Britain’s surnames in map form.

Mozart in edits.

Journalist takes a year off the net. Surprising.

Cosmarxpolitan

Amazing interactive article on Alaska.

An elderly couple visited my flat today. The estate agent told them about the local amenities, the opportunities for development, the parties the local residents’ association holds in the square every month. The old man looked out of the window onto the back garden, and as he did so a blanket of sunlight burst through the grey clouds. He turned back to me and smiled. He looked at the cricket bat with which I was toying.

“Batsman?”

“I try.”

I’ve lived here for six years. I want them to have the place. It’ll be their last home. But first the negotiations. When there’s a death in the family, agony and sadness are quickly supplanted by a mound of bureaucracy and organisation – jobs that have to be done but which it feels society’s put there as a distracting buttress. The rotting flesh is quickly buried under paperwork. This has been a happy home. Now it’ll be a place in which this sweet old pair can see out their lives together. Rather that than the woman who thinks she can make a bomb on the rental market. No, it’s theirs. But these things still have to be done properly.

Strange, the reaction to death. Today, left and right are fighting out their nasty little squabble over Maggie on my Twitter feed. It’s been going for days now.

Instead, I read this, from the Onion, over and over again:

CHICAGO—Calling the overall human experience “poignant,” “thought-provoking,” and a “complete tour de force,” film critic Roger Ebert praised existence Thursday as “an audacious and thrilling triumph.” “While not without its flaws, life, from birth to death, is a masterwork, and an uplifting journey that both touches the heart and challenges the mind,” said Ebert, adding that while the totality of all humankind is sometimes “a mess in places,” it strives to be a magnum opus and, according to Ebert, largely succeeds at this goal. “At times brutally sad, yet surprisingly funny, and always completely honest, I wholeheartedly recommend existence. If you haven’t experienced it yet, then what are you waiting for? It is not to be missed.” Ebert later said that while human existence’s running time was “a little on the long side,” it could have gone on much, much longer and he would have been perfectly happy.

A very different death. A death you can look on with tenderness. In part, because of how people see his life. In part, because of the way he saw it himself.  “We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds,” he once wrote. How those words force a rueful smile when I look at the Thatcher battlelines.

And before that, more battlelines: strivers and shirkers. It’s always over accuracy of the claims made about either side: but isn’t it somewhat appalling, this axiomatic insistence that merely to be a productive worker/consumer is something for which we should strive? That this must be what our time is for?

Dunbar’s timor mortis came to me when I was young. Fourteen years old, I think, and reading Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. The novel’s central character suddenly disappears, in a sentence, in brackets. From then on, he’s defined by his absence. And suddenly it hit me that I too must one day vanish: the anaesthetic from which none come round. Then I fucked a girl for the first time, and, being a middle class teenage kid,  became convinced I must have contracted AIDS. The Sword of Damocles hung over my head for a year. I contracted glandular fever, and lay in bed for a week, shaking and terrified. I nearly wept in the GPs room when he confirmed what it was.

And then one day, the terror subsided. Suddenly consciousness of mortality became empowering. “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy…” The challenge, actually, is not to ignore the implications of mortality, but to remember them.

Roger remembered.  “After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.”

So it goes.

Abandoned mansions

Live trains on the underground

Beautiful post on doves

Heartwrenching experience

Dog bomb

Analysis of song patterns

Fascinating Danny Baker interview

A Bit of Fry and Laurie playlist

Photos of abandoned ruins.

Tory MP tells it how it is on justice.

Photos of North Korea.

Life advice from a six-year-old, taken literally.

10 mysterious lost treasures.

Tegan and Sara’s album worth a listen.

Most amazing high school project ever.

Colour photo of French troops, Verdun, 1916.

Heaven’s Calling, Alaska

Norway Sky Bridge

Vic, Bob and at 15 minutes Martin McCutcheon’s girl band.

Nasa will text you if the space station’s flying over your house.

Brilliant piece on how Matt from the Telegraph works.

London’s population change, 1801 – 2011, in GIF form

Daddy of “go here before you DIE” sites

I like surprised Koala and I also like condescending literary pun dog.

Shanghai in 1990, Shanghai in 2010

Aussie papers’ response to BCCI photo ban = amazing

Best longread of the year so far imho

Rude places

You had one job.

Behind the scenes.

The Holocaust just got more shocking.

Five months of Reddit pictures.

The thirty places to be if you love books.

Haven’t done this in aaages…

NOTE: these links have got fucked up somehow. So think of it as a lucky dip. Or not.

Amazing list of longreads (via @marxculture)

Dull news in local newspapers

Changing tube map. 

Amazing sleight of hand skills

Authors just hanging out.

The most powerful photos ever taken.

Excellent Caroline Crampton post about 90 years of BBC radio.

Pixar’s rules of storytelling.

*amazing* post on psychiatry – sage of Cowley Road.

Authors’ diagrams.

Fifteen things Kurt Vonnegut has said better than anyone else

Jon Ronson on The Psychopath Test.

TED talk on the globality of the net.

The 9 funniest videos hiding on YouTube.

BRILLIANT letter on beauty of words.

Easily the scariest thing on the net.

Although this comes close.

Man takes a different drug every day and draws himself.

10 scary paintings.

Best dad ever.

Old Nirvana footage.

Grandfather writes to Grandson.

Full moon silhouettes

The most interesting conversation ever at a recording session.

Anais Nim on the dangers of the Internet.

Amazing piece on 30 Rock and race.

Best Letters of Note in 2012.

Shostakovic Violin Concerto no 1 

Bombed library, Kensington, 1940.

Free Hitchcock films!

Am told this doc is amazing.

Wonders of Life trailer feat. Eric Idle

Pitchfork album list.

Real time tube trains.

ALL the Paris Review Interviews. (via @glinner).

Amazing load of DFW resources.

Keith Moon passes out, 19 year old kid takes over. (via @chrisfloyduk).

Louis Theroux’s list of TV docs.

Lovely map of Hawksmoor’s churches.

List of scary books.

Modern phrases we owe to Shakespeare.

Holly Stret in the 1990s.

20 most watched TED talks.

Odd, possibly brilliant inventions.

Countries without McDonalds.

1592 – the eight types of drunkenness

Masterpieces of graphic nonfiction.

Martin Robbins’ brilliant series on Africa/propaganda.

The 10 most difficult books.

Recently Alex Andreou asked people on Twitter about their experiences of poverty. I sent a short reply, but I wanted to expand on it.

- Poverty is sickness. A constant, nagging itch somewhere in your brain; a ball of rage and sadness in the pit of your stomach.

- Poverty is logging into your online bank account with sweaty fingertips, the thought that you’ve once again gone over your overdraft limit and are about to incur charges not a kvetch, but a juddering, pulse-quickening nightmare. It’s pleading with a bank employee to extend your overdraft limit for just a few weeks, because you know that sooner or later a payment you’re owed will come in, even though you know all it’ll do is buy you a couple of weeks before the next frenzied panic.

- Poverty is shame. It’s not being able to tell your family. It’s shame at not being able to tell your family.

- Poverty is loneliness. It’s not being able to go out with your friends, partly because you have no money, but more so because you can’t bear the thought of their happiness and your brave face.

- Poverty isn’t necessarily hunger, though it can be. It’s certainly the thought process that tells you the skunk and vodka that takes the edge off the depression is more important than bread and milk.

- Poverty is rage and envy. It’s seeing others succeed, or at least live comfortable lives, purely because of where they come from or who their parents are, and wondering why no one ever really prepared you for life; never told you that actually it wasn’t the level playing field you grew up on as a child. So you sit at your computer, and you fire off job application after job application, at first thinking each covering letter through, after a few weeks just cutting and pasting, and praying that someone, somewhere, will understand how much you just need a chance.

- Poverty is standing on the bridge over the A1, staring down at the unyielding grey tarmac of the road below, tears in your eyes, thinking better of it, and going to a pub in Highgate, ordering a shot of whiskey and telling yourself to pull it together, then walking for three hours to get home, your mind strangely numb. It’s doing that for three days running.

- Poverty is a nightmare. For me, it didn’t even last a year, yet this is the impression it left. And I don’t believe that our political class – nor indeed much of our media class – actually have any understanding of what poverty really is: an agonising, life-wrecking tragedy.

As you’ll see from Alex’s Storify, it’s so many different things to different people. In the last couple of days it’s been heartening to see both political parties scrambling to disown the “strivers vs shirkers” rhetoric that characterised previous discussions of welfare (and my period of worklessness was during the New Labour years, when such talk was rarely corrected). One thing that poverty also now is – as this detailed report makes clear – is living on benefits.

Right now I begin to wonder how far Iain Duncan Smith’s campaign to save people from the “benefits trap” is as morally-driven a crusade as he claims, and how far it’s just a question of political expediency. Because the more one looks at the evidence – for example here and here - the more one wonders if his conception of inter-generational worklessness is at best flawed and at worst fabricated. Many left wingers will tell you that the Coalition wishes to punish the poor. I don’t believe that. But I do believe that politicians are often enticed by narratives that suit their ideology. Perhaps the main reason that provokes such outrage is because poverty means something different to them.

This letter was submitted to Melanie Phillips through her website on 2nd November. Re-posted and open for comments at New Statesman online.

Dear Ms Phillips,

In a piece published on 21 October (“Jimmy Savile and how the liberal left encouraged the sexualisation of our children”)  you bring to the public’s attention the shameful relationship between the Paedophile Information Exchange and the National Council for Civil Liberties — known today as Liberty. You go on to say: “Now we are being told by commentators that the culture which covered up Savile’s abuses belonged to a quite different age, that times have radically changed and paedophilia would no longer be tolerated. But this is just not true.”

As evidence for this, you cite the recent child abuse cases in Rochdale. You quite rightly add: “For while paedophilia has become a word that engenders not just social opprobrium but a degree of hysteria, at the same time Britain has, in effect, turned into a paedophile culture. It accepts — even expects — that the very young will be sexually active.”

Ms Phillips, I can find little flaw with your argument. However, I believe you make a significant omission from your piece. You fail to mention a relatively modern institution which appears to have done its utmost to promote the prematurely-sexualised culture which you describe. It is the website of the newspaper for which you write.

I find it very difficult to believe you are not aware of this. The blog post that outraged me so much that I felt compelled to write to you was published today. It now carries the title: “Little Lady Liberty! Teenager Elle Fanning pays homage to New York landmark”. It is viewable here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2226294/Halloween-2012-Elle-Fanning-pays-homage-New-Yorks-Statue-Liberty.html

This has changed from its original title, which made reference to Ellie Fanning’s “womanly curves”, which, according to an earlier version of the piece, she apparently wasn’t afraid to “flaunt”. You can see a screengrab of it here.

http://twitpic.com/b9livc

Ellie Fanning is 14 years old.

I believe the title of the article was changed due to the outrage that was sparked on social media. These pictures were taken from her personal Instagram account. The article, as it now stands, is just about respectable, assuming one doesn’t take offence at the reference to her “best angles”.

This is not a one-off mistake, Ms Phillips. As the journalist Martin Robbins has pointed out, this type of “journalism” (can it even be called that?) is a regular feature of Mail Online – a website on which your own writing appears. Indeed, it is endemic to the website’s culture. Tragically, this is because its editors know it generates traffic.

Here is his blog post on the subject:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/voices/2012/06/sex-children-and-mail-online

And here is a video of him discussing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9dqNTTdYKY

As Mr Robbins points out, “Remarkably, there is nothing in the PCC code to stop Mail Online publishing images of young children accompanied by such commentary. Section 6 of the code, focusing on children, says that “young people should be free to complete their time at school without unnecessary intrusion” and that editors “must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s life”.

You may be entirely unaware of all this. You may file your pieces, blissfully unaware of the nature of the site on which they are subsequently hosted. But I would appreciate a response from you as to whether you feel that this behaviour, from a website which has now broken the 100 million unique web browser mark, is morally acceptable. I understand you are the mother of two children. Would you be happy to see them portrayed using the language that this website chooses?

You have my email. I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Alan White

Alan White: Would you say that the latest news on the net gain in playing fields has increased significance in the light of London’s successful Olympics bid & the Green Paper “Youth Matters”, or would you say that these are entirely separate issues?

Richard Caborn: They are all tied together; absolutely no doubt at all. This is about development since I’ve had this job, every aspect of this job has been about developing a sustainable sports infrastructure for England and the UK, whether that’s in schools, in the community, or for an elite. And this is an important component part of that sustainable infrastructure, as indeed the club structure is – the modernisation of governing bodies – everything we’ve done at the end of the process is to leave the most sustainable sports infrastructure that we’ve had.

AW: There have been 72 playing fields created in 2003-4, but this is outweighed by the 52 developments that were considered detrimental to sport. If we’re being honest, the net gain is 20 fields. Given that 5000 school fields were lost between 1985 and 1995, do you think we need more fields?

RC: That’s not my decision here. The point is that we’re moving the debate about selling playing fields on – instead of talking sales we’re asking what facilities a modern sports infrastrucutre requires. We have regionalised the sports boards and given them tools like Active Places. What we’re now saying is, ‘What’s the supply and demand of these things?’ These are decisions that will be taken at the regional and sub-regional levels to achieve an objective that every member of the public will have a multi-sports centre available to use within 20 minutes of travel.

AW: Would you say the DfES legislation passed in August 2004*, which tightened the rules on selling fields, has had a big impact?

RC: Coupled with PPG17, it has had a big impact. This is government working together. It changed us from being reactive to being pro-active on the subject of playing fields.

AW: You talk about government working together, but there are well-documented differences in the policies of the DfES and the ODPM planning legislation. Why are communities’ fields protected half as well as those belonging to schools? I’m talking about the fact that a municipal field needs to have been used in the last 10 years as opposed to 5, be 0.4 hectares as opposed to 0.2, etc.

RC: I don’t think it has that major an impact. We’re dancing on a pin head here. This is a process of refinement– and these may be areas that we continue to explore. As I said we’ve a lot more to do: we’ve turned the corner. These may be areas that we continue to explore. But in the macro picture we’ve turned the corner. I’m not convinced that there’s a big difference between 0.2 and 0.4 hectares.

AW: The NPFA would tell you there’s a big psychological difference – that those small areas can be used to for things like mini-soccer – inititatives which you yourself have put in place.

RC: But the fact that those fields aren’t protected doesn’t mean that they’ve been closed down. We’ve worked bloody hard to turn the corner and I’m delighted that the stats have come out showing we’ve turned a corner – a net gain, rather than a net loss. This 0.4/0.2 hectares issue may need to be revisited.

AW: Tell me about the Active Places website.

RC: We’ve got 20000 sites – bit by bit we’re building a portfolio. It’s about building a portfolio and about keeping it up to date. Each month they’re putting more and more information on, which means that local authorities are able to plan their development strategies in a much more informed way.

AW: I’ve been told, actually by Labour MPs, that they suspect there’s a shortage of good quality space – that there’s plenty of land out there, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a peat bog, or it doesn’t have changing rooms. Do you think that in coming years the real issue is going to be the quality of England’s fields, rather than the quantity?

RC: I couldn’t agree with you more. The demand that’s being made by young people for quality facilities is more and more demanding, and rightly so. That’s behind the multi-sports centres that we’re trying to develop through Sport England, and the commitment that we’ve made in our manifesto to access these centres are important. It’s a balance of indoor and outdoor, between synthetics and grass. I don’t think that’s a ministerial decision – that’s a decision at an operational level, either a local authority, or with Sport England at a regional level. I think we’re giving local authorities the resources and the powers to make those decisions as we develop the sports boards. What’s coming across is that more and more people are playing on synthetics. Recent U21s International football was played on artificial pitches. The technology advances: rubber pitches are absolutely superb.

AW: Scientific research suggests that outdoor exercise is better for children. Do Sport England place too much emphasis on sports halls and gymnasiums?

RC: There’s no doubt that outdoor exercise is better: I think it’s true to say that indoor is more expensive. It’s a matter of getting the balance right, and that will happen at a regional level. Artificial pitches are more expensive to lay, but then your revenue in terms of maintenance is considerably less, and the amount of time you can play on them is a lot more than on a normal pitch, although there’s an issue with floodlights upsetting residents.

AW: Many say that there is an overeliance on planning law, that deeds of covenant would be a far better way to protect England’s sports fields, and would safeguard them for the purposes for which they are intended.

RC: You get yourself into all sorts of legal arguments there. You’ve got to be very careful what these covenants say, otherwise it can create more problems than it resolves. The answer is to make planning laws proactive rather than reactive.

AW: Summarise your thoughts on today’s news.

RC: My story is that this is part of developing with sport itself, I’m not sitting in an ivory tower in Whitehall – I get out there and am trying to develop a genuinely sustainable infrastrucutre. There’s a lot more to be done, but we’ve turned a corner, with a net gain rather than a net loss, and it shows that the policies we’ve put in place are starting to bite. We’ll continue to work with all our partners including the NPFA. We’re moving along, and I think Active Places is going to pay dividends.

AW: Mr Caborn, thank you.

RC: Thank you.

ENDS

This afternoon Michael Fallon and Ed Balls were on Radio 5, discussing the local election results. After a bit of Punch and Judy stuff, Balls was asked about the underwhelming demand for elected mayors. His response was, in tribal terms, a bit of a blinder: “David Cameron said it would mean Borises up and down the country – the country has said no.”