Gaming the BBC April 28, 2008
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Politics , add a commentAs I write, the top 9 posts recommended by readers on the BBC’s Have Your Say about the London mayoralty are, terrifyingly, pro-BNP. I hope that just means that BNP supporters are spending too much time online and not getting out there canvassing.
If you’ve got a moment, everyone can play that game. Just pop on over through the link above, and recommend a few posts you like.
Somers Town needs Council Housing, not Scaremongering April 27, 2008
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Camden, Politics , add a commentPosters have gone up around Somers Town suggesting that the new British Library International Science Site (BLISS) medical research centre planned for the land behind the British Library would be an inner-city version of Porton Down, and an article in the Guardian Education supplement last week sent me off to the local Community Centre on Saturday morning, where staff from the medical institutions involved were available to talk to local people about their plans.
I firmly believe that the BLISS should not be built on that site, because this area desperately needs more affordable housing, and the government should stand up to its promise to build council homes. There’s a strong local campaign underway trying to make that happen. However, it hadn’t occurred to me that the likes of the Medical Research Council or Cancer Research UK would be dangerous neighbours. After all, they’re both already in the area anyway, and there are a lot of other medical research facilities around here. It’s a major local industry.
Talking for nearly an hour with Sir Leszek Boryziewicz, the CEO of the MRC, completely upheld that opinion. He is a tall, quietly spoken gentleman. He introduced himself, I thought, as ‘Les’, saying the s oddly so it must have been ‘Leszek’. He clearly, but without being patronising, explained the type of research they are likely to do, the sorts of security that would be in place and the risks involved.
A scientist rather than a PR person, he qualifies his statements unless he is absolutely 100% sure of something. I find that reassuring, though it may seem uncertain. So, because the committee working out what science would be done in the new centre has yet to report, he won’t guarantee that this will not be a category 4 lab as discussed in the Guardian article, though he thinks it unlikely. Diseases like Ebola and Lassi Fever are not even dealt with in civilian facilities in the UK - if there was any work with them, it would be in a military facility like Porton Down. There is no reason for Somers Town to be patrolled by armed police, as suggested in the posters which have appeared.
It is unlikely that the level of hazard here will be any higher than it is in many labs and hospitals around Bloomsbury and Holburn. The MRC does research on HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and flu, and it is likely that would continue in the new lab. Given that Somers Town has a very high incidence of tuberculosis that is perhaps something we should support.
Sir Leszek is a man who was knighted for inventing a vaccine against cervical cancer, and likes Ben Goldacre. If it turns out that we can’t make council housing happen, then I’ll be very pleased indeed to welcome him to the area.
Caecilius est Amicus Doctori Whoensi (or something like that) April 13, 2008
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Reviews , add a commentDoctor Who once again takes me back to childhood. Not hiding behind the sofa, entranced by Jon Pertwee and terrified of the Daleks. My father let me watch Hammer House Horrors at the age of nine, so Daleks didn’t cause many nightmares.
No, last night’s episode, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, takes me back to 3rd form Latin, and the orange primers of the Cambridge Latin Series. Caecilius, Metella and Quintus all meet the Doctor in ancient Pompeii as the volcano explodes. Someone is having fun.
This episode was vintage Dr Who. Lots of running around, really evil monsters (who might well send a child to the safety of the sofa), and the Doctor fighting them off with a water pistol. Throw in a whole lot of angst about interfering with timelines and a few new seeds to the series story arcs - disappearing planets, ‘She will return’ and another mention of the Shadow Proclamation to set the Dr Who forums (okay…fora) alight. Series 4 is shaping up to be very good indeed.
Briefing
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Camden, Reviews , add a commentI’m ashamed to say that, despite being in this area for nearly a decade, yesterday was my first trip to the Camden People’s Theatre. I nearly didn’t make it. From the outside, it is a small and uninspiring venue in the unlovely urban desert between Drummond St and Tottenham Court Rd and when I finally ventured in last week to book tickets I was told that the opening night for their latest production had been flooded out, and that tickets have to be bought through the internet.
I’m glad I persevered. Mercurial Production’s short play, Briefing, is an hour very well spent. The play is based on Doris Lessing’s 1971 novel “Briefing for a Descent into Hell”, the story of a man who loses his memory and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital as the Patient. He may be mad, or he may be an agent of an interplanetary civilisation trying to rescue the Earth from humanity’s excesses. He cannot remember his former earthly life, as a Cambridge classics professor, but remembers snatches of his other experiences and has a strong sense of having forgotten something important. The book can be read as a psycho-drama, or as science fiction. I’m inclined to that latter, because it pivots around the scene of the ‘Briefing’ of the title, where the assembled alien agents are told that their mission to earth will be difficult, and that they will forget who they were. This scene doesn’t enter the consciousness of the Patient at any stage, and seems too concrete if the author is trying to keep the nature of this reality open.
The play is true to the novel, drawing the dialogue from it. The cast enter the small, sparse performance space down the side aisle with no separate stage. Most of the action takes place on and around a hospital bed, which becomes a raft in the ocean, and, with the cast, a cliff-face climbed by the Patient.
Where much of the book is unremitting stream-of-consciousness prose as the Patient talks through his memories, the cast use movement and words to take us through the story. First supporting his perhaps fantastical reality, then transforming into the hospital staff trying to ‘cure’ him, they bring the confusion between the two worlds to life.
As with the book, the play comes through on multiple levels. It is commentary on the way we treat the mentally-ill, with the Patient continuously drugged and under threat of electric shock therapy, and the medical staff’s certainty that their own reality is true. And is there madness too in the dire state of the planet, so much worse now than when the book was first written?
This is Mercurial Productions first production, bringing together young actors who are all graduates of the Parisian theatre school, Ecole Jacques Lecoq. James Turpin is excellent as the Patient, somnolent and confused, but calm so that the possibility that the past he partly remembers is the real one always remains open. The ensemble work together seamlessly, at times almost dancing their way through the play.
Briefing plays at the Camden People’s Theatre until 26 April. Tickets are £10/£12, and bookings must be made through Ticketweb who will add a pound or two to the price.
Writing from the front line April 8, 2008
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Miscellany , 1 comment so farLondon’s Prospect-reading classes gathered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night to listen to two of our most prominent foreign correspondents give their views on Iraq and reporting from the front line.
Robert Fisk of the Independent, recently most famous for his passionate reporting of the plight of Beirut during last summer’s war in Lebanon, and Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times, who reported the lives of women under the Taliban and the Russian invasion, were chaired by Ronan Bennett.
The evening began with Bennett’s short film ‘Why this Rush’, one of the BBC’s recent ‘10 days to War’ series, all of which are available on their website, and yet another reason for paying the license fee.
Fisk started the conversation with a denouncement of journalist’s role in the Iraq war, particularly their failure to show the brutal realities of mangled corpses and the consequences of our actions there. He is harsh on his own profession, who are controlled by editors and station managers who make the decisions on suitable tea-time viewing.
Lamb talked about the difference between reporting when she first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s, traveling alongside the mujahideen with neither laptop nor satellite phone. She would go into the field for 3-4 weeks, out of touch of the rest of the world. On her return, the reports she filed could include a synthesis of all she’d seen in that time. Now, the report is of what happens in a particular time and place, on the day the report is filed. There is less time for analysis, and events in a place on a day are seen by audiences to represent a whole country.
Fisk is angry and passionate about Western involvement in the Middle East. He believes that “there is a visceral need for superpowers to go to war” and clearly includes the UK in this. We, or at least our governments, do not care about ordinary Iraqi’s. At the fall of Baghdad, the military were not interested in evidence he collected of Iraqi torturers. But he does not believe we will stay for long - “We will leave, and will say they were unworthy” of our sacrifice.
Lamb seemed more measured, more objective, and a lot less angry than Fisk. She has agreed to be an embedded reporter, despite the difficulties that presents in reporting objectively about people she depends on for her safety. Reporting in a war zone is far more dangerous now, with no-go areas and journalists seen as legitimate targets.
Measured objectivity is a trait rightly praised in journalists, but that angry passion arouses the reader. The Middle East and the state of Iraq are issues which need our passions aroused. It was good to see them both.
Put that cauliflower down, Ken April 3, 2008
Posted by cathrynsymons in : Miscellany , add a commentIn response to revelations today that he has 5 children by three different women, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said “Clearly, I don’t think anybody in this city is shocked about what consenting adults do. As long as you don’t involve children, animals or vegetables they leave people to get on and live their own life in their own way.”
It’s the big city Ken, so noone’s too worried about vegetables. If you promise not to supply any further information on the subject, you’ve got my second preference vote.
