The Guardian World News

---

• 300,000 expected for cuts protest
• Syria uses deadly force on protesters amid spread of Arab unrest
• Clarke warns of new Lockerbie
• Japan officials fear reactor core crack
• O'Callaghan police continue search
• Sixth police protest spy unmasked
• Canadian government collapses
• 'Night stalker' jailed for life
• Irish village prepares to host Obama
• Portugal borrowing costs at new high
• Amazon village bans tourists
• They've got your number
• Interview: Philip Hammond
• Gruffalo author explains ebook veto
• Aestheticism's everyday mission
• Blind date
• Apple iPad 2: review
• Shirley Haasnoot
• Ottolenghi's spring onion recipes

300,000 expected for cuts protest Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:52 PM PDT Police braced for high numbers in London with 800 coaches and at least 10 trains chartered from around the country More than a quarter of a million protesters against public sector cuts are expected to flood central London today in the biggest political demonstration for nearly a decade. Police sources, normally cautious about estimating numbers, said last night they were braced for up to 300,000 people to join the march – far higher than previous forecasts from TUC organisers. More than 800 coaches and at least 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. The Metropolitan police, under fire for their use of kettling in previous protests, said "a small but significant minority" plan to hijack the march to stage violent attacks. Organisers, however, insist it will be a peaceful family event. Union members are expected be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters to football supporters and anarchists. Ed Miliband said the government was dragging the country back to the "rotten" 1980s. Labour is calling today's event the "march of the mainstream". The opposition leader will address the rally – his biggest audience ever – in Hyde Park to set out Labour's alternative to the cuts, accusing the government of fomenting the "politics of division" not seen since Margaret Thatcher's 1980s. His remarks are reinforced by a Guardian/ICM poll that shows the public divided over the cuts. Of 1,014 people questioned this week, 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% say they strike the right balance and 29% say they don't go far enough; 8% don't know. Two other polls put the balance more strongly against cuts. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagree with that view. The TUC organisers of the event said they had organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But with unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square planned, there was increasing nervousness that acts of peaceful civil disobedience could lead to stand-offs with police and outbursts of violence. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which is providing 100 legal observers along the route to monitor the scenes, said she had been heartened by advance co-operation between the TUC and police, but added: "Events around in the world show the precious nature of peaceful dissent guaranteed by our Human Rights Act. This fundamental freedom was hard won and is still much envied elsewhere. It must not be jeopardised either by over-zealous policing or anyone looking for trouble." Miliband said in a speech in Nottingham: "I thought the politics of the 1980s were rotten because they divided our country. I fear that this government is practising the politics of division." He argued that the government's policies divided rich against poor, public sector workers against private sector workers and north against south. "These aren't the voices of people marginal to our country but the voices of the mainstream majority in our country and that's why I'll be addressing the rally tomorrow," he said. He had been told not to join the march because of safety concerns. The Tories called on Miliband and the TUC leader, Brendan Barber, to take responsibility for any disruption on the march. Michael Fallon, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, said: "Under Ed Miliband, Labour are abandoning the centre ground, retreating into their comfort zone of left-wing protest and cosying up to the unions." Barber will tell the rally that no part of the public realm is protected from the cuts, highlighting the proposals to radically change the NHS. "Today let us say [to David Cameron]: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build," he will say. The bulk of the march will be made up of trade unionists, with virtually all of the TUC's 55 affiliated unions represented. Also among the marchers will be a coachload of mothers and toddlers from Hampshire demonstrating against the closure of Sure Start centres in the county. Catherine Ovenden, 31, said the decision to cut the service would have a devastating impact on families. "So many people rely on these centres and we are going to lose a third of them," she said . The demonstration is timed to mark the new financial year next week, when many of the cuts kick in. Research by the Fabian Society suggests that taken with the wider tax and benefit reforms announced since the election, this week's budget would in fact force large number of working families into tax, instead of lifting them out as the coalition has claimed. Tens of thousands of the lowest-income families will lose around 6% of their net income in the next year because of the government's tax and benefit changes with the bulk of the cuts kicking in next week, the analysis by the Fabian Society shows. From next week the childcare element of the tax credit system will be reduced from 80% to 70% of qualifying families' nursery bills. A family with one child and one earner earning up to £23,000 will lose between 5.7% and 6.4% of their net income, compared with last year. This would cost such a family with an income of £6,000 £1,362 a year and a family on £23,000 £1,710 a year. Public sector cuts Trade unions Opinion polls Economic policy London Public services policy Public finance Police Protest Polly Curtis Matthew Taylor Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Syria uses deadly force on protesters amid spread of Arab unrest Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:00 PM PDT Reports of many killed as marchers take to streets, plus confrontations in Jordan, Yemen and Bahrain Demonstrations in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and elsewhere were met with force as security forces struggled to contain unrest that had begun in the southern city of Deraa a week ago. Thousands once again joined funeral processions in Deraa on Friday, chanting: "Deraa people are hungry, we want freedom." Hundreds took to the streets in the cities of Homs, Hama, Tel and Latakia and in towns surrounding Deraa, with smaller protests in the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo, which are more firmly under the watch of security forces. Troops reportedly opened fire in some cases. There were reports that at least 23 people had been killed, some of them in Damascus, hitherto unaffected; the reports could not be independently verified. Amnesty International put the death toll around Deraa in the past week at 55 at least. Protests in the capital are rare and not tolerated by the Ba'athist regime. A witness told the Guardian that efforts at protests in Damascus were broken up by plain-clothed agents using batons. By nightfall, a counter-demonstration had been put on near the historic Umayyad mosque in the heart of the capital. Clashes were reported between anti-regime demonstrators and loyalists. A large rally then began in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Hundreds drove around beeping horns and waving flags, whilst posters of the president were put up in the city. The violence in Syria came after the government had pledged on Thursday to look into reforms. But activists using the Syrian Revolution Facebook page had called for a day of solidarity with Deraa. In the past, many young Syrians had been willing to overlook corruption, a lack of freedom and the slow pace of reforms in return for what they have seen as dignified leadership brought about by Assad's anti-Western foreign policy. He has also had a youthful appeal. Both appear to now be wearing thin. "Regimes become really weak when their image turns to brutality. The killings in Deraa have done that," said Ziad Malki, an activist living in exile in Switzerland. "The Syrian people want more now." Others agreed that a turning point had been reached. "Syrians [normally] never come out to protest. This shows how the killings, the worthless reforms announced yesterday and the government propaganda is insulting and is only making us angrier," said a 32-year-old man. The protests and revolts across the Arab world continued elsewhere in Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen. In Amman, one person was killed and more than 100 wounded when pro-government loyalists attacked a weekly pro-reform vigil in the heart of the Jordanian capital. The clashes were broken up by riot police. The violence was the first of its kind in Jordan in more than two months of protests which have seen the king sack his cabinet and pledge reforms. Islamic Action Front leader Hamza Mansour, whose party leads Jordan's nascent opposition, said one of its members, Khairi Jamil Saeed, 26, was killed by being beaten by police. "This is an atrocious crime and we blame it on prime minister Marouf al-Bakhit and his cabinet," Mansour told the Associated Press. "The prime minister and the cabinet must resign." Bakhit blamed opposition Islamists for the clash. "What happened today is definitely the start of chaos and it is unacceptable and I warn of the consequences," Bakhit told Jordanian television. Addressing Islamists whom he said were taking orders from Egypt and Jordan, he said: "Enough playing with fire. I ask you, where are you taking Jordan?" In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that he was willing to relinquish power but not unconditionally. "We are prepared to give up power but only to good, capable hands, not to malicious forces who conspire against the homeland," said Saleh after calling on young people leading protests against him to establish a political party and deliver a roadmap for Yemen's future. Striking a defiant pose, Saleh attacked those he claims are "conspiring against him", calling them Houthis – an armed clan demanding autonomy in north Yemen – and drug dealers. A few miles away, anti-government protesters staged their biggest pro-democracy rally since unrest broke out five months ago, in what they called the Friday of Departure. Tens of thousands knelt in neat rows for a mass prayer ceremony as a weeping imam demanded: "Why do you kill us Ali? Why?" A week ago, 53 protesters were killed at the spot by plain-clothed government loyalists firing from the roofs of nearby houses. In the Bahrain capital, Manama, riot police fired teargas at demonstrators who defied a ban on public gatherings and staged a rally in the Shia suburb of Duraz. At least 20 people have been killed in a two-month uprising led by a disaffected Shia majority against the Gulf island's Sunni rulers. Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus Syria Yemen Middle East Protest Tom Finn Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Clarke warns of new Lockerbie Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:23 PM PDT Muammar Gaddafi could stage Lockerbie-style attack in revenge for UK's role in Libya campaign, warns lord chancellor Kenneth Clarke has ratcheted up government pressure to depose Colonel Gaddafi by warning that the Libyan leader could stage a Lockerbie-style attack in revenge for Britain's role in the enforcement of the UN resolution if he is left in power. The lord chancellor told the Guardian: "We do have one particular interest in the Maghreb [the western region of North Africa], which is Lockerbie. "The British people have reason to remember the curse of Gaddafi – Gaddafi back in power, the old Gaddafi looking for revenge, we have a real interest in preventing that." Clarke says in the interview that the UN resolution does not support regime change, adding that he would regard occupation as madness. But his remarks suggest British ministers recognise they now have a direct security interest in Gaddafi's removal in light of Libya's involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 259 people on Pan Am flight 103 and 11 on the ground in the Scottish town. The justice secretary is also extremely frank in admitting that the UK government has little idea how long the conflict will take or how it will be resolved. He says: "I am not in the Foreign Office, fortunately, so I am not too worried by my remarks. But I am still not totally convinced anyone knows where we are going now". His remarks came as a Guardian ICM poll shows more people oppose British involvement in the military action in Libya than support it: 42% against, compared with 36% in favour. Asked about the purpose of British involvement, 80% support protecting civilians from attack by Gaddafi and 42% said the intervention should help Libyan rebels depose Gaddafi. Clarke himself contends that "the British people will support us for as long as it takes, so long as they think we are protecting innocent civilians, many of whom seem to share our values against an evil dictator". Clarke, who was an opponent of the Iraq war and a critic of "havering" over Bosnia, said the UN resolution on Libya "represented a significant event in the evolution of the world order". Speaking as the cabinet's senior lawyer, he said: "What we seem to have almost established in the international law is the humanitarian basis which can, in exceptional cases, justify intervention by the international community." He admitted victory would be hard to define: "ou cannot answer what is the destination, what it is going to be the moment when you can see the mission is accomplished. It is a little uncertain, but that would have been a dreadful reason for doing nothing." He added that no expert or pundit had foreseen the democratic uprising in Libya: "I don't think any of them saw it coming. I don't think any of them knew why it started or what started it. He said: "We have already achieved a great deal by stopping the imminent invasion of Benghazi in the nick of time. We would have seen a lot of innocent people, some of them inspired by the best motives, being killed and a quite lunatic regime back in power, acting as an inspiration to others who want to imitate him. So we have already achieved something." He admitted there was a risk that Libya could divide: "There has never been any love lost between Tripoli and Benghazi. I don't think at the moment, even on the ground in Libya, the average person who is shooting at the other side is quite clear where this is going to wind up."  Asked if the public would tolerate a long war, Clarke said: "We have strong public support – but, I mean, the invasion of Iraq had strong public support." The public, he said, "will support our participation so long as they are satisfied we are doing it for reasons we said and we are not getting ourselves into the occupation of another complicated tribal country of uncertain politics." He admitted members of the Obama administration that he had met "had not been interested in Arab uprisings", and had had enough of military adventures. He said: "We are not going in anyone's dreams, [going] in to start occupying the country. We have ruled it out in the resolution, thank heavens. It would be mad to occupy another country while we are in Afghanistan." Libya Muammar Gaddafi Kenneth Clarke Foreign policy Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Conservatives Aida Edemariam Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Japan officials fear reactor core crack Posted: 25 Mar 2011 09:03 PM PDT Prime minister urges vigilance after safety officials said break in nuclear reactor may have caused big radiation leak A suspected break in the core of a nuclear reactor could have been responsible for a leak of large amounts of radioactive contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Japanese nuclear safety officials said on Friday, in another setback to efforts to avert disaster at the stricken facility. In the latest developments, officials have said seawater outside one of the units has registered 1,250 the normal level of radiation, while efforts are under way to pump radioactive water that has pooled around the reactor turbines into safe storage. The BBC has reported that short-term radioactive iodine has been detected at very high levels in the Pacific Ocean near the plant. The Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, described the situation at the plant as "very serious", while media reports said that two men who were injured while working on the plant's No.3 reactor on Thursday may have suffered internal exposure to radiation. "We must remain vigilant," Kan told a televised news conference. "We are doing our best to prevent a deterioration in the situation, but we are not yet in a position that allows us to be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care." He praised the hundreds of Tokyo Electric Power employees, troops, firefighters and police officers who are struggling to avert disaster at the plant, and insisted any new information would be released quickly to the Japanese people and the international community. "We have been transparent right from the start and will continue to give accurate information about radiation levels and their possible impact on health," he said. Growing uncertainty over radiation contamination led to an increased exodus from the area surrounding Japan's stricken nuclear plant. Officials in towns across Fukushima prefecture said they had been instructed to prepare more shelters in anticipation of a new influx of evacuees. The Japanese government said it was considering extending its evacuation order to a 30km (19 mile) radius of the damaged Fukushima reactors. In Nihonmatsu, which is already housing 2,900 people who fled homes close to the reactor, officials said they were advised to prepare 10 new shelters for the next wave of nuclear evacuees. "We are preparing for more evacuations," said Hatori Norio, who serves on the town's disaster committee. The town is also preparing for the possibility that the evacuees will stay for the duration. He said the town had begun putting evacuees on the waiting list for public housing, recognizing that it may be years before they return to their homes. The government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said 130,000 residents in the area had been encouraged to leave to improve their quality of life, not because their health was at risk. The nuclear emergency, 150 miles north of Tokyo, has caused severe disruption to business, supply routes and other services in the area. On Thursday three workers were exposed to unusually high levels of radiation after stepping in contaminated water in the turbine building of the crippled No. 3 reactor, which they were trying to cool. Two received possible beta ray burns to their legs. All three have been transferred to a special radiation treatment facility. Kyodo news reported that the two more seriously injured workers could have suffered internal radiation exposure. "The contaminated water had 10,000 times the amount of radiation as would be found in water circulating from a normally operating reactor," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency. Nishiyama said it was unlikely that the reactor had cracked, but conceded that the unusually high levels of radiation appeared to have originated from its core. "It is possible there may be damage somewhere in the reactor," he said, adding that a leak in the plumbing or the vents could also be to blame. Hideo Morimoto, director of Japan's agency for natural resources and energy, said the water leak did not mean the battle to prevent meltdown at the reactor was being lost. "I feel that if the pressure vessel has been seriously damaged, then far more radiation would have leaked," he said. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far too low to be capable of further melting the core, officials said. Dr Ian Haslam, head of radiation protection at Leeds University, said there was a "real possibility" a hydrogen explosion at the reactor on 14 March had damaged the containment vessel and the fuel rods. But he added: "If there was significant damage to the rods and significant holes, the contamination would be a lot higher; we would be seeing a lot more steam coming out." Edano said the source of the leak remained unknown. "We are exploring every possibility, but we don't think this is a new situation, rather that a certain amount of radiation may have leaked from the reactor. This is a possibility that we have been mentioning for some time. "But at this point we don't know if the radiation is coming from the reactor itself or from another source." Nuclear officials say the leak may have come from pipes or the reactor's pool for storing spent fuel rods, which workers have been struggling to cool since the plant was badly damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. The reactor contains 170 tons of radioactive fuel in its core, and is the only one of the facility's six reactors that contains the potentially more dangerous plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel. Thursday's accident forced a temporary halt to work on two reactors while technicians check radiation levels. "We should try to avoid delays if at all possible, but we also need to ensure that the people working there are safe," Nishiyama said. The official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has risen above 10,000, according to the national police agency. But with more than 17,400 listed as missing, the final number of dead is expected to rise significantly. Japan disaster Japan Natural disasters and extreme weather Nuclear power Justin McCurry Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

O'Callaghan police continue search Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:02 PM PDT Forces looks at possible links to unsolved crimes after suspect leads officers to Gloucestershire field Police investigating the murder of 22-year-old Sian O'Callaghan admitted they were "stepping into the unknown" as they searched a field for a second body. Officers said the excavation of the farmer's field in Gloucestershire was likely to be a painstaking process that could take several days. Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher, who is leading the inquiry, said: "Until that has been completed we will not know what we are dealing with." Detectives from around the country are liaising with Wiltshire police over possible links to unsolved crimes or missing people from their region. They are known to include Avon and Somerset officers investigating the murder of Melanie Hall, who vanished from a Bath nightclub in 1996. Police have also spoken to organisations that help publicise cases of missing people. O'Callaghan went missing after leaving a nightclub in Swindon early last Saturday. She was found near Uffington in Oxfordshire, 12 miles east of Swindon, on Thursday after a man arrested on suspicion of her kidnap led police to the site. Fulcher said her body was undergoing a postmortem examination. The man also led the officers to the farmer's field at Eastleach, Gloucestershire, about 15 miles north of Swindon. Police would not give details about the possible identity of any body at Eastleach. They said only that it was thought to be that of an adult and they believed the case went back "several years". Fulcher said there was only one outstanding missing person in the Wiltshire force's jurisdiction from that time, whom he did not name. Police later clarified that this did not mean that this was the person possibly buried in the field. Sources also pointed out that they could not be sure that there was a body at the site. Local murder cases in which no body has been found include that of college worker Linda Razzell, 41, who vanished from Swindon in 2002. Her husband, Glyn, was convicted of her killing but protests his innocence. Razzell's family said police had not been in touch. The body of retired teacher Kate Prout has never been found after she went missing from a Gloucestershire farm in 2007. Her husband, Adrian, was found guilty of her murder last year but also insists he is innocent. The only Wiltshire person listed as missing on the Missing People website is a 53-year-old man called Anthony Fryer, who vanished from Swindon in 2005. Though Hall's body was found in 2009, sources at Avon and Somerset police confirmed that detectives involved in the case were looking at any possible links with her murder. The force already works with Wiltshire police in a major crime investigation unit called Brunel, so both forces would be involved in the O'Callaghan investigation as a matter of course. Detective Superintendent Mike Courtiour, of Avon and Somerset police, is the head of Brunel and the lead on Melanie Hall. A source said: "He would naturally be looking at the possibility of any links." At a press conference Fulcher outlined events leading to the arrest of the man now in custody on suspicion of kidnapping and murdering O'Callaghan. He described how CCTV footage and analysis of O'Callaghan's mobile phone indicated that she had left the Suju nightclub at 2.52am last Saturday and 32 minutes later was in Savernake forest, near Marlborough, around 12 miles south of Swindon. CCTV footage also established that a green Toyota Avensis was near the club at the relevant time. Further analysis enabled officers to identify the registration of the vehicle. "I believed that it was likely that Sian had been abducted and taken away in this vehicle," said Fulcher. He said police had concentrated on searching the forest and finding the Avensis and the driver. A man – named locally as taxi driver Chris Halliwell – was arrested in an Asda car park in Swindon on Thursday and a green Toyota Avensis towed away. He was initially arrested on suspicion of kidnap. But Fulcher said: "He led me to two locations, one near Uffington, where we discovered the body of a woman who we believe is Sian, and also to another location where we believe that a second body may be." Fulcher said he believed O'Callaghan's body had been moved to the spot where it was found. A house in Swindon continued to be searched and officers removed items including two spades. The suspect was being held at Gablecross police station near Swindon. He was taken to the town's magistrates court, where police asked for extra time to question him. A police spokeswoman said: "A 24-hour extension of detention was granted and the man remains in custody at Gablecross police station." Crime Steven Morris guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Sixth police protest spy unmasked Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:03 PM PDT Mark Kennedy, the first infiltrator to be exposed, says he may sue Scotland Yard for causing post-traumatic stress disorder A sixth police officer has been unmasked as an undercover spy in the protest movement as it emerged that Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, is considering suing Scotland Yard. In an interview with the Guardian Weekend magazine, Kennedy, who went "rogue" and offered to help environmental campaigners accused of planning to break into a power station, says he has suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and has been suicidal. His lawyers have been instructed to consider legal action against the police. The latest officer was reported to have been embedded in an anti-capitalist group for four years under the fake name of Simon Wellings. Newsnight on BBC2 reported that his true identity was discovered through a police blunder. Wellings inadvertently phoned a campaigner with the Globalise Resistance anti-capitalist group on his mobile phone while discussing photographs of demonstrators with another officer at a police station. The call was recorded on the campaigner's answerphone and Wellings is heard being pressed to identify protesters at demonstrations, according to Newsnight. He is recorded saying: "She's Hanna's girlfriend – very overt lesbian – last time I saw her, hair about that long, it was blonde, week before it was black." The infiltration of police spies became controversial after the identification of Kennedy and four others who had posed as members of a variety of political groups including environmental, anti-racist and anti-globalisation campaigns. The infiltration is the subject of four official investigations after police chiefs and ministers admitted the undercover operations had gone "badly wrong". Kennedy believes that other undercover officers have been similarly ostracised. "The way the police handled the whole extraction .. is absolutely thoughtless from a psychological point of view and from a safety point of view." He argues that the damage caused by such undercover work is too great, and that the police should rely more on electronic rather than human intelligence. Wellings pretended to be an activist with the group between 2001 and 2005. He always seemed to have enough money to go to many demonstrations in London, New York, Paris, Seville and other cities. Guy Taylor, a member, told Newsnight: "He didn't have much of a backstory. We never met any of his friends or his family." He volunteered to be the group's photographer and took "plenty of photographs". Wellings vanished after being rumbled by the other activists. The accidental phone call also highlights the role of police units which take photographs of protesters to be stored in secret databases such as Scotland Yard's CO11 public order branch. The other police officer is heard on the tape pressing Wellings to put names to the photographs, according to Newsnight. "Thing is we've got the CO11s. They're like – who are these people ? Do you know who they are ?" Last night the Metropolitan police said:"The use of undercover officers is a valuable tactic in the fight against crime and disorder to keep people and communities safe. "Their use is highly regulated and governed in law through the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and must be necessary, proportionate and lawful. "The deployment of undercover officers is also overseen by the Surveillance Commissioner who must be satisfied by their use." Mark Kennedy Activism Protest Police Simon Hattenstone Rob Evans Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Canadian government collapses Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:17 PM PDT Fourth election in seven years will take place in May after opposition parties bring down Stephen Harper government Canadian opposition parties have brought down the government of Stephen Harper in a vote of no confidence, triggering an election that polls suggest will reinstate the status quo of minority rule by his Conservative party. The opposition parties held the prime minister in contempt of parliament in a 156-145 vote for failing to disclose the full financial details of his tougher crime legislation, corporate tax cuts and plans to purchase stealth fighter jets. Opinion polls expect Harper's Conservative party to be re-elected but not with a majority, meaning he could only continue governing dependent on opposition votes. The opposition parties combined hold the majority of the seats in parliament with 160 while the Conservatives have 143. There is a chance the left-of-centre parties might join forces in a coalition if Harper wins another minority government on the expected election date of 2 May. On Saturday Harper will ask the governor general, David Johnston, to call Canada's fourth election in seven years. "The vote today, which obviously disappoints, will I suspect disappoint most Canadians," Harper said. Harper might be gambling that an election will confound conventional wisdom and hand him the majority in parliament that has eluded him through his five years as prime minister. He is counting on the economy to help him win re-election. Canada has outperformed other major industrialised democracies through the financial crisis, recovering almost all jobs lost during the recession while its banking sector remains intact. It avoided a property crash and most economists expect 2010 growth to come in at 3%. "By forcing an unnecessary election in this time of fragile economic recovery, Michael Ignatieff and his coalition partners are irresponsibly and recklessly putting at risk Canadians' jobs, our economy and stable government," Harper said. The opposition tried to form a coalition before, after Harper won minority re-election in 2008. But before he could be defeated in a no confidence vote Harper shut down parliament for three months and successfully whipped up public opposition against the coalition. The Conservatives accused the Liberals of treason for uniting with the Bloc Quebecois, a party that seeks independence for Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec. Harper's government is once again trying to marshal public sentiment against a possible coalition government. His underlings have attacked the opposition with accusations they will try to form a coalition if another minority Conservative government is the result of the election. The Conservatives are noting that the Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, will not rule out forming a coalition government with the other opposition parties. Opposition New Democrat leader Jack Layton has said he will not rule out forming a coalition with Ignatieff. Ignatieff took over the Liberal party in December 2008 and the election will be his first up against Harper. Ignatieff, 63, is one of Canada's leading intellectuals: an author, historian and TV panel regular in Britain before going into politics. Harper, 51, is a career politician who has spent the last five years emphasising a more conservative Canadian identity and moving Canada incrementally to the right. He has gradually lowered sales and corporate taxes, increased spending on the military and made Arctic sovereignty a priority. He has called Canada an emerging "energy super power" in reference to Alberta's oil sands deposits, the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and has avoided enacting environmental legislation that would hurt the sector. In foreign policy he has extended Canada's role in Afghanistan and been a staunch ally of Israel's rightwing government. While the Conservatives will try to scare Canadians with coalition talk, the opposition will try to keep the focus on the government's recent ethical issues. The Liberals were originally going to bring down the government over corporate tax cuts and spending billions in new fighter jets, but recent ethical issues helped them make inroads in painting Harper as an autocrat who shuts parliament when it suits him. Last week Harper asked police to look into the activities of Bruce Carson, a key former aide. Carson, 66, is accused of using the access he had to senior members of the government to lobby on behalf of a company affiliated with his 22-year-old fiancee, a former escort. The opposition parties were also united against Harper's latest budget plan but wanted to defeat the government over allegations it is in contempt of parliament. "There are only two alternatives here. More of this disrespect for democracy, more of this contempt for the Canadian people, or a compassionate, responsible Liberal government," Ignatieff said. Harper is a centre-right prime minister in a traditionally liberal country, and his plan to cut corporate tax rates has given the opposition, led by the left-leaning Liberals, an opening to argue that Canada is running a record deficit that will only worsen if taxes are cut. Opposition parties are hammering the prime minister for planning to spend at least Cdn$16bn (£10bn) on 65 American-made F-35 joint strike fighter planes, one of the biggest military purchases in Canadian history. Canada Stephen Harper guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'Night stalker' jailed for life Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:23 AM PDT Judge tells Delroy Grant his crimes are 'in a league of their own' and says he should face possibility he may die in prison The serial sex attacker Delroy Grant has been sentenced to life in prison for the 17 years of terror in which he attacked at least 203 elderly people in their homes. The "night stalker" will serve at least 27 years and was warned by the judge that he could die in prison. Grant, 53, who was convicted at Woolwich crown court, London, on Thursday of 29 charges relating to burglaries, attempted burglaries, rapes and indecent assaults against 18 elderly people between October 1992 and November 2009, was told by Judge Peter Rook: "Your offending is in a league of its own." The Metropolitan police force has apologised for blunders which led to 146 attacks being committed after he should have been arrested. The judge told Grant, a former minicab driver, he was a "very dangerous man capable of committing heinous crimes and causing incalculable harm". "You targeted elderly victims living alone. Your actions blighted the remaining precious years of their lives. Their homes, where many of them had lived for years, should have been their safest refuge where they could have expected to live their lives undisturbed and at peace. "You chose to invade their homes when they were in their beds at night. It's hard to imagine the extreme fear that the feel of your gloved hand and the sight of your masked figure looming above them must have been felt by your victims in their beds." The court also heard statements on Friday from Grant's victims and their families about the impact of his crimes. One 85-year-old woman, referred to as Miss J for legal reasons, said she still continued to suffer from her ordeal nearly nine years ago. She was 77 when Grant burgled and indecently assaulted her at her bungalow in Shirley, Croydon, in October 2002. In a statement from 2003, she said: "I have found that time is not a great healer. I don't think it's got any easier over the last year. I certainly haven't got back my peace of mind. Nobody can guarantee it won't happen again." Asked by the judge if her experiences at Grant's hands still affected her, Miss J replied: "If I go out I like to be home before dark. I do a lot of locking and bolting, and taking precautions … It changed my life." The judge paid tribute to Miss J's "courageous" testimony and quoted from the son of another of Grant's victims, who said: "It has ruined the winter years of my mother's life, and she has to live with this for the rest of her life." Grant received four life sentences for three rapes and one attempted rape of elderly women. He was also given concurrent eight-year sentences for seven indecent assaults, and concurrent six-year sentences for 18 burglaries and attempted burglaries. Courtenay Griffiths QC, defending, offered no mitigation for Grant other than to point out that his age meant he would probably spend the rest of his life in jail. The judge noted that in all but one case Grant targeted elderly people living alone, suggesting that his attacks involved considerable planning. He said: "Your offending spans a period of 17 years. Five London boroughs were affected by your offending. During that period your activities must have terrified a whole community, as your counsel accepted. "Thousands of people in south London have been living in fear that they might be your next victim." Crime James Meikle guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Irish village prepares to host Obama Posted: 25 Mar 2011 10:30 AM PDT Barack Obama's distant Irish cousin (eight times removed) helps village get spruced up as US president returns to his Irish roots President Barack Obama's Irish cousin (eight times removed) toured either side of the tiny village of Moneygall, picking out pavements to be repaired and houses to be repainted in preparation for the visit of the most powerful man on Earth. With a population of just 300, the residents will be heavily outnumbered by the US president's own entourage when Obama returns to his Irish roots in May. The village is bisected by the old Dublin to Limerick road, where part of the old homestead of Obama's Irish ancestors still stands. Moneygall has become a tourist trap two months before Air Force One touches down in the Republic. Henry Healy, accompanied by officials from Offaly county council, was helping to spruce up the village for Obama's arrival. Since the president announced on St Patrick's Day that he would visit Ireland in two months' time Obamamania has been building in this quiet corner of the Irish midlands. On Friday night the locals held their first public meeting to discuss the trip. Healy, who traces his family links back to the president's Irish ancestors, the Kearneys, was a guest of Obama when he was sworn into office in Washington DC. The president's great-great-great grandfather (on his mother's side) is said to have been born in Ireland. "Our family connection is very distant but … we do share the same lineage," said Healy. "Our ancestry is shared by the Healy and the Kearney families way back to 1761. Sarah Healy would be five-eighths grandmother of Barack Obama. I still think it's sort of surreal to say you have some connection to the president of the United States. " Healy said the Obama connection had brightened up the lives of Moneygall's people at a time of national economic hardship. "When the primaries started in 2008 our village wasn't like the rest of Ireland. We were not talking about recession or doom and gloom. We were talking about the American presidential campaign all the way from Iowa to the White House. It was a massive boost to our morale in these dark times." No US presidential visit to Ireland would be complete without a photo of him supping a pint at the bar. JFK, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have all been snapped by the world's cameras knocking back beer amid cheering Irish locals. Inside Olli Hayes's bar on Main Street Obama memorabilia dominates the walls, with framed pictures from his presidential campaign, paintings of the first black US president and the latest addition, a cast-iron bust of him at the end of the bar. "I hope nobody lifts that up one day and hits me on the head with it like they did with the bust of Queen Victoria in that murder on EastEnders," jokes Hayes. Another stop on Obama's Moneygall tour will be Templeharry Anglican church, just over a mile outside the village. It was here that Church of Ireland minister Stephen Neill unearthed Obama's roots in 2007. Inside the church, built around 1800, Neill produces the dust-laden parish record books which he used to trace Obama's lineage to the village. "We have the baptismal records which include the Kearney relatives and back in April 2007 it transpired that this lineage related to Barack Obama through Falmouth Kearney, who emigrated to America. So on these pews, inside this very church, the president's antecedents on his Irish side worshipped here on a regular basis." Obama's links to the Church of Ireland also stretch further south to Kilkenny city, where another branch of the family claims a connection to him. Jane de Montmorency Wright said she had traced Obama to the former Anglican bishop of Kilkenny, John Kearney. "The president's ancestor was a bishop here in Kilkenny city where he is buried in St Canice's cathedral, so there will be plenty for him to see," she said. Hayes and Moneygall's other 299 residents are expecting droves of other Americans to follow in the president's footsteps. A few hours earlier two couples from Chicago, the base from which Obama launched his presidential bid, turned up to have their pictures taken outside the bar. Barack Obama Ireland United States Family Europe Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Portugal borrowing costs at new high Posted: 25 Mar 2011 12:27 PM PDT S&P cuts Portugal's debt rating two notches to BBB and keeps it on negative watch Portugal's efforts to avoid joining Ireland and Greece in accessing EU bailout funds appears doomed after investors sent the cost of Portuguese borrowing to a new record on the bond markets. The resignation of the country's prime minister and a downgrade by Standard & Poor's sent the yield on 10-year Portuguese government bonds to a new high of more than 8%. With EU and IMF funds available for between 5% and 7%, there were growing calls for the government to end months of speculation and agree a bailout. After a downgrade by Fitch on Thursday, S&P cut Portugal's debt rating by two notches to BBB and kept it on negative watch, warning it could lower the rating a notch once the details of the European Union's permanent bailout fund are announced. Richard McGuire, a strategist at Dutch bank Rabobank, said: "There is clear scope for Portugal coming under yet greater strain should the country's politicians opt to defer requesting a bailout in favour of campaigning for a likely upcoming election." Markets shrugged off comments by Herman van Rompuy, the EU president, who said that European leaders gathered in Brussels had agreed a comprehensive package of economic measures, including a permanent bailout fund for the eurozone. Once it has been approved by national governments, the European stability mechanism will replace the existing temporary fund. "We will make sure that €500bn [£440bn] is available with triple-A status," said Van Rompuy. "We have agreed to ensure that the temporary facility has an effective lending capacity of €440bn. It will be in place in June." He also stressed the importance of credible stress tests to strengthen the banking sector. Six non-eurozone countries will join the Euro Plus Pact, introduced to improve economic co-ordination, – Denmark, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania. Portugal's crisis intensified on Thursday when prime minister José Sócrates resigned after his minority Socialist government's latest austerity measures were rejected by parliament. The country must refinance €4.5bn of debt in April, and is dangerously close to becoming the third eurozone state in six months to ask for a bailout. "Even Moody's, who downgraded Portugal two notches to A3 10 days ago, may have to consider further moves," said Gary Jenkins, head of fixed income research at Evolution Securities. "The factors that could push Portugal's rating lower according to Moody's are: first, the likely trend in interest rates the government has to pay to access capital markets; with five-year yields 70bps higher than they were 10 days ago this box is already ticked. Second, how successful the government is in achieving fiscal targets; there must be a big question mark next to this following the government losing the vote on further austerity measures,. And third, uncertainty over how much support the government has to provide to the banks. "The latter is to a large extent dependent upon the first two factors and will be adversely affected by the widening sovereign yields and political uncertainty. So it does not seem inconceivable that we see more rating action on Portugal over the coming days and as they slip closer to the tipping point of low triple B from S&P so it becomes more likely that they will have to request a bailout." José Manuel Fernández, page 36 European debt crisis Europe Portugal Europe Julia Kollewe guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Amazon village bans tourists Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:44 AM PDT Nazareth in Colombia says travellers don't spend much and show little respect to indigenous people The small Amazonian town of Nazareth is a traveller's dream. Wildlife prowls the surrounding jungles and indigenous inhabitants practise ceremonies that long predate the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. But it may be advisable for tourists to give the place a wide berth. Locals have declared their town off-limits to travellers, even though this stretch of the Amazon river is playing host to more visitors than ever. Their main complaint: tourists' behaviour, and that only a fraction of the money they spend trickles down to the indigenous. "What we earn here is very little. Tourists come here, they buy a few things, a few artisan goods, and they go. It is the travel agencies that make the good money," said Juvencio Pereira, an Indigenous Guard, Nazareth's unofficial volunteer police force. The town of 800 people, a 20-minute boat ride from the tourist hub of Leticia, takes its ban seriously. At the entrance, Pereira and other guards stand armed with their traditional sticks to deter unwelcome visitors. Nazareth resident Grimaldo Ramos feels that some tourists can't distinguish between the wildlife and the Amazon's residents, snapping photos of indigenous families as if they were another animal. "Tourists come and shove a camera in our faces," he said. "Imagine if you were sitting in your home and strangers came in and started taking photos of you. You wouldn't like it." Nazareth's actions reveal a split among the indigenous communities that live along the river about what role tourism should play in the region's development. With the rise of eco-tourism, this part of the Amazon, which joins Colombia, Peru and Brazil, has seen a flood of travellers arriving to experience the world's most biologically diverse region. Tourists swim with the Amazon's pink dolphins, fish for piranhas, hike through the rainforests and take in the sunsets over the mighty river. According to the tourism office for the Colombian province of Amazonas, the 35,000 people who trekked to the region in 2010 represent a fivefold surge in numbers over the past eight years. But as Nazareth complains, the indigenous people have so far seen little of the benefits, mostly just the sharp end of tourism. A common concern among indigenous leaders is that local children are adopting the outsiders' ways, with many children more comfortable in "western" dress and listening to the imported music of reggaeton and Colombia's vallenato. There are misunderstandings of two cultures interacting. What a tourist may consider polite curiosity about indigenous culture can seem to some here intrusive and even an attempt to gain sacred tribal wisdom. "We don't like it when they ask members of the community about our traditional knowledge and the medicines we possess," said Pereira. Other communities, however, take the view that the number of visitors to the region is going to rise, so they might as well profit from it. A couple of hours downriver lies Puerto Narino, whose mayor, Nelson Ruiz, understands Nazareth's worries, but says that if tourism is well-regulated it can help lift communities out of the poverty that troubles much of this zone. He added that visitors are expected to abide by certain rules, such as no drug-taking and no sexual tourism. Indigenous peoples Amazon Biodiversity South America Colombia Colombia Toby Muse guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

They've got your number Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:01 PM PDT They can dispense advice to heart attack victims or enact sexual fantasies with lonely men – but who are the faceless people who earn their living on the other end of the line? The call centre technician: Ankur Chadha, 34, New Delhi When I'm working, I use the pseudonym Alex Smith. Customers can't pronounce my real name, and we're encouraged to choose something easier. In fact, it's my job to assign aliases to new team members: I take their first and last initials, and give them a name that matches. I went to a convent school, then got a Bachelor of Technology from Delhi University. I worked with Hewlett Packard in Bangalore, where I got my initial voice and accent, technical and cultural training. You have to understand the psychology of the people you're going to be speaking to. We watched a lot of BBC and Discovery. I really liked Top Gear, especially Jeremy Clarkson. When I worked for HP, we would have 100 to 200 calls waiting in the queue, so customers were on hold for a long time before they reached us. There were 300 to 400 agents – it was a huge operation. It was a good learning curve, but customers were often very agitated by the time we spoke to them. The worst was when people would swear, using the F and B words. But because of my experience, I knew how to pacify them. The company I work for now, Go4Customer, provides technical support to customers across the UK, US and Canada, the Netherlands and Australia. When a customer calls, he connects straight to a technician. That's half of the battle there. If it's an urgent issue, customers sometimes are a little hyper, but normally they're very polite. I've had racial abuse once or twice. I try to remember that the customer doesn't know me. He's not attacking me directly. The day I start taking things personally, that will be a bad day. I love satisfying a customer. For me, appreciation is much more valuable than money. The NHS Direct nurse: Susan Lewis, 52, Dudley If someone's in severe pain you can hear it in their voice. You have to be intuitive, but you also need to probe and get a feeling for what's going on. We can't diagnose, although we get a pretty good idea what's wrong: if somebody says they've been out the night before, had a dodgy kebab and 10 pints of beer, you know that's probably why they've got an upset tummy. Abdominal pain is a common call. It can be due to all sorts of things – a virus, a gastric upset, gall bladder problems. But it can be cause for alarm, as can chest pains, which could mean heart trouble. We get a lot of calls about flu symptoms in the winter, and with children it's often asthma, coughs, colds, breathing problems. Dudley's a really big call-centre. There are about 23 pods downstairs and the same upstairs, each accommodating six people. We each take 30-plus calls a day, and you see odd things when you're looking around; people touching their heads, or rubbing their bellies, because they're trying to explain to the person on the other end of the phone, "Is your pain above or below your belly button?" We get frequent callers. They're not exaggerating as such, but if you say, "Is the diarrhoea severe?" they'll say, "Yes, I've been four times today." That's not severe. But it is to them. Then there are the people who say, "I don't want a doctor, just tell me what to take." They've got the classic symptoms of a heart attack and they're playing it down. The 999 police operator: Marc Hall, 27, Lambeth I've been here quite a few years, so I've dealt with pretty much any call you could throw at us. But when you get someone ringing up and saying, "There's a big fight in progress,", and someone's maybe armed with a knife, or shots have been fired in the street, it really gets going. You need to act pretty quick, keep the caller calm. A lot of the time they're shouting, distressed, and in among that we've got to pick out the information and get it to dispatch so we can get the police there. That initial minute or two can be an adrenaline rush. If the call is something serious that needs an immediate response, our aim is to get there within 12 minutes. We'll pass it to dispatch straight away, so they can be arranging a unit while we're still on the phone with the caller. I've had people ringing up to say the TV remote doesn't work, and could we come round and deal with it; or "The washing machine's not working"; or they want you to come and replace a fuse. It's not always elderly people, either. On Friday or Saturday nights, we'll have people calling 999 saying they want a taxi – or they want the police to come and pick them up. When people misuse the service, we do tick them off. The hardest ones to deal with are the abuse calls: the woman who has been sexually assaulted or beaten up by a boyfriend. Another one I had was a chap who came on the phone in a panic saying his baby wasn't breathing. That was quite a difficult call to deal with. I got the ambulance there, I got the police there straight away and luckily it turned out all right. But that initial bit, that gets to you. The phone sex operator: Karen, 31, Birmingham I have two regular callers who like to call me "mummy" on the phone. Submissive men are more common than you'd think – they make up about half of my customers. I don't get off on all the fetishes I hear. I have personal kinks – stockings, PVC heels – but if the person I'm speaking to is having fun, I usually end up getting into it. There's a guy who likes to dress in tights and be told to put custard down them. As long as it involves consenting adults over 18, I roll with it. I studied media writing and then worked at the BBC, but I left to do this. It's fascinating. Someone in the street walks by and you think, "That could be a person who called me the other night." It's made me a lot less judgmental. The most prim-looking person might have a little secret. My family, friends and neighbours know what I do. I have some friends in the porn and fetish community, but I'm also in touch with the people I knew before. I work freelance, under an alias: Kaz B. I tend to do the evening shift. People come back from a club, they haven't pulled and they're feeling lonely. Sometimes you have a good laugh, other times they might be a bit drunk and it's hard to get any sense out of them. But they seem happy enough. And they can carry on if they're paying me £2 a minute. I do draw the line, though. I had a guy asking if we could pretend I was very under age, and I did report him. I couldn't take any calls for the rest of the night, because that really upset me. Most of the callers are normal people. Some have fantasies they want to explore, others just want to talk. I've spent hours discussing everyday stuff, or counselling people. I wouldn't ever claim to be able to do the job of a therapist – I'm not qualified for that – but compared with a therapist, I make financial sense. One of my regulars says he's a much happier person since talking to me. At first, I could barely get a word out of him. He's very intelligent, into computers, but not very outgoing. Over eight months he's been getting more and more confident. Now we chat as friends. The telemarketer: Quentin Beddall, 61, Cambridge Telemarketers get a bad rep. People think it's all double-glazing and conservatories. I don't like to be pitched to on the phone at home – I tend to get fairly brusque with them myself – but we don't do that. We make business-to-business calls. I've been making cold calls for around 30 years, and I work for a professional appointment-setting agency. I work for a wide range of companies, making phone calls on their behalf to get them in front of business prospects. I'll make up to 150 calls in a day with the aim of getting maybe one or two high-quality appointments for our clients. Roughly 70% of the time we're selling professional services – IT support, software, digital marketing, web design – and the rest is product-related, for example, circuit-board assemblies, or bottle-washing equipment for laboratories. We get a bonus for each appointment we get, and we have a bell that we ring, so everyone else is aware. It's like the Titanic ship bell. Ding-ding-dingalingaling! When we have a good day, there's a buoyant atmosphere in the office. You can get a lucky streak. My record is five appointments in one day. I went home and celebrated. But for every day like that there are others when you don't get a single one. Friday afternoons are tricky sometimes, Monday mornings as well. We have rhino-thick skins, because it may take eight or 10 calls to get through to the person you want to talk to. Some people can be pretty shirty. They're irritated that you have the temerity to introduce yourself. Most of the time I hold my tongue, but if I'm having a bad day, I might talk back. Americans are my favourites, because they tend to be very chatty and they like to talk to English people. There was a lady at a big hospital in Chicago: we got on the subject of Wimbledon and I was on the phone to her for about half an hour, just chatting about the tennis. We got an appointment in there – we'd had such a good chat, she couldn't possibly deny me one. The cold-caller: Jason Clarke, 26, Oxfam, Bristol I worked in various call centres in the past – telephone marketing, that sort of thing – but when the opportunity came up to work for Oxfam, I pretty much bit their arm off. I chose to work for them for good reasons: I believe in what they do. People usually appreciate that when we call. People can be rude. It's rare that someone is abusive, but it's a pitfall of the job. Debates are something I try to avoid. Occasionally someone won't agree with the principle of international work. A typical example would be, "We need to focus on this country first." It takes a certain level of resilience to do this job, but I have learned a lot. Public speaking doesn't faze me any more. I'm better at building a rapport with strangers now, and being a little more off the cuff. I make anything from 35 to 50 calls a day, to people who are presented to me on our computer system. Their details are provided through data-gathering, so they're not expecting a call. We're looking for people to make regular contributions by direct debit, and the success rate is usually about three or four people in a day. My best day was persuading eight people to sign up. That was fantastic. I don't feel bad about what I do. If someone has a home phone line, then they have water, they have food, so it's justifiable. Because the people we're raising money for don't. Work & careers Nicky Woolf guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Interview: Philip Hammond Posted: 25 Mar 2011 10:15 AM PDT Andrew Sparrow speaks to the transport secretary about road safety, high-speed rail, cycling and using public transport It wasn't hard to find questions to ask the transport secretary, Philip Hammond. Transport isn't a particularly glamorous government department, but many people have remarkably strong views about cars, trains, buses, airports and cycling. When I posted a blog inviting readers to suggest topics I should raise, the response was tremendous. Our interview ranged widely, and here are the highlights: • Hammond claimed cutting fuel duty cut in the budget would not stop the government being "the greenest ever". Tackling climate change effectively had to go alongside supporting growth, he insisted, saying: "Anyone who thinks that you can do sustainable climate change agendas while ignoring growth and jobs is fooling themselves. If the public feels that the climate change agenda is driving a lack of focus on maintaining economic growth and keeping jobs, they will turn against it." • He defended his decision to reject the recommendation in the North report for the drink-drive limit to be lowered. "You can always improve road safety," he said. "You could improve road safety by making a man walk in front of a car waving a red flag. There have to be trade-offs. It's simply not right to say that anything is an absolute." • He accused the Sustainable Development Commission of launching a "misguided" attack on high-speed rail. "The benefits that we will generate by this strategic investment in rail are substantial, and they would not be matched by £17bn worth of micro-investments in regional rail," he said. • He defended the decision to scrap Cycling England. "We don't believe – and this is a fundamental view of the government – that setting up a quango and maintaining a quango is a measure of your commitment to an agenda," he said. • He said he could not remember the last time he was on a bus. "I don't particularly tend to travel by bus. In London, I tend to use the underground," he explained. • He said he and his Lib Dem junior minister, Norman Baker, agreed "on a surprisingly large number of things". We met in Hammond's office at the Department for Transport, a short walk/drive (see below) from the House of Commons. George Osborne delivered a pro-car budget and Hammond is seen as a pro-car transport secretary, although he strongly rejected the suggestion that ministers are backing away from their environmental obligations. For Hammond, it's all about balancing competing priorities. If ministers are either ideologues or technocrats, Hammond is certainly a technocrat. As you can see, he appears to view most issues in the transport in-tray through the cost/benefit prism. We spoke for half an hour. Here's how it went: Reducing car usage Q: Let's start with a general question. On the blog I posted inviting people to suggest questions, WillDuff [at 11.28am] offered this: "Is the government committed to (or even vaguely interested in) reducing car usage?" A: We're committed to reducing carbon, and those two things are not quite the same. In our urban centres, clearly congestion issues point to solutions other than the car. Beyond the urban centres, congestion is still an issue in some places, but carbon reduction has been the big driver of government policy around motoring, I think, over the last few years. The reality is that 84% of journeys are made by car. People in many areas of the country, frankly, have few practical alternative modes for many of their journeys. So the challenge is going to be reducing carbon output from vehicles, and that's why we've got a big commitment to promoting and supporting ultra-low emission vehicle technology, ultimately zero-emission vehicle technology, and we expect to see a huge increase in the proportion of vehicles that are running on electricity by 2020, and then an even bigger jump by 2030. The budget and the government's green agenda Q: You say the government is committed to cutting carbon, but my colleague George Monbiot has described this week's budget as "the blackest budget in living memory, from the team that claims to be the greenest government ever" because of the fuel duty cut and other measures. A: Any government has more than one agenda. It is about economic growth, as well as the environmental challenges, and you have to carry all of those forward all the time. If one of them goes out of kilter – and, let's face it, economic growth has stalled, and that has consequences for jobs – that's the one you have to light the burner under. It's a bit like keeping a balloon in the air. You've got to light that burner, get it back on course, then you can trim again. But anyone who thinks that you can do sustainable climate change agendas while ignoring growth and jobs is fooling themselves. If the public feels that the climate change agenda is driving a lack of focus on maintaining economic growth and keeping jobs, they will turn against it. You have got to show them that growth and job creation can be compatible with the environmental agenda over the medium and longer term. Q: George Monbiot's argument, I think, is that being "the greenest government ever" has dropped off the agenda entirely. A: I think that's very unfair. When you look at things like the green investment bank, the impact the Green Deal will have, the work we are doing in this department on ultra-low emission vehicle and rail electrification – these are longer-term agendas. What has the budget done? It has done some medium-term things around supporting economic growth, deregulating to make life easier for businesses, sending corporate tax signals. But it has also done some very short-term things to respond to the pressure that family budgets are under. Government is about balancing the different arguments and different agendas. I don't think he should see that as any lack of commitment to the environmental agenda. Far from it. Q: So the government is still on course to be the greenest government ever? A: I think it is, yes. I don't think that means it has to be a government that ignores and fails to respond to the challenges that arise to the growth agenda and the job creation agenda, which are also very important. High-speed rail Q: This takes us to high-speed rail. One of the readers who posted on the blog [Matthew Sinclair, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, at 10.51am] wanted me to ask you this: "Why should environmentalists support a project that will spend £17bn and not cut emissions when many other investments would cut emissions at lower cost?" A: There's a slight misnomer here, "not cut emissions". The average level of emissions based on the current grid carbon density will not go down. The number of seats – ie, potentially people – being moved for that level of carbon will go up very significantly. So the absolute carbon output doesn't go down until we decarbonise the grid, which, of course, we have to do. Then, once you've got an electrified railway, the carbon footprint of the railway will decline as the grid decarbonises. But you are getting an awful lot more seats. Q: Aren't there things you could do in the short term that would have a much more immediate effect on carbon emissions? A: Depends what you mean by the short term. Q: Well, less than 15 years. A: We have to create this additional rail capacity that HS2 [high speed rail two – HS1 is the link from London to the Channel Tunnel] is going to deliver. We are going to run out of capacity on the West Coast mainline. So we have to deliver that additional capacity anyway. It isn't about the £17bn sitting in a pot now, "what might we spent it on", that type of approach. We have to make this investment in additional rail capacity. By going high speed, and by delivering the reduced journey time between cities like Manchester and London, Glasgow and London, we will start to take some significant volumes of traffic out of the air and off the roads, and that is a carbon positive aspect of HS2. Q: But how will the link to Birmingham take traffic out of the air? A: We're not going [just] to Birmingham. We're going to Manchester and Leeds. We've made that very clear. This is a Manchester and Leeds project, not just a Birmingham project. Q: This week, the Sustainable Development Commission said HS2 was a "big vanity project". Andrew Lee, its director, was quoted in the Times [paywall] as saying: "Too much is being spent on these big vanity projects, such as high speed two, and not enough on local schemes that will offer practical benefits in people's daily lives." What did you feel about that? A: I did read that. What did I think about it? I shall be diplomatic. I think it was misguided. Q: Why? A: First of all, we are spending money on local rail schemes. But this is a strategic project and there isn't an option that says "we won't do this strategic project, we'll spend this money on lots of tiny little local rail projects". This is about transformational change in the way Britain works, bringing the journey time and the effective distance between the northern populations centres and London down, creating greater connectivity in the economy, improving productivity because of that, deepening labour markets. These are big strategic challenges. And the benefits that we will generate by this strategic investment in rail are substantial and they would not be matched by £17bn's worth of micro-investments in regional rail. People say to me: "Why don't you invest in branch lines?" It wouldn't deliver the same kind of environmental return that investment in the high-speed rail will deliver. Q: On productivity, Matthew Sinclair wanted to know what assessment you have done of how productive people are when they are on trains. People work on laptops on trains, and so they are not necessarily wasting time. A: If he had read the consultation documents, he would have seen that we've taken that argument, that was put forward after the previous government's HS2 consultation, on board to a certain extent. I accept that time spent on trains is not entirely wasted time. What HS2 has done is modelled a series of scenarios using different assumptions about how much of the time you spend on a train is useful and what percentage utilisation you make of time compared to being in the office. We did a rather uncontrolled experiment the other day and we discovered that, actually, because of the repeated failure of calls when you are on a train, it isn't as productive by a long chalk as time spent in the office. But it is usable. It's not wasted time. It's there for anyone to look at who's interested. [See page 50 of the HS2 consultation document]. The important point is that, if you attribute value to usable time on a train, then you also get pretty quickly to a point where overcrowding erodes that value, because how much work you can do on a train depends on the conditions you're in. If you're sitting at a table all on your own, you get some pretty good quality working time. If there are four people at the table, there will be quite a lot of things that you can't do. If you're standing in the corridor, almost certainly you won't be using that time productively. Part of the model benefits of HS2 are the reductions in overcrowding on the West Coast mainline. Q: Because traffic is being taken onto the new line. A: Yes – and the West Coast mainline is going to become completely saturated by the early years of the next decade. You will have people standing on trains. You get a compensating benefit [from HS2], in the freed capacity, and greater value of time, for people travelling on the West Coast mainline. What the antis are hoping to do is to erode the value of the benefit of time saving. But you've got to add in the counter-balancing benefits of improving the quality of the time that people on the West Coast mainline, who will be increasingly overcrowded, will get from the decrowding effect. This is all on the consultation website. They have done the work, and they explain how we rebut the value of time argument. Q: When will the legislation for HS2 come to parliament? A: The consultation will close in July. We will respond to the consultation and make our decision in December. There is then, assuming the decision is to go ahead, a big process of drawing up all the technical and design stuff which is required for the hybrid bill process. [Hybrid bills are different from the public bills normally used when the government passes legislation because they deal with decisions affecting private interests. The procedural rules are different]. It would be 2013 before a hybrid bill was introduced. We would expected to have it on the statute book by spring of 2015, just before the general election. Q: Will government MPs with a particular constituency interest be allowed to vote against? A: That's not my call. I'm expecting this bill to go through parliament with cross-party support, and therefore it not to be something that will be vulnerable to the parliamentary process. Q: And are you confident there won't be resignations from government over it? [Last year it was reported that three ministers had threatened to resign over HS2]. A: I hope there won't be. I don't think that's necessary. Those of my colleagues who are in government whose constituents have a strong view on this will argue the case on their constituents' behalf. It would be a rather harsh constituent who judged that, having vigorously argued the case but failing to carry the day, one had an obligation to resign. I don't think that's a reasonable view at all. I can assure you that those of my colleagues who represent areas affected are – vigorous would be an understatement – in presenting their case. Drink-driving Q: There were various comments on the blog about your announcement this week about drink-driving. [Hammond rejected the proposal in the North review that the blood alcohol limit should be cut from 80mg to 50mg.] Here's one [from Kevin23, at 2.03pm]: "What argument could have been so overwhelming that it compelled him to fly in the face of the medical community, road safety charity Brake, the parliamentary council for transport safety, the AA, RAC, the transport select committee and the weight of public opinion and to reject the recommendations in [the North report] which experts argue would save 168 lives?" A: Well, he's wrong about the transport select committee, because the transport select committee recommended that I should do exactly what I've done. Q: It did say that over time the drink-drive limit should be lowered [in a report published last year]. A: It said that it thinks that, ultimately, in the very long term, there should be an aspiration to get to zero. Q: Is that your policy too? A: No, I haven't set out a very long term aspiration. I have dealt with the immediate recommendations of North. But most of those organisations you've listed are focused on one aspect, that is safety. And you can always improve road safety. You could improve road safety by making a man walk in front of a car waving a red flag. There have to be trade-offs. It's simply not right to say that anything is an absolute. We are in a resource-contained environment. We looked at how best to deploy the resources available to tackle what are two recognised and identified problems. We have made huge strides on drink-driving already. But we recognise there are still a group of people who are massively abusing the law. Forty per cent of people who are tested positive are more than two and a half times over the limit. These are not people who went out for a glass of wine and accidentally had two. These are people who went out and drank five, six, seven pints, half a bottle of vodka, and then drove home. And those people, we do not believe, are going to change their behaviour just because you drop the limit from 80mg to 50mg. They are completely disregarding the limit. The only thing that is going to change their behaviour is the thought that they might get caught. We looked at the resource implications of lowering the limit, stretching the police resources, judicial resources, much more thinly, and we decided that would not be the right thing to do, focusing the police on people who are at the lowest end of the risk spectrum, currently on the lawful side of the threshold. What we should be doing is focusing police and judicial resources on the most dangerous end of the risk spectrum, on people who are repeatedly and blatantly ignoring the currently law. That's what we decided to do, with a series of measures that will make it easier for the police to target and deal with drink-drivers, that will close some loopholes in the current law that allow those who understand them and know them sometimes to escape proper punishment for breaking the law. And the second point is that the offence of drug-driving, which is every bit as dangerous as drink-driving, is at the moment almost entirely unprosecuted, because the police face some quite significant technical challenges in prosecuting drug driving cases. We decided to focus resources on making drug-driving a more clear-cut offence, hopefully getting to a point where we will be able to set thresholds where exceeding the threshold is an offence, rather than having to prove impairment on a case-by-case basis, which is where the law is at the moment. Speed limits Q: Speed limits also attracted a lot of interest on the blog [from readers like birchbiker, at 9.02am]. Do you support the 20's Plenty campaign, which says 20mph should be the speed limit in built-up areas? A: Not on a blanket basis like that, no. Almost any campaign or proposal that says "you should always do x in every place" is almost certainly going to be the wrong answer. Things like speed limits, whether you are talking about higher speed limits on motorways or lower speed limits in residential areas, should be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Q: Do you think 20mph limits should be used more often? A: This is an issue for local authorities to determine on a case-by-case basis. What we should do is provide them with clearer guidance about how it is appropriate to reach decisions on 20mph limits and they should, in my judgment, reach these decisions by looking in a rigorous way at the costs and the benefits. And they will stack up differently according to what the area is. Q: What about increasing the speed limit to 80mph on motorways, which is an idea that you have floated ... A: It's the same issue. It's not about saying the speed limit should be higher or the speed limit should be lower. What I said was that we should have a consistent and rigorous approach to appraising proposals to change speed limits, so that we are looking at all the benefits and all the costs, and then make a decision. In the past, that is not what has happened. Discussion around speed limits has usually been driven by emotive arguments around, "this could save x number of casualties", without looking at the costs. I come back to the point I made earlier. You could always reduce road casualties by slowing vehicles down. Ultimately, if you have the man with the red flag, that would dramatically reduce casualties. But you would have some huge costs as well. Q: For the record, where are you at the moment in terms of reviewing legislation on speed limits? A: We're going to publish a road safety strategy quite soon. This will be setting out parameters. We are not going to be saying "we think the speed limit should go up" or "we think the speed limit should go down". We are going to be talking about the way in which these decisions should be approached. Cycling Q: Let's move on to cycling. A lot of the readers feel strongly about this. A fairly typical comment on the blog [from jw4g, at 1.07pm] was this: "Why is the government failing to invest in cycling? Is Mr Hammond aware that other European countries invest in cycling for no other reason than it makes economic sense: cyclists on average tend to be healthier, visit their doctor less often and take fewer sick days (saving the NHS and their employers money), while cycling helps alleviate road congestion and air pollution?" There were also complaints about Cycling England being abolished. How would you respond to these comments? A: Cycling has a role to play in our overall strategy. It's part of the local transport agenda, and Norman Baker is very passionate about the role that cycling has to play. We don't believe – and this is a fundamental view of the government – that setting up a quango and maintaining a quango is a measure of your commitment to an agenda. We've absorbed the cycling agenda into the department's mainstream activities. We don't believe we need a separate quango to do it. Q: It is correct to say that funding has been cut for cycling, isn't it? A: We've protected the Bikeability scheme for the remainder of this parliament, which is a very important scheme which trains schoolchildren to cycle safely. Beyond that, the cycling agenda will be funded from the local sustainable transport fund, which has got £560m over the four years of the spending review period. Q: Do you cycle yourself? A: Not in London. I have a bike in my house in Surrey. Building new runways Q: You're opposed to new runways and airports in the south east of England. Boris Johnson thinks you're wrong. In January he published a report calling for more airport capacity and at the time he said: "One statistic which should chill business people in the City and the country is London's airport can send just five flights to China a day, Paris sends 11, Frankfurt sends 10." What do you say to that argument? A: We are focused on the economic competitiveness issues around airports and airport capacity and we are launching a consultation next week on aviation strategy post the decision on the runways to re-engage with the industry about how we can support the industry, but recognising the environment constraints that aviation has to address. It has to address the carbon challenge. It has to address the local environmental burden that it imposes. Q: In your mind, is the moratorium on new runways permanent? Or can you ever envisage a time when there might be a case for building another one in the south east? A: It's an interesting question to pose. Could it ever be the case? I pose the counter question. What would the argument against a runway be if aviation at some point in the future had become carbon-free and silent, or virtually silent? I assume the objection to runways by rational people is that aeroplanes pollute and create carbon and that they are noisy. It's a bit like the motoring question you asked me earlier. You have to distinguish what we're really fighting. I think the agenda on aviation is noise and carbon, and some other local pollution effects. It isn't "flying is bad". It's "carbon is bad" and "aircraft noise is bad". And, in motoring, it isn't that driving is bad, or private vehicles are bad. It's the carbon they produce and the congestion they deliver are the bads we're trying to deal with. It would be helpful to get the aviation agenda focused on what we trying to achieve. Using public transport Q: How much public transport do you use personally? A: Normally when I travel out of London, I travel by train whenever I go on a regional trip. Not normally, invariably. I once went by car to Southampton. But normally we always go by train. Q: In that case, one of the readers on the blog [ofap, at 4.07pm] asked when did you last travel second class by train, and what was it like? A: Just over two weeks ago. It was fine. It was a Midland mainline journey from Derby to London. I was travelling with the chancellor. Q: And he or she asked the same question about when you last travelled by bus. A: That's probably more challenging. I don't particularly tend to travel by bus. In London I tend to use the Underground. I'm not a great bus user. I could not, offhand, tell you when the last time I was on a bus was. Q: And do you walk from your office here to the House of Commons [a question asked by greenben, at 12.41pm]? A: Depends on the timing. I know it sounds silly, because it's not actually that far, but many meetings that I have during the day are in the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. It's not very far away, but it does take in excess of 10 minutes to walk it and, if you've got four meetings a day there, time mounts up. I've walked there today, for obvious reasons [the weather was lovely]. But other days it's pouring with rain, or meetings are back to back, and we have to use the car. Q: Do you get fed up with people moaning to you about public transport? A: More people moan to me about congestion on the roads than moan to me about public transport. Coalition with the Lib Dems Q: You've got Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat minister, in your department. How does that work? A: It works very well. We agree on a surprisingly large number of things, I think rather to Norman's slight disconcertion. Q: Well, not entirely. He told the undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph who went to see him that Theresa Villiers, the Tory transport minister, was sound on railways, that you were "more sceptical", but that she could persuade you to deliver "effectively what is Lib Dem policy". Is the department delivering Lib Dem policy? A: I think the department is delivering coalition policy. I think Norman is wrong about that. I'm a great enthusiast for railways. But I'm a railway realist. People who come to me and say: 'If you're an enthusiast for railways, you have to be in favour of reopening branch lines all over the country', frankly, it's for the birds. The challenge is to make the railway we've got sustainable. That means reducing the level of public subsidy needed over time and reducing the pressure on fare payers over time. At the moment fare payers are paying fare increases ahead of the rate of inflation. I don't think that's something that they can be expected to go on doing for ever. Therefore we've got to get the cost base of the industry under control. That's my prime focus at the moment. Q: Would you like to see the coalition extended beyond 2015? A: No. I would like to see a majority Conservative government building on the success that this government will have achieved righting the damage done to this economy by the previous government. Transport policy Conservatives Liberal-Conservative coalition Transport Rail transport Carbon emissions Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Gruffalo author explains ebook veto Posted: 25 Mar 2011 12:12 PM PDT Interactive apps are a bad idea that keeps children from the written word, says best-selling writer The bestselling children's author Julia Donaldson, whose signature rhyming picture books dominate top 10 lists, has revealed that she vetoed an ebook version of her most famous title, The Gruffalo, because she thinks interactive book apps for children are a bad idea. "I actually really don't like it for children's books," she said on the phone from her home in Glasgow. "I think there are lots of pros to ebooks but I don't feel we have to be controlled by technology and I don't feel we should say, 'Oh, that's the way things are going, that's the future, let's do it.' I think it would be great if there were lots of ebooks but there were also quite a lot of titles not available as ebooks. I feel if everyone just says yes to there being an ebook of everything, there is a danger they could take over." The UK market for children's ebooks and book-based apps is in its early stages, but Donaldson's comments will resonate because of her high profile, and sales worth £10m last year. Eight of the top 10 children's picture books in 2010 were by Donaldson and illustrators Axel Scheffler and Lydia Monks. Liz Thomson, editor of the website BookBrunch, says others share Donaldson's doubts: "There's a lot of stuff at the moment that we're doing because we can. It's a question of whether you can really add value to the story. If you can, then it's fun, and there is some really creative stuff going on, but certainly ebooks seem to me not so cosy, that there's a feeling of curling up with a book that you can't replicate, however good the technology." Donaldson was speaking on the eve of the Bologna book fair, which opens on Monday and where her publishers will be selling foreign rights to a clutch of new books including The Highway Rat with Axel Scheffler, who drew The Gruffalo. She says she does not know who owns the rights to develop her work for new digital applications. "I'd have to look at my contract – it could be that I haven't even got the right to say that, and my publishers are just respecting my feelings and not pushing me in a direction I don't want to go in. I'd have to check the small print." Several years ago Donaldson worked on an interactive CD to go with Room on the Broom, and she writes an original song to go on every audiobook with her husband, Malcolm. Last month her publisher issued a special ebook edition of the Gruffalo Song Book for Comic Relief, and they have also produced ebooks of her books for older children. She sees the practical advantages of digital publishing in terms of portability and storage. But she feels that time spent reading books is valuable, and that we spend much of our lives plugged into screens and headphones already. "The publishers showed me an ebook of Alice in Wonderland. They said, 'Look, you can press buttons and do this and that', and they showed me the page where Alice's neck gets longer. There's a button the child can press to make the neck stretch, and I thought, well, if the child's doing that, they are not going to be listening or reading, 'I wish my cat Dinah was here' or whatever it says in the text – they're just going to be fiddling with this wretched button." She compares the onrush of digital technology to the abolition of the net book agreement, which resulted in massive discounting of popular titles by supermarkets and a decline in writers' royalties. "I think it would be good if a few people like me spiked the future, punctured it a bit, so that people could say that with all their advantages, you couldn't get every single book there is as an ebook and that would encourage people to buy proper books." Kate Wilson, who published The Gruffalo at PanMacmillan back in 1999 and now runs her own company Nosy Crow producing a mixture of books and apps for children, says: "You judge a medium that is right for the work. I can completely understand why someone like Julia, who crafts every one of those words, doesn't want the rhythm interrupted by interactivity." But she says people will quickly tire of apps that are not interactive: "If parents and children are moving towards screens, I feel really profoundly that it is our responsibility as publishers to provide really compelling reading experiences that are at least as interesting as games. I think it's luddite and refusenik not to embrace where your readers are going. "We can't be a worthy antique as an industry – we have to go where people are. If we turn our backs on that, other people will fill the space, and they won't be people who've had 25 years' experience writing, illustrating and publishing the best children's books." Children's favourites in 2010 1 The Gruffalo Julia Donaldson 2 The Gruffalo's Child Julia Donaldson 3 Thomas to the Rescue: Thomas & Friends (Based on Rev W Awdry character) 4 What the Ladybird Heard Julia Donaldson 5 Stick Man Julia Donaldson 6 Zog Julia Donaldson 7 Room on the Broom Julia Donaldson 8 The Snail and the Whale Julia Donaldson 9 Peppa Pig: Little Library (various) 10. The Princess and the Wizard Julia Donaldson *TCM chart of best-selling children's picture books in UK, 2010 Children's books: 7 and under Children and teenagers Susanna Rustin guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Aestheticism's everyday mission Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:05 PM PDT The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition of the 'Cult of Beauty' reflects how art spread into everyday life in the Victorian period What was the aesthetic movement? If we do not know now we certainly will within the next few weeks as the V&A's latest blockbuster exhibition gets into its stride and Londoners are overwhelmed with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers and blue and white chinoiserie, symbols of an art movement gorgeous in its detail, shimmering in surface and verging on the decadent. Even for its admirers the aesthetic movement comes to have a rather claustrophobic feel. The movement started in a small way in the 1860s in the studios and houses of a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These were angry young reformers who explored new ways of living in defiance of the horrendous design standards of the age as revealed in the 1851 Great Exhibition. Over the next two decades aestheticism burgeoned, drawing in architects and craftworkers, poets, critics and philosophers to create a movement dedicated to pure beauty. The aesthetic movement stood in stark and sometimes shocking contrast to the crass materialism of Britain in the 19th century. "Art for art's sake" was its battle cry, a slogan that originated with the French poet Théophile Gautier. Aestheticism spread with a speed of conspiratorial excitement that reminds one of the radical art movements of the 1960s. Emilia Barrington, biographer of Frederic Leighton, himself a leading aesthete, gives a wonderful definition of the "craze": Burne-Jones painted it, Kate Vaughan danced it, Maeterlinck wrote it, the "Souls" (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to live it, the humorists caricatured it, the Philistines denounced it as morbid and unwholesome. There was indeed a conscious gloom to a form of art that revelled in love-sick wistfulness and tormented reveries. It eschewed mid-Victorian heartiness and cheeriness. This was a counter culture. Pickwickian it was not. First and foremost it was a painter's movement. Aestheticism combated the popular anecdotal, sentimental, morally sententious art of the Victorians. It had its own dedicated showplace, the Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street, which opened in 1877. The Grosvenor was a sensuous experience in itself with its palatial décor of gilt and inlaid marble and the greenery-yallery silk walls which showed off to maximum advantage the work of its star artists GF Watts, JM Whistler, Albert Moore and especially Edward Burne-Jones. One of the excitements of the V&A's Cult of Beauty show promises to be the reassembly of many of these then so controversial paintings. The Grosvenor held London's most must-see exhibitions and it became the fashionable talking shop. The gallery's proximity to the Royal Academy polarised opinion about the techniques and purposes of art. It was after the first exhibition at the Grosvenor that Ruskin launched his notorious attack on Whistler, accusing him of asking 200 guineas "for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face". Oscar Wilde chose the occasion of a Grosvenor opening party to make his first sensational appearance in London wearing a custom-designed suit following the contours and colour of a cello. Oh to see a photograph! The aesthetic movement frequently veered over into performance art. The cult of beauty expanded way beyond the gallery. One of the main tenets of aestheticism was that art was not confined to painting and sculpture and the false values of the art market. Potential for art is everywhere around us, in our homes and public buildings, in the detail of the way we choose to live our lives. Art had to do with architecture. The new Queen Anne style is visible to anyone who walks around the areas of London that were the main enclaves of the aesthetic movement: Bedford Park, Holland Park, Cadogan Gardens and Queen's Gate. Red brick, demure and pleasing: this was the architecture of the children's story book. The relatively plain Queen Anne houses of the period opened out into often breathtaking interiors. The aesthetic movement was lifestyle with a vengeance. It was Rossetti in his beautiful tenebrous house in Cheyne Walk, furnished with an eclectic mix of old and new and an ever-changing entourage of rather mangy animals, who invented the style later known as shabby chic. Following his lead, art became self-definition. Your choice of paintings, objects and interior decoration told people who you were and indeed who you were not. The most marvellous example of aesthetic movement interior decoration was Whistler's Peacock Room designed for the wealthy (and famously unpleasant) shipping tycoon Frederick Leyland. The large scale frieze of stylised peacocks, gold on turquoise blue, wound around the walls of the dining room in Leyland's palatial house in Prince's Gate, giving his guests something sensational to look at while they ate. These days you have to travel to the States to see this masterpiece which, after Leyland's death, was sold to the American collector Charles Freer and is now installed in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington. But there is an extant aesthetic-movement dining room much closer to home and indeed still in use. No visitor to the V&A exhibition should miss the chance of recreating the experience of having lunch or tea in the Green Dining Room, commissioned in 1865 from William Morris's decorating firm for what was then the South Kensington Museum as part of a new complex of public refreshment rooms. The Green Dining Room was envisioned as a place of enchantment, giving its customers the feeling of entering a mysterious green bower or a hidden chamber in an enchanted palace, as described in one of Morris's own poems. With its green stained oak panelling, its layer upon layer of texture and pattern, Burne-Jones's painted panels and stained glass, this is a prime example of the style of decoration that would soon be filtered down to middle-class "artistic" homes, not just in sophisticated central London but throughout the suburbs of most large provincial towns. As a style aestheticism was elaborate, allusive, extravagantly literary, infused with a love of the medieval, going overboard for the exotic and outlandish. But excess has many mansions. Another of its signs was an equally startling reticence and purity of whom the great exponent was EW Godwin, the architect-designer: Godwin's artist's house for Whistler, the White House in Tite Street, Chelsea, was an early example of fashionable minimalism, with its built in furniture and Japanese-style matting on the floor. Seeing it today Godwin's pared-down furniture has a peculiar modernity. His famous black ebonized geometric sideboard could almost be the work of the Dutch De Stijl designer Gerrit Rietveld. Similarly Christopher Dresser's beautiful angular aesthetic movement teapots could have emanated from the Bauhaus metalworking school. Dresser's almost modernist designs were taken up by 19th-century Sheffield manufacturers and made in some quantity, though still mainly by hand. Specialist shops opened to supply a movement which was all about individuality of choice. Here is art critic Julia Cartwright describing in her diary the delights of discriminating shopping at her favourite Morris & Co in Oxford Street: "There are lovely things at every turn, Persian potteries, hangings of every variety, cabinets and rugs and I fell in love with a sunflower paper at fourpence ha'penny a yard." Much the largest aesthetic movement shop, more a spectacular department store, was Liberty's. The shop on Regent Street opened in 1875 by the enterprising Arthur Liberty introduced London consumers to a vast array of objects and textiles imported from the Middle East and from Japan. Liberty was aestheticism gone commercial. The store registered "Art Fabrics" as a trademark. It had its own artistic and historic costume studio, specialising in free-flowing quasi-medieval Pre-Raphaelite gowns in dusky colours. You too could look like Janey Morris in a Rossetti portrait wearing a deep blue dress. In Liberty's wake a succession of smaller more experimental "art furniture" shops opened. Like the rush of little Scandinavian design shops that sprang up in Britain in the 1960s, a few of them flourished but most closed down fairly fast. The movement had its own intellectual underpinning. If Wilde, "the first celebrity style guru", became the public face of aestheticism, as the V&A exhibition curator Stephen Calloway claims, then its resident philosopher was Walter Pater. The Oxford don, a nervy bachelor and specialist in Renaissance studies, was far from an outgoing aesthete in himself but he became the revered spokesman for aestheticism. The Conclusion to his book of Renaissance essays, published in 1873, was seized on for the ardour with which Pater propounds a philosophy of beauty. Life should be lived for the seizing of the moment. No chance of experiencing exquisite passion should be rejected or passed by. "To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." This was a heady doctrine. No wonder aestheticism had its wilder shores. It so easily transmuted into decadence. It was also prone to extraordinary silliness. As a movement it was wonderfully lampoonable. It gave WS Gilbert his material for Patience, the popular musical satire on the aesthetes which opened at the Opéra Comique in London in 1881. Through his two central characters, Bunthorpe and Grosvenor, Gilbert gently pours scorn on aesthetic language and values and self-conscious languor, the floppiness and droopiness that characterised the craze. The costumes for Patience, which were custom-made by Liberty, derived from the flowing dresses of the maidens in Burne-Jones's defining aesthetic movement painting The Golden Stairs. The potential for absurdity in Pater's definition of aestheticism was grist to the mill of George Du Maurier, whose cartoons for Punch developed a whole gallery of characters in thrall to the culture of sensibility in which "too-too-utterly" were operative words. The gaunt and gushing Mrs Cimabue Brown; the ingratiating poet Jellaby Postlethwaite; the pathetic painter Maudle; the aesthetically aspirational Jack Spratts . . . It was through this cast of characters that many people first got aestheticism's measure in terms of its follies and pretentiousness. In one of the most brilliant of his Punch cartoons Du Maurier reworks a quip of Wilde's about how to live up to the beauty of one's teapot. One can think of design aficionados for whom the dilemma still exists. At the heart of aestheticism lay the unsolved problem of how to make beauty more generally affordable. This was much debated and became a source of agony to one of the founders of the movement – William Morris – as he realised his influence had actually reached little further than north Oxford. Morris & Co's main clients were the liberal aesthetic aristocrats and the forward thinking industrial tycoons. It was while working on the decoration of the mansion of the northern ironmaster Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell that Morris was driven to make his famous tactless outburst about "ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich". He had by then reached crisis point in his hopes for democratic beauty. What is beauty, after all, unless everyone can share it? Final disillusionment with the prospects of art drove Morris into revolutionary socialism. Did aestheticism lead anywhere? Of course it did. Morris's total despair was premature. The cult of beauty was certainly destabilised by the Wilde trials of 1895 and his subsequent imprisonment, events which bore out the public's worst suspicions of the sexual transgressiveness inherent in the movement. But this was really just a temporary blip in the socially progressive British art and design movement that gathered strength in the Arts and Crafts workshops and the garden cities of the early 20th century. In its essence aestheticism was a movement for reform and the project to infiltrate beauty into everyday life was still very much alive in the Festival of Britain of 1951, when Atlee's Labour government made a brave attempt to bring art to the people on a giant scale. The quest for beauty inherent in the young Terence Conran's bid to bring good design to the high street will be clear to those of us who remember Habitat in its earlier, purer incarnation. Now more than ever we have the power and knowledge to make informed choices of the things we want to live with, on aesthetic as well as ethical grounds. The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 from 2 April to 17 July. www.vam.ac.uk Exhibitions Painting Oscar Wilde Fiona MacCarthy guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Blind date Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:01 PM PDT Jennifer meets Tom. Was he bowled over by her passion for the horn, or was it the 18th-century French literature? Jennifer on Tom First impressions? Good – I'd been dreaming of potential disaster dates, so was pleased to meet a friendly person who didn't mumble to himself, wear mockneck jumpers or claim that life started and ended with his gap yeaah. What did you talk about? Airships (!), cooking (our lack of skills), holidays, work and attitudes towards winter sports. Any awkward moments? Not really. Good table manners? Impeccable. He was so quick off the mark serving me everything, I must have looked like I had terrible table manners. Best thing about him? Charming and polite. His mother should give herself a pat on the back. Did you go on somewhere? Just to the bar, because they were being so nice to us. Marks out of 10? 7 for a very pleasant evening. Would you meet again? Probably not. But I'll bear him in mind if I ever need any oil shipping. Tom on Jennifer First impressions? I had a feeling I'd come across her face before – thus a moment of trepidation as I tried to figure out if this Jennifer was the Jennifer I once knew. She was not. What did you talk about? London life, our slightly clashing careers, music (Jennifer plays the horn and the clarinet), theatre and 18th-century French literature (I think). Any awkward moments? When it was time to go, I thought it only right to offer her a space in my cab. It was not a romantic invitation, but she seemed happy to ride the bus. Good table manners? Oxbridge – impeccable, though a little stiff. Best thing about her? Easy to talk to, pleasant company. She's very bright, and has a real passion for the horn. Did you go on somewhere? I did. Marks out of 10? I'd never score a lady out of 10. Would you meet again? As enjoyable as our evening was, I'm not sure we will be keeping in touch. • Tom and Jennifer ate at the Mall Tavern, London W8. Fancy a blind date? Email: blind.date@guardian.co.uk Dating Relationships guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Apple iPad 2: review Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:29 AM PDT Apple remains ahead of the pack with the iPad 2, which offers faster web browsing, better graphics – and a really clever cover Apple chief Steve Jobs made a point of knocking rivals' "copycat" tablet computers at the iPad 2 launch earlier this month. Samsung, RIM and Motorola "aren't even catching up with the first iPad", he said. Apple didn't need to launch a second-generation iPad. The original commands around 80% of the US tablet market. It is less than a year out of the box. But when Jobs can improve on one of Apple's products, you can rest assured that he will. Thinner, lighter and faster than its predecessor, the iPad 2 has a smaller footprint than the original – plus two cameras and extra software such as GarageBand. At 241mm tall, 186mm wide and 8.6mm thick, Apple's iPad 2 is the sleekest tablet computer on the market. Its minimalist outer shell is complemented by a new "smart cover" that removes all the smears that come with thumbing and prodding the screen. Unlike its older brother, the iPad 2 has rounded edges, meaning it can be held more comfortably for longer. And at 100g lighter, it is noticeably more comfortable to hold than its predecessor, which could become uncomfortable if held in the same position for more than 10 minutes. The greatest departure from the original iPad is its speed. Apple claims that loading apps, playing games and browsing the internet are up to up to twice as fast as on the original. Certainly, internet browsing is the most striking difference. Fixtures on the average internet page tend to load all at once – Flash excepted, of course – and sometimes five or six seconds ahead of the original iPad. As an owner of the original iPad, I've never felt that performance was lagging (then again, I also own a 20-month-old iPhone 3G), but the iPad 2's A5 dual core processor makes it much more responsive to touch. The graphics upgrade is really only noticeable when playing £5.99 shoot-em-up games or streaming long-form programming such as the iPlayer. For most people, I suspect the greatest immediate draw to the iPad 2 will be the cameras. Apple was slammed when it didn't include them in its first edition and later claimed it to be users' most-wanted function. Sadly, the cameras on this device are left wanting. Leaving aside the question of whether people really want to wave a 10inch x 7inch computer around in public, the VGA-quality front and rear-facing cameras – for video and stills – are pixel-poor and not flattered by the iPad's high-quality screen. The rear-facing camera is put to best use with FaceTime, Apple's video-calling function. Which leads us to software. The iPad 2 includes a string of media apps which first-generation owners won't ever get a look at. Apple's popular music-making software GarageBand (which iPad 1 users can get if they upgrade to iOS 4.3) is great fun and a boon for those with rambunctious young kids knocking about the house. Warning: it doesn't come with headphones so don't turn the volume up too loud. Apple's movie-making app, iMovie, also finds a new home on the iPad 2. Precision editing was never one of the iPad's strong points – writers bemoan spending hours hovering over misspelt words before the cursor would respond to the change – so the iPad seems an unnatural home for iMovie. Frankly, uploading to the web or to a synced Mac is so painless that iMovie could happily gather dust for most users. (A new hall-of-mirrors-style app called Photo Booth is so pointless it wastes good real estate – it can't be deleted.) Despite the faster processor and enhanced graphics, the iPad 2's battery life is on a par with the original; long-life performance is one of the device's strongest selling points. My one qualm has to be the amount of time it takes for the iPad to charge – inordinately long compared with drain time. Apple's attention to detail shines through with the new "Smart Cover". At the iPad 2 launch, Jobs spent so much time demonstrating this magically magnetic clip-on sheath that I thought it would inevitably be a flop. In fact, the Smart Cover promises to shut out all the third-party manufacturers that churned out dog-eared cases for the iPad 1. Overall, the iPad 2 offers a string of incremental but important improvements on its predecessor. It remains a stretch ahead of the pack – though not quite "lapping the competition", as Apple would like to make out – and it is hard to find any serious shortcomings with the second-generation tablet. However owners of the original iPad should not feel too sore about the upgrade: you don't need to buy a new tablet. Those waiting to buy their first tablet could do much worse than the iPad 2. iPad Tablet computers Apple Computing Digital media Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Shirley Haasnoot Posted: 25 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PDT The Dutch take sex very seriously – and their focus on education for young children pays off when they grow up My son is three years old; he is learning to use the potty and brush his teeth at the moment. Next year, however, when he starts primary school, he will get his first lessons in sex education, during the so-called Lentekriebels week – the Dutch word for "spring itching" or "spring butterflies". This is not a joke, nor am I bringing up my offspring in a hippy commune. We live in a quiet middle-class neighbourhood in Amsterdam. Lentekriebels is a government-subsidised project for children aged four to 12 that takes place every year in hundreds of primary schools all over the Netherlands. This year's Lentekriebels has just finished, with an exhibition about relationships and sexuality in hundreds of schools all over the Netherlands. My son won't bring home the leaflet "Sex Yes, Worries No", about the use of contraceptives, until he is at least 10. He wouldn't be able to read it at the moment anyway. But his teachers will be talking about cuddling, friendship, newborn lambs in the fields and the differences between boys and girls. And his class might be visited by pregnant women and nursing mothers with their babies. The Netherlands has a lurid reputation abroad when it comes to sex. Everyone knows about the red light district in Amsterdam and legalised prostitution. So it might come as a surprise to some to hear that deep down, the Dutch are very conservative people who take sex seriously. Very seriously, in fact. Sex education has traditionally been an important part of the school curriculum here. Lentekriebels is in line with the Dutch tradition of assigning to schoolteachers responsibilities that might elsewhere be handled within the family. As my teacher in primary school in the 1970s told me: "If your parents don't bring you up properly, our school has to do the job for them." The issue then was not sex but prayer (we didn't pray at home), but the principle is the same. Parents are not to be trusted to do a good job and sex is a danger zone, like drugs or smoking. To discuss it at school from an early age will make young people aware of the many risks when they start to experiment with relationships and sexuality. Dutch sex education doesn't stop at Lentekriebels. I remember vividly the little grey-haired lady with the large handbag who came to my high school to talk about "the first time", true love, the effects of alcohol and how to use a condom. I was 14 and we all found it great fun. And the lessons went on until my final exams: prostitution, reproduction, sexually transmitted diseases – we were spared nothing. There is much to be said for the Dutch approach. Official figures show that the pregnancy rate here among teenage girls, 5.3 per thousand, is one of the lowest in Europe. The explanation is believed to be the open approach towards sexuality. And we see similarly low numbers when it comes to abortions and STDs. The UK, by comparison, has a teen pregnancy rate that is nearly 400% higher and a much higher abortion rate. In an attempt to make sense of these figures, we can turn to Nick Hornby's novel Slam, in which 16-year-old Sam gets his girlfriend, Alicia, pregnant. On the internet he finds government statistics about teenage parents: And some of them were funny – like, one in 10 teenagers couldn't remember if they'd had sex the night before or not, which is pretty incredible if you think about it. I think this meant that one in 10 teenagers had got so blasted the night before that they didn't know what had gone on. I don't think it meant they were just forgetful, like when you can't remember whether you packed your games kit. Dutch teenagers are probably just as sexually active as British ones and may even drink as much. But thanks to the priority given to sex education, Sam's Dutch equivalent can go skateboarding without worrying whether he has knocked up his girlfriend. • This article was commissioned after being suggested by 13thDukeofWybourne. If you have a subject you would like to see covered by Comment is free, please visit our You tell us page Sex Sex education Schools Netherlands Europe Children Young people Shirley Haasnoot guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ottolenghi's spring onion recipes Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:03 PM PDT Two ideas for making the most out of the humble spring onion: a sharp soup with an Iranian twist, and a flavour-packed Tunisian street snack, brik Spring onion soup I recently started using a wonderful product from Iran called kashk. Kash, or kishk, signifies different things throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Greece, but is often used to name food stuffs produced by the process of fermentation and then drying of yoghurt or curdled milk, turning them into a powder that can later be reconstituted. Iranian kashk is used to bulk up soups and stews, and gives them a wonderfully deep and sharp aroma, a bit like feta but in runny form. I get my kashk from specialist Iranian shops, a few of which I'm lucky to have found dotted around London. But don't worry if you can't get hold of kashk – a mixture of crème fraîche and grated parmesan (or other mature cheese) makes a perfectly good substitute. Serves four. 700g spring onions (a large variety with a thick bulb, if possible) 40g unsalted butter 50ml olive oil, plus extra to finish 2 whole medium garlic heads, cloves peeled and halved lengthways 3 bay leaves 300g frozen peas 1 medium courgette, diced 1.3 litres vegetable stock 80g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 60g kashk (or crème fraîche/parmesan mix) 20g mint leaves, roughly chopped Grated zest of ½ lemon Salt and black pepper Cut the white of the spring onions into 1.5cm-long slices and the green into 2.5cm-long segments. Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the oil, white spring onion slices, halved garlic cloves and some salt and pepper, and sauté on moderate heat for 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables are soft. Add the green spring onion segments and the bay leaves, cook for about 10 minutes, add the peas and courgette, and cook for another five minutes. Remove half the vegetables from the pan and set aside. Cover the remaining vegetables with the stock, bring to a boil and simmer for three minutes. Remove the bay leaves, add the parsley and blitz in a food processor or with a hand-held blender. Return the reserved vegetables to the pan and warm up gently. Stir in the kashk, taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary. Transfer the soup into individual bowls, sprinkle with chopped mint and lemon zest, and finish with a drizzle of oil. Brik This very simple Tunisian recipe uses very few ingredients to make the most sumptuous snack. Thanks to the Delia effect, feuilles de brick pastry, as it's known in France, is now available in many independent shops and at Waitrose (spring roll wrappers make a good substitute). A teaspoon of harissa paste added with the egg will give a little heat, if you want it. Serve with a herb salad and a dollop of creamy yoghurt. Serves two. About 250ml sunflower oil 2 circles feuilles de brick pastry, about 20cm in diameter 3 tbsp chopped parsley leaves 1½ tbsp chopped spring onion, both green and white parts 2 free-range eggs Salt and black pepper Pour the oil into a medium saucepan so it comes 1cm up the sides, place on medium heat and leave until hot, but not too hot, otherwise the pastry will burn before the egg is cooked. Trim one piece of pastry and lay in a shallow bowl. You will now need to work quickly, otherwise it will dry out. Put half the parsley in the centre of the round and half the onion, creating a little nest for an egg, then carefully crack one in. Season generously, then fold in the sides of the pastry to create a parcel – the folds will overlap so the egg is sealed in. Gently place the pastry seal-side down in the hot oil and cook for a minute a side – the pastry should be golden-brown and the egg semi-cooked, with the yolk still runny. Lift out the pastry parcel and place between two sheets of kitchen paper to soak up excess oil, then set aside somewhere warm. Repeat the process, and serve hot. • Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London. African recipes Cheese recipes Egg recipes Herb and spice recipes Middle Eastern recipes Snack recipes Soup recipes Spicy recipes Spring recipes Starter recipes Vegetable recipes Vegetarian recipes Food & drink Yotam Ottolenghi guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

You are subscribed to email updates from The Guardian World News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610