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Noticias del Reino Unido
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The Guardian World News Sun, 14 Mar 2010 09:47:17 GMT |
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UK 'ignoring evidence' of torture of asylum seekers
Charities say reports of abuse being routinely ignored is a 'systemic and increasing problem'
Torture survivors seeking sanctuary in Britain are being wrongly held in government detention centres, despite independent medical evidence supporting claims of brutal violence against them in their home countries. According to Home Office guidelines, in cases where there is evidence that a person seeking asylum has been tortured they should be detained only in "exceptional circumstances". But medical charities that carry out hundreds of independent assessments of torture survivors every year have accused the government of routinely ignoring their reports, with victims held in detention centres until their asylum claims are heard – and, in almost every case, rejected. Sonya Sceats, a spokeswoman for one charity that carries out medical assessments for the government, told the Observer: "It's very clear there is a systemic and increasing problem here. The corollary of their dismissal of independent medical evidence is that the protection [asylum] claim is invariably rejected and this means a survivor of torture is at risk of being returned to further torture or at risk of detention." The allegations come in the wake of strong criticism last week of the UK Border Agency, which was condemned for failing to investigate claims of mistreatment by failed asylum seekers in abuse allegations up to July 2008. Ministers now plan to review the use of force against asylum seekers by British security guards after a Border Agency report on abuse conceded that serious injuries were suffered by detainees who had been handcuffed or physically restrained. The new allegations further highlight systematic mistreatment in Britain's asylum system. One 43-year-old torture victim from Zimbabwe, who is on hunger strike in Yarl's Wood detention centre, Bedfordshire, alleged she was detained despite independent verification of the abuse in her home country. Her arms are scarred from repeated stabbings during an incident in Zimbabwe in which she was also beaten and raped. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been in Yarl's Wood for five months and alleges medical mistreatment and racist abuse by staff, claims that have been denied. She told the Observer: "The officers are racist and are not sympathetic. We have suffered and don't want to be tortured here, but inside here it is a form of torture but nobody can see us locked up." Bibiche Lutete, 36, was beaten and repeatedly raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the UN has confirmed rape is used as a weapon of war. After seeking asylum in the UK, she said she had been further traumatised while being illegally held in a British detention centre. She also claimed to have suffered "medical abuse" and had anxiety attacks after witnessing a naked woman dragged from her room in Yarl's Wood by private security guards, claims robustly denied by the Home Office. "Everybody was shocked," she said. "She had no clothes on and she was photographed. I still get flashbacks." The Medical Foundation For the Care of Victims of Torture, the UK charity dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors, said it had lodged complaints with the Home Office over concerns that its assessments documenting evidence of abuse among asylum seekers were being increasingly dismissed by officials. The foundation cited figures from the last 18 months showing only seven people had been released from detention out of 250 cases where clinical evidence of abuse had been presented. The Border Agency denied it dismissed the evidence of independent medical experts. Hugh Ind, the agency's director for protection, said: "We consider all evidence submitted in support of asylum claims very carefully, including claims of torture. Where an individual sets out a credible case that they are in need of protection, we normally grant asylum." An Observer investigation has also found that the number of "assaults" against refugees in detention centres remains high. The charity Medical Justice Network has documented at least 15 recent cases where a detainee claims they were assaulted, while allegations by asylum seekers of inadequate healthcare are running at eight a month. A number involve torture survivors, including one from the DRC who ended up in hospital last March after sustaining severe handcuff injuries during an attempted deportation from the UK by private security guards. His complaint to the Border Agency tells how six guards restrained him on a plane and that "one turned round trying to strangle me by my throat while the other was banging my head on the seat in front". The government is trying to clear a backlog of 200,000 asylum cases, though the border agency admits it can process fewer than half its target applications a month. Three Russians refugees leapt to their death from the 15th floor of a block of flats in Glasgow last Sunday, prompting further concern over the treatment of asylum seekers. Yesterday hundreds of people joined a rally in the city and called for an end to the "enforced removal of refugee families".
Afghanistan suicide bombers kill 30
Four explosions in Kandahar cause chaos but terrorists' attempt to free prisoners is thwarted At least 30 people were killed when four suspected suicide bombers blew themselves up yesterday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. The bombers' targets included a new prison and the local police headquarters. The attacks are believed to have been timed to draw attention away from the main target, the prison. Guards had been reinforced by Canadian troops after a 2008 bombing led to a mass jailbreak. No prisoners escaped yesterday. "They wanted to keep people busy in the city and break the prison, but the Canadians did a good job," said Wali Karzai, a provincial councillor and the half-brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Kandahar, with 800,000 inhabitants, is one of Afghanistan's largest cities. It was regarded as the Taliban's spiritual home when they ruled Afghanistan during the 1990s. Nato and Afghan forces are planning an offensive in Kandahar province later this year, a follow-up to a continuing military operation in neighbouring Helmand.
Lib Dems will not support Tory cuts
Nick Clegg describes George Osborne's plans to slash budgets as 'economic masochism' The Liberal Democrats have distanced themselves from the Conservatives by warning they would not support plans to cut public spending too early in the next parliament. The party's leader, Nick Clegg, said early deep cuts would be "economic masochism". It came as the Lib Dem treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, hit out at the Tories' economic plans. In his speech at the party's spring conference in Birmingham, Cable accused the Conservatives of engaging in a "phoney war over cuts" that would affect millions of lives. He also hit out at George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. Cable said the Tories were trying to present their economic team as "'Slasher' Osborne and the Hard Men". But, he added, they appeared to have taken cuts straight after the election off the table – at least for now. "Or at least that's what I think they said. I'd love to attempt a critique of the Tories' budget plans, but I have no idea what they are. I think the present line on the budget is: 'Trust us and we'll tell you after the election'," he told cheering delegates. He added: "People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don't want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same." He also claimed that David Cameron's party and its "cronies" were trying to create financial panic to frighten people into voting for them. "Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong," said Cable. He did not limit his criticism to the Conservatives. Cable, having famously compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, this time made delegates laugh when he said the prime minister sounded like the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, pleading: "Give me another chance." The Lib Dems had identified £15bn worth of reductions in public spending that would cut the deficit, he said. The party has come under an increasing level of scrutiny as the polls narrow. Observers are watching for any signs to suggest whether the Lib Dems would be prepared to make a pact with Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament. That is the scenario suggested by two polls released today. YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds that the Tories' lead has narrowed from five points to four over the past week. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph places Cameron's party seven points ahead – not enough for a majority. The same research suggests that the Lib Dems have strengthened their position and are now on 21 points. Clegg will discuss a hung parliament when he addresses MPs today. "People often ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the general election. Some days I read we're planning a deal with Labour, some days that we're planning a deal with the Conservatives, other days that we'll refuse to talk to anyone at all," he is reported as planning to say.
Pope 'did not cover up abuse claims'
Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, suggests 'tenacious' plot to implicate pontiff in cover-up The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981. Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot. "It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed." The Vatican has been appalled in recent days by a flood of allegations of priestly sex abuse in Germany, Holland, Austria and even Italy. Today, the pope's former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow's edition of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the city's archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a rectory. The records suggested that "it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out due to sexual relations with children". But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement said, the diocese's then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least one child was subsequently abused. "Gruber takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions," the diocese said. The church's attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which tomorrow is holding "sidewalk vigils" in more than 30 US cities in support of European victims. David Clohessy, the network's national director, said: "As a high-ranking church official for decades, if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups." The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among choirboys in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15-year-old boy who said that in the 1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars. The growing scandal has also put Catholic leaders under siege elsewhere in Europe. Bishops in the Netherlands are looking into more than 200 suspected cases, and in Germany at least 170 former pupils at Catholic schools have made accusations. Another case concerns an all-boys choir in Regensburg, the Domspatzen, once conducted by the pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger. The reported sex abuse dates from before his 30-year tenure as director. The scandals have set off an unprecedented public debate among church leaders on one of Roman Catholicism's strongest taboos – whether the paedophilia in its ranks is a consequence of priestly celibacy. On Friday, Benedict himself vigorously defended an unmarried priesthood, telling an audience of priests that it was not something to be given up for "passing cultural fashions". But one of his own prelates, Hans-Jochen Jaschke, said in a radio interview: "The celibate lifestyle can attract people who have an abnormal sexuality and cannot integrate sexuality into their lives." Priestly celibacy is a discipline, rather than a doctrine, and most of the Eastern rites of the Catholic church follow the practice of the Orthodox in allowing for married priests; the pope could do away with celibacy at any time. The Italian daily La Repubblica reported that a Vatican working group had been set up secretly to consider reform, but said no change was likely for at least 50 years. The Vatican's own newspaper, meanwhile, added to the debate. In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, Catholic academic Lucetta Scaraffia linked the scandals to the lack of women in pastoral and decision-making roles in the church. She said a more significant female presence "could have ripped away the veil of male omertà" that had covered up abuse. On Friday, the head of the German bishops' conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, briefed the pope on measures being taken by his archdiocese to deal with clerical sex abuse. But, as a German lay group noted, the pope did not take the opportunity to express sympathy with victims, and doubts remained as to how many of his pastors understand the gravity of the situation. The day before, one of the bishops closest to Benedict, Gerhard Müller, declared that the scandal was over "cases from 40, 50 years ago" that had been blown out of proportion by "a big media clamour". He lashed out at Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who had talked of a Catholic wall of secrecy. Müller said she belonged to a humanist association which he claimed was a kind of "masonry" that "considers paedophilia normal and wants to decriminalise it". Müller, who founded the institute that is publishing Benedict's complete works, is also the prelate charged with probing abuses in the Domspatzen choir.
Ordeal of Palestinian stone throwers
Rights groups express concern at the rising number of juveniles as young as 12 who are held behind bars and 'treated like terrorists' With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military. The Israeli group B'Tselem said that security forces had "severely violated" the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months. The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities. The teenager, Al-Hasan Muhtaseb, described how he had been interrogated without a lawyer late into the night, forced to confess to throwing stones, made to sign a confession in Hebrew that he couldn't read, jailed with adults and brought before a military court. He was only released on bail eight days later, after considerable legal effort by several human rights groups. As he had signed a confession, he still faces a possible indictment for throwing stones – a charge that usually brings several months in jail but carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' jail. Although most international attention focuses on diplomatic sparring in the Middle East, it is cases such as this teenager's arrest that are the reality for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. The surprise about the teenager's experience is not that it is exceptional, but that it is a common occurrence. As of the end of February, 343 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli prisons, according to Defence for Children International (DCI), which took up the Muhtaseb case. Israel routinely prosecutes Palestinian children as young as 12 and the Israeli legal system treats Palestinians as adults when they turn 16, but Israelis become adults only at 18. Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children are "widespread, systematic and institutionalised", DCI said in a report last year. Al-Hasan Muhtaseb was arrested early in the afternoon as he and his 10-year-old brother Amir were walking home through Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, after visiting their aunt. "Two soldiers came to us and told us: 'Come over here.' We went to them," said Al-Hasan, a slight boy, neatly dressed, who barely looks his 13 years. "They took my brother and I don't know where they took him. I was sent inside the station and I never saw him after that." They were detained separately. Amir was released later that night, deeply traumatised. "He was in a very, very bad psychological state," said his father, Fadel Muhtaseb, 45. "He had wet himself. He was terrified." The boy said he had been held with his eyes covered by a hat in a room where there was also a dog, which he could hear panting. Al-Hasan was interrogated at an Israeli military post in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement in Hebron. "I was asked: 'Did you throw stones? Did you hurt the soldiers or hit their vehicles? How close were you to the soldiers? Why were you throwing stones?'," he said. Eventually he had admitted throwing stones, although in an interview last week Al-Hasan said it was untrue: on that day he had not thrown stones, although earlier in the week he had. He had been made to sign a statement in Hebrew, a language he doesn't speak or read. He was blindfolded and taken to Ofer military prison, where he arrived at 3.30am. "There were no other children," he said. "I was afraid." Three days after his arrest he appeared at a military court. But his father, who works as a tiler, could not afford the 2,000 shekels (£350) bail. "My father told them he couldn't pay this much money," said Al-Hasan. His father, who sat next to him through the interview, burst into tears. Last Sunday the boy was freed under a bail arrangement in which his father faces arrest if his son does not appear at the next summons. "Even if he were throwing stones, he is only 13," said Fadel. "They treated him like a terrorist. They claim they are democratic and human, but they are not." The Israeli Defence Force defended the arrest, saying Israeli troops were acting to prevent violence. Both boys are now incontinent and Amir has been hospitalised. "He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming," said Fadel. "We try to comfort him, but he's getting worse and worse." The Palestinian Authority highlighted the case of the two Muhtaseb brothers, saying Israel was breaching international law and has recently seemed to take a stronger stance against the more routine challenges of the occupation, including the effect of the West Bank barrier. Israeli security forces have warned of a broader crackdown if the protests escalate.
My life as a Trotskyist agitator
For four years, Officer A lived a secret life among anti-racist activists as they fought brutal battles with the police and the BNP. Here he tells of the terrifying life he led, the psychological burden it placed on him and his growing fears that the work of his unit could threaten legitimate protest An officer from a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police has given a chilling account of how he spent years working undercover among anti-racist groups in Britain, during which he routinely engaged in violence against members of the public and uniformed police officers to maintain his cover. During his tour of duty, the man – known only as Officer A – also had sexual relations with at least two of his female targets as a way of obtaining intelligence. So convincing was he in his covert role that he quickly rose to become branch secretary of a leading anti-racist organisation that was believed to be a front for Labour's Militant tendency. "My role was to provide intelligence about protests and demonstrations, particularly those that had the potential to become violent," he said. "In doing so, the campaigns I was associated with lost much of their effectiveness, a factor that ultimately hastened their demise." His deployment, which lasted from 1993 to 1997, ended amid fears that his presence and role within groups protesting about black deaths in police custody and bungled investigations into racist murders would be revealed during the public inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the death of south London teenager Stephen Lawrence. His decision to tell his story to the Observer provides the most detailed account of the shadowy and controversial police unit that has provided intelligence from within political and protest movements for more than four decades. He believes the public should be able to make an informed decision about whether such covert activities are necessary, given their potential to curtail legitimate protest movements. Officer A – with a long ponytail, angry persona and willingness to be educated in the finer points of Trotskyist ideology – was never suspected by those he befriended of being a member of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit within Special Branch, whose job is to prevent violent public disorder on the streets of the capital. Known as the "hairies" due to the fact that its members do not have to abide by usual police regulations about their appearance, the unit consists of 10 full-time undercover operatives who are given new identities, and provided with flats, vehicles and "cover" jobs while working in the field for up to five years at a time. The unit has been credited with preventing bloodshed on numerous occasions by using intelligence to pre-empt potentially violent situations. Unlike regular undercover officers, members of the SDS do not have to gather evidence with a view to prosecuting their targets. This enables them to witness and even engage in criminal activity without fear of disciplinary action or compromising a subsequent court case. Officer A joined the SDS in 1993 after two years in Special Branch. It was a time of heightened tension between the extreme left and right and almost every weekend saw clashes between the likes of the Anti-Nazi League, Youth Against Racism, the British National party and the National Front. The SDS is believed to have infiltrated all such organisations. During Officer A's time undercover, all 10 covert SDS operatives would meet to share intelligence about forthcoming demonstrations. The information was used to plan police responses to counter the threat of the demonstration getting out of control. A key success for Officer A came just two weeks into his deployment during a demonstration against the BNP-run bookshop in Welling, south-east London. His intelligence revealed that the protest was to be far larger than thought and that a particularly violent faction was planning to storm the bookshop and set fire to it. As a result of intelligence provided by Officer A, police leave was cancelled for that weekend and, despite violent clashes, the operation was deemed to be a success for the Met. The then commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, met the members of the SDS to thank them.
Blair courts controversial US pastor
Former prime minister builds network of Christian allies as he prepares to launch a religious 'offensive' in North America Tony Blair is preparing to launch a "faith offensive" across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations. With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair's focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star. According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive – and, in at least one case, controversial – set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard. The foundation's advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the "15 world leaders who matter most" and one of the "100 most influential people in the world". His influence was confirmed in December 2008 when Barack Obama chose him to give the invocation at his presidential inauguration. But the decision angered many liberals, who see Warren as an opponent of gay rights and abortion on demand; a prominent alliance with Warren is likely to attract similar attacks on the former British prime minister. Also on the council is David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), a Virginia-based network of churches that spans the globe and is particularly active in the US. Another initiative has been to team up with the Belinda Stronach Foundation in Toronto. Unknown in the UK, Stronach, daughter of a Canadian billionaire, is hugely influential in Canada where as a philanthropist, businesswoman and former politician she has served in both the Conservative and Liberal parties. Attractive and barely into her 40s, media commentators have dubbed her "bubba's blonde", a reference to her friendship with Bill Clinton. According to the accounts, Blair intends to open an office in Toronto to develop the relationship. His desire for North America to be the focus of his faith-based operations was confirmed by the decision to hold his foundation's inaugural event in May 2008 in New York, for the "charity's key partners and religious stakeholders". The accounts also shine a light on the close connections the foundation now enjoys with major political institutions in the US. "With the Washington-based Centre for Interfaith Action, the foundation supported a meeting of major international organisations active in faith-based approaches to combating malaria (plus the White House, World Bank, UN, World Health Organisation) to co-ordinate international efforts," the accounts state. That Blair, a charismatic politician driven by faith, should be at home across the Atlantic is no surprise to political analysts. "He comes across as confident and persuasive," said Professor Shawn Bowler, of the University of California at Riverside. "He does not talk like a modern robo-candidate in the way so many US political figures do." Unlike in the UK, Blair's religious fervour is seen as a strength. "Blair is very open about his faith and that plays a lot better in the US than in Britain," Bowler said. But the overtly religious dimension has drawn criticism. "The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is a fundamentally flawed concept," said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "If religion is constantly at the fore, then the old suspicions and hatreds will continue to fester." Other North American faith-based initiatives endorsed by the foundation include the New York-based Global Nomads Group, which brings together young people through video conferences "to discuss the global issues that affect their lives", and the Faiths Act Fellowship, which selects "30 young leaders aged 18-25, drawn from the different faiths from the US, UK and Canada, to embark on a 10-month journey of interfaith service". Blair's status is such that he is now called on to sprinkle stardust at religious gatherings, such as a speech he delivered at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Even his autobiography, The Journey, for which he was paid a £4.6m advance, appears to be aimed at the US market. "Tony Blair is an extremely popular figure in North America," said Sonny Mehta, his publisher. "His memoir is refreshing, both for its candour and vivid portrayal of political life." So embedded is he that Blair regularly crops up in Washington society diaries. Last September, the former Republican vice-president, Dick Cheney, was dining in the same restaurant. Blair got top billing in the gossip columns.
Broadway shocked by racism claims
The New Yorker's theatre critic has divided US theatregoers with a furious assault on Irish writer Martin McDonagh's hit new play Controversial playwright Martin McDonagh is used to creating headlines in Britain and Ireland with his dark tales laced with black humour and flowing with stage blood. So his attempt to crack the American market with his first play set in the US has caused an understandable stir on Broadway, where Christopher Walken has been persuaded to play the lead role. But trying out an American setting as opposed to an Irish one is proving a challenging exercise. The play, A Behanding in Spokane, has a typically bleak and violent McDonagh premise: an ageing killer, played by Walken, is looking for a severed hand that he lost many years ago, then he meets a couple of con artists in a dingy hotel room who tell him they have the precious appendage. Some reviewers have judged that McDonagh – whose other plays include The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman and who also directed and wrote the hit film In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell – fails to understand the American psyche as well as he does that of his fellow Irishmen. "He seems to have lost his hitherto unerring sense of direction in the busy, open country of the United States," wrote Ben Brantley in the New York Times. USA Today called it: "...hardly McDonagh's most fully realised effort". Then there was the New Yorker. In an extraordinary and withering review, the magazine's theatre critic, Hilton Als, laid into the play for being overtly racist. "I don't know a single self-respecting black actor who wouldn't feel shame and fury while sitting through Martin McDonagh's new play," began Als's review, which is probably one of the most negative pieces of theatre criticism produced by the magazine in recent years. Als, who is black, took umbrage at the play's use of racist insults by Walken's character, who is openly and proudly prejudiced. "A Behanding… isn't in the least palatable; it's vile, particularly in its repeated use of the word 'nigger'," Als wrote. He then went on to compare the play's lone black role, Toby – played by Anthony Mackie, the star of The Hurt Locker, to the racist caricatures of black Americans that populated American cinema in the 1920s and 1930s. "The caricature he [McDonagh] presents in Toby, the young black male, as a shucking, jiving thief can't be excused," he wrote, before lamenting that he believed that Mackie and other black actors have to take such roles in order to get higher-profile work. "The sad fact is that, in order to cross over, most black actors of Mackie's generation must act black before they're allowed to act human," Als wrote. Als appears to be the only major critic who reacted to the play's racial themes so viscerally. Few other reviews paid its use of racist language much attention, instead focusing on Walken's performance, which has been widely praised amid early whispers of Tony awards. But Als's remarks certainly hit home with the play's British producer, Robert Fox. "It was absolutely vindictive. Although Hilton Als's comments are meaningless in the scheme of things, because the show is doing very well, I think his remarks were entirely inappropriate and irresponsible," Fox told the Observer. Fox said he thought Als's criticism was in itself an injection of racism where none was merited. "It was racist in that it was racially intolerant to write those things. He doesn't identify himself [in the review] as a black writer. I think it is extraordinary. I know people who have written to the New Yorker about it already. It is completely out of order," Fox said. Als did not reply to emails or an interview request from the Observer. Nor did the theatre or Mackie have an official reaction. "We have no comment, nor does Anthony Mackie," said a spokeswoman for the production. Some Broadway experts, however, agreed that, while the work does contain racially provocative material, it is unlikely to cause widespread offence, especially with audiences there to see Walken. "I can understand why an African-American may approach the play with a little reticence, but I don't think that is McDonagh's intent," said Dan Bacalzo, managing editor of Theatremania, a top New York theatre website. Bacalzo defended McDonagh's right to put racist language in the mouths of one of his characters as he tries to take on American themes. "For Americans race is more important than class, so the material is appropriate for him to tackle when dealing with America," he added.
Recovery yields Darling £12bn budget windfall
Chancellor will cite state investment in jobs as key to lower-than-expected unemployment Alistair Darling will claim next week that government action to protect jobs has saved around £12bn, as Labour uses the pre-election budget to spell out key economic dividing lines with the Tories. In what is expected to be the most political budget in decades, the chancellor will cite government investment in jobs programmes as a major reason why unemployment has turned out to be dramatically lower than economists predicted. Last year's budget anticipated that the level of unemployment, based on National Audit Office assessments of independent forecasts, would be 2.09 million people in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.44 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. By December's pre-budget report (PBR), however, the government had revised the forecasts to 1.72 million for 2009 and 1.91 million for 2010, saying that this would save up to £10bn over five years from lower unemployment benefits alone. Since then, the Observer has established that Darling's officials have cut the forecasts still further. The latest projections for unemployment are for it to hit 1.72 million in the final quarter of this year and 1.75 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 – a further 200,000 lower than in the PBR plans, potentially freeing up an extra £1bn-£2bn. The work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: "In the 80s and 90s unemployment continued to rise even after the recession ended, because the government failed to put the necessary support and training in place and keep it there as the economy returned to growth." She claimed that the Conservatives would cut back investment in jobs programmes and "put the economy at risk, even though the clear evidence shows helping people back to work saves money for the future too". This week Cooper is expected to announce that the government will subsidise another 7,000 jobs for young people, bringing the total created under the Future Jobs Fund to 117,000. The funding will pay for work at the national minimum wage, targeted at under-25s and people living in unemployment hotspots. Last night Treasury sources insisted that most of the windfall savings from lower-than-expected unemployment would be used to cut the deficit, rather than for pre-election giveaways. Darling believes the budget could spark a sell-off in government markets unless he stands by his pledge to halve the deficit within four years. Ministers believe that they have a credible plan to put the public finances back in order, through targeted investment in the economy, which they say will speed progress towards sustained growth; the introduction of tax rises such as the 50p rate for top earners (from this April) and national insurance rises from next April; and efficiency savings across government. But Darling is not expected to spell out any more details of specific departmental spending cuts so close to polling day.
NHS 'neglects' parents of sick children
Top doctor accuses hospitals of failing to provide beds for families, who end up exhausted, stressed and depressed The NHS is adding to the suffering of parents with a child in hospital by not giving them somewhere to sleep, the UK's top children's doctor has warned. Far too few hospitals provide parents with accommodation so they can stay beside their ill son or daughter, Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, told the Observer. He said it was "not good enough" that some parents have to sleep on a pulldown bed or an unused patient's bed, sometimes for weeks or even months, in order to keep a vigil by their child. Some end up exhausted and reduced to tears by sleep deprivation and the lack of privacy, he added. He accused the NHS of neglecting the needs of people who deserved a better deal for playing a key role in their child's recovery. "Every week, hundreds of pre-term babies are born and thousands of children end up in hospital with a broken limb, cancer or cystic fibrosis. But there aren't enough family accommodation facilities across the NHS and the situation is not good enough. In my experience, the majority of parents who are in hospital overnight are on a Zedbed beside their sick baby or child," he said. "They will be woken frequently throughout the night when other children are admitted, or the ward buzzer sounds, or the lights go on and off. They will often become exhausted. Parents can't be expected to sleep on a put-you-up bed for weeks on end," he added. "This is a major issue, as more than 40 hospitals are looking to a charity to provide what we as a college regard as an essential service. But there are over 250 children's inpatient services across the NHS and provision is far short of what's required. We believe that, whenever children are admitted to hospital, their parents or carers should be able to stay with them. The NHS is trying as hard as it can, but it can do a lot better," Stephenson said. He wants every parent whose child has more than a short stay to be offered a private room with washing and cooking facilities. Stephenson praised the role played by Ronald McDonald House Charities, which is backed by the McDonald's fast-food chain. It houses more than 400 parents or families every night in its network of 14 houses and 29 sets of family rooms at 43 hospitals across the UK. Action for Sick Children welcomed Stephen son's remarks. Some hospitals do provide good parents' facilities, said the charity's Jo Waterson. For example, the new Manchester Children's Hospital has a pulldown bed beside each bed and in each patient's room. But while more hospitals are addressing the problem, it is still a recurring complaint from parents, she said. The shortage of parental rooms is most acute in neonatal wards. Over 1,000 premature babies are born every week. A neonatal ward containing 25 babies may have just four rooms for mothers and fathers, he said. Emma Pugh's son, Tom, now two-and-a-half, weighed just 1lb 2oz when he was born at 23 weeks in her local hospital in Hereford. He was treated in the special care unit at Birmingham Women's Hospital, 70 miles away, where there were no overnight parental facilities. Pugh said: "It meant three-to -four-hour, 140-mile round trips for me, Gary and our three-year-old, Nancy, which was horrendous. I did that journey every day for three months. Having to leave Tom, especially on days when things weren't going well – he was given a less than 10% chance of survival – was gutting. That lack of parental accommodation at the hospital added to our stress, cost us £150-£170 a week in fuel, made our life even more difficult than it already was and, crucially, took away time with Tom." Andy Cole, chief executive of the sick and premature baby charity, Bliss, said: "Around 50% of special care baby units do not provide accommodation for parents. Families are already facing an extremely traumatic and stressful time. To be faced with not being able to stay with or even be near their baby is inconceivable." A department of health spokeswoman said that the department's National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services stresses that the NHS and parents are partners in looking after children receiving treatment. She said: "It also recommends that hospital care of children and young people should be provided in buildings that… cater for parents and siblings, with suitable provision for overnight stay. These must include access to meals and relaxation, and must respect parents' privacy." She added that it was for the NHS locally to decide how such facilities are provided and to what level.
Ethiopian envoy joins Geldof-BBC spat
Ethiopian ambassador says the BBC World Service has endangered its credibility with claims that western aid money was diverted to buy weapons The row between Bob Geldof and the BBC escalated into a diplomatic dispute yesterday as the Ethiopian ambassador called for an apology from the World Service after it reported claims that aid money meant for famine victims had been spent on weapons. Peter Horrocks, director of the World Service, has said he fully supports the report, which featured one former Ethiopian rebel saying 95% of the money that flowed into famine-hit Tigray in 1985 was spent by the TPLF militia on guns. A second man claimed that the TPLF (Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, now the ruling party of prime minister Meles Zenawi) had made a fortune selling sand disguised as grain to the aid agencies. Live Aid founder Geldof and other leading charities have also demanded that the BBC retract the claims and have called for its reporter, Martin Plaut, to be fired. Now ambassador Berhanu Kebede has told the Observer that he expects a full apology from the BBC, which has "destroyed its credibility in Africa". "Frankly, it's a ridiculous report. They have not looked at this person they interviewed, who had left the TPLF before 1985. Anyone knows that a liberation movement depends on the support of the people to win. How could they starve their people or snatch bread from their mouths? "To question the integrity of organisations like Band Aid, the Red Cross, Christian Aid, it is laughable. If the BBC want to investigate something from 25 years ago, they should have talked to a lot more people who were there. "In Ethiopia, people on both sides laugh at this idea. They know it would have been a suicide mission to divert the aid money and let people starve; it makes no sense and it is unacceptable. For the BBC's own credibility, it has to apologise for this disgrace." Horrocks is to have a meeting with the aid agency heads this week, and has said it was absolutely in the public interest to examine the claims being made.
EMI looks to Katy Perry to stop the rot
Billions of pounds of debt, the internet and piracy are crippling one of Britain's most iconic firms It is a tale of sex, debt and rock'n'roll that is unlikely to have a happy ending. When Guy Hands, a City financier with a penchant for fast food and an insatiable appetite for deal-making, came up with a plan to buy EMI, Britain's flagship music company, using billions of pounds of borrowed money, many wondered how he could possibly make a decent return on his investment. As it has turned out, he couldn't. This weekend EMI's new chairman Charles Allen, the former ITV chief executive hired by Hands last week to run the music arm of the company, is battling to ensure its independence, assembling a rescue plan for the company that signed the Beatles and became synonymous with the golden age of British pop. Sources close to the company say Allen, a former accountant whose eclectic musical tastes encompass Lily Allen and Edith Piaf, is "rolling up his sleeves" and working to ensure the company does not breach the terms of its bank loans, but there is no doubt EMI is in peril. "It is a very, very big moment," according to Claire Enders, founder of media consultancy Enders Analysis. "The next two or three months are critical for the future of EMI." Allen's predecessor, Elio Leoni-Sceti, left suddenly last week just as the final touches were being put on a rescue package, prompting fears over the company's future. The business is effectively being propped up by its past, surviving on the revenues generated by artists signed during a 30-year period when British music dominated the world. The list of talent on EMI's books reads like a roll call of rock royalty: David Bowie, Queen, Lennon and McCartney, the Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd. As an incubator of home-grown musical talent, the company is without equal and its position as one of the "big four" global record labels is a source of national pride; it exists to make money but EMI also safeguards the country's status as a place where music that matters is made. If EMI disappears or falls into foreign hands, many music industry figures worry that future generations of British acts may find it more difficult to find a worldwide audience. Jazz Summers, who manages former Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft, who is signed to EMI, said: "If you look at their track record, they have broken more British acts in America than anyone else, and the same is true in other countries." EMI is in crisis because it is burdened with what sources close to the company describe as a "ludicrous" amount of debt, racked up after it was bought in 2007 by Hands's private equity company Terra Firma. EMI Music currently has three artists in the top 15 of the album chart for the first time this century, including Blur vocalist Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, and it is on course to make a profit of £200m this year, but a staggering three quarters of that will go on interest payments. Hands borrowed heavily to fund the deal, using money provided by Terra Firma's investors, and EMI's valuable back catalogue, as collateral, but even then some questioned whether he was right to pay the amount he did for a business that was struggling to come to terms with downloads and a dramatic decline in physical music sales. The industry has lost between 30% and 50% of its revenues in the last five years, but the irony is that EMI is currently outperforming its peers, which include Sony BMG and Warner Music. It had the biggest-selling album of 2008, Coldplay's Viva La Vida, and reissued the Beatles digitally remastered back catalogue last year. Acts including Lily Allen and Katy Perry are selling well, but the way the company is structured means it cannot trade its way out of trouble. Before the credit crunch, loans could be refinanced cheaply, but now EMI is struggling to meet its debt repayments in the wake of the severe economic downturn. It has been forced to cut costs dramatically, laying off close to 20% of its workforce. The company is now worth £450m, around a tenth of what Hands paid for it. Some big acts, including Radiohead, have already left, muttering that the money men simply didn't understand the music business. Last week one of EMI's biggest-selling groups, Pink Floyd, won a court action preventing the company from making tracks from their 1970s album Dark Side of the Moon available to download individually. That was widely portrayed as a victory for artistic integrity – the group want their masterpiece to be consumed from start to finish, as they originally intended – but it also illustrates the challenges the music industry faces in an era of huge upheaval, when illegal downloading is costing it dear and making money from talent discovered and developed at huge cost is more difficult than ever. If Allen cannot persuade Terra Firma's investors to stump up another £120m, EMI will be in breach of its loan terms, and its main creditor – US bank Citigroup – could seize control of the company. If it does so, Citigroup is likely to sell it to Warner Music, an American rival which was outbid by Hands for EMI three years ago. The situation is complicated by Terra Firma's decision to sue Citigroup in New York, accusing it of forcing EMI towards administration so it can take possession of the company and make a profit from a quick sale, allegations that the bank denies. Hands is a larger-than-life tax exile, a hero in the Square Mile whose reputation has been badly tarnished by the EMI debacle. He now concedes he overpaid for EMI, but his miscalculation means he could be about to hand a much-loved cultural institution into the keeping of the Americans. At the end of last year Cadbury's city shareholders agreed to sell the nation's favourite chocolate company to Illinois-based Kraft. The prospect of another household name passing into foreign ownership, particularly a national champion in one of the few industries in which Britain still excels, is an unsettling one. One senior music industry executive explained: "For British music, the fact that there was a very successful British company to sign for was hugely significant." However, others say the temptation to indulge in flag-waving should be resisted. Enders said: "Britain is one of the places people come looking for talent and that won't change. There are a lot of players in the market and advances paid to acts such as Florence and The Machine have gone up." If EMI does fall into the hands of an American rival, she added, it might ultimately safeguard its future. "It would be better for EMI to have less indebtedness. It will have much more firepower." EMI could survive. It is still lining up the sale of some prized assets. It was reported last month that the Abbey Road studios in London could be sold off. The company later insisted the studios should stay under its ownership and was working with "third parties" about funding a "revitalisation project". Raising the possibility that a part of the nation's cultural heritage could be sold provides a graphic reminder of how the company's huge debt is forcing it to make unpopular decisions. It may not matter if British acts are no longer championed by a UK company as long as the country continues to produce talent and A&R men from overseas arrive here in search of the next Lily Allen or Amy Winehouse. "In the end the music business is the same as it ever was," Enders said. "It's about hits."
Brits 'least likely to suffer from food sensitivity'
Study finds US, Germany, Italy and Norway have more problems with foods such as apples, peaches, shrimp and wheat British people are some of the least likely in the western world to suffer from food sensitivity reactions. This is the conclusion of a study of more than 4,500 adults from 13 countries carried out by Imperial College London. The study found that nations varied in the rate of individuals who reacted to at least one food. At the top end of the spectrum, about 25% of people in Portland, Oregon, in the US, displayed food sensitivity reactions, compared with 11% in Iceland and Spain. Britain and France were next at 14%. For the study, published in the journal Allergy, the researchers tested participants' blood for antibodies against a range of foods. This gauges food sensitivity, which refers to an immune system response to a food's proteins. Not everyone who is sensitive to a food displays symptoms of a clinical allergy, such as wheezing, swelling or digestive problems. Results from the study revealed that, along with the US, Germany, Italy and Norway had the highest prevalence of food sensitivity, with about 22% of people from each country showing antibodies against some type of food. However, the researchers also discovered that countries tended to have similar specific foods that triggered reactions. Hazelnuts, peaches, shrimp, wheat and apples emerged as the most common. At the other end of the spectrum, fish, eggs and cow's milk – normally viewed as the foodstuffs most like to trigger allergic reactions – turned out to be least common causes of sensitivity. Those patterns were fairly consistent across countries – more consistent than would be expected by chance, according to the researchers, led by Dr Peter Burney of Imperial College London. Across countries, less than 1% of people had sensitivities to fish, eggs or milk while 7% of people had sensitivity to hazelnuts. The next most common causes of sensitivity were peaches, shrimp and wheat, which each affected about 5% of people across countries.
Books podcast: Sara Paretsky
In this week's podcast we plumb the murky depths of crime fiction. The Guardian's thriller reviewer, John O'Connell, explains the genre's lofty origins, and Belinda Bauer, whose debut novel, Blacklands, started life as a family drama, explains why her accidental foray into the field has turned her into a crime convert. And Claire Armitstead talks to Sara Paretsky, one of the grandes dames of crime literature, about the latest outing of her feisty female detective, VI Warshawski, in her new novel, Hardball. We also hear Ruth Fainlight, one of the writers who contributed to this week's Guardian Review feature on the poetry of ageing, reading her poem on the subject. Reading list Hardball by Sara Paretsky (Hodder & Stoughton)
Blacklands by Belinda Bauer (Corgi)
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (Pan)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (Penguin Classics)
Fatherland by Robert Harris (Arrow)
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers (New English Library)
24 hours in pictures
A selection of the best images from around the world
Music Weekly: The Knife
In this week's show, we examine the Knife's new Charles Darwin-inspired opera, Tomorrow, in a Year, with Olof Dreijer. Be warned, his voice is distorted, but we do have Planningtorock (Janine Rostron) on hand to speak (in a normal voice) about collaborating with Sweden's most talented siblings on the unlikeliest of projects. Alexis and Rosie are joined by Film & Music editor Michael Hann for Singles Club, in which they discuss new music from Joanna Newsom, Avi Buffalo and Goldfrapp. And the Feature With No Name returns, with Michael and Alexis discussing 70s proto-punk band Rocket from the Tombs. As always we're keen to hear your thoughts, especially on all the music featured and our glitzy new FWNN. You can friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter by searching MusicWeeklyPod. Until next week, enjoy!
Guardian Daily: High-speed rail plans
The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, has published £30bn plans for a 250mph rail link between London and Birmingham. The proposals, which would revolutionise Britain's rail network, are subject to parliamentary approval and public consultation. Work is not due to begin on the route until 2017, with the first stage expected to take 10 years to complete. After that, the government intends to extend the high-speed track to northern England and Scotland. Peter Walker hears the views of the people of Wendover in the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty that the new rail route would pass through. The transport historian Christian Wolmar says the key question is whether the high-speed rail plans would increase capacity on Britain's railways. The Guardian columnist Julian Glover says the plan will bring economic benefits to the whole country, while the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, Norman Baker, believes the consultation process will allow members of the public to be heard, and for their views to be given due consideration.
James Richardson's newspaper review
Eyes down and sponge cakes at the ready as James leafs through the backpages to bring you the European football news
Chelsea go top after comfortable win
Three days before the man himself returns to Stamford Bridge, Chelsea put on a performance that was classic Mourinho. There was no great need to exert themselves and, against a pedestrian West Ham side, they plucked the three points necessary to regain position at the top of the Premier League table. They were even able to tweak their goal difference without sweating too much. No need to tell Carlo Ancelotti, but you-know-who would have been proud. Not that José Mourinho can afford to be quite so thrilled about his current charges because Internazionale lost 3-1 at Catania last night, are shedding an increasing number of players to injury and suspension, and have actually won fewer league games than West Ham in recent weeks. Ancelotti has the air of a man feeling calm before the storm. With the exception of Florent Malouda, whose contribution shone in terms of vigour and finesse, Chelsea were a couple of gears below the levels they will require against Inter in the Champions League on Tuesday night. Not that there will be any complaints about a comfortable win after a month that threw up domestic defeats by Everton and Manchester City. "It was important to have a reaction and we have come back in the right way," Ancelotti pointed out. "We want to maintain our determination and concentration now because every game can decide our future." It was a calm afternoon for Ross Turnbull, the third-choice goalkeeper who is almost certain to play against Inter in what will be only his fourth appearance for Chelsea. If Ancelotti was hoping for the reserve's understudy to get his eye in and warm up his gloves before the spotlight intensifies, the truth was, it wasn't until stoppage time that he pulled off a genuine save, parrying well from Radoslav Kovac. Mind you, much of his underemployment was down to West Ham, who scored a spectacular goal Turnbull could not get near to, but, otherwise, fluffed their lines. Araújo Ilan ought to have given them the lead in the 12th minute, but the Brazilian blazed a rasping shot over the crossbar. Three minutes later, Chelsea were in front. Malouda picked out Alex with a fizzing cross and the centre-half hung high in the air to thump in a header from close range. Chelsea had barely stopped celebrating when they were pummelling Robert Green's goal again. Matthew Upson's touch was panicked and he had his keeper to thank for preventing an own goal. West Ham's response was as enthralling as you could expect from a team whose attacking focal point, Mido, strained to break into a walking pace. So it came as a shuddering thunderbolt when Scott Parker gathered possession in midfield and belted the ball with beautiful ferocity and dip into the top corner from 25 yards out. The equaliser crowned an energetic display by the ex-Chelsea man, who last scored in the Premier League more than a year ago. Ten minutes after half-time, Chelsea profited from an incisive break sparked by a bullish run by John Terry and helped on by a touch from their best player, Malouda. The Frenchman's cross again laid it on a plate for a team-mate and Didier Drogba was the grateful recipient, nodding in from close range. Gianfranco Zola was disappointed with the strategic mistakes made when his players got drawn out of position because of Terry's run. "That goal was a big blow," he said. "We lost our shape. But Chelsea really punish you when you make mistakes." Malouda scored the goal his performance deserved in the 75th minute, with a fine strike, sidestepping his marker before drilling past Green. Ancelotti enthused that it was as good a game as he has seen the winger produce. Drogba was not bad, either, and snaffled Chelsea's fourth in the last minute of the match, capitalising on a loose touch from the West Ham keeper. Zola believes Chelsea have the edge for their tussle with Inter. "It will be tough because they are playing against a good side and a manager who knows Chelsea well and will be preparing counter measures. It will be very close, but I give a very small advantage to Chelsea." THE FANS' PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICTTRIZIA FIORELLINO, Chelsea Supporters Group It was a good result, but a poor performance – it was just as well West Ham were so bad because we were not on top of our game. There were a few good individual performances: Malouda was excellent, Alex played really well and Turnbull put in a competent display. But Drogba didn't do much and got two goals – that tells the story. It's difficult to be too happy because I get the impression they don't want the league enough – they're so set on the Champions League they don't put enough in to league games. You can get way with that with West Ham, but we must get our heads right before we go to Manchester United. RATINGS Turnbull 8; Ivanovic 8 (Zhirkov 79 7), Alex 8, Terry 8, Ferreira 7; Mikel 6; Ballack 6, Lampard 6, Malouda 9 (Kalou 86 7); Anelka 8 (J Cole 65 7); Drogba 7 TIM CONLAN, Observer reader It was quite a good game, but we set out our stall by playing practically a reserve team. Sticking Mido and Ilan up front was a fairly negative tactic, but, ironically, we did compete very well and Ilan should have scored before they did. But Malouda ran Spector ragged – he gives opponents too much room. I think 4-1 slightly flattered them, but their goalkeeper didn't really have a shot to save. Parker's goal was worth the admission money on its own. We all shouted: "Don't shoot!" because he normally hits the floodlights from that distance. Dyer had a start today and played 60 minutes, and he looked quite fresh. RATINGS Green 7; Spector 4, Gabbidon 6, Upson 6, Daprelà 7; Kovac 5, Parker 9, Behrami 6, Dyer 6 (Stanislas 67 n/a); Ilan 4 (Diamanti 83 n/a), Mido 5 (C Cole 67 n/a) TO TAKE PART IN THE FANS' VERDICT, SPORT@OBSERVER.CO.UK
Toil but no tries in Murrayfield tussle
Scotland 15-15 England Toil has come before turmoil for England since they won the World Cup seven years ago and all that can be said about this tepid, tryless stalemate from their perspective was that it was an improvement on their previous two visits to Murrayfield. They would have struggled to have been more abject than they were in 2006 and 2008, matches again in which the trylines remained uncrossed, but at least now they are trying to play rather than just being trying. Scotland also had a go, running from their own 22 after 11 minutes, but if the will was there, the commensurate ability was not and the result was a match that started quite brightly faded with the setting sun into the dark of ball-killing at the breakdown, scrum collapsing and weak refereeing. England played for all bar the first four minutes of the second half without Jonny Wilkinson, who was helped from the field after thumping his head into the ground having attempted to tackle Max Evans. The fly-half looked as fuddled as England's attacking strategy this season, and if his replacement, Toby Flood, brought a measure of order and organisation to a back division who had been too amorphous, Wilkinson was sorely missed at the end as England found themselves in a familiar position as the clock ticked down, rolling on in search of a three-pointer. Flood, who had kicked two penalties out of three after coming on, giving England the lead on both occasions, had a 45-metre penalty with two minutes left after the replacement hooker, Scott Lawson, had negligently scragged Danny Care, and his drop goal attempt in the final seconds was charged down by Nick de Luca. Lawson was relieved as Flood's kick landed on the padding of the left upright and on an afternoon when players were only too willing to test the tolerance threshold, which turned out to be far too high, of the referee, Marius Jonker, especially at the breakdown, his was the most crass of a series of mindless offences. Given the way the game started, with both sides trying to move the ball in their own half, an early yellow card for killing the ball at the breakdown might have served as the accelerant the game so desperately needed. Instead, Jonker contented himself with warnings. Steve Borthwick, as the England captain, received three after his players had killed the ball in a ruck and was ordered to listen in as Dylan Hartley received a lecture for throwing a punch at Ross Ford when the two front rows squared up after a scrum collapse. Jonker was as responsible as the two sides for the game lacking so much in lustre. If the first half of the season saw a glut of kicking out of hand because teams were afraid to take the ball into contact, with attacking teams targeted by officials at the breakdown, the target has now turned to defenders and teams can no longer use the referee as an excuse for a lack of enterprise. Equally, referees need to be harsher on players who wilfully kill the ball, although quite why the two sets of forwards saw the need to be so cynical with neither back division looking threatening took some explaining. Both sides deserved yellow cards, but England were the more obviously cynical because they had more defending to do. They adroitly shared the misdemeanours around, Lewis Moody escaping a card because his flop over the top had come only seconds after he had replaced James Haskell, but the cumulative effect was to slow the game down to a crawl. If neither coach was satisfied with a draw, Scotland's Andy Robinson looked more like breaking out in a grin than his opposite number, Martin Johnson, even though the draw meant his side will collect the wooden spoon unless they defeat Ireland in Dublin on Saturday. Yet for all their possession, Scotland threatened to score a try only when Dan Parks chipped to the line or cross-kicked. They struggled to create space with the ball in hand, but they are a more rounded team under Robinson. England did work more openings and had they opted for a more mobile back five would probably, well possibly, have taken at least one of their opportunities. Scotland regularly took play through eight, nine or 10 phases, while England struggled to go beyond four and again lost the turnover count, this time 5-0. Until they place more emphasis on pace in the back row, they will struggle to finish what they start. Johnson for once made early tactical substitutions. Wilkinson had only just gone off when Ben Foden came on for Delon Armitage, who had again looked indecisive. Within five minutes, England had a scrum-half on the wing when Ben Youngs replaced Ugo Monye, who suffered a clash of heads with Kelly Brown and was taken to hospital for an X-ray after leaving the field on a stretcher. England's few minutes of daring faded into familiar attrition. They had trailed 9-6 at the interval: Parks twice kicked penalties that were each equalised by Wilkinson before dropping a goal. Wilkinson's last act was to kick a penalty, but after Flood had twice given England the lead, Parks levelled the scores with two penalties and hit a post with two others. The woodwork saved England, but if only their attacking strategy would work.
How to dress: shirtdresses
They may look easy to wear, but don't be fooled Shirtdresses look seductively easy in shop windows. Not too feminine, not too androgynous; crisp and neat, but not overly formal. Don't be fooled. There is a huge gulf between what looks easy to wear and what is, in fact, easy to wear. Just ask anyone who has ever tried on a cotton T-shirt dress and immediately run screaming in the opposite direction from the mirror. It's a shape thing. Tailoring gives you angles, while soft fabrics emphasise your curves. Shirting fabric tends to fall between the two: not clingy enough to show the shape you have, and not structured enough to help nature on its way. It falls beautifully on a beanpole shape, which is why shirtdresses often look enticing on mannequins, but is less flattering on actual human beings. If you snoop, you will notice that in those shops that use more normally proportioned mannequins, a rear-view of a shirt dress often reveals a cluster of bulldog clips – a sure sign of a dress that is going to look rubbish when you try it on. Bulldog clips have made their catwalk debut recently, but are a tough look to pull off at the office. Instead, approach the shirtdress armed with a belt. (A proper belt, ideally, one that isn't in danger of disappearing into your flesh like the cottony tie in this picture.) Next, face the changing-room mirror bravely, but honestly. If you find yourself wanting to undo extra buttons at the neck, take the thing off. Call me a prude, but if you feel as if you have to show upper-breast flesh to make the point that you have a figure, the dress isn't working. • Jess wears shirt dress, £99, by Banana Republic. Shoes, £359.99, by Zara. Tights, Jess's own. Photograph: David Newby
Raymond Blanc: the joy of chocolate
The chef expounds on the very real passions aroused by good chocolate
Who really wrote Shakespeare?
Surely not that 'upstart crow' from Stratford? As James Shapiro's new book rehearses the loony arguments about our greatest playwright, we ask some of today's finest Shakespearean actors and directors their thoughts on the authorship question Five years ago, James Shapiro, an American academic teaching at Columbia university in New York took the international world of Shakespeare by storm with a brilliant idea, an intimate history of the playwright through the prism of a single year. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare was one of those books that seems so obvious it's amazing no one had thought of it before. Shapiro's chosen date was inspired: the annus mirabilis in which Shakespeare wrote Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar and As You Like It, back to back, and probably completed a first draft of Hamlet, not to mention revising several sonnets. When I reviewed the book I called it "an unforgettable illumination of a crucial moment in the life of our greatest writer". Then came the curse of the sequel. Word filtered back from the publishers that Shapiro's next book would pull the same trick with 1605/06, the year of Macbeth and King Lear. Seasons passed. Shakespeare's life continued to pop up on the bestseller lists, David Tennant's Hamlet came and went. Finally, in January, along came the first proof of Shapiro's new book. But no, it was not about 1605 or 1606. Entitled Contested Will, it bore a fatal subtitle, "Who Wrote Shakespeare?". Apparently, Professor Shapiro had gone over to the dark side, the blasted heath of the authorship question. Even in his own time, Shakespeare drove people mad with his modest Stratford origins. In 1592, rival dramatist Robert Greene made a deathbed attack on the "conceit" of the "upstart crow" from the provinces who considered himself "the onely Shake-scene". For Greene, and every subsequent Shakespeare conspiracy theorist, there was something enraging about the poet's genius. The explanation must be that Shakespeare was not original but an impostor "beautified with our feathers". Later generations went further. There was such an unbridgeable chasm between the complex brilliance of the plays and what they reveal about their author's education and experience, on the one hand, and the bare facts of Shakespeare's life, on the other, that a better explanation than "genius" had to be found. Unquestionably, said the "anti-Stratfordians", as they came to be known, the recorded life of the man called Shakespeare could not possibly yield the astonishing universality and dazzling invention of the canon. They had a point. All we know for certain is that Shaxpere, Shaxberd, or Shakespear, was born in Stratford in 1564, that he was an actor whose name is printed, with the names of his fellow actors, in the collected edition of his plays in 1623. We know that he married Anne Hathaway, and died in 1616, according to legend, on his birthday, St George's Day. The so-called "Stratfordian" case for Shakespeare rests on these, and a few other facts, but basically, that's it. Into this vacuum, a bizarre fraternity, including Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Sigmund Freud, have projected a "Shakespeare" written by a more obviously accomplished writer: Edward de Vere (the 17th earl of Oxford), Sir Francis Bacon and the playwright Christopher Marlowe, to name the leading contenders in a field that also includes Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne and even Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen herself. This is the delusional world that Shapiro has chosen to explore in Contested Will. He justifies his investigation with an assertion of scholarly daring – "this subject remains virtually taboo in academic circles" – and claims that his interest is less in what people think about the authorship question, more why they think it. "My attitude", he goes on, "derives from living in a world in which truth is too often seen as relative and in which mainstream media are committed to showing both sides of every story." In fairness to "mainstream media", even the most half-baked investigative journalism would swiftly dismiss the main contenders. Starting with Shakespeare's great rival, Christopher Marlowe, who happens to have been born in the same year, 1564. The case for Marlowe is a largely American farrago of wishful thinking and speculative fantasy that is typically paranoid and often downright phoney. The maddest of all the anti-Stratfordian plots, the idea was wittily sent up in Tom Stoppard's screenplay for Shakespeare in Love. For the hierophants of the Marlowe Society, however, their playwright was not murdered in a Deptford tavern after a row about "the reckoning" (the bill) but spirited away to France through court connections (Marlowe was a spy). There, for the next 20-odd years, he wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, smuggling them back to London through diplomatic channels. Only slightly less loopy is the theory that Francis Bacon is the true and secret hand behind the plays. The Baconians owe their ideas to the first of several conspiracy-minded Americans, a charismatic 19th-century bluestocking named Delia Bacon. Sir Francis Bacon had long been recognised as a Renaissance great: scientist, courtier, philosopher, jurist – and writer. On a conventional analysis, as Shapiro makes clear, just about the only thing at which he did not try his hand were plays or poems. That was no problem for Delia Bacon. A close reading of Julius Caesar, King Lear and Coriolanus, she declared, revealed the collective effort of a "little clique of disappointed and defeated politicians" fighting a desperate covert battle against the "despotism" of Elizabeth and James I. Delia Bacon was a formidable advocate for her namesake. Of course no one individual could possibly have written the plays attributed to Shakespeare. He was little better than a "pet horse-boy at Blackfriars", "an old showman and hawker of plays", an out-and-out "stupid, illiterate, third-rate play actor". The catchy vehemence of her arguments eventually got debated by two riverboat pilots on the Mississippi, one of whom, Samuel Clemens, would become the most famous writer in the United States, Mark Twain. But it was not until the very end of his career that the author of Huckleberry Finn returned to Bacon's theories. At a dinner at his house in January 1909, Twain's circle decided that it was possible to find the coded signature FRANCISCO BACONO in a sequence of letters from the First Folio. Those who are devoted to the belief that Edward de Vere is the real author of the canon have to swallow almost as much hocus pocus. Despite his inconveniently early death in 1604 – before Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest were written and/or staged – de Vere continues to fascinate the anti-Stratfordians for whom the plays are the surrogate autobiography of a secretive literary earl. This Oxford caucus derives a good deal of its confidence from the advocacy of Sigmund Freud. Possibly more embarrassing to the father of psychoanalysis, Freud's views are based on one book, "Shakespeare" Identified by John Thomas Looney, another American. Looney would probably have been forgotten but for the appearance in 1984 of Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality. As well as marshalling the best evidence for Oxford, Ogburn arranged for his "case" to be formally tried by three US Supreme Court justices in September 1987. This stunt, which awkwardly went against Ogburn, persuaded the New York Times to ventilate the question, "Who wrote William Shakespeare?" By the turn of the millennium, the anti-Stratfordian case was flying so high that Jim Jarmusch, director of Mystery Train was reported to have said: "I think it was Christopher Marlowe" who wrote Shakespeare's plays, a conclusion that no sensible person can sustain for a moment, as Shapiro amply demonstrates. So what possessed Shapiro to undertake this wild goose chase? The Observer decided to put "Who wrote Shakespeare?" to a cross-section of our greatest contemporary Shakespeare actors and directors to see if there was any support for Shapiro's quest. First, I wanted to know if the "anti-Stratfordian" case had any artistic credibility. As a corollary, I asked: did my interlocutors have a sense of an individual author? Who, from their experience, was Shakespeare? And finally, based on their intimate knowledge of the plays in performance, was there any particular passage in which, intuitively, they felt that Shakespeare, the famously invisible author, revealed himself? I concede, in advance of this investigation, that I have never seriously questioned Shakespeare's authorship of the plays attributed to his name. I go to Shakespeare in performance almost every month, and the authentic singularity of his vision rarely fails to move and impress. Still, that's an amateur view. What would the professionals say? My first meeting was with the former director of the Globe theatre, Mark Rylance, an actor who was once described by Al Pacino as playing Shakespeare "like Shakespeare wrote it for him the night before". Rylance, who wears two hats, actor and director, with Elizabethan ease, is a celebrated refusenik. He believes that the person he insists on calling "the Stratford man" was little more than a front for a powerful literary cabal that almost certainly included Bacon. "There is a genius at work in here somewhere", he says when we meet, "but it's not William Shakespeare. A lot of other people were gathered around those plays." Rylance finds a compelling logic in the Shakespeare conspiracy theories: "The nature of authorship was different then," he argues. Rylance is a fascinating case, a fine stage actor currently starring in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. On closer examination, his belief in the Bacon theory is an assertion of the value of theatrical collaboration, against the tyranny of a single artistic source. Rylance, who has the ideas and demeanour of a countercultural guru from the 70s, finds "the idea of the single genius at work here very damaging to the confidence of younger playwrights". Rylance says he wants "the Stratford man" to be admired as a theatrical wrangler, a kind of super producer. He is publicly supported by Sir Derek Jacobi, and even Vanessa Redgrave who, in her recent Bafta speech hinted at a sympathy with the "anti-Stratfordian" position. Generally, when you approach the Shakespeare question with most contemporary directors the American conspiracies melt into thin air. Adrian Noble, who ran the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1991 to 2002, declares that he is "a Stratfordian". Noble has recently published How To Do Shakespeare (Routledge, 2009), an insider's account based on his own intimate experience of Shakespeare in production. For Noble, there's no doubt about the single authorship of the plays. Shakespeare "creates a universe, inhabits it imaginatively, and it's unique", he says, sitting front of house at the Bankside Globe. "His lines always stand out; they have a distinct authenticity." Shakespeare, adds Noble, "has this remarkable ear for the cadence of ordinary speech, for example in a character like the shepherd Corin in As You Like It, and you can always hear his mind working in the lines." Does he recognise the character of the author? "I have an overwhelming sense of the man," he says. "And I believe he was a drinker." More seriously, A Midsummer Night's Dream "tells us he was stage-struck with wonder at the make-believe of the theatre". There's also "his humanity" – a word that crops up a lot in conversations about Shakespeare. Talking about the man, Noble struggles momentarily and then comes up with a formula for an explanation of the mystery that will recur in my later conversations. "It's like Mozart," he says, citing the other most celebrated example of inexplicable, even divine, genius. Confronted with the mystery of Shakespeare's extraordinary gifts, Noble has no time for the anti-Stratfordians. The idea that Bacon or some cabal wrote the plays is, on the basis of his experience, "utter nonsense. We know more than we think about Shakespeare. The more I work on him, the clearer his work becomes." Deborah Warner also derives her sense of Shakespeare the man from the texts. She has directed Shakespeare's valedictory play The Tempest three times, and always finds "an overwhelming sense of an author". She goes on: "It becomes very hard to imagine the plays were not written by one man." She detects in the Duke's harsh treatment of Lucio in Measure for Measure a glimpse of Shakespeare's loathing for treacherous duplicity and backstabbing. Summarising the playwright's genius, Warner quotes Laurence Olivier that with Shakespeare we touch "the face of God". For her, there is no other playwright to rival him. Not Euripides; not Chekhov. "With Shakespeare you get a benign and tolerant celebration of the human. And he's universal. His plays flow through the world's imagination on a daily basis." Warner adds: "I feel myself changed by every reacquaintance with his work." Like her colleagues, she speaks warmly and personally about the man. " He is like a great associate director. You feel as though you are being shadowed." The ecstasy with which Warner expresses her love for the man and the work (she's certain he was bisexual) is echoed in her concluding thought: "What Shakespeare does – whoever he was – is make you proud to be human." Simon Russell Beale expresses his obsession – the word is hardly too strong – in a slightly different way. Sitting in a cluttered cubby hole at the National theatre, he is talking about his life and work as a Shakespearean actor, his experience of the great roles (Hamlet, Malvolio, Iago), and the playwright's fascination with masks and deception – Russell Beale has a strong sense of the writer behind the plays – when he breaks into an aside. "You know, it's rather embarrassing to admit this, but I was watching a documentary about the effect of global warming and the imminent destruction of the planet, and my first thought was: 'What will happen to Shakespeare?'" Shapiro would doubtless have some psychological explanation for this. He is primarily an academic for whom the "anti-Stratfordian" conspiracy theories have an abstract, theoretical appeal. But that's not an approach that finds much sympathy among acclaimed directors such as Peter Hall or Trevor Nunn, who both believe that it's impossible to overlook how deeply the playwright was a native of Warwickshire who never completely forgot his origins. Even the anti-Stratfordians must concede this point. Warwickshire words are scattered through his lines, like poppies in a wheat field. When, in Macbeth, Banquo is described as "blood bolter'd" (having his hair matted with blood), it is not difficult to imagine Shakespeare remembering that in Warwickshire snow is sometimes said to balter on horses' feet. Peter Hall, who founded and directed the RSC from 1960 to 1968, finds the playwright's Stratford roots essential to our understanding of the man. For Hall, there are two parts to any rebuttal of the anti-Stratfordians. First, the facts. "There's a surprising amount of evidence for the existence of Shakespeare the playwright." Second, there's what he calls "the aesthetic proof". Take any play, not just A Midsummer Night's Dream with its pastoral "bank, where the wild thyme grows", and you find it braided with country scenes, characters and imagery straight from Warwickshire. You cannot, says Hall, mistake "the sheer bloody Englishness of the whole thing". Here Hall cites the humanity, tolerance and nonjudgmental temper of Shakespeare's work. When we meet at the Rose theatre in Kingston-on-Thames, Hall who is pushing 80 but impressively vigorous, is basking in rave reviews for his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring Judi Dench, and is happy to acknowledge that he has directed "I think 32" plays from the canon. When I ask him, "Who wrote William Shakespeare?" he exclaims, "Oh please, come on! Francis Bacon could no more have written Shakespeare than he could fly." What was Shakespeare like? "I think he was very charming and quite withdrawn. He wouldn't offer much until he knew who he was dealing with. I'd say he was guarded." (In Shakespeare folklore, the poet is described as "not a company-keeper".) In Hall's mind, there is no question that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived. "He is so flexible, so ambiguous, and so consistently funny. And just when you think you've got him, he slips through your fingers. His sympathy for, and understanding of, the basic passions of mankind is extraordinary." Hall observes that critics go on about Shakespeare's dazzling wordplay but points out that he also instinctively understood when he couldn't use words. "There's a stage direction in Coriolanus, 'He holds her by the hand, silent' – which, by the way, is pure Pinter – which says it all." Summarising the attempt to pin the canon on a different donkey, he concludes with exasperation: "I'm afraid this speculation is just a terrible waste of time." Trevor Nunn, who also directed the fortunes of the RSC for many years, similarly compares Shakespeare conspiracy theories to "bonkers" American speculations about the Apollo moonshot, CIA involvement in 9/11 and the landing of aliens at Roswell, Texas. He launches into a passionate rebuttal, with reference to the First Folio of 1623, a volume compiled by actors who had actually performed with Shakespeare, containing a foreword by Ben Jonson. "Who is Ben Jonson?" challenges Nunn. "He is Shakespeare's great rival and a real talent. Garrulous, argumentative, jealous, proud, and deeply committed to exposing hypocrisy and corruption. Not a man to kowtow to nobility or privilege. What does he do? It's Jonson who coins "the Swan of Avon" (ie the declaration that the author of the First Folio is from Stratford), and it's Jonson who declares that he is "for all time" and then claims him as "MY Shakespeare". "Why on earth," Nunn continues, "would Jonson, who owes nothing to anyone, and who had competed with Shakespeare throughout his professional life, take part in a cover-up to help the Earl of Oxford from admitting that he had anything to do with the theatre?" This, says Nunn, is "game, set and match to Shakespeare". As an example of how impossible it is to imagine Bacon or Oxford writing the plays, he alludes to the brilliant detail, from the history plays, of the nuisance problem of fleas breeding in the corners of taverns where men have been pissing. Thus the conversation has come back to Shakespeare's provincial origins. Nunn repeats the story of the RSC actor who encountered two Warwickshire rustics trimming stakes in a hedge. "I rough hews them," said the first, "and he shapes their ends." So why the impulse to explain Shakespeare with heterodox fantasies? This, says Nunn, is a longstanding English problem: "To accept that someone from the lower orders, not formally educated at Oxford or Cambridge, could be a genius is very hard for us." And, of course, concedes Nunn, "there is a human appetite for mystery ... For myself, I don't feel the need to see him as a character, but I do feel the need to have a sense of him in the room, and I do have that. He adds: "Shakespeare– and this is his genius – always says: 'This is who we are'. He is the greatest humanist who ever lived. No one understands forgiveness like Shakespeare." There is no question for Nunn that he is "the greatest playwright the world has ever seen".
'I felt as if I was having a breakdown'
The singer-songwriter Kate Nash tells how she beat exhaustion, self-doubt and music industry sexism to return to the fray with her second album Asking Kate Nash a question is like winding up a motorised toy car and then letting it career around the room until it runs out of power. Her words come out in an unstoppable, breathless stream, punctuated by the occasional swear word and delivered in the soft cockney accent that is her trademark. When we meet in a pub in Hackney, east London, around the corner from her flat, she is gloriously opinionated and unselfconscious. Midway through a rant about how pornography has become increasingly mainstream, she tells me how she once picked up the Daily Sport in a newsagent's, just to see what it was like. "It was fucking porn!" she screeches, oblivious to the fact that everyone can hear her. "It was so gross I couldn't believe it was a paper and that kids could pick it up. It, like, had this totally naked woman with the tiniest stars over her fanny and nipples." The man on the next table, here for a quiet lunchtime pint, looks alarmed. Nash carries on regardless. "I would rather someone went out and bought hardcore porn rather than something that pretends not to be porn and it is." So she won't be posing semi-naked for a lads' mag any time soon? "Oh no," she says, looking down at her oversized Mickey Mouse T-shirt and black leggings. "Absolutely 100 per cent not." Yet we will shortly be seeing a lot more of Kate Nash. Next month the 22-year-old singer-songwriter releases her second album, the follow-up to Made of Bricks, which sold over 600,000 copies and featured her No2 hit "Foundations". Lines such as "You said I must eat so many lemons/ 'cause I am so bitter/ I said 'I'd rather be with your friends, mate 'cause they are much fitter'", earned her comparisons with Lily Allen, who blogged about the invidiousness of the situation. "Kate is a very talented songwriter and her music sounds nothing like mine," Allen insisted. "She exists in her own right!" Where Lily Allen failed, at the Brit Awards in 2007, when she was nominated in three categories but picked up none, Nash triumped. The following year she won best female artist, pipping Bat For Lashes, KT Tunstall, Leona Lewis and PJ Harvey. Soon Nash was touring the UK, America and Europe and appearing at festivals and on Later with Jools Holland where she introduced her mother to Paul McCartney. "It was so intense," Nash says now of that period. "It hit me like a smack in the face. I wasn't prepared for any of it." Nash had wanted to be an actress. The middle one of three sisters, she was born and raised in Harrow by her mother, a hospice nurse from Dublin, and her father, who works in computers. She won a place at the Brit School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon, south London (past students include Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, the Kooks and Adele), and studied there for two years before auditioning unsuccessfully for several drama colleges. Then she broke her foot falling down a flight of stairs at home. Frustrated by her enforced convalescence and rejected by drama school, Nash turned her attention to the songs she had been writing "as a hobby" since she was 15. She approached a pub in Harrow for a gig. "I got paid £30 and it was like, 'Hang on a minute. You can get paid doing this!'"Nash had been earning money as a waitress at Nandos and a shop assistant at River Island. "I rang up River Island and said 'There have been steps in the right direction with my career.'" She laughs, but it turned out to be accurate: Nash uploaded her tracks on to MySpace and within a few months had a record deal. Success came quickly, and Nash, still only 19, was ill-equipped to deal with it. The work schedule was relentless. At points, Nash says, "you feel you're kind of having a nervous breakdown". On a six-week tour of America in 2008 she remembers singing the same songs, night after night and finding it "hard to get nervous or excited about it. Then you'd feel guilty about that, you'd start hating yourself because you were worried you were a bad performer, and then there's all that self-doubt, and without realising it you become very insecure and very defensive. "I started drinking a lot, not in a serious way, but it doesn't keep you as healthy as you should be. I was so tired. I remember being on stage and seeing the first song on the set list and looking down, thinking 'I can't believe I've got to play all of those songs'. "I have this rule now that the only person who really cares about me is my mum," she continues, "because she has no stake in me whatsoever. You have to be cynical because this is a business. Everyone is making money out of you." Does she feel thatHas the music industry made her colder and tougher? "You just have to keep your guard [up], you have to know who to trust. You become very protective of yourself. I'm the only person who gives a fuck if I go mental." Was she worried she would go down the Amy Winehouse route of self-destruction? "I think everybody is," she replies, looking out wearily from beneath a thick fringe of red-brown hair. Nash was saved by "my friends, family and boyfriend. They kept me sane. Without them, I'd be someone else." Her mother has been a guiding influence. "She's a strong, practical, amazing woman and has brought me up with strong morals. As a nurse in a hospice, she has seen so many people die, and she helps them die with dignity. There's no time for bullshit in that situation." Tired of the bullshit in the music industry, Nash decided to take a year off. She learned to drive and play the drums. She left home and moved into her first flat with her boyfriend, Ryan Jarman from indie band the Cribs. She volunteered at a woman's shelter in Harrow called the Wish Centre and began a foundation to provide funding for struggling artists. She cooked, and bought a pet rabbit called Fluffy. Gradually, Nash rediscovered what she loved about music, listening to girl bands like Bikini Kill and the Shirelles – with the influence of both audible on her new single, "Do Wah Doo". She says a lot of the new album, My Best Friend Is You, produced by the former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, deals with female empowerment – one of her bugbears is the inappropriate sexualisation of young girls in modern society. "Young kids should be taught about sex but they shouldn't be taught to be sexy. It's really distasteful." What does she make of bands like the Pussycat Dolls, with their pre-teen fanbase and overtly sexual image? Nash rolls her eyes. "They're called Pussy. Cat. Dolls," she says with incredulous emphasis. "You don't need to say anything else really. It's encouraging sexualisation and sexuality in young kids, and I think that's a bit weird. When I was young I was listening to the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child. I was singing 'Independent Woman' and 'Survivor', and it was all about Girl Power and being with your friends. I don't think I was singing, 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'" An avowed feminist, Nash makes it a point of principle to work with female sound engineers and roadies wherever possible. "It's really important to be a strong role model. It's one of my main things because I feel I've been exposed in such an extreme way to a lot of sexism. I've become aware of being in a very male-dominated industry where a door opens and it's like, 'Oh hello, it's 12 men and me. Again.'" Nash finds it especially galling when people assume that, because she is a young woman, she does not write her own songs. "Or if I did write my own songs, [there's an assumption that] I definitely wouldn't have chosen what kind of amp to use," she says, her voice rising in tempo and volume as she gets more irritated. It makes me very defensive." The man on the next table looks suitably cowed. At least he now knows that Nash is capable of choosing her own amps, that she does not like the Pussycat Dolls and that if her new album has even a portion of the verve and strong-mindedness that she displays in person, it will be anything but boring. The new album My Best Friend Is You (Polydor) is out on 19 April
Tomorrow's world - as we saw it
The 137-year-old magazine has put all its back numbers online, including articles by Darwin, Pasteur – and predictions of orbiting space-hotels It has a list of authors that would make a publisher's eyes water and includes Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Louis Pasteur and Thomas Edison. They are all great scientists, and all writers who have put their names to articles that have appeared not in dry academic journals such as Nature but in Popular Science, a mass-market American guide to science, new inventions and wacky gadgets. This strange mixture has been newly revealed to British readers, because every issue of the 137-year old monthly magazine (now published in 30 languages in more than 40 countries) has just been made available through Google Books. Thus you can now log on and peer into the past and note not just the occasional article by distinguished scientists, or frequent features on the fledgling subject of personal computers, but observe how journalists predicted the shape of things to come: the monorail trains that would criss-cross the planet, the planes that would replace cars as our chosen means of personal transport, and of course, the obligatory space station and orbiting hotel that would be flying round the planet before the end of the 20th century. "Will space travel lengthen your life?" the magazine asked in 1957. This formula has proved startlingly successful: a mix of occasional erudition, large chunks of practical advice for techies and the odd splurge of scientific forecasting, all clearly written and imaginatively packaged. The magazine covers frequently invoke nostalgia for a time when we were more optimistic about science's bounty. Even so, this month's issue exemplifies the Popular Science mix perfectly: a guide to building earthquake-proof airports, a feature on transgenic, muscle-bound trout and the story of Per Segerbäck, the man who lives in a remote Swedish nature reserve – because he is allergic to electromagnetic radiation and an urban environment would kill him. Classic. See more at www.popsci.com
The future of Facebook
With 400 million users, will the social networking service end up eating itself? Is Facebook now "too big to fail"? I don't mean in the sense that the taxpayer would have to pick up the pieces if it went under, but in the sense that the social networking service has achieved a position of such dominance in the online ecosystem that its eclipse is unthinkable. Is Facebook, in other words, the next Microsoft or Google? The question is prompted by a couple of milestones recently passed by Facebook. The first is that it now has more than 400 million members. The second is industry gossip predicting that its revenues for 2010 will exceed a billion dollars. Other straws in the wind are estimates of the size of the "Facebook economy" – ie the ecosystem of applications, services and products that has evolved around the service; and the moral panics it now triggers in the mainstream media – a sure sign that they fear a competitor. In the real world, if an enterprise – a bank, say – becomes "too big to fail", then that's a failure of regulation because it means that normal competitive forces have been disabled. A capitalist economy can't function efficiently if enterprises are immune from the consequences of their mistakes. That's the "moral hazard" that the Governor of the Bank of England was so keen to avoid when the banking crisis first broke. In the online world, the pressure exerted by network effects – ie the way the value of a product or service increases in direct proportion to the number of people who use it — constantly threatens to produce winner-takes-all outcomes. It's one of the paradoxes of networking technology that the aggregation of billions of free choices made by millions of free agents can lead inexorably to the emergence of a single, monopolistic behemoth. We saw that with Microsoft's dominance in the operating systems and office software markets; we saw it again with Google's dominance of the market for search and query-based advertising. Are we now seeing it with Facebook in the social networking sphere? History suggests not. In the world of technology even giants can stumble – or fail. Once upon a time AOL was the reigning online behemoth. At its peak in the 1990s it had 30 million paying subscribers (which at the time was a significant proportion of the online population in the US and Europe) and thought itself big enough to take over Time Warner. There was even a schmaltzy movie – You've Got Mail – based around its email service. Now it's a business-school case study in hubris. AOL was also a study in corporate strategy from which the Facebook founders learned avidly. Initially they conceived of their service as an AOL-type "walled garden" – which implied trying to keep subscribers inside that controlled space. If one of your Facebook friends sent you a message then you had to be logged in to read it. When the irritations of that became apparent, the Facebook server began sending messages to your normal email account telling you that your friends had posted messages – but you still had to log in to read them. Now you can reply to the messages from inside your usual email system. By gradually breaching their walled garden, the Facebook founders have managed to avoid the fate of AOL – so far. Their boldest move was the launch of Facebook Connect – which allows external services like Twitter to interact directly with subscribers' Facebook accounts. What this means is that people can interact with their Facebook friends without being logged in to the site. This has triggered an avalanche of development as companies strive to cash in on the network effects of such a large subscriber base. The metamorphosis of Facebook into a platform on which other people do interesting stuff was not just a smart move; it was also a necessary one, because social "networking" is intrinsically self-limiting. If you have too few friends then people think you're a loser; but if you have too many, they think you're either a social slut or a self-publicist. As we know from the anthropologist Robin Dunbar – see My Bright Idea, page 26 – the cognitive capacity of the primate brain limits the size of the social network that an individual can develop. Last year a study by Facebook's in-house sociologist calculated that the average number of friends in a Facebook network is 120. And when it comes to real, intensive interaction, that number shrinks dramatically. It turns out that the average Facebook male interacts with only four people and the average female with six. So if Facebook is to continue to grow, then it needs something more than social networking to sustain it. We are, in the end, just naked apes. Becoming a platform will keep it going for the time being. But it won't make it too big to fail. If you doubt that, just ask AOL.
Kathryn's Oscar comes too late
Bigelow's prize makes little difference to Hollywood's basic sexist approach towards women A woman winning the Oscar for best directing is one of those cultural milestones that would pass better unremarked. Sadly, it didn't. "The moment has come!" chirruped Barbra Streisand, emoting harder than any of the actresses who were nominated that night. "It's Kathryn Bigelow!" Newspapers and magazines hurried to trumpet this historic landmark; I would have kept it quiet. The best-director Oscar going female might have been a moment worth celebrating if it had happened in 1974. But this is 2010. These were the 82nd annual academy awards. How embarrassing. It's hardly an indicator of social change. The rest of society has altered so radically since 1929 that it's no more than a random piece of pub-quiz trivia (for heaven's sake, elsewhere in America they have a female secretary of state and a mixed-race president), while Hollywood hasn't changed at all. Oscar or no Oscar, the crowd's main interest in Kathryn Bigelow was how marvellous she looks for 58. The film industry's idea of a great feminist breakthrough is to applaud the tits of women over 40 as well as under it. All week, the press has gurgled about the great bodies of the Oscar-cougars: photo spreads of Pfeiffer, Bullock and Streep, above text that essentially says, both incredulously and smugly: "You'd still do 'em, wouldn't you?" Even James McAvoy, introducing the nomination of Helen Mirren for best actress, focused his speech entirely on how "hot" he finds her. He must have imagined that this demonstrated a revolutionary political correctness because she's old enough to be his mother. No: it's just the usual reductionist nonsense, broadened upwards. The other "feminist celebration" of Bigelow seems to be that she beat her ex-husband James Cameron to the award. I say it's embarrassing that she ever married him in the first place. Look at their two films. The Hurt Locker versus Dances With Smurfs. How could that marriage ever have worked? But that's fine. That's Hollywood. A sparkly veneer of dismissive lust and gossip is what we expect and enjoy. Their mistake was drawing attention to how deep it runs. Why remind the world that it took 82 years for 50% of the human race to throw up someone who could make the best film, or be credited for it? That's just highlighting a matter of social awkwardness, like announcing you've farted. Better to let it out as quietly as possible, and hope nobody notices. When the chips are down Sorry not to write a column last week. I was in Berlin; I planned to write from there if anything noteworthy happened, but it didn't. I saw the Brandenburg gate, ate bratwurst, played a poker tournament, got knocked out by Boris Becker, left the tournament, six masked gunmen went in and stole a million dollars, that was it. So I took the week off. Yes. That's how bad a journalist I am. If it weren't for the sideline in poker, I don't think I'd eat. It was only when I got home to find a hundred kindly enquiries on Twitter and a dozen interview requests from various departments of the BBC, that I thought: "Oh. That armed heist on the €3m celebrity poker tournament seems to have been reported as news." Don't get me wrong, I had thought it was quite interesting. We haven't had an armed raid on a poker tournament for about five years now. It's six years since I saw those gunmen at the cash game in Holland. The game has become terribly respectable. Poker friends were ringing after the heist to say: "Isn't this retro? Been ages since I saw an Uzi." Those still at the tournament sounded fine, saying how calm they'd felt. Unruffled bloggers filmed the raid on their digicams; some players recognised the robbers and arrests have already begun. All the prize winners got paid. Nobody got hurt. They were posting jokes online within half an hour. The tournament resumed less than two hours later. One heroic Finnish player had been about to lose a huge pot when the gunmen came in. He declared that this did not constitute a serious interruption and insisted on paying his opponent anyway. The Finn ended up coming second in the tournament, winning €600,000 – that's karma. Boris Becker missed the raid; he got knocked out just after I did. But he would have coped. I've loved Boris ever since I saw him at a poker tournament in Nassau, a vision of perfect physical fitness, with a doughnut in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That's my kind of sportsman. None of this will make any difference to the success of the European Poker Tour. I will be at the final in Monte Carlo this April, and so will hundreds of others. You might think that's because poker players are more fatalistic – or greedier – than other people. You might think it's because guns are, historically, part of the Wild West poker picture. But I think it's because everyone can always cope with everything. Human nature is naturally stoic, unhysterical, with a sense of perspective on coincidence. Most people think: "Shit happens. If you're there: unlucky. But I'll carry on assuming I won't be." A few weeks ago, I wrote about armed police on city streets and escalated ID-checking as a "response to terrorist threat", which I believe goes against most people's desire not to have their way of life compromised by fear of theoretical disaster. A reader sent me a quote from Benjamin Franklin which came back into my mind, proudly, as I watched players start signing up for the next leg of the European Poker Tour, in San Remo just a few weeks from now: "He who values security above liberty deserves neither." www.victoriacoren.com
My shirt says I'm supporting England
It's depressing how 'Anyone But England' has become the mantra for the Scots In Johannesburg in June the sun will rise on another football bacchanal while Scotland nurses its wrath of ages at home. Five major tournaments have come and gone since last we participated. And, as we all know, It's Not The Same Without the Tartan Army. Brazilian samba dancers, Mexican gauchos and tractor apprentices from the Czech Republic are heartbroken that the "See You, Jimmy" wig and Glengarry brigade will not be joining them in South Africa. There are still 88 days to go and already the xenophobia has started: the biased commentaries, the flag-waving; the fear and the loathing. It's going to get unpleasant if you're English and living in Scotland. The first manifestation took place in a souvenir shop in Aberdeen. On display were T-shirts bearing the legend "Anyone But England". The prominence of these garments in the window prompted a visit by the police who warned the owner that they could cause offence. Anti-racism bodies said the shirts were merely harmless fun. They are correct: it is not racism. Yet neither is it harmless fun. Indeed, to a Scot such as myself the "Anyone But England" mentality which will be revealed in all its malevolent glory over the next three months is embarrassing and depressing. On shop floors and offices, at pubs and parties, English people in our midst will be expected to smile and nod in a self-deprecating manner while some braying bampot says: "Don't take it personally, but I hope you get horsed by the Americans/Algerians/Slovenians." If our English friend even hints that, actually, he may indeed have taken offence, he will be admonished. Often this will be delivered by someone who becomes emotional if an English landlord so much as dares to call him Jock or questions the legality of his Clydesdale Bank tenner. But it's not a joke. For reasons I cannot fathom, a significant proportion of my fellow Scots will be supporting anyone but England during this summer's World Cup. On the BBC, and in newspapers, otherwise reasonable, witty and objective journalists will think it acceptable to urge the nation to run up the Stars and Stripes and get stuck into the bastard English. The most common reason given for this attitude is that English football commentators become smug and objectionable when discussing their nation's progress. These worthless rapscallions insist also on talking about 1966, the year in which England won the World Cup. Yet our own Scottish commentators, our Archies and Arthurs and Dougies, have often been just a few heartbeats away from donning their Lions Rampant and wielding claymores as they urge on the Scots from their TV gantries. If Scotland had ever won the World Cup there would be an annual Scotland Month to mark the occasion and full independence would have been gained within the year. Cumbria and the north-east would have been annexed by now. Nor can we justify our anti-Englishness by citing historical grievance. We willingly entered a union with them which, economically, has been extremely advantageous to us and England provides the biggest jobs market for us outside Scotland. Our tourist economy is built on the Bank of England pound. We even run their government and many of their biggest institutions. More distressing still is that most English people will support Scotland in every endeavour we undertake. England has a splendid squad and an excellent manager. Wayne Rooney is perhaps the finest all-round footballer I have ever seen. And, though I am not yet convinced that their nation is the land of milk and honey that they claim, I'll still be singing "Jerusalem" if they do the business on 11 July.
Lehman auditors face inquiry call
MPs and financial experts demand regulators reform industry in effort to eliminate risky practices, writes Phillip Inman Pressure was mounting this weekend for a root-and-branch review of the role played by auditors in the credit crunch, following the revelation that Lehman Brothers was able to hide $50bn (£32bn) of debts from regulators despite checks by accountancy firm Ernst & Young. MPs and financial experts called on regulators to clean up the audit industry as part of a clampdown on reckless and risky practices in the financial sector. Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott urged the government to commission a fundamental review, while Tory MP Michael Fallon, who is deputy chairman of the influential treasury select committee, said: "Too much is being concealed. We need a fresh approach that gives a more realistic picture of bank finances and not one that disguises risky practices." Oakeshott said the treasury select committee's investigation of Northern Rock's collapse had already revealed that accountants should be banned from accepting additional consultancy work for the firms they audit; but, he added, "that is just a starting point to cleaning up the whole profession". Prem Sikka, a professor of accounting at Essex University and a leading critic of the accounting profession, warned that without deep-rooted reform the crisis could repeat itself. "The report into the collapse of Lehmans is indicative of a deeper malaise," he said. "We rely on the discretion of eminent firms of auditors and lawyers that are paid millions of pounds for their efforts, but that discretion is too often abused." A damning 2,200-page report commissioned by the US bankruptcy courts into the collapse of Lehman said that Ernst & Young's failure to act over off-balance sheet accounting practices which allowed the bank to hide $50bn of debts, and failing to investigate the concerns of a whistleblower, amounted to "professional negligence". Ernst & Young, which earned fees of $31m from auditing Lehman Brothers in 2007, has insisted that a thorough internal review showed it did nothing wrong.
Waitrose plans to sell food elsewhere
Managing director Mark Price aims to keep fast-growing upmarket grocer ahead of rival M&S Waitrose boss Mark Price is drawing up plans to transform the upmarket food chain into a consumer brand available in thousands of non-Waitrose shops in the UK and overseas. He believes the Waitrose label has the potential to be a big "fmcg" – fast moving consumer goods – name like Heinz or Kellogg's, which he can sell to other retail businesses, rather than just direct to shoppers. He has similar ambitions for the Duchy Originals brand, founded in 1990 by the Prince of Wales. Waitrose signed a licensing deal with the struggling royal label last autumn, which gives the John Lewis-owned grocer the right to manufacture, distribute and sell all Duchy goods in the UK. Price said there would be more than 300 Duchy products by the end of the year and there was potential for many more. He said: "What we are trying to do is give access to the brand and it is not just about owning shops. It is about taking a creative approach and making products available to as many people as possible. We are looking to work with partners." The plan to sell Waitrose goods in other stores will be kickstarted this month when Price unveils details of a deal that could eventually see Waitrose food sold in more than 700 Boots outlets. Sections of Boots' stores will be transformed into mini-Waitroses, with the grocer's own fixtures, fittings and signage. In return, Waitrose will sell a range of Boots health and beauty goods in its own stores. Last year Waitrose defied predictions it would be battered by the recession and emerged as the fastest-growing big grocer, chalking up a sales increase of more than 11% to in excess of £4.5bn, trouncing upmarket rival Marks & Spencer. "We expect to be the fastest growing again this year," Price said. Sales to overseas supermarkets are also to be ramped up. "Waitrose is seen as a really premium brand outside the UK," said Price. The grocer has already more than doubled business-to-business overseas sales to more than £100m over the past two year, exporting to 25 countries including Thailand, the Bahamas, India and China. But Price said there was much more potential. The grocer is also keen to open more franchised outlets overseas, especially in the Middle East. Two stores in Dubai are chalking up 60% annual sales growth and franchises have been awarded for Bahrain, Oman and Abu Dhabi. Price said there would soon be 20-23 Middle East outlets.
Thailand's last unspoilt islands
Millions flock to Thailand each year, but you can still find quiet, unspoilt beaches on which to do absolutely nothing, as Laura Barton discovers, while Gemma Bowes finds an island escape in the heart of touristy Phang Nga It's not that I don't like other people – indeed I would go so far as to lay claim to a rich and varied social life. It's just that, as I have grown older, I have found that I increasingly like spending holidays in a place where I can guarantee that I won't have to talk to anyone. Not splendid isolation exactly, no far-flung mountain huts or Buddhist retreats, rather something we might class as "minimal interaction": no small-talk by the pool, late-night karaoke or group safari outings, thank you very much. For this, I blame the holidays of my childhood: invariably two weeks in a remote cottage in Anglesey. There were long walks, damsons to pick, fields of cows and sheep to admire and occasional trips to the beach but, crucially, also plenty of time to read, eat, sleep and row about in the creek at the bottom of the garden. I would holiday there still, were it not for the flat grey skies and the viciously cold Irish Sea. For the past few years I have been trying to find somewhere that, while warmer than north Wales in August, is still just as quiet and still and lovely. And so it may puzzle you to learn that I recently took a holiday to Thailand. Some 14 million people flock here each year, drawn by the natural beauty and myriad delights: elephant rides and jungle adventures, temples, beaches, romantic idylls and, of course, phenomenal food. As I stood on the streets of Bangkok, breathing in the canteen smells and the diesel smoke, listening to the calls of the market vendors selling everything from Viagra to coconut water, and wind-up toy dogs to neatly-threaded garlands of flowers, I began to fear that visiting Thailand to escape the world might have been a giant mistake. But Bangkok was not my ultimate destination. Two hundred miles east of this giddying street, near the Cambodian border, lies the small island of Koh Kood, home to rainforest, coconut and rubber plantations, sleepy fishing villages, and fewer than 2,000 people. Koh Kood's great advantage is its relative remoteness. Getting there requires an internal flight or train journey from Bangkok, followed by an hour's boat ride from the mainland. This sounds more of an expedition than it actually is. It's about an hour from Bangkok to the small airport at Trat, with its manicured lawns and string of topiary elephants along the runway. The car ride to the ferry port took me through lush green countryside, past villages and temples and fruit stalls. And there are, I thought to myself as I watched the land disappear and the surf ride up behind our speedboat, surely worse ways to spend an hour than sailing the clear blue waters of the Gulf of Thailand, especially if you care to use the time for a bit of dolphin-spotting. Accommodation on Koh Kood is varied. There are homestays and budget hotels, as well as a handful of luxury resorts, but even these promote a barefoot, relaxed approach. There are no landlines, little internet access, and few cars. Electricity is minimal – homes and hotels rely on generators or solar power. All is slow, warm tranquillity. I disembarked at the jetty of Away, a quietly luxurious resort with a cluster of bungalows overlooking a bay. There's plenty of warm and graceful hospitality here, as well as a spa and one of Koh Kood's best diving centres, but no one jostles you into a hike or a snorkelling excursion. Mostly this makes for a fine place to do nothing; slow and calm and unruffled, you can feel Koh Kood subtly working its way into your bones. On an average day here I did little beyond loll about in the hammocks and deckchairs along the boardwalk, beneath the palm trees, and strategically positioned on the jetty to take in the sunset. I took a kayak across the clear blue sea to a small golden curve of beach; I took a quiet boat ride over to it the next bay. I swam, I slept, I read some Per Petterson, and amid the cool rooms and quiet corners, I felt my mind gently unwinding. Most evenings, when the sun was low but the air was still heavy and damp, I strolled into the nearby village, for dinner or a beer. The road is a dusty strip, tan-coloured and warm underfoot, and at night the jungle grows inky black, full of twitching, chirruping, wild sounds – the calls of birds and frogs and monkeys. The restaurants here are simple but fantastic, and after even a short walk through the thick evening air you are pleased to find a cold bottle of Chang beer and a bowl of yellow curry. A short jeep drive from Away, Shantaa is an undeniable step up in luxury. The 10 private villas sit on a hillside, amid lush gardens, with a simple stylish bedroom, a balcony and an open-air bathroom, home to exotic flowers, passing geckos and, to my great excitement, even the occasional iguana. There is a village nearby where you could venture for dinner, but it would be hard to leave the resort's restaurant. Family-owned and staffed by students, it is one of the island's best. The menu offers traditional Thai dishes plus some twists, such as raw sea bass salad with peanut sauce, and mango parfait with coconut ice cream. I can think of few places I have enjoyed staying more. Flinging open the doors of my villa to lie in bed and watch the sun rise over the palms each morning, I would cross over the wooden pier to walk along the long stretch of soft, pale sand. Afternoons would be spent swimming in the warm turquoise sea, sipping limeade at the beachside cafe, and taking an open-air Thai massage, all feet and breath and tiger balm, to the sound of birdsong and the steady hush of the waves. For a treat I spent my last night at Soneva Kiri, which was a bit of a trip from the sublime to the ridiculous. Imagine an uber-swanky Center Parcs, an enclosed resort amid acres of forest and organic vegetable gardens, where guests fly in by private plane, and spend their days in a kind of ludicrous Hollywood luxury; where you have your own personal valet, and everyone hums about on golf buggies and retro bicycles, shuttling between the spa and the library and the giant inflatable cinema screen (available for private hire, should the mood strike you). I can think of few places less like the remote Welsh cottage of my childhood holidays, and even if you can't afford to stay there, the resort's Benz's restaurant is worth seeking out, for an exquisite, Thai feast, from leaf-wrapped mieng kam to sweet tapioca in coconut milk and perfectly ripe mango and dragonfruit, served as you watch the sun dip below the water and the fireflies begin to blink. Later, as I took a midnight swim beneath a clear sky and a full moon, I thought how finally, after all this time, I had found an island every bit as quiet and still and lovely as a rainy Anglesey in August.
Hidden Florence
Most tourists head straight for the Uffizi, but Florence has dozens of smaller museums full of world-class art. The curator of the V&A's new Renaissance galleries was our guide Stendhal syndrome is a sickness known to afflict those of a sensitive nature who visit Florence. It's named after the French author, who was left sick and dizzy by the vast amount of art he viewed on an 1817 visit to the city. There have since been many cases documented of visitors fainting in the face of Florence's glories. Add in queuing for hours to get into museums such as the Uffizi and the Accademia, jostling for space once in and then peering over heads to catch a glimpse of Botticelli's Birth of Venus or Michelangelo's David, and a visit to Florence starts to look a little dangerous for the health. Inspired by the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum's £30m Renaissance Galleries last November, I spent a day in Florence with the galleries' chief curator, Peta Motture, who convinced me that there are many gems still to be discovered in Florence which illuminate not just the Renaissance but the history of art, all without the risk of fainting. We started at tourist central, Piazza del Duomo, now pedestrianised. But instead of joining the queues to climb Brunelleschi's dome, we ducked into a smaller building, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (9 Piazza del Duomo, +39 055 230 2885, entry €6), where sculptures that once packed the Duomo and Baptistery are exhibited. "Not many people come here," Peta promised, "but all the most wonderful original art from the Duomo is here." Although just behind the Duomo, the museum was virtually empty. At the top of the monumental staircase stands Michelangelo's radiant Pietà. It was intended for the artist's own tomb until, Peta told me, he broke the arm and left leg of Christ in a fit of temper, dissatisfied with the stone. They were later restored – Peta pointed out the cracks, which are still visible. Another work, the beautifully mature figure of Nicodemus, is a self-portrait – Michelangelo himself looming above the other figures, his eyes downcast. Peta led us upstairs to a gallery at the top where a rust-coloured figure stood alone in the centre of the room, shocking in its bedraggled emaciation. The polychrome wooden sculpture is not what one expects, either from Donatello, its sculptor, or in representations of Mary Magdalene. Hollow-eyed, wearing rags, her hands coming together in prayer, she is an intense figure, almost frightening. Peta explained that this sculpture embodies the dark mood that engulfed Florence at the end of the Renaissance. Savonarola was a hell-fire preacher who thought much Renaissance art was immoral. Donatello had come under his influence, and carved the Magdalene as a beggar, a pitiful figure whose past decadence is clear in the cadaverous lines of her repentant figure. Emerging into the daylight, we headed for lunch. Teatro del Sale (Via dei Macci 111, +39 055 200 1492), is an intriguing mix of private members' club, canteen and theatre. Buying an annual membership (€5) allowed us entry, then we paid just €15 to serve ourselves as much food and wine as we liked. After dinner (€30) in the evenings the room converts to a theatre, with entertainment ranging from tango to chamber orchestras. After lunch, Peta suggested seeing some classic Donatellos, so we headed to what was once the city jail to see the bronze David that scandalised Renaissance Florence with its nudity. The crenellated walls and tower of the Bargello (Via del Proconsolo 4, +39 055 294883, €4) feel squeezed into the narrow streets of the centre. This is Florence's oldest public building, begun in 1255, and it is said to be where condemned prisoners spent their last night. It is now one of the city's loveliest museums, being to sculpture what the Uffizi is to painting, only without the queues. The Bargello is serene and quiet, giving plenty of room and time to digest the beauty of the works and the setting. The atmospheric courtyard is the setting for a permanent exhibition of sculptures by masters such as Michelangelo and Cellini, as well as Donatello. On the first floor, in a sweeping 14th-century hall, are some of Donatello's finest works, including a youthful David in marble, as well as the aforementioned bronze David. Leaving the Bargello, we wove our way past the shops selling leather in all colours of the rainbow, to a discreet little building near the Arno. A plaque announced it as The Horne Museum (Via de' Benci 6, +39 055 2466406, €5), another secret Florentine gem. Herbert Percy Horne was a late-Victorian Englishman who came to Florence to study the Renaissance and filled his house with the sort of art that would have been seen in a home of the period. The collection boasts works by key artists such as Giotto, Filippo Lippi and Giambologna, as well as furniture and domestic objects from the period. Over drinks that evening at the top of the Torre dei Consorti, now home to the Hotel Continentale's Sky Bar, we discussed Stendhal syndrome, and how we had been spared any such cultural indigestion. We looked out at the river and the Ponte Vecchio on one side, and the illuminated towers of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo on the other. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer consistent beauty of Florence. But Peta had shown me that by concentrating on some of the quieter museums, you can still find yourself standing in front of a dazzling Michelangelo, almost totally alone. More ways to avoid the touristsWhere to eat Just 10 minutes east of the overcrowded Piazza del Duomo is the Sant'Ambrogio neighbourhood. There is a covered market for divine Tuscan cheeses and meats. Florentines stop at Cibrèo Caffè (Via Andrea del Verrocchio 5r, +39 0552345853) for a pre-lunch prosecco. Pizza may not be native to Tuscany – neither pizza nor pasta makes an appearance on Cibrèo's strictly Tuscan menu – but still, competing for the title of best pizzeria is still taken seriously by Florentine restaurateurs compete seriously to be the best pizzeria. This corner is home to the Cibrèo empire – the internationally renowned restaurant where chef Fabio Picchi made his name serving traditional Tuscan dishes, as well as a trattoria, the café and Teatro del Sale (111 Via dei Macci; tel: 055 200 1492), a mix of private member's club, canteen and theatre. Teatro is squarely aimed at locals, with a nominal membership fee (€5), then a set sum paid at the door for an all-you-can-eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. In the evening the €30 cover price includes not only the best food and wine in town but then converts to a theatre where entertainment can range from a tango show to a chamber orchestra. Antica Porta (via Senese 23, +39 055 220 527) is a buzzing pizzeria outside the Porta Romana on the south side of the river. Da Ruggero (via Senese 89r, +39 055 220 542), run by the Colsi family for over 30 years, is a classic Florentine trattoria serving the usual Tuscan favourites. Book a table or be prepared to wait in the line that snakes out of the door. Half an hour south, in the pretty village of San Casciano is Nello (via 4 Novembre 66, San Casciano in Val di Pesa, +39 055 820 163), an unpretentious restaurant with 70s décor but heavenly Tuscan specialities and wine cellar. Those who really care about their gelato go to Gelateria Badiani (Viale dei Mille, 20r), famous for its Buontalenti flavour – named for the Renaissance architect Bernardo Buontalenti. Gardens and walks The centro storico's towering stone palazzi and narrow alleys fill with tour groups. For verdant space head south of the Arno where the ochre and burnt umber facades are backed by sloping green hills dotted with cypress trees. Head to the Rose Garden (Via di San Salvatore al Monte), tucked behind a small gate en route to the Piazzale Michelangelo and open from May to July. A truly secret garden also below the Piazzale Michelangelo (on the corner of Viale dei Colli) is the Giardino dell'Iris (open to the public 2-20 May only), which contains row upon row of irises, the city's emblematic flower, in every imaginable shade. For Florence's prettiest "country" walk, take a sharp right out of San Miniato gate onto the Via di Belvedere and along the medieval wall verged with grassy banks dotted with wild flowers. Continue beyond the Forte di Belvedere into birdsong, olive groves and ordered tranquillity. The road leads through the village of Arcetri, with saffron and terracotta-coloured villas, stone walls with tumbles of honeysuckle and the charming church of San Leonardo – a mere 20-minute amble out of town. • Meridiana (0871 222 9 319) flies from Gatwick to Florence from €59 one way. The Relais Santa Croce (+39 055 2342230), close to all the museums, has doubles from €250, room-only. Further information on the V&A at vam.ac.uk.
A day in the smokehouse
Nigel Slater visits Suffolk – and returns with a batch of smoked food recipes Even before you turn into the narrow opening that is Baker's Lane, you spot the winding trail of grey smoke against Orford's white winter sky. Turn sharp right, and you see the rickety smokehouse, as black as tar, leaning drunkenly against the side of the open shop, with its noticeboard of local events and Gillian Eustace's romantic watercolour of the same scene on an altogether sunnier day. Richardson's smokehouse is one of several in this part of Suffolk, originally started as a way of preserving the local mackerel catch, and now a source of all manner of smoked fish and meat to locals and visitors alike. Smoking food has been in the area's blood for centuries, just as it has in the Highlands of Scotland. Business is thriving too, (a local company, Pinney's, has just opened a smart new shop on Orford's small, busy quay that is also worth a look). But it is the "mom 'n' pop" simplicity of Steve Richardson and Veronica Buckley's diminutive smokery and shop that appeals to someone who also tends to potter along in his own particular way. The scent of wood smoke has always intrigued me. The scented candles at home smell not of tuberose but of the fireplace. The ball of tarred string in the gardening cupboard has an addictive smoky quality that insists I pick it up and sniff it each time I open the door. And I value smoke for its nostalgia quotient too, that whiff of the garden on the day after bonfire night, visits to rambling country houses with fireplaces the size of my kitchen and of the Gypsy children who used to get on my school bus each morning filling the old coach with the essence of their bonfire. Any food that smells of it is certain to get this cook's attention. An untidy pile of fat oak logs is heaped on the floor of the Richardson's yard. Steve reckons they might just last a week. Each pile has to be humped and chopped by hand. He insists on oak and will never have any truck with the modern commercial alternatives. Now is the quiet season for the bloaters, trout and salmon that hang in one of the two tar-black rooms, but come summer, there will be queues outside. Even on a stiff February day there is a steady stream of callers for Veronica Buckley's mackerel pâté and venison sausages, and desperate pleas for more fishcakes. "Sorry, not today." Regulars brave the ice and frost for the smoked chorizo and duck breasts, though how the proprietors cope with the cold in the open-fronted building in winter is anyone's guess (after a couple of hours I was so frozen I took off to next door's Crown and Castle for the comfort of a parsley-flecked fish pie and a roaring fire). While my initial interest is with the products hanging up in the two intimately proportioned smoke rooms, it is impossible not to notice the long, ongoing love story among the kippers. "We are business partners now," says Roni firmly, even though it is quite clear they adore one another. She admits to a few ups and downs over their 30 years here, first as a couple and then as a company, which you get the feeling is something of an understatement. The rickety smokehouse could tell a tale or two. Veronica is known to all except Steve as "Roni" or "Ron". "Steve hates it," she laughs, "he always uses my full name." The smokehouse at Orford has been in Steve's family for three generations. His grandfather preserved local fish here and their son is keen to take it on when Steve and Roni retire. When you look at the rows of beautiful ochre game, plates of pork and apple sausages and links of chorizo, it seems odd to think this tall, slightly gruff Suffolk man started out as an engineer, earning good money on the oil rigs, rather than the artisan he is now. It took the shock of redundancy, followed by a swift kick up the backside from an exasperated Roni – "he drove me mad hanging round the house all day, so I sent him back to live at his grandparents' house" – to get Steve lighting up their disused smokerooms. It must have been like starting up a classic car after years on bricks in the garage. At first he smoked his daily fish catch, the two of them meeting up to hawk it around the local pubs. "To be honest it was a bit of pub crawl," admits Roni, and you can see them reeling home, having swapped their kippers for more than a few pints of Adnams. But the reputation for the quality of their softly smoked kippers and mackerel grew and soon they decided to open the stall next to the smokehouse. I suppose it was inevitable that the list grew from what Steve had on the end of his line and soon they were experimenting with everything from whole pheasants to heads of garlic. The smoker was up and running, so why not see what happens when you hang a row of partridge or slide a half stilton on the top shelf of the smokehouse and leave it for six days. (Answer: something that looks like a giant pork pie.) I say smokehouse but there are actually two side by side. The first is a cool smoker, for ingredients that are usually cooked later by the customer so require smoking but not cooking. The second room, the hot smoker, is for anything likely to be eaten without further cooking once you get it home. Kippers get a bit of both treatments – they are gutted, brined for a couple of hours, then cold-smoked overnight before being given a short final blast in the hot section. Steve has perfected a system where the fish retains as much of its oil as possible, leaving the flesh moist and sweet. Rather than hanging, they get their final treatment on flat racks that allow them to hold on to their precious oils. The sight of the moist flat fish, their skin glistening silver and gold, leads to a discussion on the method of cooking. "I hope you don't jug them," says Roni, who quite clearly disapproves of the popular method of lowering kippers into just-boiled water to cook them. "They lose all their oil that way," and I mentally change how I plan to cook the day's purchases. I am assured that a brief ride in the microwave gives the best result. Not being a microwave kind of a cook, I will just have to take my chances under a hot grill. The effect that oak smoke has on food is subtly different to that of other woods. In my house, smoked goodies often come out at lunchtime on a Saturday, laid out in their paper, a sort of smokehouse picnic. There will be soup of some sort, and maybe a bowl of crunchy slaw (wonderful with a clove of smoked garlic in the dressing) and then maybe a whole mackerel in its skin, a link or two of sausage or maybe slices of wood-infused chicken. For no particular reason I associate such flavours with the cold months. Perhaps it is the hint of the fire left at the heart of the food, or the singed edges on a fist-shaped lump of ham hock. Who knows? And no matter how good the trout or the duck that has been inside the smokers of Orford, I still want to cook with them, crumbling mackerel into a potato gratin; tucking smoked garlic inside a roasting chicken; tossing a few slices of sausage as Roni showed me into a weekday pasta supper. Yes, such delicacies are for eating in their naked simplicity, but good for the cook in us, too. I had been here once before, almost a decade ago, and came home with a purchase of their shimmering pink and gold smoked trout. On that occasion, I wimped out of the smoked Long Clawson stilton, which I believed to have been smoked for six hours. "Six days, more like," laughs Roni, who finally gets me to try some. Up to this point I have been less than open-minded about smoked cheese. I have always found it smacked of too much smoke and not enough of cheese. One smoked cheese had often tasted pretty much like another. Until now. The stilton here is a subtle revelation and I suspect it is this subtlety that is the clue to much of the couple's success. At home, I crumbled the mahogany-skinned cheese into a salad of red cabbage and some seriously sour pickled onions. A shot of pure gold on a grey winter's afternoon. Steve and Roni are particularly proud of the ham hocks from local pigs, which arrive ready smoked and are then marinated in black treacle and cider. They are boiled, then flash-roasted till their edges turn the colour of molasses. It is true they resemble blackened elephant's feet, but only to look at. One of these has been the cornerstone of my cooking this week, my host's recipe for a very basic but gorgeous stew with potatoes and lentils. I have often used a ham-hock soup to keep the cold at bay, but the smoke adds another dimension, altogether deeper and more characterful. Whether it is a brace of quail or local fish, the day's smokings are listed on a blackboard at the entrance to the shop. Despite the trays of oak-coloured whole mallard, hot smoked pigeons, chickens and duck breasts; haddock, whole trout and bloaters, Steve sorely misses the local eel that has been a mainstay of their business for years. Rarely does a day go by without someone asking about it. Only when the local reservoir is up and running again will it return to the menu. Passing round toast thickly spread with the most heavenly smoked cod's roe I have ever eaten, he looks off into the distance towards the pile of logs that give heart and soul to his products and to his working life, no doubt working out whether it will last him till the end of the week Click here for Nigel Slater's smokehouse recipes
Two pints and a haggis toastie
An old south London boozer gets a dramatic new lease of life as the chef behind the Eagle lands in Stockwell The Canton Arms, 177 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 (020 7582 8710). Meal for two, including drinks and service, £75 There is one item served occasionally at the Canton Arms, a re-opened pub in Stockwell, south London, which best sums it up. That is the foie gras toastie. It is the meeting place of scuzz and appetite, the logical answer to the question: "What do you get if you cross a real old boozer in one of London's more energetic districts with a bunch of greedy people?" That the Breville sandwich toaster, which is to Stockwell what the Smeg oven is to Dulwich, should have been turned to such a purpose fills my congested heart with glee. For those who want to rant at me about fattened goose liver, go find someone who's interested. From endless conversations with chefs it's clear to me that, in the grisly business of animal husbandry, properly administered gavage is not deserving of any particular bleating. And anyway, I was tormented by two guard geese that my parents kept when I was a kid. Eating their liver is my revenge. Except it wasn't available the night I went. They were fresh out of foie (though trusted friends say it is great). Instead I tried the haggis toastie, the crisped white bread giving way to something peppery and dense and meaty all the way from Dundee. That bar snack could also stand as a marker for this pub, which is a co-production between people involved with the Anchor and Hope in Waterloo and Great Queen Street in Covent Garden. In the kitchen is Trish Hilferty, alumnus of the Eagle in Farringdon and the Fox in Shoreditch, all of which name-dropping speaks of a hugely attractive type of food: rustic, solid, big flavours, no ingredient frottage. That is exactly what you get. To see it spread to this quieter corner of town is a marvellous thing. Not least because I live a mile away. One achievement is that the team has managed not to chase the old clientele out. This isn't some gussied-up, ersatz version of a pub, new scrubbed for the emerging middle classes. It remains what it always was, with a bar at the front full of regulars deep into their pints and the dining room out back. They've given the place a lick of paint but done little else. The menu is admirably short, with four starters and mains supplemented by a couple of specials. It was one of those specials that we chose: the six-hour braised shoulder of blackface mutton for four, at £48. No matter that there were only two of us. We were a big two, and we reckoned we were equal to the task. It arrived as a casserole dish, a folded tea towel placed underneath as a heat mat, so we could help ourselves. The sheep had been taken to that point when it could be carved with a spoon, the liquor speaking of a virtuous interplay between aromatics and meat. It is true that this was something I not only could make myself, but had literally made myself just two weeks before. However, it requires some effort, and I was grateful that Hilferty was the one taking the strain. It came with pickled red cabbage, still with its crunch, and new potatoes. It was proper dinner. Our starters needed only to play a supporting role, but they did so much more than that. The house terrine, thick and dense, served with still-warm Melba toast and cornichons, was an exemplar of its kind, especially so at £5.40. Even better were softened leeks, under the classic tangy sauce gribiche – a mayonnaise-style sauce, punched with chopped pickles, a julienne of boiled egg and fresh green herbs – that had me sweeping around the plate with the edge of my fork. We finished with a startlingly light treacle tart and "little chocolate pot", the only desserts on offer. Such brevity shows extreme and very welcome self-confidence. The mostly French-Spanish wine list starts at £12.50 a bottle and offers significant choice below £30. It is, like the entire operation, without pretension; they are absolutely not trying to be all things to all people. They are only trying to be themselves. Unlike with many places I review, I will definitely be returning, probably often. Hell, that foie gars toastie just has to be tried. Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place Side order: the tipping point
It was only last autumn that a law was passed barring dodgy restaurateurs from using tips to top up staff pay to the minimum wage. Now the government has launched a campaign on the issue. With the law change, a code of conduct was introduced by which employers are meant to announce publicly what happens to tips. If they don't, us punters are now supposed to ask before tipping. While it feels like law enforcement on the cheap, the cause is unarguable. So before you cough up the extra 10%, find out where it's going.
Post your questions for Lib Dems
Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat spokesman on international development, will be live online on the Katine Chronicles blog at 11am (GMT) on Tuesday, 16 March, to answer your questions about aid and development. Post a question
Find out more about the Liberal Democrats' policies International development faces serious challenges, whoever wins the next election. With domestic spending cuts a real possibility, protest at continued historically high spending on aid is inevitable. It is likely the aid budget will face a very tough fight. Last year, the Liberal Democrats set out their thoughts on international development in a policy paper, which outlined support for the aid target of 0.7% of GDP, a call for renewed efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals and an acknowledgement that aid sometimes fails and that perhaps financial aid is not the most effective way of delivering support. At 11am (GMT) on Tuesday, 16 March, the Lib Dems' spokesman on international development, Michael Moore, will be live online for one hour to answer your questions about the party's policies and the wider issues of aid and development. Read the party's policy paper and Anne Perkins' report on the Lib Dems' policies and then post a question. You can post a question now or come back on Tuesday. If you have problems posting, email Katine.editor@guardian.co.uk.
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