Paris fashion label says the Birmingham-born former Pringle designer will replace fellow Briton Hannah MacGibbon in June The Paris fashion label Chloé, whose previous designers have included Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney, has announced that Clare Waight Keller, who was responsible for updating the Pringle of Scotland brand, will take over as creative director. She will replace fellow Briton Hannah MacGibbon, who has worked at the fashion house for ten years and has been creative director since 2008. Chloé, which is owned by Compagnie Financière Richemont, said MacGibbon was leaving to pursue “new projects”. Born in Birmingham, Waight Keller was appointed creative director of Pringle in 2005 and charged with turning it from a heritage label into a modern luxury brand. She resigned in March after a successful six-year run with the label, where she oversaw the menswear and womenswear collections and worked on collaborations with the likes of Tilda Swinton. She has established herself as a talent able to combine craft with modern shapes. With an MA in fashion knitwear from the Royal College of Art, she has worked at Gucci under Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and begins work at Chloé on 1 June. Despite mixed reviews, MacGibbon had begun to turn Chloé’s image around with a mix of 1970s-influenced sportswear and minimalism, including wide trousers and silk blouses. In March 2010 MacGibbon, along with her former Chloé boss Phoebe Philo (currently head of design at Céline) and McCartney, were widely celebrated for pioneering an influential new look: feminine minimalism. MacGibbon’s tenure was seen as a marked improvement on the seasons by the Swedish designer Paulo Melim Andersson, who left after Philo in 2006. But the label, despite a recent successful fragrance launch, has failed to replicate the success of the Philo years, which included stellar sales and hits such as 2002′s Paddington bag. Chloé’s chief executive, Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, said MacGibbon’s “considerable talents will be missed”. In a short statement MacGibbon added: “I will always have a deep affection for Chloé and am very grateful to the company for having given me this opportunity.” During the Paris autumn/winter womenswear shows in March, rumours circulated that the label was not planning to renew the designer’s contract, and had even interviewed replacement designers. As yet no one has claimed the top job at Christian Dior after John Galliano was fired over his alleged racist and antisemitic outbursts. Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, the designer of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, is the latest designer thought to be in the frame. Balmain has also recently replaced its head designer. Fashion Fashion designers France Europe Simon Chilvers guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Paris fashion label says the Birmingham-born former Pringle designer will replace fellow Briton Hannah MacGibbon in June The Paris fashion label Chloé, whose previous designers have included Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney, has announced that Clare Waight Keller, who was responsible for updating the Pringle of Scotland brand, will take over as creative director. She will replace fellow Briton Hannah MacGibbon, who has worked at the fashion house for ten years and has been creative director since 2008. Chloé, which is owned by Compagnie Financière Richemont, said MacGibbon was leaving to pursue “new projects”. Born in Birmingham, Waight Keller was appointed creative director of Pringle in 2005 and charged with turning it from a heritage label into a modern luxury brand. She resigned in March after a successful six-year run with the label, where she oversaw the menswear and womenswear collections and worked on collaborations with the likes of Tilda Swinton. She has established herself as a talent able to combine craft with modern shapes. With an MA in fashion knitwear from the Royal College of Art, she has worked at Gucci under Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and begins work at Chloé on 1 June. Despite mixed reviews, MacGibbon had begun to turn Chloé’s image around with a mix of 1970s-influenced sportswear and minimalism, including wide trousers and silk blouses. In March 2010 MacGibbon, along with her former Chloé boss Phoebe Philo (currently head of design at Céline) and McCartney, were widely celebrated for pioneering an influential new look: feminine minimalism. MacGibbon’s tenure was seen as a marked improvement on the seasons by the Swedish designer Paulo Melim Andersson, who left after Philo in 2006. But the label, despite a recent successful fragrance launch, has failed to replicate the success of the Philo years, which included stellar sales and hits such as 2002′s Paddington bag. Chloé’s chief executive, Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, said MacGibbon’s “considerable talents will be missed”. In a short statement MacGibbon added: “I will always have a deep affection for Chloé and am very grateful to the company for having given me this opportunity.” During the Paris autumn/winter womenswear shows in March, rumours circulated that the label was not planning to renew the designer’s contract, and had even interviewed replacement designers. As yet no one has claimed the top job at Christian Dior after John Galliano was fired over his alleged racist and antisemitic outbursts. Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, the designer of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, is the latest designer thought to be in the frame. Balmain has also recently replaced its head designer. Fashion Fashion designers France Europe Simon Chilvers guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Breitbart Claims That Bill Maher and Michael Eric Dyson Set Him up to Look Like a Racist on Real Time
May 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Well, C-SPAN decided not only to embarrass themselves by allowing Andrew Breitbart to come on their morning call-in show Washington Journal this week. They also decided to give him some fact free air time with Armstrong Williams as the interviewer of all people on their Book TV series and to be allowed to cry about how unfairly he was treated on Bill Maher’s show a couple of years ago and with heaven forbid anyone being allowed to paint him as a racist as Michael Eric Dyson did on that show. Breitbart of course thinks he can’t be painted as being a racist because he loves Clarence Thomas, which is about the equivalent of Stephen Colbert talking about his one black friend in his parodies on Comedy Central given Breitbart’s history of going after groups that support minorities and the powerless and those that want to make sure that heaven forbid black people in America still have the right to get registered and to vote. Breitbart is also apparently unable to comprehend the English language since he admits here that everything Dyson said during that interview on HBO went in one ear and out the other with being capable of understanding what was being said to him. And shame on C-SPAN for giving not only Breitbart, but someone like Williams air time where the viewers don’t know anything about Armstrong’s background with being a Bush sycophant . And for a little trip down memory lane as I took last year, here’s some of Breitbart’s appearance on Real Time that he was complaining about. See if you can follow along and understand the words that come out of Dyson’s mouth, because that was apparently too much for Breitbart’s brain to digest, but something he doesn’t have any trouble with doing some historical revisionism on now. I assume he thinks that there is no one who watched the show on HBO and his appearance with Dyson that also watches C-SPAN or that possibly recorded both because his rewriting of what went down during that obnoxious interview on HBO during this Book TV interview is almost comical. Shame on C-SPAN for allowing this garbage to be broadcast on their airways. Click here to view this media
Continue reading …Breitbart Claims That Bill Maher and Michael Eric Dyson Set Him up to Look Like a Racist on Real Time
May 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Well, C-SPAN decided not only to embarrass themselves by allowing Andrew Breitbart to come on their morning call-in show Washington Journal this week. They also decided to give him some fact free air time with Armstrong Williams as the interviewer of all people on their Book TV series and to be allowed to cry about how unfairly he was treated on Bill Maher’s show a couple of years ago and with heaven forbid anyone being allowed to paint him as a racist as Michael Eric Dyson did on that show. Breitbart of course thinks he can’t be painted as being a racist because he loves Clarence Thomas, which is about the equivalent of Stephen Colbert talking about his one black friend in his parodies on Comedy Central given Breitbart’s history of going after groups that support minorities and the powerless and those that want to make sure that heaven forbid black people in America still have the right to get registered and to vote. Breitbart is also apparently unable to comprehend the English language since he admits here that everything Dyson said during that interview on HBO went in one ear and out the other with being capable of understanding what was being said to him. And shame on C-SPAN for giving not only Breitbart, but someone like Williams air time where the viewers don’t know anything about Armstrong’s background with being a Bush sycophant . And for a little trip down memory lane as I took last year, here’s some of Breitbart’s appearance on Real Time that he was complaining about. See if you can follow along and understand the words that come out of Dyson’s mouth, because that was apparently too much for Breitbart’s brain to digest, but something he doesn’t have any trouble with doing some historical revisionism on now. I assume he thinks that there is no one who watched the show on HBO and his appearance with Dyson that also watches C-SPAN or that possibly recorded both because his rewriting of what went down during that obnoxious interview on HBO during this Book TV interview is almost comical. Shame on C-SPAN for allowing this garbage to be broadcast on their airways. Click here to view this media
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Fresh insight from US magazine shows that pared-down management structure and tight feedback loops make Steve Jobs’s thinking permeate the corporation An extraordinary picture of life within Apple, in which Steve Jobs is trying to create a “university” to teach incomers how the business makes decisions, keeps a “top 100″ coterie who are told key decisions ahead of time and bawls out entire teams for failures emerges from an article published in Fortune this week. The article (which is not yet online) indicates that Apple is driven by Jobs’s personality: “the creative process at Apple is one of constantly preparing someone – be it one’s boss, boss’s boss, or oneself – for a presentation to Jobs,” writes Adam Lashinsky, who calls him “a corporate dictator who makes every critical decision – and oddles of seemingly noncritical calls too”. One key element of the company that had not previously been disclosed is the existence of a “Top 100″, not necessarily based on seniority, who gather every year for a three-day session at a sequestered location – one without a golf course, at Jobs’s insistence. Attendees are discouraged from marking the dates on their calendar or discussing it. They get to see super-secret new products before anyone else; the iPod, unveiled ten years ago, was first shown off at one such meet. But Apple also runs an extremely tight ship, with tiny product groups; just two engineers were given the task of writing the code to convert the Safari browser to run on the iPad, a task that on its face seems like a huge undertaking that other companies such as Microsoft or Google might have devoted dozens of people to. Jobs’s reputation as a manager who takes no prisoners is reinforced with an anecdote from the time in 2008 when the relaunched MobileMe cloud service had significant outages. Jobs called the MobileMe team together to the Town Hall Auditorium on the campus. “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is meant to do?” Jobs began. On getting a response describing it, he replied: “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?” A 30-minute tirade followed – and a new person was put in overall charge of the group. (Many of the developers left the group soon afterwards.) Despite being on medical leave from the company, Jobs personally took charge of Apple’s response to “Locationgate”, over the revelation that iPhones and iPads retained a file which could effectively track the owner’s movements . The article is presently only available as a paid download via the Fortune app on Apple’s iTunes Store , or as an Amazon “single” costing 69 pence to be released on 10 May – though it will be published in full for free access online in time. The thinking behind that paywalled-for-a-period strategy is worth examining: Dan Roth, managing editor of Fortune Digital, told Peter Kafka at AllThingsD that “We’re trying to figure out the best way of releasing journalism online” – which means trying to monetise a high-interest story by keeping it paid-for over a limited period. Previously it couldn’t do this, but now that it can offer the iPad app to print subscribers for free (following a deal made with Apple), it can. “There was this feeling that we’re sort of pissing off our subscribers,” by publishing the magazine’s best stories on the Web, often before paying customers got their hands on them, [Roth] says. “The problem was there wasn’t anything we could have offered them before.” The article is fascinating, with in-depth analysis of Apple’s working based on dozens of interviews. A teaser post (” 6 things I never knew about Apple “) from Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Friday led to a burst of interest that has seen the article being written about repeatedly, despite not being online. Other information revealed in the article includes: • Every Monday the executive team holds a meeting which reviews the entire business progress and products under development – in which 80% will be unchanged from the previous week • Every Wednesday Jobs or Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, chairs a marketing and communications meeting • Responsibility is taken seriously: Jobs tells anyone who becomes one of the 70-odd vice-presidents in the company that there is no acceptable excuse for not getting things done; he contrasts that with a janitor who might not be able to get access to a key to unlock a door for work. • every executive action, product or project has a “DRI” – directly responsible individual – who carries the can (or laurels) for its outcome. • only the chief financial officer is reponsible for costs and expenses that translate into profit and loss; Jobs reckons that Sony, for example, has too many divisions to create a viable iPod, iPad or iPhone competitor – a view paraphrased as “it’s not synergy that makes [Apple] work, it’s that we’re a unified team.” • the “Jobs culture” extends through the company; everyone is meant to know what Jobs would think, so that they can do it without reference • Jobs wants to institutionalise his way of running and driving the business, and to that end has created an “Apple university” inside the company – for which he hired an academic, Joel Podolny, from Yale Management School in 2008. Commenting on the details in the article, Horace Dediu noted: “Podolny has been building an understanding of how Apple is run. He’s then been asked to codify this understanding into a curriculum that can be taught to Apple employees.” • Sometimes, the company spares no expense: it got the London Symphony Orchestra to record some samples used in its iMovie movie-making software; it sent a camera crew to Hawaii to film a wedding for a demo video, and then staged one in San Francisco using its own staff as guests, groom and wife • Walt Mossberg, the veteran computer writer and reviewer at the Wall Street Journal, is referred to by Jobs as “our friend” who was “no longer writing good things about us” after the MobileMe debacle. Comment: the question that many companies ask is: how could we get as profitable as Apple? How could we get as big as Apple? And how could we get as nimble as Apple (which has grown roughly 60% of its multi-billion-dollar revenues from two products, the iPhone and iPad, that it only started selling less than four years ago)? It seems like the answer might be: structure yourself more like Apple. The problem with companies that grow bigger is that they lose the ability to move like a startup. Apple, it must be said, has probably undergone every incarnation a company can – startup, successful ingenue, mismanaged flop, basket case, imminent bankrupt, recovery prospect, surprise hit, behemoth. It might be that some sort of business Darwinism has been going on inside it. But in that case, it’s even more useful for business people to know how it works – so they can reach the final point without dicing with the “bankrupt” stage. Apple Steve Jobs Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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It’s astounding how our politicians have bought in to firms’ tax blackmail. But there is an alternative: workplace democracy More and more, we hear that nothing can be done to tax major corporations because of the threat of how they would respond. Likewise, we cannot stop their price-gouging or even the government subsidies and tax loopholes they enjoy. For example, as the oil majors reap stunning profits from high oil and gas prices, we are told it is impossible to tax their windfall profits or stop the billions they get in government subsidies and tax loopholes. There appears to be no way for the government to secure lower energy prices or seriously impose and enforce environmental protection laws. Likewise, despite high and fast-rising drug and medicine prices, we are told that it is impossible to raise taxes on pharmaceutical companies or have the government secure lower pharmaceutical prices. And so on. Such steps by “our” government are said to be impossible or inadvisable. The reason: corporations would then relocate production abroad or reduce their activities in the US or both. And that would deprive the US of taxes and lose more jobs. In plain English, major corporations are threatening us . We are to knuckle under and cut social programmes that benefit millions of people (such as college loan programmes, Medicaid, Medicare, social security, nutrition programmes, etc). We are not to demand higher taxes or reduced subsidies and tax loopholes for corporations. We are not to demand government action to lower their soaring prices. If we do, corporations will punish us. Three groups deliver these business threats to us. First, corporate spokespersons, their paid public relations flunkies, hand down the word from on high (corporate board rooms). Second, politicians afraid to offend their corporate sponsors repeat publicly what corporate spokespersons have emailed to them. Finally, various commentators explain the threats to us. These include the journalists lost in that ideological fog that always translates what corporations want into “common sense”. Commentators also include the professors who translate what corporations want into “economic science”. Of course, there are always two possible responses to any and all threats. One is to cave in, to be intimidated. That has often been the dominant “policy choice” of the US government. That’s why so many corporate tax loopholes exist, why the government does so little to limit price increases, why government does not constrain corporate relocation decisions, etc. No surprise there, since corporations have spent lavishly to support the political careers of so many current leaders. They expect those politicians to do what their corporate sponsors want. Just as important, they also expect those politicians to persuade people that its “best for us all” to cave in when corporations threaten us. What about the other possible response to threats? Government could make a different policy choice, define differently what is “best for us all”. In other words, it could persevere in the face of business threats, and to do so, it could counter-threaten the corporations. When major corporations threaten to cut or relocate production abroad in response to changes in their taxes and subsidies, or demands to cut their prices or serious enforcement of environmental protection rules, the US government could promise retaliation. Here’s a brief and partial list of how it might do that (with illustrative examples for the energy and pharmaceutical industries): • Inform such threatening businesses that the US government will shift its purchases to other enterprises. • Inform them that top officials will tour the US to urge citizens to follow the government’s example and shift their purchases as well. • Inform them that the government will proceed to finance and organise state-operated companies to compete directly with threatening businesses. • Immediately and strictly enforce all applicable rules governing health and safety conditions for workers, environmental protection laws, equal employment and advancement opportunity, etc. • Present and promote passage of new laws governing enterprise relocation (giving local, regional and national authorities power of veto over corporate relocation decisions). • Purchase energy and pharmaceutical outputs in bulk for mass resale to the US public, passing on all the savings from bulk purchases. • Seize assets of enterprises that seek to evade or frustrate increased taxes or reduced subsidies. Laws enabling such actions either already exist in the US or could be enacted. In other countries today, existing models of such laws have performed well, often for many years. These could be used and adjusted for US conditions. Of course, a much better basis than threat and counter-threat is available for sharing the costs of government between individuals and businesses. That basis would be achieved by a transition to an economic system where workers in each enterprise functioned collectively and democratically as their own board of directors. Such worker directed enterprises eliminate the basic split and conflict inside capitalist corporations between those who make the key business decisions (what, how and where to produce, for example) and those who must live with and most immediately depend on those decisions’ results (the mass of employees). One concrete example can illustrate the benefits of this alternative to the threat/counter-threat scenario. Corporations have used repeated threats (to cut or move production) as means to prevent tax increases and to secure tax reductions. Likewise, they have made the same threats to secure desired spending from the federal government (military expenditures, federal road and port building projects, subsidies, financial supports and so on). In effect, corporate boards of directors and major shareholders seek to shift tax burdens onto employees. Their success over the last half-century is clear. Tax receipts of the US government have increasingly come, first, from individual rather than corporate income taxes and, second, from middle and lower individual income groups rather than from the rich. In worker-directed enterprises, the incentive for such shifts would vanish – because the people who would be paying enterprise taxes are the same people who would be paying individual income taxes. Taxation would finally become genuinely democratic. The people would collectively decide how to distribute taxes on what would genuinely be their own businesses and their own individual incomes. Economics US taxation United States Economic policy Obama administration Public finance Equality Richard Wolff guardian.co.uk
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As the curtain rises on Terry Gilliam’s production of Berlioz’s ‘unstageable’ opera The Damnation of Faust, Andrew Dickson goes behind the scenes at English National Opera for an exclusive first look Andrew Dickson Elliot Smith Shehani Fernando David Levene
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Olympic team member trapped for two hours while 60 rescuers worked to release him from hole he dug in Florida beach It took 60 rescuers two hours to free an Austrian Olympic swimming team member who was buried up to his neck in sand on a beach in Florida. US authorities said the 19-year-old had spent much of Sunday digging a hole 2.1 metres (7ft) deep by 1.8 metres wide. Around 7pm local time, the man, whose name was not released, jumped into the hole as a joke and sand collapsed around him. A spokeswoman for Pompano Beach fire and rescue, Sandra King, said he was in danger of being crushed by the pressure from the sand. He was freed at 9pm and taken to a hospital. His condition was unknown. King said the Austrian Olympic team has been training in southern Florida since April. Sunday was an off day for team members. Florida Austria Europe United States Swimming guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Kirk Lippold is running against Sharron Angle for Heller’s Congressional seat in Nevada. If his remarks on Fox & Friends Sunday are any indication, he’s at least as nuts as she is. He appeared to make a case for why torture should be used, why keeping Guantanamo open is a good thing, and in the process, embodied everything see as evil about the Bush administration. As the former commander of the USS Cole, I’m certain he has resentment and anger about being attacked by Bin Laden. I understand that. But the answer to resentment and anger is NOT losing our humanity, at least not in my opinion. HOST: This is your first political race, and you actually helped the Bush administration create the detainee policies that are in place still today. We know that Guantanamo Bay is still open. Do you believe that politics is at play here? LIPPOLD: Absolutely. When you look at what the president has done and the policies he’s put in place especially with his attorney general, he has not made use of all the tools that are available to him. His quest — misguided quest — to try and shut Guantanamo Bay is the clearest example. The American people have spent almost three hundred million dollars to put that facility down there as an intelligence collection and analysis center. He wants to close it because of the opinions of others. The reality of it is you look at the intelligence that started us down the path that eventually led to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. It started at Guantanamo Bay , there were other threads that were built from Guantanamo Bay over the years and to not use that as a resource does put our nation at risk. Lie #1: Waterboarding was done at Guantanamo. Truth: As far as I know, the waterboarding was done at black sites by the CIA and other actors in order to maintain plausible deniability, not at Guantanamo, nor did taxpayers understand that Guantanamo was anything other than a detention center to hold detainees who were considered a threat to national security. Lie #2: Waterboarding yielded information that led to Bin Laden. I swear, we’ve beaten this horse to death, but just look at all the different posts here on C&L about how much it did NOT yield that information. If there is still any doubt left, have a look at the voluminous evidence Marcy Wheeler has compiled on the topic, starting with this post . Nevertheless, Candidate Lippold wastes no time condemning and bear-hugging torture in the same breath. HOST: Well, the president was met with reality at Guantanamo Bay. It’s clearly still open, it looks like it’s going to be open for it looks like at least the next couple of years. Give us a sense of how stopping the enhanced interrogation techniques have hurt, have jeopardized our country in the past couple of years. LIPPOLD: Well, first and foremost, I do not support torture, but I think the president needs to give himself and others the flexibility that should there be a time and a place where enhanced interrogation may be necessary to be used in the war on terror, he needs to be able to provide that authorization. To not do that does endanger us because while in fact enhanced interrogation techniques may have worked to get us those threads they should only be used in the most extreme of circumstances. But to unilaterally say we will never use them is not a responsible action. HOST: President Barack Obama has said he is against these enhanced interrogation techniques and yet CIA director Leon Panetta did not deny that waterboarding or these techniques may have been used to help bring Usama Bin Laden to justice. Do you think it’s an important part of what leads to a domino effect, leading from one piece of information to another? LIPPOLD: It could have very well. I’m not sure of the exact specifics. I frankly believe that the only reason the administration right now is even telling us they used enhanced interrogation techniques is a political calculation going into the 2012 elections because they want to say ” Look, even though we got vital information as a result of those enhanced interrogation techniques we don’t use them any more. And look at what the great intelligence is that we have. ” I think it’s a political calculation that we’re being told about this and has nothing to do with the reality of fighting the war. And we need to preserve every option available to us in order to keep this nation safe. What bothers me about this segment (even though it’s likely that only about 3 people saw it), is how glibly a candidate for the United States Congress just lies about the facts in order to make a case for something that is evil. It’s not just immoral. It’s evil. That is all. Evil.
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Study into impact of hotter, stormier weather on UK infrastructure finds threat to wi-fi range and signal strength • UK infrastructure ‘will struggle to cope with climate change’ Wi-fi internet access and other communications are at risk from global warming unless measures are taken to protect them from rising temperatures and stormier weather, a government report warned on Monday. Presenting the report, the secretary of state for the environment, Caroline Spelman, said that higher temperatures can reduce the range of wireless communications, rainstorms can impact the reliability of the signal, and drier summers and wetter winters may cause greater subsidence, damaging masts and underground cables. The threat posed by climate change to internet and telephone access is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries, which are in general more at risk from increased floods, droughts and rising sea levels. “If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can’t get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question,” said Spelman, “and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.” The report is on how the UK’s infrastructure – from road and rail, to power stations, to water supplies – needs to be made more resilient to climate change. The government acknowledges that the impact of climate change on telecommunications is not well understood, but the report raises a series of potential risks. In addition to the impact on range and reliability, warmer temperatures and more intense storms may cause communications infrastructure to be flooded, or damaged by an increase in trees falling onto overhead lines. There is even the suggestion that changes in the plants that grow in the UK could affect how radio waves travel. Transport minister Theresa Villiers said: “When Defra started out looking at this issue, communications were not necessarily at the heart of the adaptation strategy. But communications is pivotal to making everything else work, which is why it has become much more high profile in the government’s work.” Chief policy adviser to Greenpeace, Ruth Davis, said: “What this report reminds us is that sudden shifts in global climate will affect our world and our daily lives in chaotic and unusual ways. The UK will not be immune, and the government’s discovery that one of the most important sectors for the UK’s economic recovery – electronic communications – could be affected by climate change, shows just how vital it is for our prosperity that we curb emissions now.” The UK’s entire major infrastructure will be affected by climate change , the report found, with examples of measures being introduced or needed including: • New types of road surfacing to prevent the tarmac melting during hot spells • More heat-resistant rail tracks to prevent buckling • The bolstering of road and rail embankments and bridges to protect from flooding or subsidence • Better flood protection for nuclear and fossil fuel power stations • Wind turbines designed to withstand stronger winds • Stronger overhead power cables to avoid wire expansion and sagging in hotter summers. “£200bn is expected to be invested in the UK’s infrastructure over the next five years,” said Spelman. “Infrastructure assets often have lives of at least 50-100 years so they need to be designed to function long into the future when the climate is projected to be very different.” Many of the risks to communication, transport and energy infrastructure stem from the predicted increase in flooding, a threat accepted as real by the government. But Spelman said the report’s call for more investment by the private sector did not contradict the coalition’s cuts to public spending on flood and coastal defences . “I don’t think it is a hypocrisy at all. For Defra, our top priority was to protect flood defence capital and we came up with the third best settlement for capital of any government department. We are also approaching the building of flood defences in a new way.” Instead of all flood defence projects being 100% state-funded, she said, Defra will allow “co-funding” of flood defences by communities. Jamie Reed, Labour’s shadow environment minister, said: “The government is trying to have it both ways, promising to tackle climate change whilst at the same time undermining the policies necessary to deliver a low-carbon economy. The government have just slashed the flood defence budget by 27%, cancelling major projects across the country.” The report was launched at the site of the new Blackfriars rail and underground station in London , which will span the river Thames. The bridge supports have been strengthened in anticipation of greater tidal surges and increased scouring. To reduce the station’s dependency on other infrastructure and to lower carbon emissions, its roof will host the largest installation of solar photovoltaic panels in the UK. The 600 sq m project will provide 1 MW of energy – up to 50% of the station’s electricity needs. Energy Climate change Wi-Fi Telecoms Internet Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk
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