Potter-lust shows no sign of abating it seems. In my local bookshop the other day I noticed teetering piles of Potters going at full price. Surely to goodness, then, life for author J.K.Rowling must be sweet. Not only is her work loved and admired by millions, but royalties (also in the order of millions) come streaming back to her.

Still, this hasn’t stopped Rowling from taking out a copyright plaint against Stephen Vander Ark in a New York court.

Vander Ark, a former school librarian, has run a Harry Potter website for several years which features an HP lexicon. In the complex world of Potter this has provided the useful service of identifying bizarre characters, fantastic species, and arcane locations. Rowling herself is on record as having used it in her writing. Now, though, Vander Ark has created a print version, released through the small publisher RDR Books. Rowling doesn’t like it and in conjunction with Warner Bros, the studio behind the films of the books, she is suing writer and publisher of the lexicon on the grounds of breach of copyright.

Why does this leave such a bad taste in the mouth? After all, it seems clear enough that Vander Ark has benefited from someone else’s creativity. As Rowling herself put it earlier in the week, the lexicon represents nothing less than the ‘wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work’. And it isn’t just a question of money. The Harry Potter characters, we’re given to understand, are ‘dear as my children’. What Rowling offers here is the classic double rationale for copyright: economic ownership on the one hand, and ‘moral rights’ of the author over her output on the other. As it happens I’m unconvinced by either of these arguments, and remain a strong sceptic about the justification or need for copyright.

Still, whether or not you’re persuaded by full-throated copyright scepticism, certain aspects of the present case surely have worrying implications. Most importantly, we should note that Vander Ark and his publisher are defending themselves on the grounds of ‘fair use’. This is a US term, but a similar provision of ‘fair dealing’ exists in British law, and indeed in most legal systems the world over.

Quite simply, fair use covers all those forms of use of a copyrighted work where the public good has clear priority over the claims of the copyright owner for remuneration and control. Quotation for the purposes of criticism is one of the most obvious examples. Up to a certain limit you can quote what you like without referring to the owner of the copyright in the work from which you’re quoting. Just as well if you’re in my trade – academics in the arts and social sciences would be unable to publish without rights of fair use.

But the same principle must apply for other writers too, in this case someone writing a reference work for a fictional oeuvre. What Vander Ark is doing in his lexicon is nothing less than providing criticism and support in respect of Rowling’s work. This isn’t at all a matter of copying her creations. Rather Vander Ark is discussing them, and helping her readers to boot. Don’t get me wrong. I can’t stand Harry Potter. But I’ll defend to the death the right of anyone to write about the brat.

About the author

Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at The Open University. His research interests are in creativity, copyright, and ethnicity - mainly through music - and his new book, Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? is just out.

Joan died last week in a Midlands hospital. She was 83. Joan was one of those old fashioned ladies who model their lives on the better natures of the late Queen Mother. However, unlike the Queen Mother towards the end of her life, the care and health authorities failed her. She had a most painful and undignified conclusion.

According to the final report from the UK Inquiry into Mental Health and WellBeing in Later Life, a mental health pandemic and an inadequate Government response mean that over 3.5 million older people who experience mental health problems do not have satisfactory services and support. Joan was one of more recent victims.

She had been suffering from vascular dementia. For the past 3 years, since the death of her husband of 61 years, the family had been able to look after her with the care of an agency. Joan benefitted from pleasant stays at the county respite centre where she became known as ‘the Scrabble Queen’ because of her intelligence and prowess at word games. But, as her behaviour deteriorated, she was forced to leave the safe environs of the respite centre, and under the threat of being sectioned, was admitted to a special geriatric mental health unit in the middle of February.

I visited her there daily for the last 50 days of her life. This was an appalling facility. It was a living testimony to the complacent and systematic disregard by a succession of governments towards those elderly vulnerable people in England who suffer from mental ill health. Stigmatised and starved of resource, the care for such people is in crisis. There is a huge chasm in care, and systematic failures, many of them avoidable, count against the elderly (I have not even mentioned the cruel vagaries of the postcode lottery of provision).

The elderly geriatric mental health facility where Joan spent 42 days of her life resembled a prison. The main door had two double locks. All the doors in the facility were constantly being locked and unlocked. All the games and stimuli to stimulate the patients were kept under lock and key. It resembled a prison. The 8 patients displayed a range of mental ill health symptoms. Some had been there for months. One spent every 20 seconds screaming blasphemies with the other patients sitting around in low chairs, too low most patients struggled to climb out of them. The patients were only there because no where else would have them, or, they had been abandoned by their families, or all the care and nursing homes were full. One kept trying to break out using her Zimmer frame as a battering ram.

Joan was profoundly deaf and suffered from arthritis. She walked with a stick. On many occasions she was left isolated and alone, her hearing aids locked away in the office, or the shared bedroom area, together with her stick. Gradually, she deteriorated. She developed skin tissue sores on her posterior and back. She became less co-operative, and refused some of the dreadful meals, and more critically, her medication.

For weeks, the family tried hard to find a nursing home. All were full. Eventually the family did find a wonderful nursing home which would take Joan and she passed the assessment in the Ward on, irony of ironies, the day before the fall which precipitated her premature death. She died 13 days after the fall in the orthopaedic ward of the local General Hospital.

Her neck was broken in two places in that fall, on the 25^th March. Later that day she was sent in a taxi to the nearby General Hospital but returned to the geriatric ward and given aspirin. No X ray was taken. No scan. Over a week elapsed during which the family implored the staff to have Joan thoroughly examined. Two other doctors visited the ward and checked Joan but neither thought there was anything ‘sinister’ wrong.

On the 1^st April she was finally taken in agony, and in another taxi, back to the General Hospital. Her pain was now unbearable. There, a doctor immediately diagnosed a critical cervical spinal injury. Joan was admitted but she slipped away, under morphine, on the 7^th April.

One of the causes of death was the injury to her spine, sustained under the care of the NHS. Later on the 7^th we visited the geriatric ward where Joan sustained the fall. On being told the news staff said nothing, and stood in shock. My partner told them they should take better care of the remaining patients than they did her mother. Some of the patients applauded as she left the ward, which was locked swiftly behind her as she flew the cuckoo’s nest.

The Age Concern report revealed that older people with mental health services are often ignored and receive little support services. It found a poor level of service for people growing older with longstanding mental health problems. Women over 75 are more likely to take their own lives compared to any other age groups, and men over 75 have the second highest suicide rates of all men in the UK.

Dr June Crown, Chairman of the Inquiry, said: ‘Mental health problems in later life are not an inevitable part of ageing. They are often preventable and treatable, and action to improve the lives of older people who experience mental health difficulties is long overdue. Current services for older people with mental health problems are inadequate in range, in quantity and in quality.

‘We have no excuse for inaction, and no time to waste. We need a radical shift to improve services and support for older people with mental health problems. At a time when the Government is aiming to make the most of older people’s contributions, the neglect of older people’s mental health needs represents a waste of human potential that we simply cannot afford.’

With the rising numbers of older people, the situation is set to deteriorate. Without a major change in policy and practice, there will be nearly 1 million with dementia by 2021, and 5 million with depression and 1.7 million with dementia by 2051 – around twice the current numbers.

The report found that older peoples’ mental health issues remain poorly understood, highly stigmatised and are not given the priority necessary in policy, practice and research – despite official reports since at least 2000 highlighting discrimination and calling for action. Two thirds of older people with depression never even discuss it with their GPs, and of the third that do discuss it, only half are diagnosed and treated. This means of those with depression only 15 per cent or one in seven are diagnosed and receiving any kind of treatment.

Even when they are diagnosed, older people are less likely to be offered treatment and the Inquiry heard of GPs who have called depression a symptom of growing older. Joan had such a GP. You will know of others. In 2006, a review of progress against the Government’s National Service Framework for Older people said that since 2001 explicit age discrimination in mental health had not declined.

To date, the Department of Health framework for mental health services has focused only on people up to 65. People over 65 receive different, lower cost and inferior services to younger people – even if they have same condition. Many find they are moved into ‘older people’s services’, regardless of the suitability of these services, just because of their birth date.

The Inquiry’s findings are unequivocal: years of ignorance, discrimination and underfunding must be overturned. There are thousands of vulnerable people like Joan in the system, and tens of thousands of more Joans yet to enter it.

Joan’s family are to pursue a negligent claim against the healthcare trust. Leaving this world with dignity is a right any civilised society should bestow on all its inhabitants. We failed Joan. I hope she might be the last, but I doubt it.

The UK Inquiry into Mental Health and WellBeing in Later Life began in late 2003 out of concern about the neglect of older people’s mental health in policy, practice and research. It is an independent inquiry supported by Age Concern.

About the author

Dick Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

On April 10 1949 the Cambridge–trained Indian palaeobotanist Birbal Sahni died after a massive heart attack. His death at the early age of 57 came only days after the then Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had laid the foundation stone of what was later to become known as the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany. Each year, on the anniversary of Birbal Sahni’s death, wreaths are laid at the spot in the grounds of the Institute where he was cremated in accordance with Hindu custom. This year I was privileged to take part in this event that was preceded by an ancient ceremony of prayers and purification.

I did not know quite what to expect when I arrived in the main entrance foyer of the Institute because laid out on the floor beneath the soaring curved staircase were mattresses covered in white sheets surrounding a temporary hearth that had been constructed the previous day. Sitting on the sheets, cross-legged were the staff of BSIP and directly next to the hearth were the BSIP Director, his wife, and a Brahmin priest.

The ceremony began with the priest chanting ancient shlokas, rhythmic poetic prayers, in Vedic Sanskrit.  Sanskrit is the oldest continuously spoken language in the world and as early as 1500 BC its structure, as preserved in the oldest Hindu texts known as the Vedas, is so refined that it clearly has a common older source. Sanskrit is the basis of religious texts in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. It is the oldest known member of the Indo-European family of languages.

As the prayers proceeded and incense sticks were ignited, offerings of rose petals, ghee, sugar solution, and rice were prepared. Then small dry branches of mango wood were arranged within the hearth and set alight. As the smoke rose throughout the building and the prayers continued, we all added the offerings of herbs and other aromatic elements to the fire. I have no knowledge of Sanskrit but I can say that the rhythmic sounds of it expertly spoken were incredibly soothing.  

Sanskrit rythmic poetic prayers and perfumed smoke permeate the BSIP building.

The prayers were ones for the general well-being, not only of the staff and the Institute, but for all humankind and our shared planet. The concept of such a ceremony is one of purification. There are sixteen such ceremonies in the life of a Hindu marking critical stages in the passage through life. What I was witnessing is the last in this succession. The sounds of the prayers and aroma of the perfumed smoke carried to all parts of the building cleansing and purifying. It was a ceremony that brought everyone together in a common purpose.

The ceremony concluded with the priest tying a length of hand-spun thread, dyed yellow with turmeric and red with turmeric mixed with lime, around our wrists, right hand wrists for the men and left hand wrists for the women. This was a symbol of our common purpose and a reminder of what we had participated in. In the past few days as I have been wearing mine, several people not connected with BSIP have asked how I came to have such a symbol. I have been pleased to explain.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

This morning, as I flipped through the sixty plus television channels available in Lucknow, I came across a news item reporting the damage to crops here in India being wrought by “unusual” weather. The problem is not just that this year happens to have a strong “La Nina” current in the Pacific and that is affecting weather globally, but that this year’s problems are part of a pattern that has developed over recent years.

The dry season in India normally runs from about September to around July. The exact duration depends on the year, and the timing of the beginning and end varies across the country. In the past few years heavy rainstorms have punctuated the dry season causing devastation to crops and flooding. In the last few days we have had several such storms here in Lucknow, but a few weeks ago the most severely devastated area was Kerala, south India, where some nine people reportedly perished.

In Kerala the state government was forced to compensate farmers for the loss of their crops to the tune of millions of rupees. This wet spell also impacted the wildlife in the region. Within a week of the storms I visited Kerala to sample the forests there as part of the CLAMP development research. While in the extensive natural forests that make up the  the Periyar Tiger Reserve I noticed that, as I walked, the forest floor around me appeared to ripple as if it were water.

Closer inspection revealed that the movement was due to thousands of small frogs undergoing a migration from the river where they spent their tadpole stage to higher land. Normally this migration occurs at the beginning of the monsoon season and saves the frogs from being washed away as the rivers rise. In the constant wetness of the monsoon season the frogs are able to survive away from the rivers.

Whole populations of migrating frogs face death due to unseasonal rains.

Now however the migrating frogs are faced with mass mortality because the monsoon has not started and their premature migration is taking them to dry uplands where the lack of water will kill them.

In contrast, too much water is a killer elsewhere. In Bihar state, northeastern India, rapid fluctuations in the flow of the river Ganges has led to flooding and the death of many people who farm the floodplain. These violent fluctuations have been attributed to loss of the snow pack and glaciers in the Himalayas and Tibet, coupled with heavy downpours on the Gangetic plains. For the poor, malnutrition and disease follow loss of crops

As I have said before in these blogs, increased dry season precipitation and more erratic monsoon rains are exactly what we could expect from a warming on the Tibetan Plateau. It is likely that the future will bring more of the same weather-related problems.

If the “La Nina” event in the Pacific is linked to inconvenient spring weather in the UK and elsewhere, India faces more serious problems. Climate change is already devastating what is often marginal farming activity, but farming that is crucial to India’s ability to adequately feed its 1 billion (and rising) population.

Here there are demonstrations against food price inflation. This inflation is stoked by global demand for basic grain stocks:  a demand amplified by the use of crops, or farmland they are grown, on for biofuel production. I fear that this is only the beginning of global unrest resulting from climate change. India is taking the issue of climate change and all its consequences seriously, and has just announced the establishment of a national climate change centre in Chennai (Madras) so that it can prepare for an uncertain future.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

Some 50 metres from my hotel with its blue-tinted mirrored solar protection glass is a smart two storied detached house surrounded by a garden with a lawn, trees, tomato plants and ornamental bushes. This is the sort of home that in the UK would easily cost upwards of £500,000. The gated driveway protects the garden from the cows that, as with anywhere in India, mingle with the traffic. However, unlike most cities and towns in India the tarmac street outside is free of litter - no plastic, no discarded food waste rotting in the sun.

I am in Kerala, a rich state in the southwestern edge of India. Kerala’s wealth is centuries old and based on the spice trade. Here black pepper, cardamom, tapioca, cashews, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, coffee, cocoa and tea are produced in abundance alongside bananas and coconuts. People here eat well and, unlike many parts of India, they have fish and meat in their diets.

Alongside this affluence Kerala is a “green” state. Road signs urge care for the environment, protection for wildlife and celebrate organic produce. There is legislation to restrict the use of plastic and everywhere bags made from hessian or coconut fibre are available. This is a state where “low tech” solutions are a matter of lifestyle choice and not necessity.

A prime example of this is the biogas plant in the garden of the house near the hotel. The unit costs a total (parts and labour) of around 6000 rupees (£75) and by eliminating the need for bottled gas derived from fossil fuel pays for itself in just over two years. Kitchen waste is fed in at one end along with waste “grey” water from washing food, clothes, etc.. Liquid fertiliser used for the garden is produced at the other end. A large reservoir floating over the digestion tank collects the methane produced as the organic material is “eaten’ by methane-producing bacteria.


A domestic biogas plant viewed from the waste entry point, showing the reservoir and gas pipe.

This reservoir is weighted down with a small concrete block to produce the pressure that drives the gas through a flexible hose to the kitchen. There is no unpleasant smell either in the garden or the kitchen. The methane, which is a greenhouse gas some 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide and which would otherwise vent to the atmosphere, burns with a pale blue smoke-free flame in a conventional stove and produces carbon dioxide and water vapour free of toxins.

Clearly everybody wins with this system. Organic waste is disposed of without littering the streets or requiring collection, and the garden is fertilised leading to more vigorous plant growth and carbon dioxide capture. The lack of rubbish leads to low rodent and other pest populations. There are no transport costs, carbon or otherwise, in delivering the gas or removing the waste, and above all the energy is free. No wonder that most houses in Kerala have such a system, a system encouraged by the State Government. Perhaps if we in the so-called developed world were to follow India in this instance we too would be financially and environmentally better off.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

In the world of art and cultural production the idea of craft retains a low status. Indeed, specific skilled crafts such as pottery, needlework, woodworking, jewellery-making and so on have long been contrasted unfavourably with fine art but also with conceptual art - the art of the radical avant-garde. Indeed, craft has long been seen as functional and utilitarian - a kind of 'wholemeal' art; i.e. something that is admirable and good for you - but not especially exciting.

The craft historian Peter Dormer argued that this attitude stemmed from the Modernist separation of 'having ideas' from 'making objects'. So, for example, after 1917, once Marcel Duchamp has exhibited his selected 'readymades' (urinals, bottle-racks, bicycle wheels and the like) he created the possibility of art without craft. It then became common to think that using skills to make things somehow detracted from the purity of 'higher' conceptual thought. So in modern societies, while the term 'artist' still carries some glimmering traces of romance, glamour and intellectual superiority, to declare that you are a 'craftsman' (or craftswoman) conjures up some distinctly unglamorous images of dusty workshops, parochialism and practicality – not to mention chunky knitwear and country fairs.

But craft is not just about 'making objects'. It is also concerned with a particular philosophical approach embodied and expressed in one's work - any kind of work, not just pottery, basket-making and the like. Paramount here is the idea that 'craft work' should be based on the possession of distinctive learned skills, rooted in a respect for tradition, and operate through a creative convergence (rather than a separation) of mind and body. This is argued in Richard Sennett's recent (and highly readable) book The Craftsman where he also argues that craft focuses on 'objective standards' on 'good work for its own sake' and is always 'quality-driven'. Craft-based work is also locally controllable in terms of pace and quality, and so represents what sociologists often term 'non-alienated labour'.

But while craft has many recognised virtues, being 'radical' isn't usually one of them. Indeed we only think of art as being a threat to the 'establishment' because it is based on extrovert creativity, self-expressivity and rule-breaking – whereas craft is seen as more introvert, obedient and passive. But maybe there has been a reversal of these critical positions.

Photograph taken by gruntzooki. Used under Creative Commons license.

Firstly, as many critics are now arguing, the world of work has itself become more 'art-like' in so far as it is more premised on rule-breaking, visionary intuition, self-expression and creativity. Furthermore, the individualization of work, realised in the promotion of personalized contracts, performances, tests and rewards, the promotion of 'portfolio-working', the ethic of self-responsibility and so on is designed to appeal (like art) to our desires for self-evaluation and individual expression. If this is the case then the 'radical' credentials of art looks a lot less secure – art work becomes indistinguishable from any other kind of work – its values seamlessly absorbed into the mainstream.

Secondly, while the market now appears happy to accept any kind of art production that is premised on a commitment to radicalism, rule-breaking and newness (think of 1960s Situationism, Sex Pistols, culture-jamming, Damien Hirst, Banksy) it is maybe less happy to tolerate a commitment to craft. Which is not to say that craft is not commodified, or that craft objects are not sold, or that high craftsmanship does not sell in elite markets, but rather to suggest that when craft is considered as a political value, as a critical approach to the world, it can exert significant friction and drag on market relations. Craft work of this nature is slow, methodical and historically-orientated. It is a world of quality-driven and communitarian production (think of the LINUX system, the Fence Collective or the Ultimate Holding Company). It appears to wrinkle its brow at the needy demands of fast capitalism and does not present itself for easy commodification – it is stubborn, phlegmatic and inward-looking. It also appears to contradict the incessant demands of the 'new' economy for upbeat 'creative individualism' – valuing anonymity and obedience, disavowing celebrity, and privileging versioning over originality.

In 1892 in The Claims of Decorative Art, Walter Crane called craft 'a protest against the domination of our modern commercial and industrial system of production for profit' – could it still be so? At a time when appeals to radical aspects of art appear ambiguous and uncertain, could a revived politics of craft provide a counterweight to some of the instrumentalizing and desocializing demands of the new economy?

About the author

Mark Banks is Reader in Sociology at the Open University. His research interests include the cultural and creative industries, popular culture, cities and urban space.