"The women ham carvers of Spain" – #InternationalWomensDay

​[Raquel Acosta is one of Spain's most high-profile carvers (Credit: Josu Acosta)]

 "Carving legs of Iberian ham in bars, restaurants and at events has traditionally been a man's job. Now, a new generation of women is taking their place at the slicing table."

(From personal experience, I can say this carving is very difficult to do...)

Jill Petzinger's article for BBC Travel here.

Podcast: The surprising Spanish connection: Black Music in Europe (The 1970s)

Clarke Peters uncovers...Black flamenco in Spain, talking to Raul Rodriguez and Black-British flamenco dancer Yinka Esi Graves about how Seville's Triana area, where 15% of the population were once Black and why the dictator Franco used flamenco as a false national symbol.  

Listen here (for the first 6 minutes.)

(Photo: Clark Peters. Credit:: Alexandra Quinn)

"The moment Britain changed" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Who do you think said these words three days after the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum, in an attempt to explain the result? “Waves of migration and globalised culture washed among us, eroding our sense of self. Whole communities changed colour and language, leaving older people cut off...but the self-confidently multi-ethnic, liberal, urban class… barely noticed.” It’s more than a bit surprising but the person who spoke these words looking directly down the camera on public television is not a candidate for an ultra right wing political party. His name is Andrew Marr and since 2005 he has been the host of his own hour-long BBC TV news and current affairs interview show. In fact, his program has long been a part of my family’s Sunday morning routine. (We are usually eating my wife’s wonderful, home cooked crepes at some point when his show is on.) Like almost all of the entrenched British Establishment, Marr is a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge universities.He has the general appearance of a quite shy and usually polite man, especially so when speaking to royalty and Hollywood film stars. Recently though he has seemed increasingly excitable at times. I recently saw his post-Brexit piece-to-camera again and realised that his excitement was genuine this time. What viewers originally saw back then on this particular edition of his show was a man taking sides after a profound event. The words he used were deliberate and showed up his true allegiance. Marr was siding with the conservative racists, some of whom are clearly new-style fascists. In other words, he was lining up with those who are -- underneath all the polished British smiles -- in love with power. They are power worshipers: one accurate definition of a fascist. The most important element in their outlook is having someone to hate and this is always a minority group. Even better if the minority is easily recognised in public places. Historically, these lovers of power have come from all social sections of society but have always favoured supporting the strong over the weak, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed. In the UK, they have always trumpeted the ‘Parliament and rule of law’ argument as a fundamental ‘British value’ then ignored it or broken it when it suits them. Of course, in modern Britain and the wider world today (and probably for a long time in the past) there is no law. There is only power. This is what George Orwell said about totalitarian societies like the one he imagined in his novel ‘1984’. In my opinion, it is phrase that perfectly describes our time. The law does not exist, except the ability to enforce it. Andrew Marr knows this. He is a frightened man. So am I. I am frightened of the exact same thing as him: a rule of brute force in Europe. In Britain now, the rule of law has been shown to be a hollow claim. Rule by those with the ability to compel others to their will, by force, has now begun. The courts and prisons are more than full. Police numbers are now so shrunken by conservative government funding cuts and station closures that they are at times unable to defend one person or group against another. The peaceful are being attacked by the violent, some of whom are fascist criminals, others are just criminals. Broadcast all across the nation, watching Andrew Marr’s rant almost three years later, I realised something critically important. This wasn’t the moment Britain changed. It was the moment I realised it had started to completely change. [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2019.]

"Times in the balance" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Now that summer is here it is easy to ignore the wider world and only take in what we see through the sun's glare at the beach or from the top of a shady mountain.

Away from the ease of nature’s innocence though, it seems to me that we living in both pivotal and fascinating days. The good news is that Europe can take heart from some real achievements in environmental energy over the last few months. 

For example, in the month of May Germany was almost entirely powered by solar and wind, Britain functioned without coal for the first time in over a century and Portugal ran on renewable energy alone for four days straight. 

Also, the EU Parliament has called on the European Commission to severely restrict permitted uses of the toxic agricultural herbicide glyphosate - a probable cause of cancer and a substance already found in our bloodstreams.

Just across the sea in Tunisia is another development that must be welcome to anyone who cares about basic human rights. In that part of the continent that originally sparked the Middle Eastern Arab Spring protests over five years ago, Tunisia’s once-extreme Ennahda party "officially declared that it will separate its religious activities from its political ones...[and] acknowledged the primacy of secular democracy over Islamist theocracy." 

In other words, mosques there will be politically neutral - a major blow to any recruiters of fundamentalist terrorists.

But there are also current affairs stories that are not at all heartening. Conservative party attacks on the taxpayer-funded BBC TV are continuing without mercy. 

David Cameron’s government is trying to take further money away from children’s programmes in a move towards corporate advertising on that great media institution. This idea of complete abandonment of the public sector is now being taken to it’s logical conclusion elsewhere. In Gurgaon, a booming new Indian city with a population of millions they live and work “without a citywide system for water, electricity or even public sewers.”

It is exactly this kind of problem that billionaire technology magnate Bill Gates sees holding the United States of America back. He recently made the case for public funding of crucial infrastructure, arguing: ““Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D [research and development] has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private sector is in general inept,” he said. 

At least North America is experiencing a resurgence in the sales of books however. In 2015, incomes for independent booksellers were up just over 10%, and are remaining strong in 2016. Sadly, this is not the case for the United Kingdom where over six hundred independent bookshops have closed in the last decade.

Meanwhile in Australia, Peter Dutton (a man that doctors voted ‘the worst Health Minister in 35 years - having cut $57 billion from public hospitals) has just been put in charge of the area of national immigration. He was promptly caught on camera making jokes about climate impacts on low-lying Pacific Islands while on diplomatic visit. Then, as part of Australia’s right-wing government he made the self-contradicting comment that refugees “won't be numerate or literate ... They would languish on unemployment ...These people will be taking Australian jobs."

Over the summer I’m going to stop thinking about the above news items. I’m sure there will soon be fresh pieces of our human doings to be amazed by.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2016.]

Spain tops poll on accepting Syrian refugees

This poll is part of a fascinating wider international survey titled "Identity 2016" which also found that 'Global citizenship' is increasing at the expense of nationalism. To me, this is extremely encouraging.

"On the question of whether intermarriage was a welcome development" Spain and the UK were the countries most in favour.

Read more from BBC source here.

"Badly chosen words" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

I’m a huge fan of the UK’s public broadcaster, the BBC. It still produces some of the best TV anywhere in the world but one thing it does tests my affection for it. Even after it’s been pointed out to them by several different commentators, BBC news continues to use the word ‘migrant’ when they are reporting on people who are clearly refugees.

And this is not a new problem with their use of dishonest language. A few years ago some of the terms they used about the bulldozing of refugees temporary shelter at Calais in France were revealing.

The BBC has repeatedly used the word ‘clear’ in its various reports, which I would argue is something done to get rid of rubbish, mess (or possibly to forests.) This was a term also used by other British media figures such as LBC radio’s Nick Ferrari. The German press, Deutsche Welle called it “a raid” (something usually done against criminals) and quoted extensively from the British Home Affairs minister and the German Immigration minister.

It was only then that they gave some space to a different perspective: a spokesperson from the UN Refugee Agency. This was done under the heading of “[The] Problem of illegal immigration continues.” So to them the problem is somehow one of illegal immigration, not for example, the substandard living conditions of the mainly refugees, plenty of whom are children.

Unfortunately, the French socialist politician Jack Lang also put it clumsily when he stated that the French government’s arrest of the Calais refugees was “simply raking the leaves from one side to another.” His heart might be in the right place, even if his mouth was not. Lang could be correct though in his prediction that other camps will quickly appear along the French coast. “The problem” of the camps will not just go away, as the Guardian’s Alan Travis succinctly phrased it.

I suppose those two words "raid" and "cleared" do not actually sound so bad if you believe that the refugees living in the camps were somehow at fault for being there. To me, that does not seem to be the case. I have never been to Afghanistan but my guess is that, as bad as the camp was, many refugees who survived there preferred it to the way that life had turned for them in their former country, as long as there was some hope of a better existence in the UK or anywhere else.

I would think that most - if not all - have already tried claiming asylum or are in the process of doing so. There are many people who genuinely need refuge from tyrannical regimes and war zones like Afghanistan (and more recently Syria) and I cannot see a good reason why any country should be exempted from being (just one) of the nations who should accept those most in need of sanctuary.

It is more than apparent that EU agencies have failed these desperate people - especially in Syria and Afghanistan - who have also been failed by their fanatical countrymen, and the international forces there who together have made the conditions of life in those countries so intolerable. 

[A version of this article (under the tittle "Carefully mischosen words") was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2015.]