Hutton five years on ...

I still don't understand the judgement of Hutton.

Unfortunately it sent a very bad signal that

(a) Tony Blair wasn't responsible for leading us into a disasterous, immoral and illegal war

(b) The BBC wasn't allowed to critcise the government - I think this has really stiffled debate and critism of the Blair government in the UK ...

The following article is a nice summary in french of the Hutton report:

28 janvier 2004 - Quelques heures après la publication du rapport Hutton sur la mort de l'expert en armements David Kelly, le président de la BBC, Gavyn Davies, a donné sa démission.

Le rapport de Lord Hutton blâme sévèrement la direction de la radio-télévision publique britannique pour avoir diffusé, sans avoir les preuves suffisantes, des reportages accusant le gouvernement Blair d'avoir gonflé la menace que représentait l'arsenal irakien.

La BBC a présenté ses excuses et reconnu qu'une partie des informations qu'elle avait diffusées étaient inexactes.

Le premier ministre Tony Blair, pour sa part, sort blanchi des soupçons qui pesaient sur lui d'avoir autorisé la divulgation du nom de l'expert, ce qui aurait provoqué son suicide.

Michel Désautels s'entretient avec l'éditorialiste du quotidien The Times de Londres, Michael Binyon.

This American Life: Scenes From a Recession

Another great podcast from Chicago Public Radio.

I really like this liberal view of America, sensible people with quirky and interesting life stories.. a great American tradition.

Unfortunately the credit crunch seem to be hitting the American poor and middle classes very badly...

It does appear that some of the regulation and red tape we have in Europe actually did some good in the end (thank god we finally got rid of Thatcher... although we then got Blair aka "son of Thatcher"...)

Pete Tong in Brazil: Great Podcast!

I'm not usually a radio 1 fan, you know when you getting older when you think radio 2 is cool and you like radio 3 in the morning!?

Back to radio 1, there are some good shows and this podcast was fantastic!

We once had a very stylish french woman (a friend of a friend in Paris) stay with us in London on route to Salvador Carnival, I didn't realise the different between this carnival and the Rio one - slightly less of a spectacle and slightly more of a street party.

This podcast manage to convery an absolutely great atmosphere, the pleasure of being a live and how carnival is great!

I'd love to go carnival, but this is one problem - I didn't think my partner would like the intense communal party atmosphere
and the crowds ... Brighton pride is already too much for him ;-)

David Guetta feature a lot in this podcast :)

:: Rio Combo – Brazil
:: Sergio Mendes – Mas Que Nada
:: Gil Gilberto – Toda Menina Baiana
:: Ivete Sangalo – A Galera
:: Parney De Castro – Ba-Tu-Ca-Da
:: DJ Marky, Patife, & Esom ft Fernanda Porto – So Tinha Que Ser Com Voce
:: DJ Marky & XRS – LK (Carolina Carol Bela)
:: David Guetta, Steve Angello & Seb Ingrosso ft Chris Willis – Everytime We Touch
:: Noel Hosa – Com Que Ropa
:: The Heartists – ‘Belo Horizonte’
:: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicuis De Moraes & Stan Getz – Girl From Ipanema
:: David Guetta – Love Is Gone
:: White Stripes – 7 Nation Army
:: Gui Boratto – Beautiful Life

A sad study for a better world?

We keep hearing in study after study the importance of early childhood development:

Selon le Dr Andre Sourander et son équipe de l'Hôpital universitaire de Turku, quatre adolescents et jeunes adultes sur cinq qui font de sérieuses tentatives de suicide ont connu des problèmes émotifs graves à l'âge de huit ans.

Hopefully by idenitfy groups at risk we can better support these individuals in the future + provide better support for young families to avoid such tragedies!?

A curious male / female devide in this research:

Du côté féminin, les tentatives de suicide ne sont pas précédées par des problèmes de santé mentale à cet âge.

I would like to live in a society which better recognised the problems young families have and did more to support them?

Much Ado About Nothing

I am a really fan of modern film adaptions of classic stories.

I don't know why these work so well:

1) Am I intrgued by these famous stoires and history

2) Do the actors and director get into these classic roles, there must be loads of old films, books and other re-interpretations

3) A heart these are great stories, have depth, timeless characters and plots ...


The BBC's adaption of Shakespeare's "Romantic Comedy":

When Wessex Tonight newsreader Keith has a heart attack, station boss Leonard (Martin Jarvis) knows the perfect replacement - suave ladies' man Benedick (Damian Lewis). The only trouble is, his other on-screen star Beatrice (Sarah Parish) can't stand him, thanks to an unhappy love affair between the two years ago.

Meanwhile, Leonard's beautiful daughter Hero (Billie Piper) is making waves as a weathergirl, not least with dashing young sports reporter Claude (Tom Ellis). The two become an item, with Leonard's blessing. But creepy editor Don Reid (Derek Riddell) developed a huge crush on her after the pair slept together once, and just can't leave her alone.

At a fancy dress party arranged to celebrate Benedick's arrival, Benedick and Claude both dress as knights in armour. This leads to Beatrice telling Benedick exactly what she thinks of him, believing him to be Claude! Elsewhere, Don overhears Hero admit that she only slept with him because she felt sorry for him. The party is rounded off when Claude proposes to Hero.

Regarding actor's commitment to roles, I liked this:

Researching for the role, Billie visited a real-life weathergirl.

"She showed me some footage of her when she first started and that was really beneficial. There are certain ways to hold and present yourself and there's also a rhythm in the way news reporters speak – you have to get hold of that intonation. And then I just watched daytime TV solidly for about a week!"

Oh yes and she look's fantastic in a White Monoroe dress - almost as good as the original?

The Waste Land

I awoke early today and listened to a great podcast: the theme of In Our Time was The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

I had heard of this poem before naturally, it is hugely famous and revered, and this program gave you a flavour of how this poem was radical modern. It was written shortly after World War II and there is a sense of the horror and shock of a World that can never be the same again ...

The narrative does not flow like a conversational story but is jagged and jumpy like reality with many quirky moment not quite making sense. I'm sure this podcast only touches on the elusive depths of this famous poem.

One verse I particularly like is:

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
(http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/wslnd11.txt)

'I had not thought death had undone so many' apparently is a line verbatim taken from Dante's Inferno, but what I liked is image of the flow of poor commuters, a sad but powerful image of modern London. As true today as in 1922. That another nice parallel, the financial troubles of 1922 possibly equal our modern credit crunch. Eliot a linguist, was working in the city for Lloyds banks translate financial journals. He was a follower of Keynes and deeply opposed to the treaty of Versailles:

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) is a book published by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes attended the Versailles Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury and argued for a much more generous peace. It was a best seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the Versailles Treaty was a "Carthaginian peace". It helped to consolidate American public opinion against the treaty and involvement in the League of Nations. The perception by much of the British public that Germany had been treated unfairly in turn was a crucial factor in public support for appeasement. The success of the book established Keynes' reputation as a leading economist especially on the left.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

Anyway Eliot was depressed, off sick with a nervous disorder and spent 3 months working on The Waste Land, a bleak and remarkable modern poem.

french: Un peu de répit pour l’Amazonie

Just maybe the credit crunch isn't all bad ...

L'Amazonie brésilienne a perdu 754 km² de forêt de novembre à janvier, ce qui représente une baisse de 70% de la déforestation par rapport à la même période de l'an dernier, a annoncé le 3 mars 2009 l'Institut brésilien de recherches spatiales (Inpa)....

Le biome de la forêt amazonienne, originellement de 4 100 000 km² au Brésil, a été réduit à 3 403 000 km² en 2005