gooddagui

VIDEO: Art by animals goes on show

2012-02-07T04:50:00.001-08:00

A work of abstract expressionism by a chimp and a still life of a flower by an elephant are part of a new exhibition in London of artworks created by animals.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/entertainment-arts-16860961

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Aye-aye

2012-02-02T04:50:00.001-08:00

Aye-ayes are the largest nocturnal primate in the world. They are also the only primate thought to use echolocation, which they use to find insect grubs hidden 2cm deep inside a tree. During mating, aye-ayes hang upside-down on a branch, and the procedure lasts for about an hour.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Aye-aye

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Can London 2012's opening ceremony beat its predecessors?

2012-01-28T04:50:00.001-08:00

Danny Boyle is up against faked footprint-shaped fireworks, aliens in flying saucers and spectacles with artillery fire and pigeons

Anyone concerned that Danny Boyle faces a daunting, Newton-like climb on to the shoulders of choreographic giants in his role as the Olympic opening ceremony organiser needs only to glance at some of his predecessors' efforts for reassurance.

Beijing 2008 saw computer faked footprint-shaped fireworks trek across the sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird's Nest stadium, and a seven-year-old singer's vocals mimed by a more aesthetically-pleasing girl.

In 1984, not content with sending torch-bearer Rafer Johnson up the longest, steepest staircase imaginable and having an Evel Knievel lookalike in a jetpack buzz the crowd, the LA games organisers decided for the closing ceremony that nothing embodied the Olympic spirit quite as potently as a big alien in a flying saucer.

Hitler's ambitious plans for the 1936 Berlin Olympics ? complete with Leni Riefenstahl's famous film of the games ? were heroically undermined by Jesse Owens' victories. However, the games did produce one major legacy: the torch relay. Less tradition-setting were the Austrian and French teams' Nazi salutes at the Berlin ceremony, though some French athletes later claimed they were giving the not wholly dissimilar Olympic salute. Eight years earlier, the Amsterdam games kicked off with a spectacle involving pigeons, artillery fire and the Olympic flame being lit for the first time. Sadly, Queen Wilhelmina missed the extravaganza. Either furious at the organisers' failure to consult her or disapproving of the fact it was held on a Sunday, she became the first host head of state not to attend the opening ceremony, remaining in the isolated splendour of her Norwegian holiday retreat.Doubtless much to the relief of the planning committee, the Queen managed to overcome her umbrage, or principles, in time to make the closing ceremony, also on a Sunday.

But if it's a masterclass in feelgood internationalism that Boyle seeks, he may wish to look all the way back to the 1896 Athens games: 80,000 people joined the Greek royal family at the Panathinaiko stadium to usher in the first modern Olympics, where the Danish-born King George (watched by his Russian wife Olga) patriotically declared: "Long live the nation. Long live the Greek people."

The ceremony clearly met with the approval of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics. Watching the crowds stream into the stadium, he was delighted to witness the "joyous and motley concourse".

Sam Jones

Edward Gibbes

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/27/past-olympic-games-opening-ceremonies

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In praise of ? dream returns | Editorial

2012-01-11T04:53:00.001-08:00

As Thierry Henry proved against Leeds, a dream return is more than just the remembrance of things past

The game was drifting off to sleep. All the talk was of the impending replay and Arsenal's perennial frustration with its lost cutting edge. On comes Thierry Henry, on loan from New York Red Bulls. Nine minutes and five touches later, Henry slips past Leeds' stalwart defence and curls the shot around a hitherto untroubled keeper. He must have done the same shot dozens of times. This was his 227th goal for his old club. But doing it there and then made this one the stuff of dreams. For a dream return is more than just the remembrance of things past. Henry can no longer slip past three men before a turbocharger kicks in. But he can reinject the old magic, restore that sense of self-belief, put the adrenaline back into the system. Paul Scholes for Manchester United, and Ian Botham when he was recalled against New Zealand and took two wickets in 12 balls, have this quality is common. For a brief moment, they all played as if they had never really left.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/11/praise-dream-returns-editorial

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Youssou N'Dour: the singer who changed his tune | Observer profile

2012-01-08T22:00:00.001-08:00

The foremost figure in world music once said he never had any political ambitions. Now he wants to be Senegal's president, becoming a force for change rather than just a voice of change

It stands 49 metres tall at the western tip of Africa. The costly bronze statue, on a hilltop overlooking the Atlantic from Dakar, Senegal, is meant to symbolise continental renaissance. Critics regard it as a symbol too ? of another African leader who has lost the plot, consumed by hubris.

Who, then, will challenge its builder, Abdoulaye Wade, the octogenarian president set on clinging to power beyond his time? Step forward Youssou N'Dour, spine-tingling singer, composer, occasional actor, entrepreneur, political activist and now would-be saviour of Africa's latest imperilled democracy.

The 52-year-old has suspended his lucrative recording and touring career to take up his "supreme patriotic duty" of running for president in next month's Senegalese elections. Accusing Wade of "hearing only in mono, not stereo", N'Dour says he is answering the demand of the people for an alternative.

From Later? With Jools Holland to the political front line: time will tell whether this will also go down as an act of hubris. Gloriously gifted, N'Dour is the undisputed king of Senegalese music, mixing the country's traditional mbalax with everything from Cuban rumba to hip-hop, jazz and soul. His prolific output sings of Africa's identity, heritage and hopes, sometimes with a political edge. He is arguably the most important figure in world music.

And he is famous for much more than being famous: the embodiment of the self-made man, he is feted at home as an entrepreneur and job-creator, owning two recording studios, a micro-finance company and a stake in a leading nightclub. He is a media mogul with television and radio stations and the widely read L'Observateur newspaper. "I have more than a thousand people working for me," he told the BBC last week.

His political credentials doubtless make him palatable to the west. N'Dour campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela, performed at concerts for Amnesty International and Live 8 and is a Unicef goodwill ambassador, a role he has temporarily stepped aside from while he campaigns. But his change of gear now, plunging into the hurly-burly of domestic politics, is something else. It could be described as analogous to Bob Geldof or Bono running for taoiseach.

N'Dour told the Guardian four years ago: "I want to use my music to deliver a political message? but I don't want to be a politician. In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist."

He will hope his celebrity brings greater success than it did for George Weah, the former world footballer of the year, defeated for the Liberian presidency in 2005, or for Afropop pioneer Fela Kuti, who announced plans to seek Nigeria's top position in 1979 and 1983 but was disqualified both times. N'Dour is a late entrant to a crowded field and his political nous is questioned.

"For the last 20 to 30 years, this man has been able to express the feelings of the Senegalese," said Mamadou Diouf, a Senegalese academic and director of the Institute for African Studies at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York. "But how is he going to move from the claim, 'I am not a politician' to a genuine campaign for political office?"

Diouf believes the musician has an uphill task to win the election, arguing that he lacks organisation and that Senegalese voters tend to prefer their leaders university educated in the western tradition. Senegal was the first of France's west African colonies; residents of its four main towns were granted French citizenship. L�opold Senghor, the first president, was considered one of the 20th-century's finest lyric poets in French.

N'Dour does not even have a school certificate. He was born in a working-class suburb of Dakar, the eldest child of a car mechanic, and began by hustling pirated CDs in car parks. "It's true that I haven't pursued higher education," he admitted last week, adding: "I have proved my competence, commitment, rigour and efficiency time and time again. I have studied at the school of the world."

Despite his father's wish that he pursue law or medicine, N'Dour started singing at circumcision ceremonies before his voice had broken and was professional by the age of 13. With a voice that seemed heaven-sent, he sang in small clubs in Dakar in Wolof, the language of his griot (praise-singing) ancestors, and was rapidly crowned "Le petit prince de Dakar".

In 1979, he formed his own ensemble, the Etoile de Dakar. Their early work was in a Latin style popular all over Africa then, but in the 80s he developed a unique sound when he started his current group, Super Etoile de Dakar.

It was then that Peter Gabriel, the former Genesis singer turned producer and promoter, flew to Paris to hear N'Dour perform to a Senegalese audience. "I was blown away," he told the Observer. "The words that came to mind were liquid gold. A fluid and expressive voice."

N'Dour appeared on Gabriel's platinum-selling So album in 1986 and joined him on a subsequent world tour. "He's probably the top African artist in many ways. His music has reached a lot of people outside his culture. He's also become something of a statesman with all the campaigns he's taken on."

Gabriel, who is godfather to one of N'Dour's sons (the singer reciprocated with Gabriel's son), said N'Dour is probably the best-known person in Senegal. "When I was there, whenever I was stopped by police or asked for a bribe, I identified myself as a friend of Youssou and the problem generally disappeared."

But the notion that N'Dour could do for African music what Bob Marley did for reggae looks difficult to sustain. Musically, there have been hits and misses. He collaborated with Paul Simon and Branford Marsalis and his duet with Neneh Cherry, "7 Seconds", was one of the bestselling songs of the 90s. Twice, however, he has been dropped by major labels, struggling to balance African and western tastes.

Political rivals should heed his resilience, however. He won a Grammy in 2005 for Egypt, an album of Islamic praise songs. N'Dour is a member of the country's most powerful Sufi brotherhood, which will do his election chances no harm. He told Observer Music Monthly in 2004: "I'm a modern Muslim. I pray, and if I have a question, I ask someone who is more educated in the religion than me. But for me bringing religion into politics is wrong and it shouldn't be necessary to kill even one person in the cause of Islam."

Egypt was interpreted as a political statement in the post-9/11 world and N'Dour cancelled a major US tour after the Iraq war. In 2006, he was the only black actor in Amazing Grace, Michael Apted's film about slavery. As a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, he has focused on African issues such as the Darfur crisis, broadening internet access and the famine in Somalia.

N'Dour once supported Wade and sang for him during official visits before they fell out. The president's 11-year reign has been soured by widespread allegations of corruption, nepotism and erosion of free speech. He tried that old trick ? amending the constitution ? to all but guarantee himself a third term, only to be knocked back by a wave of protest.

N'Dour's bid to restore the democratic shine is no publicity-seeking whimsy, according to Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. "Youssou N'Dour is a really serious guy," he said. "He genuinely cares about the music and gets involved in the causes. "

Critics take a different view, arguing that N'Dour is running for president to protect his businesses from Wade. When he applied for a licence to open his TV station, approval was held up for two years and he was then ordered to limit its programming to "cultural" matters. Diouf suspects that it may be commercial interests, not change-the-world idealism, which prompted N'Dour to enter politics now.

Indeed, the pragmatic N'Dour risks being seen as more Cliff Richard than Occupy Wall Street. He is most popular for the mbalax beat, a traditional style that does not necessarily resonate with the under-25s who make up about two-thirds of Senegal's population.

They favour hip-hop and it is rappers who have taken the lead in agitating against Wade. Diouf added: "N'Dour is 52. He's part of the old group. He's no longer a social interpreter; he's now a well-established artist and entrepreneur. The rappers are playing the most important role against President Wade."

Should he win, however, this voice of change will have real power for the first time. What would he do with it ? and what would it do to him? Gabriel admitted: "I have mixed feelings. In politics, it's hard to remain pure. It isn't easy to be president of any country. He's a reluctant politician. He never had political ambitions when I was working with him.

"It's out of desperation this time. People feel betrayed and they identified Youssou as the only one popular enough to remove the one responsible. I'm worried for him, but I'm also hopeful. He has great heart and an absolutely pure passion for his country and I hope that will carry him a long way."

David Smith

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/jan/08/observer-profile-youssou-ndour

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Let this be the year we decide we are proud of our society | Sunder Katwala

2012-01-08T17:00:00.001-08:00

The British Future/Observer State of the Nation poll suggests we Britons are confident of who and where we are

This is a year when Britain will want to tell a story to the world. The message that we want to project overseas must depend on what we want to say to ourselves, too, about who we are, what we stand for, and what we feel about how we have changed.

These are anxious times when it comes to identity questions. As Alex Salmond prepares for a Scottish vote on independence, will we still be British in five years' time? When will the English find their voice? With the government struggling to reduce net migration, will calls to cap the population grow? The British Future/Observer State of the Nation poll captures all of these anxieties. There is a sober awareness of the perils facing British and European economies, the dangers of a lost generation if young graduates can't find jobs, and potential pressures on public services from both austerity and immigration. But we remain quietly hopeful about our families and the places we live ? and most people are looking forward to some Olympic golds and a bit of royal bunting, too, to lift the spirits.

This could be the year that we decide that we are proud of the society that we have become. This poll suggests a confidence in being able to combine the modern and the traditional. At the millennium, the failure of the Dome was its mistaken idea that Britain would be more confident about its future by drawing a line under our history. The result was contentless and empty. So we should celebrate Shakespeare and Dickens as we remember that these Olympics are being held in London, not Paris, because Seb Coe and east London's teenagers captured the Games with their vision of modern British pride.

The Queen's diamond jubilee will spark reflections not just on the service of the monarch, but on how the past six decades have changed Britain, for better and worse. We may watch Downton Abbey, but we do not want to live in it, yet the question of whether we are more classless than six decades ago divides people. Our poll also finds that ethnic minorities feel just a little more proud to be British than white Brits, and immigrants most optimistic about the future. That could be good news for integration, as long as we pay more attention to those who fear being left behind.

We have finally seen some justice for the Lawrence family. We saw the broadest campaign for British justice that we have ever seen. Who would have imagined an alliance stretching from the radical black left and anti-racist movement, through New Labour ministers to the Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, whose brilliant campaign made the legal establishment take notice? The lesson is that we brought about change, not by competing over whose grievances really matter, so again we need to give greater voice to all.

The poll captures the need to take integration seriously, to ensure that we do not segregate our children into mono-ethnic schools in diverse towns. Yet the poll also hits Norman Tebbit's cricket test for six. That will boost the argument of Tory modernisers such as Sayeeda Warsi that that argument's time has passed. It's good news, too, for my dad, who came here from India in 1968: he need no longer fear failing a loyalty test. It may even console him for Sachin Tendulkar's collapsing form, which required much tact on my part when I took him to the Oval last summer.

But I still hope that other British-born children of immigrants will mostly choose to cheer for us, with a soft spot for their parents' birthplace, too.

A confident democracy should always debate the most difficult questions openly. But that can take the form of a conversation, and not always a shouting match. Only a miserabilist minority believe Britain is going to hell in a handcart, but few would claim that little needs to change.

We are launching British Future to explore how we extend confidence in modern Britain to those who do not feel it, to help ensure no difficult issue is kept off limits, and to challenge people to work together ? on issues of identity and integration, migration and opportunity ? to create workable solutions and a future that people want to share. As we seek to create an identity and society we can all share, 2012 feels like a good moment to begin.

Sunder Katwala is director of British Future

Sunder Katwala

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/07/year-we-decide-proud-society

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Curb power of pubcos, say MPs

2012-01-08T12:00:00.001-08:00

Ministers face Commons defeat over reform of pub business as MPs call for statutory code of practice in an industry that is losing 20 pubs a month

Ministers are being accused of naivety, if not outright collusion, in their dealings with pub companies, as the government faces the prospect of an embarrassing defeat this week over its relations with the big pub operators.

An all-party move to condemn the government's handling of relations between pub companies and tied landlords will be put to a vote on Thursday. The motion attacks business department proposals to reform the pub industry and calls for a statutory code of practice and an industry adjudicator. The government favours making the industry's own codes of practice legally binding.

It comes at a time when pubs continue to close at a rate of more than 20 a month. Critics have claimed the government's stance puts the interests of big corporations ahead of local communities. Conservative MP Brian Binley said the government had "sold its soul to the devil" by refusing to introduce a statutory code that would give landlords an option to free themselves from brewers. Nearly 29,000 of the 55,000 pubs in Britain are tied.

The Business Innovation and Skills select committee has also called for the introduction of a statutory independent adjudicator. In a report in September ? its fourth on the issue ? the select committee found that the pubcos had "wasted a final opportunity" to reform their practices, offered to them by the committee in a previous report in 2010.

Also lining up against the Liberal Democrat business minister Ed Davey for Thursday's vote will be the all-party Save the Pub group, chaired by Greg Mulholland, one of Davey's Lib Dem colleagues.

Mulholland said yesterday: "I think there has been collusion between the business department and the British Beer and Pub Association, the representatives of the pub companies. I think the minister has colluded in this at worst or at best has had the wool pulled over his eyes.

"The business model of the pubcos has been akin to the banks. They overvalued their estates, borrowed vast amounts of money against that and when the property market collapsed, they found their ludicrous valuations were wrong and they suddenly found themselves billions of pounds in debt.

"They are trying to service those debts ? mainly with foreign creditors ? by taking more and more from the turnover of each pub." Mulholland said the Federation of Small Businesses and the Forum for Private Business had been asking for a free-of-tie option for lessees and an open market rent review.

"In the past if a pub owner was tied he paid more for the beer, but received a discounted rent. What has happened is the pub companies have increasingly put the rents and beer prices up."

Pub campaigners such as Justice for Licensees argue the only way to resolve the issue is to introduce an independent assessment of what rent should be paid for normal beer prices, and if a licensee is willing to charge higher prices, the rent is reduced.

Mulholland said the business department's self-regulatory deal, putting the existing codes of practice on a legal footing, was "not the option people want ? they want a free-of-tie option to end the market abuse".

He added the proposed code made matters worse "since pubcos' wealthy lawyers are using it as a way of binding tenants and lessees into the code of practice that is inadequate, including excluding the option of going free of tie".

The Business department argues the Office of Fair Trading has found no evidence of competition problems having a significant adverse impact on consumers and therefore the government was not minded to intervene in setting the terms of commercial, contractual relationships.

It also argues legally binding self-regulation can be introduced far more quickly than any statutory solution and can, if devised correctly, be equally effective.

Patrick Wintour

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/08/curb-pubcos-power-say-mps

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Hungary's hard-pressed workforce struggles with unaffordable mortgages

2012-01-08T06:00:00.001-08:00

Budapest's maverick economic policies are undermining its currency, the forint ? piling pressure on the thousands of Hungarians who are trying to pay off home loans denominated in Swiss francs or euros

The Hungarian government says it is bending over backwards to secure a vital loan of up to �17bn from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the EU, but Hungary remains in the international crossfire, sharply criticised by western governments and the European commission and suffering the indignity of a credit downgrade to junk status.

The Hungarian currency, the forint, hit record lows last week, and the crisis could cost the prime minister, Viktor Orban, or at least the economy minister, Gyorgy Matolcsy, their jobs.

The minister leading negotiations on a new loan, Tamas Fellegi, is travelling to Washington for informal talks with the IMF, which he has described as "hard"; he expects talks with the EU to be "extremely hard". From Washington, he will travel to Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Brussels.

His government has been subject to withering criticism, at home and abroad, for passing two financial laws at the end of last year that could be used to interfere with the independence of the Hungarian central bank, the MNB. The government has consistently attacked MNB governor Andras Simor for refusing to go along with its policy of encouraging economic growth by keeping interest rates down. But on Friday, Orban met Simor and promised closer government-bank co-operation. "The Hungarian banking system is sufficiently stable," the bank said in a terse statement issued after the meeting.

Hungary needs the new loan, which it calls a "safety net", by July at the latest. But some suggest that after the downgrade and the sharp drop in the forint's value, at least the bare outline of a loan agreement now needs to be reached within two weeks.

The conservative Fidesz government came to power in spring 2010 with a promise to create 1m jobs in 10 years ? badly needed, as Hungary has the lowest employment rate in the EU. Only 55% of the working-age population work and pay tax; the rest either survive on disability pensions or via the black economy. But joblessness remains steady at 11%, and a range of new taxes, including the increase of VAT to an EU record of 27%, is leading to layoffs rather than job creation. Austrian banks, which dominate the market in Hungary, have also been cutting back on the money available to their subsidiaries in eastern Europe, making it even harder to borrow.

Janos Toth stands at the top of a ladder, covered in plaster, twisting wires into a cavity in the wall. Below him, in the stairwell of a 1930s residential block, are a jumble of bicycles chained together and boxes of withered geraniums, thick with dust, waiting for spring.

Like most Hungarians, Toth has a big mortgage, which he was encouraged by his Austrian-owned bank to take out in Swiss francs in 2008, because interest rates in foreign currencies were much lower than in forints. There were 150 forints to the franc then; now, there are 250. As an electrician, he already works 14 hour days, six days a week, and often Sundays as well. But because of the forint's weakness, the sum he owes keeps growing, and he can already hardly pay the monthly instalments.

As a Hungarian from neighbouring Romania, he came to Budapest with his wife in 1998, seeking a better life. Now he's thinking of going back. "We assumed all along that we would work hard all our lives, and our children would inherit our savings," says his mate, Jozsef. "Now we can see them inheriting our debts."

Tunde Horvath is a journalist, living with her photographer husband in the Buda hills. They also had a big Swiss franc loan, but have signed up to a government scheme to pay it off in one lump sum, at a far better exchange rate than that available in the market. They now have until the end of February to find the money ? they are trying to quickly sell a plot of land adjacent to their own. But they may have to sell their own home as well.

About 100,000 Hungarians are known to have applied to take part in the scheme so far. It was agreed without the involvement of banks, which already stand to lose around �150m; the worst affected Austrian banks are taking Hungary to court for lost profits.

More than a million Hungarians, like Toth, have decided they cannot afford to take part. But their repayments soared again last week because of the weakening forint. The Hungarian economy has entered 2012 like a stricken ship in heavy seas. "We will not just need our umbrellas this coming year," the prime minister told the nation in December, "we will need our storm coats as well."

"I haven't got the money for a storm coat!" proclaimed one of the funnier banners at last week's large anti-government demonstration in Budapest. The increasingly regular protests in the Hungarian capital are getting more humorous as the confidence of the protesters grows. As the economy slides, there's a renaissance of jokes not seen since before the fall of communism.

Some jokes though, cut close to the bone. A cartoon last Monday in the French daily Le Monde portrays the Hungarian prime minister as a fascist leader. "A lot of my colleagues and commentators in Hungary think that the government intention is to build a dictatorship, but I disagree," says Peter Hack, a law professor at Budapest University and former liberal MP. "I think that the government made a series of miscalculations." He insists that Fidesz, who policies have caused international concern, remains the best bulwark against the far-right Jobbik party, which won nearly 17% of the vote at the election and has since overtaken the socialists in polls to become the country's second political force.

George Sch�pflin, a Fidesz member of the European parliament, agrees with his former rival. "One third, or maybe two fifths, of the population is at or below the poverty line. Probably 10 to 15% are in deep poverty. These are the people who are vulnerable not to the left wing, but to Jobbik," he says. "And that is what the left wing refuses to see, and that is what all the critics of Hungary fail to see: that the deteriorating economy is not helpful to the left, it is helpful to the far right.'

"The new government will be modest and humble," Orban said in his victory speech after the April 2010 elections. But "the real problem with this government is that it did not keep that promise," says Balint Ablonczy, a journalist at Heti Valasz, an influential pro-government weekly. One of the most interesting developments of recent weeks has been growing criticism from hitherto staunch supporters of the government, like Heti Valasz and the daily Magyar Hirlap.

So could Orban fall? At only 48, the Hungarian prime minister is already one of the great survivors of eastern European politics. An ardent footballer and admirer of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, some observers say that, like Berlusconi, he would rather step down than oversee a programme of austerity measures at the IMF's behest ? austerity most Hungarians say they could not bear.

Others say Orban did not wait eight years in the political wilderness, after Fidesz lost the 2002 election, to resign now, after only 20 months in office ? and that he would never leave the party he has spent nearly 24 years building in the lurch.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/08/hungary-unaffordable-mortgages-forint

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Stephen Lawrence killers will not get parole if they refuse to confess guilt

2012-01-08T01:00:00.001-08:00

Parole Board unlikely to grant David Norris and Gary Dobson release on licence without evidence of remorse

Stephen Lawrence's killers will serve many years in prison beyond their minimum sentence unless they admit their guilt, say legal experts.

Probation officers believe that before they can secure their eventual release David Norris and Gary Dobson may have to name others involved in the killing if they are to convince a parole board that they have fully accepted their guilt and have been rehabilitated.

The Observer understands that Scotland Yard detectives investigating the murder will visit Norris and Dobson in prison this week, and will urge them to help their inquiries by "naming names".

Detectives are understood to believe that the issue of their release date could be crucial in persuading the pair to provide vital information that could secure more convictions.

Public unease at the sentences handed down to the pair saw the convictions referred to the attorney general last week. Norris was sentenced to 14 years and three months, while Dobson got 15 years and two months.

However, senior figures in the probation service said it was highly likely that the pair would serve many more years in prison beyond their minimum sentences if they continued to deny their guilt. They point out that a prisoner's eligibility for release following a conviction for murder or another serious crime is routinely based on their acceptance of guilt, remorse shown, the rehabilitation programmes they have completed and an assessment of the risk they pose to the public.

If a prisoner continues to deny their guilt, it is exceptionally hard to persuade the Parole Board of their suitability for release on licence. In addition, only when they have admitted their guilt will they be able to participate in the necessary programmes to confront their offending behaviour.

"My experience is that a continued claim of innocence is always a barrier," said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union. "A lifer, in order to get out of jail on licence, needs to demonstrate that he or she has shown remorse, completed rehabilitation programmes and is therefore low-risk.

"By definition, if the prisoner says they have not committed the crime, they are not able to tick the relevant boxes for release."

Following his conviction for murder, Dobson protested his innocence, turning to the jury and telling them: "You have condemned an innocent man. I hope you can live with yourselves." During the trial Norris, too, declared: "You are accusing me of murder. I am an innocent man." The families of both men say they plan to appeal.

Publicly the Parole Board says that maintaining innocence should not be a bar to qualifying for release. However, Napo said there have been very few cases over the past 20 years where the board had agreed to the release of a prisoner who has denied responsibility for an offence such as rape or murder.

"In theory, claiming innocence should not be a barrier to release," Fletcher said. "The reality is that those on life or indeterminate sentences will serve beyond their tariff so long as they maintain their innocence."

Fletcher predicted that, as they sought to secure their release dates, Dobson and Norris would come under pressure to co-operate with the authorities by naming others involved in the murder as a way of proving they have been fully rehabilitated.

"The longer they leave it, the less likely the authorities would be willing to believe the reversal of innocence and would view it as an attempt to manipulate the system," Fletcher said.

Jamie Doward

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/07/stephen-lawrence-killers-parole-guilt

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Colin Myler heads to New York for the clash of the newspaper dinosaurs

2012-01-07T20:00:00.001-08:00

Former News of the World editor to take over at New York Daily News, which continues its bitter rivalry with the Post despite both newspapers' declining circulations

What do old editors of the News of the World do when there's no paper left to edit? They whizz back to New York, whence they were plucked by News International when Andy Coulson's exit left a big hole in need of filling. But this time Colin Myler isn't returning to his former billet on Murdoch's New York Post, but to its fiercest competitor ? the New York Daily News.

He'll find a "deeply divided and demoralised newsroom" waiting for him, with two dozen reporters shed in recent months and three more "handed their pink slips this week", along with Kevin Convey, the editor Myler replaces in short order. But those are quotes from the New York Post, and doubtless Myler will be able to duff up his former employers in similar fashion once he starts work on Tuesday.

The Post and the Daily News are deadly rivals in a Big Apple where such rivalry barely exists any longer. They scratch, they taunt, they boast and belabour. And, of course, they mostly lose circulation ? and money. Legend has it that only one of them can survive and make a profit ? but I'm not sure even that's true any longer. What is true is that, time and again, they import hardened redtop operators from the UK or Australia to fight their editorial battles for them. Once Col Allan on the Post faced Martin Dunn (ex-Sun, ex-News of the World) on the News. Now, in Myler, Allan has to tackle his own ex-number two. Think unique skills in gauging public taste? Perhaps. Or think dinosaurs, think lost worlds.

? Rupert lives again as the octogenarian Tweeter of Sixth Avenue? It's a smart enough seeming ploy in the Murdoch PR stakes ? especially since it implies that the Sun King has started using an iPad at last. But always beware a tweet too far. Much of News Corp's alleged political clout has come from only backing a winning political candidate after he or she has effectively won. It was the Bun wot joined the obvious bandwagon! Yet how do you do that in 140 characters? Romney or Santorum? Obama or Paul? Is Fox News supposed to jump every time the boss goes on Twitter? Or is Murdoch supposed to do only bromide tweets?

Peter Preston

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/08/new-york-post-news-myler

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David Cameron to curb 'fat cat' pay with people power

2012-01-07T15:00:00.001-08:00

Shareholders set to win right to block soaring executive pay under plans being drawn up by the government

Shareholders are to win a legal right to block sky-high pay awards to company executives under radical plans for an assault on "fat cat" earnings drawn up by the government. Senior ministers, including the business secretary, Vince Cable, are backing a move that would give shareholders an effective veto over pay deals they deem unacceptable.

David Cameron confirmed the move and said he was determined to end the "merry-go-round" of super-rich bosses rubber-stamping each others' inflated deals and being rewarded for failure: "Let's empower the shareholders by having a straight, shareholder vote on top pay packages," he said. "The market for top people isn't working; it needs to be sorted out."

The move by ministers, which would require legislation, came to light as the main parties scrambled to occupy the high ground over executive pay, ahead of the politically charged bank bonus season. It reflects a growing consensus at Westminster that executive pay is out of control and has to be tackled, particularly at a time when many people are losing their jobs and those on modest earning are having their pay frozen.

In the past financial year, the directors of FTSE 100 companies have seen a 49% increase in total earnings, taking average pay to �2.7m. Although bonuses will probably be down on last year, the hefty sums awarded will further highlight the growing chasm between rich and poor and fuel complaints that the government is too soft on the City.

Labour, whose leader, Ed Miliband, has called for a "fairer and better capitalism", challenged the government to back all the recommendations of the independent High Pay Commission in order to increase transparency and accountability in the boardroom and the City. Currently shareholders have a right to vote on pay awards, but the vote is "advisory" and often takes place only after decisions have been made on executive pay. Under the plans being drawn up by cabinet ministers, the vote would, for the first time, have legal force, so that executives would be subject to the democratic will of shareholders over pay.

Cameron criticised boardroom cronies who helped each other "fill their boots" while the country was being forced to tighten its belt. "We've got to deal with the merry-go-round where there's too many cases of remuneration committee members sitting on each other's boards, patting each other's backs and handing out each other's pay rises," he said.

"We need to redefine the word 'fair'. We need to try to give people a sense that we have a vision at the end of this, of a fairer, better economy, a fairer, better society, where if you work hard and do the right thing you get rewarded."

Anger among shareholders and the public at soaring executive pay has been growing in recent years. Shareholder rebellions have become increasingly common. Advertising giant WPP's management received a stinging rebuke from investors last year, with 42% of shareholders voting against the remuneration report. Shareholder activists objected to the fact that Mark Read, the head of WPP Digital, received a pay rise of 31% to �425,000 in January.

Other reforms being considered by ministers include ending the "cosy cartel" that allows top executives to set each other's pay, by bringing outsiders on to remuneration committees, and introducing rules to force executives to take more of their pay in shares that cannot be cashed in for at least five years.

The High Pay Commission said executive remuneration was out of control. It cited the pay of the head of Barclays, which rose by nearly 5,000% in 30 years, a period in which average wages had risen only threefold. It made 12 recommendations, including:

? Greater transparency in the calculation of executive pay, to end the "closed shop" on pay decisions.

? Putting employees and other "outsiders" on remuneration committees.

? Publishing the top 10 executive pay packages outside the boardroom in order to illustrate the sums earned by senior traders at investment banks.

? Forcing companies to publish a pay ratio between the highest paid executive and the company median.

? Requiring companies to publish a single total pay figure for boardroom members, including pension benefits.

Will Hutton, Observer columnist and author of an independent review of fair pay delivered to the government last March, called for companies and the public sector to publish annually the five-year trend of the ratio of top pay to median pay and justify upward movement. "Citizens, workers and shareholders would have the ammunition to challenge undeserved top pay," he said.

Deborah Hargreaves, who chairs the commission and is a former business editor of the Guardian, said: "We urge the government to be bold in their reforms and not be put off by the strong possibility of a backlash from the business lobby. The public are right behind the campaign in this new era of austerity."

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said: "We have set three tests for the government to meet, based on the principles of transparency, accountability and fairness. Anything less than the full implementation of these measures by the prime minister will fall short of what is required to empower those who ultimately own our businesses."

Toby Helm

Richard Wachman

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/07/david-cameron-fat-cat-pay

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Parliament's moral duty on assisted dying | Mary Warnock

2012-01-07T09:00:00.001-08:00

Legislators will wield the power of life and death when they act on Lord Falconer's report

There has been a lull in the media recently about the rights and wrongs of assisted dying, but the conflict is sure to break out again with the imminent publication of the report from Lord Falconer's commission, established to consider changes to the law.

The commission was set up in the autumn of 2010 and has been subject to repeated accusations of bias in favour of reform. It is true that Lord Falconer is known to be dissatisfied with the law as it stands, as indeed anyone should be. For as things are, assisting in or encouraging suicide remains a criminal offence, indeed a crime tantamount to murder, but the director of public prosecutions has compiled a list of considerations that will make prosecution unlikely (but not impossible) when a person helps another to die at his or her own request.

This cannot be a good state of the law. For one thing, it classes together the actions of someone who broadcasts encouragement to suicide to the world at large with one who agonisingly decides that, out of compassion, when asked to do so, he must help a person he loves to escape from suffering. For another thing, the only people who may not be exempt from prosecution are professionals, doctors or nurses, who are the only people with the knowledge to be sure of success. Nothing could be more terrible than a botched suicide, a terminally ill person determined to die brought back to yet more horrible life. Finally, there is the drawback of uncertainty.

The commission has carried out its work thoroughly and conscientiously. Those who gave evidence were treated courteously and fairly and were given time to expand their arguments, whichever way they tended. Whatever the commission advises, in whatever way it recommends that the present muddle be cleared up, there seems to me to be no reason simply to write off its conclusions. It will not be enough to say of Lord Falconer: "He would say that, wouldn't he?" He was chairman of a group, not all of whom thought the same, and all of whom listened to those who gave evidence, before writing their report.

Society is getting better at facing the fact that many people at present suffer horrible deaths. The commission has reinforced this welcome trend, to think seriously how things can be improved.

We can admit now how deeply we desire a good death, for ourselves, our friends and family; how much we resent the assumption that death must be fended off at all costs, whatever our wishes. Euthanasia in its etymological sense is a widely shared ideal, especially among the increasing number of the aged. The desire to die at a proper time and "peacefully" (as most people feel impelled to say in the deaths column of newspapers. Perhaps they mean that death itself is peaceful, not that dying was so, for all too often it is not) is partly a self-regarding, partly an other-regarding motive. The desire to escape the intolerable humiliations, as well as the pains, of incurable illness usually combines with the desire not to be a burden or a futile expense; this is a perfectly respectable motive, which should not be thought of as the outcome of undue pressure.

The notion that nobody would want death unless they had been persuaded by someone else to want it (or unless they were clinically depressed and could be treated for that) is surely a myth. Some may value life itself, however pointless and pleasureless it is, but others do not.

Palliative care, the control of symptoms when there is no hope of cure, is a marvellous medical development, constantly advancing. But we must not pretend that it will soon be available for everyone, nor that it is always effective. In any case, the atmosphere of loving care, palpable in the best hospices, cannot be easily reproduced in hospitals, where, as we know, terminally ill patients may suffer appalling neglect, both from doctors not much interested in death once it is imminent, and from nurses who have neither time nor specialist training.

The decision whether or not the law should be changed must rest with Parliament; despite the wider acceptance among the general public that such a change would be rational and good, it will be an extremely difficult decision for Parliament to make. If MPs do not or cannot make it, and aiding and abetting suicide remains a form of murder, then the only remedy is to follow the Law Society's long-standing advice and change the law of murder, so that it no longer carries a mandatory life sentence.

The life sentence is a farce anyway, since everyone knows that it means what it says in only a very few cases, of which assisted suicide would certainly not be one. So in the case where a loving husband had brought about the death of his wife, who preferred death to the life she was leading, it would be for the judge to decide what punishment, if any, would be just.

Perhaps, if all judges were of the same mind, precedent would gradually accumulate (and under the present law it has in a way begun to do so, in the absence of prosecutions for assisted suicide) and eventually it would be seen that to continue to treat mercy killing as a crime was futile. But Parliament must decide which way it is right to go. This will be one of the many instances where to legislate is to come to a moral decision, from which there is no escape.

Mary Warnock

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/01/mary-warnock-assisted-suicide

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Seeds survive being eaten twice

2012-01-07T04:00:00.001-08:00

How seeds survive when the lizards that eat them are eaten by birds

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15838840

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Dr Gerry Mander: the therapist the stars trust

2012-01-06T23:00:00.001-08:00

Help! I don't want to be in charge of an isolated and loathed totalitarian state

Dear Dr Mander

My father died recently, leaving me in charge of his isolated totalitarian communist pariah state. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I've got to lead a nation of 24 million people and I'm not even 30 years old. I've seen them all crying on TV at Dad's funeral, but I never liked the guy so I'd be surprised if they did. It's just an act. We're all bluffing. Take me, for example. In public, I'm, like, Mr Big Time Nuclear-armed General, but at home I just play Medal of Honour on my PlayStation and look at forbidden western internet sites (I love your English dailymail.co.uk, by the way!). What if everyone suddenly stopped pretending? I've seen the news, with all those Arab guys gathering in squares. The last thing I need is some North Korean spring. Should I be closing all the squares? Just to be on the safe side?

Kim Jong-un

Dear Kim

Brutal murderous despotism is not always the most stable form of government, although your family has managed to hold out longer than most. For marginally less extreme dictatorships I might recommend a course of modest economic liberalisation. But your case is so far gone that any change at all might provoke complete collapse. Luckily, the west is distracted by its own economic problems right now, so if you keep a low profile you might get away with it for another decade or two. Just steer clear of funding terrorists and nuclear escalation and the world will forget about North Korea again once the quiet Christmas news cycle has moved on.

Dear Dr Mander

When one is getting on in years, one expects to become a little forgetful, perhaps momentarily confused. But recently we have been experiencing a rather disturbing sense of deja vu. Riots in the inner city, emergency budgets, the royal wedding? I'm sure I read recently that Argentina was threatening the Falklands. Our people are definitely in government. The Labour party has some awful leader who they think of as an intellectual and everyone else thinks is just a bit odd. We wonder if maybe we're not still prime minister and all that dreadful business over Europe and the community charge might have been just a bad dream.

Baroness Thatcher

Dear Mrs T

This is a common syndrome afflicting former British prime ministers. John Major was in the other week complaining about divisions over Europe splitting his party. I've had Gordon Brown on the phone moaning about a credit crunch and Tony Blair's obsessed with invading Iran, saying it has weapons of mass destruction.

It is difficult to let go of power and the loss seems to manifest itself as a kind of pathological grief ? you are projecting a resemblance to your own time in office on to current circumstances when the likeness is only slight. I suggest you try to relax, perhaps take yourself off to the cinema. But steer clear of films involving Meryl Streep for the next few weeks, just to avoid unnecessary upset.

Dear Dr Mander

I am staying at Edinburgh Zoo with my partner as part of a mission to improve Sino-British relations. But your media just seem obsessed with my private life. My husband doesn't get the same treatment. Is it because I happen to be female? I am also a serious diplomat. Frankly, my treatment has been demeaning.

Tian Tian the Panda

Dear Tian Tian

This is a perennial problem for professional female animals. Laika, the first earthly creature in space, is almost entirely forgotten. Lassie has never been fully recognised for her work in child safety. I suggest you work this unwanted exposure to your advantage. Get a publicist and an agent. If you're going to be famous you should at least retain some control over your image.

Dr Gerry Mander shares his consulting room with Rafael Behr

Dr Gerry Mander

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/01/gerry-mander-on-the-couch

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In Pictures: Jellyfish blooms

2012-01-06T18:00:00.001-08:00

Increase in jellyfish blooms could disturb the marine food chain

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-13647970

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Johnny Silvo obituary

2012-01-06T13:00:00.001-08:00

Entertainer and singer who rode the crest of the folk revival of the 60s and 70s

Johnny Silvo, who has died of cancer aged 75, was a singer and entertainer who performed in British folk clubs for more than 45 years. His wide-ranging repertoire, which spanned traditional and contemporary British and American folk songs, blues, jazz and country, enjoyed great popularity in the folk revival of the 1960s and 70s. Although such a breadth of styles has been out of fashion for some years, Silvo nevertheless had a loyal fanbase, and he continued to be booked by a regular circuit of folk clubs and other venues where his fine, warm singing, accomplished guitar accompaniment and entertaining and humorous performances were much enjoyed.

Silvo was featured alongside Sandy Denny on her first two recordings, a couple of years before she brought her distinctive voice to Fairport Convention's journey into folk music. Silvo and Denny were both heard on the album Alex Campbell and His Friends in 1967 and, later in the year, a joint album, Sandy and Johnny, had tracks from each singer. Denny's reputation was undoubtedly boosted by being linked with both Campbell and Silvo, who were, at that time, the better-known performers. She also performed, briefly, with the Johnny Silvo Folk Group.

Born John Woods in Wimbledon, south-west London, Silvo was the son of an African-American soldier who was serving in Ireland, and his County Mayo girlfriend, who, unmarried, fled to London to give birth to her son. She was killed in wartime bombings, and the young Johnny was placed in a Barnardo's home in Kingston upon Thames, where a fellow resident was the future author Leslie Thomas. He transferred to another Barnardo's home, the William Baker memorial technical school for boys, known as Goldings, in Hertford, where he was school captain.

Silvo's interest in music dated from his schooldays, when he sang and played the bugle and drums in the army cadet force. During national service, he signed on as a regular soldier so that he could become a physical training instructor. By the age of 22, he was teaching PE in a school and, having bought a guitar while in the army, he sang jazz, skiffle and folk in the evenings. He soon gave up teaching to join the Mike Peters Jazzmen, also guesting with bands led by Monty Sunshine, Dick Charlesworth and Bruce Turner. At an early stage in his career, he changed his name to Silvo ? a variation of the Latin word for wood or forest.

After the trad jazz boom ended, Silvo appeared solo in nightclubs and restaurants, particularly in the Channel Islands, singing pop standards as well as jazz and folk. His repertoire and style were ideally suited to the entertainment end of the emerging folk scene, and soon he was singing in folk clubs across the country. He formed the Johnny Silvo Folk Group, one of whose members was the bass player Dave Moses, and then the two men formed a duo which performed in British folk clubs, in cabaret and on the radio, and toured Europe, north and south America and Africa. They made several recordings, including Live from London (1973), which featured some of the songs that were central to Silvo's repertoire, such as Midnight Special, My Brother Sylvest, Hold 'em Joe and Dr Jazz.

Although the duo with Moses continued off and on for many years, Silvo established his solo career from the mid-70s, with albums including Time Enough to Spare (1977) and In the Spotlight (1983). In 1999 he recorded Blues in the Backyard, a joint album of classic blues songs with Diz Disley, for the Fellside label. The musician Dave Peabody, reviewing the album for fRoots magazine, praised the album's "disarming sincerity" and compared Silvo favourably with Josh White.

In the 1970s Silvo appeared on the children's television programme Play School, where his friendly personality and entertaining songs made him a popular presenter. He was also a frequent guest and presenter on BBC radio's Country Meets Folk programme.

British folk clubs and international touring continued, and on a visit to Norway, Silvo met Berit, whom he married in the mid-80s. He moved to Stavanger, Norway, returning regularly to tour British folk clubs and festivals. He also performed in Norway in a trio, The Life of Reily. In the last couple of years, he appeared at folk festivals in Fylde, Lancashire, and Saltburn, Teesside. His most recent album, I'll Fly Away (2006), was released on the Folksound label and included, again, the popular Midnight Special.

He is survived by Berit and their son, Patrick.

? John Frederick Woods (Johnny Silvo), folk singer and entertainer, born 2 December 1936; died 18 December 2011

Derek Schofield

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/06/johnny-silvo

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Letters: Science of laughter

2012-01-06T03:00:00.001-08:00

Seumas Milne says "Margaret Thatcher was the most socially destructive British politician of our times" (Comment, 5 January). Looking around my town at the collapse of health, welfare and community services, at the plight of those who have lost their jobs and their homes, and with the gap still widening between rich and poor, while there are still obscene amounts of public spending on war and Trident, I can only say that Cameron may well wrest that title from her.
Rae Street
Littleborough, Lancashire

? When I learned CPR (Shortcuts, G2, 5 January), we were told to sing Nelly the Elephant during the chest compressions. When we got to "The head of the tribe was calling far, far away," it was time to break off and administer two mouth-to-mouth breaths. Then it was back to chest compressions and "Nelly the Elephant packed her trunk etc". We changed over to Stayin' Alive last year - but nobody could remember the tune!
Martyn Day
Twickenham, Middlesex

? A footnote to the sad death of Ronald Searle (Obituaries, 4 January) is that a number of his animated machines, including the magnificent railway train, are held in store at the Ontario Science Centre and are seldom exhibited. Perhaps Britain could ask for them back and put them on permanent display.
Percy Barber
Unionville, Ontario

? Scientists can be dry humorists and topical (Letters, 3 January). A Higgs boson goes to church but the priest refuses to let it in. The particle says: "But without me how can you have mass?"
Andrew Vincent
Cheltenham, Gloucstershire

? I'm not sure about Heisenberg.
Joe Mundy
Farnham, Surrey

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/jan/05/thatcher-cameron-cpr-searle-higgs

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Most Wanted: Six key British bugs

2012-01-05T22:00:00.001-08:00

Experts ask public to look out for six key British bugs

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-13675732

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Winning British wildlife images

2012-01-05T12:00:00.001-08:00

Winning images from the 2011 British Wildlife Photographer Awards

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15061273

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Piers Morgan's just a bit of media Marmite ?

2012-01-05T07:00:00.001-08:00

Loathing of the former News of the World and Mirror editor seems overdone. You can reach for the remote, and turn him off

Piers Morgan's real name might be Piers Marmite for all the grimaces he attracts. You either hate him, or you affect not to like him very much. His video performance on the Leveson interview show attracted predictable snarls and loathing from fellow journalists on both sides of the Atlantic. It's instructive to wonder why.

A silver spoon beginning? No, his dad (name: O'Meara, a dentist) died when he was one. He did his O-levels at Challey comprehensive, East Sussex, and his A's at a sixth-form college in Lewes. Oxbridge? Dream on ? Try Harlow College. A plum job in Fleet Street? Try beat reporting for the Streatham and Tooting News.

OK. So Kelvin at the Sun spotted a showbusiness talent worth hiring. So Rupert, the Sun God, spotted a stripling editor for his News of the World. So the Mirror poached him and he met Tony Blair 58 times (more than Murdoch himself). So he finally got serious, opposed the war in Iraq, innocently published some hoax atrocity pictures and was asked to clear his desk. So why is that quite so loathsome?

He left newspapers and went into TV, with signal success. Maybe his CNN interview show isn't a ratings wonder (but just look at CNN's ratings as a whole). Maybe his tweets and boasts and tall stories rile rivals and sum up a trade that loftier operators disdain. But who would even they throw off the lifeboat first: Morgan, or Heather Mills? In short, the histrionic loathing is much overdone; and the pursuit of the Piers of long ago seems merely gratuitous. Leveson flays evasive Morgan shock? No need for that, if you can reach for the remote and just switch him off.

Peter Preston

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/piers-morgan-media-marmite

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'Record year' for ivory seizures

2012-01-05T02:00:00.001-08:00

More elephant tusks were seized in 2011 than in any year since 1989, when the ivory trade was banned, international wildlife trade group Traffic says.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-16353204

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Patrick Mollison obituary

2012-01-04T21:00:00.001-08:00

Blood transfusion pioneer and author of a classic textbook

Patrick Mollison, who has died aged 97, was a pioneer of blood transfusion during the second world war and wrote the classic textbook on the subject, now in its 11th edition. When war broke out in September 1939, Mollison was a young doctor at the South London Blood Supply Depot, in Sutton. He had been seconded there from St Thomas' hospital by the medical school dean, who realised that the new facility of blood transfusion promised to be an important way of saving lives. Mollison's job was to treat civilian casualties and to carry out research into making transfusion safer.

He began by studying methods of treating blood in storage so that red cells had an increased lifespan. The customary way of preserving blood was to add trisodium citrate and dextrose. But this process involved sterilising the components separately as the dextrose caramelised if they were mixed first, which could lead to bacterial contamination and death. With two colleagues, Mollison found that red cells lasted strikingly longer ? and the problem of caramelisation was avoided ? when blood was stored in slightly acidified solutions. The formula, of 2% disodium citrate and 3% dextrose, came into use throughout Britain, then globally, enabling blood to be stored for 21 days. ACD, as it became known, remained in use until the mid-1970s.

When air raids started in summer 1940, Mollison's treatment of casualties included a comparison of the effects of different transfusion fluids in resuscitation. At that time, plasma was being separated from whole blood. Mollison realised that the remaining red cells, with their coat of white cells, could be useful to patients, especially those with right-side heart failure, and he was able to demonstrate this. Rhesus blood groups had recently been discovered in New York, and scientists there sent Mollison reagents for testing and matching blood, making transfusion safer.

Mollison was the son of a distinguished ear, nose and throat surgeon, and was destined from youth to follow his father into medicine. He went to Rugby school, and then studied for his first examination in medicine, the equivalent of A-levels, at Guy's hospital, London. He read natural sciences at Cambridge and then did his clinical training back in London at St Thomas', qualifying in 1938, and spent the next year as house physician to the medical unit, a job that included casualty and anaesthetics.

With the advent of war, he transferred to the South London Blood Supply Depot, set up in a former school. "The gym was turned into a laboratory and the library was turned into a room for donors," he recalled. To recruit donors, he hired a theatrical impresario who plastered the area with posters. "He took us all to a shop in the town, where we sat at tables as people were encouraged to come up and enrol."

Mollison often had to take blood for transfusion to small local hospitals, driving a van through the blackout. A postwar Medical Research Council (MRC) report commented that it was gratifying to see how the organisation, planned without any practical experience of a large-scale transfusion service, swung into action.

Mollison entered the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1943, and after serving as a medical officer in training units in Britain, was sent to Germany towards the end of the war. In May 1945 he took part in the relief of the Belsen concentration camp, supervising medical services including transfusion. He went on to India and Burma, from where he was invalided home in 1946 with a tropical disorder.

Returning to civilian life, he turned down a senior teaching post at St Thomas' to join Hammersmith hospital. He resumed research in a small room attached to the obstetrics unit, as he was interested in jaundice in babies. The MRC established him as director of a new research unit and later provided a prefabricated hut in the hospital grounds.

Mollison's unit moved to St Mary's hospital in 1960, when it was renamed the Experimental Haematology Unit, and he was made professor of haematology. The unit closed in 1979 when he retired as emeritus professor. He continued to write review articles, working on further editions of his textbook and carrying out research with Marcela Contreras of the North London Blood Transfusion Service and co-author of the later editions of his book. Contreras described him as, "the father of transfusion medicine", saluting his "seminal work on the preservation of blood for transfusion, on the survival of transfused red cells, on the mechanisms of red cell destruction, on compatibility testing, transfusion reactions and other adverse effects of blood transfusion".

Mollison was the sole author of the 1951 textbook Blood Transfusion in Clinical Medicine, universally known as Mollison, and six subsequent editions. He wrote three further editions with Contreras and a Dutch haematologist, CP Engelfriet. The 11th edition, published in December, is now known as Mollison's Blood Transfusion in Clinical Medicine. It is regarded as essential reading in every transfusion centre in the world. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society, a rare honour for a medical scientist, in 1968, and was appointed CBE in 1979.

Mollison enjoyed gardening and classical music. He attended the annual Schubert festival in Switzerland until recently and was a frequent visitor to Covent Garden, Bayreuth and Glyndebourne.

He married Margaret Prentice in 1940. They divorced in 1964. In 1973 he married Jennifer Jones, a consultant anaesthetist. She survives him, along with the three sons of his first marriage.

? Patrick Loudon Mollison, haematologist, born 17 March 1914; died 26 November 2011

Caroline Richmond

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/04/patrick-mollison

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In pictures: Chernobyl wilderness

2012-01-04T16:00:00.001-08:00

BBC Nature has exclusive access to the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with a team of scientists studying the effects of radiation on wildlife there.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14325323

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Eurozone's phoney war will be short-lived

2012-01-04T10:00:00.001-08:00

Stock markets are surprisingly calm as 2012 begins, but such complacency can't hide the fact that fault lines are forming across Europe

There's something of a "phoney war" quality to the first few days of 2012. Stock markets are rising on the back of so-so economic data, which in itself is an indication of how much bad news is priced into markets. Bank lending is flat, the housing market is going sideways at best, and there is a bit more juice in the construction sector than predicted.

In normal times, the financial markets would look askance at figures showing the economy to be on course for zero growth, or perhaps even a mild contraction, in the fourth quarter. But the economy is not actually tanking at the moment, and that is felt to be good news.

It is a similar story in the eurozone. Nick Parsons, the head of strategy at National Australia Bank, rightly notes that the economic numbers released so far in 2012 point to an increasing divergence between the strong and weak countries of the eurozone. The single currency, he notes tartly, was supposed to do the opposite: make economies like Greece, Italy and Spain more like Germany.

But hey, Greece didn't leave or get booted out of the euro in the period between Christmas and New Year, and the contraction in the eurozone looks to be marginally less severe than feared just before Christmas. Athens may be holding a gun to the head of its single-currency partners by threatening to default unless it gets more bailout cash, but the euro is still in one piece, if only just.

Are stock markets being a tad complacent about all this? You bet they are. Louise Cooper at BGC partners points out that record amounts of cash are being parked at the European Central Bank overnight: more than ?450bn (�372bn) on Tuesday against ?200bn in mid-November.

This, according to Cooper, is evidence of a worsening credit crunch, because the money being lodged at the ECB for nugatory rates of interest would normally be available for banks that need to borrow short term from the wholesale money markets. European banks have a massive funding problem, and for the time being that is being disguised by large dollops of cheap money from the ECB and other central banks. There is no real strategy here, other than playing for time in the hope that something will come up.

That looks unlikely. In early 1940, it was widely felt in Britain that Hitler "had missed the bus" by not attacking in the west straight after the invasion of Poland. He hadn't, as the invasions of Norway, the Low Countries and France showed. This phoney war is unlikely to last that long.

Larry Elliott

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/jan/04/eurozone-phoney-war

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How a cone snail catches its prey

2012-01-04T05:00:00.001-08:00

A venomous cone snail engulfs its prey before spearing it with a harpoon-like barb and paralysing it, footage shows.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16222577

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If RBS takes stakes in its ailing debtors, who knows what George Osborne could end up owning?

2012-01-04T00:00:00.001-08:00

Whatever his free-market political inclinations, it appears the chancellor is going to have to leave rolling back the boundaries of the state for better times

For the coalition's intellectual leading lights, not least George Osborne, rolling back the boundaries of the state is not just a short-term necessity imposed by the demands of the sovereign bond markets, but a deep-seated article of faith. So it's a strange irony that bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland, more than three-quarters of which is owned by the state, carries the fate of a large swath of Britain's ailing corporate sector in its hands.

It's not in RBS's remit to safeguard the livelihoods of the tens of thousands of workers whose future depends on the struggling firms it lent money to back in the boom years. But this year, as more and more private employers appear to be heading for the buffers, scrutiny of the role being played by major corporate lenders ? and particularly taxpayer-owned RBS ? looks destined only to intensify.

Already, it's not impossible to envisage a situation where shop staff at struggling high street chains HMV, Peacocks and Clinton Cards join maids and receptionists at Jarvis Hotels and staff at Four Seasons care homes who are already ? albeit indirectly and partially ? employed by RBS. Like it or not, Osborne has a portfolio of interests that stretches way beyond the family wallpaper business, and that portfolio is likely to grow significantly.

As Simon Bowers explains on page 34, the taxpayer bank has shown itself unafraid to step in with bold remedial action in the case of large but struggling businesses ? including taking controlling stakes. The same fate could yet befall TV production house Endemol, Thomas Cook and even sub-prime doorstep loan collector Cattles.

As we slip with trepidation into 2012, it may well be that, whether the government wishes it or not, another stealthy wave of quasi-state expansion emerges. Employers large and small are expected to come cap in hand to RBS and fellow state-backed lender Lloyds.

It was Alistair Darling and his apparatchiks who decided it wasn't for the Treasury to second-guess the management of the banks it had bailed out. The decision was in tune with the mood of the moment: Osborne had accused Labour of harking back to 1970s-style nationalisations in rescuing the banks, and the government was petrified of exacerbating the already febrile mood in the markets by appearing to seize control of the financial sector.

Yet that was before a shortage of credit to the real economy threatened to choke off what scant recovery there was, and before the eurozone crisis raised the spectre of a new global recession.

We have already been treated to the bizarre spectacle of ministers negotiating with banks they largely own about how much the lenders will deign to make available for small and medium-sized businesses.

With a string of high-profile firms likely to be forced into the hands of the taxpayer in the coming months, Osborne and business secretary Vince Cable should make it clear to the banks that they must be run in the long-term interests of the economy, not for a short-term return to the private sector, which, as the cut-price sale of Northern Rock to Richard Branson earlier last year showed, is unlikely to be a boon to taxpayers.

It's an unenviable tightrope-walk: Japan's experience shows that propping up "zombie" banks with balance sheets stuffed full of non-performing loans can weigh on growth for years. Equally, some of the debt-burdened firms that found their way onto RBS's books in the early 2000s were only viable in boom years.

But 2012 is going to be a(nother) grim year for businesses up and down the country: they need to know their banks are in it for the long term, and if the job losses start to pile up, the role of RBS and Lloyds could become increasingly controversial. For the time being, it looks as though rolling back the boundaries of the state will just have to wait.

? Observer reader John Webster has risen admirably to the challenge of suggesting an appropriate soundtrack for the economy in 2012. Instead of listing a few suitably apocalyptic hit tunes from the recession-hit 1980s, he's composed one of his own, available here, which takes in a broad sweep of history, from Waterloo to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. His refrain is simple: "Turbulent times, turbulent times, sometimes you're gonna live in turbulent times." Indeed.

The euro crisis was so last year. Now it's the yen

It's been All About The Euro for the past 12 months, barring a few days of panic about America's credit rating. But this year, we may have to spread our worries a bit more thinly.

In the dying days of 2011, early warning signals began to suggest that as the euro crisis rumbles on, Japan could be next in the markets' firing line.

The Japanese central bank made heavy use of the US Federal Reserve's currency-swap arrangements in Christmas week, borrowing $9bn to pass on to the financial sector. That's tiny compared with the $33bn guzzled up by eurozone banks, but it does suggest Japan's financial sector is fragile.

At the same time, the resilience of the yen is giving exporters a headache, and Tokyo's feuding politicians are still wrestling with how the country will manage its eye-watering debt burden. Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio, at over 200%, dwarfs that of Greece or Portugal, and more than half its firms pay no tax to the state.

Tokyo has long been able to rely on the deep pockets of Japanese savers to fund much of its borrowing; but the savings ratio ? the share of their income consumers put by for a rainy day ? has dropped from 10% a decade ago to 3% today, while the ageing population means a growing number of people will be spending their savings.

A recent IMF report warned that Japan should take urgent action to prevent these deteriorating debt dynamics from forcing up bond yields: but one of the few proposed measures to bring in more revenue ? an increase in the consumption tax ? prompted nine members from the ruling DPJ party to resign from the house of representatives last week. Their reticence is understandable: a premature increase in the consumption tax was seen as one of the key reasons Japan slumped back into recession in the mid-1990s after a market crash at the start of the decade.

But as the travails of Italy in 2011 illustrated, if a country's debt burden is large enough, a loss of market confidence is catastrophic, because even a relatively small increase in borrowing costs can rapidly create an economic and political crisis. Expect to hear a lot more about Japan's economy in 2012.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/01/rbs-debtors-osborne-owning

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American election: Republicans are struggling to counter Obama | Observer editorial

2012-01-03T14:00:00.001-08:00

This election is unlikely to be much like the one that we have been told to expect by media and party activists and pundits over the last three years

It has become a commonplace in the last decade or so to talk about a polarised America. What is most commonly meant by this is the divide between conservatives and liberals on everything from issues such as abortion, faith teaching and single-sex marriage to foreign policy and the size of the state.

Going into a presidential election year ? and with the first Republican primary in Iowa on Tuesday ? there is another less remarked divide that is equally profound: a generational one.

While much has been written about President Obama's approval ratings dipping as low as 38% in Gallup's long-running survey (only 2% worse than Clinton's worst ratings in his third year in office before he convincingly won re-election in 1996 against Bob Dole), a breakdown by age group tells a different story. Among voters under 30, the group most sympathetic to left-wing causes such as Occupy Wall Street, Obama is favoured over the leading Republican contender Mitt Romney by a staggering 24 points. At the other end of the generational spectrum, Obama trails Romney among voters in the "Silent Generation" ? the group just older than the baby-boomers which is heavily represented among Tea Party supporters ? by 13%

It is not simply a generational divide. Surveys of those who have chosen to donate to Romney's and Obama's campaigns thus far suggest strong differences in terms of gender as well, with 70% of those giving to Romney being male in comparison to 56% giving to Obama.

The reality is that this election is unlikely to be much like the one that we have been told to expect by media and party activists and pundits over the last three years. Sarah Palin has faded into irrelevance, while others of the Palinesque tendency have either been forgotten ? remember Christine O'Donnell? ? or have imploded, such as Michele Bachmann. While the Republican party has moved sharply to the right, what is still open to question is how much the vaunted Tea Party insurgency overlaps with a wider electorate.

While the road to the Republican primaries has sometimes seemed like a grisly beauty pageant for social conservative values ? indeed 45% of the "likely" Iowa caucus voters, who number only 120,000, define themselves as "very conservative" on social issues ? their two top concerns are a visceral desire to reduce government and government spending and the economy and employment. Social issues are cited as a top issue by only 12%.

In other words, the key areas of political contention are likely to be far more conventional than otherwise billed. Obama chose to lay out what was effectively his manifesto for re-election in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where, just over a century before, Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican president, laid out his own vision for a "New Nationalism" in which he argued for a strong federal state to regulate the economy and guarantee social and economic justice to those most in need, including, ironically, a public health system and a minimum wage for women.

While some saw Obama's criticism of a Wall Street responsible for the present financial crisis as a nod to the language of Occupy he was, however, explicit in rejecting the language of the 1% and the 99%, instead making an appeal to the aspirations of the middle classes, who, he said, "the cards" had been stacked against in America's redistribution of wealth to the super-rich.

It is on issues such as these that Romney, the most electable-looking of the Republican field and leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire, is most vulnerable in the country at large. A wealthy former hedge fund founder, whose top 10 donors are all large Wall Street companies, his offer of a $10,000 "bet" during a Republican debate has already made him appear out of touch with ordinary Americans' financial concerns. While his polling as a whole has looked strong against Obama, it has been in comparison with a tranche of weak rival candidates.That is likely to change when his policies and personality are compared directly with that of the incumbent.

And Romney has other disadvantages. To get to the White House, the Mormon former bishop will have to achieve what few US presidents have ever managed ? to make a bid having failed in a previous attempt in a country that does not much like political losers. He will also have to contend with the fact that for a large number of social conservatives almost any other Republican candidate is preferable to Romney.

But what of the story Obama has to sell? While his weaknesses have been much dissected by disappointed progressives, not least the struggles he has had to push through his agenda for change, often those criticisms have deliberately ignored the limitations on his office imposed by the separation of powers in the US between the legislative and executive branches.

A more telling criticism is that Obama is better at politics than policy, squandering opportunities in his first two years in power to enact change, while demonstrating a curious unwillingness to fight his Republican opponents for what he wants. On the issue that really matters ? the economy ? it appears things are finally going Obama's way. Last month, the Federal Reserve predicted moderate growth in the US this year, while US businesses have been creating jobs in the last quarter at a rate of around 150,000 a month, making it harder to attack him on his economic record in the midst of a global recession. At present, only a full-scale economic meltdown in Europe could threaten that trend of improvement.

Like Ronald Reagan in 1984, who annihilated the Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale, after being bolstered by improving economic figures after a lengthy recession, it is a trend that benefits the incumbent.

Yesterday, Obama's team reiterated his plans for the coming election year: a campaign based on "economic justice", job creation and an effort to demonstrate that Republican obstructionism in Congress has hurt America.

His opponents are struggling to design an inclusive message, constrained by the necessity of appealing to a narrow social conservative base presently on the ascendant in the Republican party. Until they can, the Observer suspects this election remains Obama's to lose and not a Republican one to win.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/01/observer-editorial-obama-election-strategy

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Human remains found near Queen's country retreat at Sandringham

2012-01-03T09:00:00.001-08:00

Norfolk police investigate discovery made on New Year's Day while royal family in residence for Christmas break

Police are investigating after human remains were found in woodland near the royal family's country retreat at Sandringham House in Norfolk.

A member of the public reported the find at Anmer, King's Lynn, on New Year's Day shortly after 4pm, according to Norfolk constabulary.

The force said that its detectives were investigating; an area has been sealed off, and a search is being carried out.

The Queen's estate stretches over 8,000 hectares, 240 of which make up the woodland and heath of the Country Park and are open to the public. Sandringham House, built in 1870, is used by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh as a country retreat, and traditionally they and their family spend Christmas there.

The couple attended a service with other members of the family at St Mary Magdalene's church near King's Lynn on New Year's Day before the discovery at Anmer.

There are around 150 residential, commercial and agricultural properties on the estate, according to the Sandringham estate website.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said that she had no comment to make on the discovery, which was "a matter for Norfolk police".

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/03/human-remains-found-sandringham-royal-country-retreat

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How the badly maimed BBC can stand up to parasitic Sky | Polly Toynbee

2012-01-03T04:00:00.001-08:00

Glorious Great Expectations shows why Labour must help the BBC recoup millions from Murdoch

The BBC wins again. In the Christmas ratings war, the BBC trounced the competition as it always does. A pointless silly-season contest, but it's a national reminder that Britain's good broadcasting comes thanks to Lord Reith's legacy.

Some dud programmes are the necessary price of any risk-taking creative endeavour, but well outweighed by three glorious hours of Great Expectations. Only the Grinch wouldn't have found something on the BBC to please. Was it good enough? Of course not, because there is no "good enough": it can always do better.

Never forget that in 2011 Britain's broadcasting culture was only saved by a whisker. Days before Jeremy Hunt was about to hand the Murdochs complete control of BSkyB, the Guardian's revelations about phone-hacking stopped that in its tracks. Labour feared and fawned on Murdoch, but his influence reached its zenith when his own man, Andy Coulson, secured a place right in the heart of Cameron's Downing Street.

Gaining monopolistic control of Sky was only step one: next was abolition of impartiality laws for broadcasters. Fox News was on its way here, destined to poison the UK as it has US politics. Murdoch-friendly commentators were already softening up opinion, claiming Britain's fuddy-duddy neutral news was outdated in the age of the shouty internet. Dominating the press is not enough, the right would control broadcasting too. Cameron was up for it.

Until the journalist Nick Davies and the MP Tom Watson saved the day, Murdoch and Tory attacks on the BBC were getting louder. Many Tory ministers regard the success of the BBC, like the NHS, as an affront to all they believe, a denial and a "crowding out" of markets. In Osborne's comprehensive spending review, the BBC suffered a serious 16% cut. Although the licence fee has nothing whatever to do with national debt, the general cuts were an excuse to freeze it again until 2017, when the BBC charter comes up for renewal. Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague were two leading predators: IDS tried to force on to the BBC the �600m the Department for Work and Pensions has to pay for giving free TV licences to the over-75s. (Means-testing would recoup half that sum, but IDS doesn't dare.) Hague succeeded in putting the entire �250m Foreign Office cost of the World Service on to the BBC. Osborne was all for both, saying the BBC's loss would be only one body in the mass grave of his cuts. The BBC fought back, playing them Mitch Benn's brilliant song I'm Proud of the BBC as a warning of the popular campaign it would run if the cuts were truly crippling. Downing Street quailed, and the cuts were reduced to �320m, but the BBC still came away badly maimed.

But here's a tidy sum the BBC could recoup for us all. The Murdoch press has relentlessly lobbied to cut the BBC back to a US-style small subscription service for unprofitable programmes. Now, while Murdoch is weakened, is the chance for the BBC to regain lost ground. Here's the big issue: when Margaret Thatcher helped Murdoch launch Sky with exemptions from EU broadcasting rules, she added another bonus. She made the BBC pay �10m a year to be transmitted on the Sky platform, although across the rest of Europe commercial broadcasters pay public broadcasters for the privilege of using their content. By rights Sky should pay many hundreds of millions. If the BBC withdrew, Sky would totter since BBC channels are by far the most watched by Sky subscribers, yet Sky charges an average �500 per customer, compared with the BBC's �145.50 licence fee ?and yet the BBC massively outproduces Sky content. It's time Sky paid full value.

The BBC accounts for much of Britain's success in the creative industries, a prime example of national investment yielding rich returns. Every �1 of the licence fee puts �2 into the economy, in talent trained and nurtured, in independent companies commissioned, its own output rolling through the economy. Exports and sales deliver 20% of the BBC's income: 70m US homes buy BBC channels. But Sky is a net loss to the UK: for every �1 in Sky subscriptions, only 90p stays in the UK, the rest going to the parent company and Hollywood studios. Sky is essentially parasitic, not productive, for Britain.

The BBC, naturally timid, is only demanding not to pay its �10m to Sky. That would buy another 10 hours of Great Expectations-quality drama. Nice, but not enough. Licence payers should be up in arms demanding the full price: the BBC has every right to threaten to withdraw otherwise, since Sky subscribers watch BBC channels most.

Tories of the John Redwood variety continue to seek ways to demolish the BBC, with gut support from many in the cabinet. They claim the licence fee is an anachronism in an internet age. But it doesn't matter on what equipment the BBC is received. Virtually the entire audience watches/listens live on transmission, on whatever piece of machinery: only 0.2% watch later on demand.

Labour should take up this cause: join the demand that Sky pays up, so we can all have more of the best programmes from the BBC. At the same time, support the BBC's demand that Sky stops hiding the excellent BBC children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies ? relegated to 13th and 14th on the children's section of Sky's electronic programme guide: channels 1-12 are dominated by ad-driven US cartoon dross.

Labour should be the BBC's most vigorous champion against Murdoch and Tory predators. But that doesn't mean Labour is wrong in its campaign to ensure BBC political coverage is even-handed. Labour's "serious complaint" comes after research showed Labour getting less than half the coverage of the coalition. Having spent years as social affairs editor in the newsroom, I know how nervous the BBC always is, supremely anxious to be fair, but vulnerable to government pressure. The BBC is neither pinko nor Tory-leaning: what drives it most is perpetual anxiety. Audience feedback in the daily duty log is haphazard and minimal, (so do phone in.) For want of any objective measure, an unconscious tendency lets the BBC feel its news agenda must be about right if it matches the serious press, forgetting 80% of newspaper readership is owned by rightwing moguls, many not even UK taxpayers. Labour has to keep tugging on the rope to redress that Tory heft. Yet Labour must be the BBC's champion too, guardian of this national treasure. If ever in doubt, listen to Mitch Benn's song.

Polly Toynbee

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/02/maimed-bbc-parasitic-sky

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Be warned, George Osborne, austerity will be bad for your ratings

2012-01-02T23:00:00.001-08:00

A leading ratings agency spells out what 2012 could bring for the chancellor of the exchequer

Confidential memorandum

To: The Rt Hon George Osborne,

chancellor of the exchequer

From: Moonshine Ratings Agency

Subject: The British economy

Dear Chancellor,

First, let us thank you for your spirited Christmas card. The picture of the Good Ship Britannia riding the tidal waves from across the Channel was most uplifting.

Second, may we at Moonshine wish you a very happy new year? We are not at all sure that in your case it is going to be a prosperous one, so you will forgive us for refraining from offering you that customary salutation.

From our point of view, however, it must be confessed that we have seldom been in better shape. And it is largely thanks to you. Frankly, after our dismal performance in failing to warn our clients of the financial crash, let alone in awarding good credit ratings in 2007 to the likes of Greece, we thought the game was up. We must give thanks for the short memories of most governments and market participants in general, and to you in particular, for putting us back on the map.

Yes, of all the G7, indeed G20 leaders and finance ministers, it was you, and you alone, who staked your reputation on the importance of the ratings agencies. On coming to office you compared the credit status of the UK to that of Greece, and seldom missed an opportunity to highlight the importance of your own austerity programme for the maintenance of the UK's AAA-rating. You placed particular emphasis on how closely it was tied to your ambitious plan for eliminating the UK's "structural" deficit during the lifetime of the current parliament.

And now for the bad news.

To put it bluntly, your strategy of "expansionary fiscal contraction" ? always a nonsense, the ultimate in economic oxymorons ? is in tatters. You may be consoled, indeed misled, by the fact that your party is still doing relatively well in the polls, but our judgment is that this is because the full horrors of the failure of your policy have yet to be witnessed. The British may be phlegmatic, but they are not naturally attracted to masochism.

Your opponent Ed Balls is aware of this, and in our opinion is biding his time. The fact of the matter is that the shadow chancellor read the runes correctly, and you did not.

We know why you did not. Mesmerised by the electoral success of the Thatcher government in the early 1980s, despite its deflationary policies, you decided to stake all on getting the pain out of the way in the early years, as a prelude to a triumphant, tax-cutting recovery in the run-up to a 2015 general election.

But, as the Office for Budget Responsibility has pointed out, the deficit is getting worse, not better, and on present plans you will be imposing austerity right up to and beyond the election.

In this, unfortunately for your country, you have the full support of the Treasury, whose natural instinct is to cut public spending and raise taxes. That institution is still recovering from the way it was captured by Gordon Brown, and became ? horror of horrors! ? a SPENDING department. The whole point of the traditional Treasury, as you know, is to restrain the spending instincts of others, not to join in.

However, there is a time and a place for everything. A programme of austerity at a time like this could hardly be more misplaced. You may have found Brown infuriating. In this you were not alone; Alistair Darling felt the same way, and he had to work with him. But even Darling gives Brown full credit for being the key G20 leader behind the fiscal and monetary stimulus of April 2009 which prevented the world economy from falling off the proverbial cliff. In fact, he says the rescue could not have occurred without Brown.

Alas, as was the case in the 1930s, moves to reduce the stimulus and rein in budget deficits were introduced too soon. But the gravamen of the charge against you is this: not only did you pin your colours to the mast of austerity, you preached the message to the rest of the world, not least to continental Europe.

As 2012 begins, it is all too evident from the tone of economic forecasts and developments in the markets that the European economy is on the verge of another cliff, and one does not have to approach Dover in order to be aware of it.

Instead of indulging in some form of "verbal protectionism" via your ill-judged remarks on France's credit rating ? which, predictably, provoked a Gallic counterattack ? you should have the courage to admit that you were wrong. What Britain and Europe both need now is an enlightened recovery programme, for the initiation of which you could go down in history.

Remember: Churchill, who took the UK back on to the gold standard in 1925, regretted it for the rest of his life. The same may well apply to you and your austerity programme.

We credit rating agencies are renowned as being fair weather friends. We are about to turn on you with a vengeance if you stick to your current policies. Think about it!

Meanwhile, we undertake at our end to keep the contents of this memorandum confidential.

Yours sincerely,

S J Lenten-Postulant Jnr

Moonshine Associates

William Keegan

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/01/george-osborne-austerity-ratings-agencies

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Bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland controls the fate of many British firms

2012-01-02T18:00:00.001-08:00

HMV, Peacocks and Clinton Cards are just some of the firms that could be owned by taxpayer-controlled RBS, which holds the future of thousands of jobs

Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain's taxpayer-controlled bank, will face a flood of tough decisions in 2012 over whether to seize ownership or pull the plug on a host of British employers that are struggling to meet their borrowing commitments.

Among the larger firms whose future could turn on the continued support of RBS are high-street chains HMV, Peacocks and Clinton Cards. Also on the watch list are Premier Foods, maker of Bisto, Angel Delight and Hovis; tour operator Thomas Cook; hotels group Jurys Inn; and Endemol, the Dutch TV production house behind Big Brother and Deal or No Deal.

All these companies, which together employ almost 50,000 people, may yet trade out of trouble, but with a prolonged slowdown forecast, experts at RBS, led by Derek Sach, head of global restructuring, are preparing for a busy time.

Should the hoped-for trading recovery not materialise, any of these firms ? all of which have recently sought covenant waivers or concessions from RBS and fellow lenders ? could ultimately end up being controlled, or part-owned, by their banks, and in turn by the taxpayer. That might not be ideal, but the alternative would be administration.

Britain's state-controlled bank has already seized large stakes in some of its biggest former debtors. These include the world's largest luggage maker, Samsonite ? though RBS's 30% holding was cut to 15% when the business floated in Hong Kong this summer ? and the UK's biggest care home operator, Four Seasons Healthcare.

This month alone RBS has added big equity stakes in Italian yacht manufacturer Ferretti and Miller Group, Britain's largest privately owned housebuilder, to its expanding equity portfolio. Some 42 Marriott hotels are also owned by the taxpayer's bank, though they're currently up for sale.

RBS decision-makers are under pressure on two fronts: politicians are accusing the bank of choking off credit, particularly for Britain's small and medium-sized businesses, but many in the City believe RBS's weakness is its reluctance to make unpalatable decisions, especially where a large number of jobs are at stake.

One fund manager, who specialises in buying up property freeholds from failing businesses, gives a damning analysis of the prospects for a number of well- known RBS clients on the high street. For example Peacocks is, he says, slowly being crushed under the weight of spiralling loan liabilities.

RBS and another bank agreed in October to extend loan facilities to 2013 for Clinton Cards, which the fund manager is also pessimistic about, adding that the firm is weighed down by "enormous lease liabilities".

Sach is reluctant to talk about specific clients, particularly listed companies, but defends a strategic approach that tolerates poor-performing clients for as long as is practically possible.

"In the recession of the early 1990s, when I joined RBS, banks were castigated for appointing receivers left right and centre," he says. "When I joined the rate at which we did that reduced. This time round it is very different. The financial sector, particularly in the UK, is making much more enlightened decisions.

"Yes, economies can recover faster if bad loans are cut out quickly, but there is a huge social cost ? enormous unemployment and business failures. It is better for all concerned to extend and pretend a little."

The tone of these remarks is likely to trigger scoffing among thousands of small business clients of the bank, many of whom complain bitterly of a lack of understanding from RBS, the biggest lender in this area, with about a quarter of the market.

Last February, RBS and other high street lenders signed up to the government's Project Merlin agreement, which imposed targets for business loans. Despite intense pressure from Westminster, it is perhaps the least likely of them to meet its net lending promises.

Lord Oakeshott, the former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, is among the most outspoken campaigners for RBS to increase lending, resigning in March in protest at what he saw as the weakness of the Merlin targets. "The real criticism is the way they're screwing small companies," he said. "Apart from some walking wounded, big companies in general do not have a problem with finance. It is still the small and medium-sized companies that are the problem ? and that's where RBS, the market leader, is squeezing harder and harder and harder."

A close ally of business secretary Vince Cable, he called for the government to "take vigorous action, including sacking and replacing directors", if RBS doesn't execute a lending strategy designed to boost jobs and growth.

For his part, Sach claims that his division has carried out some 500 small-firm debt restructurings this year, saving the livelihoods of about 40,000 workers.

In many cases, he argues, it is easy to see that firms are laid low only by excessive earlier borrowings on their balance sheet. Despite the implicit criticism of his lending colleagues' former imprudence, Sach's preferred solution is, wherever possible, for RBS to demand shares in the company in exchange for writing off debt.

And when it comes to big decisions, particularly in relation to large employers, Sach and his colleagues are in close communication with the business secretary's officials.

When debt-ladenThomas Cook, which takes 6.6 million Britons on holiday each year, lurched into a month-long borrowing crisis in October, negotiations between the company and its 17 lending banks even drew public comment from David Cameron. Asked whether he was concerned for the future of the business the prime minister said he had "obviously" asked Cable to keep him up to date on progress; Thomas Cook was "an important and iconic British brand".

Behind the scenes it is perhaps unsurprising that it was RBS restructuring director Bob Hedger who took the lead in talks on behalf of all the banks, even though the largest exposure lay with HSBC, Barclays and Unicredit.

Seeing that debt uncertainty was damaging Thomas Cook's trading prospects, Hedger pressed for a quick resolution. As a result the banks, and RBS in particular, now look certain to stand behind the troubled tour operator for the foreseeable future ? even if that eventually means taking an ownership stake.

In all of its lending decisions RBS has to act in the best interests of all its shareholders, but its senior executives are also aware that their largest investor ? the Treasury's UKFI asset-owning unit, with 83% of shares ? is equally keen for the bank to act in the interests of the wider economy, sustaining lending support and promoting employment wherever possible.

Sach claims the two goals are rarely at odds. "Our first priority is to protect our own balance sheet but that often means doing what you can to save a business. At the end of the day our job is to save companies ... Creditor recoveries are almost always lower in an insolvency."

Privately, however, even ministers agree there comes a point at a failing business where a bank has to intervene decisively to protect a credit exposure. In October RBS and Lloyds Banking Group called time on Britain's largest nightclub operator, Luminar, after a long period of patient support, forcing directors to appoint administrators from Ernst & Young. Behind the scenes the two banks are thought to have taken differing views on the best outcome for that business, with RBS believed to have favoured a debt restructuring deal that would give the banks ownership.

And last year RBS showed goodwill towards Connaught, the FTSE 250 social housing group, extending an additional �15m loan despite a series of profit warnings. Within two months, however, it was clear the business was in freefall and administrators moved in.

Months earlier there was a good deal of fretting among Sach and his colleagues over another even more high-profile toxic loan, a �240m credit line to Liverpool football club, owned at the time by American businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks. By autumn 2010, the highly indebted club looked to be heading for insolvency ? and, as a consequence, a nine-point penalty from the Premiership, likely to further dent its financial performance.

Unless a buyer could be found at the eleventh hour, RBS would have had to step in and rescue the business, writing down debts in exchange for a controlling interest in the club. Bank insiders say plans for such a debt-for-equity swap were drawn up and for several weeks this looked the most likely outcome. In the end, however, another US businessman, John Henry, came to the rescue, acquiring Liverpool through his Fenway Sports Group in a hard-fought deal that allowed RBS to reduce most of its exposure. Gillett and Hicks did their best to remain at the helm, but the bank took the matter to court and the sale was forced through.

This was just one of a rash of large debt-fuelled deals done by the bank in 2007 that have returned to haunt it. This disastrous vintage includes loans to Four Seasons, Samsonite, Jurys Inn and the 42 Marriott hotels.

Other businesses whose shares have made their way onto RBS's balance sheet following restructurings include Barracuda, a 225-strong pub group, and Novus, a London club and cocktail bar business where David Cameron was once a director. Control of Jarvis Hotels also fell to the bank in October, more than 18 months after the group fell into default. Three months earlier RBS took a stake in Northamptonshire yacht builder Fairline, alongside Jon Moulton's Better Capital, in a debt-for-equity deal.

Sach and his team will face many more make-or-break decisions in 2012. George Osborne may insist that he's not taking the "picking winners" approach to industrial policy discredited in the 1970s, but whether he likes it or not, as the economy turns down over the next 12 months, the Treasury will be ultimately responsible for the fate of scores of RBS-backed companies.

Simon Bowers

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/01/2012-in-prospect-banking-rbs

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Hungary set for protests over constitution

2012-01-02T13:00:00.001-08:00

Thousands expected to demonstrate in Budapest against government changes amid concerns about loss of liberties

Thousands of people were expected to protest in Budapest on Monday night after the government made sweeping changes to the Hungarian constitution that opposition figures say are an attack on democracy.

The demonstration near the city's opera house comes amid rising anger with the ruling Fidesz party, which critics ? including the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton ? fear is eroding individual liberties and media freedom while undermining the independence of the judiciary and other state institutions.

Across town, outside the headquarters of the state broadcaster MTV, journalists have been on hunger strike since 9 December, protesting at what they say is gross interference in their work by pro-government editors. They were outraged after a former chief justice was airbrushed out of a state television broadcast, evoking the dark days of media manipulation during the Soviet era.

There were also protests in December when Klubradio, a popular liberal radio station critical of the government, announced it would have to shut down in 2012 after its frequency was given to a new company. The decision was taken by the controversial Media Council, whose members are all nominated by Fidesz.

Last week MPs from the Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party were arrested when they chained themselves to the parliament gate in a protest at the government's unilateral law changes.

With two-thirds of all MPs in the Hungarian parliament, Fidesz is able to pass dramatic legislation unhindered by the opposition. In 18 months in office, the government has passed hundreds of new laws. On Friday, it ignored warnings from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to approve new central bank regulations which give the government the power to appoint bank deputies.

The IMF and the EU had already broken off talks which had been scheduled to discuss a bailout of Hungary's faltering economy. The country's finances are in such a poor state that just before Christmas the ratings agencies Moody's and S&P downgraded Hungary's debt to junk category. At a government securities auction last week, just 50% of a total offer of ?100m were sold at extremely high yields, suggesting that investors had lost faith.

At the beginning of December, the US ambassador to Hungary took the unusual step of writing a carefully worded warning to the prime minister, Viktor Orb�n, which was printed in the weekly Heti V�lasz newspaper. In the op-ed, Eleni Tsakopoulos said the US was "concerned" with the speed of legislative change in Hungary. Urging the government to "look again" at the new constitution, she said a "number of credible voices" were raising questions about the lack of "checks and balances built in to the new system" and about whether it was sufficient to ensure "that the independence of democratic institutions is maintained for future generations of Hungarians".

On 23 December, Clinton wrote personally to Orb�n to raise "significant and well-founded concerns".

Although Fidesz won enough votes in the last elections to command a super-majority, polls suggest its support has plunged over the last year and a half. Peter Kreko, research director at the Budapest-based thinktank, the Political Capital Institute, said: "In May 2010, 45% of voters chose Fidesz. But polls now show just 20% of people still support the party. There is a huge disillusionment with politics in Hungary now."

Helen Pidd

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/02/hungary-protests-budapest-constitution-changes

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In Pictures: The ocean's giants

2012-01-02T07:00:00.001-08:00

A BBC film crew capture stunning images of the giants breaking records under the waves.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14410355

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If you choose your own news, you'll be less well read

2012-01-02T01:00:00.001-08:00

Digital news offers customers the choice of what they want to read. But print offers something extra: stories that people didn't know they wanted to read until they had read them

Last year it was paywalls, the free-versus-subscription argument that gripped newspapers worried about survival. But see how the moving finger flicks on. Welcome to the 2012 version of this debate, otherwise known by the unlovely name of "versioning".

The idea of paywalls, you'll recall, is that newspapers set some sort of tariff for reading their sites. The idea of versioning is pragmatic and simple. It says: here's a pile of news. Let's put it out in variegated forms for PCs, tablets, mobiles, Facebook, Twitter and print. Same basic material: different delivery methods. Then we can charge, or not, according to circumstance.

And, let's be clear, this approach has much to commend it. John Paton's US news group, The Journal Register Company, has many admirers as it seeks to generate digital revenue first. Many forward thinkers are following the same path. But look, too, at a logical hiatus that begins to wrinkle brows. Enter Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology at New York University.

It's in no sense odd to find American academe wrangling over journalism. Dean Starkman of the Columbia Journalism Review and Clay Shirky of New York University have recently been hammering away at each other, seeking to determine whether investigative journalism can only be conducted by highly resourced news machines (like the Guardian's) or by a more individual, digital-first approach (like? um? the Guardian's). But what's sociology got to contribute here?

Plenty, Klinenberg says, outlining the fundamental bargain that underpins newspaper life. You, the reader, want crosswords and cartoons, recipes and TV programme guides. You want all the stuff that journalists serve up with a sigh (because, well, it's not exactly journalism, is it?). And, in return, as part of the deal, journalism is allowed to have a civic purpose ? to report and analyse the workings and frailties of democracy ? beyond quick ways to whip up a cottage pie.

That bargain, sealed in print, means you can't have one without the other. Put your cash on the newsagent's counter and you get some things you desire and other things, from Cardiff or Chad, that you didn't know had happened until you turned to page five.

Of course, like any other neat thesis, there are readers and editors who don't quite fit. But the nature of print ? flipping from column to column, noticing stories that intrigue you, naturally expanding your spheres of interest ? isn't "versioning" at all ? it's more eclectic. An iPad or Kindle version works within narrower bounds. A Facebook version is even more selective, tailored to your most immediate demands. And the logical version at the end of this line is utterly simple: no deals, no bargains ? just what you want, electronically provided on the basis of past predilection.

At which point, big questions about the future of news begin. Digital intrinsically insists on choice. When John Paton bets his house on digital-first, what's the basic template he's selecting from? If it's print, then the choices are comprehensible. But take print out of the equation and where are your bearings? Because then every batch of alternatives is bound to be a segment of an unfocused whole.

The easy thing is to serve up a dish of the day you know will sell, because it sold just this way yesterday and the day before. A reader's little pot pie. The difficult thing is to offer readers things they didn't know and can't be interested in until they stop and sample: that essential news bargain.

Walls are walls and apps are apps, and 2012 will see many more of them. But open minds? That's one pressing version of an open question.

Schedules not stuffed with Paxo

December 16 seems a long time ago now ? and will seem even longer by 10.30 on Tuesday night when Newsnight returns from its Christmas sleep. Havel may have died, the streets of Moscow filled with protesters, Prince Philip been rushed to hospital ? but Paxo and Co, BBC TV's premier (and indeed only) major news analysis show, takes ever more protracted breaks. It saves money, sure enough; it lets the quizzes and old movies roll unchecked through a world of dyspepsia. But public service? More and more newspapers kept editions and websites turning through the holidays ? and the news responded by just keeping coming. We may not always be nice about Newsnight when it's there. But golly! There's a whacking great hole when it's not.

Peter Preston

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/news-choice-digital-print

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Rat eradication to save seabirds

2012-01-01T20:00:00.001-08:00

Eradicating rats on Henderson Island could save the seabirds there

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/13904188

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Aum Shinrikyo cult fugitive turns himself in after 16 years

2012-01-01T15:00:00.001-08:00

Police arrest Makoto Hirata, a member of the doomsday cult responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway

A member of the doomsday cult behind a deadly Tokyo subway gas attack and other crimes has turned himself in to police after 16 years on the run.

A Tokyo metropolitan police official said Makoto Hirata, a member of Aum Shinrikyo, conspired with several other members in kidnapping a notary official in 1995 and causing his death. The victim, Kiyoshi Kariya, then 68, was the brother of a follower trying to quit the group.

Hirata, 46, who had been on the run since the summer of 1995, turned himself in at a Tokyo police station and was detained early on Sunday, the police official said. Public broadcaster NHK said Hirata told police he wanted to "put the past behind him".

Aum Shinkrikyo is most famous for releasing sarin nerve gas in Tokyo's subway system in 1995, killing 13 people and injuring more than 6,000 in Japan's deadliest act of domestic terrorism. The cult had amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government.

Police say Hirata and other cult members kidnapped Kariya off a Tokyo street and held him at the group's tightly guarded commune at the foot of Mount Fuji. They allegedly used anaesthetics on Kariya to get him to talk about his sister, who escaped from the group after being pressed to donate her land. Kariya died from a drug overdose, police said. According to court testimony, cult members burned Kariya's body in an incinerator in the commune and threw the ashes in a nearby lake to destroy the evidence.

Hirata told police he only drove Kariya to the cult compound and denied other allegations, NHK said. He is also suspected in the near-fatal shooting of Japan's then top police chief, but the high-profile case was closed last year after the statute of limitations expired.

Hirata was one of the last three wanted cult members. The other two are still at large. Nearly 200 members of the cult have been convicted in the gas attack and dozens of other crimes. The cult's founder, Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is awaiting execution after his death sentence was confirmed in 2006. Twelve other members are on death row; no one has been executed.

Hirata's arrest could help fill in missing pieces of the investigation. "As a member of the victim's family, I just want to know the truth," Kariya's son Minoru said in a televised interview. "I hope the new witness will help bring new revelations."

The cult, now renamed Aleph, once had 10,000 members in Japan and another 30,000 in Russia. It remains under police surveillance.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/01/aum-shinri-kyo-fugitive

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Aum Shinrikyo cult fugitive turns himself in after 16 years

2012-01-01T10:00:00.001-08:00

Police arrest Makoto Hirata, a member of the doomsday cult responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway

A member of the doomsday cult behind a deadly Tokyo subway gas attack and other crimes has turned himself in to police after 16 years on the run.

The cult, now renamed Aleph, once had 10,000 members in Japan and another 30,000 in Russia. It remains under police surveillance.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/01/aum-shinri-kyo-fugitive

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New Year honours list reflects my aims for 'big society', says David Cameron

2012-01-01T05:00:00.001-08:00

PM claims charity workers given honours support his policy, but Labour attack award of KBE to Tory donor and hedgefund boss

David Cameron has pointedly enlisted the New Year honours list, published today, in the service of his "big society" initiative, claiming the community and charity workers among the usual celebrity arts and sporting recipients as supporters of the policy.

Among those receiving high-profile awards are the entertainer Ronnie Corbett and Helena Bonham Carter, fresh from playing the Queen Mother in The King's Speech. They both receive CBEs.

Joan Ruddock, the former CND leader turned Labour MP, becomes a dame, and the businessman Gerald Ronson, once jailed for his part in the Guinness scandal, completes his rehabilitation with the a CBE for his charity work. Jonathan Ive, the British-born designer of the iPhone, iPad and iPod, receives the KBE.

Announcing the list of 984 recipients, the Cabinet Office said: "The vast majority of people recognised include those supporting the big society by making a real difference to their local community through volunteering, fundraising, social action and philanthropy."

Officials claimed that although honours are recommended by an independent committee, the list reflected the prime minister's "strategic agenda".

Labour immediately attacked the award of a knighthood to the hedgefund executive and major Tory donor Paul Ruddock for his philanthropic work. Michael Dugher, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "David Cameron promised to clean up politics, but in office he has shown he is utterly out of touch with decent British people. He's giving a knighthood to Paul Ruddock, who made millions from the collapse of Northern Rock and has given over half a million pounds to the Tories.

"This tells you everything you need to know about the Tories' priorities. At a time when millions of families are struggling to get by, it's the Tories' friends in the City who get the rewards."

The award of honours for community service has been common for many years, but it is highly unusual for them to be tied so overtly to a political agenda.

Three recipients brought along to tell their stories at a briefing in the Cabinet Office expressed surprise that their work had anything to do with government policy. "There are absolutely no political implications to what I do," said Joy Philippou from Bromley, south London, who has been awarded an MBE at the age of 83 after spending decades helping young people to move away from crime and gang culture, motivated by her religious faith. "I started doing this long before that."

Nearly 600 MBEs and 241 OBEs are being awarded ? 70% to those involved in community work ? together with 27 knighthoods and 94 CBEs. Women make up 43% of recipients and 12% of the awards are to candidates from ethnic minorities ? a higher proportion than usual.

Among the knights are Peter Bazalgette, the television producer best known for the Big Brother show, Jeremy Heywood, the incoming cabinet secretary at 10 Downing Street, the poet Geoffrey Hill, the church historian Diarmaid Macculloch, the diabetic specialist Stephen Bloom and Aston Villa's former chairman Doug Ellis, for his charitable donations, as well as the veteran Tory backbencher and former Blue Peter TV producer Roger Gale and Bob Russell, Lib Dem MP for Colchester.

Damehoods go to the author Penelope Lively , the former Labour MP Lady Hayman, now the first elected speaker of the House of Lords, Julie Moore, chief executive of the University Hospital Birmingham NHS foundation trust, Glynis Breakwell, vice-chancellor of Bath University and Moira Gibb, chief executive of the London borough of Camden.

From the media and the arts, there are CBEs for the poet Dannie Abse, the writer and former Observer television critic Clive James and the novelist Rachel Billington. OBEs go to the Sky News journalist Alex Crawford, following her reporting from Tripoli during the Libyan uprising, and Lorraine Kelly, the television presenter.

Crawford said: "I am staggered and honoured and can't quite believe this is not a prank thought up by one of my more mischievous colleagues."

There are CBEs for Paul Smith, founder of Celador, the TV production company responsible for Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and Steve Lillywhite, the record producer for bands including the Rolling Stones, U2 and the Smiths.

Sporting awards go to the golfers Rory McIlroy ? an MBE aged 22 after he became the youngest winner of the US Open in 88 years ? and Darren Clarke, an OBE at 42 after winning the British Open. The former cricket umpire Dickie Bird receives an OBE to add to his MBE and Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, gets a CBE.

Chris Paterson, Scotland's most capped rugby international, gets an MBE and the veteran broadcaster and football commentator Stuart Hall achieves an OBE at the age of 82 and Nigel Mansell, the former Formula One world champion, gets a CBE for his work as president of UK Youth.

Among less well known recipients is Christopher Preddie, 24, a north London former gang member awarded an OBE for his work for Crimestoppers, dissuading youngsters from crime.

His brother was shot and two distant cousins are in jail after being convicted of the murder of the schoolboy Damilola Taylor. Preddie said: "When I got the letter, I thought, why me? I used to think I was hard done by, wandering round with my trousers round my bum, but I now show young people how they can aim higher in their lives."

The award did not please Damilola's father, Richard, who said: "I think there should be stricter rules. He's a cousin of the killers of my son. I don't think honours should be given to such people."

Stephen Bates

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/31/new-year-honours-david-cameron

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Full Feeds Service Discontinued

2012-01-01T00:00:00.001-08:00

Unfortunatly the time has come for this scraper to come down (seemingly it may come as a shock to some that this is not provided by the BBC). I wrote this back in 2005 and have modified it a couple of times since mainly so that I could more easily consume RSS on the move. In short, I no longer use it, I find consuming live news is not actually something an RSS reader does very well and I face a constant battle against sites trying to use these feeds to monetize BBC content and failing to pay any attention to etag or last modified headers (hello palin-pedia.com et al). Please update your RSS subscription as the last remenants of this will be removed soon , the official BBC RSS feed you are looking for is: http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/health/rss.xml

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628494

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Sudoku 2,071 hard

2011-12-31T19:00:00.001-08:00

Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

For a helping hand call our solutions line on 09068 338 228. Calls cost 60p per minute at all times. Service supplied by ATS.

Buy the next issue of the Guardian or subscribe to our Digital Edition to see the completed puzzle.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/31/sudoku-2071-hard

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Eurosceptic hysteria over Nick Clegg needs a little balancing invective

2011-12-31T14:00:00.001-08:00

Anti-Europe backwoodsmen should to be fought with scorn ? but why has it come from New York instead of from the UK press?

Here's a "great depression" taking shape, says the IMF. The whole system's "in crisis", says the Bank of England. Everyone ? including journalists ? knows we're in deep, deep trouble, especially if the euro collapses. Things couldn't be more serious; "devastating" is only the mildest of operable words. So who's to blame in these sombre times?

Why, Nick Clegg, of course ? that "fully-subscribed euro-obsessive unable to see any wrong in the misjudgments, corruptions and idiocies of the EU", a man who "shows a Moonie-like faith in the institution", blinded, as he is, "by a fanatical devotion to Brussels". Thus, of course, Simon Heffer in the Daily Mail, making an early bid to be this column's Eurocrunch Hysteric of the week. But there's so much more competition these days.

The Mail, to be sure, waxed yet hotter and stronger as "The Big Sulk" made an excuse and didn't turn up for David Cameron's post-summit report ? and howled "treachery" at the drop of a "plot". The Sun ? kicking "sulking Clegg" en passant ? might well have led on Nasty Nick if an 18-year-old blonde from The X Factor hadn't "dumped Zayn" (Zayn Malik, not Zayn Clegg).

The Telegraph saw "Cameron standing firm as his deputy runs" at a "cathartic moment" deserving "the plaudits of a majority in this country". The Times discerned "a perilous moment for the coalition". Even the Mirror got stroppy over "pygmy" jibes ? and the Express, predictably enough, was all for pulling the Lib Dem house down, doing familiar numbers on "bloated Eurocrats" with one hand while finding "eight 'very important' new leads in the hunt for Madeleine McCann" with the other. (Well, that should cheer Lord Leveson up a bit.)

Now, there was some balancing around to be sure. The Guardian and FT weren't impressed by the PM's performance. Hamish MacRae in the Independent delivered some notably counter-intuitive analysis. David Wighton in the Times argued pretty bravely that Cameron's "brave move" had "backfired". But where was the invective to match the Mail and the Express's fury? Only, bizarrely enough, in the New York Times, where Richard Cohen, a bruiser from Westminster School and Balliol, paid back the Eurosceptics in their own coin.

Insular snobs

They are "the pin-striped effluence of an ex-imperial nation" banging on about finest hours and the Luftwaffe, "politically inept ? less the fighting spirit of the Normandy hedgerows than the self-regarding hypocrisy of the giant offshore hedge fund that Britain often resembles". And "their nostalgia for British greatness is often no more than the trumpeting of a bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner-fascist".

Phew! A trenchant New York voice ( one the late and much lamented Christopher Hitchens might have admired) praises Clegg for saying "there's nothing bulldog about a Britain hovering somewhere in mid-Atlantic" and, as he does so, booms out some of the tunes you can hear the Obama administration fluting more subtly. Then he quotes Warren Buffett: "It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked."

This reaction is fascinating for two distinct reasons. One is the way the sceptic masses take American approbation for granted. Sarkozy bellyaching on we expect, but not our special relations over the pond. The other is the sheer gusto with which he sails into the attack. Why did 57% of British voters in that first Times poll after the veto support David Cameron? In part, surely, because standing alone, doing the bulldog bit, plays into the language and legends that so much of our press has made its own.

How to swing things back into kilter? For starters, by meeting fire with fire, scorn with scorn. The Lib Dems won't do that; Labour can't find its voice; the BBC is still impaled on impartiality. I'm struck by the quote from Danny Finkelstein of the Times that adorns the web home page of the new Journalism Foundation. "A free press exists to tell the truth. To empower citizens through the truth. To challenge those who don't tell it."

Over Europe, I'm afraid, you need a whole lot of challenging before you get anywhere near the truth.

Peter Preston

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/18/eurosceptic-nick-clegg-press-comment

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Lucy Mangan's pick of the week: The story, the stat, the quote, the tweet

2011-12-31T09:00:00.001-08:00

Lucy Mangan on the people and stories in the media spotlight in the last seven days

The story

Put-upon Putin

Oh 2011, how are we to face up to a 2012 without Silvio to distract us? Ah. Step forward, unblinking iron wolfman cum once and future president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

Putin's Russia this week has been pretty old-skool: political foes bugged and the tapes released to tame media; stooge billionaire faux-opponents created; stage-managed transfer of power from gimpish front-man back to self ongoing; faceless bureaucrats reshuffled; and sinister, international elements blamed for the trouble. The only trouble was that thousands of modern types took to the streets, daringly protesting about transparently rigged elections. Vlad has offered an "honest 2012 presidential election" as an Xmas gift to the nation, but some have heard just the hint of a dry, throaty chuckle.

But take heart, democracy lovers. Your leader has at least said publicly that "There should be dialogue", and promised to think about what form it should take. And doubtless he will, good and hard. As long as there's mobile reception and Wi-Fi works in Siberia, you should all be sitting pretty by the New Year.

The stat

�4.3bn

Amount spent at the sales on 26 and 27 December. Truly we are a strange nation.

The quote

A Korean mourner

"As we're separated from the general by death, people, mountains and sky are all shedding tears of blood. Dear Supreme Commander!" One mourner interviewed by North Korean state TV at the funeral of Kim Jong-Il does himself proud.

The tweet

@MissKatiePrice

"Some men are so 2 sided and cruel, Evil 2 some and act a god to others unbelievable" ? It's Saturday (or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday), so it must be another feuding, punctuation-optional tweet from Katie Price, this believed to be about ex-husband Peter Andre. We promise not to keep you posted.

Lucy Mangan

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/31/lucy-mangan-this-week-putin

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Death and glory in the ring as children train to become superstar matadors

2011-12-31T04:00:00.001-08:00

Bullfighters in Mexico learn from an early age ? children as young as five join bullfighting academies every year

Last week Michelito Lagravere turned 14. It was a significant birthday. This is the year Michelito plans to make bullfighting history by becoming the youngest matador ever.

He has form. Michelito first stood in front of a calf aged five. In November 2009, then 11, he became the youngest novillero, or semi-professional bullfighter in the world, fighting bulls up to 370kg. If Michelito does succeed in becoming a full matador in the new year, the bulls he faces will weigh up to 600kg.

I first met Michelito in 2007. He had his future already mapped out: at 25, he would marry, have two children, fight in Madrid, buy a Ferrari and fly to Paris. I was starting to make a film about child matadors, exploring why children would put themselves in such danger in front of a bull, and why their parents would let them.

Over the course of two years, we filmed Michelito and two other child bullfighters, all at different stages in their careers. This was Mexico, where children as young as six train to become bullfighters. In Spain, it is against the law to kill a bull until you are 16. In Mexico, there is no such law.

Every year, hundreds of tiny would-be matadors ? many inspired by Michelito ? enrol in some of the dozen or so Mexican bullfighting academies. Children start as becerristas, or calf-fighters. After years of training, some will qualify as novilleros. Few become full matadors before their 20s. A figura, or superstar matador, can earn �335,000 for just one appearance, but for every thousand children that start out, according to bullfighting trainers, only one will make it.

Michelito's French father, Michel Lagravere, is a retired matador. Michelito is sad that his father never made it as a figura. After a promising start, Lagravere's dreams ended in a near-fatal goring in a ring in Madrid. The horns cut through his lung and opened up his head. Now he is back at the big rings with his son. Michelito is determined to make bullfighting history, "if not just for myself, because I've promised my dad".

By the age of 10, Michelito was already famous, often on TV and in the newspapers. He was already performing around Mexico several times a week. "It's fun," he said, "you get to know people. I'm almost always in an aeroplane." It was also turning serious. "If I want to debut as a novillero at 11 and take my alternativa at 14, now I have to get used to the big rings, to the competition," he said.

Michelito's fight was taking place in Texcoco, near Mexico City. Then he was baby-faced, chubby with puppy fat. At that stage in his career, Michelito weighed just 29kg (4st 5lb). He had already killed more than 200 bulls. He lit a candle at a makeshift altar in his hotel room and prayed for protection. He was about to step into a bullring and face an animal weighing nearly 300kg.

Michelito's bull entered the ring, snorting and rearing. Michel ran around the ring, bellowing instructions. Even then Michelito was a showman. He twirled his cape so that the bull nearly touched his body. Making dramatic expressions with his face, he stared down the bull. The crowd could not get enough. Michelito got cocky. He dropped to his knees. The move went wrong ? the bull jumped on top of him, trampling him.

Michelito made it back to the safety of the callej�n, the passage surrounding the ring. He bawled. "It's nothing son, go back in," urged his father. The little boy stood back in front of the bull. The crowd went crazy as the child with the tear-stained face dispatched his bull.

These days Michelito is rarely off the road. He recently spent six weeks on a tour of Peru. His teachers email his homework and he stresses over exams. But the real pressure is in the ring. "The difference with calf and bull fights is that you don't feel the same rivalry between children," he explains, " because they're friends. But in the big fights, a matador comes up to you and says, 'let's see if you can walk the walk' and you think yikes!"

At a bullfighting competition on a ranch outside Le�n, an industrial city in central Mexico, Joel Arturo Delgado S�nchez was making one of his first public appearances as a becerrista. A tiny boy, he twirled his cape, drawing the bull ever closer to his body. It was the paso de la muerte, or dance of death, the final phase in the fight. "Kill him now!" yelled a trainer from the sidelines. Joel raised his sword. But the bull reared up, a horn glanced Joel's face and he burst into tears. Joel was just nine years old.

On this occasion, the "kills" were purely symbolic, so Joel's calf was sent back to its field. Eight children were competing for a trophy ? the conventional, silver cup type. In other competitions when the child is expected to slaughter the calf, the trophies are the ears and tails. For a good performance, the matador is awarded one ear; two for an excellent turn. If the faena or "work" is outstanding, the prize is a tail. The rest of the animal is butchered and the meat ends up in speciality restaurants.

Joel limped out of the ring. A tooth had been loosened by the knock and he couldn't control his tears. "More than the blow, I felt the humiliation," said Joel's trainer, Ismael Rodr�guez, himself a matador, as he comforted the sobbing child.

"The bullfighting world is cruel. It's about death. And there's always the fear for children."

However, he explained, for aficionados bullfighting is a unique culture, considered an art form rather than a sport. The best bullfighters have always begun young. In his own case, he started at eight. By 10 he had killed his first calf.

"The bullfighter is born to be a bullfighter," said Rodr�guez, "and for them, this is normal. For other kids, sacrificing an animal, risking yourself, that's not normal."

Out of the ring, Joel was so shy he'd hide under his cape when strangers approached. He has a stutter and was embarrassed. Joel has never met his father; he went to America before Joel was born. His mother has remarried and Joel's relationship with his stepfather is strained. Then he discovered the local bullring; he was fascinated by the matadors' glittering suits.

He asked himself: "How can I become a matador?" And he found his answer: "I started to bullfight the matadors' cars."

Amused by a seven-year-old wielding his jacket at their vehicles, the matadors took him into the ring. He gave a few twirls of the cape and showed some talent. The matadors took Joel off the streets into the bullfighting school. He was taught to wash, dress properly and eat with a knife and fork. Bullfighting has given him a family ? and, in Rodr�guez, a surrogate father. Today, Joel is in his teens. He is killing calves and cutting ears. He is starting to make a name for himself.

True Stories: Little Matador, directed by Sandra Jordan and Gabriel Range, is on More4 on Tuesday at 10pm

Sandra Jordan

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/18/mexico-child-matadors-bullring

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Apple's struggle to defeat Amazon set to be exposed by European ebook inquiry

2011-12-30T23:00:00.001-08:00

The deal that the iPad maker struck with publishers could be threatened by an inquiry into the prices people in the EU pay for their digital reading

For book publishers, Christmas will come twice this year. After the festive trade in hardback tomes, the celebrations will begin again on Boxing Day, as the millions who got Kindles from Santa go online to stock them with reading material.

Amazon already sells more ebooks than paperbacks. It claims sales of Kindle devices have reached 1m a week, while 13m iPads will find a home this quarter. Juniper Research forecasts 25m e-readers sales globally this year, and 55.2m tablet sales.

The British bought 12.7m ebooks in the first half of 2011, double the amount for the same period last year, according to the Publishers Association. By common consent, January will be a record month for digital books.

But regulators, both in Europe and the United States, are worried that shoppers may be overpaying. This month, both the European commission and the US department of justice have announced investigations into ebook sales. They are to lift the lid on a power struggle between the publishing industry and Amazon that could determine the shape of the book trade for years to come.

The European commission will probe the "agency" deals signed between Apple and five of the biggest publishers: Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan.

The trouble began in early 2010. Worried about declining physical book sales, publishers feared Amazon's eye-catching discounts would devalue their electronic product. So they agreed to a business model proposed by Apple just before the release of the first iPad. It was a move intended to force the world's largest bookseller to relinquish control over pricing.

The agency deals apply only to digital books. Publishers set the retail prices and bookshops take a 30% cut on each copy sold. The model was designed by Apple, but subsequently forced on Amazon, and has been adopted mainly in the UK and US, by Waterstones, Canadian group Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

"The whole point of the agency model is to prevent the emergence of monopolists like Amazon," says Benedict Evans, a digital media expert at Enders Analysis. "What the publishers have done is stopped Amazon from crushing the independent ebook retail sector."

Amazon has lobbied furiously against the agency model. European regulators fear consumers may be paying too high a price to keep the American retail superpower at bay. "The commission has concerns the publishers may have colluded to raise the price of ebooks and that Apple may have facilitated this," says the commission's competition spokeswoman, Amelia Torres.

Agency deals will also come under scrutiny in US courts. Law firm Hagens Berman is bringing a class action suit in California against Apple and the big five publishers on behalf of book buyers. Founding partner Steve Berman says: "In the US, we believe that the publishers and Apple got together and agreed to fix the prices, and you are not allowed to do that. As a result, prices of e-books have exploded, jumping as much as 50%."

Publishers are reluctant to speak publicly but deny any collusion, saying they met Apple individually, rather than as a group. The agency model, often used for reselling insurance or software, is a well-established system enshrined in European law. But prices have risen since it was applied to ebooks.

Amazon no longer charges its old flat rate of $9.99 for new titles in the US; bestsellers now average $15. Berman says shoppers are paying between 30% and 50% more. Some ebooks now cost more than the hardback. Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is a contender for the bestseller of the year. It retails on Amazon for �10.77 as a hardback and �12.99 in digital format. At waterstones.com, Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, another top title and a very thick book, is marked at �5.38 as a paperback and �8.63 for download.

Digital books cost less to produce, transport and store, and these savings may not have been passed on to readers. Mass-market paperbacks are usually sold at the same price in paper or e-ink. And yet a $7.99 ebook will generate a profit of around $3.80 for a publisher, under the agency model. The margin shrinks to $2.25 for the physical version.

With ebooks available a year ahead of paperbacks, readers are often prepared to pay for instant gratification. In the UK, publishers say any saving is taken by HM Revenue & Customs. While paper books are untaxed, ebooks attract 20% VAT.

"The whole industry was worried about what Amazon would do once it got into a dominant position," says Philip Jones, deputy editor of the Bookseller. "Publishers used the agency model to deflect its progress and it has worked."

There are no official figures but industry sources say that in the past year, Amazon's share of the North American ebook market has fallen from around 80% to 60%. Barnes & Noble, which has its own Nook e-reader, said in June that it had taken 27% of the US market. Apple's iTunes is in third place, and in fourth position, with perhaps 5%, is Canadian retailer Kobo, whose e-readers are now on sale here at WH Smith and Asda. Amazon's UK share is at around 70%. Waterstones, which won't have an e-reader until next year, has slipped from 20% to 10% in the past year, while iTunes has bagged 15% to 20% of sales.

Publishers believe Amazon is no longer dependent enough on their industry to care about its wellbeing. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995 as an online bookstore, it now earns more money from shifting a panoply of nappies, TVs and golf clubs than it does from books, video and music. Last year, general merchandise accounted for $18.4bn of sales, compared to $14.9bn for media.

Books are Amazon's shop window rather than its cash cow, say publishers. When Amazon discounts paper books to below the wholesale price, it takes the hit. Should the retailer become too dominant, it could start forcing publishers to lower their margins.

Bezos has already flexed his muscles. In January 2010, Macmillan chief executive John Sargent went to see Amazon in Seattle to present agency terms, then flew home to New York. By the time his aircraft landed, every last Macmillan title Amazon stocked had been withdrawn from sale. The stalemate lasted a week.

Regulators must now decide whether agency agreements are a legitimate way to fight back. "It would be good for the industry to have clear guidance on what the legality is of these arrangements," says competition lawyer Alexandra Kamerling at DLA Piper.

Without competition between retailers, downward pressure on prices could still come from competition between publishers. But the UK banned the Net Book Agreement in 1997 after judges decided letting publishers set fixed prices was against the public interest. Large retailers like Dillons and Waterstones had in any case found loopholes. Damaged books could be discounted, so they deliberately defaced stock.

Most online bookshops are classic retailers, independent businesses used to setting their own prices. Sanctioning a model which sees them indefinitely handcuffed seems untenable. But a decision against the publishers could take the cheer from Christmas future for an already fragile book industry.

Juliette Garside

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/ebook-price-wars

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2011 was an epic year. Here are the stories you judged the most vital

2011-12-30T18:00:00.001-08:00

From the Norwegian massacre to the Japanese tsunami, and from Osama bin Laden to Gaddafi, 2011 was a big year for news. Here we illustrate which of these stories attracted most interest in terms of visits to our website

The figures in brackets show the number of search engine referrals to the Guardian-Observer website that keywords relating to a news topic triggered for a particular month.

January

VINCENT TABAK ARRESTED (60,747), 20 JANUARY

The Dutchman, 32, is arrested for the murder of landscape architect Joanna Yeates, whose body was found in Bristol on Christmas Day last year. In October, Tabak is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

WIKILEAKS INQUIRY (58,968), 4 JANUARY

The US Department of Justice announces plans to hold a congressional inquiry into WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, following the organisation's release of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.

PETE POSTLETHWAITE DIES (57,051), 2 JANUARY

FOOTBALL PUNDITS SHAMED (46,119), 25 JANUARY

Sky Sports sacks Andy Gray and Richard Keys resigns after the pair make off-camera, sexist remarks. They now work for radio station, talkSport.

CONGRESSWOMAN SHOT (45,834), 9 JANUARY

Gabrielle Giffords is shot in the head by a gunman in Arizona. Six bystanders are killed. Giffords survives and in May watches the final launch of the space shuttle, Endeavour, commanded by husband Mark Kelly. Jared Lee Loughner, 23, is charged with Giffords's attempted assassination.

February

CYCLONE STRIKES (81,708), 2 FEBRUARY

Tropical cyclone Yasi strikes Queensland, Australia, generating 9m waves and winds of up to 185 mph. A total of 400,000 people are evacuated from floodwaters and �2.2bn worth of damage is inflicted.

MUBARAK RESIGNS (66,813), 11 FEBRUARY

The demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Cairo, against the rule of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's ruler since the 1980s, reach a peak in early February. Mubarak resigns, leaving the country in the hands of a military council.

EARTHQUAKE (63,525), 22 FEBRUARY

An earthquake of 6.3 magnitude strikes New Zealand's South Island, 10km from Christchurch. The city is badly damaged: 181 people die and �15bn damage is done.

FEBRUARY

�50m TORRES (35,256), 6 FEBRUARY

Fernando Torres makes his debut for Chelsea after leaving Liverpool. His fee, �50m, is a record for a transfer between British football clubs.

March

TSUNAMI (493,098), 11 MARCH

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggers a tsunami that devastates the north-east coast of Japan. More than 1,600 people die and an estimated �190bn damage is caused. Waves also damage the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, triggering explosions in three reactors. Tens of thousands flee.

LIBYA NO-FLY ZONE (176,079), 18 MARCH

The UN security council authorises a no-fly zone across Libya to prevent government planes from bombing civilians. Rebel control of the country slowly strengthens.

APPLE UNVEILS iPAD 2 (61,813), 2 MARCH

ELIZABETH TAYLOR DIES (43,668), 23 MARCH

SHEEN SACKED (42,576), 7 MARCH

Charlie Sheen, the highest paid actor on US television, is sacked from the TV series Two and a Half Men after an expletive-filled attack on the show's producer.

April

ROYAL WEDDING (234,372), 29 APRIL

US MONEY WOES (97,647), 8 APRIL

The US narrowly avoids government shutdown after Congress signs an agreement to remove $38bn of federal programme budgets. Failure to reach a deal would have resulted in the closure of all but the most essential government services.

SPACE FLIGHT ANNIVERSARY (74,262), 12 APRIL

The 50th anniversary of the flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, on 12 April 1961, is marked by celebrations across the world, including a party on board the International Space Station.

ACTRESS ELISABETH SLADEN DIES (42,540), 19 APRIL

May

BIN LADEN KILLED (144,810), 1 MAY

Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is shot dead by a team of US Navy and CIA agents at a compound near Pakistan's capital Islamabad. Bin Laden is later buried at sea.

JUDGMENT DAY? (84,483), 21 MAY

American Christian radio host Harold Camping announces that Judgment Day will take place on 21 May. On 23 May, he moves the date to 21 October. In October, he admits he has no idea when the end will come.

COLE AXED (70,134), 25 MAY

Cheryl Cole is dropped from the US version of The X Factor only a few weeks after filming of the TV talent show in America began.

GIGGS NAMED (64,779), 23 MAY

Ryan Giggs is named in parliament as the Premier League footballer who had obtained a gagging order in relation to an alleged extra-marital affair with model Imogen Thomas.

STRAUSS-KAHN ARRESTED (52,284), 14 MAY

Head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a Manhattan hotel. Charges are later dropped but Strauss-Kahn is forced to resign his post.

SEVE BALLESTEROS DIES (25,008), 7 MAY

June

MORE POTTER (43,419), 23 JUNE

Author JK Rowling announces she is to launch Pottermore, a website dedicated to publishing new material about the world of Harry Potter.

RYAN DUNN, JACKASS STAR, DIES (249,945), 20 JUNE

OLYMPIC HEARTACHE (22,383), 17 JUNE

Two-thirds of applicants for tickets for London's 2012 Olympic games are left empty-handed in the face of a huge demand for seats.

July

AMY WINEHOUSE DIES (218,829), 23 JULY

REBEKAH BROOKS RESIGNS (95,151), 15 JULY

Rebekah Brooks resigns as chief executive of News International, following widespread criticism of her role in the controversy over phone hacking by News of the World journalists. On 10 July, NoW is closed down by News International.

NORWAY MASS KILLINGS (65,205), 22 JULY

Rightwing gunman Anders Behring Breivik murders 69 people at a summer camp in Tyrifjorden, Buskerud. Time-bombs set off by Breivik in Oslo kill a further eight.

ROYAL WEDDING II (38,061), 30 JULY

Zara Phillips, the queen's grand-daughter, marries English rugby player Mike Tindall.

BECKHAM BIRTH (32,658), 10 JULY

Victoria Beckham gives birth to a baby girl, Harper Seven.

August

ENGLISH RIOTS (486,822), 4 AUGUST

A peaceful protest march over the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August leads to a riot in Tottenham. Rioting spreads across the country.

HURRICANE IRENE (168,468), 22 AUGUST

Hurricane Irene leaves a swath of flood and wind damage as its heads north through the Caribbean, the US east coast and Canada. The death toll reaches 56.

TRIPOLI FALLS (39,045), 24 AUGUST

Muammar Gaddafi and his forces lose the battle for control of Tripoli.

HUNGER STRIKE ENDS (23,070), 28 AUGUST

Anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare ends his 12-day, nationally televised, hunger strike in India.

September

TROY DAVIS EXECUTED (225,669), 21 SEPTEMBER

OCCUPY PROTEST (44,799), 17 SEPTEMBER

More than 100 demonstrators set up a camp of cardboard boxes and tents in Manhattan's financial district as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest against economic inequality and corporate greed.

DOWNTON ABBEY II (15,780), 18 SEPTEMBER

ITV screens the first episode of the second series of Downton Abbey.

October

iPHONE 5 HOPES DASHED (1,539,846), 5 OCTOBER

Hopes that Apple would launch a new version of the iPhone are dashed when the company reveals it would only be promoting an updated version of its iPhone 4.

GADDAFI KILLED (213,762), 20 OCTOBER

STEVE JOBS DIES (166,416), 5 OCTOBER

STONE ROSES REUNITE (59,169), 18 OCTOBER

The Manchester indie band announce they have reunited for a world tour in 2012.

LIAM FOX RESIGNS (38,115), 14 OCTOBER

JOHN TERRY INVESTIGATION (34,115), 23 OCTOBER

Police begin an investigation after the England captain is captured on video making an allegedly racist remark.

DALE FARM EVICTION (29,373), 12 OCTOBER

The High Court grants Basildon council an injunction to clear travellers from the Dale Farm site in Crays Hill, Essex.

OCCUPY LONDON (20,466), 15 OCTOBER

Hundreds pitch tents at three central London sites in demonstrations about social inequality in Britain.

November

GARY SPEED DIES (184,065), 27 NOVEMBER

FATAL CRASH (156,549), 4 NOVEMBER

Seven people are killed and 51 injured in a 34-car pile on the M5.

JACKSON DOCTOR GUILTY (22,071), 29 NOVEMBER

Dr Conrad Murray is sentenced to four years in prison for the involuntarily manslaughter of Michael Jackson.

December

HERMAN CAIN CALLS OFF CAMPAIGN (19,959), 3 DECEMBER

GROUP WIN X FACTOR (57,621), 11 DECEMBER

Girl group Little Mix claim the title.

CLARKSON COMPLAINTS (31,524), 5 DECEMBER

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson prompts more than 30,000 complaints to the BBC following his appearance on The One Show in which he suggests that striking public sector workers should be "executed in front of their families".

PARTICLE BREAKTHROUGH (19,092), 13 DECEMBER

Physicists announce tentative evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle thought to underpin the microscopic workings of nature.

Robin McKie

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/18/2011-stories-made-year

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Opinion: Will negativity kill caucuses?

2011-12-30T13:00:00.001-08:00

Newt Gingrich during a campaign stop at the Dubuque Golf and Country Club in Dubuque, Iowa, on Tuesday.

The Iowa caucuses are less genteel than ever before, David Yepsen says
More voices are being heard at the caucuses, but some are increasingly hostile, he says
Yepsen: Iowa's tradition of civility is challenged by hecklers, protesters and Internet negativity
Come 2016, candidates may conclude Iowa's just not worth it any more, Yepsen says

Editor's note: David Yepsen, a former political reporter for The Des Moines Register, is the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

(CNN) -- In 1979, George H.W. Bush was giving a foreign policy speech to a group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers when a British journalist, well into his cups, shouted "Rubbish! Rubbish!" at the former U.N. ambassador from the back of the room.

Joseph Kraft, one of America's leading political columnists, frowned at his well-soaked colleague and said, "Shhh. We don't do it that way here." The man nodded, and Bush smiled and proceeded with his address.

Things have changed at caucus time in Iowa. It's a whole lot less genteel than ever before. And that may not be good for the future of the caucuses.

For several cycles now, caucus events have grown ever larger, with more money being spent and media attention being generated. But the biggest difference is the level of surliness.

Americans on both the left and the right are angry and frustrated. Many have reached snapping points. Upset about being ignored by a political process that won't do things they want done, their solution is to raise their voices and adopt guerrilla theater tactics to force their way into the debate.

Growing numbers of websites, bloggers and YouTube videos help define the coverage in ways that didn't exist a cycle or two ago. At one level, that's a healthy use of the First Amendment. There are more voices being heard.

At another level, it's not so good. Some of these voices lack civility and employ increasingly hostile tactics in an effort to garner media attention. If this sort of thing keeps up, it could contribute to the demise of the caucuses and an end to the up-close campaigning that has been a hallmark of caucus campaigns.

Newt Gingrich and the chocolate factory

Wife talked Romney into second run

Ron Paul in the spotlight

To be sure, American political campaigns have never been very genteel affairs. They seem even less so today thanks to communications technologies that enable the campaigns' negativity to be spewed into living rooms and hand-helds on a constant basis.

In Iowa, the state's tradition of civil politics is being challenged by hecklers, protesters and Internet negativity, along with record amounts of last-minute attack television ads from unknown sources.

Early signs of it came in 2010, when some tea party activists verbally challenged Iowa candidates. On top of that was the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which has poured the gasoline of unattributed campaign donations onto these fires of negativity. Next was hackers threatening a cyber attack on the caucus results to destroy the reporting of the vote. Now, the Occupy movement is arriving in Iowa to use the events as a backdrop for their protests.

(Stay tuned. This could get interesting in the coming days. When some Occupy protester from out of state gets in the face of an NRA supporter at a caucus, things could turn ugly. Despite the best efforts of cooler heads on all sides, the storyline on caucus night may not be who wins but the outcome of any Occupy vs. tea party confrontations.)

Add this all up, and it's easy to see why it could contribute to the demise of the caucuses. Already we've seen some members of Congress reduce the numbers of town hall meetings so as not to have ugly scenes with hecklers -- and to limit the opportunities for opposition trackers to capture them in gaffes that will live forever on the Internet. At many caucus events, there are also more security people than ever before, judging by the increased numbers of thick-necked fellows with wraparound sunglasses and plastic earpieces.

Come 2016, candidates may conclude that Iowa's just not worth it anymore. They may figure they are better off just raising more money in closed-door fundraisers and doing invitation-only telephone town hall meetings.

It's not hard to see why. The caucuses became important because candidates like George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush felt they got something out of participating. Candidates in the future may no longer feel that way, because the caucus events have moved a long way from the days when Carter munched lemon bars in someone's kitchen.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Yepsen.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/_hb4-Q7_9Gg/index.html

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Crayfish invasion of England's waterways tracked by radio

2011-12-30T08:00:00.001-08:00

North American predators move upstream at 500m a month, spreading disease to native species, Environment Agency finds

Members of an aggressive species of crayfish which have been invading England's waterways are being tracked with radio transmitters in an attempt to better understand them.

The Environment Agency said virile crayfish (Orconectes virilis), which are non-native, prey on native wildlife and spread crayfish plague, a disease deadly to native white clawed crayfish. The north American predators have recently been seen in waterways in east London after first being found on the river Lea near Enfield in 2004.

They have since colonised more than 10 miles of the river and linked waterways, spreading into Hertfordshire.

The agency has fitted small radio transmitters on the backs of the unwelcome guests, with preliminary results showing that virile crayfish are moving upstream at a rate of 500 metres a month.

This is substantially faster than their cousin, the signal crayfish, which is also non-native.

The UK's only native crayfish, the white clawed crayfish, was wiped out along the Lea after an invasion of the signal crayfish in the 1980s and the associated spread of crayfish plague. The plague is a fungal infection that can be easily spread between rivers on wet angling gear and water sports equipment.

Adam Ellis, environmental monitoring officer at the agency, said: "Whilst rivers in England and Wales are cleaner than they have been for decades, there is still a lot to be done in order to return them to full health. This includes the control of invasive species like virile crayfish.

"By tracking the colonisation of the river Lea by virile crayfish, we will better understand how this species impacts the environment and our native wildlife.

"However, one of the most important ways to protect our wildlife is to stop the spread of non-native invasive species. We're appealing to the public not to release unwanted pets into the wild."

Anyone who catches a crayfish must follow strict guidelines on how to handle them to prevent their spread and the transmission of crayfish plague.

It is believed that virile crayfish arrived in the UK after an aquarium owner released them into an east London pond.

The rise of invasive species is a challenge in meeting tough new EU targets on the ecology of rivers and lakes. They cost the UK economy an estimated �1.7bn a year, according to the agency.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/30/rivers-crayfish-invasion-radio-tracking

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Letters: Labour is working to avoid the trap

2011-12-30T03:00:00.001-08:00

Ben Jackson and I were disappointed to see our Comment piece (How to avoid the Tory trap, 29 October) and Policy Network pamphlet, Cameron's Trap: lessons for Labour from the 1930s and 1980s, reported online (29 December, Politics section) under the headline "Ed Miliband risks Tory trap on public spending, says shadow minister". This is narrowly inaccurate as I did not say that. More widely, it mischaracterises our argument. The Comment piece makes clear our view that Ed Miliband is strategically positioning the Labour party to avoid the "trap". That is why we say in the article that the key political moment of this parliament has been Ed Miliband's focus on the "squeezed middle".

In addition, if you examine the recommendations made in our pamphlet, it is obvious how much work has already been done by the leadership of the party to get Labour on the right side of the argument. By succumbing to the temptation to sensationalise our argument, the Guardian is not encouraging the development of progressive policies.
Gregg McClymont MP
Lab, Cumbernauld
Dr Ben Jackson
University College, Oxford

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/29/labour-working-to-avoid-trap

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Your pictures: Floral

2011-12-29T22:00:00.001-08:00

Readers' pictures on the theme of floral

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/in-pictures-13346267

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OK, if the French play up, the croissant gets it | Alex Clark

2011-12-29T17:00:00.001-08:00

If Britain has to cut ties with its former conquerors, there's a lot we'd miss. But some things we wouldn't

Heavens! Or even Mon Dieu! Is this really the appropriate time of year for a contretemps, let alone a brouhaha? Well, apparently yes, as the age-old antipathy between France and Britain rears its jolly old t�te once again. But rather than get into an ugly scene, I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to do a quick audit of what we'd actually miss if we had to cut all ties with our former conquerors, and what we'd quite happily do without. Just in case we want to get really serious and indulge in a boycott of things French, you understand. These are, of course, merely my suggestions, so do feel free to join in; we're totally laissez-faire around here.

Thank goodness next summer we'll have significant sporting events to focus on, both here and in Poland and Ukraine. Otherwise I would pine for the Tour de France, that annual celebration of mountain-top lunacy, in which one can flash one's vocabulary ? peloton, poursuivants, lanterne rouge ? with gay abandon.

Switching sport, it's barely possible to contemplate a world without Thierry Henry, but I think north London can pretty much claim him as its own now. And I have immediately reclassified Ars�ne Wenger as Alsatian. Let's face up to it straight away: the French have made a fairly hefty contribution to the world of booze, and it will be a wrench to say adieu to champagne, calvados, claret, chablis, cognac and other drinks that begin with C. Don't even get me started on cointreau. But needs must: we will have to muddle by on prosecco, chianti and Jagermeister, possibly all in one marvellously potent cocktail.

Au revoir, too, to �clairs, choux buns and meringues, but ? and this might be controversial ? I'll be relieved to be free of the tyranny of the croissant. Ever since the recent BBC television hit The Great British Bake Off (there's a clue in the title, guys), revealed that it takes virtually one's yearly consumption of butter and a week of rolling-pin action to make a tiny scrap of breakfast that isn't even a bacon sandwich, the charm of these overrated buns has been lost on me. They also encapsulate one of the aspects of French life that most gets on our nerves: agricultural surplus meets too much time on your hands and produces a culinary fetish object. Staying briefly in the kitchen: jus out! Gravy in!

Now: sex. The French are the greatest lovers in the world. Whatever. Paris is the city of love. If you say so, monsieur, but rather less so since the advent of cheap flights to Scandinavia. And here's one for the fashion-conscious: won't you be glad that you'll never again have to hear that only French women know how to wear a scarf? Fortunately, there is very little to say about French popular music. We will happily note that we can delete the post-Gainsbourg stylings of Air, always cited in arguments as "the good French band", from our iPods and move on. We will enthusiastically rediscover Plastic Bertrand, which will annoy everyone, because he is, of course, Belgian.

Enfin, there remains the difficult category of things that sound French, but might on closer inspection turn out not to be. Here we must exercise some caution. So: French polish, windows, letters, beans, Connection, kissing, toast, poodles, Lieutenant's Woman, navy and knickers, consider yourself on a warning.

And don't think we haven't spotted you, Dawn French.

Alex Clark

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/18/alex-clark-living-without-france

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PICTURES: Spider webs cocoon trees

2011-12-29T12:00:00.001-08:00

Have a look at this amazing side effect from last year's Pakistan floods: trees completely cocooned in spiders' webs.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_9440000/newsid_9443200/9443220.stm

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Frankincense trees' bleak future

2011-12-29T07:00:00.001-08:00

Frankincense - a traditional staple of the Christmas story - faces an uncertain future, according to researchers studying the changing ecology of the trees.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-16270759

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Seeds survive being eaten twice

2011-12-29T02:00:00.001-08:00

How seeds survive when the lizards that eat them are eaten by birds

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15838840

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To avoid a return to the 1930s, Europe need the postwar spirit

2011-12-28T21:00:00.001-08:00

When peace returned, debts were forgiven and a long-term loan programme was put in place? for Germany. Something of a similar order is required for the ailing countries of the eurozone

There was exultation in the French embassy in London last weekend. Thanks to David Cameron's handling of the Brussels summit, the French were able to attack the British prime minister for his obsession with the interests of the City, as opposed to the economic future of Europe, while secretly praising him for doing President Sarkozy's dirty work for him.

Despite the general perception in the run-up to the summit that the Germans were calling the shots and that France was losing influence, Cameron ensured that, for the moment at least ? and it may be many moments ? the French have won in the battle over whether the key structure for the eurozone should be the German version of binding, supranational arrangements in the hands of the Brussels commission, or the more flexible, intergovernmental approach favoured by the French.

However, in the light of the general reaction of the markets, this may be small consolation when it comes to the battles that lie ahead.

To my mind, reaction to Cameron's veto (or non-veto) has been little short of hysterical. Those of us who recall France's "empty chair" policy towards what was then the European Economic Community in the 1960s know that these things do not necessarily last. Anyone of a hysterical turn of mind would be far better advised to worry less about Cameron's behaviour than about the looming world economic crisis.

In a recent University of Warwick paper, Political Quarterly editor Colin Crouch observed that the big worry of economic policymakers used to be the labour movement, but is now capital movement. And as the chief executive of the giant bond investor Pimco recently put it, the financial crisis is such that, whereas investors used to be concerned about the return on capital, they are now more interested in the return of capital. My suspicion is that, if that was meant to be a joke, he was speaking only half-jokingly.

Now, seasoned bureaucrats and central bankers tend to start counting the spoons when their democratically elected masters complain about the behaviour of the financial markets. You cannot, it is fondly believed, and as a famous British prime minister once put it, "buck the market". On the other hand, when the market is distorted, or behaving in a way that is not manifestly conducive to the general welfare, then some attempts have to be made to control its behaviour.

That is why the British position ? that the system that produced the crisis should continue to be lightly regulated and lightly taxed ? sticks in the craw not only of continental politicians but also of many British citizens.

In the world of casino capitalism, where the amount of so-called "trading" ? ie rampant speculation ? far exceeds the value of transactions needed to finance ordinary trade, the pace is set by a relatively small number of very powerful "players" ? yes, they call themselves "players" ? in the bond market. Many of these have, not to put too fine a point upon it, been "going" for one eurozone economy after another. The argument in their favour is that, although their own motives may be less than pure, they are, in an Adam Smithian way, forcing governments to mend a faulty system.

Unfortunately, week after week, it has become evident that European, and indeed world, policymakers constitute a cacophonous orchestra without a conductor. More and more economists and interested laypeople are concerned, with reason, that we are heading back towards a 1930s-style crisis, albeit at a considerably higher starting point when it comes to living standards (although these are, indeed, already beginning to fall, except in the case of ? well, in the spirit of Christmas, let us not name names or categories).

In reaction to the 1930s, the Americans and the British got together, with a little help from their friends, to produce the postwar Bretton Woods system, which was essentially aimed at limiting the excesses of the financial markets. This broke down in the early 1970s. In a sense, the present crisis of the eurozone is the culmination of the various piecemeal efforts to substitute for the Bretton Woods system.

The essence of the problem today is that the banking crisis ? and the sovereign debt crisis that is to a considerable extent the consequence of the financial crisis ? cannot be patched up for long with financial sticking plaster.

After the second world war, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, the OEEC, which subsequently evolved into the OECD, conducted a remarkable amount of long-term planning. Germany and Austria were recipients of massive "debt forgiveness" and received very long-term loans. The former Austrian politician Hannes Androsch recalls that it was not until 1975, when he was finance minister, that his country paid off a loan made in 1952. Similarly with Germany. And the British postwar loans from the US were not paid off for half a century.

Serious long-term arrangements of this order are now needed. But without a return to Keynesianism, the crisis will only get worse. Yes, we need long-term budgetary restraint, as advocated by Merkel. But we are not faced with Weimar inflation. We are faced with rising unemployment and goodness knows how many recipes for social unrest. We need not the wartime spirit, but the immediate postwar spirit. Fast!

William Keegan

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/18/avoid-slump-1930s-postwar-spirit

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Dan Wagner: from dotcom Dial-a-dog to Venda vendor

2011-12-28T16:00:00.001-08:00

The man who presided over the notorious collapse of the Dialog technology company has something new to sell

Were you around during the 1990s dotcom boom? Then you ought to know the name Dan Wagner.

Wagner was famed for insisting on wearing a Donald Duck waistcoat as much as for his achievement of becoming a chief executive of a public company in his 20s, and for a confrontational reputation while presiding over a firm whose shares crashed by 95%.

"I had quite a lot of coverage, not all welcome," admits the former boss of Dialog, the technology company that City wags renamed Dial-a-dog. "It was partly because I spoke my mind, which is not always a good trait in a public company chief executive."

Now he's back ? at least back trying to get into financiers' good books ? and dressed in a sober suit and slicked back hair, the 48-year-old suddenly looks far more City-like. "I have been 10 years in the private [company] sector," he adds. "It feels like about the right time to come back out again."

The reason, obviously, is he has something to sell. That something is his e-commerce business Venda, built from the technology that Wagner bought for �250,000 out of the ashes of one of the most famous dotcom busts of all ? fashion retailer Boo.com. The entrepreneur holds a near 30% stake and Venda is up for sale, either via a flotation or to a trade buyer. Mind you, that has been true for years.

In 2008 Venda recruited former Orange and Wanadoo executive Eric Abensur and said it would float. It didn't. "The whole world changed," Wagner protests, before switching back to the script. "Venda is doing well in the US. It is a good thing for Britain. This is a buyers' market. We may not do anything. We are not desperate. We don't need to sell."

It is a convincing piece of sales patter, which probably disguises what a slog it's been to get this far. Venda's last accounts show the company lost �5.1m before tax in the year to June 2010, an improvement on the previous year when it lost �7.3m. About 23% of the group's �10.5m revenues came from the US, and there is a caveat to Wagner's cool "don't need to sell" line.

Two months ago the company raised $2.25m (�1.4m) issuing 5.5m new preference shares to existing investors. The documents, dated 15 September 2011, state: "If the company has not completed a qualified IPO or effected a liquidation event one year after issue of [the new shares], then the holders of the [new shares] are entitled to receive a compounding dividend of 10% per annum."

So why pay so much for so little cash? The money has been raised to promote the company in the US, where Venda has just won a contract to supply Fort Knox that will be worth $6m in the first year (and possibly a lot more afterwards).

The high interest rate, Wagner says, will provide the company with an "incentive" to sell by September. But as existing shareholders are putting up the funds, it suggests somebody is very keen to cash out. Did Wagner push for the high rate? He won't say.

He may just want to move on and even talks of a sensational return to the public markets by putting his other businesses into a holding company and floating that.

The new projects are all internet-focused. There is Locayta, which profiles visitors to websites; Powa, that allows businesses to quickly and securely deploy hundreds of e-commerce sites; Buya Powa, a group buying start-up; and Aigua, a fashion blog publishing company.

"Everything I have has got an A on the end," Wagner says. "I'm thinking of changing my name by deed poll to Dan Wagna." Now, even his City detractors must concede that's not such a bad joke.

Simon Goodley

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/18/dan-wagner-venda-internet-business

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Cameron: over-confident, cavalier and careless? and still on top | Andrew Rawnsley

2011-12-28T11:00:00.001-08:00

The prime minister hasn't had a brilliant 12 months, but there's no one that can rival him inside or outside his party

His economic strategy has gone up in smoke and so have crucial relationships in Europe. Violent urban disorder erupted on his watch over the summer and scandal forced the resignation of a key member of the cabinet in the autumn. The northern part of his kingdom is threatening to break away. His closeness to senior members of the Murdoch empire has been a serial, personal embarrassment. On a core element of the government's domestic programme ? the NHS legislation ? the prime minister has been forced into reverses which cost political capital without doing anything to reduce the risk that it will turn into a terrible mess.

And yet David Cameron ends the year on something of a high. His backbenchers greeted his return from Brussels with a hero's welcome. He may eventually come to rue raising expectations that he cannot ultimately fulfil, but for the moment he has won what one influential Tory MP calls "a breathing space" with his party during which "we will get off his back about Europe". He squelched Ed Miliband at the last Prime Minister's Questions of the year. Despite a bleak economic outlook, accompanied by the worst unemployment figures in 17 years, some polling has the Conservatives nudging ahead of Labour. The languishing Lib Dems are reduced to sighing with relief when they can just squeak a third place in a byelection. Giddier Tory MPs can even be heard speculating about engineering a snap general election. That is silly chatter, but the fact that it is talked about at all is indicative of the state of play as we come to the close of this turbulent year: David Cameron is on top.

This is not because the prime minister has had 12 months which deserve the description brilliant. In many respects, it has been a year which has exposed a variety of flaws, limitations and contradictions in both his personal style and political strategy. The "big society", which was once to be his governing theme, is rarely heard of these days. Even he appears to have given up making speeches trying to sell it. His premiership is becoming defined by austerity and Europe, the opposite of what he originally intended.

Yet he remains ascendant. That is because all politics is relative. One reason he seems to be in a good place for a prime minister is because international rivals and domestic competitors are in much worse ones. He leads a government which looks unusually robust when set beside many others. Rancour between Tories and Lib Dems is as nothing compared with the poisonous divisions in the US where government is paralysed by the deadlock between the White House and an obstructionist Congress. Whatever its faults, Britain's coalition can pass a budget and enact legislation. Greece and Italy have "technocratic" governments ? in other words, governments that no one voted for ? imposed on them by the failure of conventional democratic politics and the terror of the bond markets. I have lost count of the number of summits at which Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel met to resolve the euro crisis and then failed to do so.

George Osborne has been forced to rewrite his deficit reduction strategy, an event that ought to be a humiliation for a chancellor. A mere 18 months after he vaingloriously proclaimed that he would have the job done in a parliament, he now promises a diet of gruel into the foreseeable future. But the markets have continued to tolerate the size of Britain's debts, and most voters continue to buy the prime minister's excuses, because this government seems more decisive and stable than most.

On the domestic front, too, David Cameron is flattered by comparisons. He basks in the reflected failure of others. After Ed Miliband's latest belly flop, one Tory MP, not normally a cruel man, chortled to me that the Labour leader "is the gift that keeps on giving". Labour is having a renewed bout of jitters about its leadership and long-term prospects without evincing any serious sign that it knows how to enhance either.

The Lib Dems are furious but trapped. Nick Clegg only learnt of the denouement of the Brussels summit in a four-in-the-morning call from David Cameron after the fact. Many Lib Dems see this as the second serious betrayal of the year, the first one being Mr Cameron breaking a "gentlemen's agreement" over the conduct of the AV referendum when he licensed the "No" campaign to launch personal attacks on the Lib Dem leader. Lesson for Mr Clegg and his party: if you are going to strike a "gentlemen's agreement" be first sure that the other party is actually a gentleman. Angry as they may be, the Lib Dems have nowhere to go when collapsing the coalition and triggering a sudden election would be the proverbial turkey voting for an early Christmas.

No figure within his own party has the stature or popularity to threaten David Cameron at present. He is not constantly menaced by an internal rival in the way that Tony Blair was by Gordon Brown.

This is not entirely healthy because it exacerbates an already established tendency to be complacently insouciant at times. He has shown himself to be cavalier and careless: at home over the NHS reforms and abroad when he failed to cultivate any allies before the Brussels summit. In a speech on Friday, the prime minister called himself a "vaguely practising" Christian. Senior civil servants and colleagues sometimes wonder whether he is not also a "vaguely practising" prime minister.

On other occasions, he has shown a capacity to rise to events with clarity and boldness. He took a riskily forward position in the early stages of the Libyan crisis, insisting that a UN mandate for action could be secured when many doubted it and pushing for military intervention against considerable initial resistance from both other governments and his own officialdom and military.

To Tories of a Eurosceptic bent, which is to say nearly all of them these days, his other demonstration of boldness was to say no to a new European treaty. This is much more arguable. It was a decision not so much willed as forced upon him by the refusal of every other European leader to indulge Britain's demands and the pressure from his MPs, 81 of whom had earlier rebelled over a referendum on withdrawal, and many more of whom were with the mutineers in spirit if not in the division lobby.

One theme that has emerged over the past 12 months is that David Cameron is not very good at relationships; certainly not at some kinds of crucial relationships. He has mismanaged both his footsoldiers at home and his international peers. It is admittedly not easy to deal with Nicolas Sarkozy ? a volatile grandstander facing a difficult election within months and desperate to divert attention from his own failures and predicaments by abusing the ros beefs. But Mr Cameron ought to be asking himself why he has not got a better relationship with someone as ideologically sympathetic as Angela Merkel and how it was that he found himself without a friend in the room at the Brussels summit. European leaders who normally prefer the British to the French found the approach of Team Cameron arrogant in its assumptions and aloof in its diplomacy.

This, interestingly, echoes the complaint you often hear back home from within his own party. I have spent more lunches and dinners than I care to remember listening to Tory MPs complain about how remote they feel from their leader, often getting on to the subject before the first glass of wine. Now, it is only fair to observe that I have never known a time, whether the prime minister was Tory or Labour, when MPs didn't moan that they were unloved by their leader, especially when the MP in question felt that his talents had been overlooked for a ministerial post. Sensible leaders do something about it. Tony Blair found buttering-up backbenchers a bore so he employed people at Number 10 whose job it was to do it for him. There seems to be no one in David Cameron's Downing Street tasked with party management. Many a Tory MP has a bitter anecdote about an occasion when they or a colleague have felt snubbed by the prime minister or cold-shouldered by his operation. "It will be his downfall in the end," one Conservative MP remarked to me recently.

"Out of touch" and "arrogant" are also the words most often to be heard from focus groups of voters when they are asked to discuss what they don't like about this prime minister. This is not necessarily fatal so long as it is balanced by things they admire. It is certainly better for a leader to be regarded as too confident than the opposite. Similar complaints of arrogance were made about Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher and both won a hat trick of elections before they were finally undone. For now at least, David Cameron's approval and leadership ratings easily best those of his rivals. "He's not that good," says one senior Labour figure who despairs of his party's failure to capitalise on the coalition's many difficulties. "But Cameron doesn't have to be that good against us."

In politics, you don't need to be the best. You just have to be better than the rest.

Andrew Rawnsley

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/18/david-cameron-ed-miliband-tory

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Colosseum crumbling, claims news agency

2011-12-28T01:00:00.001-08:00

Pieces have reportedly been falling off Roman landmark, but attraction's director denies suggestions

Italy's culture ministry is investigating reports that pieces of stone have fallen from the Colosseum. Italian news agency Ansa said pieces fell on Sunday and on Tuesday, but Colosseum director Rossella Rea denied it and blamed a "psychosis" belief that occurs every so often that Rome's ancient stadium is crumbling. The environmental group Legambiente has frequently claimed that car exhaust fumes and vibrations from vehicles and a nearby underpass are damaging the exterior of the Colosseum. A ?25m (�20m) restoration is expected to begin in March.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/27/colosseum-crumbling-claims-news-agency

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Education reform: We need transparency not ideological zeal | Observer editorial

2011-12-27T20:00:00.001-08:00

The education secretary seems to be doing everything his own way

The motto of fee-paying Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen is: "Now you should use all your masterly skills" (Omni nunc arte magistra).

Michael Gove, the education secretary, is a former pupil. Since his appointment, he has given every sign that he has taken the motto to heart. In a blizzard of reforms, his skill has been to appear charming, collaborative and collegiate, while exercising a determination to do it his way, "it" in this case being the radical remodelling of the education system.

Yesterday, a glimpse of how his affability camouflages an iron resolve was again revealed when it was announced that the final results of an independent review of the national curriculum, expected in the new year, will now be delayed for 12 months. Critics say the delay is driven by the minister's desire to stamp his authority on the review process.

Next week, interim evidence will be presented that shows how far education standards in England lag behind those in other countries. The predicted outcome of the curriculum review is that pupils will be expected to learn their times tables by the age of nine instead of 11, and a new English syllabus may lead to the introduction of lessons in grammar and more rigorous reading lists that include Homer and Sophocles. The aim, we are told, is to establish a "gold standard" in education.

Few would object. Gove has repeatedly said that he intends to improve education for all, particularly the most disadvantaged.

Academies (now 1,300 in number) and free schools (24 opened this year, another 12 open next year) are his main catalysts. They report directly to him, they set their own timetable, length of term, holidays and methods of teaching. And they have extra funding.

It is conceivable that, if monitored and properly evaluated, free schools might see the birth of an education system fit for the 21st century. But there are grounds for concern. Research by Sutton Trust charity suggests that increasing the effectiveness of all teachers would have "a large and enduring effect on both the performance of schools and the economy". It is not reassuring, therefore, that free schools can employ unqualified staff if they choose.

Gove has undertaken a range of further reforms, including improving the recruitment of teachers. And, on the insistence of the Lib Dems, he has established a pupil premium ? additional school funding for the most disadvantaged. Yet there is evidence that his reforming zeal is based less on hard evidence and more by his own experience of traditional schooling, backed by an ideological conviction that the market will deliver solutions. The education secretary should be more open and allow an informed national debate ? especially as so many parents and pupils are bewildered by the complexity of the education discussion, confused as it is by the layers of reform laid down over the past 30 years. We are witnessing, without sufficient understanding, changes that could mould our education system for generations ? changes that carry the risk that the most disadvantaged will pay the heaviest price of reform.

A series of key questions need to be addressed. For instance, is Gove on a mission to allow the private sector to play a much larger role in trying to raise standards than he has yet articulated?

At a time, for example, when education will see the biggest drop in its budget since the 1950s (13% cut over four years), the past 12 months has been marked by a lack of clarity on the private sector's rules of engagement in free schools and academies.

Only recently, for example, has it become plain that a significant number of fee-paying independent schools may yet become free schools, funded by the tax payer. This may have a potentially negative impact on good state schools that are already established in the same area. Again, Nick Clegg has insisted that free schools are "not for profit". Yet IES UK, a Swedish company, recently won a �21m contract to manage Breckland Free School in Suffolk. The Anti Academies Alliance argues that "privatisation and deregulation not system-wide school improvement appear to be the destination [of travel]".

Another issue is the way in which new legislation has given the secretary of state much greater clout. Under the 1988 Education Reform Act, the education minister had 200 powers of direction. That has ballooned to more than 2,000. So, for example, Gove, via annual funding letters, can tell free schools and academies what should be taught. It is the secretary of state not parliament who can close a free school or order its change of character. Even if Gove was known for heeding the advice of his civil servants, is such a concentration of power healthy?

Part of the reasons why Gove is opaque about his motives may lie in frustration. Many secretaries of education have tried and failed to tackle the lack of educational achievement that is a tragedy not just for the individual but also for our collective prosperity. Last week, further evidence of a decline in standards was revealed in data published by the Department for Education. Four in 10 pupils who were above average in the three Rs at seven failed to fulfil that early promise by the age of 11. Family income, neighbourhood and parental aspirations play a significant part in achievement, but this pattern of under-utilised capabilities and talent has become a depressing motif.

So while there has bee an improvement in passes in vocational GCSEs, only 16% of students achieve GCSEs in the core subjects of English, maths, sciences, a language and either history or geography. In another example of wasted potential, 42% of Afro-Caribbean boys and 60% of white boys eligible for free school meals cannot read properly at 14.

Inevitably, any debate on the best road for education to take also has to include the question of a fair distribution of resources.

Education guru Sir Tim Brighouse has said that while a succession of education secretaries have talked glibly about "choice", "diversity", "autonomy", "equity", "equality", "excellence" and "accountability", these are not uncontested and mutually reconcilable desirables. "If you ratchet up the first three too far and create too much of a competitive market, then the sufferer will be equity and equality of opportunity."

We have in excess of 24,000 schools in England alone. The system under which they operate has serious defects. How they are addressed is of vital national importance that can make or mar our future.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/18/observer-editorial-education-reform

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Arrest after elderly man hit by car dies in hospital

2011-12-27T15:00:00.001-08:00

27-year-old woman held in connection with death of man who was hit outside supermarket in Birmingham

A 27-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with the death of an elderly man who was hit by a car outside a supermarket. West Midlands police said that the pedestrian, thought to be aged 76, was struck by the vehicle outside a Co-op store in Stirchley, Birmingham, at about 10am and died in hospital a short time later. A West Midlands ambulance service spokesman said the pensioner was given a very high level of first aid by staff from the supermarket before the arrival of emergency crews. He was then taken to Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham where he died.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/27/arrest-man-hit-car-dies

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UK faces bleak 2012 and risk of recession's return, warns thinktank

2011-12-27T10:00:00.001-08:00

Britain's jobless rate to rise as Osborne's economic strategy fails to halt slide back into recession, says IPPR

The UK economy faces a bleak 2012 and risks tumbling back into recession as a result of confidence-crushing austerity measures and the crisis in the eurozone, a new report warns.

The Institute for Public Policy Research says the only good news for consumers is that inflation will fall and so the squeeze on households' spending power will end ? "at least for those who keep their jobs".

The thinktank's chief economist, Tony Dolphin, says during 2011 growth was lower than expected, unemployment higher and public sector borrowing greater. Looking ahead, he sees no obvious way to shore up the economy. "In the short term, economic policy has become a matter of hoping that something turns up ? and that is why, for the UK economy, 2012 is unlikely to be a happy new year.

"As we enter 2012, it seems the word that best describes the outlook for the UK economy is 'bleak'. The eurozone crisis is unresolved and country after country is being forced to adopt extreme austerity measures that will result in large falls in output." He highlights the assessments of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that "the UK economy is teetering on the brink of a return to recession".

"These forecasts all come with the warning that things could get a lot worse in the eurozone, and if they do then the UK would fall into a serious recession," adds Dolphin.

The OECD has warned that Britain will go back into recession this winter because of a fresh increase in unemployment, a squeeze on family budgets, government spending cuts and the eurozone crisis.

The thinktank, which advises more than 30 developed countries, rejects George Osborne's argument that an expanding private sector could soak up public sector job losses and warns that dole queues will lengthen to more than 9% of the working population as growth slows.

The OBR, whose forecasts are used by the Treasury, has a similarly bleak labour market outlook. It sees unemployment rising from 8.3% now to 8.7% in 2012. At the time of the government's autumn statement on the economy, the independent body slashed its growth outlook as well. It now expects growth of just 0.9% this year and an even weaker 0.7% next year, compared with a previous forecast of 2.5%.

It puts the chances of recession in the near term at one in three, while other economists put the likelihood much higher and reckon growth has already ground to a halt or may even have slipped into negative territory.

The IPPR wants the coalition government to temper its austerity drive, which includes hundreds of thousands of public sector job cuts, to take more account of growth. "When growth is strong, tightening can be speeded up, but when growth is weak, as now, then tightening should be slowed down," the thinktank argues.

It also wants specific measures to boost the economy such as bringing forward the creation of a national investment bank.

Dolphin says even talk of austerity could send the UK into a double dip. "Going into 2012, the risk is that talk of austerity at home and crisis in Europe will dampen spirits to such an extent that the economy drifts into recession," he says.

"If the economy does find itself back in recession, it is likely to have to find its own way out of it. There are ultimately only three solutions: the government decides to increase public spending, or overseas demand for UK output increases substantially, or UK households and companies are given some reason to spend more.

"The first is not going to happen, the second is extremely unlikely, and so we left with the third. But with no prospect of tax cuts or lower interest rates, it is not clear what in the short term the catalyst for more spending by the private sector will be."

The IPPR echoes the predictions of Bank of England policymakers that inflation will fall over the coming year, easing pressure on households grappling with soaring prices and minimal wage rises.

Inflation currently stands at 4.8%, more than double the average annual pay growth of 2%. The Bank's monetary policy committee argues, however, that as this year's VAT rise drops out of calculations and commodity prices ease, inflation will come back down towards the government-set 2% target.

Katie Allen

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/27/uk-economy-faces-bleak-2012

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Move over Heston Blumenthal, I know how to make the perfect Christmas pud

2011-12-27T04:00:00.001-08:00

Observer food critic Jay Rayner wanted to create his own classic so he turned to the people who produce the celebrity chef's cult puddings

Getting into the Christmas spirit at the Matthew Walker factory in the Derbyshire town of Heanor isn't difficult. All you have to do is breathe in. The smells slap you about the chops immediately: sweet, dark sugar and spice, vine fruits and booze, a rich, dense aroma that is the essence of so many homes at this time of year.

If I had been sniffing the air in the middle of December this would, of course, make total sense, but I was not. I was doing so on the last day of August. Then again, this comes quite literally with the territory. Matthew Walker is Britain's biggest pudding factory and, in here, every day is Christmas Day.

Not that the word "biggest" does it justice. Matthew Walker, the eponymous company founded in 1899 and now owned by Northern Foods, is a leviathan of the Christmas pudding world. It produces more than three-quarters of the 25m or so puddings Britain consumes every year. The chances that you haven't been offered a spoonful of pudding made in this unit on a suburban light industrial estate are vanishingly small.

"We supply every single major retailer," said general manager Bill Mackie, "and 100% of the wholesale catering trade." It makes more than 200 varieties, from the boozeless versions served in prisons and schools to the most luxurious, high-end products that the supermarkets crave. When Waitrose needed somewhere to make Heston Blumenthal's cult puddings with a whole syrup-soaked orange in the middle, it was to Matthew Walker it turned. "That was an interesting project," Mackie said. "We had trees full of oranges being grown just for us."

The success of Blumenthal's pudding last Christmas has produced the big story of this Christmas for the factory. The 25,000 it made here in 2010 sold out so quickly that a secondary market developed, with puddings changing hands for as much as �250 on eBay. This year, it received an order for three times as many, which Waitrose then doubled when it could not meet demand. According to reports on Twitter, Waitrose is now sold out.

On top of those 150,00 big Blumenthal puddings, it had to produce a smaller, individual-portion version with a clementine in the middle. "But it's not just that," said Mackie. "All the other retailers have wanted a 'me too' pudding as a result. They all want what they call a hero product, something the customers will show off about when they put it on the table." Hence Sainsbury's Taste the Difference pudding, filled with 40 kirsch-soaked cherries, or the M&S version, which comes with a sachet of "golden glitter" sauce, or the offering from discount supermarket Aldi, which is topped with whole orange slices. "We made all of those," Mackie said proudly.

The Christmas pudding has clearly come a very long way. Believed to be descended from a medieval pottage of plums ? the generic term back then for dried fruits ? it originally included poultry or mutton and was eaten after the feast of Advent. It wasn't until Charles Dickens reinvented the festival as a major family celebration in A Christmas Carol in 1843 that the dish became celebrated. Dickens wrote of "the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy".

"When I started here 11 years ago, the market was pretty much still around the classic and traditional dark brown, solid pudding," Mackie said. "Now all that's changed. We use different types of fruit, different types of nuts, even different types of breadcrumb."

He showed me around the factory, from the unit where the dry ingredients are measured out by hand to the addition of the wet ingredients, including the tubes that bring in the alcohol. Ah yes: the booze. Matthew Walker is the biggest single purchaser of liquor outside the bottling industry, using 1m litres a year. Much of it is cider, alongside sherry and brandy ? a quite rough, strong, five-year-old cognac ? as well as named liqueurs like Grand Marnier or Cointreau for branded products. "It doesn't just lend flavour," Mackie said. "It preserves the product too. We make some puddings here that will be matured for 12 months."

Before joining Matthew Walker, Mackie worked in the supermarket sushi and prepacked sandwich business. Is the pressure here worse? "The day to day pressure is actually less, because we're not constantly sending out product. But the responsibility is greater because if we get it wrong, we get it cataclysmically wrong." I suggested to him that he was responsible for a key part of Christmas in most people's homes. He agreed. "It does feel a bit like that," he said.

The man responsible for finding ways to use all these ingredients in increasingly complex ways is Dave Sanderson, a former restaurant and hotel chef, who came here 18 months ago to do nothing but develop recipes for Christmas puddings. "It surprised me how different they can be," he said. "Plus I like a challenge. It's a unique opportunity to be involved in something historic."

And it is a challenge. Because every one of Britain's major retailers has its ideas developed here, and because they are all fiercely competitive, Sanderson has to compartmentalise his work. "We do build Chinese walls between all our clients." What if one client rejected a really good idea? Surely you would try it out with another client? "Well yes, maybe, from time to time. Wow ideas are hard to come by in this business."

As I was about to find out. Laid out in front of me were 40 or so ingredients ? dried fruits and nuts, peels and crumbs, sugars. I had been invited to create my own Christmas pudding, something uniquely, festively me. Which felt a little odd in the middle of August, but I was determined to give it a go. I have never been that big a fan of deep, dark, chewy Christmas puddings, which sit uneasily at the bottom of the stomach, like boulders. I want something light, bright and citrussy, something you could eat a lot of. So I threw in piles of orange zest and candied peel, orange shreds, light white breadcrumbs and orange liquor to give it oomph. Oh, and a whole bundle of glac� cherries. Because I like them.

Mine, like every other one of the 20m puddings coming out of the building, would use vegetable fat, rather than the traditional beef suet. It would be too complicated to have vegetarian and non-vegetarian production running from this building so instead all of them ? and by extension the vast majority of those on sale in Britain ? are animal product-free. That suited me fine. It would only make it lighter.

Sanderson was encouraging, even though he must have seen it all before. "Doesn't look half bad," he said. We took it downstairs to the serried ranks of huge steaming chambers, which look like beached submarines. It took about three hours to steam my pudding and it would be ready to eat within 12 hours. But to get the full effect, I decided to leave it to mature.

It did not matter that, outside the door, it was a summer's day. Everything that comes out of Britain's biggest Christmas pudding factory was being prepared for one festival. And my pudding was no exception.

? You can see Jay Rayner's film about the Matthew Walker factory, and how his pudding turned out, on The One Show, Friday, BBC1, 7pm. Read Jay's review of the London restaurant Aurelia on page 61 of the Observer Magazine

Jay Rayner

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/18/christmas-pudding-matthew-walker

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In Pictures: The ocean's giants

2011-12-26T23:00:00.001-08:00

A BBC film crew capture stunning images of the giants breaking records under the waves.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14410355

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Move over Heston Blumenthal, I know how to make the perfect Christmas pud

2011-12-26T18:00:00.001-08:00

Observer food critic Jay Rayner wanted to create his own classic so he turned to the people who produce the celebrity chef's cult puddings

Jay Rayner

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/18/christmas-pudding-matthew-walker

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Thailand seeks flood prevention plan as Bangkok clean-up operation continues

2011-12-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Authorities urged to tackle urban planning issues amid concerns climate change puts Thai capital at risk of more frequent flooding

Now the car parks have been cleared of crocodiles and the store room emptied of cobras, the managers at one of Thailand's biggest electronics companies have begun reclaiming their factory from Bangkok's worst flood in a century and wondering what more they can do to prevent the climate wreaking similar havoc in the future.

Cleaners scrub the floor with chemical cleaning agents, workers rip mouldy tiles from the ceilings and engineers try to salvage what equipment they can at the Hana Microelectronics factory.

Production is expected to resume any day. But it will not be business as usual for many months, if ever. Looming over this clean-up operation ? like countless others in homes, businesses and government offices in the Thai capital ? is a concern that such disasters will strike with more frequency in the future unless the human flaws and climate risks are addressed more seriously.

"The big question from our customers is: 'Will it flood again?'" said Worawit Sriburanasorn, a senior manager at Hana who fought the waters with diesel pumps and protective walls.

It is a question on many minds as Thai policymakers consider issues that are likely to affect other countries in the future: whether to build stronger defences, move to higher ground or otherwise adapt to the risks posed by political mismanagement and a changing climate.

"We are on the frontline of climate change. As we see rising temperatures, more rain and a higher sea level, Bangkok will be very vulnerable," said Seree Supratid, a professor at Rangsit University and government adviser.

"In the talks in Cancun and Durban, they just talk about reducing greenhouse gases, but the disasters are already here. We should shift the emphasis from mitigation to adaptation."

Almost five months have passed since the flooding began in the northern hills of Thailand and then spread slowly down through the central plains to inundate swaths of Bangkok, killing more than 500 people, affecting 12 million others and disrupting business at some of the planet's biggest industrial parks. The World Bank estimates the damage at 1.4tn baht (�29bn), making it one of the costliest disasters in human history.

The stories from the flood are still emerging. Among the most dramatic is that of Hana Microelectronics, which is a key supplier of sensors and chips for Apple's iPhone and also makes widgets, smart-card readers and touch pads for Samsung, Texas Instruments and Motorola.

When its Ayutthaya plant was deluged, the discovery of two crocodiles in the car park and a cobra in a store room disconcerted the staff, but the potential disruption to production caused global consternation. Apple was so worried that it offered helicopters to airlift the 100m chips inside.

The government dispatched the Thai navy to ferry 450 pieces of heavy machinery to an alternative factory so that manufacturing could resume. Even so, there was a gap of about two weeks.

Richard Han, the chief executive officer, estimated the damage to his plants and equipment at more than $30m (�19m). Lost business could cost three times as much again.

"Most of my customers will come back but they won't bring all their business back," he said. He too will move some production to an expanded operation in China to hedge against future floods.

"One thing we know is that unprecedented weather events are now happening on a regular basis. Add to that gross mismanagement and a lack of infrastructure and it is clear that the government are going to have to prepare better," he said. "My big worry is that insurers may not accept flood insurance any more. That could be a trigger for the Thai government to step in. If not, we'd have to build up reserves and self insure."

Elsewhere, several districts were still underwater as the end of the year approached. Near Don Muang airport, the motorway resembled a river with trucks, buses and jeeps leaving a wake behind them as they slowly navigated through the water.

On Buddhamonthon Road in West Bangkok, people were camping on bridges with their belongings stacked under tarpaulin. Some had lost everything. Uthai Muangpor was wading in a waist-deep pool that had once been the hospital car park where she ran a grilled banana kiosk. "I'm looking for my stove and pans," she said. "When the flood come, everything I owned floated away. I didn't have any valuables. But now even my clothes and mattress are gone."

The extent to which climate change is to blame is hard to quantify. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says Bangkok is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world because it sits on a flood plain and has been periodically inundated for centuries. It also suffers from severe subsidence and is at long-term risk from rising sea levels.

Scientists estimate that for each degree of warming, the amount of moisture in the air increases by 7%. This year is on course to be the wettest on record, according to the Met Office, which says 1,822mm of rain fell in the first nine months.

But even the most ardent campaigners for climate action acknowledge that the government must take the bulk of the responsibility. "The blame for the floods is 30% with nature and 70% with the mismanagement of the authorities," said Srisuwan Janya, a lawyer and founder of the Stop Global Warming Association. "The government responded too slowly and made errors. It need not have been this bad."

He said upstream dams did not release water early enough in the monsoon season so they had insufficient capacity to contain the huge volumes of rainwater that fell later. One of the three main flood channels running from the north to the south was shut off, adding to the pressure on the remaining two. As the water surged southward, Bangkok found itself more vulnerable than in the past because hundreds of its canals have been blocked up over decades of poorly regulated development. Political leaders then made matters worse by placing too high a priority on the city centre, which was kept dry at the expense of deeper water elsewhere.

The erratic climate may have confused decision makers.

At the start of the year, the primary concern was drought because the dry season in 2010 had been unusually severe. As a result, dam managers retained water in upstream reservoirs even after the first big rainfall in March, which was three times more than the average in northern Thailand. Faced by these extremes, it was difficult for dam managers to make judgments based on previous weather patterns. This is a key lesson of the flood.

"The difficulty of projecting droughts and floods will increase for sure," said Gernot Laganda, a climate specialist at the United Nations Development Program office in Bangkok. "We cannot rely on historic experience in managing these hazards. The world is not the same any more. Just because this is a once-in-a-century flood, we shouldn't assume that there won't be another like it for 100 years."

Faced by an increasingly "vicious interplay of prolonged droughts and fiercer bursts of rain", Laganda says it will be important to build strong monitoring systems and to start building climate flexible systems. Instead of building high walls and river defences today, he says it makes more sense to strengthen the foundations of existing structures so they can be raised as and when risks become more apparent.

The Bangkok governor, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, said the city needed to learn from the disaster. "It's a wake up call. We need to take a hard look at the problems that may arise from climate change and take a long-term perspective on how to deal with them." He has proposed more investment in flood mitigation and prevention, namely construction of more retention ponds, drainage tunnels and pumping stations. "It will cost a lot of money. But I don't think there is any other way unless we change our conceptual approach and allow some areas to be flooded during the flood season."

While a warming planet is part of the backdrop, engineers fear that it may be a distraction from the more pressing concerns of urban planning, erosion and sedimentation.

A debate is under way. Surajit Chirawate, who sits on the senate environment committee, says the government is making a mistake by relying on walls to deal with future floods. He believes Bangkok should be downsized and government offices should be relocated to higher ground. "People should not fight with the water. They should let it through. That is how we dealt with floods in the past. That is why Bangkok has so many canals. But now rich city dwellers are too distant from nature. What they are doing with their flood protection walls is actually increasing the level of the water."

Tension rose along with the water. Amid rumours that powerful politicians protected their own constituencies at the expense of neighbouring districts, several deluged communities turned to protest.

The most dramatic demonstration occurred at Yucharoen village near Don Mueng airport, where local residents furiously tore down a wall of sandbags.

"I was angry because the government did not help us until we protested," said Pattanan Thongsawad, who was among the demonstrators. "I wasn't thinking about fairness. I was only thinking about the people who were suffering."

A water mark is still visible in every home in the neighbourhood. Thongsawad said the village must prepare for similar disasters. "We want more concrete walls all the way around our community. That is the only way I'll feel secure. There will be more rain and more floods and we cannot rely on the government to deal with them."

With politics and climate both looking increasingly unpredictable, many now want more help but do not expect it.

"If it comes again, there is nothing we can do," said Sriburanasorn of Hana. "If every factory had to build its own flood defences, we wouldn't be able to afford to stay in business. The government must do it do restore confidence ? I never want to go through that again."

Additional reporting by Sunisa Pui

Jonathan Watts

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/26/thailand-flood-plan

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In pictures: England's orchards

2011-12-26T08:00:00.001-08:00

Aerial photographs and volunteer fieldwork have produced the first extensive inventory of England?s traditional orchards.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9474000/9474777.stm

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Seafood in vogue at Christmas as diners seek taste adventure

2011-12-26T03:00:00.001-08:00

A growing number of people are substituting crustaceans and fish for traditional seasonal fare

Lobsters weighing up to three times those normally sold in the UK are to go on sale amid claims that an increasing number of people are now eschewing the traditional turkey Christmas dinner in favour of seafood.

Tesco, Britain's largest fishmonger, will start selling the 1.2kg crustaceans, which are caught in Scottish waters and sold cooked. The giant lobsters, which cost �25, will be sold alongside other luxury seafood, including 1kg crabs and unusual varieties of fish such as carp.

The supermarket chain said it had also quadrupled the number of salmon fillets on order after demand for seafood in the pre-Christmas period rose dramatically last year.

Gary Hooper, a fish buyer for Tesco, said Christmas 2010 had seen "record seasonal demand" for seafood, with sales of sea bream up by 180% from the previous year. Sales of sea bass also increased by more than 150% and carp by 25%.

He believes that the trend is being driven by "adventurous diners who are prepared to try something different at Christmas, as well as pescatarians ? people who eat fish but no other meat".

Pescatarianism has become popular in recent years as people switch from meat for environmental and health reasons. According to Mintel, a market research company, more than a quarter of households say they consume less meat now than in 2005.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/18/giant-lobster-seafood-christmas-dinner

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Orcas make waves to prey on seals

2011-12-25T22:00:00.001-08:00

A film crew captures footage of what could be the most sophisticated animal hunt known

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15308790

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Oh, Ed. Only you couldn't even get being a geek right | Catherine Bennett

2011-12-25T17:00:00.001-08:00

All the cards seem to be in his favour, and yet the Labour leader continues to stumble. Time for Yvette?

Has there ever been a better time to be a geek? Even before physicists arranged for the God particle to reveal itself at Christmas, the late Steve Jobs had proved that brainiacs can become universally loved and Brian Cox had been named in People magazine's list of "sexiest men in the world".

In The Social Network, much homelier geeks become insanely rich and thus, although they remain homely, desired by beautiful women. Dr Alex Hoffman, the reclusive Cern alumnus at the centre of Robert Harris's terrific new thriller, The Fear Index, finds himself, accompanied by great wealth and a captivating wife, the master of the global financial markets and of their horrible clients. He is not at all normal, but as one character says, quoting Clinton: "Normalcy is overrated: most normal people are assholes." For a person like Ed Miliband, circumstances could hardly have been more propitious. Or they might have been, had he stuck to honest geekdom.

Instead, his supporters have boasted that he "speaks human", a comment that, if sincere, surely tells you more about them than him. What next for Westminster primacy: a signing chimp? Moreover, if it was true, why the incessant making-over? Miliband has been dressed up in normal-looking clothes, made to have a normal marriage and to drink a normal pint in a pub, operated on to give him a normal voice, and given a normal book to read: One Day.

He would have done better to study another landmark in the history of geek acceptance, Channel 4's The Big Bang Theory. The star of this popular replacement for Friends is a character called Sheldon, an emotionally illiterate particle physicist with an IQ of 187. Along with his physics genius buddies, the fictional Sheldon, famous for going to a fancy dress party as the Doppler effect, is credited with a surge in the number of actual British physics students. He is also a walking masterclass in crushing put-downs to bigger, handsomer, stupider people. If his cult status indicates potential public tolerance for clever people who combine abnormality and zero social skills with a dismaying lack of humility there seems to be no reason why Mr Milband should not have made his mark. Nobody has asked him to dress, like Sheldon, as the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the wave. Just making David Cameron look insupportably smug and arrogant would be a success, at this stage.

But last week's polls, showing growing dissatisfaction with Miliband's leadership, accompanied by another disastrous Commons performance, establish that this tragic experiment has failed. Not only does speaking human still elude the younger Miliband, he struggles, as photographs of his strange expressions cruelly illustrate, to master standard non-verbal communication. With unemployment figures at hideous levels after the chancellor's dire autumn statement, the Tories find themselves overtaking a party led by a man whom the public consider inferior, in almost all departments, to its Etonian.

Failing, as per, to make any impression on a PMQs at which he should at least have embarrassed Cameron for notching up both enemies and neets, Miliband showed that the public have got him right. Even after 15 months of practice, with some decent gags prepared, he still lacks the charm and poise to prevail on Cameron's terms and, what is more devastating, the ideas and intellectual equipment to triumph on his own. Every week, thanks to this asymmetrical double act, shallowness wins the day. Reviewing this excruciating encounter, which featured one of Cameron's favourite taunts, "it's not like we're brothers or anything", some concluded that Miliband's fratricide made him eternally vulnerable. The truth, surely, is that any evidence of superior ability and vision on Miliband's part could have vindicated his ruthlessness to a brother we never much liked anyway.

Instead, the polls ? and any appearance by D Miliband ? repeatedly suggest that he destroyed the senior geek for nothing. Fourteen months since Ed's victory, courtesy of unions he recently counselled not to strike, have not been long enough for him to identify beliefs to which he alluded in his victory speech, as running "through everything I do". Whatever these mysterious convictions may be, they could not be better applied at this stage than to organising his replacement by Yvette Cooper, the Labour party's only conceivable solution to David Cameron.

For her part, the timing might be no better now than it was in 2010, when she said her children were too young to make such a commitment.

But for now, there is no other contender. Electoral humiliation already looms and if she waits too long, the much-hyped Chuka Umunna will come along and Labour still won't have its first woman leader. Is it impertinent to suggest that Mr Balls, considering his recent contributions to the economic debate, might be more useful at home, where he could also find more time to weep in front of Antiques Roadshow and One Man and His Dog, to name just some of his appointment TV?

If she is any kind of patriot, Cooper hardly has a choice. You do not have to be a Labour supporter to cringe at debates, at a time of economic extremis, in which Cameron's wee jest, about Labour wanting a new leader for Christmas passes for some Churchillian gem. As demonstrated in her conference speech, Today interviews and demolition of Theresa May during their great borders stand-off, Cooper is more fluent than Miliband and more plausible than her husband, but even without opening her mouth, her presence alone would be a huge, possibly insurmountable obstacle to Cameron's ad hominem attacks.

True, the Ballses extracted some tremendous expenses, by way of house-flipping ? but is that a failing on which the wisteria-clearing Cameron, employer of fellow-flippers, would want to focus? Unable to taunt and scoff at her in Flashman style, or to patronise her, using his "calm down dear"/"lady's frustration" mode, what would be Cameron's tactics for crushing an equally intelligent, unimpressed woman whose weakest personal spot is her husband's contribution to the debt crisis? Given that any hint of sexism would, instantaneously aggravate his own most glaring problem that of systematically alienating women?

Certainly, a degree of humourlessness, noted even by Cooper's sympathisers, could if unchecked be turned to Cameron's and hostile sketchwriters' advantage. Won't she ever lighten up? Reassuringly, for those fearing another "speaks human" calamity, she appears to repress warmth, rather than actually require a transplant. A look at Cooper's pre-1997 Independent columns, before she was suddenly selected for Castleford, confirms that she did indeed write in approachable human, even about economics. Among other themes to exercise her were educational unfairness, callous misconceptions about ME (from which she temporarily suffered), relations between the sexes and idiotic statements about youthful political disenchantment. "Why vote when you could be snogging?" she asked. "Politics isn't cool and it isn't sexy." Nonetheless, one might argue, it urgently deserves something better than Ed Miliband.

Catherine Bennett

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/18/catherine-bennett-ed-miliband-failed-leader

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