VisitBritain to launch worldwide advertising push starring big British names to promote the UK as the place to be in 2012 With a clutch of global stars in harness and £100m to spend on marketing, tourism bosses are hoping that they can revive the Cool Britannia vibe in time for the Olympics and the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2012. A TV commercial which aims to dispel Britain’s stuffy reputation abroad and promote a more contemporary image is to be broadcast around the world. Developed by advertising agency M&C Saatchi, the “You’re Invited” campaign features actors Dame Judi Dench, Dev Patel and Rupert Everett raving about their own personal favourite UK destinations. Jamie Oliver and Twiggy will also feature in the push, aimed at raising visitor numbers by four million a year. Patel, star of Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire, woos potential travellers by promoting the “buzz” and “energy” of London’s Leicester Square, while Everett waxes lyrical about the “rickshaws, queens and bikers” of night time Soho. Twiggy, who was filmed on location on the Millennium bridge in London, promotes Britain’s “amazing stable of designers” and chef Oliver, who has been trying to break the US in the last year, talks up the UK’s “magpie culture” of “taking the world’s best bits”. Extolling the UK’s more traditional image of stately homes and rolling countryside, Dench chose to be filmed at Hever Castle in Kent, the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn, where the actor often walks her dog. Reclining on an antique sofa upholstered in union flag fabric, Dench, 76, says: “Our great bonus is that we have Shakespeare, whose plays we’ve been performing for over 400 years. “Thank goodness. He used to be known in our family as the man who paid the rent.” Attempting to capitalise on favourable exchange rates and the royal wedding, which was watched by a global audience of two billion, VisitBritain hopes to capture a “national mood of celebration” surrounding the diamond jubilee and the Games. Much of the campaign is expected to be targeted at the highly profitable US market. According to VisitBritain, last year American visitors spent £2.1bn in the UK. However numbers are still down from pre-9/11 levels. In 2010 there were just under 2.7m visits to the UK by US residents, down from a peak of 4.1m in 2000. VisitBritain’s £50m budget was cut by 34% in the government’s spending review, but it also receives funding from private firms such as British Airways, lastminute.com and hotel chain Radisson Edwardian. Royal wedding The Queen Monarchy London Olympic Games 2012 Advertising Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …VisitBritain to launch worldwide advertising push starring big British names to promote the UK as the place to be in 2012 With a clutch of global stars in harness and £100m to spend on marketing, tourism bosses are hoping that they can revive the Cool Britannia vibe in time for the Olympics and the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2012. A TV commercial which aims to dispel Britain’s stuffy reputation abroad and promote a more contemporary image is to be broadcast around the world. Developed by advertising agency M&C Saatchi, the “You’re Invited” campaign features actors Dame Judi Dench, Dev Patel and Rupert Everett raving about their own personal favourite UK destinations. Jamie Oliver and Twiggy will also feature in the push, aimed at raising visitor numbers by four million a year. Patel, star of Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire, woos potential travellers by promoting the “buzz” and “energy” of London’s Leicester Square, while Everett waxes lyrical about the “rickshaws, queens and bikers” of night time Soho. Twiggy, who was filmed on location on the Millennium bridge in London, promotes Britain’s “amazing stable of designers” and chef Oliver, who has been trying to break the US in the last year, talks up the UK’s “magpie culture” of “taking the world’s best bits”. Extolling the UK’s more traditional image of stately homes and rolling countryside, Dench chose to be filmed at Hever Castle in Kent, the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn, where the actor often walks her dog. Reclining on an antique sofa upholstered in union flag fabric, Dench, 76, says: “Our great bonus is that we have Shakespeare, whose plays we’ve been performing for over 400 years. “Thank goodness. He used to be known in our family as the man who paid the rent.” Attempting to capitalise on favourable exchange rates and the royal wedding, which was watched by a global audience of two billion, VisitBritain hopes to capture a “national mood of celebration” surrounding the diamond jubilee and the Games. Much of the campaign is expected to be targeted at the highly profitable US market. According to VisitBritain, last year American visitors spent £2.1bn in the UK. However numbers are still down from pre-9/11 levels. In 2010 there were just under 2.7m visits to the UK by US residents, down from a peak of 4.1m in 2000. VisitBritain’s £50m budget was cut by 34% in the government’s spending review, but it also receives funding from private firms such as British Airways, lastminute.com and hotel chain Radisson Edwardian. Royal wedding The Queen Monarchy London Olympic Games 2012 Advertising Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk
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Mass walkouts over public sector pensions reform will allow chancellor to blame weak recovery on them, warns Balls Ed Balls has warned trade unions not to fall into George Osborne’s “trap” by striking over plans to reform public sector pensions. The chancellor was hoping for the unions to embark on industrial action , Balls said, so that he could blame any weak economic recovery on mass walkouts. The government and unions have been at loggerheads since unions felt ministers pre-empted negotiations by going public towards the end of last week with plans to extend the retirement age and increase pension contributions for millions of public sector workers. On Sunday, Unison leader Dave Prentis, whose union represents 1.4 million state employees, said the government had “scuppered” the talks by appearing unwilling to compromise. Prentis and other union leaders had threatened the biggest wave of industrial action since the general strike of 1926 after the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, made the announcement on Friday. The Treasury later said that Alexander was articulating proposals for reform, not settled government policy, but Prentis said that Alexander’s speech had effectively rendered the talks meaningless. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show , Balls said the government was deliberately “picking a fight” with the unions. “This is not a political decision from the unions, this is actually their members feeling very upset. George Osborne is desperate to have that confrontation – he’s been saying it for months. The trade unions must not walk into the trap of giving George Osborne the confrontation he wants to divert attention from a failing economy. “That’s why it’s so frustrating to see suddenly the Treasury breaking out of the negotiations and seeming to say, ‘We’ve made decisions.’” Three unions are due to strike on 30 June, but the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has said it will call off the walkout if the government is willing to discuss the level of increases to pension contributions. Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union , which represents almost 300,000 civil servants, told the BBC it was very unlikely that the walkout would be called off. Responding to Balls’s warning of a “trap”, Serwotka said: “The problem with what Ed is saying is this: if he’s me, representing people, many of whom are on £15,000 per year – they work hard, they’re on poverty pay, they don’t look forward to a very big pension. If all of that’s being taken away and you work longer, pay more and get less, what frankly are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to sit back, say it’s unfair and do nothing?” Prentis, whose union represents people working for local authorities, the NHS, colleges and the police, said he had not yet balloted his members on action but would if they continued “to be treated with disdain”. “If we go back into negotiations on the basis of dialogue but no changes in the proposals, what’s the point in that?” he told the BBC. “If we can get an assurance that the talks are meaningful … then obviously we’d continue the talks, but we didn’t get that impression on Friday.” “And it will be the biggest action since 1926 because up to 10 million people will be involved.” Responding to the same suggestion by Balls, Prentis said striking methods would be “smarter”. He told Sky’s Murnaghan programme, “It won’t be like the miners’ dispute where we will be starved back into submission. This will be a lot smarter than that – this will be about regional action, branch action, this will be sustained action. Because I believe that this government will not turn after one or two days, and our members have got to be prepared for that, and I believe that they are.” Alexander said the government was “absolutely not” trying to provoke a battle with unions. “There is a huge amount of room for dialogue,” he told Sky News. “There is a huge amount of detail about public sector pensions that we’ve been discussing in the talks … and we need to take that forward over the coming months.” He insisted the talks could still be constructive, adding: “I don’t think my message is uncompromising at all.” John Cridland, director of employers’ group the CBI, dismissed the impact that public sector union strikes could have on the economy. He said: “Today the most they can do is disrupt people’s lives – it probably won’t disrupt the economy.” Public sector pensions Ed Balls Public sector pay Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance George Osborne Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Wearing FBI Wire, Alabama GOP State Sen Refers To Black Casino Patrons As "Aborigines"
June 19, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Credit: TPM They don’t even try to hide it anymore . Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason, a cooperating witness in a federal corruption case, called black gambling hall customers “aborigines” when he was wearing an FBI wire and recording conversations with his fellow lawmakers, it was revealed in court this week. Beason and two other Republican legislators were joking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers of the Greenetrack casino, the Associated Press reports . “That’s y’all’s Indians,” one Republican said. “They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” replied Beason. The transcript was read Wednesday in the federal trial of casino owner Milton McGregor. The Justice Department indicted eleven defendants , including McGregor, in a massive bingo bribery probe back in October. Feds charged that the four current and former state legislators, three lobbyists and two businessmen with casino interests were part of a conspiracy to influence pro-bribery legislation. Some defendants, including McGregor’s lobbyist, have plead guilty. McGregor’s trial got underway last week. In another recorded conversation, Beason — who cooperated with the feds’ investigation and has not been charged — agreed with other Republican legislators who said that there would be a big turnout of black voters if bingo was on the ballot because casino owners would offer free buffets and gambling credits to lure African-American customers and then bus them to the polls. Beason is the same bastion of tolerance that advocated that if the Republicans wanted to really deal with illegal immigration, they should just “ empty the clip, and do what has to be done. ” There are calls for Beason to resign for his racist statements , although so far, Beason has resisted doing so. Will the media hound him and his party relentlessly until he does resign? Or is this another case of IOKIYAR?
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Constitutional changes would make it easier to prosecute state officials for bringing country to its knees, says Papandreou The Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, has called for a referendum on “changes to the political system”, including to the country’s constitution, as he embarked on a three-day parliamentary marathon that will culminate in a confidence vote in his beleaguered government on Tuesday. Papandreou blames Greece’s bloated state sector for bringing the country to its knees and has vowed to effect deep changes. He said the constitutional revision would make it easier to prosecute delinquent government officials. Papandreou also made a last-ditch plea to his country to pull together behind his latest package of austerity measures, which he says are essential to save Greece from bankruptcy. He said Greece was negotiating a new international bailout package that was “roughly equal” to last year’s €110bn lifeline. European eurozone ministers are meeting in Luxembourg on Sunday night to thrash out a new deal for Greece that officials hope will spare it from default and buy it breathing space to get its public finances in order. Greece’s debt is currently more than €300bn – 150% of its entire annual economic output. Papandreou appealed to parliament to approve a new five-year package of tax hikes and spending cuts agreed with international lenders, saying that the alternative was a debt default that would prove catastrophic. Last week, he failed to muster enough support from MPs for the package, and was forced to sack his finance minister and reshuffle his government. His new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, headed to Luxembourg to meet eurozone ministers. But the real opposition to Greece’s austerity plans come from closer to home, where protesters have vowed to step up demonstrations and unions are planning new strikes to pressure MPs into rejecting the budgetary package. Workers at Greek state utility PPC said they would launch a 48-hour strike at midnight, that may result in rolling power outages, to oppose government plans to sell the company. Greece European debt crisis Europe Global recession Financial crisis guardian.co.uk
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Haw, whose tent became a familiar sight in Parliament Square, dies in Germany after a long battle against lung cancer The veteran peace campaigner Brian Haw has died after “a long hard fight” against lung cancer, his family has announced . The 62-year-old died in his sleep on Saturday in Germany, where he had been receiving treatment. He began his round-the-clock protest opposite the Houses of Parliament on 2 June 2001. The camp was initially a response to economic sanctions and British and US bombing raids on Iraq, but it grew in scope after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. His tent, his collection of pictures of war victims and his hand-written posters were a familiar sight in the square and successive attempts to remove him failed after the high court said it would be a breach of his human rights. In a statement posted on Haw’s website , his family said: “It is with deepest regret that I inform you that our father, Brian, passed away this morning. As you know he was battling lung cancer, and was having treatment in Germany. He left us in his sleep and in no pain, after a long, hard fight.” Earlier this year the Greater London Authority evicted Haw and his supporters from the grass area at the centre of the square, forcing them on to the pavement. Westminster council is set to go to court to try to get the camp moved off the pavement, which could see it disappear permanently. Fellow members of the Parliament Square Peace Campaign said on Sunday that the authorities “should forever be ashamed of their disgraceful behaviour towards Brian”. “Brian showed great determination and courage during the many long hard years he led his peace campaign in Parliament Square, during which it is well documented that he was relentlessly persecuted by the authorities which eventually took its toll on his health. “Brian showed the same courage and determination in his battle with cancer. He was keenly aware of and deeply concerned that so many civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine did not have access to the same treatments that were made available to him. Parliament, the police, and courts etc, should forever be ashamed of their disgraceful behaviour towards Brian.” Anti-war movement London Protest Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Republicans gathered in New Orleans say Rick Perry would be frontrunner for presidential nomination – if he decides to run There were buttons that said “Kiss Me, I’m a Republican” and buttons that averred “I’m the God-Fearing, Gun-Toting, Flag-Waving Conservative the Liberals Warned You About.” And of course there were badges declaring loyalty to the candidates who have announced their run for the Republican nomination, such as Michelle Bachmann and Mitt Romney. But the fastest sellers were for a politician who has not yet announced whether he will join the White House race – the Texas governor, Rick Perry. “Our best-selling button has been the Perry one,” said Anne Grout, a Republican from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “For a while, we had Perry-Bachmann buttons and people really liked that and we sold out,” Grout said of the prospect of Perry as presidential candidate and Bachmann as his running mate. Perry has said he will announce his decision soon. One member of his campaign team said he was closer than ever to joining the race and he was testing the prospects in the early caucus and primary states – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. If he does stand, Republicans at the New Orleans conference predicted he would become the frontrunner of a so-far uninspiring field. Perry, 61, has made Texas political history by being elected governor three times. At a time when the biggest issue in the US is unemployment, Texas is attracting jobs, adding 254,000 in the last year. Over the last two years Texas has accounted for more than a third of all new jobs in the US. A former air force pilot, Perry has built up a reputation for tough talking and ruggedness. He jogs with a laser-sighted pistol in his belt and shot a coyote during a run last year. He is a mainstream conservative but one that has successfully courted Christian evangelicals – he declared 6 August a day of prayer and fasting – and the Tea Party movement. He received the biggest standing ovation at a conference attended by candidates such as Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Ron Paul. At the end of his speech, the audience chanted “run Rick, run”. He is better at delivering speeches than Romney, more animated, waving his hands around. He would run on a tough fiscal and social conservatism. As president, he would seek to emulate the Texas model, a combination of deficit-cutting, low taxation, light regulation and anti-union. He would abandon Barack Obama’s health reforms. Earlier at the conference, more than 150 people queued up to have Perry sign copies of his book, Fed Up. In contrast with Romney, Perry has an easy – if not sincere – manner. “Hey girl, what’s up?” he said as one of his book buyers approached. Tim McGough, 41, a marketing director and former legislator in New Hampshire, was the first in line at the signing, getting there an hour early. “I am impressed with his record in Texas. The Republican party still needs a true leader. I think he will shake it up,” he said. “He is telegenic, a handsome guy, articulate and governor of one of the largest economies in the world.” McGough described himself as a conservative moderate, favouring limited government, and if Perry did not stand he would support Romney. But he knows people around Perry and thinks he will go for it. “He will have a huge bump initially and will immediately catapult to the front. He will then settle into a race with Romney. I think it will be close,” McGough said. Perry initially ruled himself out of the race but over the last few weeks has confirmed he is thinking about it. His wife is urging him to run and Dave Carney, a veteran campaign strategist, quit Gingrich’s team to join Perry’s. Texas journalists who have long covered Perry say they think he will stand but it is still 50-50, with the governor concerned about whether he can raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed and whether he has left it too late to develop a campaign organisation. If he runs, Perry will face questions about his refusal to grant a stay of execution in cases such as that of Cameron Todd Willingham , believed to be innocent. He will also have to deal with a comment he made last year in which he appeared to support the idea of the secession of Texas from the US. Trish Fleming, 41, who works in advertising in Houston, Texas, was second in line at the Perry book signing. A Republican who named one of her children George W, she supported Gingrich at first and then Bachmann after seeing her speak at the conference on Friday. But Fleming hopes Perry will stand. “I think he is a game-changer,” she said. “The Texas economy is the only one that is booming.” Rick Perry Republican presidential nomination 2012 Republicans US elections 2012 Texas US politics United States Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
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• Press F5 to refresh this page or use the auto-refresher • Email Ian with all your thoughts mccourti@gmail.com 51st over: Crap! I was so distracted by the Seinfeld clips coming in that I seemed to have missed an over. Since then, something has happened. Ian Bell nearly got caught and it’s now 208-4. “I’m looking forward to this,” says Robin Hazlehurst. “Not the cricket, the OBO, it’s always much funnier when done by someone who doesn’t know what is going on. Scott Murray (I think) even managed to make Formula 1 interesting once by blatantly having no clue or giving the slightest one. Klutzian commentary is an art form in its own right, I’ll enjoy your effort at it. No pressure then.” No pressure indeed. 49th over: Nothing has changed. It’s still 203-4. You really need a lot of patience to watch this sport don’t you? Daryl Vodden has hollered. “Don’t worry about a lack of cricketing knowledge old boy. I guarantee you that, by the end of the day, you’ll be using phrases such as ‘laced it through the covers’ and ‘lost his off peg’. And I promise you they’re not dirty.” I’m not sure I believe him. Can someone verify those phrases for me please? 48th over: Jimmy Anderson has hit the boundary. That’s a 4 right? England are now 203 for 4. Stephen Armson’s favourite Seinfeld scene involves one of my favourite characters Tim Whatley. You can watch it here . 10:59am: A second email. This time from Tom Crane, who assures me “most of us reading this are still blotto on gin and Relentless from last night.” Let’s hope so Tom. Otherwise, this over-by-over may not make much sense. Tom also warms to the Seinfeld theme of the morning with two great picks. This one and this one . 10:52am: This being my first over-by-over (I’m usually the guy who makes the coffee in the office) I’ve just realised that we need to put these time markers at the start. Done. David Gower tells me that the cricket is about to start. But not before Sky get a montage in. They do love those montages, don’t they? Nasser Hussain is talking about Kevin Pietersen. He keeps using the world whack. Whack, whack, whack, whack. I feel like I’ve been left out of a joke here. My first email. Huzzah! And it’s from Ron Leach who says: “Delighted to read that you don’t know anything about cricket; you’ll be among friends here, then. You’ll enjoy your day”. I’m not sure enjoy is the right word. Sheer terror might be more apt. The sun is shining at the Rose Bowl. I’m guessing we’re going to have some cricket. The lads in the Sky studio seem confident that England will do well today. Knowing no better, I’ll have to believe them.The sun is shining at the Rose Bowl. I’m guessing we’re going to have some cricket. The lads in the Sky studio seem confident that England will do well today. Knowing no better, I’ll have to believe them. Good morning all. I have just got the call to say that our resident over-by-over expert Rob Smyth is feeling unwell and so won’t be able to make it in today. So until Alan Gardner reaches manages to reach the office, I’m afraid that you are going to left in the less than capable hands of myself. I know nothing about cricket other than it takes a few days and they’re all scared of rain. So for the next hour or so, why don’t we all talk about our favourite Seinfeld moments? I’ll kick things off with a classic, when Kramer takes home the set of the Merv Griffin show . Sri Lanka in England 2011 England cricket team Sri Lanka cricket team Cricket Alan Gardner guardian.co.uk
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Ed Miliband says he will ‘stick to the mission’ of leading Labour and reveals he has been taking advice from Tony Blair Ed Miliband has sought to play down claims of a continuing rift with his brother, David, in the wake of their bitter contest for the Labour leadership, insisting they have both moved on. In an interview with the Independent on Sunday , the Labour leader said he would not be distracted by the renewed speculation over his relationship with his older sibling, but would “stick to the mission” to lead his party. He disclosed that he had been taking advice from Tony Blair, who was widely thought to have favoured David Miliband for leader and who last week called on Labour to retain the political centre ground. The interview comes as a ComRes poll for the IoS and the Sunday Mirror gave the Labour leader a -27% approval rating, down 10 points on a similar poll last month. The latest speculation about Miliband’s leadership followed the publication of a biography by Mehdi Hasan and James McIntyre that claimed the brothers and their wives were barely on speaking terms. Newspaper reports have suggested that David Miliband was now waiting for Ed to fail so that he could claim the top job. Ed Miliband, however, insisted that David had “moved on, so everybody else should too”. “Everybody knows that we fought a leadership election last year. As I said at the time I was pleased to have won and disappointed for him, but both of us have moved on,” he said. Pressed on his suggestion last year that they would one day “look back at all of this and laugh”, he admitted they had not yet reached that point. “I don’t think we’ve done that yet, but I think what I would say is that both of us have moved on,” Miliband said. He refused to be drawn on claims that they could not agree on whether he had informed David of his intention to run for the leadership after Gordon Brown’s resignation. “I’m not going to get into the detail of this. What we both agree on is that we talked before both our candidacies were declared and talked to him about the position too and we’re both on the same page on that,” he said. Miliband also brushed off reports that their wives, Justine and Louise, and also fallen out. “Nonsense, nonsense, that’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. David and Louise were at our wedding a few weeks ago, and we had a great day. It was great that they were there and enjoyed themselves,” he said. Asked about suggestions that the Milibands’ mother, Marion Kozak, was “in despair” at the state of relations between her sons, he replied: “I’m not going to get into my conversations with her about it.” The poll showed Miliband has suffered a sharp fall in his public approval ratings. It found that 18% of respondents believed he had turned out to be a good leader, against 45% who did not, a net approval rating of -27%, with 37% saying they did not know. The findings represent a 10-point drop since last month when 22% said Miliband was proving to be a good leader and 39% disagreed – a rating of -17%. The latest poll found 27% believed that David Miliband would be a better choice as leader, against 17% who disagreed. There was worse news for Nick Clegg, with 20% saying he was a good leader of the Liberal Democrats, compared with 57% who disagreed – a net rating of -37%. Opinions on David Cameron were more evenly divided, with 37% saying they believed he was a good prime minister and 44% disagreeing – a net rating of -7%. Overall, the poll put Labour and the Conservatives level on 37%, with Labour down two points on last month and the Tories down one. The Lib Dems were unchanged on 11%. ComRes interviewed 2,008 adults online on 15 and 16 June. Ed Miliband David Miliband Labour guardian.co.uk
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Yelena Bonner was the widow of Nobel peace prize winner Andrei Sakharov and a tireless human rights campaigner Yelena Bonner, the Russian rights activist and widow of the Nobel peace prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died aged 88. Bonner died of heart failure on Saturday afternoon in Boston, according to her daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich. She had been in hospital since February, Yankelevich said. Bonner grew famous through her marriage to Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s leading dissident, but she carved out her own reputation as a tireless human rights campaigner in the face of relentless hostility from Soviet authorities. Bonner and Sakharov’s cramped three-room apartment in Moscow was the unofficial headquarters of the Soviet dissident movement in the 1970s, and again in the late 1980s after they returned from internal exile in the city of Gorky. Both suffered constant harassment, and Soviet officialdom regularly made caustic, personal attacks against Bonner, accusing her of being a foreign agent who had bullied her husband, the father of the Soviet atomic bomb, into turning against his country. The attacks only seemed to strengthen their resolve, and neither stopped calling for greater personal freedom for Soviet citizens. “I hope to live out my life until the end worthy of the Russian culture in which I’ve spent my life, of the Jewish and Armenian nationalities, and I am proud that mine has been the difficult lot and happy fate to be the wife and friend of academic Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov,” Bonner wrote in her autobiography. After Sakharov died in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, Bonner continued to champion human rights, but was less and less visible, and her health began to deteriorate. She had a long history of heart and eye problems and suffered heart attacks in 1995 and 1996. Nonetheless, she edited her husband’s memoirs, which were released in 1997, and still occasionally spoke out against Boris Yeltsin’s government, denouncing Russia’s bungled war in Chechnya and the shortcomings of the country’s young democracy. In recent years, Bonner lent the weight of her voice to those opposing the leadership of Vladimir Putin, who has restored many of the Soviet-era powers of the security services. In March last year, hers was the first signature on a petition calling for Putin to go. In December, she sent a moving speech that was read at an opposition rally in Moscow in which she asked to be considered among those on the square: “Consider that I have come, again, to save my homeland, although I cannot walk.” Bonner and Sakharov met through their political activities, and were married in 1971, both for the second time. He won the Nobel prize in 1975. For nearly two decades they were the first couple of the dissident movement, confronting the Soviet state regardless of the consequences. After Sakharov criticised the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was banished in 1980 to Gorky, now known as Nizhny Novgorod. Bonner was found guilty of slander against the state in 1984 and also sentenced to internal exile in Gorky. The couple shared an apartment across the street from the police station, and they were under constant scrutiny. She detailed their plight, often with wit and irony, in a 1986 book, Alone Together. “Whenever the authorities did not like something, it was our car that suffered. Either two tyres would be punctured, or a window smashed or smeared with glue. This was how we knew that we had done something bad by their standards,” she wrote. Under Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, the couple were allowed to return to Moscow in 1986 and together they pressed ahead with their campaign until Sakharov’s death. Russia guardian.co.uk
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