BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Press Freedom in the Philippines - "I've met a man who spent 16 years in Manila city jail, waiting for his day in court to defend himself against burglary charges. Among the plethora of reasons for his interminable wait, he told me the case’s first trial judge had died of old age. But if you can pay and there's no risk of flight, you could be out on bail. A prime example is the story of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He posthumously holds the Guinness World Record for the greatest robbery of a government, for embezzling up to 7 billion pounds of public money. Mrs. Marcos, co-accused of the criminal enterprise, remains free on bail while she appeals a successful 2018 conviction for graft dating back to the 1960s"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Difficult choices in Hong Kong - "When I arrived in the United States, nothing made me more anxious than tipping. I knew some of the rules, of course. Tip 20% in restaurants and tip at least $1 for each drink in a bar. But there were so many gray areas. The confusion started once I landed. I had a pre booked prepaid taxi pick me up. As I sat jet lagged in the back of the car, I realized I wasn't sure if I needed to tip. Was a tip included in the prepayment? Or was I meant to give the driver something extra? But wait, I'd just landed and didn't have any cash with me. I quickly texted every American I knew with a plea for advice, and did some panicked googling. Tipping is deeply ingrained in American culture. It's seen as a social contract, a way of rewarding good service, while also showing your decency as a person. And tipping is an essential source of income for many. In some states, tipped workers have a lower minimum wage. It can go as low as $2 an hour. As a British person, I found tipping arbitrary and uncomfortable. It always felt awkward working out just how much to pay someone. And I made my fair share of faux pas. Once I almost tipped the plumber and found out just in time that it would have been considered insulting, because he was a trained professional. On another occasion, I was staying at a hotel in Reno. And noticed the bellboy spent a long time chatting to me as I picked up my luggage from storage. He seemed reluctant for me to go and looked angry when I eventually thanked him and walked off. Much later, I realized that according to American customs, you are expected to tip the bellboy when you pick up your luggage. Although not when you drop it off. Ironically, I was in Reno to write a piece about poverty. So I felt particularly guilty when I realized my mistake. It also made me a bit angry at tipping culture. Why was it my responsibility to decipher an inconsistent, arbitrary system? Why couldn't the hotel have made it clear that tips were a part of their bellboys’ wages? Or better still, why couldn't workers just be paid a decent wage? Because tipping is discretionary, even Americans get confused when customs change. For example, more and more people now pay by card. But card readers often prompt people to tip. Even for takeaways at bakeries or coffee shops. I found articles where Americans debated whether they should tip in those cases. And many said they tipped simply because they felt too embarrassed to say no. In recent years, some restaurants have tried to change things. They banned tips and raised prices instead, to try to ensure that everyone, not just the most popular waiters and waitresses, were properly paid. But in most cases, this backfired. Customers felt they were being ripped off, even though they were paying the same amount of money. Psychologically, the ability to choose whether to tip or not, seems to matter. In March, the corona virus started spreading rapidly across the US. We were told to stay at home and avoid all nonessential trips. Shops, restaurants and hotels began closing, and more than 21 million jobs were cut. The US economy slumped. But, perhaps unexpectedly, many people became more generous with their tips. Delivery services told me customer tips rose dramatically, in some cases, nearly doubling. While tens of thousands of people donated to virtual tip jars, websites where they could send money to service staff who had lost their jobs. There's a psychological reason for this, says Michael Norton, an expert in behavioral economics. Small acts of generosity can help you feel as if you're making a difference, which is especially useful at times when you feel powerless, such as during a pandemic... thanks to the pandemic, tipping has become symbolic. It's one of my ways of showing solidarity and thanking someone for working during a dangerous time"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Poland's political divide - "There has long been an apocalyptic quality to this sprawling metropolis. For all its swaying palm trees and soft sandy beaches, the old joke has it that there are four seasons in the City of Angels: fires, floods, earthquakes and riots. But the coronavirus has posed an altogether different threat, an existential crisis with the potential to inflict not only heavy fatalities, but permanent economic pain"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Unrest in Russia's eastern outpost - "‘Roma communities face discrimination across Europe. But one village in Hungary has become a model of transformation. Laszlo Bogdan, who preferred to be called a gypsy, rather than Roma, was a famous rights activist and politician. He was mayor of Cserdi in southern Hungary, and became famous for creating a village which has become a model for others’...
‘Just because I'm a gypsy, Laszlo Bogdan told me, it doesn't mean I should torture myself with the idea that this country owes me something because of my identity. I'm a gypsy, and that's that he said, as he showed me around his greenhouses, and as we stooped to clear stones together, out of the soil, among the endless rows of garlic plants. We were in Cserdi, the village he turned into a byword for hard work. For challenging the stereotype of the lazy, thieving Gypsy. For ordinary Hungarians to have a good opinion of the gypsies, what's the solution, he asked? The soil. We have to get down on our knees. Honest physical work brings out the best in us. Everything else is idle chatter. The handsome Gypsy - he wore a badge with the more politically correct Roma word crossed out - wore a purple scarf around his neck and a neat beard…
He took local kids around the prison in Page [sp?] the nearest city on what he called his debastardisation campaign. He wanted to teach them how terrible it was there and how much sexual violence they could expect from other prisoners if they ended up in prison. They came out, he joked later, their black faces white as a sheet. He took girls from his village round the university to show them what a beautiful thing it was to study rather than give birth as a teenager. Both lessons worked. The crime rate in his village sank to zero, and it now has its first graduates… when people were late for work, the standard punishment was for them to read Winnie the Pooh out loud in front of all the others'"
Presumably this is proof that 'victim blaming' doesn't work
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Taking on the ruler of Belarus - "How on earth is it possible for a French journalist to use in a regular report a word like emphytéotique? I keep seeing it in news stories, and I can assure you that in French, it's every bit as obscure as in English. It comes from Greek via Latin, and means a very long term lease on a property. If a British journalist use the word emphyteutic, which does exist, he or she'd be told they probably weren't in the right job. In France, it's a badge of honor to know what the word means. To deploy it confers distinction and too bad if ordinary folk don't have a clue what you're on about. There again, from language, an insight into the elitism that is for all its Republican garb, so essential in French society. What I'm saying is quite simple. Without the language, we cannot make these observations"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, From Our Home Correspondent 04/08/2020 - "‘The disadvantages of playing in an empty stadium go beyond the loss of atmosphere. Having no fans also removes much of the so called home advantage. Statistically, teams do better when they play at home. A study of European football has shown that without fans present, the advantage all but disappears. Home teams win 36% of the time when the stadium is empty. The away team wins 34 percent of the time. There really is very little difference.’"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, The death knell for Beirut? - "‘The French go determinately on holiday in August... Sadly, this is also the season for abandoning pets and France is top of the European table for this holiday habit.’...
‘As just over half of all French households have at least one pet, you would think they are a nation of pet lovers. And yet every summer emotional animal rights campaigns are launched nationwide to try and persuade people to look after their animals. In the latest hard hitting advertising campaign, the French are called European champions for abandoned pets. The soundtrack to the video is Queen’s We are the champions… A parliamentary report in June revealed each year owners turn their pets loose in even greater numbers... pets are increasingly seen as an impulse buy. A certain breed of cat or dog is fashionable, and they want one. Just like a new smartphone, and of course, like a smartphone, when it goes out of fashion, they dump it for an upgrade a couple of years later. Often parents will get pets for their children. And when they grow up and lose interest in them, it's bye bye furry friends. Over the summer owners discover that hotels charge extra for animals or even ban them, which explains why you will often see frightened lost dogs wandering near motorway service stations or beach resorts. Marina told me there was another explanation. In a country where the state is so omnipresent, the French are so used to consulting their GP or getting prescription medication from a pharmacy without handing over any money that they are shocked when they have to pay to treat their pets. As a result, many domestic animals are abandoned when they get sick or old. Back at the refuge, Betty told me the owners rarely have the courage to turn up with their unwanted companions, instead calling up to say when they can be found, or dropping them off in boxes outside the shelter under the cover of darkness. The excuses they typically give apart from going on holiday: they have a baby in the family, new partner with allergies, or they're moving. She says the owners come from all social classes, but badly treated animal cases are higher on the poor housing estates and amongst the Roma community'"
More minority shaming!
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, ‘Our grades are significantly lower than any grades we've ever received in the history of the school’ - "‘We're absolutely sure that the algorithm hasn't worked for us and it was apparent the moment we looked at our results and one of the things that is very frustrating is that if that was so apparent to us immediately we opened our results, why OFQUAL or the exam boards weren't able to see this in advance and prevent this absolute chaotic nightmare happening. And I really don't understand that. And it's clearly obvious to us because our grades are significantly lower than any grades we've ever received in the history of the school. So they are 10% lower than even the lowest grades *something*. They bear no resemblance at all, to *something* data. So that would be something that any kind of centralized checking process would have picked up immediately.’...
‘I wouldn't go with something subjective as-. The problem with teacher assessments, as I think I heard on this program earlier. Some teachers assess very positively. They’re glass half full and some are glass half empty people. So that won't produce fairness at all.’"
Apparently grade inflation isn't anything to even pretend to care about this year. Ironically poor kids are hurt the most by grade inflation, since they are unable to look for other, more costly signals, to emit
U-turn on exams may create new set of problems in England - "The Ofqual algorithm was effective in producing relatively similar national results to previous years – as it was designed to – but with the scrapping of the algorithm, and a return to the use of centre assessed grades there will inevitably be grade inflation. Last month, Ofqual said initial analysis suggested that if all students were given final grades based solely on CAGs, overall A-level results for England would be up compared with 2019 by 6 percentage points at A*, 12 percentage points at A and above, and 13 percentage points at B and above. At GCSE overall results would be up by 6 percentage points at grade 7 and above, and up by 9 percentage points at grade 4 and above.For students that follow, particularly those now in year 12 due to sit their exams next summer, the fear is that their grades will look inferior and that university places that would have otherwise been available to them may be taken up by students forced to defer this year."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'We are not going to be going onto a rota basis, we are in a place where we are able to welcome all children back into school' - "‘A moderated system, there was a strong feeling and a strong belief that that was a fairer system, especially for youngsters from the most deprived communities and from ethnic minority communities and going, the concerns were that going purely to teacher assessment would potentially disadvantage those communities most of all. But we, at every stage. And, you know, when you're in a global pandemic, there are issues that you could never potentially foresee. But one thing this is always clear to me is the best form of system of assessment is exams. And actually, the ability to move back to the system of exams is absolutely critical’"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Is lockdown good news for fish? - "‘The market for seafood is international, but some countries eat a lot more seafood than, than some others. And those countries that eat a lot of seafood tend to also eat a wide diversity of seafood types. And they value it. And they're quite, they're kind of Epicurean about it. They really enjoy seafood as a highly valued resource, or protein… in Europe that would be, typically would be, say Spain and Portugal, they, in Spain and Portugal, the per capita consumption of seafood is more than double ours here in the UK. One of the top species that we eat here in the UK is tuna. It's one of the top five species by level of consumption, quantity of consumption. Tuna, and tuna is mainly tropical water species, and it's global. So that tuna that we eat, our top five species is not coming out of UK waters or even European waters. It's part of that network of traded commodities that really are very, very complex to follow. There's an added complication here as well, that fish is sometimes caught and processed in different places. So some nations are experts at catching fish and some nations are experts at processing fish. So when you're trying to follow trade flows, it can become very complicated because fish can move to several places before it reaches the consumer’s plate'"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Jacques Pépin: My life in five dishes - "‘Not that he got anywhere near the oven in the first few months. The stove was revered. A woodfired beast that everyone referred to as the piano, after its oiled, gleaming black surface.’
‘The stove was kind of a, you know the sacred thing that you aspire to go to. And for a year I worked, cleaning, doing all of that and all of a sudden the chef say, and the chef at that time called me p’tit. You know, little one, ‘tit. Until that day, he call me Jacques, the first time he call my name. He say, you start at the stove tomorrow’"
Why Is It So Hard to Be Alone With Our Thoughts? (NSQ Ep. 9) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "‘Matt Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert, two psychologists who used a different way of studying mind wandering, something called experience sampling, where you ping someone, send them a text message or otherwise alert them. And then just in the moment you ask them some questions, so you're sampling their experience. And what Matt and Dan found was that when they think people and the answer was that they weren't doing much of anything, that they were basically mind wandering or daydreaming, there wasn't a goal or task, that actually they were less happy. And so it may not be that most people like this state, or, it could be other things like maybe when you are less happy then your mind wanders’...
‘There's a ton of research showing that what you do in the early years of a kid's life, and maybe even more important what you do before the kid is born, like what kind of person you are, has a great effect on how they turn out. You know, obviously, there's nature, genetics, which is at least a large component, if not the majority, but not even necessarily in the direction that people think so, you know, one thing that we wrote about was the effect of what we called culture cramming, you know, baby Mozart, taking them to museums. Plainly, that was not the magic bullet. There's a lot of correlation, because the kind of families that tend to do that a lot are high IQ families, families that had a lot of books in the home tended to have kids who read a lot better. But it wasn't that these books magically jumped off the shelves into the kids brains. It’s that the kind of parents who have a lot of books-’
‘They're doing lots of things.’
‘Yeah. And they tend to be higher IQ people. But the thing that is showing up in data over and over and has been for years is that what you can do for kids is, boils down to love them, give them basic cognitive and physical and emotional support. And that seems to work really well. And there is evidence I think, from your field, Carl Pickhardt, who wrote about the ages at which a parent exerts the most influence on children, here's a short passage, The child (up to ages 8-9) admires, even worships parents for the capability of what they can do and the power of approval that they possess, but in adolescence, beginning around nine to 13, parents get kicked off the pedestal. It seems they could do no right... Parents would track him down. They would ask him for parenting advice. He would say to them, if you are coming to ask me for parenting advice, you don't need any advice, because you're the sort of parent who would track down a Columbia professor to get advice and you're probably fine’"
