"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."
- Bill Shankly
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Ros Asquith paints a picture of Christmas.....
Ros Asquith has been doing a weekly cartoon for EducationGuardian for more than a decade.
This is how she's seen school festivities over the years.....
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Museums should feel free to charge admission....
Photograph by Drawsome.
We can't have museums selling off our cultural heritage to make ends meet – charging entry is a far better solution.
Britain's museums are in crisis. On the surface, things looks good. Our galleries have benefited from years of expansion. But all over Britain, a darker reality is emerging in the wake of spending cuts. A survey has shown that since the spending review 58% of museums have suffered cuts, and a fifth have been hit by devastating cuts of 25%.
The worst option is for museums and public collections to start selling works to pay the bills. The recent sale of a Millais by one cash-strapped council is a terrible mistake, a betrayal of our cultural heritage.
The best option, I am starting to think, may be to introduce admission fees. I spat out this notion earlier this week in the wake of the attack on two paintings recently in the National Gallery.
The debate was taken up by the Telegraph. Obviously, attacks on art happen at museums that charge an entry fee as well as at free ones. But this is about much more than security.
I remember the drab, uncared-for feeling of some of Britain's biggest museums in the 1980s and 90s. They seemed to be eking out their time, with no big plans and no sense of splendour.
Free museums with a supportive government are very different from free museums in a climate of austerity. Going to the Louvre or to American museums 20 years ago was like entering a different universe of cultural pride and enjoyment – these museums really wanted to thrill, and they did justice to their collections.
So do ours – right now. Britons have realised how precious our great collections are. The world shares the passion, and if you visit the British Museum this summer the sheer crowd numbers startle. How about turning that popularity into money? We can't let recent progress in our galleries and museums be destroyed by a cost-cutting mentality that first freezes, then rolls back, everything that has been achieved.
Charging for entry cannot be a taboo. I probably make more use of free entry than most people; there are obviously ways to make entrance fees egalitarian. Free entry for everyone under 20 and all students, membership schemes for the rest of us, something like the new National Art Pass for those who want to purchase annual overall access.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/jul/21/museums-charging-admission-entry-fees
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Marriage confers 'little benefit' to children's development....
Institute for Fiscal studies research suggests parents' educational qualifications more influential on child development than marriage.
Marriage confers "little if any benefit" in terms of a child's development, according to new research, challenging the rationale behind the prime minister's desire to offer tax breaks to couples who tie the knot.
New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found "little or no evidence" that marriage itself has any effect on children's "social or cognitive" development. Before the election the Tories had made the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family a key plank of their "broken Britain" analysis.
The idea is still floated by key Tories, such as work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, but is opposed by Lib Dems.
The work by the IFS accepts that those who marry tend to be relatively better educated and relatively better off. But the institute points out: "differences in outcomes between children whose parents are married and those who cohabit may simply reflect these differences in other characteristics rather than be caused by marriage."
By examining data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a sample of children born in the UK in the early 2000s, the institute shows that children born out of wedlock are behind in cognitive development at three, five and seven-years-old but this is because "cohabiting parents tend to have lower educational qualifications than married parents". The same pattern is observed with "socio-emotional" development.
Ellen Greaves, research economist at the IFS, and one of the authors of the report, said: "It is true that children born to married couples are on average more cognitively and emotionally successful than children born to cohabiting couples. But careful analysis shows that this largely reflects the differences between the types of people who decide to get married and those who don't."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/19/ifs-marriage-little-benefit-child-development
Angela Merkel dashes hopes of lasting settlement on Eurozone debt.......
Banks could be slapped with a levy of €10bn (£8.8bn) over three years to raise €30bn for another Greece bailout.
Angela Merkel has quashed hopes of a lasting solution for Greece at Thursday's crucial summit of European leaders, even as the International Monetary Fund warned of the repercussions for global economic growth if the eurozone's debt crisis was not tackled quickly.
Economists warned that indecision after tomorrow's summit could cause severe tension in the markets.
Gabriel Stein, at Lombard Street Research, said: "Ministers must come up with some solution that does not involve postponing once again the difficult positions that alone can solve the fiscal crisis. Otherwise the next eruption of the crisis won't be in the autumn, it is more likely to be next week. Moreover, each failure to act raises the threshold for what must be done next time."
Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, described Thursday's meeting as the "last chance for eurozone policymakers to get a grip on the region's debt crisis".
"Anything other than a very decisive response, which could be applied not just to Greece but also to Spain and Italy, could see the situation become irretrievable," said Loynes.
In an assessment of eurozone policies, the IMF also piled on the pressure on European leaders to act to solve the crisis and pump more money into its banks.
"It would be very costly not just for the eurozone but for the global economy to delay tackling the sovereign crisis," the IMF's Luc Everaert said.
The fund argued that the European Financial Stability Facility, set up last year to bail out troubled eurozone countries, should be increased and buy up bonds in an attempt to restore confidence in the financial markets.
But for now some European Union leaders remain in disagreement with the European Central Bank, which has been arguing that a default by Greece would mean it could no longer provide funds to domestic banks. Leaders such as Merkel believe that the private sector needs to take losses on its holdings of bonds to help shoulder the burden of rescuing Greece.
The confusion about the stance of the ECB towards Greece pushed yields on two-year Greece bonds through 40% as speculation mounted that a default was more likely.
With the FTSE 100 rising 37 points to 5,789, stocks recovered some of the losses after Monday's rout in financial stocks – when three top UK banks lost £5bn of their value – while yields on Italian and Spanish bonds slipped back from their record levels. Even so, Spain was forced to pay 3.912% on an 18-month bond, the highest price since 2002 and considerably more than the 3.26% since the last sale of similar bonds.
Monday, 18 July 2011
Phone hacking: Murdochs and Brooks set to face MPs' questions.....
Rupert Murdoch, son James and Rebekah Brooks face three hours of questions over phone hacking at News International.
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, his son James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, until a week ago the three most powerful figures in British media, will on Tuesday face an unprecedented three hours of questions over the extent to which they knew, approved or subsequently covered up widespread phone hacking at News International.
James Murdoch, his chairmanship of BSkyB already in question, will face a make-or-break examination of his professional reputation in which he will have to explain why he authorised payments to cover up illegal phone hacking by the News of the World.
James Murdoch has admitted that he authorised out-of-court payments to silence the Professional Footballers Association chairman, Gordon Taylor, over the way in which his phone was hacked. He has said he regrets the payments, and was not in full possession of the facts when he authorised them.
It is likely that Rupert Murdoch will offer further apologies for the way in which the families of murder victims had their phones hacked. But he has adopted an erratic stance in the past week, at one point telling the Wall Street Journal that News Corp has handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes".
Murdoch said the damage to the company is "nothing that will not be recovered. We have a reputation of great good works in this country." Asked if he was aggravated by the negative headlines in recent days, he said he was "just getting annoyed. I'll get over it. I'm tired."
In another sign of the uncertainty over tone within the company, the Wall Street Journal – owned by News Corporation – ran an editorial on Monday condemning the Guardian for its journalism.
But at the weekend, his British company bought adverts in newspapers to express its abject regrets at what had happened.
The Murdochs will be eager to isolate the crisis as a British media problem common to many tabloids, rather than an international problem specific to the culture he generates in his newspapers.
Brooks's lawyers have confirmed she will attend the select committee hearing, even though she was arrested for 12 hours on Sunday. Her solicitor, Stephen Parkinson, said she was not guilty of any criminal offence.
Parkinson angrily attacked the police for Brooks's arrest, saying she had suffered "enormous reputational damage. They put no allegations to her and showed no documents to her linking her to any crime. In time, the police will have to give their account of their actions, in particular their decision to arrest her with the enormous reputational damage this has involved."
Parkinson added: "She remains willing to attend and to answer questions. It is a matter for parliament to decide what issues to put to her and whether her appointment should take place at a later date."
She will be cross-examined separately from the Murdochs, but the questioning may fall apart if her lawyers insist she cannot answer potentially self-incriminating questions. Brooks has appointed David Wilson, chairman of the public relations agency Bell Pottinger, to act as her spokesman.
Meeting at the same time as the culture select committee, the home affairs select committee will separately grill both Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing Met police commissioner, and Yates, the officer responsible for deciding in the space of eight hours that the Guardian in July 2009 had published no new evidence about the scale of phone hacking.
Yates has subsequently admitted at a meeting of the home affairs select committee last week that he made an error in failing to reopen the inquiry, but blamed a lack of co-operation by News International.
Both men are now subject to referral to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for the way in which they handled the phone-hacking inquiry.
Yates will be questioned over why he failed to tell either the culture select committee or the home affairs select committee that the former deputy editor of the News of the World Neil Wallis had been employed by the Met as a strategic communications consultant. He had been cross-examined in detail in writing and orally by the MPs Tom Watson and Jim Sheridan over his relationship with Wallis, but did not mention the contract.
Watson denies Murdoch will meet his nemesis , saying the session is unlikely to match its advance billing.
"There is not going to be a killer blow on Tuesday. Expectations are way too high," he told the Guardian. "We will get the symbolism of parliament holding these people to account for the first time.
We will look for facts, and not just offer rhetoric. This story has been like slicing a cucumber, you just get a little bit closer to the truth each time."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/phone-hacking-murdochs-brooks-mps
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