Category Archives: Media

May 6, 2014 · 9:55 am

Dear Metro, Is sexual assault really so funny that it makes you snort tea through your nose?

metro
Dear Metro, Is sexual assault really so funny that it makes you snort tea through your nose?

I ask because in your article 27 things men do in bed that women hate you seem to suggest that the list your readers provided was ‘hilarious’.

Now, I might have missed something here but I am not quite seeing what is ‘hilarious’ about (for example) number 16:

‘Being so aggressive with their hands during foreplay that they pretty much give you internal bleeding and bruising.’

Or number 18:

‘Pulling your hair so hard you scream and your eyes water.’

The list goes on, biting, putting ‘objects inside’ someone, anal sex without asking or using lube…

These answers are all quite legitimate answers to ‘things [some] men do in bed that [some] women hate’ but let’s be clear…what some of the readers of the Metro have described is sexual assault.

Personally, I’m not seeing anything too funny in that and I find it amazing that both a journalist and then an editor have.

 

UPDATE: the journo who wrote the original article is evidently looking for more laughs. An hour ago she tweeted:

 

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April 29, 2014 · 2:22 pm

Craft brewery ‘Brewdog’ issues formal apology to Portman Group for ‘not giving a shit’

Brewdog
The on-going spat between the craft brewery ‘Brewdog’ and the Portman Group (named with no irony after the Guinness offices in Portman Square where it held its first meeting), has today taken another tantalising twist.

Responding to a comically dull press release from the Portman Group which once again accuses the brewery of breaking the advertising standards, Brewdog have released their own statement apologising to the Portman Group for ‘not giving a shit’.

In their comically curt response the brewery summarises their feeling to the Portman Group saying:

“Unfortunately, the Portman Group is a gloomy gaggle of killjoy jobsworths, funded by navel-gazing international drinks giants. Their raison d’être is to provide a diversion for the true evils of this industry, perpetrated by the gigantic faceless brands that pay their wages.” 

They continued:

“While the Portman Group lives out its days deliberating whether a joke on a bottle of beer is responsible or irresponsible use of humour, at BrewDog we will just get on with brewing awesome beer and treating our customers like adults.”

As if to illustrate a point the Portman Group’s Executive Director. Henry Ashworth, specifically addresses the issue of humour in the press release saying:

“The Code rules do not exist to prevent humorous or innovative brand marketing but to make sure that humour is used responsibly.”

Before following it up with possible the most humourless sentence ever constructed in the English language:

“We urge producers to exercise due diligence and consult our Code Advisory Team if they are in any doubt.”

This is the latest slightly comic spat between Brewdog and the Portman Group. In 2008 BrewDog called for The Portman Group to be scrapped (with some equally strong rhetoric) while the Portman Group has made repeated accusations against various Brewdog beers (The beer ‘Speedballs’ apparently mocked drug addiction – an accusation that led Brewdog to then initiate defamation action for, ‘Tokyo stout’ – then Britain’s strongest beer’ – encouraged binge drinking etc etc).

For the passive onlooker this is a spat that just keeps giving. Portman Group keep chipping away in mono-corporate talk that does nothing other than give Brewdog further publicity. Brewdog on the other hand keep chipping away with their wonderful diarrhoea of anti-corporate adjectives sounding increasingly like a half-pissed Noam Chomsky.

The contrast between the two is something this blogger plans to dwell on over a carefully selected independent craft beer.

Cheers.

 

*Hat tip to my my mate Russ for putting me onto this latest spat. 

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April 2, 2014 · 1:20 pm

A vote for UKIP in Stroud is a vote against science

ukip
My local paper, The Stroud News and Journal, this week published a letter from the UKIP perspective parliamentary candidate, Caroline Stephens. In the article Ms Stephens argues ‘that the climate has always been changing’ and that the local Greens should leave poor old Mr Patterson (the current climate change sceptic Tory Environment Minister) alone.

For those of you who are not familiar with the environmentalist epicentre which is Stroud, this move is akin to turning up to the WOMAD music festival to argue why you thought, not that you just didn’t like world music, but that it didn’t actually exist.

The reaction she received in the SNJ was comparable to a very verbal booing off stage. It was a splendid mixture of disbelief, outrage and bewildered humour.

But for every Stroudie who commented on the article, there are probably hundreds more who were taken in by her half-truths.

And so, once again, I feel honour bound, for the sake of anyone who is even considering lending her a vote, to highlight the pure idiocy of what she (and many other UKIPpers) actually thinks:

Point 1 – She writes:

If climate had never changed, the world would still be in say the Jurassic period maybe. If climate didn’t vary from one place to another sun seekers would not likely prefer southern Spain to the north of Scotland for their sun bathing holidays.

The first sentence is about as idiotic axiomatic and a non-sentence as me saying ‘if the Sun wasn’t there then there would be no life on this planet’.

I look forward to her speculation about where we would be without gravity.

Her second sentence shows a misunderstanding (or purposeful confusion?) of the fact that when we talk about global warming, we are talking about the globe, not what the weather is like in Spain.

Up to this point she is slightly odd but nothing too harmful.

Point 2 – She writes:

Currently there has been no statistically significant global warming for around 17 years (depending on which dataset is used).

I love the proviso here… “depending on which data set you use”. Perfect.

I think she is referring to the disparity between surface temperature and ocean temperature. If so, our friends over at Skeptical Science (who have devoted quite a lot of time to myth busting) write:

“Records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon (Figure 1).  More than 90% of global warming heat goes into warming the oceans, while less than 3% goes into increasing the surface air temperature.”

So that explains the surface temperature recordings to which I assume she refers (but this is hard to tell when her myths are written with no sources to support them).

You can read more about why the earth has been getting warmer in the last 17 years here.

Point 3 – She then references Prof John Cristy:

Yes, her only real half reference is the same John Cristy profiled here. Lol.

Point 4 – One has to ask how there were so many storms and floods going back to the nineteenth century and before. No one had even thought of blaming humankind for the weather then although the alarmists of the day did blame so called witches for ‘cooking’ the weather? Weather (rain) not climate change has been the cause of floods which have been exacerbated by the European Union’s discouraging dredging of waterways in the name of creating wetland wildlife habitats.

Just wow…of course, it is the EU’s fault!

Right, let’s keep this simple. Rain (weather) is different to climate. But the climate can impact on extreme weather events (this was the very basic point that Green Cllr Sarah Lunnon was making that sparked this bizarre response from Ms Stephens).

If you want to know exactly how climate change might impact on extreme weather events you can read this 2012 IPCC report.

A slightly more credible source than her…oh wait…none existing source.

Point 5 – (I skip a bit here as it all relates to extreme weather and frankly, I’m getting a bit bored). But towards the end she writes:

Thank goodness there are a few climate rationalists left in the Coalition to try to defend our way of life.

Sigh. “Climate rationalist”. She is of course referring to Owen Patterson who I think broke a record a few months back with the most number of climate change myths spouted on national radio.

Read this blog on his (would be comic if it wasn’t so depressing) appearance on the BBC’s Any Questions.

The Greens have my absolute backing when they call for the sacking of this man who seems to be able to ignore basic climate science.

In short, the whole letter consisted of half-truths, misinformation and vague unsupported ideas that I felt needed to be tackled .

But I look forward to Ms Stephen’s (fully referenced with peer reviewed science) response.

Until this happens though I hope the good people of Stroud will back a candidate/party that actually uses science to base their views (and policies on).

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April 1, 2014 · 10:10 am

5 points to look out for in the Labour Party political broadcast tonight

The Labour Party Political Broadcast was today launched and will be hitting your TV screens later this evening.

You can also watch it here:

Here are 5 interesting points to look out for as you watch it:

  • The first point is to note how many times they use the phrase ‘under David Cameron’ opposed to their more traditional ‘Under this Tory government’. There is a very obvious reason for this. Since coming to power in 2010, David Cameron’s personal approval rating has fallen from 57% satisfied/26% dissatisfied to 37% satisfied/56% dissatisfied. In short, Cameron has become a liability at the polls and Labour are looking to play on that.
    2010 Cameron ratings
    2014 Cameron ratings
    Source
  • The second point to note is that the whole broadcast is talking about one thing – the economy! As I wrote yesterday, the economy remains top of the list of voter concerns. This makes sense then for the Labour Party to hammer home a message that we are experiencing a cost of living crisis. The question though, that might make or break the 2015 election, is whether or not the economy remains on top of the voter concerns list as the government continues to push its message of a recovering economy. Already we can see a big drop in the last year:
    issues-facing-britain-economy-preeminence
  • With such focus being placed on the economy, one wonders if UKIP and/or the Conservatives will focus on immigration (that consistently remains high on voter concerns). If so, we could see a bigger than expected shift to UKIP from former Labour voters. This in itself might make or break the Euopean Parliament elections in May 2014.
  • They have audacity, but they know the electorate have short memories. At 1:25 into the broadcast they attack the Liberal Democrats (note attack on the party rather than Clegg) for breaking their tuition fees pledge…. They mention student debt but not that Labour introduced tuition fees and then swiftly tripled them. It is this assumption, that has so often been proved to be right, that the electorate have short term memories, which leads me to believe the Liberal Democrats will make a near to full return to strength between 2015 and 2020.
  • Lastly, and I had to re-watch the video a few times to check this, did you notice that every single person who is in focus is white and, let’s be honest, quite middle-class looking? Could this be reverse Thatcherism? Trying to convince the squeezed middle classes that they are in fact working class? Need further convincing…check out the butter dish in the kitchen at the start, who owns (and uses) a butter dish?

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March 21, 2014 · 10:21 am

First tweets from The Green Party and their elected officials…

twitter
To celebrate 8 years, twitter has released this cool little website, www.first-tweets.com. The website allows you to look up the very first tweet from any twitter account.

One wonders why it has taken 8 years for this be released.

Anyway, I thought I would take a look back The Green Party and their elected official’s first tweets:

The official Green Party account was the first to join on the 22nd July 2008 with this touch of inspirational political rhetoric:

Soon after, the leader of Brighton and Hove Council, Jason Kitcat, joined on the 4th August 2008:

Hot on his heels, the now elected leader of The Green Party, Natalie Bennett, joined on the 4th October 2008 with this bit of inner reflection:

Next up comes London Assembly Member (AM), Darren Johnson who joined at 7:45 am on the 30th September 2009. Darren’s first tweet just oozes with enthusiasm:

Just 5 minutes later, Jenny Jones (aka Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb) also an AM, joined with a rare example of supporting Boris Johnson:

Caroline Lucas, The Green Party’s only MP and then leader, joined on the 9th November 2009 with this critic of nuclear power…good to see she started as she intended to go on!

The Green Party MEP for South East England, Mr Keith Taylor, joined twitter on the 9th July 2011 highlighting some of the issues he was working on in the EU:

Keith’s partner in crime, Green MEP for London Jean Lambert, then joined twitter on the 30th September 2011 with this ever practical commitment to get out in her constituency:

How things have moved on in just a few years…Caroline Lucas is now one of the most followed MPs on twitter with nearly 75,000 followers.

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March 19, 2014 · 9:54 am

Yes, Prime Minister on Russia

The Huffington Post today highlighted this Yes, Prime Minister clip from 1986. 


Are Russia’s actions in the Crimea a sign that they are adopting ‘Salami tactics’? 

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March 11, 2014 · 1:53 pm

Coping with death: 10 years on from the Madrid bombings

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid
Today the internet has been awash with reflections and analysis of the 10th anniversary of the Madrid bombings that took the lives of 191 people and injured 1,820 more. The political aftermath in Spain has been analysed, the role of Al-Qaeda examined and the role of ETA dismissed (by most).

And yet, in all the articles I have read, with the exception of a few survivor stories, there has been a dearth of analysis to describe how people are feeling.

Us Brits know only too well that these occasions act as a sombre reflection on the needless and violent loss of life. I write this with confidence because I have seen these sombre reflections echoed on the 7th July in London. I have no doubt that some American friends can say the same for the 11th September in New York.

Being in London on the 7th July is a strange experience as the macabre anniversary intermingles with the vibrant life of the capital. Life bustles on with only the subtle behaviour changes of the living hinting at the loss that families, communities, and the nation experienced.

While life speeds on, a few people will struggle to get out of bed on these anniversaries. For some the weight of their loss will once more sit on their chest as they lay awake and alone next to the shadow of the ghost of a former lover. A few though will be out of bed and on the way into work only to uncharacteristically find themselves lost in thought as they wait at the bus stop thinking back to the awful explosions.

Many more though will go through their day changing their routine only a fraction to be a small part in the wider ritual of loss that is now, for better or for worse, part of their national identity.

This change in the national mindset is like a shard of glass inserted deep into a national psyche. But the rupture that caused this change is not just about a sense of grief or loss, but also vulnerability. This vulnerability can manifest itself in individuals, and especially survivors, in ‘what if thoughts’. What if I hadn’t been running late that day? What if my wife had been working from the office that day? What if…

On days like this, on anniversaries of atrocities, our own mortality sits slightly closer to our hearts and weighs slightly more on our subconscious.

Politicians will talk with bravado about how these attacks will not change us. They will say that they will make us stronger in the face of adversity. But, deep down we know that we are changed. We know that there is now a chink in our personal and collective armour. We know that we have experienced vulnerability and that this has crushed our completely false sense of invincibility.

For some this anniversary will bring flooding back an intense wash of emotion…grief, pain and loss. For many more though it will leave us feeling uncertain, insecure, and vulnerable.

My message then to anyone who is reading this and is today feeling out of sorts is this: it’s OK. It’s not ‘letting the terrorists win’ to feel whatever you’re feeling.

Death, near-death, and collective grief are messy subjects that don’t fit nicely into political rhetoric or motivational clichés. We are what we are – a jumble of thoughts, feelings and emotions that are shaped by our experiences.

Thousands of people across Spain and especially in Madrid experienced something truly awful 10 years ago today. No amount of pressure will squeeze their individual responses into a politically useful box.

This article was cross-published on the International edition of ehospice. 

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March 4, 2014 · 2:22 pm

No to breast cancer. No to Page 3

no-more-page-3
Over the last year I have been part of a global movement that campaigns for the dignity of every patient. This global movement campaigns for the dignity of, among others, patients with breast cancer.

It is with sadness then that I saw the breast cancer campaigns group ‘CoppaFeel’ have teamed up with The Sun newspapers ‘page 3 girls’ – a relic of a misogynistic newspaper industry that almost by definition is devoid of dignity and respect.

The campaign will see The Sun newspaper every Tuesday dedicate the Page 3 girl slot to encourage women to check their breasts for signs of cancer.

While I of course, just like the ‘No to page 3 girls’ campaign, hope this campaign is a success and it encourages more girls to check their breasts, I feel saddened that The Sun have chosen, out of all the tools available to them, the overtly sexualised images of young girls to highlight this important issue.

In fact I struggle to think of a less appropriate medium in which to highlight this campaign. Page 3 is perhaps the most prominent icon of a culture that reduces women to mere objects and men to little more than objectifiers. This culture leaves some women feeling ashamed of their bodies and shy to ask for examinations.

As much as The Sun would like to think otherwise, the No to Page 3 campaign have collected testimony after testimony from girls who blame Page 3 and the sexist culture it perpetuates for their own understanding of their bodies and sex.

One recent account from a breast cancer patient comments:

“I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and had to have a quarter of my breast removed. I feel horrible and ugly and these images in Newspapers and films make me feel worse.”

Another testimony says:

“I compared myself to this picture and having no other pictures of what naked women are supposed to look like to refer to I judged myself in light of it. I grew to hate my body, I grew to hate myself.”

I wonder how David Dinsmore, the editor of The Sun, would answer the following question: Do you think Page 3 helps or hinders the girls that gave these testimonies to stand in front of a mirror and check their breasts?

This campaign will reach millions of people and will hopefully save lives. But in 6 months’ time when the campaign is all done and dusted what will we be left with?

We will still have one of our largest newspapers going to print daily where the largest photo is of a half-naked women. We will still have a culture where women’s breasts are stared at and not respected. And this, collectively, will do nothing to install a feeling of dignity and respect into women which in turn will only hinder the chances of women regularly checking themselves for signs of cancer.

Take Action:

  • Join over 136,000 others and sign the petition calling for The Sun remove ‘the bare boobs.

UPDATE:

The Independent today ran the headline – “Breast cancer charities criticise The Sun’s new Page Three ‘Check ’em Tuesday’ for trivialising the disease“. Good to see I am not the only one who feels like this!

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March 3, 2014 · 10:04 am

An inspiring start to the week

Totally humbled. That’s how I felt this Monday morning. Reading, editing and publishing the story of Moses Byomuhangi after a weekend of partying and rock climbing has inspired me to be back in the office working for a palliative care organisation.  

After a weekend of having a lot of fun I made my way back into the office of the African Palliative Care Association where I work. I was feeling a bit ‘Monday morning’ when I started to work on an article submitted by a recent graduate, Moses Byomuhangi.

I would really encourage you to read Moses’ story.

Reading his account was a really inspiring start to my week. It left me feeling not only humbled but also inspired to keep working for the roll out of palliative care. It reminded me just why it is so important to communicate palliative care to a wider audience: because no one should have to experience what Moses’ parents did and no 15 year old should have to watch their parents die in pain.

There was so much of Moses story that took my breath away. I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it would have been for Moses, at the age of just 15, to watch his parents die in pain.

At the age of 15 I was playing football and drinking cans of beer in the local park with mates. To this day I have not experienced such a level of responsibility that Moses experienced at the age of 15. I am not sure how I would cope with being the primary care giver if my parents fell ill. If I had that responsibility at 15, I am not sure if I would have coped at all.

This is, at least in part, because growing up in the UK I was sheltered from suffering. If someone was dying or in extreme pain I would (we would?) take it for granted that they would be prescribed strong pain killers. They would almost certainly go to hospital for medical attention.

As a result, the prospect of watching (let alone caring for) a loved one in their dying moments suffer excruciating pain simply does not occur. In the age old British adage, ‘it doesn’t bear thinking about’.

It is worth reflecting though quite how unusual this is though. It is thought that about 90% of those who are in need of palliative care around the world do not receive it. In fact Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US and parts of Europe account for over 90% of the global consumption of opioid analgesics (strong pain medications).

In short, Moses’ parent’s reality of dying in pain is the crushing, devastating and completely avoidable reality for the majority. My British experience of being sheltered from such suffering leaves me in the absolute global minority.

But it is not the suffering that Moses has experienced that left me feeling so humbled and inspired. It was the fact that he used this suffering as catalyst to work so incredibly hard to work towards such an admirable goal – the relieving of suffering of others.

I hope that I can take on just a little bit of Moses’s passion, dedication and spirit in my work.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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February 28, 2014 · 9:57 am

The BBC today failed to show The Green Party a basic level of respect


The Green Party leader was this morning on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today Programme’.

The BBC radio schedule previewed her appearance with this description:

BBC Radio

Curious then that after the brief introduction, this issue seemed to slip from the whole interview. Instead the presenter, John Humphrys, decided to focus in on the pressing question of whether voters misunderstand ‘The Green Party’ to be purely interested in environmental issues.

Despite Natalie Bennett, The Green Party leader’s, best efforts to drag the interview back on course Humphry’s seemed obsessed with coming back to the issue of re-branding the party.

What this had to do with whether or not The Green Party should be included in the televised leaders debate remains unclear.

In short, the interview was in my opinion utter baloney.

Imagine, if the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, went onto the Today programme on the same pretext, and the interviewer chose to quite bizarly just focus on in on whether or not the word ‘Labour’ really reflects the party’s policies?

It would never happen.

Why? Because John Humphry, and institutionally the BBC, even if they do not agree with Labour’s policies take the party seriously.

The same cannot be said to be true about The Green Party.

Now…ask yourself a further question: Why do people not vote for The Green Party even if they support most of their policies?

Two answers jump to mind. The first is the electoral system (for the General Election) – people worry about voting Green being a ‘wasted vote’. I can’t blame the BBC for that.

The second reason though is that The Green Party is often just not taken seriously. They are perceived to be political lightweights. Ask yourself where this perception comes from and invariably we come full circle. The answer, at least in part, is found in the inaccurate and derogatory political representation they suffer in the media.

While this is frustrating in partisan newspapers, it is simply unacceptable in the nonpartisan BBC.

The reality of this media environment means that The Green Party struggle for serious representation with any outlet other than a handful of sympathetic Guardian Journalists.

I don’t expect the BBC to give The Green Party an easy ride, but I do expect a degree of respect. This morning the Today programme failed to deliver this.

UPDATE:

Interesting from the reaction on twitter I am not the only person to feel like this:

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February 27, 2014 · 10:04 am

National Trust’s new video – not what you would expect…but it is awesome

This video is reportedly the new National Trust video. If it is genuine. I take my hat off. Superb!

UPDATE: National Trust has got back to me with this:

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February 25, 2014 · 2:05 pm

How the anti-gay bill was reported in Uganda

Ugandan media has made headlines around the world in the 24 hours after Museveni signed the anti-gay bill. Here are a selection of newspaper headlines from Uganda*.

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The Red Pepper made the most headlines after it once again named suspected homosexuals.

The Daily Monitor – the biggest independent paper – ran with the conciliatory headline, ‘Joy, anger as Museveni signs law against gays’. It also quote Museveni directly in it’s follow up article, ‘Museveni: Homosexuals have lost argument in Uganda’.

The New Vision ­– Ran with the complete text of Museveni’s speech under the headline, ‘President Museveni’s speech at Anti-gay Bill signing’.

The Observer – who have previously reported n LGBT rights issues – reported the signing of the bill saying that, ‘Museveni happy to ‘collide with the West’ over homosexuality’.

*This is not intended as a complete list. If there are any articles you think I should have added then please do leave them in the comments section below.

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February 23, 2014 · 2:31 pm

Why are Ugandan teachers so often skipping school?

Natlalie Aldham writes for Hynd’s Blog about the importance of tackling the underlying causes of the ‘truant teachers’ in Uganda before blaming them for skipping school. Natalie is a teacher in the UK who volunteered in Uganda in 2013. 

St Kizito school in UgandaHaving spent a number of months last year working in Kampala primary schools, and having several colleagues around Uganda doing the same, I have a fair understanding of the problems teachers in Uganda face.

The headline then in the Guardian, Uganda’s truant teachers targeted by pupil text-messaging scheme, caught my eye and made me a little cross.

Although the article touched on some of the root causes of why teachers might be absent from schools, the overwhelming message was ‘blame the teachers’. The general gist of the article is that teachers in Uganda regularly do not show up for work, which has an obvious knock-on effect on children’s education. The solution? Give the children mobile phones so that they can text and ‘tell on’ their teachers.

I like the idea of giving pupil’s agency to hold their teachers to account and I am heartened to learn that this system makes Nabwire and his classmates feel less afraid of their teachers.

But this whole scheme ignores the old adage that ‘prevention is better than a cure’. We have to ask, why are teachers absent from schools to begin with?

To answer this, it might help to flip the question. As a teacher in the UK why do I go to work each day? Quick answers:

  1. I love my job and it gives me a sense of purpose. I feel a sense of responsibility towards the children I teach, I care about their wellbeing, and I get a buzz from watching them learn and grow.

  2. I get paid which means I can pay my rent, buy food, pay bills and afford many luxuries.

So why don’t Ugandan teachers feel the same?

Firstly, many are under trained. Teaching in Uganda isn’t always a profession you go into because you love working with children and believe it will be fulfilling. You go into it because you did well enough to finish school but not well enough to go on to University. You make this decision aged 17 and are stuck with it.

Some Ugandan teachers are highly motivated, good at their job and enjoy their work. They are the lucky ones. Many don’t. If your training has been fairly basic and you have 100+ children to teach in a room with potentially no furniture (the resource filled classroom described at the beginning of the Guardian article is a rarity) then motivation to go to work can easily be outweighed by motivation to do pretty much anything else.

Unfurnished and dirty classrooms, where children lack even the basic resources such as pencils and paper make teaching difficult. Without good training teachers rely on (often corporal) punishment to ensure ‘good behaviour’.

Many children haven’t eaten breakfast before school and a lot don’t get lunch either; hungry children aren’t the best learners. Training in how to teach children with Special Educational Needs is minimal at best, which presents further problems for teachers. The curriculum and assessment methods leave a lot to be desired.

Those issues aside, as the Guardian article alludes to, there are a huge number of reasons why teachers miss work:

‘The report attributed teacher absenteeism to factors such as illness, attendance of funerals, poor school infrastructure, transport problems, environmental conditions, lack of lunch available at school and even drunkenness.

Low pay was also cited. Kyambadde said teachers in Uganda only make an estimated 320,000 Ugandan shillings (about $129) a month and are often not paid on time, forcing many to undertake farming and other part-time work.’

These factors listed might sounds trivial, but they are real issues which teachers worry about and they shouldn’t be listed in this off-hand way as though they are just excuses.

Take the example of ‘attendance of funerals’. A school I heard of recently in Western Uganda has lost two of its teachers to premature deaths in the last year. My friend arrived to observe lessons at the school only to find hundreds of children sitting quietly with nothing to do while their teachers were at the funeral. Death among younger adults is almost an everyday event in Uganda and people really are often required to attend funerals when they ‘ought’ to be at work.

I could go on to give anecdotes about hauling water from the bore hole because the water board and local council can’t settle their differences and get the piped supply turned back on; over-the-odds numbers of serious road traffic accidents which leave teachers or their relatives in hospital (hospitals where you must visit and help any patients you know because otherwise they won’t necessarily be given any food); and I’d have a field day if I started on ‘poor school infrastructure’.

Suffice to say, the factors listed are genuine and important in the lives of most Ugandan teachers.

Finally (and this is arguably the most important point), let’s imagine for a minute that Ugandan classrooms are well resourced and schools are well managed, that death and illness are miraculously reduced to what we in the UK see as average, that water and electricity and food supplies are good… as a teacher you’d still want to get paid for going to work.

The bottom line in all of this is that teachers in Uganda are paid a pittance. And that’s if they get paid. Sometimes the end of the month rolls around and they are simply not paid. There is little they can do about this. Most teachers take matters into their own hands and take on additional work in order to provide for their families. They drive boda bodas (motorcycle taxis), they farm a small plot of land, they teach part time in a private school whilst also remaining on the government school’s payroll, they run a small business from home, perhaps taking in sewing. This takes them away from their teaching work, but it is the only way to make ends meet.

Under these circumstances, labelling teachers as simply being ‘truant’ will only add fuel to the fire. Yes there is a problem of teacher being absence and this needs to be addressed, but not like this.

The underlying reasons to why the teachers are absent needs to first be addressed.

More information:

If you’re interested to read more about education in Uganda, have a read of this article by Anya Whiteside: ‘The state of education in Uganda‘.

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January 15, 2014 · 2:05 pm

There is hope yet when the Telegraph publishes an article like this on climate change

My hopes were lifted today when I read this article ripping shreds out of climate change sceptic Sean Thomas in…wait for it…no, not The Guardian, but the Daily Telegraph!

Might this be a game changer? Instead of giving column space to climate change sceptics such as James Delingpole is The Telegraph now looking to publish serious scientists such as Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and PhD holder in oceanography, Corinne Le Quéré?

Can we finally move on from spending our time responding to the delusional few who keep peddling the ‘is global warming man-made?’ debate and start discussing how we are going to limit and mitigate the impact climate change is already having?

Maybe I am being too optimistic, but either way this article in today’s Telegraph by Corinne Le Quéré is an absolute corker and well worth a read.

What if man-made climate change is loading the dice on floods in the UK?

Flooding

Despite what ignorant pundits may have to say on the topic, climate change has raised the risk of flooding in this country

Sean Thomas depicts me in his blog as professing a new type of religion because I speak about climate change and flood risk. His tweet appears to describe me as a “nutter”. Mr Thomas appears to be himself professing ignorance, something I hardly recommend.

I am a physicist of 20 years’ experience, and climate change research is a science, not a faith. That means it is based on observations and on understanding of how the world works. It is the same kind of science that provides the tides, currents and weather forecasts. It’s not perfect science, but science, and knowing the weather, has taken us a long way in making our everyday life a lot more comfortable.

Mr Thomas is ignorant of the fact that heavy precipitation in winter has increased over the past 45 years in all regions of the UK. That’s not just stories told by people based upon their own experience, it is a lot of data collected and analysed all over the UK.

Mr Thomas is ignorant of the fact that that heavy precipitation is an anticipated consequence of a warming climate in wet regions of the world, such as the UK. It is simple physics: the planet warms, water evaporates more, more moisture is available in the atmosphere for individual storms, therefore more heavy precipitation. Storms are made by the weather, but climate change puts more moisture into the atmosphere that makes the rainfall heavier.

As for his ignorance on Arctic melting, Mr Thomas cites one year of data for his claim. The September ice cover has shrunk by 40 per cent in 30 years. When there is no ice, seawater evaporates and loads the atmosphere with moisture, which affects the weather patterns. A look at a map shows that the UK is close to the Arctic, and the possibility that changes in the Arctic might play a role in the weather that we are experiencing in the UK and elsewhere. Mr Thomas takes science and data very lightly.

What is harder to detect is the exact contribution of climate change to extreme weather when it occurs. Bad weather has always been around and “extreme” is a relative term. The techniques required to detect the role of climate change in extreme weather is at an early stage of development, and we don’t yet have the capacity to apply it while weather events occur. If UK science had that capacity then it would help alleviate Mr Thomas’s ignorance over the difference between weather, climate and belief. It would also help put a cost to the risks we are taking by changing the climate.

Mr Thomas refers to the “eerie and echoing syntax” and “the faintly theological tones of the estimable Professor Corinne Le Quéré” – but the only faintly theological tones here are made up by Mr Thomas’ livelihood as a writer of religious fiction. His fatalistic belief that data and independent evidence is of no value, and that climate change is all in the mind of the thousands of scientists specialising in the topic, is ignorant and foolish. While Mr Thomas might believe that it is all in the hand of god, science attributes manmade climate change to man, and coping with and limiting the consequences is in our hands.

If Mr Thomas would like to improve upon his fictional writing, my university, the University of East Anglia, has an esteemed creative writing programme, though he’ll have to do better than this to win a place.

 

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November 29, 2013 · 11:03 am

Venue: “Local World, you are to localism what urinal cake is to mountain freshness”

Bristol and Bath’s ‘Venue’ magazine and website, from today onward, is sadly no more. It has been shut down, or, being generous, merged into the big corporate bulk of Local World.

But, in the spirit of true independent journalism, I am pleased to see that they’re at least going down with a fight.

This is their ‘final post’ and is well worth a read:

Dear Local World,

So, here we are then. Friday 29 November 2013. Venue’s last day on Earth. Hours from being swept away as part of what you so dreamily term “the development of the what’s on module.” Sometime in December, we learn, venue.co.uk will re-emerge, like butterfly become grub, as www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Because, heck, nothing answers “Hey, where to find what’s happening in town tonight?” quite so snappily as http://www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Given a firm push, a downhill gradient and a stiff following wind, it just rolls off the tongue.

It may surprise you to learn we don’t necessarily have a problem with you closing the Venue website. Don’t get us wrong, it is curious timing. As you know, the most recent figures for daily page hits are: August – 44,162; September – 48,544; October – 55,824. Nevertheless, the two remaining of our number, working part-time on alternate weeks, would be the first to admit that Venue is a husk of its former self. Frankly, they’ll be glad to be put out of their misery. Where once they were part of a vast team of journalists delivering informed, first-hand comment from every last facet of city life, today our hapless duo struggle to do much more than pass on received opinion and rehash press releases. Naturally, we don’t have to explain this process to you, Local World, but we’re keenly aware that newcomers to the site might look at recent content and wonder at our concern.

We’ll come to that shortly, but, this being an open letter, a brief history lesson for the uninitiated (we’re being tactful here, Local World – we’re all too aware you haven’t got a fucking clue yourselves). Venue magazine began life in 1982, covering Bristol and Bath and surrounds, but swiftly fter 18 proudly independent years it was sold to Bristol United Press, owned by your predecessor, the Northcliffe Newspaper Group. Last year, having suffered death by a thousand cuts and a colourful assortment of full-frontal stabbings, the magazine was closed down. Today, it’s fallen to you, Local World, to apply the coup-de-graceless and bring down the final curtain on 31 years of work.

And hand it all over to the Post.

The Post, which decreed all street art as vandalism for years, and yet today, having so very belatedly recognised which way the wind is blowing, reaches for Banksy with the same onanistic lust the Express reserves for Diana.

We’re not going to claim we ever “championed” Banksy. We never really went in for “championing”. We simply covered everything we considered of value. So we might not have “championed” street art, but we did report t. Always. Even before 1985, the year of Arnolfini’s seminal ‘Graffiti Art’ exhibition, featuring work from the UK’s first wave of can-wielders. One of them was called 3D, or Robert Del Naja. He went on to co-found Massive Attack. We put Massive Attack on the cover before they’d even released a single.

Do you see what we’re driving at here? Have you any idea the number of wonderful bands, and theatre groups, and artists, and voluntary organisations, and filmmakers, and minority groups who had no voice anywhere else, at all, ever, and poets, and DJs, and on, and on, who claim inspiration from something they read in Venue? We make no assertions for the influence of our opinion; we simply did our level best to place a mirror in every last corner of Bristol, no matter how hidden, and allow the city to reflect back on itself.

And you want to hand over that legacy to a paper whose management – not journalists – are the precise equivalent of those radio stations which promise “your better music mix” and then put the same few songs on repeat. Which claim “the best new music” and fail to add “once it has charted and proved its popularity.” You want to hand over that legacy because, to quote from a staff email you neglected to send us, “The existing Venue website has really good functionality with a real blend of music reviews, listings, restaurant reviews etc, etc. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow our digital audience and a great platform to sell advertising on.”

Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Local World? Of course you don’t. You who boast all the cultural hinterland of a freshly discarded wet wipe. (Though you do have history, of course: born earlier this year, the helplessly stumbling result of a merger between Iliffe Media and Northcliffe, with a profit forecast of approximately £30 million – that debt-free dowry from the Daily Mail General Trust was a lovely gift, no? And they absolved you of responsibility for the deficit on that pesky old final salary pension scheme. Ah, Local World! You are to localism what urinal cake is to mountain freshness.)

And now you presume to inherit our work. We were writers, Local World, photographers, not “content providers”. We were bound together not only by our city, but by a love of language, of striking image. Our editors consistently backed our individual judgement and allowed us complete freedom of expression. As a result, Venue inspired a loyalty out of all proportion with the pittance it paid. Local World, we put our very heart and soul into our catalogue of work. And if you think you can now simply walk in and trample on its remains, then you can, with the very greatest lack of respect, fuck the fuck off.

Because we, the undersigned, do hereby assert our full rights under copyright law. It really would be for the best if you were take a moment to visit this page on the Venue website. Sit down, take a deep breath, and pause and reflect on this: “This website and its content is the copyright of the individual authors credited.” Please be assured we did not pull this phrase out of our collective arses, but out of legal statute. And if we perceive so much as a single full-stop, a solitary pixel of our work when your shameless hijacking is unveiled, then you in turn can expect to perceive a court summons. We are, to put it in terms you regularly use but cannot hope to understand, passionate about defending our legacy.

Sincerely,

Robin Askew

Lesley Barnes

Tony Benjamin

Melissa Blease

Anna Britten

Darryl Bullock

Charlotte Butterfield

Jay Chakravorty

Hannah Chapman

Matt Collins

Marc Crewe (deceased)*

Stephen Dalton

Ellen Doherty (deceased)*

Carl Dolan

Rebecca Ewing

Kristen Grayewski

Elfyn Griffith

Tom Hackett

Mike Harley

Steve Henwood

Gareth Jones

Nic Matthews

Tamar Newton

Huw Oliver

Julian Owen

Emma Parkinson

Kid Pensioner

Tom Phillips

Leah Pritchard

Pat Reid

Jo Renshaw

Andrew Rilstone

Stuart Roberts

Anna Rutherford

Mark Simmons

Delia Sparrow

Joe Spurgeon

John Stevens

Campbell Stevenson

Nick Talbot

Lou Trimby

Tom Wainwright

Cris Warren

Ben Welch

Kirsten Williams

Kate Withers

John Christopher Wood

Adam Workman

Steve D Wright

Nicola Yeeles

*Because if there is an afterlife, and we don’t add these enduringly lamented names to our treatise, we’ll never hear the end of it.

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November 25, 2013 · 10:49 am

BBC asks: “Should homosexuals face execution?”…Hynd’s Blog asks: “Is the BBC a sociopath?”

Last week I highlighted BBC Radio Bristol’s inappropriate question, “Is a victim of rape ever to blame for being attacked?”

By forming this into a question, there is a tacit suggestion that there is a credible debate to be had; that maybe a man forcing his penis into a women against her will could be her fault.

It can’t.

I thought this was shocking and called for BBC Radio Bristol to remove the question mark and to clarify their position.

All I got was silence.

Apparently though the BBC has a bit of history. In the comments section for this article I was directed to this ‘BBC Debate’ that opens by asking:

“Should homosexuals face execution?”

To try and justify the question they added:

“Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated by the Ugandan parliament”

The article then factually covers the bill before asking:

“Has Uganda gone too far?”

Again, by forming questions around these repulsive suggestions the beeb is offering a tacit suggestion that there is a credible argument to be made for the execution of homosexuals and that no, this wouldn’t be seen as ‘going too far’.

What next for beeb and their obsessive compulsion to make everything into an interactive question? ”Is it acceptable to beat a man to death with his own shoes if he looks at you strangely?”…

If a person asked any of these questions they would be treated as a sociopath. Should we judge the BBC with any different standards?

If you want you can make a complaint to the BBC, you can do it here.

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November 21, 2013 · 1:55 pm

Remove the question mark BBC Radio Bristol, a rape victim is never to blame

A series of posters have been put up all over Bristol highlighting some of the lingering myths around blaming the victims of rape. The campaigns message is simple: There are no excuses for rape and the victim is never to blame: Whatever they were wearing; However much they’ve had to drink; Even if they’ve said yes to other sexual activities.

It remains a depressing reality that such an advertising campaign is needed in the first place. Sadly though, they really are.

The campaign group behind the posters says that 3894 women and girls in Bristol aged 16-59 are victims of sexual assault in a year. This statistic becomes even more shocking in the context of there only being about 140,000 women of that age living in Bristol.

The campaign primarily focuses though on removing any lingering doubts that a victim is, in any way, to blame if he/she is raped. It is not a question – a victim is not to blame for being raped.

This is a point that BBC Radio Bristol failed to pick up on when they tweeted about these new posters asking the question:

Well, Radio Bristol (and local radio’s obsessive compulsion to make everything into an interactive question)…no, a victim of rape is never to blame for being attacked. By even asking the question I think you have missed the key slogan of this campaign: There are no excuses for rape and the victim is never to blame. 

Remove the question mark BBC Radio Bristol. A rape victim is never to blame.

Follow the conversation on twitter #noexcusebristol

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October 25, 2013 · 10:07 am

The end of Liberal Conspiracy

This morning Sunny Hundal, the Editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy, announced that after 8 years of blogging he was no longer going to be up-dating the site.

Over the last few years, Liberal Conspiracy was kind enough to publish a series of my articles. These included:

Liberal Conspiracy has given me a platform to write about issues that I am passionate about. It also provided me with a wealth of interesting articles to read and learn about.

It will be missed.

In an industry that focuses so much on negative attacks and smears, I thought it only right then to publicly thank Sunny and everyone else over at Liberal Conspiracy for everything they have achieved over the last 8 years. They have often provided a positive left-wing alternative voice in opposition to the dominant mainstream media of the day. As I said, this will be missed.

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October 16, 2013 · 9:59 am

On Israeli settlers: “They come down from the hills and get us with dogs and guns”

I have just stumbled across this article that the wonderful Kate Hardie-Buckley wrote after visiting me and my former colleague Emmet Sheerin in Yanoun in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

I don’t think I shared the article on Hynd’s Blog at the time.

The title, “They come down from the hills and get us with dogs and guns“, might read to some as being as slightly over the top. The fact that I can promise it isn’t says a lot about life in Yanoun.

Anyway, have a read of the article and let me know what you think.

PS – you can also watch Emmet’s video about life in Yanoun.

 

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October 3, 2013 · 10:11 am

Daily Mail’s defence, we’re not as bad as George Galloway…

The Daily Mail isn’t letting the furore over their article on Ralph Miliband die down (see yesterday’s Hynd’s Blog article).

Stephen Glover has taken to the pages of the Mail to say, “How typically hypocritical of the Left, who danced on the grave of Mrs Thatcher, to be upset about debate over Red Ed’s Marxist father.”

Well, where to start?

Firstly, it isn’t just the left that were upset with the Mail’s hatchet job on Ralph Miliband. David Cameron said he “completely understood” why Ed would want to get his point of view across while Nick Clegg (let’s not pretend he is on the left) tweeted:

Secondly though, I feel obligation bound to point out that as someone who self-identifies as left wing, I didn’t take to the streets to “dance on Thatcher’s grave” and nor did most people who self-identify as left-wing that I call friends. I accept though that thousands did, and that was distasteful. But at the time I repeatedly wrote articles arguing for respect, see:

Thirdly, as I argued before, these debates are not rooted in left or right wing politics but notions of respect and decency that are found across the political spectrum. Trying to make this about political affiliation is a desperate attempt to use in/out group mentality to defend the indefensible.

Lastly, it has to pointed out that Glover’s crass attempt to draw in Thatcher’s death into this argument is a desperate attempt to shield their original article with the unacceptable actions of those who metaphorically danced on Thatcher’s grave. The moment an argument rests on “well George Galloway said/did something worse” you know you’re on a slippery slope into the cesspits of journalism.

 

UPDATE:

Talking of cesspits of journalism, this story is just breaking: “Mail on Sunday reporter gatecrashes Miliband family memorial service“.

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