Do supermarkets’ plans to take a bigger bite of sandwich shop business and ultimately the restaurant trade too fill you with enthusiasm or dread? If you go down to Fleet Street today, you’re sure of not so much a big surprise, as a stark warning from the future. It is here that Sainsbury has chosen to trial its Fresh Kitchen , a spin-off takeaway offering hot ‘n’ cold food which, industry analysts predict , will soon be rolled out nationwide . The grocery giant, like several other British supermarkets, is determined to take on the nation’s sandwich shops and fast food chains, head on. If the idea of such diversification distresses you, it is nothing to actually visiting Fresh Kitchen. Spartan, cheaply utilitarian in design, the Fleet Street prototype feels like a cross between Gregg’s, McDonald’s and an emergency field kitchen. It is loud, it is brightly lit, it is packed with people (there is token, very limited seating), and the counter staff and cashiers have clearly been trained to process each sale in seconds. They shout for the next customer, shout out the orders. Shout them out again. Basically, there is a lot of shouting. Naturally, prices are competitive . According to this report (pdf) , Fresh Kitchen is selling the cheapest coffee on the street. Sandwiches “freshly made here today” (can that really still be a selling point in 2011?) run from a half “skinny” chicken sandwich (£1.39) to baguettes at £2.79, with many staple sandwiches coming in at around or just under £2. But what of the quality? Swerving a £3.99 hot meat baguette (the pork and beef on the counter looked dry and shrivelled) I opted, instead, for lasagne, one of several, “hot meals, freshly cooked here today”. Confused as to what exactly that meant, I asked the Sainsbury press office to explain: “We prepare our hot meals from a selection of components, which are cooked on site and served hot to order. The components themselves are [sourced] from across our supplier base … The lasagne is prepared in our kitchen from pasta, bolognaise and béchamel sauce components. [It is] definitely not a pre-portioned ready meal.” I couldn’t, if you’ll pardon the pun, taste the difference. The lasagne was every bit as joyless as your average supermarket ready-meal. It arrived at the authentic solar temperature, the lasagne sheets pallid and glutinous, the minced beef in the rumoured-to-be tomato sauce like curiously spongy grit. It came with an undressed side “salad” of lettuce leaves and, apart from the thin layer of cheese on top, it tasted of almost nothing. It made me, as much as food ever can do, angry. I dropped in at Fresh Kitchen while researching a budget eats piece on central London, which meant I was in the process of eating good food at similar prices (Fresh Kitchen hot meals are £4.49 each) all over the capital. I wanted to stand outside and redirect anyone buying soup (£2.49) to the nearby independent Cafe Below , where I later enjoyed a fantastic, vibrant minestrone that cost just 21p more. However, it seems the supermarkets are coming, whether we like it or not. M&S is already firmly embedded in the salad ‘n’ sandwich market with its Simply Food stores and, after its failure to buy the EAT chain , Waitrose is trying to expand its “eat now” business by rolling out convenience stores under the new Little Waitrose banner. They will sell groceries but focus on what the company describes as “food for now” . For the longer term, the industry chatter is of supermarkets diversifying to challenge sit-down cafes and restaurants directly. For several years now, M&S has been gradually expanding its network of semi stand-alone M&S Kitchen restaurants. Waitrose, likewise, is making its cafes more prominent (pdf) . There is an argument that, as the perceived purveyors of “good” food, Waitrose and M&S will bring high standards to the table (though the grab-and-go food offered at M&S Simply Food or by Waitrose at Boots adds just another layer of bland mediocrity). Certainly, the M&S Kitchen sites appear to be designed to deliver relatively wholesome, honest food, cooked to order by proper chefs. Long-term, however, running decent restaurants and cafes in any category is a complex, expensive business, and even the most casual has to differentiate itself. Starbucks, for instance, flatters those who consider themselves expert in coffee. Pizza Express alienates those who don’t like pizza. Yet, supermarkets are designed to say nothing , do everything, welcome everyone. How do you transform that absence of opinion and personality into exciting, buzzy eating spaces? Secondly, supermarkets are in a bind: if they employ full kitchen brigades to produce unique menus of ambitious, fresh dishes – which most won’t, it’s too expensive – that poses the risk of customers making unfavourable comparisons between that gussied-up food, and the ready to eat dishes which they regularly buy from said supermarket. Conversely, if eating out at a supermarket venue is no different, in terms of quality, to a supermarket ready-meal, what’s their USP? Who will go out of their way to eat food broadly similar to that which they can buy and microwave off the supermarket shelf? On the evidence of the Fleet Street Fresh Kitchen, meanwhile, the direct competition that Sainsbury will offer to sandwich shops and takeaways can only start a race to the bottom which may erode many of the last decade’s marginal gains in food quality. If that sounds melodramatic, ask yourself this: where would you rather buy a sandwich for lunch, a specialist sandwich shop like Eat or Pret A Manger or Sainsbury’s? Or am I underestimating the lure of familiar brand names – has M&S Simply Food improved your life to the extent that you’d want to eat out there? Food & drink Tony Naylor guardian.co.uk
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The UK public perceives poverty as a consequence of war, famine and natural disasters, and despite giving, see donation as a flawed response. It’s time to change their minds Over the last 10 years I’ve been looking at the question of how the UK public engages with global poverty. I’ve done this research with a variety of NGOs, including Comic Relief, and have reviewed the evidence on public engagement for DfID on four occasions. Following the most recent of these reviews – probably the bleakest – Martin Kirk at Oxfam got in touch and suggested we attempt to find solutions to the problems I was so familiar with documenting. At the same time, Tom Crompton at WWF was drafting his report, Common Cause (pdf) , identifying a shared set of values on which all third sector organisations should be campaigning in order to deepen and widen their connections with the UK public. The result of our collaboration, a report called Finding Frames , launches on Monday. In terms of perceptions of poverty, the UK public appears to be stuck in 1985. You could conduct your own survey with the public today – on the bus, at the school gates, or in the pub – and I would wager you’d find the same things as I’ve been finding in research for a decade. Poverty in poor countries arises from internal causes: war, famine, natural disasters, over-population, and of course corruption – currently the UK public’s top cause of poverty, when asked in DfID surveys . And all we can do, they would say is to give money, which probably won’t reach the people for whom it is intended. This has been called the “Live Aid Legacy”. One respondent in research for Save the Children in 2009 said: “What’s happened since Live Aid? I was at school then. Now I’m 36 and nothing has really changed.” Development NGOs are deeply implicated in this. While the research evidence on public perceptions shows levels of concern about global poverty to be static at best, and more likely falling, the available data on fundraising show a contradictory pattern: steadily increasing annual growth in public donations to development NGOs, particularly marked since 1995. In Finding Frames, we ask ourselves how this can have been achieved against a backdrop of ebbing public concern. The answer appears to relate directly to the adoption of new fundraising methods by the sector (for instance, the introduction of direct debit arrangements in the mid-1990s), as part of a wider shift in the way NGOs engage with the public. In the academic literature on social movements, this shift is described as the rise of “chequebook participation”, as the quality of the engagement between organisation and member is changed, and the organisations morph into “protest businesses”, with strong management structures and, increasingly, targets for growth. The transaction model of public engagement has worked for fundraising, but we argue it has played into the Live Aid legacy, with its emphasis on the power of giving, and little else. A quick look at the communications strategies adopted by the sector shows that, in order to achieve the same or greater levels of donation, the content of the material has got harder, more heart-rending, and with less context. It is fair to ask where campaigns and fundraising will go next to keep income rising. Make Poverty History provided an opportunity to break out of the transaction frame. By rallying around the call for “justice not charity”, it attempted to disrupt the stubborn perception that “all we can do is give money”. Yet, as it turned out, the transaction frame proved too strong. In focus groups we ran around the event, the public repeatedly stated that it must be raising money, from all those wristbands and text messages. When in the end, Live8 became the finale to the activity around the G8, the public’s certainty about the transactional model was confirmed (“Live8 was the event, ‘Make Poverty History’ was the slogan” said one respondent). Inadvertently, MPH had reinforced the Live Aid legacy. It is our contention that it is time to have another go at breaking that legacy, once and for all. We have marshalled a body of theoretical and empirical evidence around values and frames, which we use as lenses through which to see the problem of public engagement. Through these lenses we also point to solutions, for ways out of this stalemate in public engagement. We do not dictate the solutions though, as it is critical that the development sector comes together to work them out for themselves, in collaboration. Whatever the new frames for global development are, they will need to work for all organisations. Most obviously, the frames we find will need to enable NGOs to keep raising the revenue they need now, but without jeopardising public engagement over the longer term. Happily, we think there are solutions out there: at community level, in faith groups, in academic thought, and in development as it is taking place in the global south (not least through south-south partnerships). All this amounts to a big change in how NGOs pursue their missions to end global poverty – from how they draft their business plans, to how they fundraise, campaign, or work with their volunteers. Most strikingly, it suggests they should frame their messages differently; seen from this perspective, “charity” “aid” and “development” are all problematic terms. The findings in the report are not new. But the quest for positive frames to re-engage the public in global poverty will take us in new directions. If all this strikes a chord with you, we recommend you read the report, and then think about how you can get involved in this new agenda. And let us know what you think below – what do you see as the problems of a transaction model of aid and the Live Aid Legacy? What new strategies of campaigning and communication might motivate people to have a deeper, more meaningful engagement than simply signing a cheque – and what implications might that have for the sector? • Andrew Darnton is an independent researcher, and lead author of Finding Frames Aid Live 8 Live Aid guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The UK public perceives poverty as a consequence of war, famine and natural disasters, and despite giving, see donation as a flawed response. It’s time to change their minds Over the last 10 years I’ve been looking at the question of how the UK public engages with global poverty. I’ve done this research with a variety of NGOs, including Comic Relief, and have reviewed the evidence on public engagement for DfID on four occasions. Following the most recent of these reviews – probably the bleakest – Martin Kirk at Oxfam got in touch and suggested we attempt to find solutions to the problems I was so familiar with documenting. At the same time, Tom Crompton at WWF was drafting his report, Common Cause (pdf) , identifying a shared set of values on which all third sector organisations should be campaigning in order to deepen and widen their connections with the UK public. The result of our collaboration, a report called Finding Frames , launches on Monday. In terms of perceptions of poverty, the UK public appears to be stuck in 1985. You could conduct your own survey with the public today – on the bus, at the school gates, or in the pub – and I would wager you’d find the same things as I’ve been finding in research for a decade. Poverty in poor countries arises from internal causes: war, famine, natural disasters, over-population, and of course corruption – currently the UK public’s top cause of poverty, when asked in DfID surveys . And all we can do, they would say is to give money, which probably won’t reach the people for whom it is intended. This has been called the “Live Aid Legacy”. One respondent in research for Save the Children in 2009 said: “What’s happened since Live Aid? I was at school then. Now I’m 36 and nothing has really changed.” Development NGOs are deeply implicated in this. While the research evidence on public perceptions shows levels of concern about global poverty to be static at best, and more likely falling, the available data on fundraising show a contradictory pattern: steadily increasing annual growth in public donations to development NGOs, particularly marked since 1995. In Finding Frames, we ask ourselves how this can have been achieved against a backdrop of ebbing public concern. The answer appears to relate directly to the adoption of new fundraising methods by the sector (for instance, the introduction of direct debit arrangements in the mid-1990s), as part of a wider shift in the way NGOs engage with the public. In the academic literature on social movements, this shift is described as the rise of “chequebook participation”, as the quality of the engagement between organisation and member is changed, and the organisations morph into “protest businesses”, with strong management structures and, increasingly, targets for growth. The transaction model of public engagement has worked for fundraising, but we argue it has played into the Live Aid legacy, with its emphasis on the power of giving, and little else. A quick look at the communications strategies adopted by the sector shows that, in order to achieve the same or greater levels of donation, the content of the material has got harder, more heart-rending, and with less context. It is fair to ask where campaigns and fundraising will go next to keep income rising. Make Poverty History provided an opportunity to break out of the transaction frame. By rallying around the call for “justice not charity”, it attempted to disrupt the stubborn perception that “all we can do is give money”. Yet, as it turned out, the transaction frame proved too strong. In focus groups we ran around the event, the public repeatedly stated that it must be raising money, from all those wristbands and text messages. When in the end, Live8 became the finale to the activity around the G8, the public’s certainty about the transactional model was confirmed (“Live8 was the event, ‘Make Poverty History’ was the slogan” said one respondent). Inadvertently, MPH had reinforced the Live Aid legacy. It is our contention that it is time to have another go at breaking that legacy, once and for all. We have marshalled a body of theoretical and empirical evidence around values and frames, which we use as lenses through which to see the problem of public engagement. Through these lenses we also point to solutions, for ways out of this stalemate in public engagement. We do not dictate the solutions though, as it is critical that the development sector comes together to work them out for themselves, in collaboration. Whatever the new frames for global development are, they will need to work for all organisations. Most obviously, the frames we find will need to enable NGOs to keep raising the revenue they need now, but without jeopardising public engagement over the longer term. Happily, we think there are solutions out there: at community level, in faith groups, in academic thought, and in development as it is taking place in the global south (not least through south-south partnerships). All this amounts to a big change in how NGOs pursue their missions to end global poverty – from how they draft their business plans, to how they fundraise, campaign, or work with their volunteers. Most strikingly, it suggests they should frame their messages differently; seen from this perspective, “charity” “aid” and “development” are all problematic terms. The findings in the report are not new. But the quest for positive frames to re-engage the public in global poverty will take us in new directions. If all this strikes a chord with you, we recommend you read the report, and then think about how you can get involved in this new agenda. And let us know what you think below – what do you see as the problems of a transaction model of aid and the Live Aid Legacy? What new strategies of campaigning and communication might motivate people to have a deeper, more meaningful engagement than simply signing a cheque – and what implications might that have for the sector? • Andrew Darnton is an independent researcher, and lead author of Finding Frames Aid Live 8 Live Aid guardian.co.uk
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Universities peddling a traditional education to well-heeled students aren’t doing nearly as tough a job as those that nurture young people from less privileged backgrounds If Julian Fellowes, author of Downton Abbey, rather than Lord Browne had led the inquiry into the funding of higher education, we would have understood the upstairs-downstairs outcome sooner and perhaps even appreciated the witty interweaving of the life chances of the social classes in the English university setting. At the recent Guardian summit on higher education, the director of the Office of Fair Access, Sir Martin Harris, made nine references to our “elite universities” . But he appeared totally lost for words when it came to naming the other ones. The coalition’s spokesperson on access, Simon Hughes, did little better. Fifty years after the Robbins report, we have a largely unchanged concept of elite and mass provision. Its protagonists struggle to find some plausible account as to why Russell Group universities – with lamentable records of access and widening participation – should feel free to charge £9,000 in tuition fees , but those universities that have made real progress in drawing young people from poorer backgrounds into higher education must settle for £6,000. The fact is that there is still an assumption that a few are far better than the rest, and that they naturally command higher prices. A more balanced analysis of the costs of teaching and widening access soon reveals that it is more expensive to recruit, progress and secure achievement among students who come from under-represented sections of our society. What universities with strong records of widening access do is provide high quality teaching and learning which lifts candidates with weaker school exit qualifications and provides them with a platform for their higher education. Harris is right when he attributes the truly dreadful record of access at Oxford and Cambridge to the low levels of school achievement by those from poorer backgrounds, compared with the private school pupils who snap up 45% of the places on offer. But if these universities were as good as they claim to be, they should be able to lift the standards of candidates with lower school qualifications. This is called teaching. Oxford now proposes to let academically successful students from poor families – those who received free school meals – pay much lower fees . Many in the sector view this as a cynical publicity stunt. On the basis of Oxford’s track record over the last decade, the scheme is unlikely to produce recruits in double figures. A number sufficiently small, I suspect, to allow members of the Bullingdon club to have a whip round to ensure they can continue to receive free dinners without too much strain on the wallets of the elite. • Professor Stuart Bartholomew is principal of the Arts University College at Bournemouth Arts University College at Bournemouth Higher education Oxbridge and elitism Students Access to university University of Oxford guardian.co.uk
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Taxi driver Christopher Halliwell remanded in custody on charge of killing 22-year-old Swindon woman A man has been appeared in court charged with the murder of Sian O’Callaghan. Christopher Halliwell, 47, of Swindon, Wiltshire, spoke only to confirm his name and address when he appeared at the town’s magistrates court. He is accused of killing the 22-year-old personal assistant, who disappeared in the early hours of Saturday 19 March after a night out with friends. Her body was found close to the Uffington white horse in Oxfordshire, 15 miles from her home in Swindon. Halliwell showed no emotion as the murder charge was read out. Magistrates remanded him in custody until 30 March, when he will appear at Bristol crown court. Earlier, a group of around 50 people surrounded the police van taking him to court. There was a further outburst from the crowd in the public gallery as he was taken down from the dock. Crime guardian.co.uk
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Scenes from a weekend when 500,000 people took to the streets in London to protest against the government’s planned public service cuts
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Italian prime minister to appear in court for the first time since June 2003 after immunity from trial lifted Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is expected to appear in court for the first time in almost eight years in a trial over alleged fraud over the acquisition of television broadcasting rights. The constitutional court lifted Berlusconi’s immunity from trial earlier this year, exposing him to three corruption and fraud cases linked to his Mediaset broadcasting empire and a separate trial in which he is accused of having sex with an underage prostitute. The last time the 74-year old prime minister appeared in court was in June 2003. Prior to the constitutional court ruling in January, the cases had been frozen due to a law which allowed him to claim that he was too busy with his official duties to prepare his defence adequately and stand trial. He and several other people, including his son, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, who is deputy chairman of Mediaset, are accused of fraud and embezzlement over the acquisition of television rights for inflated prices. The defendants reject the accusations. “None of the facts on which the Milan prosecutors have built their case are true,” Berlusconi said in a telephone interview on Italian television before the hearing. When asked if he would attend other hearings as part of a change in his defensive strategy, Berlusconi said: “I will go to those at which I can present myself, aiming to not suspend the trials because all the trials are absolutely absurd and built on nothing.” A separate trial in which Berlusconi is accused of bribery reopened in Milan last week but the premier, who was due to brief the cabinet on the Libya emergency, did not appear in court. Berlusconi has denied doing anything illegal in any of the cases and says he has been unfairly targeted by politically motivated magistrates who want to bring him down. Silvio Berlusconi Italy Europe guardian.co.uk
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More than 200 people arrested in connection with disorder that followed largely peaceful demonstration on Saturday Police have charged 149 people with various offences in connection with the disorder that followed the peaceful protest by hundreds of thousands of people against the government’s spending cuts at the weekend. Approximately 201 people were arrested after trouble flared late in the afternoon after the demonstration in central London on Saturday. A Metropolitan police spokesman said officers arrested 145 people in connection with the incident at the Fortnum & Mason store in Piccadilly. One hundred and thirty-eight have been charged with aggravated trespass and bailed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates court on various dates from 9 May. The remaining seven have been bailed pending further inquiries. Two other people are due before the same court on Monday – one charged with possession of an offensive weapon and another charged with violent disorder and assault on a police officer. Seven others were charged and bailed to appear at the same court from 9 May: one was charged under section four of the Public Order Act, another with being drunk and disorderly, two with assault on a police officer and three with criminal damage. Omar Ibrahim, 31, of Glasgow Road, Baillieston, Glasgow, was charged with violent disorder and assault on police outside Topshop in Oxford Street. He was bailed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates court in May. A 17-year-old from Manchester will face charges of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place and going equipped for criminal damage. He was bailed to appear at west London youth court on 4 April. Three people were cautioned for criminal damage. Two were released with no further action, while 47 have been bailed to return to various London police stations over the coming few days and weeks, the force said. Commander Bob Broadhurst, who led the Met police operation, said the groups “could not have been more markedly different” from the TUC march, which was “overwhelmingly peaceful and good humoured”. He revealed that the activists had developed their tactics to avoid police by keeping mobile, using small alleyways and covering their faces. “Their intent appeared to be causing havoc, with no concern at all for those people in central London they were putting in danger. “Officers came under attack, fires were set and shops attacked,” he said. Union leaders have vowed to continue campaigning against the cuts amid mounting anger at clashes with police and damage to stores and other buildings during the demonstration. Unofficial estimates put the numbers taking part in the earlier protest at nearly 500,000, with tens of thousands of people still joining the march through central London as a rally in Hyde Park got under way. A group wearing scarves to hide their faces started attacking shops and banks well away from the march, causing damage and clashing with some of the 4,500 police on duty. The Metropolitan police is reviewing evidence collected from CCTV cameras and police officers. A cleanup operation was launched in the wake of the disorder. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said the so-called March for the Alternative exceeded expectations, with nurses, teachers, council staff, NHS workers, other public sector employees, pensioners, students and other campaign groups taking part in the biggest union-organised protest for a generation. “It now looks like close to half a million people came to London to express their peaceful but powerful opposition to the government’s deep, rapid and unfair spending cuts. “We are proud of the way that we organised our march and the way that our stewards helped ensure a good-natured and friendly event. “Of course we condemn the small numbers who came looking for violence but we will not allow their actions away from our event to detract from our campaign. “With the budget a damp squib, the economy faltering and the NHS reforms becoming more unpopular each and every day, marchers will have returned home determined to step up their democratic campaign against policies that neither government party put before the electorate at the last election.” The leader of the GMB, Paul Kenny, said the local elections on 5 May should be a referendum on the government’s economic and social policies. A police spokesman said there were 84 injuries reported during the protests, including at least 31 police, with 11 officers requiring hospital treatment. The injuries were described as “relatively minor”, including cuts and bruises, suspected whiplash and a possible broken collar bone. Unions are planning fresh campaigns in the coming days against cuts in the NHS and considering co-ordinated industrial action. Public sector cuts Protest TUC Trade unions Police London guardian.co.uk
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Researchers want to find out if decreasing numbers of snakes caused by urbanisation has led to inbreeding among adders With a quick dart of the arm, snake catcher Nigel Hand snares his prey and holds the wriggling adder aloft. The bronze snake, hissing and flicking out its black forked tongue, has been snatched from under its gorse-bush home as part of the first ever genetic survey of the UK’s only venomous snake, amid fears that dwindling populations are behind worrying signs of inbreeding, such as missing eyes and deformed spines. But the young female caught by Hand looks healthy, barring a 3cm-long scar on her back left by a buzzard or a kestrel. She squirms friskily, despite having just emerged from a five-month hibernation, as a bright spring sun shines through the alders and birches that fringe the riverside meadow. “Adders are living on the edge in more senses than one,” says Jim Foster, national reptile specialist for Natural England . They like to live on the margins of open ground and in the shelter of woods, basking in the sun then diving for cover. But habitat loss of heaths and meadows means they are also on the edge in population terms, with at least a third of the 1,000 known populations diminishing. Those smaller groups have fewer than 10 adults and even the bigger clans have just a few dozen. “We also still have a few problems from people going out and killing them, even though it is illegal,” says Foster. He says the dangers of adders are small – the last death from an adder bite was in 1975 – and that attitudes to the snake, also known as the viper, have improved vastly over the years. Taking a DNA sample from the 50cm-long adder is harmless if undignified, with a small swab inserted into its vent, an opening that doubles as the excretory and genital orifice. “Swabbing the mouth is quite dangerous, so we thought we’d try the other end,” explains Foster. Samples are being taken from both small and large populations at 16 sites across the country. Scientists at Oxford University will then compare the samples to see if the smaller clan groups are indeed genetically impoverished. “These abnormalities are very worrying, but we don’t know yet if it is to do with a lack of genetic diversity. That’s why this project is essential,” says Foster. Studies of rattlesnakes in the US have shown clear links between inbreeding and deformities. Malnutrition and disease are other possible, if still worrying, causes. The adder project highlights a looming issue for wildlife in the UK: maintaining genetic diversity in isolated populations. “Genetic management is a new field and we have to think about it now in the UK, as our landscape becomes ever more fragmented,” says Foster. The preferred solution is to provide wildlife corridors to allow populations to mix, for example by converting strips of farmland to meadow, or creating a series of glades through overly dense woodland. But this will be impossible at adder sites surrounded by built-up areas. In those cases, individuals will be translocated across the country to reinvigorate the gene pool. It is a last resort, says Foster, but has been done successfully with adders in Sweden and with natterjack toads in the UK . A small population of the toads in Lincolnshire had become dangerously inbred, Foster explains, so two years ago Natural England introduced toads brought in from Bedfordshire. “The alternative was to let the group go extinct,” says Foster. But translocation does have risks, as the infusion of new DNA can obliterate special genetic adaptations to local conditions. This happened in the Tatra mountains in Slovakia where mountain ibex from Turkey and Egypt were used as an influx of new blood, but changed the breeding pattern so much the herd became extinct. Back in the Surrey meadow, the conservationists combing the undergrowth for the next snake to swab are determined to ensure modern DNA technology can play its part in halting the decline of the adder. “They are a sentinel species – high up in the food chain. So a good healthy adder population will support all the species below them, giving a good, healthy ecosystem overall,” says Jamel Guenioui, who manages the Surrey Wildlife Trust site. Adders feed on field voles and lizards, which in turn eat grasses and insects respectively. Hand points out the extraordinary display known as “dancing adders”, which will be seen in the coming weeks as males battle to win mating rights. “It’s a wrestling match of strength and stamina, highly ritualised. It’s one of the great spectacles of nature in the UK.” “We have lost the wolf, the lynx and lots of other key species,” he says. “But, although there are very few of them, we still have this small, beautiful and enigmatic snake.” Adder facts • Adders are the only snakes that lives within the Arctic circle and this adaptability to cold may be why it is the UK’s only venomous snake • Most reptiles lay eggs, but adders give birth to live young, which are about as long as a pencil. This is probably another adaptation to cold climates • Females do not breed every year, as they need enormous stores of energy to see them through hibernation and birth • Some adders have yellow tips to their tails, which may be worm-like lures for prey, or mating signals. • Adders eat about six to 10 animals a year, killing them with venom delivered through 7mm-long fangs • Although rare, some individuals can be pigmented entirely black, the “blackadder Wildlife Conservation Genetics Biology Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk
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