Worries that “sledgehammer” legislation will prevent photography

Photo: Bill Joseph

Pressure groups and industry bodies hit out at “sledgehammer” legislation and the potential for police to wield those laws to prevent photography, curtail civil liberties and dampen dissent in the wake of Ian Tomlinson’s death during the G20 protests in London.

Crucial footage has emerged showing a police officer striking Tomlinson with a full-force baton blow. Tomlinson later collapsed and died from a suspected heart attack.

Campaigners hope this incident will highlight the dangers of police suppression of photography in public places under terrorism laws.

Dumpster-diving: Bin there, done that?

Photo: Wikicommons

Veritas gets down in the dumpster in the hunt for free food

With the country now ‘officially’ in recession, after the worst slump in gross domestic product (GDP) since 1980, unemployment is on the rise in all industries with predictions of two million jobless in 2009. Though quarterly student loans means that Scottish students are less affected, a high proportion of Napier’s international students relying on part-time jobs are less lucky.

But instead of focusing on the recession, and predictions that it’s only going to get worse, Veritas has hit the streets in its first instalment of ‘how to live for free…’ This month we look at food and the practise of ‘dumpster-diving’ – where people go through supermarket chain bins filling their fridges with food waste.

Starting back in the mid-‘90s in New York, the ‘freegan’ movement has gathered momentum in the past year in the UK, with research figures revealing a high proportion of the 6.7 million tonnes sent to landfill annually is  ‘avoidable’. The movement in Edinburgh has also grown in popularity, with numerous online forums organising meet-ups as well as positive media attention.

Pirate Bay no safe habour for file sharing

 

 

Photo: Pirate Bay

 

 

The word ‘pirate’ is derived from the Greek word peira, which roughly translates to ‘to find luck on the sea’. Language lessons aside, it seems Swedish-hosted file sharing site Pirate Bay is no longer sailing through untroubled waters. In a court case that has bordered on farcical, three of the website’s co-founders, Fredik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and the site’s donor, Swedish dotcom millionaire Carl Lundström, stood in the dock in Stockholm charged with copyright infringement and staring two years in prison and a fine of £98,000 in the face.

The trial has been the scene of comical moments: when asked if he wished compensation for appearing, part of Swedish court procedure, one of the defense witnesses quipped he would like flowers sent to his wife. This resulted in £3,000 worth of flowers sent via the internet by Pirate Bay supporters.

A soldier’s view

 

Photo: Anthony LLoyd (Wiki Commons)

This piece was originally written for impulse, but cut at the last minute by our previous module leader as he felt the topic was sensitive. Later published in Veritas, Napier student newspaper, it is an oral history of a day in the life of a soldier who served in Bosnia. Although his name was published in the print version of this story, he prefers to remain anonymous when posting on the internet. The format is similar to that of the Economist, who publish first hand accounts of interesting stories. NB: The piece contains swearing. Just a heads up for those who don’t care for that sort of thing.

 

There wasn’t much action in Bosnia, and most of the stuff we dealt with was underground crime. There’s a big Mafia scene in Kosovo and one of the main guys owned a hotel just near where we were stationed. We had to do this raid on the hotel and we were told that there would be hundreds of armed guards there. A team were camping out watching the place for fucking days and days, which is were we got our information from, about how many guards were there.

So we were training for about two weeks to do an assault on the hotel. The whole battalion was involved in the operation, so that’s about 500 men. Everyone got really worked up about it. We were shitting ourselves actually.

We rocked up to this hotel with all our vehicles and tanks and shit, and fucking just bashed through the gates. There were about five armed guards at the time who fucking threw their rifles down and ran like fuck. We all jumped out and raided the whole hotel.

We were bashing each door in at a time and the first door we bashed in there was this woman; I think she was Slovakian, and she went into a seizure because she got such a fucking fright. She went totally pale and white and actually had a seizure from shock.

Tommy Shepard: A profile

 

Photo: Wikicommons

Many of the registered voters in Scotland are hoping the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections signal a sea change for Scottish politics. They envisage an empowered, confident Parliament ready to take Westminster to task. However, low voter registration and turnout at elections will make this empowerment difficult. Comparing Scotland’s 46% turnout at its last election to France’s recent 80% shows that something must be done to engage the public. The Stand Comedy Club’s co-founder and Managing Director Tommy Shepard may have the answer.

Shepard’s new project, YouScotland.com, is a collectively owned membership website supporting direct citizen action. A ‘coalition of the disappointed’, it has no secret backers or institutional donors, and is attempting to use the web to pull together like-minded people in an attempt to reclaim Scotland’s political agenda.

“One of the remarkable things about Scotland is the contrast between the hope, ambition and pride people have in their country, and their embarrassment at the people who run it. Scotland is poorly served in terms of politicians and politics, and it could be an awful lot better. The key to that is trying to energize individual people and saying to them rather than elect someone else to go away and do this on your behalf every four years, think about taking control over your own lives and engaging in direct political action to achieve the changes you want to achieve,” says Shepard.

Vanity Kills

 

Photo: Secret Garden - May 06 - (c) Club Noir & Martin Phillimore

Sitting with Vanity Kills, the immediate reaction is to liken her to Betty Page. Setting aside simple similarities such as her raven hair, stunning figure and gorgeous smile, the sense of fun imbued in Page’s work is clearly visible in Kills’.

Page’s fans love the fact that she seems to be enjoying every second, and Kills is the same. Bubbly and personable, she immediately puts people at ease. When she laughs, light glints off her glasses, which she wears during some of her shows. An unusual characteristic in the world of burlesque, it lends, in the words of one of her admirers, a school-marm strictness to her.

Kills became interested in burlesque about eight years ago, first as an audience member and then as performer. The opening of Club Noir, Scotland’s premier burlesque club, in 2004 provided Kill with a venue to indulge her passion.

The Sinking of the Ark

 

Photo: Wikicommons

Despite providing a vital service to Edinburgh’s homeless, the Ark Cafe was forced to close this summer after its annual funding was stopped by the council. The Skinny asked those affected what the future holds…

Over the cacophony created by many people talking in a large uncarpeted room, Bruce Wiseman hands over a bacon roll with a bit of friendly banter. Up to the day I meet him, he had been volunteering at the Ark Café, working from 7am to 12pm, cooking food. Handsome and clean-shaven, neatly dressed and eloquent, he is not your stereotypical notion of a homeless person.

Wiseman is one of the 110 people who depended on the facilities provided by the Ark Trust canteen, which operated to support the homeless and those threatened by homelessness. But these desperately needed services are no longer available after Edinburgh Council withdrew the funding it granted to the Trust at the end of June.

“Before I started volunteering here, I was just a service user. I came in here to get out, have a coffee and a chat. Since I started here, I’ve got my confidence and self-worth back, I’ve got my get-up-and-go back.” Wiseman then confides: “When this place goes I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

For 70 years the Ark Café on New Street provided cheap food, clothes, toiletries, telephone and fax facilities, and housing advice to those on the front lines of homelessness.

All these resources have disappeared since the council withdrew the £167,000 funding the Ark receives per year.

Fight or be recycled

 

Photo: Box Wars

An old man brandishing a Zimmer frame, a Viking longboat, Tank Girl with her missile bra, a rooster and a pirate ship charge into battle, blood-curdling war-cries bouncing off concrete walls. Welcome to Box Wars.

“Box Wars is where people make armour and weapons out of cardboard and beat the shit out of each other to loud music” says Tamsyn Woollcombe, member of the Box Wars UK Council.

Brought over from Australia, Box Wars UK has been held on ten occasions, beginning at Forest Café, and moving to Studio 24 once it began to gain popularity. Participants construct cardboard costumes and take part in mock battles, usually during a concert.

Box Wars developed in Melbourne, and was introduced to Scotland during the travels of a friend of the members of the original Council, Demian Hobby.

“One of my best mates actually thought of the idea. He was like, ‘I have something to show you.’ We were in his backyard and he and some other mates dressed up in cardboard and beat each other up. We thought it was amazing and then they started doing it regularly,” says Hobby.