Taking Out The Trash

Sunshine Week

Like any journalist I'm a fan of Freedom of Information legislation and over in the States they run a fun week to promote access laws.
Perhaps we could adopt Sunshine Week over here?

I've got the Auge

I get to review a range of books for Tribune magazine - and usually you can tell what's coming before you open the first page.
Recent additions to my bookshelf have been I'm With The Brand (about, er, brands. In America this had a different, crapper, title), Secrets & Lies (about the CIA and mind control), the Post-American World (about how the American empire might renew itself) and A Billion Lives (by the former UN honcho Jan Egeland).
Good, snappy titles. All bar one had good research and an original story to tell. (Secrets & Lies was very disappointing).
Now I'm now waiting for a review copy of a new edition of Non-places: An Introduction to Supermodernity by Marc Auge.
An introduction to what?
Well I picked it out of the catalogue because of a summary by author Patrick Wight who wrote the quite marvellous The Village That Died for England.
Wrights says of Non-places:

“Shopping malls, motorways, airport lounges — we are all familiar with these curious spaces which are both everywhere and nowhere. But only now do we have a coherent analysis of their far-reaching effects on public and private experience. Marc Augé has become their anthropologist, and has written a timely and original book."

Sounds great. A little Iain Sinclair and a little Guy Debord and some anthropology.
But get yourselves a snappy title folks. I'm a child of the TV generation and if I can't graffiti it onto a bridge across the M4 it's not worth a damn.
*apologies for the appalling pun in the title.

Update: having looked at Patrick Wright's blog I found this post about Melvyn Bragg's brilliant In Our Time rather amusing.

Rise of the machines

Last summer I reported on a competition organised by the MoD on Salisbury Plain to enourage companies and universities to come up with a robot which could help the army fight urban wars.
My posts on this are here.
Last week the BBC reported on some of the projects the MoD was looking at funding generally and several competition winners had been given extra resources. It shows that the event itself was more than just a PR stunt  but a very serious attempt to rope schools, universities and small companies into defence projects.
Scientists for Global Responsiblity have just published a further piece by me on this.
Other items in their spring newsletter are:
*Dr Stuart Parkinson looks at the potential for a sustainable, low-carbon economy to be created through efforts to tackle the current global economic problems.
*Prof Sandy Halliday traces the evolution of the principles behind sustainable design, and argues for their much wider use.
*Social housing projects could learn from past successes Past collaborative efforts of architects and policy-makers have produced elegant social housing solutions by Kate Macintosh MBE Dip Arch.
*Dr Nick Ritchie outlines the serious flaws in the logic of nuclear deterrence upon which the proposed replacement of Trident is based.
Non-members can et a copy for £3.50 from the SGR.

Blacklist EDM and warm words

Er, just as it says in the title. 70 MPs (update 19.37 13/3: 76 now) have now signed Michael Clapham's Early Day Motion on blacklisting.

Ucatt has been looking using other mechanisms to raise the issue in parliament and one was questions to the leader of the House. Harriet Harman duely pledged to end the practice, reports Building magazine.

Update 13.3: in the House yesterday Harman responds to question from Michael Clapham with some warm words: "important issue", "totally opposed", "scurrilous activity". Anybody spot a pledge to actually do as the unions are asking and bring in the regulations required to make blacklisting illegal in her answer? It's not actualy Harman's call anyway but BERR minister Peter Mandelson - and more specifically Pat McFadden.

In an earlier article Building magazine also quoted a lawyer on the potential exposure of companies involved in the scandal.

John Armstrong, partner at law firm CMS Cameron McKenna said the firms could face potentially unlimited claims if they were proved to have behaved in a discriminatory manner against workers on the list. He said: “If someone believes they’ve been unfairly dismissed or overlooked for work then they can bring an action, certainly. It becomes a discriminatory matter.”

I've piece on the issue in tomorrow's Tribune.

In other news: My colleague Rich Cookson has spent the last few months working on a programme for C4's Unreported World about the Congo.

In the jungles of North East Congo, the Unreported World team uncovers evidence that the Lord's Resistance Army - one of the world's most brutal rebel groups - has begun a new campaign of terror, and talks to survivors with stories of unimaginable horror.

Worth tuning in for.

Downfall moves

I've moved my Downfall mash-up to here.

Two wheels bad

Brilliant post over on the Green Bristol blog doing the simple thing of walking the city's cycle routes and photographing the lethal combination of obstacles which any cyclist has to negotiate.
It's all very well to talk about making it a cyclnig city but actually doing it is another thing.

Blacklisting edm

Thirty one MPs have signed Early Day Motion number 1020 which calls on the government to take action on blacklisting.

The text of the EDM is:

That this House is alarmed and concerned to learn from the Information Commissioner's report that the blacklisting of trade union members is widespread in the construction industry; condemns the major construction contractors who subscribed to the Consulting Association and also provided it with information about workers and employees; notes that many of the companies who donated to the Consulting Association are currently engaged on publicly-procured work projects worth billions of pounds; considers that there may be legal implications where for example an employee or worker believes they were dismissed because they were on the list and requests that the Information Commissioner gives a reasonable time for people to make the appropriate checks; and calls on the Government to enact immediately legislation to prohibit the compilation of a blacklist containing the details of workers and employees with a view to them being used by employers or employment agencies to discriminate in relation to employment and to make it a criminal offence for an employer to commission such information.

Card sharp

Rather like this from George Monbiot - top ten climate change deniers as playing cards.
Shame he missed off our own Roger Helmer MEP who used his EU funding to make a DVD decrying global warming theories.

Blacklist update part 5

At some point I'm going to collate the various follow-ups and updates on the blacklisting story into one post but in the meantime....

(New readers start here: Last year I wrote a story for The Guardian on blacklisting. Following this the Information Commissioner launched an investigation. This week that resulted in a vetting agency being shut down and dozens of construction companies named as clients. And Rob Evans and I at The Guardian got the scoop which was widely picked up. This is a collection of links to those follow ups. See here, here and here for my two other updates.)

I mentioned on the last post that the role of the HR sector in all this would be worth investigating. The initial indications are they don't really see it as a problem; it must all be someone else's fault. A bit more of an honest comment here.

Legal firms have been quick off the mark offering advice to companies so they don't come a cropper as The Consulting Association and its client did. I even got some spam at the weekend offering the services of a particular solictor if I needed any legal comment for an article I might be writing.

The FT reports the story here and says at the end that it ws unable to contact the Consulting Association. Funny that, it having gone out of business and all.

The Times took the story on somewhat on Saturday having got hold of more detail on the payments firms made to The Consulting Association.

And in the blogosphere Malcolm Redfellow is just not that surprised by it all

At yesterday's Scottish Labour Conference procedural difficulties meant it wasn't possible to put a motion forward on blacklisting but Ucatt general secretary Alan Ritchie did address delegates.

Tonight MP Michael Clapham is preparing an Early Day Motion on the issue which should be put down tomorrow.

I'm off to write a 500-word piece for Tribune now.

chip wrapping

Meanwhile on with other stories as Friday's splash becomes Saturday's fish and chip paper. Have interviewed this man about piracy in the Gulf of Aden and need to turn that into 1,600 words.

And this seems like a great story on fake safety gear and I'd like to pursue it; if I can get a commission . . .