Cardiff International Arena Tonight, Cardiff’s premier gig-shed has turned into a family parlour. Five picture frames hang from the stage, gold and old-fashioned, each of them holding a member of Elbow. Every now and then, each portrait breaks its composure – to scratch a nose, brush a sleeve, or, in Guy Garvey’s case, exhale like Henry VIII after a particularly heavy supper. Eventually the lights lower, the frames empty, and the band arrive for real, raising half-empty pint glasses like welcome flags. The gesture is returned by 7,500 people – and before a note has been played, the audience is theirs. If any British band belongs to the people in 2011, it’s Elbow. By now, we all know their rags-to-riches story: forming in Bury 20 years ago, getting dropped twice, throwing everything into their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid (revived romances, personal bereavements and tons of orchestral experiment) before winning the 2008 Mercury prize. Their new album Build a Rocket Boys! is all about hearth and home – a canny move for a band that set life’s little intimacies to a stadium-sized soundtrack. And in the middle of the mêlée we find renaissance man Garvey – 6 Music DJ, thinking woman’s crumpet, national treasure. Tonight he is dressed in a three-piece suit and black tie, like a local undertaker or hearty pub landlord. His presence on stage remains refreshingly unshowy, too – he rocks from heel to toe as if he’s trying to keep balance on starboard as the band open up with “The Birds”, their new album’s opening track. Then he realises he’s got a catwalk, which he starts pounding up and down like a bear, his voice switching from smoky growl to high tenor as he rambles – a voice that has never sounded better than it does tonight. The band beam at him broadly as he does so, happy to make honey, while they let their queen parade. “What we going to do with you?” go the backing vocals; we hear the warmth, and the years, in those words. And then we’re off. Garvey gets a sweat on; his jacket comes off to womanly wolf-whistles. “Hardly, but thank you,” he deadpans. The gig becomes a mixture of proggy musical adventure and Phoenix Nights turn. “Join me in worshipping the orb,” says Garvey, introducing “Mirrorball”, as a glittery sphere descends from the ceiling. He asks if anyone is standing next to someone they love but haven’t told yet; later, he gets the crowd to applaud the audience member furthest from the stage. This is one of several antics tonight that veers dangerously towards excessive schmaltz. Elbow just about get away with it, as there is grit behind their pearls. It helps that they have become a momentous live band, their rockier tracks sounding like juddering juggernauts. “Grounds for Divorce”, for example, keens, yearns and growls, Garvey smashing a snare drum as the crowd whoa-oh along. Recent single “Neat Little Rows” also gains extra backbone, the despair and death in its lyrics becoming much more apparent here (“lay my bones on cobblestones, lay my bones in neat little rows”). Even in Elbow’s softer songs, however, these shadows linger darkly, most impressively tonight in “The Loneliness of the Tower Crane Driver” – the song Elbow campaigned to play at the 2008 Mercury prize ceremony, a song about the crushed dreams of a manual worker, rather than one of their album’s more conventional ballads. “Send up a prayer in my name,” Garvey begs tonight, as the band build the song into a huge, drenching climax. “They say I’m on top of my game,” he exhales – and hands across the crowd rise to dab at eyelashes. As the night draws on, Garvey returns to the catwalk, this time with a piano and his bandmate, Craig Potter, the man who also produced The Seldom Seen Kid . They play one of only three songs tonight from Elbow’s pre-Mercury days, 2005′s “Puncture Repair”, a song about leaning on a friend who “patches you up”, and the rest of the band join them soon after. The band finish with the expected flourish – “One Day Like This”, their perennial wave-a-lighter number, which will soundtrack emotional TV moments for ever more. As Garvey sings, however, we’re reminded it’s a song about being hung over, feeling desperate and clinging on to hope, and how we feel better when we pull together. It also becomes clear that Elbow are still part of the crowd’s real world, and not the world of rock worship – a real rarity on a stage of this size. Long may these five ordinary men keep on doing this extraordinary thing. Elbow Pop and rock Jude Rogers guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Cardiff International Arena Tonight, Cardiff’s premier gig-shed has turned into a family parlour. Five picture frames hang from the stage, gold and old-fashioned, each of them holding a member of Elbow. Every now and then, each portrait breaks its composure – to scratch a nose, brush a sleeve, or, in Guy Garvey’s case, exhale like Henry VIII after a particularly heavy supper. Eventually the lights lower, the frames empty, and the band arrive for real, raising half-empty pint glasses like welcome flags. The gesture is returned by 7,500 people – and before a note has been played, the audience is theirs. If any British band belongs to the people in 2011, it’s Elbow. By now, we all know their rags-to-riches story: forming in Bury 20 years ago, getting dropped twice, throwing everything into their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid (revived romances, personal bereavements and tons of orchestral experiment) before winning the 2008 Mercury prize. Their new album Build a Rocket Boys! is all about hearth and home – a canny move for a band that set life’s little intimacies to a stadium-sized soundtrack. And in the middle of the mêlée we find renaissance man Garvey – 6 Music DJ, thinking woman’s crumpet, national treasure. Tonight he is dressed in a three-piece suit and black tie, like a local undertaker or hearty pub landlord. His presence on stage remains refreshingly unshowy, too – he rocks from heel to toe as if he’s trying to keep balance on starboard as the band open up with “The Birds”, their new album’s opening track. Then he realises he’s got a catwalk, which he starts pounding up and down like a bear, his voice switching from smoky growl to high tenor as he rambles – a voice that has never sounded better than it does tonight. The band beam at him broadly as he does so, happy to make honey, while they let their queen parade. “What we going to do with you?” go the backing vocals; we hear the warmth, and the years, in those words. And then we’re off. Garvey gets a sweat on; his jacket comes off to womanly wolf-whistles. “Hardly, but thank you,” he deadpans. The gig becomes a mixture of proggy musical adventure and Phoenix Nights turn. “Join me in worshipping the orb,” says Garvey, introducing “Mirrorball”, as a glittery sphere descends from the ceiling. He asks if anyone is standing next to someone they love but haven’t told yet; later, he gets the crowd to applaud the audience member furthest from the stage. This is one of several antics tonight that veers dangerously towards excessive schmaltz. Elbow just about get away with it, as there is grit behind their pearls. It helps that they have become a momentous live band, their rockier tracks sounding like juddering juggernauts. “Grounds for Divorce”, for example, keens, yearns and growls, Garvey smashing a snare drum as the crowd whoa-oh along. Recent single “Neat Little Rows” also gains extra backbone, the despair and death in its lyrics becoming much more apparent here (“lay my bones on cobblestones, lay my bones in neat little rows”). Even in Elbow’s softer songs, however, these shadows linger darkly, most impressively tonight in “The Loneliness of the Tower Crane Driver” – the song Elbow campaigned to play at the 2008 Mercury prize ceremony, a song about the crushed dreams of a manual worker, rather than one of their album’s more conventional ballads. “Send up a prayer in my name,” Garvey begs tonight, as the band build the song into a huge, drenching climax. “They say I’m on top of my game,” he exhales – and hands across the crowd rise to dab at eyelashes. As the night draws on, Garvey returns to the catwalk, this time with a piano and his bandmate, Craig Potter, the man who also produced The Seldom Seen Kid . They play one of only three songs tonight from Elbow’s pre-Mercury days, 2005′s “Puncture Repair”, a song about leaning on a friend who “patches you up”, and the rest of the band join them soon after. The band finish with the expected flourish – “One Day Like This”, their perennial wave-a-lighter number, which will soundtrack emotional TV moments for ever more. As Garvey sings, however, we’re reminded it’s a song about being hung over, feeling desperate and clinging on to hope, and how we feel better when we pull together. It also becomes clear that Elbow are still part of the crowd’s real world, and not the world of rock worship – a real rarity on a stage of this size. Long may these five ordinary men keep on doing this extraordinary thing. Elbow Pop and rock Jude Rogers guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Nobody can accuse the liberal Media Matters group of having a hidden agenda. The mission is out in the open and called “war on Fox.” That’s how founder David Brock describes the group’s new vision to Ben Smith of Politico . As part of this war, it plans a campaign of…
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Chemist Lorraine Gibson is working on technology to analyse the condition of old books and treasures by the gases they emit Walk into a library or museum and you cannot fail to note a distinctive musty smell. This is made up of a cocktail of compounds given off by ancient tomes and exhibits. For some the experience is pleasant; for others, such smells are fusty. But for chemist Dr Lorraine Gibson, of Strathclyde University, these odours are the bread and butter of her research. Gibson believes smells can be used to expose the condition of a book or an artefact – without touching it – before it has decayed dangerously, so repairs and restoration can be applied early to avoid serious damage later on. The trick, she says, is to develop a device than could mimic our sense of smell, or at least part of it. This is the focus of her work at Strathclyde University’s department of chemistry. So how can smell help the heritage business? The smell produced by an old book or museum exhibit is comprised of hundreds of volatile compounds. Most of these will be of no interest but a few will be of great importance. We are trying to pinpoint the important ones so we can discard the rest. Consider paper. It is comprised of cellulose, lignin and many other compounds. As paper ages, it changes – anyone who works with old books knows it becomes brittle and fragile. Volatile
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Chemist Lorraine Gibson is working on technology to analyse the condition of old books and treasures by the gases they emit Walk into a library or museum and you cannot fail to note a distinctive musty smell. This is made up of a cocktail of compounds given off by ancient tomes and exhibits. For some the experience is pleasant; for others, such smells are fusty. But for chemist Dr Lorraine Gibson, of Strathclyde University, these odours are the bread and butter of her research. Gibson believes smells can be used to expose the condition of a book or an artefact – without touching it – before it has decayed dangerously, so repairs and restoration can be applied early to avoid serious damage later on. The trick, she says, is to develop a device than could mimic our sense of smell, or at least part of it. This is the focus of her work at Strathclyde University’s department of chemistry. So how can smell help the heritage business? The smell produced by an old book or museum exhibit is comprised of hundreds of volatile compounds. Most of these will be of no interest but a few will be of great importance. We are trying to pinpoint the important ones so we can discard the rest. Consider paper. It is comprised of cellulose, lignin and many other compounds. As paper ages, it changes – anyone who works with old books knows it becomes brittle and fragile. Volatile
Continue reading …
It’s fast and it lasts. Endurance races such as the Le Mans 24-hour event deserves higher status – and that might just be about to happen As Formula One hit the road today in Australia, it did so with a raft of rule changes and technical enhancements designed to improve the racing. That changes are mooted almost every season, largely focusing on encouraging more overtaking, will not have gone unnoticed, even to casual observers. Yet, in America last weekend, a worldwide series held its opening meeting, featuring cars comparable in performance to those of F1 going wheel to wheel. Fifty-six of them. For 12 hours solid. There was no shortage of racing, no shortage of overtaking and at the chequered flag the first three cars were separated by only 45 seconds. It is motor sport’s best kept secret. Britain’s Allan McNish drove in F1 for Toyota in 2002, but since 2006 he has been an Audi Sport factory team driver as part of its sports car programme in endurance racing – a form of the sport that most will be familiar with from the Le Mans 24 Hour race (which he has won twice) that this year forms the centrepiece of the first full season of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC), an endurance racing series set up by the Le Mans organisers, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. McNish, who was driving in the series opener, the 12 Hours of Sebring, in Florida last weekend, admits that endurance racing was, at first, a surprise even to him: “Until I came to see it myself by racing in it, I didn’t appreciate it in totality, then I thought, why did I not look at this before?” The cars are sub-divided into classes by performance, a factor in the appeal. With the fastest cars 30 seconds a lap quicker than the slowest, it is dealing with this “traffic” that demands attention. Done with skill, it can be a race-deciding factor: “You’ve got a lot of constant excitement, it doesn’t dull down, it actually is a race from the start to the end, flat out with that constant focus. That’s why the drivers like it. Because they have to combine this intensity with a really fast car,” says McNish. It is also, he argues, easily comparable with F1. “If you’re talking about the cars and the technology, it’s equal to F1. In terms of performance, downforce levels, power, and torque, things like that, it’s Formula One standard. And that’s why I think now, there are a lot of drivers who have had good strong careers in F1 adapting very well to this style of racing.” Only the added 300 kilos of weight make a difference. And that means “you’ve got to throw the car around,” says McNish. Anthony Davidson, driving for Peugeot, another of these ex-F1 drivers who is enthusiastically embracing endurance racing, agrees: “It’s the closest thing to an F1 car I’ve ever driven. As soon as you wind them up, they’re great at high speed.” “After leaving the world of F1 and joining the sportscar scene, I suddenly realised it was like this secret of motorsport that no one has discovered. The cars are fantastic and the scene is brilliant,” he said. McNish also vouches for Davidson’s enthusiasm: “Anthony and [Giancarlo] Fisichella have come from the same sort of arenas – single seaters and you see a smile on their faces because we love to race, we’re racing drivers, we’re passionate about our racing.” That the greatest sports car race in the world, the Le Mans 24, has not formed part of a series since the World Sports Car Championship folded in 1992 and is now at the heart of the ILMC is no coincidence. It is central to the direction the manufacturers, teams and drivers want it to go. Becoming a fully-fledged World Championship is surely the purpose of this nascent series. Indeed, the FIA president, Jean Todt, who was boss at Peugeot in the championship’s last incarnation, has said “endurance racing could be an area we are interested in” regarding World Championship status. It is a realistic possibility, especially given the paucity of quality of opposition on offer in motor sport Championships at the moment, and, if it were granted, would make it the second most prestigious in the sport, below only F1. A goal not to be sniffed at. In the 1970s, the World Championship was as popular, in terms of crowds and coverage as Formula One. It was only the slow departure of manufacturers that caused the decline, a trend that is reversing rapidly. Where teams like BMW and Toyota had their fingers burned and withdrew from F1, huge investments offering little in terms of results, they are now returning to endurance racing. BMW in the form of a works team that has already won the American Le Mans series and Toyota providing the engine for the Anglo-Swiss Rebellion team – the source of a much-rumoured full-time return. They are not alone. Britain’s Aston Martin will be bringing a brand new prototype to compete with Audi and Peugeot at the next race at Spa, Nissan is providing engines for the Signature team and they are in the classes below joined by cars representing Ferrari, Lotus, Chevrolet and Porsche. The reasoning behind this renewed interest goes beyond just offering exciting racing for the fans and suggests that more manufacturers will follow. Audi Sport’s team boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich sees it as two-fold at least. “We always try to have technology in our race cars first, before they then go into our road cars and are made available to out customers,” he explained, pointing out that the direct fuel injection and diesel technology that has seen his team win Le Mans nine times in the past 11 years both transferred directly into road cars. “That’s missing in Formula One, There is no connection at all. What you learn in F1 you can’t use for your customer. As long as the tehnology in Formula One is not relevant for our customers it makes no sense to go there,” he emphasised. There are also potential longer term gains in terms of marque prestige. A lesson Dr Ullrich also recognises and that for many has been long since forgotten: “Many big names in racing, like Ferrari – the brand – have this great name not because they’ve been successful in F1; they have it because they have been very successful many, many years ago in endurance racing – that’s where it comes from.” Success eluded McNish at Sebring. After having his car damaged by an ill-calculated overtaking manoeuvre by Marc Gené in the Peugeot he managed a creditable fourth having been laps down in his R15 – the car’s final race ( view the gallery from the race here ). He and co-drivers Tom Kristensen (an eight-times Le Mans winner) and Dindo Capello (three times) will be using their brand new R18 coupe at the remaining ILMC races, a prospect McNish relishes, especially for the British round, the Silverstone 1000km in September. “All of these cars, iconic cars that you would love to drive on the road, the fastest of today’s road generation in race trim, all the sights and sounds, whether it be a Corvette thundering out, a Ferrari screaming or one of our diesels, to watch that through Copse and then blast off down through the Becketts section will be a pretty spectacular sight, then to look back and see all the other cars chasing will make it an intense affair,” he said. But intense and memorable for the fans too: “If they come to Silverstone their eyes will be opened wide. They’ll be shocked by every level of it. How advanced from a technical point of view it is, at the hard cut and thrust of the racing, and how accessible it is … Anybody that goes to Le Mans or to Silverstone would come back for more.” It’s an opinion to take seriously. McNish is not going anywhere, the racing’s format and intensity is just too good: “We’ve won and lost races by seconds after driving multiple grand prix distances at just one event. There’s no waiting for somebody to drop out or a problem to happen, because of the reliability they don’t. You’ve got to grab a hold of these races and these cars, and drive the wheels off them. It’s the only way. The only way for success. “Its part of the reason I love it – there’s no hiding place,” he said. Something the sport’s best kept secret may find out itself before too long. Le Mans Series Motor sport Giles Richards guardian.co.uk
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It’s fast and it lasts. Endurance races such as the Le Mans 24-hour event deserves higher status – and that might just be about to happen As Formula One hit the road today in Australia, it did so with a raft of rule changes and technical enhancements designed to improve the racing. That changes are mooted almost every season, largely focusing on encouraging more overtaking, will not have gone unnoticed, even to casual observers. Yet, in America last weekend, a worldwide series held its opening meeting, featuring cars comparable in performance to those of F1 going wheel to wheel. Fifty-six of them. For 12 hours solid. There was no shortage of racing, no shortage of overtaking and at the chequered flag the first three cars were separated by only 45 seconds. It is motor sport’s best kept secret. Britain’s Allan McNish drove in F1 for Toyota in 2002, but since 2006 he has been an Audi Sport factory team driver as part of its sports car programme in endurance racing – a form of the sport that most will be familiar with from the Le Mans 24 Hour race (which he has won twice) that this year forms the centrepiece of the first full season of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC), an endurance racing series set up by the Le Mans organisers, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. McNish, who was driving in the series opener, the 12 Hours of Sebring, in Florida last weekend, admits that endurance racing was, at first, a surprise even to him: “Until I came to see it myself by racing in it, I didn’t appreciate it in totality, then I thought, why did I not look at this before?” The cars are sub-divided into classes by performance, a factor in the appeal. With the fastest cars 30 seconds a lap quicker than the slowest, it is dealing with this “traffic” that demands attention. Done with skill, it can be a race-deciding factor: “You’ve got a lot of constant excitement, it doesn’t dull down, it actually is a race from the start to the end, flat out with that constant focus. That’s why the drivers like it. Because they have to combine this intensity with a really fast car,” says McNish. It is also, he argues, easily comparable with F1. “If you’re talking about the cars and the technology, it’s equal to F1. In terms of performance, downforce levels, power, and torque, things like that, it’s Formula One standard. And that’s why I think now, there are a lot of drivers who have had good strong careers in F1 adapting very well to this style of racing.” Only the added 300 kilos of weight make a difference. And that means “you’ve got to throw the car around,” says McNish. Anthony Davidson, driving for Peugeot, another of these ex-F1 drivers who is enthusiastically embracing endurance racing, agrees: “It’s the closest thing to an F1 car I’ve ever driven. As soon as you wind them up, they’re great at high speed.” “After leaving the world of F1 and joining the sportscar scene, I suddenly realised it was like this secret of motorsport that no one has discovered. The cars are fantastic and the scene is brilliant,” he said. McNish also vouches for Davidson’s enthusiasm: “Anthony and [Giancarlo] Fisichella have come from the same sort of arenas – single seaters and you see a smile on their faces because we love to race, we’re racing drivers, we’re passionate about our racing.” That the greatest sports car race in the world, the Le Mans 24, has not formed part of a series since the World Sports Car Championship folded in 1992 and is now at the heart of the ILMC is no coincidence. It is central to the direction the manufacturers, teams and drivers want it to go. Becoming a fully-fledged World Championship is surely the purpose of this nascent series. Indeed, the FIA president, Jean Todt, who was boss at Peugeot in the championship’s last incarnation, has said “endurance racing could be an area we are interested in” regarding World Championship status. It is a realistic possibility, especially given the paucity of quality of opposition on offer in motor sport Championships at the moment, and, if it were granted, would make it the second most prestigious in the sport, below only F1. A goal not to be sniffed at. In the 1970s, the World Championship was as popular, in terms of crowds and coverage as Formula One. It was only the slow departure of manufacturers that caused the decline, a trend that is reversing rapidly. Where teams like BMW and Toyota had their fingers burned and withdrew from F1, huge investments offering little in terms of results, they are now returning to endurance racing. BMW in the form of a works team that has already won the American Le Mans series and Toyota providing the engine for the Anglo-Swiss Rebellion team – the source of a much-rumoured full-time return. They are not alone. Britain’s Aston Martin will be bringing a brand new prototype to compete with Audi and Peugeot at the next race at Spa, Nissan is providing engines for the Signature team and they are in the classes below joined by cars representing Ferrari, Lotus, Chevrolet and Porsche. The reasoning behind this renewed interest goes beyond just offering exciting racing for the fans and suggests that more manufacturers will follow. Audi Sport’s team boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich sees it as two-fold at least. “We always try to have technology in our race cars first, before they then go into our road cars and are made available to out customers,” he explained, pointing out that the direct fuel injection and diesel technology that has seen his team win Le Mans nine times in the past 11 years both transferred directly into road cars. “That’s missing in Formula One, There is no connection at all. What you learn in F1 you can’t use for your customer. As long as the tehnology in Formula One is not relevant for our customers it makes no sense to go there,” he emphasised. There are also potential longer term gains in terms of marque prestige. A lesson Dr Ullrich also recognises and that for many has been long since forgotten: “Many big names in racing, like Ferrari – the brand – have this great name not because they’ve been successful in F1; they have it because they have been very successful many, many years ago in endurance racing – that’s where it comes from.” Success eluded McNish at Sebring. After having his car damaged by an ill-calculated overtaking manoeuvre by Marc Gené in the Peugeot he managed a creditable fourth having been laps down in his R15 – the car’s final race ( view the gallery from the race here ). He and co-drivers Tom Kristensen (an eight-times Le Mans winner) and Dindo Capello (three times) will be using their brand new R18 coupe at the remaining ILMC races, a prospect McNish relishes, especially for the British round, the Silverstone 1000km in September. “All of these cars, iconic cars that you would love to drive on the road, the fastest of today’s road generation in race trim, all the sights and sounds, whether it be a Corvette thundering out, a Ferrari screaming or one of our diesels, to watch that through Copse and then blast off down through the Becketts section will be a pretty spectacular sight, then to look back and see all the other cars chasing will make it an intense affair,” he said. But intense and memorable for the fans too: “If they come to Silverstone their eyes will be opened wide. They’ll be shocked by every level of it. How advanced from a technical point of view it is, at the hard cut and thrust of the racing, and how accessible it is … Anybody that goes to Le Mans or to Silverstone would come back for more.” It’s an opinion to take seriously. McNish is not going anywhere, the racing’s format and intensity is just too good: “We’ve won and lost races by seconds after driving multiple grand prix distances at just one event. There’s no waiting for somebody to drop out or a problem to happen, because of the reliability they don’t. You’ve got to grab a hold of these races and these cars, and drive the wheels off them. It’s the only way. The only way for success. “Its part of the reason I love it – there’s no hiding place,” he said. Something the sport’s best kept secret may find out itself before too long. Le Mans Series Motor sport Giles Richards guardian.co.uk
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Tanzania condemned for planned road, which critics say will be disaster for environment and ecosystem International pressure is growing on the Tanzanian government to shelve its controversial plans to build a two-lane highway across the Serengeti, one of the most important wildlife sites in the world. Scientists claim that the road will slice directly across the annual migration route of 1.5m wildebeest, effectively destroying the life cycle of the species and bringing the ecosystem of the national park crashing down with it. Amid growing anger from conservationists, scientists, tourists and holiday companies, the German government said last week that it would put money into an alternative route, looking at building new roads in areas bordering the Serengeti on the eastern and western boundaries without crossing the actual park. Germany also indicated this weekend that it would favour financing an international feasibility study for a southern bypass around the national park. So far the Tanzanian government has made no response. The wildebeest migration is one of the greatest wildlife shows on Earth, accompanied by tens of thousands of gazelles and zebras and their outriders, predators that include lions and hyenas. The herds go on an annual 500km round trip from the southern Serengeti to the northern edge of the Masai Mara in Kenya. The proposed road is planned for the northern part of the Serengeti, linking the Lake Victoria area with eastern Tanzania. Environmentalists are damning about the project, which they say will establish a damaging precedent, implying that Africa’s ecological and wildlife assets are up for grabs. Andrew Dobson, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, led 27 wildlife experts who signed a letter to the government, begging it to reconsider the road. “Not only would we lose huge numbers of wildebeest who would simply die out, there would be the knock-on carbon effect,” he said. “The Serengeti is the biggest carbon sink on the planet and if the wildebeest go, the grass burns and we have a second environmental blow. The Serengeti is the world’s best studied ecosystem… economically, ethically and environmentally, this mustn’t happen.” The German move comes after the World Bank also intervened to offer the Tanzanian government help in financing an alternative route. In a letter to President Jakaya Kikwete, a leading American Serengeti expert, John Adams, urged him to accept the offer or risk losing western aid. He said that other environmentally unfriendly projects being pursued by Tanzania, such as an extraction plant at Lake Natron in Arusha that threatens the lake’s flamingo population, risk alienating the international community. “Foreign aid relies on goodwill and is less likely if Tanzania is damaging its secure revenue base in tourism,” he wrote, adding: “The proposed road would deny millions of animals the right to migrate to water and at the same time the Tanzanian government is asking for aid due to water shortage.” But to date, Kikwete has insisted that plans for the $480m (£300m) Arusha-Musoma road remain on course. The migration, which begins in April, when the wildebeest start to leave the depleted grasslands of the southern Serengeti, attracts tens of millions of tourist pounds. A road will not only force the animals to overgraze in the south, leading to the dramatic reduction in the sizes of the herds, but also allow in invasive species and lead to greater poaching. The Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources, Shamsa Mwangunga, has made it clear that the road was a campaign promise made by Kikwete in 2005 that the administration is determined to carry out. She said the main reason was to help the country’s people, whose only present option to get across the country is a 418km route that skirts around the southern end of the national park. The route is expected to carry 800 vehicles a day, mostly trucks, by 2015, and 3,000 vehicles a day – an average of one every 30 seconds – by 2035. “Those criticising the road know nothing about what we’ve planned,” she said. “We’re all keen to preserve our natural resource. We’ll never compromise on that.” She said the road would not affect wildlife migration patterns because a 40-mile stretch would be left unpaved. David Blanton, co-director of Serengeti Watch, said the road will be “the beginning of the end” for the Serengeti: “The government is saying the highway is going to be a dirt road, but on the soft soil that’s there, a dirt road won’t work. It will have to be paved and fenced off because there will be a lot of collisions with wildlife.” This month a coalition of Tanzanian organisations petitioned the government to reconsider. The Mazingira Network said the road would compromise the ecological integrity of the park. “Direct, indirect and cumulative impacts… to the ecology would be significant,” said its chairman Zuberi Mwachula. He said the scientific consensus was that if constructed the road would, in a matter of decades, destroy the wildlife migration routes. Many Tanzanians are especially worried about their government squandering the legacy of the country’s first president, Julius Nyerere, who said: “In accepting the trusteeship of our wildlife we solemnly declare we will do everything in our power to make sure our children’s grandchildren will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance.” Conservationist Richard Leakey has weighed in, pointing out that the road is intended to allow the towns it links to grow. “A dirt track may suffice today, the populations of these towns are only about half a million people each. Projecting forwards, say 50 years, and thanks to the new roads these towns will become cities of three to four million people each. The Tanzanians should not be assessing the impact of a narrow strip of road as we envision it today; it will not be a narrow strip in 30 or 40 years. A railway line will parallel it, and there will probably be a six-lane highway in each direction. This, for certain, will kill the migration.” Two alternative routes have been proposed that would allow the movement of trade to western Tanzania by going south of the Serengeti and north into Kenya, both are longer and more expensive construction projects and would mean an election promise broken to the tribes of the northern Serengeti. Leakey even suggested a raised road, elevated as it crosses the Serengeti so that the animals could move freely below it. But the cost and upkeep implications are huge for the economy of any African state. “It is a responsibility of the Tanzanian government to play it’s role in protecting the countries natural resource asset base for future generations, and by deliberately taking an action that could degrade one of the great spectacles of wildlife on the planet is a very heavy responsibility,” he said. Unesco, which lists the Serengeti as a World Heritage Site, has also warned against the road. “In terms of potential environmental deterioration, the damage to the park by the north road could be severe enough as to prompt inscription of the site on the List of World Heritage in Danger,” it stated.But internal pressures on the Tanzanian government could still prove too strong. People in the north Serengeti have been promised a road and developing countries need good transport links to survive. Dobson said: “The ecological reasons are insurmountable, but if you ever want to know why an illogical decision is being taken, look to politics.” Tanzania Wildlife Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk
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Dedicated teacher Leonora Rustamova wrote a book to engage five teenage rebels in her class. But after it went up on a website she was dismissed, a decision that was upheld at a tribunal For the five teenage “unteachables” in the class, sitting still was a challenge, never mind reading. But when their teacher, Leonora Rustamova , began to write her own stories, based on them and a fictional account of their lives, they were gripped. She wrote what quickly became a book in her own time, at weekends and on holidays, and promised to read them a chapter every Friday afternoon if they got through a week without any of them being excluded. The work “Miss Rusty” was doing to engage troubled and school-phobic 16-year-olds first gained her a promotion. Then dismissal. After 11 years as a teacher at Calder high school in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, Rustamova was sacked when the book was made available on the internet, a decision upheld by an industrial tribunal in Leeds that threw out her claim for unfair dismissal by a majority decision of two to one. “It was baffling, utterly baffling. I still feel as though I am in some kind of dual reality,” she told the Observer . As a leaving present for her pupils, and with the approval of the headteacher, Rustamova, 40, had several copies of the book, Stop! Don’t Read This! , printed, using an online publishing website. The boys and their families were delighted; one parent told her it was the first book her son had read to the end. “It boosted their self-esteem; it engaged them. We were having conversations and discussions,” said Rustamova. “For a group of boys like this, that was incredible. I thought it would be a lovely gesture to have it printed for when they left school.” The school’s headteacher, Stephen Ball, who had at first described the project as a “triumph”, wrote her a note after reading the first four chapters that stated: “You’ve done a superb job with this. Let me know if I can help.” He told her he was extremely pleased with the work she had done in interesting alienated and difficult teenagers in literacy. Rustamova’s husband, Denis, had used a publishing website to have the book electronically formatted and for several months Stop! Don’t Read This was freely available as a download. It was that availability that led Ball to call an unsuspecting Rustamova into his office in January 2008, formally suspend her and have her escorted from the building. “I had no idea about the internet website so I rang my husband to get him to get it taken down and I just sat in the car park staring at the school. In all the time I had been at the school no teacher had been suspended. I was just dazed,” she said. “I thought the headteacher would smooth it all over with whoever had made the complaint and things would be back to
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