Mike Sweeney

Speedway: No brakes, no fear

2011-07-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

The following article was recently entered for a long-form journalism competition organised by GQ men's magazine.

A flat oval dirt track some way off the M25 in Essex; barren-land, lurid under floodlights. A tractor rumbles along the back straight, smoothing out the loose shale with industrial rake in toe. A crowd is gathering; fathers and sons with hooters and scarves and chequered flags; pensioners pitching up chairs on the grass bank and off-duty labouring men finding their way up the concrete stairs of a shabby grandstand.

Above the clamour, the sound of an engine revving peals out into the night. A plume of black smoke belches up from the dugouts; not ordinary petrol fumes – a sweeter, more pungent smell: methanol, because it’s less flammable.

This is speedway, the long forgotten-about jewel in the repository of British motorcycle racing – arguably the most dangerous motor sport invented. Four men on a 260 meter circuit, 12 meters across, riding at speeds that exceed 80 mph, on a surface that is designed to make them slide. And they have no breaks.

It’s race night at the Arena-Essex raceway, the second leg of the Elite Shield and a preseason showcase of some of the top riders competing in Britain. Wolverhampton Wolves, leading the aggregate and captained by towering Swedish number one Freddy Lingren, versus the Lakeside Hammers, carrying home advantage this time and with the greater weight of Grand Prix experience.

Fortunately for Lakeside promoters Stuart Douglas and Jon Cook, the rain has ceased for a few hours, allowing the track to dry. There are 1,800 fans here tonight, less than the promoters had hoped for perhaps but enough to raise an atmosphere.

A team of medics trickles out onto the inside of the track and contemplates the crowd.

In the pits, sixteen lean, Kevlar-suited riders are making final preparations. Hard-browed and broad-shouldered Krzysztof Kasprzak, the top Hammer rider and Polish international, bows his head solemnly against a wall, pincing his fingers with the rhythm in his headphones. Tai Woffinden, the bright-eyed nineteen-year-old for Wolves, shares careful last minute checks on his engine with a mechanic. The mood is grave, pensive, dense with rivalry and tension.

Perhaps nerves are understandable in this sport, even if these men do race three times a week. Each of them can tell ten tales of riding careers ended on the raceway, bones shattered, shoulders immobilised, even lives lost. If the right statistics were compiled, they would probably show that speedway is among the most perilous sports in the world.

“Injuries might be more common in motor-cross,” says Lakeside team manager Jon Cook, “but they are rarely more severe. If a motor-cross rider miss-times a jump, he might hit the ground at 30 to 40 piles per hour. If a speedway rider falls on a bend he lands at 70 miles per hour. Hit the fence at that speed and things will not look good for him.”

Take Lakeside captain Adam Shields, 31, he instances. In August 2008 he was up-righting from a bend during the final heat of a meeting in Peterborough, tied at 31 points a piece, when he clipped the lead rider’s back wheel and slammed side-on onto the track, flying down the straight like a skimming pebble. By the time he came to a stop, Shields had fractured two discs in his lower back and broken three ribs, one of which had punctured his lung. He was confined to a body cast for the next three months. It was, in the words of Cook, “more than an injury crisis; the heart had been ripped from the team.”

Or, ask former world under-21 champion Lee Richardson, last season’s Lakeside number one and the highest scoring British rider in the Elite League, who his biggest inspiration is. When Richardson was just an infant, his uncle Steve Weatherly, himself a professional racer, tangled with another rider at a meeting at the Hackney Wick stadium in London, and was paralysed for the rest of his life.

And yet, in spite of all the risks, the pain, the operations, here comes captain Adam Shields now, Lakeside number three, in the blue helmet-cover, rising with the whine of a two-minute countdown call for the first heat. Steam heaves from his snout in the biting cold of the night. A mechanic helps jump-start him out and on the track. He nods at the mob of children waiting for him beside the barrier.

Twenty-five years ago, men like this were handsomely rewarded for their travails. Elite speedway riders were national rather than local heroes. Ten million people sat down to watch the sport every Saturday afternoon on ITV World of Sport, and up and down the country, tens of thousands of fans huddled together in greyhound racing stands – sometimes in football stadiums – to watch the great Peter Collins and Bruce Penhall churn up vast clouds of brown haze as they tore terrifyingly, majestically round the tracks. It was the summer spectacle of Britain’s labouring classes. Never had such grace, such strength and agility been demonstrated in so sullied a setting as the raceway.

But it was not to last. In the mid ‘70s Wembley lost its place as the home of the Speedway Grand Prix world final, joining a five-year rota with Sweden, Poland, Germany and Holland. New sports like darts and snooker emerged to scatter the interests of the populace. Television coverage ebbed, and with it the level of sponsorship, paling now by comparison with the money in Polish and Scandinavian speedway.

For riders, most of whom had known no other career and wanted none, there was no option but to take on the costs of racing themselves.

Professionals began to arrange their own sponsorship deals, set up their own workshops and hire personal mechanics. And as soon as the landmark Bosman contract ruling of 1995 allowed them, they began to sign contracts with speedway clubs in other EU countries, flying to up to four different meetings a week to increase their earnings. What formed was an itinerant community of riders from all over the world, mainly Sweden, Poland, Britain and Australia, moving from raceway to raceway, trading on their valour and audacity.

The top competitors still earned good money – perhaps £20 000 on a good week – but they had to work harder for it. And they lost some of their team-ethic and sense of belonging it would seem. Last season the two Lakeside riders Kauko Nieminen and Daniel Davidsson rode together every Friday night at the Arena-Essex raceway, then flew across the North Sea and competed against each other for different teams in the Polish Ekstraliga, only to meet up again on Tuesdays in Sweden to ride for club Valsarna.

“It is the strangest team sport in the world,” says British number one Lee Richardson, “One day you’ll find yourself sitting on a plane sharing jokes with your team mate, the next day you’re entering an arena and he’s become your arch rival. It can be quite disorientating.”

But there were more intractable problems with the peripatetic setup too. Since the late nineties, British speedway has been suffering a dearth of home-grown talent. In an echo of the complexities of top-flight football, most of the top rider spots in the Elite League are now filled by experienced foreign riders (they account for ten of the sixteen riders competing tonight) and even in the Premier League, the second speedway division, there are several clubs with only two British riders. Add to this the difficulty for young athletes to enter the sport in the first place – since most domestic clubs are too small to support youth academies – and it will come as no surprise that British speedway is struggling on the international stage. The GB team currently resides at the bottom of the Speedway World Cup medals table, having managed a top three place in just two of their last ten competitions.

Ten years ago, with attendance figures in the decline and more riders signing sponsorship deals abroad than at home, you'd be forgiving that British Speedway was heading for the scrap heap. But then, curiously, a new breed of promoter arrived, and there were buyout at five of the nine Elite League clubs. The entrepreneurs were like local property-developer Matt Ford at Poole Pirates or advertising exec Stuart Douglas at Lakeside, they had lived and loved speedway as kids and were at pains to watch its demise.

And in 2000, they converged under the rubric of the British Speedway Promoters Association (BSPA) to draw up a game plan.

“The promoters saw that their only realistic opportunity for coverage was with Sky Sports, which was already showing other minority sports like UK ice-hockey," explains Jon Cook, 34 at the time and promoting for the Eastborne Eagles:

"The problem was that Sky wasn’t sure that it could attract the kind of viewing figures to make it viable. So the BSPA (British Speedway Promoters Association) decided to put their money where their mouth was, and pledged to make a contribution themselves to fund the enterprise. It was a risk obviously, but it paid off. The viewing figures were good.”

Very good in fact, and they rose steadily. Speedway became the third most popular sport in Sky Sports’ portfolio, and in 2006 the BSPA signed a new five-year contract with the broadcaster.

But television coverage was only half the battle; owners had to ensure that their clubs produced the quality of speedway to merit it, and few teams were well moneyed at this point – partly because, as Lee Richardson suggests cautiously, “the British clubs were a bit stuck in their ways.” The sport needed a revamp, and who better to provide it for the Hammers than an ad-man.

“My local team as a kid was the Rayleigh Rockets [in Essex],” says Stuart Douglas. “I used to go with my dad on a Saturday night and eat pasty and chips. When I was still young the club dissolved and I lost speedway as a sport, going on to promote Superbikes instead. But when I heard that the Hammers were in financial difficulties I came into sponsor the club.”

The old ‘Arena-Essex’ moniker was jettisoned for a new one, the Lakeside Hammers, and the club’s fortunes altered dramatically. After finishing bottom of the Elite League in both 2005 and 2006 and failing to making a league cup final since 1993, the club rose to seventh in 2007, second in 2008, and third last season, also winning the Elite League KO Cup (hence tonight’s meeting). What is more, and as if to prove their dedication to the future of the club, in February 2008 Douglas and Cook set up a youth academy at Lakeside, managed by veteran elite rider Paul Hurry.

And the Hammers are not the only club riding a wave of new investment and enterprise. Designs for youth academies at elite clubs Belle Vue Aces and Peterborough Panthers were announced earlier this year, and new and renovated venues are also being planned in Manchester, Leicester, Cirencester and Bristol. “The rush to open up new raceways is at an all time high,” confirms Jon Cook – and this particular speedway veteran, whose opinion seems to be worth something, is very optimistic. “In the 1920s when speedway first arrived in Britain races were ridden in front of 30,000 people – the equivalent of second division football. At the moment, we’re sitting somewhere between the conference and division four, but I would like see the return of crowds of eight to ten thousand, and I think its very possible.”

Back at the raceway, the noise is deafening. Heat one; Hammers Kasprzak and Shields, in red and blue helmets, versus Fredrik Lingren and Nicolai Klindt the Dane, in green and yellow. A baseball-style jingle announces the beginning of the race, a zip wire lifts at the starting line, and the bikes rocket into full throttle, immediately fanning out into the first turn.

The riders lean both back and in to the turn, pitching out their rear wheel, broad-stanced, taut, their elbows up and out, firm and resolute. They glide powerfully, indomitably round the bend, nigh on sideways. Then, violently, they thrust their whole bodyweight forward to finish the turn, spoiling for an extra wheel-length of lead.

The engines rise and wane terrifically as they pass the crowd, splattering the bottom of the billboards and barriers with grit. The front wheels lift viciously on the straight – Lingren in first, then Kasprzak, Shields, Klindt. The Hammer tries to whip round on the outside of the leader, but he is too strong in the turn, and Kasprzak is forced to balk back in retreat.

And now the crowd is jumping and yelping and howling with rapture and delight, throwing their arms forward to will their riders on, drop-jawed and wide-eyed with the drama of it all.

It might not be the youngest crowd, but something here suggests there is still plenty of life in British speedway.

What now for the Digital Economy Act?

2010-08-31T06:29:00.000-07:00

If Ofcom is smart, it will permit internet users to download music free of charge...

There was something of a subterfuge to the way in which The Digital Economy Act was passed through parliament this summer. Introduced at the tail end of the last government and receiving assent at the beginning of this one, its fast track passage has left it woefully bereft of the kind of nuances that such an important piece of legislation surely requires.

At least legislatures had the sense to acknowledge as much. Peter Mandleson, who introduced the bill, left its terms flexible to point of provisionality. At present, rights-holders will be permitted to investigate abuses of copyright and inform Internet Service Providers, who will then be responsible for warning users to desist. But, crucially, the conditions under which such action will be required have not yet been decided. A legal definition of 'copyright infringement' will be outlined by Ofcom in a regulatory code presented to parliament this Autumn.

That this all-important clause has been omitted from the Act is in some ways unsurprising; it represents utterly unchartered legal territory. In essence, to decide on terms of infringement, regulators have to address a dilemma that has vexed music moguls and movie suppliers since the dawn of downloading : what constitutes a legitimate file-sharing 'peer', and through what kinds sites should these 'peers' be permitted to share files.

Early pronouncements from those responsible for this decision have been little cause for reassurance. Last week, Lord Lucas suggested to the Guardian's Helienne Lindval that the law would avoid criminalizing file sharing between friends, but instead target users that sought files from profit-making host-sites. Hence, an advertising-free site like Dropbox (where users share online data spaces in order to download each other's files) would be permitted, but not one like Pirate bay (where the same process happens, but users have to put up with erratic popups and third-rate advertising).

But as most reasonably savvy internet users will sense, the distinction here is blurred. Facebook profits from advertising, for instance, and it has always made provisions for the transfer of audio and video files. And the inbox pages for googlemail and hotmail are full of adverts. Surely Lucas wouldn't wish to criminalise the emailing of MP3 files?

If not profit-making, though, what is the distinction Lucas is trying to draw?

Arguably, the real issue is the amount of file-sharing that a site facilitates. Whilst a site like Dropbox allows a user to download only their friend's files, Pirate bay facilitates the downloading of millions of discrete files. But there are problems here too; some friends are more generous with their files than others, for instance, and some files (especially new music releases) are in higher demand, so any restriction on the quantity of downloading per site seems unlikely to protect artists and songwriters.

Rather, it seems to me that the suggestion Lucus is making (albeit gropingly) is a far more contentious one. That is, that some online 'friends' are simply more legitimate than others. What, in essence, makes file-sharing on Facebook, Dropbox and Myspace passable, but not on Pirate bay or Limewire, is that user-connections on the former have a tangible real-life equivalent, whereas on torrent sites, users almost never know the person whose file they are using.

Certainly, any standard based on allowing file-sharing between 'friends' but not 'peers' (as it were) would dramatically curb the amount of online file-sharing, most of which goes on between people who have never met. It might even, alas, be workable. But it would also represent an unprecedentedly draconian piece of state-nannying.

The internet is full of sites which encourage connections between people who have never met. Last FM, the online music radio site, prompts users to 'friend' eachother in order to discover new music. Facebook encourages members to join groups and start discussion threads with strangers; Twitter relies on this kind of intercourse. Indeed, virtually-formed relationships lie at the very heart of what has made the internet, a network originally existing solely of collaborative chatrooms, such a huge phenomenon. To argue that they are in some way less legitimate than real-life ties seems to undermine the very sense of democratic altruism upon which the web has flourished..

Where does all of this leave the Digital Economy Act? It seems to me that any attempt by Ofcom to regulate file-sharing will be doomed to failure.

Consider the following scenario: A user logs into a site advertising itself as a forum for people interested in new film releases. All users have, via their shared interest, established a inchoate relationship with each other. On this basis, they begin to share files. Should they be prosecuted? Only, according to Lord Lucas' latest comments, if the site begins to profit from hosting the connections (e.g. via advertising). But why would it want to? An internet site is relatively cheap to run, and it would be worth the efforts of any one (particularly keen) downloader if it represented a means towards extensive file-sharing. Hence the case ranged against the Digital Economy Bill by BT and Talktalk, both of which have claimed that law will simply drive internet users towards more obscure sites.

In fact, the only effective standard for Ofcom to use is one that (admittedly) Lucas and others have already hinted at: one in which all file-sharing is permitted, and in which film and music artists and producers make money via direct negotiations with ISPs . A big commerical deal, like the one already attempted between Virgin Media and Universal Music group, would take the pressure off ISPs (who are surely loath to become cyber police) and ensure songwriters, directors and their like a proper source of revenue.

If Ofcom is to decide on a fair and workable system, and make good a rather shoddy piece of legislation, it must steer well-clear of contentious definitions of file-sharing and allow carte blanche on downloads. As long as we pay to enter the online world -- and we will have to start paying considerably more -- what we take from it should be free.

UPDATE 21/11/2011: A key civil servant admits The Digital Act passed despite lack of independent evidence on effects/extent of piracy

Iraq’s missing modern art

2010-07-20T04:45:00.001-07:00

This article was originally published at New Statesman.co.uk

----

Baghdad’s art galleries are struggling to restore their priceless collections.

There was an intriguing piece in the New York Times this week on the sorry state of Baghdad's National Museum of Modern Art. Despite once housing some of the Arab world's most important works, the museum has been left to atrophy since the fall of Saddam. Its paintings, looted during the collapse of the Ba'ath regime in 2003, are now trading on the black market.

According to recent estimates, about 1,700 of the 7,000 works removed from the museum have been reclaimed. Still missing are paintings by the influential Iraqi artists Madiha Omar and Saud al-Attar, as well as a collection of valuable European works, among them paintings by Pablo Picasso.

For some years now, a coterie of artists and curators has been trying to buy back looted pieces, pressing both the Coalition Provisional Authority and US authorities for help in recovering lost art. But the official position of the occupying powers has been to insist on the voluntary return of goods. Only recently did the new Iraqi government authorise the repossession by force of works removed from the Museum of Modern Art.

In contrast, Iraq's National Museum, which stores ancient treasures from the Sumerian and Babylonian eras, has received heavy investment, including a $14m grant announced in autumn 2008 by Laura Bush. Though still waiting for a heating and cooling system, the national museum was deemed ready for a high-profile reopening ceremony last February, hosted by Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.

So why is the Iraqi administration focusing its resources in this way? Its bias against modern art almost certainly stems from political motives. Most prominent Iraqi artists of the past 20 years have enjoyed the patronage of figures tied to Saddam Hussein's regime -- indeed, the modern art museum was formerly known as the Saddam Centre for the Arts -- and there are some fears that returning works will be vandalised.

In addition, the Islamic political parties that have emerged in the postwar vacuum -- al-Maliki's Dawa Party among them -- have shown scant regard for modern art, in part for fear that these works could be viewed as impious. In a nation riven by so many religious and political divisions, the authorities have had to look to ancient history, rather than modern culture, for symbols of national unity.

So, for the time being, Salam Atta Sabri, director of the Museum of Modern Art, is exhibiting what he can. Of the five storeys that the museum once occupied, three galleries are now open to the public. The rest has become a warren of offices and cubicles belonging to the ministry of culture.

"Hopefully someone is going to help us from international museums [sic]," Sabri told a reporter from the New York Times, "to get the grant for restoration first, and [then] for a better place."

In search of Harper Lee

2010-07-14T05:05:00.001-07:00

This article was originally published at NewStatesman.co.uk

------

It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird, but the author is maintaining her silence.

Spare a thought for residents of the small Bible Belt town of Monroeville in Alabama, where this week a horde of journalists were traipsing the sun-baked, dusty roads in search of anyone who might know a shy old lady living in the town's sheltered housing complex.

July 11 marks the 50th anniversary of 84-year-old Harper Lee's landmark civil rights novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which is set in a fictional equivalent of the town and draws heavily from Lee's own life experiences in it. Like her protagonist Atticus Finch, the author's father was a lawyer who represented black defendants in the Monroeville court house, and like her book's young narrator Scout, as a child she was tomboyish and withdrawn.

But if newspaper editors were hoping to garner something new of the author's enigmatic personality, they were surely to be disappointed. It says much about the relationship between Harper Lee and her keen press following that a five sentence exchange with Daily Mail journalist Sharon Churcher last week was re-reported the world over. In the fifty years since the book's publication, Lee has said barely a word to the media, and she has not given an interview since 1964.

So, in lieu, journalists have been speaking to friends and associates of the author, known locally as "Nelle". And taken together, these give us at least an intimation of why she has been so guarded. The Mail's most insightful source, for instance, was 87-year-old George Thomas Jones, a retired businessman from the town who has known Harper since she was a girl. He said:

I'm not a psychologist, but there's a lot of Nelle in that book . . . People say the publicity the book got turned her into a recluse but publicity didn't ruin her life: I don't think Nelle's ever been a real happy person. '[Her father] was a real genteel man, who listened more than he talked ... but he sure didn't show much affection. I used to caddy for him on the local golf course. He was so formal that he would wear a heavy three-piece suit.. '[Later] my late wife was [Harper's own] golfing partner and she knew never to ask her about [the book]. It's not just something she didn't want to talk about - it's a subject you wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

Meanwhile, the BBC's Washington correspondent Steve Kingstone spent time with retired minister Rev Thomas Lane Butts, who describes himself as a close friend of Lee's.

She [once] asked me, 'You ever wonder why I didn't write anything else?' And I said, 'Along with several million other people. She said, 'I would not go through all the deprivation of privacy through which I went for this book again for any amount of money...[Besides] I did not need to write another book. I said what I wanted to say in that book.

The New York Times had to settle for the writer and documentary director, Mary McDonagh Murphy, who has interviewed Lee's sister Alice, and who suggested she has shunned reporters in the opinion that "writers should not be familiar and recognisable; that was for entertainers."

A three-day festival has been planned to commemorate the novel next week, including a panel discussion of the book featuring Southern scholars and writers, outdoor readings, and expert walking tours of Monroeville. But To Kill a Mockingbird's publishers have organised the festival on the assumption that Lee will not take part. A spokesperson for Harper Collins said: "The legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird speaks for itself."

What is it with reviewers?

2010-01-26T05:54:00.000-08:00

It was with a sad pang of disappointment that I descended the sticky exterior staircase in Covent Garden's Odeon cinema on Saturday evening, having just witnessed the much vaunted Jacques Android thriller Un Prophéte, which seems to have sent film critics into a bizarre apoplexy of adulation.

Android's film, charting the rise of French-Arab Malik El Djebena from small-time petty criminal to hardened mob leader, or rather, wide-eyed ingénu to brutalised maître de criminalité, is far from a bad piece of work. It is a fine piece of work in fact; a sage insight into french prison life harnessing some mean acting and more than a few dramatic, visceral scenes of violence. It is also, however, confusingly sinuous of plot and unsatisfactorily empty of social commentary. Certainly not - not by any stretch - a masterpiece, which is what it has been (repeatedly) described as.

So it was with relief that I read this piece today by Guardian arts writer David Cox, who seems as perplexed as I am by the hyperbole that surrounds the film. It is not so much that the work has been misrepresented; rather, that it does not seem to have been much scrutinised at all. Few of the lionising reviews of A Prophet seem give any indication of why it is supposed to be so good.

Putting aside the issue of what reviewers are for, or how much we should trust them, or (for that matter) whether they are any better qualified than anyone else to pontificate about cinema, it seems fair to say that a certain cinematic topos will always strike a chord with the kind of art house aficionados that write for the broadsheets.

Certainly any film boasting a festival award is unlikely to receive lukewarm reviews in the press. Rarely it seems, more dubiously, is a film with subtitles - particularly one from France - presumably on the logic that no film not worth its weight would have been translated so early on, or (more fatuously) that France is well renowned for art house cinema. Add a few close-ups of scar ridden faces, a few unflinching depictions of mob confrontation, and even the most hollow, meaningless picture seems to be given the stamp of approval.

To reiterate, Un Prophéte falls into neither of these categories (being neither hollow nor meaningless), but it might have been better served by its admirers were audiences not settling into their cinema seats expecting a magnum opus.

Was Nabokov a bad man?

2009-12-21T14:45:00.001-08:00

iPlayer is currently holding a documentary on Vladimir Nabokov, the great Russian emigre writer of Lolita ("Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul"). How Do You Solve A Problem Like Lolita?, it is called - the problem being that Lolita, like a number of Nabokov's books, describes its protagonist's paedophilic proclivities towards a pubescent girl.

The book presents its reader with an unsettling paradox: Humbert Humbert is bad man with a tremendous power of expression, a demon word maestro. We are appalled by his observations, but we cannot help but be lured in by his louche, lucid self analysis. If any author by his or her work says 'this is what this predicament feels like', Nabokov is saying, 'this is what it feels like to be a paedophile'.

The big question that has always loomed over the novel, though, is how much of Humbert is Vladimir? And if the answer is - a lot, does this change the way we must regard Lolita?

The documentary features footage from a 1970s interview in which the writer was boldly asked if he was Humbert Humbert. He gave the only answer he could give under the circumstances: no, absolutely not, "I do not know any little girls." Yet as Martin Amis remarks gravely, writers are in the business of distilling their own musings, and Nabokov clearly mused upon these illicit amorous inclinations with an "embarrassing frequency."

There may some reprieve for the great stylist, however. Even if Lolita does represent the most damning evidence of Nabokov's affliction, it may also be the artefact of his redemption. What if Nabokov, instead of using his page as the amber on which to trap his thoughts, used it as an outlet upon which to dispel them, ridding his mind of its impurities?

There is never a question in the book of the vileness of Humbert's peculiar carnal predilections.

Perhaps Lolita is a testament to the purgative nature of writing.
----------------

This video from 1950s CBC programme Close Up shows Nabokov discussing his Lolita.

Portrait of a migrant family

2009-12-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Migrant communities account for such a large section of the capital's population that you often forget how extraordinary the journey's of many of these families have been. I was invited for dinner this week by the father of two boys I tutor in North London. They are an Afghan family living on a council estate in Camden. English is the family's second language - better learned by the children than by the parents it must be said. Najibullah is a mechanic at the local garage, his wife Shillan works part time as a seamstress.

Asking immigrant families like this one why they came to Britain, however interesting one suspects the answer, is not always a good idea - partly because it can spotlight torrid episodes in their past, partly because it is often awkwardly suggestive of the prelude to a xenophobic diatribe.

Such was my good fortune, therefore, when the conversation turned quite naturally onto where we were from and why we had left.

Najibullah, it transpires, was until 1998 the deputy mayor of Meymaneh, the capital of the Faryab province in north of Afghanistan, and a local chieftain of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan - the national communist party. His wife, meanwhile, was a prominent general practitioner in the city.

Everything changed, he says, when the Taliban ran riot over the northern provinces twelve years ago. Led by some of the very same men that are currently being bounty hunted by the British army, the fundamentalist paramilitary group launched a series of raids on the region in an attempt to take control over the entire country. They failed, but not before they had either killed or forced into exile virtually all of the 10,000 affiliated members of the PDPA.

Najibullah scrambled onto the nearest Europe-bound ferry with his wife, his two infant children, and his cousin Messah, who has joined us for a feast of traditional middle-eastern cuisine. His father, brother and brother in law were all murdered, Najibullah says.

"My whole family had lived in same part of Faryab for three generations. My wife and I attended the local university, and I had been deputy mayor for five years.

"The Taliban had been conducting an eradication of the PDPA from the south of the country upwards. As soon as we began to hear of the kidnapping and slaughter of party members in the nearest city we knew it was time to leave."

Shillan meanwhile (who like the rest of the women in the room has stood for the entire meal) had been practicing medicine for ten years before she came to Britain. She is desperate to obtain the necessary qualifications to become a doctor here too, but she fears she might be too old to perfect her English to the required standard. Hence her minimally paid job at the local clothiers.

You do wonder how common such stories are amongst the immigrant populations of the city. Probably not very, but it does confound crude suggestions that such families come to Britain for an easier standard of living. Who knows how hard it must be for people with degrees in Mathematics and Medicine, and who have known such high positions of influence in their communities, to have to adapt to a precarious life at the bottom borders of society. Most people are lucky enough never to find out.

United Maidens of Camden fight deepening personal debts

2009-11-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

The following article was originally published in the Saturday Guardian LINK

Photograph: Martin Argles (courtesy guardian.co.uk)

Who do you turn to when the money's run out and the bailiff's at the door? For women on the Maiden Lane council estate in Camden, north London, all the official bodies, even the local Citizens Advice bureau, seemed foreboding.

But instead of allowing themselves to slide into hopelessness, the women took matters into their own hands and formed a self-help group that is being hailed as a groundbreaking solution to tackling personal debt problems.

In what local councillors and community support officers call a "bottom-up" response to the credit crunch, the United Maidens meet weekly to share their experiences of financial difficulties and discuss ways in which they can better manage their money.

Since August, Money Wednesdays – sessions run by and for residents from the estate – have been helping Camden mothers apply for tax credits and benefits, as well as teaching them how to budget properly, prioritise debt repayments and access job training.

What started as informal question and answer sessions have developed into a highly organised outfit of discussion groups, advice clinics and money skills classes, run by United Maidens. Momota Khaton, a Maiden mother who helped set up the sessions, says the presence of familiar faces, the relaxed atmosphere and the community ethos of the group is making it the first point of contact for many residents on the estate who are struggling to cope with money problems.

"People come here because they feel comfortable asking for advice from mums who have been in similar situations. It is a warm, friendly environment. Friends of mine on the estate were frightened of going to Citizens Advice because they thought they might be pressured into paying bills.

"Here, they ask questions and seek advice on matters they might otherwise be reluctant to go into."

The group's main focus is on keeping members free of debt and arrears.

Those attending are given the opportunity to complete an eight-unit course – taught by Maidens who have undergone voluntary training – on how to prioritise outgoings. Kevin Jones, a member of the housing regeneration team at Camden council, and who has worked closely with United Maidens, estimates the sessions may have saved attendees up to £9,000.

"The mothers here pass on clear and direct information about the financial issues that matter most, everything from which of their debts are the most serious, legally and practically, to which bailiffs are permitted by law to enter their house in the event of falling into arrears.

"The emphasis is on preventing people falling into financial ruts, but also on making them aware of their rights."

Rapid response

What distinguishes the group from other financial advice services is that not only is it run by and for people in financial hardship, but also that it consolidates the expertise of several support sectors.

Representatives from the welfare rights board, the local council's employability office and the legal advice centre are all invited by the mothers – and attend regularly – to answer questions from residents.

The result, the women say, is that problems are solved more quickly.

"Some of us were a bit tired of the appointment system at Citizens Advice and felt it took too long to get council tax deductions and benefit claims sorted out," says Pauline Stafford, a United Maiden.

"In our sessions, people from many different support groups come to us, and answer our questions and queries directly and face to face.

"This is the first time this has happened, and it means our visitors can skip the complicated bureaucracy of forms or waiting lists."

The group points to the example of a young local resident who was fined by Transport for London for having 30p too little credit on his Oyster card – a sum that escalated to £350 after he became confused as to how to contest the penalty.

Upon attending a Money Wednesday session, his claim was dealt with by a representative from the local Mary Ward legal centre there and then, and the issue was quickly resolved. "This is definitely something that could be applied elsewhere in Britain," says Camden council's Jones, who acts as support officer and secretary to United Maidens.

"What we have found is that residents are empowered by the responsibility of looking out for one another, and that councillors and support providers are more than willing to help on the mothers' terms.

"As long as there are key estate activators – residents who are really keen to improve the standard of living for the people around them – the services are there for them to help themselves."

Money Wednesdays are held at the Maiden Lane Community Centre, Camden, every Wednesday, from 11am until 12.30pm.

Surviving on a recession budget

2009-10-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

Ugh. My financial paucity looms over me like one of J.K Rowling’s dementors, whispering a gloomy mantra into my ear: no job, no money, no prospects. Like most people in my year, I left university with a mountain of debt, I moved out and started renting, and I still part-rely on my parents (at what point does that become embarrassing? When will I have to start paying them back?)

Enough grumbling though – there are more pressing concerns. Like: we need more toothpaste, and the bog role is dwindling. Like: while I wait for that golden career opportunity to escape from the dull compulsion of a jading bar job, how will I make ends meet?

It’s taken me a while to adjust to my new life of austerity – a crash course in thriftiness – but after three months on the breadline, I think I’m getting the knack of it. I tell myself: don’t get evicted, remain in rude health, and try and stave off recession woe. My budget: £100 a week, after rent.

The first conundrum was how to beat down my Morrison’s budget without getting too fat or too thin. Thank god for economy class products, and thanks too to the supermarket for stacking them at the end of the isle so I'm not tempted by luxury items (Caramel McVities are the bane of my post-recession life). Economy bread comes in at 28 pence a loaf, economy juice at 58 pence a cartoon, economy soap at 13 pence a bar.

I buy small amounts of food every evening – not only does this make me feel better at the checkout desk, it also means I can grab discounted products just about to head into the skip. Gradually, triumphantly, I have developed an entirely functional attitude to my food. I have cut out indulgences. I listen to my body. If I am on a sugar low, I eat sugar.

But what about my mental health? Am I never spending on recreation ever again? Correct! A television, with it’s exorbitant license fee, would be fiscal suicide. I watch iplayer and 4OD (I don’t watch ITV). I don’t pay for a TV licence because I don’t watch live television. I go to the pub for the football, ordering a larger shandy - or anything that looks and feels like a pint but doesn’t cost one - and I place it further than an arm’s reach away on the table, to prevent nervous sipping. My gym membership has been cancelled. I don’t swim anymore. I cycle, everywhere. My purchase of a grade 2 bike lock was a difficult, but justifiable decision (a vexed price versus risk assessment).

And finally, my piece de resistance, my tight fist raised and shaking stoically against the downturn: I immerse myself in films and books (loaned from the library, of course) that romanticize poverty. This week I reread Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris, last week it was the beat canon: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Charles Bukowski. I watched Withnail and I three times last month, and I was positively revived by The Pursuit of Happiness (Will Smith, 2006).

So I’m coping. Granted, I’m not having the most fun I have ever had, but fun is expensive. At the moment, I am settling, sanguinely, for fiscal satisfaction.

Pay after reading

2009-08-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

[image: D. Mccandless]

Contesting space in Naples

2009-08-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

"THE SHITBAGS HAVE TAKEN OVER THIS AREA"

In Naples, electric wires hang like old coat hangers from the bleached and peeling facades of five story apartment blocks. Mopeds tear through the traffic, mount the pavements, terrorise pedestrians. The oppressive orange din of street-lights and the stifling July air makes the whole place feel like a microwave.

Naples is dirt poor. The metro is unstaffed, dusty, humid. The police are nowhere to be seen, and the Camorra, the most resilient of Italian Mafiosi are – though equally elusive - a force to be reckoned with in the city.

Still, what strikes the tripper most about the region is neither the poverty nor the criminality, nor the uncollected garbage which made international headlines last year. Instead, it is a steely brand of class conflict - noticeable in the pedestrian piazzas, on the metro, even on the roads; a latent animosity between moneyed and struggling blended dangerously with a macho Italian culture of honour and respect.

I go to a concert in Piazza Gesù Nuovo in the heart of the city with hostel worker Bertrando - short suave and affable in three quarter Levis and matching tattooed feet. It has been arranged in response to the internment without charge of several known protestors prior to Berlusconi’s hosting of the G8. The square is thronged with rowdy locals slurring out lyrics to a hip-hop outfit Bertrando tells me are ‘prophets’ of the Italian music scene.

But there is an eerie tension in the piazza this evening too. In the narrow side-streets, on all four sides, skinheads in short sleeve shirts and Lacoste trainers are revving their mopeds provocatively. They rip in and out of parked cars. At about ten thirty - midway through the set of a lively Neapolitan reggae group – a glass bottle is thrown from the steps of a statue of the virgin Mary. It hits the floor first, sending shards into the crowd.

"These" says Bertrando nodding discretely, "are the shitbags. They come here in the afternoons and evenings on their bikes to keep other people away. They have driven most of the people in Naples out of this area."

The conflict is about space, presence, identity, incomers and outsiders. It is about keeping Naples as it is and preventing its gentrification

"Don’t take this wrong" – his English is clipped and slippery – "I have friends from poorer neighbourhoods, and I know many work hard and do not make trouble. But Naples is full of these people: Shitbags. They come and take over these areas. Ten years ago, this place would have been like this every Saturday evening: people drinking and laughing, beautiful women dancing outside the cafes. But then the Shitbags came and they", he looses his tongue, makes a ramming gesture with the back of his hand to fill the gap, "they clear us all out."

There is a culture of generosity towards beggars in Italy. On the metro, a young man with polio has his empty coffee cup splashed with coins as he staggers down the carriage. But this group of twenty-somethings feel threatened by the hard-up in their city.

As Betrando becomes more vehement, other revellers begin to jostle in with nods and Italian words I don’t understand.

Why the acrimony?

"It is not that they are jealous of the rich. They do not want what they have [or] to behave in the way they behave. For them being poor is not worse, but better. They feel a status and pride because they have to be smarter. They feel they are better because they live with less. And what they do have, they protect and guard."

Including, it would seem, municipal spaces. It is a peculiar phenomenon. Urban groupings are often territorial. Areas are ghettoised, worse-off families driven away from high-rise areas. But in Naples, even picturesque piazzas tucked away behind high-rise church steeples have become no-go areas.

Remarkably, given the political nature of the event and the size of the crowd, there is still not a single policeman in sight. But it would be too easy to say that Naples is lawless. Driving around the centre might give you that impression - cars jump red lights at crossroads; signs inform you that overtaking is forbidden, but that cars on the wrong side of the road have right of way.

In fact, at least on the surface, nothing unlawful is occurring here. The enmity is played out in angry glares, the blasting of horns, a man marching to the front of a kebab line. It’s unnerving. The whole square feels charged, like it’s on the brink of violence, and yet nothing has really happened.

Banksy vs The Bristol Museum

2009-08-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

REVIEW

This summer elusive (but now, alas, outed) Bristol based street artist Banksy is causing a (perhaps unusually sedate ) stir at the Bristol Museum, where his first UK exhibition continues until September. It's a suitably chaotic and uncurated collection of paintings and installations boasting the usual anarchic spin offs of classical works (the Mona Lisa etc) and wry subversions of the establishment.

Among the works are some graffiti pieces loyal Banksy fans will recognise - the hooded and masked street-fighter throwing a bunch of flowers; the policemen kissing passionately; the house-cleaner sweeping dust under a brick wall - but also some brand new, and certainly some of Banksy's best, mechanised objects - a caged family of cctv cameras pecking on birds nests; a policeman rocking hauntingly on a child's coin operated machine horse; a leapord skin coat draped around a tree, flicking its tail lethargically as if it were a resting animal.

In some ways, this is a brave thing for the museum to have done. Not only does it seem to sanction the artist's often illegal activities, in some ways it celebrates the anarchy underpinning all of Banksy's work. Hence, presumably, the museum's decision to wave the normal proscription on photography, and hence the free admission. Art galleries, and certainly museums, are ordinarily places of order and decorum, places where the citizen is silent and acquiescent, and hosting a Banksy exhibition seems rather like holding a boxing match in a church. Maybe this is the point. At any rate, as one of the artist's works declares (its a plywood block with a message splashed across in white emulsifierr paint) 'Its amazing what passes for Art if you put it in a golden frame.'

Banksy is certainly one of Britain's most popular (if not one of its most respected) artists, and the museum has been attracting droves. It's not your average bloc-spectacled art loving elite either, but a younger, more garrulous crowd streaming through the galleries. And it is a stream too, for like most Banksy works none of these pieces seems to demand much pause for thought. Instead, they elicit the kind of reaction the artist has always garnered, the humoured, satisfied, but ultimately rather hollow 'mmmm!'

Call me a snob, but everything Banksy does seems to me to be getting at the same point - look how regulated and repressive modern urban living is, let's all cut loose and rebel before we get swallowed up by Big Brother. Its by no means an empty sentiment, and its certainly well executed, but it all seems a bit unsophisticated.

For me, Banksy is a brilliant political commentator. If he worked for Punch, Private Eye, or the New York Times (and he never would), he would no doubt win awards. As an artist, however, awards seem few and far between.

Go and see Banksy at the Bristol Museum, but don't expect to stay for more than half and hour.