Maria, 22, came to the UK from Ukraine in March last year shortly after the war broke out. She and her mother travelled using the Ukraine family scheme visa to stay with her aunt. But when her aunt was evicted, they became homeless. For five months, Maria and her mother have been living in temporary accommodation in south London.
“It’s horrible actually, the corridors are so old and so dirty,” Maria says. “The council haven’t been very helpful. The room is so small and it’s hard with two adults in one room.”
Maria is hoping to find private accommodation, but it is unaffordable when living on universal credit. “You have to pay a deposit, and have a lot of savings but we don’t have that right now,” Maria adds.
Maria, pictured with her mother Liudmyla: ‘It’s horrible actually, the corridors are so old and so dirty.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
The position Maria finds herself in is one shared by many of the more than 150,000 Ukrainians who came to the UK under the sponsorship scheme or to stay with relatives. In August, it was reported that more than 50,000 Ukrainian refugees in the UK could be made homeless in 2023 as initial six-month placements with hosts end without further accommodation in place.
Anastasia Salnikova is the founder of the community interest group J&C Soul CIC, and has been supporting Ukrainian refugees as their sponsorship schemes come to an end. Difficulties in finding accommodation has been a recurring theme for Salnikova.
“The problems people are facing are that some are becoming homeless when the sponsorship agreement comes to an end,” Salnikova says. “People are finding it so difficult to find private accommodation too. There are lots of single parents, or people on universal credit, and even those who have full-time jobs are struggling to find accommodation. So what is going to happen is that we are going to have lots more people facing homelessness as the scheme ends”.
Anastasia Salnikova: ‘There are lots of single parents, or people on universal credit, and even those who have full-time jobs are struggling to find accommodation.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Despite having a relatively well-paying, full-time job as a chef, Oksana, who’s a single parent to her 12-year-old son, is struggling to find a place to live once the sponsorship scheme comes to an end. Since December, Oksana has enquired after at least seven properties but hasn’t been successful in finding somewhere for herself and her son to live.
“The scheme is coming to an end and I’m trying to find private accommodation, but even though I’m earning good money and have a good job in central London, I can’t find accommodation because many places are too expensive or need a guarantor, which I don’t have.”
“My sponsor is well-connected, and has been helping me to find somewhere too. But even with all the connections we have, and having a good job, it’s still a challenge,” Oksana says. “And so for the people without, it’s even harder”.
Natalia Platonova and her partner, Andreyy Palatov, feel as if they’re in limbo. Their current sponsorship is due to end in the next few months, and although there is the possibility that it may be extended, this hasn’t been confirmed.
Natalia Platonova and husband Andreyy: ‘No matter how wonderful our sponsors are, we want to be independent.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
They are from Mariupol, which has been completely destroyed by bombing, so it is not an option for them to return. They want to build a life here.
“On one hand, we’re extremely grateful that we’re here and that we were able to escape and survive, our sponsors have been wonderful,” the couple say, through an interpreter.
“No matter how wonderful our sponsors are, we want to be independent but we don’t speak English and we’re middle-aged. It’s frustrating because we don’t see the prospect of having our own private accommodation, not because we don’t want to but because we don’t speak English it’s more difficult to find a job or a landlord who would rent to us,” they add.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “Homes for Ukraine has seen 112,000 Ukrainians welcomed to the UK, thanks to the generosity of sponsors.
“We’ve provided councils with extensive funding including an addition £150m to support Ukrainian guests move into their own homes, as well as £500m to acquire housing for those fleeing conflict.
“All Ukrainian arrivals can work or study and access benefits from day one and we have increased ‘thank you’ payments for sponsors to £500 a month once a guest has been here for a year.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Israel’s culture minister is attempting to revoke state funding from two documentary films dealing with the occupation of the Palestinian territories, increasing concerns that the country’s new hard-right government will follow through on promises to crack down on dissenting voices.
The minister, Miki Zohar, of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, has pledged to “revoke funding that promotes our enemy’s narrative” and withhold grants from films that “present Israeli soldiers as murderers”. He has also said he will require film-makers to sign a declaration they will not use state funds to create content that “harms the state of Israel or IDF soldiers”.
The minister says he wants the producers of two films, both currently screening in festivals and viewable on Israeli cable networks, to return government-funded grants. One, called H2: Occupation Lab, tracks the history of Israeli control over the West Bank city of Hebron. The second, Two Kids a Day, explores the arrests and interrogations of Palestinian children.
Israeli cinema, including its high-profile documentary industry, is heavily reliant on the state through grants administered by a group of government-paid film funds.
David Wachsmann, the director of Two Kids a Day, said: “These two films are in the eye of the storm, but this is an attack on freedom of expression in Israel, on culture and on every Israeli artist.”
The film explores the arrests and interrogations of four children from the Aida refugee camp who were held – in one case for four years – on accusations of stone-throwing. Human rights organisations have documented hundreds such arrests annually. Most take place in the middle of the night when the children are sleeping.
“Israel has decided to turn culture into propaganda,” said Noam Sheizaf, who directed H2: The Occupation Lab along with Idit Avrahami. Their film tracks the history of Hebron, where military rule and a far-right takeover by Jewish settlers have turned the once-bustling centre of the Palestinian city into a dystopian ghost town.
It argues that the mechanisms of control first developed in Hebron – “Jewish supremacy in its most blatant and unapologetic form”, says Sheizaf – are replicated throughout the Palestinian territories and will increasingly reach Israel.
Both films drew the ire of Shai Glick, a far-right activist known for targeting artists and cultural institutions he believes sully Israel’s reputation. His organisation, Betsalmo, launched pressure campaigns to get local authorities to cancel screenings – succeeding on one occasion when a public screening of H2 was canceled by the Israeli town of Pardes Hanna.
Glick’s efforts reached the culture minister, who has asked the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to investigate whether the government can retroactively revoke grants made to the films.
“Our film argues that not only the [Palestinian] territories, but also Israel is going through a process of ‘Hebronization’,” Sheizaf said. “What’s crazy is that the process that’s at the heart of the film happened to the film itself.”
The culture ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time an Israeli culture minister has targeted Israeli productions dealing with the occupation. Miri Regev, the firebrand politician who held the post from 2015-2020, worked to withdraw state support from critical productions. She also created the “Samaria Film Fund” for Jewish settlers to counter what she claimed was a leftwing bias in the industry. However, her bill that would have made state funding conditional on “loyalty” to the state, died in parliament.
But under the current government – the most right wing in Israel’s history – artists worry that the guardrails that existed just a few years ago are about to come down. A proposed legal overhaul would gut the independence of the judiciary and of legal advisers, who have occasionally served as a check on similar efforts. The reforms to the judiciary have been the subject of mass protests in Israeli cities in recent weeks.
At the same time, the government’s communications minister has vowed to dismantle the country’s public broadcaster, which, alongside its news operation, funds scores of television and documentary productions.
“The feeling is that this is happening in the context of a watershed moment,” Sheizaf said. “If all of these things come to pass, this will be a very different country, overnight.”
Wachsmann said that the controversy had resulted in more public discussion of Israel’s practices. “That’s the plus in all of this – there’s been a focus on Palestinian children. They’re the issue here.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
There are those who believe that at 80, Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term as president. Yet few clamour for him to hand over to the person who would normally be the heir apparent.
Two years in, Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to be vice-president, has had her ups and downs. Her relationship with Biden appears strong and she has found her voice as a defender of abortion rights. But her office has suffered upheaval and her media appearances have failed to impress.
Such behind-the-scenes drama is recounted in The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, written by the author, journalist and film-maker Chris Whipple and published this week. Whipple gained access to nearly all of Biden’s inner circle and has produced a readable half-time report on his presidency – a somewhat less crowded field than the literary genre that sprang up around Donald Trump.
“In the beginning, Joe Biden liked having Kamala Harris around,” Whipple writes, noting that Biden wanted the vice-president with him for meetings on almost everything. One source observed a “synergy” between them.
Harris volunteered to take on the cause of voting rights. But Biden handed her another: tackling the causes of undocumented immigration by negotiating with the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
“But for Harris,” Whipple writes, “the Northern Triangle would prove to be radioactive.”
With the distinction between root causes and immediate problems soon lost on the public, Harris got the blame as migrants kept coming.
One of her senior advisers tells Whipple the media could not handle a vice-president who was not only female but also Black and south Asian, referring to it as “the Unicorn in a glass box” syndrome. But Harris also suffered self-inflicted wounds. Whipple writes that she “seemed awkward and uncertain … she laughed inappropriately and chopped the air with her hands, which made her seem condescending”.
An interview with NBC during a visit to Guatemala and Mexico was a “disaster”, according to one observer. Reports highlighted turmoil and turnover in Harris’s office, some former staff claiming they saw it all before when she was California attorney general and on her presidential campaign. Her approval rating sank to 28%, lower than Dick Cheney’s during the Iraq war.
But, Whipple writes, Biden and his team still thought highly of Harris.
“Ron Klain [chief of staff] was personally fond of her. He met with the vice-president weekly and encouraged her to do more interviews and raise her profile. Harris was reluctant, wary of making mistakes.
“‘This is like baseball,’ Klain told her. ‘You have to accept the fact that sometimes you will strike out. We all strike out. But you can’t score runs if you’re sitting in the dugout.’ Biden’s chief was channeling manager Tom Hanks in the film A League of Their Own. ‘Look, no one here is going to get mad at you. We want you out there!’”
Speaking to the Guardian, Whipple, 69, reflects: “It’s a complicated, fascinating relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“In the early months of the administration they had a real rapport, a real bond. Because of Covid they were thrown together in the White House and spent a lot of time together. He wanted her to be in almost every meeting and valued her input. All of that was and is true.
“But when she began to draw fire, particularly over her assignment on the Northern Triangle, things became more complicated. It got back to the president that the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was complaining around town that her portfolio was too difficult and that in effect it was setting her up for failure. This really annoyed Biden. He felt he hadn’t asked her to do anything he hadn’t done for Barack Obama: he had the Northern Triangle as one of his assignments. She had asked for the voting rights portfolio and he gave it to her. So that caused some friction.”
A few months into the presidency, Whipple writes, a close friend asked Biden what he thought of his vice-president. His reply: “A work in progress.” These four words – a less than ringing endorsement – form the title of a chapter in Whipple’s book.
But in our interview, Whipple adds: “It’s also true that she grew in terms of her national security prowess. That’s why Biden sent her to the Munich Security Conference on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She spent a lot of time in the meetings with the president’s daily brief and Biden’s given her some important assignments in that respect.”
A former producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Whipple has written books about White House chiefs of staff and directors of the CIA. Each covered more than 100 years of history, whereas writing The Fight of His Life was, he says, like designing a plane in mid-flight and not knowing where to land it. Why did he do it?
Chris Whipple. Photograph: David Hume Kennerly
“How could I not? When you think about it, Joe Biden and his team came into office confronting a once-in-a-century pandemic, crippled economy, global warming, racial injustice, the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. How could anybody with a political or storytelling bone in his body not want to tell that story? Especially if you could get access to Biden’s inner circle, which I was fortunate in being able to do.”
Even so, it wasn’t easy. Whipple describes “one of the most leakproof White Houses in modern history … extremely disciplined and buttoned down”. It could hardly be more different from the everything-everywhere-all-at-once scandals of the Trump administration.
What the author found was a tale of two presidencies. There was year one, plagued by inflation, supply chain problems, an arguably premature declaration of victory over the coronavirus and setbacks in Congress over Build Back Better and other legislation. Worst of all was the dismal end of America’s longest war as, after 20 years and $2tn, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.
“It was clearly a failure to execute the withdrawal in a safe and orderly way and at the end of the day, as I put it, it was a whole-of-government failure,” Whipple says. “Everybody got almost everything wrong, beginning with the intelligence on how long the Afghan government and armed forces would last and ending with the botched execution of the withdrawal, with too few troops on the ground.”
Whipple is quite possibly the first author to interview Klain; the secretary of state, Antony Blinken; the CIA director, Bill Burns; and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about the Afghanistan debacle.
“What became clear was that everybody had a different recollection of the intelligence. While this administration often seems to be pretty much on the same page, I found that there was a lot more drama behind the scenes during the Afghan withdrawal and in some of the immediate aftermath,” he says.
The book also captures tension between Leon Panetta, CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama, who was critical of the exit strategy – “You just wonder whether people were telling the president what he wanted to hear” – and Klain, who counters that Panetta favoured the war and oversaw the training of the Afghan military, saying: “If this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.”
Whipple comments: “Ron Klain wanted to fire back in this case and it’s remarkable and fascinating to me, given his relationship with Panetta. Obviously his criticism got under Ron Klain’s skin.”
Biden’s second year was a different story. “Everything changed on 24 February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Joe Biden was uniquely qualified to rise to that moment and he did, rallying Nato in defiance of Putin and in defence of Ukraine. Biden had spent his entire career preparing for that moment, with the Senate foreign relations committee and his experience with Putin, and it showed.
“Then he went on to pass a string of bipartisan legislative bills from the Chips Act to veterans healthcare, culminating in the Inflation Reduction Act, which I don’t think anybody saw coming.
“One thing is for sure: Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated from day one and, at the two-year mark, he proves that he could deliver a lot more than people thought.”
Biden looked set to enter his third year with the wind at his back. Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, inflation is slowing, Biden’s approval rating is on the up and dysfunctional House Republicans struggled to elect a speaker.
But political life moves pretty fast. Last week the justice department appointed a special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents, from Biden’s time as vice-president, at his thinktank in Washington and home in Delaware.
Whipple told CBS: “They really need to raise their game here, I think, because this really goes to the heart of Joe Biden’s greatest asset, arguably, which is trust.”
The mistake represents a bump in the road to 2024. Biden’s age could be another. He is older than Ronald Reagan was when he completed his second term and if he serves a full second term he will be 86 at the end. Opinion polls suggest many voters feel he is too old for the job. Biden’s allies disagree.
Joe Biden speaks at the National Action Network’s MLK Jr Day breakfast, in Washington this week. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock
Whipple says: “His inner circle is bullish about Biden’s mental acuity and his ability to govern. I never heard any of them express any concern and maybe you would expect that from the inner circle. Many of them will tell you that he has extraordinary endurance, energy.
“Bruce Reed [a longtime adviser] told me about flying back on a red-eye from Europe after four summits in a row when everybody had to drag themselves out of the plane and was desperately trying to sleep and the boss came in and told stories for six hours straight all the way back to DC.”
During conversations and interviews for the book, did Whipple get the impression Biden will seek re-election?
“He’s almost undoubtedly running. Andy Card [chief of staff under George W Bush] said something to me once that rang true: ‘If anybody tells you they’re leaving the White House voluntarily, they’re probably lying to you.’
“Who was the last president to walk away from the office voluntarily? LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson]. It rarely happens. I don’t think Joe Biden is an exception. He spent his whole career … thinking about running or running for president and he’s got unfinished business. Having the possibility of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee probably makes it more urgent for him. He thinks he can beat him again.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: At least five persons were injured in twin mysterious blast in Narwal area of Jammu on Saturday.
Quoting a senior police officer news agency GNS reported that the blasts were reported from two vehicles, leading to injuries to five persons.
The injured have been evacuated to nearby hospital.
“The area has been cordoned off and senior police officer along with other police personnel are at the spot and further investigations are underway,” he said.
Srinagar, January 21: At least five persons were injured in twin mysterious blast in Narwal area of Jammu on Saturday.
A senior police officer told GNS that the blasts were reported from two vehicles, leading to injuries to five persons.
The injured have been evacuated to nearby hospital.
” The area has been cordoned off and senior police officer along with other police personnel are at the spot and further investigations are underway,”.(GNS)
Government of jammu and kashmir has released notification and hereby ordered that Government Order No. 57- JK(GAD) of 2023 dated 16.01.2023 in so far as it relates to transfer and posting of Mr. Natyapal Singh, Assistant Information Officer in the office of Joint Director, Information, Jammu, as Public Relation Officer, Jammu Municipal Corporation is cancelled ab-initio. By order of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir.
SRINAGAR: The Jammu-Srinagar Highway has been closed for vehicular traffic due to shooting stones at Panthyal on Saturday, officials said.
“Traffic movement stopped from both ends on Jammu Srinagar NHW in view of road blocked at Panthyal due to continuous shooting stones,” Traffic police said in a tweet.
When archaeologists working on the route of HS2 began excavating a stretch of pasture in Warwickshire, they were not expecting to uncover what one of them calls “the highlight of our careers”. Their excavations revealed the monumental stone bases of two towers from a late medieval fortified gatehouse, the existence of which had been completely lost to history.
While that find was remarkable in itself, the ruins were even more significant than they first appeared – and might even rewrite the history of the English civil war.
Peppering the sandstone walls were hundreds of pockmarks made by musket balls and pistol shot, showing that the building had come under heavy fire. Experts think this may be evidence that the gatehouse was shot at by parliamentarian troops heading to the nearby Battle of Curdworth Bridge in August 1642, which would make this the scene of the very first skirmish of the civil war.
The finds were “a real shock”, said Stuart Pierson of Wessex Archaeology, who led excavations on the site. “The best way to describe it is that we were just in awe of this tower.
“People always say that you want to find gold in archaeology, but I think for a lot of us finding that tower will always be better than finding gold. I think it’s the highlight of our careers finding that, and I don’t think we’re going to find anything like that again.”
Musket ball impact marks on the outside wall of Coleshill gatehouse. Photograph: HS2/PA
The team knew that a large Tudor manor house had stood somewhere near the site at Coleshill, east of Birmingham, but its location had been lost. As they started excavating, they were astonished at the state of preservation of its vast ornamental gardens – larger in scale than at Hampton Court.
Pierson had said to colleagues that he expected there might be the remains of a gatehouse, “but we figured a small box structure. We weren’t thinking anything involving towers.” He was on holiday when the first walls were uncovered. “My colleagues say their favourite memory from the site was my expression when I [returned and] saw this complete tower,” he said.
Taken together, the finds make the site “nationally significant – and a bit more”, he added.
In the lead up to the civil war, which pitched forces loyal to King Charles I against parliamentarian soldiers seeking to topple him, Coleshill Manor was in the hands of a royalist, Simon Digby. The position of his grand home, next to a key strategic crossing of the River Cole, would have put it directly in the path of parliamentarians on the march to Curdworth Bridge. While it is impossible to prove, experts think it is highly likely that it is their musket balls – dozens of which were recovered from the site – which struck the gatehouse on this journey.
While the discovery potentially rewrites the history of the start of the civil war, Pierson said, it can also tell us more about the experience of those living through it. “What it gives us is a more personal [insight] to the civil war. There are always stories about royalty and the lead parliamentarians, but there’s not so much focus given to the people themselves, even the upper classes who found themselves involved but weren’t necessarily really part of it.”
The discovery features on Digging for Britain on BBC Two at 8pm on Sunday 22 January.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
What were you hoping for? An enjoyable and interesting evening with someone new.
First impressions? A friendly guy who put me at ease straight away.
What did you talk about? Our families. Motorbikes. The state the country is in.
Most awkward moment? The selfie.
Good table manners? We shared our starters, which seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.
Best thing about Dennis? He is a good talker and a good listener.
Would you introduce Dennis to your friends? Yes, because he seems to be so easygoing and chatty.
Describe Dennis in three words. Family-minded and adventurous.
What do you think Dennis made of you? He must have noticed that I’m passionate about politics.
Did you go on somewhere? No, the restaurant was in the middle of the countryside and on that night it was -4C.
And … did you kiss? Yes, we had a little kiss on the lips.
If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be? Can’t think of one thing.
Marks out of 10? 8.
Would you meet again? I wouldn’t mind seeing his narrowboat and riding pillion on his motorbike. But don’t tell my children. They are already worried that I might glue myself to a building and get arrested.
Dennis and Juliet on their date.
Q&A
Want to be in Blind date?
Show
Blind date is Saturday’s dating column: every week, two
strangers are paired up for dinner and drinks, and then spill the beans
to us, answering a set of questions. This runs, with a photograph we
take of each dater before the date, in Saturday magazine (in the
UK) and online at theguardian.com every Saturday. It’s been running since 2009 – you can read all about how we put it together here.
What questions will I be asked? We
ask about age, location, occupation, hobbies, interests and the type of
person you are looking to meet. If you do not think these questions
cover everything you would like to know, tell us what’s on your mind.
Can I choose who I match with? No,
it’s a blind date! But we do ask you a bit about your interests,
preferences, etc – the more you tell us, the better the match is likely
to be.
Can I pick the photograph? No, but don’t worry: we’ll choose the nicest ones.
What personal details will appear? Your first name, job and age.
How should I answer? Honestly
but respectfully. Be mindful of how it will read to your date, and that
Blind date reaches a large audience, in print and online.
Will I see the other person’s answers? No. We may edit yours and theirs for a range of reasons, including length, and we may ask you for more details.
Will you find me The One? We’ll try! Marriage! Babies!
Can I do it in my home town? Only if it’s in the UK. Many of our applicants live in London, but we would love to hear from people living elsewhere.
How to apply Email blind.date@theguardian.com
Dennis on Juliet
What were you hoping for? Some lively conversation about current affairs and social unrest.
First impressions? She seemed a very confident lady.
What did you talk about? Velocette motorcycles! Her father owned one, as did I. From then on we covered so much. How lovely Ireland is. A turtle who lives on the Coventry canal. The suffragette movement. The Jarrow march.
Most awkward moment? Taking the selfies.
Good table manners? Excellent: we agreed to share but were so busy talking we almost forgot.
Best thing about Juliet? Very open and a great conversationalist.
Would you introduce Juliet to your friends? Absolutely, Juliet will go down a storm.
Describe Juliet in three words. Confident, attractive, talkative.
What do you think Juliet made of you? I think I managed to leave a favourable impression.
Did you go on somewhere? No, it was too late.
And … did you kiss? You would need to torture me to get me to answer that.
If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be? It to have been a lunchtime date, which would have given us more time together.
Marks out of 10? 10.
Would you meet again? Definitely. We have tentative plans for a pillion ride on one of my classic motorcycles, and a trip aboard my narrowboat.
Dennis and Juliet ate at The George, Great Oxenden, Leicestershire. Fancy a blind date? Email blind.date@theguardian.com
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
