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'Crime of passion' is no defence

Infidelity or nagging should no longer be used as an excuse to escape life for murder, say Ministers
Husbands who claim their partner's nagging or infidelity drove them to kill will face much tougher sentences under a government shake-up of so-called 'crimes of passion'.

Ministers are secretly reviewing the defence of provocation, which has its origins in the bygone tradition of men fighting duels, under which a defendant can evade a murder charge by arguing that their victim did or said something that made them lose control.

Ministers argue that it reflects a medieval view of marriage, in which a man whose honour is insulted by a domineering or unfaithful wife is entitled to fatal revenge rather than a divorce. It also encourages defendants to blacken the victim's name in court, painting her as a bad wife.

The review will prompt impassioned debate over modern relationships, with critics likely to argue that men instinctively respond differently than women to infidelity and that 'feminising' the law is unfair.

'This defence institutionalises the blaming of the victim - "I killed her, but it was all her fault" - and we say we are going to put the victim at the heart of the crim inal justice system,' said a Whitehall source.

'We put a high value on human life and have high standards of responsibility. Times have changed: we don't have duels and we don't see men's ownership of their wives in the same way.'

The provocation defence cannot secure a killer's acquittal, but reduces the charge from murder carrying a life sentence to manslaughter, with a much shorter or even suspended sentence.

Solicitor-General Harriet Harman, Home Secretary David Blunkett and the Lord Chancellor's Department are still discussing the reforms.

Leading options include scrapping the provocation defence altogether - understood to be Harman's preference - or strictly limiting the circumstances in which provocation could be claimed, making clear that sexual jealousy is not enough.

Ministers are also studying the US system of homicide counts, under which different 'grades' of murder carry different tariffs.

The review follows the case of Madeleine Humes,who was killed by her husband, Les, a solicitor, after she confessed to an affair with her karate instructor. The court heard last year how their teenage daughter tried to seize the knife from Humes as he repeatedly stabbed her mother. Humes, who said in court he 'just saw this red mist', got seven years for manslaughter - leaving his wife's family furious.

'If Madeleine had survived and he had been charged only with attempted murder or GBH, he would have got more of a sentence than that,' says Paula Watt, Madeleine's sister.

'But he killed her, so he gets less. What kind of signal is that sending to people? All the way through, Les was seen as a victim - Maddie wasn't heard at all.'

Home Office research on homicides found that women were much more likely to be killed by a husband or lover than a stranger: one of the most dangerous flashpoints is a woman leaving the relationship, even if - as in the Humeses' case - the marriage was not previously known to be violent.

Using the defence requires defendants to show it was reasonable, given their character, for them to have responded by killing. But there is little definition of what counts as provocation.

'We call it the "nagging and shagging" defence - classically, it will be either "she was sleeping with someone else" or that she nagged him,' said solicitor Harriet Wistrich, of campaign group Justice for Women. 'But if it is simply that she is leaving you, is that enough of an excuse for murder?'

Several women who have killed abusive partners - famously Sara Thornton - have claimed provocation, arguing that they snapped after years of putting up with domestic violence.

But Ministers believe these cases could be covered by extending the law on self defence to cover cases where the woman was not responding to an immediate attack, but was still effectively killing to save herself.

High-profile cases involving provocation include Joseph McGrail, who walked free in 1992 with a suspended sentence for kicking his wife to death, after pleading provocation on the grounds that she was an alcoholic and swore at him. The judge said the dead woman 'would have tried the patience of a saint'.

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Liberal Democrat conference

Grassroots Liberal Democrats vote for graduate tax campaign

Delegates at party conference pass motion to explore the 'possibility to build cross-party support' on the issue
The Liberal Democrats Hold Their Annual Party Conference -Day 1
Business secretary Vince Cable has already floated the idea of a graduate tax. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Grassroots Liberal Democrats today voted to campaign to replace university tuition fees with a graduate tax in a move that will worry the coalition government.

Delegates at the party's conference in Liverpool passed a motion vowing to explore the "possibility to build cross-party support around replacing tuition fees and student loans with a graduate tax".

A graduate tax would mean the lowest earners pay less for their degrees, while high-income graduates pay more than they do now.

University fees are arguably the most divisive issue within the coalition and one that will test its durability over the next few months.

Next month, an independent review is expected to recommend that tuition fees rise. Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive who is leading the review, is likely to suggest fees rise from £3,290 per year for undergraduates to £5,000 or £7,000.

Key Liberal Democrats, such as deputy leader Simon Hughes, have said they expect tuition fees to be abolished in favour of a graduate tax. Vincent Cable, the business secretary and a Lib Dem, has also floated the idea of a graduate tax.

But the universities minister, David Willetts, a Conservative, has hinted that tuition fees could rise.

In an attempt to manage their differences, the two parties have agreed that Lib Dem MPs can abstain from voting on the issue in parliament.

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell has said if the Lib Dems were to go back on their policy of phasing out tuition fees, he would rebel.

The National Union of Students said today's vote showed the Lib Dems had a "golden opportunity to achieve one of their most popular and longstanding policy aims". But the lecturers' trade union, the University and College Union, said the Liberal Democrats had not given any details of their graduate tax plans.

Sally Hunt, UCU's general secretary, said: "Hardworking families who aspire for their children to go to university will judge any proposals on whether or not they make it more expensive to get a degree, not how the plans are called."

Meanwhile, a poll of nearly 500 students found two-thirds would not have been able to study at university if fees had been £6,000. A similar proportion were against a graduate tax, the survey by shows.

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Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract obituary

Moderate Labour MP and champion of his mining constituency
Geoffrey Lofthouse
Geoffrey Lofthouse was left a helpless spectator during the 1984-85 miners’ strike Photograph: PA

To become a miners' MP in October 1978 was to enter parliament in a moment of calm in a decade marked by ferocious industrial conflict. Geoffrey Lofthouse, who has died aged 86, won the byelection at Castleford and Pontefract, West Yorkshire, following the death of the sitting MP, Joseph Harper. The wage restraint established by the Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, and the main union leaders was sticking, inflation falling, the International Monetary Fund seen off. Prime Minister James Callaghan's attempt to push that restraint to breaking point was a year off. And in the coalfields, the militancy promoted by Arthur Scargill was dormant.

Lofthouse represented the miners devotedly. They were the key workforce of the constituency and he had been one himself, starting work at the Ackton Hall colliery in his native Featherstone at the age of 14. This had not stopped the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from seeking to impose its nominee when the seat fell vacant. Lofthouse's success in seeing him off was an act of disrespect that sparked a campaign to unseat him.

However, with a general election on the horizon in 1979, Lofthouse was tough and resourceful enough to get his local party sufficiently onside for him to be reselected from a shortlist of one. At that time, he was seen as a moderate, an impression underlined by his soft-spoken, gentle manner.

In the Commons, he quietly argued for every local and mining interest. In the course of achieving better compensation for the victims of emphysema, he introduced five bills. And he was a bitter critic of Margaret Thatcher's man at the National Coal Board (NCB), the Scottish-American Ian MacGregor, accusing him early on of planning a general assault and dismemberment of the industry.

Lofthouse belonged to a tradition that thought of the strike as a weapon best left hanging on the wall, but periodically pointed to in negotiations. He also believed in proper trade union procedures, which meant balloting the membership. When Scargill jumped that particular gun and initiated the 1984-85 strike in response to the announcement of pit closures, miners' MPs and regional miners' leaders were left as the prisoners of solidarity while sharing an intense dislike of Thatcher and MacGregor.

Accordingly, Lofthouse bitterly criticised police tactics, which included having mounted men making cavalry charges. He also accused Thatcher's ministers and MacGregor's management team of trying to resist compromise and seek the unqualified victory that indeed they eventually achieved. In his view, the government had an essential ally in Scargill, president of the NUM from 1982, who rejected a compromise deal put forward by the colliery union Nacods, involving an independent review body for pit closures. This would have given the pitmen a victory on points, but it was felt to be impossible to criticise Scargill's folly without seeming to break faith with those whom he led into joblessness and debt.

Lofthouse, like many others in the mining world, was left a helpless spectator during the strike and a grieving seeker of mitigation afterwards. In 1985, after the end of the strike, he joined miners marching back to Prince's pit in his constituency.

A critic of further nuclear reactors, he attacked the government's readiness to import coal, the increased risk of injury in private pits and the weakening of safety regulations. It was a melancholy and depressing task for a decent man.

Lofthouse was the youngest of five children. When his father, a farm labourer, died in 1930, his mother and the children were evicted within two days. After attending schools in Featherstone, Geoffrey entered mining as a haulage hand, later serving as an NUM official.

In 1957 he went to Leeds Univeristy and gained a BA in political studies. When, in 1970, he became a personnel manager for the NCB, he moved to the clerical union Apex. He had been heavily engaged in local affairs, serving on Pontefract council (1962-74) with a year as mayor in 1967, and on Wakefield council (1974-79).

Lofthouse's personal life had been stricken at the end of the miners' strike by the death of his wife, Sarah. They had married in 1946, and had a daughter.

He was a deputy speaker of the Commons under Betty Boothroyd from 1992, knighted in 1995 and stood down at the 1997 election, after which he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lofthouse of Pontefract. From 1998 he was a deputy speaker of the Lords. Mild, competent and steady, Lofthouse was ideally suited to the chair, ignoring its opportunities for personality excursions. In the less strident era of John Major's administration, it was easier for an MP from the coalfield to function in a non-partisan post.

A rugby league and cricket follower, he produced two autobiographies, A Very Miner MP (1986) and Coal Sack to Woolsack (1999). He kept his home in Pontefract at all times, and in recent years had campaigned against hospital closures with his successor as MP, Yvette Cooper.

• Geoffrey Lofthouse, Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract, politician, born 18 December 1925; died 1 November 2012

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Dave Hill's London blog

Mayor Johnson's India trip reveals shortcomings of "Brand Boris"

The London mayor's trip to India highlighted his strengths but also underlined his weaknesses
Boris Johnson Boris Johnson at Amity University, south of Delhi. Photograph: EPA

The value to London business of Mayor Johnson's trade mission to India last week is trickier to measure than is its use to "Good old Boris" himself. If his jokes and photo-ops have enhanced commercial links between the UK capital and New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, evidence for it won't emerge for years and will be hard to quantify. By contrast, the benefits to Brand Boris have been instant and easy to define. The words "promotion" and "self" sum them up just fine.

India's financial community may have greeted his Bombay stock exchange speech with empty seats and London's chamber of commerce chief executive may have wished out loud that he'd re-open the permanent London offices in India - set up by Ken Livingstone - that he's had closed, but back home the mayor's media chums were demonstrating their usual deference: oh look, Boris playing cricket!; oh look, Boris on a bike! The hype triggered a mild revival of that numbing press prattle about his rivalry with "Dave." His reported disinclination to rule out a return to Westminster before his second mayoral term ends in 2016 will do nothing to cure the media herd of its addiction to the fantasy that one day he'll move into Number 10.

Still, hogging headlines is part of the mayoral brief, more so than for most in Johnson's trade. "Politicians, I'm afraid, are very useful in that they open doors," he remarked when asked to justify his trip, an excursion of a type Lynton Crosby and his proxies heaped scorn on back in the spring, but which the mayor revealed to Lib Dem Stephen Knight within weeks of his re-election that he intends making several of – the Middle East, Brazil, China and other locations are being considered. Setting aside the double standards, though, he has a point.

The top job at City Hall entails all sorts of attention-seeking behaviour, notably lobbying in areas where mayors have no powers. The issue is not the mayor being a self-appointed evangelist for things he's not in charge of, whether at home or abroad, but his choice of causes to champion.

Those he addressed while in India illustrate the case. Many agree that obstructive UK visa regulations unhelpfully discourage Indian students from studying in London and Indian businesses from investing here, and the affronted Home Office rebuttal of his claim – not a novel one - that it has effectively introduced the amnesty for irregular foreign migrants that he has long argued for suggested he'd located a sore spot.

But even his friends at the boss end of the Evening Standard don't think reducing stamp duty on new "affordable" homes will do much to help the capital's aspiring first-time home buyers. Criticizing the government's huge cuts to London's affordable housing grants might be a better use of his time than campaigning for new airports or reductions to the top rate of tax. And housing provision is something he actually has some direct control over.

The theme of the second Johnson mayoralty is fostering London's economic growth, but his view of how to achieve this is limited by his conviction that tax cuts and Chicago school economics are the answer to everything (except, of course, if applied to London's profits-draining road traffic congestion). How growth of itself helps a city to become richer as a whole is not a theme he addresses in much depth. Mayor Johnson swings a cricket bat prettily for the cameras, but if he were a golfer he'd have just one club in his bag.

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Dec 2012


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Krishnan Guru-Murthy presents Channel 4 News

  • 29 May 2014:

    Krishnan Guru-Murthy: In Senegal, more people die of cancer than malaria, tuberculosis and Aids put together, but many do not get the drugs they need

  • Ed Miliband 2 Apr 2014:

    With the election a year away – and the prospect of hours of exposure on TV – the Labour leader is bringing in a broadcast guru to change his image. G2 asked a panel of experts how Ed could enhance his appeal

  • Duncan Bannatyne 4 Aug 2011: Krishnan Guru Murthy: Like it or not, anonymity has its place in social networks. We just need to work towards a culture of respect online
  • Andrew Marr 11 Oct 2010: Krishnan Guru Murthy: Not all bloggers are household names or worthy of a slot on Radio 4, but Andrew Marr is wrong to dismiss them out of hand

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Nicola Barker is an author. Her novel Darkmans was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker prize. Her latest book, The Yips, is out in July 2012

  • 22 Jun 2012: 'His writings brought huge numbers of men (and, no doubt, women) into lives of spiritual contemplation'
  • Martin Amis sitting on red sofa, at home in New York 13 Jun 2012:

    Martin Amis's vision of modern England is filthy, inventive, topical, cruel, breathtaking – a Big Mac made from filet mignon, says Nicola Barker

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Delivering corporate leadership in the civil service

In a new monthly blog on leadership training, senior civil servant Peter Rainey shares his progress on the training programme
Civil servants going to work
The leading to inspire programme is aimed at senior civil servants appointed in the last few years. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian

I've been a civil servant for three and half years, initially working at the Central Office of Information (which closed in March), before joining the Ministry of Justice in January, where I lead the corporate communication team.

Before that, I worked for a number of years at Royal Mail, a very large commercial organisation facing major change, so as well as the public sector, I have experience of working in a very competitive market.

Now I find myself in a new role and in another large organisation, this time the civil service, also in a time of enormous challenge. Alongside wider civil service reform, the MoJ is delivering a significant programme to transform the justice system, looking for ways to make it more effective, less costly and more responsive. Consequently, I need to make sure that I'm in the best place possible to respond to these challenges and to help lead my team, and others, through this change.

The leading to inspire programme, part of a new strategy for delivering training to civil servants, is aimed at senior civil servants appointed in the past few years. It has been developed by Civil Service Learning in partnership with Ashridge Business School. It's structured in three residential, two-day modules, each one looking at a different aspect of leadership, and brings together civil servants from a number of departments to explore how leadership works.

Being relatively new, the programme gives a great opportunity for me to understand better what the civil service thinks it wants of its leaders, assess how well I meet those needs, and identify the areas I need to develop in order to meet the requirement more effectively. As a bonus, being on the first intake should mean I can also help shape the way the civil service develops its people.

The first module was about providing visible leadership, and your own leadership style. We'd all gathered 360-degree feedback in advance, so there we spent some time going through these andusing them to manage our own development, including a very useful one-to-one personal coaching session. There were also segments on employee engagement, personal resilience, and an enjoyable workshop on developing a personal "leadership brand".

Having completed the two days I'm hopeful that the programme will continue to meet my overall expectations. Many of the courses I've been on in the past could have been delivered in half the time, but this didn't feel like that; it was well paced, covering a range of topics and leaving sufficient time for discussion and reflection, but without dragging on.

We also had an interesting mix of people – some career civil servants, and some who've joined from the private and third sectors. The discussions were on the whole thoughtful, and people weren't scared to share their views, so I'm looking forward to the group working we'll be doing after the next two modules.

In the meantime, my personal challenge is to try and apply some of the learning back in the office. I'll let you know how I get on in a few weeks' time.

Peter Rainey is a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Justice

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

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Vets call for a national blood service to save pets' lives

A large-scale national blood service for pets could save the lives of hundreds, or thousands, of ill and injured animals each year, leading veterinarians said yesterday.

Limited availability of blood for transfusions means many animals are unable to undergo emergency treatment that could save their lives after being injured in road accidents and fights or suffering from serious illnesses.

In March Britain's first animal blood bank was established as the charity Pet Blood Bank. Based in Loughborough, the bank's vets collect blood from dogs brought to clinics within a two hour drive of the facility. The organisation sells blood products to veterinary surgeries around the country for £100 a unit and directs profits into educational programmes. It hopes to launch a service for cats next year.

Royal Veterinary College experts called for a larger national blood bank for cats and dogs. Dan Brockman, a heart surgeon at the college hospital in Hatfield, said broader availability of blood would have a dramatic impact on animal welfare.

"If there's one thing that could have a huge impact on saving pets' lives, then this is it," he said.

Mr Brockman specialises in open heart surgery on animals and performs around five blood transfusions a week, usually on dogs. Many breeds develop heart disease later in life, but some, such as the Cavalier King Charles, are prone to specific heart problems that require intricate surgery.

Two years ago the government lifted restrictions that barred veterinary clinics from storing animal blood products. However, many do not have the specialised facilities to store blood. Instead, some vets have set up a system whereby willing owners bring their pets in to donate fresh blood when it is needed.

Amanda Boag, co-director of the blood transfusion service at the Royal Veterinary College hospital, backed the call for a wider blood service, adding: "In some instances blood transfusions will be life-saving."

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Dave Hone's Lost Worlds

Persistent dinosaur myths

No matter how many excellent TV documentaries are made about them, some dated ideas about dinosaurs just won't die
Artist's impression of a sauropod dinosaur
Despite the evidence of footprints, the belief persists that sauropods were so big they had to spend their time partially submerged. Image: AFP/Getty Images

Work on dinosaurs for long enough and do enough engagement and outreach activities and a few myths and misconceptions will come up again and again. For all that films like Jurassic Park and documentaries like Planet Dinosaur helped drag the general view of dinosaurs into the 21st century, a good number of people are decades behind the research.

Now to be fair, I hardly expect most people to be that interested in dinosaurs, but equally, almost everyone I come across does have some residual interest in them and seems to at least know a bit. Keeping up with every piece of research and new discovery is almost impossible even for professional dinosaur researchers, but anyone who has taken a look in a decent natural history museum, read any recent media coverage of dinosaurs or seen any of a host of documentaries would, you'd hope, have been disabused of some ideas that were out of date in the 1920s.

There is still much debate among palaeontologists about some aspects of dinosaurs' lives owing to a lack of data, or data that are inconclusive or even contradictory. However, there's much we can be certain about, supported by lots of lines of evidence and good studies. Some of the things listed below were rejected by the scientific community almost as soon as they were first hypothesised but have somehow clung on in the public consciousness, recycled endlessly by bad stereotypes, and cheap and lazy knock-off books and media coverage.

Dinosaurs were all big

Some dinosaurs were truly colossal and many, indeed most, dinosaurs when adult were big compared with modern terrestrial mammals. However, there were plenty of species the size of cows, sheep, small dogs and even those more the size of a cat or chicken. Birds aside, the smallest dinosaurs we know of were only about 200g as adults.

They died out for, well any of dozens of reasons except the right one
There's an endless supply of ideas about what killed off the dinosaurs (and indeed plenty of other groups that went with them). From the obviously mad (aliens hunted them) to the impractical (they all died of diseases or mammals ate all their eggs) to the reasonable but no longer strongly supported (rise in greenhouse gasses), there's plenty of ideas out there. More than one hundred have been proposed, but the only well supported and universally accepted theory is that of an asteroid impact and subsequent global devastation.

They were stupid

I doubt many were smart, but most people seem to regard all dinosaurs as being dumb as a bag of hammers. I think this is linked to the idea that dinosaurs were somehow evolutionary failures and that being dumb was part of this.

Intelligence is hard enough to quantify in living species, let alone extinct ones, but there's evidence for things like social behaviours and group living, parental care and the like, and a least some dinosaurs had relatively large brains for their body size. Few might have been intellectual titans, but not all could have really been total dunces and many were probably much smarter than they are generally given credit for.

They were slow (or for that matter, super fast)

The old idea of super-slow, lumbering dinosaurs still hasn't quite died out. But they were not just colossal lizards gasping from footstep to footstep but were instead largely active and agile animals.

The interesting counter to this are those who took Jurassic Park a bit too literally and now think Velociraptor could hit 60 miles an hour, or Tyrannosaurus 30mph or more, when in fact modern analyses suggest these are gross exaggerations.

Dinosaurs dragged their tails on the ground

Obviously dating from the time when dinosaurs were considered especially reptilian and lizard-like, dinosaurs posed with their tails dragging still turn up to this day. The anatomy of the tail bones and muscles alone suggest this is wrong, but the killer should be the near endless collections of dinosaur footprints not accompanied by marks left by dragging tails.

Sauropods lived in swamps/water

This is another idea that lasted only briefly in scientific circles but which still appears today in books and media articles. The giant long-necked sauropods were thought too big to survive on land and so must have walked about while partially submerged in water – despite fairly obvious problems such as the fact that they would float, and that if submerged that far their lungs would collapse, and fossilised footprints show them walking on land, and more.

Tyrannosaurus was a dedicated scavenger

A much more recent idea floated by Jack Horner, this idea never gained much support from palaeontologists (and apparently even Horner never really thought much of it) and it has been sunk by a number of studies and reviews. Nevertheless, the coverage this got when it was first suggested means that it shows up repeatedly and is fiercely clung to by some.

All dinosaurs lived in jungles/warm climates

On average, the Mesozoic Era in which the dinosaurs lived was rather warmer than in the modern world. However, dinosaurs lived across the world for tens of millions of years and they occupied a wide range of ecosystems that included deserts, plains, coastlines, forests, jungles and even high arctic environments. It wasn't just steamy rainforests and hot fetid jungles.

Stegosaurus had two brains

Please not this one. They just didn't. What they did have is an enlarged nerve cluster at the base of the spine like lots of vertebrates including humans. To see just how pervasive this myth is for dinosaurs as a whole (though poor old steggy generally gets picked out) and how hard this idea is to kill, read this sorry tale by a friend of mine and his interaction with TV producers and editors (starts a way down).

There are lots of other little things about dinosaurs that are quite capable of irritating me, but these really are the biggies. Readers are of course quite free not to care one jot about this and to find my frustration incomprehensible.

But part of the job of a scientist is to communicate new research to the general public and given the interest in dinosaurs in the media, museum attendances and the endless succession of documentaries and books out there, it's clear that a great number of people are interested and engaged. So it is incredible that ideas that have been disproved a century ago are still hanging around and being actively propagated. It does a disservice to the actual science and research, and a disservice to those who want to learn.

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brain flapping

Dean Burnett writes about neuroscience, psychiatry, the media and standup comedy

  • Friday 21 June 2013

  • Simon Feeley Chicken

    An intelligent chicken angrily remonstrating with an intellectually inferior child, as is the norm. Illustration: Simon Feeley

    Dean Burnett: A study claimed chickens are more intelligent than children. There are many reasons why this isn't true

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  • Friday 8 March 2013

  • Red Riding Hood

    Red Riding Hood, an example of a female character who could stand to be updated. Photograph: Kimberly French

    Dean Burnett: International women's day reminds us that it's important to tackle gender bias wherever we can, even if it's something small scale, of little consequence or even downright weird

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Delivering on Dilnot: the practicalities of social care reform

If key proposals are to be enacted, the debate on the white paper planned for the spring has to move beyond funding
Care Groups Demonstrate In Westminster
Actor Tony Robinson (centre) joins campaigners protesting about the crisis in social care in London earlier this month. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

As the health and care bill makes its embattled journey through parliament, social care concerns are, as ever, taking a back seat to wider NHS reform. Nonetheless, Paul Burstow, the care services minister, continues to stress that reform of social care remains an urgent government priority.

The spending review made additional funding available to support social care, and by 2014-15 an extra £2bn per annum should be invested; but meanwhile charities and independent organisations continue to highlight a growing funding crisis.

The government's response to last year's report from the Dilnot commission on the funding of care and support has yet to emerge. However, the social care white paper planned for the spring must deliver fundamental reform to both the model of funding and the wider policy framework for adult social care. As the health select committee has also emphasised, it is important that the future shape of social care "is not dominated by a debate about the technical details of funding".

Much of the debate so far has focused on paying for care, but, as my scoping report for the Social Care Institute for Excellence (Scie) finds, if the key proposals from both the Dilnot and Law Commission reports on adult social care are to be enacted, a number of practical issues will need to be addressed, particularly around assessment approaches and determining eligibility for publicly funded support. The Dilnot commission argued for a changed approach with the development of a new assessment and eligibility measure, and one that would enable people to "carry" their assessments between local authorities.

Dilnot recommended that assessments of care needs should be carried out in ways that would be "more objective and more easily understood", but what this might mean in practice is not clear. There are plenty of validated assessment tools, and the case for introducing another would need to be made. The Scie study found no appetite among key stakeholders for a new tool.

A more objective model would also need to be consistent with the principles of personalisation and compatible with self-assessment. Good assessment is much more of a dialogue between a person needing care and support and the person co-ordinating the assessment; it is concerned with identifying goals and outcomes and how these might best be met through support. By contrast, many assessment tools that appear "objective" are functional and concerned with people's ability or inability to undertake particular activities of daily living. It is easy for such a model to focus on the things a person is unable to do, rather than supporting people to maximise their independence.

Any change of assessment tools and methodology would have major training and workforce development implications if greater consistency and objectivity were to be achieved.

It is widely accepted that the variability of eligibility for social care between local councils causes considerable confusion and apparent inequity. The Dilnot commission argued that the threshold for eligibility for publicly funded social care should be set nationally to offer a "clearer, fairer and more coherent system for the public".

Removing the so-called postcode lottery has an obvious appeal and would be a popular move, but it would raise significant tensions with localism and local democracy. Two councils may operate the same eligibility threshold but actually provide quite different levels of support because of different approaches to investment in community assets and resources. Establishing a national threshold without addressing this wider context will not achieve equity across the country.

The central recommendation of the Dilnot commission was to protect people from catastrophic care costs by capping the amount they would need to contribute over a lifetime; Dilnot suggested a cap set at £35,000. If this model is implemented, there will be considerable implications for councils and their systems of assessment and eligibility determination. In order for individuals' care costs to be counted towards their capped contribution, their needs would have to be assessed and a notional spend allocated to such needs.

Wherever the cap is set, it is clear that this approach would necessitate many more people who are paying for their own care to be brought into the assessment system. There are risks of the system becoming overly bureaucratic, and the practical issues of assessing and reassessing people's needs and keeping a tally of their virtual spend would need considerable development. There are questions too about how the support provided by informal carers would be treated, or how the risks of people manipulating the system can be minimised.

Despite these very real challenges, this approach also provides opportunities to ensure that self-funders get a better deal in future. It is well documented that at present many people paying for their own care and support do so with little information or help, and the chance to benefit from assessment and advice about what support is available and how best to access it could make a major difference.

The transformational change that would be required to deliver the Dilnot recommendations is considerable. There are risks that focusing on systems and processes can confuse ends and means and fail to address the central purpose of focusing on individual needs and improving outcomes. In the lead-up to the promised white paper, it is essential that such matters are fully explored and appreciated if a smooth transition to a new system is to be achieved.

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A quota for women in the boardroom

With the European commission calling for action on the disgracefully low level of women in the boardrooms of major companies (EU rights commissioner warns of laws to put more women in boardrooms, 15 July), it is now surely time for Britain to introduce quotas to deal with our continuing level of around 10% of female representation. Norway's highly successful 40% quota is an ideal model. This is not just an issue of fairness and equality. We desperately need to change the "group think" – particularly in the banking and financial sectors – that led us into the current economic mess. Research has shown that boards comprising a variety of people from different backgrounds and experiences are more effective.

This also begs the question why the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, making key decisions about everyone's future, is all male? We've seen in recent debates in parliament, still only 22% female – most notably in the debate on anonymity for people accused of rape – that women from all parties have brought different views and experiences. We need to ensure those views are heard and taken into account everywhere decisions are being made.

Caroline Lucas MP

Green, Brighton Pavilion

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NHS to publish surgeons' survival rate league tables

Figures ranking surgeons by how many people die in their operating theatres are to be published next year
  • theguardian.com,
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Surgeon performing operation.
Publishing data on surgeons' performance is seen as key to driving patient choice in the NHS. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

League tables ranking surgeons by how many people die in their operating theatres will be published next year, the new independent quango in charge of the NHS has announced.

In what it describes as a "revolution" for patients, the NHS commissioning board says in its planning guidance for 2013-14 that "providers should by summer 2013 publish consultant-level data covering survival rates and quality of care for 10 specialties including cardiac, vascular and orthopaedic surgery".

The step is seen as key to driving patient choice in the NHS, although doctors have been resistant to such changes in the past. Only after the outcry from the Bristol children's heart surgery scandal and years of campaigning did surgeons make public their survival rates for heart bypass operations and aortic valve replacement surgery.

. Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the board, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that "the drive of professional pride over surgeons' performance data was very important".

"We want to make the NHS the best customer service in the world by doing more to put patients in the driving seat. We are determined to focus on outcomes and the rights people have under the NHS constitution, as well as ensure those most in need gain most from the support we provide.

"At the heart of our approach is local control over decision-making. We want to put power in the hands of clinicians who know their patients best. We want to give them the money, information and tools to do the job. And we want the public to have the information they need to make choices and participate fully in the development of their health services."

The new guidance comes against a backdrop of radical change in the NHS – where improvement is driven by clinical commissioning groups, clusters of GPs charged with purchasing care for patients.

The document outlines the incentives and levers that will be used to improve services and "is a key step towards the new system for commissioning healthcare in England, built around 211 local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), led by GPs".

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7 January 2013

Top stories for society

  1. Nick Clegg and David Cameron

    Nick Clegg joins protests over 'shirkers' tag

    Tory rhetoric on welfare criticised and Lib Dems accused of indiscipline on day of coalition relaunch

  2. 4.45pm
    Newcastle bridges

    Newcastle leader accuses ministers of north-south bias over cuts

    Council chief Nick Forbes wants an independent body to take over allocation of local authority funding, claiming political 'abuse'

  3. 12.49pm
    George Ferguson

    Bristol mayor sets out cuts to cover £35m 'growing budget hole'

    George Ferguson, elected as an independent in November, plans to shed 300 local authority jobs and raise council tax
  4. India Healthcare

    'Two Indias exist everywhere, especially in healthcare' – video

    Video Video (5min 52sec)

    For 15 years a dedicated group of doctors have been running a health project in central India called Jan Swasthya Sahyog

  5. 12.22pm
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    Indian gang-rape accused appear in Delhi court

    Five men accused of rape and murder of 23-year-old woman hear charges against them amid rowdy courtroom scenes

  6. 10.35am

    Change4Life advertising campaign highlights sugar and fat in food

    Government TV campaign targets obesity after supermarkets agree voluntary 'traffic light' food labelling

  7. 10.14am
    Adult holding baby hand

    Child benefit: who is entitled to what

    Families with at least one partner earning £50,000 or more will be expected to repay some of the money received

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talking sport 620

Screen Break

Big Ron thrives in the theatre of cruelty

    • The Guardian,
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Where Are They Now? No 37: Ron Atkinson. Following a spectacular fall from grace in 2004, the former king of the commentary box Ron "Big Ron" Atkinson found himself shunned by TV producers and his former colleagues in the world of football. Suddenly unemployable, the shamed former manager, who at the height of his fame owned more large white leather sofas than anyone in Britain, was forced to sell his six-bedroom mock-Tudor mansion in Sutton Coldfield and a number of very attractive standard lamps, and move into a two-up, two-down with outside toilet, in Dudley. Which was unfortunate, because the house itself was in Wolverhampton.

Recognising the magnitude of his sins and the vacuity of his former way of life, Big Ron became a devout Christian and spent the next 20 years working among lepers in a remote region of Africa.

Some years later, now little more than a colourful footnote in football history, Ron was spotted handing out soup and succour to the homeless in the back streets of Birmingham by a young TV researcher. After some persuasion the kindly white-haired gent, whose beatific smile belied his beginnings in the brash cut-throat world of professional sport, agreed to participate in a TV programme charting his spiritual journey.

Yeah, right. I mean, let us be honest, who has got time for all that these days?

Penitence on that scale might have been viable in Profumo's day when there were only two TV channels, but with new stations opening faster than Subways, you have got to have something to put on them, and Ron's perma-tanned face, combed-over hair, wide grin, and fleshy boxer's nose were absolutely made for widescreen TV.

So how long do you think it might have been after Ron's Racist Shame (copyright: all newspapers) that his phone first began to ring again? A month? A week? In your dreams. The reality shows will have been on the blower before Ron was out of ITV Towers with his black bin bag.

Nowadays purdah is not so much a way of life as a quick rest stop on the road to reality TV. And to be fair to the big man - as the argot of the locker room might have it - he resisted the I'm A Celebrity shilling which almost certainly will have been offered.

But he needs to work, doesn't want to get under Mrs Ron's feet as she vacuums the thick shag pile and all that, so in no time at all we got that travesty of a documentary in which a film crew followed Ron to America's Deep South, supposedly so we could see a chastened football man confronting the realities of racial prejudice. What we actually saw was Big Ron in a lightweight suit.

Obscure radio slots and bits of TV followed, but now in a serious bid for the Russell Brand Award for Television Ubiquity, Big Ron seems to be all over the place. No sooner has Excuse My French, the series in which Ron and stand-up comic Marcus Brigstocke are taken to Provence to see if it is possible to live with Esther Rantzen for a month, finished its run on BBC2, than along comes Big Ron Manager, on Sky One.

Having signally failed to learn French, or anything much about racial prejudice, this fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall documentary series finds Big Ron back where he might be expected to have at least a nodding acquaintance with what he is talking about; at Peterborough United FC, helping the club win promotion from League Two.

Or not, as it turns out. Close examination of the football results will confirm Peterborough - with Big Ron having come and gone and worked his magic - still in that division, eking out a 0-0 draw on Saturday at Notts County. Coincidentally the first match featured in the programme is at Meadow Lane, which the manager Steve Bleasdale actually managed to win, unassisted by Atkinson. There's progress.

Not that results are altogether the point of the project for Peterborough. Reports say that for moving Big Ron and the cameras into London Road, Sky paid in the region of £200, 000, which is a very attractive region for a struggling club. The club's owner Barry Fry, for whom the expression "crazy like a fox" might have been invented, has presumably used the money to bring in a couple of wise heads on the pitch, and replace the unfortunate Bleasdale with a more experienced manager.

You have to feel sorry for Bleasdale, a likeable Scouser whom we first see in exchange with a rival supporter: "Sit down, you prick," the fan advises. "Prick? That's a bit strong," counters Steve. "See you down here afterwards, just you and me, you bastard." It is an approach to problem resolution rarely touched on in management seminars, popularly known as "offering him outside".

It is no surprise, then, to see Steve unsettled by the sleek untroubled presence of Big Ron hanging around "helping" him. I mean, I don't like being watched when I am filleting a fish, so what must it be like having an eminence grise swish in in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and stand over you while you are trying to win a football match.

Big Ron Manager is theatre of cruelty and you will hate yourself for watching, but it is cracking, compelling TV. Those lepers are going to have to wait.

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Formula one medium plain badge

Lewis Hamilton 'so happy' for McLaren team-mate Jenson Button

• Competitive Jenson Button 'perfect team-mate'
• Lewis Hamilton confident of winning races soon
Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton endured a difficult weekend in Melbourne for the Australian grand prix. Photograph: Srdjan Suki/EPA

Lewis Hamilton does not begrudge team-mate Jenson Button claiming the first win of the season for McLaren at the Australian grand prix last weekend and is confident his own chances of victory are not too far away.

The 25-year-old endured a difficult weekend in Melbourne that began with him being arrested by police and ended with a frustrating race. He drove superbly to climb from 11th to third before a second pit stop and a late collision with Red Bull's Mark Webber combined to see him finish sixth.

Button profited from a decision to make just one tyre change and a mechanical problem for Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull to secure the first win for his new team.

Hamilton has welcomed the competition between the two ahead of this weekend's race in Malaysia. "The fact is that I have got a very competitive team-mate, which is great as it is what we need as a team. Honestly, I was just so happy for Jenson because he is a great guy, and a great part of the team. I do feel at some stage that I will get my chance to win races and we are only two races into the season.

"I think the pace [in Australia] showed that I definitely had the pace in the race at least and I am as quick as the front guys. But definitely having a race like that lifts you up after a tough weekend overall. It definitely lifts you up and gives you that confidence that you are still there again."

Hamilton expressed his frustration with his team immediately after the race for their decision to call him into the pits for a second time during that race. However, the 2008 world champion has now put the incident behind him and stressed he has complete faith in his team to make the right calls in Malaysia.

"You have to rely on your team," he added. "When I am in the car I don't know exactly what is going on around me. After sitting down with the guys in the garage, I had a good understanding of why we did it. And from that experience, we will definitely take it forward for the next race and future races."

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Olympics badge

Luke Campbell

The bantamweight boxer won gold at the 2008 European Amateur Championships and wants more glory in 2012
  • theguardian.com,
Luke Campbell
Luke Campbell hopes to be boxing bantamweight at the London Olympic Games in 2012. Photograph: Getty Images/Getty Images for adidas

Progress towards 2012

I'm in a good place at the moment - being the No1 fighter at my weight in Team GB, I couldn't ask for anything more right now. I'm taking it one step at a time, not thinking too far ahead towards London 2012 and listening to my coaches to get better and better.

There are always improvements to make, no boxer in the world does everything right. We're not changing anything specific with the Games in mind, everything seems to be coming together well.

A highlight of my career so far was winning the 2008 European Championships in Liverpool, being the first Englishman to do it in 47 years.

I split a tendon in my right hand on a training camp in Kazakhstan and was out for a year, but after the operation I came back and won gold at the Bocskai Tournament in Hungry earlier this month.

I'm strong mentally and I'm confident I can beat anyone out there. I've just got to stay focused and keep training hard.

It will be same as for any major tournament; you focus on key exercises like sparring, bag-work, pad-work and running. Obviously the intensity increases with bigger tournaments and greater competition. I'll keep training as I have been. There's no need to change anything if you're winning. If it's not broken, why fix it?

Born 27 September 1987, Hull

Educated Pickering High School, Hull

Favourite films Hitch and Twilight

Favourite book I like reading autobiographies and magazines like Boxing News and Men's Health, especially when away for tournaments

Favourite band Kings of Leon are good but I like anything from Rihanna to Frank Sinatra

Outside of boxing I ... enjoy playing a bit of badminton or basketball with my mates

If I hadn't been a boxer I ... would have gone into business

Key statistics

2008 Wins gold at European Amateur Ch'ships at 56kg

2009 Wins bronze at European Union Amateur Champs

2010 Wins gold at the Four Nations Challenge and European Cup

Current world ranking

17 (last updated May 2010)

Main rivals

Yankiel León, world No1, won silver in Beijing

Detelin Dalakliev, world No2, silver in 2008 Europeans

Olympic countdown

March 2011

Chemistry Cup, Germany

May 2011

Grand Prix, Croatia

June 2011

European Championships, Bulgaria

September 2011

World Ch'ships, Baku, Azerbaijan (Olympic qualifying event)

November 2011

GB Amateur Boxing Ch'ships, Liverpool; Olympic test event, London December 2011

Presidents Cup, venue tbc

All bouts at London 2012 will be held in the ExCeL Arena at Royal Victoria Dock, London

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We look at 100 of the British medal contenders for the London Olympic Games in 2012


text:
Andy Murray wary of Australian Open heat and crowds after layoff

• Murray loses 7-6, 7-6 to Lleyton Hewitt in exhibition
• 'We'll see how I am after the first or second match'
Video no longer available

Andy Murray's chances of winning the Australian Open are as much a mystery to the player as they are to the many bookmakers hovering around the tournament. Nobody is prepared to dive in to the punting pit just yet.

Nobody can be sure in which direction Murray will go, in either rally or match. "Stranger things have happened," he said, after losing to Lleyton Hewitt in an exhibition semi-final of the highest quality. On admittedly scant evidence, Murray will have a pretty hard time of it in Melbourne over the next fortnight. On Friday,he played only his fifth competitive match since back surgery three months ago and, while losing a glorified hit in two close sets against Hewitt at Kooyong, he remains a long way from Centre Court at Wimbledon. He must suspect that his prospects of going deep in the 2014 Australian Open have been reduced.

Hewitt, who looked good beating Roger Federer in the Brisbane final last weekend, played near to his best in holding off Murray's grooved serve and took advantage of some loose ground strokes to win 7-6, 7-6.

Murray was upbeat. "They were good conditions to play in," he said. "It will be hot when I play on Tuesday [against the Japanese world No112, Go Soeda] and I need to get the hours in those conditions.

"We got here last Friday and it was quite cold until pretty much yesterday. So to get a couple of hours in was decent. I have never played that well here but I served well today. I didn't move as well as I would have liked but that will come with matches."

As for Soeda, he said: "I have never played him before. He had a good 12 months about a year ago but seems to have struggled a bit in the last few months. He is a solid player who doesn't make too many errors, good backhand, so I'll need to be on it."

Murray was not sure if the enforced break he has had was good or bad. "Playing matches in these conditions is tough," he said. "Just being back and playing in front of a lot of people when you haven't done it for three months, it's different to playing on a court when there's no one there.

"In terms of the travel to tournaments, I definitely feel refreshed in that respect. I'm away for basically five months, it's a long period and, maybe if I hadn't had the break I'd be going into that thinking that's a tough period. I feel good just now.

"The back problem I had stopped me from doing a lot of the things I like to do. I wasn't able to be active, playing different sports, I hadn't done that for about 18 months or two years. That's one reason I went ahead with the surgery because I was spending all day working on my back and some days it was starting to become unbearable.

"So I didn't get to do loads of things during the rehab but I did get to spend some time at home and I've come through the other side of the surgery and am able to get back to having a bit more fun off the court."

If he comes through all that rehab, maybe he will get up on his feet and shout "hallelujah". A couple of months ago, not long after surgeons had fixed a disc problem that had plagued him for two years, Murray said he would not play in the Australian Open if he did not think he had a realistic chance of winning. He has obviously rearranged his options.

"Yes, playing in 40-degree heat over five sets is a massive test when I have really only played one match – the first match in Doha was nothing and then obviously here."

His other outings were a defeat to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and a win over Stanislas Wawrinka in an exhibition tournament, and a curious defeat by Florian Mayer in Doha, where he was a set and 3-0 up before the German wiped him off the court.

Murray said: "I have practised well. I have put in the work and the training on the practice court. But, once you get on the match court, that's a different story.

"We will see how I am after the first or second match. If I get through, we will see how it goes. But, if I get myself into the tournament, well, stranger things have happened."

Throughout his career, stranger things have happened. Are there any twists to come?

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Duchess Theatre, London

5 / 5

Garlanded with awards, Michael Frayn's Copenhagen transfers impeccably from the National to the West End. Not the least of its virtues is that it shows that out of a three-character, one-set play you can create both intellectually gripping drama and a metaphor for what Lear called 'the mystery of things'.

Frayn's starting-point is the meeting in wartime Denmark between Niels Bohr, Europe's leading quantum theorist, and Werner Heisenberg, his ex-colleague working on the German atomic bomb project. What actually happened? Why was the meeting so brusquely aborted by Bohr? Was Heisenberg seeking information, absolution, endorsement? And why did Heisenberg fail to make the final calculation that would have enabled Germany to develop its own bomb? Out of the uncertainty Frayn builds a brilliant play - one that replays, from the vantage-point of eternity, the endless possibilities of this collision of human particles. Under the watchful eye of Bohr's wife, Margrethe, the two men re-live their encounter, searching for its meaning. What I hadn't fully grasped the first time was Frayn's suggestion that Heisenberg's final mathematical failure stemmed from moral compunction.

The play's balance of emotion and ideas is beautifully captured in Michael Blakemore's production, while the three actors - David Burke as Bohr, Matthew Marsh as Heisenberg and Sara Kestelman as Margrethe - perfectly show the relation between science and character. Some claim to have been blinded by Frayn's science I emerged deeply moved by his simultaneous awareness of life's value and its inexplicable mystery.

Till August 7. Box-office: 0171-494 5076.

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text:
Measure for Measure

Almeida, London
3 out of 5 3
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Measure for Measure at the Almeida Theatre
Thrill of the chaste ... Ben Miles and Anna Maxwell Martin in Measure for Measure. Photograph: Donald Cooper

Shakespeare's complex comedy is very much a play for today: not least because of its emphasis on political corruption and the phoney facades of people in high places. But, while Michael Attenborough's modern-dress production doesn't pursue the contemporary resonances as rigorously as recent versions by Declan Donnellan and Simon McBurney, it is clear, coherent and very good on individual psychology.

  1. Measure for Measure
  2. Almeida,
  3. London
  1. Until 10 April
  2. Box office:
    0207 359 4404
  3. See details

In particular, it suggests a strong symbiotic connection between Angelo and Isabella, who are both seen as ﬂawed moral extremists. As Angelo, the puritanical deputy assigned to clean up Vienna, Rory Kinnear is outstanding. At first, he seems a shy bureaucrat astonished by his promotion. Once installed, he visibly grows in authority and then finds himself poleaxed when Isabella comes to plead for her brother's life. Where most Angelos are propelled by lust, Kinnear's is smitten by love: he sighs that Isabella may see him "at any time" and studiously swaps his specs for contact lenses to make a good impression. This doesn't excuse the sexual bargain he proposes: what it does do is suggest that Angelo is a man floundering in unfamiliar emotional territory.

What attracts him to Anna Maxwell Martin's excellent Isabella is her single-minded moral purity. It is easy for the character to seem a prig in her refusal to exchange her virginity for her brother's survival.

But Maxwell Martin plays her as a mirror-image of Angelo: a fierce absolutist forced to wake up to new experience. Her cry of "more than our brother is our chastity" is delivered as a plea to heaven rather than a ringing assertion. She also agrees to the notorious bed trick with a haste born of innocence. And, in the final act, after she has sued for mercy for the fallen Angelo, they stare at each other as if realising theirs would be a natural union.

Not everything in Attenborough's production is on this level. The attempt to evoke a world of corruption through a pair of scantily-clad display dancers is a bit tame. And, while Ben Miles is perfectly decent as the disguised duke who sets the play in motion, he never makes it clear whether the man is a squalid fixer or dispenser of divine justice. But there is good work from Lloyd Hutchinson who plays Lucio as a gossip who likes to pretend he has the inside dope on the city's power-brokers. And there are neat contributions from Trevor Cooper as the bawd, Pompey Bum, forever wincing at ritual gags about his surname, and from Victoria Lloyd as the jilted Mariana. I've seen Measures that create a more vivid Vienna, but the strength of the production lies in its suggestion that it is a play about two imperfect moralists who would, in a better world, make a perfect match.

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Daniel Kitson – review

Nottingham Playhouse
4 out of 5 4
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"I don't think anyone really knows who they are," says Daniel Kitson. "So much of what we know about the world is assumed." It's not often standup can be mistaken for Humean philosophy, but it's a while since Kitson has resembled a normal standup. As if to emphasise the distinction, he sits down throughout this touring show, twiddling knobs on a sound desk. Ambient burbling underscores his digressive rumination on life, love, memory and the imagination. The effect is to lure us deeper into the head of this singular, intensely thoughtful performer. For most of these 100 minutes, it's an exhilarating place to be.

  1. Daniel Kitson
  2. After the Beginning, Before the End
  3. Durham Gala theatre
  1. Starts 21 May
  2. Until 21 May
  3. Then touring
  4. Tour details

That's mainly because, with Kitson, you don't doubt that his inquiry into what life is really about comes straight from the heart. Other comics are just as smart, but few live their existential angst so fully. Here, his life – adored by his fans, unlucky in (or terrified by) love – is exhibit A in his argument that most of us are wandering more or less blindly from birth to death, shoring up our confusion with myths and half-truths about ourselves and the way the world works. Our feelings lie to us; sexual attraction is barbarism; parsnips are tastier than his granny gave them credit for.

Occasionally, the self-analysis looks like special pleading. Usually, though, Kitson's unsentimental honesty feels like a gift and is oddly inspiring. And it's funny, too, as he sets up an opposition between his friends, many of them parents, and himself, sitting at home itemising whether or not he's a dickhead. The phrasemaking, the ridiculous overthinking, the absence of cliche, the hypnotic intensity – this is gripping stuff. It dares us to be as alert to compromise as Kitson is, and yet constantly reminds us why it's easier not to be.

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Guardian News & Media: Sustainability report 2009

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    To become an industry leader in sustainability, the ad department has been creating its own vision

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    Working in partnership with a range of suppliers, our Ventures division provides services such as dating, subscriptions, travel, financial services, lifestyle, product and entertainment offers in print and online

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    One of the fastest growing parts of our business is Guardian Professional, which seeks to maximise profits through activities ranging from conferences and sponsored supplements to the development of online educational tools

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    Advertising is a key source of revenue, but when its message conflicts with our editorial principles, should we ban the offending ads?

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Apps blog

20 best Android apps this week

Biophilia, Tinder, Leiths Kitchen Wizard, Gentlemen, Team Red Cross, Super Mega Worm, Yarrly, Pac-Man Dash, Zumba Dance, Robot Unicorn Attack 2 and more
Bjork Biophilia Android app
Bjork's Biophilia app has been ported from iOS to Android devices

It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for Android smartphones and tablets.

It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases. The equivalent iOS roundup will be published later in the day.

For now, read on for this week's Android selection (and when you've finished, check out previous Best Android apps posts). It's a heavy games week this week, hopefully there'll be a better balance with non-games releases next week.

Biophilia (£8.49)

It took a while, but Björk's Biophilia album-app has finally made the leap from iOS to Android. As before, it offers an individual "mini-app" for every song on her last album, with a mixture of games, creativity and musicmaking tools to explore the sounds of Biophilia.

Tinder (Free)

Tinder made its name on iPhone as a location-based dating app that was hugely popular among college students. Can it repeat the success on Android (and, for that matter, in the UK?) The app shows you people nearby who might be a match, then lets you text-chat to them before deciding whether to meet.

Leiths Kitchen Wizard (£2.99)

This aims to be a helpful app for cooks, providing timed recipes; conversions of weights, temperatures and volumes; and a glossary of "classic" cooking terms. A quiz aims to help build your knowledge in the kitchen too.

Gentlemen! (£2.99)

Described as a "Victorian era head-to-head arcade battle for tablets", this two-player game sees your dapper duellists hurling knives, bombs and even homing pigeons at one another in a fight to the death. One of the best share-the-device multiplayer games I've seen on Android.

Team Red Cross (Free)

This is an app for the US, since it comes from the American Red Cross rather than its British division. It aims to get more people volunteering to help victims of fires, floods, storms, and other disasters, with the app providing details of volunteer jobs before they arrive, and options to share details with friends on social networks.

Super Mega Worm (£0.65)

On iOS, this is definitely the best in the giant-worm-swallowing-everything-in-its-path game genre. You play "the Great Death Worm, Wojira", chomping humans and machines through 24 levels while growing ever more fearsome.

Yarrly (Free)

Lots of press already this week for Yarrly, which styles itself as an "anonymous, remixable photo app" where you take a photo, then take a photo of your reaction to that photo, add captions and share to social networks. A meme-creator, in other words.

Pac-Man Dash! (Free)

If you think about it, the original Pac-Man was one of the first endless-runner games, given its hero's mission to keep moving and guzzling pills. Now, in the era of Canabalt and other side-scrolling endless runners, Pac-Man is evolving too. The game features more than 70 missions and lots of power-ups.

Zumba Dance (£3.25)

The Zumba dance craze has made its way to Android in this motion-activated fitness app. It sees on-screen instructors telling you what to shake and when, with licensed music from the likes of LMFAO, Pitbull and Sean Paul. There are three default fitness classes to try, as well as the option to build your own classes.

Robot Unicorn Attack 2 (Free)

More endless running (and jumping) with this sequel to Robot Unicorn Attack, which became a cult hit thanks in part to its music. The sequel adds more customisation and power-ups, including the ability to buy new songs for the soundtrack.

Digisocial (Free)

Digisocial is the latest messaging app hoping to catch on with Android owners. In this case the messages can be voice, text and photos, with a focus as much on meeting new people as communicating with existing friends.

Deep Dungeons of Doom (Free)

This pixelly-retro action game has been a critical hit on iOS and the Ouya console alike. Now it's available on Android, getting you to plunge down dungeons fighting and looting in a touchscreen-friendly format.

Le Vamp (£0.63)

Another characterful indie game here from High Voltage Software, and more running, as you guide Le Vamp safely to his crypt home while keeping a few steps ahead of an angry mob. Stylish graphics make it stand out from the herd.

Squeebles Times Tables 2 (£1.49)

This is part of developer KeyStageFun's series of Squeebles education apps for children. Multiplication is the focus here, with six game modes covering the 1 to 12 times tables (plus 13, 14 and 15 for adventurous kids). Parents and teachers get a password-protected area of the app to monitor progress, too.

The Walking Dead: Assault (£1.99)

Based on the Walking Dead comic books, this is a strategy game viewed from an isometric perspective that sees you rescuing survivors, collecting supplies and striving not to get gnawed by the zombie hordes.

Stay Alight (Free)

Already causing oohs and aahs from appreciative Android gamers for its graphics, this offers 60 levels of physics-puzzler action as you hunt down and destroy green microbes trying to take over the world.

Bounty Arms (£3.20)

More whizzy visuals in an Android game, in what's a good week for showing Google-powered devices can hold their own with what iOS has to offer. It's a 3D platform-adventure based on the Unreal Engine.

Jack Lumber (£2.59)

Another game, this one focused on its hero, "the supernatural lumberjack who hates trees, loves animals, and hates trees" (yes, the double-mention is intentional). The gameplay sees you chopping logs by swiping your finger, but with slower strategy rather than fast Fruit Ninja-style reflexes.

True Skate (£1.28)

If you've ever played with a finger-skateboard in the real world, this game may be for you. It sees you flicking and dragging to guide your virtual skateboard around the environment, pulling tricks along the way. An extra skatepark is sold via in-app purchase.

SourcesPro (£1.25)

Finally, something fun if you're feeling visually creative yourself: an app to "to combine simple geometric constructs (waves and repeating patterns) in various ways" to make images for saving and sharing. With a bit of practice, the results look very nifty indeed.

That's this week's selection, but what do you think? Make your own recommendations, or give your views on the apps above, by posting a comment.

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text:
Badge technology blog

Will an algorithm pick you for your next coding job?

The former CTO of Dopplr has hacked together an algorithm to find the best (open source and public) coders in whatever location he's in. A taste of the future?
Job interview2 460
Are you on the social graph of really good coders?

Will your next job come from an algorithm?

You'll have noticed that among other things you can get here at the Guardian are jobs. But the way that we find jobs is a bit outdated, isn't it? Plug in a CV, hope that someone picks it up; or alternatively, hunt through job ads trying to find something that fits your experience and skills.

Wouldn't it be easier - at least in the programming field to begin with - if your job could find you?

That's the possibility being held out by a recent post on Hackdiary, in which Matt Biddulph ("I'm based in Berlin. I'm a software designer and creative technologist. I work at Nokia. I was the CTO of Dopplr, a social network for frequent travellers acquired by Nokia in 2009") notes that his new job involves recruiting people for new projects in Berlin, which he's only recently moved to.

The problem: how do you figure out who the people to recruit for your project are, when you're not familiar with the people in the area but need to get going?

Well, one option is to analyse submissions to Github, the open source code repository used by dozens of companies and individual programmers.

Biddulph explains:

"When I'm hiring, one of the things I always want to see is evidence of personal projects. Over the last two years, GitHub has become an amazing treasure trove of code, with the best social infrastructure I've ever seen on a developer site. GitHub profiles let the user set their location, so I started with a few web searches for Berlin developers. This finds hundreds of interesting people, but how do I prioritise them?"

Good question. Of course, another question would be "how do you know if they're any good?" For that, Biddulph moves to the next step:

"Another thing that I look for when building a good team is someone's personal network. I've always believed strongly in spending lots of time at conferences meeting passionate people who are smarter than me. A good developer can make themselves even more productive by knowing who to email, IM or DM to answer a question when they're stuck."

From there it's a pretty short hop, skip and JMP to his solution:

"A recent article by Stowe Boyd on centrality and influence in social networks reminded me of some of the network analysis we use behind the scenes calculating recommendations for the Dopplr Social Atlas. So I wrote some code to query the GitHub API and analyse the social graph of the Berlin subset of their users."

"The JRuby code uses Yahoo BOSS to do the web search. After querying the GitHub API for each user's followers it builds an in-memory graph using the Java Universal Network/Graph Framework. Then it ranks each user node in the graph using the Betweenness Centrality algorithm."

And, inevitably, he's put the source code on Github.

Your task: see how you would rate against that system. And consider: is the future going to be about doing more in "social programming", where what you've contributed becomes key to your hiring?

Bonus link: over at Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror blog (Atwood is the co-creator of, where coders often gather...) he's written about "the non-programming programmer" - basically, his frustration with people who misrepresent their abilities in interviews.

""the vast majority" of so-called programmers who apply for a programming job interview are unable to write the smallest of programs. To be clear, hard is a relative term -- we're not talking about complicated, Google-style graduate computer science interview problems. This is extremely simple stuff we're asking candidates to do. And they can't. It's
the equivalent of attempting to hire a truck driver and finding out that 90 percent of the job applicants can't find the gas pedal or the gear shift.

Which is why something like Github, where contributions are open and reviewable, are useful.

Although you could imagine that the next thing that would happen would be that people would find the most "linked" and "successful" programmers and copy their code and represent it as theirs on Github or similar. So how do you protect against that?

And what do you think of the idea of being hired - or at least selected for your next job interview - by an algorithm?

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text:
Rebel Without a Cause

Cert PG
3 out of 5 3
  1. Rebel Without A Cause
  2. Production year: 1955
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 15
  5. Runtime: 111 mins
  6. Directors: Nicholas Ray, Ray Nicholas
  7. Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Nick Adams, Sal Mineo
  8. More on this film

Gay subtexts surely don't get closer to the surface than in Nicholas Ray's teen issue drama from 1955 now restored as part of a James Dean season at London's National Film Theatre. Fifty years on, the film looks brash but also conservative and maladroit, conceived fundamentally from the parent's-eye view. Dean is Jim Stark, a troubled adolescent with an overbearing mom and a blustering, weak-minded dad (Jim Backus). Jim scuffles with the school tough guy and even falls for his best girl, the 16-year-old Natalie Wood. His only friend is someone even more mixed up than he is, the singularly nicknamed "Plato", played by Sal Mineo, a wealthy latchkey kid who has a monumental crush on Jim. Mineo winds up upstaging Dean in the final melodramatic confrontation with the police, and we are asked to believe that Dean and Wood find grown-up redemption in trying to behave like proper, and even faintly stuffy parents to him. The drama and hepcat dialogue feel clunky now, but the movie's plea for dads to talk to their children - what we now call emotional literacy - is valid enough.

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The Guardian: G2

Friday 5 February 2010

    Comment & features p4

  • Britain's foster care crisis

    foster care

    Amelia Gentleman spends a week with one London fostering team as they battle to find safe harbour for some of the country's most vulnerable children

    Comment & features p12

  • Growing up with EastEnders

    The Masood family

    For 25 years, Homa Khaleeli and her relatives have been glued to the BBC soap. They love it even more now that there's finally an Asian family worth watching

    Comment & features p18

  • When women are too old to appear on TV

    Miriam O'Reilly The broadcaster Miriam O'Reilly is suing the BBC for ageism. She's not the first TV presenter to cry foul, but how does the dearth of visible older women affect the rest of us?

    TV and radio in G2 p24

  • Henry Moore, My Father

    Meet the Queen Mum at 11, go for a haircut after lunch. This glimpse into Henry Moore's world was fascinating, writes Elisabeth Mahoney

    TV and radio in G2 p25

  • Simon King's Shetland Diaries

    Simon King's Shetland Diaries Simon King was having a jolly old time in Shetland. And then the weather turned. By Sam Wollaston

    TV and radio in G2 p26

  • Watch this

    My Boyfriend the MI5 Hoaxer | Lost | Latin Music USA | Gordon Ramsay's Cookalong USA

    TV and radio in G2 p27

  • Your next box set: Breaking Bad

    Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad

    Your next box set: Breaking Bad tells the Jekyll-and-Hyde tale of a pillar of the community who becomes a ruthless drug dealer, and it's one of TV's darkest, sharpest treats

    Puzzles and cartoon p28

  • Kakuro 1,071 hard

    Fill the grid so that each run of squares adds up to the total in the box above or to the left

  • Sudoku 1,477 hard

    Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9

Guardian and Observer archive

Feb 2010

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text:
Simon Hoggart's week: BBC 'elitism', Attenborough and Downton dialogue

The BBC is still the world's best broadcaster – although you wouldn't think so to see the way some papers are trashing it
    • The Guardian,
    • Jump to comments ()
A northern quoll, as featured in Attenborough's Ark
A northern quoll. David Attenborough showed how Australian scientists had taught the marsupial to avoid eating toxic cane toads. Photograph: Jonathan Webb/AFP/Getty

✒In my experience the reviled BBC managers are like army officers: half of them are people of great intelligence, insight, charm and skill. The other half are pretty much useless. I recall one who, when Linda Smith died, said we should go ahead with a normal News Quiz, "because it's what she would have wanted". Luckily none of the regular panellists would have dreamed of doing the show that awful week, and we ran a tribute instead.

There was another middle manager who announced that a political programme I was working on was "elitist" because sometimes we mentioned less well-known MPs. Often these people had been producers, but were no good, and had to be kicked upstairs, only to do even more damage.

That said, the BBC still is by miles the greatest broadcaster in the world, and the sight of some papers trying to trash it for two admittedly serious mistakes is fairly loathsome. Just before George Entwistle resigned I was watching Attenborough's Ark, a show about some of the strangest animals in creation, and reflecting that it was almost worth the licence fee in itself.

✒Privatised companies – energy, the railways – are presently gouging us for everything they can get, via bloated prices or taxpayers' subsidies or both. So, like the NHS, it's even more vital that we keep the BBC a public service, even if other media corporations would love to dismember it.

Oh, and since they need a new director general, why not Greg Dyke, now amply vindicated after the Hutton nonsense? It's a really good idea, which I suppose is why it will never happen.

✒To Southwold for the annual literature festival. I was fascinated by Jessica Fellowes, niece of Julian, who spoke about Downton Abbey and revealed that most of the characters are based on real people.

The earl, for example, is Julian's father, a man so honest – it was said – that if he crashed his car in the desert and there was a parking meter, he'd fret if he didn't have the right change. Carson, the butler, "more snobbish than the family he works for", was based on a butler called Arthur Inch. O'Brien is a cousin of Julian's grandfather, and the dowager countess is Jessica's great-great-aunt. Maggie Smith is the only female member of the cast permitted not to wear a corset – she says she's finished with them.

There was some disagreement with the audience about the language. How is it, they wanted to know, that every visual detail, down to the appearance of telegrams and the cast's underwear, is researched immaculately and reproduced perfectly, while the dialogue often sounds as if it could have come from Friends or EastEnders?

The examples they quoted from the last series were "steep learning curve" and "a big girl's blouse". Jessica said that if Julian used them, they existed at the time, though I doubt that's the case in the first, and the second might have been heard in a ladies' clothing store, never used as an insult.

Jeremy Vine told a story about perils of the internet. He has Google Alert, which tells him if his name crops up online. Once he learned about a blogger who was asking his readers, "is Jeremy Vine (a) a tosser, (b) a huge tosser or (c) an intergalactic tosser?"

He said: "I needed to know how the voting was going, but to find out you had to vote. I did, and discovered that I was the only person who had voted." As the Google people will tell you, half of all blogs have only one reader: the blogger.

✒More on the late Peter Morrison, the paedophile who was also Margaret Thatcher's parliamentary private secretary. Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council when Morrison was the local MP, wrote describing how he'd often met Morrison, who was by the 1980s pretty well constantly drunk.

"After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested."

This was only a year and a half after his failed, boozy campaign to save Mrs Thatcher. Incredible that she – presumably – had no idea, and that such deals could be struck then.

✒Sir Rex Hunt, who has just died, returned to the Falklands as governor after being thrown out by the Argentinians in 1972, which meant that he was on site for Thatcher's greatest ever double entendre. She had flown out for her victory tour, and was being shown around battle sites. On a cliff top overlooking the plain over which the Argies would have had to march if they re-invaded, she was shown a huge field gun, manned by a single squaddie. She admired the weapon and the soldier asked if she would like to fire a round.

"Goodness!" she replied, "won't it jerk me off?"

The problem with this unintentional smut – bizarrely frequent – was that nobody could ever laugh or even look remotely amused because of the terrible fear that she might turn to you and inquire in that blood-freezing fashion what was so very funny.

✒Daft labels: John Cranston bought a tube of Ronseal smooth finish filler: "Smooth over filler with wetted finger prior to drying", then further down, "avoid contact with skin".

There are a few tickets left for Simon Hoggart's talk next Wednesday about his new book, House Of Fun.

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text:
Political trends

Theresa May's shoes at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.
Theresa May's shoes at the Conservative party conference in Manchester. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The support of the Daily Mail and its owner Lord Rothermere for Nazi Germany and the Blackshirts here in Britain in the 1930s, when Nazi thugs were escalating their violent attacks on Jews and socialists, is well known. For the same paper to pursue this same agenda 80 years later with the nonsense it is printing about Ralph Miliband is remarkable in its stupidity (Report, 1 October). However, as the Spectator put it in January 1934, "the Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made." Plus ça change.
Martin Quinn
Tavistock, Devon

• In 1977 I travelled to Saudi Arabia from London by VW van with my boss (Driving harms ovaries, Saudi cleric claims, 30 September). One day the police stopped us and told me I was to be arrested for driving. I clearly was not doing so, but they'd not seen a right-hand-drive vehicle before. So they decided I should be locked up for driving without a steering wheel. I started to smile; my boss swiftly told me to grovel or it could be 20 years. I said I was very sorry for driving without a steering wheel and wouldn't do so again.
Charlotte Breese
Devizes, Wiltshire

• Ben Ainslie was already in Team USA's squad so, rather than being akin to signing Lionel Messi at half time (Letters, 27 September), his appearance on Team USA was more like keeping Messi on the bench going 8-1 down and then thinking it might be a good idea to bring him on.
Peter Mourant
Picture editor, Jersey Evening Post

• From 1998 to 2000 I worked for the European commission in Belarus. Every so often we received a letter stamped by the Belarussian postal services with apologies because it had been "found open" in the post and resealed by them (Letters, 26 September). Perhaps the rest were just better resealed after scrutiny.
Bob George
Tiverton, Devon

• Get your girls into politics, Melissa Benn urges (G2, 30 September). What an excellent idea; when they become home secretary the Guardian can then publish a picture of their shoes at the top of the front page (1 October). Get a grip.
Ken Coker
Edale, Derbyshire

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The 24-carat fake

Gaby Wood profiles comedian Jon Stewart who presents The Daily Show, the phony news-and-talk television show with real power

From a solemn TV studio in New York, a news presenter is interviewing Rudolph Giuliani, the city's former mayor. Giuliani, a Republican, is commenting on the first presidential debate of 2004 and criticising John Kerry's wavering stance on the war. 'I agree with you,' says the presenter politely, 'he's had trouble articulating that in the past, but tonight he seemed relatively consistent.'

'Really?' shouts Giuliani, leading the presenter to smirk in faux-submission: 'Coulda been my TV. Might well have been my TV.' The studio audience dissolves into laughter and Giuliani is doomed. The presenter is The Daily Show 's Jon Stewart, a man advertised on billboards as 'the most trusted name in fake news'. The phrase is a spoof of CNN's motto and Stewart's show, which airs at 11pm on Monday to Thursday nights, has made him a cult hero.

So much so that, in some respects, the news he brings is not fake at all. Part news bulletin, part talk-show, The Daily Show features a set of 'fake' correspondents and a series of celebrity guests. But The Daily Show , now in its sixth year, is considered to be so influential that its correspondents are actually invited to political party conventions. No longer entirely artificial, they wield far more clout as a new breed of reporter: comedians with press passes. And the celebrity guests are real, too: both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been on, as has John Kerry. Once you get to that level, what exactly is fake?

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre earlier this year showed that 21 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds got their regular campaign news from The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live . The show has won five Emmys (two of them this year) - and, more unusually for a comedy programme, a Peabody Award for its reporting of the 2000 presidential campaign. It has been argued - by politicians themselves as well as pundits - that an appearance on The Daily Show will do a politician more good among a younger crowd than, say, an appearance on Meet the Press. Research has shown The Daily Show audiences to be highly informed, and General Wesley Clark, a former guest, has said Jon Stewart has 'tremendous influence'.

Stewart, however, has staunchly defended his phony position. 'Our politics are fuelled by comedy,' he has said. 'We are not a power base in any way.' When John Edwards announced on the show that he would be running for President, Stewart's response was: 'I have to warn you we are a fake show, so you might have to do this again somewhere.'

Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, and brought up in New Jersey. His father is a physicist and his mother taught gifted children. He grew up fascinated by politics, but disdainful, in his own description, of politicians themselves. After college, he moved to New York and changed his name once on the comedy circuit, to avoid the kind of racial taunting he'd received at school. In the early 1990s, he had his own show on MTV, and then spent time writing and performing on The Larry Sanders Show . Since taking over at The Daily Show in 1999, he has changed the format, so that it is a sharper, more serious satire on politics and the media, and tripled the viewing figures. The show, which is on cable, now has an audience of more than a million.

Part of the show's success is Stewart's intelligent and low-key screen persona. He has a trademark raised-eyebrow look of scepticism, but his most striking feature is that of being a softly spoken, all-round nice guy. Ben Karlin, who was hired by Stewart as head writer in 1999 and is now executive producer of the show, explains that although Stewart is 'the main force on the show', he 'realises that not having to be the subject of the story himself actually strengthens everything. Those other late-night shows ... I think Conan O'Brien's show is excellent, but it is driven by Conan's personality.

'Most comedy,' Karlin goes on, 'aims to distract - it's not so intently issue-driven, and when it is issue-driven, it gets didactic and shrill. And Jon, because he's such a performer, is able to deliver material that's actually quite substantive and still keep it genuinely funny. And I can't think of anyone else who's able to do that.'

Stewart, Karlin and the other writers of The Daily Show have just produced a book, which has instantly shot to number one in the New York Times bestseller list. America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction is designed like a school textbook. One 'Fun Task' is an empty outline of the Middle East, with the instructions: 'What do you think the borders of the Middle East should be? Don't be afraid to group people with no regard for history and ethnicity. It worked for the British and the French!' A guide to Europe lists 'famous Europeans: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Johnny Depp and Jim Morrison'.

Karlin is proud of the book, but, like Stewart, he will not admit their team has any public influence. 'There aren't scientific machines sensitive enough to detect how negligible our effect is,' he says. Stewart is contracted to stay on at The Daily Show through the 2008 election. We'll see how wrong they turn out to be.

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text:
The Observer: Observer Magazine

Sunday 21 May 2006

    Comment & features p7

  • Celebrity etiquette

    Toddlers, teenagers, Chantelle...give us the life story when you grow up.

    Comment & features p14

  • How did he manage that?

    He started with five wins, then the famous 5-1 over Germany and revenge against Argentina. But next came Ulrika, Faria and the fake sheikh. Now, as Sven-Goran Eriksson heads to the World Cup with the hopes of a nation on his shoulders, Simon Garfield picks his starting 11 highlights from the Swede's five years in England's dugout.

    Comment & features p20

  • Rae of sunshine

    Platinum-selling Yorkshire-born singer Corinne Bailey Rae tells Bryony Gordon about coping with stardom but staying on song.

    Comment & features p26

  • A life on earth

    When Deborah Kellaway died, unexpectedly, in January this year, her family felt desolating loss. It was hardest of all to visit her cottage in Norfolk and the garden she had worked on for 40 years.

    Comment & features p40

  • The end of the terrace?

    Unlike its neighbours, there's nothing traditional about the Dudzickis' south London home. For one thing, the walls arrived on the back of a lorry from Germany. Ian Tucker discovers a modern masterpiece.

    Comment & features p53

  • Cooking without almonds

    Ask Nigel: Cooking without almonds ¦ What can I do with a jar of anchovies and hot peppers?

  • Green giants

    Deep in Chelsea, hidden behind old brick walls, lies a magical - inspirational - herb garden. Nigel Slater takes a leaf out of London's healthiest larder.

    Comment & features p54

  • Heat of the moment

    Shellfish so pretty you could hang it in a gallery, and spices that leave you dileriously numb... Sichuan cooking this good will breathe fire back into London's Chinatown, says Jay Rayner.

    Comment & features p55

  • Four bottles too good for Robert Parker

    Robert Parker is the owner and publisher of the Wine Advocate, a newsletter which has a phenomenal influence on the wines that you drink.

    Comment & features p57

  • Custody war

    His girlfriend's ex has started a custody war. But the child is the priority, says Mariella Frostrup.

    Comment & features p63

  • How to barbecue ecologically

    Ask Monty: The environmental impact of barbecues ¦ My fig tree won't bear fruit

  • Hips, hips hooray

    The flowers of a species rose may be simple but the shark's fin thorns and tomato hips are spectacular. Every garden should have one, says Monty Don.

    Comment & features p67

  • Going to jail

    Incredible journey: Tom Bryson sees both sides of the law in Africa.

  • Crashing bore

    It's Britain's most reliable car. But perfection rarely inspires affection, as Martin Love discovers.

    Comment & features p69

  • Horoscopes

    May 21: Neil Spencer on your astrological week ahead

Guardian and Observer archive

May 2006

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