Section:GDN 1N PaGe:1 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
From picking
up litter to
guerrilla
gardening
52 acts of
kindness
 G2
‘Intolerable’ NHS crisis will last
until Easter, health leaders warn
Many patients are dying
needlessly over failure
to act, says BMA chief
Andrew Gregory
Health editor
The crisis engulfing the NHS would
continue until Easter, health leaders
warned yesterday, as senior doctors
accused ministers of letting patients
die needlessly through inaction.
Navratilova
reveals new
diagnosis
of cancer
John Ashdown
Martina Navratilova said yesterday
she would “fight with all I have got”
after disclosing that she had been
diagnosed with throat and breast
cancers. The 66-year-old, one of the
greatest tennis players of all time,
previously underwent treatment for
early-stage breast cancer in 2010 and
had been cancer-free since.
She announced yesterday the dis-
covery of the new cancers – unrelated
to each other. “This double whammy
is serious but still fixable, and I’m
hoping for a favourable outcome,”
she said. “It’s going to stink for a while
but I will fight with all I have got.”
Navratilova had been due to travel
to Melbourne for the Australian Open
to work as a television pundit. That
trip has been cancelled, said her
representative, who added that the
former world No1 hoped to be able
to contribute to the Tennis Channel’s
coverage remotely.
“Martina Navratilova
6 
has been diagnosed with
•
More than a dozen trusts and
ambulance services have declared
critical incidents in recent days, with
soaring demand, rising flu and Covid
cases and an overstretched workforce
piling pressure on the health service.
But amid warnings that as many as
500 people a week may be dying due
to delays in emergency care alone,
and oxygen for seriously ill patients
running out in parts of England, NHS
leaders said more chaos was expected
until April.
“It seems likely that the next three
months will be defined by further
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:28
Charlotte Higgins Why I have
started to learn Ukrainian
critical incidents needing to be
declared and the quality of care being
compromised,” said Matthew Taylor,
chief executive of the NHS Confed-
eration, which represents the whole
healthcare system in England, Wales
and Northern Ireland.
Ministers face growing pressure
to get a grip on the crisis. The British
Medical Association (BMA) said the
government’s “deafening” silence
and failure to act was a “political
choice” which was leading to patients
“dying unnecessarily”.
The Liberal Democrats urged the
government to recall parliament,
while Labour blamed government
“mismanagement” for creating a
sense of “jeopardy” around the NHS.
Taylor said the situation had
reached crisis point: “Some of our
members have said their ward
staffing numbers are now below min-
imum levels as they work hard to set
up more escalation spaces to sup-
port arrivals from ambulances, that
they have had instances where their
oxygen cylinders have ran out tempo-
rarily, and that some of their patients
have waited over two days for a bed.
The nine-times
Wimbledon
singles winner
Martina
Navratilova
said she would
‘fight with
all I have got’
PHOTOGRAPH:
EDGAR SU/REUTERS
cYanmaGentaYellowbla
 Journal
Tuesday
3 January 2023
£2.50 €2.90
From £1.85 for subscribers
“High rates of flu and Covid
which have more than doubled,
ongoing issues with delayed hospi-
tal discharges which is leaving over
12,000 medically fit patients stuck in
hospital, and the aftershock of indus-
trial action are compounding the
longer-term issues of over 130,000
NHS vacancies, a decade-long lack
of investment in capital and an elec-
tive backlog which continues to grow
past seven million people.”
It comes as thousands more para-
medics, nurses and doctors
4 
prepare to strike over pay
Moscow
admits big
losses after
missile hit
Pjotr Sauer
A New Year’s Day attack on a complex
in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian
city of Makiivka has killed scores of
recently mobilised troops sent by
Moscow, in one of the deadliest single
strikes against Russia’s forces since
the war began.
Russia’s defence ministry, in a rare
admission yesterday, said 63 Russian
soldiers died when Ukraine hit “a
temporary deployment facility” with
four US-supplied Himars missiles.
Without claiming the strike,
Ukraine’s military command said up
to 400 Russian soldiers were killed
in the city, which is in a Moscow-
controlled area of Donetsk.
Even if the total numbers are
lower, the strike in Makiivka would be
one of the deadliest attacks involving
conscripts and will add further pres-
sure on Moscow’s military leaders.
Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Moscow
proxy official in Russian-occupied
Donetsk , earlier said a
20 
Ukrainian missile had
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:2 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:15 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:3 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:16 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:4 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 20:34 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

Inside 03/01/23 News

Four sections
every day
 RMT union The Department for Transport
News and Sport chief Mick rejected Lynch’s claims, and said the
Lynch, centre, rail minister had remained in regu-
on the picket line lar contact with all parties. It said it
On the frontline outside Euston remained committed to rail reform,
station, London. and had taken significant steps to
Just Stop Oil and Insulate He said that the enable a deal.
Britain have doubled down government A DfT spokesperson said: “The
on plans for ‘civil resistance’ was ‘out of government has demonstrated it is
their depth’ being reasonable and stands ready to
Page 7
PHOTOGRAPH: facilitate a resolution to rail disputes.
JAMES MANNING/PA It’s time the unions came to the table
and played their part as well.
Journal Outside G2 “Inflation-matching pay increases
Opinions and ideas for all public sector workers would
cost everyone more in the long term
 I want to hear a vision – worsening debt, fuelling inflation,
and costing every household an extra
for the BBC that goes £1,000.
beyond cut, cut, cut “Unions should step back from this
Roger Bolton strike action so we can start 2023 by
ending this damaging dispute.”
Page 3
Rail passengers have been warned
to expect significant disruption
G2 Centre pullout for the rest of the week, with only

Rail firms ‘in despair

Features and arts
Reality bites
Comic Rhod Gilbert tackles
anxiety, infertility and at government’s
cancer in The Book of John
handling’ of dispute
Page 8
Save up to 33%
with a subscription Gwyn Topham
to the Guardian Transport correspondent
and the Observer Passengers face another week of
Visit theguardian. barely functioning train services as
railway staff start five consecutive
com/paper-subs days of strikes, amid claims that rail
companies are “in despair” over the
government’s handling of the pay
Weather dispute.
Page 28 Members of the National Union of
Rail, Maritime and Transport Work-
ers (RMT) at Network Rail and 14
Quick crossword train operators will go on strike for
Back of G2 two 48-hour stoppages, the first start-
ing today and the second from Friday,
Cartoon while train drivers in the Aslef union
will also strike this week, wiping out
Journal, page 4 many services on Thursday.
Passengers have been urged to
attempt to travel only if necessary.
The strikes will be the culmination
of four weeks of industrial action that
have severely disrupted rail services
over the festive period, including an
overtime ban ending later today.
Mick Lynch, the general secretary
of the RMT union, said he believed a
deal could be reached but that minis-
ters had been absent since a meeting
in mid-December. Speaking on the
BBC Today programme yesterday,
Lynch said there had been “radio
silence” since the last talks before
Christmas.
He said: “We’ve outlined what
we need to make progress; these are
experienced people we’re dealing
with, but the government simply will
not give a mandate to the employers,
Network Rail and the train opera-
tors, that will allow this deal to be
resolved.
“They’re sitting on their hands and
are noted by their absence from this
scene. They keep saying that they’re
facilitating a deal. And I think it’s
absolutely the opposite to that.”
Lynch added: “The executives
who run the industry day on day are
in despair at what the government
is making them say in these talks.”
The RMT leader said the union
was looking for a settlement, with
“sensible proposals”, but said the
government was “out of their depth”.
Lynch said policy was behind prob-
lems on the railway. He said: “They’ve
given us a structure that simply
doesn’t work: abandoned franchis-
ing, they’ve abandoned their latest
Greater British Rail [sic]… they stum-
ble from one day to another and all
they want to do is bash the unions.”
He said pay was only part of the
dispute: “This is about the way our
members are deployed, their work-
life balance – if we don’t defend those
conditions we will end up like gig
economy workers, all the low-paid
and vulnerable people in our society.”
about 20% of national rail services
expected to run on RMT strike days,
mostly during the hours of 7.30am
to 6.30pm.
Network Rail has advised people
to check online for updates on when
services will run.
The Aslef strike on Thursday will
mean even fewer trains running, with
no services at all across most of the
15 operators where drivers are going
on strike.
Daniel Mann, the director of indus-
try operations at the Rail Delivery
Group, said: “No one wants to see
these strikes go ahead and we can
only apologise to passengers and to
the many businesses who will be hit
by this unnecessary and damaging
disruption.
“This dispute will only be resolved
by agreeing the long overdue reforms
to working arrangements needed to
put the industry on a sustainable
footing, rather than unions con-
demning their members to losing
more pay in the new year.”
The Aslef general secretary, Mick
Whelan, said the union was “in it for
the long haul”, after no pay increases
for some drivers in three years at a
time of high inflation.

Cryptic crossword
Back of Journal
Contact
For missing sections call 0800 839 100.
For individual departments, call the Guardian
switchboard: 020 3353 2000.
For the Readers’ editor (corrections & clarifications
on specific editorial content), call 020 3353 4736
between 10am and 1pm UK time Monday to Friday
excluding public holidays, or email
guardian.readers@theguardian.com.
Letters for publication should be sent to guardian.
letters@theguardian.com or the address on the
letters page.
NEWSPAPERS
SUPPORT
RECYCLING
The recycled paper
content of UK newspapers
in 2017 was 64.6%
Guardian News & Media, Kings Place, 90 York Way,
London N1 9GU. 020-3353 2000. Fax 020-7837 2114.
In Manchester: Centurion House, 129 Deansgate,
Manchester M3 3WR. Telephone Sales: 020-7611 9000.
The Guardian lists links to third-party websites, but
does not endorse them or guarantee their authenticity
or accuracy. Back issues from Historic Newspapers:
0870-165 1470 guardian.backissuenewspapers.co.uk.
Published by Guardian News & Media, Kings Place,
90 York Way, London N1 9GU, and at Centurion House,
129 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3WR. Printed at Reach
Watford Limited, St Albans Road, Watford, Herts
WD24 7RG; Reach Oldham Limited, Hollinwood Avenue,
Chadderton, Oldham OL9 8EP; Reach Saltire Ltd,
110 Fifty Pitches Place, Glasgow G51 4EA; and by
Irish Times Print Facility, 4080 Kingswood Road,
Citywest Business Campus, Dublin 24. No. 54,857,
Tuesday 3 January 2023. Registered as a newspaper at
the Post Office ISSN 0261-3077.
‘Intolerable’ NHS crisis will last
until Easter, warn health chiefs
 Continued from page 1
and conditions. Ambulance staff are
due to strike on 11 and 23 January,
while nurses will do the same on Jan-
uary 18 and 19. A ballot for industrial
action by junior doctors in England
will open on 9 January. The mounting
crisis comes as the UK Health Secu-
rity Agency (UKHSA) warned families
about high levels of flu, Covid-19
and scarlet fever as children return
to education and childcare settings.
“If your child is unwell and has a
fever, they should stay home from
school or nursery until they feel bet-
ter and the fever has resolved,” said
the UKHSA chief medical adviser,
Prof Susan Hopkins.
Yesterday, Robert Halfon, the
education minister, claimed that
Rishi Sunak was treating the crisis as
a “top priority” but neither the prime
minister nor his health secretary,
Steve Barclay, chose to comment.
“It is disingenuous for the prime
minister to talk about ‘backing the
NHS’ in his new year message, when
his own health secretary is failing to
discuss how this crisis can be fixed,”
said Prof Philip Banfield, chair of the
BMA.
The shadow health secretary, Wes
Streeting, said it was “completely
inexplicable” that neither Sunak
or Barclay “has raised their head or
shown their face to say exactly what
they are doing to grip this crisis and
to support patients and those staff
who are working in intolerable con-
ditions and busting a gut against the
most extraordinary pressures”.
Although ambulance services and
A&E may appear to be taking the
brunt of the tension, the whole of the
NHS was now under major pressure,
Taylor said. “While secondary care is
where these challenges are perhaps
the most visible, all parts of the NHS
including primary, community and
mental health care, are under huge
strain.” The burden is so severe that
it is also derailing efforts to tackle the
backlog of operations and surgeries
that has ballooned to seven million in
England alone, Taylor added.
NHS England is expected to report
today that a record number of can-
cer patients received treatment last
year, but waiting lists were also the
longest ever.
“The situation in the NHS is intoler-
able and unsustainable, both for our
patients and the hard-working staff
desperately trying to keep up with
incredibly high levels of demand,”
said Banfield. “The BMA has repeat-
edly invited the government to sit
▲ Ambulance staff are due to go on
strike again on 11 and 23 January
down and talk about the pressures on
our health service, but their silence
is deafening.”
The Royal College of Emergency
Medicine reiterated its claim that
between 300 and 500 people were
dying each week as a result of
delays and problems with urgent
and emergency care, after the NHS
England chief strategy officer, Chris
Hopson, claimed not to “recognise”
that estimate.
Banfield said it was clear patients
were dying needlessly. “The govern-
ment should deliver on its obligations
to the public. This is a political choice
and patients are dying unnecessarily
because of that choice,” he said. “The
government must step up and take
immediate action. Without inter-
vention, waiting lists will continue
to grow, patients will continue to suf-
fer, and staff will continue to leave.”
Liberal Democrats health spokes-
person, Daisy Cooper, said: “This
is a life or death situation for huge
numbers of patients. The NHS is col-
lapsing in front of our eyes whilst the
prime minister and health secretary
are nowhere to be seen.
“This is a national crisis.”
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:5 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
‘I had to say
goodbye’: fans
bid farewell
to football
legend Pelé
Andrew Downie
Santos
Thousands of mourners braved pun-
ishing heat to pay their final tribute to
the footballing legend Pelé yesterday
as the president of Fifa said he would
ask every member nation to name a
stadium after the recently deceased
Brazilian player.
Fans lined up outside the 106-year-
old Vila Belmiro ground in Santos – the
city in south-eastern Brazil where
Pelé first made his name as a star
goal-scorer in the 1950s – overnight
and at about 10am mourners began
filing past the coffin that had been
placed under a shaded tent in the
middle of the field.
Family members, including Pelé’s
widow, Marcia Aoki , and sons,
Edinho and Joshua, as well as doz-
ens of friends and former teammates,
stood over the open coffin, some of
them weeping.
The world’s media watched on
from the main stand as, a few metres
to one side of the coffin, fans – most
of them wearing shorts and many
of them dressed in Santos shirts –
walked by in silent tribute.
Three sides of the 16,000-capacity
stadium were draped with Santos
flags celebrating the life of the city’s
favourite son, and the public address
system occasionally played some of
the songs Pelé recorded during a par-
allel career as a singer and songwriter.
“LONG LIVE THE KING,” said one
massive banner alongside others
depicting his face and famous num-
ber 10 jersey. “I had to come and
pay tribute,” said Roberto Morais,
a 67-year-old who had travelled
50 miles to see Pelé for one last time.
“I had to say goodbye. He was the king
– he taught the whole world.”
Pelé died at São Paulo’s Albert Ein-
stein hospital on Thursday afternoon
after a long illness. The former Brazil,
Santos and New York Cosmos star was
diagnosed with colon cancer in Sep-
tember 2021 and was in and out of
•
News
hospital for a year. His cancer stopped
responding to treatment in Novem-
ber and doctors said his death came
as a consequence of “multiple organ
failure”.
Pelé’s body was kept in the hospital
over the new year period and driven
50 miles to the Santos ground early
yesterday, where it was laid out in the
middle of the pitch.
Fans will be allowed to pass by the
coffin for 24 hours before it is taken
for a private burial today. Pelé will
be laid to rest in a private service
at 10am in the Memorial Necrópole
Ecumênica, a vertical cemetery with
space for 18,000 bodies.
Long queues formed throughout
the day, snaking through the nar-
row streets that surround the ground
where Pelé played many of his more
than 1,000 games for the club.
The mood was respectful but
noisy, with the presence of dignitar-
ies and politicians guaranteeing a
heavy police presence and helicop-
ters flying overhead.
Among the mourners who made
their way past the barriers and
through the scrum of fans and media
were Gianni Infantino, the president
of Fifa, and Alejandro Domínguez,
the president of the South American
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:38
Football Confederation (Conme-
bol). Infantino said he would ask
Fifa’s member nations to pay a spe-
cial tribute to the three-time World
Cup winner. “We will ask every coun-
try in the world, every federation in
the world, and there are 211 countries
who are members of Fifa, to name
one of their stadiums with the name
of Pelé,” Infantino said.
“Because everywhere in the world,
children – in 20 years and 50 years
and 100 years from now – they need
to remember Pelé. And they need to
remember [Pelé] in a place where you
score goals, where teams are winning
– and maybe also losing – but where
emotions are happening.”
Other fans paid their own tributes,
including with flags and fireworks,
and members of the organised fan
▲ Pelé’s son, ▼ A banner group known as the Torcida Jovem
Edinho, front honouring (Young Fans) were present in the nar-
right, helps Pelé near the row streets outside the ground.
carry his Vila Belmiro “Pelé called us young fans, so
father’s coffin ground. Fifa’s that’s what we named ourselves,”
to the centre president wants said Cosme Damião, who founded
of the pitch at 211 stadiums the group in 1969. “And he has meant
Santos FC’s named after the so much to me since then, and we
stadium sporting icon became friends.
PHOTOGRAPH: NELSON PHOTOGRAPH: UESLEI “Brazil was one thing before Pelé
ALMEIDA/AFP/GETTY MARCELINO/REUTERS and another thing after. The city of
cYanmaGentaYellowbla
5
MAIN PHOTOGRAPH: DIEGO VARA/REUTERS
▲ Pelé’s widow, Marcia Aoki, tends
his coffin at Santos FC’s Vila Belmiro
Stadium. Top left, a mourner with a
replica World Cup trophy in Santos
Santos was one thing before Pelé and
another after.”
Edson Arantes do Nascimento was
born in the town of Tres Corações
(Three Hearts) but was brought up
in Bauru, a mid-sized city 250 miles
inland from Santos.
The 15-year-old was brought to the
port city for a trial in 1956, and after
impressing the coaches he quickly
found his feet and became a fixture
in the first team.
Less than two years after making
his debut for the club he was called
up for the Brazil squad that went to
the 1958 World Cup in Sweden.
Pelé missed the first couple of
games through injury but scored
six times in the last three matches,
including a double in the final against
the host nation, to give Brazil their
first world title.
Injury meant he played little part
when Brazil successfully defended
their trophy in Chile four years later,
and in 1966 his skills attracted a brutal
approach from opponents and Brazil
were eliminated at the group stage.
However, four years later he made
the most triumphant return possi-
ble by leading what is considered
to be one of the greatest sides ever
to a record third World Cup win in
Mexico.
Teammate Clodoaldo lauded his
friend and repeated the oft-heard
contention that Pelé was and remains
the greatest ever to play the game.
“Pelé showed in 1970 why he was
the king,” Clodoaldo said. “The crown
was his from that moment on.”
“People who follow football know
that young people who didn’t see
Pelé play have doubts about him,
and I am always being asked: ‘Was
he really that good?’ I tell them: if you
take a bit of every crack you admire
today, you might get close to being as
good as Pelé.”
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:6 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
6 News
Campaigners
call for halt
to Sweden’s
‘disastrous’
wolf hunt
Helena Horton
The biggest wolf cull in modern times
has begun in Sweden, causing an out-
cry among nature organisations who
warn it could drastically harm the
population.
Yesterday, 200 hunters went to kill
wolves in forests between Gävleborg
and Dalarna, hunting from midnight
until the sun set at 3pm.
The hunters surrounded the areas
where the wolves have their lairs.
They released dogs to search out
the wolves and drive them on a path
towards the waiting hunters. Yes-
terday the dogs had no luck, and the
hunters went home empty handed.
Over the next month hunters will
be allowed to kill 75 wolves from a
population of 460, as the government
seeks to reduce the population den-
sity in certain districts.
“Hunting is absolutely neces-
sary to slow the growth of wolves.
The wolf pack is the largest we have
had in modern times,” said Gunnar
Glöersen, the predator manager at
the Swedish Hunters’ Association.
Navratilova
announces
diagnosis
of breast
and throat
cancers
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
But nature organisations have
pointed out that the Swedish popu-
lation of wolves is relatively low – in
Italy there are more than 3,000. They
have appealed against the decision,
which they argue breaks the EU’s
Bern convention on the conserva-
tion of wildlife, but to no avail.
Marie Stegard, the president of
the anti-hunting group Jaktkritik-
erna, said: “Wolves as top predators
in the food chain are a prerequisite for
biodiversity. Killing a quarter of the
population through hunting has neg-
ative consequences for animals and
nature. It’s disastrous for the entire
ecosystem. The existence of wolves
contributes to a richer animal and
plant life. Human survival depends
on healthy ecosystems.”
Anna-Caren Sätherberg, the Swed-
ish rural affairs minister, recently told
the public broadcaster SVT: “We see
that the wolf population is growing
every year, and with this cull we want
to ensure that we can get down to the
goal set by parliament.
“We can see that the level of con-
flict has increased, and that the level
of acceptance has fallen,” Sätherberg
said, adding that the government
 Continued from page 1
stage one throat cancer,” read a state-
ment. “The prognosis is good and
Martina will start her treatment this
month.
“The cancer type is HPV and this
particular type responds really well
to treatment. Martina noticed an
enlarged lymph node in her neck
during the WTA finals in Fort Worth.
When it didn’t go down, a biopsy was
performed, the results came back as
stage one throat cancer.
“At the same time as Martina was
undergoing the tests for the throat,
a suspicious form was found in her
breast, which was subsequently
diagnosed as cancer, completely
unrelated to the throat cancer.
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:08
had asked the state environmental
protection agency to look again at
recommended population numbers.
The agency had previously recom-
mended that the population should
not fall below 300, to avoid it being
further weakened and threatened by
inbreeding. However, a majority in
the Swedish parliament was in favour
of cutting the wolf population to 170,
at the very bottom of the 170 to 270
range that would allow the country
to meet the requirements of the EU’s
species and habitats directive.
Hunting is a hot political topic in
Sweden, with a powerful lobby able
to influence politicians into allow-
ing more animals to be killed. Stegard
added: “It is obvious that there is a
‘Wolves contribute to
a richer animal and
plant life. Humans
depend on them’
Marie Stegard
Anti-hunt campaigner
“Both these cancers are in their
early stages with great outcomes.
Martina won’t be covering the Aus-
tralian Open for Tennis Channel from
their studio but hopes to be able to
join in from time to time by Zoom.”
During a career that spanned from
1973 to 2006, with a hiatus between
1996 and 2000, Navratilova became
the most successful female player in
the Open era.
Her record of 59 grand-slam titles
(including 18 singles titles and 41 dou-
bles and mixed doubles trophies)
remains unmatched, as does her
nine Wimbledon singles champion-
ships. In all she won 167 singles and
177 doubles titles.
In 1975 the 18-year-old Navratilova
defected to the US from communist
strong political pressure for licensed
hunting for wolves, lynx and bear.
“There is a large majority of
Swedes who like wolves, even where
they live. In our opinion the reason
for these hunts is simply that there is
a demand for shooting wolves among
hunters. The hunters’ organisations
have enormous power in Sweden. It
is a fact that the Swedish parliament
has a hunters’ club open to members
of all parties, with a shooting gallery
underneath the Houses of Parlia-
ment. This sounds like a joke but it’s
absolutely true.”
A group of scientists from top
European universities recently wrote
to the journal Science, arguing that
scientific advice for this goal had
not been sought and that it would
threaten an already fragmented and
fragile population.
Benny Gäfwert, a predator expert
at the WWF, said the parliament’s
figure of 170 was “not based on any
scientific facts”.
“Unforeseen things can happen in
wild populations, and a level of 170 is
far too low,” he told SVT. “We have a
problem when it comes to the genet-
ics of wolves, and the smaller the wolf
▲ Martina Navratilova: diagnosed
with two forms of cancer
cYanmaGentaYellowbla
▲ Swedish MPs have allowed a cull
of wolves by hunters (above left), a
powerful lobby in the country
PHOTOGRAPHS: BEATA FURSTENBERG; ALAMY
population, the greater the impact of
fluctuations in genetic status.”
Norway shares a wolf popula-
tion with Sweden around its border,
which poses further threats to the
endangered predator. Norway and
Sweden’s wolf population – the Scan-
dinavian wolf – is on the endangered
species list and are categorised as crit-
ically endangered in Norway and
severely endangered in Sweden. Nor-
way’s government has put in place
a very restrictive wolf management
policy with a fixed population target
of only four to six pups every year. As
far as it is known, Norway is the only
country in the world that sets a max-
imum target number for a critically
endangered species.
Campaigners in Norway are fight-
ing the decision to allow such a large
cull in court, and there is a hearing
next week which they hope to win.
If they do, it could have ramifications
in Sweden, which is governed by the
same European laws.
Czechoslovakia, though in 2008 she
regained her Czech citizenship.
Since her retirement from the sport
she has become an enthusiastic activ-
ist on a range of topics from human
rights to environmental issues, and
has been a regular and outspoken
critic of Donald Trump. In 2019
Navratilova fell foul of Wimbledon
officials when wearing a baseball cap
bearing the legend “impeach” at the
All England Club. Political messages
are banned at Wimbledon.
One of the first openly gay play-
ers, at the Australian Open in 2020
she took to the court to campaign for
the renaming of the Margaret Court
Arena in Melbourne – Court, Austral-
ia’s greatest female player, is opposed
to same-sex marriage.
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:7 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 20:40 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •

Stonehouse TV drama Devolution 7

Tale of MP who faked Corbynista’s bid for
death ‘beyond fiction’ power in north-east
Page 13 Page 17

Breast cancer patients get proton beam

the patient’s breast tissue and lymph
nodes are located close to their heart,
or they are already at risk of heart
problems.”

therapy on the NHS in world-first trial

Andrew Gregory
Health editor
Three breast cancer patients have
undergone pioneering proton beam
therapy for the first time on the NHS
as part of a world-first trial.
The hi-tech treatment targets
tumours far more precisely than
conventional radiotherapy, suit-
ing patients with difficult-to-treat
growths in critical areas. The NHS has
previously used proton beam ther-
apy to treat patients with tumours in
and around their brain or spinal cord.
The trial, the first of its kind glob-
ally, will compare proton beam
therapy with standard radiotherapy
for patients who are deemed at higher
risk of long-term heart problems after
radiotherapy treatment.
“There is untapped potential in
proton beam therapy, potentially
reducing the risks of side-effects
following cancer treatment,” said
Prof David Sebag-Montefiore, a
former chair of the National Can-
cer Research Institute’s clinical and
translational radiotherapy research
working group.
Kim Jones, a school caterer from
Ely, is the third patient to undergo
proton beam therapy for breast can-
cer as part of the trial on the NHS.
She was diagnosed in February after
noticing some thickening of the skin
and painful twinges in her left breast.
Jones, 44, was referred to Adden-
brooke’s hospital in Cambridge,
where she had chemotherapy fol-
lowed by a mastectomy and lymph
node removal. She was later accepted
to the Parable trial, and completed
her proton beam therapy at the Chris-
tie hospital in Manchester last month.
“I felt very lucky to have the oppor-
tunity to get this treatment,” said
Jones. “I was told I might be suitable
to participate in the Parable trial as
it would potentially benefit patients
with a high risk of long-term heart
▲ Kim Jones qualified for the trial
because of a previous heart issue
complications. As I already had an
issue with my heart, the trial seemed
like a great idea.”
Jones described the treatment, in
which doses of high-energy charged
particles from the centre of atoms,
called protons, were used to pre-
cisely target her cancer as “superb”
and “very relaxing”.
Doctors involved in the trial will
determine whether proton beam
therapy can help deliver adequate
doses of radiotherapy to the breast
while at the same time minimising
radiation around the heart.
The trial will enrol 192 patients
across 22 sites in the UK. Patients allo-
cated to receive proton beam therapy
will be treated at either the Christie
or University College London hospi-
tals, with accommodation provided
for those travelling far from home.
The trial is being led by medics,
scientists and researchers at the Uni-
versity of Cambridge, the Institute of
Cancer Research, London (ICR) and
the Royal Marsden NHS foundation
trust.
Prof Judith Bliss, the director of
the Cancer Research UK-funded
clinical trials and statistics unit at
the ICR, which is managing the trial,
said: “Radiotherapy is a very effec-
tive part of treatment for breast
cancer that helps to lower the risk
of cancer returning and has been
shown to improve survival. How-
ever, effectively delivering standard
radiotherapy can be difficult when
Every year in the UK about 30,000
breast cancer patients receive radio-
therapy after surgery. Radiotherapy
is very effective for most but there
can be a very small risk of it leading
to heart problems later in life – less
than 1% of all those treated.
The risk of heart problems later
in life due to radiotherapy may be
higher than 1% for a very small group.
Typically, this is because the breast
tissue and lymph nodes requiring
radiotherapy are close to the heart,
or they already have heart issues or a
higher risk of heart problems.
The trial’s chief investigator, Prof
Charlotte Coles, a professor of breast
cancer clinical oncology at the Uni-
versity of Cambridge, said: “There is
a small group of patients for whom
proton beam therapy may be a better
option.” Patients predicted to have a
2% or higher potential lifetime risk
of heart problems from radiotherapy
will be invited to take part.
Proton beam therapy has been
used in other countries to treat
breast cancer, but trial numbers have
been small and there have been no
reported trials directly comparing
proton beam therapy with standard
radiotherapy.

Climate
 Protesters from the activist
group Just Stop Oil blocking traffic
in central London in October

groups vow PHOTOGRAPH: JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES

the world’s most iconic oil paintings.

to continue More than 2,000 arrests were made

disruption
Damien Gayle
Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain
have reaffirmed their commitment
to disruptive climate “civil resist-
ance” after Extinction Rebellion
announced new tactics prioritising
“relationships over roadblocks”.
“It’s 2023 and XR has quit,” Just
Stop Oil said in a statement. “But it’s
2023, and we are barrelling down
the highway to the loss of ordered
civil society, as extreme weather
impacts tens of millions. As our coun-
try becomes unrecognisable there is
now a need to face reality.
“We must move from disobedi-
ence into civil resistance – this is what
the nurses and paramedics are doing.
They are on the frontline of the harm
being wreaked on us and have said
no more.”
Insulate Britain said its supporters
remained prepared to go to prison.
“Insulate Britain supporters remain
committed to civil resistance as
the only appropriate and effective
response to the reality of our situa-
tion in 2023,” its statement said.
“In the UK right now, nurses,
ambulance drivers and railway
workers are on strike because they
understand that public disruption is
vital to demand changes that govern-
ments are not willing or are too scared
to address.”
In recent years, XR has led its
supporters into blockading London
streets and bridges for days, smash-
ing bank headquarters’ windows and
spraying fake blood on the Treasury.
But on Sunday, the group announced
“we quit” as it made a new year res-
olution to “prioritise attendance
over arrest and relationships over
roadblocks”
But since its radical start, XR has
become comparatively more moder-
ate. It has called for 100,000 people
to take to the streets of Westminster
in April, but cancelled its last series of
protests in London after the queen’s
death.
Recent demonstrations at private
airfields led to no arrests. Trials con-
tinue of XR supporters involved in
direct actions over previous years.
Reflecting on the announcement,
one climate protester who has taken
action with both XR and Just Stop
Oil said: “I just heard a friend, a very
able and motivated person, say:
We’ve quit from something we’re
not doing.”
On the other hand, over the past
year, supporters of the Just Stop
Oil campaign have smashed pet-
rol pumps, blockaded oil terminals,
glued themselves to the streets of
London, zip-tied their necks to goal-
posts at Premiership football matches
and thrown tomato soup over one of
during JSO actions and 138 of its activ-
ists have been held behind bars either
awaiting trial or while serving a sen-
tence this year, with 12 currently in
jail, according to the group.
In a column for the anarchist news
website Freedom, Jan Goodey, a uni-
versity lecturer currently serving a
six-month sentence for climbing a
gantry over the M25, said the house-
hold energy crisis had vindicated
Insulate Britain’s use of disruptive
tactics to demand home insulation.
“Words of hope and encouragement
are ineffective and irrelevant; it is
action, resistance and solidarity that
work,” he wrote.
One activist who has campaigned
with both XR and Just Stop Oil said he
was conflicted about XR’s announce-
ment, which may attract more
supporters but at the risk of effective-
ness. “My concern is our lack of time,”
he said. “If we don’t actively, noisily
push for change now, later may prove
way too late to save anything.”
James Ozden, of Social Change
Lab, said XR’s repositioning could
allow it to take advantage of aware-
ness raised by radical protests,
without being implicated in their
unpopularity.
“As Just Stop Oil continues to
organise more disruptive protests, it’s
likely we’ll see a radical flank effect:
whereby radical tactics increase sup-
port for more moderate groups, such
as Extinction Rebellion.”
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:8 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:17 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
I would like my father and
brother back, says Harry
Miranda Bryant
The Duke of Sussex has said he wants
his father and brother back during an
ITV interview due to be broadcast on
Sunday, two days before the publica-
tion of his highly anticipated memoir.
The latest intervention, expected
to again rock Buckingham Palace with
revelations of its inner workings, is
one of two interviews to be broad-
cast on the same day either side of
the Atlantic.
In the other interview, with a US
broadcaster, he accuses the palace
of failing to protect his family like
other royal family members. The
prince says “I would like to get my
father back, I would like to have my
brother back” in a preview clip from
Actor Jeremy Renner ‘critical but
stable’ after snowplough accident
Sian Cain
Jeremy Renner has been seriously
injured in an accident while plough-
ing snow which left him in a “critical
but stable condition”, a spokesper-
son for the actor said.
“We can confirm Jeremy is in
critical but stable condition with
injuries suffered after experiencing
•
National
the interview with the ITV News at
Ten presenter Tom Bradby.
The 90-minute programme, pro-
duced by ITN Productions for ITV,
will broadcast two days before
Harry’s autobiography, Spare, is pub-
lished on 10 January.
In a series of clips cut together
with no questions heard, Harry says
“it never needed to be this way” and
refers to “the leaking and the plant-
ing”, before adding: “I want a family,
not an institution.”
He also says “they feel as though it
is better to keep us somehow as the
villains” and that “they have shown
absolutely no willingness to recon-
cile”, although it is unclear to whom
he is referring.
Filmed in California where Harry
lives with his wife, Meghan, the
Duchess of Sussex and their two
▲ Jeremy Renner owns a ranch
above Lake Tahoe in Nevada
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:45
children, the interview will go into
“unprecedented depth and detail”
about his life inside and outside the
royal family, ITV said.
Bradby, who has known Harry for
more than 20 years, was also behind
the interview during the couple’s
2019 southern Africa trip, when he
asked Meghan about the impact of
the pressure she was under during
an ITV documentary.
In comments that became an early
public signal that the couple were
struggling under the intense media
spotlight, she said: “Thank you for
asking because not many people have
asked if I’m OK, but it’s a very real
thing to be going through behind the
scenes.”
In a separate interview, to be
broadcast on US television, Harry
told the 60 Minutes programme on
a weather-related accident while
plowing snow,” a spokesperson for
the Hawkeye star told the Hollywood
Reporter on Sunday night.
“His family is with him and he is
receiving excellent care,” they added.
Deadline reported that Renner was
airlifted to hospital.
The 51-year-old actor has been
nominated for two Academy Awards
over his acting career, for his perfor-
mances in The Hurt Locker and The
Town. He has become well known for
his portrayal of the superhero Clint
Barton, also known as Hawkeye, in
Marvel films, and for his role in the
Mission: Impossible film franchise.
Renner owns a ranch above Lake
▼ The Duke of Sussex with Prince
William and King Charles at Queen
Elizabeth’s funeral in September
PHOTOGRAPH: CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES
CBS News that “silence is betrayal”
while talking about the alleged fail-
ure of Buckingham Palace to defend
him and the Duchess of Sussex before
they stepped down as senior royals.
In a clip from the interview, to be
broadcast on Sunday, Harry tells the
journalist Anderson Cooper: “Every
single time I’ve tried to do it privately,
there have been briefings and leak-
ings and planting of stories against
me and my wife.”
“The family motto is ‘never com-
plain, never explain’, but it’s just a
motto,” he added. “[Buckingham Pal-
ace] will feed or have a conversation
with a correspondent, and that corre-
spondent will literally be spoon-fed
information and write the story, and
at the bottom of it, they will say they
have reached out to Buckingham Pal-
ace for comment. But the whole story
is Buckingham Palace commenting.
“So when we’re being told for the
past six years, ‘we can’t put a state-
ment out to protect you’, but you do
it for other members of the family,
there becomes a point when silence
is betrayal.”
Buckingham Palace said it would
not be commenting on either trailer.
Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada moun-
tains, in Nevada. The region was hit
by a winter storm on New Year’s Eve
that saw 35,000 homes lose power.
Much of the US has been hit by the
“blizzard of the century” over the
past week. On 13 December, Renner
shared a photo of snow in the area on
Twitter, writing: “Lake Tahoe snow-
fall is no joke.”
On Instagram, he posted several
clips of himself behind the wheel of a
snowplough, writing on one: “Nearly
done with sledding hill for the kids.”
Renner is next set to appear
in the second season of Mayor of
Kingstown, which begins airing in
two weeks.
cYanmaGentaYellowbla
9
Windrush 75th
anniversary
‘should be a
jubilee for
modern Britain’
Harriet Sherwood
This year’s 75th anniversary of
Windrush, the ship that brought
hundreds of immigrants from the
Caribbean to the UK, should be a
“diamond jubilee for modern, diverse
Britain”, say campaigners.
The actor Sir Lenny Henry,
Tristram Hunt, the head of the V&A,
and Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic
director of the Young Vic, are among
representatives of the arts, sport,
business and faith to call for the anni-
versary to be marked with national
celebrations.
Windrush Day on 22 June was
introduced by the government in
2018 to encourage “communities
across the country to celebrate the
contribution of the Windrush gener-
ation and their descendants”.
The move came a year after the
Guardian began to uncover how hun-
dreds of people who came to work in
the UK had been wrongly detained,
deported and denied legal rights.
This year will be a “special year
for Britain, a year of identity”, said
Sunder Katwala, the director of the
thinktank British Future. “A corona-
tion year that ushers in a new era. One
when we mark 75 years of pride in the
NHS, and 75 years of Windrush, the
moment which symbolises the post-
war migration that has shaped our
society today.”
Special events and programmes
are being planned. The V&A will host
a season of displays, talks, workshops
and events telling “rich, layered sto-
ries about the Windrush generation
and their legacies through objects
from the V&A collection and beyond,
showcasing artists and designers
associated with Windrush and
exploring the impact of the Caribbean
presence on art, design and culture
in Britain”, said Hunt.
Henry’s one-man play, August in
England, about the injustices of the
Windrush scandal, will be staged at
the Bush theatre in London, and he
has also written a six-part drama,
Three Little Birds, that will air on ITV.
“It’s vital this year to celebrate the
courage of those Windrush pioneers
75 years ago, who gave up the life they
knew to seek a better one here in Brit-
ain. They paved the way for those of
us who have followed,” he said.
Kwei-Armah said: “The Windrush
embodies so many human stories – of
dreams for the future, injustice and
adversity, identity and belonging –
which have spanned generations
over the past 75 years. It’s a powerful
symbol that will inspire culture-mak-
ers throughout 2023.”
A poll carried out for the Windrush
75 network found six in 10 people
agree “Britain owes a great deal to the
Windrush generation of migrants and
should recognise their contribution
as part of our national story”.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:10 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:24 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

10 National
Politics

Labour reveals
plan to transform
jobcentres into
hubs for training
and entrepreneurs
Jessica Elgot
Deputy political editor
Labour is planning a radical overhaul
of jobseeking in the UK by promising
to hand major powers to local author-
ities and turning jobcentres into hubs
for skills training and advice for
would-be entrepreneurs.
The party is also considering allow-
ing universal credit claimants to
undertake far more comprehensive
programmes of study and training
opportunities while continuing to
claim benefits.
The policy is likely to be adopted
based on two key reports by the for-
mer prime minister Gordon Brown
and the former minister David Blun-
kett, which will be the building blocks
for Labour’s manifesto offer.
Alison McGovern, the shadow
It said that health services should
have closer connections to job sup-
port and they should be data hubs for
local market information.
Blunkett’s learning and skills
report also recommends fund-
ing people to study with agreed
providers and that the DWP “should
allow people to study full or part-
time, while on benefits for an agreed
course”.
Under the current system, there
are limits on the ability of people
to train and study and continue to
receive universal credit.
Many experts have cited the
requirement for people to spend
a minimum amount of time each
week looking for work, which limits
the ability for full-time skills training
or study.
A study by the Work Foundation
this year found many universal credit

Just the job

employment minister, said there was
little engagement from the Depart-
ment for Work and Pensions about
how jobcentres could match the local
skills needed, and that local author-
ities were best placed to overhaul
employment support.
“To grow our economy, every place
needs an economic plan,” McGovern
told the Guardian. “We want to grow
the economy across the country and
make sure everybody feels the bene-
fit. You cannot do that without local
places being in the lead.
claimants voicing their frustration
that they were not being signposted
to adequate training to allow them to
build and aspire towards long-term
careers in sectors.
In cases where people were able to Locally run – and about
undertake part-time training, most
of those cited in the study said they
were still having to spend between
16 and 35 hours each week looking
more than ticking boxes
for work so they could keep receiv-
ing benefits. training and apprenticeships in
McGovern, the MP for Wirral South, Jessica Elgot construction with close ties and
said that it was self-evidently wrong funding to developers, McGovern

“At the moment, too much of
DWP’s policy is made in a high-
handed way from Whitehall, whereas
we want to learn the lesson from the
places that do it best and make sure
every place has a really good plan for
jobs for all its people.”
Brown’s Commission on the
UK’s Future said the devolution of
Jobcentre Plus should mean they
bec ame a hub for local employers
– open to those looking to upskill,
re-enter the workplace later in
life or after childcare responsibilities,
or start businesses and resources for
civil society, trade union and private
sector support.
‘We should empower
local authorities
to look at what the
opportunities are
… and let towns and
cities work it out’
Alison McGovern
Shadow minister
that people were being penalised for
wanted to improve their skills.
She said that top-down scripts
delivered to work coaches from
Whitehall would never be flexible
enough to match local skills gaps
or help people into long-term skilled
jobs. “My frustration is that the DWP
doesn’t engage in the conversations
at all about the big initiatives that are
happening between councils, skills
centres or big developers. All their
policies are set by Whitehall. The con-
versations people have with work
coaches are all driven by Westmin-
ster,” she said.
McGovern, a former councillor in
Southwark, south London, said coun-
cils were often already building their
own initiatives to try to bridge the gap
locally.
“It’s not the jobcentre sitting with
skills centres or employers working
out who might fit where. Southwark
council have created a whole new
body – Southwark Works – to back-
fill what DWP should be doing.
“We should empower local
authorities to look at what the oppor-
tunities are – every sector has labour
shortages – and let towns and cities
work it out.”
A
long the snowy quays
in Canada Water,
south-east London,
the waterfront and
sidestreets
are teeming with
new developments. The buildings
include shops and cafes – many
advertising for full or part-time
staff.
Despite extensive gentrification
Southwark remains one of the most
deprived boroughs in England.
The council has faced a challenge
in how to directly link the benefits
of shiny new development to the
lives of young people growing up in
Rotherhithe or Peckham.
Alison McGovern, the shadow
employment minister, says Labour
wants to bridge that gap between
jobcentres and the local knowledge
of councils and employers.
It will involve a radical overhaul
of what jobcentres offer – with
powers fully devolved for local
authorities to decide how they
operate rather than running from
central targets and scripts.
Speaking as she toured
Southwark Skills Centre, a hub for
said the changes would be one of
the pillars of Labour’s offer on jobs.
“Everywhere I go I ask people,
what do they think of the
jobcentre? I never hear much
enthusiasm, we have great
people working there but they
are constrained by what they are
told to do in Whitehall and that’s
wrong,” she says. “People locally
know their area best, they know
how to help people get jobs.
“Jobcentres are there to tick
boxes at the moment and that’s
not good enough. Kickstart,
Restart, all these national schemes
– we need to rethink it from the
ground up and locally.”
A report by Gordon Brown
into devolution and democracy
said the devolution of Jobcentre
Plus should mean they become a
hub for local employers – open to
those looking to upskill, re-enter
the workplace later in life or after
childcare responsibilities, or start
businesses, and resources for civil
society, trade union and private
sector support.
Health services should have
closer connections to job support
and be data hubs for local market
information. Kieron Williams, the
leader of Southwark council, said
his local authority had to in effect
build schemes such as Southwark
Works, a free employment support
service, in order to bridge the gap.
“The challenge we face with the
nationally provided programmes
is they’re not connected with the
local employment market,” he says.
“They don’t see where the
opportunities are to create more
employment, or the skills gaps
exist, and how you fill them.
“We have a separate works
programme, ensuring that you’ve
got a real focus on those groups
of people who are most likely to
be excluded from work, getting
the additional support they need
to get into employment. What’s
really important there is that that’s
connected back to the community.”
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:11 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
▲ Alison McGovern in a classroom
at Southwark Skills Centre. Labour
wants jobcentres to be run locally
PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN GODWIN/THE GUARDIAN
A skills report by the former
Labour minister David Blunkett
also recommends funding people
to study with agreed providers.
“The nature of the way in which
the [Department for Work and
Pensions] currently operates,
people are pressed into taking
an immediate job available,” the
report found.
“Those who are being requested
to job search for 35 hours a week
are self-evidently not able to access
training.” He said the DWP should
“allow people to study full or part-
time, whilst on benefits for an
agreed course”.
McGovern says it is “blindingly
•
 Labour’s Alison McGovern at
the pioneering Southwark
Skills Centre in London
PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN GODWIN/THE GUARDIAN
obvious” that people should not
be penalised for wanting to train for
a long-term skilled career.
“People are being pushed into
insecure, unskilled jobs, when they
could be sat in these classrooms.”
Southwark Works functions
in much the same way as Labour
hopes jobcentres could eventually
exist, offering support to
anyone who drops in and with
specialist support for care leavers,
long-term unemployed or sick,
those with disabilities,
the homeless, families and
lone parents.
Some are already referred by
the local jobcentre but many and
in particular young people refuse
to engage with the jobcentre at all.
Almost 85% of the people who were
supported into work were from
Black, Asian or minority ethnic
backgrounds.
Joseph, 20, who is waiting to
take a test in one of the centre’s
classrooms, says he came to the
centre via his probation manager.
“I want to be a bricklayer because
it’s more hands-on, I’m not into
working in an office, but here I can
meet people who have the jobs.”
John White, the partnerships
director at the Skills Centre,
says it prides itself on having no
curriculum at all, but constantly
evolving provision based on what
local employers need, training
10,000 people to date.
“We want to make sure we
get local people into local jobs,”
he said. “We’re speaking to
local places who just can’t get
bricklayers. And we speak to places
that need big tiling jobs done, and
we know we can get local people in
trained to do the work.”
In the yard outside, formwork
apprentices are working in bright
pink jackets and thick gloves. Some
are women, part of a concerted
effort to get more of them into
construction jobs. Clarissa
Destouche, 36, says: “I would not
have joined this course if there was
not an initiative for women to join.
Representation matters a lot.”
Many of the apprentices were
in their 30s, seeking a new career
direction. Lawrence Atkinson, 31,
says he had mixed feelings about
what the jobcentre had offered him.
“There should be a lot more
transparency there, about
what’s available, more diverse
opportunities, different pathways.
I want to challenge myself to see
how far I can go. Here is where I can
find out what the pathways are for
my career.”
Ultimately, the vision is for
similar provision to exist for
training where there are big local
gaps – whether in hospitality,
agriculture, nuclear or green
energy.
“We’re working around
hospitality skills because
we’ve had big growth in that
industry,” Williams says.
“And we want to make sure that
not just the entry-level jobs in those
professions but the good jobs, the
hotel manager and beyond, are
within reach to people.”
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:25
Trade unions
Pledge to fight
PM’s effort to
curb strikers
Jessica Elgot
Unions are expected to take legal
action against anti-strike laws being
prepared by Rishi Sunak amid reports
the curbs will be announced when
parliament returns this month.
The legislation being looked at by
Sunak would extend plans already
announced by ministers to enforce
minimum service levels on public
transport – meaning 20% of regular
rail services would need to continue
during strike action.
That could be extended across
the public sector to include NHS
staff including ambulances as well
MPs’ conduct
‘Whisper list’
claims trigger
call for reform
Jessica Elgot
Calls are growing for third parties
to be allowed to make complaints
to Westminster’s sexual miscon-
duct watchdog after concerns were
reignited about parliament’s culture
by a Labour MP who privately shared
a list of 20 MPs to avoid.
After various sexual misconduct
and bullying scandals led to suspen-
sions and resignations of sitting MPs,
some parliamentarians and unions
say they remain concerned that
witnesses cannot make complaints.
Complaints to the Independent
Complaints and Grievance Service
can also be made only by those work-
ing on the parliamentary estate or in
constituencies, not from those out-
side who experience bullying or
harassment from MPs.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary
of Prospect, a leading union for staff
working for parliament, said: “Trade
▼ Support for NHS nurses near
Downing Street. Rishi Sunak wants
new laws to curb strike action
PHOTOGRAPH: LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
as teachers, Border Force or fire ser-
vice. Ministers are also considering
beefing up strike laws that already
impose tough conditions to allow
strikes to go ahead. Currently, strikes
are allowed only if there is a 50% turn-
out of union members.
But there is a higher threshold
for transport, health and eduction –
needing 40% of all eligible members
to be in favour, not just of those vot-
ing, and that requirement could be
extended to all sectors.
The legislation may be introduced
shortly after parliament returns on
Monday 9 January, though it is highly
unlikely to be in place before the sum-
mer because of anticipated delays in
the Commons as well as the House of
Lords – and then the law is likely to be
challenged by unions in court.
A government spokesperson con-
firmed that Sunak was “exploring
further measures to help minimise
disruption and protect the public.
“Anything we bring forward will
rightfully balance the rights of
workers to strike with the rights of
the public to get on with their daily
lives and keep people safe,” the
unions and others in parliament have
been warning for many years about
a dangerous culture which fails to
address sexual misconduct.
“It is abundantly clear that further
reform is needed to protect those
working there. This must include
excluding MPs under investigation
for sexual misconduct and must
also include allowing third parties to
report complaints to the Independent
Complaints and Grievance Service.”
Charlotte Nichols, the Labour MP
for Warrington North, posted the list
of 20 names on a WhatsApp group
for other Labour MPs before deleting
it, saying it had been sent in error,
according to the Mail on Sunday.
Nichols, who was elected in 2019,
has previously said that when she
arrived in Westminster, she was given
a “whisper network list” of dozens
of politicians to avoid. Speaking in
November, she said some MPs were
notorious for their bullying or sexual
▲ The Labour MP Charlotte Nichols
posted a list of names on WhatsApp
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
11
spokesperson said. “This work is con-
tinuing at pace, and further details
will be set out in due course.”
Dave Penman, the general sec-
retary of the FDA union, which
represents civil servants, said that
anti-strike legislation would not
solve the problem of low pay that
had caused widespread strike action
across so many sectors.
“It would be a political choice
for the prime minister, but it’s not
going to resolve this,” he told LBC.
“Tinkering with what are already
some of the most draconian trade
union laws in western economies are
not going to address the fundamen-
tal problems around this.” He added:
“The government’s got a majority,
and if they can pass legislation in the
Commons and the Lords then ulti-
mately there’s only a limited amount
we can do, where we think it’s unlaw-
ful we will seek to challenge. This
is not going to resolve any of these
disputes … working people are still
voting in record numbers for this.”
Key figures in the government
believe taking swift action on strikes
will be a politically advantageous
fight for the Conservatives to have
with Labour.
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer,
has suggested the party will not back
further curbs to industrial action and
his deputy, Angela Rayner, has said
she wants to repeal all the govern-
ment’s anti-worker legislation.
Labour has stopped short of back-
ing many striking workers, and
frontbench MPs have been told not
to stand on picket lines.
A new wave of strikes this week
will cause mass cancellations on the
rail network because of action by the
RMT and Aslef unions. About 40,000
RMT members from Network Rail and
14 train operating companies will
take action this week, shutting down
most rail services across the country.
misconduct, adding: “We all know
and nothing is done and they con-
tinue to walk around and do their jobs
– and there’s that kind of culture of
impunity on it.”
A Conservative MP told the Mail on
Sunday the list was “grossly irrespon-
sible” and said Nichols should make a
complaint to the ICGS or police if she
had evidence. Responding on Twit-
ter, Nichols said: “I can’t legally make
a third-party report to the ICGS or
police. Am I not meant to warn others
about conduct I’ve seen, experienced
or been told about that many times by
different people that it’s a clear pat-
tern of behaviour? I’m many things
but a bystander isn’t one, and while
Westminster is as grim as it is I won’t
pretend otherwise.”
She added: “What’s actually irre-
sponsible is the lack of real action to
sort out Westminster’s sexual harass-
ment problem, which is so endemic
other MPs and staff have to be warned
about some colleagues’ behaviour to
keep them safe! Wish it wasn’t this
way, but for now it is. So here we are.”
Three Tory MPs have the whip sus-
pended because of complaints about
sexual misconduct. In July, Chris
Pincher, deputy chief whip under
Boris Johnson, triggered the prime
minister’s downfall after outrage
that Johnson had initially intended
to allow him to keep the whip after
witnesses alleged he had groped men
at a private members’ club.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:12 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:19 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

VOYAGE A MILLION
MILES FROM
ORDINARY
A World Away From Ordinary
Flight
Inclusive
from the UK*

With its vast glaciers, deep fjords and boundless

stretches of wilderness, Alaska’s scenery leaves you
feeling more than just half the world away.

Alaska
Cruises
Departures:
May – September 2023
Flight included*

FROM
ONLY £5,290pp*
Book now

Call 0203 131 5565 | Visit hurtigruten.co.uk | Contact your preferred travel agent
Scan the
QR code
Terms and conditions: *Flight Inclusive from the UK: Offer valid until 28th February 2023. Please see website for full T&Cs.
From prices are capacity controlled, subject to availability and subject to change. From price quoted in GBP, are per person
to learn
and based on full occupancy of cabin. Single supplements may apply. See website for full T&Cs. The air-inclusive holidays and more
flights are ATOL protected by the Civil Aviation Authority, our ATOL number is 3584. Image: © Shutterstock.
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:13 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 20:03 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •

National 13

MP who faked his death

Five weeks later, he was arrested
in Australia, where he had been
joined by his lover. Stonehouse was
later sentenced at the Old Bailey

Stonehouse case truth to seven years in prison for fraud,

theft and deception.
Hayes, whose biography of
his great-uncle, Stonehouse:

is ‘stranger than fiction’ Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy,

was published in 2021, said the
TV drama misrepresented how
he became embroiled with the
earth that anybody would swallow Czech secret services. “The drama
Harriet Sherwood it as a plotline. It’s a classic case of portrays a honeytrap, but in fact
truth being stranger than fiction.” they psychologically groomed him

T
he true story of
John Stonehouse’s
entanglement with
espionage and faked
death was far more
fascinating than the
television drama airing this week,
according to his great-nephew
Julian Hayes.
Hayes, who has clear childhood
memories of Stonehouse and the
impact of his disappearance in
1974 on the family, said little of the
dramatised version was strictly
factual. A Czech secret services
honeytrap was substituted for the
real-life “slow insidious grooming”
of the Labour MP for Wednesbury
and Walsall North, he said.
“If you’d written the Stonehouse
story as fiction, it’d be completely
unbelievable. There’s no way on
Hayes, a lawyer, saw a preview
of the drama and read the scripts
as part of a consultation: “It says
it’s based on a true story, and that’s
really as far as it goes. Most of the
peripheral characters are made up,
and very little is factually correct.”
The ITV show stars the real
life married couple Matthew
Macfadyen as Stonehouse and
Keeley Hawes as Barbara, wife
of the disgraced Labour MP and
former cabinet minister at the time
of his disappearance. The script
was written by John Preston, whose
credits include A Very English
Scandal about the Jeremy Thorpe
affair, which became a TV drama
starring Hugh Grant, and The Dig,
about the archaeological site Sutton
Hoo, which was made into a 2021
film starring Ralph Fiennes and
Carey Mulligan.
▲ Matthew ▼ John Stonehouse was a member of
Macfadyen as Stonehouse Harold Wilson’s cabinet as aviation
John Stonehouse surrounded by minister and postmaster general,
and Keeley members of the but his career crashed when he was
Hawes as his press after being named in 1969 as an agent of the
wife Barbara in released on bail Czech secret service. His problems
the ITV drama from Brixton were compounded by worsening
Stonehouse prison in financial troubles and an affair with
PHOTOGRAPH: ITV London in 1975 his secretary, Sheila Buckley.
After stealing the identities of
two dead men in his constituency
to create fake passports,
Stonehouse flew to Miami, checked
into the Fontainebleau hotel and
went for a swim, leaving a pile
of clothes on the beach. After he
failed to return, he was presumed
drowned. His wife and three
children were plunged into grief.
over a period of time. There was no
sex involved… But he provided the
Czechs with information and got a
lot of money from them. He knew
what he was doing.”
Stonehouse’s daughter, Julia,
dismissed the spy claims in her
own book, John Stonehouse, My
Father, published in 2021. “She puts
his behaviour down to depression,
breakdown and use of prescription
drugs,” said Hayes.
ITV said: “Based on years of
extensive research, the writer
John Preston dramatised the
aspects that interested him most
and has created a rich, colourful
and poignant account of an
unforgettable politician.”
Stonehouse is available on ITVX. A
documentary, The Real Stonehouse,
is on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:14 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:21 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

14
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:15 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
NHS trust pays widow damages
over man’s decomposed body
Jamie Grierson
A widow received damages from an
NHS trust after a mortuary allowed
the body of her late husband to
decompose to the point he was
“unviewable”, the Guardian can
reveal.
Caroline Murray said she had
struggled to grieve properly and suf-
fered from intrusive mental images
of what the body of her husband,
Paul, would have looked like in an
advanced state of decomposition.
When the body was finally released
to the family five months after Paul’s
death, the funeral directors were
unable to identify him from a photo
and advised his widow not to view
him. She was only able to identify her
husband over the phone when the
funeral director confirmed he still had
his wife’s rosary beads in his hand.
In out-of-court settlement pro-
ceedings, Hampshire hospitals NHS
Pecking
order
Penguins
watch as a
member of
staff at Sea
Life London
Aquarium
takes part in
the annual
new year
“count and
clean” audit of
all the centre’s
fish and
other marine
animals.
PHOTOGRAPH:
JAMES MANNING/PA
Child mental health cases in
England rise by nearly 40%
Andrew Gregory
Health editor
The number of children in England
needing treatment for serious mental
health problems has risen by 39% in
a year, official data shows.
Experts say the pandemic, social
inequality, austerity and online harm
•
National
foundation trust admitted it failed to
follow internal procedures regarding
the timing of body condition checks
after Paul’s death in 2020. Lawyers
acting for the trust said the oversight
occurred during the Covid-19 crisis
when the mortuary was experiencing
“unusually high levels of occupancy
and significant understaffing”.
Caroline said: “Dealing with los-
ing Paul and then dealing with all of
this … It’s been horrendous. I’ve been
having to put all the normal feelings
of grief to one side because I’ve been
trying to get straight in my mind what
the hell had really happened.”
The couple were married for 43
years and lived in Whitchurch, Hamp-
shire. Paul worked for Hampshire fire
and rescue service and was a mem-
ber of the urban search and rescue
team. “He was just the most won-
derful, caring person in the world,”
Caroline said. “He loved the out-
doors, ice climbing, skiing, he was
the kindest person in the world.”
Paul, who had Parkinson’s disease,
are all fuelling a crisis that saw NHS
mental health treatment referrals
for under-18s increase to 1,169,515
in 2021-22.
In 2020-21 the figure was 839,570.
In 2019-20, there were 850,741 refer-
rals, according to analysis of official
figures by PA Media.
The figures include children who
are suicidal, self-harming, suffering
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:36
▲ Paul Murray’s widow was unable
to view his badly decomposed body
died aged 64 on 20 November 2020
and his body was taken to the mor-
tuary of Basingstoke and North
Hampshire hospital. A month later,
on 23 December, mortuary staff claim
to have conducted a body condition
check and found it to be “unview-
able”, but an internal investigation
found that this did not take place.
The investigation root cause
analysis report, conducted by a cel-
lular pathology laboratory manager
at Queen Alexandra hospital in Ports-
mouth between July and September
serious depression or anxiety, and
those who have eating disorders.
Dr Elaine Lockhart, the chair of
the child and adolescent psychiatry
faculty at the Royal College of Psy-
chiatrists, said the rise in referrals
reflected a “whole range” of ill-
nesses. She said “specialist services
are needing to respond to the most
urgent and the most unwell”, includ-
ing youngsters who have psychosis,
suicidal thoughts and severe anxi-
ety disorder.
Lockhart said targets for seeing
children urgently with eating disor-
ders were sliding “completely” and
2021, found a “lack of evidence” to
explain why the opportunity to freeze
Murray’s body at 30 days was missed.
The report said a record of the con-
dition of body check claimed to have
taken place on 23 December 2020 was
completed retrospectively. When the
Hampshire trust’s pathology labora-
tory manager challenged the validity
of the document, the mortuary team
said it had been completed at a later
date to help train a team member on
the process. The investigation found
this explanation “improbable”.
The Hampshire trust continues to
insist the body check on 23 December
took place. However, even if the
check did take place, the trust accepts
it did not act on the finding that the
body was “unviewable”.
Matthew Gold, who acted for the
widow, said: “Paul’s death was trau-
matic enough for his wife … The
failure by the Basingstoke and North
Hampshire hospital to preserve Paul’s
body resulting in it being unrecognis-
able made matters much worse.”
Alex Whitfield, chief executive at
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Founda-
tion Trust said it was “deeply sorry”
the care it provided “fell short of the
high standards our patients and their
families rightly expect”. She added:
“A thorough investigation took place,
with robust measures implemented
to prevent this happening again.”
more staff were needed. “I think
what’s frustrating for us is that if
we could see them more quickly
and intervene, then the difficulties
might not become as severe as they
do because they’ve had to wait,”
she added.
A Department of Health and
Social Care spokesperson said: “We
are already investing £2.3bn a year
into mental health services, meaning
an additional 345,000 children and
young people will be able to access
support by 2024 – and we’re aiming to
grow the mental health workforce by
27,000 more staff by this time, too.”
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
15
In brief
Weather
Met Office warns of icy
conditions on UK roads
Drivers were urged to take care
on the roads as a yellow weather
warning for ice covered large
areas of the UK yesterday. The
Met Office issued the alert for
Scotland, Northern Ireland and
most of the north of England,
warning pedestrians of the risks
on icy pavements.
Forecasters said the outlook
suggested a south-east and north-
west split would develop, as high
pressure clings on to the south,
with low pressure to the north.
There were 15 flood warnings in
place throughout the UK, mostly
on the south coast and in south-
west England. Robyn Vinter
Colonialism
Chagossians ‘ignored’
in sovereignty talks
Descendants of Chagos Islanders
say their views are being ignored
after Mauritius announced talks
with Britain over the territory’s
future. The negotiations could
lead to the return to Mauritius of
the islands, whose inhabitants
were forcibly displaced by the UK
in the 1960s and 1970s. Britain is
expected to retain rights over Diego
Garcia, a military base.
Rosy Leveque from the Chagos
Islanders group said: “History is
repeating itself – the same states
who treated my family like cargo
are once again negotiating our
future without the involvement of
the community.” Daniel Boffey
Scotland
Three deaths in fire
at hotel in Perth
Three people died following a fire
at the New County hotel in Perth,
Police Scotland have confirmed.
Officers were called shortly before
5.10am yesterday. Emergency
services attended (pictured below)
and three people were confirmed
dead at the scene, while a number
of others were treated for minor
injuries. Hotel guests and two
people from a neighbouring block
of flats were evacuated.
Ch Supt Phil Davison said: “Our
enquiries are ongoing to establish
the full circumstances, and officers
are conducting a joint investigation
with the Scottish fire and rescue
service.” PA Media
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:16 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:25 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

16
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:17 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Devolution
‘Last Corbynista in
power’ sets sights on
regional mayoralty
Josh Halliday
North of England correspondent
O
ne is a Jeremy
Corbyn-supporting
former nightclub
bouncer who retired
as a jiu-jitsu sensei
to enter politics
at the age of 48. The other is
Michael Gove. Together, they have
formed an unlikely bond, aimed
at transforming the north-east
of England through a “historic”
devolution deal.
Jamie Driscoll, the North of Tyne
mayor, may be the most influential
Labour figure whom people outside
the region have never heard of.
He was elected in May 2019, a year
after “reluctantly” entering politics
as a Newcastle councillor. The self-
proclaimed “lefty policy geek” now
heads up an authority that includes
Newcastle, North Tyneside and
Northumberland. But his fiefdom
may be about to get much bigger.
Driscoll and Gove hailed a
potentially “transformational”
•
National
deal last week that will see £48m
a year of new money – plus
powers over transport, education,
skills, housing and regeneration
– transferred to a region of
2 million people. If it passes a local
consultation, as expected, the
region will have its first mayor in
May next year. Driscoll, described
recently as “the last Corbynista in
power”, is the lead contender for
the £100,000-a-year role.
It is the sixth devolution deal
signed in the last year, but it is
arguably the most significant.
The proposed new authority,
which stretches from Berwick
to Gateshead, will include
four constituencies that voted
Conservative for the first time
in nearly 100 years, if ever, in
2019: Blyth Valley, Sedgefield,
North West Durham and Bishop
Auckland. It spans 13 other
seats where Labour’s five-figure
majorities were more than halved
at the last general election, when
many voters ditched the party over
Brexit and Corbyn.
Driscoll, 52, has steered the
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:42
‘My differences with
Michael Gove are
well documented, but
he turns up and he
answers my calls’
Jamie Driscoll
North of Tyne mayor
▲ Driscoll has been cast in the role of
dealmaker in devolution talks with a
series of Conservative ministers
PHOTOGRAPH: GARY CALTON/THE GUARDIAN
devolution deal through three
changes of prime minister and
four levelling up secretaries, and
outlasted four of the seven council
leaders in place when he took office
less than four years ago. But in Gove
he has found an unlikely political
ally. He says he “gets on well”
with the Conservative levelling up
secretary: “Our political differences
are well documented but he turns
up, he answers my calls and he
answers my texts.”
The mayor, who chaired the
Newcastle branch of Momentum
and accompanied Corbyn on a pre-
leadership trip to the north-east,
insists he has a closer relationship
with cabinet members than many
local Tory politicians. What’s the
secret? “You start with a bit of a
joke and banter,” he says. “If you
go in either shouting at people for
being a load of Tory bastards or for
not giving you enough money –
well, they’re human.”
Negotiations over a devolution
deal started in 2015 under David
Cameron’s government but fell
apart several times, sometimes
acrimoniously, before finally
coming together in recent weeks.
It has cast Driscoll in the role
of dealmaker, peacemaker and
occasional referee. Many thought
a north-east combined authority
would never happen, in part
because it is a complex patchwork
of seven very different councils –
and local rivalries run deep.
One local Labour leader
repeatedly stresses that their
area is “not being taken over or
annexed by the North of Tyne” and
admits they are “jittery” about a
mayor overseeing their area. “On
a personal level I like Jamie,” the
leader says. “I just wish he would
reserve his comments to the
position he’s elected to, not the
position he’s not elected to.”
Other local politicians are more
complimentary. Glen Sanderson,
the Conservative leader of
Northumberland council, describes
Driscoll as “an excellent honest
broker” who deserved full credit for
his role and abilities.
Driscoll left school at 16, trained
as an engineer, then received
a grant to study engineering at
Northumbria University. He joined
the Labour party in 1985 but it
was not until 2015 that he became
fully involved, campaigning for
Ed Miliband in the general election
before championing Corbyn’s
leadership bid.
When the role of North of Tyne
mayor came up in late 2018, Driscoll
says he had to be convinced to
put himself forward. He won
the support of trade unions and
Momentum and was selected as
Labour’s candidate.
Now he faces another selection
battle, albeit this time as the
frontrunner. Kim McGuinness, the
police and crime commissioner
for Northumbria, has also been
tipped to run. For now, Driscoll is
doing “cartwheels down the street”
at what he calls England’s “best-
funded devolution deal”.
But he wants ministers to go
further – to full fiscal devolution,
which would allow councils to
raise, retain and spend money
locally. For that, he may have to
wait rather longer for Gove to
return his calls.
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
17
Pair accused
of murdering
footballer
at nightclub
appear in court
Robyn Vinter
Two suspects charged with the Box-
ing Day murder of the footballer Cody
Fisher in a Birmingham nightclub
have appeared in court.
Kami Carpenter, 21, and Remy Gor-
don, 22, were charged on Saturday
with killing Fisher, who was stabbed
on the dancefloor at the Crane in
Digbeth.
The defendants spoke only to con-
firm their personal details and to
enter pleas of not guilty to a linked
charge of affray during a hearing
before two magistrates at Birming-
ham crown court yesterday.
Carpenter, of no fixed address, and
Gordon, of Birmingham, were not
asked to enter any plea to the mur-
der charge. Both defendants were
ordered to reappear before a crown
court judge tomorrow. A further hear-
ing was set for 30 January.
Fisher, who played for Stratford
Town FC, had been on a night out
with friends when he was stabbed.
A knife was recovered from the scene.
The nightclub's licence was sus-
pended on Friday after accusations
by police of “serious management
failings” on the night of the incident.
Fisher’s girlfriend, Jess Chatwin,
paid tribute to him with a message on
Twitter the day after he died, writing:
“You didn’t deserve any of this. I’m
so sorry this has happened to you my
baby please come home. I love you
forever Cody Fisher.”
A statement published by police
and attributed to Fisher’s family
said: “My family and I are asking for
privacy and respectfulness at this
heart-breaking time.”
Stratford Town postponed a match
against Bromsgrove Sporting yester-
day as a mark of respect.
Fisher spent time at Bromsgrove
Sporting last season before return-
ing to Stratford Town in the summer.
The club said in a tweet: “All of us at
Bromsgrove Sporting Football Club
are deeply saddened … Cody was a
friend to many at the club and we
send our deepest condolences to his
family and loved ones.”
Birmingham City and Hull City
players observed a minute’s silence
for Fisher before their Championship
clash at St Andrew’s on Friday.
Additional reporting PA Media
The football player Cody Fisher died
after being stabbed on a night out
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:18 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:16 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

18
Eyewitness
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:19 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:17 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •

19

Catholics
queue to pay
respects as
Benedict XVI
lies in state
Angela Giuffrida

Thousands of Catholics queued at

the Vatican yesterday to pay their
respects to the former pope Benedict
XVI, with some hoping he would be
canonised as a saint.
Benedict died on Saturday, aged
95, and his body was transferred from
a Vatican monastery to St Peter’s
Basilica on yesterday at 7am, where
it will lie in state for three days before
his funeral on Thursday.
Rome officials anticipate that at
least 35,000 people a day – many of
them travelling from overseas – will
descend on the Vatican to pay their
respects to Benedict, who almost a
decade ago became the first pope to
resign in 600 years.
Many of those who joined the
queue early yesterday to see Bene-
dict’s body, which has been dressed
in red papal mourning robes, were
priests and nuns who waited along-
side Catholic devotees or those who
were already visiting Rome and
wanted to pay tribute.
“The queue is moving pretty stead-
ily, and there is a calm and serene
atmosphere,” said Christopher White,
the Vatican correspondent for the
National Catholic Reporter. “Those
who were queuing for hours before
things opened up are the type of peo-
ple who really had a strong devotion
to him. For a certain type of Catholic,
Benedict had quite a draw. He had a
reputation as an intellect, scholar and
theologian, which resonated with
the more theologically minded con-
servative Catholic. Their immediate
pivot is that he is one of the greatest
minds the church has ever had, and
they have every confidence that he
Vatican City will one day be a saint.”
The body of Among the first people to enter
Pope Emeritus St Peter’s Basilica, where Benedict’s
Benedict XVI, body has been laid out on a casket
dressed in red covered with a gold cloth in front of
papal mourning the altar, were the Italian president,
robes, lay in Sergio Mattarella, and the prime min-
state in a chapel ister, Giorgia Meloni.
before being Benedict’s successor, Pope Fran-
moved to St cis, will lead the funeral mass on
Peter’s Basilica Thursday before the body is buried
in the Vatican in the tombs beneath the basilica.
yesterday, where Born in Germany, Benedict led the
nuns, Catholic Catholic church for eight years before
devotees, resigning in 2013, citing a decline
members of in his health. He chose to be called
the public and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI after
visitors to Rome his abdication, instead of reverting
queued to pay to Joseph Ratzinger, and continued
their final to live within the walls of the Vatican
respects and wear a white cassock.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Despite being in the background,
VATICAN MEDIA/ Benedict came forward on a variety
AFP/GETTY IMAGES;
GUGLIELMO of issues over the past decade, often
MANGIAPANE/ clashing with the views of the more
REUTERS;
ALESSANDRA
liberal-minded Francis. The unusual
BENEDETTI/CORBIS/ relationship inspired the film The
GETTY IMAGES Two Popes.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:20 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 20:36 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

20

Moscow admits scores of

its troops killed in missile
attack on Russian-held city
 Continued from page 1
struck a vocational school in Maki-
ivka that housed soldiers two minutes
after midnight on New Year’s Day.
“A massive blow was dealt to the
vocational school from American
MLRS Himars,” Bezsonov wrote in a
post on the Telegram messaging app,
referring to US-provided missiles.
“There were dead and wounded;
the exact number is still unknown.”
Photographs circulating on social
media show what appears to be the
ruins of the building in Makiivka used
by the Russian army as barracks.
A number of prominent Russian
pro-war bloggers and commentators
also acknowledged the attack, but
suggested the number of casualties
was higher than the figures reported
by the defence ministry.
“In terms of the number ofvictims,
there are still no final figures,
since many people are listed as
missing (remained under the rub-
ble). In any case, there are many
hundreds dead and wounded,” Igor
Strelkov, a Russian ultra-nationalist
commentator and former intelligence
officer, wrote on Telegram.
“What happened in Makiivka is
horrible,” wrote Archangel Spetznaz
Z, another Russian military blogger
with more than 700,000 followers
on Telegram. “Who came up with
the idea to place personnel in large
numbers in one building, where even
a fool understands that even if they
hit with artillery, there will be many
wounded or dead?” he wrote.
Commanders “couldn’t care less”
about ammunition stored in disarray
on the battlefield, he said. “Each mis-
take has a name.”
Rybar, a popular Telegram channel
with links to the Russian military, said
yesterday as the clearing of debris
continued that at least 70 people had
died and more than 100 were injured.
The attack also sparked renewed
criticism among pro-invasion blog-
gers and some officials over the state
of Russia’s military and the deci-
sion to use civilian infrastructure to
house soldiers. “Housing personnel
in buildings instead of housing them
in shelters directly aids the enemy.
From the situation in Makiivka it
is necessary to draw the toughest
‘A blow was dealt to
the vocational school
from American
MLRS Himars’
Daniil Bezsonov
Moscow proxy official
conclusions,” wrote Andrey Medve-
dev, an ultra-conservative journalist
who is deputy chairman of Moscow’s
city parliament. Bezsonov called for
the punishment of “those guilty of
the decision to use the facility. The
Donbas has enough objects with
strong infrastructure where you can
house army personnel.”
Vladlen Tatarsky, a military blog-
ger whom Putin met in the Kremlin
in September, called for a tribunal for
the military leadership, describing
Moscow’s top officers as “untrained
idiots”, in a post on Telegram.
Russia’s acknowledgement of
scores of deaths in one incident was
almost without precedent.
Sunday’s deadly strike came a day
after the Ukrainian defence minister,
Oleksiy Reznikov, said the Kremlin
was planning to close its borders and
announce a second wave of mass
mobilisation in January. The Krem-
lin earlier denied there were plans
to launch a fresh recruitment drive.
There has been public anger from
citizens over the first wave of mobi-
lisation, including complaints that
the conscripts were not adequately
prepared and equipped.
Meanwhile, Moscow extended its
bombardment of Ukraine into a sec-
ond day, launching several waves of
Russian drone attacks that targeted
infrastructure in and around Kyiv.

‘We were left on our own’

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr
Zelenskiy, has commended Sumy’s
territorial defence several times.
In his New Year’s Eve address,
How Sumy residents kept the equivalent of the monarch’s
Christmas message in Britain,
he singled out Sumy’s resistance
They said only about 20 out of 400
had previous military experience
and coordination was conducted
via messaging apps and phone
calls, with groups in civilian cars
and trucks to meet the incoming
Russians.
arms from an army warehouse and
formed reactive groups,” said Ihor,
who along with Serhiy has now
joined the regular army.
“It was so chaotic that it’s even
difficult to describe,” said Ihor.
“There was no coordination or

invaders out of their city efforts, describing how ordinary

forces rolled towards them. The
Isobel Koshiw Sumy self-defence forces, which
Sumy formed for the most part on the first
residents became the “bone in the
throat” of the Russians.
“Formally it was called territorial
defence forces but in reality, it
was just people who had received
instructions from Kyiv or anything
like that. We made [everything] up
ourselves.”
Though there were only a few The self-defence forces had
thousand civilians with rifles, a few some handheld anti-tank weapons
dozen anti-tank weapons and no but otherwise, they were just
armed vehicles or heavy weaponry, armed with guns and molotov

O
n 24 February, when
Russia invaded,
there were only a
few dozen Ukrainian
professional soldiers
in the north-eastern
city of Sumy, and they had no
command centre. That evening,
those 50 or so paratroopers were
ordered to leave the city – about 20
miles from the Russian border – for
another area. Most of the police
force had already fled, along with
much of the city’s leadership.
Sumy’s residents were left,
confused and in shock, to defend
the city on their own as Russian
day of the invasion, managed to
hold the city for almost six weeks,
despite being completely encircled.
After 6 April, the Russian forces
were pushed out of Sumy region,
and most of the self-defence forces
members then joined the army
where they are now serving.
Sumy region borders Russia on
two sides, to the north and east.
The efforts of Sumy self-defence
forces and ordinary residents in
and outside the city contributed to
the disruption of Russian supply
lines, helping to prevent Russian
forces from surrounding the capital
and seizing control of the country’s
command centre.
by mid-March the Russians were
scared to enter the city.
In an alleged recording of a
phone call released by Ukrainian
intelligence services on 16 March,
a Russian soldier can be heard
breaking down after telling his
mother that they needed to take
the road through Sumy city but
“not a single column of [theirs] had
survived”.
Serhiy and Ihor, 32-year-old
council workers and close friends,
were among 400 Sumy residents
who took up arms on the first day of
the invasion.
Others joined in the following
days as they got over the shock.
Ihor, a council worker, took
up arms against Russia
cocktails, they say. Neither Serhiy
nor Ihor had body armour.
“An old man walking through the
city saw me and said his grandchild
had fought and he would bring you
a helmet,” said Serhiy, who said the
bulletproof vest that he found did
not have protective plates.
One of the main factors which
saved the city, said Ihor and Serhiy,
was the first battle, which took
place outside the city’s art college.
The 50 paratroopers destroyed a
whole column of Russian tanks.
Both sides did not at first realise
they were facing the army, said
Ihor, and the Russians even got
close enough to ask the Ukrainians
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:21 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Viva Lula
LGBTQ+ community
nity
welcomes new leader
ader
Page 23
for directions. The Ukrainians
twigged first and opened fire,
successfully destroying the tank
column, said Ihor.
But when Serhiy and Ihor
reached the paratroopers that night
with the rest of their small group
of armed civilians, to their dismay,
they were leaving.
“We saw their armoured vehicles
and we thought ‘phew’, we are not
alone with our rifles,” said Ihor.
“But then they were told to leave,
and we were left on our own.”
“People would call us from one
district and say: ‘Get down here,
there’s a battle going on,’ and then
someone else would ring you
because they spotted Russians
elsewhere,” said Ihor, describing
how they would arrive ahead of
columns and set up defensive
positions and start shooting.
It was this initial battle and other
attacks mounted in the first few
days by the self-defence forces
which convinced the Russians
there were lots of weapons and
regular troops in Sumy, said Serhiy.
“We were lucky. In reality, it was
just self-defence forces like us.”
“Everyone started working for
•
Stray bullets
Human casualties
from French hunters
Page 24
the victory. My girlfriends from
the university were bringing us
boxes of molotov cocktails to the
base. There were grandmothers
texting us with the locations of the
Russians. I think because of this,
the city was able to withstand the
invasion,” said Serhiy.
After their failure to use Sumy
city as a throughway, the Russians
Serhiy, Ihor’s close friend,
also defended Sumy city
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:36
 The aftermath
of a missile
attack by
Russian forces
in Kyiv. The
retaliatory
attack by
Ukraine may
have killed
hundreds
PHOTOGRAPH:
ANADOLU/GETTY
started to go around the city and
use the southern Sumy region
towns of Trostianets and Okhtyrka.
Oleh Anatolyvych, 57, from the
village of Krasnopoliya metres
from the Russian border in Sumy
region, did not have a gun when the
invasion started.
He hid in bushes along the
highway and filmed the Russian
columns, counting the number of
vehicles. He then sent the videos
to his son, an officer in Trostianets:
“In the first few days, there was a
new column every two hours. They
did not suspect me because I look
like an old man.”
Oleksandr Nesterenko, a major-
general from Sumy who fought in
the battles for Kyiv and Kharkiv
and is now overseeing his home
area, said the Russians “can try”
to attempt the same but he has no
doubt they will fail.
“What you have to understand
is that all these people who were
accountants and businessmen nine
months ago, now have nine months
of training," he said. "We’re here
with more manpower, weaponry
and we’re motivated. It won’t be
like February again.”
‘Historic
moment’ as
Croatia enters
eurozone and
opens border
Shaun Walker
Central and eastern Europe
correspondent
Croatia has adopted the euro and
joined the European Union’s border-
less Schengen zone, two steps that
its prime minister said represented
a historic moment.
“Nothing is the same after this,”
said Andrej Plenković, promising
that joining the euro would better
protect Croatians from financial cri-
ses, and joining the Schengen zone
would make travelling easier and
boost tourism.
Croatia became the 20th eurozone
country on Sunday, at a time when
inflation is high across Europe due
to rising food and fuel prices since
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It is
the season of new beginnings. And
there is no place in Europe where this
is more true than here in Croatia,”
tweeted the European Commission
president, Ursula von der Leyen,
upon her arrival to mark the occasion.
Croatian politicians said the adop-
tion of the euro and the removal of
borders with neighbouring Slovenia
and Hungary were symbolic steps
marking the endpoint of the coun-
try’s post-independence journey.
“We opened our doors to borderless
Europe. This goes beyond eliminat-
ing border controls, it is the final
affirmation of our European iden-
tity,” said the interior minister, Davor
Božinović, who was at the Bregana
border crossing with Slovenia to cel-
ebrate the end of passport checks.
Croatia declared independence
from Yugoslavia in 1991 and fought
a war to cement its existence as an
independent state, in which 20,000
80%
Proportion of bank deposits in
Croatia denominated in euros. The
country joined the EU in 2013
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
21
 Croatia’s
leader, Andrej
Plenković,
with the EU's
Ursula von der
Leyen, marking
Croatia's entry
in the visa-free
Schengen zone
PHOTOGRAPH: DENIS
LOVROVIĆ/AFP/GETTY
were killed and hundreds of thou-
sands displaced.
It was the most recent country to
join the EU, in 2013. Slovenia joined
in 2004, while the other parts of the
former Yugoslavia – Serbia, Bosnia,
Montenegro, North Macedonia and
Kosovo – are still in the early stages
of negotiations over accession.
While some Croatians expressed
fears that the switch to the euro could
lead to price increases, the general
mood in the country was celebratory.
“Fantastic! Phenomenal!” ran a
headline in the newspaper Večernji
list, quoting travellers who used the
border on New Year’s Day.
In Zagreb, Plenković treated Von
der Leyen to a coffee on the city’s
main square, paid for in euros.
Experts say the adoption of the
euro will help shield Croatia’s econ-
omy at a time when inflation is
soaring worldwide. The country’s
new euro coins feature designs
including the map of Croatia and the
inventor Nikola Tesla. The currency
was already widely used in Croatia,
with about 80% of bank deposits
denominated in euros and shops and
restaurants in tourist areas accepting
payment in euros.
Analysts say joining the euro is
likely to improve borrowing condi-
tions in Croatia, pointing out that
inflation in recent months has tended
to be higher in EU countries, such as
Poland and Hungary, which are out-
side the eurozone. Croatia’s inflation
rate was 13.5% in November, higher
than the 10% in the eurozone.
The tourism industry accounts for
20% of Croatia’s GDP, and the adop-
tion of the euro as well as the end of
land border controls with Slovenia
and Hungary are expected to boost
visits to the country’s popular Adri-
atic coastline this year.
Croatia becomes the 27th member
of the Schengen zone, made up of EU
countries as well as Liechtenstein,
Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
For some years, rights groups
have criticised Croatian authorities
for illegal pushbacks of refugees and
migrants at its border with Bosnia,
with police accused of violence and
abuse. In a report last month, Human
Rights Watch accused European
agencies of turning a blind eye to, or
even encouraging, such behaviour
in Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria, all
countries which have been keen for
some years to join the Schengen zone.
Last month, a meeting of EU inte-
rior ministers rejected applications
from Romania and Bulgaria.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:22 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
22
‘People will know we exist’ The race
to save the songs of India’s Biate tribe
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Rajasthan
A
s he sat by a fire,
deep in the forests
that cover the hills
of Dima Hasao in
Assam, a shadow of
sadness came into
the eyes of Lallura Darnei. Now in
his 70s, Darnei is one of the oldest
members of the Biate community,
an ancient hill tribe in north-east
India. The songs he sang around the
flames, speaking of great floods and
birds that flap their wings at sunset,
dated back so many generations the
tribe said they were as old as time.
But, said Darnei, when he died
these songs would probably die
with him, and with it the history,
the knowledge, culture of the
Biate, would be gone. The younger
generation of the tribe had fallen in
love with guitar music and K-pop
and had not learned traditional
songs. They could not pick up the
ancient melodies and he was the
Four killed as helicopters collide in Australia Four people have died and three were
in critical condition after two helicopters collided near Sea World on Australia’s Gold Coast
yesterday. The dead and critically injured were travelling in a helicopter that crashed to the
ground following the collision, landing upside down. The other helicopter managed to land
near the Sea World theme park after the incident, which happened about 2pm local time.
PHOTOGRAPH:
DAVE HUNT/EPA-EFE/
SHUTTERSTOCK Passengers in that helicopter sustained minor injuries from glass shrapnel.
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
World
last of the Biate able to play and
make the siranda, a traditional
violin crafted from wood and the
dried skin of an iguana.
Sitting across from Darnei as
he shared his grief that night five
years ago were two people who
did not belong to the tribe. Piyush
Goswami and Akshatha Shetty,
a couple from Bengaluru, had
stumbled upon the Biate during
a journey they were taking across
India, documenting and living
with marginalised and tribal
communities and finding ways to
bring them greater prosperity.
“This was not the first time we
realised that these Indigenous
cultures are fading away,” said
Goswami. “All over, we had seen
that these cultures which had
thrived and sustained themselves
for hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of years are now facing
extinction. What we stand to lose is
staggering.”
It was a realisation that would
form the basis of the Forgotten
Songs Collective, a project to
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:58
▲ Biate musicians at last month’s
Magnetic Fields festival in Rajasthan
help communities like the Biate
tribe document and revive
their Indigenous cultures in
India to ensure that, in the face
of modernity, technology and
religious conversion, they are not
erased without a trace.
In the past half century, India
has lost more than 250 languages
and according to Unesco the Biate
language is one of hundreds now
regarded as endangered.
After curious agreement by the
elders in the Biate tribe, who are the
gatekeepers of the songs, Goswami
invited Vinayakâ, an electronic
musician and sound designer from
Bengaluru, to spend two weeks
with the tribe in 2018, recording
their music. Vinayakâ mixed a track
using the Biate recordings, but the
project stalled when the Covid
pandemic hit and visiting the tribe
became almost impossible.
However, last month it was
revived when the Biate, as part of
the Forgotten Songs Collective,
were invited for a residency and
performance at Magnetic Fields,
India’s best-known electronic
music festival, billed alongside
global acts such as Four Tet.
Biate elders, including Darnei,
travelled to the desert state of
Rajasthan to take part. It was the
first time their music had been
performed outside their forest
community. For Darnei, who sang
and played his siranda, it was an
overwhelming experience. “How
will we know we are Biate without
these songs?” he said.
Goswami said the project’s main
focus was getting “this generational
transfer of knowledge going once
again”. They are working to record
and archive the songs on a website,
and introduce a culture syllabus in
local schools to be taught be elders.
“We are so happy to have shared
our songs with the world, it gives
me hope,” said Darnei. “At least
now when people hear these songs
they will know we exist.”
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Nasa chief
sounds alarm
at China’s
designs on
the moon
Edward Helmore
New York
The US is locked in a space race with
China and the country needs to
“watch out” that its rival does not
gain a foothold and try to dominate
lunar resources, Nasa’s top official
has warned.
The assessment came from the
Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, a
former astronaut and Florida sena-
tor, who went on to warn that China
could eventually claim to “own” the
moon’s resource-rich areas.
The next two years could deter-
mine which country achieves an
advantage, he said. “It is a fact: we’re
in a space race,” Nelson told Politico.
“And it is true that we better watch
out that they don’t get to a place on
the moon under the guise of scien-
tific research. And it is not beyond
the realm of possibility that they
say, ‘Keep out, we’re here, this is our
territory.’”
Nelson cited Chinese aggres-
sion over islands in the South China
Sea, where Beijing has established
military bases, as evidence of its ter-
ritorial ambition. “If you doubt that,
look at what they did with the Spratly
Islands,” he said.
Last year, China put up an Earth-
orbiting space station and has
mounted several lunar orbiting
and sample-retrieving missions. A
third phase of its space programme,
to establish an autonomous lunar
research station near the Moon’s
south pole, is scheduled for 2025.
In December, the Chinese govern-
ment offered its vision for a crewed
lunar landing, space transportation,
infrastructure and space governance.
China has also announced the goal of
landing taikonauts on the moon by
the end of this decade.
Nasa, meanwhile, recently com-
pleted the Artemis I mission to take
pictures of the lunar surface. Future
missions are designed to establish
more activity on the moon. However,
the US is also focused on Mars.
US military leaders have also
sounded alarm over Chinese militari-
sation of space and attendant security
concerns.
“It’s entirely possible they could
catch up and surpass us,” Space Force
Lt Gen Nina Armagno said on a visit
to Australia. “The progress they’ve
made has been stunning – stunningly
fast.”
But Beijing has rejected some US
interpretations of its motives. “Outer
space is not a wrestling ground,” Liu
Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chi-
nese embassy in Washington, told
Politico.
Liu said some US officials had
“spoken irresponsibly to misrepre-
sent the normal and legitimate space
endeavors of China”.
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:23 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Spain ups the ante on Gibraltar,
saying it is set for any scenario
Ashifa Kassam Madrid
Jessica Elgot
Spain and the EU are prepared for all
possibilities – including a hard Brexit
– when it comes to the bloc’s relation-
ship with Gibraltar, Spain’s foreign
minister has said, adding that the ball
was now in London’s court after 11
rounds of negotiations.
“Spain doesn’t want a ‘no deal’
scenario,” the Spanish foreign minis-
ter, José Manuel Albares, told Europa
Press. “The government of Spain and
the EU, which is ultimately the signa-
tory on the agreement with the UK,
are ready for any scenario.”
The Brexit withdrawal agreement,
announced on Christmas Eve 2020,
did not cover Gibraltar. Days later – as
the overseas territory was hours away
‘We feel free’
Brazil’s
scorned
minorities
cheer Lula
Tom Phillips
Brasília
T
he Brazilian drag
queen Salete Campari
came to toast her
country’s new era
dressed as Marilyn
Monroe. “I feel
fabulously happy,” said the activist
and performer as she posed for
selfies outside Brazil’s presidential
palace while waiting for the
incoming president, Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva, to arrive.
“Now Brazil’s LGBTQIA+
community can feel free because
we have a president who respects
diversity. It’s so important.
Everyone is welcome now,” said
Campari. “No one was welcome
under that man,” she added
of Lula’s proudly prejudiced
predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose
political demise has provided a
moment of redemption for the
country’s marginalised minorities,
as well as its black majority.
During Bolsonaro’s four-year
reign, the presidential palace was
occupied by predominantly white
male politicians and military
officials, many of whom scorned
Indigenous and traditional black
communities, favela residents and
civil rights activists.
“The minority must bow to the
majority,” Bolsonaro once declared.
•
World
from becoming the only land border
marked by a hard Brexit – Madrid and
London signed off on an agreement in
principle that championed the idea
of incorporating the British territory
into the EU’s Schengen area.
Negotiations aimed at turning
the agreement into a formal treaty
began in October 2021. As Spain and
the EU squared off against a UK del-
egation that included Gibraltarian
officials, they sought to steer clear
of the centuries-old sovereignty dis-
pute between London and Madrid.
Instead, the focus was on common
ground such as the 15,000 workers
who cross into Gibraltar each day
from Spain and keep the economy
humming on both sides of the border.
The drive to protect the workers’
freedom of movement, however, has
also given rise to one of the proposal’s
‘I feel fabulously
happy. Now we
have a president
who respects
diversity. Everyone
is welcome now’
Salete
Campari
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:32
sticking points: the question of who
will carry out passport checks on
travellers who arrive at the airport
in Gibraltar.
Spain has repeatedly insisted that,
as the sponsoring Schengen mem-
ber, the responsibility should fall to
the Spanish police. The UK, however,
has pushed for the EU border agency,
Frontex, to take on the role.
Their positions are complicated by
300 years of history; despite ceding
Gibraltar to Britain in 1713, Spain has
long sought to reclaim the territory.
The issue has seemingly stymied
the talks, leaving parties walking
away from the latest proposal on the
table despite reports of constructive
talks and goodwill from both sides.
“Obviously we cannot be in this
situation for ever,” said Albares. “The
United Kingdom has to say clearly if it
But as Lula arrived to take office
on Sunday, the stunning marble
ramp into the palace was encircled
by citizens representing one of the
world’s most socially and racially
diverse nations.
“I saw trans men and women,
transvestites, drag queens,
disabled people … there were
pastors, priests and Afro-Brazilian
religious leaders,” said the black
favela activist Rene Silva, who
was among the crowd. “I saw the
Brazil that I know. We could see
ourselves. I felt at home.”
Bolsonaro boycotted the
ceremony, having flown to the US
on the eve of the inauguration,
allowing Lula to use the symbolic
passing of the presidential sash to
emphasise his desire to build an
inclusive and tolerant nation.
Many spectators, including Silva,
wept as Lula strode up the ramp
wants this agreement, which is global
and touches all aspects of what has
to be the relationship between Spain
and the United Kingdom regarding
Gibraltar, or if it does not want it.”
He described the proposal as “rea-
sonable and balanced,” adding that
Spain was “ready to sign tomorrow”.
He declined to provide a timeline of
how much longer Spain and the EU
were willing to continue negotiating.
Officials in Gibraltar – where 96%
of residents voted in 2016 to remain
in the EU – are bracing for the worst.
“The government remains firmly
committed to the negotiation of a
treaty but has a duty to prepare for
no treaty at the same time,” Joseph
Garcia, Gibraltar’s deputy chief min-
ister, has previously said. “This will
be a different world where our inter-
actions with Spain and with the EU
will be more cumbersome, bureau-
cratic and time-consuming than
anything we have known before.”
The Foreign Office said further dis-
cussions were planned for the coming
weeks and described a mid-Decem-
ber meeting between the foreign
secretary, James Cleverly, and his
Spanish counterpart as “productive”.
▲ Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with
a group representing the rich
diversity of Brazilian society
PHOTOGRAPH: JOEDSON ALVES/ANADOLU/GETTY
flanked by eight representatives
of Brazilian diversity and struggle,
including the revered Indigenous
leader Raoni Metuktire, a disabled
influencer and a metalworker.
The sash was handed to the new
president by the black rubbish
collector and activist Aline Sousa.
“This is a historic moment,”
said Douglas Belchior, a civil rights
leader from the Black Coalition For
Rights group who was there.
Lula pledged to tens of
thousands of supporters who
gathered to hear him speak: “I will
govern for all, looking forwards
towards our bright shared future
rather than into a rear-view mirror
of division and intolerance.”
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
23
Temperatures
soar around
Europe in
‘unheard of’
weather event
Damien Gayle
Weather records have tumbled across
Europe at a disconcerting rate in the
last few days, say meteorologists.
The warmest January day ever
was recorded in at least eight Euro-
pean countries including Poland,
Denmark, the Czech Republic, the
Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and
Latvia, according to data collated by
Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist
who tracks extreme temperatures.
In Korbielów, Poland, the mercury
hit 19C (66F) – a temperature the
Silesian village is more used to in May,
and 18 degrees above the 1C annual
average for January. In Javorník in
the Czech Republic it was 19.6C, com-
pared with an average of 3C for this
time of year.
Temperatures in Vysokaje, Bela-
rus, would normally hover around
zero in January. On Sunday they
reached 16.4C, beating the country’s
previous record January high by 4.5C.
Elsewhere on the continent, local
records were broken at thousands
of individual measuring stations,
with nearly 950 toppled in Germany
alone from 31 December to 2 January,
Herrera said.
Northern Spain and the south of
France basked in beach weather,
with 24.9C in Bilbao, its hottest
ever January day, and records bro-
ken at stations in Cantabria, Asturias
and the Basque region. Only Nor-
way, Britain, Ireland, Italy and the
south-east Mediterranean posted no
records. “We can regard this as the
most extreme event in European his-
tory,” Herrera said.
Alex Burkill, a senior meteorologist
at the Met Office, agreed it was an
extreme weather event. “It’s been
extreme heat across a huge area,
which is almost, to be honest,
unheard of,” he said.
Burkill said a warm air mass that
developed off the west coast of Africa
had travelled north-east across
Europe from Portugal and Spain,
pulled in by high pressure over the
Mediterranean. “It’s also worth not-
ing, we had some exceptionally warm
weather in the south of England … I
think about seven sites in southern
England recorded their warmest ever
New Year’s Eve on record.”
Professor Bill McGuire, who has
written on the consequences of cli-
mate breakdown, said the high
temperatures were a portent of worse
to come.
“The most worrying thing about
this is that – such is the speed of
global heating – it simply isn’t a sur-
prise any longer,” he said. “It is a small
glimpse of a future that will see win-
ter reduced to a couple of months of
dreary, damp and mild weather, with
little in the way of frost, ice or snow.”
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:24 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
24
‘We’re not wild boar’
France hunt tragedy
deepens rural divide
Kim Willsher
Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye
O
n a brisk morning at
the Étang des Regains
in Charny-Orée-
de-Puisaye, shots
ring out from the
forest. It is hunting
season and local hunt members are
flushing out and tracking wild boar,
deer and smaller game.
A few miles away from the
northern Burgundy town, the
woods lining the departmental
road off the A6 Autoroute de
Soleil are peppered with hunters
wearing fluorescent orange jackets
and holding placards reading
“Attention: chasse en cours”
(Warning: hunt in progress).
Like the road signs warning of
falling rocks, there is little passing
hikers or motorists can do to avoid
them. In October 2021, Joël Viard,
67, was fatally injured when a stray
hunter’s bullet hit him in the neck
as he drove along a motorway
from Rennes to Nantes. The
hunter is under investigation for
manslaughter.
Hunting is one of France’s most
popular and divisive activities.
Opponents say hunters behave as
though the countryside belongs
Liver let live
The vegan
foie gras
selling out
across Spain
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
World
to them and allege that they have
killed, injured and terrified locals
with impunity. Hunters, in turn,
accuse critics of seeing rural France
as a kind of Disneyland, where deer
and wild boar roam free – damaging
farmers’ crops and forests.
In recent years, the divide has
widened and hardened: anti-hunt
activists – not all of them bourgeois
urbanites – reject the view that
innocent victims such as Viard
are an inevitable corollary of rural
tradition. French hunters have
dug in to defend the centuries-old
pursuit, pointing out that most of
those killed or injured are hunters.
The death of Morgan Keane
two years ago brought everything
to a head. Keane, 25, was hit in
the chest as he was cutting wood
outside his home in a village north
of Toulouse when a hunter, Julien
Féral, “believing he was shooting at
a boar”, shot him from a distance of
75 metres with a Remington pump-
action rifle, a court has heard.
The tragedy of errors recounted
during Féral’s trial seemed to
surprise even the judge: a fatal
conjunction of an inexperienced
hunter wielding a powerful rifle; a
hunt director incapable of saying if
those present had paid attention to
the safety rules; a young man shot
in the chest on his own property.
Ashifa Kassam
Madrid
T
he company laboured
over the recipe for
over a year, tweaking it
800 times. After being
taste-tested by more
than 150 people, the
plant-based take on foie gras was
deemed ready for market, with a
modest plan to deliver 5,000 units
to supermarkets and speciality
stores for the holiday season.
Within 12 hours of launch in mid-
December, they had sold out across
Spain. The company scrambled
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:06
Even Willy Schraen, outspoken
president of the French hunters’
federation – who insists “zero risk”
is impossible even for innocent
bystanders in hunting – declared
the incident “unacceptable”.
Féral, who does not deny
firing the fatal shot, is on trial for
manslaughter and a verdict in the
case is due on 12 January.
For Keane’s close friends, it is
unthinkable that his death should
be treated as collateral damage in
a popular but minority pursuit.
“Exactly how many deaths,
injuries and people terrified are
acceptable in the name of an
unnecessary tradition?” said one,
Léa Jaillard. “After Morgan died, I
remember thinking back to things
to restock – and watched in awe as
another 30,000 units flew off shelves.
“We’re absolutely gobsmacked,”
said Javier Fernández, founder of
Madrid startup Hello Plant Foods.
“Our plan was to start slowly … but
we’ve just increased our production
▼ Protests in southern France,
left, in defence of hunting, below
PHOTOGRAPHS: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/GETTY;
CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
 A shrine to
Morgan Keane
in south-west
France. He
was killed by
a hunter who
thought he was
a wild boar
PHOTOGRAPH:
VALENTINE CHAPUIS/
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
we’d endured as children in the
countryside. If we went out for a
walk, my parents told me to sing or
shout so the hunters could hear. Of
course, we were children, so it was
a game. We would shout, ‘We are
not wild boar.’”
Keane’s friends set up the
anti-hunt collective Un jour un
chasseur (One Day One Hunter)
and organised a petition for a ban
on hunting on certain days, tighter
security controls and tougher
sentences for hunters who ignore
the rules. It got enough signatures
to force a Sénat commission to look
into hunt safety, to which they gave
evidence.
“Our campaign has opened the
gate to allowing rural people, those
sevenfold. It’s crazy.” Its offering –
named Fuah! – is the latest entry into a
fledgling market of plant-based alter-
natives that are taking on a product
that has long stirred debate: foie gras.
In Paris, the chef Fabien Borgel
launched his vegan take – named
“faux gras” – two years ago, adding
to the plethora of recipes that have
sprung up online in recent years.
The vegan offerings come as the
animal product has routinely found
itself in the headlines. King Charles
reportedly told animal rights
activists in November that foie
 A tray of Fuah! – Hello Plant
Foods’ plant-based foie gras
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
most affected by hunting, to speak
about how they really feel about it,”
Jaillard said.
Official figures show hunting
accidents have dropped in the past
20 years. In 2020-21, there were
80, seven of which were fatal. Last
year, there were 90 accidents, eight
of them leading to deaths.
The French hunters’ federation
is a powerful lobby group that
has the ear of the president,
Emmanuel Macron. The director
general, Nicolas Rivet – a former
French army officer – is in broad
agreement with Schraen, only
more diplomatic: “Over the last 20
years, we have seen a reduction
in the number of accidents, but
zero accidents does not exist. The
majority are caused by hunters not
respecting the safety rules.”
Rivet said the federation had
introduced measures to increase
security, including requiring
hunters to wear fluorescent orange
vests and put up warning signs, and
recalling hunters every 10 years to
remind them of the rules.
Though disappointed with the
Sénat’s response to their petition,
Jaillard believes the political and
public mood towards hunting in
France is changing. “Hunters say
hunting is traditional but not all
traditions are good.”
gras would not be served in royal
residences, while the US state of
California and New York City have
both sought to ban the product.
It was against this backdrop
that Fernández and his team
began using cashews, coconut oil
and beetroot extract to produce a
hyperrealistic plant-based version,
he said, one aimed at vegans and
vegetarians but also meat-eaters.
“There’s a hidden consumer
that loves foie. But … a photo of the
ducks with the tubes sticking out of
them flashes before them and they
don’t want it,” he said. “When they
try Fuah! their eyebrows shoot up
and they go: ‘Madre Mia.’”
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:25 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Economists warn of another
turbulent year for markets
Graeme Wearden
Investors should brace for another
turbulent year in the financial mar-
kets, economists have warned as
central banks fight inflation, China
reopens its economy after Covid
restrictions and the Ukraine war
pushes the global economy towards
recession.
The first half of the new year is
likely to be choppy, according to Wall
Street predictions, after global mar-
kets suffered their biggest fall since
the 2008 financial crisis last year.
But the US S&P 500 is still expected
to end 2023 a little higher than it
began the year. The average target
of 22 strategists polled by Bloomberg
has it ending 2023 at 4,078 points –
about 6% higher than it ended 2022.
Economists are looking to the US
Federal Reserve to slow its interest
rate rises this year, as the outlook
for America’s economy sours. US
inflation has dropped back from its
peak last summer, while interest
rate increases in 2022 have cooled
the housing market.
“We believe that a period of
sub-trend growth is inevitable,
and recession risks are high as the
lagged effects of tighter monetary
policy work their way through the
economy,” said Brian Rose, senior
US economist at UBS Global Wealth
Management.
Michael Antonelli, managing
director and market strategist at the
investment bank Baird, predicted the
Fed will “hit the pause button” in Feb-
ruary after one more rate rise. He also
expects the US stock market to make
gains during 2023.
“The stock markets all about ‘Are
things getting better or are things
getting worse?’ I think they will get
slightly better next year,” Antonelli
told Yahoo Finance Live. He added:
“I don’t think we’re getting any big
gains, but I think next year will be
somewhat positive.”
Deutsche Bank predicts economic
downturns this year, which will hit
Firms more reluctant to borrow
money than any time since 2008
Gwyn Topham
The UK’s leading companies are less
inclined to borrow now than at any
point since the financial crisis of
2008, a survey of directors has found.
Demand for credit is flagging
among chief financial officers, with
barely a quarter of those polled at
•
financial markets. “We see major
stock markets plunging 25% from lev-
els somewhat above today’s when the
US recession hits, but then recovering
fully by year-end 2023, assuming the
recession lasts only several quarters,”
Deutsche Bank analysts said in their
2023 World Outlook late last year.
A global downturn could prompt
central banks to reverse some of the
hefty interest rate rises implemented
in the last year. Nikolaj Schmidt, the
chief international economist at
the investment management firm
T Rowe Price, predicted major cen-
tral banks will ease monetary policy
early in the second half of 2023.
Schmidt said: “We see the world
plunging into a global recession in
2023. The recession is going to be
the result of the immense mone-
tary tightening the central banks
have administered over the past 12
months. As a silver lining, it will sow
▲ A bull arrives for a ceremony marking the opening of the stock market in Seoul yesterday PHOTOGRAPH: JUNG YEON-JE/GETTY
FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies
expecting to increase borrowing in
the next year.
The quarterly survey by the
accountancy firm Deloitte found
firms now more reluctant to bor-
row from banks or issue debt than
they had been since 2008. With the
Bank of England having raised inter-
est rates to 3.5%, about 70% of those
questioned now rate credit as costly,
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:29
‘Recession will result
from the immense
monetary tightening
– but it will sow the
seeds of retracement
of inflation’
Nikolaj Schmidt
Economist
the seeds for a substantial retrace-
ment of inflation,” Schmidt said.
Analysts at the investment bank
Jefferies predict a global recession
this year, but expect Asia could avoid
an outright downturn. The region
could benefit from a resurgence of
tourism, as Chinese tourists begin to
return to travel. “Asia could be the
and almost half said that new credit
was hard to get.
Despite a turbulent year of rising
inflation and supply chain disruption
on top of rising interest rates, not all
the sentiment among the businesses
– including more than 50 UK-listed
companies – was negative.
Deloitte found that the perception
of external risks to businesses, par-
ticularly inflation, had eased.
Fears of disruption in supply
chains, of labour shortages and even
higher interest rates have also abated
slightly, along with concern over
energy prices that had soared since
best of a bad lot and avoid an out-
right recession. In the past shocks of
the dotcom bust, and the GFC [Great
Financial Crisis], Asia bounced back
quickly, and we expect that it can do
the same in 2023,” they said.
China’s decision to relax Covid
restrictions last month could ease
global supply chain tensions, but
may also lead to higher demand for
commodities and energy, adding to
inflation pressures.
The Bank of England is expected
to raise interest rates again, with the
bank rate forecast to hit 4.5% in the
summer, from its current 3.5%.
Britain’s FTSE 100 was one of the
few major share indices to rise during
2022, gaining almost 1%. Ipek Ozk-
ardeskaya at Swissquote predicted
the FTSE 100’s outperformance could
stretch into the new year: “If the Chi-
nese reopening brings along another
bump in inflation due to higher
energy and commodity prices, the
FTSE 100 could continue offering a
good shelter to those willing to hedge
against an energy-led global inflation
to temper the negative effects.”
Russia’s economy is in recession.
“Having started a brutal war, Putin
has no easy way out,” said economists
at Berenberg bank.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Only
one in 10 CFOs said they expected
significant supply disruption by
2024 – the most positive result for
18 months. Most said they expected
inflation to fall sharply to just over
5% in a year.
Ian Stewart, the chief economist
at Deloitte, said: “The most aggres-
sive tightening of monetary policy in
more than 30 years is reshaping cor-
porate attitudes to debt.
“Not since the credit crunch have
CFOs rated debt as being less attrac-
tive as a source of finance for their
businesses than they do today.”
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
25
China, US
and EU all
slowing
down, says
IMF head
Staff and agencies
For much of the global economy,
2023 is going to be a tough year as
the main engines of global growth
– the US, Europe and China – all expe-
rience weakening activity, the head
of the International Monetary Fund
has warned.
The new year is going to be
“tougher than the year we leave
behind,” the IMF managing direc-
tor, Kristalina Georgieva, told CBS TV.
“Why? Because the three big econ-
omies – the US, EU and China – are
all slowing down simultaneously,”
she said.
“We expect one-third of the
world economy to be in recession.
Even countries that are not in reces-
sion, it would feel like recession for
hundreds of millions of people,” she
added.
In October, the IMF cut its out-
look for global economic growth
in 2023, reflecting the continuing
drag from the war in Ukraine as well
as inflation pressures and the high
interest rates engineered by central
banks such as the US Federal Reserve
aimed at bringing those price pres-
sures to heel.
Georgieva said that China, the
world’s second-largest economy,
is likely to grow at or below global
growth for the first time in 40 years
as Covid cases surge following the
dismantling of its ultra-strict zero-
Covid policy.
Moreover, a “bushfire” of expected
Covid infections there in the months
ahead are likely to further hit its econ-
omy and drag on both regional and
global growth, said Georgieva, who
travelled to China on IMF business
late last month.
Meanwhile, Georgieva said, the US
economy is standing apart and may
avoid the outright contraction that
is likely to afflict many of the world’s
economies.
The “US is most resilient,” she said,
and it “may avoid recession. We see
the labour market remaining quite
strong.”
“This is … a mixed blessing because
if the labour market is very strong, the
Fed may have to keep interest rates
tighter for longer to bring inflation
down,” Georgieva said.
The first week of the new year
brings a raft of key data on the US
employment front, including Friday’s
monthly nonfarm payrolls report,
which is expected to show the US
jobless rate remained at 3.7% – near
the lowest since the 1960s.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:26 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 16:45 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

26 Business

as accountancy are winning in higher prices are inevitable and

Business view the wage war, pushing the official
figure for average earnings growth
here to stay.
Nestlé and P&G tell shareholders
Phillip Inman to 6.9%. that the cost of basic raw materials
On the other hand, profitability continues to eat into profits, but
remains strong across most sectors, celebrate how their price rises have
which invites the question, why are offset those bills.
Life is sweet for shareholders workers and consumers allowing
investors to be largely untouched
We know Nestlé’s Schneider,
who has run the company for more
by the pandemic and the fallout than five years and receives about
and boss of Nestlé – but at what from the Ukraine war? Why accept
across-the-board price rises when
£9.5m a year, is also threatened
by another potential cost – that
it contributes to the worst fall in workers’ salaries should keep pace
cost to workers and consumers? living standards in a century?
P&G raised prices by 9% and the
with inflation. In October he said:
“I worry about the development

N
estlé is on course
to report its best
profit since 2008
when full-year
figures appear next
month. The Swiss
maker of consumer favourites
from KitKat to Nespresso coffee is
expected to shrug off the cost of
living crisis affecting consumers
in most of its big markets to keep
shareholders smiling in 2023.
Its US rival Procter & Gamble,
which competes on several fronts
with Nestlé, has performed
a similar magic trick. Back in
October, the maker of Pampers
nappies said average prices
across its product lines rose 9%
in the first quarter to the end of
September, more than offsetting
a 3% fall in sales.
A similarly upbeat message is
expected from Jon Moeller, chair,
president and chief executive at
P&G, who received a 44% pay rise
in 2022 to $17.7m (£14.7m), when
the firm’s second-quarter results
are announced later this month.
Both companies have committed
to maintaining or increasing
dividend payments and buying
back shares to reduce the number
in the market and thereby increase
their value.
Increasing sales and maintaining
profits for shareholders appear to
be at the expense of wage rises.
Across all industries, salaries have
increased by just 4% this year,
according to data covering private
sector pay deals. Only the workers
in the financial services sector and
those in business services such
value of organic sales increased
by 7%. At Nestlé’s headquarters
on Lake Geneva, executives found
that almost 90% of the organic
sales growth of 8.5% was the result
of product price rises to maintain
an underlying trading operating
profit margin of around 17%.
As a reward for investors, the
boss, Mark Schneider, said the
company was aiming to repurchase
SFr20bn (£18bn) worth of shares
from 2022 to 2024 and said it had
already bought around half to help
bolster its share price.
The world’s largest consumer
product makers are not alone:
there are similar stories across
many industries where wages
are being held in check while the
prices charged by the firm are
rising, improving profitability and
shareholder dividends.
▲ Mark Schneider, Nestlé’s CEO,
is paid around £9.5m a year
It’s not pay claims that are
driving up prices in Britain. It’s
profits. Obvious examples include
the energy companies that have
made huge windfall profits from
selling gas, electricity, diesel and
petrol over the past two years. They
face a windfall tax in recognition of
their profiteering. The EU has a tax
and so does the UK.
A similar one-off “war tax” on
consumer goods makers would
pose insurmountable problems,
which is why consumers should
consider a boycott.
Otherwise we all become
victims of marketing that tells us
of wages.”
Asked what pay rise Nestlé
workers enjoyed in 2022, a
spokesperson for Nestlé declined
to comment.
Schneider was one of many
company bosses who urged central
banks to raise interest rates in an
effort to bring down inflation.
However, inflation is not falling
quickly enough to prevent another
year of sharp decline in living
standards, should employers
continue to keep a tight rein on
wage increases.
Rip-off Britain was a slogan
that gained traction after the 2008
financial crisis when there was a
suspicion that copycat price rises
were pushing inflation higher
than it needed to be. It’s time for
consumer groups to dig out those
old posters and start picketing.

Help us
deliver hope
We live in extraordinary times. The worst of the pandemic
appears to be over, attitudes towards the climate crisis are
changing and our investigative reporting continues to shed
light on corruption and expose injustice and incompetence.
But there is still a long way to go: in Ukraine, civilians’ lives are
on the line, while in Russia, protestors are continually censored
and silenced.

Editorial independence has never been more important. The

Guardian’s unique funding model means we’re free from the
influence of shareholders and billionaire proprietors. We can
hold the powerful to account and follow the truth wherever
it leads. But to do this we need the support of our readers.
Guardian Patrons are supporters who give a little more towards
helping make our vital work possible - and are offered exciting
benefits in return.

You can help us produce journalism that empowers and

energises by becoming a Patron today. Your contribution will
ensure that independent and fact-checked journalism remains
available to everyone - now and for generations to come.

Find out how to join our community of Patrons at

theguardian.com/patrons, by calling 020 3353 3483
or by scanning the QR code
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:27 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:55 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •

Business 27

Pubs and restaurants cut opening hours as

surviving and not for so many busi-
nesses. So we need that to come as
early as practically possible.”
There have been reports the gov-

cash-strapped customers opt to stay home ernment intends to halve financial

Joe Middleton
Joanna Partridge
Pubs and restaurants face a “perfect
storm” of challenges this year as cash-
strapped consumers slash spending
and government energy bills support
reduces – forcing many to cut their
opening hours.
The industry faced a plethora of
difficulties over the past 12 months,
including soaring energy bills, staff
shortages, rampant food inflation
and fragile consumer confidence.
Trade at bars, pubs and restaurants
was further affected by rail strikes,
which may have cost the industry at
least £1.5bn last month alone.
Kate Nicholls, the chief executive
of UKHospitality, said businesses
were concerned going into the first
few months of the year, which was
already a quieter time for pubs and
restaurants with many opting to cut
capacity by 20%.
“The fear is that people will tighten
their belts quite considerably. That’s
when the cost of living will bite. And
you’ll see customers not going out.”
Nicholls said a survey the industry
body undertook in November indi-
cated that one in four people were
not planning to go out as frequently
or spend as much because of the
increased cost of living.
“There’s no doubt quarter one is
going to be tough,” she said. “Around
half of our members are restricting
their opening hours, their capacity,
the days of the weeks that they are
opening, and this is being driven pri-
marily by staff shortages that have
been exacerbated by energy costs and
the need to make sure that they can
be as profitable as they possibly can.
“We’re hearing lots of people talk-
ing about curbing their capacity by
about 20%, just simply to be able
to match supply and demand. And
we have seen, in rural and tourist
locations, quite a few businesses
going dark over the winter months …
just to try and conserve cash and then
reopen when the trade comes back.”
Nicholls was disappointed an
announcement of further support
for businesses’ energy bills was not
made before Christmas.
“Energy costs have gone from
the fourth-largest cost, round about
4% or 5% of turnover, to being the
second-largest and 16%. That’s more
than rent and rates combined. So
before you open the doors, you’ve
got to be able to pay your energy bill.”
She said government support
“could be the difference between
support on energy bills when the
current business aid scheme ends in
March. Nicholls warned that would
coincide with the financial year end
and the March rent quarter, heaping
more pain on businesses. According
to a report in the Times, the chancel-
lor, Jeremy Hunt, plans to extend the
support programme by 12 months but
at a reduced level.
Despite the difficult outlook,
Nicholls said there was some cause
for optimism. “The government
appears to have stabilised the ship,
it doesn’t look as though interest rates
are going to peak at as high a level,
it’s possible that inflation and inter-
est rates have already peaked … if we
start to turn that corner, and the econ-
omy looks as though it’s improving,
consumer spending will rebound.”

Hilton at 60
Behind the
scenes at
luxury hotel
on London’s
Park Lane

Tobi Thomas

H
osting more than
200,000 guests a
year, the Hilton
hotel on Park Lane
is one of London’s
landmarks. It was
where the Beatles met their guru,
the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in 1967.
Eight years later, two people lost
their lives and many more were
injured when the Hilton was rocked
by an IRA bomb, and in 2012, the
International Olympic Committee
set up residence at the hotel during
the London Games. The first
skyscraper hotel to be built in the
capital, it will celebrate 60 eventful
years this April.
Behind the £1,500-a-night rooms
and extravagant banquets is a small
army of staff who keep the vast
operation going.
Matthew Mullan, the general
manager, has worked at the Hilton
for almost 35 years, having helped
to run hotels across the world, ▲ Clockwise the Galvin at panoramic views of the city. Its been the staff shortage. Many
including in Egypt, Barbados, Malta from top: a Windows head general manager, Peter Avis, hospitality workers from the EU
and Abu Dhabi, hosting prestigious member of chef, Marc began his hospitality career as a went home during the Covid-19
guests including Bill Clinton when housekeeping Hardiman. dishwasher in Miami at 17, having pandemic. “There’s a hole in the
he was the US president. “He just at the Hilton Left: Peter Avis, moved there from Liverpool. “I workforce, and there is a crisis in
carries this fabulous aura … when on Park Lane; the restaurant’s didn’t have any formal education … recruitment,” Avis says. “But we’ve
he walked into the lobby of the the hotel general My sister got a modelling contract been developing opportunities to
hotel, the whole place went silent,” launderette; a manager in Miami, and I got the chance to go bring in young people who may
Mullan recalls. gourmet treat; out there with her.” have otherwise not had the chance
PHOTOGRAPHS:
On the 28th floor, the restaurant staff preparing GRAEME ROBERTSON/ Avis took up his role at Windows to work in our industry, such as
Galvin at Windows offers a guest room; THE GUARDIAN in 2020. His biggest challenge has those with disabilities.”
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:28 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:S Sent at 2/1/2023 18:42 cYanmaGentaYellowb

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

28

Weather
Tuesday 3 January 2023
UK and Ireland Noon today Forecast Around the UK

London
Sunny Mist Fog Lows and highs Precipitation Air pollution

11 12 90% Low
Sunny intervals Hazy
Manchester
1004
Mostly cloudy
10 12 95% Low
Overcast/dull Edinburgh

1000
7 8 85% Low
Sunny showers Moderate
Belfast

Sunny and heavy showers 9 11 90% Low

Birmingham
Light showers

11 12 90% Low
Rain Sleet Light Moderate
Brighton
snow

Snow showers 11 90% Low

1016
Bristol
Heavy snow Ice
Carbon
count
35C 11 12 90% Low
1008
30
Thundery rain
Daily atmospheric CO2
Cardiff
25
readings from Mauna Loa,
20
Hawaii (ppm):
Thundery showers 15 11 12 95% Low
Latest
X
10
30 Dec 2022 419.10 Newcastle
5
Weekly average
Temperature, 0 1012
25 Dec 2022 419.38
ºC
-5
9 11 85% Low
1020 02 Jan 2022 417.42
-10 02 Jan 2013 394.85 Penzance
Moderate
-15 Pre-industrial base 280
Wind speed, Windy
mph -20 Safe level 350
Source: NOAA-ESRL
12 13 90% Low

Atlantic front Weather tracker Around the world

California ended 2022 with a heavy Algiers 21 Lisbon 15

rainfall event that brought flooding Ams’dam 9 Madrid 13
to San Francisco and surrounding Athens 15 Malaga 20
areas, resulting in landslides, Auckland 24 Melb’rne 20
inundated roads and evacuation B Aires 29 Mexico C 21
orders. The second highest daily Bangkok 30 Miami 28
rainfall total since records began Barcelona 15 Milan 10
Cold front in 1949 fell on New Year’s Eve in Basra 20 Mombasa 31
San Francisco, with 5.46in (139mm) Beijing 3 Moscow 2

Warm front recorded. This is more than 25% of Berlin 7 Mumbai 30

the annual average rainfall and only Bermuda 21 N Orleans 22
0.08in short of the all-time record Brussels 9 Nairobi 21
Occluded front set in November 1994. Budapest 10 New Delhi 17
Recent heavy rains have been C’hagen 6 New York 13

Trough part of an atmospheric river event Cairo 20 Oslo -6

– where a conveyor belt of warm, Cape Town 27 Paris 11
moist tropical air is able to interact Chicago 15 Perth 34

High tides
Source: © Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Times are local UK times
Sun & Lighting with and feed into mid-latitude Corfu 17 Prague 8
storm systems, greatly enhancing Dakar 29 Reykjavik 1
Moon up rainfall potential. Dhaka 25 Rio de J 30
San Francisco had a dry start to Dublin 13 Rome 16
Aberdeen 1107 3.7m 2324 3.8m London Bridge 1058 6.3m 2338 6.3m Belfast 1612 to 0847 2022, with about 20% of normal Florence 15 Shanghai 10
Avonmouth 0410 10.7m 1640 11.1m Lossiemouth 0921 3.5m 2140 3.6m Birm’ham 1606 to 0817 rainfall totals until early October. Gibraltar 17 Singapore 30
Barrow 0853 7.8m 2115 8.0m Milford Haven 0327 5.7m 1553 5.9m Brighton 1607 to 0802 Prior to this latest event, rainfall H Kong 18 Stockh’m -2
Belfast 0837 3.2m 2103 3.2m Newquay 0222 5.9m 1448 6.0m Bristol 1615 to 0815 totals since October were close to Harare 23 Strasb’g 11
Cobh 0229 3.5m 1458 3.6m North Shields 0032 4.4m 1311 4.4m Carlisle 1556 to 0835 average, meaning that despite the Helsinki 0 Sydney 26
Cromer 0342 4.3m 1626 4.2m Oban 0303 3.1m 1545 3.3m Cork 1636 to 0841 wet end to December the city ended Istanbul 12 Tel Aviv 20
Dover 0827 5.8m 2103 5.7m Penzance 0158 4.6m 1419 4.7m Dublin 1619 to 0840 2022 with only about two-thirds of Jo’burg 24 Tenerife 23
Sun rises 0805
Dublin 0919 3.7m 2135 3.7m Plymouth 0248 4.7m 1513 4.7m Sun sets 1603 Glasgow 1557 to 0847 the annual average rainfall. K Lumpur 31 Tokyo 8
Galway 0234 4.3m 1459 4.3m Portsmouth 0849 4.2m 2116 4.1m Moon rises 1310 Harlech 1613 to 0828 After a brief lull in the heavy K’mandu 17 Toronto 4
Greenock 0943 3.1m 2215 3.2m Southport 0752 7.6m 2011 7.8m Moon sets 0506 Inverness 1544 to 0857 rainfall so far this week, a new Kabul 6 Vancouv’r 4
Full Moon 6 Jan Kingston 30 Vienna 10
Harwich 0845 3.5m 2123 3.5m Stornoway 0445 4.1m 1652 4.2m London 1603 to 0805 atmospheric river is expected to
Holyhead 0800 4.8m 2016 4.9m Weymouth 0426 0.6m 1648 0.6m M’chester 1603 to 0824 hit California from tomorrow, with Kolkata 24 Warsaw 9
L Angeles 16 Wash’ton 18
Hull 0311 6.5m 1552 6.4m Whitby 0104 4.8m 1344 4.8m Newcastle 1551 to 0831 further heavy rain, strong winds
Forecasts and Lagos 30 Well’ton 22
Leith -- -- 1214 4.8m Wick 0854 3.0m 2110 3.1m
graphics provided by
Norwich 1553 to 0806 and mountain snow expected.
Lima 25 Zurich 11
Liverpool 0837 7.9m 2056 8.1m Workington 0901 7.0m 2123 7.2m AccuWeather ©2023 Penzance 1632 to 0821 Matt Hills Metdesk
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:29 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Rugby union
Borthwick Ten Hag says
wields the axe in United ‘need’ to
England shake-up splash the cash
Page 31 
Trapped in a bunker
Saudi sportswashing
is working so well
there may be little
point in LIV golfers
Ewan Murray
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:17
•
Football
Page 36 
▲ Cameron Smith is
one of the big names
to join but LIV is
still struggling to
force its way into the
mainstream
JOE SCARNICI/LIV GOLF/GETTY
I
t is telling that discussion around Cristiano
Ronaldo’s move to the Saudi Arabian league
focuses on the player’s inexorable slide
towards footballing oblivion. Ronaldo was
unveiled at the end of a year in which at least
147 people had been executed in Saudi Arabia,
according to the European Saudi Organisation
for Human Rights. Ronaldo’s 526 million
Instagram and 106 million Twitter followers will
now be afforded updates from Al Nassr as football
obsessives debate his on-field decline. The Saudis have
bought one of the game’s iconic figures, meaning goals
and assists barely matter. Neither does the source of
Ronaldo’s weekly wage. Sportswashing works.
Newcastle United’s charge into the upper echelons
of the Premier League and the hero worship afforded
to Eddie Howe as a direct consequence will be
regarded in the Kingdom as another success story.
The Saudi Arabian grand prix is normalised. If Tyson
Fury fights Oleksandr Usyk in Saudi Arabia in March,
a boxing world will shrug its shoulders.
Golf has rapidly emerged as the Saudi sporting
outlier. Anybody involved with LIV, which has
already been backed to the tune of $2bn by the Public
Investment Fund, speaks with absolute certainty
about a prosperous future but this entity enters 2023
with questions and doubts swirling. The response,
if there is to be one, from Greg Norman and chums
will prove fascinating. LIV is suddenly in need of a
jump start. During this window when mainstream
golf has essentially shut down, LIV been unable to
garner momentum.
In late October, LIV’s chief operating officer
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
29
and president, Atul Khosla, spoke in a composed
manner to assembled journalists at Doral. Khosla
acknowledged LIV’s need for a broadcast deal. He
said a 2023 schedule would appear by the end of the
following month. Khosla said teams would be set for
this calendar year by the end of 2022.
Shortly before Christmas, it was announced that
Khosla – to many the acceptable face of LIV – had
left the organisation after just a year. “We respect
AK and his personal decision,” Norman said. Sean
Bratches lasted six months as chief commercial
officer before walking out last May. LIV’s inability
to retain experienced, externally hired sporting
M
executives is intriguing.
uch of the void is filled by
Performance54, a sports
marketing group which
Companies House shows has
three Saudi Arabians on their
board including Majed al-Sorour
– also a director of Newcastle
and the long-time front man
for Saudi’s golf operation. Khosla, meanwhile, is
due to appear as a witness when the case between
LIV members and the European Tour Group is called
for sporting arbitration in February. There is no
suggestion Khosla, who is due to speak in defence of
LIV players, will not give evidence but his attitude will
be interesting given the sudden and thus far opaque
nature of his exit from the rebel tour.
There remains no television contract for LIV in
either the US or the UK. A full schedule for this year is
yet to appear, with only seven tournaments listed on
the LIV website. Rumoured signings – Patrick Cantlay
and Xander Schauffele were the most high profile –
have opted to remain within the PGA Tour. If the PIF
is content to bestow millions of dollars on Pat Perez
and Peter Uilhein, fair enough, but otherwise they are
going to have to throw even more exorbitant sums to
coax big-name golfers to LIV. With every such deal,
return-on-investment potential is impacted. And
contrary to widespread belief, ROI targets do exist.
If LIV remains with the cast list that exists now and
without a broadcast platform, it risks irrelevance. The
LIV story of 2022 was fascinating on account of the
“Will he, won’t he” narrative of players tempted by
their blank cheques. Without such a
It is possible narrative in 2023, will anybody care?
LIV completed its 2022 campaign
there will without implementation of an anti-
be no LIV doping programme, which is curious
for an entity so many years and so
golfers at many dollars in the making. Insiders
the Paris insist that will change this year.
Olympics Failure to gain recognition from the
official world rankings in one sense
suits LIV, given it can depict the
closing of ranks by golf’s crusty status quo. Yet it has an
negative impact upon golfers. Paul Casey, something
of an Augusta National specialist, is not eligible for the
Masters after sliding outside of the world’s top 50. Only
seven LIV members qualified for Augusta thanks to a
top-50 berth and, of those, the average ranking was 40.
It is highly possible there will be no LIV golfers at the
Paris Olympics in 2024.
A coalition of families and survivors of the 9/11
atrocity has said it will protest outside the gates of
Augusta National due to the involvement of LIV golfers
in April’s Masters. The custodians of the tournament
will not like that. Perhaps complaints about
human-rights abuses washes over Saudi’s sporting
wing, just as it apparently does the golfers it employs
on such lucrative terms. At some point, one has to
assume all the heat, hassle and expense has to become
worth it. LIV used 2022 to disrupt golf and change
the complexion of the sport forever. Nothing that has
transpired in the off-season suggests Saudi Arabia’s
dalliances on the fairways will prove as fruitful as
elsewhere. So long as that risk lingers, golfers inside
the LIV bubble face an uncertain future.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:30 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
30
‘Being world champion is
a dream but the Olympics
is a much bigger deal’
The big interview
Jake Wightman
Victory in Oregon
launched the Scot into
the limelight, but he has
little time to enjoy his
new status as he targets
glory at Paris 2024
Donald McRae
‘I
’m glad I just said: ‘Oh my
God!’” Jake Wightman
suggests as he remembers
his reaction when he
crossed the line to win the
1500m in a stunning result
at the world championships five
months ago. “Imagine if I’d chosen
to say something a lot worse. In that
moment you could say anything,
couldn’t you? I could have said:
‘What the fuck?’ and that would
have been seen again and again.”
Wightman laughs when I point
out that he could have become a
permanent meme. “Exactly. Maybe
I should have.”
The 28-year-old made the
shortlist for BBC Sports Personality
of the Year and his victory was a
fleeting sensation on social media
because his father, Geoff, was
the stadium commentator at the
World Athletics Championships in
Eugene, Oregon. Footage of Geoff
standing up while he commentated
on the final stages of the race
with exemplary professionalism,
until he raised his arms after Jake
won, went viral. When he became
aware that his face filled the giant
screen Geoff said, with understated
emotion: “I have to tell you why
the camera is on me. That’s my son.
I coach him. And he’s the world
champion.”
The achievement of Jake,
especially in holding off the
challenge of Jakob Ingebrigtsen,
Norway’s usually impregnable
Olympic champion, might have
earned even more attention if
he had said something colourful
and profane when winning. But
Wightman is realistic about the
limited reach of athletics and more
interested in trying to articulate his
emotions in that giddy moment.
“It’s surreal,” he says. “In Tokyo
I was gutted that I couldn’t turn
back the clock and do it again
but the race was done [after he
finished a disappointing 10th in
the Olympic final in August 2021].
At the worlds, it meant I’d done it
and no one could change it. Those
feelings are at opposite ends of
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:06 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
Sport
Athletics
the spectrum. One was complete
disappointment and the other was
shock and euphoria. The moment
I had dreamed of had actually
happened.”
His father, in his role as coach,
had sharpened Wightman’s
winning mentality. “I said to my
dad the day before the race that,
‘because of Tokyo, I really want
to get a medal here’,” Wightman
recalls. “In Tokyo, part of me
blowing up was because I wanted to
stay with the leaders to give myself
a chance of winning the Olympics.
But if I’d hung back I’d have had a
better chance of a medal. I said: ‘I
don’t want to end up trying to win
this and get nothing.’ He was like:
‘Yeah, but how often do you stand
on a global final start line and try
to win the thing?’ We decided I was
going to try.
“Before the race I said: ‘If I’m
there at the bell, I’m going to try
to get to the front before the last
200m and see if I can hold on.’ The
chances are so slim but I felt good
and when I went past them on the
back stretch I knew it was going
to be close. Jakob has never been
put in that position so you have no
idea how he’s going to react. He
might be even stronger and breeze
past you, but I knew I’d have given
myself a good shot.”
What did Ingebrigtsen say to
him after the race? “He tried to
explain what he should have done.
I listened and said: ‘Yeah, maybe,
but you didn’t.’ He got bad press
for an interview when he said
something like: ‘It’s never nice
losing to someone inferior to you.’
He beat me a month before in Oslo,
really badly, but the main thing
was that I beat him in the world’s
final. He was actually very good to
me. He kept saying: ‘You ran well.’ I
hope I gained some respect.”
Wightman smiles wryly: “He
didn’t lose again the rest of the
season and the worst thing is that I
poked the bear and he’s never going
to let me get into that situation
again. So I have to get even better
and keep finishing quick.”
Ingebrigtsen’s aura was dented
but, as Wightman remarks, “his ▲ Jake Wightman: ‘I don’t enjoy the up until Wightman’s surprising without fire. But I bet my house on
strength is seen as arrogance but training but I enjoy trying to win’ breakthrough. He believes the being clean and in Britain we have
it’s just 100% confidence he’s going ALICIA CANTER/THE GUARDIAN legacy of doping is a significant always been brought up to play by
to win every race. That’s what factor in the lack of success for the rules. I think the main thing is
makes him so dangerous because British middle-distance runners you can still beat [the dopers], even
every time he wins he gets even during a period spanning almost though I’ve always looked at it with
more confident. He doesn’t have 40 years. “The 1990s and 2000s rose-tinted glasses and felt that
bad races so to beat him you have to were pretty tainted for Brits, people I race against are clean. But
be perfect and that’s probably why especially in my event, and there it’s likely that they’re not all clean.”
he was a bit of a sore loser against was probably a lot of cheating. It Asked if it is inevitable that some
me. I’m sure I’ll race him again ‘I’ve shown that I can became unattainable for Brits to of the leading 1500m runners are
before the worlds [in Hungary next be able to mix it with [runners who doping, Wightman says: “Yes. I
August] and that will be exciting.” beat the field I’ll face doped] in those eras.” wouldn’t want to put a percentage
Steve Cram won the same
race in 1983, and Sebastian Coe
at the Olympics Is doping still an issue in track
and field? “Yes. I’ve not seen
on it, but there must be at least two
or three of the top 25. That’s just the
retained his Olympic title a year – that keeps my anything obvious but there’re way the numbers in the sport work,
later, but the British production always rumours about athletes like the amount of people that get
line of great 1500m runners dried motivation so high’ and normally there’s no smoke banned. There’s also the sad reality
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:31 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
▼ Wightman reacts on winning the
1500m at the world championships
ADAM WARZAWA/EPA
that people who are cheating will
go their whole career without being
caught. The lucky thing for me is
that I don’t know anyone who’s
cheating – therefore I don’t have
any resentment. You always have
suspicions and there will always be
cheating but, like I said, we can still
beat anyone, clean or dirty.”
Wightman is already locked
into midwinter training. He is
a little rueful when he says: “I
always thought that, if I ever won
the Olympics or worlds, I’d love a
sabbatical year. But you can’t do
that in this sport. That’s the worst
bit because you’ve worked so hard
to get to that point but you then
have to work even harder the next
year to push on. But that’s what
I want to do so it’s definitely a
different motivation.”
H
e is typically honest
when he says: “I
don’t enjoy the
training but I enjoy
competing and
trying to win. But
to keep my hunger I train with
guys that are very good at stuff
that I’m not. It’s not a bad thing to
get spanked by them. We did a hill
session and this woman asked who
we were. My mum said: ‘One of
them won worlds in the summer.’
The lady was like: ‘Which one of
you is world champion?’ When
they pointed to me she said: ‘Oh,
well done.’ But she’d just seen me
running up this hill and finishing
dead last. I’m now training with a
group [of long-distance athletes]
who can help make sure that next
year is even better for me.”
His father remains his coach
and they meet at least three times
a week to work together. “At the
worlds he was happy but as soon as
I’d finished it, he was like: ‘Right,
what’s next?’ So it’s now all about
what can I do to win worlds again.”
The close bond between
Wightman and his parents, both
of whom were elite runners,
was obvious at the world
championships. Wightman
admits he was moved because,
“generally, my dad doesn’t show
much emotion with my running.
So to see that video that Kath
[Merry, the former GB athlete]
filmed of him commentating was
really nice. I wouldn’t have known
how he had reacted without
seeing that. I know it was huge for
him, both as a dad and a coach, to
park that moment as the stadium
announcer and be personal. I’d
never seen him break the third
wall and say anything about me as
his son. The closest he’d get to it
•
would be to crack a gag that I look
like a milkman we once had.”
Wightman rolls his eyes. “I’m
just so used to him commentating
because he did it at our school
race days. We also used to watch
the British champs and sit with
him in the commentary box. So
when I started running at major
championships I was so used to him
commentating that it never seemed
weird. It meant that I’ve never had
a coach there because he’s always
been working. So I’ve become very
self-sufficient and it was also cool
because, if I’d had a stinker, he
wouldn’t have seen it as he has to
watch the front of the race. He’d
have to ask me: ‘What happened,
where did you come?’ I’d be like:
‘Good job you didn’t see it.’”
His twin brother, Sam, used to be
one of his closest rivals at school.
Wightman remembers once nearly
resorting to desperate lengths by
hiding Sam’s spikes before they
raced. His conscience won out
and he returned them before his
brother had even noticed. But he
smiles when suggesting that Sam,
who is an actor now, was similarly
competitive when it came to
school plays. “When we were in
primary school I would never get
a good part. One year the school
play was The 12 Days of Christmas
and the best part was the calling
doves. There were four of them and
then it went all the way down to the
worst part, a piper, which got given
to me. It was pretty rubbish. Sam
was one of the four calling birds
and when they needed another
they asked him: ‘Would Jake like
to be a calling bird?’ I would have
loved it but he said: ‘No.’”
Sam is staying over during
the Christmas break and so
Wightman calls him in to join our
conversation. They are amusing
and thoughtful company whether
telling such anecdotes or reflecting
on life as twins and the contrasting
challenges of their different
vocations. The brothers plan to
start a podcast about being twins
next year and, if their 10 minutes
together with me is any guide, it
will make for entertaining listening.
Wightman’s primary focus, of
course, is to try to retain his world
title and then chase Olympic gold
in 2024. “To be Olympic champion
is the one you dream of. A sad thing
is that the person on the street
doesn’t have a clue what winning
the worlds means. But everyone
understands the Olympics. So it’s
a much bigger deal and I’ve shown
that I can beat the field I’ll face at
the Olympics. That is the one thing
that keeps my motivation so high.”
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:44
’I will fight with all I have got’
Navratilova diagnosed with early-stage
throat and breast cancers Page 1 
Rugby union
Borthwick shows the door
to three backroom staff
Gerard Meagher
Steve Borthwick’s overhaul of Eng-
land’s coaching team has gathered
pace with three of Eddie Jones’s
backroom staff shown the door. The
forwards coach, Matt Proudfoot,
Brett Hodgson and Danny Kerry
have all left the England setup with
Borthwick making his mark before
the Six Nations campaign begins
next month.
Proudfoot is the highest-profile
casualty and has already found
new employment at Stellenbosch
University in South Africa. Hodgson’s
tenure as defence coach was one of the
shortest in history after only assum-
ing the role after Anthony Seibold left
following the autumn campaign. His
departure was signalled when the
Rugby Football Union confirmed
the arrival of Kevin Sinfield before
Christmas. Danny Kerry’s tenure is
only marginally longer as Jones’s
training coordinator.
Proudfoot’s recruitment by Jones
in 2020 was seen as a coup given
the 50-year-old was considered the
mastermind behind South Africa’s
scrum dominance at the 2019 World
Cup. In his three years under Jones,
however, Proudfoot was unable
to turn England’s scrum into a
consistently potent weapon – indeed
it became a liability last year, brutally
exposed by the Springboks at the end
of November in the defeat that forced
the RFU to act.
His job was under scrutiny in
Darts PDC World Championship
PDC blocks out
noise from
Price in row
over crowd
Paul MacInnes
The Professional Darts Corporation
has said that Alexandra Palace’s rowdy
atmosphere is “part of the event” after
the world No 1, Gerwyn Price, took to
the oche in ear defenders to block out
booing during his quarter-final defeat
against Gabriel Clemens on Sunday.
Price has said he may never return
to the competition he won in 2021
after losing 5-1 against the German
surprise package, but his behaviour
has provoked debate over the effect a
raucous crowd can have over players
at even the highest levels of the sport.
The PDC confirmed that Price had
made a written request to wear the ear
defenders, a must under Darts Regu-
lation Authority rules, and revealed
that a number of players wear in-ear
plugs to block out crowd noise. But
the organisers said that every player
Matt Proudfoot
has a new role
in South Africa
2021 but he stayed in position with
Richard Cockerill appointed as a sec-
ond forwards coach, allowing Proud-
foot to focus on the scrum. It was a
move that did not work and Borth-
wick has wasted little time in moving
on Proudfoot, who has been made
consultant head coach of the team
nicknamed “Maties” at Stellenbosch
University. The RFU’s executive
director of performance rugby Conor
O’Shea said: “We are very grateful to
Matt for all he has done for England
and wish him every success in his
next career move.”
It remains to be seen if Borthwick
will replace Proudfoot or broaden
Cockerill’s remit but if he opts for the
former, he could do far worse than
turning to Saracens’ scrum coach,
Ian Peel. Jones was planning to again
call on the services of Marc dal Maso,
the French scrummaging expert he
temporarily appointed in 2017, before
he was sacked.
Hodgson, who shadowed Seibold
during the autumn, was always
is also aware of the environment in
which they are expected to perform.
“The atmosphere is part of the
event and is something that all
players are well used to,” a PDC
spokesperson said. “PDC events
are played under Darts Regulation
Authority rules [and] the relevant
rule is 5.17.2 - ‘No headgear… shall be
worn without permission following a
written application from the player.’
Gerwyn had sought permission
before his third-round game against
Raymond van Barneveld, but opted
not to wear them.”
Van Barneveld is one of the elite
players who have used in-ear plugs at
the World Championship, alongside
Price – who used them at other points
during his quarter-final – as well as
Mervyn King and Gary Anderson.
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
31
expected to depart after Borthwick
succeeded in taking Sinfield with him
from Leicester to Twickenham. The
appointment of Kerry, who guided
Great Britain’s women’s hockey
team to Olympic gold in 2016, came
in October and similarly his stay
ends before getting going. Cockerill
remains in place, with Martin Gleeson
also continuing as attack coach,
for the time being, though further
changes by Borthwick are expected.
Meanwhile, Joe Marler told the
RFU’s disciplinary panel that refer-
encing other players’ mothers was
a “go-to” line following his com-
ments made to Bristol’s Jake Heenan
that led to his two-week ban. At the
hearing, Marler accepted an RFU
charge of conduct prejudicial to
the game for twice calling Heenan’s
mother, who is ill in hospital, a whore.
Marler insisted he was not aware
that Heenan’s mother was unwell
and argued his comments did not
constitute verbal abuse.
The full judgment reads: “In a
candid response to a panel member’s
question, [Marler] accepted that
this was a normal ‘go-to line’ if he
was trying to get a reaction when
“sledging or ribbing” an opponent
player. [Marler] said that he would
not do so in the future, not least
because “you never know what is
going on in other people’s family”.
In a statement provided by Heenan,
the Bristol flanker says that it was the
failure of the referee, Karl Dickson,
to act that prompted him to “lose
his head”. Heenan said: “After being
kicked on the ground by Joe Marler
the ruck before the scrum, I told him
to cut it out at the next scrum. After
a few words he said ‘your mother is
a whore.’ I left the first time, then he
repeated it a second time to which I
looked at Karl Dickson. Karl looked at
me, looked away and shook his head.
When I realised that he wasn’t going
to intervene I lost my head.”
 Gerwyn
Price wore
ear defenders
during his
quarter-final
loss to Gabriel
Clemens
LUKE WALKER/GETTY
The beginning of Price’s transfor-
mation into a pantomime villain is
believed to have occurred during a
match against Anderson in 2018. The
final of the Grand Slam of Darts that
year saw Price exuberantly celebrate
a crucial score of 174 in the face of the
Scotsman, who pushed the Welsh-
man away. Price was fined £21,500 by
the DRA after they said the incident
“drew an unprecedented number of
complaints from the public”.
Following his defeat, Price wrote
on Instagram: “So frustrating, you
play all year round preparing for this
one tournament. So gutted I wasn’t
let [to] play but good luck everyone
left in. Not sure I will ever play in this
event again.” The 37-year-old subse-
quently appears to have deleted all
posts from his account.
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:32 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:27 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

You can’t put a price on integrity.

But you can get a 33% discount.

While the Guardian and Observer continue to bring you Package Newsstand price per month Subscription rate Saving

world-defining moments from politics, sport, culture and Every day £84.50 £55.99 33%

more – reporting that holds power to account won’t cost you the Six day £69.33 £47.99 30%

earth. Subscribers to our award-winning newspapers and Weekend £30.33 £22.99 24%

magazines can save up to 33% off the cover price. Saturday £15.17 £12.99 14%

Sunday £15.17 £12.99 14%

Prices above are monthly. Savings calculated are savings made per month against the retail price.

Subscribe today at
theguardian.com/33-off

Open to UK mainland and NI residents aged 18+. The savings calculation is based upon the saving made per month against the retail price of all products included in the subscription package. The Guardian and Observer reserve the right to end this offer at any time. Details correct at the
time of printing. For full subscription terms and conditions visit theguardian.com/subscription/terms.
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:33 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 19:33 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •

Sport 33

Football

Cinch Scottish Premiership clear penalty, which James Tavernier Sky Bet Championship roundup Norwich appeared the more
dispatched with typical aplomb. likely to get a winner late on as

Furuhashi’s The resources Celtic could call

upon to try to haul themselves back
Maatsen’s double strengthens Marcelino Núñez twice went close,
while Josh Sargent clipped the bar.

late strike
into the game would not be lost on
Beale. Liel Abada, Jota, Giorgos
Giakoumakis and Aaron Mooy would
Burnley’s grip at the top But Watford struck on the break,
Ismaïla Sarr squaring for Bayo to
sidefoot home. Norwich slip to

keeps Celtic
all be Rangers starters. Celtic’s reboot 11th, and are expected to appoint
under Postecoglou has afforded them Burnley strengthened their Dean Smith’s successor this week.
such options, while the Rangers position at the top of the Rock-bottom Wigan endured

in charge squad has stagnated.

The equaliser arrived when Mooy’s
reverse pass found Giakoumakis,
Championship, holding on for a
hard-fought 2-1 win at Swansea to
make it six wins in a row for Vincent
a third 4-1 defeat in the space of
seven days as Hull moved away
from danger with victory at the DW

at summit with the Greek’s cut-back flicking off

the Rangers substitute Scott Wright.
The hosts had chances to clear but
did not take them. Enter Furuhashi,
who slammed high into the net. Both
Rangers 2 teams looked content to settle for a
Kent 47, Tavernier 53pen
point from there.
“We gave away two really bad
Celtic 2 managerless Norwich to get their
goals,” said Beale. “It is disappoint-
Maeda 5, Furuhashi 88
ing but there were a lot of things in the
performance that I needed to see. In
Ewan Murray terms of a performance level, there’s
Ibrox not a lot between us [and Celtic] if
we play at our level.” Many will take
Only time will tell whether Michael legitimate issue with that assessment
Kompany’s side.
Ian Maatsen got both Burnley
goals in the space of 10 first-half
Stadium. Nathan Broadhead had
got the Latics level on the hour after
Jacob Greaves’s opener for Hull.
minutes, the first a free-kick in the The visitors regained the lead
12th minute and a powerful strike ▲ Ian Maatsen (left) celebrates via a deflected strike from Óscar
from distance for the second. after scoring Burnley’s first goal Estupiñán, and Tyler Smith struck
Ollie Cooper pulled one back in twice late on as Hull pulled seven
the 27th minute but Swansea could earned Watford victory at points clear of the bottom three.
not find a leveller, with Burnley Ched Evans headed in a winner
moving 14 points clear of third- promotion bid back on track and in the third minute of time added
placed Blackburn. extend the Canaries’ winless run to on as Preston won 1-0 at Stoke.
Vakoun Bayo’s late winner four games. PA Media
Barnsley (0) 0 Bolton (2) 3 Yeovil 24 5 12 7 20 22 -2 27

Beale has as much faith in the Rangers given Celtic’s ongoing domestic dom- Results 13,913
Charles 12pen
Bödvarsson 41, Dempsey 76
Aldershot
Gateshead
23
24
8
4
2 13 32 39 -7 26
9 11 30 40 -10 21
squad he inherited from Giovanni inance. Beale’s continual focus on Derby (3) 4 Accrington Stanley (0) 0 Oldham 23 5 6 12 25 39 -14 21
van Bronckhorst as public utterances players returning from injury to boost Barkhuizen 7 46 Maidstone 26 5 6 15 30 55 -25 21
Hourihane 16
Torquay 25 4 7 14 28 49 -21 19
would suggest. Rangers’ fortunes is also dangerous; McGoldrick 45pen 26,816
Scunthorpe 25 3 7 15 29 53 -24 16
Had Beale’s men held on to the managers the world over can bemoan Lincoln City (0) 1 Ipswich (0) 1
Boreham Wood 1 Barnet 1; Gateshead 2 York 2;
lead which existed with 87 minutes the fitness status of key performers. Football Diamond 64pen
10,115
Humphreys 81
Maidstone 0 Dag & Red 1; Solihull Moors 1 Wrexham 2
of this scrappy Old Firm clash played, VAR’s only serious involvement SKY BET CHAMPIONSHIP VANARAMA NATIONAL LEAGUE NORTH
Sheffield Wed (2) 5 Cambridge Utd (0) 0
P W D L F A GD Pts Scarborough 2 Darlington 5; Southport 2 Curzon Ashton 1
the manager would have had cause surrounded a Celtic penalty claim. Windass 7 70 80
CINCH SCOTTISH PREMIERSHIP
Burnley 26 16 8 2 52 25 +27 56 Smith 21pen, Palmer 51 24,221
to scoff at those who say major sur- It seemed strange that the referee, Sheffield Utd* 25 15 5 5 43 22 +21 50 P W D L F A GD Pts
SKY BET LEAGUE TWO
gery is required at Ibrox. The suspi- John Beaton, was not asked to have Blackburn 26 14 0 12 30 30 0 42 P W D L F A GD Pts Celtic 20 18 1 1 63 17 +46 55
40 Rangers 20 14 4 2 46 20 +26 46
cion remains that Beale, now five a second look at a strong handball Watford 26 11 7 8 31 28 +3 Leyton Orient 24 16 5 3 35 13 +22 53
Middlesbrough 26 11 6 9 41 33 +8 39 Stevenage 24 15 6 3 35 17 +18 51 Hearts 19 9 4 6 35 30 +5 31
matches into his tenure, is playing a shout against Connor Goldson. The 39 Aberdeen 20 8 2 10 33 32 +1 26
Millwall 25 11 6 8 32 26 +6 Northampton 24 13 7 4 39 24 +15 46
game of public relations; this Rangers key problem with VAR’s arrival in Luton 25 10 9 6 31 26 +5 39 Carlisle 24 10 9 5 37 25 +12 39 St Mirren 18 7 5 6 21 25 -4 26
group are serial failures at domestic Scottish football is that all too often it Sunderland 26 10 8 8 38 29 +9 38 Bradford City 23 11 6 6 30 23 +7 39 Livingston 19 7 4 8 18 28 -10 25
West Brom 26 10 8 8 34 26 +8 38 38 St Johnstone 20 7 3 10 24 30 -6 24
level. Beale has been brought here to feels as if matches are being refereed Swindon 25 10 8 7 28 25 +3
Hibernian 20 7 2 11 24 33 -9 23
Preston 26 10 7 9 24 26 -2 37 Mansfield 24 11 5 8 33 31 +2 38
somehow buck that trend. by someone in front of a monitor far, Norwich 26 10 6 10 32 29 +3 36 Doncaster 24 11 4 9 30 34 -4 37 Kilmarnock 20 5 5 10 17 33 -16 20
Celtic, who were well short of far away. Reading 26 11 3 12 29 36 -7 36 Walsall 23 10 6 7 29 21 +8 36 Motherwell 19 5 4 10 23 28 -5 19
35 Dundee Utd 19 5 4 10 23 33 -10 19
their best for all but the opening There was sectarian singing, the Coventry 25 9 8 8 27 26 +1 Barrow 24 11 3 10 29 28 +1 36
Swansea 26 9 8 9 36 36 0 35 Salford City 23 10 5 8 30 23 +7 35 Ross County 20 4 4 12 14 32 -18 16
half-hour, will claim a moral victory disruption of a minute’s silence in 35
QPR* 25 10 5 10 27 30 -3 Sutton 25 10 5 10 25 31 -6 35 Aberdeen (0) 0 Ross County (0) 0
on account of Kyogo Furuhashi’s late commemoration of the 1971 Ibrox Hull 26 9 6 11 32 42 -10 33 Stockport County 23 10 4 9 33 23 +10 34 14,356
equaliser. Ange Postecoglou’s team disaster and the sight of various Birmingham 26 8 8 10 27 29 -2 32 AFC Wimbledon 24 9 7 8 29 28 +1 34 Hearts (2) 3 Hibernian (0) 0
Stoke 26 8 6 12 28 34 -6 30 33 Shankland 8 38pen
retain a nine-point advantage in foreign matter tossed between Tranmere 24 9 6 9 25 20 +5
Humphrys 90 18,980
Bristol City 26 7 8 11 32 35 -3 29 Grimsby 23 8 6 9 26 27 -1 30
Scotland’s top flight, which should home and away supports. Depressing Cardiff 26 7 7 12 20 29 -9 28 Crewe 22 7 7 8 19 27 -8 28
Kilmarnock (0) 0 St Mirren (0) 0
prove insurmountable for Beale and though it is, none of this should Rotherham 26 6 9 11 28 39 -11 27 Newport County 24 6 7 11 23 27 -4 25
7,008
26 Livingston (1) 1 Motherwell (1) 1
Rangers. Furuhashi’s first goal in register as a surprise. Neither should Blackpool 26 6 8 12 28 38 -10 Harrogate 23 6 5 12 30 36 -6 23 Boyes 39 Van Veen 42
Huddersfield 25 7 4 14 24 32 -8 25 22
a Glasgow derby arrived when his the fact Celtic summoned the spirit 24
Crawley 24 5 7 12 26 39 -13 2,163
Wigan 26 6 6 14 26 46 -20 Colchester 24 5 5 14 21 31 -10 20 Rangers (0) 2 Celtic (1) 2
teammates looked in danger of run- to keep Rangers a safe distance away. *not including last night’s match Hartlepool 24 4 7 13 24 45 -21 19 Kent 47 Maeda 5, Furuhashi 88
ning out of ideas. Beale’s activity in the coming weeks Birmingham (0) 1 Middlesbrough (0) 3 Rochdale 23 4 4 15 18 35 -17 16 Tavernier 53pen 50,066
“Yet again, when it was required will reveal more about his desire – or Chong 74 Crooks 57 59 Gillingham 23 2 8 13 7 28 -21 14 St Johnstone (0) 0 Dundee Utd (0) 1
17,823 Akpom 85 Watt 81
the players found the will and char- ability – to bridge that gap. Barrow (0) 0 Rochdale (0) 0
Norwich (0) 0 Watford (0) 1 3,055 CINCH SCOTTISH CHAMPIONSHIP
acter to get a result,” said Posteco- Bayo 86
Newport County (0) 2 Crawley (1) 2 Dundee 2 Arbroath 4; Hamilton 0 Raith 1; Inverness CT 6
glou. “It would have been easy at Rangers Celtic Cove Rangers 1; Morton P Ayr P; Queen’s Park 2 Partick 0
4-2-3-1 4-3-3 QPR (-) L Sheffield Utd (-) L Dolan 83 Telford 36 67pen
Zanzala 90 4,184 CINCH SCOTTISH LEAGUE ONE
2-1 to be resigned to our fate but McGregor; Tavernier, Hart; Johnston, (late kick-off)
Airdrieonians 3 FC Edinburgh 5; Dunfermline P Falkirk P;
Carter-Vickers, Starfelt•, Northampton (0) 1 Leyton Orient (0) 0
this group are never done.” The Goldson, Davies,
Barisic; Kamara, Taylor (Juranovic 21);
Stoke (0) 0 Preston (0) 1
Fox 51 7,475 Peterhead 0 Montrose 0
20,034 Evans 90
Australian said Celtic “lost our way Lundstram (Jack• 71); McGregor, O’Riley Stevenage (1) 1 Gillingham (0) 0
CINCH SCOTTISH LEAGUE TWO
Sakala, Tillman (Mooy 61), Hatate Swansea (1) 1 Burnley (2) 2 Forfar 0 Elgin 1
a little bit” but shrugged off any rea- Cooper 27 Maatsen 12 22
Piergianni 23 3,703
soning for that. “They are human
(Sands 85), Kent;
Morelos (Wright 80)
(Giakoumakis 77); Forrest
(Abada 61), Furuhashi, 17,699 VANARAMA NATIONAL LEAGUE Cricket
Subs not used Maeda (Jota 77) P W D L F A GD Pts SECOND TEST (first day of five)
beings,” Postecoglou said. “They are Colak, Roofe, Arfield, Subs not used
West Brom (0) 1 Reading (0) 0
58
Dike 60 25,322 Notts County 25 17 7 1 65 24 +41 Karachi New Zealand 309-6 (DP Conway 122,
not robots. This is a big occasion, a McLaughlin, Devine, Bain, Kobayashi, Bernabei, Wrexham 24 17 5 2 62 20 +42 56 TWM Latham 71) v Pakistan.
King Abdilgaard Wigan (0) 1 Hull (1) 4
big game.” Broadhead 63 Greaves 15
Chesterfield 23 15 4 4 49 27 +22 49 Tennis
Woking 24 14 4 6 43 24 +19 46
It was one that stuttered and stalled Referee John Beaton Attendance 50,066 Estupiñán 78 UNITED CUP (Australia)
12,522 Smith 85 90 Barnet 23 12 4 7 43 40 +3 40
as opposed to ripping and roaring. Southend 24 9 8 7 30 21 +9 35
Group A (Perth): Greece 1 Belgium 1: A Van Uytvanck
SKY BET LEAGUE ONE (Bel) bt D Papamichail (Gre) 7-5 2-6 6-3; S Tsitsipas (Gre)
Celtic started in a manner which P W D L F A GD Pts Eastleigh 25 10 5 10 31 30 +1 35 bt D Goffin (Bel) 6-3 6-2. Group B (Brisbane): Poland 1
suggested they were of a mind to dem- Plymouth 25 17 5 3 46 26 +20 56 Dag & Red 22 10 5 7 36 36 0 35 Switzerland 1: I Swiatek (Pol) bt B Bencic (Swi) 6-3 7-6
Bromley 23 9 7 7 32 29 +3 34 (7-3); M-A Hüsler (Swi) bt D Michalski (Pol) 6-3 6-2.
onstrate the gulf between the Glas- Sheffield Wed 25 15 7 3 45 18 +27 52
Wealdstone 24 9 7 8 29 35 -6 34 Group C (Sydney): USA 2 Germany 0: T Fritz (US) bt
Ipswich 25 14 8 3 47 25 +22 50 A Zverev (Ger) 6-1 6-4; M Keys (US) bt J Niemeier (Ger) 6-2
gow clubs. Daizen Maeda capitalised 41 Solihull Moors 23 9 6 8 36 31 +5 33
Derby 24 11 8 5 33 17 +16 6-3. Group D (Sydney): Spain 1 Australia 1: A De Minaur
on a loose Alfredo Morelos pass before Bolton 24 11 7 6 30 20 +10 40 Altrincham 25 8 9 8 37 45 -8 33 (Aus) bt R Nadal 3-6 6-1 7-5; N Párrizas Díaz (Sp) bt
Boreham Wood 23 8 8 7 27 24 +3 32 M Inglis (Aus) 6-1 6-3.Group E (Brisbane): Italy 2 Norway
slotting underneath the advancing Barnsley 23 12 4 7 30 21 +9 40
0: M Trevisan (It) bt M Helgø (Nor) 7-5 3-6 6-4; L Musetti
Wycombe 25 11 5 9 33 26 +7 38 Halifax 24 9 5 10 24 31 -7 32
Allan McGregor. During that opening Dorking 26 8 6 12 43 59 -16 30 (It) bt V Durasovic (Nor) 7-6 (9-7) 6-3. Group F (Perth):
Peterborough Utd 24 11 2 11 39 31 +8 35 France 0 Croatia 2: D Vekic (Cro) bt A Cornet (Fr) 6-4 6-3;
quarter, Rangers toiled to string three Port Vale 24 10 5 9 27 32 -5 35 York 25 7 8 10 28 29 -1 29 B Coric (Cro) bt A Rinderknech (Fr) 7-6 (7-1) 7-6 (7-2).
passes together. Celtic’s failing was 34 Maidenhead 25 8 5 12 27 34 -7 29
Exeter 25 9 7 9 38 36 +2 Darts
not pressing home their superiority Bristol Rovers 25 9 7 9 40 42 -2 34
Portsmouth 22 7 10 5 29 27 +2 31 PDC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (Alexandra Palace)
by way of a second goal. Fleetwood 24 6 11 7 28 25 +3 29 Quarter-finals: D Van Den Bergh (Bel) bt J Clayton (Wal)
Beale is due credit for his half- Oxford Utd 24 7 8 9 29 27 +2 29 Greg Wood’s racing tips 5-3; M Smith (Eng) bt S Bunting (Eng) 5-3; G Clemens
(Ger) bt G Price (Wal) 5-1; M van Gerwen (Neth) bt C Dobey
time work. Rangers emerged from Lincoln City 23 6 11 6 23 28 -5 29 (Eng) 5-0.
29
the dressing room full of belief, Shrewsbury 24 8 5 11 23 29 -6
Fixtures
Charlton 24 6 10 8 36 35 +1 28
epitomised by Fashion Sakala teeing Musselburgh 12.15 Animore 12.45 Jem In Em Football (7.45pm unless stated)
Cheltenham 23 8 4 11 18 25 -7 28 1.15 Parliament Hill 1.45 Massini Man 2.15 Russian Virtue Premier League
up Ryan Kent for a sublime equaliser. Cambridge Utd 24 7 3 14 21 39 -18 24 2.45 Moore Clouds 3.15 Florida Dreams Arsenal v Newcastle; Everton v Brighton;
Kent’s curling shot was beyond the Accrington Stanley 23 5 7 11 21 38 -17 22 Chelmsford 12.30 Gintini 1.00 Miss Sligo 1.30 Valkyrian Leicester v Fulham; Manchester Utd v Bournemouth (8pm)
Burton Albion 25 5 7 13 32 50 -18 22 2.00 Triggered (nb) 2.30 Baccarat Baby Cricket
reach of Joe Hart. Morecambe 24 4 9 11 24 34 -10 21
3.00 George Morland (nap) 3.30 Reset Button Third Test (first day of five)
Wolverhampton 5.00 Mafia Power 5.30 Al Khawaneej Storm
Soon, Rangers surged ahead. Carl ▲ Kyogo Furuhashi celebrates after MK Dons 24 6 3 15 23 36 -13 21 6.00 Raffles Rebel 6.30 My Boy Jack 7.00 Wakai Umi
Australia v South Africa, Sydney (11.30pm)
First T20 international
Starfelt’s lazy tackle on Sakala was a his late equaliser for Celtic at Ibrox Forest Green 25 5 5 15 21 49 -28 20 7.30 Nacho 8.00 Alya’s Gold Award 8.30 Little Roman India v Sri Lanka, Mumbai (1.30pm)
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:34 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
34
Mbeumo adds final sting
to complete Klopp’s pain
Brentford 3
Konaté 19og, Wissa 42, Mbeumo 84
Liverpool 1 P
Oxlade-Chamberlain 50
Nick Ames
Gtech Community Stadium
This was a thudding reality check
for anyone who thought Liverpool,
having dusted themselves down
over the winter break, would stroll
back into the top four. They were
beaten here by a resolute Brentford
but also by a shambolic night’s work
by their own back line that took the
game away. Ibrahima Konaté’s own
was followed before half-time by a
header from Yoane Wissa, who had
already seen two efforts disallowed.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s riposte
appeared to have shifted the dial but
Bryan Mbeumo’s cool late finish, from
Brentford’s only significant attack of
the second half and resulting from a
costly slip by Konaté, completed a
chastening evening for Jürgen Klopp.
Brentford, unbeaten in six, are in
fine form and move up to seventh.
Klopp may reflect that Liverpool
remain a shadow of themselves.
Sent at 2/1/2023 19:59 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
Sport Wissa
doubles
Football Premier League
Liverpool’s
troubles
Yoane Wissa
(right)
heads home
Brentford’s
second goal
against
visiting
Liverpool
JOHN SIBLEY/
ACTIONS IMAGES/
REUTERS
Pinnock header and drawing a foul Núñez thought he had given them
from Jørgensen, who was booked. impetus within three minutes of
But it was his loose hold-up play the restart but was flagged offside;
inside the box that led to the coun- there were no such concerns almost
terattack from which the Bees ulti- immediately afterwards when
mately scored; while Brentford were Trent Alexander-Arnold checked
missing their own target man, Ivan on to his left foot and crossed for
Toney not quite fit enough to play Oxlade-Chamberlain, on the run, to
after his injury against West Ham, head deftly past Raya. It was his first
the home side looked amply trou- league goal since last January.
The stroke of fortune behind the blesome through sheer speed and For all their chaos at the back,
opener was of no concern to Brent- How they stand attacking movement. Liverpool had always looked capable
ford. They had just started to get That was only the start of it. Liver- of scoring. Fabinho sought a quick
going, earning a corner after Mbeumo pool, for all their territory and despite second, turning sublimely before
W D L F A GD Pts
blazed a trail past Virgil van Dijk only coming close to an equaliser when forcing Raya to parry a daisycutter,
to be foiled by Alisson’s block, and Arsenal 16 14 1 1 40 14 +26 43 Raya saved from Kostas Tsimikas, and had two efforts blocked on the
within seconds there was no need Man City 16 11 3 2 44 16 +28 36 were all at sea when pressurised. hour as Brentford struggled to get
to regret the near miss. Mbeumo’s Newcastle 17 9 7 1 32 11 +21 34 Another Mbeumo corner was even- out. But further clear chances were
delivery from the right did not look Man Utd 16 10 2 4 24 20 +4 32 tually bundled in by Wissa, who few as proceedings entered their final
especially threatening as it went over Tottenham 17 9 3 5 33 25 +8 30 was correctly ruled offside amid the quarter; if sometimes messy, Brent-
the heads of Mathias Jørgensen and Liverpool 17 8 4 5 34 22 +12 28 scramble. Then a third such cross ford’s defensive work was stout.
Fabinho but the players behind them Brentford 18 6 8 4 30 28 +2 26 found Wissa completely alone, able Another opening eventually arose
were unsighted; it meant Konaté, Fulham 17 7 4 6 29 27 +2 25 to control and rifle past Alisson via but, in space on the right, Núñez
with Ben Mee in close attendance, Chelsea 16 7 4 5 20 18 +2 25 a deflection; Brentford rejoiced but dragged horribly wide. Salah, peri-
was at a loss as the ball struck his leg Brighton 16 7 3 6 28 24 +4 24 VAR found the shot had touched an pheral for considerable periods,
and squirmed inside the near post. Crystal Palace 16 6 4 6 17 21 -4 22 offside Mee on its way in. saw a shot deflected off target and
Konaté’s first match since the World Aston Villa 17 6 3 8 19 25 -6 21 The let-off was significant but Konaté headed the subsequent cor-
Cup final had begun as unhappily as Leicester 17 5 2 10 26 30 -4 17 Liverpool did not learn from it. ner just beyond the far upright. But
that night in Doha ended. Leeds 16 4 4 8 23 29 -6 16 They lost the ball from the resulting when the Frenchman appeared to
It changed the dimensions of a Bournemouth 17 4 4 9 18 36 -18 16 free-kick and Brentford countered, have beaten Mbeumo to Christian
game Liverpool had started well. Everton 17 3 6 8 13 20 -7 15 Mbeumo teeing up Mathias Jensen Norgaard’s long pass only to stumble,
There was a snap to their work in the West Ham 17 4 2 11 13 22 -9 14 for a cross to the far post. With Konaté the game was up.
early exchanges and it should have Nottm Forest 17 3 5 9 12 34 -22 14 nowhere to be seen, Wissa converted
brought a goal within eight minutes. Wolves 17 3 4 10 10 26 -16 13 a standing header that Alisson could Brentford Liverpool
Southampton 17 3 3 11 15 32 -17 12 3-5-2 4-3-3
The chance fell to Darwin Núñez but not claw out in time. Third time Raya; Jorgensen•, Allison; Alexander-Arnold,
arose through magical play from lucky, but Liverpool’s defending had Pinnock, Mee; Roerslev,
Jensen (Dasilva 74),
Konaté, Van Dijk
(Matip ht), Tsimikas
Mohamed Salah, who brought a high was David Raya; where things fell been rotten. Nørgaard, Janelt (Robertson ht); Elliott•
(Ghoddos 87), Henry (Keïta ht), Fabinho,
ball down from the sky and, turning short was in the finish, from an angle That Klopp made three half-time (Sørensen 90); Wissa Thiago•; Salah, Núñez•,
90 degrees at the same time, angled and on his weaker left side. It was changes was little surprise; Van Dijk (Lewis-Potter 74), Oxlade-Chamberlain
Mbeumo (Canós 88) (Jones 83)
himself perfectly to spot his team- blocked superbly by a sliding Mee, had been given a torrid time by Subs not used Subs not used
mate’s run. His through ball was but Núñez ought to have made sure. Mbeumo and, rather than Konaté, Strakosha, Damsgaard, Gomez, Carvalho, Bajcetic,
Crama, Trevitt Phillips, Kelleher
perfectly weighted and there was Núñez had already exposed Brent- was the central defender replaced.
nothing wrong with Núñez’s touch ford once, seizing on to a weak Ethan Liverpool re-emerged at speed. Referee Stuart Attwell Attendance 17,163
 Section:GDN 1N PaGe:35 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Analysis
Jonathan Wilson Gtech Community Stadium
Pressing problems for Liverpool
as a shambolic evening puts
their European dreams at risk
I
f football really was the
simple game of cliché, it
would be easy for Liverpool
to identify a single issue,
work out a solution and put
it right. This, after all, is the
team that has, for five years, been
consistently the second-best side
in England. Yet, after a shambolic
defeat at Brentford, they lie
15 points behind the leaders
Arsenal and, more pertinently,
four points off Manchester
United in fourth, having played
a game more. What must be
most troubling is the sense of
plates across the stage stopping
spinning as Jürgen Klopp dashes
frantically between them.
Klopp, addressing rumoured
interest in Enzo Fernández and
Moises Caicedo, had warned
that the club is not able to play
Monopoly. What has been
especially impressive over
the past few years is the way
Liverpool have achieved that
level of consistency without
ostentatious spending. And that
is also why Champions League
qualification is so essential; if
revenue drops, so too does their
capacity to spend and, with the
club in significant transition, that
could have serious consequences.
It doesn’t take much for virtuous
circles to become vicious.
But when fractures come it
is in battalions. Everywhere in
this Liverpool side, with the
exception of Allison, there are
doubts and concerns. In one
sense, Liverpool’s problems this
season have not been difficult
to diagnose. The press has not
been functioning and that is
not something easily rectified.
But to that was added a new
vulnerability, an almost comical
inability to defend corners as
though Liverpool were still
engaged in a festive game of
charades, enthusiastically
acting out Wenger-era Arsenal
away at Stoke.
Late sport
You may notice that due to
ongoing production issues
beyond our control your
Guardian sport section does not
include some coverage of late-
night sport. Thank you for your
patience – we hope to restore
our normal service very soon,
but in the meantime you can
always find the most up-to-date
coverage on our award-winning
sport website
theguardian.com/sport
•
▲ Jürgen Klopp watches on as his
side slumps to defeat at Brentford
Every Bryan Mbuemo delivery
from the right before half-time
caused chaos. One trickled in off
Ibrahima Konaté and two others led
to disallowed goals. Some offsides
are the result of careful planning
and well-executed plans; these just
happened in the chaos.
But it wasn’t just set-plays. In
the build-up to the first Brentford
goal it was noticeable how Mbuemo
hurtled past Virgil van Dijk, his
turning circle so great they also had
to move the stand for him, in the
move led to the critical corner. Not
for the first time this season, the
thought occurred that Van Dijk is
not quite so physically imposing as
he used to be. Then for the second,
a turnover that came directly from
the free-kick for the second effort
disallowed for offside, Liverpool’s
marking fell apart again. Konaté,
meanwhile, was inexcusably weak
as Mbuemo brushed him aside for
the third.
This is not entirely unrelated to
the press, which should offer a first
line of defence against counters.
When it goes awry, the back four
is inevitably more exposed. Add
fragile confidence and perhaps a
little rustiness after the World Cup
and the chaos is, if surprising, not
inexplicable.
A modern press is an almost
infinitely complicated weapon,
one that relies upon mutual
understanding and interaction.
A good one, when it works, can
▲ Andy Robertson tries to rally his Liverpool teammates
ANDREW POWELL/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:04
smother an opponent; but the
multifacetedness that makes
it such a difficult weapon to
combat is also what makes it so
vulnerable to malfunction.
Exactly what has gone wrong
with the oppress is harder to say.
The changes to the forward line
perhaps haven’t helped. Planned
as some of those have been,
others have been imposed by
injury, with Luis Díaz and Diogo
Jota long-term absentees and
Roberto Firmino struggling with
a calf problem. In that context
the signing of Cody Gakpo for
what these days feels a relatively
modest £37m initial fee probably
makes sense if only to provide
cover. He is a curious player, with
a skillset that seems not quite
to match his body shape, but he
anyway was unavailable as he
awaits a work permit after his
move from PSV Eindhoven.
That meant Alex Oxlade-
Chamberlain again being
deployed on the left of the front
three. He remains a likable,
pleasing player, and one flick
to set up a first-half chance
for Konstantinos Tsimikas
showcased his awareness,
imagination and technical quality
but, equally, he has not completed
the full 90 minutes in the Premier
League since April 2018. His goal
was his first since last January
and, with his contract expiring in
June, he is surely playing, from
Liverpool’s point of view, only out
of necessity and, from his own, to
persuade another Premier League
club he does still, after all his
injury problems, have something
to offer at this level.
But there are also issues with
an injury-ravaged midfield. There
are absences everywhere. It was
injuries that underlay Liverpool’s
slump during the Covid season
and there will be those who
wonder just why this side seems
so susceptible. Perhaps it’s bad
luck, perhaps it’s related to
the relentless intensity Klopp
demands or perhaps it’s simply
evidence of an ageing squad in
need of rejuvenation.
And that demands money, and
that requires qualification for the
Champions League.
Arsenal make improved
Mudryk bid to Shakhtar
Fabrizio Romano
John Brewin
Arsenal have made an improved offer
for Mykhaylo Mudryk, the Shakhtar
Donetsk winger who is their No1
January target. Talks are on after the
Ukrainian club rejected an earlier bid
of £35.5m plus £17.7m in add-ons.
Shakhtar set their asking price
at £85m but are aware Arsenal are
unlikely to go that high and are weigh-
ing up their next move. There is also
interest from Chelsea but Mudryk,
who turns 22 on Thursday, has his
heart set on the Premier League
leaders. He has posted pictures on
social media that show he has been
watching Arsenal’s two most recent
matches and described Mikel Arteta
as a “top coach” during Saturday’s
4-2 victory at Brighton.
Mudryk impressed in the Cham-
pions League group stage, scoring
three times and has seven goals in
his past eight league appearances for
Shakhtar, who are on a winter break.
Arteta believes third-placed
Newcastle will present “a big test”
as Arsenal attempt tonight to open
a 10-point gap on Manchester City.
▲ Mikel Arteta is hoping his Arsenal
team can open up a 10-point gap
Ten Hag eyes
striker market to
boost Euro race
 Continued from back page
in the squad and especially, I would
say, the front line.”
Harry Maguire faces further com-
petition to regain a starting berth
after Ten Hag said Luke Shaw’s “fabu-
lous” displays at centre-back offered
another option in the position.
Maguire was dropped after the
opening two games and last began
a Premier League match on 30 Octo-
ber. He was injured in the autumn
and after illness ruled him out of the
Carabao Cup win against Burnley
on 22 December, he was a substitute
when United beat Nottingham Forest
and Wolves, with Shaw partnering
Raphaël Varane in central defence.
With Lisandro Martínez, Ten
Hag’s preferred first-choice central
defender, back in full training after
the World Cup and Victor Lindelöf
also selected ahead of Maguire in the
past, United’s captain may effectively
be fifth in the pecking order.
Ten Hag said: “Casemiro did well
as a centre-half [against Burnley] and
then Luke Shaw did very well against
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
35
Eddie Howe’s team visit the Emir-
ates Stadium having dropped two
points on Saturday after being held
to a goalless draw by Leeds while City
do not play again until they travel to
Chelsea on Thursday.
Newcastle are likely to offer the
toughest post-World Cup test yet for
Arsenal, who in scoring seven goals
in their two matches since returning
are yet to show many ill-effects from
the absence of Gabriel Jesus. “A very
good team,” Arteta said of Newcastle.
“I think what Eddie has done in that
short period of time, when you look
at the numbers, [is] incredible. Big
credit to him and the coaching staff.”
Newcastle have lost only one
match all season, at Liverpool on
31 August. Arteta said: “They have
created a belief, a momentum around
the team that they play the same way
against any opponent. It’s going to be
another big test. But we play at home
and I’m looking forward to it.”
Arsenal have won every Premier
League home game to the delight of
their supporters and Arteta hopes
his team can sustain the party
atmosphere. “It’s about being real-
istic where we are,” he said. “The
way we are performing,we are really
happy with that. But, as well, we set
the objectives in the short term and
what we want to improve, and what
is making us win that many matches.”
Arteta set his hope for the new year
simply: “To win against Newcastle.
And then the next one and then the
next one. That is the dream. And
that all my loved ones and every-
body around the club feels healthy
and satisfied and enjoys life, which
is beautiful.”
Nottingham Forest. Also you look at
the gameplan, the way we had to
approach Wolves, and I thought it was
the best match with Rapha and Luke.
Especially [as] we knew the speed of
Wolves from the right side and we
could cover that because we wanted
to attack over the left side with our
offensive game from Tyrell Malacia.
That was a good fit and also in pos-
session you can have better angles
with the left foot.
“We have seen the last two games
he [Shaw] has been fabulous. He
has impressed but, of course, we
also know he is really good as a left
full-back. It’s an extra option and
that’s always good for a team.”
Ten Hag is “quite optimistic”
that Scott McTominay and Lindelöf,
who have been ill, will be available
for Bournemouth’s visit to Old Traf-
ford tonight and said Diogo Dalot,
who has been injured, had made
“good progress”.
▲ Harry Maguire last began a league
match for United on 30 October
Section:GDN 1N PaGe:36 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Jake Wightman
‘To be Olympic
champion is
the one you
dream of’
Page 30 
Bees swarm
over sorry
Liverpool
Brentford Liverpool
3 1
 Bryan Mbeumo celebrates
scoring his side’s third goal to the
dismay of Ibrahima Konaté
Report and analysis Pages 34-35 
‘We need a striker’
United must sign forward for
top-four race, says Ten Hag
Jamie Jackson
Erik ten Hag has said there is a “need”
for Manchester United to sign a for-
ward this month to try to ensure
Champions League qualification.
United’s 1-0 victory at Wolves on
Saturday elevated Ten Hag’s side to
fourth with 32 points and they have
a game in hand on Newcastle, who
are third on 34 points. Cristiano Ron-
aldo’s departure before Christmas has
freed up some funds with Ten Hag
Sent at 2/1/2023 20:24
More Mudryk k The G
Arsenal raise
their bid for
Shakhtar
winger
Page 35 
asked whether a new attacker was
required to finish in the top four.
“I think we have a good team when
all the players are available,” he said.
“But with many games coming up, I
think there is a need. But you need
one who can have an impact, other-
wise you are just burning money and
you don’t strengthen the squad and
it doesn’t help you.”
Erik Ten Hag Marcus Rashford scored the win-
says recruiting ner at Wolves but Ten Hag admit-
a striker this ted Anthony Martial was not at his
month would best, indicating this may be because
bolster United the Frenchman is still to reach full
Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023
Tuesd
JOHN SIBLEY/ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERS
match fitness after injury. “I don’t
think [he is 100%],” Ten Hag said.
“He didn’t play [a lot] for a long time
and probably this [Wolves] wasn’t his
[best] game. I was more happy with
his performances before. You could
see what a real impact he can have.
That’s normal.
“You can’t expect players to always
play their best form. This was one
game. In the next game, I expect a
better performance from him. I think
he will do, I’m convinced of that.
“I’m really happy with his perfor-
mances across many games. He has
a really good impact on our game. It’s
really enjoyable to work with him. If
you see the minutes he’s played and
the impact he’s had so far, I think
that’s huge.”
Ten Hag was asked about potential
interest from Everton in Anthony
Elanga. “I know we have good
players and I know a lot of clubs
will have an interest in players who
aren’t playing for us so often,” the
manager said. “But we need
35 
the squad. We need depth
cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Game halted
for 40 minutes
after abuse of
female official
Mark Dobson
Darlington have launched an appeal
for witnesses after a National League
North game was delayed for almost
40 minutes amid allegations of
misogynistic abuse being aimed at
a female official.
The match, which Darlington won
5-2 at Scarborough’s Flamingo Land
Stadium to return to the top of the
table, kicked off at 1pm but did not
finish until about 3.40pm after a
38-minute second-half suspension.
An announcement warning spec-
tators about abusive language was
made over the public address system
after a brief first-half stoppage that
followed a conversation between the
referee, Dean Watson, and one of his
assistants, Emily Carney.
Darlington later issued an appeal
for witnesses after an allegation of
“misogynistic remarks” from the
visitors’ section.
A statement on the club’s website
said: “During the first half of the
game at Scarborough, the female
assistant was subject to alleged
misogynistic remarks from one or
two Darlington fans.
“Darlington FC wholeheartedly
condemns such conduct. If you wit-
nessed these incidents and can help
identify the culprits, then please
email ray.simpson@darlingtonfc.org
in the strictest of confidence.”
Shortly after Jacob Hazel had put
Darlington 3-0 ahead with his second
goal, nine minutes into the second
half, the game was stopped again
after further problems.
Scarborough tweeted: “We would
like to emphasise that discriminatory
language of any nature will not be
tolerated. Please respect the match
officials, players and fellow fans.”
Both sets of players returned to
warm up again after a break of about
28 minutes, with the game resuming
10 minutes later.
Both clubs have been contacted
for comment.
▲ The match at Scarborough was
suspended for almost 40 minutes
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:1 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:58 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

52 acts of kindness
How to spread joy
in every week of 2023

Tuesday 03/01/23
Zoe Williams
Why generation X
wins at Christmas
page 3

Rhod Gilbert
On comedy, candour
and his hit show
The Book of John
page 8
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:2 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:33 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

The world in review,

every week

20% off an annual subscription

Monthly Quarterly (10% off) Annual (20% off)

Th Guardian Weekly takes you beyond the headlines

The
T Subscription
t g
to give you a deeper understanding of the issues that £13.75 £37.13 £132
price
really matter. Subscribe today and take your time over
rea
re
hand picked articles from the Guardian and Observer,
han
ha
del
de
delivered to your door wherever you are. Or, you could Price per issue £3.44 £3.09 £2.59
even gift the Guardian Weekly, so a loved one can enjoy a
eve
ev
dee
de
deeper dive into the issues that matter.

Visit the guardian.com/guardian-weekly

or scan the QR code

Offer is 20% off the annual gifting or standard subscription for 12 months, and 10% off the standard quarterly subscription. Offer not available to current subscribers of Guardian Weekly. You must be 18+ to be eligible for this offer. Offer subject to availability.
Guardian Weekly reserves the right to end this offer at any time. Offer details correct at the time of printing. For offer terms and conditions visit https://subscribe.theguardian.com/p/20ANNUAL/terms and https://subscribe.theguardian.com/p/10QUARTERLY/terms
and for full subscription terms and conditions visit theguardian.com/guardian-weeklysubscription-terms-conditions.
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:3 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:18 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

Pass notes 3
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

Zoe
Williams
Generation X are Mum’s given
up whisky.
the real winners I blame the
– at parlour games Tories

G
eneration Z ask a lot about what life was like in It was the very tail end of the holiday
the olden days, and a lot of their questions are
stupid. Did we have printers before the internet?
How did we arrange to meet our friends before
season, and I was trying to make my
mother drink whisky, partly – no,
sorry, entirely – because I bought
№ 4,499
mobiles? We say, “Wow, that’s a stupid question,”
and they say, “Imagine being so dumb that you
have 15 defunct Instagram accounts because you don’t know how
it for her and I wanted to drink
it. While I am intensely relaxed
about drinking alone, I still have a
Buccal fat
to manage your passwords, even though they’re all the same.” A faint cultural taboo about drinking Age: As old as humanity itself.
lot of the evidence is in their corner. I’m not saying they are more someone else’s present in front of Function: Facilitates chewing and protects
intelligent, but their generation does seem to have an intelligence them. I should have also bought her facial muscles from external impacts.
better adapted to the world around it. a jigsaw or something. That sounds very useful. Hooray for
Then it gets to gameplay season: parlour games, word games, She wouldn’t, because she didn’t buccal fat! What? Are you kidding? Cut it
European board games, quiz formats and everything charades- want to fall over and end up in A&E. out of me now.
adjacent. Never, if they were not all under one roof, would God knows I don’t want her to end But look how important it is! Important,
multiple generations see each other’s concentration-face up up there, either, but whisky the schmimportant. You know where buccal
close. I was playing Codenames with my brother the other day and way she drinks it – in minuscule fat is?
realised I haven’t seen him thinking since about 1994. Ruminating, amounts, topped up with boiling No, but I can discern from context that
maybe; considering, pondering, calculating, but not actually water like a Lemsip – could no more it’s probably in the cheeks. Exactly! In the
thinking, until he was trying to guess a plausible connecting word topple a person over than a gusty cheeks. Fat. In my cheeks. Do I look like a
between monkey and skyscraper. wind. I came at this point forcefully, gerbil to you?
He was thinking aloud, and walked us all carefully through from many different directions, but You look like a normal person. Ugh, a
his process, which was that my elder sister and I were too stupid she wouldn’t budge. normal person. People have been chased
to make any meaningful connection, our other brother wasn’t The list of things she won’t do to off Instagram for less.
trying and only the youngest was on his wavelength. He lost a avoid putting additional pressure Wait, are people seriously getting their
lot of friends during this game and, more pleasingly, he also lost on the NHS also includes: having buccal fat surgically removed? Of course
the game. I can make no comment on the relative intelligence of her cataracts done; getting a duck they are. Haven’t you been paying attention
each generation, since most games aren’t really about intelligence out of an oven; using sharp knives. to social media? Anyone who is anyone is
(OK, I’ll give you Boggle and the name game). There are often The entirely human-made crisis having their buccal fat removed.
elements of strategy (Catan, Agricola), and millennials take in the health service has reduced And by “anyone who is anyone”, you mean
these pretty seriously. Most of the time, it is her quality of life by, conservatively, … I mean Chrissy Teigen, for a start.
Gen Z’s fine motor a test of stamina and cognitive – not affective
– empathy: you don’t need to feel what other
about 85%, and she is at its very
periphery, a person who hasn’t even
The model and TV personality? That’s the
one. “I did that … buccal fat removal thing,”
skills are no use people are feeling, you just need to be able to
guess it. These are also the core competencies
had to use it. Track inwards through
the concentric circles – people with
she told the internet. “And since I quit
drinking, I’m really seeing the results, and
for anything more of a serial killer.
Even to consider the possibility that people
chronic conditions, people with
accident-prone small children
I like it.”
And what are the results? Well, you usually
than Mouse Trap exist who have never played the name game
makes me sad, but just in case: you do 10 names
(which is all small children), people
in high-density housing during a
find the most pronounced buccal fat on
babies and infants, so have a guess. What
each, put them in a hat, split into teams, describe flu season, people who have to be don’t babies and infants traditionally have?
them to your own team, and get as many as you can in a minute. in A&E because they work there – Cosmetic surgery? Yes, that. But also
There is always one person who has never heard of anyone at all, and the national stress level is too cheekbones. If you take away buccal fat, you
and will describe, for instance, Marlene Dietrich with “What’s the intense to wrap your head around. automatically accentuate your cheekbones.
opposite of fat Coke? What’s the opposite of poor?”, and by the end This is all part of the Tory And cheekbones are sexy.
of their round everyone, even the 10-year-old who has also not gameplan, people used to say: But it’s not the only way to get cheekbones,
heard of Dietrich, holds them in contempt. reduce the NHS to a state of is it? Well, no. There is also, arguably, diet
There is always one name that comes up multiple times: this year, unworkability, then shrug and say, and exercise. There is also being so stressed
it was Harry Styles. Nine of us playing, 10 separate Styleses; cue a “Well, plainly it doesn’t work.” It about what strangers on the internet
lecture from me to the youngsters about how you must always bring sounded devilish cunning at the think of your appearance that it keeps you
your A-game to the name game. Then it turned out it was me who beginning of their ill-begotten rule, awake at night.
put him in twice. A lot of glee was derived from establishing that but, as it reaches its finale, sensible Are you OK? I’m fine. Although, ever since
fact, none of it mine. The closest married couple on earth will never people are coming to a different, I first heard about buccal surgery, I’ve become
be a 10th as good a team as any given siblings who absolutely hate more obvious, conclusion: it’s obsessed with the awful wads of fat hanging
one another. It’s just one of those weird things. broken because they broke it. We from my face, and now I can’t face being seen
Anyway, in random order: boomers have a huge amount of don’t need to give up on socialised in public again. But, yes, I’m fine.
general knowledge, broad and deep (county towns, obscure health care. We need to give up on And when did you first hear about buccal
COVER: MARCOS MONTIEL/SYNERGY/THE GUARDIAN

gods, chemical names for things), and if they could just muster
any sense of urgency they would clean up – in quizzes, that is.
Most games are mainly sense-of-urgency, though, and boomers
are hopeless. Millennials bring a distinct serious-mindedness,
particularly to board games, which they play all year round and
not just at Christmas, and they credit themselves with inventing
a lot of stuff that actually has obvious roots in I’m Sorry I Haven’t
a Clue. Generation Z have amazing fine motor skills because of
their computers and whatnot, and those are no use to them at
all unless they are playing Mouse Trap, which nobody does.
It’s generation X, I’m afraid: we’re the best, and we always win.
Well, come on: we’ve got to be good for something.
Conservative governments.
surgery? About 25 minutes ago.
This sounds an awful lot like a fad. What
are you suggesting? That cosmetic surgeons
are running out of things to suck and chop
and tweak, so they’ve found the most
innocuous part of your entire body, and
are now determined to convince you that it
is unsightly?
Yes. Well, it worked. Mission accomplished,
surgeons.
Do say: “Buccal fat surgery will give me
incredible cheekbones.”
Don’t say: “Surely that’s worth risking not
being able to chew properly?”
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:4 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:51 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

4 The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

How to spread joy in every

Make this the
year you pay it
forward. Emma
Beddington
suggests 52 acts
of kindness that
will make this
a better world –
from fostering
kittens to giving
blood to being
a ‘bin hero’

N avel-gazing is
always a danger at this time of year
– and not just to admire the results
of a two-week assault on the fridge.
Indoctrinated by “new year, new
you” messaging, we fixate on self-
optimisation: one hand dredging
the Celebrations tub and the other
searching online for “hot yoga near
me” or “should I read Ulysses?”
But there is another way to be
better: by doing something kind.
This doesn’t mean giving money
(welcome though that always
is), it’s about giving your time,
empathy, support and thought –
finding ways to help the people
around you.
To make this list of suggestions,
I explored acts of kindness given
and received, acutely needed and
fondly remembered, with Guardian
readers, charities, friends and
family, marvelling at how much
quietly industrious kindness goes
on around us. I hope there is
something for everyone: some
require commitment; others need
nothing more than the ability to
boil a kettle. But what all these acts
have in common is that they will
make you feel good: research shows
that being kind make us happier. So
you can help others and feel better
yourself all at once. You won’t
get that kind of win-win from a
gym membership.
1. Give blood
Each donation can save up to three
lives, and you get free biscuits.
Everyone eligible is welcome, but
“we urgently need more blood
donors of black heritage”, says
Rob Knowles of NHS Blood and
Transplant; these donors are
more likely to be able to help the
increasing number of patients
with sickle cell disease. Sign up at
blood.co.uk, call 0800 1232323 or
use the NHS Blood app. If you can’t
get an appointment immediately,
don’t worry; your donation will be
vital whenever it’s given. To donate
quickly, the best appointment
availability is at the 25 permanent
donor centres across the UK.
2. Walk a dog
The Cinnamon Trust provides
support for elderly and terminally
ill people who need urgent help
to walk their pets so they can
keep them. Check the map at
cinnamon.org.uk, register as a
volunteer and you will be ready
when help is needed in your area.
3. Buy a Big Issue when
you can – but also talk to
your seller
Generally, having a chat with
someone on the streets is a nice
thing to do and often appreciated.
It needn’t be anything heavy:
ask how their day is going and if
there is anything they would like
or need help with. Some people
want to chat, some don’t – just be
respectful. If a homeless person
tells you they are having difficulty
accessing medical facilities or with
other practical issues, the Big Issue
suggests alerting StreetLink, which
connects rough sleepers with
services they need.
4. Target your support
Create a for food banks
On top of the obvious non-
guerrilla perishable foods, the Trussell
Trust says donations of toiletries,
vegetable bed, laundry and washing-up stuff, baby
supplies and sanitary towels and
and let people tampons are always welcome. The
best way to support food banks,
help themselves though, is to find out what they
need from day to day. I follow my
to your harvest local, the Collective Sharehouse, on
Instagram, where it posts requests
for free for urgent help. Remember, you
can donate time as well as goods:
“Food banks are busier than ever
and very grateful to anyone who
can spare a few hours on a regular
basis,” says Ellie Lambert of the
Trussell Trust. Help can include
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:5 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023
week of 2023
picking up or unpacking corporate
donations, delivering to the most
in-need clients and even assistance
with social media.
5. Go guerrilla gardening
Inspired by the Incredible Edibles
movement, create a “propaganda
bed” – an easily accessible pot
or bed planted with herbs and
vegetables for people to help
themselves. Label it so passersby
know what’s what, and that it’s
all free.
6. Give a coat to Calais
During winter, Care4Calais needs
coats for refugees in northern
France, where 2,000-plus sleep
rough. If you have a warm coat in
reasonable condition, find a drop-
ILLUSTRATIONA BY MARCOS MONTIEL/SYNERGY/THE GUARDIAN
•
off point and pass it on to someone
who needs it.
7. Repair something
Repair cafes are booming and, as
the BBC One series The Repair Shop
shows, they can be a great source of
joy. If you are handy with a sewing
needle, bikes, carpentry, electricals
or computers, your local repair
cafe would almost certainly be
delighted to have your help. If there
isn’t one locally, why not start one?
8. Be a bin hero
Full? Take it out rather than
leaving it for someone else in
your home. Emptied? Take it in.
It’s scientifically impossible to be
anything other than thrilled when
someone else deals with the bins.
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:52
9. Help prisoners with reading
About 50% of people in UK prisons
struggle with reading. The Shannon
Trust helps them to help one
another throughout England,
Wales and Northern Ireland. “Our
prison volunteers train and support
prisoner mentors to work one-
to-one with learners,” says Karen
Ryan, director of prison delivery.
At the moment, the trust
particularly needs volunteers
in central and eastern England.
There is training and support and
you are accompanied on your first
prison visits.
“We know volunteering in a
prison setting isn’t for everyone,”
Ryan says, “but we also have roles
in the community to help people
directly with learning or to help our
area teams with administration and
data collection.”
10. Be a Sense virtual buddy
Sense, a charity for deafblind
people and others with complex
disabilities, organises volunteers to
phone or video-call disabled people
to fight isolation and loneliness.
Volunteers are supported for
their first sessions and buddies
find stuff to do they both enjoy
– cooking, craft, watching a film,
playing games …
11. Pay a compliment
“You’re looking nice,” is good. “You
have great skin” or “I love your
shoes” is better. Someone once told
me I had “cute ears” and I treasured
it for years.
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
5
12. Take pictures
If you see someone in contortions,
trying to take a selfie, offer to take
a photo.
13. Join a stem-cell
donor registry
Only 30% of blood cancer patients
find family donors, meaning more
donors are needed, especially male
and minority ethnic ones. Existing
blood donors can ask to join the
NHS register during their next
donation. Blood cancer charities
DKMS and Anthony Nolan also
have their own registers. Check
online if you are eligible to donate,
order a free cheek swab kit, swab
and return. You will be added to
the register and contacted if there’s
a match.
14. Chat to an older person
Age UK’s telephone befriending
service will match you with an
older person who would enjoy
a 30-minute chat once a week.
15. Make a mixtape
Give someone a curated Spotify or
YouTube playlist of stuff you think
they would like.
16. Volunteer in a shelter
Francesca helps out at Hackney
winter night shelter in east London.
“Our role is to create a welcoming
space for guests,” she says. “We
volunteer in three-hour shifts and
it’s mainly cooking breakfasts
or meals, having a chat, keeping
the place tidy, etc. The support
the guests get is brilliant, and the
lively and lovely community of
volunteers do a lot in terms of
fundraising. It is really important
to us that we are able to help out,
and in our local community.”
17. Become a trustee
All charities need trustees and
many struggle to find them.
Whatever your skill set, you
almost certainly have something
to contribute to a local charity. It’s
rarely a major time commitment
– a few hours every few months at
most – and a great way to get more
involved in your community. Ask
around or check the vacancies at
reachvolunteering.org.uk.
18. Be the office Secret Santa
all year round
Leave a box of biscuits or a cake
in the kitchen, or put bars of
chocolate on your colleagues’ desks
anonymously, then secretly enjoy
the happy buzz it creates.
19. Hit the apps
Apps and sites such as Next Door,
Buy Nothing, Freecycle and Olio
Continued on page 6 
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:6 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:52 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

6 The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

 Continued from page 5

are easy ways to give away stuff you

don’t need but others in your area
might. People also post requests
for things they need, or for other
assistance: lifts, gardening help,
local recommendations … It’s
enormously satisfying when you
can help out.

20. Foster an animal

Paula fostered cats for several
years. “We had to spend a lot of
time building trust and gently
playing,” she says. “It could be
tricky at times – blood was drawn!
– but the breakthrough moments
were lovely.” It was sad when cats
moved on, she says, but adds: “I
still get photos of the cats in their
new homes. I love to see them
lounging, looking relaxed and in
charge of the house.”
To foster cats, dogs or other
animals for the RSPCA, you need
to be 18 and own your home,
or have permission from your
landlord to have pets, and be able
to transport your foster animal to
vet appointments.

21. Feed pickets

Strikers need solidarity to keep
feeling positive: show yours with
a box of biscuits or a round of
hot drinks.

22. Answer phones

at ChildLine
Children have had an especially
tough few years, and four hours a
week answering calls can make a
huge difference. The recruitment
process is quite lengthy and careful:
there is training and assessment,
followed by two observed shifts
and one mentored one before
potential volunteers find out if they
are a good fit. It’s worth it.
“I was really nervous on my
first shift, but also loved it, feeling
good to be even a small part of
being there for a young person
wanting to talk,” a recent recruit 25. Write a postcard tea point and the offer of support 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac
tells me. “There can be difficult Find some postcards – you can be huge – but there are also arrests each year; knowing what to
and upsetting contacts, but probably have a pile lying around organisations that can match you do if you encounter one can mean
volunteers are always supported somewhere – and write to people up, such as Arts Emergency, aimed the difference between life and
by experienced supervisors. It’s
not all doom and gloom, and when
you haven’t spoken to for a while.
Tell them you are thinking of them,
at young people who want to work
in the arts, and Meet a Mentor in I get photos of death. Take 15 minutes and do the
BHF’s free online training course.
a young person says: ‘Thanks
for listening and not judging,’ or
share a memory or thank them for
something they did for you.
the tech sector.
my foster cats in 32. Be a breastfeeding
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that’,
I feel such a high.” 26. Become a mental health
29. Or mentor a child
Become a “Big” for Big Brother
their new homes. peer supporter
Just because it’s natural doesn’t

23. Help with reading

in schools
Organisations such as
Schoolreaders and Beanstalk match
volunteers with schools to listen to
children reading, usually focused
in areas with high literacy needs.
You need to be 18 or over with a
good grasp of English. If travelling
is tricky, you can provide reading
support online by volunteering
with Bookmark.
24. Give old tools a
new home
The charity Tools With a Mission
needs used tools, which it
reconditions and sends to the
developing world to help people
develop skills and livelihoods.
Check the list of what is needed
at twam.uk.
first aider
Given the number of hours most
of us spend at work, many mental
health crises occur there. Knowing
there is someone available who
can offer confidential support can
make all the difference, so ask
your employer if you can train as a
workplace mental health first aider.
27. Give as you shop
Sign up to easyfundraising.org.uk
and whenever you shop online,
many big companies (including
major supermarkets, Amazon, eBay
and Trainline) will donate a portion
of your spend to charity. It doesn’t
cost you anything.
28. Be a professional mentor
Help out people new to your job,
or wanting to get started. It doesn’t
have to be formal – a chat at the
Big Sister and spend time with a
seven- to 12-year-old who could
I love to see
do with a supportive figure in their
life once a week. Or, if you are in
them lounging,
London, Manchester or Liverpool,
the charity Reach Out needs after-
looking relaxed,
school mentors for primary and
secondary school pupils.
in charge of
30. Be a gig buddy
the house
As a gig buddy, you will accompany
someone with autism or a learning
disability to concerts or other fun
events, making their experience
smoother and less stressful than
it might be otherwise. The project
started in Brighton, but there are
now lots of Gig Buddy projects
around the UK.
31. Learn CPR
The British Heart Foundation
estimates there are approximately
mean breastfeeding is easy for all
new mothers: encouragement and
advice from someone who has
been there can help. You can train
to be a peer supporter with the
Breastfeeding Network.
33. Try tutoring
Action Tutoring works to close the
attainment gap for disadvantaged
children. “I’d wholeheartedly
recommend applying,” says Laura,
who volunteered. “My 10-year-old
tutees were a delight – sparky and
fun. I looked forward to seeing
them every week, hearing their
news and watching their skills and
confidence grow. Best of all, I got an
email at the end of the programme
to let me know how they had got on
in their Sats – they had aced them.”
You will need a B grade at A-level
in English or maths (or a relevant
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:7 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023
degree). Training and resources are
provided and a helpful coordinator
is just a text or phone call away.
34. Drive kindly
If you’re sure it’s safe, flash
your lights or wave your hand at
someone waiting to cross the road
in front of you.
35. Use your language skills
Refugee charities often need
volunteer interpreters. Medical
Justice, which works to ensure
detainees’ health rights are
respected, needs people with a
range of languages from Albanian
to Vietnamese at immigration
removal centres across the UK.
36. Buy coffee for a stranger
Many cafes offer a “pay it forward”
system, where you can buy an extra
coffee for someone (an especially
good way to support homeless
people). Alternatively, just pay for
the person behind you without
them knowing, then disappear,
fairy godmother-style.
37. Give text help
Shout (giveusashout.org) is a
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCOS MONTIEL/SYNERGY/THE GUARDIAN
•
confidential text messaging
service supporting children and
adults in distress – not everyone is
comfortable with making a phone
call. Volunteers are trained and
receive coaching and support. You
only need to commit to one shift,
usually two to four hours, from
home each week.
38. Clean up
Is a friend or acquaintance dealing
with the pre- or post-move slog or
just struggling to keep on top of
things? Offer to help them declutter
or clean while they get on with
other tasks.
39. Give plasma or platelets
If you are near Birmingham,
Reading or Twickenham, you can
donate plasma – vital for people
with weakened immune systems
and other conditions. Unlike blood,
you can donate once a fortnight:
see blood.co.uk.
Also consider donating platelets.
“The NHS relies on a very small
group of platelet donors to keep
this special healing agent in good
supply,” says Rob Knowles of NHS
Blood and Transplant. “Male blood
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:52
donors with good veins who are
happy to take a little longer when
they donate typically graduate to
platelet donations and our staff are
always happy to talk to donors
about making the switch.”
Existing type-A blood donors are
particularly in demand for platelets.
40. Garden
You might know someone who
could do with a hand with the
heavy stuff. Otherwise, consider
helping Groundwork’s Green
Aiders, which provides a one-
off cleanup service for older,
vulnerable and disabled people
with overgrown gardens.
41. Help asylum seekers
to adapt
“We see people in our asylum
system face incredible challenges
in the face of hostile government
policy. But we’re always heartened
by the public’s seemingly limitless
generosity and desire to help,” says
Tim Naor Hilton, Refugee Action’s
chief executive. “Volunteers are
the lifeblood of Refugee Action.
People can help our clients to
access asylum support and
accommodation to make sure
they have food and a roof over
their head, and mentor refugees
to help them find work and
support with English, among other
opportunities.” Roles are posted
at refugee-action.org.uk or sign
up for volunteer alerts.
41. Litter pick
There are organised litter picks
everywhere – a nice way to meet
people in your community who
are also enraged by rubbish – but
there is nothing stopping you
from heading out with a binbag
and gloves. The humorist David
Sedaris has picked so much litter
that he had a bin lorry named in his
honour: that could be you.
43. Be an animal ambulance
RSPCA animal rescue volunteers
collect sick, injured or orphaned
birds and small mammals and
take them to vets, rehabilitation
or wildlife centres, and help out
with other animal transport jobs.
“It’s a unique opportunity to
help animals,” says Lucy Bailey
of the RSPCA. Volunteers need
to have access to a vehicle and
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
7
a smartphone – all other kit and
training is provided. Find out more
at rspca.org.uk.
44. Look after delivery drivers
Ask delivery people if they would
like a drink, or to use your loo – and
tip food riders if you can.
45. Use your car for good
Assuage your climate guilt by
delivering meals on wheels, driving
people to hospital appointments,
picking up shoes for Sal’s Shoes
(which sends shoes to children
who need them), or dropping off
donations for the hygiene charity
Beauty Banks. Or just text your
neighbours when you are going to
the dump in case they need to get
rid of anything you could drop off.
46. Join a Dementia
Adventure
Dementia Adventure organises
supported holidays for people with
dementia and their carers, giving
them fun experiences and respite.
Volunteers are essential to these
events, to provide practical support
and company.
47. Become a puppy socialiser
Support Dogs needs homes for
future canine helpers for people
with autism, epilepsy and other
disabilities until the dogs start
training at 14 months. Guide Dogs
for the Blind and Hearing Dogs
need puppy care, too.
48. Support your local library
Libraries are a lifeline all year,
but in this winter of much bigger
energy bills, they are doubling up
as welcoming warm spaces. To
keep doing this, they need help: ask
what you can do at your library.
49. Bee prepared
Learn to revive a tired or struggling
bee. If it’s wet, put it in the sun;
otherwise deposit it on a high-
nectar flower such as buddleia or
sunflower. If that hasn’t helped,
offer a little sugar water (two
tablespoons of white granulated
sugar to one tablespoon of water,
left on a spoon or in an eggcup).
50. Be a digital coach
The relentless shift online has
left many behind. Do you know
someone who might need
help with Google, setting up a
smartphone or an email account,
or making web-based payments?
51. Cook something
Message someone who might
welcome a hot meal to say that you
have made too much and could
they take some off your hands. If
you frame it as a favour to you, they
may be more likely to say yes.
52. Take the public transport
load off
It’s old school, but giving a hand
to carry a bag, find a trolley or lift
a pushchair can instantly make
someone’s journey less stressful.
Offering to distract a toddler
for a few seconds can feel more
awkward, but when my kids were
little that sometimes averted total
meltdown (mine and theirs).
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:8 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 16:54 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

8
Arts
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

Turnaround …
the standup with
extreme social
anxiety wants to
talk to strangers
about his
most intimate
experiences

‘I want to talk about more

than just toothbrushes’

A
full-blown rant and stays there. difficulties conceiving a child show,” he says, “all my standup
Or it used to. “It’s softened a bit with his wife, the comedy writer was made up. I think pretty much

Rhod Gilbert now,” says Gilbert. That’s just as

well: Gilbert needs to look after
Sian Harries. Over-heatedness
was still Gilbert’s stock in trade
everything was entirely fictitious.
And in this show, it’s not. It’s all

used to direct himself. This is his first national

newspaper interview since his
but now he had everything to be
overheated about.
true stuff that happened: the
stroke, my mum’s Alzheimer’s, the

his fury at stage-four cancer diagnosis in

July, as he recovers from surgery,
What’s remarkable about the
show is Gilbert’s candour and,
fertility treatment. And John does
exist. I did hire a driver for that
service stations, lot has
changed since Rhod Gilbert began
radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
“It does feel weird,” he admits. “I
despite charting territory he had
not previously gone near in 20
year. But yes, there’s some comedic
licence taken with our arguments.”
baked potatoes touring The Book of John in 2019
– a tour that still hasn’t come to an
don’t know how much to talk about
the cancer. I haven’t really worked
years of standup, how funny he
makes it all. That’s partly because
He pauses. “To say any more than
that would spoil it, wouldn’t it?”
and the tog- end. First it was interrupted by a
pandemic. You may have heard
out what to say. I’m more than
happy to talk about it but I haven’t
his mouse-that-roared shtick,
however “softened”, remains
The Book of John wasn’t the first

rating of duvets. about that. Then, in 2022, Gilbert

had to pause the tour again with
Now, finds a persistent unexplained throat
problem. Trekking Cuba to raise
Brian Logan, money for the Velindre Cancer
Centre in Cardiff, of which he is
the Welsh comic a longstanding patron, Gilbert
discovered the problem was in fact
is happy to cancer – for which he has been in
treatment, at Velindre, since. “I’m
tackle anxiety, sitting there having chemo,” he tells
me, “with a picture of me on the
infertility – and wall as a fundraising patron. You
couldn’t make it up, honestly.”
even his recent The tone of voice, via Zoom from
Wales, is recognisable to anyone
cancer diagnosis familiar with the 54-year-old’s
standup. Escalating dismay is the
keynote. On stage, it ascends to a
had time to process it at all.”
He’s emerged from his
hilarious. It’s also down to John.
John was Gilbert’s chauffeur ‘Until this show,
convalescence (“Some days I’m well
enough to potter and other days, or
throughout the period the show
records because, after his mini-
all my material
was fictitious’ …
whole weeks, I’m in bed”) to discuss
the digital and DVD release of The
stroke, the comic wasn’t allowed
to drive. Always on hand with
Gilbert touring
The Book of John
Book of John. The show marked
a departure for the Carmarthen
some choice idiocy as Gilbert’s
life collapses around him, John’s
man and a career peak (give or take
2008’s for-the-ages Rhod Gilbert
dimwit conversation is the grease
that oils the show’s wheels.
and the Award-Winning Mince Pie).
After years confronting life’s milder
John is, I venture, a bulletproof
device for bringing levity to
irritants – service stations, baked
potatoes, the tog rating of duvets
heavyweight material. “Device?
What!” responds Gilbert, and
– with apoplectic fury, he returned
after a seven-year hiatus with a
I worry that, with my barely
concealed scepticism as to whether
show which discusses matters of
very considerable significance:
John actually exists, I’ve triggered
another rant. But no: there’s a
bereavement; a recent mini-stroke; twinkle in Gilbert’s eye. “Until this
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:9 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023
The cancer is
on my mind
24/7. But there
is humour in
there, definitely
time Gilbert publicly addressed
male infertility. With shows such
as Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience
and Rhod Gilbert’s Growing Pains,
many will know the Welshman
more as a TV presenter than a
standup, and in that role he fronted
two intimate and autobiographical
BBC documentaries, in 2018
and 2021, on social anxiety and
infertility. They made a big impact –
and they also changed the direction
of his career.
With his 2012 live show The Man
With the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo,
Gilbert had felt his standup running
aground. “I was having to look for
things to be angry about, to fit what I
did,” he says. “And that’s diminishing
returns, clearly. I felt that, and I
think audiences felt that.” When
that tour ended, he announced he
was quitting live comedy. And for
seven years, “I didn’t miss it at all.
Didn’t write a word. Not motivated
in any way to do it.”
But the experience of making
PHOTOGRAPHS: JAMES DAVIES/ALAMY; HUW JOHN/NBCUNIVERSAL PICTURES
those documentaries, and all that
other “life stuff ” he was dealing
with, opened Gilbert up to a new
way of working. A man who had
only ever lied on stage began telling
the unvarnished truth. A man with
extreme social anxiety started
talking to strangers about his most
intimate experiences. “As I got
older, I started to feel – and maybe
this is a bit wanky – that I’ve got a
bit of a platform here. And I should
be doing more with it than just
talking about toothbrushes.” More
than that, though, he adds: “I have
definitely become somebody who
wants to be really open and talk
about stuff, and who sees the value
in talking.” It’s the same with his
cancer today, he says.
“Pretty much, there used to be
Sent at 2/1/2023 17:47 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
•
9
How we made
two reactions to my comedy,” says
Gilbert. “You’re funny or you’re
not.” Whereas now I get letters
and emails from all over the world
The Story of the Blues by Wah!
from people talking about their
own experience of a stroke, or their
parents’ Alzheimer’s, or infertility.
It’s a totally different response. ‘In the studio, we got violins, backing singers – and
And I really like it.” Off stage, says
Gilbert, “years ago, if I’d gone for
then we had the mad idea of performing a seance
a walk down the beach with the
dog, I’d have kept my head down
to get the spirit of John Lennon on to the track’
and not engaged with anybody.
Whereas now, if somebody stops had done with the Associates and wanted my
me, I’ll end up in an hour’s chat voice to be equally central. I met Mike and we
about infertility, cancer, whatever. got on instantly. In the studio, we got violins,
The most intimate conversations.” backing singers – and even had the mad idea
It’s a turnaround – and an unusual of performing a seance in there, to get the
role for a comic. I tell Gilbert I can’t spirit of John Lennon on the track.
imagine Jimmy Carr having heart- When the single came out [in 1983], Peel
to-hearts on the beach. He replies: and David Jensen played it on Radio 1, but
“I can’t imagine Jimmy Carr on a the record company had almost given up on
beach, to be honest.” it. Then we got on this TV show, Pop Goes
So committed is Gilbert to his Christmas. I wore a black dinner suit and they
new, no-filter way of being, he’s made my quiff look huge. Bet Lynch from
already hatching plans for the Corrie was sat in the makeup room with me
standup show that addresses watching me being pampered and said: “I
his cancer experiences. “If I get haven’t seen one that big in years.”
through this,” he says, and then The single charted – at No 59 – on
breaks off. “I’ve got to stop saying Christmas Day and started climbing. I said I
that. People tell me off. When wouldn’t have a drink until it started slipping
you’re going through cancer, any down the chart – and in fact I stayed teetotal
sign of doubt or negativity gets until it left the charts completely. It peaked
nipped in the bud very quickly.” at No 3 on 16 January 1983 and I went on Top
And so he restarts: “When I get of the Pops. I’ve been told The Story of the
through this, the next show will be Blues is the “greatest single ever made” and
in a similar vein. The cancer is on stuff like that. I’m just glad to have done
my mind 24/7, but when I’m well something people found helpful.
enough to write, I’m jotting down a
few things. And there is humour in
there, definitely.” Mike Hedges
This conviction represents Producer
another about-turn from Gilbert,
who used to doubt he’d ever write You could tell Pete was a star within five
another standup show. “Every minutes of meeting him. “Life and soul of
‘He was crazy,
Edinburgh I was like, ‘How on the party” doesn’t begin to describe him. He
mouthy but
earth am I going to write another was crazy, mouthy but funny, bouncing off
funny’ … Pete
show next year? How am I going to the walls. He was always at every party and
Wylie in 1983
write even another five minutes?’ wanted his gravestone to read: “Here lies
Whereas now I’m mad keen. I’ve Pete Wylie plus one.” When he fell and broke
got a 250-page document of stuff his back and the fire brigade asked his name,
that’s on the go.” Don’t rule out he told them: “You should know my fucking
a comeback for the offstage star name.” I thought he was amazing and believed
of The Book of John, either. “The Pete Wylie we could definitely do something together.
response to John is just insane,” Singer, songwriter When we went into the studio, Pete sat
says Gilbert. “People waiting down with an acoustic guitar and played me
backstage asking, ‘Is John here?’ The early singles by Wah! Heat were indie hits The Story of the Blues. It was obviously going
He’s like a folk hero! He is more because John Peel championed them. I went to be an important song. We didn’t have a
popular than I am!” to meet him at a Fall gig in Manchester. The drummer, so I got hold of a very early Linn
All of which gives Gilbert Fall were fantastic but it felt like the gig was drum machine, but there was no manual. As
something to focus on as he full of people who were there just to be seen. well as the main beat on the single, there’s
navigates a challenging period. Suddenly indie wasn’t a scene I wanted to be in. also a weird conga pattern, which wasn’t
“All my work has gone. My social I’d read Alvin Toffler’s books Future Shock intentional. It was left in because we didn’t
life has gone. Everything has and The Third Wave, about the impact of know how to delete anything.
gone. Everything. It’s just me and technology, and was becoming interested I wanted the song to sound epic and
this bloody cancer, really.” The in drum machines. I was also obsessed with overloaded the acoustic guitar at the mixing
postponed final seven gigs of The Phil Spector, Motown and the Chi-Lites and desk so it distorted on the chorus. Everything
Book of John tour are scheduled for wanted to do something soulful. The other was very quick: we only had a couple of days
2023: “Having them is something key moment was watching Alan Bleasdale’s in the studio. I was mixing another artist as
to look forward to, really. But I’m Boys from the Blackstuff, about the effects well so wasn’t getting much sleep, as usual.
PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN STODDART/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES
making things sound very gloomy, of mass unemployment. I’d grown up in a I found the three-woman string section
and they’re not.” dysfunctional household where money was busking in Covent Garden, London. They
Today, he has been cheered always an issue and it resonated with me. were wearing punk outfits with mini skirts,
by the fact that his standup pals I wanted to write songs expressing solidarity stockings and stuff, which I thought was
– Rob Brydon, Greg Davies and that were a force for change. brilliant. Pete wanted soul singers so I got the
others – are rallying to his aid, I was having a drink with Clash manager Chanter Sisters in to do a session and Kate
hyping The Book of John’s release Kosmo Vinyl when he suggested I write Robbins – now better known as an actor –
on social media and beyond, a “drinking song”. I sat at the piano and sang backing on the choruses.
because Gilbert isn’t well enough to channelled Frank Sinatra’s One for My Baby I always thought the finished recording
do so himself. “I’m really aware of (And One More for the Road). I began: “Here was a bit slapdash, because we didn’t have
mental health now,” he says, “and in my pocket I’ve got the story of the blues …” much time or many instruments, but the
I’m checking in with myself every But once I started thinking about the world I vocal was fantastic. Pete just carried it. The
day. I feel fine, weirdly. I’m happy, was living in – unemployment, Liverpool, the Story of the Blues is social commentary and
optimistic and hopeful that next fact that I’d just had a break-up/breakdown – anthemic, my favourite kind of music.
year it’ll all come good.” it changed into this big, anthemic thing about Interviews by Dave Simpson. The
The Book of John is available now on what was going on. 40th-anniversary blue vinyl 12in of The Story
DVD and digital download I loved what the producer Mike Hedges of the Blues is out now on Chrysalis
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:10 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 16:57 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

10
TV and radio
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

2022: The Year from Space

7.30pm, Channel 4
Matthew
Macfadyen
and Keeley
Hawes as John
and Barbara
Stonehouse

Certain events in 2022 have been so big

they’re best appreciated by satellite. And
we’re not just talking about the Queue or
the Liz Truss fiasco. This documentary
offers airborne perspectives on
Review Stonehouse, ITV his suburban life. The trouble is, he isn’t very good
at spying either. His information is either boring or
everything from the summer heatwave
outdated. “You are the worst spy I have ever come to the return of Glastonbury. Inevitably,
across. Ever!” barks his handler, who wanted state there’s horror, too: the floods in Pakistan
secrets and got a dreary Bond acolyte instead.
He is so bad at delivering useful information that and, of course, the unfolding nightmare
of Ukraine that, from the buildup of
Absurdist account
you start to wonder if it is a strategy. One of the case
studies in Stephen Grosz’s fascinating book about
psychoanalysis, The Examined Life, is of a man Russian troops on the border to the
of a hapless who seems set on boring everyone around him;
Grosz concludes that it is a deliberate act, designed
to exclude others. I wonder if that might be what
discovery of mass graves in Bucha,
looms over everything.
MP who faked Stonehouse is up to, but perhaps that is reading too
deeply into the story. Besides, the evidence for it turns
Phil Harrison

Waterloo Road
his own death
out not to be particularly strong; Stonehouse gleefully decade ago – confronts
informs the Czechs of the invention of Concorde, only 8pm, BBC One her inner snob by going
to be told that this bombshell had been on French Beloved school drama to a dirt-track race
television news, two nights earlier. Waterloo Road has been with Billy the “bogun”,
The tone is spot-on, tongue-in-cheek and cheeky. reborn for 2023. This as well as visiting a
★★★★☆ It is written by John Preston, who also wrote the book riotous opening episode prestigious school. Hollie

Rebecca
on which 2018’s A Very English Scandal, about the sees student activism at Richardson
disgraced MP Jeremy Thorpe, was based, and it canters its core, as teachers face
along at a similar pace. Much of the scandalousness a firefighting operation. 24 Hours in A&E

Nicholson
is played for comic effect. The title sequence is Mad Tackling prescient teen 9pm, Channel 4
Men-ish, the soundtrack Pink Panther-esque, and the issues from LGBTQ+ The cathartic hospital
espionage is campy rather than sinister. Macfadyen’s rights to the cost of living docuseries travels beyond

L
Stonehouse has a touch of his Succession character, crisis, Kim Campbell London for the first time,
ast week, No 10 issued a statement Tom Wambsgans, though the MP lacks the watery (Angela Griffin) is but one and there is no shortage
regarding “very concerning” reports of cruelness of Wambsgans; Stonehouse is less devious familiar face set to return. of drama at the bustling
MPs indulging in sex and excessive alcohol and easier to please. Danielle De Wolfe Queen’s medical centre
on parliamentary trips abroad. (Perhaps But there are cruelties here, casually buried within in Nottingham. A freak
the suitcase full of wine served a purpose its slapstick, as you might expect from a man who The Hairy Bikers accident at a fun run puts
beyond Downing Street?) With fortuitous attempts to convince the world he is dead. Poor Go Local veteran ward sister Lou
timing, Stonehouse is here with the vintage edition. Barbara tries to intervene in the household budget, 8pm, BBC Two and her team on high
This fun and funny drama, high-spirited and revelling as newer cars and bigger houses turn up on the scene Heading off on a new alert, while a 93-year-old
in its absurdities, retells the story of John Stonehouse, while private school fees go unpaid. “Which one of us food mission – but now with breathing difficulties
Labour MP for Walsall North, a former postmaster is a graduate of the London School of Economics?” her What’s On on electric bikes – Dave is brought in.
general and rising star of Harold Wilson’s government, husband says, pretending there is nothing to worry Scan the QR and Si are turning Graeme Virtue
who got himself in a spot of financial and espionage- about. He hires a secretary whose shorthand is lacking, code below matchmaker. They want
based bother. His solution was to fake his own death mostly because he fancies her. And later, he steals the to sign up for to find great regional Belfast Midwives
on a beach in Miami in 1974, before fleeing to Australia identity of a dead constituent, flattering his widow by the What’s On restaurants and introduce 10pm, Channel 4
with his secretary and assuming a new, stolen identity. attending the man’s funeral, only to betray him for his newsletter, our them to local ethical About 5,000 babies are
The problem for him, and the joy for viewers, is own dreadful purposes. free TV email producers, starting in delivered every year
that Stonehouse is not very good at being a baddie. Last July, Stonehouse’s daughter expressed with the best Wales where a father and at the Royal Jubilee
Matthew Macfadyen plays him as a heedless buffoon. concerns that the drama would be a reviews, news daughter chef team have maternity service,
In the Commons, he parrots what Wilson says; at “misrepresentation”. It gets a disclaimer at the and exclusive their eyes on a Michelin Belfast – one of Northern
home, he parrots what his wife, Barbara (played by beginning, explaining that the drama is “based writing direct star. PH Ireland’s busiest
Macfadyen’s real-life wife, Keeley Hawes), says. He on a true story” with some parts “reimagined” for to your inbox maternity units. This new
is a man in search of an identity, and on a work trip to dramatic purposes. It seems inevitable that there every Monday Miriam Margolyes: series follows those who
Czechoslovakia (as it was then), he makes much use of would be complaints from surviving relatives, as it Australia Unmasked help them into the world,
the “traditional Czech specialities” on offer by getting is not particularly sympathetic to Stonehouse. From 9pm, BBC Two featuring three very
extremely drunk and having sex with his guide – an The Crown to The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, the Are there really no formal different birth stories
act that is, naturally, filmed by the Czech secret service question of what a drama inspired by real life owes class distinctions in per episode. This week’s
and used to blackmail him into spying for them. to its subjects, if it owes anything at all, will continue Australia? In this final include a waterbirth,
Stonehouse, a family man in an ordinary house, does to be the subject of debate. As a drama, though, the part of her investigation, a C-section and a
not seem particularly perturbed by this development. brief rise and astonishing fall of Stonehouse makes for Margolyes – who got her squeamish husband.
He sees it as a chance to inject a bit of excitement into enormously entertaining television. Australian citizenship a Ali Catterall
 Section:GDN 12 PaGe:11 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:01 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

•
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023 11

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 Channel 5 BBC Four

6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.15 Rip Off
Britain: Holidays (T) 10.0 Big
Little Crimes (T) 10.45 For
Love Or Money (T) (R) 11.15
Homes Under the Hammer
(T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) (R)
1.0 News (T) 1.30 Regional
News and Weather (T) 1.45
Doctors (T) 2.15 The Farmers’
Country Showdown (T) 3.0
Escape to the Country (T)
3.45 The Repair Shop (T)
4.30 Make It at Market (T)
5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0
News (T) 6.30 Regional News
and Weather (T) 7.0 The One
Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T)
6.30 The Farmers’ Country
Showdown (T) (R) 7.15 Make
It at Market (T) (R) 8.0 Sign
Zone: The Repair Shop at
Christmas (T) (R) 9.0 News
(T) 1.0 Tom Kerridge: Lose
Weight for Good (T) (R) 1.30
Saved and Remade (T) (R)
2.15 Carousel (Henry
King, 1956) (T) 4.15 The Real
Marigold Hotel (T) (R) 5.15
Flog It! (T) (R) 6.0 Richard
Osman’s House of Games
(T) 6.30 Take a Hike (T) 7.30
Saving Lives at Sea (T) (R)
6.0 Good Morning Britain (T)
9.0 Lorraine (T) 10.0 This
Morning (T) 12.30 Loose
Women (T) 1.30 News (T)
1.55 Local News and Weather
(T)2.0 Dickinson’s Real Deal
(T) 3.0 Lingo (T) 4.0 Tipping
Point (T) 5.0 The Chase (T)
6.0 Local News (T) 6.30
News and Weather (T) 7.30
Emmerdale (T)
6.15 Countdown (T) (R) 6.55
3rd Rock from the Sun (T)
(R) 7.45 Everybody Loves
Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier
(T) (R) 10.40 Undercover
Boss USA (T) (R) 11.35 News
(T) 11.40 Four in a Bed (T)
(R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0
A Place in the Sun (T) 4.0 A
New Life in the Sun (T) 5.0
Come Dine With Me: The
Professionals (T) (R) 6.0
Hollyoaks (T) (R) 7.0 News
(T)
6.0 Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine
(T) 12.45 Traffic Cops: On the
Edge (T) (R) 1.40 News (T)
1.45 Home and Away (T) (R)
2.15 Fatal Mind Games
(2022) (T) 4.0 Bargain-
Loving Brits in the Sun (T) 5.0
News (T) 6.0 Holiday Homes
in the Sun (T) 7.0 GPs: Behind
Closed Doors (T) 7.55 News
7.0 Great Continental Railway
(T)
Journeys (T) (R) Michael
braves a tour of Stockholm
from its rooftops. 7.30
Villages By the Sea (R) Ben
Robinson visits Bamburgh.

8.0 Waterloo Road (T) New
series. As a new term
begins, a peaceful protest
escalates into a riot, while
former pupils Donte and
Chlo are excited about their
daughter’s first day.
9.0 Silent Witness (T) Nikki
becomes more involved with
the ’Ndrangheta and Jack
discovers disturbing leads.
8.0 The Hairy Bikers Go Local
(T) New series. Dave and Si
bring together the best local
restaurants with the most
innovative local suppliers.
9.0 Miriam Margolyes: Australia
Unmasked (T) Miriam
explores how class and
money impacts the Fair Go,
and meets Australians from a
variety of backgrounds.
8.0 Coronation Street Chesney
has second thoughts about
getting married, and Roy is
left bewildered by his new
smartphone.
9.0 Stonehouse (T) John
Stonehouse, hiding out in
Melbourne, draws suspicion
from local police. Barbara
and Sheila fly to Australia to
confront the disappeared MP.
7.30 2022: The Year from Space
(T) Images of the world
filmed by satellites over the
course of 2022, including
footage of the war in Ukraine
and crowds returning to
cities in the wake of the
Covid lockdowns.
9.0 24 Hours in A&E (T) New
series. A 45-year-old comes
in after a fun run accident.
8.0 Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly
(T) Trainer Graeme Hall helps
a St Bernard that loves to
make a song and dance about
getting in the car.
9.0 Ben Fogle: New Lives in the
Wild Ben travels to the Sierra
Nevada mountains to meet
Mike Basich, a snowboarder
who left professional sport
to pursue a quieter life.
8.0 To the Manor Born (R) (T)
Audrey organises a protest
rally.
8.30 Sykes (T) (R) Hattie practises
first aid skills on her brother.
9.0 Hattie (T) (R) Ruth Jones
stars as Hattie Jacques in this
dramatisation of her secret
affair with a younger man in
the early 1960s, while still
married to John Le Mesurier.

10.0 News (T)
10.30 Regional News and Weather
10.40 The Woman in Black
(James Watkins, 2012) (T) A
lawyer visits a village to put
a deceased client’s affairs in
order. Horror, with Daniel
Radcliffe and Ciarán Hinds.
12.10 Have I Got News for You (T)
(R) 12.40 Weather for the
Week Ahead 12.45 News (T)
10.0 Detectorists (R) Andy and
Lance meet a history student.
10.30 Newsnight (T) Weather.
11.15 The Caribbean With Andi and
Miquita (T) (R) Andi Oliver
and her daughter Miquita
visit the West Indies.
12.15 My Old School (T) (R) 2.0
Sign Zone: Expedition Rhino
(T) (R) 2.45 The Traitors (T)
(R) 3.45 This Is BBC Two (T)
10.0 News (T)
10.30 Local News (T) Weather
10.45 Gordon, Gino & Fred Go
Greek (T) (R) The gang head
to Athens in a campervan.
11.55 Jonathan Ross’ New Year
Comedy Special (T) (R)
12.50 Shop: Ideal World 3.0
Dickinson’s Real Deal (T) (R)
3.50 Unwind With ITV (T)
5.05 Lingo (T) (R)
10.0 Belfast Midwives (T)
11.05 Emergency Helicopter
Medics (T) (R)
12.10 Murder in the Alps (R) 1.05
Travel Man: 96 Hours in Rio
(R) 2.0 The Simpsons (R) 2.25
Prince Andrew: The Musical
(R) 3.20 Kitchen Nightmares
USA (R) 4.10 Couples Come
Dine With Me (R) 5.05 Fill
Your House for Free (T) (R)
10.0 HMP Belmarsh: Maximum
Security (T) (R) A look inside
HMP Belmarsh prison.
12.05 Police Raids: Caught By
Surprise (T) (R) 1.0 The
Live Casino Show (T) 3.10
Casualty 24/7: Every Second
Counts (T) (R) 4.0 Get Your
Tatts Out (T) (R) 4.45 Divine
Designs (T) (R) 5.10 House
Doctor (T) (R)
10.25 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
(T) (R) Smiley seeks out an
invaluable friend.
11.15 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,
Spy (T) (R) George Smiley
remembers Kara.
12.0 Ireland to Sydney By Any
Means (T) (R) 1.0 Great
Continental Railway
Journeys (T) (R) 1.30 Villages
By the Sea (R) 2.0 Hattie (R)

Other channels Radio

BBC Three Hotel Hell 9.0 The Bad Boys II (2003) Sky Max Barrie to JRR Tolkien Radio 3 Radio 4 (5/8) 5.0 PM 5.54 (LW) Honeymoon (2/6) 11.30
7.0pm Hungry for It Goldbergs 10.0 The Comedy thriller sequel, 6.0am Bondi Rescue 8.0 The World in a 6.30am Breakfast 9.0 6.0am Today 9.0 Shipping Forecast 5.57 The War of the Worlds
8.0 Young MasterChef Big Bang Theory 1.0 starring Will Smith and 8.0 DC’s Legends of Painting 9.15 The Ghost Essential Classics 12.0 Rethink Climate. Amol Weather 6.0 Six O’Clock (2/6) 12.0 Machines
8.30 Hot Cakes 9.0 The Karate Kid Martin Lawrence. 11.55 Tomorrow 9.0 The of Richard Harris 11.30 Composer of the Week: Rajan investigates the News 6.30 The Cold Like Me (2/10) 12.15
The Others (2001) (1984) 3.25 Modern You Were Never Blacklist 10.0 Supergirl Rothko: Pictures Must Be Max Richter (2/5) 1.0 attempts to combat Swedish Winter. Comedy, Black Eyed Girls (2/5)
10.40 My Left Nut Family 4.0 Brooklyn Really Here (2017) 11.0 NCIS: New Orleans Miraculous 12.45 Blue Radio 3 Lunchtime climate change. (2/5) by Danny Robins. (3/4) 12.30 Ed Reardon’s
12.10 Young MasterChef Nine-Nine 4.30 Brooklyn Psychological thriller, 1.0 Hawaii Five-0 2.0 Note Records: Beyond Concert. In the first of 9.45 (LW) Daily Service 7.0 The Archers 7.15 Week (5/6) 1.0 The Goon
12.40 Hungry for It 1.40 Nine-Nine 5.0 The Big starring Joaquin Phoenix. S.W.A.T 3.0 The Blacklist the Notes 2.40 King this week’s highlights 9.45 (FM) Book of Front Row 8.0 File on Show 1.30 Little Blighty
My Left Nut 3.10 Ellie Bang Theory 5.30 The 1.45 Come to 4.0 DC’s Legends of Rocker 4.35 Anarchy on from the Verbier Festival the Week: The Light 4 (1/11) 8.40 In Touch on the Down (2/5) 2.0
& Natasia 3.25 Young Big Bang Theory 6.0 The Daddy (2019) Comedy Tomorrow 5.0 Supergirl Thames 5.0 Music Icons: 2022, Sarah Walker We Carry. By Michelle 9.0 Inside Health 9.30 Who Goes There? (5/6)
MasterChef Big Bang Theory 6.30 thriller, starring Elijah 6.0 NCIS: New Orleans The New Orleans Sound presents Yefim Bronfman Obama. (2/5) 10.0 Rethink Climate (2/5) 2.30 No Commitments
The Big Bang Theory 7.0 Wood. 8.0 David Blaine: 5.30 Video Killed the playing Schumann and Woman’s Hour 11.0 9.59 Weather 10.0 The (6/6) 3.0 Little Dorrit
Dave Hollyoaks 7.30 Modern Beyond Magic 9.0 David Radio Star Bartók, and Augustin Science Stories. Lindsey World Tonight 10.45 (2/5) 4.0 Busman’s
6.0am Teleshopping Family 8.0 The Great ITV2 Blaine: Real Or Magic? Dumay performing Fitzharris tells the Book at Bedtime: Lessons Honeymoon (2/6) 4.30
7.30 Storage Hunters UK Celebrity Bake Off for 6.0am World’s Funniest 10.0 Wolfe 11.0 We’re Sky Atlantic Beethoven. (1/4) 2.0 story of 19th-century in Chemistry (2/10) 11.0 The War of the Worlds
8.25 Fast Justice 9.25 Stand Up to Cancer 9.0 Videos 6.35 Totally Here 12.10 The Russell 6.0am Storm City 7.0 Afternoon Concert. physician Ignaz Small Scenes. Sketch (2/6) 5.0 Machines Like
Fast Justice 10.30 Rick Gogglebox 10.0 Naked Bonkers Guinness World Howard Hour 1.05 Road Richard E Grant’s Hotel Mao Fujita performs Semmelweis. (3/5) 11.30 series. (1/4) 11.30 Tim Me (2/10) 5.15 Black
Stein’s Cornwall 11.0 Attraction 11.05 First Records 7.0 Secret Crush Wars 2.0 Hold the Front Secrets 7.55 Gomorrah Schumann, and as Out of the Ordinary: Holy Key’s Late Night Poetry Eyed Girls (2/5) 5.30 Ed
Rick Stein: From Venice Dates 12.10 Gogglebox 8.0 Dress to Impress Page 3.0 Hawaii Five-0 11.10 True Blood 1.20 soloist, Rachmaninov’s Relics. Jolyon Jenkins Programme (R) 12.0 Reardon’s Week (5/6)
to Istanbul 12.0 Special 1.15 Gogglebox 2.20 9.0 In for a Penny 9.30 4.0 S.W.A.T 5.0 Highway True Detective 3.30 ever popular Second investigates the trade News and Weather 12.30 6.0 The Goon Show
Ops: Crime Squad UK Naked Attraction In for a Penny 10.0 Patrol Gomorrah 5.45 True Piano Concerto. 5.0 in supposed pieces of Book of the Week: The 6.30 Little Blighty on
1.0 Special Ops: Crime 3.15 First Dates 4.10 Celebrity Supermarket Blood 7.55 Game of New Generation Artists. the True Cross. (1/3) Light We Carry (2/5) the Down (2/5) 7.0 Jake
Squad UK 2.0 Top Gear Ramsay’s Hotel Hell 5.0 Sweep 11.0 Alan Sky Arts Thrones 9.0 Big Little Masabane Cecilia 12.0 News 12.01 (LW) 12.48 Shipping Forecast Yapp’s Unwinding (2/20)
USA Special 3.0 Top Gear The Goldbergs Carr’s Epic Gameshow 6.0am Ludovico Einaudi: Lies 10.05 Landscapers Rangwanasha sings Shipping Forecast 12.04 1.0 As BBC World Service 10.0 The Cold Swedish
Botswana Special 4.0 QI 12.0 Secret Crush 1.0 Elements – Live 7.15 La 11.10 The Tunnel: Barber’s Knoxville: Call You and Yours 12.57 5.20 Shipping Forecast Winter (2/4) 10.30
XL 5.0 Taskmaster 6.0 Film4 Dress to Impress 2.0 Dolce Vita: The Music Sabotage 12.10 Souls Summer of 1915. 6.15 Weather 1.0 The World at 5.30 News Briefing 5.43 Cabin Pressure (2/6) 11.0
Taskmaster 7.0 Richard 11.0am Night Family Fortunes 3.05 of Italian Cinema 9.0 2.10 The Baby 2.50 Words and Music: Out One 1.45 The Crowning Prayer for the Day 5.45 My Teenage Diary (5/6)
Osman’s House of Games Passage (1957) Western, Chuck 4.0 One Tree Tales of the Unexpected Game of Thrones 4.0 of the Mouths of Babes of Everest. The story of Farming Today 5.58 11.30 The Celebrity
7.40 Would I Lie to You? starring James Stewart. Hill 5.0 The OC 6.0 9.55 Alfred Hitchcock Storm City 5.0 Richard E (R) 7.30 Proms at John Hunt and his team’s Tweet of the Day Voicemail Show (2/2)
8.20 QI 9.0 QI XL 10.0 12.50 The Hound Celebrity Catchphrase Presents 10.25 Alfred Grant’s Hotel Secrets Christmas 2022. Daniel Everest expedition. (2/5) 11.45 Guy Browning’s
Have I Got a Bit More Old of the Baskervilles 7.0 Ninja Warrior UK Hitchcock Presents Harding conducts the 2.0 The Archers (R) Radio 4 Extra Small Talk (2/2) 12.0
News for You 11.0 Live (1959) Sherlock Holmes 8.0 Superstore 8.30 10.55 Discovering: Basil Berlin Philharmonic 2.15 Release. Drama. By 6.0am Busman’s Little Dorrit (2/5) 1.0
at the Moth Club 12.0 mystery, starring Superstore 9.0 Kavos Rathbone 11.50 Voices in Schnittke’s Viola Matt Hartley. 3.0 Short Honeymoon (2/6) 6.30 Busman’s Honeymoon
Mock the Week 12.40 Peter Cushing. 2.35 Weekender 10.0 Family of Ireland 1.0 Tales of Concerto and Bruckner’s Cuts: The River. Josie The War of the Worlds (2/6) 1.30 The War of
Would I Lie to You? 1.20 The Mouse That Guy 10.30 Family the Unexpected 2.0 Symphony No 4. (R) 10.0 Long presents short (2/6) 7.0 Machines Like the Worlds (2/6) 2.0
Taskmaster 2.30 Richard Roared (1959) Comedy, Guy 11.0 Family Guy Boswell & Johnson’s Free Thinking: Katherine documentaries on the Me (2/10) 7.15 Black Machines Like Me (2/10)
Osman’s House of Games starring Peter Sellers. 11.30 American Dad! Scottish Road Trip 3.0 Mansfield and Mavis flow of water. 3.30 A Eyed Girls (2/5) 7.30 Ed 2.15 Black Eyed Girls
3.0 Ladhood 3.25 4.15 The Pink 12.0 American Dad! Portrait Artist of the Year Gallant 10.45 The Essay: Thorough Examination Reardon’s Week (5/6) (2/5) 2.30 Ed Reardon’s
Storage Hunters UK 4.0 Panther (1963) Crime 12.30 Superstore 1.0 2022 4.0 Discovering: Behind the Veil – The With Drs Chris and Xand 8.0 The Goon Show Week (5/6) 3.0 The Goon
Teleshopping comedy, starring Peter Superstore 1.30 Don’t Jon Voight 5.0 Tales Story of Irish Nuns. Olivia – Can I Change? Learning 8.30 Little Blighty on Show 3.30 Little Blighty
Sellers and David Niven. Hate the Playaz 2.15 of the Unexpected O’Leary reflects on the to Listen. Chris considers the Down (2/5) 9.0 on the Down (2/5) 4.0
E4 6.30 Now You Totally Bonkers Guinness 5.30 Tales of the You Were education she received the cause of his many Who Goes There? (5/6) Who Goes There? (5/6)
6.0am Hollyoaks 6.30 See Me 2 (2016) Crime World Records 2.45 Unexpected 6.0 Alfred Never Really from nuns. (2/5) 11.0 arguments with Xand. 9.30 No Commitments 4.30 No Commitments
Hollyoaks 7.0 Ramsay’s thriller sequel, starring Unwind With ITV 3.0 Hitchcock Presents 7.0 Night Tracks (R) 12.30 (5/8) 4.0 In the Name (6/6) 10.0 Little Dorrit (6/6) 5.0 Little Dorrit
Hotel Hell 8.0 Ramsay’s Jesse Eisenberg. 9.0 Teleshopping Wonderland: From JM Here, Film4 Through the Night (R) Of 4.30 Great Lives (2/5) 11.0 Busman’s (3/5)
Section:GDN 12 PaGe:12 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 17:03 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

TODAY’S PET CORNER ANSWER CAT

12
Puzzles
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 January 2023

Yesterday’s Quick crossword no 16,430

solutions 1 2 3 4 5

Wordsearch Across Down 6

1 Heavy metal fan? (10) 1 Precipitation (5)
7 Provider of cover (7) 2 Taj Mahal location (4) 7 8 9
8 Bitter and sharp (5) 3 Golfer’s sub-par performance (6)
10 Great merriment (4) 4 Close shave (4,4)
11 Coffee-flavoured liqueur (3,5) 5 Ancient country of central Italy,
13 Tool for cutting timber (6) centre of the Etruscan civilisation
10 11
15 What Madrileños call their (7)
country (6) 6 1958 Elvis musical drama film (4,6)
17 Contestant not considered 9 Someone who reacts 12
likely to win (8) overemotionally (5,5)
18 Boyfriend (4) 12 Roman Catholic church with 13 14 15
21 Boredom (5) special privileges (8)
22 Swiss cheese (7) 14 Funnel-shaped flower (7)
16
23 Blow with the side of the hand 16 Stingy (6)
(6,4) 19 Ogle (3,2)
Solution no 16,429 17 18 19
20 Either of two US presidents (4)
G E T AMO V E ON
U S A E S F 20
O C C U P I E R AWR Y
C N L B K A
I P A D MA H A TMA 21 22
M E T E
T H I N S K I N N E D
O P M O
M I M I C R Y O V I D
L G E B E R 23
B E L L S K U L L C A P
T O S L L K
G O F O R B R O K E
Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83. Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus your phone company’s access charge.
Service supplied by ATS. Call 0330 333 6946 for customer service (charged at standard rate).
To buy puzzle books, visit guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.

Sudoku

Sudoku Suguru Wordsearch

Medium. Fill the grid so that each row, column and Fill the grid so that each square Can you find 15 words associated
3x3 box contains the numbers 1-9. Printable version at in an outlined block contains a with art in the grid? Words can run
theguardian.com/sudoku digit. A block of 2 squares contains forwards, backwards, vertically or
the digits 1 and 2, a block of three diagonally, but always in a straight,
squares contains the digits 1, 2 unbroken line.
and 3, and so on. No same digit
appears in neighbouring squares,
not even diagonally.
Word wheel
OVERPOWER

Suguru

Word wheel Pet corner

Find as many words as What does the character
possible using the letters of Ruth call her pet cat in
in the wheel. Each must Robert Icke’s The Doctor?
use the central letter a. Charlie
and at least two others. b. Cat
Letters may be used only c. Sami
once. You may not use d. Roger
plurals, foreign words or Answer top right
proper nouns. There is at
least one nine-letter word
to be found. TARGET:
Excellent-45. Good-38.
Average-28.
 Section:GDN 1J PaGe:1 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:35
Do BBC bosses have any plans that aren’t just cut, cut, cut? Roger Bolton, page 3
Greta Thunberg on machismo and the fate of the planet Rebecca Solnit, page 4
Barbara Walters, pioneering American TV journalist Obituaries, page 6
The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
Opinion
and ideas
Why learning
I
n the autumn, I started to learn Ukrainian.
After a reporting trip to the country, I felt that
on my return I really should try to be less than
totally linguistically helpless. The Ukrainian
the language
Institute in London offers group and individual
lessons remotely with highly qualified teachers
but, perversely perhaps, I decide I would
like to learn from an instructor based in the
shows solidarity
country itself. I am recommended a friend of a friend,
an internal refugee from the capital now living in
Ivano-Frankivsk, western Ukraine.
Olya Makar, who manages to make her Zoom
with Ukraine
lessons fun and exacting, is carrying on her work
despite many setbacks. Owing to Russian missile
strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, at present
she has electricity only for three two-hour blocks a day
– supposedly according to a schedule, but one that can
Charlotte shift unexpectedly – and a patchy internet connection.
Higgins We reluctantly have to cancel a couple of sessions.
Like most Ukrainians I have met, she greets such
problems with bracing realism; things could easily
get more difficult, she says. “After each attack it’s
getting worse and worse,” she says. “But we will find
new ways to adapt.” I also tune into the Ukrainian
Lessons podcast, in which a cheerful and charming
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
G2
Daily
pullout
life &
arts
section
Inside
voice belonging to teacher Anna Ohoiko guides me ILLUSTRATION:
through the early steps of learning a language: saying R FRESSON
hello, describing family, and eating out. The first
seasons of the podcast were made in 2016, and there’s
a bittersweet feeling in them of time-travelling to a
different Ukraine, with Ohoiko describing carefree
trips to the market and her favourite park in Kyiv
– which was hit by Russian cruise missile attacks
when I was in the city in October.
Then there is the language app, Duolingo, which,
to my surprise, has a Ukrainian course. I imagined
Duolingo Ukrainian may be something of a minority
sport – but last month, the app’s data crunchers
reported that it was Duolingo’s fastest-growing
language of the year in the UK, with users rising by
1,254% – and that it had grown by a remarkable 2,229%
in the Republic of Ireland. In the UK, there was a spike
for Ukrainian learning in February and March, and then
another in May, when the system finally spluttered
into gear and Ukrainians began to arrive in substantial 
numbers, the curve in the graph a reflection of the Charlotte
inefficiency of Britain’s refugee scheme. Higgins
The overall trend is similar in other is the Guardian’s
countries receiving refugees – Poland,
Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech  chief culture
writer
Section:GDN 1J PaGe:2 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
2
Why learning the language
shows solidarity with Ukraine
Charlotte Higgins
 Continued from front
Republic all saw spikes in Ukrainian
 learning last year. But there have been
sharp rises in Japan, Vietnam and Latin
America too, and “in just about every country on
Earth” that uses the app, according to Cindy Blanco,
one of Duolingo’s learning scientists, many of them
receiving few or no refugees. Around the world,
1.3 million people started learning the language
on Duolingo in 2022, she says.
In short: people across the globe have been learning
Ukrainian to express their solidarity with the victims
of Vladimir Putin’s aggression. At the same time, the
growth of Russian has slowed, which, in relation to
the rate of uplift in app users overall, amounts to a
decline. In a delicious irony, Putin himself is behind
this extraordinary own goal in soft diplomacy terms,
since he is indirectly responsible for the very presence
of the Ukrainian language on the app: in 2014, in the
wake of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, the US’s Peace
Corps withdrew its volunteers from the country,
freeing up some of the staff to pursue individual
projects. It was one of them, Iryna Krupska, who
worked with Duolingo to develop a Ukrainian course,
T
as well as an English course for Ukrainian speakers.
here are many reasons to learn a
language: school, university, work,
relationships, ancestry, the prospect
of holidays and travel. Sometimes,
though, the reason is political,
since language and politics walk in
lock step. Ukrainian was audible
in TV footage of the invasion; it
was heard when President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s
daily addresses were broadcast round the world. It
became swiftly clear for those following the war that
the language itself was at stake in the conflict. Putin’s
obsession with Ukraine hangs on his false conviction
that the country exists only as an appendage
of Russia and has no identity of its own; many
Ukrainians have been dropping Russian in favour of
speaking Ukrainian as a symbol of resistance.
Ohoiko tells me she’s seen numbers for her podcast
surge – by 600% on Spotify, for instance, while her
Ukrainian Lessons’ Facebook group has grown from
having a couple of thousand active users before
February’s invasion to 10,000 now. When I confess
to her that a small part of me feels Russian would be
a more “useful” language to learn, more adaptable
to many countries in the former Soviet Union, she
tells me that one of the main reasons she set up her
podcast was her certainty that Russian would enter
a long-term decline, in her country and others.
“I’ve always felt it has been a generational question,”
she says. “I hoped that when I was old and retired, and
Ukraine was developing towards democratic values
and European integration, that Russian wouldn’t be as
strong as it used to be in Ukraine. Since independence
there has been a slow move towards Ukrainian, but
now it’s become much faster.”
Ukrainian is not straightforward for those who do
not already speak a Slavic tongue. I myself am under
no illusions: if I can say a few words and order my
dinner in Ukrainian, I’ll be doing just fine. But in my
case too, studying the language goes way beyond the
practical. It makes me feel a connection with friends in
Ukraine, and draws me towards a cultural landscape
I’ve been reporting on. I feel closer to the country
when I practise the language, whether it’s because of
my teacher’s struggles to keep going with her work,
or Ukrainian Lessons’ social media posts highlighting
vocabulary that, says Ohoiko, “we are hearing every
day on the news and matter a lot to us now – words
for air raids and missiles, different types of weapon,
ways of describing the energy crisis”.
I feel small shots of triumph, too – like when I read
my first poem in Ukrainian, Vasyl Symonenko’s glorious
You know that you are human? (and I feel a chill when
I learn he died in 1963 aged 28, after being beaten up by
police). One day, though, I want to be one of those who
learn in order to increase their pleasure in holidaying in
a normal country – when I can raise a glass of Ukrainian
red wine on the peaceful shores of the Black Sea.
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:36
Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust № 54,857
‘Comment is free… but facts are sacred’ CP Scott
Afghanistan
As the country falls apart,
the Taliban care only
about punishing women
The Taliban’s relentless campaign against women is
not only a matter of rights, but of survival. It is not
only cruel and oppressive, but deadly. In a country
already on its knees, where 97% of the population
live in poverty, two-thirds need humanitarian
assistance, 20 million face acute hunger and
parents sell kidneys to feed their families, it has
made life still more desperate. By banning women
from working for NGOs, they are denying essential,
life-saving services to women and children.
Almost all the large aid agencies have suspended
operations and the United Nations has paused some
“time-critical” programmes. Major world powers
have urged the Taliban to immediately reverse their
“reckless and dangerous” decision, while UN agency
chiefs described female staff as key to every aspect of
the humanitarian response.
In many cases, these staff – who number in the tens
of thousands – are also the only breadwinners in their
households. Denying them their salaries ensures that
women, children (and, incidentally, men too) will
starve. The Taliban’s earlier decision to bar women
from universities – and reportedly even primary
education – means that no more female doctors or
teachers will be trained. Teenage girls have already
been kept out of school for almost a year and a half.
The Taliban strove to create the impression of a
more moderate “Taliban 2.0” before their return to
power, promising not to repeat the cruelties of the
1990s regime. But the new Taliban look more and
Economics
Britain cannot afford to
have wasted decades of
excessive unemployment
The misguided attempts by some central banks
to reduce inflation by raising interest rates and
generating unemployment seem to be about
credibility. Their reputations as anti-inflation fighters
must be preserved despite the heavy cost. Even
when the Nobel laureate and prominent monetarist
Franco Modigliani renounced this theory in 2000,
central banks continued to follow the creed he
abandoned. More pain is being inflicted on the public
through rate rises while the evidence stacks up that
this is unnecessary suffering.
Last October, the Peterson Institute for International
Economics produced a paper looking at 11 advanced
economies and said the “little noticed dark side” of
low inflation before the Covid pandemic was that
“unemployment was almost continuously higher than
needed to keep inflation low. Unless central bankers
change their economic models, the world is likely to
return to chronically excessive unemployment in the
years after the [current] inflation surge.” The problem
is that central bankers see economies running hotter
than they actually are – and hike borrowing costs when
there is no reason to do so.
The institute says that even when booms occurred
– the biggest were in Spain and Italy – “there was no
increase in … inflation”. It goes on to recommend that
if inflation does not return quickly to their 2% target,
“central banks should not … risk recessions in order to
return to 2%”. Instead, the authors say, inflation targets
ought to be relaxed. This heresy is very good advice.
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
more like the old one. If there are more moderate
figures in the ranks, they are unable to prevail.
Last month, there was the first public execution
since their return to power. Women have been
among those punished in public floggings. If
the Taliban’s priorities were not so horrific, they
would be bizarre: this viciousness appears to be
all they care about, despite the country’s parlous
state in every possible regard.
Relations with Islamabad are breaking down
as cross-border attacks by the Pakistani Taliban
(TTP) increase. In December, members of the TTP
– separate to but allied with the Afghan Taliban
– overpowered guards at a counter-terrorism
facility in Pakistan and seized control. As the
security situation deteriorates, Islamic State has
claimed responsibility for attacks on the Pakistani
and Russian embassies in Kabul. The Chinese
ambassador ordered all nationals to leave the
country after gunmen attacked a hotel used by
Chinese businessmen. These developments are not
merely a diplomatic problem for the Taliban; hopes
of income to help replace the vanished foreign
aid that shored up the country for so long have
disappeared. Now the last props are being removed
as aid operations halt, at terrible cost.
In these grim times, women have demonstrated
extraordinary courage and resilience in challenging
the Taliban’s harsh rule. Men have taken a stand
beside them. They deserve not only admiration,
but support. The UK did extremely poorly at
evacuating Afghans before Kabul fell last year.
As of early December, not one person had been
accepted and evacuated under the Home Office’s
Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which was
launched in January for those at risk because they
had worked for or were affiliated with the British
government. Afghans, and especially those brave
enough to challenge this regime, need more than
words from the British government.
Unfortunately, many central bankers are too stuck
in their destructive ways to accept it.
The Bank of England raised interest rates for the
ninth time in a row last month. While inflation hurts
the poorest most, it is predicted to be temporary.
There is a danger of long-term damage to the
economy by overtightening. Last September, the
Office for National Statistics looked at measuring
unemployment accurately. When it considered a
more natural understanding of what it means to
be unemployed, it calculated a UK jobless rate of
about 7% – almost double the official count. High
unemployment is such a waste of resources that
no one interested in efficiency can be complacent
about it. When he recanted, Modigliani admitted
that “unemployment is due to lack of aggregate
demand. This is mainly the outcome of erroneous
macroeconomic policies.” What are the right ones?
Jens van ’t Klooster at Amsterdam University thinks
high interest rates are about ending the “failed
experiment” of quantitative easing rather than
fighting inflation. But that seems like jumping out
of the frying pan into the fire.
The economist Bill Mitchell, at Kyoto University,
suggests we ought to be watching the Bank of Japan.
In December, the Japanese central bank’s decision to
allow its 10-year government debt yield to fluctuate
half a percentage point both above and below
its 0% target – twice as much as before – had free
marketers predicting “a period of tightening”. But as
Prof Mitchell observed, it was a move to restore the
capacity of Japanese firms to issue corporate bonds
at reasonable rates. The Bank of Japan believes that
the current bout of inflation is transitory and doesn’t
want to risk damaging economic growth, and record
prime-age employment levels, by hiking rates.
Seeking the right exchange rate and level of nominal
growth to avoid a downturn, its policy is out of step
for all the right reasons. This, as Prof Mitchell points
out, makes for a very different country indeed.
 Section:GDN 1J PaGe:3 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 18:38
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian •
Opinion
D
Do BBC bosses
o we still think public service
broadcasting matters? For those
of us who do, these are worrying
times. “The public service
have any plans
broadcasting system is undoubtedly
facing an existential threat,”
warns the former chair of ITV
and much else, Peter Bazalgette.
that aren’t just
ITV, he reveals, has not yet decided to reapply for a
new public service broadcasting licence because it
does not know what the terms will be. He and many
others await the new broadcasting bill.
cut, cut, cut?
It now seems unlikely that the bill will propose
privatising Channel 4. But what next? Who knows.
Could someone please offer an inspiring vision of
what its contribution to public service broadcasting
should be over the next 40 years? Does anyone
Roger have a vision of the future to compare with that
which Jeremy Isaacs, its founding chief executive,
Bolton displayed all those years ago?
And then there is the BBC, the public service
mothership just turned 100 years old. But what is
its vision for the next decade, let alone the next
century? Two baronesses hit the nail on the head
very forcibly in a recent House of Lords debate. “It
remains unclear what the BBC wants to be, beyond
being a significant player in this global media world,”
said the Conservative peer Lady (Tina) Stowell, chair
of the communications committee, who once worked
for the BBC. She wanted to know “what it will do
more of … continue to do … stop doing”.
Lady (Dido) Harding, also a Conservative peer,
fired a warning shot across the bows of Broadcasting
House, saying, “No investment proposal should be
approved without a compelling long-term vision and
plan.” The implication was clear, she hadn’t seen one.
But then, neither have the rest of us. It’s a creative
vision thing: is there such a thing at and for the BBC ?
There is certainly a business vision, as there
should be. The BBC board is now top-heavy with
bankers and business people. The chairman, Richard
Sharp, tutored Rishi Sunak at Goldman Sachs. The
corporation’s future as a big, international business is
pretty secure. A commercial version of it could survive
without the licence fee, but is that what we want?
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
3
No one voted
for cuts to
news, local radio and
the World Service.
The slogan ‘It’s your
BBC’ is in danger of
ringing hollow
Contrary to what the Daily Mail constantly
argues, the BBC is now a very efficient business, not
least because of the herculean efforts of its director
general, Tim Davie, who, while cleverly blunting
government allegations of bias, has been faced with
a 30% cut in real spending power. With inflation
rampant, further cuts are in the offing, which will
follow already announced cuts in essential elements
of its public service offering, including news, local
radio and the World Service.
But no one voted for that. All this is happening
without the people who pay for the corporation, the
licence-fee payers, being consulted. The oft-used
slogan “It’s your BBC” is in danger of ringing hollow.
The BBC has never been very good on
consultation or accountability, as I know from my
many years presenting Radio 4’s Feedback, where
all too often there was little feedback. When it came
to inviting executives on to the programme, the
press office would often intervene, saying, “We
don’t think this is the right time to say something
on this subject.” I would reply that the right time was
whenever the listener wanted an answer.
First lady When it came to inviting presenters and
Olena Zelenska producers on to Feedback, requests also had to go
speaks to BBC through the press office, and if an interview took
journalists place a press officer would usually be present, at their
in Kyiv, Ukraine, insistence. The good producers, and there are a lot
November 2022 of them, would roll their eyes at being chaperoned.
PHOTOGRAPH: And I got the impression that some press officers
D
ABACA/PA IMAGES were a bit embarrassed by their role as “minders”.
avie has said that he is
determined to improve
accountability, and I am sure
he is sincere, but he then presses
on with his business plan – and
those cuts – as though he were
running a commercial business,
not this much-loved, publicly
owned, publicly financed institution.
Of course, someone has to take decisions, we can’t
all vote on what has to go, but surely we would have
a right to expect the ability to discuss priorities? For
instance, Radio 4 Extra may go online only, thus
depriving some older listeners of a service they
greatly value. They had no say in this process. BBC
director of speech radio Mohit Bakaya says, rather
mystifyingly, that the online move of 4 Extra is “not
a done deal”. Maybe protests could tip the balance.
BBC Four, which originally commissioned the
wonderful series Detectorists, is also to go online
and become an archive channel only. Again, no
consultation was undertaken before that decision
was taken. BBC local radio is being decimated,
despite its role in serving so many communities.
Truly, to use Bazalgette’s phrase, this is an
existential threat, and with a new year we need
new thinking: pause the BBC cuts now, postpone
 the debate on the privatisation of Channel 4 and
Roger Bolton ensure that ITV remains a public service broadcaster,
is a former while conducting a proper cross-party inquiry
BBC executive into the future of the public service media and
and journalist. how to pay for it. We have, by accident and design,
He presents created a landscape and a tradition of public service
the podcast broadcasting in this country that is very special.
Roger Bolton’s We must be vigilant of it. It would be careless, not
Beeb Watch to say criminal, to let it slip away.
Section:GDN 1J PaGe:4 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
4 Opinion
Thunberg on
machismo and
the planet’s fate
Rebecca
Solnit
O
n 27 December the former
kickboxer, professional
misogynist and online
entrepreneur Andrew Tate, 36,
sent a boastfully hostile tweet to
climate activist Greta Thunberg,
19, about his sports cars. “Please
provide your email address so
I can send a complete list of my car collection and
their respective enormous emissions,” he wrote.
He was probably hoping to enhance his status by
mocking her climate commitment. Instead, she
burned the macho guy to a crisp in nine words.
He went looking for attention, and he got it. Cars
are routinely tokens of virility and status for men,
and the image accompanying his tweet of him
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:42
pumping gas into one of his vehicles, coupled with
his claims about their “enormous emissions”, had
unsolicited dick pic energy. Thunberg seemed aware
of that when she replied: “yes, please do enlighten me.
email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”
Her reply gained traction to quickly become one of
the top 10 tweets of all time. As I write, it’s been liked
3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000 or so,
and the exchange became the topic of countless news
stories around the world, from India to Australia.
There’s a direct association between machismo
and the refusal to recognise and respond appropriately
to the climate catastrophe. It’s a result of versions of
masculinity in which selfishness and indifference
– individualism taken to its extremes – are defining
characteristics, and therefore caring and acting for
the collective good is their antithesis.
“Men resist green behavior as unmanly” is the
headline for a 2017 story on the phenomenon.
Machismo and climate denial, as well as alliance
with the fossil fuel industry, is a package deal for the
right, from the “rolling coal” trucks whose plumes of
dark smoke are meant as a sneer at climate causes to
Republicans in the US who have long opposed nearly
all climate action (and are recipients of oil money).
Thunberg’s takedown clearly stung Tate – who,
10 hours later, tweeted out a video in which he tried to
reassert his masculinity by blathering on in a dressing
gown, with a cigar and a pizza box as props. Not long
after that, he and his brother Tristan were arrested
by Romanian authorities linked to allegations of sex
trafficking. Tate is a troll and a creep; he’s also alleged
to be a pimp and rapist. He denies all wrongdoing.
Tate is part of a huge network of far-right men
online and he’d been banned from most social media
platforms. Elon Musk’s Twitter let him back on not long
before the tweet that was seen around the world.
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
He was hoping to promote himself with his sneer
at Thunberg; he managed to raise his visibility just
in time to make news of his arrest and the charges
international news. By at least one account, the pizza
box in his video helped cue Romanian police to his
location, although the authorities have thrown doubt
on that. Still, had he not harassed Thunberg, his arrest
and the charges would not have been major news. He
went looking for attention, and he got it.
Thunberg drily tweeted on the 30th: “this is what
happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes,”
mocking her own earnest public image. As I write, it has
2.6m likes. Beyond the entertainment value of what
transpired over the past few days is a serious reminder
of the intersection between machismo, misogyny,
hostility to climate action and climate science, and
the dank underworld of rightwing characters like Tate
recruiting white boys and young men to their views.

Rebecca Solnit
is a Guardian
US columnist
and the author
of Orwell’s
Roses and
Recollections of
My Nonexistence Greta Thunberg PHOTOGRAPH: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/GETTY
 Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Established 1906
Country diary
Willington,
County Durham
The growl of high street traffic had
barely faded as we walked uphill,
away from the town centre, when
we saw the kestrel. She was sitting
on a leafless branch of a cherry
tree, feathers fluffed, her back
turned towards the icy wind. She
seemed reluctant to fly as we drew
closer. Cautiously sidling around
her, we could see that her pale
eyelids were closed; dozing in the
early morning sunshine, perhaps
digesting her last meal. Then her
head swivelled and our eyes met;
mirrors of polished jet glared down
at us. A shimmy of plumage, to
smooth ruffled feathers, and she
was away, chestnut wings scything
across the grassy hillside.
Willington grew around a
coalmine that closed in 1967. For
120 years, a jagged mountain of
colliery waste, known locally as
Twin Peaks, stood on this spot.
Earlier generations called it Dante’s,
a reference, some say, to coal spoil
tips’ potential to spontaneously
combust and become an inferno.
Many would have experienced
hellish conditions, hewing coal
in labyrinthine mine tunnels
under it. The miner and poet
Richard Watson’s words – “Large
rubbish heaps along the hillside
show / the vast extent of hollow
ground below”– chiselled into a
commemorative stone, testify
to their toil.
In the early 70s, Twin Peaks was
reduced to a gently regraded grassy
hill, creating an open public space,
a pleasant place to spend a morning
watching birds or even, in summer,
enjoying a picnic, just a 10-minute
walk from the town centre. Now
it’s known as Willington Woods.
Oaks and hawthorns were planted
by community groups and
schoolchildren in 2005, more trees
added later by a local hospice. This
morning, a noisy flock of fieldfares
plundered a fine crop of haws.
Much of the hillside remains open
grassland, clothed in winter with a
deep thatch of dead grass, riddled
with tunnels of field voles; a land of
opportunity for a hunting kestrel.
From our kestrel’s-eye view on
the hilltop, we had a panoramic view
of the Wear valley beyond. Below,
in the town, sunlight glinted from
solar panels on house roofs that
would once have been wreathed in
coal smoke, rising from chimneys
on winter mornings like this.
Phil Gates
When sending a letter, please
include a postal address, a reference
to the article and a phone number.
We may edit letters. Submission
and publication of letters is subject
to our terms and conditions: see
theguardian.com/letters-terms
•
Letters
Sunak’s shelter incident
exposes our prejudices
When I first saw the headlines
about Rishi Sunak asking a
homeless man if he was in
business, I shared the view that
it showed how out of touch he
was with reality – that’s what
headlines do. The thoughtful
article by Simon Hattenstone and
Daniel Lavelle made me rethink and
recognise my own prejudices and
preconceptions, which I usually
try to be aware of and compensate
for (When Rishi met Dean: a lesson
for us all, 29 December).
Homeless people are drawn
from many walks of life, yet we
persist in thinking that they must
be people of low capacity, with
poor prospects, who are somehow
responsible in some way for their
homelessness. The writers are right
when they say: “The fact that this
conversation became a source of
hilarity for so many people says
more about us and our prejudices
than it does about Sunak.”
I also wonder if the reaction
had an element of people thinking
that Sunak isn’t really one of us
and doesn’t quite understand
social norms. Thanks, Simon
and Daniel, for reminding me
that we are all guilty of making
My uncle’s role in Polish codebreaking efforts
Robert Gawłowski properly drew
attention to the cracking of the
Enigma code by Marian Rejewski
and other Polish mathematicians
from the University of Poznań
(Letters, 21 December); and
Michael Saunders (Letters,
29 December) pointed out that
there is a memorial to the Polish
contribution at Bletchley Park. The
two other members of Rejewski’s
team also deserve a mention:
my uncle, Henryk Zygalski, and
Jerzy Różycki. Rejewski, Zygalski
and Różycki left Poland in
September 1939 to continue their
codebreaking in France and north
I have skills and experience but can’t get a job
I read with interest the letter
from Chloe Jepps (27 December)
regarding where “Britain’s missing
workforce” has gone. I was made
redundant in July 2021. I am in
my mid-50s and had, until then,
been working since my late teens
in various offices as a PA/secretary/
administrator in London and
the home counties. I have been
for more than 25 job interviews
(mostly face to face) since being
made redundant, but despite
receiving positive feedback, I
have not had a single job offer.
Sent at 2/1/2023 18:21
assumptions about people, even
when we think we do not.
Meher Pocha
Letchworth, Hertfordshire
• If our prime minister believes that
business and finance careers are
possible for homeless people, then
his vision is one I would like to see
realised. If Rishi Sunak takes the
time to engage with disadvantaged
communities, then mocking him
for his efforts is counterproductive –
how else is he to rectify his perceived
lack of understanding? I think the
debate could more fruitfully centre
on access to opportunities for the
homeless and disadvantaged.
Barbara Loon
Horncastle, Lincolnshire
• I run a food bank and one of our
key concerns is operating with
respect. I agree that Rishi Sunak
wasn’t excruciating – he was
responding without assumptions,
which is a key tenet in maintaining
dignity. I am not a big Tory fan,
but in this he was right. Presuming
a homeless person couldn’t
possibly be in business illuminates
preconceptions, instantly writes
that person off and shows a lack of
Africa, then travelled via Spain and
Gibraltar to Britain in 1943.
Różycki sadly died at sea on the
way to the UK, so with Rejewski’s
return to Poland, my uncle became
the only one of the team to remain
in Britain. He was billeted to my
aunt, Bertha Blofield. After she
was widowed in 1948, he became
her lifelong partner. Henryk
became a British citizen, and
taught mathematics and statistics
at Battersea Polytechnic (later the
University of Surrey). He never
returned to Poland, but kept in
touch with Rejewski by phone.
Henryk died in 1978 but, prior
I have not retired – I do not want
to, nor can I afford to. I have tried
to get temporary and part-time
work, have not asked to work
from home, nor do I need any
flexibility – for example, to care
for an elderly parent.
So while I am not arrogant
enough to think that every job
interview should have led to a
job offer, I am baffled about what
British companies want. They
say that they need experienced
staff. Well, I am experienced,
flexible and adaptable, so why
 guardian.letters@theguardian.com
 @guardianletters
understanding in who is hungry
in our society today. Hunger isn’t
a class issue any longer.
Fiona Dalgleish
Peebles, Scottish Borders
• It’s good to see some considered
comment on this farcical fuss.
I am no Tory supporter, but
the gleeful response to this
conversation exposed not only the
prejudiced perceptions that Simon
Hattenstone and Daniel Lavelle
describe, but also the fact that many
of the critics did not listen closely
(or at all) to the recording. What
Rishi Sunak actually asked was: “Do
you work in a business?” That “a”
shows that he meant any business,
which encompasses a vast number
of jobs. He did not ask whether the
guy worked in corporate finance.
Sue Johnson
London
• Rishi Sunak’s conversation with
Dean was annoying because he
asked closed questions. It came
across as controlling the narrative
so that he could use the encounter
to push his own agenda for the
camera. I’d have seen it differently
if he’d asked Dean for his story.
When I speak to people on the
street, I first ask if they’ve eaten and
then use open questions to start a
conversation and listen to them.
But listening to people isn’t this
government’s strength.
Pauline Galloway
Ladybank, Fife
to the Rejewski revelations, he
had never breathed a word of his
wartime adventures to his family.
A memorial stone was laid at
Chichester crematorium in 2018,
on the 40th anniversary of my
uncle’s death, after a campaign by
my brother Jeremy Russell, John
Gallehawk (a former archivist at
Bletchley), Anya Zygalska-Cannon
(Henryk’s cousin), and Dermot
Turing, who has written an account
of the codebreaking in XY&Z: The
Real Story of How Enigma Was
Broken. The 90th anniversary of
the first Enigma codebreaking
was celebrated by a service beside
the memorial in December.
Georgina Donaldson
Lympne, Kent
am I not getting offered a job? Is it
something more sinister such as
age discrimination? Sadly, I think
this is happening to me.
I wish the government would
sit up and listen to us middle-
aged, experienced staff who are
desperately trying to get work – I
really hope that someone takes
a chance on me this year. I don’t
know what else I can do if my
CV, skills and experience are just
what a company wants, but they
are not willing to employ me. If
anyone has any ideas, I am open
to reasonable suggestions.
Katerina Ayres
Hertford
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
5
Corrections and
clarifications
• An article said Gen Mark Milley,
chairman of the US joint chiefs of
staff, had claimed that as many as
100,000 Russian soldiers had been
killed in the war in Ukraine; in
fact, this number related to those
killed or wounded (How Russia’s
past traps Putin in today’s conflict,
26 December, p26).
• A feature misspelled the Scottish
city of Stirling as “Sterling” (‘By this
point my friends were saying I was
stalking her’, 19 December, G2, p3).
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
guardian.readers@theguardian.com or The readers’
editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
You can also leave a voicemail on 020 3353 4736
Inspired to strive for
greater immaturity
Having left the army at the age
of 61, I took up festival-going,
grew my own cannabis and
bought an open-topped sports
car. My children categorised this
behaviour as “Dad’s midlife crisis”.
Simon Hattenstone’s article (‘I’m
60! Time to embrace being an old
fart’, 29 December) has put the
record straight and encouraged
me to strive for yet greater feats
of immature irresponsibility.
Mark Hainge
Hay-on-Wye, Powys
• Great that fast food companies in
France now have to wash crockery
and cutlery in their outlets (Fast
food giants face up to ban on
disposable cups and tableware,
29 December). This will revive the
art of the plongeur, the occupation
of struggling artists and radicals
made famous in George Orwell’s
Down and Out in Paris and London.
Sam White
Lewes, East Sussex
• It’s interesting that, in his
letter defending the House of
Lords (2 January), Baron Timothy
Kirkhope states that it is important
that steps are taken to avoid the
“accusation” of cronyism, rather
than avoiding cronyism itself.
Phil Coughlin
Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne & Wear
• “Nearly 90% of bicycle thefts
unpunished…” (2 January).
Sergeant Pluck from Flann
O’Brien’s surreal masterpiece
The Third Policeman would be
shaking his huge head.
David Feintuck
Lewes, East Sussex
• Christmas Day: last jar of 2022
marmalade opened. New Year’s Eve:
Seville oranges bought. New Year’s
Day: first batch of 2023 marmalade
cooked. Happy new year!
Elizabeth Pearson
New Barnet, London
Section:GDN 1J PaGe:6 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
6 Obituaries
Barbara Walters
American TV journalist
who was the first female
co-anchor of a network
evening news show
T
he award-winning
journalist Barbara
Walters had to
break through lots
of glass ceilings to
become one of the
best-known faces
in US television
news. Walters, who has died aged
93, began her career in the 1960s
when the prevailing attitude among
TV executives was that viewers
would not take seriously women
delivering news about politics, war
or other weighty subjects.
Through a combination of
talent and drive, Walters went
on to make TV history in 1974 as
the first female co-host of NBC’s
Today morning news show. Two
years later, she switched to ABC to
an even more prestigious job: the
first female co-anchor of evening
news on any network. At the time,
the three networks – ABC, CBS
and NBC – were a prime source of
information for many Americans.
Her success opened the way
• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023
for the generations of female TV
journalists who followed.
As well as this pioneering
role, her reputation rests on
the hundreds of interviews she
conducted over five decades. They
included every US president from
Richard Nixon to Barack Obama.
The interviewees were an eclectic
mix, ranging from other world
leaders to Hollywood stars, from
sports celebrities to murderers.
Walters was very much an
establishment insider, close to the
elites in Washington and New York,
and faced criticism throughout her
career of being too cosy with some
of her interviewees, too fawning.
Other journalists accused her of
blurring the line between journalism
and entertainment. Her trademark
became finding an interviewee’s
vulnerable spot and making them
cry. She was criticised, too, for
allowing her own views to intrude,
as she did when talking in 1999 to
Monica Lewinsky, the former White
House intern with whom Bill Clinton
Sent at 2/1/2023 17:33
said he had had a relationship
“that was not appropriate”. It was
one of the most watched news
interviews in US TV history.
Walters asked: “What will you
tell your children when you have
them?”
Lewinsky: “Mommy made a big
mistake.”
Walters: “And that is the
understatement of the year.”
She was born in Boston in 1929
– though occasionally claimed to
be two years younger – to Louis
Walters, a theatrical promoter,
originally a Londoner, who
emigrated to the US, and Dena
Seletsky, a shopworker. Barbara
Walters on set was brought up in Boston but
with her veteran moved with her family to Miami
co-host Harry and then New York, where her
Reasoner in father ran nightclubs. He often
1976. Initially brought his daughter backstage to
he could barely mix with can-can dancers.
conceal his With that background, she chose
disdain for theatre as her major at the Sarah
having to work Lawrence college in New York state.
with a woman She got her start in TV as a publicity
DISNEY/ABC/GETTY assistant at an NBC affiliate in New
York, and made her first appearance
on screen when she was producing
a children’s show, Ask the Camera.
Short of a question, she wrote her
own - “I’ve always wondered:
how does a hippopotamus eat?” –
and answered it.
She briefly left television and the
US for Europe, where she worked
as a model in Paris. Back in the US
she became a writer in 1961 for NBC
Today and three years later became
a regular on screen as a reporter.
Such was the paucity of women
in top TV reporting jobs she merited
a profile in the New York Times in
1965, a sympathetic piece by Gloria
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Steinem. The casual sexism of the
time was reflected in the headline:
“Nylons in the Newsroom”.
Sexism was evident, too, when
out on jobs with the press pack,
such as Nixon’s trip in 1972 to China,
where she was largely shunned by
male journalists who regarded her
as a lightweight. But viewers liked
her and TV executives, in turn, liked
the ratings. Two years later, she was
named co-host of Today.
When she switched to ABC in
1976, she made news not only
because she became the first female
co-anchor of a network evening
news programme but because of
the size of her salary, $1m a year.
The move was initially a disaster.
Her male co-host, the veteran Harry
Reasoner, failed to hide his disdain.
She resolved the problem by
keeping out of the studio as much as
possible, doing her own interviews,
her Specials. The first, in 1976,
included the president-elect, Jimmy
Carter, and Barbra Streisand.
She recalled those years in the
second half of the 70s as the high
point of her career. She secured a
rare interview with Fidel Castro
in 1977. Later that year, she did
the first joint interview with the
leaders of Egypt and Israel, Anwar
Sadat and Menachem Begin, a
symbolic moment in the Middle
East. “From that time on I was more
or less accepted as a member of the
old boys’ club,” she wrote in her
autobiography, Audition (2009).
The casual
She was creator of The View,
which began in 1997, a popular
sexism of chat-show covering politics and
the time
other issues. The co-hosts were all
was women, from different generations
and backgrounds. She was one of
reflected
the co-hosts from 1997 until 2014.
in the At the end of Audition, she
headline: devoted eight pages to listing some
of the hundreds of interviews
‘Nylons she had done. Among them were
in the Margaret Thatcher, Michael
Newsroom’ Jackson, Muammar Gaddafi,
David Beckham, Truman Capote,
Judy Garland, Bashar al-Assad
and Vladimir Putin. Her favourite
interviewees included Cher and Tom
Hanks: her worst Warren Beatty.
She was ridiculed for off-the-wall
questions, such as asking Katharine
Hepburn: “What kind of a tree are
you? If you think you are a tree?”
She was lampooned in the mid-70s
on Saturday Night Live, portrayed
as pronouncing “r” and “l” as
“w”: across the US, she overnight
became “Baba Wawa”.
She won several Emmys and other
awards and in 2007 was given a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Her first two marriages ended in
divorce. The third, to a TV executive,
Merv Adelson, in 1981, ended in
divorce in 1984. She remarried
him in 1986, only to divorce again
in 1992. Walters is survived by her
daughter, Jacqueline, from her
second marriage, to Lee Guber.
Ewen MacAskill
Barbara Jill Walters, television
journalist, born 25 September 1929;
died 30 December 2022
 Section:GDN 1J PaGe:7 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone:
Tuesday 3 January 2023 The Guardian
Other
lives
Arthur Pedlar
Clown known worldwide who funded
the purchase of his first unicycle by
selling miniature ships in bottles
My husband, Arthur Pedlar, who
has died aged 89, was a clown with
an international reputation.
Although his main occupation
until he retired at 65 was managing
a shop – Wayfarer’s Arts in
Southport, Merseyside, which sold
modern Scandinavian furniture
– it was through clowning that he
found his greatest satisfaction.
Born in the seaside town, the
eldest child of Margaret (nee
Mercy), a housewife and former
nurse, and Vyvian Pedlar, a banker,
Royal Navy air reservist, actor,
singer and dancer and founder of
Wayfarer’s Arts, he inherited from
his father a love of greasepaint.
As a child Arthur was inspired by
the great American clown Emmett
Kelly, whose hobo character was to
influence his first clown persona.
He learned to play the clarinet and
ride a unicycle, which he financed
by selling miniature ships in
bottles. (He made The Guinness
Book of Records for having made
the smallest ship-in-a-bottle, in
1956, in a 2.38cm by 0.9cm medical
phial. The ship had three masts,
five sails and three flags.)
As a pupil at Leighton Park
Leo Sheridan
Investigative reporter determined to
find out what happened to the Gaul,
a Hull trawler lost at sea in 1974
As a boy in Ireland, during the
second world war, my husband, Leo
Sheridan, who has died aged 89,
witnessed a crash into Galway bay
of an RAF pilot attempting to avoid
the city when his plane developed
mechanical problems. He later
helped local fishermen to recover
the wreck to honour this pilot.
Leo went on to become a
fiercely independent investigative
journalist and was involved in
numerous battles to reveal the
truth through the columns of the
Guardian and other newspapers.
Although he was regularly
invited to appear on television and
radio, there were those who tried
to silence him. His thirst to reveal
incidents that threatened the lives
and security of others at sea and in
the air disturbed governments.
The families and those close
to the men who perished on board
•
 obituaries@theguardian.com
 @guardianobits
school in Reading, he first thought
up a short routine and discovered
that he could “communicate
silently with an audience”.
After national service (1951-
53), he joined a troupe of British
clowns for a season at the Cirque
Medrano in Paris. There, he had
the opportunity of “stooging” for
Buster Keaton. However, after nine
months he refused an invitation to
join the show’s tour of France and
returned to Southport to help his
father and aunt in the family shop.
Nevertheless, as Vercoe (his
middle name), he continued to
clown whenever he could. It was
when he was appearing as part of
a show put on by the Magic Circle
at Chichester Festival theatre,
that I (then Valerie Robinson,
the daughter of a magician) met
him. We married in 1968 and our
children, Joe, born in 1970, and
Arthur Pedlar worked as the managing director of his family’s furniture shop
in Southport, Merseyside, but clowning gave him his greatest satisfaction
a Hull deep sea trawler, the Gaul,
which disappeared in the Barents Sea
in 1974, thanked him for his efforts to
find the wreck and traces of its crew.
He discovered that the Gaul might
have been suspected of espionage
by Russia and could have been sunk
by a collision with a submarine,
work for which he risked his own
life – and liberty. He was arrested on
fraud charges, apparently in an effort
to silence him, but was acquitted
unanimously by the jury.
Leo was born in Cork, the
fifth of six children. His father,
John Sheridan, was Ireland’s
representative for the scales
manufacturer Avery, and was
transferred to Galway when Leo
was four. His mother, Elizabeth
(nee Harvey), was a talented pianist
and organist. When his father
died, Leo left school to support
his mother financially. But in his
late 20s he plunged into accident
investigation.
I first met Leo in Galway in the
1970s; he had two children, Mary
and Leo, from his first marriage. He
Sent at 2/1/2023 17:34
Elinor, in 1972, were adopted as
babies. Arthur travelled widely,
whether performing, lecturing,
teaching, visiting circuses or
attending clown conventions.
He was thrilled to be part of a
show at the Leningrad Circus in
1991, and for many years taught at
the clown camps held at La Crosse,
Wisconsin. He joined the World
Clown Association, becoming their
president in 2003-04, and was a
member of Clowns International
and the Holy Fools.
Although not a talkative man,
Arthur loved sharing his knowledge
about clowns of the past,
explaining that good clowning was
not simply a matter of slapstick, but
that it required skill and thought.
He is survived by me, Joe and
Elinor, our grandsons, Patrick and
Jamie, and his sister, Angela.
Valerie Pedlar
and I settled in Hull and our son,
Kevin, was born in 1978. Divorce
in Ireland was not possible at the
time. We eventually decided to
marry in 2015.
After leaving Hull, our family
moved to Lizard Point in Cornwall,
where our daughter, Bridget, was
born. Leo highlighted the lack of
adequate rescue facilities around
the Lizard after the sinking of a
coaster during a storm in 1981 and
the disastrous loss of the whole
crew of the Penlee lifeboat.
Our cottage had a full view
over the cliffs and sea off Lizard
Point, and Leo helped Falmouth
Coastguard by training his
binoculars on the dangerous
waters, telling them when vessels
Tony Flower
Social entrepreneur and right-
hand man to Michael Young at the
Institute of Community Studies
My friend Tony Flower, who
has died aged 71 of cancer, was a
social entrepreneur and writer.
He was also a maker of musical
instruments, models and charities.
For 20 years he worked with
Michael Young (Lord Young
of Dartington) at the research
organisation the Institute for
Community Studies, helping Young
develop some of the organisations
that made him one of the most
prolific social activists of the 20th
century. Tony was deputy director
of the ICS, where I was a fellow
trustee, from 1994 to 1996 and chair
from 2001 to 2005 (before and after
Young’s death), and he then chaired
the Young Foundation until 2007.
Tony played an important role
in more than 30 organisations,
where his contributions included
writing constitutions and funding
applications, helping recruit (and
retain) staff and, often, chairing
the trustees. He was co-founder
and general secretary (1982-88) of
the Tawney Society, the thinktank
behind the SDP; a consultant with
the Joseph Rowntree Reform
Trust, for a decade from 1993; and
a trustee and chair of trustees for
Education Extra, the foundation for
after-school activities.
Tony was born in Fordingbridge,
Hampshire, the son of Frank,
a Hurricane pilot in the second
world war and later a civil servant
working on aircraft development,
and Dorothy (nee Williams), a
postmistress. He attended Chipping
Sodbury grammar school, followed
by the universities of Exeter (for a
BA in philosophy and sociology and
an MA in sociology) and Leicester
(for a PhD in mass communication),
and worked as a graphic designer.
were giving out distress signals.
On a number of occasions he
guided the Falmouth coastguard
lifeboat by telephone to vessels in
trouble. He was much loved and
appreciated by Cornish and Hull
fishermen alike.
He continued his work for more
than 30 years after we left Britain
to live in France. He was widely
admired for his commitment,
courage and perseverance during
his investigations.
His friend, Paul Brown, the former
Guardian environment reporter,
said: “Leo exposed wrongdoing
that would otherwise have been
hidden from public view. In doing
so he took risks because many of
those he exposed were powerful and
sometimes corrupt people.”
Family and friends remember
Leo as a beautiful singer and
a captivating and humorous
storyteller, a good man and a
fighter to the end.
He is survived by me, his
children and four grandchildren.
Pamela Sheridan
cYanmaGentaYellowblac
7
In 1981 he met Young, who had
invited him for lunch to discuss
setting up the Tawney Society,
and quickly became his right-
hand man. From then on until his
retirement, whether working for
Young or independently, Tony was
based at the ICS’s headquarters in
Bethnal Green, east London. He
was a benign and cheerful presence
at the heart of the office.
Young said of him in 1996:
“You have so many qualities I
admire – humour, braininess, good
judgment (a priceless asset, and so
rare, in our sort of field anyway),
unflappability, capacity to get on
with all sorts of people, an inner
confidence which draws people
to you … excellent writing [and]
perseverance.”
Tony’s special talent was an
ability for getting on with people.
He claimed to be interested in
everything – except football. He
lived in an old house in Stepney,
filled with objects he had picked
up or made himself and with
an ancient bubble car sitting
immobile in the front room. After
he retired, he and his collection
(minus the bubble car) moved to a
small house in Faversham, Kent.
In his last years Tony suffered
from cancer and sight loss, which
was frustrating for somebody who
was always making small, delicate
things, but he remained stoical.
He is survived by his sister,
Carol, brother, John, and
nephews, Matthew and James
Kate Gavron
Birthdays
Sarah Alexander, actor, 52;
David Atherton, conductor, 79;
Sir Geoffrey Bindman, human
rights lawyer, 90; Eamonn Butler,
director, Adam Smith Institute, 71;
Lord (Robin) Butler of Brockwell,
former cabinet secretary, 85; Dame
Linda Dobbs, former high court
judge, 72; Mel Gibson, actor, 67;
Gavin Hastings, rugby player,
61; John Paul Jones, musician,
77; Anya Linden, ballet dancer,
90; Josie Pearson, Paralympic
athlete, 37; Florence Pugh, actor,
27; Michael Schumacher, racing
driver, 54; David Starkey, historian
and broadcaster, 78; Rory Stewart,
former Conservative MP and
minister, 50; Stephen Stills,
musician, 78; Lord (Matthew)
Taylor of Goss Moor, former Lib
Dem MP, 60; Greta Thunberg,
climate activist, 20; Hilary
Wainwright, founding editor,
Red Pepper, 74; Justin Webb,
broadcaster, 62.
.
Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:230103 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/1/2023 16:39 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

• The Guardian Tuesday 3 January 2023

8 Puzzles

Yesterday’s Killer sudoku Codeword

solutions
Easy Each letter of the alphabet makes at least one appearance in the grid,
and is represented by the same number wherever it appears. The letters
Killer sudoku The normal rules of decoded should help you to identify other letters and words in the grid.
Easy sudoku apply: fill each
row, column and 3x3
box with all the numbers
from 1 to 9. In addition,
the digits in each inner
shape (marked by dots)
must add up to the
number in the top corner
of that box. No digit can
be repeated within an
inner shape.

Medium

Medium

Codeword

Cryptic crossword Guardian cryptic crossword No 28,957 set by Nutmeg

Solution No. 28,956
S AMP L E R D E B A T E R
C A I E O R H O 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Across Down
R T R E V MENDA C I T Y 1 Devious follower aiming to 1 Male jockeys tucked into cereal, a
E E R I O M N A taboo food nowadays? (5,4)
WE S T E RN E R B AG E L kidnap a king (7,2,6)
U T I L W 9 Teasing adult I see in very old hat 2 Minions have no means of access,
PRANK S ENT I ENCE 9 10 (7) one cell being shared (7)
I N C O N E
MI L L I CENT GATES 10 Outbids American wallies, 3 Passivity I confronted primarily
O F R P O extreme characters taken in (7) in country (8)
NUDGE SME L L ARA T
I A E K A O O H 11 Former English West Country 4 Tropical bird’s gullet swallowing
KERBDR I L L GAF F E 11 12 banker (3) roughly (5)
E T G N L O I R
RE S P E C T YANGT Z E 12 Big adjustable spanner a boon to 5 Make sense of dignitary made
estuary’s shipping (5,6) public (6,3)
13 Translating a poet is no Yankee 6 They cut bill dropped by flyers at
13 14 15 16 idler’s preference (4,6) sea (6)
15 Bearing children is always painful 7 Itinerant mounted police
17 (4) working across America (7)
18 Backing spoils instrument (4) 8 Go after opponents at table, then
18 19 20 21 20 Measuring device for farm prosecute (5)
vehicle (10) 14 Waterproof covering setter in
22 23 Back row in Palladium booked in rickety train (9)
advance (11) 16 Courts approve standard (9)
23 24 25
25 Broadcast overlooks woman’s 17 Uncompromising firm’s leading
entitlement (3) chain (8)
26 Put straight tabloid’s missing 19 Direct lots of deliveries here from
section with ferocious expression time to time (7)
26 27
(7) 21 Lottery raised a good deal — order
27 Capital tour, lastly to coral island British to split it (7)
(7) 22 Strong drink artist put up on shelf
28 This precursor of flood proving (6)
28
ruinously expensive (8,3,4) 23 Choice morsel of Brie? Precisely
Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83.
Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus your (5)
phone company’s access charge. 24 Criticise mean bribe (3,2)
Service supplied by ATS.
Call 0330 333 6946 for customer
service (charged at standard rate).
Want more? Get access to more than
4,000 puzzles at theguardian.com/
crossword. To buy puzzle books, visit
guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846.