SarahIrving - Manchester, United Kingdom

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Full Name: Sarah Irving
Member since Jan 08, 2009
Location:
Manchester :: United Kingdom
Education: post-graduate

Profile views: 1,398 | Total page views: 21,564 | Reach

Total Contributed Reports: 28

Number of Comments: 26

Number of Ratings: 117

My Story:

I'm a freelance writer based in the UK and specialising in social and environmental issues and the Middle East. For more...

Writing, editing, ...

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Comments

Posted By SarahIrving | 4 days ago

See http://www.uhc.org.uk/portfolio.php?tag=14&project=54 for images of some of the tattoo designs

Posted on British artist tattoos 'ambassadors' for endangered species
Reply By SarahIrving | 8 days ago

Hi Billie - thanks for your kind words as ever. You've been doing some fantastic reporting, I see... http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4693171-women-leaders-urge-clinton-condemn-antiwomen-violence-in-honduras - really important stuff.

Posted on Israeli authorities deny entry to former Black Panther leader
Reply By SarahIrving | 2 months ago

Indeed - her mother, Lauren Booth, joined the Free Gaza boat project and visited Gaza with, I think the first boat, and has been very publicly supportive of them since.

Posted on Tony Blair's niece to join Palestine Peace Cycle
Reply By SarahIrving | 3 months ago

There are two separate areas of territory.One is the state of Israel, formed in 1948.The second is the West Bank, land largely lived on by Palestinians, either those whose familes have been there for generations or Palestinians whose families were forced out of the land that it now Israel in 1948, who live in refugee camps.In 1967 Israel also occupied the West Bank after the Six Day War. If a Palestinian state is ever to be allowed by the international community, this would be the main piece of land it would be on.The Israeli Settlements are towns being built illegally (according to international law) in the West Bank, ie they are not in Israel. They are used as an effort by Israel to expropriate land which would be part of a Palestinian state to make this unworkable and as a way of taking further control over Palestinian land and water.The current US government is trying, not very hard, to stop Israel building more settlements, as building more settlements is a clear indication that Israel has no interest in any just peace in Palestine, as it is a way of taking more and more land which it will then refuse to leave.There are two main types of people in the settlements: some are religious zealots who want to make all of the area part of Israel, and some are people who are attracted by the good houses, schools, jobs and tax breaks offered by the Israeli government if they move into the more institional settlements.

Posted on Once again the disputes emerged on Israeli settlements.
Reply By SarahIrving | 3 months ago

Hi Ibrahim - thanks for the comment - always nice to get positive feedback!

Posted on Sex & The City star slated over illegal Israeli settler products
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

You're continuing to be a really important way that information from Honduras is getting out - the mainstream press, certainly in Europe, are showing little interest, and these reports from your contacts are really necessary.

Posted on Honduran Coup-sponsored Violence Injures Women, Children; Represses Journalists
Reply By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

It's an excellent article - originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and is by Michele Bratcher Goodwin. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0724/p09s03-coop.html

Posted on Gates, race and 'driving while black'
Reply By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

It's an excellent article - originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and is by Michele Bratcher Goodwin. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0724/p09s03-coop.html

Posted on Gates, race and 'driving while black'
Reply By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

I agree with Slydog, in that one of the important things about this whole issue is the relationship between religion and politics. I guess I'm always sceptical of any extra sources of allegiance which might make people follow political leaders without looking at their actual positions on different issues. I'd also be interested in knowing why people see political leadership from Christian clerics as somehow less inherently threatening than that of Islamic ones (if this was happening in a Muslim country wouldn't we be hearing words like 'fundamentalism' and 'theocracy' being bandied around?). But then maybe the corruption and lack of real values which pervades so much political life - including in my own country - needs an injection of real moral debate.

Posted on A PRIEST'S PROPOSAL
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

From a UK perspective - it's not just the UK is comparatively well stocked with Tamiflu, it's also the fact that if I do come down with swine flu, I will be able to get that Tamiflu free of charge and at need, and potentially delivered to me. I find the propaganda coming out of the USA against 'socialised medicine' - or as we call it the National Health Service - truly amazing. For example, my grandmother died earlier this year, at the age of 94. She was comfortably off but not rich, and although she was lucky enough to have a fairly quick and painless passing, in the few years before she had suffered various problems with her legs, had had a couple of falls and was starting to suffer from some dementia. All of these issues had been dealt with swiftly, professionally and with care by her doctors, community nurses etc, and at no point did we as her family or she as an elderly and increasingly confused person have to deal with any thoughts of how we would afford this or whether it would come out of the money she very much wanted to leave to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We had no forms to fill in or doctors checking at Accident & Emergency when she had a fall as to what her health care insurance cover was. I can't imagine how horrible it must be going through these times of life in a country where you must always be worrying about the financial impacts of getting proper treatment, and while it may be (I've not been following the details closely) that there are details of the Obama administration's bill that need fine-tuning, I cannot comprehend how anyone not in the pay of the health insurance companies which bleed so much out of ordinary working people's pay packets in the USA can be in favour of retaining the current US medical system.

Posted on Swine Flu Tests Socialised Medicine
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

That's some sound advice from Donald. I'd add:
- get out there, find out about the subjects that interest you and start asking questions. There are a lot of bad reporters out there nowadays who just replicate press releases - what Nick Davies' book Flat Earth News calls churnalism. That's not reporting, it's an extension of PR, and unfortunately commercial pressures are forcing more and more journalists to do it. But in the end you might as well be writing press releases for all the information and understanding you're adding to the world;
- read. You can't write well if you don't read good writing. Find different respected journalists and read their work, either in volumes of collected articles or, if they're still writing, online. For instance in the field of conflict journalism, two of the absolute best (in my opinion, but in a lot of other people's too) are Martha Gellhorn and Robert Fisk. Fisk still writes for the Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/, although who knows for how much longer, since it's in serious financial trouble.
- write. One of the best ways to learn to write is just to do lots of it, and then come back to pieces you done a day or two later and see what's wrong with them.
- get edited. Even if it's as a volunteer writer. One of the most educational experiences I ever had as a professional writer was being edited by Corinna at Women's E-News [http://www.womensenews.org/]. She was vicious, but it taught me an awful lot about style, factual attribution etc, and it's made me a better writer (at least there's less red ink all over my copy back from her nowadays).
- remember that there are different styles of writing nowadays, and writing for websites is a very different skills from writing for print journalism - the format Donald lays out is the classic print article one, but in website articles you need to front-load them much more, because people read online in a totally different way so you need to present information differently. If you're looking to go down this route it's worth finding a specific Writing for the Web course - Michael Wignall at Streamengine in the Uk [http://www.streamengine.co.uk/index.html] does a great one, I have no idea about other parts of the world.
Hope that was all at least a bit useful!

Posted on Wan To Know How To Be The Best......!!???
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

A very useful summary, and implicitly highlights some of the wider problems, ie that drugs policies need to be long-term and holistic, when most political decision making is short-term and narrow in scope.

Posted on What a Better "War on Drugs" Could Look Like
Reply By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

I'm sorry but this statement is quite inaccurate - the settlements are fair from being 'residential small homes,' but are actually towns which in some cases (such as Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim) house tens of thousands of people. There are now hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in settlements on illegally confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank, and there are also large industrial and agricultural settlements - industrial examples include Barkan and Mishor Adumim, and agricultural settlements are largely spread along the Jordan Valley. In both examples thousands of Palestinian labourers have their workers' rights abused by being paid less than the legal minimum wage and being subjected to unsafe and sometimes abusive conditions. For more information see http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10492.shtml, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9347.shtml and http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/section_eng.asp?pid=195

Posted on Once again the disputes emerged on Israeli settlements.
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

How excrutiatingly depressing. Did the site's founders go to Eton or similar, by any chance?

Posted on "F*ck the Ethiopians....we need weed", says new Faceparty donations plea
Reply By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

Not surprising at all, but I would be very surprised if the IDF undertook any investigation - as I said in the article, tear gassing at Bil'in and similar protests is a standard practice by the IDF and when there are investigations into IDF tactics it tends to be due to diplomatic pressure when internationals get injured/killed or if there are big enough allegations of human rights abuses to start making Israel's allies in the US, UK etc afraid for their reputations.

Posted on Palestinian political leader tear gassed in Bil'in
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

Thank you! It's great to find like-minded people on here - and especially when they're writers of skill and integrity too!

Posted on U.S. Border Enforcement Keeps Illegal Aliens Here!
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

Well done on helping expose another brutal fact of the ways that governments - both yours and mine (insofar as either of them actually relate to us in any meaningful way) - manipulate discourses on immigration - that when there is high employment immigrants stay off the agenda because they make useful cheap labour for our companies, but as soon as there is a conflict between 'domestic' and 'migrant' labour, recent incomers become a useful scapegoat for unemployment, not to mention crime, shortcomings in the healthcare system, etc etc. And unfortunately and shamefully, people buy into it...

Posted on U.S. Border Enforcement Keeps Illegal Aliens Here!
Posted By SarahIrving | 4 months ago

Yes, but what does this business DO?

Posted on new manchester buisness `phoenix roofline`
Reply By SarahIrving | 5 months ago

If you're interested in knowing more about the conditions for migrant workers in Israel, many of whom are treated extremely badly, you might want to look at the work of Israeli human rights NGO Kav La Oved (Workers' Hotline, http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/default_eng.asp) and an article I did a while ago on the subject for Big Issue in the North, on conditions for horticulture workers on Israeli farms, http://www.sarahirving.net/palestine/palestine.php?page=flower-workers

Posted on British FreeGaza deportee 'raring to go back'
Reply By SarahIrving | 5 months ago

If you're interested in knowing more about the conditions for migrant workers in Israel, many of whom are treated extremely badly, you might want to look at the work of Israeli human rights NGO Kav La Oved (Workers' Hotline, http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/default_eng.asp) and an article I did a while ago on the subject for Big Issue in the North, on conditions for horticulture workers on Israeli farms, http://www.sarahirving.net/palestine/palestine.php?page=flower-workers

Posted on British FreeGaza deportee 'raring to go back'
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Member since Jan 08, 2009

Manchester :: United Kingdom

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