Latest news with #Restoration
Globe and Mail
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Ukraine restoring medieval Kyiv cathedral damaged by Russian blast
Restoration is under way on the medieval St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv after missiles damaged the iconic symbol of Ukrainian identity and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The blast wave from the missile and drone strike on the night of June 10, which came as part of Russia's continuing and intense summer offensive, damaged the cornice on the 11th century cathedral's main apse. Museum experts are using chemical and technical analysis, and 3-D scanning data of the cathedral, to assess the damage and expect to restore the cornice by the end of the summer, said Nelia Kukovalska, the general director of the Saint Sophia of Kyiv National Preserve, a historical and cultural state institution. Built shortly after the Christianization of Kyivan Rus in 988 A.D. by Prince Volodymyr the Great, St. Sophia is considered a symbol of Ukraine's historical and cultural heritage and houses important secular and religious mosaics and frescoes. Odesa cathedral repairs bring hope as Ukrainians enter third year of Russia's war on their culture 'UNESCO commissioned chemical and technological analyses of the cornice plaster, which enabled it to determine the precise composition of the necessary solution. Now, we can restore the damaged section and reinforce the entire cornice,' said Ms. Kukovalska. She said she had been concerned about the 1,000-year-old Oranta mosaic of the Virgin Mary with her arms raised in prayer. Standing six metres tall, the mosaic is considered a protective symbol of Kyiv and often referred to as the Indestructible Wall. But an inspection of the mosaic has not revealed any visible cracks. As Russia's war on Ukraine continues, its cultural heritage remains under threat. UNESCO has stated 501 cultural sites across the country have been damaged since the war began in 2022, including religious buildings, museums and historical buildings. The full extent of damage is not known because nearly all of Crimea and the entire Luhansk region are occupied, as are parts of the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Kherson regions. Ukraine's Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications, Mykola Tochytskyi, announced on the ministry's website that damage to cultural heritage sites would be documented and submitted to international bodies. The Ukrainian government considers the attack on St. Sophia Cathedral a violation of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The summer has been especially difficult as Russia's offensive continues in multiple regions across the country. St. Sophia Cathedral has been on the UNESCO list of World Heritage in Danger due to the risks posed by the war. Ms. Kukovalska said that as early as 2022 Ukrainian intelligence warned of a possible strike on the cathedral and she credited Ukraine's air defence forces with preventing further destruction. The cathedral is renowned for housing the world's largest collection of 11th-century secular frescoes, offering a glimpse into daily life of Kyivan Rus. The dynastic portrait of Volodymyr the Great and his family includes his son Yaroslav the Wise and daughters who were princesses connected to various medieval European royal families. They include Agatha of Kyiv, who married Edward the Exile of England and became mother to Edgar Atheling and Saint Margaret of Scotland. Maria Dobroniega, also in the portrait, married Polish King Casimir I. 'Our bloodlines have spread throughout European families, says Ms. Kukovalska. 'Across every European country, there are echoes of our shared history.'
BBC News
13-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Surrey Grade II listed building repairs nearly complete
Restoration work of a historic Surrey building is close to finishing, a council has said. Pippbrook House in Dorking recently received £200,000 to repair its roof after its owners said they were "morally obligated" to maintain the 19th-century site. Chair of Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) councillor Roger Adams and other guests attended a tile signing ceremony to mark the milestone on 9 July. It comes after MVDC decided to increase the repair budget from £1.4m to £1.6m in June so parts of the building damaged by a leak in October 2023 could be fixed. Pippbrook House is Grade II* listed, a "distinction" English Heritage only bestows on about 5% of all listed properties, according to MVDC. 'Significant challenges' ahead "We are delighted this complex roof-level stage is near completion, both within budget and on schedule," said Councillor Nick Wright, cabinet member for leisure and community assets. He added that the next stage of the project aims to return the building - a "valued local asset" to active use. MVDC needed to find "creative ways" of funding more needed work, but this could not be done when "you've got holes in your roof", Mr Wright added."There are significant challenges... but these works are necessary," he said. In February 2023, the council originally approved a budget of £3.1m for works required to fix Pippbrook House – with £1.6m coming from Mole Valley and the rest obtained through local authority was unable to bring in any external cash, limiting what could be achieved, according to the Local Democracy Reporting new work will also open up two rooms that cannot be used due to ceiling damage, the meeting heard, it added.
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Peerless: the purge of the hereditaries
The House of Lords is very old, but not quite continuous. In 1649, shortly after the execution of King Charles I, the Cromwell-ian House of Commons passed an act which said: The Commons of England assembled in parliament, finding by too long experience, that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the People of England… have thought fit to Ordain and Enact… That from henceforth the House of Lords in parliament, shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away. This measure was nullified, however, by the Restoration in 1660. The parliaments of King Charles II, and all parliaments since, have included the House of Lords. The hereditaries served their country loyally: 59 were killed in the two world wars, as were 316 of their sons. It is in the Lords that the throne sits. From that throne, the monarch delivers his or her speech which opens each session of parliament. Now we are in the reign of King Charles III. As I write, Labour is abolishing all traditional membership of the House of Lords – except, which is interesting, the Lords Spiritual, the bench of Anglican bishops. All hereditary peers might even be out as early as the end of this month. Why is this happening? In 1999, the Blair government abandoned its promise to reform the Lords root and branch, but was still determined to get rid of the hereditaries. Because its other reform proposals had fallen away, it struck a deal with the Conservatives: 92 hereditaries, 'exempted' from the cull of 700 or so, could stay until such time as a full reform package should be presented. More than a quarter of a century later, no package has appeared. That 1999 deal is now being broken. Sir Keir Starmer is making no new active reform proposals, but he wants the '92' (now eroded to 86 by the suspension of replacement by-elections) out. Lacking a New Model Army to enforce his wishes, he is not proposing to abolish the Lords outright but, Cromwell-lite, is determined to drain from it what has been its lifeblood for 800 years. He wants every last drop. Last week, Lord Roberts of Belgravia (better known to Spectator readers as the historian Andrew Roberts) moved an amendment, which I seconded, to the bill. As life peers, Andrew and I feel we should stick up for our hereditary comrades, most of whom shy away from self-justification and prepare to go with silent, pale-faced dignity to the scaffold. Always, until now, the monarch has had two hereditary peers in the Lords specifically present to look after the interests of the Crown – the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain. We argued that their roles would be hampered, and the monarch therefore discourteously served, if they could no longer sit there. After all, the core doctrine of our constitution is that of 'The Crown-in-parliament'. Why should the Crown's main representatives be blocked from parliament's proceedings and reduced to the ranks of the 'lanyard classes'? The government's attitude echoes that of King Lear's ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan, to the former monarch's 100 knights. 'What need you five and twenty, ten, or five?' asks Goneril. 'What need one?' adds Regan grimly. So, despite our protests, out go the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain. Luckily, our present King remains firmly on the throne and shows no Lear-like desire to give everything away, but the impulse which throws out peers because of their heredity logically extends to monarchs. Presumably that is why, in the days when Sir Keir allowed himself to express his own opinions unguardedly in public, he was in favour of abolishing the monarchy. The government does not enjoy defending this legislation. It prefers sullen silence. But to the extent that it does speak, its view is that hereditary peers 'are indefensible in the 21st century'. That is an assertion, not an argument, very like that 1649 claim that the House of Lords is 'useless and dangerous to the People of England'. The battle is not quite over. Last week, 280 of us defeated the government with an amendment which would allow the hereditary element to perish by the passage of time rather than sudden expulsion. There may also be deals in which a few hereditaries get life peerages instead. (I vote for keeping 25 per cent of the Labour ones, in other words, Viscount Stansgate, the hereditary beneficiary of his anti-hereditary father, Tony Benn.) But there can be no doubt that the hereditary principle in parliament is dead, killed by the convention that the Lords does not block commitments made in the winning party's election manifesto. What is being gained? Well, the loss of the 86 will create a bit more room in what is widely thought to be an overcrowded House. It will also remove what some see as the unfair numerical advantage of the Conservatives and improve the sex and ethnic balance (since all the hereditaries are white men). I really cannot think of anything else. What is being lost? First, a group of people who are disinterested, in the proper sense of that word. None is there for the power or the money (both of which are very small). Unlike under the unreformed, full hereditary system, none is there as of right alone. Since 1999, hereditaries wishing to sit in the Lords must be elected by their peers, some chosen by the whole House. They therefore have to want to do something. They take junior government or shadow posts, are deputy lord speakers, chair committees. The Earl of Kinnoul, the convenor of the entirely independent crossbenchers, more than 30 of whom are hereditaries, is a hereditary peer. Lacking worldly ambition or partisan passions, knowing that their existence is questioned, the hereditaries show, despite their titles, little sense of entitlement. They are polite and benign. We shall miss them – such characters as Earl Howe, who has sat 40 years in the House and served 15 years as a minister, or the youngish 19th Earl of Devon, a recent arrival who has held us spellbound with his well-developed and no doubt accurate claim that the Earls of Devon, who have been around since the Norman Conquest, have done more for Devon than anyone else. (Elsewhere in the magazine, Sophia Falkner – who knows a thing or two about the hereditary principle – looks at some of the others we will lose from the Upper Chamber. More than four-fifths of the 86 men have a background from the private sector or the professions – farming, business, the law, the army; one is a vet – and therefore possess, in the current cant phrase, 'lived experience' of areas of national life almost unknown in the corridors of power. None has passed his life under the protection of that 21st-century iteration of the Establishment, the Blob. All have done the state some service, yet now they are to be collectively attainted. It is sad. Part of the sadness has been peers voting to eject fellow peers – an uncomfortable thing, especially as they are being thrown out for no reason other than what opponents of the hereditary principle call 'accident of birth'. Even in the age of mass immigration, most of us are British citizens by 'accident of birth'. Is that such a bad principle? What is lost, though, goes beyond this temporary, dislocating unhappiness. It concerns what's left and what might happen next. It sets a constitutional precedent which the original provision of the 92 was intended to counter. In almost any free country, it would be unconstitutional for the executive to decide to remove a portion of those who sit in one of its legislative chambers, especially if such removal increases the executive's power. That sort of thing gets a country arraigned before the European Court of Human Rights. Such change should be made only as part of much wider constitutional reform, arrived at through broad consensus and/or a referendum. Occasionally, Labour drops little hints that something big might happen, but the evidence of its actions suggests it won't. Even if it did, consensus is unlikely, because people cannot agree whether they want to keep a strong House of Commons or, by creating an elected second chamber, challenge the Commons's power. Get that wrong and you could be laying the ground for the sort of power struggle which this country last saw in the 1640s. So the most likely thing which will happen is nothing much, at first. Except for the poor dear bishops, whose own appointments are now almost wholly in the hands of a separate bureaucracy, the Lords will be almost entirely composed of those appointed by prime ministerial prerogative. They (we – I am one of them) will continue to have some independence, because we cannot easily be ejected. But the idea that our legitimacy will be enhanced without the presence of the hereditaries is absurd. Party animosities will grow. Our fig leaf of traditional respectability will have been removed. Ah, say some reformers, the answer is to take the power of patronage away from 10 Downing Street. Let an 'independent body' – a greatly glorified version of the ineffective House of Lords Appointments Commission – decide who should become a peer. Then the process would have 'integrity'. It should surely be obvious that such a system would replicate all the features of 21st-century unanswerable, bureaucratic, self-perpetuating public-sector Blobbery that have become so disliked and feared. The Lords would soon become, in those original 17th-century words, 'useless and dangerous to the people of England'.
The Herald Scotland
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'The witch Sturgeon ruined Scottish arts,' says actor Rupert Everett
Now 66, Everett came to Glasgow at the end of the 1970s to work at the Citz. He loved the experience. 'Glasgow was very stimulating. A different city to what it is now. When I got there the Gorbals had just come down and those horrible towers had just gone up. They were kind of magnificent in a weird way. Read more "In the wintertime that bus used to go down Gorbals Street lit at night and you just saw these towers and for me it was the best period of my life probably, being at the Citizens. It's when my education started and I found creatively it was a magnificent place to be.' He talks about the theatre and the city with huge affection. 'I lived in a series of fun places. I used to live with a professor from the university in his house off the Byres Road and then with my aunt and uncle in Helensburgh. Then they moved into Kirklee Circus. 'Being in the theatre was incredible because it had a relationship with the audience that I haven't really come across since. It was an audience that sometimes came because it was a cheap place to go and hang out. There was such a variety of people. But it wasn't necessarily highbrow. It was people who came and you entertained them. Or not. And they were quite vocal sometimes if they didn't like what they were seeing. Rupert Everett in Vortex at the Citizen's Theatre in 1988 (Image: unknown) 'I think it was very spoiling. It was very direct. It's how I imagine the relationship with the audience must have been in the Restoration in a way. It was a collaborative thing between the audience. A very vocal audience. It was literally like going into Aladdin's cave, going into the Citizens. 'For me it was a magical time and every time I get up to Glasgow on the train, as soon as I get to Motherwell I get palpitations almost. 'You used to be able to see the Citizens from the train. You can't anymore.' Of all the people he has worked with in his career it is Philip Prowse, who along with Giles Havergil and Robert David MacDonald, ran the Citizens while he was there, that he singles out. 'Philip stands out as the person who has had the biggest influence on my life. Male. The Citizens theatre redevelopment is the first major makeover of the building since it began life as a working theatre in 1878 (Image: Gordon Terris) 'I became great friends with both Philip Prowse and Robert David McDonald. They were amazingly clever people. They were really wonderful teachers to be around. 'To be in plays like David's adaptation of the complete works of Proust, for example … I started learning about everything.' That was the extraordinary thing about the Citz, he says. Its ambition. 'It was a European theatre in the same vein as Peter Stein, Pina Bauch. It was a national European theatre. And unlike those theatres, it never ran at a loss. It presented an uncompromising array of work to people that it never patronised. As soon as the witch Sturgeon came into power everything changed in Scottish arts and everything had to be about being Scottish. 'In the whole United Kingdom there was nothing like that theatre. 'It was one of the most extraordinary cultural events I think in the British scene postwar, frankly.' And will he be heading to Glasgow for the reopening in September? 'If I'm here I will get up. I'd love to get up.'
Scoop
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
North Malaita Constituency Tribal Reconciliation Paves The Way Forward For Development
Press Release – Solomon Islands MRD Mr. Nunufia further stated that, under the leadership of the Member of Parliament, Honourable Daniel Waneoroa, settling land disputes, reuniting tribes and people, and addressing land issues remain top priorities for fostering development in the … The North Malaita Constituency (NMC) office recently conducted a historic tribal reconciliation program, signifying its readiness to progress socio-economic development for its people and the rest of the constituency. Held at Fo'ondo from 25th to 27th April 2025, the event was organized specifically for the Abua'ero tribal clan. It was successfully celebrated under the theme: ' A Journey of Reconciliation, Reunion, and Restoration of the Abua'ero Tribal Clan'. The reconciliation aimed not only to resolve grievances and disputes but also to reunite and restore family relationships, paving the way for tangible development in their land. This initiative was organized by the constituency office under its Land and Tribal Reconciliation program. It was co-funded by the constituency office in collaboration with the Abua'ero tribe, individual families, and other stakeholders. 'Development cannot happen in the air. It happens on the land. So, preparing people and their land for development is paramount,' Constituency Development Officer (CDO) Nason Nunufia said. Mr. Nunufia further stated that, under the leadership of the Member of Parliament, Honourable Daniel Waneoroa, settling land disputes, reuniting tribes and people, and addressing land issues remain top priorities for fostering development in the constituency. 'Since most of our lands are tribally owned, we must come up with models and avenues to engage people in a people-centred approach to deal with land issues and disputes, a collective paradigm,' Mr. Nunufia emphasized. He further underscored that 'The constituency office believes that for real development to happen, reconciliation must first take place. This is to ensure that people are prepared, organized, and ready to embrace development in their own land.' At the same time, Mr. Nunufia said that one of the major hindrances to development in our country is land disputes, an issue that requires a multifaceted approach involving an understanding of the complexities of our customary land tenancy arrangement, community leaders' involvement, and the implementation of practical dispute resolution mechanisms. A senior officer from the Ministry of Traditional Governance, Ben Oto'ofa, facilitated the reconciliation ceremony. The event also saw the transfer of tribal leadership titles from Elder Paramount Chief Philip Akote'e Damirara to Silas Benono Wawane, who is now the new Abua'ero Tribal Chief. CDO Nunufia described the event as emotional and historic, noting that it reunited families for the first time since their great-grandfathers left the land between 1910, some 115 years ago, 'especially our lineage from Kwara'ae.' Families gathered and reunited during the program came from Western Province, Kwara'ae, Langalanga, and North Malaita. Meanwhile, on behalf of the constituency office, CDO Nunufia acknowledged the new Abua'ero Tribal Chief, Silas Wawane, along with his family, Ben Tobis and his family, Kenley and his family, stakeholders, individual families, and everyone who contributed resources that made the program a success. He also expressed profound gratitude to Hon. MP Waneoroa for his continued support of important constituency matters and initiatives that can lead to meaningful development for the people. Mr. Nunufia also recognized Solrice Company for its generous support of 20 bags of rice for the event.
