Award-winning photographer Sean Smith joins an Operational Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT) on patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan
Posts Tagged ‘guardian.co.uk’
Guardian Daily: Purdy on assisted suicide
August 1st, 2009 |
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The Guardian’s Maggie O’Kane on evidence of possible collusion by Iraqi government officials in the kidnapping of five British men in Iraq – four of whom are believed dead.
Debbie Purdy on her historic legal victory to get clarification on whether her husband would be prosecuted if he joined her should she wish to end her life.
The Guardian’s Steve Morris joins former solidiers paying their respects to the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.
And Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is joined by the Guardian’s Stuart O’Connor to talk about his new project and his appearance at this weekend’s BBC Proms.
Tony Scott on The Taking of Pelham 123
August 1st, 2009 |
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Tony Scott, director of Top Gun and the new Taking of Pelham 123 remake, tells Andrew Pulver about the lure of action movies, how he moved from painting to film-making, and the ‘R word’ – his brother Ridley
Iran begins trials of activists who protested election
August 1st, 2009 |
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Up to 100 defendants accused of violence in aftermath of disputed presidential election appear in Tehran court
The first trials of opposition political activists and protesters arrested after June’s disputed Iranian presidential election began today.
Up to 100 defendants were reported by Iranian media to be appearing before a court in the capital, Tehran, accused of violence following the 12 June vote.
The election sparked days of protests as thousands of Iranians took to the streets to denounce the official results, which declared victory for the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The official IRNA news agency said the defendants were charged with rioting, attacking military and government buildings, having links with armed opposition groups and conspiring against the ruling system.
Under the country’s Islamic law, acting against national security – a common charge against dissidents – could be punishable by a long sentence or even the death penalty.
Several prominent reformist opposition activists – including the former vice president Mohammat Ali Abtahi, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a former government spokesman, and Behzad Nabavi, an ex-vice Speaker of parliament – are among the defendants.
The Associated Press said the former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh and Mohsen Mirdamadi, the leader of Iran’s biggest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, were also facing trial.
Photographs from the courtroom showed a Abtahi and Mirdamadi, wearing prison uniform, sitting in the front row. Many other defendants were handcuffed but were not wearing prison clothes.
Prosecutors read out an indictment outlining what they alleged was a year-long plot by leading pro-reform political parties to carry out a “velvet revolution” – a popular, non-violent uprising to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
The phrase comes from the peaceful 1989 velvet revolution which overthrew decades of communism in Czechoslovakia.
The prosecutor said three of the biggest opposition parties had taken money from foreign non-governmental organisations and sought to use the election controversy as an opportunity to carry out their plot, according to a transcript reported by IRNA.
He claimed Israeli and western officials had spoken in recent years of fomenting revolution in Iran.
“Based on the evidence obtained and well-founded confessions of the defendants, these events had been planned in advance and stages of the velvet revolution were carried out in accordance with a time schedule,” the indictment said.
IRNA did not give information about how many defendants were in court, but the semi-official Fars news agency said more than 100 were present.
State media did not provide further details about the trial, and there was no information on when it would end and when a verdict could be expected.
The reformist mowjcamp website denounced the trial, saying defendants had no access to lawyers and there was no jury.
“Do those who organised this show trial think that the nation will remain silent to slaughter the nation’s best?” it asked.
Iran’s opposition maintains Ahmadinejad stole the vote from the opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, but demonstrations have been ruthlessly suppressed, leaving hundreds in prison.
Yesterday, Ahmadinejad said the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was like a father to him.
The president accused his hardline rivals of trying to drive a wedge between him and the man who sits at the top of Iran’s clerical leadership and has final say in all state matters.
On Monday, Khamenei will lead a ceremony formally approving Ahmadinejad’s second term. He will be sworn in before parliament two days later.
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MI5 ‘recruited al-Qaida sympathisers’
August 1st, 2009 |
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Senior Tory says six men were thrown out of security service amid ‘serious concerns’ and demands investigation
A senior Tory MP today called for an investigation into whether MI5 mistakenly recruited al-Qaida sympathisers.
Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the counter-terrorism subcommittee, said six Muslim recruits had been thrown out of the service because of serious concerns over their pasts.
The MP said he was writing to the home secretary, Alan Johnson, to call for an investigation into the matter.
Two of the six men allegedly attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan while the others had unexplained gaps of up to three months in their CVs.
Mercer told the Telegraph that the September 11 2001 terror attacks on the US should have prompted the British government to expand the security services, but this did not happen until the bombings on London’s transport network on 7 July 2005.
“It took an attack on this country for such measures to be started,” he said.
“But at this point it was an unseemly rush of which our enemies, not unsurprisingly, took advantage.”
Mercer added that he was concerned al-Qaida sympathisers who may have infiltrated the security services had not all yet been rooted out.
He said the two recruits who had allegedly been to training camps were not dismissed until after they had been given several weeks of training at MI5, but the others were identified before they started training.
A Home Office spokesman later said: “MI5 takes vetting very seriously indeed. All candidates are required to undergo the most comprehensive process of security vetting in the UK.
“Applicants go through extensive vetting and it is not unusual for a number to drop out or fail at the earliest stages for a variety of reasons.”
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Britons arrested in Brazil ‘granted bail’
August 1st, 2009 |
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Two law graduates arrested over allegations they fraudulently claimed to have been robbed ‘have had passports confiscated’
A judge in Brazil has granted bail to two British law graduates who were arrested over allegations that they fraudulently claimed they had been robbed, their lawyer said today.
Shanti Andrews and Rebecca Turner, both 23, must stay in the South American country as part of their bail conditions and their passports have been confiscated, reports said.
The pair, who both studied at the University of Sussex, were originally denied bail because they were foreigners, their lawyer, Renato Tonini, said.
Following an appeal, Andrews and Turner were told yesterday that they would be released from custody.
Speaking from Rio de Janeiro today, Tonini said: “Yes, they have been granted bail. They will be released today, but I don’t know what time.”
The women are reported to have been transferred from the squalid Polinter jail, south of Rio de Janeiro, to another prison in which they have their own cell.
They had been forced to sleep in overcrowded conditions, with just a blanket on the floor, at Polinter.
The pair told police in the Brazilian city that belongings worth £1,000 had been stolen during a bus journey.
They were taken into custody at dawn on Monday after officers from a specialist tourist support unit apparently became suspicious that they had waited several days before reporting the alleged theft to police.
The Rio de Janeiro state civil police website said the Britons had tried to register a robbery of baggage and documents and claimed they had been attacked.
A subsequent search of their lodgings, in Copacabana, allegedly uncovered some of the belongings they had originally told officers had been stolen.
Tonini said he was “confident” Andrews and Turner would be dealt with fairly by the Brazilian justice system following concerns voiced by Simone Headley, Andrews’s mother, last week.
“We hope the Brazilian justice system will see it as a misunderstanding and the girls will be able to come home safely,” she said.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it had not yet been informed that the women had been granted bail.
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‘Big, ambitious, slightly bonkers’
July 29th, 2009 |
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‘Item one: we need more gigs’
July 28th, 2009 |
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The politics of climate change
July 28th, 2009 |
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This week’s guest is writer and eco-warrior Jonathon Porritt.
As the founding director of the sustainable development NGO, Forum for the Future, and, until this month, chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, when Porritt speaks about global warming people listen. The former director of Friends of the Earth and trustee of WWF came into the pod to fill in the British government’s scorecard on tackling climate change.
The astronomer Carl Sagan was a prolific scientist, pioneering the study of exobiology and astrochemistry and promoting the search for extraterrestrial life. One of his biggest achievements was Cosmos, a 13-part science documentary series first aired in the US in 1980. In it, he took viewers on a journey around the universe describing everything from atoms to galaxies and set a gold standard for science on television.
Alok Jha speaks to Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, who was also one of the writers on Cosmos.
You can win a DVD box set of the classic documentary series by entering our competition.
Pursuing the cosmic theme, we visit a new exhibition at London’s Science Museum that shows how astronomy has influenced culture, and how it has changed our behaviour and been popularised. Exhibits include Astronomy Monopoly and a telescope built from baked-bean cans, spare car parts and coat hangers.
As ever, there’s the Newsjam which this week has details of a sharp rise in the number of animal experiments in the UK, the discovery that humans glow in the dark, and fatherhood beckons for our favourite tortoise, Loneseome George.
Stick your neck out. We’d love to hear your views on the show and the week’s science news …
• Mail us at science@guardian.co.uk
• Get our Twitter feeds for programme updates and daily science news
• Join our Facebook group
Whale impaled on cruise ship bow
July 28th, 2009 |
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The Sapphire Princess arrives in Vancouver in Canada with the dead 20-metre long (70ft) fin whale wedged to its bow
24 hours in pictures
July 28th, 2009 |
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The truth about sports drinks
July 28th, 2009 |
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Sam Murphy reveals how much fluid you need to drink before, during and after a workout, and whether water does the job just as well as sports drinks
Do I really need a sports drink? Won’t water do?
It depends on the intensity and duration of your workout. “Water is generally sufficient for shorter sessions, but for exercise lasting more than 60 minutes, an isotonic sports drink is recommended,” says Wendy Martinson, registered dietician and sports nutritionist.
But Nick Morgan, head of sport science at Lucozade, believes sports drinks can be useful for shorter workouts, too: “If you’ve had a good high-carbohydrate meal in the three-four hours before your workout, you probably don’t need a sports drink”, he says. “But if you haven’t eaten for ages – if, for example, you’ve just got up or have hit the gym straight after work, a sports drink will provide a little extra energy, helping you get more out of yourself and reducing your ‘perception of effort.’”
Just for the record, a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming an isotonic sports drink increased treadmill running time to exhaustion by 27% in recreational runners.
What should I look for in a sports drink?
According to Martin Gibala, an associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada, there are two key ingredients in a good sports drink: “Carbohydrate, which provides fuel for working muscles, and sodium, which helps to maintain fluid balance.”
But formulation is key. An isotonic drink (such as Lucozade Sport or Gatorade) contains a 6-8% carbohydrate solution, which is absorbed into the body more rapidly than water, as well as providing energy. A sports drink should also contain approximately 50mg of sodium per 100ml, along with smaller amounts of the other electrolytes, such as potassium and chloride, which are lost in sweat.
Morgan highlights another important consideration: palatability. “Studies show clearly that if you don’t like the taste of a sports drink, you won’t consume enough of it.”
Are all sports drinks isotonic?
Confusingly, no. Lucozade Sport Hydro Active, for example, is ‘hypotonic’, meaning it contains a less concentrated carbohydrate solution (1-3%). “This will promote water absorption, but provides less carbohydrate energy and fewer calories,” explains Martinson.
At the other end of the scale are ‘hypertonic’ drinks, with a carbohydrate concentration greater than 10%. “These will have a slow gastric emptying rate, thus decreasing fluid absorption,” says Martinson. Energy drinks – including Red Bull – and soft drinks – such as Coke and Pepsi – come into this category, which makes them unsuitable for use during exercise.
How much do I need to drink?
In 2007, the American College of Sports Medicine, an international authority on sport science, revised its guidelines on fluid intake during physical activity, no longer suggesting specific volumes per hour. “We now know that individual needs vary so much it is impossible to suggest a ‘one size fits all’ amount that will suit everyone”, says Morgan. “Issues surrounding the risks of dehydration on one hand and hyponatraemia (water intoxication) on the other make this dangerous ground.”
So what’s the best way forward? Martinson advises calculating your own personal ‘sweat rate’ (see below) so that you can determine how much you need to drink. “Exercise performance is impaired when there is only a 2% decrease in body weight [due to fluid loss]“, she says. “Determining your own sweat rate will enable you to drink sufficient amounts of fluid to minimise weight loss to less than 2% body weight.”
According to Joseph Verbalis, Professor of the Department of Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, you should also listen to your body. “Thirst is a good indicator of your body’s need for fluid,” he says.
Working out your sweat rate
• Record your nude pre-training weight (in kg)
• Record your nude post-training weight, towelling off sweat first.
• Opt for a 30- or 60-minute session, during which you don’t consume fluid. (This makes the maths easier!)
• Subtract your post-training weight from pre-training weight to work out the weight lost, and multiply by 1,000 to convert to grams. The amount you lost in grams is equal to the amount of fluid you lost during that session. If you did a 30-minute session, multiply by two to get your ml per hour figure. This is the amount you should aim to consume in subsequent sessions. For example, if you lost 500g in 30 minutes, you’d be looking to consume 1000ml per hour.
• Bear in mind that the temperature, weather conditions and the intensity of the session will influence your fluid loss – factor this in when determining how much to drink in future sessions.
Should I drink before my workout, or just during?
It’s important to start exercise well hydrated. Research suggests that the body cannot absorb ingested carbohydrate efficiently if the body is dehydrated, so even if you are guzzling sports drinks, they may be of limited benefit. The ACSM recommends drinking 5-7ml of fluid per kg of your body weight in the three-four hours before exercise. (So, if you weigh 60kg that means drinking 300-420ml.) If your urine is still dark after this, they suggest drinking a further 3-5ml/kg. Water will do just fine – but, says Martinson, consuming a sports drink helps to top up carbohydrate stores.
Does it matter if I drink sports drink and water in the same session?
Martinson believes not. “You will still benefit from the carbohydrate and electrolytes in the sports drink even if you drink some water as well,” she says.
Scientists at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, however, disagree, stating: “Watering down a sports drink dilutes the taste, carbohydrate content and electrolyte level – any of which will diminish its performance benefits.”
What about if I mix sports drinks with gels? Am I destined for the Portaloo?
Despite a belief among many runners and triathletes that you shouldn’t mix drinks and gels, according to Morgan it shouldn’t make any difference. “The important thing is to get enough fluid and enough carbohydrate on board – whatever the source,” he says. But like any nutrition or hydration strategy, you need to test it out in training.
Once I’ve finished exercising, is there any benefit in drinking a sports drink?
“You need to think about what kind of workout you’ve done and when you’ll next be exercising to determine whether a sports drink will help you recover,” says Morgan. If you’ve swanned around the gym for 20 minutes, forget it. If, however, you’ve done a tough session and will probably be doing another one within the next 48 hours, you’ll definitely benefit from taking extra carbohydrate on board within the first hour.
“Research also supports the practice of consuming protein after exercise to promote muscle recovery,” adds Gibala. Proprietary ‘recovery’ sports drinks typically tick both the carb and protein boxes, but research from Northumbria University found chocolate milk to be highly effective in facilitating recovery.
Other recent research, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, found that athletes who added caffeine to their recovery cocktail had 66% more glycogen in their muscles four hours after finishing an intense workout.
I have ‘tidemarks’ on my clothes after exercise – should I take extra salt on board?
Tidemarks on clothes are an indication of a ‘salty sweater’. But, says Morgan, this alone is not reason to take extra salt on board. “It needs to be considered alongside the volume you sweat: so you could be a salty sweater who doesn’t lose much sweat (so not too much sodium lost) or a non-salty sweater who sweats buckets (increased loss of sodium.) If you sweat profusely and are a salty sweater there may be need for extra salt, but you would probably be suffering from cramping or extreme fatigue if this were the case.”
How to make your own sports drink
This sports drink recipe, provided by Wendy Martinson, will produce an isotonic drink containing 6-7% carbohydrate solution, depending on the type of squash used.
Mix 250ml ordinary squash or 200ml high juice squash (not sugar-free or low calorie) with 750-800ml cold water, or mix 100-110ml standard Ribena with 900-890ml cold water. Add 1.25g salt (1/2 level tsp).
More information
lucozade.com/sport
gssiweb.com
American College of Sports Medicine on exercise and fluid replacement
Do you swear by sports drinks during exercise, or does water keep you going? Will you change what you drink after reading this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Whitehall’s 20-page guide to Twitter
July 28th, 2009 |
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Guidelines suggest tweets should be frequent, timely and credible
Even its author admits that a 20-page strategy paper for government departments on how to use Twitter might be regarded as “a bit of over the top” for a microblogging tool with a limit of 140 characters a message.
Indeed, the 5,382-word official “template”,which translates into 36,215 characters and spaces, would need roughly 259 separate tweets to put the word around Whitehall using Twitter.
But its author, Neil Williams, who describes himself as head of corporate digital channels at Lord Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, admits that when he sat down to write a proper plan for his department’s corporate Twitter account, “I was surprised by just how much there was to say ‑ and quite how worth saying it is.”
Whitehall’s official use of Twitter was pioneered by Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Communities and Local Government department.
Their low-profile experiments have grown into a regular feature of their official digital output.
Now Williams, a self-confessed web geek, has turned his template into an official Whitehall Twitter guide and posted it on the Cabinet Office’s digital engagement blog.
He suggests that nothing too onerous is involved. Each department’s “digital media team” should only need to spend less than an hour a day running their Twitter streams. A quick discussion of potential tweets at the morning press cuttings meetings should be followed by emails to minister’s private offices to gather more material, and any incoming messages should be replied to.
However, the idea of official government use of a tool that provides a confidential and confessional glimpse into somebody’s personal life and views appears at first sight to be something of an oxymoron.
The official guide seems to acknowledge this when it recommends that exclusive content such as “insights from ministers” and “updates on their movements” in a light or humanised style will be needed for the Twitter stream beyond the “business as usual” content of daily press releases and announcements.
It also concedes there is a problem with one of the basic Twitter features, the ability to “follow” any other users. It admits that if government departments start following individual users on Twitter uninvited, this may well be interpreted as “interfering ‘Big Brother’-like behaviour”.
However, once anyone does follow a Whitehall Twitter stream it recommends they should automatically be “followed back” on the grounds that it is not only good etiquette, but could result in a poor Twitter reputation if not done ‑ and in extreme cases could lead to the account being suspended.
In urging his fellow Whitehall civil servants to use Twitter, Williams sets out several grounds rules for the kind of content that needs to make it work:
• Human: He warns that Twitter users can be hostile to the “over-use of automation” – such as RSS feeds – and to the regurgitation of press release headlines: “While corporate in message, the tone of our Twitter channel must therefore be informal spoken English, human-edited and for the most part written/paraphrased for the channel.”
• Frequent: a minimum of two and maximum of 10 tweets per working day, with a minimum gap of 30 minutes between tweets to avoid flooding followers’ Twitter streams. (Not counting @replies or live coverage of a crisis/event.) Downing Street spends 20 minutes on its Twitter stream with two-three tweets a day plus a few replies, five-six tweets a day in total.
• Timely: in keeping with the “zeitgeist” feel of Twitter, official tweets should be about issues of relevance today or events coming soon.
• Credible: while tweets may occasionally be “fun”, their relationship to departmental objectives must be defensible.
Alongside the promised tweetable content of minsters’ thoughts and reflections following key meetings and events is something rather more sinister sounding called “thought leadership”. Also known as “linked blogging”, the idea is that by highlighting relevant research, events, awards and other action elsewhere on the web, the department’s Twitter feed gets a reputation as a reliable filter of high quality content.
It even holds out the promise of “crisis content” in which the Twitter feed becomes a primary channel alongside the official website for up to the minute guidance and advice in the event of a major incident.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block is that in true Whitehall tradition everything that goes out has to be approved and cleared first. So news releases are to be cleared for use only if they have first been paraphrased for Twitter. All other tweets have to be cleared by staff at information officer grade in the digital media team and colleagues in ministers’ private offices and communications units have to be consulted as well.
The guidelines recommend that “light-touch controls” will also be needed to prevent “inappropriate content” being published in error such as embargoed news releases, information about the location of ministers that could put their security at risk, or other commercially or politically sensitive content. Steps are also to be taken to avoid hacking or vandalism of content.
But it is perhaps the “tone of voice” that is most troubling about the idea of Whitehall twitter stream. “Though the account will be anonymous (ie, no named officials will be running it) it is helpful to define a hypothetical ‘voice’ so that tweets from multiple sources are presented in a consistent tone (including consistent use of pronouns),” recommends the official template.
“The department’s Twitter voice will be that of the digital media team, positioning the channel as an extension of the main department website ‑ effectively an ‘outpost’ where new digital content is signposted throughout the day. This will be implicit, unless directly asked about by our followers,” it advises.
Williams, the author of this template, launched the first ever blog by a British cabinet minister. He admits he once ran a comedy website called idiotica.co.uk but the Cabinet Office confirm that his Twitter guidelines are genuine.
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News quiz: from the Sunday papers
July 28th, 2009 |
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Guardian Daily: New UK torture claims
July 27th, 2009 |
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Huddersfield businessman Alam Ghafoor claims that British intelligence were complicit in his torture in Dubai. Helen Carter reports.
Senior sports figures cast doubt over London’s Olympic legacy, as the Guardian’s sports news correspondent Owen Gibson explains.
A new report by the House of Commons transport committee says rail companies are taking passengers for granted. Transport correspondent Dan Milmo has the details.
Ed Pilkington in New York discusses the future of Sarah Palin as she steps down as the governor of Alaska.
And arts correspondent Mark Brown on a rare Peter Sellers film.
US pulls plug on ticker in Cuba
July 27th, 2009 |
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Sign flashing human rights messages at the US interests section in Havana goes blank
It was smuggled through the US diplomatic pouch, secretly installed across the facade of a building overlooking Havana and given a very specific mission: to annoy Fidel Castro.
The scrolling electronic sign, a low-tech version of New York’s Time Square ticker, escalated the US’s propaganda war with Cuba’s leader three years ago by flashing human rights messages in five-foot high crimson letters. But history, or more specifically Barack Obama, appears to have pulled the plug on the billboard which flitted across 25 windows of the US interests section in Havana. The screen has gone blank – the latest indication that half a century of enmity may be winding down.
The ticker, erected by the Bush administration in January 2006, infuriated Castro and provoked tit-for-tat diplomatic jousting which further strained relations.
“It was basically a contest of which side could annoy the other the most,” said Dan Erikson, author The Cuba Wars and an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. “The US described [the sign] as a way to convey information to the Cuban people but the real purpose was to irritate the Cuban government.”
It ran quotes from Martin Luther King (“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up”) and Abraham Lincoln (“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent”) as well as the likes of Lech Walesa.
It also blamed the island’s transport crisis and material privations on the communist authorities: “Some go around in Mercedes, some in Ladas, but the system forces almost everyone to hitch rides.” Bush officials said the ticker was a way to circumvent censorship and convey hope and liberty to a tropical gulag.
Castro said it was another assault on Cuba’s sovereignty by a hypocritical imperialist bully. Soon after it appeared he marched a million people past in protest, dug up the US mission’s car park and erected anti-US billboards and 138 huge black flags to commemorate “victims of US aggression” – and block the ticker.
The revolutionary leader said there would be no contact between Havana-based US diplomats and Cuba’s foreign ministry until the sign came down. Since then he has fallen ill and been succeeded as president by his brother, Raul, and Bush has been replaced by a Democrat who has spoken of a new start with the Caribbean island 90 miles off Florida.
After Obama’s election the Cuban government expressed a desire to normalise relations and took down its billboards around the US mission, though the flags remained. In recent months the White House lifted restrictions on remittances and travel for Cuban-Americans – a slight easing of the Kennedy-era economic embargo – and resumed talks with Havana over migration and disaster preparedness. The ticker disappeared several weeks ago but was reported only today. US diplomats told visitors there were “technical difficulties” and that there were no plans to switch it back soon, according to Reuters.
There is speculation that US and Cuban officials in Havana have resumed contact. The US state department and Cuban foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
The ticker made little visible impact on Cubans but became a tourist attraction. Cumbersome technology, however, diminished its impact. The sign was slow-moving, difficult to read and lacked Spanish accents and tildes.
For instance “año”, which means year, appeared as “ano”, which means anus.
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Lloyds names Bischoff as chairman
July 27th, 2009 |
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Bischoff spent most of his career with Schroders and was appointed chairman in 1995
Veteran banker Sir Win Bischoff today threw his support behind the embattled Lloyds Banking Group chief executive, Eric Daniels, as he was appointed chairman of the troubled bank, which owes £14bn to the taxpayer.
Linked to one of the toughest jobs in banking for many weeks, Bischoff declared Daniels was “the right man for the job”. Questions about the long-term future of Daniels have been asked since the rescue takeover of HBOS last year left Lloyds saddled with bad loans that could total £50bn over the next two years.
But Bischoff said: “From all I know [Daniels] is a superb operational manager. If execution is important he can lead this bank. He’s the right man for the job but we have to see. If you execute well your shareholders will support you.”
“I endorse him,” Bischoff said.
The 68-year-old, who was educated in Germany and South Africa, had faced criticism for not being an innovative enough candidate for the role and because of his close association with the troubled US bank Citigroup, where he was chairman until the start of this year.
One analyst said: “When you think it was Bischoff who dropped the ball at Citigroup, you have to wonder why there wasn’t a better alternative for the Lloyds job?”
But Bischoff shrugged off any such criticism, insisting his part of the business – the European operations – had not been associated with the problems at the US bank, which also once employed Daniels.
Bischoff was Lloyds’ “preferred candidate” from a list of 50 domestic and international hopefuls. He was on a shortlist of 15 after a recruitment process led by the non-executive director Sir Julian Horn Smith. Bischoff will earn £700,000 a year after he becomes chairman on 15 September, the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that sent the financial system into turmoil and forced HBOS into the rescue takeover by Lloyds days later.
Bischoff takes over from Sir Victor Blank, who resigned following shareholder unrest after the extent of the problems at HBOS unfolded earlier this year. Blank was seen as the public face of the HBOS takeover after clinching a deal with Gordon Brown to overturn competition rules, allowing the historic takeover.
Those competition waivers are now being questioned by the EU, which is considering which businesses Lloyds should sell off in return for participating in the government’s asset protection scheme.
Daniels said: “Sir Win brings great knowledge and insight to the group as we build the UK’s leading financial services provider, and I look forward to working with him. The board and I are immensely appreciative of the leadership and vision Sir Victor has provided during a time of great change for the group and the financial services industry in general.”
Bischoff had 14 interviews for the high-profile role, including with UK Financial Investments, the body that looks after the taxpayers’ stakes in the bailed-out banks, and City regulator the FSA, which had to approve his appointment.
UKFI, which also supported the departure of Blank, endorsed Bischoff, saying it “welcomes Sir Win’s appointment and looks forward to working with him”.
UKFI needs to sell off the taxpayer stake in Lloyds, which is still worth less than the bailouts. The shares, which had stopped trading for the day before Bischoff’s appointment, gained 7% to 83.8p yesterday – below the 122p average at which the taxpayer bought in.
Analysts agreed that Bischoff faced a tough challenge in building enough shareholder confidence in the bank to allow the stakes to be sold off.
Ian Gordon, of broker Exane BNP Paribas, who has resisted putting Lloyds shares on his list of best buys, said the move would bring the bank some much needed stability after the resignation Blank.
“After much speculation it has been done quickly and efficiently. It is not going to upset shareholders,” he said.
Analyst Sandy Chen of rival broker Panmure Gordon said Bischoff will bring significant experience to rebuild Lloyds’ finances and reputation. “However, the extent of the challenges faced by the bank are such that he is one of many people who will be needed to support the bank.”
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US choreographer Merce Cunningham dies
July 27th, 2009 |
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New York choreographer Merce Cunningham crossed artistic barriers and stretched the parameters of dance
Merce Cunningham, the iconoclastic choreographer whose career spanning more than six decades crossed artistic barriers and stretched the parameters of dance, has died in New York aged 90.
As news of his death on Sunday spread, he was hailed as one of the towering figures in art of the 20th century. The New York Times dubbed him the “greatest living artist since Samuel Beckett”.
Cunningham founded his Manhattan-based dance company in 1953 and continued as an influential figure until weeks before his death. He appeared in every performance of the company until he was 70, and last danced on stage aged 80.
Earlier this year, at the occasion of his 90th birthday, he presented a new 90-minute work, Nearly Ninety, with music by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.
Working with his long-term collaborator and partner, John Cage, who died in 1992, he set about freeing dance from its restrictive conventions. He detached his choreography from music and from story lines, letting it stand in its own right.
At times he would throw coins or dice to decide the flow of movements, and ended the unwritten convention that dancers face the audience.
He also took dance out of its box, linking it to other mediums, notably contemporary art. He worked closely with Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
Shortly before his death he established a trust in his name. Last month, he explained: “My idea has always been to explore human physical movement. I would like the Trust to continue doing this, because dancing is a process that never stops, and should not stop if it is to stay alive and fresh.”
Trevor Carlson, director of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, said “Merce saw beauty in the ordinary, which is what made him extraordinary. He did not allow convention to lead him, but was a true artist, honest and forthcoming in everything he did.”
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Adviser attacks PM’s ‘big tent’ failure
July 27th, 2009 |
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Special adviser singles out reform delays and criticises government as ‘illiberal and often deeply reactionary’
Gordon Brown’s government has proved to be “illiberal and often deeply reactionary” in promoting a policy agenda that is unimaginative and lacking in respect for liberty, the Liberal Democrat lawyer, peer and civil rights campaigner, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, says in Tuesday’s Guardian.
In a scornful account of his 15 months “inside the Brown big tent” he singles out Jack Straw, “a conservative justice secretary”, for a special onslaught.
As a “tribal” Labour politician, Straw ignored the conditions Lester demanded in return for becoming one of the prime minister’s “goats” – recruited to a “government of all the talents” after Brown succeeded Tony Blair in June 2007.
Lester started out with high hopes that New Labour would promote a liberal agenda. Brown’s “governance of Britain” green paper – issued days after entering No 10 – suggested Brown understood what needed to be done to decentralise and open up state power, Lester recalls.
“Brown’s ambitions for reform were laudable. In practice, however, the government’s efforts have not been encouraging. The reform in the way judges are appointed was made on the back of an envelope in the wake of Lord Chancellor Irvine’s removal from that great office [in 2003]. It had to be rescued by the judges and the House of Lords,” Lester writes.
“More recently, the government’s knee-jerk response to public uproar over MPs’ expenses was a parliamentary standards bill, rushed out to show that the government was doing something before the huge vacation they have given to MPs. The bill violated basic constitutional principles and was unfair to MPs themselves. It has had to be rewritten by the House of Lords,” Lord Lester adds.
His views of the new act, which was signed into law last week, are echoed by MPs and peers in all parties, some of whom also blame the justice secretary for dragging his feet on a range of reforms. What Lester calls a “mouse of a bill” recently published as the constitutional reform and governance bill is widely seen as a far more modest collection of disparate changes than Brown envisaged in 2007.
Most of its “sensible” ideas have been around for years, including the final removal of hereditary peers from parliament. But the bill’s exclusions are more significant, the unreformed role of the attorney general, the absence of parliamentary vetting of key public appointments, and electoral reform – the holy grail for Lib Dem reformers.
Straw, who has belatedly embraced limited electoral reform – the alternative vote system, blames the distraction of the expenses row where all parties agreed to change the system, but simultaneously sought party political advantage. Lester’s explanation for his disappointment is that Brown wanted to recruit him as a “tethered goat”, but Straw did not want his advice. Straw therefore shunted him off to his junior minister, Michael Wills, and granted him only one 15 minute session.
But Lester’s critique does not spare the prime minister either. “A couple of weeks ago, [he] came out with suggestions about making our electoral system work more fairly, and holding constitutional referenda. He does not seem to realise that he has missed the tide and it is all too late. His government is deeply unpopular and we are living during a sustained economic depression. His government no longer commands public confidence and has no mandate for major constitutional reform,” says Lester.
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Mandelson hints at tuition fees rise
July 27th, 2009 |
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Paying for excellence must not come at price of barring poorer students, says business secretary ahead of independent review
The government today gave its strongest indication yet that it wants university tuition fees in England to increase.
The business secretary Lord Mandelson told university leaders he would not preempt a review this autumn into whether fees, capped at £3,225 a year for students starting in October, should rise.
But Mandelson, whose department is in charge of universities, told vice-chancellors that excellence in higher education was “not cheap” and the country “had to face up to the challenge of paying for excellence”.
The peer would not be drawn over how much fees could rise. However, a report by vice-chancellors in March argued that £5,000-a-year fees would not deter students, even though the National Union of Students says this would leave most graduates more than £27,856 in debt by the end of their courses.
A separate poll has shown two-thirds of vice-chancellors want fees to rise and more than half want them to increase to £5,000 or more.
Mandelson, in his first speech on higher education, said: “When this government came to office, we faced the challenge of maintaining a world-class university sector with higher participation rates.
“We now face the same challenge with inevitable pressure on public resources. We cannot duck the issue: everything we want to achieve in higher education depends on a solid, sustainable system of funding … Inevitably, we are going to come back to the balance of state and user funding and this raises the issue of fees and their role in paying for world-class institutions.”
He said fees, which were introduced in England and Wales in 1998, had been a “radical and signal success in strengthening the resources available to universities without sacrificing accessibility to students”.
But the University and College Union (UCU), which represents university lecturers, said the vast majority of the British public were against tuition fees and that raising them would be “about as popular as the poll tax with hard-working families”.
Sally Hunt, UCU’s general secretary, said: “In a time of recession, the government should be considering how to make access to education cheaper, not giving the green light to universities who wish to charge higher fees.”
Mandelson used his speech to criticise universities, especially the most selective such as Oxford and Cambridge, for their “limited progress” in opening access to the poorest students.
He told university leaders that if they wanted to raise fees, they would have to provide more places for working-class students.
“I think we have to ask why, for all the work in the sector and the seriousness with which it has tackled this question, are we still making only limited progress in widening access to higher education to young people from poorer backgrounds – especially at our most selective universities?” he said.
“I am impatient about this progress and intend to turn up the spotlight on university admissions. We are at risk – as are all countries that aspire to excellence in their higher education sector – of failing properly to exploit the role of university education as a means of social mobility.”
Universities should see beyond exam results and spot talented students who had “exploited the opportunities open to them in their lives”, he said. But he stopped short of asking universities to lower their grades for the most disadvantaged students.
But Wendy Piatt, director-general of the Russell group of large research-intensive universities, said universities already drew on a range of factors not necessarily reflected in a student’s traditional qualifications to identify potential. “Some universities will take into account any particular barriers the candidate may have faced during their education, such as spending time in care,” she said.
UCU said that if institutions were allowed to charge greater fees, the amount of money poorer students would have to find would be dramatically increased. An increase in fees to £7,000 per year, for example, would mean a university would only be required to fund a bursary of £700. That bursary, coupled with the current state maintenance grant of £2,906, would leave the poorest students needing to find £3,394 a year, UCU claimed.
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