The Finished Article

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The Finished Article.

Sunday 06 May 2012 A slow-moving Sunday paper that’s worth waiting for / It’s time for the full story.

FREE

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Welcome one and all

The Finished Article.

You’ve been teased with bits of news here and there; parts of stories, obscured articles and headlines on walls dotted around town. Now is the time to see the bigger picture, to get the full story, and to read The Finished Article.

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What’s inside?

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CONTENTS /

06-07 08-09 10-11 12-13 14-15 16-17 18-19 20-21 22-23 24-25 26-27 28-29 30-31 32-33 34-35

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Editor’s Letter / How it works

Monday

The Slow Movement

Tuesday

Mind Puzzles Part I

Wednesday

How slow can you go?

Thursday

Social Movements - Why?

Friday

Mind Puzzles Part II

Saturday

Time Poverty

Sunday

Mind Puzzles Part III

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Editor’s letter

Behold, here doth lie The Finished Article.

Prepare to feast your eyes upon not only today’s news, but a complete recollection of all last week’s stories and articles too - starting with Monday 30 April.

So hopefully you’re hooked and raring to discover all of the wonderful things that happened last week that you weren’t a part of. You might’ve missed out when they actually happened, but thanks to the power of ‘journalism’, said events can be relayed to you in the past tense with words. Hot diggity!

So we’ve got news, new news, old news, today’s news, everyone’s news! For those who enjoy dabbling in mind puzzles and conundrums, there’s also all of last week’s Sudoku puzzles and crosswords to get started on.

My apologies if this paper is a bit too slow for your taste.

If in fact it doesn’t seem like your bag, may I be so bold as to suggest you try an alternative publication instead. Recently I’ve been hearing good things about ‘Nuts’.

Perhaps start there.

Editor in chief Jonathan Buschenfeld

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HOW IT ALL WORKS / Every day last week you could find news posted up around town in a large poster format. It also advertised some headlines and promised the full stories this Sunday. So here’s the aforementioned promise being kept. This Sunday paper archives all of last week’s news in full PLUS all of today’s stories. Double whammy.

Monday 30 April

Large format newspaper posters can be spotted around town and are easily identified by their colour code system. The paper uses a different colour for each day and it’s branding is primarily the name of the day of the week. After all each day’s news is only a prelude to the final Sunday edition of the paper called, The Finished Article.

Tuesday 01 May

7 days of news

Sunday paper containing full stories from the previous week, The Finished Article.

Wednesday 02 May

Thursday 03 May

Friday 04 May

Saturday

What happens next?

These past 7 days then get condensed into a free Sunday publication which has the sole purpose of being a newspaper worth waiting for. A paper that deals with the issue of time poverty by creating a renewed appreciation of traditional details and processes. Every day features a different area of news linked to one of the many Slow Movement sectors, for example Money, Science and Fashion to name but a few.

05 May Fun Fact #7 The blue used for the Saturday edition of ‘(It’s not quite) The Finished Article’ is actually the exact same colour Pantone used by Everton Football Club.

Sunday 06 May (Today)

Monday 30 April

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MAIN HEADLINE / Police and MI5 get power to watch you on the web Welcome to the new future of Big Brother Britain /

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olice and all intelligence officers are to be handed the power to monitor people’s messages online in what has been described as an “attack on the privacy” of vast numbers of innocent Britons communicating.

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, intends to introduce legislation in next month’s Queen’s Speech which would allow law-enforcement agencies to check on citizens using Facebook, Twitter, online gaming forums and the video-chat service Skype.

Regional police forces, MI5 and GCHQ, the Government’s eavesdropping centre, would be given the right to know who speaks to whom “on demand” and in “real time”.

Home Office officials said the new law would keep crime-fighting abreast of developments in instant communications – and that a warrant would still be required to view the content of personal messages.

But many civil liberties groups expressed grave concern at the move.

Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, described it as “an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance as in China and Iran. “This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, whilst also adding some significant costs to internet businesses,” he said.

David Davis, the former Conservative shadow Home Secretary, said the state was unnecessarily extending its power to “snoop” on its citizens.

“It is not focusing on terrorists or on criminals,” the MP said. “But it is absolutely everybody. Historically, governments have been kept out of our private lives. They don’t need this law to protect us. This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people in vast numbers.”

The now former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith abandoned plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit – labelled the “Big Brother database” – in 2009 after encountering strong opposition.

Ms May is confident of enacting the new law because it has the backing of the Liberal Democrats, who are normally very strong supporters of civil liberties.

Senior Liberal Democrat backbenchers are believed to have been briefed by their ministers on the move and are not expected to rebel in any parliamentary vote. A senior adviser to Nick Clegg said

he had been persuaded of the merits of extending the police and security service powers but insisted they would be “carefully looking at the detail”. “The law is not keeping pace with the technology and our national security is being eroded on a daily basis,” the adviser said.

Confirming the legislation would be introduced “as soon as parliamentary time allows”, the Home Office said: “We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes. Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of Government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of these communications.”

According to The Sunday Times, which broke the story, the Internet Service Provider’s Association, which represents communications firms, was unhappy with the proposal when it was briefed by the Government last month. A senior industry official told the paper: “The network operators are going to be asked to put probes in the network and they are upset about the idea... it’s expensive, it’s intrusive to your customers, it’s difficult to see it’s going to work and it’s going to be a nightmare to run legally.”

Google and BT declined to comment. A spokesman for Microsoft told The Independent: “We comply with legislation in all the countries in which we operate. This is a proposal and we have not had the opportunity to review it in depth.”

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had resisted much greater surveillance powers when in opposition. “This is more ambitious than anything that has been done before,” she told Sky News’s Dermot Murnaghan.

“The Coalition bound itself together in the language of civil liberties.”

SECURITY THEN AND NOW June 2009: “Today we are in danger of living in a control state. Every month over 1,000 surveillance operations are carried out. The tentacles of the state can even rifle through your bins for juicy information.” - David Cameron April 2012: “It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public. That is the most important thing.”

- Home Office spokesman MARTIN HICKMAN /

MONEY / Now the countdown’s on: Last gasp tips to enhance your ISA allowance today It’s important that you do not miss out on a year’s tax-free savings, and there’s no time to waste before the deadline soon comes in full force /

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ith the final day to park up to £10,680 in a tax-free shelter looming on Thursday, investors are being warned to use the individual savings account tax-free allowance, or lose it.

But I bet you’re probably wondering what the big deal is and why it is so vital to use the whole of your tax-free allowance. An ISA allows you to protect your money from the tax collector, so interest generated from your cash will be tax free and any capital gains from your investments will also be exempt from tax.

At a time when interest rates are stuck at record lows of 0.5 per cent, you’ll still be wiser to put your hard-earned cash in an ISA, than see it taxed in an ordinary savings account.

It means if you are a basic rate tax-payer, you won’t get charged the 20 per cent rate on your savings interest in an ISA, and if you pay tax at a higher rate, then you won’t be hit by 40 per cent tax.

You may be thinking this message of “use it or lose it” is starting to sound like a stuck record, and what difference can a year of saving make?

Using your full allowance every year compounds your tax-free savings, helping your money to grow more over the longer term.

“Everyone focuses on how it’s so important to put money away and use your ISA allowance, but why is it so important?” says Catherine Penney from the Barclays Stockbrokers.

“If every year you put money into an ISA, you take it out of the tax bracket. Each year in isolation doesn’t have much of an impact but building up a tax-free portfolio over time is absolutely the most crucial thing.”

There is still time to put away your money and consider certain tips to help you maximise your savings. If you are keen to put cash to work in a stocks and shares ISA, but don’t know where to invest before the deadline, there’s no need to panic.

“A number of stocks and shares ISA providers offer a ‘cash park’ option whereby your stocks and shares ISA can stay in cash pending investment,” says Jason Witcombe at Evolve Financial Planning. “If £10,680 is a lot of money to you, it is not wise to rush the decision on what funds it is invested into. Using

SPORT / the cash facility buys you time and gives you the option of spreading the time over which you put all this money into the markets.”

But it is important to make sure you don’t jump head-first into a fund just because the clock is ticking. Although the universe of investment products appears never-ending, you should make a list of key investment criteria to help whittle down the relevant funds, and seek an independent financial adviser if needed.

“When choosing a fund that is right for you, not one recommended by a neighbour or a friend, is key,” says Philippa Gee, of the Philippa Gee Wealth Management yesterday.

“Just because a fund is right for someone else, does not mean it is right for you, as the risk may be too high.”

If you want to invest on an ethical basis, for example, there are certain investments which will be more suited to your needs. “The Jupiter Ecology fund is a good option for ethical ISA investors,” says Danny Cox at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The year ahead could be an interesting and potentially rewarding one for ethical investors.”

Or, if you have an aboveaverage appetite for investment risk and are willing to experience a potentially bumpy ride, Mr Cox says the Junior Oils Trust could be an attractive offering.

“The fund invests in higher-risk smaller companies involved in the oil industry,” says Mr Cox. Another tip for investing to maximise your money is to try to keep costs to a minimum, which means looking at charges. Using lower-cost tracker funds or exchange-traded funds is one way, and leaves more of the market’s return in your pocket than with the fund manager.

While it might seem there is a lot of decision making for investment ISAs, those with cash ISAs should not just sit back and relax.

You need to keep an eye on the rate you are receiving if you want to make the most of your ISA allowance, otherwise your cash could be generating very little bang for your buck.

“The Budget has reminded investors of the importance of using their ISA allowance. Those who are undecided where to invest can still subscribe to an ISA and park their money in a cash trading account, until they are really ready to invest.

Opening an ISA by telephone or online usually takes less than five minutes but the transaction has to complete by midnight. Last year, some people left it too late and missed out forever.” - Danny Cox, Hargreaves Lansdown.

EMMA DUNKLEY /

Upcoming Olympic ticket sales are to be held up The football draw will delay London’s next set of Olympic ticket sales /

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he organisers of the London Olympics are still to decide when the next round of ticket sales will begin. A further 2.5 million tickets will be released but because the draw for the football is not until the end of next month and the London mayoral election are at the start of May, Locog have yet to settle on a date.

The one million non-football tickets available are likely to sell quickly, but football tickets seem to have proved a less attractive option. The draw, which will include Stuart Pearce’s Great Britain side, Brazil and Spain, is scheduled for 24 April, and Locog hope that once the public know who is playing where there will be a lot more interest.

Details of exactly what other tickets are on offer have yet to be determined. Locog have been criticised over a lack of openness around ticketing.

“The reason I cannot tell you exactly is because we are finalising how many it will be,” said Paul Deighton, Locog’s chief executive. “As we finalise the last details of the seating plan there will be more seats that become available.

The schedule is not finalised because we want to make absolutely sure it is after the football draw.”

The International Olympic Committee yesterday completed their final inspection and officially declared London “ready”.

ROBIN SCOTT-ELLIOT /

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FLUFF PIECE / Erm, not unless you were the last man on Earth...

Niche dating sites – including one for the more apocalyptically minded – are really booming.

Simon Usborne cuts the small talk to find out why /

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t can be hard to impress a date in a bunker with only tinned food and a human-waste compactor. But there is hope for people looking for love despite believing the end of the world is nigh. Survivalist Singles, an American website for amorous doomsayers, is among dozens of niche dating services enjoying an unlikely boom in popularity. GSOH? Fine, but if you’re not a farmer, cat lover, married, or a fan of Ayn Rand, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.

The niche dating scene is similarly buoyant in Britain, and considerably more positive about the future. UniformDating.com has a disproportionately visible presence in TV ad breaks for “the UK’s premium dating service where you can find lots of women and men in uniform”, but reports a growing membership.

And elsewhere found online, in a global industry worth an estimated £2.5bn, there are sites designed for most religions (JDate, for Jewish singletons in the UK, has been around for more than 10 years), rich people, horsy people and even married people – Undercoverlovers. com has more than 500,000 members and last week unveiled posters it plans to release at the same time the Euro 2012 football championships take place in Poland and Ukraine this summer. The ads feature photos of Wayne Rooney

I* / and John Terry and say: “After scoring at home, time to play away!”

Almost one in five newly married couples now report starting their relationship with the click of a mouse. Once seen as the preserve of the desperate, online dating has tipped into the mainstream. But nowadays it’s simply no longer enough to tick boxes to state interests on general dating sites.

Tracey Cox, who writes about relationships and sex, says she is not surprised by the rise of more specialised dating services.

“We already live in an age where we can tailor most things and custom build our entire lives, so it makes sense to narrow everything down when we’re looking for a partner doesn’t it?” she said with a smile.

But is it only human nature or productive to be quite so exacting?

There are dating sites for farmers, vegetarians, druids, gadget geeks, dope smokers, single parents, eco-warriors and celibates.

But the ultimate box-tickers will not be swayed. Survivalist Singles, that end-of-the-world site, has the slogan: “Don’t face the future alone.” It has recently quadrupled its ranks to almost 1,700 members, not all of whom predict an imminent apocalypse (there are some who are only concerned by the prospect of nuclear war). One user, a 34-year-old man from Vermont, says in his profile: “In addition to what people think of when they hear the word ‘survival’, I can do all of the basics ... cooking, cleaning, laundry, and more importantly firearms maintenance.” We’re sure he’ll be snapped up like a shot.

SIMON USBORNE /

I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

Prime Minister marks the 30th anniversary of Falklands conflict The PM today marks the 30th anniversary of the invasion of the Falklands /

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whole three decades after Argentinian troops seized the islands’ capital, Port Stanley, Mr Cameron paid tribute to the Task Force sent by Margaret Thatcher to take them back. However, in a gesture of reconciliation, the Prime Minister said it should be a day to remember both the 649 Argentinians who died in the conflict as well as the 255 British armed forces personnel.

The run-up to the anniversary has been marked by a ratcheting-up in tensions between London and Buenos Aires, with the Argentine government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner loudly reasserting its claim to the islands.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph today, the Foreign Secretary William Hague has described Argentina’s most recent aggressive actions as “deeply regrettable” and said the government’s statements “have impressed few people,

including in South America”.

He went on: “We should remind the world that in the years since their liberation the Falkland islanders have repeated - without qualification or equivocation - their wish to keep their constitutional status, their national identity, and to live peacefully with their neighbours in Latin America.

“As long as the people of the Falklands continue to express that view, the UK will defend and support their right to do so.”

Meanwhile, the widow of lt Col “H” Jones told the newspaper she hoped Britain would “do it all again” if Argentina launched a fresh occupation of the Falklands.

Lt Col Herbert Jones, known as “H”, died while leading a charge against an Argentine machine gun post at Goose Green. Sara Jones said in an interview: “The islanders have always been fiercely British and want to stay that way. I would like to believe that we would, if we could, do it again.” In a statement to mark today’s occasion, Mr Cameron was adamant that Britain would not compromise on the central issue of the islanders’ right to self-determination.“Thirty years ago today the people of the Falkland Islands

suffered an act of aggression that sought to rob them of their freedom and their way of life,” he said.

“Today is ultimately a day for commemoration and reflection: a day to remember all those who lost their lives in the conflict - the members of our Armed Forces, as well as the Argentinian personnel who died.

“Today, we salute the heroism of the Task Force which set sail to free the islands.”

“We are rightly proud of the role Britain played in righting a profound wrong doing.”

And all the people of the Falkland Islands can be justly proud of the prosperous and secure future that they have built and created for their islands since 1982.

“Britain remains staunchly committed to upholding the right of the Falkland Islanders, and of the Falkland Islanders alone, to determine their own future from now on.

“That was the fundamental principle that was at stake 30 years ago: and that is the principle which we solemnly re-affirm today.”

rhubarb; and Great British Outdoors, during which it is suggested that we all go outside and subsist on bulrush.

There are many more of these shows, each barely distinguishable from the next: Great British Menu, The Great British Summer, The Great British Weather, Great British Journeys, Great British Railway Journeys. We’ve also had Great British Hairdresser and The Great British Body, two programmes about the universal traits of vanity and selfabsorption in which the protagonists’ Britishness is clearly only incidental.

One current offender is The Great British Countryside, which has Julia Bradbury and Hugh Dennis wading through rivers, scaling mountains and disappearing down potholes in a variety of woolly hats and cagoules and reminding us of the delights on our doorstep. It’s really beautifully filmed and actually earns its title, though the concept has been so diluted by what has come before that I almost didn’t watch it.

Over the past couple of years television seems to have turned into one long Little Britain sketch, without the Tom Baker voiceover. I have nothing against celebrating our heritage, whether it’s trumpeting our lesser-known foodstuffs or casting a spotlight on the towns and

villages that lie off the tourist trail. And when times are tough and everyone’s skint, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of escapism. Isn’t that, after all, what Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife are for?

But whole programmes devoted to rhubarb, or our ability to cut hair, or informing us that the countryside looks prettier in the summer, does not a great nation make. This epidemic of all things British is, of course, symptomatic of a broader problem in television, the inability of the commissioners to comprehend that less is more. Think how the “Celebrity” prefix has cloned its way across the schedules, from Celebrity Masterchef to Celebrity Juice, or how, for a while, we were inundated with so called edgy sports programmes with the words “ultimate” or “extreme” in the otherwise ordinary title.

So having noted the success of The Great British Bake Off, and the vogue for all things vintage (aka old), and commissioners have decided that shoehorning the words “great” and “British” into every subsequent programme will make it just that. Trust me, it doesn’t and it won’t.

GAVIN CORDON /

II / It’s time to put a lid on all those ‘not so great’ British TV shows Television is turning into one long repetitive Little Britain sketch, says Fiona Sturges /

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f you’ve turned on the television lately, it won’t have escaped your notice that there has been a glut of programmes extolling a conspicuously sepia-tinted view of our isles.

Claiming to celebrate all that is innately wonderful about Britain, these shows hark back to a post-war era of WI get-togethers, village fêtes and the thwack of leather on willow.

Like a tourist brochure aimed at the hard of thinking, they present our nation as a land of thatched cottages, abundant pastures, bobbies on bicycles and interiors lined with wonderful Cath Kidston fabrics. Think a live-action Trumpton. These shows are easily identified by their titles, all of which come with the “Great British” pre-fix.

We’ve already had The Great British Bake Off, in which amateur bakers churn out scones in a leaky tent in the grounds of a stately home; Great British Food Revival where Gregg Wallace exhorts us to eat home-grown

FIONA STURGES /

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Hold your horses

THE SLOW MOVEMENT /

Ironically, Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the world today; a religion that traditionally incorporates states of meditative absorption combined with liberating cognition (ie. slowing down to feel better). People are flocking to supermarkets looking for organic produce, asking whether the chicken that laid their eggs is living happily on a free range farm somewhere in Surrey and doesn’t have a history of neglect or ornithological abuse.

The school and education system is in all kinds of turmoil and there has recently been a distinct increase in the number of children being homeschooled.

All of these occurances can be attributed to the prolificacy of the ‘Slow Food Movement’.

The Slow Food Movement began in Italy, 1986 by Carlo Petrini as an alternative to fast food. It strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages the farming of plants, seeds, livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It’s all about quality. Nice one Carlo.

The Slow Food Movement was the ignition for the now much broader ‘Slow Movement’ which encompasses all sorts of things such as money, travel, living, books, cities, art, science and much more.

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The Slow Movement diagram

Way of life

If you take nothing else away from this reading experience, at least take away this joke: These speed bumps are rubbish.

If anything they slow me down!

Efficiency

What is lost by efficiency?

By speeding up we are denying ourselves the maximum quality and enjoyment in life. The same thing is happening with newspapers. Online news is great, it offers immediate updates daily. But by speeding up, what do we sacrifice? We miss out on the journey and we miss out on the view. The scenic route. So sit down. Put your feet up. And enjoy the paper.

Slow down & enjoy the ride

An improved quality of life

It’s not where you’re heading, but how you get there. Not the destination but the journey. The oasis is beneath your feet, the desert was just too distracting.

It’s time to start appreciating the right here, right now!

Improving the quality of the here and now is what the Slow Movement’s all about. An area of the movement called ‘Cittaslow’ (Slow Cities) seeks to improve the quality and enjoyment of living by encouraging happiness and self-determination.

Tuesday 01 May

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MAIN HEADLINE / Bold new planning rules that ‘value countryside’ New planning rules have brought in the idea of “robust protections” for the countryside /

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inisters say changes to the planning system, which see more than 1,000 pages of guidance slimmed down to around 50 and focus on a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, are necessary to boost growth. But countryside campaigners reacted angrily to draft plans published last year, raising concerns that they could lead to inappropriate development in the countryside - in particular, areas which were not protected by existing designations or schemes.

Today, Communities Minister Greg Clark insisted the new planning guidance recognised the “intrinsic value of the countryside”, whether or not it was already designated as green belt, national parks or Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Mr Clark outlined a number of changes to the new national planning policy framework in a bid to answer concerns sparked when the draft version of the reforms were published last July. They include an explicit return to “brownfield first”, which requires councils to favour previously used land for new development over green field sites and a clearer definition of “sustainable development”. It will also favour town centres for development.

And it will allow councils with a local plan - intended to set out where development is wanted and needed in an area - that is broadly in line with the new rules to use that for up to 12 months. But councils with no local plan must use the national planning policy framework from today.

Mr Clark told the Commons that the presumption in favour of sustainable development meant building would not be held up unless approving it went against the “collective interest”. Sustainable development strikes a balance between “social and environmental as well as economic objectives”, he said, as he laid out the simplified system which ministers believe will speed up the planning process.

Mr Clark said the changes would allow the building of more homes, which have been held up in part by the “sclerosis” of the planning system. And he said it underlined the importance of town centres while recognising that rural businesses should be able to expand. He insisted: “The framework guarantees robust protections for our natural and historic environment, and goes further by requiring net improvements to put right some of the neglect that has been visited on us.” He told MPs that the new guidance could not override existing protections for green belt, national parks and SSSIs and that it recognised the intrinsic value and beauty of all countryside, whether or not it was designated. Back gardens and playing fields would also benefit from protection from development, he said. Businesses immediately responded positively to the announcement of the amended document.

British Property Federation’s chief executive, Liz Peace, said: “We believe the NPPF is now a more moderate and sensible document. “The changes to the framework do not, however, alter its overall objective of supporting well planned, sustainable growth

SPORT / within a streamlined, plan-led system. “Government has made some sensible concessions while still ensuring that local authorities must provide homes and jobs where they are needed.” She added: “What’s needed now is clarity over how the NPPF is going to be implemented in the immediate future.”

British Retail Consortium director of business Tom Ironside welcomed the emphasis on promoting town centres. He said: “For too long the planning system has been a brake on growth - complicated, costly and slow. These practical measures are a marked improvement and should help bring a boost to local economies. “Retail is a competitive, innovative sector which looks to the Government to create the right conditions for growth. Making the system more transparent and efficient will enable development and should play a key role in efforts to revitalise England’s troubled high streets.”

Simon Walker, director-general of the Institute of Directors, said: “Being able to develop new shops, houses and factories is crucial to delivering economic growth, and too often planning regulations have prevented that. The fundamental principle that sustainable development should be supported is a very welcome one. “To ensure this reform works well, councils must now fulfil their role by putting plans in place that recognise the need to support development. “Britain needs to get building again, and these reforms allow that to happen - as long as they are followed through. Only time will tell now.”

But Ruth Davis, from Greenpeace, said: “There is a flawed assumption from George Osborne behind this assault on the planning system - he thinks that we can boost the economy by uprooting decades of protection for the natural habitat and the countryside. “This is misguided, dangerous and wrong, and appears to be based on little more than some private, cosy chats he has had with big developers.

“Whilst today’s concessions will provide some short-term breathing space for local people seeking to protect the wildlife and places they love, the final test of this policy will be the types of development finally given approval. “If, in the coming months, we start to see the development of projects that burden communities with more traffic, noise and pollution, suck up scarce local water resources, or destroy precious countryside, not only will it be a political disaster for the Government - they will also be guilty of undermining the future of rural development.”

Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), which spearheaded the campaign against the planning reforms, welcomed the recognition of the value of the countryside, whether or not it was protected. But he said: “While recognising the scale of the housing crisis, we remain very concerned to ensure that the Planning Framework does not place undue emphasis on short-term economic growth at the expense of other important long-term, public interest objectives of planning, including the protection and enhancement of the environment.” And he raised concerns about the “transition period” allowing councils to move from their existing local plans to the new rules.

EMILY BEAMENT /

SCIENCE / Dr Albert Einstein’s brain is ready to go on display Einstein’s brain is going on display for the first time in the UK with that of an infamous murderer /

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ollowing his death at the age of 76 in 1955, Einstein’s brain was divided into sections, two of which are going on show at the Wellcome Collection.

Brains: The Mind As Matter also features the brain of US suffragette Helen H Gardener, which she donated to science to disprove theories about gender. The two slides from Einstein’s brain are on loan from the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, where they were only shown publicly in the US for the first time last year. The eminent scientist was cremated and his ashes were scattered according to his wishes. But pathologist Thomas Harvey, who carried out the post-mortem examination, said that Einstein’s son gave him permission to preserve the brain for research, a claim which was later disputed. He kept the brain, which to many people’s surprise was not particularly large, and divided it into 240 sections preserved in jars of formaldehyde at his house. He gave a box of 46 slides to his pathologist colleague William Ehrich, and the samples were eventually donated to the museum in Philadelphia. “Gentleman, scholar and murderer” Edward H Rulloff ’s brain - one of the largest ever known - is also on display for the first time in Britain. Despite being known for his intelligence, he is thought to have killed his wife and child and was

Volleyball - It’s a cover up Olympic beach volleyball players are allowed more clothes /

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each volleyball, a sport with minimal following in Britain, was one of the most sought after events when tickets went on sale for this summer’s Olympics. Since its induction as a medal event in 1996, the bikinis worn by female competitors have helped define and raise the profile of the sport. Cynics might suggest that the demand for tickets has been driven as much by the appeal of watching bikini clad competitors as it has been a desire to see world class volleyball in London. But those heading to Horse Guards Parade this summer hoping to see semi-naked players competing in the sand near Buckingham Palace may find themselves disappointed after the sport’s governing body ruled that female players will have the option to wear less revealing outfits should they so choose.

But recently the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) has said it will allow shorts and sleaved tops at the 2012 Games, along with the traditional bikinis and body suits already permitted.

“Many of these countries have religious and cultural requirements so the uniform needed to be more flexible.” Richard Baker told The Associated Press.

The much less revealing outfits were already permitted for the the five Continental Cups, through which 142 nations are competing. “Winners of the Continental Cups will qualify for the Olympics, so it has to be applied,” said Baker.The modified rule permits “shorts of a maximum length of three centimeters (1.18 inches) above the knee, and sleeved or sleeveless tops. They weren’t forced to wear a bikini,” Baker said.

SIMON RICE /

sentenced to death in 1871 for killing a shop assistant in New York.

The exhibition also includes the brain of an ancient Egyptian, one of the oldest specimens ever known, the brain of computer science pioneer Charles Babbage (17911871), and a brain specimen containing a bullet wound. The exhibition examines the measuring and classifying of brains, its mapping and modelling, cutting and treating and preservation techniques.Also on display is a “souvenir” piece of William Burke’s brain, which was kept as a piece of “poetic justice” following his hanging in 1929 for murdering several people to sell their bodies for dissection.

Guest Curator Marius Kwint said: “Brains shows how a single, fragile organ has become the object of modern society’s most profound hopes, fears and beliefs, and some of its most extreme practices and advanced technologies. “The different ways in which we have treated and represented real, physical brains open up a lot of questions about our collective minds and more.”

Ken Arnold, Wellcome Collection’s Head of Public Programmes, said: “We all recognise its outline and know that it is the most important part of us but for many, the brain remains as mysterious as it is beguiling.” :: Brains: The Mind As Matter opens on Thursday and runs to June 17 at the Wellcome Collection in London.

SHERNA NOAH / I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

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I* / The butler does it ... and for peanuts Who’d wait on the rich for less than the minimum wage? Plenty of people. It turns out you can get the staff these days /

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FLUFF PIECE / It’s finally true - chocolate ‘can help keep you slim’ Far from piling on the pounds, a chocolate habit can help keep you slim /

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cientists have announced the discovery every chocolate lover has been waiting for. A study has found that, despite boosting calorie intake, regular chocolate consumption is related to lower body mass index (BMI).The effect is modest but greater than can be explained by chance, say the US researchers who took account of influencing factors such as overall fat consumption, body type and exercise.

BMI relates height and weight and is the standard measurement used to assess levels of obesity. The good news about chocolate emerged after scientists screened a group of 972 men and women with an average age of 57 for a study of statins - cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Among other diet and lifestyle questions, participants were asked: “How many times a week do you consume chocolate?” Chocolate is known to contain plant chemicals called polyphenols that combat heart disease and may influence metabolism.

The researchers suspected they might, to some extent at least, off-set the unwelcome effects of high saturated fat levels in chocolate bars and sweets. No account was taken of different types of chocolate, some of which contain more healthy elements than others. The results showed that chocolate was not only “calorie neutral” but actually appeared to make people slimmer. Participants who ate chocolate on more days of the week than average were statistically likely to have a lower BMI than those tested who did not. Volunteers had an average BMI of 28 - meaning they were overweight

- and ate chocolate on average twice a week. No link was seen between the amount of chocolate eaten and either higher or lower BMI. The findings appear in Archives of Internal Medicine, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Study leader Dr Beatrice Golomb, from the University of California at San Diego, said: “Our findings appear to add to a body of information suggesting that the composition of calories, not just the number of them, matters for determining their ultimate impact on weight. “In the case of chocolate, this is good news - both for those who have a regular chocolate habit, and those who may wish to start one.” The scientists pointed out that chocolate products “are often rich in sugar and fat, contributing to assumptions that chocolate boosts BMI”. They added: “This study does not obviate the possibility that some chocolate-containing products do so, that some chocolate consumption profiles do so, or that for some people, even frequent modest chocolate consumption does so. “Moreover, since findings are cross-sectional, causality in the observed association cannot be assumed. However, the finding fits with the literature suggesting benefits of chocolate for other metabolic factors.”

Previous research on rodents has suggested that chemicals in chocolate might speed up metabolism.

Epicatechin reduced weight in rats whose calorie intake and exercise levels were unchanged. “Parallel processes in humans, if present, could underlie our findings,” Dr Golomb’s team concluded in their research article. The results justified a randomised trial looking at the metabolic benefits of chocolate in humans, said the scientists.

JOHN VON RADOWITZ /

he cost of the British monarchy has long been a bugbear for ardent republicans.

The Queen is thought to deprive the taxpayer of around £36m each year, though anti-monarchist groups claim the figure is closer to £200m. To their credit, the Windsors have made an effort to reduce their lavish spending in recent years – there have been fewer trips on the royal train, for instance – but some of the penny pinching seems a little mean-spirited.

Eyebrows were raised when Buckingham Palace announced last week that it would be recruiting a trainee butler, but those brows arched demonstrably higher when it was revealed that the candidates will be expected to work 45 hours a week for a salary of £15,000 – far below the London living wage of £8.30 per hour.

He or she will have to serve meals, undertake messenger duties and bring the Royals their breakfast trays and newspapers. There’s no real guide on what they’re looking for, and much of the official job description is incredibly anodyne and corporate. They need to “communicate confidently” and “work effectively and flexibly”, the advert says.

And despite such small reward, the reprimands should they put a foot out of line will be severe. One footman poured whisky into the corgis’ water and was given a demotion and a corresponding cut in his salary. However, 24-year-old butler-school graduate Ben Wyld, from Eastbourne, still wants the job. Currently first-class cabin crew at British Airways, Wyld wants to be a butler, “like something you might see on the brilliant Downton Abbey”.

LIAM O’BRIEN /

II / UK Stamp prices have soared to record highs First and second class stamp prices are to increase by 14p to record highs of 60p and 50p, the Royal Mail announced today /

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rices will rise from the current 46p and 36p from April 30, while the cost of posting large letters will increase from 75p to 90p for first class and 58p to 69p for second class.

The increases followed a decision by regulator Ofcom to give Royal Mail the freedom to set all of its own prices.

Royal Mail said that even after the increases, second class stamps will still be the cheapest in Europe while first class will be around average.

The Royal Mail also announced that millions of people on low incomes will be able to buy up to 36 stamps for Christmas at the current price.

The new prices, showing increases of 30% for first class and 39% for second class, follow a huge reduction in the number of letters posted - down from 84 million a day six years ago to 59 million today. Royal Mail chief executive Moya Greene said: “We know how hard it is for households and businesses when our economy is as tough as it is now. Noone likes to raise prices in the current

economic climate but, regretfully, we have no option.

“Royal Mail provides one of the highest quality postal services in Europe for amongst the lowest prices for both consumers and business. That service is under threat from declining volume, e-substitution and ever increasing competition. Because of these pressures Royal Mail has lost £1 billion over the last four years; the sustainability of the service is now at risk.”

“This is a very high quality, cherished service, but it needs to be paid for. The increase will restore our finances and maintain the universal service. We had no alternative but to increase all of the prices.”

Ms Greene said research showed the average household spent 50p a week on stamps, so she believed there was no “affordability issue” with the much higher prices.

Over the last four years, Royal Mail has made a loss in its core mails business, including packets, of almost a staggering 31 billion.

It said there had been a “significant deterioration” in its finances, blaming artificially low prices, falling volumes and less mail being delivered to an increasing number of addresses up from 27 million to 29 million since 2003. Deputy general secretary Dave Ward added: “Giving Royal Mail the

ability to raise prices will go some way to rebalancing the years of under-investment in the industry and addressing the unfair restrictions which competition put on the company. Competition set Royal Mail up to fail.” The Government is pressing ahead with plans to privatise the Royal Mail amid continued opposition from unions.

The stamp prices have increased by higher percentage amounts in the past.

In 1940, there was a 66% increase, with the cost of sending a 2oz letter increased to 2.5d from 1.5d (the price introduced in 1923). This was before a two-tier firstand second-class service was introduced in 1968. In 1975, first- and second-class prices rose by 55% and 58% respectively.

Robert Hammond, of Consumer Focus, said: “This is not great news for consumers. I doubt anyone is going to think about the challenges facing Royal Mail when they are paying 60p for a firstclass stamp.

It’s rather unfortunate the economics of Royal Mail meant that something had to give in order to maintain the universal service obligation.

“Our research suggests that for some customers there is a fine line between being willing to pay more and deciding to walk away from using the postal service.”

ALAN JONES /

Mind Puzzles Part I

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1 Deliberately uncooperative (6-6) 9 Supermarket feature (5) 10 Kenyan port (7) 11 Shame (4) 12 Admonition (8) 14 Bamboozling delivery? (6) 15 Small sofa (6) 18 366 days (4,4) 20 Coloured black (4) 22 Native American wind helicopter (7) 23 Brother of Moses (5) 24 Polite response to thanks (5,7)

2 Southern African country, capital Maseru (7) 3 Follow the instructions (4) 4 Loud and repetitive noise (6) 5 Steeped (in) (8) 6 Play — big emotional scene (5) 7 (Of a stunt) very dangerous (5-7) 8 Carefree (5-2-5) 13 Scottish highlander’s sword (8) 16 Display of temper (7) 17 New Englander — type of bet (6) 19 I’m off! (5) 21 Brandy made from wine press residue (4)

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ENJOY Feel ! free to ma the m k o gigan st of th e es t and a ic crossw e pprec ords unusu iate thei al si r ze.

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1 Software that harms digital files (8,5) 8 King — Harrison? (3) 9 Vigilance (9) 10 Too thin? (8) 11 Vehicle for hire (4) 13 ‘Pre-’, for example (6) 14 Concoction — elixir (6) 16 Captain of the whaler Pequod (4) 17 Dig out (8) 20 Spouse (5,4) 21 Charged particle (3) 22 Beyond comparison (3,10)

1 Ionian island (5) 2 “Apples versus oranges” for example (5,8) 3 Dauntless (8) 4 Prime number (6) 5 Power to reject legislation (4) 6 Further check (2-11) 7 Sitting (7) 12 Appalling (3-5) 13 Green-coloured starter (3,4) 15 Breathe out (6) 18 It picks Premium Bond winners (5) 19 Pivotal point — cross (4)

Wednesday 02 May

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MAIN HEADLINE / Fuel strike draws closer Prime Minister tells drivers not to panic, but they are advised to top up all vehicles and petrol cans /

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rime Minister David Cameron has suggested motorists take the “sensible precaution” of topping up on petrol ahead of a potential strike by fuel tanker drivers. Cameron’s comments come just hours after Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, said any potential strike would put lives at risk.

Maude advised drivers to fill up any spare jerry cans with petrol, even though motoring organisations and energy firms have urged people not to panic buy. He accused the Unite union of behaving irresponsibly, adding that a “couple of hundred” military crews would be trained to cover for striking tanker drivers in a bid to maintain supplies to hospitals and schools, as well as garages. However, the Fire Brigades Union urged Maude to withdraw his advice to stockpile fuel, warning it would “massively increase” the risk of fire and explosions.

Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said: “This is not sensible advice…Those without garages may be tempted to store fuel in the home. In the event of a fire in the house or a neighbouring property, it would be disastrous. “It is already against the law to store more than 10 litres of petrol in two five-litre plastic containers in the home. As that amounts to little more than a third of a tank in most cars, the advice is of little practical help. “There is a real danger the public will start storing fuel in inappropriate ways if the Government is encouraging panic-buying and storage. This advice is wrong and must be withdrawn immediately.”

Responding to the FBU’s warning about the dangers of stockpiling fuel, Mr Maude told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “There are legal limits on what you can store, very sensibly, and they have been in existence for some time and I am sure the fire service will communicate this. “There are perfectly sensible regulations surrounding this, which people will no doubt obey. “It sounds like people are behaving in an extremely sensible way. There is no kind of dramatic action. Where there is an opportunity sensibly, calmly, to get a bit more fuel they are doing that without any drama. “There are sensible low-key things that can be done and if they choose to do it, that’s one of them, obviously within sensible constraints.” The civil contingencies committee Cobra will meet at a later date to discuss the measures they will put in place in the event of fuel tanker drivers with the Unite union going on strike.

Unite drivers, who have already voted to go on strike over health and safety standards and terms and conditions, supply 90 per cent of petrol stations in the UK. Responding to accusations by Labour that the Government had caused alarm by giving people the impression they should panic buy, David Cameron said: “There is no imminent strike. The unions would have to give seven days’ notice of any strike so there is no need to queue to buy petrol. “If there is an opportunity to top up your tank if a strike is potentially on the way, then it is a sensible thing if you are able to do that.” He added: “I absolutely do not want to raise the temperature”.

JOHN HALL /

I* /

II /

MEDIA /

GDP fell much faster than predicted in fourth quarter

Ameria awakens to the sour taste of ‘pink slime’

Bar has apologised over offensive ‘midgets’ advert

Britain’s economy begun the year even weaker than predicted, as GDP growth fell by 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2011 /

The secret meat product that’s surprisingly found in all kinds of US food and is causing a very unsavoury row /

A bar that promised people the chance to party with “our very own Christmas midgets” has acted offensively - watchdog rules /

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JOHN HALL /

GUY ADAMS /

JOSIE CLARKE /

he Office for National Statistics said that it had downwardly revised it’s GDP estimates from 0.2 per cent at the end of last year, largely driven by falling business investments.

The ONS said there were also surprises in services, mainly household spending and manufacturing. Plus the services sector, which accounts for the bulk of the economy and includes consumer spending, had been expected to flatline in the fourth quarter of 2011, but actually fell by 0.1 per cent.

Eventually household spending returned to growth at the end of the year, but was still one percentage point lower than the same quarter in 2010.

Manufacturing declined by a whole 1.3 per cent, although this was slightly better than initial predictions. And the construction sector has also contracted.

Despite GDP being seen as a partial indicator of a nation’s economic health, most economists think industry data from 2012 suggests the UK will avoid another recession – defined as two successive quarters of contraction.

The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated just 0.8 per cent growth in 2012. Vicky Redwood, chief economist at Capital Economics, said: “It looks as though the economy has managed to expand in the first quarter of 2012.

“Nonetheless, we still think that there are a number of reasons to doubt that the recovery can maintain the recent acceleration seen.”

The Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: “It’s very worrying news that the economy shrank even more than we thought at the end of last year. And these revised figures also show that since George Osborne’s spending review our economy has flatlined and not grown at all. Ball added: “This slow growth and rising unemployment means the Government is set to borrow an extra £150 billion.”

ake a cow. Chop it into pieces. Sell the edible bits to supermarkets, ship its hide to a handbag factory, send leftover bones and organs to a rendering plant. Now, what’s left?

In most of the developed world, the answer is simple: pet food. The sinew, gristle and fat regarded as unfit for human consumption are taken away

by Mr Pedigree Chum and turned into something the salmonella-resistant stomach of your average Labrador will find vaguely digestible.

But in America, they do food differently. Here, in the land of GM corn, 26 per cent obesity and a government which classifies pizza as a “vegetable”, scientists have discovered a way to turn bacteria-ridden scraps from the abattoir floor into a substance called “pink slime”, which is then sold to unwitting consumers of hamburgers, tacos and other beef-based junk products. The process involves sticking bovine off-cuts in a heated centrifuge, so they separate into a mixture of liquid fat and a puttycoloured paste. That substance is then treated with ammonium hydroxide (a chemical used in household cleaners and home-made bombs) to kill off salmonella and e-coli. Then it’s mixed with regular beef and – hey presto! – you have “all natural” mince. Not for nothing, they argue, has the stuff been banned in Europe, where mechanically-separated meat from cows and sheep has been prohibited since the era of BSE. This month, as the product became a burgeoning national talking point, several major supermarkets went slime-free. School districts were allowed to start banning it and dozens swiftly did so. Yesterday, Beef Products Inc, pink slime’s leading manufacturer, shut down three of its four plants, citing swiftly cratering demand. According to the American Meat Institute, 600 jobs could now be lost.

ar Fusion’s Facebook page read: “Christmas Eve with midgets! For the first time in Tunbridge Wells this Christmas Eve party with our very own Xmas midgets.” It went on: “That’s right Midgets!!!!!!!!! Entry just £5 all night.”

A reader had complained that the ad, and in particular the use of the word midgets, was offensive and reinforced negative many stereotypes towards short statured people.

Bar Fusion said it was never their intention to cause offence, and with hindsight “felt they must apologise for doing so”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said in its ruling.

Bar Fusion apologised for causing offence and said the event was booked by an outside promoter, resulting in it believing it was actually acceptable to use the “midget” term.

The bar added that the night and artists were booked by an outside promoter who used the term, and they therefore believed that it was acceptable, politically correct and would not cause any of the offence it did.

Facebook said the ad had not been paid for, was entirely user-generated and they did not monitor, review or verify any of the claims.

Facebook distanced itself from the ad by saying it was not a paid-for Facebook advertisement and added that the company did not monitor, review or verify any claims that were made in usergenerated content.

Upholding the complaint, the ASA said the ad “portrayed the presence of individuals of short stature as an attraction and source of entertainment”.

It said: “We therefore considered the ad was likely to cause serious and widespread offence.” It ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form and told Bar Fusion to ensure that the ads were prepared “with a sense of social responsibility”.

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FLUFF PIECE / Prime Minister defends introduction of ‘pasty tax’ Prime Minister defends the decision to charge VAT on hot food served by shops, cafes and supermarkets /

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r Cameron said that the move - which will add 20 per cent to the cost of hot pies and pasties sold by shops like Greggs - would defend takeaway restaurants against competition from major chains.

Chancellor George Osborne was yesterday accused of being out of touch after he was unable to recall when he last bought a pasty as he answered questions about the so-called “pie tax” in Parliament. But Mr Cameron was quick to declare himself a keen pasty-eater, telling reporters he recently bought a large one from the West Cornwall Pasty Company’s outlet at Leeds station, adding: “And very good it was too.”

Greggs chief executive Ken McMeikan last night said ministers had “lost touch with the public” and did not appreciate the impact the changes to VAT rules would have on ordinary people.

The high street chain saw millions wiped off its shares after the Budget closed a loophole that has meant some hot takeaway foods, such as sausage rolls and pasties, escaped the duty. The move sparked outrage, with critics pointing to the contrast of a cut in the 50p top tax rate. But speaking at a 10 Downing Street press conference today, Mr Cameron said that Mr Osborne was trying to bring shops into line with the VAT charged for more than two decades on takeaway burger bars, fried chicken restaurants and fish and chip shops.

The Prime Minister said: “It was Nigel Lawson who over 20 years ago put VAT on hot takeaway food, and may pasties and other items of hot takeaway food have had VAT on them since that time. “What we have seen since then is a number of businesses trying to find ways around that rule, fighting court cases and the rest of it. “Many, many small businesses in this country, whether selling fried chicken or fish and chips or hot takeaway pies, are already paying VAT. What the Government has to try to do is make sure the VAT rules are fairly applied. I don’t think it is fair that the small businessman running a fried chicken takeaway is having to charge his customers VAT but the big supermarket isn’t having to pay VAT on fresh hot chicken. It’s about trying to have a sensible vat arrangement where the boundaries are sensible too.”

The move was ridiculed by Labour MP John Mann during Mr Osborne’s appearance before the Commons Treasury Committee yesterday. “With the weather as it is today, a lukewarm pasty from Greggs is not VAT-able because the ambient temperature outside is the reference point, whereas if it is the middle of winter and freezing cold it is VAT,” Mr Mann said.

Labour leader Ed Miliband talked to the press outside a Greggs outlet in Redditch, where he and Ed Balls made a brief stop to buy eight sausage rolls at a cost of £4.70. He said: “There is a serious point here which is that the Government is hitting people’s living standards in every way they can. “Not just fuel duty going up, child benefit taken away, tax credits being cut, now even putting 20% on the cost of pasties, sausage rolls, and the Chancellor’s excuse? Well, he says you can buy them cold and you can avoid the tax. It just shows how out of touch this Government is and it shows that we’ve got a Budget that is hitting millions of people while cutting taxes for millionaires. It’s not fair and it’s out of touch with the vast majority of people in this country.”

Leeds station’s last pasty shop closed earlier this month. The Cornish Bakehouse concession now stands empty in the main concourse of the busy interchange. But shop workers said the station also once had a branch of the West Cornwall Pasty Co. But this shut in 2007. One woman who works in a station store said: “David Cameron? Buying a pasty on this station? I don’t remember that.”

Workers at another branch of the West Cornwall Pasty Co. - about 400 metres away in Leeds city centre - said they had not seen David Cameron either. Staff at the branch of Greggs next door also said they had no recollection of ever seeing the Prime Minister in the store. Mr Cameron did not appear exactly sure of the details of his pasty purchase when he mentioned it during a Downing Street press conference about the Olympics. The PM told reporters: “I am a pasty-eater myself. I go to Cornwall on holiday, I love a hot

SPORT / pasty. I think the last one I bought was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company. I seem to remember I was in Leeds station at the time and the choice was whether to have one of their small ones or one of their large ones. I have got a feeling I opted for the large one, and very good it was too. But I would be pretty sure that I would already be paying VAT because it was hot takeaway food.”

West Cornwall Pasty Company chief executive Gavin Williams said: “It’s great that David Cameron is discerning enough to select our traditional and authentic Cornish pasties.“We thank him for his glowing endorsement of our quality product and for helping to spread the news that a West Cornwall Pasty Company pasty is the best around.

However, what we really need from Mr Cameron right now is not advertising but clarity and leadership. We would have hoped that if he had been rubbing shoulders with our customers he’d better understand the impact that this move will have on them, and our sector and all the great suppliers within it. This is not about the West Cornwall Pasty Company but about the Cornish pasty industry as a whole and as the country’s biggest specialist retailer we need to stand up for everyone within it.” The firm, which has 80 branches across the UK, said it is estimated more than 13,000 jobs are sustained by the Cornish pasty industry.The National Federation of Fish Friers, which represents 8,500 fish and chip shop owners across the country, said that it backed the changes proposed in the Budget. At present, supermarkets and bakeries enjoyed an unfair competitive advantage over fast-food outlets because they do not have to pay VAT on hot food, said the Federation. “There should be a level playing field,” said the NFFF in a statement.

“Why should the UK’s fish and chip shops have to pay 20% on all the hot food they sell, including chicken and pies, when the bakery next door sells hot pies, pasties and sausage rolls free of VAT? “Also, why is the supermarket along the street allowed to sell hot chicken, potato wedges and a variety of pies and pasties free of VAT?” If implemented, the Budget proposals would help to provide the ‘level playing field’ that the NFFF has been campaigning for, said the organisation when questioned.

Meanwhile, the three Conservative MPs in Cornwall, Sheryll Murray, George Eustice and Sarah Newton, have urged Cornish people to take part in the HMRC consultation on the so-called “pasty tax”.

Mrs Murray, MP for South East Cornwall, has written to Chancellor George Osborne describing the pasty tax as “ill thought-out” and highlighting the difficulties in enforcing it. “Who is going to monitor the ambient against pasty temperature?”

Mrs Murray wrote. Surely the last thing we need is to employ an army of thermometer-wielding tax inspectors poking our pasties to see if they have cooled enough? What is going to be the difference allowable from ambient temperature? If a pasty is sitting in a window and the sun is shining, then is this pasty VAT-able? If a pasty is sold cold but an oven is made available to customers, is this then VAT-able? “Would it be VAT-able if a charge was made for the use of the oven?”

Mrs Newton, MP for Truro and Falmouth, spoke out in the House of Commons over the tax changes. “There is growing concern throughout Cornwall about the possible unintended consequences of the Budget and about the undoubtedly real threat to the Cornish pasty of the pasty tax,” she told MPs. Last week the Say No To The Pasty Tax group was set up on Facebook and an online petition has also been established to raise awareness. Steve Gilbert, Lib Dem MP for St Austell and Newquay, has also written to the Chancellor asking for a meeting with pasty manufacturers to discuss the impact of the proposal on their business and the Cornish economy. “The pasty industry employs thousands of people in Cornwall and is worth millions of pounds to the Cornish economy,” he wrote. We believe that by adding more VAT will undermine the industry and are calling for foods that have significantly advanced Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in Europe, such as the Cornish pasty, to be exempt from this proposal.”

Mr Gilbert added: “These proposals could hit the pasty industry greatly. “I’m determined to find a way for the pasty to be exempt from this tax and protect the industry that brings millions to the Cornish economy and directly employs thousands of local people. And has done for hundreds of years.”

ANDREW WOODCOCK /

Next stop Michael Phelps The London tube map gets Olympic style make over and rebrand /

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any visitors pouring into London this summer for the Olympics will arrive at Nadia Comaneci. They’ll need to travel by tube to Simon Whitfield (via Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal) before changing there and heading to Michael Phelps (via Carl Lewis).

That is one of the most direct routes to the Olympic Park in Stratford if one arrives at King’s Cross and changes at Bank, at least according to a new Tube map. Transport for London today unveiled their Olympic Legends Map. The names of all 361 stations on the iconic multi-coloured London tube map have been altered to the names of Olympic heroes - past and present have been included.

Oxford Circus has become swimming legend Ian Thorpe, Covent Garden is the British Ben Ainslie and Paddington is now reigning World Footballer of the Year Lionel Messi.

“There were heated debates and a few late changes of heart, but we are happy with the result: dozens of nations represented, all 2012 Olympic sports accounted for, and Ali (Stratford International station) and Phelps, two of the greatest Olympians of all time, guarding the Stratford gateways to the games,” map designers Alex Trickett and David Brooks said in a joint statement.

Some other notable inclusions are Jesse Owens (Aldgate), Usain Bolt (Victoria) and Steve Redgrave (Knightsbridge). Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing takes Stratford stop. “The map not only celebrates multiple gold medal winning athletes but also features other extraordinary athletes who may not have won an Olympic gold medal but are recognized for their abilities,” TFL said.

Plus along with some notable exclusions, including Zola Budd and Mary Decker, the runners who got tangled in the 3,000-meter final at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the designers of the map concede that not everyone will be happy.

SIMON RICE /

I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

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How slow can you go?

My wife asked me should have anoth “Whoah there. S the legs are still Let’s finish this

if I thought we her baby. I said, Slow down love, l in the freezer. s one off first.�

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Thursday 03 May

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MAIN HEADLINE / Fuel prices soar as drivers panic over a strike threat Sales of petrol increased dramatically yesterday as motorists flocked to garages to fill up following controversial advice from the Government ahead of a possible strike by fuel tanker drivers /

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etrol sales shot up by 81% and diesel by 43%, according to the Petrol Retailers Association, which represents around 5,500 garages across the UK. A spokesman blamed poor advice from the Government on keeping tanks topped up, including the much-criticised call by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude to fill up jerry cans.

“This is exactly what we didn’t want to happen - people panic buying. This is the situation we made our number one priority to avoid. Deliveries are still being made to garages and we are advising people to continue with their normal buying habits.”

Moves to start peace talks aimed at averting a strike will be stepped up today, with the conciliation service Acas trying to arrange a meeting between the Unite union and seven companies involved in the dispute.

Unite will have to give seven days’ notice of any industrial action, so it was looking increasingly unlikely that strikes will be threatened over Easter. The AA said current fuel shortages were the result of poor advice and rumours leading to panic buying. AA president Edmund King said: “There is no fuel tanker strike and therefore if drivers followed normal fuel buying patterns there would be no fuel shortage whatsoever.

We now have self-inflicted shortages due to poor advice from the Government directly linked to topping up the tank and hoarding in jerry cans. This in turn has led to localised

I* / shortages, queues and some profiteering at the busy pumps. Theoretically if 30 million cars with half full tanks are advised to fill up over 24 hours, this means that 750 million litres of fuel would be sold, whereas average sales over 24 hours would be 90 million litres.

Hence the top-up advice means that demand for fuel has increased more than seven-fold.

So it is no surprise that the “top-up” advice has lead to shortages.”

Labour accused the Government of playing “political games” over the issue, following days of bad headlines over the Budget and dinners for Tory donors. Opposition leader Ed Miliband called on Prime Minister David Cameron and Mr Maude to apologise for their handling of the situation.

“The Prime Minister is presiding over a shambles on petrol. The country is paying the price for the incompetent way he is governing. In a delicate situation which demanded statesmanship, the Government showed partisanship. They made a crude decision to play politics with petrol without regard for the consequence. Being able to fill your car up or worrying about how you will get to work is not something that should be subject to political games.”

Energy Secretary Ed Davey urged people to take “precautions”, and defended Mr Maude’s handling of the situation. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Francis has been playing a key role in getting the Government’s preparations ready. If you are at the meetings that I’m at with Francis Maude, with Liberal Democrat colleagues and Conservative colleagues, we’ve come together really strongly to make sure our country, our economy, isn’t hit by what could be a damaging strike. People should take precautions, just in the way the Government has taken precautions doing some sensible planning.”

ALAN JONES /

TRAVEL / Australia: Being between a rock and a hard place It’s 150 years since the first explorer crossed Australia from south to north. Today you can make the same journey along the spectacular Stuart Highway /

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or the adventurous traveller, everything is pointing in the same direction: along the epic Stuart Highway from Adelaide in South Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory. This year is the 150th anniversary of John McDouall Stuart becoming the first man to cross this vast country from south to north. In mid-April the dry season begins in the “Top End” of Australia, the ideal time to make the journey. Simultaneously, air fares from Britain tumble to their lowest. And there are even new flights connecting both ends of the route, making this the perfect time to follow in Stuart’s heroic footsteps.

The route from Adelaide in South Australia to Darwin at the top end of the Northern Territory covers 1,894 miles – and that’s before you start adding diversions.

Most of the journey is through the vast, glorious nothing of Australia’s outback, snaking between the giant road trains and caravan convoys on the Stuart Highway. Access roads to almost all the major sites are sealed – a conventional vehicle is fine unless you plan to take a four-wheel drive to some of the really obscure nooks and crannies of Australia’s interior if you’re prepared.

For a journey that’s largely about ploughing through stark desert, it starts off in a remarkably genteel manner. The Barossa Valley and Clare Valley wine regions are a short drive out of Adelaide, with numerous companies offering tasting tours around some of the best wineries in Australia. In the Barossa Valley, The Kirche at Charles Melton (Krondorf Road, Tanunda; 00 61 8 8563 3606; thekirche.com.au) is a converted church with the luxe trimmings fitted in – and it just so happens to be inside the vineyard of one of Australia’s best winemakers. A stay here costs A$435 (£311) per night for up to four guests, with breakfast included.

Soon the rolling hills disappear from your rear-view mirror, and the long haul across South Australia – the driest state in the driest continent on earth – begins. The Stuart Highway is single-carriageway for almost all its length, but you should be able to maintain the top legal speed of 110km/h (68mph) in South Australia and 130km/h (81mph) in the Northern Territory with little trouble. Keep an eye on the fuel gauge,

however: roadhouses, or service stations, are usually spaced between 100-130 miles apart. In rare instances, the next one may be out of fuel – keeping enough in the tank for a three to |four hour stint is advisable. Fuel for glass-based evening consumption, of course, is best stocked up on in the Barossa or Clare Valley.

The Flinders Ranges should be the first major diversion. The mountains have the most spectacular desert scenery, while the hiking in the natural amphitheatre of Wilpena Pound is excellent. Beyond Port Augusta, where the highway west to Perth disappears into a hazy mirage, you’re properly into the Outback. Here, the South Australian desert town of Woomera is a fabulous oddity. It was built around a once-secret weapons testing base. Old missiles are displayed in a park outside the primary school.

Further on, the opal mining town of Coober Pedy is equally strange. From a population of 3,500, seven out of 10 live underground in dug-out caves to avoid the scorching heat. The tours of the mines and show homes are engrossing. The Desert Cave hotel (00 61 8 8672 5688; desertcave.com.au) in Coober Pedy offers four-star dug-out cave accommodation from A$240 (£171).

The five-mile base walk around Uluru is one of the most rewarding half-day treks imaginable. So make the 132-mile diversion from the Stuart Highway at the Erldunda Roadhouse, 125 miles south of Alice Springs. Meanwhile, the Ayers Rock Resort’s Sounds of Silence dinner (best booked through Viator.com at £112) involves great barbecue food, watching the Rock light up at sunset and guided star-gazing presentations from on top of a remote sand dune. Nearby Kings Canyon and Kata-Tjuta both have their own majesty – at least three days should be budgeted for the Red Centre. An hour south of Alice Springs, the Stuart’s Well Roadhouse (00 61 8 8956 0925; camels-australia.com.au) offers camel rides as well as petrol fill-ups – and from pretty much then on, every roadhouse has its own gimmick. Top of the pile is Wycliffe Well (00 61 8 89641966; wycliffe.com. au), which claims to be the UFO capital of Australia and has scores of plastic aliens and Elvises scattered throughout the grounds. It’s also possible to stay there – a decent option for anyone wanting to get to the nearby Devil’s Marbles for sunrise. En suite cabins cost from around A$107 (£76). The Daly Waters Pub (00 618 8975 9927; dalywaterspub.com) is an Outback legend – stay for the barramundi, beer and entertainment, then try to ignore the spiders that may be creeping around the rather rustic cabins costing A$125 (£89) a night.

DAVID WHITLEY /

Swine flue jab has been linked to narcolepsy The Swine flu vaccine may well have been responsible for a sudden increase in cases of narcolepsy among schoolchildren in Finland, a study has found /

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he sleep disorder is characterised by periods of extreme drowsiness, sudden naps, and paralysis attacks.

Scientists spotted a sudden increase in narcolepsy rates among Finnish children early in 2010.

Research showed it was associated with the Pandemrix vaccine, given to the children to protect them against H1N1 swine flu. One study found that the incidence rate of narcolepsy among children and teenagers under the age of 17 shot up 17-fold after the vaccinations. In contrast, the incidence rate for adults over 20 was unchanged.

The study compared narcolepsy rates between 2002 and 2009, and 2010. During the first period, the rate for children was 0.31 per 100,000 individuals. After swine flu vaccination, it rose to 5.3 per 100,000 subjects tested.

A further study involving the same researchers, led by Dr Markku Partinen from the Helsinki Sleep Clinic, collected the narcolepsy and vaccination data for children born between January 1991 and December 2005. It found that narcolepsy incidence for vaccinated individuals was 13 times higher than for those who were unvaccinated.

Both studies appear in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE. The researchers concluded: “We consider it likely that the Pandemrix vaccination contributed, perhaps together with other environmental factors, to this increase in what we call genetically susceptible children.” The scientists suspect the vaccine may have contributed to an autoimmune effect linked to narcolepsy.

JOHN VON RADOWITZ

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SPORT / Public slow to warm to this summer’s Olympics

FLUFF PIECE / The new serif in town The fonts used on London’s signs and shops have an army of fans /

More than half of those polled think that spending £9.3bn on the Games is not very good value for taxpayers’ money /

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ore than half the public thinks that the London Olympics will not be worth the taxpayers’ money that has been spent on them, according to a survey for The Independent. The ComRes poll found that 51 percent of people disagree with the statement that the Games will be worth the £9.3bn cost to the public purse; 40 per cent agree with the statement and 9 per cent replied “don’t know.” Young people are much more relaxed about the cost of the event than other age groups: 58 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 believe the Games will be worth the money, compared with 32 per cent of those aged 35 to 44. Opinions also appear to divide according to social class.

More people in the top AB group (49 per cent) think the cost is justified than do not (42 per cent).

But the opposite is the case among other social classes, suggesting that the Olympic could be seen as a “rich person’s event”. ComRes interviewed 1,000 adults by telephone between the 23 and 26 of March. Data was weighted to be demographically representative of all British adults and also weighted by a number of past vote recalls.

ANDREW GRICE /

II / UK is back in recession, says the OECD

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t’s the dots that do it, on the “i’s”. Except that they’re not dots at all, but diamonds.

The adornments on an otherwise beautifully simple typeface are an identifying quirk of Johnston Sans, a font that is as synonymous with London as Big Ben. It has become known as the “handwriting” of the city, but can you identify it? Did you even know its name?

Antony Harrington is obsessed with type. It is partly the job of successful fonts to be invisible and as such they are usually overlooked. Johnston Sans, as it happens, is the font of London Underground. Harrington wants everyone to know this and is inviting fellow enthusiasts to draw a typographic map of the capital. He wants to use modern technology to record great or endangered examples of lettering to show the unique and quiet way the words around us can help shape the identity of a place and how we feel about it.

I meet Harrington, a partner at a branding and design company in north London, outside the Covent Garden Tube station, where lunchtime shoppers steer a course around two men behaving strangely. We are doing what few Londoners ever do, looking up to admire the Underground’s unmistakable roundel sign, as well as the more ornate typeface used on the station’s façade. After a few minutes I reach for my phone, start the app Harrington has devised and take a photo. I write a caption and upload the image to the London Typographica website, where it is added to a map of the city now dotted with examples of type.

Harrington admits to being a font geek, but says there’s a reason we should all look with fresh eyes at the words in our own towns and cities. “Typefaces work well as little milestones,” he says. “They anchor a building to a time and a function, whether it’s commercial or social, and this is a heritage worth preserving.”

Edward Johnston was commissioned in 1913 to design a unifying font for an underground network still made up of lines owned by different companies. Using a quill at his studio in Sussex, he ignored the conventions of the time to design a typeface of startling simplicity. It was among the first functional fonts to communicate only information but nothing about class or education and first appeared on posters in 1916.

It has survived minor tweaks to appear as clean and as modern today as it did on the drawing board 100 years ago, diamonds included. Johnston also inspired, directly or otherwise, several other sans serif fonts (serifs are the little flourishes that appear at the end of the strokes in, for example, Tiempos, the typeface you’re reading now; it’s Georgia if you’re online. Sans serif type does away with these marks for a clean, clear aesthetic).

Gill Sans, designed by Eric Gill, a student of Johnston’s, became the font of the old British Railways and, now, the BBC logo. Helvetica, a Swiss font designed in 1957, has been embraced by corporations and cities and, in New York City, is as strongly associated with the subway as Johnston is with the Tube.

Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type, a book about fonts, says the letters on signs as well as shopfronts and buildings have a crucial and increasingly overlooked role.

“You should be able to be parachuted into any city in Europe and know where you are instantly from seeing the typeface,” he says. “You can land at a London airport and know you’re there because you see Gill Sans everywhere.” But Garfield says the power of type

to characterise a place is threatened by the digital drop-down menu. “Since computers arrived, type has become internationally homogenised,” he says. “In the old days someone would come up with a typeface and great metal blocks had to be carted around. Now someone designs a typeface in Hawaii and gives it to a big typographical sales bureau and it’s all over the world within a day. “If you’re branding a place today you go with the font everyone else has gone with – and only a few of these have an impact.”

In some cases the fonts that once marked out cities face a physical threat. From Covent Garden Tube station, Harrington guides me down Long Acre, one of the area’s busiest shopping streets. We’re following a route originally charted by Phil Baines, a professor of typography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. “Can you see it?” Harrington asks as we stop to look up at a branch of H&M. “See what?” And then, like a camera coming into focus, my eyes begin to see the wonderful, ghostly remnants of words in the stone: “London’s favourite fruiterers, T Walton & Sons (London) Ltd.” The shapes are the shadows left by metal letters that once identified this handsome building, which stands a few cartwheels away from the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. “It won’t be long before that disappears completely,” Harrington says. We take a photograph and record the ghost font on Harrington’s website, before continuing our walk.

If the modern typographic landscape fails to distinguish cities as it once did, one man is trying to preserve the role of the font, casting himself as a modern-day Edward Johnston. Jeremy Dooley is a type designer who lives in Chattanooga, a small city in the southern American state of Tennessee. Once known as one of America’s most polluted cities, Dooley says it’s now a thriving centre for a creative industry that struggles to separate itself. In 2012, Dooley wondered, could a font help a city make a comeback?

Dooley joined forces with a fellow type designer, Robbie de Villiers, to create Chatype, unveiled this year. “By creating a custom font for the city we wanted it to immediately say, in every application, this is Chattanooga,” Dooley says. “We wouldn’t even need to say it – it would be subliminally communicated.”

Dooley says the design of a city font is “as important as picking the colours in a flag”. His font combines the city’s Native American heritage with its industrial past and entrepreneurial, creative present. Chatype has already been used by a handful of Chattanoogan businesses and Dooley has had good feedback from the city’s authorities.

“Chattanooga already has a vernacular language but not one that distills down into a font,” Dooley says.

It was not always clear what the designers of the last font on Harrington’s tour were trying to achieve. We have walked from Covent Garden down St Martin’s Lane, where we nip down May’s Court, an alley, to admire the vast Art Nouveau letters built in stone which mark the London Coliseum, the home of the English National Opera. When London revealed its Olympic logo in 2007 it was ridiculed.

The more recent unveiling of 2012 Headline, the official Olympic font, passed more quietly but its shouty angles and jaunty slant have not won it many fans. Garfield calls it “surely the worst new public typeface for 100 years”. Harrington was similarly unimpressed but has since changed his mind. “I think it’s a stroke of genius,” he says.

“They’ve managed to predict a feeling, that we’d grow into the type. There’s a vibrancy to it and an emotional impact when you look at it now, you think London”.

SIMON USBORNE /

The UK has slipped back into recession after the economy contracted in the first quarter of 2012, a highly influential think-tank warned today /

Scotland Yard’s communications chief Dick Fedorcio resigns

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Scotland Yard’s communications chief resigned today after the force decided to launch disciplinary proceedings against him over the awarding of a contract to an ex-News of the World executive /

ross domestic product (GDP) - a broad measure for the total economy - is on course to have fallen by about 0.1% in the three months to the end of March. The gloomy forecast comes after official figures revealed the economy contracted by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2011, which was worse than the previous estimate of a 0.2% fall. The OECD also warned the recovery for the world’s biggest economies would be fragile, with the outlook “very weak”.

PETER CRIPPS /

I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

III /

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ick Fedorcio was facing gross misconduct allegations over the decision to hire the Sunday tabloid’s former executive editor Neil Wallis to provide PR advice for the Metropolitan Police.

An investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) concluded that Mr Fedorcio had a “case to answer” over the procurement of the contract.

Mr Wallis’s company Chamy Media was paid £24,000 by the Met for communications advice between October 2009 and September 2010.

Mr Fedorcio had been on extended leave from Scotland Yard since August pending the investigation into his relationship with the former News of the World executive, who was arrested on suspicion of phone-hacking last July but has not been charged. The IPCC’s report, which it sent to the Met on January 10, will be made public shortly. IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass said: “Our investigation found that Mr Fedorcio has a case to answer in relation to his procurement of the contract for Chamy Media.

“Last week the Metropolitan Police Service proposed to initiate proceedings for gross misconduct and I agreed with that proposal. In light of Mr Fedorcio’s resignation today, those proceedings cannot now take place and I propose to publish our investigation report detailing our findings in the next few days.”

Earlier this month the Leveson Inquiry into press standards heard that Mr Fedorcio invited people from leading PR firms Bell Pottinger and Hanover to submit rival bids for the contract that was awarded to Mr Wallis.

Chairman Lord Justice Leveson suggested that the Met head of public affairs chose these companies because he knew they would be more expensive than the former News of the World executive, adding: “The point is, this is set up to get a result.” Scotland Yard said it would not comment on any aspect of Mr Fedorcio’s pay.

SAM MARSDEN /

Power to the people

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Anti-Consumerism Animal Rights Movement Black Power Movement

Social Movements Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organisations which focus on specific political or social issues. In other words, they carry out, resist or undo a social change. A ‘movement’ in the opposite direction. They derive from freedom of expression.

Civil Rights Movement

Social Movements

Ecofeminism Environmental Justice Movement Fair Trade Movement

Promotes sustainability in developing countries. It also makes you and I pay a fortune for a bar of chocolate.

Food not Bombs Free Love

A social movement that rejects the idea of marriage. Anyone supporting this movement is known as a “free lover” or a “sex radical”. Oh I say.

Human Rights Movement Nazism

A unique variety of fascism that incorporates both biological racism and antisemitic views.

Generally frowned upon.

Nonviolence Movement Nudism

A movement that defends social nudity in private and public.

Not to be confused with Nazism.

Occupy Wall Street Open Access Publishing Slow Food Movement Slow Movement Stop Kony Students for a Democratic Society

The Slow Movement is one of the less extreme and nicer social movements. The kind you’d tell your parents you were a part of.

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WHY? / Supporting The Slow Movement is all well and good but why choose a newspaper? Well my good Sirs and ladies, newspapers like everything else in this world are speeding up. They’re bending the knee to this obsession with speed which we all seem to have. Don’t get me wrong, The Slow Movement isn’t some right wing radical extremist movement protesting against progression forward in technology or anything like that. It’s not about halting advances in science. It’s about preservation if anything. It’s about not forgetting where we came from before we move to somewhere else. Who we were dictates who we are and who we will be. That all sounds very serious but it’s not.

Newspapers are now online. They’re not the only thing, everything’s online these days. It’s brilliant. Everything’s a lot easier with the internet; things like shopping, work and banking (yes I meant banking). But some traditional medias have seen a set back with the rise of the digital age. Newspapers are arguably still the strongest print media alive - still going strong and have been for hundreds of years. They haven’t changed much in that time to be honest. Until now that is. An online newspaper is a very different beast to a paper variant. Lets not get into a mud slinging contest between the two, they both have pros and cons. Let’s however look at the old guard.

Let us appreciate the newspaper for all the wonderful things newspapers - and the emphasis here is on the ‘paper’ part - bring to the table. Research collated suggests the top reason people like a newspaper is to read something at the table on a morning when eating toast. No one wants toast on their iPad. You can also read a paper when on the loo. No one wants to read an iPad on the toilet. If you did these things with your iPad it’d be in a right state. Newspapers live their day long life and then they move on to be recycled and become another future installment. Can you recycle iPads? I honestly don’t know. But that’s probably not important.

Newspapers are brilliant things. Of course they have their flaws, not least usually the content inside them, but that’s for another day. Let us all appreciate the smell of ink and paper. Research also pointed out that the second most important part of having an actual newspaper is being able to do the Sudoku or crossword. Being able to scribble down, fold down corners and make mistakes is eons away from the poor online versions of these puzzles.

Online and digital papers are strange things. For me, I only read news online if there is a particular story I want to know about and there will be developments throughout the day. The internet offers a new kind of immediacy. Live updates throughout the day. But thats an entirely different thing to being able to sit down and read a newspaper. It’s a ritual really. Who knows, it probably won’t be long before we’re all reading hologram papers like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Let’s enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Friday 04 May

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MAIN HEADLINE / New pesticides linked to bee population collapse Two studies confirm the dangers of ‘nerve agents’ used on onethird of all British cropland /

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orldwide declines in bee colonies, the threatening much of global agriculture, may be caused by a new generation of nerve-agent pesticides, two new scientific studies strongly suggest. The findings place a massive question mark over the increasingly controversial compounds, now the fastest growing family of insecticides in the world. Bee declines represent a serious threat to agriculture because bees are the pollinators of a large percentage of crops. Both honey bees and wild bumble bees are seriously harmed by exposure to the neonicotinoid insecticides, even by tiny doses not sufficient to kill them outright, the studies by British and French scientists report today.

The British study, carried out by scientists from the University of Stirling, concludes that “there is an urgent need to develop alternatives to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops wherever possible”.

About 30 per cent of British cropland – 3.14 million acres – was being treated with the chemicals in 2010, while in the US the figures for neonicotinoid use are enormous: in 2010, 88 million acres of maize, 77 million acres of soy and 53 million acres of wheat were treated with them. The compounds, which attack insects’ central nervous systems, have been increasingly implicated in the widespread decline of honey bees and wild bees over the past decade, which have culminated in the mysterious colony collapse disorder in the US – a phenomenon in which the whole population of a beehive suddenly vanishes completely.

The value of the bees’ pollination services has been estimated at £200m per year just in Britain. The global annual value of pollination has been roughly estimated recently at nearly a staggering £128bn annually.

Many beekeepers have become convinced that the new pesticides are behind the

FLUFF PIECE / declines, and in France, Italy and other countries they have been banned. But in Britain and the US their use continues.

Last year The Independent revealed that the American government’s own chief bee researcher, Dr Jeffrey Pettis of the US Department of Agriculture, had conducted a study showing that bees exposed to microscopic doses of neonicotinoids were much more vulnerable to disease – but his study had not been published nearly two years after it was completed. Dr Pettis’s findings were eventually published two months ago shedding new light on the subject and were described by The Economist as “a plausible hypothesis for the cause of colony collapse disorder”.

The findings of the two brand new studies, published simultaneously in the journal Science, are explosive.

The British study, led by Stirling’s Professor David Goulson, showed that growth of colonies of the common bufftailed bumble bee, Bombus terrestris, slowed after the insects were exposed to “field-realistic levels” of imidacloprid, a common neonicotinoid insecticide.

The production of queens, essential for colonies to continue, declined by a massive 85 per cent in comparison with unexposed colonies used as controls.

“Given the scale of use of neonicotinoids, we suggest that they may be having a considerable negative impact on wild bumble bee populations across the developed world,” the Stirling team says.

The French study, led by Mikaël Henry from France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research in Avignon, have also looked at honey bees exposed to another neonicotinoid product known as, thiamethoxam.

The study found that even though the dose was sub-lethal, the exposure seriously affected the bees’ homing abilities to the extent that they proved to be two to three times more likely to die while away from their nests than untreated bees. “Non-lethal exposure... causes high mortality due to homing failure, at levels that could put a colony at risk of collapse,” the researchers say. “These new studies put beyond all reasonable doubt the capacity for neonicotinoids to cause environmental

destruction,” said Matt Shardlow, director of Buglife, the invertebrate conservation trust. “Our Government must take the precautionary step of banning their use.” The Government has twice been formally asked to suspend neonicotinoids; on both occasions the requests were completely ignored. The problem posed by neonicotinoids is that they are “systemic” pesticides, which means that they do not just sit on the surface of the plant, but are taken up into every part of it, including the pollen and the nectar; and so even if bees are not the target species, they ingest the chemicals through the pollen and nectar when they are foraging.

You stay classy San Diego Anchorman and Ron Burgundy are back /

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ot many films get to announce their sequel by having its star, in character, storm a chat show to broadcast the news. But few films of the last 10 years are as universally loved as Anchorman – it’s kind of a big deal.

Will Ferrell, dressed as chauvinistic news anchor Ron Burgundy, took over the Conan show this week, jazz flute in hand, to announce that the 2004 Judd Apatowproduced hit was being resurrected. Predictably, the news has been met with a mixture of excitement and apprehension by many fans.

Comedy sequels haven’t fared so well in recent times (just look at the panning last year for The Hangover Part II, which was a charmless rehash of the original jokes and set-up). Let’s just hope Anchorman 2 doesn’t stink as bad as Sex Panther, Paul Rudd’s “formidable” cologne from the now classic original film.

GILLIAN ORR /

Force of nature: The life AND DEATH of bees Bumble bees are distinctive for their large, furry appearance. They are hugely important as natural crop pollinators. The queen is the only individual that can survive the winter, hibernating underground and emerging in spring to build a nest.

She lays eggs which hatch as worker bees. The workers fly from flower to flower gathering nectar and spreading pollen as they go. Bumble bees pollinate a great variety of plants – from the wild to the agricultural.

Honey bees have a different life cycle, with all the bees surviving the winter inside the hive. Honey bees are much better than bumble bees at producing honey, made from the nectar and sweet deposits of trees and plants brought back to the hive. It is these bees in particular that are bred by beekeepers all over the world.

Unfortunately both the honey bee and the bumble bee populations have dramatically declined in recent decades. In Britain, bumble bees have been vanishing since the 1950s.

A UN report last year said that a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that had seen the number of honey bee colonies in Europe and the USA plummet since the 1960s, had become a global problem.

MICHAEL MCCARTHY /

I* / Attractions: A very Hogwarts day out Tomorrow, The Making of Harry Potter tour opens to the British public – and it’s wizard, says 15-year-old Holly Hatfield, who’s only gone and had a sneak peek /

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he idea of spending three hours walking through Hogwarts, discovering Diagon Alley and flying on broomsticks may leave some of you cold, but to any Harry Potter fan (and let’s face it, there are millions of us) the Warner Bros Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, which opens to the public tomorrow, is an incredible, emotional experience; I had to pinch myself to believe it was possible.

First things first. This is not The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal Studios’ experience in Orlando, Florida. This isn’t about rides. This is the real deal, the first time fans have had the opportunity to go behind the scenes and see the extraordinary skill, craftsmanship, imagination, dedication and attention to detail that made the eight Harry Potter films so special.

The tour lets visitors see and experience sets, props and costumes and even immerse themselves in some special effects.

Without giving too much away, you enter – as Harry did when he first arrived – into the Hogwarts Great Hall. Here, 400 students and teachers could sit at solid oak and pine tables where “pupils” were encouraged to carve in their own graffiti. (As the production designer Stuart Craig explains, “this would happen in all schools”.)

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint literally grew up on these sets.

You can see how they changed as the characters matured and the films became darker.

For example, the beds that were originally built for the boys’ dormitory in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were much too small for the later movies and filmmakers had to find creative camera angles to fit the actors into them.

It’s fun for all ages. As you enter, you are given a “passport”, for things to spot and get stamped. You can sit in the Ford Anglia in which Harry and Ron drive to Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and other film vehicles, or walk on the actual Privet Drive!

Bring a camera, because photographs are encouraged and your BlackBerry will fill up in no time. The green-screen area is the exception. Here you learn how the Quidditch games and the Weasleys’ flying car were created. You can even experience how they were shot against a green screen before a backdrop such as London at night was inserted.

You might have to queue a long time here. But what Potter fan wouldn’t want to sit on a Nimbus 2000 broomstick while wearing a Hogwarts school robe (that is handily supplied for you)? You can purchase photos of yourself “flying”. They are quite expensive at £12, but Potter fans will love them.

Film buffs will be entranced by the craftsmanship, the detail, the secrets laid bare and – who knows? – non-fans may even be converted after a ride on a Nimbus 2000. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

HOLLY HATFIELD /

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ART / My pupil, Damien Hirst Michael Craig-Martin on the making of the art world’s wunderkind /

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s the Tate Gallery mounts a major retrospective of the superstar artist’s work, Damien Hirst’s former teacher Michael Craig-Martin describes the beginnings of a career that has redefined British art.

In 1987 I was at an opening at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, when to my surprise I recognised the waiter serving me champagne – it was Damien Hirst. Still a first-year student at Goldsmiths, where I was one of his tutors, he had got himself a parttime stockroom job at the most important contemporary gallery in London.

Hirst is quick-witted, full of sharp observation and imaginative energy. He has the uncanny ability to go immediately to the centre of the issue. This makes secondary or peripheral concerns obvious for what they are. One sees the result of this ability in the visual economy and directness of his work, which often makes things look easy that are not. People say “I could’ve done that”. But they didn’t.

He is, as one would expect, a perfectionist, giving absolute consideration to every detail of his work. He is an artist who sees the possibility of something and then sets out to make it happen. He knows how to organise and orchestrate large numbers of people and things. In this sense he is like a film director, a choreographer, an architect.

Hirst always takes an overview, seeing things in relation to the larger picture. By working at d’Offay he gained an understanding of how the art world worked at that level.

Over the years, his ability to understand, tease, mock and exploit the art world has been one of his defining characteristics. As an artist, he takes the role of provocateur, playing with the art world’s self-image, assumptions, pretentions and rituals.His sensibility, humour, scepticism, bravado, stubbornness, naughtiness, romanticism and independence of mind mark him as a very British artist. This confident Britishness was evident in all the “Young British Artists”. Hirst exemplified their uncompromising, highrisk attitude. In a country that had few contemporary galleries and even fewer collectors, generations of young artists had survived through art-school teaching, the dole, various enterprise schemes, odd jobs. By the end of Margaret Thatcher’s reign, these options had more or less dried up.

I always find it laughable that people think that the YBAs were cynical careerists.

Nothing could be further from the truth. They were full of youthful and innocent confidence and ambition. Their attitude, expressed in their work of that time, was the take-no-prisoners, hell-bent stance of those who genuinely have nothing to lose. All or nothing. The expectation of selling for more than a few hundred pounds was so low that they often made work that defied the idea of the market altogether.

What they didn’t realise was that their defiance would be the very characteristic that would soon attract the market. They made work that was unmistakably British in content, but which spoke to the international art world with irreverent fluency. Hirst said to me recently that he is now amazed by the risks he took in his early career. His first solo London show, In and Out of Love, held in a vacant shop off Bond Street in 1991, consisted of two sections, one called Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays and the other White Paintings and Live Butterflies. Black caterpillar pupae had been stuck randomly in the white paint of the latter, and there were rows of potted flowers along their bases.

II / Blackberry ‘open to selling’ as revenues slump by 25 per cent The new chief executive of Research in Motion, the maker of Blackberry smartphones, signalled that he would be open to selling the company after it posted another catastrophic set of sales figures and plunged deep into the red /

SPORT / After several experiments, the opening had been precisely timed so that the pupae would hatch and the butterflies would emerge and fly off the paintings and down to the flowers as people watched. To encourage the hatching process and keep the butterflies alive, several large humidifiers pumped steamy hot damp air into the room, creating a tropical greenhouse atmosphere. Amazingly, the butterflies hatched on schedule. As Hirst now acknowledges, if they hadn’t, the anticlimax and loss of credibility might have jeopardised his whole subsequent career. But it was several years earlier, when I visited the site of the show Freeze while the work was being hung, that I had fully realised the quality and ambition of Hirst’s project. Freeze occurred in three parts over the summer months of 1988. Hirst had just completed the second year of a three-year undergraduate course. It was he who had found the grand, toplit, semi-derelict building in Docklands, organised its cleaning and preparation, chosen the artists, hung the works, and put together an invitation list that included virtually everyone involved in contemporary art in London.

Despite the youth of the artists, the most striking thing about the show was that it wasn’t like a student exhibition at all. The work was more confident and sophisticated than one would expect from undergraduates and recent graduates. Each artist was highly individual and presented a number of accomplished works. There was a copper-covered, fully illustrated catalogue with a text by the head of Goldsmiths art history department.

Hirst’s instinct for public relations – sending taxis for important guests – was in high gear.

But these things alone do not explain the show’s importance or impact.

I believe that what Hirst had achieved was not just to bring its young participants to international attention, but to establish for himself and for them a clear sense of context, a realisation that they were part of something larger than just their individual selves: a common cause. This helps explain why every success that each experienced subsequently helped them all. Freeze felt fresh and exciting, announcing the arrival of a new and very different generation of artists, not afraid to assert themselves or willing to wait for an invitation to the table. In the first part of Freeze, Hirst showed a group of boxes of various sizes painted in bright gloss colours and attached near the ceiling rafters like hornets’ nests. In the third part he showed spot painting for the first time, the spots painted directly onto the wall. After Freeze closed, he went back to Goldsmiths to complete his BA course. His final degree show the following summer consisted of four of the first medicine cabinets. Not a bad achievement.

In 1990 Hirst helped Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman stage two more important group exhibitions – Modern Medicine and Gambler – in a warehouse called Building One. Both were memorable. In Freeze all the participants had been or were still students at Goldsmiths. Each of these later shows included new works by Hirst and some of those who had been in Freeze, but added work by other young artists, many of whom had attended different art schools. Hirst’s instinct was always to expand what had been achieved by Freeze to include an ever-increasing number of artists, to make the circle bigger, not simply to consolidate the success of the original group. It was this generosity of spirit towards other artists that helped transform the London art world so completely.

Within a couple of years, dozens and then hundreds of young artists were sharing in the new and exciting atmosphere of creative endeavour and opportunity that Hirst and his peers had initiated.

MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN /

It’s the protest games - Olympics being targeted Activists have promised they will defeat extra security to get their messages across /

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his summer’s Olympic Games will happen against a backdrop of nearconstant demonstrations, protesters have promised, as activists plan sit-ins, marches and occupations of key sites despite the huge security presence that will surround London 2012.

The vow came as the first major demonstration on an Olympic site – a protest camp against the construction of a training hall to be used during the Games – moved into its seventh day.

Construction of the basketball facility at Leyton Marsh in east London was halted on Wednesday as protesters from Occupy London joined local residents who had set up camp there.

The Olympic organisers were recently forced to more than double the number of security guards required for the Games from 10,000 to 23,700, pushing the cost of security up from £282m in 2010 to £553m in December 2011. They also announced earlier this month that 7,500 of the extra guards would be military personnel.

Police have also been given extra measures to deal with demonstrations, including the ability to fast-track the process of dismantling makeshift camps.

But a newly-established protest group Our Olympics, which acts as a forum for other activists to organise protests, said yesterday that it would get around the extra security, and promised the “greatest act of non violent civil disobedience of our time”.

Kerry-anne Mendoza, a London School of Economics student and member of Occupy London, said: “They can’t stop us all. I really believe that this will be the biggest act of civil disobedience we have seen in a long time. It has already begun and new actions are likely to spring up more and more from now.” Games organisers Locog did not respond to a request for a reply or comment.

KEVIN RAWLINSON /

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evenues over the past three months, including the Christmas period when rival Apple sold millions of iPhones and iPads, were down 25 per cent, RIM said last night. The company – a pioneer in smartphones, particularly for business executives – announced a boardroom clear-out and a top-to-bottom review of its strategy, in an attempt to revive its fortunes.

Consumers have switched to trendier phones from Apple and other handset makers and companies that used to provide Blackberries for employees are increasingly letting them use their own phones.

Thorsten Heins, who replaced RIM’s long-time joint chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January, admitted that the company’s problems went deep. “The impression I had on Day 2 of being chief executive was pretty different from the facts I know after being ten weeks as chief executive,” he said.

The company “needs to learn to partner” instead of assuming it can make handsets, develop operating software and run its secure data network all by itself, he said.

The strategy review would examine cost-cutting measures, partnerships and licensing deals, and even a sale of the company if a potential buyer came forward, he said.

The promise of a strategic review took the edge off the disappointing results for investors, and while the shares initially plunged more than 10 per cent in after-hours trading in New York, they eventually settled down 2.4 per cent. They remain close to their lowest levels since 2004.

Revenues for the three months to 3 March were $4.2bn (£2.6bn), down from $5.6bn in the same period last year, and the net loss was $125m, compared with $934m previously earned.

STEPHEN FOLEY /

I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

Mind Puzzles Part II

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SUDOKU /

Monday

6 3 4 9 3 2 4 9 1 3 3

6 4 8 1 2 7

2 8 7 7 9 8 1

Scribbles & workings

Notes

6 4 2 3 8 1 9 3 4 3

Difficulty 

Wednesday Scribbles & workings

Notes

6 5

3 6

2 7 3

2 1 5 7 3 1 1 6 8 3 7 3 7 9 8 1 3 4 1 9 5 2 1 4 Difficulty 

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BRA All o IN FUN! f Sudok this week u ’s puzzl one c es in on for y venient place ou t think o wrap yo er ar u ound. r

Friday

7

Scribbles & workings

Notes

7 6 9 2 5 4 8 7 2 4 8 3 5 9 3 9 8 3 9 6 1 3 5 2 6 Difficulty 

Sunday Scribbles & workings

Notes

2 9

3

7 9 8

9

8

8 3 6 7 5

3 4 5 7 2 8

Difficulty 

*Solutions available next week. Probably.

1

9 6 3 3

2 1

Saturday 05 May

28

MAIN HEADLINE / Mayoral rivals tax clash

FASHION / Now trending - I’ll wear what she’s wearing yeah?

Boris Johnson launches foul-mouthed tirade at Ken Livingstone /

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ayor of London Boris Johnson unleashed a furious foul-mouthed attack on his Labour opponent Ken Livingstone today after the pair clashed in a fractious radio debate.

Mr Johnson shouted “It’s all f****** lies, it’s all f****** lies” after the former mayor claimed on air that the Conservative was channelling his earnings through a private company.

The two men were travelling in a lift up to the roof terrace at LBC 97.3 to be photographed after taking part in a live mayoral debate ahead of next month’s elections.

Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick and Green candidate Jenny Jones were also in the lift.

Mr Johnson was “visibly shaking with anger” and was “right up in Mr Livingstone’s face” when he began swearing, sources claimed.

The outburst came after Mr Livingstone accused the mayor of having “the same arrangements” for dealing with his media earnings as him. Mr Livingstone has come under attack for “tax dodging” in recent weeks over claims that he was paid via a company so he was liable only for corporation tax at 20% instead of income tax. Claims he denies. It is understood the mayor talked to his opponent privately after a business hustings three weeks ago to tell him what he had been saying about his tax arrangements was not true and he was furious when Mr Livingstone then repeated the claims on the airwaves.

On the radio show Mr Johnson called the accusation “lies”, adding: “I have never used a company to minimise my tax. There was a TV production company which I was briefly a director of but I certainly never ... I have always paid full income tax.” In relation to my business affairs and tax arrangements, specifically do I have any company or other arrangements constructed to enable me to pay less tax and do I, as has been claimed by the Labour mayoral candidate and the opposition leader, have the same arrangements as Labour’s mayoral candidate? The answer is simple in both cases. No. My salary as mayor is taxed as an employee of the GLA. In the same way as when I was an MP my salary was taxed as an employee. This should be about Londoners, not the foul mouths and fragile egos of Boris and Ken. Londoners deserve much better than they’re getting and it’s finally time for a change.”

SAM LISTER /

I* / Universities to voice concern over A-level proposals

New fashion app on the block /

Headteachers and universities voice concern over Michael Gove’s A-level proposals /

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asily the most chic way to respond to a question about one’s clothes is to say “this old thing” and pretend you hate the haute rags you are currently dripping with.

But one more thoroughbred arrives in the social media stable today, with its sights set especially on the best-groomed clientele and making fashionably false modesty a thing of the past. The Trendabl app engages the immediacy and interactivity of Twitter or Instagram to create fashion communities between users, blending tastes, trade and, of course, trends. You see a nice frock on a celeb or in a window, upload the picture and tag it with brand and price details, so that others can scope it out and potentially purchase.

You can even upload pictures of your own looks. Trendabl will do great business among brands looking to capitalise on celebrity sightings and media exposure: users then search by label or location to browse the looks online. Helpful if you want to broadcast your wardrobe to the world, but not particularly classy.

HARRIET WALKER /

eadteachers and universities voiced concerns today about Michael Gove’s plans to hand control of A-levels to higher education. The Education Secretary has announced that he intends to give universities, particularly the most elite institutions, “a far greater role” in designing A-levels in the future amid concerns that the qualifications are failing to prepare teenagers for degree study.

In a letter to the exams regulator, Ofqual, Mr Gove said he did not envisage the Government playing a part in developing A-levels in the future. Responding to the announcement, Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), warned that preparing students for university is just one aspect of A-levels.

He said: “The number of 18-year-olds taking A-levels has increased sharply and many use them as a springboard for apprenticeships, employment-based training or entering the workforce.

“It may be that university departments need to look at other ways of assessing applicants which don’t rely as heavily on A-level grades. That is what employers do. I fear that some of Mr Gove’s concerns are based on an unrealistic expectation of what an examination can accomplish. Academic achievement is not synonymous with employability skills, and a good education must provide both. I have doubts over whether universities are better-placed than awarding bodies to undertake the highly-complex task of setting examinations for many thousands of 18-year-olds, or indeed would wish to do so.”

Peter B Hamilton, headmaster of the private Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School and chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) academic policy committee, said: “A-levels are and will remain the most important examination for young people completing their pre-university education.

“Michael Gove is right to want university input into the much-needed review of A-levels but it would be most unwise to give universities total control. Those who teach 16 and 17-year-olds know best what they need, both to expand their knowledge base and develop their study skills, so input from successful sixth-form teachers will be equally important in getting an examination system fit for the 21st century.”

In his letter to Glenys Stacey, chair of Ofqual, Mr Gove said that exam boards should be able to work with universities to develop qualifications.

The Conservatives first said they planned to put universities, exam boards and professional societies in charge of creating A-levels before the last general election and Mr Gove has repeated the policy since taking office two years ago.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: “This sounds like a quick fix gimmick from Michael Gove.

“Of course universities have a useful role to play in deciding what should be tested at A-level, but A-levels need to test more than just the ability to go to university.

A-levels need to teststudents’ skills and help prepare them for the world of work and daily life as well as to study further.” In his letter to Ofqual, Mr Gove said he would like to see the new university-led A-levels available for first teaching in September 2014.

“I want to see new arrangements that allow awarding organisations to work with universities to develop qualifications in a way that is unconstrained - as far as possible - by centrally determined criteria,” Mr Gove said. AS-levels allow students to find out earlier if they are struggling with a subject. Three fifths (60%) said that their universities are providing extra “support” classes for under-prepared first-year students, usually focusing on writing and independent learning. And nearly three quarters (72%) of those questioned said that they have changed their teaching styles for students who are not ready for university study.

Researchers also found that lecturers believe that too much teaching to the test is a “major factor” in undergraduates being unprepared. Problems include trouble structuring essays, spelling, punctuation and grammar, referencing and citing sources, building arguments, conducting research and evaluating information, the study found.

But they are most prepared in terms of ICT skills, ability to work in teams and in presentation and communication skills.

ALISON KERSHAW

/

29

FLUFF PIECE / School meals are made smaller to save money School children are going hungry, teachers warn /

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chool meal portions are being shrunk, leaving lots of children to go hungry, teachers and parents have warned. Smaller portion sizes caused by cost-cutting are reported in schools across the country and are of particular concern, given the increase in the number of impoverished pupils who rely on school lunches as their only hot meal of the day. Primary-age children, in particular, are going hungry after being given lunches that are too small, according to teachers.

The findings of a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) were confirmed by individual teachers and parent groups who told The Independent it was a growing problem that had to be addressed. “Children are going hungry in schools and we all know what hunger does to your ability to learn,” said Mary Bousted, the ATL’s general-secretary. “It is no surprise that, in the current economic climate, there has been an increase in the uptake of free school meals ... For some children, it may be their only hot meal of the day.”

Figures from the School Food Trust show that the number of children eligible for free school dinners increased by 43,000 to an estimated 1,055,000 in 2010-11. More than a third of education staff have reported an increase in the take-up of free meals since 2007.

In the ATL survey, teachers warned that private providers, who are often hired to supply school meals, were cutting portion sizes to make their budgets go further and win new contracts. “The younger children pay the same price but get much less than the older ones,” said one reception class teacher in Bradford. “Also, they do not get the choice as this is also saved for the older ones.”

Another primary teacher added: “There are occasions when the portion size is very small and there have been times when portions have run out.”

An early years teacher said: “Children who come with packed lunches eat a lot more at lunchtime.” Another said: “Some meals are delicious, others are far from it. The portions served to the children are very poor and there seems to be no regular inspection of the food, kitchens or portion size.”

Margaret Morrissey, of the pressure group Parents Outloud, said it had received similar complaints from parents. “Providers would rather cut back on quantity than put up their prices because they fear a rise in cost would lose them the contract,” she said.

“Instead of increasing the price, they have cut back on quality and quantity. Councils should monitor providers very closely because many children – especially the young ones – have this as their main meal of the day. It is important that the meal is of very good to excellent quality.”

Claire Kellett, a teacher working in Somerset, warned the Education Secretary, Michael Gove: “Children don’t have to read Dickens – yes, Mr Gove, they’re living it.”

Teachers say that those pupils whose families pay for their school meals are simply

SPORT / receiving less for more. In all, 62 per cent of teachers surveyed by the ATL said meal prices had risen by up to 50p a day – or £95 extra a year – in some areas. Nearly half (44 per cent) of the teachers surveyed believed that all primary age pupils should be entitled to free school meals.

A spokesman for the School Food Trust said: “Our research proves that school food is particularly sensitive to changes in price. In these tough financial times, access to decent food for children has never been so important.”

“Every child having meals should be offered a portion of fruit and a portion of vegetables or salad every day. Since nutritional standards came into force, around threequarters of primary school children now have a portion of veg or salad on their plate, which is great progress.” He added that schools needed support to “run their catering efficiently and to deal with rising costs”.

Michelle Smith, the school project manager at the Jamie Oliver Foundation, urged the Government to make more children eligible for a free meals and for schools to protect quantity and quality.

“For those children from lower-income families, a nutritious school meal might be the only hot, nutritious meal they get each day,” she said. “A nutritious meal at lunchtime increases a child’s concentration, improves their behaviour in class, and their chances of doing well and achieving their best at school.”

A spokeswoman for the Association for Public Service Excellence, which monitors the school meals service, said the major costs for caterers were staffing and overheads such as kitchens, equipment and energy supplies, and these would be targets for cuts rather than portion sizes. However, she added that government grants for school dinners were no longer ring-fenced and had been incorporated into schools’ overall budgets, thereby making the meals service less secure.

London sex workers feeling threatened by the prostitution crackdown for Olympics A crackdown on prostitution in the Olympic boroughs is putting the lives of sex workers at risk, it has been claimed /

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The system has undergone radical change in recent years. Schools can hire private providers to run their service – or do it themselves. Local authorities have catering services but schools are free to decide whether to buy into them or not.

Since Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve school dinners in 2005, new nutritional standards have outlawed junk food and limited the serving of chips to twice a week.

The standards do set out minimum calories for each age group. But Christine Lewis, of the public service union Unison, which represents school dinner staff, said it had “almost been left on faith with the providers to abide by them”. “There is a possibility providers are violating the standards,” she added.

To further complicate matters, academies and free schools are exempt from the nutritional standards. Jamie Oliver is now campaigning with teaching unions and other education staff to reverse that decision.

ew figures show that arrests of the prostitutes in the areas surrounding the Olympic Games site in Newham have increased dramatically in the run-up to the Games.

In Tower Hamlets, the number of arrests made in the first two-and-ahalf months of this year has exceeded the total made 2011. Arrests have also risen in Newham.

Eighty brothels across the five Olympic boroughs have been closed in the past year, compared to 29 closures in London’s other 32 boroughs, and prostitutes are being barred from the area under new bail conditions.

A support group for sex workers has claimed that the crackdown is forcing women to move into unfamiliar areas, where they are more at risk of attack.

“Security systems among women on the street are being busted up and women displaced into unfamiliar areas.

Women are having to work harder and take more risks to make the same money,” said Cari Mitchell, of the English Collective of Prostitutes.

The group renewed its calls for the legalisation of prostitution in order to avoid sex workers becoming the victims of attacks.

RICHARD GARNER /

RICHARD HALL /

Canteen culture: the meals system

II / UK condemns the Buenos Aires British embassy attack 30 years ago The Government has condemned violent protesters who attacked the British Embassy in Buenos Aires on the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War /

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everal hundred demonstrators pelted police officers with homemade fire-bombs and threw rocks and flaming bottles towards the embassy as a series of events were held in both Argentina and the UK yesterday to commemorate the 1982 conflict.

Television footage showed riot police using a water cannon to disperse the group of extremists who had earlier set fire to a Union Jack flag and an effigy of the Duke of Cambridge in protest against the British rule of the islands.

The violence came after Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner stoked the diplomatic battle between Buenos Aires and London by describing the UK’s control over the Falkland Islands as unjust. However, David Cameron said he remained committed to upholding British sovereignty over the territory and insisted that the islanders must be allowed to choose their nationality status.

The lack of an aircraft carrier would make a repeat impossible, the ex-Navy chief told The Times.

Mr Hammond noted however that there was “not the slightest intelligence to suggest that there is any credible military threat to the Falklands now”. Spurred on by the discovery of oil reserves off the Falklands, Ms Kirchner has spearheaded an intense reassertion of Argentina’s claim over what it calls Las Malvinas. At the weekend, it threatened legal action against British and American banks involved in advising UK companies exploring for oil.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, who has led a push to improve UK trade and other links with South America, and has described Argentina’s recent aggressive actions as “deeply regrettable”.

AP / I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

30

Watch out for time thieves

The Time Poverty diagram

Need for time

Time Poverty

Lack of time

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TIME POVERTY / I know what you’re thinking. “What in the world is time poverty?!”

Well sit back and prepare yourself for a schooling. Time poverty is basically a lack of time. It’s a term used to describe our modern way of life as humans. It suggests that there is a lack of quality in the now. So if you invest your time in activities and pursuits that lack quality, you will always end up feeling deprived even if the amount of time is unchanged. Basically that means if you’re going to waste all day playing Skyrim, make sure you enjoy it.

When you actually stop planning, projecting and remembering, and instead begin to focus only on the here and now - you will find that worry disappears.

The second way to deal with time poverty is to alter the way you interact with the world. I’m sorry to tell you that it’s actually a lot less like The Matrix than it sounds. The Slow Movement is fundamentally about connection. In particular making a connection with other people and the things around us. Changing your methods of interacting with the world is an intrinsic part of The Slow Movement.

Become deliberate in what you do. Do things in the now. But not right now because you’re reading this paper.

When you look at the big picture you’ll find the unimportant stuff just simply falls away.

As Jack Bauer will testify there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Even if you love what you do and are engaged in the moment, part of the problem of time poverty comes from time pressures. These are external obligations, responsibilities and duties that make demands of your time. Your cat needs feeding, your alarms going off, your parents keep asking why you don’t have a job, a girlfriend or a purpose in life. The way to defeat time pressure is to accept and embrace your abilities to make decisions. Like making the decision to finally do something with your life and sign on.

Sunday 06 May

32

MAIN HEADLINE / The Justice Secretary - introducing secret courts could result in saved lives Inquests and court hearings should not be take place in public if they involve national security matters that could endanger life, the Justice Secretary said today /

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enneth Clarke, responding to Nick Clegg’s earlier comments that he could not support the Government’s proposals for more secret hearings in their current form, said he shared the Deputy Prime Minister’s concerns but felt that the cost of open justice could not be counted in lives lost.

The debate comes as MPs and peers on the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights said the controversial proposals were based on “vague predictions” and “spurious assertions” about catastrophic consequences. The committee said that, in reality, the plans are a “radical departure from long-standing traditions of open justice” which should only be invoked when publicly disclosing sensitive material carries “a real risk of harm to national security”.

The Defence Secretary countered the argument by stating that, rather than the ‘silence’ judges and coroners are currently met with when dealing with sensitive information, access to evidence would in fact be greater in a secret hearing. Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are trying to get the evidence in. Otherwise what happens is it is not just closed hearings, it’s closed altogether. Clarke also insisted that procedures had to be put in place to ensure foreign nations were happy to share intelligence with Britain without fearing it would be exposed publicly. He said that, while he was unaware of specific details, he had been told that US agencies became “extremely cautious” after the Binyam Mohamed case, and felt the risk of highly sensitive material becoming public knowledge was “getting in the way” of investigations.

Mohamed’s case risked damaging intelligence-sharing agreements between the UK and the US amid claims Britain published American intelligence that was not in the public domain.

Clarke recognised concerns over whether it should be the Justice Secretary who makes the decision on what material is heard privately and said he was committed to ensuring that it is a judge who has the final say. He said: “We will be protected against terrorism, which we must be, but those security services will be more accountable to both Parliament and to the court, and more evidence will be heard by judges than is now.” He added that the powers to take evidence in secret should not apply to inquests, and that it must be judges who decide whether or not to use them in the small number of civil cases that throw up issues of national security that could endanger life.

JOHN HALL /

FOOD / Deregulating sales of Fugu blowfish - ‘putting lives in danger’ Nature’s most toxic treat /

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ugu’s active ingredient is called tetrodotoxin, a poision many times more poisonous than cyanide It’s ugly, expensive and poisonous enough to induce respiratory paralysis and death, but the blowfish has long been one of the more desirable items on Japanese seafood menus.

The good restaurants in central Tokyo charge nearly £100 a pop for a sashimi meal of fugu, the Japanese name for one of nature’s most toxic treats.

Japanese fugu chefs are an exclusive guild, licensed to carefully gut the fish of the liver, ovaries and other parts where the poison lurks.

Now in a move that has sent some blowfish restaurants into toxic shock, Tokyo’s government says it is deregulating the trade, allowing the fish to be sold in premises without a licensed chef. “Regulations no longer meet the needs of contemporary fugu distribution,” sniffed an official with the government’s public health bureau.

Fugu lovers have for years been bypassing the capital’s licensed – and expensive – eateries by ordering from other parts of the country where the fish is freely available. The licensing system, which forces chefs to train for at least two years, is completely outdated and costly, say many opponents.

“The strict regulations have protected Tokyo’s fugu industry, and this has kept the fish’s prices high,” restaurantchain owner Daichi Sakamoto told the Yomiuri newspaper yesterday.

Over the years, hundreds of people have died after dining on the chewy white meat. Fatalities peaked after the Second World War when starving Japanese riffled restaurant rubbish bins for food. Fugu restaurants pushed for the government licensing system, which was introduced in 1949. Since then, poisonings have fallen to the current 20 or so a year, mainly by people gutting and cooking the fish at home with care and attention.

DAVID MCNEILL /

I* / First global aid fall in fourteen years sparks cash call Europe’s richest countries today faced pressure to step up cash support for developing nations after figures showed the first fall in global aid for 14 years /

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study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development confirmed America as by far the largest donor state, followed by Germany, the UK, France and Japan.

But of all donor countries worldwide, only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden currently beat the United Nations’ Overseas Development Aid (ODA) target of giving at least 0.7% of national wealth to the neediest in the world.

Today’s OECD report said the UK, whose aid commitment fell slightly last year, nevertheless remained on track to achieve the ODA goal of 0.7% by 2013 - two years ahead of target.

The report said major donors’ support fell by nearly 3% on average last year, breaking a long trend of annual rises for the first time since 1997. Greece and Spain cut their aid by 39% and 33% respectively because of the economic crisis, and other big slashers of national aid budgets were Austria, Belgium and Japan.

Continuing tight budget pressure will put pressure on aid levels for years to come, warned the OECD report, and OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria urged donors nevertheless to keep up their aid pledges: “The fall of ODA is a source of great concern, coming at a time when developing countries have been hit by the knock-on effect of the crisis and need it most” He praised the donor states who kept their aid pledges despite tough domestic economic cuts, and warned: “They show that the crisis should not be used as an excuse to reduce development cooperation contributions.” EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs joined the call, declaring: “In times of crisis, the EU must not forget the poorest in the world.” He said the 27 EU countries combined remained the world’s largest aid donor in 2011 - to the tune of 53 billion euro (£44 billion), or more than half all official global aid.

At a time of heavy budget constraints at home, three EU donor nations Germany, the UK and France - ranked among the five largest individual donors countries worldwide, while four had already reached the 0.7% target. Overall, the EU’s donor aid currently amounted to just over 0.4% of EU combined wealth. The Commissioner went on: “EU aid has pulled millions of people out of poverty and saved countless lives over the last ten years. Development aid is both solidarity and an investment to make the world safer and more prosperous.

“I therefore call on member states to reaffirm their commitment to achieving the goal of increasing ODA to 0.7% of GNI (national wealth) by 2015.” International aid agencies warned the aid cuts would cost lives in the developing world. Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said: “It is tragic that global aid should be cut just when we are making dramatic progress in saving children’s lives. Aid works, and even though many donors are experiencing their own financial difficulties, this should not be an excuse to abandon poor countries, especially when aid represents such a tiny proportion of their total spending.”

He said the eurozone crisis was clearly directly hitting the poor in the developing world as well as hurting European: “In this context, the UK should be congratulated for keeping its promise. We know that aid saves lives and at a time when other countries are making cuts, the UK’s leadership is particularly vital.” Max Lawson, Oxfam’s Head of Policy, said: “This cut in aid is a global scandal. Rich countries are using the economic crisis as an excuse to turn their backs on the world’s poorest at a time when they need help the most.” Mr Lawson added: “Governments have shown that they can find large sums of money to bail out banks but with notable exceptions - Denmark, Norway and the UK most are failing dismally to find much smaller sums for the world’s poorest people.”

GEOFF MEADE /

33

SPORT /

II /

The Olympics - Welcome to Hackney beach club

Food Standards Agency agree to ban meat removal technique

VIP sparkle his Hackney /

A technique used in the UK to remove meat from animal bones is going to be banned this month following a moratorium by the European Commission, it was announced today /

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unseeker yachts and palm trees may not be a usual sight off the coast of Newham, but a developer is hoping a temporary island in a nearby canal will bring a bit of VIP sparkle to the Olympic borough.

The illustrious smoked salmon manufacturers Forman & Son have unveiled plans for the “Fish Island Riviera” just a hundred yards from the stadium this summer. The structure will host up to 30 corporate hospitality suites for the 17 days of the games, starting at £75,000 plus VAT – not including catering. Yachts moored in the canal will also be available for hire, while the developers promise palm trees and cocktails in a beach club setting for those dropping by.

“Fish Island will be the VIP side of the Games. Guests can arrive in style by boat and enjoy the atmosphere surrounded by palm trees and yachts,” Lance Forman, managing director of Forman’s Fish Island, said. “We expect athletes to come here to celebrate their medal wins.” The island will be situated next to Forman’s new salmon smokery – the company was forced to move its factory off the site of the Olympic Park when London won the right to host the Olympic Games.

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he UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it had agreed to the moratorium but stressed there was no evidence of any risk to human health whatsoever from eating cow and sheep meat produced from the brand new

low-pressure ‘Desinewed Meat’ (DSM) removal technique.

The FSA said a “very small part” of the UK’s meat processing industry used the DSM technique to remove meat from animal bones, with the product closely resembling minced meat.

The FSA said the DSM process had been used in the UK since the mid 1990s, and local producers had reported that DSM meat was also exported by other EU countries such as Germany, Holland and Spain.

The agency said in a statement: “The FSA is clear that there is no evidence of any risk to human health from eating meat

produced from the low-pressure DSM technique. There is no greater risk from eating this sort of produce than any other piece of meat or meat product. The EU Commission has informed us today they do not consider this to be an identified public health concern.”

The FSA said the EC had decided that DSM did not comply with EU single market legislation and had therefore required the UK to impose a moratorium on producing meat products from the bones of cows and sheep using DSM by the end of April.

JOSIE CLARKE /

FLUFF PIECE / James Bond has ditched signature vodka martinis for a smooth Heineken As 007 swaps his usual tipple for lager in the forthcoming James Bond film ‘Skyfall’, Geoffrey Macnab looks at what switching to beer means for the secret agent /

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repare for all the puns about irritated James Bond enthusiasts being shaken and stirred. Earlier this week, it was confirmed in Advertising Age that Britain’s best known secret agent is going to change the habits of a lifetime and drink beer in the new Bond film, Skyfall. Heineken has struck a deal for a Bond campaign. There will be a new Heineken ad tied to the Bond film and Bond will reportedly be shown drinking Heineken in at least one scene in the movie itself. This is an act of near heresy for a movie character who has been defined for the last 50 years by his love of martinis.

Beer, movies and advertising go back a very long way together. Whether it was Orson Welles sonorously telling us that a certain Danish lager was probably the best in the world or the use of footage of a parched John Mills, just out of the desert in Ice Cold In Alex, sipping on a cold beer, advertisers have frequently turned to films and film stars to hawk their wares. However, with a character whose habits are pored over as intensely as those of Bond, every change in behaviour is studied for secret meaning.

We don’t know yet if this new-found fondness for lager will get in the way of Bond’s consumption of martinis. One argument must be that his beer drinking represents a further democratisation of a figure who (as originally created by Ian Fleming) came from an upper-class public-school background. As played by Daniel Craig, Bond is now more of a rugged everyman.

Whereas older Bonds (including Sean Connery) dressed very formally and made a great fuss about having their vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, Craig’s secret agent seems far less bothered about how his drinks are prepared.

“Do I look like I give a damn?” he already said to a bartender in Casino Royale when asked how he wanted his martini. It is only a small step to seeing him swig his beer from a bottle. The topic of Bond and beer has been tackled before. Kingsley Amis, writing under the pseudonym William Tanner in his now out-of-print Book of Bond, gave would-be aspirational 007s advice on which lager could be drunk in specific spy related situations a secret agent might find themselves in: “You drink it occasionally; In Geneva, a Löwenbräu; in the States, a Miller’s High Life, a couple of Red Stripes in Jamaica and as many as four steins of local brew in Munich if you find yourself with an ex-Luftwafffe pilot. But eschew English beer. It belongs in pubs and 007 does not.” The challenge for director Sam Mendes is to show Bond quaffing his lager without allowing it to compromise his mystique. After all, beer in films has rarely been used before to suggest sophistication. “Bah! I’ve supped some ale tonight,” was the catchphrase of the northern comedian and film star Frank Randle, whose comic persona was based around beer, burping and bodily functions.

British films inspired by the music-hall tradition were full of leering, bandy-legged drunks. They were deliberately bawdy and vulgar. Part of their intention was to cock a snook at respectable, middle-class society. It wasn’t much different in Hollywood either.

Watch WC Fields’ 1933 short The Fatal Glass Of Beer and you enter a world that is as far removed from Aston Martins and 007’s customary Euro-trash luxury as you can imagine.

Fields plays a Yukon prospector caught in a snow storm who wails a preposterous song about the evils of drink.

Of course, Bond (whoever plays him) has an iron constitution. There isn’t a single scene in any Bond film that springs to mind in which he has ever been caught tipsy or woken up with a hangover, regardless of how many martinis he has consumed over the last 50 years. It’s doubtful that his new-found enthusiasm for lager will result in the shakes or that he’ll suddenly be caught short in the middle of an important mission and have to rush to the gents as Blofeld escapes over the horizon.

TOM PECK /

GEOFFREY MACNAB / I* - Full story that accompanies headlines given earlier this week.

Mind Puzzles Part III

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1 Badly clad — sort of trick? (6) 4 Escape holes for gas or air (5) 7 Floor of a building (6) 8 Sunder (anag) (6) 9 Taverns (4) 10 Intelligible only to the initiated (8) 12 Pigment making plants green (11) 17 Ancestor (8) 19 Religious faction (4) 20 Peers (6) 21 Source (6) 22 Greek letter (5) 23 Go — fix (6)

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