Amongst the 20 shortlisted entrants, Akash was unanimously voted the outstanding entrant in the 2009 awards by the judging panel. His two portfolios demonstrate an ability to work with movement and a range of different light. They are vibrant and engaging whilst still managing to tell stories about the people and places in his images. Judges’ Panel 2009, Travel Photographer of the Year.

Ship breaking in Pakistan

Ships purchased on the basis of their light displacement tonnage (ldt) are demolished in ship breaking yards and sent to steel re-rolling mills for reuse as raw material for production of steel. Currently, the international ship demolition market is cantered on the Indian subcontinent. While a large number of tankers find their way to scrap yards in Pakistan and Bangladesh,

The workers in Gaddani, Pakistan are mostly Pashtu people from the Northern Territories close to the Afgan border, they are seasonal workers, in their home they work as farmers, they are quite poor, they are what you would call fundamentalists in their Islamic believes, they veil and lock up their women, they are hard workers, they are tall and strong, they are soft spoken but proud. G.M.B. Akash.

Take me Home

Due to Bangladesh’s large population, inadequate seats on the trains and poverty, it is quite common to see a thick layer of people occupying the roof of a train. Frequent accidents, which occur when a free rider slips, are not enough to deter these stowaways of the railway. G.M.B. Akash.

Hat Tip: The Guardian.

The whistle blowing website Wikileaks has temporarily shut down because of a lack of funds.

The site, which has been a major irritant to governments and big businesses since it launched in 2007, says it cannot keep going without more public donations. Matthew Weaver, The Guardian.

For anyone who believes in open government and holding big business to account then dip into your pockets to support Wikileaks.

Research by Richard G Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham and Kate E Pickett of the University of York shows that the greater inequality is linked to more kids dropping out of school; more violent crime; more people ending up in prison; more babies dying and more mental illness – and it’s not just those at the bottom who suffer as this graph of infant deaths against the father’s social class – sexist I know but it does illustrate my point – Sweden which is less divided than the UK does better across all social classes.

Hat Tip: Mark Easton, The BBC.

More than 150 people have approached consumer publication Which? Computing claiming to have been wrongly targeted in crackdowns on illegal file-sharing.

ACS:Law has sent thousands of letters to people claiming they have illegally downloaded material and offers them a chance to settle by paying around £500. Source: BBC.

Personally I wouldn’t pay them a penny, Andrew Crossley, of ACS:Law, might say:

That he is convinced the method used to detect the IP address used for illegal downloads is foolproof.

“We are happy that the information we get is completely accurate,” he said. Source: BBC.

Absolute rubbish – ACS:Law aren’t saying how they collect IP Addresses so one can’t identify the loopholes in their methodology – but one thing you can be sure of on the internet and that is, nothing is foolproof.

ACS:Law hasn’t actually been to court yet and I’m with Matt Bath, technology editor at Which? On that point,

I suspect that if they went to court it would be very difficult to proof beyond doubt that a particular individual was responsible for downloading the illegal content. Source: BBC.

As I said don’t pay ACS:Law

How petty can employers be? In the Netherlands a waitress at a McDonalds in the town of Lemmer sold a hamburger to a co-worker who then asked for cheese, which she added – the waitress was then fired. I wouldn’t say the waitress had the last laugh but Leeuwarden district court ordered McDonalds to pay the former employee more than 4,200 Euros ($5,900; £3,660) for the last five months of her contract, reasoning the dismissal was too severe a measure. It is just a slice of cheese.

Source: The BBC.

A 10-year-old girl accidentally hanged herself with a dressing gown cord as she danced around her bedroom, a coroner has ruled at her inquest.

Megan Williams was taken to hospital after being found by her brother at their home in Harpurhey, north Manchester, in May 2009.

She died despite resuscitation efforts by her mother and paramedics.

Coroner Nigel Meadows said he hoped the case would highlight the dangers of playing with ropes and cords.

He recorded a verdict of accidental death at Manchester Coroner’s Court on Tuesday.

“It is an illustration of the significant dangers of playing around with things you put around your neck,” he said.

“I am entirely satisfied that Megan had been messing about. She had been dancing, listening to music, and she put her head through the loop.

“She was playing about without knowledge of the risks.” Source: BBC.

What a horrifying accident sends shivers through my body. As a father of an 8-year-old daughter I’m resisting the temptation to rush upstairs and remove all ropes, strings, scarves and the like from her room – it’s tempting – but that would be treating her like a prisoner in the police cells – what I will be doing is ensuring my daughters aware of the risks.

The gap between rich and poor in the UK is wider now than 40 years ago, a government-commissioned report says. Source: The BBC.

Whilst it’s popular to bash Labour it seems very convenient for Tories and the press to forget who was in power when the biggest rises in inequality occurred. Here’s a clue from the report.

Inequalities in earnings and incomes are high in Britain, both compared with other industrialised countries, and compared with thirty years ago. Over the most recent decade, earnings inequality has narrowed a little and income inequality has stabilised on some measures, but the large inequality growth of the 1980s has not been reversed. Source: Government Equalities Office.

The answer – the Tory government of Margret Thatcher which was in power from 4th May 1979 – to her resignation in 28th November 1990 – her government sold off much of the states wealth at knock down prices from council houses to British telecom as well as carrying out much of the banking de-regulation that helped to allow the recent banking crisis to occur – Labour didn’t actually come to power until 2nd May 1997 – we had another seven years of the Tories under John Major.

It’s easy to blame Labour for failure to close the income gap in society – the trouble is it’s very easy to give someone something it is almost impossible to take it back.

The report also points out some of Labour’s successes.

Some of the widest gaps in outcomes between social groups have narrowed in the last decade, particularly between the earnings of women and men, and in the educational qualifications of different ethnic groups. However, deep-seated and systematic differences in economic outcomes remain between social groups across all of the dimensions we examine. Despite the elimination and even reversal of the qualification differences that often explain them, significant differences remain in employment rates and relative pay between men and women and between ethnic groups. Source: Government Equalities Office.

Still that won’t stop nonsense from the Tories and their supporters.

Theresa May, shadow minister for women and equalities said: “It is unbelievable that Labour thinks it can claim to be the party of aspiration when its failure to tackle the causes of poverty have let down so many lives.” Source: BBC.

So much for Cameron’s much for Tory honesty – a word Cameron loves to use – I suggest he takes a look at his own cabinet ministers before making accusations.

It’s a recovery by the smallest of margins – the Office For National Statistics could easily revise that figure down as Paul Mason at the BBC implies what would have happened if it wasn’t for a) low interest rates, b) numerous micro schemes to stop foreclosures and job losses from spiralling into a deeper recession, c) £200bn quantitative easing, d) the falling pound and e) car scrappage schemes across Europe. Also discretionary public spending and the VAT cut where on earth would we be?

And Cameron wants to start cutting public spending straight away if the opinion polls are bourn out and he gets into office – madness.

Labour has “no excuse” for not starting to cut the budget deficit this year, David Cameron has said, claiming further inaction will hurt the economy.

The Tory leader said Labour must “tear up” its plans to increase spending in 2010 and the only reason not to do so would be “naked political calculation”.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has said he plans to cut the bulk of the deficit during the next Parliament.

But Mr Cameron declined to spell out the scale of cuts that would be needed. Source: The BBC.

This is never going to work – many of us are under pressure and cutting back expenditure if the government does the same then there’s only one outcome – I’ll say it again recession.

Whilst the headline unemployment figures aren’t as bad as we feared what they hide is a reduction in earnings for many workers – the 1.3 million people made redundant during the recession have largely managed to find alternative employment in doing so they’ve reduced their pay by over a quarter.

A perfect storm is brewing – workers are seeing there wages eroded and the state is about to cut expenditure – there’s going to be only one outcome – a recession.

Source: The BBC.