I’ve been in the West Bank for less than 24 hours but am already bowled over by the warmth and generosity of the people I’ve met.
I’m not going to post at length at this point. Something that has struck me today though, after conversations with a few different local people, is the power of words.
Despite what I have chosen to do as job, this isn’t something I generally give much thought to. But for the Palestinians it seems to matter.
A European I was with today got pulled up after calling the area we are in “The Palestinian Territories” – the phrase that European politicians seem to favour. This is just a way devised by the Israelis to avoid the phrase “Occupied Territories”, he was told – and in any case this place is and always has been called Palestine.
The second word that came up for discussion was “settlement”. Does this inoffensive little word not mask what is really happening here – in their view colonisation – the Palestinians asked. They believe that by calling these fortified Jewish communities being built in their land “settlements”, we are making them sound acceptable.
Later, and during a chat I had with an eminent Palestinian academic, the phrase “Arab Israeli” came under fire. By calling Palestinians living within Israel’s green line borders by this name, aren’t the Israeli’s cleverly denying the very existence of a Palestinan nation or identity, he wanted to know.
Words that always seemed innocuous now feel loaded with hidden meaning…these people clearly seem to feel that their use is chipping away at their identity. My eyes are opening to a perspective very different to my own.

A staggering 50m women could be “missing” from the Indian population as a result of selective-abortion, infanticide and gender violence.
Rita Banerji, an activist from Calcutta, has launched a campaign to highlight this worrying imbalance, using the photo-sharing website Flickr. Check it out – there are some amazing images in there

Apologies for my silence after the past couple of weeks – it’s been pretty manic trying to organise myself for my travels and finish everything I was committed to doing.
I’m finally done and am now readying myself for my big adventure. I fly later today and will spend the next month in the West Bank, Israel and Jordan. No doubt I’ll update while I’m there…

The countdown has begun before I leave home again – this time to spend a month in Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan. I see this as being one of the big perks of working freelance – being able to take off on a whim for work and travel. The downside is that you lose your income while you’re away and could be footing the bill for months to come.
Whatever, it’s an opportunity and adventure the likes of which I’m not likely to get another chance to enjoy, so I am very excited. I have lots of interesting things lined up to do while I’m away but there is one thing I’m already certain of – that I will return even more confused about the situation over there than I already am.
I have just two weeks left before I head out there, and am still frantically trying to finish my work from India as well as a few pieces that have been hanging around since before that trip. So if I’m (even) poorer at posting than usual, that is why. I’m around in spirit but my mind is elsewhere.

Why is that society makes a big joke about the idea of men being subjected to violence by their female – and male – partners?
One in six men are believed to to fall victim to violence within a relationship during their lifetime, against one in four women. Only last week I discovered the brother of a friend has been going through precisely this.
But he, like many in his position, found that support for men is woefully inadequate compared to what is available for women. And that’s saying something: domestic abuse services for women are widely criticised as being underfunded and overstretched.

(From the Big Issue in the North)

A couple of weeks back I met up with Edward Timpson, new MP for Crewe and Nantwich (Cheshire) for a feature for the Big Issue in the North. Much was made during the by-election campaign earlier this year about Timpson’s privileged roots – Labour Party activists waged a toe-curling battle against him clad in top hats and tails. It backfired spectacularly and the Tory overturned a huge Labour majority to take the seat, previously held for almost 35 years by Gwyneth Dunwoody.

So my time in Delhi is drawing to a close. Tomorrow is my last day and – after one last wander around Old Delhi – will end with a long flight back to the land of Manc.
My week has continued as it began and has given me a feel for a side of India I only glimpsed while travelling.

Yesterday was Indian independence day, which saw the city come to a standstill, but since my last post I’ve crammed in a visit to a jhuggie (slum) with an Indian agency that helps poor people fight for their rights (above).

Today was also a brilliant day. I travelled to Haryana, a rural state just outside Delhi, to visit a live-in shelter run by Project Concern, the NGO which works with street kids. Thirty-five boys are living there, where they are being educated and rehabilitated away from drug abuse and street life. As it happens today is Raksha Bandhan, a Hindu festival, in which sisters traditionally tie ‘Rakhi’ – or bracelets – around their brothers’ wrists. Today I was the honourary sister for all the boys, which was very touching. I had to put a pilak (red dot) on their foreheads along with a few grains of rice, tie the Rakhis and pop a sweet in their mouths.

The picture below is I think one of my favourites from the whole week….can’t quite put my finger on why but I am really pleased with it. Raju, the little boy in the blue T-shirt, arrived at the PCI shelter in April, aged just five years old. He was found by an outreach worker at a Delhi train station, where he had been living rough – surviving on his own – for about two weeks. He is the youngest child they have ever found on the streets and staff were very shocked.

More here

I’ve been in Delhi for two full days so far and am blown away by the place. I first came here in 2004, at the start of a backpacking trip around northern India, and couldn’t wait to get out of the city. Looking back, mistake number one was choosing a hotel right in the middle of the hectic old city, where travellers get hassled by hawkers and beggars from the moment they step outside and the whole experience is a somewhat unnerving introduction to India.

Four years on and after two trips totalling almost two months in which we’ve visited several states in north and south India, I’m back again – only this time for work – and my experiences so far couldn’t be more different.

Perhaps I’m just more relaxed, but I am dealing much better with the attention that a young blonde, white woman on her own inevitably attracts. Today, at the Nizamuddin Shrine – a Sufi Muslim pilgrimmage site – I literally drew a crowd. It was slightly embarrassing but I am learning to hide behind my camera and enjoy the ride.

I’ve come over here with an international NGO to see a project they are funding which could have an enormous impact on the estimated 100,000 people who sleep on Delhi’s streets.

While I’m here I’m also visiting a project that works to educate slum children, and a third group that works with the runaways and abandoned kids who end up at the city’s railway stations. I am very excited to be here and to have the opportunity to see some of this stuff.

Last night I visited a homeless shelter and spoke to staff and a number of residents. One guy particularly touched me – a former Hindi literature teacher with two post-graduate qualifications who ended up on the streets 15 years ago. Now, aged 65, he is a proud librarian and looks after the shelter’s meagre reading room. In exchange he gets a bed for the night and a few rupees to live on.

I’m in between trips right now, having just returned from an exhausting but fun-packed holiday in Hungary and days away from a work trip to India.
As well as drinking too much wine and staying up far too late, I learned about life behind the Iron Curtain during the past week, when I met a number of people who were forced to flee Budapest as refugees following the doomed 1956 uprising against the communist regime.

Before I left, I contributed a feature to a terrorism special, out in this week’s Big Issue in the North. My job was to meet up with Tony Porter, detective chief superintendent with Greater Manchester’s counter-terrorism unit, to discuss the present situation and how policing has adapted to respond to modern methods used by extremists.

Ahhh the wonders of the modern age. I am writing this from my sunny little backyard…thanks to the genius of laptops and wireless internet.
It’s the first time I’ve taken my work outside like this, despite toiling from home most days of the week. There hasn’t been much opportunity this summer because it has rained pretty much every day in Manchester apart from this week. Probably the biggest reason though is that I wouldn’t get much done.
I must admit to feeling a bit de-mob happy today though. I’m going on holiday in a few days’ time to Budapest, followed a few days after my return by a work trip to Delhi…more of which later. I’m not going to be able to do much between now and my departure and typically I am waiting for people to return my calls. So I may as well sit out and enjoy the sunshine, especially since we have been getting so little of it lately.
Meanwhile in medialand, the silly season is upon us and the tabloids continue to tear themselves apart over the Max Mosely orgy set-up. It was a titillating story when it was published by the News of the World a couple of months ago, but I personally fail to see how exactly revealing his kinky bedroom habits should be considered to be in the public interest.
Yesterday there were laughable claims that in upholding Mosley’s claim for breach of privacy, the judge had damaged Britain’s great tradition of investigative journalism.
For once, I even find myself agreeing with the media commentator Roy Greenslade.
I also find it worrying that kiss and tells are deemed worthy of so much newsprint, when investigations of real value – those which in the vein of the Washington Post’s Watergate coverage can take good reporters months of digging – are deemed expendable by editors and publishers now desperate to cut costs.
See you on the other side