Veterans attend Normandy commemorations on 81st anniversary of D-Day
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades and historical re-enactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth commemorated the anniversary of the D-Day landings, in which American soldiers played a leading role, with veterans at the American cemetery overlooking the shore in the village of Colleville-sur-Mer.
The June 6 1944 invasion of Nazi-occupied France used the largest-ever armada of ships, troops, planes and vehicles to breach Hitler's defences in western Europe. A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded.
The battle – and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities – killed around 20,000 French civilians between June and August 1944.
The exact German casualties are unknown but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone.
'The heroism, honour and sacrifice of the Allied forces on D-Day will always resonate with the US armed forces and our allies and partners across Europe,' said Lieutenant General Jason T Hinds, deputy commander of US Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa.
'Let us remember those who flew and fell. Let us honour those who survived and came home to build a better world.
'Let us ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain by meeting today's challenges with the same resolve, the same clarity of purpose and the same commitment to freedom.'
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day.
Of those, 73,000 were from the United States and 83,000 from Britain and Canada.
Forces from several other countries were also involved, including French troops fighting with General Charles de Gaulle. The Allies faced around 50,000 German forces.
More than two million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day.
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Wales Online
7 hours ago
- Wales Online
The man tasked with turning around a lifesaving service in Wales that was branded rotten
The man tasked with turning around a lifesaving service in Wales that was branded rotten Fin Monahan has commanded the Red Arrows, fought cancer and more. Now he is in charge of sorting out one of Wales' biggest employers Fin Monahan is six months into being Chief Fire Officer of South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne ) Fin Monahan knew the job he wanted when he left the military: a job at Nato. But when he was on a mandated training course he was told to write a CV and cover letter and find a job that he matched his skills. As he searched online, he came across one - chief fire officer at South Wales Fire and Rescue Service. It not only fit the bill, but it interested him. Within the advert was a brief mention to the requirement to deliver "cultural change". It didn't take Google long to throw up any of the many stories detailing the state the service was in. In January 2024, an independent review had found repeated examples of bullying, homophobia, racism and sexism. Sexual harassment and domestic abuse had been tolerated, as well as incidents of physical aggression outside of work. "Inappropriate behaviours the top down," it read. The-then chief announced his retirement on the same day. Our coverage of the first review can be read here. Shocking is an overused word, but the 185-page report truly was. Page after page listed more and more problems of nepotism, abuse of power, and grievances gone unresolved. Article continues below Fast forward a year and he is at Aberbargoed fire station. He is being asked about shift patterns and the layout of control rooms in a stuffy room full of local crews. As he approaches six months in office, he says he's met 97% of the 1200 and something staff that work for the service. John Finbar Monahan, Fin, is a former Air Vice-Marshal, former Royal Air Force officer, pilot, Red Arrow commander who has lived in India, New Zealand and Belgium for three years, he was also based with American troops in Stuttgart He started his schooling in Maentwrog, now Gwynedd, and studied for (one of) his degrees in France and fought in the Balkan wars, three tours of Afghanistan, he commanded operational unit in north Africa. For his Welsh mum, the biggest change was when he returned from his 24 weeks of officer training and could keep a clean bedroom. His last big role before leaving was as one of the directors of all of Nato's air assets from the Arctic to the Black Sea immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, running the aircraft of 32 nations creating a ring of steel around all the NATO nations of Europe, but also moving satellites and people on the ground. It wasn't his first involvement with Ukraine. In 2015, he set up what would later become the training programme for Ukrainian soldiers, which has gone on to train 50,000 people. In his words: "I'm used to being in dangerous environments". He holds masters degrees from both University of Nottingham and University of Madras, and awarded a Doctorate PhD from University of Birmingham on organisational culture. He is also a cancer survivor and has had two bone marrow transplants. In 2009 the back pain he was suffering was diagnosed as cancer, at the time he was embedded with the Indian military. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy were followed by a stem cell transplant, and he managed to return to the RAF. In 2015, a scan revealed minute traces that the cancer in his bone marrow. Eight months after a second transplant, he became commandant of the Central Flying School, a role which includes training, organising and flying with the world's most famous aerobatic team, the Red Arrows. He is a patron of two cancer groups and in his free time you'll find him sailing or maybe skiiing, possibly even in his campervan, and he's been to five Glastonbury Festivals. His current challenge is South Wales Fire and Rescue Service. He says there were a few things that interested him about the job when he read the advert. Firstly, he'd done some firefighting training in his military career, and loved it. And then there was some "pressure" from his wife, given his career had been internationally-based. Fin Mohanan in front of a Skyhawk whilst on exchange with the Royal New Zealand Air Force (Image: Fin Mohanan ) He was one of five shortlisted candidates, and had five days of exercises, panels, and interviews before being appointed. When asked in his interview what he thought of the review by Fenella Morris, he told the panel it was "shocking, absolutely shocking". "There are awful things that have taken place here and they clearly need to be sorted out. There is, in my view, a leadership problem and we need to sort that out," he told them. In these first six months since taking over, he has made a point of visiting station after station, crew after crew. His did his first station visits "straight away" and says he detected a feeling from the troops that "we say stuff but nothing gets done". He makes a point of telling staff he is an outsider. That's important because some of those people he has met are victims, and some are those did wrong, and the former in particular need to know there has been a change and the slow process of rebuilding trust can then begin. He starts by telling those people that "quite a lot" of the former leadership has gone. "I do still get people saying 'they were part of it' because they were somewhere in that leadership structure. Clearly you're not going to get rid of everyone and then start again so it's a massive challenge," he said. But one of his red lines - "If you slip, you will be sacked," he said. Fin Monahan speaking to fire crews at Aberbargoed fire station (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne ) "The egregious excursions from norms, behaviours and disciplinary standards are gone, okay?" he says, making precision eye contact across the lecture room table we sit at. Asked if that means he can say racism, homophobia and sexism are completely gone from the shop floor, he replies: "I think you could go to any organisation in Britain and you will find people who are sexist, racist and homophobic. "My line to people is 'if you are a sexist, racist, homophobe or you do not respect people, this is not the place for you' I'm hard on that. "I am very, very clear that you need to either very rapidly change the way you behave and the way you think, or there is not a place for you in this service," he said. Rebuilding the trust of those impacted directly, or even indirectly will take time, he says, but it is underway. He has set up a "CFO Confidential" email where people can send concerns anonymously, seen solely by him and his chief of staff, also brought in from outside the service. "We have no affiliation with anyone else and what that allows people to do is to send concerns in," he said. There have been 35 cases raised through that, some more serious than others, around 12 have, he says, been dealt with via a "really good resolution" and others continue to be looked at. "I go round, face to face, I look people in the eye and I say, 'some of you in this room, you won't admit it to other people in the room, but you might have concerns either about yourself or about other people'." He then tells them to go to him directly. "Having very clear standards is fundamentally important," he said. "If you wear the uniform then you are responsible for your behaviour, not just when you're at work, it's actually in everything you do. So when you go out to a pub, if you do something wrong, they will refer to you as a firefighter X so you let down the service . "There have been things outside the service that have actually impacted us as a service and there is no room for that. Actually we have higher standards and we need to maintain them. He will not shy away from sacking people if behaviour falls below his expectations. "We are quite prepared to go to that point for egregious departures from behavioural norms and standards, but that has to sit within the law and it has to be fair," he said. But he says he's had cases raised with him where the concern is "justice hasn't been done". In that situation, he will meet them and ask their expectations. "They get direct access to the chief, to someone from the outside who they can trust," he said. People had seen those who they had made complaints about back at work, with no visible sanction or explanation, that led to resentment. "Unless they see a reduction in rank, they might be there looking at someone, thinking, 'well, why are they still in the service? They have had a major impact on my life.'" Fin Monahan on duty during flooding during Storm Bert in November 2024 (Image: Mark Lewis ) They've also been visited by his former colleagues in the Red Arrows - something which may raise an eyebrow given the fact that in 2023, the world-renowned display team is in "special measures" after a report found predatory behaviour towards women was "widespread and normalised". An investigation described a "toxic culture" where women suffered sexual harassment and bullying. There was unwanted physical contact, sexual texts, invitations to engage in sexual activity, and women being seen as "property". Behaviour went unchallenged until, in 2021, three women went to the then-head of the RAF about complaints they had made which had not been addressed by their chain of command going back to 2017. "When, for example, the Red Arrows incident happened that was 'it's the Red Arrows how could it possibly...' "You have organisations there held in high regard, when they slip, it's worse from a reputational damage point of perspective," he said. "Look at what happened but look at how they responded. "There was unacceptable behaviour. Two pilots ejected - sacked - from the Red Arrows and from the military. I think there were another five people who had disciplinary cases against them, but really hard action and obvious action," he said. For the following two to three years, the "diamond nine" of the Red Arrows was seven, because they had lost members. "It was public penance. In the circles I move in, that was very public, there was a certain humility to it all." He said what was discussed on the visit was "how did that happen?" and what the root causes were. "I was the commander of the Red Arrows about three or four years before and it was an amazing place". I had people who are openly gay, we tried to do pride smoke. It was very, very proactive approach, a really comfortable nice place to be and we had we had a transgender woman on the squadron who just transitioned and the support there was was palpable and excellence being delivered all the time. "To see then the organisation slip, I was very clear 'you are to get on the front page of the newspaper not for the wrong reasons' He has now worked in three areas where there have been high-profile reports of discrimination, or sexually deviant behaviour. Asked why that happened in the military, the Red Arrows, and the fire service, whether it was power or ego, he said: "If you're in a public service you are held to a higher standard by people, you're very obvious and so if something bubbles up, then it's actually more important that it's dealt with than in other organisations." Fin Mohanan in front of a harrier jet during his RAF career (Image: Fin Mohanan ) At South Wales Fire and Rescue Service he saw a lack of leaders intervening to resolve issues. "There was no mediation package in the service at all. Leaders didn't want to get their finger in the mangle because they're not trained to do that. "So small things would explode into a grievance that then festers because there are so many grievances and they're sitting there waiting for something to happen. "The grievance system also, in order to protect certain people, will suspend them but then rumours go round what is actually a relatively small organisation." he said. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here He said he could clearly see staff knew how to do run incidents on the ground, but elsewhere leadership is lacking. He has set up a leadership academy, sending fire service staff to the Central Flying School to do the flying instructor's course, and brought in some of his former colleagues - recovering from their own scandal - to share their expertise. There are now trained mediators to deal with disputes and more being trained. Part of the reason for that lack of leadership, he said, is that it used to be that fire crew commanders, now managers, would be sent to the fire training college at Moreton-in-Marsh for a six week course but the college was privatised and focuses on practical, technical training, not the management courses. "The military has something called Mission Command that's common to 32 nations in NATO, it[s described this is the way to do leadership and it's delegation to the lowest level absolutely possible, empowerment to the lowest level possible, challenging up the chain of command to make sure that the commander makes informed decisions rather than makes their own decisions," he said. "When I say to a crew manager, so what training have had to deal with difficult situations. They say, none. They say they can do incident command. There it's pretty direct, it's noisy. You have to be directive and it's absolutely right that you are directive in that situation. But the people skills element isn't being taught now." He has a two-track approach, of short term changes, but building a proper strategy. In the management world that is usually talked about in terms of 10 to 15 years. In her report, Fenella Morris says that in their interviews with staff, there were numerous references to the 'chain of command'." But he told the panel that wasn't the problem in itself. A chain of command, in roles like the military or emergency services is imperative, but a lack of leadership is different and the two had been conflated. "When I came here, early on I was going around saying, 'right, what is your leadership philosophy or leadership style that you have in South Wales Fire and Rescue Service?' "No one could articulate it," he said. In his six months in the role, station visits to meet staff has been one of his priorities (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne ) He also saw an "us and them" attitude about operational staff and those at say headquarters. When that language is used in his sessions, he tells a story about how all but one of the service's payroll HR department was taken down by norovirus except one, who had just graduated. "That person worked day and night to do all of the pay run for the whole of the service. Nailed it and we all got paid," he said. "I say to them, 'Let's just think about that, that's us'. It's not those people down in headquarters," he said. He urged the crews there on this day to take up the option to go to the control room to see what they're doing. His aims are relatively simple. To keep people safe but secondly, he wants the organisation to get three "outstanding" ratings from His Majesty's Inspectorate and Fire Rescue Services. ] He accepts they have a long way to go for that especially given a recent review of services found there were "serious concerns" about whether the service can keep people safe. "What's my number one priority? It's actually protecting 1.6 million people. Day and night, 365 days of the year, our base operational excellence. That's my number one priority. "My number two priority is culture. My PhD is in organisational culture in uniform services so I've got all sorts of tools to bring to the party to make sure that our culture improves because unless your culture improves, you can never be excellent," he said. "On the culture side of things, looking at being a people organisation? That starts now, not in five years time. That starts immediately." His academic background and practical knowledge tells him a 10 to 15 year plan is reasonable. He's given himself eight but he doesn't however think he should be in role for the end of that. "I do not think that I should be here for eight years. It's too long. What I want to do is to make sure that we are building strategic leaders in the service. It's a bit shocking really, isn't it, there was no-one ready to step in and just take over." He believes it is making a difference already but they are burned by what has gone on, and coverage of the report, and the fear that one brush was used to tar all. "Those people that you just saw in that room downstairs, they are there ready to risk their lives and go out and protect people, save people. "We just had a a house fire about four or five weeks ago in which two of my firefighters, with breathing apparatus on, went in and fought a fire to get to the staircase, fought it on the staircase, cleared five rooms and dragged someone out and actually saved seven people in total. "It was a well-alight building, all three storeys, that is a serious fire. And they're doing it with utmost dedication. You will see people right the way across the organisation who will unflinchingly go and do this stuff. "As a military person has been shot at quite a bit and gone into combat out of the utmost admiration. There is a massive amount of physical courage that people exercise every day," he said. "Watching how they deal with the general public is phenomenal, very respectful, very compassionate, very professional and that is the vast majority of people in my organisation are, up there in the 98% of people. "Clearly, you will have some people who who are not not respectful, well, they don't have a place in my organisation and that's clear. But there's I will get a lot of people you just described. 'We're not all like this.' and absolute horror at the way they have been represented. "These are people risked their lives and then they see themselves on the news or in newspapers and painted as being terrible people when they know they're not. "They know that they're respectful and they're dealing with incredible things and at moments in their lives where they're at the lowest that they'll ever be, dealing with people who are, who are going to commit suicide or set fire to themselves or or doing bariatric rescues. The compassion is just phenomenal." But he accepts that to all those who say it wasn't them, they will have potentially witnessed inappropriate behaviour, or known it has gone on, not called it out or reported it. "That's why I'm talking about a leadership school and an induction process. If you haven't taught people a framework of behaviour, said 'These are our standards and this is what what what we espouse, if you don't have a leadership cadre and say 'these are the values that we have in this service' and include courage, which is physical courage of going into buildings but the harder version of courage, which is moral courage then..." That moral courage is, he accepts, hard but what has been lacking. "Just the other day I was on a fire station and someone used an inappropriate word and I was in that position where I was about to intervene., but the individual said, 'I shouldn't have said that' and then the crew intervened to say 'No, that was an inappropriate use of language'. "That was them coming together as a team. Rather than being sort of angry and 'you shouldn't have done that' and it going to grievance, it was the team all agreeing that wasn't an appropriate word to use. "I thought, I'm really proud of you, that you were able to step back from that'. Some of the discussions that we're having that are breaking through." Changing the whole organisation is a huge ask, but adversity and defying the odds is something else he knows about. "After I got diagnosed [with cancer], I did a PhD, I got my yacht master offshore qualification. I got back to flying, which no one thought I would, commanded operations again. "There is life beyond a diagnosis of an incurable cancer. I'm now in approaching year 17, when originally I was told probably a couple of years, maybe five, but, it wasn't great. I had really successful treatment and I am now surfing the wave of medical technology," he says, producing the lunchbox containing medication he takes daily. He was, he admits, into extremes before his diagnosis. "I'm a fighter pilot, I've flown low level, gone on combat operations. Joined the Air Force at 18. when I was at university. I'm really into the outdoors. I'm really into exploration. "I love travel, I love life. I've always thought the life wouldn't be long enough. I love everything. I'm actually a really happy person. "I love people, I really like people. I think most people are good and I also think that if people aren't good is a lot you can do to just shift mindsets and things. But I'm really determined, really determined. Some of that is instilled by being in the military. "I'm not afraid of death. I've confronted it a few times. but I'm not afraid of it at all. And I just love living. It's great. Life is great and if I can help people who are not in the fortunate position that I'm in, then I will. "I'm a patron of a small cancer charity and I'm also a patron of Military versus Cancer as well, that's this community of the military family so if anyone "I'm busy, but I was an air Vice-Marshal in the Air Force, that is a two star job is a very, very, very busy job. So I just keep going." When I ask if he is surprised that he has ended up here in south Wales, and not at Nato, he looks disbelieving I could consider them different. "It might look as though this is a very, very local job, it's not. "We're responsible for things that actually are global here. So climate change is just one. Terrorism, that's another one. We are responsible for critical national infrastructure of the United Kingdom. "When we start getting flooded we need to put high volume pumps in place. Otherwise, the critical national infrastructure breaks down. "If Britain gets attacked militarily, below the threshold of warfare, and we've just seen fire used as a tool of of sabotage with Keir Starmer [properties linked to the Prime Minister were allegedly set on fire]. "I need to make sure that my fire service is ready for a cyber attack because if adversaries choose to attack us below the threshold of actual war, that's how they're going to get us. "If you can take the whole fire service down, then people are not safe. It fits into the big global picture," he says. It is also political, in the broadest sense, dealing with funding, staffing, resilience, list goes on." With that, the interview he chose, off the cuff, to double in length, really has to end. But then he insists he wants to go again, reeling off the summary of the three pages of notes he just took at meeting with firefighters. Article continues below "Seven minutes later, he actually stops but just momentarily, and he continues talking until we reach the front door, when he absolutely does have to go.
The National
18 hours ago
- The National
There is a chasm at the heart of politics across the West
However, there is now a growing feeling that the very idea of the future – how we think, imagine and act upon it – is in deep crisis affecting how we reflect and behave in the present and see our capacity to bring about change. This essay will assert that this crisis of the future is not something far-off which can be parked until we have time to think about it. Rather it is a crisis in the present and of where we are – and where we are going. It matters and has consequences for all humanity and our planet. READ MORE: Angela Rayner called out over 'tone deaf' message about terminal illnesses It will examine the notion of past, lost and alternative futures, the rise and fall of 'the official future' and the danger of being mesmerised by the allure of 'a single story'. The idea of the future reveals much about the current times we live in. Hence, the future is often a projection of present times or trends, hopes and fears, and entails a temporal dimension whereby past, present and future are linked. Past Futures Still Present THE future has been with us for a long time. In the 18th century, a genre of utopian fiction arose that addressed epochal changes across the Western world such as the rise of industry, empire and a mercantile class. In the 19th century, collective movements and ideas explored the explosion of wealth, trade, technology and inequality, rooted in the socialist and collectivist traditions which posed the prospect of a new kind of society based on equality and co-operation. In the 20th century, scarred by two deadly World Wars, the march of modernity continued politically, culturally and through architecture, design and style. Fritz Lang's iconic 1927 film Metropolis captured a view of the future – of skyscrapers, densely populated cityscapes and flying cars – informed by his first experience of visiting Manhattan. Despite Lang's anti-Nazi beliefs, the film was loved by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, and by senior Nazis who saw their brutal dystopian plans foregrounded in its images. Post-1945, such cities as the new capital of Brasilia, Le Corbusier's designs, the Bruce Plan for Glasgow all represented peak modernity. There was a faith in an innate optimism, and that humanity and human relationships could be remade in a new ordered, clean environment. It turned out differently. The post-war rise in living standards and consumer revolution across the West revolutionised how we lived. One symbol was the explosion of car ownership and what it inferred about its owner. It was not just about getting from A to B but stood for an expansive vision of the future representing independence, choice and the safety of a privatised freedom where you could create your own journey through time and space. (Image: Archant) This transformation was marked by a technological revolution in the home and a shift in how we saw planet earth environmentally and from space. The Space Race between the US and USSR witnessed a plethora of films, drama and writing about science-fiction futures. These were often shaped by threats to earth and how humanity organised and came together to repel, or civilize, it – from Star Trek's first variant in the 1960s to a host of cheaper UK variants such as UFO and Space 1999. Cold War Scenarios and the Rise of 'the Official Future' THE Cold War era produced a huge military-industrial complex in the US and USSR. In the former, this saw the creation of the Rand Corporation which advised the US government on how to compete with the Soviets in nuclear weapons, technology and how to practice 'deterrence' and even the fallacy of how to 'win' a nuclear war. Rand brought together experts, academics and military planners who changed how futures thinking occurred. Their version of the future was influential, had access to the highest levels of government, and was a future about levels of classification and secrecy. In this it fuelled the idea of a secret future which government and authority are deliberately keeping from the public. Rand and other like-minded bodies contributed to the explosion of conspiracy theories which now litter public discourse from 9/11 to Covid. Rand introduced the world to a host of future thinking tools, namely 'the official future', scenario planning and a 'war room' as the centre of decision-making: mimicked by mainstream politics. Later Shell Corporation pioneered innovative scenario planning in the 1970s spurred on by that decade's oil price spike and global instability. The Year 2000 produced by the US Hudson Institute in 1967 attempted to provide a comprehensive survey of the next 33 years. It was an impressive collation of materials, trends and data, addressing increasingly complex nature and demands upon government, and expansion of education and skills at work. More revealing is what they missed – including the changing status of women in Western societies, the rise of identity politics, and the emergence of radical Islam. All of which underlined the blinkered nature of privileged 'policy wonk' intelligence in the US and West. This reinforces a wider truth about such 'official future' thinking, that in their top-down way of analysing the world they have built-in biases. The values inherent within them are often unstated or assumed without scrutiny. The Year 2000 found the Western economic model so universal in its merits that it could not believe it would not be irresistible and spread across the globe. The Power of Storytelling ALTERNATIVE ways to imagine the future are available, and one obvious way is through the power of human creativity, imagination and story. Studies about the importance of story and storytelling abound but one of the most ambitious in recent decades has been The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker. Booker states there are a finite number of archetypical stories – an argument as old as humanity. He poses that a common theme informing many of them is the search for light and the allure of the dark and the continual battle between the two: an observation he uses to illuminate our ongoing fascination with Nazis in fiction and epic narrative such as Star Wars. A corollary of this is put by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche who in a 2009 TED talk identified 'the danger of a single story'. She was addressing how Western opinion has traditionally viewed Africa and Africans as 'a basket case', 'hopeless' and 'helpless', and how these external caricatures have come to be internalised by Africans themselves contributing to these descriptions taking even more of a hold. Adiche posed that rejecting the constraints of 'a single story', whether it concerns Africans or any other group, is a kind of release and liberation. She argues that it aids people to overthrow external attempts to disempower them and helps them make their own story and future by empowering them to tell a more nuanced account of their lives. These insights informed two futures projects, Scotland 2020 and Glasgow 2020, undertaken with the UK think tank Demos which I led. The Scotland 2020 project came first and entailed both scenario exercises and generated a set of stories, along with a series of policy recommendations. The more wide-ranging project Glasgow 2020 followed and deliberately did not commission scenarios (there already being an entire industry of such production in various city agencies). It concentrated on the development of stories by the people of Glasgow via events across the city where they created characters, plot lines, relationships, choices and values of its citizens in that future. The story events represented a representative cross-section of the city, over 5000 people, and involved immersive, deliberative conversations. Humans have an innate ability to talk about the future if they feel they have agency, are respected, trust processes and know that any real future involves difficult choices and trade-offs. Then as now, the 'official future' of the city was laid out in glossy documents. This 'official future' was nearly always sectoral in the account it told whether about tourism, shopping, culture, economic development. For all the talk of joined-up governance, it was anything but. The stories of the future that people told were not sectional. Instead, they were cross-cutting, value-based and centred on the philosophies in the most general sense people wanted government and public bodies to champion. People did not address narrow areas such as public health or crime levels; rather they addressed how people related to each other and yearned for official bodies that spoke the same language as them. Many suspected when they spoke about the values of government that, for all the soft ways in which officialdom tried to present things, they were far removed from the values they wanted them to champion. They felt there was a democratic deceit at the heart of how government was conducted. Tomorrow cannot just be a bigger version of Today PRESENT in all these discussions was the spectre of 'the official future' – an account with an instrumental view of people, progress and the future which reinforces a prevailing sense of powerlessness. Core to this view of the future is something we came to call 'linear optimism' – a phrase that not one single person verbalised throughout the project but which they often described. Linear optimism embodies the notion that the future should be, and will be, a better, bigger version of the present. In this it has, as one of its central conceits, a denial of future choice. It says underneath its fake optimistic gloss that all of us outwith government, public bodies and corporates should not bother considering the future because it has already been decided by bodies more important and knowledgeable than ourselves. It says the future is closed and not open for discussion. Critically for its adherents it has increasingly failed to deliver on its central promise: economic growth, greater prosperity and wider opportunities. The mantra of the globalisers and their vision of a free trade world driven by market forces became the dominant global order after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet for all its self-assuredness it has increasingly failed to deliver the goods with flatlining living standards across the West since the banking crash, an unsustainable Chinese economic model driven by debt and a trade deficit with the US, global instability, and the West's neverending wars in the Middle East (which globalisation apologists such as Thomas Friedman said would not happen in a world of interconnected trade). The New York University-based Centre for Artistic Activism, led by Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, utilises similar creative tools as a different way of advancing social change and the future across the world. They make the case that too much radical politics do not contain joy, fun or irreverence, and instead come over as a chore and weight on people's shoulders, leaving people feeling exhausted and lectured. In their opinion, much radical protest is about going through the motions and not looking at the world and gains that people want to make and then thinking about what this would change – and seeing if that change can be advanced and nurtured. The two Steves put creative imaginations at the core of their work. Their residential in the run-up to 2014 in Newbattle College attracted an amazing array of participants of all ages and backgrounds, of which one said, 'I have been coming to political events since 1961 and this was the most inspiring set of discussions I have ever experienced'. A major take away from their work is the importance of art, specifically that 'art needs activism and activism needs art.' Lost Futures and Post-Capitalism THE future of the future needs to address what Mark Fisher described as 'lost futures', drawing on the concept of Jacques Derrida's hauntology. This is, in Fisher's words, 'a society haunted by the remnants of these lost futures, leading to a cultural landscape where nostalgia and revivalism prevail': all contributing to an absence of alternative futures in the present. These 'lost futures' are felt profoundly, producing a truncated, predictable menu of stale choices curtailed by 'the official future.' The radical science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin added to this the observation, asking whether we can dare to have the capacity to imagine a post-capitalist world and future? Can we outline, beyond such works as Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Iain M Banks Culture series and the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, a real, viable alternative idea of the future? Jonathan White's recent book In The Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea poses that the notion of the future is about the present and the notion of temporal space, language and capacity: an intelligence which connects past, present and future, and which kicks against the short-termism of party politics today. The space to create that set of connections needs to be made in a world driven by short attention spans, by instant gratification and simple solutions, and by the failure of mainstream politics to treat voters as adults who can make difficult choices. One view of the future increasingly influential is put forward by Silicon Valley tech bros. They present a view of capitalism, transgressing being human and planet earth which takes a transformative view of AI, transhumanism and even life beyond the limits of our planet. This is a power elite who have been fawned and told that they are unique and that their every desire should be indulged, with their private fantasies projected onto a version of the future which aligns with their capitalist interests. The absence of futures thinking and literacy in present-day Scotland can be seen in political debate and independence. In office, the SNP have said implicitly don't worry about the future; this is intertwined with independence and any other major choices can be decided the other side of statehood. This is another example of a closed future saying this subject is not up for discussion. This is a major missing dimension of Scottish political debate and a subject I will explore in a follow-up essay. One issue which needs addressing is agency. The hollowing out and exhaustion of mainstream politics and political parties across the West aids the crisis of the future. This can be seen in the collusion of the traditional Westminster parties in clinging to the broken UK economic and social model and in an inability to map out an alternative terrain on political economy, capitalism and repairing the social contract between government and people. The geo-political global environment raises major questions not just for politics but the idea of the future. In the immediate post-war era, in the 1950s and 1960s, America represented the future with its open expansiveness, its growing economy, cultural clout and military power – all offering an intoxicating mix of 'the American dream' of freedom and opportunity. Trumpian America has dealt a deathblow to that version of the US. There can be no going back to how things were before, America is no longer watching the back of Europe and is no longer the shining idea and future. America has become another 'lost future'. Related to this is the prevalent feeling that we are living in 'end times' – whether that is imminent environmental collapse or the march of technology and AI. This contributes to a diminishing of timescales and temporal space with numerous elections presented as 'the last chance' to save democracy or something else precious. That raises the stakes in numerous contests and the benefit and loss between winning and not winning as seen in the recent American and Brazilian Presidential elections. The same dynamic can be identified in COP summits and the protests of Extinction Rebellion and from a very different perspective American survivalists. COP summits regularly present humanity as close to 'the midnight hour' to try to motivate the delegations to come to global agreement. But the cumulative effect is an arms race of language. The Closed Future has to be defeated THE future cannot be closed. It cannot be left to experts, governments or corporates. The crisis of the future is a major phenomenon in an age of change, disruption and shocks, and cannot go unexplored and unchallenged. If it were, major and negative consequences flow for politics, humanity and the planet. The open future is the opposite of the closed future. It is a rejection of 'the end of history.' It is not some Blair-Clinton 'third way' narrative and hangover from the era of peak globalisation. Rather it is about prising open the debate on our collective future. Rejecting the end of the future. Debate across the West cannot be reduced to a choice between a failed neoliberalism and bust economics; a watered-down social democracy which has many historic achievements but is now exhausted and hollowed out and a populism presenting itself as the main challengers to the status quo. In such circumstances the forces of the populist right will have many advantages pretending to be insurgents. All the above share common ground on economics, the broken social contract, and the way they regard most people as incapable of creating and deciding their collective future with others. They believe the future has been determined. Mainstream politics are part of a single problematic story which stresses that there is no alternative. Breaking out of that single story that limits, diminishes and depowers us would be a kind of freedom and liberation. But it will require developing visions of different futures, not accepting that the future is over and closed, and finding new forms of political expression beyond the current inadequate forms of party and democracy. Those different versions of the future and different ideas of society, the world and our planet, are already here. They can be found in fiction, arts and culture, and innovators and imagineers working beyond the mainstream. But 'the official story' wants to hold on, despite its failures, and tell us the lie that there is only one single story – that 'There is No Alternative' to the present state. That deception and the dehumanising, diminishing, reactionary values it represents must be defeated by a vision of the future which tells a very different, more hopeful story of, for – and by – all of us. We can see all around us dissatisfaction, anger and rage at the status quo and 'the official future' from our communities, across Scotland and the UK, to globally. People know the existing domestic and global order is rotten and indefensible. That feeling and resistance has to be used to create the resources and ideas for that alternative future.
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Scottish Sun
All four pilots suspended after runway collision which saw Boeing slice through tail fin of parked Airbus
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) ALL four pilots involved in a horrifying runway plane collision which saw one jet slice through another's tail fin have been suspended. Harrowing footage showed a Boeing shred through a stationary Airbus while on the tarmac - just moments before it was set to take off. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 A plane sliced through another one's wing on a runway 3 Debris scattered across the tarmac during the horror collision 3 Nearly 400 passengers disembarked both flights Hundreds were left stranded after the shocking accident which unfolded in front of terrified passengers who watched debris scatter across the runway. The two Vietnam Airlines aircraft smashed into each other at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam on June 27 - with both aircraft carrying a total of 386 passengers. The Ho Chi Minh City-bound Boeing 787 was taxiing for take-off when it struck an Airbus A321, parked on the tarmac, waiting to head to Dien Bien. Vietnam Airlines has now suspended the four pilots involved - two from each jet. Meanwhile, investigators are still probing the exact cause of the crash. Initial findings have suggested human error, due to the fact the Airbus was not parked correctly on the runway at the time of the smash. The dramatic collision took place at the intersection of taxiways S and S3, under clear weather conditions. In the shocking footage, a blue Airbus can be seen taxi-ing just moments before take-off. But seconds later, another jet's right wing rips through the rear section of the stationary aircraft - almost like butter. Frightened passengers watched in disbelief as they saw parts of the plane's tail stabilizer shoot off onto the floor. Ex-French army general and couple die in horror crash as plane smashes into residential area minutes after takeoff Both planes immediately disembarked hundreds of panicked flyers after the accident. And they were given replacement flights to board shortly after. An independent team hired by the airline are investigating the crash, alongside the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam. The terrifying footage comes after a recent string of horror aviation accidents. Heartstopping footage showed the moment an American Airlines flight saw smoke and sparks flying from the plane's engine. Harrowing video of the incident was shared on social media, showing puffs of smoke and orange sparks coming from the plane's engine. And last week, a Ryanair flight crashed into a barrier and suffered a badly smashed wing after landing at a Greek airport. The Boeing 737 suffered 'severe turbulence' during the flight, before those onboard heard a huge bang as the aircraft landed and collided with a barrier.
