The Moléson VF with the Narrative Clip 2
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The Moléson VF with the Narrative Clip 2

Byrichard

The Narrative Clip 2 is a specialist camera that can be programmed to take photos at regular intervals whilst you enjoy activities. This is sometimes referred to as life logging. The idea is that you wear the camera either on clothing or place it somewhere where it can capture the passage of time.

For this event the camera was worn around my neck and took pictures throughout the activity. As you can see from the last image I had the Ricoh Theta S on a monopod and the Sony Xperia Z5 compact for other pictures. You do not see that I had a fourth camera with a 30 times optical zoom.

The camera took over four hundred images during this event and I chose just a few. I avoid sharing images of people unless I have their informed consent. I share the images that best represent the pleasant moments.

If I took the time I could rotate this camera to be horizontal and I could capture daily timelapses. Every time I go for a bike ride or a hike it would capture regular images. The camera has enough battery power and you can keep the camera in your pocket until you want to start logging the event. When the event is finished you can place the camera back in to your pocket and head home for example.

An improvement which I have recently noticed is that when you put the camera to charge it can automatically upload the day’s images to the narrativeapp website and you can then select what you want to share.

As cameras get smaller and more portable and as they become more specialised so we have an opportunity to get different types of images. One is for time lapses, the other has a powerful zoom, the third allows us to capture spherical images and the fourth is practical for sharing to social media.

 

“Why We Voted leave: Voices from Northern England

Byrichard

This short video provides us with voices from Northern England. We hear about the closures and about the strikes that took place decades ago. We hear superficially about migration but the key message is that the North feels abandoned by the South. The North has been fed the message that austerity is the fault of the European Union and that the European Union imposes its will on people rather than provide them with the freedom to choose.

from Guerrera Films on Vimeo.

Although mentioned briefly London has failed rural England. Mines closing down and jobs disappearing is one thing. To have poverty and the sense of hopelessness continue for generations is harder to understand. What about education and regeneration projects?

Parts of the city region experience skills shortages, particularly in key growth sectors and clusters. There are also significant problems of low basic skills levels, which are quite acute within some disadvantaged communities. In parts of the city region, educational performance remains lower than the national average. The city region’s labour market functions below its optimum. It has a higher than average level of worklessness, especially in inner urban and isolated rural areas. Source

If there are skills shortages then couldn’t the local community provide those who are unemployed with vocational training to learn the skills that are required? We see the same problem in Spain. There is unemployment but the source is an educational system that has not kept up with the job market. 
“It’s a paradox,” said Valentin Bote, head of research in Spain at Randstad, a recruitment agency. “The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we’re seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don’t have the skills employers demand.” source. 

 

Caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the front-runner to lead the next government after posting gains in Sunday’s election, has pledged to add half a million jobs a year, but his campaign focused on posts for the legions of unemployed, rather than producing skilled workers to power the economy. Rajoy’s opponents say his policy of driving down wages and stripping back job protection has mainly created poorly-paid low-skill posts. source

We see that as certain jobs go to where labour is cheaper people are saying “But I want to keep doing my old job.” The European Union allows people to migrate to do the job they want to do. They could move to France, Germany or other countries. Instead they stay home and express nostalgia. Their attitude if they want to stay in England should be “Well, if you take away my current job then train me to do a higher skilled job.” England has a diversity of vocational training schemes at numerous levels, from BTEC to foundation degrees and more. There is no reason not to upskill when there is a shortage of work.

At a European level, Doncaster is part of the Yorkshire and the Humber (European Parliament constituency) constituency and is represented by six MEPs.(source) 

The European constituency of Yorkshire and the Humber is coterminous with the English region. After the European Parliament election in May 2014, Yorkshire and the Humber is represented by three UK Independence Party two Labour and one Conservative MEPs. (source)

Until 2011 Yorkshire Forward was the Regional Development Agency charged with improving the Yorkshire and Humber economy, where some 270,000 businesses contribute to an economy worth in excess of £80 billion. With over 5 million people living in the region it ranks alongside some small countries including Ireland, Greece, Norway and Singapore. Source

According to the Leeds City Region wikipedia page a diversity of jobs are available in a range of professions:

Economic drivers and innovation

City region growth sectors include

• Financial and business services

• Electronics and optical

• Communications

• Health and public services

Niche clusters are

• Digital and media

• Bioscience and medical research

• Advanced niche manufacturing, including defence

• Logistics and distribution[15]

Six universities in the region produce 40,000 graduates a year. Source

Democracy is about the flow of information and we see that people voted without understanding the situation. Every time a person is asked a question we see that they speak in generalities with very few concrete examples. The strongest point is about the protest and the mine closures. Look at the interview in the library. One person was in favour of remain but he was unable to explain how to affect change at an EU level. These people have six MEPs to represent them in Brussels. These are the people they should have been encouraged to bring their concerns to.

I probably spent an hour researching this blog post. I was surprised by how positive the situation looks. With what seem like minor changes the inequalities currently present in Northern England could be rectified.

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Post-fact Britain

Byrichard

I was in the graduating class of 2000 with 99 other students representing more than one hundred countries. As an individual I already have three nationalities and four identities. I am British, Italian, Polish and a foreigner living near Geneva, Switzerland. As a result of this mixture I said, when I was in Tanzania in 1999 that I was European because that was the simplest way to describe my identity. When I first heard about the Brexit Referendum months ago I thought that this was so stupid that I thought it was not a serious project. It did become a serious thing, especially in a post-fact Britain.

Because these narratives typically involve a selective use of facts and lenient dealings with matters of truth, they have given rise to symptoms of a post-factual democracy. A democracy is in a post-factual state when truth and evidence are replaced by robust narratives, opportune political agendas, and impracticable political promises to maximize voter support. source

For months I saw that The Guardian and other newspapers were heavily critical of the European Union. You couldn’t read an article from their website without getting the feeling that Europe was a terrible place. This bias, this message encouraged me to switch to French language media to get a less biased, less anti-European narrative. The Guardian is relatively open compared to the British tabloid press. The British tabloid press lied and misled its readership. Twice The Sun lied about the Queen supporting Brexit. Twice it suffered no consequences.

It is well known that Murdoch is anti-European. Few men have done more to fuel anti-European frenzy than the Australian-American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, owner of several newspapers and the UK’s most important private television news channel. In his book How Britain Will Leave Europe, former Minister for Europe Denis MacShane describes how former Prime Minister Tony Blair considered holding a referendum on adopting the euro, only to renounce the plan for fear that the “shadowy figure of Rupert Murdoch” would use his media empire to campaign against it. Source

When you control the media it is easy to push your agenda forward. Conspiracy theories are always about how our privacy is being invaded and about how our phone conversations, e-mails and other communications but few of them address the problems of indoctrination or brainwashing. They rarely look at the message that we are being given on a daily message. We have to ask “What is the root message that we are getting?” In the United Kingdom the root message was “Europe is bad”. Imagine if the BBC, The Guardian and other news sources had provided both sides.

The website notes that as an EU tier 1 area, “companies can benefit from the highest level of grant aid in the UK”. Earlier this year the sports car company TVR announced it would build a factory and create 150 jobs there. Will it still come? Will the Circuit of Wales, a multimillion-pound motor racing circuit a private company has been proposing to build on the town’s outskirts creating 6,000 jobs? Will the £1.8bn of EU cash promised to Wales for projects until 2020 still arrive? source

Imagine if the Fourth Estate in the United Kingdom had been used to provide people with clear examples of how the EU was investing in the UK. Imagine if instead of focusing on getting people to vote Leave the British media had provided a complete and unbiased view of the European Union. Wales voted against the EU and yet this article shows that they had a lot to gain by remaining within the EU. Between 2014–2020, Wales will benefit from around £1.8bn European Structural Funds investment. Source . 

In his first public comments since last week’s historic referendum vote, the owner of newspapers including the Times, Sun and Wall Street Journal said leaving the EU was like a “prison break … we’re out”… Source

There was a period when we could read about the imbalance in wealth and investment between Rural England and London. This imbalance was making people uncomfortable and one of the reasons for which the BBC decided to become decentralised was to address this concern. It is interesting that for a number of months the BREXIT campaign has focused all of that dissatisfaction at the EU rather than London. In a 2010 article by the BBC we find this sentence: But even fans of London admit it is too expensive, too dirty and too crowded. And its critics say that it sucks talent, money and opportunities out of the rest of the country. source. Brexit has not resolved this issue. Could this explain why around 7 percent of the British population have emigrated from Great Britain?

According this this article 4.9 million brits emigrated from the United Kingdom to live as migrants in other countries. This figure is from the UN population division. In theory I am British migrant as I live outside the United Kingdom. Brexiters (I will not play their game and call them brexiteers) made such a big song and dance about migrants coming to the UK and yet  British people are the single most mobile population in Europe. In Switzerland you can’t go a day without meeting Brits. Can you imagine the backlash if Europe decided to behave like England did?

I believe that people spent so much time worrying about privacy that they forgot to think about the prominent message in the media. They were groomed to see Europe in a negative light and voted accordingly. By choosing to provide people with the message that they wanted to hear the Leave campaign won. In a Post-fact Britain the checks and balances to hold brexiters to account failed. A campaign was won on lies and instability has resulted. The silver lining for other nations is that pro-european sentiment has risen. They have seen what a farce anti-European movements are.