to declare she was entering the race, becoming the second member of the shadow cabinet in a month – after Burnham – to announce their intention to stand for a metro mayor position. She is the youngest person and the only woman to have stood to be Labour’s candidate for any of the new metro mayor positions.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/16/school-behaviour-tsar-classroom-disruption

Education

2015-06-15T23:01:02.000Z

Rowena Mason

School behaviour tsar appointed to tackle classroom disruption

A new school behaviour tsar will be tasked with stopping low-level disruption in the classroom such as children making silly comments, passing notes to each other and swinging on their chairs, the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, will announce on Tuesday. In a speech at an academy school in London, she will announce the appointment of Tom Bennett, a teacher and behaviour expert, as part of a push to help teachers deal better with minor misdemeanours that cost pupils on average 38 days of learning a year. Bennett is the latest in a string of behaviour gurus brought in by governments, following in the footsteps of Sir Alan Steer under Gordon Brown and Charlie Taylor under the coalition. His specific remit will be working out how to train teachers to tackle low-level distractions, which were highlighted as a serious problem in a report by Ofsted in September last year. Morgan will say that the battle against low-level disruption is part of the government’s “commitment to social justice … [ensuring] every single person in the country has access to the best opportunities Britain has to offer”. At the same time, Morgan will confirm that the Conservatives intend to press ahead with a manifesto pledge to make every pupil starting secondary school this September study English, maths, science, a language and history or geography at GCSE. She will also confirm that the new grading scale of 1 to 9 for GCSEs will require pupils to achieve a 5 or better to get a “good pass”, which will be used to rank the performance of schools. The Department for Education said a grade 5 would be comparable to a low B or high C under the old grading system, raising the bar for a “good pass” from the previous level of C. “This means ensuring children study key subjects that provide them with the knowledge they need to reach their potential – while setting a higher bar at GCSE so young people, their parents and teachers can be sure that the grades they achieve will help them get on in life,” Morgan will say. Bennett will lead a group to develop better training for teachers, who Morgan said were “never trained to deal with this low-level disruption” The DfE said that although misdemeanours such as swinging on chairs, passing notes and making silly comments were “minor in themselves, they create a stream of disruption that can make teaching impossible and stop those young people who want to get on and learn”. It said the aim was for all schools to be able to replicate the work done by many heads and teachers across the country to tackle the problem. Bennett, director of the researchED project, said behaviour had been “the elephant in the classroom for too long, and the amount of learning time lost because of disruption is a tragedy”. He said: “At present training teachers to anticipate, deal with and respond to misbehaviour is far too hit and miss – great in some schools and training providers, terrible in others. Parents and children deserve safe, calm learning spaces, and teachers deserve to be equipped with sensible strategies that maximise learning, safety and flourishing. I’m delighted to lead a group which will offer advice on doing just that.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/09/police-in-madrid-and-paris-on-alert-after-is-threat-to-champions-league-venues

Football

2024-04-09T13:44:35.000Z

Sam Jones

Police in London, Madrid and Paris on alert after IS threat to Champions League venues

Police in Madrid and Paris have stepped up security before this week’s Champions League quarter-finals after an apparent threat from Islamic State (IS). In London, the Metropolitan police said it had “a robust policing plan” in place for Tuesday’s match between Arsenal and Bayern Munich at the Emirates Stadium. Real Madrid told they can close roof to raise noise against Manchester City Read more Although Spain’s interior ministry stressed the country’s terror alert remained at level four of five, it said 2,000 officers from the national police and Guardia Civil forces would be deployed to help municipal police patrol Real Madrid v Manchester City on Tuesday and Atlético Madrid v Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday. “This deployment is being coordinated and supported by the state-wide measures established under the anti-terrorist prevention, protection and response plan,” the ministry said in a statement. “The government and the state security forces have taken all relevant initiatives to guarantee the safety of participants and spectators at the two sporting events – as well as the safety of Spanish citizens as whole – so that they can go about their day-to-day business knowing that Spain is one of the safest countries in the world.” France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said the security around Wednesday’s match in Paris between Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona was being “considerably reinforced” after a “threat” from IS. “We have seen, among other things, a communication from Islamic State that specifically targets the stadiums,” Darmanin said. He pointed out that IS had called for “an attack on a sporting venue” about 10 days ago. “All sports can be affected,” Darmanin added. “The prefect of police has considerably reinforced security resources [at Parc des Princes]. It goes without saying that, when it comes to important occasions like the football Champions League, we are discussing matters with our partners.” PSG take on Barcelona at the Parc des Princes in Paris on Wednesday. Photograph: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy A source close to the matter told Agence France-Presse: “IS has threatened the Champions League quarter-finals, not specifically in France, through one of its communication outlets.” France raised its security to the highest level, urgence attentat (attack emergency) after last month’s Moscow terrorist attack, in which 144 people were killed. IS claimed responsibility for the attack – a claim confirmed by US and French intelligence agencies. British counter-terrorism sources were struggling to recall a previous time when IS had advertised that it intended to carry out attacks on a specific target and then carried it out. What has been seen before is a threat to a high-profile event, such as New Year’s Eve celebrations, which failed to materialise but which, in IS’s eyes, provided a propaganda boost. 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. Sources in the United Kingdom do not believe that there is a specific plot, as evidenced by the fact the UK’s terrorist threat level remained unchanged. It is substantial – the third of five levels – with evidence of a specific plot enough to ratchet it up to maximum. A source said there were no plans to deploy extra Met officers at the Arsenal game beyond the strong plan already in place, which had taken into account mitigating any terrorist threat. The Met deputy assistant commissioner Ade Adelekan, overseeing the policing of London on Tuesday, said: “The UK terrorism threat level remains at ‘substantial’, meaning an attack is likely, and we work closely with colleagues from across counter-terrorism policing in planning for events here in London, to take into account any relevant information that could help us to keep those attending safe. “We’re aware of online and media reports in relation to calls to target matches across Europe and here in London. However, I want to reassure the public that we have a robust policing plan in place for tonight’s match and we continue to work closely alongside the club’s security team to ensure that the match passes peacefully. As ever, we ask the public to remain vigilant, and if they see anything that doesn’t look or feel right, then report it to police or security staff.” Sources stress that although there is little belief the threats are credible, the Moscow attacks means they can not afford to be complacent. Arsenal said they were were working closely, as ever, with the Met. “Our planning for tonight’s fixture is no different and our approach, working together with the police and Uefa, is proportionate to the current UK threat level,” the club said. Uefa said it was aware of the alleged terrorist threat and was liaising closely with the authorities at the different venues. “All matches are planned to go ahead as scheduled with appropriate security arrangements in place,” it said.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/18/us-cuba-deal-pope-canada-obama-castro

World news

2014-12-18T09:34:05.000Z

Chris McGreal

Behind the scenes of the US-Cuba deal

For years, the Cuban government maintained a large billboard facing the six-storey “US interest section” – the half-empty former American embassy – on Havana’s seafront, denouncing “Señores Imperialistas” for their bloody policies from Nicaragua to Iraq. The American diplomats inside what was a US embassy in all but name responded by running a giant electronic ticker from the upper windows, relaying news and anti-communist propaganda. Within months of Barack Obama coming to power in 2009, the billboards were pulled back and the ticker disappeared. It was an early and visible sign that the new administration was prepared to consider a different path to the futility of half a century of isolation and embargos, and that the Cuban government was prepared to respond. Creeping changes followed, from the easing of restrictions on Americans visiting family in Cuba and sending money to increased scientific and cultural exchanges. But by the time Obama drew accusations of pandering to a dictator for going out of his way to shake Raúl Castro’s hand at Nelson Mandela’s funeral a year ago, the US and Cuba were engaged in a more far-reaching and secret effort to find a different path. The Vatican helped initiate the talks and finalise the deal. Canada, which Havana has used to bypass the blockade and is the source of a steady flow of tourists to Cuban resorts, hosted several rounds of negotiations. Now the US interest section – which was built in 1953 but sat empty for years after the Cuban revolution until president Jimmy Carter re-established partial diplomatic relations in 1977 – is to return to its role as a full embassy with an ambassador and, no doubt, plenty of CIA agents. The Obama administration did not need much encouragement to deal with the Cuban regime, especially since Raúl Castro had succeeded his brother Fidel in 2008 with promises of reform. There was widespread recognition that the embargo had, if anything, helped solidify, not weaken, communist rule in Cuba and that it was a policy driven more by US politics than a realistic prospect of bringing down Castro’s government. Wayne Smith, the Carter administration’s chief of mission at the US interests section in Havana from 1979, was a vocal critic of the blockade, saying it accomplished nothing, and was a proponent of improved relations as the path to reform in Cuba. But what the White House did need was secrecy, given the predictable hostility from Republicans – particularly in Florida with its large Cuban immigrant population – in the runup to last month’s elections. After initial contacts between officials in Washington and Havana, the first face-to-face talks between American and Cuba were held in Canada in June 2013, with the Vatican smoothing the diplomatic path. For the Americans, the principal obstacle to a public thawing in relations was the continued imprisonment of Alan Gross, a US citizen jailed for smuggling satellite communications equipment into Havana. The Cubans were pressing for the release of three spies held in the US for 15 years. The archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, acted for Pope Francis in bringing the Cuban government along. As the talks progressed, the pope wrote to Obama and Castro urging each side to release the prisoners. It was a delicate issue for the White House, which had consistently denied that Gross was an intelligence agent and did not want to be seen to swap him for Cuban spies. Havana saw it differently. Gross was arrested while working for a Maryland company that had a $6m (£3.8m) contract with the US Agency for International Development to smuggle equipment into Cuba that could circumvent controls on the internet. To the Cubans, the covert nature of Gross’s actions, and the fact that American government money was funding them, smacked of espionage. Cuban officials felt equally aggrieved over the arrest in 1998 and jailing of five of its nationals on spying charges in Florida. The Cuban Five, as they became known, were intelligence agents sent to penetrate Cuban exile organisations, including armed groups, that Havana alleged were planning illegal and even terrorist acts against Cuba. The Cuban government said that once evidence was gathered it planned to deliver it to the FBI in the expectation that it would put a stop to the activities. It argued that the agents were not spying on the US. Eventually a path was found that involved releasing others as well as Gross and the Cuban spies. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, met his Vatican counterpart, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on Monday, although no public mention of the deal in the works was made. The agreement was finalised in a nearly hour-long call between Obama and Castro on Tuesday. The three remaining Cubans still in federal prison – two had served their time – were released. In return, Cuba freed a double agent. At Washington’s insistence, Gross’s release was dressed up as a humanitarian gesture rather than part of a trade in spies. Cuba won a commitment from the White House to move towards removing it from the list of states sponsoring terrorism on which the Reagan administration placed Havana in 1982 for its support of liberation movements in Latin America. The White House described the pope’s personal involvement as “very important to the president”. Now the thaw is out in the open, the Obama administration is keen to play it up as a “the most significant change in our policy in more than 50 years”, as the president put it. Democratic politicians hammered home the message that the embargo had failed and said the US had long ago lifted the embargo against Vietnam, a country it was once at war with. Kerry described US policy of the past five decades as “virtually frozen” and said it had “done little to promote a prosperous, democratic and stable Cuba”. “Not only has this policy failed to advance America’s goals, it has actually isolated the United States instead of isolating Cuba,” he said. But Kerry and other officials also cautioned that the diplomatic shift is only a beginning and it will not change Cuba overnight. “This new course will not be without challenges, but it is based not on a leap of faith but on a conviction that it’s the best way to help bring freedom and opportunity to the Cuban people, and to promote America’s national security interests in the Americas, including greater regional stability and economic opportunities for American businesses,” Kerry said. Talks on the normalisation of diplomatic ties are expected to begin within weeks. Then Kerry himself hopes to make history. “I look forward to being the first secretary of state in 60 years to visit Cuba,” he said.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/29/from-the-observer-archive-i-want-to-be-alone-a-greta-garbo-retrospective-1979

Life and style

2021-08-29T05:00:10.000Z

Chris Hall

From the archive: looking back at Greta Garbo’s private world, 1979

When Greta Garbo said ‘I want to be alone,’ Peter Cook was merciless in his mockery of her as Emma Bargo, shouting through a loudhailer being driven through London, ‘I want to be alone!’ Garbo had indeed uttered that line in Grand Hotel (1932) but claimed shortly after, in an interview regarding her private life, ‘I only said I want to be let alone. There is all the difference’. This was just one of the insights from Garbo herself in a serialisation of Frederick Sands and Sven Broman’sThe Divine Garbo (‘The private world of Garbo’, 16 September 1979). ‘I am forever running away from something or somebody,’ confided Garbo to the author Garbo left Hollywood in 1941 aged just 36 and never made another film. ‘On her return from a visit to Sweden after the war, in 1946, she told reporters, “I have no plans, either for the movies or anything else. I’m just drifting.”’ To anyone trying to get her to change her mind she had one short answer, summed up in her remark to David Niven: ‘I had made enough faces.’ ‘I am forever running away from something or somebody,’ confided Garbo to Sands in 1977. ‘Unconsciously I have always known that I was not destined for real and lasting happiness.’ Garbo, they wrote, put up barriers: ‘Her self-imposed isolation, her constant quest for privacy, her distrust of people, made her few friends… ‘Disliking domesticity in any shape or form, she never wanted a permanent home of her own, preferring to live in rented houses or hotels.’ She viewed possessions as ‘millstones around one’s neck’. (Though presumably not her Renoirs.) Garbo’s New York apartment buzzer was identified by a solitary G. ‘Neighbours and building staff … do not speak unless she speaks first, they do not smile unless she smiles first.’ Surprisingly, given all the gloom, her apartment was a ‘light and airy study in pink’.

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/17/aliens-ufo-uaps-us-defence-government-coverup-david-grusch

Science

2023-06-17T14:00:16.000Z

Stuart Clark

Are aliens that bad at parking? What we need to ask about recent UFO revelations

Another day, another story about the US government hiding the fact that it has retrieved alien spacecraft. You can hear similar claims all the time from conspiracy theorists in certain corners of the internet. Yet what made this particular account international news was that the person talking had apparently been in a position to know. American David Grusch served 14 years in the US air force. He is a decorated veteran from the Afghanistan conflict, who went on to serve in the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. In these positions, he sat on the US Department of Defense’s unidentified aerial phenomena taskforce from 2020 to 2022. UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, as they are now officially known, are what used to be called UFOs. In 2021, a report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the taskforce was investigating 144 UAP reports. They had been made between 2004 and 2021, mostly by military personnel, but few conclusions could be drawn because the actual data was limited and difficult to analyse. Deputy director of US naval intelligence Scott Bray plays a video of a UAP to a subcommittee of the House intelligence committee, May 2022. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA Now Grusch has turned whistleblower and told the Debrief website that the US has been retrieving intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin for decades. These retrievals happen all over the globe – anywhere that the craft have landed or crashed. In the article, Grusch is said to have given Congress “extensive classified information about [these] deeply covert programmes”. But, according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, until these documents are also made public, we should remain sceptical. “We shouldn’t believe stories unless evidence supports them. So as intriguing as it is to hear Grusch’s testimony, he did not provide any physical evidence or any data,” says Loeb. In the effort to collect scientific data about UAPs, Loeb co-founded the Galileo Project, which watches the sky around the clock, looking for anything that moves. Its prototype observatory is located at Harvard itself. It records the sky at infrared, optical and radio wavelengths, and listens for audio too. This continuous stream of data is then analysed by computers to work out whether a passing object is a bird or a drone, or something unidentifiable that needs deeper analysis. So far, everything has been explainable but Loeb has just received a donation to build five more observatories to extend the search to other parts of the US. You’d think that if they could travel between the stars, they could get the last 0.0001% of the journey right too Michael Garrett, radio astronomer But there’s something much more down to earth that makes Michael Garrett, a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank, part of Manchester University, and chair of the International Academy of Astronautics’s Seti (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) permanent committee, sceptical of Grusch’s story. It all comes down to a how badly these supposed aliens drive their spacecraft. “If there were all these alien spacecraft crashing on Earth – well, that seems a bit weird. You’d think that if they could travel between the stars, they could get the last 0.0001% of the journey right too,” he says. Thinking of the small number of accidents that occur each day compared with the vast number of road journeys undertaken, the idea of aliens crash-landing on our planet for decades seems implausible. “It would imply that there must be hundreds of them coming every day, and astronomers simply don’t see them,” says Garrett. Yet in the same Debrief article, Jonathan Grey, who allegedly works for the US National Air and Space Intelligence Center, backs up the story, adding that “exotic materials” have been retrieved and studied since the early 20th century. Grusch says that the US has been in a race with other superpowers – presumably Russia and China – for decades to identify these crash and landing sites, in order to retrieve whatever remains and reverse engineer the materials. Garrett is doubtful here too, seeing no real-world evidence of that activity bearing any fruit. “If they had an understanding of how these things worked, they would result in completely disruptive technologies,” he says. In other words, we should be seeing amazing products and materials bursting on the market out of nowhere. But we aren’t. “Either they’re just not very good at reverse engineering, or there’s nothing to be reverse-engineered,” says Garrett. US defence department footage from April 2020 taken by navy pilots showing interactions with a UAP. Photograph: DoD/AFP/Getty Images Perhaps they should call Prof Sara Russell, a planetary scientist from the Natural History Museum in London. She is skilled in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials, in the form of meteorites, and knows exactly what kind of chemical fingerprints to look for. The techniques have been honed over decades of studying the things that fall from space. Take iron, for example, a fairly common element in meteorites. If she is handed a lump of iron and asked whether it came from space or Earth, she looks for the presence of nickel because the two are formed in similar astronomical conditions but not terrestrial ones. By a careful analysis of the naturally occurring isotopes of oxygen in a rock, she can easily tell whether it has formed in space; she can even tell where in the early solar system the meteorite was formed. Standard laboratory techniques make analysing non-naturally occurring substances easy as well. “If you give me an alloy, it would take me less than half an hour to tell you what elements are in it. That’s easy-peasy for us,” she says. The upshot is that it should be easy to understand whether something falling to Earth is man-made or extraterrestrial, and if it is the latter, whether it is naturally occurring or not. This ability is spurring Loeb to chase after fragments of the first interstellar meteor, known as IM1, and catalogued by Nasa as CNEOS 2014-01-08, that landed in the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea on 8 January 2014. His interest was piqued when the calculated speed and trajectory of the object’s entry into Earth’s atmosphere showed that it came from outside our solar system. My quest is to look for the evidence and make it open to the public. That is the way science is done Avi Loeb, Harvard astronomer More intriguing is that when Loeb and his students calculated the material strength of the meteorite from the bright fireball it created, they found it was tougher than an iron meteorite – the strongest naturally occurring meteorites in our solar system. “To me, that’s intriguing enough to go to the Pacific Ocean for a few weeks, try to collect the fragments, bring them to a laboratory at Harvard University and figure out the composition,” says Loeb. While presupposing nothing, he points out that we have been sending space probes such as Voyager 1 and 2 off into the distant galaxy. So it is not impossible that a similar defunct space probe from another civilisation might just have accidentally collided with the Earth in 2014. “My quest is to look for the evidence and make it open to the public. That is the way science is done. There is no secret here,” says Loeb. Loeb’s daily updates from the expedition can be read on the Medium platform. Meanwhile, the material Grusch handed to Congress will be investigated by the powerful House of Representatives oversight committee, chaired by Republican congressman James Comer. Whether alien driving skills are on the agenda of the committee has yet to be disclosed.

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/may/02/blur-oasis-vendetta-britpop-damon-albarn-noel-liam-gallagher

Music

2017-05-02T13:24:04.000Z

Barry Nicolson

Blur v Oasis: the Britpop battle remains as contrived and cynical as ever

Even before the new Gorillaz album was released on Friday, Damon Albarn was anticipating Liam Gallagher’s hot take on We Got the Power, the first formal collaboration between the erstwhile Blur frontman and Liam’s estranged older brother Noel. “No one’s asked Liam what he thinks about the song yet,” Albarn told Vulture. “No doubt he’d have a fantastic one-liner about what a bunch of fucking knobheads we are.” Noel may as well have said “Our Kid” five times into the bathroom mirror, because within 24 hours of the quote appearing online, Liam’s verdict was in. “That dick out of Blur and the creepy one out of Oasis need to hang there heads in shame as it’s no dancing in the streets,” he tweeted, presumably referring to Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s endearingly naff version of the Martha and the Vandellas classic. He then went on to deride Albarn as a “gobshite” who’d turned Noel into a “massive girl” and promised “there’s gonna be war” the next time they meet. That gobshite out of blur might have turned noel Gallagher into a massive girl but believe you me nxt time i see him there's gonna be war — Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) April 28, 2017 It is easy to forget that in the early days of Britpop, there was a mutual respect – and even tentative admiration – between Blur and Oasis. At the 1995 NME Awards, where Blur won five awards to Oasis’s three, Noel and Damon gamely mugged for the cameras together, and Liam, in a rare moment of humility, conceded that: “I don’t think we should have got more [awards] than Blur. Blur are a top band.” It wasn’t until a couple of months later, when Albarn turned up to a Creation Records party celebrating Some Might Say reaching No 1 – and was mercilessly taunted by a triumphal Liam – that the seeds of the greatest pop rivalry of the age were sown. “Damon got on one about it and decided to take Oasis on,” Creation boss Alan McGee later recalled to NME. “Oasis, being Oasis, decided to hate them. And Blur, being Blur, thought it was a game.” Everyone knows what happened next. Blur and their label engineered a chart battle between the bands’ next singles, Country House and Roll With It, from which Blur would ultimately emerge victorious, if mildly traumatised. (Guitarist Graham Coxon famously threatened to jump out of a window over the whole affair.) Yet more memorable than the songs themselves, both of which were the bands’ weakest to date, was the media circus surrounding the showdown – the tribal loyalties it engendered; NME’s breathless “heavyweight championship” cover; and Noel’s infamous off-the-cuff remark wishing Aids on Albarn and his bandmate Alex James. (Gallagher apologised in 2011, saying he should have wished “a bad cold” on them instead.) Blur’s triumph in the charts marked the high point, if not the end of hostilities: six months later, Oasis would revel in sweeping the board at the Brits by treating the audience to a rendition of Parklife they charmingly retitled “Shitelife”. Then, as Britpop began to fizzle out, the Gallaghers’ fire was increasingly trained on another target, Robbie Williams, in addition to each other. Nevertheless, Albarn told NME in 2006: “I can’t make it up with Noel. Britpop would be over and heaven forbid that we’d ever admit we’d all grown up!” After Oasis imploded in 2009, however, their long-dormant rivalry became a recurring subplot in Liam’s ongoing beef with his brother, who – when Liam’s not bemoaning his inexplicable reluctance to be in a band with him again – is regularly (and entertainingly) denounced as “old brown tongue”, “the Ronnie Corbett of rock’n’roll” and “POTATO”. Noel and Damon made their peace in 2011, but when they appeared on stage at a Teenage Cancer Trust benefit in 2013, Liam compared the occasion to Noel’s Downing Street tete-a-tete with Tony Blair (“Don’t know what’s worse RKID sipping champagne with a war criminal or them backing vocals you’ve just done for BLUE!”) and claimed their detente had effectively “killed Britpop”. (At least he acknowledged it was dead.) Celebrity summit … Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher at No 10. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA In the 90s, the feud held some tangible rewards for both bands (or their respective labels, at any rate). Since then, however, the battle lines have been redrawn beyond recognition: Oasis doesn’t exist, Blur’s future is unknown. The principals have long since buried the hatchet, leaving Liam – the eternal man with a fork in a world of soup – to wage a one-sided guerrilla war of snark on social media. “[It’s] about him staying relevant,” speculated Noel of his brother’s shit-stirring last year. “If you’re him, what else is there to tweet about? How his spring/summer collections are doing for his clothing firm? I’m not sure that warrants a tweet.” There is undoubtedly some truth in that. Tellingly, Liam signed off on his 140-character review of We Got the Power with the words, “as you were” – the title of his forthcoming solo album, which after Beady Eye’s brief, inglorious existence looks increasingly make-or-break for his musical career. Does he actively dislike Damon Albarn? Probably not, considering he championed Blur’s Lonesome Street as the “song of the year” in 2015. Two decades on from the Battle of Britpop, however, it is oddly comforting to see that the Blur-Oasis vendetta remains as contrived and cynical as ever. The bad blood between the Gallagher brothers themselves, on the other hand, is very real. “Lots of people say I need to chill out about Noel,” Liam confessed to Q magazine last year. “Not until they stop Twitter. That cunt will always get it from me.”

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