Alan Keen, British politician, MP for Feltham and Heston (since 1992), died from cancer he was 73.

David Alan Keen was a British Labour Co-operative politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Feltham and Heston from 1992 until his death in 2011 died from cancer he was 73..

(25 November 1937 – 10 November 2011)^[1] 

Early life

Although born in London, Alan Keen was brought up in the Grangetown and Redcar area in the present day unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland in the north east of England. He went to the Sir William Turner's Grammar School in Redcar.^[2] He joined the British Army in 1960 and after nearly three years of service, in 1963, he started his career with the Fire Protection Industry where he remained until his election to the House of Commons.^[3] He also worked as a tactical scout for Middlesbrough F.C. for eighteen years.^[4]

Parliamentary career

He served as a member of Hounslow Borough Council from 1986–90 and was elected to Parliament at the 1992 general election when he unseated the sitting Conservative MP Patrick Ground.^[5] In Parliament he has served on both the Education (1995–96) and the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committees (1997–99 and since 2001).^[6]

Policies

Heathrow Airport expansion

On 28 January 2009, Keen voted against a motion in Parliament calling on the government to review a decision to add a third runway to Heathrow Airport.^[7] Keen had claimed to be opposed to expansion at Heathrow for many years;^[8] stating in his consultation publication on the issue he is "opposed to an additional runway" and although he was in favour of expansion up to the present boundaries "there has to be a limit" and he believed "that limit has been reached".^{[9][dead link]} However at a House of Commons debate in January 2009, Keen voted in favour of the third runway.^[8] Conservative Councillor Barbara Reid of Hounslow Council, said the Keens were “completely ignoring their constituents and letting them down.”, noting that "90 per cent of people in every survey we have done do not support the third runway".^[8] Further controversy arose when Keen suggested the third runway would "hardly affect my constituents at all".^[8]

Expenses

Main article: United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal

Together with his MP wife Ann Keen, the couple used their combined second homes allowances to buy an apartment in an up-market development at Waterloo on the South Bank of the River Thames, claiming £175,000 over five years. The Waterloo apartment is nine miles from their constituency home in Brentford, a 30-minute drive from Westminster.^[10][11] MPs who reside near the Keens in Brentford, such as Home Office Minister Phil Woolas who lives in the next street, are able to commute from there to Westminster.^[12] The couple claimed for both the interest payments on the Waterloo flat and the cost of re-mortgaging their Brentford home. The Fees Office agreed with the couple's argument that this was claimable because it was used to raise equity for the flat. The mortgage also included the cost of "compulsory" life insurance attached to the mortgages, a practice which is now banned.^[10][13] In total the Keens have claimed almost £1.7 million in expenses over seven years.^[12]
In 2009, their Brentford home was occupied by squatters^[14] after it was unoccupied for 9–12 months following a dispute with a building firm undertaking renovation work.^[15] The squatters' declared aim was to turn the house into a centre for war refugees, in response to Mrs Keen's support for the British invasion of Iraq.^[15]
In defending their part in the expenses scandal the Keen's stated "we have advocated, strongly supported, and voted for the introduction of Freedom of Information legislation. We are pleased that the point has been reached when full details of MPs' expenses are being published on a regular basis for everyone to see".^[16] However, in November 2009, arsonists repeatedly attacked an office block containing Mrs Keen's constituency offices in reaction to the revelations over their expense claims.^[17] Keen voted against the reform of MP's expenses in 2008.^[18]
A formal investigation into the Keens' expenses by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled in March that the Keens had breached the expenses rules and that he regarded the breach of the rules as "serious", and involving "significant public funds". He suggested that the Keens should pay back four months worth of their claims - some £5,678. However, The Commons Standards and Privileges Committee of MPs disagreed with his findings and reduced the repayment to £1,500.^[19]

Personal life

Keen's wife Ann Keen, whom he married in 1980, joined him in the Commons at the 1997 general election when she was elected for the neighbouring seat of Brentford and Isleworth.^[20] Ann held the seat until she was defeated in the 2010 general election.^[21] His sister-in-law, Sylvia Heal was an MP from 1997–2010 and Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons before retiring at the 2010 election.^[22] He and his wife lived in his wife's former constituency at Brentford.
Keen employed son David for at least 8 years as his constituency manager and senior caseworker.^[23][24] He also had a further son and a daughter from a previous marriage.^[3] He died on 10 November 2011 from cancer, aged 73.^[1][25]


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Ivan Martin Jirous, Czech poet and dissident, died he was 67.

Ivan Martin Jirous  was a Czech poet, best known for being the artistic director of the Czech psychedelic rock group The Plastic People of the Universe and later one of the organizers of the Czech underground during the communist regime died he was 67.. He is also known more frequently as Magor, which can be roughly translated as "loony" or "blockhead" and is supposedly derived from "phantasmagoria". This nickname was given to him by the "experimental" poet Eugen Brikcius.^[1] His wife, Věra Jirousová, wrote a good deal of the Plastics' early lyrics.

(September 23, 1944^[1] – November 10, 2011^[2])

Trained as an art historian but unable to work as such under the Communist regime in then Czechoslovakia, Magor/Jirous was a member of the dissident subculture there. His particular contribution to Czech dissidence was his work on the concept of the "Parallel Polis," or "Second Culture." Magor believed that simply expressing oneself through art could ultimately undermine the totalitarian system.
He was friends with Václav Havel, and is mentioned several times in Havel's Letters to Olga.

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Barbara Grier, American publisher (Naiad Press) and writer, died from cancer he was 78.

Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher most widely known for co-founding Naiad Press and writing and editing The Ladder under the pseudonym Gene Damon  died from cancer he was 78..

(November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011) 

Early life

Born in Cincinnati to Dorothy Vernon Black, a secretary, and Philip Strang Grier, a doctor, Grier grew up in several midwestern US cities. She claims she came out as a lesbian at 12 years old and spent her life finding as much information about female homosexuality as she could.^[1] Her parents divorced when she was 13 years old. Grier went to the library to discover more about lesbians after noticing her own behavior patterns were different from her friends. She told her mother that she was homosexual, and her mother replied, "No, because you're a woman, you're a lesbian. And since 12 years old is too young to make such a decision, let's wait six months before we tell the newspapers."^[2] She began collecting books when her mother gave her a copy of The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall when she was 16 years old.^[3] She describes her collection of lesbian-themed books as Lesbiana, a collection that was fueled by a "love affair with lesbian publishing."
Shortly after Grier graduated high school in 1951, she met Helen Bennett in a public library. They spent 20 years together living in Denver, Colorado while Bennett went to library school, then moving to Kansas City where both worked in public libraries.^[2]

The Ladder

Grier began writing book reviews in The Ladder, a magazine edited by members of the Daughters of Bilitis, soon after subscribing to it in 1957. She used multiple pen names in her writings including Gene Damon, Lennox Strong, Vern Niven, most often writing to review literature in which lesbians were characters or a plot device.
Grier took over editing The Ladder in 1968 with the goal of expanding the magazine to include more feminist ideals. The magazine gained a more professional and sleeker layout and increased to more than 40 pages from the 25 average under previous editors and tripled in subscriptions. She described her roles in editing the magazine, ""In 1968, I became editor of The Ladder, and I had to write three hundred letters a week, edit the magazine, run a staff of fifteen people spread all over the world, work a part-time job, keep house, read the books, and write my 'Lesbiana' column."^[4] Grier also removed the word "lesbian" from the front cover, after being placed there in 1963, in an attempt to reach more women. Grier's tenure took place at a time when the Daughters of Bilitis were in conflict about the direction of the organization. DOB founders tended to encourage a more assimilationist stance for the organization and came in direct conflict from more radical separatist lesbians, including Grier. When the DOB folded in 1970, Grier, who was editing the magazine from Kansas City, planned with DOB president Rita LaPorte to take the only two copies of the subscription list from the printer and the DOB headquarters in order to keep The Ladder alive. LaPorte took both copies to the ignorance of DOB founders Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, and relocated the magazine to Reno, causing an uproar. The Ladder ran for two more years before it outgrew its finances and folded in September 1972. Said Grier about her role in the controversy, "You have to understand that none of these things were done with malice aforethought or with intention to damage. I mean I was just as much a light-eyed maniac then as I am now in terms of the mission. The mission is that the lesbians shall inherit the earth, you see."^[5]

Naiad Press

Grier had been in a relationship with Helen Bennett for 20 years when librarian Donna McBride fell in love with her. Grier left Bennett for McBride and claims it was the only decision she ever agonized about.
Grier and partner Donna McBride began running Naiad Press at the support and urging of two editors of The Ladder, Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford in 1973.^[3] Their first published work was The Latecomer written by Marchant under the pen name Sarah Aldridge. Naiad was run from Kansas City until 1980 when it relocated to Tallahassee, Florida. Both women continued to work full time until 1982 when they dedicated all their time to the publishing company.
Authors represented by Naiad include Valerie Taylor, Katherine V. Forrest, Jane Rule, Ann Bannon's reprinted Beebo Brinker Chronicles, and Gale Wilhelm, whom Grier spent several years attempting to locate to bring out of obscurity. One of the most controversial of these was Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, a work of non-fiction that was banned in Boston and criticized by the Catholic Church.^[6] Penthouse Forum ran a series from the book and it made Naiad an internationally-known publishing name.^[1]
Grier used her extensive lesbian literature collection, what she termed "Lesbiana" at Naiad. By 1994, the company had a staff of 8 and projected sales of $1.8 million US. In 1992, Grier and McBride donated Naiad's entire collection to the San Francisco Public Library, which consisted of a tractor trailer full of 14,000 books estimated at $400,000 US.^[7] What began as a search became a self-described obsession for Grier. She worked with Jeannette Howard Foster and Marion Zimmer Bradley to compile the largest collection of books with lesbian themes in the English language, they called The Lesbian in Literature.^[2] Books were rated from A to D referencing how important lesbian characters were to the plot, or T, indicating the book was "trash".^[4]
In 1985 Grier earned the President's Award for Lifetime Service from the Gay Academic Union. In 1991, Grier and McBride, representing Naiad Press, was given the Lambda Literary Award for Publisher's Service. Grier and McBride were given the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award in 2002. Grier and McBride sold the Naiad backlist to Bella Books in 2003.

Death

Barbara Grier died of cancer in Tallahassee on November 10, 2011.^[8] She was 78.


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Ana Grepo, Croatian model, died from carbon monoxide asphyxiation she was 36.

Ana Grepo was a business woman and former model from Split, Croatia died from carbon monoxide asphyxiation she was 36... In 1995 she was crowned Miss Dalmatia on the regional beauty pageant in Split. In the last years of her life she resided in Zagreb where she was an operating manager of her own modeling agency. She was one of the main figures for gathering young prospective models for the entire area of southeastern Europe, and ex Yugoslavia.^[2]

 

^{(5 March 1975 – 10 November 2011[1])}

She has previously been noted in a variety of business magazines as one of the most successful business-oriented women in Croatia with her fortune estimated up to 50 million Euro.^{[citation needed]}

Early life

Her father Petar was a fisherman and mother Andja was a housewife. While still in high school, Grepo was drafted by the Midiken modeling agency from Zagreb. Finishing her last high school year in Zagreb, Grepo had already become one of the most wanted young models in Croatia.

Modelling career

In late 1995 Grepo moved to Milan working for different modeling agencies. In the nine-year period between 1996 and 2005 Grepo worked in various fashion capitals of the world, including Madrid, Paris, London, New York and Tokyo. While engaging herself as a full-time model, in late 2000 she started forming her own modelling agency which she based in Zagreb, Croatia.^[3]

Post modelling career and personal life

Having dual Croatian and Italian citizenship, Ana relocated to Milan in 1995 and over the next decade was kept busy in such major cities as London, New York, Tokyo, and Paris. While briefly married to businessman Dragan Jurilj, she used the connections she had made and started accumulating great wealth and business notoriety by starting her own Zagreb-based modeling agency in 2000. Later, she acquired a soccer team and built a luxury casino.^[4]
In 2002, she purchased property on the Croatian shore near Dubrovnik and the government agency granted her rights to build a five star casino resort on the Brioni Islands. In the summer of 2006 she entered a purchasing bid for a major Croatian basketball team Cibona, Zagreb but she eventually withdrew the offer. As a holder of a dual citizenship an Italian and Croatian passport, Grepo entered the Italian business market as well. In early 2007 she bought a small part of a holders share of an Italian soccer club A.C. Chievo from Verona, Italy. In March 2007 she reportedly paid 4.5 million Euro for a 16th century Italian traditional mansion in Verona, Italy.^[4]

Death

While spending the majority of her time during the last period of her life at her estate in Zagreb, Ana died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning while at home.^[4]


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David Boyd, Australian artist, died he was 87.

David Fielding Gough Boyd, OAM was an Australian artist, and a member of the Boyd artistic dynasty died he was 87..

(23 August 1924 – 10 November 2011)

Boyd family artistic dynasty

Main article: Boyd Family

The Boyd artistic dynasty began with the marriage of Emma Minnie à Beckett (known as Minnie) and Arthur Merric Boyd in 1886. Both were already established as painters at the time of their marriage. Their second-born son William Merric Boyd married Doris Gough and had five artistic children, Lucy de Guzman Boyd, Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, Guy Martin à Beckett Boyd, David Fielding Gough Boyd, and Mary Elizabeth Boyd.
In 1948 David Boyd married Hermia Lloyd-Jones, the daughter of graphic artist Herman and Erica Lloyd-Jones. Following the tradition of their family, their three daughters Amanda, Lucinda, and Cassandra are artists. [1]

Education and career

Boyd entered the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne at seventeen, but was conscripted to the army after one year. Upon his return, he studied art at the National Gallery School on an ex-serviceman's grant.
In 1946, he worked with his brother Guy at the Martin Boyd Pottery in Sydney. He also established a pottery studio in London in the early 1950s and continued working mainly in pottery through to the mid-1960s. In 1956, Boyd and his wife became widely known as leading Australian potters. They introduced new glazing techniques and potter's wheel use in shaping sculptural figures.
Boyd's painting career began in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers that aroused much controversy at the time, focusing as they did on the tragic history of the Aboriginal Tasmanians. In 1958 he exhibited a series of paintings based on the histological episodes in the explorations of Burke and Wills and Bass and Flinders.^[2] He joined the Antipodeans Group in the 1950s. Boyd discovered a technique in 1966 that he named Sfumato, after da Vinci's usage of the word to describe graduations of smoky tones in painting. Boyd's method achieved this effect through a new technique involving candle flame.
Boyd and his family moved to Rome in 1961, and later moved to London. They also spent several years creating art in Spain and the south of France before returning permanently to Australia in 1975.
David Boyd was artist-in-residence at the School of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney from 1993-1996.
In a September 2004 art review, Alex McDonald of State of the Arts magazine stated that David Boyd's work was 'ahead of his time in addressing the mistreatment of Indigenous people in Australia, but commented that an 'explanation for his frosty reception from Australian critics and dealers may have something to do with his choice of subject matter'. McDonald explained that the controversy may have stemmed from the fact that the 'legal system, race relations and religion' are 'not exactly popular issues' and were not 'up for debate in the late 1950s'.

Appointments and awards

• President of the Contemporary Art Society - Victorian branch (1960)
• Elected Councillor of the Museum of Modern Art of Australia (1960)
• First Prize Italian Art Scholarship for Australian Chairman of the Federal Council of the *Contemporary Art Society of Australia (1961)
• Artist-in-residence at the School of Law, Macquarie University, NSW (1993–96)
• MEMBRO ALBO DORO DEL SENATO ACCADEMICO - International Academy of Modern Art, Rome, Italy (1998)

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Peter J. Biondi, American politician, member of the New Jersey General Assembly (since 1998), mesothelioma, died he was 69.

Peter J. "Pete" Biondi was an American Republican Party politician who served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1998 until his death in 2011, where he represented the 16th Legislative District  died he was 69..

Biondi was born in Newark, New Jersey.^[2] He graduated from Union High School.^[3]

^{(June 23, 1942 – November 10, 2011)[1]}  

Biondi served on the Somerset County Youth Services Commission from 1996 until his death and as its Co-Chair in 1997. He served on the Hillsborough Township Planning Board from 1986 to 1999, served on the Hillsborough Township Committee from 1983 to 1993, served as the Township's Deputy Mayor in 1985 and as its Mayor from 1986 to 1993. Biondi served on the Somerset County Board of Chosen Freeholders from 1994 to 1997, was its Director in 1996 and its Deputy Director in 1995. He served on the Industrial Pollution Control Financing Authority in 1997. Biondi was a member of the Somerset County Planning Board from 1994 to 1996. Biondi served in the United States Army Reserve from 1961 to 1967.^[4]
He served as the Republican Conference Leader starting in 2006 and was the Assembly's Assistant Republican Leader from 2002 to 2003. Biondi served in the Assembly on the Regulated Professions Committee, the Intergovernmental Relations Commission and the Legislative Services Commission.^[4]
Biondi introduced a bill in the 2006 legislative session which would require operators of all "public forum websites" to gather the full names and addresses of all persons posting on such websites, and turn such information over to anyone claiming the posting of "false or defamatory information", with the penalty for failure to comply being liability for lawsuits relating to the posting of the information (under libel laws). The requirement is specifically on any ISP or similar entity doing business in New Jersey to require anyone using said entity's facilities for website posting to gather and make available said information.^[5] News of this bill has reached outlets as widely read as Slashdot on March 6, 2006.^[6]
In October 2011, Biondi publicly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma about one year earlier, and that he had undergone chemotherapy and believed the disease was in remission. On Election Day, November 8, 2011, Biondi was re-elected to what would have been his eighth term in the Assembly. He died two days later at the age of 69.^[3]
He was succeeded by Republican Donna M. Simon, who is filling out his term. Simon, who was appointed in February, 2012 is being challenged by Democrat Marie Corfield in a special election on November 6, 2012.[1]


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Terry Willers, 76, Irish cartoonist, died he was 76.

Terry Willers  was a noted cartoonist and animator died he was 76.. Willers was born in London but settled in Ireland. He spent most of his later life in Carrigower and for over 40 years in Rathdrum, both in County Wicklow. In 1992, Willers was the co-founder and chairman of the Guinness International Cartoon Festival,^[1] which ran for three years in Rathdrum. He was a winner of the Jacobs Award for his work for television.

(1935 – 9 November 2011)

Writing in the Irish Independent, Tom Mathews recalls, "Nobody who encountered Terry in full flight in his persona as Rathdrum's cartoon ambassador to the world is likely to forget him... Terry must have had three hands because despite having a cigarette in one and a glass in the other, he was always drawing on any surface that held still — even the walls of his beloved Cartoon Inn at Rathdrum village where so many of his exhuberand productions are still displayed." Mathews describes Willers as "a stylish and dapper dresser" who was never seen without a shirt and tie and "the sort of pastel blazer favoured by the gameshow host that he so resembled". Writing in the Irish Times (not available online), fellow cartoonist Martyn Turner wrote, "He was always very happy and full of jokes and was an incredibly talented artist. Most cartoonists become cartoonists because they have to... but Terry could draw anything and everything. In many ways he was an artist more than he was a cartoonist."

Willers career is said to have begun at the age of 15 when he joined what has been described as "a Disney studio in London" and "a Walt Disney animation team.At the age of 17 he was certainly contributing the 4-panel cartoon 'Tich' to TV Comic (1952-53). In 1959 he also contributed to Zip and Jack & Jill comics.
Around this time, Willers began working for the Martin Toonder Studio in Holland, drawing 'Panda' and, from 1963, 'Tom Poes', a hugely popular newspaper strip created by Toonder in 1919. According to Lambiek, "he added a slapstick element to the strips, and intensified the absurdism in the artwork." The strip ran in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and various regional papers until 1965. He then went to draw 'Kappie', the adventures of Captain Anne Wobke and the crew of his tug, the Kraak for three years. In 1968, he returned to 'Tom Poes', when he did a comic strip for Donald Duck comic.Willers also contributed briefly to British comics during this period, ghosting episodes of 'General Nitt and His Barmy Army' and 'Georgie's Germs' for Wham!.
Willers contributed in the 1970s and 1980s to Hall's Pictorial Weekly, hosted by Frank Hall, and The Mike Murphy Show, broadcast on Ireland's RTÉ,and Hullabaloo. He was also a prolific contributor to magazines, including the Farmer's Journal, Sunday Independent, Evening Herald and Wicklow People. In the 1990s, Willers contributed to The Yellow Press, an Irish anthology comic, and The Beano, drawing 'Minder Bird' in 1995. He also illustrated several books, including Brian Power presents 'It's All Happening' (1970), The TV Generation by Desmond Forristal (1970), Gift of the Gab! The Irish Conversation Guide by Tadhg Hayes (1996, later reprinted as The Wit of Irish Conversation), Twelve Days Of Chaos by Frank Kelly (1997) and Stop Howling At The Moon by Eamon O'Donnell (2007).


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