Latest news with #PaulWatson
BBC News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Lincoln gentleman's club rules criticised as 'sexist'
A gentleman's club, which voted to continue to prohibit women from becoming members, has been called "sexist" by a feminist can only enter the Castle Hill Club in Lincoln as the guest of a man who is a Watson, secretary at the club which opened in 1922, said the rule "had always been the same" and "for the rights or wrongs of it, they wanted to leave it that way."Ellie Henshaw, 19, from the University of Lincoln's Feminist Society, said the decision was "frustrating" and "its not the default anymore that women should be excluded". All 560 members were asked to vote on whether women should be allowed to become vote closed on 7 May.100 members voted to keep the rule the same. 78 voted for Watson said the vote was "democratic" and "all members had different views on it".He said he believed women who visited the club as guests of male members were "happy"."They keep coming. They're obviously comfortable in how the club is set up."Mr Watson said the venue was historical."A lot of it has to do with the history of the club and about not wanting too much change to keep the club running as it has done since 1922." Ms Henshaw said "times have changed" and women should be allowed to join."I'm a history student. I think denying progress in the name of history is a very flawed argument," she Moore, 18, from the society, said she understood men's clubs were "historic"."But we live in an age where everyone is equal and excluding people is wrong", she said."I would call this sexist. I don't see a reason why women have been excluded." According to Mr Watson, the Grade II listed building dates back to the middle ages and used to operate as a pub called the Black 1922, as the pub was struggling to stay afloat, he said pub regulars took over the establishment and made it a gentleman's club. Eventually, the members bought the pub together and it became the free house run by volunteers which it remains."When I was first there, there were 80 members. There's 560 now," Mr Watson to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
The Guardian
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Is it OK to say Tuchel's two England wins have been a bit dull?
Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email On the podcast today; England win another qualifier on the road to the World Cup in 2026. Some critics have been vocal about how dull both games of the Thomas Tuchel era have been but isn't this just the way they were always destined to go? Elsewhere, Paul Watson's World of Football takes us to New Caledonia, Sudan and the Marshall Islands. Plus, a huge week in the Women's Champions League, Juventus part company with Thiago Motta and your questions answered. Support the Guardian here. You can also find Football Weekly on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fears hundreds of new homes on farmland will make 'horrendous' traffic problems worse
Residents among the hundreds who turned up to view proposals for a development of 550 houses on farmland in Atherton have voiced repeated concerns over choked-up local roads and an absence of schools places and doctors surgeries. Such fears are currently a common theme among opponents of large developments in the Wigan borough. Landowner the Lilford Estate wants to build the development on a 51.5-acre site south of Bolton Road in an area known as Shakerley. A five-hour public consultation meeting took place at Atherton and Tyldesley Botanica Gardens, near to the site. As well as neighbouring residents, members of the community group ASPECT (Atherton South Ecological Community Team) were also on hand to answer questions. Also in attendance were several local councillors, including Couns James Fish, Paul Watson and Jess Eastoe. READ MORE: Urgent warning issued over dangerous sweets and drinks with links to cancer 'flooding UK' READ MORE: Greater Manchester man, 34, reported as missing during Tenerife holiday after 'phone switched off' Barbara Constantine is the 71-year-old chair of ASPECT and explained that the group had taken a 'neutral and pragmatic' approach to engaging with developers after eventually losing a battle to prevent development in the south of Atherton in 2013 at the public inquiry stage. The public exhibition was a prelude to an outline planning application for the housing by Lilford. It means more detailed plans will be tabled as 'reserved matters', if the proposal is approved by Wigan council's planning committee. A leaflet circulated by ASPECT at the meeting said: 'Be in no doubt, this development has already been given an informal green light by Wigan council to meet its housing needs. 'It has been on the cards since it was included in the Wigan Borough Core Strategy more than a decade ago.' But Barbara said that this does not mean that local residents have no input to put forward ideas that might improve the site before the outline planning application is submitted formally to Wigan council. Coun James Fish told the Local Democracy Reporting Service following the meeting: 'I didn't speak to one person who attended the meeting who is not against it. It's the usual problem of over congestion and a total lack of an adequate infrastructure to cope with the influx of new residents.' Vinny Smith, 67, who lives on Peel Lane said: 'It's a joke. My wife works at the Royal Bolton Hospital and she starts work at 8am. In order to get there on time from here, which is only a few miles away, she has to set off at 6.45am. 'She finishes at 5pm and it takes 45 minutes for her to get home. There just isn't the road infrastructure to cope with the extra residents. John Patrick, of Douglas Park, said: 'The traffic around here is horrendous. If there are 550 houses, there are likely to be an extra 1,500 cars at least. So the traffic problems will get even worse.' Sian Carradus, 42, said her home in Crawford Avenue, overlooks the site and is concerned about her back garden disappearing because mining subsidence and flooding. She also presented images taken from her home of recent flooding events. Local resident Phil Mills said: 'The absence of school places is going to be big issue. The schools around here are already full. Are they going to build a new school?' 'We've lived there for 20 years,' she said. 'The land has changed so much because of the weather. Wildlife in the area will also be affected massively because of the growth of traffic and there are major fears over flooding. 'The area is covered with old mineshafts. I don't know how they're going to build on that land. I am very worried about losing my back garden because the land is slipping away.' Judy Westerdale, 55, was also worried about the loss of greenery and the extra traffic. 'They talk about progress, but I don't think that necessarily results in improvements.' The land at Shakerley has been set aside by Wigan council for residential development and identified in Greater Manchester's strategic development plan, Places for Everyone (PfE). A Lilford Estate spokesperson said that it had a 'longstanding legacy with Atherton'. "This includes the provision of parks and open spaces within the town utilising land within the estate's ownership," they said. "We remain committed to delivering sustainable development in Atherton and achieving Lord Lilford's objective of a lasting legacy for residents." They said that the company distributed more than 1,300 invitations by leaflet to the public exhibition event and said it was 'well attended'. "We heard a variety of views on a range of relevant issues," they said. "We recognise and welcome that the local community wishes to engage and feel that this is an important part of the planning process. "Our planning application will be supported by a comprehensive body of technical evidence covering the issues that have been raised. Through the planning process, this evidence and the views of the community will be fully considered by Wigan council in determining whether the proposal should receive planning permission." "
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
"Surfers Have a Powerful Activist Base": An Exclusive Conversation with Captain Paul Watson
In our first conversation with Captain Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist talked through his recent five months in a Greenland jail, other brushes with the law in his 50 years of activism and his ongoing battles with the Japanese government. In the second installment of our chat, he discusses surfers' role in activism, his acrimonious split with Sea Shepherd in 2022, on playing the long game and what we can do to help."Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in the United States officially labeled me a pirate in the 1980s. So when somebody calls you something like that, well, instead of denying it, I just embrace it. I said, 'If you want to call us pirates we'll be pirates.' I got myself my pirate flag logo and all that sort of thing. And also pirates are romantic characters, especially to young people, so we have to take advantage of that. There's the harsh reality of piracy, and then there's the romance of piracy, and we embraced the romance part of it." "It's a long process, and I knew it was going to take a long time. We started opposing the killing of dolphins and pilot whales in the Faroe Islands in 1983. We've been opposing dolphin slaughter in Taiji since 2003. Look, slavery didn't end overnight. Women didn't get the right to vote overnight. You have to have patience to make a difference. But let's look at what has been accomplished since 1974 when I started this. Australia stopped whaling in 1977. Peru, Chile, South Korea and Spain followed soon after. As of 2019, all pelagic whaling was ended. So whaling is now confined to the waters in Norway, Iceland, and Japan, plus the Faroe Islands. The problem is Japan is now looking at returning to the Southern Ocean, and we know that because of the ship that they built, which is definitely too big and long-range to be going to for coastal whaling. So that is their ambition. So right now we have our ship the Bandero, in Melbourne to act as a guard to the entrance of the Southern Ocean. If Japan returns, we'll be there and we'll be prepared. Our other ship, the Jean Paul de Jore, is in Bermuda, and in June it will be heading to Iceland to go against the Icelandic whalers there. That's where the frontiers are now." "In 2022, there was a hostile takeover of Sea Shepherd when I was illegally dismissed from the board of both US and Global. They took everything. They took the ships, the assets, the database, they took everything. But most grievously, they changed the objectives to go mainstream. They accused me of being too controversial and confrontational. And the reason they did that is the guys who did it, like the Managing Director Jeff Hansen in Australia, is because they have nice comfortable jobs and a lot of job security. I was too controversial and a risk to their precious positions. I work now with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. I never set Sea Shepherd up to be an organization. I set it up to be a movement. And so that's what we're continuing to do with the France and Brazil Sea Shepherd plus the Captain Paul Watson Foundation continuing the movement with the original objectives and the original strategies that I developed in 1977. ""We don't compromise to sell out to governments. The falling out I had with Sea Shepherd Australia was because they went into a partnership with Austral Fisheries. Austral Fisheries is 50% owned by the Maruha Nichiro Fishing Company in Japan, who had links with the Taiyo Whaling company that we went up against in the 1970s. So I never envisioned that Sea Shepherd would be in partnership with a company that was involved with killing whales, but that's exactly what happened. But fortunately, a lot of the people who supported me when I was with Sea Shepherd have come over. John Paul DeJoria, the owner of the Paul Mitchell shampoo line and Patron Tequila, bought a ship that we named after him as well as another called The Bandero. So within 3 or 4 months of the Foundation starting we had our first ship and a lot of veteran crew members also came over. We've had so much support." "Kelly Slater and Dave Rastavich have been actively involved as supporters and so many surfers have joined our crews. I've always looked on surfers, scuba divers, and sailors as ambassadors for the ocean. To me, the most alarming thing that we face today is that since 1950, there's been a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton in the sea, and phytoplankton provides up to 70% of the oxygen in the air we breathe and sequestered enormous amounts of CO2. And why is this happening? I think it's because of the diminishment of whales, seals, dolphins and seabirds. Whales are farmers in the ocean. They're just spreading manure across the crops of phytoplankton, and so they perform an extremely important ecological function. And the reality is that if phytoplankton disappears from the sea, we die. We don't live on the planet with a dead ocean. So the ultimate responsibility of every human being is to do everything we can to protect life diversity and interdependence in the sea. Surfers are in a better position to see right before their very eyes the changes that are escalating as far as climate changes and the effect of biological diminishment of diversity. Surfers and the surf industry have a powerful lobby and activist base. They need to use it."
