Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

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Petition for Visiting Artists

4 March 2009 / / 1 Comment

Here’s a petition co-ordinated by the Manifesto Club, regarding the impractical restrictions placed on visiting artists invited to perform in the UK.

The Home Office recently introduced new restrictions on international artists and academics visiting the UK for talks, temporary exhibitions, concerts or artists’ residencies. Visitors now have to submit to a series of arduous and expensive proceedures to get their visa, and then more bureaucratic controls when they are in the UK. Already a series of concerts and residencies have been cancelled.

In addition to making UK cultural life a little more miserable, these measures also serve to reduce our “soft power” abroad. I am reminded of the time when Thomas Mapfumo, the Zimbabwean singer, was denied the chance to perform at WOMAD, for similar immigration related problems.

Convention Quotes

2 March 2009 / / 0 Comments

Here are some of the quotes that caught my ear at the Convention on Modern Liberty, which took place yesterday at the Institute of Education.  Not ann executive summary of the day, but the imperfect jottings of my notebook.  As such, they are perhaps not 100% accurate, so I will correct them as and when footage or transcripts become available, as they are starting to over at the Convention site.  They are, however, in chronological order.
Dominic Greive

“The totally mythical State of Absolute Security”

Helena Kennedy:

“Perfectly decent people of course do not realise they are actually [abusing power]. They too are like the frogs going into the water and the heat is turned up they don’t realise they area becoming authoritarian, they think they are the good guys.”

Ken MacDonald QC:

“To abolish the distinction between ‘suspects’, and those suspected of nothing, to place them entirely the same category in the eyes of the state, is a clear hallmark of authoritarianism.”

Phillip Pullman:

“A courageous nation would not be afraid of its own newspapers.”

“Imagine a government that trusted the people who elected it. Imagine agencies of the state that regarded the people’s privacy as something it was the state’s duty to guard, rather like the value of their money and the historic individuality of their town centres and their freedom to speak and write as they like.”

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The best people aren't people

27 February 2009 / / 1 Comment

A fascinating presentation by Matt Jones on “city magic” mentioned a few non-human things that Twitter:  Tower Bridge, the River Thames, the Lovell Telescope and a orchid plant named “Robert”, tee-hee.   Matt says:

I’m kind of finding that the best people on twitter aren’t people.

I already follow the Mars Rovers, Mars Phoenix and Cassini, which aren’t people, and aren’t even on earth.
Its interesting how such uses of Twitter weren’t really predicted by the creators of the site, which insists on a human “bio” for each non-living thing.  This gives rise to new forms of wit, as those who create the accounts on behalf of these inanimate twitterers come up with anthropomorphisms.
It reminds me of the whole palaver over the Facebook status “is”, which also provoked creativity through unexpected use of the technology.

Mightier than the Sword

23 February 2009 / / 1 Comment

Today I start a new job, as Campaigns Manager at English PEN, promoting literature and human rights worldwide.  A dream job for a blogger, I reckon.
As before, consider this full disclosure to the bloggers’ register of interests, and sufficient explanation should this site suddenly begin to feature more posts on imprisoned writers or UK libel law. 
One of my first acts will be to go an hear Giles Ji Ungpakorn speak about Thailand’s archaic Lese-Majesty laws at SOAS, 7pm. Its chaired by Carole Seymour-Jones, chair of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee. PDF details here.

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