Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Guardian World News

The Guardian World News

Muammar Gaddafi's forces threaten to retake Zawiyah

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:28 PM PST

Gaddafi's forces encircle rebels in Zawiyah after a day of pitched battles intensifies pressure on the embattled dictator

Forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi have encircled rebels in the town of Zawiyah after a day of pitched battles in the far west and east of Libya that intensified the pressure on the embattled dictator.

The fighting in Zawiyah, 30 miles west of the capital, Tripoli, was some of the most savage so far of the two-week uprising that has seen the east of the country fall into rebel hands and the veteran autocrat's rule pushed to the brink of collapse.

A contact of the Observer inside the city said the fighting was intense. "You must tell the world what is happening," the man said by phone. "Snipers are firing at anyone who moves."

Another inhabitant reported that at least 20 tanks had rolled into the town and had started shelling its square. "The fighting has intensified and the tanks are shelling everything on their way," Abu Akeel said. "They have shelled houses. Now they are shelling a mosque where hundreds of people are hiding. We can't rescue anyone because the shelling is so heavy."

A doctor in Zawiyah said that at least 30 people, mostly civilians, had been killed during fighting yesterday, bringing to 60 the death toll from two days of battles for control of the coastal town.

In the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, an SAS unit of up to eight men was being held after a secret mission to put British diplomats in touch with leading opponents of the regime ended in humiliation, the Sunday Times reported. The soldiers were captured as they escorted a junior diplomat through rebel-held territory in the east, according to the newspaper.

The onslaught came as the oil town of Ras Lanuf, around 250 miles west of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, fell to anti-government forces after a day of fighting that left at least 20 dead. Residents of Ras Lanuf reported running battles between loyalist forces and rebels for 24 hours, before the government troops withdrew in what some observers have suggested was more of a tactical retreat than surrender. The area between the two towns is now being treated as a front line in a protracted campaign that many in Benghazi fear is beginning to turn into a civil war.

Some officials in Benghazi's nascent organising committee hailed the fall of the strategically important town as an important landmark in an eventual push towards Tripoli. However rebel commanders urged caution, insisting they must consolidate their gains before trying to advance. They point out that Sirte, further up the highway and in the hands of Gaddafi's troops, remains impassable.

After a fortnight of clashes, there are signs the battle for control of Libya is approaching a stalemate.

In an apparent softening of earlier declarations, leaders of the revolt said talk of a push on Tripoli was premature. Some went as far as to suggest that unless international moves are made to keep Gaddafi's air force out of the skies, the push would not take place.

Gaddafi has so far made only limited use of his 250 fighter jets in an apparent bid to reduce the risk of international intervention in the conflict. Establishing a no-fly zone would shift the balance of power and allow rebels to advance.

The Observer saw bombing runs near rebel positions on the outskirts of Brega last week. Witnesses said that jets also bombed targets in Ras Lanuf on Saturday and an attack helicopter fired on rebel-held areas.

However, most of the bombs appear to have fallen short – a result that some rebel leaders say is deliberate. "He is playing with us," said Major Ibrahim Fatouri in Benghazi. "This is the one time in recent years that he has cared what the world thinks of him. When you are tired of watching, the pilots will start hitting targets."

An intensification of the fighting came as the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, criticised Europe's response to the crisis.

In an article for the Observer's website, Alexander said: "The EU has been slow off the mark on Libya. The UK government should now propose that Friday's EU council become a joint emergency summit held with the Arab League."

Heightened concerns that unrest will spread across the Middle East have prompted the government to issue new advice to travellers. The Foreign Office said: "We recommend that all British citizens without a pressing need to remain in Yemen should leave by the commercial flights currently available."

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which has become concerned that the uprisings might spawn copycat protests, banned all marches. The announcement signalled that the recent small-scale protests by the Shia minority in the oil-producing east of the country would no longer be tolerated.

Thousands of Shia protesters in Bahrain formed a human chain around the capital, Manama, as their campaign to loosen the Sunni monarchy's grip on power entered its third week.

Martin Chulov
Peter Beaumont
Jamie Doward

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Crisis plan to wean Britain off oil

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 12:34 PM PST

As Middle East conflicts cause oil prices to rise dramatically, government spells out plans for radical energy shift

Ministers will be ordered to adopt urgent measures to wean the country off oil, amid rising concern that the Libya crisis has left the economy exposed to a dramatic rise in fuel prices.

With fears growing that the cost of petrol could hit £2 a litre if instability in the Middle East persists and deepens, every government department will be told this week to comply with a new national "carbon plan" aimed specifically at "getting off the oil hook".

The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, told the Observer that the UK had no option but to speed up efforts to move away from oil. "Getting off the oil hook is made all the more urgent by the crisis in the Middle East. We cannot afford to go on relying on such a volatile source of energy when we can have clean, green and secure energy from low-carbon sources," he said. "The carbon plan is about ensuring that the whole of government is engaged in a joined-up effort to lead us into a low-carbon world."

The transport secretary, Philip Hammond, who has infuriated green groups by floating the idea of raising the motorway speed limit from 70mph to 80mph, will be told he must produce a nationwide strategy to promote installation of infrastructure for electric cars by June.

It is also expected that new deadlines will be set for building low-carbon homes, and that a firm starting date of September 2012 will be established for a new "green investment bank" to become fully operational.

The Carbon Plan will be launched this week by David Cameron, his deputy Nick Clegg and Huhne. In a tacit admission that ministers have failed so far to live up to their claim to be part of the "greenest government ever", the prime minister will, in effect, make their job security dependent on "green achievement" by demanding that those whose departments fall short of environmental targets write to him with a full explanation of what went wrong.

And in another extraordinary move, non-governmental organisations, including Greenpeace, will be asked to play a monitoring role to ensure progress across each department is maintained.

Sources have told the Observer that Clegg – unhappy that the coalition could not boast more green achievements – had recently chaired meetings with ministers in "growing frustration that some departments were not taking their green responsibilities seriously enough".

In a speech last week, Huhne warned that China was pouring money into developing a low-carbon economy while Britain lagged behind. "China will build 24 nuclear power stations in the time it takes us to build one. By 2020, their nuclear capacity will have increased tenfold," he said. "They will lay 16,000km of high-speed rail track in the time it takes us to go from London to Birmingham.

"They have the highest installed hydro-capacity and the most solar water heaters in the world. And they are forging ahead on wind power. So China knows what's coming."

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said that despite the initiative, which was welcome, only some in government appeared to understand the need to break free from oil. "Sadly, over at transport, Philip Hammond is still confused. Cuts to public transport, coupled with his recent proposals to raise the speed limit, appear designed to reduce fuel efficiency and increase our dependence on oil. Huhne really needs to drag Hammond away from Top Gear and force him to spend some time watching the news," he said.

The sharp rise in oil prices – to a two-and-a-half-year high – has already pushed unleaded fuel above £1.40 a litre in garages in Kent. With the government facing growing calls for action, the chancellor offered his firmest hint yet that he would stop a planned 1p-a-litre rise in fuel duty – due to come into effect next month – in the budget on 23 March.

George Osborne told the Conservative spring conference in Cardiff: "I know how hard the rises in world oil prices are hurting families in Britain. We've got another of the Labour party's preprepared rises in petrol taxes coming this April – one penny above inflation. When it costs £1.30 for a litre of petrol, £80 to fill up a family car, I know people feel squeezed. And I say this to people watching: I hear you."

In response, Angela Eagle, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said that Osborne should act now to answer concerns. "People want action, not warm words, from George Osborne. He should listen to Labour's campaign and act right now to help millions of families by reversing the Tory VAT rise on petrol, which has added £1.35 to the cost of filling up a 50-litre tank. In the budget, he should look again at the annual duty rise due in April. The last Labour government often postponed planned duty increases when world oil prices were rising, as they are now."

In his address to the Tory conference today Cameron will strike an optimistic note on the economy, stressing his party's commitment to enterprise. He will say: "For Conservatives, enterprise is about more than money, more than the economics of growth and GDP. We understand that enterprise is not just about markets – it's about morals too. We understand that enterprise is not just an economic good, it's a social good."

The Carbon Plan is being published in draft form ahead of a final version in the autumn, and will be updated annually. It will be unveiled as the centrepiece of a week of "green announcements" by ministers.

The progress made by each department will be published quarterly on the 10 Downing Street website.

Toby Helm

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Republican race for 2012 hots up

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:14 PM PST

The race to take on the Democratic president has begun in earnest as potential contenders head for the key battleground of Iowa

The long-heralded race for the Republican presidential nomination is set to begin this week as a multitude of potential candidates for the job of taking on President Barack Obama in 2012 head to the first key battleground state of Iowa.

Five potential runners will appear tomorrow at an event organised by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition in the state capital, Des Moines. They include big names such as former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, as well as outsiders such as the Tea Party favourite, businessman Herman Cain.

In a sign of how serious the race has now become, Santorum, a darling of the religious right with extremely conservative views on social issues, will spend this week touring all the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in a trip that bears all the signs of a genuine campaign swing.

Santorum's move throws down the gauntlet to other potential candidates, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who must now consider jumping into the fray to stop other candidates soaking up early publicity. The race is set to dominate the political headlines for all of 2011 and be one of the most hard-fought and intense in recent memory.

In many ways, that could be good for Obama, who will sit back and watch his Republican opponents forced to attack each other. "With a long primary season these candidates are going to go after their rivals. They will do a lot of Barack Obama's work for him," said Professor Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.

It will also make for fascinating politics as the Republican field fills out with a ragtag mix of current and former politicians who run the range from potentially serious contender to joke candidate. At the moment the leader in recent polls is Mike Huckabee, the current Fox News host and former governor of Arkansas, who won Iowa in 2008 before eventually losing the nomination to John McCain. Huckabee last week created headlines by appearing to criticise Obama for his family links to Kenya and spending part of his childhood in Indonesia. Such statements create bad mainstream press but appeal to the Republican base. Huckabee is now setting the pace with many Republican experts. "I think Huckabee is in a tremendous position, certainly in Iowa. He will do very well there," said Steve Mitchell, chairman of political polling firm Mitchell Research.

Huckabee has started to outshine the man tipped early on to be the Republican front-runner: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has been hit hard by criticism that a healthcare plan he applied in his state was too similar to Obama's reforms. With the Republican party campaigning vigorously to have healthcare reform repealed, Romney's prospects have been dampened.

He is not alone in having major image problems in important areas. Indeed, almost all of the Republican field has at least one major drawback, which could provide a boost for Obama and his Democrat team. Candidates like Huckabee, Santorum and Gingrich are seen as conservative enough to win a Republican primary but very off-putting to more moderate independent voters who will probably decide the 2012 election.

More centrist figures, such as former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, lack name recognition and are unpopular with the Republican base. Some candidates, like Pawlenty and Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, are seen as competent but also bland and uninspiring. Meanwhile, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is seen as being too Southern to appeal outside that region and has sullied his chances with a series of insensitive remarks on race.

There are also novelty candidates, such as the oft-touted presidential ambitions of reality TV businessman Donald Trump, or Tea Party stars Cain and congresswoman Michele Bachmann, whom few see as remotely serious.

Finally, looming above it all, is Sarah Palin. Though she has a fanatical fan base and huge fame, the former governor of Alaska is seen as a wildly divisive figure. She is polling badly among Republican voters and many experts feel that her work as a speaker and author is too lucrative for her to risk what would be an intense and lengthy campaign. However, if she were to jump in she would be likely to electrify the race and the nation.

That means that many experts should see Obama as a favourite to win. However, he faces a great challenge in the form of an economy that is struggling to emerge from recession, especially in the area of job creation. Some experts see the 2012 race less as Obama vs a Republican and more as Obama vs the economy.

Many believe that, if the economy is still in trouble 18 months from now, Obama could potentially be defeated by almost any Republican candidate. "If the economy is still stuck in the summer of 2012, then Obama will be vulnerable. But if the economy clicks, then Obama wins," Bowler said.

Paul Harris

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Le Pen more popular than Sarkozy

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:21 PM PST

Far-right leader could gain a first-round election victory if the country were to go to the ballot box today

The leader of France's far-right National Front party is more popular with voters than president Nicolas Sarkozy, an opinion poll has revealed.

Marine Le Pen would gain an unprecedented first-round election victory if the French were asked to vote for a new president today. France will go to the polls to elect a new president in May next year, but the results of the survey, published in Sunday's Le Parisien newspaper and based on an opinion poll by the Harris Institute, come at a time when Sarkozy's popularity continues to plummet.

The findings have revived the spectre of 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen – Marine's father – knocked socialist candidate Lionel Jospin from the country's opposition out of the presidential race in the first round before losing to Jacques Chirac.

The Le Parisien poll found that 42-year-old Le Pen, who took control of the National Front in January, would obtain 23 per cent of the vote in the first round of any poll if it were held now. Sarkozy would get 21 per cent. Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry, who has not announced her intention to stand, would also get 21 per cent.

The survey does not give the level of support for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, who is expected to declare his intention to represent the socialists in the May 2012 vote and is widely believed to stand more of a chance than Aubry.

Since Le Pen, a mother of three, assumed control of the French National Front it has softened its traditional revisionist line on the Holocaust and antisemitism and appears to be targeting France's large Muslim community.

After the results of the poll were announced, Le Pen said they were "an encouragement to continue to work and present our project to the French". Speaking during a visit to the northern city of Lille, Le Pen added that French people were "waking up".

"The French want a different kind of politics, they would like to have a proper choice in the second round [of the presidential elections]: the choice between a national project and a global project as represented either by Nicolas Sarkozy, either by Dominique Strauss-Kahn or by Martine Aubry."

Le Pen said she was convinced Sarkozy – who is hoping to win over rightwing voters with a crackdown on immigration and a debate on "Islam in France" – had lost the support of the French people.

"There's a trend that makes me think that Nicolas Sarkozy is going to lose the presidential elections. I don't think he can climb back up. He represents such a disappointment and rejection by French people that I think he's already out of the second round."

Kim Willsher

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Che's motorcycle companion dies

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 02:55 PM PST

Man who made journey across Latin America, which was immortalised in The Motorcycle Diaries, has died

Argentinian Alberto Granado, who travelled with Ernesto "Che" Guevara on a journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalised on-screen in The Motorcycle Diaries, has died in Cuba aged 88.

Their road trip awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political convictions that would turn him into one of the iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century.

The two travellers both kept diaries, which were used as background for the 2004 movie, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. Granado was born on 8 August 1922 in Córdoba, Argentina, and befriended Guevara as a child. As young medical students, they witnessed deep poverty across the continent, particularly Chile, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela, and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a lasting impression on the pair.

They parted ways in Venezuela, where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami, then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies.

Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro in toppling the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day in 1959.

Granado visited Cuba at Guevara's invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year, teaching biochemistry at Havana University. He had lived in Cuba ever since.

In his biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was "barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose, but he sported a barrel chest and a footballer's sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humor and a taste for wine, girls, literature and rugby".

According to Cuban television, Granado requested for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Guevara was captured and killed by soldiers in Bolivia in 1967 as he tried to foment revolution in the Andean nation.


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NY police chief attacks reform plans

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:14 PM PST

Jessica De Grazia, New York's former chief assistant DA, says elected police commissioners in England and Wales would damage public faith in the legal system

The government's blueprint for police reform, modelled largely on US cities such as New York, will breed corruption and undermine the professionalism of the force, a former senior prosecutor from Manhattan has warned.

New York's former chief assistant district attorney, Jessica de Grazia, has joined the growing chorus of criticism over proposals from Britain's coalition government to introduce elected police commissioners, among a range of controversial reforms including cuts in pay and conditions. De Grazia will appear alongside the police minister, Nick Herbert, at a Westminster conference this week to condemn the introduction of a US-style system.

She said that, although New York's transformation from America's "murder capital" to its "safest big city" was impressive, the coalition's plans to borrow elements of US policing would not work in England and Wales.

"You don't have to have elected commissioners to cut crime; it's a mistake to equate the two. The worst-case scenario from the plans is that the professionalism of the police could be downgraded, and that could cause corruption and the public to lose confidence in the police," said De Grazia, who served in the New York district attorney's office from 1975 to 1987 and became Manhattan's most senior non-elected law officer, in charge of 400 lawyers, fraud investigators and prosecutors.

The coalition has looked across the Atlantic for inspiration in its police reforms, with the home secretary, Theresa May, citing New York as a model for reducing police numbers, and Herbert meeting New York police commissioners on their home turf.

But De Grazia cites a series of major scandals in New York as exposing the risks of elected commissioners, including the systemic recording of serious offences as minor in order to keep crime figures artificially low and the subsequent failure by an elected commissioner to properly investigate the allegations.

"There is always a risk of police corruption, but there is both a higher risk and incidence when you place the police directly under the control of an elected politician. I don't believe the government's bill in its current form sufficiently recognises this risk and takes step to mitigate it," she said.

"If you are going to take another country's governance system, then you should import the checks and balances from that system. That has not happened in this case. The problem appears to be that they are looking only at crime reduction and not corruption."

De Grazia, who produced a critical government-commissioned report into the Serious Fraud Office in 2008, added that ministers had also disregarded major differences between the UK and US criminal justice systems. "In the US prosecutors can initiate investigations, while in the UK we are completely dependent on the police. Investigative decision-making is non-transparent by its very nature and that means there is a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong, deliberately or through operator error."

The Home Office strongly denies such claims, but De Grazia said she had been approached by a number of veteran Scotland Yard CID commanders who had experienced police corruption first-hand and were "horrified" by plans to install an elected commissioner with the power to hire and fire chief constables.

Her comments come ahead of Tuesday's publication of a review of police wages and conditions that will pave the way for their first major overhaul in more than 30 years. The review, by former rail regulator Tom Winsor, is expected to recommend a reduction in overtime payments, housing and travel allowances and suggest changes to pensions and shift patterns along with the abolition of bonuses.

Relations between ministers and the police are already tense, worsening further last week after May appeared to pre-judge Winsor's review by announcing that cuts in police pay and conditions are unavoidable. The Police Federation has warned of a "morale meltdown", with mass protests by officers a possibility.

Both Winsor and Herbert will face a sticky ride at the Westminster conference on Thursday when they face speakers from the Police Federation, the Association of Police Authorities – the organisation that will be scrapped through the introduction of elected commissioners – and police superintendents angry over the direction of reform.

De Grazia said: "You have to be prepared for the possibility that a person without the integrity we would want to see gets elected and uses their power over the police chief to improperly influence decisions about cases. The government has said it will protect operational independence, but how will it?"

Mark Townsend

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Afghan security firms paid £29m

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:14 PM PST

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act confirm growing reliance on privatisation underpins Britain's war effort

A record £29m worth of contracts were awarded last year to British private security firms in Afghanistan, fuelling fears over the increasing privatisation of the UK's military capability.

New figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm that a growing reliance on private firms is underpinning Britain's war effort. They come as the private security industry regulator reveals it is being encouraged by the government to take a "more extended" role in supporting military operations.

Andy Bearpark, director general of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), will meet Foreign Office officials this Wednesday to discuss a closer relationship with Whitehall. He said: "The point is that the British government has just about finalised its position on private security, this will legitimise companies working with the government."

The £29m spent last year in Afghanistan represents a significant increase compared to the £62.8m spent on security contractors between 2007 and 2009. Most contracts were awarded to G4S, with £23.3m designated to provide "mobile and static security" in Afghanistan. The company is the parent firm of ArmorGroup, the focus of a US Senate inquiry alleging it "relied on a series of warlords to provide armed men" engaged in murder and bribery.

The government has opted in favour of self-regulation, but the senior campaigns officer for War on Want, Yasmin Khan, said: "As the government is plunged deeper into the conflict in Afghanistan, national regulation is urgently needed to hold British mercenary companies to account."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Private military security companies play a vital and necessary role in hostile environments."

Mark Townsend

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China begins People's Congress

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 08:30 AM PST

With one eye on revolts in Middle East, Chinese premier says he will put have-nots at the heart of development goals

China's premier has promised to ensure social stability by curbing inflation and raising the incomes of those left behind by the spectacular growth of the world's second-largest economy.

In his address at the opening of the National People's Congress, Wen Jiabao pledged to place the country's have-nots at the heart of its development goals for the next five years.

Inequality has risen sharply in recent years despite government pledges to tackle it. The dangers of popular discontent are now higher on the agenda following the uprisings in the Middle East.

"We must make improving the people's lives a pivot linking reform, development and stability," said Jiabao, in his annual work report. "And make sure people are content with their lives and jobs, society is tranquil and orderly and the country enjoys long-term peace and stability."

Figures show that the official domestic security budget has outstripped the military's for the first time. Spending on law and order will rise to 624.4bn yuan this year, while the People's Liberation Army will receive 601.1bn yuan.

"This shows the rising costs of maintaining internal control ... This system is very sensitive to any instability or contention," said Xie Yue, a political scientist at Tongji University in Shanghai who studies domestic security.

State media offered its most public warning yet against protests, saying "turmoil" in the Middle East had brought calamity to ordinary people.

The commentary in the Beijing Daily newspaper urged citizens to "conscientiously protect harmony and stability", adding: "At home and abroad, some people with ulterior motives are trying to draw this chaos into China. They have used the internet to incite illegal gatherings."

Chinese authorities have reacted harshly to an anonymous call for "jasmine revolution" demonstrations, detaining or harassing scores of activists and dissidents, although the calls to rise up may have come from abroad and only a handful have shown interest in protesting. Another call has been launched for gatherings, again appearing on an overseas website.

The official China News Service said Beijing had mobilised 739,000 police officers, officials, security guards and volunteers to maintain security during the week-long National People's Congress.

Wen's two-hour talk, to about 3,000 delegates, stressed the importance of reining in inflation, with promises to build up reserves and even impose price controls if necessary to restrain food prices.

"This problem concerns the people's wellbeing, bears on overall interests and affects social stability," he said.

Inflation hit 4.9% in January, although many economists believe food prices – the biggest concern for many – will fall soon as the worst effects of bad weather wear off.

Overall the 12th five-year plan outlines a strategy to shift an economy that is heavily dependent on state investment and exports to a more sustainable position, fuelled by consumption.

It aims to boost household income and put private enterprises on a more even playing field, and includes commitments to increase social spending.

"They seem more serious about these issues than they have been previously, but it doesn't guarantee that any of this will get done," said Alistair Thornton, China analyst at IHS Global Insight.

"There's a growing consensus that this time it has to be different. There's more emphasis in this plan than the last one, specifically on income growth.... [But] they need a bigger shake-up to get the results that the rhetoric suggests they want.

"What we were optimistically looking out for – although we recognised it was unlikely – would have been an actual target on income growth or consumption growth. They did say they were targeting a rise in consumption, which has been declining as a share of GDP."

The work report sets the usual economic growth target of around 8% this year, but reduces the figure for the five-year period to 7% annually, down slightly from last year.

Most local governments have set far higher rates, suggesting that as usual growth will come in well ahead of the headline figure.

Tania Branigan

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Universities hit out at visa plans

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 12:01 PM PST

In a letter to the Observer, 16 vice-chancellors express 'profound concern' over Theresa May's plans to limit visas

Universities across the country will have to close vital science and engineering courses and sack staff unless the home secretary, Theresa May, drops controversial plans to limit UK visas for international students, a powerful alliance of vice-chancellors has warned.

In a letter to the Observer, 16 vice-chancellors express their "profound concern" at the proposals, making clear that they will have a devastating effect on universities' incomes and their ability to run the best courses for British, as well as overseas, students. Their intervention will stoke a cabinet battle that has pitted May, who is committed to cut net immigration from 215,000 to 100,000 by 2015, against the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the universities minister, David Willetts.

Cable and Willetts are known to be deeply concerned about the damage to universities and the economy if the £5bn-a-year income universities get from overseas students is choked off.

The vice-chancellors, many of whom have lobbied ministers privately in recent weeks, have gone public with the joint letter just days after a 12-week Home Office consultation over the changes was concluded. A decision from ministers is imminent.

The vice-chancellors say they are "fully aware" of public concern about abuse of immigration rules by bogus students and colleges, and promise to continue playing their part in combatting it. But they insist that "international students in universities overwhelmingly do not abuse the system" and are instead a welcome and much-needed part of the university system.

They add: "International students coming to universities contribute over £5bn each year to the UK economy through tuition fees and off-campus expenditure. Reductions in student numbers will lead to reductions in income and jobs.

"Without international students, many university courses, particularly science and engineering, may no longer be viable. This will in turn reduce the courses available to UK students.

"International students bring extensive cultural and political benefits to the UK. When they return to their countries at the end of their studies, they become cultural and economic ambassadors for the UK. At a time of financial austerity, this issue is of immeasurable importance to the UK."

The proposals would affect students from outside the EU applying for visas under what is known as tier four of the points-based system. These accounted for two-thirds of the 273,000 visas issued to students in 2009.

Damian Green, the immigration minister, has said that the government is fully aware that attracting talented students from abroad is strongly in the UK's interests but argues that there is a need to be more selective about who can come and for how long.

Gareth Thomas, Labour's higher education spokesman, said: "The government doesn't understand just how damaging these politically driven changes are set to be for our universities. With universities set to lose 80% of their teaching funds, and research money being cut back too, the loss of income from overseas students is likely to push tuition fees for home students even higher.

"It's not too late for the government to sit down with universities and student representatives to rethink these ill-thought-out plans."

The Home Office estimates that 14% of language school students on tier four visas, and 26% of those studying in private institutions, are breaking immigration rules.

The government wants to cut the number of visas to those wanting to study at courses below degree level, and to require a higher standard of English. But universities argue that many international degree students are recruited from non-degree courses, on which they have improved their English and increased their knowledge.

The public consultation received more than 30,000 responses. It asked for views on plans to introduce tougher language requirements for people coming to the UK to study at below degree level. It also proposed that students wishing to extend their studies show evidence of academic progression and suggested limiting students' entitlements to work and their ability to bring in dependants.

A Home Office spokesperson said all views expressed in the consultation would be taken into account. "Any criticism can only be based on speculation as no decisions have yet been made on the changes to the student visa route. However, universities that are confident in the product they have to offer genuine students should have nothing to fear from policies that root out abuses in the student visa system."

Toby Helm

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King: bankers exploit the gullible

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 09:47 AM PST

Bankers hit back at Bank of England governor after he warns that drive for profit could spark another credit crunch

A fragile peace pact between the government and Britain's top banks has fractured as the Bank of England's governor, Mervyn King, delivered a scathing rebuke to top financiers for taking big bonuses while exploiting "gullible or unsuspecting" customers.

In an attack that drew an angry reaction from the Square Mile, King suggested that "imbalances" in the banking system are beginning to grow again, posing a risk of another credit crunch.

The governor, who will get broad powers to regulate the banking industry when the Financial Services Authority is abolished next year, accused high-street lenders of taking a short-term view to "simply maximise profits next week". And he asked: "Why do banks in general want to pay bonuses? It's because they live in a 'too big to fail' world in which the state will bail them out on the downside."

King's remarks, to the Daily Telegraph, are his sharpest swipe yet at banks, which had hoped that last month's Project Merlin agreement to increase small business lending would draw a line under criticism of their behaviour. The governor's comments were widely interpreted as a warning to the chancellor, George Osborne, to heed any recommendation of a break-up of big banks by an independent commission.

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, echoed King's comments in his speech to the Scottish Liberal Democrat spring conference in Perth.

"I understand why people are angry when they hear about the super-sized salaries and bumper bonuses awarded to top bankers," Clegg said.

"I am too. I agree with Mervyn King today that the job of making our banks safe and responsible is not yet complete."

The British Bankers' Association rejected King's comments as superficial and outdated. The lobbying group's chief executive, Angela Knight, said: "There have been massive changes within the industry which I don't think have been recognised in his comments. Nobody can build a business unless they're close to customers and providing people with products and services that they want."

Knight said that, far from being too big to fail, banks were facing new legislation allowing them to be wound down in an orderly manner if they get into trouble. She defended bonuses: "You either pay the going rate in an industry or your workforce walks off down the road."

No stranger to political heat, King has been the Bank's governor since 2003 and came under pressure last year when WikiLeaks cables revealed he had made disparaging comments to the US ambassador about David Cameron and George Osborne. Last week, he told MPs on the Treasury select committee he was surprised public anger towards banks had not been even greater.

This weekend, he accused banks of routinely ripping off clients: "If it's possible to make money out of gullible or unsuspecting customers, particularly institutional customers, [they think] that is perfectly acceptable."

Asked whether there could be a repeat of the financial crisis, King said: "Yes. The problem is still there. The search for yield goes on. Imbalances are beginning to grow again."

Shadow Treasury minister Christopher Leslie said King's comments highlight the government's failure to extract lasting commitments to reform from the City: "Project Merlin was supposed to draw a line under these issues but it failed to convince the public, or even the governor of the Bank of England, that the balance of risk and reward was correctly established."

Many financial experts believe that Sir John Vickers's five-strong independent commission on banking, which reports later this year, will call for a clear separation between high-street and investment banking operations to prevent the public from footing the bill for catastrophes on City trading floors. But the chancellor, who is keen to offload the Treasury's shareholdings in bailed-out banks such as Lloyds and RBS, is believed to be cautious about major structural changes.

The economic secretary to the treasury, Justine Greening, told BBC News that King's criticisms of banking were likely to strike a chord with the public: "People will recognise a lot of his comments about regulating the banking industry and in terms of how [the banks] deal with consumers."

Andrew Clark

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MP calls for museum entry fees

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:15 PM PST

Regional museums unfairly treated compared with London, says Stoke MP and historian Tristram Hunt

Britain's leading museums and art galleries should start charging entrance fees, according to the historian and Labour MP Tristram Hunt.

In a strongly worded article in today's Observer, Hunt, the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, claims the move would establish a "truly equitable cultural policy" at a time when regional museums and galleries are being forced to introduce charging due to budget cuts but London ones are not. "This metropolitan, club-class government has made sure that our global cultural icons are immune from the pressures hitting their regional colleagues," Hunt writes.

Drawing comparisons with the US and major European cities, where it is common to find charges, Hunt questions whether a similar move would hit the UK's tourism industry. "At New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art there is a $20 entrance fee, so why not a fiver for London's great galleries? Would it really undermine our cultural competitiveness?"

Hunt's comments are likely to trigger a debate about arts funding. Free entrance to the country's leading museums was one of the previous Labour government's most popular policies, credited with bringing tens of millions more people through their doors.

In 2007, then shadow arts minister Hugo Swire floated the idea of allowing museums to reintroduce charging, but was slapped down by a Tory central office concerned about a backlash.

Jamie Doward

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Housing cuts will force many to move

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 01:29 PM PST

Changes in housing support will force many to move within 10 years, survey by leading housing organisations finds

A third of England will become unaffordable for low-income households within a decade, according to a study by two leading housing organisations.

A report by the housing charity Shelter and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) claims that government plans to overhaul housing benefit would price low-income households out of a third of local authorities in England, pushing them into areas of high unemployment.

The changes, to be introduced in 2013, were outlined in last month's welfare reform bill, which established that future increases to local housing allowance for private tenants will be linked to the consumer price index of inflation rather than the cost of local rents.

Shelter and CIH warn that this means that, in places where rents rise faster than inflation, housing benefit will increasingly fail to cover housing costs.

Their report claims that by 2023, 34% of local authorities outside London will be unaffordable for people claiming local housing allowance, including those in working households on low incomes or unable to work such as pensioners, carers and people with disabilities.

Earlier research carried out for Shelter by Cambridge University has already predicted that many on housing benefit in London will have to move out of their homes to areas where rents are lower. But suggestions that those outside the capital will also be affected is likely to revive concerns that the changes will contribute to a form of social engineering that will have consequences for much of the country.

"These changes will mean that the level of housing support that people receive will be based on the average increase in the price of random items like washing machines and a meal out, instead of the rents they pay," said Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb. "As this takes effect, many people will see a big drop in their housing support, leaving them with a stark choice between rent arrears, eviction and possible homelessness, living in overcrowded homes, or moving across the country to an area where they can afford to live but where there are fewer jobs available."

The local authorities predicted to be most affected are concentrated in the east of England, East Midlands and the south-west, where rents have risen rapidly in recent years. The regions that will still be affordable in 2023 – the north-east, north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber – have higher than average rates of economic inactivity and unemployment.

The analysis assigned each local authority in England a rent inflation indicator that was used to estimate how long it would take for fewer than 10% of private rented homes to be affordable once the changes were introduced. There are concerns they could undermine the government's aim to get people back to work if they are forced to move away from areas with good employment prospects to those with higher unemployment.

Just over a quarter of housing benefit claimants earn low wages. Shelter and CIH warn the changes could mean claimants could find their jobs at risk if they can no longer live close to where they work.

"These changes will undermine the government's own welfare reform ambitions to make work pay and to support people back in to jobs," said Sarah Webb, chief executive of CIH. "You don't help someone back in to work by forcing them to move from neighbourhoods where they have established support networks and make them move to areas with fewer employment opportunities, miles from the very support that can make work viable. We need welfare changes that help get our economy growing again, not changes that will entrench unemployment and dependency further."

Jamie Doward

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Call for volunteers help midwives

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:04 PM PST

Thinktank says its plans would allow hard-pressed maternity staff to spend more time at the bedside

Hospitals should use volunteers to relieve the pressure on busy maternity units so that overworked midwives can spend more time with women in labour, a new report urges the NHS.

Many more women could be cared for by midwives if they were freed from tasks such as filling in forms, taking blood pressure and giving breastfeeding advice, according to the influential King's Fund health policy thinktank.

It is calling on hospitals to use their existing maternity staff in different ways rather than relying on the government to hire more midwives. Midwives' leaders have accused ministers of reneging on promises to hire thousands more to cope with the rising birthrate.

The King's Fund wants the NHS to improve maternity care by, among other things, midwives undertaking some jobs currently done by doctors, such as examining newborn babies; nurses attending elective caesarean section operations instead of midwives; midwives supervising the labour and birth of many women now looked after by a doctor; and maternity support workers taking on extra roles.

The report wants hospitals to copy the experience of a few maternity units that are already working in different ways. For example, the Homerton hospital in east London uses 40 "active labour volunteers", each working up to 18 hours a week. "They provide support in labour by massaging women, encouraging and supporting them, and staying with them if a midwife has to leave the room to do other things," said head of midwifery Joan Douglas. Volunteers receive only travel expenses and lunch vouchers.

At East Surrey hospital in Redhill, "task-shifting" has increased the amount of time midwives spend with mothers-to-be from 32% to 50%. A round-the-clock ward clerk has been hired to welcome expectant mothers and help them fill in their paperwork, allowing the midwives to concentrate on one-to-one care of women in labour. Hospital managers had found that midwives were spending 32% of their time dealing with patients but 34% on clerical duties.

A dedicated equipment store means midwives no longer have to search wards for machines such as heart-rate monitors, while an electronic keypad security system for the nine drugs cupboards has ended midwives' regular searches for the two sets of keys previously needed to unlock medication for epidurals, said Adaline Smith, a midwifery sister. "We have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of time midwives spend at the woman's bedside, where she should be, and that must have increased safety," said Denise Newman, the matron.

At Bedford hospital, nurses help look after women having caesarean sections so midwives can spend more time on antenatal screening, surveillance and one-to-one labour care.

Anna Dixon, the King's Fund's head of policy, said such innovative practices could greatly increase the number of low and medium-risk pregnant women whose care in labour is supervised by a midwife. The NHS's need to save £20bn by 2015 means hospitals need to make such changes, Dixon added. "Midwife numbers get too much attention. What really matters is having the right staff in the right place at the right time doing the right things," she said.

But Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said that while midwives could take on some new roles "these should not be added at the expense of the essential care many midwives are currently struggling to provide because there simply are not enough of them to deal with their current workload". She also voiced concern at other health workers taking on roles in maternity care. "You cannot compensate for not having the right number of midwives by transferring to other members of staff care that only midwives can and should provide," Warwick said.

She warned recently that the NHS maternity service "is teetering on the brink" because many more midwives are needed. She has accused David Cameron and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, of breaking pre-election pledges to hire 3,000 extra midwives.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said: "The new report misses the crucial fact that midwifery care is needed throughout a woman's pregnancy. For continuity of care to occur, more midwives are needed."

Denis Campbell

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UK students take their degree abroad

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:04 PM PST

With UK tuition fees ready to soar as high as £9,000 a year, school-leavers are choosing to go elsewhere

Carnival preparations are taking over the Dutch city of Maastricht. Multicoloured ribbons, clown masks and streamers bedeck lamp-posts and windows. Trucks are delivering beer kegs, and kiosks that will sell paper cones of chips and waffles are being set up. Revellers are arriving from miles around.

"I can't wait to see what it's going to be like," said Theresa Bullock, 19, who is in her first year at Maastricht University. She is looking forward to a break, not just from her computer science studies but from a new role that she is starting to adopt – that of an unofficial adviser. With tuition fees about to triple in Britain, more and more UK students are looking to study abroad and Maastricht, with most of its degree and master's courses entirely in English, is at the vanguard of European universities eager to net the best.

Bullock, who blogs on being a student abroad, is being inundated with emails from parents and prospective students. "Most people are worried about the language, but you can live here and never use a word of Dutch," she said.

Bullock, who comes from Redditch, Worcestershire, admits her family were baffled by her decision to study in the Netherlands. "They were a bit worried. I did also apply to Liverpool Uni to keep my mum happy as a backup plan, but I told her Maastricht was closer than Scotland; it's only three to four hours away by train. I knew this was what I wanted." It also helps, she said, that her annual tuition fees are just €1,672 – about £1,450.

The coalition government's plans to triple UK university tuition fees to a maximum of £9,000 a year are about to have a side-effect it didn't bank on – an exodus of students abroad. Maastricht, whose fees are kept low because of Dutch subsidies, is already processing more than 200 applications from the UK, six months before the deadline for the next academic year, and expects many more.

With more than 2,400 courses available in English in the non-English-speaking parts of Europe, the trend will extend beyond the Netherlands. The universities of Valencia and Milan are also seeing a rise in UK interest. It has traditionally been hard for overseas universities to prise undergraduates out of the UK, but last year a record number, 22,000, were studying for degrees abroad. "The Ucas system in the UK is so stressful and so many people don't get through that it seems really unfair. I like that the Dutch give people a second chance," said Bullock. "If you do badly in your A-levels you can still have a go. In England you just won't go to university if you get a C, which is a bit tough when you are so young.

"Financially it's going to make a big difference to me. I have a cousin doing a master's at Manchester who will leave with £40,000 of debt. I hope to leave with none."

With a part-time job sorting post and being within easy distance of Brussels, Düsseldorf and Cologne, Bullock is making the most of student life. "I do feel a lot more European than before," she said. With its cobbled city centre crisscrossed more by bicycles than cars, its open squares lined with trees and tolled over by the bells of its historic churches, Maastricht is already a border town of linguistic diversity. It sits in the odd teardrop in the southern Netherlands that rolls into Belgium and Germany, and is versed in English as well as Dutch, German and French. While it is likely to be the economics that will bring a British invasion here, the only thing mystifying the university is what took them so long.

Professor Teun Dekker, vice-dean of University College, said they had been actively looking to bring in native English-speakers to enhance the faculty for everyone. "The idea of internationalism became the goal of many universities, to maximise the experience for the students. Maastricht has always been keen to follow up on this; it's a very natural idea here because of the geography. British students have always been very reluctant to go abroad for even part of their education and there is this imbalance in the exchange of students.

"Cross-pollination that comes out of an international group of students is very valuable. When you have a lecture-based system it doesn't matter what nationality anyone is, but with our discussion-based learning it's very valuable to have people from different backgrounds. English has been the medium for education here for years, it's embedded.

"The UK higher education market is very stratified and I think parents can have a hard time placing us in the hierarchy. Of course, it has very good universities of its own. Now though, with tuition fee rises, it will be different.

"We love David Cameron," he joked, "His policies are doing a great thing for European integration!"

He and fellow vice-dean, Dr Mark Stout, are passionate about their college and, with 94% employment rates for students within six months of graduation, the results support them.

"Our mission," said Stout, "is to bridge that gap and let UK students and their families know that there is an alternative here. Maastricht is comparable to most Russell Group universities. It's not Oxford but on a level with Edinburgh or St Andrew's. There are so many opportunities here for young, dynamic students who are prepared to dip their toe into the water of an education abroad and say OK, our parents didn't but we can."

A major difference between the Dutch and UK systems is who gets in. In the Netherlands, entry requirements are low to allow everyone a chance. The dropout rate is initially high, then quickly drops.

"In the UK, getting into university is very difficult but staying there is easy," said Dekker. "In Holland, getting in is very easy but staying is difficult. You have a chance but it's down to you to make a success of it. It's a political decision but very democratic. We often find that people who didn't excel at school do excel at university. It's sink or swim once they get here but at least, unlike the UK, we let everyone into the pool."

Both vice-deans emphasise that cheaper fees are not the only plus for Maastricht – a claim backed by John Birrane, 20, a psychology student from Co Mayo, Ireland, who is here for a year. "I came here expecting windmills and marijuana but my course is just cutting edge, great," he said. "All the research papers are hot off the press. I just can't believe how good it is.

"The career grid you're given is a list of Irish universities and the entrance requirements and then it's 'Oh, you want to study abroad? That's a bit revolutionary.' So most English-speaking people don't dream of applying for a European university. But now I'm here, I can't understand why anyone from the UK wouldn't want to come here."

Birrane has enrolled on a Dutch language course and has even bought the obligatory bicycle. "I'm coming back here for my master's," he said.

Geoff Lucas, general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), an association for heads of the UK's leading public schools, visited Maastricht earlier this year. "In terms of value for money and the quality of the student experience, the high contact education and the career opportunities, it's impressive. Word is most definitely spreading.

"This government's higher education policy is in an utter mess and this is a side-effect they didn't see coming. It will certainly test all their heated rhetoric about how we live in a global economy when our universities suddenly have serious competition."

Tracy McVeigh

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'I often find myself at a loss for words'

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:02 PM PST

Enigmatic singer Michael Stipe on 'the massive insecurity of not being articulate', 30 years with REM, and why he's driven to remake his world in birch plywood

Michael Stipe wanders into the lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan, looking flustered. He is running late for his Observer photoshoot and interview. I introduce myself and he tells me he has had "heating problems" at his apartment. We chat amiably for a moment about the weather, which, even by New York standards, is extreme. "It's Inuit weather," he says.

He is wearing a reefer jacket, jeans, work boots, an ethnic-looking scarf, a snug woolly hat and a full beard. He looks healthy, which he has not always done. On his lapel, a little metal badge says Michael Stipe. This, of course, is very Michael Stipe: arty, playful, even a little bit pretentious.

A man walks past and shouts "Michael Stipe!" at him. Heads turn. On cue, the press officer materialises and, to Stipe's obvious relief, ushers him into a waiting elevator that whisks him up to where the photographer is waiting. "I just realised I haven't had breakfast yet," I hear him say as the doors close. It is almost 4pm.

Were there not already a Spike Jonze film called Being John Malkovich, (produced, incidentally, by Stipe's company, C00 Films) one could easily imagine one called Being Michael Stipe. Like the elusive, oddball actor, Stipe gives the impression of existing entirely inside his own self-contained universe. He exudes a certain otherness but one is never sure how much of it is natural and how much learned.

"I've been watching the Empire State Building change colour," he says, gazing dreamily out of the window, as I arrive in the room the record company has booked for the afternoon. He speaks quietly in small, quick flurries of words that often do not cohere into sentences. "I find myself often at a loss for words," he muses at one point. "There are TV shows I don't go on because I do not talk like that, I don't think like that, I don't debate like that. I've realised that to try and slot myself into that world is to diminish what I have to offer. And I do have something to offer but it's just in a different dialect, a different language."

Today though, he seems relaxed, reflective, talkative, which is a relief. I have interviewed him three times in the past, never to my satisfaction. It was not for want of trying on my part. The first encounter was way back in 1988, when REM's sixth album, Green, was just about to cross over into the mainstream charts. He was charming but elusive to the point of cryptic – like his songs, in fact. "That was a long time ago," he says, nodding, when we settle down in a room that looks like a designer take on a Western movie bordello. "I still hadn't learned how to talk or how to look someone in the eye and finish a thought. I'm much better at that now but I'll carry that with me my whole life, the massive insecurity of not being articulate."

Now 51, Stipe has been lead singer of REM for just over 30 years. The band's new album, Collapse Into Now, is their 15th. In the interim, the group have gone from cultdom to indie sainthood to global superstardom. The tipping point came in 1991, with the release of their seventh album, Out of Time, and its stirring hit single, "Losing My Religion". It caused a seismic shift in their fortunes that bass guitarist, Mike Mills, later described, not altogether positively, as "life-changing". Even before then, Stipe seemed troubled by the whirlwind of fame, struggling to make sense of the stadium tours that followed 1987's hit single "The One I Love". He has had an uneasy relationship with his own celebrity ever since.

"I had to grapple with a lot of contradictions back in the 80s," he says, frowning. "I would look out from the stage at the Reagan youth. That was when REM went beyond the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the art students and the indie music fanatics. Suddenly we had an audience that included people who would have sooner kicked me on the street than let me walk by unperturbed. I'm exaggerating to make a point but it was certainly an audience that, in the main, did not share my political leanings or affiliations, and did not like how flamboyant I was as a performer or indeed a sexual creature. They probably held lots of my world views in great disregard, and I had to look out on that and think, well, what do I do with this?"

The band, all teenage friends from Athens, Georgia, survived that particular trauma, as well as the departure of an original member, drummer Bill Berry, who quit in 1997, a few years after collapsing from a brain aneurysm onstage in Switzerland. Another wobble occurred in 2001 when guitarist Peter Buck was arrested for drunkenly assaulting two British Airways stewards in a violent struggle over a pot of yoghurt on a flight to London. (His evidence was that he had mixed a sleeping pill with a small amount of wine. He was cleared, having pleaded "non-insane automatism".)

The new album, like its predecessor, Accelerate, sounds like a group who have rediscovered their mojo after a run of albums that sounded, well, like a big stadium band on cruise control. There are pop songs, and harder rock songs, and odd little in-between songs that could not have been made by anyone else. As always of late, they walk a tightrope between a signature and a formula. And, as always, it is Stipe's elliptical lyrics that, depending on where you stand, are the most intriguing or the most annoying aspect of the whole. He has not lost his facility for arresting titles. One song, which could be the first rock song about breaking wind (he's not saying), is suggestively called "Mine Smells Like Honey"; another, which sounds like an exercise in word association, is called "Alligator, Aviator, Autopilot, Antimatter". Even more intriguing is "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I", a kind of meta-pop song that references a Neil Young number called "Pocahontas".

In that song, Young imagines himself shooting the breeze around a campfire with Pocahontas and Marlon Brando, who, among other things, was a campaigner for Native American rights. I ask Stipe what his Marlon Brando song is about. "It's about me going to Neil Young for advice," he replies, as if this was the most natural thing in the world to write a song about. Has he actually done that? "Oh, no. It's entirely made up, but it's sincere. I hold Neil in high regard, but I have never asked him for advice, though I am sure he would have honoured it if I had."

As has been pointed out before, Michael Stipe is not your regular rock'n'roll star. For a start, he's too intelligent for that. And too curious. In his spare time he is also an activist (The LA Times dubbed REM one of America's "most liberal and politically correct rock groups"), film producer (he was credited as executive co-producer on Being John Malkovich, Velvet Goldmine and Man on the Moon), photographer (he published a book of photographs, Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith, in 1998) and, latterly, conceptual artist. His current obsession, he says, is "making replica pieces in bronze or birch plywood" of objects that hold a particular and personal fascination for him. They include a Polaroid camera, a microcassette and a newspaper. "About five years ago I sat bolt upright in bed and said to myself, 'I want to make sculpture'," he says, growing visibly excited now that we have gotten the album out of the way. "I don't know where it came from, and I'm not even sure what sculpture is any more, but it just hit me like a truck. I'm making these replicas of things that have a personal fascination for me in order, I guess, to somehow explore that fascination, to remove myself from it in a way."

One of his pieces is called My Favourite Ever Edition of the New York Times. It features that favourite edition encased in a Plexiglas box. Could he talk me through it? "It is what it is. The date of the edition is not as important as the experience I had reading the paper on that day. It was a Thursday. The Times is always great on a Thursday. So I decided to commemorate and memorialise this experience by preserving the edition in Plexiglas."

It all sounds, I say, a bit Duchamp. He looks momentarily offended. "Well, I'm not a prankster. There is a sincerity to what I am doing. Always and sometime to a fault. In a way, that's all I've got."

It often seems, from the outside, that Stipe is entirely consumed by each new creative passion. Does he consider himself an obsessive? "Oh God, yes, no question," he says, laughing. "I'm working something out for sure. But, you know, that feels like a purely selfish reason for creating, and that's not what it's about. There's an ego and a desire to be loved that is colossal and so peculiar to public figures, the kind of people that do what I do, but I think I have a pretty good handle on that. With the artworks, it's more a need to create, to express myself in another form. It's like something I have to get out of me."

In all of this, Stipe has remade himself in the manner of his greatest idol, and now close friend, Patti Smith. Like her, he has become a polymath of sorts, though his approach to the making of music and art is altogether more, for want of a better word, postmodern than Smith's. Stipe is not rock'n'roll in the way that Smith is, though, lyrically, he shares her facility to tap into the unconscious and let the words and images flow out as if unedited. He has spoken in the past of the impact that Smith's seminal album, Horses, had on him as a confused 15-year-old. "It tore my limbs off and put them back on in a whole different order," he once said, "It was like, 'Shit! Yeah! Oh my God!'. Then, I threw up."

I ask if there is anyone in the world of fine art who has had the kind of impact Smith had on his younger self? He thinks about this for some considerable time. "Well, going to see a Brancusi show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with Patti, when she was on tour with Bob Dylan in 1995. It took years for that to land on me but the impact when it did was incredible. I think Brancusi is a huge presence, perhaps even the greatest artist of the 20th century. I just look in awe at his work."

He is currently working on a replica of a Brancusi staircase. "It's the tiny staircase between his atelier and his sleeping quarters. You can visit it if you're around the Pompidou Centre [in Paris], free of charge, open daily. It's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. All the thought in the world went into that staircase, that he would climb up every night and walk down every morning, though the design was probably unconscious on his part. That's an example of something that just hit me, then I became fascinated with it, and then it became enough of a nagging obsession to be turned into a piece."

With hindsight, one can see that the songs Stipe wrote and sang back in the early 80s when REM were a small independent rock group operating out of their home town of Athens were the first clue to his otherness. Mostly they are cryptic, impressionistic, introverted and often wilfully elusive in their meaning. Back then, his singing style was best evoked by the title of REM's debut album, Murmur, released in 1983. One of those songs was called "Radio Free Europe". He later described it as "complete babbling". It often seemed to me that, as a fledgling songwriter, he was perpetually at war with the obvious, a stance that almost flew in the face of his ability to write great pop songs with big hooks.

"There's some truth in that. I've learnt to have fun fucking around with the medium. And the pop song is such a great medium to fuck around with. But it took a while."

Stipe's peripatetic upbringing may hold some clues to his elusiveness. He was born in Decatur, Georgia in 1960, the son of a serviceman whose constant relocations took the family across America, from Alabama to Illinois, as well as to Germany. His father served as a helicopter pilot in Korea and Vietnam. Stipe Junior once recalled how the family would gather nightly around the television to watch the news from Vietnam in the late 60s, their mother instructing him and his two sisters to look closely at the footage to see if they could spot their father. "We would of course sit there and go, 'I think I saw him' over and over again."

The family remain close. He spends every Christmas with them. In 2004 he said of his father: "I couldn't relate to my father's experiences, or the troops in Iraq who'd been at war, until 9/11. My father was a career army man, having been to Vietnam twice and Korea once. I'm very proud of him for that. But we agree on Iraq. Politically, we are almost down the line".

Politically, though, Stipe is right-on-going-on-radical. He has campaigned for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and REM have espoused environmental, feminist and human rights causes. In 1988 Stipe campaigned for the Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, and in 2004 the group put their weight behind the doomed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on their Vote For Change tour. Will REM inevitably come out against the Tea Party? "Well, part of me says 'give them enough rope'," he says, laughing. "They are going to keep shooting themselves in the foot. I'm more concerned with the media, about what is being represented as truth and fact when it is not, and the whole issue of how news is being manipulated by certain powerful media corporations. It kind of terrifies me."

He pauses and thinks for a while. "For me, the great weapons used against the American people are fear and ignorance. Keeping people either so uneducated or distracted that they are not able to really form a valuable, educated choice is a great weapon. Fear is an even greater one. For one half of my life we have had administrations in this country that have used both of those to divide and conquer and to establish their particular vested interests in a way that best suited them and the people that they wanted to see profit. Has it got worse with the Tea Party? I don't know."

Back in the mid 1990s, when questioned in interviews about his sexuality, Stipe described himself as "an equal opportunity lech". That was after a periodof spiralling rumours that he was HIV positive. In 1999 a writer called Douglas A Martin published his first novel, Outline of My Lover, in which the main character describes a six-year relationship with the lead singer of a successful Athens-based rock group. Stipe and Martin had previously collaborated on a poetry compilation, The Haiku Year, and the latter later confirmed that the novel was indeed a fictional delineation of their relationship.

Then, in 2001, Stipe told Time magazine that he was "a queer artist". Last year he curated an exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of Jean Genet's birth, which he tells me was "kind of like a queer history but from a peripheral point of view, but also about what might have happened if Genet and queer culture had impacted on me more". He does seem to be a whole lot more comfortable now with his sexuality. Was he troubled by it while he was growing up?

"Not troubled, no. Not confused either. But I felt there just wasn't a place for me. I hate and refuse to apply the term bisexual to myself. It doesn't seem appropriate. It feels like just another label. For a time I was conflicted by how I was represented, and then Aids came, and that's an era that has still to be spoken about in depth by people of my age. It was a very difficult time to be honest and frank about one's sexuality. And a very scary time for people like myself, who were not able to be tested anonymously without some concern. I mean, under Reagan, lest we forget, there was a time when they were talking about internment camps for people who were HIV positive. To this day I can't give blood to the Red Cross because I have sex with a man."

Would he still describe himself as "an equal opportunity lech". He smiles, then turns serious again. "On a sliding scale of sexuality I'd place myself around 80-20, but I definitely prefer men to women. I had sex with, and enjoyed sex with, women until I met someone that I fell in love with, and who is now my boyfriend. That's the only real news in the last 12 years, but when it's a slow news day I get dragged out of some closet again."

For the record, Stipe currently lives in a spacious Tribeca apartment with his partner, Thomas Dozol, an art photographer.

We talk for a while about the etymology of the word "queer", and I ask him why he finds it more acceptable than the word "gay". "I never identified with gay, that's all. I will always honour anyone who had to make different choices, then stand by them, and I would hope that honour would extend to me and my choices as well. I'm talking about how one chooses to define oneself, the community within which one feels comfortable. That's what it's about, really. It's the 21st century," he concludes. "A lot of younger people have a much more it-is-what-it-is approach to sexuality. The black and white binary approach just does not work. So you find the terms that make you most comfortable.

As we come to the end of the interview, I tell Stipe he gives off a different kind of energy these days. It seems that, if anything, New York has calmed him down. Does he now consider it his home? "My second home, for sure. I've lived here now since the mid-80s with the exception of a few years in Los Angeles. There's even a New York song on the album, which you can discover for yourself. It's about a moment that occurred not far from here on Houston Street, when I was stumbling down the street having been at a party, a vodka in one hand and an espresso in the other, and just being so inspired by the energy of the city and the people. It's a moment-of-discovery song, about discovering oneself and suddenly feeling this huge sense of possibility. New York can do that to you," he says, smiling. "You come here to change the world but you end up changing yourself."

Sean O'Hagan

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The price to pay for living longer

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:16 PM PST

This week Lord Hutton's report on public sector pensions will spark a debate about the costs of a population where the chance of celebrating your 100th birthday are growing ever greater

Graphic: ageing Britain, the vital statistics

At the Department for Work and Pensions in Whitehall, they have a crystal ball – and when they gaze into it they see centenarians everywhere. Just a few weeks ago, a group of civil servants lost themselves in contemplation of what Britain will look like in 70 years' time; the picture that appeared before them was both fascinating and mildly disturbing.

By 2080, the crystal ball showed, the country would boast 626,900 people aged 100 or more – with 21,000 of those being 110 or over. This is more than 53 times greater than the current number of centenarians (11,800), and at present fewer than 100 people are older than 110. Whoever is monarch of the day will constantly be sending out messages of congratulation.

Pensions minister Steve Webb described the figures as "staggering", showing exactly why the government had to reform the pension system. "Many millions of us will be spending around a third of our lives or more in retirement in the future," he said.

The figures, which are based on genuine projections, were released partly to shock the public, and partly as a prelude to a major report on reform of public sector pensions to be published this Thursday by Lord Hutton, the former Labour cabinet minister.

Hutton, who was commissioned by the coalition government, will call for an end to final salary schemes in the public sector and for employees to pay higher contributions.

The reason that change is badly needed, he will argue, is that the world has changed – but the pension system has not changed with it. In the 1970s, anyone who reached 60 could expect to live another 18 years. By last year that had risen to 28 years. A male pensioner who retired from the NHS at 60 last year could expect to spend 41% of his adult life in retirement, compared with 28% for one who had retired at the same age in 1955.

In an interim report last October Hutton spelt out the daunting scale of his personal challenge. "Many of the current public service pension design features, including accrual rates, pension ages and the link to final salary, date back nearly 200 years, despite the enormous upheavals in demography and in the nature of work in our economy," he said.

Put simply, the state, which itself has expanded hugely, particularly in recent years, is supporting more and more old people for longer and longer under a pension system designed for the early 1800s, when people died younger and thus cost less to keep. Today, most public servants still retire at 60 on final salary schemes but survive far longer than even decades ago, creating an unsustainable cost to the country.

In the past decade alone, since 1999-2000, the amount of benefits paid from the five main public sector pension schemes – local government, the NHS, the civil service, teachers and the armed forces – has risen by 32%. Around one in five UK citizens has some entitlement to a public service pension, amounting to £32bn in 2008-09. It is certainly not, however, an ideal time for Hutton or the government to be telling people they may have to pay more for less – and work longer. Wage freezes and tax increases, such as the recent rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, have helped to create a potentially explosive backdrop against which to deliver pension pain.

People in public and private sector jobs are already struggling to save for their later years as they face a coincidence of increased financial demands. A new report by Scottish Widows shows that, on average, 40% of people aged 45 to 54 – there are 3.5 million of them – are now unable to save anything at all on top of their existing commitments, including pensions. The group, which is often referred to as the "sandwich generation", have increasing calls on them both from children – particularly those of university age facing rising fees – and ageing parents who need looking after.

But there is a broad consensus that government has to make changes, and Hutton's report could mark a decisive moment. Experts agree the state has to face a longevity crisis which, in financial terms, is about far more than merely the cost of pensions. As people live longer, the amount of time they spend free of illness and disability also reduces, placing extra pressure on health and care services – which in the majority of cases means the state.

Hutton's report will mark a historic departure. It will almost certainly mean the end of final salary schemes for around 4.5 million public sector workers and usher in some form of "career average" system in its place. This may not save money in itself, but will be sold as being "fairer". The savings will come from requiring those currently expecting to retire at 60 to work longer to achieve the same level of benefits. Hutton will also support a rise in members' pension contributions, but is expected to leave it to ministers to decide the precise level.

Ian Naismith, head of pensions market development at insurers Scottish Widows, said the culturally ingrained idea of retirement at 60 for many public sector workers, and 65 for others, could not survive much longer. "People are just going to have to realise that they are going to have to work longer in years to come," he said.

John Wright, head of public sector pensions at Hymans Robertson, which advises the pensions industry, said that ministers had three options to make public service pensions more affordable and sustainable in the long term. "They can reduce benefits [the amount of pension paid out], make public sector workers pay more in contributions and retire later, or a combination of both."

Wright believes that it will be a delicate balancing act, because if people are asked to pay larger amounts into their schemes, many could opt out of their schemes altogether, storing up extra costs for the state in the long term.

"Expecting people to pay more for less is a tough ask," Wright said. "However, it is important that people stay in their schemes, otherwise they give up valuable benefits and could be more dependent on the state in future."

Trade unions are already warning that there will be mass opt-outs from pension schemes if the chancellor, George Osborne, presses ahead with his plan to increase contributions for public sector workers by an average 3%. The GMB union says there is only one question that needs to be asked when Hutton reports: "Will there be more retirement saving as a result of his recommendations, or will workers continue to be driven out of otherwise sustainable pension schemes?"

The GMB has gathered evidence from local authorities showing that over the past five years participation in the local government pension scheme has fallen from 81% to 75%. Brian Strutton, GMB national secretary, said that ministers risk causing more of a problem if they go too far by forcing up workers' costs.

"It is not enough for the commission to utter broad platitudes about the value of pension saving and the need for taxpayer affordability. The whole country needs Lord Hutton to take a stand and make the case for sustainable pension schemes in the public sector that are cost efficient for taxpayers and affordable for members."

Reform may be 200 years overdue, but that does not make the solutions any easier to find.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

WORK A new era of jobs for the experienced

Will Hutton, executive vice chair, The Work Foundation

Talk to Sainsbury or any other major retailer and they will say they like older workers. They are more reliable, their absenteeism is lower, customers like them. They are diligent and happy to work flexible hours.

It is a similar story with top professional and business service firms. They also like older workers, and so do their clients. They have seen a few ups and downs in the stock market. They know their way around; their contacts books are enormous. Finding a way to persuade a retiring partner not to walk away completely and still contribute is a major preoccupation.

So it should not be a surprise that the most dynamic part of today's labour market is the growth of employment over 65. Moreover, last year total employment in Britain went up by 218,000 – but, amazingly, 104,000 of those jobs went to the over-65s. In other words, nearly half of all new jobs in Britain last year went to just 3% of the labour force, an unnoticed bonanza in employment opportunity.

This trend will accelerate in April when it becomes illegal to require any worker to retire at 65. Compulsory retirement is over; the boom in over-65s employment will gather pace. Many of the jobs are part-time, but that is what many over-65s want. The rational retirement age is 70, or even 72, given today's life expectancy. The faster the country recognises this, the better. It would not only mean better and more meaningful lives rather than the absurd notion that at 65 it's all over; at a stroke it would slash the budget deficit.

LEISURE The 'grey pound' is now worth £100bn a year

Andrew Clark, business editor

The "grey pound" has never been more valuable. Annual spending in the UK by households that include someone over the age of 65 passed the £100bn mark in 2009, with retired people more likely than ever to enjoy foreign holidays and cultural activities or to spend money on home improvements.

In a study to be released this week, the charity Age UK says people aged between 65 and 74 spend more on recreation, relative to their income, than any other age group. But what is often overlooked in analyses of that spending is how that outlay slips sharply as people age. In this regard, as in others, 66 can be very different from 80.

"This is not because of a decline in appetite for participation," says Age UK, citing instead a lack of access as people become less mobile. "Four in 10 respondents were unhappy that they were not doing things such as going to the cinema or eating out regularly."

According to Saga, people between their mid-60s and mid-70s spend a higher proportion of their budget on food and drink, housing, furniture and recreation. However, retired people are less likely to acquire mobile phones or electronic gadgets. Benefiting from concessionary fares, they spend less on domestic transportand they spend slightly less on alcoholic drinks and tobacco. Meanwhile, more than a third of holidays are taken by over-50s, according to insurer LV.

But Age UK says that accessibility issues persist – it is waging a campaign against the abolition of cheques, which banks want to scrap by 2018: "It is impossible for many people to access their own money without disclosing their pin. This increases dependence on others and risk of financial abuse."

FAMILY The more generations, the better

Yvonne Roberts, broadcaster

In the 1900s, only 4% of the population was 60 and over. And then, not by much. My grandfather died in 1955, aged 67. Times change. Last year, my great-aunt Mary died aged 108 while this year, at my mum's 87th birthday party, we had five generations of the same family, most of whom could easily live to become centenarians, especially baby Millie, aged five months.

In a couple of decades, it's conceivable that an extended family will consist of seven or eight generations. Throw in a couple of divorces, stepfamilies and second and third husbands and partners, and the family tree could begin to look like Sherwood forest. But will anybody be speaking? And who will care for whom?

In my mother's family, which has never uprooted and remains close, the answer is that everyone speaks, often at once, and everybody helps out with everyone else – older, younger, "old old", the less than able. They weave an exchange and mart of support, old giving more in the currency of care, and that in itself fuels an enjoyment of life.

But for my generation of baby boomers – who geographically moved out of the family orbit and had babies when the stork ought to have been suffering from osteoporosis – the cradle of support is more fragile. My mum is active, independent and tunes into the news several times a day. She lives two hours away from me because she dutifully visits my father, who is in his 90th year, has Alzheimer's and is in a psychiatric hospital. Arrangements that could easily fall apart, but hold for now precisely because ageing isn't what it used to be. I'm grateful for the extra time.

Toby Helm

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'We're always being called dirty Jews'

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:13 PM PST

Antisemitic comments allegedly made by the designer John Galliano come as no surprise in the Marais quarter of Paris

Like most Paris schools, the Ecole des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais bears a sombre plaque. It reads: "165 Jewish children from this school, deported to Germany during the second world war, were exterminated in the Nazi camps. Do not forget."

In this district, known as the Marais, the heart of Paris's oldest Jewish quarter, gay bars rub shoulders with falafel cafés, kosher restaurants, synagogues and prayer rooms. Its labyrinthine streets have been home to Jews on and off since the 13th century. Ten days ago, however, it also played host to John Galliano.

The alleged infamous outburst of the Dior designer, who has now been sacked, in which he is said to have abused a Jewish woman and her Asian boyfriend, was offensive on many levels – not only because of what he allegedly said, but because of where he said it. It was in a bar just a few paces from the Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais that the couturier, who is British but has lived in the French capital for two decades, was arrested. And it was also where, last year, he was filmed telling two women he believed to be Jewish that he loved Hitler.

His reported behaviour has shocked France and the fashion world. Yet in what locals call the pletzl – "little place" in Yiddish – it provoked little surprise. Local residents and traders say that the insult "sale juif" (dirty Jew) is a fact of daily life; asking a local if they have suffered abuse provokes a quizzical stare as if you are trying to be funny. "Bien sûr" ("of course") is the most common reply.

"It's stating the obvious," says one kippah-wearing youngster in the Rue des Rosiers, the Jewish quarter's main street. "We hear what Galliano said, or versions of it, every day, sometimes several times every day." Like many I speak to, he prefers not to be named.

Standing in the doorway of a grocery shop, Dan points to his wide-brimmed black hat. "My 80-year-old neighbour told me that when she was growing up they used to say we Jews wore these hats to hide our horns, and long black coats to hide our tails," he says, laughing.

"She would tell me not to let my boys wear their [skull] caps in case 'they' come back. More than 50 years after the war, she still thought it could happen again."

At the Sacha Finkelsztajn pastry shop, famous for its apple strudel and cheesecake, two women shrug when Galliano's alleged antisemitic diatribe is mentioned. Over the road in the Panzer, a grocery store, the shop assistant refuses to talk about Galliano. "We're always being called 'dirty Jews'; there's always been antisemitism here and there always will be. It upsets me, but it doesn't shock me." Galliano was filmed telling the two women he thought were Jewish that their relatives would have been "fucking gassed".

In La Perle, the trendy bar where the designer – who denies being antisemitic – was arrested after another alleged outburst, Jérôme says: "France invented the term 'antisemitism'."

He says he would like to write a book on "happy" events in Jewish history, but adds that he would need time to research some. "I find it depressing that whenever I talk to my son about Jewish history it's just one long list of terrible events."

Like a sore that never completely heals, antisemitism erupts in France, which has the biggest Jewish community in Europe, with depressing regularity. Toni Kamins, the American author of The Complete Jewish Guide to France, observes that since Roman times Jews have been subject to vilification and humiliation. It is a history scarred with mass expulsions, forced conversions to Christianity, crippling taxation, segregation and "both systematic and random physical violence and murder".

The French revolution and the early 19th century saw the country's Jewish citizens emancipated. But the undercurrent of hatred persisted, culminating in the Dreyfus affair in 1894, with the trial and false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer of Jewish descent, which is often described as one of the most influential events in the modern history of French Jewry. Dreyfus became a byword for antisemitism.

At the time of Nazi occupation in 1940, as many as 9,000 Jews lived in the Marais. Many of them were among the estimated 76,000 French Jews who were deported between 1942 and 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most were exterminated on arrival.

In 1982, after a terrorist bomb planted outside the Copernic synagogue in Paris killed four people – only one of them Jewish — the then prime minister, Raymond Barre, spoke of "a heinous act" that had struck "innocent French people". When a British-born rabbi, Michael Williams, tried to visit the injured in hospital, he says he was told: "Get the hell out of here. You're responsible for this."

Then, in 2006, a 23-year-old mobile-phone salesman was kidnapped and horrifically tortured for three weeks before being left for dead because he was Jewish and his Muslim attackers assumed his family had money.

Until recently the extreme-right Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen was the political face of antisemitism in France. Since his daughter, Marine, became leader, it has moved away from historical revisionism and has its sights on France's Muslim population.

In the Marais, many Jews now blame antisemitism on immigrants from France's former north African colonies, and on the country's traditional special relationship with Arab countries.

The Jewish community's Protection Service documented 466 reported antisemitic incidents in 2010 – down from a 10-year peak of 974 in 2004 – but says many more go unreported. It says most attacks can be linked to Muslim fundamentalists.

Politically, the "Jewish question" is often a scratch from the surface in France. A fortnight ago Le Monde reported that French internet surfers searching for information on politicians typed a name followed by "Juif" ("Jew") more frequently than in any other nation. Olivier Ertzscheid, an internet specialist at Nantes University, said this could "reveal the mentality" of the country.

A French newspaper website recently asked: "Is France ready for a Jewish president?" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a potential candidate in next year's presidential elections, was recently described by an opponent as "cosmopolitan" and "not the image of rural France", both well-known French euphemisms for being Jewish.

Jérôme believes the idea of the "enemy within" – epitomised by the Dreyfus case – is a cause of antisemitism that is unique to France. "I think it makes some people angry that Jewish people are so well integrated that, while they know we are here, they don't know who we are."

He describes a Gallic attitude to its Jewish population that is two-faced: "The Jews who were deported and died during the second world war were mostly denounced by French people, but those French Jews who remained in France and lived were saved by French people."

It is 4.30pm, and across the other side of the Marais from La Perle the bell rings at the Jewish school. Pupils do not stream out of the door. Instead, a nervous-looking man with a walkie-talkie propels them into waiting cars.

In his grocery store, not far from Goldenbergs, the restaurant that was targeted by terrorists in 1982 and is now a men's clothing shop, Dan says that local people live in fear of attack. But he adds: "It's a peaceful place on the whole. We have a Jewish saying: you can tell what's in the heart of a man by how he behaves when he's drunk, when he's angry and when he has money. I think we have seen what's in the heart of Galliano."

Kim Willsher

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How we stayed wedded to the royals

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:14 PM PST

As the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton approaches, some republicans believe the death of Elizabeth may bring the reign of the Windsors to an end - but is that what the public really wants?

Hugh Ashton's face was a portrait of thwarted ambition as he watched from a discreet distance the anti-monarchist protest in front of Buckingham Palace. He had come from Chichester, West Sussex, to take part in the illegal gathering, but couldn't bring himself to join the chanting republicans gathered at the gates of the enemy.

"It's a bit disappointing. I was expecting more people than this. It's made me wonder, if this is the strongest number they can get out... I was sort of hoping the police might move them on, but there's no edge to this at all is there?" Indeed, there was not. Two police officers watched impassively. They had another four community police officers to call on if things got out of hand.

Demonstrations are not permitted in the pedestrianised area between the Victoria Memorial and the palace's east front, from where Prince William and his bride, Kate Middleton, will perform the nuptial kiss on the balcony overlooking the crowds of well-wishers on 29 April.

A French tourist was explaining to fellow sightseers that the inscrutable cops had probably been advised not to take any action in case it encouraged other protesters. "It's not exactly Libya, is it?" he sneered. The Japanese visitors took turns to duck in front of the protesters and have their photos taken, fingers raised in the V for victory sign. Inevitably the media outnumbered the 25 protesters. Perhaps there were more wannabe republican demonstrators hanging about the edges like Ashton. "I think five minutes would have been enough," he muttered as the protest lingered on past the half-hour mark, breaking into another chorus of protest songs around the theme of royal secrecy (the government has exempted the monarchy from freedom of information legislation). "These are all heartfelt sentiments, but I'm going to go to the pub now. I am a lone voice in Chichester."

Graham Smith doesn't share the pessimism. As the only person in the UK who draws a salary for promoting republicanism, he takes a professional approach. The campaign manager of the organisation Republic believes that royal weddings are good for business – if not quite as good as the Prince of Wales, whom he would like to make an honorary member. He points to last year's Swedish royal wedding, on the eve of which a poll showed that support for the country's monarchy was at its lowest: only 46%.

"It's a good omen for those of us who want a serious debate about the monarchy and our constitution," he tells a German TV crew. "The monarchy is not a luxury; it's an imposition and an obstacle to serious political reform." British public opinion about the royal family is fickle, he says. "We are launching Republic 2025. We need to put a date on it because things that people don't expect can happen very quickly – just look at the Arab world."

But Britain a republic by 2025? The calculation is based on the longevity of the Queen, who Smith grudgingly concedes is unassailable "because she's been there so long, we've all grown up with her". When Elizabeth II departs it is game over for the Windsors, according to Republic. Even Tories, such as journalist Max Hastings, seem to agree about Prince Charles's potential for damage. "He is not a bad man, but I think he is a very dangerous one for the monarchy, if allowed to ascend the throne," the former Daily Telegraph editor wrote recently.

In an essay for the Institute of Public Policy Research, Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt urged Prince William to steer clear of his father's "reactionary, anti-Enlightenment sensibility" and leave "the bling and conspicuous consumption to the Russians and Saudis". Hunt says millions view the monarchy with affection because at its best it represents "continuity, tradition and dignity", though for many on the left it is "the antithesis of everything we believe in". He concludes that "for better or worse we do have a monarchy which has numerous advantages in modern, multicultural Britain. Yet if it is to sustain itself, 'the firm' needs to continue to evolve."

Whether or not you agree, it is a good illustration of why Smith describes the status quo as "the politicians' monarchy – it serves their interests and not ours. The monarchy corrupts the culture of politics because the politicians end up seeing themselves as part of a state apparatus rather than the people's servants."

Hunt's good friend Lord Mandelson was not just a republican himself 30 years go, he flaunted it. All the way to France, in fact. In protest at the "royalist orgy" that was the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, he hopped on a cross-Channel ferry with Harriet Harman and other Labourites to escape for the day to republican France. Three of the day-trippers now have seats in the House of Lords.

This time last year Mandelson was lord president of the Privy Council, presenting business from its monthly meetings for the monarch's approval. Harman served during the same period as lord privy seal. Alastair Campbell recorded in his diaries Mandelson's desperate efforts to get a place at Diana's funeral in September 1997: "Peter called from the US to try to get to the funeral 'as a personal friend'. He also called Mark Bolland (deputy private secretary to Prince Charles) and tried via him, saying he was setting up a phone call between TB (Tony Blair) and Charles. He just could not resist it. There was something pathetic about it."

The current lord president of the council is Nick Clegg, who Smith believes is, or at least used to be, a republican. The point of the Buckingham Palace protest was to call on Clegg to use his protection of freedoms bill to open up the monarchy to greater public scrutiny. "We know that most of the Lib Dems, including the cabinet members, are supportive of us. A lot of them have admitted it privately to us, but they are terrified of going public, of the repercussions and the electoral impact. They should take heart from Norman Baker [Lib Dem transport minister] who is one of our members. He's MP for Lewes. East Sussex isn't regarded as a hotbed of republicanism, and yet the issue hasn't affected his vote. The media hasn't caught up with the fact that most people are indifferent to the royals."

But it's a giant leap from indifference to activism on an issue which fails to register in the national discourse. Where are the young Mandelsons and Harmans of today? Republic can rely on the support of only 14 Labour MPs, the Green MP and two Liberal Democrat MPs.

Last week there was a telling encounter in the House of Commons. The Speaker, John Bercow, chided Chris Bryant, a former Foreign Office minister, for saying: "Isn't it time we dispensed with the services of the Duke of York?"

Prince Andrew's friendship with US billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein made headlines this weekend, as well as news that the fourth in line to the throne entertained a leading member of the deposed Tunisian regime at Buckingham Palace last year. WikiLeaks revealed that a US diplomat described him as "cocky and rude".

As if this weren't enough to suggest the prince is a liability for Britain in his role as special trade representative, Bryant told the Commons of Andrew's friendships with Saif Gaddafi and the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni. Bercow intervened, telling MPs: "References to members of the royal family should be sparing and respectful. We have to be very careful in our handling of these matters." He was later forced to accept that only the monarch – not members of the royal family – was referred to in the parliamentary handbook, Erskine May, when discussing matters of decorum.

If the monarchy has never looked more protected by the political establishment (David Cameron slept out overnight on the Mall in 1981 to ensure he got a good view of newlyweds Charles and Diana), Smith believes that 20 years ago he would have faced far greater hostility from the public for advocating a republic. "That's gone and it's down to the royal family's own scandals, which have stripped away the veneer of magic. Society has become a lot less deferential. The royals have become a part of the celebrity culture, and that's what sustains them."

That may be true, but neither is there the noisy antipathy towards the royals which surrounded the 1977 silver jubilee. "Fuck the Jubilee" was the rallying cry of the punk movement and God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols its anthem. Johnny Rotten today sells butter on TV ads and confesses he is a fan of Princes William and Harry. According to Mori founder Sir Robert Worcester, support for a republic has remained constant at about 19% since 1969 – except in the two weeks after Diana died, when it rose to 25% and then fell to 12% after the Queen broke her Balmoral silence on the tragedy.

The Germans, the Spanish, the French and the Japanese have nailed the true point of interest in the royal wedding: it is a romantic fairytale made flesh and blood for a global audience. "Right now most Germans are really excited about the wedding, they see it as really romantic and they are thinking about Diana," Michael Gartner of SAT1 German TV said. "Kate is on the cover this week of Bunte, the biggest magazine, and the wedding will be shown live on three national channels." He had to think long and hard when I asked him for the name of the German president. "It's Wulff, but nobody cares."

David Sharrock

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Glasgow divide goes beyond football

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:53 PM PST

Two Old Firm games in a week have tested Scotland's biggest city to the limit – but is the violence that follows them worth tolerating any longer?

All the police cells were full across the city, with some of those arrested having to be ferried to police stations up to 50 miles away. A wild west-style brawl enveloped one Glasgow southside pub, leaving 10 officers injured. There were other outbursts of aggression too, not just in bars and on streets but in homes. In the hours after the final whistle was blown, domestic violence reportedly rose by 81%.

The disorder, which broke out in mid-February after one of the city's famous Old Firm matches - between arch rivals Rangers and Celtic - led to Les Gray, head of the Scottish Police Federation, calling for the derbies between the two clubs to be banned. The football, he said, was not worth the " murder and mayhem" the games unleashed.

Last Wednesday, trouble erupted again, at the third match between the two clubs in less than a month, on andoff the pitch once more. Players shared a total of 13 yellow cards, most shown to Rangers players, with three sent off – one of a record seven between the rivals this season.

There were 34 fans arrested inside the Parkhead grounds after extraordinary scenes between Celtic manager Neil Lennon and Rangers assistant manager Ally McCoist, when both men had to be restrained. There is still furious speculation among fans about what words were exchanged between the two who have since shaken and made up according to Lennon who said only: "It's a passionate game and both of us want our teams to win." But now, after it was revealed this weekend that Lennon had been given 24-hour security protection, after a second hoax bomb package in as many months was intercepted on the way to his home, Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, has called an emergency summit this week in Edinburgh to discuss the problems. The great fear is that the sectarian violence of the past could once again rear its head in a city that is riven by religious prejudice.

In the east end of Glasgow yesterday, the refrain followed a familiar pattern. A stream of Celtic fans heading for a match against Hamilton blamed the problems on aggression on the pitch by Rangers players. Just as the Rangers fans blame Neil Lennon.

At Baird's Bar, Celtic fans without tickets prepared for the match to start on TV with several dozen pints and some noisy Irish jigs. A busload of Irish supporters from Co Meath, who got up at 4.30am to catch their ferry over, were stopping by. Chris Millar, 36, was also over for the match. "Both Rangers and Celtic need to grow up," he says. "We're in big danger of going back to the sectarian dark ages. At the end of the day, it's a football game."

Landlord Thomas Carberry has a sign on the wall that promises zero tolerance to IRA songs. The two fans outside having a song with their cigarettes clearly have not read it. The pub is plastered with Celtic and Irish memorabilia. Carberry is worried by police suggestions that pubs might be asked to close during Old Firm matches. "It's all the trade we get around here. The smoking ban, the cheap supermarket booze, the recession – it's all taking its toll," he says.

"The whole east end is reliant on these matches. This city is divided and you're not going to change that. It's deep; it's even in the clothes. You can't wear a blue top and get away with it in some places. I've got three Protestants working behind the bar here, but in other places the sectarianism is just rife, [in] the city council for a start. My opinion is that the schools need to be mixed. Until you do that, you won't change anything. Until then what we have is a healthy bit of bitterness that keeps us all going."

Many fans on both sides insist the divides are misunderstood and that often the banter that flares during the match is forgotten afterwards. "I hate them for those 90 minutes, and it's reciprocated," said Paul Cassidy, a 44-year-old Glaswegian Celtic supporter. "But all that aside, it's the drinking, the blokes tanking it in pubs all day and fuelled up and going home and beating up their wives – that is something we should be looking at."

Many experts agree that social issues are important. Dr Susan Wiltshire, of Glasgow University, has just published a research paper commissioned by the Scottish parliament that looks at apparent prejudice in the justice system against Catholics. Some 17% of Scotland's population are Catholic, yet Catholics make up 26% of those in Scottish jails.

"My paper was about discrimination that Catholics in Scotland might experience in the criminal justice system and about poverty indicators, such as that Catholics are more likely to live in poorer areas, though again, there are strong historical settlement patterns which account, in part, for this. This is a social issue which should not be ignored," she says.

Wiltshire adds: "The Catholic-Protestant divide which often ignites at matches is so structurally entrenched that it is something that has to be addressed at various levels, and consistently and systematically. "

Wiltshire says that a drop in political commitment to tackling sectarianism is also apparent. One charity, Nil by Mouth, set up to tackle religious bigotry in schools, is facing closure because of cuts in its funding.

Bob Doris, the Scottish National party MSP for Glasgow, has written to Celtic and Rangers urging them to support the charity financially. He says: "Off-field trouble related to Old Firm games is a reflection of wider problems in society, male violence and alcohol abuse that would exist even if the Old Firm did not.

"That said, both clubs are well aware that their players are role models to many. The clubs don't share the blame for that disorder – people are responsible for their own actions – but they do shoulder a responsibility for helping to find a solution."

Alcohol, football, religion and discrimination all no doubt play a part in the sectarian issues facing Glasgow.

The Louden Tavern is five minutes' walk from Baird's. "Aye, but we get the cleaners in now and again," says Rangers fan Andy McMinigal, 55. "That pile of rubbish Baird's have got down there would go up if someone put a match to it."

He has come in with fellow Rangers season-ticket holder Charlie Watts, 63. They are in their suits after a Saturday morning Orange Lodge march. "Most pubs are not segregated as such, but they'll have a pope corner and a proddy corner but they still mix," Watts says.

"Keeping people apart you can blame on the Catholic Church. It's them that's wanting separate schools. The Catholics are separatists and criminals, it's just a fact of life. But with the football it's the young people who get tanked up on drugs and drink and just want to spoil it for everybody."

Landlord Robert Marshall keeps his colour scheme true blue. Blue walls are hung with portraits of Rangers' great and good.

"Its a Catholic lassie that does them," says Marshall, who took over what had been a loyalist pub in 1994. "I don't hold with any of that, I've never been to Ireland and I'm not interested. None of this sectarian stuff has anything to do with religion. That's just what the morons on both sides say. I hate Celtic but I don't hate Celtic supporters."

Several of the banners he has hung outside his pub over the years have had to be taken down because of the "lack of sense of humour" of Celtic fans who complained to police. "They were looking for an insult when there wasn't one. The thing about Glaswegians is, because of [the city's] working-class roots and its poverty through the years, there's a sense of humour that people can find heavy going, they think we're having this terrible fight.

"Look at those figures, 60,000 supporters in a city and there's only 50 odd extra arrests? The Rangers-Celtic thing is a lot of people's whole lives and we are a city who is passionate about football. Its just a normal city, a great city ... until there's an Old Firm game."

Additional reporting by Erik Geddes

Tracy McVeigh

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UK coastal regions under threat

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:12 PM PST

Millions living near the coast are likely to be hit by rising sea levels, erosion and storm surges, warns a new study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

On Benbecula, they know all too well that rising tides threaten the UK's coastline. For the 1,200 inhabitants of the small, low-lying island in the Outer Hebrides, the sea's encroachment is becoming a serious problem, especially on its western shores.

Impacts of Climate Change on Disadvantaged UK Coastal Communities, a report to be published tomorrow by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an influential thinktank, records how local people have seen the coastline retreat before their eyes in just a few years.

The threat posed by erosion has been exacerbated by the fact that the sea has taken material from the island's beaches that is normally used for constructing roads and buildings. But Benbecula is not alone: the report claims that rising sea levels are likely to have a "severe impact" on much of the UK's coastline by 2080.

The authors note that "the total rise in sea levels off the UK coast may exceed one metre, and could potentially reach two metres". They warn that "the frequency of intense storm events is expected to increase and, along with the rise in sea level, to lead to more coastal flooding".

As a result, many of the 30 million people living near the UK's coastline – which has 291 inhabited islands – will need to anticipate how climate change will affect them. "We haven't devoted enough time to debating these issues," said Jeremy Richardson, director of the engineering consultancy URS-Scott Wilson, who co-authored the report.

"Because we're talking about what happens in 2050 to 2080, people tend not to talk about this, but the coast is going to be at the forefront of these climate change impacts. We're not just talking about flooding or drought, but also rising sea levels and an increase in storminess; it will affect a lot of towns, many of which are especially vulnerable because they are isolated geographically."

Climate change threatens to be an additional burden on coastal regions already experiencing major socioeconomic problems. Many have increasingly elderly populations, with younger people forced to move inland to find work. Among Britain's local authorities with the largest proportions of pensioners, all but one are coastal, according to the report.

Each coastal region will be affected differently, it suggests. Winter precipitation is likely to increase markedly on the northern and western coastlines of the UK, prompting concerns that these areas will experience a rise in flooding. The east of England, with its low-lying and soft-sediment coasts, will be most vulnerable to erosion, with towns near estuaries particularly at risk.

Some 17% of the UK's coastline is already thought to be suffering from erosion. Five areas are identified as particularly at risk: south Wales, north-west Scotland, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, East Anglia and the Thames estuary.

One of the towns that will be particularly affected is Llanelli, on the Loughor estuary in Wales. The inhabitants told the report's authors that they believe many parts of their town could be under water within 50 years. Recent storms have destroyed the Millennium Coastal Path around Llanelli, while sand dunes at nearby Pembrey have disappeared.

Skegness in Lincolnshire is identified in the report as being at particular risk from sea-level rises and increased storm surges. The report warns that the town's problems are compounded by its "predominant architectural style, which consists of largely single-storey dwellings, meaning that residents cannot simply go upstairs to avoid floodwaters. In addition, there is a suspected 'hidden population' living in caravans all year round."

Another town identified as a key concern is Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast, which was flooded in 1953. A "near miss" in November 2007, when a tidal surge and high tides resulted in partial flooding, has raised concerns among the town's business leaders that its tourist industry is vulnerable to climate change.

The government has wrestled with the dilemma of how best to defend the UK's coastline for decades. For the last half a century, successive administrations have employed a "hold-the-line" policy – defending the coast through the use of "hard" defences such as sea walls and groynes.

Advocates of such a policy point out that around 60% of the best agricultural land is five metres or less above sea level, while 90% of UK trade comes and goes through sea ports. In addition to being a major tourist destination, the UK's coastline is also home to internationally significant wetlands and habitats for major bird populations. Around 10% of Britain's nature reserves are located near the coast.

Recently ministers have questioned whether maintaining this approach is cost-effective in the long term as sea levels rise. But Richardson said it was vital that the government provided coastal communities with adequate resources to combat the new threats posed by climate change.

"We are an island nation; we live and die by the sea," he said. "Even if protecting the coastline does not make sense in cost-benefit terms, it is vital to our national character and identity."

Jamie Doward

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Hollywood turns to classic fairytales

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:14 PM PST

Studios and A-list actors are banking on updated versions of fairytale favourites to explore darker themes about sexuality that will appeal to today's teenage audiences

Prepare for a fairytale invasion. Hollywood movie studios, in their constant quest for remakes and modern spins on old stories, are about to unleash a new wave of film versions of ancient European folktales.

The list includes an updated version of Little Red Riding Hood, two films based on the Snow White story, a movie of the old English fable Jack and the Beanstalk, a 3D Pinocchio, a version of Beauty and the Beast set in modern America called Beastly, and the unusually titled Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

The recent release of a new Disney cartoon version of the Rapunzel story called Tangled will be followed this weekend by the release of Beastly, whose monster is a high-school jock magically turned into an ugly freak due to his vanity and arrogance.

But the fairytale revolution will really get into top gear with the debut in the US of Little Red Riding Hood, starring the rising young actress Amanda Seyfried.

Like many of the coming rush of fairytale films, the movie takes the format of an ancient folktale, set in a village in a deep forest menaced by a predatory wolf, and gives it a contemporary feel.

In this case the project is clearly aimed at a teenage audience obsessed with awakening sexuality and the supernatural. Its director is Catherine Hardwicke of the hit vampire movie Twilight. "This Little Red Riding Hood looks completely made for the Twilight generation. It looks like it is teenage angst and very pale people," said Professor Jonathan Gray, a popular culture expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The new films are attracting some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Jack the Giant Killer, which is to be directed by Bryan Singer, features Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci and Bill Nighy. The Hansel and Gretel film has signed up British actress Gemma Arterton. But perhaps the most anticipated are the twin Snow White films. Snow White and the Huntsman has Charlize Theron playing the villainous Queen, while Julia Roberts – still perhaps the biggest female star in Hollywood – has taken the same role in The Brothers Grimm: Snow White. "Julia was our first and only choice to play the Queen. She is an icon, and we know that she will make this role her own," said producer Ryan Kavanaugh.

Nor is it just A-list actors who are being drawn to the genre. One of the main forces behind the new Pinocchio is the top Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who is famed for his dark, fantastical visions. They may be a world away from the child-friendly film versions of the legend that most people are familiar with, but experts say his role in the new venture is no surprise.

Though previous Hollywood treatments of fairytales, such as the classic 1937 Snow White cartoon, have often been aimed squarely at family audiences, the ancient stories offer a wealth of opportunities to probe much darker themes. Beneath the magical surface of a fairytale, with its castles and princesses, often lurk ideas around sexuality, the dangers of growing up and leaving home, relationships between children and parents, and the threat that adult strangers can pose.

"Fairytales can be quite dark," said Gray. He pointed out that the idea of locking up a pretty princess in a tower – as in the story of Rapunzel – or putting one to sleep with a poisoned apple because she is so beautiful, as in Snow White – can be seen as conservative morality fables about the dangers of young female sexual power.

"There is often a theme about the threat of female sexuality. They can be about imposing rules and limiting sexual power with acceptable boundaries. When Snow White hangs out with men, they turn out to be seven dwarves, and so they are not a sexual threat," he said.

Such themes certainly seem to have helped attract Hardwicke to the Red Riding Hood story. In a recent interview with Newsweek, she said: "Why did she get in bed with the wolf … It represents a dark animal nature which is close to sexuality. In the traditional story, the wolf cross-dresses and lures her into bed. That's pretty kinky right there!"

But there are other reasons behind Hollywood's latest trend. Movie executives, faced with squeezed bottom lines and a US economy still struggling to recover from financial crisis, see fairytales as potential money-spinners. Hollywood history is littered with successful adaptations and the stories are already familiar to moviegoers, which means marketing a film becomes easier and cheaper.

"The entertainment industry's appetite is voracious for content, plots and ideas and these fairytales work. They've been around for ever," said Barry Brummett, a communications professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

Paul Harris

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Architects do matter, Mr Gove

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:09 PM PST

The education secretary claims architects have 'creamed off' money that could have gone to teachers. It's time he opened his eyes to the far-reaching benefits of a beautifully designed school

If Michael Gove were a building, he would leak. He would crack and crumble on faulty foundations. He would be windy, but also overheat. Behind a pretentious facade, he would be shoddy in design and execution.

So far, the secretary of state for education has had to apologise for the hasty and inaccurate way he announced the cancellation of school building projects, and been told by a judge that his failure to consult was "so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power". He keeps giving not-quite-true information to Parliament, for example that a college in Doncaster, a pilot project of the government, took an impressively short 10 weeks to procure. It actually took 22 weeks.

On 14 February he told the House of Commons that "it's a scandal… millions of pounds were spent on consultants" on the design of new schools. "One individual, in one year, made more than £1m as a result of his endeavours." This might be an impressive fact, were it not that he is referring to a case in Birmingham in which the sum was £700,000, was paid over four years and covered the work of five advisers at different times, as part of a programme of more than 80 schools, costing more than £1 billion.

Yet Gove presses on, seemingly untroubled by evidence, common sense or decency, with his campaign to lower the quality of the buildings in which the nation's children are taught. He has repeatedly attacked architects for "creaming off" money that could be better spent on teaching. He recently smirked to a conference that "we won't be getting any award-winning architects" to design new schools, "because no one in this room is here to make architects richer". The message is that a well-designed environment is an irrelevance: teaching is all that matters.

There has been talk that schools can be churned out in bulk, the way Tesco builds its supermarket or McDonald's its outlets. To dot the country with standardised McSchools is not obviously consistent with the government's localism agenda, or its interest in a "happiness index", but never mind. One contractor, Willmott Dixon, has punted some suggestions as to what such schools might look like. These look plausible, if drab, on unencumbered, level sites. But, like Daleks encountering a staircase, they need help when they hit a slope, or a constrained urban site, or the individual needs of particular schools. Standardisation has its uses, but it needs design to do well.

To Gove's rejection of design, Phil Blinston, executive head of the Minster School in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, says: "It's bizarre. I just don't get it. Why wouldn't we want to factor in everything architects have learned from other buildings? Youngsters are growing up visually articulate. Why would they not expect to see that in school? Why would you expect them to lower their standards?"

The Minster School has been using an award-winning building for four years, designed by architects Penoyre & Prasad. Blinston says: "Our results were good and continued to rise with the new building. Our behaviour has improved." It has good acoustics and natural light, which "have a profound effect on the emotional state of children, which helps their learning".

Its circulation works smoothly, without "one-way systems, keep left signs or massive numbers of rules". Hidden spaces "where vulnerable kids fear to tread" are designed out, so you don't need "people standing guard". It is designed so that locals can use the building in evenings and school holidays, so this public asset is used to the full.

"I'm not talking about fancy architecture," he says – and a limited budget means the school has a simple-going-on-basic look – "but it's about enabling people to feel good. Good design produces a relaxed community. If we say education is important, we can demonstrate that by putting children in decent environments." Buildings cannot do a teacher's job, in other words, but they can make good teaching better and bad teaching less so.

To which it might be added that, if environment were irrelevant to learning, then Eton College, the alma mater of many of the present government, would sell its agreeable slab of Berkshire real estate and move to low-cost units in a business park in Slough.

Gove is very much right about one thing, which is that the last government's £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme, which aimed to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in the country, was a monstrously wasteful and cumbersome process, which often led to very poorly designed schools. The "creaming off", however, was not being done by architects, who were, instead, among the first to point out the faults of the programme.

The main beneficiaries were the financial institutions and their advisers who funded the programme, who will earn handsome returns and bonuses for years to come at the taxpayers' expense. They are followed by the big construction companies, several of which were fined in 2008 by the Office of Fair Trading for breach of competition law – ie price-fixing – on a range of project types. They were, to coin a phrase, creaming off the funds of clients, including local authorities.

This unfortunate blemish has not impeded the same companies from securing huge education contracts, and it would be stretching credulity to think that price-fixing never now happens in school building. Yet there has been no ministerial slap. Rather, Gove's architect-free vision of the future places ever-greater reliance on the men with the hard hats, the handshakes and the plausible paperwork.

There are also the lawyers who expensively write and rewrite the byzantine contracts, at hourly rates several times greater than architects', and project managers, who do less, and less useful work than architects for a similar total cost. Worst of all was the waste inherent in BSF's processes: it cost contractors up to £3m to bid for a package of schools. They would expect to win one in three, meaning that they would want to recover £9m from successful bids just to cover their bidding costs.

Gove's department is unable to produce the figures on which he makes his assertions, saying that "detailed data on individual projects was held locally to minimise the regulatory burden on projects and project reporting". It is, however, possible to find out that architects' fees have been between 2.5% and 5% of construction cost. If capital costs other than construction are included, this can drop to well under 2% of the total. If, as happened under BSF, future running costs are included in the contract, architects' fees become a tiny proportion. Most architects working on schools will tell you that it pays less well than almost any other kind of work and is sometimes loss-making. One says that schools work "is threatening to put us out of business".

In other words, in the torrents of waste surrounding school building, good architects are value for money. If budgets get tighter, we will need their skills to make the most of them. If, as seems likely, future work is more about refurbishment rather than glamorous new buildings, architects' adaptability will help. If there is more standardisation of new buildings, it needs design intelligence to do it well. Gove seems to think that architects are all bow-tied ponces longing only to inflict their fantasies on the public. They could be his greatest allies.

Rowan Moore

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'The slightest remark gets me crazy'

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:09 PM PST

As her captivating new album shows, the Swedish singer is a lover and a fighter. But why is she so sensitive?

After the success of her first album, 2008's Youth Novels, Lykke Li went to Los Angeles to write the follow-up. She rented a small cabin in Echo Park and a big piano to put in it, along with an auto-harp and a guitar. "I didn't have a driver's licence so I was stuck on that hill," she says. "I could have gone on for ever, just hanging out, not going on tours."

Sitting in a quiet hotel bar in damp, grey, chilly east London, the 24-year-old Swede looks momentarily wistful. She's just flown in from Stockholm, where she says the weather is even more dreadful, and she seems tired. Her face is pale and her clothes – boots, tights, short skirt, jacket and woollen cape – are uniformly black. She mutters darkly about having to do all these interviews and despising everything she says in them. Another dose of California sun, I feel, would do her good.

"It's like the most exotic place on Earth," she brightens up. "I read this book by David Lynch where he talks about coming to LA from Chicago and he's like, 'There's always this beautiful light – it fills your soul – and the smell of jasmine.' My plan was to take a really long break. But then I wrote all these songs and it felt like if I don't record them they're going to be lost. I'm just going to get too happy [in LA], so I'll just do it, OK?"

She flew back to Stockholm, hooked up with her regular producer Bjorn Yttling, of Peter Björn and John, and took to the studio. Listening to Wounded Rhymes, the album she released last week, you can feel a cold draught of Scandinavian air undercutting the hazy LA heat. It is loose and dreamy with a 60s West Coast vibe – Hammond organs, shoo-wop harmonies – and the sound is more full-bodied than on her first album, but a melancholy chill permeates it. The lyrics throb with loneliness and pain, and – it's one of the song titles – unrequited love.

Was it difficult to make?

"No, it's easy to make a dark album," she laughs. "I love pouring my heart out. People don't want to hear you whine when you're with friends, so you can sing about it instead – it's the best outlet."

The first album was also preoccupied by painful love affairs, though sweetened by cute-sounding hits such as "Little Bit". At the time, she talked about a "really weird relationship" that had been torturing her for years. Is it the same heartbreak haunting her on this album?

She furrows her brow. "The problem is, when I talk about heartbreak or whatever, people want to melt it down to some break-up of a relationship, but it's not about that. If you're a sensitive person, just stepping outside can be heartbreaking."

All this makes Wounded Rhymes sound like a decidedly gloomy prospect, but actually it's a captivating album full of beautiful moments despite – or perhaps because of – Li's unconventional voice, which was childlike on Youth Novels but has become harder and huskier. ("I think I sing like shit," she tells me at one point, though her numerous fans might disagree.) And it's not all melancholy. "Youth Knows No Pain" and "Get Some" are rousing songs with big crashing drums and punchy choruses.

"Like a shotgun/ Needs an outcome/ I'm your prostitute/ You gon' get some," she drawls on the latter track. It sounds very much like a threat, but some have interpreted the line in a less complicated way. What did she mean by it?

"It's my comment on how men, and especially journalists, look on women and write articles about female artists," she says, fixing me with a flinty stare.

I tug at my collar uneasily. Could she explain further?

"How much can you explain? If that's what you think, if that's your opinion, then I'm your prostitute, you're gonna get some. It's not about sex, or being a victim, it's actually really powerful, you know. It's kind of like Scarface or something: 'You want some of this, I'm going to get you some of this.'

"I just want to be free," she goes on. "Men can be whatever they want to be. Like David Bowie. He can have no shirt or go dressed as a woman. Why can't I do that?"

Li doesn't conceal her distaste for the music industry and she has worked hard to insulate herself from it. She releases through her own label, LL Recordings, under licence to Warner Music. Does anyone try to steer her creatively? "Oh God, I could never let that happen. They want me to do interviews and they expect me to show up for concerts." She shakes her head. "God, I actually like it when people try to make me do things. I can fight you know, like waaaah, I can get crazy at one slightest comment."

She says that at the end of her last tour she felt like Muhammad Ali on the stage. I can well believe it. But now, on the brink of another year of touring with the new album, she feels "very shy and vulnerable" at the prospect of performing again. "I'm actually a really shy person," she says. "I just really enjoy being in studio, I don't go out much."

She was born in the south of Sweden but her parents, a musician father and a photographer mother, moved Li and her two siblings around a lot. They lived in Morocco and on a Portuguese mountaintop and spent a lot of time in India – a proper hippie childhood. "It was very free," she says, "but I've seen so much at such a young age and had so much freedom, it can be quite damaging."

In what way?

"You can become quite blasé, and also I have no sense of home, I don't have roots, I've never had that feeling that someone else is going to take care of me, ever. I don't trust people." She laughs, as if trying to soften that last remark. "But I'm a survivor," she says, "so I can take anything."

A few hours later, I go to see her doing an in-store gig at a record shop in east London. She comes out with a male backing band, all dressed in black, and sings a handful of songs from the new album. The audience are appreciative, but quiet. "You're making me nervous," she says, though she appears perfectly composed. Her composure seems, to me, a hard shell, and within it I can imagine Muhammad Ali lurking, ready to punch.

Wounded Rhymes is out now on LL Recordings. Lykke Li tours the UK from 11-19 April

Killian Fox

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India: smartest country in the world?

Posted: 05 Mar 2011 04:02 PM PST

From rocket science to DNA research, India is ridding itself of its poor country image. In this extract from her book Geek Nation, Angela Saini visits Lavasa, an emerging electronic 'dream city' where machines will rule

A1,000-mile stretch of high hills blanketed in forests near India's west coast is one of the most remote places in the world. There are at least 5,000 types of flower. Elephants, snakes, tigers, and cave bats all live here, secluded from the rest of India. Zoologists who have occasionally ventured into the Ghats have found new species by the handful. The mountainous territory is inhospitable. The second I cross into it, civilisation disappears. I can't get a mobile phone signal.

And yet here in the middle of the Western Ghats, in what can reasonably be called nowhere, I descend into a steep valley and find myself in what will soon become one of the most advanced cities on earth.

I first read about Lavasa in an advertisement in an inflight magazine, and became intrigued by what the advert claimed will be a metropolis governed mainly by machines. A central bank computers will control everything here from household security to the transport network. It's a half-billion dollar project to build, from scratch, an urban dream in the middle of the mountains.

Standing on the promenade in the heart of Lavasa, I have a vantage point across the entire site. Ten years ago there was nothing here but a few tribal villagers living in low thatched huts. They grow food by terracing the slopes and waiting for the monsoon rains to feed their rice and vegetables. And now they can be found on the outskirts, watching this city rise from the valley, like a girl gazing at her mother while she puts on her makeup.

If it looks surreal to me, it must look bizarre to the villagers. There are tall, thin, multicoloured apartment blocks in long terraces; they appear to have been lifted brick by brick from the Italian streets of Portofino. The opulent chalets above me, nestled inside the forests, could be from Bavaria. In the brochure, the Lavasa Corporation has used pictures of Oxford to illustrate how picturesque Lavasa will look when it's finished. It's as if the developers have picked the most beautiful parts of Europe and transplanted them here.

Right now, though, it's a ghost town. Work has halted while the Indian authorities debate environmental issues surrounding the development, though few seriously doubt that the project will reach completion. The city is eerily silent. There's a state-of-the-art hospital, which looks deserted. Electricity pylons stretch from here to the horizon, standing tall in the sun like marching aliens. The only building that could be described as remotely busy is the canary-coloured town hall where men in suits and sleeveless yellow safety jackets stand outside for a smoke, but by any normal standards it's very quiet. This is the opposite of an  Indian city.

"Indian cities have not distinguished themselves in the annals of urban management in terms of how well run they are," says Scot Wrighton, the American city manager for Lavasa, whose small office is upstairs inside the town hall. He's responsible for running the city until it receives its first residents and elects a real mayor. Although this is an Indian project, the developers scoured the world for an expert who knew how to run towns with western efficiency and cutting-edge technology. Wrighton, who has previously managed a few midwestern cities, was their choice.

I imagine that travelling from the American midwest to the Western Ghats must have been a culture shock for him. Many Indian cities are unplanned and riddled with slums. Affluent districts have security guards on constant watch or locked gates at least. Since 24-hour access to any kind of amenity, from water to electricity, is rarely guaranteed, people who can afford it have their own electricity generators and water pumps.

So the challenge for Lavasa's planners is to create a city that doesn't suffer from these problems. The way they hope to do it is by wherever possible replacing human bureaucrats with machines.

Miles from the reach of even the police and the emergency services, Lavasa is, by accident or design (I can't figure out which), forced to be self-sufficient. The chairman of the Lavasa Corporation, Ajit Gulabchand, dreams of turning this city into its own governmental entity, so it can do whatever any other Indian city is allowed to do, from providing healthcare and education to levying taxes. His ambitious promise is that Lavasa "will be a city that governs itself" using technology, leapfrogging cities in the rest of the world.

But this isn't just an idealistic community. Lavasa is also a profitable real-estate development. Mumbai is only a few hours away. And the nearest city, Pune, is famous as an up-and-coming IT hub. In fact, the more I wander around the perfect pavements and delicate fountains in the blistering midday heat, the more I notice how hard they're trying to attract the kind of nerdy IT workers who are working in India's booming technology companies like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. There's a videogaming arcade opposite the American diner. In the next few years developers will also be building a space theme park, masterminded by the same people who created the American Space Camp in Alabama.

This may be India's first city designed for Generation Y. It's a geek's paradise. And not only will the geeks live here, the geeks will rule.

"Electronic governance is really nothing more than conducting the basic transactions of government via an electronic portal," says Scot Wrighton. This means replacing paper-based filing, official forms and bills with digital ones, and transferring every point of contact between the government and its citizens online. The philosophy behind it is that automating the government can make bureaucracy faster, easier and more transparent. (The idea itself isn't new. About a decade ago countries around the world, but particularly in Asia, began putting these ideas into practice in earnest, using the terms e-government and Government 2.0.)

Here in Lavasa, one of the major companies responsible for installing and maintaining the technology is Wipro, one of India's big three IT firms. The linchpin of the e-governance system is a website through which residents will be able to pay their bills, access emergency services, report any problems, make complaints and do anything else involving the government's help. Households without computers will have a digital automation unit fitted in their homes to give them access to the site. The hardware will be replaced every four years or so, and the software will be automatically updated through the internet cloud. It's a "slimmed-down, more efficient" infrastructure, Wrighton explains.

The Lavasa public-relations team take me to speak to the person from Wipro responsible for installing the hardware. He's known here only by his initials, UGK. He won't tell me what the U stands for but the GK means Gopal Krishna. "Lavasa on a proactive basis would be looking at every aspect of infrastructure in the city," he tells me, "whether it is the streetlights, whether it is the roads, whether it is utilities. In the phase one, we would be having approximately 70km of optical fibre."

Metre by metre, researchers are mapping the city using a geographic information system. It includes water pipes, fibre optic cables, electrical wires, transport links, and the footprint of every building. If a pipe bursts, they will know exactly where it is.

UGK continues: "You will have smart metering enabled which will allow you to capture the points of failure on a predictive basis, a preventive basis. It will also exactly pinpoint where the fault is. All this would ensure that a resident at Lavasa would experience a very quick turnaround of faulty actions and repairs around that."

I'm impressed, but at the same time I can't escape the feeling that I'm being given the hard sell. Indeed, from the slick brochures to the manicured gardens, it all feels like a giant sales pitch. But I guess I should have expected this. If the Lavasa Corporation doesn't attract a critical mass of at least 100,000 residents, there simply won't be enough teachers, doctors, lecturers, shop staff and other people to supply and use the services. It will remain a ghost town.

The PR team and the staff continue to drill me with the idea that Lavasa won't only work here but can also be a role model for the rest of India. "We can't just cram more people into these already overloaded cities," says Wrighton.

"What we're going to have to think about is how to structure that and deliver those services differently. That's the laboratory of Lavasa. The vision of the chairman is that we can create a new governance model that can be replicated elsewhere. That's a terribly grand and idealistic goal, OK. It really doesn't exist anywhere else. So his idea is that we will be the laboratory, and figure out what works and what doesn't work."

He suggests that I check out the corporate video in the building next door. He's in it, he tells me, half proud and half embarrassed. It's as professional as a Hollywood movie. Over helicopter shots of the lush hills someone quotes Byron: "There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less but Nature more…"

Gulabchand appears on screen in sunglasses and a sharp suit. "Four hundred million people will migrate from rural areas to the urban areas in India over the next 40 years," he says, his thick, silvery hair fluttering as he walks past some bushes, the towering hills behind him. "This huge migration took a thousand years to happen in Europe. It will happen in India in just 40. India will have to expand its cities and towns." The solution, Gulabchand announces, is Lavasa.

The next morning I take a tour of the entire 25,000-acre site. Most is empty land, with only the odd bulldozer lazily nuzzling the dirt. Reaching the edges, where the black Tarmac gives way to dirt roads, we stray into tribal territory. The number of people living in Lavasa, I am told, will be capped at 300,000 to make sure that services aren't overwhelmed. The city will be a quarter of the size of Mumbai but with only 2% of the population. There isn't a town on earth I know of that is so tightly controlled that the size is decided upfront, except maybe a retirement village.

I also wonder what this means for the poorer families on the outskirts of the city. When the Lavasa Corporation arrived in the Western Ghats, 150 families moved out of the valley.

"They just moved from their land? Didn't they mind?" I ask.

"They were hardly connected to the city," a spokeswoman tells me. "There used to be a bus maybe once a day, maybe less." Now there are regular buses. And to help keep the peace, the corporation also gave them electricity connections for the first time, and built creches to educate the local children. "This is better for them," she insists.

I leave Lavasa the following day. Rushing to the airport, the driver is reluctant to take a shortcut. He tells me he's scared to go down the minor roads because people living outside Lavasa throw rocks at vehicles coming out of the city when they see them.

Some fear that the environmental impact on this corner of the Western Ghats may be too big, and that's why work is currently at a standstill. The Lavasa Corporation is waiting for clearance before it can continue construction, which, given the might of the project, I am sure it will do. But I wonder whether the geeky governance model being used here can be replicated, as the corporation seems to believe, or if it runs the risk of turning India into an even more split society by introducing a digital divide where economic divides already exist. Lavasans will be living their hi-tech, sheltered lives parallel to the forest-dwelling tribes just a few mountains away. For it to work, it would have to meet everyone's needs, not just those of the wealthy and privileged.

THE NEW GURUS: People in the driving seat

KIRAN MAZUMDAR-SHAW: Biotech queen
Named one of the world's 100 most influential people last year by Time magazine and dubbed "India's mother of invention", Mazumdar-Shaw founded Biocon in her Bengaluru basement aged 25. Her aim was to make drugs affordable to everyone. Now Biocon is Asia's largest biotech company.

NR NARAYANA MURTHY: "India's Bill Gates"
Chairman of Infosys Technologies, a consulting and IT services company with offices in 33 countries and some 128,000 employees. Founded by Murthy in 1981 with just $250, Infosys is based in a vast Google-style campus in Electronics City, Bengaluru's answer to Silicon Valley. Murthy, 64, is now worth an estimated $1.6bn but lives a simple life.

NANDAN NILEKANI: Socially conscious tech guru
The charismatic former CEO of Infosys helped move India into the IT age. Now he's heading up India's new ID programme, the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), which many believe will benefit the country's faceless millions.

G MADHAVAN NAIR: Space-race heavyweight
Until recently the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, Nair supervised sending the Chandrayaan-1 rocket to the moon in 2008 and 27 other space missions.
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MANISH GUPTA: Spoken Web prophet
Runs IBM's Spoken Web, a voice-based internet service which could boost the number of internet surfers by hundreds of millions.
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AZIM PREMJI: Modest IT billionaire
Media-shy chairman of Wipro who turned a family business that produced cooking oil into a software giant, after entering IT in the 1980s. Premji, 65, is, according to Forbes, the 28th richest person in the world but drives a Toyota Corolla and flies economy class. His Premji Foundation, based in Bengaluru, recently donated £1.2bn to education in rural India. Killian Fox

Angela Saini is a science journalist. Extracted from Geek Nation, How Indian Science is Taking Over the World.

Angela Saini

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