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Feast of Bengal

July 27th, 2009 | No Comments

Tamarind, mustard, chilli and dal … Bangladeshi food packs the biggest punch in Asia. In this final extract from his book, Far Eastern Odyssey, Rick Stein captures the fiery flavours of the delta

Driving through Bangladesh and observing village life can be immensely calming: a panorama of paddy fields, water buffalos with a white egret or two on their back, men and women planting rice, and the villages themselves, gardens filled with banana plants or fruit trees, wooden houses near rivers and children shouting and scampering.

You often read of Bangladeshis saying their cuisine is not worth making a fuss about, that it’s just the sort of stuff they cook at home. But I found the local food fascinating. If you ask me for three or four of the most distinctive flavours of Bangladeshi cooking, I’d say mustard, ghee and a particular spice mix, panch phoran, unusual in that the combination of mustard, nigella, cumin, fennel and fenugreek seeds contains whole rather than powdered spices. I’m still marvelling at the subtlety of the mango chutney I had when eating lunch with a family in Dhaka, a sweet one flavoured with panch phoran.

Spicy pea and potato samosas (aloo matar shingara)

The filling is some simply spiced potatoes and peas, and the pastry deep-fries to a pleasing crispness. Makes 20.

For the potato filling:

500g evenly sized waxy potatoes,
such as Charlotte
4 tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for
deep-frying
2 tsp black mustard seeds
275g onion, finely chopped
1 tsp turmeric powder
30g garlic, crushed
4 green cayenne chillies, finely chopped
1 tsp kashmiri chilli powder
150g frozen peas, thawed

For the pastry dough:

225g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp vegetable oil

For the pastry, sift the flour and ½ tsp salt into a bowl. Add the oil and about 150ml warm water and mix together to make a soft, pliable dough, adding a little more water if necessary. Turn out on to a surface lightly dusted with flour and knead for 2-3 minutes until very smooth and elastic. Wrap in clingfilm and set aside to rest for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, for the filling, put the potatoes in a pan, cover with water, add 1 tsp salt and bring to the boil. Cook for 20 minutes or until tender. Drain, cover and set aside for 20 minutes. Then peel the potatoes and break into small pieces.

Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the oil, then the mustard seeds, cover with a lid and fry until they have stopped popping. Add the onion and fry for 5-6 minutes, stirring, until soft and lightly browned. Add the turmeric, garlic, green chillies and chilli powder and fry for a few seconds, then add the potatoes, peas and 1 tsp salt and mix well.

Unwrap the dough, divide it into 10 evenly sized pieces and shape each piece into a ball. Work with one piece of dough at a time, keeping the others covered with clingfilm so they don’t dry out. Roll it into a thin 15cm disc. Cut the disc into two D-shaped pieces and brush half of both the curved and straight edge with a little water. Spoon 1 slightly heaped tablespoon of the filling to one side of the D and fold the other side over so the edges meet.

Press together well, then place on a tray lined with greaseproof paper. Continue until you have 20. Set them aside for at least 30 minutes to dry slightly, as this will make for better deep-frying.

Heat some oil for deep-frying to 180C.

Fry the shingharas one or two at a time for 3 minutes until crisp and golden brown, turning them over now and then as they cook. Lift out with a slotted spoon on to another tray lined with plenty of kitchen paper and leave to drain. Serve hot or warm.

Aubergine curry with tomatoes, ginger and fennel seeds

If you can get them, use finger aubergines for this. They are shaped rather like a small courgette and hold their shape well during cooking. This is a simple curry, but interesting to me, as it uses a lot of fennel seeds, a common flavour in Bangladeshi food. Incidentally, they call them aniseed there, but they’re not. I wandered into a kitchen in Sylhet and tried them for myself. Serves 6.

600g aubergines, ideally Asian finger aubergines
150ml vegetable oil
40g peeled ginger, roughly chopped
40g garlic, roughly chopped
2 green cayenne chillies, finely chopped
2 tsp cumin seeds <strong
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp freshly ground coriander seeds
½ tsp turmeric powder
400g chopped tomatoes, fresh or from a can
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp each of chopped fresh coriander and mint

Top and tail the aubergines and cut in half lengthways. If using larger, Mediterranean-style aubergines, then cut each one across in half and then each piece lengthways into 6 or 8 wedges. Toss them with ½ tsp salt and set aside in a colander for 10 minutes.

Heat a large frying pan over a high heat. Pour the oil into a shallow dish. Brush the aubergine pieces, a few at a time, with oil, put them in the frying pan and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until richly browned. Cooking the aubergines in this way helps prevent them from absorbing too much oil, which would make the finished dish greasy. Set aside in a bowl and repeat with the remaining aubergines.

Put the ginger, garlic and chilli into a mini food processor with 2-3 tbsp water and grind to a smooth paste.

Put 2 tbsp of the remaining oil into the frying pan and add the cumin and fennel seeds. Leave them to sizzle for a few seconds, then add the ginger and garlic paste and leave this to fry for a further 2-3 minutes. Add the coriander and turmeric and fry for 1 minute, then add the tomatoes, black pepper, 3 tbsp water and ½ tsp salt. Cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes until reduced and thickened slightly. Return the fried aubergine slices to the pan and stir well to coat in the sauce. Simmer for 5 minutes, stir in the coriander and mint, and serve.

Toovar dal with tamarind, tomatoes and curry leaves

This dal is unusual in that it is referred to in Bangladesh as “sour”, which often indicates the presence of tomatoes. We don’t normally consider tomatoes sour, but they are, and together with the tamarind and lime they give the pulses a particularly enjoyable, slightly astringent note. Toovar (or toor) dal is a dark ochre-coloured split pea with a rich, earthy flavour. Serves 4-6.

250g toovar dal
2 tbsp each vegetable oil and mustard oil
100g onion, thinly sliced
15g garlic, crushed
½ tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp freshly ground cumin seeds
1 tsp freshly ground coriander seeds
200g chopped vine-ripened tomatoes
1 tbsp tamarind water (see below)
4 green cayenne chillies, slit open lengthways
1 large pinch asafoetida
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
10-12 curry leaves
4 cloves
10cm cinnamon stick, halved
lime wedges, to serve

Put the dal into a medium-sized pan with 1 litre of water, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and leave to simmer for about 45 minutes or until the dal is soft and the mixture has reduced and thickened.

When the dal is almost ready, heat 1 tbsp each of vegetable and mustard oil in a medium-sized pan. Add the onion and fry for 6-8 minutes until soft and lightly golden.

Add the garlic, turmeric, cumin and coriander seeds and fry for a further 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until they just begin to soften. Add the mixture to the dal with the tamarind water and green chillies and simmer gently for 3-4 minutes.

Heat the remaining vegetable and mustard oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add the asafoetida, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves, cloves and cinnamon, cover with a lid and leave to sizzle for 1 minute until the mustard seeds stop popping. Add to the dal and season to taste with salt. Cover and leave for 5 minutes for the flavours to infuse. Serve with lime wedges.

Tamarind water

Take 60g tamarind pulp (about the size of a tangerine) and put it in a bowl with 150ml hand-hot water. Work the paste with your fingers until it has broken down and the seeds have been released. Strain the slightly syrupy mixture through a fine sieve into another bowl and discard the fibrous material left behind. The water is ready to use and will keep in the fridge for 24 hours.

• Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey is on BBC2 on Thursdays, at 8pm. Nigel Slater returns next week. Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey is published by BBC Books, at £25.

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Prejudice lives on in the USA

July 26th, 2009 | No Comments

The arrest of an African-American professor and the vilification of a Latina woman judge show that prejudice lives on in the USA

During a major policy speech on healthcare, even President Obama found time to weigh in: “… I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three – what I think we know separate and apart from this incident – is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately…” Needless to say, the next morning’s papers talked about Obama calling Cambridge police “stupid”.

The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates has been officially swallowed by the larger narrative of race in America. Now I love a good racial escapade as much as the next person, but this one strikes me as uniquely unfortunate both in its timing and its capacity for becoming a flashpoint for unrelated resentments.

The facts not in dispute are straightforward. Gates came home from a trip and found his front door jammed. With the help of his driver, he tried to push the door open, unsuccessfully. He then went to the back door, opened it with his key, turned off the alarm system and called Harvard’s property management company to report the sticky door. Meanwhile, a passerby called the police to report that “two black males” were breaking into a house. When the police arrived, they encountered Gates in his living room. Gates provided his driving licence and his Harvard ID.

Here the stories diverge. Gates says he asked the officer to identify himself and the officer refused. The officer says that Gates was unco-operative, called him a racist and began shouting so loudly – “Your momma!” and: “You don’t know who you’re messing with!” according to the police report – that the noise constituted “tumultuous behaviour” and “public disorder”. Gates was handcuffed and hauled off to jail for a few hours. A day later, a judge dismissed the charges, saying both sides had acted badly. Gates demanded that the arresting officer apologise; the officer demanded that Gates apologise. The Cambridge police department demanded that President Obama apologise, which he did, quite eloquently as usual. Gates took to national television to set the record straight. Al Sharpton announced his intention to march in protest. And Michael Jackson, pushed from the front pages for a hot minute, was finally able to rest in peace.

Most unfortunate, but as American crime blotters go, this one is no big deal. Yes, racial profiling is an endemic, massive problem, but in this instance the police were called because of at least minimally suspicious behaviour – two men trying to force open a door. And yes, (allegedly) shouting angry taunts at the police isn’t tea-time politesse, but it does seem that the officer might have responded to it in a more professional manner than elevating it to the level of public “tumult”.

What makes this case so interesting – and alarming – is the vitriolic public commentary that ensued. Early newspaper and on-line accounts helped seed confusion, varying wildly: some gave the impression that Gates was trying to break into a house not his own, some that he refused to identify himself or that he resisted arrest. None of that was true.

But the larger backlash has quickly moved from the individual incident itself to condemnations in the stereotyped plural, concentrating on a very tight set of recurring themes: Gates is “uppity”, arrogant, pseudo-educated. He should have been grateful that the police came to his house at all. Harvard was stupid for hiring him. African-American studies, the department Gates chairs, is a non-subject, only on the curriculum to keep black students from rioting. The Ivy League is run by politically correct “wusses” who don’t have the courage to get rid of “undeserving” “whiners”. Who could blame police officers for refusing to come to black homes or neighbourhoods if this is what they get? “Those people” have jobs a “more qualified” white person should be holding.

(Where, oh where, our fleeting “post-racial” moment of Kumbaya?)

I mentioned that timing was also a probable factor in this brouhaha. The entire week before Gates’s arrest was consumed with reports of the congressional hearings for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She would be the first Hispanic and only the third woman sitting in our highest court. Hence, racial resentment had already been simmering on the shock-jock media burners. Three ultra-conservative senators in particular grilled her, day after day, using some of the most prejudiced, stereotype-laden language we’ve heard publicly in many a year. Despite the fact that Sotomayor graduated at the top of her class from Princeton and Yale Law School, she has been attacked as not qualified, chosen not for merit but because she’s a woman or Latina. Pundits such as Pat Buchanan railed that “affirmative action is to increase diversity by discriminating against white males”. Furthermore, said Buchanan, there could be nothing wrong with a court of all white men, because, after all “white men were 100% of the people who wrote the constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg…”

Then, too, controversy erupted over a statement Sotomayor made years ago, in which she hoped her life experience as a Latina woman would lend her wisdom in ways that might allow her easier insights into situations that others might not have lived through. This, the so-called “wise Latina woman” statement, has got her relentlessly labelled a “reverse racist” by the shock-jocky press.

Finally, Judge Sotomayor was part of a panel of judges that ruled, based on established precedent, that a hiring test given by the New Haven fire department should be scrutinised for bias, after all the African-American applicants and all but one Hispanic failed the test. Coincidentally, barely a month ago, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court narrowly overruled that holding, saying that disparate impact was not alone sufficient to strike down the test – and that it was “racism” against the white firefighters who did pass the test. As a visual flourish, during Sotomayor’s hearing, row upon row of New Haven firefighters (in uniform, all white men but for that lonely Hispanic) sat in on the hearing, there to object to her nomination. The cameras loved it, panning their solemn faces relentlessly.

In short, the Sotomayor hearing and the New Haven firefighters case have reignited the general American debate about affirmative action. So when the extremely distinguished Harvard university professor Henry Louis Gates was carted off in handcuffs, allegedly calling out: “This is what happens to black men in America!”, there was a distinct shimmer of schadenfreude in some parts of the national psyche. The reactionary themes that had been percolating during the last few weeks came bursting to the fore: minorities are taking over! Obama is only appointing non-whites! White people are the truly oppressed! People of colour, particularly ones who went to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, are reverse racists.

The arrest itself is hardly the best example of either racial profiling or police-state oppression. But the discourse that has welled up in its wake reveals a public inclination that is marred by that and more.

Patricia Williams is professor of law at Columbia University

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Hundreds evacuated as Med wildfires spread

July 26th, 2009 | No Comments

In pictures: Med coast wildfires

Summer wildfires have forced more than 1,000 people from houses and holiday homes along the Mediterranean coast this weekend.

At least 10 people – including six firefighters – have died in fires in Spain, France, Greece and the Italian island of Sardinia in recent days.

Thousands of firefighters are still working around the clock to bring blazes under control.

Six people have died in Spain, which has been hardest hit, with at least seven big fires in the south and east of the country.

Several are now rated as stable, but British holidaymakers planning to visit the region have been advised by the Foreign Office to check its website before they travel.

Strong winds have fanned flames in the hot, dry weather, where temperatures have reached 39.1C. Authorities hope that forecasted cooler conditions will ease the crisis.

Anne Kirkbride, 55, who plays Deirdre Barlow in Coronation Street, was one of dozens of British tourists caught in the Spanish fires. She was among some 1,500 people evacuated from the coastal resort town of Mojácar in the south-east of the country.

“It’s like a horror film around here,” said Benjamin Jackson, a 23-year-old British expatriate. “For as far as you can see, basically everything has burned down.”

Sharon Pressley, who lives in Mojácar, said: “Police are saying they think it could be arson rather than the temperatures, but that is just speculation. The area where I live is free of fire at the moment, but the smoke and devastation is still there for all to see.”

Local authorities have deployed thousands of people and more than 30 aircraft to combat the flames in tinder-dry pine forest regions, and Spain has been placed on maximum fire alert. Lightning bolts from an electrical storm that hit the Aragón region caused several of the blazes, El Pais reported.

Fires in the Mediterranean bring destruction to hundreds of thousands of hectares of land every year. Wildfires are still burning on the French island of Corsica, while three suspected arsonists have been arrested in Greece and Italy. On the Italian island of Sardinia, 10 water-dropping planes helped fight a series of bush fires that killed two people, including a shepherd who had been trying to rescue his flock. Helicopters and boats were used to rescue more than 120 people trapped on a beach at Capo Pecora in the south-west.

The island’s prison also had to be evacuated, with inmates temporarily transferred to the beach.

In France, an inquiry is under way into how a military exercise sparked a major wildfire on the outskirts of Marseille. The blaze, which threatened homes and destroyed 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of brush, provoked an angry reaction from officials and residents.

• In southern Japan, heavy rains have destroyed homes and set off floods and landslides that left at least five people dead on the island of Kyushu. In a week of downpours, a mudslide buried a nursing home in Yamaguchi prefecture on the main island of Honshu last Tuesday, killing 14 people.

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The evidence Bush tried to hide

July 26th, 2009 | No Comments

Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice – a record loss – were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.

“These are one-metre resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic,” said Thorsten Markus of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. “This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that’s been missing.”

Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned. Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve. In addition, ice reflects solar radiation. Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more. The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.

The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. Last week the head of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data – crucial to predicting future climate changes – was now at “great risk” because America’s ageing satellite fleet was not being replaced.

“Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don’t have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need,” said Lubchenco, who was appointed by Obama. “We are playing catch-up.”

Even before her warning, scientists were saying that America, the world’s scientific superpower, was virtually blinding itself to climate change by cutting funds to the environmental satellite programmes run by the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Nasa. A report by the National Academy of Sciences this year warned that the environmental satellite network was at risk of collapse.

In February, a Nasa satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth’s carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off.

The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.

The NOAA is under additional pressure to provide environmental data because of the re-emergence of the El Niño climate phenomenon, where warming of the tropical Pacific causes heatwaves, droughts and flooding around the world. June’s land and sea surface temperatures were the second hottest on record, and scientists are predicting this will be the warmest decade in recorded history. The last major El Niño was in 1998, the hottest year in recorded history.

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America’s flagging scientific lead. The president’s economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.

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Massa suffers skull fracture in crash

July 26th, 2009 | No Comments

• Massa flown to hospital for immediate surgery above left eye
• Fernando Alonso on pole following timing system failure

Felipe Massa was airlifted to a Budapest hospital with a skull fracture as the result of an injury received during qualifying for today’s Hungarian grand prix. The Brazilian was knocked unconscious when a spring, which had become detached from the rear suspension of Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn, struck Massa on the head as he reached 175mph on one of the fastest sections of the Hungaroring.

The Ferrari cut the inside of the left-hand bend that followed soon after, ran straight across a run-off area and embedded itself in a quadruple-layer tyre barrier. The qualifying session was stopped as Massa was removed to the track’s medical centre and stabilised before being flown to hospital, where he successfully underwent emergency surgery. The hospital released a statement last night saying Massa’s condition is serious but stable, adding that surgeons expect him to be awoken this morning after being kept sedated on a respirator overnight.

The spring, weighing around 700 grammes, had somehow penetrated the top of his visor and injured Massa above the left eye, perilously close to the cornea. The accident came six days after 18-year-old Henry Surtees died of injuries received when he was struck on the head by an errant wheel in another freak accident during a Formula Two race at Brands Hatch.

The Brawn team is trying to understand why a standard suspension part, which had previously given no trouble, should suddenly come adrift. The Brawn of Barrichello’s team-mate, Jenson Button, received a thorough check, the delay preventing the leader of the championship from completing as many laps as he would have liked when the final part of qualifying, Q3, resumed. As this crucial phase of the weekend neared its conclusion, qualifying descended to farce when the electronic timing systems failed.

The nine remaining drivers in Q3 climbed from their cars without knowing who had won pole. Each driver had his individual lap time showing on the cockpit display and it was only by comparing times that Fernando Alonso began to realise he had qualified on pole position for the first time in almost two years. “This was a really stressful qualifying,” said the Renault driver. “There was a yellow flag towards the end of Q1 and, at that stage, I was 15th fastest and in danger of not making it [among the fastest 15] to Q2.

“When the track was clear, I had just one lap to do a time without making mistakes and I managed it. Then, at the end, the timing was not working. I asked other drivers what time they had done in order to get a reference and when everyone was saying times which were slower than mine, I started to get excited.”

Mark Webber did not think he had done enough. The winner of the previous grand prix in Germany was heading for a shower when told he would be joining his Red Bull team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, in the press conference for the fastest three qualifiers. “I made a mistake at Turn 2, so I knew Sebastian was faster,” said Webber. “But I thought I hadn’t been quick enough. I had no idea who was on pole. So congratulations to Fernando; that makes it three Renault-engined cars at the front. And Seb and I are in a position to capitalise on the Brawns not doing so well.”

The problem with Barrichello’s car consigned the Brazilian to the 13th fastest time, five places behind Button. It was not the performance Brawn had hoped for after introducing development parts that should have combined with the tight, twisting circuit to return the championship leaders to the front after disappointing races at the Nürburgring and Silverstone.

“I missed most of Q3,” said Button. “We had a failure at the back of Rubens’s car, so we changed my car and put a new part on. That took time and meant I missed my first run. I therefore had more fuel on board than I should have done when doing my time at the end of the session. Eighth is not great and I’m starting on the dirty side of the track.”

Button is hoping that Lewis Hamilton, fourth fastest, will use the Kers performance boost on the McLaren to overtake the Red Bulls on the downhill run to the first corner. There could also be unintentional assistance from Alonso, who is not expecting to win after qualifying with a very light load of fuel.

“It’s always nice to start from pole, especially here because overtaking is difficult,” said Alonso. “Also, this circuit is special for me because I won my first grand prix here in 2003. But, to be honest, our aim is to get on to the podium for the first time this season.” Rather than thinking about Alonso, Vettel is more concerned about the immediate challenge from behind, not only from Hamilton and the fifth-place Williams of Nico Rosberg, but Heikki Kovalainen’s McLaren and the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, both of which have the Kers energy retention system.

“It’s been a bit of a struggle, so it’s a bit of a surprise to be on the front row,” said Vettel. “The main thing is that we are ahead of the Brawns. The biggest threat is right behind us and it’s a question of whether they will pass us on the right or the left on the run to the first corner.”

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Row over Tory link to Polish right grows

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

The credibility of David Cameron’s new alliance in the European parliament is cast into fresh doubt today as the Observer reveals damning new evidence about its Polish leader’s past.

The allegations, which threaten to do serious damage to the Tory leader, centre on Michal Kaminski, a rightwinger chosen this month to chair the new and supposedly mainstream European Conservatives and Reformists group, of which the 25 Tory MEPs are members.

Opponents of Kaminski, 37, claim he has shown homophobic and antisemitic tendencies at odds with Cameron’s vision of a new tolerant Tory party. In particular, they say Kaminski was active in efforts to block an apology by his countrymen in 2001 for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941. He denies this.

Speaking to this paper Kaminski also insisted he had never given an interview to a far-right Polish journal, Nasza Polska, during which he allegedly said Poles should not apologise for the Jedwabne pogrom until the Jews said sorry for collaborating with the Soviets.

“I never did an interview,” Kaminski insisted, adding that he “never tried to stop” an apology. But investigations by the Observer call those denials into doubt. Residents of Jedwabne at the time – backed by Polish journalists who covered the story – say Kaminski is misrepresenting his past role.

Footage of a television news bulletin from 5 March 2001 shows Kaminski reacting to news that the then President Aleksander Kwasniewski was to issue an apology and saying: “I think that Mr President can apologise but for other things. He should withhold apologies for Jedwabne.” The editor in chief of Nasza Polska, Piotr Jakucki, confirmed that Kaminski gave the 2001 interview.

At that time Jedwabne was the focus of international press attention after an American professor, Jan T Gross, published a book, based on the accounts of local people, which concluded that Poles, with the help of some occupying Nazi troops, locked hundreds of Jews into a barn, and set it on fire. But many people in Jedwabne and other parts of Poland, including Kaminski, believed the whole of Poland was being unfairly blamed for an unproven crime.

Maria Kaczynska, then a journalist with Gazeta Wspolczesna, recalls Kaminski’s role. “I remember all of this very vividly. I had to be in Jedwabne to write about him. I saw him in Jedwabne. He had a big folder and he pulled out a file, a petition calling on locals not to participate in apologies to the Jews.”

Kaminski also flatly denies having been involved in attempts to set up a committee aimed at defending the people of Jedwabne. “I had no involvement with them,” he said. However, Stanislaw Michalowski, the town council head at the time, said: “He was trying to set up a committee of Jedwabne defence but he failed.” Rafal Pankowski, who edits Never Again, an anti-racist magazine, said it was “incredible and appalling that Kaminski can lead a group in the European parliament that pretends to be mainstream and tolerant”.

In a letter in today’s Observer Kaminski calls claims that he is antisemitic “distressing” and insists he has spent “a lifetime of work supporting Israel and the Jewish community in Poland”.

“I have made it clear that the actions of some Poles in the Jedwabne massacre were horrific and criminal. The Polish people were also shattered by the Nazis. While we should share in commemoration I do not believe we should make the whole Polish nation culpable for the criminal acts of a small minority.”

Glenys Kinnock, the Europe minister, said: “This is another example of David Cameron’s inexperience and his willingness to leave Britain isolated. In the global downturn, it is more vital than ever that Britain remains at the heart of Europe. He needs to learn that he will not serve Britain’s national interests by resorting to isolation and extremism.”

Tories in Europe

Why has Cameron formed a new EU group?

In 2005, when campaigning to become leader, he promised Eurosceptic MPs he would quit the federalist European People’s party (EPP).

What is the problem?

He struggled to make a new group and ended up with allies on Europe’s hard right.

Does it matter?

Yes. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are angry that Cameron has left the EPP. It strikes important deals before EU summits.

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Army torture inquiry flaws exposed

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

The day after a firefight in May 2004 between British soldiers and insurgents, the bodies of 20 Iraqis were returned to their families. At the time, many relatives claimed the corpses showed signs of torture. Now an investigation by Greater Manchester police has raised the disturbing possibility of an army cover-up. Rajeev Syal and Mark Townsend report

A military investigation into one of the most notorious incidents of the Iraq conflict, in which British soldiers allegedly murdered and mutilated unarmed Iraqis, has been severely criticised by police called in to assess its credibility.

A new inquiry has found that the Royal Military Police – who are responsible for investigating claims of wrongdoing by soldiers – failed to collect forensic evidence, ignored key witnesses and did not ask Iraqi witnesses relevant questions as they investigated the “Battle of Danny Boy” and its aftermath.

The 120-page Greater Manchester police report into the RMP’s Special Investigation Branch (SIB), which has been obtained by the Observer, concludes that some interviews with Iraqi detainees may have been conducted in an effort to justify their arrest, not to probe human rights abuses. The report is expected to be significant for a judicial review that will examine the Iraqi claims next week.

The army investigation centred on a firefight between soldiers from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR) and insurgents at a road checkpoint known among the troops as Danny Boy, near Majar al-Kabir in Maysan province, on 14 May 2004. The next day the bodies of 20 Iraqis were returned to their families.

Several Iraqi witnesses claimed that some of the 20 were taken as prisoners to Camp Abu Naji, an army base in Amara, to be interrogated and tortured, before being killed. Evidence of torture and mutilation allegedly included close-range bullet wounds, the removal of eyes and stab wounds, according to evidence presented by human rights lawyers.

The Ministry of Defence has maintained that all 20 died “on the battlefield” and their bodies were taken to Abu Naji to be photographed, to see if one was an insurgent suspected of helping to kill six military police the previous year. It said only nine live prisoners were taken to the camp, and all left alive.

The subsequent investigation conducted by the Red Caps, as the RMP is known, cleared British forces of any wrongdoing and found no evidence to back any of the Iraqi claims.

However, Det Supt Martin Bottomley, from Greater Manchester police’s major crime unit, conducted a month-long inquiry into the RMP investigation and found that it was flawed from its earliest days. In his report Bottomley concluded that army investigators neither secured nor preserved evidence in the crucial days following the incident. Interviews were not conducted at that time, which may have allowed potential witnesses and suspects to alter their accounts or leave the area.

“Such a delay has potential implications in relation to issues such as evidence recovery, forensic opportunities, scene security and witness opportunities,” the report states.

Military investigators also missed a clear opportunity to question the nine Iraqi detainees, even though they were aware that the men had accused British officers of vicious assaults, the report concluded.

“Clearly, all but one of the nine detainees were also potential key and significant witnesses who may have been in a position to provide information in relation to the allegations of torture, mutilation of bodies and murder,” wrote Bottomley. The detainees were interviewed 76 days after their arrest.

After reading notes from army investigators discussing detainee interviews, Bottomley suspected that they were predominantly interested in justifying their arrests, not uncovering the truth. “[It] implies that there was a need to interview the detainees solely to justify detention since 14 May, and not to interview them in relation to the serious allegations that had been made,” he wrote.

A key finding of the police report is that Captain Lucy Bowen of the RMP, who was the first officer to be in charge of the investigation of the firefight, admitted to detectives that she did not have the credentials or the time to run such a complex investigation. “I did not believe I was sufficiently qualified to deal with a shooting investigation of this magnitude, particularly not with the amount of work my section was already dealing with,” she told police. When Bowen raised these concerns with a senior officer, she was told that she was in danger of undermining her position, the police investigation reveals.

Case notes written by Bowen show that, for more than a month after the firefight, she was unsure whether she was allowed to investigate fully the incident and to whom she should be talking. Meanwhile, evidence relating to any of the alleged mutilations and murders could have been moved or destroyed, witnesses were able to leave the scene and the bodies of alleged victims may have been buried.

However, she was waiting for permission from senior officers in the regiment to complete a shooting incident review – a requirement by the army that could have sparked a full RMP investigation.

Three days after the shooting incident, she wrote a note in her case diary describing her concerns: “Have not been permitted to investigate by the unit… to date. It is believed that… the requirement for an investigation will be dispensed with… PM [the Provost Marshal, the head of the Royal Military Police] and I both disagree with this. Explained loss of evidence, etc.”

By 19 May, Bowen had become aware that allegations had surfaced alleging ill-treatment of detainees. She wrote that soldiers from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment could still not be interviewed. “PWRR will not co-operate and release troops for interview. Potential problem. Informed PM.”

On 20 May, Bowen again stood down from proceeding with a full investigation, but was permitted to look into the allegations of assault, which include one detainee being beaten with a rock and another jumped upon while handcuffed. She had been contacted by a superior, who explained that “all investigations into this matter are on hold pending the arrival of a legal adviser to review the situation and review whether an investigation is required,” she wrote.

The attitude of Bowen’s superiors changed on 19 June, 36 days after the incident, when they became aware that the media planned to publish allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners. According to the police report, Bowen was shown correspondence from Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Maer, the commanding officer of the regiment, which claimed that he had asked the Red Caps to investigate the incident days earlier.

Bowen denied Maer’s alleged claims in her case notes. “This is absolutely untrue. The PWRR has never to date tasked the SIB to investigate anything at all,” she wrote.

The delay in launching an official RMP investigation was crucial, according to the police report. “Such a delay has potential impact in relation to issues such as evidence recovery, forensic opportunities, scene security and witness opportunities, all of which could be adversely affected by lack of action in the early stages of an investigation,” wrote Bottomley.

Police also questioned why a new forces’ investigator was appointed to the inquiry as each tour of duty ended, slowing the pace of a complex and difficult inquiry. Between 2004 and 2008, four military investigators have led the Danny Boy investigation. Two of these – Bowen and Captain Graham Smith – were not accredited senior investigating officers.

While 150 army personnel and 50 Iraqi nationals were interviewed as part of the 2005 SIB investigation, even by September 2008 the RMP had not identified all members of army personnel who had come into contact with Iraqi nationals. The original Red Cap investigation concluded in March 2005, clearing all military personnel of wrongdoing. But after lawyers representing Iraqis sought a judicial review of the process, a new investigation was opened in September 2007.

Two new investigating officers took up the task. However, despite the obvious mistakes made during the first investigation, they were not told if they were supposed to be reviewing the previous investigation, re-investigating the investigation or examining new claims that had arisen from lawyers.

“The senior investigating officer was kept in a state of uncertainty, not only to her own role, but also as to the nature of the inquiry itself,” Bottomley wrote. This continued until April 2008, when the officer in question was transferred to another post.

The apparently ad hoc methods by which interviews took place in such a delicate inquiry puzzled the police. Red Cross officials, who first raised the allegations of torture and mutilation in May 2004, were not even interviewed by army investigators, the police report concluded.

Documents disclosed at court have shown that Red Cross officials visited the British detention facility between 17 and 19 May 2004, a few days after the incident. Though they praised some aspects of the detention centre, they referred to what they called “one major concern” – a Red Cross doctor said that, in some cases, facial injuries suggested they were inflicted when the detainees were being “held down” or “defenceless”.

The MoD conceded the need for an independent investigation into the Danny Boy incident this month, after it was forced to admit that key documents had not been disclosed. In a letter read out in court, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, said he “profoundly regrets” the failures to disclose relevant documents. Though he denied the allegations of mutilation and murder, he said he was prepared to set up an inquiry under European human rights legislation.

Six Iraqis who sought a full, independent inquiry include Khuder al-Sweady, uncle of teenager Hamid al-Sweady, one of the 20 who died. The other five applicants were survivors of the Danny Boy incident: Hussein Fadel Abbas, Atiyah Sayid Abdelreza, Mahdi Jassim Abdullah, Hussein Jabbar Ali and Ahmad Jabbar Ahmood. They say they were punched, threatened with violence, thrown violently against a wall, hit by guards if they fell asleep, denied water and subjected to other forms of mistreatment.

Major-General Julian Thompson, former commander of the Royal Marines, said it was important to remember that the dangers and idiosyncrasies inherent in military operations in Iraq placed complex and extreme pressures on military police. “It’s all very well for the Greater Manchester police to look out of their window on a peaceful city; in Iraq, the issues are somewhat more difficult.”

But Mark Cann, director of the British Forces Foundation, said: “The military should hold itself to the highest standards at all times. If you are in these countries trying to take the high moral ground, then you have to uphold your ethics, particularly if you want to change the way other people live.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “The Greater Manchester police’s peer review of what was then an ongoing Royal Military Police investigation was requested by the RMP and was designed to provide the senior investigating officer with an independent view of the investigation.

“This is normal practice in an investigation of this magnitude and complexity and is in line with civilian police best practice. The document forms part of the evidence in ongoing judicial review proceedings and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

How the case unfolded

14 May 2004: The “Battle of Danny Boy”, a fierce exchange between British soldiers and Iraqi insurgents near the town of Majar al-Kabir, Maysan. British estimates put the Iraqi deaths at 50. Residents claim relatives tending nearby fields were embroiled in the fighting. British forces also detained a number of men and were seen transporting them from the battlefield. Up to 20 Iraqi civilians are allegedly tortured and executed; it is claimed that some of them were mutilated before they died.

15 May: 20 bodies are returned to Iraqi families by UK forces.

17-19 May: The International Committee of the Red Cross visits the detainees. Allegations of mistreatment emerge.

19 May: A draft letter is drawn up by armed forces minister to Tony Blair informing him of the allegations.

20 June: Royal Military Police investigators are eventually given permission to question soldiers and to obtain evidence about the Iraqi claims.

October 2007: Judicial review proceedings issued.

October 2008: Greater Manchester police launch review of RMP investigation.

April 2009: Government denies any wrongdoing on behalf of the soldiers and says the Iraqis were killed during the gun battle.

6 July: Government concedes that there should be a new investigation and orders a judicial review.

August: Judicial review to begin.

Army Abuses

September 2003
An Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Musa, dies in British military custody after sustaining 93 injuries while being detained by soldiers from the former Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Basra, southern Iraq. In July last year the MoD paid almost £3m in compensation to the father of Musa and nine other Iraqi civilians who were abused.

February 2005
Three British soldiers are jailed for abusing Iraqi civilian prisoners at an aid facility called Camp Bread Basket in Basra during May 2003. Details of the abuse came to light after a young soldier took “trophy photographs”, including humiliating sexual images of naked Iraqi men. They only came to light after a shop assistant in Staffordshire contacted the authorities after being shocked at the pictures.

February 2006
The News of the World publishes pictures from a video allegedly showing a disturbance in the street outside what appears to be a military compound. British soldiers are shown chasing youths involved in the incident, dragging four of them into the compound and beating them on various parts of the body with batons and kicking them, one in the genitals.

July 2008
Royal Military Police reveal they are investigating another allegation against British troops in Iraq after a 14-year-old Iraqi, detained in 2003 with a group of looters, claims he was sexually abused.

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Wealthy elderly turn backs on seaside havens

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

Newly retired move to cultural cities or the shires

God’s waiting rooms are undergoing a transformation. For decades, many of Britain’s coastal towns have been synonymous with blue rinses, bingo and tea dances. Places such as Bournemouth, Eastbourne and Worthing have been seen as retirement havens for generations of pensioners, keen to take the sea air just as their Victorian predecessors used to.

But according to an analysis of demographic data, many of today’s wealthier pensioners are turning their backs on traditional retirement destinations with a “grey influx” into upmarket towns and cities in some of the UK’s most sought-after inland locations – such as in the Cotswolds, and parts of Hampshire and Kent.

The shift is driven by an increase in the number of people reaching retirement age, coupled with rising levels of wealth. In 1945, life expectancy at birth for men and women was 63 and 68 respectively. In 2009 it is 78 and 82.

The dramatic increase in the number of over-65s means that by 2019 there will be 2.4 million more than today. But the traditional coastal retirement resorts, which grew to meet burgeoning demand from the postwar middle classes, have not been able to accommodate the demographic shift.

Research from Experian, the consumer research and credit rating agency, charts the trend. Changes to its giant Mosaic database – which divides the UK population into socioeconomic and lifestyle groups – show a much larger proportion of older people moving to the most desirable parts of the country, often funding this by selling their mortgage-free homes. And where coastal destinations were once the vogue, many are now looking to inland market towns, historic cities and major cultural destinations.

“People want to spend more of their retirement in the country, in areas of attractive scenery,” said Richard Webber, visiting professor of geography at University College London, who helped develop Mosaic. “And they are choosing to live a long way from London and other major population centres.”

Webber said around half of those reaching retirement age choose to carry on living in their own home, or at least in the same area. But of those with above-average wealth, around 60 per cent choose to live somewhere else. Half of these now select less traditional retirement destinations.

“A lot more older people want to retire to places of historic importance, places that have orchestras and festivals,” said Webber. “They’re looking at historic market towns and cities, places like Bath and Cheltenham, cathedral cities and university towns where there are beautiful buildings.”

The new pensioners

As a result of its extensive social mapping of the UK, Experian has identified five new types of retiree.

Beachcombers

This group reflects the growing trend for the middle-class retired to select smaller communities, many on the coast or a river, rather than larger resorts. Popular destinations: Barnstaple, Newport (Isle of Wight), Carmarthen, Inverness, Kendal, Newton Abbot.

Balcony downsizers

Higher-status retired people in their 70s and 80s, who live in privately owned or leasehold apartments in purpose-built blocks of flats suitable for those too fragile to cope with the upkeep of houses and gardens. Popular destinations: Worthing, Boscombe, Edinburgh, Southend-on-Sea, Barnet, Kingston upon Thames.

Golden retirement

People with accumulated assets, who pick prestigious retirement communities. They lead busy social lives, drive and garden. Popular destinations: Exeter, Southampton, Poole, Chichester, Norwich, Canterbury and Ipswich.

Bungalow quietude

Retirees with modest pensions, living in older-style bungalows, often in less well-off areas unattractive to younger families. Popular destinations: Blackpool, Rhyl, Scarborough, Plymouth, Nottingham, Peterborough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Lincoln, Leicester.

Country-loving elders

People on comfortable incomes living in former farms or older-style properties in quiet villages and market towns. Popular destinations: Truro, King’s Lynn, Hereford, Carlisle, Shrewsbury.

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Whistleblower reveals plight of America’s sick poor

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

When an insurance firm boss saw a field hospital for the poor in Virginia, he knew he had to speak out. Here, he tells Paul Harris of his fears for Obama’s bid to bring about radical change

Wendell Potter can remember exactly when he took the first steps on his journey to becoming a whistleblower and turning against one of the most powerful industries in America.

It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia.

Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills. People queued in long lines to have the most basic medical procedures carried out free of charge. Some had driven more than 200 miles from Georgia. Many were treated in the open air. Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements.

For Potter it was a dreadful realisation that healthcare in America had failed millions of poor, sick people and that he, and the industry he worked for, did not care about the human cost of their relentless search for profits. “It was over-powering. It was just more than I could possibly have imagined could be happening in America,” he told the Observer

Potter resigned shortly afterwards. Last month he testified in Congress, becoming one of the few industry executives to admit that what its critics say is true: healthcare insurance firms push up costs, buy politicians and refuse to pay out when many patients actually get sick. In chilling words he told a Senate committee: “I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick: all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”

Potter’s claims are at the centre of the biggest political crisis of Barack Obama’s young presidency. Obama, faced with 47 million Americans without health insurance, has put reforming the system at the top of his agenda. If he succeeds, he will have pushed through one of the greatest changes to domestic policy of any president. If he fails, his presidency could be broken before it is even a year old. Last week, in a sign of how high the stakes are, he addressed the nation in a live TV news conference. It is the sort of event usually reserved for a moment of deep national crisis, such as a terrorist attack. But Obama wanted to talk about healthcare. “This is about every family, every business and every taxpayer who continues to shoulder the burden of a problem that Washington has failed to solve for decades,” he told the nation.

Obama’s plans are now mired and the opponents of reform are winning. The Republican attack machine has cranked into gear, labelling reform as “socialist” and warning ordinary Americans that government bureaucrats, not doctors, will choose their medicines. The bill’s opponents say the huge cost can only be paid by massive tax increases on ordinary Americans and that others will have their current healthcare plans taken away. Many centrist Democratic congressmen, wary of their conservative voters, are wavering. The legislation has failed to meet Obama’s August deadline and is now delayed until after the summer recess. Many fear that this loss of momentum could kill it altogether.

To Potter that is no surprise. He has seen all this before. In his long years with Cigna he rose to be the company’s top PR executive. He had an eagle-eye view of the industry’s tactics of scuppering political efforts to get it to reform. “This is a very wealthy industry and they use PR very effectively. They manipulate public opinion and the news media and they have built up these relationships with all these politicians through campaign contributions,” Potter said.

Potter was witness to the campaign against Michael Moore’s healthcare documentary Sicko. The industry slammed the film as one-sided and politically motivated. Secret documents leaked from the American Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s lobby group, detailed the plan to paint Moore as a fringe radical. Potter now says the film “hit the nail on the head”. “The Michael Moore movie that I saw was full of truth,” he admits.

Potter was also working for Cigna when it became embroiled in the case of Nataline Sarkisyan, whose family went public after Cigna refused to pay for a liver transplant that it considered “experimental” and therefore not covered by their policy. Cigna reversed this decision only hours before the Californian teenager died. “I wish I could have done more in that case,” Potter said.

Such sentiments are rare in an industry that has given America a healthcare system that can be cripplingly expensive for patients, but that does not produce a healthier population. The industry is often accused of wriggling out of claims. Firms comb medical records for any technicality that will allow them to refuse to pay. In one recently publicised example, a retired nurse from Texas discovered she had breast cancer. Yet her policy was cancelled because her insurers found she had previously had treatment for acne, which the dermatologist had mistakenly noted as pre-cancerous. They decreed she had misinformed them about her medical history and her double mastectomy was cancelled just three days before the operation.

Last month three healthcare executives were grilled about such “rescinding” tactics by a congressional subcommittee. When asked if they would abandon them except in cases of deliberately proven fraud, each executive replied simply: “No.”

To Potter that attitude has a sad logic. The healthcare industry generates enormous profits and its top executives have a lavish corporate lifestyle that he once shared. Treating patients for their expensive conditions is bad for business as it reduces the bottom line. Kicking out patients who pursue claims makes perfect economic sense. “It is a system that is rigged against the policyholder,” Potter said. The congressional probe found that just three firms had rescinded more than 20,000 policyholders between 2003 and 2007, saving hundreds of millions. “That’s a lot of money that will now go towards their profits,” Potter said.

A lot of that money also goes into contributions to politicians of both parties – $372m in the past nine years – and in lobbying groups to run TV ads slamming Obama’s plans. Many of these ads deploy naked scare tactics. One report said that the industry was spending $1.4m a day on its campaign. In the face of that, it is perhaps no wonder that the Senate has delayed its vote, dealing a massive blow to Obama. “I have seen how the opponents of healthcare reform go to work… they are trying to delay action. They know that if they keep the process going for months, and turn it into a big mess, then the political impetus behind it will lessen,” Potter said.

Potter, who now works at the Centre for Media and Democracy in Wisconsin, says the industry is afraid of Obama’s reforms and that is why it is fighting so hard. It wants to deal him the same blow as it did Bill Clinton when it scuppered his attempt at reform in the 1990s. Potter admits that he is worried the industry might win again. “I have seen their tactics work. I have been a part of it,” he said. He knows he has no chance of ever working again for a major firm. “I am a whistleblower and corporate America does not tend to like that,” he said. But there is one thing Potter is not sorry about: leaving the healthcare industry and speaking out. “I have absolutely no regrets. I am doing the right thing,” he said.

Comprehensive healthcare reform in the US has been an ambition of many presidents since the early part of the 20th century. None has succeeded in creating a system that gives all Americans the right to coverage. Barack Obama, below, is desperate to avoid the same fate.

Finding a cure

What is the current system?
It is a complex mish-mash of systems. Millions of Americans have their own private healthcare plans, either individually or through their employer. About 47 million Americans have none. However, systems do exist to cover the very poor and the old. The system is fiendishly complex and full of loopholes, so even those with coverage can have it withdrawn.

How bad is it?
US hospitals are the best in the world if you can afford them. Many cannot, and an accident or sudden illness can often bankrupt someone.

How does it compare with other countries?
It depends how you measure things. The US spends about 16% of GNP on healthcare, far more than France and Germany, which spend 11 to 12%. Yet those countries provide universal care.

What is the biggest problem?
Critics say the biggest issue is the profit motive that drives US healthcare. This ensures that costs are always rising as the incentive is there to provide expensive treatment. It also gives health insurers the incentive to refuse treatment to claimants, by seeking to withdraw their cover.

What is Obama’s solution?
Obama has asked Congress to draw up a government option, allowing all Americans to get some sort of cover. The sheer size of the state plan should theoretically allow it to drive down costs by economies of scale.

What’s happening now?
Obama has put his reputation on the line to persuade wavering Democrats and moderate Republicans to vote on legislation by August. The Senate has said this will not happen. That’s a major blow, as it puts off the debate until September and could see the political momentum stall.

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Earliest Wodehouse satires found

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

Writings from 100 years ago emerge to cast new light on the author’s politics

The discovery of four satirical “playlets” by PG Wodehouse, seen by the public for the first time in 100 years this weekend, prove that the humorist – who is often viewed as apolitical – had a strong interest in public affairs from his youth.

Wodehouse is best known as the creator of the all-knowing Jeeves and his egregious boss, Bertie Wooster. However, the four sketches, written between 1904 and 1907 – and complete with lampooning songs – show he was closely engaged with British politics and happy to function somewhat as the Have I Got News For You of his day.

In a meeting room at Calders bookshop on London’s South Bank yesterday, Wodehouse fans from across Europe met to read the playlets for the first time with the man who found them, literary historian Paul Spiring.

Wodehouse, or “Plum” as he was known to friends, used the sketches to parody the debate of the time about tariff reform and proposed changes to tax law that split the Conservative government, and led to a Liberal landslide in 1906.

He wrote the sketches with his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson, known as “Bobbles”, and they were published in the Daily Express and Vanity Fair before disappearing into publisher archives. Hilary Bruce, chairman of the Wodehouse Society, is among those keen to see the works. “Lovers of literature, be they scholars or simply voracious readers, are always delighted when early or little known works are collected and republished,” she said.

“Scholars welcome comparison between early and later works. Wodehouse was just 22 when the first of these satires was published, and that makes them interesting to us now.”

In later life the author faced angry public accusations, including from writer AA Milne, that he had sympathised with the Nazi regime in Germany.

During a period of internment in what is now Poland, Wodehouse made a series of light-hearted broadcasts that were viewed by critics as treason. His supporters, including George Orwell, defended Wodehouse by saying he was naive and not interested in politics. It is now clear this was not the case. “People who enjoy Wodehouse like to think he was apolitical, but actually as a young man he was highly attuned to the political nuances of the day,” said Robert McCrum, author of the biography, Wodehouse: A Life

“He was conservative with a small ‘c’ – a supporter of Joseph Chamberlain and tariff reform. But he had started out as a journalist and was alert to controversy, and could always write to commission.”

While Wodehouse was politically aware, McCrum suggests that the writer would have been happy to deliver pieces to suit the political position of the owners of the Daily Express.

“He would turn his hand to anything that paid, and do it well. He was ambidextrous when it came to writing, and not snooty. But more than anything at that time, he liked writing funny poems and lyrics.”

Wodehouse’s father was in the civil service in India, but not wealthy enough to send his son to Oxford. As a result, the young Wodehouse worked in a bank after leaving school. He hated the work, and took up writing in his spare time, hoping to establish a career that would free him from a life in finance.

As one of the first modern “freelance” writers, Wodehouse went on to satirise politicians in the character of Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup and leader of the “Black Shorts”, who appears in several Jeeves stories.

The new playlets were discovered, one by one, during four years of research by Spiring, who is also an expert on the work of Arthur Conan Doyle. He came across the first Wodehouse sketch almost by chance. “They all followed from a successful set of poems he had written known as the Parrot Poems,” he said.

“They are quite powerful and show that he was very much a supporter of the Tariff Reform League and pro-Chamberlain. His writing has often given people the impression that he was above politics. But the songs show that he was quite astute.”

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My space

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

The millionaire businessman shows us the home office where he turns into Goldfinger

When I’m in my chair I feel like Goldfinger or one of the other Bond villains. Under my desk there’s a secret switch on the right which can raise my monitor out of the top. I also have cats like Mini-Me in Austin Powers, but mine are two Persians called Coco and Bella (short for Tinkerbell); Coco was here first and gets very territorial of this area. She’s a very snooty cat.

My wife is an artist, and we’ve got quite a nice set-up. She paints in her studio to the left of this space. When I’m buying art with her, I tend not to negotiate. She’s very passionate about her field and says: “For God’s sake darling, artists need a living, too.”

When we first bought the house this room was my gym. I bought a treadmill and after three years I still hadn’t removed the Harrods price tag. I used to hang my jacket on the arms instead and I don’t think we ever actually turned it on.

We’ve lived here in St John’s Wood for 15 years now. We moved from Winchmore Hill, where we had a slightly larger house, because we needed to move closer to town so that my daughters, Hannah and Gemma, could go to City of London School for Girls. They are both now in their final years at university (they are only 11 months apart).

Hannah is quite interested in private equity, because she’s very financially astute. Gemma is more artistic. What tends to happen at the weekend is if I have bits and pieces to do, they will be in here on the sofas opposite my desk, doing their homework on their laptops.

My executive assistant shares my office at Hamilton Bradshaw in Mayfair, but I can normally do two or three meetings from here before I leave. I’m very protective of the rest of the house though. That’s strictly for family business only.

• The Real Deal: My Story, from Brick Lane to Dragons’ Den, by James Caan, is published by Virgin books at £18.99. Dragons’ Den is on Wednesdays at 9pm on BBC2.

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Adebayor was ‘desperate’ not to join

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

• Ferguson says Adebayor offered himself to Manchester United
• ‘[City] are a small club with a small mentality,’ adds Scot

Sir Alex Ferguson has claimed that Manchester City’s latest signing Emmanuel Adebayor was “desperate” to join Manchester United or Chelsea instead, and contacted both clubs even after he had agreed his £25m move to Eastlands.

Speaking to The Observer, the Manchester United manager – who also dismissed City as “a small club with a small mentality” – said the striker tried to engineer an alternative move away from Arsenal even as the transfer to City was being finalised.

“At the last minute, from what I can gather, either Emmanuel Adebayor or his agent phoned us after they had agreed a deal with City and then did the same with Chelsea. He was desperate to get to either Chelsea or us.”

Ferguson, speaking in Malaysia during United’s pre-season tour of the Far East, claimed that Adebayor’s move, and those of other high-profile players who have joined City this summer, was motivated by money, not ambition: “When someone offers you that kind of money, it’s a big attraction to people nowadays. That is the reason they have gone there.”

The 25-year-old said that “silverware and trophies” were behind his decision to join Mark Hughes’s side, but Ferguson does not think City will challenge, saying signing the likes of Adebayor, Roque Santa Cruz and Gareth Barry may be the sum total of their success this season.

“Do you know what City’s biggest triumph is? It’s getting those players there. I don’t know if they will do anything with them,” he said. “It is not easy to get into that top four so the biggest success of all is to just get the players there.

“There will be three teams to beat. Ourselves, Liverpool and Chelsea will be very close together… The one who has the challenge this season is Arsène. He doesn’t have the money and how he uses the £25m from Adebayor will be very, very interesting,” he said of the Arsenal manager.

Continuing his attack on City, Ferguson also suggested that Hughes has focused too much on attack in his spending spree.

“For all the buying they have done, they still have to pick a team with balance. That won’t be easy for Mark. What’s he got, 10 strikers? So if he picks a squad to go to Chelsea he has to leave seven behind, or five at least.”

One of those strikers is Carlos Tevez, whose move to the blue half of Manchester prompted City to erect a billboard sporting an image of the Argentinian with the message “Welcome to Manchester” – a stunt Ferguson dismissed as typical of the club’s mentality.

“It’s City isn’t it? They are a small club with a small mentality,” he said. “All they can talk about is Manchester United, they can’t get away from it… They think taking Carlos Tevez away from Manchester United is a triumph. It is poor stuff.”

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What happened next

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

How do you follow the greatest day of your life? One year on, Emma John catches up with six Olympic gold medallists and finds that if you think losing’s hard, you should try winning

Twelve months ago, we were a nation transfixed. We knew that the Beijing Olympics would be the greatest show on earth: we had never guessed that Britain would play such a starring role. From the moment that Nicole Cooke crossed the line in the women’s road race, to James DeGale’s middleweight scrap on the penultimate day of the Games, we got up early, joined Hazel Irvine on the couch, and watched, open-mouthed, as a procession of British talent took the podium. When Boris Johnson accepted the handover flag, Britain had finished the 29th Olympiad fourth in the medal tally with 19 gold medals, and 47 medals in total – our best performance in exactly 100 years.

A year on, a few have stayed with us – the one who was knighted, the one who wore Jimmy Choos, and the one we mistook for a villain, at least until she won the 400m. For the rest, if we’re honest, we would struggle to match the name to the sport, if we remembered the names at all. If we do think of our Olympic champions, we might imagine them basking in their achievements, their perfect physiques wrapped in a contented glow. We tend to forget that for those who have spent their lives chasing a single, all-but-impossible, goal, achieving it leaves a void. As Victoria Pendleton, the track cyclist who took the women’s sprint title, puts it: “You don’t plan for the next day.”

Most have chosen to attempt it all over again. The opportunity to perform at a home Games comes only to a lucky few, and of the 27 British gold medallists, only two have opted not to defend their titles at London 2012, with another two undecided. The rest have already returned to their gyms, to their diets, to their sleep schedules; to the start of the long, monotonous climb towards a peak performance three years away.

For gold medallists, anticlimax isn’t just a danger, it’s an unavoidable reality. The American sprinter Wilma Rudolph, after finishing the 1960 Olympics with victories in the 100m, 200m and 100m relay, said: “There has to be more to this life than that.” After the 2004 Games, where he won the individual pursuit, cyclist Bradley Wiggins found himself locked in a year-long spiral of drink and depression, a combination of unlimited partying opportunities with a sudden loss of purpose. Another Athens champion, the Australian diver Chantelle Newbery, was admitted to hospital with depression. Harold Abrahams seemed grief-stricken after his 100m gold in 1924 – when a friend asked him why, he replied: “Maybe you should try winning some time.”

For athletes who have known no other life but full-time training, it can be hard to picture a future beyond the locker room. Many will have forgone university or other higher education. Only a lucky few will find roles in coaching or commentating; the others must start new careers from scratch. Cyclist Paul Manning, who won gold in the team pursuit, was the first champion to announce their retirement after Beijing. He has since landed a job as assistant construction manager with the firm that is building the London 2012 velodrome, but he admitted that, even with a degree in geology, it was intimidating to enter a tough job market with a CV that boasted shelf-stacking and a paper round.

So what do you do after the Downing Street drinks have run out, and the open-top bus has dropped you back home?

Backstage at Belfast’s Odyssey Arena, in a small, spare dressing room, James DeGale is punching the air. Not in euphoria, although he is euphoric. The boxer has just beaten the Czech fighter Jindrich Kubin in two minutes 22 seconds, and he is replaying some of the highlights for his trainer, Jim McDonnell, and his dad, Leroy.

“In the corner, I had him with a body blow, then boom! Boom!” He dances around the space. “He didn’t hurt me one bit. I feel fantastic. I could go again tomorrow, Jim, easy.” The 48-year-old McDonnell, a former European champion, tells him to enjoy the feeling. “The number of times you’ll come into a dressing room, you’ve done 12 rounds, and you can’t even breathe…”

This is DeGale’s second professional fight, and his second win. The 23-year-old turned pro in December, four months after reaching the peak of his amateur career with his middleweight gold in Beijing. The thought of becoming the first Olympic boxing champion to retain his title in his home city was tempting for a time – he was, he says, still in “the Olympic bubble”. But he has wanted to be a professional fighter since, aged 13, he first saw a video of Naseem Hamed. When Frank Warren, the man who made Naz, offered him terms worth “not far off” £2m, the bubble burst.

It did, however, mean an end to the non-stop party life DeGale had enjoyed since Beijing (as his father Leroy says, endearingly, “It’s not fair to depict him as a playboy; he was only a playboy for four months”). Having well and truly celebrated his arrival at the top of his sport, he began again as a novice. There was a new training regime – longer runs, tougher sparring rounds – and DeGale learned the hard way that an Olympic gold buys you little goodwill in the professional realm. His debut in February – a points victory against Georgian Vepkhia Tchilaia – was marred by boos from sections of the crowd, and poor reviews in the press; and it upset the one-time golden boy to find himself, so suddenly, an antihero.

“I sparred with someone a week ago,” says DeGale, “and today they’ve wrote on the internet: ‘I can’t believe all these Olympians are getting so much attention – James DeGale is nothing special.’” He adds that he has found respect from most fighters, including his idol Joe Calzaghe. The former world champion had previously speculated that DeGale’s post-Beijing fortune would diminish his hunger for success. But DeGale has set his goals high, a British title by the end of 2010 and a world title by 2012, and today, with the adrenaline of his TKO, he seems ecstatic about his progress. “I can fight, I can box, I can move my feet when I need to. If you compare from my first fight to now, it’s pathetic, innit?”

Boxing is one of the few Olympic sports that offers its champions a path to a greater prize. For the rest, be they athletes or archers, the question is: what next? There is no way to better a gold medal: the only challenge left is to win more. And that means repeating themselves, submitting to the same sacrifices, the same routines, and the same cycle of “lesser” tournaments – competitions that were once major events in their careers. There’s also the knowledge that, when the Games arrive, nothing less than victory will do. “If I’d gone to London 2012 and won a bronze or a silver,” says DeGale, “it would have been a failure.”

Rower Andrew Triggs Hodge, the blond-maned stroke in the victorious men’s four, admits that before Beijing he had a very particular motivation. “I was always labelled the dumb kid at school,” says Triggs Hodge. “I didn’t achieve anything. When I discovered rowing, something I was good at, it was like a ‘fuck you’ to everybody who didn’t believe in me.”

In 2004, his boat came dead last in the men’s eight: more than 1,000 days of training, including 4am starts and ergos that took him to the edge of unconsciousness, had counted for nothing. Victory in Beijing was the settling of an imagined score. “Then there was nothing left,” he admits. “I wondered, ‘Has the carrot gone?’”

Of his team-mates, Steve Williams has taken an indefinite break from rowing to ask himself the same question and Tom James only recently announced his return. Triggs Hodge lasted just six weeks away from the water before he cracked. “I tried to distract myself, but it was intrinsic, I just wanted to do it. I didn’t want to prove anybody wrong – I’ve put those ghosts to bed. The only way I can describe it, now, is pure will.” It seems to be working: competing in the pairs with Peter Reed, the other member of the Beijing four, Triggs Hodge has taken gold and two silvers in this summer’s world cup regattas.

Even while returning to the stringent schedules of Britain’s Olympic coach Jürgen Gröbler, Triggs Hodge has taken on the elected (and unpaid) post of captain of the Hampton-based Molesey Boat Club; he regularly works 10- to 12-hour days there, working on club strategy and management, doing admin, encouraging the juniors. Like many of the gold medal fraternity, he seems disinclined to enjoy his laurels. He rarely reminds himself that he is an Olympic champion: “And whenever I do think about it, my first reaction is – don’t forget how hard it was.”

There’s a restlessness that is common to gold medallists, who seem keen to fill their time with new projects, goals, and ambitions. No one epitomises this better than Tim Brabants, who won kayaking gold in the K1-1,000m and bronze in the K1-500m. “Once the weight has lifted you feel like” – he sighs – ‘Now what?’” In Brabants’s case, the answer is a diary that would make super-ambassador Dame Kelly Holmes blanch. The canoeist has returned to his pre-Games career as a doctor at one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in the country, in the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, where he balances locum shifts with exam study and regular volunteering as course doctor at sports venues such as Donington Park. He has taken up triathlon and rowing, and in July raced in a four-man crew from Sark to Jersey. He has also taken on advisory roles with the London 2012 Organising Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, not to mention sponsors commitments and presentations, and has, on occasion, headed straight from an eight-hour night shift to talk at a school assembly. “I really like the way that my lifestyle is unconventional,” he smiles. “I like variety, and I can fit a lot into my time.”

On the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show in May, the celebrities are as much the exhibits as the gardens. A cluster of journalists has settled on a particular stall where Robert Winston and Stephen Fry are chattering amiably into dictaphones, and Victoria Pendleton is posing with a rose that has been bred especially for her. Wearing a tomato-coloured shift dress that she made herself, and a Burberry mac which is, she says, the single most expensive thing she has ever bought, she holds a gold medal in one hand and the yellowy-tangerine bloom (the closest to gold the growers could manage) in the other.

Pendleton seems to be enjoying herself and angles her demure smile this way and that to the great credit of the Royal Horticultural Society. She admits that she loves an excuse to glam up – this year has already brought several awards ceremonies, and a sashay down Stella McCartney’s catwalk at London Fashion Week. New frocks are needed for Ascot, Wimbledon and Buckingham Palace, where she is to receive an MBE.

Like every British Olympic champion, Pendleton received a welter of invitations in the immediate aftermath of the Games. Theoretically at least, it is possible for a gold medallist to live like a 19th-century dAndrew, eating out at other people’s expense for lunch and dinner every day, and scarcely needing to go home in between. “I remember having a chat with Rebecca [Romero] at one event and we were both saying this is a completely different world,” says Sarah Webb, who won her second Yngling gold in Beijing. “It was much, much bigger than Athens. By mid-November, I’d been out every lunch or dinner for weeks doing something and I thought, ‘I need to rein it in a bit because this isn’t normal. It would be nice to sit in and watch TV.’”

Pendleton now chooses to attend only the bare minimum of events; she says – and you suspect that she’s joking – that she only went to the British Olympic Association’s Gold Ball because they promised the athletes makeovers beforehand. “Sometimes you meet some fantastic people and you see celebrities and it’s fun,” she says. “But sometimes it is just hard work and you are looking around thinking, ‘Is it OK to leave now?’

“Yeah, you get invited to a nice dinner, but there are a million and one questions, you don’t kick back and enjoy yourself, you are working all the time, putting on your best face. There are only so many times you can repeat yourself before you feel like you’re reading off a script. Is it heavy? Yes, it is heavy. Is it really gold? No, it’s silver and gold plated. How did it feel? It was a dream come true that I can’t possibly put into words…”

The eddy of social engagements also contributes to another, more potent, illusion. If every time you see an Olympic champion they are wearing Amanda Wakeley or Paul Smith, clasping a glass of champagne or a royal gong, it is easy to believe they are on their way to becoming extremely wealthy. Even as the team landed at Heathrow last August – and were escorted from the first-class cabin to the VIP arrivals entrance – the chief executive of sponsorship at M&C Saatchi was claiming that they could soon be millionaires. “People don’t understand how much these guys could actually make,” Steve Martin said. “The potential is simply huge now.”

But most of the champions – with the exception of DeGale, who is giving the shops on Bond Street plenty of business – say that their financial situations have not changed at all. The suggestion that they are on their way to their first million is met with derision. Pendleton’s Burberry mac is one of only two treats she allowed herself; the other is a pair of Christian Louboutin heels. When Zac Purchase was asked if his earnings had been boosted by his rowing gold, he replied: “I got a pair of gold, limited-edition wellies… Does that count?”

Lottery funding notwithstanding, Brabants has always known he would need a second career. Canoeing offers no financial incentives, and while being recognised at the hospital might be a bizarre perk – a patient having a heart attack recently stopped him to say “You’re that Olympic doctor, aren’t you?” – the gold medal has had little other impact. “People do say that I must be making loads of money, but how?” he asks. “I’ve said yes to as much as I can, I have been to schools, universities, and businesses, taking every opportunity that has come my way, but I am no richer. Everybody wants you for free.”

Some of the top performers have picked up a few more personal sponsorships, or improved terms from the ones they already have. But in a tough financial climate where sponsors are increasingly demanding, and athletes training for London 2012 loth to compromise their training schedules, opportunities are necessarily limited. Some feel that their achievements are already forgotten, or considered last year’s news.

The same is true on the speaking circuit. Fees for corporate engagements can be anything from £1,000 to £25,000 a time, but after Beijing companies wanting a speaker for their business leadership seminar can choose between 27 different Olympic title holders rather than the usual one or two. Most Olympic champions training for 2012 are still reliant on their lottery funding, which doesn’t reward a gold medal – it stays at a maximum of £25,000 a year for anyone with “podium potential”, whether that’s gold or bronze. Moreover, lottery funding is means-tested – so a gold medallist’s rewards from outside earnings and sponsorship can end up diminishing it.

Back at the Flower Show, Pendleton wanders around the stalls. One man asks if she’s an exhibitor; she explains, patiently, that she is a guest, and shows him the buttonhole that was named after her and – when he doesn’t recognise the name – her gold medal. At another stall, a woman makes flippant references to Olympic athletes, before her husband quietly points out that she is talking to one. “I’m sure loads of people have asked you this but what does it feel like when you win?” he asks. Pendleton smiles and takes a breath. “Oh, it’s a dream come true…”

That’s actually a bit of a myth. Pendleton admits later that like most Olympic champions she has spoken to, she found the sensation rather underwhelming: not one of triumph or elation but of relief. “There’s not really any time to go ‘Oh my God!’” she says. “On the podium I was thinking, ‘I should be crying, why am I not crying?’ So I looked down at my medal and I just smirked – then I thought, ‘Don’t smirk during the national anthem, that’s probably treason.’ From the moment you win, everything is very clinically done: dope control, podium, media, home.”

In some ways, the British team have become victims of their own success. “The first time I rode for Great Britain in ’96,” says Chris Hoy, “there was one gold medal for the men’s coxless pairs, so if you won a bronze or a silver then you were pretty hot stuff. Now not only do you have to win a gold but you have to do it in a way that becomes memorable.” Among the returning champions, a hierarchy quickly became apparent, with those who won multiple individual golds scooping the best sponsorships and the acclaim, and those who won their medals as part of a team discipline all but forgotten (consider the last time you heard a story about cyclists Jason Kenny or Ed Clancy).

Thanks to his three individual golds, Hoy is at the centre of the bunfight, and nearest the buffet. The Sports Personality of the Year, Jaguar ambassador and face of Kellogg’s has also had a jumbo jet named after him and received a knighthood in the New Year Honours, and when we meet he is on yet another promotional day, this time for Skyride, a series of mass-participation cycling events taking place in cities across the UK in August. After Athens, Hoy said that a gold changed nothing about his life. Reminded of that, he laughs. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve eaten my words there a bit. The one thing I’ve had to change is that I’ve had to learn to say no to things. I used to be able to say yes to almost everything.” And while he admits he’s earning well, he says it still doesn’t put him among the ranks of most professional sportsmen. “Olympic athletes are very much amateur athletes. When you finish you’re going to have to start at the bottom rung of a different career somewhere else. Any money you get now is to offset that future loss.”

You wonder if he’s embarrassed by his lion’s share of the attention. Is it awkward, for instance, that he has a knighthood while everyone else, including those he trains with, had to settle for MBEs? Hoy says he doesn’t think that other athletes mind, and that it has happened before, to Kelly Holmes and to Steve Redgrave. But he admits he does find the hype rather bemusing. “Just because I won three gold medals doesn’t necessarily make me a better athlete than someone who can only compete in one event.”

One explanation for the phenomenon is that the public only have room in their collective consciousness for one male and one female icon from each Games. This year the lucky two have been Hoy and Rebecca Adlington. That has certainly been noticed by Brabants, Adlington’s Nottingham neighbour. Whenever he gets an invitation to a local event, he says candidly, it is because Adlington has turned it down.

Pendleton has often voiced her frustrations with the inequality of the situation: “When you see one of your team-mates gain so much fame and recognition you think, ‘Why can’t I have that too?’” A few weeks after the Flower Show, she appears on the cover of FHM. It’s a break from the usual goody-two-shoes image of the Olympic athlete – the public generally associates gold medallists with fibre-rich cereals, cholesterol-free margarine and house insurance. Pendleton says that some people thought it “unnecessary”, and others were surprised she hadn’t been paid for the shoot. “But I said: ‘When will I get asked to go on the front of a magazine?’” She laughs. “Plus I thought, ‘They are going to make you look hot.’”

“Vicky’s one of the few athletes that does really thrive on that,” Hoy says. “She loves the media spotlight and I think she measures her success by how much attention she gets, which is crazy because she’s the best in the world at what she does. That’s one of the things I always try to say to her, enjoy your success. If you could say to her four years ago that this is what you’re going to achieve she’d be over the moon, but she measures her performance against her public recognition.”

In June, OSM meets Pendleton again. She recently promoted a project for Sky with Elle Macpherson; apparently Macpherson was surprised to find that Vicky could ride a bike. Recognition, it seems, is still not forthcoming. She sighs. “I’ve done pretty much everything I can and I’m still an unknown. I’m giving up on that whole thing. It’s never going to happen. Never mind, it wasn’t what I set out to do in the first place. Get down to training, do my job.”

The day before Sarah Webb’s gold medal race, Adam Gosling, her boyfriend of four years, arrived in Qingdao. They had arranged not to meet until after the competition, but a lack of wind had delayed the Yngling final by 24 hours, and Gosling was insistent – he had to see her. Webb said he could have half an hour, and went along to his hotel room. He proposed. “I actually thought he was joking,” she says now. “But he’d decided he was going to do it that Saturday, and he’s an absolute stickler for a plan.”

Paranoid about the ring – it wasn’t insured – Gosling insisted she it tie to the waistband of her tracksuit. Webb hid it until after the race, telling no one about the engagement. It was only on the podium that friends watching on TV spotted a shiny glint, and it was 10pm before her sailing partners noticed the new accessory.

They married in February and had their reception at St James’s Palace, where they received special permission from the Queen to take their dog, Derek. With the Yngling class no longer an Olympic event, Webb decided to retire from sailing. She and Gosling busied themselves with plans to demolish their London house and replace it with an ecohome; she also took a broadcast journalism course and filed her first reports for BBC Radio 5 Live. As if that weren’t enough, they also agreed to join a nine-day, 880-mile charity cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats, along with another recently married couple, Webb’s fellow “Yngling Belle” Sarah Ayton and windsurfer Nick Dempsey. When we catch up in June, Gosling is at the wheel of a motorhome, on the A466 in Monmouthshire, with a heavily pregnant Ayton in the navigator’s seat. Webb, Dempsey and the rest of the cycling team are about a mile behind the support vehicle, at the bottom of a very steep Welsh hill.

Post-Beijing, life has changed as much for Gosling as for his wife. For the three years in the run-up to the Games, he only saw Webb one week in every four. Now they see each other every day, and it’s a big adjustment although, he adds quickly, a pleasant one. There has been drama, too: on a ski slope in February, Gosling fell and broke his neck, ironically enough while turning round to check on Webb; he was confined to their house for five weeks afterwards. “It was actually really good for us,” says Webb, “because we hadn’t spent more than two weeks in one place together.”

The year after a Games tends to be a busy one for couples. An Olympic campaign is a pretty self-centred experience, not to mention a fairly monastic one, and for athletes who do much of their training and competing abroad, in warm-weather climates, relationships have to be long-distance. Even for Ayton and Dempsey, who compete at the same regattas, the tyranny of their respective training commitments meant that they stayed engaged for eight years before finally tying the knot last October. The bride had started her wedding preparations the year before Athens.

The quadrennial round of engagements, weddings and pregnancies is an established part of the Olympic cycle. Chris Hoy proposed to his girlfriend, Sarra, on a trip to Prague in April. They met three years ago in a pub in Edinburgh and he says he knew straight away that she was the right girl for him: “It was just about me trying to persuade her likewise.” But with Sarra working as a solicitor in Edinburgh, and Hoy training full-time at the velodrome in Manchester, they had become used to a weekly routine of emotional ups and downs: the anticipation of a Friday-night meeting, and the misery of the drive back to the airport on Sunday. Since the engagement Sarra has found a job in Manchester – Hoy, injured in a crash in February, is back on his bike and preparing for October’s World Cup. “Finally we’ll be able to spend time together,” he says. “It’s nice to have something on the horizon just for the two of us.”

Pendleton didn’t even have time for a relationship before the Games. She had been out on a few dates with sports performance scientist Scott Gardner, but that was as far as it had got – the Olympics, naturally, came first. She says that one of the best things about post-Beijing life has been having time to develop that relationship, and spend more time with family – her parents, her sister Nicola and her twin brother Alex.

Gardner has since moved in to Pendleton’s house in Wilmslow, Cheshire. She says she has been lucky to find a man who is willing to adapt his lifestyle to that of an elite sportswoman. She is tyrannical about her sleep regime – she goes to bed early, gets up late, and hates to be disturbed – and has similarly inflexible eating habits. “Scott lives by my rules,” she admits. “I have to do things certain ways for the sake of my performance, so anyone else has to fit in. It sounds terrible, but he understands. After all, it’s not forever.”

But it is not always so easy for athletes to slot into a new, shared lifestyle. “What Sarah [Ayton] and I have noticed most since Beijing is how selfish you are,” says Webb. “How hard it is to be normal and not put yourself first in everything.” Triggs Hodge, too, admits to a nervous anticipation of September when his girlfriend Anneka, who currently lives in the Netherlands, is due to move in with him. “There is a good chance that she’ll be astonished at how little I am going to be at home,” he admits.

Webb still weighs her porridge out on the scales each morning – 25 grams only – and religiously records her heart rate data, uploading it to her home PC “which is of no use to anybody”. Gosling notes that without a goal to pursue, she became quite low. “This cycle ride is the first time she’s really come alive again,” he says.

So will Webb change her mind, and come out of retirement? She looks torn. “In the lead-up to Beijing, even before we’d won, we’d done it so well I didn’t know how we were going to better it.” There’s a long pause. “But then, when you see everyone else sailing you think… it’s very hard. It would be a bit premature to say never.”

“Becoming Olympic champion seems like an end goal,” says Brabants, who will defend his K1-1,000m gold in 2012. “But it ends up being a stepping stone. It’s hard to put away that drive and determination.”

Witness Pendleton who, only five days after her victory in the Olympic sprint final, put herself back in training for March’s world championships. The team management had told the gold medallists they need not compete – they had too little time to prepare properly, and scarcer motivation. Pendleton knew all this – no track cyclist had ever followed up on their Olympic title at the next year’s world – but she couldn’t help herself. “I just can’t bear the idea of someone else standing on top of that podium and putting my jersey on,” she told me, after defending her sprint title. “An individual medal won at the Olympics isn’t going to sustain a lifetime of satisfaction for me.”

When Hoy crashed in February, the injury to his hip forced him to sit out 10 weeks of the cycling season, and miss the world championships for the first time in his career. It was the longest he had been off his bike since he was seven. “If I’d sat at home watching the world championships and thought, ‘You know what, it’s quite nice to be sitting here with a beer in my hand watching the TV,’ that would have been a bad sign,” he says. “But I was desperate to be up there. Even though it would have been a very compromised preparation and I wouldn’t have been in the best shape of my life. I may not have won anything at all, and I knew that was a risk, but I would never not race just because I was afraid of losing.”

Pendleton worries that winning the sprint again in 2012 will not be challenge enough for her; she is hoping that the Olympic committee will expand the women’s track cycling programme to include more races that she can contest. But you wonder whether anything can bring her true satisfaction. And she’s not alone.

“You come away with two gold medals and you think your life’s made,” says Webb. “But I’m not sure anything’s different at all.”

Q+A: James DeGale

How does life compare with last year?

The change is unbelievable. People recognising me, stopping me in the street. I’m not a millionaire but I’m comfortable now – it’s much easier to buy the clothes I like.

How are you finding professional boxing?

Fantastic. Your attitude has to be different, no nonsense. I was very nervous before the first fight, and I still find the dieting hard.

Do you still have a party lifestyle?

I’m normally too knackered. I’m training twice a day and by the time I get back from the gym all I want to do is sleep. But it ain’t totally stopped …

Q+A: Victoria Pendleton

Have you had a holiday since the Games?

After the worlds I went to Tasmania – I really needed a break by then. I tried to relax but I still got edgy and ended up going to the gym.

How have you found the return to training?

I feel so out of shape I hate myself. And I have off days where I hate riding my bike. When you’ve been in form like you were at the Olympics, everything else is a step down.

How do you motivate yourself for 2012?

I am still working on that. If it wasn’t in London I don’t know if I would bother.

Q+A: Sarah Webb

How did you find the post-Games hype?

You get swept away on the emotion of it; when it stops it’s hard because you think: now what?

And now you’ve gone into journalism…

The people in radio always seemed really nice, and I’d thought in Athens that I might like to try it. So I went on a couple of courses and I’ve just done my first show for BBC 5 Live.

Do your gold medals change your outlook?

I don’t sit and look at my medals, and I’m quite shy about showing them to people. But it does make you realise that you can do anything if you decide to do it.

Q+A: Chris Hoy

Are you enjoying the attention?

It’s lovely, but it takes some getting used to. It makes getting sponsorship easier, but I’m not earning a footballer’s salary.

How did the crash affect your year?

Because I wasn’t training I’ve been trying to cram in all my other obligations, and it’s exhausting. It sounds pathetic but it really is.

After three golds, what goals are left?

Two more in London would give me five golds and a silver, which is more than anybody has won for Britain. That’s a nice target.

Q+A: Tim Brabants

Have you been asked to do a naked calendar?

No, and I’d turn that down. I was emailed asking what my favourite biscuit was, though.

Did you need time off from kayaking this year?

Not so much time off as time to move my medical career forward – it’s difficult to progress when you’re only working part-time.

Has interest in your sport remained?

I think sports in which Britain did well will stay in the public eye more through to 2012. I hope it inspires kids to realise they might have talent in a sport that isn’t football – often you are only exposed to what’s available.

Q+A: Andrew Triggs Hodge

What did you do after Beijing?

I took a three-week holiday, at a profitable time for medallists. But I needed a break and the Azores haven’t heard of the Olympics.

How easy is it to go back to training?

It’s “welcome back to reality”. But I do regret that I don’t have a social life any more.

Does the gold improve your 2012 chances?

The medal is just this bit of metal and I’ve got to make sure I am ticking Jürgen’s boxes now and not then. It’s like walking a tightrope: the further you get from base the harder it gets.

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Taliban switch tactics with new attack

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

Taliban fighters wearing suicide vests and armed with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the main police station in the eastern Afghan city of Khost yesterday. Their assault triggered lengthy gun battles that left seven militants dead and 14 people wounded, officials said.

The attack was one of the most audacious in recent years and took place in an area that it was hoped had been stabilised. Khost is a major provincial centre and the site of one of the biggest US bases in Afghanistan.

The assault signalled a further escalation in Taliban tactics of targeting poorly defended government installations rather than heavily armed international troops. One aim is to drive a wedge between local forces and officials and those trying to protect them. Local forces are attacked directly, international soldiers are struck with remote-controlled bombs.

In recent weeks, tribal leaders have seen a major influx of fighters who are fleeing operations on the Pakistani side of the porous frontier 12 miles from Khost where Islamabad’s soldiers have begun moving against key insurgent havens.

The attack began in the afternoon when at least six insurgents wearing explosives stormed the area around the main police station and a nearby government-run bank. All were shot and killed before they could detonate their vests, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. A seventh attacker detonated a car bomb near a police rapid reaction force, wounding two policemen. Sporadic firing could still be heard late in the afternoon.

Khost has long been a flashpoint. This year 11 Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings there, killing 20 people and wounding three Americans. Documents obtained by the Observer reveal that several of the attackers were from overseas and that Taliban commanders were angry at what they felt was a failed operation because of poor co-ordination.

Though attention has focused on the south of Afghanistan, there has been violence throughout the east too. Last week suspected Taliban militants launched near-simultaneous assaults in Gardez, about 50 miles northwest of Khost, and in the eastern city of Jalalabad, which had been calm.

Western strategy in Afghanistan is based on clearing terrain then handing control to local forces so they can eventually leave. Afghan defence officials said that they expected violence to become worse over the summer.

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Zuma plea as protests hit townships

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

South Africa’s president calls for an end to the anti-poverty violence as he admits that he needs time to end corruption and improve services

After two weeks of vandalism and running battles between township residents and police, President Jacob Zuma asked South Africans yesterday to desist from violence and give him more time to improve their living conditions.

Speaking at a township stadium rally on his home turf in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma acknowledged that the government had fallen short in the past 15 years. He told the audience: “The troubles we are seeing in our townships prove to us that there is much work to do and much to repair. But there must not be violence between us. Let us work together!”

The response to his speech was muted, and the African National Congress organisers seemed disappointed at the turn-out of about 3,000 people. They admitted that the 67-year-old president, after an early-morning visit to workers at a World Cup building site in Durban, had delayed his arrival to allow more time for the stadium to fill up.

Nozipho Mbambo, 24, was attending the siyabonga (“thank you”) rally in the hopes of seeing Zuma – affectionately known as Msholozi, meaning dance. It is nearly 100 days since Zuma swept to power on a platform of hip-wriggling and promises that he, at last, would be a people’s president. “I don’t have much to thank Msholozi for,” she said, adding that things would be different if someone had plumbed in the breeze-block toilet that was built for her street five years ago.

In the past week, scenes reminiscent of the apartheid era have returned to the townships – clouds of acrid black smoke rising from burning tyres, police turning on residents with rubber bullets, sirens wailing and – most symbolic – official buildings and vehicles being set on fire.

Commentators say South Africa is sitting on a social time bomb. Government damage-limitation efforts so far seem focused on preventing an explosion before next year’s World Cup rather than on improving delivery of services.

Sitting on the grass, Mbambo, who in common with nearly two thirds of the population voted ANC on 22 April, said the government was out of touch. “We vote ANC because you must. They are like the royal family. Zuma is a Zulu, so there was no question for me. But that does not mean I am happy,” explained the single mother who lives with her parents. “First, I would like a job.”

Semi-rural Hammarsdale has few shacks and widespread electricity coverage. But Mbambo says residents have to burn their own litter because it is never collected. Transport is scarce and crime is bad. “You have to walk everywhere. It is dangerous, so you can’t go out at night. There are rats that bite the children. Last month armed robbers held up worshippers during a church service.”

She said she understood restive compatriots in squatter camps. Her uncle lives in Diepsloot, near Johannesburg. “He moved there from Alexandra because President Thabo Mbeki was promising him a house. That was eight years ago. He is a man in his 60s and he has to do his business in a bucket. Now the local councillors have told them to move again, to a wasteland near Pretoria, to make way for a new sewerage pipe. I support all those who are rioting now.”

Across South Africa’s 283 municipalities, similar incidents have caused a crescendo of rage in the past month. Protesters have brandished placards saying life was better under white rule. Ethiopians and Pakistanis in Balfour, within the province of Mpumalanga, have taken refuge outside a police station, fearing a repeat of last year’s xenophobic attacks which left 100,000 people homeless and saw 63 killings.

Fifteen years after the first all-race elections, the situation is dire, whichever set of statistics you look at. Hammarsdale has a 33% HIV infection rate and antiretroviral drugs recently ran out. Nationally, figures issued last week by the Institute of Race Relations showed 70% of children live in poverty. The number of black orphans has increased by more than a quarter in five years, pushing the number of households where a child is in charge to nearly 148,000.

This week 150,000 municipal workers will go on strike and petrol pumps may run dry if chemical industry workers also go ahead with planned industrial action. The disputes do not have astronomical demands. The recent construction industry strike – which halted World Cup projects for a week – centred on a modest pay increase for 50,000 workers, from 14 rands (£1) per hour to 15.68 rands. It was finally awarded by an industry in full boom. The chairmen of the five construction companies building stadiums have claimed share options this year worth millions of rands and their chief executives’ salaries average 7m rands (£530,000).

The South African wealth gap is deepening. Even as squatter camp residents were rioting, the new communications and education ministers were out buying cars. Insensitively, their spokesmen said they were “obeying the rules” by purchasing three BMWs and a Range Rover for a total of 4.1m rands (£310,000).

The government’s clumsy handling of the present crisis adds to the bitterness. After, in effect, ignoring last year’s xenophobic violence, this time the ANC has deployed the hitherto unknown minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, to deal with the issue. But he is firing in all the wrong directions, suggesting it is normal for people to take to the streets because “we are legitimate government and their protests mean they understand this”. He told a radio station that people with complaints should ring Zuma’s new “presidential hotline”, but inquiries by the Observer revealed the people will have to wait until September, when it comes into service.

Shiceka has said demonstrators who have gone on looting sprees are “opportunists using their bad living conditions to take advantage of a situation”. Defending the country’s image, he said: “The international community must not have any fears. Before the World Cup in France in 1998 there was a big strike and everything came to standstill. But no one saw that as a problem for the World Cup.” The government acknowledges that the 2.6 million homes it has built since 1994 are still 2.1 million short of its target. Shiceka admits that local authorities are chaotically run, but blames the councillors’ lack of experience.

Ordinary South Africans – and the estimated one million shack-dwellers in the country – are very clear: service delivery failures are the result of ANC nepotism, comrades being assigned to positions for which they are not qualified. In some regions, the escalator to the middle class runs solely through local government jobs and tenders. Analyst Aubrey Matshiqi says this explains why service delivery protests take place outside election time: “There was a lull during the election campaign period because some of the protest leaders hoped to be on ANC election lists or had already succeeded in their quest to be on them.”

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Harry Patch, Britain’s last surviving soldier of the Great War, dies at 111

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

It was only when he turned 100 that the veteran of Ypres began to speak about the horrors he had seen

It was just 11 years ago, when he turned 100, that Harry Patch first began to talk about his experiences fighting in the first world war.

It was a week ago that he became the last surviving soldier in the country who had seen at first hand the horror of the trenches.

Yesterday, Harry Patch died peacefully in his bed at his residential home in Wells, Somerset, a man who spent his last years urging his friends and many admirers never to forget the 9.7 million young men who perished during the 1914-18 war.

Last night, it was announced that a special commemoration service for the entire generation of British soldiers who died in the first world war will be held at Westminster Abbey, attended by the Queen and military and political dignitaries.

“War isn’t worth one life,” Patch, nicknamed “the last fighting Tommy”, would say. So traumatised was he by his experiences at the 1917 battle of Passchendaele – which claimed the lives of 70,000 men – that each year Patch locked himself away in a private vigil for his fallen friends.

It was seven days ago that Henry Allingham, 113, Britain’s oldest man and a fellow veteran of the trenches, died; with both men has gone Britain’s last living link to one of the most traumatic events in modern history. The prime minister said it was the passing of the “noblest of all the generations”.

“I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family’s grief at the passing of a great man. The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten,” said Gordon Brown. “We say today with still greater force, ‘We will remember them’.”

Harry Patch was born on 17 June 1898 in Combe Down, near Bath in Somerset. He left school at 15 to learn his trade as a plumber. He turned 18 just as conscription was brought in and, after six months’ training, he was on the frontline with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. He was in the trenches at Ypres between June and September 1917, where he and his gang of five machine gunners made a pact not to kill an enemy soldier if they could help it: they would aim for the legs.

In September 1917, a shell exploded above Patch’s head, killing three of his comrades; he was hit by shrapnel in the lower abdomen, but survived. Every year since then Harry would remember that day.

“He would just lock himself away and remember his friends,” said author Max Arthur, whose 2005 book Last Post documented the words from the last 21 survivors of the war. “Last week, there was just one; now there is no one alive who has seen what Harry saw in the trenches. Harry said it was just the most depressing place on earth, hell with a lid on,” he said.

Arthur said the horrors of Passchendaele stayed with Patch throughout his life. Patch exhibited the signs of post-traumatic stress and even opening a fridge and being confronted by its interior light sometimes became a “traumatic experience, the light resembling an explosion”.

After the war, Patch returned to his trade as a plumber and married Ada, whom he had met while convalescing. They were married in 1919 and had two children, Dennis and Roy. His wife died in 1976 and his sons have also since died. Too old to fight in 1939, Patch became a maintenance manager at a US army camp and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service. He retired in 1963 and in 1980 married again, to Jean, only to be widowed a second time five years ago. His third partner, Doris, who lived in the same retirement home, died last year.

It was only on his 100th birthday that Patch came into the spotlight, when for the first time he allowed reporters to visit his care home. His autobiography, The Last Fighting Tommy, written with Richard van Emden, was published in 2007. “He was the last of that generation and the poignancy of that is almost overwhelming,” said van Emden yesterday. “He remembered all of those who died and suffered, and every time he was honoured he knew it was for all of those who fought.”

He said that his conversations with Patch were “a real education”. “He had a sparkle about him, a dry sense of humour. He was one of the most rewarding people to be with.”

As well as launching poppy appeals for the British Legion, Patch became an agony uncle columnist for men’s magazine FHM and he even had a cider named after him.

In 1999, he received the Légion d’honneur medal awarded by the French to 350 surviving veterans of the Western Front, dedicating it to his three fallen friends. He revisited the Ypres battlefield and British and German war cemeteries, placing a wreath on a German grave. Patch fervently believed war was “organised murder”. “It was not worth it,” he said. “It was not worth one, let alone all the millions.”

Prince Charles was among those to pay tribute yesterday. “Harry always cherished the extraordinary camaraderie that the appalling conditions engendered in the battalion and remained loyal to the end.”

Yesterday, the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said he spoke on behalf of all ranks of the army in expressing sadness at the news.

“He was the last of a generation that in youth was steadfast in its duty in the face of cruel sacrifice and we give thanks for his life – as well as those of his comrades – for upholding the same values and freedom that we continue to cherish and fight for today.”

The funeral is in Wells Cathedral.

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African lake gas poses threat to millions

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

Trapped methane and carbon dioxide could be set loose by a quake or landslide, say scientists

More than two million people living on the banks of Lake Kivu in central Africa are at risk of being asphyxiated by gases building up beneath its surface, scientists have warned.

It is estimated that the lake, which straddles the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, now contains 300 cubic kilometres of carbon dioxide and 60 cubic kilometres of methane that have bubbled into the Kivu from volcanic vents. The gases are trapped in layers 80 metres below the lake’s surface by the intense water pressures there. However, researchers have warned that geological or volcanic events could disturb these waters and release the gases.

The impact would be devastating, as was demonstrated on 21 August 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, in West Africa. Its waters were saturated with carbon dioxide and a major disturbance – most probably a landslide – caused a huge cloud of carbon dioxide to bubble up from its depths and to pour down the valleys that lead from the crater lake.

Carbon dioxide is denser than air, so that the 50mph cloud hugged the ground and smothered everything in its path. Some 1,700 people were suffocated.

“The lake was essentially like a bottle of beer that had been shaken up,” said Professor George Kling, of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Michigan University. “When you opened it, carbon dioxide bubbled up, and the beer frothed over. A glassful is OK. A lakeful is deadly.”

Kling has since turned his attention to Lake Kivu, which is more than 3,000 times the size of Nyos and contains more than 350 times as much gas. More worrying is the fact that the shores of Kivu are much more heavily populated. About two million people live there, including the 250,000 citizens of the city of Goma.

Mount Nyiragongo, near Goma, erupted in 2002 and lava streamed from it into Lake Kivu for several days. On this occasion there was no disturbance of the lake’s deep layers of gas and no deadly outpouring of carbon dioxide or methane. However, Kling has warned – in the journal Nature this month – that in the event of another eruption the region may not be so lucky again.

Indeed, the impact would dwarf the disaster that struck Nyos. “Kivu is basically the nasty big brother of Nyos,” Kling told Nature.

The source of Kivu’s problems stems from carbon dioxide that has bubbled up through the lake bed from molten rocks below. The region – in Africa’s Great Rift Valley – is a centre of volcanic activity. In addition, some of this carbon dioxide has been converted by bacteria in the lake into methane. Hence the accumulation of both gases.

According to studies by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, there was a 10% rise in carbon dioxide concentration, and a 15-20% increase in methane concentration in Kivu between 1974 and 2004. At the same time, plankton fossils on the lake’s bed have revealed several massive bouts of biological extinctions in Kivu over thousands of years. However, it is impossible to say if a new one is imminent, researchers told Nature.

At the same time, engineers are trying to tap Kivu’s rich supplies of methane – by lowering pipes from floating platforms down to its holding layers and siphoning off the gas. This could then be burnt and used as a source of industrial and domestic energy.

Several projects have been established, though only one is currently generating electricity – albeit sporadically – for the Rwandan grid. Another platform sank last year shortly before it was scheduled to begin production.

Tapping Kivu’s methane could, theoretically, reduce the risk of a deadly eruption, say engineers. However, scientists have also warned that tampering with the lake’s gases also carries a risk of triggering a disaster.

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Secrets of CIA ‘ghost flights’ to be revealed

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

Guantánamo detainee’s lawyers hail UK air firm’s U-turn that allows rendition case to go to court

Confidential documents showing the flight plans of a CIA “ghost plane” allegedly used to transfer a British resident to secret interrogation sites around the world are to be made public. The move comes after a Sussex-based company accused of involvement in extraordinary rendition dropped its opposition to a case against it being heard in court.

Lawyers bringing the case against Jeppesen UK on behalf of the former Guantánamo Bay detainee, Binyam Mohamed, claimed last night the climbdown had wide-ranging legal implications that could help expose which countries and governments knew the CIA was using their air bases to spirit terrorist suspects around the world.

Jeppesen UK, a division of the Jeppesen Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boeing, is alleged to have provided a range of services that allowed planes owned by shell companies operating on behalf of the CIA to fly suspected terrorists to “black sites” .

Jeppesen is alleged to have provided flight planning services, secured permits for travel, arranged fuel provision and filed flight plans for the clients in the knowledge that the planes were being used for extraordinary rendition.

“Jeppesen’s embarrassing U-turn vindicates our fight to expose corporate collusion in torture,” said Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, which has led the campaign on behalf of Mohamed. “Binyam Mohamed, and perhaps many others, are one step nearer to making the directors of companies stop and think before they commit criminal acts for profit.”

According to an affidavit signed by a former employee, Jeppesen’s managing director, Bob Overby, told his staff that “we do all the extraordinary rendition flights”. Sean Belcher, a former technical writer for the company, said Overby claimed that the CIA “spared no expense” when it came to paying for Jeppesen’s services.

Jeppesen contends there is “no basis” to the claims against it. But after Mohamed’s London lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, presented a large volume of evidence – running to 419 pages – which they claim proves the company’s involvement in the rendition process, the British arm of the firm withdrew its attempt to have the case struck out.

In a letter to Mohamed’s lawyers, Jeppesen’s legal representatives, Allen & Overy, state: “Our client… has undertaken an extensive review of information in order to address and rebut your client’s evidence. During the course of this exercise it has become apparent that due to the scope and diffuse nature of the evidence… there is a real risk that the hearing of our client’s application will descend into a ‘mini-trial’… In these circumstances, we consider that the most appropriate and proportionate course is for our client to withdraw its application and for the claim to proceed to trial in the normal way.”

A separate case is being pursued against Jeppesen in the US by the American Civil Liberties Union and Reprieve. The US government is seeking to have the case against Jeppesen dismissed, saying it would breach national security. But Jeppesen UK’s decision to drop its opposition to fighting the case in a British court means a wealth of confidential information relating to the alleged rendition process will become public.

“We want to know whether Jeppesen UK participated in Binyam’s rendition which led to his torture,” said his barrister, Daniel Leader. “It is right they should now disclose all the relevant evidence so we can get to the truth.”

Mohamed, an Ethiopian who lived in Britain, was arrested in 2002 in Pakistan and handed to the US. He alleges that before his transfer to Guantánamo Bay he was held in prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, beyond the reach of law. While in Morocco, he alleges that interrogators tortured him by using blades to cut his penis and chest.

Reprieve’s renditions investigator, Clara Gutteridge, said the CIA could not have acted alone and the case would raise questions over which governments were complicit in extraordinary rendition.

Jeppesen did not return calls.

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Minister: swine flu panic is danger to NHS

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

• ‘Pandemic’ of fear is worsening crisis
• Worried well will swamp GP surgeries

Ministers moved to quell swine flu hysteria last night, as concerns grew that the National Health Service might be overwhelmed by hordes of “unnecessarily anxious” people who could make a full recovery at home.

Amid rising government worry about how NHS staff will cope as the virus spreads, health secretary Andy Burnham warned that panic itself could push services to breaking point. Health Department officials said there was a danger of a “panic pandemic” that could hinder the treatment of more serious cases.

Calling for calm, Burnham said that although swine flu presented a huge challenge for the country, it was not a life-threatening condition for the vast majority of people.

He told the Observer that it was vital not to over-react and claimed the government had the situation under control. “It is very important for everybody to keep a sense of perspective,” he said. “It has been a mild virus in the vast majority of cases, with relatively mild symptoms from which people recover fully fairly quickly.

“If people are made unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already under enormous pressure, far more difficult as people become unduly worried.”

He added: “People should be assured that we have been planning our response to a pandemic for a long time.”

Health officials are also concerned at rising levels of fear among parents who know that children are particularly susceptible to the H1N1 virus.

Doctors last night tried to reassure families that the vast majority of young people would get better without a visit to their GP’s surgery or a hospital.

Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. said: “Health services struggle when they are overwhelmed by people who don’t need to be there.

“Our first message to parents of young children is to keep this in perspective and keep calm. There are 11 million children in England and 256 of them are in hospital [with swine flu]. For the four families where children have died, it is an absolute tragedy, but if you are talking about a previously healthy child where swine flu has led to their death, there have been none.”

Last Thursday, the Health Protection Agency said that GP consultation rates had risen sharply in the past week, with children under 14 the worst affected group. The over-65s continued to show a much slower rate. The HPA estimated that there had been 100,000 cases in England in the past week. Overall, 26 people have died.

A Department of Health spokesman said that last week’s launch of a helpline for sufferers had already eased pressure on surgeries. Figures released last night showed that the service enabled 5,500 people to receive antivirals on its first day of operation. Some 58,000 people used the service, 89% of whom used the self-assessment scheme on the internet.

Burnham said: “People in need of antivirals are able to get them quickly and conveniently using the new service, and it is freeing up GPs to look after patients in risk groups as well as those with other illnesses.”

He made it clear that he was angry with Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, for criticising his decision to delay the setting up of the helpline. Lansley described it as “too little, too late”. Burnham said the comment was “unhelpful” and insisted that doctors had urged him to hold back from setting up the line until H1N1 had spread more widely.

Burnham also pointed out that, over the past 12 years, there had been around 8,000 flu deaths a year in England and Wales.

Meanwhile, ministers – afraid of stoking more “crisis” headlines – refused to be drawn on whether Parliament would have to be recalled if the number of cases continued to escalate at the same rate, or on whether the country had sufficient intensive care beds.

Although Stephenson moved to reassure parents, he said contingency plans were in place. These included plans to move children into intensive care beds meant for adults. The NHS has 300 intensive care beds for children and 3,000 for adults.

He also said that hospitals could increase recruitment, while cancelling planned admissions.

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said that too many people who were not unwell were turning up at surgeries: “There’s too much preoccupation with the threat of death. The numbers of people getting influenza are still tiny. The reality is, that for most people it’s a basically mild illness, and we are losing sight of that.”

Field argued that it was crucial for there to be no unnecessary pressure on GPs or hospitals, partly because they needed to prepare for later in the year. “This is almost like the phoney war at the moment,” he said. “The big danger and real threat is that there will be a big spike in the numbers of people with influenza in the autumn.

“People should regard the phase we’re in now as a practice for far more people having it over a sustained period of a few weeks in the autumn. If that happens, we will have learned valuable lessons from what we’re doing now.”

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This is how we let it happen, Ma’am …

July 25th, 2009 | No Comments

A group of eminent economists has written to the Queen explaining why no one foresaw the timing, extent and severity of the recession.

The three-page missive, which blames “a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people”, was sent after the Queen asked, during a visit to the London School of Economics, why no one had predicted the credit crunch.

Signed by LSE professor Tim Besley, a member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, and the eminent historian of government Peter Hennessy, the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Observer, tells of the “psychology of denial” that gripped the financial and political world in the run-up to the crisis.

The content was discussed at a seminar at the British Academy in June that was attended by economic heavyweights including Treasury permanent secretary Nick MacPherson, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill and Observer economics columnist William Keegan. The letter explains that as low interest rates made borrowing cheap, the “feelgood factor” masked how out-of-kilter the world economy had become beneath the surface, with some countries, such as the United States, running up enormous debts by borrowing from others, including China and the oil-rich Middle Eastern states, that were sitting on vast piles of cash.

Despite these yawning imbalances, they say, “financial wizards” managed to convince themselves and the world’s politicians that they had found clever ways to spread risk throughout financial markets – whereas “it is difficult to recall a greater example of wishful thinking combined with hubris”.

“Everyone seemed to be doing their own job properly on its own merit. And according to standard measures of success, they were often doing it well,” they say. “The failure was to see how collectively this added up to a series of interconnected imbalances over which no single authority had jurisdiction.”

That meant when the reckoning came it was extreme, starting in summer 2007 and culminating in the near-collapse of the entire world financial system after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers last autumn.

“In summary, Your Majesty,” they conclude, “the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”

Besley stressed that the experts had not been in “finger-wagging mode” and had agreed that the causes of the credit crunch were extremely complex. “There was a very complicated, interconnected set of issues, rather than one particular person or one particular institution.”

Other experts at the seminar last month included Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, Vernon Bogdanor, the constitutional expert from Oxford University, and HSBC’s chief economist, Stephen King.

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said the Queen has displayed a particular interest in the causes of the recession, summoning Bank of England governor Mervyn King to a private audience earlier this year to explain what he was doing to tackle it.

Official figures published on Friday revealed that Britain’s economy has now been contracting for 15 months, and the recession is deeper than any since the 1930s, outside of wartime.

Robin Jackson, chief executive and secretary of the British Academy, said: “The global recession is a huge development, and it is reasonable to ask to what extent it could have been foreseen. What’s more, we can’t say ‘never again’ if we don’t fully understand what occurred. The academy forum was an opportunity to get an exceptional range of experts, participants and commentators in one room, sifting fact from fiction and shedding light on what had gone on. We hope Her Majesty – and indeed others – will find our letter informative.”

The academy plans to hold a second seminar later in the year to ask how best to prevent another such crisis occurring. Besley denied that economics as a profession had been discredited by the scale of the crisis, but admitted that unconventional ideas – about how herd psychology and bouts of irrationality can grip financial markets, for example – had sometimes received “less play” during the boom years.

He said the academy hopes to provide a forum for airing economic differences: “What we need is a forum where people can come together on a very open basis, to provide challenges and have a debate.”

Professor Luis Garicano, to whom the Queen directed her question when she visited the LSE in November last year, said: “She seemed very interested, and she asked me: ‘How come nobody could foresee it?’ I think the main answer is that people were doing what they were paid to do, and behaved according to their incentives, but in many cases they were being paid to do the wrong things from society’s perspective.”

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