Below is the text of a message regarding the threatened deportation of Hicham Yezza. Hicham was an administrator at the University of Nottingham who helped print off material about al-Qaeda from a US government website for a friend who was using it for his academic research. With the racism endemic amongst the British public and police, Hicham and his friend were both arrested and questioned for nearly a week before being released without charge. However, Hicham was told that there were 'irregularities' in his immigration status and was told that he wouldn't be charged if he would leave the UK quietly. He refused, and now the immigration service is even sinking to cancelling court proceedings to try and turf him out quickly and quietly. Freedom of speech and knowledge - but only if you're white, apparently.
Legal developments and the home office - we need your help!!
To members of Global Support to Stop The Deporation of Hicham Yezza
November 27 at 1:11pm
Reply
Dear friends,
Thank you all for your continuing support throughout the previous months of hard campaigning. Together we have already achieved an extraordinary level of success in stopping the initial deportation and bringing the Home Office actions to the attention of the national and international media.
Last Wednesday, on the 19th November, Hicham was due to attend a hearing regarding the alleged charges that formed the basis of his attempted deportation in June This is precisely what the campaign demanded: a chance for Hicham to fight his case in a court of law (As you might already be aware, Hich was offered the chance back then to have the charges dropped against him in exchange for quietly leaving the country but refused).
However, in an extraordinary and highly unexpected move, the Home Office announced on the EVE of the trial that it had decided to reject Hicham's right to stay in the U.K and, even more incredibly, have announced that he would only be given till Tuesday 2nd of December (in five days!) before being LIABLE TO BE DEPORTED from the country.
In other words, the Home Office has opted to assume Hicham is guilty rather than let a court of law decide. Hicham's solicitors have called the decision (and its timing) a clear attempt at "psychological warfare" in order to unsettle Hicham before the hearing and to intimidate him into giving up.
We believe this act and its timing to be clearly unfair and highly indicative of the political nature of Hicham's persecution by the Home Office. We are committed to fighting this decision by lodging an appeal before Tuesday and we ask you to help us in every way you can.
In particular, we are in urgent need for people to donate to Hicham's legal fund. Hicham has been prevented by the Home Office from returning to work and is entirely dependant on the campaign's support for financial support. We are currently aiming to raise five thousand pounds to ensure Hich can fight his case properly. We are still applying for access to legal aid in order to lessen this burden but we cannot count on this and need to ensure we are ready for all eventualities.
Please, if you can, log onto your online banking and donate TEN pounds (or whatever it is you can afford) to the campaign bank account. With a collective effort, we can give Hicham the opportunity to fight his case in a fair and just manner.
Please click www.freehicham.co.uk for details of how to donate as well as other ways of helping out (including template letters to the Home Office).
Please continue to spread the word and inform all your friends and colleagues about the campaign.
Many Thanks
The Free Hich Campaign
Website: www.freehicham.co.uk
Email: staffandstudents@gmail.com
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
A work of pure genius
As someone who occasionally needs to resize photos for work purposes but has no desire to learn (or to shell out for) Photoshop, and who hasn't yet managed to figure out how to resize or crop pictures using the various opensource graphics programmes, I was very, very happy to discover DrPic. That rare thing, a really useful website...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Surviving winter in freelance-land
This spring, I moved from being a part-time employee and part-time freelancer to being a full-time freelancer. I joined the pyjama workforce, that band of people who can be shamed at any time of the day by a postman turning up with a parcel, only to find them unshowered and wearing worn plaid jammies or a threadbare dressing gown.
A few months later I decided that this lifestyle is psychologically unhealthy, at least for me, and joined a shared workspace co-op called Openspace. First and foremost this provides flexible work packages ranging from full membership (£100 a month for a desk, some storage space, high speed internet, some blog space on a shared website and use of other shared facilities such as a printer and secure backups) to the ability to just drop in with your laptop once or twice a month to get a change of scene or a reliable web connection.
Openspace also fits into my work and concerns nicely by being a social enterprise (by virtue of its not-for-profit, co-operative status) and its commitment to environmental and social functions such as recycling, using recycled products and green electricity and providing a networking point for other social and ethical enterprise.
Now I've been a member for several months, I thought it was time to evaluate whether this was a good decision, and decided that actually it's probably been close to a life-saver.
As winter draws in and daylight hours get unspeakably and depressingly short, dragging myself outside during the daytime would have been really hard to do regularly as pyjama-me. Somehow actually getting my arse in gear by 3pm or whenever it's getting dark at the moment seems like a massive effort when I don't actively HAVE to. But the bike ride down to Openspace forces me to get outside and get a bit of sunshine and exercise, and that's a very, very good thing for my mental wellbeing.
Secondly, one of the unexpected benefits of Openspace – even to its founders – has been the quantity of cross-fertilisation of work and projects that has come out of it. People have submitted bids together, developed artistic projects and generally passed round useful information about economic opportunities. With the credit crunch and looming economic nightmare of the next year or so, opportunities that I wouldn't have known about but for being in a shared space have made my financial situation that much more stable, at least for the moment.
Working at Openspace comes easier too, especially when I've got a big deadline looming – I'm pretty good at keeping my self-discipline going when it comes to deadlines, but my bathroom does tend to get suddenly cleaner and my kitchen floor washed when I've got a big one coming up. But being in a workspace somehow forces me to get my head down and get on with it, and that makes me that more productive.
A final small benefit has been that as the weather gets colder, it's nice to be able to head off to the office, where it's nice and warm, instead of staying at home, having to put the heating on at some eye-popping cost in fuel bills. Yes, I know I should wrap up in more jumpers, but there's only so many I can actually fit on, and if I'm going to work (ie type) my fingers still need to be out there in the air and not seized up from the cold. The cats are pissed off though – fewer nice hot radiators to weld themselves onto.
There's only one lovely Openspace, in Manchester, but I know that Edinburgh has the Melting Pot and the Hub network has places in a number of cities worldwide, including London and Bristol in the UK. And similar, if less ethically-oriented, setups can often be found by Googling terms like 'shared workspace' or 'co-working' for your town.
A few months later I decided that this lifestyle is psychologically unhealthy, at least for me, and joined a shared workspace co-op called Openspace. First and foremost this provides flexible work packages ranging from full membership (£100 a month for a desk, some storage space, high speed internet, some blog space on a shared website and use of other shared facilities such as a printer and secure backups) to the ability to just drop in with your laptop once or twice a month to get a change of scene or a reliable web connection.
Openspace also fits into my work and concerns nicely by being a social enterprise (by virtue of its not-for-profit, co-operative status) and its commitment to environmental and social functions such as recycling, using recycled products and green electricity and providing a networking point for other social and ethical enterprise.
Now I've been a member for several months, I thought it was time to evaluate whether this was a good decision, and decided that actually it's probably been close to a life-saver.
As winter draws in and daylight hours get unspeakably and depressingly short, dragging myself outside during the daytime would have been really hard to do regularly as pyjama-me. Somehow actually getting my arse in gear by 3pm or whenever it's getting dark at the moment seems like a massive effort when I don't actively HAVE to. But the bike ride down to Openspace forces me to get outside and get a bit of sunshine and exercise, and that's a very, very good thing for my mental wellbeing.
Secondly, one of the unexpected benefits of Openspace – even to its founders – has been the quantity of cross-fertilisation of work and projects that has come out of it. People have submitted bids together, developed artistic projects and generally passed round useful information about economic opportunities. With the credit crunch and looming economic nightmare of the next year or so, opportunities that I wouldn't have known about but for being in a shared space have made my financial situation that much more stable, at least for the moment.
Working at Openspace comes easier too, especially when I've got a big deadline looming – I'm pretty good at keeping my self-discipline going when it comes to deadlines, but my bathroom does tend to get suddenly cleaner and my kitchen floor washed when I've got a big one coming up. But being in a workspace somehow forces me to get my head down and get on with it, and that makes me that more productive.
A final small benefit has been that as the weather gets colder, it's nice to be able to head off to the office, where it's nice and warm, instead of staying at home, having to put the heating on at some eye-popping cost in fuel bills. Yes, I know I should wrap up in more jumpers, but there's only so many I can actually fit on, and if I'm going to work (ie type) my fingers still need to be out there in the air and not seized up from the cold. The cats are pissed off though – fewer nice hot radiators to weld themselves onto.
There's only one lovely Openspace, in Manchester, but I know that Edinburgh has the Melting Pot and the Hub network has places in a number of cities worldwide, including London and Bristol in the UK. And similar, if less ethically-oriented, setups can often be found by Googling terms like 'shared workspace' or 'co-working' for your town.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Fascists, fascists everywhere...
Well, who'da thunk it. Someone in the BNP has leaked their entire membership list and posted it on a Blogspot page. Given that coppers now get fired for this, and it is somewhat frowned upon in certain other professions represented - like teachers and nurses - I guess a few fash will be sweating for their jobs tonight. I'm sure their trade union reps will be sobbing in sympathy. Or not. A few posh types too - like former Chief Inspectors. Surely, old chap, one should just lurk on the more objectionable end of the Tory party with the other inbreds, not actually slum it with the skin'ead hoi polloi.
Hehehehe.
Interesting, though, to see the mainstream media take on it - absolutely loving it, but not quite daring to pop up a link to the actual site.
Hehehehe.
Interesting, though, to see the mainstream media take on it - absolutely loving it, but not quite daring to pop up a link to the actual site.
Writing course at Gorton Monastery
For anyone foolish enough not to be coming to ChomskyAt80, here's a quick plug for a writing course on the 29th November, bring run by Hyde freelancer Andrea Wren. I don't know Andrea well, but we met a few times at the late lamented ConnectMedia NorthWest get-togethers and she could certainly teach aspiring feature writers a thing or two about how to market themselves.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Another act of genius
Another act of genius from Marc Roberts. Oh, and as I omitted to mention last time I posted one of his cartoons, they've been popping up in all sorts of cool places, like Ethical Consumer magazine, New Internationalist and Realclimate.org, the kind of place journalists should be going for information on dangerous climate change rather than publicity-seeking Scandinanvian eejits with spurious credentials for talking about anything but themselves. Thank goodness for some decent research, like this. But then there's often a disturbing similarity between your average wordcount-padder when faced with a rampant self-publicist telling them something they want to hear, and a rabbit caught in headlights...
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Reporting Poverty in the UK
Last Wednesday was the Manchester launch of Reporting Poverty in the UK, a guide for journalists based on research carried out by Glasgow Caledonian University.
The research looked at how the British press talks about poverty, and while perhaps not a surprise to someone with my attitude to the ethics of the mainstream press in this country, it did include some depressingly good illustrations of the way that some journalists think.
One illuminating quote from the editor of a national tabloid was along the lines of: "Fuel poverty is not a story. Poor people fiddling their gas meters is a story." So - thousands of people freezing in their homes over the winter isn't interesting, and fuel companies making massive profits off huge price rises isn't interesting, but a tiny and unrepresentative number of poor people finding ways to get round that is a valid subject for prurient, judgemental prying. What a delightful society we are.
A more comforting comment was from an anonymous female tabloid reader, who said something akin to 'I read the News of the World but I don't believe anything in it - not even the TV listings.'
The actual launch event, run by funders the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Media Trust, was excellent (and not just because of the really good lunch, much better than the somewhat suspect sarnies usually on offer. And a decent veggie selection).
With a reasonable balance of journalists and people from a wide range of organisations tackling poverty or working in marginalised areas (like Carisma from Home Sweet Home, Moss Side), there were some really active debates about how third sector organisations, especially those with tiny PR resources and budgets, can relate to the media, how they can protect their members and service users when journalists turn up wanting case studies, and how journalists can behave in a slightly more ethical and honourable fashion, respecting people whose life circumstances have put them in poverty.
Discussions raised issues like why the press seems to feel the need to stereotype and insult poor people - is it so that the better-off can deny to themselves that they might be benefiting from an unequal system? And is the kind of understanding and improvement in reporting that the event and report are trying to achieve eroded by developments in the media industry itself, where it seems to be increasingly difficult to get an entry into national-level newspapers and magazine without spending weeks or months doing unpaid internships. And who gets to do those in London, a ludicrously expensive city to work in? Rich, usually white, kids. Increasing yet more the distance between journalists and the people and communities they talk about. So, all the more need for people to take a look at the Media Trust/JRF guide, and try to absorb some of its lessons.
The research looked at how the British press talks about poverty, and while perhaps not a surprise to someone with my attitude to the ethics of the mainstream press in this country, it did include some depressingly good illustrations of the way that some journalists think.
One illuminating quote from the editor of a national tabloid was along the lines of: "Fuel poverty is not a story. Poor people fiddling their gas meters is a story." So - thousands of people freezing in their homes over the winter isn't interesting, and fuel companies making massive profits off huge price rises isn't interesting, but a tiny and unrepresentative number of poor people finding ways to get round that is a valid subject for prurient, judgemental prying. What a delightful society we are.
A more comforting comment was from an anonymous female tabloid reader, who said something akin to 'I read the News of the World but I don't believe anything in it - not even the TV listings.'
The actual launch event, run by funders the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Media Trust, was excellent (and not just because of the really good lunch, much better than the somewhat suspect sarnies usually on offer. And a decent veggie selection).
With a reasonable balance of journalists and people from a wide range of organisations tackling poverty or working in marginalised areas (like Carisma from Home Sweet Home, Moss Side), there were some really active debates about how third sector organisations, especially those with tiny PR resources and budgets, can relate to the media, how they can protect their members and service users when journalists turn up wanting case studies, and how journalists can behave in a slightly more ethical and honourable fashion, respecting people whose life circumstances have put them in poverty.
Discussions raised issues like why the press seems to feel the need to stereotype and insult poor people - is it so that the better-off can deny to themselves that they might be benefiting from an unequal system? And is the kind of understanding and improvement in reporting that the event and report are trying to achieve eroded by developments in the media industry itself, where it seems to be increasingly difficult to get an entry into national-level newspapers and magazine without spending weeks or months doing unpaid internships. And who gets to do those in London, a ludicrously expensive city to work in? Rich, usually white, kids. Increasing yet more the distance between journalists and the people and communities they talk about. So, all the more need for people to take a look at the Media Trust/JRF guide, and try to absorb some of its lessons.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Cantankerous Frank gets arrested as an eco-terrorist
Marc Roberts is a genius Manchester-based cartoonist with a a big heart, lots of common sense and a stunning capacity for bile and vitriol regarding the many ways various human systems and organisations are fucking up the Earth. He's also terrifyingly prolific, and this evening's cartoon is a particularly marvellous comment on the state of the planet.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Onion sez it again
Best bits of US election analysis I've seen so far...
"Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job"
and
"Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"
"Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job"
and
"Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
4th November 2008
God, I hate US elections.
I hate being stuck on the other side of the Atlantic not being able to participate usefully in something which is going to affect the whole world so profoundly.
I hate that I end up with wishy-washy liberal sympathies for politically horrible Democrat candidates just because they're less obviously maniacally dangerous than the Republican version, even though in the end I know they'll be equally vile on most of the issues that matter, and even if they're not all the other vested interests will scupper anything worthwhile they might do.
I hate how furious I end up being at the American population for electing murderous fucking nutters, and how on one level I know that there are so many people who are disenfranchised and maybe they'd have voted differently (although part of me can't help suspecting that The Onion was right on the button here). But the other part of me is just thinking YOU BASTARDS ELECTED BUSH - TWICE!
And I hate that the media seems to have nothing else to report (except for BBC talentless waste-of-oxygen celebs saying stupid things) when there are so many things going on in the world, but to people who don't have power/money/their own radio show.
I hate being stuck on the other side of the Atlantic not being able to participate usefully in something which is going to affect the whole world so profoundly.
I hate that I end up with wishy-washy liberal sympathies for politically horrible Democrat candidates just because they're less obviously maniacally dangerous than the Republican version, even though in the end I know they'll be equally vile on most of the issues that matter, and even if they're not all the other vested interests will scupper anything worthwhile they might do.
I hate how furious I end up being at the American population for electing murderous fucking nutters, and how on one level I know that there are so many people who are disenfranchised and maybe they'd have voted differently (although part of me can't help suspecting that The Onion was right on the button here). But the other part of me is just thinking YOU BASTARDS ELECTED BUSH - TWICE!
And I hate that the media seems to have nothing else to report (except for BBC talentless waste-of-oxygen celebs saying stupid things) when there are so many things going on in the world, but to people who don't have power/money/their own radio show.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Meeja whinging
As a media freelance who occasionally crosses the divide between PR and journalism - as seems increasingly common - I appreciate that the PR's job is not always a happy one. But Cake PR of London seem to be taking it out on muggins, the hapless freelance on the receiving end of their less-than-impeccable competence.
Nearly 3 months ago, I went on a PR trip to the Lake District organised by Cake on behalf of fair trade fruit company Agrofair. The trip went fine, but because of the short notice I paid for my own train and taxi fares, which totalled over eighty quid. The following week I sent my tickets and receipts and an invoice into the PR girlie at Cake who I'd been dealing with. She acknowledged receipt and said she'd get the cash sent asap.
Have I seen that cash yet? Have I buggery. Maybe in smug London PR-land eighty pounds is small change, but in Northern freelance land it's a fair wad on spending money, and I want it back. The rude cow has even stopped replying to emails, and the accounts department don't seem to know what I'm on about, which seems to imply that she hasn't even registered the claim.
So, warning to fellow freelances etc. Avoid Cake PR. And to fair trade companies wanting to operate ethically, avoid them too, if you're as interested in freelance journalists not getting screwed over as you are in just treatment for majority world farmers.
Ho hum.
Nearly 3 months ago, I went on a PR trip to the Lake District organised by Cake on behalf of fair trade fruit company Agrofair. The trip went fine, but because of the short notice I paid for my own train and taxi fares, which totalled over eighty quid. The following week I sent my tickets and receipts and an invoice into the PR girlie at Cake who I'd been dealing with. She acknowledged receipt and said she'd get the cash sent asap.
Have I seen that cash yet? Have I buggery. Maybe in smug London PR-land eighty pounds is small change, but in Northern freelance land it's a fair wad on spending money, and I want it back. The rude cow has even stopped replying to emails, and the accounts department don't seem to know what I'm on about, which seems to imply that she hasn't even registered the claim.
So, warning to fellow freelances etc. Avoid Cake PR. And to fair trade companies wanting to operate ethically, avoid them too, if you're as interested in freelance journalists not getting screwed over as you are in just treatment for majority world farmers.
Ho hum.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
School in Hebron
"Waiting"
Waiting is Donna Baillie's film about the trials of getting to school if you're a Palestinian kid in Hebron - and if it wins the Babelgum film festival $10,000 will go to those very kids. Take a look!
Waiting is Donna Baillie's film about the trials of getting to school if you're a Palestinian kid in Hebron - and if it wins the Babelgum film festival $10,000 will go to those very kids. Take a look!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
We're doomed, I tell you...
You'd think that being shacked up with a climate change obsessive, spending your working life researching evil corporate behaviour, being politically engaged with the fate of Palestine and playing mother to a bulimic three-legged cat would induce a level of hopelessness about the state of the world that couldn't get any lower.
You'd be wrong.
In one of my normally mind-numbing days being pimped out to do research for Supposed Ethical Corp, yesterday I got sent off to look up stats on food security. It took only a couple of hours of reading reports like Chatham House's 'UK Food Supply: Storm Clouds On The Horizon' and the Cabinet Office's 'Food: an analysis of the issues' to convince me that not only are we doomed on this front (as well as the ice caps melting, blah blah) but that as a species we bloody well deserve to be. Global grain stores halved in thirty years - because it costs too much to stash. Scary amounts of agricultural land worldwide irreversibly degraded. Chinese per capita meat consumption increased by two-and-a-half-times in twenty years. And official proposals to address the problem seem to include joys such as another shot at persuading us all that GM food is a great idea, really.
Oh boy, we are so fucked.
You'd be wrong.
In one of my normally mind-numbing days being pimped out to do research for Supposed Ethical Corp, yesterday I got sent off to look up stats on food security. It took only a couple of hours of reading reports like Chatham House's 'UK Food Supply: Storm Clouds On The Horizon' and the Cabinet Office's 'Food: an analysis of the issues' to convince me that not only are we doomed on this front (as well as the ice caps melting, blah blah) but that as a species we bloody well deserve to be. Global grain stores halved in thirty years - because it costs too much to stash. Scary amounts of agricultural land worldwide irreversibly degraded. Chinese per capita meat consumption increased by two-and-a-half-times in twenty years. And official proposals to address the problem seem to include joys such as another shot at persuading us all that GM food is a great idea, really.
Oh boy, we are so fucked.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Further horrors from the Hate Mail
Oops! Another stupid Hate Mail hack has the idiocy to send this round via press /PR service Responsesource. I guess she'll be closing down that AOL account soon...
——-Original Message——- From: rsreply@dwpub.com [mailto:rsreply@dwpub.com] Sent: 13 February 2008 15:57 To:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Response Source - Diana Appleyard , Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
Email: mailto:dianaappleyard@aol.com
Phone: not provided for use
Fax: 01296 738083 (preferred)
——-Original Message——- From: rsreply@dwpub.com [mailto:rsreply@dwpub.com] Sent: 13 February 2008 15:57 To:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Response Source - Diana Appleyard , Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
PUBLICATION: Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
JOURNALIST: Diana Appleyard (staff)
DEADLINE: 14-February-2008 16:00
QUERY: I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status. We can pay you £100 for taking part, and I promise it will be anonymous, just a quick phone call. Could you email me asap? Many thanks, Diana
Email: mailto:dianaappleyard@aol.com
Phone: not provided for use
Fax: 01296 738083 (preferred)
Sunday, December 09, 2007
The politics of museum displays
Paris is great, even in December, but being back from Paris can be a bit of a sharp comedown.
While wending my way around the galleries of the Louvre which house ancient archaeological pieces from an area roughly described as the Levant - Palestine, Lebanon, Southern Syria, Jordan, Israel - the disparity between the different bits of the museum struck me.
In the big, exciting, fashionable, child-friendly Egypt galleries, for instance, and other areas like the Assyrian and Mesopotamian galleries, noneof which are associated with major current political issues, the spaces are clean and bright and newly-furnished-looking, and the display cabinets are new and expensive-looking, and there are attractive places to sit, and plenty of these have been sponsored by one big international corporation or another, as evidenced by the plaques with their names on.
But in the complicated and controversial and unfashionable area that is 'the Levant,' the vibe is very different, with slightly grubby walls and floors, tatty cases, little seating and older, sparser labelling of many of the objects. Granted, most of the stuff here is less sexy - no vast reconstructions of Assyrian palaces, or stunning wall-sized sculptures. But the 3-foot-high Jordanian plaster figure, older than any pottery and with blank inhuman eyes but a bizarrely realistic child's nose was pretty amazing to me. But could it be that those big corporate donors don't want to get mixed up with this stuff, that even those donors from the Arab world who are happy to claim more resplendant, less currently complex civilisations for themselves, are chary of association with this untidy, emotionally and politically loaded corner of the Middle East?
While wending my way around the galleries of the Louvre which house ancient archaeological pieces from an area roughly described as the Levant - Palestine, Lebanon, Southern Syria, Jordan, Israel - the disparity between the different bits of the museum struck me.
In the big, exciting, fashionable, child-friendly Egypt galleries, for instance, and other areas like the Assyrian and Mesopotamian galleries, noneof which are associated with major current political issues, the spaces are clean and bright and newly-furnished-looking, and the display cabinets are new and expensive-looking, and there are attractive places to sit, and plenty of these have been sponsored by one big international corporation or another, as evidenced by the plaques with their names on.
But in the complicated and controversial and unfashionable area that is 'the Levant,' the vibe is very different, with slightly grubby walls and floors, tatty cases, little seating and older, sparser labelling of many of the objects. Granted, most of the stuff here is less sexy - no vast reconstructions of Assyrian palaces, or stunning wall-sized sculptures. But the 3-foot-high Jordanian plaster figure, older than any pottery and with blank inhuman eyes but a bizarrely realistic child's nose was pretty amazing to me. But could it be that those big corporate donors don't want to get mixed up with this stuff, that even those donors from the Arab world who are happy to claim more resplendant, less currently complex civilisations for themselves, are chary of association with this untidy, emotionally and politically loaded corner of the Middle East?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Train torture
At this time of year it's hard to feel like one of the biggest impediments to sustainable transport in the UK is the British train industry. Having spent the last few weeks making regular visits to the trainline.com website to see if they've deigned to start listing affordable tickets for Christmas, I am now convinced that the modern version of Mr Scrooge is a bunch of rail industry prices executives laughing to themselves while anyone who doesn't fancy shelling out (for example) £65 a pop to get home for Christmas has to waste their time watching train ticket websites like a hawk. And then when they finally release all three reasonably priced tickets, they will sell in ten seconds flat and half the desperate buyers will be faced with that horrible patronising screen that some scumbag copywriter at trainline.com has invented to tell you lies about where the ticket you just tried to buy has disappeared to in cyberspace.
This country really badly needs decent public transport, and the grasping corporations ijn place aren't providing it. We need to tax the tits off the aviation industry and instead of building another insanely polluting runway at Heathrow, put the money into an improved, not-for-profit rail system.
And then we need to hang Richard Branson up by his heels from the front of one of his Pendelinos and tug on his cheeky little goatee till his eyes pop out.
This country really badly needs decent public transport, and the grasping corporations ijn place aren't providing it. We need to tax the tits off the aviation industry and instead of building another insanely polluting runway at Heathrow, put the money into an improved, not-for-profit rail system.
And then we need to hang Richard Branson up by his heels from the front of one of his Pendelinos and tug on his cheeky little goatee till his eyes pop out.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Meeja horing
Well, rather bizarrely OA and I seem to have degenerated into poster children for not having kids for environmental reasons - OA's vasectomy has now managed to make its way into Ethical Consumer magazine, the Metro, BBC2's Heaven & Earth, the Observer and now the Femail section of the Daily Mail.
The Observer, done by their environment & transport editor Juliette Jowit, was generally a fairly positive experience. Juliette was a genuinely interesting person to talk to, wrote an excellent article and was obviously very interested in properly exploring the issue of population and the environment. After the horror of the Observer Woman section and its general pathetic vacuousness, being involved in this article kind of restored a small amount of my faith in this publication (though I still want one of those Observer Woman Makes Me Spit t-shirts). The pic of me was a bit of a horror, but at least Albert's beans on the allotment looked good!
Daily Mail writer Morag Turner wasn't as horrible as I was expecting from this fascist rag (Overgrown Antipodean and I will be donating half our fee for the piece to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns), although she obviously had a fairly shallow understanding of and interest in the subject. You kind of got the impression that she was a bit bored of writing the usual tripe that goes in Femail and had aspirations (not matched by the quality of her article, unfortunately), to write 'proper' stuff. The quotes from OA and I that made it into the article bore a slightly bizarre and vague relation to what we actually said, but that's tabloids for you. The most traumatic bit of this whole experience was getting photographed - I knew we were going to have a photographer round, but was utterly unprepared for the appearance of the makeup artist, who proceeded to plaster me in more slap than I've worn in about the last 15 years and certainly more than I have ever worn at one time in my entire life. I looked like a raddled old slapper and my hair kept sticking to me. The photographer was a kind of old-style gent, but the makeup artist was weird - we started off thinking that she was rather standoffish, but rapidly realised that actually is was just that breahing occupied all synapses, and she certainly couldn't walk and speak at the same time. And the result was infinitely more horrible than anything the no-makeup, bit-of-a-weird expression Observer guy inflicted on what miniscule public reputation I may have!
Well, Daily Mail woman is now talking about pimping us to Grazia or something similar. Will have to see what the fee would be... and maybe donate half of that one to something radical feminist. Unless of course they see this blog...
Observer article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2206650,00.html
Daily Mail article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879
The Observer, done by their environment & transport editor Juliette Jowit, was generally a fairly positive experience. Juliette was a genuinely interesting person to talk to, wrote an excellent article and was obviously very interested in properly exploring the issue of population and the environment. After the horror of the Observer Woman section and its general pathetic vacuousness, being involved in this article kind of restored a small amount of my faith in this publication (though I still want one of those Observer Woman Makes Me Spit t-shirts). The pic of me was a bit of a horror, but at least Albert's beans on the allotment looked good!
Daily Mail writer Morag Turner wasn't as horrible as I was expecting from this fascist rag (Overgrown Antipodean and I will be donating half our fee for the piece to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns), although she obviously had a fairly shallow understanding of and interest in the subject. You kind of got the impression that she was a bit bored of writing the usual tripe that goes in Femail and had aspirations (not matched by the quality of her article, unfortunately), to write 'proper' stuff. The quotes from OA and I that made it into the article bore a slightly bizarre and vague relation to what we actually said, but that's tabloids for you. The most traumatic bit of this whole experience was getting photographed - I knew we were going to have a photographer round, but was utterly unprepared for the appearance of the makeup artist, who proceeded to plaster me in more slap than I've worn in about the last 15 years and certainly more than I have ever worn at one time in my entire life. I looked like a raddled old slapper and my hair kept sticking to me. The photographer was a kind of old-style gent, but the makeup artist was weird - we started off thinking that she was rather standoffish, but rapidly realised that actually is was just that breahing occupied all synapses, and she certainly couldn't walk and speak at the same time. And the result was infinitely more horrible than anything the no-makeup, bit-of-a-weird expression Observer guy inflicted on what miniscule public reputation I may have!
Well, Daily Mail woman is now talking about pimping us to Grazia or something similar. Will have to see what the fee would be... and maybe donate half of that one to something radical feminist. Unless of course they see this blog...
Observer article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2206650,00.html
Daily Mail article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Is this a ham I see before me?
Well, it's a bit off-topic but I suppose it fits into corporate ethics on the grounds of gouging bastard London theatres, and into art on the grounds of being a Shakespeare play. But generally I just need another opportunity to vent some spleen, whilst possibly getting a warning out there to anyone still planning to cough up serious cash for the West End production of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart.
Overgrown Antipodean (see http://theethicalwedding.blogspot.com for who this is) reckons that the reason this production had theatre critics creaming themselves en masse is that they're all middle aged men whose egos have been stroked by the idea that a bald 60-something can play a part better suited to a man in his 30s or 40s, with its implications of military and physical prowess. It's as good an explanation as any.
I was really excited about seeing this play. Macbeth has always been one of my favourites and I've never seen it done on stage. I have been known to 'fess up to a liking for Mr Stewart too, although I did go off him slightly after reading somewhere that he'd left his wide for a bit of stuff, which is just tediouslt stereotypical of aging actors whose careers are doing well, and really not in Jean-Luc's class. So prior to actually seeing it, this play had a lot going for it. And it's not often I shell out nearly £40 each for theatre tickets.
Oh dear. Was I ever wrong. I mean, it wasn't really, really diabolical or anything (well, one or two bits were). But it certainly wasn't up to the hype, and some bits were really quite ropey. Patrick Stewart was the hammiest thing alive. There's one scene in which he makes a ham sandwich and you just want to yell, Mary Whitehouse Experience style, 'that's you that is!' at him. What are directors for but to tell people they're hamming themselves into seriously unhalal territory and looking very, very silly in the process. OA nearly laughed a couple of times, and he is damn sure that if he had, plenty of the audience may well have succumbed too and then where would have Mr S been?
Next up is the big 3 witches 'double, double toil and trouble' speech. Now, this bit needs to be done well because the coherence of the plot of much of the rest of the play rests on understanding what they're saying. So doing it as some dodgy semi-rap with a lot of feedback hissing is really, really unhelpful. And when you do it in a style which is blatantly a rip-off of the 1990s video to Shakepeare's Sister's 'stay,' the one with Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey fighting over some prine bloke in a hospital bed, then it just gets really daft. I mean, director blokey, did you think no-one would notice? Dear oh dear.
And then there's the generic authoritarianism motif which seems to be de rigeur for any play in London which is vaguely about power, kingship, corruption, authority etc etc etc. I'm sure once, about twenty years ago, this was a fresh and interesting take, but now it's just a bit sloppy and vaguely offensive to use shots from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in such an imprecise and slapdash way.
There were some good things. Banquo's ghost standing bloodied on the dining table; the slithery bloodspots projected on the background; Lady Macbeth looking very fine in a rather nice bias-cut evening frock. But, to be honest, I'd quite like my 40 quid back. And my main lesson from this? Well, never trust a critic, but that goes without staying. But for my Shakespeare, I'm definitely sticking to the regions and hoping for some more quality like the wonderful, brilliant production of the Tempest this summer at Manchester's Royal Exchange, with Pete Postlethwaite.
Overgrown Antipodean (see http://theethicalwedding.blogspot.com for who this is) reckons that the reason this production had theatre critics creaming themselves en masse is that they're all middle aged men whose egos have been stroked by the idea that a bald 60-something can play a part better suited to a man in his 30s or 40s, with its implications of military and physical prowess. It's as good an explanation as any.
I was really excited about seeing this play. Macbeth has always been one of my favourites and I've never seen it done on stage. I have been known to 'fess up to a liking for Mr Stewart too, although I did go off him slightly after reading somewhere that he'd left his wide for a bit of stuff, which is just tediouslt stereotypical of aging actors whose careers are doing well, and really not in Jean-Luc's class. So prior to actually seeing it, this play had a lot going for it. And it's not often I shell out nearly £40 each for theatre tickets.
Oh dear. Was I ever wrong. I mean, it wasn't really, really diabolical or anything (well, one or two bits were). But it certainly wasn't up to the hype, and some bits were really quite ropey. Patrick Stewart was the hammiest thing alive. There's one scene in which he makes a ham sandwich and you just want to yell, Mary Whitehouse Experience style, 'that's you that is!' at him. What are directors for but to tell people they're hamming themselves into seriously unhalal territory and looking very, very silly in the process. OA nearly laughed a couple of times, and he is damn sure that if he had, plenty of the audience may well have succumbed too and then where would have Mr S been?
Next up is the big 3 witches 'double, double toil and trouble' speech. Now, this bit needs to be done well because the coherence of the plot of much of the rest of the play rests on understanding what they're saying. So doing it as some dodgy semi-rap with a lot of feedback hissing is really, really unhelpful. And when you do it in a style which is blatantly a rip-off of the 1990s video to Shakepeare's Sister's 'stay,' the one with Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey fighting over some prine bloke in a hospital bed, then it just gets really daft. I mean, director blokey, did you think no-one would notice? Dear oh dear.
And then there's the generic authoritarianism motif which seems to be de rigeur for any play in London which is vaguely about power, kingship, corruption, authority etc etc etc. I'm sure once, about twenty years ago, this was a fresh and interesting take, but now it's just a bit sloppy and vaguely offensive to use shots from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in such an imprecise and slapdash way.
There were some good things. Banquo's ghost standing bloodied on the dining table; the slithery bloodspots projected on the background; Lady Macbeth looking very fine in a rather nice bias-cut evening frock. But, to be honest, I'd quite like my 40 quid back. And my main lesson from this? Well, never trust a critic, but that goes without staying. But for my Shakespeare, I'm definitely sticking to the regions and hoping for some more quality like the wonderful, brilliant production of the Tempest this summer at Manchester's Royal Exchange, with Pete Postlethwaite.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Sands of Sorrow
| Profoundly moving film made in 1950 or so showing the experiences of Palestinian refugees forced from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8047351706461342401&q=uranium&pl=true | |
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