Twitter claims of intimate photos of socialite and Top Gear host are untrue and upsetting, says Khan Jemima Khan described weekend rumours that she has taken out a gagging order preventing “intimate photos” of herself and Jeremy Clarkson being published as a “bloody nightmare”. The socialite was among a number of celebrities alleged to have taken out privacy injunctions to stop potentially embarrassing details being made public. A Twitter account claiming to expose the celebrities has attracted about 30,000 followers since its first message on Sunday afternoon. Khan said the rumours were ” untrue and upsetting “, and added on Monday: “I hope the people who made this story up realise that my sons will be bullied at school because of it. Plus I’m getting vile hate tweets.” Khan has consistently denied having obtained a gagging order. On Monday, Mark Stephens, a senior media lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, told the Guardian: “This is discriminatory justice: not one single woman has sought or obtained a superinjunction.” Stephens added that the Twitter user behind the allegations “should expect a knock on the door within the next 48 hours” from solicitors representing the stars. “If it is false, it is libellous; if it is true, it is contemptuous,” he said. The lawyer added that anybody acting for the celebrities could attempt to force Twitter to hand over information about the person behind the account. “Twitter can reveal the user who dialled up to the connection at that time,” he told the Guardian. “The technical trail is indelible – it has the fingerprints of the miscreant all over it. They should expect a knock at the door in the next 48 hours and they should take their toothbrush to court, because they can expect to spend a very long time in Pentonville [prison].” Privacy injunctions – and the high-profile figures alleged to have obtained them – have been thrown into the spotlight in recent weeks as MPs warn of a new privacy law created by judges, rather than parliament. The use of Twitter and other internet sites to publicise the alleged injunctions has made the high court gagging orders “increasingly untenable,” Stephens said on Monday. “We’re in Spycatcher territory here. Eventually, the House of Lords will be forced to accept that the purpose of an injunction has been removed so remove it – as I’m sure they will on this occasion.” Twitter had not returned a request to comment at the time of publication. On Sunday, a Twitter spokesman said the company “strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content,” but that it would remove “illegal tweets and spam”. Keith Arrowsmith, the head of intellectual property and media at Ralli solicitors, told the Guardian that superinjunctions – where even the existence of a gagging order cannot be reported – are rendered ineffective without an international “supercourt” to implement them. “Anything the government says about privacy law is now nonsense, because they can only tweak UK law.” More details soon … • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Privacy & the media Media law Press freedom Newspapers & magazines Newspapers Superinjunctions Twitter Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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A little-known Elizabethan lyric, this week’s poem is an elegant, complex meditation on evanescence I discovered this week’s poem in a glorious anthology, Elizabethan Lyrics, edited by Norman Ault in 1925 . I’d like to say a bit about the anthology first, because it’s such an achievement. Ault’s aim was to challenge the conventional claim about Elizabethan poetry that “After Wyatt and Surrey, nothing; then Sidney and the giants.” The major figures receive duly generous space, of course, but around them swirls a garland of minor but exquisite works, some by Anon, many by long-forgotten names. And, having mined the printed poetry collections, dramatic works, songbooks and manuscripts of the period, Ault arranges all the poems, as far as possible, in chronological order. This means that the poems of the productive major figures are not clumped in the usual way, but scattered across the volume, allowing individual developments, influences and shifts of fashion to be traced. Ault’s cornucopia of an anthology demonstrates that “the giants” were of their time as well as above it; feeding, and fed by, its remarkably fertile soil. The author of this week’s poem, “A Palinode,” is represented only by this single composition (dated 1600) – but what a complex and lovely piece it is. Edmund Bolton was born c.1575 and died c.1633. It seems he was an eccentric sort of character: a Catholic, he held a court post under James I, only to fall out of favour on the accession of Charles I and end his days imprisoned for debt. The palinode is not a strict poetic form: the term simply means a retraction. Bolton, however, raises retraction to an art. His poem is shaped as two sonnets, each rather different in rhyme-scheme, and certainly not straightforward mirror-images of statement and retraction. The sonnets are ingeniously linked by argument and images, the latter arranged in different patterns and symmetries. Bolton might be shaking a kaleidoscope or choreographing a very elaborate minuet. He begins with some pleasant but fairly conventional imagery. Notice how the key verbs of the first four lines (“wither”, “fade”, “vanish”, “melt”) are taken up by the fifth, but set in reverse order, more palindrome than palinode. The sixth line repeats the images of the first four in their original order (“primrose”, “sunlit fountains”, “bubble”, “snow”) but the “primrose” now becomes the “rose”, the “sunlit fountains” are simply, and rather magically, “the shine.” And in line seven we see why. Bolton has evolved a further metaphor: the rose, shine, bubble and snow are now attributes “Of praise, pomp, glory, joy –”. If you’re feeling faintly dazzled, put on your sunglasses; Bolton hasn’t finished. A final melancholy scene reprises the natural emblems, with further beautifully evocative adjectives, and asserts the Biblical lesson. The human treasures we “up-lay” also “wither, vanish, fade, and melt away”. Those verbs do not, of course, denote a logical progress, or “vanish” would need to come last. They simply denote various kinds of evanescence. The second sonnet begins with the four key images, again in reverse order. First, there’s the snow, now attached to an expansive conceit that indicts the over-ambitious hills whose nakedness its melting has exposed. The bubble sails away and wreaks havoc – a shipwreck, no less. Perhaps the repetition of the word “dalliance” should alert us to an erotic subtext? At this point, the plot thickens, the wordplay intensifies. The sun has melted the snow, and perhaps we half expect a chain of reactions now, along the lines of “The House that Jack Built.” But that’s not what happens. The sun restores negative to positive, colours the bubble, makes the primrose grow. Bolton can only be building to another retraction. He is, but he expresses it subtly, concluding his bravura display with a rhetorical question rather than a statement. The final couplet unites the two quartets of concrete and abstract nouns. Evanescence wins, but evanescence itself is temporary. Flowers fade, but grow again, and so on. Bolton’s “A Palinode” reminds me of Louis MacNeice’s “Snow” (it’s possible, of course, that MacNeice knew the Palinode, and sourced his snow and roses there). Bolton, too, sets disparate images together and somehow suggests that, even if life is mere shine and bubble, there is constant wonder in “the drunkenness of things being various”. The poem creates an impression not of pendulum-like assertion and retraction, but of circularity. What goes around comes around, and vice versa. Bolton puts it far more memorably. A Palinode As withereth the primrose by the river, As fadeth summer’s sun from gliding fountains, As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever, As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains: So melts, so vanishes, so fades, so withers The rose, the shine, the bubble and the snow Of praise, pomp, glory, joy – which short life gathers – Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy. The withered primrose by the mourning river, The faded summer’s sun from weeping fountains, The light-blown bubble, vanishéd for ever, The molten snow upon the naked mountains, Are emblems that the treasures we up-lay Soon wither, vanish, fade and melt away. For as the snow, whose lawn did overspread The ambitious hills, which giant-like did threat To pierce the heaven with their aspiring head, Naked and bare doth leave their craggy seat; Whenas the bubble, which did empty fly The dalliance of the undiscernéd wind, On whose calm rolling waves it did rely, Hath shipwreck made, where it did dalliance find; And when the sunshine, which dissolved the snow, Coloured the bubble with a pleasant vary, And made the rathe and timely primrose grow, Swarth clouds withdrawn (which longer time do tarry) – Oh, what is praise, pomp, glory, joy, but so As shine by fountains, bubbles, flowers or snow? Poetry Carol Rumens guardian.co.uk
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Do kick-ass young heroines empower women or are they just sustaining a masculine idea of what feminism is? Imagine a film that celebrates an adolescent boy who’s trained from birth to kill other people and ruthlessly committed to doing just that. Hug him, and he’ll snap your neck. If one of his arrows somehow misses your heart, he’ll shoot you in the back of the head. Even if you’re the unsuspecting young recipient of his first-ever kiss, he’ll feel obliged to give you a surprise beating afterwards for no obvious reason. Such a character’s possible influence on young cinemagoers might give cause for concern. However, Hanna’s a girl, so that’s all right. Is it? As a remorselessly homicidal young cutie, Hanna is just one member of what’s becoming something of a big-screen sorority. Her most obvious antecedent is Kick-Ass’s Mindy (aged 11), but we’ve been seeing a lot of Lisbeth Salander as well as quite a few other tigerish women like those in Sucker Punch. Katniss Everdeen is eagerly awaited in the forthcoming adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games . These brutish babes were perhaps foreshadowed by Luc Besson’s Nikita and Mathilda, as well as by various Japanese pitiless poppets. Now, however, they seem to be becoming not only mainstream but both attractive and praiseworthy. This is clearly good news for blokes who are titillated by murderous misses; but what’s it doing for women? To find out, Hanna’s star, Saoirse Ronan , went to a screening for an all-female audience. “What they really got out of the film was a sense of empowerment ,” she reports. The women found that her character, who “is female and has this strength over so many people”, was “very exciting to see on screen”. Maybe, but perhaps it’s worth asking whether ultra-violence is the optimal form of female assertiveness. Some might imagine that violent behaviour by fictional young women would be unlikely to infect their real-life counterparts, because girls, unlike boys, are hard-wired to shun brutality, and can therefore be relied on to interpret female-enacted savagery merely metaphorically. Maybe such thinking should be regarded as either feminist or misogynist poppycock; anyway, apparently it’s wrong. Research at the University of Montreal has shown that baby girls are just as aggressive as baby boys ; they become less so only because of the social pressure that’s brought to bear on them from infancy. Some researchers, such as Professor James Garbarino , a Chicago psychologist who has advised the FBI on criminal violence, believe that growing on-screen endorsement of violence perpetrated by women is stripping away this conditioning . According to Garbarino, girls appeared immune to contagion by screen violence in the 1960s, but this had changed by the 1980s . He attributes this shift partly to the emergence of violent female protagonists. Even Hermione Granger gives him cause for disquiet. At the end of the third Potter film, she punches Draco Malfoy, exclaims “That felt good”, and is rewarded with cheers from her friends. Says Garbarino: “Girls hit, it feels good and people appreciate it: that’s the message.” If Hermione’s modest fisticuffs have indeed sent out such a signal, the more robust activities of bruisers such as Hanna must surely prove yet more baleful. There are indications that girls are particularly likely to approve on-screen violence when they can see it as symbolising the triumph of good over evil . The mayhem perpetrated by characters such as Hanna is calculated to create just such an impression. Of course, no one can be sure that cinema has had any impact at all on the way young women behave. Yet something has. In England and Wales, assaults have become the most common first-time crime for females under 17 ; such offenders now constitute more than a third of all girls receiving court sentences. Overall, the number of offences involving violence committed by female juveniles increased by 28% between 2002/3 and 2009/10. A similar pattern has emerged across the developed world . Some may view this trend as evidence in itself of a kind of female empowerment. Others, however, may consider young women to be merely aping the pitiful conduct of their menfolk . A perhaps surprising feature of the bloodthirsty heroics of characters such as Hanna and Mindy is that they’re often wholly directed by some kind of patriarch. The young women in these films play out an entirely male-dictated version of what their self-realisation might constitute. Just how empowering is that? Action and adventure Feminism Women David Cox guardian.co.uk
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• Today’s agenda • Timeline: NHS reforms • NHS reforms: who are the key players? • NHS reform jargon explained • What are the key issues? 12.29pm: Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has been out touring the studios to say the coalition has to realise the health and social care bill is “a bad bill”. He was backed, albeit in an unrelated interview, by Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, who said he’d be “delighted if this bill was withdrawn”. Labour’s frontbench spokeswoman Emily Thornberry (above), who in the last election won her seat partly by fighting against a local hospital closure, told the BBC that it was worth noting that the Department of Health’s response to criticism by family doctors was to say the bill was “going to get the market to work in favour of patients”. Thornberry noted: A third of the bill will create a new monster called Monitor … to “drive competition into the heart of the NHS’. Once you let that genie out of the bottle you can never put it back again. Meanwhile over at Channel 4, London GP Dr Jonathon Tomlinson argues that the NHS will be gobbled up by private companies. As Adrian Fawcett, CEO of the largest private hospital group in the UK – General Healthcare Group (GHG) – said: “We are entering a new, exciting era, driven by the forthcoming healthcare reform that will ultimately change, to our benefit, the landscape in which we operate.” I can imagine the future for my patients. Because of the cuts, several unprofitable departments in the local hospital will have closed. The services will hopefully be available elsewhere, but my patients will be forced to travel to unfamiliar and inconvenient places. They will be “allowed” to pay extra to jump queues for treatment, to have side-rooms in hospital or additional care. Those services that remain free will have long waiting lists and will be severely restricted, for example physiotherapy or psychotherapy will be limited to a handful of sessions with a junior practitioner. Simple procedures can be performed more efficiently and profitably than complex care, so that care for the elderly, home care, psychiatry, and treatment for addiction will be hit hardest because market incentives will divert resources towards the most profitable work. My job as coordinator of my patients’ care will be made impossible because of the huge array of different companies involved in looking after my patients. 12.05pm: The union of British doctors has just sent us their briefing paper for MPs ahead of today’s opposition debate. Essentially, the British Medical Association (BMA) seems to be saying that they’ll support Lansley’s bill, but only if all of its key demands are taken out. The letter reads: The bill brings into stark relief a number of grave concerns about the way the government wants to change the NHS, and the BMA believes that it requires significant amendment to prevent these concerns becoming reality. There remain considerable gaps, which must be addressed to ensure proper accountability, to prevent unacceptable variation and to ensure appropriate national oversight of key issues such as education, training and workforce. Here are a few of the BMA’s suggested changes: • Challenging the role of the health regulator: “Monitor’s primary role is not to promote competition but is to protect and promote high quality, comprehensive, integrated healthcare services.” • Maintaining the role of the secretary of state as having “ultimate overall responsibility” for the health service, with continued national oversight of medical education and training. • Challenging timetable to get rid of PCTs and make hospitals achieve foundation status. The BMA says that the timetable should remain flexible to prevent “artificially rigid” timetables undermining patient care. • The BMA also calls for “strong safeguards” to be put in place to ensure that patient confidentiality is not undermined by the Information Revolution. The head of the BMA, Hamish Meldrum, has already spoken out against the proposed reforms on this blog . 11.56am: Paul Corrigan, Tony Blair’s former health adviser, writes here about the planned health reforms. The killer paragraphs are here: On the ground there are already significant changes happening for patients. Last Thursday I received my first email advert from a private medical insurance company that was selling to me based clearly upon the impact of the Government NHS reforms. A firm providing users with an overall analysis of all private medical insurance, your health, your choice, beat that quote. Their offer recognised the return of waiting lists to the NHS, something that had become a thing of the past: “With this type of insurance you are able to avoid NHS waiting lists and secure treatment as quickly as possible.” Those selling private medical insurance recognise the anxiety that people on NHS waiting lists feel. They recognise that waiting lists have increased over the last year and that therefore they have an opportunity to sell to people on those lists. The government have withdrawn the necessity for the NHS to reduce waiting times and by doing so have renewed a market for private medical insurance that had been diminished by the success of the 18-week target. Up until this time last year I thought the NHS had won this issue. But in one short year the basket case that is NHS reform has increased waiting lists and reopened this market. 11.34am: Andrew George (left), the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, has sent a press release to the blog headlined: NHS reform: Better start afresh says Liberal Democrat rebel leader It’s true to say that George has been hostile to the coalition’s proposed reforms since they were first floated. But he is raising the stakes again today calling for a stop rather than a pause in the reforms. We have a chance to allow the coalition to mature now that it’s passed its first anniversary. We should work together where we agree; seek compromise where we don’t; and where comprise cannot be reached agree to take unresolved matters to parliament to decide. We should adopt “listening” as a theme for government, not as grudging concession when things start falling apart. The bill itself should be stopped rather than paused. Any policy which undermines the NHS ethos through marketisation, fragments services which need to be integrated and which hands executive power to a narrow group of clinicians who are reluctant to take on such responsibilities anyway is destined to fail. Any attempt to remove the duty on government to maintain a comprehensive NHS, as this bill does, should be vigorously opposed too. To use the language of the NHS chief exec – Sir David Nicholson – you should be able to see this government U-turn “from outer space”. If not then we should start again. I’m pleased that we’ve been able to turn the debate around since my lone voice protest 10 months ago. Saving the NHS is more important than saving a few egos in the coalition. Will anyone follow the rebel leader? 11.07am: With Labour and the Tories trading blows over health cuts, Randeep Ramesh has been digging around in some of the international data on health. A couple of things stand out: 1. According to the IMF: “The projections suggest that the outlook is grim in the United States, but also in Europe, where the fiscal challenge posed by health spending is sometimes underestimated.” IMF projected increase in public health spending in advanced economies, 2011-30, per cent of GDP: 2. Our GPs, according to the OECD, the rich world’s thinktank, are among the best paid in the world – see graph below. The truth is that about 40% of the government’s projected £20bn of savings comes from cutting staff costs – and that means taking on doctors over pay. While GPs are no doubt sincere in their attacks over the detrimental pro-competition aspects of the health bill, there is a question over whether doctors’ opposition is rooted in self-interest. 10.40am: How are health cuts affecting patients right now? In this audio interview , Rowenna Davis speaks to Linda Reason, the head of health and adult care at Barking and Dagenham council, and Anne Bristow, the director of adult and community services, to find out. In this interview, the council members explain how decisions are being taken “behind closed doors”. Senior cabinet members are only being told about spending cuts the night before they are due to be announced. Already they say that walk-in centres have been closed and access to GPs is being denied. A campaign to save services has also been launched, with almost 1,000 signatures collected so far. _ 10.12am: The Daily Telegraph’s political editor was briefed over the weekend that Downing Street has sent over his own health adviser to the Department of Health to “sell the reforms” . Sean Worth, who is currently David Cameron’s health adviser in Downing Street, will make the short journey across Whitehall and act as a close adviser to Mr Lansley. I am indebted to Andy Cowper , who points out that long ago health experts had singled out Worth as a safe pair of hands. Worth is a labour economist by training, and was behind the Tories’ voluntary insurance proposals to fund long-term care for the elderly. Henry Featherstone, formerly of Policy Exchange and now in PR, wrote this profile of Worth for the HSJ 100 . Featherstone presciently wrote that Worth is “politically astute and dedicated to market ideology”. Worth “will be relied on to push through reform if the DH stumbles”, she said. 10.00am: PoliticsHome (paywall) has been following former Liberal Democrat MP and practising doctor Evan Harris on Radio 5 Live. My colleague Andrew Sparrow over at the Politics blog emails with what Harris said: We have two conferences a year, in September and in March, and in March we identified democratically and clearly those bits of the bill that we didn’t like so yes you could say the Liberal Democrats formally didn’t reject until March a bill that wasn’t launched in January but there wasn’t any opportunity between January and March for us to identify what parts; we didn’t have the processes in place. 9.50am: Our health correspondent Denis Campbell just sent us his thoughts on the Royal College of GPs’ comments today. Here he questions the future of the health secretary at a time when many are describing the health bill as a “poll tax in an NHS uniform”: The Royal College of GPs’ submission to the government’s NHS “listening exercise” could not be more timely. Nick Clegg told Andrew Marr yesterday – bluntly, not in the usual political code – that the Liberal Democrats wouldn’t wear the health and social care bill unless it underwent major changes. Today GPs’ leaders are saying essentially the same thing. Significantly, the deputy prime minister yesterday said that “no bill is better than a bad one”. Given the chance the RGP would probably rather see the entire bill scrapped and the government start again from scratch in its approach to NHS reform. Interestingly, both the Lib Dems and the RCGPs – especially the latter – are pressing for changes to some of the bill’s real fundamentals, especially the planned ultra-intensification of competition in England’s NHS. That’s the element of health secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans that has caused the most trouble politically for the government; the fear, justified or not, that “any willing provider” and other elements of marketisation will see the NHS privatised. Every passing day makes Lansley’s hold on his job appear more and more tenuous. The fact that he remains convinced that his bill needs only minor changes shows how unsuited he is to playing a central role in the coalition’s post-”listening exercise” efforts to belatedly win hearts and minds in this most delicate of areas, the NHS. The bigger the Cameron/Clegg-agreed U-turn ultimately is, the worse his chances of survival. Increasingly he is in office but not in power. That is a real shame for a man who, whatever his failings, friends say is so genuinely, passionately committed to his vision of transforming the NHS for the best possible reasons. Can anyone think of such radical proposals from a cabinet minister in recent memory that have been so poorly explained, and so signally failed to gain consent and then had to undergo this actually extraordinary two-month “pause”? No wonder some critics see it as the poll tax in an NHS uniform. 9.43am: Here is today’s media round-up. The health reforms are dominating the news this morning, and we’ll be following up these stories throughout the day … • This morning a new report from the Royal College of GPs warned that the NHS could “unravel” if the health secretary’s reforms went ahead , as covered by the BBC . The college want the government to step back from introducing market forces into the NHS. Most important perhaps for patients is that family doctors won’t be able to charge the sick for coming into surgery. That commissioners or providers should not be able to charge patients for healthcare services that are currently provided free by the NHS or are recommended by Nice. • According to our colleagues over at the Politics blog , Conservatives aren’t happy about Nick Clegg’s comments over the weekend, when the deputy prime minister positioned himself against the reforms. • Last night the health secretary Andrew Lansley released a statement saying that new analysis of Labour’s spending plans shows that they would cut NHS budgets by £28bn over the next four years. The editor of the Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson, sounds disappointed , saying he’s “singing someone else’s song”. • On the Today programme this morning, Norman Lamb, Nick Clegg’s point man in parliament, and John Redwood, the Tory right’s ideologue-in-chief, went head to head. Lamb, his party’s former spokesperson on health, said changes to the bill “shouldn’t be regarded as concessions to placate Lib Dems”. But Lamb did warn that US-style privatisation of healthcare would be a “disaster” and that there was a “concern” that the reform “elevates competition above other really important principles”. Redwood said he “loves the NHS” and accused the Lib Dem’s deputy leader Simon Hughes of “not understanding the NHS at all”. “These are coalition proposals that the Liberal Democrats contributed very strongly to.” Nick Robinson gave a great intro: describing the rise and fall of Andrew Lansley, Tory health secretary, in the eyes of the professionals and how an Orange Book Clegg advocated a European-style health system, where people paid insurance premiums rather than tax – and accurately described the NHS reforms as a contest between Lib Dems and Tories for “the credit” in changing the bill. 8.57am: The health secretary must be anxiously preparing for his appearance in the Commons this afternoon. This weekend Nick Clegg threatened to derail the minister’s plans to shake up the NHS unless they were significantly reformed. Today the Royal College of GPs has warned that the NHS could “unravel” if his health bill goes ahead. We’ll be live-blogging Andrew Lansley’s responses during health questions this afternoon, and a lot more besides. With a focus on cuts to health services, here is today’s star line up: Coming soon: Our health correspondent Denis Campbell gives us his thoughts on the report from the Royal College of GPs out today. 10:30am: Linda Reason, cabinet member for health and adult services in Barking and Dagenham, talks to us about what effects the cuts are having on patients right now. 1-2pm: Nick Seddon, deputy director of the liberal thinktank Reform, will be debating the case for cuts with Barbara McKenna, Unison’s head of health for the east Midlands, and Richard Grimes, who writes on health issues at Torylies . 3pm: We’ll be hearing from another senior Unison member about their meeting with the health secretary, straight after putting their concerns to him this afternoon. Also this afternoon – we’ll be live blogging the health questions as Lansley appears in parliament and covering the Labour opposition day debate. 4-5pm: Gary Walker, former chief executive at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust who presided over massive efficiency savings who now leads management consultant firm Modern Leader , comes on to tell us how it worked along with head of a health charity facing cuts (name tbc). NHS Health Health policy Randeep Ramesh Rowenna Davis guardian.co.uk
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The tightening suppression of China’s creative voices makes this a good moment to seek them out. Please point us in the right direction Last month’s coup, with Claire Armitstead blasting off to Russia in pursuit of Yuri Gagarin , spread a little stardust over our collection of recommendations , with Dominic H hymning the “sharp, beautful, unforgettable, prose” of Venedikt Yerofeev ‘s Brezhnev-era Inferno, Moscow Stations, GraceAndreacchi saluting Pechorin in Mikhail Lermontov ‘s A Hero of Our Time as “the Russian anti-hero at his Byronic best” and, of course, chak’s reminder of a work I’m sure we’re all familiar with, Alexander Plotkin’s, erm, запретный плод . But this month we’re taking the World literature tour back to its roots, calling up the spirit of Diego’s original invention and returning to the democratic principles on which it was first established by heading to … China. The irony of heading to the world’s mightiest totalitarian regime, which has kept a tight lid on dissent since 1989′s Tiananmen Square protests , on the basis of a vote, is acute. At the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, International Pen identified 42 writers and journalists imprisoned by the regime , a situation which appears only to have worsened since, with 10 pages of International Pen’s 2010 caselist taken up with Chinese writers and recent uprisings across the Arab world prompting a new crackdown . All the more reason to celebrate both great writers from the past and those contemporary authors who are bravely creating fine work despite the commercial and political difficulties which surround them . Using the boxes below, we can assemble a list of fiction, non-fiction, poems and plays – whether written by Chinese authors or those looking at the Middle Kingdom from the outside – which can paint a portrait of life in China beyond the reach of any censor’s black marker. I’m off to recommend the excellent Zhu Wen , as well as Bi Feiyu’s brutal novella Moon Opera , filling in the country – that’s China – the title, the author, the translator and some indication of why they’re both so great in the boxes of power down below. But while you’re racking your brains over whether to suggest Li Bai or Wang Wei , remember to keep an eye on the future. After China, where next? Remember to vote for the country of your choice in the comments below. The destination of the World literature is in your hands. Fiction Poetry Richard Lea guardian.co.uk
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Oscar-nominated actor reportedly frontrunner to star in Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western tribute set in days of slavery The storyline to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained was revealed recently when the screenplay leaked online. Now it appears that Will Smith is emerging as the frontrunner to play the lead role. Django Unchained – the title pays tribute to the 1966 Sergio Corbucci film Django, and is a paean to spaghetti westerns – calls for an actor to play a black slave who escapes from his bonds and becomes a gunslinger. The setting is the deep south, rather than the old west, and the title character will be joined on his mission to free his still-enslaved wife by a German bounty hunter. Austrian actor and new Tarantino favourite, Christoph Waltz, is being lined up to play the latter part following his Oscar-winning turn as a SS colonel in Inglourious Basterds. The Hollywood Reporter says there will also be a role for Tarantino stalwart Samuel L Jackson, that of the manipulative house slave to the villain – plantation owner Monsieur Calvin Candie (Django’s former master). The screenplay calls for a face-off between the two African-American characters. No official offer has yet been made to Smith, and with a script that apparently features extravagant use of the “N” word, it’s a film that could yet prove difficult to cast. Django Unchained reportedly explores the issue of race in typically breezy Tarantino style. The Hollywood Reporter suggests the Oscar-nominated actor has received the script but says it’s unclear at this stage whether he will sign on the dotted line. Inglourious Basterds was Tarantino’s most successful film so far at the global box office, pulling in an impressive $321m (£196m). Teaming up with Smith, one of the top high-earning stars in the world, would make Django Unchained hot property when it arrives in cinemas next year. Tarantino aims to shoot in the autumn, potentially in Louisiana, so a 2012 release date seems possible. Will Smith Quentin Tarantino Action and adventure Ben Child guardian.co.uk
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UN’s climate change science body says renewables supply, particularly solar power, can meet global demand Renewable energy could more than meet the world’s expected growth in future energy demand, according to a landmark report published on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the United Nations, said that solar power holds out the greatest hope for generating low-carbon energy around the planet. The report marks the first time the IPCC has examined low-carbon energy in depth, and the first interim report since the body’s comprehensive 2007 review of the science of climate change . Although the authors are optimistic about the future of renewable energy, they note that many forms of the technology are still more expensive than fossil fuels, and find that the production of renewable energy will have to increase by as much as 20 times in order to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. Renewables will play a greater role than either nuclear or carbon capture and storage by 2050, the scientists predict. Investing in renewables can also help poor countries to develop, particularly where large numbers of people lack access to an electricity grid. About 13% of the world’s energy came from renewable sources in 2008, a proportion likely to have risen as countries have built up their capacity since then, with China leading the investment surge, particularly in wind energy. But by far the greatest source of renewable energy used globally at present is burning biomass (about 10% of the total global energy supply), which is problematic because it can cause deforestation, leads to deposits of soot that accelerate global warming, and cooking fires cause indoor air pollution that harms health. As with all IPCC reports, the summary for policymakers – the synopsis of the report that will be presented to governments and is likely to impact renewable energy policy – must be agreed line by line and word by word unanimously by all countries. This will be done at Monday’s meeting in Abu Dhabi. This makes the process lengthy, but means that afterwards no government or scientist represented can say that they disagree with the finished findings, which the IPCC sees as a key strength of its operations. As a result of this process, the key summary is not likely to be published until around noon on Monday. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Energy Solar power Climate change Global climate talks Renewable energy United Nations Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
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Centrica blamed the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and the Fukushima nuclear crisis for pushing up the cost of power Britons should be braced for higher energy bills this winter after Centrica warned that wholesale gas and electricity prices have risen by a quarter compared with last year. Centrica blamed the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and the Fukushima nuclear crisis following March’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan for pushing up the cost of power. Domestic bills, the energy giant said, do not yet reflect this. “In the UK, the forward wholesale prices of gas and power for delivery in winter 2011/12 are currently around 25% higher than prices last winter, with end-user prices yet to reflect this higher wholesale market price environment,” said Centrica, which owns British Gas, on Monday morning. Oil prices had soared earlier this year, with the cost of a barrel of Brent crude hitting $127 in April, compared with just $85 a year ago. Prices did fall back slightly last week, though, as the commodities boom faltered. On Monday, Brent crude was trading at $111 a barrel. Shares in Centrica fell by 3.4% in early trading, to 304.8p, after it admitted that its profit growth for the current financial year will be lower than expected. It pinned the blame, in part, on the tax increases announced by George Osborne in the last budget . Centrica now expects to pay an extra £300m in tax in the UK, and told shareholders that it will no longer “maintain the previously projected high levels of investment in the UK”. “We continue to expect growth in our 2011 group earnings but at a more modest rate than anticipated at the time of our last results announcement as upstream profits have become more highly taxed,” said Centrica. Last week Centrica warned that it may close its Morecambe Bay field in response to the raid on North Sea oil and gas producers. Centrica told the City that the UK domestic market was “significantly more challenging” than a year ago, with average residential gas consumption in the first four months of the year 19% lower than for the same period in 2010. Electricity consumption fell by 4%. The company said this was due to warmer weather this year, particularly in April, as well as energy efficiency improvements. The company also reported that British Gas now has nearly 16 million customers, a slight increase on the level at the end of 2010. Centrica Energy bills Consumer affairs Household bills Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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