The Glorious Twelfth

I have said nothing about the reasons for my silence, painful family reasons. And nothing about seismic world events and local difficulties. Sometimes we just end up, for no particular reason, resounding from the last loud noise. To my loyal follower, I can only apologise.

With regard to recent events, Prévert had the sense of it, years ago. He was writing about an escape from what we then called Borstal in the UK (forerunner of Young Offenders Institution):


Hunting the kid


Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

They can see birds on the island
all round the island is water

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

What's all this baying for blood?

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

It's a pack of the silent majority
out hunting the kid

who's had a bellyful of Borstal
So the screws used their keys on his teeth
and left him out cold on the concrete

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

Now he's broken out
on the run in the night
like a hunted beast
and everyone's galloping after -
policemen tourists shareholders artists

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

A pack of the silent majority
out hunting the kid
You don't need a permit
all real men do it
What is it swimming out there in the night
What are all these noises and lights
A kid on the run
They're firing their guns

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!

All these chaps on the beach
empty-handed – they're gagging with rage

Mugger! burglar! layabout! scum!
Come back to shore come back to shore!

They can see birds on the island
and all round the island is water.


Jacques Prévert (trans AB)

library users: consumers or citizens?

More than 400 public libraries in the UK are threatened with closure.

"If you think about it, public libraries are all about recycling. Books are lent out to an individual, then recycled through the system to someone else. Public libraries also act as laboratories, allowing individuals to experiment with, and ‘test out’ items before they decide to make any kind of consumer decision itself, such as buying a new book or CD or DVD or indeed, any other type of creative work. Not only this, they function as a democratic access point to information: when you enter a library you are not judged on your background, your status, or your wealth (or lack of it). You have the exact same rights of access to the information as everybody else there too. Do you realise how empowering that is? Such access to information is unbelievably powerful: and why I see public libraries as the bedrock of world citizenship. They are, without a doubt, one of the most important ideas of the 19th century (the UK’s first Public Libraries Act was in 1850 by the way) and inherently stem from concepts of The Enlightenment and The Republic of Letters, that is, universal access to knowledge. The juxtaposition that I am exploring is that although my belief system is founded upon these concepts, I’m actually living in a world and a time where we’ve been shifted from our previous state of individual citizens to individual consumers. This is a crucial distinction: issues of access are now going to be determined by your levels of engagement as a consumer not as a citizen. What might that mean? It might mean that if you don’t have the required level of wealth, you’re not going to have the same level of access to certain types of information, and information can become knowledge… and we all know where knowledge can lead… yes, to power: the power to make informed decisions about your life, your community, your health, your educational and lifelong learning needs, and much, much more.

From The Itinerant Poetry Librarian's interview in Seam 30 (2009) [my bold].
Follow the intrepid and utterly wonderful Itinerant Poetry Librarian on Twitter, Facebook, and see her post today on Baroque in Hackney.

Six Flags

This amusement park in New Orleans was abandoned after Katrina and is due to be demolished next month.

What is the fascination of ruins? Partly that they show us what will happen. In one version, we look back from the future and see a morality tale of which perhaps the inhabitants were unaware. In another version, we can see there our own future undoing. And in this case, any easy romanticism is blown away by the horror of that storm, and the cruel ineptitude of a government that allowed people to drown and a way of life to perish.
Via

ooh-ahh

It was snowing the other day, but not so much here, so I paid little attention to the radio news stories of panic-buying of petrol. When I went to fill my three-quarters-empty tank at the local all the pumps were closed so I gave up, figuring I probably wouldn't need to go anywhere for the couple of days till it got back to normal. I gave DH a lift to Cambridge and on the offchance made a detour via Sainsbury's - they were out of petrol too. I took this as a sign not to bother. I don't tweet; I don't even do Facebook much, so I didn't pick up on any of the panic. But if it had been cash...

Eric Cantona was a brilliant footballer. I don't know so much about his grasp of economics. He wants to bring the banking system to its knees. He wants people to draw money out of the banks tomorrow to prove - gasp - that there isn't enough cash to pay everyone should they all demand it at once. Apparently, this makes banks teh evil. There are plenty of reasons to imagine (some) banks are teh evil, but this isn't one of them. Taking your money and using it to do something else, making a profit on that and giving you a bit of the profit for the opportunity to use your money - that's what banks do. It helps build roads and factories; it helps generate power and pay wages.

But hey, what do I know? If you were the elderly blind person over the road who can't get to the bank, maybe you wouldn't be so keen on this stunt. If your mortgage payment was due at the end of the month maybe you wouldn't be so keen either. Or a shopkeeper wanting to bank your takings and pay wages. Hey, you're capitalist scum, who cares about you?

So far, there are only a few thousand people signed up for Cantona's grand gesture. It would take a lot more than them to destabilise anything - until you think about the turbo-charging effect of social networking. How many tweeted queues does it take to make a crisis?

Uh-oh, maybe I should have kept quiet. All I know is that a bunch of sovereigns in a sock is jolly handy if a burglar smashes in your bedroom window.

xkcd

Here.

Weblog

As any fule no, a blog is a weblog, and it started out by being a list of sites visited. As an antidote to Blytonia, here are some of the more interesting items I've come across in the past few days.

Jim Murdoch ponders the dearth of modern nursery rhymes.

Lorna Watts is refused the loan of scissors by a north London librarian: They are sharp, you might stab me.

Anton Vowl suggests what Gordon Brown should have answered to that question from Andrew Marr.

Belle Waring has an impassioned post on Crooked Timber about sexual harassment in the academy, with a sideswipe at "look but don't touch" Kealey from Buckingham. Mary Beard isn't so bothered. Is Terence Kealey as misunderstood as Juvenal? (Or as contemporary? I'm inclined to add.) Yes, it may have been satire, but it's pretty lame satire.

In a post entitled Because Men are Stupid and Shallow, That's Why, Jeff Fecke demonstrates that some men are capable of seeing the person beyond the breasts. He challenges the Canadian Rethink Breast Cancer campaign (aimed at raising men's awareness by concentrating on breasts):

the thing about breasts that I generally like the most is that they’re usually attached to living, breathing women, and I like women, because, you know, they’re people. Many of them are people I like, and consider friends. All of them are worth far more than the breasts attached to them; that should go without saying.

Ben Goldacre considers the AIDS-denialist film House of Numbers, which was shown at Cambridge Film Festival and (temporarily) hoodwinked rationalist sceptic Caspar Melville. Goldacre starts a lively discussion about how to deal with moonbats - exposure, ridicule, debate? Or by ignoring them? (There's no widely accepted noun for that, but ignoral might suit.) This comment in particular struck me:

The best advice my late Dad ever gave me was; “Never argue with an idiot, because people watching lose track of which is which”. The older I get, the more I appreciate his words. Several times a week, I’m given cause to think of them.

Teach the debate is what creationists say.

Jack of Kent argues why English libel law is a danger and makes a proposal for reform.

Shuggy has a go at performative theists aiming for the class prize.

no man ever forsook his father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter and took up his cross in order to support the nuclear family, preserve the work ethic, reduce crime in the neighbourhood or foster charitable giving as an important ingredient in civil society.

Terry Glavin doesn't know how to handle the human tide, except that the handling should be humane. Who could disagree?

Right, I'm off to Oxford now for the launch of See How I Land.

Councillors pointing at things

Cllr Neil Williams draws attention to a road defect

Glum Councillors:

This blog will doggedly collate images of councillors looking glum whilst pointing at holes in the road, wearing hard hats or presenting oversized cheques. Lets celebrate the work of our local elected representatives! Tweet suggestions to @glumcouncillors

Via.

It's easy to mock. I blame the photographers. Or perhaps the editors. The posed photograph of someone looking glum while pointing at a pothole is a staple of local newspapers. Which come to think of it are under threat not just from the internet, but allegedly from what Roy Greenslade calls the "local Pravdas" produced by, erm, councils. The councils' glossy, clourful, fun-packed magazines are a fast breeding species, full of jolly news of filled potholes, pie-charts, bin collection dates, keep-fit classes and tips on healthy eating. Greenslade may have a point, though it reminds me uncomfortably of the point James Murdoch was making about the BBC. You know, where he was saying that free content on the BBC website was unfair competition for newspapers.

I admit it. It's partly my fault. I rarely buy a local paper.

I didn't go to the pub much either, and look what's happening to them.


[Crap Photo Editions: No Smoking]

Abducted. Abused. Raped. Survived

The header is a quote from The Observer. It should make headlines when a girl minding her own business going to school is snatched away to spend her life with a stranger, and forced to bear him children. But it's not the story everyone's talking about, and it's more common than you might think.

Each year there may be as many as 4000 cases of forced marriage involving British residents.

At least there's a law against it here now, though some claim it doesn't go far enough.

The problem is far wider than forced marriage - as if that weren't bad enough - and it's global.

Violence against women and girls is a human rights scandal; from the bedroom to the battlefield, from the schoolyard to the work place, women and girls are at risk from rape and other forms of sexual violence.

The response of governments to rape and other forms of sexual violence is still inadequate.
Amnesty International

And a better than average CiF, from Victoria Brittain, here.

Amnesty International. Here's the link.

Purity patrol update

I was so incensed by the behaviour of security guards aired on last Sunday's Broadcasting House that I went onto the BH website and filled in a comments form with some intemperate language, demanding to know the exact location of the petty tyranny that seeks to suppress midriffs and buttcracks, so I could deny the proprietors the dubious benefit of my custom.

I forgot about my outburst. Several people had pretty well convinced me that I'd been a victim of a classic BH wind-up, but I still nursed a sense of grievance that these public places are being privatised by prudes and worse.

But this morning, lo! There was a message in my intray from the great Paddy O'Connell himself. After thanking me for writing, he tells me

the pathway in question was on the South Bank of the Thames, leading from the London Eye to the road to Waterloo Station. It runs perpendicular to the river.

I wonder if I should go back there and see what happens.

Fantastic! (My original message was attached. I'm rather ashamed of it. The word "Taliban" was used. Dear me.) I'm impressed and very pleased that Paddy O'Connell replied. It is a serious issue.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a bit of research, and arguing with friends. I have had difficulty in convincing some people that there is any real difference between a nightclub and the South Bank when it comes to the legitimacy of enforcing standards of dress and behaviour from visitors.

I've have been meaning to post a measured analysis of the issues of public space/private ownership, taking in reviews of books and articles that cover the issue. That will take some time. The privately owned public space concept is complex and evolving. The law can't keep up with the models, let alone how people's behaviour adapts. I haven't even read Anna Minton's book yet.

[edit...] Here are some links to get you thinking.

Liberty discusses private ownership of "public space" in relation to the right to protest, in a submission to JCHR (see esp p 5 et seq)

Cities for sale
The enclosure of urban space (extract from Paul Kingsnorth's Real England: The Battle Against the Bland) from The Guardian

Urban public space is at the heart of city and town life. It is the essence of public freedom: a place to rally, to protest, to sit and contemplate, to smoke or talk or watch the stars. No matter what happens in the shops and cafes, the offices and houses, the existence of public space means there is always somewhere to go to express yourself or simply to escape.

Chris Webster: Property rights, public space and urban design (pdf)

Policing the retail public - keeping out the "less well-heeled"? Guardian article

Shopping Malls: The New Village Green by Robin Fox

Private Policing: A View from the Mall
Abstract of an article by Alison Wakefield that sounds interesting but is v expensive to download. If anyone has more information about it, I'd be most grateful.

Police Partnership at Cribbs Causeway (pdf)

Ecotowns given the go-ahead

Update

And no, I have been assured that the Broadcasting House recording was most certainly not a wind-up:

If you could have seen the look on the face of the female security guard you would know that she was very serious indeed.

She looked as if she had been suddenly struck by a very old kipper, just above the top lip, and she kept summoning assistance on her lapel radio.

Can't have people telling the truth about things like this, can we?

Purity patrol

If you're down on the South Bank showing flesh, a man in a uniform can tell you to pull your jeans up, and if you don't like it he can summon up reinforcements to run you off the premises. Did you know they were "premises"? Neither did I.

I don't normally listen to Broadcasting House, but caught the tail end this morning. The fascists are out in force.

Listen again (for seven days only):
The bit I'm interested in concerns the discussion of public space at the end of the programme. It segues from discussion of the 4th plinth, which starts at around 52.30. Anna Minton (who's just written Ground Control) discusses public space and private ownership, starting at 54.30 minutes, and the clip ends with security guards hassling the interviewer away from the "private" area on the South Bank, after a guard has just asked a girl to pull her jeans up as she was showing a gap... The girl was sitting with her family - it's not as if she was cavorting around drunk with her trousers round her ankles. The goons want the interviewer to stop recording.

We've had it already with hoodies banned from Bluewater, which I thought was was just a weird fascistic aberration, all of a piece with that dystopia. But when you start getting blokes in uniform telling girls to cover themselves on the South Bank, for heaven's sake, I feel a sense of indignation. Who is making these rules, and with what authority? Should people with no mandate other than someone else's money dictate how we conduct ourselves in public?

The Royal enclosure at Ascot, Glyndebourne, the Ritz - most people wouldn't even dream of going there in the first place, so any who choose to can take the dress code deal. This is on an altogether different scale, so the principle is different too. The South Bank looks like a public space. We all feel as if we're entitled to be there. We may not all care to see a butt crack when someone sits down wearing hipsters (I'm assuming that's what the little hitler was complaining about) but I certainly don't want to see people stopped from showing it, especially when they're sitting down with their parents minding their own business.

This is only a symptom of a deeper malaise. As the Guardian headline has it, they sold our streets and nobody noticed.

Don't bury your bras

Textiles have become the fastest-growing waste product in the UK. About 74 per cent of the two million tonnes of clothes we buy each year end up in landfills, rotting slowly (or not at all) in a mass of polyester, viscose and acrylic blends. Where is Steptoe when you need him?



Another charity bag flopped through our letterbox this week. Unless they are collecting stuff to sell in their charity shops, it's best regarded merely as a way of clearing out clutter if you can't be bothered to go down to Oxfam with your old duds. Or preferably as a binliner. If you read the small print you may spot that the collector for the Lithuanian breast screening project with its pink ribbon isn't a charity at all, although their website seeks to reassure people "that their clothing donations will only be used to fund worthwhile, bona fide charities" - in Lithuania. Even if this week's bag is supporting a pukka UK registered charity, you may find that they get very little out of it.

This one, for example, is in aid of Childline, an organisation that has helped thousands of children with no-one else to turn to. The bag gives details of the charity, with their helpline prominently displayed and the charity registration numbers as required, and the details of the company which actually operates the collection on their behalf. Childline will get £50 per tonne. A tonne is an awful lot of "clean, good quality clothing... and bric a brac". Cambridge Oxfam might well charge £10-£15 for a dress, more for a designer label. See also the Salvation Army value guide. Unsorted mixed used clothing is being sought by a merchant in Bedfordshire this week at 50p/kilo (ie, £500 per tonne). And old bras can fetch up to £2,500 a tonne.*

As far as I know, Childline doesn't operate any charity shops, so this kerbside collection partnership with a commercial organisation is a low-admin method of raising funds that wouldn't otherwise come their way. But you'd be making better use of your resources to give the clothes direct to a charity shop and make a donation to Childline. You can afford to be generous. 50p would be twice what your 5kg bag of castoffs would earn in this particular charity bag scheme with its promised rate of £50 per tonne.

Charitybags campaigns for greater transparency in the field. Their website is a trove of information.

We estimate that around £20 million income is lost by genuine charities each year because of misleading, bogus and poor-value "charitable" house-to-house collections of clothing etc in the UK. Many of these collections are illegal.

You need a local authority licence to collect door to door for charity, even just clothes and bric a brac. Some charities (eg Age Concern, Oxfam, Red Cross, RNLI etc.) have a national exemption, but they are supposed to inform the local authority when they are collecting in their area. Some may have a local exemption granted by the police. If you want to hold a jumble sale for your scout troop and collect door to door for it, this is the route you'd take.

Of course, jumble sales and charity shops fulfil a social need for the purchaser as well as providing income for the charity in question. And a low-guilt solution to the overloaded wardrobe.

But where there's muck there's brass. Second hand clothes from Britain end up on markets in Lithuania and Belarus, and much further afield. According to UN Chronicle,

An estimated 40 to 75 per cent of used clothing donated to charitable organizations end up not in the hands of the needy in the West but in busy markets across the developing regions, such as in sub-Saharan Africa.

It's not the end purchasers I have a problem with (and they are probably being ripped off) but the dodgy operators.

At least with Steptoe, you knew who was going to benefit.

Whatever you do, don't let it go to landfill. (A very old paper, but the principles still apply.)

*On African markets. Apparently Africa lacks an inexpensive, good-quality bra manufacturing industry. (Check the link - it's a fascinating insight into what happens to old clothes.)

Norwich North

I don't know what to make of this. Craig Murray claims he's being gagged. He's standing in the Norwich North by-election, due in two weeks' time. There are eleven other candidates, with the Tories favourite to win. Last I heard, Ladbrokes were quoting him at 25/1, ahead of the Lib Dems (33/1) and the BNP (200/1), UKIP and sundry others.

He's had grief (which he blames on the Ministry of Justice) from the Post Office over getting his electoral address out; the BBC is refusing to give him any coverage; "and, despite numerous representations from within their own union, the Universities and Colleges Union have still banned me from this evenings candidates' education debate, despite the fact that I am the Rector of a Univeristy and a great deal more interesting on the subject than the rest of the candidates put together."

Craig Murray, one of the Indy's Alternative National Treasures*, is the ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, the man who blew the whistle on the UK's complicity in obtaining "evidence" through torture. In this respect he is on the side of the angels. He was hounded out of office for his pains. All sorts of mud was chucked at him, and then he was ignored, except by the (occasionally rather strange) people that haunt his comments box. By his own admission he's clearly not the most compliant of employees, and his behaviour in - ah - certain matters has been less than saintly. That sets him apart from other pols then, eh?

He is standing on an anti-sleaze platform.** Whatever mud's actually stuck to him from the past, none of it's sleaze-coloured.

Minority candidates usually get a bum deal from the media, unless they are deemed to be newsworthy in their own right. Think how the media have salivated over BNP - and I wonder how many votes BNP would get if they didn't. I'd have thought Murray's colourful past and ability to insert himself in the governmental nasal orifice would make good copy, but the BBC doesn't see it that way:

[in]response to the many complaints about their decision to exclude me from all election coverage. They have started to send out standard replies saying:
one of the key factors they look for is "evidence of past and/or current electoral support" in that electoral area.
Note the BBC's own quotation marks within that quote. They have tacked on "In that area" to their formal criterion.

When the BBC banned me from all coverage at the last General Election when I stood in Blackburn against Jack Straw, who is blocking my electoral address now, the BBC explained it was because I had no "evidence of past and/or current electoral support".

I gained 5% in that election - which is a lot better than the 3% the Greens got in the same election in Norwich North. That 5% may have been modest, but it does meet the BBC's criterion. So the BBC have now moved the goalposts to exclude me, by adding a brand new stipulation "in that area" to their criterion, so the electoral support in Blackburn does not count - despite the fact I might reasonably expect to do a lot better in my own county.

As for the bureaucracy, the whole system is geared up to deal with major parties. So the apparent gagging of Dr Murray isn't necessarily evidence of bad faith conspiring to put the kibosh on his campaign, more likely a convergence of inertia, incuriosity and incompetence. Nevertheless, it is all a bit odd.

I don't know if I'd be voting for him myself if I were in Norwich North. You have to question the common sense of someone who imagines that voters will bother to look at an election address on DVD. But whatever your political stripe, if his allegations here have any real substance it's a cause for concern. The three major parties have an entrenched right to airtime whatever their chances of success, while BNP is becoming a creature of the media, interviewed and analysed wherever they go.


*The Independent says:

Craig Murray Former ambassador

Britain is a better place now that Craig Murray has returned. As ambassador to Uzbekistan, Murray witnessed the UK's changing attitude to torture, and rather than keep it under his hat, came back and revealed all. He had his own problems, what with the drinking and leaving his wife for a dancer. But after a breakdown, he has bounced back to become a fully fledged member of the awkward squad. The Foreign Office may have disowned him, but we welcome him with open arms.

**The Put an Honest Man in Parliament party isn't quite as sexist as it sounds. He had to form it urgently as it was the only way he could get the slogan on the ballot paper.

Deji

What would you do if you were a political refugee and discovered that the country you thought was safe was anything but - in fact habitually refused asylum to people from your country then rounded up the unsuccessful applicants into camps before shipping them off back home as fast as it could? Would you trust them to deal with your case fairly, or would you weigh your chances and keep your head down, hoping to get by with help from friends, hoping even for an amnesty?

I know what I would do. And that's what Deji did too. I first came across Deji as a participant in the Exiled Writers project at Oxford Brookes University. He was a popular member of the group. The anthology we all contributed to is due to be published later this year, and there will be a reading from it tomorrow night in Oxford, as part of Refugee Week. Someone else will have to read Deji's poem though, because he was arrested in April and has been held in Oakington since.

In the Looking-glass Home Office world, failing to claim asylum on entry is evidence not of fear of the certainty of being sent back, but of lack of good cause to be here in the first place. He's from Nigeria. The Home Office almost always sends back Nigerian refugees whether they're fleeing political or religious persecution, gangsters, or FGM, even if they can prove those threats are real. You can read the Home Office briefing note on Nigeria here (pdf file). Deji's fear of persecution is real. For failing to toe the party line he has narrowly avoided an assassination attempt; his mother and small son have been kidnapped in an attempt to coerce him. A brother who tried to help him had his flat ransacked. Deji has been vocally critical of the ruling PDP, and they have agents everywhere, determined to stamp out opposition, utterly ruthless.

He is due to be deported tomorrow evening. Campaigners are trying to arrange a Judicial Review; meanwhile you can help by appealing to the Home Secretary to halt the deportation, and to the CEO of Virgin Atlantic appealing to them not to participate in the forcible removal. It will only take a moment. The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns features Deji's case on its homepage today, with links to model letters specific to Deji's case, and the addresses to send them. Do it now.

Update
Sad to report that Deji was deported on Thursday. Right until the last minute his solicitor was prepared to go to the High Court with an application for JR, but the critical proof didn't arrive in time from the Nigerian solicitor. It appears that pressure had been put on him not to expedite Deji's claim. Now who could have done that?

At least Deji managed to get away from the airport. There is a lot more to say about all this.

Brutish National Party

I hate them with a deep and abiding passion.
I hate that they arrogate to themselves the word "British", which refers to a politically troubled archipelago off Northwestern Europe.
I hate that they arrogate to themselves the word "national" and purport to define it. [...]

I wish I knew what to do. When there are enough sad gits to vote in a BNP MEP, it feels as if liberal democracy has failed. Or rather, that it has finally delivered the inevitable outcome of tolerance.

More anon. Meanwhile, let's just remind ourselves of the sort of people they are. Ordinary, ignorant.

[Edited to make me seem a nicer person than I am.]

Update
Andrew Brons, the new MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, is a former Chairman of the National Front. He has a conviction for using insulting words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace (directed at a black police officer). He was ambivalent about the value of firebombing synagogues, which might do the cause more harm than good. He led the chant: if they're black, send them back. And so on. None of this is a great secret.

In a facebook discussion last night I was foolish enough to refer to him as "a sh**" and to complain of the "ignorance, prejudice, hostility, self-righteousness of the BNP voters". I got flamed for my "mass generalisations and angry tone." Apparently some of them are "little old ladies" who are terrified by smooth-talking canvassers into believing that they will be murdered in their beds by illegal immigrants, and we should be reaching out and educating the poor dears.

Quite how a "little old lady" (and isn't that term demeaning!) could live so long and remain so ignorant escapes me. Surely it's simple racism of the sort that so often runs like a sewer under a veneer of decency? There was a time when racism was open and unashamed of itself, busy controlling jobs and tenancies, promotions and awards, and generally inscribing itself on the culture. And some people seem to regret its passing.

I refuse to make excuses for BNP voters. They may be disaffected, they may have much to feel disaffected about, but there are plenty of other parties to vote for who aren't racist. All the BNP offers that other parties don't is a particularly noxious line on race. And possibly - and possibly we aren't paying enough attention to this - the BNP knocks on doors and talks to people. Few mainstream parties have had the courage to do that this time, now the whole of British politics is being played out as a TV reality show. The voter wants to feel important too. The voter wants someone to care what he thinks. It doesn't seem to matter to some voters who that someone is.

Dooms

"Very, very dangerous" giant underwater volcano found off Indonesia, 4,600m high and 50 km at its base.

Resistance to malaria drug growing, experts warn.

Road accidents have overtaken malaria as the leading cause of preventable deaths in developing countries. In five years time, if nothing is done, traffic accidents will be the biggest single cause of premature deaths for children aged 5 to 14.

Climate change "kills 300,000 every year"

Update
But there is hope yet:

Gay penguins rear adopted chick. Perhaps I should be depressed that this is even regarded as news, depressed that the zoo and the BBC put inverted commas round "gay" but in view of the torrent of hatred and oppression that usually flows unchecked, this is mildly cheering - cheering that the zoo for all their scare quotes (which might just be bet-hedging for less tolerant customers) seem fairly enlightened, and cheering that it seems to be reported in like vein. Roll on the day when this sort of thing isn't news because it's unremarkable, and when humans no longer have to refer to animals to seek legitimacy for human behaviour because humans are finally accepted for themselves.

Salt

Salt is one of the leading poetry publishers in the country. They also publish fiction, criticism and drama, and their authors come from all over the world - over 200 titles this past year. But the recession is hitting them too. Chris Hamilton-Emery has just posted this plea:

Here's how you can help us to save Salt.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

UK and International

USA

2. Share this note on your Facebook and MySpace profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

Go on. Buy one. You know you want to. Just look at their website - you can listen before you buy, watch videos, download a pdf of the first few pages to sample a book.

Salt books I have purchased in the last twelve months:

Josephine Balmer - The Word for Sorrow
Simon Barraclough - Los Alamos Mon Amour
Isobel Dixon - A Fold in the Map
Katy Evans-Bush - Me and the Dead
Jane Holland - Camper Van Blues
Charles Lambert - The Scent of Cinnamon
Tony Lopez - Meaning Performance
Rob MacKenzie - The Opposite of Cabbage
André Mangeot - A Little Javanese
Andrew Philip - The Ambulance Box
Andrea Porter - A Season of Small Insanities
Fiona Sampson - On Listening
John Siddique - Recital
John Wilkinson - Down to Earth
John Wilkinson - The Lyric Touch

and my own The Men from Praga

Some I have just ordered:
Julia Bird - Hannah and the Monk
Diana Pooley - Like This

WoT

Robbie G1, who created the slogan, credits
jamesholden.net/billboard/, who created the app. Go there to make your own billboards.

Via Hatherley.

Gun control

Dr Omed got a gun

Jesus got a gun

True facts of the Tulsa Gun Show

Janie's Got a Gun
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Oh shit wrong chord

London's lease hath all too short a date

Diamond Geezer draws our attention to

The Golf Sale. The legendary never-ending Golf Sale. The sports shop down a Mayfair sidestreet near Oxford Circus. The iconic Golf Sale advertised along Oxford Street by men with sandwich boards since time immemorial. Much imitated, never beaten. The Golf Sale. Closing down. Nip down to Maddox Street fast if you want to snap up a cut-price putter...

The lease is up.

Three landowners control most of the West End:
The Portman Estate

The Portman Estate is principally located within Marylebone, central London.

It encompasses Oxford Street from Marble Arch to Orchard Street, from Edgware Road in the west to beyond Baker Street in the east, and stretches north almost to Crawford Street. The Estate includes Portman Square, Manchester Square and the residential squares of Bryanston and Montague.

The Duke of Westminster (Grosvenor Estate)

Key locations in Mayfair are: Mount Street, Grosvenor Street, North Audley Street, Duke Street, Park Street
Key locations in Belgravia are: Grosvenor Gardens, Motcomb Street, Elizabeth Street, Eaton Square, Pimlico Road, Ebury Street

and HM the Queen. Details of Crown London holdings here.

(Not forgetting Cadogan Estates' massive - though diminishing - holdings in Chelsea.)

Between them, they own enough to make the market.

The Portman website advertises retail premises to let:

Shops are available on new Full Repairing and Insuring leases for 5 years, without rent review and outside the Security of tenure provisions of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954.

Are we just starting to see the effects of the 2004 amendments to the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954? And we've just passed Lady Day, when rents are due... I'd love to know more, but alas do not have a subscription to Estates Gazette. What sort of business is prepared to take on a five year full repairing lease without right of renewal? Someone selling Olympic tschotskes, maybe? You'd have to be reckless, unless there were no choice.

The erosion of tenants' rights that began under the Tories has continued apace under New Labour. Under the guise of market liberalisation, most new residential lets are unprotected; new agricultural and business lettings suffer the same sort of insecurity. It doesn't allow a business to put down roots. It doesn't make for cohesive communities. It can cause dreadful hardship. It took generations to build up security of tenure but it seems to have been pissed away in under twenty years.

On their website (which doesn't let me link to a specific page) the Cadogan Estate exonerates itself from blame for the homogenisation of the High Street:

Today, Cadogan's holding in Chelsea is substantial in value, but is nevertheless still patchy. The assumption, for instance, that Cadogan owns everything on the King's Road is wrong. And the associated assumption that Cadogan is therefore responsible for the influx of High Street brands is profoundly inaccurate.

Not their fault, then. No-one's fault.

Village life

The Party Planner's shop has closed. I only patronised it once (for Hallowe'en, and not for me, and it's a long story), because it didn't sell anything I wanted. It appears it didn't sell enough of what other villagers wanted either. Not for them the party poppers, bouncy castle, personalised helium balloons. Not for them the dream wedding limo hire. Perhaps the reality was just too cruel.