← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The Robots Come Out at Night
00:27:46
Robots are doing the cleaning up in an old people's home in Denmark. Are they popular?...
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Kate Adie
This is a download from the BBC. It's the latest edition of From Our
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Anna Verstergaard
Own Correspondent, broadcast on Radio 4, and
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Kate Adie
it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Hello. Today, every mother's Nightmare American children are told what to do if a gunman opens fire in their school. A princess appears in court. The Spanish royals wonder if they can come back after an annus horribilis. We're in China learning that Jewish and Confucian culture have much in common. And in Denmark, where the robots have arrived at an old people. But don't worry, they are only allowed out at night. The mass murder which took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut two years ago may not have resulted in tougher gun controls, but it did lead to security being stepped up in schools across the United States. Millions of dollars have been spent on metal detectors, surveillance cameras, fences and gates. Thousands of teachers and resource officers have received special training in protecting schools from violence and intruders. But still the shootings happen. Last year there were more than 25 separate incidents in which students were left dead or injured on two occasions in the last three months alone. Those pointing the guns were boys aged just 12. So safety drills are now almost as common in American schools as fire drills, as Laura Trevelyan, herself a parent in New York City, has been finding out.
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Laura Trevelyan
My 7 year old is a chatterbox, and as the youngest of three boys, he's always keen to be heard. Little in his life goes unreported. Every day has a banner headline. So he couldn't wait to tell me about the safety drill he and his classmates had practised that morning. It's in case someone has a bad day, ben announced with gravity. We huddle with our teachers and keep quiet until the danger outside has gone away, he said matter of factly. There's no danger inside, he explained for emphasis, gazing intently at me with his big blue eyes. I smiled encouragingly while wincing inwardly and rapidly changed the subject. The thought of my children learning how to behave in case there's a gunman on the rampage is deeply unsettling. But for schools across America, the lockdown drill has become a grim necessity. Although statistically the number of school shootings in the US has remained steady since the mid-1990s, they are a disturbing reality of American life. Since September, There have been 11 school shootings, and that doesn't even include shootings on college campuses. In Nevada and New Mexico, 12 year olds have threatened their classmates with guns. In Nevada, the maths teacher who confronted the middle school shooter last November was himself shot dead. The most chilling school shooting of all was just before Christmas in 2012. 21st grade students at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, aged just six and seven, were killed by Adam Lanza, who shot his mother and six adults at the school before taking his own life. The scale of this shooting was so horrifying and the age of the children so heartbreakingly young, that it led to a push for national gun control, which ultimately failed to get through the US Congress. I reported on the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, one of the more painful assignments of my career. Christmas trees for the 20 dead children lined the street by the school. Ornaments decorated by friends and family described 6 and 7 year olds who loved football, horses and Santa Claus. The temporary morgue parked near the scene of the shootings was a particularly upsetting sight. The thought of the dead children inside the same age as my youngest was hard to contemplate. It was impossible not to wonder how I would cope if it was my child inside that morgue. Since Newtown, many schools have adopted safety plans. Metal detectors, surveillance cameras and fences have become a fact of life. All three of my children now practice safety drills, and the school is careful to let parents know in advance in case the topic comes up at home. One parent, echoing my own feelings, told me that it breaks her heart to have her boisterous, talkative five year old learning to hide from what could be a gunman. Another mother questioned the need for this kind of drill, regarding it as an overreaction to an event that's still very rare. We all wonder what impact this has on our children and if it makes them fearful. But most parents see the drills as a necessary feature of school, which could save lives. Meanwhile, efforts to bring about national gun control have stalled. The State of the Union address in January. President Obama mentioned gun control in passing last year. It was the emotional centrepiece of his address. I try to downplay the topic with my children. Two of the boys haven't even mentioned the drills they've done at school. It's little Ben who's reflected the most on the subject. I tell myself that even though there are almost as many guns in the US as there are people in New York, gun control is strict and the police are close by. It would be difficult for a gunman to get into a New York school unseen, I rationalize. Do you think anyone will ever have a bad day near me? Asked Ben recently, looking up from his elaborate drawing of dragons. No, I said firmly, crossing my fingers and speaking in my most confident and reassuring manner. You don't need to worry about that it will never happen. Apparently satisfied with that answer, he returned to his drawing while I turned away, my eyes brimming with tears.
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Narrator/Correspondent
And that was Laura Trevelyan. The youngest daughter of Spain's King Juan Carlos is being questioned today in court on the island of Mallorca. Princess Christina is being investigated as part of a multi million euro corruption scandal surrounding her husband. The Princess's lawyer insists she's innocent, but a slow moving Spanish legal system means the case has rumbled on for three years, with every twist, turn, allegation and denial appearing in the press. Spain's royal household admits it's all been highly damaging for the reputation and credibility of the Royal family. There have even been questions about the future of the King. A recent poll suggested some 60% of Spaniards believe he should abdicate. Tom Burridge has been to two palaces in Madrid this week in search of background to what's been a difficult time for the Spanish royals.
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Kate Adie
Past Alsatians, metal detectors and armed guards. We were whisked in an old blue minibus up a very long windy drive. And as we drove through the arid tree scattered grounds of the Thothuela Palace, I spotted some deer. It made me think of King Juan Carlos trip to Botswana, the self inflicted low point of a very difficult two years for the Spanish monarch. Back then he didn't have Bambies in his sights, but to the shock of most people in Western Europe, he was shooting elephants. The timing couldn't have been worse, as at that point there was an acute sense of economic crisis in Spain. Perhaps there should have been sympathy when the King fell and fractured his hip while in Botswana, but instead he was forced into a public apology and then further embarrassment when an alleged affair with a German princess, also present on the holiday, got more coverage in the Spanish press. Nearly two years on from those events, the sense of crisis at Spain's royal household has not gone away. And today the media is full of the corruption scandal surrounding the King's son in law and his wife, the King's youngest daughter, Christina. I'd come to the palace to attend a briefing on the subject for foreign journalists. Smartly dressed waiters served milky coffee. An American colleague pocketed a couple of royal sugar sachets. They were for his Spanish mother in law, he told me. The themes of the briefing confirmed much of what we already knew, or at least we thought we knew. The popularity of King Juan Carlos has fallen significantly in recent years. The corruption scandal surrounding the King's son in law and now hovering over the King's daughter has damaged the reputation and credibility of the royals. And then there's the question which is mentioned more and more. Might the King now abdicate? Pure hypothesis, we were told. And such a decision would be a personal one for the King. No decision had been taken. Just two days later, I found myself in another royal residence. This time it was the appropriately named Royal palace in Madrid, where in fact, the royals do not now live. It's a place tourists can visit, but not on days like this one, when the king takes part in an annual ceremonial event. Today, the palace comes complete with pike wielding royal guards, traditionally dressed in red, white and blue, with black pointed hats and white capes which look like they could swallow them up. The royal household knows it has to rebuild the image of King Juan Carlos, who not so long ago was praised in the Spanish media and adored by the public, partly for his role in uniting Spain and as the country moved from being a fascist dictatorship to a modern European democracy. At the last similar event at this palace at the beginning of the year, things had not gone well. Then. The now 76 year old king, already physically in bad shape after several recent operations, had struggled to read his speech. This week. He was talking to a room full of foreign Madrid based diplomats in the palace's fresco ceilinged hall of thrones with its humongous chandeliers, magenta carpet and gold framed mirrors. I saw the charger d' affaires of Indonesia in his black square sided hat, taking a photo on his smartphone of the charge d' affaires from Mozambique and the representative from Oman, resplendent in his country's traditional dress with a bright green turban and a black and golden gown. As the King walked slowly in with a stick in one hand and supported by a member of the Spanish military on the other, the Spanish journalists went up like meerkats on their tiptoes. They were trying to work out if the King's mobility, which has stopped him traveling abroad recently, had improved. The truth was not by much. His fairly red face showed each step was a struggle. And yet King Juan Carlos read his foreign policy speech in which he talked of the importance of the European Union and the need to end the conflict in Syria with a steady, assured voice. Spain's royal household obviously hopes the scandal casting a shadow over the royal family will soon recede and they believe the King's popularity can be restored. They tell us that by this spring he will become more mobile. Some subtly drop guarded comparisons with another European monarch into the conversation. Two and a bit decades ago, Queen Elizabeth had her self proclaimed. The polls now show Britain's Queen enjoys record support from her public and that's a place King Juan Carlos would again like to be in a few months or years time.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Tom Burridge in Madrid now correspondents working in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo need to be a hardy bunch. But even they were shocked at the news on Sunday. One of their most prominent and respected colleagues, Mel Gunasekara, was stabbed to death in her home while her family were out at church. Unlike many other acts of violence against journalists on the island, this one appears not to have been politically motivated. The police say they arrested a suspect who killed Melgona Sekira after breaking into the house to burgle it. Charles Haviland says that her killing has led to much comment in Sri Lanka about how society there has been brutalized by years of violent conflict.
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Charles Haviland
To wake up to the news that a friend has been murdered is shocking. My own distress and horror at the sudden ending of Mel Gunasekira's life is shared by hundreds of others in Colombo, her loving family and her many friends, including fellow journalists. Many can't believe she is no longer with us. Thanks to the Internet. There have been many tributes for a woman who was good humoured and irreverent, who helped others, who loved keeping dogs, driving fast cars and singing choral music. You expected her to outlive you and just be there. One friend of the 40 year old Mel In a country where many journalists are browbeaten and censor their own work, there is a dogged core of excellent and unassuming reporters, many of them women. And she was one. She had founded the Lancre Business online website before working for the French agency AFP and then going freelance. She did not write polemics, but she did her job well and thoroughly. The large numbers who attended her funeral in a Catholic church and a tranquil corner of the city cemetery had showed how many people cherished her. In the reactions and tributes there is also a palpable sense of anger. It is anger at what people see as the low value now accorded to human life here. Life is precisely what has become worthless in our troubled land, said a broadcaster and writer close to Mel Nalaka Gunawardana. Life today is so cheap it can be snapped away at the slightest provocation or even without any, he wrote. He put this trend down to what he called Sri Lankan society's indifference and denial when faced with violent acts. The violence here is not the worst in the world, but you do see daily and distressing accounts of Death in the newspapers Last month, there was a report of a woman who worked in a nightclub being burned to death in her house in Colombo. Around the same time, a boy was crushed to death at school in an accident involving a grass roller. Rather longer ago, a video emerged of members of the police chasing a mentally ill man into the sea in Colombo and drowning him while beating him. It was filmed by an onlooker. The list seems endless, but the incidents are reported once and then it seems almost forgotten about. Often the victims are women or children. There are many incidents that don't get into the newspapers, such as human rights campaigners, allegations of regular torture in police stations. Amanta Perera, a journalist friend of mine who is lamenting Mel's death, agrees with those who say the value of life in Sri Lanka is being eroded. Violence, he told me, has been relegated to a numbers game, like reporting a cricket match. Along with many others, he attributes this brutalizing effect to decades of violent conflict here. In the late 1980s, a leftist insurgency by a Sinhalese guerrilla group, the JVP, and its crushing by the state caused tens of thousands of deaths and disappearances right on the doorstep of people all over Colombo and the south of the country. We saw bodies burning everywhere, amantha recalls, as does anyone else who lived through that time. He feels that gave an impetus to the devaluing of human life. In parallel, of course, the state's war with the Tamil Tigers was developing, and that conflict and its exceptional violence fed the same trend. Denial and indifference are still factors today, and while much of the violence is non political, there's a disturbing feeling, widely echoed, that some criminals get political protection and violent thuggery is central to political life here. The sense of having a brutalized society is not unique to Sri Lanka. In years of reporting from this region, I have seen it in other war racked nations Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in India. That country is for the most part at peace, but much violence there is inherent in society in the rigid social hierarchy of caste and sexual discrimination. The outpouring of reactions in Sri Lanka after the murder of our friend Mel Gunasekira includes a lot of sober reflection on how this country has become so brutalized. When this happens, it may take years to change that trend. Once, people here lived with their doors and windows open, but increasing numbers are retreating into more heavily guarded homes, building barriers of fear around themselves. It's to be hoped that that trend can eventually be reversed and that violence and death will retreat from their all too prominent position in life here and
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Narrator/Correspondent
that's Charles Haviland in Colombo. Now, when a nation is living through interesting times and fears a voice that danger might lie ahead, its people can tend to look to the past for guidance. China is going through such times now. Excitement about the phenomenal economic growth of the last decade and a half and the striking physical changes seen in the cities is giving way to concern about environmental degradation and the grotesque inequalities within society. So Chinese intellectuals are looking backwards. And Michael Goldfarb, who's been making a program for Radio 3 it airs tomorrow evening, says some are finding guidance for the future in an unlikely source Jewish history.
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Michael Goldfarb
Like most people on their first trip to China, I felt like an ocean swimmer trying to get back to shore against a particularly vicious riptide. Overwhelmed. It wasn't just the gigantism, the number of people, the epic infrastructure projects, the impenetrable air pollution. It's that the place in many ways looks familiar, but just off kilter, as in a dream. All those Western brand names on advertising hoardings. But you can't read the ads because they're all in Chinese. I had this strange feeling of knowing but not having a clue. Most intensely when I visited Shandong University in Jinan. I was making a program called Faith Without God, about the simultaneous origins of Buddhism and Confucianism. Shandong is close to Chufu, Confucius hometown, and is a center of modern Confucian scholarship, and I had arranged some interviews. The university's religion department also houses the center for Judaic Studies, China's one and only department of Jewish Studies. Its existence is one of those off kilter things. Sure, American and British universities have Jewish studies programs, but in China I was surprised. But the man who runs the center, Professor Fu Yuda, told me I shouldn't be Confucian and Jewish culture have much in common. The core of Confucianism and Judaism is ethical, he explained. They both stress the importance of the relationship between man and man and are based on the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, he continued. The Fifth Commandment enjoins Jews to honor their fathers and mothers. Confucianism also emphasizes filial piety, but in a way Jewish parents can only dream of. We were seated in Professor Fu's 17th floor corner office, the neatest academic environment I've ever visited. The leaning towers of books and papers that characterize most senior academics habitats were completely absent. On his surgically sterile desk was a copy of Roger's thesaurus. The thesaurus is a useful tool for the professor's work as a translator among the Jewish classics he has translated are Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, as well as Benedict Spinoza's Hebrew Grammar. It was Spinoza who provided Fu the connection to Judaism because of, he said, the tolerance and generosity in his work. The professor himself grew up in a time notably lacking in both qualities. The son of farmers, he was born in a mud walled agricultural commune in 1956, just as Mao's Great Leap Forward was getting underway. That disastrous attempt to collectivize Chinese agriculture led to famine and the deaths of anywhere between 20 and 45 million people. He graduated high school in the middle of the Cultural Revolution and spent five years working in a factory for one yuan a day, nothing, before finally being allowed to attend university. Fu is an impressive man and had a remarkable grasp of Jewish history and religion. But there was one element of Jewishness he seemed not to get the jokes. The Chinese are a very serious people, but they do laugh. There are stand up comedy clubs in China and a comedy channel on tv. Anyway, I wonder if the Chinese can get the core of Jewish humor, its bitter irony. Heinrich Heine, 19th century poet and essayist, described it best. I tried to tell my grief and it all becomes comic. Who doesn't think humor matters? Jokes are important for Jewish literature, he said, but as a culture, the core of Judaism is the law as given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. Well, I'm not so sure about that, I replied. The culture has been shaped by how Jews have responded to persecution over the 2500 years since the law was for first written down in the form we know it, which, come to think of it, was in the same century when Confucius was formulating his teachings. So the Jews and Chinese are linked by historical coincidence, in addition to filial piety and the Golden Rule. We carried on into the afternoon discussing our people's cultural affinities. Jews love Chinese food, I pointed out. Also Chinese medicine. Fu added, I know foreigners who say, I don't want to take Chinese medicine, but my Jewish friends, many of them accept Chinese medicine. This led me to tell him a story about an Israeli acupuncturist, a Jewish Buddhist who had treated me in India the previous week. But I'll tell you that story another time.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Michael Goldfarb in the Chinese city Jinan. Now, of all the Scandinavian states, Denmark was hardest hit by the financial crisis in 2007. Its citizens are saddled with the world's highest levels of private debt. Yet they also pay the highest taxes in the world. The Prime Minister Heller Tauning Schmidt is pushing through a series of controversial reforms aimed at gaining control of public spending and turning the country's economy around. There are new restrictions on state pensions, child benefit payments, student grants and welfare allowances. Public services are being streamlined. On the other side of the equation, corporation tax has been reduced from 25 to 23%. Yet Jake Wallace Simons says that one of Mrs. Toning Schmidt's reforms sounds like something from
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Anna Verstergaard
a science fict Novel Thursday found me in an old age home in central Copenhagen in the company of a woman and a robot. It was raining outside and I was soaked up to the knee. The thermostat was cranked right up and I feared that I was about to steam. The robot, one of five currently in use at the old age home, seemed to be peering at me inscrutably. I began to feel self conscious. These machines were introduced by the government last year as a test, said Anna Verstergaard, the deputy director of the state funded Rosenberg Sentret Retirement Home. Before, the government was paying for an army of cleaners to go into every old person's house in the country and every retirement home. It cost a lot of money. So now the robots take on some of the cleaning and the rest can be done by the old people themselves or by their families. If so far your mind has conjured images of a sort of Nordic C3PO, I apologize. These machines are not in the least anthropomorphic. They are squat, disc shaped and about the size of a salad bowl. When they are switched on, they sense where the obstructions are in the room and buzz about sucking up dirt until they are told to stop. They've been a great success here, said Anya. We first started using them in the old people's bedrooms, but they kept falling over them. So now we just use them to clean the halls and the communal spaces in the night when everybody is asleep. They're a great help. The initiative has proven highly controversial in Denmark. There are those who are concerned that the general risk of social isolation amongst the elderly would increase if people began to be replaced by machines. They're also worried about the number of human cleaners who will be turned out of their jobs. Others, however, have hailed the measure as a great efficiency. They argue that society can fill the gaps if a voluntary program of visitors was introduced. The elderly would not get lonely even when surrounded by machines. Indeed, they may even value the privacy. In a bedroom off the main corridor, I met a 79 year old former academic with an impressive candy floss beard. Colourful contemporary paintings hung on every wall, and books were piled up everywhere. Elderly people should not have to rely on cleaners for companionship anyway, he pointed out cheerily. That wouldn't say much about our society. I have family and friends, so if a robot wants to clean my floor, that's no problem. He leaned forward confidentially. But I wouldn't want it touching my books. Overall, Denmark has not lost its status as one of the most fiscally liberal countries in the world. Nevertheless, the recent program of public spending reforms marks a dramatic swing to the right, and many Danes worry that their country is beginning to lose its identity. At the same time, however, they are resigned to the fact that something needs to be done to address Denmark's economic woes. The appearance of robots on the floor is not the only sign of change in the Rosenborg Centre at retirement home. New government measures were introduced in January that aim to cut the burden of bureaucracy and streamline working methods. Whereas new residents used to have to be assessed individually to establish their care needs, now they are automatically allocated 182 minutes of care per day, with more available upon special application. Anya feels tentatively positive about the changes. If it leaves the nurses more time to nurse and saves the government money at the same time, I think it will be nice, she said. But we are still getting used to the new system. I'm not sure how it will work. One measure has worked very well, however. In her New Year's speech, the prime minister suggested that the elderly could play a greater role in their own care and help with domestic chores. They've started to clean up their own dinner plates, said Anya. It's only a small thing, but it's made a huge difference. We finished our conversation and stepped out into the hall. Anya placed the robot on the floor, pressed some buttons, and off it went. There was a sense that, like it or not, this was the future trundling off along the carpet.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Jake Wallace Simons in Denmark and it'll be a little while yet, I think, before the robots take over from our own correspond more from them, the human ones, that is, on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.