• Email rob.smyth@guardian.co.uk with your thoughts • Press refresh or hit the auto-update for the latest • Follow Rob Smyth on Twitter , if that’s your thing 16th over: England 48-1 (trailed by 67 on first innings; Strauss 16, Bell 23) Another delightful boundary from Bell, this one pushed straight back down the ground off the bowling of Sreesanth. The ball is swinging a little, but the pitch isn’t doing too much at the moment. We’re not going to have a Test like this , are we? “Wasn’t too long ago that the OBO was filled with please for rain, rain and more rain,” says Aram Gumusyan. “Now there’s heady talk of symbolic maces? Watch out for when The Man comes round, and his name is Hugh G. Bris.” Nah, I’m not having that. None of us are saying that it will happen or that it deserves to happen, but it’s close enough to make discussion of it entirely legitimate. It’s not like we’re rushing to the machine in the toilet just because a girl said hello to us. 15th over: England 42-1 (trailed by 67 on first innings; Strauss 15, Bell 18) Strauss drives Kumar pleasantly thorugh mid off for four. If I wasn’t terrified of being savaged by twos of readers for tempting fate, I’d say England have started the day very promisingly. ” Scyld Berry?” says Ali Kinnaird. “A name with no vowels? This is a first for me! Are there any other names with no vowels in them? Thank you.” I can’t think of any surnames without a vowel in them. 14th over: England 38-1 (trailed by 67 on first innings; Strauss 11, Bell 18) Bell lashes Sreesanth through the covers for four, prompting a cry of ‘Shot!’ from Strauss at the other end. He didn’t quite do the full ‘Ian Ronald Bell’, like Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks, but it was still a nice moment. “Here on Star Cricket, Sunny and Ravi Shastri had a right go at Vaughan, Sunny wanted VVS to take Michael to court,” says Vivek Radhakrishnan. “Entertaining rants by both of them. Where do stand on this issue, Rob?” I am saying absolutely nothing on this subject. Hell does hath fury like a woman scorned, and I suspect we’ll witness it at some stage before the end of August. 13th over: England 31-1 (trailed by 67 on first innings; Strauss 9, Bell 13) Some early swing from Praveen Kumar. Mind you, he could swing the ball in an airless bunker. Strauss tucks him through midwicket for three, and then Bell deliberately fiddles one to third man for four. England trail by 36, and will probably want at least another 285 runs in this innings. “What a glorious series this has been, like waking up after a huge bender on the first night of a holiday and realising you have no hangover, the sky is blue and you still have 5 nights to play with,” says Guy Hornsby. “It’s hard to recall it’s only 7 days old. With Trott seemingly out, today is all about our Eoin. I desperately hope he gets a big score. Having an on-song Morgan in your Test side for the next six or seven years. Imagine that!” He should come out swinging today. Forget the technical concerns and the poor form and do what he does best: just hit the ball. 12th over: England 24-1 (trailed by 67 on first innings; Strauss 6, Bell 9) Sreesanth bowls the first over of the day, trying to draw Bell into a drive outside off stump. He declines, so it’s a maiden. “First! (Sorry)” says Ryan Dunne. “Do teams still get the giant mace if they become No1 team in the world? Would it be put on display on Lord’s or the like, or would Swann be allowed to play about with it for cool Twitter photos? I remember when Duncan Fletcher said (well, he would) that his achievements with England in the 00s far dwarfed anything the country managed in the 80s; could a case be made that England deserve serious plaudits (including more gongs from the Queen) if they reach No1, or has Test cricket overall declined too much from the heady days of 2005?” I think it’ll be a huge achievement if England manage it. Fletcher was right; England were often hopeless in the 1980s. Scyld Berry wrote a fine piece on that subject in the very first edition of The Wisden Cricketer. And yeah, they do get the mace. “Good morning,” says John Starbuck. “It’s been announced that Trott will bat though no-one knows what position yet.” Crikey, that is a surprise. No10 or 11? Thought for the day This series is going to kick off very soon, isn’t it? Trottwatch He faced only two balls in practice this morning before going off for an injection. It seems very unlikely he will bat. Preamble Morning. These days everyone wants to be FIRST! We’re a culture obsessed with the first: first impression, first match of the season, first meal (Paulie Walnuts says breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and wise men don’t argue with Paulie), first date, first injunction, first pint after eight hours kissing the feet of The Man. In some contexts, however, the second is far more important. For example, a monstrous slab of lunchtime meat at The Hawksmoor trumps Frosties anyday, although you can tell Paulie that. Similarly, the second set of a tennis match is surely the most significant, when the contest is almost completed at 2-0 or comes alive at 1-1. That’s the scenario we have at Trent Bridge today, where an excellent Test match will probably be decided, if not actually completed. Either England go 2-0 up or India level it at 1-1 with power, Sehwag and Zaheer to add. The English cricket lover in me is desperate for England to win; the Test cricket lover in me is equally desperate for India to win. Think about how empty 2005 would have been had Australia gone 2-0 up at Edgbaston, and not just because England were losing. Six years ago we had the best of both worlds – an epic series and an England win. So this time we want India to win here, England to win by one wicket at Edgbaston and then by one run at The Oval, thus clinching the series 3-1 and going top of the Test Championship. Is that so much to ask? All that said, I suppose we could live with England winning by 114 runs here after a staggering 121-ball 132 from Eoin Morgan. India in England 2011 England cricket team India cricket team Cricket Over by over reports Rob Smyth Rob Bagchi guardian.co.uk
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Republicans say they are confident a deal to raise the US debt ceiling can be reached as last-minute talks continue The White House and Republican leaders in Congress have made significant progress toward a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic default, according to officials familiar with the talks. Under a plan negotiated late on Saturday night, the ceiling would be raised in two steps by about $2.4tn (£1.5tn) and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount, the officials said. The first stage – to raise the ceiling by about $1tn – would take place immediately and the second later in the year. Congress would be required to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but none of the debt limit increase would be contingent on its approval. President Barack Obama is seeking legislation to raise the government’s $14.3tn debt limit by enough to tide the US treasury over until after the 2012 elections. He has threatened to veto any proposals that might lead to a recurrence of the current crisis next year but has agreed to Republican demands that deficits be cut – without tax increases – in exchange for authorising additional US borrowing. Without a compromise in place by Tuesday, administration officials say the treasury will run out of funds to pay the nation’s bills. The subsequent default, which would be the first in US history, could prove catastrophic for the US economy by causing interest rates to rise and financial markets to sink, and sending shockwaves around the world. With financial markets closed for the weekend, the parties to the negotiations had a little breathing space, but not much. Asian markets open for the new working week late Sunday afternoon Washington time. “There is very little time,” Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday. He called for an end to political gamesmanship, saying: “The time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now.” One official commenting on the late night negotiations said the two sides had settled on general concepts, but that there were numerous details to be worked out – and no assurance of a final agreement. “There are many elements to be finalised,” Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate said. “There is still a distance to go.” Still, word of significant progress after weeks of stalemate offered the strongest indication yet that a default might be averted. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said at a joint news conference with the House speaker John Boehner that he was confident a deal could be reached “in the very near future”. After a meeting at the White House with Obama and the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Reid initially disagreed with that optimistic assessment. Past increases in the US debt ceiling have been routine, but Republicans, citing the giant US deficit, have demanded huge spending cuts as a condition for approving the increase this time. After weeks of intense partisanship, there was renewed talk of compromise as both the House and Senate convened for extraordinary Saturday sessions. McConnell and Boehner held their news conference shortly after the House of Representatives had rejected a Senate Democratic bill drafted by Reid to raise the government’s debt limit by $2.4tn and cut spending by $2.2tn. The House vote was 246-173, mostly along party lines and after a bitter debate. The vote was unusual in that Republicans lined up to kill Reid’s legislation before it had even cleared the Senate. It was orchestrated as political payback because late on Friday Reid had engineered the demise of Republican proposals hours after it they were passed in the House. Before the House vote, Republicans said Reid’s proposals were full of gimmicks and would make unacceptable reductions in defence spending. Pelosi said Boehner had chosen “to go to the dark side” when he changed his own legislation to satisfy the Tea Party movement and other critics, who insist taxes must not be raised to cut into federal deficits, even for the wealthiest US companies and individuals. US politics United States US economy Economics Republicans Democrats Tea Party movement guardian.co.uk
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Scores killed and wounded as President Bashar al-Assad’s troop launch assault on opposition stronghold ahead of Ramadan Syrian troops in tanks have stormed the flashpoint city of Hama, killing and wounding scores of people in a barrage of shelling and gunfire that left bodies scattered in the streets. Residents shouted “God is great!” and threw firebombs and stones at the tanks as they pushed through the city before dawn on Sunday. “It’s a massacre, they want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan,” an eyewitness who identified himself by his first name, Ahmed, told the Associated Press by telephone. Hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties and were seeking blood donations, he said. Activists have predicted that demonstrations will escalate during Ramadan, which starts on Monday, as protesters and government forces try to use the Muslim holy month to tip the balance of the uprising that began in March in their favour. Ahmed, a Hama resident, said he saw up to 12 people shot dead in the streets in a district known as the Baath neighbourhood. Most had been shot in the chest and head, he said. “Troops entered Hama at dawn today,” another resident told AP by telephone. “We woke up to this news, they are firing from their machine guns randomly and there are many casualties.” A doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters that the city’s Badr, al-Horani and Hikmeh hospitals had received 24 bodies. There were scores of wounded people and a shortage of blood for transfusions, he said by telephone from the city, which has a population of around 700,000. “Tanks are attacking from four directions. They are firing their heavy machine guns randomly and overrunning makeshift roadblocks erected by the inhabitants,” the doctor said. Machine gun fire could be heard in background as he spoke. “There are bodies uncollected in the streets,” said another resident, adding that army snipers had positioned themselves on the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison. Tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around northern Hama, residents said, and electricity and water supplies to the main neighbourhoods had been cut off – a tactic used regularly by the military when storming towns. During Ramadan, Muslims throng mosques for special night prayers after breaking their daily dawn-to-dusk fast. The gatherings could trigger major protests throughout the predominantly Sunni country and activists say authorities are moving to try to ensure that does not happen. An estimated 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime since the uprising began. Most of the dead were killed in shootings by security forces at anti-government rallies. Hama, about 130 miles (210 kilometres) north of Damascus, has become one of the hottest centres of the demonstrations. In early June, security forces shot dead 65 people there, and since then it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing the city and conducting overnight raids. The city has a history of dissent against the Assad dynasty. In 1982, Assad’s late father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered his brother to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement. The city was sealed off before air strikes destroyed parts of the city. As many as 25,000 people, human rights groups say. The real number may never be known. Then, as now, reporters were not allowed to reach the area. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had compiled the names of 13 dead from hospitals and residents in Hama, but the figure could not be independently confirmed. The Syria-based Local Coordination Committees said it had the names of four victims, but thatthere were more bodies still to be identified. Syria Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …China rail crash families accept compensation as Beijing moves to silence furore
July 30, 2011 No Comment
Ten families agree to £87,000 compensation as death toll mounts Relatives bereaved by China’s high-speed rail crash have accepted compensation after the government doubled its original offer, as authorities tried to silence the furore over the disaster. Ten families have agreed to the deal – 915,000 yuan (£87,000) per victim – the state news agency reported. The death toll is now 40, with another 190 injured. Other relatives say the compensation is insufficient and that the ministry of railways, which has apologised for last weekend’s disaster, should take more responsibility. “Our deceased relatives were in the prime of their lives; they have children and senior parents to support,” said Chen Engfen. He said he would not accept less than £141,000. The crash, near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, happened when one train ploughed into the back of another. Six coaches were derailed, with four plunging from a viaduct. Officials have blamed design flaws in signalling and are checking the equipment at 58 other stations. The disaster, and the government’s handling of it, unleashed an outpouring of anger. Many see the crash as epitomising the problems facing China in its headlong rush towards development, including the lack of transparency. However, unusually aggressive reporting has come to an abrupt halt. “Some newspapers have been told not to run articles, or had prepared far harder coverage but at the last minute had the rug pulled out from under them,” said David Bandurski of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. China has seen a similar pattern in previous disasters, with censors shutting down discussion and relatives coming under pressure to sign compensation deals and stop raising questions about the incident. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported a relative as saying the family stopped protesting about the crash “because pressure was applied privately”. Chinese journalists have said that a television producer was disciplined after his programme asked searching questions about the crash. A note on Wang Qinglei’s microblog said that “as long as a country has journalists who resist pressure… it still has a soul”. China Rail transport Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
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Sea Shepherd flagship impounded in Scottish port after Maltese tuna fishery sues for £850,000 in damages “Eco-pirate” Paul Watson is losing a race against time to recover his flagship boat, the Steve Irwin, which has been impounded in Shetland. The world’s most radical conservationist, Watson is being sued for $1.4m (£850,000) by a Maltese fishing company, Fish and Fish, one of Europe’s leading tuna processors. The law suit against Watson’s Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was filed last year after activists aboard the Steve Irwin freed 800 bluefin tuna from a pen in the Mediterranean. Watson has just 10 days to raise the bond required to release the boat, which was named after the late Australian conservationist. It has been impounded in the harbour at Lerwick ever since the company sued him for damages. By last night, the society had raised about $500,000, after a global Twitter campaign and appeals to celebrities who have helped Watson in the past. A co-founder of Greenpeace, Watson was picking up volunteer crew and restocking the Steve Irwin in preparation for a trip to protest against whaling in the Faroe Islands when he was served with the writ. The tuna cage that had been intercepted 40 miles off the Libyan coast in June last year held an estimated 35 tons of fish. After a fracas in which there was hand-to-hand fighting between the two crews, Sea Shepherd sent in divers to release the 800 tuna. Joseph Caruana, the owner of Fish and Fish, declined to speak to the Observer , but has claimed in the Maltese press that two of his divers were injured in the encounter, an allegation strongly denied by Watson. “Sea Shepherd cannot continue behaving this way. My aim is for justice to be done. I wanted to show that we mean business and we will fight our cause,” he said. Malta has become a global capital of tuna fishing, exporting £80m-worth of the fish, mainly to the Middle East and Japan. Ships surround the fish with nets and then tow them to cages, where they are fattened for export. Catches are limited to two weeks a year and ship owners have been given strict quotas to meet by governments, but, with little policing, the industry has been able to openly flout the law in Libyan waters. Greenpeace and WWF called last month for a suspension of the Mediterranean tuna fishing season, saying that stocks were at critically low levels. “Mediterranean bluefin tuna is on the slippery slope to collapse,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, of WWF Mediterranean. In a statement last week, Watson said that if Sea Shepherd could not raise the money, the Steve Irwin could be held indefinitely and possibly sold. “This would not only be a financial hardship, but it could threaten our ability to defend whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary from the Japanese whaling fleet this December. Fish and Fish are claiming damages for bluefin tuna we believe were illegally caught after the season had closed,” he said. In a separate incident, the Namibian government has declared Sea Shepherd a “threat to national security” after it tried to film the annual slaughter of 90,000 Cape fur seals on the west African coast. It is a crime to document seal clubbing in Namibia. “The group tried to document the seal slaughter, but was detected by Namibian special forces,” said Watson. “It was a good plan, but Sea Shepherd is no match for the Namibian military.” The group fled to South Africa, having had its rooms burgled and cameras destroyed. Fishing Marine life Malta Endangered species Food Wildlife Conservation John Vidal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Jon Kyl Continues the "Can’t Raise Taxes on the Job Creators" Nonsense in the Republican Weekly Address
July 30, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media In the Republican Weekly Address , Sen. Jon Kyl continued with more of the GOP’s latest excuse for why no one can ever dare to take tax rates back to where they were when Bill Clinton was in office. Heaven forbid we can’t raise taxes on the “job creators.” Republicans care about job creation, alright … just not in the United States. Maybe once they’ve destroyed our economy entirely where people here will work for a few dollars an hour, those “job creators” will decide to start blessing us again and creating more jobs here at home. Kyl also seems to have a bad case of amnesia if he’s not going to acknowledge just who did that “runaway spending” he’s talking about here. Kyl’s part of the problem with his votes for the Bush tax cuts, the illegal invasions of countries that were not a threat to us and the giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry — not to mention he and his fellow Republicans’ aversion to any type of regulation that might have prevented the financial meltdown and subsequent bailouts that have done terrible harm to our economy. Kyl claims that raising the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts would be irresponsible. Sorry Jon, but your reckless spending that you refused to pay for or even put on the books that caused us to go from a surplus to a deficit in the first place is what’s irresponsible. Now your party just continues to prove that you’re completely incapable of governing as well. Slash, pillage, burn and destroy is all these people understand. Weekly remarks by Sen. Jon Kyl, as provided by Republican Party leadership Good morning. I am Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona. By now, most Americans know that lawmakers in Washington are engaged in a difficult debate about the nation’s ‘debt ceiling,’ the legal limit to the amount of money the federal government can borrow. The debt ceiling is currently set at a little more than 14 trillion dollars, and if Congress and the president don’t reach an agreement to raise it by this coming Tuesday, the Treasury secretary tells us America will no longer be able to pay all its bills. The consequences of missing this deadline could be severe, precisely because Washington…. …borrows so much money — more than 40 cents out of every dollar it spends. So, spending would have to shrink by 40% very quickly. What’s more, markets would likely respond, dropping in value and hurting the retirement savings of millions of Americans. Republicans have tried to work with Democrats to avoid this result and put our country on a better path, but we need them to work with us. We start from the understanding that the reason the debt ceiling is a problem is because of runaway Washington spending. So, Republicans have been united in the belief that raising the debt ceiling without making significant spending reductions would be irresponsible. With debt crises rolling across Europe, we know it is only a matter of time before people start to question whether America can sustain its huge and growing debt. If we don’t do something about our spending problem now, the scenes we’ve seen playing out all across Europe could happen in America. If we don’t change the way Washington operates, we will not get control of our government, or our future. In short, we hoped that the need to increase the debt ceiling could be an opportunity to make some very hard decisions to reduce government spending. Unfortunately, after weeks of negotiations, it became clear that Democrats in Washington did not view this crisis as an opportunity to rein in spending. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to impose huge tax increases on American families and small businesses. President Obama is simply too committed to the European-style of big government that his policies have set in motion. To Democrats in Washington, the answer isn’t to cut spending, but to raise taxes and keep on spending. Democrats claim they would only target the privileged few. But behind the scenes they argue for much broader tax increases. The simple fact is, in order to afford the kind of government this president wants, taxes would have to be increased dramatically — and for middle-income Americans, not just on the wealthy. Job-killing tax increases are the wrong medicine for our struggling economy. Back in 2009, President Obama admitted that you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a recession. This advice is just as true today. At the moment, more than 14 million Americans are looking for work and can’t find it. According to economists, a healthy economy is one in which unemployment is around 5%. The unemployment rate today is 9.2%. And we got more bad news yesterday: Our economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.3% in the second quarter and the first-quarter growth was downgraded to just four tenths of one percent. Raising taxes will only make this worse. And prolonging the debt crisis will only add to the ongoing economic uncertainty. Republicans believe we must solve our debt crisis — and we believe we can solve it if Democrats will work with us. No one will get everything they want, and we can’t solve all of our problems at once, but surely we can reach an agreement that will increase the debt ceiling, impose accountability, and begin reducing the size of our federal government. That may not be what some in Washington really want. But it’s what Americans, and the American economy, really need.
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Thinktank Demos warns poorly planned volunteering stints in developing nations can do more harm than good The multi-million pound gap-year industry is in danger of damaging Britain’s reputation abroad and raising fears that the west is engaged in a new form of colonialism, according to a leading thinktank. Young people planning a gap year should focus on what they can offer their hosts in order to discourage the view that volunteering is merely a new way of exercising power, says a new report by Demos. Those who carefully select the projects in which they take part are likely to make the most of their time, while doing the most to dispel the belief that their trips are merely self-interested, says the report. Nine out of 10 young people surveyed by YouGov for Demos said they had improved their self-confidence, self-reliance and sense of motivation following a stint of volunteering in a developing country. However, the gap-year industry is a £6bn business for western companies, costing volunteers between £1,500 and £4,500 for a mere two-month experience. One in five people who took a gap year said they believed their presence in the place they visited made no positive difference to the lives of those around them. Jonathan Birdwell, author of the Demos report, said there was even evidence that an ill thought-out gap year could be bad for local communities and Britain’s relations with other countries. “There is a risk of such programmes perpetuating negative stereotypes of western ‘colonialism’ and ‘charity’: a new way for the west to assert its power,” he said. Birdwell added that “projects that do not appear to have benefits or make a difference for communities abroad leave volunteers unmotivated and disillusioned”. One respondent to the survey’s report said: “I felt that the local community could have done the work we were doing; there were lots of unemployed people there. I’d have preferred to work with local unemployed and helped them in some way to benefit their community.” The study comes in the wake of the government’s launch of the International Citizen Service which, in the words of the prime minister, is designed to “give thousands of our young people, those who couldn’t otherwise afford it, the chance to see the world and serve others”. The scheme is means tested, allowing those who come from families with a joint income of less than £25,000 the chance of a gap year for free. The pilot of the scheme will involve 1,080 young people visiting 27 different countries. The Demos report found that 64% of 3,000 parents surveyed want their children to take part in the ICS scheme. However, Demos’s research indicated that there were key factors which make a gap year successful and the report recommends the ICS should incorporate them. There should be post-placement support, which allows the young person to continue the work they started abroad once back home, it claims. The report says there should be pre-departure training to ensure that young people are able to offer relevant skills. It says placements which are short are just as likely to have positive outcomes in personal development and civic participation as long-term ones. Young people who live with a host family are also more likely to report positive outcomes in “skills, identity and values”. The report found that the typical UK overseas volunteer tended to be young, affluent, white and female, although those with few qualifications and those from low-income backgrounds reported the most positive experiences. Birdwell said he hoped the ICS would grow to help around 3,000 young people a year and that these would be the least well-off in society. He said: “The new International Citizen Service is an exciting opportunity for young British people to experience the world and gain invaluable experience and skills while helping to contribute to the UK’s international development goals. “However, the ICS is competing with an already crowded gap-year market. In order to be successful, it must ensure that activities benefit communities abroad and it must target recruitment to young people who couldn’t afford commercial gap year programmes.” Gap years Gap year travel Students Volunteering Voluntary sector Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
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Coalition’s policy chief on reforms believes excellence would be achieved through fear of losing jobs and real discipline Oliver Letwin, the coalition’s policy minister, has revealed the government’s determination to instil “fear” among those working in the public sector, who he claimed had failed for the past 20 years to improve their productivity. Letwin, architect of the coalition’s plans to reform public services, told a meeting at the offices of a leading consultancy firm that the public sector had atrophied over the past two decades. In controversial comments angering teachers, nurses and doctors, he warned that it was only through “some real discipline and some fear” of job losses that excellence would be achieved in the public sector. Letwin added that some of those running schools and hospitals would not survive the process and that it was an “inevitable and intended” consequence of government policy. “You can’t have room for innovation and the pressure for excellence without having some real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers that things may go wrong if they don’t live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them,” he said. “If you have diversity of provision and personal choice and power, some providers will be better and some worse. Inevitably, some will not, whether it’s because they can’t attract the patient or the pupil, for example, or because they can’t get results and hence can’t get paid. Some will not survive. It is an inevitable and intended consequence of what we are talking about.” Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU), reacted angrily to Letwin’s comments, describing them as “nonsense”. He added: “Public sector workers are already working in fear – fear of cuts to their job, pension, living standards and of privatisation. Far from improving productivity, the cuts are creating chaos in vital public services.” Letwin was speaking at the launch of a liberal thinktank’s report at the London headquarters of KPMG, one of the biggest recipients of government cash, which won the first contract for NHS commissioning following the decision to scrap primary care trusts and further open the health service to private companies. Letwin’s recent white paper on public sector reform had been dismissed as watered down earlier this month amid speculation that the Liberal Democrats had vetoed radical change. But Letwin said on Wednesday that he believed he was prosecuting “the most ambitious set of public service reforms that any government in modern Britain has undertaken”, adding that productivity had improved across the economy except in the public sector in the past 20 years. A spokesman for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said he did not know where Letwin had sourced his figures. However, an ONS analysis that works back to 1997, shows that productivity in public services fell on average by 0.3% a year between 1997 and 2008 because the level of inputs, such as staff and equipment, increased faster than the output, such as operations performed and numbers of pupils taught. Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, said last night that she did not recognise Letwin’s portrayal of the public sector. “Death rates in hospitals have been falling, satisfaction levels have been rising,” she said. “What hasn’t changed is the Tories’ antipathy to public services. And the idea that the way to improve public services is to put fear into those who provide them is absolutely grotesque.” A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “It is widely acknowledged that there is a problem with productivity in public services. The government’s policy is to improve it and provide the best value for the taxpayer.” Oliver Letwin Public services policy Public sector cuts Liberal-Conservative coalition Harriet Harman Daniel Boffey Mark Serwotka guardian.co.uk
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Kevin McKenna finds happy faces – and even a few union flags – as he joins the crowds to see Edinburgh’s own royal wedding The bride, as ever, looked radiant in a beautiful little off-the-shoulder number and the groom looked simply delighted. Then a white stretch limo pulled up and disgorged the ushers and a gaggle of bridesmaids, all pink and giggly. A lone piper greeted them at the door of the MacDonald Hotel then guests who had been sipping beers and Bacardis at the cafes on Holyrood Road followed them. It was the wedding day of local couple Paul and Sharon, and they didn’t seem in the least fazed by the thousands heading in the other direction for the union of a royal and a rugby star in the Canongate. The Edinburgh Evening News had predicted a crowd of only 2,000, but there looked to be at least double that gathered 10-deep in the Edinburgh sunshine and stretching most of the way up the Royal Mile. Earlier, I had sought to secure one of the little commemorative union flags that most people in the crowd seemed to be sporting. For this was Edinburgh’s Old Town – perhaps the only place in Scotland where you can wave the red, white and blue without making an exhibition of yourself. In the days before the wedding of the Princess Royal’s daughter, some had tried to induce outrage at the cost of the event to the public purse. They had chosen the wrong target, though. Anne is Scotland’s favourite royal and seems cast in our image and likeness. She doesn’t seem to brook any nonsense and you can imagine her helping the servants bring the coal in of a winter night. Besides, she’s patron of the Scottish Rugby Union and attends all Scotland’s matches in a tartan skirt. Zara herself seems a fresh and sonsie young woman who has emulated her mother as a world-ranking equestrian. The occasion had a down-to-earth feel – even, dare I say it, couthie. Two of Mike Tindall’s ushers were family members while three came from his rugby background. One was Peter Phillips, Zara’s brother. The groom’s brother, Ian, was also among their number. And there was also a little human touch becoming of Anne: as she watched the couple set off for Holyroodhouse she firmly linked arms with Tindall’s elderly father, Phil. The choice of the Canongate Kirk as the venue for the nuptials struck some as unusual and iconoclastic, but it wasn’t really. This 17th-century chapel, one of the most handsome in the city and commissioned by James VII, is the parish church of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and of the Scottish parliament. Indeed, did the Queen not worship there just the other week? She was also welcomed to this church 59 years ago, not long before her coronation. In the Canongate kirkyard, perhaps one of the most beautiful urban resting places in Scotland, lie the remains of David Rizzio who loved a queen once then paid for it with his life. There, too, are the bones of Robert Fergusson, a great Scottish poet who inspired Robert Burns, and the philosopher Adam Smith is interred just ahead of him. One of the best views in Edinburgh lies just beyond. The spirit of another, whose remains do not lie in the Canongate, nevertheless haunts the Royal Mile. Before his life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell wrote his Edinburgh Journals based on his nocturnal adventures in this most historic of streets. This was 18th-century Scotland’s Sunset Strip and housed many of the capital’s shebeens and whorehouses. Boswell, it seemed, visited every one. He would have chuckled at the procession of Daimlers ferrying the entire top tier of Britain’s aristocracy to a church he once sashayed past while royally inebriated. I digress. Across the road, Caroline and Lesley from Kirkcaldy were enjoying their day in the sunshine. Like many others in the throng, they would not regard themselves as great supporters of the royal family, but when the Queen whisked by with a wave, there were tears. “She’s a lovely woman, I hope she enjoys her granddaughter’s wedding,” said one. Thomas was there with three young children, his bronzed features belonging to someone who works outside for a living. Did he not resent the reputed £500,000 cost of the occasion? “Not a bit of it,” he said. “This is the Queen’s parish and she does a lot for this country. I wouldnae begrudge her a penny.” It had just gone four o’clock when Zara and her new husband emerged from their nuptials. Everyone cheered. Soon she would arrive back at Holyroodhouse and be serenaded by the Royal Scots Association pipe band. As a sidenote, though, she will not take her husband’s name and become Mrs Tindall. Zara Phillips it was, and still is. “Who do you think made the dress?” asked Lesley. I told her it looked suspiciously to me like a Stewart Parvin number, having seen the couturier’s triumphant 2010 show at London’s White Gallery. She regarded me with renewed suspicion. “Are you havin’ a laugh?” Royal wedding Monarchy Weddings Scotland Mike Tindall The Queen Prince William The Duchess of Cambridge Kevin McKenna guardian.co.uk
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