PM indicates he will seek to block potential bid by Brown to become managing director of International Monetary Fund David Cameron has indicated he will stop any bid by Gordon Brown to become the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the grounds that the former prime minister “might not be the most appropriate person” in the light of his record in office. Brown has emerged as the favourite to take the £270,000-a-year role when the incumbent managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, stands down. The former prime minister, who was reportedly networking at a US conference of policymakers at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire – where the IMF was founded – last week, would need to be nominated for the post by the government. It is believed any hopes of getting the job would be thwarted if his own country raised strong objections. In a swipe at Brown, Cameron raised doubts about his suitability for the post, saying it was important that the role went someone who “gets” the dangers of excessive debt and deficit. The PM said it was important that the IMF was headed by “someone extraordinarily competent and capable” and praised Strauss-Kahn for doing an “excellent job” in the role. Asked whether the coalition would veto a move by the former chancellor to take the helm, Cameron told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I haven’t spent a huge amount of time thinking about this, but it does seem to me that, if you have someone who didn’t think we had a debt problem in the UK when we self-evidently do have a debt problem, then they might not be the most appropriate person to work out whether other countries around the world have debt and deficit problems.” Cameron suggested the IMF should look to “another part of the world” for its next leader in order to increase its global standing. “If you think about the general principle, you’ve got the rise of India and China and south Asia, a shift in the world’s focus, and it may well be the time for the IMF to start thinking about that shift in focus,” he said. “Above all, what matters is: is the person running the IMF someone who understands the dangers of excessive debt, excessive deficit? “And it really must be someone who gets that rather than someone who says that they don’t see a problem.” Cameron – who insisted on staying on the programme to do the racing tips – picked a horse called “Stormin Gordon”, saying: “What I said about Gordon Brown, if you disagree you could go for Stormin Gordon in the 2.10 at Pontefract.” But he said he would choose Red Samantha in the same race. Gordon Brown IMF Economics Global economy David Cameron Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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As tuition fees continue to make the news, the comedian Josie Long has taken her comedy – and her actions – into the political arena, setting up a charity to support students Josie Long possesses the kind of playful energy that could make even the most hardboiled curmudgeon mellow, so it takes a few moments to realise that the young comedian, known more for her whimsical musings on the minutiae of life than her political opinions, has a serious message to get across. For someone who is worried she is “going to say things that make me sound stupid,” Long displays a natural flair for articulating why, after more than a decade spent honing her comedy credentials, she is suddenly getting all political. In 2009, Long, who has accumulated a string of awards since entering the comedy world at just 17, embarked on a typically whimsical project: “a hundred days to make me a better person” (her comedy shows have upbeat titles such as Be Honourable! and Trying is Good). She set herself small arbitrary tasks such as writing a joke every day and speaking to strangers. One of the aims of the project was to become more politically aware because she felt a bit “woolly” on the subject. It was an experiment that sparked an unlikely journey and, later this month, she will launch an educational charity to help young people from underprivileged backgrounds get to university and tackle their debt. Underpinning the project is her desire to raise the profile of the liberal arts, which she believes have been sidelined by government ministers keen to push the idea of higher education as a route to employability rather than an end in itself. Long, who is now 29, says she has always been annoyed that she left university in debt, when her rich friends didn’t. “I’ve always believed that higher education shouldn’t make you have a massive debt at the end. It should be state–funded.” But the thing about being more politically active is that it has been a “world of hurt” every day, she says earnestly. “I began to feel like I couldn’t possibly be leading a good life unless I was doing more things. It came from feeling like I wasn’t doing anything to help society be more like how I wanted it to be. I guess it was just getting a bit older and feeling a bit disillusioned with being a comedian because it felt a bit too easy and good for me.” It was the prospect of a Tory government that made her think hard about education (she is proud of having studied English at Oxford despite coming from a modest background with “no connections” or family financial assistance). “I was thinking about how much my degree enriched my life, and how much it gave me for the future, in terms of learning how to study and read and research and think critically”. Rather than stay mired in vague exasperation or using comedy to vent (although she confesses to having enjoyed doing just that as part of her political awakening), Long decided to act on her impulses. First of all she took part in the student protests last year, ending up on the late-night political programme The Week at one point and giving Michael Portillo a run for his money debating tuition fee increases. She also became involved with UK Uncut, the disparate anti-tax avoidance network, taking part in some of the group’s occupations of high-street banks. But it still wasn’t enough, according to Long, so – despite having no voluntary or education sector experience whatsoever – she decided to set up her own charity. She is starting small with the mentoring where she lives in Hackney, east London, with “perhaps only a handful of pupils”, but the long-term aim is to help students all over the UK. Her new charity, Arts Emergency Service, is a collaboration with her friend Neil Griffiths, an experienced fundraiser. As well as running a small monthly lottery for graduates where winners get some and possibly all of their debts paid off, the pair also want to raise money for a long-term mentoring scheme and to convince their friends and others that “it’s not enough to have the ‘correct’ opinions and anxieties”, but that they should play an active part in effecting change. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that for all her earnestness Long seems unable to veer too far away from her comedy roots when talking about her plans. She beams mischievously while outlining one of her more quixotic ideas for Arts Emergency Service, which involves renting a van with a few friends and “going round for 10 days doing ad hoc [comedy] shows in the middle of nowhere – like in cul-de-sacs” to promote it. Another idea scheduled for later this month will entail using Twitter [@ artsemergency ] and the charity’s website [ arts-emergency.org ] to have a playful poke at Prince William. “We’ve got an idea to coincide with the royal wedding because prince thingy studied history of art – and he probably left debt-free.” Pausing for comic effect, Long adds: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t have a student loan.” She says the “ultimate aim” of Arts Emergency Service is “to reinstate free education for all at a tertiary level,” and, she says, giggling, trying to be as unrealistic as possible. “I’m almost perversely pro-stupid degrees now. I don’t care if you are studying beer management. Good for you – you enjoy yourself. Have three years of absolute flowering.” Long recalls the one-woman standup show she did at the Edinburgh festival in 2010, Be Honourable! It was her first foray into political comedy and was written as the concept of Arts Emergency Service was gestating. The critics loved it, with some saying she was unexpectedly filling a gap where political comedy should have been. “I’m just [trying] really hard not to be shit,” Long says half-seriously. “I didn’t intentionally start doing shows [that were political]. I just always believed that if I said what I really cared about I would build the right audience. That’s why this last show felt totally a part of all the other ones.” Whatever Long may have felt she was doing, there is a sense of someone who has put herself in the firing line – right in the middle of one of the most contentious issues of the day. When she first began mooting her views on the cuts and on education policy on Twitter, she was slightly thrown by the “massive resentment” of many of those who responded. “What’s been really upsetting has been getting loads of people saying things like ‘Why should I pay for other people to flit around?’ The idea is that you would want to [pay tax to fund education] because you feel responsible for everyone else in a society. I feel old-fashioned because that’s what I care about and believe in.” As she toured the country after the Edinburgh festival, Long, whose comedy is not the sort that tends to attract hecklers, found herself on the receiving end of some aggressive challenges. She recounts how one punter shouted that she shouldn’t be able to rant about government policy without any balance. “I was like, ‘yes I fucking can, it’s my gig you prick’. “There are people who don’t like me because of a [comedy] aesthetic,” Long adds, shrugging her shoulders. “But what I’ve encountered recently – which I’ve not really encountered before – is that I’ve made people angry and upset. That’s been really hard to deal with and quite sad.” But if it has been tough, it also seems to have reinforced her view that, with a few notable exceptions such as Mark Thomas, the contemporary scene is failing to embrace political satire. “I feel like there’s been a real aggressive attempt to make comedy apolitical and to send it back to pre-alternative comedy. A lot of the mainstream shows are just men coming on and going ‘Oh this is crap isn’t it I hate my wife’ and that’s been quite tedious.” Does she worry that by venturing beyond comedy and setting up a grassroots project – and one that could ironically be heralded by the Tories as a prime example of the “big society” in operation – potentially opens her up to accusations of naivety? “I would rather do something now than look back in 10 years and [realise] that I hadn’t done anything. I feel like I won’t be able to sleep at night unless I’m articulating these things at every opportunity and doing everything that I can.” Then does she at least acknowledge that she’s taken on a very ambitious task? Yes, she says, but that is beside the point. “We’ve got a lot of righteous indignation. It’s fuel. And I think the government is going to keep giving us fuel for at least the next four and a half years. If in five years’ time we have paid for even one person to go through university to study an arts degree, that would be wonderful.” Students Comedy Student politics Tuition fees Higher education Charities Voluntary sector Josie Long Mary O’Hara guardian.co.uk
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The lifestyles led by Chris Martin, Trudie Styler et al only perpetuate the consumerism that helped cause global warming There I was, kicking back in my Edun “natural indigo” organic jeans (£163), sipping on an icy cold glass of Fleury vintage organic champagne (£56 a bottle), having taken my new Porsche 918 hybrid supercar (£524,000) for a spin, when I started pondering where my next holiday might be. Would it be the languid lagoons of Cousine Island in the Seychelles, which boasts its own on-site ecologist? Or perhaps the Hacienda Tres Rios in Mexico with its philosophy of “intelligent and responsible use of our ecosystems and natural resources”? Organic produce, hybrid cars, eco-tourism resorts, ethical fashion – what could be finer than living such a fantastic, indulgent “champagne environmentalist” existence? But while the explosive growth in “eco-lifestyle” markets may seem good, in reality it is a perpetuation of the consumerist economic model that has largely got us into our current mess. The green scene is littered with compromised, hypocritical celebrities. Poor Prince Charles preaches and pontificates about harmony and simplicity, then ties himself in masochistic bondage knots of inconsistency by spending £100k on a biofuelled train tour to promote cycling . Famous frequent fliers abound, from Coldplay’s Chris Martin – who opined about global warming in song then racked up a personal carbon footprint massively bigger than the average Brit – to Sting’s wife, Trudie Styler, who flew her entourage (including hairdresser) by private jet from New York to Washington so she could go to a party. Most brilliantly, John Travolta encourages us all to “do our bit for climate change” while owning five private jets. As with the pejorative “champagne socialists”, the message is very much “do as we say, not as we do’. Like the highly discredited theory of “trickle-down” economics, there is a belief that this “eco-leadership” will somehow percolate into our collective consciousness and create demand for environmental goods and services at all levels of the economy. But this is missing the point. We fret about the environmental implications of global population growth in the belief that it is the fertility of our fellows in the developing world that is at the root of our resource problems. But this is a buck-passing, mean-spirited attempt at alleviating our own consumptive guilt. As studies have demonstrated , the richest 500 million people on the planet (about 7% of global population, and yes that includes all of us Brits) create 50% of global carbon emissions, while the poorest 50% create just 7%. So when we ask ourselves the question: “how will we live?”, the answer is fairly obvious: more simply and more frugally. Much of the nonsense written about green lifestyles is laughable, as if we can all carry on as we are, as long as we’re all buying organic, fair trade and ethical products. The real answer is that less really is more, and while the champagne environmentalists can lecture on how fantastic their sustainable lifestyle is as they throw another log from daddy’s woodland into the stove or go wild foraging on the family estate, that’s not going to mean much for the 80% of people who live in cities. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s vital that we promote a sense of positive hope, that life can be better for all of us when lived more sustainably. Its just that the “yes, you can have it all” mentality of some environmentalists is not just hypocritical, but potentially deceitful and distracting. I think the real fizz and excitement in sustainability is to be found where lifestyles and business models are being radically transformed. The Transition Network and the collaborative consumption movement. The high-end eco-products and aspirational lifestyles that alter our footprints by incremental percentage changes lull us into false security about dealing with the problem of climate change. The environmental lifestyle champagne has definitely gone flat. • Ed Gillespie is co-founder of Futerra Sustainability Communications Ethical and green living Carbon footprints Climate change Celebrity Ed Gillespie guardian.co.uk
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UK performance still not good enough as bulk of profit increase came from Asian operations, says new boss Philip Clarke Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, has reported record profits of £3.8bn – more than £10m a day – but admitted that it needs to do better in its core UK operations. Results for the year to end February, released on Tuesday, showed the bulk of Tesco’s 12.3% profit increase came from its growing Asian operations. Total group sales were £68bn and in the UK sales grew 5.5% to £45bn, with trading profits ahead by 3.8% to £2.5bn. But the performance was not good enough, Tesco’s new boss Philip Clarke admitted. “We didn’t achieve our planned growth in the year and this was only partly attributable to the deterioration in the consumer environment during the second half. We can do better and we are taking action in key areas – for example, to drive a faster rate of product innovation and to improve the sharpness of our communication to customers.” The retailer’s US losses also worsened in 2010, rising to £186m. Tesco said the increased losses reflected acquisition costs and Clarke, who took over from Sir Terry Leahy six weeks ago, reaffirmed his commitment to the US Fresh and Easy business. “Fresh and Easy is loved by customers who shop in it. The easiest thing would be to cut and run, but the sensible thing is to improve the business and get more customers,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Clarke suggested he would be taking a somewhat softer approach than his predecessor. “In the way I deal with the press and investors and our own people I can soften [the image] a little. I am a little more open and that’s the style I would like here.” Matthew McEachran, retail analyst at Singer Capital Markets, suggested the sharpening of Tesco’s UK focus would concern rivals. “With over £5bn of sales, and space potentially increasing by 10% per annum, intensification of their offer will result in more pressure for a number of general retailers including those already having to compete harder.” Tesco’s strongest growth came in Asia where profits grew by 30% to £570m. Shares in Tesco opened down by 0.6%, a fall of 2.5p to 397p. Tesco Supermarkets Retail industry Alex Hawkes guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …David Cameron and his advisers want to make us feel better, but they don’t know how One of the best gauges of whether a statement actually means anything is to stick a not in its middle. If the opposite sounds ridiculous, then the chances are the original proposition is mush. Who would seriously argue that banks shouldn’t be well-regulated, that the starvation of African babies is perfectly OK, thanks, or that civil liberties aren’t worth a fig? Run the mush test over the launch of the campaign group Action for Happiness. “I’m up for more happiness!” was one slogan – as if anyone but a Dickensian villain, hobbling around Victorian London and sending ragged-trousered tots scattering in fear before him, would ever admit otherwise. The same combination of vagueness and grandiosity runs through the website . “Action for Happiness is a movement for positive social change” – other movements presumably go round calling for things to get worse. “We’re bringing together people from all walks of life who want to play a part in creating a happier society for everyone” – rather than recruiting from the narrowest demographic imaginable, in order to proselytise for misery. Big, baggy talk like this must be partly why the British debate on happiness has failed to get past the opening shots. Here is a big idea – that government ministers should make policy decisions with an eye to making us happier rather than ever-richer – that deserves a proper airing. What it has got instead is the policy equivalent of a Rorschach test, in which commentators and wonks talk about what makes them happy, which isn’t the same thing at all. Even when David Cameron says: “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing”, the statement gets treated as just another respray of the true blues rather than a yardstick against which to judge his policies. But one of the key findings of researchers is that unemployment is a surefire way of making people utterly miserable – which means that whatever else is wrong with the prime minister’s austerity economics, it also contradicts his goal of making voters happier. Seeking specifics, I went to the Action for Happiness launch. In a grand former church packed out with believers and activists, it felt like an inaugural love-in. One of the founders, LSE economist Richard Layard, described “the science of happiness”. Helping a stranger lights up the same part of your brain as eating a bar of chocolate, apparently – although the significance of that finding went unexplained, as did what would happen if you assisted a stranger in eating their Green & Black’s. A former Buddhist monk called Andy led the hall in meditation, battling the plaintive rings of an abandoned Nokia. “Help out a friend in need,” we were advised. “Make sure you get enough sleep.” Thanks, Mum. This is happiness in its banal and individualistic form: a kind of smile-high club. It also mis-sells the research it’s meant to be promoting – by both overstating its status as a science and understating its potential to affect the way governments set policy. At the moment, happiness is as much a science as that bit in the L’Oréal ads when a bunch of equations float across the screen. Action for Happiness claims : “If we could increase our levels of happiness to those in Denmark, Britain would have 2.5 million fewer people suffering from unhappiness.” Yet the best researchers in the field have no idea how we might do that. Between them, David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald practically invented happiness economics . They organised the world’s first ever economics of happiness conference at the LSE in 1993 (“We stuck up posters, we put out 100 chairs,” remembers Oswald. “About eight people turned up.”). In a paper produced this February for the Academy of Management Perspectives the two lay out the state of research. The most telling part comes when they discuss the mental wellbeing of the Danes and the Dutch – then remark: “We do not yet know why these countries are so perplexingly happy.” What they do know, however, is that the field could end up posing a major challenge to free-market orthodoxy. For a start, one thing that happiness research shows is that people aren’t as good at choosing for themselves as they like to think – a BMW, for instance, really doesn’t give us so much more pleasure than a Micra. And paying attention to happiness gives a whole different slant to economic policy-making than simply focusing on increasing income. Take air pollution, which is often seen as the necessary price paid for economic growth; research shows that dirty air makes people consistently and notably more upset. Where civil servants and politicians were once able to shrug off complaints about pollution as just so much whining nimbyism, in the future they might have costings that back up the anti-pollution campaigners. A few years ago, Layard wrote Happiness, the best starter book on the subject, and he knows the field might end up being revolutionary. When I asked him last week what Hayek, father of free-market thinking and another former LSE professor would make of his campaign, he replied: “God knows. The road to serfdom, no doubt” – a reference to the Austrian’s tract against big government. But in order to make their policies more attractive to Whitehall and Westminster, Layard and his colleagues have taken all the politics out and left nice-sounding aspirations about turning “the rising tide of excessive individualism”. You wouldn’t want to argue with it, let alone disagree. The problem is, you probably wouldn’t bother to engage, either. Economics Global economy Psychology David Cameron Aditya Chakrabortty guardian.co.uk
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Married couples are more harmonious than unmarried ones as they take it in turns to win arguments, according to new research. Can that really be right? A group of Tokyo economists have discovered that married couples take it in turns to win an argument, while the unmarried just trample all over each other . Couples were asked if they would rather go to the theatre or for a meal; and if they would prefer go-karting to dancing. Where the pair differed, boffins monitored the pattern of compromise. I use the word “boffin” sarcastically, since any couple agreeing to go-kart would clearly be 12. Anyway, there it is: marriage either confers or proves a more mature, even-handed attitude. But I have a problem with the methodology, which I’m going to illustrate with this argument from within the atavistic, Lord of the Flies-fest that is my unmarried relationship. My beloved and I were arguing over who was the aggressor and who the victim, between our two offspring (this is the starter- argument). He decided that, to save time, he was going to adopt the unspoken practice of rugby, where transgression is so complicated that the referee just gives out penalties in turns. I countered that, since they were two small children and not 22 huge men, it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of a moderately competent adult to see which one had started it (this is the correct argument). He said it was actually 26 huge men (this is the diversion argument) and, if I spent less time watching the children and more time watching telly, I would improve my sporting knowledge across the board (this is an attempt to argue away the opening parameters of the argument). He went on to argue that, while there were more men in rugby than we had children, they had only one ball, where we had about 7m toys (this is totally irrelevant). From this we can abstract the following: real arguments in couples are seldom between two competing and equivalent positions; one is usually right, where the other is wrong. So, to adopt a convention of turn-taking would be random and against reason, whether you were married or not. I don’t know about you, but I simply can’t limit myself to being right only one time in two. Marriage Relationships Zoe Williams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Britain’s first national park deserves support in its battle to balance the needs of locals and protection of the environment The Peak District national park , 60 years old this month, famously lacks any peaks and isn’t a park. But as Britain’s first national park, and almost certainly its busiest, it has played a proud part in preserving a special part of the English landscape and encouraging the public to enjoy it. The high gritstone Dark Peak countryside remains a true wilderness, even though on a mist-free day you can see the fringes of Manchester and Sheffield from its tops. The soft limestone countryside of the White Peak is still quietly rural, and a refuge for the millions of visitors who come each year from the Midlands and beyond. As Roger Redfern’s country diary records twice a month on these pages, the Peak District is part of the life of the cities on its borders, and has been since well before the famous Kinder mass trespass of 1932, which saw ramblers demand their right to walk across the Duke of Devonshire’s shooting estate. The national park authority has often found itself caught in the middle of a debate between access, development and preservation, and has done a decent job at all three. With limited resources, it has restricted quarrying and tried to balance the needs of locals for new homes with the protection of a delicate environment. It deserves strong support in this battle – as do the rights of all national parks, reported to be under scrutiny in a crowdsourcing exercise to test red tape. This Easter, there can no better place than the Peak to tramp the moors or wander past meadows and spring lambs. Peak District guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Britain’s first national park deserves support in its battle to balance the needs of locals and protection of the environment The Peak District national park , 60 years old this month, famously lacks any peaks and isn’t a park. But as Britain’s first national park, and almost certainly its busiest, it has played a proud part in preserving a special part of the English landscape and encouraging the public to enjoy it. The high gritstone Dark Peak countryside remains a true wilderness, even though on a mist-free day you can see the fringes of Manchester and Sheffield from its tops. The soft limestone countryside of the White Peak is still quietly rural, and a refuge for the millions of visitors who come each year from the Midlands and beyond. As Roger Redfern’s country diary records twice a month on these pages, the Peak District is part of the life of the cities on its borders, and has been since well before the famous Kinder mass trespass of 1932, which saw ramblers demand their right to walk across the Duke of Devonshire’s shooting estate. The national park authority has often found itself caught in the middle of a debate between access, development and preservation, and has done a decent job at all three. With limited resources, it has restricted quarrying and tried to balance the needs of locals for new homes with the protection of a delicate environment. It deserves strong support in this battle – as do the rights of all national parks, reported to be under scrutiny in a crowdsourcing exercise to test red tape. This Easter, there can no better place than the Peak to tramp the moors or wander past meadows and spring lambs. Peak District guardian.co.uk
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Republican denies that bill, aimed at reforming requirements for election candidates, was swipe at president Arizona governor Jan Brewer has vetoed a bill that would have required President Barack Obama and other presidential candidates to prove their US citizenship before their names could appear on the state’s ballot. The bill would have made Arizona the first state to pass such a requirement. Opponents had warned the bill would further denigrate Arizona’s reputation after last year’s controversy over the state’s illegal immigration enforcement law. Brewer said in her veto letter that she was troubled that the bill empowered Arizona’s secretary of state to judge the qualifications of all candidates when they file to run for office. “I do not support designating one person as the gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions,” said Brewer, who was secretary of state until she became governor in 2009. “In addition, I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth to submit their ‘early baptismal circumcision certificates’ among other records to the Arizona secretary of state,” she said. “This is a bridge too far.” The certificates were among the documents a candidate could have submitted under the bill in place of a birth certificate. So-called “birthers” claim that there is no proof Obama was born in the US, and he is therefore ineligible to be president. But Hawaii officials have certified Obama was born in that state. The US constitution requires that presidential candidates be “natural-born” US citizens, be at least 35 years old, and be a resident of the US for at least 14 years. Opponents questioned whether Arizona’s bill would have added additional requirements. The measure would have required that political parties and presidential candidates hand in affidavits stating a candidate’s citizenship and age. It also would have required the candidate’s birth certificate and a sworn statement saying where the candidate has lived for 14 years. If candidates did not have a copy of their birth certificates, they could meet the requirement by providing baptismal or circumcision certificates, hospital birth records and other documents. If it could not be determined whether candidates who provided documents in place of their birth certificates were eligible to appear on the ballot, the secretary of state would have been able to set up a committee to help determine whether the requirements were met. The names of candidates could be kept off the ballot if the secretary of state didn’t believe the candidates met the citizenship requirement. The bill did not explicitly provide an appeals process for a candidate whose name was kept off the ballot. The bill’s sponsor, Republican representative Carl Seel, said he was disappointed by the veto. It would have been reasonable to have the secretary of state, the state’s top election officer, decide whether a candidate had adequately documented his or her qualifications, he said. Because the bill would have required candidates for all offices to submit documentation of their qualifications, he said “it would have been excellent reform”. Seel had said previously the measure wasn’t intended as a swipe against the president, and would have helped maintain the integrity of elections. US politics Arizona United States Barack Obama guardian.co.uk
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