Monthly Archives: April 2020

What do you do when you cant get the move you want?

Raheem Sterling, Neymar even talkSPORTs Darren Bent have tried various tricks to get their way.

They have been heavily criticised as a result, but this kind of player power isnt unprecedented.

Getty Images - Getty

Sixty years ago Newcastle midfielder George Eastham staged a strike to get away from the north east and in doing so, brought an archaic transfer system crashing down and bettered the lives of his fellow professionals.

It was 1959 when Easthams Newcastle contract expired. He wanted to go and earn more money elsewhere, but bound by the retain and transfer system, which allowed clubs to keep a players registration and refuse to pay them if they had requested a move, he was stuck.

Essentially, chairmen had their players by the balls and were not ready to let go.

Easthams career as a footballer was on hold and he took a job selling corks, which as a result of his situation actually earned him more money.

Everywhere I went was an open door, Eastham told author Jon Henderson in the book, When Footballers were Skint.

Nobody said they didnt want to see me because I was in the newspapers. So I sold a bit of cork and I was getting more money selling it than I was playing football.

He hadnt given the game up entirely and he maintained fitness by playing charity matches for celebrity XIs where team-mates included James Bond himself, Sean Connery. That career lasted for eight months before Newcastle relented and let him join Arsenal in October 1960.

Hulton Archive - Getty

And despite being glad he was once again doing what he loved most, he wasnt finished with the bigwigs.

Players had tried to take a stand against their paymasters before. Wilf Mannion one of the most famous players of his era attempted to wrangle over his Middlesbrough contract in 1948 before backing down and returning to work to earn his money care for his ill wife.

Here, though, Eastham went one step further and embarked on the type of revenge mission that would make The Punisher proud, proving not all heroes wear capes.

Newcastle were probably hoping that after I eventually signed for Arsenal the dispute over the retain-and-transfer system would fall away, he continued.

But the PFA were looking to me to be the man to take the fight forward, to bring an end to the system.

They were coming to the end of their resources they werent a big PFA in those days, they were a small PFA, the money wasnt coming in like it does now but they offered to pay my expenses if I carried on.

And so began the gradual shift of power between club and player.

AFP - Getty

I said, Yes, lets do it. Lets go the whole hog. I wasnt happy with the way things had gone with my transfer. So the case went to High Court and that broke the retain-and-transfer system.

Mr Justice Wilberforce, whose great, great grandfather, William Wilberforce, led the movement that resulted in the abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, heard the case in 1963 and ruled the FAs retain-and-transfer system was an unreasonable restraint of trade.

Two years earlier, footballers saw the maximum wage of 20 abolished and the tide was slowly beginning to turn.

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For Arsenal, it was worth the wait and in six years he played 221 times and scored 41 goals, earning a place at no.41 on their list of 50 Greatest Gunners.

He scored twice on his debut against Bolton in December 1960 and, in response to Newcastle fans giving him a hard time on his return to the club, used his left foot to create two and score one on his return to his former club.

He was also among Englands non-playing 1966 World Cup winners who received a medal in 2007 following a rule change adopted by FIFA.

Continue reading here:

Ex-Arsenal midfielder George Eastham is the man who revolutionised football transfers when he went on strike - talkSPORT.com

It was bats. Or pangolins. To hear common narratives about the origins of Covid-19, there is a simple causal relationship between Chinas consumption of wild animals and the coronavirus ravaging the globe.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the United States top epidemiologist, told Fox: It boggles my mind how when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we dont just shut it down. His opinion echoes a growing chorus across the political spectrum that singles out Chinas so-called wet markets as the culprit for the pandemic. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham has called the Chinese exotic animal trade disgusting and conservationist Jane Goodall has called for a global ban.

Science and political economy, however, tell a more complex story. The principal driver of zoonotic diseases (such as the virus Sars-Cov-2, which spread from animals to humans) is industrial animal agriculture. When food production encroaches on wild habitats, it creates opportunities for pathogens to jump to livestock and humans. Industrial agriculture also breeds its own diseases, like swine flu and avian flu, on hellish factory farms. And it contributes to antibiotic resistance and climate change, both of which exacerbate the problem.

We need to have an honest public discussion on how to produce our food. Individually, we must stop eating animal products. Collectively, we must transform the global food system and work toward ending animal agriculture and rewilding much of the world. Oddly, many people who would never challenge the reality of climate change refuse to acknowledge the role meat-eating plays in endangering public health. Eating meat, it seems, is a socially acceptable form of science denial.

Researchers have long issued warnings about the consequences of our livestock-dominated food system. After the Sars outbreak in 2003, an essay in the American Journal of Public Health lamented that changing the way humans treat animals most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. In 2016, the UN Environment Program warned that the livestock revolution was a zoonotic disaster waiting to happen.

Yet meat consumption continues to rise. Now, just as experts predicted, eating animals is coming back to bite us.

Xenophobes call Covid-19 the Wuhan virus, but in reality zoonoses emerge worldwide, and do so with increasing regularity. The 1918 Spanish flu probably came from a midwestern pig farm. In the 1990s, ecological destabilization in the US south-west led to the Four Corners hantavirus outbreak. The Hendra and Menangle viruses are named after Australian towns. The Reston virus is an Ebola strain named after a DC suburb. Marburg virus emerged in Germany. These last two diseases sprang from monkeys imported for laboratory use the Chinese are not the only ones with a large and dangerous wildlife trade. Sars, Mers and Zika are only three of many novel zoonoses to strike in the new millennium.

Fauci, Graham and Goodalls call for a clampdown on the exotic animal trade is a valid demand, but ignores how that industry is inextricably intertwined with conventional food production. The Chinese government has encouraged smallholders to breed and procure wild game to compensate for losing market-share to large livestock firms. Similarly, reliance on bush meat in west Africa increased after local fishers were pushed out of coastal waters by foreign trawlers in the 1970s, leading to the outbreaks of HIV and Ebola. The problem isnt some peoples taste for seemingly strange delicacies, but rather our global, profit-driven, meat-centered food system.

Just as zoonotic threats are multiplying, combating them is becoming harder. Antibiotics are increasingly ineffective in part because commercial livestock farmers abuse them, hoping to speed up growth rates or as a prophylactic measure against the spread of disease on overcrowded factory farms. Overuse of antibiotics spurs the evolution of super-bugs like MRSA, a flesh-eating bacterium now found at hospitals worldwide. Modern solutions, like viral cures and vaccines, are elusive. The World Health Organization reported that the most important techniques for controlling the 2003 Sars outbreak were not cutting-edge medicines so much as 19th-century public health strategies of contact tracing, quarantine, and isolation. This has also been the case with Covid-19.

Our short-term priority is the development of a vaccine for Covid-19. But we must also start thinking about more radical measures to address the roots of this crisis. We need a more resilient food system that puts less stress on the planet and on public health.

This requires three interventions. The first is ending subsidies to industrial animal agriculture and taxing animal products to incorporate the cost of environmental and public health externalities, with the aim of the industrys eventual abolition.

The second is support for local, sustainable plant farming to replace the monocrop-focused status quo. We must relieve pressure on soil and wildlife while creating better, safer agricultural jobs. (We should also remember that meatpacking workers, like their peers in wet markets, tend to be the first exposed to new pathogens.)

The third is large-scale, public-directed investment in both plant-based meat alternatives and cellular agriculture (ie, growing animal tissue from stem cells), which would expand scientific research and employment while spurring a transition to animal-free protein.

The post-meat age will be a healthier one. Between farming, ranching and feed crops, the livestock industry gobbles up 40% of the worlds habitable surface. A vegan food system would require a tenth as much land. Restoring the natural environment could also create jobs through a public works program akin to the New Deals Civilian Conservation Corps. And it would reduce the outbreak of new epidemics by reducing contact between humans and wild animals and by restoring biodiversity.

Old habits can change. In the last few weeks, as the coronavirus has spread and millions shelter in place, bean sales have surged. People, it seems, are willing to eat legumes if its part of a public health effort. When this pandemic ends theyll need to keep doing just that, lest a more lethal disaster comes to pass.

Jan Dutkiewicz is the Connie Caplan postdoctoral fellow in the department of political science at Johns Hopkins University

Astra Taylor is the author, most recently, of Democracy May Not Exist, but Well Miss It When Its Gone

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and a William Lyon Mackenzie King research fellow at Harvard University

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The Covid-19 pandemic shows we must transform the global food system - The Guardian

NewsEducationAt some point, schools will reopen but many people think education in the UK may never be the same again

Saturday, 18th April 2020, 7:00 am

At some point, schools will reopen but many people think education in the UK may never be the same again.

i's education newsletter: latest schooling news

i's education newsletter: latest schooling news

Some people are already predicting the demise of high-stakes exams such as the GCSE. Others think coronavirus will lead to classrooms being revolutionised by technology. With exams not taking place, a new way of awarding grades using teacher assessment has been invented from scratch.

In England, teachers have been asked to predict GCSE and A-level grades, which will be moderated by the exam boards. It is a remarkable volte-face. Under reforms introduced when Michael Gove was education secretary, the majority of teacher-assessed coursework was scrapped, with grades awarded almost purely on the basis of exam performance.

School's out for ever

Many teachers have been critical of this system, arguing that it puts too much pressure on teenagers.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, believes the crisis could be a transformational moment for education, proving that putting children through 30-plus exam papers was a whole paraphernalia of assessment that we really didnt need, he says.

Magnus Bashaarat, the head of independent Hampshire school Bedales, agrees. His school became so dissatisfied with GCSEs that it created its own alternative qualification, the Bedales Assessed Course. Mr Bashaarat thinks the Gove reforms were motivated by mistrust. The reason why Conservative ministers moved away from coursework towards terminal assessment is because they havent really trusted teachers, he says. Covid-19 has forced them to place their trust in the profession again whether they like it or not.

'If Covid-19 leads to the demise of GCSE... that would be a positive thing'

GCSEs are seen as more vulnerable to change or even abolition because they were designed in an age when many left school at 16. With young people now obliged to stay in education or training until 18, people have questioned whether they are still relevant.

Mr Bashaarat would not mourn their passing. If [Covid-19] leads to the demise of GCSEs and a much fairer assessment criteria emerging from it, that would be a really positive thing, he says.

Changes to assessment

It will certainly be difficult for the Government to put the teacher assessment genie back in the bottle. The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, has repeatedly said that grades will be as valid this year as any other.

Dr Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, thinks the Government will struggle to return to its exams only mantra. Now theyve admitted that teacher assessment is valid and reliable, how are they going to get out of that?

She thinks that, at the very least, exams taking place in 2021 including primary-school Sats will have to be slimmed down to reflect the teaching time that has been lost. Any idea that GCSEs and A-levels in 2021 canjust be the same as they were in 2019 is profoundly wrong, she says.

However, some people think that reports of the death of exams have been greatly exaggerated. Tom Bennett, who advises Westminster on pupil behaviour, argues that claims that the lockdown will usher in an education revolution have been overcooked.

The solutions weve come up with to cope with the current crisis are absolutely necessary, but theyre not optimal, he says. Teacher assessment is bedevilled by enormous levels of bias, he contends, and testing is important for student motivation. He does not accept that GCSEs are irrelevant, because they help inform admissions to sixth forms.

'Opportunity' to change education

Technology is another area of education where change is predicted. As with other professions, teachers have had to adapt to remote working. Mr Bashaarat has been marking his students work using an online platform. I can help them edit their work and make comments in real time I wont be going back to bits of A4 with differing levels of legibility.

As well as video conferencing and online collaboration, some schools have been experimenting with artificial intelligence. Robert Halfon, the Tory chair of the Education Select Committee, believes that lockdown provides an incredible opportunity to evaluate these approaches.

Century Tech is one of the firms providing AI. Its platform gives a lesson that constantly changes to match the students ability and sends an analysis of their work to the teacher. Century has offered free access to the platform during lockdown, and Priya Lakhani, the firms chief executive, says several hundred schools have come on board.

But Mr Bennett is sceptical about technology, too: The experience of distance learning has entrenched what we already know that it is not superior to face-to-face classroom learning. When we put students in front of a screen, we massively dislocate the impact that teacher can have because so much more of what the student does relies on the students own desires, motivation and opportunities to work.

He is not alone in predicting that attainment gaps between rich and poor students will grow during lockdown.

Perhaps the most profound legacy of coronavirus will be how we view schools. Teachers have come in over their Easter holiday to look after the children of key workers. Others have walked miles to deliver free meals. In a crisis, schools have carried on doing what theyve always done, which is being a major support hub, Dr Bousted says. The idea that we can go back to Government ministers saying schools are about academic excellence and nothing else, thats really been shown for the lie it is.

More here:

Coronavirus lockdown: From the demise of GCSEs to technology and AI, how the crisis has changed education - inews

In my last column, I discussed how total grain production and total grain exports have not increased dramatically over the last five years. So why are grain companies building new facilities over this same time period?

Grain handling is a volume and numbers business. If grain companies dont handle the volume, they need to change the numbers so they net out profitable in the end. But how do they do that if someone else is controlling the sales and handling fees?

It started back in 2012 with legislation that gave the grain companies control of their own destinies in the world of grain handling on the Prairies with the abolition of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) Act.

Before 2012, the CWB would sell the grain and determine what to pay the grain companies to handle your grain, and the balance after costs went back through the pools to producers.

Now the grain companies sell the grain and can set and flex their own handling fees up to government/industry set maximums. This means the grain companies take any profit or losses made on the sale plus they get their self-determined handling fees and keep it all and offer you a fair market value for your grain.

Now this is where basis comes into play. Having been in the grain-buying industry for 20 years and then work for the CWB for five years and now as an independent marketing consultant for the past 14 years, I can tell you that basis levels have changed somewhat since 2012 to today and not in favour of you, the producer.

Back in 2006 when I started my consulting business, I can remember doing marketing strategies with producers and setting canola basis targets and hitting them constantly at levels under -$10 per tonne. In todays world, what I would call a good basis would be a number under -$20 per tonne, and that is not near as easy to hit now as was a -$10 back then.

It is similar with wheat basis. Back then a good basis was in the +$50 to +$60 per tonne range and now a good wheat basis ranges in the +$30 to +$45 per tonne range.

Production on the Prairies is not going to increase dramatically enough to enable all of these facilities to be able to turn their facilities eight or 10 times a year. In order for them to make money, they need to make a little bit more on every tonne they handle so at the end of the year they make the same or more profit.

If total deliverable volumes on the Prairies dont increase over time, you can expect the cost of doing business will, as shareholder and corporate profit expectations will demand it. If we have years of lower production, you may see some better basis levels as grain companies compete harder to get their hands on the fewer tonnes that are available, otherwise expect basis levels to remain static.

Before committing to a contract, ask about handling and cleaning charges as they can vary widely between companies. If you know what different companies charge, you can use that as leverage to try to negotiate a better price.

If only these grain companies were producer-owned co-ops that would pay dividends back to producers on the profits they are going to make. Wait a minute some of them used to be, what happened?

Find out in my next column.

Excerpt from:

How grain companies are changing the numbers: Part 2 - Grainews