|
|
|
Noticias del Reino Unido
|
The Guardian World News Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:24:20 GMT |
|
Endgame in Afghanistan: 'It's taken a year to move 20km. It's steady progress'
Sean Smith's brutal film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of war's stalemate. Warning: contains distressing images
Gove under fire over academies claim
Only 153 schools apply to become academies – despite education secretary's claims that more than 1,000 had done so Michael Gove, the education secretary, faced renewed attacks today when it emerged that only 153 schools had applied to become academies – despite his claims that more than 1,000 had done so. Gove had said that the scale of demand from schools to escape town hall control required the government to rush legislation through parliament before this week's summer recess. It now seems likely that no new academies will be formed in time for the autumn term as a result of the scheme. The shadow education secretary, Ed Balls, accused Gove of "railroading" the legislation through parliament, and demanded that he explain why he "misleadingly claimed that more than 1,000 schools had applied". Balls, a contender for the Labour leadership, added: "It seems to me that the real reason for the rush was to avoid proper scrutiny for a deeply flawed piece of legislation." Gove is already under attack from MPs, teachers and councils for a bungled announcement over whether hundreds of schools' plans for new buildings would go ahead. He was forced to apologise in the Commons earlier this month after his office ignored advice to check an error-strewn list of cancelled building projects before it was published. The list suggested that many school building programmes would go ahead that had in fact been cancelled. In relation to the academies, the department issued a press release on 2 June quoting Gove as saying: "The response has been overwhelming. In just one week, over 1,100 schools have applied." He added: "Of these, 626 are outstanding schools, including over 250 primary schools, nearly 300 secondary schools (over half of all the outstanding secondary schools in the country) and over 50 special schools." Outstanding schools are to be fast-tracked to academy status. A fortnight ago, the Department for Education revealed a second list of 1,907 primary, secondary and special schools that had registered an interest in turning into academies. Gove has written to every school inviting them to apply. The new, far lower, number of schools that have applied may largely stem from the fact that Gove misdescribed expressions of general interest in the scheme as an actual application. The lower-than-expected demand also questions why he needed to use emergency parliamentary procedures to rush through legislation this week. The academies bill, which became law on Tuesday, allows hundreds more schools to opt out of local authority control and turn into academies. The bill was pushed through the Commons in less than three days. Balls said the emergency procedures were unnecessary given that only 153 schools had applied. He said Gove "railroaded" the bill through "because he said hundreds of schools wanted to become academies ... and many wanted to open [as such] in September. Now barely 10% of that number have even applied for academy status and none of them will convert in September." It may be too early to say whether the level of demand to become academy schools is truly much lower than Gove had envisaged, but it would be a serious blow to the government's whole public service reform programme if it emerges that his revolution does not have the support in schools that he claimed. Supporters of the scheme argue that school governing bodies are going to need time to weigh up the advantages of academy status, as well as see how some of the new schools perform. But the preliminary figures suggest that Gove's reforms have not sparked an instant nationwide revolution. During the parliamentary passage of his legislation, Gove agreed to allow greater local consultation than planned before a school could take academy status. The list of 153 schools includes about 45 primary schools, at least 12 faith schools and more than 20 grammar schools. Gove has said he hopes – and expects – that academies will be the norm among secondary schools by the end of a first term in government. He told the Today programme earlier this month that "hundreds of schools are anxious to take advantage of these proposals". Teachers' leaders condemned the government tonight for acting too hastily over academies. "Our education system is too important to be subject to acting in haste, but repenting at leisure," said Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. "We remain concerned that many of the schools which have applied won't have carried out any form of consultation. Democracy will not be well served if children, parents and staff first learn of their school's plans to become an academy from the media." She added that it would be "interesting to see if the list of schools applying to become an academy is as accurate, or not" as the error-ridden list that informed schools whether their building projects were to be scrapped. Academies, unlike other state schools, have total freedom over their budgets, the curriculum and the length of the school day and term. They can also decide teachers' pay. Their expansion is thought to be the biggest change to school structures since grammar and secondary moderns were encouraged to become comprehensives in the 1960s. Under Labour, only failing schools were turned into academies. But the new government has said that schools rated outstanding will be allowed to quickly switch to academy status and have their applications pre-approved.
Al-Qaida 'planned attack on Kabul'
Details of plot emerge in file among US military intelligence documents published by WikiLeaks website It may be one of the more audacious terrorist plots to be hatched in Afghanistan, but it was certainly not the most original. The same al-Qaida masterminds behind 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington planned to commit a similar attack in the capital of the country that once harboured them, according to a file among US military intelligence documents published this week by the WikiLeaks website. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second in command, is said to have given the order for a team of 22 to board one or more planes at Kabul airport, hijack the aircraft and steer them toward a number of "important objectives". The targets were to include Hamid Karzai's presidential palace, Nato headquarters, the British and US embassies and the Ariana hotel – the whole which the CIA rented and used as its station in Kabul. The details of the plot have emerged as the leak of secret intelligence continues to create controversy in Kabul and Washington owing to the large number of references alleging that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. Karzai today told reporters that Islamabad was the source of the conflict in his country, and called on his western allies to "destroy" the Taliban's sanctuaries inside Pakistan. It was a striking return to the sort of anti-Pakistani rhetoric that he, who has sought better relations with Islamabad, has refrained from for many months. Karzai also criticised the publication of files naming Afghan informers as "extremely irresponsible and shocking", echoing widespread fears that their lives are now at risk from Taliban reprisals. Several logs published by Wikileaks have been found to contain information about local intelligence sources including names, locations and even grid references. The three news organisations which published reports based on the Afghan war logs this week, the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, took care not to publish any material that would identify informers or otherwise put troops at risk. The report on the alleged hijack plot, recorded by intelligence officers on 23 March 2009, highlights the mixed quality of western intelligence, particularly the large number of "threat reports" fed to coalition forces each day – there are almost 2,500 for Kabul alone in the five-year period covered by the logs. On the one hand the airline plot report is detailed, naming a number of conspirators, including Afghan or Pakistani generals and a pilot from the Afghan national carrier, who were allegedly involved in providing the hijackers fake IDs and "facilitating anti-coalition training". Whereas the 9/11 hijackers went to flight schools in Arizona and Florida, the Kabul plotters were due to receive flying lessons at a "private air club in Karachi". Apparently their ideological indoctrination had already begun as they attended a madrasa in Khukitan, in Pakistan's Swat valley. All 22 were al-Qaida members and included Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and Uzbeks with fake Afghan IDs, the report claims. At an unspecified date they would enter Afghanistan and try to obtain Russian, Chinese and Iranian visas to allow them to fly to those countries. "During the flight they will hijack the plane and conduct attacks in Kabul," said the report. Although it is categorised as a "C3", meaning the source is regarded as "fairly reliable" and the information is "possibly true", the report is imprecise, both referring to a single plane being hijacked and to a number of different "attacks" against various targets. Iran's Fars news agency reported that an attempted hijack of an Ariana aircraft by a loan hijacker was foiled in May. Even if the intelligence report referred to a serious plot it seems very unlikely to have succeeded. A 9/11-style attack would be ruled out by the fact that only a couple of commercial flights take off from Kabul every hour, and there are no direct flights to China or Russia. Kabul airport is also an exceptionally difficult place from which to hijack planes, with some of the most stringent security procedures in the world. It is normal for passengers to have their bags searched twice and to be frisked four times, with varying degrees of effectiveness, before they reach check-in – there's another frisk and bag check before getting onto the plane.
French mother admits infanticide
Dominique Cottrez charged with multiple infanticide but husband is released over discovery of bodies in plastic bags A French nursing assistant and mother of two has confessed to killing eight of her newborn babies, placing their bodies in hermetically sealed plastic bags and hiding them from her family over a 17-year period. Investigators into what appears to be France's biggest infanticide case said Dominique Cottrez, from the north-eastern village of Villers-au-Tertre, had admitted deliberately suffocating the infants immediately after giving birth to them on her own. She was charged today with murder. The 46-year-old faces life in prison for the killings, which are understood to have taken place between 1989 and 2006. According to Eric Vaillant, prosecutor of the nearby city of Douai, Cottrez confessed "quickly" during questioning after the new owners of her late parents' home stumbled across the bones of two infants while digging in the garden on Saturday. She had, he said, then directed investigators to the remaining six corpses, found in the garage of the house she shared with her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez. He was today freed as an "assisted witness" in the case despite efforts to have him charged for concealment of bodies and failing to report a crime. Throughout her testimony to police, his wife maintained he was unaware not only of the killings but also of the pregnancies. "Mrs Cottrez told investigators he had known neither that his wife was pregnant nor that she had got rid of them directly afterwards," said Vaillant. Dominique Cottrez appeared to have been fully conscious of what she was doing. According to her initial statement to police, "she was perfectly aware of all her pregnancies", said Vaillant. If the psychological tests support this, it would seem unlikely that she had pregnancy denial, a condition in which the sufferer is unable to process the fact that she is expecting. Experts will now endeavour to determine her "degree of responsibility" for the killings, said Vaillant. The findings in the two houses located about a mile apart have bestowed upon Villers-au-Tertre a sudden and unwanted notoriety. Before, residents joked that they lived in "a village of the dead" where little noteworthy ever happened. Now local people are asking how could no one have noticed Cottrez's frequent pregnancies? And if they did know, why did keep their observations to themselves? Above all, if it is proved that Cottrez did what she says she did, then why? Those who are keen for answers are her daughters Virginie and Emeline Cottrez, who tonight broke their silence, defending their mother and insisting they had no idea about the suspected infanticides. "We never noticed a thing. Yes, she had moments of tiredness but between her work as a nursing assistant and the housework she worked almost 24 hours a day," the women, 21 and 22 respectively, told the French newspapers La Voix du Nord. "She never judged us; she accompanied us, supported us," they added, recounting how their mother had been at Emeline Cottrez's bedside when her first grandson was born. "It was she who held him, dressed him … We both had tears in our eyes," said the eldest daughter. Their mother had told police that previous traumatic childbirth experiences had put her off having any more children but that she "did not want to see a doctor to get contraception", said Vaillant. As for why nobody else noticed the pregnancies, Patrick Mercier, the local mayor, said that although Cottrez had always been "pleasant" she was "rather introverted and was seen out a lot less than [her husband] in the community". Her figure was also a factor, said police, claiming that it was easier for someone "of a heavy build" to hide a swollen belly than a slighter person. But officers nonetheless expressed bewilderment that Cottrez's daughters, to whom, said locals, she has been "a very good mother", her husband and her employers, a Douai-based home help agency, had noticed anything. "I am just overwhelmed and I'm finding it impossible to understand," said a villager, who did not want to be named, adding: "Pierre-Marie … is a mate of mine. We used to have a drink, talk about work … He is very generous. He wears his heart on his sleeve." Since Thursday, when news of the bodies sparked a media invasion from all corners of Europe, a spirit of solidarity has descended on the community. A belated Bastille Day celebration which had been planned for Saturday has been called off. "We will not celebrate without our friends," said Mercier. But it could be a long time before Cottrez comes home. A police spokesman said investigators were not expecting to find any more bodies. "But there is still a lot of work to do," he added.
Oil industry safety record blown open
National Wildlife Federation says catalogue of oil industry accidents proves BP disaster in Gulf of Mexico is not a one-off The oil industry has been responsible for thousands of fires, explosions, and leaks over the last decade, killing dozens of people and destroying wildlife and the environment across America, according to a report published today. None of the individual incidents catalogued by the National Wildlife Federation comes close in scale to BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in America's history. But the thousands of lesser offshore spills, pipeline leaks, refinery fires and other accidents demolish the industry argument that BP's ruptured well was a one-off, and that the oil and gas business has grown safer, the report's authors said. "These disasters make it clear that the BP disaster isn't a rare accident," said Tim Warman, who directs the global warming programme for NWF, which calls itself the country's largest conservation organisation. "These are daily occurrences. These are daily incidents of not paying attention." In a further grim reminder, the American midwest was in the throes of its own environmental disaster today, with a ruptured pipeline gushing gallons of oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River. Enbridge Energy, which is Canadian-owned but based in Houston, said the spill may have reached 1m gallons. Federal government officials in Washington and the state of Michigan were struggling to stop the oil from reaching the Great Lakes. In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, while BP's oil well remains capped, a tugboat crashed into an abandoned well this week and set off a 100ft gusher of oil and gas. The coastguard commander, Thad Allen, told reporters today that operations were switching from response to recovery, suggesting that equipment and personnel in the Gulf could be drastically scaled back in four to six weeks. "If you need fewer skimming vessels out there, there is going to be a levelling you need to consider," he said. The report from the National Wildlife Federation drew on records from the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with a figure of 1,440 offshore leaks, blowouts, and other accidents were reported between 2001-2007. In addition to environmental damage, these caused 41 deaths and 302 injuries. The safety record for onshore activities was even more dismal. Some 2,554 pipeline accidents occurred between 2001 and 2007, killing 161 people and injuring 576. "Oil and gas is being produced in 34 states across the country and it is just not being regulated to the extent it needs to be," said Lauren Pagel of Earthworks, which monitors extractive industries. At times, the accidents occurred far from industrial installations such as offshore drilling rigs or refineries. In one particularly gruesome incident from August 2000, three families with young children on a camping trip in New Mexico were consumed by a 500ft fireball from a ruptured pipeline. All 12 people were killed, and an official investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board later blamed the pipeline company for failing to detect or repair severely corroded pipes. Four years later, a tanker truck lost control and crossed guard rails outside Washington DC, igniting 8,000 gallons of burning petrol on one of the country's busiest highways. "There was fire everywhere," the report quotes highway officials as saying. Four people were killed. Among the causes for the poor safety record was the industry's relentless costcutting, despite record profits, said the report's authors, describing equipment failures, tank corrosion, and other signs of poor maintenance. The poor safety and environmental records were not restricted to the so-called Big Oil companies. Enbridge Energy has had 400 separate spills between 2003 and 2008, spewing 1.3m gallons of crude into the environment, according to official records.
Minority Report-style law for Russia
Legislation will give security services powers to arrest people for crimes they have yet to commit Russian citizens can be issued official warnings about crimes that they have not yet committed under powers granted to the security services today. President Dmitry Medvedev signed off on a new law giving the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, the right to caution people suspected of preparing acts of extremism, or to jail them for obstructing the agency's work. The powers appear similar to those enjoyed by Precrime, the police unit in the 2002 Hollywood film Minority Report. "This is a draconian law reminiscent of our repressive past," said Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement. Rights activists had hoped Medvedev would rein in the security services, after his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, stuffed his administration with hawkish veterans. The Kremlin's tough stance comes against the backdrop of a disparate but emergent civil movement protesting against corruption and authoritarian government. Under the new provisions, the FSB will be able to echo Soviet practices. The punishment for ignoring a warning was unclear, but 15-day jail sentences are envisaged for "obstructing an FSB officer's duties". Sergei Ivanenko, a leader of the Yabloko party, called it "the law of a police state". He said: "If such a law exists in a democratic country then it is limited by a very powerful system of civil, public and parliamentary control. In our conditions it will mean absolute power for the security services." Rights activists, who fear the measures could be used to stifle civil disobedience, had expressed optimism that Medvedev might step in to quash the legislation. There have been signs of democratisation under Medvedev, while Putin, whom he replaced two years ago, has continued to promote a hardline image from his post as prime minister. But during a meeting with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fortnight ago, Medvedev said: "Each country has the right to perfect its own legislation, including that which affects its special services." He added: "What's going on now – I would like you to know this – was done according to my own direct instructions." Russia's police and security services have looked increasingly clumsy as they try to deal with inventive grassroots activists or single-issue protest groups. One group wears blue buckets on their heads in mimicry of the flashing blue lights on the cars of bureaucrats who terrorise the roads: police arrested several activists but had to let them go because they had committed no crime. Another organisation has been attacked while trying to stop destruction of a protected forest near Moscow. "Medvedev may smile more than Putin but the face of power hasn't changed," said Eduard Limonov, an opposition politician who plans to run for president in 2012. "The Kremlin is still terrified there will be an Orange Revolution in Russia if people are allowed to gather on the streets." This Saturday will be the first anniversary of protests started by Limonov and a coalition of activists known as Strategy 31. They meet in Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow at 6pm every 31st of the month to demonstrate in favour of Article 31 of the constitution: the right to free assembly. Despite each rally being broken up by riot police, the protests have grown steadily, attracting more than 500 people in May. About 180 of them were arrested. "Instead of thinking of new ways to suppress us, the authorities should listen to our concerns," said Limonov. Yet democracy activists are often demonised as traitors or extremists in the state-dominated media. This week at its summer camp the Kremlin-backed Nashi youth movement put up a photograph of 83-year-old Lyudmila Alekseyeva, one of the organisers of Strategy 31, on a dummy wearing Nazi insignia. On Saturday she will go to Triumfalnaya. The protest movement, she said, "will only grow in the face of repression."
Arlington graves scandal enrages US
• Thousands visiting wrong headstones in Virginia
• Senator in charge attacked for lack of explanation The families of thousands of dead American soldiers may have been mourning at the wrong graves for years, it was revealed yesterday, as more than 6,000 headstones at Arlington cemetery may have been mixed up. There was outrage among families, the American Legion and others last month when the number of graves that had been misnamed was thought to be 211. The higher figure was revealed yesterday at a Senate investigation into how there could be so much confusion over the headstones at the US national military cemetery. Senator Claire McCaskill, who is heading the Senate committee conducting the inquiry, said: "We now know that the problems with graves at Arlington may be far more extensive than previously acknowledged. At a conservative estimate, 4,900 to 6,600 graves may be unmarked, improperly marked, or mislabeled on the cemetery's maps." Arlington, just across the river from Washington, is one of the most revered and emotional sites in the US, having been used for members of the military since the civil war. There are an estimated 300,000 graves, including those of John F Kennedy and his two brothers, Robert and Edward. Fresh graves are being dug regularly for the dead from Afghanistan and Iraq. Army investigators found that Arlington has been mismanaged, with remains buried in graves listed as empty and others had headstones but no remains. Others were unmarked or misidentified, or did not appear on cemetery maps. At the Senate hearing, John Metzler, who was superintendent of Arlington for 19 years, said he accepted "full responsibility" for the problems. He said the paperwork relating to the graves was complex and this gave rise to errors. "Personally it is very painful for me that our team at Arlington did not perform all aspects of its mission to the high standard required," he said. Metzler and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, were forced to retire last month after army investigators discovered the initial mix-up over the 211 graves. Metzler cited a 35% cut in staff and the complexity of burying 6,000 people a year at the cemetery. "Those staffing losses were to be offset by increased opportunities for outsourcing to private contractors," Metzler said . "As experience has shown, however, that approach does not always result in the most effective or efficient solution." Senators appeared frustrated and exasperated at times with Metzler's explanations for the mix-ups. He said that problems down the years had been quickly remedied and that though maps used by cemetery employees were mislabelled, this did not mean people were necessarily in the wrong graves. The anger among senators applied across partisan lines. McCaskill, a Democrat, said: "The notion that you would come in here and didn't know about it until a month ago is offensive. You did know about it, and you did nothing." Scott Brown, the Republican who won Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts seat in January, said: "I don't think we're getting straight talk here." Higginbotham answered some questions but invoked his right, under the fifth amendment, not to respond to others. He said: "It was always conceptual that anything done by hand for 40-plus years that there would have to be some errors somewhere." When the original mix-up was first revealed, the secretary of the army, John McHugh, apologised. At the time, the Stars and Stripes military paper quoted families expressing concern. Ami Neiberger-Miller, whose brother Christopher Neiberger is buried in Arlington, told the paper: "I think anyone would be concerned and alarmed. "I appreciate that the army came forward with this information and talked about it in such an open way and that the secretary of the army actually apologised to surviving families for this." The American Legion expressed disappointment at the time that "our nation's heroes are treated in such an undignified manner".
End of compulsory retirement at 65
Plan to end the so called default retirement age is outlined in a consultation document to be published today People will be encouraged to work longer under government plans to phase out the so-called default retirement age of 65 by October 2011. Currently employers can make staff retire at 65 regardless of their circumstances, but ministers signalled this was set to change as people were living longer, healthier lives. The proposal to phase out the default retirement age (DRA) is outlined in a consultation document, published today, which will run until October. However, the government said bosses will still be able to operate a compulsory retirement age if they can "objectively justify it". The move to phase out the DRA is one of a number of measures the government is taking to help and encourage people to work for longer against the backdrop of demographic change. Other steps include reviewing when the state pension age should increase to 66 and re-establishing the link between earnings and the basic state pension. The business department said the consultation also proposes to help employers by removing the administrative burden of statutory retirement procedures. A department spokesperson said: "With the DRA removed there is no reason to keep employees' right to request working beyond retirement or for employers to give them a minimum of six months notice of retirement. "Although the government is proposing to remove the DRA, it will still be possible for individual employers to operate a compulsory retirement age, provided that they can objectively justify it. Examples could include air traffic controllers and police officers." The plans provoked a mixed reaction. Campaigners welcomed the decision, but employers warned the removal of a default retirement age could make workforce planning more difficult. Chris Ball, chief executive of The Age and Employment Network, called it a "win/win outcome" for employers, but warned that today's move is only a first step. "Many employers will need to adopt a totally new mindset," Ball said. "They will need to actively plan and assist workers to be able to go on contributing to the success of their organisations. "This may mean adapting work practices and work places. It will certainly mean providing opportunities to train or retrain and to work more flexibly, and, crucially, actually recruiting people in their 50s and 60s where they may not have done so in the past." Rachel Krys, campaign director of anti-ageism group the Employers Forum on Age (EFA), said the default retirement age, which was created in 2006, was a "dated and unfair system". "Its removal is simply common sense," she said. "With rising life expectancies, and people staying fitter for longer, it is archaic to assume that someone's age is an indicator of the contribution they can make to the workplace. "Employers have nothing to fear from this change. This is an outdated policy and the removal of forced retirement is an opportunity to put policies and processes in place which make the most of an age-diverse workforce." The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which has campaigned for many years to remove the DRA, said the "breakthrough" was "greatly encouraging". Dianah Worman, the CIPD's diversity adviser, said: "Our research has shown that many employees wish to work past retirement for differing reasons and many employers are already benefiting from allowing such flexibility." The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said the proposals will give employers little time to prepare and leave them with unresolved problems. John Cridland, CBI deputy director-general, said: "Scrapping the DRA will leave a vacuum and raise a large number of complex legal and employment questions, which the government has not yet addressed. Employers and staff will not know where they stand. There will need to be more than a code of practice to address these practical issues; we will need changes in the law to deal more effectively with difficult employment situations." David Yeandle, the Engineering Employers Federation's head of employment policy, said: "Many manufacturers will be seriously concerned about this change in policy, which will make workforce planning more difficult. "The proposed timetable also gives employers virtually little or no time to alter their policies and practices before such an important change in employment legislation is introduced. "There is also a real danger that it could open a Pandora's box with the onus being placed on employers to prove whether older employees are capable of continuing in their current role. Inevitably, this could lead to employment tribunal cases from some older employees who have been dismissed rather than allowed to retire." 'An artifical construct'As a founder member of the EFA, Nationwide building society has been pushing hard for the DRA to be removed. It has allowed employees to work past retirement up to the age of 70 since 2001, once it realised many of its customers preferred to discuss their financial arrangements with older people. In 2005 it raised that limit to 75 subject to employees passing what its HR director, John Whitehouse, describes as a "gateway test". "As long as people want to carry on working and there aren't any problems, we're happy to let them do that," he said. "Since then I can't think of any example of us saying to staff, sorry we don't want you to carry on." Out of an approximate 15,500 employees, Nationwide has 285 over the age of 60 working in all areas of the business. Its oldest branch manager is 60, while its oldest employee is a 76-year-old lady who works part time in its Swindon call centre. From an employer's perspective, Whitehouse said Nationwide does have to think about issues like succession and benefits in a different way, "but they are not insurmountable things. Arguably these are things companies should be doing anyway. This artifical construct that we all must stop working at 65 is a relic of past usage. It's the stuff of the 1950s." Today, pensions minister Steve Webb admitted that people face a "hell of a shock" when they reach retirement because of their failure to save. In an interview with the Independent, he admitted that the basic state pension of £97 a week is "not enough to live on", and confirmed that the government would raise the state retirement age to 66 earlier than planned. He said that around 7 million people are currently not saving enough to meet their retirement aspirations.
PM alarms Foreign Office veterans
PM's 'open and honest' approach has angered Israel and Pakistan and stirred EU debate over Turkey As waiters in livery dispensed chicken curry canapes and a selection of colourful Indian summer fruit juices from silver trays, a tinkle on a glass indicated the guest of honour had something important to say. David Cameron stepped up in front of the guests gathered in the drawing room of the British high commissioner's palatial residence in New Delhi to say he had made a mistake. With due apologies to Humphrey Bogart, the prime minister told scores of business leaders and diplomats he had quoted one of the great lines from Casablanca incorrectly when he concluded a speech to Indian business leaders with the words: "Let's build a beautiful relationship." Looking mildly sheepish, Cameron joked: "I should have said: 'This could be the start of a beautiful friendship'." The audience laughed before filing out in the humid monsoon heat to the splendid gardens of the residence, in the heart of the Lutyens-designed New Delhi, the main feature of which is a croquet lawn. The guests were too polite to ask publicly whether the prime minister had made a rather graver mistake at the end of his speech to the Indian business leaders earlier in India's hi-tech centre of Bengalooru (formerly Bangalore). In remarks which reverberated across the subcontinent within minutes, the prime minister blamed elements of the Pakistani state for promoting the export of terror. Islamabad was quick to criticise Cameron, saying the prime minister should not believe leaked US military documents. A central finding of the Wikileaks documents is that Britain and the US believe the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, is still encouraging the Taliban. The prime minister's remarks raised eyebrows in the Foreign Office which believes that, given that most terror plots in Britain originate at some point from the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, Britain has a vital interest in maintaining warm relations with Islamabad. A message was quickly despatched to Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president who will be visiting Cameron at Chequers next week, that Britain believed his government is fighting hard against the terror threat. Cameron echoed this , though he insisted he would continue to talk frankly about Pakistan. While experienced diplomats were alarmed, Cameron's colleagues saw nothing wrong with his remarks which demonstrated a refreshing approach in their eyes. William Hague, the foreign secretary, said: "The prime minister is a great diplomat. He is a natural at it." A senior aide said: "What you see with David is what you get. He has always spoken his mind and told it exactly as it is. David does that back in Britain. After the Cumbria shootings he expressed his horror but said there was no need for fresh legislation. Imagine how many new criminal justice bills Gordon Brown would have introduced. "David is also adopting this straightforward, open and frank approach abroad. It is so refreshing. With Labour you could never quite understand what they thought because they would always have convoluted ways of looking at issues abroad." A series of interventions by the prime minister, during a frantic two weeks on both sides of the Atlantic, are held up by Downing Street as signs of this open and honest diplomacy. On the eve of his speech in Bengalooru, Cameron delighted Turkey with two pronouncements: accusing Israel of turning the Gaza Strip into a "prison camp" and indicating that Britain was prepared to battle France and Germany over Ankara's bid to join the EU. The Cameron bluntness was given a high-profile outing the week before in the US, though the victims that time were patriotic readers of the Daily Mail. In an attempt to recalibrate Anglo-American relations to a more realistic level, the prime minister said Britain should accept it is the "junior partner". To illustrate his point, Cameron said that this was even the case at the height of the "special relationship" in 1940 when Britain and the US stood shoulder to shoulder to meet the Nazi threat. He later admitted his remarks showed a shaky grasp of history because in 1940 Winston Churchill was embarking on his year-long campaign to persuade Washington to join the allied war effort. Cameron had warmed up for his US trip by speaking his mind on a sensitive matter closer to home. The release, last year on compassionate grounds, of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing by the Scottish authorities had been a mistake, he said. During his visit to Washington the prime minister also raised the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker facing extradition to the US, asking whether McKinnon can serve his sentence, if convicted, in Britain. Downing Street's firm defence of the prime minister's performance over the last two weeks shows that, as Cameron flew back to Britain at the end of the largest official visit to India since independence in 1947, he is convinced he is fashioning a new form of open and honest diplomacy. Where Labour wound itself up in intricate and complex explanations, Cameron will just speak his mind. But old lags at the Foreign Office argue that the delicate art of communications overseas is a well-established practice known as diplomacy. In India's case it dates back centuries to the era when emissaries from the English crown came bearing gifts to princely rulers as they sought to trade. Diplomacy was quickly replaced with the sword in India, but an art form had made an early mark. The need for a delicate approach to diplomacy today was highlighted, according to the traditionalists, when Cameron blundered into the tinder box of Indo-Pakistan relations this week. Cameron believes the two countries can be broadly dealt with in two categories: trade with India and security co-operation with Pakistan. Diplomats say Cameron is overlooking lesson number one of the subcontinent: the nuclear neighbours, who formed one country under the British crown until 1947, can never be treated separately. Opening up Britain's civil nuclear technology to India in the hope of boosting trade, as Cameron did, will be hailed in Delhi. But Pakistan will be alarmed. Cameron had an early taste of the perils of plain speaking the day before his India trip when he likened Gaza to a prison camp and warned of a battle with France and Germany over Turkey's EU membership bid. No 10 said his Gaza remarks were no different to his description of the Palestinian territory in June as a "giant open prison". The reaction from Israel may give the prime minister pause to reflect on whether it was wise to accuse the state created by Holocaust survivors of creating a prison camp. Government sources said that his second message in Ankara – his warning to France and Germany – fits into an approach of delivering uncomfortable home truths to close allies. "It is really noticeable that the prime minister has been pretty outspoken to the US on BP, saying it is a multinational company," one senior figure said. "He has also not shied away from speaking his mind in the EU on financial services and the importance of not harming the City of London with undue new regulations. This approach is paying dividends." Cameron will be on his diplomatic best when he hosts Zardari at Chequers next week. Perhaps this will serve as a reminder that life as the leader of a permanent member of the UN security council means every word has to be measured with care. The prime minister believes his trip has been a resounding success in boosting trade. So pleased is he with his debut that he was even heard saying it might be time to move on. "That's it, I retire," he said after realizing a childhood dream by hitting the Indian cricket legend Kapil Dev for six. Unlike his trip that was easy. Dev had bowled him a tennis ball.
Settlers evict Palestinian family
Takeovers have created dozens of Jewish 'outposts' in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City in recent years Israeli settlers took over a Palestinian home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City today, evicting about 45 members of an extended family which has occupied the building for more than 70 years. The settlers claimed to have documentation to prove they had purchased the building from the owners. The Palestinian tenants, who have been fighting attempts to evict them for many years, were challenging the takeover in court. A police spokesman said the Israelis had entered the home "based on documents claiming that they owned the property". According to Mohammed Kirresh, 22, a member of the Palestinian family, "Jewish people and Israeli soldiers with weapons" came at 2am, when most of the family was at a wedding. He said the family, which had rented the property since 1936, had won two previous court cases challenging eviction orders. He claimed the Israelis had broken furniture and damaged belongings. "Everything we own is inside – our money, ID papers, clothes, food," he said. Armed police were guarding the entrance to the house. Around 20 members of the Kirresh family pledged to stay on the narrow street outside the house. "We are staying here," said Mohammed Kirresh. "We hope the court will rule in our favour." The new occupants of the house refused to speak to the press. Dozens of settler "outposts" have been established in the Old City over recent years, many hanging huge Israeli flags in the Muslim quarter. Settler organisations have offered large sums to Palestinians to sell property to them. The Old City is located in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured and occupied – and later annexed – in 1967.
Harrods owners' supercars clamped
Qatari royal family fined for illegally parking their luxury cars in front of the family shop When they went shopping in Knightsbridge three months ago and picked up a rambling old emporium for a modest £1.5bn, the Qatari royal family would have done well to enquire about proprietorial parking perks. A quick question might have spared them £220 in parking fines – and the palpitations induced by finding sinister yellow triangles hugging the wheels of a £1.5m supercar. Unfortunately for the al-Thani family, the traffic wardens of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are not cowed by astronomical wealth and had no hesitation when it came to ordering the clampers to Harrods last week. A spokesman for the store refused to discuss the fate of the £1.2m Koenigsegg CCXR and the £350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce that were photographed parked illegally outside the store. Neither would he confirm or deny whether the light blue cars were indeed al-Thani property. "Any matters relating to parking tickets and enforcement are strictly the domain of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea," he said. The borough's parking office said that fines and release fees would probably have amounted to £110 a car, while a council spokesman insisted rules were rules. "There is a greater shortage of parking space for residents in Kensington and Chelsea than practically anywhere else in the country," he said. "At the same time we have a huge number of visiting motorists attracted here by our fine shops, restaurants and other attractions." But the council's priority, he added, was its residents: "To keep space available for them, we must deter visitors from taking up residents' bays and our experience is that clamping is simply the most effective deterrent." However, as one onlooker remarked: "Judging by their cars, I shouldn't think the owners will worry too much about paying a couple of hundred quid to have the clamps taken off."
Penguin boss: ebooks 'not a problem'
John Makinson says that if people want to read using new technology, that's what publishers must give them Penguin this week celebrates its 75th year and is marking the anniversary by repackaging a series of seminal books from the 1960s to the 1980s. Although the company might afford itself a brief look backwards, it feels as though there is little room for nostalgia in book publishing now, as the industry turns its face firmly – and apprehensively – to the future. Amazon last week announced sales of ebooks on its US site had outnumbered hardbacks for the first time, stunning casual observers, even if it had not been entirely unexpected in the trade. The launch of the iPad has added a sense of urgency. Where music went first, books are set to follow, although Penguin and other publishers would hope without the same devastating effects. Amazon this week launched a cheaper, more lightweight version of its Kindle ebook reader and a digital store on its UK site, while others, including Google, are muscling in. Digital book sales are still less than 1% of Penguin, but the direction of the market is clear. In the US, digital books already account for 6% of consumer sales. Penguin chief executive John Makinson says he is a convert. The day after we meet he is on his way to India, as part of David Cameron's delegation, and had loaded titles on to his iPad, including a manuscript by John le Carré and some Portuguese classics (in English) ahead of Penguin launching a range in Brazil. He is also reading Lord Mandelson's diary. It simply makes sense, he says, instead of carting an armful of books in your carry-on luggage. Innovation
"It does redefine what we do as publishers and I feel, compared with most of my counterparts, more optimistic about what this means for us," he says. "Of course there are issues around copyright protection and there are worries around pricing and around piracy, royalty rates and so on, but there is also this huge opportunity to do more as publishers."Publishing, he says, must embrace innovation: "I am keen on the idea that every book that we put on to an iPad has an author interview, a video interview, at the beginning. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not. There has to be a culture of experimentation, which doesn't come naturally to book publishers. We publish a lot of historians, for example. They love the idea of using documentary footage to illustrate whatever it is they're writing about." The very definition of a book is up for grabs he says, although the company has just published a version of Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth for the iPad in the US that might provide clues – and horrify traditionalists. It includes scenes from a TV adaptation embedded in the text, as well as extras including the show's music soundtrack and Follett's video diary during the making of the series. For now, Makinson says, digital books are expanding the market; hardback sales in the US are up this year, despite the march of ebooks. Piracy is not yet a significant issue and lessons have been learned from the music business. "You have to give the consumer what the consumer wants – you can't tell the consumer to go away. So we didn't participate in this experiment where a number of publishers deferred publication of the ebook until a certain number of months after the hardcover publication. I thought that was a very bad idea. If the consumer wants to buy a book in an electronic format now, you should let the consumer have it." He has added confidence, because with tablets such as the iPad, consumers are used to paying a subscription to the wireless operator and for "apps", creating a more benign environment than the wild west of the PC, where users are used to getting everything for free. Penguin's profits more than doubled to £44m in the first half of the year. The company gained market share, but one reason for the dramatic improvement was the outsourcing of some design and production to India last year; the company now has around 100 designers in Delhi making books for Dorling Kindersley, belying the idea that Britain can at least live off its creative industries. Makinson defends the decision and says DK is now back in profit, which means it can reinvest in Britain: "We can't pretend we can do everything here. In order to be internationally competitive, some work needs to be done in other places." About 8% of the publisher's sales are from its classics, including Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and revenues are still growing, despite much of the copyright being in the public domain. It is launching the range in Mandarin, Korean and Portuguese. But it is not all highbrow. What would Penguin's founder, Sir Allen Lane, whose aim was to publish quality paperbacks for the masses, have made of Penguin putting out books "by" Peter Andre or Ant & Dec? "Allen Lane's view was that we should publish good writing of all kinds for all audiences at affordable prices," Makinson says. "I'm not saying he would necessarily have approved every single publishing decision we take, but would he have approved of Penguin being a very democratic publishing company, publishing for lots of different tastes? I think he would definitely have approved." Makinson has long been mentioned as a successor to Dame Marjorie Scardino, who runs Pearson, Penguin's parent company. Her departure has been a perennial question, though she has defied the investment community's chattering classes by staying in her post for well over a decade. She has also confounded expectations by keeping Penguin and the Financial Times in a group dominated by educational publishing. Makinson says it now makes more sense than ever for Penguin to remain part of the group, as the digital era draws each division closer. He says there will still be the need for publishers in the digital world: "I used to have this discussion with [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author] Douglas Adams. He created this thing called the digital village, an online publishing platform. Douglas's argument was, 'all of my friends will come along and publish on digital village and you the publishers will be disintermediated, you will be irrelevant'. Well, it hasn't happened. I am not aware of any successful direct to consumer publishing model that exists. "The reason it doesn't work is that the publishers do actually perform quite a useful service: they edit the book, then they publicise it." In the physical world, they make sure it is stocked in bookshops, he adds. Clubbable
Makinson, 55, perhaps feels more adaptable than some of his counterparts because he arrived at Penguin as an outsider. A clubbable character, he has taken an unusual career path, from a journalist on the Financial Times, to working for the Saatchis, setting up his own investment consultancy, running the Financial Times and then becoming Pearson finance director, despite having no training as an accountant.But his passion for books is evident. Five years ago, he and his brother bought a bookshop in the small Norfolk town of Holt. For an out-of-the-way independent, the Holt Bookshop attracts a starry line-up of authors for events, including Stephen Fry, due to talk about his new autobiography, which, perhaps not surprisingly, is published by Penguin. "We are all terribly sentimental about books," Makinson insists. "It is terribly important to me that we sell lots of wonderful books in my little independent in Norfolk, and when I talk about digital I do sometimes worry that it looks as though I am neglecting all this," he points to the books on the shelves behind him, "which I am not." CV
Born: 1954, Derby.Education: Graduated from Cambridge with honours in English and History. Career: 1976-1979, journalist, Reuters; 1979-1986, journalist, Financial Times; 1986-1989, vice-chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi; 1989-1994, co-founder of capital markets advisory firm Makinson Cowell; 1994-1996, managing director, Financial Times; 1996-2002, finance director, Pearson; 2002-present, chairman and chief executive Penguin Books. Other interests: chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a director of the National Theatre and of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organisation. Family: Married with two daughters.
Von Trier's mysterious Melancholia
Cannes beckons again for the controversial Danish director as he embarks on a typically dark 'psychological disaster movie' They must have been rubbing their hands in Cannes this week as Lars von Trier lifted the veil on his latest film project, Melancholia. After a lacklustre 2010 festival, the possibility of the Danish enfant terrible returning to the Croisette in May looks a thrilling prospect. Von Trier has described his new film as a "psychological disaster movie" and "a beautiful movie about the end of the world", but what will it look like? "Shit. No, I hope not, but a little shittier than the one I did before," the Danish director told the assembled press pack at the Trollhättan film studios in Sweden, where shooting for Melancholia began last week. This was about as much as the notoriously guarded Von Trier was prepared to give away. "I have a plan and nobody will ever find out what the plan is," he said. All we know of this plan is that the film is about two sisters – and a planet. Kirsten Dunst plays one of the sisters. Keeping a close eye on her director during the press conference, she was equally cagey about the plot: "I'm afraid of what I can say and can't say. I don't want to tell the story either." Next to her, co-star Kiefer Sutherland was gushing about the prospect of swapping a decade of Jack Bauer in 24 for arthouse cinema. "[Von Trier] was certainly the catalyst for me to want to come and do this film," Sutherland said. "We had a quick conversation before I got the script and I said I would do whatever – I would cater – just to watch." The actors had taken a break from a scene in which Dunst's character is getting married to one played by Alexander Skarsgård. "Kirsten is getting married ... but only for a short while, of course," said Von Trier, alluding to impending disaster in the shape of a planet that is heading, ominously, closer and closer to Earth. Oh, and there will be no happy ending. Von Trier has promised to put a stop to this trademark (which only the director himself seems able to recognise in his oeuvre). Dunst and Sutherland are part of an impressive cast that features many of Von Trier's former collaborators, including John Hurt, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who starred in Trier's previous film, Antichrist. The Icelandic singer Björk vowed to give up acting after her clashes with Von Trier on the set of Dancer in the Dark, but Gainsbourg has expressed her desire to work with the director again. "It will be completely different to last time," she told Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende earlier this year. "What's attractive about working with Lars von Trier is actually him. The experience of being directed by him is so special. I'd never expected anything like it, and I would like that experience again. For me the relationship with the director is more important than the script." Antichrist seduced and enraged critics, landed Gainsbourg the best female actor award at Cannes and created the perfect media storm thanks to its graphic culmination, which sees the female protagonist cut off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors. The Danish press seemed just as busy tracking down the special effects team behind the prosthetic genitalia as they were reviewing the film at the time, and this week's circumspect press conference has once again reignited the Von Trier mystery. Not that they will mind this at all in Cannes. If the prodigal son wraps up Melancholia in time for a planned festival premiere in May, the welcome committee will surely be lining up on the Côte d'Azur when Von Trier steps out of his camper van.
Building a Jerusalem in Zimbabwe
Place names, schools, eloquent oratories and, of course, cricket can make Zimbabwe seem the most English of African countries High tea and cakes to the strains of a grand piano. Rooms with names such as Balmoral, Edinburgh, Windsor, Mirabelle and Edward & Connaught. An oak-panelled grill that recalls a gentlemen's club on Pall Mall. Yes, it must be Zimbabwe again. The Meikles in Harare claims to be the country's best hotel, and it certainly seems to have dodged the economic bullets of recent years. Its colonial aura, with regal tapestries and framed black and white photos of Harare a century ago, would probably console the establishment's founder, Thomas Meikle, a Scottish immigrant. To me too it felt reassuringly, and alarmingly, like home. One night there I switched on Zimbabwe state television to discover, amid controversial jingles extolling President Robert Mugabe, a developing crisis for Siegfried and Tristan in a rerun of All Creatures Great and Small. Only a few buildings from the era of empire survive in Harare, formerly Salisbury, but there are also parks and tree-lined avenues that feel somehow familiar. In the east of the country, near Mutare, the best place to stop to admire the scenery is Prince of Wales View. It might be 30 years since independence, but Britain remains in the cultural DNA. O-levels and A-levels are still studied. St George's College and Prince Edward are the leading schools, with much that evokes Harry Potter's Hogwarts or Billy Bunter's Greyfriars. English, the official language, is not only widely spoken, but spoken very well. I have attended public events where black Zimbabweans deliver speeches with an ornate eloquence, or sometimes grandiloquence, that seems more Victorian literary salon than oppressive African dictatorship. Theirs is a language no longer spoken by the British. Mugabe, self-declared nemesis of the evil former empire, is no exception to this. His speeches are finely polished and buffed in the colonisers' tongue: "If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me, and me to you." Heidi Holland, author of Dinner with Mugabe, recalls being handed tea in an exquisite English porcelain cup by a waiter in white gloves and tails while waiting at the State House to interview the president in 2007. Last year in a speech entitled The Britishness of Mugabe, she spoke of how he has dressed all his life in austere suits of the stereotypical English gentleman, polished his vowels self-consciously and developed something of a British sense of humour. Holland said: "What most revealed Mugabe's fragmented identity to me, though, were the tears glistening in his eyes when he talked about Britain's royals. The Queen and her four children, her sister and her mother had all stayed with him at State House, he told me. 'And now, to this day, we treasure those moments, and we have nothing against the royal family,' he continued – using the royal 'We'." His love for Savile Row tailors is matched by a love for that most English of games: cricket. Mugabe, patron of Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC), once declared: "Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen." Now, after years in the doldrums, there are signs of the sport coming back to life here. A recent domestic Twenty20 tournament was televised and brought in multiracial crowds of more than 7,000 and corporate sponsors otherwise starved of entertainment. A Pop Idol-style contest toured the country inviting all comers to prove they could be Zimbabwe's fast bowling star of the future. The national team is also on the up. Alan Butcher, a former England batsman, is now the coach of a side, no longer dominated by white players, that has claimed the one-day scalps of the West Indies, India and Sri Lanka. Zimbabwe is looking to return to Test cricket for the first time since 2006 with a home series against Bangladesh next year. Some hope this could be the catalyst for wider social recovery. But there's no escaping politics. In 2003 two of Zimbabwe's finest players, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, wore black armbands at the World Cup to mourn the death of democracy. The men in charge of the game have notoriously had ties with Mugabe. Ozias Bvute, managing director of ZC, is on the EU's banned list owing to alleged associations with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. Recently I found Bvute in a freshly painted office, complete with satellite TV and Wi-Fi internet access, that some may find suspiciously plush for a country in which many government buildings are shabby and threadbare. But he insisted he is no tool of Mugabe. "I woke up one day and was told I was on the sanctions list," he said. "I read, 'These are the people responsible for the tragedy of Zimbabwe.' I read that cricket is a political instrument. This is a myth. I do not hold any card from any political party. It's like the ANC in South Africa: 70% of individuals here have had associations with Zanu-PF. It's a small society. We know each other." Certainly David Coltart, the Movement for Democratic Change's sports minister, and a cricket fanatic, seemed untroubled. He told me: "There are people in the administration in influential places who are aligned with Zanu-PF, but I'm in a cabinet chaired by Robert Mugabe. "In the first four or five years post-Nelson Mandela's release, there were many people in the South African government who I'm sure the ANC had difficulty in dealing with. But it was part of the process. It was the price you paid for a peaceful transition. The same applies to cricket." The return of Test cricket would give the appearance, at least, that Zimbabwe is almost back to normal. Alistair Campbell, a former captain and now chairman of selectors, said: "I'd like to see England and Australia touring here again. I'd like to sip chardonnay on the opening day of a Test at Harare Sports Club." At the sports club's Maiden or Red Lion pubs, a summer's day on the playing fields of England can seem eerily close at hand. Whereas South Africa, that big and brash power of the continent, often reminds me of America, it's Zimbabwe, the quieter, ironic and perhaps cripplingly introspective cousin, that makes me think of Britain. I wonder if this is why, like many of my compatriots, I fall head over heels for this beautiful country, both strange and familiar, satisfying a lust for African adventure but leavened by a comforting, nostalgic scent of home. And I worry how healthy that is.
Vera Baird
Vera Baird: Coalition's U-turn on anonymity for alleged rapists is welcome, but it is likely to have more retrograde ideas Until last weekend, government policy was to give anonymity to rape defendants. Protection from publicity was on the way for alleged rapists, though not for defendants in cases involving murder, paedophilia or burgling the homes of old ladies. Their names and alleged deeds would still be demonised publicly. The justification? According to the justice minister, Crispin Blunt, sex crimes "are of an entirely different order". Why not anonymity for paedophiles then? His boss Ken Clarke, gave another reason in the Commons on 15 June for giving anonymity to defendants in rape cases. He said it was "tit for tat" because the complainants were anonymous. Nobody has questioned the wisdom of that since 1976 when it became law. Its purpose – to give complainants the confidence to come to court – does not apply to defendants. Blunt said in debate that anonymity for defendants had "nothing to do with the likelihood of acquittal" although David Cameron had earlier said that "we know that a lot of people are falsely accused". Research shows 3% of rape complaints may be false, mostly outed at the earliest stage, and there is no evidence that this is more than for other offences. Baroness Stern, in her recent review of rape reporting, acknowledged some figures around 8% for false complaints but added that "those we spoke to in the system [judges, police and CPS] felt they were very few". Blunt promised two weeks ago that the policy on anonymity for rape defendants would be effected without delay or consultation. Ken Clarke said in June that "it is no good trying to sweep the issue from the field". On Sunday, without delay and with no consultation, the issue was swept from the field, in a briefing to the Sunday Telegraph. Blunt will ask newspapers for a voluntary agreement instead. The anonymity policy, part of the coalition agreement, never made sense. There is no reason to treat rape suspects preferentially. Women's groups made clear that it would deter complaints. Police said it would hinder investigation and stop them calling for other complainants to come forward in serial cases, such as that of the taxi driver John Warboys. In recent years, convictions for rape have doubled, though the figures still need to improve. Support from sexual assault referral centres and independent advisers brings forward more complainants and helps them stay the course. Why put it all into reverse? Defendant anonymity, rushed by backbench amendment into the final stages of 1976 Sexual Offences Act, was scrapped by a Conservative government in 1988 on the firm advice of the police and every judge on the influential Criminal Law Revision Committee. If this is the coalition's idea of tackling rape, there are likely to be more retrograde ideas instead of the positive steps that are still needed for better justice. On Sunday the News of the World reported allegations by Raoul Moat's former partner Sam Stobbart that he raped her a year after they broke up. Stobbart says she let him into her home, too afraid to do otherwise. "He thought having sex with me was his right and he took it," she said. Forty-five per cent of rape complaints are against current or former partners but few end in conviction. A previous relationship with the defendant is seen as an obstacle by police, because it is easy to allege that the complainant was tempted back to consensual sex. The appeal court said, in a case called R v A: "It is common sense that a person who has previously had consensual intercourse with another … may on the occasion in dispute have been more likely to consent to intercourse … than if the other were a stranger." As Stobbart's allegations suggest, this is not a safe assumption. Her case can now be seen with the understanding that Moat was violent, but if she had complained at the time it probably would not have proceeded. Stobbart did not make a complaint. "I didn't even tell my mum until not long ago," she told the News of the World. Most people assume that somebody who is raped will rush for help but those closely connected with victims know that many do not. They suffer self-loathing and a reaction that Stobbart summarised well when she described Moat's conduct as making her "feel sick inside". Delay in lodging a complaint has been seen as weakening a case. Jurors are likely to assume that immediate reporting is the norm. The defence will say that the sex was consensual and some motive to "cry rape" came later. The appeal court pronounced on this issue in R v D, last year, saying that judges should tell juries "to ensure fairness to the complainant" and that while some people may complain immediately, others may feel shame and shock and not complain for some time. Police still seem to treat late complaints as a problem. That can only be because they haven't understood that the former one-sided defence approach will now be undercut by judges. Stobbart's late complaint would probably have put her, along with many other women, into a class of rape cases traditionally seen as hard to pursue. As Baroness Stern found, the last government, with an active voluntary sector, developed policy and practice that could ease deficiencies in how public authorities tackle this endemic crime. This area needs continuing effort and the coalition seems a long way from understanding that.
What next for the US climate bill?
There is a chance build on the rubble of the Senate's failure to cap carbon emissions, says Eric Pooley Following the rocky path of climate legislation in the U.S. Congress these past years brought me back to the 1980s, and my time as a crime reporter in New York City. After a shooting in those days, a homicide detective named Marty Davin would go to the hospital and intercept the gunshot victim on a gurney outside the emergency room. If the victim was conscious, Davin would lean over and ask, "Who killed you?" That usually got the victim's attention, along with an I'm-not-dead-yet protest. Davin would reply, "You are going to die. You might as well tell me who did it." As I interviewed the sponsor of whichever emissions-reduction bill had just been gunned down, I often thought of Davin. The politicians and climate campaigners would assure me that they were still alive — passage of a carbon cap was inevitable, they'd say — and I'd remind myself that they had survived countless near-death experiences. But what happened last week, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would not even try to bring a compromise climate bill to the Senate floor, was not just another setback. Sometimes dead really is dead — and for this Congress, barring a miracle, climate action is finished. With an ugly election looming in November, it may be years before we get another chance to debate a bill that prices carbon. And the consensus approach to federal climate action — the idea that cap-and-trade was the most politically viable policy — may well be dead, too. This is a time to take stock. The first question is whether this was a failure of policy; a failure of politics, message, and messenger; or both? Second, is there a Plan B around which the climate campaign should now unify? And third, what needs to be done to allow a better outcome when the next opportunity finally does appear? No one who follows climate politics could have been very surprised by Reid's move. The bigger shock was his decision to remove from the bill a mandate that utilities must generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. (Proponents hope to offer it as a floor amendment.) It was if the Senate was saying: Anything remotely effective, we're not going to do. When Reid pulled the plug, I thought back to a snowy afternoon in Copenhagen last December. Sitting with Al Gore in an empty hotel café, I asked him to contemplate this very moment. "If the United States doesn't act," he replied, "if the Senate defeats the legislation or waters it down to a point where it is not even worth having a bill, that is an event horizon beyond which it is difficult to see." He parsed the same issues then that climate campaigners are parsing now: "It may mean there is a fundamental flaw in the international political approach, but I'm not sure there is a good alternative. The reality is so dire that a new plan would have to emerge — but just now I can't imagine what it would be." Gore had a point. When the goal is emissions reduction, there aren't many alternatives: You've got to reduce emissions. The Plan B options now being offered by various advocates should be vigorously debated, but all of them seem vulnerable to the same polluted politics that killed the cap. Advocates of the carbon tax are ready to take a run at their goal, and Godspeed — but it is hard to see how politicians who were terrified to support a cap (because opponents labeled it a tax) will suddenly become bold enough to support a carbon tax. Policy groups such as the Breakthrough Institute argue that instead of making dirty fuels more expensive, it's time for intensive energy research and development to make clean fuels cheaper. That sounds reasonable, but without the revenue stream that a cap or tax would provide — and in an era of budget cutbacks — it is hard to see government supplying the massive, long-term funding their plan requires. Is the cap so fundamentally flawed that it should be abandoned forever? I don't think so. I believe it needs to be liberated from legislative bloat and rehabilitated as a modest first step: a tool for regulating power sector emissions, the job it performed so successfully in the 1990s, when America tamed acid rain. It's worth remembering that while climate politics were bogging down, climate policy mechanisms were being improved. Clever wonks found ways to cushion consumers and high-carbon industries from the price impact of the cap, while preserving a price signal for generators. Trading restrictions were added to keep speculators out of the carbon game. Though the term cap-and-trade has been demonized, the cap itself isn't broken. Some will argue that this latest setback is proof that the U.S. will never cap carbon. I reject that view. All we can say for sure is that the U.S. will never cap or price carbon until the politics of the issue change — so the first order of business must be to begin improving the political atmosphere. During the three years I worked on The Climate War, a narrative of the campaign to pass a carbon cap, I came to realize I was writing a political thriller, a whodunit with multiple culprits. Let's look for lessons by considering some of the culprits, starting with the most obvious. 1. The Professional Deniers. Gore and environmental leaders made a tactical error several years ago when they declared the science "settled" and refused to engage the forces of denial and delay. The basic science was indeed settled, but the resulting message vacuum was the perfect medium for those who sow doubt and confusion about global climate change. It shouldn't be surprising that so many Americans remain skeptical about global warming. For 20 years, this loose network of PR pros, working for industry associations and anti-tax think tanks, has spread doubt about climate science and fear about climate economics, claiming that any attempt to cap CO2 would wreck the American economy. Their disinformation, amplified via the Internet, helped poison the debate. To counter the deniers' campaign, President Obama needs to speak out forcefully, and champions of the clean energy economy must point to the new jobs that are already being created by the renewable energy economy and show Americans precisely where they fit into it. 2. Senate Republicans. Most climate campaigners understand the folly of trying to remake the American energy system without bipartisan support. But it's hard to forge centrist solutions when an entire party is denying there's a problem and vilifying the solutions. A scaled-back approach, one that can be sold as a modest, incremental step and not a new industrial revolution, might fare better. There was a time — 2007 and 2008, to be precise — when some Republicans were moving away from deny-and-delay tactics. (In 2007, briefly, Newt Gingrich supported the carbon cap.) More recently, opposition to climate action has become a litmus test in the GOP. Arizona It's hard to forge centrist solutions when an entire party is denying there's a problem.
Republican John McCain, who sponsored the Senate's first serious climate bills but now faces a primary challenge from the right, recently called a successor bill "a farce." His mantle of Republican climate courage passed to Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who took so much heat from his own party that he withdrew from the climate bill he helped write. Graham's position has been incoherent since then, but he has signaled support for a cap on the power sector. That could be something to build on. 3. Senate Democrats. After Reid pulled the plug, Democrats were quick to blame Republicans for obstruction. But what about the obstructionists within the Democratic ranks? Harry Reid didn't have the clout to force action on this issue because a dozen or more centrist Democrats — from states that either mine coal or produce much of their electricity from it — were dug in against it. It is impossible to tell if the senators were truly concerned about what the cap would do to their state economies — nonpartisan studies suggest its impact would be minimal — or just worried about what attack ads would do to them. Again, a more modest first step could change the dynamic. The crucial thing is to get started. 4. The Green Group. At a meeting in February 2007, the Green Group, an unofficial association of the leaders of the big U.S. environmental non-profits, told Harry Reid they supported a single legislative goal: An economy-wide cap. Their strategy was to assemble the broadest possible coalition to push the broadest possible bill. Given the magnitude of the crisis and the need to reduce emissions quickly, this made sense. Politically, though, it proved disastrous, because it led to bills of such cost, scope, and complexity that they scared the pants off timid legislators. The Green Group held out for an economy-wide bill even after it became clear, in late 2009, that it was unachievable in the Senate. Only recently did The Green Group wanted too much and ended up with nothing.
environmental leaders try to negotiate a compromise cap on electric power plants, which account for 40 percent of U.S. emissions. Passing a utility cap would have been a great first step, but the talks got started too late. The Green Group wanted too much and ended up with nothing. 5. The Power Barons. When the eleventh-hour search for a compromise began, the utilities got too greedy. If they had to go it alone, they argued, they deserved virtually all of the carbon allowances in the program for free. This left too few for other crucial purposes, such as cushioning manufacturers from higher electricity prices. Worse, in exchange for supporting a carbon cap, some utilities demanded relief from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations governing conventional pollutants such as mercury. Like the greens, they asked for too much and got nothing. (The greens, however, were overreaching on behalf of the planet, not their own coffers.) Some utility bosses were relieved to see the bill die. Those feelings may prove short-lived as the battle to reduce emissions moves to the EPA and the courts. Some advocates, such as Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund, regard the decision to negotiate with the power barons as the height of folly. Washington, they argue, should simply dictate the terms of surrender to the polluters. Such a stance ignores an important fact: It isn't possible to remake the U.S. energy system without negotiating with the power barons. Punishing generators means punishing households that pay electricity bills. That doesn't mean, however, that the politicians should give the barons everything they want. But there was only one player with the clout to cut a fair deal with them, and he was missing in action. 6. The President. Barack Obama chose not to lead on this issue. His decision to address health care reform before energy and climate change doomed the latter. With advisors Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod whispering that climate was a losing proposition (a self-fulfilling prophesy, to be sure), Obama never threw himself behind a particular climate bill. He left it to the Senate, the Green Group, and the power bosses — all of whom were sorely in need of adult supervision. The real grownups in this tale were Rep. Henry Waxman and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last year surprised the Obama Administration by taking a comprehensive climate bill to the House floor. The White House had no choice but to help whip the vote, and it passed. Then Obama stopped trying, and the Senate refused to take up the legislation. It was a colossal failure of nerve, and a decision that likely destroyed any chance of achieving climate action in Obama's first term. Since the president and his political advisers thought an economy-wide cap was too heavy a lift, Obama should have led a tactical retreat to what, in the past several months, became the last-ditch compromise position: the cap on the electric power sector. Had negotiations focused on this months ago instead of weeks ago, and had the president thrown his weight behind it then, we might today be celebrating a step forward instead of mourning another failure. Only Obama had the authority to call this audible early. The environmental NGOs and their allies were too invested in the economy-wide approach; they needed Obama to lead them. He refused. To the bitter end, the White House pursued what his aides called a "stealth strategy" that deployed the president only sparingly. As a result, he failed to take advantage of the BP oil spill. When its terrible scope became apparent, in June, Obama began talking about the need to Welcome to the 'glorious mess' — the tangle of regulation and litigation that follow when Congress fails to act.
cap carbon and accelerate the transition to clean energy. But it was a fleeting moment. Many climate campaigners knew the climate bill was dead on June 15, when Obama gave his long-awaited Oval Office address on the oil spill. Instead of making an explicit connection to the climate bill — and explaining that by capping carbon the U.S. could speed its transition to clean energy and help break its addiction to fossil fuels — Obama whiffed. He had a road map but didn't try to share it with the people. "We don't yet know precisely how we're going to get there," he said. Today, with that map in shreds, we surely don't. As climate campaigners wait however long it takes to get another shot at legislation, there is important work to be done. Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. have been dropping — and not just because of the recession. The task is to build on this trend during the economic recovery. Changes in our energy infrastructure are making this possible. In Texas, our highest-emitting state and a bastion of climate skepticism, carbon emissions have been declining since 2004 thanks in part to a renewable energy standard — signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush — that accelerated the installation of wind power and created thousands of jobs along the way. The Department of Energy now has 7,000 clean energy projects across the country — projects that save money, create jobs, and reduce emissions. According to an analysis by the World Resources Institute, by leveraging existing authority over the next ten years the U.S. could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent to 12 percent below 2005 levels. This is far short of the 17 percent reduction Obama promised in Copenhagen and nothing close to what needs to be done. But if we continue cutting emissions before asking voters to embrace a cap, we prove that cuts are both technologically feasible and economically sustainable. And we'll be in a better position when the next legislative opportunity comes. Until then, the climate war will be waged by cities, states, regional cap-and-trade programs, and, above all, the EPA, which early next year is set to begin regulating stationary sources of CO2 — power plants and large factories. Welcome to the "glorious mess" — Michigan Rep. John Dingell's phrase for the tangle of regulation and litigation that will follow when Congress fails to act. We are about to experience precisely the sort of costly, protracted, plant-by-plant trench warfare the cap was intended to avoid. Since the utilities and the manufacturers weren't willing to cut a deal, this is what they get. The fragile period of compromise and cooperation between environmentalists and big business may now be coming to an end. Green groups that have invested time and money into the legislative process are now putting on their war paint and returning to the courts, with a renewed focus on stopping new coal-fired power plants and shutting down the oldest and dirtiest ones. Tough new EPA rules for conventional pollutants will help, and so will new EPA carbon regulations. Perhaps these strict new regulations will refresh the power bosses' appetite for a cap. But they have plenty of lawyers, and the long, ugly battles over implementation of EPA regulations could extend the current period of uncertainty by many years. Republicans (and some Democrats) will try to strip EPA of its authority over carbon, or at least delay implementation of its new rules. In effect, the Senate will be saying that Congress alone should have the power to act — so that it can then not exercise that power. Obama's aides say the president will be fully engaged in the battle to save EPA authority over carbon. It is a fight that he can't possibly duck, because it is our last line of defense. As Gore reminded me in Copenhagen, "The fact that this is extremely hard doesn't mean we should quit."
|
|
|
Seleccionar la fuente:
|
|
