Latest news with #St.Valentine'sDay
Spectator
5 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Why are schoolchildren making Valentine's Day cards for refugees?
In Birmingham, schoolchildren as young as five have been reportedly asked to write Valentine's Day cards to asylum seekers. One group of children were said to have created heart-shaped messages with slogans like 'You are welcome here!. Let us count the ways that school children sending Valentine's Day cards to asylum seekers might be misinterpreted or otherwise lead to unintended consequences. Let alone whether it might cause alarm to parents, and generally reinforce the idea that the people in charge in this country are either profoundly naive or politically malevolent. Firstly – how might a Valentine's Day card be interpreted by the intended recipients? In most of the world, the celebration of what we used to refer to as St. Valentine's Day is still a very recent phenomenon; its introduction was largely commercially driven, based around adult conceptions of romantic or sexual relations. As it sadly is in this country nowadays, albeit with its older role as a celebration of more platonic forms of love still lingering somewhere in the folk memory. The journalist David Aaranovitch suggested it was 'disgusting' to perceive a sexual connotation in a Valentine's Day card – but in most of the world, Valentine's Day has no other connotation. In many countries there would be uproar if a teacher even mentioned Valentine's Day to their children Anywhere in Asia and in most of Africa, Valentine's Day is regarded as the western import that it is, and is associated with Western conceptions of sex and relationships – or at least, with those places' imagining of western notions of sex and relations, which they understand to be a complete free-for-all, without any constraints of social or religious propriety. Outside of the more westernised urban classes in the Middle East or India, it would still be considered a bit racy to mark Valentine's Day within a marriage. Certainly, no child in those places is making a Valentine's Day card at infants' school and giving it to their mother. In fact, in many countries there would be uproar if a teacher even mentioned Valentine's Day to their children. Secondly, there's the question of who exactly the recipients are. As far as we can tell the cards were not sent to named recipients, as opposed to the clients of a particular charity as a whole. This spared the school the trouble of considering these people as individuals with any specific characteristics; names, nationalities, genders or ages. Much of the outrage to this story has come from people making an educated guess regarding the demographics of the recipients based on those of asylum seekers in the UK generally. That is to say they are likely to be predominantly male, in their twenties or thirties, and from places like Afghanistan, the Middle East or the Horn of Africa. It's quite striking that those who encourage us to make asylum seekers 'feel welcome' are often very hostile to actually considering specific characteristics that might help us define them as individuals. Even speculating on their nationalities is regarded in such quarters as being slightly conspiratorial. They prefer to think of them generically simply as 'refugees'. This brings us to what the actual purpose of the 'Schools of Sanctuary' organisation that planned this exercise was. It has nothing to do with refugees as individuals. Instead, it is about instilling in children at a young age the trappings of empathy toward an amorphous, ageless, stateless blob of people for whom they ought to feel sorry, like 'the sick' or 'the poor'. In successful cases, some of these children will retain such simplistic notions into adulthood, and go on to become columnists for the Independent and the Times. But this is a mockery of real empathy. You cannot truly feel empathy for another human being whilst forbidding yourself from considering them as having an age, being a man or a woman, or as coming from a specific place as you yourself do. But as soon as we start to think about asylum seekers as individuals, we risk running into group characteristics that detract from public sympathy. Only by completely stripping people of their individual characteristics can we hope to remove prejudice, so the reasoning goes. On the streets of many of our cities, we can see the results of this policy of treating 'refugees' as a fungible mass of blank humanity, to be slotted in wherever there's physical space, and left to mill about aimlessly. Housing of Multiple Occupation with a dozen guys from several random countries, with equally random reasons for making their way to Britain. All they likely have in common with one another is that some Home Office lawyer decided that a rejection of their asylum claim could be challenged plausibly under Article 8 of the ECHR. Perhaps, an anonymous card from a local primary school makes up for any of the normal means by which a human being may find a sense of belonging in this world, and which these men have been convinced to sever themselves from to come to Britain. We can only speculate as to how baffling the contents of these cards might have been to a lad from Eritrea or rural Syria whose only previous exposure to Valentines Day was when it popped up on the sort of website that he'd now need a VPN to access in this country. I suspect pure bemusement was a more likely reaction than the ostensibly intended one of 'feeling welcomed'. But the people whose idea it was have no interest in that at all – their interest is in shaping the views and assumptions of young children.
Irish Daily Mirror
30-07-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
‘High IQ Jekyll and Hyde' character jailed after Valentine's Day road rampage
A man described as a 'Jekyll and Hyde' character after he drank alcohol has been jailed for eight months and put off the road for five years after going on a rampage in Co. Donegal. Owen Orr committed a series of offences on St. Valentine's Day in 2019 leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The father-of-five punched another motorist in the face, assaulted a Garda, damaged his motorbike and then crashed his car into a terrified mother and daughter. Orr, who has 31 previous convictions, appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court where he pleaded guilty to a range of offences which all occurred on the same evening. Judge Roderick Maguire said it was completely unacceptable that Gardai had been put in such danger while doing their duty. He also said members of the public were fortunate not to have suffered more serious and lasting injuries as a result of Orr's actions. The 32-year-old was charged that, at Cullion Road, Letterkenny, he assaulted Garda Michael Kilcoyne, a peace officer, acting in the course of his duty. The charge is contrary to Section 19 (3) of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994, as amended by Section 185 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2006. He was charged that he did without lawful excuse damage property, to wit, a Garda Honda motorcycle, belonging to the Chief Superintendent, An Garda Siochana. The charge is contrary to Section 2 (1) of the Criminal Damage Act, 1991. Orr was charged with the unlawful interference with a mechanically propelled vehicle, the property of Charles Bonner, while such vehicle was stationary at Manorcunningham by removing the key from the ignition. The charge is contrary to Section 113 or the Road Traffic Act, 1961, as amended by Section 6 of the Road Traffic Act, 1968 and Section 18 of the Road Traffic Act, 2006. He is also charged with dangerous driving o the N13 on February 14th, 2019 He is further charged that, at Dromore, Letterkenny, on February 14, 2019, that he did without lawful excuse damage property, to wit, a Toyota Corolla belonging to Kathleen Birch intending to damage such property or being reckless as to whether such property would be damaged. The charge is contrary to Section 2 (1) of the Criminal Damage Act, 1991. He is also charged with failing to report an accident when injury was caused to property or a person at Dromore Lower on February 14th, 2019 being the driver of a vehicle involved in the accident. Other charges were also taken into account by the court. Prosecutor for the State, Ms Fiona Crawford, BL, along with Garda Daire Sheridan outlined the series of events on the day which led to Orr's arrest. He told how another motorist, Charles Bonner, was driving on the dual carriageway into Letterkenny when he saw another car overtaking a series of other vehicles before pulling in front of him. Mr Bonner flashed his lights at the car but the other driver, now known to be Owen Orr, slammed on his brakes forcing the other driver to brake. Mr Bonner stopped and the driver of the other car came over, punched him in the nose, pulled the keys out of his jeep and then threw them into a hedge and drove off with the entire incident being captured on dashcam. At Dromore Lower, some kilometres down the road, Mrs Kathleen Birch and her daughter were traveling towards Letterkenny down Lurgybrack when a car pulled out and smashed into them. Mrs Birch suffered pain in her back and legs and feared her car was going to go on fire as other motorists came to her aid. The driver of the other car fled on foot but left his wallet with bank cards and identification at the scene. Garda motorcyclist Michael Kilcoyne arrived at the scene of the accident and went in search of the driver of the other car and found Owen Orr walking at nearby Cullion Road. He addressed Orr who became aggressive and assaulted the Garda by grabbing him by the neck causing his motorbike to fall to the ground. A scuffle broke out and Orr lashed out at the arresting officer by kicking him before he was taken to Letterkenny Garda Station for questioning. The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week While in the station, Orr refused to give either a blood or urine sample to a registered nurse. The accused man was interviewed four days later when sober and the court was told he was very apologetic about the incident. Barrister for Orr, Mr Ciaran Elders, BL, directed by solicitor Frank Dorrian, said his client was very cooperative during the second interview describing him as a 'Jekyll and Hyde' character when he had alcohol taken. He added that he finds himself in a better place today and has been sober since 2023 after two periods in rehabilitation apart from a small lapse. The accused man had a total of €2,000 in compensation to offer including a sum to replace the €500 key for Mr Bonner's jeep, another €750 for the damage to his glasses and €750 to be given to a charity of Garda Kilcoyne's choice. A further €500 was also available to Mrs Birch while the court was also told that civil proceedings are also ongoing arising from the collision. Mr Elders added that his client was now trying to put his life back together and was a man with a high IQ with five children, the oldest of which were also academically gifted and wanted to attend college. Judge Roderick Maguire addressed the accused and asked him how his family were now keeping and how his life was now that he is trying to remain sober. Orr said that he was attending AA meetings four times a week. Mr Elders added that now that it appears that Orr has been rehabilitated and has also come a long way since this incident in 2019, he was not sure how a custodial sentence could benefit Orr or society at large. Passing sentence, Judge Maguire outlined all the events of the night saying he had considered all matters. He outlined a headline sentence but then said he had to consider mitigation before passing a final sentence. He said Gardai had noted that Orr was very easy to deal with when sober, he had not come to Garda attention since, had entered an early plea and was in a much better place today. The Judge also noted his probation report, the fact that he has five children and also considered the management of his alcohol abuse and that he is now attending alcoholics anonymous four times a week. He also noted that compensation had been offered to those caught up in Orr's rampage which he said were concrete expressions or remorse of the accused. Taking all these matters into account, Judge Maguire reduced the headline sentence to one of sixteen months with the last eight months suspended and banned Orr from holding a driving license for five years. He also ordered him to enter a bond to keep the peace for a period of two years upon his release from prison. For more of the latest breaking news from the Irish Mirror check out our homepage by clicking here.
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Cynthia Pelayo blends horror and Chicago history in ‘Vanishing Daughters' — including legend of Resurrection Mary
Cynthia Pelayo walked into a bar the other day just after it opened. It was a weekday. The place was dead. Other than a bartender and the dead girl in the corner — a mannequin, dressed like a ghoul, in a long white gown and pale make-up. Pelayo jumped and laughed. She wasn't here for a drink; she's been sober for several years. She was here because Chet's Melody Lounge in Justice is entwined with the legend of Resurrection Mary — that's Mary in the corner — and Pelayo just wrote a novel weaving together a serial killer, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, a plane crash at O'Hare, quantum entanglement, Chet's and Resurrection Mary. Her thrillers, becoming increasingly popular, bite off a lot, but always include some uncanny paranormal something or other, and a nod to the history of tragedy in Chicago. Hailey Piper, a fellow bestseller and friend from Maryland, said she's heard critics complain about the amount of Chicago history in Pelayo's books. She heard people say they don't want a history lesson when they read a novel. 'And yet nobody complains when Stephen King goes on a 10-page tangent about Derry, Maine, and that's not even a real place! In horror, setting is very important, and in Cynthia's novels you get a real feel for Chicago, always with the reminder she's critiquing a place she loves so much.' Chet's, Pelayo reminded me as we entered, leaves a bloody mary on the bar every night, in honor of Mary. As the local lore goes, a taxi driver on Archer Avenue picked up a strange woman who, during the ride, seemed to vanish. The driver stopped at Chet's, to ask if anyone had seen the woman. The bar exploded in laughter. You just met Mary, they said. Pelayo, 44, long black hair, long face, head to toe in black, explained to the bartender we just stopped by to look around; she has a new book, 'Vanishing Daughters,' partly set on Archer Avenue and about Mary. The bartender said she'll have to read that one. Chet's owners emerged from the back. Richard Prusinski, whose father, Chet, bought the century-old bar in the 1960s, has run it for years with his wife, Barbara. They inherited the ghost tours that stop by and tourists looking for a fright. Halloween is their Christmas. Sometimes a customer will say they danced with Mary. The bartender, listening, said she's heard strange knocks 'but Mary's fine if you just leave her be.' Pelayo nodded: 'She's not mean. She's Chicago's ghost, we love her.' 'You from the area?' Barbara asked. 'West of Logan Square,' Pelayo said. 'Always interested in local ghosts?' 'Oh, yeah. The devil baby at Jane Addams Hull House. Of course, all the gangster-related ghosts. … This area takes a lot of pride in those kind of stories, you know?' Barbara stepped aside to reveal a backroom still decorated for St. Valentine's Day as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, complete with gangster cutouts and faux bullet holes. Outside, Archer Avenue is lonesome in the daylight, austere Resurrection Cemetery stretching along one side and depressed dusty parking lots and industrial-looking buildings lining the other side. Pelayo sent a lot of time around here while writing 'Vanishing Daughters,' just as she spent a lot of time on the Chicago River while writing 'Forgotten Sisters' (which draws on the S.S. Eastland ship disaster in 1915 that killed 844 passengers and crew) and walking around Humboldt Park lagoons while writing 'Children of Chicago' (partly about the history of local children killed by neighborhood violence). 'At night, there's nothing here,' she said, watching traffic hush past. 'It's like standing in nothing. There's a lot of versions of the Mary story, but generally, she met a man at the Willowbrook Ballroom, they danced all night, he went to take her home, she vanished and now hitchhikes on Archer. Everyone knows this. I knew it as a kid. I came here at night to see what people see and it's super dark, just nothing moving. What's interesting is supernatural activity spiked after the first nuclear reactors (assembled in Hyde Park) were buried in Red Gate Woods nearby. Now people see black horses with fiery eyes, monks high in the tree tops. I mean, the Illinois-Michigan Canal isn't far and some Irish immigrants who dug it out died then kind of slipped into the water and washed away …' She could go on. Her husband, Gerardo Pelayo, a senior IT analyst, said family trips sometimes get hijacked by his wife's appetite for tragic histories. The couple and their two kids tried to hike Red Gate: 'The first time we went, it was cold, kind of dark, rainy and we didn't even make it to the (reactor) site. Cynthia felt something and said, we have to go now.' Pelayo's horror novels do not read like a lot of horror novels. They are light on jump scares and blood. They read less like contemporary horror than Gothic thrillers relocated to a 21st-century Midwest, layering in detective fiction, melodrama, a touch of lyrical literary ennui. History in her books — the legacy of local violence, the Iroquois Theater fire, the early silent film studios — plays like a mirrored reflection of the present. She doesn't focus on monsters so much as their victims, ghouls with reasons. Becky Spratford, a local librarian and major tastemaker in the horror genre, said: 'Cynthia doesn't write the most violent horror out there but without question it's some of the most disquieting. If you live in Chicago, you feel these stories in your guts.' A Cynthia Pelayo novel also throws a fairy tale in there somewhere. 'Forgotten Sisters' drew from the Little Mermaid, 'Children of Chicago' had room for a Pied Piper luring children to their dooms. Her latest book finds some inspiration in Sleeping Beauty. She notes two reasons for this: As others have said, the flip side of Chicago's history of tragedies is its incongruous history as a birthplace of magic — the writing of 'Wizard of Oz,' the home of Walt Disney. Her parents, who came to Chicago from Puerto Rico and settled in Hermosa — where Pelayo and her family still reside — 'couldn't read English well, so they recounted fairy tales and lullabies, which became a place of comfort. I still feel like if I have a fairy tale for the scaffolding of a story I can tell it.' So far, it's worked. This will be a big year for Pelayo: Other than 'Vanishing Daughters,' two of her earlier novels from independent publishers — and her debut story collection, 'Lotería,' which she self-published in 2012 (after using it as her MFA thesis for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) — are being reissued soon by a major publisher, Hachette. 'Vanishing Daughters,' meanwhile, is published by Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer. Jessica Tribble, Amazon's editorial director, told me: 'I'm a huge fan. I love how she finds a way to weave familiar tales into a modern story. She touches on Sleeping Beauty even as she asks what it means for Chicago to be a city with a history of serial killers. She is making fairy tales part of the zeitgeist — yet reminding us fairy tales were often cautionary for a reason.' We went across the street to Resurrection Cemetery. We checked in at the front office, so they knew why two people were casually using a cemetery parlor to talk. The woman at the counter said she never heard of Resurrection Mary, which sounded like something she tells tourists. 'Oh, Mary's not with us,' Pelayo explained. 'She's a ghost.' 'I haven't seen her,' the woman replied blankly. Thoroughly ghosted, we sat. She doesn't believe in ghosts, Pelayo told me. She's told others she doesn't believe in an afterlife, or a heaven or a hell. 'Children of Chicago,' which put her on the map, was her way of writing about growing up in Hermosa, at the poverty line, touched often by crime. As she started on 'Vanishing Daughters,' her father died of cancer. She was thinking of how to get across 'the way grief manifests emotionally and spiritually,' while also touching on the history of Chicago women whose murders have gone unsolved. She saw Mary as a vehicle. 'A lot of murdered people get victimized after their deaths. There are so many versions of a vanishing hitchhiker story, for instance, but usually they're malicious — they're monsters. What if Mary was a murder victim trapped in an existential loop, wandering Archer Avenue when all she wants is to get home?' Pelayo lived in Puerto Rico until she was 2. Her household was very strict, she said, her parents conservative Catholics who nevertheless relished casually retelling — 'so matter of factly' — stories of kidnapped cousins never seen again and childhood friends found dismembered in dumpsters. She said she wasn't allowed to have many friends, and was rarely allowed to leave the house. She remembers watching a lot of horror movies, and 'because I didn't go to preschool, my dad would take me on the train downtown and get popcorn and go to the Division Street bars so he could talk to his buddies while I played Pac-Man. He would just take me everywhere since he loved the history of Chicago, so I was constantly being shown it. I also remember someone called me a (racial epitaph) my first day at Columbia College. I told him I was never going back. He said he had police dogs attack him in the '60s. He had local coffee shops not serve him when they heard his accent — but I wasn't going back to school because someone called me one racist name? He was right and I went back and graduated with honors.' Gerardo was friends with his future wife in high school, though he remembers her as a teenager being intimidating, an authoritative ROTC member 'who let how she felt be known and didn't shrink from exchanging looks or words in hallways. She was always a target.' She was allergic to any kind of bureaucratic authority and was frequently suspended. She wanted to go to Columbia and become a fiction writer but her father ('who came to America with $6 in his pocket') would tell her, 'No, you should be like Ted Koppel.' So she settled on journalism, then went to Roosevelt University for marketing. She worked for two decades at Ipsos, doing marketing research in the corporate reputation division. She was good at it, she said, but she was never happy. She told her husband she was going back to school to get her MFA in fiction writing. 'I was surprised, yes,' he said. 'We had made it out of the inner city and now we were traveling and we had kids and we were running marathons and we had a cute dog — but Cynthia wasn't really fulfilled.' At SAIC, her advisors told her that she was a horror writer who didn't know it. She wrote poetry about true crime. She wrote books of poetry. Inspired by 'Devil in the White City,' she started 'Children of Chicago' as a blend of history, detective thriller and horror. At first, the mix was daunting: 'Nobody would represent me because the fiction and the history would be separate chapters. I would hear that I wrote like someone who didn't know how to write. So I started to learn how to spread out the nonfiction in the fiction.' She began to win awards, an International Latino Book Award, a Bram Stoker Award — the Oscars of horror writing. Yet, as her star rose, she said she experienced racism, classism, sexism — 'a lot of insinuation, a lot of it online, and from corners of the (horror) community, who seemed to think this stuff wasn't meant to be written by certain people.' She began to regret that, despite having broader aims, she was largely identified as a horror writer. Her agent, Lane Heymont of New York-based Tobias Literary Agency, said: 'She's one of the top women in horror right now, the first Latinx person to win a Bram Stoker, and authors are prone to being jealous. The more attention you get, the more people want to publicly feed on you in this business. But also, publishers used to think of horror as a white man's game — they knew Stephen King and that's about it. But horror is on the rise now, and those same people are having to get used to all the women and people of color with major roles in this genre.' Indeed, the most interesting new horror voices of the past decade — Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Jessica Johns, Alma Katsu, Carmen Maria Machado, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Nick Medina, Gus Moreno — have been Indigenous, Latino or writers of color. As Pelayo and I talked, a young Latina in the cemetery office stopped to say hi. 'I love your books,' she told Pelayo. 'Thank you! I'm here because my new book — ' ''Vanishing Daughters'!' 'Right! It's set on Archer.' 'I'm so excited to read it.' When she left, Pelayo leaned over: 'I have to accept I am getting more public. I didn't realize that could happen. I told my husband we can't fight in public anymore. Scary! '
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chocolate, already expensive, set to get even pricier ahead of Easter
Even though the indulgence of festivities like Easter and Eid al-Fitr is weeks away, shoppers might be best advised to start getting hold of chocolate as soon as possible, lest the increasingly expensive treats see further price hikes. Poor harvests in recent years in Ghana and the Ivory Coast have reduced the supply of cocoa, in turn making it more expensive for chocolate producers and in the end for consumers, once costs are passed on. Mondelez International, the parent company of British brand Cadbury, recently warned of reduced profits for 2025 in the wake of "unprecedented cocoa cost inflation." Switzerland's Lindt issued a similarly downbeat assessment in which it pointed to "record-high cocoa costs, substantial price increases, and weakened consumer sentiment." Similar to the run-up to Easter, demand for chocolate often soars in February ahead of St. Valentine's Day, with Wells Fargo saying earlier this month that chocolate in the US was 20% more expensive than it was ahead of February 14 last year. A tonne of cocoa hit a record $12,646 in December, around four times as much as a decade ago, while producers in turn have reported that making chocolate has been made more expensive not only by cocoa, but by price increases for fuel and transport. Cocoa supply has fallen short of demand for around four years. Chocolate producers last year were also faced with reduced supplies of sugar after smaller-than-usual harvest in Thailand and curbs on exports by India. Sugar became more expensive in turn, adding to the upward price pressure on chocolate. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chocolate, already expensive, set to get even pricier ahead of Easter
Even though the indulgence of festivities like Easter and Eid al-Fitr is weeks away, shoppers might be best advised to start getting hold of chocolate as soon as possible, lest the increasingly expensive treats see further price hikes. Poor harvests in recent years in Ghana and the Ivory Coast have reduced the supply of cocoa, in turn making it more expensive for chocolate producers and in the end for consumers, once costs are passed on. Mondelez International, the parent company of British brand Cadbury, recently warned of reduced profits for 2025 in the wake of "unprecedented cocoa cost inflation." Switzerland's Lindt issued a similarly downbeat assessment in which it pointed to "record-high cocoa costs, substantial price increases, and weakened consumer sentiment." Similar to the run-up to Easter, demand for chocolate often soars in February ahead of St. Valentine's Day, with Wells Fargo saying earlier this month that chocolate in the US was 20% more expensive than it was ahead of February 14 last year. A tonne of cocoa hit a record $12,646 in December, around four times as much as a decade ago, while producers in turn have reported that making chocolate has been made more expensive not only by cocoa, but by price increases for fuel and transport. Cocoa supply has fallen short of demand for around four years. Chocolate producers last year were also faced with reduced supplies of sugar after smaller-than-usual harvest in Thailand and curbs on exports by India. Sugar became more expensive in turn, adding to the upward price pressure on chocolate.
