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guardian.co.uk How my life changed after the Tour de France ce Exclusive extracts from his autobiography From Rolling Stones to Nutcrackers Arts critics pick the Christmas highlights
Bradley Wiggins
Black America clings to faith in Obama, even as wealth gap widens
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY
Gary Younge
When Barack Obama was contemplating a run for the White House, his wife, Michelle, asked him what he thought he could accomplish if he won. The day I take the oath of oce, he replied. The world will look at us dierently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves dierently. That alone is something. The symbolic resonance of Obamas victory for black Americans has not diminished. At rallies the hawkers are still there with T-shirts setting him alongside Martin Luther King; according to Gallup 90% of African Americans intend to back Obama (pictured above at a rally in New Hampshire yesterday) and they plan to turn out at the same rate as white voters. No other block of voters is more loyal, with polls consistently showing African Americans are more likely than any other group to be bullish about their own future, believing they are better o, that the countrys best days are yet to come and that the economy is already recovering. A Pew survey in January 2010 indicated that the percentage of black Americans who thought blacks were better o than they were ve years before had almost doubled, with signicant increases in the percentages who believed the standard-of-living gap
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The week ahead Tania Branigan on the changing of the Chinese old guard
With its glamorous presenter, primetime slot, nervous participants and eager crowd brandishing smiling or frowning cardboard faces to indicate approval or disdain it might sound like another of Chinas glitzy dating shows. But the anxious men facing the cameras on Wuhan Television have more than romance on their minds. All are ocials facing up to angry complaints from the public and a potentially career-stalling audience verdict. Ordinary people take part. Ordinary people comment. Ordinary people supervise, growls the voiceover on a trailer. America is not the only global superpower picking a new leader this week. On Thursday, China opens its 18th party congress, designed to usher in the new generation of Communist party ocials who will govern the worlds most populous country into the 2020s. The process will be choreographed to within an inch of its life. Its outcomes, decided in advance by the leadership, will not be properly known until the middle of November. But the men (there almost certainly will not be any women) who le on to the stage for collective approbation face a public that increasingly demands the right to hold its government to account. The party is seeking new ways to respond without undermining its rule. Ocials are adopting additional methods of observing and channelling the public mood, whether that be using microblogs there are 80,000 government accounts, according to state media or television shows such as Wuhans. Citizens expect more from their ocials, and stories of malfeasance or incompetence spread quickly online.
In 2008, under 40% of Chinese people deemed corruption a problem. That gure is now 50%
Authorities have repeatedly vowed to crack down on corruption. State media have reported that 600,000 ocials faced punishment for disciplinary violations over the last ve years. Yet in 2008, just under 40% of Chinese people deemed corrupt ocials a very big problem. That has risen to 50%, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The Chinese leadership knows the legitimacy of the party now depends on performance, in terms of delivering services and improvements in living standards, said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham.
The result is what he calls a consultative Leninist system They want to know what people think so they can take away the causes of discontent and potential challenges to the party. Thats not the same as the accountability we would talk about and expect in Europe or North America; its more of a safety valve and has an element of [the Maoist injunction] from the masses, to the masses. The Wuhan show, which aired this summer and is due to return next month, is limited both in the subjects it tackles and in the personnel taking part. While vice-mayors appeared this summer, the citys most senior leaders were absent. It touched on issues such as food safety, but steered well clear of sensitive topics such as birth control. Even so, the questioning was pointed at times. Im still sweating, vice-mayor Hu Lishan told the Global Times after appearing on the show. Zhao Zhenyu, a scholar at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology who also participated, said: Because its live, the ocials cant prepare; you can tell they are nervous during the show. They have to x the problem after appearing on the programme, as people are watching them, and they have pressure. There are many ways to supervise the government. This TV show is just one of them. In one programme, a disgruntled resident complained: You always ask us ordinary people to report it if the lake is getting lled [up with stu ], but actually even if we report it were just wasting our time. You said you would ask people to take responsibility. You just cheat people.
The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China opens on Thursday, promising to be the most signicant gathering in a decade as it will appoint a new generation of leaders. Wednesday sees a vital makeor-break vote in the Greek parliament on new austerity measures and 2013 budget.
An ocials promise to clear up the rubbish quickly met with short shrift from the presenter: Next month? You said as soon as possible, she reminded him. By the end of this month, he responded. There are only a few days left, she said. In a week, he added, with a nervous smile.
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On Wednesday evening, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel (below), is in London for talks expected to focus on the eurozone crisis. Americans choose their next president tomorrow. The polls close tomorrow night and a result is expected in the early hours of Wednesday morning recounts, hanging chads and judicial interventions permitting. Christmas lights go on across the UK today. Oxford Street is illuminated tonight and others including Bristol and Manchester follow later in the week.
What better way to prepare to ring in the new, than to clean out the old? And so the week began with the formal expulsion of Bo Xilai, the erstwhile rising star who fell from grace, accused of numerous crimes including corruption and bending the law to hush up the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood by his wife, Gu Kailai. Once his wife was convicted, Bos fate was never seriously in doubt. The only surprise, perhaps, was that it took a four-day closed-door meeting to ratify it. Few things encapsulate the authorities approach to the 18th congress the simultaneous desire for fanfare and secrecy better than state news agency Xinhuas report on plans to update the partys constitution. It announced that the central committee had approved an amendment, which can only be made at the congress, and that the heir apparent, Xi Jinping, had elaborated on it. It said that the amendment had been decided at a Politburo meeting last month and that it would reect the partys latest theoretical achievements in localising Marxism and practical experience. Is that clear?
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News
From Elton John via the Beatles to Adele, the 123 hit singles that sold a million
List issued to mark 60th birthday of pop chart Internet downloads mean single sales are booming
Caspar Llewellyn Smith
It is a music chart in which Dont You Want Me? by the Human League sits outside the top 20 but above the Beatles Cant Buy Me Love. Lennon and McCartneys 1964 hit, in turn, is just ahead of Whitney Houstons power ballad I Will Always Love You, followed by the Three Lions football anthem by Baddiel and Skinner and the Lightning Seeds and Ken Dodds cheesy 1965 song Tears. The records are ranked by sales in the most authoritative chart of the UKs topselling singles ever issued. Compiled by the Ocial Charts Company to mark the 60th anniversary of the singles chart, the list features 123 records that have sold more than 1m copies since the chart began in 1952. It is topped by Elton Johns double A-side Something About The Way You Look Tonight/Candle in the Wind, which was released in the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, and sold 4.9m copies in the UK. At the other end of the chart, in 123rd place, and just scraping past the million mark, is When We Collide by the X Factor winner two years ago, Matt Cardle. Since the NME published the rst singles chart on 14 November 1952 with Here in My Heart by Al Martino at No 1 more than 32,000 records have appeared on it, making those 123 million-sellers an elite group. The total represents a huge leap from the 76 singles that had passed the million mark just 10 years ago, when the chart turned 50. Contrary to popular perception, sales of singles are booming as never before, said Martin Talbot, managing director of the Ocial Charts Company. Theres been a disproportionately huge increase of million-sellers over 60% within the last 10 years, Talbot said. The chart was really struggling then, but now were back in the era of the superhit. Last year some 178m singles were sold in the UK, and the projected gure for this year is 190m. At that rate, this decade will eclipse the 90s as the most successful ever for sales. Ten singles have already reached the million mark, including Adeles Someone Like You and, most recently, Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye featuring Kimbra. The charts revived fortunes have been attributed to the advent of digital downloads, after sales slumped to 31m in 2003 the lowest level since the 1950s. As bricks and mortar record shops have gone to the wall, the advent of broadband internet and digital services such as Apples iTunes, Amazon, Tesco.com and Spotify has revitalised the industry. Sales of physical formats now account for less than 1% of singles sales, with downloads monopolising the market. Tim Ingham, editor of trade paper Music Week, said: You dont see stores selling singles on the high street any more and older music fans still mourn the demise of Top of the Pops, so theres sometimes an
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Above, left to right: Elton John, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Adele. Below: Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta Bottom: Whitney Houston incorrect perception that the singles market is struggling. The picture couldnt be more dierent. The contrast with the albums market, where sales fell by nearly 14% in the rst half of 2012, is stark. Part of the dierence between the past and now is that todays record buyers will cherry-pick the songs they like best from a record they wont necessarily want to buy all the tracks that make up an album. The authors of a new book profiling those hits, The Million Sellers, published by the Ocial Charts Company, point out that in 1964, a seven-inch single cost 6s 8d the pre-decimal equivalent of 33.3p. Adjusting the 1964 price for inflation, the cost of a single today would be 5.84, whereas most downloads are just 99p. The digital era has also brought some old records back to life. Singles including Julie Covingtons Dont Cry for Me Argentina (a No 1 hit in 1976) and Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick by Ian Dury and the Blockheads (a chart-topper in 1979) came close to selling a million copies physically before being deleted, but have reached the magic number now thanks to digital sales. The rst record to sell a million copies was Bill Haley & His Comets Rock Around the Clock in 1955. The Beatles had six million-sellers. The average million-seller was released in the mid-80s, is most likely to be by a group or duo (almost 60% are) and has a playing time of three minutes and 46 seconds.
The top 30
1 Something About The Way You Look Tonight/Candle In The Wind 97, Elton John, 1997, 4.9m 2 Do They Know Its Christmas? Band Aid, 1984, 3.69m 3 Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, 1975, 2.36m 4 Mull Of Kintyre/Girls School, Wings, 1977, 2m 5 Youre The One That I Want, John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John, 1978, 2m 6 Rivers Of Babylon/Brown Girl In The Ring, Boney M, 1978, 2m 7 Relax, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 1983, 2m 8 She Loves You, the Beatles, 1963, 1.9m 9 Unchained Melody/(Therell Be Bluebirds Over) The White Clis Of Dover, Robson Green & Jerome Flynn, 1995, 1.86m 10 Love Is All Around, Wet Wet Wet, 1994, 1.85m 11 Marys Boy Child/Oh My Lord, Boney M, 1978, 1.85m, 12 I Just Called To Say I Love You, Stevie Wonder, 1984, 1.83m 13 Barbie Girl, Aqua, 1997, 1.79m 14 Anything Is Possible/Evergreen, Will Young, 2002, 1.79m 15 I Want To Hold Your Hand, the Beatles, 1963, 1.77m 16 Believe, Cher, 1998, 1.74m 17 (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Bryan Adams, 1991, 1.72m 18 Last Christmas/Everything She Wants, Wham! 1984, 1.60m 19 Imagine, John Lennon, 1975 1.60m 20 Summer Nights, John Travolta & Olivia NewtonJohn, 1978, 1.59m 21 Two Tribes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 1984, 1.58m 22 Ill Be Missing You, Pu Daddy & Faith Evans, 1997, 1.56m 23 Perfect Day, various artists, 1997, 1.55m 24 Dont You Want Me? Human League, 1981, 1.54m 25 Cant Buy Me Love, the Beatles, 1964, 1.53m 26 I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston, 1992, 1.53m 27 Three Lions, Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds, 1996, 1.53m 28 Tears, Ken Dodd, 1965, 1.52m 29 ...Baby One More Time, Britney Spears, 1999, 1.51m
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30 My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion, 1998, 1.48m Ocial Charts Company (full list: guardian.co.uk)
US election National
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa. He and Barack Obama will embark on a
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Barack Obamas advisers claimed the polls were moving in his direction
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Race for the White House News, analysis and the latest polling guardian.co.uk/world/usa
diary
Its tting that an election race dened by imaginary gaes based on absurdly selective quotations should end with an imaginary gae based on an absurdly selective quotation. In Ohio on Friday, when Barack Obama fans booed a mention of Mitt Romney, the president told them: No, no, no, dont boo vote. Voting is the best revenge. Never mind he was paraphrasing a saying about the merits of not behaving vengefully: hed said revenge; that meant class war. Vote for revenge? said Romney rhetorically: Let me tell you what Id like to tell you: vote for love of country. The campaign threw together an ad: Revenge or love of country. Amid the deafening sound of Democratic foreheads being smacked from coast to coast in disbelief at the sheer gall, no one noticed that the Republican had committed a far graver gae of his own. He told the crowd: Vote for President Obama the door to a brighter future. Ive trimmed that quotation, and moved a couple of words around for clarity. But you get the gist.
theres never been a day in the last four years Ive been proudThe changing of the Chinese old guard to be [Obamas] vice-president, he told cheering supporters. Not one single day! Meanwhile heres senior Obama strategist David Axelrod, in Ohio, getting sweaty with appreciation for his boss: He believes in what hes doing. He believes in what hes ghting for. You can see in the speech that hes delivering that this is coming from his loins. Um, OK. That last part wasnt strictly necessary, but thanks anyway.
Back in the world of non-imaginary gaes, senior Democratic gaologist Joe Biden did in fact unveil a classic over the weekend, by way of a campaign sign-o. I tell you what
Post-Sandy Hurricane days its quite natural that Rudy Giuliani, though a committed Republican, should show solidarity with the president as he oversees responses to the aftermath of the storm. Entirely natural but far from the truth. Instead, the 9/11 leader is spending time calling for Obamas resignation. He should resign. He lied. He has been a disaster: the worst president for our economy in our lifetime, Giuliani told a Romney rally. He doesnt want a second term. He wants a second chance because he screwed it up the rst time! Vicious words, but then at least Giuliani is bipartisan in that: in recent years he attacked a prominent Republican presidential candidate as a man without a core a man that will say anything to become president. Awkwardly, that man was Romney. Ive never seen a guy change his position so many times, so fast, on a dime, Giuliani said last year, stumping for Newt Gingrich. But perhaps its unfair to call him wildly inconsistent. Its been clear for years that Giuliani, in his heart, believes theres only one person truly qualied to lead America: Rudy Giuliani.
frantic 24 hours of campaigning to mobilise voters ahead of tomorrows election Photograph: Jim Young/ Reuters
in the political class is hailed as the progress of a community, when in fact it is the advancement of an individual. That is why criticisms of him for not doing enough for his own people both miss and devalue the point. The demand to close the racial gaps left by centuries of discrimination is not a sectional interest but a national one. Obama should do more for black people not because he is black but because black people are the citizens suering most. Black people have every right to make demands on Obama not because theyre black but because they gave him a greater percentage of their votes than any other group, and he owes his presidency to them. Like any president, he should be pressured to put the issue of racial injustice front and centre, and if black people arent going to apply that pressure then nobody else will. But in fact the opposite has been happening. With Obama in the White House African American representatives have been backpedalling. Black politicians, too, have held their re. In the absence of that pressure Obama has felt little need to focus on the problem, even rhetorically. In his rst two years in oce he talked about race less than any Democratic president since 1961. The day Obama took oce, the world may have looked at black America dierently, but black America has yet to look at Obama dierently. When he went from being an aspiration to a fact of political life, the posters that bore his likeness in socialist-realist style over single-word commands like Hope, Believe and Change should have been replaced with posters bearing the single-word statement: power. As the black American social reformer Frederick Douglass said: Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
US election National
the endorsement of the Mexican band Man. We have the conviction that Obama is the best candidate for all Latinos, said frontman Fher Olvera. Jonathan Watts
Africa Even Bush did more for us, and hes a white man
Obamas election provoked euphoria in his ancestral village in Kenya, and among African governments. Four years later there is a sense of deation. SubSaharan Africa has barely been mentioned in the campaign and the feeling of apathy is mostly mutual. Four years ago there was so much hope in this country, said Boniface Mwangi, a photographer and political activist. Now were no longer that hopeful and asking where did we go wrong. I thought Barack Obama would do well for Africa but Im ashamed to say that George Bush did more. Obama has done nothing for us. Obama, who once hailed the blood of Africa within me, has spent only 20 hours on sub-Saharan African soil since becoming president. Commentators note that Obamas principal African focus has been security, for example in combating Islamist militancy in Somalia, with pragmatism based on American self interest. Ousseynou Bissichi, a guide at the African Renaissance Monument, in
In Kogelo, Kenya, where Obamas father once lived, people pray for an Obama win
Simon Tisdall
end of the decade. It is thus a tting heir to the evil empire. Tari wars over Chinese imports may be just the start. Romney appears to see the western Pacic as a whole new cold war-style conict zone.Reprising the rogue state theme, Romney promises a tougher line on Irans nuclear activities. He says he will arm Syrias rebels. He threatens a virtual blockade of North Korea; vows to avenge war crimes allegedly of Sudans leadership; and warns the Palestinians that any attempt to assert their statehood without Israels agreement will bring heavy penalties. This will be underwritten by a big expansion of defence spending, again echoing Reagans 1980s. To achieve this end and ignoring record federal debt, Romney plans to add $2tn over the next decade to the Pentagons already enormous $711bn annual budget. At the same time, he proposes a supranational, worldwide, Reagan Economic Zone [sic], to extend the benets of free enterprise. Rarely have guns and butter been so blatantly linked. Obama is more prosaic, pledging a prolongation of his pragmatic-aspirational foreign policy that characterised his rst term and disappointed many supporters tight focus on the Afghanistan-Pakistan withdrawal, action against al-Qaida, careful management of the Arab spring and Iran dossiers, new emphasis on Asia and denuclearisation. Martin Indyk and others wrote in Foreign Aairs: The Obama approach has been informed by a realistic overarching sense of the US role in the world The tone has been neither that of American triumphalism and exceptionalism nor one of American decline. On balance, this approach has been eective.
National
The Bryn Estyn boys home, Wrexham, which shut after child abuse claims
public gures were named in the inquiry looking at the abuse in north Wales, but the media were barred from reporting the allegations, with Sir Ronald Waterhouse, who died last year, reportedly dismissing the claims as fantasy. Commenting on the claims surrounding the politician, Towler said: Sometimes when people move to protect individuals or institutions, they do so at the expense of victims and that is unacceptable. Wood told BBC Radio 4s World This Weekend: We must get to the bottom of this, we cant leave it hanging. The process must be transparent and open, and the victims must have some sort of justice. A Welsh government spokesman pointed out that the allegations related to a pre-devolution period, but said that the administration was very concerned by the allegations and would look at all the evidence as it comes forward. The investigation by Waterhouse heard evidence from more than 650 individuals who had been living in about 40 homes between 1974 and 1990. The investigation published its report in 2000, making 72
Paying tribute to Fashina, a 43-yearold accountant from Liverpool who took home the title in 2005, he said: Ive a lot of time for Waly; hes a good friend of mine and if I hadnt been in the nal I would have been cheering him on. He was very gracious in defeat. As online apps and social media sites such as Facebook breathe new life into a traditional pastime, Scrabble fans are hoping their game will go from strength to strength in the 21st century. Gallen urged all budding players to try out the Scrabble circuit. People play on their iPhones; people play on Facebook, he said. I would encourage them all to try the tournament scene. The 2012 national championship, which saw six regional events funnel the best 60 play-
ers into a semi-nal earlier this year, was the 41st to be held. Last year, a Warrington nancial adviser, Wayne Kelly, 37, was crowned the victor after playing high-scoring words such as caromel, meaning to turn into caramel. Gallen said he had prepared for the clash with nothing more than a good nights sleep. He was watched by his father, who had own over from Belfast to support him. Gallen, who started playing in a Belfast team and played his rst tournament in 2006, was ranked number ve in the world going into the national championship. He said he would be aiming next year to play in the Scrabble world championships and to win another major. But he added: Ill just try and enjoy this one rst. Its so dicult to win UK majors because there are so many good players now. So [Ill] just enjoy this.
National
Snowvember Cold snap hits UK
Unseasonal snow came to the UK yesterday, with blizzards in Durham and Cumbria and a light coating in Shepton Mallet, Somerset Photograph: apexnewspix.com
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Book till midnight 05 Nov. Travel Mon-Thurs, Nov - Jan. T&Cs apply see Ryanair.com for details. Fare includes a 6 admin fee which can be avoided if you pay with Ryanairs Cash Passport Card. Flights from London (Stansted).
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The horse CB [Charlie Brooks] put me on. Fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun. DC
Cameron to Brooks
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Parliament
tion. She added: I think it is right that the police should be looking again at this. MacShane announced he was resigning as an MP on Friday after the committee recommended a years suspension from the Commons for claiming thousands of pounds using fake receipts. The parliamentary standards commissioner found MacShane had entered 19 misleading expenses claims for thousands of pounds from the European Policy Institute signed by its supposed general manager. However, the institute did not exist in this form by the time in question and the general managers signature was provided by MacShane himself or someone else under his authority. As the MP controlled the EPIs bank account, he was eectively submitting invoices to himself and asking the parliamentary authorities to pay. PA
Competitors make their way up Hammer Hill near Cuckeld, West Sussex, during the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run yesterday Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
People
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Case study
A housing estate in Tower Hamlets, which has relocated some residents to Northampton Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty
The government had hoped the housing benet reforms would force landlords to reduce rents to within cap limits. But councils say the demand for private rented property from tenants priced out of the housing market means most landlords see no reason to drop rents, and a substantial number say they will no longer consider renting to people who are claiming housing benet. Some councils have estimated that up to a third of families aected by the introduction of the 26,000 benet cap, the local housing allowance cap and under-occupation penalties, known as the spare room tax, will lose about 100 a week. They face the options of nding more income, moving into cheaper accommodation or
presenting to the local authority as homeless. Most authorities have attempted to identify and advise residents at risk of losing income as a result of welfare changes. But there is acceptance among ocials that many of the families affected will have few options. One cabinet member for housing in an inner city borough said: Lets face it, a lot of people with more than two or three children, and who are dependent on benets in this borough are not going to be here for very much longer. Although ministers have introduced a 165m discretionary housing fund for London councils in 2013-14 to help families who can make a case for staying, the CPAG report says this is inadequate and
amounts to less than 10% of the shortfall in benet income caused by changes. A government spokesperson said: It is neither acceptable, fair nor necessary for local authorities to place families far away from their area. The law is already clear that local authorities must secure accommodation within their own borough so far as reasonably practicable, and new rules will reinforce this. Our reforms restore fairness to a system that was allowed to spiral out of control under the previous government. Its not right that some families living on benets should be able to live in areas of London that hard-working families could simply never aord to stay in. Additional research by Irene Baque
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Sharon Osbourne has decided to have no more cosmetic surgery Photograph: Getty
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Author Alan Moore was surprised when his masked character V became a symbol of Occupy Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
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International editor: Charlie English Telephone: 020 3353 3577 Fax: 020 3353 3195 Email: international@guardian.co.uk Follow our coverage on Twitter: guardianworld
Hand of God (and altar boy) selects Egypts new Coptic pope
Abdel-Rahman Hussein Cairo
Some huddle in conclave before announcing their decision in a pu of smoke. Others ballot church dignitaries and pray for the wisdom to elect the right leader. Not so the Coptic church, which yesterday selected its new pope by getting a blindfolded boy to pick a name from a bowl. The winner, Bishop Tawadros, became Pope Tawadros II. By a quirk of fate, it also happened to be his birthday. They call it the altar lottery, and its how the Coptic Orthodox church has been selecting its heads since the 18th century. After the death of Pope Shenouda III in March, candidates from within the church put themselves forward for a lengthy selection process in which 2,500 prominent Christians from both inside and outside the church whittled them down to rst ve and nally three candidates. The other two were the auxiliary bishop of central Cairo, Bishop Raphael, and Father Raphael Ava Mina, a monk at the St Mina monastery near Alexandria. Even after the boy had picked out Tawadross name, the other two names had to be picked out of the bowl too, to ensure transparency of the process. Sherif Azer, a Coptic Christian and human rights advocate who has been critical of the churchs recent political stances, told the Guardian: The idea behind it is to invoke divine intervention, which doesnt t with the concept of a demoPope Tawadros II takes over as head of the Coptic Church at a time of continued sectarian attacks against Christians in Egypt cratic election. Some active church members have already discussed reviewing the process, but I dont think this issue will be brought up anytime soon as the pope will serve for a lifetime. Tawadros is to be ocially enthroned on 18 November, but speaking from the monastery where he lives in the Nile delta governorate of Beheira, he told the assembled throng: The other two candidates were more deserving than me. I put myself in the hands of Christ, who is the true leader of the church. He takes over a church that has not yet fully come to terms with the death of Pope Shenouda III, after four decades at the helm, and amid continued sectarian attacks against Christians in Egypt. His predecessor had always seen the state as the only bulwark against increased Islamist fanaticism and sectarian tensions. This came to a head in October 2011, when 27 Christian protesters were killed when soldiers opened re on them and ran them over. The churchs refusal to condemn the ruling military junta led to criticism from within the Coptic Christian community and from revolutionary forces. In a nod to the delicate balancing act he will have to perform, Tawadros said: At this time, we would like to thank the state and the media who paid great attention to this lovely event and have shown us great aection. Azer said: I think the new pope has two options: either be outspoken and make the church the ocial representative of the Copts, openly demanding their rights, or remove the church completely from the political realm.
A blindfolded altar boy selects the new head of Egypts Coptic Church at St Marks cathedral in Cairo yesterday. He picks a paper with a name at random from a crystal chalice containing all three candidates and Tawadros II is declared pope
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Royal party The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are greeted by dancers in Boera village, Papua New Guinea, where they planted a mangrove sapling as part of a conservation project during a tour to mark the Queens diamond jubilee year Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
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International
Gulf visit
Amid complaints, criticism and bad feeling, PM ies out to smooth rued feathers
The Arab spring and a plans for a parliamentary inquiry have rattled vital trading partners. Ian Black reports on Camerons peace mission
avid Camerons Gulf mission is a conspicuous attempt to calm relations between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both vital trading partners, after spats caused by the changes during the Arab spring and fears over the growing strength of Islamist groups in the Middle East. The trip is part of an ongoing eort to smooth recently rued feathers in the two autocratic states and ensure that billions of pounds worth of defence sales and other UK economic interests are not aected. Problems on the prime ministers agenda include sudden diculties over renewing a key BP oil concession in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the Arab emirates, and worries about a 7bn ghter aircraft deal with Saudi Arabia. Both countries are bristling over criticism of their human rights records though little of it is from the British government. UK trade with the Gulf is worth 17bn a year. Camerons trip was arranged some time ago, but follows last months extraordinary outburst by the Saudi ambassador to London, who said the kingdom felt insulted by a planned parliamentary investigation into Britains relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Saudi sources warned the BBC that there could be a retaliatory review of the countrys ties with the UK. British ocials have subsequently been scrambling to explain that the government cannot control the Commons foreign aairs committee. One view was that the ambassador may have been covering his back, rather than acting with the authority of the foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, who has been ill. Saudi ocials complained that the foreign aairs committee had been manipulated by the vocal Bahraini opposition, some of them with links to Iran, who are keen to stress the Saudi role in helping to crush the unrest in Bahrain in March 2011. Friends and critics of Saudi Arabia agree that the parliamentary move had damaged the countrys already poor image in the UK. William Hague, the foreign secretary, and Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, are planning separate Gulf tours.
IRAQ
IRAN KUWAIT
Oman
The deals
BAE close to order for 12 Typhoon jets
The deals
Key BP oil concession in Abu Dhabi Serco provides aeronautical services at six international airports across the Gulf. The company also operates the Dubai metro, which transports 30 million people a year in driverless trains that travel at up to 90km an hour
BAHRAIN
Manama
applied by the UAE, brooding over regional and local issues. Like the Saudis, the Emiratis were devastated by the wests abandonment of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt last year and the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East. The UAE is also notably hawkish on Iran, whose nuclear programme is at the centre of regional tensions. Emirati leaders have been angrily expressing their concerns to the UK, diplomats say. Tempers ared recently over coverage of Islamists and human rights issues by the Guardian and BBC, triggering a Twitter campaign accusing Britain of backing traitors. ndependent observers are pleased that the UK is becoming more critical of the status quo in Bahrain, where the British government criticised a ban on demonstrations as excessive last week. People are surprised that the British are taking such a critical role in assessing the situation in a way that might have a negative impact on trade, said Mansour al-Jamri, editor of the Bahraini newspaper al-Wasat. But others see more continuity than change in the region as a whole. The Gulf states are unnerved by the ease with which the US and UK have shifted towards engaging with the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa, said Jane Kinninmont of Chatham House. They dont want what happened to Mubarak to happen to them. Elsewhere in the Middle East things are dierent, but I struggle to see any dierence in policies towards the Gulf. Britain is doing business as usual in Bahrain despite the protests. Thats a signal that will not be lost on the Saudis as they deal with unrest in their eastern provinces. If the Saudis are now silent, their British friends are speaking out. Daniel Kawczynski, the Tory MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Saudi Arabia, says the row over the foreign aairs committee inquiry has been extremely unhelpful and damaging to relations between the two countries. Every time I take an MP to Saudi Arabia their views are radically changed, Kawczynski said. There is a huge amount of prejudice in the House of Commons as there is in the country as a whole, because you only ever hear negative press reports. People have a very distorted view of the kingdom. I would be very put out if the Saudis came to this country and challenged and berated me about all our social ills whether neglect of the elderly or drug abuse or inner city crime. But we constantly criticise the Saudis in a quasi-colonialist and condescending and derogatory manner. You have to consider what would happen if Saudi Arabia was in the hands of an extremist Muslim government.
QATAR
Doha
Dubai
UAE
Abu Dhabi
Riyadh
Standard Chartered is largest international bank in UAE, where it has 340,000 customers and employs 2,305 sta. It also has signicant operations in Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates Sir Norman Fosters architectural practice has designed an $18bn (11.2bn) carbon neutral city in Abu Dhabi. Masdar City, which is designed to be powered entirely by solar energy and other renewable energy, will be home to about 50,000 people, at least 1,000 businesses and a university WS Atkins. The UKs largest engineering consultancy employs 1,972 in 11 oces across the Middle East and made 171.4m in the region last year. Its most high-prole project was designing the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab 56-storey hotel on a purpose-built island in Dubai
OMAN
Muscat
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia
The disputes
Kingdom says it felt "insulted" by a planned parliamentary investigation into Britains relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
YEMEN ERITREA
Sanaa
The deals
7bn BAE ghter aircraft deal with Saudi Arabia still to be nalised Private security rm G4S has a joint venture in Saudi Arabia, Almajal G4S, which employs more than 15,000 people across the kingdom and operates more than 500 armoured vehicles. The companys support for the regime during popular protests earned local sta a two-month bonus
ETHIOPIA DJIBOUTI
Compounding tensions with the Saudis is what regular visitors describe as a sense of drift in Riyadh, where 88-yearold King Abdullah is ailing, reforms are moving at a glacial pace and the future is uncertain. Another part of the problem is a London embassy that is notoriously prickly and uncommunicative. Little damage has been felt so far, but there is palpable nervousness regarding the future. Cameron will push for the completion of the BAE Systems deal for 72 Typhoon jets, maintenance and missiles, and for lucrative business with the UAE, where the defence manu-
facturer has huge ambitions, in the words of its chairman Dick Olver. The Saudis will play Russian roulette with payments which could be quite exciting given BAEs current problems, predicted a businessman with long experience of the region. They will use political stu as a point of leverage whatever tools they have at their disposal. Precedent is worrying. In 2006 the Saudis threatened to end counterterrorist cooperation with the UK unless the serious fraud oce dropped its investigation into BAE Systems over the al-Yamamah arms deal. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, ambassador to Saudi Arabia at time, assessed that the threat was real and the investi-
gation was shelved on national security grounds. He is now BAEs international business development director. Unrest in the eastern provinces, home to the countrys Shia minority, is another highly sensitive issue, with Gulf ocials warning that the Saudis will not countenance interference in their internal aairs. The Foreign Oce categorises the kingdom as a country of concern in terms of human rights, but its criticism is discreet. Saudi Arabia gets a comparatively easy ride given the scale of the human rights violations in the kingdom, Amnesty International said last week. Uncertainty over the BP concession suggests pressure is already being
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International
Young Muslim brides await their grooms in a mass marriage ceremony in Bhopal, India, yesterday. More than 45 Muslim couples were joined in this matrimonial ceremony organised for underprivileged people Photograph: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA
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International
Libya
A cleaner adds the nishing touches in Vientiane, Laos, before this years Asia-Europe Meeting opened yesterday. The economy topped the agenda Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Israel
ocial biographer, Martin Gilbert. The book laid out in crystal clear form that Churchill throughout his life was a passionate believer in the cause of Zionism, said Antony Rosenfelder, a British trustee of the foundation. He said that it was astounding how little recognition there had been in Israel for a man who, over half a century, did so much not just to ensure Israels survival but actually to help the development of the state. This is just a small way of thanking someone for something I think is fairly central to Israel today. The ceremony was attended by the former prime ministers great grandson, Randolph Churchill. It means a huge amount to our family, he said. The Israeli historian Tom Segev said that, for some Jews, Churchills failure to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz outweighed his support for the Jewish people. Accepted opinion today is that he was a friend of Zionism and the state of Israel. But he did not have an emotional attachment. He regarded the whole thing as political, Segev said. Harriet Sherwood Jerusalem
Iran
far as the eye can see; the gravedigger of Shiraz reported the delivery of 60 bodies on a single occasion, of victims at most 20 years old. Men were arrested at 10 in the morning and were dead by 11; entire families were eliminated and whole wards purged; rows of prisoners were shot by ring squad, still breathing until they were nished o by coup de grce. One of the most chilling accounts was given by a man who admitted that as a child he was forced to shoot any survivors in the head. Nice added: Truckloads of bodies were tipped into mass graves In no case was an execution ordered in accordance with due process. In its judgment, the Iran tribunal found that the Islamic Republic of Iran bears absolute responsibility for gross violations of human rights against its citizens and crimes against humanity under customary international law as applicable to Iran in the 1980s. Among its recommendations, the tribunal called on the human rights council of the United Nations to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate these atrocities. The tribunal was composed of six judges including the UK barrister Michael Manseld QC, John Dugard, a South African professor of international law, and professor Patricia Sellers, a former UN adviser on human rights. Owen Bowcott
United States
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Financial
Business editor: Julia Finch Tel: 020 3353 3795 Fax: 020 3353 3196 Email: nancial@guardian.co.uk Follow us at twitter.com/BusinessDesk HSBC has now set aside nearly 1bn to cover nes for alleged money laundering Photograph: PA Archive/Ima
Executives responsible for the Mexican business have since left the bank. The bank, which is expected to announce quarterly prots of 5bn, has condently informed shareholders that it is no longer run as an operation with a presence in 80 countries but as an integrated business with four global heads to centralise standards and controls. Insiders say it will take Gulliver longer to reform structures that have dominated the bank for decades and provided a power base for many valued senior executives. The bank is also caught up in the Libor rigging scandal, along with several US and Swiss banks. They are accused of articially inating interest rates ahead of the crash to raise prots, and massaging them down in the wake of the crisis. Gulliver, whose bonuses are tied to the banks reputation, did not make provision for any ne or legal cases. Barclays has been ned 290m for Libor manipulation. Since the summer HSBC has hired Preeta Bansal as its global general counsel for litigation and regulatory aairs, adding a third Obama administration ocial to support damage limitation eorts. Bansal will help manage litigation and regulatory risk, and report to the chief legal officer, Stuart Levey, the former sanctions ocial in the Bush and Obama Treasury oces, who was appointed in January. In August, the bank hired Robert Werner, a former head of the Treasury departments trade and economic enforcement arm, as head of global standards assurance.
24 hours in pictures The most arresting news photography from the last 24 hours guardian. co.uk/ inpictures
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Natural resources
Podcasts Podcasts Podcasts Div Dive in an Dive in and and immerse mmers immerse yourself yourself in self e yourself in the biggest h bigges the biggest issu issues su issues guardian. guardian. d guardian. co.uk/audio
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Financial
He inherited a decit, saved jobs but failed to make good his promise as Americas new Roosevelt. Is Obama history, asks Larry Elliott
he Great Recession has been hard on world leaders. Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi are all history. Angela Merkel has her date with destiny next autumn, and Barack Obama has his tomorrow. US political history would point to Obama joining the list of recent political casualties. He was billed as the heir to Roosevelt when elected during the worst slump since the 1930s, but he has been no FDR. Recovery has been weak, unemployment slow to come down, inequality has got worse and vested interests left untouched. If the Republicans had been able to put up a candidate with even a hint of Ronald Reagans charisma, Obama would be going the way of Jimmy Carter. To be sure, Obama has not had it easy. He has been faced with venomous opposition from Republicans in Congress determined to obstruct the White House every inch of the way. Whats more, the poor state of the economy over the past four years largely reects stu that happened before Obama became president. It was George W Bush who took
If Obama wins it will be because he saved General Motors, and because of the fear that Romney would be even worse
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Comment
Debate
Jackie Ashley After last weeks political opportunism, the party has to ensure it counters the nations growing anti-EU sentiment
Im not even sure whether the phrase Tory pro-Europeans is still plural; is it only Ken Clarke now?
urope has become the place where nothing quite happens. David Cameron goes to Brussels demanding a freeze in the EU budget, while the European commission and parliament want a hefty 5-6% increase. It should be a storming confrontation, vetos threatened, walkouts happening. But we all know that, somehow, life will go on. It always does. Yet Europe is also the issue in British politics that is changing more than any other. Icy hostility is hardening. Those who want to leave are growing ever more numerous and implacable. Never has the pro-European voice been weaker and less certain. It isnt simply the opportunism of the parliamentary Labour party trooping through the lobbies after MPs Reckless and Cash. It isnt just the radical shift among Tory MPs, with pro-Europeans cowed and isolated. (Im not even sure the phrase Tory pro-Europeans is still plural; is it only Ken Clarke now?) Its the shift among voters. According to polling in Camerons own Witney constituency, 68% of Tory supporters there want a referendum on Europe and 29% would consider switching parties to get one. Theres no secret about where they would go. National opinion polls show a steady rise in the Ukip vote; the most recent, for the Observer, puts Ukip third nationally, ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Cameron is promising a major speech on Europe soon. But what can he say? This momentous shift is partly the result of the slow-motion car crash inside the eurozone, itself caused by the glaring dierences between northern and southern economies. As Iain Duncan Smith admitted yesterday, British politicians are waiting to see how the eurozone deals with its deep problems before deciding how to react themselves nervous bystanders by the crash site, watching the emergency services argue. So it may seem unfair to say that the second reason for the strong antiEU tide owing through the UK is an absence of pro-European leadership in Britain. Yet this failure of leadership is fundamental and aects both the major parties. Cameron and his senior team are frankly scared sti of the rising Eurorejectionist tendency, too frightened to confront them. For Labour, sitting back and watching Tory turmoil has been too enjoyable to resist. It may even be an eective electoral strategy: it is not impossible that Ukip may deliver a Labour majority in 2015. The trouble is that all this opportunistic, tactical game-playing allows the argument for a
complete break to grow, perhaps to the point where it becomes irresistible. A Labour party that has declined to pick a ght on the European issue with its natural enemies may nd that the game has changed. Almost nobody is speaking up. The Gordon Brown camps legendary hostility to the euro is morphing into general appeasement of the anti-EU mood. What Denis MacShane did in his expenses ddling was unforgivable, but his departure from politics removes one of the few outspoken Europhile voices in national politics. Certainly no other Labour MP comprehends the European project so well. I can understand Camerons lack of leadership. Ideologically, Tory freemarketeers have a deep problem with a single economic union. There isnt a great deal of space left for him to occupy between Brussels federalism and Tory Atlanticist anti-Europeanism. If you really think the City of London is Britains last economic card then, yes, youd be scared sti of new EU-wide banking rules. Labours lack of leadership is odder. Yes, there are populist tricks to be won on immigration and even on the EU budget. But if you look at Labours developing domestic vision for Britain, what do you see? A major drive on technical training, regional industrial policy, the living wage and a rebalancing of the economy away from nancial services and towards engineering, combined with business banks structured to invest for the long term. And what does that sound like?
Germany. If Labours vision of a bettergrounded, fairer and more sustainable economy isnt quite a copy of modern Germany, it is at least remarkably close to the social democratic capitalism that has evolved under parties of dierent stripes across much of northern Europe. Ed Milibands one-time guru Maurice Glasman could tell him as much. The German dilemma just now is about the depth of sacrice Germans, and northern Europeans generally, should make to save southern economies that they regard as unreformed (and which they fear are unreformable). That is a domestic crisis for the eurozone, which isnt much helped by ostage heckles from outsiders. But as Labour tries to dene its new identity, after the neoliberalism and bust nancial capitalism of the Blair years, many European economies still provide the best examples of what to aim for. When Labour argues for real, knowledgeable, locally based banking and training, supporting high-end companies, plus a fair tax system designed for citizens, not global parasites, its arguing for a European future. Its obvious. Voters arent stupid and they would get it. But its something that needs to argued for. Soon it may be too late. Europe often seems a policy area where nothing happens; its quite possible that Britain will vote for a neoliberal exit. And Labour should remember this: you cannot win an argument you havent made. Twitter: @jackieashley
head of the Israeli elections next January, a merger between the parties of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has been announced. They are to contest the elections on a joint list, intending to become the largest bloc in the Knesset. The move is seen as an achievement for both men. Netanyahu was shaken by the recent decline in the popularity of his Likud party and the possible return of Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, as leader of an opposition alliance consisting of Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister; Shaul Mofaz, leader of Kadima; and Yair Labed, a rising political star. Netanyahus avowed objective is to assemble a major political force that would guarantee his re-election and ensure his dominance of the Israeli right. Lieberman is the main beneciary of this alliance: it guarantees power for his party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and under the agreement, Lieberman can choose to run whatever ministry he desires, including the important ministry of defence. He will gain political legitimacy and be transformed from a mere participant in a coalition government to a key player. If in recent years the government has been a construct of Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, the next government will be a NetanyahuLieberman one. Lieberman can also contest Likuds leadership after Netanyahu.
The alliance reects a lunge to the right, at a time of greater extremism in Israeli politics. Previously, Lieberman was very much on the margins. When he became minister of transport, a minister in the Labour party resigned, refusing to sit at the same table with him. After that, Lieberman became the foreign minister. Many thought this would provoke the ire of the international community. But he was warmly received in European capitals. If one had said 10 years ago that Lieberman would become foreign minister, one would have been accused of ignorance, if not of hostility and incitement against Israel. Among the obvious outcomes of this new coalition is the fact that Likud has become more extremist, and Lieberman more inuential and more dangerous. A few months ago Lieberman called for the toppling of President Mahmoud Abbas, despite the fact that the Palestinian leader has maintained the peace in the shadow of the occupation, and continues to pursue negotiations even in the absence of an Israeli partner. Lieberman also called for economic, political and security sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after it began diplomatic moves to gain UN recognition for a Palestinian state. Lieberman has espoused policies hostile to Arab citizens of Israel, who constitute 17% of the population. The slogan of his party is No citizenship without loyalty; he seeks to oblige Arabs citizens to declare loyalty to the Zionist state as a condition for citizenship, including the right to vote and become members of the Knesset.
As the danger of racism depends not only on its callousness but on its power and inuence, this coalition at the heart of government suggests a sharp rise in levels of racism and a dramatic decline in democracy. Central to Liebermans politics is ocial recognition for the annexation of Jerusalem and the illegal Jewish settlements, in exchange for the transfer of major Arab population centres to Palestine. Altogether, Liebermans aim is to make the citizenship of Palestinian Arabs conditional and temporary. Ultimately, this could result in a pure Jewish state, free of Arab citizens. When Jrg Haider and his extreme right party entered the Austrian government, several European countries imposed sanctions. Lieberman is far more dangerous than Haider. His stature is proof that extremism has come to dominate in Israel. Should the kind of politics that are rejected in Europe be accommodated in the Holy Land? Trying to persuade Netanyahu and his government to adopt more moderate policies is a waste of time and eort. The only way to ensure change is through pressure and sanctions on the Israeli government. Netanyahus political conduct shows that he bows only when confronted. Whoever wants a just peace, to put an end to the crimes committed by occupation, to combat racism, must help in imposing sanctions. Jamal Zahalka is an Arab member of the Knesset, and head of the parliamentary group of the National Democratic Assembly
The Guardian | Monday 5 November 2012 Follow us on Twitter @commentisfree Join us on Facebook facebook.com/guardiancomment
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Comment editor: Becky Gardiner Telephone: 020 3353 4995 Fax: 020 3353 3193 Email: cif.editors@guardian.co.uk
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Gary Younge Obamas presidency may have been too timid, but lets not forget who has been responsible for the USs political gridlock
There may have been precious little calm before the storm, but there was a greater degree of clarity after it
to mention it. While no single storm can be attributed to climate change, warming oceans make them more likely and a clear pattern is emerging that would help to explain an occurrence such as Sandy. As the New York Timess Nicolas Kristof pointed out, three of the 10 biggest oods in lower Manhattan since 1900 have occurred in the past three years, while seven of the 10 warmest summers on record have taken place in the past 12. But to raise an issue like this during an election takes the kind of political courage that has long been in short supply. Given the hours of coverage and the billions of dollars devoted to the election, its stunning how few of the nations most glaring problems are being discussed. The US now has more people in its penal system than the Soviet gulag at its height; its capital city has a male life expectancy lower than that of the Gaza Strip; and the country openly operates a system of torture and a policy of targeted assassination. The fact that nobody even expects these issues to come up tells you something about the low expectations Americans have of their politicians. But Sandy concentrated minds. Disasters have a way of doing that. Its arrival prised a much coveted endorsement for Obama from the New York city mayor, Michael Bloomberg, an independent who formerly ran as a Republican. The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the north-east brought the stakes of next Tuesdays presidential election into sharp relief, he said. True, Obama had not campaigned on it but at the very least he acknowledges its existence, made some eorts to address it, and is not beholden to a party that refuses to accept the science. As Bloomberg was penning his endorsement, Obama was touring storm-hit areas with the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Christie, Romneys rst pick for vicepresident, delivered a keynote speech at the Republican convention. The week before, he had described the president as a man wandering around a dark room, hands up against the wall, clutching for the light switch of leadership, and he just cant nd it. Last week, when the lights went out, he praised Obama for his handling of the storm,
saying: The president has been all over this and he deserves great credit. While Sandy prompted both Bloombergs and Christies conversions, elsewhere in the country came evidence of a deeper split in Republican ranks. In the Nebraska Senate race, several Republicans came out against the Tea Party-supported candidate and for the Democrat, Bob Kerrey. A week earlier, George Bushs former secretary of state Colin Powell a Republican broke ranks again to back Obama. I think Im a Republican of more moderate mould and thats something of a dying breed, Im sorry to say, he said. But, you know, the Republicans I worked for are President Reagan, President Bush, the Howard Bakers of the world, people who were conservative but people who recognise that, at the end of the day, you got to nd a basis for compromise. Compromise is how this country runs.
owells breed may be further from extinction than has been apparent. For the past four years, Tea Party activists have been claiming they want to take their country back. Now a growing number of Republicans appear to want to take their party back. And so it was that by the end of last week you got a sense of what an Obama presidency might have been, and might be again, were it not for the wilful obstruction of an opposition whose primary stated aim was to deny him a second term: too timid for what is necessary but nonetheless the best that is possible within the narrow connes of American electoralism. Of course, he still has to win on Tuesday, which is by no means certain. But the dying days of the campaign put to rest one of the cases against him that has gained most traction among waverers. The arguments of the Des Moines Register and the Orlando Sentinel are true as far as they go. But they dont go very far unless they locate the source of the gridlock and hold to account those responsible for it. In the absence of that, handing the presidency to Romney becomes little more than a reward for bad behaviour. Twitter: @garyyounge
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US foreign policy
Town centres
In praise of texting
According to AT&T, 40% of texters who are dating believe that text messaging plays a signicant role in their relationship. This may be of scant consolation to David Cameron who has been trying unsuccessfully to bury a cache of texts between Downing Street and the former News International chief Rebekah Brooks. But of all the boons of the internet age, SMS messages may well turn out to be the most far reaching. They are a more instant form of public service announcement than radio. Governments use SMS alerts in times of crisis to warn people of oods and earthquakes. Their social impact has been truly global. A text message campaign in Africa that exposed which countries ran out of essential medicines embarrassed national governments into action. Texts are both personal and nonintrusive. When handed to the likes of Lord Justice Levesons inquiry, texts may, however, lose some of their initial intimacy.
Mohammed Hanif
If Pakistan really wants to combat the fundamentalists, it should be protecting its children and their teachers
pparently, Pakistanis dont need the Taliban to destroy their schools any more they can do it themselves. Last week, a girls high school was set ablaze in Pakistans second largest city, Lahore. And no, the Taliban were not the culprits. A mob, enraged after allegations of blasphemy against a teacher, carried out the attack. Instead of taking action against them, the police arrested the schools 77-year-old owner. The accused teacher, who allegedly committed blasphemy by photocopying the wrong page of a book for homework, is in hiding. Pakistan may have declared an education emergency earlier this year, but it still fails to protect the schools it has. How did we get here? They have shut down girls schools, I told a childhood friend who was eusively praising the Pakistani Taliban after its temporary takeover of the Swat valley three years ago. Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani peace activist shot last month by the Taliban, was a bored 11-year-old schoolgirl then. My friend lived about 350 miles away from Swat, and had three daughters. His reasons for liking the Taliban were simple: they were local heroes who had decided to take things into their own hands. If only people in our area had the same courage, he said. Would you like a Taliban-type system here in your city? I asked him. Yes, of course, he would. Every morning, my friend drove two of his daughters to school and was pretty certain that one of them would go to medical school. But the Taliban dont allow girls education. What will happen when they shut
down your daughters school? I asked. My friend was puzzled, but only for a moment. They wouldnt do that here. What they did in Swat is their culture, Pashtun culture. Not educating girls is not the only myth about Pashtuns: Pashtun mothers produce sons so that they can send them to war; fathers will shoot their daughters if a stranger sees their faces. Of course, as the myth goes, they also dont want to send their daughters to schools. And why do they need to send their sons to school anyway, if they are born soldiers in an eternal jihad? But there was no evidence of any such Pashtun culture in the Swat valley I had visited the day before our conversation. When the Taliban made their bid to rule the region, Swat could have easily passed as the education capital of Pakistan. There were law schools, medical schools, nursing schools and more computer schools than any other valley of this size could accommodate. And thats without counting the hundreds of informal beauty schools that provide on-the-job training for girls so poor they cant aord any other type of education. A lot of Pakistanis, as well as people
What is conveniently ignored is the fact that every 10th child in the world who doesnt go to school is a Pakistani child
the world over, have expressed their solidarity with Malala by doing the obligatory status update or tweet: We are all Malala. But for most people, she is someone elses child and will remain so. She is a child whose name can be invoked to start another military operation, a child whose name can be used to prove the blindingly obvious that parents, whatever their religion or culture, would like their children to be at school if they can aord it. What is conveniently ignored in the debate over Malala is the fact that every 10th child in the world who doesnt go to school is Pakistani. The Taliban are not the only ones keeping kids out of school. Some fairly secularly minded people think of Pakistans children as someone elses children not deserving the education that their money buys for their own kids. As such, Pakistan is a booming marketplace for private education. Ask anyone on the street, and theyll tell you its the biggest business in Pakistan. You can see people on donkey carts driving their children to private schools that oer English-medium education in air-conditioned rooms for 400 rupees a month. Every morning, in every small town and city, you can see kids three on a bicycle, ve on a motorbike, 10 squeezed into a rickshaw all heading for a school. Girls top almost all university exam tables in Pakistan. Whatever sad destiny the country may be hurtling towards, there is one thing standing between Pakistan and the Talibans dream of heaven on earth: the number of women who have been to school, and the number of women who couldnt go to school but are determined to send their daughters to school, no matter the economic imperative. Whatever your ideas about a good Muslim
girl, you cant really lock up 90 million of them behind closed doors. Listen to the Taliban, not to their cuddly intellectual friends, and you begin to get a clearer picture. Their apologists in political parties may try to prove that girls education is an invention of the indels, but the Taliban seem to know what they are talking about. An educated female population is more threatening to them than armies equipped with all-seeing drones. Every girl who crams for a high-school exam, every woman who runs a hospital, and every semi-educated mother who makes sure her daughter gets a better education than she herself received, is a mortal threat to the Talibans declared ambition that every little girl who talks about school gets it in the head. By abdicating its responsibility to educate our children, to protect those who manage to go to school and those who teach them, Pakistan is making it that much easier for the Talibans mission to succeed. Mohammed Hanif is author of Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and is based in Karachi
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Letters and emails Guardian surrender on self-regulation
We are disappointed that the Guardian now appears to accept the merit of the new system of press self-regulation being proposed by David Hunt of the Press Complaints Commission and Guy Black of the Telegraph (Editorial, 2 November). You admit yourselves that their plan vests too much power in an industry funding body which retains key powers over the regulator, but you fail to take this to its logical conclusion: that it is little more than a reinvention of the same system of self-regulation which has failed the public and journalism for the last 60 years. We share your commitment to independent regulation, both from politicians and the press itself. This cannot be achieved by a system controlled by the same press interests which have dominated the failed PCC. Moreover, as so far described, the Hunt-Black plan has no means of ensuring that all major press companies sign up (the so-called Desmond problem), nor any foolproof method of enforcing its rulings. Were it not for the Guardians commitment to courageous and outstanding investigative journalism in the teeth of bitter resistance by the PCC and its controlling press interests we would never have discovered the true scale of abuse and corruption in parts of the press. This is surely the moment to push for a genuinely independent regulator, founded in law, which could command real public trust and reinvigorate public interest journalism. For the Guardian meekly to surrender this opportunity in favour of yet more self-regulation is a sad nale to its own exemplary journalism. Professor Steven Barnett University of Westminster, Professor Richard Sambrook Cardi University and 18 others Full list at gu.com/letters
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A Shortcuts item (Breast cancer screening: will you, wont you?, 31 October, page 3, G2) published in the wake of an independent review of the NHS breast screening programme erred in saying: A 50-year-old woman who turns up for screening has a 93.2% chance of being told all is well. This and other statistics referred to in the article relate to all women in the NHS breast screening programme, under which those in the 50-70 age group are called for screening every three years. An article about arrangements made by Lloyds Banking Group to compensate people who were mis-sold payment protection insurance (Lloyds adds 1bn to costs of PPI payback, 2 November, page 35) said the company wrote to the Financial Ombudsman Service last month to suggest claims management companies pay the 850m costs associated with processing the claims they bring. In fact it suggested that claims management companies pay the 850 costs associated with processing each case they bring. A Comment piece (Camerons pro-EU charade cannot go on much longer, 31 October, page 33) said the EU budget had never passed audit. To clarify: the EUs court of auditors has not given a declaration of assurance in relation to the EU budget since 1994. Contacts for Guardian departments and sta can be found at gu.com/help/ contact-us. To contact the readers editors oce, which looks at queries about accuracy and standards, email reader@guardian.co.uk including article details and web link; write to The readers editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU; or phone +44 (0)20 3353 4736 between 10am and 1pm UK time Monday to Friday excluding public holidays. The Guardians policy is to correct signicant errors as soon as possible. The editorial code of the Guardian incorporates the editors code overseen by the Press Complaints Commission: see pcc.org.uk
Threatening tree owners with nes of 5,000 does not make for good relations
Donald Barker
One law for MacShane and another for Laws Grassroots support for green spaces
Can anyone explain why Denis MacShane (Report, 3 November) has been forced, rightly, to resign as MP for falsely claiming 12,000 in expenses, while David Laws, who falsely claimed over 40,000 for rent, ostensibly to hide the fact that he was gay, is not only back in parliament (after only a seven-day suspension, compared with 12 months imposed on MacShane before he decided to quit), but is now installed as minister for schools? Michael McColgan Sheeld I recently travelled from Croyde in north Devon to Stratford, mostly by train. On the journey, I didnt see a single wind turbine (Simon Jenkins, 2 November). Rosemary Brian Croyde, Devon Jen and Geo may have a simple solution to what their grandchildren call them (Letters, 3 November), but when my granddaughter calls me Grandaddy, I feel she has some sense of the wonder of the passing of the generations. Michael Harrison Oxford No matter what you call your grandmothers, we in Scotland are ever mindful of which one we can and cannot forcibly eject from a bus (Oh ye cannae shove your grannie o a bus). Norman Williamson Glasgow For cremations (Letters, 2 November), the most appropriate music must be Fire! by Arthur Brown (I am the god of hell re ...). Mike Topham Birkenhead, Wirral Seumas Milne (31 October) condemns the obscene and ever-growing wealth of the richest people in the UK and how they and global corporations have avoided paying taxes estimated to be greater than the entire national debt. A few pages later, Alison Benjamin asks who should pick up the bill for our green spaces?. Why not let the public decide? Over the last 20 years we have seen the rapid growth of over 5,000 local friends of parks groups committed to rescuing our urban green spaces from the scandalous decline they were plunged into by public spending cuts in the 1980s. Despite this rescue act still not having been completed for most of the 30,000 such spaces, our parks are facing a national funding crisis yet again. As everyone knows, urban parks, despite being a non-statutory service, are a priceless environmental and social resource for every community, and are the most well-used and popular of all our vital public services, on a par with the NHS. It is unacceptable that they should be starved of the stang, maintenance and management they need. However, there are real dierences between now and the 1980s. First, we now know the disastrous problems caused by underfunding and neglect, and the huge cost and eort it takes to turn it back round. Second, we now have a popular, grassroots movement which is going to speak out and demand eective action. Lets all ensure theres an active and vociferous group for every green space. We call for adequate funding for all UK parks and a statutory duty to manage them to high standards. Dave Morris Campaigns ocer, National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces
Country diary
Open door
want to buy the Guardian today. I did, because I love the paper, but it was a real repellent. I know advertising keeps newspapers alive and those border adverts, that stand out, are OK but when it blocks the very thing I buy the Guardian for, the news, and, more importantly, the Guardians take on the news, not just for me, the regular buyer but also for the people who buy other papers but see your headlines, well, its horrible. Some saw irony in a series of advertisements for Vodafone, a company that has been the subject of allegations of tax avoidance often reported in the pages of the paper. One wrote: Are you trying to see how far you can push your readers before we crack? Please dont ever wrap my daily newspaper in a giant advert for a notorious tax-avoiding company again, because if you do I shant buy it. And then last Wednesday Vodafones rivals in the new market for 4G networks, EE, swept into the pages of the Guardian, dominating the advertising slots for the rst 20 pages. This prompted another smaller urry of complaints about saturation. So far there have been 34 complaints about the scale of the advertising by broadband companies. There were also a further 34 complaints about an earlier series of ads that involved the half wraparounds or bookmark ads, which appeared on 17 September 2012. The chief complaint, unsurprisingly, the vertical front half page advertisement is attached to the back page, but because of its size both parts tended to pull away more easily than two full pages. Some readers appeared to enjoy the challenge: I will not be able to sleep at night having purchased todays edition without knowing if I have a rare copy. Looking as if the front cover had a small tear, upon closer inspection outside the newsagent I actually have one-anda-half front pages with an incomplete advertisement for First Direct on the reverse. The actual back page of the real paper has the obituaries. Oers please? Never knowingly undersold. A lot of readers feel there is a higher advertising-to-editorial ratio than there was once was. Paul Johnson, a deputy editor, said this is not the case: There isnt a strict ad-editorial ratio [its roughly 50-50]. G1 is built on editorial minimums through national, international, nancial [pages]. We have a whole series of rules about what ads can go on pages one two and three, the number of pages without ads etc. For instance, we dont have advertising on our comment pages. Some proposals for advertising shapes are turned down as being too intrusive, says Johnson, but the demand for dierent positions is strong: Advertisers or advertising agencies have got much more demanding and adventurous in recent years. We take some of the dierent congurations put up, believing that we can design good editorial pages around them. The wraparound may be a new departure, but it is only 60 years ago that ads made way for news on the front of the Guardian and there have been occasional instances of irregular shapes since. CP Scotts essay celebrating the centenary of the Guardian, published in 1921, made much of the balance between the material and the moral life of a newspaper. However, he was clear that the balance should tip towards the latter as a guiding principle of purpose while recognising that the Guardian needed to be a business to survive. That hasnt changed. So the Guardian feels that even when the innovative shape can occasionally be awkward for some, it is a revenue stream that supports nearly 50% of the costs of publication. What do other readers think? What would you do?
Chris Elliott
The readers editor on handling the changing shape of advertising
n the past few years advertisements have leapt out of their accustomed slots below the fold of the Guardian to appear in a variety of shapes and forms; the L shape, the chimney, or funnel, on the inside, and on the outside the bookmark half page. On Friday 26 October the Guardian carried its rst full wraparound advertisement, for Vodafone, part of a 4m campaign by the company across the media. Many readers, especially those who identied themselves as Guardian subscribers, objected: Im sorry, but the front-back Vodafone cover made me not
Some saw irony in a series of advertisements for Vodafone, the subject of allegations of tax avoidance
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Opinion
Emily Bell
merica experienced a moment last week when forecast became fact; shockingly, concretely. Tomorrow, the same thing will happen. A speculative river will solidify into a hard fact. Whether it is the trajectory of the super storm Sandy, or the outcome of the presidential election, recent US media discourse has been dominated by forecasts, forecasting and those who make and disseminate them. Informed judgment, or speculation as it is less atteringly known, has formed a key component of reporting for as long as the practice itself. The faulty forecast has become the dry rot in the imsy framework of public trust in journalism. Failures to adequately anticipate phenomena, from al-Qaidas rise to the nancial systems collapse, have contributed to an erosion of credibility. The bendy tree journalism of wind-blown TV news reporters has too often misled audiences about the threat of weather systems. As with every other branch
of journalism, the dynamics of reporting what will happen are shifting from the qualitative model of expert opinion to the quantitative model of what can be extrapolated from measurement. One of the astonishing aspects of Sandy was how accurate the forecasts often were; foreseeing, for example, its move oshore before landing, as predicted, smack in the middle of New Jerseys shoreline. Thorough reporting soon followed, as a torrent of social media updates and photos tumbled into the stream of innovative eorts by big media. The rapid, sketchy information, false rumours and photos made some kind of sense of the scattered chaos. We watched, with timelines, maps and commentary, journalism get better before our very eyes. In a real storm, it seems the media can pull together, and make use of the technologies which arrived to disrupt it. In US political forecasting, however, punditry has created its own fake storm, centring on the predictive powers of one man, Nate Silver. Silvers FiveThirtyEight blog makes his voice one of the most listenedto in US politics. But Silver didnt develop his journalism through the traditional route, wearing out shoe leather on the
campaign trail and drinking in Capitol Hill bars with interns and advisers. He has a background in economics and started his career modelling baseball statistics. His prediction modelling for the 2008 election gave him remarkable accuracy and elevated his blog to a soughtafter source of political wisdom. A deal with the New York Times sealed his rise. His prominence has unsettled those he disrupts, and the possibility that he might be wrong encouraged the sceptics into open hostility. In his new book The
One of the astonishing aspects of storm Sandy was how accurate many of the forecasts were
Signal and the Noise, Silver lays bare how political pundits failed to predict accurately the scale of the Obama victory. Joe Scarborough, a commentator for MSNBC, levelled his guns at Silver last week, saying that he was an ideologue, a far more insulting term in US journalism than in British, and that the election was in eect a coin toss. At its most basic level, this argument goes beyond left and right it is about a new emerging school of journalism challenging the status quo. Journalism delivered through lovely prose and burnished anecdote, developed through access traded, sometimes for truth, is under threat from spreadsheets and the numeracy of a dierent elite. All journalism in one way or another is about the performance of information; presenting, polishing, contextualising and reporting. Silvers performance is through numbers and methodology; those left outside it attack it, without acknowledging this might be a world where both can thrive. As of Friday Silver had Obama at an 81% likelihood of winning the election. The polls themselves, it seems, were disrupted by the politics of Sandy. And this was something no one predicted.
Full Monty David Montgomerys Local World plans to consolidate the regional titles Photograph: Anna Gordon/eyevine believes will reinvigorate the ailing sector. The industry is on a one-way street everyone has been waiting for something to happen and unless there is market consolidation there will be no regional newspaper business, said one senior newspaper industry executive. The rst stage of Montgomerys plan is to merge Northclie, the UKs fourth biggest regional newspaper group by circulation, with Iliffe News & Media (the 11th largest), owner of titles such as the Cambridge Evening News, into a venture called Local World. DMGT and Ilie will control almost half of the venture, with Trinity Mirror also in talks about taking a stake. Montgomery has backers lined up including hedge fund manager Crispin Odey and is also talking to former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft about a stake. Montgomery will have the benet of not having to deal with Northclies pension decit DMGT is taking responsibility. The company decit stood at 370m at 1 April, although how much of that relates to Northclie is unknown. Pension issues have hampered previous negotiations between major players about regional newspaper consolidation. Local World will also not own any printing plants, saving it from the considerable associated costs. However, there is scepticism about whether Montgomery, who was ousted in January last year from Mecom, the pan-European newspaper publisher he founded, is the shining knight with the masterplan that the industry has been waiting for. Journalists who remember Montgomerys time at the Mirror titles in the 1990s, when he had a reputation as a brutal cost cutter, may shudder at the thought of his return to UK newspapers. It is not a particularly compelling business; the combination will still leave them fourth in the pecking order of regional newspaper groups, said a former senior newspaper executive. Montgomery knows the regional business and it unequivocally needs to be done, but after Mirror Group and Mecom Im surprised it is him and not an existing big player starting this. The big player most fancied to have done so is Trinity Mirror, the biggest UK publisher with regional titles including the Liverpool Echo and Newcastle Journal, which has spotted the potential of Local World. Trinity is negotiating to take a stake, thought to be less than 20%, but will not at this point be merging its titles into Local World. Putting Trinity Mirrors 100-plus titles into Local World would create a superplayer much better able to cope with the digital challenge. One analyst compared such a super-merger to the regional newspaper equivalent of the joint venture between book publishers Penguin and Random House, a move designed to try to keep pace with digital upstarts such as Amazon. The critical question is whether the tough stance taken by competition regulators will nally soften in light of the parlous state of the regional market. One observer points out that Montgomery will be keenly watching the outcome of the Competition Commissions investigation into Global Radios takeover of GMG Radio. That deal brings together the biggest and third biggest players in the UK radio market, and has been struck in the face of many of the same issues facing regional newspapers. How the regulator views local market competition will be make or break for whether Montgomery can really lead consolidation the radio ruling will be the test for Local Worlds plans, said one source. The idea that local publishers restrict and control media content in the internet age is ridiculous. Montgomery has no plan if regulators dont acknowledge this.
The industry is on a one-way street everyone has been waiting for something to happen
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Coming up this week Tuesday Tuesday: Grierson documentary 2 awards 2012 announced. The shortlist includes Terry Pratchett: Choosin Choosing to Die Friday: A national newspaper ABC circulatio circulation gures for October
You cant mask change Troy Carter with Lady Gaga. Photograph: Getty Images
Its more important to have the one million diehard fans, than to have 54 million who arent necessarily fans
Curriculum vitae
Age 39 Education West Philadelphia High school Career 1995 joins Bad Boy Entertainment 1999 forms boutique urban talent management company Erving Wonder 2004 sells Erving Wonder to Sanctuary Group 2008 founds talent management rm Atom Factory 2011 sets up AF Square angel fund for tech startups 2012 co-founds Backplane
Do you have outstanding commercial and leadership skills, a passion for history, integrity and the ability to work with a diverse range of people?
Administrative Director
If so, the award winning Crich Tramway Village, Matlock, Derbyshire, home of the National Tramway Museum is seeking to appoint to the following new position: Salary circa 40,000 An exceptional opportunity has arisen to play a critical strategic and tactical role in the daily life and ongoing success of the worlds largest book festival. This creative and outstanding individual will have responsibility for staff management, site logistics and all aspects of running the business, ensuring the nancial health and robust future of the operation. Extensive experience of arts and festival management, proven nancial planning skills and exemplary managerial and organisational skills are required. Full details: www.edbookfest.co.uk/about-us/jobs Closing date: Tue 20 November, 5pm Interviews: w/c 26th November
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1 - General Manager
Editorial Assistant
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Required to implement a strategic growth plan; assess, rene and create systems and structure; and grow revenue by focusing on value creation. Must have solid experience at MD or GM level, preferable in the Medical industry.
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For an informal discussion about this opportunity, please contact Steve Heywood, Head of Communications, on 0191 515 2691 or steve.heywood@sunderland.ac.uk
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English 1st language essential Starting January 2013 Working on two publicly-funded TV projects (1) Khmer Rouge Trials (2) Good Governance Minimum qualications: Extensive experience as documentary writer/producer University degree B.A. 2.1 or better Proven script writing ability All expenses and salary commensurate with local conditions. Fantastic opportunity for right person.
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Reviews Reviews
More reviews online Rian Evans on Jac van Steen and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales guardian.co.uk/classical
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Classical
BBC Philharmonic/Noseda/ Bavouzet Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Maverick French pianist Jean-Eam Bavouzet is among the most generous and indefatigable of performers, sometimes playing two works for piano and orchestra in an evening, rather than the usual one. Such was the case on this occasion, when he tackled Prokoevs First and Fourth Concertos as the centrepieces of a particularly strong BBC Philharmonic concert, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Both concertos are eccentric and suit Bavouzets glamorous playing and quirky temperament well. The First is a one-movement ragbag of themes and styles, written when Prokoev was only 21. The Fourth, commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, is for the left hand only and can seem pithy, despite a slow movement of considerable grandeur and weight. The panache and charm that Bavouzet and Noseda brought to the First proved wonderfully appealing. The Fourth was all morbid humour and sardonic elegance. Bavouzet ung out scales and arpeggios with steely precision. The orchestral sound was impeccably detailed. The piece itself remains unconvincing, but the case for it could not have been better articulated. Italian music formed the rest of the programme. The overture to Verdis I Vespri Siciliani, furiously performed, left me wondering not for the rst time why Noseda is seemingly overlooked by UK opera companies. He closed with Alfredo Casellas Third Symphony. Completed in 1940, its a remarkable work that reects the composers disillusionment with fascism, of which he had initially been a supporter. You can hear Mahlers inuence in its complex counterpoint, while the mix of anguished lyricism, harmonic violence and forced jollity carries emotional echoes of Shostakovich. Noseda, who has been reappraising Casellas work for some time, conducted it with intensity and conviction. Overwhelming stu, superbly done. Tim Ashley
Real energy Aysha Kala and Damson Idris in Khadija Is 18 at the Finborough Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
Pop
World Party Royal Albert Hall, London
It has been 12 years since World Party last toured Britain, and Karl Wallinger, responding to a shouted reprimand
from the crowd, appears to acknowledge that they may possibly have been a little slow to return. Yes, he agrees, with a grin and a mildly embarrassed shrug, it is about time, isnt it. Wallingers veteran bands long-term silence is perplexing, as in the early 90s they seemed likely to rise to stadiumlling status. Yet his absence is to some extent understandable: in 2001, the singer and guitarist was taken ill with a crippling brain aneurysm that required ve years of rest and rehabilitation. Flanked by a busy eight-piece band, the greyer and chunkier Wallinger is in rude health at this fervently received comeback show. It seems tting that they open the evening with Waiting Such a Long Time, a new track that shows he has not lost the knack of penning cerebral, erudite pop essays drenched in gorgeously winning, Beatles-esque melodies. Wallinger switches to keyboard early on for Shes the One, the 1997 World Party album track turned into a national anthem by Robbie Williams, but draws much of the set from their 1990 highwatermark album, Goodbye Jumbo. The environmentalist concerns of Put the Message in the Box and Is It Too Late are set to retro stylings, yet betray a band that were presciently ahead of their time. Well try to see you again rather more frequently, mumbles the shamefaced singer as World Party exit after the ferocious, Dylan-esque Way Down Now. Karl Wallinger may still have a great album in him. Whether he gets around to making it is another question. Ian Gittins
Dance
Philippe Decou Company DCA Sadlers Wells, London
Philippe Decou won the Prix Bagnolet for choreography when he was just 21, and since then has become one of the most successful showmen in dance involved in public events, such as the carnival parade celebrating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, as well as productions for his own company. Part of his success is due to his versatility, whether turning his hand to old-fashioned physical comedy, pure dance or sci- fantasy. As this new retrospective show makes clear, Decou operates in the middle of a very unlikely stylistic curve, somewhere between Jacques Tati and Cirque du Soleil. Panorama links together highlights from his repertory from the last 30 years, in a format thats close to music hall. Matthieu Penchinat, with his booming voice and droll incompetency, is master of ceremonies, introducing a fast and freewheeling collage of dierent routines. In the 1983 Vague Caf, we get a joyful but disciplined ragbag of dance styles; in a later solo, Decou reverts to an almost Bauhaus severity, restricting the choreography to a rigorous play of spiralling circular forms. There is storytelling by shadow play, an aerial duet and a mock ght to electronic beats. Finally, theres a sampling of more recent work in which
shape-shifting costumes, with ipper feet and extra limbs, endow the dancers with a fantastical range of movement. The performers snap from one turn to the next in exuberant, elegant style, but the drawback with this format is that its never more than the sum of its routines. There is no overarching narrative or structural dynamic to drive the evening; like spoilt children, we expect each new turn to be funnier, more extraordinary than the last. Like spoilt children, too, were unreasonably disappointed when its not. Judith Mackrell
Constellations
Sally Hawkins and Rafe Spall star in Nick Opening this week Paynes entrancingly dark romcom about a beekeeper and a theoretical physicist. Duke of Yorks, London WC2 (0844 871 7623), Friday to 5 January 2013.
Once
Based on the movie of the same name, this Book show tells the story of now an Irish busker and young Czech mother brought together by music. With eight Tony awards under its belt, John Tianys production should storm the West End. Phoenix, London WC2 (0844 871 7629), 16 March to 30 November 2013.
Sleeping g Beauty
A Christmas Fair
Jim Cartwright, who wrote The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Road, pens a new play for this tiny arts venue in Ryedale. Appropriately, its about a group of villagers preparing for their annual Christmas fair in the local hall. The Milton Rooms, Malton Yorkshire (01653 696 240), 13 to 23 December.
Friends and enemies, en ceramic heads and giant gures, satire and caricatu caricature, created by Europes Europe leading lead sculptor. s SerpenS tine Gallery, Ga London W2 (020-7402 (02 6075), until 18 Novembe November.
Dirty Three
Bad Seed Warren Ellis returns to his wonderful, eerie instrumental trio. Tour starts 20 November at Birmingham Glee Club (0871 472 0400).
36
The Guardian | Monday 5 November 2012 Obituaries desk Email: obituaries@guardian.co.uk other.lives@guardian.co.uk Twitter: @guardianobits
Obituaries
Han Suyin
Other lives
Susan Beckerleg
Our friend and colleague Susan Beckerleg, who has died of breast cancer aged 56, had a productive career in anthropology that combined academic research with social development consultancy, splitting her time between homes in Britain and east Africa. The daughter of Heather and George, Susan grew up in Paignton, Devon, with two brothers, Geoffrey and Richard. She studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing a PhD on Swahili medicine. She worked at the universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Oxford, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and for the Medical Research Council in the Gambia. With vigour, originality and success, she pursued an alternative to the conventional academic career. She spent many years in Kenya with her rst husband, Abudi Kibwane Sisile, whom she married while researching Swahili medicine in the 1980s. In 1995, with him and Maggie Telfer from the Bristol Drugs Project, she established the Omari Project, with support from the Big Lottery Fund and the British Council. For many years the project, a residential heroin rehabilitation centre on the Kenyan coast, was the only non-fee-paying service of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa and it continues to provide outpatient and outreach services. Susans research into the lives of female heroin users led to improvements in their healthcare through training for sta and further work on drug use and policy development in the region. Susans rst marriage ended in divorce. From 2003 she based her life and work in Uganda with Musa Almansi (whom she married in 2010, and who survives her) and conducted research on the drug khat, leading to her book Ethnic Identity and Development: Khat and Social Change in Africa (2010). She had recently completed an MSc on holistic science. Gillian Hundt and Colette Jones
Han Suyin, who trained as a doctor, initially defended Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution in China, but she later recanted Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty
Chinese-born author best known for her 1952 book A ManySplendoured Thing
olonial Hong Kong, a doomed aair and the echoes of revolution in China were the explosive mixture that made the reputation of the author Han Suyin, who has died aged 95. The lm of her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing may have been just a classic weepie, but the original novel shocked Hong Kong with its tale of her aair with a married man and its sympathy for the appeal of communism to Chinas downtrodden millions. She would shock people many times again as she acted out the philosophy expounded in the lm by Jennifer Jones, playing a character based on the author: To go on living, one must be occasionally unwise. Her defence of Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution, though later recanted, came to overshadow her literary talents. The ambiguities of her identity, as the daughter of a Chinese engineer and his Belgian wife, were always close to the surface. Her writings oered more than one version of her life. Elizabeth Kuanghu Chow was born in Xinyang in the north-central province of Henan. Her father, who came from a landowning clan in Sichuan province, met his wife while studying abroad and took her home to semi-feudal China. As a child in Beijing, she remembered travelling to school by rickshaw and seeing the bodies of those who had died of starvation on the pavements. From the age of 12, she decided to become a doctor against the wishes of her mother who urged her to marry a foreigner preferably an American because all Americans are wealthy. Mother and daughter existed in a chasm of aversion. After leaving school she paid for her fees at Yenching University in Beijing by learning to type. A Belgian businessman became her father substitute and arranged a scholarship for her to continue her medical studies in Brussels. In 1938 she returned to China to work in a French hospital in Yunnan, but was diverted on the way, meeting a handsome young ocer, Tang Paohuang (Pao), who educated her in the Nationalist version of patriotism. They were married that year in
Wuhan, just before it was abandoned to the Japanese, and ed on the same boat as Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist government. They travelled west to Chongqing, the Nationalist wartime retreat. There, she also learned how to write. A missionary doctor, Marian Manly, encouraged her to record the story of her journey with Pao, polished the text and suggested avoiding subjects such as prostitution. The intention was to attract American readers to the Chinese cause. Later she regretted her idealised version of reality. But ideals were the currency of the time: Bertrand Russell said that Destination Chungking (1942) published under the pen name Han Suyin told him more about China in an hour than he had learned there in a year. In 1942, when Pao was posted to London as military attache, she followed him with her adopted daughter and resumed her medical studies two years later. The marriage had chilled in spite of a reconciliation engineered by the Labour politician Staord Cripps. Through her publisher Jonathan Cape, she joined the circle of progressive Asia-minded intellectuals around Kingsley Martin, Dorothy Woodman, Margery Fry and JB Priestley. But medicine remained her goal. Pao was posted to Washington and later to the Manchurian front where he died, ghting the communists, in 1947. Han Suyin remained in London to take her nals and then moved to Hong Kong. It was there that she met and had a passionate aair with the Times correspondent Ian Morrison. Their relationship was the basis of A Many-Splendoured Thing, which became a bestseller. It is an unashamed love story: the scenes on the hillside overlooking the harbour are in the book as much as the lm, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). A sharp piece of social satire, the book pulls apart the preposterous world of expatriate Hong Kong. But faced with the choice between the revolutionary mainland and the outside world, Han Suyin was unable to make the sacrice of self. She moved to Malaya and married, in 1952, Leon Comber, an ocial in the police service. Her bestseller was followed by And the Rain My Drink (1956) and The Mountain is Young (1958), set respectively in Malaya and Nepal. The rst of these examined the suering caused by British suppression of the Malayan emergency. The second arose out of a visit to Kathmandu for the coronation of King Mahendra, and her meeting Vincent Ruthnaswamy, a colonel in the Indian army, who, in 1971, became her third husband.
She took to fame with an alacrity which some found o-putting. I could be a top-grade, highly paid [medical] specialist, she told a journalist in 1958. But she was possessed of a demon that forced her to write. In the 1960s she began to identify more consistently with the struggle of ex-colonial Asia. A frequent visitor to China, she wrote essays for the pro-Beijing Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon. A selection of these was re-issued in Tigers and Butteries (1990). Her themes were women, peasants, the divide between town and country, exploitation in many forms, and the incomprehension of the auent west for labouring Asia. As the Vietnam wars shadow lengthened, she denounced a society which she knew well from lecture tours so numbed by advertising that it could not distinguish between napalming 50 children and sucking the latest sweet.
rom this new perspective she now reviewed her own life in three volumes of autobiography, The Crippled Tree (1965), A Mortal Flower (1966) and Birdless Summer (1968). She had been invited regularly to China since 1956, when she had her rst of many private meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai. She was not alone in being charmed by the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution. In her book China in the Year 2001 (1967), she hailed the remaking of man in China as a watershed for the world. Many of her friends suered terribly in those years. Later she claimed to have intervened in
many cases but the extent to which she did so is unclear. In a mildly critical article, Water Too Pure , written in 1972, she deplored the innocent victims. It remained unpublished until 1990. She laboured to produce a detailed history of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, resulting in The Morning Deluge (1972) and Wind in the Tower (1976). Neither oered much original insight, and the credibility of the second volume was undermined by the upheavals following Maos death in 1976. Another autobiographical volume, My House Has Two Doors (1980), tried to reconcile some of these contradictions. She plunged into Deng Xiaopings new China, for the rst time not feeling obliged to plead Chinas cause against a critical world. She lectured to students who were beginning to ask their own questions and she welcomed the 1989 democracy movement. It lled her with joy, and she blamed the ruling party for missing a great opportunity to rejuvenate itself. Her biography Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China (1994) told the story of the most dedicated and seless personality in Chinas history. She dismissed as inane suggestions that he should have opposed the Cultural Revolution. In a slim volume of autobiography, Wind in my Sleeve (1992), she wrote of her grief, anger, desolation at the Beijing massacre but the book attracted little attention. She decided that the world was in such an intellectual mess that I would write detective stories but she continued to visit China regularly. She funded educational projects and one for cultural relations between India and China was named after Ruthnaswamy described as an ambassador of friendship. He provided a genuine emotional bulwark in her later years. In A Share of Loving (1987), she wrote a tender account of her struggle, with her husband, to care for his brain-damaged son. Han Suyin settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, and remained a splendid grande dame it helped obscure the fact that she could be a grand writer. HalfChinese, but striving to be whole Chinese, she was as full of contradictions as her motherland. When the epic of modern China is re-examined she and her works will provide important evidence. Her husband died in 2003. John Gittings Han Suyin (Elizabeth Comber), writer and doctor, born 12 September 1917; died 2 November 2012
Birthdays
Bryan Adams, singer, 53; John Berger, author and art critic, 86; Niall Dickson, chief executive, General Medical Council, 59; Art Garfunkel, singer, 71; Professor Marianne Hester, professor of gender, violence and international policy, Bristol University, 57; Bernard-Henri Lvy, philosopher, 64; David Mannion, former editor-in-chief, ITV News, 62; Lord (John) Morris of Aberavon, QC, former Labour MP and attorney general, 81; Peter Noone, pop singer, 65; Tatum ONeal, actor, 49; Lester Piggott, jockey, 77; Prof Steven Schwartz, psychologist, former vicechancellor and principal, Brunel University, 66; Elke Sommer, actor, 72; Sir William Stubbs, former chairman, Qualications and Curriculum Authority, 75; Tilda Swinton, actor, 52; Eldred Tabachnik, QC, former president, board of deputies of British Jews, 69; Ned Temko, journalist, 60; Justin Tomlinson, Conservative MP, 36; Barbara Trapido, novelist, 71.
Announcements
William Holden and Jennifer Jones in the lm Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, based on Han Suyins bestseller
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Weather&Crossword
Weather report
Around the UK and Ireland
Sun Rain Temp (C) Weather hrs mm High/Low (noon) Sun hrs Rain Temp (C) Weather mm High/Low (noon)
Weather forecast
Air pollution
London SE England SW England S Cent England Channel Is SE Anglia NE Anglia E Midlands W Midlands S Wales Cent Wales N Wales NE England NW England Scotland N Ire/Ireland low low low low low low low low low low low low low low low low
Summary
1008
Wind (mph) X Sunny
Aberdeen Aberporth Aberystwyth Alnwick Aviemore Barrow/Furness Belfast Belmullet* Birmingham Bognor Regis Bournemouth Braemar Bridlington Bristol Cardi Cork* Cromer Dublin* Durham Edinburgh Eskdalemuir Falmouth* Glasgow Guernsey* Hastings Holyhead Hove Hull Huntingdon Ipswich Isle of Man Isle of Wight
5.2 0.4 2.7 10.6 2.6 7.7 0.2 2.1 0.0 3.0 1.2 0.6 2.8 3.3 0.5 2.0 3.2 30.0 3.6 0.2 0.0 0.5 13.0 1.6 4.2 3.9 4.4 5.0 5.7 3.0 1.6 0.2 3.4 0.2 6.3 2.4 1.6 0.0 0.0 2.0 5.7 13.0 3.4 0.6 6.6 0.0 0.2 0.1 15.0 0.0 13.0 5.7 0.0 -
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-3 3 0 -2 -2 3 4 4 1 0 -3 0 1 5 3 2 4 -1 -1 -1 2 7 4 1 -1 2 2 8 8
Sunny Cloudy Sunny Sunny Cloudy Sunny Showers Cloudy Rain Cloudy Cloudy Sunny Cloudy Cloudy Showers Rain Rain Fair Cloudy Sunny Showers Cloudy Showers Sunny Showers Fair Rain Rain Sunny -
Jersey* Kilkenny Kinlochewe Kinloss Kirkwall Leeds Lerwick Leuchars Liverpool London Malin Head* Manchester Margate Milford Haven Morecambe Mullingar* Northallerton Nottingham Okehampton Oxford Plymouth Portland Portsmouth Prestwick Rhyl Shannon* Shrewsbury Skegness Southend Stornoway Swansea Tiree
6.7 5.4 3.4 6.0 1.3 0.0 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.2 3.6 0.6 5.6 0.0 1.0 0.1 16.0 3.0 0.8 0.0 2.0 7.8 - 11.2 6.3 0.0 4.9 1.1 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 4.6 9.0 1.3 21.8 - 23.0 - 18.0 - 13.0 0.5 1.0 2.2 3.9 8.2 1.3 1.0 3.0 9.4 0.9 11.0 9.0 0.4 5.0
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7 2 -1 2 -1 5 -3 2 2 4 3 3 7 2 3 -2 0 3 -1 3 4 3 4 2 5 -2 1 3 4 6 6
Cloudy Fair Fair Cloudy Fair Fair Showers Sunny Sunny Rain Cloudy Showers Cloudy Sunny Cloudy Mist Fair Showers Sleet Showers Cloudy Cloudy Cloudy Sunny Showers Fair Cloudy Cloudy Cloudy Cloudy Showers
1012 8
Sunny intervals Showers Heavy showers Rain Light rain Mostly cloudy
N Isles, W Isles, NW Scotland, NE Scotland, Channel Is Plenty of cloud along with frequent showers. There will be some bright or sunny spells at times. Moderate north-westerly winds. Max temp 8-11C (46-52F). Tonight, scattered showers. Min temp 2-5C (36-41F). SE Scotland, SW Scotland, NW England, W Midlands, E Midlands It will be a largely dry and bright day with long spells of sunshine. The slight chance of a shower. A cold day. Light northerly winds. Max temp 6-9C (43-48F). Tonight, clear spells. Cold. Min temp -1 to 2C (30 to 36F). Wales, SW England There will be plenty of dry and sunny weather, but there will be a few showers in western-most areas. Moderate north-westerly winds. Max temp 8-11C (46-52F). Tonight, isolated showers. Min temp 1-4C (34-39F). SE England, Cent S England, London Any early showers will clear away allowing plenty of sunshine to develop by the afternoon. Feeling chilly. Light northerly winds. Max temp 7-10C (45-50F). Tonight, cold and clear. Min temp -2 to 1C (28 to 34F).
Sleet showers
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Moderate
Todays forecast in towns and cities by busy roads. Low (1-3); moderate (4-6); high (7-9); very high (10)
Lighting up
Belfast Birmingham Bristol Dublin Glasgow London Manchester Newcastle 1638to0735 1629to0711 1635to0712 1644to0733 1629to0733 1626to0703 1628to0717 1621to0718
8 9
Slight
1004
35
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30 25 20 15 10
24 hours to 6pm yesterday. Locations supplied by MeteoGroup UK. * denotes sunshine from previous day
Channel Islands
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NE England, E Anglia, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire It will be a mostly sunny day but with a few scattered light showers towards the coast. Feeling chilly. Moderate northerly winds. Max temp 6-9C (4348F). Tonight, dry and mostly clear. Min temp -1 to 2C (30 to 36F). Northern Ireland, Ireland It will be a bright day with plenty of sunshine. Scattered showers in the far north and west. Moderate north-westerly winds. Max temp 7-10C (45-50F). Tonight, cloud building from north. Min temp 2-5C (36-41F).
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High tides
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0451 3.7m 1014 11.1m 0230 3.2m 0203 6.0m 0836 4.3m 0352 3.2m 0244 3.8m 0136 4.8m
Sun rises Sun sets Moon rises Moon sets Last Quarter
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High 12 Low 4
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Weatherwatch
A drop in crop yields in the UK and many other grain producing countries, as a result of extreme weather, has increased prices worldwide, and may cause serious hardship. But these consequences would be dwarfed by the catastrophe that a volcano could unleash on a heavily populated planet. Evidence unearthed in Londons Spitalelds of mass graves, dated to 1258, shows that between 20 and 40 bodies were buried at once in a series of pits in the cemetery. There were both sexes, with adults and children together. They are believed to be famine victims because they had no battle injuries and it was a century before the Black Death. The same year the monk Matthew Paris of St Albans recorded unendurable cold in the winter that suspended all cultivation and killed calves. In June spring had still not arrived and wheat was so scarce that a very large number of poor people died. Contemporary chroniclers in other continents also record appalling weather and mass starvation. Geologists have found that over both hemispheres, as far south as Antarctica, there is a thick layer of volcanic ash from the same period. The sheer quantity of aerosols projected into the atmosphere would have blotted out the sun and wiped out crops. The volcano responsible for this devastation and mass starvation is not known, but 850 years is a short gap in geological time. Somewhere this monster is dormant and could erupt again. Paul Brown
Across
1 Approximate price semi may make (9) 6 People available for a game (4) 8 Write letters in bed, when in quarters (8) 9 Make clear theres a fantastic fry-up about one (6) 10 Note more money for cook (6) 11 Suered, so gained redress (8) 12 In Latin I is used by many showing vanity (6) 15 Court case: its arranged so this person may prove their promise (8) 16 Swindle made to pay but jailed all the same (8) 19 Get in a pie for this? (6) 21 Gold in nals round? Quite the opposite, resulting in a serious complaint (5,3) 22 Put down for PE, does workout (6) 24 Do they keep to the beaten track? (6) 25 Sweet sort of lady giving children guidance (8) 26 Kittys back to stay (4) 27 Talons hug brutally in attack (9)
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Rainfall
Averaged across England and Wales there was 115mm of rain, which is 111% of the mean. Scotland had 107mm, representing 95% of its average, and Northern Ireland had 93mm, or 85% of average. The wettest location was East Okement Farm in Devon, where 212mm of rain fell. Wainseet, Lincolnshire, was driest with 45mm. It was particularly wet on 11 October when both Charterhall, Berwickshire, and Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, recorded 52mm of rain. The two-day period 11-12 October saw 67mm fall on Lentran House, just west of Inverness.
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Temperatures
The mean maximum temperature in October ranged from 15.2C at Jersey airport in the Channel Islands to 8.6C at Dalwhinnie, Inverness-shire. The Central England Temperature (CET) was 1 degree below the average at 9.7C.
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2 Picnic arranged to entertain posh composer (7) 3 Pick hat up and nally leave (5) 4 Its not right for in-law to embrace divorcee (7) 5 Like jelly in pineapple? (9) 6 Fond of, to some extent (7) 7 Not on time when trade is slack (3,6) 13 Where stevedores work for a likable chap (4,5) 14 Promises of party in show ring (9) 17 Leading at snooker a conspiracy? (5-2) 18 Big drinks bring people to court (7) 20 Upsetting habit in restaurants? (7) 22 A mouthful of water (5) 23 Full-bodied drink (5)
Winners of prize puzzle 25,778
This weeks winners of Guardian Style and Secrets of the Setters are: P E Howe Llandudno; P Thomas Cornwall; F Stoll - London; V G Miles London; R Riesco - Bolton Please allow 28 days for delivery
Sunshine
England and Wales had an average 101 hours of sunshine, which is 90% of the mean. Scotland fared a little better with 103 hours, or 117% of its average, but Northern Ireland was sunniest, recording 115 hours, which is 128% of the average. Tiree, Inner Hebrides was the sunniest location with 120 hours of sunshine, while Kinlochewe, Wester Ross, had the lowest total with only 62 hours. It was also the least sunny spot in September. Rebecca Flitton MeteoGroup
Stuck? For help call 0906 751 0038 or text GUARDIANC followed by a space, the day and date the crossword appeared another space and the CLUE reference to 85010 (e.g GUARDIANC Monday12 Across1). Calls cost 77p per minute from a BT Landline. Calls from other networks may vary and mobiles will be considerably higher. Texts cost 50p per clue plus standard network charges. Service supplied by ATS. Call 0844 836 9769 for customer service (charged at local rate, 2p per min from a BT landline). Want more? Access over 4,000 archive puzzles at guardian.co.uk/crossword. Buy the Guardian Cryptic Setters series (4 books) for only 20 inc UK p&p (save 7.96). Visit guardianbooks.co.uk or call 0330 333 6846.
Futoshiki 317
2 6 3 9 7 8 1 5 4
9 8 4 6 1 5 7 3 2
1 5 7 4 3 2 6 9 8
6 4 9 5 2 3 8 1 7
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4 3 6 7 5 1 2 8 9
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F R E E S I A M E R L O T
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Down
1 Victor out West is a pretty good shot (5)
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