Petition Launched for Cathays Cemetery's Decaying Chapels

The history of Cardiff can be read through the engraved epitaphs spread throughout it, but Cathays Cemetery lies unnoticed and forgotten by most of us.

After decades of neglect the two chapels at the entrance to the 19th century cemetery are now a fenced off eyesore, where once they provided a grand welcome to the quiet retreat just outside the little, but growing, town of Cardiff.

A group from the welsh capital, The Friends of Cathays Cemetery, want the two chapels to be brought back to their former glory from their current crumbling state. They've set up a petition to try and encourage Cardiff Council to repair and maintain the grade 2 listed chapels.

Cathays Cemetery itself is one of the biggest cemeteries in the UK and was built in 1859, when Cardiff was just a small town.

Buried in the grounds are a number of characters from Cardiff relatively short history, including boxer 'Fearless' Jim Driscoll, who reportedly missed a world title fight because of a previous commitment to visit some nuns, Ernest Thompson, who pioneered hot air balloons during the first world war, as well as many of the men who helped established Cardiff as the biggest exporter of coal in the world.

A similarly historic cemetery in Bristol was featured on the BBC's Restoration programme, but no one has noticed the fact that Cardiff's biggest cemetery is decaying. The buildings are two twin chapels, one Church in Wales, the other for denominations such as methodists.

To give your support to the decaying funeral chapels sign the petition set up by the Friends of Cathays Cemetery. There are also guides of the cemetery aimed at visitors who want to walk around and find out a little of the history buried in the 110 acres site.

The Archbishop and the Lazy Journalist

'Muslim Laws Must Come to Britain', was the front-page headline on the Daily Express on Friday. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, had apparantly said something so controversial that neither Madeleine McCann nor Princess Diana made it to the front page.

However it would seem the 'World's Greatest Paper' (correct use of quotation marks) does not even know basic punctuation. Not only is this not a direct quote from Archbishop Rowan Williams, it's not even a paraphrase of what he was saying at a speech at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday. In the speech titled Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective, he discussed how overlapping authorities might be used in cases involving certain religous issues or parties. At no point did he say Muslim or Sharia law must come to Britain.

What he did say in the six thousand word lecture was '... if what we want socially is a pattern of relations in which ... groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty, it seems unavoidable'. In short, if we don't want people to feel separated from society because of the laws they hold themselves to, then a system of overlapping religous and civil authorities should be introduced. He was not only talking about Sharia law either, but also Orthodox Judaism. His speech was intelligently written and argued and based on a number of scholar and acedemics from the religious and secular world.

Though I highlighted The Express earlier in the blog, that was just a snapshot of the terrible reporting of the story. It seemed every media group was doing their upmost to report the story in the most simplistic, lazy and unintelligent way possible. I wonder how many of those reporting the story actually read the speech for themselves rather than taking much reported soundbites out of context. If they had they would have found it was quite a dull and complicated speech that was only ever addressing things like marital law, financial law and conflict resolution. Despite what many caught up the frenzy might have thought he was not sanctioning the chopping of hands or anything else so Draconian. He himself said any new system would have to 'not collude with unexamined systems that have oppressive effect or allow shared public liberties to be decisively taken away by a supplementary jurisdiction'. Unfortunately this section of the lecture was buried towards the middle and doesn't make a great headline.

This is not the first time we've seen a talk on religious issues jumped opon by the media looking for an easy story. A similar incident occured in 2006 when the Pope quoted a controversial text in a speech trying to encourage more thought into religious issues, which as was proved by the reaction to the case, is greatly needed, not least by the media.

I am currently training to become a journalist and it's seeing stories like this that inspire me to want to work in the media. Such poor reporting of a story aggrevate me so much to want to do a better job myself. Its a high hope, but i think i'm entitled to such ideals at this stage of my career.

I don't necessarily agree with the Archbishop. What i don't agree with is the way the media and therefore the public have reacted to the speech. I was most disgusted today to see someone shouting at him to resign as he left a service in Cambridge.

With such critisism thrown at Dr Rowan Williams from many directions, he's been forced to defend his speech by reiterating what he actually origanally said. Whether or not this gets the message across or saves him from having to resign remains to be seen.

What was the point of Live Earth?

For those of you who missed the Live Earth concerts on Saturday, i think it is important to let you know that the Earth is getting hotter. Apparently we are not aware of this fact enough, but thanks to Al Gore and an army of pop musicians we should now be in no doubt as to how big a problem climate change. Oh, but don't take my word for it, Madonna says so as well!

Throughout Saturday, the BBC broadcast musician after musician playing their biggest hits in a bid to boost their sales/show their support for the big cause. I was watching Wimbledon for much of the day, and occasional flicks over to the concert did not do much to improve my low expectations of it. I caught the first few minutes of the event in which dozens of drummers played on stage together, each bearing a massive cheesy grin. From there we went to Jonathan Ross and Jimmy Carr in the studio who then introduced the loud and moaning Shakira: It was not a great start. Further dips into the channel presented more bands from the present and past, with little to explain what exactly this was all in aid of.

So what was it all about? Well as we are all aware, climate change is happening, and this is apparently largely down to the actions of the human race. But what can we do about it? Well on a simple level, you can do a number of things, all of which have been well reported in recent times. Things like using less electricity and cutting down on the flights you take are pretty much at the top of the list. So organising a massive series of gigs involving musicians flying in from different locations around the world, might not be the sort of thing we should be encouraging then? The whole thing is as big a farce as the Spinal Tap show that featured at Wembley.

There has been a lot of criticism of the obvious hypocrisy and idiocy of the gigs, with many others pointing out the unenvironmentally friendly flights made by those involved to get to the different gigs. Seemingly in reaction to these criticisms the lead singer of Duran Duran felt compelled to make it clear to everyone watching that he had not flown to Wembley on a private jet. Give that man a medal!

These sort of concerts seem to be getting more and more frequent nowadays, and I'm sure i can't be the only only one that's getting pretty bored by them. Two years ago we had Live8, another farce of a concert in which nothing was accomplished except to show those in power that when faced with a serious issue, we as citizens choose to have a party. Why not instead of having a big gig we actually took these issues more seriously?

If every time we are faced with a serious issue we put on a big entertaining show then how can we expect the government to take us and the cause seriously. How many of those at the gig actually voted at the last election? How many petitioned, campaigned or wrote to their MP about the issue of climate change? If they are not willing to engage in these effective forms of representation that democracy allows us, then these gigs will, as i expect, have very little effect.

Guilt City

200 years ago slavery was abolished in this country, but despite this fact Bristol is still a breeding ground of resent and guilt due to the part it played in the slave trade. Bristol is a city in which the pride and the shame of its history are intrinsically linked.

Much of Bristol's success is due to merchants who profited through selling slaves, working in what was called the triangular trade, in which goods from Bristol were used to buy slaves in Africa which were then sold in the caribbean. Bristol's main concert hall along with a number of schools are named after one of the most successful of these merchants, Edward Colston, and there are many other places in Bristol where the slave merchants' mark can still be seen, creating a constant reminder of a history that Bristol has long been trying to forget.

The resentment and guilt has made it hard for Bristol to move forward, away from its dark past, highlighted most recently by the naming of a new development in the centre of Bristol, proposed to be called 'Merchants Quarter'. If you didn't know the full context of this name you might think it a perfectly reasonable name for the retail development; an area named after the group that brought prosperity to Bristol throughout its seafaring history, even after the abolition of slavery. It also of course is a name that describes the activities that will be taking place within it. But for many in Bristol it is an offensive reminder of Bristol's slave trade past. After much campaigning the developers eventually conceded and agreed to change the name of the development which has now lead to a campaign for Bristol to go one step further and officially apologise for its part in the slave trade. A large public meeting took place in Bristol to debate and vote on the need for an apology concluding that an apology was indeed needed. Interestingly, as it now turns out Bristol did actually apologise over twenty years ago, but this apology has been rejected by a leading figure in the campaigning Afro-Caribbean community, arguing that a wider national debate is needed.

But just what is going to suffice? The fact is that Bristol (and many parts of Britain) benefited greatly from the slave trade and many of the buildings were built on this blood money, but no-one is proud of Bristol's slave past and much has been done since to make some recompense for the part that Bristol played. However much we try and forget, we cannot change the past, changing the name of the Colston Hall (which has previously been campaigned for) will not change anything nor will eradicating every visible memory of the Merchants of Bristol's past. There comes a time when we just have to move forward, an apology 200 years after the event is an empty gesture and is concentrating on the wrong issue. Instead of looking to the mistakes of the past we should be looking at the issues around us today. An apology will settle nothing, as would seem to be evident in the fact that the existing apology has been rejected. This call for an apology it seems is just a mask for the level of resentment created by the racial splits existent in our society today, in which much of the ethnic-minorities still remain amongst the working class are often marginalised by the dominant white middle class. Why don't we tackle the real issue here and not keep Bristol in an indefinite and inescapable feeling of guilt?

'In "OTHER" News...'

This has been a big news week. Over the past seven days we've had the news of Prescott's affair, Clarke's admission that foreign prisoners have been released and lost, Hewitt's battles with NHS nurses and then there was the news of Scolari being offered and then refusing the England managerial job. While these jobs have understandably been dominating the pages of the press there is another story that is being largely overlooked despite the fact that it is far more important on a world scale.

Iran this week stated its intention to continue in its nuclear programme, refusing demands by the UN to stop. The fear is that they will use their technology to create nuclear bombs, though the Iranians have always denied this, saying that they just want to use the technology to create nuclear power stations. The IAEA have been unable to find evidence to confirm either side to the argument.

Basically the worries arise from the process of enriching uranium, which is needed for both power and weapons. However enriching uranium for use in nuclear bombs is a far more advanced and difficult procedure than that for use in power stations. Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium whereas power stations can run on just low-level enriched uranium. The question is how advanced is the Iranian's enriching programme? Previously the IAEA had been keeping a check on Iran's facilities in order to address this question, but because the UN has demanded that they stop their nuclear programme altogether Iran has refused for the IAEA to continue its checks. What Iran is now arguing is that they will allow for these checks to continue if the UN permits them to continue in its programme to build nuclear power stations. This is not acceptable to the UN (under the influence of the US) who will not stop until Iran has ceased any efforts to advance its nuclear technologies, regardless of its uses.

This whole disagreement has meant that Iran is increasingly being treated as an outsider to the international community, a status that means they are not worthy of advancing its technologies too far. It would seem that only the friendly western states are allowed nuclear technology ... oh, and Israel, Pakistan and India. Surely a more useful campaign against nuclear weapons should be directed at these countries who we know for a fact have the bomb and are currently involved in conflicts- Palestine and Kashmir respectively.

Why is it that only a select few are allowed to develop advanced technology? The obvious answer is the fear that nuclear weapons in the wrong hands could bring death and destruction to its enemies. But let's face it, there are many ways to cause mass destruction, without resorting to nuclear weapons, as we all saw on September 11th. A nuclear weapon by itself does not bring mass destruction, it is the initial intent that is the route cause. Instead of trying to make the world safer by 'taking out' specific people and countries, the UN (and I’m really talking about America here) should look at the real cause of terrorism: bad foreign policy. I think a more responsible and peaceful foreign policy is far more likely to make us safer than worrying about who is developing technology that means they just might create a bomb that just might be used. A hate filled person will find a way to kill regardless of technology, but a peaceful person in possession of a nuke is far less of a threat.

Instead of excommunicating Iran and refusing their right to develop as a nation, we should be bringing them further into the international community, allowing them the responsibility of nuclear technology, albeit with a close eye kept on them. If the UN allowed Iran to develop nuclear power stations and kept a check that they were not using the technology to develop weaponry, as it seems it would be quite easy to do, then this would be beneficial to the whole international community. I think the more we try to unite these 'OTHER' nations, the safer our world is. The Iran nuclear issue would be a good opportunity to show that we in the west are willing to do this and could be the first step in decreasing the reasons for many of the Middle Eastern terrorists to hate us. I think it is about time that we recognised that much of the West's aggressive foreign policy is doing more harm than good and that a near paradigm shift is needed to make our world safer and decrease the threat of terrorism.

Wimbledon: Equality just isn't fair

In the news today is the announcement by the All England Club that Wimbledon's highly controversial prize money disparity between the men and women is going to remain in place for this year's tournament. Basically the men's champion will receive £655,000 while the women's champion will get a 'meagre' £625,000. Many of the top female players are understandably angered at the seeming discrimination against the female players, with Venus Williams leading the women in threatening proactive action in protest.

Equality in all areas is seen as essential in today's society, so whenever anyone is seemed to be treated unequally people react immediatley to criticise the actions, with no regard for the reasoning behind them. The fact is that last year at Wimbledon, the top 10 women earned more overall than the top 10 men. Who's discriminated against now? The women play best of three sets as opposed to the men's best of five, they are therefore on court for just over half the time that the men are, and yet receive 95% of the prize money. Is that fair? The women's game is dominated far more by an elite groups of players at the top of the rankings table, with the men's game far more competitive, meaning the money is shared around alot more with the top players receiving less prize money relatively to the women. Are you starting to see my point? By being on the court for much less time, they, unlike the men, are able to enter doubles events, sometimes both women's and mixed, meaning they often have the opportunity to win three times as many prizes as most of the men. Is that equal? Finally you have to look at where this prize money actually comes from- fans and spectators. The men's game is more popular than the women's and receives higher gate receipts and TV viewers. Men earn the All England Club more than the women, so isn't it fair that they should receive more of it back off them? Fair but not equal.

On the whole i sincerely believe people should be treated equally and not be discriminated against, but people have got equality confused with fairness. In most situations equal treatment is the only right course of action, but in others they need to be treated in proportions to other factors. Equallity isn't always fair.

To discern what is, we need to engage our brains a bit, and not make quick judgments leading to claims that decisions are 'morally indefensible'.