- Brown freezes doctors' pay at economic 'crossroads'
Prime minister announces pay freeze for doctors, dentists and hospital consultants as well as senior managers across most of the public sector
Gordon Brown drew the election battle lines around the economy today, announcing a freeze on public sector pay and declaring he had the strength of character to lead the country to recovery.
Brown stressed the country was at a "crossroads" and faced "crucial decisions" in the months ahead. He warned that "ideologically-driven" Tory plans for cuts risked tipping the country back into recession.
The prime minister said he would save £3bn by freezing pay for doctors, dentists, and hospital consultants as well as senior managers across most of the public sector.
Brown also used his address to confirm that the budget will be in two weeks' time, on 24 March, leading to speculation that the prime minister will announce the date of the election on 6 April.
Speaking at Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf, the same venue where the Tory leader, David Cameron, attacked Labour's record on the economy last week, Brown said the "resolve" and urgency felt during the 2008 banking crisis needed to be displayed again now.
He admitted that in hindsight, it was now clear just how close the world economy came to "economic meltdown".
The economy remained in "choppy waters", said Brown as he cautioned against any belief that the recovery would automatically continue.
"In my view we are nearly there ... but there is nothing preordained or automatic about the upturn either here or abroad," he said.
Brown turned the tables on those who accuse him of lacking character by insisting that the past 18 months had been a period demanding the "greatest test of character" as the country was brought through a "dreadful" economic storm.
The prime minister said: "I have heard people say it is about policy and I have heard other people say it is about character. But I don't think you can separate the two. It is for other people to judge.
"But I believe that character is not about telling people what they want to hear but about telling them what they need to know. It is about having the courage to set out your mission and take the tough decisions and stick to them without being blown off course, even when the going is difficult."
He told the audience that tough decisions needed to be made to keep the economy on course to recovery.
He said: "We face crucial decisions. The stakes are high. We dare not risk the recovery. We are weathering the storm and now is no time to turn back. We will hold to our course and will complete our mission."
This included a "disciplined approach" to pay and benefits right across the public sector.
Speaking on the day that the senior salary review bodies publish their recommendations for public sector pay rises, Brown announced he intended to freeze the pay of senior staff in the civil service, the military, the judiciary, the health service and the pay of consultants.
Salaried GPs and dentists – those employed by hospitals or other GP/dentist contractors – will receive a 1% pay rise, while contractor dentists and GPs – those that run practices and may employ other people – will effectively have their pay frozen.
He said that the government remained committed to halving Britain's record £178bn deficit within four years and that the curbs on public sector pay would save more than £3bn by 2013-14.
The government has decided to accept some, but not all, of the review body's recommendations.
It ignored a recommendation to increase the minimum pay for senior civil servants by £2,300 to £61,500 and has also rejected a recommendation to increase the pay for NHS managers earning less than £80,000 by 2.25%.
The announcement is likely to provoke fury among public sector unions just days after it was announced MPs will see an automatic rise of 1.5% in their pay.
The FDA, which represents senior ranking civil servants, described the decision as an "insult" to hardworking staff.
Brown reminded the audience that he has already ruled that government ministers will eschew pay increases of any kind next year.
The prime minister also stressed that, while the worst of the recession is over, the economic recovery remains "fragile" and could be undermined if spending cuts were pushed through too quickly.
Brown emphasised the need to ensure the recovery is balanced and sustainable on a global basis as he called for the G20 to inject "new urgency into the delivery of the international agreements we have reached".
He said: "I believe that around the world we have to rediscover that sense of urgency and collective ambition that guided us a year ago. For it is our choices – and the wisdom resolve and judgments we bring to bear in making them – at both a national and global level – that will determine whether we secure a lasting recovery and indispensable reforms to safeguard our economic future."
Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, said: "Gordon Brown's speech shows he is leading with a weak hand.
"It's very difficult to see how the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust can campaign on his stewardship of the economy after the greatest bust for decades. The only reason he is, of course, is because the Conservatives are even worse."
He added: "The budget must clearly spell out where Labour intend to make spending cuts in order to tackle the budget deficit."
- Berezovsky wins Litvinenko libel case
Russian oligarch awarded damages over claims he arranged polonium poisoning of friend and former KGB spy
The exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was today awarded libel damages of £150,000 over "savage" allegations he was behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned Russian dissident who was his close friend.
In a chaotic high court battle in London, the 64-year-old tycoon successfully argued his reputation had seriously been damaged by a Russian state television broadcast in April 2007.
The programme, available to view for free by satellite in the UK, included an interview with a man who claimed he had been offered £40m by Litvinenko – who was working for Berezovsky until his death – to falsely confess to being a KGB hitman tasked with killing Berezovsky with a poisoned ballpoint pen.
When he refused to take the bribe, the man said, he was drugged and then forced to make a false testimony used to bolster Berezovsky's asylum application in the UK.
The purpose of this lie-filled testimony, the man said, was to "prove" the oligarch would be in mortal danger if he returned to his homeland.
His evidence was indeed crucial in proving Berezovsky's political refugee status and he was granted asylum in 2003, the court heard.
In the same programme the presenter suggested that Litvinenko, who died from poisoning with radioactive polonium in London in November 2006, was killed at Berezovsky's behest because Litvinenko was a witness to Berezovsky's fraudulent claim for political asylum.
The logic was that Litvinenko would be an important witness for Russian prosecutors investigating allegations that Berezovsky's asylum was based on lies, and thus Berezovsky wanted him dead – just in case.
Berezovsky claimed he was a victim of "selective editing" after the programme began with a clip of him saying: "If I particularly dislike someone I'll kill him." The remark was clearly "ironic or jocular", said his barrister, Desmond Browne QC.
The oligarch pulled up to court most days during the trial in a blacked-out limousine and sat in court flanked by his security guards.
Giving evidence, he explained why he took action. "I cannot imagine a more offensive and damaging allegation. It would be damaging enough to allege merely that I bribed or drugged a man so as to force him to give false evidence in order to help me secure my asylum status; that I was accused of Sasha's [Alexander Litvinenko's] murder, and to think people may believe it to be true, was, and still is, deeply upsetting.
"I have been portrayed as a man whom people should fear; this affects my relationships with everyone who is not already a close personal friend."
In his judgment today, the judge, Mr Justice Eady, said: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it."
Berezovsky, who has an estimated wealth of $1bn (£667m) according to Forbes magazine, told the court that Litvinenko was a dear and loyal friend who had saved his life "on more than one occasion" – chiefly by refusing to assassinate him in 1998 when Litvinenko was a KGB agent.
The grateful Berezovsky then became Litvinenko's benefactor, arranging his family's escape to the UK. Once in London he gave Litvinenko a house and thousands of pounds a month in "research grants".
To back up his case, Berezovsky enlisted a roster of high-profile witnesses including Litvinenko's widow, Marina.
After Litvinenko fell ill in 2006 after ingesting a radioactive isotope in a London sushi bar, Berezovsky told British journalists that his friend had been poisoned because he was an enemy of the then Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The two-week trial was almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Browne quipped: "That must be Mr Putin on the line."
At least three Russian prosecutors were in court each day to assist Vladimir Terluk, the man accused of giving the contentious interview about Berezovsky's bogus asylum claim. They whispered in Terluk's ear, passed him notes and smirked or laughed as the evidence was heard.
At one point they asked for the opportunity to cross-examine Berezovsky. "I thought that a step too far," said Eady in his judgment.
Terluk, a Kazakh who came to the UK to seek asylum in 1999, had been left to defend the libel action alone and without a lawyer after the Russian Television and Radio Company refused to take part.
He denied being "Pyotr", the man in the offending broadcast, yet maintained that everything Pyotr said was true, including "that [Berezovsky's] associates tried to organised the falsification of the assassination plot with the purpose of obtaining refugee status by Mr Berezovsky and his associates … and the late Mr Litvinenko himself was the one who was trying actively to implement that falsification".
In his judgment, Eady said: "I have no doubt that Pyotr was indeed Mr Terluk and that he must have known he was being filmed." But Terluk did not himself accuse Berezovsky of murdering Litvinenko, which was, Eady said, "the overall message conveyed by the programme".
Moscow has made no secret of its desire to extradite Berezovsky, who has been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin since he fell out with Putin in 2000.
In April 2009 Russian prosecutors charged Berezovsky with "knowingly false denunciation of a involvement in a serious crime" – a charge peculiar to Russian law that relates to the allegedly fabricated evidence in support of his 2003 asylum claim.
One of the Russian prosecutors admitted to the Guardian he hoped Berezovsky would lose the case so his asylum status would be called into question by the Home Office and he would be returned to Russia to face trial.
They were also intent, Eady ruled, on blackening Litinvenko's character. "He was portrayed as something of a wild man. It was said that he was an unreliable fantasist who was prone to emotional outbursts." The purpose of this "wholesale attack", said Eady, was to undermine the credibility of evidence Litvinenko gave in support of Berezovsky's asylum claim.
Speaking after the judgment, Berezovsky said: "I have no doubt that, in making this programme the purpose of RTR and the Russian authorities was to undermine my asylum status in the UK and to put the investigation of Sasha Litvinenko's murder on the wrong track. I am pleased that the court, through its judgment, has unequivocally demolished RTR's claims. I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."
He was not optimistic about the prospect of recovering the £150,000 damages but said: "This was never about money." Mr justice Eady said in his judgment that "the quanitification of the damages may be academic in the sense that there are likely to be formidable obstacles in recovering the money".
Berezovsky is no stranger to London's law courts. In 1997 he sued the US magazine Forbes after it printed an article that asked: "Is he the Godfather of the Kremlin?" He won despite only 2,000 copies of the 785,000 sold worldwide having been purchased in the UK.
That case is often cited as an example of libel tourism – foreigners taking advantage of England's libel laws, which tend to favour the claimant by putting the burden of proof on the defendant.
In 2008 he began a £2bn legal tussle with another London-based oligarch, Roman Abramovich, over allegations Berezovsky was forced to sell shares in a string of huge Russian state companies. He is currently fighting the widow of his friend and business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili for half of the dead man's fortune.
- Hague on foreign policy – LIVE
Live coverage as the shadow foreign secretary makes a foreign policy speech at Royal United Services Institute
1.59pm: Well, I tried. I put it rather politely, I thought. In his speech Hague talked about the importance of the prime minister and the foreign secretary of the day having a good relationship. I used that as a way in to ask a RUSI-ish (ie, lengthy and reflective) question about Ashcroft. In his speech Hague also talked about "learning lessons". Among other things, I asked what lessons he had learnt from the Ashcroft affair.
But it didn't work. All I got was this:
This is a lecture about foreign policy. One of the lessons I've learnt is not to answer silly questions from the Guardian.
Oh well. At least I can add William Hague to the list of people who've been rude to me. I suppose that's an honour, of sorts.
A colleague also tried to ask Hague about Ashcroft as he was leaving the building. Hague did not give him an answer either.
Still, the questions won't go away. Better luck to whoever tries next.
1.49pm: Two questions about foreign policy so far. Quite technical.
1.48pm: Normally the questions are off-the-record, Michael Clarke says. But this session is on-the-record.
1.45pm: Hague is winding up now. He's going to take questions. But there aren't many journalists here - it's mostly foreign policy experts - and so I may be the only person who asks about Ashcroft. Let's see ...
1.43pm: Hague says his fifth theme relates to upholding "the highest values" of our society.
Britain would set an example to the world. This involves "taking a hard look when we ourselves make mistakes," he says.
1.39pm: Hague says his fourth theme relates to international institutions. The Tories would actively engage with the European Union from day one.
Widening the EU is in Europe's collective interests, he says.
The Tories said the Lisbon treaty would lead to a "bureaucratic turf war". That analysis appears to have been vindicated, he says.
He will be visiting Berlin in a few days time.
The Tories would work with Lady Ashton, the new EU "foreign minister", "who we wish well in a very difficult task".
Britain would play a "leading role" in the EU, he says.
1.37pm: Hague says there are many areas where he would like to see China play a bigger role.
On Africa, he says the Tories would put more emphasis on conflict prevention.
1.35pm: Hague says his third theme is about good relations with countries outside Europe and America.
No foreign secretary has visited Australia since 1997, he says.
He also says Japan often gets overlooked as a major power.
And with India, Britain has not made the most of all the opportunities available.
1.31pm: Hague says the Tories support the American strategy for Afghanistan launched last year.
A Conservative government would also help Pakistan transform itself. Britain has a particular role here because of its links to Pakistan.
The Tories would also support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
He says the Tories would be friends to Israelis and Palestinians.
In these area, a good relationship with the US is essential, Hague says.
1.30pm: Hague says that, unless Iran complies with its international obligations for nuclear proliferation, there should be further sanctions.
1.27pm: Hague outline seven priorities for the defence review:
1. Being able to defend the UK
2. Being able to defend UK territories
3. Being able to help defend Nato allies.
4. Being able to project power at a strategic level with the US and France
5. Being able to extend stabilisation forces
6. Having meaningful political cooperation with certain nations.
7. Being able to enhance British influence by using assets like the SAS
1.23pm: Hague says five themes will influence the Conservative approach.
The first involves learning from past mistakes. That is why the Tories wanted an Iraq inquiry.
If it had been set up when the Tories suggested, it would be over by now.
The Iraq inquiry evidence has reinforced the case for having a proper national security council, as the Tories propose.
This won't involve the creation of a new Whitehall department, he says.
Hague says Gordon Brown set up a national security cabinet committee. But that has not met regularly. The Conservative national security council would be different.
The national security council would conduct the foreign policy and defence review proposed by the Tories. That review would be foreign policy led.
1.20pm: Hague says the Foreign Office possesses "many people of great character and dedication". But they have not been allowed to exert their influence properly.
Under a Conservative government, the Foreign Office budget would not depend on fluctuations in the exchange rate (as it does under a system introduced in 2007).
1.18pm: Hague says being engaged in the world is "an indispensable part of the British character".
He and David Cameron espouse "liberal conservatism" in foreign affairs. As Cameron has said, his instinct is to work with the grain of human nature.
1.15pm: Hague says two challenges are particularly threatening: the first is climate change, "controversial as it is"; and the second is the spread of nuclear technology.
If Iran's nuclear programme leads to a Middle East arms race, the world's most populous region will also become the world's most dangerous region.
1.12pm: Hague says the Tories would reject "strategic shrinkage".
He does not think the UK should become "less active in the world".
If Britain does become only the 11th biggest economy in the world, then it will have to work harder to use what influence it has.
Hague lists various UK assets, including: skilled armed forces, a seat on the UN security council, membership of Nato, the English language, a trading reputation.
Britain should not retreat into its shell with "every fewer embassies".
1.09pm: Hague says restoring the strength of Britain's economy will be essential if the Conservatives want to restore its standing in the world.
The economy needs "change and modernisation". But if Labour wins the election, Britain will move backwards to a 1970s economic model. The trade unions would become more powerful and Britain would be saddled with high debt and high taxes.
1.04pm: Hague starts with a compliment to RUSI. He says it's one of Britain's premier institutes.
He says he has already set out five themes that will guide Conservative foreign policy.
He and his team have already visited 50 countries while developing their policy framework.
One concern is that Labour has "accelerated and intensified" Britain's economic decline.
By 2015, Britain is forecast to drop out of the top 10 world economies, he says.
1.02pm: I'm at RUSI. Professor Michael Clarke, the RUSI director, is introducing Hague. He describes Hague "as a rather young grand old man".
11.44am: William Hague is giving a big speech today. It's on the "foreign policy framework of a new Conservative government" and Hague is delivering it at 1pm at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall. The Tories have already released some excerpts in advance and my colleague Nicholas Watt has already written a blog about what Hague's speech means for the Foreign Office, while I've written a story covering some other aspects of what Hague will say.
But Hague is also promising to take questions. This will be his first major public outing since we learned last week that he had been kept in the dark about Lord Aschroft's tax arrangements for nearly 10 years. Hague did not want to talk about this when he gave an interview to the Financial Times – beyond saying that Ashcroft never tried to influence party policy – but there's a chance that we might have more luck today. We'll find out soon.
.
- Northern Rock customers in arrears
Despite the losses – down to £257m from £1.3bn a year ago – Northern Rock is paying out £15m in bonuses to its staff but chief executive will waive his
More than 22,500 Northern Rock customers – over 4% – have missed monthly mortgage payments, the nationalised mortgage lender admitted today as it reported a sharp fall in losses for last year.
Despite the losses – down to £257m from £1.3bn a year ago – the bank is paying out £15m in bonuses to its staff and will be paying £1.5m to the Treasury to cover the cost of the one-off tax on the payments.
Chief executive Gary Hoffman is waiving his bonus although the bank said a new long-term incentive scheme was being drawn up for the former Barclays executive.
The new scheme for Hoffman will pay out only when the nationalised bank returns to profit or if it can be returned to private hands.
The bank, which was split into a "good" and "bad" operation at the start of the year, actually managed to make a £466m profit in the second half of the year although this was not enough to offset losses in the first half, and charges for impaired loans of £1bn.
The operation reporting today is Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc – technically the "bad" bank. Before it was nationalised, the company specialized in so-called Together loans – allowing customers to borrow more than the value of their home – and this left it a legacy of large customers in arrears.
The company's mortgage arrears rate rose in the first half of 2009 before stabilising in the final quarter of the year by which time residential mortgage accounts over three months in arrears reached 4.28%, compared with 2.92% at 31 December 2008. If Together loans are stripped out, the numbers in arrears fall to 3.10% although this is still higher than the 2.25% at 31 December 2008, which shows that more than 6% of customers with Together mortgages are in arrears.
Hoffman warned of the difficulties ahead. "The outlook for the UK economy remains uncertain. After a contraction in the economy during 2009, with increases in unemployment and house price deflation, conditions appear to have stabilised, but economic recovery is still expected to be relatively weak," Hoffman said.
He said the current low level of interest rates means that loan repayments "remain affordable for those in employment", but said that the company's future performance will be influenced by the timing and extent of increases in rates.
He also admitted that loan loss impairment charges are expected to remain high during 2010, but below the level recorded in 2009.
"It is over two years since Northern Rock entered public ownership. During that time the company has made good progress in pursuit of its objectives that include repayment of state aid, delivering value for taxpayers and ultimately a return to private ownership. We are looking forward, not back, and my colleagues across the business remain committed to delivering a high standard of service for all of our customers. We are on the right trajectory and I am confident that, with the current strong management team in place, we are well positioned to deliver against our objectives in 2010," he added.
The bank, which has permission from the EU to start mortgage lending after reducing its loans in the early months following its nationalization in February 2008, said residential lending stood at £4.2bn in 2009, compared with £2.9bn in 2008. But as a result of the strategy to lend again, the taxpayer has injected more funds into the lender which now owes the taxpayer £22.8bn, up by more than £8bn.
Northern Rock Asset Management has £49.7bn of residential mortgages, as well as £3.9bn of personal unsecured loans.
Following approval for state aid granted by the European commission, the company ceased to offer new lending at the end of 2009. As a result of the restructuring the company also transferred its entire book of retail savings, of £19.5bn, to the new "good" bank, Northern Rock plc, and no longer offers any retail savings products.
- Let us jog your memory, Eliza ...
Former MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller denies knowing about mistreatment of detainees. Didn't she read the papers?
To be fair to Britain's security services, the gathering of intelligence can be the most difficult of jobs.
The claim on Wednesday from the former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, that the US hid from the UK security services the torture they were meting out to the Muslim men they had labelled terrorists, comes as a bit of surprise. In a lecture given in the Palace of Westminster, she related:
"I said to my staff, 'Why is he [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners and terrorists was that they never said anything …
"They said the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times."
She went on to claim that "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing."
It did not require a high degree of James Bond-style espionage for MI5 to realise – much earlier than she says it did – that Guantánamo and other US sites were places where torture was practised.
Before her retirement in 2007, then, all that Manningham-Buller needed to have been doing was read a decent newspaper or use a web search, either of which would have produced headlines and articles that would have pricked the curiosity of even the dullest of minds. Never mind those who see themselves as among the sharpest and brightest.
So, for the benefit of the former intelligence chief, the list of reporting of disturbing allegations and evidence of torture employed by the US and its allies in the war on terror starts here – but please add your own in the thread below:
Guardian: Father fears for son held by US in Afghanistan, 10 February 2003
Guardian: Briton held as terror suspect says CIA threatened torture, 4 October 2003
Guardian: Officials 'knew of beatings at Guantánamo', 15 May 2004
Observer: US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp, 16 May 2004
New York Times: Threats and responses: The interrogations; Account of plot sets off debate over credibility, 17 June 2004
Guardian: US abuse could be war crime, 5 August 2004
Times: Britons accuse US Government of 'torture' at Guantánamo Bay, 28 October 2004
Times: Guantánamo report reveals 'torture', 1 December 2004
Guardian: Guantánamo Briton 'in handcuff torture', 2 January 2005
Independent: My nightmare of torture and assault, by Briton held in Guantánamo, 30 January 2005
Washington Post: Va. terror suspect testifies to torture, 20 October 2005
Guardian: Hunger strikers allege 'force feed torture' at Guantánamo, 21 October 2005
Guardian: Torture claims 'forced US to cut terror charges', 25 November 2005
ABC News: History of an interrogation technique: Waterboarding, 29 November 2005
Telegraph: Torture law victory for terror suspects, 9 December 2005
Guardian: US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects, 25 January 2006
Washington Post: Guantánamo force-feeding tactics are called torture, 1 March 2006
Guardian: Evidence against terror suspect extracted by torture, hearing told, 10 May 2006
Times: Bush admits that terrorist suspects were held in secret prison network, 7 September 2006
Guardian: Cheney condemned for backing water torture, 28 October 2006
- The last McQueen collection revealed
Sixteen outfits were 80% finished at time of Alexander McQueen's death and were completed by his design team
- UK urges Karzai to start peace talks
Foreign Office officials believe elements of Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict, and growing casualties
Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged – and more British lives lost – as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.
A speech to be delivered in the US by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, will reflect growing anxiety in London that President Hamid Karzai's professed desire for a political solution has not been backed up by any serious planning or concrete proposals.
Unless more pressure is put on the Afghan government, some British officials predict that Karzai's proposed loya jirga, or grand peace council, due at the end of next month, will be little more than a PR stunt. "My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort," Miliband will say at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a text of the address seen by the Guardian.
British officials believe that significant Taliban leaders are ready to start talking about a political settlement in which they would sever ties with al-Qaida and put down weapons in return for a role in politics. But there is also concern that opportunities to open a preliminary dialogue are being lost, and that the conflict, which has already cost more than 270 British lives, is being intensified by Kabul's inefficiency and corruption.
"The Afghans must own, lead and drive such political engagement," Miliband will say in his speech. "It will be a slow, gradual process. But the insurgents will want to see international support.
"International engagement, for example under the auspices of the UN, may ultimately be required."
Karzai presented a paper on political reconciliation at a conference held by Gordon Brown in London in January. But officials who saw it, and subsequent Afghan proposals on peace talks, have variously described them as "empty" and "a C-team effort".
Gerard Russell, at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, said: "We had a look at the Afghan government's thinking on reconciliation, but we haven't seen a concrete proposal or a workable methodology."
Russell, a former political adviser to the UN mission in Afghanistan, added: "There is a talk about having a loya jirga. But what is a loya jirga going to do? On its own, its not going to achieve anything."
The growing alarm at the lack of political initiative in Kabul comes at a time when back-channel contacts with the Taliban have also run into trouble, paradoxically as a result of a Taliban arrest hailed as a triumph last month.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban's military operations seized in Karachi by Pakistani intelligence agents, had taken part in tentative and secret contacts with Saudi intermediaries last year.
One participant in those talks told the Guardian that Baradar's arrest had been "a huge blow" to the peace effort.
Britain's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has been sent to Kabul as caretaker ambassador, with the primary mission of trying to inject more substance into the loya jirga planned for 29 April. Tomorrow, Miliband will also call for a direct international role in managing the peace process. Miliband's speech also carries a message for Washington.
While Britain's Foreign Office believes work on peace talks should begin straight away and be pushed behind the scenes by the Obama administration, most US officials, and some British generals, question whether such negotiations would produce results before Taliban morale has been depleted by the military surge.
"There is an important US audience for this," a British official said. "Nobody wants a PR stunt in Kabul that doesn't lead anywhere."
- 'Jihad Jane' faces terror charges
US woman accused of plotting to murder unnamed Swede and raising money for her cause on the internet
An American woman who called herself Jihad Jane has been charged over an alleged plot to murder a Swedish man.
Colleen Renee LaRose, 46, from Philadelphia, is also accused of conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, making false statements and attempted identity theft.
Irish police yesterday arrested seven people over an apparent plot to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had a bounty put on his head after depicting the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog – though Vilks has not been named as LaRose's alleged target.
Garda sources said the four men and three women were in their mid-20s to late-40s. Some of them arrested hold Irish citizenship and some are from the Middle East. Converts to Islam were among them, the Irish police said.
Vilks's cartoon, drawn in 2007, prompted al-Qaida to place a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head and offer a 50% bonus to anyone who slit his throat to ensure he was "slaughtered like a lamb".
At least three Swedish newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – published the cartoon today.
The US justice department declined to comment on whether the two cases were connected.
David Kris, the head of the department's national security division, said: "The indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face."
LaRose, who also called herself Fatima LaRose online, allegedly posted a comment on YouTube in June 2008 saying she wanted to help "the suffering Muslim people".
According to the indictment filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania she sent emails to unnamed co-conspirators offering to become a martyr as well as to use her American background to avoid detection.
The indictment accuses LaRose of agreeing in March 2009 to marry a co-conspirator from a south Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe. He is alleged to have urged her to go to Sweden, find the unnamed Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause and lied to FBI investigators.
LaRose was arrested after returning to the US in October 2009 on a charge related to the theft of a US passport, according to court documents.
If convicted on the four counts in the indictment, which was dated 4 March 2010, LaRose could face a sentence of life in prison and a fine of $1m (£670,000).
Michael Levy, the US attorney in Pennsylvania, said the case showed that terrorists were looking for Americans to join their cause. "It shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."
The Obama administration has grown increasingly worried about Americans and foreigners living in the US taking up the cause of anti-American militants.
Two recent cases have fuelled those concerns: the arrest of a Chicago man accused of helping plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks and an Afghan immigrant living in Colorado who pleaded guilty to plotting a bomb attack on the New York subway system.
- Match of the Day 2, Gordon Brown 0
A Downing Street request was denied after the BBC decided it would be inappropriate this close to a general election
Gordon Brown is a sports fanatic whose passion for Raith Rovers, the football team he has supported since childhood, is a matter of public record. But the BBC has barred the prime minister from appearing on its Sunday night Premier League highlights programme Match of the Day 2, saying it is too close to an election to have him on as a guest.
Downing Street asked if Brown could appear in the MOTD2 studio alongside the presenter, Adrian Chiles, and pundits, who include Lee Dixon, towards the end of last year. The prime minister's advisors wanted him to talk about England's bid for the 2018 World Cup, but after taking advice, the show's production team declined.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We made the judgment it wouldn't be appropriate in the run-up to the election".
The BBC must adhere to strict guidelines about impartiality in the months before a general election, giving equal airtime to representatives of the main political parties. Brown's appearance was part of a No 10 campaign to soften his image in recent months by encouraging him to extend his media appearances beyond the news bulletins. Brown's confessional ITV1 interview with Piers Morgan last month was regarded as a success by his advisers.
Tony Blair was the first prime minister to appear regularly on TV outside news and current affairs programmes, agreeing to be a guest on ITV's This Morning on several occasions.
That approach has since been aped by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who regularly appears on breakfast TV and has given ITV unprecedented access to his private life for a Sir Trevor McDonald documentary to be shown on Sunday.
In November 2005, Blair was a guest on Football Focus, BBC1's Saturday lunchtime show.
A BBC insider said Football Focus is regarded as a lifestyle show with a wide range of guests and pointed out it is highly unusual for anyone who is not a pundit to be invited on Match of the Day or its Sunday spin-off show.
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- Tech chiefs' letter attacks internet bill
ISPs, Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo sign letter saying clause threatens free speech and could lead to blocking of sites
Amendments made to the digital economy bill by the House of Lords threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said today.
The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers – BT, Orange, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups, academics and the technophile television host Stephen Fry, objecting to amendment 120A to the bill, which was added to the bill last week with support from Liberal Democrat and Conservative peers.
Ministers had been seeking powers to amend copyright law and impose conditions or fees where infringements were taking place.
But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats succeeded in removing the measures from the bill last week, replacing them with a more specific amendment handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites.
In a letter to the Financial Times , the online giants argue that the rules, if they become law, would fail to tackle copyright infringement as intended. The amendment has "obvious shortcomings", the 16 signatories say.
The letter says: "Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take.
"There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option."
The amendment had been roundly criticised last week when it was added, as critics pointed out that it could be used to block sites such as YouTube.
But Lord Tim Clement-Jones, one of the backers of the amendment, said last week that the intention was to deal with "cyberlockers" – a system that allows individuals to swap large files directly, rather than sending them by email or storing them on websites.
The House of Lords passed the amendment last week, replacing a clause that would have given broad powers to ministers to change the Copyright Act to respond to new forms of online infringement without the need for primary legislation.
But the letter's signatories called the amendment "bitterly disappointing", and explained: "Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law-making."
Responding to the letter, the chief executive of UK music industry body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, said that the amendment provided a "clear and sensible" way of dealing with illegal downloading.
Taylor added that the signatories to the FT's letter have acknowledged that illegal downloading has to be dealt with.
"The amendment adopted by the House of Lords provides a clear and sensible mechanism to deal with illegal websites," he said.
"Contrary to the claims in the letter, service providers would in every case be able to ensure that the decision as to whether a site should be blocked is made by the high court. The court would be required to consider the extent of legal content on a website, any impact on human rights, and whether the website removes infringing content when requested. So the suggestion that the clause would lead to widespread disruption to the internet or threaten freedom of speech is pure scaremongering.
"The signatories to the letter recognise that dealing with illegal websites is a legitimate concern, and have argued in the past that action against illegal downloading should focus on commercial operators. Removing unfair competition from clearly illegal websites will encourage investment in legal online services and improve the legal internet experience for everyone."
The digital economy bill is expected to be pushed through before parliament is dissolved for the general election, widely expected to happen on 6 May. If it reaches a second reading by early April, when an election would be called, it could go into the "wash up" – the process at the end of a parliament when bills that have not been passed are hurried through. The government would need cooperation from the opposition to achieve that with the bill – but it is not clear whether the Tories, who have objected to elements of the bill, as the "landline tax" of £6 a year to help pay for next-generation broadband, would support it.
Lord Clement-Jones had said the provisions, approved by 165 votes to 140, would protect the creative industries by preventing access to websites where films and music were being provided illegally.
He told peers: "I believe this is going to send a powerful message to our creative industries that we value what they do, that we want to protect what they do, that we do not believe in censoring the internet but we are responding to genuine concerns from the creative industries about providing a process whereby their material can be satisfactorily accessed legally."
Lord Clement-Jones said the "blanket nature" of the government's original intention was "objectionable". He argued the new proposals were "more proportionate, specific and appropriate".
The bill extends the role of media regulator Ofcom to include communications infrastructure and media content, and to appoint providers of local news in ITV regions.
It also includes powers to stop under-age children getting hold of violent computer games and contains measures to help the switchover to digital radio.
- UK 'least socially mobile' in developed world
The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says
Children from poor families in Britain have a greater chance of struggling on low incomes than their counterparts in the west's other rich countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said today.
Highlighting the UK's lack of social mobility, the Paris-based thinktank said the chances of a young person from a less well-off family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents was "relatively low".
The findings came in the OECD's latest Going for Growth report, which said the developed world faced a "daunting task" in restoring public finances to health after the most severe recession since the second world war. It stressed the need for stronger financial regulation and structural reform to labour markets in order to lay the foundations for sustained recovery.
"Policy reform can remove obstacles to intergenerational social mobility and thereby promote economic equality of opportunities across individuals," the OECD said.
Labour and the Conservatives have repeatedly clashed recently on whether it is now easier for young people to escape from poverty, and the issue is likely to feature strongly in the election campaign.
The OECD, which has more than 30 developed-country members, said the UK's record – along with a number of other rich countries – was unimpressive. "Mobility in earnings across pairs of fathers and sons is particularly low in France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, while mobility is higher in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada."
It added that there was a hefty wage premium associated with growing up in a better-educated household and a corresponding penalty for being raised in a less-educated family.
"The premium and penalty are particularly large in southern European countries, as well as in the United Kingdom."
In the UK, the OECD found that 50% of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers have over low-earning fathers is passed on to their sons. By contrast, in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries, less than 20% of the wage advantage was passed on.
Government ministers are likely to use the report to back policies such as Sure Start, intended to provide help in the earliest years of childhood to poor families, and to the expansion of higher education. The Conservatives say that 13 years of Labour government have resulted in less social mobility than before.
OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan said all governments facing ballooning deficits should seek efficiency gains from public spending, particularly in education and health, and avoid "harmful" labour and capital taxes.
He also said that the response to the crisis has left "new challenges in the form of moral hazard and weak competition" in the financial sector.
"Regulators across the OECD need to step up ongoing efforts to strengthen financial market regulation," he said in the 250-page report.
- Rachel Corrie civil action begins in Israel
Parents of American activist killed by Israeli bulldozer seven years ago take fight for justice to Haifa courtroom
A court today began hearing a civil suit brought against the Israeli government over the death of Rachel Corrie, the US activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago.
The case, brought before a Haifa court by Corrie's family, challenges the official Israeli version of events in which the military said its troops were not to blame. The family hopes the hearing will be a chance to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. If the Israeli state is found responsible, the family will press for at least $300,000 (£201,000) in damages.
Before the hearing began, Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, said the family had been on a "seven-year search for justice in Rachel's name".
"I think when the truth comes out about Rachel, the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal," he said.
Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised into her daughter's death.
"I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said.
The family's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, will argue that witness evidence shows the soldiers saw Corrie at the scene, with other activists, well before the incident and could have arrested her or removed her from the area before there was any risk of her being killed.
He will argue her death was either due to gross negligence by the Israeli authorities or was intentional.
Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed are to give evidence.
The first witness to give evidence was Richard Purssell, a Briton who was an ISM volunteer along with Corrie. He described how he had gone to Gaza to see the situation for himself and to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian houses.
He said the ISM told him it was a strictly non-violent organisation. "Our role was to support Palestinian non-violent resistance."
He briefly described the moment Corrie was killed. "Rachel disappeared inside the earth and the bulldozer continued for 4 metres and then reversed," he told the court.
Corrie, who was born in Olympia, Washington, travelled to Gaza to act as a human shield at a moment of intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians.
On the day she died, when she was just 23, she was dressed in a fluorescent orange vest and was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. She was crushed under a military Caterpillar D9R bulldozer and died shortly afterwards.
A month after her death the Israeli military said an investigation had determined its troops were not to blame and said the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and did not intentionally run her over.
Instead, it accused her and the group she was with, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), of behaviour that was "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous."
The army report, obtained by the Guardian in April 2003, said she "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death."
But several witnesses offered a different version of events, saying the driver had seen her but continued anyway, hitting her with the bulldozer blade. She was severely injured and died shortly afterwards in an ambulance.
While Corrie was in the Palestinian territories, she wrote vividly about her experiences. Her diaries were later turned into a play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has toured internationally, including in Israel and the West Bank.
- Clifford ends NoW action in £1m deal
Tabloid accused of buying silence after persuading celebrity PR agent to drop case over interception of voicemail messages
The News of the World was tonight accused of buying silence in the phone-hacking scandal after it agreed to pay more than £1m to persuade the celebrity PR agent Max Clifford to drop his legal action over the interception of his voicemail messages.
The settlement means that there will now be no disclosure of court-ordered evidence which threatened to expose the involvement of the newspaper's journalists in a range of illegal information-gathering by private investigators.
The case had potentially important implications for Andy Coulson, media adviser to the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who edited the News of the World at the time of the illegal activity and who has said that he does not remember any of his journalists breaking the law.
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, who has asked questions in parliament about the affair, said: "This is a clear attempt to buy the silence of people who had their phones hacked by the News of the World's reporters. It would make more sense for the newspaper to come clean. The trouble with cover-ups like this is that they give no reassurance that the guilty parties have really changed their ways."
The settlement with Clifford is understood to be worth just over £1m, including legal costs and substantial personal payments which will not be described as "damages", leaving the News of the World free to claim that it has admitted no wrongdoing. It brings to more than £2m the amount paid by News International to victims of phone-hacking to secure their silence: in a separate case the paper paid more than £1m to suppress legal actions brought by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, and two others who had sued the paper over the interception of their voicemail. The paper had always denied all involvement but paid for a secret settlement after a judge ordered disclosure of paperwork which implicated some of its journalists.
The two men at the heart of the scandal – the paper's former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire – also have been paid money by the News of the World in settlements of unfair dismissal claims, the terms of which are believed to compel them not to disclose what they know about illegal activity at the paper.
Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of a total of eight victims, including Clifford and Taylor. The News of the World originally claimed that it had no knowledge of any of the illegal activity. Coulson resigned on the grounds that he carried ultimate responsibility.
Since then it has emerged that other News of the World journalists were involved in handling illegally "hacked" voicemail messages and that there were numerous other victims. Three mobile phone companies found more than 100 customers whose voicemail had been accessed in the previous 12 months by the two jailed men.
Scotland Yard has admitted that in material seized from Mulcaire, it found 91 pin codes, which are used for the interception of voicemail, and that it warned people in government, the military, the police and the royal household that their messages may have been intercepted. Known victims include Prince William, Prince Harry, the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, the MP George Galloway and the former executive director of the Football Association, David Davies.
The Clifford case threatened to bring important new material into the public domain. In preliminary hearings, Mulcaire insisted that, contrary to the News of the World's denials, he passed information from the hacking of Clifford's voicemails to journalists on the paper. He did not identify them but on February 3, Mr Justice Vos ordered him to do so. The settlement means that Mulcaire is no longer required to name the names.
The judge had also ordered the Information Commissioner's Office to provide material seized from a second investigator, Steve Whittamore, which according to an ICO witness statement reveals "a widespread and unlawful trade in confidential information commissioned by journalists of the News of the World".
Through its barrister the News of the World accepted that contrary to its previous claims, Goodman's purchase of confidential personal information from a private investigator had not been an isolated incident. The ICO material would have identified individual journalists, but that, too, will not now be disclosed.
Finally, the settlement means the News of the World is no longer required to disclose the terms of its secret settlement with Taylor, nor the agreement with Mulcaire that is alleged to have bought his silence.
The settlement is unlikely to mark the end of the affair. Clifford's lawyer, Charlotte Harris, of JMW Solicitors in Manchester, said last night: "There are a number of public figures who are now contemplating issuing proceedings against the News of the World." Politicians, leading actors and sportsmen are believed to be among those who are preparing to sue. And MPs on all sides of the house are watching closely for the effect of the scandal on Coulson.
The House of Commons media select committee last month accused witnesses from the News of the World of "obfuscation" and "collective amnesia". A Labour member of the committee, Paul Farrelly, said last night: "This seems to be another settlement by the News of the World that preserves the cloak of secrecy and confidentiality around its affairs. It all mounts up to give the impression that silence is effectively being bought. People will draw their own conclusion about what are the real motives behind the settlement."
The News of the World declined to comment. Clifford said he was very happy with the outcome: "I'm now looking forward to continuing the successful relationship that I experienced with the News of the World for 20 years before my recent problems with them."
- Venables posed trivial risk, psychiatrist said
Evaluation of Venables before his release in 2001 concluded the likelihood of the killer re-offending was minor
A psychiatric evaluation of Jon Venables carried out before his release from prison concluded that he posed a "trivial" risk to the public and that the likelihood of him re-offending was "so negligible as to not amount to a serious consideration".
The document, which was prepared by a leading psychiatrist in 2000 and is excerpted in today's Times, also noted that Venables had made "exceptional psychological progress" and come to terms with his part in the murder of James Bulger in 1993.
"The Jon Venables of today is a very different person to the Jon Venables aged 10," the report noted. "It has been a very important part of his rehabilitation so far that he has come to terms in a wholly realistic way with the awfulness of his behaviour."
It emerged last week that Venables, who was given a new identity and released on licence in 2001, has been recalled to prison following "extremely serious allegations".
Media reports over the weekend suggested that Venables, now 27, had been returned to prison in connection with child pornography offences. It has also been suggested in the press that Venables has become mentally fragile, has been known to drink heavily and use drugs, and has revealed his true identity to others.
Although the psychiatric report estimated that the chances of Venables being rehabilitated were "exceptionally high", it stressed that his progress depended on him being able to maintain his anonymity and continuing to receive the "appropriate support and guidance".
It also recommended that he be released from juvenile custody rather than placed in the prison system, where exposure to drug taking and criminals would prove a "very major setback".
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, has refused to bow to pressure to disclose the reasons for Venables's recall to prison, and has been supported by the judge who granted the former prisoner anonymity.
Lady Butler-Sloss, the former president of the high court's family division, reiterated "the enormous importance of protecting his anonymity now and if he is released, because those who wanted to kill him in 2001 are likely to be out there now".
She said: "This young man may or may not be tried. He may or may not have committed offences. There is, of course, at least the possibility that he has committed no offence.
"And consequently, he may therefore be allowed again to be out (of jail) on licence."
James Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, has accused the government of treating the issue like a political football and of closing doors in her face.
She told ITV's This Morning that the days following the revelation of Venables' recall had been "a massive rollercoaster".
Fergus confirmed she found out about Venables's recall when officials visited her home in Kirkby, Merseyside.
"Any question I have asked them, I have had no answers and it's about time now I got some answers," she said.
"I am sick of them closing doors in my face. It's about time they started telling me what I think I should know. As James's mother I have a right to know."
However, Straw, who is due to meet Fergus later this week, said releasing further information was "not in the interests of justice" as it could threaten the fairness of any future trial.
- Violence in Pretoria threatens World Cup
With only 93 days to go before the start of the 2010 World Cup, residents in Mamelodi townships are threatening to disrupt the tournament. They are demanding that the government immediately supply them with houses, electricity, running water and flushing toilets
- News quiz: Wacky Wednesday
Take a walk on the odd side
- Driver discusses runaway Toyota Prius
Driver says his hybrid car accelerated out of control on a US freeway on Monday
- Guardian Daily: A 999 calling
The Northern Ireland assembly has voted to devolve policing and criminal justice powers to Belfast. But despite the intervention of George Bush, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron, the Ulster Unionist party refused to back the deal. Henry McDonald, our Ireland correspondent, assesses the implications of the vote, while in Westminster, chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt looks at what it means for Britain's Conservatives.
As plans to make all dogs carry microchips are announced, we hear the view from people walking their dogs on Wandsworth Common.
Fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley describes the sombre mood in Paris, where Alexander McQueen's last collection was unveiled.
And ambulance control worker Suzi Brent - whose blog neenaw.com is now a book, Nee Naw: Real Life Dispatches From Ambulance Control - recounts some of her extraordinary experiences as a 999 call-taker.
- Tornado hits western Oklahoma
Amateur footage gives close-up view of tornado that damaged thousands of homes in central US state
- Samis can teach climate survival
As global warming and habitat degradation accelerates, people indigenous to the Arctic circle say they have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive
Elina Helander-Renvall comes from Utsjoki, a place so obscure that even many Finns have little idea where it is. Utsjoki, or Ochejohka, Uccjuuha, and Uccjokk, depending on which local language you are speaking, is Finland's northern-most municipality. Straddling the border with Norway, it shivers, unregarded, deep inside the Arctic circle, a few icy miles from the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Utsjoki, population 1,034, is home to Finland's largest concentration of Sami speakers, the indigenous people once loosely known as Lapps who have eked out an itinerant existence herding reindeer across the frozen wastes of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia since the last Ice Age. Nearly 50% of Utsjoki's population are Sami. In Finnish terms, it's the closest this eternal minority has got to being the majority.
Born and raised on the margin though she was, Helander-Renvall's message these days is strictly mainstream. As accelerating climate change and other man-made environmental degradations create growing alarm across the planet, the Sami people have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive, she says.
"There is a lot to learn from the Sami, they have the traditional ecological knowledge, they really know about nature," said Helander-Renvall, head of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples Office at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. "They have the most precise knowledge about the weather conditions, about the plants, the diet, the resources. The Sami people have an ethical relationship with nature; a respect for nature that also has a spiritual side."
The Arctic region is uniquely vulnerable to global warming, but if it is to weather the storm, it would do well to adopt Sami methods of land and resource management, communal co-operation and communication, local knowledge and best practice, she said.
In order to keep a reindeer herd out of trouble, for example, a knowledge of different types of snow could be decisive, Helander-Renvall said. Muohta (ordinary snow) or oppas (untouched snow) might be safe. But the presence of sievla (wet snow), skarta (thin, ice-like snow layers) or ceavvi (a hard layer that the reindeer cannot penetrate in search of lichen) could dictate a life-saving change of route or decision to move camp.
Local knowledge will also be vital to the large-scale industrial development on the fast-expanding oil and gas fields of western Russia's Yamal peninsula, and for the burdgeoning commercial and tourism industries in the Scandinavian north. Knowing where it is safe to build, how to site the foundations for a new road, airstrip or pipeline, what terrain to avoid, and how to do so responsibly while protecting biological diversity will all be increasingly important. "We need to preserve and transfer indigenous knowledge to future generations," Helander-Renvall said.
Professor Monica Tennberg of the Arctic Research Centre in Rovaniemi said the Sami had shown notable ability to adapt to changing climate conditions. "We've seen how the community adapts, for example finding new ways to deal with floods. We've seen better co-operation, better municipal leadership, better communications, better early warning systems," she said. Adverse effects of climate change on pasture and traditional herding trails had been met with new rotation and migration patterns and also by a tighter communal discipline.
The Arctic as a whole faces enormous challenges. Broadly speaking the region is warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, said Paula Kankaanpaa, director of the Research Centre, with local "hotspots" that fare even worse.
Symptoms include reduced sea ice; the opening of blue-water sea passages both east and west in summer, north of Canada and Russia; increased levels of carbon-carrying organic waste in the Arctic Ocean caused by melting tundra; coastal erosion due to increased wave activity; loss of habitat for large mammals such as seals and polar bears and growing disruption of indigenous human communities.
Governments still resist the idea that Arctic indigenous peoples have something unique to contribute. Canada announced this month that it will convene a foreign ministers' meeting of the five Arctic Ocean states (Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark/Greenland) in March "to encourage new thinking on responsible development" and "reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region".
To their dismay, Arctic indigenous people's organisations, including the Sami, Inuit and Inuvialuit, were not invited.
- Not smoking? There's an app for that
Facebook and iPhone applications can help you stub out your smoking habit
Are you one of the more than 2 million smokers ready to quit on No Smoking Day? Then today is your day! Don't worry, you won't be alone as there is an app for it – well, several. And this is how you can call it a day:
First of all, you install the WeQuit Facebook app to let everybody know what your are up to. It's best to grab one of your chain-smoking friends for a competition. The Facebook version of WeQuit helps you to reward your friend if they achieve success and punish them in case of failure, perhaps by throwing a sheep at them. You can also use WeQuit to bet your Facebook friends to see who can give up for longest, or sponsor someone to quit to raise money for charity.
Secondly, you can use your iPhone to download a free NHS Quit Smoking app. Here a real-time counter keeps track of the money saved – a significant amount considering the cost of cigarettes. It also displays the minutes, hours and days you've been smoke-free.
If you are in danger of a relapse, a button on the app can connect you to an adviser on an NHS helpline. If not, you might find some solace in downloading the No Smoking PhotoBook for £1.19 to show you beautiful "no smoking" signs from all over the world.
Good luck!
- Ferguson: Beckham unlikely to start
• United manager warns 3-2 first-leg lead is precarious
• Wayne Rooney will be fit to play despite knee injury
There are some nights in the Champions League when it is more than just a football match; it is an occasion. Manchester United versus Milan, under the Old Trafford floodlights, is one of them – even if Sir Alex Ferguson is right and David Beckham is left out by the Rossoneri tonight. Milan will have to be bold and adventurous if they are to recover a 3-2 deficit from the first leg and Ferguson's hunch is that the most recognisable player on the planet will be sacrificed in a game that reads like a Who's Who of the Champions League elite.
Beckham being Beckham, he needed a police escort when he arrived at Manchester airport yesterday, the latest instalment of what his former manager witheringly described as "the David Beckham media circus" a few weeks ago. He was also due for a charm offensive at Milan's press conference until it was pointed out that Uefa rules do not allow the same player to face the microphones before the home and away legs and that Beckham had told us enough times how thrilled he would be to run out at Old Trafford again.
Ferguson, however, does not envisage his former player starting the tie. "He has not started a game since the last time he played us," the United manager pointed out. "I don't know if Beckham will play. I haven't got him down in my conclusions."
Whether it was deliberate or not, the impression from United's manager was that there were other players who concerned him more anyway. Pato is expected to have recovered from a thigh strain while Ferguson has already pinpointed the fit‑again striker Marco Borriello, absent from the first leg, as a serious threat – and that is all before considering the way Ronaldinho tormented Rafael da Silva in the first leg.
Older, leaner, wiser maybe, Ronaldinho has played a part in 24 of Milan's 46 league goals this season, scoring nine and setting up 15. Ferguson could ask Gary Neville to replace Rafael but, at 35, the former England defender now counts as a veteran in football terms and his lack of mobility threatens an even more harrowing ordeal should Ronaldinho be in the same mood. Wes Brown was lined up to play at right‑back but suffered a broken metatarsal in Saturday's win at Wolverhampton Wanderers and has been ruled out for up to six weeks.
The better news for United is that Wayne Rooney is fit after missing the weekend game because of a knee injury. "I looked at him on Friday and didn't think he had any chance," Ferguson reported. "But he has progressed and he plays and, on this form, he would be a threat to anyone. That is what he will provide for us: a real threat up front."
Rooney, in all likelihood, will operate as the lone striker in the 4-3-2-1 system that Ferguson prefers on European nights, which would mean no place again for Dimitar Berbatov, increasingly a fact of life for a player who has started only six of 19 Champions League ties since becoming the club's most expensive player in a £30.75m transfer from Tottenham Hotspur 19 months ago.
Michael Carrick is suspended, while Ryan Giggs, Anderson and Owen Hargreaves are injured, which reduces the options in the midfield, but there should be no undue concern even if Ferguson was determined not to say anything that could be considered presumptuous.United's is a formidable position of strength considering that, in 54 years of European football at Old Trafford, no side has ever beaten them by the two clear goals that Milan will need if they are to turn this tie upside down.
Ferguson, though, senses a renaissance in Serie A. "European football is an ever-changing process. The challenge last year was to get past Barcelona to win the trophy and the Italians were not as good as the Spaniards. But there has been a little shift and the Italian teams are better this year. That's why winning in Milan was a big step forward for Manchester United. It was the first time in four attempts that we had done it. I was delighted with it because, historically, we were playing against one of the best European teams of all time. So it was a landmark victory for us. I can't help but think it was a really, really important win for us – a psychological thing."
A different manager would try to suffocate the game and wind down the clock, but that is not the United way. "I don't think we are very good at defending leads, to be honest," Ferguson said. "The nature of our club is that we have to have a positive attitude. When we went 3-1 ahead in Milan, for instance, it would have been easy to shut up shop but we kept looking for that fourth goal and sometimes it makes games more exciting than they need be.
"We maybe should have killed off the game but then [Clarence] Seedorf's goal near the end keeps the match on a tightrope. Sometimes you get the benefits, sometimes you don't, but the most important thing is that the philosophy is the right one. So we will try to do it our normal way and it will be an open game. I don't think we should be confused by the score of 3-2 – it does not represent a bye into the quarter-finals."
- Bent ends Sunderland's barren spell
After almost four months and 14 Premier League games without a win Sunderland's bleak midwinter finally ended last night. As the thermometer dropped to freezing point it did not exactly seem like spring but Steve Bruce's suddenly relaxed body language was that of a man who has just felt the sun's warmth on his back for the first time in a very long while.
Like Bolton, who began brightly enough but faded badly, Sunderland have not yet banished relegation fears but, thanks to Darren Bent's hat-trick and Fraizer Campbell's opener, their manager now has no reason to feel trepidation when he attends a scheduled formal meeting with his boss this morning.
More than an hour before kick-off Bruce stood in the centre circle deep in conversation with Ellis Short, Sunderland's owner. Given Fabio Capello's recent experience with bugging, perhaps it was the one place the pair felt confident of not being overheard as they presumably discussed the reasons behind the team's lack of victories since beating Arsenal in November.
Small wonder then that relief was writ large across Bruce's and Short's face as Campbell's first Premier League goal gave Sunderland a 44th-second lead. When Bolton only semi-cleared Anton Ferdinand's deep cross, Lorik Cana sent another ball back into the area for Campbell to latch on to before beating Jussi Jaaskelainen courtesy of a controlled, close-range volley.
It proved the cue for the recently underwhelming Cana, Campbell and Steed Malbranque in particular to recapture their early-season spike and sparkle.
"It's been a long time, a long winter," said Bruce. "The early goal gave everyone the confidence we needed. It's been tough and I'm not just talking about the north-east weather. I just feel relieved." And his tête-à -tête with Short? "I went outside to get some fresh air and who did I bump into but the owner," added Sunderland's manager before extolling the Texan's "supportive" stance.
Fears that Bruce would require post-match consolation receded when Malbranque, excellent on the left, helped create the second goal, playing in the hitherto disappointing Cattermole who slipped a lovely ball to Bent. Surging forward, he held off a clutch of markers to shoot powerfully, right-footed, past Jaaskelainen from just inside the penalty area. It was the sort of defender-confounding finish to make you think Bent should be on England's summer flight to South Africa after all. "Darren must be in Fabio Capello's thoughts," said Bruce. "He's a natural goalscorer."
It got worse for Bolton and even better for Bent. First Sam Ricketts was sent off for a second yellow-card offence, namely the gentle shove which sent Bent tumbling, thereby conceding a slightly controversialpenalty. Next the victim dusted himself down and converted that kick before subsequently completing a first Sunderland treble by shooting his 19th goal of the season through a crowded area after playing a lovely one-two with Campbell.
Despite enjoying a fair amount of possession and forcing several set pieces, Bolton rarely threatened Craig Gordon – even if Lee Chung-yong might have done better than shoot wildly over the bar when he might have equalised.
"With conceding so early and then going down to 10 men everything conspired against us," said Owen Coyle, Bolton's manager, who thought the already booked Cana should have been sent off for a heavy, knee-high, tackle on Vladimir Weiss and disputed both the penalty award and Ricketts's red card. "I thought we were very unfortunate."
If only his team had been as feisty.
- Charles Allen to run EMI music arm
Former ITV boss to become executive chairman as troubled firm prepares last-ditch bid to raise £100m from investors
Former ITV boss Charles Allen is taking control of EMI's music business, home to acts including Coldplay and Robbie Williams, after the surprise departure of chief executive Elio Leoni-Sceti.
Leoni-Sceti will be leaving the troubled company at the end of March after just 18 months with the firm. His departure comes at a critical time for EMI, as the cash-strapped business puts the finishing touches to a new business plan which its private equity owners can present to investors.
Allen, who joined EMI as a non-executive director in January 2009, will become executive chairman of the music company. EMI Music Publishing will continue to be run by chairman and chief executive Roger Faxon. Allen's previous experience at ITV, which he created by merging Granada with Carlton Communications, is likely to increase speculation that EMI is being lined up for a merger with Warner Music.
EMI was bought by Terra Firma, run by City financier Guy Hands, for £4.2bn in 2007 but has run into severe problems, with key acts defecting and profits crashing. The company has suffered turbulent relations with some of its top acts, most recently ending up in court with Pink Floyd and plunged £1.75bn into the red last year. Crucially, unless Terra Firma can find more than £100m from investors to satisfy the terms of its loan from Citigroup, the bank which advised the private equity firm on the buyout and provided the lion's share of the funding, EMI will end up in the hands of its banks.
Leoni-Sceti, a former executive with consumer products group Reckitt Benckiser, was asked to come up with a plan that would persuade investors to get involved. That business plan is due to be presented and new money raised by the end of June. But Leoni-Sceti said today: "My job here is now done and it is time for me to move on."
Allen said he had been closely involved in the creation of the company's new business plan. "Elio and I have worked together for the last 14 months and he has decided that he has done what he came to do," he said.
He said that new business plan would be "very much an extension of things we have been doing", adding: "If you look at what Terra Firma did, they came in and rationalised the cost base and we have continued to tighten the business. But more importantly what you have now got is a real focus on how do we drive new music, a focus on hits. These things do not happen overnight, you have to nurture new talent but the early signs are pretty positive."
"The problem, the issue, is getting our message through. This is a good company with good people, we have got more to do but we are on track to deliver. We have a challenged cost structure."
But the storm clouds keep gathering over the business. Terra Firma is currently locked in a bitter legal fight with Citigroup, claiming the bank tricked it into offering too much for EMI by failing to inform it that other potential buyers had pulled out. A US judge will rule by the end of the month whether the case will be heard in the US or UK.
Allen said: "Would it be better if that wasn't there? Yes, but the team have got their heads down and just got on with it."
Hands made headlines when he bought the business, as a result of his at times heavy-handed dealings with artists. Since then the new management at EMI has been building bridges. Asked whether he would be involved in dealing with EMI's artists, Allen said he had already been meeting them. "I have spent a lot of time with the talent and the management," he said. "It's like ITV. Would you deal with Simon Cowell or Ant and Dec as chief executive? Yes you would. Here you would be dealing with Robbie Williams or Lily Allen or whoever."
One of the key acts that Allen will have to charm is Coldplay. The band's next album is rumoured to be the last under the existing deal with EMI, although last month the band's frontman, Chris Martin, said the band was "signed for a lot".
"I think there is a good relationship with Coldplay," Allen added. "They are really talented and really focused and great to work with. The team they deal with on a day-to-day basis is the team that's there delivering for them."
- Industrial production falls amid snow
Some economists believe the weak outturn was a blip and expect production to have bounced back in Februar
Britain's manufacturers suffered their biggest fall in production in six months at the start of the year when snow storms brought parts of the country to a standstill.
Factory output fell by 0.9% in January, official figures showed this morning, taking City economists by surprise who had pencilled in a 0.3% gain. This was the biggest monthly drop since last August and reversed December's strong 0.9% increase.
The pound fell more than half a cent to $1.49 on the news, which dented hopes that the economic recovery might have picked up more speed in the first quarter of the year. The figures were released as Gordon Brown warned in a speech: "Although the economy is growing, the recovery is still in its early stages and remains very fragile."
The Office for National Statistics said the decline came after a strong December and poor weather in January.
Some economists believe the weak outturn was a blip and expect production to have bounced back in February.
"Snow will have physically obstructed workers at manufacturers and their end customers from getting to work," said Alan Clarke at BNP Paribas. "Similarly deliveries in and out of businesses will have been impeded. We believe this was a temporary blip and a sharp snapback is likely next month. Past episodes of extreme snow have experienced an offsetting bounce when the big thaw arrives."
In the three months to January, manufacturers ramped up production at the fastest rate in nearly four years.
But Colin Ellis at Daiwa was more sceptical about industry's prospects. "The risk is that at least part of January's weakness reflects the soft underbelly of the economic recovery, and is another signal that GDP growth will struggle to pick up to around 3% by the turn of the year, as the Bank of England expects. At the very least, today's data mark an inauspicious start to 2010."
Overall industrial production, which also includes mining and utilities, fell by 0.4% in January, also the largest drop since August. The decline was less severe than in manufacturing because households cranked up the heating during the cold spell.
Hopes that the cheaper pound will power the UK to an export-led economic renaissance suffered a blow yesterday with the news the trade gap widened sharply in January.
"Industry now looks unlikely to drive any significant pick-up in GDP growth in the first quarter. What's more, with the latest trade figures still showing few signs of any real boost from the lower pound, the outlook for the export-sensitive industrial sector remains pretty fragile," said Jonathan Loynes at Capital Economics.
- Stress broadens men's sexual tastes
The usual rules of sexual attraction go out of the window when men are stressed, say psychologists
Men are drawn to a wider range of women when they are feeling stressed out, according to research into the psychology of sexual attraction.
People are usually attracted to partners with similar facial features to their own, but after a brief but stressful experience, men's preferences changed to include a wider variety of women, the study found.
Relaxed men who took part in the study rated women on average 14% less appealing if they looked very different from themselves compared with women who looked similar. But a group of stressed men found dissimilar women 9% more attractive.
Johanna Lass-Hennemann, who led the study at the University of Trier in Germany, said the findings echo research suggesting that animals lose their normal mating preferences when they are under stress.
"Men have a tendency to approach dissimilar mates and to rate these to be more pleasant when they are acutely stressed," Lass-Hennemann said. "[But] we are not sure how this might reflect in true mating decisions."
Scientists suspect the appeal of similar-looking partners may be linked to our tendency to have more trust in a familiar face, a factor that is important for long-term relationships. Under stress, however, the importance of pairing up with someone similar-looking seems to vanish.
Lass-Hennemann speculates that stress might increase men's tendency to "outbreed", or reproduce with more genetically dissimilar women, with the potential benefit that any children born from the relationship might be better equipped to cope with a stressful environment.
"We think that chronically stressful environments should increase outbreeding, because inbreeding may lead to offspring that are not genetically diverse enough to deal with the varying circumstances that a risky and stressful environment imposes on them," she said.
In the study, 50 healthy heterosexual male students were divided into two groups. Those in the first group were asked to plunge one arm into a bucket of icy water for three minutes before taking part in the test. Those in the second group were asked to do the same, but with water heated to body temperature.
Measurements of the volunteers' heart rates and levels of the stress hormone cortisol indicated that the men in the first group were significantly more stressed before the test began than those in the second.
In the test itself, the men were shown a series of images on a computer screen. Some were of household objects, but others were of naked women. Some of the women's faces had been digitally altered to resemble either the person being tested or another man in the group.
Throughout the test, the scientists played occasional bursts of noise to startle the men and recorded their reactions. Previous research suggests people startle less when they are looking at something they find attractive. The men were also asked to rate the images by how appealing and arousing they were.
While men in the control group performed as expected and were more attracted to women who looked like them, the stressed men consistently rated the unfamiliar women as more appealing. Their startle reactions confirmed their preferences.
The research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Lass-Hennemann said it is highly unlikely that the acute stresses of everyday life can switch someone's tastes when it comes to choosing a partner, but long-term stress might shift male preferences towards women who are more dissimilar.
- Just ad hauteur
Does the advertising of prepared foods as ingredients represent a real change in our cooking behaviour or just a sop to the guilty consciences of their consumers?
For a long time now food products have been shilled by the broadest and most numinous of benefits; this cream cheese is 'an indulgence', this butter is a natural product and will therefore make your family happy in some unspecified way, making you feel you're a good person because you choose it - but suddenly there's a little trend amongst the admen to talk to us as if we actually cook.
The latest campaign for Philadelphia cream cheese promotes it as a versatile ingredient, showing the stuff being smeared and dolloped into the most unlikely places and even going so far as to represent the redesigned container as a saucepan (it's a kitchen tool. See what they did there?). In Lurpak's latest campaign they have recruited notable food bloggers to cook the food in the ads and even created an online 'Bake Club', such is their keenness to 'engage' with the exciting new consumer sector: the enthusiastic home cook.
There's an oft told legend in the advertising world that when the Betty Crocker company first launched their cake mixes, they contained powdered egg and required only water, a stir and chucking in the oven. Sales remained flat until they changed the composition of the product to require the addition of a single fresh egg. Sure, women in 1950's America wanted a convenient and simple way to knock up a cake, but no-one wanted it to be that simple. Actually cracking a real egg, made them feel like they were really 'baking'.
Were I trained in Cultural Studies or even a researcher for a TV documentary, I'd fully believe that advertising was a fair reflection of contemporary life; that these new ads mean we genuinely are all cooking more from scratch. Instead, having spent too much of my life as a less morally calibrated version of Don Draper, I know that advertising only reflects real people's lives at those points where they involve shopping.
For me, hopeless cynic that I am, the deeply unsavoury leering mug of Marco Pierre White as he forcefeeds pucks of meat juice to his own children doesn't mean more people cook from scratch; instead, like Betty's egg, it offers a 'solution' to those who wish they did.
Call me an extremist but a decent home cook doesn't need to be told that cream cheese and butter are ingredients and will never believe that pelletised stock is anything other than an abomination.
Do you think the new 'ingredient' ads represent a real change in our cooking behaviour or a sop to the guilty consciences of the consumers of prepared foods?
- Farmers look to improve crop yields
Amref works with farmers' groups to investigate how to protect crops from drought and prevent soil erosion
As rains begin to fall heavily in Katine sub-county, farmers are equally busy opening up their gardens for the first season planting.
Nearly everyone can now be seen working on their garden, desperately hoping there will not be a repeat of last year, when a serious drought in the region wiped out harvests and left many people facing serious food shortages. In some parts of the Teso region, where Katine sits, people died of starvation.
The drought undid some of the efforts carried out by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the now four-year development project in Katine, to support farmers. Some farmers had been given seeds through the project, but the crops they produced were destroyed. The drought-resistant variety of cassava planted by some of Katine's farmers was successfully harvested. At the end of last year, farmers had managed to harvest sorghum.
However, according to Amref, it was not just the drought that had an impact on harvests; the fertility of the soil was an issue and efforts are now being directed to find solutions to the problem.
Amref, under its livelihoods component, has set up demonstration plots in Olochoi village to work with farmers to test different techniques to help farmers understand the reasons for poor productivity.
With the help of new farming technologies, farmers are being helped to compare yields resulting from traditional and modern techniques. Farm-Africa, which is giving Amref technical support in livelihoods, hired a local consultant, Joshua Zake, to train the leaders of the 66 farmer groups so they can share information with their group members, who, in turn, can teach others. Leaders will document lessons learned from the demonstration plots, which can then be shared among the groups.
Soil and water conservation practices, use of manure, fertilizer and intercropping are some of the techniques being studied.
Soil and water conservation practices include digging water channels to reduce the force of running water that can wash away the top soil, causing erosion. This technique also helps conserve water in the garden that can then be used to help crops survive longer during times of drought.
The intercropping of legumes and cereals is meant to help maintain levels of soil fertility. Legumes, like groundnuts and beans, add nitrogen to the soil, while cereals, like maize, rice and sorghum, protects the soil from direct exposure to rain.
"The purpose is to ensure soil conservation and improve farmers' yields," said Amref's project assistant for livelihoods, David Ogwang. "Our worry is the repeat of extreme drought like last year. In such circumstances, even these techniques cannot help."
Although the use of fertilizer helps a farmer realise higher yields, the project is encouraging farmers to use manure instead to avoid future damage to the soil.
However all techniques are being examined to help farmers determine what is best for them.
- The Innocent smoothies of politics
The green, matey, ethical stuff went down well for a while. But the new Tory brand can't survive many more ugly revelations
During a recent half-term break, my family and I were trudging around Dorset. Great fun it was too, though we did run into a series of barriers. Every now and again we would come up against a gate or fence, informing us that this was the "Property of the Drax Estate". Beyond the Bond-villain name, I didn't give it much thought. Until, in a pub near Corfe Castle, I spotted a notice inviting locals to meet the prospective Conservative candidate for South Dorset: Richard Drax.
Sure enough, it's the same family. The would-be MP is indeed master of the vast Drax estate, estimated to run to some 7,000 acres. There is something exquisitely 18th century about the notion: who better to represent the constituency than the man who owns it?
That's certainly been the logic of the Drax clan, which has produced six generations of MPs before now – the first of whom went to the Commons in 1678, just around the time the Draxes were making their fortune from the slaves and sugar plantations they owned in Barbados. They like to keep power in the family, even as the family name has grown unwieldy. The likely next member for South Dorset is in fact – deep breath – Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
It's mean to pick on one individual when, as the Eton-educated Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax so rightly points out, it's not one's "very privileged background" that matters: "It's what's in your soul." So perhaps we should head further west, where a brother-and-sister Tory duo are set to be launched upon the world.
In Somerset and Frome, Annunziata Rees-Mogg is the MP in waiting. She has no need to buy a constituency home: she can merely lodge with her father – the former Times editor Lord Rees-Mogg – in the 15th-century house her parents own in the village of Mells. Seeking the seat next door is brother Jacob, also an Old Etonian and now married to Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair, daughter of Lady Tadgell who inherited a fortune estimated at £35m.
Why do I mention these future faces of David Cameron's party? Haven't we been told time and again that it is cheap, petty and counterproductive to play the toff card – that in 21st-century Britain we should be beyond such vulgar attempts to incite class war?
We have. Indeed, one of Cameron's singular achievements has been not only to detoxify the Tory brand, but to de-toff it too, so that you might notice all the Old Etonians sitting around the Tory top table – but it is bad form to mention this.
That's fine with me. It is pointless to bang on about Tories' accents, double (or quadruple) barrels and schooling if these are somehow offered as criticisms in themselves. They are relevant only as evidence of a much more important fact, one that has been assiduously concealed: that for all the window-dressing and air-brushing, the Conservative party in Britain remains what it has always been – the party of the landed and moneyed interest.
This is why the revelations about Michael Ashcroft are so damaging, because they play into a pre-existing – indeed, a centuries-old – perception that the Tories are the party of the well-off, looking out for the well-off. Of course there are process questions – what did Cameron and Hague know and when did they know it – but the heart of the matter remains simple: the Conservatives' deputy chairman is a billionaire hell-bent on influencing who writes the laws and sets the taxes of this country, but equally determined not to pay his share.
The rising fury within Tory ranks at Ashcroft is not only because he has ensured a run of bad headlines in this crucial period of overture before the full cacophony of the election campaign, but because he has undone years of painstaking effort by the Conservatives' brand managers to divert our gaze from the party's true base of interests.
Ever since Cameron was elected in 2005, he has sought to project a new image of the Tories, one far removed from the wad-waving Tory boy of the Thatcher years and the aristocratic patrician of yore. Cameron's Conservatives were supposed to be a new entity altogether: green, organic and open-necked.
And you can see why the Conservatives believed the approach would succeed – because it's already worked wonders for everyone else. All over the marketplace are companies who would once have been reviled as behemoths of capitalism, but who have somehow marketed themselves as concerned, friendly guys who are not trying to squeeze a profit out of you – oh no, they just want to be your mate.
Note the rise of ever more informal language in advertising. Ads on the Guardian website for Virgin Media, a giant communications company raking in billions, now eschew the pompous vocabulary of "terms and conditions", urging the reader instead to "Rollover for legal stuff". Plenty of multinationals ensure their ads and posters appear to be hand-written, preferably by a child. Pret a Manger may once have been part-owned by McDonald's, but it still strives to sound small and funky. "We don't sell 'factory' stuff," it promises.
The masters of the form are Innocent smoothies, a company with a turnover in excess of £100m and part-owned by Coca-Cola, that nevertheless speaks to its consumers as if it were two blokes running a market stall in Camden Town: "No added sugar. No concentrates. No funny business."
It works magnificently. Punters who would balk at handing over cash to some US-based mega-corporation feel good about forking out – even over the odds – for a vaguely green or ethical-sounding product, especially if it's presented in matey, egalitarian language.
Among the first on to this new approach to capitalism was one Steve Hilton. Humbled by the Tory defeat of 1997 – in which his Demon Eyes poster did not fare so well – the former ad man launched a new venture later that year: Good Business. It advanced plenty of admirable ideas, urging corporations to use their muscle to socially useful ends, but it also sought to persuade companies that shaking off the negative trappings of traditional capitalism – adopting instead popular causes and their lingo – was good for business. As he wrote in the Guardian in 2001, "engaging with the social issues that matter to … customers and employees is a surefire way of enlisting their loyalty".
What Hilton did for his corporate clients he has tried to do for the Conservative party: shed the visible ties to institutions people reject – the City, the landed elite, tax-dodging billionaires – and wrap yourself instead in warmer, cuddlier things: huskies, wind turbines, kids in pushchairs. Early Cameron was the "natural ingredients only" candidate. That the Tories were once 20 points ahead proved it worked.
For a while. The trouble is, it came apart when people saw that the cycling party leader had a car driving behind him to carry his bags. It came apart again when it emerged that Zac Goldsmith – a Green & Blacks organic chocolate bar in human form – had been a non-dom, unwilling to pay full tax in the country whose laws he wanted to write. And it comes apart every time you discover that, for all the new packaging, the Conservatives are the "same old Tories" after all – from the expected 50 Tory MPs in the next parliament to be drawn from the City or the financial services industry all the way to the "no entry" signs on country estates their families have owned for more than 500 years.
- Egypt's chilling conservatism
A new religious conservatism is on the march in Egypt, with women the biggest losers
It's no secret that in Egypt religious conservatism is growing. The only people denying this fact are the conservatives themselves, who tell us that we are on a path to hell in blind imitation of the west.
This conservatism has taken many undesirable forms, all of which highlight the disturbed psychology of the Egyptian people in recent years. Perhaps the most obvious symptom of this conservatism is the abnormal preoccupation with women, and I don't mean women's rights. The void left by lousy education and unemployment has been filled to overflowing with "religion". If that meant an emphasis on good behaviour, honesty, trust and hard work, we wouldn't have a problem. The sad thing is that there are human beings that think of nothing but the dos and don'ts that should supposedly apply to women and on gender mixing, in addition to the usual insistence on flaunting religiosity in the form of prayer callouses on the forehead, carrying prayer beads and spending exceedingly long amounts of time in the mosque where people can see you pray.
This is not an exaggeration. Consider for example culture minister Farouk Hosni's comments a few years ago that the increasing prevalence of the hijab was a sign of backwardness. Nobody bothered to ask him why he made those comments, but were content with demonising him. This was the main reason why most Egyptians were glad that he lost his bid to become head of Unesco, instead of being upset that an Egyptian lost out.
The fact that the scholars of al-Azhar University took the time to think about and issue a fatwa condemning "immodest" mannequins at women's clothes stores is in itself disturbing. Al-Azhar was formerly a beacon of Islamic moderation and enlightenment. That it has fallen to such ignorant levels is appalling.
When Mohamed Tantawi, grand imam of al-Azhar, said that the niqab has nothing to do with Islam, he was vilified by millions. For almost a month, the only thing newspapers, talk shows and people on the street could talk about was the niqab. Popular telepreachers on satellite TV bashed Tantawi relentlessly. One notable sheikh referred to niqabi women as pure and modest while those who dressed "immodestly" were designated as "whores".
Is this really all people can think about anymore? Walk into any bookstore or newsstand selling books on religion. Almost all the books are about women, such as how to be a good wife or how to please your husband or how to cook tasty food for your husband. There is an entire field called "women's fatwas" that goes to unbelievable lengths to debate the legality of praying and fasting during menstruation and pregnancy, the dos and don'ts of sex and proper Islamic attire for respectable women.
All over the streets, university campuses and on public transportation, there are posters depicting what women should and should not wear, with a big red X on anything other than a loose-fitting jilbab. Some female professors in Alexandria University's faculty of medicine have gone so far as to refuse to admit girls wearing trousers to oral exams.
Any conversation with a taxi driver is bound to turn to how "all women are whores these days" and how they're "tempting us with their bodies". Sermons for men at mosques encourage them to teach "our women" the proper behavior of a Muslim woman, relentlessly reminding men of the alleged hadith of Prophet Muhammad that the greatest fitna (assumed to mean temptation) of the Muslim ummah is that of women.
I am not advocating a sexual revolution or "blind western imitation", but it is truly pathetic to see so much time and energy go to waste on meaningless issues. This preoccupation with women encourages men to view them as nothing but sex objects, maidservants and nannies. It fosters a growing disrespect for half the population, making women less than equal to men. It is this culture that prompts men to blame women for their growing sexual frustration and all of society's problems in general. Our sexual harassment problem can only increase when women are constantly blamed for arousing desire.
It is not simply a case of reaction by the poor to difficult circumstances that might prevent them from getting married, though this may be one valid explanation. Even rich, educated people are hopping on the religion bandwagon. It's become fashionable and socially more acceptable.
Egyptians are isolated in their own society and running to religion as a result. They feel insecure about their future and mistrustful of everything and everyone around them. Many feel like second class citizens in their own country. In such an atmosphere, extremism can only grow.
- 6 Music drops Bruce Dickinson
Rock show with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson goes from 6 Music while Radio 2's Radcliffe and Maconie cut to three nights
Bruce Dickinson's BBC 6 Music rock show is to be axed and Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie's Radio 2 show cut to three nights a week in the latest changes to the two stations.
Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has presented a rock show on the digital station since it launched in 2002. It is the first 6 Music show to be axed since the BBC announced plans to close the station at the end of next year.
Radcliffe and Maconie's award-winning weeknight show, which has been running on Radio 2 since 2007, will be cut from four to three nights a week.
Their Thursday night outing will be replaced with a new live music strand, In Concert, which previously aired on Radio 1.
The Radcliffe and Maconie Show will switch to three nights a week from 12 April. Dickinson's 6 Music show, which currently airs on a Friday evening, will finish at the end of April.
6 Music is one of two BBC digital stations, along with the Asian Network, which will be closed following BBC director general Mark Thompson's strategy review last week.
Radio 2 is also undergoing a transformation, having been instructed by the BBC Trust to put more speech content and social action programming in its daytime schedule and to reverse a drop among its older listeners.
Breakfast show host Chris Evans has been the target of listeners' ire since he replaced Sir Terry Wogan. The first official Rajar figures for Evans's new slot will not be released until May.
But the Radcliffe and Maconie Show and Dickinson's 6 Music show are made by the Manchester-based independent production company Smooth Operations, which is run by John Leonard. Part of UBC Media, it also makes Radio 2's Mike Harding Folk Show and long-running comedy Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show on BBC Radio 4.
"I'm hugely disappointed but we are looking forward to other opportunities when the BBC moves [BBC Radio 5 Live] to Salford," said Leonard.
Radcliffe was named music broadcaster of the year at last year's Sony Radio Academy Awards.
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- Gifts of the gab
From Petronius to John Steinbeck and Evelyn Waugh, the novelist considers books that have mastered the art of dialogue, ensuring that 'they always speak to us, not least between the lines'
Born in Chicago but educated in England, Frederic Raphael is probably best known as the author of Glittering Prizes, and its sequel Fame and Fortune, both of which he adapted into acclaimed TV and radio series starring Tom Conti as writer Adam Morris. This month, he publishes a third volume in this series, Final Demands, which finds Morris contending with middle age and its discontents and which he has also adapted for BBC Radio 4.
Raphael is also a prolific author of some 20 other novels, as well as history books, biographies and film screenplays. Last year he completed a strikingly contemporary translation of Petronius's Satyrica, (published by Carcanet, priced £12.99).
Buy Frederic Raphael books at the Guardian bookshop
"Dialogue brings a novel to life. It is possible to compose fiction without it, just as Georges Perec was able to write an entire book without using the vowel "e", but one had better be a genius to affect such forms of composition. And once is quite enough. It may also be possible to contrive great blocks of prose, in which landscapes are described and psychological states analysed as never before. But a writer who cannot make characters talk, and have their conversations require us to listen to them, is locked into airless formality.
"Dialogue tells us what people say and it hints at what they do not. It encourages readers to bring a book to life by enticing their participation in it. They then supply their own reading of how loudly or softly, truly or falsely, words are exchanged. When a writer allows his characters to talk among themselves, he grants them their freedom. If only because the subconscious can then chime in, his premeditated scheme never wholly dictates what someone will say.
"Dialogue in a novel is like stained glass, the surrounding prose is there to frame and support it. Even Marcel Proust, who certainly delivers paragraphs of dense prose, used dialogue brilliantly; and silence too. His greatest character, the Baron de Charlus, is arrogant, garrulous and caustic. But when an arriviste hostess finds the nerve to banish him from her house, his inability to find any kind of crushing retort signals the moment when the narrator, Marcel, is able to stand away from his mentor's shadow. Thenceforth he is free to depict him with merciless accuracy. Dialogue can be used in various ways and various registers, but a writer who masters its nuances will produce novels that always speak to us, not least between the lines."
1. Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
O'Hara was a keen observer, above all of the Pennsylvania Dutch inhabitants of the town he called Gibbsville (a permeable disguise for his birthplace, Pottsville). He could mimic local speech and vocabulary so that the reader can overhear it. The story of the life and death of Julian English is a masterpiece of erotic suggestion and narrative economy.
2. The Satyrica by Petronius Arbiter
Petronius, who lived during the reign of Nero, who ordered his suicide, wrote a sprawling picaresque novel of which only the chapters concerning the gross Trimalchio, a millionaire ex-slave, have survived in their entirety. Petronius was a master of elegance and of its low cousin, scorn. The adventures of Encolpius, his anti-hero, and his louche companions are salacious and farcical by turns, but they are brought to life by the often absurd and obscene chat which comes directly from the gutters of Roman life. As I discovered when translating Petronius, dead languages can still have raucous voices.
3. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Lewis was nicknamed "Red", more for the colour of his hair and livid complexion than on account of his politics, but his capacity for catching the vocabulary and aggressive philistinism of middle-western America was as boundless in print as it was, we are told, in person. In company, he was a mimic who did not know when or how to stop; in print, he made accuracy into satire. Babbittry entered the American language as the style of salesmanship and humbug to which John Updike surely paid rhyming tribute in his creation "Rabbit" Angstrom, a salesman in the Lewis tradition.
4. A God and His Gifts by Ivy Compton-Burnett
The last novel published in Ivy's lifetime was one of the first I ever reviewed. I am glad that I recognised genius when I saw it; a limited genius perhaps, but there it was. Ivy's novels were always a tapestry of dialogue, formally phrased but full of hidden poisons and traps. Her milieu was the Edwardian upper middle-class, on the surface polite, savage underneath. She described very little, but lust, violence and greed all emerged from the seemingly prim dialogue. Melodrama was never more elegantly articulate.
5. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
Murdoch was a philosopher and a romantic, with a sensuous intelligence and a keen ear. Her novels contain slabs of rather too colourful landscape and gushing description, but her great strength lay in the clever edginess of her conversations. I wrote the movie script of A Severed Head and it was, I confess, an easy job: unlike most writers', much of her dialogue sounded good out loud. I remember, for instance, an unfaithful wife saying, "It's all or nothing" and the husband's answer: "Let me recommend nothing." Facile? You do it.
6. Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham
Maugham is regularly dismissed and as regularly resurrected. He had no grand opinion of his own work, but he learnt early on, when writing plays, that a capacity for amusing dialogue supplied the best means for capturing an audience. Cakes and Ale (the title comes from Twelfth Night) proves that the literary world of the 1930s, with its cliques and claques, is not very different from that dominated by today's Michaels and the ubiquitous Antonias. It is said that Hugh Walpole soon came to recognise his own voice, and character, in Alroy Kear and, no doubt, Thomas Hardy in Edward Driffield. What is a novel of manners without a serrated edge?
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
When I first opened Steinbeck's great novel about "the Okies" – migrant sharecroppers from the 1930s dust-bowl of Oklahoma – I found their dialogue, phonetically reproduced on the page, quite incomprehensible. But read it aloud and the voices of the Joad family come out fighting, as it were. The family's trek to golden California has plenty of cruel incident, but when I think of Rose of Sharon, for instance, I hear her name "Rosa-sharn" the way Tom Joad said it, and says it.
8. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Most pundits now proclaim Brideshead Revisited as Waugh's enduring masterpiece. Its purple passages have their nostalgic glamour, but isn't there something lamingly absurd in all that well-spoken snobbery? Waugh does so love a Lord. The earlier Scoop is a satire on pre-war Fleet Street and has a savage larkiness that never visits Bridehead. What does one remember in particular? The line "Up to a point, Lord Copper", the nearest an employee dares come to disagreeing with his tyrannical (Northcliffian) boss.
9. The Golden Fruits by Natalie Sarraute
Sarraute was one of the "new novelists" who set out to renovate French fiction in the early 1950s. Her novel, like Cakes and Ale, is a satire on the literary world, this time in Paris, written almost entirely in dialogue. Its title refers to a novel which is only talked about in her text. It is first saluted as a masterpiece and then slowly picked to pieces by critics and envious friends of the author.
10. A Roman Marriage by Brian Glanville
The story of an English girl seduced and enchanted by an Italian lover is told with appropriate irony by a man who knows and loves Italy almost as well as England. His novel Along The Arno is early evidence of his ability to bring characters to life by reporting them, so to speak, with curt accuracy. A Roman Marriage is a comedy of incompatible manners, Anglo-Saxon and Latin. I confess, if it is a confession, that A Roman Marriage is dedicated to me. It is not a sign of corruption to speak well of one's friends, not least when their work deserves it.
© Volatic Ltd 2010
- Disappearing acts: Stonemasonry
Mark Cutler on the patient craft and the eventual need to 'just commit'
- Spot the dog and me
Author and illustrator Eric Hill shows how he draws 'my little puppy'
- Ask Tom: your dilemmas answered
Lonely Planet's Tom Hall answers your questions on worldwide travel. This week: is Colombia really a safe destination and can you do Cairo in a day?
Email Tom for help planning your next trip
Why is it that we hear so little about Colombia? I know that they had trouble years ago with drug gangs etc, but I've heard that it's settled now and is an absolutely beautiful country. A couple of friends have travelled away from the usual coastal areas to the main coffee area around Armenia and said the Andean scenery was stunning. I'm thinking of going in the summer and would like to go to the central area, not the touristy coast. Can you help?
Name and address supplied
Once the South American country to avoid, Colombia is continuing a recent come-back, and is now far safer with a wild mix of destinations that take in the Andes, the Caribbean, the Amazon and the Pacific. The Guardian listed it as one of the destinations of the decade, and its South America correspondent only warned against the remote areas.
One of the great Andean destinations, actually, is Bogota, one of South America's most engaging capitals. The cobblestone core of La Candelaria is a student-filled area with a wonderful free museum of Botero's plus-sized sculptures and cafes selling canelazo tea (spiked with aguardiente), and the sushi bars and salsatecas around northern neighborhoods like Zona Rose and Parque 93 are for the dress-up crowd.
The classic Colombian route still hugs the coast, taking in Cartagena, Caribbean beaches and then hitting an island or two. If you'd rather take in the attractions of the interior, you could do a loop out of Bogota first heading north via colonial towns like Barichara and Mompos (or Mompox) to Cartagena. If you want to do the jungle trek to Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City), then you can head north-east from here to Santa Marta to arrange the hike. Then you can head back south to Medellin to explore the Zona Cafetera – the coffee lands that your friends were rightly raving about - and the nature reserves around Manizales and the Valle de Cocora outside Salento. You can reverse again at Cali, after you've visited the archaeological ruins at Tierradentro and San Agustin, before returning to Bogota via the striking landscape of the Tatacoa Desesrt. Ciudad Perdida is an ancient Tayrona site you trek in to over three days.
Provided you don't go too far off the beaten track, you're likely to come away thinking Colombia feels as safe as anywhere else in South America, though frequent military checkpoints are a reminder of a less stable past. Apart from the Colombian tourism authority's snappy assertion that "The only risk is wanting to stay", the main concern is of theft when out and about in big cities. Take taxis after dark and seek local advice on any no-go areas.
Are there any Buddhist monasteries near Nara in Japan that people can visit and then stay the night? If so, can you recommend an authentic one?
Marie Hynes, Ireland
Here are a few authentic options to try near Nara, recommended by the Japan National Tourist Office
• The temple at Hosenji, 40 miles and a couple of hours by train.
• Closer is the Soto International Zen Center at Nanyoji, 10 miles from Nara.
• Taizoin is located in north-west Kyoto but gets good reviews.
• The Temple Lodging in Japan website lists a number for Nara.
I am travelling to Cyprus in May and was considering going to Cairo on a daytrip. Is it safe for westerners and can you recommend a tour company?
James Mullaney, by email
These tours take advantage of Cairo's proximity to Cyprus – flying from Pafos takes less than an hour. It's a pretty breathless day, requiring an early start and taking in the Pyramids and the Sphinx before lunch. After a bite to eat, usually in a centrally-located hotel, it's off to the Egyptian Museum, sometimes with time for a quick Nile cruise and a couple of compulsory stops at shops for "demonstrations" of their wares. You'll get back to your hotel in the small hours. The trips run during the summer season. Cairo is a safe and exciting city and there's certainly no risk involved other than frustration at the time you spend stuck some of the Egyptian capital's traffic jams and not having longer to explore further. Regency Travel is the main company running this tour, charging around £324 for the all-inclusive day trip, but I don't have any experience of using them. If any readers do, please get in touch.
Your help would be hugely appreciated to plan our summer holiday. We would like to spend two weeks in Austria over the summer. A rough itinerary would be Vienna or Salzburg for two-three days, around eight days hiking (with some rest days in between) and then finish up in a really nice hotel for three days for some well needed R&R. For the hiking, we would like to see the best that Austria has to offer - stunning mountains, lakes, meadows, rural villages etc. We are both quite fit but don't want any hiking that would involve a lot of experience or technical climbing skills. We would like to stay in authentic Austrian B&Bs with homely food or stunningly located serviced mountain huts. What areas/rough itineraries would you recommend?
Also, do you have any recommendations for companies that transfer your luggage, as this is on option we are seriously considering? And we would like to finish up in a really nice hotel with spa and excellent food in a gorgoeous location ...
Carol Houlihan, by email
I asked Austria expert and guidebook author Neal Bedford for a few suggestions. He says:
"If they're looking for lakes and mountains, then they have the choice between Carinthia or the Salzkammergut. Both will be busy in July. The Salzkammergut is easily accessible from Salzburg, and offers some great hiking, for instance around Dachstein (near the former celtic settlement of Hallstatt), where there are cable cars to high altitudes and mountain huts all around. Or, if they're travelling by car, they could traverse the Grossglockner road in Osttirol, while heading from Salzburg to Carinthia, and end their drive at Weissensee."
The location, with a lake at 995m and chairlifts into the mountains with hiking all around is both fit for your purpose and and very traditionally Austrian.
"From there, they could drive east to Styria/Burgenland and the region's thermal spas. Bad Blumau was designed by noted Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and is a pretty funky place, but cheaper options include spas at Loipersdorf and Bad Waltersdorf. From there, it's an easy couple of hours by car or train to Vienna."
For more on Austria, visit: austria.info/uk
- Clips of the month: mountain biking
As the first signs of spring tempt more of us back in the saddle, this month's video round-up features our pick of MTB films and clips from the internet
This month's video chart is all about mountain biking. So basically broken bones, scabs and some moments that will bring a tear to your eye, all against backdrops of rather large and unforgiving hills. Here are our favourites but there's plenty of room for you to add yours below.
1. What better way to kick off than with Sheffield's Steve Peat finally becoming World Champion? There are lots of clips from the Canberra race in 2009 which saw him squeeze past Greg Minnaar and achieve a dream, but most of them have terrible music. Plus this one shows him doing what he predicted he would do if he won – cry. Can anyone else feel their heartstrings being pulled?
2. Next up is one of the most inspiring and beautiful MTB films ever made. Fact. Seasons raised the bar when it was released in 2008. It follows seven riders over four seasons, with everything from dirt jumping to downhill covered. Highlight has to be Andrew Shandro proving that he may be old, but boy can he still ride that BC North Shore. Oh, and Cam McCaul gets a bonus point for laying claim to his own forehead.
3. Of course there is more to MTB than big jumps. Here's a taste of the Great Divide Race that sees competitors charge from Canada to Mexico in just over two weeks, climbing the equivalent height of Everest seven times. No wonder they all look like whippets.
4. Is it worth pointing out that girls ride bikes too? Round of applause to Women of Dirt for finally capturing the obvious on film.
5. Rumour has it that the Red Bull Rampage could well be back in the first week of October 2010. In other words insane freeriding in the dusty wilds of Utah makes a return after a two-year absence. Huge jumps, hilariously scary lines and the kind of cojones not usually associated with homo sapiens. In other words: mountain biking at its best. And to prove it, here's a clip from the legendary MBUK production Dirt circa 1995 and starring the much missed Jason McRoy. Compare and contrast - we've come a long way people.
6. And finally. At some point it was going to become necessary to bow to the views of those in the know. Both Tracy Moseley, Trek's downhill champ and Jess Stone, 2 Stage bikes' newest ripper insisted that the Steve Peat (him again) and Nathan Rennie section from Progression - Kranked 6 be included. And they are right - it's amazing.
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