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| Somalis 'forced into Yemen war' Hundreds of Somali refugees are being forced at gunpoint to join rebel fighting in north Yemen, a Somali diplomat has told the BBC. news.bbc.co.uk |
China Rejects International Criticism of Dissident Trial China says expressions of international concern on behalf of dissident Liu Xiaobo are violations of the country's internal affairs. The comments come one day after Liu was put on trial for charges of subversion. www1.voanews.com |
A patchwork of personality | Peter Preston We are all imperfectly human. So how can centralised structures be imposed so rigidly on us?Inevitably, our justice secretary has got it in the neck from all and unionised sundry for his mild new year observation that "some police officers, whatever they say, quite enjoy being in a police station in the warm" – and therefore taking four toasted hours or so to fill out a few report forms that, for chaps in the force next door, might take an hour of their time.Cue a spectrum of outrage from "inflammatory and irresponsible" to a "stab in the back". But in fact it's Jack Straw's next sentence that carries the real message for politics in 2010. "We are dealing with human beings," he said, before going on to talk about "culture and discipline" in the service. What, human beings? You mean the kind of people who round up their expenses, forget to put £5 in the Christmas box, have a drink or three too many at party time and may, in extremis, attract a £15 impost for occasionally leaving a car parked two minutes too long? You mean us?Look around a little. Why is it taking X over there 20 minutes longer than Y to eat his canteen soup? Why has P finished his classroom test long since while Q is still sucking a pencil and looking out of the window? Why have we been waiting three hours in A&E when the hospital closer to town turns the same things around in 90 minutes or less? Because human beings are involved, that's why – because this particular X factor (though perennially denied) conditions most of the things that go right or wrong in life.How do we recruit police constables – the chief police officers of the future? Not by requiring any formal educational qualifications (compare and contrast the way nursing is going). No, the business of finding the new boys in blue is left to your local top brass working within what's called the "national competency framework", involving just over 90 minutes of variegated testings – including "two written exercises of 20 minutes each". It's not exactly Sats.So, of course, some plod more lugubriously over casework than others. Perhaps they have a better nose for crime on the beat. Perhaps they have a sweeter line in public relations. But it is utterly, deludingly unrealistic to expect them all to be equally adept, and quicksilver slick, at everything. They aren't standard products. Only their complaints about overload, once collated by a general secretary or head of some professional body, come as standard.Does such overload exist? Sometimes: in harassed social work departments, on time-trial postal rounds – even among police ranks when too many sick days strike together. Yet stress, too, is a variable feast. One friend of mine turns nervous wreck over the challenge of catching a train (and usually arrives at Euston 40 minutes early for safety's sake); another will drive around for days with his no-petrol yellow light flashing. And it's the fate of all governments to affect to impose uniformity on this patchwork of personality.Targets, new laws, more management consultancies? Take your pick. This isn't an argument about them. It rests, rather, on what's left after all the training courses and jawboning: just things, human things, going pear-shaped. Create a new superstructure to combat terrorism, and what do you get? The same barely watched watch lists, the same hapless dozing over tens of thousands of foreign names. Will it be better with mounds of fresh hi-tech kit on board? Not if human beings are standing guard.There will always be a bungle here or there as supposedly masterful bombers try vainly to light their underpants. There will always be another Baby P, another duff buying spree at the Ministry of Defence, another dossier of dodgy assumptions overheard in the Travellers' Club bar.Do judges occasionally snooze on the job? I've been there when they did, adjured to awed silence over snores that "didn't happen". Can doctors make grotesquely wrong diagnoses? Read Barbara Ehrenreich and weep. Is there truly a job called "security expert" when insecurity is the name of his game?Straw said something profound in a subclause, then. He said that, no matter how relentless the education, how rigorous the testing, we will always mess up somehow. He said that a warm office on a freezing day is even better than a warm Z-car cruising round. He said that there will never be perfection because we are all imperfect human beings. A glimpse of the bleeding obvious? Naturally: except that we never include it in the roster of retribution when something that "must never happen again" comes down the slipway one more time. Shut the door, please, officer. It's snowing outside.PoliceJack StrawPeter Prestonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Ex-soldier named Tibet governor China appoints a former soldier as the new governor of Tibet after the previous one resigned unexpectedly. news.bbc.co.uk |
My costume dramas | Holly Walsh Put more thought into your fancy dress themes, people. Tarts and vicars just won't cut itNext weekend I've got to go to a fancy dress party. Which I'd quite look forward to if the theme weren't "tarts and vicars". As the daughter of a female vicar, the last thing I want to do is go to a party dressed as my mother (although this is only a matter of time. I've already found myself flicking through the Lands' End catalogue and eyeing up Ecco shoes).Don't get me wrong – I bloody love a fancy dress party. I take them very seriously. I've been known to take a sick day from work to make a costume. But this tarts and vicars thing annoys me because it's just so unoriginal. I like a party with a theme that makes demands of the imagination. A good fancy dress costume is all about lateral thinking; you have to consider the most obvious thing you could go as, and then work backwards. The best Halloween costume I've ever seen was someone who arrived in a long white tube with a little round window, and two blue lines painted across their face. They'd come as a pregnancy scare.The fancy dress challenge is more complicated for women, who must battle against any temptation to Just Make It Sexy. Look through anyone's photos and eventually you'll come across some fancy dress party where the girls are all dressed as either sexy cats or sexy devils. The theme? Presumably "half-heartedness". If sexy cats and sexy devils are the default costumes for women, the default for men is James Bond – whatever the brief.A couple of years ago I went to a party where the theme was "sea creatures". Now, you'd have thought you couldn't make "sea creatures" sexy, and you'd be right, which is why most women had come as sexy cats, lamely claiming to be catfish. I'd come as a giant king prawn. The other women looked at me like I was a dick, even though my papier-mâché shell was anatomically spot on. The men came as James Bond.Take note of the papier-mâché point here. The best fancy dress costumes are always home-made. There's something delightfully stupid about a giant Facebook page made of cardboard, with the wearer's head poking through for the profile picture. You couldn't buy it in a shop, and it probably won't last the night, but it was made especially for the occasion.Hiring an elaborate costume might look slicker, but I think it's a bit of a cop-out. Just once, I'd like to see Elton John and David Furnish throw one of their massive charity balls where all the celebrities have to make their own costumes. Imagine David and Victoria up till past midnight the night before adding the finishing touches to their cardboard robot costumes. Or Liz Hurley on the cover of Heat dressed as a wonky pirate.Of course, there are some parts of a costume that are harder to make than others, and that's where the party shop comes in. My local high street has changed radically in the last couple of years because of the recession. Supermarkets, banks and Woolworths have disappeared, but somehow the party shop has stayed open, despite the fact that most people I know only buy a pair of Austin Powers glasses once in a lifetime. I discovered something of an unlikely fancy dress mecca recently, in Galway on the west coast of Ireland. Over the course of a weekend, I found half a dozen fancy dress shops. That's a lot of pretending for one town. Presumably the low sales of Salvador Dalí moustaches are offset by the booming popularity of sexy cat ears.For the guest, fancy dress is a chance to show off. For the host, it's a test to see how much effort your friends are willing to make for you. Which is why, even though I think the theme is a bit dull, I'm going to push the boat out next weekend. It's no mere vicar for me. I'm going as the archbishop of Canterbury – complete with homemade mitre, hand-stitched vestments and a full-sized crosier. I've worn it once before – to the 2003 annual synod – and let me tell you, that was one hell of an after-party.CraftHolly Walshguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |