Rising Dawn

Press Article

Originally uploaded by Dawnriser

My sponsored ride has hit the local press in York. The story has been mainly culled from by blog so there’s nothing new in there. The Press hasn’t posted the article on their website so you can’t see it online.

There’s another sponsored cycle ride article on the same page. Brian Crosby, who is coincidentally another Riding Lights board member, was raising money for three other charities.
It’s the season for Riding Bikes.

There’s still plenty of time to donate to the Riding Lights fund. www.help.co.uk/ridingbike

George Monbiot: The most potent weapon wielded by the empires of Murdoch and China | Comment is free | The Guardian
If you want to know how powerful Rupert Murdoch is, read the reviews of Bruce Dover’s book, Rupert’s Adventures in China. Well, go on, read them. You can’t find any? I rest my case.

As lucid and alarming as ever George Monbiot puts Murdoch in his sights and provokes an intelligent discussion on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog.

The Times used to be the final authority in British Newspapers. No longer. I’d rather read The Telegraph. At least I know what it’s bias is. I have to work hard to discern which part of Murdoch’s empire The Times is championing on any one day, but I know it’ll be in there somewhere.

Do I have Sky? Yes, but only for the football. And if wanted to rant on I could whip up a good argument for the way pay TV has ruined the beautiful game too. 

The article may be long but it’s worth reading, including the comments from readers.

BBC NEWS | UK | Youngest inventor patents broom
A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UKs youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.
Sam Houghton, of Buxton, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.
After passing the rigorous patenting process, his idea is now protected from anyone who might copy it.

I heard this story on 5Live this morning. The boy was apparently only 3 when he invented the broom.  Amazing. Then I heard that his father is an expert in patent law. At that point the story lost something. Am I just being cynical?

BBC NEWS | Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

Hundreds of listeners have contacted BBC Radio 4 after newsreader Charlotte Green dissolved into giggles while reading a bulletin on Today.She lost control after playing a clip of the oldest known recording of the human voice.

Charlotte Green has my sympathy - as someone who used to read news bulletins I know the dreadful feeling when a fit of the giggles interrupts your normally sedate reading voice.

The one that I recall most vividly was when I was reading a piece of copy, “North Yorkshire dinner ladies were toasted for winning an employment tribunal case over equal pay”. My imagination played riot with the idea of toasted dinner ladies.

Can news be presented as drama? The editorial team at the BBC must have wrangled over this one. Newsnight is to stage a series of short dramas to raise issues about the decision to go to war against Iraq 5 years ago. This is how the Editor, Peter Barron explained it in his daily email.

Next week on Newsnight we’re making our first foray into drama with a series of films entitled 10 Days to War. This may prove controversial, but we hope it will also open up the debate about the war in Iraq in new and revealing ways. The issue our viewers most often ask us to revisit is - by some distance - the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Over the next two weeks, to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion, we will look back and examine again the circumstances of the run-up to war: the WMD claims, the question of legality, the diplomatic wrangles and so on.

I’m pleased they’ve decided to present the films as a mini drama series that will screen before Newsnight starts. But it still raises difficulties. (more…)

The response of Israel to the attacks from Gaza is out of proportion. Whilst I defend the right of a country to protect it’s inhabitants the treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel is unjust. I saw a play called Salaam Bethlehem by Riding Lights Theatre Company in York last December. It is set in a Christian Palestinian home. It made me realise how the Palestinian Community has been humiliated by the overwhelming response of the Israeli authorities to the terrorist attacks in their country. The tension between these communities is as old as modern Israel itself. More bombs, bullets and rockets will never solve the problem. The international community is right to raise a protest, it must also increase its efforts to bring agreement and peace between the two sides. Both have a right to exist, neither has the right to dominate and humiliate the other. Salaam Bethlehem.