Sing Sing

As I went through security at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining this morning, the guard noticed my accent and asked why I wasn't watching the royal wedding. The grim correctional facility in upstate New York made famous in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's surely was a stark contrast to the feelgood occasion taking place in England, but it showed me how another part of America's population lived.

Our informed tour guide quashed rumors of the prison closing, saying it was too important for local jobs. Although the debate is still swirling and depends more on administrative and political decision-making.

I was at Sing Sing with colleagues from a human rights charity to look at the treatment of prisoners. We were shown the complete lack of privacy the prisoners had in their own cells complete with toilets, as we walked down a housing block and how they had to shower within 10 to 15 minutes in doorless cubicles before the warden turned off the water at the mains. Another housing block for which there is a waiting list, allowed inmates to walk around freely and even keep pets but the warden said it still hadn't stopped one inmate from knifing another to death a few weeks ago.

One person in the group thought the "prisoners had it pretty good", others imagined living in those conditions if they were unfairly imprisoned. An educational and eye-opening visit.

Social mobility on both sides of the Atlantic

I liked columnist and writer, Allison Pearson's view on UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg's social mobility strategy plans reported in the UK press this week. Clegg said he wanted to reverse the unpaid internship culture that favoured the wealthy and well-connected.

Pearson pointed out: "Fairness is the new buzzword for politicians, yet string-pulling is to our ruling elite what rain is to Swansea. It’s the prevailing climate, whether you’re Left or Right."

Last month a black British journalist who has been working in the US media for more than a decade told me she preferred working in America because there were more opportunities for people like her than in the UK. She told me she did not think she would have made it to a senior rank like she had in the States, in the UK. (Although, the trade-off was a general lack of intellectualism and an inappropriate amount of deference to authority figures in the US media, she added!)

Yet the U.S. has its own problems in this area. Coincidentally, last week there was debate around a new book published here called “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy” by a researcher at the Himalayan Languages Project, Ross Perlin.  He writes: "Colleges and universities have become cheerleaders and enablers of the unpaid internship boom, failing to inform young people of their rights or protect them from the miserly calculus of employers. In hundreds of interviews with interns over the past three years, I found dejected students resigned to working unpaid for summers, semesters and even entire academic years — and, increasingly, to paying for the privilege."

On both sides of the Atlantic, the more wealthy and well-connected are likely to be able to survive while doing these internships. But in the US the point is that interns are being exploited to weaken the leverage of existing employees trying to find work in the current economy - i.e. professionals, which others may refer to as the jilted generation.

How much can Britain be blamed for problems in its former colonies?

So British PM, David Cameron, has said that Britain is responsible for most of the world's problems as he made a visit to Pakistan. When asked what Britain could do when it came to the dispute in Kashmir, he replied: “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”

At home in the UK, he was criticised for being too ready to tell foreign hosts what they wanted to hear by saying Britain is responsible for everything bad that may have happened in its former colonies. The issue is too complex and cannot be simplified but I know it is a recurring and contentious one. In 2006 it came up in a different setting - when Radio 4 ran its This Sceptred Isle: Empire series and historians examined how Britain and other countries around the world have been changed by their experience of empire. Historian Niall Ferguson and academic Priya Gopal exchanged polemical blows on whether the former was a imperial apologist.

The British Empire operated differently from place to place, and any discussion of its possible benefits should take that into account and its negative impacts cannot be denied either. The whole point should be to engage less in a polemical battle of views but more on learning about the past, knowing we cannot change it. Then doing what we can to change negative situations in the present. Not easy, I know, but more mature and effective perhaps?

Fracking up American lives?

You may have heard of fracking in the documentary film, Gasland (or maybe in Battlestar Galactica where it's used as a more polite substitute for other insults). In this blog entry I am referring to the former definition.

On Sunday, I travelled to Dimock in Pennsylvania to talk to Craig and Julie Sautner about the consequences of living near "fracking" sites. What is fracking? It's another term for hydraulic fracturing, a method of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.

The potential harm to health and the environment is under-researched and films like Gasland and the testimonies of those like the Sautners, provide a massive cause for concern. The Sautners have not had clean running water for almost two years and are not able to sell their home and move because of this. Instead, they have to use spring water provided to them by the barrel. In the meantime they are breathing in air that they believe is being contaminated by the drilling of gas companies.

On our trip, at least three of my colleagues felt nauseous upon arriving in Dimock. One has a sensitivity to chemicals and said she could taste metal on her tongue as soon as she entered the town.

The Sautners vow to stand firm against any continuation of the drilling as a moratorium passed last year to stop gas companies drilling for a time, comes to an end. The Sautners are calling for more research  on the health and environmental fallout of "fracking" as well as a clean water supply.