This week's news on Tomlinson death cover up.
-
Is Rikers Island jail with 'the Program'? | Sadhbh Walshe
16 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Allegations that corrections officers are using youth offenders to control others may not be the most daunting of Rikers' problems
Last week, the Village Voice newspaper ran a cover story about an upsurge in violence at New York City's jail complex known as Rikers Island, complete with graphic photos of mostly young inmates with vicious-looking knife wounds on their faces and necks. The story was replete with horrific details of alleged beatings at the jail's adolescent facility (the RNDC), and concluded that violence at the adolescent complex was out of control.
The Voice also claimed that internal documents provided to them by correction department sources confirmed that a practice known as "the Program", in which guards either look the other way, or actively enable, tougher inmates to beat up on weaker ones in order to control them and extort their privileges, was still firmly in place. The NYC Department of Corrections (DoC) immediately issued a response (pdf) to the story stating that the "recent unsubstantiated and anonymous allegations are without merit." The DoC also maintains that "the Program" was never anything other than a media fabrication and that violence among the adolescent population has remained about the same and that "the department continues to enjoy record low levels of violence in its jails."
Trying to establish exactly what is going on inside a prison is generally a challenge as accounts tend to vary wildly, depending on perspectives. But in this instance, with one party alleging that sources inside the prison are telling them that violence is out of control, while the overseers of the prison maintain that they are continuing to enjoy record low levels, the discrepancy is more than usually severe. Unfortunately, very few stakeholders appear to share the latter's point of view.
Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, who chairs the committee on fire and criminal justice service and co-authored a 2010 report on precisely this problem (pdf), is one of those dissenting views. She issues a statement that:
"[V]iolence at Rikers is a serious issue. Despite repeated testimony that jail violence is down, multiple reports show the opposite."
Correction Officers Union President Norman Seabrook cited a rise in the number of his staff, 96 so far this year, who were sent to hospital for injuries caused by inmates. As to whether or not "the Program" exists, there has been a series of documented incidents in the recent past of corrections officers using undue force on inmates or looking the other way as inmates used undue force on one another. A 2009 New York Times article detailed a slew of lawsuits leveled against the city in which Rikers inmates claimed to have been the victim of beatings by other inmates, while guards neglected to intervene. One such case was settled by the city for $500,000, another for $100,000. This suggests that whatever the status of "the Program", there is a worrying pattern of violent and neglectful behavior.
The case that really brought the so-called "Program" into the spotlight was the 2008 death by beating of an 18-year-old named Christopher Robinson. Robinson apparently bled to death after being beaten by three inmates in his cell. The saddest thing about his death is that the poor kid, who was originally imprisoned for stealing a cellphone, was only back in jail for violating his probation curfew after working late at his job in Staples.
His death launched an investigation into staff behavior at the prison and resulted in two correction officers being sent to jail. The DoC has since been notified that the US Department of Justice has commenced a civil investigation focusing on the custody of adolescents at the RNDC, which appears to have been prompted by Robinson's death.
However you want to look at it, whether violence is worse, better, or about the same, clearly all is not well at Rikers Island. In the DoC's defense, they do appear to be serious about addressing the issue, and have taken several important steps. In recent years, the DoC has increased staffing levels at the juvenile facility. They have also installed a total of 481 surveillance cameras (230 in the last two years), and added beds in the punitive segregation unit. Most importantly, however, they are in the middle of piloting a new approach (pdf) to dealing with the jail's mentally ill population.
This last step could not come a moment too soon. Oddly enough, the one statistic that everyone readily shares – that 46% of the adolescent prison population have been diagnosed with mental illness – is by far the most shocking. My first thought upon hearing that almost half the population of 16- to 18-year-old inmates were mentally ill was "what are they doing in prison, then?" To Commissioner Dora Schriro's credit, since her appointment in 2009, she has made the needs of this community a priority and has spearheaded a multi-agency pilot program to re-evaluate the city's responses to dealing with mentally ill offenders. One of the recommendations of the program, which could ultimately become a national model, is to divert more people with mental health needs to community-based alternatives to incarceration. That will be some respite for advocates for the mentally ill who believe prisons are the new asylums.
If that comes to pass, something good could come out of a situation that has been terribly bad. In the meantime, one can only hope that the DoC continues actively to seek creative solutions to the complex problems at their facilities, rather than downplaying or denying their existence.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Murder of model Eva Rhodes was covered up to protect Hungarian police officer, sister claims
16 MayIndependent.ie
THE murder of model Eva Rhodes was covered up by the Hungarian authorities to protect a policeman who was involved in her death, her sister claimed today.
-
If there were global justice, Nato would be in the dock | Seumas Milne
16 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Liberia's Charles Taylor has been convicted of war crimes, so why not the western leaders who escalated Libya's killing?
Libya was supposed to be different. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan had been learned, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy insisted last year. This would be a real humanitarian intervention. Unlike Iraq, there would be no boots on the ground. Unlike in Afghanistan, Nato air power would be used to support a fight for freedom and prevent a massacre. Unlike the Kosovo campaign, there would be no indiscriminate cluster bombs: only precision weapons would be used. This would be a war to save civilian lives.
Seven months on from Muammar Gaddafi's butchering in the ruins of Sirte, the fruits of liberal intervention in Libya are now cruelly clear, and documented by the UN and human rights groups: 8,000 prisoners held without trial, rampant torture and routine deaths in detention, the ethnic cleansing of Tawerga, a town of 30,000 mainly black Libyans (already in the frame as a crime against humanity) and continuing violent persecution of sub-Saharan Africans across the country.
A year after the western powers tried to make up for lost ground in the Arab uprisings by tipping the balance of the Benghazi-led revolt, Libya is in the lawless grip of rival warlords and armed conflict between militias, as the western-installed National Transitional Council (NTC) passes Gaddafi-style laws clamping down on freedom of speech, gives legal immunity to former rebels and disqualifies election candidates critical of the new order. These are the political forces Nato played the decisive role in bringing to power.
Now the evidence is starting to build up of what Nato's laser-guided bombing campaign actually meant on the ground. The New York-based Human Rights Watch this week released a report into the deaths of at least 72 Libyan civilians, a third of them children, killed in eight separate bombing raids (seven on non-military targets) – and denounced Nato for still refusing to investigate or even acknowledge civilian deaths that were always denied at the time.
Given the tens of thousands of civilians killed by US, British and other Nato forces both from the air and on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen over the last decade, perhaps Nato commanders prefer not to detain themselves with such comparative trifles. And Human Rights Watch believes that, whatever the real number of civilians directly killed by Nato bombing, it was relatively low given the 10,000-odd sorties flown.
But while Nato's UN mandate was to protect civilians, the alliance in practice turned that mission on its head. Throwing its weight behind one side in a civil war to oust Gaddafi's regime, it became the air force for the rebel militias on the ground. So while the death toll was perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000 when Nato intervened in March, by October it was estimated by the NTC to be 30,000 – including thousands of civilians.
We can't of course know what would have happened without Nato's bombing campaign, even if there is no evidence that Gaddafi had either the intention or capability to carry out a massacre in Benghazi. But we do know that Nato provided decisive air cover for the rebels as they matched Gaddafi's forces war crime for war crime, carried out massacres of their own and indiscriminately shelled civilian areas with devastating results – such as reduced much of Sirte to rubble last October.
There were also Nato and Qatari boots on the ground, including British special forces, co-ordinating rebel operations. So Nato certainly shared responsibility for the deaths of many more civilian than its missiles directly incinerated.
That is the kind of indirect culpability that led to the conviction last month of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, in the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Taylor, now awaiting sentence and expected to be jailed in Britain, was found guilty of "aiding and abetting" war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s. But he was cleared of directly ordering atrocities carried out by Sierra Leonean rebels.
Which pretty well describes the role played by Nato in Libya last year. International lawyers say legal culpability would depend on the degree of assistance and knowledge of war crimes for which Nato provided cover, even if the political and moral responsibility could not be clearer.
But there is of course simply no question of Nato leaders being held to legal account for the Libyan carnage, any more than they have been for far more direct crimes carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only Briton convicted of a war crime over the bloodbath of Iraq has been Corporal Donald Payne, for abuse of prisoners in Basra in 2003. While George Bush has boasted of authorising the international crime of torture and faced not so much as a caution.
Which only underlines that what is called international law simply doesn't apply to the big powers or their political leaders. In the 10 years of its existence, the International criminal court has indicted 28 people from seven countries for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Every single one of them is African – even though ICC signatories include war-wracked states such as Colombia and Afghanistan.
That's rather as if the criminal law in Britain only applied to people earning the minimum wage and living in Cornwall. But so long as international law is only used against small or weak states in the developing world, it won't be a system of international justice, but an instrument of power politics and imperial enforcement.
Just as the urgent lesson of Libya – for the rest of the Arab world and beyond – is that however it is dressed up, foreign military intervention isn't a short cut to freedom. And far from saving lives, again and again it has escalated slaughter.
Twitter: @SeumasMilne
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death
15 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Groundbreaking Columbia law school study sets out in shocking detail the flaws that led to Carlos DeLuna's execution in 1989
A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."
Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.
The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students.
Starting in 2004, they meticulously chased down every possible lead in the case, interviewing more than 100 witnesses, perusing about 900 pieces of source material and poring over crime scene photographs and legal documents that, when stacked, stand over 10ft high.
What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. "It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he says.
Carlos DeLuna was arrested, aged 20, on 4 February 1983 for the brutal murder of a young woman, Wanda Lopez. She had been stabbed once through the left breast with an 8in lock-blade buck knife which had cut an artery causing her to bleed to death.
From the moment of his arrest until the day of his death by lethal injection six years later, DeLuna consistently protested he was innocent. He went further – he said that though he hadn't committed the murder, he knew who had. He even named the culprit: a notoriously violent criminal called Carlos Hernandez.
The two Carloses were not just namesakes – or tocayos in Spanish, as referenced in the title of the Columbia book. They were the same height and weight, and looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. When Carlos Hernandez's lawyer saw pictures of the two men, he confused one for the other, as did DeLuna's sister Rose.
At his 1983 trial, Carlos DeLuna told the jury that on the day of the murder he'd run into Hernandez, who he'd known for the previous five years. The two men, who both lived in the southern Texas town of Corpus Christi, stopped off at a bar. Hernandez went over to a gas station, the Shamrock, to buy something, and when he didn't return DeLuna went over to see what was going on.
DeLuna told the jury that he saw Hernandez inside the Shamrock wrestling with a woman behind the counter. DeLuna said he was afraid and started to run. He had his own police record for sexual assault – though he had never been known to possess or use a weapon – and he feared getting into trouble again.
"I just kept running because I was scared, you know." When he heard the sirens of police cars screeching towards the gas station he panicked and hid under a pick-up truck where, 40 minutes after the killing, he was arrested.
At the trial, DeLuna's defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a "Carlos Hernandez" after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna's lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a "phantom" who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a "figment of DeLuna's imagination".
Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.
By the end of that single day the investigator had uncovered evidence that had eluded scores of Texan police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges over the six years between DeLuna's arrest and execution. Carlos Hernandez did indeed exist.
Liebman's investigator tracked down within a few hours a woman who was related to both the Carloses. She supplied Hernandez's date of birth, which in turn allowed the unlocking of Hernandez's criminal past as the case rapidly unravelled.
With the help of his students, Liebman began to piece together a profile of Hernandez. He was an alcoholic with a history of violence, who was always in the company of his trusted companion: a lock-blade buck knife.
Over the years he was arrested 39 times, 13 of them for carrying a knife, and spent his entire adult life on parole. Yet he was almost never put in prison for his crimes – a disparity that Liebman believes was because he was used as a police informant. "Its hard to understand what happened without that piece of the puzzle," Liebman says.
Several of the crimes that Hernandez committed involved hold-ups of Corpus Christi gas stations. Just a few days before the Shamrock murder he was found cowering outside a nearby 7-Eleven wielding a knife – a detail never disclosed to DeLuna's defence.
He also had a history of violence towards women. He was twice arrested on suspicion of the 1979 murder of a woman called Dahlia Sauceda, who was stabbed and then had an "X" carved into her back. The first arrest was made four years before DeLuna's trial and the second while DeLuna was on death row, yet the connection between this Hernandez and the "phantom" presented to DeLuna's jury was never made.
In October 1989, just two months before DeLuna was executed, Hernandez was setenced to 10 years' imprisonment for attempting to kill with a knife another woman called Dina Ybanez. Even then, no one thought to alert the courts or Texas state as it prepared to put DeLuna to death.
Hernandez himself frequently told people that he was a knife murderer. He made numerous confessions to having killed Wanda Lopez, the crime for which DeLuna was executed, joking with friends and relatives that his "tocayo" had taken the fall. His admissions were so widely broadcast that even Corpus Christi police detectives came to hear about them within weeks of the incident at the Shamrock gas station.
Yet this was the same Carlos Hernandez who prosecutors told the jury did not exist. This was the figment of Carlos DeLuna's imagination.
Many other glaring discrepancies also stand out in the DeLuna case. He was put on death row largely on the eyewitness testimony of one man, Kevan Baker, who had seen the fight inside the Shamrock and watched the attacker flee the scene.
Yet when Baker was interviewed 20 years later, he said that he hadn't been that sure about the identification as he had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another.
Then there was the crime-scene investigation. Detectives failed to carry out or bungled basic forensic procedures that might have revealed information about the killer. No blood samples were collected and tested for the culprit's blood type.
Fingerprinting was so badly handled that no useable fingerprints were taken. None of the items found on the floor of the Shamrock – a cigarette stub, chewing gum, a button, comb and beer cans – were forensically examined for saliva or blood.
There was no scraping of the victim's fingernails for traces of the attacker's skin. When Liebman and his students studied digitally enhanced copies of crime scene photographs, they were amazed to find the footprint from a man's shoe imprinted in a pool of Lopez's blood on the floor – yet no effort was made to measure it.
"There it was," says Liebman. "The murderer had left his calling card at the scene, but it was never used."
Even the murder weapon, the knife, was not properly examined, though it was covered in blood and flesh.
Other photographs show Lopez's blood splattered up to three feet high on the walls of the Shamrock counter. Yet when DeLuna's clothes and shoes were tested for traces of blood, not a single microscopic drop was found. The prosecution said it must have been washed away by the rain.
There appeared to have been an unseemly scramble to wrap up the crime scene. Less than two hours after the murder happened, the police chief in charge of the homicide investigation ordered all detectives to quit the Shamrock and allowed its owner to wash it down, sweeping away vital evidence that could have saved a man's life.
The exceptionally lax treatment of evidence continued even beyond the grave. When Liebman asked to see all the stored evidence in the case, so that he could subject it to the DNA testing that was not available to investigators in 1983, he was told that it had all disappeared.
Having lived and breathed this case for so many years, Liebman says the most shocking thing about it was its ordinariness. "This wasn't the trial of OJ Simpson. It was an obscure case, the kind that could involve anybody. Maybe those are the cases where miscarriages of justice happen, the routine everyday cases where nobody thinks enough about the victim, let alone the defendant."
The groundbreaking work that the Columbia law school has done comes at an important juncture for the death penalty in America. Connecticut last month became the fifth state in as many years to repeal the ultimate punishment and support for abolition is gathering steam.
In that context, Liebman hopes his exhaustive work will encourage Americans to think more deeply about what is done in their name. All the evidence the Columbia team has gathered on the DeLuna case has been placed on the internet with open public access.
"We've provided as complete a set of information as we can about a pretty average case, to let the public make its own judgment. I believe they will make the judgment that in this kind of case there's just too much risk."
As for the tocayos Carloses, Carlos Hernandez died of natural causes in a Texas prison in May 1999, having been jailed for assaulting a neighbour with a 9in knife.
Carlos DeLuna commented on his own ending in a television interview a couple of years before his execution. "Maybe one day the truth will come out," he said from behind reinforced glass. "I'm hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this, I don't think it's right."
• Main pic: Top (left to right): Hernandez; Hernandez; Hernandez; DeLuna. Bottom (left to right): DeLuna; Hernandez; DeLuna; DeLuna
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Warm up the record player! Laura Barton returns to Alan's
14 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Last month, Laura Barton wrote about her favourite and much-missed record store. When Alan's reopened, they asked her along to man the till
Mesnes Street in Wigan runs from the heart of town down towards the park. It begins busily, with bakeries and coffee shops and the Tavern Bar, but at the far end slows to a quiet collection of buildings: a Hospice Shop, a fancy dress store, and the spot where Alan's Records used to be. Alan's stopped selling records in 2000, and for two years the shop stood shuttered – a victim of bigger stores and the rise in online music sales. The shop's non-music interests – skateboards and BMX bikes – moved to new premises near the railway station; the records were boxed up and stored away.
Then, last month, I was asked to write about a favourite record store of my youth, as part of a bigger G2 celebration of the UK's fifth annual Record Store Day. I wrote a short piece about Alan's, and about the teenage years I spent shyly perusing its selection of Tortoise and Bis and Slint albums. In the days that followed, the shop's owner, Alan Woods, found himself inundated with inquiries and reminiscences; a memorial Facebook page was set up. Inspired by so much enthusiasm, Woods decided to unpack his unsold records and re-open the shop, for two weeks only. He also invited me to return to my hometown to work behind the counter for a day.
I arrive around lunchtime, to find the shop window revived with a life-sized model of Frank Sidebottom and an intriguing array of vinyl. Inside, the empty space has been hastily transformed into a shop: plastic boxes of records stand on trestle tables; on the walls there are posters for The World Won't Listen by the Smiths, the Verve's The Drugs Don't Work, a Radio 1 roadshow promising Dave Lee Travis, as well as a selection of vinyl rarities: White Stripes 7in singles, Barbara Woodhouse dog training recordings, singles from Hole and the Hard-Ons. There are cassettes with handwritten labels ("Babes in Toyland – Live at Leeds Duchess of York 3/10/90", with "Peel Sessions 29/9/90" on side B); there are old copies of the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. "Marvin Gaye Coming!" reads one cover "… and Johnny Cash."
A makeshift counter holds the cash box, a turntable and a collection of discount 7in singles. Behind it stands a former Alan's employee, Whitey, and a man known locally as Paul Static (he used to run Static Records, a secondhand store). Alan hands me a staff T-shirt emblazoned with the store logo. "Hello," it reads, "my name is Laura." A handful of customers mill about while the staff hunt for the key to the float, take delivery of plastic bags and fiddle anxiously with the record player, last used three or four years before. "I think it's just getting warmed up, Whitey," Woods says, frowning. "Must be a valve." Two seconds later, the speakers splutter into life and the shop is filled with the glorious sound of the Jam's Town Called Malice.
"It would have been easier if we'd put it all away properly," Woods admits, surveying the clutter, relocated from his loft and under the stairs, and mostly repriced at £3. "But when we closed, I just thought God, we can't do it any more, and I packed them away. At the time you move on, you've got bills, a mortgage, kids. [Woods still runs the skateboard and BMX side of the business.] It takes time to look back and say, 'That was good.'"
Alan's Records began in 1985, born of Woods' musical passions and spurred on, he says, by the example of John Peel. "I wouldn't have ever done the shop without him." He smiles and looks a little sad. "Without Peel it doesn't seem right. It felt as if, with his death, someone should say, 'Music should now stop.'"
The shop opened first in Hindley, then on Petticoat Lane in Ince, before moving to Hallgate and then here in 1992. "We didn't sell what people wanted, we sold what we thought people should want," Woods says. He also started a label, putting out 20 releases between 1988 and 1992. Several of these are here today, pinned proudly to the walls: the Drive album and some Jailcell Recipes records. The 1990s brought change. "The indie scene was waning," Woods says. "It was a funny time. And as time went on, we sold a lot of dance records." He grimaces. "The Andy Weatherall stuff was exciting, but piano house … it was horrible. Still," he brightens, "you had Tortoise and Godspeed [You! Black Emperor] and all those post-Sonic Youth bands."
There is a steady stream of customers, sticking Elliot Smith 7ins behind the counter for later, spending their lunchbreaks at the punk singles box or flicking through the pricier records (in a yellow plastic tub marked Cycle Clothing). I meet Nigel, who swaps a July 1980 edition of the Radio Times for a Labi Siffre record, and Suzi, who once looked after me when I did work experience at the Our Price record store; I have a customer who buys a confounding selection of records – a Rush album, a Divine Comedy 7in, Ultimate Phlegm, Cyber God by Nausea.
Some of the older customers come with their children. Others are hoping to stock up on records from their musical heyday. I watch a man's face fall as Whitey tells him, regretfully: "I tell you Gary, I've been through it with a fine-tooth comb – there is no Stereolab."
In quieter moments, we scour the boxes for treasure: a holiday company flexidisc advertising skiing vacations, and Man to Man/Man Parrish's Male Stripper go on the turntable. I put on Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness and a James Brown compilation and, at a quarter past four, Paul Static puts up his hood, zips his coat and does a backspin to a funk record.
We also reminisce: Woods traces his own musical epiphany back to a school football match. "The other side were really into playing, and our team were more interested in talking about Joy Division. I remember being in the goal discussing Love Will Tear Us Apart. We got caned for that." Whitey remembers sitting in class, writing out his favourite lyrics in his exercise book. "The teacher took my book and read them. He said, 'You should be thinking about chemistry, not punk rock.'"
More staff from the old days are due to join Alan for his brief revival, which will include live shows with local bands, a DJ from Southport, Chorley's finest proponents of hiphop (Krispy 3), my old teenage sweetheart's band appearing live via Skype from Japan. "For the grand finale, before the fireworks go damp," says Woods, "we might do a Frank Sidebottom take on Seven Nation Army."
He is giddy with it now; there is talk of relaunching the shop online, maybe even resurrecting the label. As six o'clock nears, the shop begins to transform once more: amps and microphones are set up; the counter is repurposed for record decks; disco lights flicker red, green and yellow.
Alan's two weeks came to an end last Saturday – but when the shop begins its new life as a tattoo parlour, and this end of Mesnes Street goes quiet again, there will be something that lingers on: a memory of fine times, friendships and backspins – and the music that made them all happen.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Michael Apted: 56 Up and still going strong | Andrew Anthony
13 MayGuardian.co.uk - Media News
He's a feted Hollywood director, whose career started with a bunch of children in Seven Up! And he is still charting their lives 49 years later in a landmark of documentary broadcasting
They understand longevity at Manchester's ITV Granada, which was Granada Television and is the only survivor of the original four independent TV franchisees awarded in 1954. Not only does it make Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, but this week sees the return of its Up series, which may be the world's longest-running documentary.
The first Up programme was the brainchild of Tim Hewat, the brilliant Australian producer behind the World In Action strand. Legend has it he walked into the World in Action office and quoted the Jesuit motto cited at the beginning of the film: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." And then instructed a young trainee named Michael Apted to go out and find some children.
This was back in 1964, when Britain was even more dominated by class than it is today. Apted's job was to locate seven-year-old children who would confirm the thesis that social background determined destiny. He had just three weeks.
The result was Seven Up!, a film directed by a Canadian, Paul Almond, that was vividly political in its exposure of inequality but also ineffably poignant in its treatment of childhood aspirations, whether they were to work in Woolworths or become an astronaut. Few who have seen the film will forget the bright-eyed optimism of Neil, the middle-class lad from Liverpool who would become a homeless loner in his thirties, or Paul's fear of getting married to a wife who would feed him greens.
The film was critically acclaimed but Apted's main interest was in becoming a fiction director. He moved away from documentary and began directing episodes of Coronation Street, which was also then nurturing his fellow director Mike Newell and the writer Jack Rosenthal.
"Forget bloody movie stars!" Apted once said of this period. "Violet Carson and Pat Phoenix [Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner] were the biggest divas in Britain. It was an incredible baptism… Everything I ever learned about actors I learned from Coronation Street."
Nonetheless, five years later Denis Forman, a senior figure at Granada, suggested that Apted should find out what happened to the children from Seven Up! Apted took up the challenge and ever since he has been bringing us new instalments every seven years.
Of the original 14 participants, all but one feature in the latest update, 56 Up. The single no-show is one of a trio of public schoolboys who came across in the original as over-sophisticated little Lord Fauntleroys. Charles Furneaux dropped out of the programme at 21 and – perhaps tellingly – went on to make a career as a documentary film producer.
Apted himself has enjoyed a prolific career as a film director. He spent the 1970s working in Britain on films such as Stardust and Agatha, and then moved to Hollywood, where in 2003 he was elected president of the Directors Guild of America.
Over the years he has established a reputation as a reliable craftsman rather than an inspired auteur, someone who can work across a variety of genres, including James Bond and Narnia. But if there is a theme to his oeuvre, it is the many strong parts for women.
He started off in America with Coal Miner's Daughter, which won an Oscar for Sissy Spacek; and Vanessa Redgrave, Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weaver and Romola Garai have all turned in powerful performances under his direction.
He has said that one of the reasons for the prominence of women in his work was to make amends for the error of not having more women in the Up series. Only four of the 14 participants are female. In 1964 feminism had barely shown its face and, as he has admitted, Apted couldn't then imagine the possibility that there would ever be a female prime minister.
"In a sort of profound way it really affected my interest in women," he told an audience in New York. "Because I think I missed the boat in the Up films. The biggest social revolution in my life, growing up in England, has been the change in the role of women in society. And because I didn't have enough women, I didn't have enough choice of what options were in front of women who were building careers and having families and all this sort of stuff. I suppose in some way the choice of movies has been to compensate for that."
It's notable that Apted begins 56 Up with Sue, one of the trio of East End girls who have stayed the course in the programme. Her story covers the familiar landmarks of life – marriage, children, divorce – and for an audience that has been fed on the melodrama and confessions of reality TV, her answers to Apted's polite, prodding questioning might seem bland and unmemorable.
But herein lies the secret of the Up series. It's not what anyone says at any particular time that marks the programme out as special or unique; it's how the interplay between their words and actions takes on a larger meaning when placed against the accumulated knowledge of their lives.
They don't always tell the truth about their feelings, but then who does? Yet you sense the doubts and regrets as you sense your own: gradually. It's slow television, the "drama of ordinary life". You have to wait years for character developments and plot changes.
"Very few films really celebrate the heroism of what we have to go through," Apted has said. "Not the drama of fiction films, Hollywood, books, but the drama we all have to face to get through the day. These films celebrate that."
Apted doesn't indulge in flashy techniques or complex structures, and he avoids politics. He just lets his subjects do the talking, although their silences are just as eloquent. And somehow, taken together, the films, as the critic Roger Ebert put it, "penetrate to the central mystery of life".
Apted's upbringing was probably too solidly and uneventfully middle class to have qualified for Up.
He was born in Aylesbury and grew up in Essex, where his father worked for an insurance company. He was so timid his mother had to walk him to primary school to stop the other boys picking on him. A scholarship and the tube from Ilford took him to the City of London School.
To accommodate his parents' wishes for a stable career, he read law at Cambridge, but he already knew what he wanted to do. At 17 he had seen Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and it changed his life. "I thought, 'Holy Christ! This is a genuine form of expression', and from that moment I knew I wanted to make films."
Like many promising talents, he was given his head at Granada. Dick Fontaine, a contemporary who is now head of documentary direction at the National Film and Television School, recalls "an extraordinary atmosphere in which young people were given responsibility and allowed to develop their ideas".
Apted collaborated with the Jack Rosenthal on several of his best TV plays, including There's a Hole in Your Dustbin, Delilah and, much later, P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang. Armed with his experience with Pat Phoenix, he made his feature film debut directing Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson in The Triple Echo, for which he was nominated for the Golden prize at the Moscow Film Festival.
Apted, says Fontaine, was always "a really thoughtful person. And it's true to his character that he's taken his role in Up very seriously. I think he knows that it will in some way define him."
Aside from his careful, home counties' voice, Apted doesn't feature in the films, which enables us to forget that he, like his subjects and the rest of us, is also ageing. He's now 71, which means that he'll be 78 if there's to be a 63 Up.
No one believes the series would survive Apted's departure, so how much longer can he and it continue? A couple of years ago he said that the only reason he'd stop would be if several participants pulled out.
Given that only two have turned their back on the programme, and one of them returns in 56 Up, that seems unlikely. So perhaps we might get to 63 or, if Apted maintains his health and energy, even three score years and ten. For those of us who have been following the story for decades, it would seem a shame not to reach that milestone.
There are probably no major revelations or life transitions to come, but there is the prospect of seeing how the various individuals respond to old age and the deepening awareness of mortality. That's not a concept that would win many commissions nowadays, yet it accounts for what draws audiences back to this monumental series: the fundamental journey from birth to death. It's always the same and, as Apted has so painstakingly shown us, always different.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
UN moves to compensate the victims of terrorism
12 MayThe Guardian World News
Report will recommend far-reaching changes to rebalance international law in favour of those who have suffered
People seriously injured or maimed by terrorist attacks across the world would be granted automatic legal rights to compensation and rehabilitation under far-reaching changes to rebalance international law in favour of victims, a UN report will recommend next month.
The report, drawn up by the UN's special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, a leading British lawyer, will be welcomed by the UK government at a time when the international legal system faces criticism for doing too much to protect the rights of alleged supporters of terrorism, such as the radical cleric Abu Qatada.
Emmerson's report, details of which have been obtained by the Observer, is to be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva on 20 June and the general assembly in New York on 28 June. It is understood to have support in the Foreign Office and other UK departments, including the Home Office. The report is also thought to have backing among Council of Europe members, including Spain, which has led the international campaign to highlight the rights of victims of terrorism.
Emmerson will press the case for life insurance policies, most of which do not at present cover people killed in terrorist attacks, to pay up to bereaved next of kin. The proposals would also affect travel insurance policies that cover medical and other care for those killed or injured through terrorism while on holiday.
Groups set up to support victims and the bereaved have welcomed the progress that is being made.
The report comes after a four-year campaign by the family of Mumbai bomb victim Will Pike, 31, who was left disabled. Along with other British victims of the Mumbai attacks – and of those in Bali, Turkey and Egypt – Pike was left without financial help to cope with his injuries.
Few states outside western Europe have satisfactory compensation systems, including the US, although Washington did set up a special scheme to compensate 9/11 victims.
The report will say that full and effective reparation should include, as appropriate, restitution, compensation and rehabilitation.
It also says states should consider whether to legislate to prohibit the sale or marketing of life assurance policies that contain an exclusion for deaths that result from acts of terrorism.
In the UK, victims of terrorism can apply for compensation through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Payments range from £1,000 to £500,000. However, while the UK has a system in place, survivors of the 7/7 attacks have complained of long delays.
In April this year, the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, set out details under which the UK government would make ex gratia payments to victims of terrorist incidents which take place outside the UK. These range from payments for minor wounds such as tendon injuries (£2,500) to quadriplegia, which would qualify for a payment of £250,000.
The Emmerson report, if accepted, would have the effect of obliging all UN states to adopt a uniform set of standards, establishing more firmly in international law the principle that terrorist acts amount to violations of the human rights of the victims, irrespective of the question of direct or indirect state responsibility.
unjustified intrusion by the media following attacks. Following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington many families complained of media intrusion, particularly in the immediate aftermath. Victims of terrorism would include those who have been killed or who have suffered serious physical or psychological injury; next-of-kin or dependants of a direct victim and innocent individuals who have been killed or suffered serious injury indirectly attributable to an act of terrorism.
A foreign office spokesperson said: "We agree that the rights of victims of terrorism are fundamentally important. The UK has a good track record domestically for protecting the rights of victims. The way that work to further this might be taken forward internationally needs careful consideration if it is to be effective and implemented by all states. It will be important that proposals are evidence-based and that there are opportunities for thorough consultation with states and civil society."
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Cheap flights: how the add-ons add up
12 Maywww.guardian.co.uk/travel
Just a bag and the credit card fee can be £82. We look at the real cost of budget flights
Holidaymakers travelling to Europe this summer on budget airlines face soaring fees for taking just a single bag on the plane – and staggering costs if they have to make any changes to their tickets or discover at the airport that their bag weighs too much.
Ryanair's new "high season" rate of £70 return for a 20kg bag to go into the hold comes into force in June and lasts to October, with an £80 charge if you're heading to the Canaries, Greece or Cyprus.
If you don't book online, but turn up at the airport with your bag, the fee rises to a staggering £130 one way.
Meanwhile, passengers on easyJet this summer face a charge of up to £32 for a 20kg suitcase on a return flight, up from £28 last summer, while Aer Lingus has hiked its bag charge from £24 to £36 return.
A Money survey of budget airlines' add-on charges reveals that it can cost £100 to take your golf clubs, £110 to change the name on a ticket, £30 for extra leg room and £120 because your bag weighs 3kg over the limit.
What's more, we found car hire offered by the "low-cost" airlines to be much pricier than rates that could be found elsewhere. But we were surprised to find ultra-cheap (basic cover) single-trip travel insurance offered by an airline, Jet2.com, that beat anything we could find searching elsewhere.
We researched costs at Aer Lingus, British Airways, CityJet, easyJet, Jet2, Flybe, Monarch, Ryanair and Thomson. Given the recent takeover of BMI by British Airways, we did not test bmibaby, its low-cost offshoot, which is due to close in September.
Ryanair was the highest cost airline for bags, credit card fees, name change fees, flight change fees, fees for taking on special items such as golf clubs, and even the fee for sending a passenger a text to tell them about the flight. It's £1.50 at Ryanair and £1 everywhere else.
But easyJet, Jet2 and Aer Lingus have each introduced general "administration" fees which are slapped on to all flights, although quite what this covers is not made clear.
Jet2 also charges a fee for online check-in (£10 return) which, along with its other charges, makes the Leeds/Bradford-based airline second only to Ryanair in the add-on costs league (click on main picture for full table).
But Ryanair and Jet2 are by no means alone in imposing significant extra costs on travellers lured by the promise of low-cost flights.
When we tested costs for a one-week return flight for one person this summer to Malaga (in the case of Aer Lingus and CityJet we used London to Dublin), we found add-on costs of £34.95 at Thomson, rising to £58.10 at Jet2 and £82 at Ryanair. CityJet was the only airline to charge nothing whatsoever in add-ons. British Airways limited its add-ons to a £4.50 fee for paying by credit card.
The card surcharges are a huge moneyspinner for the airlines. The Office of Fair Trading found that UK consumers spent £300m on payment surcharges to airlines in 2010 and, in December 2011, the government said it would ban "excessive" card fees from the end of 2012. But that comes too late for travellers this summer and, in any case, may be circumnavigated by the airlines.
Ahead of the planned government crackdown, Ryanair no longer calls its £6 per-person-per-flight card fee a card fee. Instead, its site refers to the charge as an "administration fee" which "relates to costs associated with Ryanair's booking system".
For a family of four paying with a debit or credit card, the fee adds £48 to the holiday cost.
Navigating the add-on costs is a confusing business. Some airlines charge flat-rate fees, while others charge rates based on the total cost of the flight.
But the underlying cost of the flight may, for many people, still swing the equation in favour of Ryanair.
For example, the cheapest return on Ryanair from London to Malaga we could find, flying out at peak time this summer, on Saturday 4 August, returning one week later, was £146.22, but £188.98 on easyJet. However, if the traveller takes a 20kg bag, the price advantage over easyJet disappears.
Beware flying Ryanair if you are planning on taking your golf clubs or any sports equipment. The airline now charges £100 return to carry golf clubs – more than the cost of taking a human on many of its flights.
Other airlines surveyed by Money charged between £50 and £60, although CityJet takes them for free.
It can make for some interesting price comparisons. For example, Ryanair gives the cost of a one-week return from London to Dublin as just £40.98 in mid-June. But this jumps to £222.98 once the traveller takes a 20kg bag for their week away and brings their golf clubs.
CityJet charges a much higher base cost of £182.13, four times the price of Ryanair, but as bags and golf (or other sports equipment) go free, it's cheaper to take CityJet.
Most airlines now push partner deals on car hire, hotels and travel insurance, which are mostly poor value, except for Jet2's single-trip insurance.
Ryanair came out cheaper than other airlines on the car hire it sells to travellers when they are making a booking.
In our survey, we found that Ryanair wanted £92 for the hire of a basic car at Malaga airport for a week, compared to the £125 quoted by Flybe and £109 by easyJet.
But even though it was cheaper, don't be lured into buying. For the same period, car hire booked through holidayautos.co.uk at Malaga airport was £72 for a Ford Ka, £77 for a Corsa, and £100 for a Ford Focus.
Travel insurance is another minefield. The budget airlines use every tactic possible to scare passengers into buying, and usually make it something that has to be "unchecked" before proceeding with a booking.
Cheapest was Jet2's £5 offer for a week in Malaga, a third of the price of easyJet's deal. It even compares well with the best deals available by searching on the likes of MoneySupermarket.com.
But you get what you pay for – Jet2's cover for theft of personal belongings is limited to £500 and it has a £100 excess. Still, if you are just looking for basic protection against catastrophes such as medical claims, it's good value.
Flying with a budget airline can save the traveller money, but largely by foregoing a bag and by accepting that once the ticket is bought, there can be no changes. Jet2 even bills itself as a "no-refund" airline.
If you do make changes after booking, the costs are eye-watering. Again, Ryanair tops the table of charges. If a traveller inputs the wrong name during online booking or wishes to change the name on a ticket at a later date, Ryanair will charge as much as £160 at the airport, or £110 online. Other airlines tend to charge £70-£80.
And woe betide the traveller who arrives at the airport with their bag bulging. If it is three kilos overweight it will cost £60 at Ryanair (one way) and £30 at easyJet.
Travellers who try to dodge Ryanair's fees by stuffing their carry-on luggage to the limit are also taking a financial risk. The airline has a flat £50 fee for oversized cabin baggage.
Most travellers can also wave goodbye to their money if they have to cancel, and should claim on their travel insurance instead if it is the result of the death or serious illness of a partner.
Infants under two, travelling on a parent's lap, have to pay £40 return on easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair, even though they are not taking a seat. On very cheap flights, it can mean the baby pays more than the parent.
The "full service" airlines, such as British Airways, came out well in the survey, although BA introduced budget airline-style advance seat reservation charges in 2009, much to the dismay of regular travellers.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
PS I Love You Paper Bag Session video // Album out 28th May // Canadian cover stars
11 MayAltsounds
Ontario's PS I Love You are set to follow-up their Polaris Music Prize long-listed debut album with their second long-player Death Dreams. The eleven-track album will be released in the United Kingdom on May 28th on Paper Bag Records. The pair are currently featured on the front covers of major Canadian music mags Exclaim and NOW. Paul Saulnier of the outfit was recently named as Number 99 in Spin Magazine's Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
To the casual on-looker, PS I Love Yous quick rise to the summit of the intensely competitive Canadian music landscape is the thing dreams are made of. Heck just over one year ago the band released their highly praised homage to their hometown Kingston, Ontario. Meet Me At The Muster Station was embraced by critics across the globe garnering consistently dazzling reviews. As a result PS I Love Yous Benjamin Nelson and Paul Saulnier began to tour Muster Station around the planet.
While on the road Paul Saulnier began to have reoccurring dreams centered around, as dark as it may sound, his mortality. Triggered by life on the road these images, created by Saulniers subconscious have, shaped the direction of the bands brilliant new LP Death Dreams.
Death Dreams was recorded with Muster Station producer Matt Rogalsky on his portable studio in the bands tiny rehearsal space. No big budget studios for these lads. The albums photography and design of the albums artwork was created and executed by Benjamin Nelson.
Paper Bag Records is one of North Americas finest independent record labels. Based in Toronto, Paper Bag Records has cultivated an exciting and diverse roster which includes both domestic and international talent. Most recently, the label became the Canadian home for operatic electronic act Austra, the enthralling Rural Alberta Advantage as well as long-standing purveyors of countrified rock Cuff The Duke and Elliott BROOD. In 2011 the label had a staggering four albums included on the Polaris Music Prize long list and has started 2012 with four Juno Award nominations. In its tenth year of existence, Paper Bag Records is currently working with an exciting active roster of PS I Love You, Young Galaxy, Born Ruffians, The Acorn, Winter Gloves, Woodhands, Slim Twig, CFCF and Sally Shapiro. The label has also had the pleasure of furthering the careers of You Say Party, Tokyo Police Club, Broken Social Scene and Stars in the past.
PS I LOVE YOU 'How Do You' [Paper Bag Session 006 / Pt. 3] -
What is the left's issue with the police? | James Ball
10 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Though modern policing has become frontline social work, officers are not given the same solidarity as other public servants
A lorry has taken a corner too fast and hit a three-year-old girl, critically injuring her. Elsewhere a drunken couple are arguing in their flat: she's thrown several objects at him, causing injury, and alleges he'd hit her. Among it all, they had both "forgotten" her five-year-old son was upstairs – they thought he'd "gone out to see a friend". A knife-wielding man is threatening to kill himself and anyone else who comes near.
All three would represent nightmare scenarios for most of us, but for Britain's rank-and-file uniformed officers these are routine. Modern policing is as much frontline social work as crime-fighting – police deal firsthand with the consequences of deprivation, substance abuse, mental illness, antisocial behaviour and sheer bad luck.
So, on a day when police officers are joining public sector workers in a protest on the streets of London, it's worth asking: why are they more often a target of the left's opprobrium than their support? The fates of most public sector workers – doctors, nurses, dinner ladies, social workers – serve as rallying cries on strikes and rallies. Police, perhaps the most likely of any of these groups to actually come from the working classes, are generally treated as the enemy.
It's hardly a new phenomenon. George Orwell, still the most famous (and probably most-cited) of Britain's leftwing writers even 60 years after his death, wrote in Homage to Catalonia:
"I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker', but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask which side I am on."
The context of Orwell's quote is telling of the left's antipathy towards police: altogether too much of the activist left's contact with police is through picket lines or protest.
Protest is hardly a place to see police at their best: at the most extreme end is the shocking and appalling killing of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests of 2009.
More routine are cases of kettling, allegations of brutality and more. Often, these are well-founded, though few present at such protests deny that small factions of protesters deliberately sought and provoked clashes in places.
Police behaviour at protests should be monitored, regulated and scrutinised to make sure it's fair and proportionate and that the public (which of course includes protesters) are protected.
But we must not confuse conduct at protest with the vast majority of day-to-day policing. Similarly, the Metropolitan police racism scandal, which has led to the suspension of nine officers, should be treated as important and disturbing, but not without evidence representative of the force's 32,000 officers (and the Met just one force of 43).
The barbaric actions of Dr Harold Shipman were not taken as evidence of evil deeds on behalf of all doctors. Too often the actions of small numbers of officers are taken as evidence against all.
Police deal every day with the people many on the left stand up for: embattled working-class communities, vulnerable adults and children, and more. They do a job which is demonstrably made harder during both recession and public sector cuts.
They face sizeable cuts themselves: the police federation says forces have lost 5,200 officers in the last year alone, and £163m from cash benefits, alongside a two-year pay freeze.
For many longer-serving officers, pension contributions have already increased from 11% to about 12.5%. A government report has suggested this should increase to 14%. This is considerably more than MPs, who pay between 5.9% and 11.9%.
Police are public servants like any others: they have flaws, serious ones, and are and should be the focus of considerable scrutiny. They face the same cuts as other public servants, and have the same difficult jobs. They face the same charges of bureaucracy, laziness and inefficiency as everyone else in the public sector.
All they're missing is any of the solidarity from the left afforded to their compatriots. Perhaps they're due some.
• This article was amended on 10 May 2012. It originally referred to there being 8,000 officers in the Metropolitan police. This has now been corrected
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
