Posters for 'whites-only' parent-and-child group in Metro Vancouver draw outrage


CBC
Mon, September 25, 2023

A partially removed sign at the Coquitlam Centre mall in Coquitlam, B.C., pictured Monday that advertises a mother-and-child group for families of European descent only. (Joel Ballard/CBC News - image credit)

City officials in Metro Vancouver have described signs advertising a "whites-only" social group for mothers and children as "vile garbage."

On Sunday, social media posts about the "Whites-only Moms and Tots" group meant for families of European descent began popping up on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, with many condemning the posters as racist.

CBC News located some of the signs, which had been partially removed, at the Coquitlam Centre, a shopping mall in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, B.C.

Officials with the neighbouring City of Port Coquitlam said they had been alerted to the posters over the weekend and directed bylaw officers to search for them and remove them.

Group seeks 'proud parents of European children'

"As soon as it was brought to our attention, bylaw officers immediately searched the area and all bus stops, but no signs were present. Perhaps being removed by someone else," said a joint statement from the city and Mayor Brad West.

"This vile garbage isn't welcome in our community, or anywhere else."

A partially removed sign at Coquitlam Centre in Coquitlam B.C. on Monday Sept. 25, 2023 advertising a mother and child group mean for families of European descent only.

One of the posters at the Coquitlam Centre, pictured on Monday. The neighbouring City of Port Coquitlam said it had also received reports of signs and had instructed bylaw officers to remove them. (Joel Ballard/CBC News)

The signs advertise a play group for mothers and children to "join other proud parents of European children as we create an atmosphere in which our kids feel like they belong."

Contact information at the bottom of the posters refers to the group as "White Tri-Cities Parents and Tots." The Tri-Cities refers to the Metro Vancouver municipalities of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody.

In its statement, Port Coquitlam condemned the signs and the group they advertise "in the strongest terms," adding that the city "promotes an environment without hate."

Report signs to police, cities say

The City of Coquitlam said in a release that the notices are racist because they "explicitly exclude" certain groups based on their race, and they have no place in the city.

"Coquitlam celebrates its rich diversity and we firmly believe that it is through the embrace of different backgrounds, cultures and experiences that we grow stronger as a community," it said.

The statement said the city encourages spaces that are inclusive of all children, no matter their backgrounds.

"Coquitlam encourages initiatives that promote unity, understanding and appreciation of the differences that make our community inclusive," it said, adding that any posters in the city would be removed.

Census data from Statistics Canada in 2021 says Coquitlam has a population of nearly 150,000 and Port Coquitlam has 62,000 residents, both with dozens of ethnicities represented.

Both Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam are asking residents to report other signs to RCMP, which it said was investigating, providing the file number 23-25827.

CBC News contacted the group through the email address provided on the sign, but did not immediately receive a response.

On the messaging app Telegram, the group's page has more than 200 subscribers.

Alberta election boundary commission chides MP for email campaign

CBC
Sun, September 24, 2023 

The Lethbridge riding is represented by Conservative MP Rachael Thomas. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press - image credit)

At the end of July, the commission charged with redrawing the federal electoral map for Alberta released its final report.

Some proposed changes were confirmed; others walked back.

But the document also contained a section scolding an unnamed MP for appearing to organize an email campaign after public hearings to try to influence the commission.

"This influx appeared to be the result of a calculated effort, led by a particular MP, to persuade the commission to maintain the existing electoral boundaries, thereby ensuring that the MP would maintain their stronghold," the section reads.

"This raised the concern that an attempt was being made to interfere with the integrity of the redistribution process."

Through an access to information request, CBC News analyzed more than 200 emailed submissions sent after the last hearing on Sept. 26, 2022, to identify the "voluminous influx of emailed submissions" cited by the commission.

Of those, 161 emails were related to the Lethbridge riding, represented by Conservative MP Rachael Thomas. More than half of those were sent on Oct. 31.

Thomas's office did not respond to a request for comment.

John Courtney, a professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan who previously worked on a federal boundary commission, said MPs whose ridings are slated for change often oppose them with few exceptions.

An interim report is tabled in parliament, which gives MPs the opportunity to submit official objections to the commission. Thomas did not file one of the five received for Alberta.

None of the other 2022 provincial commission reports mention the possibility of organized opposition through submissions by an MP. Nova Scotia did receive hundreds of postcards in opposition through a community-based campaign.

"Having written about redistributions, I can safely say that organized public pressure on a commission has in the past been rare, at least with any sizeable number," Courtney wrote in an email, adding that he could not determine whether it had become more common.

Courtney himself was subjected to opposition through hundreds of emails, letters and postcards as well as robocalls in 2012 during the federal redistribution for Saskatchewan.

That this was conducted through email is a reflection of changing methods of communication, he said.

Shifting boundaries

At issue was a proposed reduction in geographical size that would see the northern boundary of the Lethbridge riding move south to the Oldman River. Commissions have a mandate to draw the riding boundaries so that ridings all have roughly the same population numbers.

The impetus given for the change was the growth of the city of Lethbridge, Alta., putting the population of the riding 7.5 per cent above the electoral quota.

The commission's note said many of the emails in question "praised the MP and echoed or mirrored the talking points used by that MP at a public hearing."

CBC News has not viewed or heard Thomas's submissions to the commission.

At least nine emailed submissions reuse the exact same wording. Around 15 include Thomas's parliamentary email as a recipient.

The most repeated concern from the emailed opposition was ease of access to the elected representative, complaining of hours-long drives to meet MPs in other ridings.

The commission said it gave the email campaign submissions "no weight" but the proposed changes were ultimately dropped.

The final report reads that, at the hearings, "several presenters were quite prepared to accept the higher population figure as a suitable trade-off for more effective representation."

"After considerable deliberation, the commission accepted these presentations and submissions and has redrawn the electoral district of Lethbridge to include the entire County of Lethbridge, which includes Coalhurst, Nobleford, Barons, Picture Butte and Coaldale as well as the entire City of Lethbridge."

UK

Jenny Harries interview: We’ll behave more like Sweden when the next pandemic hits

 “Her modus operandi: rationalism tempered with empathy” 

Paul Nuki
Sun, 24 September 2023 

'What we saw with later waves of the pandemic is that people will take action themselves,’ says Harries - Geoff Pugh

LONG READ

Dame Jenny Harries does not shake my hand as I’m ushered into her office and I wonder momentarily if this interview is going to be more difficult than anticipated.

“I’m just going to be very open,” she says in a way that only a doctor can. “The reason I haven’t shaken hands with you is, I’m just slightly under the weather. Not respiratory-wise – in other ways. I think I’ll be fine. But I’m just not not quite as buzzy as I usually am.”

I relax (and check I’m not blocking the most direct route to the exit). Harries has never been known as a bundle of laughs but her vigour has never been in doubt. She’s of a generation of medics that pulled three-and-a-half-day shifts as juniors and, while most of her contemporaries have long since been put out to graze, she, at 65, remains whippet lean and A* sharp.

It’s just as well. As we meet, the highly mutated BA.2.86 “pirola’’ variant of Covid-19 is spreading rapidly ahead of winter, a new booster shot for the most vulnerable is being rushed out and H5N1 bird flu is causing havoc around the world. And these are just some of the near-term risks she must deal with.

Harries’s doggedness has served her well. After a career in public health spanning over 25 years – much of it spent as a diligent deputy to alpha men – she’s emerged from the widespread bureaucratic and professional wreckage of the pandemic very much on top. Now, as head of the powerful new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), she’s responsible for protecting the country from everything from viruses to chemical, biological and nuclear threats – and she’s loving every minute of it.

It was in March 2020, as the first wave of Covid-19 was sweeping Europe, that Harries first came to national prominence. “Amid the bedlam, she is in our corner, soothing the country with an effortless bedside manner,” said Vogue magazine of the then Deputy Chief Medical Officer. “Her modus operandi: rationalism tempered with empathy,” it added.

'Amid the bedlam, she is in our corner, soothing the country with an effortless bedside manner,' said Vogue magazine in 2020

 - Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street

Headline writers were especially taken with Harries’s response to a question thrown at her on the eve of the first national lockdown on how lovers should navigate the coming months. Standing at a lectern next to Matt Hancock (who we can surmise was not listening), she said: “I’m clearly going to start a new career here in relationship counselling, so I will tread very carefully... If the two halves of a couple are currently in separate households, ideally they should stay in those households. The alternative might be that, for quite a significant period going forwards, they should test the strength of their relationship and decide whether one wishes to be permanently resident in another household.”

“Shack up or break up,” the papers shouted as the shutters came down the next day.

Harries is big on the power of human experience and thinks we have learnt a huge amount as a population about infection control over the past few years. So much so that if we were to face another pandemic tomorrow the UK would take a more Swedish approach to social distancing, she suggests. Social contact fell broadly to the same extent in both countries during the pandemic but, while stay-at-home orders were legally mandated here, in Sweden they were voluntary for the most part.

“What we saw with omicron and later waves of the pandemic, and even now, is that people are good at watching the data and they will take action themselves,” says Harries. “You can see it in footfall going down. People actually start to manage their own socialisation, and the [viral] waves flatten off and come down.”

So next time round we will be more like Sweden, changing our behaviour but without the need for legislation?

Harries is far too savvy to have the word Sweden or – as I later try – South Korea put in her mouth, but the direction of travel is clear. The key, she says, is to be transparent about the risks and build trust with the public.

“The more people trust the organisation to give them early, accurate, honest and straightforward information, then, yes, the likelihood of us moving to extreme forms of transmission management reduce all the time, whether it be for coronavirus or anything else,” she says.

In public, Harries has a certain calmness about her, something she puts down to a “Jemima Puddle-Duck” approach: “paddle frantically beneath the surface but remain serene on top”. It’s helped her deal with all sorts of nasties over the years, including the Salisbury Novichok poisonings of 2018 – one of a series of events that first brought her to the attention of Whitehall.

The same cool confidence was evident when Harries appeared in June at the first part of the Covid inquiry, the part dealing with pandemic preparedness. While many were monstered under cross-examination (see David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt and virtually anyone who was anybody at the Department of Health and Social Care), Harries sailed through unscathed.

Austerity measures before the pandemic had left local directors of public health “under significant pressure” and their teams “denuded”, she told the inquiry. It was a lack of capacity across the health and social care system, and not the UK’s pandemic plan itself, that had been the main problem. “I don’t hold with the groupthink agenda,” she said of the idea, floated by the former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies among others, that Britain’s experts had been blinded by exceptionalism and failed to learn the lessons of the earlier Sars and Mers outbreaks in south-east Asia.

When we meet, Harries sticks to her guns on this. The UK’s pandemic plan was not perfect but it was “pretty advanced” comparatively speaking given that “many parts of the world had no plans at all”.

What about South Korea, I ask. They escaped lockdowns and overstretched ICU wards by closing their borders and rolling out mass testing almost immediately.

“I think this is where we need to be really careful because the culture in South Korea was very different,” says Harries. She is not ruling out that we may be more like them in future but does not think Britain would have bought into more interventionist plans ahead of the pandemic, even if they had been proposed.

“In South Korea, they have had a different experience… communities, individuals and governments build on the experience and the culture that they have,” she says.

Harries says it is key to be transparent about risk and build trust with the public - 

Whether Harries’s cool will survive the next phase of the inquiry, which opens on Oct 3, remains unclear. Before the pandemic, she was responsible, as Deputy Chief Medical Officer, for non-communicable health threats such as tobacco control and obesity and so was never really going to be on the hook for failures in pandemic planning. However, module two of the inquiry looks at government decision-making during the outbreak – something she was very much more involved in.

A taste of the hard questions she will face came from the media last year when she was ennobled. Some said her damehood was not deserved and cast her as just another dissembling Whitehall apparatchik. “The health chief has had a torrid time during Covid while conversely boasting more lives than Lazarus,” said one. “Throughout the past 20 months, Harries has come to embody many of the worst aspects of Britain’s well-meaning yet under-performing bio-security state.”

It’s true that in the first few months of the outbreak Harries echoed the self-serving orthodoxies of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), much of which would later be reversed. Face coverings, which had not been stockpiled for public use, were not a good idea for the “average member of the public” because they could “trap the virus” and spread it further, she told the BBC.

Mass testing – again not planned for in the UK – was also “unnecessary”, said Harries in March 2020, despite the World Health Organisation urging everyone to “test, test, test”. There was also a televised fireside moment with Boris Johnson in Downing Street when she played down the danger of attending mass events just as the Cheltenham Festival was opening. “Big gatherings are not seen to be something which is going to have a big effect so we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives,” she said.

To be fair to Harries, all of this reflected the Western scientific consensus of the time. And awkwardly for her loudest critics – most of whom are lockdown sceptics – the policy of minimal social intervention she was advocating for then is what they are advocating for now.

I put it to Harries that she and many of her public health colleagues have changed over the course of the pandemic; that they’ve shaken off the old fatalistic DHSC orthodoxies, many of which owed more to Treasury myopia than good science, and have become more confident and independent as a result.

She buys some of it but not all of it, declaring herself a “very proud senior civil servant” as well as being head of the UKHSA. On the other hand, she says it’s right that the pandemic has given many in public health a new confidence.

Systems like track and trace – that would have taken years to build in peacetime – were put together by public servants working with private companies around the clock in a matter of months. One of the UKHSA’s epidemiologists – Meaghan Kall – became a social media star, winning the agency plaudits and levels of trust most government agencies can only dream of. And, perhaps most important of all, from the public sector emerged some brilliant science.

“We are now going to be an exemplar, a new-style civil service organisation,” says Harries. “One that is directly public facing and where we work very openly and freely right across government in that collaborative way that we saw through the pandemic”.

‘UKHSA is now going to be an exemplar, a new-style civil service organisation’ - PA

As part of this, Harries recently opened a new vaccine development centre at the high-security Porton Down laboratories in Wiltshire in an effort to tackle “Disease X” and other unknown future threats. The Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre (VDEC) will house more than 200 scientists working to support the development of vaccines to protect against threats including avian influenza, Mpox and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. The unit is part of the wider global “100 Days Mission” on vaccines, which aims to create prototype jabs for all major viral pathogens ahead of a new outbreak.

“The risks are growing around climate change and urbanisation,” Harries said at the launch last month. “As well as building on the legacy of the pandemic caused by Covid-19, VDEC will target a wide range of other deadly viruses and pathogens, helping to secure the health and prosperity of the UK and saving lives around the world.”

Harries builds on the theme of health security being good for business when we meet at her offices. The Treasury has a tendency to see money spent on pandemic planning as money down the drain. Harries – and many others within the sector – are now fighting hard for it to be seen as capital investment which will more than wash its face in decades to come. “I think there are huge opportunities in the science,” says Harries, “in terms of preparation and response, but actually in the economics of scientific growth as well.”

Hopefully the Treasury will listen this time round. In the last national pandemic plan, it estimated the cost to the UK of a major pandemic at just £28 billion, virtually ensuring that no major preparatory works were done. The actual bill is estimated to sit closer to £400 billion – a debt that the taxpayers will be paying down for generations to come.

And the health threats the UK faces have not gone away. Harries says the biggest infectious disease threat facing us today is pandemic flu which sits – as it has for more than a decade – at the top of the National Risk Register. “Things like bird flu are very much in our sights at the moment”, in reference to the H5N1 avian flu strain sweeping the world.

But Harries is clear that we should not focus on a single disease. We face a wide number of overlapping threats, she notes, including an array of infectious diseases but also non-communicable conditions like obesity and then issues like climate change and antibiotic resistance. The health security risk the UK faces is therefore “cumulative and growing”, she says. Our response must be multi-layered and ongoing.

Harries declares herself 'a “very proud senior civil servant' - Geoff Pugh

Harries was born in Watford, the second of two children. Her father was a virologist who worked in the public health laboratories she now oversees and who died, aged 93, at the very start of the pandemic.

By her own admission, Harries has always been “a bit of a nerd”. So much so that at the age 10 she insisted on leaving home for boarding school, much to her mother’s dismay. “The parental message afterwards was, ‘well, you said you wanted to go and we thought you’d hold it against us if we didn’t let you’,” she recalls.

Unusually for a future doctor, Harries ducked science in sixth form, taking A-levels in ancient Greek, Latin and ancient history instead. Her interest in classics is perhaps the only thing she has in common with Boris Johnson, and she has used it very differently.

“You have to construct sentences in those languages very precisely and very logically”, a vital skill for any disease detective, she says. “When you’re doing an outbreak investigation, you don’t want to be swayed by somebody saying, ‘Oh, well, I saw three cases of it over there’. You want to say ‘what is the evidence in front of you’ and construct it in a logical way to get to the right answer, not the red herring.”

At Birmingham University, Harries studied medicine and pharmacology, graduating in 1984. But rather than jump straight into a career, she packed a rucksack and set off on the hippy trail, starting in south-east Asia and taking in the Australian outback before settling in New Zealand for two years, where she married and had the first of her four children. “On the way back we bought a campervan and drove the whole way from Tasmania to Darwin along the coast,” she recalls.

The marriage didn’t last and Harries spent a long time as a single mother – a tough job at any time but especially hard in the late 1980s and 1990s when the mood was less supportive. Yet there were positives. She says the experience shaped her – she’s a huge DIY fan – and also some of the women she now works with. “Sometimes, if I tell them I was a single mum for many years, that actually is quite an important point for them. It makes them feel they can make it through as well.”

Harries says that only once, right at the start of her career, did she allow gender discrimination to steer her professional choices. “It’s the only time in my career I’ve made a gender-biased choice. I wanted to be a paediatric surgeon but, at the time, it was completely incompatible with having children. There were no female role models. They were just more or less non-existent.

“It’s the only time ever I’ve done anything where I’ve said ‘actually, you know, this isn’t going to work. I’m a woman’. I wouldn’t do any of that now. These are completely different times – fortunately.”

It’s impossible not to admire Harries’s work ethic and determination. There are parallels to be drawn with the hard-boiled cops of Hollywood legend – although she is a pescatarian and only drinks “two or three” glasses of wine each week.

True to form, she ended a talk at the new Pandemic Institute in Liverpool last week with the word “Panglossian”. “I wanted to encourage them to remain enthusiastic in the face of total adversity,” she explained. There was only the slightest hint of a smile.

Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages


Andrew Griffin
Mon, 25 September 2023 

(Antony Jones/Getty Images for Sp)

Spotify has cloned the voices of its top podcasters and will use them to translate podcasts into other languages.

Presenters including Lex Fridman and guests such as Kristen Bell now have podcasts on Spotify in which they have conversations in Spanish – despite those interviews never actually having happened.

Instead, Spotify took those podcasts and used a range of artificial intelligence technologies to create a match of their voice. They then translated the podcasts and used the voice clone to read them back out, giving an interview that is in another language but nonetheless sounds as if it was being spoken by the actual presenters.

The company hopes that the technology means that people can listen to natural-sounding podcasts that were originally English – even if they do not speak the language.

The technology is available for a limited number of podcasts in Spanish already, and Spotify will collect them in a devoted part of the app, and will also appear as a suggestion when someone starts listening to a relevant podcast. Soon it expects to use the technology for French and German, and will apply it to more podcasts.

“By matching the creator’s own voice, Voice Translation gives listeners around the world the power to discover and be inspired by new podcasters in a more authentic way than ever before,” said Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s vice president of personalisation, in a statement. “We believe that a thoughtful approach to AI can help build deeper connections between listeners and creators, a key component of Spotify’s mission to unlock the potential of human creativity.”

Spotify has already rolled out a number of other AI-powered features, including its AI DJ, which not only chooses songs but uses an artificial voice to introduce them. Like that AI DJ, the new translation technology is built on tools provided by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.

It said the current techologies are “just the beginning”. “The creator and audience feedback from the pilot will provide important insights for future expansion, iterations, and innovations,” Spotify said in its announcement, and it said it would “continue exploring new ways to overcome barriers to storytelling”.

UK

Nissan vows to go all-electric by 2030 despite Sunak delay on petrol ban

Alex Lawson
Mon, 25 September 2023

Photograph: Jay McNally/AP

Nissan has vowed to “press ahead” with a plan to only sell electric vehicles in Europe by 2030 despite Rishi Sunak’s delay to the UK ban on new petrol and diesel car sales.

The Japanese carmaker said all new models in Europe will be entirely electric by the end of the decade, as it launched a new EV design in London.

Sunak sparked anger among green campaigners, MPs and sections of the car industry last week when he announced a U-turn on a string of climate-related policies, including delaying a planned ban on new petrol and diesel cars and vans by five years from 2030 to 2035.

Related: Carmakers call on EU to delay 10% tariff on electric vehicle exports

Carmakers have already spent billions shifting their models and supply chains towards electric cars, and the ban could disrupt their plans for phasing out petrol and diesel cars. However, Nissan said on Monday it was “pressing ahead with plans to achieve 100% EV in Europe by 2030, with all new Nissan models from now to be all-electric in Europe”.

The company’s president and chief executive, Makoto Uchida, said: “There is no turning back now.”

Nissan plans to introduce 19 full-electric and eight hybrid models before 2030. By 2028, it also plans to introduce “cobalt-free” technology to bring down the cost of EV batteries by 65%. The company is also working on a battery that can cut charging times by a third, due to launch in five years’ time.

“EVs powered by renewables are key to us achieving carbon neutrality, which is central to our Ambition 2030 vision. Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe – we believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet,” Uchida added.

He was speaking as Nissan launched the Concept 20-23 design in Paddington, London. The sporty, urban design was launched to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Nissan Design Europe building at the central London site.

Nissan announced plans to spend €40m (£35m) at that building and its nearby Nissan Technical Centre Europe on new staff, technology and upgrading the facilities. It will spend more than €26m solely on electrification projects at the latter site.

The technical centre is host to a study on autonomous driving. The government-backed research aims to develop a self-driving car capable of safely navigating residential, urban and rural spaces. The programme involves the creation of maps and systems that make the vehicle capable of handling a range of different on-the-road scenarios.

MPs and carmakers are pushing to reduce Europe’s reliance on China for critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium, which are crucial in the EV supply chain.

Carmakers have also called for a delay to post-Brexit tariffs on UK and European car exports in the face of competition from China.

In the UK, the faltering electric car industry had received a boost from the Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata’s £4bn investment pledge for an electric battery plant, likely in Somerset, and BMW’s £600m upgrade of facilities in Oxford to produce the Mini. However, Sunak’s U-turn has threatened to stall this momentum.

Nissan will soon launch two new EVs in Europe – a successor to the “entry-level” Micra, and another vehicle, which will be built at its vast Sunderland plant as part of a £1bn project.

The increased competition from China also provided impetus for Nissan to complete a long-delayed deal to restructure its relationship with Renault earlier this year.

The troubled alliance between the global manufacturers had been a source of tension for decades, and risked collapse after the arrest in Japan of Carlos Ghosn, the former chair of both companies who had been pushing for a full potential merger, on charges of concealing income in 2018.

Nissan says ‘no going back now’ as it commits to all-electric in Britain by 2030

Gareth Corfield
Mon, 25 September 2023

Nissan launched its new electric vehicle Concept 20-23 in London

 - Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Nissan Motor Europe

Nissan has vowed to go all-electric in Europe by 2030 as the Japanese car giant’s chief executive said “there is no going back now”.

Its commitment to the 2030 deadline comes less than a week after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pushed back a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2035.

Makoto Uchida reiterated Nissan’s EV timeframe at an announcement in London on Monday, where he unveiled the manufacturer’s latest battery-powered car design.

Nissan employs more than 7,000 staff across the UK at three sites, including its flagship factory in Sunderland, which accounts for 6,000 employees.

Mr Uchida said: “Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe – we believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet.

“More than a million customers have already joined our journey and experienced the fun of a Nissan electric vehicle, and there is no turning back now.”

“We are committed to EVs and we have been from the start, we are at the tipping point of consumer adoption for EVs. The world needs to move on.”

Downing Street’s decision to push back the petrol car ban from 2030 sparked an instant backlash from large parts of the automotive industry last week, as companies raised concerns over the consistency of government policy.

Ford UK chairman Lisa Brankin warned that dropping the 2030 deadline would threaten future investment in the UK.

She said: “Our business needs three things from the UK government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three.”

The reversal from Mr Sunak followed years of effort from carmakers to meet the 2030 goal.

Former Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said in 2020 that phasing out of petrol and diesel cars “would create 40,000 extra jobs” in Britain while reducing emissions “equivalent to taking more than 4m cars off the road”.

Britain’s EV production was recently boosted by a surge in investment, fuelled in part by government subsidies.

Earlier this month, BMW-owned Mini announced a £600m deal to convert its factory in Oxford to all-electric by 2030, with the company reportedly receiving a £75m taxpayer subsidy.

Jaguar Land Rover is also building a £4bn EV factory after it received £500m in government funding.

Similarly, Nissan and Tata have announced plans to invest billions into huge battery manufacturing plants.

RIP

Singer-songwriter Terry Kirkman, founding member of the Association, dies at 83


Christi Carras
Sun, September 24, 2023 

Singer-songwriter Terry Kirkman of the Association has died. (Michael Ochs Archives)

Terry Kirkman, singer, songwriter and founding member of the 1960s folk-rock band the Association, has died. He was 83.

The musician died Saturday at his home in Montclair, his wife Heidi Berinstein Kirkman confirmed to the Los Angeles Times. He died of congestive heart failure following a long illness.

Kirkman formed the Association alongside guitarist Jules Gary Alexander and others in Los Angeles in 1965. The group comprised a large ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists who blended a variety of sounds — from pop and rock to folk and psychedelic — in perfect harmony.

In addition to lending his vocals, Kirkman penned a number of songs for the Association, including the popular tracks "Everything That Touches You" and "Cherish."

Before Kirkman departed the Association in 1972, the band was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including three — contemporary rock 'n' roll group performance, performance by a vocal group and contemporary rock 'n' roll recording — for "Cherish." Kirkman returned when the band reunited in 1979 before leaving again in 1984.

In 2003, Kirkman and other members of the Association were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

Outside of his work for the Association, Kirkman was proud to serve as clinical director of the Musicians Assistance Program — now known as MusiCares — where he helped artists experiencing addiction.

Kirkman is survived by his wife, daughter Sasha, son-in-law and two grandchildren.

 

Denis Villeneuve Calls IMAX Releases ‘the Future of Cinema’

Christian Zilko
Sat, September 23, 2023 


Denis Villeneuve has emerged as one of the most vocal proponents for the preservation of theatrical moviegoing in recent years. In addition to combining Hollywood spectacle with cerebral filmmaking with his star-studded “Dune” movies, he remains a passionate supporter of his fellow blockbuster auteurs.

As a believer in movie theaters as a communal experience, he has had a lot to celebrate this summer with the success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” In a new interview with the Associated Press, Villeneuve said that he always expected “Oppenheimer” to be a financial success. But he admits that the film’s massive box office haul has outpaced even his most optimistic predictions.

“Where it is right now has blown the roof off of my projection,” Villeneuve said of “Oppenheimer.” “It’s a three-hour movie about people talking about nuclear physics.”

Much of the success of “Oppenheimer” can be attributed to IMAX and 70mm film screenings, which offer fans an experience that is not possible to replicate through home viewing (and help distributors through higher ticket prices). Villeneuve said that he believes the use of large formats like IMAX to turn films into events represents a path forward for the film industry.

“The future of cinema is IMAX and the large formats,” he said. “The audience wants to see something that they cannot have at home, that they cannot have on streaming. They want to experience an event.”

While Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” was initially scheduled to hit theaters this fall, it was delayed to 2024 amid a recent shuffling of Warner Bros.’ release calendar. But the Oscar nominee is already thinking ahead to future entries in his sci-fi franchise. He recently teased that he has begun to brainstorm ideas for a potential third “Dune” movie that would pull heavily from Frank Herbert’s follow-up novel “Dune Messiah.”

“If I succeed in making a trilogy, that would be the dream,” Villeneuve said. “’Dune Messiah’ was written in reaction to the fact that people perceived Paul Atreides as a hero. Which is not what he wanted to do. My adaptation is closer to his idea that it’s actually a warning.”

UK
Gordon Brown in challenge to SIR Keir Starmer over backing Tory benefit policies


Hamish Morrison
Mon, 25 September 2023 

File photograph of former prime minister Gordon Brown (Image: PA)

GORDON Brown has said the UK’s benefit system is failing to support those living in poverty – in an indirect challenge to Keir Starmer who has said he will maintain punishing Tory welfare policies.

Speaking at an event in Edinburgh earlier this month, the former prime minister said the Government could improve people’s lives by making the social security net more generous, arguing current policies made people live in humiliating poverty.

He said people "cannot live on the benefits that [they] receive" at the moment.




Asked how the Government could “fast-track” a change to combat the cost-of-living crisis, Brown responded: “Change the benefit system. I mean, Universal Credit is, in my view, discredited as a benefit.”

It has been read as a challenge to the current Labour leader who has committed to maintaining policies like the two-child cap on benefits.

Brown went on: “Half of the people on Universal Credit are not actually getting the benefits that officially they are entitled to, because they’re subject to deductions, because if you go on Universal Credit, you’ve got to lend money for the first five weeks and then half the people, some people, have got 30% of their benefits deducted.

The National: Gordon Brown

“So you’ve got declining benefits and you’ve also got deductions from benefits. And of course, you’ve got things like the two-child rule, you’ve got the benefits cap, you’ve got the housing benefit limit, you’ve got the bedroom tax.

“All these things have been introduced recently. So the truth is that you cannot live on the benefits that you receive at the moment and they used to maybe last one week out of two weeks, they now last only for the first two or three days and then people are finding it very difficult to survive.

“I think there is a responsibility on all of us to review the Universal Credit system and to see if we can make it better. But equally at the same time, we’ve got a winter crisis ahead of us and that’s why I’m appealing to people now.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer mocks Labour critics in two-child benefits cap row

“People are concerned about the divisions in our society and, yes, people are so embarrassed by their poverty that they try and hide it but can’t in the end hide it from children who are going to school without proper clothes, without proper hygiene. We have the responsibility to do something about it.”

'Labour must commit to bold reforms'

Ben Macpherson, a former social security minister in the Scottish Government, said Brown was right to argue for changes to the benefits system and called on Labour to commit to “bold reforms”.

He said: "The UK Government’s Universal Credit benefit system is not fit for purpose - it is uncaring and wrongheaded, and anyone who speaks to those struggling in our communities understands that.

“Now, at a time when people are really suffering in a cost of living crisis, the Labour leadership have shockingly shown that they won’t do anything differently from the Tories to create a fairer UK welfare system.

“As the SNP has long argued, Keir Starmer should do the right thing and commit to boldly reforming the UK benefits systems by scrapping the two child cap, the benefit cap and the bedroom tax, as well as increasing the payments, as Gordon Brown has rightly argued.

“If Labour leaders cannot commit to these bold reforms, it will be clear that that’d rather align themselves with the Tory status quo than help those struggling in our society.

“In stark contrast, the SNP will always push for changes at Westminster and is taking action where we can to help those that need it most - with the Scottish Government spending over £700 million over the past 5 years mitigating some of the worst aspects of the UK welfare system, increasing twelve Scottish benefits by the rate of inflation, creating the Scottish Child Payment, and increasing the Scottish Child Payment by 150% since 2022 to £25 per eligible child per week.

“If the Scottish Government had more powers over social security, and more financial powers, we could get rid of damaging policies entirely and build a better Scotland that is based on the principles of dignity, fairness and respect.”

READ MORE: 'Two cheeks of same backside’: Alba leaflet pans Tories and Labour

Labour were criticised when it was revealed over the summer the party would not reverse draconian Tory welfare policies such as the two-child limit on benefits.

The National: Keir Starmer

Starmer defended the party’s stance saying it was the type of “tough decision” Labour must make they want to win the next General Election.

He said: “We keep saying collectively as a party that we have to make tough decisions. And in the abstract, everyone says: ‘That’s right Keir.’

“But then we get into the tough decision – we’ve been in one of those for the last few days – and they say: ‘We don’t like that, can we just not make that one, I’m sure there is another tough decision somewhere else we can make.’ But we have to take the tough decisions.”

ABOLISH LESE-MAJESTE
Top Thai protest leader jailed on royal insult charges

By AFP
September 26, 2023

Thai lawyer and political activist Anon Numpa has been jailed for four years over a speech calling for reforms to lese-majeste laws which protect the monarchy from criticism - 

Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Pitcha Dangprasith and Rose Troup Buchanan

A Thai court on Tuesday jailed one of the leading figures in the kingdom’s youth-led pro-democracy protest movement for four years on royal insult charges.

Thailand has some of the world’s strictest royal defamation laws, which shield King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his close family from criticism and which critics say have been weaponised to silence dissent.

Anon Numpa, a 39-year-old human rights lawyer and activist, was convicted on Tuesday at Bangkok Criminal Court over a speech he made during the protests in 2020.

At their peak the demonstrations drew tens of thousands to the streets, with some making unprecedented calls for reforms to the monarchy, and for changes to the lese-majeste law, which carries a 15-year prison sentence.

Tuesday’s case was first of 14 lese-majeste charges against Anon.

“Loss of personal freedom is a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” Anon told reporters as he entered the court with his partner and their baby, ahead of the sentence.

He raised a three-finger salute as he walked in — a symbol adapted from the “Hunger Games” films that became synonymous with the demonstrations.

“We’ve come a long way and we’ve seen lots of changes in the Thai political scene since the movement back in 2020,” he said.

“If I get sentenced to prison today, it might be many years but it will be worth it.”

The court also fined him 20,000 baht ($550) for violating an emergency decree in effect at the time.

Following the verdict, his lawyer Krisadang Nutcharas described Anon as an “innocent man” and said they would probably appeal.

“The family and friends are trying to submit bail for a temporary release,” he told reporters outside court.

Anon is one of more than 150 activists who have been charged under lese-majeste laws, often referred to as “112” after the relevant section of the criminal code.

Ahead of the hearing, dozens of young political activists — many wearing shirts emblazoned with “No 112” — waited to show support.

– ‘A dark day’ –

Andrea Giorgetta of the International Federation for Human Rights told AFP the jail time was “severe”, describing it as “a long prison sentence for exercising your rights”.

“It is certainly a dark day for justice,” he said outside court.

He said the conviction rate under 112 remained close to 100 percent.

“The only question remains how many years you will get, and whether the court will decide if you can be awarded bail.”

Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, Amnesty International’s regional researcher for Thailand, also condemned the verdict.

“Today’s conviction is yet another indicator that Thailand’s space for freedom of expression is vanishing,” he told AFP.

Chanatip said more than 1,800 people had faced broad criminal charges since the demonstrations.

“These charges are the shameful legacy of Thailand’s previous administration that has yet to be remedied by the new government.”

In a general election in May, the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) won the most seats partly on a promise to reform lese-majeste laws.

But MFP was shut out of government by conservative pro-royalist forces in the Senate.

PRO PUTIN
Slovakia campaign rhetoric raises LGBTQ concern

By AFP
September 26, 2023

A Bratislava protest against the murder in October 2022 of two men at a gay bar - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Laszlo JUHASZ

A year after a homophobic double murder, Slovakia’s LGBTQ community is concerned about the increase in hate speech ahead of elections on Saturday in a country where gay people have few legal rights.

Former prime minister Robert Fico, whose left-wing Smer-SD party is set to win the parliamentary vote, is infamous for his frequent verbal attacks on the community.

He has labelled adoption by same-sex couples, which is not possible in Slovakia, a “perversion”.

The latest campaign video by Smer-SD features a character resembling liberal PS party leader Michal Simecka wrapped in a rainbow flag pondering which toilet to choose during a school recess.

“While the progressive Misho (Michal) decides whether he is a boy, a girl or a helicopter today, for us gender ideology in schools is unacceptable and marriage is a unique union between a man and a woman,” a smiling Fico says to the camera.

“I will certainly never be a supporter of them (LGBTQ people) being able to marry, as we see in other countries,” Fico told a press conference recently.

As same-sex partnerships are not regulated by law, LGBTQ people in Slovakia are not legally considered related to their partner and cannot, for example, obtain information about their health, or inherit.

Slovakia also does not recognise marriages contracted abroad.

– ‘Spread of hatred’ –

Martin Macko, executive director of the Inakost (“Otherness”) Initiative, an umbrella organisation of Slovak gay and lesbian organisations, voiced concern about the rhetoric from Smer-SD.

“Smer-SD not only uses the spread of hatred towards LGBTQ people in its campaign but also pledged in its programme to enforce legislation that prohibits talking about LGBTQ people in schools,” Macko told AFP.



“We expect him to push for similar laws as (Prime Minister Viktor) Orban in Hungary or (Republican governor) Ron DeSantis in Florida,” he added.

Only two of the 25 parties running for parliament offer promises of better rights for the LGBTQ community and other Slovak parties have used similar rhetoric to Smer-SD in their own campaigns to attract votes.

LSNS, a far-right opposition party, uses slogans and posters promising to protect the country from LGBTQ and gender “ideology”.

Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) chairman Milam Majersky recently labelled LGBTQ “ideology” a “scourge” for Slovakia.

Former centrist prime minister Igor Matovic, whose OLaNO party is struggling to make it into parliament after a dive in popularity, has also taken to social media to criticise LGBTQ people.

“Seventy three genders? Sick. Convert 12-year-old girls to boys? Sick,” he wrote in one post.



– ‘Don’t expect any change’ –

Apart from the SaS party, which according to the polls will struggle to make it into parliament, Progressive Slovakia (PS) is the only liberal party that has a chance of being part of the new Slovak government.

Its pre-election programme promises “the extension of marriage to all couples, which we consider to be the true fulfilment of the principle of equality”.

Even if liberal or progressive parties could form the new Slovak government, there is no guarantee that their election promises would become policy.

“I am afraid that it will turn out the way it has always been in Slovakia,” Juraj Martiny, director of a public relations firm, told AFP.

“To create a governing majority in parliament, they (PS) will join forces with more conservative parties and the agenda in favour of LGBTQ people will be forgotten, as a concession to these parties to form a coalition,” said the 46-year-old, who is gay.

His words are echoed by Hana Fabry, a 60-year-old author and lesbian activist from Bratislava.

“I don’t expect any change.

“But I want and need to believe that if the PS party comes to power, it will not throw the rights of LGBTQ people in the trash during negotiations on participation in the government, as is the norm in Slovakia,” Fabry said.

“Hate speech used by politicians also finds support in a large part of the population,” she added.

– ‘Nothing to take away’ –

In a 2022 survey by Inakost, more than 77 percent of gays and lesbians in Slovakia said the most serious problem faced by the LGBTQ community was the lack of legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.

But according to the latest study by GLOBSEC, an international think tank, 63 percent of Slovaks do not want equal rights for gay people.

Slovakia, a predominantly Catholic country, was shaken by a double murder in front of a gay bar in Bratislava in October 2022.

A 19-year-old man, the son of a prominent member of the extreme right political party Vlast, gunned down two young men before killing himself.

The murderer posted on Twitter, rebranded X, immediately after the crime that he acted out of hatred towards LGBTQ people.

In the aftermath of the attack, there were calls for reforms but little was done.

Martiny held out little hope that the election would change that.

“The state has not done anything for us so far… Where there is nothing, there is nothing to take away.”