Chemical attraction: why mosquitoes zone in on some people, but not others

Posted on May 17, 2015 by tess

Everyone who has ever been camping or walking in the wild with friends can’t have failed to notice how insects seem to prefer some people’s flesh to others. Some unlucky souls are totally covered in itchy red blotches and others are miraculously spared. Sometimes only some family members are affected. My mother has never been bitten by a mosquito (though fleas like her) while my brother and I are often the targets.

This article about why mosquitoes zone in on some people but not others is by Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and was first published on The Conversation website.

Previous observations have shown a higher mosquito preference for larger people (who produce more CO₂), beer drinkers and pregnant women, and although diet was often suspected as a factor, nothing in what we eat (even garlic) stood up to scrutiny.

The authors of a new study in PLOS One claim to have found the answer. They studied the differences in attraction of skin odours to mosquitoes, specifically Aedes aegypti, in a group of brave volunteers drawn from a group of female identical and non-identical twins – part of the large national TwinsUK cohortthat I set up 21 years ago. The reason for using both kinds of twin was to separate the effects of nature and nurture (or genes and environment). In humans this is the only way to get a good estimate of the contribution of genetics to the differences between people.

Our valiant twins put their hands into a specially constructed plexiglass sealed dome where the odours either attract or repel 20 female mosquitoes without being allowed to bite. Each subject was given an attractiveness score compared to the other hand at the other end of the dome. Sure enough the identical twins, who share all their genes, had consistently more similar scores compared to fraternal twins – showing a clear genetic component. This comparison estimated that 67% of the differences between people (called heritability) was down to their genes.

Repel with smell

Why might this be? Many years ago in another twin study we showed that underarm body odour as perceived by human sniffers had a genetic basis – with huge variability in how strong smells were perceived. This showed that we have gene variations controlling both the odours we perceive and the chemical odours we produce. In this way we are similar to mosquitoes because they also have big differences in which odours and chemicals attract and repel them.

Different mosquitoes prefer different parts of our bodies to others. The species Aedes Gambiae prefers the odours of our hands and feet to other bits like groins and armpits. Some animals use their body odour to keep insects away and companies have been trying to unravel what the best chemicals are.

The twin study authors realised that the chemicals could come from glands in our skin or from the billions of microbes on the surface. They discounted the bacteria as a cause as the dogma is that bacteria can’t be influenced genetically. It turns out they were wrong.

Your own personal microbes

We all have very different and unique microbial species in our mouths, guts and on our skin. We share only a small fraction of our microbial species with each other – but still have a unique microbial signature fingerprint. Until recently it was thought this variety was random or due to where we lived. But recent studies, again using UK twins, have shown the importance of genes in influencing which type of gut bacteria flourish inside us – and the same is likely to be true for our skin.

Our 100 trillion microbes outnumber our own human cells ten to one and it turns out we don’t pick them – they pick us – based on our genetic makeup. This means that, just like mosquitoes, certain microbes prefer to coexist with us and other find us rather unpleasant and settle elsewhere.

Our microbes produce many of our vitamins and chemicals in our blood, and far from being the bad guys, their diversity contributes to our health. They are also probably responsible for most of our smells and odours. Even regular hand washing can’t remove these bacteria.

The special smell many of us have between our toes comes from a bacteria called Brevibacteria linens. This is identical to the bacterial species that gives Limburger cheese its distinctive smell.

To demonstrate that bacterial species are the same wherever they grow a team of microbiologists at UCLA performed an unusual experiment. They have started making and eating cheese from human skin – and reportedly this gourmet belly-button food tastes just fine.

So, the next time you get bitten by a mosquito on the ankle – don’t blame bad luck or your cheap repellent – think of the amazing evolutionary match-making processes that hooked up your special mix of genes to a particular community of microbes that feed off your skin and produce a chemical that only certain species of mosquito find irresistible.

Photo by Rick Miller

Note: Pod Academy has other pieces on our bodies as bacteria ecosystems – see also:

Your gut bacteria don’t like junk food – even if you do

Posted on May 10, 2015 by tess

We humans are ecosystems. 100 trillion microbes live in our bodies, most of them essential to our health. And the microbes in our guts don’t like junk food even if we do, as Professor Tim Spector and his son, Tom, discovered……

This article by Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London was first published on The Conversation website.

When Morgan Spurlock famously spent a month eating large portions of McDonalds for the purposes of his documentary Supersize Me, he gained weight, damaged his liver and claimed to have suffered addictive withdrawal symptoms. This was popularly attributed to the toxic mix of carbs and fat plus the added chemicals and preservatives in junk foods. But could there be another explanation?

We may have forgotten others who really don’t enjoy fast food. These are the poor creatures that live in the dark in our guts. These are the hundred trillion microbes that outnumber our total human cells ten to one and digest our food, provide many vitamins and nutrients and keep us healthy. Until recently we have viewed them as harmful – but those (like salmonella) are a tiny minority and most are essential for us.

Studies in lab mice have shown that when fed an intensive high fat diet their microbes change dramatically and for the worse. This can be partly prevented by using probiotics; but there are obvious differences between us and lab mice, as well as our natural microbes.

A recent study took a group of Africans who ate a traditional local diet high in beans and vegetables and swapped their diet with a group of African Americans who ate a diet high in fat and animal proteins and low dietary fibre. The Africans fared worse on American-style food: their metabolism changed to a diabetic and unhealthy profile within just two weeks. The African Americans instead had lower markers for colon cancer risk. Tests of both groups showed very different microbiomes, the populations of microbes in their guts.

Home testing

Surprisingly, no one has specifically investigated the effect of junk food on westerners from the perspective of the microbiome.

For the sake of science and research for my book The Diet Myth, I’ve have been experimenting with several unusual diets and recorded their effects on my gut microbes. These include fasting, a colonoscopy diet, and an intensive unpasteurised French cheese diet. My son Tom, a final year student of genetics at the University of Aberystwyth suggested an additional crucial experiment: to track the microbes as they changed from an average western diet to an intensive fast food diet for over a week.

I wasn’t the ideal subject since I was no longer on an average diet, but Tom, who like most students enjoyed his fast food, was. So he agreed to be the guinea pig on the basis that I paid for all his meals and he could analyse and write up his results for his dissertation. The plan was to eat all his meals at the local McDonalds for ten days. He was able to eat either a Big Mac or Chicken nuggets, plus fries and Coke. For extra vitamins he was allowed beer and crisps in the evening. He would collect poo samples before, during and after his diet and send them to three different labs to check consistency.

Tom started in high spirits and many of his fellow students were jealous of his unlimited junk food budget. As he put it:

I felt good for three days, then slowly went downhill, I became more lethargic, and by a week my friends thought I had gone a strange grey colour. The last few days were a real struggle. I felt really unwell, but definitely had no addictive withdrawal symptoms and when I finally finished, I rushed (uncharacteristically) to the shops to get some salad and fruit.

While it was clear the intensive diet had made him feel temporarily unwell, we had to wait a few months for the results to arrive back. The results came from Cornell University in the US and the crowdfunded British Gut Project, which allows people to get their microbiome tested with the results shared on the web for anyone to analyze. They all told the same story: Tom’s community of gut microbes (called a microbiome) had been devastated.

Tom’s gut had seen massive shifts in his common microbe groups for reasons that are still unclear. Firmicutes were replaced with Bacteroidetes as the dominant type, while friendly bifidobacteria that suppress inflammation halved. However the clearest marker of an unhealthy gut is losing species diversity and after just a few days Tom had lost an estimated 1,400 species – nearly 40% of his total. The changes persisted and even two weeks after the diet his microbes had not recovered. Loss of diversity is a universal signal of ill health in the guts of obese and diabetic people and triggers a range of immunity problems in lab mice.

That junk food is bad for you is not news, but knowing that they decimate our gut microbes to such an extent and so quickly is worrying. Many people eat fast food on a regular basis and even if they don’t get fat from the calories, the body’s metabolism and immune system are suffering via the effects on the microbes.

We rely on our bacteria to produce much of our essential nutrients and vitamins while they rely on us eating plants and fruits to provide them with energy and to produce healthy chemicals which keep our immune system working normally.

We are unlikely to stop people eating fast food, but the devastating effects on our microbes and our long term health could possibly be mitigated if we also eat foods which our microbes love like probiotics (yogurts), root vegetables, nuts, olives and high-fibre foods. What they seem to crave, above all else, is food diversity and a slice of gherkin in the burger just isn’t enough.

This article was written with the assistance of Tom Spector

Photo: SpilltoJill

Triumph of the Trivial: Notes on the election non-coverage

Posted on May 1, 2015 by tess

This post by Professor Rod Stoneman, Director of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at NUI Galway, and a member of the Pod Academy advisory board, first appeared on The Column website.

Eye-catching storylines fascinate the British media as they report daily contention in the month leading to the parliamentary election in May 2015. Entwined narratives build as new elements are added and then speedily replaced by fresher and more attention-grabbing headlines. It is a fleeting moment, a national vote every five years, but even this most limited version of democracy is played out in digression and distraction. Journalists and commentators are uninhibited as they reiterate cliché and depend upon patterns of repetition. Overall our perception of election discourses is dominated by their tendency towards the inconsequential, which alienates sections of the population by their terminal triviality. Discord and acrimony circulates without substance.

Political difference is constantly simplified and psychologised. On 9^th April Miliband was attacked with a sound bite by Michael Fallon, Defence Secretary: “He stabbed his own brother in the back, now he will stab the United Kingdom in the back to become Prime Minister.” It is astonishing that a male version of sibling rivalry, the ancient myth of Cain and Abel, should loom behind a debate on defence and the nuclear deterrent. The system is circular – the original utterance is designed and released for the press to take it up. The speed and rhythm of the traditional media, newspapers and news bulletins, is increased by the advent of ancillary electronic media and 24 hour news. The media’s instinct for the dramatic reproduces the statement without delay, then Gloria De Piero, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Women, rebuffs it: “Tory personal attacks just show how desperate they are. Fallon should be ashamed.” The whole exchange somehow sets aside or minimises any kind of a substantial discussion of nuclear weaponry in the wider body politic.

Privately owned commercial media utilise every opportunity to intervene directly in the service of their underlying political motives and manipulations, the right wing press is brazen in putting out misinformation. An article in Open Democracy by Adam Ramsay on 6th April focused on the establishment’s perceived danger of a SNP coalition: ‘The newspapers are preparing for a coup, and Labour is doing nothing to stop them.’ Public service media are in cautious mode as they are under fierce scrutiny themselves; all parties have their stop watches out to check the timing and ‘balance’ of coverage. There is trepidation in relation to the television debates as they are intense media moments and it is very easy to mis-judge a formula or wrong-foot a formulation leaving the broadcaster vulnerable. Few enquire how the television debate format frames the terms of the contest and how the images and discourses of election coverage relate to policy implementation or operation.

Manichean filters, the good versus the bad, work through visual appearances and carry the underlying arguments. Everything is focused on the personal and then displaced onto the irrelevant – the slightest slip while eating a bacon sandwich re-enforces the perception of ineptitude and inability. It develops its own iconography – Farage familial as the nationalist populist, pint in hand, the joker in the pub can be modulated to gravitas as a potentially professional politician.

The male contenders take their partners with them, they have a type of adjectival function in support of the male image. There have been entire articles about Miliband’s hypothetical girlfriends and Natalie Bennett was attacked by the Labour loyalistDaily Mirror for her partner’s ‘X-Rated’ blog posts.

The contestation is embedded in an image system. The newsfeed carries bumpy pictures of Cameron mobbed by supporters as he emerges from his election ‘battle bus’, until a tweeted picture reveals it has been staged in the corner of a mostly empty car park.

Revealed by social media the incident exemplifies the way that digital forms offer some potential for change without substantially altering the terms of traditional election coverage overall. There is a degree of self-consciousness and a relative reflexivity in the media – some commentators express their fascination with spin and the choices of tactics in campaigning, but there is general avoidance of any deeper analysis of the politics of representation.

Psychologically, personally, the noise of these minor skirmishes soon feels oppressive and isolating; one can but await the way it will be wound to fever pitch in the coming weeks. The underlying metanarrative of the competition is a cliff hanger punctuated by opinion poll graphics and maps of psephology. Narrative tension increases as small movements in the numbers jeopardise a predictable result. The general background ambient sound of British politics becomes more noticeable as political discourse and specious punditry accumulates over a concentrated period.

The unspoken gaps and missing agendas are constantly significant. The forms of expression available for electoral arguments do not welcome complication and depth. As Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck suggested “We live in a world that does not encourage complexity.”

The customary shortfall in the media’s attention span means opportunities to extend agendas, make deeper connections and introduce analysis into the wider public domain are left aside. 50 Shades of Grey, Jimmy Savile or Rolf Harris, Dominique Strauss Kahn can be understood to be ‘about’ power and gender. Nuclear weaponry could be opened towards the initial basis for a long term exploration – the abolition of war itself. The scale of the financial depression still awaits public consideration and assessment about an economic system which is not fit for purpose. Understanding the ecological crisis and the economy of perpetual growth scarcely confronts the implications for the way we work and live. The crisis is anticipated but not acted upon – perhaps that is due to some failure of our imagination – and is also clearly indicated in the hollowing out of participation in political parties and electoral processes.

The competitive interaction of parties is centripetal as they scrabble for the middle ground – Blair was once accused to “taking moderation to extremes.” Vocabulary and phrasing acts out a self-predictable prophecy; the ‘extreme’, the ‘far’ left is always bound to be wrong. Lack of breadth in the range of debate in the media is parallel to the constraint of actual political choice in Western elections – it reinforces the absence of entities with agency to change the situation. There is no Syriza or Podemos in the UK (there are complex historical and cultural factors at play in Greece and Spain, Venezuela and Bolivia that allow other forms of politics to emerge from their electoral processes). Self-fulfilling prophecies and vicious circles in the political formations exclude the parties and possibilities of through going change in England. A symbolic order connects with a social order and they constantly renew and reinforce each other.

A climate change caused by the release of market forces in television have reduced the range of public service broadcasting and eliminated production and programming from small independents. Artists’ video work and experimental film has migrated from a film context to the gallery and visual arts spaces. They have found refuge, but lost a wider audience in the process. The internet offers possibilities for expression, but mainly transient and individualistic in an electronic equivalent to the Tower of Babel or Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Inaccessible or unheard expressions do not constitute a dialogue; speech which is absorbed into a pervasive hubbub does not justify the West’s self-righteous proclamations of openness and democracy.

Television is locked away from vital political and artistic interactions. It is limiting that the main challenges to dominant British media are other state funded controlled channels with their own narrow national and regional agendas: the English version ofAl Jazeera, Telesur led by Venezuela, Russia Today…

However sometimes making use of the uneven opportunities of social media demonstrates the potential to break out of the dominant media. The enormous popularity of Russell Brand’s Youtube videos indicates a thirst for alternatives. There are some precious web resources: Open Democracy, Pod Academy,Libcom and Novara Media. Small incisions that challenge ossified media forms through new means. Perhaps these are starting points to develop the full spectrum contention that is necessary to create a climate for new agendas.

“At the very moment where all is lost, everything is possible.”

Emmanuel Lévinas.

The five reasons companies fail

Posted on April 30, 2015 by tess

When companies fail, our first instinct is to start pointing fingers. Usually we point them at the people at the top – the chairman or chief executive. They were in charge, after all; the decisions that drove the company to the wall must have been made by them. Whatever went wrong is their fault. Change the leaders and the problem will go away.

But is it as simple as that? No, says Morgen Wizel, Fellow at the Centre for Leadership Studies at University of Exeter, who points to 5 factors – complacency, obsession with winning, constant changes, errant executives and prioritising numbers over people – as the real culprits. This post first appeared on The Conversation website.

Very often the problem does not go away if the chief executive is sacked – and this is because, in actual fact, leaders have only limited control over the organisations that they purport to lead. You can call yourself a leader and give all the orders you want, but if no one is willing to follow, then you are powerless. Euan Sutherland found this out to his cost, battering his head against the brick wall of the Co-operative’s long-established culture, and unable to make a dent.

Companies that fail very often have a culture that makes them more likely to fail. Culture is a set of established beliefs, values and ways of doing things – and the right kind of culture can be a very valuable asset to a business, or any other organisation come to that. But if the culture goes wrong – and many do – then it becomes a toxic culture, holding the company back and eventually dragging it down.

That’s not to say that the chairman and CEO have no responsibility for company failures. For a start, one of the key jobs of the leader is to manage their organisation’s culture and make sure toxic elements don’t creep in. What are the reasons companies fail? The warning signs are easy to spot, if you know what they are and where to look for them. Here are five of the most common:

1. Complacency

The sin of complacency has killed many companies in the past, and has cost many others their market dominance and profits. Just because the firm has been successful in the past, it doesn’t mean it will go on being successful in the future. Think of Kodak. For generations it was the world leader in the camera market and paid little attention to the looming threat from digital photography until it was too late. Now, Kodak is no more.

Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School calls this the “innovator’s dilemma”. A company rises to prominence by doing something really well, better than anyone else. The company then becomes so proud of its technology and ideas that it rests on its laurels.

It stops innovating because it believes there is no need to carry on. We’ve won, the thinking goes; we’re on top, and no one can touch us. Then along comes a disruptive technology or business model, the game changes and the old certainties go out the window. When the company does try to shift and adapt, it is usually too late.

2. An obsession with ‘winning’

Companies that boast about their revenues, their profits, their market share and other signs of growth as though these were the only things that matter are setting themselves up to fail. Growth is a mirage that has claimed the lives of many companies and the careers of many executives. Dutch company Royal Ahold set itself the goal of becoming the world’s largest supermarket group. Like the Monty Python character Mr Creosote, Royal Ahold gobbled up everything in its path – and then exploded.

Executives who talk about “winning” over their competitors have forgotten what business is for. The purpose of a business is not to win. It is to serve its customers.

3. Constant changes

If it ain’t broke it’s because you haven’t looked hard enough. Fix it anyway.

So said Tom Peters in his book on management, Thriving in Chaos. This belief that change is a constant and that any change is for the better is a popular view in many companies.

Restructuring, in particular, is a common response when no one can think of what else to do. Constant change and churn, constant turnover of people, constant restructuring, chaos and confusion also distract companies from their real goal, serving customers. An atmosphere of constant turbulence is a clear danger signal.

4. Errant executives

Another surprisingly frequent warning sign that a business is in danger is when executives make more headlines in the bedroom than in the boardroom. A couple of years ago, the Financial Times ran an article about (male) executives having testosterone injections to boost their confidence and make them more, well, more masculine. Bad idea. The problem in business today is too much testosterone, not too little.

Macho businesses should a thing of the past, but they are not. Sexual discrimination and harassment remain rife in many workplaces. Some senior executives still seem to think they can behave like Neanderthals and get away with it. These days, they can’t. The internet loves nothing more than sex, and stories of boardroom peccadilloes will go viral in a matter of hours.

This matters because once again these stories distract people from the real purpose of business – yes, serving customers. And partly because cultures where people are irresponsible about sex are also places where people are irresponsible about other things too. Trust, loyalty, transparency are all essential to good business.

5. Prioritising numbers over people

There is a prevalent idea in many businesses that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But there are all sorts of things – trust, knowledge, initiative, entrepreneurship, and of course culture itself – that must be managed and yet cannot be effectively measured. Any company that chains itself to metrics and refuses to engage with the soft side of business is riding for a fall.

There are many more warning flags to look out for in a failing business, from “heroic” leaders surrounded by nodding dog executives to cynicism and lack of purpose. But these are five of the key ones which, if allowed to continue, will likely result in a business going bust.

Photo: Berry hard work by JD Hancock

Alistair Parvin: Open Source Architecture

Posted on April 16, 2015 by tess

Jo Barratt talks to architect, designer and inventor, Alistair Parvin in this latest podcast from Civic Radio.

Alistair Parvin says it is easier to capture what a citizen is not, than what a citizen is, and notes the language of ‘customers’ and ‘consumers’ that has been increasingly employed as public services have been privatised.

But he points to the growing movement of those who are reframing ‘democracy’ (so that it isn’t just about registering a vote every few years) and challenging how public services are provided. He suggests that new technology enables a true revolution – in which we move away from centralised civic structures, towards a world in which community planning and construction is done by citizens rather than to citizens. Where architects are not just working for the rich and for huge construction companies, but supporting more people have more power over their environment.

This is not just a theoretical position. Alistair is part of Zero Zero, a company that encourages and coordinates the development of Open Source architecture blueprints of houses, (the WikiHouse) that can be downloaded free of charge, and made, in kit form, with 3D printing. The kit can then be constructed by those with no traditional construction skills, in a matter of days.

Scale model of Wikihouse in New Zealand pic by Martin Luff

You can also see Alistair Parvin’s Ted Talk here.

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New Citizenship Project

Posted on April 3, 2015 by tess

The New Citizenship project wants to challenge the idea of an individual as a consumer – and replace it with the individual as a citizen, using the techniques of marketing and public relations(usually associated with consumerism) to do so.

in this latest podcast from Civic Radio, Jo Barratt talks to Jon Alexander and Irenie Wilson, the Directors of the New Citizenship Project.

Has the world of commerce encroached irrevocably on our civic spaces, and how much do we care? How much is civic exclusion growing because of what participation demands or expects of us? Civic Radio is on the road, seeking out the people and organisations that are exploring these topics in different ways.

The New Citizenship Project is interested in how you create a shift in the dominant story of the individual in society from the Consumer to the Citizen.

Subscribe on iTunes to Citizen Radio..

Produced by Jo Barratt.

This is the latest podcast in the Civic Radio series.

Other podcasts in this series can be found here:

Launch of Civic Radio with writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield
Social inequality and civic participation featuring Simon Willis, CEO of the Young Foundation
At the service of the citizen:redefining civic tech conversation with tech activist Laurenellen McCann
Re-imagining local government with Anna Randle of Lambeth Borough Council, London
Aral Balkan on being a citizen
Can public servants change the face of local government? with Dave Seliger, a New York civil servant.
Civic Innovation and the Interconnected City with Bryan Boyer

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Civic innovation and the interconnected city

Posted on March 27, 2015 by tess

“Citizenship is about participating in a thing that is bigger than yourself and in which everyone has an equal stake.” says architect Bryan Boyer.

In this latest podcast from Civic Radio, Bryan Boyer a US architect who spent some time in the Finnish Innovation Fund in Helsinki, talks to Jo Barratt about re-imagining the libraries in New York and the importance of reconceptualising the civic.

With a bill for repairs that would top $1bn dollars (more than a universal childcare pledge), a grand library building programme was unlikely to be championed by New York politicians, so Boyer and his team had to find another approach, one that would leverage alternative forms of capital – time, expertise and also the institutional weight of individuals, communities, museums, and non-profit organisations – which could effectively de-risk investment in civic assets. It is, he says, crucial to demonstrate that innovation can bring good results, and at the same time de-risk the innovation (innovation can be scary for politicians), so that local politicians can buy in.

So what role does he see for public institutions? For Boyer they provide ‘continuity and scale’. Pubic institutions are important because, he says, they deal with large numbers of people in equal, fair and consistent ways. However, because of their sheer scale they have often abstracted the detail – it is statiscitcal analysis rather than the experiences and needs of individuals, that drives policy. The big issue is making public instituions more responsive.

A lot of people in the UK are talking about a ‘digital public space’,could this be the answer? According to Boyer it is important (and he commends gov.uk for its friendly interface), but ‘we still need to coexist on the street.’ We have to rethink how the core of an institution works.

So, do civil servants really understand the potential of open data portals? Boyer is clear that top civil servants know that a different approach is needed(but feel constrained by the system), and certainly front line staff at the bottom of the food chain know what is at stake and have the best ideas of what is needed. But there are two problems. Firstly, the tech community is not coming up with the killer apps that will seize the initiative, and secondly the huge number of civil servants in what he calls the ‘Fat Middle’ (a term he used in Helsinki) is so disconnected from the everyday concerns of citizens that they cannot see the need for a new way of working.

How can ‘civic spaces’ (such as schools, parks, post offices and libraries) retain their importance at the heart of the community when they are increasingly facing competition from private providers? The so-called ‘white flight’ from US cities in the 1980s meant a lower tax base for public services, which led to a vicious cycle of decline – the services deteriorated, so few people were then prepared to fight for them, they became sink services.

In part, says Boyes, this is a failure of the conceptualisation of the civic. We need to develop services that people really want to use, and persuade them to participate in those services as citizens but, importantly, it is also about initiating a healthy conversation about funding the civic parts of our lives.

A key recognition is that civic institutions are linked – the swimming pool and the library and the park together give us an understanding of the connectedness of the city as a whole – and of utmost importance is affordable, efficient public transport that enables us to move around the city, and the safety and cleanliness of our streets. Here there is also a role for civic tech – to connect us to what is going on (though as Boyes points out, he doesn’t know of one single place where information on all the events and activities being run by the public authorities can be viewed.)

======================

Photo of Tampa, Florida by John T Howard

This podcast is part of the Civic Radio series of the Civic Shop which is temporarily housed at Somerset House in London.

And you can subscribe to the Tech For Good feed on iTunes – just search in the iTunes store).

Other podcasts in this series can be found here:

Launch of Civic Radio with writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield
Social inequality and civic participation featuring Simon Willis, CEO of the Young Foundation
At the service of the citizen:redefining civic tech conversation with tech activist Laurenellen McCann
Re-imagining local government with Anna Randle of Lambeth Borough Council, London
Aral Balkan on being a citizen
Can public servants change the face of local government? with Dave Seliger, a New York civil servant.

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Irish referendum on gay marriage, 22 May

Posted on March 22, 2015 by tess

On 22 May, the Irish people will vote in a referendum on gay marriage. But is a plebiscite the right way to take such a decision, should the majority have the right to deny basic human rights to a minority?

Michael Angland, welcomes the referendum as a ‘national conversation’. Writing on the Get Real website, a termly University of Cambridge student publication written, edited and produced by the LGBT+ community in Cambridge and its allies, he argues that this is about building a fairer society, and despite the risks, a referendum is better than top down legal reform.

Here we republish his article, Yes to a national conversation……..

In two months time, my civil liberties are being put to a popular vote

It seems unjust that the mainly heterosexual population of Ireland will have the power to choose whether the love I experience and the relationships I engage in are to be considered valid in the eyes of the state. The unjust anachronism of marriage inequality should have been quickly and quietly righted by the Irish parliament, as its British counterpart did two years ago. In a way, the Irish referendum should highlight the fact that Britain’s closest neighbour is still catching up, shaking off the shackles of a constitution which enshrines the conservative patriarchal values of a bygone age, written under the watchful eye of the future Archbishop of Dublin.

The problem is, the mood among LGBT+ people and social liberals on the other side of the Irish Sea is much more complicated than this. Some relish the chance to become the first nation to enshrine an LGBT+ right by popular plebiscite. The last four months have given better exposure to queer issues in the media and on the streets than a thousand LGBT History Months could hope to provide, and the nation has heard many heartwarming and sobering stories of Irish gay men and women’s experiences. From Colin Farrell’s beautifully written tribute to his gay brother, who bravely dealt with ignorance, hatred and violence when he was in school, to a courageous Dublin priest revealing his sexuality to his parishioners during mass and calling for a ‘Yes’ vote. From Gaelic footballer and Cork legend Valerie Mulcahy sharing the difficult and often overlooked experience of being a gay woman in rural Ireland, to the Minister of Health coming out and taking a stand on the referendum – becoming the first openly gay Irish cabinet minister.

These personal stories from across the spectrum of Irish society may seem unremarkable to some young people, but they have brought the reality of LGBT+ people’s existence and struggles to the homes of people like my grandparents, whose generation in rural County Cork was largely undisturbed by the existence of openly gay people.

The fact that marriage equality has to even go the electorate, and that voters could conceivably reject it, is not at all ‘right’. But many things enshrined by law are neither right nor just, and as Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias recently reminded us, for those who strive for equality and justice, politics has nothing to do with being right, it is about being effective in creating a fairer society.

There is a tendency in the modern left to wall ourselves off in a secluded chamber of dogmatic correctness, backed up by Trotsky and Butler and Said, and to wait for the misguided masses to come grovelling to us, renouncing the error of their former ways. The recent history of the SWP tells us all we need to know about the efficacy of that tactic. Bypassing all of the hard work and getting same-sex marriage quickly legislated from on high might seem attractive, but I would prefer to take the risk of having a national conversation, which has the potential to fundamentally transform society for the better. Even should the worst happen and the referendum fail, the silences shattered and truths confronted in living rooms all over Ireland during the last few months bear testament to the value of the latter road.

Were I a libertarian, I would logically question why the state should have any say in who I could marry, and probably challenge whether there should be a state sanctioned institution of marriage at all. But as a believer in a shared society and a shared future, I see a special value in my home country validating and protecting me in law, especially if it results from a popular vote.

Prejudice will still thrive, even if the people in power make the right noises. The only way to minimise it is not through a quick-fix parliamentary vote but through the arduous path of meeting hatred with love, ignorance with education, anger with patience, and darkness with light. The referendum has put it up to each and every Irish person to do just that, and imagine how much sweeter justice will feel when it has been vindicated by our families, neighbours and friends, not by a detached bunch of political opportunists on Kildare Street.

Yes Equality /Tá Comhionannas

Michael Angland (GR. Features Editor)

Get Real also carried an article by Ronan Marron putting the counter argument – that the majority should not vote on minority rights.

Picture: David Goehring

Pod Academy podcasts you might be interested in:

Don’t say Gay! About introducing children to different sexualities

Me, myself, I: Changing gay male identity – a discussion between Andrew Cooper and Jeffrey Weeks.

“GET REAL.,” is a termly University of Cambridge student publication written, edited and produced by the LGBT+ community in Cambridge and its allies for students of the University, Cambridge and the outside, “bigger,” world. It aims, through the coverage of important news stories and through its comment and features pieces to create a safe space for debate and discussion of LGBT+ related issues.

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