Skills Wales, with Jeff Cuthbert

THIS week is Adult Learners’ Week. Whether you are looking for your first job, thinking about changing career or you just want to learn a new skill, now is a great time to find out what is out there for you.

Throughout Wales there are more than 800 events taking place to give people a taste of the variety of skills they can learn. The week is organised by NIACE Dysgu Cymru, and supported by the European Social Fund through the Welsh Government.

In the current economic climate people of all ages face big challenges in the jobs market but by equipping themselves with relevant skills they will greatly improve their chances of succeeding.

There are many different ways to get those new skills too. Apart from enrolling in full or part-time courses, individuals can build their skills through volunteering or get work placement that gives them valuable on-the-job experience.


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For example, today I will be attending a Learning @ Work Day event with SA Brains in Cardiff, to highlight the importance of skills development in the workplace. This year, 250 organisations in Wales – including the Welsh Government – will take part in Learning @ Work Day.

Evidence from previous years indicates the development of skills through “on-the-job learning” can enhance performance, productivity, increase team morale and cut absenteeism and staff turnover.

At the event, I will be meeting budding chef Peter Jarvis, 29, from Caerau, Cardiff, who has been juggling catering training with full-time employment.

Since 2004 Peter has been working at the Brains Brewery-owned Churchills Hotel in Pontcanna, initially as a porter but has since worked his way up the ranks and now creates desserts, specials and wedding buffets.

He left school at 16 and applied to what was then Coleg Glan Hafren to do a hospitality catering course but didn’t have the right qualifications for it. He then did a three-year certificate at the college for people with special learning needs and passed every element of the course.

At work, Peter’s manager and head chef suggested that he should receive some training and, as a company that is keen to progress and train its staff, Brains helped him enrol onto a foundation apprenticeship with Cambrian Training.

This week is also about recognising and celebrating the achievements of individuals such as Peter. Last week, I attended the Inspire! Adult Learning Awards event in Llandudno, to hand out some of the awards.

The awards recognise exceptional achievement by adult learners and tutors, in categories such as community learner, family learning and learning at work.

Peter was one of the winners at that event and I met many others with inspirational stories about how learning a skill has changed their lives and many who have overcome severe obstacles to gain new qualifications. I hope their stories will encourage others to try something new.

If you want to find out more, you can go to an event in your area or log on to www.yourfuturechoiceaction.org.uk

Building skills is vital for individuals’ own success and self-esteem and also for the future prosperity of Wales.

Jeff Cuthbert is Deputy Minister for Skills in the Welsh Government

Read More: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education-news/2012/05/17/skills-wales-with-jeff-cuthbert-91466-30984892/

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Sam’s Velo Virtuoso bike shop aims to cash in on Hadleigh Olympic mountain bike track – echo

Sam’s Velo Virtuoso bike shop aims to cash in on Hadleigh Olympic mountain bike track

By Jacqueline McMillan

Business opportunity – bike shop owner Sam Mashford

A YOUNG entrepreneur hopes to capitalise on the Olympic mountain biking event a Hadleigh by opening a bike shop nearby.

Sam Mashford, 25, of Hazel Close, Hadleigh, is a plumber by trade, but is converting a former financial services office, in London Road, ready for an influx of cyclists from near and far.

His new shop, Velo Virtuoso, is opening in the former Crawford Scott offices, which closed over six months ago.

Mr Mashford hopes to pick up business during the Games and for years afterwards, since Essex County Council plans to keep the London 2012 track at Hadleigh Farm as a public cycling course, with
bike hire facilities after the Olympic events on August 11 and 12.

Mountain bike enthusiasts will be able to buy bikes, helmets, clothing, pumps and accessories from May 26. Mr Mashford said: “It has long been an ambition to open my own shop.

“There is a real demand for bike shops in the area, as it is quite popular here, especially with what’s going on with the Olympics. It’s an exciting time to come to Hadleigh.

“I’m looking forward to the launch, but I was a bit nervous. In this economic climate, opening a business is difficult and a worry.

“You have to really bring something to a high street which people want and need.

“This certainly would not have been possible without the help and support of my family.”

The area already has several bike shops, including Cycle Warehouse in London Road, Hadleigh.

However, mountain biker Luke Farey, 39, of Silversea Drive, Westcliff, welcomed news of the new business.

He said: “I think is really good idea, especially if they supply proper mountain biking gear.

“It’ll be good for the area, because mountain biking is growing massively across the whole of the UK and I’m sure the Olympics will make it very popular in Hadleigh.

“I’m really looking forward to using the Olympic track once it’s all finished.”

The county council’s post-Games plans for the Hadleigh venue include building a community centre with a cafe, changing rooms and toilets, and adding new footpaths and bridleways in the park.

The course itself will be split into two tracks – one for beginners and and one for more experienced riders. Lessons will be available.

About 100 local mountain bikers have already put their names down to join a new club to help people of all ages enjoy the track at Hadleigh A planning application for the post-Games changes is
expected to be submitted to Castle Point Council in the next few weeks.

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Read More: http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/9714773.Sam___s__Velo_Virtuoso_bike_shop_aims_to_cash_in_on_Hadleigh_Olympic_mountain_bike_track/

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Carbon compensation ads blitz TV

(Song plays throughout: ‘Tell Me Something I Don’t Know’ – Selena Gomez)

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER (To press): Today is the day that money will first start to flow through to families resulting from carbon pricing.

GREG COMBET, CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY MINSTER (To press): And so we’re doing some advertising to make people understand that that’s what’s being delivered when it arrives in their accounts.

(Excerpt from Government Household Assistance Package ad)

VOICEOVER: It’s the first part of the Australian Government’s household assistance package.

GREG HUNT, OPPOSITION CLIMATE SPOKESMAN (To press): There’s no mention of the carbon tax in the carbon tax ads.

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER (To press): This is the tax which dare not speak its name.

GREG COMBET (Lateline): I actually don’t see what’s wrong with that. We’ve not hidden our light under a bushel.

CHRISTINE MILNE, GREENS LEADER (To press): I think people are going to say ‘why am I getting this compensation payment?’

JULIA GILLARD (To press): Everybody knows that the price on carbon will start on the 1st of July.

CHRISTINE MILNE (To press): The Government has really missed a big opportunity with the ads.

GREG HUNT (To press): They should mention the carbon tax, they should mention electricity bills, gas bills, grocery bills, the fact that three milk companies are hit front and centre.

JULIA GILLARD (To press): We are making sure that family payment increases, pension increases and a tax cut flows.

TONY ABBOTT (To press): The Government loves to talk about the compensation but they refuse to talk about the injury.

GREG COMBET (To press): Tony Abbott’s just a lout really.

BILL KELTY, FORMER ACTU PRESIDENT (At ACTU Congress): I think we make politics just simply too hard. The truth will normally do.

JULIA GILLARD (At press conference): We do know electricity bills will go up, the average amount they’ll go up for people is $3.30 a week.

TONY ABBOTT (To press): Power costs will go up by an estimated 20 per cent.

GREG COMBET (To press): He’ll be found out for the sort of deceitful conduct he’s engaged in.

TONY ABBOTT (To press): I want to reassure the Prime Minister that I will be in the manufacturing heartland of our country…

(In Factory): I just stapled my finger to this …

(To press)…. day in, day out ….

(In baking factory): So they’re pies aren’t they?

FACTORY WORKER: Pies, yep.

TONY ABBOTT (To press): : … week in, week out …

(In baking factory): And what’s this?

FACTORY WORKER: Cooking oil ..

TONY ABBOTT (To press): … between now and the next election.

JULIA GILLARD (To press): And I can guarantee this for you: the 1st of July will come and go as a very ordinary day in Australia. So, don’t believe all of the false claims.

Read More: http://www.elp.com/index/from-the-wires/wire_news_display/1669780097.html

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Climate change science and true believers

On March 28, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a statement that said the following: “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized (property) losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.” That, according to the Washington, D.C., press.

Did you notice that statement “high agreement”? How big a deal is this admission by the IPCC?

Although it appears to be somewhat narrow, this admission is huge. In terms of impact, this is akin to the pope declaring that the Sunday after next, Catholics will all become Lutherans. Well, maybe not that big, but still.

Some contend that 97 percent of American science professionals find manmade influence on climate change to be indisputable. The “97 percent” number is used to try to convince us that consensus is real. It is not. Moreover, science is not consensus, and consensus is not science.

In 2010, 141 scientists signed a letter to the United Nations challenging the junk science of the global warming cult, declaring “climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discover’ — the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is not settled.”

In addition, a year later, in response to the East Anglia “Climategate,” more than 1,000 scientists expressed concern about the validity of the whole notion of climate change.

Fewer and fewer people believe in the “faith” of manmade environmental change. There is not enough evidence. Moreover, everywhere we turn we find the “experts” are flat-out lying or fudging data to make their case. Finally, many in the environmental movement really don’t believe in it themselves.

Economist Ottmar Edenhofer is a co-chairman of an IPCC working group. In the world of environmentalism, he is a big deal. He said, “(O)ne must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. … One has to free oneself from the illusions that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

As one commentator put it, “When climate science is no longer about the climate but rather about ways to engineer a massive transfer of wealth from developed nations … it is no longer science … (it is) a ruse.”

The Earth’s climate will continue to change as it always has. “True believers” twist natural phenomenon into distorted positions that condemns humanity for things over which we have no control or much, if any, influence.

It’s difficult to have a proper understanding of humanity’s impact on the Earth because we are almost always around people or around evidence of human activity. Years ago, I spent a year on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Later I had the privilege of flying the SR-71 for five years. I also was a U-2 mission planner, planned anti-drug reconnaissance missions, and occasionally reviewed film of the Amazon basin. What strikes me most about those experiences is not the impact of humanity on this planet but the complete lack of evidence of human presence on the vast majority of our globe.

As for energy use, some contend that we need to get off the oil treadmill and drive electric cars. Pure electric cars? OK, and electric cars get their electrical power from where? Forty-five percent of the electricity available in the United States comes from coal-powered plants. Assuming electric cars are evenly distributed across the country, 45 percent are really coal-burning cars.

They aren’t electric cars at all. They are powered by coal, hydroelectric, natural gas and nuclear energy. A tiny number are wind powered. Given the sources for their electricity, how many miles per gallon equivalent do these crummy highway golf carts get anyway? I would hope there are good estimates, but I am not aware of what they are.

Finally, since the 1960s, the efforts we have made to clean up the environment have been nothing short of spectacular. How far have we come, and how far do we have to go?

If we have improved the environment by 80 or 90 percent, why haven’t we also correspondingly reduced the size of the EPA and MPCA?

If the war on pollution is largely over, how big should these agencies be just to maintain the high environmental quality we now have or to continue work to improve the environment without involving themselves in things they shouldn’t be doing?

Stan Gudmundson is a community columnist for the Daily News.

Read More: http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/colothers/article_6337737c-a236-11e1-b160-0019bb2963f4.html

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Climate change an afterthought

As beneficial as a general international framework for emissions cuts might be for the planet, there seems almost no chance at this stage that such a framework will be agreed upon, and even if it were the problems in enforcing it would be enormous

As the leaders of the G8 and other invited nations gather in the US state of Maryland this weekend it’s not surprising that the focus will be on the unfolding financial crisis in Europe and how to implement measures to avoid a global recession or even depression. Other issues that will get some attention are the war in Afghanistan, the continuing violence in Syria and the proper response to Iran’s nuclear programme. But climate change, one of the dominant issues of the 2009 G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will likely be an afterthought at most when it comes time to write the prepared statement at the end of the summit.

That’s not because the problem has gone away or that the situation is showing even the slightest improvement because of the strong measures pledged by world leaders in Pittsburgh on global warming, which included the promise to ”spare no effort to reach agreement in Copenhagen through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations”. As everyone knows, the high hopes placed on the Copenhagen summit were dashed in a fractious divide between developed and developing nations. We can only hope that the ideas the world leaders come up with in Maryland this weekend to save the eurozone are more effective than the ”effort to reach agreement in Copenhagen”.

In 2009 there was also considerable anxiety over the global economy because of the crisis which started in the US over sub-prime housing loans, but it was a relatively optimistic period with regard to climate change. With the election of Barack Obama there was finally a man in the White House who pledged to work within the UN framework on climate change and commit the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases to making cuts in carbon dioxide emissions rather than do everything possible to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol as did his predecessor. But Mr Obama’s good intentions were dashed on political and economic realities.

As it turns out George W Bush may have had the right approach to climate change after all. As beneficial as a general international framework for emissions cuts might be for the planet, there seems almost no chance at this stage that such a framework will be agreed upon, and even if it were the problems in enforcing it would be enormous.

Mr Bush said that rather than make binding commitments to reduce emissions, each nation should design its own strategy, reflecting each country’s ”different energy resources, stages of development and economic needs”, and emphasised that governments should stimulate investment in clean energy, renewables, and energy efficiency and provide financial and technical support for such projects in developing countries. This is a far preferable course to postponing the day of action on climate change until a multilateral deal on carbon emissions can be worked out, which seems to be what most of the world is waiting for.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in Mr Bush’s actions to suggest he really meant what he said and was serious about tackling climate change. This would of course mean taking steps to loosen, and maybe some day to break, the control of Big Oil over the global energy picture. There is little indication that any of the leaders gathered at this week’s summit are willing to do that in any major way either, especially at this time of economic instability. Realistically, there is only so much even a world leader can do when it comes to a choice between the environment and economics. And to be fair, for the time being fossil fuels will necessarily play the dominant energy role no matter how progressive the leadership.

However, there are certain steps that could make an immediate difference and that would involve little political risk. As the summit statement in Pittsburgh noted: ”Enhancing our energy efficiency can play an important, positive role in promoting energy security and fighting climate change”. The statement also said ”inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change”. This is a very important point, and it can be taken a bit further. Until the true costs of fossil fuels are taken into account, clean energy sources will continue to be at a great disadvantage in attracting investment. These costs include not only climate change but also the deterioration of air quality and the potential for more catastrophic accidents at sea, such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Did you know?

You can introduce your kids to edutainment reading with our Student Weekly magazine: Thailand’s only all-English entertainment and education magazine for teens and all ages.

Read More: http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/294208/climate-change-action-now-an-afterthought

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To see climate change, watch the sea

THE Earth turns white when a change in large-scale ocean circulation triggers a sudden worldwide shift toward freezing temperatures. You may remember this apocalyptic scenario as the climax of the 2004 US movie The Day After Tomorrow. But how many of us are aware that the ocean can dramatically effect our climate in reality?

In addition to well-known currents near the surface of the sea, such as the Kuroshio current around the coast of south east Asia, Japan and China, there is a massive global current that flows unseen in the deep, thousands of metres below the surface, called oceanic general circulation.

Ocean water becomes heavier when it is colder and when it contains more salt. Around the polar regions, ocean water is cooled down by air and forms ice. Because the ice does not contain salt, the salinity of the surrounding sea water rises, which results in ocean water near Antarctica or the North Atlantic sinking to join oceanic general circulation.

The oceans are said to be able to hold about 1,000 times more heat than the atmosphere can. If all the oceanic water in the world released enough heat to reduce its own temperature by 0.01°C, the temperature of the atmosphere would be 10°C higher. A small change in the sea can profoundly effect our climate.

As oceanic general circulation delivers heat around the world, a change in it could affect the climate. Thus, detailed observation of the sea is necessary to detect climate change.

But observing the sea is not easy at all. Satellites can only observe the surface of the sea. To observe conditions underwater, the surveying devices need to be in the water, making it extremely difficult to cover the entire sea.

Therefore, a worldwide observation system dubbed Argo, a global array of deep-sea probes to measure temperature and salinity, began operation in 2000. Japan is one of the many nations participating. About 3,500 automatic measuring probes – called Argo floats – now drifting in the world’s oceans dive to about 2,000m below the surface every 10 days to measure water temperature and salinity.

Research so far has already shown the possibility of salinity falling in northern regions – near the North Pole, off Alaska and off the Chishima (Kuril) Islands. Such salinity changes may cause changes in sinking or rising currents in the oceanic general circulation.

The research also reveals the tendency of salinity to rise in areas with little rain, including Hawaii, and of salinity to fall in areas with heavy rain, including some northern areas. Widening gaps in the amount of rainfall from one area to another, like similar gaps already observed in areas on land, may be occurring at sea, experts said.

Observations using floats equipped with oxygen density measuring instruments have started as well, to study the environment that maintains the marine ecosystem.

The level of oxygen is relatively high near the surface of the sea, where many fish live, thanks to the abundance of phytoplankton that produces oxygen. But this ecosystem could not be maintained if the phytoplankton did not get sufficient nutrients from deeper layers. The new observations attempt to find out how the nutritious water from deeper levels with little oxygen moves up to the surface.

Observations in the sea around Japan by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and others since last year have found that large-scale gyres measuring hundreds of kilometres in diameter sometimes occur, stirring up water and revitalizing biological activity. The Argo floats will also study this mechanism in detail.

“We’ve only just started the observations, and there are many mysteries. We hope to unravel oceanic climate change on a global scale,” said Shigeki Hosoda, deputy team leader of JAMSTEC. – Yomiuri Shimbun / Asia News Network

Read More: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/5/20/asia/11319629&sec=asia

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On the euro, and on global warming, it turns out the ‘thought criminals’ were …

Similarly, as we watch the euro undergoing its catastrophe, for precisely the
reasons that the dissenters foretold, it is fascinating to see the disarray
in which this leaves the cheerleaders for the cause. We recall the days when
the BBC obsessively promoted calls for Britain to join the euro; when Evan
Davis, in 2002, was telling us how the euro had made Greece financially
“stable”; or when Stephanie Flanders, in 2008, derided those who thought the
euro would “crash and burn” and proclaimed that its role as a global
currency was now “secure”.

It has been instructive to see Robert Peston admitting that the euro’s problem
was that it was “a political project in economic clothing”. That was
precisely why some of us, back in the 1990s, were trying to point out that
it was doomed to fail.

But how all those commanding heights can now be brought back to any
intelligent understanding of the world is another matter. Boris Johnson
calls for a Tory director-general to knock sense into the BBC. Perhaps he
has forgetten that it already has a Tory chairman – that tireless Europhile
and global warming zealot, Lord (Chris) Patten.

As a footnote, to illustrate how trivial so much BBC coverage has become, its
political correspondent Nick Robinson last week reported David Cameron’s
claim to be “winning the debate on the Government deficit”. But I do not
recall the BBC telling us that, in March, our public-sector borrowing hit a
record £18.2 billion, or £4.5 billion every week. It is not part of the
BBC’s “anti-cuts” agenda to tell us that public spending is still hurtling
upwards, any more than it tells us about so many other things which do not
accord with its deeply skewed world-view.

We do not pay the BBC to have a “line” on pretty well everything it covers,
but that is what we get. I fear we can only reciprocate the contempt in
which it appears to hold us.

A fatuous metric plea from a ‘dead sheep’

Front-runner for fatuous remark of the week was the claim by Lord (Geoffrey)
Howe of Aberavon, in the Lords, that “the most glaring omission” from the
Queen’s Speech was a pledge that, before the Olympics, Britain will scrap
miles, pints and ounces. This, according to the former foreign secretary,
would save foreign visitors from the “deeply confusing shambles” of our
weights and measures, which “puts us all to shame”.

As a fanatical Europhile, Lord Howe should know that we retain miles and pints
under EU law. The revision of EU directive 80/181 which would be needed to
scrap them is scarcely something his friends in Brussels could rush through
in a matter of weeks.

As patron of a lobby group, the UK Metric Association, Lord Howe does pop up
with this plea whenever he can, though never quite so absurdly as on this
occasion. The real reason why our weight and measures have ended up in what
he sees as a shambles is that, ever since 1965, the campaign to make Britain
exclusively metric has consistently relied on stealth, concealment and
downright lies, its supporters always always being terrified of putting the
issue to a proper debate and parliamentary vote. One such blatant untruth,
that we embarked on metrication to meet the demands of British industry,
still has pride of place on his lobby group’s website.

What an odd part Lord Howe has played in our national life these past 40
years. Apart from the feline dagger-thrust which set off the downfall of Mrs
Thatcher, his proudest achievement was that device in the 1972 European
Communities Act which allows EU law to be put into UK law by ministerial
fiat, without any need for parliamentary debate – perhaps the greatest blow
to parliamentary democracy in our history.

Years ago I was asked to speak at the annual dinner of his former constituency
association. I was not wholly kind about the supreme object of his devotion,
the EU, and when questions were invited, he stood up and rambled on for 10
minutes so inchoately that few of us had any clue what point he was trying
to make. Several present came up afterwards to apologise for their former
member’s rudeness. I told them that I at last appreciated the force of Denis
Healey’s immortal comment, that being attacked by Geoffrey Howe was like
being “savaged by a dead sheep”.

Child snatching is now big business

There has been publicity from all the usual quarters, led inevitably by the
BBC, that we are in the middle of something called National Fostering
Fortnight. So many children are now being taken into care – 24,000 last year
in England alone – that there is a critical shortage of foster carers to
look after them. According to Fostering Network, a new foster home is needed
“every 22 minutes”.

A point that is rarely heard, however – although it may help explain why the
seizing of children is at a record level, care applications having doubled
in just four years – is that fostering has become a very lucrative industry.
Foster carers themselves can be paid £400 a week or more for each child they
take in, and the companies which employ many of them (almost invariably run
by former social workers) are hugely profitable. Last year, Rothschilds
organised the sale of the National Fostering Agency, the second largest such
company, private equity and pension funds bid up the initial bid price of
£80 million to £135 million.

According to a recent Policy Exchange report, the average cost of keeping each
of the 65,000 children now in care in England is £37,000, an annual bill of
£2.4 billlion. This is quite apart from the other costs of our “child care”
system, such as the lavish fees paid to “experts” and the legal profession.

So “child protection” is very big business, one of its main benefciaries being
Barnardo’s, the fostering and adoption agency, with an annual turnover of
nearly quarter of a billion pounds. But whether this is likely to raise any
questions in the mind of our children’s minister, Tim Loughton, is another
matter. Last July he appointed, as his chief adviser on adoption, Martin
Narey – who was CEO, from 2005 to 2011, of Barnardo’s. In December, Mr Narey
did his best to disabuse MPs of the thought that any children were being
taken from their families unnecessarily. But for many of us, not least the
families involved, this thought has become rather pressing.

Read More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9277302/On-the-euro-and-on-global-warming-it-turns-out-the-thought-criminals-were-right.html

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American Pie Reunion and Bang On: Top things to do this weekend

Get down to…

Shabazz Palaces

The innovative US hip hop combo, led by Ishmael Butler (pictured), released their startling, snappy Black Up album (a Metro highlight of 2011) on the Sub Pop label. They’re making their mark as a spaced-out live act, too, with their latest dates starting at Bristol’s Start The Bus tonight, before they head to the Southport Weekender (at Butlin’s Minehead, confusingly) tomorrow, Newcastle on Monday, then Salford and London.                  

http://shabazzpalaces.com

Feast your eyes on…

Drowning World

Gideon Mendel’s photographic series about flooding around the globe, depicting major scenes of devastation from Britain to Pakistan, merges climate change activism with art.


Until Jun 5, Somerset House. 
www.somersethouse.org.uk

Fiona Rae: Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century

Distinctly ambiguous abstract paintings from the past decade by the acclaimed former Young British Artist, created after she began incorporating references to the digital age.

Until Aug 26, Leeds Art Gallery.
www.leeds.gov.uk/artgallery

Curl up with…

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale

It wasn’t done for a lady to express lustful thoughts in the 19th century. Instead, Mrs Robinson, probably like many other bored, unhappy, Victorian housewives, confessed her adulterous feelings for a local doctor to her diary. Her private entries led to a scandalous divorce and Kate Summerscale, author of The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, constructs her story in a riveting account of Victorian sexual anxiety.

Tune into…

Sweet Billing Pilgrim: Crown and Treaty

SBP’s sequel to their Mercury-nominated 2009 album is a more expensively produced session, which takes these busy session musicians out of the garden shed in which they’d previously recorded. Their USP is to lurch between twinkly campfire folk, fiddly prog-funk and clever-clever Steely Dan-ish AOR, to beautiful effect.

Bang On: [sic]

Bang On’s debut album for Big Dada puts Scouse-rap on the homegrown hip hop map, in a blaze of phlegmy, whip-smart rhymes and dizzying slang. His bristling energy and humour mark him out as a singular, ferocious voice in the increasingly identikit Brit-hop playing field.

Buy popcorn for…

American Pie Reunion

Nostalgic thirty-somethings will most enjoy tucking into this gross-out comedy that recaptures the spirit of its iconic 1999 original.

Monsieur Lazhar

This heartwarming, Oscar-nominated drama about an Algerian asylum seeker who volunteers at a French-Canadian primary school could well be 2012’s Dead Poets Society.

Read More: http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/898770-american-pie-reunion-and-bang-on-top-things-to-do-this-weekend

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Film"The Hungry Tide" Speaker Phil Glendenning Q & A

When:

20 May 12 @ 5:00 pm

Venue:

Avalon Baptist Church

Where:

2 George St, Avalon, NSW, 2107

Contact:

Kath Moody

99182502

Web:

avalonbaptistchurch.net/

“The Hungry Tide”, a very personal and human story about the reality of climate change, screens at the Avalon Baptist church on May 20.

SPEAKER:  PHIL GLENDENNING
Q and A session

After the success of our film night in March, Avalon Group of Amnesty International and Avalon Baptist Church are screening another great documentary “THE HUNGRY TIDE”  All are welcome to come, participate, and enjoy a free supper!

This film, about Maria, and her struggle to save her homeland, is made by Tom Zubricki, award winning film maker, who has a gift of showing how real people are coping with disasters and problems with courage and inspiring passion. ”I wanted to put a human face to climate change,” Zubrycki says.

Film critic Sylvia Lawson says about “The Hungry Tide”: “ The documentary shows rising seas on the small Pacific nation of Kiribati – a scattering of sandy atolls – and the work of one of its citizens, Maria Tiimon, to spread the news internationally. Maria is seen at her job with an NGO in western Sydney, failing to make it home for her mother’s death, worrying for her father, and at Copenhagen in December 2009, pleading for her sinking nation; growing into her public speaking roles, and returning to Kiribati as one of a delegation led by Patrick Dodson. This is a marvelous film, strong in narrative, imagery, argument and character. Every politician should be obliged to watch it.”

This film will inform and inspire all who care about the future of our wondrous planet .

Date:  Sunday -20th May     5 pm – 7.30 pm
Place:  Avalon Baptist Church 2 George St. Avalon
Free entry/Free supper
- donations suggested to   The Pacific Calling Partnership
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Read More: http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/events/story/filmthe-hungry-tide-speaker-phil-glendenning-q-a/

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400,000 more English homes in fuel poverty

An increase in the price of gas and electricity price at the end of 2011 is estimated to have pushed 400,000 more homes in England into fuel poverty, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The new projections show that 3.9 million homes in England were in fuel poverty at the end of last year, with more than 10 per cent of their income being spent on energy bills.

DECC figures show there was a significant decrease in the number of UK households in fuel poverty to 4.75 million in 2010, from 5.5 million in 2009.

This improvement was a result of income growth, a fall in energy usage and relatively stable energy prices.

However rising energy prices in 2011 are expected to have reversed the improving trend.

The region of the UK in the deepest fuel poverty is Northern Ireland, where 44 per cent of households are estimated to spend more than 10 per cent of their incomes on heat and power.

In England, 16 per cent of households are in fuel poverty, followed by Wales at 26 per cent and Scotland at 28 per cent.

Age UK warned of the dangers of fuel poverty, with vulnerable groups at risk of suffering ill health and even death as a result.

Energy and climate change minister Greg Barker said: “The Green Deal will help people pay for home improvements through savings on their energy bills with extra financial help for the most vulnerable.”

Energy company E.On has pledged not to increase energy prices for residential customers this year.

E.On’s chief executive Tony Cocker said: “Unfortunately global energy markets are expected to see an overall trend of rising wholesale prices but as a company we believe in acting fairly, which means cutting prices when we can and never raising prices unless absolutely necessary.”

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Read More: http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2012/05/17/400000-more-english-homes-in-fuel-poverty/

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