person:george bell

  • War of words : my battle to correct Wikipedia | The Spectator
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/war-of-words-my-battle-to-correct-wikipedia

    I signed up some years ago as a Wikipedia ‘editor’, thinking that, as I knew a little about some subjects, I could help to straighten out the online encyclopaedia a bit. Heaven knows, it needs some help. Its worst failing, much like BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, is to portray subjects that are racked with unresolved controversy as if they were settled.

    But I soon found out why nobody else had managed to put this right. Almost every significant article is guarded by powerful forces that appear from nowhere if you dare to make changes. Unless you have unlimited time, and a squadron of determined helpers, they will simply remove any alterations you make, and put things back the way they were.

    La controverse porte sur des accusations de pédophilie sur un évêque anglican. La version actuelle semble factuelle et équilibrée. Et compatible avec celle que déclare avoir défendue l’auteur.

    George Bell (bishop) - Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bell_(bishop)

    In September 2015 the diocese paid compensation to the woman and Martin Warner, the Bishop of Chichester, issued a formal apology to her the following month.

    This led to a major controversy, as people who respected Bell’s legacy found the claims to be incredible, and found the Church’s apparent acceptance of them to be unjust.

    Due to the controversy, in February 2016 the woman spoke publicly for the first time under the pseudonym “Carol”, in an interview with the Brighton Argus about being sexually abused from the age of five until her family moved away when she was nine.

    In June 2016 the Church of England announced that it would hold an independent review of the procedure used to investigate the church’s handling of the allegations (not the truth of the allegations themselves) and in November it announced that Alex Carlile, a QC and a member of the House of Lords, would be the reviewer. Carlile submitted his report to the Church of England in mid-October and on 15 December 2017 the church published it.

    Carlile found that “there was a rush to judgment: The church, feeling it should be both supportive of the complainant and transparent in its dealings, failed to engage in a process which would also give proper consideration to the rights of the bishop.” The report also found that the available evidence did not suggest there would have been “a realistic prospect of conviction” in court, the standard that prosecutors in England and Wales use in deciding whether to pursue a case.

    The Church of England released a statement with the report, in which it apologized to Bell’s relatives for the way it investigated child abuse claims made against him, acknowledged the mistakes highlighted by the report, and promised to implement all except one of its recommendations. Archbishop Welby rejected calls to state that the investigation had cleared Bell’s name and said that the allegations were handled as a civil matter, not a criminal one.

    In March 2018, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse began examining the handling of allegations of sexual abuse in the diocese of Chichester, including this matter, which it said would unfold over two years.

    Wikipédia propose un (long) article sur l’auteur, Peter Hitchens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hitchens où la controverse n’est pas mentionnée. Article plus court, en français.

  • Why is Berlin so dysfunctional? - Poor and sexy
    https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21731837-unlike-other-capitals-germanys-drain-rest-country-why-berlin-so


    Auf der Suche nach Ärger - dem bürgerlichen Schreiber fehlt die aalglatte Servicekultur der gleichgeschateten Metropolen.

    Unlike other capitals, Germany’s is a drain on the rest of the country

    Dec 2nd 2017 | BERLIN

    AT A crossroads in the middle of Tegeler Forst, a wooded part of north-west Berlin, visitors can admire the city’s longest-serving provisional traffic light. Erected in 2013 after a burning car had destroyed the pillar on which the lights were mounted, it was meant to be replaced by a more permanent structure within a few weeks. When a city lawmaker asked the government why, four years later, the lights still had not been fixed, he received an interesting response: owing to changed regulations, calculating whether or not the new structure would fall down had become “very laborious and difficult”. The government would not specify how much longer it would take.

    The traffic-light saga illuminates a wider problem. Berlin, the capital of Europe’s most successful economy, is surprisingly badly governed. The new airport, the city’s biggest flagship project, missed its seventh opening date earlier this year and may not open until 2021, ten years after it was originally supposed to. The jobless rate is among the highest in the country. Schools are dismal. Courts and police are so overworked that hundreds of millions of euros in fines and taxes have not been collected; and the city failed to keep tabs on Anis Amri, the jihadist who killed 11 people with a lorry last Christmas, despite warnings about him three weeks earlier.

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    Astonishingly for a capital city, Berlin makes Germany poorer. Without it, Germany’s GDP per person would be 0.2% higher. By comparison, if Britain lost London, its GDP per person would be 11.1% lower; France without Paris would be 14.8% poorer. “Berlin’s economic weakness is unique among European capitals”, says Matthias Diermeier of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.

    The city’s dysfunction makes everyday life more irksome. In some boroughs the streets are constantly clogged by piles of rubbish, not to mention inexplicable roadworks that make little or no progress. Registering a new car can take weeks, depriving new owners of a means of transport and car showrooms of space for new stock. This summer desperate couples travelled out of town to get married because short-staffed town halls could only offer wedding dates months in the future. “It is hard to escape the impression that Berlin’s government has a certain contempt for its citizens”, says Lorenz Maroldt, editor of the local daily Tagesspiegel, who writes a newsletter chronicling the city’s administrative hiccups.

    Berlin’s woes are partly a consequence of structural changes. Before the second world war the city was an industrial hub. When it was divided by the victorious allies, many firms moved their offices and factories to West Germany. As an anti-communist bulwark, West Berlin was heavily subsidised, but not an attractive place to set up a business. After unification, firms that had re-established themselves in Germany’s southern industrial clusters had little reason to move back. Instead the city attracted bohemians, lured by low rents and large numbers of abandoned factories and warehouses that made ideal artists’ studios or rave venues. These new, hip residents earned little and paid little tax. In 2003 Klaus Wowereit, a former mayor, described Berlin as “poor but sexy”.

    The city’s economic fortunes are improving. A heavy dose of austerity in the early 2000s averted bankruptcy. Startups have moved into the artists’ warehouses, making Berlin the second-biggest European tech hub after London. Its rough-and-colourful image has attracted tourists. The city’s population is growing.

    Yet the bureaucratic dysfunction continues. One culprit is the complex division of responsibilities between the city and its boroughs. This makes it easy for officials to pass the blame for problems back and forth without doing anything about them. (By contrast, cities such as Hamburg or Munich have centralised their administrations to improve accountability.) That the austerity measures were implemented in a slapdash fashion probably did not help either. But the main reason, Mr Maroldt believes, is cultural, going back to Berlin’s historic anti-capitalist and anti-technocratic streak: “We have a deeply held suspicion of anything that smacks of efficiency and competence.” Abandoning that attitude may make life in Berlin easier. For some, no doubt, it will also make it less sexy.

    #Berlin #Gentrifizierung