Elephant Therapy
The elephants at the Elephant Conservation Centre in Lamphun, Northern Thailand, are part of a unique rehabilitation project being run by Breathing Space, the only rehabilitation facility licensed by the Thai Ministry of Health.
Garrett Tuck, 40, the founder of Breathing Space, himself an ex drug addict, said: “The elephants are in therapy themselves so they can form relationships with the clients and help them.”
The royally approved Elephant Conservation Centre, the only government owned elephant centre, specializes in rescuing badly treated elephants.
The man in charge of mahout training, Khun Daeng, said: “The elephants come from all over Thailand. We rescue them from bad owners who just use the elephants to make money.
“One female elephant was used to drag trees and she was given drugs to make her work. Others were used for illegal logging.”
This is not the first time the centre’s elephants have been used in therapy. They have also been used to help autistic children in The Elephant Assisted Therapy Project (TETP) run by Dr Nuntanee Satiansukpong of Chiang Mai University.
Mr Tuck explained that animal assisted therapy, mainly with horses, has been used worldwide but these two programmes are the only ones to use elephants.
Both programmes have shown promising results.
Breathing Space clients showed a marked improvement after visiting the elephants when tested using the Beck Depression Inventory before and after their visits.
The children taking part in TETP displayed long-term improvements in various areas including sensory skills, posture, balance and coping with day-to-day activities.
In the future Breathing Space and Dr Nuntanee hope to do collaborative research on using elephants in therapy.
Lisu New Year in Chiang Mai
Meeting To Stop Library Closure
Upper Norwood Library is London’s only independent library. It is jointly funded by Lambeth and Croydon councils, but independently managed by its staff.
Croydon council have now withdrawn funding because they accuse Lambeth of breaking the councils’ joint agreement on running and funding the library. This means Croydon do not have to give a minimum of one years notice before withdrawing funds.
Croydon have given Lambeth three options. They are: to buy Croydon’s share of the library, to lease Croydon’s share of the library and to run it or to sell the library and split the profit between the two councils.
There was no official representative from Croydon council at the meeting whilst Florence Nosegbe represented Lambeth Council.
After much discussion it was decided that the two boroughs should be persuaded to sit down together to discuss funding options.
A unanimous motion was passed calling on Croydon and Lambeth councils: “To meet and resolve funding issues so that the Upper Norwood Joint Library is placed on a firm financial footing for the foreseeable future with such a meeting to take place no later than December 31st.”
Beer Festival
It will be the third beer festival at the Grape and Grain in Crystal Palace, CAMRA’s South East London Pub of the Year.
Landlord Rick Wright, 46 said: “This will be twice as big as our beer festival in March making it the biggest in South East London.
“We’ve got 60 beers from all over the UK, from the north of Scotland to Cornwall. We will have some beers seldom seen in London.”
Rick will also be celebrating his birthday on Sunday by serving a unique one-off birthday beer specially brewed for him by the Westerham Brewery Company from Kent.
There will also be live music every night and food to soak up the beer will be available throughout the festival.
Peckham Peace Wall
Hundreds of residents wrote positive messages about Peckham and stuck them to the board covering the smashed window of the Poundland shop in Rye Lane, Peckham.
It was the brainchild of Lisa Harmer, age 28, and Dani Baker, both from Peckham Shed an inclusive theatre company that runs drama workshops at schools in Peckham.
They had come to Peckham to help tidy up the mess left by rioters. When they arrived other volunteers had already cleared up so they decided to set up the wall.
Lisa Harmer said: “We see so much positivity in the young people we are working with in Peckham and we wanted other people to tell us what they think of Peckham.”
Armed with a bunch of different coloured Post-It Notes and pens they encouraged passers by to write messages saying why they love Peckham.
By the end of the day the board was covered in positive messages.
These included messages such as: “Peckham is home soo much potential here.”
“All together we love Peckham as one community.”
“Peckham will recover.”
Lisa Harmer said: “It’s been a really amazing response, it’s been quite cathartic.”
Most people passing added to the wall and thought it was a good idea.
A pair of teenage girls who did not want to be named were less positive. They said they had not rioted but friends of theirs had.
They were both very angry at the police. One said that people rioted because they hate the police due to their bad treatment of youngsters. She said: “Yesterday I got sworn at by the police, they are always swearing at us. The police have too much power.”
She believed many of the rioters just wanted to let off steam and get their revenge against the police. She said: “They were having fun playing with the Feds.”
Dani Baker also works with youngsters. She said that earlier that day she had spoken to some of them who had rioted.
They all said that they hated the police and saw the riots as a way to get back at the police. She said: “One of them said he had been stopped and searched four times in one day and he felt that rioting was a way to get back at the police.”
Crystal Palace Riots
Nearly all the shops and pubs, including Sainsburys, were shut all day on Monday after rioters hit Crystal Palace late on Monday night and in the early hours of Tuesday.
On Tuesday the streets of Crystal Palace were strangely quiet, the only activity was glaziers putting boards over shops as locals gathered at the two open pubs to discuss the previous nights events and how to stop it recurring.
The Blockbuster video store in Westow Street was hit at and later, at 3 am, the jewellers in Church Road was raided.
Justin, a local landlord who did not want to give his full name, said: “At about 9.30pm there was a heap of guys in masks trying to get onto buses for Croydon, but they would not let them on the buses.”
The rioters then disappeared, but they returned to Crystal Palace later and tried to break into Blockbusters where brave residents tried to hold them off.
Justin said: “We heard they were breaking into Blockbusters at 10.30. Staff from pubs, locals and organizers from the Crystal Palace Festival went to help. It started off small, but got bigger and bigger.”
Laurence, a local barman who did not want to give his full name, said: “Later 25 to 30 of them came back and pushed us out of the way, they had a hammer and other weapons, there were only about 12-15 of us and we couldn’t do anything to stop them.
“I flagged down a police car before the big group came, but they said they could not stop.”
Laurence thought that people were deliberately going out to loot on a big scale. He said: “The only cars on the roads were white vans.”
Pub goers decided that Tuesday evening would not see a repeat of the previous night’s looting.
They decided that they would come out onto the streets to create a peaceful presence to put off potential looters. Laurence said: “We want to get people standing outside the shops.”
Fortunately the looters did not return and Crystal Palace was quiet on Tuesday night.
The police have CCTV pictures of the raiders stealing from the jewelers and are looking for help in tracing the men pictured.
Cameron’s Economic Ignorance
In a recent statement David Cameron showed his lack of grounding in basic economic history when he said Africa should follow the mythical Korean model of growth through free trade.
Cameron said: “Freer trade in Asia gave Korea space to grow.”
The truth is the opposite. Much of Korea’s massive increase in GDP happened because of protectionist state control according to the highly respected Korean Economist Ha Joon Chang and others.
In South Korea development was state led. The government exercised control over the banks to ensure that they served industry rather than seeking profit for themselves. The government also discouraged consumer loans whilst encouraging long-term saving.
This meant the government could target investment to favoured industries, which gave them the financial security to follow long-term development plans. The government also ensured all large companies were always domestically majority owned meaning that profits would stay within the country.
The government followed a programme of ‘infant industry protection’, a term coined by the 19th century economist Friederich List. He argued that, like children, young developing industries need to be protected by their governments until they grow strong enough to compete with other mature foreign industries.
South Korea protected its infant industries in a number of ways. It gave them cheap finance, removed tariffs on their imported raw products needed for manufacture, gave them tax breaks and imposed heavy tariffs on competing imports.
Importantly, such help was entirely dependent on results. Productivity and imports had to increase and industrialists that failed faced jail. The state encouraged development that benefited the country rather than making individuals wealthy, though it still did make some people very rich.
The South Korean government also strictly controlled what type of industry they favoured at what time. All the supported companies were export orientated and once an industry had matured help was withdrawn and transferred to another infant industry.
The timing of the government’s support for infant industries was also very important. Initially they supported lower tech industries such as those producing cement and fertilizers, once they matured and could compete globally help went instead to heavier industries such as those producing petrochemicals and steel. When they matured their help was withdrawn and it went instead towards shipbuilding and semiconductor manufacture.
Real problems only started when South Korea removed the tight controls on its financial markets. As Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said in his book Globalization and its Discontents: “Under pressure from the United States it [South Korea] had reluctantly allowed its firms to borrow abroad. But by borrowing abroad, the firms exposed themselves to the vagaries of the international market.”
Large unregulated flows of money from international banks flooded into the country and South Korea soon accumulated foreign debts of $150 billion, most of it private and short-term. This inflow of money also caused a price boom in share and property prices.
In 1997 hedge funds started speculating on the Thai baht, this speculation soon spread to other Asian countries including South Korea. Repelling the speculation reduced the country’s foreign reserves before it was finally forced to reduce the value of its currency.
This caused jitters amongst some international financial investors who then withdrew their funds, other investors panicked and followed suit.
This herd-like behaviour of international finance makes it potentially very damaging, as was the case in South Korea, where worries of a crash became self-fulfilling.
The sudden withdrawal of funds caused the property and stock markets to crash. Other problems included a much heavier debt burden on companies and banks that had borrowed in foreign currencies. This led to more non-performing loans which weakened the banks and resulted in less lending to businesses. Inflation also rose because the price of imports increased due to the weakened currency.
Finally South Korea had to turn to the IMF for help.
Cameron is right in that Korea can teach us lessons in development, unfortunately he cannot see what it has taught us.
Far from showing us that freer trade is a good thing it shows us the perils of opening up markets to unregulated financial institutions.
If he and other politicians had correctly learned the lessons of the East Asian financial crisis and introduced more regulation of finance the worst of the UK financial crisis might have been avoided.
It also shows us that government intervention is not always a bad thing.
That Cameron does not realize this makes one wonder quite what grasp he has over the reasons behind the financial crash in Britain.
World Cup Gave Me Fresh Goals
While most England internationals had a World Cup to forget, this English football player enjoyed the time of his life at the one he was in.
Kareem Leigh turned out for the national side at the Homeless World Cup in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The 19-year-old, who lives in a Denmark Hill hostel, banged in 24 goals in 12 matches played on the famous Copacabana Beach.
Sadly, like their counterparts at the World Cup, Kareem and his team failed to make the final.
He said: “The competition has woken me up a whole lot. It was one of the best times of my life and I want to have more experiences like that.
“It’s kicked me up the backside – motivated me to try harder and do something with my life and stop wasting time.”
Kareem, pictured, said he was a trainee at West Ham when he was 16, but failed to make the most of his chance.
He said: “I was playing well but they said they wouldn’t give me a scholarship because my attitude was wrong.
“I went to Norwich, but I got injured so I couldn’t sign for them. Then I went to Crystal Palace.
“They really wanted to sign me but that was when I was made homeless so I had loads of other problems in my life.
“My life wasn’t stable enough for me to go training every day.”
In Brazil, teams with three outfield players competed in seven-minute halves.
Kareem’s side was knocked out by Holland in a second group phase of the tournament last month.
Kareem is now playing for Bromley in the Blue Square Bet South league and wants to build on his experience.
He said: “My main focus is to play regularly and to get more match fitness before I try and join a professional club.”
Disabled Passengers’ Rail Lift Woes
Crystal Palace and Gipsy Hill stations have been improved by Transport for London (TfL) and Southern respectively.
Southern improved disabled access to the ticket hall at Gipsy Hill. The operator fitted automatic doors and ramps, disabled toilet and an adjustable height ticket office window. One of the platforms can be accessed by a side gate, but the other only has stairs.
Crystal Palace station is being renovated by TfL, and while three lifts are planned, design work is still being completed.
A TfL spokesman said it had to get best value for money in the current economic climate.
Patrick Horan, Southwark Disablement Association chairman, said: “South London is full of stations that are inaccessible. Only main stations have access for disabled people.”
A Southern spokeswoman said an application to the Government for lifts at Gipsy Hill had failed. She said: “There are no plans to put in lifts. If funding becomes available there is room for lifts.”