Freelance Projects, Design and Programming Tutorials
Chelsea captain John Terry insists his team-mates remain behind boss Carlo Ancelotti and has ordered them to “man up”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Maxine Peake plays a barrister on the front line of criminal law As a former barrister, writer Peter Moffat has witnessed for real the drama of a courtroom. He returns to his legal roots in new BBC drama Silk.
Peter Moffat surveys his cramped surroundings and shivers. “It gives me the absolute willies to be back here.”
Our interview is taking place in the cell of a former magistrates’ court in central London.
The building has been transformed into a swanky hotel. But the old prisoner cells, adjacent to the bar, are largely intact – even if the latrine in the corner does now contain ornamental pebbles.
“I was a barrister up until about 10 years ago,” says Moffat. “Some of my earliest experiences are in this court. I remember speaking to clients in these cells.
“As a ‘baby barrister’, you are thrown in at the deep end and have got nothing in terms of a brief. You might have one sheet of paper with a name, and the court time. It’s absolutely terrifying.”
It is this world that Moffat portrays in Silk, in which Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry-Jones play barristers applying for “silk”.
Silk comes from the idea that when a barrister is made a Queen’s Counsel, they will be given authority to wear coloured robes. Traditionally, these robes were always made of silk.
Moffat admits it was difficult trying to become a writer while still mired in legal paperwork.
“I remember being given a three-month fraud trial and my feelings should have been, ‘Great – this is a nice big case.’
“But actually my thought was, ‘Damn, I’m not going to be able to write for three months.’ So I knew something had to give.”
Having quit the legal profession, Moffat now has several legal dramas under his belt.
These include Channel 4’s North Square, in which Penry-Jones starred, and Criminal Justice, in which Peake appeared.
“We all felt at the end of North Square that there were more stories to tell,” says Moffat, adding that it is “lovely to be back working with Rupert”.
One writing challenge that arose in Silk came when Penry-Jones damaged his knee playing football just weeks before filming – an accident that called for some last-minute rewrites.
Penry-Jones also appeared in BBC spy drama Spooks Penry-Jones recalls: “I was in training for Soccer Aid, and in the last minute of the last day of training I fractured my knee. I was on crutches for the first two episodes.”
The 40-year-old actor did not need to do much research ahead of Silk, due to his experience on North Square.
“I’d been to the Old Bailey and sat through many court cases. It’s mainly the workings of the chambers I found so interesting.
“It’s like an acting agency – the clerk is the agent and the barristers are the actors.”
Moffat has his own theory as to why the legal world is such a fertile ground for drama. It is because “everybody’s under pressure,” he says.
“I wanted to write about how often it is in chambers that you get a case very late in the day and how much pressure that puts on you. The stakes are very high.
“It’s great drama because at the end there’s always a big moment. There’s a guilty or a not guilty.
“There are stories within stories in a court case. A piece of cross-examination has its own natural structure – a beginning, middle and end. It’s natural drama territory.”
With his lead character, defence barrister Martha Costello, Moffat wanted to avoid the female lawyer so often portrayed by Hollywood – successful yet single, and unfulfilled.
“I don’t think it’s just Hollywood,” he says. “Apart from Helen Mirren, you struggle to come up with a single character-led drama led by a woman.
“And not have that woman have as her only big issues whether or not she’s going to be with the man she quite fancies, and whether or not a baby might get in the way of her professional existence.
“It’s great to have Maxine Peake,” he continues. “She’s really real and not obviously barristerial.
“I can think of a number of other actors who could step in and do those Kavanagh-type role really well. I wanted somebody with a bit more normal life about them.”
Silk begins on 22 February on BBC One at 2100 GMT.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Sophie van Brugen reports on the growing trend of on the job training for school leavers.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Red Bull driver Mark Webber believes the decision to call off the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix will not hurt the teams’ preparations for the 2011 campaign.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Lord Tebbit met students from Merthyr Tydfil College who made a film about welfare reform An ex-minister who once advised the jobless to get on their bikes says Merthyr Tydfil’s unemployed should consider moving to find work.
Lord Tebbit was being interviewed by Merthyr Tydfil College students who made a film about the potential effects of the UK government’s welfare reform.
The former Conservative party chairman said people in the UK should follow the example of those in Poland and Hungary.
The UK government says its reforms will encourage the jobless back to work.
When asked whether people in Merthyr should get on their bikes and look for work, Lord Tebbit replied: “Yes people do have to get up and go.
“People do it in Poland, people do it in Hungary, people do it in Lithuania. Why are they more willing to do it than we are?”
In 1981, when more than 3m people were unemployed, Lord Tebbit, then Margaret Thatcher’s secretary of state for employment, famously caused controversy when he told the jobless to get on their bikes to find work.
The students’ encounter with him is shown on BBC Wales’ Week In Week Out programme on Tuesday.
Merthyr currently has the second highest percentage of people seeking jobs in Wales, and regularly features in surveys of areas with the highest rates of people claiming incapacity benefit.
The once thriving industrial town has also been hit by job cuts in manufacturing, including the loss of production at the Hoover factory in 2008.
Student Gemma Griffiths, 23, and her sister Donna, 21, who grew up in a family on benefits in Merthyr, made the 15-minute film shown to Lord Tebbit.
The Griffiths sisters say they were raised in a family hit by poverty Last week the UK coalition government unveiled plans to reform the welfare system and promised to make work worthwhile.
Prime Minister David Cameron promised “to make work pay for some of the poorest people in our society”.
A “universal credit”, sanctions for those turning down jobs, and a cap on benefits paid to a single family were among the changes outlined.
But Gemma Griffiths said: “I made this film because I grew up in a family in poverty and I think the benefit reform is a bad idea because it will push Merthyr into deeper poverty than it already is.”
The sisters spoke to a number of benefit claimants who face losing out because of changes to the rules, and they both believe cutting benefits in the current economic climate will make poor people in Merthyr poorer.
“Why have we got today fathers who have never worked?”
Lord Tebbit Former Conservative minister
But Lord Tebbit told them: “It is an interesting film which shows up some very longstanding deep-rooted problems.
“When I was a kid at school we’d all had fathers who had been unemployed but I don’t think any of us had a father who had never been employed.
“Why have we got today fathers who have never worked? In that sense we are worse off than we were before the war, before the welfare state.
“I think some people may get less well off, may get poorer.
“But the question is whether we can help the majority of people to get out of that hole.”
Last year, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith sparked debate when he said people in Merthyr had become “static” and suggested they “get on a bus” to find work in Cardiff.
Week In Week Out, Message from Merthyr, is on BBC One Wales at 2235 GMT on Tuesday, 22 February.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Timothy Geithner says he is “very impressed” by George Osborne’s financial strategy
UK Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity plan has received the backing of the US Treasury Secretary.
Timothy Geithner told the BBC that he was “very impressed, as just one man looking from a distance, at the basic strategy that he’s adopted”.
He said Mr Osborne had been handed “problems not created by this government”.
But he said the chancellor had “locked his government and the coalition into a set or reforms that are very good”.
At the Davos-based economic forum earlier this year, Mr Geithner had said that, in the case of the US, rapid, drastic spending cuts were “not the responsible way” to cut budget deficits.
That is in contrast to the direction of the coalition government led by David Cameron, which has implemented the biggest fiscal squeeze in the UK in a generation.
Mr Osborne plans £81bn of spending cuts, but Mr Geithner said the UK’s deficit position was worse than that of the US, which is one of only two G20 countries which expects its deficit to rise, not fall, this year.
“You need to bring [the deficit] down in a way that is reasonably growth friendly, and still preserves the capacity for investments,” said Mr Geithner, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“If you don’t do that, if you mis-calibrate, then the risk is that you make the problem worse over time.”
He said he was also worried about European banks not having the same capital as US banks.
And Mr Geithner said the “light-touch approach to financial regulation” which was “designed consciously to pull financial activity from New York, and from Frankfurt and Paris to London” was a “deeply costly strategy for financial regulation”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Blocking an enzyme can prevent can cells spreading Scientists at the UK’s Institute of Cancer Research have prevented breast cancer spreading to other organs in mice by blocking a chemical.
In their experiments, they showed that blocking the enzyme LOXL2 prevented metastasis.
They said their findings, published in Cancer Research, provided a “fantastic drug target” and were “highly likely” to be used in a clinical setting.
Cancer charities say the research shows great promise.
The authors of the report say 90% of cancer deaths are due to tumours migrating around the body.
When they looked at patients with breast cancer, they showed that high levels of the enzyme LOXL2 were linked with cancer spread and poor survival rates.
They also showed that LOXL2 was important in the early stages of cancer spread. It helps cancerous cells escape from the breast tissue and get into the bloodstream.
“This laboratory research shows great promise and we look forward to seeing how it translates into patients”
Arlene Wilkie Breast Cancer Campaign
In their studies on mice, they used chemicals and antibodies to block the activity of LOXL2. This stopped breast cancer spreading to other tissues.
Dr Janine Erler, team leader at the Institute of Cancer Research, said: “LOXL2 is a fantastic drug target, it’s highly likely to be used in a clinical setting.”
She said the findings were not just important for drug development, but also for developing a test which can predict the likelihood of cancer spreading and as a result, patient outcomes.
Arlene Wilkie, Director of Research and Policy at Breast Cancer Campaign, which funded the study with the ICR and Cancer Research UK, said: “Dr Erler’s results are very exciting, as although currently we can treat breast cancer that has spread, we cannot cure it.
“By using LOX2 to predict whose cancer will spread and drugs to block the enzyme to stop this from happening, many more lives could be saved. This laboratory research shows great promise and we look forward to seeing how it translates into patients.”
Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “Cancer spread is an important problem in breast and other cancers, and scientists are searching to find new ways to stop cancer spread and save many more lives.
“The team have shown that targeting the molecule LOXL2, which plays a key role in spread, could offer new approaches to tackle this problem.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
It is estimated that about half of working age population has low numeracy skills Being bad at maths must no longer be seen as a “badge of honour” if poor numeracy skills among England’s adults are to be tackled, campaigners say.
The National Institute of Continuing Education is calling for a cultural shift in the nation’s attitude to maths and a change in the way it is taught.
It also says adult maths skills campaigns have done little for those with the lowest ability.
The government said tackling poor basic skills was a top priority.
Research has shown that those with poor maths skills are far more likely to be out of work, or to be stuck in low-paid jobs.
Carol Taylor, director of operations at NIACE said the UK had a “huge numeracy problem” but many people saw being bad at maths as a “badge of honour”.
She said the problem was, in part, a cultural one: “No one would dream of boasting that they couldn’t read, but many people stand on platforms, write in blogs, appear on radio and television, admit to friends and colleagues, proudly showcasing our inability to handle everyday maths.”
NIACE’s report into the issue is due to be published later on Tuesday.
Last year a committee of MPs found that large numbers of England’s adult working population remained functionally illiterate or innumerate – despite the government’s £9bn Skills for Life programme.
The committee said there had been far less progress in tackling numeracy, compared with improving literacy among adults.
And the number of people with very poor numeracy skills who have participated in adult numeracy courses was very small, it added.
“Poor numeracy skills have a devastating effect on many people’s lives”
Dame Mary Marsh
Author Dame Mary Marsh writes in the NIACE report’s introduction: “As a country we have long recognised that we have a problem with numbers.
“Yet no other country seems to take so much pride in our difficulties. We say, ‘I’m useless at maths cheerfully’, and with a sense of finality.
“Poor numeracy skills have a devastating effect on many people’s lives.”
People who reach adulthood with poor numeracy skills are more than twice as likely to be unemployed, far less likely to receive work-related training, get a promotion or receive a wage increase, the report said.
Dame Mary said that the Skills for Life strategy, to address poor numeracy had “pumped billions of pounds” into raising literacy and numeracy standards.
But this had only had a “limited effect on numeracy”, she added.
A study for the National Audit Office in 2008 found that just one in 10 adults with numeracy skills lower than an 11-year-old had taken part in a numeracy course.
The NIACE report calls for “a cultural shift” in the nation’s attitude to numeracy.
“We urge the government to bring the pleasure of numeracy and numbers to the population in the way that reading and books has become such a focus since the first National Year of Reading,” Dame Mary added.
The report also calls for adults to be taught using real life activities, for more adult numeracy teachers and support workers, and for help to be targeted at adults with the poorest numeracy skills.
A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “We are committed to offering fully funded literacy and numeracy courses for all those who left school without these basic skills.
“The government is currently reviewing the quality of literacy and numeracy skills provision and examining how it equips individuals with the skills they need to get a job and play a full part in society.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Street fundraising is much maligned, even providing material for television comedy Manchester has become the latest city to restrict the activities of street charity fundraisers – “chuggers” to the critics – but some observers warn good causes will have to become even more persistent to survive tough times. Is the antipathy between Britain’s shoppers and fundraisers about to intensify?
Hi, can I stop you there? Do you have a minute to talk? Have you ever thought about giving to charity?
Not today? Mind how you go, now.
With their brightly-coloured tabards, youthful energy and unflaggingly cheerful demeanours, face-to-face fundraisers have become as much a fixture of UK high streets as Marks and Spencer and late-night binge drinking.
To their advocates, they play a crucial role in keeping campaigns and benevolent organisations going at a time of economic uncertainty.
To detractors, however, these “chuggers” – a derogatory term, abbreviated from “charity muggers” – are a national nuisance who use emotional blackmail and harassment to shake down shoppers for direct debits.
Either way, the face of eliciting direct debit contributions in the UK is changing.
James Brown, a 26-year-old technical project manager from London, worked as a street fundraiser for charities like Amnesty International, Water Aid and WorldVision when he was a student
The days were long, hard and repetitive. With Amnesty the target was for each of us to get eight people a day to give £5 a month.
It wasn’t my natural tendency to just go up to people and stop them. In England we’re all a bit reserved about that sort of thing.
But eventually you find a way to do it that fits with your personality. You learn about negotiation. You develop a thicker skin when people shout at you or give you abuse – you learn not to take it personally because they don’t know you.
It’s the kinds of things you learn in a call centre, but today if I’m in a meeting or dealing with a client today I would definitely use those same business skills.
Manchester has become the latest city to restrict the practice, confining the bib-clad, clipboard-wielding battalions to four sites in its centre and allowing them only to ply their trade on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 0900 and 1800.
It is the 40th local authority to strike such an agreement with the fundraising industry’s voluntary regulators – both a response to objections from sections of the press and public, and a recognition by the industry that it needed to assuage such sentiments.
The move may go some way towards placating the critics. But Sophie Hudson, who covers the fundraising industry for The Third Sector magazine, suspects that it could be offset by broader financial pressures on charities operating within the same precarious economic climate as the rest of the country.
“The main problem seems to be that there’s going to be an increase in demand for services but they’re facing cuts left, right and centre,” she says.
“Even though face-to-face fundraising has attracted a lot of negative publicity, there may be a feeling that whatever works is what needs to be done.”
This contradiction is framed by two key observations.
The first is that street fundraising is, for many charities, demonstrably effective.
According to the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA), the method brings in up to 600,000 new regular donations each year and donors recruited face-to-face are worth £120m annually to good causes. It also estimates that up to 18% of those who make direct debit or standing order payments do so having been recruited in the street or on the doorstep.
“There’s an assumption that if they say no they are being mean”
Lord Foulkes
The second is that the public, whenever asked, tend to express an aversion to the tactic. A 2009 survey suggested that two-thirds of people would cross the street to avoid them.
Though it may feel like it has been around for longer, the technique which has been only widely been practised in the UK since the 1990s. More recently, many charities have also begun expanding face-to-face tactics beyond the high street and onto householders’ doorsteps.
One critic of chugging who fears the situation could deteriorate is Lord Foulkes, a Labour peer and Member of the Scottish Parliament who introduced a motion at Holyrood urging ministers to do more to regulate the industry.
He says the conduct of street fundraisers has been the focus of an increasing number of complaints from his constituents in the Lothians.
“They feel harassed – they always feel there’s an assumption that if they say no they are being mean, when in fact they may already give generously to charity,” he says.
“I can see that this is a tough climate for charities and they are having to do more with less. My concern is that this will force them into an even more aggressive approach.”
The industry is, of course, used to fending off criticism. In 2010 a BBC Newsnight report warned that it would take the the average donor would take more than a year to cover the fee paid to charities by the fundraising companies the employ to drum up new recruits on the street.
In response, the companies’ watchdog said the firms provided a good return on the investment.
Likewise, PFRA chief executive Mick Aldridge insists that face-to-face fundraising is practised professionally according to the body’s code of practice. He observes that only 0.6% of those signed up this way go on to make a complaint.
It is true, he acknowledges, that face-to-face fundraising has remained steady during the downturn and its aftermath despite direct main and telephone-generated income for charities having dropped off.
Yet he argues that, in a very even market, any good causes which suddenly decided to flood the nation’s high streets with an increased number of bibs and tabards would encounter the law of diminishing returns.
“For the last eight to 10 years, the number of people signing up face-to-face has been remarkably stable – 500,000 to 600,000 each year,” he says.
“It wouldn’t make sense to throw out more and more fundraisers onto the street. People’s attitudes would harden over time and it would prove less and less effective.”
Those avowed critics of the practice will hope that he is right.
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
5. amd767
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
4. endangeredlogic
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
3. Sam C
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
2. Covcatgrp
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
Comments 5 of 6
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Rory Cellan-Jones
Microsoft says a new world of possibilities for computing may open up Microsoft is to open up its XBox Kinect technology to allow amateur software developers to experiment with it.
The company is to release a software development kit in the spring, which will give developers access to the secrets behind the technology.
For now it will only be for personal use, but Microsoft says it will release a commercial version in due course.
Kinect, which turns the player’s body into a game controller, has been a big hit since it launched last November.
It has already captured the imagination of the hacker community, which has been demonstrating various uses for the technology, including 3D photography.
Microsoft is hoping that an army of smarter developers will now find more ways to take Kinect to the next level.
“As breakthrough technologies like these reach scale, the resulting creativity and invention will open up a whole new world of possibilities for computing,” said Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer.
The announcement was made during an open day at Microsoft’s research centre near Seattle.
The company is hoping that the success of Kinect, developed by its own scientists, can give it a greater presence in the home entertainment field.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Messenger mission systems engineer Eric Finnegan explains some of the features on the craft designed to help it cope with Mercury’s extreme conditions.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Richard Black
The Discovery took Scott, Shackleton and other pioneers to Antarctica in 1901-02 Samples of a marine creature collected during Scott’s Antarctic expeditions are yielding data that may prove valuable in projecting climate change.
The expeditions in the early 1900s brought back many finds including samples of life from the sea floor.
Comparing these samples with modern ones, scientists have now shown that the growth of a bryozoan, a tiny animal, has increased in recent years.
They say this means more carbon dioxide is being locked away on the ocean bed.
“Scott really should be given more credit for some of the scientific work they did”
David Barnes BAS
The tiny bryozoan, Cellarinella nutti, looks like a branching twig that has been stuck into the sea floor.
It grows during the period in the year when it can feed, drawing plankton from the water with its tentacles.
The length of the feeding season is reflected in the size of the annual growth band – just as with tree rings.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have just published an analysis of growth rates in samples collected in the Ross Sea.
This is the Antarctic region where Capt Robert Falcon Scott moored during both the Discovery expedition of 1901-04 and the Terra Nova expedition a decade later, in which he lost his life attempting to return from the South Pole.
Other projects have since collected bryozoan samples at the same site, while the Census of Marine Life has increased the flow of data over the past decade.
The bryozoan’s seasonal growth yields growth rings, similar to a tree’s Putting all this data together has allowed researchers to show that the creatures grew roughly the same amount each year until about 1990.
Since then, there has been a steady increase, with the annual growth rate now being more than double the 20th Century average.
The BAS scientists suggest this means that the bryozoans are now eating for longer, which means they are eating more phytoplankton – the tiny marine plants that draw dissolved CO2 from seawater.
“This is important because it’s locking away carbon,” said lead researcher David Barnes.
“The ‘branches’ of the bryozoans break off and are easily buried, and we’ve seen that – so burial is taking carbon out of circulation,” he told BBC News.
The team suggests this is acting to increase the size of the carbon sink – the absorption and storage of CO2 – in the Southern Ocean.
However, other researchers have concluded that the Southern Ocean is progressively absorbing less CO2.
The Global Carbon Project, an international research network, concluded four years ago that the size of the global sink fell by 18% in the period 2000-06, with a large chunk of that decrease registered in the Southern Ocean.
“Winds there have accelerated over the last 50 years, and it’s thought this is speeding up the mixing in the Southern Ocean and bringing to the surface deep water that’s rich in CO2,” said Corinne Le Quere, a member of the Global Carbon Project and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
“So we have observations of this physical process, but the biological activity we don’t have much information about; if you’re mixing the ocean more, how are organisms responding?
“Usually in my experience the biological response compensates a bit, but not enough [to counteract the physical change]; and the fact that you have this one organism with higher growth rates doesn’t say how much this is going to affect the carbon balance.”
If the new research does not shed too much light on the likely progression of climate change, it does help us put the achievements of Captain Scott and his colleagues in a new light.
Despite the hardships inherent in polar exploration, both expeditions made the collection of scientific samples a top priority – including retrieving samples from the sea bed at a depth of half a kilometre using trawls.
“Prior to this, I tended to associate success in the Antarctic with people like Amundsen and Shackleton – Scott, I thought, doesn’t have the same attachment to success,” said Dr Barnes.
“But now I view things differently, and I think in 100 years’ time people will still be using the collections he made – they’re extensive and high quality, and in fact we struggled to find collections made after that that were as good.
“He really should be given more credit for some of the scientific work they did.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Eminen won just two of the 10 awards he was nominated for A veteran music executive has criticised the Grammy Awards in a full-page advert in the New York Times.
Steve Stoute said Grammy voters had “lost touch with contemporary popular culture” by snubbing artists like Eminem and Justin Bieber.
He added the show had become “a series of hypocrisies and contradictions”, claiming both acts were only asked to perform to boost TV ratings.
Last week’s ceremony attracted 27m viewers – the largest since 2001.
Stoute, who is most famous for managing hip-hop arts Nas, is the chief executive of marketing company Translation and is considered to be one of the most influential voices in entertainment marketing and pop culture.
He also took the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to task for snubbing Eminem in 2001, which saw the rapper’s Marshall Mathers LP miss out on album of the year in favour of Steely Dan.
Stoute’s letter also questioned why Kanye West’s Graduation was also passed over for the same award three years ago by Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters.
“We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation,” Stoute wrote.
‘Change this system’
Eminem, who lead this year’s Grammys with 10 nominations, picked up only two awards, while Bieber went home empty-handed despite his two nominations.
“How is it that Justin Bieber, an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist, did not win best new artist?” Stoute said.
Esperanza Spalding beat Justin Bieber to the best new artist award “His cultural impact and success are even more quantifiable if you factor in his YouTube and Vevo viewership.”
Beiber lost out to singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding for the award in question.
Stoute added: “Interesting that the Grammys understands cultural relevance when it comes to using Eminem’s, Kanye West’s or Justin Bieber’s name in the billing to ensure viewership and to deliver the all-too-important ratings for its advertisers.”
He also said his “suspicions” over a link between performers and winners appeared to be proven true, citing Arcade Fire’s surprise album of the year win just after they had finished performing on stage.
“Does the Grammys intentionally use artists for their celebrity, popularity and cultural appeal when they already know the winners and then program a show against this expectation?” he said.
He finished by calling on artists to “demand they change this system” and uphold “its mission for advocacy and support of artistry as culture evolves”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A publicity drive has started for the census, now just five weeks away, but the survey is being criticised for its question on religion. So is it even possible to accurately measure how religious the UK is?
According to the Gospel of Luke, it was a Roman census that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Jesus Christ.
And more than 2,000 years later, the same kind of counting exercise is being used to gauge the religious make-up of the UK.
According to the last Census 10 years ago, more than two-thirds of people in Britain regarded themselves as Christian – 72% in England and Wales, and 65% in Scotland.
More than 1.5 million in England and Wales, more than 3% of the population, said they were Muslim and nearly eight million ticked “no religion”. There were also 390,000 self-proclaimed Jedi.
But five weeks before the next census day, Sunday 27 March, some groups are questioning whether the religious numbers are at all accurate, and could ever be.
They prefer to use the British Social Attitudes survey, carried out annually by the National Centre for Social Research, which paints a picture of a less-religious country, with 51% describing themselves as non-religious and 43% as Christian.
“It fairly allows you to answer it because you can say ‘no religion’ but if you wanted to make it as neutral as possible, you might ask ‘Which of these would you describe yourself as?’ says Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov.
“It does have a slight assumption, although not a strong one, but these wordings do make a difference.”
The religious question in the census was first introduced in 2001, as a voluntary option. In some other countries such as France, state questions about race, ethnicity or religion are not permitted.
But in the UK, the vast majority of people answered it despite not having to, although the reappearance of the same question in the forthcoming census has prompted complaints.
Question 20 in England and Wales will say: “What is your religion?” In Scotland, question 13 will ask: “What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?”
The British Humanist Association (BHA) believes they are leading questions that actively encourage people to tick a religious answer, thereby inflating the numbers, especially among Christians because many people hold a weak affiliation.
If you were baptised but had not been to church since then, you might be inclined to say you were still Christian, says Naomi Phillips, the head of public affairs at the BHA. She says the actual number of secular people is probably double the number the census recorded.
“Many people tick Christian but wouldn’t consider themselves to be religious if you asked them otherwise. And this is used to justify maintaining faith schools and used by local authorities to make their planning decisions to allocate resources to public services.
“It means more budgets go to Christian groups and the needs of non-religious groups are not taken into account.”
The BHA begins a poster campaign next week on buses and at railway stations that urges people who are non-religious to “for God’s sake, say so”.
Ms Phillips says it would be preferable not to have the question, because it’s hard to get an accurate picture.
Outside London, the counties with the highest proportion of Christians were Durham, Merseyside and Cumbria, all with 82% or moreThe districts with the highest proportions of Christians were all in the North West: St Helens, Wigan and Copeland (Cumbria) each with 86% or moreThe number of people who stated Jedi was 390,000
Source: 2001 census
“It’s very difficult to measure. There are so many different things to measure – by belief, practice, whether you believe in God, whether you attend places of worship, whether you pray.”
The census question pre-supposes you have a religion, she says, and a two-part question like they have in Northern Ireland would be fairer, which differentiates between your faith at birth and your faith now.
The humanists are not alone in wanting the question changed. The Foundation for Holistic Spirituality (F4HS) wants it easier for those people who have a spiritual but non-religious tendency to answer the question.
But the Office for National Statistics, which collects the data, says the question is one of a number that allows people to fully express their identity in the way they consider most appropriate.
“The religion question measures the number of people who self-identify an affiliation with a religion, irrespective of the extent of their religious belief or practice,” says a spokesman.
It’s a question that is worded in the most sensitive way possible, says historian and broadcaster Nick Barratt, especially with the subtle change of emphasis introduced in the new census – respondents are now faced with “no religion” as the top option to tick, rather than “none”.
The census is a compulsory survey taken every 10 yearsNew questions this time cover civil partners, the number of bedrooms in your home and recent migrationCritics say it’s too intrusive, duplicates information held elsewhere and it’s expensiveThe 2011 census will cost about £482m
“This [change] makes it more secular, and easier for people to identify with the question and where they are coming from. There’s the question of faith and belief as opposed to religion. It allows other beliefs to get in. If you said ‘none’, it is like you have no belief or faith, but ‘no religion’ means you may have.”
He expects this change could mean fewer Christians this time, but it’s an important question, he says, because it shows how richly diverse some communities are.
It also has a practical purpose, says the ONS. The results are used to improve understanding of communities, it says, and to provide public services, monitor discrimination and develop policy to best cater for people’s religious backgrounds.
But what is the true picture? Whichever survey is accurate, it’s clear that many people in Britain still feel an affinity with Christianity, even if they haven’t attended church in many years.
Average Sunday attendance in the Church of England was 960,000 in 2008, a figure which has been falling for a number of years. A survey by Christian charity Tearfund suggested it was one in 10.
Yet nearly 40 million people in England and Wales, 72%, identified themselves as Christian. Other surveys suggest the majority of people pray and believe in God, even if they don’t regularly go to church.
The question does seem to imply that you have a religion already, says Anne Atkins, author and contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.
“But that’s ameliorated by the very first option being ‘none’, so it’s not something I’d get very exercised about.
“The 72% figure for Christians is higher than I initially expected. If I had shut my eyes and considered how many people in my street are Christians, I probably wouldn’t have realised it was more than half.
“But if I had actually asked them in person then perhaps it would have been. Who am I to say if someone is Christian or not?”
Christianity should not be measured simply in terms of Sunday worshippers, which are falling in number, says a Church of England spokesman, because the numbers of people going at other times remains high.
“The 72% figure seems to be constant and not decreasing. What’s interesting for us is the social mobility and social change. People might not go on a Sunday to church any more but might go on a Saturday or Thursday or they might go less often. It’s a change in how much time they have available.
“We have made worship available online, in the morning and in the evening. There’s probably more people engaging with the church than ever before.”
Christianity is a religion that people identify with, he adds, regardless of their level of church-going.
But it’s impossible to quantify the numbers, says pollster Stephan Shakespeare, founder of YouGov.
“It’s very hard to make an absolute measurement. You have to get an ideal definition about what being a Christian means or what being religious means. But what is useful is to ask the same question as last time and see the change.”
So even if a question is slightly flawed, it’s better to stick with it.
Editors’ Picks All Comments (90) 
‘Religion’ implies that Christianity is about ‘doing’ things, whereas I think many Christians would agree with me that it’s not about ‘doing’ (trying to BUY favour to get into heaven), it’s about ‘being’ (accepting you are loved). Also, the idea that if you don’t go to church, you’re not a Christian or vice versa, is flawed. I don’t go to church, but I love God. Very interesting 🙂
46. Schism
Isn’t it obvious? If you believe in the religion and follow its rules then you belong to the religion! If you dont believe or dont follow the rules then how can you possibly be of that religion? You might involve yourself in the social events but that means nothing seeing as religion is a life long commitment for the body and the mind.
33. ArmchairScot
I find “No religion” just as confusing as “None”. It certainly covers a range of options ranging from ‘strict’ atheism, through agnosticism to an even more woolly ‘don’t really think about it’ category. How we are supposed to draw conclusions on religious attitudes Britain today, based on this multiple choice, frankly escapes me.
32. Desiderius Erasmus
Is it a really fair reflection of the nations beliefs, when some people can’t declare themselves as atheists, or of a religion not their families liking, for fear of violent reprisals? And don’t say the forms are ‘secret’, because in reality they will be filled in by just one person in many households.
22. TallBlondJohn
My parents will tick C of E, but they are agnostics. For them religion is social activity – its part of the village community. They do the church flowers regularly, but only go to church for the major festivals. So do they have a religion, or a tradition?
Comments 5 of 7
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The current “brown” economy is carbon and resource intensive and is not sustainable, the study says Investing $1.3 trillion (£800bn) each year in green sectors would deliver long-term stability in the global economy, a UN report has suggested.
Spending about 2% of global GDP in 10 key areas would kick-start a “low carbon, resource efficient green economy”, the authors observed.
They also recommended following policies that decoupled economic growth from intensive consumption.
The findings have been published at a meeting attended by 100 ministers.
“Governments have a central role in changing laws and policies, and in investing public money in public wealth to make the transition possible,” said Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Programme’s (Unep) Green Economy Initiative.
“Misallocation of capital is at the centre of the world’s current dilemmas and there are fast actions that can be taken, starting literally today,” he added.
“From phasing down and phasing out the $600bn global fossil fuel subsidies, to re-directing more than $20bn subsidies perversely rewarding those in unsustainable fisheries.”
Unep defined a “green economy” as one that resulted in “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities”.
When it came to investing 2% of GDP in greening the global economy, the authors recommended a number of investments, including:
$108bn greening agriculture, such as encouraging and supporting smallholder farms$134bn on the building sector, including improving energy efficiency$110bn improving fisheries, including reducing the capacity of the world’s fishing fleet$15bn on forestry, with “important knock-on benefits for combating climate change”Almost of $110bn on both water and waste, including sanitation and recycling
The report, produced by experts from developed and developing nations, suggests that the green economy model would deliver higher annual growth rates within 5-10 years than a business-as-usual scenario.
In order to unlock the level of investment required, it added that it was necessary to reform existing national and international policies.
“The green economy – as documented and illustrated in the report – offers a focused and pragmatic assessment of how countries, communities and corporations have begun to make a transition towards a more sustainable pattern of consumption and production,” said Unep executive director Achim Steiner.
“With 2.5bn people living on less than $2-a-day and with more than two billion people being added to the global population by 2050, it is clear that we must continue to develop and grow our economies.
“But this development cannot come at the expense of the very life support systems on land, in the oceans or in the atmosphere that sustain our economies, and thus, the lives of each and everyone of us.”
The findings are being published at the 26th session of Unep’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environmental Forum, which is being held in Nairobi, Kenya, until 24 February.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Report this comment