try, fail, try again, fail better

stopped under s.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000

Terence Eden was randomly stopped and searched by the police at Waterloo Station and streamed the whole incident from his phone.  Facism is so close to the surface in Britain today.

England's number one revealed as untrustworthy

Steve Banks. source: Yahoo! Eurosport Deutschland, used under t&c.

Steve Banks, veteran Hearts goalkeeper, has been revealed as an untrustworthy traitor and has been purged. His name should no-longer be mentioned.

After becoming first choice keeper last season when Craig Gordon left, he has been a reliable and indeed on occasions fun goalie - he swung from the crossbar during a game against Aberdeen last season after the crowd first sang "Banksy Banksy give us a wave", got a wave, and then sang "Banksy Banksy swing on the bar", after which he swang on the bar.  And lost concentration, let in a goal, nearly let in another one, nearly giving away the victory ...

"England's number one" we used to sing, slightly tongue-in-cheek following Gordon's departure (who really truly was Scotland's number one goalkeeper).

But now he has been revealed as an untrustworthy traitor.  He was dropped on Saturday, and after the game Vladimir Romanov burst into the Hearts dressing room to declare "Banks cannot be trusted, same as Pressley could not be trusted, same as (Andy] Webster could not be trusted".  Romanov clearly has trust issues. Banks is now reduced to being the youth team's goalkeeping coach.  And, to be honest, might not stay at Tynecastle much longer (although almost certainly will have to sign a confidentiality clause before he goes that will also prevent him from sueing the club for constructive dismissal).

Just when everything was looking good.  When Csaba Laszlo was looking like a real manager who made his own decisions ... Romanov makes it clear again who is really in charge.  Doom and gloom descends over west Edinburgh once again.

Georgia

In the final series of The West Wing, Russia and China become involved in an armed confrontation in Kazakhstan.  On the verge of the US Presidential elections, the outgoing president decides to pour US troops into the conflict, so giving whoever is elected to replace him the problem of an Asian land war but perhaps giving his preferred candidate the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in a crisis ...

And in the real world, with three months until the Presidential election, Russia has invaded Georgia. Arguably, this has been in response to Georgia's overconfidence that it would soon be joining NATO, and so essentially becoming safe from any future Russian threat.  President Saakashvili has clearly made a big mistake, but who encouraged him and who has benefitted?

The Georgian army had already been trained by the US military (that link gives a very interesting, gung-ho Russian perspective).  And now, as of yesterday, US troops are being sent to Georgia, nominally to deliver aid.  That is but one step from "military advisers", and two steps from support on the front line where the spurious ceasefire is being largely ignored.  Russia has invaded Georgia and America is sending troops to support the Georgians.  This is agonisingly close to a war between the US and Russia.

Cui bono?  In three months time, the American electorate will choose between Barack Obama and John McCain.  If that is presented as "Skinny Kid vs War Hero" at a time when US troops are facing up to their Russian counterparts, that is a big boost the the Republican who is acting all presidential.

To me, it is horribly like this a throw of the dice by the right wing.  The Republican party have wisely distanced McCain from Bush, but they will still do anything to have the next President. It was the US that encouraged Georgia to think that it was being brought into the NATO fold, and I think it is not unreasonable to think that the Dick Cheney and the Project for the New American Century neocons could have been doing this in order to deliberately trigger a crisis that would work to their political advantage.

The world is in trouble.  Obama is going to have to do something impressive to regain the upper hand.  Mike Smithson has an interesting theory that the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate will be General Wes Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, so giving the Democrats' ticket a bit of military gravitas.  The candidate will be revealed at or before the Democratic National Convention, and will speak immediately following Bill Clinton on 27 August.
 

the rose theatre

Museum of London Archaeology excavate at the site of The Theatre, Shoreditch. source: guardian.co.uk, used under t&c.

The excavation of a sixteenth century theatre in Shoreditch, largely believed to be The Theatre has reminded me that I've been wanting to blog about The Rose theatre for quite a while.  The Rose is arguably the most important archaeological site there has ever been in the UK.  Not for the importance of the archaeological remains found, but for its political significance.

The Shoreditch site, on New Inn Broadway just north of Liverpool Street Station is in a part of town where, historically, a playhouse called The Theatre was built in 1576.  This is where Shakespeare is believed to have first acted and potentially first had plays that he had written staged.  Interestingly, it was demolished in 1598-99, with its timbers being reused on the south bank to build the  much more well-known Globe Theatre (not quite to be confused with Shakespeare's Globe, the fabulous reconstruction which is 400m west of the original site).

And between The Globe and its reconstruction is the site of The Rose.  All of these sites have been excavated by archaeologists working for the Museum of London (in various guises over the years), but by far the most important has been The Rose.

Queen's Hotel site, York. source: York Archaeological Trust via Rescue News.

When the site of The Rose first came to public attention, in the winter of 1988-89, there was a great outcry.  This was at a time when damage to archaeological sites was becoming a phenomenon in the public eye – very visibly with the Queen’s Hotel site in York, where a significant depth of urban stratigraphy extending back through Viking to Roman deposits was being destroyed unrecorded (or with the thinnest of watching briefs) from late 1988 into 1989. Here, English Heritage had offered a token £20,000, which was voluntarily matched by the developer – but there was no scope for insistence on full and proper recording.

Huggin Hill Bath House in London was another significant case, but then, the biggest and grandest of protests was around the site of the Rose.

Dustin Hoffman & Peggy Ashcroft at the site of The Rose Theatre. source: Rose Theatre Trust , permission sought for use.

Here, permission for development had been granted without a full evaluation of the site having been undertaken – because there was no requirement in the planning process for this to take place - and extensive remains of a sixteenth century theatre were exposed. This attracted a huge amount of international attention, primarily because this site has historically known to have been a place where Shakespeare himself had worked and several of his plays had their first performances at the site.

Graffiti at Rose Lane, beside the site of the Rose Theatre . photographer: K. Aitchison.

Protests and campaigns to preserve the site were joined by eminent thespians, and while a lot of money was diverted into the excavation and recording of the site, it could only be partly preserved beneath a new development.

A question was asked in the House of Commons on February 21 1989 by Robert Maclennan MP about The Rose, and hence on policies on archaeology and planning, which was passed from the civil servants to English Heritage, where various people had been drafting a document about archaeological remains and the planning process. The publicity around The Rose sparked a rapid and considerable redraft, ensuring that it would fit in with government policy.

The Conservative government of the day was always unhappy with suggestions that the financial burden for archaeological recording might fall on the public purse, but also wanted to offer developers choice.  And so was born PPG16, the most important archaeological publication there has ever been in the UK.  This is the governmental guidance note that says that the presence of archaeological remains had become a material consideration in planning decisions, and that this would have to be taken on board by all local planning authorities.  It doesn't quite say that developers have to pay for archaeological work to be undertaken in order to get their planning permission, but it has been pretty much interpreted as such.

And because of that, PPG16 has effectively created the archaeological profession in the UK today (nigh on 7000 people, more than three times as many as in 1989, most of them working in the private sector).

Rose Court, Southwark Bridge Road (nb blue plaque at bottom right). photographer: K. Aitchison.

The Rose sped things up and rammed home the problems, but it wasn't archaeologically that important.  Part of it survives under a few inches of water in the basement of a development called Rose Court, but it wasn't saved in the sense that the protesters wanted.  Because planning permission had been granted, the only way it could have been fully preserved would have been if it had been entered onto the Schedule of Ancient Monuments and so preserved as a site of national importance.  That wasn't ever going to happen, and the story goes that while Geoff Wainwright, the then Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, was on stage facing a hostile crowd of protestors and thespians (appearing with Simon Jenkins and Simon Hughes MP), one of his Inspectors of Ancient Monuments was deputed with a staplegun to put up the single notice of non-scheduling while no-one was looking.

London Borough of Southwark plaque at the site of The Rose Theatre. photographer: K. Aitchison.

It is nice that the Borough of Southwark have put up a blue plaque to note the site - because it was an important place on the south side of the river. It doesn't merit an English Heritage marker - in terms of what came out of the ground, it just wasn't that important.   

But in a much bigger picture, it was.  It might be the most important site for the archaeological profession in the UK.

To reuse the quote from the final scene of the last act of the most awesome of tragedies, King Lear, which is being applied to the site in Shoreditch (because a new theatre will be built there), "the wheel has come full circle".  If it were not for The Rose theatre, there may not have been the requirement for the archaeological assessment that first identified the Shoreditch Theatre to have been undertaken, and there would not have then been the requirement upon the developers to fund the excavation that mitigates the damage their work will do through funding the preservation by record of the site.

labouring in archaeology: profiling the profession 2007-08

Updated 9.viii.08 from a text submitted for forthcoming publication in The Archaeologist 69 (September 2008)

For the third time, comprehensive labour market intelligence has been gathered for the archaeological profession in the UK, and will soon be published as part of the Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe series as Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2007-08. This follows on from previous work in 1997-98 and 2002-03, so a time-series dataset has been created which allows us to see both a snapshot of archaeological employment and to identify trends that have been going on over the last ten years.

As discussed by this author in The Archaeologist 68, these data are also being fed into the Europe-wide Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe project, so will be part of a wider dataset covering the archaeological profession in twelve of the 27 EU countries. This will also look at our abilities to move between countries to work as archaeologists.

A selection of headline data are presented here – these are taken from the summary of the full report, copies of which will be sent to all IFA members and will also be available for download from the IFA website.

•    The estimated archaeological workforce in 2007-08 was 6865, a 20% increase on the figure of 5772 estimated for 2002-03 (and a 55% increase over ten years on the estimated archaeological workforce in 1997-98 of 4425).

•    On average, full-time archaeologists earn £23,310 per annum. The median archaeological salary is £20,792 (50% of archaeologists earn more than this, 50% earn less). By comparison, the average for all UK full-time workers is £29,999 – so, overall, the average archaeologist earns 78% of the UK average.

Over the five years since 2002-03, the average earnings of archaeologists have increased by 22%, while the national average has increased by 23% over that  same period, so archaeological earnings are increasing at approximately the same rate as the national average.

•    Nearly one in eight (12%) of archaeologists hold a Doctorate or post-doctoral qualification, 40% hold a Masters degree of higher and 90% of archaeologists hold a Bachelors degree or higher. Effectively, 100% of archaeologists aged under 30 (for whom qualifications data are available) are graduates.

•    41% of archaeologists are female and 59% are male. In 2002-03, the proportions were 36:64.

•    Archaeology is not an ethnically diverse profession. 99% of working archaeologists are white. This is effectively unchanged since 2002-03.

•    The proportion of people with disabilities working in archaeology is very low, with 98.4% of archaeologists not being disabled.

It may not come as a surprise to many archaeologists to learn that we are an underpaid, very well-qualified but not at all diverse profession. Gathering and presenting this kind of information will help us as a profession to address some of these iniquities and to plan for our collective futures.

However, we are now facing another, bigger, issue.

Respondents were asked to provide information that related to their organisations on Monday 13 August 2007. This means that we are seeing snapshot data captured at a remarkable time – because on Thursday 9 August, the global banking system froze over as banks suddenly found it difficult to lend each other money and so on Friday 10 August, the FTSE suffered its biggest single day loss for more than four years.  We didn’t realise it then, but that was the start of the credit crunch.

And very rapidly this hit the housing market - August 2007 was the high point of the property boom and since then the Land Registry has reported property prices falling in every subsequent month (to June 2008).

The number of planning applications submitted in October – December 2007 increased by only 1% on the year before and in January - March 2008, the number of applications fell by 6% when compared with the same quarter of 2007. This represents the tail-end of the steady rise in planning applications (leading to planning permissions leading to construction groundwork) which has underpinned the growth of the archaeological profession and funded the work of so many archaeologists, as 58% of all archaeological posts reported in August 2007 are funded at least in part by income generated by work related to development or the planning process.

How we cope in a contracting, or, at absolute best, a static economic environment is going to challenge all individual archaeologists, employers and IFA as a professional association.

Kenneth Aitchison, IFA Head of Projects and Professional Development


 

jungle of technicalities

jungle of technicalities
Originally uploaded by russelldavies

I love this image. There are fantastic smiley dragons and snakes out there in the jungle of technicalities.