TOP 100 NEWSPAPER SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| The Excess Factor | Peter Preston TV programmes, films and even politics these days are swollen with inordinate repetitionLet's call it the Excess Factor, the panting growth of flab that defined mass entertainment and too much else through the decade just wheezing its last. Thus last weekend's X Factor final, two hours on Saturday, two more last night, contained a bare 90 relevant minutes of singing, judging and actual competition. The rest was hype, video silt, drum rolls, guest fill-ins, outside broadcasts – and inordinate repetition. How long does it take to choose between an ordinary Joe, Olly and Stacey?Meanwhile, over on BBC1, the score seemed much the same: 105 minutes of Strictly Come Dancing, featuring 14 of actual dancing, 10 of judges waving their cards, plus six to announce the result.Make that two hours of necessary action covering a couple of shows that consumed five hours and 45 minutes of primetime attention. And if you add two more TV hours to find one Sports Personality of the Year and 90 minutes to crown a few Britpack comedians, you have the ultimate curse of noughties existence: padding, pure padding.When did everything get so swollen with guff? Was it after James Cameron sank the Titanic in 194 minutes (whereas Lewis Gilbert sank the Bismark in 97)? Spielberg took 115 to capture ET – but Avatar needs 164 clicks of the clock. The show must go on, and on, and on.But television and movies are only the start of the problem, mere symptoms of our absurdly stretched experience. Do MPs fit the thesis by working longer? Not at first glance. They're off to flip a few second homes before you can say knife. But the business of the house has been subtly tuned for repetition, too. Here's something we never had until Gordon Brown, a pre-budget report telling us in November or December what the chancellor will do next March or April, unless he changes his mind. And here, via any Today programme in season, is the relevant minister leaking in detail what he'll tell parliament five hours later.TV producers with X audiences strictly in mind think doing the same thing time after time builds viewing figures and interest. Shrewd politicians know precisely the reverse. Jaw-jaw means bore-bore means no time for awkward questions. Freedom of information arrives by the sackload. How many Iraq inquiries do we need? This is the third, its findings expected after the next election, when two days of Tony Blair grilled and roasted in public would have done the job. But we're still not going to get that – just a blank wall of no blame diffused and more calls for another inquiry.Does it really take two weeks in Copenhagen to save the world when most of the real business will come in the last 12 hours? If time is running out, what price another fortnight of talk? How do six more months to the next election seem to you, or 31 to the London 2012? We're supposed to resist instant gratification, but indefinite frustration seems much worse as, from talent shows to governing shows, the clock never seems to stop. News may arrive by satellite 24:7, but it's mostly the same news on a perpetual loop.Time, rationally used, is one of the basics of life. It defines what's important. It parcels out our existence. But the start of this millennium has begun to play havoc with time, pushing problems into the long grass and distracting attraction in swift, tweeting bursts. Movies were meant to last 90 minutes. Golf was never an Olympic sport. Two 15-minute question times for the PM were much better than 30 minutes of bluster.The BBC, I guess, is already worrying about how to rescue Strictly. ITV hasn't yet glimpsed the stones on the approaching shore. But (see big, bloated brother) the lessons are already there. There is a natural balance to all these things, something sensible betwixt and between. It's the difference between national moments and national eternity.TelevisionBBCITVThe X FactorPeter Prestonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
The perfect gift? How about an end to loneliness – and not just at Christmas | Jonathan Freedland A remarkable experiment is getting people visiting one another again, and its radical lessons could boost public servicesLet us take as our seasonal text the words of St Elvis of Memphis:It'll be lonely this Christmas,Lonely and cold.It'll be cold, so coldWithout you to holdThis Christmas …As so often, the king was on to something. He understood that loneliness, while a chronic, daily condition for so many, gains an extra sting during the days of yuletide cheer. For the other 360-odd days of the year, you can bustle about, filling the day with errands and noise. But Christmas allows no hiding place. There can be no excuses, not when everyone else seems to be with someone, cosy in the company of friends or family. The message coming from every song on the radio and every ad on the telly is that if you are alone at Christmas, you are lonely.Of all the statistics spelling out gloom, those on loneliness can strike the most heartbreaking chord. We know there are people who will be sick or suffering on 25 December, just as there are on any other day. But the notion of passing that day in solitary – silent, when the rest of the nation is with other people – seems harder to bear.But the lonely are not alone: there are many of them. Recent research showed one in three of those over 60 do not talk to a friend or family member for as long as a week, while one in 10 can pass a whole month without such a conversation. That latter figure means that there are 850,000 Britons who are seriously lonely.The result is not only personal pain for those individuals, but also for society. The World Health Organisation rates loneliness as a higher health risk than lifelong smoking, while researchers see a link between a lack of social interaction and Alzheimer's disease, an illness costing – through drugs, care and loss of employment – an estimated £17bn each year.But we are not powerless against this problem. A pilot scheme called Get Together has just wrapped up in Westminster and will soon be introduced across London. It rejects the old approach – "befriending" schemes, which take inspiration from the dating business and tends to be dogged by long waiting lists and be poor in terms of delivering lasting results – chiefly because the lonely soul and volunteer befriender, brought together randomly, often have nothing in common.With the Get Together scheme, if you're lonely you sign up to a phone group on a topic that interests you – it might be music or politics – and then, at the appointed hour, you join six or eight others and a moderator on the line for an hour's chat. The organisers aim to bring together those who live near each other, so that they might meet up afterwards. The trial run in London brought astonishing results: those who would clam up if they were ushered into a room full of strangers found they could open up on the phone with a group who shared an interest.The people behind Get Together have larger ambitions. They have now developed a new service, recently trialled in the London borough of Southwark, but expanding into three further areas early in 2010, which could not only offer a remedy for the social disconnection that can come with old age, but could also offer a radically new approach to public services.It's called Southwark Circle, and is winningly simple. Watch a short video on the website, and you get the entire idea. People pay a fee and thereby become entitled to home visits from security-checked helpers – some paid, some volunteers – who can do anything from hacking back bushes in the garden to setting up the Freeview box on the TV to teaching you how to send text messages to your grandchildren. If you like, you can reduce your quarterly fee by becoming a helper yourself, visiting others and using your skills to help them.It may be the lure of practical help that gets people in, but the result is a web of local, human connections. Suddenly people are visiting each other and men, in particular, who organisers say often balk at the notion of asking for help, are drawn to a project that offers them the chance to be useful once more.The key distinction from other services for the elderly is the tone of voice. Southwark Circle's website makes no mention of age: it just offers a service which anyone would find appealing. It doesn't push a service at you, it pulls you in with an offer that makes sense.Former journalist Shirley Anderson, now aged 70, says she had always feared any service that carried an elderly tag. She worried she would soon be in a draughty hall, singing "It's a long way to Tipperary". The very idea makes her shudder. "Patronising and ghastly." But last week Southwark Circle had a Christmas lunch for members in a pub with good food and good music – a real musician, not an "entertainer for the old folks". Shirley went, and she loved it.Also there was 47-year-old Barry, known not by his last name but by the name of his guide dog, Bailey. A Circle helper went with him to the shops to help him pick the right-coloured tracksuit; now Barry plans to give back, by visiting those who are unable to get out. It doesn't feel like a social service to him at all: "It's like a group of friends." And guess what: a fellow Circle member has invited him over for tea on Christmas Day. He had been due to spend the day alone.The driving force behind these projects is Participle, a social enterprise which aims to reimagine the entire public realm. Co-founder Hilary Cottam, named designer of the year in 2005 for innovative work on health, schools and prisons, says Southwark Circle came about by doing what public services so rarely do: listening to the public. Rapidly she came to realise that older people rejected both the old 1950s state and 1980s market models. "They didn't want to be needy recipients, but nor did they want to be passive consumers."They wanted to be active. Both Shirley and Brian told me they liked the idea that the Circle is two-way: they give as well as receive. Note that all members, even those living on Peckham's very poor Lettsom estate, willingly pay a fee: that makes them members, not recipients, and the difference matters.Surely the rest of Britain's public services could learn from this remarkable experiment. They might follow the clear lesson that prevention is better than cure: the Circle aims to enrich people's lives when they're fit, rather than wait till they're ill. And universality is crucial. Cottam laments the public services that end up spending a fortune assessing people's means, working out whom to exclude. The Circle has some wealthy members, drawn to a service that is not aimed solely at the needy, and they cross-subsidise the rest. Early estimates suggest Southwark council will save £5 for every £1 they put into the Circle.I don't know which party, Labour or Conservative, will embrace this approach. It should appeal to both, and they should learn its lessons fast. For this is an idea too good to be left on its own, getting lonely.Public sector careersChristmasPublic services policyJonathan Freedlandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
'1,000 homeless' in Solomons quake Landslides and a tsunami triggered by a quake in the South Pacific's Solomon Islands have left some 1,000 people homeless. news.bbc.co.uk |
Michael White's diary In a mess over mayors. Who will pay for this voting fraud? Let legal battle commence• Brits are less smug about ballot fraud only being a Belfast problem since Labour enacted lax postal voting on demand in 2000. Election judge Richard Mawrey QC confirmed "massive, systematic and organised" postal voting fraud by six Labour councillors in Brum in 2005. Now it's the Tories' turn. Mawrey ordered party headquarters to pay the £215,000 legal cost of overturning the fraudulent 2007 defeat of Lydia Simmons, Europe's first black elected woman mayor, in Slough. The winner, Eshaq Khan, and five others were jailed (and can't pay). This week the Tories went to the high court to argue they are not liable; parties only became legal entities in 1998, and under election law candidates are still individuals – or "legal necessities", as some say. Experts think they may win.• Iris-gate rumbles at Stormont, where the latest unkind joke on the non-sectarian circuit goes: "What do the Robinsons have in common with Ikea? One loose screw and the whole cabinet falls apart." Not yet, it doesn't.• Alastair Campbell's talent for annoying people was on bold display in his post-Chilcot blog yesterday. Having annoyed Gordon Brown by reminding everyone that chancellor Gordon had a central (if furtive) role in invading Iraq in 2003, he used the blog to mock the Blair-bashing media ("their addiction to the whooshery of breaking news") for claiming that this, or most of what he told Chilcot, is actually news any more. He niggled both Christians and fellow atheists by quoting comforting biblical texts he'd been given. He wrapped it up by saying he later joined a family visit to ogle Keira Knightley, appropriately in The Misanthrope, rather than watch Newsnight. She'd be great playing the heroine of his new novel (plug). But so would Winslet. And Penelope Cruz. Comically shameless. Is everyone cross now?• Squillionaire Zac "non-dom" Goldsmith has raised spirits at John Denham's daftly named Department of Communities and Local Government. As Tory candidate for Richmond Park and North Kingston, Zac dashed off an email demanding to know why his struggling local high streets aren't getting extra money from the "empty shops fund" to help regenerate struggling town centres. It's because the cash goes to deprived places, Zac. Richmond and Kingston may look like bombsites to you. To most people they look prosperous.• Fading Fleet Street pot house, El Vino's, wants to open a Rumpole basement bar in honour of John Mortimer, who drank there and called it "Pommery's" in his novels. But the first editions he always sent have gone walkies, and plans to call the house claret "Château Thames Embankment", as Rumpole did, may fall foul of EU wine labelling laws. Life imitating art?• With their usual sense of proportion, the very clever people who run the Russell Group of elite universities have just warned that Labour funding cuts could devastate 800 years of creativity in places like Cambridge, "recognised across the globe as a gold standard". Quite right. At Cambridge's Clare Hall tomorrow, Dr Olga Ulturgasheva will discuss her groundbreaking research on "The concept of human-reindeer in children's ideas about their own future among Siberian reindeer herders".• Campbell is not the only new media type with exhibitionist tendencies. From somewhere in north London, dynastic humourist Giles Coren uses his Twitter account to share sensitive feelings. "Next door have bought their 12-yr-old son a drum kit. For fuck's sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or fuck him, then kill him then burn it?" Quizzed by fellow sados, Giles expands his options. "More lucrative to sell the kid, surely. Slightly burned, partially fucked." Ring BBC management someone, we have found the new Russell Brand.• "How does it feel to be plain Mrs Pinter?" hacks shouted at newly-wed diarist, Lady Antonia Fraser. "She's not," shouted Harold. Karl Marx was a snob, too.Michael Whiteguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Suu Kyi 'may be free in November' Burma's military government may be planning to release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi later this year, reports say. news.bbc.co.uk |