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FEEDSPORTAL Sat, 14 Jan 2012
Simply walking into the Delaunay makes you feel you've found the perfect restaurant. Sited on the corner of Aldwych and Drury Lane, it hums with elegance. The rubicund doorman tips his top hat, a startlingly pretty Roedean-head-girl takes your coat and you enter a wide, welcoming, marble-floored space. To your right, a vast bar is lit up like a cathedral high altar; to your left is a line of tables for posers, chatterers, couples nursing cocktails. Riding on castors is a glass-topped trolley full of teatime cakes – millefeuille, Black Forest gâteau, sachertorte – in case someone fancies a sugar rush at 9pm. Beyond the grey pillars, you make out the dark, indefinably sexy interior where the serious eating goes on. Mein Gott, you think, das ist wunderbar.
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WORLDHEALTHNEWS.HARVARD Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:00:00 EST
Edmund Kagire reports that health and financial leaders in Rwanda are confident that their county will succeed in achieving many of the UN Millennium Development Goals by the prescribed 2015 deadline. "With only two years to the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Rwanda remains optimistic that it is on track to achieve all the goals by 2015. The 2011 MDG Progress report published by the United Nations towards the end of last year, puts Rwanda among the few African countries on track to achieve the MDG's by 2015. Others are Ethiopia and Mozambique…According to the Minister of Finance John Rwangombwa, Rwanda should be well on course to achieve the remaining goals as the country seems to be maintaining the tempo. 'I don't have all the figures off-head, but what I can tell you is that we are right on track to achieve almost all of them,' Rwangombwa told The New Times. Among other areas, Rwanda is well on course to achieve its targets in health, education, governance and environment sustainability, though uncertainties remain in the area of economy, due to the prevailing poor state of the global economy…The Minister of Health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, believes Rwanda has surpassed some of the targets, particularly in the area of health."
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GUARDIAN Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:00:01 GMT
Progressive activists in the 'critical Muslim' movement are growing in strength and number
When I last logged into Facebook, I was delighted to see a surge of posters featuring a Muslim woman with the tagline "Occupy the mosque". This does not mean I support the physical occupation of prayer spaces across the UK (especially not when people are praying), but because I believe in dismantling the status quo – a status quo that many British Muslims, especially women, have had to pay a bitter price for.
A series of declarations were listed above the poster, including "Women have an Islamic right to hold leadership positions and as members of the board of directors and management committees", and "Women have an Islamic right to be full participants in all congregational activities."
As trivial as these rights may sound to the average secular ear, a fast-growing group of Muslim activists have proved their determination to fight for every single one. Campaigning sentiments are slowly spreading beyond the realm of private whinges, and into community centres and Twitter feeds. It goes without saying that progressive activists are still met with stiff resistance, which extends to threats and intimidation in some cases. Kalsoom Bashir, of Muslim women's consultancy Inspire, related that extremist films were published about her on YouTube after the Guardian documented her struggle for women's empowerment.
What is new about these critical voices is their level of organisation, and their willingness to collaborate with diverse groups. A prime example is the coalition of religious and non-religious groups who organised a counter-protest against the poppy-burners of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) on Remembrance Day 2011 (MAC was banned the night before, rendering the counter-protest unnecessary, but that is a moot point).
This week I attended the launch of the Muslim Institute's new quarterly, Critical Muslim, which promises to usher in a new era of organised critical thought on issues relating to Islam and Muslims. Crucially, this criticism is constructive rather than personal. It is underpinned by values such as truth, justice, compassion and wisdom – values that are both Qur'anic and secular.
At the very least, contributors share a deep concern about the problems that 21st-century Muslims find ourselves mired in. There is often dissatisfaction with the lack of nuance and insight in traditional religious leaders' responses, but this is accompanied by a keen awareness of the numerous agendas that often hijack this discussion. While it would be too crude to label them all as "Islamophobic", many external hijackers do not necessarily have the best interests of Muslims at heart. Social media interactions have the advantage of making these respective intentions clear, sifting the sincere people from the obscurantists.
This brings me to another unique feature of the critical Muslim movement: we are taking control of our own destiny, without allowing external forces to dictate the terms. For example, the recent "Happy Christmas 4ALL" Facebook campaign was an organic response to the frustration of seeing "Muslims ban Christmas" fabrications in the press. It turned into a celebration of the diverse ways in which people of all faiths and none mark the season. One Muslim friend even shared a picture of her Christmas tree, with a twist – it was festooned with the "Ninety-nine Names of Allah". Actions like these are a testament to the values of the critical Muslim movement. Let us hope that journals like Critical Muslim further entrench open-mindedness, humility and mutual respect.
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Tehmina Kazi
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FEEDSPORTAL Fri, 13 Jan 2012
The dish that has been called "almost certainly the most widely eaten food on the planet" originated in Naples, though Neapolitans would be aghast at the pizza toppings such as chicken tikka, ham and pineapple, and chicken pesto that have taken root in this country. Back in the home of the pizza, people keep it simple. Most go for the Marinara, topped with tomatoes, garlic, oregano and olive oil (with the option of a few anchovy fillets) or the Margherita, topped with tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and olive oil.
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GUARDIAN Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:05:01 GMT
Some viewers may not have had the best interests of the teenage nudists in mind …
Your 17-year-old daughter tells you she's getting into the idea of public nudity. You worry she's not old enough to think through all the consequences and that not every man and woman who sees her naked will be admiring her freedom of expression. So what do you do? Nothing, and hope it's a passing phase? Sit down and talk to her in private? Or talk to her in front of a TV camera knowing that several million more people are likely to see her face – and the rest of her – than would have done, had you kept quiet.
For some reason. Mollie and Clare's mothers chose the last option, though to be fair to them, I doubt they were told in advance that the producers would choose a title, My Daughter, the Teenage Nudist (Channel 4), that was certain to attract an audience, not all of whom would necessarily have their daughters' best interests in mind. Still, they can take some comfort from the fact that the title was by far the most interesting thing about this documentary because there isn't actually very much to say about naturism beyond most people looking better with their clothes on. Clare seemed to have changed her mind about getting her kit off in public fairly early in the piece, and though Mollie was still stating her intention to go on the odd naked bike ride I sensed, too, that her enthusiasm was wavering now that she's at university in London. What she had really wanted wasn't to get naked but to get the hell out of Hinckley.
And that was the last we saw of any teenagers. The next closest thing was Alex, a student at Manchester in her mid-20s, and her two friends, Jess and Luke, whose idea of a good time is to organise naked tea parties. For Alex, these parties are a political protest against a prevailing culture that dictates everyone should strive to have the perfect body. Nothing wrong in that, except Alex may have undermined her own cause a little by having a near-perfect body herself. Her boyfriend – very sensibly in my view – kept his clothes on and his face out of sight of the camera.
Then we had Daryl, a man of whom we saw all too much – not least when he had his bum pushed up in the air at the beauty parlour for his regular "back, sack and crack" wax. Daryl is on a one-man mission to recruit as many people as possible to join the 18-30 wing of British Naturism. Last summer – winter is a no-no – he signed up 24 new members. He also lives alone on a houseboat. The two facts may not be unconnected. It will take a lot more than Daryl to bridge the gap between a teenager's desire to strip off on holiday and playing volleyball with the over-50s.
I also saw rather more than I would have liked on The World's Scariest Plane Landings (Channel 5). I'm a complete wuss when it comes to flying – on a recent trip abroad the pilot proudly announced the plane was on its first flight since being delivered from the factory in Toulouse and I went into meltdown: I would rather be on one that had a few miles under its wings – but I find any programme about air disasters to be somehow compulsory viewing.
This selection of 10 clips merely featured near-disasters, but was no more reassuring for that. I prefer my pilots to have worked out how much fuel they need before heading off across the Pacific and not to take off in a plane they had just crash-landed without bothering to get it fixed. Still, I did come away with some useful information: three more airports – St Barts and St Martin in the Caribbean and Leeds Bradford in the UK – to make sure I avoid.
One programme I would very much like to have seen was Unfinished (BBC2), Alastair Sooke's take on the works of literature and music that remained incomplete at the writer or composer's death. Unfortunately, as of the morning of transmission, it was still ... unfinished. Given that it can hardly have been a last-minute commission as it was timed to go out just after this week's Dickens two-parter, The...
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GUARDIAN Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:40:01 GMT
Placenta smoothies, video conferences with two-year-olds – that's modern mothers for you
Anyone who remembers Pulling, the fabulous and fabulously filthy comedy that Sharon Horgan co-wrote and starred in (and which was criminally not recommissioned by some eeeediot at the BBC), might be surprised by this. How to be a Good Mother with Sharon Horgan (Channel 4)? Really? Isn't that a bit like How to be Sober with Freddie Flintoff? Or How to be Likable with Piers Morgan?
It's not just a lesson though. Sharon's visiting other mums with different ideas, to see how they do it. She goes to see Lynnea, a "natural mother" and placenta enthusiast. Lynnea makes fruit smoothies out of them for new mums – mmm, afterbirth and banana. And nice little umbilical cord charms to hang in the window. So cute.
Next there's Daria, a stay-at-home "continuum mum", who believes that a mother should never be separated from her baby. Daria also believes in "elimination communication" which, roughly translated, means not wearing nappies. But the mother of all stay-at-home mothers is Charlene, who, by the age of 27, has got six kids, all home-schooled and called some combination of her name and husband Terry's – Techar, Chartel, Charmar, Cherry, Telsee, and Chantee. There's another on the way – presumably to be called Terylene, though don't tell "natural mother" Lynnea.
There are more. Fiorella is a stay-at-work mum. But she's also a techno-mum, and she schedules in a video conference with her two-year-old son every day. She also has the most terrifying to-do board I have ever seen. "I don't play the wishing game, I play the managing-expectation game," she says. Then there's Aimi, who fits neatly into the "overprotective pole-dancing mum" category. And finally, my favourite, wicked stepmother Antonia Pugh-Thomas (she gets a surname because she's proper posh). Antonia P-T is a qualified stunt woman, and a dress designer. She never wanted kids – always thought they were "a bit creepy" – but suddenly found herself with three – two step, one hers. No problem, she's got dogs, children are just the same.
They're all mad – crazy women with crazy ideas and crazy names. You can see that Sharon is half-thinking that, but also half-thinking that maybe there's something in what they say. She's very good like that – at both taking seriously and taking the piss, all at the same time. She's also taking the piss out of herself, as much as she is out of everyone else. And she's very funny (yeah, all right, I do have a little thing about Horgan, I don't mind admitting). And the brilliant thing is that because she's with all these loons she comes across as being an absolutely brilliant mum. As I'm sure she is. I'm sure they all are, really.
Here's another person it's impossible not to like. Not larking about with a pint or pie-eyed on a pedalo this time, because this is Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport (BBC1). He's talking about depression – other sportsmen's and his own (the pedalo incident came during one of his lowest periods).
It's a fantastic cast he has assembled – fellow cricketer Steve Harmison, Celtic manager Neil Lennon, snooker champion Graeme Dott, footballer turned Hollywood bad guy Vinnie Jones, boxers Barry McGuigan and Ricky Hatton (who seems to live inside a giant house-sized trophy cabinet). It's great that these hard, famous men are talking so openly and eloquently about something that no one would have admitted to a few years ago, a sign of changing attitudes. Flintoff himself is particularly good on the problem for high-profile sports people – of having this big, shiny public persona, the unflappable hero, when actually it's not like that at all underneath.
The media hasn't always been helpful. Piers Morgan says he would have found it ridiculous that someone with the enormous privilege and honour of playing for his country and who was staying in five-star hotels could claim to be depressed. Yes, Piers, because happiness is mainly about...
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GUARDIAN Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:10:00 GMT
The PIP implant scare exposes serious flaws in British medical regulation and NHS policy
Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, deserves praise for his rapidly produced interim report on Poly Implant Prostheses (PIP). He recommended that 40,000 women who have received PIP breast implants in Britain be contacted and "offered further procedures subject to clinical need and taking full account of the wishes and concerns of the patient".
But his report also reveals an astonishing regulatory failure. It identifies weaknesses in UK health decision-making. And it shows why opening up the NHS to private providers is such a dangerous and ill-considered venture.
Breast implants in the UK are regulated under an EU medical devices directive. The PIP implant was approved in 2000 on the understanding that it used medical grade silicone. Exports to the UK began that year. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) first noted concerns about the PIP implant in 2008. This was two years after surgeons had begun publicly reporting their own anxieties about these prostheses. In 2007, R B Berry wrote: "That a high cohesive gel implant could have suffered such a massive failure only three years after implantation is very worrying and, in this case, not only had silicone migrated to a regional lymph node, but the exposed silicone gel appears to have provoked an inflammatory response with the production of a significant quantity of serous exudate. In view of these two reports the reliability of PIP implants must be questioned and, for myself, I intend to discontinue their use in favour of implants from other manufacturers." Did the MHRA read this report? If not, then what is the point of an agency that does not keep up with safety signals reported in the medical literature? If it did, then why did it not order an urgent safety review?
The only reasonable conclusion can be that the MHRA failed to do the job the public expects – to protect it from harm. Last December the French regulatory authorities advised women, based on their assessment of the evidence, to consider removal of PIP implants. The MHRA responded on the same day by disagreeing. The MHRA argued that it did "not believe that the associated risks of surgery from breast implant removal can be justified without further evidence". This judgment was hasty, cavalier, and completely counter to concerns about PIP implants. Keogh did his best to offer collegial support to the MHRA. He wrote that he agreed that there was "no specific safety concern" and that there was "no clear evidence at present that patients with a PIP implant are at greater risk of harm than those with other implants".
But his recommendation that women should have free removal of implants (if they are concerned) in effect overturned not only the MHRA's advice but that of the chief medical officer, released on the same day. She told women who had received PIP implants that they "should not be unduly worried".
But that view was quite literally incredible given that women had received implants containing an industrial-grade silicone gel that was not approved for human use. Women should certainly be worried that regulatory procedures in place in the EU and UK have failed them so spectacularly.
One final concern. The British government's health and social care bill will open up the NHS to private sector providers. The events of the past month show why this policy is so misguided. When something goes wrong in the NHS the entire organisation can be mobilised to address the problem coherently, transparently, equitably, and to the very highest of standards. But in the case of PIP implants, over 95% of which were done by private providers, what have we seen? Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has had to castigate private cosmetic clinics for failing to gather and provide high-quality data on their procedures. The best he could do was ask that they "take similar action" to the NHS; he could not.....
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