8th Circuit Upholds Minnesota Law Requiring Disclosure Of Campaign Contributions
May 17, 2011 No CommentGood for Minnesota! If this ruling stands, this would be the way to go, state by state, to at least stem the flood of anonymous money into politics: By a 2-1 vote, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday sided with a federal judge in allowing a state campaign finance law to require corporations to disclose when they spend money to support or defeat a candidate. “Minnesota did not ban corporate independent expenditures,” the Appeals Court wrote. “Instead, based upon the lower court’s findings, as strongly supported by the record, we find that Minnesota created a statutory scheme designed to require corporations to disclose certain information when making independent expenditures.” The decision affirms a ruling by U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in September 2010, in which he refused to strike down the law. In his ruling, Frank said that voters have “an interest in knowing who is speaking about a candidate on the eve of an election.” One of those reports before the primary elections last year showed that Target, Best Buy and other corporations gave to MN Forward, a pro-business group that is buying ads to support GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. The disclosures riled groups at odds with Emmer’s opposition to same-sex marriage, and they launched a blistering attack on the companies.
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Can Mel Gibson beaver back into public affection with a puppet in Jodie Foster’s offbeat comedy? Not in this rodent of a film To paraphrase the old saying: career-death is easy but comedy is hard. After Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic outburst and the hateful abuse of his partner brought him the direst disgrace, he sought a funkily ironised way back into the public’s affections. A proposed cameo in Hangover 2 didn’t work out. Now we have his leading role in a pedantically offbeat dramedy-satire of male menopause, written by Kyle Killen and directed by Jodie Foster. Gibson plays the CEO of a failing toy manufacturer who has a breakdown. An attempted suicide winds up with a TV showing an image of Johnny Rotten landing on his head and he wakes up to find he can only communicate via a Beaver hand-puppet he found in a dumpster, speaking in a sort of Aussie-Michael-Caine accent. Crazily, it is liberating and his idea for a Beaver-themed kids’ woodwork kit makes squillions. A number of questions suggest themselves: can Gibson play comedy, of any tone or hue? Can he project an underlying sympathy or charm in his character? Can he make the Aussie-Michael-Caine accent funny or interesting in any way? Can Jodie Foster, as director, help him? The answer in each case is “No”, written in letters big enough to be seen from space. The Beaver might have been interesting if it was boldly, defiantly, autobiographical – with Gibson holding a toy Adolf Hitler puppet. Or if it was about a stressed beaver with a Gibson puppet. Instead we have a standard-issue indie-quirk picture which draws laborious parallels between the mixed-up middle youth grownups and their teenage offspring: Gibson’s adolescent son, who worries about turning out like his appalling dad, makes money writing other people’s class papers in their style – ventriloquising them, in fact – and he too is alienated from his emotions. Kyle Killen’s script is pretty similar in feel to Alan Ball’s screenplay for American Beauty and its themes of midlife crisis and absurdity have a little of movies such as Being There and Network . And of course the creepy hand-puppet gaining, as it were, the upper hand, must inevitably remind the audience of Michael Redgrave in Cavalcanti’s Dead of Night . In each case, the situation’s power surely consists in the leading character having some compelling vulnerability, or some genuine hurt or need, which endows the resulting dysfunction with dramatic meaning and force. And Gibson’s character, tellingly, hasn’t really done anything bad, apart from generally suffer from grouchy middle-aged depression. The person who really should be depressed is his wife (played by Foster herself) who has the quirky job of roller-coaster designer, but is landed with a blandly written role. The Beaver might not have been bad if it was acted with some subtlety and realism and something approaching a sense of humour. Well, Gibson will have to get his teeth into something else. Rating: 1/5 Cannes 2011 Cannes film festival Mel Gibson Comedy Drama Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk
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Labour leader writes preface to Blue Labour e-book in which he praises movement for recognising the centrality of life beyond the bottom line Ed Miliband has gone further to embrace the thinking of “Blue Labour”, the loose set of intellectuals who believe the party must do more address a conservative working class, by recognising that New Labour’s embrace of globalisation ignored the importance of human relations and community provision of services. Miliband has written a preface for a Blue Labour e-book in which he praises the movement for recognising the centrality of life beyond the bottom line. “It is our families, friends and the places in which we live that give us our sense of belonging,” he writes. The book is based on a set seminars held since the general election looking at the way in which neoliberlaism cut the party off from some of its community traditions. Critics claim Miliband is being forced to embrace Blue Labour and its politics of “radical conservatism” because precious few other intellectual currents are alive in the party, but some Blue Labour thinkers have long admired Miliband and are his close personal friends. Miliband, under pressure to move towards some policy specifics, is due to take further steps in the next week to set out where he thinks the party needs to go after the staging post of the local elections. Mliband argues in a preface to the e-book: “Even in the aftermath of a profound economic crisis, politicians of all parties need to realise that the quality of families’ lives and the strength of the communities in which we live depends as much on placing limits to markets as much as restoring their efficiency. “And for social democrats in particular, the discussion points to the need to ask how it can support a stronger civic culture below the level of Whitehall and Westminster.” Jon Cruddas, the influential Labour backbencher and a supporter of Blue Labour, underlined the political meaning of Blue Labour, saying: “Appealing to Lib Dems is all well and good. But we have to start to reach out to the millions of working class former Labour voters who left us for the Tories. We need to encourage them to come home.” The authors, including the Labour peer Lord Glasman, are sharply critical of Labour following its election defeat saying: “Labour lacked an organised party, it had no plausible ideology, and it had no narrative of the past 13 years that could explain its lack of transformative power. It has no shared interpretation of its history, and it had lost its idea of reason and its conception of the person. “The coalition government had accepted much of its progressive agenda of social tolerance and constitutional reform, and Labour lacked an alternative. It had no viable political economy through which it could address issues of the deficit and sustainable growth. The party was administered, not organised, and its membership had fallen as its power was removed. In England there was no redistribution of power to localities that was not managerial. There had been no development of the appropriate relationship between state, market and society, and of the role that the labour movement and a Labour government could play in generating a good life for our country.” Some of the authors call on its leaders to do more to admit Labour government errors. Marc Stears, an Oxford University academic, writes: “In an understandable desire to protect the reputation of the outgoing government, senior Labour party politicians are frequently found publicly denying that the country’s financial troubles are the party’s fault. But it is extraordinarily difficult for these same politicians to help build new and better relationships in the face of such denials. People will not engage in common action with those who they believe are shirking responsibility. “The crash in the financial sector and the resulting deficit came under Labour’s watch. The party and its leadership is thus always going to be popularly held to be at fault, whatever the disagreements on macro-economic policy. “An acceptance of responsibility – an acknowledgement of weakness in this regard – would not make the crafting of new relationships between Labour’s leaders and its people harder, as is currently implied. It would make it far easier. Pride in our party’s achievements should not prevent us from acknowledging our mistakes. He also urges the party to not to believe “radical politics consists merely of a culture of complaint, and an expectation of state beneficence”. He also delivers a warning that Labour must break out of its current electoral enclaves. “Just like Stanley Baldwin’s National Government of the 1930s, David Cameron’s coalition knows that it can be re-elected without Wales, Scotland, and large swathes of the north of England. It does not need the public sector to be on side. It can quite happily allow Labour to represent the rump, while it collects the support of the rest of the country.” Jonathan Rutherford, one of the central Blue Labour thinkers, warns: “Labour must now have a reckoning with itself. It stopped valuing settled ways of life. It did not speak about an identification and pleasure in local place and belonging. “It said nothing about the desire for home and rootedness, nor did it defend the continuity of relationships at work and in neighbourhoods. It abandoned people to a volatile market in the name of a spurious entrepreneurialism”. He also warns Miliband against becoming associated with a progressive liberal class, at the expense of a wider group in society. “In England’s larger cities, and particularly among the educated elite, economic modernisation has led to an affirmation of racial and cultural difference, and a celebration of novel experience and the expanding of individual choice.” But he says across the country a more conservative culture holds sway which values identity and belonging in the local and the familiar. Economic modernisation, “the new”, and difference, are often viewed more sceptically, and as potential threats to social stability and the continuity of community, he writes. Ed Miliband Labour Jon Cruddas Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Commander of five British soldiers killed by policeman in Helmand says local officers were open to corruption The commanding officer of five British servicemen killed by a rogue Afghan policeman has claimed local officers could lack commitment, were sometimes high on drugs and were open to corruption. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Walker described one episode in which an Afghan police officer passed on ammunition to the Taliban in exchange for narcotics. Walker, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, also told how his men were posted at the checkpoint where they were shot dead following a “blood feud” between an Afghan policeman and a local Taliban commander. At the start of the inquest into his men’s deaths, Walker also insisted that the Afghan police force was full of men determined to do good for their country and he said there was “deep shock” and “shame” within the force following the killing of the five British men. Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, Sergeant Matthew Telford and Guardsman James Major, all of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, died alongside Corporal Steven Boote and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith from the Royal Military police on 3 November 2009. Another six soldiers and two Afghan policemen were injured in the attack. They were sitting on steps at a checkpoint, codenamed Blue 25, in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand when they were killed. They were “relaxing in the sun” at the time and not wearing body armour or carrying weapons. The gunman, known only as Gulbuddin, fled and his motive is not known. At the inquest in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Walker said that Blue 25 had been beset by problems when he and his troops arrived in the area. Residents of the nearby village of Shin Kalay felt the local police at the checkpoint, which was on a vital supply route, were heavy handed. A shura – meeting – was arranged with village elders and it was discovered that there was a blood feud between the local police officer in charge of Blue 25 and a Taliban commander. The checkpoint was coming under attack every night. Walker felt the villagers were tolerating or supporting the Taliban, allowing them to target the checkpoint. Walker decided to use his own security detachment – which usually helped guard him as he moved around the area – to mentor the local police at the checkpoint. He said the arrangement worked well and the routine attacks on the checkpoint stopped. Questioned by the Wiltshire and Swindon coroner, David Ridley, Walker accepted there were general problems within the Afghan police force, giving the example of a checkpoint commander who traded ammunition for drugs with the Taliban. He described how after the exchange, some of the officers got high on the drugs and their police station was attacked by the Taliban later that day. Reinforcements arrived just in time and the police station was saved, but Walker said the same thing happened the next day. This time the reinforcements were hit by a roadside bomb as they raced to help and five police officers died. Walker said such a series of events was “not untypical”. He said Afghan police officers were poorly paid and so were “susceptible to the influence of money”. Walker told the inquest that after the shooting he made a number of recommendations including setting up separate recreation areas for British and Afghan men and making sure rest areas were better protected. He also suggested that sidearms were carried as a deterrent against “irrational action”. The inquest continues. Military Afghanistan Taliban Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Commander of five British soldiers killed by policeman in Helmand says local officers were open to corruption The commanding officer of five British servicemen killed by a rogue Afghan policeman has claimed local officers could lack commitment, were sometimes high on drugs and were open to corruption. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Walker described one episode in which an Afghan police officer passed on ammunition to the Taliban in exchange for narcotics. Walker, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, also told how his men were posted at the checkpoint where they were shot dead following a “blood feud” between an Afghan policeman and a local Taliban commander. At the start of the inquest into his men’s deaths, Walker also insisted that the Afghan police force was full of men determined to do good for their country and he said there was “deep shock” and “shame” within the force following the killing of the five British men. Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, Sergeant Matthew Telford and Guardsman James Major, all of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, died alongside Corporal Steven Boote and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith from the Royal Military police on 3 November 2009. Another six soldiers and two Afghan policemen were injured in the attack. They were sitting on steps at a checkpoint, codenamed Blue 25, in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand when they were killed. They were “relaxing in the sun” at the time and not wearing body armour or carrying weapons. The gunman, known only as Gulbuddin, fled and his motive is not known. At the inquest in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Walker said that Blue 25 had been beset by problems when he and his troops arrived in the area. Residents of the nearby village of Shin Kalay felt the local police at the checkpoint, which was on a vital supply route, were heavy handed. A shura – meeting – was arranged with village elders and it was discovered that there was a blood feud between the local police officer in charge of Blue 25 and a Taliban commander. The checkpoint was coming under attack every night. Walker felt the villagers were tolerating or supporting the Taliban, allowing them to target the checkpoint. Walker decided to use his own security detachment – which usually helped guard him as he moved around the area – to mentor the local police at the checkpoint. He said the arrangement worked well and the routine attacks on the checkpoint stopped. Questioned by the Wiltshire and Swindon coroner, David Ridley, Walker accepted there were general problems within the Afghan police force, giving the example of a checkpoint commander who traded ammunition for drugs with the Taliban. He described how after the exchange, some of the officers got high on the drugs and their police station was attacked by the Taliban later that day. Reinforcements arrived just in time and the police station was saved, but Walker said the same thing happened the next day. This time the reinforcements were hit by a roadside bomb as they raced to help and five police officers died. Walker said such a series of events was “not untypical”. He said Afghan police officers were poorly paid and so were “susceptible to the influence of money”. Walker told the inquest that after the shooting he made a number of recommendations including setting up separate recreation areas for British and Afghan men and making sure rest areas were better protected. He also suggested that sidearms were carried as a deterrent against “irrational action”. The inquest continues. Military Afghanistan Taliban Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Tepco sticks to timetable for ‘cold shutdown’, despite revelations plant suffered greater damaged than previously thought The firm at the centre of Japan’s worst nuclear accident insisted on Tuesday it would bring stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant under control by January 2012, despite evidence that the complex is more seriously damaged than previously thought. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it would try new methods to cool the reactors, but would stick with its original plan, announced a month ago, to stabilise radiation levels and bring the units to a stable condition – a process known as “cold shutdown” – within six to nine months. Officials said the melting of fuel rods in three reactors did not raise the risk of explosions and would not affect the timeline for bringing the plant under control. But Tepco’s roadmap has looked increasingly unworkable recently, after it said uranium fuel rods in three reactors had been left exposed and had melted hours after the earthquake on 11 March. On Friday, the company revealed fuel in the No 1 reactor had partially melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressurised vessel which holds the reactor core together. Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tepco, said reactors Nos 2 and 3 were likely to have suffered similar problems. “The findings at the No 1 reactor indicate the likelihood that water level readings in the other reactors aren’t accurate,” he said. “It could be that a meltdown similar to that in the No 1 reactor has occurred.” Tepco said it will abandon plans to stabilise the reactors by filling them with water, after leaks were discovered in the main vessel of the No 1 reactor. Flooding them would increase the chances of vast quantities of contaminated water leaking out of the complex. Instead, workers will attempt to cool the melted fuel by circulating water that has already built up inside the reactors. The Fukushima Daiichi complex now contains thousands of tonnes of water – enough to fill 36 Olympic-sized swimming pools – adding to fears that the liquid could find its way into groundwater and the Pacific ocean if efforts fail to store it safely. Questions have been raised about Tepco’s original explanation for the crisis. For weeks it claimed power to vital cooling systems inside the reactors was knocked out by the 15 metre tsunami that followed the earthquake. But recently retrieved data from the plant showed the earthquake had been more powerful than three of the six reactors were built to withstand, raising the possibility that at least one of the reactors was disabled before the waves arrived. “This was clearly a larger earthquake than we had forecast,” Matsumoto said. “It would have been hard to anticipate this.” In another revelation that reflects badly on the firm’s ability to manage the crisis, reports suggest a Tepco worker manually cut the power to the cooling system in the No 1 reactor, after data showed it was cooling too quickly in the immediate aftermath of the quake. “At the time we could not have known that the tsunami was coming and that we would lose power,” Matsumoto said. Japan’s earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 people, while another 9,500 are still missing. More than 80,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes after the nuclear accident, with no indication of when they might be able to return. The crisis prompted the prime minister, Naoto Kan, to announce a review of Japan’s energy policy. He ordered the temporary shutdown of another nuclear plant deemed vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis, and abandoned plans to build 14 new nuclear power plants by 2030. Any adjustment to Tepco’s roadmap would have caused embarrassment for Kan, who has been widely criticised for his handling of the crisis. “In terms of achieving cold-shutdown status within six to nine months, I believe we should be able to proceed without changing the timeframe,” he told parliament on Monday. Even if Tepco meets its deadline, experts predicted work to decontaminate the site and decommission the reactors would take years. Japan disaster Japan Natural disasters and extreme weather Nuclear power Nuclear waste Energy Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Tepco sticks to timetable for ‘cold shutdown’, despite revelations plant suffered greater damaged than previously thought The firm at the centre of Japan’s worst nuclear accident insisted on Tuesday it would bring stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant under control by January 2012, despite evidence that the complex is more seriously damaged than previously thought. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it would try new methods to cool the reactors, but would stick with its original plan, announced a month ago, to stabilise radiation levels and bring the units to a stable condition – a process known as “cold shutdown” – within six to nine months. Officials said the melting of fuel rods in three reactors did not raise the risk of explosions and would not affect the timeline for bringing the plant under control. But Tepco’s roadmap has looked increasingly unworkable recently, after it said uranium fuel rods in three reactors had been left exposed and had melted hours after the earthquake on 11 March. On Friday, the company revealed fuel in the No 1 reactor had partially melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressurised vessel which holds the reactor core together. Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tepco, said reactors Nos 2 and 3 were likely to have suffered similar problems. “The findings at the No 1 reactor indicate the likelihood that water level readings in the other reactors aren’t accurate,” he said. “It could be that a meltdown similar to that in the No 1 reactor has occurred.” Tepco said it will abandon plans to stabilise the reactors by filling them with water, after leaks were discovered in the main vessel of the No 1 reactor. Flooding them would increase the chances of vast quantities of contaminated water leaking out of the complex. Instead, workers will attempt to cool the melted fuel by circulating water that has already built up inside the reactors. The Fukushima Daiichi complex now contains thousands of tonnes of water – enough to fill 36 Olympic-sized swimming pools – adding to fears that the liquid could find its way into groundwater and the Pacific ocean if efforts fail to store it safely. Questions have been raised about Tepco’s original explanation for the crisis. For weeks it claimed power to vital cooling systems inside the reactors was knocked out by the 15 metre tsunami that followed the earthquake. But recently retrieved data from the plant showed the earthquake had been more powerful than three of the six reactors were built to withstand, raising the possibility that at least one of the reactors was disabled before the waves arrived. “This was clearly a larger earthquake than we had forecast,” Matsumoto said. “It would have been hard to anticipate this.” In another revelation that reflects badly on the firm’s ability to manage the crisis, reports suggest a Tepco worker manually cut the power to the cooling system in the No 1 reactor, after data showed it was cooling too quickly in the immediate aftermath of the quake. “At the time we could not have known that the tsunami was coming and that we would lose power,” Matsumoto said. Japan’s earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 people, while another 9,500 are still missing. More than 80,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes after the nuclear accident, with no indication of when they might be able to return. The crisis prompted the prime minister, Naoto Kan, to announce a review of Japan’s energy policy. He ordered the temporary shutdown of another nuclear plant deemed vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis, and abandoned plans to build 14 new nuclear power plants by 2030. Any adjustment to Tepco’s roadmap would have caused embarrassment for Kan, who has been widely criticised for his handling of the crisis. “In terms of achieving cold-shutdown status within six to nine months, I believe we should be able to proceed without changing the timeframe,” he told parliament on Monday. Even if Tepco meets its deadline, experts predicted work to decontaminate the site and decommission the reactors would take years. Japan disaster Japan Natural disasters and extreme weather Nuclear power Nuclear waste Energy Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …You rarely see any outrage from the Beltway media when Republicans make insane claims about Democratic policies or politicians. When Alan Grayson went on the attack to try and get better health care for the country, the media quickly threw him under the bus as fast as they could. There is a huge double standard playing out in the media and it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Why is it fine for John Boehner to say on CBS that everything is on the table to lower our deficit except raising taxes? REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: No more whistling past the graveyard. And now is the time to deal with the fiscal problems we have in an adult-like manner. HARRY SMITH: Including Medicare? REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: Medicare, Medicaid, all– everything should be on the table except raising taxes because raising taxes will hurt our economy and hurt our ability to create jobs in our country. That’s not putting everything on the table. Raising taxes brings in much-needed revenue, and to dismiss that out of hand is not acting like an adult. How many times have you heard the Beltway media hail Paul Ryan as a brave and bold man instead of dissecting his policies in detail and exposing them for the shams they are? Luckily, we’re allowed at least one liberal economist on TV to speak up for us instead of the usual Conservative Democrat. Atrios: The Villagers have declared that the Democrats are not allowed to tell the truth about Republican plans. How about we replace their “employer provided health insurance” with a voucher and see if they think it’s the same thing then. Exactly. Let’s ask media elites to have to suffer the same consequences and sacrifice they are asking the American people to have to swallow and see how they would react. By the way, as monikers go, ‘The Enema Man’ fits Alan Simpson to a T. So I see that Alan Simpson is still giving us wise advice . What does it take for someone to stop being regarded in Washington as a wise man? The Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog stuff is actually the least of it. I turns out that Simpson has been telling us how to fix Social Security, yet he doesn’t know the most basic facts about the program, and when confronted with data from the Social Security Administration, he insists that they’re left-wing talking points. Adding Simpson’s name to a document goes a long way to undermining that document’s credibility.
Continue reading …You rarely see any outrage from the Beltway media when Republicans make insane claims about Democratic policies or politicians. When Alan Grayson went on the attack to try and get better health care for the country, the media quickly threw him under the bus as fast as they could. There is a huge double standard playing out in the media and it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Why is it fine for John Boehner to say on CBS that everything is on the table to lower our deficit except raising taxes? REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: No more whistling past the graveyard. And now is the time to deal with the fiscal problems we have in an adult-like manner. HARRY SMITH: Including Medicare? REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: Medicare, Medicaid, all– everything should be on the table except raising taxes because raising taxes will hurt our economy and hurt our ability to create jobs in our country. That’s not putting everything on the table. Raising taxes brings in much-needed revenue, and to dismiss that out of hand is not acting like an adult. How many times have you heard the Beltway media hail Paul Ryan as a brave and bold man instead of dissecting his policies in detail and exposing them for the shams they are? Luckily, we’re allowed at least one liberal economist on TV to speak up for us instead of the usual Conservative Democrat. Atrios: The Villagers have declared that the Democrats are not allowed to tell the truth about Republican plans. How about we replace their “employer provided health insurance” with a voucher and see if they think it’s the same thing then. Exactly. Let’s ask media elites to have to suffer the same consequences and sacrifice they are asking the American people to have to swallow and see how they would react. By the way, as monikers go, ‘The Enema Man’ fits Alan Simpson to a T. So I see that Alan Simpson is still giving us wise advice . What does it take for someone to stop being regarded in Washington as a wise man? The Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog stuff is actually the least of it. I turns out that Simpson has been telling us how to fix Social Security, yet he doesn’t know the most basic facts about the program, and when confronted with data from the Social Security Administration, he insists that they’re left-wing talking points. Adding Simpson’s name to a document goes a long way to undermining that document’s credibility.
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Councillors consider erecting tower for ‘nightmare’ gulls to move 150 nests from Tyne Bridge The only urban colony of kittiwake gulls in the UK faces a potential siege at Tyne Bridge. More than 150 nests have been wedged into granite carvings on the four towers that support Newcastle upon Tyne’s river crossing since the first two pairs arrived in 1997. Initially hailed as a tourist attraction, with visitor signs and temporary telescopes to watch their antics, the seabirds have now been condemned as an obstacle to the riverside’s award-winning regeneration. Newcastle, which has won Forum for the Future’s greenest city award two years running, is sensitive to any move that could forfeit its chances of a hat-trick. So councillors are considering a possible new landmark in an area already famous for Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North – a kittiwake tower to ensure the birds stay locally but not directly above bars, restaurants and shops. Traders in the warren of streets below the bridge, which forms a 15-storey artificial alternative to famous natural nesting sites such as Bempton cliffs on the North Sea coast, describe the level of noise and mess as a “nightmare” and “horrendous”. Debris from the colony includes mummified birds, and shopkeepers such as florist Vivienne Brown say tourists take refuge in shops to avoid being divebombed. The mass keening of the kittiwakes, whose name is inspired by their raucous cry, can also be heard in the tall, narrow streets huddled beside the Tyne. The birds spend winter at sea but return inland to breed between April and August, building larger nests than other gulls. “It’s a cause for concern because the quaysides are such an attraction now,” said a spokesman for Newcastle city council, which has joined Gateshead in two decades of investment along the waterfront. Projects such as the Millennium bridge, Sage concert hall and Baltic gallery have encouraged the opening of dozens of thriving small businesses, restaurants and bars. The kittiwakes were identified as a problem in a report last winter from the two cities’ joint development agency, 1NG. The report has also roused defenders of the colony, led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “They are one of the great features of this city and much loved by many people,” said Martin Kerby, the RSPB’s regional conservation officer. “Tyneside is the only really urban location in the world that you can find them and it is a great shame that this report seems to think they are not an asset but a problem to be removed. “TV crews have often been here to film them, the council itself put up signs to promote them and lots of visitors come to see them on the coast to coast tours. It’s a real shame that biodiversity such as this should be looked on as a problem.” Kittiwakes are causing concern internationally after several poor breeding years in their North Atlantic strongholds. A shortage of their staple prey, sand eels, has coincided with an increase in their main predator, the great skua. Breeding pairs in northern Scotland, home to the main UK population, fell by more than half to 23,000 in the past two decades and recovery has been patchy. The Newcastle council spokesman said there were no plans for immediate action, but the concept of a kittiwake tower had obvious appeal. He said: “They don’t seem to have found the Angel yet, but there could be a lot of interest in designing something appropriate for them just a bit further away.” The strategy has had some success in Gateshead, where a slender metal structure rehoused kittiwakes expelled when the Baltic flour mills were converted into a gallery in 1997. But 30 pairs of the resourceful birds have found their way back, and CCTV footage of their nests and fledglings is being used as a gallery attraction. Newcastle Birds Wildlife RSPB Conservation Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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