http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/jan/03/ones-to-watch-2013-charli-xcx?intcmp=122

Ones to watch in 2013: Charli XCX

"Yep, we could get to like this one"

Meet the singer who piles on the 90s references to create a self-contained world of Day-Glo poptasticness

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Charli XCX's route to success has been slow, at least in the hyper-accelerated world in which she lives. The 20-year-old singer was first noticed in 2008, when she featured on post-dubstep tracks by acts including Alex Metric. Since then, she has released two mixtapes, toured with Coldplay and ridden the spurious Tumblr-wave genre alongside the likes of Kitty Pryde and Grimes.
Charli, though, simply sees herself as a pop singer. "I love pop, that's always what I've wanted to do," she says. "Do pop but with my point of view – to inject some magic." That demand for magic is what underpins her take on pop – be it a collaboration with the likes of LA rapper and stripper Brooke Candy on Cloud Aura or having You're the One remixed by the Internet.
We meet at her flat in west London, a wonderland of 90s pop nostalgia, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figurines and Spice Girls paraphernalia. She's wearing a sort of Sporty Spice-gone-glam outfit, complete with a crop top, lamé leggings and lashings of eyeliner, and giggles at the idea of being a slave to mainstream fashion.
"I've always been obsessed with the 90s in a really unhealthy way," she says. "I love the Spice Girls and Shampoo and Aqua; the marriage of bubblegum pop and super-grunge really excited me. I came from the warehouse rave scene, where the whole club kid/extreme fashion thing was really interesting. It's always been a part of me."..........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/jan/03/ones-to-watch-2013-charli-xcx?intcmp=122

What might a world without work look like?

Nina Power.
The Guardian, Thursday 3 January 2013 21.00 GMT.

  As ideas of employment become more obscure and desperate, 2013 is the perfect time to ask what it means to live without it.

A few months before the financial crash hit, the National Lottery issued a new kind of scratchcard. At £5 a go – the more expensive end of the range – it offered the chance to win £40,000 a year, every year, for the rest of your life. Howard Groves, the director of game development, described the idea in the following way: "It's about not having to put up with life's everyday irritants."


The card proved successful, despite its cost, and a new version in 2009 is still selling well. Everything that is carried in the hope of the card – life (how long might I live for?), security (how might I care for myself and others?) and leisure (what might I do with my free time?) – is really code for a life without work. The "everyday irritants" identified by the card-makers pose an important question: is work one of these "irritants"? Perhaps even the largest irritant of all?

As with all major institutional entities – law, prison, education – to question work is to tamper with reality itself. As with law, prison and education, it is almost always "never a good time" to talk about reform, or the abolition of existing structures. The ideological mishmash represented by the word itself is worth examining. Paid employment is an economic necessity for all but a tiny percentage of the population, but "work" is tied up with miasmic qualities that touch on social and even quasi-religious elements: identity, status, community, habit, duty.

The Tories, as ever,..............
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/world-without-work

Report shows how NHS trusts are working to improve staff health.

A study reveals how NHS trusts in England are promoting the wellbeing of employees – from Zumba classes to healthier food.

Jude Williams

Guardian Professional, Wednesday 2 January 2013 10.59 GMT


The Staff Health Improvement Project report, which was released in November, reveals the steps taken by 22 NHS trusts in England to support staff health and wellbeing.


The report, published by the Health and Work Development Unit, a partnership between the Royal College of Physicians and the charity the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, also reveals how they have used the evidence-based workplace guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to achieve this. Nice has issued guidance on how to reduce smoking and obesity, promote physical activity, support mental wellbeing and improve the management of long-term sickness absence in the workplace.

I became the lead for the project in early 2012. We interviewed a mix of acute and mental health trusts, large and small, urban and rural. My colleague Sarah Jones and I held in-depth interviews with the health and wellbeing (H&WB) board lead and implementer from each of the selected trusts. We captured a wealth of knowledge, experience and practice, all of which was recorded in the report.

Embedding staff H&WB into the values of an organisation was identified as crucial to the success of this work and some trusts had clearly articulated to staff the link to improved quality of patient care and experience. As one acute trust board lead, said: "We're in the healthcare business. If we can't get it right for staff there's not much hope for anybody.".........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2013/jan/02/report-nhs-trust-staff-health-wellbeing

Take up Dancing.....

2012 was the year of cycling. Now we need a revolution...   As bike use reaches critical mass we must keep up the momentum, for our health and for the good of the environment.   Call it the Richmond Park test. Yesterday morning, amazing to report, it wasn't belting down with rain, and the park was crammed. It was a joyful sight – families, dog-walkers, runners. But what would have amazed a time traveller from a couple of decades ago would have been the thousands and thousands of cyclists. Something has happened.

There are the dolphin-like schools of muscular men and women in matching Lycra, teams from Britain and the continent, moving as one; there are the men of a certain age, still on racing bikes, but swaddled in woollens; there are the kids with their parents; and there are the stately amateurs, sitting up straight on their three-gear Raleighs. But the main thing is the sheer number of them, a constant, gleaming, metallic stream.

Richmond Park is unusual, granted. It's a huge urban park, with hills and views that attract the big cycling clubs as well as many individuals from the rest of London. It now has a 20mph speed limit. But the something that's happened there is hardly unique, and is spreading, and should spread.

And it's simply that cycling has reached a tipping point, a critical mass, that has turned the motorists into a minority, and an increasingly boxed-in, nervous minority at that. On most of Britain's roads, if a couple of cyclists are side by side, causing cars or vans to brake, there will be shouts and hoots and waved fists. Here, drivers simply have to accept that the world has changed. Drivers who lose their temper find it isn't so easy in the park. They can't zoom off. And they are outnumbered by cyclists.

I've written about the cycling revolution before,........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/30/cycling-bikes-wiggins-environment-transport