Fall from grace - tyrant Mugabe finally toppled...

The downfall of Robert Mugabe - the Marxist teacher turned revolutionary pioneer turned globally-reviled tyrant - has been an agonisingly long time coming.
He has ruled - and ruined - Zimbabwe for all of its 37 years since winning independence, a victory for which he claimed much of the credit.
He has been variously described as ‘the lion of Africa’ and ‘a wily old crocodile’, known as ‘Uncle Bob’ to supporters and ‘Mad Bob’ to critics - and he had plenty of both, after seizing unprecedented power but bankrupting his country and brutalising millions.
Mineral-rich Zimbabwe used to be known as ‘the breadbasket of Africa’, prosperous on the back of its diamond and gold mines and expanses of fertile land.
But under Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party it has become one of the world’s poorest - with infrastructure left to rot, schools and hospitals neglected, families left in near-famine conditions and opponents bullied, tortured and murdered.
A cholera epidemic in 2008 killed almost 4,300 people, at a time of economic meltdown when inflation soared as high as 500billion per cent, ransacked supermarkets lay empty and bank queues for the following morning would begin to form each afternoon.
An undercover visit by Metro in December 2008 when foreign journalists were banned found piles of unburied corpses dating back weeks, hospital patients languishing outdoors attached to drips looped around branches, and children obliviously swigging from rubbish-crammed, contaminated streams.

"Well, I really don't mind the rain and a smile can hide all the pain..."

A lyric leapt to mind the moment it was finally confirmed tonight, as sadly long anticipated, that this world had lost Glen Campbell.

No, not the wonderful ones everyone's sharing, about needing more than wanting and wanting for all time. Not here in this head, anyway, heartaching as they are - but instead:

"You take a K, an E - you add an N and a T - a U and a C K Y: and that spells Kentucky, but it means Paradise..."

"Some come here who escaped but who want to talk about how they feel guilty somehow..."

Young child survivors and witnesses of the Grenfell Tower inferno are still turning up pleading for help in the nearby streets - while too frightened to fall asleep.
Kids whose parents either hauled them to safety or who watched in horror in the surrounding estates will remain in need not only in the weeks but years ahead, volunteers say.
Helpers on 24/7 duty at the nearby Westway Sports Centre told Metro of being haunted by scenes reminiscent of British Red Cross emergency responses in overseas warzones and natural disasters.

"...and the Tottenham Hotspur will be there..."

"There...is a place...where I can go...when I feel low...when I feel blue..."

"There used to be a football club over there."
So (supposedly) muttered a resigned Keith Burkinshaw, walking away towards Tottenham High Road in 1984, presumably looking forward to lighting up a consolatory pipe back home.
And leaving behind him a Uefa Cup trophy newly, thrillingly won under the White Hart Lane lights - but a board too cravenly preoccupied by that new entity, THFC plc.
This Sunday night all the switches will be flicked off at that grand old stadium for the final time, ahead of demolition beginning on Monday morning, leaving behind ... well, what?
Well, still a grand old team to play for and a grand old team to see - albeit one that will, after a year’s unwanted exile in Wembley anyway, be a little further along that High Road.
For all the sweetbitterness of the Burkinshaw goodbye, there is certainly a football club still here in N17.
Why, one flourishing in recent seasons in stark contrast to those drear years of the Nineties and early-Noughties.
It seems to have been a long time coming, this new next-door behemoth of an arena - too long, some may feel, if certainly a necessary and enticing next step.
And yet, and yet - a so-long to the old White Hart Lane we know can’t help but feel like it's come sorrowfully suddenly upon us.
So this final farewell to Tottenham’s official home ground for 42,621 days and 1,993 games this coming Sunday provides a sadly celebratory time to reflect on what’s gone and what’s going.
Cliché as it may be, "second home" feels the perfect wording for what it will have been to Tottenham fans of and throughout all ages.
Somewhere to go to for release from everyday stresses and strains, for a surge of excitement and achievement - or else, of course, simply all the more (alternative) stresses and strains.
A place of such familiarity, and yet one where the only predictable thing is that something different will happen - sometimes exhilirating, sometimes disappointing, yet invariably something to chew (or drink) upon afterwards.
Until the next time.
Surely few better tributes exist than the exemplary words-and-pictures tour de force The Lane by Martin Cloake and Adam Powley, alongside designer Doug Cheeseman and with invaluable archive photo contributors including the legendary John White’s son Rob.
Nor the elegiac video posted this week by MPH1982, one which appears to have cast more tear-inducing dust into the air than any annual "Flying Ants Day" might imminently manage.
But perhaps the finest memorial - this Sunday’s send-off aside, hoping and trusting it proves appropriate - will be our own memories.
And oh-so-many of them, both collective and collectively individual.
Pray (self-)indulgence, perhaps, for a few scattered here...

‘Talk, more talk. Chat, more chat. I'm happy to do it for you...’

‘Talk, more talk. Chat, more chat. I'm happy to do it for you...’
Stigma, and beyond. (See also: Self-harm, and beyond... http://aidanrad.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/cant-shout-cant-scream-i-hurt-myself-to.html)

Talk is cheap. Yet can prove so valuable. How dear, then, is stigma?
‘Just talking about it is really important.’
So it is - as movingly displayed by so many, such as the (for want of a better word) ‘stars’ of the ten Heads Together two-minute, tear-enticing films released today.
Who could fail to be moved by the heartfelt testimony of so many people who have not only plunged the pits of despair yet also re-emerged strong and willing enough to talk about their ordeals not only with loved ones but the wider world?

Harry's band of brothers...

A British soldier dubbed ‘the human fireball’ and a blind American serviceman were given the royal seal of approval yesterday as they prepare to run two marathons in a week together.
Karl Hinett and Ivan Castro were among wounded military veterans hailed by Prince Harry for their efforts fighting back against not only debilitating physical but also mental suffering.
The pair were welcomed by the prince yesterday, ahead of running both the London Marathon and the Boston Marathon next month in aid of the Royal Foundation-backed Heads Together mental health campaign.
Prince Harry made a plea for military personnel with mental health problems to seek help - and at least begin by talking to anyone about their feelings and fears, as they attended an event run in partnership with military community mental health coalition Contact.
As Mr Castro told Metro: ‘It all starts with a conversation.’

"Can't shout, can't scream - I hurt myself to get pain out..."

(See also, appearance on BBC World Service's The Why Factor episode about self-harm - broadcast on June 5, 2017: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0548s5t)

"Sink a few too many pints and the world sings and swigs with you.
Puff your way through a pack of Marlboro Lights and a gang of fellow smokers will seldom be far away.
But stub one of those cigarettes out on your arm, or slice a razorblade across your flesh, and you do it alone. The world turns away very quickly.
Four types of self-harm, four ways of coping with pressure – but while half might invite mild disapproval, the other two inspire a blend of revulsion, anger, shock and frustration..."

Ping an elastic band repeatedly around your wrist and a colleague might raise an eyebrow.
Fill a cup at a fountain and dash the cold water in your face and they could then raise both.
But produce a razor and scythe it across that wrist, or repeatedly thump yourself in the face, and any unfortunate witnesses might well raise alarm - and more.

Today is the fifth annual Self-Injury Awareness Day, to highlight concerns - and indeed misconceptions - about the estimated one in 200 who harm themselves, or one in five women and one in seven men, or 13 per cent of those aged between 11 and 16, depending on different studies.
And to encourage those in need towards help - and encourage those who can offer so, to do so.
If only such alternative actions and distractions suggested above and by some counsellors, when feeling any urge to self-harm, were the entire answer.
And yet here at least, they can prove just enough of a coping mechanism in times of rising anguish at home or work - with apologies to colleagues taken aback by such behaviour.

"Never underestimate the power of a simple gesture or that of the humble little snowdrop – a symbol of hope and consolation..."

A message from Lynn Radnedge, who chairs Finchley's CCJ (Council of Christians and Jews) branch, for this evening's Holocaust memorial service at St Mary at Finchley...

(See also Metro coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day and one survivor's story here: "Far right rise is so shocking, says survivor of death camp")

Anyone who has ever suffered a devastating loss or tragedy in their lives often asks themselves how life can possibly go on. 

Each year at this time we hear stories of unimaginable horror and loss and it's hard to imagine how millions of people then and now found the courage to carry on.

And it’s right that we keep telling the stories of those who died and the ones who survived against all the odds.

I’m so proud of the tradition we started eight years ago at this church to honour HMD with all faiths and ages.

The refugee kids who fled terror in Syria and Iraq, now facing a fresh hell in Lesbos detention camps

Forgotten families plucked from the sea after fleeing death and destruction in Syria and Iraq face a miserable Christmas in limbo on the island of Lesbos.
Extras and Ugly Betty star Ashley Jensen has just returned from a mercy mission to the Greek island where thousands of people are being detained after fleeing their homes and heading to Europe.
She was especially struck by the young mothers forced to bring up their traumatised children in bleak and unhelpful surroundings more akin to ‘a prisoner of war camp’.
Ashley, who has a seven-year-old son Francis, told Metro: ‘The whole atmosphere is desperate and desolate. 
‘These people have the impression they’ve just been forgotten about - it feel like very little’s being done to help them.’
She was visiting in her role as an ambassador for Save The Children, the charity which this Friday holds its annual ‘Christmas Jumper Day’ - encouraging people to donate £2 apiece while wearing festive woolly tops.

Ditching of Human Rights Act 'betrays Hillsborough dead'

(Previous Hillsborough blog: “‘B*****ks – no one would have been killed’ – the stridently, chillingly complacent riposte came from the then-chairman of Sheffield Wednesday, yet could have tripped from the lips of many more...”)

Families of football fans killed in the Hillsborough disaster are urging Theresa May not to ‘betray’ them by scrapping the Human Rights Act.

‘Justice for the 96’ campaigners are backing a new Amnesty International defence of the act, which proved crucial in securing a second inquest into how and why their loved ones died.

They told Metro how the government’s readiness to repeat the Act could prevent similar disasters from being properly investigated - and instead protect corrupt police and authorities.

They today backed Amnesty International’s new ‘Save The Act’ campaign - launching on Tuesday - to keep the Human Rights Act, which came into force in Britain in 2000.

"Just let me hear some of that rock and Bowl music..."

"The next song we're gonna sing is an oldie, some of you older people might remember - it's from last year, and it's called She Loves You..."

If John Lennon's tongue was not necessarily always embedded in his cheek then his speaking-voice could invariably give the impression it was at least jabbing towards that general direction.

His She Loves You intro, approaching the end of the melded set making up The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl - newly-reinvigorated at Abbey Road and given a first CD/digital release - is not quite up there with that "and the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewellery" crack at the Palladium.

In fact, it may be that to hear more of his habitually sarky drawl in this is to underestimate even the most cynical Beatle's authentic wonder: look at just how much had been done in those few months between '63 Beatlemania erupting and '64 Beatlemania not so much consolidating as surging even further.

Few can have imagined packing, let alone actually go on to cram, just so many careers into mere years as the Fab Four had already done and would continue. Count 'em: singles, albums, films, gig-a-day tours, TV and radio factory lines, and the little matter of prolifically, inventively not-so-simply songwriting throughout.

This "new" album might well prompt mere shrugs from many outside that (hefty enough) Beatle-obsessive demographic.

And yet after the Anthology bootleg rounds-ups of the Nineties, the sweeping Mono and Stereo remasters of the past decade along with the mixed pleasures of Let It Be Naked, Love and Yellow Submarine Songtrack, the too-much-unloved live album sneaked out in 1977 now gets its belated turn.

Humanity remains washed ashore, for all too many more...

A year ago today: an emotive photo of one tragic child among so many, yet special in being the one to prompt a horrified world to act - or, at least, piously promise so.

Yet 12 gruelling months since three-year-old Alan Kurdi died, drowned - and those harrowing images emerged of the poor boy, face-forward on a Turkish beach - that same world stands accused of letting him down. And many thousands, potentially millions, more.
Gasping politicians' vows to better protect those fleeing Daesh and Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war have not been met with sufficient help in the region nor safe havens elsewhere, exasperated aid workers say.

"... 'cause I remember ..."

"I know that was then, but it could be again...?"

Not all England team-members came away empty-handed when (wait for it) football (almost) came home at Euro 96.
Twenty years ago this month, and some 16 years before London 2012’s 70,000 selfless and tireless ‘Games Makers’ became the world’s most acclaimed ‘under-rated heroes’, a volunteer army ten times as small played their part in another summer of now-nostalgia-drenched sporting glory.
Or, of course, and indeed agonisingly, near-glory.

Some comfort for refugees - amid grim suffering and warnings of worse storms ahead

Stricken refugees rescued from the Aegean Sea will be looked after better and more safely thanks to generous Metro readers.
A fresh batch of supplies has just been delivered to the beleaguered Greek island of Lesbos, funded by thousands of pounds’ worth of readers’ donations.
But actor Hugo Speer, who delivered specially-designed beds which can accommodate almost 100 people, warned that a new ‘storm’ looms of many more migrant boats bringing misery to the shoreline.
He was most touched by one Syrian youngster holding up a placard, pleading: ‘I survived war but you make me wish I didn’t.’
Metro told in March how The Full Monty star Speer and Men Behaving Badly and The Night Manager actor Neil Morrissey had just spent a week in Lesbos helping the rescue efforts.

All those Afghan interpreters, Britain's crucial unarmed forces, merit grateful refuge not dismissive neglect

A young girl brings a letter home from school from her parents. So far, so everyday, anywhere.

Except it’s from the Taliban, vowing execution for her ‘infidel’ father.

His crime? Risking his life – and those of his family and friends – for British forces. Only to find that ‘help for heroes’ only apparently goes so far.

Whether morally – after putting themselves in danger not only as targets but ‘traitors’ – or merely pragmatically – why should any conflict-zone local help help-denying Britain in future? – the Afghan interpreters’ case (raised way back when by Metro) should seem open-and-shut.

One year on from Nepal quake, the child victims sold as sex slaves - and the thousands still waiting for help

Girls as young as three are being sold by their families into the sex trade for less than £400 after Nepal’s ‘forgotten’ earthquake a year ago this Monday.
The number of children and young people at risk of abuse and slavery is surging amid chaos and desperation caused by the 7.8-magnitude disaster that killed almost 9,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
As many as 20,000 children are feared to have been trafficked since the quake last April 25, dismayed campaigners have told Metro - and they accuse senior politicians and police of being in league with child-abusers and people-smugglers.

Syria crisis, five years on - a nation set back decades

‘If you dare give those to Bashar al-Assad, I swear I’ll find you and beat you up.’

Back then the threat seemed jarringly unlikely and would have been laughable had the situation not been so bleak - in retrospect it reflects somehow a relatively simpler time.

The words were not growled by an AK47-toting militant nor patrolling soldier but a knee-high four-year-old anxious not to be caught in an aid worker’s photos beside Lebanon’s Syrian border.
Fear and even desperate aggression from a child were expressed in the context of bogeyman Bashar al-Assad, the man behind an onslaught by rockets, barrel bombs, chemical weapons and shoot-to-kill street thugs.
Since that encounter in Akkar in September 2013, Syrians’ plight has been exacerbated still further - and more convolutedly - by bloodthirsty emergency and surge of Daesh, Russian air-strikes and chaotic ‘peace talks’.
And still the Arab Spring revolt that became a government crackdown that became a gruelling civil war that become a global crisis displays few signs of hope or progress, only the promise of decades more misery...

"These memories keep coming back - and I'm glad they do": Michael Sheen on Syria's lost generation

They could be kids running carefree in Port Talbot or on the streets of London - or even the teenage offspring of Hollywood stars.
Instead, they are the civil war-scarred, homeless, helpless and forced-old-before-their-time children cast adrift by five years and counting of carnage in Syria and spreading beyond.
Children as young as seven are being forced by armed groups to fight in Syria’s civil war which reaches its five-year anniversary on Tuesday, a Unicef study has found.
And as many as 8.4million children are now thought to have been harmed by the civil war which began in March 2011 with Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
Among those confronted by such enveloping despair - and the odd glimmer of hope - has been The Damned United, Frost/Nixon, The Queen and The Passion actor Michael Sheen, also a Unicef UK ambassador who spent last week in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan.

Mercy mission: the expats, holidaymakers and actors fishing refugees from the sea

Distraught and bedraggled families are being fished from the Aegean Sea by holidaymakers, retired expats and star actors - while officials look on.

Men Behaving Badly’s Neil Morrissey and The Full Monty’s Hugo Speer have told Metro of their experiences helping desperate refugees arriving off the Greek island of Lesbos.

They found despair among the hundreds fleeing civil war, poverty and persecution back home, defiance from local volunteers - yet some impotence from authorities meant to help and protect.

Razor-wire-surrounded reception centres are often the refugees’ first official sights on European Union land - ‘more like prison camps’, Speer said.

And official agencies have to hang back unless a boat is actually sinking, for fear of being accused of people-smuggling themselves for helping people across international borders.

Other volunteers have felt less constrained, with Morrissey telling: ‘You feel you have to do whatever you can to help - you can’t just stand by and watch.’

"Love These Goon Shows!"

‘Take it away, wanna hear you play ‘til the lights go down...’

Ah, RIP Sir George Martin. 
In an uncharacteristic blip of a Queen’s English slip, the Holloway-born, Bromley-schooled producer said in advance of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: ‘It’s going to be a stonching [sic] record.’
They all were. He did so much to make them so.
The Beatles provided the tunes - whatever David Cameron might have, inevitably clunkily, claimed - and the genius flights of fancy, but their producer was necessary to give them studio reality.