Debut novelists predominate among six finalists tackling notably traumatic material First-time novelists make up half the shortlist for the 2011 Orange prize for fiction, indicating “the rude health of women’s writing”, according to this year’s chair of judges Bettany Hughes. The list includes novels that tackle strikingly difficult subjects – not least Kathleen Winter’s debut novel Annabel, which tells the story of a baby born in back-of-beyond Newfoundland with both male and female genitalia. Then there is inhuman imprisonment in Emma Donoghue’s Room; mental illness in Emma Henderson’s Grace Williams Says It Loud; the Sierra Leonean civil war in Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love; the aftermath of the Balkan civil war in Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife; and traumas, sorrows and terrible secrets in Nicole Krauss’s Great House. “The clarity and human understanding on the page is simply breathtaking,” said Hughes. “The verve and scope of storylines pays compliment to the female imagination. There are no subjects these authors don’t dare to tackle. “Even though the stories in our final choices range from kidnapping to colonialism, from the persistence of love to Balkan folk-memory, from hermaphroditism to abuse in care, the books are written with such a skilful lightness of touch, humour, sympathy and passion, they all make for an exhilarating and uplifting read. This shortlist should give hours of reading pleasure to the wider world.” Judges chose the shortlist from a longlist of 20. One of the most notable omissions is Jennifer Egan’s multi-layered A Visit From the Goon Squad which has done fantastically well in US literary prizes, beating Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom to the the fiction prize from the National Books Critics Circle last month. The first-time novelists are Henderson, Obreht and Winter, a former Sesame Street writer who was born in Gateshead but whose family moved to Canada when she was a young girl. Just getting shortlisted will mean a healthy spike in sales but the writers have to wait until 8 June before the £30,000 winner is named. Recent winners have included US novelists Barbara Kingsolver, who won last year for The Lacuna, and Marilynne Robinson in 2009 for Home. The prize was created in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction written by women. The judges this year include publisher Liz Calder, novelist Tracy Chevalier, actor Helen Lederer and BBC broadcaster Susanna Reid. Hughes, a broadcaster and historian, said the calibre of submissions was high. “Our judging meeting fizzed for many hours with conversations about the originality, excellence and readability of the books in front of us.” Orange prize for fiction Fiction Awards and prizes Emma Donoghue Mark Brown guardian.co.uk
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President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, says deadly blast in Minsk metro station was an attempt to destabilize the country President Alexander Lukashenko has said that a blast that tore through a crowded metro station in the Belarus capital Minsk in the evening rush hour, killing 11 people, was an attempt to destabilize the country. As police placed the capital on high alert, Lukashenko linked the explosion to a previous unsolved blast in 2008, saying: “These are perhaps links in a single chain.” “We must find out who gained by undermining peace and stability in the country, who stands behind this,” added the president, whose re-election for a fourth term and subsequent crackdown on protests in December was criticised by western nations. Acts of deliberate violence are unusual in the ex-Soviet republic of 10 million people which shares borders with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania and with Russia and Ukraine. One opposition figure said he feared Lukashenko would use the blast to crack down even more harshly on political rivals. “Prosecutors qualify this as a terrorist act,” a source in Lukashenko’s administration said. Lukashenko said: “I do not rule out that this [the blast] was a gift from abroad.” A former state-farm boss, Lukashenko has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, jailing opponents and silencng independent media while offering generous welfare and pensions to his citizens on the back of Russian subsidies. After the election, police arrested nearly 700 protesters and reporters during protests. The EU and the US have imposed a travel ban on Lukashenko and his closest associates because of the 19 December crackdown. He has said the opposition rally was an attempted coup financed by the west. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors said the vote count was flawed and criticised police for being heavy handed. The remarks angered Minsk, which forced the OSCE to close down its office there. In typical combative style, Lukashenko hit back, defending the police, dismissing members of the opposition as being bent on “banditry” and denouncing the OSCE verdict as “amoral”. Monday’s blast occurred on a platform at around 6pm at the Oktyabrskaya metro station – one of the city’s busiest underground rail junctions – about 100m from the main presidential headquarters. Lukashenko was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying 11 people had been killed and 100 injured. A presidential administration source later said 126 people had been injured. In his remarks, Lukashenko referred back to July 2008 when a homemade bomb wounded about 50 people at an open air concert he was attending. The crime was never solved. “Regardless of who organised and ordered the blast, the government will be tempted to use it as an excuse to tighten the screws … I am afraid they will use it,” said Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the opposition United Civic party. Belarus Europe Global terrorism guardian.co.uk
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Consumer prices index is 4% for March, down from February’s 4.4%, on cheaper food and drink costs, said the Office for National Statistics Inflation in the UK fell back last month, confounding City economists but bringing some respite to shoppers and easing the pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates soon. The consumer prices index dropped to 4% in March, from February’s 4.4%, the Office for National Statistics reported. The Retail Prices Index, which includes housing costs, dropped to 5.3% from 5.5% the previous month. City analysts had expected CPI to remain unchanged around 4.4%, with some expecting a rise towards 5%. At 4%, though, CPI remains at double the Bank of England’s official target of 2%. The ONS said that food and drink costs had fallen in March, compared with February. While prices in the shops continue to climb, consumers are cutting back. The latest data from the high street showed that retail sales in March suffered their largest monthly fall since 1995 . More to follow… Inflation Economics Interest rates Consumer spending guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sir John Vickers has let the banks off lightly, and ducked radical reforms As banks’ shares led the London stock market yesterday, Sir John Vickers may have had a few misgivings that his prescription for reform of Britain’s banking sector had not been tough enough. He would be right. The much heralded analysis from the Independent Commission on Banking lets the banks off lightly. Its brief was to make banks safer as well as to come up with ways of injecting more competition into the market. Eminent figures from Vince Cable, the business secretary, to Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, suggested the commission look at breaking up the banks so that taxpayers could stand behind the retail branch networks while allowing the investment or “casino” operations to fail in a crisis. But Sir John and his fellow commissioners have backed away from a clear break between investment and retail banking, and instead argue that these activities can remain within the same institution if they are separated by a “firewall”. Crucially for the banks, the report allows them to transfer capital between both sides of the bank, meaning they can go on gambling with depositors’ money. Banks have got carried away in recent years by the profits on offer in risk-taking on international markets. This has little to do with providing a branch network. Retail banking should be a utility business much like running a power company or gas provider. It is an essential service for most people and should not be the root to riches. Too often banks have neglected their customers, selling ill-designed investment products and poorly performing savings policies to a captive base. Since depositors’ money is used to support their more lucrative investment banking activities, banks were desperate to protect this source of funding. The alternative would be expensive borrowing. This is why the banks will be privately cheered by the report even though they are moaning publicly about all the changes that they have endured in recent years. Sir John and his colleagues appear to have been convinced by threats from institutions such as Barclays and HSBC that they would shift out of London if draconian reforms were imposed on them. The separation advocated by the commission is a compromise that will make the system safer if it is done properly, but a clean break would be neater. The commission does not specify how a firewall could be set up and how this will operate in practice, although it does shoot down some of the higher estimates of the cost which were put at £12-15bn. Sir John will now consult the banks on how this separation can be achieved and no doubt, they will push for the most flexible way of doing it. Importantly, the report has nothing to say about the banking issue that preoccupies the public at present – bank bonuses. The commission says the City regulator – the Financial Services Authority – will deal with this. But pay policy is an inherent part of making banks safer. Many analyses of the crisis have pointed to the risks taken by bankers in pursuit of higher bonuses. It is high time there was an informed debate about the share of bank revenues devoted to remuneration, shareholders and tax. Unfortunately, the Vickers commission has ducked this issue. It has backed away from radical reform for consumers too. The commission clearly looked at dismantling Lloyds’ rescue merger with HBOS which was made at the height of the crisis and only after the government waived all existing competition considerations. This resulted in a further concentration of an already small number of banks and a reduction in customer choice. However, Sir John and colleagues instead suggest that Lloyds sell off more branches along with the 600 already specified by the EU. This would help to encourage rivals and add to the plurality of the banking system which, in theory, would mean we were better served.Customer service by banks is poor, and little has been done to improve it in recent years. Depressingly, last week’s Treasury select committee report found many of the same problems as a previous analysis had done a decade earlier. Anyone who has tried switching banks will know that it is not a straightforward process, even though mobile phone providers can manage it speedily. Some of the most effective suggestions of the commission may be the smaller ones, such as allowing portability of bank account numbers. There is no doubt that Britain’s bank system needs urgent reforms if we are to avert another crisis. Reform will also help restore the public’s faith in banks, which they need to rely on to save for their old age. Sir John’s prescription, however, does not go far enough. Banking Financial sector Financial crisis Economic policy Deborah Hargreaves guardian.co.uk
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Vicars advised to direct couples who include foreign nationals to apply for a common licence, which involves greater scrutiny The Church of England is to stop offering the traditional practice of reading the banns before weddings involving a foreign national from outside Europe as part of a drive against “sham marriages”. New guidance for clergy from the House of Bishops says that couples who include a foreign national and insist on their banns being published should be reported to the diocesan authorities immediately and their details passed on to the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Vicars are to be asked to suggest that couples who include foreign nationals should be directed to apply for a common licence, which involves greater scrutiny such as the production of passports and swearing of affidavits. There is a certain irony in the decision to ban the practice of publishing the banns for couples who include a foreign national as it was originally established to enable any local objections to be raised to an impending wedding to prevent marriages that are invalid. The Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, said the new guidance was needed because the “office of holy matrimony must not be misused by those who have no intention of contracting a genuine marriage but merely a sham marriage. The purpose of this guidance and direction from the bishops to the clergy and those responsible for the grant of common licences is, therefore, to prevent the contracting of sham marriages in the Church of England.” The immigration minister, Damian Green, who approved the new guidance, said recent enforcement action had resulting in 155 arrests for sham marriages across the country: “Would-be fraudsters should remember that a marriage in itself does not equal an automatic right to remain in the UK.” The guidance says that if the couple insist on having banns read rather than applying for a common licence they should be reported to diocesan legal officers. The clergy should require verifiable evidence of the couple’s right to marriage by banns, such as a driving licence and official correspondence in their original forms, and they should visit the couple at the address they have given. The guidance encourages vicars to contact the UKBA if they have any doubts about the marriages they are asked to conduct. They are encouraged to report any threats or other improper pressure to the police. It makes clear that while vicars have a legal duty to conduct the marriages of their parishoners, this does not extend to marry people “in pursuance of a criminal enterprise”. Marriage Christianity Religion Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Constituency colleagues decide against featuring once-popular deputy prime minister on publicity material It is just under a year since Nick Clegg was the pride of the Liberal Democrats and hailed as Britain’s most popular leader since Winston Churchill during a brief period of election hysteria. Now the deputy prime minister’s Lib Dem colleagues in his Sheffield Hallam constituency appear to be turning their backs on him and have left him out of their leaflets for the local elections on 5 May. A year ago Clegg’s mugshot popped up on every page of the Hallamshire Herald, whose front page ran the banner headline: “We’re backing Nick!” On page two, under two pictures of Clegg, the Lib Dems printed pictures of the party’s five councillors in Hallam. Wind forward 12 months and there are no pictures of Clegg. The editors of an edition of the Lib Dem Focus freesheet have decided not to remind voters that Hallam has elected Britain’s deputy prime minister as it runs the following headline on its front page: “Work starts on Stannington Park.” The leaflet was published on the centre left blog Political Scrapbook . A spokesman for Clegg said: “This is just one leaflet from a huge number put out by Liberal Democrats across Sheffield, including another that went out at the same time with Nick’s image on the front and the back. It’s a local election. Some of our leaflets feature Nick and national issues, while others focus more on local issues and the fantastic work our local councillors are doing.” “Nick is proud to be a Sheffield MP and Sheffield Lib Dems are proud that Nick is in government delivering on our manifesto. This was clear just last month when we became the first political party to hold a conference in the city.” There was further embarrassment for Clegg when Tavish Scott, the Lib Dem leader in Scotland, joked about the deputy prime minister’s admission in the New Statesman last week that he sometimes cries to music . Scott, whose party faces a tough fight in the elections to the Scottish parliament on 5 May, told Clyde 2 radio: “Nick Clegg doesn’t make me cry – grimace occasionally, but not cry.” Clegg’s office laughed off Scott’s remarks. “Tavish Scott is allowed to make a joke,” one source said. “Nick gets on very well with Tavish and will going up to Scotland for the elections.” But Lib Dems in Glasgow appear to think Clegg is not much of an asset in Scotland. The Daily Record reported that a four-page pamphlet for the Glasgow region features two pictures of the former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy but none of Clegg. A Lib Dem spokesman told the Daily Record: “Nick Clegg will be part of our Scottish election campaign, but so will Charles Kennedy. He is a tremendously popular politician.” Nick Clegg Elections 2011 Local elections Local government Local politics Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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• BRC-KPMG retail sales monitor shows biggest fall in total sales since survey began in 1995 • RICS figures show house prices outside London are continuing to fall Britain’s retailers are enduring the toughest trading conditions for at least a decade and a half, as consumer spending wilts in the face of higher inflation and the first drop in personal spending power since the slump of the early 1980s. Today’s monthly healthcheck from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) of activity in brick and mortar stores and on the internet found an across-the-board weakness in consumer spending that left takings down on a year earlier. City analysts are braced for fresh evidence of upward pressure on the cost of living with the release of the latest Office for National Statistics data today. Financial markets are expecting the annual inflation rate as measured by the consumer prices index to nudge closer to 5%, adding to the Bank of England’s dilemma over whether to raise interest rates at a time when the economy is weak. Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: “The next interest rate decision is a difficult balancing act for the Bank but, for now, supporting our weak economy must be the priority. Inflation is coming mainly from temporary and external price shocks – VAT, world commodity prices and the weak pound – not wage or consumer-driven increases. Increasing interest rates would do more harm than good.” The BRC data comes in the wake of profit warnings from high street names ranging from Dixons to Mothercare, Carpetright, Halfords, HMV and the Argos owner Home Retail Group. The former Asda boss Andy Bond has warned that retailers are facing a two-year high street recession as consumer confidence and household incomes come under increasing pressure. The BRC-KPMG retail sales monitor showed that the total value of retail sales last month was 1.9% lower than in March 2010, but down 3.5% when the data was adjusted for an increase in floor space over the past 12 months. “This is the worst drop in total sales since we first collected these figures in 1995,” Robertson said. “Non-food retailers were particularly hard hit. This is strong evidence of the pressure customers and traders are under. This year’s later Easter is a factor but this fall goes way beyond anything explained by that alone. “Uncomfortably high inflation and low wage growth have produced the first year-on-year fall in disposable incomes for 30 years. Mounting fuel and utility costs, falling house prices, higher VAT and the prospect of more tax rises and job losses left people unwilling to spend unless they really had to. These pressures aren’t going away and the arrival of higher national insurance is likely to compound them in the immediate future.” A sector-by-sector breakdown of trading conditions found that spending on clothing was down on a year earlier, food sales were flat, stores selling electrical goods had a “challenging” month, book sales were down and many computer games stores were disappointed by sales of the new Nintendo DSi 3D. The BRC said that online sales were also affected, with the growth rate in internet retailing halving to 7.5% between March 2010 and March 2011. Helen Dickinson, head of retail at the accountancy firm KPMG, said: “We have seen an emergence of new, lower spending patterns since the middle of January, which are currently continuing to trend downwards. Many retailers will not be able to sustain this ongoing weakness in demand beyond the short term and are hoping for some good news around the extended bank holiday period and a feelgood factor driven by the royal wedding. “However, as disposable income continues to fall, without reducing saving or increasing borrowing – which would oppose current trends – this will not be possible.” A separate report today from Britain’s estate agents suggested little prospect of the traditional spring surge in the housing market. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said that activity was flat, demand for new property had fallen and prices were continuing to edge downwards. Nationally, the number of firms reporting falling prices exceeded those registering price increases by a margin of 23 percentage points, slightly lower than the balance of +26% in February. According to the RICS, the general fall in house prices over the past three months was in the range of 0-2%. London was the only part of the country to report a rise in prices, and also bucked the trend in terms of activity. Ian Perry, RICS housing spokesman, said: “The rather negative outlook for property prices across the UK seems to better reflect the general economy than the microclimate of London. The low level of buyer interest in many parts of the UK continues to impact on the market, resulting in some downward pressure on prices. With the prospect of forthcoming interest rate rises and continued shortage of mortgage funding, it seems that overall recovery for the national housing market is still some way off.” Consumer spending Inflation Economic growth (GDP) Economics Bank of England Interest rates Retail industry House prices Property National insurance Tax Dixons Retail Mothercare Carpetright Halfords HMV Home Retail Asda Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A US appeals court today ruled that key parts of Arizona’s controversial immigration law will remain blocked, reports the Washington Post, “Arizona has attempted to hijack a discretionary role that Congress delegated to the Executive,’’ read the majority opinion in the 2-1 decision, which ordered only that the lower…
Continue reading …When BP’s Macondo well blew skyward, the oil titan opened up its wallet and doused oil-soaked Gulf communities in cash. And non-oil-soaked Gulf communities. Both of which went shopping, reports the AP in an analysis of what the $754 million that BP paid to state and local governments bought. BP…
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Survey finds less than 10% of placements are ‘unconventional’, with majority in education, hair and beauty, office and shops Mixed-sex schools are not doing enough to promote girls’ confidence and ambitions, according to an Ofsted survey, which finds that work placements for young women are almost all in “stereotypically female” occupations such as hair salons. Single-sex schools say they find it easier to promote confidence and a competitive attitude in the absence of boys, but inspectors found that even in these schools the pattern of entries for GCSE and A-level subjects conformed with the national picture of girls’ choices. In all the schools Ofsted visited, girls mainly chose courses such as dance, art, textiles, and health and social care. While there is a widening gap between girls and boys’ performance at GCSE – last summer 72.6% of girls passed at A* to C, compared with 65.4% of boys – this has not translated into advantages in careers or pay. Christine Gilbert, chief inspector of schools, said: “It is encouraging that most of the girls inspectors spoke with were open to the possibility of pursuing careers that challenge stereotypes. What is worrying is that they all too often follow courses and qualifications that don’t give them these opportunities in practice.” Ofsted’s survey finds that schools are not using work experience to challenge gender stereotypes. Out of more than 1,700 examples of work placements, less than a tenth were “unconventional”, while the vast majority were in education, hair and beauty, offices and shops. In the few examples where girls set out on an unfamiliar route, this had often come about after a personal experience. In one case, a girl in the first year of GCSE studies was determined to become a forensic scientist after watching a crime officer dealing with a burglary at her father’s shop. The most positive attitudes were found in single-sex schools, where most of the girls said they would definitely consider jobs stereotypically done by men. In selective schools, girls did not view any career as being closed to them, as long as they worked hard and got the relevant qualifications. They felt that more women should be encouraged into roles traditionally done by men. However, this confident thinking was not matched by any noticeable shift away from gender-typical course or career choices. “Almost all of these girls told inspectors that they were not planning to pursue such a route for themselves,” the report says. esceInspectors found that careers education for pupils aged 11-14 was “generally weak”, which made informed choices about courses and careers difficult. Explicit teaching about career breaks, the impact of raising a family and how careers develop through promotion was rare in all the schools visited for the survey. Little information about starting salaries, promotion prospects and earning potential was available, and girls had no clear idea what these might be. “This was a major shortfall in the information available to young people making choices in these schools, irrespective of gender,” the report says. A report commissioned by the last government found that women are “crowded into a narrow range of lower-paying occupations, mainly those available part-time”, though there is some evidence that young women are now earning more than young men. In the last decade, girls have become more likely to pick certain A-level subjects, such as maths or technology, which have been male-dominated. But the proportion of girls taking physics has fallen slightly, from 23% in 2000 to 21% in 2010. More girls than boys do biology A-level, while chemistry is close to being evenly balanced. Course choices were overwhelmingly gender-stereotypical in all the 10 further education colleges Ofsted visited. Construction, motor vehicle and engineering departments remained predominantly male. Areas such as health, social care, childcare, hairdressing and beauty therapy remained primarily the choice of female students. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Employers have a key role to play in challenging gender stereotypes in the workplace, by encouraging girls to take on work placements in male-dominated fields and providing female role models. “Schools and colleges want to provide relevant, worthwhile work-based learning, but they are dependent on local businesses agreeing to take on students. Companies must do more to support schools and colleges in making high-quality work placements available.” The single-sex girls’ schools visited had various approaches to challenging stereotypical choices, including the use of positive female role models and successful former students returning to the school to share experiences of work. “Schools need to develop more opportunities for young women to meet professionals working in non-stereotypical roles, and to learn more about what the job entails through diverse work placements.” Careers Schools Ofsted Equality Secondary schools GCSEs A-levels Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
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