The Guardian World News

---

• Paddy Ashdown attacks George Osborne over AV
• Bahrain braced for more repression
• Syria's al-Assad promises reform
• Libya rebels call for Nato troops
• FA Cup puts roads under pressure
• Nicolas Cage held on abuse charges
• Greeks press for country to default
• Glencore denies tax allegations
• Poppy Project fears as funding is cut
• MPs lament long hours in Commons
• One Hyde Park flat sold for £136m
• Standoff at Tibetan monastery
• Alternative tributes
• Baldness cures: hair-raising science
• University a lottery for people like me
• How ketamine killed our daughter
• Islanders rescue oil slick penguins
• Penn and Pitt share the same screen
• Nigel Slater's main course salads
• Is Cowell essential to The X Factor?
• The sweet smell of success

Paddy Ashdown attacks George Osborne over AV Posted: 16 Apr 2011 12:23 PM PDT • Chancellor's claims on electoral reform cash are 'bizarre' • Deputy PM Nick Clegg joins the attack on the no campaign The former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown has launched an explosive attack on George Osborne, accusing the chancellor of cheap mud-slinging and scaremongering ahead of the alternative vote referendum. As the AV debate grows increasingly acrimonious, laying bare growing coalition tensions between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Ashdown takes Osborne to task over his allegations that the Electoral Reform Society stands to profit from a yes vote. Osborne claimed the society, which gave £1.1m to the yes campaign, would benefit from the adoption of the alternative vote system through its commercial subsidiary, Electoral Reform Services Ltd (ERSL). But in a strikingly personal attack on the chancellor, Ashdown writes in today's Observer that Osborne's approach is a prime example of why British politics needs radical reform. "The strategy is clear," writes Ashdown. "Throw as much mud as you can, don't let the issue be discussed openly and frighten the public over the next three weeks into voting to preserve the power the present first-past-the-post system gives you. This strategy stinks of the same odour which has surrounded our politics recently. "For the chancellor of the exchequer – the chancellor of the exchequer – to claim that there is something 'dodgy' about the Electoral Reform Society donating cash to a campaign in favour of electoral reform is bizarre. George Osborne makes the case for change for us. He graphically shows why we need to change our politics. Why we need to clean it up. Why the voting public deserve something better." Ashdown's aggressive intervention is made as the gloves come off in the increasingly embittered referendum debate. Twelve Tory ministers and cabinet ministers, including key allies of David Cameron, pounded pavements across the country drumming up support for the no vote which a Comres poll last night said had a 6% lead on the yes vote, with 43% supporting the retention of first past the post. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, condemned the use of smear campaigns during the AV debate and attempted to distance himself from Tory policies. "The no campaign is getting increasingly desperate," the Lib Dem leader said. "That's why they are using ludicrous false claims to try to scare people into keeping things the way they are." Clegg added: "Working together in the national interest does not mean we agree on everything. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't be taking the fight to the Tories in the local elections, criticising mistakes and wrong priorities wherever they occur." Meanwhile, the former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said that the no campaign was a "Conservative front". He urged Labour party supporters to ignore the no campaign of the former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, and vote yes with the Liberal Democrats and Labour leader Ed Miliband, to "stuff the Tories". Oakeshott said: "The no campaign is a pantomime dinosaur, with Prescott at the front, [BNP leader Nick] Griffin at the back and Cameron firmly on top all the time. The stakes couldn't be higher on 5 May – a yes vote will empower the progressive majority in our country. A no will let the Tories in through the backdoor to dominate the 21st century like the 20th." Friction between the coalition partners comes amid growing frustration on the part of those closest to Clegg that the no campaign has been used to attack the Lib Dems, and the deputy prime minister in particular. Clegg's image is prominent in the no campaign material. A senior Lib Dem source told the Observer the personal attacks appeared to have been sanctioned from Downing Street. The source added: "The no campaign has been turned into an avenue through which the Tories can attack Nick, let off some steam. The campaign has been funded heavily by Conservative headquarters and the attacks have become very personal. It is like a pressure valve for the Tories for their frustrations in other policy areas." The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has warned that negative campaigning by the Conservative chairwoman, Baroness Warsi, among others, could lead to a breakdown in the coalition. Ashdown explicitly criticises Warsi. "To have Baroness Warsi stand on the site of race riots in the 1930s and say that a yes vote will help the BNP is as tawdry as it is indefensible", he says. "The BNP are campaigning for a no vote. Such extremist parties as have, God help us, been elected in Britain, were elected through first past the post. As a host of independent commentators have commented, AV will diminish their chances, not increase them." AV referendum Paddy Ashdown George Osborne Liberal-Conservative coalition Alternative vote Liberal Democrats Conservatives Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Bahrain braced for more repression Posted: 16 Apr 2011 01:05 PM PDT Arrests and troop movements signal another government crackdown on protests in the tiny Gulf state Bahrain is braced for a fresh bout of violent repression as new arrests and the alleged death of a female student fuel sectarian tensions in the tiny Gulf state. Armoured vehicles and security forces were reported to be gathering in the streets of the capital, Manama, and in surrounding suburbs and villages. Meanwhile, evidence has emerged that Saudi forces have been involved in violence against the opposition in the mainly Shia villages and suburbs around Manama. In a graphic eyewitness account of the repression given to the Observer, a Bahraini who has been caught up in the violence claimed that officers with Saudi accents, in plainclothes but armed with automatic weapons, had led attacks on members of the Shia opposition on several occasions over the past month. When Saudi and UAE troops from the Gulf Peninsula Shield force entered the kingdom at the request of the government last month, it was said that they were there to guard strategic buildings and infrastructure. Reports from the city said that a young woman – beaten up last month by government supporters at Bahrain University – had died. A family member confirmed her death but the circumstances remained unclear. Arrests of lawyers and doctors working for the opposition continued. Protesters, who were brutally removed from their peaceful anti-government site at Manama's Pearl roundabout last month, claim that there has since been a systematic campaign of repression by Sunni Bahraini security forces, backed by forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Human Rights Watch says that four people have died in custody over the past month, out of 430 who were arrested. Opposition sources say that the true figure is 720 arrested with 210 missing. Tensions were high after another day of mourning, for Karim Fakhrawi, a Shia businessman who died in police detention, allegedly after being tortured. The mourning also coincided with an important Shia festival, the commemoration of the death of Fatima al-Zahra, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad. This is traditionally marked by three days of religious observance, including marches, which are now banned under Bahrain's month-old state of emergency. Meanwhile, Mohammed al-Tajer, a lawyer who represented detainees held during the protests, was reportedly arrested along with a doctor accused of treating injured demonstrators. Doctors and medical facilities have been singled out in the repression, with the main hospital in Manama, Salimanya, under military occupation for the past month. The government says that it is acting to maintain security after what it describes as an "attempted revolution" by mainly Shia protesters last month. It says hospitals were being used as organisation centres for the protests. The government appears to be backing down from a plan to outlaw the leading opposition parties, Al Wefaq and Islamic Action, after protests from America and Britain. But a suppression of media reporting continues. Last week a correspondent from the Financial Times was denied entry at the airport. No reason was given. Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent, was detained at the airport for three hours before being allowed into the country. Other journalists reported increasing difficulties in obtaining visas. Bell Pottinger, a British public relations company that advised the Bahraini crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, and which was assisting with media visas, has had its government contracts suspended during the period of martial law. Prince Salman is regarded as a moderate, but the failure of his offers of "dialogue" with the protesters has handed power to Sunni hardliners, led by the prime minister, Prince Khalifa, who has been in office since 1971. The protests are seen as a threat to security across the whole Gulf region. There have been further protests in Iran in support of the mainly Shia Bahraini opposition, and Tehran recently warned Pakistan against sending any more "mercenaries" to join the crackdown. Many Bahrain police officers are hired in Sunni countries such as Pakistan and Jordan. Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Middle East guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Syria's al-Assad promises reform Posted: 16 Apr 2011 01:10 PM PDT Embattled president promises end to 48 years of emergency law, more 'humble' government, and action on unemployment Syria's embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, has promised to end 48 years of emergency law and instigate further reforms, but failed to satisfy those protesting against his 11-year rule. In a speech to his new cabinet, Assad said restrictions would be lifted by the end of the week. He blamed the month-long protests on a "conspiracy" and said stability remained his priority but reform was needed to strengthen the country. Syria's protest movement, which has gathered momentum in recent weeks, swelled to unprecedented levels on Friday as thousands of people marched on Damascus from surrounding areas. Assad's tone was more conciliatory than in a previous speech to parliament on 30 March, directing ministers to become more accountable and humble. "Citizens need security and services, but also dignity. We want to engage in dialogue with the unions and with national organisations," he said. Protesters rejected Assad's move as too little, too late. They said continuing arrests and a state media campaign to blame violence on armed gangs was deliberately inciting anger towards protesters. "The tone was different but there were no concrete reforms again; many still don't trust emergency law will be lifted," said an analyst in the capital, Damascus, who asked for anonymity. "If he had made this speech on 30 March, it may have been different, but now it is too late." The protests this week have resulted in fewer deaths than the previous week, in a sign the regime may be trying to calm dissent, according to latest reports. The protesters have demanded an end to emergency laws and more freedoms. But they have also called for an end to abuses by the security services and the release of all political prisoners. Both topics were notably absent from Assad's speech. Instead he talked about Syria's media, its municipal elections and political parties and, in reference to claims of ministerial corruption, said that ministers should provide details of their income and property. He also acknowledged the country's economic troubles, calling unemployment "the biggest problem". Activists accuse Syrian leaders of framing the demands of protesters in economic rather than political terms – although in eastern areas of the country financial worries are their priority. "Assad still didn't talk about the reason for the crisis in the country," said Razan Zeitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist in Damascus. "And he ignored the main demands of the people: freedom and democracy." Mmore than 1,000 women were reported to have held a protest in the coastal city of Banias. Protests in this heavily repressive state were unthinkable before March, when activists inspired by uprisings sweeping the Arab world broke through a barrier of fear. Further demonstrations are being planned for Sunday, which is a national holiday in Syria. Bashar Al-Assad Syria Protest Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Katherine Marsh guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Libya rebels call for Nato troops Posted: 16 Apr 2011 10:12 AM PDT The situation grows more desperate in the Libyan city with increasing evidence of the use of cluster bombs against civilians The city that has become the epicentre of a desperate battle by Libyan rebels against forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi came under renewed pounding today amid mounting evidence of the use of cluster bombs against the besieged civilian population and calls for Nato to send in ground troops. More than 100 rockets had been fired on opposition-held areas of Misrata by mid-morning and there were "raging battles" in two strategically key streets, according to rebels. The assault added pressure on the city's beleaguered hospitals, which are already overwhelmed with appalling injuries and a rising death toll. Most of the casualties are civilians, and they include many women and children, say doctors. TV pictures showed scenes of devastation and desperation from inside the city – Libya's third largest, home to around 300,000 people – which has been under intense attack for seven weeks. Mohamed, a rebel spokesman who asked for his full name to be withheld, told the Observer via Skype that "the killing and destruction and human suffering" was relentless. "The massacre that was prevented in Benghazi is now happening in Misrata. There is nowhere safe in the city." Evidence that Gaddafi's forces are now targeting cluster bombs on civilian neighbourhoods of Misrata is likely to fuel calls for accelerated action from Nato, whose military actions and international sanctions against the regime have succeeded in weakening Gaddafi but have failed so far to secure a decisive breakthrough in the conflict. Human Rights Watch released photographs and testimony from its arms expert which it said confirmed witness reports that the munitions, banned by more than 100 countries, were being fired on the city. Cluster bombs explode in midair, indiscriminately throwing out dozens of high-explosive bomblets which cause widespread damage and injuries over a large area. The sub-munitions often fail to explode on impact but detonate when stepped on or picked up. "They pose a huge risk to civilians, both during attacks, because of their indiscriminate nature, and afterwards because of the still dangerous unexploded duds scattered about," said Steve Goose, HRW's arms division director. The Libyan government denied its forces were using the munitions, challenging HRW to provide incontrovertible proof. Libya has not signed the convention on cluster munitions, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions. Amnesty's Donatella Rovera said she had found "several bomblets and canisters all over the centre of town". Mohamed said Misrata's hospitals were seeing victims of what he described as "candy bombs – something that resembles a pretty bottle. You pick it up and it explodes and kills you." Rebels hold the port area and the north and the east of the city, which is surrounded on three sides by government forces. Yesterday Tripoli Street and Heavy Transport Road leading to the port saw heavy fighting, said Mohamed. "He has identified the throat and he is going for it," he said. "Gaddafi's forces are trying to destroy the port and the port area at all costs. They know that it's the lifeline for Misrata and they want to cut it off." Residents of the city are corralled in an ever-decreasing area, lacking adequate food, clean water, sanitation and medical supplies. Many homes now have multiple occupants as people have fled neighbourhoods under fire. The electricity supply was limited to six hours every three days, said Mohamed, and food was becoming scarce – "especially vegetables and manufactured products like macaroni. There's been no water for God knows how long. Misrata is really feeling the effects of the siege and the destruction and the murderous shelling." The shelling was "random, crazy," he said, adding: "No one feels safe in the city. There is nowhere safe to go. You can imagine the pressure and anxiety and fear that strikes into people." Rovero, who arrived by boat in Misrata on Friday, said she had found "scores and scores" of Grad rockets in a residential neighbourhood of the city. They were "in people's bedrooms and kitchens, gardens, courtyards, in the streets. This neighbourhood was considered safe till yesterday, but is obviously no longer so. Families who had fled other areas had gone there, and yesterday after the shelling they left again to seek shelter elsewhere – but people are running out of places to shelter as more and more areas are coming under fire." Mohamed said the large numbers of displaced people were "putting a strain on everyone. Seventy per cent of the population is crammed into 30% of the city. Schools, mosques and community centres are full of people." Paulo Grosso, an Italian anaesthetist from the NGO Emergency, said the hospital where he is based, 2km from the frontline, had seen an average of 10 deaths and 40 wounded people each day. Most were civilians, including children. "We are seeing gunshot wounds, injuries from shelling and bomb explosions," he said. Twenty-three civilians were killed on Thursday alone. The hospital was suffering a critical shortage of nurses, he said, as the Filipino staff had fled. A doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières, Morten Rostrup, said medical supplies were running critically short and that "doctors were being forced to discharge patients prematurely". Typical injuries were headshot wounds, brain damage, chest traumas and fractures. People with chronic medical conditions were also suffering because of the lack of supplies, he said. Rebel boats from Benghazi carrying arms and aid to Misrata are attempting to dock in the port, along with international aid ships trying to evacuate civilians. The Libyan government claims that aid agencies are smuggling weapons to the rebels under the guise of aid. Among those desperate to flee the city are more than 8,000 migrant workers. According to Mohamed, five Egyptians waiting to be rescued were killed last week on the dockside by shelling. Rostrup said a large group of sub-Saharan Africans were living in "dire conditions" under plastic sheeting after heading to the city in the hope of being evacuated by sea. "They are desperate to leave the country. They've heard there are ships leaving, so they come." Gastro-enteritis was rife, he said. Rebel fighters in Misrata have called on Nato to step up its airstrikes on loyalist positions around the city to protect the civilian population and aid the resistance. Nato has said that Misrata is its "number one priority". Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy last week described the government attack on Misrata as a "medieval siege… to strangle its population into submission". In a jointly authored article, the three leaders wrote: "The brave citizens of those towns that have held out against forces that have been mercilessly targeting them would face a fearful vengeance if the world accepted [Gaddafi staying]. It would be an unconscionable betrayal." The shift by the US, Britain and France towards regime change as a goal of the Nato operation is controversial among some countries that backed UN resolution 1973, which authorised military action to protect Libya's civilian population. But the three countries that have been the driving force behind the international coalition insist that Gaddafi must "go and go for good". The Libyan government has refused to allow journalists based in Tripoli access to Misrata, citing security, although it permitted a team from the Red Cross to send a fact-finding mission to the city today. Its spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, claimed that "terrorists and armed gangs" were behind the opposition and that "many so-called independent reporters are collaborating with the rebels". Calls for Nato to intensify its military operation were, said the deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kayim, "a clear call to target and kill civilians and destroy Libya's infrastructure. They [the international coalition] are siding with the rebels fighting a legitimate government. It has nothing to do with supporting democracy." Nato itself is in a quandary about how to break the military deadlock in Libya. UN resolution 1973 specifically rules out a "foreign occupation force". Amid mounting calls for a Nato ground presence in Libya, politicians, lawyers and military chiefs are poring over the resolution's semantics to establish whether such a step – with its enormous political and military risks and implications – could be taken. Mohamed said the rebel opposition in Misrata had appealed to Nato to send ground troops to relieve the city. They were, he said, grateful for the international coalition's military intervention. "But we're surprised. And we're angry. We are angered by the lack of hits on Gaddafi's troops by Nato forces. "This reluctance and hesitation is allowing him to suffocate the city. It's unbearable. It's getting to the point where it's troops on the ground – or it's over. We are so grateful and relieved by the international community's efforts, it's just that they didn't go the extra steps, and that has played into the tyrant's hands. "He will massacre the people of Misrata. If a massacre happens, [Nato's] credibility is on the line. Either they intervene immediately with troops on the ground – now, now, now – or we will all regret this. It's murderous and mad, the people of Misrata are paying the price." Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Nato Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

FA Cup puts roads under pressure Posted: 16 Apr 2011 10:57 AM PDT M1 closure after fire causes long traffic jams as thousands flock to capital for FA Cup semi-finals and marathon It was the day Manchester merged with London. The FA Cup semi-final saw an estimated 60,000 Manchester City and Manchester United fans descend on Wembley and turn much of the capital blue and red. The northern influx was reinforced by armies of Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers fans descending on the capital before their teams' semi-final on Sunday. Thousands more people were also flocking to London ahead of the marathon that will see some 36,000 people take part in the race in one of the busiest weekends in the sporting calendar. Fears that there would be violence between fans of the four teams saw police take action before the game. British Transport police banned alcohol on all trains between Manchester Piccadilly and Euston stations before and after the game, and almost 200 letters were sent to people on football banning orders warning them not to attend this weekend's matches. But there were no reports of problems in the hours leading up to the match. Instead it was the country's infrastructure, rather than the police, that came under pressure. As heavy traffic took to the motorways before the impending Easter, royal wedding and May Day bank holidays, the capital's main link to the north, the M1, was closed in both directions between junctions one and four following a fire at a scrapyard. Around 40 firefighters had tackled the blaze that broke out close to Scratchwood Services. About 50 people living in properties near the scrapyard were temporarily evacuated as a precaution while the cylinders, some of which contained highly flammable acetylene, were cooled and made safe. Railway lines close to the area were also shut. One of the northbound lanes was open again by the end of the FA Cup semi-final, which finished 1-0 to Manchester City. However, a Highways Agency spokesman said that the southbound carriageway of the motorway would remain shut between junctions one and four "until it is safe to be reopened". Other northbound lanes would remain closed until further investigation. Fans caught up in traffic jams on their way into the capital have been spelling out their indignation on Twitter. There were long delays on the A1, M40 and M6 diversionary routes, according to Trafficlink, the traffic information provider. The Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, had earlier described the decision to play two semi-finals involving four northern clubs at Wembley as "quite incredible". Supporters of a high-speed rail link to the north said the semi-final weekend highlighted the limited capacity of the current rail network. A spokesman for the Campaign For High Speed Rail said: "There are currently three trains per hour between Manchester and London, with each having the capacity to seat 439 passengers. This means that the West Coast main line can carry 1,317 passengers an hour from Manchester and London. "During the key period in which the supporters will be hoping to travel , only around 6,585 passengers will be able to be transported." However, Virgin Trains, which runs the West Coast main line, put on extra services between London and Manchester to alleviate the pressure caused by the weekend's overcrowded sporting calendar. Transport FA Cup Manchester City Manchester United Stoke City Bolton Wanderers Wembley stadium Sir Alex Ferguson London Marathon London Police Rail transport Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Nicolas Cage held on abuse charges Posted: 16 Apr 2011 03:58 PM PDT Oscar-winning actor Cage taken into custody in New Orleans after allegedly grabbing his wife and damaging parked cars Actor Nicolas Cage has been arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse after an allegedly drunken altercation with his wife. The Oscar-winning actor was taken into custody in New Orleans on Friday after he was said to have grabbed his wife, Alice Kim, and damaged parked cars during an argument about where they were staying in the city. Cage, 47, was booked on suspicion of domestic-abuse battery, disturbing the peace and public drunkenness, said New Orleans police spokesman Gary Floyd. "[They] were standing in front of a residence that he insisted was the property the couple was renting," said Floyd. "She disagreed and Cage grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her to what he believed was the correct address." He is then alleged to have begun striking cars. "An officer… observed that Cage was heavily intoxicated." There were no visible injuries to Cage's wife and the actor was later released on bail. Nicolas Cage Domestic violence United States guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Greeks press for country to default Posted: 16 Apr 2011 05:52 PM PDT Violence on the streets as backlash grows over Greece's austerity package and €110bn bailout A growing chorus of voices is urging the Greek government to restructure its debt as fears grow that a €110bn bailout has failed to rescue the country from the financial abyss and is forcing ordinary people into an era of futile austerity. "It's better to have a restructuring now … since the situation is going nowhere," said Vasso Papandreou, whose views might be easier to discount were she not head of the Greek parliament's economic affairs committee. Other members of prime minister George Papandreou's party have said that Greece is locked in a "vicious cycle", unable to dig itself out of crisis with policies that can only deepen recession. International fears of a Greek default rose last week after the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, refused to rule it out and markets, sensing upheaval, sent Greek borrowing costs soaring. The normally mild-mannered prime minister has vehemently rebuffed the prospect of Greece failing to meet its debt obligations, saying restructure would not only be catastrophic for the country – blocking its access to markets for years – but also for the eurozone's delicate economy. "Our problems will be addressed in depth not if we restructure our debt but if we restructure the country," he said, announcing the "road map" that would lead Greece out of crisis. Amid speculation over the country's ability to avoid default, a wave of civil disobedience is causing many to wonder if Greece is becoming ungovernable. In the Athens suburb of Keratea, locals furious over the prospect of a landfill site last week dug up the road and the capital's top police officer asked for his men to be removed from the anarchic area. "There is clearly a breakdown of the rule of law, and without the rule of law there can be no economic development," said political analyst Takis Michas. "It is organised lawlessness spearheaded by the hard left." Tomorrow, in a clear sop to the thousands who have signed up to the "can't pay, won't pay" movement, the ruling socialists will announce reductions of up to 50% in road toll fees. As the nation struggles to rein in a debt of €340bn, the logic of appeasing protesters – an estimated 8,000 Greeks a day were refusing to pay tolls – has outweighed antagonising them further. "Our hope is that this will calm things down," the deputy transport minister Spyros Vougias said. Last week, a man shot a bus inspector hired to crack down on fare dodgers after protesters stormed a police station, snatched hundreds of confiscated number plates and set light to thousands of fines. Days later thugs attacked Antonis Loverdos, the health minister, as he visited a hospital in Athens. In Patras, James Watson, the 83-year-old Nobel Prize-winning geneticist was also attacked as he prepared to give a speech at the city's university. "In any other country people would have been arrested but here the lack of arrests has contributed to the feeling that anything goes," said Michas. Haunted by a recession that has exceeded even the worst predictions of the EU and IMF almost a year after they moved to rescue the country with their bailout last May, austerity has hit Greece as never before. Last week it emerged that hospitals were facing severe shortages of beds and supplies while schools could no longer afford cleaners. Disposable incomes have dropped dramatically as wages and pensions have been slashed, taxes have been raised and unemployment has reached a record 15%. Eighteen months after the economic crisis erupted, Papandreou said last week that more cuts were needed to meet deficit-cutting targets. How do countries default? A default is when a country misses a repayment on its debts. But the most likely outcome for Greece is a "restructuring", a negotiation between Athens and its creditors that would result in the owners of its bonds accepting that they won't get all their money back. What would the consequences be? Investors would shun Greek debt, making it hard for the country to borrow. But what Europe's policymakers are more worried about is the knock-on effects for Greece's lenders, many of which are German and French banks, which would have to declare large losses. Portugal and Ireland would also have a strong incentive to follow suit. Who has defaulted in the past? Refusing to pay your debts has an impeccable pedigree: Edward III sowed chaos in Florence in the mid 14th century by defaulting on a series of loans. Every country in Latin America, apart from Brazil, followed suit in the early 19th century. Most recently, Russia shocked world markets by defaulting in 1998, as did Argentina in 2001. Greece IMF Helena Smith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Glencore denies tax allegations Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:07 PM PDT World's largest commodities broker rejects claims in leaked review of Zambia operation's accounts A UK subsidiary of the world's largest commodities broker helped one of its African mining operations avoid paying tens of millions of pounds in tax, according to charities who have analysed a leaked review of its accounts. The findings of a draft report into internal controls at Zambia's Mopani Copper Mines plc have been categorically rejected by its owner, Glencore, the giant fuel, metals and cereals trader based in the Swiss tax haven of Zug. The report, seen by the Observer, was carried out in 2009 by a Norwegian subsidiary of Grant Thornton, one of the world's largest accountancy firms, at the request of the previous Zambian government. Its authors alleged the mine's owners "resisted the pilot audit at every stage", a claim denied by a spokesman for Glencore, which owns a 73% stake in Mopani through a company based in the British Virgin Islands, another tax haven. The report claimed there had been an "unexplainable" increase in Mopani's costs between 2006 and 2008 that allowed it to minimise its stated profits and lower its tax bill. "We suggest the ZRA [Zambian Revenue Authority] does a new tax assessment based on the results of the audit," the report claims. Glencore, which is preparing a £37bn listing on the London stock market, the capital's biggest ever flotation, said the auditors had failed to factor in rising fuel and labour costs over the period. The audit also suggested Mopani sold copper at artificially low prices to Glencore in Switzerland under a deal struck with the firm's UK subsidiary in 2000. The metal was then sold on, allowing Glencore to take advantage of Switzerland's ultra-low tax regime. There are claims that the transactions breach international rules ensuring there has to be an arm's-length principle when it comes to sales between related parties. Glencore said all transactions were conducted at an arm's-length basis and at internationally agreed prices. When asked by the Observer for a response to Glencore's criticisms of the draft report, Grant Thornton International declined on the grounds of client confidentiality. But charities said the report suggested Glencore had questions to answer. "Based on the Grant Thornton analysis, we estimate that the company's practices potentially cost the Zambian government up to £76m a year in lost corporation tax," said Anna Thomas, head of tax policy at ActionAid. She pointed out the amount was significantly more than the £59m the UK government gives Zambia each year in aid. The claims have surfaced as Glencore prepares for a listing that will make multimillionaires of the firm's 485 partners. City analysts were astonished to learn the extent to which the company dominates the commodity markets in documents published ahead of the listing. Glencore revealed it controlled 60% of the traded zinc market and 50% of copper. Development charities have contrasted the impending wealth of the company's management with the poverty of Zambians, around two thirds of whom live below the recognised poverty line, according to the United Nations. The leaking of the report is potentially embarrassing for European governments. Mopani received a €48m development loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to help bring prosperity to Zambia. But the report states: "The pilot audit has shown there is a high need for a determined effort at collecting the taxes that are assessed under the laws implemented by the Zambian government." The EIB has informed OLAF (the European anti-fraud office) of the report's allegations and launched an investigation. Emmanuel Mutati, CEO of Mopani, has described the audit as "flawed and incomplete" saying it did not include a series of third-party transactions that would affect its accounts. "We have also been audited by independent auditors annually," Mutati said. "Every year the independent auditors' report has given Mopani a clean bill of health." The UK government recently called for new measures to ensure that the poorest people in Africa benefited from mining. Glencore was founded by Marc Rich, the controversial oil trader who was accused of tax evasion by American authorities but was pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office. The company, which last year had a turnover of $145bn, is no longer connected to Rich. The Zambian government has declined to investigate Mopani's tax affairs despite calls from development charities. "We are disappointed with the government's lukewarm reaction," said Savior Mwambwa, executive director of the Centre for Trade Policy and Development, Zambia. "They need to take action and change the whole taxation system." Mining Zambia Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Poppy Project fears as funding is cut Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:06 PM PDT The Poppy Project needs £450,000 of charity aid to survive. Without it, countless victims of abuse will be left to cope alone Mansa, a 33-year-old Ghanaian woman who days ago was close to being deported, has no doubt that the Poppy Project saved her life. "I was ready to kill myself if I had gone," she said. "I didn't know what else I would do." Hundreds of other victims of sex trafficking in Britain may not be so lucky. Shortly after midday last Monday, an email confirmed that ministers were withdrawing funding from the charity, which pioneered specialist services for victims of sex trafficking, and is the biggest and most established organisation of its kind. The government decision immediately prompted a campaign by luminaries such as Professor Liz Kelly, the chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, and urgent appeals for donations to help the project continue supporting victims of trafficking. The withdrawal of funding means that the charity requires £450,000 in donations by the end of June to continue. The impact of the funding cut on trafficking victims – an issue that David Cameron says is a "key priority" – is potentially catastrophic, according to the organisation's case workers. Abigail Stepnitz, the national co-ordinator for the Poppy Project Eaves charity, said that the decision was "politically motivated". "The government doesn't like someone who will rock the boat. We were a problem for them in that sense," she said. Since the charity joined an oversight board two years ago, assessing the government's compliance on tackling trafficking, it has successfully appealed 17 UK Border Agency decisions on identification of trafficking victims and forced countless reassessments. Last week's decision has also crystallised concerns that the coalition government does not regard sex trafficking as a priority – regardless of Cameron's pledges. Stepnitz points to letters from officials, which concede that, while the rape experienced by victims is "unfortunate", it does not qualify them for government help. Her all-female team of 16 support workers provides around-the-clock support and accommodation for those women who are trafficked to Britain and forced into prostitution or servitude. More than 700 have received help since the organisation was founded in 2003. The organisation's virtues were underlined by the rescue of Mansa, days before news of the funding decision. In 2003, the Ghanaian had been taken from Heathrow airport to a rural house where she was held and "tortured and sexually abused" over four years. Faced with her deportation, the Poppy Project argued that, after eight years in the UK and with an abusive family in Ghana, she would be better to receive continuing support at its Sheffield office. On the morning of her scheduled deportation flight from London on 1 April, Poppy staff acted to keep Mansa in the country. They contacted the pilots' union, explaining the situation. Leaflets were printed and distributed to passengers at Heathrow, and every legal avenue explored. Stepnitz made an application to the European Court of Human Rights. It paid off. Less than four hours before the flight's departure, the government backed down. "Poppy saved me. They helped me emotionally, mentally and support every bit of my life. But without the funding it's going to be very tough. A woman who has been tortured, raped and beaten needs a lot of support to get better," she said. Another of Poppy's success stories, Maria, 24, was trafficked from the Balkans to London by a neighbour when she was a child. Despite claiming asylum almost a decade ago, the government had never responded, leaving her unable to work legitimately and forcing her back into prostitution to survive. At the start of 2011, a friend told Maria that help was available. "Before the Poppy Project, I had never felt like a human being, I was never treated as a human, I was always treated like a dog," she said. "For seven years I didn't live something I could call life. Now I feel free and happy, Poppy has given me power I never had. Now I want David Cameron to come here and talk to us, hear how we feel." But the damage may have already been done. The £4m contract for services that the charity developed went instead to the Salvation Army, a decision that the government said was "much better for victims of trafficking". One element of the decision that had troubled support workers was the assumption that most victims would require only 45 days of treatment. Stepnitz said that at least 90 days was required to rehabilitate victims. The average length of treatment at the charity, which can support 128 women, is between three and eight months. Within the charity's south London headquarters are the tools of rehabilitation. Trafficked women learn English, how to write CVs, computer skills and how to eat healthily. Between shifts manning the emergency referral and advice hotline, Leigh Ivens and her colleagues escort women to see doctors, meet Home Office officials and solicitors. They may eventually escort them to court to testify against their trafficker. The charity has secured more than 500 years in convictions against traffickers. "But really it is about getting women to the stage where they have their freedom back," said Ivens, who this week will adopt another role – campaigning to raise the £1.8m a year required to help women like Maria and Mansa. Donations to the Poppy Project can be made via Eaves' website Prostitution Human trafficking Charities Women Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

MPs lament long hours in Commons Posted: 16 Apr 2011 01:28 PM PDT Mumsnet poll show parliamentarians lament late nights spent voting on legislation and say the system is still not family friendly Nearly one in three MPs say they have considered quitting because of the pressure on their families caused by long working hours. Politicians complain that late-night votes and the strain of splitting their lives between constituencies and London places them under strain. Despite efforts in recent years to reform House of Commons practices, a survey by the website Mumsnet shows nearly two thirds of MPs believe their jobs have had a negative impact on their family lives. More than 90% of the 101 MPs surveyed said that parliament was not family friendly – a figure indicating that steps such as the opening of a creche for the children of MPs and staff have not succeeded in rectifying the Commons work/life balance. MPs regularly have to stay for late night sittings that go beyond 10pm. And last year a Cardiff Liberal Democrat MP complained it was "crazy" that she had to leave her baby with colleagues during votes in the House of Commons. Jenny Willott said she handed her 18-week-old son Toby "to the nearest MP" to comply with rules that allows only MPs into the division lobbies where votes are cast. The complaints are not new. A number of former MPs have cited the lack of time they are allowed to spend with their loved ones as a reason for their eventual abandonment of a life in parliamentary politics.One veteran MP said: "I never saw my children grow up and I'll regret that for the rest of my life." Another MP added: "I am newly elected and cannot see how I can keep this up for the next four years without damaging my family relationships." Almost half of those MPs asked said they wanted to end late night voting. John Woodcock, the Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, said he had never considered giving up parliament but had grown concerned since being elected in May about the effect of the working practices at the Commons into MPs' lives at home. Woodcock, Labour's transport spokesman, who has a two-year-old daughter, Maisie, said: "It is a huge privilege to do the job and I'm working flat out at it. But it inevitably puts a strain on the family to live in two places through the week, spending half the week in the constituency and half the week in London."Speaking to colleagues, on top of that, the hours of the House of Commons for many people are not geared up to ease family existence for those who have their family in London during the week. Late night votes and meetings leaves them tired at the weekend and that has an effect on life at home." " Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, said she had long-contended that reforms were urgently necessary to make parliament more effective. "It is important that we allow MPs family lives because so much policy is centred around family," she said. "I have for a long time said that MPs should be able to travel back from their constituencies on a Monday and start work earlier on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so they can finish earlier on those days. I think that would make parliament a more family friendly and actually a more effective place." Despite the concerns, 85% MPs have roundly rejected the idea of parliamentarians having job shares, an idea proposed by the newly elected Green MP Caroline Lucas. Commenting on the survey findings, CEO and co-founder of Mumsnet, Justine Roberts, said: "Making a country or workplace family friendly relies on all of us helping to change the culture around us. If politicians want the country to be more family friendly they need to lead by example, and at the moment parliament falls far short of this. If we want legislation that reflects the needs of families, it seems fair we allow MPs to live as families.The country could waste a lot of talent if we give in to the viewpoint that parliament is no place for a parent with young kids." House of Commons Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

One Hyde Park flat sold for £136m Posted: 16 Apr 2011 01:12 PM PDT Nick and Christian Candy sell the Knightsbridge home for a record price in their new London development It is the perfect London pied-à-terre for a non-dom tycoon about town. A three-storey penthouse overlooking Hyde Park has been sold for £136m – becoming by far the most expensive flat ever bought in Britain. An unnamed buyer, using lawyers in Ukraine, has bought two apartments in the newly opened One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge that have been knocked into one to create a 25,000 sq ft (2,300 sq m) penthouse with a wine cellar and access to room service at the neighbouring Mandarin Oriental hotel, according to documents filed last week at the Land Registry. The price eclipses the value of landmark properties elsewhere in the world. In Beverly Hills, the 3.7 acre Hearst mansion, where John and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned, is on the market for just $95m (£58m). And in Manhattan, luxury apartments in the Plaza hotel overlooking Central Park cost a little over $50m. One Hyde Park has been developed by thirtysomething brothers Nick and Christian Candy, who began their property career with a £6,000 loan from their grandmother, and who have been involved in several other luxury projects, including an aborted scheme to build on the site of London's Chelsea Barracks. Nick Candy said that 45 flats in the development have sold so far for a total of £963m – an average of £22m each: "No one else has achieved that – not just in London, but anywhere in the world," he said. The £136m sale was agreed several years ago, but has only just been formally documented by the Land Registry. For the same amount, the buyer could have bought 1,564 houses in Burnley, the Lancashire town recently named as Britain's cheapest, with an average property price of £87,194. The penthouse was purchased as an empty shell, and the buyer is spending £60m fitting it out. Neighbours will be a multicultural bunch – purchasers already identified include the Kazakh copper billionaire Vladimir Kim, the prime minister of Qatar and Irish developer Ray Grehan. "There's a lot of Indian and Chinese money in London and we're doing a lot of deals with Middle Easterners," said Candy, adding that buyers are investing in London and elsewhere following unrest in nations such as Egypt, Bahrain and Syria. "Because of the turmoil, they need to find a safe place for their money," he said. London Housing Property Andrew Clark guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Standoff at Tibetan monastery Posted: 16 Apr 2011 05:13 AM PDT Spiritual leader says China should be asked to show restraint in five-day standoff between monks and armed police A five-day stand-off between monks and armed police at a Tibetan monastery in western China could become "explosive", the Dalai Lama has warned. The Tibetan spiritual leader also asked the international community to request that Chinese authorities show restraint in the confrontation at Kirti monastery in Sichuan, where police have reportedly locked down the complex with up to 2,500 monks inside. The International Campaign for Tibet said hundreds of Tibetans gathered at the monastery in Aba county, also known as Ngaba, believing the authorities were preparing to forcibly remove the monks for "patriotic education". Exiles allege that security forces beat residents and loosed dogs on them as they forced their way through the crowds on Tuesday, injuring two women in their sixties. The re-education campaign was reportedly launched after a young monk from Kirti died after setting fire to himself in protest against Chinese rule on 16 March. English language state media have mentioned the death but have not referred to the clash at the monastery, and the Guardian has not been able to confirm it independently. A spokeswoman at the Aba local government office said she knew nothing about the situation. But the United States has raised concerns about the confrontation with Beijing. "I am very concerned that this situation if allowed to go on may become explosive with catastrophic consequences for the Tibetans in Ngaba," the Dalai Lama said late yesterday. "I urge both the monks and the lay Tibetans of the area not to do anything that might be used as a pretext by the local authorities to massively crack down on them. "I also strongly urge the international community, the governments around the world, and the international non-governmental organisations to persuade the Chinese leadership to exercise restraint in handling this situation." The Tibetan spiritual leader lives in exile in Dharamsala, India. Beijing accuses him of seeking to split Tibet from the rest of China, while he says he seeks only meaningful autonomy. The dead monk, Phuntsog, aged between 16 and 20, set fire to himself on 16 March – three years after anti-government unrest rippled across much of Western China following the Lhasa riots. Aba is one of many areas outside the Tibet region with a large Tibetan population. Tibetan exiles allege that the police beat Phuntsog instead of putting out the flames. Other monks then intervened, dragging him into the monastery for shelter before taking him to a hospital. A Chinese state media report denied that he had been beaten, saying a post-mortem found no injuries other than burns, and alleged he died because the monks denied him medical treatment. The International Campaign for Tibet says that authorities then installed a barbed wire fence and concrete wall around much of the huge complex and detained several Tibetans, including a 16-year-old boy and Phuntsog's brother and uncle. The campaign said residents were allowed to deliver food to the monastery for the first time yesterday and that 15 senior monks spoke to the director of the religious affairs bureau after local religious leaders asked for dialogue. Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said: "The use of violence against peaceful, unarmed demonstrators including those surrounding the Kirti monastery would be both unjustifiable and completely unlawful. "It is vital that Chinese security forces respect the safety of all concerned, use the minimum force needed to keep public order, and fully respect both the monks and bystanders' right to freely practice religion, assemble, and peacefully carry out protests." A foreign ministry spokesman did not answer questions about the incident at a regular press briefing on Thursday, but said Beijing's policies had dramatically raised Tibetans' living standards. China Tibet Dalai Lama Buddhism Religion Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Alternative tributes Posted: 13 Apr 2011 01:34 AM PDT From an exclusive entry in Adrian Mole's diary to a Bollywood-style film, the Observer commissioned eight of Britain's most creative talents to mark the royal nuptials in their own original style. And here's what they came up with ...

Baldness cures: hair-raising science Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:04 PM PDT With radical transplant techniques and revolutionary formulae for regrowth, men – and the women who love them – may be looking forward to a luxuriantly hirsute future. Tim Lott investigates It is some time now since I started to worry about baldness – somewhere between the retreat of the already fine hair at my temples in my early 30s and the final failing of the last growth of hair at my crown a few years back. I had been trying to convince myself that things might not be too bad for the past 20 years. But at the beginning of this year, at the age of 55, an encounter with a ceiling-mounted mirror revealed to me what was doubtless obvious to others – a monkish, thinning crown. There was no longer any doubt about it. I was definitely more bald than not. My wife, Rachael, wanted me to take it all off and be done with it. It was an option that made me nervous. My brother, Jack, a professional hairdresser for 20-odd years, advised me to hold on to what little I had. He had witnessed many times the shock, usually unpleasant, that men felt when they finally did clip or shave their hair. I retained a sentimental attachment to what remained of my hair. After all, it had once been my pride and joy. In my teenage years, during the summer, it was cornstalk yellow, and I wore it long and wild. I considered it to be one of the few effective items of mating display available to me, and its relentless disappearance was a matter of grave regret. But regrets were not going to get my locks back. So, against the advice of my own brother, I turned up at Jack's salon, determined, at last, to go for The Chop. I may be ONE OF THE LAST generation of men who face this dilemma. In December last year, scientists at the Berlin Technical University revealed they had grown the world's first artificial hair follicles from stem cells. The leader of the research team claimed that within five years millions of hair-loss sufferers could grow new hair from their own stem cells and have it implanted into their bald spots. In January this year a study by the University of Pennsylvania suggested that bald men were not bald at all – it was simply that their stem cells were producing growths too fine to be visible to the human eye. According to the team leader, Dr George Cotsarelis, "The fact that there are normal numbers of stem cells in a bald scalp gives us hope for reactivating those stem cells." Then, in February, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that a chemical called Astressin B showed "astounding" results for hair regrowth after one jab per day for just five days. The tests were on mice, but the researchers were confident that a cure for baldness could be found in five to 10 years. Finally, in March, a British company called Nanogen announced that their scientists had pioneered a brand new technology to combat hair loss. The new technology had "been designed to improve hair growth and even re-awaken dormant hair follicles". The company claimed to have developed a new "growth factor complex" (sh-VEGF) which would stimulate hair-follicle growth on balding scalps. Taken together, this seemed to herald a revolution. Over the years there has been no shortage of unrealistic headlines promising an end to baldness – but most of this new research seemed to emanate from respectable academic institutions, and all of them seemed to be promising the same thing – the End of Bald. Even if the research proved to be disappointing in the long run, there appeared to be other developments in the world of hair repair taking place, too – not in biochemistry, but in the technology of hair weaving and transplants. Actor James Nesbitt spent tens of thousands of pounds on what appeared to be a remarkably successful hair transplant. "They've changed my life. It's horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn't is lying," said Nesbitt. Instead of the pitted sprouting potato look seen on many unfortunate recipients of hair transplants, Nesbitt's hair looks convincing enough to help land him – he believed – major new roles that he would otherwise have been denied. The success of the transplant doubtless had something to do with the amount of money he could afford to spend on the job, but in the past hard cash didn't always solve the problem. "All that money and he's still got hair like a dinner lady," spat Boy George of Elton John, who has appeared to unsuccessfully confront his receding hairline with various ineffectual treatments over the years. But this time, the transplants were actually pretty convincing. What was going on? There were rumours that a new hair-transplant technique – FUE, or Follicular Unit Extraction, which transplants follicles from the back of the head one by one instead of in a long strip – used robot technology to enable thousands of follicles to be replanted at once, thus producing a more sophisticated and convincing result. Perhaps a new crop of hair could be bought, right now, without having to wait for genetic science to take the necessary leap forward. At my brother's hairdressing shop in London's Soho, I paced the floor. I'd spent the past week in a sunny clime gaining a tan in an attempt to minimise the impact, but listening to Jack revving up his clippers made me antsy in the extreme. I lowered myself nervously into the chair. This would be the end of all choice – other than one, two, three or four, the settings on Jack's clippers. A "number one" was the bonehead cut, the number four the "suede head". I decided to go for the most modest option, the number four. As I watched the hair cascade from my scalp, I was surprised how much of it I still had left. There was still bulk at the sides and the back, but that was now disappearing in clumps on to Jack's floor. I watched with a combination of fascination and anxiety. The procedure didn't seem to require too much artistry – clip, flip, drop, buzz, zip. Jack started with a channel down the centre of the head, just for fun I think, so I would look genuinely like a 50s mental patient, then took the rest off. The process probably lasted no more than 20 minutes. I kept asking Jack to change the music to something more calming. Then it was over. Jack smiled, and dusted the back of my neck with talcum powder. I ran my hand over my head to feel the sharp, angry stubble, checked in the mirror then went into the bathroom and checked the mirror there. How did I feel? I felt happy. I had never felt so clean, and so… straightforward. It was no nonsense, it was real, it was me. I liked it. I suddenly had no idea what the fuss about being bald was all about. Why does baldness matter so much to men? The thinker and notable bald person, Alain de Botton, recalls his own grief when his hair began to disappear in his late teens. "It was very distressing and frustrating," he says. "It stood in the way of being confident about myself and undermined my sense of how attractive I was to women. Even at the age of 40 I still think of it as an unfortunate thing in my life. But I see it as being almost analogous to a disability. It isn't simply vanity – most people do look worse without hair." De Botton also notes that it is not subject to social inhibition in the way other shortcomings might be. "It is completely acceptable to laugh at a bald person in a way that it simply isn't at a fat person." His distress is not unusual. Stories of men – and women – becoming suicidal after hair loss are not uncommon. This is not just about looks, but mortality, the passage of time. "It is a paradigm of ageing, a signal of loss of control over our bodies on a continuum with, say, losing the ability to stand up or the loss of a faculty," says De Botton. "We suddenly become describable as just an old biddy or an old fool. Baldness quickly swallows up a person, like 'just' a fat person or an ill person." Murray Healy, journalist and author of the book Gay Skins: Class, Masculinity and Queer Appropriation, points out that losing hair naturally is "seeming to fail, which is a bad thing. Thinning hair is, in a sense, the equivalent of a 'failed crop'." By which he means a failed agricultural rather than tonsorial crop. He suggests unhappiness at not having hair is to do with a sense of shame, rather than any objective reality; and that if one is bold and does nothing to conceal the loss, and in fact emphasises it by shaving, it can signify the opposite of failure – confidence in one's own masculinity. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, which can be traced back to the hyper-masculinity advertised by the original skinheads in the 60s and 70s, a hairstyle which was then appropriated and lionised by the gay community in the 80s and 90s and turned into the opposite signal. By the time Bruce Willis and David Beckham started to crop their hair, shaven-headedness had gone Mainstream Hetero. The white-van man and metrosexual alike, the baldness sufferer and the style surfer, were all flocking to have their hair clippered to the minimum length. "Celebrities shaving their heads brought a different interpretation to baldness entirely," says Healy. "From when Trevor Sorbie started to makeover men with cropped hair on daytime TV in the early 90s, the meaning changed." But what about those who are not convinced by Trevor Sorbie or Bruce Willis? Is there really hope for them, with the new research discoveries and fresh techniques for hair transplantation? Probably not, according to GP and medical journalist Dr James Le Fanu, author of The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine. "You have to be incredibly sceptical about stem cells and anything where people say in five years' time we'll do such and such," says Le Fanu. "Stem-cell technology appears to offer the moon. Regeneration and regenerative medicine is often presented as the answer to everything in the universe. But actually there's nothing in the bank." Balding, Le Fanu points out, is deeply mysterious, even counter-intuitive. "Nobody knows why you get balder as you get older. It's an anomaly. It doesn't fit." Because, Le Fanu explains, people with lower levels of testosterone (which usually comes with ageing) should theoretically enjoy better hair growth. After all, castrati never lose their hair, because they don't produce testosterone. "There is some link between hair loss and testosterone, but no one knows what it is." Le Fanu isn't all negative. He claims that hair transplants are pretty good nowadays and recommends drugs such as Regaine (Minoxidil), which induces hair growth in 30-40% of people. He notes that "increasing circulation to the scalp also appears to promote hair growth. The Japanese have a special hair brush which they use to massage the scalp 200 times a day to increase blood flow. This is said to improve hair growth." Le Fanu, though knowledgeable, is not a hair-loss specialist. The closest I could get to an independent expert, Dr Bessam Farjo, is medical director of both the Institute of Trichologists and the Farjo Medical Centre in Manchester, which specialises in hair transplants. Farjo respected calls for scepticism, but was cautiously optimistic that real progress is being made. "The importance of George Cotsarelis's research is in showing that stem cells are not lost when people lose their hair," says Farjo. "It's just that a certain kind of cell – the progenitor cell – is missing. If the hair is still there and the cells are still there, the hope is that the cell can be 'kick started' to produce new hair growth. "The UCLA experiments with Astressin B underline the case for linking hair loss with stress – the mice in the experiment lost hair when put under stress and regained it when the Astressin B was introduced. Furthermore, the German research is the first time to my knowledge that artificial hair follicles have been grown in a laboratory. This could be very promising." The "growth factor", sh-VEGF, that Nanogen claims to have discovered, and which can supposedly "reawaken dormant hair follicles", is also significant, according to Farjo. "A growth factor sets off protein in the body that triggers various processes... they flow in the body naturally. But a growth factor can also retard growth as well as promote it. The research is all about trying to figure out how to introduce more of the positive growth factors." Farjo emphasises that "curing" baldness – which, after all, is completely natural and therefore doesn't require a cure – is still a long way off. "We definitely have a lot more information now than five or 10 years ago – but curing baldness could, in the long run, be as difficult as curing cancer." Farjo recommends hair transplants for those seeking a quick solution – which, he says, have greatly progressed. However, the idea that James Nesbitt has been the benefactor of a new robotic FUE technique is simply wrong. Nesbitt had a conventional "strip harvesting" process. He was just lucky, had a good surgeon, and it took well. "Robot technology has simply not been achieved yet to the level where it can be used," says Farjo. "And there is no real difference in quality between strip harvesting and FUE – it's just a matter of how serious a scar you leave at the back of the head." Talking of scars – psychological rather than physical – the big test for me was going home after my crop. It was, after all, my wife who had nagged me for years to get my hair taken off and, as usual, I cravenly sought her approval. Somewhat predictably, for the first day, she didn't even notice. I had to resort to blocking her off in a corridor and asking her the pointed question: "Well?" while raising my eyes to the crown of my head. "Well what?" Rachael said, scanning me abstractedly, to work out what exactly I was talking about. "Well?" I said, even more pointedly, lowering my head slightly so she might be able to get a better clue. "Oh, your hair!" she said finally. She grimaced, then said, "I was hoping it would be shorter." Then she rushed off to an important appointment. Clearly she was unimpressed, but then I was sure the style would grow on her – so to speak. Sure enough, when she returned from her appointment, she examined me critically, as if for the first time, and smiled. She clearly loved it. "You look like a cancer patient," she said, cheerfully, and went to make some tea. Perhaps a comb over wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. Beauty Stem cells Medical research Biology Biochemistry and molecular biology Chemistry James Nesbitt Alain de Botton Tim Lott guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

University a lottery for people like me Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:06 PM PDT With projected A-level grades of three As and a B, this talented student had hopes of reading English at Oxford or Bristol. But the huge influx of students trying to beat the rise in tuition fees has left her and countless others disappointed For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to go to Oxford. Martin Luther King had his dream, and I have mine – granted, mine is a lot more egotistical and selfish and not really concerned with social utility, but I'm 17 years old, give me a break. I don't want to go to Oxford because I've had some inspirational chinwag with an eccentric teacher who satiated my growing ego with tales of how much potential I have and how good a writer I am (I am pretty good though, I can paint pictures with words, make them all pretty, like). I want to go there because it's the best university in the country (excepting Cambridge, but they're essentially the same thing, let's call a spade a spade) and, according to universally acknowledged league tables, the best for my subject, which, if you hadn't guessed from my colourful vocabulary, is English literature. I didn't get into Oxford and it hurt, but I'm not going to detail my grieving process because it brings up too much buried pain and I'm reserving that material for my therapist. Anyway, it's not just Oxbridge and it's not just black students: getting into university this year has been a perilous feat, leaving students depressed, dejected and with a dismal outlook on life. The cap on tuition fees has been blown off like an unruly volcano and now we students are festering in the poisonous lava. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to get ethnic minorities interested in aiming higher, yet their coalition government is allowing the increase in fees and sticking us with the prospect of a £27,000 debt over our heads. So this year, with an unbelievable influx of applicants all trying to beat the hike, all universities have had the undesirable job of choosing the best students out of a pretty indistinguishable pile. And thus we are stuck with a catch-22 where the only way out is a student lottery. Which is why people with higher grades, lower grades and pretty much the same grades as me are getting in, and others with higher grades, lower grades and pretty much the same grades as me are not. And that is just the way the unfair, unjustified and just plain stupid cookie crumbles. The most painful thing about not getting into Oxford was that, at the time, I didn't understand why. I was predicted A*AAB (which, after the results of my January exams, has now been revised to A*A*A*B – bittersweet, to say the least), I had a strong personal statement, a good reference and a glittering personality (seriously, ask anyone). I met the entrance requirements, I aced the admissions test and my interview went pretty well, too. What went wrong? It wasn't just Oxford that rejected me, but Warwick, Bristol, UCL and, seemingly, life – life has rejected me and left me a writhing, gibbering wreck with nothing to look forward to except a perpetual cycle of rejection. Hallelujah. Bristol was the worst. With every other university, it was more or less a clean break. It was all "we have received your application" and then – kaboom – "unsuccessful". But not Bristol, they had to reject me with style. They had to be the rejectors to beat all rejectors. They had to make me want it. They had to make me wait with ceaseless expectation as they tended to my application. Keeping track became like monitoring a disease that got progressively worse, and then, when I had the most chance of recovery, Bristol pulled the plug on my life support machine, leaving me, to all intents and purposes, dead. And I still don't know why. I mean, running with this disease metaphor, a doctor, while tending to my rotting corpse, would give my family closure, tell them that my application lacked passion or something, so the next time, following miraculous revivification, I would understand how not to die. But none of the universities thought past killing me. I do know, however, that it was not a lack of aspiration that led to these failures. It's often said that due to a stifling culture that forces black students into not aiming high enough, or aspiring for better than their council flat in Bermondsey or their inevitable descent into gang warfare, ethnic minorities think Oxbridge is an unachievable dream. Well, they don't. It's not a case of black people seeing a mass of impenetrable whiteness at Russell Group universities and therefore being scared out of applying. I mean, we got a man on the moon. We didn't let our fear of aliens stop us from breakdancing on that over-sized lump of rock, did we? Well, I mean "we" as a collective human race, not "you and me", unless you happen to be Neil Armstrong. Ethnic minorities won't succumb to not succeeding just because they've been dissuaded by a couple of secondary school teachers; if there's something to aspire to, people aspire. I aimed high, and am from a generation that consistently dares to be better and achieve greater things, especially in the face of adversity. I aimed even higher when I was selected by the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF) – because I'm high-achieving, but underprivileged (yippee, I think) – for special mentoring. I still had to apply, though – you'd think being selected would grant me immunity from having to fill out the application form, but no such luck. I was paired with an amazing mentor called Ajay, who went to Cambridge and got a first in history and is now a journalist. This made me plan out the next decade of my life as such: go to Oxford, get a first-class degree, become a journalist, be amazing. As a mentor, Ajay gave me advice about applications and emailed cyber slaps whenever I was freaking out about life, the universe and everything. The SMF set me up with a wealth of interview preparation sessions and got speakers to come in and talk to us about careers, so I was pretty confident when, in wintry December, I had my interview at Oxford. It went well. You can't hear my tone, so I'm going to have to state that I am not being sarcastic, it actually did go pretty well. When I got to Oxford, it was initially rather calamitous because I tried to make friends with some international students who probably thought I was an alien (with the blue hair and everything) and promptly ran away, and I couldn't talk to anyone else because they were all sitting in fully formed circles in the junior common room, so I went to bed thinking, "Gah! Oxford is terrible!" But then I woke up and it was like it never happened. I met the rest of the English students and we bonded before our interviews and there was a really nice atmosphere because we swore that we would be best friends for ever. Except we can't now, because Oxford has dashed my dreams of world domination. And having wicked cool friends. I had two interviews over consecutive days, each with two tutors. I'd been prepared for the old "So, why do you want to read English?" question, which, of course, they didn't ask (because that was what my personal statement was answering). I was expecting a sort of "good cop, bad cop" operation, where one tutor would ask me where Leo Tolstoy spent his pocket money as a child while snarling at me, and the other would counter with "Now, tell me, what is a rhyming couplet?" Instead, the first tutor discussed a poem with me (it wasn't a very good poem), then the second tutor and I discussed the socio-economic state of India in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and other examples in literature where a character has failed to adapt to changing situations. I even slipped in some background reading I'd done by way of an essay by Roland Barthes called "The Death of the Author". They were smiling and nodding like Cheshire cats on acid when they heard that. In the second interview, I quoted the introduction of Lolita because it's my favourite part of the novel and I like quoting things, and I linked the language used in Lolita to the grandiose language of Othello, which is my A-level text. Granted, I did confuse "Ode to a Nightingale" with "Ode on a Grecian Urn", but it wasn't as though I thought Charlotte Brontë wrote Hamlet or anything and I corrected myself and continued with my analysis of Romantic literature. I thought I did pretty well. Although I probably saw about one other black person while I was in Oxford, I didn't feel like a minority. I remember meeting a German guy called Florian who was applying for linguistics – we had an argument over the spelling of "Bach". It was good times. The only point at which I experienced any discrimination was when my all-male pub quiz team in the junior common room ignored me when I knew the answer to a football question. It's been a gruelling year for students. Cameron and his cronies need to stop making strange racial assertions about one of the country's oldest establishments and ensure the radical changes to the education system don't make students of all colours fear for their futures. Tuition fees University of Oxford Higher education Students guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

How ketamine killed our daughter Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:02 PM PDT Bright, popular, rebellious and creative, 21-year-old Louise Cattell had everything to live for. Then she made a fatal mistake. She took the party drug ketamine and was found dead in the bath by her flatmate. There are 125,000 other ketamine users in the UK. Louise's parents want to make sure it never happens to any of them… When Vicky and Ross Cattell woke at the usual time on Wednesday 2 March they had no reason to think the day would not pan out just like any other. They were at their flat in Geneva, where they had been living for just over a year, and their first thought, as always, was for their children in London, Tommy, 23, and Louise, 21. Both, as far as they knew, were still safely in bed, Tommy at the family home in Belsize Park and Louise at her bachelor-girl flat in Clapton, further east. Ross set off for work at Deloitte, the financial advisory firm, and Vicky prepared for her daily exercise routine. Everything seemed utterly normal. Then, just before his 8.30am meeting, Ross's phone rang with the news that would rip their world apart: Louise was dead, drowned in the bath after taking ketamine, the horse tranquilliser that is currently the "party drug" of choice among young people across the UK. "When I first found out , I couldn't believe it. I thought there must have been a mistake," says Ross. "It was the most terrible shock." Vicky nods in agreement: "You have this nightmare so many times as a parent that something like this is going to happen and then you wake up and think, 'thank God, it's not true'," she says. "The problem is that now it is actually true. The worst thing that could happen has happened and there's not a thing we can do about it." We are talking at the Cattells' house in London just a few days after their daughter's funeral. It is a lovely light-filled space, full of bright rugs and cushions, books and paintings: an elegant yet unpretentious family home. There are photographs of Louise everywhere: smiling at the camera alongside her brother, her parents and her friends; striking poses in a succession of crazy frocks, her hair a different colour and style in every shot. Beneath the stairs is an impromptu shrine to "our darling girl" complete with scented candles, flowers and yet more photographs – Louise hula-hooping in giant sunglasses and a leopard print mini-dress; Louise winking and pouting in a long black wig and matt black lipstick: Louise with lilac hair in a black corset, competing in The X Factor (she got through to the second round). Among some wilting lilies stands a solitary half-bottle of champagne, its label customised with diamanté studs. Vicky shows me the card tied to its neck. "Dearest Louise," it reads, "Something to help you on your journey". Given what she has been through in the past few weeks, Vicky is remarkably composed. So, too, is Ross, who provides coffee and biscuits on a tray, then listens thoughtfully as his wife tells me about the last few weeks of their daughter's life. Stroking Louise's cat Pickle on her lap, Vicky recounts how Louise had returned in early February from a month in Australia visiting friends – a 21st birthday trip funded by her parents – and thrown herself into applying to art college. Already established as a photographer and DJ, and with a track record in the fashion industry (she did a foundation course at the London College of Fashion and worked as a production assistant during several London Fashion Weeks for names such as Giles Deacon and Julien Macdonald), Louise had decided it was time to develop her talents as an artist. "She was very, very creative, always artistic as a child, but she'd never focused like this on her art before. She did amazingly well getting her portfolio together so quickly," Vicky says. "That was what we talked about during the last conversation we had – I told her I was so proud of her for getting it done in time." It is only when she talks about the night Louise died that Vicky's voice breaks and the emotion she must be feeling spills over. "She had dropped off her portfolio to Chelsea College of Art the night before and spent the day hanging out in her flat, working in the garden. In the evening three male friends came round to supper. Her best girlfriend, who was living with Louise at the time, was also there. Apparently, they had a nice meal – Louise was a terrific cook – and they drank some wine. At some point in the evening, I'm told, Louise and some of the others took ketamine. "The girls watched TV for a while and then Louise's friend went to bed. Louise was tired too but didn't think she'd be able to sleep, maybe because of taking the drug but also because she had things on her mind. She had given up her job [as a visual merchandiser for the fashion chain New Look] before going to Australia and she knew she had to find another one because she had bills to pay. She'd been worrying about that. So she said she was going to take a bath to help her relax. About an hour later her friend woke up and realised straight away that something was wrong. She just had a feeling. She went into the bathroom and found her. She had fallen asleep in the bath and drowned." Horrified, Louise's friend called the emergency services who told her how to try and resuscitate her but by then it was too late. The police called at the Cattells' home in Belsize Park at 7.30am to inform Louise's brother she had died. "It was terrible," Tommy tells me over the phone after I've seen his parents. "I can see it so clearly in my mind, it is imprinted on my brain. Me in my pyjamas, the policeman and policewoman sitting on the sofa looking awkward and tired, the disbelief I felt in my heart – I just kept thinking it could not be true." Too shocked to use the telephone, Tommy asked a family friend who was staying at the house to ring Ross and tell him what had happened. Before leaving Geneva, Vicky posted a message on Louise's Facebook page. "Our darling Louise is dead," she wrote. "Please help us through this very difficult time." Within days she had been contacted by hundreds of her daughter's friends, offering and seeking condolence. On the Saturday after Louise's death they held an "open house" for everyone who had known her and around 200 people turned up throughout the day. "Obviously our own grief is terrible," says Vicky. "But for the young people involved it is also incredibly hard to bear. Her friend who found her, the poor girl, I can only imagine what she is going through. We realised we had to support them all." Because of the scale of the response to her death, the Cattells changed their original plan for a small, private funeral and opted instead for a "big send-off" at Golders Green Crematorium. Upwards of 400 people attended the humanist service, where in place of the usual hymns and prayers there were poems written by Louise's friends and songs from her Spotify playlist, such as "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses and "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure. The order of service was a fanzine-style brochure again put together by friends, full of touchingly goofy photos of Louise vogueing for the camera in outrageous, barely there clothes, mad wigs and kooky make-up, and with a heartbreakingly simple coverline – Louise 1989-2011 – that brings home the brevity of her life. The service ended with a mass singalong to the theme song from the movie Cabaret "in celebration of Louise's love of life and karaoke", which her mother thought a fitting tribute to "someone who never sat alone in her room". Reading the many tributes on the memorial website set up by her parents, and talking to her friends and family, you get the sense that Louise Cattell was an absolute one-off. "Rest in peace you truly fantastic and much-loved beautiful person," reads one testimonial. "Louise I'll miss you for ever. You were the greatest, funniest, most amazing person I'll ever know. RIP darling. I love you," says another. And so it goes on. "She was full of energy and fun, she was always smiling and positive and you felt so happy and excited in her company," says her friend Charlie, who was a classmate at Francis Holland School in central London. "She was a true original." Her mother recalls Louise going to school aged 12 with green hair, being sent home, only to return with a subtle shade of aubergine, which they let her keep. "I think they secretly admired her chutzpah," says Vicky. She admits she and Ross always let Louise do "exactly what she wanted to do, to a degree, and there were people, parents of her friends, who disapproved of that. But we tried things like curfews and it was hopeless. We found it worked best for the whole family when we trusted her to use her freedom wisely and she almost always repaid our trust. She got all her GCSEs and A-levels despite running club nights and doing gigs as a DJ from the age of 14. No doubt, there will be people who say all this happened because we let her be too wild but I simply don't think that is true. Dying your hair a different colour every week and staying out late does not necessarily mean you are heavily into drugs." Louise was in no sense a habitual drug user. "I'd talked to her about drugs quite a bit," says Vicky. "She'd come across some quite serious cocaine and heroin addicts on the north London music scene and she said to me, 'Mum, I've seen what drugs can do to you and how they've messed up people's lives, and I'm never going to go there.' She may have taken the odd ecstasy tablet but she didn't even like smoking cannabis. I asked Tommy about that the other day – he said she didn't like the taste." According to her friends, ketamine was something Louise took on an occasional basis, as many of them do too. "It's a new thing which is everywhere at the moment. People of my age are all doing it," says one of her close friends, who is 21. Louise's brother adds: "I was not surprised to hear she had taken it because it is very much part of the arty, east London scene she was involved in. It's quite socially acceptable. They all take it, it is definitely the fashionable drug of choice at the moment." Vicky believes that while young people of Louise's age are very aware of the dangers of addiction to hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, they are much less alert to the risks attached to occasional recreational use of ketamine. "We've been talking about this to a lot of Louise's young friends, and I think because ketamine is so widely used and available, despite being illegal, there's this idea among young people that it is somehow safe, but it is incredibly dangerous. I've found it too painful to do too much research into the drug but what I do know is you never know what is in it – and none of the people taking it seem aware of the dangers of using alcohol with it, for example. If Louise had not drunk alcohol, would she still be alive? We don't know." Also known as Special K, Vitamin K, Super K and just K, ketamine is actually a powerful dissociative general anaesthetic originally used as a tranquilliser for horses and other large animals, which depresses the nervous system and causes a temporary loss of body sensation. It was briefly fashionable in the 1960s as a psychedelic drug but then largely disappeared from recreational use, resurfacing in Europe and north America during the 90s. It was made a class C drug five years ago, but despite this ketamine now boasts an estimated 125,000 users in the UK, and more users among young people in England and Wales than heroin and crack cocaine combined. In 2008 the British Crime Survey revealed it was the fastest growing "party drug" among 16-24 years olds, leading it to be called the "new ecstasy". Users taking a small amount experience a euphoric rush which wears off fairly quickly. Larger amounts can cause people to "trip" for about an hour – they call it "going into a k-hole". Often they experience hallucinations and out-of-body experiences similar to those caused by taking LSD. Some report conversations with God. Because you cannot feel pain when you have taken ketamine it is possible to injure yourself quite badly and not be aware of it. Users may also become incapable of moving while under the influence, again exposing themselves to physical risk. It can cause dangerously high blood pressure if mixed with ecstasy or amphetamines. And, crucially, in relation to Louise's case, if the drug is taken with other depressant drugs such as alcohol, even a small amount can dangerously suppress breathing and heart function and can lead to unconsciousness. Louise's brother does not believe she would have been aware of these kinds of side-effects before taking the drug. "I think she would probably have thought, everyone's taking it so it must be safe. The fact that it is only a class C drug could well have reinforced this view," he says. David Nutt, the former chairman of the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, suggested before he was sacked from his post in 2009 that ketamine should be upgraded from a class C drug due to the harm it can cause to users. However, Louise's parents are not convinced that a change in classification would have a great effect on the numbers of young people using it. Ross does not believe young people pay much attention to drug classifications anyway. "I think raising awareness is much more important than legislation. Young people need to be more risk-aware when it comes to ketamine," he says. Vicky has a background in the media and PR – she has worked for the Telegraph Group and was most recently media director for the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development – and she is planning to draw on this to start a campaign to increase awareness of how dangerous ketamine can be. "We're going to work with some of Louise's friends and some of my contacts in the film industry to put together a short film using Louise's life as a showcase, an example of a bright young life cut short, coupled with facts and figures to let young people know what is going on and to raise awareness of the dangers and risks associated with the drug," Vicky explains. "It is going to be made by young people for young people. It doesn't need to cost a lot of money. We'll make it a viral campaign, on the internet, which is where it will reach young people." Another close friend who did not want her name mentioned claims that Louise's story has already had a profound effect on people who knew her and even on those who didn't. "This has certainly woken up a lot of people," she says. "I know a lot of people who regularly use ketamine who are stopping and thinking about what they are doing. I really want to warn people about it now." She and other friends of Louise think it is especially important to get the message about the dangers of ketamine into schools and youth clubs because the people taking it are getting younger and younger. "My friend's little sister who is 14 was caught taking it at school. Apparently loads of other girls in her year had been taking it." As well as their campaign, Vicky and Ross are planning a memorial gathering for Louise on 21 June. This will be a simple Quaker-like ceremony where people will be able to contribute memories from the floor, after which they will launch magic lanterns over London in her memory. Next year the Cattells will stage a tribute concert to commemorate Louise's life and highlight the ketamine awareness campaign. "We want to prevent any other young person from having a horrible accident like this," says Ross. "If any good can come from this…" His voice tails off. In the meantime, he and Vicky are faced with the unbearably painful business of clearing Louise's flat and tying up the loose ends of her young life, which had barely begun. "I've been to her flat once to collect her jewellery," says Ross. "It was quite tough. But somehow not as tough as going to the bank to close her bank account, or ringing the water company to tell them to stop sending the bills." Hardest of all was "ringing Ucas and telling them there was no point in progressing her applications to art school any further". Louise's brother Tommy doesn't think he will ever get over her loss. "People say you grow to accept it but at the moment I just feel a really sad feeling in the pit of my stomach all the time. I'd always imagined that in 30 years' time we would still be going on holiday together, going out of each other's houses and our children would be friends. Now that's never going to happen. It makes me feel empty and alone." www.louisecattell.com Drugs Drugs policy Young people David Nutt Social networking Social trends Lisa O'Kelly guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Islanders rescue oil slick penguins Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:06 PM PDT Helped by the RSPB, a small, remote community in the South Atlantic has worked together to save 4,000 endangered birds One of the world's most dramatic wildlife rescues is coming to a successful conclusion on Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. Thousands of endangered northern rockhopper penguins, which were caught in thick oil slicks, have been saved in a month-long operation involving virtually all of the islands' 260 inhabitants. The penguins were trapped in oil released by the freighter MV Oliva when it ran aground and broke up last month off Nightingale island, 20 miles from the main island of Tristan da Cunha. Thousands of these delicately feathered birds – known locally as pinnamins – were coated in thick oil and all would have died but for the extraordinary intervention of local people. "Just about everyone on the island has played a part in this operation," Katrine Herian, an RSPB project officer based on the island, said. "It was an amazing, co-operative effort. Some people took boats to Nightingale to pick up oiled penguins – a very tricky task given the swells and winds there. Carpenters on the main island built pens to keep them in. The main store – where tools, cement and machinery are stored – was cleared out and sand put down on the concrete floor so we could keep the penguins there. "Then the island's swimming pool was drained of nearly all its water and used as a home for cleaned birds. People even ransacked their freezers to find fish they could thaw out and use to feed the rockhoppers. They would have starved otherwise." In the end, about 4,000 rockhoppers were saved, although Herian warned that it was impossible to say how many others may have died: "We won't really know until next year when the birds start breeding again and we can get a proper chance to count numbers and see how badly they were affected." The northern rockhopper penguin, Eudyptes moseleyi, is found on only a few islands in the Atlantic, with 99% of its population making homes on the British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha, a lonely, volcanic archipelago considered to be the world's most remote inhabited group of islands. There is no airstrip and the nearest major ports are in South Africa. Keeping track of the northern rockhoppers in such a location is not easy. Nevertheless, ornithologists have discovered that their numbers have plunged by more than 90% since the 1950s, with factors such as climate change and over-fishing of squid and octopus – the penguins' main source of food – being put forward as possible causes. As a result, the northern rockhopper is now classified as an endangered species. The wrecking of the MV Oliva, therefore, posed a significant threat to them. The ship was carrying 65,000 tonnes of soya beans from Brazil to China when it ran aground on 16 March on an islet off Nightingale island. All 20 crewmen were rescued by islanders, but the vessel broke apart and released more than 1,500 tonnes of oil on to the waters around the island, coating the rockhoppers. Within a day, islanders and RSPB workers began their remarkable rescue operation. When winds and the swell were low, they sailed to the island in small boats and, using Tristan's principal fishing vessel, the Edinburgh, as a command vessel, began shipping oiled rockhoppers back to the main island. "The birds get very distressed when they are coated in oil," said Herian. "They lose body temperature very quickly in the water and preen themselves to get rid of the oil. They get weaker and weaker as they do that. Unless they get help, they die." Capturing the birds as quickly as possible became a priority. Then they were transported to the main island, where they were corralled in pens, then showered and soaped to get rid of the oil and given liquid glucose feeds that vets usually give to pet cats and dogs to provide them with a quick energy boost. Then they were dried off under infra-red lamps. "Many of the islands' older inhabitants played a key role in this work," said Herian. "These are remarkably hardy people and pensioners think nothing of walking many miles every day to get about. They did a lot of the hard work in cleaning up the penguins." The local rescue mission was also given crucial support from a team from Sanccob, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, which arrived on the island on 5 April. They brought specialist cleaning equipment, vitamins – and 20 tonnes of frozen pilchards. The Sanccob team also installed three large hot-water geysers in the wash-bay to improve penguin-washing, as well as hundreds of metres of piping and cable to link to the island's water and electrical supplies. In the end, a complex routine was established. Workers sprayed a fine mist of de-greasing agent over stricken penguins. Then the birds were washed in a warm bath of biodegradable soap and an antiseptic solution before being given a gentle clean round their eyes using a toothbrush. Later the rockhoppers were moved to the islanders' swimming pool so that their swimming skills could be assessed. Those that passed the test were released into the Atlantic. "We will know next year how successful this operation has been when we count how many breeding pairs have returned to Tristan," said Herian. RSPB Endangered species Wildlife Pollution Robin McKie guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Penn and Pitt share the same screen Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:06 PM PDT The matching megastars have gone from matinee idols to serious actors; now they face each other as father and son in a film that has set pulses racing in Hollywood As films go, the ambition of The Tree of Life is hardly small. The eagerly awaited epic from enigmatic auteur director Terrence Malick aims to explore the very meaning of existence in its two hours and 18 minutes run time. News that it is showing at the Cannes film festival has set pulses racing among Hollywood's great and good. But it's not just Malick's lushly artistic directorial style that has people excited. It is the identity of the male leads: Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Tree of Life will showcase the acting skills of two of modern Hollywood's biggest stars, appearing in a movie together for the first time. It is a classic piece of casting. "I'm eager to see these two work together," said Professor Richard Dubin, a director-turned-film-academic at Syracuse University. On the face of it, the film's leading men appear dissimilar. Pitt, 48, retains much of the boyish good looks that made him a classic matinée idol. The 51-year-old Penn, meanwhile, with his craggier looks and outspoken opinions, appears more to epitomise the tortured artist. Yet both are now undisputed masters of their game. Until the reviews come in, it will not be known if Malick's film will shed much light on the meaning of life, but its leading men appear to have already unlocked something almost as important: the secret path to Hollywood megastardom. Pitt and Penn play men of different generations and differing temperaments. In the few teasing bits of information and the brief trailer released so far, it is clear that Pitt plays Penn's father as a classic male of the 1950s: stern and traditionally masculine. Penn's character, meanwhile, struggles with that paternal legacy decades later, seeking to resolve his adult problems by searching for meaning in their troubled relationship. In reality, their journeys towards Hollywood celebrity have largely paralleled each other. Each has ticked a series of boxes demanded of top male stars and in return the industry has showered them with success. Both are hugely talented and good-looking. But the streets of Los Angeles are littered with such people who will never make it. There has to be more than simple ability: there is also a pattern and a strategy. Both actors got their breaks early and both began with bit parts on television. Pitt started in 1987 with an appearance on the sitcom Growing Pains and a short role in Dallas, before the sight of his chiselled six-pack in Thelma and Louise sent America's women into Pitt-mania. His brief, but highly effective, appearance catapulted him into the mainstream. Penn's first role was as an extra in The Little House on the Prairie. He graduated into playing a young recruit at a military school in 1981's Taps before hitting it big in the 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, playing a stoned surfer. Theoretically, such a role should not have paved the way to a serious career. But Penn, like Pitt, just needed an audience and rapidly progressed to more serious and critically acclaimed work in projects such as Bad Boys and The Falcon and the Snowman. Both men have been careful to cultivate as wide a fan base as possible. Penn, despite a reputation for his serious thespian roles, has not been shy about doing mainstream thrillers and action movies. He starred in the cop movie Colors and the mystery caper The Game, each full of gun battles and car chases. Pitt is even less of a stranger to the big bangs, screen kisses and frantic bullet-dodging that form much of the meat and potatoes of Hollywood life. He became a movie star on the back of manly roles in big-budget films such as A River Runs Through It, Interview with a Vampire, Troy and Mr & Mrs Smith. Yet both avoided the classic pitfalls: typecasting and stereotype. "They got into a good position where they could make some choices, then they both made hay out of it," said Dubin. Many of Hollywood's leading men – especially those expected to draw audiences simply by having their name on the movie posters – seem to repeat role after role in the same rut. Pitt and Penn have been careful from the very beginning to stretch their skills in smaller, more difficult roles. Pitt, especially, could have just relaxed into being a sex symbol. But he agreed to play Death in Meet Joe Black, the impossible-to-understand Irish boxer Mickey in Guy Ritchie's Snatch, a famous outlaw in the acclaimed art house western The Assassination of Jesse James and the title role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where he lives his entire life growing younger, not older. Penn, meanwhile, won numerous awards and acclaim for tough roles as a murderer in Dead Man Walking, a mentally disabled man in I Am Sam and a gay rights activist in Milk. Both perfected the art of keeping mainstream crowds streaming into the multiplexes while also indulging their artistic passions. There are parallels in their personal lives, too – a sphere that remains a key part of any Hollywood career no matter how distasteful an actor may find it. Both found themselves in celebrity relationships, with Penn marrying Madonna and Pitt, Jennifer Anniston. Each marriage guaranteed mass tabloid exposure. Neither did the resulting divorces break the pattern of famous spouses that are bound to keep an actor in the public eye. Pitt is now famously partner to Angelina Jolie, while Penn was last week reported by the US tabloids to have started living with Scarlett Johansson. The final box to tick in the magic "Penn-Pitt" formula for conquering Tinseltown is to get behind the camera as well as in front of it. Pitt has been executive producer on some great films, including the masterful The Assassination of Jesse James. Penn, meanwhile, has long honed his directing skills, particularly on 2007's Into the Wild. Luck, too, plays a major role. "It is being in the right place at the right time. A lot of success for Hollywood stars is just dumb luck," said Peter Shankman, an author and PR expert. That was certainly true of Pitt, who followed the classic path to Hollywood from a small city in the middle of America (Springfield, Missouri), doing a variety of jobs to make ends meet while attending audition after audition. He struggled for years before a shot of his rippling chest catapulted him to world fame and he was able to leave the thousands of other struggling actors behind. Penn, meanwhile, was born on Hollywood's doorstep. Both his parents were involved in show business. His father got him his first role in a TV show he was directing. It clearly takes luck of all sorts to make a star, but both men have had their flops. Not many people care to remember The Weight of Water, the 2000 thriller in which Penn starred with Elizabeth Hurley. And Pitt may have looked wonderful playing Achilles in Troy, but the movie did not please many critics. He did not even look good in 1992's Johnny Suede, in which he sported an immense pompadour that one critic called "the worst movie hairdo ever". They also have different acting styles, many critics say. Dubin sees Pitt as more of a "personality" actor in the style of a classic leading man such as Cary Grant. Penn, however, is more of a character actor who inhabits the roles he plays. "Actors like Penn clothe themselves in their role more fully than actors like Pitt. That does not make them better, just different," Dubin said. Another large difference between the two is their attitude to politics. Both are active for their favoured causes but they have markedly different ways of expressing it. Pitt has spoken out in favour of gay marriage and taken an active interest in helping to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But much of his work is under the radar. The famously fiery Penn is renowned as an outspoken Hollywood liberal who is unafraid to make political points. It is hard to imagine Pitt abandoning Jolie to spend a year running a Haitian refugee camp, as Penn has done. Yet in the end studying their careers offers only hints of why they succeeded where so many have failed. "There is a limit to how much you can plan this sort of thing," Dubin said. There is one more thing, that both have in spades: ambition and drive. In one of the few pieces of dialogue to be released from The Tree of Life, Pitt's character addresses the issue. "It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world," he said. Both would probably agree on that. Sean Penn Brad Pitt Terrence Malick Cannes 2011 Paul Harris guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Nigel Slater's main course salads Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:05 PM PDT Frisée and trevisse, alfalfa and amaranth… with all the spring leaves to choose from, April is an inspiring time for salads The spring weather encourages a lighter touch to our cooking, and in my kitchen at least, a greater emphasis on main course salads. The leafy base may include some of the crisp, refreshingly bitter chicories and mild, mixed spring leaves but this is also when sprouted seeds and members of the cress family can be used to add everything from mustardy heat to a soft, earthy sweetness. Depending on the occasion, a spring salad can contain anything from noisettes of lamb to shavings of farmhouse cheese or some cheap and cheerful chicken livers. The protein element is really playing a supporting role to the wealth of new spring leaves and seedlings. FRIED NEW POTATO SALAD WITH DILL, SOURED CREAM AND CHICKEN LIVERS Substantial and quite rich, this is an economical main course salad using that cheap, underused delicacy, chicken livers. I go against modern advice and serve mine pink in the middle. It's up to you.            SERVES 2 For the livers: chicken livers 250g milk 200ml streaky bacon 150g butter a thin slice For the potatoes: new potatoes 400g olive oil a little For the dressing: soured cream 150ml (a 142ml tub will do) dill 6 sprigs capers 1 tsp white wine vinegar a few drops Check the chicken livers for any dark patches, trimming where necessary, then put them in a mixing bowl with the milk and leave for 20 minutes. This is to remove any bitterness that may be present. The milk will also form a pleasing crust on your livers as they cook. Scrub the potatoes, then boil them in salted water for 8-10 minutes till almost tender. Drain, then crush them lightly with a potato masher so that the skins break and the potatoes crumble slightly. Warm the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan, add the potatoes and leave them to cook for 10 minutes till they are crisp and golden, turning them once to cook the other side. If they crumble during cooking, then all to the good – there will more crispness that way. While the potatoes are cooking, drain the livers and season with salt and black pepper. Cut the bacon into short pieces, about the width of a postage stamp. Melt the butter in a frying pan and when it is hot add the bacon and then, as it starts to crisp, the drained chicken livers. Make the dressing: put the soured cream in a bowl. Chop the dill and add it to the soured cream with the capers. Sharpen with a little vinegar, just a drop or two, if you like a sharper dressing. Assemble the salad: put the potatoes on a warm serving dish, tip the chicken livers and bacon over the top, then trickle the dressing over. PEAR AND CHEESE WITH SPROUTED SEEDS Crisp, mild, light and fresh, this is the antidote to the big-flavoured salad. I prefer to use hard, glassy-fleshed pears straight from the fridge for this, rather than the usual ripe ones. Any sprouted seeds can be used, including young pea shoots, wine-red amaranth or purple radish. The easy-to-find bags of mixed sprouts are good here, too. The cheese is up to you. Something with a deep, fruity flavour is probably best, though I have used firm goat's cheeses on occasion, too. Rather than slicing it thickly, I remove shavings from the cheese with a vegetable peeler. A sort of contemporary ploughman's lunch. SERVES 2 For the dressing: natural yoghurt 150ml olive oil 2 tbsp herbs, such as chervil, parsley or chives a handful bitter leaves, frisée or trevisse 4 handfuls crisp pears 2 firm, fruity cheese, such as Berkswell 150g assorted sprouts, such as radish, alfalfa, sunflower, amaranth To make the dressing, put the yoghurt into a bowl and whisk in the olive oil and a little salt and black pepper. Chop the herbs and stir into the yoghurt. Put the frisée or trevisse leaves in a mixing bowl. Halve the pears, remove the cores and slice thinly, then add them to the herb and yoghurt dressing. Put the salad leaves on a serving dish. Pile the pears and their dressing on top. Using a vegetable peeler, shave off small, thin slices of the cheese and scatter over the salad with the assorted sprouted seeds. FIVE-SPICE CHICKEN AND PEA SHOOT SALAD Sometimes you can find raw, diced chicken at the butcher's or supermarket, but if not, then a mixture of thigh and breast, coarsely diced, is fine, too. Rabbit would also be an option.            SERVES 2 For the salad: pea shoots 2 or 3 large handfuls young, small, salad leaves a mixed bag will do sprouted seeds or cress a couple of handfuls For the chicken: fresh ginger about 40g red chilli a small one Chinese five-spice powder 2 tsp garlic 2 cloves groundnut oil 2 tbsp chicken meat 400g, uncooked, diced caster or palm sugar ½ tsp lime juice of 1 Prepare the salad: wash the pea shoots and salad leaves and spin or shake them dry. Peel the ginger and grate it to a pulp, scraping every bit from the grater into a mixing bowl. Finely slice the chilli, add it to the ginger, then stir in the five-spice powder. Peel and crush the garlic then add it to the ginger. Pour in the oil and mix thoroughly. Add the chicken to the ginger mixture and toss the ingredients together. Get a wok or frying pan really hot. Add the diced chicken and its dressing to the pan and let it cook over a high heat for 6 or 7 minutes, stirring from time to time, until it is cooked through. (A lid will help the chicken to cook right through.) Add the sugar, stir-fry for a further minute, then add the lime juice and salt generously. Add the pea shoots and salad leaves to the wok, toss for a few seconds till they have started to wilt and darken, then tip everything into bowls. Scatter with the sprouted seeds or cress and serve immediately. A SALAD OF SPRING LAMB, LEMON AND OLIVES Small, peppery or spicy spring leaves work well with lamb, and especially so when they are tossed with a lemon-scented dressing. Rocket leaves, young dandelions, bitter frisée or watercress are good here. The dressing, which utilises the flavour left behind in the pan after the lamb has been cooked, should be tossed with the leaves at the very last minute. SERVES 2 noisettes of lamb 4 olive oil a little mixed salad leaves 4 handfuls, washed and dried For the dressing: rosemary 3 bushy sprigs garlic 2 cloves lemon a small one green olives, stoned 70g olive oil 4 tbsp Season the lamb on both sides with salt, pepper and a little olive oil. To start the dressing, remove the needles from the rosemary and chop them finely. Flatten the garlic cloves with the side of a large knife or using a pestle. No need to peel – just squash them lightly. You want only a subtle hint of garlic in the dressing. Remove 6 short strips of peel from the lemon. Roughly chop the olives. Place a non-stick frying pan over a moderate heat, then, as soon as it is hot, put the oiled and seasoned lamb into the pan and let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, until it is light walnut brown on the underside. Turn the meat over and cook the other side for a further 3 or 4 minutes. Check the meat is cooked to your liking, then lift out and leave to rest on a warm plate, covered with foil, while you quickly make the dressing. Discard any fat from the pan but leave the sticky golden sediment remaining – it will form the base of the dressing. Put the pan back on the heat, pour in the 4 tbsp of olive oil, then add the rosemary needles and the flattened garlic cloves. Add the lemon peel to the pan, squeezing each piece as you go to release the lemon oil. Leave the aromatics to flavour the oil for 2 or 3 minutes. Put the salad leaves in a mixing bowl. Add the olives to the pan – they only need to warm through. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon and a grinding of black pepper and salt. Stir the pan briefly with a wooden spatula, scraping any undissolved pan stickings from the lamb into the dressing, then tip over the salad leaves. Immediately divide the salad and its warm dressing between two plates, place the noisettes on top and serve. CRAB, AVOCADO AND LIME SALAD A luxurious salad for a special occasion. I sometimes use this as a first course instead of a light lunch, in which case it will serve three, rather elegantly. In a perfect world you could use your own home-cooked crab, but I often use ready-dressed crab from the fishmonger.        SERVES 2 crab meat, mixed 300g For the dressing: red chilli a small one spring onions 2 thin cucumber a 10cm piece avocado 2 small palm sugar or golden caster 1 heaped tsp fish sauce 1 tbsp lime juice 3 tbsp coriander leaves a handful To serve: ciabatta 4 slices lime ½ olive oil a little Seed and very finely chop the chilli. Cut the spring onions into very fine slices and add to the chilli. Peel the cucumber, halve it, scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon, then dice the flesh finely into tiny cubes. Remove the flesh from the avocados and dice finely. Toss the cucumber and avocado with the onions and chilli. Put the palm sugar or caster sugar in a small mixing bowl, add the fish sauce and lime juice, then stir till the sugar is dissolved. Chop the coriander leaves and stir into the dressing. No further seasoning is necessary. Toast the slices of ciabatta till crisp, rub with the cut-side of the lime to release a little of the juice, then trickle over enough olive oil to saturate each one. Put the crab meat in a mixing bowl, pour over the dressing and toss very gently, using a fork to mix. Pile on to plates and serve with the lime toasts. nigel.slater@observer.co.uk Food & drink Nigel Slater guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Is Cowell essential to The X Factor? Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:05 PM PDT Simon Cowell is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting The X Factor. Tom Lamont and Euan Ferguson debate whether the programme could survive such a blow Yes, says Observer journalist Tom Lamont To borrow Cowell's own expansive interpretation of maths: 1,000,000% yes. He is essential to The X Factor. That is not to say that when, as has been suggested, Cowell steps down from his on-screen role on the show, ending a seven-year run as judge and mentor to focus his attention on American TV, The X Factor will end. More than 20 million tuned in at its peak last year; ITV will not cull this revenue source in a hurry. But without Cowell The X Factor will be diminished. Keen smiles (We're OK!). Host Dermot O'Leary doing twice as many clicks and heel-spins (It's still fun!). Singers trying to look grave as they listen to verdicts from Cowell's replacement (This is legitimate criticism!). The show will live on, but unhappily. The contestants are the problem. Conditioned by years of platitude and catchphrase-analysis from the show's other judges (first Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne, then Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole), auditionees have learned to care only what Cowell thinks. Good performers wait kindly while Walsh repeats their name several times and pronounces on their "star quality", while Minogue says something about "smashing it" and Cole tries to cry. Yeah, yeah, their faces say – but what does he think? Bad performers look properly distraught if Walsh, Minogue or Cole say something mean, but always have one eye on Cowell. One of the incidental delights of The X Factor is that bit, a quarter-way through, when the contestants are divided into groups (under-25s, boy bands, and so on) and told which judge will "mentor" them. If they get Cowell it's chaos: fancying themselves that much closer to escape from routine life, the hopefuls run towards him as if he were the last American helicopter out of 'Nam. The other judges get a bit of fist-pumping, all the contestants grin, but their eyes are worried. They're thinking about those peers, weeping and bear-hugging in Simon Cowell's living room. It shows they've got some industry nous, already, to care about Cowell so much. Outside the bounds of its 20-week TV run, the show's best chart successes have been defined by their relationship to Cowell. Either boosted by his lavish support (Leona Lewis, an X Factor champ in 2006) or by his teasing opposition (Will Young, a contestant on X Factor predecessor Pop Idol, launched to fame by being the first contestant to talk back to Cowell, to spar with the master). So, yes, he's essential – essential, lastly, to audience enjoyment. At least mine. As is probably clear, I'm not so much a fan of The X Factor as a fan of the Simon Cowell bits. He's really the only one with the nebulous quality the programme purports to search for. Charged to think up new ways to say "You're good" or "You're bad" well over 100 times a series, he keeps his little blasts of critique enviably fresh. Perhaps more impressively he keeps all boredom in check as, every year, the same crowd of karaoke veterans, frustrated professionals, tearful family types (always instructed to audition at the deathbed of a relative) troop through. He keeps our boredom in check too. Cowell's the whole show. No, says Observer TV critic Euan Ferguson Personally, I'd rather Mr Cowell stayed in Britain. Not, and I mean that word in big angry italics, because I think he does any good, but because Americans are now going to spend the next year thinking the cream of British style, wit and intellect today is faithfully represented by Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan. But will The X Factor here wither? Does it need his honesty, his acidity, his tanned sneers? Or, being charitable, simply his drive, and his canny eye and ear? Of course not. The product has been made, the genie unleashed, and the British public now know what they want, or at least what they think they want, and the producers would have to be blind bibulous cretins not to give it to them. Tears, drama, preferably of the unstaged kind but good editing can always help – remember those careful shots to the teen sneerers in the audience the second before Susan Boyle, in Cowell's other show, opened her mouth? And a steady diet of drip-fed goss to the tabloids, to up the ante before this year's chosen diva/teenybopper takes to the telly at the weekend for the next stage in the "journey". And some pappy music. And a misanthropic, truth-telling judge. This has been one of Cowell's better achievements: successful shows of this type will now always be more popular when they feature a Cowell, a Craig Revel Horwood, a Jason Gardner, and the days of niceness, of three nice judges saying nice things about nice performances, are probably and thankfully over. The machine is in place, and his heirs are not cretins, and can cope perfectly well without Cowell. A few weeks ago, for my sins, I sat in Dublin's O2 covering the opening of the X Factor tour. It was mobbed, it was phenomenally successful and for anyone who actually likes music it was of course excruciating; but the slickness, professionalism and cynicism of the machine were never in the slightest doubt, and not a Cowell in sight. Not only has he left this legacy: he's changed other shows. Everything wants to follow the pattern. Even the latest series of Masterchef, though it has settled a bit and involves some cooking, opened with auditions, tears, and much too much talk of "journeys": the hopeful early contestants were even filmed being reunited backstage with their families, emerging wearing or not wearing the coveted be-logoed apron, to screams and jumps or shaky solemn hugs. Who wins, from Cowell's legacy? Ratings win. Gossip wins. Sentimentality wins. But Joe McElderry, X Factor winner a couple of years ago, was on Friday dropped from Simon Cowell's record label, just two years after being told the world was at his feet; he doesn't win. Mainly, Simon Cowell wins. And he will still be victorious in his absence. Simon Cowell The X Factor Entertainment Television Tom Lamont Euan Ferguson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The sweet smell of success Posted: 16 Apr 2011 04:05 PM PDT Who cares about being antisocial? Some meals are so good the foul after-effects are worth it… I am, for the most part, a sociable chap. I like the company of others. Apart from homeopaths, libertarians, Morris dancers and men who drive small sporty BMWs with leather trim. Oh, and John McCririck. Other than that, come one, come all. In certain matters of appetite, however, I am completely antisocial. By which I mean I am more than happy to indulge myself in ways that will make me actively unpleasant to people – including myself. And yet, despite knowing that the foods I am planning to eat will have this effect, I can't stop myself. There is something so utterly compelling about the flavours responsible, so totally necessary, that they cannot be denied. In any case, dinner is something which, on a point of principle, I try never to regret. The first time this struck me most acutely was in San Francisco 15 or so years ago. My wife and I had been for dinner at the Stinking Rose, a famed landmark of a restaurant that will serve you anything you like as long as it comes adorned with garlic. Sitting on the table there were dishes of a warm bagna cauda, that utterly irresistible mix of olive oil, anchovies and crushed garlic, to be mopped up with crusty bread while you studied the menu. There was garlic rabbit, and egg yolk yellow ribbons of pasta smothered in the bulb, and roast chicken with 40 cloves, and at the end, ice cream. Flavoured with garlic. We had thought it would be a ludicrous gimmick; it was actually a terrific meal. No dish went back unfinished. Later – much later – we hailed a cab to take us somewhere else in the city. "You been to the Stinking Rose?" the driver said, eyeing us in his rear-view mirror. Yes, we said. Clearly we still stank. "Bet you're regretting that?" The truth was we weren't. The air in our hotel room may well have hung heavy with days of savoury flatulence. People might have been moved to back away from us in lifts. But it was worth it for that moment at the table. And that's what it's all about: the moment. The recent mini-explosion of regionalism in Britain's Chinese restaurants has only increased such opportunities, as the overly familiar foods of Canton and Beijing are supplemented by those of Sichuan and Hunan and Xinjiang. Time and again I have found myself staring at a menu outside these places, certain in the knowledge that the meal I will eat will be so high in salt and garlic and salt and chilli and chilli and salt that dinner will be followed by a restless night of regular awakenings to quench my thirst, leading to trips to the loo and more drinking. But it doesn't stop me. I order dry, rustling dishes mined with lumps of chilli, rocks of salt and lip-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. I go to wonderful Pakistani grill houses in London's Whitechapel like Tayyabs or the Lahore or Needoo's, then clamber into bed, my fingers still stained from hands-on bone nibblage. Only for my wife to get back out of bed with a look of disgust on her face as she slopes off to sleep elsewhere rather than with this wretched, stinking man she had the bad judgment to marry. Generally the freeze-out is temporary, much like the after-effects of the food responsible. The dry mouth. The bad breath. I always know these things will eventually pass, to leave behind just the memory of the sweet, solipsistic moment at the table and the anticipation of the chance to do it all over again. Soon. jay.rayner@observer.co.uk Food & drink Jay Rayner 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