London must stand together in 2017 if its golden age is not to end

For three decades, with barely a blip, the UK capital has been going from strength to strength. Nothing has stunted its potency and growth, not the 7/7 bombings or the 2011 riots, not Black Monday or the 2008 global crash, not even the original Millennium Dome. Its economy drives and subsidises the rest of the country, its still-new tier of regional government – the mayoralty and the Greater London Authority (GLA) – has been a success and it has hosted a triumphant Olympic Games. Its population, after shrinking through years of managed decline, is now at an all-time high, and may hit 10 million by 2030. But London enters 2017 with a question mark after its name. Might its golden age be coming to an end?

After the fireworks, the New Year begins amid unaccustomed unease. The heavy, grey cloud above is Brexit, with major employers in an international city whose wealth has been built on financial services pondering their options for the future. Meanwhile, austerity, albeit moderated by Miliband-ish measures from Theresa May, continues to erode from below. It doesn’t lighten the general mood that armed police officers have become a routine feature of everyday London life. In all these circumstances optimism is essential, but staving off its opposite will require fortitude and skill.

The mayor, of course, has a big part to play in all of this. Sadiq Khan’s 2017 will involve the Labour man in unending nagging of and negotiating with the Conservatives in charge of national government, hoping to secure the best possible post-Brexit deal for the capital and, by extension, the country. His panel of Brexit advisors, bankers, accountants, Peter Mandelson and all, doesn’t delight those who think he’s insufficiently left-wing. But pragmatism is an essential mayoral art: if you want a bunch of Tories to take you seriously, you don’t surround yourself with Corbynites.

Policy delivery will begin with Khan hailing a freeze on those public transport fares that Transport for London (TfL) sets, but not the universal one some of his election campaign statements and a line in his manifesto claimed. Political opponents will attack him (again) for that, and for the demands he is making on TfL’s finances as a whole as his first mayoral budget, covering all GLA functions, comes under closer public scrutiny.

Khan’s new “hopper” fare, which enables bus passengers to catch two buses for the price of one during a 60 minute period, has given him – not to mention a lot of Londoners on low incomes – a quick early win. But this initiative, though welcome, needs to be seen in the context of falling bus ridership, something TfL can ill afford given its increasing dependence on fares revenue.

This, in turn, is a consequence of worsening road traffic congestion, which London’s economy could do without. Congestion also harms air quality, another issue the mayor has sought to make a fast start on. He is set to kick-off implementing his anti-pollution policies by introducing an emissions surcharge (the so-called “T-charge” on toxicity) on high-pollution vehicles entering the congestion charge zone early in 2017, but will be urged by critical friends to go further with his policies as a whole.

Holding down public transport fares is one part of a broader attempt to address London’s high cost of living, which leaves too many of its households, including around 40% of its children, struggling to make ends meet on unacceptably low pay and excluded from many of the city’s many riches. Housing costs are, famously, a huge factor in this and also hugely difficult to control. The mayor’s housing team has assembled a purposeful strategy for getting more homes built for sale, rent or a combination of both at prices ordinary Londoners can afford. Khan will hope to be able to boast of initial successes as he embarks on the vast task of trying to better match housing delivery to the city’s social and economic need. The backdrop to all this is the ongoing three-year monster mission of writing a new London Plan.

There are going to be tensions. Hammered by successive grant cuts and hampered by limits on their freedom to borrow to build, some of the capital’s boroughs, often Labour-run, are becoming ever more adroit at finding ways to meet at least some local “affordable” housing demand, but these can mean private sector partnerships involving publicly owned land that don’t always work as well as planned. The available alternatives – largely, small variations on doing nothing – aren’t all that attractive either.

Squeezed between the same rock and hard place we find shortages of school places and health and social care provision also having their impact at borough, and indeed neighbourhood level. Dynamic boroughs and the mayor alike are trying to get more more purchase on low-cost childcare and improving post-school skills training, as the city strives for greater autonomy in the running of its affairs.

A striking thing about the politics of London is the high degree of consensus about the benefits of devolving power over such things as welfare programmes, property taxes and infrastructure investment from Whitehall. Agreement crosses party lines and unifies business interests, social sector campaigners and more. There is strength in that solidarity. London will need every ounce of it to keep on prospering in 2017 and beyond.

London must stand together in 2017 if its golden age is not to end

Tasmanian devil milk could kill golden staph and other antibiotic-resistant bugs

Milk from Tasmanian devils could kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria like golden staph and potentially combat the deadly facial tumour disease that has killed 80% of the wild devil population in the past 20 years.

According to research led by Sydney University PhD student Emma Peel, milk produced by the marsupials contains antimicrobial peptides called cathelicidins which had been tested as being effective against a number of pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or golden staph.

“These peptides are killing superbugs, so there is potential for future development into antibiotics,” Peel told the ABC.

“That is the next step for our research, to see if these peptides have anti-cancer potential, if they are killing superbugs maybe they could kill the facial tumour.”

Peel said the tests were done with artificial peptides made by extracting the cathelicidin sequence from the devil’s genome.

The artificial peptides also tested as between three and six times more effective against some fungal infections than anti-fungal medication.

Milking the famously aggressive animals was a process to be undertaken “very, very carefully and with a lots of safety gear,” Peel said.

Androo Kelly, owner and director of Trowunna Wildlife park in northern Tasmania, which has bred 16 generations of devils, said it could be done but “I don’t think you would set up a dairy”.

He tried his hand at milking devils in the 1990s for an earlier series of research by University of Tasmania associate professor Menna Jones.

“The devils that we have, we have mothers with young that are also used to being handled, so it’s a simple thing that when the mothers are lactating you just squeeze the milk out,” he said. “It was more of a once off, it would not be a common practice.”

Kelly said the research answered the longstanding question of why young devils did not contract the highly contagious devil facial tumour disease from infected mothers. It also explained how the immature young, which are born at just 3mm long and mature in the pouch, survive without a mature immune system.

“I really believed that the solution to the devils disease was something within them … this is only further supporting that,” he said.

Devil facial tumour disease was first reported in 1996 and spread to cover 95% of Tasmania, prompting an international breeding program to save the animal.

Recent research found the carrion-eating marsupials had already evolved a degree of resistance to the disease, which is caused by two of only four strains of viral cancer to be found in the wild.

Researchers in Hobart have also developed a vaccine and begun releasing vaccinated devils into areas believed to be free of the disease.

Tasmanian devil milk could kill golden staph and other antibiotic-resistant bugs

The Golden Probes: humor is a weapon on "misogyny"s most glamorous evening"

Reeling off the winners and categories of the 2016 Golden Probes – a satirical award show applauding the worst of sexism and anti-choice politics – sounds hilarious, until, that is, you remember that these politicians actually determine US laws.

Ohio’s attorney general, Mike Dewine, nabbed the “best adaptation of reality” award for claiming Planned Parenthood “steam-cooked” fetuses.

Virginia state representative Bob Marshall won the “best original science” award for declaring that women who have abortions often later give birth to handicapped children.

The “best acting like you care about women in a non-supportive role” gong went to the Republican congressman Steve King of Iowa for claiming that abortion should be illegal because sexual predators can abuse children without people knowing, by aborting the evidence.

The inaugural Golden Probes, “misogyny’s most glamorous evening”, took place last Sunday night in Manhattan. The sneaker-wearing feminist favorite Wendy Davis, the former Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams and the Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria presented awards, while other celebrities – including comedians Sarah Silverman, Samantha Bee and Broad City’s Ilana Glaser and Abbi Jacobson – appeared in recorded videos.

The Golden Probes is just the latest project by Lady Parts Justice (LPJ), an organization created in 2012 aimed at using humor and the internet to fight for reproductive health.

LPJ creates and posts funny political videos online, “dropping information into popular culture spaces so people can swallow it a way that’s palatable, and feel outraged and motivated”, said co-founder Lizz Winstead. Winstead co-created The Daily Show and served as the show’s head writer for years, so she knows how to mix politics and pop culture.

“I think it is really important for us to have fun and to laugh and to point our finger at those that are being absolutely ridiculous,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health, an organization which runs abortion clinics across the country.

Hagstrom Miller was a presenter at the Golden Probes and sits on the board of LPJ’s sister organization, Lady Parts Justice League, the educational arm of LPJ.

She led her Texas clinics to the supreme court of the United States, arguing against Texas’s restrictive HB 2 law – which demanded clinics function like mini hospitals and saw half of the state’s abortion clinics closed – and won in June.

Ambrosia Parsley and Holly Miranda perform at the Golden Probe awards. Photograph: JP Yim/Getty Images for Lady Parts Justice

“Our work is very difficult on the front lines; we’re confronted every single day. Sometimes it’s just absolutely absurd so it’s fun to step back and laugh at it,” said Hagstrom Miller, speaking about LPJ.

LPJ functions in a “a kind of USO [United Service Organizations] capacity,” said Winstead, by providing support – ranging from odd jobs painting walls and fixing gardens to throwing parties – for abortion clinics around the country.

In Ohio, during the RNC, the group brought in a taco truck to the parking lot of an abortion clinic and hosted a staff party. In Montgomery, Alabama, members worked as clinic escorts helping women pass through lines of activists and also threw clinic workers a party. In Louisville, Kentucky, they hosted a breakfast for workers and held a comedy show. And in Buffalo, New York, they delivered cupcakes to a clinic.

Next week they’re off to Fort Worth, Texas, to build a fence for an abortion clinic.

The last few years have seen a “constant onslaught” of laws aimed at restricting abortion access, with 2,000 proposed or passed in state legislature since 2013, Winstead said. LPJ attempts to highlight the often forgotten work of the states – whether related to shutting down abortion clinics, restrictive voter ID laws or restricting bathroom access to trans people.

“Most important legislation is coming out of the states and it’s happening because people don’t know how all this anti-choice legislation is drafted,” said Winstead.

State politicians who make these laws – usually white, cisgender men – often run in elections with low voter turnout and little public interest, allowing them to slip under the radar. “It’s not people driven by science, facts, constitutional law or even working knowledge of anatomy that are elected,” noted Winstead.

“Women’s healthcare is compromised in order for Republican officeholders to promote their own agenda,” said Davis, who founded the political organization Deeds Not Words. She noted that the Texas maternal death rate has doubled in the last five years and that women are self-inducing abortions in higher numbers.

“It’s a whirlwind of misogyny. We see it on full display in this election, but those of us who have been fighting on behalf of gender equality for this country have been seeing it every day on both local, state and national levels,” Davis said.

At the Golden Probes, Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, might have narrowly missed out on the “outstanding underperformance by a politician in a leading role” award (that went to Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, for claiming that the blood of innocents will need to be spilled if Hillary Clinton is elected president), but several high-profile guests said they’d award their own Golden Probe to Pence’s presidential running mate, Donald Trump.

“He doesn’t say real things. He doesn’t form full sentences. And the idea of that is very …” Williams, who’s currently working on her own show for Comedy Central, trailed off, said, staring blankly ahead.

“He’s a sexist, misogynist fucking piece of shit white straight rich guy in a really shitty toupee,” said Lea DeLaria, who stars as Big Boo on Orange is the New Black.

“How can you make fun of someone for the way they look when they look like him? Unless he transplants his brain into Brad Pitt’s body, he should shut the fuck up,” quipped DeLaria.

The Golden Probes: humor is a weapon on "misogyny"s most glamorous evening"

THIS Will Happen When You Start Drinking Golden Milk Every Night (How it’s made)

THIS Will Happen When You Start Drinking Golden Milk Every Night (How it’s made)

Braille isn"t "embattled" we"re on the cusp of a golden age for blind folks | Ian Macrae

‘Five years ago 96% of all books wouldn’t be turned into forms accessible to blind people … I’m now able to read pretty much any book I want in electronic braille’. Photograph: Image Source/Rex Features

Imagine a situation where you walk into your favourite restaurant and ask for the menu, only to be told it isn’t available. Chances are it wouldn’t stay your favourite for very long.

As a braillist – someone who uses braille – the dream for me is when the opposite happens. A small number of chain restaurants offer menus in braille; sometimes, they’re even up to date.

It is difficult to over-express the sense of liberation at being able to browse and choose your preferred pizza independently. And in Co-op supermarkets, where some of the own-brand labels feature braille, there is pride in being able to identify a bottle of wine from a label that few if any other people in the store are able to read.

All too often, though, finding anything in shops is a matter of random selection, peering in earnest, or asking for help. And just when it seemed the situation couldn’t get any worse for braillists, along come headlines suggesting the end is nigh for braille, that this communication lifeline is about to be cut off.

This week, Dr Matthew Rubery, curator of an exhibition on alternative methods of reading for blind people, described braille as “embattled”. He went on to say its biggest threat “is computer technology, which makes it much easier not to have to learn it. A lot of people fear braille won’t survive because it will be read by so few people. The use has declined and there are concerns about funding to keep it going.”

This seems to me a rather glass-half-empty view, although there is some evidence to support his argument. Anecdotally, it is claimed blind children are no longer being taught braille. This is said to be owing to sighted teachers who believe computer technology, and in particular synthesised speech, has rendered it redundant. Therefore, the teachers don’t need to learn braille either.

If this is true, and no other factors were to come into play, then the outlook might really look bad. But, like print, braille has gone through a process of evolution. It started out in classrooms as the equivalent of the slate – my five-year-old hands punched out each dot individually through a sheet of thick manilla paper. We learned to write it backwards and read it forwards.

Then Harold Wilson’s “white heat” age of technology ushered in the mechanical era. Classrooms echoed to the deafening collective rattle of 15 or more braille machines – the Stainsby, the Perkins, the Lavender – pounding away at dictation or composition.

And now, like print with its tablets, Kindles and touch screens, braille has gone digital. And it is my belief that this could well mean it becomes more widely available and infinitely more useful. This is important because it means all children in future will be able to enjoy the same degree of literacy, not to mention the same levels of liberation and pleasure, as I do now.

Think of this: I am writing and editing this piece on an Apple computer using braille from an electronic display that drives pins into the correct shapes to form a line of braille text. Once the piece is published I will be able to go to the Guardian website on my iPhone or iPad, use Bluetooth to connect up a portable braille device, and read it along with you. The main problem currently is the cost of the braille-reading equipment: the cheapest is £900.

But, fellow reader, we are now in the age of the app and of haptic technology, which communicates through vibration and touch. It is already possible for me to download an app that will create on my touch screen a virtual braille keyboard on which I can compose texts, emails, tweets and Facebook updates in braille.

Meanwhile, the search is already on for the holy grail of braille – a means of creating dots without using expensive mechanical cells that make the shape of braille characters using pins. Then the world would truly be at our fingertips.

What is needed is an app that would turn digital text on your device into electronic impulses in the shape of braille characters, transmitted by the screen of your iPad or other tablet, to be read by touch. To go back to my restaurant quandary, all I would need to do would be to call up the menu online, put it through my haptic braille app, and read it on my screen.

Add into that mix a scanning app, and I could point my device at what was on the supermarket shelf and have the haptic braille app produce the package information.

And if you think this is hopelessly optimistic pie in the sky, it’s worth remembering that less than five years ago 96% of all books produced would never be turned into forms accessible to blind people. But with the advent of e-books and existing technology, I am now able to read pretty much any book I want to in electronic braille.

So rather than seeing the end of braille, we could be entering a golden age of access and communication. Here’s to more pizza, more wine, and more braille.

Braille isn"t "embattled" we"re on the cusp of a golden age for blind folks | Ian Macrae

Braille isn"t "embattled" we"re on the cusp of a golden age for blind people | Ian Macrae

‘Five years ago 96% of all books wouldn’t be turned into forms accessible to blind people … I’m now able to read pretty much any book I want in electronic braille’. Photograph: Image Source/Rex Features

Imagine a situation where you walk into your favourite restaurant and ask for the menu, only to be told it isn’t available. Chances are it wouldn’t stay your favourite for very long.

As a braillist – someone who uses braille – the dream for me is when the opposite happens. A small number of chain restaurants offer menus in braille; sometimes, they’re even up to date.

It is difficult to over-express the sense of liberation at being able to browse and choose your preferred pizza independently. And in Co-op supermarkets, where some of the own-brand labels feature braille, there is pride in being able to identify a bottle of wine from a label that few if any other people in the store are able to read.

All too often, though, finding anything in shops is a matter of random selection, peering in earnest, or asking for help. And just when it seemed the situation couldn’t get any worse for braillists, along come headlines suggesting the end is nigh for braille, that this communication lifeline is about to be cut off.

This week, Dr Matthew Rubery, curator of an exhibition on alternative methods of reading for blind people, described braille as “embattled”. He went on to say its biggest threat “is computer technology, which makes it much easier not to have to learn it. A lot of people fear braille won’t survive because it will be read by so few people. The use has declined and there are concerns about funding to keep it going.”

This seems to me a rather glass-half-empty view, although there is some evidence to support his argument. Anecdotally, it is claimed blind children are no longer being taught braille. This is said to be owing to sighted teachers who believe computer technology, and in particular synthesised speech, has rendered it redundant. Therefore, the teachers don’t need to learn braille either.

If this is true, and no other factors were to come into play, then the outlook might really look bad. But, like print, braille has gone through a process of evolution. It started out in classrooms as the equivalent of the slate – my five-year-old hands punched out each dot individually through a sheet of thick manilla paper. We learned to write it backwards and read it forwards.

Then Harold Wilson’s “white heat” age of technology ushered in the mechanical era. Classrooms echoed to the deafening collective rattle of 15 or more braille machines – the Stainsby, the Perkins, the Lavender – pounding away at dictation or composition.

And now, like print with its tablets, Kindles and touch screens, braille has gone digital. And it is my belief that this could well mean it becomes more widely available and infinitely more useful. This is important because it means all children in future will be able to enjoy the same degree of literacy, not to mention the same levels of liberation and pleasure, as I do now.

Think of this: I am writing and editing this piece on an Apple computer using braille from an electronic display that drives pins into the correct shapes to form a line of braille text. Once the piece is published I will be able to go to the Guardian website on my iPhone or iPad, use Bluetooth to connect up a portable braille device, and read it along with you. The main problem currently is the cost of the braille-reading equipment: the cheapest is £900.

But, fellow reader, we are now in the age of the app and of haptic technology, which communicates through vibration and touch. It is already possible for me to download an app that will create on my touch screen a virtual braille keyboard on which I can compose texts, emails, tweets and Facebook updates in braille.

Meanwhile, the search is already on for the holy grail of braille – a means of creating dots without using expensive mechanical cells that make the shape of braille characters using pins. Then the world would truly be at our fingertips.

What is needed is an app that would turn digital text on your device into electronic impulses in the shape of braille characters, transmitted by the screen of your iPad or other tablet, to be read by touch. To go back to my restaurant quandary, all I would need to do would be to call up the menu online, put it through my haptic braille app, and read it on my screen.

Add into that mix a scanning app, and I could point my device at what was on the supermarket shelf and have the haptic braille app produce the package information.

And if you think this is hopelessly optimistic pie in the sky, it’s worth remembering that less than five years ago 96% of all books produced would never be turned into forms accessible to blind people. But with the advent of e-books and existing technology, I am now able to read pretty much any book I want to in electronic braille.

So rather than seeing the end of braille, we could be entering a golden age of access and communication. Here’s to more pizza, more wine, and more braille.

Braille isn"t "embattled" we"re on the cusp of a golden age for blind people | Ian Macrae

Northwestern University Is Squandering The Golden Opportunity To Support Its Football Players

In the wake of Wednesday’s Nationwide Labor Relations Board ruling that Northwestern University football players are staff and have the legal appropriate to unionize, the leaders at Northwestern University have a golden possibility to be on the correct side of labor history.  However, it is an opportunity that they really do not look ready to embrace.

Wednesday’s ruling by NLRB Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr provides Northwestern University a bona fide choice of how to proceed in light of this ruling.  The university could both to appeal this ruling to the complete Nationwide Labor Relations Board, or accept its football players’ appropriate to unionize and move towards the potential of coming into collective bargaining negotiations with its football players.

The NCAA obviously would like Northwestern University to maintain litigating.  In current years, college sports’s unique trade association has remained steadfast in its refusal to accept legal rulings that encourage the rights of pupil-athletes, irrespective of regardless of whether these rulings involve publicity law, antitrust law, or now even labor law.

However, Northwestern  University’s greatest public relations move might be to just let Wednesday’s ruling be, not to file an appeal.

By not fighting Wednesday’s ruling, Northwestern University could choose to take control of their personal public relations and become seen as a national leader for pupil-athlete rights. The university could also commence to concentrate on its very likely collective bargaining negotiations with its football players, and a affordable evaluation of where compromise may possibly make sense.

The Rock at Northwestern University with University Hall in the background (Photograph credit score: Wikipedia)

If the NCAA as a result had been to attempt to banish Northwestern University for its actions, the university would have an extraordinarily powerful antitrust situation towards the trade association.  Indeed, if the NCAA had been to them banish Northwestern University for its compliance with a National Labor Relations Board order, it appears most likely the courts would strike down factors of the NCAA bylaws as speedily as a  post-touchdown added stage.

There is even some precedent for NCAA member university standing up for their student-athletes rights and getting constructive press for doing so.  Most notably, in the early 1990s litigation Hill v. NCAA, Stanford University intervened and took their players’ side in a lawsuit difficult the NCAA’s necessary drug testing guidelines under California’s state privacy protections.  Stanford University’s willingness on occasion to stand alongside its athletes is one particular of its numerous draws for premier students and athletes.

If Northwestern University makes the brave decision not to appeal Wednesday’s NLRB ruling in favor of its football gamers, the university would right away garner positive brand equity amongst amongst athletes for its willingness to stand up for adjust.

If only Northwestern University leaders weren’t so darn afraid of how the NCAA would react!

____________________________

Marc Edelman is an Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York’s Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business, where he has published a lot more than 25 law overview articles on sports activities law matters.  His most latest articles include “A Short Treatise on Amateurism and Antitrust Law” and “The Future of Amateurism after Antitrust Scrutiny.”

Northwestern University Is Squandering The Golden Opportunity To Support Its Football Players