Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Books, Scotland

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2013…

CELEBRATING 30 YEARS

30 years ago in 1983, Jenny Brown welcomed visitors through the gates of Charlotte Square Gardens for Edinburgh’s first Book Festival, presenting a vibrant programme of some 80 authors including John Updike, Liz Lochhead and Alasdair Gray. Little did anyone realise that over the next three decades the event would grow to ten times its original size, becoming the biggest and best-respected festival of books in the world.

At 30, the Edinburgh International Book Festival is well established as a key part of Scottish cultural life with an international reputation: a means of helping us think differently about our past, our present and our future. The Festival this year, which starts on the 10th August, will proudly celebrate its birthday with events looking back over three astonishing decades, and forward to what might happen over the next generation.

The 2013 Festival will include special events hosted by the Book Festival’s former directors, by Guest Selectors Margaret Atwood, Gavin Esler, Neil Gaiman and Kate Mosse, and Illustrator-in-Residence Barroux.

30 YEARS BACK, 30 YEARS FORWARD

The Edinburgh International Book Festival will also examine the impact of changes to our social, political and cultural life since the Edinburgh’s first Book Festival in 1983. Thatcherism was blossoming; the Berlin Wall still stood; Nelson Mandela was in prison and the internet was the domain of science-fiction.

In literature, 1983 was the year Roald Dahl published The Witches and Mairi Hedderwick’s Katie Morag was born; it was the year Hergé and Tennessee Williams died, while a young Iain Banks was writing his first book. Many of today’s leading Scottish authors, including Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Irvine Welsh, James Kelman and J K Rowling, were yet to publish the novels that would bring them fame across the world.

All Book Festival events take place in Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh. Author events last one hour (unless otherwise specified) and most are followed by a book signing.

All Book Festival events take place in Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh. Author events last one hour (unless otherwise specified) and most are followed by a book signing.

Next year, Scotland faces a historic referendum whose outcome will affect the lives of future generations. The Festival’s 2013 programme attempts to provide a generation-wide, international (and politically neutral) context for the referendum debate. The Festival will also look at how writers are projecting forwards to imagine what might happen in the next 30 years. The Book Festival will look into its crystal ball through the eyes of leading public intellectuals, novelists and comics and graphic novel creators.

Opening day, Saturday 10th August…

The Edinburgh Book Festival begins at 10:00 and will see a range of authors on the opening day, from Graham Stewart’s ‘Thatcher’s Decade’ to Angus Peter Campbell’s work of ‘Gaelic Fiction in the 21st Century’, presented by Guest Selectors. List events are no more than £10 for entry (£8 for concessions). The Festival which will incorporate a Children’s Programme and Young Adult Events will close on Monday 26th August.

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Arts, Philosophy

There are risks and costs to a program of action…

MD Esquire

Words attributed to John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963, President of the United States of America

Dear Mr Browning,

I thought it would be nice to start adding an anthology of inspirational thoughts. This is the format I would like to use.

Yours most earnestly,

JACKIE: (very slowly) Take Tube A and apply to Bracket D.

VICTORIA: Reading it slower does not make it any easier to do.

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Arts, Britain, Culture, Government, Media

Plans for a tough new Press watchdog following the Leveson Inquiry…

PRESS STANDARDS

Following the Leveson Inquiry into press and media standards, Britain’s newspaper and magazine publishers have revealed the details of a tough new Press watchdog.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will have the power to impose fines of up to £1 million for systemic wrongdoing and require editors to publish upfront corrections ‘whether proprietors like it or not’.

The Media and Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, has said she is ‘glad’ that progress is being made following months in which talks on Press regulation have stalled.

The watchdog will have far tougher rules than the previous toothless Press regulator, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). It is understood that Ipso will incorporate a standards and compliance arm, with strict investigative powers to call editors to account. The majority of members of the new body will be independent and the industry itself will have no veto on appointments, but proper processes for public appointments and scrutiny will be in place.

Report: The Leveson Inquiry highlighted ethical failings in the press

Report: The Leveson Inquiry highlighted ethical failings in the press

The public will be able to call a hotline number if they want to ask media organisations to leave them alone. And a whistleblowers’ hotline will also be set up for journalists if they are asked to do anything they believe is unethical.

The details were released ahead of a meeting today of the Privy Council at which a Royal Charter to govern the rules surrounding Press regulation will be discussed.

Newspaper publishers appear to hold a common consensus in that the Independent Press Standards Organisation will be a ‘complete break with the past’ and will deliver all the ‘key recommendations’ made by Lord Justice Leveson.

The Culture Secretary said:

… We have been urging the newspaper industry for several months to set up a new self-regulator, and are glad that they seem to now be making progress.

… We all want to see the principles of the Leveson report implemented and the self-regulatory body is a key component of that.

Most in government will welcome that the Press are forging ahead with the establishment of a new regulator. Ipso will go a long way to remedying the deficiencies of the PCC and in fulfilling the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson.

Though it may take several months for the new body to be operating, the proposals offer a route map out of the deadlock eight months after Leveson reported. That deadlock is mostly attributable to the lobby group Hacked Off which has tried to stitch up a deal for political control of newspapers.

A watchdog with teeth is needed. The public have a right to expect a resolution to this matter sooner rather than later.

PROPOSALS

  • Maximum fines of £1 million for systemic wrongdoing by the Press
  • Upfront corrections when stories are wrong
  • A phone hotline for the public to complain about harassment by the Press
  • A whistleblowers’ hotline for journalists who are concerned they are being asked by bosses to do something unethical
  • A standards and compliance arm, with investigative powers to call editors to account
  • The Press have no veto over appointments to the new regulator
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