Tt 2014 11 21 by Jurco Smotrych

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friday november 21 2014 | thetimes.co.uk | no 71360

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Ukip purges ‘dangerous’ candidates in poll drive Laura Pitel Political Correspondent Francis Elliott

The Graduate director dies at 83

Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, the celebrated 1967 drama that earned an Oscar for Mike Nichols. Page 12; thetimes.co.uk/obituaries

Police struggle to trap tech-savvy terrorists

Security chief warns of increasingly sophisticated threats Sean O’Neill Crime & Security Editor Francis Elliott Political Editor

The ability of Britain’s intelligence chiefs to monitor the terrorist threat is at its lowest level for a decade, according to the country’s most senior anti-terrorism policeman. Detectives are increasingly resorting to physical surveillance as the electronic monitoring of jihadist suspects becomes patchier and more uncertain after leaks by the whistleblower Edward Snowden and the installation of sophisticated encryption on mobile phones. The comments by Assistant Com-

missioner Mark Rowley came as three young Muslim men who were arrested by armed police just before Remembrance Sunday appeared in court accused of plotting to behead a member of the public on the street. Mr Rowley said that his officers in Scotland Yard were operating from a “shaky platform” against a terrorist threat that was growing in scale, complexity and volatility. “Since the Snowden episode and with technology developments our intelligence picture is less good than it was — both domestic and international — and that makes operations

harder to run,” Mr Rowley told The Times. The government signalled last night that it would restore police powers to send terrorist suspects into “internal exile”, after the Liberal Democrats dropped their opposition to the measure. The ability to move suspects from their homes was scrapped along with control orders in 2011 and replaced with Terrorist Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims). However, the threat posed by hundreds of British jihadists returning from Iraq and Syria has forced a rethink and Theresa May, the home secretary, will

announce next week that police will again be allowed to relocate suspects. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, had resisted the reintroduction of relocation powers and wanted instead to increase the power to limit suspects’ movements within their neighbourhoods. He backed down, however, when David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, concluded that the option was flawed. Mr Rowley said police believed that the power to move a suspect would help to disrupt terrorist plots by disconnecting extremists from friends and Continued on page 4, col 5

Ukip is expanding its battlefront in readiness for the general election, it has emerged, as Nigel Farage looked forward last night to a “massive” victory that would give his party its second elected MP today. After a strong by-election campaign in Rochester & Strood, which was ranked 271 in Ukip’s list of target seats, the party is purging suspect candidates in areas previously seen as unwinnable. It plans to bring in big hitters instead. David Cameron’s failure to hold a seat that the Conservatives won four years ago with 50 per cent of the vote would redraw the electoral map, Mr Farage said. “If we win this then looking forward to next year’s election, all bets are off, the whole thing’s up in the air.” A second successive by-election defeat would heap pressure on the prime minister, who had said at the start of the campaign that he was “absolutely determined” to win the contest triggered by the defection of Mark Reckless. “We are coming for you in by-elections and we are going to throw everything we can at you,” Mr Cameron said this month. Instead, senior Tories were clinging to the hope last night that the margin of defeat would be in single figures. The result is also set to deliver a crushing blow to Ed Miliband as Labour sources admitted that the party could poll as little as 10 per cent, with most former voters switching to Mr Farage’s party. His embarrassment was compounded when Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney-general, was accused of treating voters with contempt. She captioned a tweeted picture of a home in the Kent constituency bedecked with the England flag with the words: “Image from Rochester”. The MP for Islington South and Finsbury was later forced to apologise. Mainstream parties privately concede that Ukip’s growing professionalisation has increased its chances of achieving a breakthrough at the polls in May. The party plans to use wins in Clacton and Rochester & Strood to launch offensives into the rest of Essex and Kent. It has been quietly removing candidates from seats that were once seen as long shots but are now seen as Continued on page 9, col 2

IN THE NEWS Banker bonus defeat

Patient evictions

Club bars rapist

Obama defiant

£1m fraud conviction

George Osborne has halted his campaign against European rules to limit bankers’ bonuses after learning that a legal challenge by the Treasury was destined to fail. Page 2

The Royal Bournemouth Hospital is threatening “bed-blocking” patients with eviction, saying that they could face legal action if they do not leave within a week. Page 5

Sheffield United Football Club has bowed to public pressure and retracted its decision to let Ched Evans, who was jailed in 2012 for rape, to return to training. Page 7

President Obama pledged to defy Congress with a plan to bring out of the shadows up to five million of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States. Page 22

The former boss of JJB Sports has been convicted of taking more than £1 million in backhanders from a supplier and using the proceeds to fund a home in Florida. Page 29

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Opinion

Business

Osborne abandons fight with Brussels over bank bonus cap

Ben Macintyre, page 19

Page 37

Harry Wilson

INSIDE TODAY Paddington Bear has a message about tolerance

The mighty Mercedes Maybach returns to take on Rolls-Royce and Bentley

The Register

Siegfried Lenz — German author who tackled guilt over the Nazi era

Times2

An exhibition on Spanish civil war art is rich in truth

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, page 50

Obituary, 41

Opinion 17 Weather 17 Cartoon 19 Leading articles 20 Letters 21 World 22 Business 29 Markets 38, 39 Register 40 Times2 44 Sport 51 Crosswords 43, 64 Please note, some sections of The Times are available only in the United Kingdom and Ireland

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George Osborne has abandoned his legal battle with Brussels to stop curbing bank bonuses. The chancellor caved in after learning the Treasury’s legal challenge lodged with the European Court of Justice was destined to fail. Britain’s legal challenge to European rules which limit bonus awards to twice salary has “no legitimate grounds”, said one of the European Court of Justice’s top lawyers. Niilo Jääskinen, advocate-general of the court, said that limiting the bonus did not amount to an anti-competitive cap “because there is no limit imposed on the basic salaries that the bonuses are pegged against”. Last night the Treasury said it was abandoning the challenge. A spokesman said: “We will therefore withdraw the challenge, and instead look at other ways of building a system of pay in global banking that encourages rather than undermines responsibility.” Mr Osborne said: “I’m not going to spend taxpayers’ money on a legal chal-

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The taxman must inform debtors to their face before seizing cash direct from their bank accounts, ministers will announce today as they seek to limit the fall-out from the controversial new power. The introduction of sweeping debt recovery measures for HMRC in this year’s budget was heavily criticised by MPs and tax experts as being overbearing and intrusive. They will allow the taxman to seize cash direct from bank or building society accounts or Isas of anyone owing more than £1,000. Ministers say that the measure will help the government to rake in £100 million of unpaid tax. Bank chiefs warned that the move could breach human rights legislation and MPs objected after it emerged that joint bank accounts could be raided. Ministers will seek to blunt criticism today with safeguards including a guarantee that those at risk of having their cash seized will have a face-toface visit from the HMRC and a chance to challenge the order in the courts. The visits will also help the taxman to

Leading article, page 20

identify “vulnerable” debtors. The taxman will freeze targeted accounts for 30 days before taking any cash to give people a chance to agree repayment terms. HMRC has said it expects to use the new direct recovery of debts powers against 17,000 people a year, with the average debt of those affected amounting to £5,800. About half of these cases will involve debtors with more than £20,000 in their bank and building society accounts, it claims. David Gauke, the Treasury minister, defended the new powers last night: “The vast majority of people pay the tax that is due, on time, but there is still a very small minority who try to gain an unfair advantage by persistently refusing to pay what they owe, despite being able to. These are the people who will be targeted by the powers for the direct recovery of debts owed to the Exchequer. “We already set out robust safeguards to protect vulnerable debtors in our original direct recovery of debts proposals, but feedback from the consultation process told us we could do more to make sure this catches only those who are playing the system.”

of tax reliefs’ Alexi Mostrous

HM Revenue & Customs is failing to monitor tax reliefs worth billions of pounds, Britain’s spending watchdog has found. The National Audit Office found that HMRC failed to “robustly” investigate why entrepreneurs’ relief, introduced in 2008, was costing the public £2 billion more a year than expected. Despite detecting “large-scale abuse” of share loss relief in 2006, HMRC did not monitor changes in the use of the relief until last year, when it discovered claims had risen by more than 300 per cent. “Avoidance schemes accounted for almost all the increase,” the NAO said. “But HMRC did not check the total amount of claims in 2006-7 or subsequent years to check whether there were other unexplained surges.” Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said she was “deeply concerned” that fraud might be going undetected. An HMRC spokesman said: “It is nonsense to suggest that our administration of tax reliefs loses money.”

Shopping vouchers to reward breastfeeding Chris Smyth Health Correspondent

Offer subject to availability, £1 for 30 days trial to new customers (18+) of the Digital Pack only. TNL reserves right to exclude this offer in certain territories. See timespacks.com/london for full terms and conditions.

dealt with a bank bonus tax, 50 per cent tax rate, changes to non-domicile taxation and a tsunami of other regulation. It will no doubt do so again.” Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, the UK’s bank supervisor, said last month that the cap was the wrong policy. Tom Gosling, head of the UK reward practice at PwC, said: “The cap alone is too blunt an instrument to curb risktaking in the banking industry and brings with it many unintended consequences, particularly an increase in fixed pay and a reduction in the level of bonuses available for clawback.” Ed Balls MP, the shadow chancellor, said: “This is a humiliating climbdown by [Mr] Osborne, which he has tried to sneak out under the cover of the Rochester & Strood by-election. “The chancellor revealed his true priorities when he decided a year ago to spend taxpayers’ money fighting a bank bonus cap while working families face a cost-of-living crisis. He should tell taxpayers how much money he has now wasted on this challenge.”

Taxmen must meet debtors HMRC ‘failing to keep track before raiding accounts Francis Elliott Political Editor

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lenge now unlikely to succeed. The fact remains these are badly designed rules that are pushing up bankers’ pay not reducing it. These rules may be legal but they are entirely self-defeating.” The British Bankers’ Association hit out at the ruling and said the cap ran “counter to recent reforms” and would put European banks at a disadvantage to those in other parts of the world. It said: “Shareholders should be given powers to determine staff pay, not politicians. That’s why banks consult investors before setting staff pay and shareholders also have the power to vote on the pay of senior bankers.” Mark Boleat at the City of London Corporation said the ruling was disappointing. “It will have little effect in reducing risks to the financial system and will only serve to harm the competitiveness of Europe’s financial services industry. In fact, it may well drive talented people to our competitors.” Nicholas Stretch, at CMS, the law firm, said: “The industry had not been hanging its hopes on the European courts throwing out the bonus cap rule. Over the past few years the City has

Thousands of mothers are to be offered shopping vouchers if they breastfeed their babies, after a pilot study suggested financial inducements worked. Two thirds of women who signed up to the scheme were claiming the vouchers at six to eight weeks, a breastfeeding rate higher than the national average. The women received up to £200 to spend at shops such as John Lewis, Matalan, Argos and big supermarkets if health professionals confirmed they were feeding their babies breast milk. Researchers hope the scheme will boost Britain’s low breastfeeding rate, improving the health of children and cutting costs for the NHS. However,

many NHS staff are uneasy about “bribing” mothers, saying they should be offered support instead of cash. Dr Clare Relton of the University of Sheffield, who is leading the study, said: “We have been delighted to see how enthusiastic local mothers and healthcare professionals have been.” One mother who took part said: “Sometimes you think ‘Should I just move on to the bottle now?’ and then I think ‘Oh but then I won’t get the money to be able to treat them’, so it does help.” The pilot scheme looked at over 100 women in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. The vouchers will now be offered to 4,000 mothers in a full-scale trial. The World Health Organisation

recommends that babies be exclusively breastfed until the age of six months, but only 1 per cent of British babies meet this target. Just over half are not having any breast milk at all by the age of eight weeks. Dr Relton added: “Despite many efforts, this situation has not improved. Now we need to conduct the full trial to find out if offering vouchers can significantly increase our stubbornly low breastfeeding rates.” Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives said: “Incentivising public health behaviour through monetary reward will always be contentious. However, the RCM believes that alternative ways of increasing breastfeeding rates also need attention.”

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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The secret of Shackleton’s endurance

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

Antarctic explorer used sets of encyclopaedias for crew’s toilet paper, Gabriella Swerling and Valentine Low write In the great list of supplies and equipment that Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team took with them to cross Antarctica 100 years ago, some choices were more obvious than others. Rations, clearly: so too the dogs that would pull their sledges, the clothing to keep them warm and the tents that would give them shelter at night. Encyclopaedia Britannica, on the other hand, may not have appeared one of the essentials for an adventurer trying to conquer the southernmost tip of the world. It was, however, for Shackleton, who took two sets: one for each ship — Endurance and Aurora. Its usefulness turned out to consist of more than just settling arguments about the names of Anglo-Saxon kings, or for looking up useful information about the workings of the internal combustion engine whenever the expedition’s motor car broke down. As an exhibition reveals, when things got sticky, the encyclopaedia could be used to smoke tobacco, burnt as fuel and used as lavatory paper. Shackleton’s men were not complete barbarians, however. When they were stuck on the ice for six months, they kept themselves sane by reading it. By 1914, Roald Amundsen had already won the race to the South Pole and the Americans reached the North Pole. Shackleton, a romantic adventurer who had already led one Antarctic expedition, set himself a new goal, to be the first to cross Antarctica from one side to the other via the South Pole. Setting sail just as war was breaking out in Europe, the team’s plan was to use two boats to land sledge parties on either side of the Antarctic with the aim of meeting on top of the Beardmore Glacier. Shackleton would lead Endurance from the Weddell Sea, while Aurora was to head for the Ross Sea. Although the expedition was a failure, as Endurance became trapped in the ice and was crushed, it was also a triumph for the way Shackleton made the 800-mile journey by boat to South Georgia to get help. He returned to his crew on a Chilean tug in August 1916. While Shackleton’s story is well known, what is less familiar is the part played by the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, published by Cambridge University Press: 29 volumes including the index and 40,000 articles. In the words of Meredith Hooper, curator of an exhibition at the Press Museum at Cambridge, it was “the internet before the internet”. Ms Hooper said that words and paper — a fine Indian paper, which made the

many hours that would otherwise have been heavy on our hands”. Two volumes of the surviving Aurora set have been loaned by the Royal Geographical Society for the exhibition. As Ms Hooper wrote: “The pristine volumes that sank in the Weddell Sea, the well-used blubber-impregnated volumes abandoned on floes, the pages burnt as fire-lighters, or wrapping the comfort of addictive tobacco substiWhen Endurance became trapped in the ice, Ernest Shackleton, below, set off on an 800-mile trip for help. The crew used pages from their encyclopaedia to light pipes and roll cigarettes — and also pressed them into service for lavatory visits

volumes surprisingly light — helped the survival of the explorers. According to one account of their wait to be rescued, “there was not a man of the party who did not make frequent and eager use of the volumes”. She said: “On Endurance they were being ripped up because paper was good for lighting pipes and probably good for other things, although they don’t say it [in their diaries]. “It was the only sort of paper. There were men who wanted to read them and those who wanted to use them.” Dr Alexander Macklin, a surgeon, tore out the entry on scurvy, rescuing it from men who wanted to use it as lavatory paper. Reginald James, a physicist, saved a section about geometry. After their rescue the men of the Ross Sea party gave their encyclopaedia back to the man who had given it to them, John King Davis, the ship’s master, who took members of the expedition home. The grateful inscription describes how it “enabled us to pass

Grumbling Venetians ban rumbling wheelie-cases Tom Kington Rome

Residents of Venice who grew up with the sounds of lapping canals and crooning gondoliers are fighting back against a new outrage: the rumbling of tourists’ wheeled suitcases, which they claim is driving them insane. In a surprise ruling, city officials announced yesterday that they will ban tourists from entering the city tugging suitcases which use rigid plastic wheels, rather than rubber or air-filled ones. Any visitors who dare to trundle a

rigid-wheeled bag down the city’s stone flagged alleys will be slapped with a fine of €100 (£80). The city’s building director, Maurizio Dorigo, said: “Venice was once the city of silence, thanks to the absence of cars. Now the rumble of suitcases has become its soundtrack. You can hear one tourist at a hundred metres in an alley at night.” With no cars, tourists arriving in Venice by train must either catch a water bus to their hotel or pull their suitcases down streets where gaps between the

traditional Venice paving stones add a clacking noise to the rumble. Mr Dorigo said the measure, which is set to come into effect next May, would also help to protect streets and bridges which had stood for centuries but were now crumbling from wear and tear. Tourists were not the only target, he said. “Venetians are tired of being woken at dawn by trolleys loading goods into supermarkets. But it’s the only way. Without cars, everything goes on wheels here, like ancient Egypt.” Fines for businesses will rise to €500.

tutes, the remnants left behind in the hut contrived by balancing the two remaining boats, upturned, on low stone walls on Elephant Island . . . Ocean-drowned, or ice-buried, the eleventh edition of the encyclopaedia was in truth a trusty guide and, most precisely, as the editors had confidently claimed, to ‘all class of readers’.” The exhibition runs until the end of February.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

News ALAN CROWHURST / GETTY IMAGES

Cloud chasing Runners head down the straight at Wincanton racecourse, in Somerset, yesterday where the going was good to soft and the weather was even better. Racing results, page 51; forecast, page 17

Laughing trio accused of beheading plot Fiona Hamilton

Three Muslim men arrested three days before Remembrance Sunday are accused of plotting to behead a member of the British public. The three laughed and grinned as they appeared in court for the first time charged with an attack that was said to be imminent. Nadir Ali Sayed, 21, from Hounslow, west London, Yousaf Shah Syed, 19, from High Wycombe, and Haseeb Hamayoon, 27, from Hayes, west London, were arrested on November 6. They were detained by the Metropolitan Police for a fortnight — the limit under the Terrorism Act — before being charged yesterday with “the intention of committing acts of terrorism, jointly engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to their intention”. The three men, who all had beards and wore long grey tops, arrived at Westminster Magistrates’ Court under heavy police guard. They travelled in two armoured prison vans which were flanked by three unmarked police cars with flashing blue lights and sirens. The three spoke only to confirm their name and address during the 15-minute hearing. The Sayeds, who are cousins, twice refused a direction by District Judge Michael Snow to sit down. They smiled throughout the proceedings. Mr Hamayoon sat down and nodded to associates in the public gallery. All three were remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on December 4. A fourth man, who was arrested in Uxbridge, west London, in the original raids was released on November 15 with no further action.

Old-fashioned surveillance is key to beating jihadists Sean O’Neill Crime and Security Editor

Detectives are relying on surveillance methods used against the IRA 20 years ago because electronic monitoring of jihadist suspects is becoming less reliable. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, national head of counter-terrorism policing, said that a weakened intelligence picture had created greater dependence on “conventional surveillance” — thought to mean techniques such as close observation of suspects and bugging of cars and houses. “Quite a few detectives have commented to me that running operations today feels more like it was 20 years ago than it did five years ago,” said Mr Rowley in his first interview since taking control of anti-terror policing in June. “We’ve had 15 years of everyone having a mobile phone and for a large part of that we had excellent intelligence coverage — but as that gets more patchy and terrorists chase the blind spots, that gives us problems.” His teams were “massively stretched” dealing with several plots inspired not just by the Syrian conflict but from other jihadist theatres such as Somalia, and ranging from would-be “spectaculars” to plans for low-tech, high-impact attacks using “a kitchen knife and a mobile phone”. Counter-terrorist units have arrested more than 250 people this year, a third for non-terror offences such as fraud, as they seek to disrupt extremist activity. The Syria conflict had radicalised hundreds of young people “who have not been on the radar before”, while there had been a rise in people with mental health problems being referred to deradicalisation programmes. Mr

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley: “We ought to be able to chase anyone effectively . . . that is getting harder”

Rowley said: “Mental health is a concern because it indicates their vulnerability to being radicalised and their volatility in terms of the risk — intervening with them is very important.” He said that the degradation of the intelligence picture was not solely the fault of Edward Snowden’s leaks, adding: “Part of it is Snowden — he has raised the awareness of the power of intelligence agencies more clearly in the minds of terrorists. They are acutely aware of what may and may not be possible and are trying much harder to work and communicate in ways which they believe we can’t penetrate.” The increased uncertainty meant police were more likely to arrest suspects early in their planning rather than waiting to secure more evidence. He said: “We can’t roll the dice when there are threats to life involved.”

Mr Rowley, a former chief constable of Surrey who joined the Met in 2011, said the political debate and public concern over surveillance powers was “entirely understandable”. He added: “It’s not for police officers to demand or lobby for powers but it is for us to explain the consequences in terms of ‘if we had these powers we could do more of this, if we don’t have them this is the consequence’. The question of more powers is always about civil liberties . . . and that’s what parliament has to balance.” Police and intelligence agencies are concerned that Apple and Google have introduced stringent encryption which make it almost impossible to track terrorist and criminal communications. Mr Rowley said: “We don’t want to do surveillance on everybody . . . but we ought to be able to chase anybody effectively if there is a good case for doing so. That is getting harder and harder to do.” He will launch Counter-terrorism Awareness Week on Monday, calling for citizens, public sector agencies and the technology sector to “step up” in the effort against terrorism. The officer added: “We need the support of the public, the support of other agencies like health services and GPs, the support of businesses — if they can all step up in their own way then it gives us the best chance possible of meeting this new challenge. “But if everyone else steps back and says this is too difficult . . . then we’re left carrying a bigger and more complex load, then that’s a problem.” Civil liberties groups have expressed concerns at the extent of security activity, with the Islamic Human Rights Commission claiming Muslims are being targeted.

Police fight to halt high-tech terror attacks Continued from page 1

associates. He said: “If you have significant information that somebody is a terrorist risk and despite all your best efforts you cannot build a case to put them in prison — really the state has two choices: either to say we’ll accept that risk or put in measures where you have some controls around people. “It’s a political decision, but our experience is that for people in many of the situations we deal with the ability to relocate would make a big difference.” He added: “We are less capable and have more blind spots than we had five years ago.” Police and intelligence agencies are concerned that technology giants such as Apple and Google have introduced encryption on devices that make it almost impossible to track terrorist and criminal communications. Mr Rowley said: “We don’t want to do surveillance on everybody — we haven’t got the time for or the interest in doing that — but we ought to be able to chase anybody effectively, if there is a good case for doing so. That is getting harder and harder to do.” Internet companies already scan online activity to direct advertising at people, and had a “corporate social responsibility” to do the same for signs of violence. Mr Rowley said: “If they can spot if someone is interested in buying a pair of jeans, surely they can spot if someone is interested in beheadings. There must be scope for a more proactive duty on the technology sector.” Both sides of the coalition have had to give ground in negotiations over the new counterterrorist moves. Last week David Cameron effectively admitted that he had dropped his initial proposal to strip returning jihadists of their passports.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

Elderly patients threatened with eviction notices Chris Smyth Health Correspondent

A hospital is threatening so-called “bed blockers” with eviction from their wards, saying overstaying patients could face legal action if they do not leave within a week. Staff at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital say that families are parking elderly relatives in NHS beds while they redecorate or go on holiday, and senior doctors believe it is now common for relatives to “hold the ward to ransom” for selfish reasons. Campaigners attacked the policy as “completely unacceptable”, saying the NHS should focus on arranging support for elderly patients in the community rather than using legal threats. The controversy highlights a growing flashpoint, as hospitals increasingly struggle to send vulnerable patients home because of problems with social care. Two sets of figures this week showed rising numbers of beds “blocked” because of difficulty discharging patients. The Bournemouth hospital said that it had dozens of patients who were medically fit to leave but did not want to do so. Katie Whiteside, clinical manager for discharge services, said one family asked them to “keep hold” of a relative while they had a two-week holiday in Turkey. “At the moment we have relatives coming back telling us they don’t like the decor of care homes, or they don’t like the member of staff who met them at the door,” she told the BBC. “Sometimes they are decorating the house or having a ‘granny annexe’ built and they know that, while the patients are here, they are being fed, watered and looked after.” “Bed blocking” has been blamed for delays in accident and emergency, cancelled operations and other problems, as hospitals struggle to admit new

patients. Analysis by the Health Service Journal this week found that 1.4 million bed days were lost to delays in discharging fit patients in the past year, the highest level on record. Sky News said 1,000 patients a day cannot be discharged because there is no care at home. Ms Whiteside said: “We would be in a position to commence legal proceedings and formally evict a patient if that was necessary. It would be an absolute last resort but it’s something we are in a position to do with the solicitors here at the trust.” Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: “We understand the NHS is under great pressure but it is completely unacceptable for any hospital to deal with an older person in this way.” She said it was very difficult for families to make quick decisions about moving relatives into care homes or

adapting where they live. “There’s a lot hospitals can do to make it easier for older people to be discharged as soon as their medical conditions warrants it, like having good arrangements in place with care homes and local authority social care services. Threatening older people with legal action is emphatically not the right approach,” she added. A spokesman for Royal Bournemouth Hospital said: “Once medically fit for discharge, an acute hospital environment is not in the patient’s best interest . . . We are asking that when patients and their representatives are given names of care homes from the hospital staff, for example, they view these homes and come to a decision within seven days.”

Video games Care home is help sufferers fined after of Parkinson’s resident’s fall Computer consoles can improve the lives of people with Parkinson’s disease, researchers have found. A study at Lancaster University found that games involving movement acted as a form of physical therapy. Dr Emmanuel Tsekleves said: “Muscles and joints tend to become stiff and rigid, which is why exercise is crucial in managing some of the symptoms. “Physiotherapy exercises are very repetitive in nature leading to boredom and demotivation. “Computer games have the potential to motivate people to keep active by implicitly incorporating repetitive exercises into the games.” Parkinson’s disease affects more than 120,000 people in the UK, and six million across the globe. Researchers have been adapting computer games to be used as physical therapy and say people with Parkinson’s should be involved in the design. Professor David Burn, clinical director of Parkinson’s UK, said: “This study is only in a handful of people, and needs to be replicated in larger numbers, but the results are promising.”

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A care association has been fined after breaching health and safety laws when a 92-year-old woman died after falling from a window at a care home. Staff found Olga Llewellyn on the ground outside her room at Brocastle Manor in Bridgend, at 7am on November 5, 2010, three hours after she was last checked on, Cardiff crown court was told. Hafod Care Association, the care home’s owner, has admitted failing to ensure residents were not put at risk. The windows at the care home were said to have been designed at low level for residents to have a view when in bed. However, they had not been fitted with suitable restrictors. After the death, additional restrictors were fitted. Her daughter, Janet Morgan, said her mother had been shown how to disengage the restrictors, adding that she had been hurt by suggestions that her mother may have taken her own life. Judge Neil Bidder, QC, ordered Hafod Care Association to pay a fine of £96,000 and £100,000 costs. He said: “It’s obvious to me that Mrs Llewellyn fell accidentally to her death and did not . . . intend to harm herself.”

News TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MIKAEL BUCK

Winter wonderland Young friends enjoy the ice thrones at the launch of the Magical Ice Kingdom in Hyde Park, London

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News

UK pays twice its fair share to green fund Ben Webster Environment Editor

Britain is contributing double its fair share to a global fund to help poor countries to deal with climate change, according to Oxfam. The government pledged yesterday to pay up to £720 million to the green climate fund — more per capita than any other major country. The Department of Energy and Climate Change said that Britain was “committing to fund 12 per cent” of the organisation, which has raised $9.3 billion (£5.9 billion) from 15 countries towards its initial target of $10 billion. Oxfam calculated that Britain’s fair share, taking into account its wealth and historical contribution to climate change, was 6 per cent. A spokeswoman said: “This pledge is certainly more than what we calculate would be the fair share.” The US has pledged $3 billion — about half as much as Britain per capita. Germany pledged €750 million: about £7 per person compared with Britain’s contribution of about £11 per person. Graham Stringer, a Labour member of the Commons energy and climate change committee, said it would be a better use of money to spend it on foreign aid projects “rather than funding a new “international bureaucracy”. He added: “I cannot see any justification for paying twice what even Oxfam thinks we should pay.” The green climate fund, which was

established by the UN to help to persuade developing countries to sign a global deal on emissions in Paris next year, plans to spend $10 million next year on the wages of its 50 staff and another $7 million on other administrative costs. It is unclear when the fund, which is based in South Korea, will begin spending money on aid projects linked to climate change, but it has said it will begin to consider requests for funding in the second half of next year. Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, said that Britain had a moral duty to help the world’s poor to cope with rising temperatures. He dismissed as “little Englanders” those politicians who argued that Britain should be spending the money protecting its own citizens from the growing risk of flooding. Sir Edward Leigh, a senior Conservative backbencher and former chairman of the public accounts committee, said he was not against funding “carefully costed” projects abroad, but said there was a need to look after the interests of UK taxpayers. The energy department said Britain’s contribution would fall within its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid. A spokesman said Britain was giving more per capita because it had previously channelled more aid through international funds rather than spending it directly in poor countries.

SOTHEBYS

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

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Most read at thetimes.co.uk

Petal power Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 by Georgia O’Keeffe fetched over £28 million at auction yesterday, triple the previous record for any woman artist

1. Russian hackers put webcam footage live on internet 2. Diesel car curbs hastened 3. Duchess of Alba dies aged 88 4. You wonder if it will ever end: head cleared of child rape 5. How to beat Ukip? No idea 6. There’s only one answer to ‘deathstyle’ jihadists 7. Germans halt immigrant curbs 8. Africa has changed, Bob, so change your tune 9. Paedophile gang ‘may have killed 17 more children’ 10. Deborah Ross: Readers, I know who you are now

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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News

Double glazing test case offers window of opportunity for listed homes Fariha Karim

They may be romantic, and often the epitome of style, but most owners of listed buildings would concede that draughts and creaky windows can be a considerable problem in the winter. Now help could be at hand as a Hampshire parish councillor is mounting a test case at the High Court to ease restrictions on fitting double glazing. Timothy Guinness said planning authorities showed “prejudice” about double glazing in listed properties because designs had moved on since the windows were restricted to “frightful PVC”. The owner of Widmoor

Farm, in Ellisfield, he applied to change the windows at the 16thcentury property but was rejected by planning authorities. He is now fighting his case at the High Court in the interests of hundreds of listed building owners in the same predicament. He told Neil Cameron, QC, the judge: “I felt that by standing up and being counted, at some financial risk, I was doing my fellow countrymen a service, if it turned out that the courts could and would correct an error of law in the inspector’s decision.” The judge has reserved judgment in the complex case. Mr Guiness’s battle began in September last year with an application to replace the steel-framed

Ched Evans, who was jailed for five years, with his girlfriend Natasha Massey

Club retracts offer to rapist footballer after public outcry David Sanderson

A football club has bowed to public pressure and reversed its decision to let a convicted rapist return to train with it. Sheffield United admitted last night that it had not anticipated the intensity of the anger after it decided to offer Ched Evans the use of its facilities. Evans, who was jailed in 2012 for raping a woman, 19, in a hotel room, had recently been released from prison and was preparing to return to training at his former club. It led to an outcry from prominent Sheffield United supporters, including the Olympic athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill, who said she wished her name to be removed from one of the club’s stands. Charlie Webster, the TV presenter, Dave Berry, a Sixties pop star, and Lindsay Graham, a Sheffield businesswoman, all resigned as patrons of the club, while the musician Paul Heaton stood down as a patron of the club’s community foundation. Last night, the club said that it had “decided to retract the opportunity” for Evans to use its facilities. It said the reaction to its initial offer to Evans “has been at an intensity that could not have been anticipated”. “We recognise that a number of our supporters will be disappointed, but would ask that they remember the responsibilities we have not only to a club, whose history stretches back over 125 years, but also to the communities in which Sheffield United is active and

to the city we represent,” the club said. Meanwhile, there was fresh controversy when the chairman of a different club was accused of “anti-semitism”. Dave Whelan, the former owner of JJB Sports and now chairman of Wigan Athletic, said he believed that “Jewish people chase money more than anybody else”. He also said that the word “chink” was not offensive. He was attempting to defend his decision this week to employ Malky Mackay as his club’s manager. Mr Mackay is under investigation by football authorities for alleged racism and anti-semitism during email and text exchanges at his previous club. Mr Mackay is alleged to have described a Malaysian club owner as a “chink” and said of a Jewish football agent: “Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers.” Mr Whelan told The Guardian yesterday: “Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else. I don’t think that’s offensive at all. If any Englishman said he has never called a Chinaman a chink, he is lying. There is nothing bad about that. It is like calling the British Brits, or the Irish paddies.” Simon Johnson, the chief executive at the Jewish Leadership Council, said last night: “Mr Mackay and now Mr Whelan have referred to some of the worst old-fashioned tropes which have been used as the basis of antisemitism and stereotyping of Jewish people.” Jenny Wong, a Chinese community leader, said that Mr Whelan was condoning racism.

windows with a timber-framed double-glazed variety, with a local joinery company listed for the work. He said that he had been brought up at the Grade II property, listed in 1984, and that the windows he seeks to install at his home are timber-framed and will enhance its appearance as well as make it more energy-efficient. Mr Guinness’s application was refused by planning authorities at Basingstoke and Deane borough council in June on the ground that the replacement windows would “harm the historic character” of the timberframed family farmhouse because they were too “bulky”. Planners said that the Crittall

windows were not historic, or of architectural interest in their own right, and that they did not contribute to the historic significance of the listed building. They added that the replacement windows of Mr Guinness would fail to “preserve the special architectural or historic interest of the listed building”. So Mr Guinness, 67, and his wife, Beverly, appealed against the decision, but lawyers representing the Department for Communities and Local Government argued that the inspector had been entitled to reach the decision she did. Guidance from English Heritage on draught-proofing windows and doors for listed buildings says that proofing is

one of the “most cost-effective and least intrusive ways of improving the comfort of occupants and reducing energy used for heating”. It adds that windows and doors make a big contribution to a building’s historic nature and every effort must be made to maintain it. This is not the first time that planning decisions on listed buildings have reached the High Court. A battle has been fought over plans to redevelop the former home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, over a Grade II-listed property, at Undershaw in Hindhead, Surrey. A judgment on Mr Guiness’s case is expected before Christmas.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

News By-election

Farage tries something French Ukip leader replaced beer with bon-bons to calm his election nerves, Laura Pitel reports As he awaited the result of the most important contest in his party’s history yesterday, Nigel Farage confessed to suffering a bout of election-day nerves. “I think we’re going to win,” he said. “But I think it might be a bit closer than

people think.” So anxious was the Ukip leader he even promised to resist his usual weakness for a pint or two of bitter. Instead he opted for a visit to Sweet Expectations, the old-fashioned confectioners whose sweetie-jar election barometer has made the shop a regular in TV news reports. Stepping out into Rochester High Street, clutching his own bag of sweets, he said: “No pints for me. Just bon-bons.” One nearby wit heckled: “Isn’t that a bit French?” It was not a charge that appeared to bother the MEP, who, for

reasons unknown, had chosen a Bayeux Tapestry tie for the occasion. One vote Mr Farage should be able to count on is his ex-wife’s. Clare Thomas, a nurse whom he married in 1988, lives in the constituency and had a Ukip poster in her window. The couple divorced in 1997 but are still on good terms. Mr Farage can be forgiven for being a little nervous, however. Winning Clacton last month was a triumph. Victory in Rochester & Strood would, in his own words, be “massive.” “This matters,” said Mr Farage. “This

matters because if Ukip win, this is our 271st target seat. If we win this then looking forward to next year’s general election, all bets are off, the whole thing is up in the air.” Victory would be a reflection of how far the party has come in the past few months. Both in Clacton, where Douglas Carswell became its first elected MP last month, and in Rochester & Strood, it pursued local concerns to broaden its appeal beyond its traditional supporters. A key battleground has been Lodge Hill, a proposal to build 5,000 new homes on a former military site that is home to a rare colony of nightingales. Residents on the Hoo Peninsula, where the development will be built, are deeply worried about the pressure on schools, hospitals and transport. Few voters seemed to care that Mark Reckless, the Tory defector who triggered the poll, once supported the Lodge Hill project. He and Ukip loudly opposed it, to great effect, throughout the campaign. That was just one of many reasons why Kenneth Bamber and his friend Richard Andrews committed a small act of rebellion. The octogenarian duo are both former Tory councillors. Yesterday they voted Ukip for the first time. As they reflected on their decision over a pint, they listed a familiar cocktail of grievances. They dislike coalition government, gay marriage, and what they describe as David Cameron’s tendency to “waffle.” The housing issue, however, was a top concern. The old stalwarts of Europe and immigration still remain core issues for Ukip other supporters. John Horton,

Who’s who in the Ukip top team

Female warrior Suzanne Evans The deputy chairwoman is a favourite of Farage’s. She is a key member of the policy development team and has the task of winning over female voters.

The by-election bill

£100,000

Spending limit for campaigning for each party

£135,000*

To run the by-election

£105,000*

For the free mailing service offered to each candidate

£40,000

Conservative party’s spend on open primary to select its candidate, a cost of £7 per vote

£3*

Amount spent on each of the 77,000 eligible voters. With turnout expected to be low, the actual cost per vote will be much higher

£25,000

Labour’s minimum spend to run an unwinnable campaign *estimated cost to the taxpayer

70, said that he backed the party yesterday because was fed up of edicts from Brussels. “Why should they keep telling us what to do?” he said. The strategy did not work on everyone. Some people were driven to the polling station solely by a desire to keep Ukip out. “That’s why I decided to get out of the house,” said David Morrad, 21, who voted for the first time in order to back Labour. Tracey Simmons, 50, who voted Conservative, said: “I don’t trust Nigel Farage as far as I can throw him.” There was no sign of anyone voting for the Liberal Democrats. A constituency poll by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft showed that, while Ukip were on course to win the by-election, the Tories were in with a decent shot at winning it back next year.

Backroom boy Raheem Kassam The election strategy chief was hired after starting a right-wing news website this year; he has been caught posing with a gun.

I’m voting for Nigel, says his ex-wife

igel Farage counted his former wife among the Ukip supporters expected to spur the party to victory (Laura Pitel writes). Clare Thomas, a nurse he married in 1988, lives in the Rochester & Strood constituency. A Ukip poster was on display in the window of her home in Hoo yesterday. Mrs Thomas, then known by her

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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By-election News

to prepare for sweet success Old guard Nigel Farage The party leader has become a demagogic figure among supporters and is behind Ukip’s hardline libertarian agenda. His wife Kirsten is a key behindthe-scenes operator too.

Money man Paul Sykes The Yorkshire property tycoon has donated more than £4 million to the party. He has been accused of buying influence because he controls how it is spent.

maiden name of Clare Hayes, tended to Mr Farage after he was badly injured in a road accident and then had testicular cancer diagnosed. They married soon after, but divorced in 1997. One of her neighbours said that the pair had remained on good terms after their split, as the Ukip leader would see her regularly when their two sons were younger. She said that Mrs Thomas had gone for a drink with Mr Farage a few weeks ago after a pre-election event. Not everyone in the family has been so supportive. One of the couple’s sons, Samuel, was reported to have joined the Exeter University Conservative association while studying there in 2007.

NewKip Paul Nuttall The deputy party leader’s profile has soared in the past year. The Liverpudlian is a long-time party figure, but he has become the face of its cleaner, more professional image.

Economist Patrick O’Flynn The party’s economics spokesman is a left-winger who wants to raise income taxes; earlier this year he called for a “wag tax” on expensive handbags and cars.

Ukip beefs up candidate list Continued from page 1

winnable targets. An expanded candidates’ department has been trawling through the history of those in key constituencies to ensure that they do not cause embarrassment. In Portsmouth South, Douglas Denny has been removed after describing homosexuality as “abnormal”. Mr Denny, who joined Ukip in 1999, condemned the decision as “immoral” and said it was part of a manipulative purge carried out by Ukip’s leader. Ukip has said that Mr Denny is free to apply to stand in other constituencies. In Boston & Skegness, the disgraced

former Tory Neil Hamilton was told by the party’s national executive committee not to put his name forward for selection. The party said yesterday that it had chosen a 22-year-old local councillor to fight the seat. In Basildon & East Thurrock, Keri Smith was also deselected after being deemed unsuitable to stand in a target seat. A party source said: “Once it looked like we might get one or two MPs. Now ten is far from out of the question. We’ve been beefing up our candidates’ department, and some of those who have been with the party a long time have stuff that could embarrass us.”

Cameron seeks quick fix on immigration Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor

David Cameron is trying to overcome a string of obstacles so that he can announce a temporary limit or “emergency brake” on EU migration. The prime minister’s immigration speech, which could be made next week, is regarded as another “essay crisis” moment for Mr Cameron. While the focus shifted last month to examine curbing salary subsidies received by low-paid migrants, sources say even this week the prime minister has been insisting on investigating controversial measures to reduce the number of new entrants to Britain. The idea of an emergency brake, first floated at conference time, has run into problems. Any attempt by Britain to claim that net EU migration is damaging the economy is undermined by the success of the UK economy. There are also doubts that it would actually reduce net migration in the medium term unless Britain was able to claim a perpetual state of emergency. Plans to curb in-work benefits could be more effective than a brake, according to sources. Some at the top of the Conservative party have expressed concern about the change in direction on Europe. George Osborne is among those who have signalled discomfort at proposing a direct confrontation with European partners by announcing something which may not be negotiated if the Tories win the election. Mr Osborne’s allies are stressing the importance of the Tory reputation for stability and security, especially with business, and say there is concern that any proposal which is rejected by European allies will encourage talk of “Brexit”, the British exit from the EU, and undermine confidence in the city. Mr

Cameron is being encouraged to consider an answer to the challenge posed by migration by figures such as Lynton Crosby, the Australian election strategist, and Craig Oliver, the director of communications. Mr Cameron believes the public are right to worry that EU migration levels are now too high. “The PM does not want to keep being told what he can’t do. He’s been very clear he wants options for what he can do,” said one source. Among the arguments regularly made inside No 10 is the idea that Britain should be allowed to bend treaty rules, in the way the French do when they miss deficit reduction targets. Ed

Red Box

Analysis: Where the 2010 voters are headed http://thetim.es/voterdata

Llewellyn, the prime minister’s chief of staff, and Tom Scholar, Number 10’s Europe adviser, are among those who are urging caution. Some believe it might be better to announce fewer headline-grabbing initiatives, hoping the overall package convinces voters. “Should it be eye-catching but harder to deliver, or contain more, smaller things that are at the more ambitious end of what might be deliverable?” said one source. An emergency brake has a small chance of being agreed by Britain’s European partners, particularly if Britain wants to be able to apply the curb unilaterally and without seeking the support of the other 27 EU countries.

Labour MP apologises for England flag tweet Matt Dathan

A Labour frontbencher who appeared to mock a house draped in England flags by writing a caption on Twitter that read “image from Rochester” has been accused of snobbery. Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney-general, who lives in a £3 million house in Islington, north London, apologised last night for “any offence caused” by her tweet. After the picture was posted online, her Labour colleagues berated her for being “derogatory” and treating working-class voters with “contempt”. Tory MPs also condemned the tweet. Henry Smith, MP for Crawley, said that it showed the “mark of a true champagne socialist”. Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said that Ms Thornberry had “let [Ed] Miliband’s mask slip”. A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “It’s fair to say he [Mr Miliband] made his view very clear that people should fly the England flag with pride.” Ms Thornberry last night defended the tweet, saying: “It was a house covered in British flags. I’ve never seen anything like it before. My point is that it’s a remarkable image.” Despite apologising, she hit back at

Emily Thornberry’s tweeted picture

her critics who she said were “making mischief”. However, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, remained critical of Ms Thornberry. “I think she was being derogatory and dismissive of the people. We all know what she was trying to imply,” he told MailOnline. “It’s like the Labour party has been hijacked by the north London liberal elite and it’s comments like that which reinforce that view. I want to see more people flying the British flag.” A man who answered the door at the house declined to give his name and said that he was “going to talk with my barrister” before making any comment. He appeared unconcerned by the Rochester & Strood by-election, telling BuzzFeed: “I’ve not voted yet and I’m probably not going to vote.”

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News JAMES GLOSSOP FOR THE TIMES

Top church school fails inspection over Islamic links Nicola Woolcock Education Correspondent

Two Bob bits Robert MacBryde’s Two Women Sewing and Robert Colquhoun’s Figures in a Farmyard feature in a new show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art exploring the work of two of the country’s finest 20th-century artists

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

A leading Church of England school will fail an inspection today because it did not protect pupils from Islamic extremism. Sir John Cass Foundation and Red Coat School in Tower Hamlets, east London, was rated outstanding by Ofsted but will be placed in special measures by the education regulator. Its head teacher transformed the school from one of the worst in the country. Two weeks ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, dismissed “broad brush” criticism of faith schools after the Trojan horse affair in Birmingham. “No church schools or faith-based schools were caught up in Trojan horse. We are the solution, not the problem,” he said. Ofsted inspectors found that Sir John Cass — a church school where more than 90 per cent of pupils are Muslim — had allowed segregation of boys and girls in the playground. It also failed to monitor the activities of an Islamic society set up by sixth-formers. Its Facebook page allegedly contained links to radical preachers. Haydn Evans, the school’s headteacher, was awarded a CBE in the new year honours list and received an honorary degree from the University of East London this week. He said yesterday: “We are surprised by the outcome of the Ofsted inspection. The teaching and results remain good, which they have been since 1999, and my priority now is to address the issues identified and to work closely with the local authority and the diocese to return the school as quickly as possible to an outstanding school.” Concerns over safeguarding at a

school make it automatically fail the leadership and management category of an inspection. Local head teachers said the downgrading had sent “shockwaves” through the area. They believe Ofsted over-reacted and the school made a mistake in one area, rather than inculcating a radical agenda. The playgrounds were segregated at the time of the earlier inspection, at which the school was deemed to be outstanding. One head told The Times: “We’re depressed by the reaction, this could have been dealt with in a phone call to the head about the Facebook site, rather than the public thrashing of a school that’s been a beacon to us all. “Mr Evans is hugely respected, his vision and drive and his hard line on behaviour have improved the results of working-class children. I’m not sure about Ofsted’s agenda but there’s fear on their behalf about whether they’re doing enough, whether schools are being British enough. Schools will be examining themselves very carefully and will be on high alert about whether they’re getting everything correct.” Ofsted will publish its latest report today, alongside its findings from inspecting another six independent Muslim schools in Tower Hamlets and an advisory note for Nicky Morgan, the education secretary. Twenty-one Birmingham schools were inspected after an anonymous claim that schools there were being taken over by Muslim hardliners trying to impose a culture of extremism. Speaking this month, the archbishop said: “Commentary around Trojan horse has made it sound as if schools with a religious character are a problem. That’s not true and that fact seems to need a lot of repeating.”

Horses killed Government employs 1,500 by trains at level crossing spin doctors At least 12 horses died after being hit by two trains on Wednesday at Milton, near Cambridge, British Transport police confirmed last night. Chief Inspector Matt Allingham said: “We urgently really need to find out who owns these horses. We just can’t ascertain how the horses got on to the line, there doesn’t seem to have been any obvious access point, but we’re keeping an open mind.” He said that 12 horses had been killed, but added that “there may be some more”. It was originally believed that seven animals had been killed. The horses were struck on a level crossing by two trains going in opposite directions shortly after 5pm on Wednesday. People travelling on the first train were taken off at nearby Waterbeach because of the damage. One passenger was taken to hospital with minor injuries, and has since been discharged. Train services were severely disrupted for several hours. A spokeswoman for the RSPCA, which sent inspectors to the tracks, said: “Even though these were seasoned inspectors, they described the scene as one of the worst things they had ever seen.”

Whitehall departments employ more than 1,500 staff in press and communications work, according to figures published yesterday (Jill Sherman writes). The analysis, taken from freedom of information requests and the government’s own “transparency data”, shows that 20 central government departments have 1,514 staff with communication responsibilities. Those with the highest numbers are the Home Office, with 276 staff, the Department for Work and Pensions with 184 and the Cabinet Office with 205, according to the figures compiled by Press Gazette. The Cabinet Office denied that there were so many press officers in government and said it did not “recognise the figures”. A spokesman said there were only 23 members of staff in the Cabinet Office and only seven with the words “press” or “media” in their job title. He said that considerable savings had been achieved since the last general election. “Since 2010 we have thoroughly reformed government communications to ensure that it is effective, professional and delivers best value for hard-working taxpayers,” he said. “We have also introduced controls on advertising and marketing spend which helped save £378 million in 2012-13.”

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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News

Sark paper accused of harassing islanders Police are investigating complaints against an employee of the Barclay brothers, reports Simon de Bruxelles It is known as an unspoilt idyll of rocky coves and wildflower meadows, where all motor vehicles apart from tractors are banned. Yet the tiny Channel Island of Sark, for centuries unsullied by the modern world, is at the centre of a bitter dispute over a newsletter that has drawn in scores of its 600 residents and now a neighbouring island’s police force. Guernsey’s law officer is considering whether delivery of the newsletter amounts to criminal harassment after police received more than 50 complaints to police against it and its editor, Kevin Delaney. Every week The Sark Newspaper — also entitled The Sark Newsletter until it changed its name in September — accuses the island council, the Chief Pleas, of being a totalitarian “feudal Taliban”, the hereditary Seigneur of Sark of “crimes against humanity”, and members of involvement with terrorism and international organised crime. Mr Delaney settled on Sark seven years ago when he was appointed managing director of the businesses owned by two of Britain’s richest men on the island. Twenty years ago, Sir David and Sir Fred-

NICK RAY FOR THE TIMES

Sark’s idyllic image has been shattered by a bitter dispute involving the managing director of businesses owned by the Barclays, below left

erick Barclay, the octogenarian twins who own The Daily Telegraph and the Ritz hotel, bought Brecqhou, a rocky islet off Sark’s west coast, on which they built a mock Gothic castle. After Mr Delaney’s arrival from Essex in 2007, their businesses acquired a quarter of the island, including four of the six hotels and The Avenue, where most shops and businesses are located. Mr Delaney ordered hundreds of acres of vines to be planted on what was traditionally grazing land for the islanders’ livestock. The first bottles of Sark sparkling wine are expected to be uncorked next year. Opposition to what was seen as a hostile takeover allegedly led to acts of vandalism against the vines. Posters appeared for the film The Great Dictator on which Mr Delaney’s face replaced Charlie Chaplin’s. A firework was set off outside his office. He now goes everywhere accompanied by “minders”. The response from The Sark Newsletter was to accuse named members of the island’s “unelected one-party ruling elite”. Although some locals have welcomed the Ba Barclays’ investment, others believe it is a poisoned chalice that now threatens the economy. Last week, Mr Delan-

What the paper says “T British “The Crown Cr Dependency De of Sark: A lawle lawless island wher where members of the totalitarian one ruling party regime par can commit ca crimes with crime IMPUNITY and with their leaders’ approval just like fascist Germany in the 1930s.” “Anyone is free to commit crimes they like against those identified as enemies of the state” “Prominent members of Sark’s one ruling party government XXXX XXXX (name deleted for legal reasons), a right-wing racist involved in organised crime, and her friend and accomplice, the convicted fraudster ZZZZ ZZZZ (ditto) a homophobic, are very much part of the out of control . . . online world which attracts people with only one purpose in mind, namely the destruction of others”

ey announced that the brothers’ hotels would be closed next year, just at a time when the BBC series An Island Parish has attracted record numbers of visitors. The loss of so many beds threatens not only the livelihoods of dozens of employees and islanders who rely on the tourist trade but also the viability of the Sark Shipping Company, which operates the transport link to the island. Mr Delaney said that his decision followed the refusal of the Chief Pleas to set up an immigration and customs post so that visitors do not have to transit via Guernsey. The council says that the island cannot afford the cost and infrastructure required to make it an official port of entry to the EU. Rosanne Guille, an artist who sits on the Chief Pleas, has been a target of the newsletter. It has accused her of detonating an “explosive device” outside Mr Delaney’s office and attempting to steal his fingerprints so that they can be “planted at a crime scene”. Ms Guille says that she has made her complaint because she cannot see any other way to bring the campaign against her to an end. “It is blighting my life,” she said. “It is a small island and to know that this is being put through your neighbours’ letterboxes and on the internet week after week is horrible.” Mr Delaney’s lawyer, Gordon Dawes, said yesterday that his client saw

himself as being in “the best traditions of the pamphleteers of the 18th and 19th centuries”. He added: “[Mr Delaney] now sees his primary role as proprietor and editor of The Sark Newspaper exposing the government of Sark weekly, holding up a mirror to the actions of those who seek to control Sark, in the interests of transparency, openness, accountability and, most of all, in the public interest.” 5 miles

Guernsey

Sark Brecqhou

CHANNEL ISLANDS

The Barclays built a mock Gothic castle on Brecqhou

Jersey

He said that the Barclay brothers have no input regarding the publication and that all “decisions and running of the businesses” on Sark are in Mr Delaney’s hands. He added: “The majority have brought about the economic failure of Sark through their reactionary policies.” No one knows what Sark’s newest resident will make of her new home. Irina Abramovich, the former wife of Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea FC and one of Russia’s richest men, recently paid £2 million for a mansion on the island. If she was hoping to get away from it all she may be in for a surprise.

Driverless cars at risk of French allow weapons on Dover ferry cyberattack, expert warns Hacking is one of the biggest threats facing driverless cars, an expert on cybersecurity has warned. Cyberattacks on cars and trucks that are largely computer-controlled could bring chaos to the roads, warned Hugh Boyes, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). He said software systems had to become far more reliable before autonomous vehicles could be trusted. Speaking at the launch of an IET report on the future of such vehicles, Mr Boyes said: “If we have the hacker community start to target vehicles, we can imagine a fair amount of chaos. “We just have to look at what happens in London when one vehicle breaks down on a major artery into the city; the tailbacks that rapidly occur. “If just one in a 100 vehicles, or one in 1,000, gets interfered with and ceases to operate as planned we can expect chaos. “That’s why cybersecurity of autono-

mous vehicles will be critical.” He stressed that while car manufacturers went to great pains to make their products as safe as possible, the danger from hacking was not on their radar. “Unfortunately we’re living in a world today where people deliberately tamper with technology because they can,” he added. The move towards driverless vehicles is expected to take place gradually over the next 10 to 15 years. Before this happens, major challenges will have to be overcome, such as motorists becoming less vigilant and road aware, and therefore less able to take manual control in an emergency. Mr Boyes said software had to become much less prone to glitches and defects. The government has given the goahead for trials of driverless or semiautonomous cars on public roads in selected UK cities next January.

French border forces at Calais allowed a gun enthusiast with a car boot full of weapons to drive on to a ferry bound for Dover without telling the British authorities, a judge has heard. Manuel Wallner, from Austria, drove 300 miles across the UK with a Steyr Aug semiautomatic .223 rifle, a semiautomatic Beretta .9mm pistol, 280 rounds of ammunition, knives, an extendable baton, a gas mask, body armour and balaclavas. Judge Keith Thomas said it was startling and disturbing that Wallner could declare the weapons in Calais and continue without any further comment. At an earlier hearing Judge Thomas had demanded an explanation as to how Wallner, 23, had managed to get the weapons into Britain. Interpol had sent an email saying too many people worked at Calais to discover who had dealt with Wallner, and that CCTV coverage was wiped every two weeks. Judge Thomas said there had been “a gaping hole in security arrangements through which Wallner had been able

When Wallner’s colleagues saw his guns and knives, police were called

to walk”. Wallner was at Swansea crown court for sentencing after admitting nine offences of possessing illegal weapons. The court heard that he had hoped to work in personal security in Iraq or South America. He enrolled on a £4,200 close protection and hostile environment operation course in the Black Mountains, south Wales. Wallner was told to bring equipment such as wet-weather clothing, but he decided to take his weapons too. Patrick Griffiths, prosecuting, said Wallner

maintained that on arriving in Calais he told border officials about the arms in the boot of his car, and that he was told to wait until a member of the French forces spoke to him. Nothing happened and a representative of myferrylink told him to drive on as the last vehicle, to lock his car and to give the keys to a crew member. Mr Griffiths said myferrylink had placed a “Code 100” mark on his travel details, and so he must have told someone what was in the boot. French security forces should at least have told the British. In Dover, Wallner drove through the “nothing to declare” corridor and on to the Black Mountains. It was only when he showed his arsenal to colleagues on the course that the police were called. Wallner was sentenced to 18 months suspended for two years. His weapons and ammunition were confiscated. A spokeswoman for myferrylink said after the case: “A Code 100 is a standard code to indicate there are firearms aboard a vehicle. It is for the authorities to take notice if they want to.”

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

News ALLSTAR / EMBASSY

Director made The Graduate his masterclass

ike Nichols, probably best known for his Oscar-winning film The Graduate, has died at the age of 83 (Patrick Kidd writes). One of the most celebrated American directors of stage and screen, Nichols was born in Berlin but arrived in New York as a seven-year-old refugee from the Nazis in 1939. He could speak only two sentences: “I do not speak English” and

“Please, do not kiss me.” He went on to become one of only 12 people to win all four big entertainment awards in the United States — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony — in a long career that won praise and fans from Broadway to Hollywood. When he died on Wednesday, after suffering a heart attack, Nichols, who was married to the news anchor Diane Sawyer, had been working on a film

thetimes.co.uk/ obituaries

Top: Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer. Right: receiving his Oscar for The Graduate, above

adaptation of Master Class, Terrence McNally’s play about the opera singer Maria Callas, starring Meryl Streep. He had previously directed the actress in three mediums: the 1983 film Silkwood, which had five Oscar nominations; the 2003 television series Angels in America, for which he won two of his four Emmy

awards; and a Broadway production of Chekhov’s The Seagull in 2001. Streep said that he was “an inspiration and joy to know, a director who cried when he laughed, a friend without whom we can’t imagine our world, an indelible, irreplaceable man”. He began as part of an improvisational comedy duo

with Elaine May and won a Grammy for best comedy album in 1962. He then started as a director, prolifically in theatre — he once had four shows on Broadway at the same time — and in 1966 made his film debut with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Two Hoffmans

owed their reputation to Nichols. In 1967, he cast the little-known Dustin Hoffman as the lead in The Graduate, a comedy about a young man who sleeps with the wife of his father’s best friend and then falls in love with her daughter. It was the only Oscar that Nichols won, although he was nominated five times.

Always look on the bright side as the departed go out with a smile Patrick Kidd

Life is quite absurd and death’s the final word. You must always face the curtain with a bow. Forget about your sin — give the audience a grin. Enjoy it, it’s your last chance anyhow. It seems that we are becoming less defiantly selfish and more humorously philosophical in the face of death, if the annual survey from the Co-operative Funeralcare is anything to go by. For the first time in more than a decade, Frank Sinatra’s My Way has been knocked off the top spot in the chart of music requested from Britain’s largest funeral director. It has been replaced by Always Look on the Bright Side, Eric Idle’s whistleheavy ditty that closes the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian. The song, which includes the chorus “Always look the bright side of death, just before you draw your terminal breath”, was played at the memorial service for Graham Chapman, the late

Steven Spielberg, his fellow director, said that the film was “life-altering, both as an experience at the movies as well as a masterclass about how to stage a scene”. In 2007, Nichols directed the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War, a comic drama about the 1980s Afghan war. Four years later he cast the younger Hoffman as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, a play that won him his seventh Tony for directing. He also won in 2005 for the Monty Python musical Spamalot. Tom Hanks, who played the lead role in Charlie Wilson’s War, said: “Mike Nichols changed the lives of those who knew him, who loved him, who will miss him so.”

Python, who died in 1989. The last song to keep My Way off top place was Bette Midler’s cover version of Wind Beneath My Wings in 2002. Sinatra’s confrontation with the final

curtain has, in fact, slipped to No 5 in the chart, which is based on requests at more than 30,000 funerals that took place over the past year. Although 84 per cent of funeral

The last farewells 8 Enigma Variations Elgar, Nimrod

1 Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Eric Idle, from Monty Python’s 1979 film Life of Brian, right

9 You’ll Never Walk Alone Gerry and the Pacemakers, adopted by fans of Liverpool FC and Celtic

2 The Lord is My Shepherd Psalm 23 / Crimond Traditional 3 Abide with Me Traditional

5 My Way Frank Sinatra

Beautiful Traditional

4 Match of the Day theme

6 All Things Bright and

7 Angels Robbie Williams

10 Cricket Theme / Soul Limbo Booker T & the MGs / Test Match Special theme

directors reported a decline in the popularity of hymns and classical music, The Lord is My Shepherd (Psalm 23), in various arrangements, is still at No 2 in the chart, followed by Abide with Me. That Victorian hymn, used before FA Cup Finals since 1927, may reflect the nation’s interest in football, since the fourth most popular choice is the theme tune from Match of the Day. Queen has nine entries in the list, including Who Wants to Live Forever, while Elvis Presley appears six times. More recent artists who are requested at funerals are Ellie Goulding, the 27year-old singer, with her cover of The Waterboys’ How Long Will I Love You? and last year’s Christmas hit, Lily Allen’s cover of Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know. The leading classical compositions are Elgar’s Nimrod, from the Enigma Variations, and Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Several songs have been refused on the ground of poor taste, however, including Bat out of Hell by Meat Loaf, Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and God Save the Queen, by the Sex Pistols.

How to stay alive in the graveyard Frances Gibb Legal Editor

Graveyards may be all about death — but that does not mean people want to end up dying in one. New advice has been issued to burial authorities to minimise the hazards of memorials and gravestones so that cemeteries are safe places to visit. The guidance, from the Ministry of Justice, notes that the risk is “extremely low”: eight people have been killed by falling memorials in the past 30 years. Yet burial authorities must take reasonable precautions, it says — from assessing the likelihood of toppling to alerting visitors of potential dangers. Ownership of a memorial remains with the family of the deceased and operators will have to communicate with them to ensure they take steps if a memorial needs repairs. Only if a memorial poses a “significant” risk, such as imminent collapse in a way that could lead to injury, does immediate action need to be taken. Memorials along a path or on uneven ground will present a greater risk, as will those with “architecture or aesthetic qualities” that attract visitors.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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News

Born in the USA — but Boris refuses to pay their tax bill Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor

Boris Johnson is refusing to pay tax in the United States in a move that could put him in prison. The mayor of London, who was born in America and holds a US passport, said that he had not lived in the country for many years and did not recognise the legitimacy of the claim. He spoke out while on a book tour in the US to promote his new book, The Churchill Factor. The US insists that all citizens must file a tax return to the Internal Revenue Service and pay US taxes. Asked whether he paid American taxes, Mr Johnson told a National Public Radio phone-in: “No is the answer. I think it’s absolutely outrageous. Why should I? I think, you know, I haven’t lived in the US for . . . well, since I was five years old. I pay the lion’s share of my tax, I pay my taxes to the full, in the UK where I live and work.” He went on to denounce the US system of taxing nations with overseas earnings. “You may not believe this but if you’re an American citizen, America exercises this incredible doctrine of global taxation.” Asked why he continued to carry a US passport, he said: “It’s very difficult to give up.” Unless Mr Johnson

actively renounces his citizenship, which requires an appointment at a US embassy, coupled with forms and fees, he is still an American citizen. This means he should file all taxes and report all UK bank accounts to the US Treasury department. In 2006, he suggested that he might do this after being turned away from a US airport because his American passport had expired. He wrote in a column that he was “getting a divorce from America” and would renounce his citizenship, noting, “For years I have travelled exclusively on a British passport.” Under US law, for each year a taxpayer wilfully fails to file an income tax return, they can be sentenced to one year in prison. In general, there is a six-year statute of limitations on federal tax crimes. It is unclear whether his book sales in the US would count as taxable earnings there. Non-payment is also costly. The civil penalty for wilful failure to timely file a return is generally equal to 5 per cent of the amount of tax “required to be shown on the return per month, up to a maximum of 25 per cent”. The mayor could open himself up to accusations of hypocrisy for his criticism of the US for failing to pay fines incurred by ignoring the London congestion charge.

NEWS DOG MEDIA

Calm waters A black swan glides across the lake in Moseley Park, Birmingham. Freezing conditions are expected next week

Brothers held in sex-grooming case Andrew Norfolk

Three brothers were arrested yesterday by police investigating an alleged sex-grooming network whose members are suspected of abusing dozens of girls in Rotherham. Search warrants were executed at five addresses by detectives from Operation Clover, a criminal inquiry into the use and sale for sex of young teenage girls in the South Yorkshire town. The Times understands that panic alarms were fitted by police yesterday afternoon at the homes of a number of potential witnesses in the case. The

detained men, aged 39, 38 and 35, were held on suspicion of sexual offences against “a number of under-age girls” between 1990 and 2001. Police made two arrests during earlymorning raids at properties in Goole, East Yorkshire. The third brother was held some hours later. All three were taken to a South Yorkshire police station for questioning and later released on bail. Operation Clover was launched in August 2013, in response to allegations that a group of men, largely of Pakistani origin, were responsible for targeting, pimping and trafficking vulnerable Rotherham girls over a period of years.

Multiple child-sex offences were said to have been committed. It is understood that detectives working on the case have a list of 10 suspects and more than 150 potential victims. In August, an independent inquiry found that at least 1,400 children in Rotherham were subjected to “appalling levels of crime and abuse” over 16 years until 2013. The Jay report said that children as young as 11 were abducted, beaten, threatened and gang-raped. It accused police and senior council officials of suppressing and ignoring “clear evidence of child sexual exploitation”.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

News

Grammar schools ‘offer little advantage’ Greg Hurst Education Editor

Grammar school pupils have the same chance of enrolling at an elite university as bright children who attend comprehensive schools, a study has found. Although a higher proportion of grammar school pupils attended leading universities, this pattern is believed to be as a result of their academic ability prior to sitting the 11-plus exams and their family background, it suggested. Academics who studied the schooling of thousands of children found that those who went to grammar schools did do better at exams aged 16, when they

sat O-levels — replaced by GCSEs in 1988 — but this advantage disappeared when comparing A-level results and university progression. The pattern challenges the view that grammar schools offer a better route to advancement for working-class children. In contrast, pupils who attended private schools were far more likely to attend a highly selective university. Researchers from the Institute of Education, part of the University of London, and the University of Manchester tracked 7,700 children born in the same week in 1970. They took part in tests and surveys at intervals thereafter for the British Cohort Study. The

team then looked at the types of schools they attended, exam results and how many attended elite universities, defined as members of the Russell Group, plus St Andrews and Bath. They found that 31.5 per cent of private school pupils went to a highly selective university, 12.8 per cent from grammar schools, 5 per cent from comprehensives, and about 2.5 per cent from both secondary modern and special schools. Once weighted for other factors linked to educational progression — including prior academic achievement or family background, such as a parent with a degree and home ownership —

any advantage from attending a grammar school disappeared. However, this advantage remained strongly associated with private schooling. Researchers also found a pattern emerging for grammar school pupils who achieved highly at 16 but did not go on to a leading university. The so-called post-16 “leaky pipe” required further investigation, they said. Professor Alice Sullivan, the lead author, said: “It was surprising that grammar schooling was not linked to any significant advantage in getting a degree.” She added: “We also investigated whether grammar schools were especially beneficial for working-class pupils who attended them, even if there was no overall grammar school advantage. But we found no statistical evidence to support this argument.” Overall, 6.7 per cent of the children who were studied went to selective universities and 16 per cent attended other universities or polytechnics. The researchers said that independent schools’ results reflected highly developed links between leading universities and private schools, plus higher levels of aspiration among teachers and parents of pupils sent to private schools. Their report said: “We can say though that the view that the domination of elite universities by the privately educated was justified by the concentration of the pool of talent in such schools is not justified by our analysis. “Our findings accord with longstanding results showing that state-educated pupils outperform their comparably qualified privately educated peers once at university.” A paper on the research entitled “Social Origins, School Type and Higher Education Destinations”, will be published next month in the Oxford Review of Education.

Journalists take police to court over secret data Fiona Hamilton Crime Correspondent

A group of six journalists is taking landmark legal action to try to halt police surveillance of their activities after learning that they had been placed on a “secretive” database. Scotland Yard is accused of snooping on the journalists and gathering details about their lives, their family and their associates. The group intends to seek a judicial review against the force, which has refused to remove their names and details from its domestic extremism database. The journalists, who have all worked on stories which expose state misconduct, complain that their “lawful journalistic and union activities are being monitored and recorded” by the police. They have all pursued legal action in the past against the Metropolitan police or private companies over alleged interference of their rights to privacy or freedom of expression, arising out of incidents such as being “kettled” while covering protest rallies. One of the group, David Hoffman, a freelance photographer, has been paid more than £30,000 by the Met in damages after being detained. The National Union of Journalists, which is spearheading the legal action, said the surveillance and data retention was “unnecessary, disproportionate and not in accordance with the law”. The group is seeking the destruction of data held by the police about them. The Met has until today to respond to their case before they apply for judicial review in the High Court.

Court rejects plea to drop Assange warrant Sweden’s court of appeal has rejected Julian Assange’s attempt to have the arrest warrant against him over allegations of sexual assault lifted. Mr Assange, 43, the founder of WikiLeaks, who denies the allegations, was granted diplomatic asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London and has been living there since August 2012. The ruling is expected to increase pressure on prosecutors to find new means of breaking the deadlock. Per Samuelson, one of Mr Assange’s lawyers, said he would take the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Flu vaccine boosted Research into how the immune system fights flu could enable scientists to create better vaccines. They have found that the body responds not only to an infecting strain of flu but also to those it has already encountered. The flu virus has often mutated by the time the seasonal vaccine is given, but the hope is to update vaccines by gambling on how the virus will develop without losing protection against past strains.

Lover wins will dispute Sisters Jennifer Rowan and Alison Walker, who said their mother didn’t know her own mind when she left her stake in a £1.2 million farm in Garlinge Green, Kent, to a young lover, have failed in a High Court case to overturn her will. Elizabeth Walker, 53, died in 2010 of a brain tumour, but Judge Nicholas Strauss, QC, found that she was in a rational state when she named Michael Badmin, then 30, in the will.

UK worth £7.6 trillion The UK’s net value rose by 4 per cent to £7.6 trillion last year, making each person worth an average £119,000, official figures show. Wealth is increasingly tied up in homes, which account for more than three-fifths of the total, rising 5 per cent to £4.7 trillion, the Office for National Statistics said. Banks and financial companies rose in value, but government and corporate debt was a drag on national wealth.

The talk of the Toon

Overseas students at Newcastle and Northumbria universities are being offered the chance to learn the Geordie dialect. Samantha Wagner, from the US, and Yawen Zhang, from China, above, attended a taster session run by International Newcastle, which will also teach the history and culture of the northeast. Among the words they will learn are netty (toilet), doylem (idiot) and dancers (stairs).

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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News

Radio host is caught speeding at 16mph Kaya Burgess

Speed demons may not consider 16mph to be much of a thrill, but it was enough to get Jeremy Vine in trouble yesterday. The BBC Radio 2 host was pulled over by police for breaking a 5mph limit while cycling through a park. He posted footage of the incident on the social networking site Vine. The video shows a police officer with a radar gun asking him to stop cycling along the dedicated cycle path in Hyde Park. Vine tweeted: “[This is] the moment I got stopped by police with a speed gun, Jeremy Vine posted a video of the Hyde Park incident online

checking cyclists today. They said speed limit in Hyde Park is 5mph and I was doing 16mph. I apologised.” Hewas not fined but was given a “telling off”. When he got to work, his producer told him he was “living on the edge”. Police confirmed that they had carried out a “cycle speed awareness operation” in partnership with the Royal Parks agency. Although the pedestrian and cycle paths are separated by a solid white line, pedestrians have priority if they stray on to the cycle path. A police spokesman said: “The oper-

ation . . . follows a number of incidents over the summer where young children were injured by cyclists. Officers equipped with speed guns stopped cyclists and provided advice around safe cycling whilst informing them of their recorded speed as well as highlighting the 5mph speed limit. “Police stopped hundreds of cyclists and issued leaflets informing them of the pathway code.” Vine, 49, said that he was embarrassed to be stopped, but warned that cyclists would be discouraged from using the safer routes through royal parks if such slow limits were imposed. “My concern is that if cyclists are forced to travel at walking pace, they will return to the roads and mix it with trucks,” he said. Ten people have died this year while cycling in London, the latest being Janina Gehlau, 26, who was run over by a lorry last month. There have been urgent calls for the capital’s cycling network to be upgraded. The Times’s Cities Fit for Cycling campaign is calling on the government to build safe routes in other English cities, and for the devolved authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to do the same. This month, Vine dismissed fears that new cycle superhighways could cause minor delays. Vine commented: “Oh sorry. Apparently allowing cyclists to move around the capital without dying will ‘slow drivers down’.”

NIGEL DAVIES

David Prowse reprises his 1970s role as the Green Cross Man to berate adults for their lack of road safety awareness

Stop! Look! Have you seen this man before?

Miles Costello

He was the safety-conscious superhero who helped children cross the road unharmed. A generation of 1970s youngsters grew up with “Stop! Look! Listen!” echoing in their ears through television adverts for the Green Cross Code, featuring a muscular caped protector played by the actor David Prowse. Now he is back, in two short films designed to educate adults whose road safety awareness remains incomplete. Prowse, 79, reprises his role in the

films, released overnight on YouTube, to coincide with Road Safety Week. As well as playing Green Cross Man, below, the Bristol-born bodybuilder and former British heavyweight champion was famously the body of Darth Vadar in the original Star Wars trilogy, although the voice was supplied by James Earl Jones. Prowse also put in for the part of Superman in the 1978 film, but went on to coach the successful candi-

date, Christopher Reeve. In the new films, commissioned by the insurer More Than, the Green Cross Man berates adults for being glued to mobile phones or listening to music on headphones while crossing busy streets. In a firm message to errant grown-up pedestrians, he even resurrects his trademark phrase. “A “Always use the Green Cross Code, because I wo won’t be there when you cross the road.”

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News

Mother drowned children and wrote ‘I love you’ on bodies Jenny Booth, Gabriella Swerling

A pregnant woman drowned her three young children in the bath then wrote “I love you” on their chests before leaping to her death from a multistorey car park, an inquest was told. Fiona Anderson, 23, drew a heart in green marker pen on the chests of Levina, three, Addy, two, and Kyden, 11 months, after splitting up with the children’s father. Police who broke into her flat in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on April 15 last year found the children tucked up in her bed with their teddy bears. More messages were scrawled on the walls, including: “I’ve put them in bed, the last words they heard were ‘I love you’”, and “I love them and I’m going to keep them safe”. The forehead of each child bore the lipstick mark of a kiss. Miss Anderson, who was eight months pregnant, had thrown herself off the roof of a car park. The names of each child were found written on her body, along with the name Eve. She had intended to name her unborn daughter Evalie Rihanna. The inquest was told that a Suffolk Local Safeguarding Children’s Board serious case review found that the refusal by Miss Anderson and Craig

McClelland, the children’s father, to co-operate with social workers had made it difficult to take any effective action. The report’s author said attempts to intervene had been allowed to drift, a student social worker had inappropriately been assigned to the case and the relationship between the couple and social workers had become “adversarial”. The inquest was told that care agencies had been involved with the family since Miss Anderson first became pregnant in 2009. As her relationship ended and her mental state deteriorated, Miss Anderson had feared that the children would be taken into care. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Smith told the inquest in Bury St Edmunds that the day before the killings Miss Anderson had argued with her former partner, who had begun a new relationship, and she had stabbed him. A chance to save the children was missed because Mr McLelland initially told police that he had been stabbed in the street by a stranger. Later Miss Anderson sent him a text message reading: “Say goodnight to your children — it’s the last time you will see them”, but Mr McClelland did

MASONS

Levina, Addy and Kyden were found tucked up in bed. Below, Fiona Anderson

not receive it until after the killings because he was in hospital. Mr Smith said: “He later told us he lied to protect Fiona and stop the children being taken into care. It is clear that Fiona Anderson loved her children but that she was extremely emotionally disturbed.” Peter Dean, the Suffolk coroner, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of the children, and suicide for Miss Anderson. He added that he would be writing to the health minister about the case as it highlighted the need for more awareness of parents with mental health problems.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Worker died trapped in giant oven A man was burned alive after he was locked in in an industrial oven and which reached temperatures of 280C. Alan Catterall, 54, had gone into the oven at Pyranha Mouldings in Runcorn to fix a fault. A colleague, who did not know he was inside, switched on the oven, locking the doors. Mark Francis, who switched on the oven, was engaged to Mr Catterall’s daughter. A jury at Liverpool Crown Court was told that Mr Catterall tried to break free using a crowbar but because of the noise on the factory floor no one could have heard his attempts or his cries for help. Pyranha is on trial charged with corporate manslaughter, and its directors and the oven’s designer face charges relating to health and safety breaches. Andrew Thomas, QC, prosecuting, said: “The design of the oven was such that the moment it was switched on, its power-operated doors shut and automatically locked with metal bolts on the outside. There was no means of escape and no alarm. “He suffered severe burns and died as a result of shock. The first anyone knew about the problem was when smoke started seeping out of the oven.” Graham Mackereth, 64, from Runcorn, Peter Mackereth, 59, from Llangollen, Wales, and Paul Keddie, from Wales, who designed the oven which makes plastic kayaks, deny health and safety breaches. The trial continues.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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comment pages of the year

Paddington Bear, the immigrant even Ukip loves Ben Macintyre Page 19

Opinion

Dave’s Big Society has become the Big Lie

The modernisers who helped Cameron win the Tory leadership have been betrayed. Only Boris can save them now Philip Collins

@pcollinstimes

veryone in Tory politics is angry with David Cameron except the people who ought to be. With the electorate of Rochester and Strood preparing, as I write, to offer Mark Reckless a six-month stay of execution, British politicians have been tempted into nonsense about tightening rules they don’t control on benefit tourists who don’t exist. The argument, driven into panic mode by the stubborn Ukip vote, has been insular, shrunken and small. Society, if you remember, was meant by now to be big, or at least bigger than this. On Wednesday, a key figure in the charity sector lambasted the prime minister for the collapse of an idea he once declared his “passion”: the Big Society. In the roseate glow of 2010 Mr Cameron was firing off speeches about how excited he was at the prospect of people running their own post offices. It was the very reason, he said, that he was in politics at all. The prime minister never mentions the Big Society now. Lack of money is some part of the reason for its demise. The friendly societies of late Victorian England rose, fell and rose again in strict line with the state support they received. It was always a fallacy, though one shared by the prime minister, that when the state withdraws the voluntary sector rushes gratefully in. Austerity, therefore, helped to shrink the Big Society but different choices could

have been made to protect the prime minister’s “passion”. The rate and scope of austerity was a choice, not a force of nature. The truth is that the Big Society is an emblem of where four years of government has dumped the Tory party. Such passion for modernisation as it ever had has been spent. This is a party in which the leader’s policy consigliere, Oliver Letwin, declares that there is a significant chance that it will take Britain out of the European Union. After a year of pandering to the unlistening right, the Ukip vote has not budged and the prime minister is making promises he never used to mean and certainly cannot keep. The short history of Tory modernisation was never meant to lead here, let alone so quickly. It is, to be sure, harder to push a party against the grain when it does not enjoy a majority. To which the short retort is that failure properly to complete the process of changing the Tory party is the reason it did not

It is a rich irony that AV would have saved the Tories from Ukip win a majority in the first place. So it can hardly make sense to retreat farther. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats appeared, for a brief and heady moment, to inaugurate a new style of Conservative politics. Good relations were carelessly tossed aside by the prime minister’s childishly aggressive conduct of the Alternative Vote (AV) campaign. It is the richest, and most merited, irony of politics today that AV would almost certainly have saved the Tories from the threat of Ukip.

When David Cameron first emerged, Tony Blair’s strategy team spent a long time trying to work out how to define the new Tory leader. The general feeling was that, after three painful defeats, the top team was dedicated to a plan of modernisation and liberal conservatism. To the extent he has carried that out, Mr Cameron has been greeted with some loathing in his party. It seems unfathomable, though, that the angriest of all should not be the modernisers who trusted him to carry their message. Look at how comprehensively any semblance of new Toryism has been abandoned. Cutting the 50p top rate of income tax was a political mistake when the focus was on deficit reduction. The conference pledge of £7 billion of unfunded tax cuts is bog-standard Tory bribery. The early radicalism of opening up public services to competition was shelved and forgotten. Andrew Lansley threw a brick through the windows of the NHS. City mayors were lost for want of an advocate in government. Environmental policy was first ceded to the Liberal Democrats and then described as crap by the prime minister who, before the election, tried to kid us that he cared. Welfare descended into a cartoon in which strivers pay while shirkers spend. John Hills’ magisterial new book, Good Times, Bad Times, tells the story about how good welfare smooths income across a lifetime while bad welfare pays for collective failure. That story, which would have appealed to the pre-government modernisers, is too clever and complex by half these days. Worst of all, the living symbol of having given up was the exiling of Michael Gove, the catherine wheel of reform, to the chief whip’s office where, now he can no longer carry

back to its senses. They have fought too softly and given up too easily. Above all, they have been too slow to realise that their half-hearted, uncommitted figurehead, Mr Cameron, is an increasing problem. If the modernisers were loyal to their cause they would be less loyal to their leader. Mr Cameron is a chaser after orthodoxy. At every stage of his career he has blown with the wind. He came to modernisation late and reluctantly. He left it early, carelessly. The Tory moderniser has two options. Leave the party to the

At every stage in his career Cameron has blown with the wind Boris Johnson is the one man who can hang from a high wire above politics

on public service reform, he is merrily failing to prevent public house reform. It would be unfair not to salute the too-few achievements of Tory modernisation. Theresa May, with the rebarbative Tom Winsor as her chief inspector of constabulary, has made progress in the perennially sticky task of reforming the police. It is to Mr Cameron’s great credit that he passed the gay marriage bill against the advice of the turn-theclock-back merchants in his party. It will prove to be the best thing he ever does. I salute him too for withstanding the strident and ignorant pressure to cut the foreign aid bill. This is not, however, much to show for the elite that captured the Tory tribe and brought it half way

moon barkers or stand and fight. If they decide to stand and fight, a candidate will be needed. A band of truly political Tory modernisers would, by now, have nailed down Boris Johnson as their man before the mayor makes a fool of himself and a friend of all the wrong people. Failure to cut this deal could be the dumbest sin of omission since David Miliband forgot to make sure that his brother was running his leadership campaign. Boris Johnson could be the anti-politics politician from within the fold, the one man who can hang from a high wire above politics. The modernisers need him. He needs them. The Conservative party needs them both.

The Opinion podcast pod Daniel Finkelstein, Patrick Kidd and Anne Ashworth on the bigg issues of the dayy thetimes.co.uk/commentcentral

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Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Ukraine, eastern Poland, Belarus, western Russia, Romania, Moldova Cloudy and cold with a band of rain, sleet and snow affecting southern Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Drier in northern Scandinavia and western Russia, but staying very cold. Maximum 7C (45F), minimum -15C (5F). Southern France, Iberia, Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean islands and coasts A few isolated showers, mainly in northern Italy, but most places staying dry with the best of the sunshine across southern Italy and Greece. Maximum 25C (77F), minimum 3C (37F). Northern France Scattered showers in Haute-Normandie, Picardie and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, but drier elsewhere. Maximum 15C (59F), minimum 4C (39F).

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Opinion

America is sex mad but not in the way you think Once it was Janet Jackson, now it’s pick-up artists. The US can’t take too much erotic reality Justin Webb

@justinonweb

nce again we are reminded that Americans are an extremely odd bunch when it comes to sexual love. The self-styled “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc, who holds seminars that appear to extol the virtues of choking women to make them fancy men, has been banned from Britain. An online petition demanded that the US citizen be denied a visa; the home secretary has decided they are right: Mr Blanc is a bad sort. Most of his fellow Americans would agree but he is a symptom as much as a cause of a deeper malaise in a nation that finds sexual relationships disturbing and veers crazily, dangerously even, between porn and pampering, abstinence and abuse. The most important cultural event in my eight years’ reporting on America for the BBC was the appearance on television, for 9/16ths of a second, of one of Janet Jackson’s breasts. It was a live show in the middle of the biggest TV event of the year, the 2004 Superbowl, with 90 million people watching. It is fair to say that many of them found their lives changed by the event, which scientists have determined was brought about by a dodgy bustier.

But Middle America wasn’t buying that. Some 560,000 people complained that a nipple had been deliberately foisted on them and their complaints led to an almost decade-long set of inquiries and court cases involving the federal government and media companies. Reviewing the escapade recently, Marin Cogan, of ESPN magazine, called it with only a hint of irony “one of the worst cases of mass hysteria in America since the Salem witch trials”. While many felt the nipple might damage them, plenty more could not get enough of it; Janet Jackson and Nipplegate became the most searched words in the history of the internet. The term “wardrobe malfunction” (the initial excuse) entered the English language. And desperation to see the footage over and over again led a young computer

It is torn between porn and pampering, abstinence and abuse programmer, Jawed Karim, to get together with friends to find a way of sharing videos easily: the site became known as YouTube. Truly 9/16ths of a second that changed the world. But why? In any other western country the whole thing would have been laughed off. It was a rare moment of spontaneous reality — almost erotic if you weren’t getting out much — in an otherwise crass and tawdry piece of faux-sexy piffle. Jackson’s dance was artless: basically it involved chasing Justin Timberlake

Nipplegate: the “worst case of mass hysteria since the Salem witch trials”

around the stage while he sang: “Better have you naked by the end of this song.” The wider, if unintended, message is that America is comfortable with tawdry fantasy, but deeply uncomfortable with naked reality. In that weird world, thrust between Los Angeles porn stars and Midwestern abstinence queens, no wonder Julien Blanc and his many imitators find such a rich seam of work. They are dealing with people traumatised by nipples. Real abuse, caused in part by the “pick-up artist” view of women, has led to renewed controversy over sexual consent. California public universities now have a “yes means yes” rule that bans any sex unless full agreement is received

beforehand. The left-wing blogger Ezra Klein suggested: “If the ‘yes means yes’ law is taken even remotely seriously, it will settle like a cold winter on college campuses, throwing everyday sexual practice into doubt and creating a haze of fear and confusion over what counts as consent. This is the case against it, and this is also the case for it.” Others, less keen on the law, have pointed out that sex is still going to ruin lives when misunderstandings and false accusations happen. Still, for Americans, the gloomy sense lingers that getting naked is sinful, tinged with violence or coercion and liable to end in court. Not very sexy. Most scholars of early American history would agree that blaming “the puritans” for this state of affairs is lazy and probably wrong. It is true that puritan New England had no shortage of sex crimes on the statute but New Englanders were not antisex in all circumstances. But if we discount the easy explanation where does that lead us? To a quintessentially American place: Main Street. America is not very sophisticated. In many respects this is a good thing; Americans tend to be warmer, less cynical than us Brits. The US can be a gentle place to live. But in sexual mores the lack of sophistication of the many clashes with the worldly cosmopolitanism of the few. The result: psychosexual confusion on a continental scale. Pick-up artists, checklists before sex, and the fleeting memory of Janet Jackson’s bared flesh — Americans are indeed exceptional in the bedroom. But without having much to boast about.

Helen Rumbelow Notebook

It’s an NHS operation – but in quiet back streets

hey say you don’t get to know a country until you have had children in it, but that’s only half right. You don’t get under the skin of a place until you’ve tried to find some emergency contraception or abortion advice. I’ve loved America all my life, and for a few years in my twenties I lived there. But I never really knew America until the morning in a Nevada parking lot when I had to run the gauntlet of a line of protesters waving images of “murdered” embryos. The memory came flooding back when I heard that the woman leading the protests outside Belfast’s new and only abortion clinic has been convicted of harassment, with the judge clear that she couldn’t intimidate women going in. Good: Northern Irish women already have hardly any access to abortion compared with other UK citizens; they shouldn’t need to break through

an Arthur Scargill-style picket line too. The bigger picture is that it’s not the women who are vulnerable, but the clinics. The actual buildings are the problem: situated both literally and politically far from the safety of hospitals. That morning in Nevada I was seeking a morning-after contraceptive pill, which in England you can get by choosing a quiet moment in Boots. In Nevada I had to drive to a clinic in a desolate industrial estate, and, as I got out of the car, was acutely aware I was alone against a line of people bearing placards and expressions of happy hatred. I took a deep breath. In America in the early 1970s most abortions were done in hospital. But as political pressure grew, hospitals closed their doors to it. Small clinics filled the void with the best intentions, taking on nearly all the burden, but staff became easy targets: no shelter, no anonymity. In the past year many doctors have campaigned to reverse this mistake, which has put the lives of so many of their colleagues at

risk. Northern Ireland could learn something here. In this country the NHS funds nearly all abortions, but outsources most. You’ll have your NHS abortion somewhere that feels small and unNHS. This is no big deal in our more tolerant land; there’s an argument for specialisation. But something niggles away. Abortion is no longer “back street”, but it is done in the quiet back streets. Architecture says something.

Male deficit

here’s a lot of feminist talk of princesses taking over our girls’ imaginations. I was in Disneyland Pa Paris at the we weekend with my daughter. Seen through her eyes, all the female characters — Elsa, Anna, Merida — at the park were royal even though their costumes would put a drag queen to shame. Ke Kenneth Branagh’s new Cinderella for Disney, out next ye year, adds to the roster. But

what of the men? I tried to view it through my son’s eyes and counted the male characters. Mickey, of course, then Goofy, Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Two animals, two toys. The women may be princesses, but at least they are human. Disney’s males are sub-human.

Back to nature

e knew that women are more attractive to men when they are ovulating. What we know now is that women become indifferent to men’s looks when on the pill. It’s oestrogen beer goggles: “He’ll do.” Coming off the pill is like waking up the morning after, and going “What the!” at some bloke. Except by this time you’re already married and sharing a flat in Pinner. I have friends who genuinely worry that their long years on hormonal contraceptives have skewed their choices, or his. This has given rise to a new phrase doing the rounds: “paleo-dating”. Like paleodieting, it seeks modern truths in cave-man methods. Not dragging Raquel Welch back to the cave by her hair, but letting your pheromones waft pure and free. This all sounds cool until you realise where it’s leading you: folk dancing. @helenrumbelow

King Charles must keep his shrill, silly opinions to himself Oliver Kamm

hereditary head of state, said Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary physician or astronomer. The Prince of Wales appears bent on proving it. Whereas no one really knows what the Queen thinks about politics, the heir to the throne is less inhibited. It is a style of speaking that, according to his allies, Prince Charles intends to persist with when he becomes king. You might think this a reliable way to bring the monarchy into disrepute. Unfortunately the consequences are likely to be far worse. Charles’s interventions long ago crossed the threshold of constitutional propriety, yet they also damage public debate by their remorseless silliness. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, the constitutional expert, insisted yesterday that there would be no question of Charles, as king, making interventions not approved by the

Charles wouldn’t be Charles if he could stop talking blather government of the day. Yet that isn’t quite the problem. Charles can remain above party politics while voicing a consistent and partisan position. That, after all, is what he already does. Whether criticising modern architecture, espousing quack medicine, or castigating genetically modified crops, he represents a shrill, insular and anti-scientific voice in public life. I recall with particular derision his insistence on maintaining the purity of “English English” against American incursions. The monarchy takes forms determined to a large extent by the monarch’s character. As George III’s mental powers diminished in the 1780s, he wisely determined on presenting himself as a neutral figure exemplifying family virtues. After a resurgence of republican sentiment in the 1860s and 1870s, Queen Victoria restored the reputation of the monarchy by concentrating on its ceremonial aspects. Charles’s misfortune is that he can’t stop talking blather. He would not be Charles if, on ascending the throne, he managed to shut himself up. It’s his prerogative to believe that homeopathic “medicine” works and to surround himself with cranks, but the test of ideas in the public square is the strength of evidence. Bad ideas get not only rebutted but discredited. This is where Charles’s interventions are improper as well as inane. The long habit of deference toward royalty means that Charles’s notions escape the scrutiny they deserve. His critics are accused of attacking a man who can’t answer back. In reality, he gets listened to only because of his constitutional role. He shouldn’t exploit it any further in pursuit of his idées fixes, but he will.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Opinion

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Paddington Bear, the migrant even Ukip loves A postwar children’s favourite, adored by Nigel Farage’s nostalgic supporters, has a message that may surprise them Ben Macintyre

@benmacintyre1

n a country run by Ukip, Britain’s most beloved immigrant would have got no farther than the station after which he is named. Instead Paddington Bear, stateless, homeless and without official documents, would probably have been stopped as he got off the train, closely questioned on his skills and background, then deported back to “darkest Peru”. And Britain would be immeasurably poorer as a result. The latest Times YouGov poll shows that Ukip voters long to dwell in the past. Nearly 70 per cent would willingly turn the clock back 30 years, while almost 60 per cent believe that immigration has been bad for Britain. Yet few icons of postwar Britain are more enduring than Paddington, a polite and helpful bear who arrived destitute, found a warm welcome and was assimilated into the culture like no other fictional character. Paddington was born in 1958, but he was inspired by Michael Bond’s experience of life in Britain during

and after the Second World War. As a child, Bond saw children being evacuated, carrying their possessions in suitcases, with labels round their necks. Paddington was another refugee, labelled with a simple appeal for help: “Please Look After This Bear. Thank You”. And that’s what Britain did, in the shape of Mr and Mrs Brown, of 32 Windsor Gardens, their children Judy and Jonathan, and the nanny, Mrs Bird: all quintessential examples of the kindly, bourgeois, uncomplicated Britain that Ukip hankers for. Everything about Paddington speaks of austerity Britain, from his marmalade sandwiches to his wellies and duffle coat. For 1950s readers

Bond saw evacuated children with their possessions in suitcases that coat immediately summoned up images of Field Marshal Montgomery in what became known as the “Monty Coat”: Paddington wears a specific sartorial message: Keep Calm and Carry On. Paddington is a stranger in a strange land (and thus prone to hilarious mistakes), but in his good manners and simple tastes he swiftly emerges as entirely English, adopted

by an open, understanding society, the latest in a long line of Peruvians to settle in Britain, including the late Michael Bentine, Mario Testino and the restaurant Nobu. The notion of a hospitable and embracing Britain is made thumpingly explicit in the new film Paddington: “They have not forgotten how to treat a stranger,” says Aunt Lucy, as she packs him off to London, before settling into the Home for Retired Bears. At the end, Paddington utters a multicultural mantra: “Mrs Brown says in London everyone is different, everyone can fit in.” In 2008 Bond placed Paddington in the middle of the immigration issue in Paddington Here and Now, explaining that he wanted to explore “a side of Paddington the Browns don’t really understand at all: what it’s like to be a refugee, not to be in your own country”. But the challenge of cultural assimilation has always formed the heart of the Paddington comedy. As a young man, Bond worked at the BBC monitoring service at Caversham Park, which was largely staffed by immigrants and refugees — Polish, Russian, Hungarian and other nationalities — listening to and translating foreign broadcasts. Mr Gruber, Paddington’s friend who runs an antiques shop in Portobello Road, is a highly educated Hungarian of polished correctness

who addresses Paddington as “Mr Brown”. Mr Gruber was modelled on Bond’s literary agent, Harvey Unna, a refugee from Nazi Germany. Unna was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Hamburg and became a doctor of jurisprudence; his thesis Demand in Insurance Law is still a standard work. Destined to become Germany’s youngest judge, he was dismissed in 1933 under the Nazis’ antisemitic race laws and fled

He represents an older Britain where manners and marmalade flourish

to Britain. Here he worked in a scrap metal business, took British citizenship, made German broadcasts for the BBC and became a translator at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He then created one of Britain’s most successful literary agencies. His Times obituary described Unna as “correct, buttoned-up Harvey, with his deep sense of right and wrong”, the essence of Mr Gruber. Bond initially intended Paddington to come from “darkest Africa”; it was Unna who gently pointed out that there are no bears in Africa. I would guess that affection for Paddington is greater among Ukip supporters than those of any other

party, for he represents a vision of an older, better Britain, where good manners, marmalade and elevenses still flourished, children were packed off to boarding school and everyone had a housekeeper. Paddington is a natural conservative and so are his supporters: in 2007 a TV advert showed him swapping marmalade for marmite, prompting a national outcry. Even the wife of the Peruvian ambassador complained. Paddington is an astonishingly successful British export: the 70 books have sold 30 million copies in 30 languages. But Paddington is an import to Britain. Ukip may remember postwar Britain as a halcyon world, but it was also a place that valued the immigrant and welcomed the refugee. Like Mr Gruber and Harvey Unna, Paddington is an advertisement for the benefits of immigration, a stowaway in a lifeboat who arrived with nothing, a cheerful, adaptable, hard-working and optimistic refugee who frequently gets it wrong, but always “tries so hard to get things right”. He is the ideal foreignerpatriot, orphaned and exiled from his own land, who became more English than the English. “It doesn’t matter that he comes from the other side of the world or another species,” says Mrs Brown in the new film. “He’s family.”

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Leading articles Daily Universal Register UK: MPs vote on the NHS anti-privatisation bill; Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, is expected to reshuffle the cabinet; Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, gives a keynote speech at the mayor’s education conference. US: President Barack Obama visits Las Vegas to discuss immigration reform.

Brussels Pouts

George Osborne’s surrender in his battle against the EU cap on bankers’ bonuses does not bode well for Britain’s future in Europe From its vantage point on the 18th floor of a skyscraper in Bishopsgate, the European Banking Authority has a fine view over the City of London. On a clear day, it could read the computer screens of half the world’s biggest banks with a decent telescope. It does not seem to like what it sees. In the face of initial opposition from George Osborne, fading yesterday to meek submission, the European Union’s financial regulator has reined in investment bankers’ bonuses. Since January, the banks have been limited to paying their employees bonuses the same size as their basic salary — or twice as large if they can get it past their shareholders. Mr Osborne yesterday withdrew an appeal at the European Court of Justice after it ran into a significant roadblock when the court’s advocate general ruled that the bonus cap was sound because it did not limit bankers’ total pay. This was a sharp blow to Mr Osborne and the UK’s financial sector, but it did not have to be decisive. It is not unknown for the ECJ to overrule its own legal advice, as it did when deciding to curb short-selling. It was worth pushing for a similar result this time. The chief argument against the cap is well rehearsed. To keep their bankers’ incomes constant, bosses will have to raise their fixed salaries. This

has, as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, put it, the “undesirable side-effect of limiting the scope for remuneration to be cut”, making it harder for banks to shed costs in lean years. In a savagely competitive global business where fine margins are everything, the City needs the bonus cap like a pair of concrete boots. This is unlikely to wash with the British public, who are on the whole fed up after years of malpractice, arrogance and fantastically large state subsidies in the banking sector. The suits have not done much to help their case. From drugs scandals to payment protection insurance, from impenetrable “dark pools” to the rigging of foreign exchange and international lending rates, this is a trade whose misdeeds are on a fabulous scale. The numbers and the lifestyles involved are also vastly out of proportion to the rest of the country. Most people would be delighted with a six-figure bonus that doubled or tripled their salary. Why not make the bankers take their medicine? The answer is not just that financial services make up 10 per cent of the British economy and contribute 12 per cent of the tax take. At its heart, this is a question of authority. The UK is home to four of Europe’s ten biggest banks, and dozens more have important outposts in London. If

bankers’ pay is to be regulated, it is a matter for parliament, and not for a supranational body that has repeatedly shown itself to be unequal to the job of overseeing a healthy banking system. What is more worrying is the sheer whimsy with which European regulations are being applied. The European Economic Community set out four fundamental freedoms of movement in its founding charter, the Treaty of Rome. Three of these — the unconstrained flows of goods, services and capital — it has time and again proved itself perfectly happy to fudge. Only the free movement of people has been held up as unbending dogma. This is a bizarre and dangerous inconsistency. The EU’s highest officials lecture Britain about its attempts to manage migration while its regulators cheerfully micromanage matters that are none of Brussels’ business. Such interference can only undermine efforts to secure the UK’s place in the union. Whatever happens at the general election in May, this country’s relationship with Europe faces a reckoning. The negotiations should not be about buying Britain off with political sweeties. They should be about fairness. The EU must be sensitive to concerns that it is carelessly marginalising one of its largest and most mutinous members. It could start by respecting its own principles.

Rainbow Regulation

Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration is a first step — and a last resort Last month President Obama promised to learn from his party’s heavy defeat in the US midterm elections by working together with a new Republican Congress. Last night he went to work alone. In an address to the nation from the Oval Office he turned his back on Capitol Hill to announce that he will use special executive powers to grant up to five million illegal immigrants or their children protection from deportation. The goal is honourable. The method will be contested but is probably legal. The political price, however, will be high. It will be paid by a Congress destined to play out the next two years in a nearpermanent showdown with the White House, and by a president who vowed to transcend Washington trench warfare but is now mired in it. The world’s richest nation is quintessentially a nation of immigrants. They gravitate to its 2,000mile border with Mexico as they gravitated to Ellis Island a century ago. But whereas in 1914 America’s population stood at a third of its current level and its government welcomed all-comers, US immigration policy is now a dysfunctional mess that divides families and voters and fails utterly to

reflect the country’s fast-changing demographic reality. Fixing it is a legal and moral emergency that is pressing even by American standards (and more pressing than the one bringing Ukip, seat by seat, to Westminster). More than 11 million undocumented aliens make up a modern American underclass beyond the reach of government either as a support system or as a collector of taxes. Mr Obama pledged in 2008 to overhaul the laws that turn a blind eye to this state of affairs if he was elected president. He made the same pledge in 2012. It remains largely unfulfilled. In the meantime the number of migrants apprehended along the southwestern border has fallen from 1.6 million a year in 2000 to 415,000 in 2013, but the number getting through is unknown and the number of children arriving unaccompanied from the poorest countries of Central America has risen sharply. There were high hopes two years ago that an immigration crisis could be averted with sweeping congressional reform supported by both parties. The 2012 electorate was 14 per cent less white than 20 years earlier. Mr Obama had been re-elected

with 70 per cent of the Latino vote, and it was assumed that Republicans would embrace immigration reform in order to stay in contention for 2016. That has not happened. Legitimate concerns over Mr Obama’s commitment to police the border, and the base political instinct to deny him a second-term legacy, have led congressional conservatives to oppose every White House initiative on immigration. With few exceptions, Republicans have vowed to oppose this executive order as well. It will, nonetheless, give legal protection to at least 3.7 million illegal immigrant parents of children who are legally resident in the US having been born there. It will also protect from deportation at least 600,000 children brought into the US illegally. Six million other illegal aliens will not be protected. This order could be scrapped by a future president but it is a step in the right direction. That it fails to live up to Mr Obama’s promises is the price of his mismanagement of Congress. A higher price may yet be paid by some conservatives for their reluctance to embrace the changing complexion of their country.

Intolerance Testing

Offensiveness is no reason to censor opinions or exclude foreign nationals “This Home Secretary has excluded more foreign nationals on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour than any before her,” said a spokesman for Theresa May yesterday. Remarkably this was not intended as a criticism. It ought to have been, because the case under discussion was not about behaviour but about speech. Julien Blanc, an American who styles himself as a “dating coach” , has been denied entry to Britain after campaigners criticised his tactics as manipulative and demeaning to women. He should be allowed in. The proper response of a free society to offensive speech is to do exactly nothing.

There is a worrying trend for government and other institutions not to realise this. A debate scheduled by an anti-abortion group at Oxford University was cancelled this week after student activists expressed outrage at the wording of the motion that “this house believes that abortion culture harms us all”. The complaint was pitiful, and the cancellation was contemptible. The Times supports the current abortion law and deplores Mr Blanc’s chauvinism. Our views give us no right to expect that those we disagree with will be silenced. If someone seeks to enter Britain to espouse hateful opinions, so be it. The

views of such people as the Dutch anti-Muslim demagogue Geert Wilders, who was barred entry to this country in 2009, are grossly offensive. Those who wish to avoid them have no obligation to listen, let alone take them seriously. The students who were offended by a heterodox position on abortion will survive. Protecting sensibilities is no role of government (or academia) but protecting the right to offend most certainly is. Citizens should pitch in. Voltaire, as paraphrased by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, had it about right: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Nature notes Smews are beginning to arrive here from the north, and are feeding on lakes and reservoirs. They are small diving ducks that belong to the sawbill group, which have teeth on the inside edge of their beak to help them hold the fish they catch. The drakes are very attractive birds, snowy-white all over, with just a few black pencil-marks on them and a black eye. The females and young birds are quite different. They are grey with a dark red cap and white cheeks, and are generally called redheads. Most of the birds that have come so far are redheads. The drakes appear when the weather gets worse on the continent. Another diving duck that is arriving is the goldeneye. The drakes have a bottle-green head, the females a dark red head, and both have a conspicuous, shining gold eye. The drake also has a round white mark on his cheek. Other more abundant visiting species that are now here are teal and wigeon, while our native mallards and tufted ducks are seeing their numbers swollen greatly. However, recent warm winters have meant that many more have remained on the continent than used to be the case. derwent may

Birthdays today Tina Brown, pictured, founder and chief executive of Tina Brown Live Media and editor-inchief of The Daily Beast (2008-13), 61; Björk, singer, It’s Oh So Quiet (1995), Moon (2011),49; Andrew Caddick, England cricketer (1993-2003), 46; Lord (Mervyn) Davies of Abersoch, banker, chairman of Corsair Capital and of the Royal Academy Trust, 62; Sir Charles Dunstone, founder, Carphone Warehouse, 50; Amelia Freedman, founder, Nash Ensemble, 74; Goldie Hawn, actress, The First Wives Club (1996), 69; Alex James, bass guitarist with Blur and cheesemaker, 46; Lord (Stanley) Kalms, president, Dixons Retail, 83; Dani King, Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist (2012), 24; Peter Kyle, chairman, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 66; Jena Malone, actress, The Hunger Games (2013-14), 30; Susan Philipsz, artist, Day is Done (2014) and winner of the 2010 Turner Prize, 49; Fiona Pitt-Kethley, poet, Sky Ray Lolly (1986), 60; General Michel Sleiman, president of Lebanon, 66; Liza Tarbuck, actress, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), 50.

On this day In 1783, in Paris, Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes made the first manned hot-air balloon flight; in 1918, ten days after the end of the First World War, the British interned 74 ships of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney; in 1953 experts at the Natural History Museum in London declared the skull of the Piltdown Man a forgery; in 1974, two bombs exploded in central Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring more than 180.

The last word “Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render to every one his due.” Justinian, Roman emperor, in the Institutes

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Letters to the Editor

1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Email: letters@thetimes.co.uk

Terrorist attack at Jerusalem synagogue

Chicken risk Sir, There is no scientific evidence that campylobacter causes 100 deaths a year in the UK (“Chicken contaminated by deadly bug”, Nov 19). I assume that figure was taken from the Food Standards Agency website which summarises the IID2 study. On the data used to extrapolate that figure, it is stated that “great caution should be taken on interpreting such analysis”. It also explains that deaths “are often associated with vulnerable groups that have underlying conditions”. The study puts the severity of campylobacter infection into context, saying “it is responsible for a small proportion of hospital admissions (compared with other causes of food poisoning)”. I do not underestimate the need to tackle the worldwide problem of campylobacter contamination of poultry meat but until a solution is found efforts should be concentrated on advising consumers on good kitchen hygiene. peter hewson Consultant, Veterinary Public Health Church Stretton, Shropshire

Incompatibility Sir, In your report (“Letwin would back EU exit if talks fail”, Nov 20) you quote Gunther Krichbaum, chairman of the Bundestag European affairs committee, saying that Germany was “not in favour of all brakes, moratoria or anything else”, adding “Free movement of persons — this cannot be negotiated.” He said all this at a meeting on Monday too. I replied robustly then and again the next day in the Commons debate that I introduced on UK-German relations within the EU. I explained that we put our democracy and our national parliament, which had saved both us and Europe, at the heart of the debate, whereas Germany puts its interest within its own destiny of political union. These are incompatible. Without a fundamental change in our relationship with the EU, these matters will not be resolved and the UK would have to leave the EU. sir william cash mp House of Commons

Corrections and clarifications 6 A letter sent to 230 head teachers asking them to tell police about pupils they suspected of being under the influence of Islamic extremists was wrongly atttributed to Tower Hamlets council (News, Nov 20). It was in fact sent by Buckinghamshire County Council The Times takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are committed to abiding by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (“IPSO”) rules and regulations and the Editors’ Code of Practice that IPSO enforces. Requests for corrections should be sent by email to feedback@thetimes.co.uk or by post to Feedback, The Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

Sir, The appalling and brutal murders carried out in a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers this week (“Deaths push Jerusalem to brink of holy war”, Nov 19) are to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The desecration of the sacred, taking life in a house of prayer, is the absolute antithesis of faith and of what we stand for. This attack on people at prayer is yet another example from across the globe of violence in the name of religion, which undermines religious freedom. We appeal to the believers of all traditions to denounce such attacks wherever in our world they take place and to call for an end to religiously motivated violence. the most rev justin welby Archbishop of Canterbury ephraim mirvis Chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth shaykh ibrahim mogra Assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir, There is, rightly, outrage at the synagogue massacre; there should also be outrage at Benjamin Netanyahu’s response, which will ensure the cycles of “getting even” go on. It seems we are lacking a statesman capable not only of halting this spiral of violence but even understanding it. dominic kirkham Manchester Sir, Foreign secretary Philip Hammond calls for peace between

Blocked beds Sir, The article (“Hospital beds blocked”, Nov 18), does not reveal a new phenomenon. Even 47 years ago, when I was a houseman in Sheffield, we had several such patients who had been on the acute medical ward for two years. The city had some smaller hospitals, to which some people could be transferred for long-term social care, but these were closed and the sites sold for housing. We have lost nine hospitals. Those who moved into the new homes in their 30s and 40s are now older and requiring hospital attention. This was predictable — but

on this day november 21, 1914

HOW LIEUT DIMMER’S VC WAS WON Lieutenant John Henry Stephen Dimmer, of the 2nd Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps, on whom, as was announced yesterday, the Victoria Cross has been conferred for conspicuous bravery at Klein Zillebeke on November 12, has sent to his mother, who lives in Griffiths Road, South Wimbledon, a short account of the fighting in which he was wounded. He says: “Here is how it all

the Palestinians and the Jews. Surely he should be calling for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, whether the Israelis be Jewish, Druze, Christian, Bahá’í or indeed Muslim. The tragedy is that a separate state called Palestine would not have such a variety of believers. tamara selig Stanmore, Middx Sir, I have found that when someone shouts at me, shouting back rarely makes things better. My daughter is in Israel at present. I would feel more confident about her safety if the Israeli government took a more measured approach to the inexcusable terrorist murders. james goldman London NW4 Sir, Thousands of Israelis, both Jews and Muslims, including the president and heads of both religions, attended the funeral of Zidan Saif, the Druze policeman killed in the attack. In this deeply conflicted part of the Middle East where the positions of the Arab Muslim and Israeli Jewish parties appear intractable, the Druze, a Muslim community living in Israel, should be seen as a model of cooperation on which to build. dr r rosenfelder London NW6 Sir, Your correspondent Catherine Philp puts the cart before the horse (“Jerusalem braced for holy war”, Nov 20). The conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours did not begin as “territorial and political,” we do not have enough beds to look after them in the acute phase and certainly not in the longer term as social carers. A myopic approach was taken all those years ago, and the chickens have come home to roost. dr james burton Hope, Derbyshire

Team effort Sir, I am baffled by the report that Sir Bruce Keogh will require surgeons’ death rates to be published (News, Nov 17). He is a serious surgeon with a track record of good sense. Why is happened. On Thursday last at about 1 o’clock, we were suddenly attacked by the Prussian Guards — they shelled us unmercilessly and poured in a perfect hail of bullets at a range of about 100 yards. I got my guns going, but they smashed one up almost immediately and then turned all their attention on the gun I was with, and succeeded in smashing that too, but before they completed the job I had been twice wounded, and was finally knocked out with the gun. My face is spattered with pieces of my gun and pieces of shell, and I have a bullet in my face and four small holes in my right shoulder. It made rather a nasty mess of me at first, but now that I am washed and my wounds dressed I look quite all right.” A telegram received by Mrs Dimmer from the Secretary for War on Thursday night says that Lieutenant Dimmer is “reported to be much improved.” Lieutenant Dimmer rose from the ranks. From Merton Church School he gained a County Council scholarship at Rutlish School. In

now “morphing into religious war.” Its origins were always fundamentally religious in nature — the notion of Jewish selfdetermination in any part of the “Dar el-Islam” [The House of Islam] being a challenge to Islamic jurisprudence. Israel’s chief rabbinate may have forbidden Jews from entering the Temple Mount, but other rabbis have ruled differently. In any case, it is for each individual Jew to make up his or her mind on this issue. If Christians and Moslems can pray at this site, why not Jews? professor geoffrey alderman University of Buckingham Sir, It is 20 years since Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Muslims and wounded 125 others as the prayed in the Mosque of Abraham in Hebron. His house was not demolished and though some of his supporters in the extreme rightwing Meir Kahane group were briefly held, it was the Palestinians of Hebron who were punished for this atrocity: their movements became ever more restricted, and half their mosque was converted into a synagogue. As we rush to condemn those who have applauded the synagogue attack in Jerusalem, let us remember that Goldstein’s grave became a place of pilgrimage for Israeli settlers — more than 10,000 visited it before it was demolished by the Israeli government. brigid waddams Batcombe, Somerset something so extraordinary going out under his name? Anyone who has worked in the NHS knows that avoidable postoperative complications are more related to nursing care than anything else, and that surgeons have little control over that. Clearly a correct diagnosis has to be made, and the correct operation offered and performed by the surgeon. Once the last stitch is in, it’s over to nurses and physios to ensure success. Death rates will reflect the success of the team working together, not the skill of the surgeon. alastair lack Coombe Bissett, Wilts 1902 he enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (having previously been in a cadet battalion), and in the same year he was posted to the 4th Battalion in South Africa. There he was twice promoted, and in 1906 he was sent to Belgium and Germany to study the military methods of these nations. He received his commission in 1908, and was afterwards specially selected by the Colonial Office for work in Africa, whence he returned on leave last spring. 0 The Smokes for Soldiers and Sailors Committee are sending tobacco and cigarettes to nearly 400 hospitals and convalescent homes in this country and in France. Gifts of tobacco, cigarettes, pipes and subscriptions are urgently needed, and should be sent to EF Benson, Hon Secretary, “S.S.S.”, 4 Buckingham Gate. sign up for a weekly email with extracts from the times history of the war ww1.thetimes.co.uk

Ofsted’s role Sir, The scale and consequences of the failures of Rotherham Council cannot be overstated (“Councils leaving children exposed to sex grooming”, Nov 19), but Ofsted’s contribution should not be ignored either. Since 2005, Ofsted produced 11 reports on safeguarding in Rotherham. In only one report, in 2009, were serious concerns raised and the following year these were said to have been addressed. An unannounced inspection in 2012 of the council’s arrangements for the protection of children concluded that “the overall effectiveness of local authority arrangements . . . is adequate. Significant improvements have been made since 2009 [...] These improvements have been driven by clear and resilient leadership and informed by a sound and realistic understanding of the needs of the local community”. The sexual exploitation uncovered in Rotherham took place between 1997 and 2013. Who will shine a light on Ofsted? john gaskin Bainton, E Yorks

Less British Sir, I write with regard to your report on migration (Nov 19). First, the subject is understated by some media which refer simply to net migration, and second, there is unbalanced criticism of the EU by the failure to make a distinction between immigration from EU and non-EU countries. For the year ending March 2014 there were 560,000 immigrants of whom almost half were from non-EU countries. The government can do nothing about EU immigrants while we remain within the EU. It does, however, have responsibility for nonEU immigration and it seems to have lost control of this. In the same year, 316,000 people left the UK, making it likely that the UK is less British by almost one million people. No wonder there is growing public concern. lord kilclooney House of Lords

At the Galop Sir, In 1946 at the age of nine I struck a deal with Crispin Winter [sic], my choirmaster, that practice on Fridays would not begin until 7.10pm. This gave us five minutes to run to church and five minutes to recover our breath after Dick Barton Special Agent (letters, Nov 17 & 19). When The Archers started in 1951, choir-practice, by mutual agreement, reverted to 7pm. john peett Pangbourne, Berks Sir, Professor Garel Rhys, (letter, Nov 19) says the BBC brought in The Archers as a temporary measure. I do hope that this turns out to be the case. brian salt Walsall

Boy lollipop Sir, I see from your report that spending on lollipop ladies has been cut by more than 40 per cent. The last time I looked I was still a man. peter richardson Sale, Cheshire

No mx up Sir, How to pronounce Mx? (Letter, Nov 18.) It’s obvious. “Middlesex”. andrew francis London WC2

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

World

Obama defies Congress over fate of 5 million immigrants United States

David Taylor, Matt Spence

President Obama went over the heads of his Republican opponents in Congress last night to tell the American people why he was going it alone to introduce the most sweeping immigration reform in a generation. The bold move, two weeks after he suffered a drubbing in the midterm elections, brought an immediate promise of retaliation from enraged Republican leaders. Mitch McConnell, the incoming Senate leader, said: “We’re considering a variety of options but, make no mistake, when the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act. The president will come to regret the chapter history writes if he does move forward.” The new congressmen and senators will take up their seats in January. There are an estimated 11 million people living illegally in the US. Mr Obama aims to bring up to five million of them out of the shadows. Within this group, an estimated 3.3 million people, who are parents of children born in the US, will be able to get a work permit if they have lived in the US for at least five years. They will have to settle unpaid taxes and pay for a background check to verify they have no criminal record. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 700,000 people who arrived in the US as children will also be able to stay. A previous measure introduced in 2012 legitimised about 1.2 million socalled Dreamers brought to the US as children. The measure is now being extended to people aged under 30. Some Republicans are seeking to thwart immigration reform by refusing to pass a budget, thus shutting down the government. Ted Cruz, the most conservative of the 2016 presidential hopefuls, said that if Mr Obama went ahead with the proposed reform, “he will not be acting as a president, he will be acting as a monarch”. The Texas Senator suggested retalia-

Q&A

Has the president exceeded his powers? The Republicans say he is acting like an emperor, but White House lawyers have spent months working on a package of reforms that they insist do not tear up the constitution. Presidents have the authority to decide whether particular laws should be enforced. Obama supporters say that Ronald Reagan and George W Bush also used executive powers to reform immigration. Would reform have come through Congress if he had been patient? It is unlikely that a

New efforts to tackle illegal immigration from Mexico will not focus on families

Jeb Bush woos Latinos David Taylor

Jeb Bush, the Republican presidential hopeful, tried to boost his appeal to Latino voters yesterday by promising education reforms that would give their children “the right to rise”. Speaking in Washington DC, he condemned a “civil rights crisis” in American education that put Latino and black children at a disadvantage. By age ten, he said, most were 2½ years behind their white peers in reading. “When schools fail our kids, we deny them not only their right to an education, we deny them their right to their potential,” he said. “Doors close to them. They become stuck in a world that none of us would choose for our own children.” Mr Bush said the problems in education hit African-American and Hispanic children hardest because they were

comprehensive new law, dealing with everything from border security to visas for elite workers and some form of amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants, would have passed. The Senate passed such a bill last year after a “gang of eight” Republican and Democrat senators worked together but the bill died in the House of Representatives, where John Boehner, the speaker, tried to appease Tea Party conservatives. Congress would probably have passed a more limited border security law and possibly visa reform — and it still could. What do the Republicans do now? Some say that they should

most likely to be growing up in poverty. “What is in danger here is not public education but the core idea that defines America: the right to rise.” The younger brother of George W Bush is considering running for the White House in 2016, and is seen as a safe choice by many big Republican donors, but his positions on education and immigration have made him unpopular with grassroots conservatives. He supports compassionate immigration reform and last year outraged some on the right when he said that an illegal immigrant who crossed the border trying to find work was not a criminal but was committing an “act of love” for his family. He has policies that could well appeal to Latino voters — but that could also prove to be a big turn-off for some party loyalists.

escalate the row, refuse to pass a budget and shut down the government. Cooler heads urge that they should respond in kind by proving they can be trusted by passing some piecemeal immigration reforms. What does it mean for Mr Obama’s remaining two years? Animosity over immigration will mean less chance of the two sides co-operating on issues such as reform of US tax law and international trade deals. The Republicans will probably block any Obama appointments that need congressional approval. Congress will attach conditions making any nuclear deal with Iran harder to negotiate. In

going it alone on immigration reform and climate change, Mr Obama is looking to his legacy. What does it mean for the 2016 presidential election? Latino voters will make up about 12 per cent of the electorate. In key states such as Colorado and Florida, they delivered a win last time for Mr Obama. A Democratic candidate will doubtless get a boost from reforms that help millions secure their status in the US. The Republicans can argue that Mr Obama’s seeming disdain for Congress gives them a powerful “time for a change” platform, but outright opposition to immigration reform risks alienating Hispanic voters.

tion in which Congress would pass a budget for the Department of Homeland Security with strings attached that restricted spending linked to immigration changes. If the president was unwilling to accept that, “he alone will be responsible for the consequences”, he said. Speaking from the White House to a primetime television audience, Mr Obama sought to reassure Americans that he was acting within the law to fix the “broken” immigration system. The president highlighted new efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the Mexican border, and said that immigration agencies would be told to focus on deporting criminals before families. Speaking yesterday during an awards ceremony at the White House, Mr Obama previewed his national address. “Part of staying competitive in a global economy is making sure we have an immigration system that doesn’t send away talent, but attracts it,” he said. The move comes ten months after the president promised a “year of action” in his State of the Union address. After Mr Obama won a second term in 2012, taking 71 per cent of the Latino vote, there was cross-party support for immigration reform, as the Republicans realised that they needed to reach out to Hispanic speakers, who now make up 17 per cent of the population. A comprehensive bill passed the Senate with backing from 14 Republicans, but John Boehner, the Speaker, refused to allow a House vote on the package, which included funding for the toughest border security operation in history. He refused because he did not want to expose splits in his own party before the midterm elections. When he told Mr Obama in the summer that he still would not allow a vote, the president warned him that he would take action alone. However, the heavy midterm defeat for the Democratic party means that Mr Obama is now open to accusations that he is defying the will of the voters. Executive actions can be reversed by the next president, or challenged in the courts. They could also be overturned by a new law passed by Congress, unless the president used his power of veto. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll yesterday suggested that there was widespread support for reform, with 57 per cent of voters backing a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants, rising to 75 per cent if it included payment of a fine, back taxes and a background check. However, 42 per cent disapprove of the president acting alone. Mr McConnell vented his anger on the floor of the Senate yesterday, calling the president’s action “jarring”. He said that if the president went ahead “he will have issued a rebuke to his own stated view of democracy”. Mr Obama said last year that if he acted without Congress he “would be ignoring the law in a way I think would be very difficult to defend legally”. However, White House briefing notes sent to Democratic congressional offices yesterday said the president would be “acting with legal authority”. Leading article, page 42

Paddling for the fjords Tomasz Furmanek,

Aboriginals Australia

Bernard Lagan Sydney

Australia’s largest state is to close more than a hundred small Aboriginal communities in the Outback and force thousands of people into larger towns — a decision that has been greeted with outrage by community leaders. It marks the first step in reversing a 50-year-old policy that was intended to help Aborigines by encouraging them to return to their ancestral homelands but which has, instead, led to worsening levels of unemployment, suicide and imprisonment. The government of Western Australia, which covers almost a third of the country, said it could no longer afford to provide basic services to the smallest 150 of 270 remote Aboriginal communities. Colin Barnett, the state premier, has acknowledged that the move will distress many of the 12,000 Aboriginal

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Mafia deploys new terror tactics Page 27

TOMASZ FURMANEK / MERCURY PRESS

EU must hand back half its powers, demands Sarkozy France

Charles Bremner Paris

a photographer, enjoys a moment’s reflection as he heads for the fjords and lakes around the Lofoten islands, Norway

Guns and roses: diary of a jihadist bride Page 26

The EU will fall apart if half of its powers are not returned to member states, according to Nicolas Sarkozy. “Europe must give back 50 per cent of its competences to member states,” the former French president said. “If not, the system is going to explode.” His swipe at the EU came as he stepped up his campaign to retake the leadership of the opposition Union for a Popular Movement in a vote next week. Instead of meddling in all aspects of citizens’ lives, EU powers should deal only with industry, agriculture, competition, trade negotiations, energy and research, he said in an internet posting while he was in Mulhouse, near the German border, where he addressed 2,000 supporters. Mr Sarkozy drew applause with the sharpest version so far of the anti-EU rhetoric which he has made a pillar of his comeback campaign. His main target is the Schengen system of open frontiers among 26 European states which he blames for illegal immigration. “I no longer believe in the possibility of changing things in Europe from the inside,” he told the audience. “On Schengen, the situation can no longer continue. We must carry out the empty chair policy.” That was a reference to President de Gaulle’s boycott of European diplomatic business for several months in 1965 in protest against the commissions plans for establishing supranational authority. Mr Sarkozy has promised, if reelected to the presidency, to halt all French business with Brussels until his demands for frontier reforms are met. He also called for the creation of a Franco-German economic bloc at the heart of the eurozone, a theme he has pushed since returning to the political stage in September. The big powers must be given control over the single currency that they dominate with more

than 50 per cent of the economic output of the 18-nation zone, he said. Mr Sarkosy’s anti-EU stance is an attempt to shore up votes from rightwing party members who are attracted by the t offensive against immigration from Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front. Her party has surged ahead of the UMP and President Hollande’s Socialists in opinion polls. She is promising to leave the euro and hold an in-out referendum on the EU if she wins the presidency in 2017. Mr Sarkozy, 59, is almost certain to regain leadership on November 29, but with less than the 85 per cent endorsement he had wanted. Bruno Le Maire, 45, a moderate who served as a Sarkozy minister, has about 25 per cent support. In rallies over the past fortnight, Mr Sarkozy has hammered the immigration theme. “We cannot better integrate the immigrants who are here if we do not control the arrivals. We must have much more severe control over them and those who are in an illegal situation must be expelled,” he said in Paris last week. On the Schengen zone, he said that Europe must produce a common policy on regulating intra-EU movement to control welfare abuse by nonEuropean citizens. “If you get three times as much welfare benefit in France than in Spain, why stay in Spain?” he asked, to applause. Unlike David Cameron, Mr Sarkozy has no intention of challenging the free movement of European citizens in the EU. “This is a fundamental right of all Europeans. But it is a right for Europeans, not people from the whole world,” he said in Paris. His remarks reflect popular frustration in France over the free flow of non-EU migrants into France after they have crossed the Mediterranean into Italy and Greece or entered from Turkey and the Balkans. Mr Sarkozy stumbled in his campaign this week when he changed position and came out in favour of repealing gay marriage laws.

forced to quit homes in the Outback Killer doctor jailed for third people who live in the deep Outback, but said the state had no other option after the Australian government cut funding for essential services. The concept of Aboriginal people living in their desert homelands — known as the “back to country” movement — has been fostered by successive Australian governments over the past five decades, despite grim statistics on Aboriginal health, employment and crime. There has been no serious attempt until now to force Aboriginal people into larger towns, where they will have access to mainstream health, education and welfare services. Figures released by the Australian government this week appear to

support those who believe that many remote communities are failing their populations. Recorded suicide attempts have increased by nearly 50 per cent in the past decade and the number of adult Aborigines sent to jail has leapt by nearly 60 per cent over the past 15 years. Aboriginal juveniles are 24 times more likely to be held in institutions than non-Aboriginals. The figures also show almost no progress in raising Aboriginal literacy and numeracy skills, which remain particularly poor in remote areas. Brian Samson, an AboAn Aboriginal boy joins his father at a Brisbane protest

rigine from Jigalong, one of Western Australia’s larger Aboriginal towns, which would have to take some of those from small communities marked for closure, believes that the desert people would struggle in larger communities. He said they had preserved their own languages and culture within their much smaller communities and would have great difficulty adjusting. The Rev Christopher Saunders, the Roman Catholic bishop for the Kimberley region, said the forced removals would add to the social problems of larger towns as displaced Aboriginal people arrived. “We all know that the government agencies cannot keep up with the needs of the fringe-dwellers and the marginalised people in the towns as it is,” he said. The Western Australia government has promised a period of consultation with Aboriginal people before it begins the programme of closures.

time after more patients die China

Leo Lewis Beijing

A convicted murdered who convinced hundreds of people that he was an “omnipotent doctor” and that water was the root cause of all diseases has been returned to prison after killing again. Hu Wanlin begins his third extended prison sentence today in Hunan province with the blood of at least a dozen people on his hands after a self-taught medical career. Hu, whose qualifications are limited to his primary school education, managed to thrive in an environment created by a healthcare system riddled with corruption that put treatment beyond the reach of poorer Chinese. Into that gap poured a variety of alternatives, including quack healers such as

Hu. His latest killing was last year when he convened a summer health retreat at a hotel for 12 patients. One of them, Yun Xuyang, 22, a student, was persuaded that water was the enemy and drank Hu’s “magic medicine”. That was a liquid containing sodium sulphate, and the cause of Ms Yun’s death was recorded as dehydration. In court, Hu disputed that this was the cause of death, saying he would consume 1.5kg of the stuff with no ill effects. Hu was sentenced to 15 years, not for murder but for illegally practising medicine — the same sentence he received in the late 1990s after 13 of his patients died. He emerged from prison in 1999 but was jailed again in 2000 after three more patients died, including the mayor of the city of Luohe.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

World

Putin risks seismic rift with Merkel Australia

David Charter Berlin Ben Hoyle Moscow

Angela Merkel insisted last night that she was committed to dialogue with Russia despite revelations of a showdown with President Putin at his hotel in Australia during the G20 summit, seen as marking a significant worsening of relations. It emerged yesterday that the German chancellor spent almost four hours locked in private talks with the Russian president in Brisbane, only to emerge furious at his intransigence. For much of that time the pair were alone as they tried — and apparently failed — to thrash out a solution to the Ukraine conflict, calling into question Mrs Merkel’s role as the bridge between Russia and the West. “We are aware that Europe’s security can only be ensured, in the medium and long term, with Russia,” she said at a ceremony in the Polish town of Krzyzowa yesterday to mark a quarter century of reconciliation with Germany. “The sanctions are not a goal in themselves. They are applied only when necessary. We want to proceed with dialogue with Russia.” That Mrs Merkel needed to make this

public statement showed how close she had come to a rupture with the Kremlin after nearly two decades of steadily improving relations between Germany and Russia. It was after the main G20 dinner on Saturday that she went to the Hilton Hotel to join Mr Putin in a small conference room, where the pair closed the door to all advisers. For two hours until about midnight they conversed without interpreters — Mr Putin having learnt perfect German while KGB station chief in Dresden and Mrs Merkel knowing impeccable Russian from having grown up in communistcontrolled East Germany. German sources said that the conversation was mainly about Russia’s relations with its neighbours, and especially the reach of Nato up to its borders. Mrs Merkel insisted that Nato had changed since the Cold War into a reactive organisation offering access to intelligence and security in the context of a peaceful

Europe. Mr Putin portrayed it as a hostile force used by the US to destabilise and provoke Russia in breach of verbal agreements 25 years ago, as the Berlin Wall fell, that Nato would not extend to the former Soviet realm. Mrs Merkel

Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin talked for almost four hours

countered that she well understood Russian sensitivities and had personally vetoed a Nato “action plan” with Ukraine in 2008 because it would have been seen as the first step towards membership. Still, the two could not be reconciled, and Mrs Merkel remained offended that Mr Putin did not to level with her about Russian military involvement to support separatists in eastern Ukraine. The pair were joined after midnight by Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, and Mrs Merkel is understood to have left at about 1.30am. One route forward in rebuilding relations was apparently agreed — a dialogue between the EU and the Russian-organised Eurasian Economic Union. Since the summit there have been no indications of the Kremlin softening its stance on Ukraine. Both the German and the Russian sides seem rattled at the failure of the Brisbane talks, however. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, visited his counterpart in Moscow on Tuesday and was surprised to be invited to meet Mr Putin. They talked for 90 minutes, viewed as a sign that Moscow wants to keep dialogue with Berlin open.

Ties with Russia grow threadbare as patience in Germany runs out

Analysis Ben Hoyle

resident Putin rarely gives in-depth interviews to western media. It pays to listen when he does. On Sunday night the German public broadcaster ARD aired a conversation with the Russian leader, recorded in Vladivostok on his way to the G20 summit last Thursday. Amid the unsubstantiated bluster about the threat of “ethnic cleansing” faced by Russian speakers in east Ukraine, there was a direct overture to the German people. “Look at what an atmosphere formed between Russian and Germany in the last ten to 15 years,” Mr Putin said. “It would be too bad if we lost all this.” For Mr Putin, who spent his formative professional years as a KGB officer in Dresden and speaks fluent German, the Russia-Germany connection holds personal significance. For his country, it is a relationship of towering economic and political importance. A seventh of everything that Russia imports is made in Germany. Trade between the two countries last year was worth more than double the trade between Russia and the US. Germany has been a vital bulwark for the Kremlin against what it sees as the aggression of the US and some other Nato powers. Yet this week, the ties binding Russia and Germany suddenly look more threadbare than at any point since the 1990s. The Cold War-style tit for tat expulsions of one Russian and then one German diplomat were a sideshow. Of greater concern is that the Russian-

speaking Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany and was long regarded as the western leader Mr Putin was most likely to listen to, appeared so deeply frustrated at her failure to convince him to change course in Brisbane. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, emerged from a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow on Tuesday evening to declare bluntly that there were “no grounds for optimism” over Ukraine. Usually an advocate of Ostpolitik engagement with Russia, he mourned how “25 years after the fall of the Wall we are threatened by silence instead of dialogue, compartmentalisation instead of exchange and confrontation instead of co-operation.” According to Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre think-tank, the relationship breakdown is a “real problem” that undermines “one of the pillars of European security”. The constant reinforcement in the Russian media of the country’s role in defeating Nazism, with its supposed echo in the fight against the “fascist junta” in Kiev, is also beginning to colour ordinary Russians’ thoughts about Germany again. Putin loyalists argue that isolation from the west could be of benefit to Russia, boosting economic self-reliance and accelerating a long-heralded pivot to Asia. But the loss of Germany was still unexpected. In private, even the man himself may be looking to Berlin and wondering if he really has “lost all this”.

Police fire gas to block Nigeria opposition MPs Abuja Police used tear gas to keep

opposition politicians out of Nigeria’s parliament complex before a security vote. The government was seeking an extension to emergency rule in the northeast of the country. Opponents pointed to advances by Boko Haram, saying that the powers have not curbed Islamist violence since their introduction in May last year. The focus of the aggression appeared to be Aminu Tambuwal, the speaker, whose defection to the opposition outraged the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The PDP has tried to remove Tambuwal as speaker chair and stripped him of his security detail. (AFP)

Sri Lanka to hold snap presidential election Colombo President Rajapaksa has

announced that he will seek a third term, two years before the present one expires. The snap election will be held in January, shortly before a visit from the pope. Mr Rajapaksa, 69, remains popular within Sri Lanka, having overseen the end of a 37-year war with Tamil separatists, but faces international pressure over his human rights record. (AFP)

Widow joins race to succeed president Lusaka The widow of Michael Sata, the president of Zambia who died last month, has joined the race to become the ruling party’s candidate to succeed him. Christine Kaseba joins her stepson, Sata’s son Mulenga, his nephew Miles Sampa and four others who are standing to become the Patriotic Front’s candidate. The country is to go to the polls on January 20. (AFP)

12,000 fake names on government payroll Nairobi More than 12,000 fake names have been found on the Kenyan government’s payrolls. The errors were discovered after a new scheme for registering employees started in September. Detectives and specialist bank fraud officers will investigate, a Kenyan cabinet spokesman said. Kenya is ranked 136 out of 177 nations on a perception of corruption index.

Kosovo prime minister to go in coalition deal Bucharest The two main political parties in Kosovo have agreed to form a ruling coalition to end five months of deadlock, in a deal that is likely to oust the prime minister, Hashim Thaci. Isa Mustafa, the opposition leader, would become prime minister, according to his party, the Democratic League of Kosovo. One newspaper reported that Mr Thaci would be president in 2016.

Hottest October on record across globe Washington Global temperatures

in October were the planet’s hottest on average since recordkeeping began in 1880, the US government said. The combined average temperature over land and ocean surfaces for October was 0.74C above the 20th century average of 14C. Temperatures were also warmer than average over most of the Earth’s land surface. (AFP)

the times | Friday November 21 2014

FGM

World

Mexican president quits £4.5m home to quell fury Mexico

Rhys Blakely Los Angeles

Mexico’s beleaguered president has been forced to disclose his private wealth to head off corruption allegations as the parents of 43 murdered students gathered in Mexico City last night to lead a protest against the government. Rioting in the capital sparked by the death of the students, who were abducted by police, has kindled talk of a revolution and in recent days anger has been further inflamed by a property deal involving the president’s wife, who is an actress in a soap opera. The disappearance of the students

from Guerrero on September 26 has become the most politically explosive atrocity of an eight-year drugs war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The murders are believed to have been ordered by a mayor and have become symbolic of a rotten ruling class. Prosecutors say the mayor of Iguala ordered police to attack the students over fears they would disrupt a speech by his politically ambitious wife. This month, spectators held up posters of the students’ faces when Mexico’s national football team played Holland. For weeks, Twitter has fizzed with hashtags such as #YaMeCansedelMiedo, meaning “I am tired of fear”. As cities prepared for demonstra-

tions, President Peña Nieto was planning to observe a parade to mark the anniversary of the Mexican revolution from a military facility in Mexico City, rather than his usual vantage point at the National Palace. This week he was forced to reveal that he owns nine properties and is worth at least £2.1 million. On Tuesday Angélica Rivera, his wife, promised to give up a luxury home valued at £4.5 million after it emerged that she was acquiring the property on credit from a subsidiary of Grupo Higa, a company to which Mr Peña Nieto granted several multimillion-dollar contracts while he was governor of the State of Mexico, the region that surrounds the capital. Another subsidiary

of the same company was part of a consortium awarded a £2.4 billion contract to build a new railway line this month. That deal was cancelled after just three days, following an outcry from opposition politicians. President Peña Nieto took office two years ago with an agenda to concentrate on economic growth. However, he has done little to ease concerns that Mexico’s elected leaders continue to work in tandem with the drugs cartels that exert bloody control over vast areas of the country. Allegations of cronyism are not new but public anger has been given a new edge by the disappearance and murder of the 43 students. After the attack, the

body of one victim was found with his eyes gouged out and the skin removed from his face. Officials have said that the others were shot and then burned after their protest against the government’s hiring practices. However, their bodies have yet to be identified, despite a search that has uncovered several mass graves. Activists were calling for a general strike in Mexico City yesterday while three caravans, led by families of the 43 students, were set to converge in Zócalo, the symbolic heart of Mexico. Similar protests in the state of Guerrero have already forced its governor to resign over his response to the massacre of the students. DEREK GEE / THE BUFFALO NEWS / AP; LINDSAY DEDARIO / REUTERS

Six feet under . . . Buffalo braces for yet more snow

nother two feet of snow was expected to fall on the city of Buffalo, in New York state, last night after a storm which caused eight deaths as it crushed buildings and filled the home stadium of the Buffalo Bills football team (Will Pavia writes). Six feet of snow covered some areas yesterday morning after an extraordinary downfall, with forecasters warning that more heavy snow, as well as thunder and lightning, were on the way. Schools were closed and driving bans were in force in parts of the city after an

Baby cut free from submerged car United States

Will Pavia New York

Two lumberjacks saved a baby trapped in a car that had rolled off the road and was upside-down in an icy creek. The three-month-old girl was underwater and strapped into a car seat when Leo Moody, who was passing by, waded into the cold water and reached through a broken window to cut her free with the knife that he always carried. She had stopped breathing. Mr Moody, 44, said he “kept telling myself, ‘don’t drop the knife’.” Wade Shorey, who was driving home from work, pulled over and scrambled down the bank. “It was dark, I turned on the flashlight of my phone so he [Mr Moody] could see what he was doing,” Mr Shorey said. The car had slid from an icy road in a remote corner of Maine on Monday

evening. The three adult passengers had escaped but were shouting that that there was a baby trapped inside. With the flashlight, they could see the bottom of the car seat while the rest of it — and the baby — was submerged. Mr Moody managed to pull the Wade Shorey, a logger, performed CPR on the 3-month-old girl

entire car seat free and handed it to Mr Shorey, 32, who carried it up the bank, unstrapped the infant and performed CPR. “Her lips were blue,” Mr Shorey said. “The rest of her was pale white.” He said that he had recently taken a refresher CPR course. “I had to ask

everyone to be quiet so I could hear,” he said. “That was when I noticed the baby was slowly breathing again.” He carried the infant into a car, wrapped her up and turned on the heaters while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from at least 20 miles away. Chad Lindsey, of the state police, said that the incident was the most remarkable thing he had seen in his career. “If Wade hadn’t happened along, the baby would be dead, no question about it,” he told The Bangor Daily News. The infant was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor where a spokesman said that she was in a fair condition. Mr Shorey said he had visited the hospital and spoken with the mother. The baby “looked nice and pink”, he said. He added that the child’s mother “hadn’t slept but she was doing better. She was a bit overwhelmed but happy.”

initial snowfall that buried vehicles and proved too high in places for the city’s snow ploughs. Andrew Cuomo, New York governor, asked residents not to venture out. “Stay in your home,” he told the Buffalo Daily News. “Pretty please.” Meteorologists said the city was being pounded by “lake effect snow” — when warmer air from the Great Lakes and water vapour meets wintry winds which carry it onshore. The Buffalo Bills were offering fans $10 an hour plus free tickets to help to clear the 220,000 tonnes of snow from the stadium.

Utah to restore firing squads amid shortage of lethal drugs Matt Spence

A decade after scrapping shooting as a means of capital punishment, Utah is planning to bring back the firing squad for executions. The state voted yesterday to restore shooting if shortages of lethal drugs continue to prevent it from carrying out the death sentence by injection. The bill was sponsored by Paul Ray, a Republican, who said: “We have to have an option. “If we go hanging, if we go to the guillotine, or we go to the firing squad, electric chair, you’re still going to have the same circus atmosphere behind it. So is it really going to matter?” The proposal, which clears death by firing squad only if the state cannot acquire the drugs necessary for lethal

injection 30 days before a scheduled execution, still requires passage by the full Utah legislature when it comes back into session in January. It is possible that it will set a precedent for other states which have faced shortages of the drugs used in executions, after European suppliers from countries opposed to the death penalty stopped exporting them to the US. Utah stopped using the firing squad in 2004, citing public perception, but criminals convicted before that date were allowed to request the method and Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer, was shot in 2010. Utah was the first state to execute a prisoner after a suspension of capital punishment across the US by the Supreme Court between 1972 and 1976. Gary Gilmore was executed in 1977.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

World

Mills & Boon meets jihad in diary of an Isis bride Syria

Tom Coghlan

She left her comfortable life as a doctor to travel to Syria, marry a jihadist she had never met and whose language she did not speak, and whose principal ambition was to be killed in battle. Welcome to the breathless world of Bird of Jannah, the female jihadist whose online diaries read like a Mills & Boon fantasy, though they seem unlikely to end with the words “and they lived happily ever after”. The 26-year-old diarist claims to be from Malaysia, and has maintained a steady stream of online updates on her life in Tabqa and Raqqa since her first missive in February. Her updates cannot be independently verified, though they contain photographs to corroborate her claims and references to other jihadists known to be in Syria. They offer stern lectures on female rectitude under Isis, advice for those seeking to follow her, and tales of her romance with a fundamentalist fighter. The woman, whose real identity is unknown, uses the nickname Umm

Abu Baraa and claims to be a trained doctor, often using medical language in her diaries. She did not respond to contact through social media. She has faced criticism from doctors in Malaysia after she posted pictures of a stethoscope entwined with a Kalashnikov rifle. In September, the Malay Mail interviewed Malaysian

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The coalition against Isis: key factions and unlikely alliances thetimes.co.uk/middleeast

doctors who accused her of betraying her Hippocratic oath. Her apparent marriage to a Moroccan fighter, who uses the nickname Abu Baraa, was arranged by another fighter’s wife in April. She described meeting for the first time on the day of their wedding. “I was trembling. Nervous. Scared. My

emotions were mixed,” she wrote. “When he noticed my arrival, he gave salaam [greeting] and introduced himself, so did I. Then, it was a long awkward silence. After few minutes, I flipped my niqab [full-face veil]. He looked at me, our eyes catches each others’ [sic]. He smiled. And asked a question I shall never forget . . . ‘Can we get married today?’ ” The day after their marriage, she wrote about how they had prayed together. “He turned back and smiled at me. And I can feel something. Yes, I guess I just fell in love with someone — my husband!” On October 21, she described her husband’s return from the battlefront and a party with fighters. A week later she wrote: “I know the fact that one day — my husband will be a shaheed [martyr] ... and I have to prepare for it.” On November 6, she had no news of her husband. In the last posting to date she wrote: “I should learn to be positive and stay happy for the sake of my unborn baby.” Four days later on Twitter she wrote: “November is officially the month of martyrs, one after another, joining the smiling caravan.”

The Malaysian doctor says she travelled to Syria to join Isis, where she married a militant and blogged about her new life

Shock after Egypt acquits FGM doctor Egypt

Bel Trew

A judge has acquitted the first doctor to be tried in Egypt for performing female genital mutilation (FGM), a verdict that human rights groups fear will leave doctors free to continue the illegal practice. Dr Raslan Fadl was found not guilty of mutilating Soheir al-Batea, 13. The girl’s father, Mohamed al-Batea, who reportedly paid £5.50 for the procedure in June last year, was also found not guilty. Soheir died after what was officially recorded as an allergic reaction to penicillin at the rural Nile delta clinic. The trial was the first of its kind in Egypt, where 91 per cent of women

aged between 15 and 49 have been cut despite the banning of the practice in 2008. International rights organisations, which brought the case to trial, had hoped that the verdict would be a turning point for the country. “We were counting on this judgment to be guilty, as a lesson for all doctors performing FGM in Egypt,” said Suad Abu-Dayyeh, a consultant at Equality Now. She added: “It’s a step backwards in the move to end cutting in Egypt, which violates human and women’s rights.” Equality Now will appeal the verdict. Details of the judgment have yet to be made public. However, lawyers who attended the trial said that they were surprised by the verdict, as

health ministry officials and the attorney-general, who sent a team of experts to examine Soheir’s body, had both issued statements confirming that FGM had been performed. Dr Fadl originally faced seven years in prison for manslaughter, but those charges were dropped after a deal was made with the victim’s family. Performing FGM carries a two-year prison sentence. Soheir is not the first to die in Egypt following the procedure. In 2007 the deaths of two teenagers prompted the government to ban the practice. In 2010 Nermine al-Haddad, also 13, bled to death. Although it has historically been carried out by “midwives”, doctors now perform 80 per cent of the procedures in Egypt.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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World ©MICHAEL HÜBNER / BILD-ZEITUNG

Parents given child’s-eye view of kitchen dangers

hospital concerned at the rise in burns injuries to children has built a giant kitchen in its foyer to remind parents what it is like to be a curious toddler in a dangerous environment (David Charter writes). A frying pan handle protrudes temptingly over the edge of the cooker, above the head of the average adult visitor but just within reach, ready to tip out its plastic fried egg and spatula if disturbed. Nearby is a chopping board with a sharplooking plastic knife that will fall on the head of an unwary meddler. The installation at Virchow-Klinikum, the largest children’s emergency hospital in Berlin, was designed by

Mafia deploys new terror tools: crocodiles and snakes Italy

Tom Kington Rome

Bored with bombs, guns and arson attacks, mafia bosses in southern Italy have taken to using crocodiles and boa constrictors to frighten their victims into submission. Investigators who recently searched an apartment belonging to an affiliate of mobsters in Caserta, near Naples, found a small crocodile lurking on the balcony. The reptile, it transpired, was used by the Camorra mafia to intimidate local businessmen who were reluctant to hand over protection money. The method was simple: lock man and reptile in the same room. “Pay up or become the crocodile’s lunch, was the message,” Marco Trapuzzano, an official with the forestry police in Italy, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. In Villa Literno, another town outside Naples, Camorra members broke into the car of a 58-year-old man and left a 9ft-long boa constrictor on the back seat as a warning. Looking to intimidate a police officer

involved in an anti-Camorra campaign, mobsters hurled a python through the open window of his car as he was driving. Mr Trapuzzano said mob bosses were also turning exotic creatures into status-symbol pets in their plush villas dotted around Naples; from a Siberian tiger found in Mugnano, to two rare macaque monkeys that were placed in a cage in the room where a boss in Avellino held mob summits. In the Traiano neighbourhood, also in Naples, police seized a pair of African grey parrots from drug dealers and handed them over to a local animal refuge — where it was discovered that the birds had picked up the language of their former owners. Whenever a phone rang, the parrots would squawk: “Hello, how much do you need?” When placed under stress, one would shriek: “Now I will shoot you.” Officials said Camorra mobsters were increasingly using rare animals as both pets and threats, as they moved into the profitable trafficking of endangered species, making good use of clandestine routes and

techniques they had developed for drug smuggling. Police said they had rescued rare turtles, including an African spurred tortoise, which hails from the Sahara and is the third-largest turtle in the world, with a lifespan of more than 100 years. Mr Trapuzzano said the turtles sold for as much as €5,000 in northern Italy; boa constrictors for €500, and illegally imported Siberian tigers for €30,000. To bring rare animals into Italy, the mobsters have become adept at removing microchips implanted in legally imported animals and transplanting them into the illicit new arrivals. Mr Trapuzzano said that, while the Naples crime bosses had invested in the rare animals to threaten others, their ignorance of the various species meant they were more in danger of hurting themselves. “Often these people are buying murderous weapons and they don’t know it,” he said. “Monkeys, for example, are dangerous not only for their bite, but because they can transmit lethal diseases, like many other exotic species.”

Norway unveils world’s coolest passport Norway

David Charter Berlin

It has been called the coolest passport in the world — so beautiful, in fact, that immigration officials might want to think twice about spoiling it with an entry or exit stamp. Norway’s new travel document — the winning entry in a design competition — has pages which reveal the northern lights under the ultra-violet lamps used by border police. The chic passport follows the artistic new banknotes issued last month which feature pixellated images of the Norwegian coastline. “Nature

has always been an essential part of the Norwegian identity and tradition, as well as being a key fundament for our welfare,” said the Neue Design Studio, which came up with the winning concept. It is minimalist on the outside, featuring a red cover embossed with a Norwegian crest, with a blue version for diplomats and a pale gray one for immigrants. Inside is a stylised Norwegian mountain scene. The competition jury praised

its “simplicity”. “It both illustrates the Norwegian identity and makes sure the passport will be viewed as document of high value,” the judges said. “The concept make the documents deeply rooted in the Norwegian culture and widely accepted. It will be relevant for many years to come.” The new passports are expected to be issued within two years once they have been tweaked for security requirements.

More Safety for Children, a national agency, to make adults feel 18 months old again. The hospital has treated 388 children with burns — many of them caused in the kitchen — in the past 18 months, compared with 308 in the same period ten years ago. “The giant kitchen gives grown-ups the chance to see things through the eyes of a child,” Stephanie Maerzheuser, the head of More Safety for Children, said. “Adults can suddenly understand why children would reach up to the top of the cooker, or grab a container with hot liquid in it. Children cannot see the danger from their perspective. It reminds adults how we can protect children.”

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World

Thai junta menaces Hunger Games rebels Thailand

Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor

Thai students have been arrested and threatened with “attitude adjustment” after raising the three-fingered salute popularised by the Hollywood film Hunger Games, which has become a symbol of dissent against the country’s military government. At least two cinemas in Bangkok cancelled all screenings of Mockingjay — Part 1, the latest film in the series, which tells the story of youthful resistance to a fictional totalitarian regime. The film’s premiere in the capital was cancelled without explanation. The salute has become an act of peaceful opposition to General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the chief of the army, who seized power from an elected government six months ago. “The three-finger sign is a sign to show that I am calling for my basic right to live my life,” said Natchacha Kongudom, 21, a student at Bangkok University, who was arrested yesterday after saluting in front of a billboard for the film. “The Mockingjay movie reflects what’s happening in our society. When people have been suppressed for some time, they want to resist and fight for their rights.” Two other students were arrested inside the theatre and the screening was cancelled by Apex, the cinema chain. Those two were later released — but not Ms Natchacha. “She flashed an anti-government sign several times,”

said Colonel Kittikorn Boonsom, of Bangkok Metropolitan Police. “She may be taken to the army camp for attitude adjustment.” Five students were briefly detained on Wednesday after they gave the three-fingered salute during a speech by General Prayuth in Khon Kaen, northeastern Thailand. They wore T-shirts with the message: “Don’t want a coup”. General Prayuth smiled to the crowd and said: “Anyone else want to protest?” The five were released after being questioned, and told to return to the police station with their parents on Thursday to sign documents promising not to take part in political activity. According to a human rights lawyer, they were threatened with expulsion from university if they failed to comply. The junta has in the past arrested people for publicly reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s classic novel of dictatorship and surveillance, and, bizarrely, for publicly eating sandwiches and holding picnics — a parody of the law which bans gatherings of more than five people. General Prayuth declared martial law and seized power in May, after seven months of violent protests against the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of the exiled former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. He later suspended the constitution and appointed an assembly which elected him prime minister in August.

Review, page 47

RUNGROJ YONGRIT / EPA

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

China declares £12bn Nigeria railway deal Nigeria

Leo Lewis Beijing

Natchacha Kongudom: arrested for raising the three-fingered symbol of defiance

A state-owned Chinese railway company announced a record $12 billion (£7.7 billion) deal in Nigeria yesterday that could transform the infrastructure of Africa’s most populous nation. Experts warned, however, that the mega-deal could join a long list of grand projects in Africa that have collapsed in a bedlam of funding problems, corruption allegations and political U-turns. Billed as China’s single largest overseas contract, and announced with fanfare by its state-owned news agency, the China Railway Construction Corporation has plans to build a 1,400km (870-mile) coastal railway line linking Lagos with Calabar. Chinese state media did not explain how the deal would be financed, and what sort of collateral might be offered from the Nigerian side. However, it said the project would create up to 200,000 jobs as the line was built and 30,000 once trains started running. Deborah Brautigam, an expert on China’s commercial and diplomatic activities in Africa, said that the deal could follow in a tradition of large deals struck by Chinese companies where the contract is signed, but unravels during the fundraising phase. “It’s a case of show me the money before we can really tell the significance of the deal,” she said.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

Right royal gold strike

Too much information

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Welsh mine makes a precious find

FGM

Another fine mess for bank’s IT team

A nation of shoppers

Business

Retail sales soar as industry slows

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YOSHIKAZU TSUNO / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

Risk of banking on computers business commentary Alistair Osborne

et’s face it, plenty of people would welcome a bank that “failed to accurately record transactions on their accounts”. Tons more, you’d think, than the mere 6.5 million affected by Royal Bank of Scotland’s great computer crash in June 2012 (report, page 60). Trust the regulators to be such spoilsports. They’ve just fined the lender £56 million: £42 million from the Financial Conduct Authority and £14 million from the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority. Something to do with RBS’s geeks taking advice from Roy on The IT Crowd, apparently: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Yeah, they did try a version of that, uninstalling new software. Did the trick too, lousing up RBS’s and NatWest’s systems for six days, while the snafu at Ulster lasted 20. RBS should have seen it coming, the FCA reckons, what with the bank’s internal audit identifying the risk of a “batch processing failure” — the glitch in question — as long ago as August 2010. Still, it was “not the result of insufficient investment” at a bank spending £1 billion a year on IT, just weak risk management. That’s not stopped Ross McEwan, RBS’s newish boss, investing an extra £750 million on IT, while ensuring there’s a separate processor for each bank brand, so they can’t all keel over at once. RBS has also spent £70.3 million making things up to UK customers. Computer glitches hit punters more directly than Libor or forex rigging, so it’s fair there’s a fine. But where does the money go? Given the taxpayer owns 80 per cent of the bank and the cash will wing its way to the Treasury, we’re effectively fining ourselves £44.8 million. Still, it sets a nice precedent. Only last month there was a bit of an outage at another famous bank, causing the worst disruption for seven years to the UK payments system, handling £277 billion of transactions a day. A big fine surely looms for the Bank of England.

Chill factor rises

eople are always writing in to ask: what exactly is the Polar Vortex? Well, as most meteorologists would tell you, it’s just another reason Centrica has come up with lately for repeatedly cutting its earnings per share forecasts (report, page 64). A large pocket of cold air in North America has merged with “mild weather in the UK” and an alarming glow at the under-repair Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear power stations. And that’s produced a new target of only 19p to 20p per share for 2014. A bit lower then than the 27p that the British Gas owner was guiding to last year. Or even the 25p in February, 22p-23p in May or 21p22p in July. And to think Centrica

had 26.6p of earnings in 2013. Add challenges on the boiler repair front and a Competition and Markets Authority inquiry into the consumer business and it’s not quite how Sam Laidlaw, chief executive since July 2006, hoped to bow out. Yet, it’s what Centrica said about 2015 that caught the eye. It reckons there’ll be a return to earnings growth — but with gains “significantly offset” by falling oil and gas prices. That adds up to another cut, with 2015’s 23.3p consensus forecasts coming down. So, here’s an issue for Mr Laidlaw’s successor, Iain Conn, who arrives in January. Will he have to cut the dividend? On Morgan Stanley forecasts, this year’s payout amounts to 92 per cent of earnings. That’s pretty thin cover. Brrr.

Fracking payoff

eing 235ft up on The Big One rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is whiteknuckle enough — without having Cuadrilla poking around nearby for shale gas. True, minor earthquakes do liven things up for anyone finding 87mph down a 65 degree slope a bit tame. But they’re a bit much for some people. OAPs, say. So, it’s no great surprise that the fracker’s 2011 Blackpool exploits have put back UK shale exploration, as Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos founder, suggested yesterday (report, page 59). He’s the bloke who had a run-in with the unions at Grangemouth, the chemicals plant whose future depends on importing cheap US shale gas. But, as he says, we’ve got the stuff here and need to start using it before we finish off what’s left of our manufacturing industry. Gas is three times pricier in the UK than in America, a chunky cost disadvantage. So, Ineos wants to spend $1 billion drilling hundreds of exploration wells. What’s in it for the locals? Plenty. Mr Ratcliffe plans to hand them 6 per cent of fracking revenues, up to £400 million over 15 years, he reckons, for some villages. There’s a warning too: without a big cut in energy costs, Ineos’s Runcorn chlorine plant “is not going to survive long term”. He’s got a point.

Better the devil . . .

aving shot the advertising puppets, Andy Haste’s moved on to real people. The Wonga chairman has done over Tim Weller, the interim chief executive who’s only had six months in the job, the same as his predecessor, Niall Wass. Mr Weller, who was also finance chief for three years, arrived after the fake lawyer scandal and can’t be blamed for that. The hands-on Mr Haste just wants a team he knows. He’s made two big hires so far: from RSA, the insurer he used to run.

alistair.osborne@thetimes.co.uk

Land of the rising wine The beaujolais nouveau run used to end in London. Now Tokyo is a popular venue for parties to celebrate the arrival of the new vintage, with Japanese wine drinkers expected to import seven million bottles this year

Ex-JJB chief found guilty of £1m fraud Marcus Leroux

The former boss of JJB Sports has been convicted of taking more than £1 million in backhanders from a supplier and using the proceeds to fund a luxury home in Florida. Chris Ronnie, who led JJB for 18 months until early 2009, received payments from two companies run by David Ball and David Barrington, who were convicted of helping Ronnie to cover his tracks by deleting emails. Ronnie, who refused to give evidence during the eight-week trial at Southwark crown court, showed no emotion as he was convicted of three offences of fraud and two of furnishing false information. The jury deliberated for 35 hours to reach unanimous verdicts on the 52-year-old. The fraud was based on three transactions Ronnie pushed through at JJB soon after taking charge of the company. In 2008, JJB bought Travel Fox, an obscure American trainer brand, from Ball and Barrington’s Performance Brands for £1.5 million. Ronnie received a £650,000 cut from the deal. Two further payments for a total of $630,000 followed for JJB to buy stock and the Travel Fox brand in the Americas from Fashion and Sport Limited, another entity set up by Barrington and Ball. Ball and Barrington were found

guilty of two counts each of perverting the course of justice by paying for an engineer to wipe emails from a server and lying to the Serious Fraud Office during its investigation. Ball, 54, from Sutton, in Surrey, was acquitted of two counts of furnishing false information. Barrington, 52, from Sale, in Cheshire, was a friend and former colleague of Ronnie.

Inside today

The tracksuit baron who came undone Page 35

The convictions draw a line under a sequence of events that began in June 2007 when Dave Whelan, the founder of JJB, sold his 29 per cent stake in the company to Ronnie, who was considered a lieutenant to Mike Ashley, the founder and controlling shareholder of Sports Direct, JJB’s biggest rival. The company’s performance deteriorated sharply, to the alarm of Barclays,

which drafted in forensic accountants and insisted on the appointment of additional independent directors. Ronnie was dismissed as chief executive in 2009 after it emerged that he had lost control of his stake in the business without informing the company. The charge of furnishing false information related to a false loan document that he presented to Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander, the Icelandic bank that financed his acquisition of Mr Whelan’s stake in JJB. After the Icelandic banking collapse and a plunge in the JJB share price, Kaupthing wanted its money back. Ronnie produced a forged loan document in an attempt to conceal his true assets. JJB collapsed into administration in 2012, at the cost of 4,000 jobs. The three men will be sentenced on December 12. Prosecutors signalled that they would seek a directorship bar as part of the sentence. Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told the men: “I’m granting you bail to give you an opportunity to get your affairs in order.” The case is a much-needed triumph for the SFO, which had been working on the case since August 2009. Last month the cash-strapped body asked the government for extra funding for high-profile investigations into Libor and foreign exchange rigging.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

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Business

Need to know Your 5-minute digest UK: The country’s economy is becoming ever more unbalanced as consumer spending props up growth in the face of a slowdown in manufacturing. Figures out yesterday showed retail sales soared in October while the sluggish global outlook hit exports and dented confidence at UK factories. Retail sales volumes rose by 0.8 per cent in the month, as falling petrol prices gave shoppers a little extra cash for clothes and furniture in particular, the Office for National Statistics said. Page 36 Eurozone: The 18-nation bloc’s private sector grew at the slowest pace in 16 months in November, in a “serious blow” to hopes that the region’s recovery would start before the end of the year. Markit’s Composite Flash Purchasing Managers’ Index, based on surveys of thousands of companies, fell to 51.4, down from 52.1 in October. Any reading above 50 signals expansion. Page 36

banking & finance 0.54% Royal Bank of Scotland: |The taxpayer-backed lender has been fined £56 million by regulators for a computer failure that left millions of customers unable to access their accounts. The IT fiasco in the summer of 2012 left 6.5 million customers at RBS, NatWest and Ulster bank, which it owns, unable to access their accounts online, to make mortgage payments or to access cash abroad. Page 32 Wonga: The payday loans company has parted company with its interim chief executive after five months running the company. Tim Weller resigned with a payoff by mutual consent in October, Wonga disclosed, saying the executive chairman Andy Haste, was taking a more hands-on approach. Mr Haste, the former RSA Insurance chairman parachuted into Wonga in July after it was embroiled in a fake lawyers scandal, said the departure would ensure “clear leadership in the weeks and months ahead”. Page 32 Montagu Private Equity: One of Europe’s longest-established private equity groups has sold CAP, which provides vehicle valuation data and new vehicle information to the automotive industry, to Solera Holdings for £288 million. Solera provides risk and asset management software services to the automotive workplace. EY advised Montagu and CAP on the sale.

construction & property 0.13% NewRiver Retail: The listed shopping centre group revealed a strong set of halfyear results yesterday, with a record pre-tax profit of

£12.3 million — up 137 per cent on this time last year. Its assets under management have increased by 28 per cent to £767 million and it said it was on target to reach £1 billion by 2015. The group’s net asset value per share increased by 14 per cent to 252p a share. Grainger: The listed residential group has recorded a 26 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to £81.1 million and said its gross net asset value per share had risen 20 per cent to 291p a share. The company, which is Britain’s largest listed landlord, has increased its fullyear dividend by 22.6 per cent to 2.5p a share. Land Securities: Britain’s largest developer has bought the 50 per cent share it did not already own in Thomas More Square, a City “fringe” office scheme, for £85.3 million from Cadillac Fairview, the property division of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Thomas More Square is next to St Katharine Docks in London and comprises six buildings on a 4.2-acre estate.

consumer goods 0.07% Graco: The American baby products maker has recalled about 4.7 million strollers in the US, Canada and Mexico, after reports that they were involved in six fingertip amputations, four partialfingertip amputations and one finger laceration. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said that a folding hinge on the sides of the stroller “can pinch a child’s finger, posing a laceration or amputation hazard”.

engineering 1.07% UK car manufacturing: Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show that the 150,060 cars built in Britain last month was down by nearly 7 per cent year on year. It also dragged the year-to-date figure into negative territory, with 1.28 million built in the first ten months, down slightly on the same period last year. Page 37

industrials 2.72% Johnson Matthey: The decline in the value of the pound against the dollar in the late summer meant the reduction in profits from currency movements for the rest of this year would be less than had been forecast, the precious metals specialist announced. Halfway pre-tax profits were 3 per cent higher at £207.8 million during the first half. Tempus, page 38

leisure 0.37% De Vere Group: QHotels has

been handed the management of six De Vere golf resorts, including Cameron House, on Loch Lomond, after their sale, for an estimated £160 million, to Sankaty Advisors and Canyon Capital Advisors. HVS: A recent surge of investment in the hostel and limited-service hotel sector is set to continue as it is accepted by developers as a viable alternative to offices and other types of property asset, according to a new report by the hotel consultancy. Pubs: Vince Cable, the business secretary, said that the government would not challenge the vote by MPs for a “market rent only” deal for tied tenants as it went through the parliamentary process to pass into law. He told the House of Commons that he would accept the vote and “let the matter rest”. Young’s: Like-for-like sales at the London pub operator’s managed house operations rose by 7 per cent in the half year to September 29 and had continued “very positively into the autumn”, it reported, rising by 8.8 per cent. Page 39

World markets FTSE 100 6,678.90 (-17.70)

BHP Billiton: Ian Dunlop, the former energy industry executive and environmental activist, has failed in his attempt to get elected to the board of the world’s biggest mining company. More than 64 million shares, or 2.2 per cent of the shares, were cast in favour of his election.

professional & support services 0.54% Babcock International: The outsourcing specialist, which earlier this year bought the Avincis helicopter operator, produced a reassuring set of halfway figures to the end of September, with a better-thanexpected contribution from Avincis and a 32 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to £187 million. Tempus, page 38

retailing 0.26% JJB Sports: The former boss of the company has been convicted of taking more than £1 million in backhanders from a supplier and using the proceeds to fund a luxury home in Florida. Chris Ronnie, who led JJB for 18 months until early 2009, received payments from two companies run by David Ball and David Barrington, who were convicted of helping Ronnie to cover his tracks by deleting emails. Ronnie, who refused to give evidence during the eightweek trial at Southwark crown court, was convicted of three offences of fraud and two of furnishing false information. Pages 29, 35

Conlumino: The retail analyst said that research it had

16,000 15,600

6,600

15,200

6,500

Mon

Wed

Tue

Thu

Dow Jones 17,718.94 (+33.21)

6,400

17,800

Mon

Tue

Wed

14,800

Thu

Nikkei 17,300.86 (+12.11)

17,600 17,200

17,400

Mon

Wed

Tue

Thu

16,800

17,200

Mon

Tue

Wed

$ 1,220

Brent Crude $79.08 (-0.70)

$ 85

1,200

1,180

1,160

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

1,140

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Currencies £/$ $1.5682 (+0.0013)

Tue

$ 1.600

Wed

Thu

£/€ €1.2520 (+0.0035)

¤ 1.280

1.580

1.260

1.560

1.240

1.540

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

1.220

The day ahead George Osborne has one last chance for some good news on government borrowing today before he delivers his autumn statement next month. The public finances have been disappointing this year. After six months,

borrowing has risen by £5.4 billion. Today’s release is important because October is a big month for corporation tax. The chancellor will hope that borrowing is below last year’s £7.9 billion if he plans any giveaways next month.

Graph of the day Sales of existing homes in America jumped to their highest in more than a year in October and outpaced the sales level a year ago for the first time in 2014. The National Association of Realtors said sales rose 1.5 per cent to an annual rate of 5.26 million units, the highest since September of last year. 5.5m

US home sales in 2014

technology 0.93%

16,400

Thu

Commodities Gold $1,191.45 (-2.47)

conducted, in partnership with AgilOne, showed that more than three quarters of British shoppers expect a “personalised experience” online. It also found that more than half of those surveyed wanted brands or retailers to send an offer via email for a product they have viewed online.

18,000

17,600

Mon

natural resources 2.19%

6,800

FTSE 250 15,604.52 (+2.64)

6,700

Source: National Assocation of Realtors

economics

Alibaba: Strong demand for its debut bond could prompt the Chinese internet company to raise the size of the sale to $10 billion from an initial $8 billion. Investors placed orders worth more than $55 billion for a five-year bond to yield 0.95 to 0.97 percentage point more than comparable US Treasury bills, according to The Wall Street Journal. Micro Focus International: The executive team behind Britain’s second-largest software company are set to share a bonus of £83 million in three years’ time after completing the £730 million takeover of a US rival. The FTSE 250-listed company agreed to take over Attachmate in September. Page 32

telecoms 0.63% Inmarsat: The UK satellite company has signed a deal with Alcatel-Lucent to build a broadband network to pipe into aircraft. The companies anticipate the hybrid satellite4G network will be offering speeds of 75Mbps to airline passengers by the end of 2016.

transport 0.06%

5.25m 5m 4.75m Jan Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sept Oct

4.5m

Results in brief Name

Pre-tax figure Profit (+) loss (-)

Dividend

Atlas Development (services FY) Babcock (services HY) Dart (transport HY) Euromoney (media FY) Grainger (property FY) Investec (finance HY) Johnson Matthey (industrials HY) NewRiver Retail (property HY) QinetiQ (technology HY) UDG (health FY) Young & Co (leisure HY)

-$1.4m (-$0.2m) 0c £137m (£105.9m) 5.5p p Jan 14 £71.7m (£78.1m) 0.75p p Feb 2 £101.5m (£95.3m) 23p f 16p p Feb 12 £81.8m (£64.3m) 2.50p f 1.89p p Feb 6 £209m (£197.4m) 8.5p p Dec 29 £207.8m (£202.1m) 18.5p p Feb 3 £12.3m (£5.2m) 4.25p p Jan 30 £44.4m (£67m) 1.8p p Feb 13 €125m (€33.9m) 10.12c f 7.43c p Feb 23 £18.8m (£14.9m) 7.9p p Dec 12

6 Results in brief are given for all companies valued at more than £30 million. f = final p = payable

The day’s biggest movers Company Outsoucery A deal with Microsoft Stellar Resources Finds more gold in Wales Johnson Matthey Higher profits Babcock International Lifts the dividend BG Group RBC upgrades Anglo American Miners are unloved Sports Direct Cautious comment from Citi BHP Billiton More uncovincing economic data from China National Grid Shares trade ex dividend Rio Tinto Cheaper iron ore

Change 46.3% 42.9% 6.0% 5.9% 1.8% -2.2% -2.4% -2.6% -2.6% -2.6%

Air miles: Frequent flyers in America are buckling up for a bumpy ride after two big airlines announced changes to how they award air miles from the distance flown to the amount paid for a ticket. The value of air miles has been eroded in recent years as companies have cut their worth. Delta and United Airlines will start handing out air miles, or frequent flyer points, on the basis of how much a ticket costs rather than how far a passenger is flying. Page 33

utilities 1.85% Centrica: The integrated energy group said it had faced a number of challenges in 2014 and moved down its expectations of earnings for the full year to 19p to 20p, compared with an earlier range of 21-22p. Centrica blamed the mild weather, which meant it supplied less gas and electricity to its customers, as well as outages at nuclear power stations which it operates in the UK. Page 34; Tempus, page 38

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Business

Ineos bids to become UK’s shale-gas king Tim Webb

The owner of the Grangemouth chemical site has vowed to become the UK’s largest shale gas player after pledging £640 million to invest in fracking projects. Ineos plans to drill hundreds of exploration wells near the site in central Scotland and across the north of England, aiming to produce enough shale gas to supply its operations with energy. The remainder would be used to power homes and businesses. Jim Ratcliffe, its chairman, claimed that a glut of cheap domestically produced shale gas could solve the country’s energy and manufacturing crises and secure the future of the UK’s largest privately owned company. “We are a believer in shale,” he said,

hoping that the UK can replicate the American shale gas boom, which has triggered an industrial revival and left manufacturers, such as Ineos, struggling to compete. Mr Ratcliffe was scathing about Cuadrilla’s aborted attempt to frack the country’s first well near Blackpool in 2011, which had to be abandoned after triggering minor earthquakes. “The US has drilled 1.1 million wells. The UK has drilled one and that was not drilled very well, frankly,” he said. Asked why Ineos felt it necessary to act when specialist companies like Cuadrilla and IGas claim they will soon start producing the UK’s first shale gas, he replied: “There is not a great deal of evidence that it’s going to happen.” Ineos, which has operations across the US and Europe and headquarters in

Switzerland, is one of the biggest users of gas and electricity in the UK. It pays three times as much for its gas and twice as much for its electricity as US competitors. Even German firms, who enjoy generous exemptions from renewable energy levies, pay half as much as Ineos for electricity. Mr Ratcliffe warned that its plastics manufacturing plant at Runcorn, in Cheshire, which employs 1,300 workers and uses as much electricity as Liverpool, would eventually have to close. “We are buying the most expensive electricity in Europe. Runcorn is not going to survive long term if we are paying twice what Germany and the US are paying,” he said. If Ineos cannot cut its energy bill with domestically produced shale gas, he said that the group’s future in the UK,

The Grangemouth plant pays twice as much for electricity as US competitors

along with the rest of the country’s remaining industrial base, was bleak. “The numbers do not work. Something needs to happen reasonably quickly,” he added. “If it does not, there will be no gas left in the UK and little manufacturing left in the UK. We want to take the lead for shale in the UK.”

The Grangemouth refinery and petrochemicals site was the subject of a bitter industrial dispute a year ago that threatened its future. Ineos has acquired two shale gas exploration licences in Scotland, covering more than 120,000 acres. It has also submitted a “material number” of bids in the government’s latest onshore oil and gas exploration licensing round, which closed last month, mostly in the north of England. Ineos has promised to pay 6 per cent of revenues from producing shale gas to local communities. This would amount to about £375 million for a village or small town hosting 25 production pads over a 36 sq mile block for a 10 to 15-year period. Ineos is confident that the offer will help it to win most of the licences for which it has bidden.

ANDREW MILLIGAN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES, PA

as 500,000 oz of gold could be lying untouched in the area surrounding the mine. Stellar Resources said that it carried out the tests during the summer, and David Lenigas, who retired as chairman of Stellar Resources last month, said yesterday: “There is absolute potential in Wales but it is going to have to be worked on.” The gold “find” is even better news for Stellar Resources, a very small natural resources company, whose share price plunged a fortnight

High-quality Welsh gold strike comes with royal approval

mine that produced the rare Welsh gold used to make the wedding band for the Duchess of Cambridge has generated another significant find in them thar hills (Deirdre Hipwell writes). It may not quite match the Welsh “gold rush” of 1862, but Stellar Resources, an AIMlisted natural resources company, said that an underground sampling of an abandoned section of its famous Clogau St David’s goldmine showed “significant” gold content. Out of 55 samples there was an average gold grade of 67.3 grams

per tonne, with one result showing as much as 435 grams per tonne. This compares with an average grade of 1.8 grams per tonne for goldmines globally. Clogau, pronounced “clog-eye”, was first worked in 1862 and produced more than 165,000 tonnes of gold before it was abandoned, and it was subsequently reopened. Gold from the mine in Snowdonia — the rarest of all yellow metal types — is on the wish list of many well-heeled individuals and has been used in the wedding rings worn by the royal family since 1923. The royal family

The Duchess of Cambridge is the latest royal family member to wear a ring of Clogau gold

tradition of using gold from Clogau was started by Lady Elizabeth BowesLyon, later to become the Queen Mother, on her marriage to the Duke of York, the future King George VI, in 1923, left. Since then Clogau gold has been used to

create wedding rings for the Queen, whose ring was crafted from a nugget of pure Welsh gold; Princess Margaret; Diana, Princess of Wales; and the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. A report conducted by Snowden Mining Consultants in 2012 suggested that as much

15 miles

Clogau goldmine

Aberystwyth

Cardiff

ago after a consortium, of which it is a member, failed to find gas at Horse Hill, near Gatwick. Yesterday its share price soared by 76 per cent in early trading and ended the day up nearly 43 per cent at ¾p. Donald Strang, the chairman of Stellar Resources, said the group had to carry out further studies on the potential to mine the gold and that it would update the market later this month on the potential costs.

Gatwick’s success built on Europe and not long-haul flights Robert Lea Industrial Editor

Europe, and not the far-flung fastgrowing export markets of the world’s developing economies, are the key to the success of Gatwick, London’s second airport has admitted. Gatwick, locked in a battle for support among opinion formers to win the right for it, and not Heathrow, to build a new runway, has long made great play of the various services that it has opened to China and the Far East. But in its half-year results — the busiest six months in its history — Gatwick

confessed to knowing where its real growth lies. “A series of new European business routes have been added, including Strasbourg, Brussels and Paris,” the airport said as it reported a 15 per cent growth in underlying profits for the year. “Several airlines have increased frequencies on European routes and introduced new destinations underlining that Europe will continue to be the dominant market for London airports.” Gatwick has been seen as serving passengers flying directly between cities, whereas Heathrow acts as a hub

or interchange, where passengers fly in and then fly on, either to long-haul destinations or, after an intercontinental flight, to their final destination in the UK or on the Continent. While Gatwick in its present one runway-two terminal guise still has plenty of capacity to soak up, in the six months to the end of September yearon-year passenger growth was 1.7 million, or 8 per cent, to 22.5 million. With per-head spending in the shops and car parks on the rise, that meant that Gatwick’s half-year revenues came in 8.6 per cent higher at £391 million.

With Stewart Wingate, the chief executive, putting the squeeze on staff and maintenance costs, operating profits were £162 million, up from £141 million. Pre-tax profit was down £5 million at £122 million, although earnings flattered in the previous year because of a one-off gain in the treasury department’s derivatives trading. Mr Wingate said that Gatwick’s success comes from handling more, bigger and better filled aircraft. The average aeroplane is flying 86 per cent, rather than 85 per cent, full as the number of passengers per flight has risen to

154 from 149, indicating that the average aircraft using Gatwick is one from easyJet, its biggest customer, which tends to fly 180-seat Airbus A320s. He warned that the summer months were getting too busy for the airport. “Gatwick’s success means we are now unable to meet demand across much of the year and we are just a few years away from hitting full capacity,” he said. The airport reported a 5 per cent growth in airline charges to £217 million, a 13 per cent increase in retail incomes and a 13 per cent rise in turnover from car parking charges.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Business

IT staff pay price for computer fiasco that locked RBS customers’ accounts CHANNEL 4

Patrick Hosking, Alex Ralph

The staff responsible have shouldered about a tenth of a £56 million fine slapped on Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday for the disruptive IT glitch that left millions of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers unable to access their accounts. RBS said that about £6 million had been shaved off its wages bill because 16 RBS employees had voluntarily waived bonuses or had them reduced, while the entire department was subject to an 18 per cent reduction in bonuses in respect of 2012. The IT fiasco in June two years ago left 6.5 million customers at RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank shut out of their accounts online, unable to make mortgage payments or to access cash abroad. Many were embarrassed, left stranded at petrol stations and supermarket checkouts, while companies found themselves unable to pay staff or other bills. Property transactions were delayed and in one case a man was forced to stay longer in jail because of the failure of a bail payment. RBS received 69,500 customer complaints in the days that followed and paid out £70.3 million in compensation to those financially disadvantaged. The Financial Conduct Authority has fined RBS £42 million and the Prudential Regulation Authority, part of the Bank of England, fined the group £14 million. The FCA said that RBS had failed to “put in place adequate systems and controls to identify and manage their exposure to IT risks”. The FCA found that the IT problem had been triggered when an overnight software upgrade failed and the tech workers responded by uninstalling the software “without first testing the consequences of that action”. “Technology Services did not realise that the upgraded software was not compatible with the previous version,” the FCA found. The problem also meant that the banks applied incorrect credit and debit interest to customers’ accounts, produced inaccurate bank statements and some organisations were unable to meet their payroll commitments or finalise their audited accounts. Tracey McDermott, the director of enforcement and financial crime at the FCA, said the IT failure meant that millions of customers were “unable to carry out the banking transactions which keep businesses and people’s everyday lives moving”. She added:

The IT Crowd may have its funny side on television but staff at RBS have discovered that a computer glitch can prove painful

Osborne’s £1.4 billion windfall Behind the story

he latest fines will be added to a “misconduct windfall” of more than £1.4 billion heading to the Treasury and expected to be used by the chancellor to provide modest preelection pleasers in his autumn statement next month (Patrick Hosking writes). The Financial Conduct Authority

keeps only about £40 million of the £1.44 billion in fines it has levied this year, to cover the cost of its enforcement team. The recent forex scandal, in which traders at five banks tried to rig benchmark currency rates, brought in £1.11 billion this month, and late settlements over the Libor affair boosted the take further. The FCA and its predecessor, the Financial Services Authority, used to keep all penalties to offset their costs and reduce the fees imposed on all City firms. However, when

the fines increased at the time of the Libor scandal in 2012, George Osborne announced that the money would go to military charities and, later, the Treasury. Public finances figures for October due today are expected to show the chancellor has little room for manoeuvre next month, with borrowing expected to have risen by another £7.5 billion, little better than the £7.8 billion for October last year. At the time of the forex fines last week, he promised to use the money for “the wider public good”.

“The problems arose due to failures at many levels within the RBS Group to identify and manage the risks which can flow from disruptive IT incidents, and the result was that RBS customers were left exposed to these risks.” The FCA said that the failings were not due to a lack of investment from RBS, which spends more than £1 billion annually to maintain its IT infrastructure. The City regulator found that the risk of a so-called batch processing failure, the glitch that caused the problem, was identified by the bank’s internal Sir Philip Hampton repeated his apology to customers

audit as a potential risk to the bank nearly two years earlier in August 2010. That report was seen by the board audit committee. Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of RBS, said that the failure revealed “unacceptable weaknesses” in the bank’s systems and “caused significant stress for many of our customers”. Sir Philip repeated his apology to all the customers whom the bank had “let down” and said he was confident that the new IT system was more resilient. However, customers have suffered other problems since 2012, most recently before Christmas last year when it was forced to apologise to millions of customers whose debit cards stopped working. RBS, which said that the fines had been covered by provisions already made by the bank, has also paid out £70.3 million to customers in redress and £460,000 to individuals and businesses that were not customers. Stephen Hester, chief executive of the bank at the time, and Jim Brown, the chief executive of its Ulster Bank subsidiary, which was particularly badly affected, waived their bonuses for 2012. The 16 people identified as being partly responsible in RBS’s “accountability review” included not only those who made the wrong decisions on the night, but also those responsible for auditing and checking on the resilience of the IT systems and processes. RBS declined to say whether they included Ron Teerlink, the head of business services, who left at the beginning of last year, or Mike Errington, the head of IT, who left a few months later. Simon McNamara, the new RBS chief administration officer, who was hired in the wake of the disaster, said that it should not be seen as a blame game. “It’s very much a team game,” he said. There was no finding of gross misconduct against anyone, he said. Richard Lloyd, director of the consumer group Which?, welcomed the fines: “These multimillionpound fines rightly reflect how important it is to consumers that banks properly maintain the payments system we all rely on.” He urged the Treasury to spend the money on improved financial education for young people.

£83m takeover bonus for software team Wonga chief departs after Nic Fildes Technology & Communications Editor

The executive team behind Britain’s second-largest software company is in line to share an £83 million bonus after completing the £730 million takeover of an American rival. Micro Focus, a FTSE 250-listed company that sells and maintains software for large companies such as Tesco, agreed to acquire Attachmate in September. The completion of the deal yesterday means that 15 senior managers in the combined company will receive stock equivalent to 2.5 per cent of the new business’s shares in issue if performance targets are met. The maximum

payout will be achieved if the share price reaches £15.40 by November 2017 and 99p worth of dividends have been paid to each shareholder according to Numis, the company’s broker. Half of the £83 million share pool will be paid out if the share price is about £11.30 in three years’ time with the same level of dividends paid out. Kevin Loosemore, who is executive chairman of Micro Focus, would stand to gain £15 million in shares if the maximum level were paid out. Mike Phillips, chief financial officer, and Stephen Murdoch, chief operating officer, stand to earn £10 million and £6 million respectively. The company has also introduced an “additional responsibility allowance” as

part of the takeover to reflect a successful integration of the two businesses. The deal reversed the trend for British technology businesses selling out to American competitors. This year Qualcomm has acquired the Cambridge-based chip maker CSR, and Delcam, a software supplier based in the Midlands, was acquired by Autodesk, of California. Other names to disappear from Britain into North American hands include Logica, Autonomy and Kewill Systems. The combination of Micro Focus and Attachmate creates a business with 4,500 workers and $1.4 billion of revenue. Shares in Micro Focus closed 2.2 per cent higher yesterday at £10.60.

just five months in the job

Patrick Hosking

Wonga has parted company with its interim chief executive after only five months running the embattled payday loans company. Tim Weller resigned with a payoff by mutual consent last month, Wonga disclosed yesterday, adding that Andy Haste, its executive chairman, would be taking a more hands-on approach. Mr Haste, the former RSA Insurance chairman parachuted into Wonga in July after it became embroiled in a fake lawyers scandal, said that Mr Weller’s departure would ensure “clear leader-

ship in the weeks and months ahead.” Wonga is facing a string of potential challenges, including the new cap on payday loan charges that comes into force on January 2 and the need to gain a full licence to operate under a much tougher regime set out by the Financial Conduct Authority. Under regulatory pressure Wonga last month wrote off £220 million of loans to 330,000 customers. It also reported a halving in profits to £39.7 million and in June it was severely censured and ordered to compensate customers who were sent debt recovery letters from bogus solicitors.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

FGM

Business

Sathnam Sanghera

Move to link air miles to ticket cost hit turbulence

The idea that recruiting arts graduates might prevent another financial crash is a fallacy

‘‘

Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter @Sathnam

My initial reaction to the news that Royal Bank of Scotland is seeking to hire a new generation of arts graduates to counteract the “linear thinking” of mathematicians and economists, which arguably led to the catastrophic financial crisis, was, as the holder of a degree in English literature, one of relief. It’s easy to be sceptical about the real-world value of someone spending a year writing a thesis on The Corporeal Configurations of the Heroic and the Monstrous in Beowulf but, in recent months, this cynicism has turned into the kind of outright mockery and abuse normally reserved for Ed Miliband. Last week we had the education secretary, Nicky Morgan (jurisprudence, Oxford), arguing that too many teenagers were taking humanities A levels in a mistaken attempt to keep career options open and urging more to study maths or sciences instead. Before that, the coalition (run mainly by men with degrees from Oxford in philosophy, politics and economics) decided to remove university teaching funding for the humanities, giving priority to science students. Meanwhile, Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder (philosophy, Stanford), has referred to degrees such as his own as “antiquated debt-fuelled luxury goods”, while Barack Obama (political science, Columbia) has argued that so-called liberal arts degrees offer poor preparation for employment, echoing disparaging remarks that Republican politicians have made about the value of degrees in anthropology, English, philosophy and gender studies. As a novelist who writes about business and the holder of A levels in maths and English, I like to think I can sit on the fence on the issue. But Obama’s comments nevertheless came as a blow. After all, it is hard to think of any other living person who better demonstrates the value of an education in the humanities, with its ability to bestow skills of analysis, cultural comparison, historical perspective, critical thinking and, as Tim Skeet, managing director of RBS capital markets, put it this week, “leftfield, blue-sky creative thinking . . . and the ability to ask the tough questions”. Though I suppose nothing

demonstrates this ability to ask tough questions more than the fact that so many people with humanities degrees regret their choices. And, in turn, it is a result of the analytical skills that an English degree has bestowed upon me that I can see that the idea that arts graduates might prevent another financial crash is a fallacy. How come? Well, the simple fact is that many humanities graduates were involved in the financial crash. A third of all Fortune 500 chief executives have liberal arts degrees. Recently, the University of Oxford tracked the career choices of about 11,000 alumni who entered the university between 1960 and 1989 and concluded that they have played “a growing role in emerging UK industrial sectors, particularly finance and law”. In America, research shows that people with liberal arts degrees end up earning more than their peers with professional or pre-professional degrees. It’s a total myth that people with humanities degrees are

unemployable. They’re everywhere, not least in the British media, which singularly failed to predict any of our recent banking and economic crises. If banks are serious about tackling the problem of “linear thinking” and “group think”, they need to be more radical than looking beyond maths and economics graduates, not least by recruiting from different social classes. Indeed, a bunch of academics from the department of sociology at Columbia University published a paper this year titled Ethnic Diversity Deflates Price Bubbles, which involved them setting up a series of six-person stock markets, some ethnically diverse and others ethnically homogeneous. They concluded that groups of ethnically diverse traders were 58 per cent better at pricing stocks, and that “when bubbles burst, [ethnically] homogeneous markets crash more severely”. Would humanities graduates give banks access to this kind of social diversity? The fact that the RBS story

was juxtaposed in The Times on Tuesday with an item about how arts schools are becoming increasingly socially homogeneous as a result of the introduction of tuition fees suggests not. Though even increased social diversity in recruitment would not, I suspect, provide a real solution. For the fundamental problem with banking is that it hires people who want to be bankers. Peter Sutherland, the one-time international chairman of Goldman Sachs, once talked about how he was the 32nd person to interview a candidate for a junior post at the bank. I guess the aim of such intensive interrogation is to find people with a certain kind of intelligence, and of a certain “fit”, but what it actually does is produce fanatics and clones who are not only dysfunctional but who are unlikely to challenge dysfunctional behaviour. How dysfunctional does it get? Well, according to a Swiss study published this week in Nature, bankers have an instinctive tendency to lie for financial gain. Two hundred financial professionals took part in the study (including 128 from a single unnamed international bank) for the team at the University of Zurich, which, through a series of gameplaying experiments, found that although bankers “behave on average honestly in a control situation . . . when their identity as bank employees is made salient, a significant proportion of them become dishonest”. The same experiments conducted with people from other industries, such as telecoms and pharmaceuticals, found they were not inclined to cheat in the same way. As a paradox, the need to hire people who do not necessarily want the job is not entirely uncommon. The best person to lead the Labour party at the moment is probably Alan Johnson, who has stated that he doesn’t want the role. The best and most talented candidates for The X Factor are people who would never consider being involved in anything so crass. The NHS would probably be better managed by medical professionals who have no interest in doing so. And the best potential bankers out there are people who’d be interested in the challenge, but who’d happily move on if things got dark.

’’

Alexandra Frean Washington

Frequent fliers in America are buckling up for a bumpy ride after two big airlines announced changes to how they award air miles from the distance flown to the amount paid for a ticket. The value of air miles, one of the most cherished consumer perks, has been eroded in recent years as companies have reduced their worth. Both Delta and United Airlines will now start handing out air miles, or frequent flier points, on the basis of how much a ticket costs rather than how far a passenger is flying. Delta, which will introduce the change from January 1, has said the change is intended to “better reward our premium customers”. United Airlines, which will make the same change from March 1, said passengers with premium status will “earn even more”. Travel blogs have been buzzing with complaints. Writing on boardingarea.com, a blog for frequent fliers, a user called nycman suggested that Delta’s SkyMiles programme should be renamed “SkyDung”. On the same site, Beavis said: “I’m very scared that the other airlines will follow,” and a user called Nick said the scheme was changing from a loyalty programme to a fixed-percentage rebate, adding: “The average consumer has no incentive to give these companies any loyalty.” Brian Kelly, founder of thepointsguy.com, a website dedicated to loyalty points, miles and travel, said that while elite business travellers whose companies pay the full fare for them to travel first class would clearly benefit from the changes, most people travelling for work would lose. “There’s a big misconception that business travellers are paying full fare but a huge number of them are travelling on the cheapest tickets available. They are the ones who will be squeezed by changes like this,” he said. “With industry consolidation and less competition there is less reason for the airlines to think of the consumer.” However, he said that wider changes in the business were creating new classes of beneficiaries because most miles nowadays are awarded through credit cards that allow users to accrue miles with named airlines as they spend. Not all airlines are following Delta and United’s model. The AAdvantage mileage programme formed by the merging American Airlines and US Airways has no provision to link miles to money spent.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Business

Centrica cools down profit forecast after warm spell Tim Webb

The mild autumn weather and defects at four nuclear reactors have conspired against the owner of British Gas, which has said that profits this year will be 9 per cent lower than expected. It is the fourth time that Centrica has downgraded its 2014 profits this year as the weather, the recent slump in oil and gas prices and politicians have hampered Britain’s largest energy supplier. The company expects full-year earnings per share to be between 19p and 20p, equivalent to post-tax profits of £1 billion, compared with the 20p to 22p suggested in July. The slump in gas

consumption because of the warm weather in September, October and early this month was responsible for half the downgrade as households kept their heating off. The other penny of earnings was knocked off because four faulty nuclear reactors operated by EDF Energy, in which Centrica has a 20 per cent stake, will be out of action for longer than expected. The original announcement of the defects at the reactors at Heysham and Hartlepool triggered the company’s previous profit downgrade. Centrica also warned that profits next year may be “significantly offset” by the impact of the slump in oil and gas

prices, which is denting profits from its upstream division. Oil prices have fallen by 30 per cent since June while UK wholesale gas prices, despite a recent rally, are a 20 per cent lower than they were a year ago. Although the company’s upstream division has been hit by lower energy prices, its supply side is failing to enjoy the full benefit because of bad hedging. In May, British Gas promised not to raise energy prices this year, having bought large amounts of electricity and gas in the forward market as a hedge. Wholesale prices have since fallen, however, leaving British Gas — and its 15 million residential customers —

locked into more expensive prices, making a cut in energy bills unlikely. Jeff Bell, Centrica’s interim chief financial officer, said: “We are committed to keeping prices as low as possible. We buy energy well in advance to protect customers from volatile price movements. It takes a while for prices on the spot markets to flow through.” He warned that green levies, which are added to household energy bills, are rising and would make it more difficult to reduce bills next year. Industry executives have admitted in private that Labour’s pledge to freeze energy bills for 20 months if they won the general election has discouraged

them from cutting bills. They would not be able to pass on the cost if wholesale energy prices rose during the freeze. Angelos Anastasiou, an analyst with Whitman Howard, the stockbroker, described the price freeze as “the elephant in the room”. Nevertheless, British Gas is forecasting that its average household energy bill will be £100 lower this year than last because of falling energy consumption. Average household gas consumption for the first ten months of the year is 21 per cent lower than last year, while households used 7 per cent less electricity over the same period. The shares were down 5½p to 293¼p.

Blowing hot and cold Post-tax profits £bn

£1.3 £1.3

2014 profits forecasts keep tumbling £bn

£1.4 £1.4

£1.285

£1.1

£0.975

£0.9

£1.075

May

Jul

Feb

£0.975

Nov

Spot UK gas price p per therm

Average British Gas customer’s gas consumption Therms

2008

547

2009

506

2010

564

2011

443 494

2012

492

2013 2014

£1.125

389 est

Q4 2013

2014

75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30

Tiger Global’s Schools rise shells target to interest firms in EU rate challenge Alexandra Frean Washington

One of the world’s most powerful hedge funds is understood to be behind a string of short-selling bets against a number of companies in Europe, including Quindell, the embattled insurance outsourcing company. Tiger Global, the New York fund, has apparently been using anonymous Cayman Islands-based shell companies to mount short-selling attacks on Quindell and other companies. Rob Terry, the chairman of Quindell, stepped down this week with two other directors after a string of difficulties culminating in a contentious loans deal involving the three departing board members. The company’s shares recovered some ground yesterday, rising 18 per cent after this week’s precipitous fall. Tiger Global’s $6.5 billion hedge fund is the investor that used an entity called Roble SL to bet that Quindell’s share price would fall, according to an investigation by the Financial Times. Its other European moves have included a $200 million bet against Nokia, as well as short positions in HMV before its bankruptcy, according to the FT. It also bet against Blinkx, a Londonlisted online video company whose shares plunged after a Harvard professor published a report attacking its internet traffic figures last year. Several European regulators told the paper that they did not know Tiger Global was behind the short positions. Tiger Global declined to comment. Market report, page 39

The 15th annual Target Two Point Zero Bank of England and The Times Interest Rate Challenge is under way, with 307 teams nationwide competing for the Challenge Trophy and £5,000 for their school or college. In 42 regional heats, teams of four students, aged 16 to 18, will analyse British and global economic data and their possible impact on inflation and the outlook for the UK — as the Bank’s monetary policy committee does each month. The winning team from each regional heat will advance to one of six area

finals to be held in February. The final will be contested in March at the Bank of England. Results from the latest heats were: Edinburgh: winner: Stewart’s Melville College; runner-up: George Heriot’s School. Leeds: winner: Birkdale School, Sheffield; runner-up: Greenhead College, Huddersfield. London: winner: City of London School; runner-up: Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. Nottingham: winner: Nottingham High School; runner-up: Trent College, Long Eaton.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Business

Tracksuit baron undone by Florida dream JAMIE LORRIMAN, MIKE EGERTON / PA

Marcus Leroux and Danielle Sheridan on the money trail that led from grimy Wigan to the sunshine state

ith a palm-shaded garden and an outdoor swimming pool and spa bath, 321 Bird Key Drive had little in common with the Wigan industrial estate that JJB Sports called home. Chris Ronnie, the chief executive of JJB Sports, was smitten with the four-bedroom bungalow on Florida’s Sarasota Bay, and paid $880,000 in cash for it in the summer of 2008. The property was the final resting point of a money trail that began on Martland Mill industrial estate, a mile from Wigan Athletic’s stadium. Ronnie had arrived at the JJB headquarters in summer 2007 after acquiring a 29 per cent stake from Dave Whelan, the company founder and owner of Wigan Athletic football club. His sudden elevation to the ranks of Britain’s tracksuit barons caused a stir. How did a sports industry journeyman find £190 million to buy the stake from Mr Whelan? He swiftly got used to the perks of a corner of the industry known for its predilection for helicopters and private aircraft, taking the company’s jet to Florida the summer he joined. Mr Whelan’s former lieutenants, such as Andy Gill and Martin Wild, became unnerved. One of the early signs of trouble, according to two figures who knew the company, was Ronnie appropriating the cash for sales of defective stock at JJB’s Wigan warehouse — money that, under Mr Whelan, funded the company’s Christmas party. In an interview with the Manchester Evening News, Ronnie gave an indication of his high-handed approach when he said: “I acquired the business last June . . . and am happy with the way things are coming along.” He was already siphoning money out. In December 2007, four months after his appointment as chief executive, Ronnie spoke to David Barrington, an old friend, about buying Travel Fox, a defunct American trainer brand. Barrington’s Performance Brands had ac-

Chris Ronnie paid $880,000 in cash in 2008 for his Florida bungalow, the last point in his trail of fraud

Blowing the whistle on this sporting life Behind the story Marcus Leroux

hen Chris Ronnie arrived at JJB Sports he had to assure the board and its shareholders that he was not doing the bidding of his friend and former colleague Mike Ashley. It was a bizarre situation. Ronnie’s foothold at JJB came courtesy of the £190 million stake he acquired from Dave Whelan, Mr Ashley’s arch-rival. Mr Ashley, right, is the controlling shareholder in Sports Direct and Newcastle United; Mr Whelan, in 2007, was the biggest

shareholder in JJB and the owner of Wigan Athletic. The pair had not seen eye-to-eye since Mr Ashley blew the whistle on a round of football shirt pricefixing in 2000. At one meeting Mr Whelan, having arrived by helicopter in a rival’s backgarden, was said to have told Mr Ashley: “There is a club in the north, son, and you’re not part of it.” Ronnie’s transactions with David Barrington and David Ball appeared on the Serious Fraud Office’s radar only after it began looking into the circumstances surrounding Ronnie’s sudden ascent in the hurly-burly world of sportswear retailing. He had originally intended to take the company private as part of a plan called Project Braveheart. Investigators were looking into alleged links between Mr Ashley and Ronnie. They found nothing

untoward and there is no indication Mr Ashley has done anything illegal. However, by the standards of most industries, there was a remarkably incestuous relationship. Ronnie worked for Mr Ashley at Sports Direct. The pair, who played squash competitively, invested in a failed nightclub venture in Hale. Under Ronnie, JJB did deals with Sports Direct that many argued it ended up on the wrong end of. In particular, there was the disastrous acquisition of the Original Shoe Company from Sports Direct. Another deal that has attracted attention was the sale of a batch of stores from JJB to Sports Direct, a deal that the OFT eventually gave the all-clear.

quired Travel Fox for £175,000. They agreed that JJB would pay £1.5 million and that they would split the profit. The ruse unravelled when fraud investigators, already scouring Ronnie’s directorships, noticed something curious. He had set up a private company called Seacroft Management in 2004 that had been inactive since then. However, its 2008 accounts showed that £650,000 in cash had appeared on its balance sheet. It was one of three undeclared payments received by Ronnie from companies related to Barrington, totalling £1 million. Ronnie had claimed the payments were a loan for buying the Florida home and commission payments for work he had done for Performance Brands as an agent. Barrington and David Ball, a London accountant who was also a director in Fashion and Sport Ltd, had paperwork that purported to prove it. The jury that convicted Ronnie of fraud yesterday agreed with the prosecution that the loan agreement was fake. It contained a telling error: it was for 321 Bird Key Drive, when Ronnie had originally put down a deposit on 525 Bird Key Drive. That sale fell through and Ronnie later acquired No 321, but the anachronism had slipped into the loan agreement. Ball and Barrington paid an IT engineer to wipe emails from the Performance Brands server, but he was suspicious and kept back-ups, which he handed to the Serious Fraud Office last year. With a trove of nine years of emails, the SFO was able to show that the supposed commission agreements and home loan that Barrington and Ball said explained the payments had not been mentioned once. After the deletion of the emails was brought to light, they were charged with perverting the course of justice. Ronnie’s short tenure at JJB had already come to an end by the time the Office of Fair Trading began an investigation in the summer of 2009. It transpired that he had lost control of his stake in the fallout of the Icelandic banking crisis and not told the company. It went into administration in 2012. Ronnie sold the property on Bird Key Drive for a small loss in 2010. JJB’s headquarters became a Sports Direct distribution centre.

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Business

Britain becomes a nation of shoppers as industry falters Philip Aldrick Economics Editor

The economy is becoming increasingly unbalanced as consumer spending props up growth in the face of a slowdown in manufacturing. Retail sales soared in October while the sluggish global outlook hit exports and dented confidence at UK factories, figures published yesterday revealed. The Office for National Statistics said that retail sales volumes rose by 0.8 per cent in the month, well above forecasts for a 0.3 per cent increase, as falling petrol prices gave shoppers extra cash for clothes and furniture. The better-than-expected perform6 Britain is worth £7.6 trillion, says the Office for National Statistics. The sum represents the value of all UK companies, cash, investments, machinery and property and is nearly five times the size of the country’s GDP. The ONS estimate, for 2013, equated to £119,000 per person, or £289,000 per household, and was 4 per cent more than 2012. The bulk of the total was accounted for by the nation’s homes, which were estimated to be worth £4.7 trillion, more than three times their estimated value of £1.4 trillion when the survey began in 1997. ance pushed up the pound for a second day running. Sterling climbed 0.19 per cent against the dollar to $1.5709 and 0.25 per cent against the euro to €1.2521. In contrast to the good news for the high street, Britain’s manufacturers continued to suffer. The CBI’s industrial trends survey for November showed that factories expect output during the next three months to be the lowest in more than a year, hurt by the sluggish eurozone and a slowdown in China. The recovery in British manufacturing has slowed since a bright start to the year, it added. In the survey, 17 per cent of respondents said that their export order books were better than average while 34 per cent said they were below. The balance of -17 per cent was

slightly better than October but still negative. Rain Newton-Smith, CBI director for economics, said: “Overall manufacturing output remains quite strong, although growth is expected to ease against the backdrop of continuing global risks. Manufacturers are particularly struggling in export markets due to a challenging global economic climate, including sluggish eurozone growth and also slowing emerging markets, such as China.” Overall order books fared better as domestic demand held up. The balance rose to +3 per cent this month from -6 per cent last month. The improvement in retail sales was driven by the non-food sector, with an increase in furniture sales helped by the rise in housing market activity this year. Sales volumes compared with October last year were up by 4.3 per cent. Liz Martins, an HSBC economist, said that the recent slowdown in the housing market could weigh on retail sales in coming months. Average store prices were 1.5 per cent lower compared with last year, the largest drop since 2002, because of falling oil and food commodity costs and the continuing supermarket price war. With prices in decline, shoppers were able to load up on more goods as every section of the high street experienced higher sales volumes. Clothes shops posted 0.5 per cent growth, making up some of the weather-related 5.9 per cent fall from September. Online sales suffered a rare setback, dropping by 0.1 of a percentage point to 11.2 per cent. Paul Hollingsworth, of Capital Economics, said that the government’s long-awaited rebalancing of the economy would have to wait. “The onus is likely to remain on the dominant services sector to keep the overall economic recovery chugging along.” Rob Wood, UK economist at Berenberg Bank, said that quarterly economic growth may slow to 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter, down from a peak of 0.9 per cent in the second, but would pick up again next year.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Shares down as business activity slows around world Patrick Hosking

Mothercare baby steps to recovery

nvestors in Mothercare who overwhelmingly backed a deeply discounted £100 million rights issue were buoyed yesterday after the struggling retailer produced a better set of interim results

(Deirdre Hipwell writes). The childrenswear retailer said that it was back in the black with pre-tax profits of £5.5 million in the six months to October 11, compared with a loss of £11 million last year, on revenue down from £376.3 million to £372.7 million. UK like-for-like sales, which do not include revenue from new stores opened during the period,

rose 1.5 per cent to £235.6 million, and it said that losses from its UK store portfolio were reducing as its turnaround programme started to work. Mothercare has stores in 60 countries and its international sales of £397.5 million were up by 4.9 per cent on a like-for-like basis during the period. Shares in Mothercare closed up by 7.2 per cent at 185p.

Sentiment over the prospects for the world economy has taken another knock after surveys of businesses on three continents showed a slide in the pace of activity. Growth in the 18-country eurozone has fallen to its slowest pace in 16 months as new orders dipped, according to Markit, which compiles the closely watched purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data for the economic bloc, Britain’s biggest trading partner. Separate PMI data showed a decline in the level of activity of Chinese manufacturers to a six-month low, while their counterparts in the US, although still recording respectable growth, posted their lowest number since January. The gloomy data sent share prices falling across most of Europe, but are expected to increase pressure on policymakers to respond with extra stimulus. “It does reinforce the case for quantitative easing from the European Central Bank,” Alan Clarke, European economist at Scotiabank, said. The initial November reading of the eurozone PMI came in at 51.4 points, down from 52.1 in October. That still pointed to sluggish growth. Any number less than 50 indicates an economic contraction. While manufacturing ticked up slightly, growth in the services sector slowed to its weakest reading since last December, Markit said. Official data last week showed that Germany narrowly avoided recession in the three months to September, while France bounced back from contraction in the second quarter. However, the more up-to-date PMI numbers suggest that the eurozone economies have been struggling to gain traction since. David Cameron said this week there were “red warning lights flashing on the dashboard of the global economy”. Preliminary figures indicated that manufacturing activity in China was stagnant this month. Its PMI was 50. US manufacturing growth slowed in November to its lowest rate since January, while a gauge of new orders also fell for a third month, PMI data there showed. The main index fell to 54.7 from October’s final reading of 55.9.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Business

FABIAN KIRCHBAUER / BMW

End your commute with a scoot

ini has been riling the purists for years with its cars that are anything but mini (Robert Lea writes). However, the supersizing of the British motor favourite under the ownership of BMW now makes sense. Mini has produced an electric scooter to fit into the boot of its cars. The

Citysurfer is aimed at motorists who are expecting to be increasingly shut out from inner-city driving. The foldable 40lb scooter, which has a top speed of 15mph and a range of 15 miles off a charge from a household electric socket, is also handy to carry on public transport and can be used for the final mile of the daily commute. Mini has yet to reveal pricing details on the scooter but it is likely to form part of a package for new Mini buyers.

Robert Lea

Silent hydrogen-powered cars are making all the noise in California Robert Lea Industrial Editor

Hydrogen is everywhere. That is what the chemists say, and at the Los Angeles Auto Show cars that run silently on the fuel of the future are making themselves heard among the high-performance speedsters and bulky 4x4s beloved of West Coast America. After the big splash in the run-up to the show by Toyota with the launch of the Mirai, the world’s first showroomready hydrogen fuel-cell car, other manufacturers are making sure that the push for the ultimate alternatively fuelled vehicle is not a one-horse race. Audi, the luxury end of the Volkswagen group, unveiled the A7 Sportback h-tron quattro, a hydrogen fuel-cell version of its e-tron plug-in hybrid electric car. The h-tron is still a concept car, but Rupert Stadler, chairman of Audi, said work is far enough advanced that, apart from producing zero carbon emissions, it can reach 60mph in 7.8 seconds. It makes the car nearly a couple of sec-

6 The biggest wow at the LA Auto Show was something altogether more conventional: a German luxury limousine to take on the best produced from the British factories of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Daimler has resurrected the Maybach brand, which it had ditched when the cars it produced were written off as “thirdworld dictator chic”. It has launched the 18-foot-long Mercedes Maybach, which is essentially a Mercedes S Class, beloved of many top executives but stretched and everything inside smelling of wood and leather.

British motor industry hits the brakes on Continent

onds quicker than the Mirai, suggesting Audi believes that in the world of guilt-free motoring, people will still want high performance. Honda had been racing Toyota to get a production-ready model of its FCV fuel-cell vehicle to LA, but John Mendel, the group’s US chief, conceded that it would not make its debut until the Detroit motor show in January. This means that while the Mirai goes on sale in Japan next month, Honda will not be on the road until spring. Another big manufacturer moving on with hydrogen, the zero-emission fuel that enables cars to go at least three times as far as the best lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles, is MercedesBenz. It put up a futuristic G-Code concept car in China this month, but insiders admit it “will remain on the internet” for some time yet. California is the market on which all the manufacturers are focused and why the LA Auto Show is “Hydrogen Central”. Alberto Ayala, deputy head of the Air Resources Board, California’s

environment quango, said that this was because the state “has been the environmental leader for the last 47 years. With our zero-emission mandate, we are developing policies that limit emissions from cars and trucks, but do it in a way that promotes innovation. We had found, however, that we could not resolve the chicken-and-egg question”. This is the conundrum of getting car makers to produce hydrogen vehicles when there is no fuelling infrastructure. It is being resolved by California investing $200 million in setting up a 100-strong filling-station network to ensure that the state hits its target of 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on its roads next year, or about one in ten cars. Toyota and Honda have put up $20 million of funding between them to back the project. Dr Ayala said: “We will do whatever it takes to hit our targets, but to succeed in California, [hydrogen car makers and infrastructure suppliers] need to succeed everywhere else, as that way we all benefit from the economies of scale.”

The British motor industry has scored an unwelcome hat-trick with the production of cars, vans and engines all down this autumn, and the Continent is taking the blame. Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show that the figure of 150,060 cars built in Britain last month was down by nearly 7 per cent year on year. It also dragged the year-to-date figure into negative territory, with 1.28 million built in the first ten months, down marginally on the same period last year. This year was supposed to be a boom year for British car production with the launch of the new Nissan Qashqai in Sunderland and the new four-door Mini hatchback at Cowley, the most productive car plants in the country. It was hoped that these vehicles would help Britain to hit record production levels within three years to overtake previous peaks in the heyday of the Ford Cortina and the Vauxhall Viva in the early 1970s. However, four in five cars built in Britain are bound for export, with half of those going to the Continent, the sick man of the global economy. John Leech, automotive expert at KPMG, the accountancy firm, suspects moribund volumes in continental markets to be part of the problem. “The surprising fall in UK car production in October was due to weakening export demand and a higher amount of lost production days arising from supplier issues,” he said. “I do not expect this downward trend to continue as planned model launches should see UK production rising towards two million cars sold in 2017.” SMMT data showed engine manufacturing down 17 per cent last month and off by more than 6 per cent for the year so far at 2.03 million. Ford is Britain’s biggest engine producer. The manufacturing of commercial vehicles is still in a slump since Ford’s decision to quit making the Transit in Southampton. The numbers, which now rely heavily on the Vauxhall Vivaro built in Luton, showed a fall of 9 per cent last month and down 23 per cent in the year to date.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

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Business Markets companies news

Martin Waller Tempus Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips

Bleaker forecasts than the weather

Dyson’s £1.5bn for R&D

Centrica share price 2014

350p 340 330

Source: Thomson Reuters

320

centrica Expected 2015 dividend 18.1p

310 300 290

280

ne commentator was complaining that MY ADVICE Avoid Centrica was behaving WHY The earnings per share in too erratic a manner figure is approaching the for a utility; these businesses are meant to have dull dividend payment, putting profit streams and predictable some questions over whether dividend income. the yield can be maintained The latest profit warning is certainly not what one would expect from one of the regulated water companies, say. Yet Centrica is not a cent fall in its share of UK nuclear utility, but an integrated energy output. company that seeks gas in the North Centrica certainly managed to Sea, provides it and electricity to cram as many negatives as its customers, and installs and possible into the statement, services their boilers. including a reduction in the This means that it is expected output this year 19p-20p vulnerable to the price of from its gasfields because Expected eps for of pipeline constraints in oil and gas, the amount of this year power users need and its the Netherlands sector. ability to supply services The main concern is over efficiently. The main concern the prospects for next year over the latest warning and, by extension, for the is not that the continuing warm dividend. Centrica has promised that weather has hit profits this earnings will rise in 2015 and, year. That should already have assuming more normal weather been known, and likewise the 4 per patterns, this should be a given. babcock international Revenue £2.1bn

Dividend 5.5p

he coalition has just about doubled the amount it has spent on outsourcing, against Labour’s total, since it came to power. Among the beneficiaries has been Babcock International, which has specialised in defence. Only this week the company was made preferred bidder, beating two American rivals, for the work maintaining the MoD’s military vehicles, a contract reckoned to be worth £2 billion or more over 15 years. A further army logistics contract is due to be awarded over

Dyson, the vacuum cleaner and hand-dryer producer, is to invest £1.5 billion in research and development and new facilities over the next four years. This will include a £250 million expansion of its technology base at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, scheduled to open in 2016. It will be bolstered by £50 million headed for British universities that are helping Dyson in its twintrack programmes of developing more efficient and powerful motors and getting into robotics.

johnson matthey

Foot off the gas

the next few weeks. Analysts covering the outsourcing sector, though, are turning their minds to the effect of the coming election, and even a Labour government, on future workflows. For Babcock, the answer would seem to be minimal, despite the 60 per cent of revenues that come from the public sector, because the areas it focuses on are unlikely to be kept in the public sector. The halfway figures suggest no looming problems. Work is being shunted from the pending drawer on to the order book, which has risen by £5 billion to £18.5 billion since July. The most encouraging news came from Avincis, the helicopter operator

£500m

Book value of three larger CCGT plants

Revenue £4.8bn

Dividend 18.5p

s the effects of the lower pound against the dollar start Number of residential to wash through into company 15m energy accounts on results, we will see some sharp supply recoveries from the falls caused by its strength. Some of the first evidence Barrels oil equivalent 80m for this comes from Johnson Expected production Matthey. The chemicals specialist in 2014 said in July that forex would reduce Expected capital £1bn operating profits by £25 million in spending in 2014 the year to the end of March. It now says that the effect would be limited Fall in Centrica’s share to £16 million, the extent of the 4% of UK nuclear output reduction in the first half. So full-year profits will be up on last time, rather than little Yet it has warned that the changed. Much of this will follow me impact of lower oil and gas come from that currency on twitter prices on its upstream effect. JM is a collection of for updates businesses, plus a change in specialist businesses @MartinWaller10 moving in different the tax regime governing these, will significantly offset directions. Its emission any gains, including from a full control technologies side is year of ownership of the Irish Bord moving ahead, underlying profits Gáis Energy, bought in the spring. up by 25 per cent, on the back of It is pushing ahead with disposals, tighter regulation in Europe and including interests in Trinidad and greater efficiencies at its plants. Tobago and three gas stations in the First-half performance looks UK. The warning, though, had pedestrian, pre-tax profits up 3 per analysts scaling back on their cent at £207.8 million. Strip out oneforecasts of earnings for next year. offs, such as the end of a contract One was looking for a 10 per cent with Anglo American, and the cut, to perhaps 21p. underlying figure is up 10 per cent. This would indeed be an increase, The shares added 189p to £33.41. but it would be sailing uncomfortably They sell on 19 times earnings; worth close to the projected 18.1p dividend tucking away, as growth in its core that year, which provides the markets looks set to continue. shares, off 4¾p at 294p, with the support of a 6 per cent yield. Add in uncertainties such as Labour’s MY ADVICE Buy for long term possible tariff freeze and the WHY Further growth competition inquiry into energy expected in core markets supply, and this suggests the shares are best avoided for now. bought in the spring. This was seen as risky by some, but the £53.8 million maiden contribution was well ahead of expectations. This left pre-tax profits ahead by 32 per cent to £187 million, and the dividend is up by 9 per cent. A degree of relief sent the shares 66p higher at £11.84. They sell on 17 times earnings, not cheap, but are among the most reliable in the sector. Buy for further recovery.

MY ADVICE Buy WHY Concerns over Avincis acquisition overdone

Goldman dismissals Goldman Sachs has dismissed two members of staff after a junior employee allegedly passed confidential information from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, his former employer, to a senior colleague. The Wall Street giant said that the incident, which happened in September, was immediately reported to its compliance team, regulators and the New York Fed, and an internal investigation launched.

Annual forecast lifted Johnson Matthey, the world’s biggest maker of catalytic converters, lifted its forecast for the year after worldwide demand for environmentally friendly cars rose. Pre-tax profits for the halfyear to September 30 rose 3 per cent to £207.8 million with nonprecious metals sales up 2 per cent to £1.5 billion. Total revenue fell 25 per cent to £4.8 billion. Shares in Johnson Matthey rose 5.9 per cent to £33.41.

Babcock bounds ahead Babcock International, whose biggest customer is the Ministry of Defence, marked a near-30 per cent rise in first half pre-tax profit to £137 million with a 10 per cent lift in the interim dividend to 5.5p a share. The defence, support services and engineering contractor is the preferred bidder for the sale of the MoD’s business that looks after equipment for land forces. The shares closed 5.9 per cent higher at £11.84.

And finally . . .

wrote about John Laing Environmental Assets Group, or JLEAG, when it came to the market in the spring. This is another of those infrastructure funds. It has the right to buy, as the name suggests, power and waste assets developed by John Laing, and all the proceeds from the IPO have been invested. As ever with such funds, you know what you are getting. JLEAG has announced a first halfway dividend of 3p and is promising the same at the final stage. This puts the shares on a reliable yield of 5.6 per cent.

For the latest breaking news thetimes.co.uk/ business

PRICES Major Indices New York Dow Jones Nasdaq Composite S&P 500

London Financial Futures 17719.00 (+33.27) 4701.87 (+26.16) 2052.75 (+4.03)

Tokyo Nikkei 225

17300.86 (+12.11)

Hong Kong Hang Seng

23349.64 (-23.67)

Amsterdam AEX Index Sydney AO Frankfurt DAX

416.81 (-0.98) 5302.50 (-50.00) 9483.97 (+11.17)

Singapore Straits

3315.60 (-18.96)

Brussels BEL20

3193.24 (-17.77)

Paris CAC-40

4234.21 (-31.98)

Zurich SMI Index DJ EURO Stoxx 50

8989.94 (+6.42) 3102.21 (-20.91)

London FTSE 100 6678.90 (-17.70) FTSE 250 15604.52 (+2.64) FTSE 350 3630.05 (-8.06) FTSE Eurotop 100 2748.23 (-8.91) FTSE All-Shares 3564.14 (-7.74) FTSE Non Financials 4153.01 (-4.85) techMARK 100 3327.31 (+9.02) Bargains 1067682 US$ 1.5702 (+0.0033) Euro 1.2512 (+0.0018) £:SDR 1.07 (+0.00) Exchange Index 86.4 (+0.2) Bank of England official close (4pm) CPI 128.40 Sep (2005 = 100) RPI 257.60 Sep (Jan 1987 = 100) RPIX 257.10 Sep (Jan 1987 = 100) Morningstar Long Commodity 815.16 (+0.29) Morningstar Long/Short Commod 4551.34 (+19.67)

Long Gilt 3-Mth Sterling

3-Mth Euribor

3-Mth Euroswiss

2 Year Swapnote 5 Year Swapnote 10 Year Swapnote FTSE100 FTSEurofirst 80

Period Dec 14 Mar 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Jun 15 Sep 15 Dec 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Jun 15 Sep 15 Dec 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Jun 15 Sep 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Dec 14 Mar 15 Dec 14 Mar 15

Open 116.37 115.52 99.440 99.380 99.290 99.160 99.000 99.900 99.900 99.905 99.905 99.885 100.04 100.09 100.11 100.11 111.54 127.44 147.52 6688.5 6629.0 3924.5

High 116.96 116.10 99.440 99.390 99.310 99.190 99.040 99.910 99.910 99.920 99.920 99.905 100.05 100.10 100.12 100.13 111.55 111.56 127.55 100.00 147.95 100.00 6698.5 6630.0 3924.5

Commodities Low 116.35 115.52 99.430 99.370 99.290 99.160 99.000 99.900 99.895 99.900 99.895 99.880 100.04 100.08 100.10 100.11 111.54 111.55 127.44 100.00 147.51 100.00 6642.5 6587.0 3924.5

Sett 116.67 115.83 99.430 99.380 99.300 99.180 99.030 99.905 99.905 99.915 99.915 99.900 100.05 100.09 100.12 100.12 111.55 111.55 127.53 127.53 148.00 148.00 6678.0 6622.5 4097.0 4098.0

Vol 172426 9812 6143 39000 36167 38099 59695 38719 37827 42009 31218 32253 2544 5905 2742 2728 450 104 404 3 106 3 76414 140 1

Open Int 426644 1212 385574 426405 485225 335890 358513 478060 401038 354183 329512 314886 67898 81674 57811 25823 22138 11408 5147 575391 19401 76

Feb

ICIS pricing (London 7.30pm) Crude Oils ($/barrel FOB) Brent Physical Brent 25 day (Jan) Brent 25 day (Feb) W Texas Intermed (Jan) W Texas Intermed (Feb)

78.40 79.25 79.65 75.85 75.85

+1.80 +1.20 +1.15 +1.35 +1.40

Products ($/MT) 753.00 701.75 395.50 627.00

754.00 703.75 397.50 633.00

+0.00 -1.75 -3.50 -4.00

unq 699.00-698.75 696.00-695.75

Brent (9.00pm) Dec unq Jan 79.32-79.29

Cocoa Dec Mar May Jul Sep Dec

unq unq unq unq unq unq

Mar May Jul

Nov Jan Mar May

unq unq unq unq

Jul Sep

unq unq unq Volume: 14341

Feb Mar

707.75-707.00 BID Volume: 178142

Mar Apr

80.30-80.22 81.00-80.69

unq unq Volume: 9895

White Sugar (FOB) Reuters

ICE Futures Gas Oil Nov Dec Jan

Volume: 751373

RobustaCoffee

Spot CIF NW Europe (prompt delivery) Premium Unld Gasoil EEC 3.5 Fuel Oil Naphtha

79.76-79.70

LIFFE

Dec Mar May

unq unq unq

Aug Oct Dec Mar

unq unq unq unq Volume: 2790

London Grain Futures LIFFE Wheat (close £/t) Nov May

123.40 131.50

Jan Jul

125.75 132.20

Mar 128.70 Volume: 258

the times | Friday November 21 2014

FGM

Markets Business

PETER DENTON / GETTY IMAGES

Outsourcery flies high on cloud of computer magic Gary Parkinson Market report

deal with Microsoft magicked Outsourcery to the top of AIM. This is the IT company known almost exclusively for its co-chief executive, Piers Linney, that chap on Dragons’ Den. And now it can take over the billing relationship with Office 365 customers, one of the few UK cloud computing companies to be blessed by the American software behemoth with that privilege. It’s a privilege that chivvied the shares a thumping 46.3 per cent higher to 15p. Nothing quoted in London fared better. Before organising the ticker tape parade, however, it is worth remembering that these are shares that floated at 112p last year, helped to market by

insurance claims

Quindell fire sale that wasn’t

hen you’re under this much pressure, any relief is a blessing. Quindell, the insurance claims processor/software company/legal business (you choose) hit by controversies culminating in share purchases by directors that turned out to be share sales, categorically denied that it was “actively seeking to sell its shares in Nationwide Accident Repair Services”. Phew. Not that market professionals thought it had been. Quindell owns more than 25 per cent of the

Wall Street report Stocks edged up in late afternoon trading to another record close as data showed further strength in the American economy and Intel gave an upbeat forecast. The Dow Jones industrial average closed 33.21 points higher at 17,718.94.

Young’s can toast Indian summer as profits rise

ritain’s Indian summer may have hurt retailers and energy companies, but not Young & Co’s Brewery, which credited the balmy weather with helping to drive a 26.2 per cent rise in profits (Deirdre Hipwell writes). The brewery group said punters flocking to quaff pints at its many riverside pubs with “attractive beer

gardens” during the long, warm summer had lifted pre-tax profits to £18.8 million on revenue up nearly 8 per cent to £116.6 million in the six months to September 29. Young’s said it had enjoyed a strong total and like-for-like sales performance across both its managed estate and its hotel division, and recorded a return to growth in its tenanted pub estate, recently relaunched as the Ram Pub Company. Not even the shock announcement this week that MPs have voted to scrap the beer tie that has

AHDB meat services Average fatstock prices at representative markets (p/kg lw) Pig Lamb Cattle GB 90.73 173.96 187.52 (+/-) -6.54 +0.57 -0.09 Eng/Wales (+/-) Scotland (+/-)

90.73 -6.54

174.12 +0.81

186.84 +0.09

unq

172.18 -1.96

204.43 +5.00

London Metal Exchange (Official) Cash

3mth

15mth

Copper Gde A ($/tonne) 6686.0-6688.0 6620.0-6621.0

7310.0-7320.0

Lead ($/tonne) 2016.5-2017.0

2020.0-2022.0

1980.0-1985.0

Zinc Spec Hi Gde ($/tonne) 2236.0-2236.5 2245.0-2245.5

1943.0-1948.0

Tin ($/tonne) 19750.0-19775.0

19775.0-19800.0

Alum Hi Gde ($/tonne) 2016.5-2017.0 2010.0-2011.0 Nickel ($/tonne) 16170.0-16175.0 16245.0-16250.0

19805.0-19855.0 2280.0-2285.0 18770.0-18870.0

existed for hundreds of years dampened the mood of Stephen Goodyear, the chief executive of Young’s, who said: “We are delighted to report another period of very strong trading. Fundamentally, our continued like-forlike growth comes from having highquality, well-invested pubs and hotels in a range of great locations, with premium food and drink.” Young’s has increased its interim dividend by 6 per cent to 7.9p a share and its shares closed up by nearly 4.4 per cent at £10.25.

Gold/Precious metals (US dollars per ounce) Bullion: Open $1181.90 Close $1191.30-1191.60 High $1196.90 Low $1176.61 AM $1194.00 PM $1190.00 Krugerrand $1179.00-1251.00 (£751.23-797.10) Platinum $1210.00 (£770.98) Silver $16.20 (£10.32) Palladium $775.00 (£493.81)

Investec, and peaked at 128p. Frankfurt ground out the most They are also still trading far modest of gains. outside the 20p level at In London, Babcock follow us which funds were raised International was on track on twitter only in August. and 66p higher at £11.84. for updates Outsourcery did expunge @timesbusiness Orders are growing at the its name from the list of defence contractor; so is the members of the infamous dividend. Better still, Johnson “90 per cent club”, just, in a stock Matthey jumped 189p to £33.41, to market that fluttered lower. Again. A the top of the Footsie. Tougher rules lacklustre FTSE 100 drifted off a to protect the environment helped further 17.7 points to 6,678.9. More the maker of catalytic converters to soggy economic data from China and deliver higher profits at the half-year. the eurozone were to blame. Richard Edwards, of Citi, trimmed A closely watched barometer of his forecast for Sports Direct China’s manufacturing sector slipped International’s annual earnings by to its lowest in six months, keeping up £15 million to £293 million. The recent the pressure on iron ore and mining warm weather and its planned shares, which dominated the Footsie’s spending spree were the catalyst. In biggest fallers. Rio Tinto lost 77p to response, Mike Ashley’s trainers £28.65, and BHP Billiton fell 42½p to empire lost 15½p to 638p. £15.82½. Other shares were marked lower A survey of manufacturing and the after they started to trade without services industry across Europe rights to the next dividend. National showed the most anaemic growth in Grid and J Sainsbury were among 16 months. Like London, Paris, Milan them, off 24½p to 936p and 4½p to and Madrid were under water. 258p respectively.

Dollar rates Australia Canada Denmark Euro Hong Kong Japan Malaysia Norway Singapore Sweden Switzerland

1.1606-1.1606 1.1297-1.1298 5.9370-5.9374 0.7977-0.7977 7.7559-7.7568 118.11-118.11 3.3625-3.3645 6.7592-6.7601 1.3001-1.3006 7.4019-7.4036 0.9587-0.9588

Argentina peso Australia dollar Bahrain dinar Brazil real Euro Hong Kong dollar India rupee Indonesia rupiah Kuwait dinar KD Malaysia ringgit New Zealand dollar Singapore dollar S Africa rand U A E dirham

13.358-13.370 1.8213-1.8215 0.5876-0.5951 4.0377-4.0534 1.2518-1.2521 12.172-12.174 97.094-97.295 18980-19005 0.4554-0.4579 5.1823-5.3826 1.9971-1.9976 2.0401-2.0412 17.182-17.209 5.7611-5.7674

2 mth

3 mth

1mth

3mth

6mth

12mth

0.10

0.15

0.23

0.48

0.50

0.56

0.69

0.98

-0.13

-0.05

0.05

0.21

Sterling Euro

6 mth

12 mth

0.5048

0.5296

0.5574

0.6859

0.9846

Clearer CDs

0.58-0.43

0.60-0.45

0.65-0.50

0.80-0.65

1.07-0.92

Depo CDs

0.58-0.43

0.60-0.45

0.65-0.50

0.80-0.65

1.07-0.92

Eurodollar Deps

0.10-0.20

0.18-0.38

0.23-0.43

0.35-0.55

0.55-0.74

Eurodollar CDs

0.15-0.08

0.18-0.12

0.22-0.15

0.36-0.21

0.52-0.38

Sterling spot and forward rates

Dollar

Finally, trading in African Minerals’ shares was suspended while funding talks continue. As AIM aficionados will recall, this is the West African iron ore miner whose chairman is Vasile (Frank) Timis, the colourful Romanian entrepreneur. Excitement about its Tonkolili iron ore project in Sierra Leone once made it AIM’s most valuable company. In 2011, Bank of America Merrill Lynch slapped a “blue skies” valuation of £19.50 on shares that yesterday stood at 10p, laid low by ebola, corporate governance issues and the tanking iron ore price. This month, Mr Timis completed his takeover of London Mining’s assets. London Mining, which also operates in Sierra Leone, collapsed into administration last month. African Minerals operates a mine not far from London Mining’s Marampa operation in west Africa. As expected, the deal was carried out through Timis Corporation, rather than the quoted African Minerals.

Money rates %

1 mth

Currency

£32 million business that fixes pranged motors. Earlier this week, Westhouse, Nationwide’s broker, gazed on at the latest car crash at Quindell and wondered whether now might be an opportune time for

Base Rates Clearing Banks 0.5 Finance House 1.0 ECB Refi 0.05 US Fed Fund 0-0.25 Halifax Mortgage Rate 3.5 Treasury Bills (Dis) Buy: 1 mth 0.40; 3 mth 0.43. Sell: 1 mth 0.31; 3 mth 0.38

Interbank Rates

European money deposits %

Details were sought, but Quindell still has its Nationwide shares

Mkt Rates for Copenhagen Euro Montreal New York Oslo Stockholm Tokyo Zurich

Range 9.2734-9.3337 1.2542-1.2461 1.7719-1.7802 1.5633-1.5735 10.592-10.673 11.398-11.637 184.99-186.09 1.4961-1.5063

Close 9.3163-9.3189 1.2520-1.2519 1.7728-1.7734 1.5693-1.5694 10.606-10.611 11.615-11.621 185.35-185.36 1.5045-1.5050

1 month 44ds 4pr 8pr 4ds 107pr 36ds 9ds 7ds Premium = pr

3 month 139ds 11pr 27pr 11ds 276pr 104ds 34ds 29ds Discount = ds

Other Sterling

that stake in its client to change hands. Westhouse quietly sounded out potential buyers, at a thumping discount to Nationwide’s prevailing market price, naturally. As reported, once Quindell caught wind, any potential share sale was swiftly pulled. To offload that stake now would smack of a fire sale. No fire sale, then, was enough for Quindell’s shares to surge/soar/roar (you choose) by 10.8 per cent to 53¾p. They were 551p in March. Nationwide’s dipped 4p to 70½p.

Exchange rates Australia $ Canada $ Denmark Kr Egypt Euro ¤ Hong Kong $ Hungary Indonesia Israel Shk Japan Yen New Zealand $ Norway Kr Poland Russia S Africa Rd Sweden Kr Switzerland Fr Turkey Lira USA $

Bank buys Bank sells 1.980 1.720 1.940 1.680 9.990 8.760 12.350 9.830 1.360 1.190 13.060 11.490 418.520 344.330 21907.400 17474.500 6.600 0.000 199.540 172.810 2.230 1.890 11.550 9.980 5.820 4.770 79.030 65.810 19.220 16.280 12.360 10.990 1.650 1.420 3.870 3.090 1.710 1.500

Rates for banknotes and traveller's cheques as traded by Royal Bank of Scotland plc yesterday

Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication

FGM

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Film director who struck gold with The Graduate Mike Nichols thetimes.co.uk/obituaries

Obituaries

The Duchess of Alba

Spanish aristocrat whose unmatched collection of titles, fabulous wealth and colourful love life made her a staple of the gossip columns TIME LIFE PICTURES. BELOW LEFT: SEAN THORTON/WENN.COM

Not only was she one of Europe’s wealthiest and most eccentric aristocrats, but the 18th Duchess of Alba held more titles than any other noble in the world. She had more than 40 all told, including being five times a duchess and 29 times a countess. So illustrious was the duchess’s lineage that she was said to outrank the Queen, thus posing a potential nightmare for any hostess foolish enough to invite them both to dinner. The duchess would arguably have taken precedence and protocol would demand that the Queen bow to her. In fact the two were childhood friends and the duchess herself scoffed at the suggestion. “This is literature,” she said. When they met again at a gala dinner in 1988 in Madrid, the duchess dutifully bowed. A descendant of King James II (via his illegitimate son, the Duke of Berwick), the duchess was distantly related to Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales. Had the recent Scottish referendum ended differently, her connection to the Stuart dynasty would have given her a claim to the Scottish throne. Her peripatetic childhood meant she was fluent in five languages and, in 1955, she wrote a letter to The Times claiming her right to use the title of Duchess of Berwick when in England. “I should like to take advantage of the hospitality of your columns to call attention to the fact that on November 23, 1954, the Boletín Oficial del Estado published the decree of the Head of the Spanish State recognising my right to succeed all the titles of my late father . . . among these is that of Berwick.” The duchess’s fortune was estimated at €3.5 billion (£2.75bn). She owned so many estates that it was said she could travel from the northernmost point of Spain down to the south coast without ever stepping off her own land. Her homes included the Liria Palace in Madrid, the Dueñas Palace in Seville and a beach house in Marbella. Among her possessions were

She fell in love with a bull-fighter but was forbidden to marry Christopher Columbus’s first map of the Americas, a first edition of Don Quixote, and the last will and testament of the medieval monarch Ferdinand the Catholic. Her extensive art collection included a number of paintings by Velázquez and a portrait by Goya of the 13th Duchess of Alba, her late 18th-century namesake who was rumoured to have been the artist’s lover. In the Fifties Pablo Picasso asked the duchess to pose naked for his version of Goya’s masterpiece, but she declined. Much of her vast patrimony — including the 50,000 pieces of art and 18,000 books housed in her palace in Madrid — was owned by the House of Alba Foundation, and cannot be sold without permission from the Spanish ministry for culture. A flamboyant character who was nicknamed the “rebel noble”, she became a constant in the pages of Spain’s gossip magazines. Even late in life her wild hair and eye-popping outfits provided copy for the columns. Rumours abounded of facelifts, lip injections and

Napoleon III’s bride Empress Eugénie. The newlyweds enjoyed a six-month honeymoon, travelling around Europe and America. They had six children: Carlos, the Duke of Huéscar; Alfonso, the Duke of Aliaga; Jacobo, the Count of Siruela; Fernando, the Marquis of San Vicente del Barco; Cayetano, the Count de Salvatierra; and Eugenia, the Duchess de Montoro. A court awarded the duchess more than $400,000 in damages from a Spanish television company which had alleged Fernando was the son of the flamenco dancer Antonio el Bailarín, who claimed that he had a passionate extramarital affair with the duchess. After her husband died of cancer in 1972, she began a relationship with Jesús Aguirre y Ortiz de Zárate, an illegitimate ex-Jesuit priest who became a director of music in the Spanish ministry of culture. Their first meeting was

After her third wedding she broke her pelvis on her honeymoon

The duchess and her father, left, at her first wedding, to Don Pedro Luis Martínez de Irujo, in 1947. It was said to be the most expensive wedding in the world. Below, her third wedding in 2011 was opposed by some of her children

Botox; once a famed beauty, she denied having any cosmetic surgery, though her appearance suggested otherwise. María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay was born in 1926 in Madrid. From childhood she was known as Cayetana, or simply “Tana”. She learnt to ski aged three and developed a passion for flamenco. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was eight; three years later, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, her father, the 17th Duke of Alba, took her with him to London where he served as Spain’s ambassador to Britain. She attended a convent school in Kensington and “kept house” for her father at the embassy in Belgrave Square. In 1945 the duke resigned as ambassador after Don Juan de Borbón, the son of Spain’s last monarch, Alfonso XIII, published a manifesto urging General Franco, the country’s

fascist leader, to acknowledge a democratic monarchy and encouraging those royalists employed by his government to give up their jobs. At the age of 14, she appeared on the cover of the British magazine Modern Girl, to promote an interview inside with her father. Seven thousand guests attended her coming-out party and in 1947, she married the naval officer Don Pedro Luis Martínez de Irujo, a son of the Duke of Sotomayor. The duchess (by then she held the title of Duchess of Montoro) had allegedly fallen in love with a bull-fighter, Pepe Luis Vázquez, but her father forbade the match. The wedding was acclaimed as the last feudal marriage in Europe, overshadowing in the global press the wedding of Princess Elizabeth Windsor to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten which took place the following month. The French newspaper Libération claimed it had been “the most expensive wedding in the world” said to have had cost more than 20 million pesetas. Her satin wedding dress was inspired by that of

not a success. “Cayetana said I was like drying paper,” he recalled. “I thought she was gorgeous but utterly impossible.” Aguirre even sent love poems he had written for the duchess to Julio Iglesias in the hope that he might set them to music. Iglesias refused because they were too explicit. They married in 1978. Aguirre, with the duchess’s eldest son Carlos, managed the foundation of the House of Alba. “I rise with El Alba — the dawn — and La Alba — the female Alba,” he once quipped. Seven years after his death, the duchess, aged 83, began a relationship with Alfonso Díez Carabantes, 24 years her junior. The King of Spain was said to have made a personal phone call to the duchess “discouraging” her from marrying him. Her children made no secret of their distaste for the match, something the duchess complained about in the press. She pointed out that all of her six children’s marriages had ended with divorce — “They change partners more often than I do”. In 2011, in order to silence their objections to her impending wedding, she officially split her patrimony between them and Díez renounced any claim to her wealth. She still, however, retained control of her assets and, in an interview with ¡Hola! magazine, denied that she had been pressured into dividing up her estate. She married Díez in Seville, and after the ceremony kicked off her shoes in the street, to dance flamenco as the crowds cried “guapa! guapa!”. But the duchess broke her pelvis during the honeymoon, which fuelled more jokes about her active love life. With her bizarre antics and colourful personal life, she made sure she could not easily be forgotten. She attributed her success with men to her cheerful character. “Every good love story should end with a wedding,” she said. The Duchess of Alba, Spanish aristocrat, was born on March 28, 1926. She died of pneumonia on November 20, 2014, aged 88

the times | Friday November 21 2014

FGM

Jimmy Ruffin

Soul singer who delivered a classic hit with What Becomes of the Brokenhearted but felt neglected by the Motown label Jimmy Ruffin was one of the most potent singers to emerge from the golden era of American soul music. A product of the Motown “hit factory”, his memorably aching 1966 hit What Becomes of the Brokenhearted defined the anguished soul ballad, the song’s sorrowful vocal, melodramatic arrangement and insistent, building rhythm creating a template for the genre. Further chart success followed as, in the proud boast of Motown’s advertising slogan, the label became “the sound of young America”. But just as the Motown hit machine made Ruffin’s career, it almost broke him as he lost out to more favoured artists on the label. “I felt I wasn’t getting the right kind of promotion and follow-through,” Ruffin said when he left the label in 1970. “The company just didn’t seem interested.” Nor did his desire to steer his own path sit well at a label noted for expecting subservience from its artists. and controlling every aspect of their careers. That he felt undervalued was in part down to the success of his younger brother David, who enjoyed a string of hits as lead singer with the Temptations. Yet there was no jealousy between them and Ruffin turned down an invitation to join the Temptations in favour of a solo career and recommended his sibling. “He [Jimmy] was underrated because we were also fortunate to have David, who got so much acclaim,” Motown’s founder Berry Gordy admitted. But Gordy added that What Becomes of the Brokenhearted was “one of the greatest songs put out by Motown and one of my personal favourites”. Ruffin later moved to Britain, where What Becomes of the Brokenhearted made the top ten for a second time on its reissue in 1974 as he rebuilt his career

on the cabaret circuit. He returned to the limelight in 1980 with the help of Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, who wrote and produced his top ten hit Hold On To My Love. However, a British tour four years later had to be abandoned when Ruffin was arrested at Detroit airport for having a gun in his luggage. His management explained that it was quite normal for him to carry a gun in his home city and “he inadvertently packed it in his suitcase”. A determined but sensitive man, Ruffin was discomforted by the pressures of celebrity ty. “Suddenly you’re mo moving up in society, go going to places you’re not really prepared for, bey beyond your own race, cu culture and class,” he ob observed. “I never wa wanted to be a professional singer. I wasn’t ambitious. It was just that I loved singing.” At the height of his fame in 1966 he confe fessed to enjoying wo working with numbers. “I find a fascination in working with mathematic mathematical problems. It seems to relax me, me,” he said. Jimmy Lee Ruffin wa was born in 1936 in Co Collinsville, Mississippi. His love of music ca came from his father Eli, a sharecropper and la lay preacher who sang in a gospel group group. His father’s voice was the only music he heard, for there was no electricity in the house. He toured with his father as part of a family gospel group and in his teens also briefly with brother David as a gospel duo, before he was drafted into the US army. He enjoyed life as a GI and resolved to pursue a military career; but while serving in Germany he also began singing with a group that performed at bases across Europe. “We had little plastic recorders so that you could send a message back home. I recorded myself playing guitar and singing Sam Cooke’s Only Sixteen. I played it back and darn if I didn’t sound better

REX

Ruffin in 1974 when his best-known song was a hit in Britain for the second time

than Sam. So I began to think maybe I could do it.” On his return to America in 1959, he took a job on the production line at the Ford plant in Detroit, the “Motor City”, where Gordy’s nascent Motown label was based. Two years later the singer Mary Wells secured him an audition. “I

didn’t necessarily want to be discovered,” he recalled. “But I went and sang for Berry Gordy, who said, ‘We’ll sign him up and record everything he’s got’ .” But after a debut single it was three years before the label released anything else in his name and Ruffin continued to work on the production line while

Motown decided what to do with him. By the time What Becomes of the Brokenhearted came out, he had released just three singles in five years. The song had been written for the Detroit Spinners, but Ruffin lobbied hard to record the song and eventually won his battle. “The Isley Brothers were going to cut it and Diana Ross heard it and said she wanted to do it with the Supremes,” he explained. “Fortunately, they put my version out and I didn’t need to go back to the car plant.” Despite the record’s success in making the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic, Ruffin felt that Motown executives continued to prioritise other stars. The prolific in-house writing team of Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian Holland and Eddie Holland ensured that there was no shortage of hit songs, but to Ruffin’s frustration he was seldom given first pick of them. He recorded the first demo of Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, only for Gordy to decide to give the song to the Temptations. He was even more upset when Motown declined to release his recording of Maria (You Were The Only One), which he was convinced was hit. Instead the label kept the song back until 1972, when it was given to the youthful Michael Jackson. After reviving his career in Britain, where he lived for almost 30 years, he went on to record in the 1980s with Paul Weller and Heaven 17. He became a vocal anti-drugs campaigner following the death in 1991 of his brother David from a cocaine overdose, which he blamed on the pressures of the music industry. He later returned to America and lived the last few years of his life in Las Vegas. He is survived by five children: Philicia, Jimmy Lee Ruffin Jnr, Arlet, Ophelia and Camilla. His one-off collaboration with Weller was called the Council Collective and their song Soul Deep raised money for striking miners. As the record climbed the charts, however, Ruffin claimed he had no idea of its political message. “I am not a socialist,” he protested. “If I had known that the song was going to preach such a revolutionary message I would not have got involved.” Jimmy Ruffin, singer, was born on May 7, 1936. He died on November 17, 2014, aged 78

Siegfried Lenz German author who confronted the silence over his country’s Nazi past and wrote subtle reflections on issues of guilt He may have had less of a public and international profile than contemporaries such as Günter Grass, but Siegfried Lenz was one of the most influential German authors of his generation. He wrote numerous novels, essays and pieces for theatre and radio; his work was translated into 30 languages and sold an estimated 25 million copies. Readers appreciated Lenz’s reflective characterisation and intense feel for the landscape of northern Europe, and his ability to engage with moral issues of guilt and power. His subtle but candid exploration of his country’s Nazi past made him a highly significant figure as Germans belatedly engaged with the darkest period of their history. It was his novel Deutschstunde (The German Lesson), published in 1968, that made Lenz’s name, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and adopted as a key text in debate about how the barbarism of the Third Reich had been possible. It used the device of a younger German, held in a youth detention centre after the war, who was told to write an essay on the pleasures of duty.

FELICITAS/INTERFOTO/WRITER PICTURES

He reflects on the idea of duty as seen in his father, a policeman in an isolated northern coastal town who was ordered to enforce a painting ban on his best friend — an artist whose work had been classified by the Nazi authorities as “degenerate”.

Rather than a cruder portrayal of ideology or bigotry, this was a much subtler portrait of totalitarian rule through exploitation of an obsessive and unquestioning Germanic devotion to duty. It was an attempt, Lenz once said, “to expose the world, so that no one could feel innocent or unaffected by it”. Tensions between father and son — a regular theme in Lenz’s work — also resonated with younger German generations challenging their parents’ guilty silence about the Nazi period. The novel was filmed and widely read in German schools. The landscapes and small-town life portrayed in Deutschstunde drew on Lenz’s own upbringing in Lyck in Masuria, part of the eastern German territory that became Polish after the war. Born in 1926, he lived in a community of labourers and fishermen, basket weavers and minor officials, who later became characters in much of his fiction. The changing weather and huge Baltic skies were also a regular backdrop to his writing. He was a solitary, reflective character from a young age, hoping, he once said,

to take on a job such as fishing where “nothing much was said”. Writing was an early enthusiasm. Yet all youthful ambition was interrupted by the cruel demands of wartime. After the death of his father, a customs official, Lenz’s mother and sister had to leave Lyck while Siegfried stayed behind with his grandmother. In 1943, after a rushed schooling, he was recruited into the German navy. Files published years later suggested he had become a Nazi party member, but Lenz pointed out that this was done as part of a mass recruitment that he knew nothing about. He witnessed bitter fighting and deserted before the war ended. Imprisoned by the British, he settled in Hamburg after his release, studying philosophy, literature and English. After a time on a local newspaper, Lenz’s fiction was published, and took up a disciplined life as a full-time writer. His early works, including Es waren Habichte in der Luft (There were Hawks in the Sky) and Duell mit dem Schatten (Duel with the Shadow), began to address themes of resistance to

authoritarian states and guilty pasts. Writing about his homeland combined celebration of a distinctive culture with rejection of Germany claiming back territories lost in the east after the Nazi catastrophe. Lenz supported the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt, whom he accompanied on an historic visit of reconciliation to Poland in 1970. He was also a close friend of another Social Democrat chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. Lenz was married to his first wife, Liselotte, an artist, for 57 years until her death, and is survived by his second wife, his Hamburg neighbour Ulla Reimer, whom he married in 2010. His prolific output engaged further with recent German history, or addressed issues such as unemployment, corruption and the environment, but with a focus too on finely observed individuals and personal dilemmas. There were also tender love stories set against his beloved Baltic background. Siegfried Lenz, German author, was born on March 17, 1926. He died on October 7, 2014, aged 88

FGM

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Television & Radio/Announcements

Today’s television BBC ONE

6.00am Breakfast 9.15 Neighbourhood Blues 10.00 Homes Under the Hammer 11.00 Call the Council 11.45 Don’t Get Done, Get Dom 12.15pm Bargain Hunt 1.00 BBC News; Weather 1.30 BBC Regional News; Weather 1.45 Doctors 2.15 Moving On 3.00 Escape to the Country 3.45 Glorious Gardens from Above 4.30 Flog It! 5.15 Pointless 6.00 BBC News 6.30 BBC Regional News Programmes 7.00 The One Show 7.30 Still Open All Hours 8.00 EastEnders 8.30 Citizen Khan 9.00 Have I Got News for You 9.30 Not Going Out 10.00 BBC News 10.25 BBC Regional News; Weather 10.35 The Graham Norton Show 11.20 Cuckoo 11.55 EastEnders 1.55am-6.00 BBC News

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6.10am Homes Under the Hammer 7.10 Call the Council 7.55 Don’t Get Done, Get Dom 8.25 Sign Zone 8.55 Live Formula 1: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix — First Practice. Coverage from the Yas Marina Circuit 10.35 The Travel Show 11.00 BBC News 11.30 BBC World News 12.00 Daily Politics 1.00pm Live Formula 1: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix — Second Practice. Further coverage from the Yas Marina Circuit 2.35 Coast 3.00 A Place to Call Home 3.45 The Rockford Files 4.35 Cagney & Lacey 5.20 Vintage Antiques Roadshow 6.00 Eggheads 6.30 Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two 7.00 The Home That Two Built 8.00 Mastermind 8.30 Tigers About the House 9.30 Mock the Week 10.00 QI 10.30 Newsnight 11.05 Never Mind the Buzzcocks 11.35 FILM: SoulBoy (2010) 12.55am1.55 Sign Zone: Question Time

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6.20am The King of Queens 7.10 3rd Rock from the Sun 8.00 Everybody Loves Raymond. Double bill 9.00 Frasier 10.00 Daily Brunch

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Channel 4

Today’s radio

5.30am News 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Farming Today 5.58 Tweet of the Day 6.00 Today 8.31 (LW) Yesterday in Parliament 9.00 Desert Island Discs (r) 9.45 (LW) Act of Worship 9.45 Book of the Week 10.00 Woman’s Hour 11.00 Glasgow School of Art: Rising from the Ashes 11.30 The Missing Hancocks 12.00 News 12.01pm (LW) Shipping 12.04 A History of Ideas 12.15 You and Yours 1.00 The World at One 1.45 Foreign Bodies 2.00 The Archers (r) 2.15 Afternoon Drama (r) 3.00 Gardeners’ Question Time 3.45 Short Rides in Fast Machines 4.00 Last Word 4.30 Feedback 4.55 The Listening Project 5.00 PM 5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00 News 6.30 The News Quiz 7.00 The Archers 7.15 Front Row 7.45 Inquest 8.00 Any Questions? 8.50 A Point of View 9.00 A History of Ideas 10.00 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime 11.00 A Good Read (r) 11.30 Today in Parliament 11.55 The Listening Project 12.30am Book of the Week (r) 12.48 Shipping 1.00 As World Service 5.20-5.30 Shipping

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5.00am Newsday 8.30 Business Daily 8.50 Witness 9.00 Ebola: The Impact on Africa 10.00 World Update 11.00 News 11.06 Outside Source 12.00 News 12.06pm The 5th Floor 1.00 News 1.06 HARDtalk 1.30 Science in Action 2.00 Newshour 3.00 News 3.06 Business Daily 3.23 News About Ebola 3.30 Sport Today 4.00 The Newsroom 4.30 Tech Tent 5.00 The Newsroom 5.30 World Business Report 6.00 World Have Your Say 6.50 News About Ebola 7.00 BBC Africa Debate: Did the Arab Spring Do More Harm Than Good? 8.00 News 8.06 HARDtalk 8.30 The World This Week 9.00 Newshour 10.00 News 10.06 The Newsroom 10.30 World Business Report 11.00 News 11.06 The 5th Floor 12.00 The Newsroom 12.20am Sports News 12.30 The World This Week 1.00 News 1.06 Business Matters 2.00 News 2.06 The 5th Floor. The week’s global news 3.00 News 3.06 The Newsroom 3.30 Heart and Soul 4.00 The Newsroom 4.20 Sports News 4.30-5.00 Boston Calling

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Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast. With Petroc Trelawny 9.00 Essential Classics. With Sarah Walker 12.00 Composer of the Week: Big Band. The more recent directions taken in big band jazz (r) 1.00pm News 1.02 Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert. Music by Mahler and Schoenberg 2.00 Afternoon on 3. The BBCSO in works by Korngold, Villa-Lobos, Glazunov and Revueltas live from Maida Vale 4.30 In Tune. With Emma Kirkby, Larry Goves, Esther Yoo and the Parker Quartet 6.30 Composer of the Week: Big Band (r) 7.30 Live Radio 3 in Concert. John Storgards conducts the BBC Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet Overture and Fifth Symphony, and Katherine Bryan is the soloist in Nielsen’s Flute Concerto 10.00 The Verb. With James Robertson, Tom Chatﬁeld, Nathan Jones and Karen McCarthy Woolf 10.45 The Essay: England Ejects. Novelist Andrew Martin considers the tradition of going to church on Sundays (r) 11.00 World on 3. The band Arifa in session 1.00am-7.00 Through the Night

the times.co.uk/announcements

the times | Friday November 21 2014

FGM

Games Bridge Andrew Robson

Word Watching Paul Dunn In (e), you can lead (to) ♦K, but will need a side entry to reach ♦AQ. If you have no side entry, you may be best overtaking ♦K with ♦A – at least that way you can win two tricks (♦A then ♦Q).

Game ten of the World Championship is played today. Games can be followed in real time via the 2seeitlive link on the header of The Times twitter feed @times_chess. Meanwhile there is good news from Westminster. The recent election of Dominic Lawson as English Chess Federation President has facilitated renewed interest for chess in the corridors of power and the first all-Parliamentary Group for chess has been established. It had its first meeting on 18 November, chaired by Yasmin Qureshi MP. The game today is a win by Marmaduke Wyvill who came second in the first great international tournament of London 1851 and who was also MP for Richmond in Yorkshire. White: Hugh Kennedy Black: Marmaduke Wyvill MP London 1851 Sicilian Defence 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 g6 A highly modern continuation for 1851. White does not choose the best reply which is widely regarded

♠ AQ 3 ♥7 6 ♦Q 10 9 8 5 3 ♣Q 2 ♠ 10 8 7 6 5 2 ♠J 9 N ♥A J 9 8 5 4 W E ♥Q 10 ♦2 ♦A 6 4 S ♣10 8 6 4 ♣9 7 ♠K 4 ♥K 3 2 ♦K J 7 ♣A K J 5 3 S

1♣ 3NT

1♥ end

2♦

E Pass

Grischuk Kramnik Aronian Gelfand Ding Liren Leko Morozevich Inarkiev

1 * ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 0

2 ½ * ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 0

3 ½ ½ * ½ ½ ½ ½ 0

4 1 ½ ½ * ½ 0 0 ½

Trick one went ♥8, ♥6, ♥Q, ♥K, declarer grabbing that ♥K or

he’d never win it. Needing nine tricks without losing the lead (and a flurry of hearts), playing on the lovely diamond sequence was out. Declarer needed eight quick tricks from the black suits. He used the Unblocking Rule to avoid getting stuck. At trick two declarer led ♣3 (low from the longer length) to ♣Q, then ♣2 back to ♣AKJ. Because the opposing clubs split no worse than 4-2, he could now cash his lowly ♣5. He’d kept dummy’s three spades and now turned to that suit, starting with ♠ K (high from the shorter length), then ♠ 4 over to ♠ AQ. Nine tricks and game made.

andrew.robson@thetimes.co.uk

as 5 c4. His continuation incorrectly strengthens Black’s centre. 5 Nxc6 bxc6 6 Bd3 Bg7 7 0-0 e6 8 f4 d5 9 f5 Wildly premature. 9 ... dxe4

________ árDb1kDn4] à0 D Dpgp] ß DpDpDpD] ÞD D DPD ] Ý D DpD D] ÜD DBD D ] ÛP)PD DP)] Ú$NGQDRI ] ÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈ

10 fxe6 If 10 Bxe4 Qb6+ 11 Kh1 gxf5 when Black wins a safe pawn. 10 ... Qd4+ 11 Kh1 Bxe6 12 Rf4 Rd8 13 Qe1 If 13 Rxe4 Qxe4 wins. 13 ... f5 14 Bxe4 fxe4 15 Nc3 After 15 Rxe4 the tactic 15 ... Qxe4 again wins. 15 ... Nf6 16 Be3 Qe5 17 Rh4 0-0 18 Bxa7 Bd5 19 Rd1 Rd7 20 Bd4 Qf5 21 Qe2 Nh5 22 Be3 Rdf7 23 Kg1 Bf6 24 Rh3 Bxc3 25 bxc3 Nf4 26 Bxf4 Qxf4 27 c4 Be6 28 Re3 Bg4 White resigns

5 ½ ½ ½ ½ * ½ ½ ½

6 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ * ½ ½

7 1 1 ½ 1 ½ ½ * ½

8 1 1 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ *

5½ 4½ 4 4 3½ 2½ 2 2

________ á D D 4kD] Winning Move à0bD 4p0 ] ß D D h )] White to play. This position from Kramnik-Morozevich, Moscow 2014. ÞD 0 D H ] This position is taken from the Petrosian Ý DPDpD D] Memorial (crosstable given above) won in Ü) G ) D ] fine style by Alexander Grischuk ahead of Û )QDBD 1] a powerful field. White has a strong attack ÚD I D $ ] but Black threatens both 1 ... Qxg1 and 1 ... ÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈ Qxh6. What is White’s best move? Solution right

7 8 9

10 11 13

1 Sound loud and harsh (5) 7 Written language for the visually impaired (7) 8 Scottish cross (7) 9 Cooked but still firm (2,5) 10 Myth, legend (5) 11 Able to be drunk (7) 13 Cut off (a branch) (3) 15 Official record (3) Solution to Crossword 6563 SHOE S U A A MA T I L D C A J A MM I K A RUE I NG O C CUS T AR K W A L OUD L O U L I NCO L

BOURBON R G R E A HA I KU Z N T EDODGER N D O TOUCAN E U R DCRE AM I L C S P E A KUP O S E L N SUR L Y

17 Supposed link between ancient sites (3,4) 19 Become larger (5) 21 Usually (2,1,4) 23 Seashore pebbles (7) 24 Start of Roman months (7) 25 Like a young female (5) Down

1 Shy, easily embarrassed (7) 2 Speak unpreparedly (2-3) 3 Neurological disorder (8) 4 Country; come down (4) 5 Face cloth (7) 6 Rise in opposition (5) 7 Unpleasant behaviour (11) 12 Grace said before a meal (8) 14 Flexible (7) 16 Horizontal mine passage (7) 18 Conifer (5) 20 Sir Edward —, composer (5) 22 Arm bone (4)

Check today’s answers by ringing 09067 577188. Calls cost 77p per minute.

How you rate 12 words, average; 17, good; 22, very good; 27, excellent

Deadly 54min

19 20

23 12

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. The digits within the cells joined by the dotted lines add up to the printed top left hand figure. Within each dotted line ‘shape’, a digit CANNOT be repeated.

Codeword

No 2248

Numbers are substituted for letters in the crossword grid. Below the grid is the key. Some letters are solved. When you have completed your first word or phrase you will have the clues to more letters. Enter them in the key grid and the main grid and check the letters on the alphabet list as you complete them. 10

1 18

16 23

Winning Move solution

Intrados (c) The curved inner surface of an arch or vault. Gules (a) The heraldic name for red. Tazza (b) A wine cup with a shallow bowl and circular foot, probably from Arabic tassah, bowl.

Word Watching answers

Yesterday’s answers agent, anger, argent, gannet, gape, gaper, garnet, gate, gean, gear, gent, gnat, gran, grant, grape, grate, great, page, pager, pang, parge, parget, prang, pregnant, rage, range, regnant, tang, targe, trepang

8 3

Polygon From these letters, make words of four or more letters, always including the central letter. Answers must be in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, excluding capitalised words, plurals, conjugated verbs (past tense etc), adverbs ending in LY, comparatives and superlatives.

Killer No 4015

Across

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9 Solutions tomorrow, yesterday’s solutions below

4 9 1

7 3 2 5 6 3 1 2

No 6564 5

Fiendish

2 8

T2 CROSSWORD Times Quick CrosswordNo 6564

Contract: 3NT, Opening Lead: ♥ 8

Petrosian Memorial, Moscow 2014 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Intrados a. A mixed dish of starters b. A musical introduction c. The inside of an arch Gules a. Red b. Guts, cojones c. Peppered stew Tazza a. A tassel b. A wine glass c. A spiced marinade

Dealer: South, Vulnerability: Neither

Chess Raymond Keene Parliamentary Games

Sudoku No 6969

1 Nh3! leaves Black defenceless along the g-file, e.g. 1 ... Qxh3 2 Rxg7+ Kh8 3 Bxf6 winning.

Tips for Intermediates 25 - The Unblocking Rule There is a very nice rule that prevents you from playing your high cards in the wrong order, getting stuck. Consider these suits: (a) ♦AQJ2 facing ♦K3 (b) ♣KQ2 facing ♣A3 (c) ♥Q2 facing ♥KJ103 If in (a) you mistakenly lead ♦3 (to) ♦A/♦Q/♦J first, you’ll have to then lead to ♦K (to avoid crashing two high cards together), but you’ll then be stuck in the wrong hand to enjoy the remaining winners. The solution is to play ♦K first, then ♦3 over to ♦AQJ. Here is the Unblocking Rule, telling you in which order to play your sequential high cards: If you are leading from the hand with the shorter length, lead the highest card. If you are leading from the longer length, lead the lowest card. In (b) you lead (to) ♣A first, then ♣3 to ♣KQ. In (c) you lead (to) ♥Q first, forcing out ♥A, then (on regaining the lead), ♥ 2 to ♥KJ10. If the opponents don’t win (“duck”) ♥Q, you’ll lead ♥2 to ♥KJ10 and soon force out ♥A. The only time you’ll get stuck is when you have a suit in which one hand has only high cards with no accompanying low card eg (d) ♠ A32 facing ♠ KQ (e) ♦K facing ♦AQ2 In (d), you can lead (to) ♠ KQ, but have no way to enjoy ♠ A without using another suit for transportation. You’ll need an “entry” to the hand with ♠ A.

14 14

16 10

13 1

12 17

7 2

13 16

16 26

4 18

16 11

8 21

2 5

10 2

25 16

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1

Sudoku, Killer and Codeword solutions 8 5 2 7 4 1 3 6 9

1 4 7 3 6 9 8 5 2

6 9 3 8 2 5 7 1 4

9 1 8 6 5 7 4 2 3

No 6965

7 2 6 9 3 4 5 8 1

4 3 5 1 8 2 6 9 7

3 8 1 4 9 6 2 7 5

5 6 9 2 7 3 1 4 8

2 7 4 5 1 8 9 3 6

9 2 5 8 4 6 7 3 1

7 6 3 1 2 5 4 8 9

1 4 8 7 3 9 5 2 6

6 3 2 4 5 7 9 1 8

No 4013

4 5 1 9 8 2 6 7 3

8 9 7 3 6 1 2 4 5

2 7 9 6 1 3 8 5 4

5 1 4 2 9 8 3 6 7

3 8 6 5 7 4 1 9 2

F L OP S I R E X F I GH T T A S E H E N S M Q L OB L UDO A A P AR G L E E G I E Z O F ORGO T I OP S T EWS

No 2247

D J U I L E V T H AR S E C E L I A E M T AK E S L N E S E WO E RA D T O

ROR U O R OW A D L A Y L A I N G E ND R I R S T O T R SO

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

arts

Richard Morrison the arts column

‘The National Trust needs to start paying its workers’ GETTY IMAGES

s chief executive of Samsonite, Tim Parker should know a bit about jobs that come with baggage attached. Just as well. Last week he succeeded Simon Jenkins as chairman of the National Trust, and was immediately plunged into what could be an embarrassing scandal for Britain’s biggest heritage organisation. In short, it’s a row over how little the Trust pays its workers. At its AGM last week the NT board enthused about a “strong year” in which membership income leapt by £10 million, paid admissions rose to nearly 20 million and total income increased by £4 million to £460 million. Yet despite this picture of ruddy financial health, about 2,000 of the Trust’s 12,000 staff are paid less than the living wage of £7.85 an hour. At least two employees’ organisations — the Prospect union and the Professional Gardeners’ Guild — are now on the warpath. “The National Trust should be in the vanguard, paying top wages,” a PGG spokesman said. In fact the opposite appears true. A housekeeping assistant job is currently advertised on the NT’s website at £6.50 an hour. You would need remarkable housekeeping skills to live on that in 2014 Britain. The NT is also advertising for an assistant ranger, expected to deploy a variety of land-management abilities, at £7.51 an hour. Even a head gardener, at the top of his or her green-fingered trade —

The organisation seems to have an upstairs-downstairs mentality towards staff and responsible for wowing a paying public with year-round horticultural displays — can expect to earn just £24,000 a year if employed on a Trust property. The Trust’s only response is to flag up a staff survey showing that 94 per cent of employees are “satisfied with their working conditions”. It’s hard to argue with the Prospect spokesman who declares that “Downton Abbey is alive and kicking in the National Trust”. At £58, the annual membership fee for the Trust is

2,000 of the Trust’s staff are paid less than £7.85 an hour

among the highest for any heritage organisation in the world (it’s just £39 a year to join the National Trust of Scotland, for instance), so there is no shortage of money. Yet the Trust appears to have an upstairs-downstairs mentality when it comes to hiring the people who will get their hands dirty to provide weekend pleasures for the middle classes. To make matters worse, the row erupted at the very moment when Simon Jenkins, in his last act as NT chairman, penned a vitriolic article castigating the government’s mismanagement of the landscape and portraying the Trust as the doughty defender of countryside values. A master provocateur throughout his journalistic life, Jenkins pressed all the right buttons to induce a froth of indignation in middle-class Middle England. He painted a picture of

idyllic landscapes, cherished for centuries, now being overwhelmed by housebuilders and wind-turbine speculators, abetted by a government that has fundamentally changed planning laws to make it much easier for developers to build on greenfield sites and besmirch much-loved vistas. “The coalition wants to tear up half a century of rural guardianship unique in Europe,” Jenkins fumed. He wants landscapes to be graded like historic buildings, only even more so — from 1 to 7 in order of beauty, with grades 1 to 3 for ever protected from development. Leaving aside the army of inspectors that would be needed to produce this 21st-century aesthete’s version of the Domesday Book, or the eternal planning appeals that would follow each verdict, just consider the philosophical implications. There is nothing remotely natural about the English landscape except its underlying geology. It is almost wholly man-made, recast by generation after generation according to their needs. Right now young people need homes, hundreds of thousands of them, and you can’t just say “protect the countryside” without suggesting where these homes should go. Jenkins says they should infill the cities of the Midlands and north, where there are plenty of brownfield sites — but where are the new jobs that would enable young people to move there? This is a highly complex issue. Demanding that every pretty meadow or fallow field is protected for ever is a simplistic response. And if the great thinkers who run the National Trust are so concerned about preserving the rural way of life, why do they pay those who toil on their own estates such a pittance? If I were the Trust’s new chairman I would pay all my gardeners and housekeepers a living wage before preaching to others about what’s best for the countryside.

American generosity puts us to shame New York, damn it, has put London to shame. While we fret about finding the £175 million to erect Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge over the Thames, New York has nabbed Britain’s design genius to build a park on stilts above the Hudson River. His structure will include three performance arenas, woods and a marine sanctuary. The £108 million needed for the project is already there, thanks to an £80 million gift from Barry Diller, the ex-boss of Paramount Pictures, and fashiondesigner Diane von Fürstenberg, his wife. Public bodies will chip in the rest. I don’t totally admire the American Way, but when it comes to funding big civic projects their rich people are generally leagues ahead of ours in generosity and vision. Is it tax breaks, or the tradition of giving something back to society, if society has been good to you? I don’t know, but we need to look and learn.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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arts

THE CRITICS

Wendy Ide

is hungry for Mocking jay, Part 1 p47

Will Hodgkinson hears David Guetta p48

Rachel Campbell-Johnston on art and the Spanish Civil War p50

Cowboy, you just shot yourself the big film

exploded hamster. Cuddy finds him with a noose round his neck and saves his life with the caveat that he will help her to transport the women. It’s fun, fun, fun and much stroppy banter between Cuddy and Briggs — he’s a “man of low character”, she’s “as plain as an old tin pail” — until they calm down and collect the women, wild-haired, screaming harridans who have all lost the use of language and look almost interchangeable. The very definition of the Victorian disease of “hysteria”, they are as unconvincing as witches from central casting. As for the flashback that shows one selfharming woman being raped by her husband while in bed with the ghost of her mother — whoa there, Mr Jones! In the production notes Jones says

he “explores the female condition in the mid-19th century American West . . . because I think it’s the origin of the female condition today”. But Hollywood’s hot new feminist thinker chooses two male co-writers to help with his analysis of the female condition, shuffles the gals to the sidelines and ends up making himself the singing, dancing, shooting star of the show. Also Jones is 68 and Swank is playing a 31-year-old. How likely is it that . . . oh, never mind. There are other peculiar elements to this shaggy prairie-dog story that don’t quite gel. One week there’s an icy blizzard, the next roses are in bloom. When a posse comes by looking for trouble, Briggs just releases a horse, the supposedly dumb locals chase after it and any cinematic tension drains away. A wasted opportunity, like so many here. Jones also avails himself of two fine female actors in the form of Meryl Streep and Hailee Steinfeld, but gives them minuscule roles. Streep is on screen for all of five minutes as a dull minister’s wife, but gets major billing on the movie’s posters. Steinfeld, who was fantastic in the Coen brothers’ True Grit, also barely checks in. Yes, Swank and Jones give fine performances, but the direction and the script are a melodramatic, silly mess, surprising after Jones’s well-received directorial debut in 2005 with another western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He is far preferable as an actor — from Men in Black to No Country For Old Men to his movie-stealing performance as Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln. The Homesman, however, starts to look like a vanity project as Jones fills more and more of the screen. Frankly, Jones just doesn’t get it. His women are cut-out clichés and Swank would quite possibly have made a better job of directing this material. As a penance Jones should be made to watch Kelly Reichardt’s pioneering feminist wagon movie Meek’s Cutoff on a loop and be forced to read all the volumes of Little House on the Prairie.

Brooks exudes a luminous purity that is heightened by the grubby moral turpitude that surrounds her. She plays Thymian, an innocent who is seduced by a vulpine young man who works for her father. She gives birth to his baby but refuses to marry him. The child is given away and Thymian is sent to some kind of S&M reform school. Rejected by her father, who has married his manipulative new housekeeper, her only route is to a Weimar-era brothel. In Pabst’s view,

the relationships between the whores and their clients seem infinitely healthier than any others in the film. Pabst allegedly told Brooks she would end up like those fallen girls and by her own account the prediction turned out to be not far from the truth. Yet there’s no question that, for a while at least, Brooks was one of the most iconic stars that cinema has ever seen. Wendy Ide Diary of a Lost Girl is released by Eureka on DVD & Blu-ray on Nov 24

This would-be feminist western is a mess on many frontiers. Vanity projects often are, says ys Kate Muir

ee-ha, folks! Here’s an odd-couple western starring Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank on a wagon trip, escorting three madwomen home across hostile Injun country. What could go wrong? Almost everything, is the answer and Jones must shoulder the blame for anointing himself co-writer, director, executive producer and star. The film is a tonal nightmare, lurching uneasily from hang-’em and shoot-’em cowboy comedy to gruesome vignettes of frontier women driven insane by infanticide, rape and disease. Based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, the movie begins promisingly in Nebraska Territory in 1855, where Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank) is, despite being a single woman, doing the job of a proper homesman, having staked her claim, built her cabin and seeded her fields. Much is made of Cuddy’s muscular ploughing and water-pumping, which is a turn-off for the local marriageable men, who

classic film of the week

Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones watch their tonal nightmare of a film gallop off into the sunset

The Homesman

15, 122min

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Diary of a Lost Girl PG, 115min

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complain that she’s “bossy” and “plain”, an unlikely description given Swank’s beautiful bone structure. Anyway, Cuddy outmans the men, dons a rabbit-skin hunting hat and agrees to take the three women back east, a five-week wagon trip across the prairie to Iowa. Flashbacks show the women as their children are killed by diphtheria, their cattle by drought and their love by violent husbands. Blueskinned dead babies make a jolting appearance just before Jones rocks up cheerfully as George Briggs, a raddled desperado type, sheep-stealing and claim-jumping until he is bombed out of a mud cabin by his neighbours. Covered in black soot, in his onesie underwear with his furry mutton chops, Briggs looks like a wrinkly,

his second and final collaboration between the Kansas-born silent movie star Louise Brooks and the German director Georg Pabst was for a while somewhat overshadowed by their first, Pandora’s Box. This was partly to do with the brutal treatment the film received at the hands of the censors. The restored version of this deliciously sordid soap opera contains an extra seven minutes of previously censored footage.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

film

Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) runs a hotel in the caves of Cappadocia with his sister Necla (Demet Akbag)

It’s a winter of deep content for film lovers

This tale of bitter divisions in a rural hotel is gripping but its barren setting is the real star, says Kate Muir Winter Sleep 15, 196min

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What We Do in the Shadows 15, 86min

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My Old Lady

12A, 107min

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The Times Film Show: watch our critics debate the big releases for the weekend tablet editions and thetimes.co.uk/film

‘I

f you only have three olives you can place them on a plate or gobble them out of a plastic bag,” lectures the protagonist of Winter Sleep, a landlord disgusted by the peasant life beneath him. Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this exquisitely photographed work of real philosophical heft that tackles the divide between classes, men and women, believers and non-believers. The setting is breathtaking, deep in Cappadocia on the Anatolian steppe, a strange moonscape of rock formations like giant stalagmites, riddled with caves. In a remote village, the intolerant, self-obsessed landlord and former actor Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) runs a hotel with cathedral ceilings hewn from the caves. On a trip, Aydin’s car is hit by a rock thrown by a small boy. The boy’s family are behind in their rent and the bailiffs have taken away their fridge and television. Aydin is surprised by their resentment and the local imam (Serhat Mustafa Kiliç) comes in to calm things, reeking of insincerity. The scene is set for conflicts between the bearded, sixtyish Aydin and all those around him. He lives with his stroppy sister (Demet Akbag) and his beautiful wife (Melisa Sözen), who is young enough to be his daughter. As winter grips, the cave dwellers in the hotel turn in on themselves with an intensity that opens up wounds and Chekhovian conversational battles. At more than three hours, longer than Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep requires commitment, but rewards with deep satisfaction. What We Do in the Shadows is the vampire mockumentary you’ve been longing for. This Spinal-Tap-with-fangs opens with that old shot of a hand

slamming an alarm clock — but it’s coming from a coffin. Every bloodsucking and documentary trope is lampooned in a film co-directed by and co-starring Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi of Flight of the Conchords. Four vampires live in a suburban house-share in Wellington, New Zealand, and their cleanliness rivals that of Withnail and I. Amid fights about the rota for cleaning the blood off the dishes, the vampires, one of them 8,000 years old, try to get by in modern life. When they mistakenly turn a 20-year-old into a vampire, he provides an entré into nightclubs and new technology and won’t be parted from his tasty-looking human friend, who works in IT. A complete hoot. Having Maggie Smith on screen in My Old Lady is like biting into a crisp, slightly sour apple. Even when she is playing a woman in her nineties, quilted with wrinkles, the interior is deliciously tart. Smith is Madame Girard, a grande dame who lives in a humongous Paris apartment recently inherited by a rather irritating American, Jim (Kevin Kline on droll, exasperated form). Jim is surprised to find Madame Girard and her trinkets in “his” €12 million apartment in the Marais. Those pesky French laws make it tricky to sell the place, bought under the viager system, where the buyer owns it but must pay the vendor, who continues to occupy it, until they die. “What age are you?” asks Jim. “Ninety,” replies Madame Girard with healthy oomph. Things escalate when Jim enters the grotty lavatory and makes the screaming acquaintance of Girard’s fiftysomething daughter (Kristin Scott Thomas, at her bilingual, biting, vulnerable best). The three characters begin to tangle nicely in this witty film, by Israel Horovitz.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Katniss hits a bull’s-eye The teen franchise gets darker, deeper and braver, thanks largely to Jennifer Lawrence’s talent, says Wendy Ide

tale of the foment of a rebellion that feels like padding. This is partly, although not entirely, owing to the exceptionally high quality of the cast. Jennifer Lawrence deepens and darkens the central character, Katniss Everdeen. Busted out of the shattered arena where she and her fellow

winners had been forced to slaughter each other, Katniss has found shelter in the rebel stronghold, a grim, subterranean concrete bunker in District 13. However, the warrior figurehead that the rebels had hoped for is a broken spirit, traumatised by the deaths of so many of her fellow “tributes” and by Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) not being rescued when she was. Rather than stoke the fires of rebellion, Katniss just wants to crawl off into a corner and have a good cry. It’s a wrenching performance — Lawrence doesn’t put a foot wrong. New to the series is Julianne Moore, playing District 13’s President Coin. She is fearsome and patrician, with steely grey hair and rock-solid ideals. She eyes the weepy Katniss with obvious disappointment, but her right-hand man, Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman in his final role), urges the president to give Katniss time to step into the role of the Mockingjay, the icon of rebellion. It’s not until she sees the devastation wrought on her own district by the vengeful forces of the Capitol that we start to see a glimpse of the old Katniss, “the girl on fire”. And this is where this already gritty film becomes chillingly harrowing. Katniss finds herself dropped into the aftermath of a genocide. Her neighbours and friends have been culled in a mass execution. This is a darker film than its predecessors, both in terms of the subject matter — with its killing fields and shattered minds, this is tough viewing for its young audience — and in its look. The colour palette takes its cue from Moore’s monochrome hair; the drama unfolds in a murky underworld. There is none of the flamboyant Technicolor extravagance of the Capitol. Exhilarating action set-pieces notwithstanding — Katniss takes out two fighter planes with a single arrow — this is unusually challenging viewing for a teen franchise.

the jittery physicality of Brown’s stage performance; his knees and hip joints endure punishment in the quest for authenticity. And while he doesn’t sing (the voice is Brown’s own) the show’s dynamism is faultless. Off stage he combines the self-certainty of a man who knew he was changing music with a twitchy paranoia. Brown’s wretched backstory (drip-fed throughout the film ) meant he was fervently defensive of his success. Co-written by the British playwright Jez Butterworth, it’s a formally adventurous film, a disjointed collage in which Brown breaks the fourth wall to address the camera. At times it feels that more thought went into directorial devices than storytelling, but while the film might not fully get under Brown’s skin, it certainly gets his groove. If a movie, in its opening sequence, diagnoses its central character as a chara “malignant narcissist”, “mali likens him to Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy

and links him to the suspected murder of five women, you suspect that he’s not going to be a flowers-and-kittens guy. Not content with painting Idris Elba’s escaped convict Colin as a thoroughly bad sort, the suspense-free home-invasion movie No Good Deed has a score that assaults us with histrionic crashes and bangs. It’s the musical equivalent of a series of increasingly screamy news headlines. Colin’s victim is a stay-at-home mum (Taraji P Henson), who lets him in during a thunderstorm (both a lame plot device and a clunky piece of symbolism). The director Sam Miller tries hard to ratchet up the tension, but all the ominous orchestration and baby peril in the world is not going to rescue a film in which characterisation is boiled down to good versus evil. The Thai film Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy is based on 410 consecutive tweets from a teenager. It’s actually quite an intriguing, episodic attempt to channel a new form of communication into an old medium. The problem is that it’s far longer than a movie based on a series of 140-character statements has any right to be. Wendy Ide

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 12A, 123min

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t’s easy to be irritated by the fact that the final Hunger Games book has been split into two films. It’s a decision that with other franchises tends to be driven by avarice as much as narrative logic. Take Twilight, for example. It felt as though the final two films stretched the already meagre material to breaking point. Breaking Dawn: Part 1 was almost entirely constructed of moody slow-motion shots of Kristen Stewart moping around in her cardigan. But hey, at least they scored two sets of box-office figures rather than just one. It quickly becomes clear, however, that there is more than enough meat in the final book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy to nourish two films. There’s not a scene in this increasingly bleak

Get On Up 12A, 139min

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No Good Deed

15, 84min

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Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy

TBC, 127min

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Jennifer Lawrence stars as Katniss Everdeen in the third Hunger Games film

he opening shot of Get On Up — backstage, with the distant roar of anticipation thundering through the corridors — is a cliché of the musician biopic. You might recall it from Walk the Line and innumerable others. Fortunately director Tate Taylor’s electrifying portrait of James Brown rapidly takes a left turn away from formula via Brown’s colourful brush with rock bottom. The infamous incident in which the Godfather of Soul, brandishing a rifle, accused someone of using his private toilet before fleeing, pursued by armed police, is an unusual opener for a celebration of a genius. But it does capture his maverick intensity. However, the main conduit for the James Brown experience is Chadwick Boseman, pictured, who plays Brown from a dirt-poor teenager sent to prison for stealing a suit right up to the age of 63. It feels more like a spiritual possession than an impersonation. Boseman nails

film Movie Watch

To infinity and beyond We loved Interstellar as much as the next slightly dimwitted sci-fi nerd, but we’re perplexed to hear that the American cinema chain AMC Theatres is selling an “unlimited viewings” ticket to the film. Costing as much as £22 and clearly channelling the temporal loop-the-loop vibe of the movie, the ticket lets cinemagoers watch Matthew McConaughey farting around the cosmos an infinite number of times. After which — and presumably this is the point of the endeavour — you’ll be able to answer key questions such as: why didn’t the “future humans” communicate directly with Michael Caine? Did Matt Damon seriously think his plan was going to work? And how come everybody looks so healthy on a corn-only diet? No cramps, diarrhoea or dermatitis? Not a single intergalactic belch? Here, boyy — it’s time for your close-up Awards season gets into full swing as the nominations are announced today for the canine equivalent of the Oscars: the Fidos — For Incredible Dogs On Screen. It’s a particularly tight race this year, with a whole pack of stand-out pooch performances, most recently from Zora, who plays Rocco, the adorable black pitbull puppy rescued by Tom Hardy, above, from a dustbin in The Drop. Also in contention are Nicolas Cage’s canine companion in Joe and the golden retriever that turned in a moving performance alongside Brendan Gleeson in Calvary, as well as the comic alsatian dog turn in Sex Tape, which stands a good chance in the Rom-Com Rover category. The Fidos supports AA Dogs Rescue and the awards ceremony will be on December 7 at the Cinema Museum, SE11 (facebook.com/fidoawards2014). There can be only . . . two? It’s the franchise that wants to live for ever! Plans are afoot for a reboot of Highlander, the preposterous cult classic about immortals skirmishing across the centuries that spawned several sequels and a TV series. The first films starred Christophe Lambert as the death-proof Scottish warrior and it looks like the remake will retain a Gallic connection: the Frenchman Cedric Nicolas-Troyan is attached to direct. No news on who will step into Lambert’s kilt but the producers are rumoured to be chasing none other than Tom Cruise to play the Highlander’s dashing mentor, originally played by Sean Connery. Shurely shome mishtake?

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

arts music

You don’t become a £40m superstar DJ by taking risks pop

The world’s two highest-earning DJs have new albums out but the results are all too predictable, says Will Hodgkinson David Guetta Listen Parlophone

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Calvin Harris Motion

T Sony

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here’s a top table of superstar DJs who are paid vast sums to turn up to clubs and festivals and, according to one of their number, do very little indeed. “I just roll up with a laptop and hit a spacebar,” Joel Thomas Zimmerman, aka the mouse ears-wearing DJ Deadmau5, told Rolling Stone in 2012. That was when America was discovering the joys of raving and came up with the term EDM — electronic dance music — to describe the music they raved to. The EDM phenomenon does have a Wizard of Oz quality. Calvin Harris, a nondescript 30-year-old from Dumfries, is currently the highest-paid DJ in the world with a net worth of £42 million. He received £320,000 for being the wedding DJ at Tamara Ecclestone’s nuptials in the south of France. That’s a lot of money for hitting a spacebar. Coming in second at £28 million is the Frenchman David Guetta, one of the first DJ/producers to turn himself into a global industry and a

pioneer of the EDM formula of kick drums, ecstasy-stimulating synthesiser crescendos, emotional vocals and lyrics confined to international English in order to be understood from Singapore to Las Vegas. Now Guetta wants to break out of the EDM prison he helped create. “Listen is about taking risks and the results are spectacular,” claims the press release for his latest album. That’s pushing it — sounding exactly as you would expect a 47-year-old superstar DJ’s album to sound like is a more accurate description — but still, there’s a sense of character and irrepressibility here that many of Guetta’s contemporaries, in their relentless search for global domination through entry-level dance music, have left behind. Bang My Head features vocals from the Australian singer Sia, another vastly successful mainstay of modern pop: she sang on Guetta’s mega-hit Titanium and has written for Rihanna, Beyoncé and Katy Perry. There are all kinds of clichés about waiting for daylight, broken wings learning to fly and rising above it all, but Bang My

There are all the clichés about broken wings learning to fly Head has zest, especially when Guetta’s hysterical synthesiser chords kick in. Hey Mama, in which the rap diva Nicki Minaj stomps in to provide some pre-liberation thoughts about cooking and cleaning for her man, is even more basic, but Guetta is such a master of “the drop” — the moment when the beat dies away before all hell breaks loose — that it works in spite of its limitations. Major hit material duly provided, Guetta does take a few small risks. On I’ll Keep Loving You he enlists the voices of Jaymes Young and Birdy, two young singers who bring a mood of gentle innocence to a melancholic, idealistic ballad about eternal love. There’s also a quiet piano-and-violin piece called The Whisperer in which Sia pops up again to provide heartfelt

Arias and graces in a classical

Mozart benefits from a more relaxed approach, says Geoff Brown Teodor Currentzis/ Musica Aeterna Così fan tutte

Sony Classical

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ix months ago, a thunderbolt hit Mozart. It arrived in the form of an ear-opening new recording of Le nozze di Figaro, sent from an unexpected place: the city of Perm in Russia. The Greek-born conductor Teodor Currentzis and his utopian collective of musicians have been working there, at white heat, recording with maverick intent all three big Mozart operas. Now we have Così fan tutte, presented in its physical format in a package so plush that the only thing missing is a woven gold bookmark. Currentzis’s own approach, as before, is the reverse of plush. Female voices are stripped of vibrato. The singing style is intimate, conversational, while his orchestra, Musica Aeterna, variously displays the speed of a cheetah and the caress of a

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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DJ David Guetta

words on the pain of life. You expect the delicate notes to be bludgeoned into oblivion by crashing beats, but they never come. It’s a tentative move away from the formulaic dance music that made Guetta’s fortune, but a move nonetheless. Calvin Harris, who produced such huge hits as Rihanna’s We Found Love and Dizzee Rascal’s Dance Wiv Me, is not willing to jeopardise his position as the world’s most lavishly rewarded spacebar-presser. Motion, his fourth album, sounds like the result of its creator coding a series of pleasure-stimulating logarithms into his mega-computer. Many of the songs have already been hits, such as Blame, a vaguely soulful dance track featuring John Newman, and Outside, with Ellie Goulding singing about being on the outside of a love affair. Then there are Harris’s own pop-star moments like Summer and Faith, former No 1s in which he puts his croaky tones against nagging synthesiser hooks in a blatant (and successful) attempt to provide digestible anthems for mass consumption. There’s a tone of pragmatism throughout — you get the feeling that Harris’s favourite musical style is the one that sells the most copies. Moments of feminine sensitivity like Pray to God, featuring the Californian sisters Haim, sit uneasily with Open Wide, an ugly piece of sexual bullying in which the rapper Big Sean boasts about “turning flat chests into mountains”. This doesn’t suggest that Harris is sexist, more that he’ll take whatever brings in the cash without asking too many questions of himself or anyone else. It’s a shame, because his talent really shines on the album’s smaller moments. Slow Acid is a superb piece of space-age electronics complete with handclap beats and burbling, pulsating noises that would be an excellent accompaniment on a trip through the cosmos. Music this good suggests Harris would be happiest being creative in the studio, coming up with weird sounds for the hell of it. Somewhere along the line, however, worldwide fame, money and highly paid wedding gigs for heiresses got in the way.

resh, human, very cosy Così summer breeze. In Fiordiligi’s opening duet, the fragile beauty of the voice of Simone Kermes, pictured right, knocks you for six. From Soave sia il vento to Per pietà, other wonders keep tumbling out as Lorenzo Da Ponte’s absurd libretto rolls on. The orchestra too keeps springing delights, from punchy chords to the fortepiano’s springing gait in the recitatives. The new set also highlights flaws that before were present in miniature. Kermes sings so like an angel that you wonder if her character could ever stray from the path of steadfast love; not the case with Malena Ernman, as her livelier sister Dorabella. The biggest problem is the sound balance. Given Currentzis’s loving attention to tiny details, like the maid Despina (Anna Kasyan) sipping her chocolate drink,

it’s odd that he allows singers to get submerged by the orchestra or contribute from an echoing distance.

Sometimes Christopher Maltman’s Guglielmo seems as if he’s tucked away in the broom closet and Kermes’ voice can easily become too intimate for its own good. Still, the quirky sound mix certainly keeps you listening with ears cocked, eager to catch every nuance, every lyrical flight of Kenneth Tarver (Ferrando) or cynical pronouncement from Don Alfonso (Konstantin Wolff). Kinks and all, if you want a dynamic new Così, full of feeling humans rather than puppets, this is still the one to buy.

What we did on our trip to Hamburg

arts music

jazz

This newly exhumed live set from 1972 is a classic of its time, as three young players show us how it’s done, says John Bungey Keith Jarrett Hamburg ’72 ECM

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Listen to themed playlists selected by our critics — from classical indulgences to jazz covers of rock classics thetimes.co.uk/listen

Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett in the 1970s

e may be one of jazz’s most enduring stars but Keith Jarrett remains a divisive figure. While the faithful sit hushed and reverential through the pianist’s solo, extemporised concerts, there is a muttering minority who have no time for his on-stage outbursts and detect ponderousness and pretentiousness. This newly exhumed live set from 1972 is strong evidence for the defence. ECM, in an intriguing piece of reverse marketing, is releasing it on Monday with almost no fanfare, banking instead on excited word of mouth. The 69-year-old Jarrett, drummer Paul Motian and bassist Charlie Haden (three-quarters of what would become his great American quartet) play with the freedom and abandon of youth. There is a feral energy that, for obvious reasons, you won’t hear from Jarrett’s Standards trio today. He eases gently into the set with a rhapsodic start to Rainbow but soon spurred by Motian’s splashy cymbal work and Haden’s muscular bass, his right hand is flying. A word of warning here for recent Jarrett converts: he also plays some Ornette Colemaninspired soprano saxophone and freejazz flute that shouts 1972 as loudly as Jarrett’s afro. These instruments may not be what you feel you have paid admission for but, taken as part of the journey, the forays make sense. And that’s what this set is: a riveting voyage through balladry, solo piano, free jazz, through the rolling gospel of Take Me Back (a highlight) to arrive at an epic Song for Che. Given that he has been active for almost 50 years, Jarrett’s record releases are almost uncountable but Hamburg ’72 deserves a place in the outhouse that keen fans have surely had to construct for their collection. As a document of music caught in the moment, of three young players throwing caution to the wind, the record stands as a classic of its time.

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

arts visual arts

How Spain’s war gave Britain an art tutorial

COLLECTION OF ROSA BRANSON, SUCCESSION PICASSO / DACS 2014

A new exhibition about the art of the Spanish Civil War is light on great works but rich in truth, says Rachel Campbell-Johnston

n April 26, 1937, just as the people of the Basque town of Guernica were bustling about their main square on market day, a now infamous aerial bombardment took place. It became a landmark moment. This had not been an attack on military targets. It had been launched on civilians. Brought to worldwide attention by the Times journalist who published a harrowing eyewitness account, it came to stand as a symbol for the indiscriminate suffering wrought by modern war. Picasso’s iconic depiction of this horrifying moment was brought to England in 1938. Exhibited in London, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, it was seen by thousands of workingclass men and women as well as artists, upon whom it had a profound impact. Yet, when we think of the Spanish Civil War and its resonance in the minds of the British it is not to the works of our painters or sculptors to which we tend to turn. Rather it is remembered as a writer’s war: as the battleground of Orwell or Auden or Caudwell or Spender. But now, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of this conflict, Pallant House Gallery

Artistic support for Spain crossed every artistic style focuses on the role played in this war by a generation of passionately committed British artists, some of whom even went to Spain to fight, while others worked at home, designing the visual materials for awareness-raising campaigns and

relief missions. The first exhibition to look at this subject from the viewpoint of British visual artists alone, it amounts to more than just an art-historically interesting footnote. This is a philosophically fascinating and thought-provoking show. Don’t expect, however, to see many great paintings. Picasso’s 1937 Weeping Woman — a portrait of his then mistress, her anguished face crumpled like a tear-soaked handkerchief — on loan from the Tate is the most famous artwork you will come across. This preliminary study for Guernica stands in for the iconic masterpiece which exerted so profound an influence on such home-grown artists as Walter Nessler, who saw in the destruction of the Basque capital a prefiguration of the Second World War bombing of British cities, or Henry Moore who found inspiration in its jagged Cubist forms. So forget the aesthetic calibre of the art on display. Focus instead on the breadth of response and the all-encompassing variety of media through which ideas were disseminated. Curators have trawled archives and private collections, contacted families and small regional museums to assemble pieces ranging from paintings, sculptures, photographs and film clips, through cartoons, book-jacket designs, letters and banners to the papiermâché mask and model of a horse head which appeared on a float in a May Day parade. Artistic support for Spain crossed every form of artistic style in an art world that was composed of myriad groups. “We have got into the middle of not one but a thousand battles,” as one observer put it. “Left, right, black, red . . . Hampstead,

Bloomsbury, surrealist, abstract, social realist, Spain, Germany, heaven, hell, paradise, chaos . . . have you given a picture? — Have you seen The Worker . . . don’t you see, you are bound to be implicated.” On display you will find anything from the wilfully naive painting of Clive Branson delivering blatant left-wing messages, to the decidedly tangential responses of the freespirited surrealists. Here is John Armstrong’s evocative tempera image of a deserted Spanish street with its torn scraps of paper blowing like bits of dismembered bodies amid the abandoned buildings. Here is Barbara Hepworth pushing abstraction to atypical uses as she seeks to create a monument to the war (now lost). And here too are dozens of largely forgotten figures: artists such as the teenaged Ursula McCannell who, in Spain for the outbreak of war, turned (as did many other artists) to the inspiration of famed Spanish predecessors — Goya and El Greco — in her more than competent descriptions of the plight of the rural poor. But though the hang of successive

Above, from top: Demonstration in Battersea (1939) by Clive Branson; Weeping Woman (1937) by Pablo Picasso. Below: Design for We Ask Your Attention (1938) by Henry Moore. Left: Spanish Head (1938-9) by FE McWilliam

galleries or display spaces emphasises the range of differing media or styles, the broader message is more convoluted. It is not just that artists who sympathised with Franco — figures such as Wyndham Lewis or Edward Burra or, most saliently Francis Rose — are represented, but that even within the ranks of Republican supporters opinions were divided. Was it better to go out and fight and risk losing your life or to work from home and turn your talent to rousing wider support? How direct should the role of the British government be? From amid the myth-making that surrounded this, in many ways romanticised, conflict, thornier questions continually raise their prickly heads. Conscience and Conflict, even while it casts light on a frequently overlooked passage of British art history, suggesting that our artists were not working in quite such a vacuum as is commonly described, illustrates a far more stirring point. It illuminates a world in which art, taken out of elite galleries and made relevant to the masses, can take on an extremely persuasive power. Visitors to this show can still tap in to its living force. A copy of the banner (the original, designed by James Lucas and embroidered by his wife, was captured in battle) behind which British members of the International Brigade marched adorns a final wall. Until last year, when the last known member of this brigade died, it was used at their funerals to cover their coffins. Now it hangs as an artwork on a gallery wall. On one level, with its totemic clenched fist and list of British-fought battles, it looks ordinary enough, but on another, it represents the single most moving object in this show. But then, on one level, this exhibition is only of minor artistic importance, on another, it reminds us of the worldchanging importance of art. Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War is at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (01243 774557), until Feb 15 and then touring to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle from Mar 7

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Sport

England, my England Exclusive Twickenham exile Steffon Armitage desperate to play again

Chairman criticised Ch Dave Da Whelan, of Wigan Athletic, is under fire for At his hi reported comments

Rugby union, pages 61-64

Football, pages 55-59 Fo

Melodic Rendezvous is tuned up for return

Andy Stephens

The joint favourites for the Champion Hurdle will be in action at different courses in the space of an hour tomorrow. Jeremy Scott has spent this week wrestling over which of the pair that Melodic Rendezvous should take on and yesterday committed his stable flagbearer to an intriguing clash with The New One at Haydock Park. As a consequence, the inaugural running of the £100,000 Betfair Price Rush Hurdle will be a tasty appetiser for the main event on the card, the Betfair Chase, for which the first three home last year — Cue Card, Dynaste and Silviniaco Conti — feature among nine final entries. Haydock’s gain is Ascot’s loss, with Melodic Rendezvous’ absence from the

similarly valuable Coral Hurdle leaving that race, run over about three furlongs farther, at the mercy of Faugheen. “It’s a shame there are two suitable races on the same day, especially when there is the Fighting Fifth Hurdle the following weekend,” Scott said at Chepstow. “It makes it very difficult to run this weekend and then go to Newcastle. “We have got to go where the ground conditions are more likely to suit and that looks being Haydock. More rain is predicted and I won’t mind if it tips down — I think that will be more to our advantage than The New One. “I’d be happier if my horses were running better — it’s taken a long time to get them straight — but Melodic Rendezvous ran his best race first time up last season and is as well as he’s ever been. If we are ever going to beat The 1.30

Ascot

1 2 3 4 5

Rob Wright 1.00 Alisier D’Irlande 2.40 Niceonefrankie (nb) 1.30 The Skyfarmer 3.15 Josies Orders (nap) 2.05 Jolly’s Cracked It 3.50 Benbecula Timekeeper’s top rating: 2.05 Jolly’s Cracked It. Going: good to soft (soft in places) Racing UK

1.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

130PP332 021-4 0640U101-2 3-233 0-0 00-P

2.05 ----v105 -----94 ---

5-1 Heated Debate, Saint Charles, Scorpiancer, 13-2 Alisier D'Irlande, 7-1 Arpege D'Alene, 9-1 Its A Sting, Kotkiri, 11-1 Springboks, 14-1 Nimbus Gale, 16-1 Rock Des Champs, 25-1 others.

Rob Wright’s choice: Alisier D’Irlande was impressive on his only start in an Irish point-to-point and can take this Dangers: Saint Charles, Scorpiancer

1.20

Rob Wright

1.55

(£9,747: 3m) (15)

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1 JEBRIL 32 (D,G) C Gordon 4-11-5 T Cannon 42/1-1 JOLLY'S CRACKED IT 20 (CD,G,S) H Fry 5-11-5 N Scholfield 1130-2 CLONDAW BANKER 20 (BF,S) N Henderson 5-11-0 B J Geraghty FUTURE SECURITY 196F A Middleton 5-11-0 J Banks (3) 16 GENERAL MONTGOMERY 19 (D,F) N Mulholland 5-11-0 M Quinlan 01 WILBERDRAGON 20 (T,C,D,G) C Longsdon 4-11-0 N Fehily 54450/ KAYFLIN 665 Mrs L Jewell 6-10-7 L Aspell

12PP- WHO OWNS ME 210 (D) M W Easterby 8-11-12 Mr H Bannister (5) 1P1-4 NIGHT IN MILAN 22 (D,BF) K Reveley 8-11-11 J Reveley 022-U MATTHEW RILEY 20 (P) P Kirby 7-11-9 H Brooke 1133/ MOON INDIGO 993 J Wade 8-11-7 B Hughes 0P-15 QULINTON 124 (T,V) J Farrelly 10-11-6 J M Maguire 314-0 CLOSING CEREMONY 27 (D) Miss E Lavelle 5-11-5 D Jacob 45P-0 MILAN BOUND 35 (D) Jonjo O'Neill 6-11-4 R McLernon 11305 MASTER MALT 18 Jonjo O'Neill 6-11-2 Raymond O'Brien (3) 05200 BELL WEIR 19 Mrs D Sayer 6-11-2 Colm McCormack (5) 26552 PLAYHARA 9 M Todhunter 5-10-11 G Watters (5) 143-0 HARTFORTH 27 (D) D Whillans 6-10-11 K Edgar (5) 34-02 QUEL ELITE 20 J Moffatt 10-10-5 T Kelly (3) 0431- FEAST OF FIRE 248 M Sowersby 7-10-3 B Harding 43-54 STORM OF SWORDS 26 D Skelton 6-10-3 H Skelton 6P421 MAGGIE BLUE 9 (D) Mrs H Graham 6-10-0 C Bewley (7)

11-2 Maggie Blue, 13-2 Closing Ceremony, 9-1 Master Malt, 10-1 Bell Weir, Night In Milan, Quel Elite, Storm Of Swords, 11-1 others.

1 2 3 4 5 6

3.05

(£16,245: 2m 110y) (4)

Novices' Hurdle

1 2 3 4 5

(Listed: £11,888: 2m) (6)

Novices' Chase (£16,245: 2m 6f) (6)

0-231 GOLDEN HOOF 27 N Henderson 6-11-7 A Tinkler 164-1 VIRAK 30 P Nicholls 5-11-7 S Twiston-Davies 2300- GRAND VISION 231 (C,D) C Tizzard 8-11-2 D Jacob 10-2U MONKEY KINGDOM 20 (T) Miss R Curtis 6-11-2 P Carberry 3P00- UGLY BUG 210 (D) A Dunn 8-11-2 Kevin Jones /0P-F WOODPOLE ACADEMY 21 (H) P Kirby 7-11-2 H Brooke

11-4 Golden Hoof, 100-30 Grand Vision, Virak, 4-1 Ugly Bug, 11-2 others.

Blinkered first time: Ascot 1.00 Verve Argent. Wolverhampton 4.10 Little Choosey. 4.40 Ellingham.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

-11100 0P60-P 2-2326 5665P233221 13F2-5 /1F030621/P

RUM AND BUTTER 55 (P,D,F,G,S) Jonjo O'Neill 6-11-12 W Kennedy DRUMSHAMBO 27 (C,G,S) Miss V Williams 8-11-12 C Whillans (5) KING EDMUND 22 (T,C,G,S) C Gordon 11-11-9 T Cannon NICEONEFRANKIE 216 (CD,G,S) Miss V Williams 8-11-3 A Coleman LYSINO 30 (H,G,S) Dr R Newland 5-11-3 N Fehily AL ALFA 36 (BF,S) P Hobbs 7-10-13 R Johnson FAIRY RATH 330 (C,G,S) N Gifford 8-10-13 L Aspell PILGRIMS LANE 167 (T,P,F,G) A Middleton 10-10-13 S W Quinlan

126 121 v140 138 129 137 133 --

Wright’s choice: Niceonefrankie runs off the same mark as when taking this race by 13 lengths 12 months ago Dangers: Al Alfa, King Edmund

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

200106 510-40 131/43 0041-P P62-01 1000-6 112-02 4-3234 1105-0 540-33 11-040

hurdler being officially rated 81lb inferior to Faugheen. With prize money down to sixth, Davison reasons that he may only have to complete to bolster his meagre winnings. “The money is there, isn’t it?” she said. “He’s going to be retired after this, because he’s got lots of ability but doesn’t want to use it. Hopefully he will go out with something.” Tony McCoy will again sit out this weekend but plans to return on either Wednesday or Thursday next week, to prove his fitness for the ride aboard More Of That, the World Hurdle winner, at the Hennessy meeting. Meanwhile, Frankel continues to generate massive sums. Yesterday, one of his foals, a filly out of Finsceal Beo, was sold at Goffs for €1.8 million (about £1.44 million). Brown Advisory Handicap Chase

(£15,640: 3m) (11)

GRANDADS HORSE 20 (P,D,F,G,S) C Longsdon 8-11-12 N Fehily ARDKILLY WITNESS 20 (G,S) Dr R Newland 8-11-11 W Kennedy I HAVE DREAMED 154 (T,P,C,F,G,S) Mrs L Hill 12-11-9 D Bass FLAMING GORGE 196 (D,G,S) F Hawes 9-11-9 N De Boinville (3) HOWARD'S LEGACY 9 (D,S) Miss V Williams 8-11-9 A Coleman JOSIES ORDERS 19 (P,C,D,S) Jonjo O'Neill 6-11-7 B J Geraghty BALLINVARRIG 17 (C,S) T George 7-11-5 P Brennan IMPERIAL CIRCUS 26 (B,D,F,G) P Hobbs 8-11-3 R Johnson REBLIS 200 (D,F,G,S) G L Moore 9-11-1 Joshua Moore TULLAMORE DEW 13 (F,S) N Gifford 12-10-11 T Cannon ROC DE GUYE 27 (H,P,D,G,S) H J Evans 9-10-6 M Quinlan

133 136 134 135 137 120 135 v138 109 137 133

4-1 Howard's Legacy, 11-2 Ardkilly Witness, Ballinvarrig, 13-2 Imperial Circus, 7-1 others.

Course specialists

Wright’s choice: Josies Orders shaped with promise on his chasing debut over an inadequate trip at Carlisle Dangers: Imperial Circus, Tullamore Dew

Ascot: Trainers N Henderson, 31 from 135 runners, 23.0%; P Nicholls, 26 from 116, 22.4%. Jockeys B J Geraghty, 30 from 110 rides, 27.3%; N Scholfield, 7 from 35, 20.0%. Ffos Las: Trainers W Greatrex, 5 from 16, 31.2%; A Honeyball, 12 from 43, 27.9%. Jockey R Hatch, 4 from 13, 30.8%. Haydock Park: Trainers C Tizzard, 5 from 17, 29.4%; P Nicholls, 10 from 53, 18.9%; N Henderson, 10 from 55, 18.2%. Jockeys J M Maguire, 26 from 105, 24.8%; D Jacob, 6 from 32, 18.8%. Wolverhampton: Trainers R Hannon, 7 from 19, 36.8%; S Bin Suroor, 35 from 104, 33.7%. Jockey C Beasley, 14 from 63, 22.2%.

3.50

Novices' Hurdle (£6,498: 2m 4f) (5)

NH Flat Race (£3,249: 2m) (4)

41- ABIDJAN (T) P Nicholls 4-11-7 S Twiston-Davies 35- ALONG CAME THEO 213 Andrew Crook 4-11-0 J Kington (3) O-342 DEAN'S WALK 22 J Wade 5-11-0 B Hughes 23 MIDNIGHT SHOT 26 C Longsdon 4-11-0 C Deutsch (5)

Evens Midnight Shot, 9-4 Abidjan, 9-2 Dean's Walk, 14-1 Along Came Theo.

Ffos Las

1 2 3 4 5 6

1/6-46 26104-11 F106-4 4141-S 10-243

Canaccord Genuity Handicap Hurdle

(£12,512: 2m) (6)

STARLUCK 13 (B,D,F,G,S) D Arbuthnot 9-11-12 LE FIN BOIS 254 (S) T Vaughan 4-11-9 SWEET DEAL 145 (D,G) N Henderson 4-11-7 LEVIATHAN 9 (D,S) Miss V Williams 7-11-1 FLUTE BOWL 14 (D,S) G L Moore 4-10-13 BENBECULA 26 (D,BF,S) N R Mitchell 5-10-8

12.40 Missed Approach 2.50 Rendl Beach 1.10 Binge Drinker 3.25 Kingspark Boy 1.40 The Happy Warrior 4.00 Veripek 2.15 Dan’s Wee Man Going: soft At The Races

12.40 Maiden Hurdle (£1,949: 2m 4f) (8) 6-2 LEWIS 198 T Symonds 5-11-0 B Poste (5) 11 MISSED APPROACH 21 W Greatrex 4-11-0 D C Costello 4/ RICHARDOFDOCCOMBE 601P G Haywood 8-11-0 Lizzie Kelly (7)

T Cannon R Johnson B J Geraghty A Coleman Joshua Moore Mikey Ennis (7)

133 118 130 128 119 v136

6-4 Sweet Deal, 7-2 Starluck, 5-1 Leviathan, 7-1 Benbecula, 15-2 Le Fin Bois, 11-1 Flute Bowl.

Wright’s choice: Benbecula was a fair third at Wincanton and 7lb claimed by the capable Mikey Ennis can make the difference Danger: Sweet Deal

0P-0 SHANKSFORAMILLION 92 D Rees 5-11-0 P Moloney 4 R Dunne 5 64/60 TA HA 52 M Jones 6-11-0 Miss J Hughes (7) 6 6R532 TINKERS LANE 85 (T) D Rees 5-11-0 1-13 VINTAGE VINNIE 26 (H,BF) Miss R Curtis 5-11-0 D N Russell 7 D Devereux 8 0006 MADE OF DIAMONDS 52 P Bowen 5-10-7

4 5 6

25-41 TARA ROAD 20 (T) Miss R Curtis 6-11-5 -1242 PHONE HOME 27 (CD) Nick Mitchell 7-11-2 6-032 DAN'S WEE MAN 12 (BF) A Honeyball 5-10-4

D N Russell B Powell R Mahon

15-8 Tara Road, 7-2 Dan's Wee Man, 9-2 Moss On The Mill, 5-1 others.

11-8 Missed Approach, 6-4 Vintage Vinnie, 5-1 Lewis, 12-1 others.

2.50

1.10

1 13-3F FIREBIRD FLYER 166 (C,BF) E Williams 7-11-12 C Ring (5) Tom O'Brien 2 P-F42 RENDL BEACH 24 (T,D) R Stephens 7-11-12 R Mahon 3 06P/6 AS DE FER 31 (T,C,BF) A Honeyball 8-11-9 4 1214- ROSA FLEET 225 (H,BF) Miss V Williams 6-11-7 A P Cawley M Byrne 5 14-52 ASHFORD WOOD 12 (V,C) T Vaughan 6-11-7

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Novices' Hurdle (£3,119: 3m) (9)

46341 AN POC AR BUILE 27 (D) Fergal O'Brien 5-11-5 A P Cawley 31-41 BELMOUNT 12 (CD) N Twiston-Davies 5-11-5 R Hatch (5) 231-1 BINGE DRINKER 30 Miss R Curtis 5-11-5 D N Russell -2154 CARN ROCK 27 (P) M Gates 6-11-5 Peter Carberry (3) 65 DR ROBIN 24 P Bowen 4-10-12 D Devereux /22-4 LETBESO 27 P Bowen 6-10-12 J E Moore 12356 RUSSIAN EMPIRE 12 Mrs S Lewis 6-10-12 Mr J Nixon (7) 05-0 SINGH IS KING 137 D Rees 6-10-12 P Moloney 6 MAMMIE'S TREASURE 16 (H) D Rees 4-10-5 A Wedge

6-4 Binge Drinker, 7-2 Belmount, 4-1 An Poc Ar Buile, 6-1 Letbeso, 8-1 others.

Rob Wright

1 2 3

3.15

(£15,640: 2m 3f) (8)

11-10 Vago Collonges, 15-8 Maximiser, 11-2 How About It, 15-2 Adam Du Breteau, 100-1 Top Cat Dj.

1 2 3 4

Melodic Rendezvous will tackle The New One at Haydock Park

Winkworth Handicap Chase

01-1 MAXIMISER 29 (D) S West 6-11-4 J Colliver (5) FU1- ADAM DU BRETEAU 236P Jonjo O'Neill 4-10-12 R McLernon 1-0 HOW ABOUT IT 34 Miss R Curtis 5-10-12 P Carberry P0F-0 TOP CAT DJ 21 C Grant 6-10-12 D O'Regan (7) 122/2 VAGO COLLONGES 17 P Nicholls 5-10-12 S Twiston-Davies

3.40

522-1 HUFF AND PUFF 181F (D) Miss V Williams 7-11-6 L Treadwell 03121 KIAMA BAY 28 (D) Jim Best 8-11-6 J M Maguire 150-1 OSCARTEEA 12 (T,D) A Honeyball 5-11-6 D F O'Regan 322-3 THE BROCK AGAIN 13 (T) P Nicholls 4-11-0 S Twiston-Davies 223- THORPE 292 Miss L Russell 4-11-0 P Buchanan 146-1 STEPHANIE FRANCES 43 (D) D Skelton 6-10-13 H Skelton

2.30

107 v130 128 -80 -49

Rob Wright’s midday update thetimes.co.uk/sportsbook

Graduation Chase

2.40

apart from anything else, the prize money is so much better. We will take a view about chasing after this race. I don’t want to leave it too long because we’ve got to get experience.” The Coral Hurdle rarely attracts many runners — the past two renewals have been contested by only four apiece — and the presence of Faugheen is likely to ensure another small turnout. One trainer banking on that is Zoe Davison, who intends to run Houseparty despite her maiden

9-4 Niceonefrankie, 7-2 Lysino, 9-2 Al Alfa, 13-2 Fairy Rath, 7-1 King Edmund, 17-2 others.

Wright’s choice: Jolly’s Cracked It, a half-brother to Crack Away Jack, readily beat Clondaw Banker here and can follow up Danger: Wilberdragon

9-4 The Brock Again, 7-2 Oscarteea, 4-1 Kiama Bay, 11-2 .

1 2 3 4 5 6

---v136 --

15-8 Clondaw Banker, Jolly's Cracked It, 7-2 Wilberdragon, 12-1 Jebril, 14-1 others.

21U-4 MWALESHI 21 (CD) Mrs S Smith 9-11-7 R Mania 2335- THIRD INTENTION 253 (T,D) C Tizzard 7-11-7 D Jacob 212F- TURBAN 229 (D) W Mullins (Ire) 7-11-7 R Walsh 23F-3 VALCO DE TOUZAINE 26 (H,T,D) P Nicholls 5-11-7 S Twiston-Davies 7-4 Turban, 11-4 Valco De Touzaine, 100-30 Third Intention, 4-1 Mwaleshi.

12.50 Handicap Hurdle 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Felix Rosenstiel's Widow & Son Introductory Hurdle (£6,882: 2m) (7)

1 2 3 4

12.50 Milan Bound 2.30 Virak 1.20 Turban 3.05 Vago Collonges 1.55 Oscarteea 3.40 Midnight Shot Thunderer: 1.55 Thorpe (nap). 2.30 Virak. Going: soft (good to soft in places) Racing UK

W Kennedy T Scudamore N Fehily L Aspell R Johnson

11-4 Boondooma, 3-1 The Skyfarmer, 7-2 Killala Quay, 4-1 Irish Cavalier, 9-2 Puffin Billy.

R Johnson N Fehily R McCarth (5) A Coleman L Aspell T Cannon T Dowling (10) W Kennedy B J Geraghty T Scudamore C Ward (5) Jack Doyle P Brennan

Haydock Park

Sodexo Beginners' Chase (£7,507: 2m 3f) (5) BOONDOOMA 27 (H,G,S) Dr R Newland 7-11-1 IRISH CAVALIER 231 (G,S) Miss R Curtis 5-11-1 KILLALA QUAY 231 (G,S) C Longsdon 7-11-1 PUFFIN BILLY 31 (C,D,S) O Sherwood 6-11-1 THE SKYFARMER 252 (D,G,S) P Hobbs 6-11-1

Wright’s choice: The Skyfarmer showed useful form in handicap hurdles last term and is likely to make a better chaser Danger: Killala Quay

Geotech Soil Stabilsation Maiden Hurdle (£5,630: 2m 3f 110y) (13 runners) ALISIER D'IRLANDE 229P (H,S) P Hobbs 4-11-0 ARPEGE D'ALENE P Nicholls 4-11-0 DONAPOLLO 317 I Williams 6-11-0 HEATED DEBATE 21 (BF) C Longsdon 4-11-0 ITS A STING 35 (G) O Sherwood 5-11-0 KOTKIRI 363 A King 5-11-0 NIMBUS GALE 225 C Mann 5-11-0 ROCK DES CHAMPS Jonjo O'Neill 4-11-0 SAINT CHARLES 223 (BF,F) N Henderson 4-11-0 SCORPIANCER 40 (S) Miss R Curtis 5-11-0 SOLSTICE STAR 10 M Keighley 4-11-0 SPRINGBOKS 199 A King 4-11-0 VERVE ARGENT 30 (B) P Webber 5-11-0

115-15 1141001P4555/5-3 11150-

New One this would probably be our best chance.” Melodic Rendezvous won three Champion Hurdle trials last season but could finish only seventh in the main event. Scott believes drying ground at Cheltenham was a factor and says his programme this term, which could include a switch to fences, will be determined by underfoot conditions. “It’s not that he can’t handle better going, but more that his body does not cope with it terribly well,” the Somerset-based trainer said. “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t jump a fence; he’s not been over-raced and has schooled fine at home. We are starting him over hurdles because,

1.40 1 2 3 4

Handicap Chase (£3,769: 3m) (4)

-65F1 TRILLERIN MINELLA 24 (P,C) G McPherson 6-11-12 R Hatch (5) 2-602 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 8 (BF) R Buckler 6-11-7 G Derwin (7) 60-63 LORD LIR 15 (T,BF) T Vaughan 8-10-11 M Byrne P4-54 RIVER D'OR 27 Mrs S Leech 9-10-2 P Moloney

13-8 Trillerin Minella, 2-1 The Happy Warrior, 7-2 Lord Lir, 11-2 River D'Or.

2.15 1 2 3

Handicap Chase (£6,498: 2m 5f) (6)

2300- CHAMPAGNE RIAN 236 Miss R Curtis 6-11-8 K Cogley (10) 410-1 MOSS ON THE MILL 200 (C) T George 6-11-8 R Flint P-FV4 COPPER BIRCH 27 (C) E Williams 6-11-6 P Moloney

Handicap Hurdle (£5,393: 2m 6f) (5)

11-4 Ashford Wood, 3-1 As De Fer, 4-1 Firebird Flyer, 5-1 others.

3.25

Handicap Chase

(£2,144: 2m 3f 110y) (5)

1 33P5- WINSTON CHURCHILL 506 Mrs S Leech 8-11-12 Killian Moore (3) Tom O'Brien 2 0PP2P LAMB'S CROSS 1 (CD) M Gillard 8-11-11 A Wedge 3 3F35- BOBBITS WAY 235 (P) A Jones 9-11-3 P Moloney 4 33P6P SURPRISE US 14 (P) M Gillard 7-10-10 T Cheesman (7) 5 4-356 KINGSPARK BOY 12 (P) D Rees 7-10-0 2-1 Kingspark Boy, 11-4 Winston Churchill, 7-2 Bobbits Way, 4-1 others.

4.00 1 2 3 4 5 6

NH Flat Race (£1,643: 2m) (6)

4 COURTLANDS PRINCE 199 D Pipe 5-11-0 C O'Farrell 35-4 LOOKS LIKE POWER 44 Mrs D Hamer 4-11-0 Tom O'Brien PRINCE OF THIEVES A Honeyball 4-11-0 Rachael Green 2 RUSTAMABAD 29 T Vaughan 4-11-0 A Johns (7) 2- VERIPEK 285P Miss R Curtis 5-11-0 D N Russell 0-0 TAMBURA 23 G Maundrell 4-10-7 Mr Z Baker (7)

11-4 Rustamabad, 3-1 Prince Of Thieves, Veripek, 4-1 others.

Yesterday’s racing results Chepstow

3.20 (2m 3f 110yd ch) 1, Islandmagee (Lewis Gordon, 6-4 fav); 2, Jackies Solitaire (15-8); 3, Awbeg Massini (7-1). 14l, 45l. E Williams.

12.40 (2m 110yd hdle) 1, Taj Badalandabad (T Scudamore, Evens fav); 2, Quinlandio (33-1); 3, Hughesie (14-1). 14 ran. 4l, 2l. D Pipe. 1.10 (2m 110yd hdle) 1, Rouquine Sauvage (Rachael Green, 10-1); 2, Moving Waves (8-1); 3, Sunshine Buddy (9-2). Annaluna 5-4 fav. 7 ran. 9l, 1l. A Honeyball. 1.40 (3m ch) 1, Smiles For Miles (T Scudamore, 7-2); 2, Cruising Bye (16-1); 3, Fourovakind (3-1 fav). 8 ran. 4Kl, 1Kl. D Pipe. 2.15 (2m 4f hdle) 1, Flintham (Nico de Boinville, 9-2); 2, Princess Tara (7-2); 3, Eaton Rock (3-1). Steel Summit (5th) 2-1 fav. 7 ran. NR: Castarnie. 1Ol, 2l. M Bradstock. 2.50 (3m hdle) 1, Kapricorne (Paul Moloney, 4-1); 2, Always Bold (5-1); 3, Johns Luck (11-8 fav). 9 ran. 4Kl, 3Ol. Mrs S Leech.

3.50 (2m 110yd hdle) 1, Rock On Rocky (C Poste, 2-1); 2, Oscar Sunset (7-4 fav); 3, Helium (7-1). 5 ran. 1Kl, 6l. M Sheppard.

Going: soft (heavy in places)

Placepot: £119.20. Quadpot: £16.10

Market Rasen Going: soft 12.30 (2m 3f hdle) 1, Gone Forever (Danny Cook, 5-2); 2, Atlantic Gold (22-1); 3, Capard King (14-1). Horsted Valley 9-4 fav. 10 ran. NR: Bells Of Castor. 9l, 10l. B Ellison. 1.00 (2m 6f 110yd ch) 1, Shantou Magic (N D Fehily, 9-2); 2, Viva Steve (6-4 fav); 3, Benevolent (28-1). 6 ran. 4Kl, 15l. C Longsdon.

1.30 (2m 6f 110yd ch) 1, Richmond (L Treadwell, Evens fav); 2, The Society Man (11-4); 3, Dashing George (14-1). 4 ran. 3l, 35l. Miss V Williams. 2.05 (3m hdle) 1, Master Of The Hall (Joe Colliver, 25-1); 2, Drum Valley (9-2); 3, First Fandango (4-1). Home Run (ur) 13-8 fav. 5 ran. 3l, 2l. M Hammond. 2.40 (2m 5f hdle) 1, Dunlough Bay (Harry Skelton, 9-4 jt-fav); 2, Raktiman (28-1); 3, Phare Isle (11-2). Definitely Better (6th) 9-4 jt-fav. 6 ran. 1l, 18l. D Skelton. 3.10 (2m 4f ch) 1, Hi Bob (Danny Cook, 5-1); 2, It’s Oscar (9-4); 3, Zazamix (9-1). Veyranno (4th) Evens fav. 4 ran. 1Kl, 3Ol. Lucinda Egerton. 3.40 (2m 1f flat) 1, Desilvano (L Treadwell, 15-8 fav); 2, Kerrow (9-1); 3, Lawless Island (8-1). 8 ran. NR: After Toniight. 1Nl, 5l. H Evans. Placepot: £1,088.20. Quadpot: £316.60.

Wincanton Going: good to soft

12.50 (2m hdle) 1, Aristocracy (Miss B Hampson, 7-2 jt-fav); 2, Fuse Wire (7-2 jt-fav); 3, Drummond (20-1). 10 ran. 3l, 1l. A Turnell. 1.20 (2m ch) 1, Dance Floor King (Nick Scholfield, 9-4); 2, Quite By Chance (2-1 fav); 3, Un Anjou (6-1). 6 ran. 5l, 7l. N Mitchell. 1.50 (2m 6f hdle) 1, It’s A Close Call (Sam Twiston-Davies, 5-4 fav); 2, Velvet Cognac (8-1); 3, Well Rewarded (7-1). 13 ran. 4Kl, 13l. P Nicholls. 2.25 (2m 4f hdle) 1, Sporting Boy (L P Aspell, 12-1); 2, Taigan (3-1 fav); 3, Handazan (4-1). 8 ran. NR: The Brock Again. 1Nl, 2Kl. J Farrelly. 3.00 (2m 4f 110yd ch) 1, Pressies Girl (Sam Twiston-Davies, 5-2 fav); 2, Lily Waugh (3-1); 3, Midnight Belle (5-1). 6 ran. 1Nl, 3Kl. P Nicholls.

3.30 (2m 4f 110yd ch) 1, Trickaway (R Johnson, 9-4 fav); 2, Golanova (7-1); 3, Chance Encounter (4-1). 6 ran. 6l, 11l. P Hobbs. 4.00 (2m 4f hdle) 1, Positive Vibes (M G Nolan, 5-1); 2, Flashy Star (8-1); 3, Rior (7-4 fav). 8 ran. NR: Titch Strider. Sh hd, 1Nl. R Woollacott. Placepot: £14.40. Quadpot: £8.20.

Kempton Park Going: standard 4.10 (6f) 1, Trojan Rocket (G Baker, 13-8 fav); 2, Doc Hay (5-2); 3, Midnight Rider (10-1). 11 ran. NR: First Rebellion. 1l, 1l. M Wigham. 4.40 (6f) 1, Chetan (L Morris, 6-5 fav); 2, Cloak And Degas (8-1); 3, Rialto Magic (3-1). 8 ran. Kl, 2l. J M Bradley. 5.10 (7f) 1, Gleaming Girl (Sophie Killoran, 16-

1); 2, Vegas Rebel (11-8); 3, Lyfka (11-10 fav). 4 ran. NR: Marmalad. Nk, sh hd. D M Simcock. 5.40 (1m 3f) 1, Solidarity (A Kirby, 7-4 fav); 2, Double Discount (7-2); 3, Elbereth (12-1). 10 ran. 1l, 1N. C Appleby. 6.10 (7f) 1, Sirius Prospect (Jim Crowley, 11-4 fav); 2, Plucky Dip (20-1); 3, Alejandro (8-1). 10 ran. 1Kl, 3N. D K Ivory. 6.40 (1m) 1, Unforgiving Minute (A Kirby, 5-4 fav); 2, Aqua Ardens (20-1); 3, Outer Space (16-1). 12 ran. Nk, 1l. C G Cox. 7.10 (1m) 1, Olivers Mount (L Morris, 11-4 fav); 2, Dreaming Again (7-1); 3, Rocky’s Pride (7-2). 11 ran. NR: Strategic Action. Nk, Kl. E F Vaughan. 7.40 (1m) 1, Barbary (Martin Lane, 9-4 fav); 2, Carrera (5-1); 3, Bowsers Bold (20-1). 12 ran. Nk, nk. C Fellowes. Placepot: £172.20. Quadpot: £147.00.

FGM

Sport Cricket

Sri Lanka struggling to raise a smile

DINUKA LIYANAWATTE / REUTERS

Richard Hobson Deputy Cricket Correspondent

Sri Lanka were grinning broadly back in June, resilient against perceived England skulduggery and historic victors in Test, one-day and Twenty20 formats. They reduced James Anderson to tears at Headingley and left Alastair Cook’s wife to talk her husband out of relinquishing the captaincy. For Angelo Mathews and his squad, the rematch could not come soon enough. Five months on, Sri Lankan waters are rather choppier, and that has nothing to do with the monsoon rain due to clash with the 50-over series. An injury here, a suspect bowling action there, but most of all a hastily arranged trip to India have disturbed the serenity of an outfit who were on course for one of the most successful years in their time as a frontline cricket-playing nation. Lasith Malinga is absent while he recovers from ankle surgery. Sri Lanka are optimistic rather than certain that the fast bowler will be fit for the World Cup that starts in February. Sachithra Senanayake is bowling again in domestic cricket, but remains suspended from internationals after tests in July confirmed England’s suspicion that his arm straightened beyond the permitted 15 degrees. As for the last-minute tour to India, no one can know how destabilising it will prove. Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) felt unable to say no when it was asked to deputise for West Indies, whose players downed tools and headed back to the Caribbean last month. Wholly 6 Vithushan Ehantharajah, who covers county cricket for ESPNcricinfo, won the Christopher Martin-Jenkins young journalist of the year award with a prize of £5,000, supported by The Times, at the fourth annual ECB County Cricket Journalism Awards last night to mark outstanding coverage of the domestic game. Richard Rae, of BBC Radio Leicester, was named the winner of the Christopher Martin-Jenkins county broadcaster of the year award, receiving £5,000 from the ECB. The Cricket Paper won the national newspaper of the year award, the Yorkshire Post took the prize for best regional paper and ESPNcricinfo was named leading online publication.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Ali’s bowling prowess gives him chance to open batting Richard Hobson

First throw: Ali has been called in to open the innings in England’s warm-up game to enhance the side’s bowling options

unprepared, Sri Lanka suffered their first 5-0 whitewash. They could not even win in consolation when India rested players. Perhaps SLC felt it had no option given the economic might of the Indians. But acquiescence went down very badly with the players. Kumar Sangakkara, never afraid to put his head above the parapet, said: “Our six weeks of pure fitness [training] ends abruptly. Have a week to do a month’s requirement of skills work before India. Planning ahead anyone?” Management had demanded that players improve fitness, and recriminations began even before the full horror of the final scoreline. Whereas, in England, disagreement might be screamed across a radio phone-in or a website, in this case it spilt into parliament, where Arjuna Ranatunga and Sanath Jayasuriya, teammates in the 1996 World Cup win, are representatives. Age has not mellowed Ranatunga. Even with his brother, Nishantha, being secretary of SLC, he has not moderated his criticism. Arjuna fired with both

Ruined figures Sri Lanka’s one-day record in 2014 Bangladesh (A): Feb: 3-0 Asia Cup (in Bangladesh): Feb-Mar: winners, 5-0 record overall Ireland (A): May: 1-0 England (A): May-June: 3-2 South Africa (H): July: 1-2 Pakistan (H): Aug: 2-1 India (A): Nov: 0-5

barrels. He described the tour as “a disaster”, apportioning blame to SLC and the sports ministry. It just so happens that Jayasuriya is deputy minister for sport as well as chief selector. His take was rather different. He accepted responsibility, but added: “These are professional cricketers. The SLC pay them throughout the year and provide them training throughout the year.” Lead balloons have gone down more gently. As England discovered in Australia last winter, poor results widen fault

lines in relationships. The most influential pair of Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena made their views of authority clear this year when they confirmed retirements from Twenty20 in public before telling their employers. They have been rebuked again since India for speaking their minds. This time, Sangakkara was annoyed at being rested for the last two games while Jayawardena, deceptively strongwilled, said that he wanted to move from the middle order to open the batting. He has enjoyed success there and Sri Lanka need a reliable partner for Tillekeratne Dilshan, so the idea has merit. In the way of cricket, Sri Lanka could do worse and probably will. After Sri Lanka’s calamity in India, England are only one point below them in the one-day rankings. To say that Cook’s side are favourites when the seven-match series begins in Colombo on Wednesday is stretching the mark. Sri Lanka may even view the visit as serendipitous, given their need for a swift recovery. But it is clearly not the mission impossible for England it seemed a month ago.

Alastair Cook cited the bowling of Moeen Ali as the reason for the change at the top of the batting order for the first of England’s two warm-ups against Sri Lanka A today, before the sevenmatch one-day series starts on Wednesday. The captain said in Colombo that he would open alongside Ali because England want an extra bowler in their top six, but stressed that it was “nowhere near our final decision for the World Cup”. With Ian Bell due to bat at No 3, England have invited renewed criticism of an overconservative approach given that Alex Hales, the No 3 batsman in the ICC Twenty20 rankings, opened against India at the end of the recent season. “It was incredibly hard to pick a side, even for this warm-up game,” Cook said. “Moeen bowled well in the last game against India. He has improved so much as a bowler since he came into international cricket and this is another challenge for him, opening the batting.” Ali has struggled against the short ball at times in his brief Test career, but said last week that his favoured oneday role is to open the batting, which he has done for Worcestershire. Kevin Pietersen has expressed alarm at the 64,000-person drop in participation among recreational cricketers revealed by The Times on Wednesday and offered to help clubs and schools. He said on Twitter: “We have got a fantastic pool of talent here in the UK and [the] thought of kids dropping out and not fulfilling potential is frightening and needs changing.”

Exclusive to members

Video exclusive Moeen Ali reveals the secrets of bowling unplayable off-spin thetimes.co.uk/cricket

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Sport

McIlroy makes it look simple with storming start in desert Golf

Ron Lewis Dubai

When Rory McIlroy hits top form, golf looks easy. As the rest of the field in the DP World Tour Championship were chugging towards the end of a long season in Dubai yesterday, a refreshed McIlroy looked like a man without a care in the world. After one round, McIlroy sits atop the leaderboard along with Shane Lowry on 66, six under par. This should have been the climax to the Race to Dubai, but McIlroy has that sewn up, without even playing for the past six weeks. For the early part of his round, the Northern Irishman threatened to blow the field apart at the Jumeirah Golf Estates, hitting four birdies on the first five holes and lipping out a six-foot putt for another at the 3rd that he was still griping about off the course. “I’ve always said, when it’s like this, you always wonder how have you ever played so badly,” McIlroy said. “I’m

Leading first-round scores Great Britain and Ireland unless stated 66: R McIlroy, S Lowry. 67: R Ramsay, T Olesen (Den). 68: E Grillo (Arg), H Stenson (Swe). 69: R Fisher, T Fleetwood, D Willett, L Oosthuizen (SA), E Molinari (It). 70: T Hatton, J Luiten (Neth), K Broberg (Swe), G Coetzee (SA), L Westwood, J Blixt (Swe). 71: H Otto (SA), D Howell, P Larrazábal (Sp), V Dubuisson (Fr), R Karlsson (Swe), J Rose, M Warren, R Wattel (Fr), T Bjorn (Den), M Á Jiménez (Sp), A Levy (Fr), R Sterne (SA). 72: G McDowell, C Schwartzel (SA), B Grace (SA), M Kaymer (Ger), D Fichardt (SA), T Jaidee (Thai), O Fisher, S Gallacher, J Donaldson, B Wiesberger (Austria). 73: F Molinari (It), A Sullivan, S García (Sp), F Zanotti (Par), N Colsaerts (Bel), W Ormsby (Aus), S Dyson, R Cabrera Bello (Sp), M Hoey. 74: M Ilonen (Fin). 75: E Els (SA), O Wilson, I Poulter, M Manassero (It), M Baldwin.

Wolverhampton Rob Wright

4.10 Sannibel 6.20 CityOfAngkorWat 4.40 Silver Mirage 6.50 Yourinthewill 5.15 Topaling 7.20 Dream Child 5.50 Cape Cay 7.50 Footstepsintherain Going: standard Tote Jackpot meeting Draw: 6f-7f, low best At The Races

4.10 Apprentice Handicap (£2,102: 5f 216y) (13)

1 (2) 5416 METHAALY 18 (B,CD) M Mullineaux 11-9-7 L Stones (7) 2 (4) 0001 INSOLENCEOFOFFICE 7 (P,CD) R Ford 6-9-7 N Grundy (7) 3 (6) 0404 FOIE GRAS 136 (D) C Dwyer 4-9-6T Hemsley (5) 4 (1) 0000 SALVADO 31 (T,D) A Carroll 4-9-5 R Hornby G Mahon 5 (7) 0031 SYNONYM 9 M Appleby 3-9-3 6(11) 2025 LITTLECOTE LADY 7 (V,D) M Usher 5-9-0 J Gordon (5) 7 (3) 3/40 LUCKY ROYALE 37 (D) J Gask 6-8-13 A Davies (7) 8(10) -055 SANNIBEL 9 (P,C,D) D Bridgwater 6-8-9 C Meehan 9(13) -000 FORZARZI 78 (C) J Riches 10-8-8 H Burns (5) 10(8) 0655 SPOWARTICUS 95 (V) S Dixon 5-8-7 R Harris (5) 11(12) 0500 PICNIC IN THE GLEN 22 S Kirk 3-8-7 J Dinsmore (7) 12(9) 6430 LITTLE CHOOSEY 106 (T,B,C,D) S R Bowring 4-8-7 Aaron Jones 13(5) 4056 STUDFARMER 83 (P,D) P Gundry 4-8-7 L Avery (5) 5-2 Insolenceofoffice, 7-2 Synonym, 5-1 Sannibel, 6-1 others

4.40 Maiden Stakes

(£2,588: 5f 216y) (9)

1 (8) 5243 BLUE BOUNTY 7 (B,BF) M Tompkins 3-9-5J Quinn 2 (1) 6556 FORCEFUL BEACON 30 A Carroll 4-9-5 W Twiston-Davies S A Gray (5) 3 (4) 0460 MUKAYNIS K A Ryan 3-9-5 50 PROMINNA 15 A Carroll 4-9-5 Luke Morris 4 (7) 5 (6) 00 WATTABOUTSTEVE 14 Ralph J Smith 3-9-5 J Fanning 6 (9) 0666 AUSSIE SKY 69 D Loughnane 3-9-0 S Donohoe

6-4 Mukaynis, 2-1 Silver Mirage, 3-1 Blue Bounty, 10-1 others.

Handicap

(£2,749: 1m 5f 194y) (12)

1(11) -130 DEVON DRUM 23 P Webber 6-10-0 W Twiston-Davies 2 (6) 2546 LEXINGTON BAY 34 (D) R Fahey 6-9-13 T Hamilton 3 (9) 0-15 WATT BRODERICK 29J (BF) I Williams 5-9-12 S Donohoe 4 (7) 0021 ANEEDH 59 (B) C Mulhall 4-9-11 P McDonald 5 (4) 0606 ASCENDANT 43J (V,D) A Reid 8-9-11 D Brock (3) 6 (5) 2056 LINEMAN 42 (P,C) A Hollinshead 4-9-10 S W Kelly 7 (1) 2120 SAINT THOMAS 38 (C) J Mackie 7-9-7 G Gibbons R Tart 8 (8) 0545 LADY OF YUE 38 E Stanford 4-9-3 P Mulrennan 9 (3) 2562 QUENELLE 11 E Dunlop 3-9-2 10(2) 3652 ANGUS GLENS 7 (P) D Dennis 4-9-0 D Sweeney 11(12) 5403 FLYING CAPE 18 (T,P) A Hollinshead 3-8-11 T Eaves J Quinn 12(10) 0131 TOPALING 31 M Tompkins 3-8-4 11-2 Quenelle, 15-2 Flying Cape, Lexington Bay, 8-1 Lineman, Watt Broderick, 9-1 Aneedh, Angus Glens, 10-1 others.

5.50 Maiden Auction Stakes (2-Y-O: £2,264: 7f 32y) (12)

KYRENIA CASTLE R Hannon 9-1 S Levey 1 (2) 2 (6) 3303 CHICAGO BERE 37 R Hannon 8-13 K O'Neill T Eaves 3(12) 03 ORACOLO 17 D Simcock 8-13 THERMAL COLUMN R Fahey 8-13 T Hamilton 4 (9) CHARLTON HEIGHTS J Moore 8-11 L Jones 5(10) R Havlin 6 (8) 00 MISU PETE 15 M Usher 8-11 7 (1) 020 RENNIE MACKINTOSH 9 M Johnston 8-11 J Fanning 0 SIGNS AND SIGNALS 104 E Vaughan 8-10 8 (3) D Sweeney 9 (5) 53 CAPE CAY 164 (BF) R Beckett 8-8 G Gibbons 0 COLOURFILLY 28 E Walker 8-8 Luke Morris 10(11) 6 KINNARA 6 S Kirk 8-8 L Keniry 11(7) 12(4) 2004 CHEFCHAOUEN 17 J Moore 8-6 J Gordon (7) 7-2 Chicago Bere, 9-2 Cape Cay, 5-1 Chefchaouen, 11-2 others.

Brash and Dujardin head Olympia cast Equestrianism Scott Brash and

very comfortable with my game at the minute, I’m on a really good path and I know what I need to do to make my game work.” There were no signs of rust for McIlroy, who had not played a competitive round since finishing second at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews at the start of October, as he made a whirlwind start to his opening round here. The only blip in his opening five holes was the birdie putt that lipped out. Apart from that, he was faultless. At the 5th, he went straight at a vicious pin position in the front left corner and played an approach to within six feet for another birdie; at the par-three 6th, he left himself a testy eight-footer for par, but struck it straight to the centre of the cup. “It was a great way to start and it probably should have been five birdies in the first five holes,” McIlroy said. “You never expect to start like that, but I’ve been hitting the ball well for the last two weeks I’ve been practising, it was just a matter of taking that good range play on to the course.” On a blazing afternoon, even the Northern Irishman could not maintain his impressive momentum. Good birdie chances slipped by on the 10th, 11th and 14th greens, while he produced a bold chip shot from off the green to rescue par on the 12th, having driven wide left off the tee. When he did break a run of nine successive pars, it was thanks to a remarkable drive on the 15th as he boldly picked a way through the bunkers to lie just short of the green. His final birdie came on the 16th, where he holed a putt from the edge of the green. While McIlroy was practising in Dubai last weekend, Lowry was having a tough time at the Turkish Airlines Open in Antalya, where the Irishman

7 (2) 0500 ELLINGHAM 30 (V) Mrs C Dunnett 3-9-0 C Catlin 8 (3) 43 SAVED MY BACON 17 C Dwyer 3-9-0 C Beasley (3) 9 (5) 0533 SILVER MIRAGE 14 (H,BF) M Bell 3-9-0 A Kirby

5.15

STEPHEN HINDLEY / AP

Charlotte Dujardin, the Britons ranked world No 1 in showjumping and dressage respectively, head the entries for the London International Horse Show at Olympia from December 16 to 22 (Jenny MacArthur writes). Brash, who gained his second successive Champion of Champions title in the Global Champions Tour series in Doha last week, is one of 11 showjumpers in the world top 20 due to compete at the show. The home entry includes Laura Renwick, Britain’s top-ranked woman, and four members of the Whitaker dynasty: Michael, John, William and Robert. Dujardin will attempt a fourth win in the Reem Acra FEI World Cup dressage leg in what will be the first time that she and Valegro have competed in Britain this year. “I can’t wait to do my new floor plan in front of the home crowd,” Dujardin, the Olympic, European and world champion, said. “I think it is harder than my Olympic routine, so if I can get it right on the night I could possibly beat the world record I set last year.”

Marshall crashes out Boxing The reign as world champion of Savannah Marshall came to an end when the middleweight from Hartlepool lost her opening bout in the women’s World Championships in Jeju Island, South Korea, on points to Yaroslava Yakushina, of Russia. Sandy Ryan, the lightwelterweight, is through to the quarter-final stage after a points won over Gulsum Tatar, of Turkey.

On a charge: McIlroy showed no signs he was playing his first competitive round for six weeks yesterday, compiling a score of six under par to share the lead

moved up to share the lead in the final round, only to see his chances quickly fall apart and Brooks Koepka, the American, took the victory. Lowry birdied the first two holes yesterday and four of the last six. “Any time you shoot 66 anywhere, it’s quite decent,” he said. “This golf course can be difficult at times. I played one real bad hole and other than that played beautiful golf.” But for a double-bogey at the 16th, Thorbjorn Oleson would have been on top of the leaderboard. It was the only blot on his round after seven birdies, four of which came in successive holes at the turn. The Dane shared third place

on five under par with Richie Ramsay, from Scotland. Emiliano Grillo, from Argentina, was another stroke back, alongside Henrik Stenson, last year’s winner from Sweden, who was playing with McIlroy and had seven birdies and three bogeys in his round. Ian Poulter was straight off to the practice green after a disappointing round of three over par. He dropped three shots on the opening nine holes and his only birdie of the day came on the five-par 14th. Justin Rose was four over par after ten holes, but turned his form around dramatically to record five birdies in a respectable score of 71.

6.20 Handicap

7.20 Handicap (£4,852: 1m 1f 103y) (13)

1 (6) 0231 CITY OF ANGKOR WAT 55 (T,CD) J Hughes 4-9-7 J Browning (7) 2 (4) 4104 POOR DUKE 6 (C) M Mullineaux 4-9-5 R Havlin 3(10) 0424 STANLOW 34 (P,C,D) D Loughnane 4-9-5 S W Kelly 4 (9) 1205 WITH HINDSIGHT 36 (C,D) J Spearing 6-9-4 C Catlin 5 (1) 2205 TUKITINYASOK 100 (H,C,D) C Mulhall 7-9-3 G Chaloner 6 (8) 0030 HICKSTER 14 (C) Miss M Rowland 3-9-3 J Quinn 7 (3) 5116 CATCHING ZEDS 156J (B,C,D) K Frost 7-9-1 S Donohoe 8 (5) 4440 SNOW DANCER 60 (C,D) J Riches 10-8-11 C Beasley (3) 9 (7) 2040 PERSEVERENT PETE 7 Mrs C Dunnett 4-8-9 Luke Morris 10(2) 0004 FLYING APPLAUSE 17 (T,B,C,D) S R Bowring 9-8-7 E J Walsh (5) 11(11) 0200 SARLAT 34 W M Brisbourne 3-8-5 Amy Scott (3)

1(13) 0104 BERLUSCA 7 (C,D) D O'Meara 5-9-7 Sam James 2 (3) 2160 LIKE A DIAMOND 27J (H,C) Miss A Stokell 4-9-2 J Fanning 3 (1) 0100 CHAPTER AND VERSE 23 M Murphy 8-9-2 S W Kelly 4 (6) 0340 PATRIOTIC 21 (P,C,D) C Dwyer 6-9-1 C Beasley (3) 5 (2) 0000 VERY GOOD DAY 14 R Fahey 7-9-1 G Chaloner 6(11) 4000 COMMISSAR 48 (T) I Williams 5-9-0 S Donohoe 7(10) 0026 EXTRATERRESTRIAL 23 R Fahey 10-9-0 T Hamilton 8 (8) 3314 DREAM CHILD 28 (CD) C Appleby 3-8-13 P Makin 9 (4) 4152 HANDHELD 21 (P) Miss J Feilden 7-8-13 Shelley Birkett (5) 10(9) 0050 KUNG HEI FAT CHOY 11 (B,C) J Given 5-8-13 T Eaves 11(5) 3014 TOGA TIGER 11 (C) K Frost 7-8-13 P McDonald 6303 CRICKLEWOOD GREEN 17 R Hannon 3-8-13 12(12) S Levey 13(7) 1-05 GHAZI 17 (P) S Bin Suroor 3-8-12 K Shoemark (7)

(£2,102: 1m 1f 103y) (11)

4-1 City Of Angkor Wat, Stanlow, 15-2 Tukitinyasok, 8-1 Poor Duke, Snow Dancer, 10-1 Flying Applause, Sarlat, 11-1 others.

6.50 Handicap

(£2,102: 1m 1f 103y) (11)

1 (5) 2400 MERCHANT OF MEDICI 60 M D Hammond 7-9-7 P McDonald 2 (1) 1650 ELLE REBELLE 6 (C) W M Brisbourne 4-9-5 Luke Morris 3 (6) 0600 YOURINTHEWILL 28 (C,D) D Loughnane 6-9-5 S W Kelly 4 (7) 0122 LES GAR GAN 22 K Dalgleish 3-9-4 J Fanning 5(11) 3310 LOLA MONTEZ 28 (B,CD,BF) D Lanigan 3-9-3 G Baker 6 (9) 0620 MY RENAISSANCE 35 B Case 4-9-1 J Duern (5) 7 (2) 6030 TRIPLE STAR 24 H Morrison 3-8-12 Hayley Turner 8(10) 4224 ROYAL MIZAR 67 (BF) Ralph J Smith 4-8-11 C Beasley (3) 9 (8) 5003 EIUM MAC 17 (B) N Bycroft 5-8-8 J Butterfield (3) 10(4) 5543 BROWN PETE 17 (P,C) Miss A Stokell 6-8-7 C Bishop 11(3) 0000 DUTCH LADY ROSEANE 7 J Unett 3-8-5 L Jones 3-1 Lola Montez, 5-1 Les Gar Gan, 13-2 Triple Star, 7-1 Yourinthewill, 9-1 Eium Mac, Elle Rebelle, 11-1 others.

5-1 Dream Child, 13-2 Ghazi, 15-2 Berlusca, 10-1 others.

7.50 Handicap (£2,749: 1m 141y) (13) 1 (6) 0500 LORD OFTHE SHADOWS 23 R Hannon 5-9-7 S Levey T Eaves 2 (4) 2-00 BUSHEL 44 J Given 4-9-7 3(11) 4006 WANNABE KING 64 (V,D) G Harker 8-9-6 D Allan 4 (7) 2363 LEAN ON PETE 17 (P,C) O Pears 5-9-4 J Butterfield (3) 5(13) 3200 PRIME EXHIBIT 70 (T,C,D) D Loughnane 9-9-4 E J Walsh (5) C Catlin 6 (5) 21 MEMORIA 15 (CD) Rae Guest 3-9-4 7 (2) 2032 FOOTSTEPSINTHERAIN 8 (C) D Dennis 4-9-4 D Sweeney 8(10) 3106 DANSILI DUTCH 27 (C,D) D O'Meara 5-9-3 Josh Doyle (7) 9 (1) 0001 PIVOTMAN 18 (T,B,C) M W Easterby 6-9-2 G Gibbons 10(9) 0000 RAKAAN 23 (C,D) B Powell 7-9-0 S Donohoe 11(8) 1256 MADAME MIRASOL 64 (P,C) K A Ryan 3-9-0 T Hamilton 12(3) 3010 FRANKTHETANK 17 (P) K Dalgleish 3-9-0 J Fanning C Beasley (3) 13(12) 0062 GAMBINO 21 J Riches 4-8-13 5-1 Memoria, 7-1 Footstepsintherain, Lean On Pete, 8-1 others.

Sarfraz shines in Dubai Cricket Sarfraz Ahmed struck a defiant century to help to leave the second Test against New Zealand in Dubai evenly poised. New Zealand appeared on course for a healthy first-innings lead before Sarfraz (112) added 81 for the last wicket with Rahat Ali. Yasir Shah and Zulfiqar Babar, the Pakistan spinners, then took three wickets apiece as New Zealand were reduced to 167 for six, a lead of 177. Ross Taylor is 77 not out.

Results Football FA Cup First-round replay Maidstone Utd(1) 2

Stevenage

(0) 1

Collin 2, 87 Charles 47 2,226 (Maidstone United away to Wrexham) Sky Sports Victory Shield (under-16): England 2 Scotland 1 (at Huish Park, Yeovil); Northern Ireland 0 Wales 2 (at Ballymena Showgrounds).

Cricket Second Test match Pakistan v New Zealand Dubai (fourth day of five): New Zealand, with four second-innings wickets in hand, are 177 runs ahead of Pakistan New Zealand: First Innings 403 (T W M Latham 137; Zulfiqar Babar 4 for 137) Second Innings T W M Latham c Shafiq b Shah 9 *B B McCullum lbw b Babar 45 K S Williamson c Umar b Babar 11 L R P L Taylor not out 77 C J Anderson b Shah 0 J D S Neesham b Babar 11 †B J Watling c Shafiq b Shah 11 M D Craig not out 0 Extras (lb 3) 3 Total (6 wkts, 48.2 overs) 167 Fallofwickets:1-42,2-63,3-78,4-79,5-125,6-166. Bowling: Rahat Ali 4-0-19-0; Adil 5-1-20-0; Babar 21.2-5-60-3; Shah 18-1-65-3. Pakistan: First Innings (overnight 281-6) †Sarfraz Ahmed c and b McCullum 112 Yasir Shah c Watling b Southee 2 Ehsan Adil lbw b Southee 0

Zulfiqar Babar c Watling b Boult 5 Rahat Ali not out 16 Extras (b 7, lb 2, nb 1) 10 Total (147 overs) 393 Fall of wickets: 1-28, 2-32, 3-145, 4-195, 5-220, 6-279, 7-285, 8-287, 9-312. Bowling: Boult 30-8-69-2; Southee 30-5-67-3; Craig 28-5-117-1; Sodhi 39-9-92-2; Anderson 7-0-26-0; Neesham 11-2-12-1; McCullum 2-1-1-1. Umpires: R E J Martinesz (Sri Lanka) and P R Reiffel (Australia).

Fixtures Football Sky Bet Championship (7.45): Brentford v Fulham; Cardiff v Reading.

Rugby union

Aviva Premiership: Harlequins v Sale (7.45); Newcastle v Gloucester (8.0). Greene King IPA Championship: Worcester v Jersey (7.45); Yorkshire Carnegie v Plymouth Albion (8.0). Guinness PRO12 (7.35 unless stated): Connacht v Zebre; Newport Gwent Dragons v Munster (7.30); Scarlets v Glasgow; Ulster v Ospreys. Principality Building Society Welsh Premiership (2.30): Aberavon v Cardiff Rugby; Bedwas v Llandovery; Bridgend v Ebbw Vale; Cross Keys v Carmarthen Quins.

Other sport

Basketball: BBL Championship (7.30): Bristol v Surrey; Leeds v Durham; Sheffield v Worcester. Ice hockey: Rapid Solicitors Elite League: Braehead v Sheffield (7.30).

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Sport

Rosberg ups the ante in title feud

JAMES MOY / PA

Formula One

Kevin Eason Motor Racing Correspondent Abu Dhabi

If a picture is worth a thousand words, there was a novel in the handshake for the photographers between the two rivals for the Formula One world championship. Lewis Hamilton was staring into the middle distance, his right hand outstretched to Nico Rosberg as if his Mercedes team-mate had turned up for work with a heavy cold. The German simply thrust his square-jawed smile straight at the cameras. The veneer of friendship and comradeship snapped yesterday as they faced questions in the build-up to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final race of a season dominated by these men in silver and white. They apparently started out as mates until their on-track clashes — notably a collision at the Belgian Grand Prix in August — ignited a firestorm in the Mercedes motorhome. The greatest fear at Yas Marina is that another collision or false move could decide the world championship. Hamilton tried diplomacy but Rosberg laid his cards on the table with just a hint of a sneer when both were asked whether they believed that this would be a clean fight for the title. “Lewis can do something to keep it clean, which is to drive clean himself. So, it is not like he can’t do anything,” Rosberg spat across the press conference table. Ouch, that hurt. Was this Rosberg upping the ante in the closing hours before battle commences? The German is on a roll after winning in Brazil and stopping a run of five victories for his team-mate. He appears to be looking to destabilise his rival. He knows that Hamilton can be psychologically sensitive and Rosberg clearly is attempting to get under his teammate’s skin. “Of course I need to do what I can to put pressure on Lewis,” he said. “He made a mistake in Brazil, so there’s a chance. I will do what I can.” Hamilton appeared slightly stunned,

Exclusive to members

Hamilton v Rosberg Audio graphic Kevin Eason tells the tale of a tempestuous title race thetimes.co.uk/formulaone

Fernando Alonso spluttered into his beard as he sat like an uncomfortable piggy-in-the-middle between the man who has replaced him and the man he could replace. The question was straightforward enough: “Would you like Jenson Button as your team-mate at McLaren next season?” Cue some lingering looks from the Briton and a little bit of cajoling. “Take your time and say yes,” Button giggled. Alonso could not reply. At least Sebastian Vettel knows what is going on: the four-times champion finally put pen to paper yesterday on a three-year deal with Ferrari worth £150 million. He leaves Red Bull for the Scuderia, while Alonso will cease to be a Ferrari driver after the Abu Dhabi

Federer is left watching his back despite end to spat Tennis

Rick Broadbent

Poles apart: Hamilton looks unimpressed by Rosberg’s offer of a handshake as the title rivals prepare for the season finale

even perplexed. His answer was somewhat more circuitous than the Yas Marina track, which is more Disneyland than F1. “You always go into the weekend believing [a clean fight] is going to be the case,” he said. “We don’t need to [talk]. It has been discussed at the beginning of the season and several times through the season and particularly after Belgium again. We’re not children. We should know what is wrong and what is right.” In the Mercedes motorhome, abuzz with preparations for this world championship climax, team members milled around and journalists clutched notebooks. The rivals went their separate ways, though — Hamilton in one hospitality suite and Rosberg in another. All was well, everyone in a Mercedes team shirt insisted, but the tension snapped, crackled and popped. Come Sundayy night, one side of the Mercedes suites will be ecstatic, the other will be in deep depression — possibly full of anger ger if the worst comes to pass. This race — offering double points for the first and probably last

Close encounters Bahrain Rosberg grabs pole position but the pair dice for lap after lap until Hamilton takes the initiative and overtakes his team-mate. It is wheel to wheel all the way, with Rosberg almost forced off track. Monaco Hamilton believes that he is cheated out of pole by Rosberg, who veers into an escape road, ruining the Englishman’s fast lap. Rosberg leads the 1-2 finish but the relationship is shattered. Hungary An engine fire ruins Hamilton’s qualifying and he starts last, with Rosberg on pole. But he gets ahead of Rosberg, then disobeys orders to move over for his teammate. Rosberg is furious. Belgium Hamilton overtakes Rosberg, who was on pole, but the German turns into his teammate on the second lap. Hamilton is out with a puncture and Rosberg finishes second. Hamilton says that the German caused the collision deliberately.

Wo Words by Kevin Eason

time in the history of F1 — has become a winner-takes-all grand prix. Hamilton leads the world championship by 17 points from Rosberg, but that is almost an irrelevance in a race in which the winner will carry off 50 points. All eyes should have been on the Mercedes headquarters, but there were distractions at every turn, not least a few doors down the paddock at Caterham. They got here on a wing and a prayer and £1.9 million worth of donations from fans, raised through a crowd-funding exercise. Kamui Kobayashi, one of the team’s drivers before the financial crash that brought in the administrators, was back in the paddock after two grands prix at home. The second seat has gone to Will Stevens, the young Briton making a speciality of working for teams on the edge of oblivion. The 23-year-old signed as reserve driver for Marussia last month; that lasted a single race before they went down the pan. Stevens has put together a lastminute deal at Caterham to make his F1 debut in Abu Dhabi. It will be a ride on a scale of the rollercoaster that stands in the theme park outside Yas Marina. But his main objective should be to stay well out of the way of two warring Mercedes drivers — or he will become a sitting duck on the battlefield.

Alonso deal may herald Button’s final lap for McLaren Kevin Eason

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Grand Prix on Sunday night. There were obvious tinges of regret for the Spaniard, not least in a season that is likely to end without a Ferrari victory for the first time since 1993. There were 6 Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s chief executive, is expected to call together the sport’s nine teams for an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss the cash crisis in the sport. Mercedes are said to have offered to waive any share of the almost £40 million prize money that was due to the defunct Marussia team so that the cash can help the sport’s smaller teams. The suggestion from Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ head of motorsport, was rebuffed, though, by Red Bull and Ferrari.

11 wins and two final-race title deciders, but the world championship in red never materialised, the relationship soured and he was shown the door so that Ferrari could turn to the relative youth of the 27-year-old Vettel, six years Alonso’s junior. “I felt it was the time for new projects and motivation,” Alonso said. “I felt around September that it was time to move. Only time will tell whether it is a good or bad decision.” It could be a bad decision for Button because Alonso is bound for McLaren. This is a marriage of convenience, though, for Alonso needs a team and McLaren want a marquee signing to herald the arrival of Honda as their new engine partner. The fall guy could be Button, who waits and waits for a decision on his future. At 34, time is not

on his side, and McLaren could favour Kevin Magnussen, his 22-year-old team-mate, as Alonso’s new partner. Button is sanguine about his future, despite the disappointment that a 15season veteran and world champion could be treated in such an off-hand way. “When you have been in F1 for so many years, you have your blinkers on,” Button said. “But when you are put in an uncomfortable situation, your eyes are opened to other possibilities and there are a lot of challenges out there.”

Inside today

Caterham propel Sussex pub into the F1 spotlight thetimes.co.uk/sport

Roger Federer knows that the best part of a French crowd of 27,000 will hope that his back problem resurfaces this afternoon. The world No 2 has declared himself fit for the start of a Davis Cup final brimming with emotion and subplots. The Swiss totem craves the trophy to add to the 17 grand-slam singles crowns and the Olympic gold medal he shared with Stanislas Wawrinka in 2008. However, his preparation for Lille has been plagued by back spasms, a heckling row and his withdrawal from the title match at the ATP World Tour Finals in London last weekend. He trained gingerly on Wednesday but slightly better yesterday. Certainly, he made himself available and the draw put him up against Gaël Monfils, one of the sport’s more erratic souls, in today’s singles. That match will come after Jo-Wilfried Tsonga takes on Wawrinka, who was heckled by Federer’s wife Mirka during their match in London on Saturday. The spat has been dismissed, but the back problem lingers. It seemed to be ushering Federer towards retirement in 2013 until he found a cure, a revival and, in January, a new coach in Stefan Edberg. Federer will also play Tsonga in the reverse singles on Sunday. Ideally, he would partner Wawrinka in tomorrow’s doubles, but the Swiss have named the lowly ranked duo of Marco Chiudinelli and Michael Lammer to face Richard Gasquet and Julien Benneteau. Should the massages and

How they line up Today: Jo-Wilfied Tsonga (Fr) v Stanislas Wawrinka (Switz); Gaël Monfils (Fr) v Roger Federer (Switz), Tomorrow: Richard Gasquet and Julien Benneteau (Fr) v Marco Chiudinelli and Michael Lammer (Switz). Sunday: Tsonga v Federer; Monfils v Wawrinka. Television: Live on British Eurosport.

painkillers pay off, Federer could still play a third match alongside Wawrinka. To add to the drama, a huge, partisan crowd will be watching in a converted football stadium. All the sessions sold out quickly. France have nine David Cup victories but none since 2001; Switzerland have never won one. “We’ll see tomorrow how it goes, but I practised well today,” Federer said. “If there was a risk it would impact the rest of my life, obviously I would not play, but I have had similar problems in the past and I can draw from that.” Wawrinka confessed that it had been a trying week for him too, squandering match points against Federer on Saturday before the heckling sideshow became global news. “Clearly on Saturday night I was destroyed,” he said. “It was difficult to accept that loss. I did everything I could to win that match. Sunday was also a difficult day. I was hurt.” The match with Monfils should be entertaining. The world No 19 indulged in a spot of on-court breakdancing at the French Open, then squandered a two-set lead and two match points against Federer in the US Open quarter-finals. The match will be played on clay and the entire tennis world is waiting to find out whether Federer now has feet fashioned from the same stuff.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Comment Sport

Lessons must be learnt from ‘Night Games’ Matt Dickinson Chief Sports Correspondent

MATT WEST / BPI / REX

nna Krien’s Night Games is a highly unusual work to feature on the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award given that it focuses on the caveman sexual habits, gangbangs and “camel nights” (everyone gets a hump, geddit) of Australian Rules footballers and rugby league players. Yet the relevance for an English audience can hardly be missed when you read the book’s key theme and killer line: “Treating women like s*** shades into a culture of abuse, which in turn can shade into rape”. Its arrival in Britain could hardly be more appositely timed in light of the Ched Evans case. The book has caused controversy down under for its section entitled The Grey Zone, tip-toeing through a dangerous area between consent and rape, and because of the author’s conflicting feelings towards a lowgrade footballer acquitted in a rape trial that forms the book’s centrepiece. But those who have objected that Night Games is dangerously ambiguous are surely mistaken. It is a challenging, sometimes jarring but necessary assault on misogynistic “jock culture”; testosterone-fuelled sportsmen with their sense of sexual entitlement, exploiting groupies and engaging in that strange practice of the gangbang, sharing the same woman. Such an incident, of course, led to Evans being locked up in prison after he was alerted by his friend, Clayton McDonald, a former housemate when they were Manchester City apprentices, that he had “got a bird”. Krien does not reference the Evans case but, from conversations with victims, players, police, psychologists and criminologists, she writes a haunting passage imagining a woman

‘English football can hardly deny that there is still much to be done’

Evans, who was jailed for rape, continues to protest his innocence, but his case could provide a sequel for Krien, another footballers’ “prank” gone horribly wrong

suddenly drawn into these “night games” where men bond over a sexual conquest who needs no name, no identity, nothing except a pulse. “As a prank bonds its perpetrators and isolates its subject, does she realise that she really has nothing to do with what is happening around her, to her?” Krien writes. “And, sure, it doesn’t have to be a prank; possibly she knows how it looks on that guy’s phone, that she was ‘up for it’. And she was. She has no real recourse, only the slow dawning realisation that these guys, they don’t really like her and maybe they never liked her. That this, this f***ing, has nothing to do with her at all.” It can only be wondered if the victim in the Evans case went through that realisation, given that she remembered nothing about what had happened in a room at a Premier Inn. But there are deeply uncomfortable parallels when it is known that Evans watched McDonald (who was acquitted of rape) have sex, then took his turn with a woman he had encountered previously only when he stepped over her drunken figure to enter a kebab shop. Meanwhile, Evans’s brother and a friend were trying to look through a window, giggling as they strained to catch the moment on film. Evans continues to protest his

innocence, saying that sex was consensual — the Criminal Cases Review Commission is weighing up if there are grounds to open a new appeal — but Krien has her English sequel if she wants fresh material, another “prank” gone abominably wrong. Her focus is on Australia, which seems to have developed a problem of sexual assault on a terrifying scale. Over the past decade, more than 20 cases involving at least 55 elite Australian Rules footballers and club staff have been reported in the media. The culture seems so grotesquely blokeish that when Krien writes that the sports authorities are belatedly taking measures, such as enhancing women’s roles in sport and player education, you can imagine that it might take 50 years to catch up with modern civilisation. Australia appears to be an extreme, but English football can hardly deny that there is still much more to be done to educate young sportsmen about appropriate treatment of women. Football has a long history of nasty incidents; so many that it would probably be unfair to pick out a few. From prominent England internationals all the way down the ladder, society is not unused to the scenario of women being drawn to footballers, and it all turning out

badly, often on video tape. You wonder if the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) might do worse than distribute copies of Night Games in academies so that some of the messages are rammed home in Krien’s arresting style. She quotes one Australian Rules player who remarks that the difference between a rape allegation and what is termed “regrettable sex” (regrettable for her, not him) might just be putting the woman in a cab, not kicking them out on to the street halfclothed. “Treating a woman well. You know, like a human being,” Krien observes, devastatingly. Peter Crouch once wryly responded that if he had not been a footballer, he would have been a virgin, but there are lessons about the perils of groupie-dom and its dehumanising effects for both parties. “A footballer does not look at another human when he f***s a groupie. He’s looking at his glorified reflection — and when he performs, he’s doing it for ‘the boys’, not her,”

Krien argues, though she does not let the girls off the hook. The more she investigates jock culture, the clearer is the need for players to understand that a rape can happen without violence or screaming. To acknowledge, too, that true consent is not just a tr woman going along for the ride. wo As she writes of gang sex — or a “spit roast” or, in Australian terminology, the “club bun” — if a woman is considered nothing more than meat, what capacity for consent can she have? She describes a culture where footballers are so used to having their way with women that they almost cannot understand when one turns them down. To judge from Krien’s book, Australia has by far the worst of this misogyny, but the parallels with English sport are clear enough as she explores the objectifying of WAGs, barriers for women WA journalists and casual, everyday jour Crouch once said that if he had not been a footballer, he would have been a virgin

sexism. These topics are no less relevant in the United States, where the NFL has embarked on a new education campaign for its players about domestic violence and sexual assault after some shocking incidents. Compulsory lessons include advice on consent and the need to understand if a sexual partner is under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The NFL has hired three female experts, including a former head of sex-crimes prosecution for the Manhattan district attorney. In England, the PFA says that it has a former NHS worker who delivers a lecture on sexual relations to each club, probably once every two years, so that every 16-18-year-old who comes through an academy has been taught about appropriate relations as well as the dangers of STDs. Is it sufficient? Recent history suggests that there cannot be enough of this enlightenment, especially among young sportsmen who will have more than their share of sexual offers and opportunities. Very, very few footballers become rapists but, then, no one is saying that Evans set out to rape that evening in Rhyl. Perhaps he just thought he was playing “night games”. But to borrow Krien’s phrase, treat women “like s***” and you never know where that leads.

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Falcao back on treatment table PAUL GREENWOOD / REX FEATURES

James Ducker Northern Football Correspondent

Radamel Falcao’s miserable start to his Manchester United career took another turn for the worse yesterday when the Colombia striker was ruled out for at least two more weeks. Falcao has missed United’s past three matches with a troublesome calf injury and has not played for a month since appearing as a late substitute in the 2-2 draw away to West Bromwich Albion, as doubts grow about the wisdom of signing the player on loan from Monaco in September while allowing Danny Welbeck to leave for Arsenal. The striker dismissed suggestions yesterday that his battle for fitness was related to the anterior cruciate ligament knee injury suffered in January that ruled him out for seven months. Yet Falcao’s recovery from a calf strain suffered in training before the match against Chelsea last month has been slow and he will now miss the visit to Arsenal tomorrow evening, when Welbeck will be out to prove a point against his former club, as well as the Barclays Premier League games at home to Hull City a week later and Stoke City three days after that. He is unlikely to return to action until the trip to Southampton on December 8. “He has a calf injury and that takes time,” Louis van Gaal, the United manager, said. “Now it’s four weeks [he has been out] and next week he shall train with the squad, and then he needs two weeks. “It’s always like that. It’s a pity, but players in football are injured.” Falcao expressed his frustration with recent reports suggesting that he was still being hampered by his knee, but he is understood to have admitted in an interview in Colombia that it does require occasional icing, even if his main focus is to overcome his present calf complaint. “I am getting better, I feel well and I hope to come back to the pitch soon,” Falcao said. “It is disappointing that I can’t play, but I have to be calm and

Daley grind: United’s injury problems increased again with Blind’s damaged knee ligament set to keep him out until 2015

recover because that is important to help the team when I return to games.” Falcao’s absence is just one of a glut of injuries concerning Van Gaal. Although the manager said that David De Gea, Ángel Di María and Michael Carrick would be fit to face Arsenal, the Dutchman remains without Marcos Rojo, Phil Jones, Jonny Evans, Rafael da Silva, Ashley Young and Jesse Lingard, while Luke Shaw is a doubt with a hamstring injury and Daley Blind faces a long spell on the sidelines. Blind was substituted only 20 minutes into Holland’s 6-0 win over Latvia

with a calf injury. Not expected back until December 8. Ashley Young Out for the past month with a groin problem.

Marcos Rojo Out for six weeks with a dislocated shoulder that Louis van Gaal has warned could reoccur.

Phil Jones Missed the past three matches with a shin complaint. Not expected back for at least a fortnight.

Radamel Falcao Has missed the past three matches

Rafael Da Silva Missed the past two games with a

on Sunday with suspected medial knee ligament damage and could be out for up to three months. United will get a clearer idea of the midfielder’s expected layoff when he undergoes another scan in ten days’ time. “He has a brace on his knee,” Van Gaal said. “I can’t say it will be six to eight weeks, I can’t even say it will be ten to 12 weeks, but it is definitely not six months.” De Gea dislocated his little finger during a training session with Spain last week but the goalkeeper has been passed fit to start against Arsenal, along

thigh injury and could be out for another two or three weeks. Jonny Evans Due to play for the reserves next week after two months out with an ankle injury. Luke Shaw A doubt for the Arsenal game tomorrow with a hamstring problem. Jesse Lingard Been out since August 16 with a knee injury. No return date.

with Di María, who suffered a cut to his right foot after being stamped on by Nani, the United winger on loan at Sporting Lisbon, during Argentina’s 1-0 defeat by Portugal at Old Trafford on Tuesday. Carrick will be included, despite pulling out of the England squad last week with a groin problem. United’s main worries are in defence, though. “I think Evans will play in the second squad [the reserves] next week, but the other players are not coming back. Rafael and Jones are still not fit enough to football train,” Van Gaal said. Van Gaal has urged Wayne Rooney to continue his goalscoring exploits for England against Arsenal after watching his captain reach a century of caps for his country and move to within three goals of Sir Bobby Charlton’s record. “It’s fantastic to see and I have congratulated him, but now he has to score for Manchester United and that’s important as well,” he said. Van Gaal also stood by his decision to sell Welbeck and believes that he has done the England striker a favour by allowing him to leave for regular firstteam football. “He takes all the benefit from playing every week,” he said. “That was a question mark with Manchester United. It’s good to see he’s doing what I thought.”

Giroud’s quick return gives Wenger welcome boost Rory Smith

Olivier Giroud, the Arsenal striker, has recovered from the broken leg he suffered in August more than a month ahead of schedule and is likely to be named as a substitute for Arsène Wenger’s side for their match against Manchester United tomorrow evening. The 28-year-old forward fractured his left tibia — in circumstances so unusual that even Wenger admitted he did not understand how he managed it — in the final minutes of Arsenal’s 2-2 draw with Everton on August 23. Initial estimates suggested that the France forward would not play again until 2015, but late last month Wenger revealed the astonishing speed of his

Martínez fires back at Keane in row over Ireland pair Tony Barrett

Outs and doubts: United’s growing injury list a worry for Van Gaal Daley Blind The Holland midfielder has suffered suspected medial knee ligament damage and could be out for up to three months. Will be scanned again in ten days.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

recuperation. Giroud returned to training while the majority of his team-mates were away on international duty and the Arsenal manager said yesterday that he is available for selection for the crucial visit of Louis van Gaal’s side to the Emirates Stadium as Arsenal attempt to rectify their stuttering form in the Barclays Premier League. To Wenger, it will no doubt be another positive sign that his side’s wretched run of injuries is finally starting to abate a little. Theo Walcott has made two substitute appearances after overcoming the knee problem that ruled him out for 11

months, while both Giroud and Mikel Arteta, who has recovered from a hamstring strain, are in contention, too. Mesut Özil ranks as the only long-term absentee. “Giroud is weeks ahead of schedule,” Wenger said. “Originally we planned to have him back for competition at the beginning of next year, so he is one month ahead. Both he and Arteta are available, it is just a question of how ready they are. We have Giroud back, we have Walcott back, and slowly they will reintegrate into the team.” If Wenger’s attacking options Giroud’s recovery from injury is a month ahead of schedule

are being bolstered, though, his team remain stretched in defence. He said yesterday that it will be three weeks before Mathieu Debuchy and Laurent Koscielny return to full training and a minimum of a month before they are available to play again. “Koscielny and Debuchy are doing well, they are out on the field again,” Wenger said. “We have to see now. Usually, field work is three weeks away from full group training. Then there is fitness. “It looks straightforward for Debuchy. It’s not inflammation, it’s just repairing surgery. For Koscielny, it depends how well he responds to training. At the moment he is looking good.”

Roberto Martínez has delivered a withering response to Roy Keane’s claims that Everton put pressure on their players not to play for Ireland, accusing Martin O’Neill’s assistant of a lack of respect, talking “complete nonsense” and unfairly putting James McCarthy in the line of fire as a result of his own “agenda”. The mild-mannered Martínez usually goes to whatever lengths necessary to avoid confrontation, but Keane’s outspoken comments prompted a fierce broadside from the Everton manager, who believes that the former Manchester United player breached managerial protocol by going public with his criticism. Privately, the Goodison Park club believe that Keane was using Everton as a diversion after Ireland’s disappointing defeat by Scotland on Friday and Martínez dismissed out of hand Keane’s assertion that McCarthy, who missed the Euro 2016 qualifier because of a hamstring injury, had been pressurised to miss the game by his club. “James picked up a grade one hamstring problem against Sunderland,” the Everton manager said. “Normally with these injuries they clear between eight and ten days, but in that period you are injured. I don’t think it is an issue at all. If there is an issue it should be treated with respect and privately to try and get to the bottom of Martínez believes Keane was wrong to react publicly

it. To come out and make things public could leave some of the Irish fans thinking that the players don’t want to play, or that Everton have stopped some players from playing. That’s nonsense. That’s ridiculous. You just have to look at Everton and how proud we are as a football club to see our players representing us for their countries. “It’s wrong and unfair to put a doubt in the mind of the fans to think that the players could be having second thoughts about representing their country.” Keane also claimed that Everton’s reluctance to allow McCarthy and Séamus Coleman to play for Ireland was manifest in the information they provide before internationals. “You get the impression from Everton that Séamus and James are both barely able to walk,” he said. “So when they actually turn up and they are walking through the reception, you think, ‘Praise the Lord, it’s a miracle.’ ” Again, Martínez was dismissive, even alluding to Keane walking out on his country before the 2002 World Cup. “I don’t know the agenda that that person has behind that,” he said. “Does that person do it as an ex-player? Does he do it as a fan? Does he do it in his position? Because if the two managers talk it doesn’t make sense for him to do it. As an ex-player, we all know what happened [when Keane walked out]. “Our relationship with Ireland is very good. In the cases that everyone is talking about, no one has mentioned that Séamus Coleman played against Scotland with five stitches in his foot. Everyone [in the Ireland camp] is aware of it.”

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Football Sport

Ninth setback for Sturridge leads Liverpool to investigate Tony Barrett

Liverpool have launched a full medical investigation into Daniel Sturridge’s persistent fitness problems after the England forward was ruled out for another six weeks with the ninth injury he has suffered to the same thigh. An audit has already been carried out of Sturridge’s injury record throughout his career, taking into account occurrences at previous clubs, and the evidence is being scrutinised by Liverpool’s medical department as they look to establish if there is a root cause to his continuing absences. Brendan Rodgers, the manager, initiated the inquiry in the wake of Sturridge’s latest thigh strain, his second this season, which the 25-yearold striker suffered during a routine training session on Tuesday. The setback means that Sturridge is unlikely to be fit until the new year, having already missed ten weeks of the season as a result of injuries to his thigh and calf. “I think that is his ninth injury on that thigh from previous clubs and here,” Rodgers said. “So there is an issue there somewhere. This [scan] shows a slight tear just below where he had a previous injury. It’s something that the medical team are looking into.” That Sturridge’s latest injury occurred in innocuous circumstances has added to Liverpool’s concern, particularly as it is the third time this season that he has suffered muscle damage during a training session.

Notable absentee

League games played by Sturridge for Liverpool since he joined in January 2013

League games Sturridge has missed because of injury (plus one when Liverpool rested him) Words by Bill Edgar

On each occasion, the former Chelsea player has pulled up without any contact and has been unable to continue, a sequence that continued at Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground, three days ago, when a kicking motion caused another tear to his left thigh. “Obviously it was in a session and quite an innocuous action,” Rodgers said. “He did it when he just flicked the ball, it wasn’t a shot or anything that looked serious. But obviously he felt the pain and then, when the medical team told me the next day after the scan, it was disappointing. “Now we just have to concentrate and focus on the players we do have. It’s that simple — we have to make the best of what we have available. Though of course it is hugely disappointing to lose a player of that quality.” Sturridge believes that there is an hereditary nature to his muscular problems, but Rodgers wants to examine all possibilities in the hope of finding a solution. The need to restore the England forward to full and prolonged fitness has been exacerbated by Liverpool’s struggles without him; they have taken only eight points from the eight league games he has missed already this season. As reported in The Times last week, Liverpool are looking into the possibility of bringing Divock Origi into the fold in January and are willing to pay Lille a premium to release the forward before next summer, despite having an agreement in place with the French club for him to remain with them for the rest of this season. For the time being, though, Liverpool have no option but to persist with Mario Balotelli, Rickie Lambert and Fabio Borini as their main attacking options, even though the trio are yet to score a goal between them in a combined total of 888 minutes of league action. While Rodgers remains disappointed at having to cope without Sturridge once again, he has urged his potential replacements to make the most of their opportunity and help to salvage Liverpool’s season. “At this moment in time, it [the answer] is within the squad because that’s the players we have available,”

PETER POWELL / EPA

Jason Mellor

Alan Pardew has attempted to play down claims made by Jonás Gutiérrez that Newcastle United acted insensitively after the Argentina midfielder’s cancer diagnosis last year. Gutiérrez, who recently received the all-clear after treatment for testicular cancer, is set to return to training with the club before Christmas. It promises to be a potentially awkward reunion with the manager, after Gutiérrez, 31, was quoted in South America saying that he was told to find another club by Pardew only days after undergoing surgery. However, Gutiérrez’s future at St James’ Park had been in doubt before he had the cancer diagnosed 16 months ago. Pardew insists that the decision to release the midfielder was taken purely on footballing grounds and that he is looking forward to seeing him back on Tyneside for the final six months of his contract. “It was a pure football decision and those are decisions that have to be made,” Pardew said. “We’ve supported him and tried to do what we can when his illness was made known to us before it was known publicly.” Gutiérrez signed a new four-year contract in 2011, and made the most recent of his 195 appearances for the club in the 2-1 victory away to Cardiff City 13 months ago. He hopes to prove his fitness to earn a new contract elsewhere. Pardew said: “What he has done is absolutely marvellous, to recover like he has.”

Poyet hits out at fines that create ‘robots’ Jason Mellor

Rare sight: Sturridge has not enjoyed much game time this season, having already missed eight league matches, during which Liverpool have struggled

Rodgers said. “It would present an opportunity to the guys who have maybe been on the sidelines for quite a while. We can’t worry about what we had last season or what we have lost. “We have to look at the players we have. We have an exciting period of games coming up. We want to ensure we go back to our basics and be really

hard to beat and be strong and aggressive. We want to make an impact in front of goal. Now there’s an opportunity for some players who didn’t think they’d get a chance.” 6 Brendan Rodgers was speaking at the Liverpool FC academy day, a bid to inspire young players and foster a oneclub mentality

Lambert angry at Swiss role in fresh Senderos injury Ian Baker

Paul Lambert, the Aston Villa manager, will compile special fitness dossiers on all his international players after Philippe Senderos broke down while on duty with Switzerland. The centre back, 29, suffered a fresh calf injury while taking part in full training with his country, only days after returning to light training with Villa after a thigh problem. Senderos will now miss the next month and Lambert has promised decisive action to prevent any kind of repeat. “I think we will need to give them information now if they are not going to look at it,” he said. “If someone has

not played or trained for a month, you need to manage them. We need to make people aware of things — if that’s what’s going to happen to your player. “I think they should have known he had not played for a month before and only played six minutes against West Ham. Common knowledge tells you — you have to know — what guys have not done as much as other guys. “Philippe was totally fine when he went there and I could have started him against West Ham. If you bring players in, you need to do your homework. I think he will be now out for a month. “They won’t pay his wages but we’re forgetting that side. I’ve lost a centre half who has been playing really well.

Gutiérrez set for reunion with Pardew

Senderos broke down with a calf injury while training with his country

He’s just come back from an injury and now he’s out again. “They’d known he was injured. They should have done their homework. They don’t need us to tell them what he had done and what he needed to do.” In addition to Senderos, Lambert will be without Nathan Baker and Ron Vlaar for the Barclays Premier League match against Southampton at Villa Park on Monday, leaving Jores Okore and Ciaran Clark as the only two remaining centre halves. “Nathan will be at least a couple of months,” Lambert said. “He’s just done his knee. It’s the back of his knee which is damaged, but it will only need a rest.”

Gustavo Poyet, the Sunderland head coach, has warned the FA that it risks turning players into passionless robots, more likely to fail at international level, after questioning a £20,000 fine for misconduct received by the Wearside club. Sunderland accepted the FA charge for failing to control their players during the 1-1 draw with Everton at the Stadium of Light this month, when several of the squad surrounded Lee Mason, the referee, after the award of a late penalty for the visiting team. Poyet, who at the time conceded that he largely agreed with Mason’s decision, said: “We were fined £20,000, now is that right? I think there’s a line. Let’s not make people lose their passion, because then we become robots. “Some people in England might want to make players robots, but the more you do that, the more you’re in danger of suffering at international level. At that level, the opposition are not going to be robots, they’re going to be doing everything possible to win the game. You want to win a game without passion? That’s fine, but you won’t. “I had a similar situation when I was at Brighton. We had to pay the fine, but I totally agreed with that one, so I don’t take issue for no reason. I didn’t expect anything to come of this one. There’s a line between passion and not caring. Don’t go too much down the line [of lacking passion], otherwise it’ll be just, ‘Yes sir, yes sir.’ ”

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Sport Football

Whelan and Mackay likely to show how FA lacks gall to act TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, BRADLEY ORMESHER

In the NBA, racism can lead to a life ban, but football’s governing body is out of step, writes James Ducker

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As Michael Essien prepares for the Milan derby, he will be keeping one eye on Chelsea, his former club thetimes.co.uk/football

In the eyes of the beholder: Whelan’s moral barometer would have had no problem with the behaviour of Mackay, above

There may be more chance of Whelan being invited round for afternoon tea with the Jewish Leadership Council, which was quick to condemn his remarks yesterday, or given a year’s free meals at any of Wigan’s Chinese restaurants than the FA adopting as tough a stance as its NBA counterparts, but the Wigan chairman’s extraordinary statements have merely raised the stakes in the Mackay “textgate” affair. Already under pressure from antiracism groups, such as Kick It Out, to avoid whitewashing the scandal but arguably at risk of being left hamstrung by its own policy not to take disciplinary action over private messages, this sordid saga is fast taking on the feel of a landmark case for the governing body. The FA was quick to issue a statement yesterday denying Whelan’s

claims, after reputed conversations with two “influential” figures at the FA, that “nothing will come” of its investigation into Mackay and Iain Moody, his former head of recruitment at Cardiff City, with whom he is accused of exchanging the offending texts. It also attempted to defend the glacial pace at which its inquiry has moved by indicating that it did not “come into possession of the relevant evidence relating to the messages until midOctober”, almost two months after the publication of the allegations. Still, the singular focus now will be on the way the FA deal with Mackay and Whelan. Whelan was perhaps given the benefit of the doubt by some at his manager’s unveiling on Wednesday for a number of clumsily worded statements, not least by saying Lisa Nandy, the Wigan MP, was “not a Wigan lass so she

doesn’t understand football”. Yet his latest alleged remarks left no room for interpretation — they were crass, offensive and demonstrated a disturbing inability to grasp the sensitivity and seriousness of a situation that is threatening to spiral out of control. Three years Sterling’s junior, age or the “of a certain time and generation” argument represents the flimsiest of defences for Whelan’s stance when, as owner of a Sky Bet Championship football club, the Wigan Warriors rugby league team and DW Sports Fitness, his remarks tarnish the reputation of all three and deal another blow to English football’s attempts to portray itself as diverse, modern and respectful of all races, cultures and orientations. The FA has much to ponder in the weeks ahead. Just don’t bet on it taking its lead from the NBA.

Redknapp defends Mackay’s right to a ‘second chance’ Alec Shilton

Harry Redknapp, the Queens Park Rangers manager, has defended Malky Mackay and admitted that he regularly receives “sick” messages, amid further criticism of the decision to appoint the 42-year-old as Wigan Athletic’s manager. Leroy Rosenior, the television pundit and a patron of Show Racism the Red Card, an anti-racism educational charity, stated yesterday that he believes Wigan are “gambling on their reputation” and that the appointment

Blatter stays away from US but denies he is evading FBI Matt Dickinson Chief Sports Correspondent

o now we know why Dave Whelan had no problem with appointing Malky Mackay. Now we know why the decision to appoint a manager accused of exchanging antisemitic, racist, sexist and homophobic comments did not prick his conscience, did not trouble his own moral barometer. In Whelan’s eyes, Mackay simply did nothing wrong. In the Wigan Athletic owner’s eyes, there is no harm in branding a Chinese person a “ch***” or a Jew a money-grabber. It’s just the same, you see, as calling the British “Brits”. In the United States, the National Basketball Association (NBA) threw the book at one of its club’s owners for talking offensively like this. In April, Donald Sterling, the 80-year-old owner of the Los Angeles Clippers franchise, was banned for life and fined $2.5 million (£1.6 million) after being recorded making racist comments. Sterling was heard berating a female friend for bringing black men to a Clippers game. Explaining the sanction, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, said that Sterling’s views “simply have no place in the NBA” and even President Barack Obama described the comments as “incredibly offensive racist statements”. Sterling may have come from a different age, a different time, but it did not matter to the NBA. He was the owner, the public figurehead of one of its franchises and there was no excusing such behaviour from such a high profile individual. The consensus was that he could ill afford to be so out of step with modern society and he paid a heavy price, the NBA making it clear to one and all that, as an organisation, it had a zero tolerance approach to racism.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

made by Dave Whelan, the Wigan chairman, “sets a precedent that football clubs can do what they want”. Whelan offered Mackay a route back into football on Wednesday against a backdrop of protestations from Kick It Out, the anti-racism campaign group, who say that Whelan has “disregarded the ongoing investigation being undertaken by the FA, and any punishment Mackay may face”. Rio Ferdinand, the QPR defender, recently received a £25,000 fine and a three-match ban for tweeting the word “sket”, suggesting that Mackay is

unlikely to escape punishment if the FA believes accusations to be true that racist, homophobic and sexist messages were exchanged with Iain Moody, the former head of recruitment at Cardiff City. “Whenever I have met Malky, I have thought he was a decent Redknapp deletes ‘silly’ messages that he receives

person,” Redknapp said in Mackay’s defence. “I get stupid messages all the time; silly jokes, sick jokes. I hate them and delete them straightaway, but people do tend to do that in life. So he is not the only person who has made a mistake. I am sure his life has been absolute hell for the last few months. “I am not condoning what he has done, but he has got another chance. Have a look around the world and see what happens. There are people who come out of prison who have murdered people, beaten up old ladies. They get second chances.”

Sepp Blatter fears that he could suffer the embarrassment of questioning by the FBI if he visits the United States, according to a leading football figure. The agency’s investigations into Fifa corruption have been cited as a reason why the Fifa president has not visited the US since a trip to Miami more than three years ago. A spokesman for Blatter yesterday denied that the president had any reason to avoid visiting the US, saying that he had not been there since May 2011 simply because of other priorities. Chuck Blazer, the former Fifa executive committee member, has turned informant for the FBI, leading to a belief that the agency is digging into corruption at the governing body. Blatter has insisted throughout the recent scandals that neither he, nor Fifa, have anything to hide from any inquiries. Blatter says Swiss law is preventing him from publishing the full report by Michael Garcia into corruption in bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, although the prospect of more information emerging increased yesterday when it was agreed that all 430 pages would be made available to Domenico Scala, the head of the audit and compliance committee. Scala will decide which information to pass on to the 26 members of the executive committee. The spreading of information raises the chances of leaks, although there is still little hope that even a redacted version of the full report will be released by Fifa. Scala’s involvement does little to allay concerns over a lack of transparency. The move followed clear-the-air talks between Garcia, the US attorney Blazer, a former administrator, is informing the FBI

who heads the investigatory arm of Fifa’s ethics committee, and HansJoachim Eckert, the German judge who is chairman of the adjudicatory chamber, in Zurich yesterday. Eckert and Garcia stressed the need for “good communication” after the farce of last week, when the former released a 42-page summary of the investigation that the latter promptly disowned. Garcia still has an appeal to Fifa outstanding against Eckert’s work. Garcia continues to pursue cases against individuals, while Fifa has also sent a file to the attorney-general’s office in Switzerland that reportedly concerns alleged money-laundering. Eckert’s summary cleared Russia and Qatar of serious wrongdoing. The executive committee could ask for the vote to be reopened after reviewing whatever evidence it is permitted to see, though that seems extremely unlikely. Russia and Qatar look certain to keep their tournaments even though there has been a fresh round of allegations, with a former Fifa ethics committee member claiming that a member of the executive committee asked for a cash bribe during the bidding process. Les Murray, an Australian broadcaster, said that an unnamed executive had asked for “hard cash”. He passed his concerns to the ethics committee, yet saw no mention in Eckert’s report.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Football Sport

Sheffield United U-turn leaves Evans in the cold Rory Smith

Sheffield United have withdrawn their offer to allow Ched Evans to train with the Sky Bet League One club after coming under intense public pressure not to offer the convicted rapist an immediate route back into football. Just nine days after releasing a statement saying that they would accede to a request from the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and let the 25-year-old use their facilities to regain fitness after his release from prison, the Bramall Lane side rescinded that offer last night. Their volte-face follows more than a week of fierce criticism over their original stance. A petition demanding that Evans not be permitted to re-register as a professional with his former club has attracted more than 150,000 signatures, while several of United’s most high-profile supporters have also made their displeasure known. Paul Heaton and Charlie Webster — the singer and television presenter respectively — left their positions as patrons of the club in protest at their handling of the matter, but perhaps most damaging of all was the insistence of Jessica Ennis-Hill, the

Olympian, that she would want her name removed from her eponymous stand at Bramall Lane if Evans returned to the club on a permanent basis. A number of sponsors had also suggested that they would reconsider their support if the striker did sign a contract after serving two and a half years of his five-year sentence for the rape of a 19-year-old woman at a hotel in the Welsh town of Rhyl in 2011. Sheffield United claimed last night that their U-turn followed a process of “ongoing and extensive deliberation” that had sought the views of supporters, sponsors and executives, as well as consulting all the relevant professional bodies. Rather bizarrely, though, they also attempted to mollify fans who might have wanted the Welshman to be signed and claimed that they could not have predicted the furore his return would prompt. “After ongoing and extensive deliberation, Sheffield United has decided to retract the opportunity for its former player, Ched Evans, to use the club’s facilities for training purposes, as was previously intended,” a statement on the club’s website read. “Members of the board have

MARTIN RICKETT / PA

Consequences severe if ‘pranks’ go wrong Matt Dickinson, page 55

Not wanted: Evans had asked to use Sheffield United’s facilities to regain fitness after his release from prison, but his former club have withdrawn their offer to the striker

consulted dispassionately with supporters, vice-presidents, Community Foundation members, executives, staff, sponsors and other relevant stakeholders in order to help it reach this decision. “We recognise that a number of our supporters will be disappointed with this decision, but would ask that

City plan loan extension for Lampard James Ducker

Manchester City will intensify their efforts to extend Frank Lampard’s loan from New York City as the Barclays Premier League champions prepare to lose Yaya Touré for up to six weeks because of the Africa Cup of Nations. Touré, the City midfielder, was part of the Ivory Coast team who secured their place in the tournament with a goalless draw against Cameroon in Abidjan on Wednesday. The tournament, which will be staged in Equatorial Guinea after Morocco pulled out because of the ebola crisis in Africa, is due to start on January 17, although, if Ivory Coast reach the final, Touré would be involved until February 8. With the

player required to join up with his national squad about two weeks before the start of the tournament, City face the prospect of a long spell without their midfield talisman, a situation that will strengthen Manuel Pellegrini’s desire to retain Lampard. Lampard’s loan arrangement is due to end on January 1, but City are keen to keep the former Chelsea and England midfielder until early or mid-February, even though such a move would be dimly Lampard’s deal with City runs until January 1

received by New York. Although the American club accept that the final decision on Lampard will ultimately rest with City, who are their parent club, the Major League Soccer startup franchise have built their marketing structure around the 36-year-old. New York could hold a pre-season training camp at City’s new training complex in January and play some friendly matches in the north west, which would enable Lampard to remain in Manchester for longer, but also leave him accessible to his employers at New York. City are pushing to get Vincent Kompany, their captain, and David Silva, the Spain playmaker, fit for the Champions League encounter at home to Bayern Munich on Tuesday.

Berahino urged to move on from snub Brendan McLoughlin

Alan Irvine, the West Bromwich Albion head coach, says that Saido Berahino should not be disheartened over missing out on his first England cap and has urged the forward to use it as motivation to secure his place in Roy Hodgson’s next squad. Berahino was named in an England squad for the first time for last Saturday’s Euro 2016 qualifier against Slovenia and for the friendly against Scotland. The 21-year-old, the highestscoring Englishman in the Barclays Premier League this season with seven goals, had been widely expected to be given his senior international debut in the match at Celtic Park. Hodgson, the manager, instead opted to introduce Rickie Lambert, the Liverpool forward, from the

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substitutes’ bench. Irvine, whose team are away to Chelsea tomorrow, has urged his highly rated striker to grasp the positives from his experience. “There’s certainly no benefit to sulking,” Irvine said. “He has to look at the last two weeks as a great experience, one that helps him to become a better player. If that helps him to raise his game to another level, then fantastic. “He came back really pleased to have been away and looking hungry to continue his development. He may be disappointed that he did not get on but it will certainly benefit him.” Berahino, says Irvine, will now be aware of the standard required to make the grade. “Having had that taste, I’d hope he’ll be desperate for a bigger taste and a regular taste of that,” Irvine said. “He’ll also have had a chance to look at the competition.”

they remember the responsibilities we have not only to a fine and proud club, but also to the communities in which Sheffield United is active and to the city we represent. The club initially accepted a request from the PFA for Ched Evans to be able to train. The reaction to this has been at an intensity that could not have been anticipated when first announced.” At the time, United insisted that they would not allow “mob justice” to dictate their behaviour and, even as they confirmed that they were bowing to public pressure, reiterated their belief that Evans is entitled to “rehabilitation”, regardless of the profile of his profession. Evans — who is pursuing another appeal against his conviction and has always maintained his innocence — and his representatives have been increasingly aware that United were not likely to offer him the chance to return to their ranks. Agents working on his behalf have approached a number of clubs to assess whether there would be any interest in his signature. Thus far, at least, all those entreaties have been rejected.

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Lords votes to stifle ticket touts before World Cup

Youngs benefits from regaining sense of pleasure in his work DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES

Alex Lowe

John Westerby

The RFU joined other sporting bodies last night in urging the government to act against ticket touting in the buildup to the Rugby World Cup by backing an amendment passed by the House of Lords. A cross-party alliance of sporting peers, including Baroness GreyThompson, Baron Moynihan and Baroness Heyhoe Flint, succeeded in persuading parliament’s upper house to support a move requiring sellers on secondary ticketing websites to provide more detailed information about their ticket, with the aim of preventing fraudulent sales. A vote on Tuesday night was passed by 183 votes to 171. If the amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill is passed by the House of Commons, sellers will be required to provide a specific seat number, the face value price and the name and address of the original seller. Websites that offer secondary ticketing options, such as SeatWave and Viagogo, would be required to display this information. The RFU hopes that the legislation can be passed in time for the World Cup next year. The initiative, designed to put a dent in a £1.5 billion market for fraudulent ticket sales, was also backed by the FA and the Lawn Tennis Association. Rugby World Cup organisers had been disappointed when the government failed to offer the same protection Ritchie backed the legal amendment to protect fans

afforded to Olympics tickets, the resale of which was made illegal, but the Lords vote has offered fresh encouragement. In the initial round of ticketing for the World Cup, more than five million applications were made as 950,000 tickets were sold. “The RFU is extremely pleased to see that protections for the ticket-buying public were supported last night in the House of Lords,” Ian Ritchie, the RFU chief executive, said. “There are too many examples of fans being exploited and mis-sold tickets and this needs to stop urgently. The vote was a significant and timely step forward in making this happen, given that our hosting of the Rugby World Cup is only months way.” The ECB has similar hopes for next summer’s Ashes series after campaigning for greater protection for several years. “It has been frustrating to watch action be taken for the London Olympics and the Commonwealth Games but have no support for fans attending our own events,” Philip French, the ECB’s director of policy, said. “Every year we receive more and more stories of fans being ripped off and mis-sold tickets and action has long been overdue.” Opponents of the amendment, including Baroness Neville-Rolfe, believe that additional regulation of the secondary ticketing market would only increase the dangers of greater sales on the black market. “The online ticket marketplaces provide a safe place to buy and sell online. We must not push the industry back underground,” Baroness Neville-Rolfe, a junior minister for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, said.

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

It has been more than 18 months since Ben Youngs last enjoyed a run of games in England’s starting XV, a dark period for the Leicester Tigers scrum half, who lost sight of what it was that had allowed him to make such an electric impact on international rugby. Youngs burst on to the scene in 2010 and almost immediately established himself as England’s premier scrum half, winning an RBS Six Nations Championship title, playing in the World Cup in New Zealand and earning a place on the 2013 Lions tour. That ride came to abrupt halt last season. Youngs began the season injured, struggled for form and slipped to third in the England pecking order behind Danny Care, who was revitalised at Harlequins, and Lee Dickson. He had to endure the long Tuesday night journeys home after being released from England’s training camp during last season’s Six Nations and he set his mind on working as hard as possible to rediscover his touch and force his way back into Stuart Lancaster’s plans. It was a natural reaction, especially at Leicester: if something is not right, get out on to the training field and work hard to fix it, but Youngs soon discovered that all the effort was in vain. He decided to take the less is more approach and it was as if a light had been switched on. Youngs has been captaining Leicester Tigers this season in the absence of Ed Slater and that has not been without its challenges, but he has shown some good form off the bench for England over the past two weekends and with Care now dropped from the squad, this weekend represents a chance to reclaim that No 9 jersey once again. “Last year, when not involved in the Six Nations, the biggest thing was to go back to my club and find that spark again, find that thing that got me there in the first place, which was just playing rugby, enjoying it,” Youngs said. “I was struggling for form and I didn’t know how to get out of that rut, because I hadn’t been in that situation before. I found myself training longer, kicking longer, found myself passing longer, doing more weights, whatever it may be to find a way through. “In fact the best thing I could have done was to have done nothing and say, ‘You know what, I’m going to strip it right back to the minimum and focus on enjoying the performance at the weekend.’ “For me, it was getting my mind right. I had two starts for England in the summer, which got my confidence right back up. Then a good break and that

Three big days . . . Australia 20 England 21 June 19, 2010, Sydney Youngs was making his first start for England. He collected a lineout 35 metres out and shaped to spin a pass wide, but cut around and beat the last man for a memorable try. England 35 Australia 18 November 13, 2010, Twickenham The scrum half was taunting the Wallabies again, this time by sparking the try of the year. Youngs dummied a kick from behind his own goalline and ran the ball out, passed to Courtney Lawes and the lock sent Chris Ashton away. Australia 16 Lions 15 June 29, 2013, Melbourne It was a bitter-sweet day for Youngs. He had enjoyed an outstanding Lions tour and earned the No 9 jersey for the second international but he could not do himself justice in a scratchy performance.

Getting his kicks again: Youngs has rediscovered the joy in his game and has been rewarded with a return to the top of England’s pecking order at scrum half

allows you to build in pre-season. It is about enjoying my rugby and if you do that, you tend to play your best rugby.” With that refreshed mindset, Youngs feels like he has come full circle as a player, albeit collecting 42 caps’ worth

of experience along the way, including two for the Lions in Australia. “Some guys haven’t been through a dark patch, but they will at some point because everyone does,” Youngs said. “You realise that if you play awfully

badly, you can come through it and get out the other end. You have an appreciation that you can stay relaxed, not go out there with fear because you realise that this is what works for you. “Playing for England in the summer reassured me that I could play Test level, because when you are struggling for confidence and form, you can forget that you’ve played Test level before.” Youngs made his name for England as a running scrum half, but it is his tactical kicking as much as anything else that earned him the nod to face Samoa in what are forecast to be wet conditions. Lancaster sees Youngs and George Ford, who makes his first England start tomorrow, as experts in that area and they know each other from their days in the same Leicester team. “I won’t need to put my arm round George or anything like that,” Youngs said. “If anything, just give him the ball early. Let him get into the game, that’s what you want when you have been waiting for an opportunity. I know how he likes to play.” Youngs and Ford were on the field together as England finished strongly against New Zealand and South Africa, but both games ended in defeat, which adds a greater significance to tomorrow’s clash with Samoa and the game against Australia next week. “They’re really important,” Youngs said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to show that we’re improving.”

Carter in the cold as New Zealand shuffle their No 10s John Westerby

Steve Hansen, the New Zealand head head coach, has continued his tour policy of rotating fly halves by leaving Dan Carter out of his squad for the game against Wales in Cardiff tomorrow. Carter made his first international appearance of the year in the victory over Scotland last weekend, but Beauden Barrett will start at No 10 at the Millennium Stadium. There is no place in the matchday squad for either Carter or Aaron Cruden, who had worn No10 against England, with Colin Slade acting as fly half cover on the bench. Barrett’s most recent start was

against Australia last month, while Cruden was serving a suspension. Hansen also caused a surprise by starting Ben Smith ahead of Israel Dagg at full back. “We’ve seen Cruden on this tour against one of the big teams in England and we wanted to see Beauden in one as well, so the Welsh game was the one he’d be picked for,” Hansen said. “We’re using this tour to find out more about the guys we’ve got.” Kurtley Beale could make his return to international rugby in Dublin on Saturday after he was named among Australia’s replacements for the game against Ireland. Beale has not played since he was fined for sending lewd text

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messages, a controversy that resulted in the resignation of Ewen McKenzie as head coach last month. Michael Cheika, McKenzie’s successor, is also Beale’s coach at the New South Wales Waratahs, said that Beale had served his punishment. “The man did the wrong thing, went to the tribunal, he’ll pay the fine and he will play his rugby,” Cheika said. Rory Best, the Ulster hooker, will return to Ireland’s front row tomorrow after missing the victories over South Africa and Georgia with a calf strain. Gordon D’Arcy will line up at inside centre and, with Jared Payne ruled out by a foot injury, Robbie Henshaw starts at outside centre.

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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Rugby union Sport

Leo prepared to stand tall and put interests of Samoa above his safety Lock tells Alex Lowe that he and the senior players are willing to force a revolution to ensure better treatment

an Leo is willing to risk his personal safety in order to force through a revolution inside the Samoa Rugby Union (SRU) whose board includes members of the island’s government and has the country’s prime minister as its chairman. The London Irish lock, who has been named on the bench for tomorrow’s match against England at Twickenham, said that he had received threats from officials after leading the squad’s protest over the management of the SRU and the way the international players are treated. Leo preferred not to detail the threats, but he expects that the families of other players will have also been targeted. However, they collectively

refuse to back down. “The goal we have kept in mind is that this isn’t for us, it is for the next generation of Samoan players,” Leo said. The Samoa squad wrote to World Rugby (formerly the IRB) last month to outline its concerns over governance and transparency within the SRU. There have been allegations that £1.5 million raised by the people of Samoa to help to fund the team at the 2011 World Cup was unaccounted for. Mahonri Schwalger, the former captain, went on the record after the previous World Cup and questioned where the money went. He never played for Samoa again, nor did a number of other players who backed him up. The present squad also take issue that tour fees have not risen from about £500 since 1990, which can leave them out of pocket because some clubs now refuse to pay players while they are on international duty. These are not new gripes, but the squad was simply not prepared to put up with the situation any longer, despite the fact that registering their complaints and calling for change would mean acting against Tuilaepa

DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES

Pushing the boundaries: the Samoan players train yesterday as they prepare for tomorrow’s international against England

Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, the country’s prime minister. “It’s in the back of our minds all the time,” Leo said. “You can’t have a situation where players are questioning accountability and transparency and then getting their families threatened. That’s not sport in my opinion. “I have had threats since we went down this road. If it’s happened to me, it has probably happened to others. There needs to be a separation of politics from sport. “They got rid of our captain after the

Saints pair return to scene of triumph Alex Lowe

Ken Pisi and Kahn Fotuali’i will return to Twickenham tomorrow for the first time since they helped Northampton Saints to win the Aviva Premiership title in May. Pisi has been named at full back to face England as one of six changes to the Samoa side who beat Canada 23-13 last weekend. Stephen Bethan, the Samoa coach, has named a side with a strong Englishbased influence with Johnny Leota, the Sale Sharks centre, and Jack Lam, the Bristol flanker, also starting.

Alapati Leiua, who has made such an impact at inside centre for Wasps, is on the right wing, with David Lemi captaining Samoa from the left and Fotuali’i playing at scrum half. Ofisa Treviranus, from London Irish, starts at No 8 while Mo Fa’asavalu, Census Johnston and Zac Taulafo will all be familiar to Premiership rugby supporters and Anthony Perenise and Dan Leo are among the replacements. “It’s a great bonus to have most of these players play up here in the UK,” Betham said. “We’re expecting a firedup English team this weekend.”

Betham described England’s decision to start with George Ford and Owen Farrell in tandem as “unusual”, but he said that he expected Stuart Lancaster’s men to “have some tricks up their sleeve.”

Samoa XV v England Samoa: K Pisi; A Leiua, R Lee-Lo, J Leota, D Lemi (captain); T Pisi, K Fotuali; O Treviranus, J Lam, M Fa’asavalu, K Thompson, Teofilo Paulo, C Johnston, Tii Paulo, Z Taulafo. Replacements: M Leiataua, V Afatia, A Perenise, F Lemalu, D Leo, T J Ioane, P Cowley, M Stanley.

last World Cup for speaking up. I was one of nine players who wrote a letter to the Samoan Observer backing him up. They got rid of about four or five of those guys. “There hasn’t been any progress between 2011 and now. We are going into a big year where the Samoan Rugby Union will be asking the Samoan people for a lot of money. We were the only team at the last World Cup who went out fundraising. We went to schools, churches, villages. “We are not comfortable repeating that process not knowing where the money is going. We refuse to. It has to be dealt with now.” Leo, a senior member of the squad at 32 with 38 caps, was put forward by the squad as the man to write the letter to World Rugby that contained the threat to boycott the game against England. The prospect of strike action was real, but withdrawn once World Rugby and the International Rugby Players’ Association (IRPA) got involved but, according to Leo, the SRU is refusing to engage in discussions. The Times contacted a senior member of the SRU yesterday, who said that he was unaware of Leo’s claims and that no complaints had been lodged, but he declined to comment further. The SRU policy is for the chairman to

handle media statements and he is out of the country. The prime minister said that the players were acting like “spoilt children”. The union did not attend a meeting in France last week and it pulled out of yesterday’s planned meeting at the Lensbury Club in Teddington, Middlesex, after officials claimed that they had got their days mixed up. “By today we were supposed to have got some resolution around moving forward, which would have been based on guaranteeing players’ safety, no blacklisting of players after this tour and a number of things such as transparency and effective governance,” Leo said. The Samoans are planning some kind of a protest at Twickenham tomorrow, but are anxious to stay within the rules. On £500 a week, they could not afford to pay the fine if they were hauled in front of a World Rugby disciplinary hearing. They have generated a social media campaign that has been backed by the All Blacks and numerous high-profile players from around the world. “It needs to get to the people of Samoa because they are the people who vote the Samoan Rugby Union board members in,” Leo said. “We are hoping they will stand down due to public pressure.”

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Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Sport Rugby union

‘It’s the best thing I ever did to become Steffon Armitage tells Owen Slot that despite the frustration of his exile, it was his move to Toulon that made him the finest player in Europe

ere he is, the man on the outside looking in. England play at Twickenham tomorrow and Steffon Armitage would love to be there with them. By the time of kick-off against Samoa, though, he will be back in Toulon, back in a kind of elite exiles club of which he and Matt Giteau seem to be lifetime co-presidents. Armitage accepts that his exile is self-imposed, but he is quite clear: “I definitely still want to play for England.” The name Giteau he introduces himself. Giteau is the sort of rare, glittering talent that has been essential to Armitage’s own complicated rise to prominence. He just loves playing with Giteau; Giteau, he says, “deserves to be in the Australia team. He is definitely one of the best players in the world.” What Armitage will not do, though, is say the same of himself and England. Playing politics is not his style; quite the opposite. Giving this interview is about as political as he gets. But he is not interested in criticising England for neglecting him because of their rule that bars players from foreign clubs. Or debating the definition of the “exceptional circumstances” rule that would allow them to pick him. And although he could claim, as many have on his behalf, that he could give struggling England the very X factor that they are missing, he will not go there, either. The 29-year-old’s only frame of reference on that count is his five-cap England career, which stuttered to a halt nearly five years ago. “I was young,” he says. “I tried too much. I don’t think I really knew the game back then and I didn’t have the time or run of games to get familiar with what international rugby is about.” What he knows is that he is now very different. “I am 100 per cent a better player.” We are talking at Richmond RFC, where he used to play as a boy. He has come home on a break from Toulon. He does still refer to it as home, which is what this interview is about. When he is done playing, he says, he wants to coach back there (he has already done his Level 2 qualification) and his wife wants to open a coffee shop. The reason, I think, that he has agreed to this rare interview is to set the record a little straight on his national affiliation. This season, he appeared to be seesawing, seemingly like a mercenary, between France, who want him, and England, who might want him but cannot pick him. Armitage’s advisers explored the possibility of qualification through residency to play for France, although the player never even spoke to Philippe Saint-Andre, the France head coach. It was when he almost transferred to Bath last month that it became clear he only wanted England. “It would have been a lot easier if things had worked out with Bath,” he says. “But it didn’t. At this point, I have to move past that.” So he is back where he has been for three years, blocked by England’s selection protocol, and not spared

No regrets: Armitage admits that it has taken four and a half years of gnawing frustration to come to terms with not being permitted to play for England, but knows

by the “exceptional circumstances” get-out clause. It could be argued that Armitage’s 2014 European player of the year award is sufficiently exceptional. I have wondered if it is actually the case that Armitage is a face and a name that does not fit, although having canvassed former club-mates, I am disabused of that theory. For the hour that we are together, he seems shy, likeable, humorous. I ask Armitage how he would fit into the England squad and he laughs. “I am the cuddly bear,” he says. “Everyone wants to hug me for some reason. I don’t know why. A smile and a hug, that’s what I give.” There is another argument in all this: that he signed up knowingly to his own fate, that he knew the rules when he

moved to Toulon. This point he accepts entirely. Yet there is a bit of chicken and egg here. He would not, he believes, have reached the standards he is at if he had not left London Irish for Toulon, but if he had not reached those standards, he would not be much use to England. “When I left for Toulon,” he says, “things weren’t going too well.” He had been tried and discarded by Martin Johnson, the England team manager at the time. He says: “I thought I needed something to change. At London Irish, the hunger went, but France has given it back. The move was not, as people said, for the money. I went out there for not a lot of money at all. “I had a lot to prove. I had nowhere near the amount of national caps as the other flankers there. I knew that every

day I would have to train better than anyone else, come in earlier and stay later. And I got into a team with some of the best players in the world. That shows I am willing to fight. “The fact is, at Toulon, every game could be your last, because if you have a rubbish game, you know they can go out and buy someone else instead. That gives you the fight to be the best player you are. “So all aspects of my game have improved. Irish got me to the point to be an international, but coming to Toulon got me to an extra level and each aspect of my game has got better. That is why I can’t regret moving to France. It’s the best thing I ever did to become the player I am today.” Yet with the improvement, the exile seemed harsher. “It did bother me,” he

says, “but it has got to the point now where I have accepted it. It’s been four and a half years to accept it.” It gnawed away at him most, he says, this time last year, when he was deciding whether to re-sign with Toulon or return home. He says that he was hoping for some show of interest from England to tempt him back. “That was on my mind, knowing there was a World Cup, but we heard nothing, no feedback from England,” he says. “That made the decision to stay on in France quite easy.” So now he is accustomed, twice a year, to the club emptying of their internationals while they go away to play for their countries, and he stays put. “Sometimes I do think it should be me,” he says. “But we are a close family and always try to help each other out

the times | Friday November 21 2014

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the player I am today’ TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, MARC ASPLAND

Pros and cons of open-side verdict If Steffon Armitage were to return to the England squad, he would be in competition for a place in the team with Chris Robshaw, the captain. John Westerby compares the potential rivals for the No 7 shirt Chris Robshaw Club Harlequins Height 6ft 2in Weight 17st 4lb Strengths Defence Robust, he rarely misses a tackle and often comes top of the tackle charts. Also organises his players well Stamina Robshaw is renowned for his workrate and is regularly among the top few in England squad fitness tests Weaknesses Breakdown Tall for an open-side flanker, Robshaw gets through plenty of work at the breakdown, but is not renowned for an ability to pilfer opposition ball Pace His ball-carrying tends to be short, straight bursts as he lacks the pace of some open-side flankers, which compromises his ability to link forwards and backs Steffon Armitage Club Toulon Height 5ft 9in Weight 16st 3lb Strengths Ball-carrying Quick and light on his feet, Armitage’s barrelling ball-carrying has been a feature of Toulon’s success in recent seasons, reflected in their occasional use of him at No 8 Scavenging In the traditional open-side manner, his low centre of gravity makes him tough for opponents to shift from over the ball, an attribute that enables him to make turnovers

that he is a better player for the move

and look out for each other. Giteau, Drew Mitchell — there are a few of us in that situation. Every now and then we send out a tweet for each other.” Last week, Bryan Habana, the South Africa wing, was widely quoted on his views on Armitage and how good he would be at international level. “I owe him £50 for that,” Armitage says, laughing. “But it does mean a lot. To know guys like that are backing you makes you want to push that little bit harder.” That is all he can do for now, push harder. “Head down, stay fit, keep playing well,” he says. It is a policy that wins him trophies and awards — but, still, no more England caps. 6 An extended interview with Steffon Armitage will appear on Rugby Tonight on BT Sport 2 at 8pm on Monday

Weaknesses Lineout As he is short and relatively heavy for his height, he is not a regular lineout jumper, which reduces his side’s options at the set-piece Temperament There were question marks about Armitage’s attitude early in his career, although big-match performances for Toulon seem to have proved his relish for the grandest of occasions

ARMITAGE ON . . . WHETHER FITNESS LEVELS IN FRANCE ARE LOWER

People who say that don’t watch the Top 14. I have never been fitter. My GPS and all the numbers are high all the time. Every season I feel I am getting fitter. WHAT MOTIVATES HIM

Whatever the game, I go out to play the best I can, because I know on Monday you’ve got to deal with [coach] Bernard Laporte shouting down your throat. In my head, that’s what I am scared of: Bernard telling me I’m rubbish and I’ll never wear a Toulon shirt again. HIS VERSATILITY

Playing No 8 as well as No 7 has made me more aware of positioning on the pitch. It has given me more vision. I also played scrum half for 20 minutes once against Perpignan. I even do a bit of kicking. My brother’s [Delon] not better than me at kicking, he is just long range. From inside the 40-metre range, I am better. Tell him that.

Armitage’s heart set on England Continued from back page

France head coach, had never spoken to him about it. “I have never come out and told anyone I wanted to play for France,” he said. “There was some talk that it was a possibility, but there was never a conversation with him asking me: ‘Do you want to?’ And if he had asked, I would not have answered that question by saying yes. One the greatest ever moments for me was playing at Twickenham with my brother.” Armitage said that Laporte had advised him to stick with England, even though circumstances make that option so hard. “He said: ‘I want you to do whatever you think is right and the right thing for you is England,’ ” Armitage said. “That’s why he said he would make me available for the training camps, so if there is a possibility of being picked, I’d be available.” Armitage said that he does not regret signing for Toulon, despite the risk he was taking with his international career. “I won’t start moaning about it,” he said. “I do want to play for England, but I accept my decisions and it is something me and my wife have to live with. But if I get picked again, I’ll give everything I’ve got.”

Rugby union Sport

Ford’s engineering all set to design a prosperous future Stuart Barnes Commentary

here is something ironic about the surname. When it comes to headlines, George Ford frequently finds himself linked with cars. Ford Focus was one of the more recent. The irony is, Ford shows absolutely no sign of having come off the latest state-of-the-art production line. He is not the flashy sports car model of Danny Cipriani’s wild days, nor the four-wheel drive off-roader that can be Owen Farrell. Neither massproduced nor unique, Ford is a throwback to another age. But his type of No 10 has been quietly forgotten, at least at international level. Charlie Hodgson has similar qualities and is still playing quite beautifully at club level. The pair represent the vintage line of fly halves. The emotion most evoked when I see Ford play? It is probably nostalgia. “You throw them and I’ll catch them.” That was the famous line of Barry John to Gareth Edwards. “Give me the ball, I’ll do the rest.” Obviously the game has evolved since their heyday, but progress is not necessarily linear. The extra meat and muscle of the fly half has resulted in him being judged as much for the quality of his defence as the control of his game. While every player has to be capable, not every fly half has to be as brutal in their tackling as Jonny Wilkinson was and as aggressive as Farrell is now. All 15 members of the team have subtly varying roles. Sometimes this truism is lost in the muscle. The primary role of the fly half is to steer his team around the field. If that means that defensive tactics might have to change, fine. “Defences win titles” was a Shaun Edwards mantra at Wasps. Well, they don’t if the self-same determined defenders cannot find a way to score their own points. It is just as valid to say that attacks win games; all that is different is the mindset. Ford has to find a way to add the missing element that is costing England against the best. His route to victory is not physically confronting whatever is in his way, but finding the easiest way through it towards the tryline. He uses vision. Stealthy, he reads games quicker than any English fly half I can remember. Few fly halves are manufactured like Ford. His identification of space and possibility marks the purest of fly halves. Nostalgia? Damn right. The computer speed of mind is allied with a strong foundation of

technical gifts, hard-earned gifts. He has worked at his basics while others were in the gymnasium. His ability to pass team-mates into space is thrilling. When defenders drift on to the objects of his distribution, he is willing and sharp enough off the mark to take a defence on himself. The combination of passing and running on the gain-line made him the most accomplished young fly half in the world at junior level. Supporters will be keen to see some rhythm in the English running game, but his tactical kicking is even more important to the rebuilding of the team. There is much talk about the game’s favourite coaching cliché, “the exit strategy”, but for England, the “entrance strategy” has been the greater problem. They have not been able to regularly find ways of playing their pack into a position on the field where they can do the kind of damage they did, on two occasions, to South Africa’s pack last weekend. Ford has the array of skill to drop the ball on the intended spot. Judge the success of Ford on the amount of time the England pack are in positions where they can score tries or win penalties. Territorial control is top of the England wish list; the running game, in contrast, is an important bonus. If Ford sparks something special behind the scrum, it will have been an impressive effort. He is at his best playing flat and unleashing midfield runners and wings on the gain-line. England have — at least from first phase — a shape whereby the forwards are the front line and the backs sweep deep behind. Much of England’s attacking play is predicated on finding space outside the No 13 channel. Ford is artful at unpicking defences farther infield. Presumably, he will drive England on to the front foot in broken play, provided that recycled possession is quick enough. And provided that he can take Farrell with him. Make that both Farrell men. Father, Andy, and son are important components in the England camp. One is a strategist off the field, the other a general on it. For Ford to flourish, the relative newcomer has to be given his head to run the show and not sit back as the new boy. England need to adapt to him as he must adapt to the team’s mus broad structure. And br Owen Farrell has to accept that Ford is in charge. The inside centre can be the eyes and ears of the fly half, but not the brain. The brain is the reason Ford is picked to play. Ford and Farrell have played together at junior level, but since then Farrell has forged ahead of Ford and relished the re responsibility of his position. For Ford-Farrell to work, the junior man has to take the senior role. The chemistry between old friends and new rivals will determine the success of Stuart Lancaster’s small-scale experiment tomorrow.

Sport

Friday November 21 2014 | the times

Hamilton’s feud for thought

McIlroy the class in Gulf

Rosberg revs up the animosity as title race reaches climax

Northern Irishman races to the top of Dubai leaderboard

Formula One, page 54

Golf, page 53

thetimes.co.uk/sport

british press awards — sports team of the year

Whelan in the line of fire for ‘antisemitism’ James Ducker Northern Football Correspondent

Dave Whelan, the Wigan Athletic chairman, has been accused of antisemitism and condoning racism in a fresh storm in the wake of his controversial appointment of Malky Mackay as manager. Whelan reportedly claimed that it was “nothing” to call a Chinese person a “ch***” and said that “Jewish people chase money more than everybody else” as he defended Mackay’s role in the so-called “textgate” affair. The chairman’s comments came on the same day that one of Wigan’s shirt sponsors, Premier Range, a kitchen appliances company, announced that it was ending its agreement with the club in protest at Mackay’s appointment and the FA issued a statement denying Whelan’s claims that “nothing will come” of its investigation into Mackay. The FA is looking into allegations that Mackay exchanged antisemitic, racist, sexist and homophobic text messages with Iain Moody, his former head of recruitment at Cardiff City, during his time in charge of the club. Mackay was accused of describing Vincent Tan, Cardiff’s Malaysian owner, as a “ch***” in one text and is reported in another text, in reference to Phil Smith, a Jewish football agent, to have said: “Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers.” Yet Whelan reportedly told The

Guardian yesterday that he felt the word “ch***” is not offensive and that he used to say it of Chinese people when he was young. “If any Englishman said he has never called a Chinaman a ch***, he is lying,” he is reported to have said. “There is nothing bad about doing that. It is like calling the British Brits, or the Irish paddies.” Whelan said he did not believe that the reference to Smith was insulting. Asked if he did not think what Mackay said was offensive as the claim that Jews “love money” has been used as a negative stereotype, he allegedly replied: “Do you think Jewish people chase money a little bit more than we do? I think they are very shrewd people.” The chairman — who said he did not think there was “a lot wrong” with anything Mackay said — reportedly added: “I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else. I don’t think that’s offensive at all.” Jenny Wong, a Chinese community leader, accused the Wigan chairman of condoning racism and said that the word “ch***” is “an insult, racist”. Simon Johnson, the former FA and Premier League executive who is now chief executive of the Jewish Leadership council, said: “Unfortunately Mr Mackay and now Mr Whelan have referred to some of the worst oldfashioned tropes, which have been used in the past as the basis of antisemitism and stereotyping of Jewish people.” Sordid saga, page 58

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DAVID ROGERS / GETTY IMAGES

Armitage still hoping to play for England Exclusive Owen Slot Chief Rugby Correspondent

Home is where the heart is: Armitage has rejected the possibility of playing for France and wants to return to the top of the game by representing England

across

down

1 Satisfied with energy stored by fuel cells (7) 5 Planners of Oxford course inhabiting another world! (7) 9 Show contempt for food item hospital put out (3) 10 Second leg: match substitute is one doing extra time (11) 11 Short story is by fellow that supposedly has magical powers (8) 12 Businessperson in bed struggling (6) 15 Rustic with nothing? (4) 16 Cleaner goes round ship where the furnaces are found (6,4) 18 Unhappy member of royal family reported plans for the future (10) 19 View does not show lake and I complain (4) 22 Wee dram and what it makes you? (6) 23 Cardinal’s return broken by female announcer (8) 25 The fellow would rush around with better woman in play (5,6) 27 Welshman in newspapers denied stories (3) 28 Gloomy quality of men wandering round in East Anglian town (7) 29 Book of French art is prefaced with information (7)

1 Bash European people and avoid any financial subsidies? (2,5) 2 Stiff busmen could need to move around (6-5) 3 Match that’s held in the morning is least likely to thrill (6) 4 One overexcited by what’s in store? (10) 5 Economist wanting seven-figure sums to be halved? (4) 6 Feature of card game that has Margaret yawning, we hear? (8) 7 Put away 19, maybe, after starter (3) 8 In bed, Greek character has bits of food sent up (7) 13 Bus dropping us off, for example, in rough side road breaks down (11) 14 Offer support once the standard has been raised? (3,3,4) 17 Waste medicine fed to plant (8) 18 Complained long, like an invalid? (7) 20 Decade of new social initiatives beneficial to couples (7) 21 Fancy having name for old penny coin once (6) 24 Members of minority group look to be heard (4) 26 Restraint needed when one’s angry, upset (3)

Steffon Armitage has pledged his future to England, even though he cannot get into the squad, and insists that he will never play for France. Armitage, who won the last of his five caps for England more than four years ago, has had the possibility presented to him of switching nations and appearing for France, where he plays his club rugby. In September, he was even named in an extended France squad. However, he has told The Times: “Maybe I have spent time in France, but that is nothing, my heart was always with England.” His problem for now is that England will not return the love because of a policy that prevents them from selecting players from teams outside the country other than in “exceptional circumstances”. Armitage, 29, the European player of the year, has been at Toulon for three seasons and although he is contracted for another three, he says that Bernard Laporte, the Toulon head coach, had encouraged him to play international rugby again and has agreed to release him for all training-camp dates that England would ask of him. “I definitely still want to play for England,” Armitage said. “As a rugby player, you want to play at the top of the game, and the top of the game is your country.” Armitage made his debut for England at Twickenham against Italy alongside his brother, Delon. “I want to end up back at Twickenham,” he said. He insists that he did not know he was to be added to the France squad list and that Philippe Saint-Andre, the Continued on page 63

Yesterday’s solution 25,949 P RO F L I A E A P E NGU I E O R R E P L E T H L C H I N A U L N F I E L D F F H L I B R A I R R NOON D A K O Y S I K H E

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