Thirty-eight patients in south Wales underwent surgery with instruments used on person at high risk of fatal brain condition Thirty-eight patients who underwent surgery with instruments previously used on a patient at high risk of the fatal brain condition CJD have been warned they may contract the disease. Health authorities say the likelihood of the long-incubating Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease having spread is low. However, the concerns over possible sterilisation problems at a hospital in south Wales in 2007 echo those raised at Middlesbrough general hospital in 2002 when 24 patients were told they had been exposed to risk . The hospital is not being named but it is overseen by the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board, which includes hospitals in Swansea, Maesteg and Port Talbot. A statement from Public Health Wales on Monday said: “Letters were sent to those at risk after it became apparent that a patient who underwent surgery in a hospital in the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board area in 2007 was at high risk of the disease. “All surgical instruments used on the patient were removed from use when the patient’s history became known, and all patients operated on with the same instruments in the interim have now been informed.” Jörg Hoffmann, its consultant in communicable disease control, said: “In this incident, we do not have a single confirmed case of CJD. However, we do have one patient who was at high risk and 38 people at extremely low risk. “We know that all the surgical instruments used on this group of patients were cleaned, disinfected and sterilised normally. However, it is possible that the proteins that cause CJD, known as prions, survived these routine sterilisation procedures so an extremely small risk of transmission remains. “We have identified and written to all patients concerned to make them aware of the extremely low risk. They have been offered information and support and a helpline has been set up for anyone who has received a letter and has further questions.” He said there was no risk to anybody else. The statement did not say how it had emerged that the initial patient had been discovered to be at high risk of CJD, nor what type of surgery he or she had undergone. For decades there has been concern over the possibility of CJD, or its variant – originally caused by eating contaminated meat from BSE-infected cows – being transmitted through surgery. There have, however, only been six cases worldwide of any form of CJD being transmitted in this way. The Middlesbrough case led to a UK overhaul of guidance on the quarantining of instruments used on “risky” patients and the handling of such cases. Health Wales NHS James Meikle guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Thirty-eight patients in south Wales underwent surgery with instruments used on person at high risk of fatal brain condition Thirty-eight patients who underwent surgery with instruments previously used on a patient at high risk of the fatal brain condition CJD have been warned they may contract the disease. Health authorities say the likelihood of the long-incubating Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease having spread is low. However, the concerns over possible sterilisation problems at a hospital in south Wales in 2007 echo those raised at Middlesbrough general hospital in 2002 when 24 patients were told they had been exposed to risk . The hospital is not being named but it is overseen by the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board, which includes hospitals in Swansea, Maesteg and Port Talbot. A statement from Public Health Wales on Monday said: “Letters were sent to those at risk after it became apparent that a patient who underwent surgery in a hospital in the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board area in 2007 was at high risk of the disease. “All surgical instruments used on the patient were removed from use when the patient’s history became known, and all patients operated on with the same instruments in the interim have now been informed.” Jörg Hoffmann, its consultant in communicable disease control, said: “In this incident, we do not have a single confirmed case of CJD. However, we do have one patient who was at high risk and 38 people at extremely low risk. “We know that all the surgical instruments used on this group of patients were cleaned, disinfected and sterilised normally. However, it is possible that the proteins that cause CJD, known as prions, survived these routine sterilisation procedures so an extremely small risk of transmission remains. “We have identified and written to all patients concerned to make them aware of the extremely low risk. They have been offered information and support and a helpline has been set up for anyone who has received a letter and has further questions.” He said there was no risk to anybody else. The statement did not say how it had emerged that the initial patient had been discovered to be at high risk of CJD, nor what type of surgery he or she had undergone. For decades there has been concern over the possibility of CJD, or its variant – originally caused by eating contaminated meat from BSE-infected cows – being transmitted through surgery. There have, however, only been six cases worldwide of any form of CJD being transmitted in this way. The Middlesbrough case led to a UK overhaul of guidance on the quarantining of instruments used on “risky” patients and the handling of such cases. Health Wales NHS James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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Accept the lead role in a musical and there’s nowhere to hide, Daniel Radcliffe. But somehow semi-competence is perfect here If this series proves anything, it is that the quality of people’s acting will always be a matter of opinion. Singing and dancing, on the other hand … Well, if you accept the lead role in a Broadway musical then there is only so much uncertainty to hide behind. As Daniel Radcliffe has just discovered. Two things emerge unanimously from the American reviews of his performance as the young window cleaner J Pierrepont Finch, who strives to scale the corporate pyramid in How to Succeed in Oh I Can’t Be Bothered You Type the Rest. The first thing: everybody wishes young Radcliffe well. The second thing: absolutely no one thinks he can sing. “As winningly game and diligent as he shows himself to be … he’s out of his league,” says Peter Marks in the Washington Post . “Radcliffe’s skills do not include showmanship, an attribute this slick part cries out for. Because carrying a tune is not the same as carrying a production, and merely talking fast does not a fast-talker make.” Joe Dziemianowicz in the New York Daily News concurs. “He shows off a pleasant singing voice,” Dziemianowicz says, “but he’s waxen and not animated enough to make Finch soar.” Even the show’s best review, in USA Today , comes to much the same conclusion. “Radcliffe relaxes enough to revel in the controlled chaos,” writes Elysa Gardner. “He also reveals, in the musical numbers, a serviceable tenor and sufficient rhythmic savvy to handle Frank Loesser’s jaunty, jazz-tinged score.” The problem, as everybody notes, is that, no matter how expertly he flaps around and gasps for breath, Radcliffe on Broadway remains a fish out of water. Or, to put it kindly – as Charles McNulty in the LA Times does – “an honest-to-goodness trouper”. “Gleaming with young-adult stardom,” McNulty continues, “Radcliffe gets an A for effort, but he doesn’t have the theatrical stature to pull together this choppy production.” In the New York Times, Ben Brantley is less indulgent. “I would give him, oh, a 6 out of 10,” he sighs, like a well-meaning but eternally disappointed maths teacher. “[Radcliffe] conscientiously hits his choreographic marks, speaks his lines quickly and distinctly (with a convincing American accent) and often sings on key … You truly want him to succeed, just as you hope a favorite athlete or hip-hop artist will avoid elimination on Dancing With the Stars. But you don’t particularly want his character in the show to succeed, and that really is a problem.” Yet, despite all this, with something that the less imaginative critics cannot resist calling wizardry, Radcliffe survives. Scott Brown at New York magazine , as he tends to, puts the matter well: “Radcliffe has often struck the ungenerous mind – mine, I mean – as a nice, lucky kid who was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “He was the boy who looked like Harry Potter, therefore Hollywood made him Harry Potter … Radcliffe, Equus aside, has always given off a just-happy-to-be-here vibe. He still does, and it might be his greatest asset here. For Finch is also a bit of a blank page, one that no one can resist filling with his or her obsessions.” Bingo! Radcliffe’s own semi-competence just happens to be suited perfectly for the part! “He doesn’t have to play the role like a Broadway wiseguy,” notes Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune , “he can play him as a risk-taking, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kid. That feels like a pretty apt description of Radcliffe himself in his first Broadway musical. The hair-raising tour de force not only is great fun for everybody, but it also fits the themes of the piece.” So it looks as though Radcliffe, in the end, has come out ahead. Which makes this probably a good time to quit. Do say Wizard performance! Don’t say What, he isn’t naked ? The reviews reviewed Well done. Just. Daniel Radcliffe Broadway Theatre Musicals US press and publishing Leo Benedictus guardian.co.uk
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All eight appointments to the bench since that of Lady Hale in 2004 have been white men Just two weeks after it was reported that women in the legal professions are still finding it difficult to break through the glass ceiling , here comes another setback. Though an official announcement has yet to be made, it seems that the next two appointments to the supreme court will be men. Sir Nicholas Wilson and Jonathan Sumption QC were said to be in the running when Sir John Dyson was appointed in March 2010. This time they’ve made it to the finish line. Of course there is much to be said about Sumption’s “leapfrogging” from the bar straight into the top level of the judiciary. But what about the most obvious characteristic they both share with all but one of their new colleagues? What of the fact that, Baroness Hale excepted, the supreme court is populated by white men? When it comes to the diversity of its members, the supreme court continues to lag far behind its overseas counterparts . Since Lady Hale’s elevation to the then House of Lords in 2004, all of the subsequent eight appointments to the supreme court have been men. In contrast, four of the nine members of the Canadian supreme court, three of the nine justices on the US supreme court, three of the seven judges of the high court of Australia and 19 out of the 47 judges on the European court of human rights are women. Furthermore, none of the members of the UK supreme court (or the court of appeal for that matter) has a black or minority ethnic background. Nor is there the diversity in sexual orientation found on the South African constitutional court and, until recently, Australia’s high court. This lack of diversity should give us pause for thought. Indeed, if the recent exchange between Lady Kennedy (incidentally the only woman on the government’s bill of rights commission ) and Lord McNally in the House of Lords is anything to go by, questions are already being asked. After all, assuming that judicial qualities are, on the whole, evenly distributed between men and women, appointment on merit should lead to (more or less) equal numbers of male and female judges, precisely because women are just as likely as men to possess the attributes of good judges. However, the reality is that this will happen only if the pool from which appointments are made is itself gender-balanced. We don’t know how many women applied in the latest round of appointments (though none made it on to the all-male shortlist ). But what we do know is that as long as we continue to select only from legal professions in which women continue to find it difficult to progress , appointment “on merit” will do little more than replicate this imbalance. If this is the case, then appointment on merit and progress to a more diverse judiciary truly are opposed. Something has to give. So what are the options? The answer need not be simply to parachute women into the shortlist through the use of quotas or targets. Nor should we abandon the search for “the best”, the goal of appointment on merit. The way forward lies in recognising that, all other things being equal, a more diverse judiciary is a better judiciary. Appointment on merit requires us to look for merit wherever and however it is to be found. This requires, first, that we acknowledge – with Hale – that a judiciary is enriched by the diversity of its members, by incorporating a broader pool of experiences, insights and attributes. For it is on this experience, insight and expertise that all judges will, on occasion, need to rely when applying and developing the law. Second, it means we must be alive to the risk that our quest for the best appointments may be thrown off track by misplaced assumptions as to how and where these are to be found. Should the rumours prove true, what the latest round of appointments shows is that there is a danger that we end up associating judicial quality with the attributes possessed by those who have traditionally held such positions, the result being that we see merit only in its familiar guises. Direct appointments to the supreme court bench may yet prove to be an effective way of addressing some of these problems. However, if the government is truly committed to a more diverse judiciary, then it needs to do more to ensure that the highly qualified women, who are out there and are eligible for judicial appointment, are promoted to the supreme court bench. After all, when it is suggested that the appointment of yet another white, male barrister – albeit one who has not previously held a judicial appointment – might be welcomed for the “diversity” it brings, then something is amiss. • Erika Rackey is on the executive committee of the Equal Justices Initiative , a group of academics, practitioners, judges and policymakers working towards gender parity on the bench UK supreme court Judiciary Gender Race issues Erika Rackley guardian.co.uk
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To prepare for the Lewa marathon, Adharanand Finn starts training with a new team of top Kenyan runners “It’s like we’re going to war,” jokes our coach, Godfrey, as we pile out from the back of the pick-up truck and start stripping down to our shorts and T-shirts. My wife, Marietta is scooting around taking photographs, while my children watch sleepy eyed from the truck cab, piles of water bottles on their laps, a bunch of bananas up on the dashboard. At the end of my six months in Kenya I’m going to run the Lewa marathon . Whenever I mention it to runners here in Iten they shake their heads and say: “That is hard.” The race is hot, hilly and is run along dirt trails. Oh, and there are lions and cheetah roaming around. To keep the wildlife at bay, the organisers send out helicopters to circle the route, but there’s not much they can do about the heat, the hills and the uneven terrain. It’s not a fast course. To help me prepare, I’ve managed to find myself a team of top Kenyan runners who also want to race in Lewa. We’ve christened ourselves the Iten Town Harriers and this morning we’re off on our first training run. The rainy season seems to have ended early and the early morning air is crisp and fresh. Runners and small buses pass by as we stand on the side of the main tarmac road in Iten while Godfrey gives us a little prep talk. “No racing,” he says. “Take it nice and easy.” And with that we’re off. The plan is to run a steady 30km, although I’ve already told them I’m likely to bail out at 20km. The truck, with Godfrey and my family in it, will follow us along the way, giving us five km time splits and handing out water if we need it. I’ve never been a great organiser, so I’m amazed this has all come together. My approach is usually to have an idea, put it out there and then hope that someone will come along to help me put it into action. In Kenya, it’s not a recipe that usually gets me very far, but somehow today it has worked. Our team’s star runner is Chris Cheboiboch , who has the fifth fastest time ever in the New York marathon. He’s a smooth operator who travels everywhere in his low-slung car, his Rolex and big grin hanging out of the window. He is largely responsible for everything coming together this morning, especially as he managed to find a truck we could use for the day. Godfrey, our big-hearted coach, got me worried when he rang me up the night before the run to tell me there was a change of plan. This usually means he has double booked himself, or he’s somewhere on the other side of the country, but fortunately he was just calling to say he would be 15 minutes late. Kenyans are infamous for bad timekeeping, but I’ve found that every training run I’ve been on has started exactly on the dot. If they say 6.10am, they’ll be gone if you turn up at 6.12am. Godfrey is bringing over a young runner called Shadrack, who he keeps telling me is going to win Lewa, for sure. “Are you kidding me,” he says. “This boy is good.” Shadrack himself is quiet and gentle, like most runners out here. His friend and training partner, David Barmasai, has just won the Dubai marathon , the world’s richest race, and I get the feeling Shadrack is feeling a bit left behind. Also on the start-line for our morning run is Josphat, a friend of Chris who has been running for years. There is much debate about his age, although his official Lewa entry form says he is still only 34. He doesn’t say much but instead likes to stand quietly in the background with a knowing look on his face. The last runner is one of my neighbours in Iten, Japhet. A young man of 24, he lives in a humble wooden shack without any electricity. His shoes are torn almost to pieces, which gives him a constant string of niggling injuries he treats by massaging himself. Despite his hardships, Japhet is a full-time athlete – even though he has never actually made a single Kenyan shilling from running. He’s a talkative, friendly person who is constantly smiling and saying: “It is good.” The run sets off at a gentle pace (we go through the first five km in 24 minutes), and I run at the head of the group with Chris, the two elders leading our troop along. After about ten minutes the truck drives past us along the main road, the children waving, Marietta crouched in the back snapping away. It’s a beautiful morning as we turn off the road and head out through the lush patchwork of fields. The dirt road meanders gently through small homesteads, clusters of round mud huts dotting the landscape like huge kilns or chimneys for an network of underground houses. At ten km the truck stops and Godfrey and my eldest daughter hand out water bottles, which we grab on the run as Godfrey shouts out that we’ve run the last five km in 22 minutes. As we run on, Chris suddenly ups the pace. I don’t know if he’s trying to show his authority, but suddenly the talking and joking stops. The truck keeps passing us by, but I’m having to focus too hard to wave back now. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up. Chris turns to me with a grin. “You OK?” he asks. Surprisingly, I am. I’m quite enjoying the new pace, even. But I feel as though I’m pushing my luck. Chris’s question sends doubts, excuses pinging around in my head. Before I’ve fully made the decision, I’m blurting out: “I’m just going to run 15K.” “Sure,” says Chris. I feel like I’ve given him the answer he was expecting. “We’re nearly at 15K,” he says. “Just two more corners.” I should go on, but the pronouncement has been made. Once you decide where you’re going to stop, it takes a reckless surge of energy to overrule yourself. Up ahead I see the truck stopped at the 15km point. It feels good to stop. My daughter runs to meet me, handing me some water. Marietta is crouched down, still snapping away. A group of children stand in a muddy field staring at us dumbstruck as though they have just witnessed an alien spaceship landing. The others run past, and on, following the dusty road disappearing into some trees. “That last five km was just under 20 minutes,” Godfrey tells me. “That’s fast.” It’s not bad, but I can’t help feeling I bailed out too early. I clamber into the back of the truck and sit down on the spare tire next to my youngest daughter. She’s looking up at me as though she’s only half sure who I am. Chris, after pushing the pace, ends up hopping in the truck at 20km, complaining of a twisted ankle, while the others plough on to 25km, where they all stop (the last 10km is run in 38 minutes). Godfrey hands out bananas and we take a group photograph. Then we jog the last one km back to Iten for a warm down. Inspired by watching the run, or perhaps just fed up with sitting in the truck, my eldest daughter joins us, skipping along up and down the banks at the side of the road like the Kenyan children who usually like to follow the runners. By the end she’s feeling very pleased with herself. Godfrey drops us all off in town and we head our separate ways, resolving to meet up again for another group run in a few weeks. The Iten Town Harriers are up and running. • The book Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn will be published in 2012 Running Fitness Adharanand Finn guardian.co.uk
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Diana Wynne Jones, who died this weekend, wrote some of our wittiest and warmest children’s books, from the Chrestomanci series to Howl’s Moving Castle. The world of children’s literature is a smaller, sadder place without her It’s rare these days that I make a detour into the children’s section of the bookshop. But when I do, it’s usually to see if there’s a new Diana Wynne Jones novel out, or if I have, mysteriously, managed to miss out on something she’s written in the past. And I always make sure to check under both the Js and the Ws, just in case. So I was hugely saddened to learn of the author’s death this weekend : the world of children’s literature is a smaller, sadder place without her witty, warm, ingenious presence. Rereading Wynne Jones’s novels as an adult, I am invariably overwhelmed with nostalgia. They feel intricately interwoven with my childhood: the Chrestomanci books with being nine and 10 and desperate to discover that, like Cat or Christopher Chant, I had a secret but super-powerful talent for magic (was anyone else convinced that if they tried hard enough they’d be able to cast a spell?); the sublime Fire and Hemlock with that awkward, pre-teen moment when romance becomes something desired, but never likely to actually happen ( Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover is another book that reminds me of this difficult, possibility-packed time of my life, and I think I’m still slightly in love with Mahy’s Sorry and Wynne Jones’s Tom). I was terrified of Monigan – an old rag doll which turns out to represent an ancient and hungry goddess – in The Time of the Ghost : still am, in fact. Power of Three was another favourite; I’d stride about the moor by my cousins’ home in Wales, glancing surreptitiously and hopefully around for the Dorig. And I decided that the butter-pies of A Tale of Time City (despite my previously mentioned aversion for time travel stories ) beat the hot-cold goodies of The Faraway Tree for top fictional food. (“Vivian was getting very tired of being called V.S. She would have objected if she had not at that moment bitten into the butter-pie. Wonderful tastes filled her mouth, everything buttery and creamy she had ever tasted, with just a hint of toffee, and twenty other even better tastes she had never met before, all of it icy cold. It was so marvellous that she simply said quietly, ‘You owe me an explanation. What were you trying to do?’ ‘Save Time City, of course,’ Sam said juicily out of the middle of his butter-pie.”) And I think my claustrophobia may partly stem from the scene in The Magicians of Caprona – purchased with a birthday book token, so very much treasured – in which Tonino and Angelica are turned into puppets and trapped in a cardboard box by the evil duchess (although, as I’ve said before, Alan Garner must also shoulder some of the blame ). “When Tonino came to his senses – at, incidentally, the precise moment when the enchanted book began to shrivel away – he had, at first, a nightmare feeling that he was shut in a cardboard box,” writes Wynne Jones. “He rolled his head sideways on his arms. He seemed to be lying on his face on a hard but faintly furry floor. In the far distance, he could blurrily see someone else, leaning up against a wall like a doll, but he felt too queer to be very interested in that. He rolled his head around the other way and saw the panels of a wall quite near. That told him he was in a fairly long room. He rolled his head to stare down at the furry floor. It was patterned, in a pattern too big for his eyes to grasp, and he supposed it was a carpet of some kind. He shut his blurry eyes and tried to think what had happened.” I can’t believe I missed Howl’s Moving Castle when I was younger – our library obviously wasn’t up to much. But I stumbled across it when perusing the Ws and Js in our local library last year, and was charmed by Sophie Hatter and her Howl (he probably would have been another crush if I’d read it young enough), and particularly by Calcifer. Top Diana Wynne Jones of all, though, for me, is The Lives of Christopher Chant . I read it again last year, and felt almost as excited as I did as a child when, relieved of the silver in his pockets which had been dampening his magic, Christopher lifts the roof off his tutor’s house. Stirring stuff. And isn’t Throgmorton the best possible name for a cat? Looking back, I can see the influence Wynne Jones’s books, burned deep into my memories when I was little, have had on my reading tastes. Discovering Christopher Chant and Chrestomanci for the first time made me realise just how good fiction could be, and I think she sowed the seeds for my future love of fantasy. I adore the work of a lot of children’s authors, and I tend to bang on about it a fair bit . But Diana Wynne Jones stands out from the crowd, for her humour, her originality and her touching, clever, rollickingly good stories – she’s 10 times the writer JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer ever will be, and I’m astonished to discover that, until Harry Potter took off and publishers realised how successful children’s fantasy could be, many of her books were out of print . At least they’re widely available now. And it turns out, studying her bibliography, I’ve still got some left to read. The Dalemark quartet , here I come. And Diana, here’s to you: to your sudden wild magic and to the books you’ve left behind. May they never go unread. Diana Wynne Jones Fiction Children and teenagers Children’s books: 8-12 years Teen books Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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Australian government is investigating the disappearance of Yang Hengjun, last located in south-east China Australia has asked China for information on a Chinese-born Australian writer who disappeared in the country, the government has said, amid reports he may have been detained in Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on political expression. The Sydney-based spy novelist Yang Hengjun phoned a friend on Sunday from Guangzhou airport in south-eastern China to say three men were following him, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported. He has not been heard from since. Australia’s department of foreign affairs confirmed on Tuesday that it is investigating the disappearance. Yang, 46, was an official in the Chinese foreign ministry before moving to Australia. His novel Fatal Weakness deals with espionage between China and the US and has been published on the internet in China. He also writes a blog that frequently discusses issues involving China’s government, according to Feng Chongyi, associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology in Sydney. “Yang is the most influential political blogger in China, with millions of readers,” Feng said. China’s government has in recent weeks harassed and detained dozens of activists to prevent any copying of the pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East. China’s foreign ministry said it had no information on Yang. “I have not heard of that person,” spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference in Beijing on Tuesday. China Australia Blogging Digital media guardian.co.uk
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Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 11.57am: Chris Bryant has finished giving evidence. John Yates is appearing now. 11.55am: Bryant says his main complaint is that the police had evidence of criminality but did not interrogate him. Keith Vaz asks Bryant if he has met Yates. Bryant says Yates wrote to him threatening to sue him. At the bottom of that letter Yates offered a meeting. Bryant says he did not take that as a friendly invitation. He is now involved in legal action with the Met. 11.55am: Bryant says that some mobile phone companies tell customers when they think their phones have been hacked. Some don’t. But they all should, he says. 11.52am: Chris Bryant says Andy Hayman, who ran the original phone hacking investigation, is now working as a News International columnist. He also says that the police have never investigated Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive, even though she effectively admitted to a crime when she told the culture committee in 2003 that her journalists had paid police officers for information. (Bryant was on the culture committee at the time and he was the MP who put the question.) 11.47am: Bryant says the original prosecution does not seem to have had a deterrent effect. Kelly Hoppen had her phone hacked last year. A senior MP (who he does not name) has had her phone hacked within the last few months, he says. Bryant says there is a real danger that the Met can be seen as being “in collusion” with News International. Last week Yates defended the fact that he had taken hospitality from News of the World executives. Bryant suggests that these meetings were a mistake. Yates had lunch with Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive, in February, Bryant says. Bryant wonders whether Yates told the officer currently leading the new phone hacking investigation about this. 11.45am: Bryant says if the police found a name alongside a list of phone numbers, they should have taken those numbers to the person identified and asked him or her about them. The police did not do this, he says. In response to a question from Bryant, he says the police have now been in touch with him to tell him about his phone being hacked. 11.41am: Mark Reckless, a Conservative, asks Bryant if he thinks Yates deliberately misled the home affairs committee. Bryant says that a note written by Scotland Yard in 2006 says that a “vast number” of people had had their phones hacked. Reckless says that this suggests Yates was deliberately misleading the committeed. “Quite,” says Bryant. Bryant says it was “disingenuous in the extreme” of Yates to suggest that there were very few victims because the police had never bothered to look at the evidence properly. 11.37am: Keith Vaz, the chairman, asks Bryant if he accepts that the Crown Prosecution Service originally told the police that a hacker would have to listen to a message before it had been heard by the intended recipient for an offence to be committed. Bryant says that he accepts that a lawyer may have said this to the police. But he says he thinks Yates’s evidence on this last week was “somewhat disingenuous”. He says that he wants to tell the committee about the other areas where he thinks Yates misled MPs. But Vaz says he wants to concentrate for the moment on the issue of the legal advice. 11.32am: Chris Bryant is giving evidence to the committee first. John Yates will appear at 12pm. Bryant starts with an opening statement. Bryant says Yates told the home affairs committee on 7 September 2010 that there was no evidence that MPs had had their phones hacked. But at least eight MPs have had their phones hacked, he says. Yates said a hacker had to listen to a message before the intended recipient had heard it for an offence to be committed. But Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has said that this legal definition played no part in the original inquiry, he says. 11.22am: It’s Groundhog Day for John Yates. Last week he appeared before the Commons culture committee to answer allegations – made by Chris Bryant in a Commons debate earlier this month – that he misled MPs when he gave evidence about the legal advice given to police when they first investigated phone hacking. For almost two hours, he endured a fairly undignified duffing up. You can read Nick Davies’s story about the hearing here, and Simon Hoggart’s sketch here. Now Yates has got to go through the whole thing all over again. The home affairs committee has invited him to appear because he originally gave evidence to it about phone hacking as well as to the culture committee. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs committee, clearly does not want to feel left out. At the end of last week’s hearing Yates suggested he was unhappy about the prospect of having to answer the same questions twice. But is he going to nick Vaz and his colleagues for wasting police time? I doubt it. The hearing will start soon. 11.18am: Most people in the Labour party are opposed to AV, Lord Reid, the former Labour cabinet minister, told BBC News this morning. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he said: My view is quite simple. If the vast majority of the people in the Labour Party, as I believe they are, are opposed to AV and want to defend one person one vote – as well as the vast majority of people in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties as well – then I’m on the side of the mainstream majority on this one. 11.02am: Could “bling back” become official government policy? It’s a term in a report published by Lady Newlove, the government’s champion for safer communities, to describe money made from the sale of drug dealers’ assets being given to the communities they blighted. Newlove is in favour of “bling back” and also “community reward” – money being given to communities to spend on crime prevention initiatives as a reward when people pass on information leading to criminals being convicted. There are more details of the report in this Home Office news release. James Brokenshire, the crime prevention minister, has praised Newlove for her contribution. 10.49am: Matthew Elliott, the No to AV campaign director, wasn’t impressed by the line up at this morning’s pro-AV rally. (See 9.20am and 10.34am.) He’s put out this statement. Yes to AV claim they are the “people’s campaign” but today’s launch looked like a Lib Dem convention chaired by Ed Miliband. The only person missing from their Westminster photo-op is the man who is forcing us to have this expensive referendum: Nick Clegg. It was he that bargained away his promise on tuition fees for a referendum on the Alternative Vote. It would be his party – the Lib Dems – that would benefit most from a switch to AV. The Yes to AV campaign is just a front for the Lib Dems and they are deceiving the public if they claim otherwise. 10.34am: Ed Miliband told the AV rally this morning that the alternative vote would increase the chances of “progressive” parties winning elections. Here’s an extract. AV would encourage us to build bridges, not barriers, between parties so that we can persuade more voters of our case. I believe today’s political culture, which only encourages division, profoundly damages belief in politics. Nowhere has this been more true than among the progressive forces in Britain. I have spoken before about the progressive majority. The tragedy for progressive politics in Britain has been that division on the centre and left has handed a united right victory after victory. For most of the last eighty years, there has been one Conservative party but several competing for progressive votes. No wonder the Tories back the current system. They know Britain is not a fundamentally Conservative country. But with first past the post, they are more likely to govern whenever progressive forces are divided. This Tory led government and its current alliance of power with the Liberal Democrats does not change my belief that there is a progressive majority in this country. Britain deserves an electoral system that fairly reflects voters’ views. 10.28am: William Hague has met a member of the Libyan opposition. He put out this statement after his meeting with Mahmoud Jibril, an envoy from Libya’s interim transitional national council (ITNC) ahead of today’s Libya conference. I was delighted to invite Mr Jabril to London today. Mr Jabril and I have spoken on several occasions over the past week and he has come to London at my request. The ITNC is an important and legitimate political interlocutor and the UK is committed to strengthening our contacts with a wide range of members of the Libyan opposition who are working to create a Libya where the legitimate aspirations of its people can be met. We discussed the current political and humanitarian situation in Libya. We agreed on the absolute importance of protecting and safeguarding civilians in Libya. We considered how best the UK as well as other attendees at today’s London conference can best support the Libyan people, and I asked for Mr Jabril’s assessment of the humanitarian needs in Libya and priorities for international assistance. 10.12am: Labour have just sent out Refounding Labour, a 32-page consultation document exploring ways the party needs to reform (pdf). Patrick Wintour has written a story about this for the Guardian today and he says that it could lead to registered Labour supporters being given a vote in leadership elections. The document has been written by Peter Hain, the chair of Labour’s national policy forum. His report does not contain specific recommendations, but it does raise plenty of thoughtful and far-reaching questions about party organisation. Here’s what Hain is saying this morning about the need for the party to change. Since the 1950s membership of political parties has been in decline across Europe’s established democracies. The UK now has one of the lowest rates of party membership of all. The 1.5 per cent of the electorate who belonged to parties in the UK in 2001 compares to nearly 5 per cent elsewhere in Europe in the late 1990s. By 2005 only 1.3 per cent of UK voters were members of any of the three main political parties, down from nearly 4 per cent in 1983. The Labour Party’s basic structure is essentially that adopted in 1918. In today’s much more diffuse, individualist political culture, how can we maximise the potential for participation by ‘Labour Supporters’ – those who would not join the Party, but who could be mobilised to back and work for us? How do we manage this in a way that does not undermine the rights of ‘full’ members? 9.47am: The Office for National Statistics has revised its growth forecast for the fourth quarter of 2010 back to a 0.5% decrease. That’s marginally better than the ONS was forecasting last month, when it put fourth quarter growth at minus 0.6%, but exactly the same as it was predicting in January, when it made its first stab at producing a figure. The ONS is still saying that the snow was to blame for growth falling by 0.5%. That means that, without the bad weather, growth would have been 0%. The economy would have been flat. That’s still pretty bad. The ONS summary is here, and the full ONS statistical bulletin is here (pdf). 9.39am: Looking at the Press Association overnight wire, I see that Labour MP Kerry McCarthy used an iPad instead of notes to prompt her when she was delivering a speech in the Commons last night. She is thought to be the first MP to use an iPad in this way in the chamber. Last week a Commons committee said that the ban on MPs using iPads “as an aide memoire” in debates should be ended. 9.27am: While we’re on the subject of AV, there’s a letter in the Times (paywall) today claiming that first-past-the-post is one of the reasons why Britain has been able to punch above its weight in world affairs. It sounds like a fairly spurious argument, but the letter has been signed by a heavyweight collection of signatories: William Hague, the foreign secretary, four former foreign secretaries (Margaret Beckett, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Hurd and Lord Howe) and three former Foreign Office ministers (Keith Vaz, Tony Lloyd and Caroline Flint). Here’s an extract. Those of us who have represented Britain internationally know that one of the many reasons why we have always punched above our weight is our simple and straightforward voting system, a system that everyone can understand, because it gives one person, one vote. Democracies all across the world have been founded on the example of our voting system. Today, billions of people elect their representatives through the system of one person, one vote. It took many centuries for the principle of one person, one vote to become enshrined in our democracy. And now that it is there, we believe it would be a grave error to abandon this principle and replace it with a voting system that is more complex, more confusing, more costly and more unfair. 9.20am: The Yes to Fairer Votes rally has started. BBC News has just shown a clip of Caroline Lucas, the Green leader, speaking on the platform, with Ed Miliband behind her. Here’s a full list of the politicians taking part. Ed Miliband Shirley Williams Caroline Lucas John Denham Charles Kennedy Darren Johnson Tessa Jowell Tim Farron 8.47am: There’s plenty to keep us busy today. London is hosting a conference about the future of Libya . Adam Gabbatt should have more details on his Libya live blog . There will be a press conference, but it won’t be until late this afternoon. I’ll be focusing on the domestic politics today, of which there’s plenty. Here’s a full list. 9am: Ed Miliband speaks at a pro-AV rally alongside Charles Kennedy and Caroline Lucas and other Labour, Lib Dem and Green politicians. 9.15am: Sir David King , the former chief scientific adviser to the government, launches a report on nuclear policy in the UK. 9.30am: Frank Field and Nadine Dorries MP hold a press conference about amendments they are tabling to the health bill about abortion . 9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes its revised forecast for growth in the final quarter of 2010. 10am: Officials from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury give evidence to the Treasury committee about the budget . 10.30am: Universities UK and the Russell Group give evidence to the business committee about the future of higher education . 11.30am: Chris Bryant , the Labour MP, and John Yates , the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about phone hacking . Bryant will appear at 11.30am, and Yates at 12pm. They will be asked about allegations that Yates misled the committee last year over the legal advice given to the police about what constitutes phone hacking. Last week Yates was grilled by the culture committee about these allegations . 2.30pm: Keir Starmer , the director of public prosecutions, and Lady Neville-Jones , the security minister, give evidence to the joint committee on human rights on extradition policy . 3pm : George Osborne , the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the budget . 3.30pm: Kenneth Clarke , the justice secretary, makes a statement to MPs about his green paper on civil justice . As usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one after Osborne has finished. House of Commons Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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Full coverage of the inquest into the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson after he was struck by police during the G20 protests in London in 2009 11.53am: In his opening remarks, the coroner told the jury their task was to find the cause of death of Tomlinson. In summary, he: • Warned the jury to avoid researching the abundance of material about his death available on the internet, as well as press reports from the inquest. • Told the jury to ignore the fact that the director of public prosecutions (DPP) chose not to bring criminal proceedings against the officer. “That was not a final decision, but a provisional decision,” he said. “He may review that decision after the inquest.” • Stated that the inquest would consider some broader issues, but would not be as wide-reaching as a public inquiry. “Nobody is on trial. No organisation is on trial. You as the jury will not decide any question of civil or criminal liability.” • Gave a summary of Tomlinson’s last 30 minutes alive. He explained how he left Monument tube station, where he had been selling the Evening Standard newspaper, shortly before 7pm. He made his way north, encountering several police cordons, before his encounter with PC Simon Harwood at Royal Exchange buildings. 11.44am: The video shown to the jury is a compilation of still pictures, CCTV footage and pictures taken from a police helicopter. It shows the newspaper seller trying to find a way through the various streets in the area, many of which were cordoned off. The helicopter footage shows police medics treating Tomlinson after he fell to the ground in Cornhill. 11.38am: In his opening remarks, the coroner summarised the events leading up to Tomlinson’s death. He told the jury that it wasn’t clear where Tomlinson was heading on the evening he died, but it’s possible he was heading home to a hostel in the Smithfield area. The jury was also told that Tomlinson suffered from alcoholism and had been drinking that day. The jury members were then shown a compilation of video footage, which has not been seen before. Later, the jury will visit the location in the City of London where Tomlinson died. 10.57am: Welcome to the first day of our coverage of the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller who was struck by police during the G20 protests in London in 2009. Judge Peter Thornton QC, a senior judge sitting as assistant deputy coroner, is overseeing proceedings, which in fact began yesterday with legal argument that we are unable to report. A jury of seven men and five women were sworn in at 2.15pm, after what Thornton conceded was an “unusually protracted process” due to the limited number of suitable candidates in London’s Square Mile. They were sent home while the legal debates continued. Over the next five to six weeks the jury will determine Tomlinson’s cause of death, deciding specifically whether he was unlawfully killed by police. I’ll be live-blogging, tweeting, and writing reports. You can email me in confidence at paul.lewis@guardian.co.uk or message me on Twitter . Tomlinson’s family, most of whom are in the hearing today, have been waiting almost exactly two years since the day of his death to get to this point. It has been a long road, so here is a brief recap of how we got here. Tomlinson died on 1 April 2009, the day of the G20 protests in London . He was not a protester, but was trying to pick a route home through the City of London. Many of the streets around the Bank of England had been cordoned off by police detaining activists in “kettles”, and Tomlinson found himself caught up in the crowds. He was struck by a police officer around 7.30pm on Cornhill. Police initially claimed he died of natural causes and there was no investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). That changed six days later, when the Guardian released video footage showing Tomlinson being struck from behind then pushed in the back by a member of the Met’s Territorial Support Group (TSG). Tomlinson, who had his back to the officer and his hands in his pockets, fell to the ground and was unable to break his fall. He collapsed and died shortly afterwards. In July last year, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, announced there would be no charges laid against the officer who struck Tomlinson. Ian Tomlinson G20 Protest Police London Independent Police Complaints Commission Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
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State-controlled banks have had a bad press, but they can play a big part in long-term and socially necessary investment The critical role played by development banks is increasingly ignored and therefore forgotten in discussions on development. In the second half of the 20th century their use was widespread in the developing world as public or joint sector banks with the explicit mandate to provide long-term credit at terms that would make long-term and risky, but socially necessary, investment financially sustainable. What exactly did these development banks do? Essentially, they were both lenders and investors, using lending to influence investment decisions and monitor the performance of borrowers, even directing long-term investment. As developing country governments started to abandon state-led industrialisation strategies and opted for more market-determined outcomes, development banks and their activities also got a bad press. They were wound down or marginalised as economies were more directed to reliance on stock and bond markets and other forms of financing long-term investment. In India, for example, the range of development banks that were oriented to different sectors were gradually “reformed” over the 1990s so that their development banking functions were diluted and they started operating as commercial banks with a more short-term and profit-making orientation. But in Brazil, development banking has retained a crucial role in the economy, essentially through the BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), which was established in 1952 and is owned by the federal government of Brazil. Over time the government has used various measures, such as special taxes, levies on insurance and investment companies, and direction of pension fund capital, to mobilise resources for the industrial financing activities of the BNDES. Of course, all this is anathema to market liberalisers, but the surprising thing is that even when market-oriented economic reforms were introduced in the 1980s, the BNDES survived. Under former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, it even grew dramatically in strength, with assets close to $120bn at the end of 2008. This turns out to have served Brazil well, in some unexpected ways. It had a significant positive effect in helping Brazil deal with the effects of the 2008-09 financial crisis, and was responsible in no small measure for the quick turnaround in GDP growth. How did this work? In the usual pattern, the BNDES receives part of a government indirect tax on goods and services, and uses it to finance private and public enterprises. Most of this credit goes to infrastructure and long-term investment, but part of it is also directed to regional development and circulating capital for small and medium enterprises. The loans are provided at subsidised rates that partly compensate for Brazil’s excessively high interest rates. When the global financial crisis broke, commercial banks in Brazil were not so badly affected because they had relatively high prudential requirements and other forms of regulation. Even so, there was – as in many other countries – a significant credit crunch on non-financial firms. In many countries that were similarly affected, the response was to lower interest rates and ease reserve requirements for commercial banks. But this did not necessarily mean that the banks then passed on these resources to the productive sector, and so the credit crunch really hit output and employment. In Brazil, the existence and spread of the BNDES allowed for a different kind of solution: to create a penultimate lender of last resort through government loans to the bank, which in its turn lent the resources to firms. This credit facility reached 3.3% of GDP during the crisis and helped many firms to meet their needs of circulating capital in 2008-09. So the drying up of private sector loans did not affect Brazilian producers as much as it did in most other developing countries. After the worst impact of the crisis receded, this special credit facility was gradually redirected to finance investment, which accelerated from the second half of 2009. In the past two years its lending has gone up by more than 70%. Critics argue that the BNDES is hampering the development of the financial sector in Brazil. But the world should be much more cynical now about the benefits ostensibly delivered by an unregulated financial sector bent on extracting private profits, even when at the cost of development and social conditions. In fact the criticism of the BNDES could be not that it is doing too much, but that it is not doing enough, given Brazil’s low investment rate. Even so, this experience of the important countercyclical role that can be played by a government-controlled development bank is something that other countries need to take notice of. Brazil India Financial sector Jayati Ghosh guardian.co.uk
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