The Independent 6 March 2016

6 March 2016
MMMM
THE GOD
BOTHERER
Trumps racism
and hatred strike a
chord with Americas
Evangelicals
P28
NO OVEN NEEDED! ROBIN GILL

COOKS RAW In the magazine
2.20
STAGE
AND
SCREAM
Mel Giedroyc and
Bobby Gillespie
reveal their latest
adventures
Arts & Books
VADIM GHIRDA/AP
REFUGEE CHILDREN, WATCHING AND WAITING AS EU WHEELS GRIND ON

SPECIAL REPORT FROM IDOMENI, GREECE P33
Torture and the UK:

a new cover-up
NO 1,357
7 7 0 9 5 8
1 7 2 9 7 5
::: Files on treatment of terror suspects ::: Secret Blair, Bush, Straw and
being suppressed at request of UK
Government says US State Dept
Powell letters discuss questioning of

detainees but we can know no more
EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY JAMES HANNING P7
MMMM
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
CONTENTS
HS2 is in danger of coming off

the rails as problems multiply
NEWS
Exclusive National Audit Ofce inquiry and Cabinet Ofce review add to the projects uncertainty
06|03|16
Remain camp is ahead
after the first weeks of the
EU referendum campaign
P4
COMMENT
Societys in-built misogyny

lets some men behave so
badly, says Joan Smith
P42
TRAVEL
Get away! Your guide to

the very best summer
holiday bargains around
P52
MONEY
Emergency Brexit: What

leaving the EU would mean
for your personal finances
P62
SPORT
Foxes in the clear: a draw

in the north London derby
boosts leaders Leicester
Premier League P1-8
By Mark Leftly
DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR
The 50bn High Speed Two

railway is being battered by an
emerging storm of problems,
damaging Chancellor George
Osbornes plans to wean Britains
economy from its dependence
on London.
The Independent on Sunday can
reveal that HS2, which will take
commuters from London to Birmingham in 49 minutes when the
rst phase opens in 2026, before
heading north to Leeds and Manchester, is suffering because:
HS2 executives have been
spooked by an unexpectedly
early National Audit Office
(NAO) inquiry
There are fears the 1,300-person
project team, HS2 Ltd, isnt ready
to oversee such a massive project,
as a long delayed Cabinet Office
review begins
Many highly skilled staff are refusing to relocate from London as
the project shifts headquarters
to Birmingham and many staying put will commute on the
very line HS2 is supposed to relieve of congestion
Ministers believe the project
will become bogged down in the
House of Lords when the HS2 bill
reaches the upper house
The appointment of the private
sector partner to run the project
has been delayed twice in the past
few weeks.
The NAO is looking at the latest position on costs, schedule and
programme scope, but HS2
executives had not expected this
scrutiny until later this year.
The projects business case was
criticised by the NAO in 2013, and
a year later the public spending
watchdog questioned HS2s economic rationale. Mr Osborne
High anxiety: Can an elite

mountain climber be a
good father and husband?
Arts
Books
Lisa Markwell
CROSSWORDS
Crisp. Sun and

showers P49
Prize and
Concise P49
Beelzebub,
The New
Review P37
LOTTO
11, 19, 29, 37,

40, 41 (B) 47
Recycled paper made up 78% of the raw

material for UK newspapers in 2012
believes HS2 will help Northern

and Midlands businesses grow to
compete with those in the more afuent South-east.
NAOs latest inquiry comes after
tens of millions of pounds were
added to the price, after changes
such as a longer tunnel in the Chilterns agreed by a committee of MPs
last month. An industry source said
executives were spooked by the
NAO inquiry coming so soon.
Its an emerging storm, said the
source. Theyre concerned the
NAO report is coming at the same
time as the Cabinet Office review.
The Cabinet Offices Review Point
One should have started last autumn,
but was delayed because of fears HS2
Ltd could fail crucial tests. The fourperson review will begin later this
month. A source close to HS2 said
the organisation, led by chairman
Sir David Higgins and chief executive Simon Kirby, might not be fully
mature enough to pass. Every day
of delay adds to the risk of the
project, said another source. There
are concerns HS2 Ltd has grown too
big. A source said its size is out of
control at 1,300 staff; officials are
worried it is far bigger in terms of
numbers than the team that built the
London 2012 Olympics.
The HS2 Bill is undergoing lineby-line scrutiny in the House of
Commons and will move to the
Lords later this year. A Government
source said getting Royal Assent by
the end of 2016, as planned, was unlikely because it was up in the air
how long rebellious Conservative
peers will try to bog down the Bill.
HS2 Ltd was due to select its
engineering delivery partner, the
private sector consortium that will
<RXpYHEHHQJUHDW1RZEHSDUWRIWKHVWRU\RQHODVWWLPH
Turning up the heat:

Great British Bake Offs
Mel Giedroyc gets serious
WEATHER
Delays to the line will hamper George Osbornes Nothern Powerhouse plan GETTY
help manage the project, last month.

Three consortiums led by US rms
(Bechtel, CH2M Hill, and Parsons
Brinckerhoff) are shortlisted for the
350m job. This had been delayed
until tomorrow; now it is understood to have been moved to later
this week, following an intervention
from No 10 for media reasons.
HS2s HQ is moving from London
to Birmingham, which has upset staff
who dont want to live in the West
Midlands. Some will commute by
rail, an irony given HS2 is to supposed to ease train congestion
between London and Birmingham.
Joe Rukin, campaign manager at
Stop HS2, said: It is completely unprecedented for the NAO to be
working on a third report on a project
at such an early stage. Previously the
NAO said there was a lack of clarity
regarding HS2 and the Government
has been unrealistic about the
project, but these serious concerns
were brushed aside, so it is no real
surprise that the NAO is investigating again. All the independent
reports about HS2 have shown it is
a disaster waiting to happen.
The fact HS2 Ltd staff refuse to
relocate to Birmingham is the ultimate hypocrisy from overpaid
bureaucrats who are only interested
in running their own gravy train.
An HS2 spokesman said: We welcome the NAO scrutiny as part of
a process to ensure we deliver this
vital project in the most effective way.
We have been pleased to co-operate
and work with Government as we
approach our rst Review Point.
HS2 Ltd and Government committed to moving our HQ two years
ago. This is not only practical (as
Birmingham lies at the heart of
HS2) it is also cost efficient in
terms of, for example, office rent.
Inevitably, there will be a mix
of new recruitment, relocation
and redundancy.
EDITOR
Based on a mixture of instinct and

previous correspondence with
readers over the past three years,
you take a pretty dim view of journalists congratulating themselves.
Apologies are due in advance,
then, because on page 22 youll
find a (brief) article about the

awards of excellence given to this
newspaper at the Society for News
Designs global competition.
Acknowledging our successes is
all the more poignant because there
are only two more editions of The
Independent on Sunday to go, after
this one. And so I have been looking
through the archives at editions
all the way from the very first, in
January 1990, to those of my most
recent predecessor, John Mullin.
From weeks when there were
unprecedented world events to
weeks when, well, the editor needed
to be very creative, there are some
fascinating papers. There are also
the bylines of people who have

gone on to become internationally
famous, in everything from literature to politics. Some of them will
be featured in a (briskly edited, I
promise) final edition.
But what I really want to include
on 20 March are your memories. Do
you remember that first Sunday?
Has there been a story that affected
you? Did a book review make you go
out and buy an author whos become
a favourite? One reader has already
told me about his Sunday habit of
coffee, Courvoisier and The IoS ....
Interaction with our readers is one
of our distinctive features after
all, your nominations have helped
the Happy List and the Rainbow List

grow from on-the-fly ideas to hugely
important events; dates on which
those non-celebrities who make
Britain a better place, and those who
champion LGBTI rights, get some
much needed attention.
So, please be part of the story one
last time (although dont forget the
Independent.co.uk website and app
will still give you the quality news
and analysis you love). Thank you.
Post: Lisa Markwell,

The Independent on Sunday,
2 Derry Street, London W8 5HF
Email: l.markwell@independent.co.uk
Twitter: @lisamarkwell

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
GOOD TURN
A scene from
Inception has
triggered a run
on Vorso tops
(below)
hen serial Oscar

nominee Leonardo DiCaprio
nally broke his
Academy Award
drought last week he inadvertently
triggered a small surge in sales of
spinning tops. The reason, explains
Will Cutler, a product designer
from Burton upon Trent, is somewhat complicated.
Movie buffs will remember that
DiCaprios character in the 2010
science-ction lm Inception was
a thief who inltrated the subconscious of his victims. In a world
where dreams and real life are difcult to distinguish, Dominic Cobb
relied on a small top his totem to
check if he was awake (the spinning top slows and topples) or
dreaming (it spins for ever).
So, when DiCaprio picked up his
Best Actor Oscar for The Revenant,
the internet celebrated with a
meme showing the actor using his
top to check if he was dreaming or
if he had actually got his hands on
a gold statue. And that, according
to Mr Cutler, the designer of the
Vorso MK1 top, was enough to
cause an upturn in business.
Im serious man, said the 26year-old designer. Im worried we
wont have enough stock.
In truth, the curious renaissance
of the spinning top was under way
before DiCaprio won
his rst Oscar. A cursory search of
crowdfunding sites
such as Kickstarter
and Indiegogo places where the latest
tech gadgets tend to
dominate reveals a
plethora of tops, a rudimentary
toy that has existed
since antiquity.
Todays tops tend to
spin
Leos got us in a
An internet meme sparked by DiCaprios Oscar has

made it boom-time in Burton. By Richard Jinman
be small, metal objects with hyperbolic names. They include the TTi-180,
the UltraTop XXX, the BilletSpin,
the Kraken and the ForeverSpin, a
product that reportedly raised $1.5m
(1m) on Kickstarter. Some of the
new generation of tops glow in the
dark, others can be stacked like
building blocks; most promise extravagant spin times. A few boast more
metaphysical qualities: the UltraTop,
for example, is billed as a great way

to relax, escape from the hustle and
bustle and meditate.
Most of the tops are designed and
made in the United States, but Mr
Cutlers is machined on a lathe in
Staffordshire. Cut from high grade
metals and alloys to a tolerance of
0.05 microns, and equipped with either a stainless steel, ceramic or
synthetic ruby tip, it is an object of
desire designed to spin for more than
10 minutes.
Long spin times require a top made
from a particularly heavy metal
tungsten, for example and a hard
surface. Mr Cutler recommends a
concave mirror made from surgical
glass. The record spin for a Vorso
top is 15 minutes 38 seconds; not bad
considering a bespoke top with a diamond-coated tip made by a team of
Japanese master craftsmen set a
record at a contest last December by
spinning for almost 19 minutes.
All this rened engineering doesnt
come cheap: the basic Vorso MK1
costs 32; the Alpha, a stainless steelover copper top by American design
legend Rich Stadler, will set you back
about 90. Heavily customised tops
popular with completists who often
buy a set of tops in a variety of exotic
metals sell for more than 500.
Who is buying these exotic tractricoids? According to Mr Cutler, the
typical customer is a male professional aged 25 to 35 who works in an
office, but has a love of the outdoors. A man who wishes he was
elsewhere, presumably?
The tops look like toys that should
cost very little money, says Mr Cutler. But they require extremely high
levels of engineering and are made
on machines that cost 350,000.
Essentially, theyre pointless, but
when you spin it and it gets to the
point when it appears motionless its
mesmerising.
MMMM

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Tories vent
their anger
over Project
Fear attacks
In-ghting increases after Iain Duncan Smiths
anti-EU remarks. Tom McTague reports
he Tory civil war over

Europe intensif ied
last night as ministers rounded on Iain
Duncan Smith over a
series of provocative attacks on
the Government.
The Work and Pensions Secretary has sparked fury in Downing
Street after launching a sustained
media assault on the Prime Ministers campaign to keep Britain in
the EU including allegations the
Government produced a dodgy
dossier about the UKs future in
the event of a Brexit.
In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, the Education
Secretary Nicky Morgan singled out
Mr Duncan Smith for criticism over
the remark, warning that women
voters will swing behind EU membership as long as such attacks
continue. She said she had been
approached by constituents saying:
What kind of language is that?
Another minister, who did not
wish to be named, slammed Mr
Duncan Smith for using language
resonant of the Iraq war to attack
the Government. The minister
warned that the referendum must
not be allowed to dominate everything else.
The warning came amid claims
that backbench Eurosceptics furious with David Cameron over his
handling of the referendum
campaign are refusing to back ministers on key government business.

George Osborne has been forced
to drop plans for a tax raid on wealthy
savers by introducing a at rate of
pension tax relief after an outcry
from Tory MPs. The Government is
also facing a major rebellion this
week over plans to relax Sunday
trading laws.
It is the latest sign that the EU
referendum has led to a major breakdown in party discipline. Ministers
have already been forced to kick the
controversial obesity strategy into
the long grass, alongside other fractious issues including a proposed
British bill of rights, the renewal of
Trident and Heathrows expansion.
The entire Queens Speech setting
out the Governments programme
could also be delayed until after
the 23 June poll.
While the Governments official
position is for Britain to remain a
member of the EU, ministers have
been given the freedom to campaign
to leave. About half of the Conservative Partys MPs including London
Mayor Boris Johnson and ve cabinet ministers are supporting a
British exit.
Mr Duncan Smith has been the
most outspoken cabinet critic of the
Governments position, attacking the
desperate and unsubstantiated
claims of the Remain campaign
which he claimed would damage the
Remain
goes ahead
after Brussels
agreement,
poll shows
By John Rentoul
David Cameron has won the rst

two weeks of the EU referendum campaign, according to new
polling by YouGov.
Since the Prime Minister
concluded his renegotiation
in Brussels on 19 February and
allowed ministers to campaign
against the deal on 22 February, YouGov has carried out ve
surveys, four of which put the
Remain camp in the lead.
The average level of support
for Remain in the polls since the
deal is 52 per cent, with 48 per
cent backing Leave (this excludes
those who say they dont know
Hes not being straight with

the public about how the UK
outside Europe will work
Theres no need to
use language thats
resonant of the Iraq war
or will not vote). This compares

with the last two YouGov polls
before the Brussels deal showing
Remain trailing on of 46 per cent
to 54 per cent for Leave.
The lead for Remain in the
recent surveys is small, but the
ndings are signicant because
they show a movement in Mr
Camerons favour in repeated
polls before and after the deal.
The campaign for Britain
to stay in the EU may also be
encouraged because online polls
have been more favourable to the
Leave side. YouGovs most recent
four surveys are the rst series of
online polls to show a consistent
lead for Remain.
very integrity of those who make

them in the eyes of the public. He
has accused the Government of
launching Project Fear to scare people into voting to remain. Mr Duncan
Smith has also warned that a vote to
remain would increase the likelihood
of a Paris-style attack in the UK.
Speaking to The IoS, Mrs Morgan
said such attacks would backre. She
said: I had a conversation with some
businesswomen in my constituency.
They said, that bloke who talks
about the dodgy dossier Iain Duncan Smith what kind of language
is that? Thats not going to tell us
anything about the debate.
Aggression always appeals to a
certain type of person in politics, but
my experience is it doesnt appeal
The average of the three most

recent online polls from different companies since the Brussels
deal show an exact 50-50 split,
whereas the comparable polls
carried out by phone show
Remain on an average of 59 per
cent and Leave on 41 per cent.
ComRes, which carries out
polling for The Independent on
Sunday, argues that online polls
attract more pro-Leave Ukip supporters, and that phone polling is
likely to be more accurate.
The company points out that
phone polls on the EU referendum question have so far been
closer to the ndings of the
British Election Study, a large
to women. I think, actually, saying

these phrases like dodgy dossiers
and asking about project fear completely misses the point.
She also dismissed the impact the
London Mayor would have on the
referendum: I can tell you nobody
in Loughborough has talked to me
about Boris Johnsons position.
A government source told The IoS:
If you are talking about project
fear, youve got IDS talking about
Paris-style attacks. Hes not being
straight with the public about how
the UK outside Europe will work.
A senior source in the Remain
campaign added: We are making
serious points, but they just scream
project fear. Rather than presenting
themselves as victims, they need to
EU REFERENDUM POLLS
Leave
Remain
56%
52%
48%
44%
28
January
3
February

6 MARCH 2016
MMMM
NEWS
Labour says the Governments treatment of parents is a disgrace AFP/GETTY
Benefit cuts leave

mothers with a
stonking 13bn bill
By Tom McTague
and Ian Johnston
answer tough questions, because this

decision will have an impact on
peoples lives. The more they say
project fear, the clearer it is they
dont have an answer.
One minister, speaking anonymously, said: Remember what we
said at the start that we would treat
each other with respect and we would
treat the people with respect. Theres
no need to start whingeing about the
Governments position or to use language thats resonant of the Iraq war.
You may disagree with the conclusion but that doesnt mean you should
suggest people are dishonest.
We must not let the debate dominate everything else. The whole
point about the referendum was to
open this out widely and not focus
19 February
David Camerons Brussels deal
22 February
Cabinet meeting: referendum
campaigns launched
51%
52%
53%
51%
52%
48%
49%
48%
23 25
49%
47%
1 2 3
March
SOURCE YOUGOV
BROKEN RANKS
Clockwise from
top left: Iain
Duncan Smith
with Priti Patel;
Boris Johnson;
Nicky Morgan
EPA; PA; GETTY
academic survey that interviews

voters face-to-face and which
produced the most accurate
picture of voting in the May 2015
general election.
So far there has been only one
phone poll since the Brussels
summit at which Mr Cameron
agreed the new terms of Britains membership of the EU. It
was carried out by ComRes on
19 to 23 February, from the day
before the deal was signed until
the day after the Cabinet meeting to agree that the Government
would recommend it. That poll
found 57 per cent in favour of
Remain and 43 per cent for Leave,
a three-point swing in favour
on ourselves. There are a number of

individuals who dont like the Prime
Minister for whatever reason and
are using it as a revenge match. Colleagues will remember this and
wont forgive them if they use it as a
personal vendetta.
It was announced yesterday that
John Longworth, the director-general
of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has been temporarily
suspended over his comment last
week that Britains long-term prospects could be brighter outside the
EU. The BCC has said it will not campaign for either side as its membership
is split on the issue.
NICKY MORGAN INTERVIEW PAGE 13
JOHN RENTOUL PAGE 41
of Remain from a similar poll

carried out a week earlier.
On the other hand, other polling companies have reported
shifts in favour of Leave. ICM
and ORB, both online polls,
have shown two- and four-point
swings towards Leave in surveys
carried out before and after the
Brussels summit.
YouGov conducted seven online

surveys: 27-28 January (1,735
British adults); 2-3 February (1,675);
21-23 February (3,482); 24-25 February (1,731); 29 February to 1 March
(2,233); 1-2 March (1,705) and 2-3
March (1,695). Full details are
available on the YouGov website.
Mothers will be 13bn worse off

under the current Government
as a result of policies announced
over the past year, according to a
new analysis.
Labour described the gures
produced by the House of Commons Library as a disgrace,
saying mothers played a key role
in society but had been hit with a
stonking great bill.
The research looked at the
effects on women with dependent children of a number of
changes announced by Chancellor George Osborne, since last
years general election.
It found that cuts to universal
credit, the four-year freeze on
child benet and other welfare
payments, reductions in housing benet, and other policies,
outweighed increases to the personal income tax allowance and
extra money for childcare.
The overall impact meant
mothers will be 13bn worse off
over the course of the current
parliament from last year until
2020. The Labour MP Yvette
Cooper, who commissioned the
research, said: These gures
are a disgrace. On Mothers Day,
the whole country celebrates
just how much mums do to hold
families together, communities together and even hold our
economy together too.
Yet what thanks do mums get
from George Osborne and David
Cameron? Only a stonking great
13bn bill.
Last month the Childrens
Society urged the Government to
reconsider the benets freeze if
ministers were genuinely concerned about child poverty.
The charity calculated that
a 23-year-old single mother,
who works as a primary school
teacher and rents her home,
would be more than 2,800 a
year worse off as a result of the
changes. And a nurse and her

partner, living in a rented house
in London with three children,
would be 5,100 a year worse off.
In a report, the society found
that seven million children in
low-income families would be
affected by the four-year benets freeze, while others would be
pushed into poverty as a result.
Departments are still waiting
to hear what they are likely to
get in the Budget, but the Department for Education is hopeful
that plans to alter the funding formula for schools will be revealed
before Mr Osbornes political
showpiece. A consultation on
what is known as a fairer funding formula is planned shortly.
Many London boroughs have
received additional funding
for years, because the previous
Labour government was keen to
help struggling pupils in the capital catch up with those elsewhere
in the country. London Councils,
which represents the capitals
local authorities, has estimated
that changes could slash school
budgets in some areas by 14 per
cent, but Tory MPs have been
frustrated that schools in their
shire constituencies have been
relatively underfunded.
The consultation may recommend phasing in changes so
angry London head teachers do
not suffer immediate large cuts.
A government spokesperson said: We are determined
to deliver a new settlement for
the British people, one that will
create a higher wage, lower tax
and lower welfare economy.
She added: The reality is that
our welfare reforms are helping
more people into work and offering a strong safety net for those
who cant. With a record number
of women in work, our reforms to
extend free childcare and exible
working are giving more women
the security of a regular wage,
with the National Living Wage set
to boost pay even further.

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Sunday trading
change triggers
Tory unrest
Ministers are hoping the reforms, added to the
Enterprise Bill, can be pushed through this week
By Mark Leftly and

Tom McTague
The Government has moved to

stave off a politically damaging
rebellion of up to 50 Conservative
MPs over its plans to relax Sunday
trading laws ahead of the Budget.
Ministers have resurrected the
reforms, despite dropping a vote
in November that would have allowed councils the right to extend
Sunday trading hours. Ministers
feared they could lose the vote
amid opposition from backbenchers, Labour and the Scottish
National Party. Unions and church
leaders are also against the plans.
The reforms have been added to
the Enterprise Bill to be debated
this week, but David Burrowes, the
Conservative MP for Eneld Southgate, has tabled what has been

described by his colleagues as a killing amendment. The showdown
comes a week before the Budget.
More than 20 Conservatives have
signed up to this amendment, and
Mr Burrowes said ministers were
now looking for a way out. Some
MPs are rebelling on religious
grounds, although a backbencher
said he was against the idea on the
basis that he liked the culture of laidback Sundays.
Brandon Lewis, the Housing minister who has overseen the reforms,
is hoping to placate them, and has
tabled a separate amendment that
would give councils the right to allow
longer trading hours only in zones
needing an economic boost such as
Medical professionals often work six-day weeks and can only shop on Sundays GETTY; REX
high streets. This would leave local

authorities with the power to decide
whether the relaxation was necessary, while also averting further
trade being sucked from struggling
town centres to out-of-town parks
dominated by large retailers.
Mr Lewis met MPs last week to
discuss his compromise and will see
more of them before the debate
starts on Tuesday. Current Sunday
trading laws pre-date the internet,
he said. This is about making sure
of an environment that is good for
consumers. Doctors and nurses
often work six-day weeks and Sunday
is their best day to shop.
One rebel said this was a helpful

change that could mean he falls into
line behind the Government.
A separate compromise, proposed
by former cabinet member Caroline
Spelman, would allow cities with
large numbers of tourists to opt out
of existing Sunday trading laws.
Mr Burrowes said he was willing
to look at this idea, but warned
that the Government could still have
a serious rebellion on their hands
if enough ground was not ceded.
The last thing they need ahead of
the Budget is to have a divided party,
he said.
If the Government is sensible
about the situation they should come

up with an alternative. If they dont
then its back to the barricades.
However, a Government source
said Ms Spelmans alternative did
not hand enough autonomy to councils. The source added: We want to
give local authorities exibility and
this would look like were saying
that we are happy to devolve power
unless we dont like what theyre
doing with it.
The Independent on Sunday
understands some ministers and
Government aides are even
considering abstaining in this
weeks vote.

6 MARCH 2016
SPECIAL REPORT | NEWS
ey documents that
could shed light on
allegations of UK collusion in torture and
rendition are being
suppressed by the British government. The newly uncovered les
include confidential exchanges
between former PM Tony Blair
and former president George Bush
about treatment of detainees at
Guantanamo. Possibly most signicant are ve other documents,
communications between the
former UK foreign secretary, Jack
Straw, and former US secretary
of state, Colin Powell, expressing interest and concern about
the welfare and legal status of UK
detainees at Guantanamo.
While the documents may relate
to casual expressions of care for
the welfare of UK citizens, former
detainees have alleged that British
officials have either been present
at, or submitted questions for,
extreme interrogation by US
officials. The US government has
been required to make public a
large number of les which relate
to British involvement in the treatment of prisoners in the years
following the 9/11 bombings.
Litigation continues across multiple US departments over the
possible release of mainly intelligence-derived documentation. But
12 documents found in the US State
Departments search, not derived
from intelligence, were also withheld. These relate to interventions
by British politicians and officials
over the treatment of detainees
and interrogation techniques. In
court papers, the State Department
reported: After reviewing the
documents, the UK Governments
Foreign and Commonwealth
Office requested that all 12 documents be withheld in full from
public disclosure.
The revelation will surprise campaigners, who are accustomed to
hearing that the release of condential documents by Whitehall
would go against established
protocol whereby a country (eg
the US) is entitled to have intelligence documents it has shared
with another country kept secret.
On this occasion, the US has explicitly stated that the UK is
preventing publication.
The documents, which appear
not to have been seen by either the
Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2007 Intelligence
and Security Committee (ISC) inquiry into rendition, have come to
light as a result of a lawsuit by the
All Party Parliamentary Group on
Extraordinary Rendition. In 2008,
the groups chairman, Andrew
Tyrie MP, started legal proceedings
against seven US departments and
agencies, including the FBI, Interpol and the CIA, under freedom of
information legislation. The group
asked the State Department to supply les on the circumstances and
extent of participation in (rendition) programmes by the UK and
on the USs control and treatment
of detainees. The State Department
initially refused to release any
information relating to the 12 documents, but relented on the day they
were due for review by a US court
SHACKLED
A prisoner
is taken for
questioning at
Guantanamo
CHRIS HONDROS/
GETTY
Key documents on
rendition suppressed
by UK government
Files reveal Tony Blair and Jack Straw discussed treatment of British
detainees in Guantanamo with US ofcials. James Hanning reports
but giving only imprecise details of
their content.
The issue of extraordinary rendition (the state-arranged kidnap and
cross-border transporting of individuals for interrogation) has long
been controversial. In the US its
practice was initially denied and
then admitted. In 2005, Mr Straw,
then Foreign Secretary, said there
simply is no truth in claims of UK
involvement in rendition. But three
years later, his successor David Miliband said: I am very sorry indeed
to have to report to the House [of
Commons] the need to correct those
and other statements on the subject.
One legal case that stalled a full
investigation into UK involvement
in rendition was that of Abdelhakim Belhadj, an opponent of Libyas
then president Muammar Gadda, who was rendered to Libya in
2004. A letter later emerged from
a senior MI6 official to the head of
Libyan intelligence, describing the
In 2005 Mr Straw said that

there simply is no truth in
claims of UK involvement
Every day this cover-up
continues makes it harder
to win the ideological war
UKs apparent delivery of Belhadj

into Libyan hands as the least we
could do. Mr Belhadj is still trying
to pursue a civil claim for damages
in the English courts.
The Gibson report, an inquiry into
the possible UK involvement in redition set up in 2010, was curtailed and
published incomplete because of
legal cases such as Mr Belhadjs. Of
the 12 documents revealed in outline
today, the Gibson report refers to
just three. Apart from the ve exchanges between Mr Straw and Mr
Powell, the documents contain the
following:
A letter from a British embassy official to a State Department
counterpart about a possible visit to
Guantanamo to visit UK detainees.
A three-page letter from Mr Blair
to Mr Bush in November 2003 about
legal procedures for processing UK
detainees at Guantanamo.
A further letter from Mr Blair to
Mr Bush in December 2004 on
conditions for the return of UK detainees to the UK.

A letter from Condoleezza Rice,
then assistant to the president for
national security, to Sir Nigel Sheinwald, foreign affairs adviser to Mr
Blair, dated March 2004, about the
conditions for the transfer of British
nationals detained in Guantanamo.
A two-page letter from then Foreign Secretary David Miliband to Ms
Rice in 2007 about Guantanamo
detainees with links to the UK.
A two-page letter from then UK
Foreign Secretary William Hague
to Hillary Clinton, dated July
2010, expressing concern about
Guantanamo.
In 2010, Mr Miliband admitted to
The Independent on Sunday: The
facts are that bad things were done
by the Americans after 2002 and they
didnt tell anyone else. Last night
Mr Tyrie said: Either these documents are insignificant which
seems unlikely as the State Department thought them relevant or they
are highly signicant. If there is concern about the names of British
officials being revealed, those can
easily be redacted.
The ISC and Gibson should have
seen these documents already, and
bar three of them it seems they
havent. As each piece of new information about the scale of UK
complicity has come to light, it has
usually been accompanied by a reassurance that this is the full extent
of the UK facilitation of the US programme of kidnap and torture. The
conclusions of the 2007 ISC report
were shown to be misleading and
inaccurate by the Binyam Mohamed
litigation . It is likely that only a
judge-led inquiry can get to the
bottom of this.
Philippe Sands QC, professor of
law at University College London
and author of a book on post-9/11
torture told the IoS last night: The
failure to disclose the full contents of these documents, several
of which seem to be newly identied, will serve only to fuel suspicion
of a cover-up. Facts, rumour and allegation meld seamlessly into an
unhappy story that undermines our
supposed commitment to the rule of
law and an end to impunity.
The Government should support
Andrew Tyrie in his efforts, and cauterise the festering wound that is the
allegation of UK complicity in torture: since the US seems to have
no objection, all these documents
should be published now.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of
Liberty, said yesterday: We will
never defeat evil in the world by covering up our own Governments past
complicity in torture. The Prime
Minister must take a lead from one
of his most respected MPs. Every
day this shameful cover-up continues makes it a little harder to win the
ideological war against IS.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman
said: The UK government stands
rmly against torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or
punishment. The Intelligence and
Security Committee is currently
conducting an inquiry into detainee
issues. The UK government is cooperating fully with this review.
LEADING ARTICLE PAGE 43

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Housing debt
is leading more
people to seek
their doctors
help to cope
GETTY
Worry over rent

sends a million
to GP surgeries
Doctors treat stress and anxiety as more than half
the people in England fear losing their homes
By Jonathan Owen
More than a million Britons have

had to see their doctor due to the
stress of keeping a roof over their
heads, according to new research by
Shelter, the homeless charity.
The gure is based on a national
survey of people struggling to pay
their rent or mortgage, and has been
estimated using Government population statistics. The number of those
who have sought medical help is part
of a wider problem, with more than
three million unable to sleep properly at night, according to the
research. Relationships are being
put under strain too, with around 2.6
million people having argued with
their partners because of the pressure to pay their rent or mortgage.
More than half of people (54 per
cent) in England are either struggling or falling behind with their rent
or mortgage, according to a survey
of more than 3,500 adults by YouGov,
commissioned by Shelter.
One in 20 (5 per cent) of those nding it difficult to make ends meet
have been to see their GP because
of the stress. More than one in seven
(16 per cent) are losing sleep due to
worries about being able to pay their
rent or mortgage. And 13 per cent of
those who are struggling say their
financial situation is causing
arguments with their partner. The
gures apply to England but reect
the situation across Britain, according to the charity.
And a new report released by
Shelter today, based on detailed interviews with 19 individuals who
have been, or are, in arrears with
their rent or mortgage payments,
warns: People were very emotionally and mentally affected from being
in housing and other types of debt
and some felt this had led to physical illness too.
It adds: Some reported depression, an inability to sleep and panic
attacks as a result of the stress and
some felt it had led to physical illnesses such as high blood pressure
and strokes.
A change in circumstances, such
as losing your job or falling ill, are
the two main ways people nd themselves in financial difficulties,
according to the report. This can lead
to some hard choices. As one mother
from London, speaking anonymously, said: It came down to do I heat
the at and feed the children or do I
pay all of the rent? Another mother,
from Yorkshire, described how her
health is suffering: Im on anti-anxiety tablets now and get panic attacks.
It feels like Im being buried.
The report also features an example of an individual who suffered a
stroke: One person felt that the
stress of not being able to afford her
SICK NOTES
IN NUMBERS

of people in England are either

struggling or falling behind with
their rent or mortgage

of those nding it difcult to

make ends meet have been to see
their GP because of the stress that
they are under

are losing sleep due to worries

about being able to pay their
rent or mortgage
rent directly led to the stroke that

she had last Christmas.
The report concludes: It is too
easy at the moment for people to go
from struggling to pay their housing
payments to losing their homes.
Commenting on the findings,
Campbell Robb, the charitys chief
executive, said: Every day at Shelter we speak to families struggling
to keep up and suffering from stress,
depression and sleepless nights as
a result.
As our housing crisis spirals out
of control, more and more families
are living on a knife-edge where just
a small change in circumstances
could leave them ghting to keep a
roof over their heads. Welfare cuts,
coupled with the Governments lack
of progress on getting genuinely
affordable homes built, mean
things look set to get worse. The only
way to x things for the long term
is to start building homes that
people on ordinary incomes can
actually afford.
Dr Maureen Baker, the chair of
the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: Where people live
and their individual circumstances
undoubtedly have an effect on their
health and wellbeing.
In a statement, a spokesman for
the Department for Communities
and Local Government said: There
are strong protections in place
to guard families against the
threat of homelessness, and those
worried about their nances should
seek advice.
Shelter.org.uk/advice or telephone
0808 800 4444

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Fracking sites
across America
have been
targeted by
environmental
activists GETTY
Fracking is main
suspect in US
methane surge
Rapid rise in the global-warming gas, 86 times
more powerful than CO2, is spotted by satellites
By Geoffrey Lean
Startling increases in one of the

main pollutants that cause global
warming have been unexpectedly
discovered over the United States
and the main suspect is the countrys booming fracking industry.
New Harvard University research,
drawing on satellite measurements,
concludes that US emissions of
methane a much more powerful
warming gas than carbon dioxide
have increased by more than 30
per cent over the past decade.
The researchers say they cannot readily attribute the rise to
any particular source but point out
that US production of shale gas increased nine times during the same
period, while other studies show
that many fracking operations are
emitting much more methane than
has been officially recognised.
If the extraction process proves
to be the culprit, it will show that
exploiting and burning shale gas
has been much more potent in global warming even than using coal,
severely undermining energy and
climate-change strategies. Both
the British and US governments
have been banking on shale gas as
a relatively clean fuel that would
act as a bridge to the low carbon
economy needed in the next few
decades if the world is not to heat
up uncontrollably.
Their policy is based on the fact
that burning gas emits half as much
CO2 as coal. But if large amounts of
methane 86 times more powerful
in causing global warming is emitted via fracking then this advantage
will be negated, or overturned.
The ndings are an unpleasant
surprise, as the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) has held
there has been no signicant rise in
emissions of the gas since 2002. But
it relies on estimates based on data
from emitting industries, while the
new study is based on independent
satellite measurements.
Oil and gas exploitation, coal
mining, livestock and landlls all emit

methane, with wetlands the major
natural source. The study, published
in the journal Geophysical Research
Letters, says the rise in emissions
is largest in the central part of the
country. It points out that the US
has seen a 20 per cent increase in oil
and gas production, and a ninefold
increase in shale gas production
over the relevant period, but adds that
the spatial pattern of the methane
does not clearly point to the industry, and calls for more research.
Other experts, however, have little
doubt as to the identity of the main
culprit. Professor Robert Howarth,
of Cornell University, who conducted
a groundbreaking study into the
effects of methane emissions from
exploiting shale ve years ago, says:
The increase almost certainly must
be coming from the fracking and from
the increase in use of natural gas.
And a review of 200 studies by Stanford University scientists concluded
leaks in the gas system are an important part of the problem that US
emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates.
Even EPA head Gina McCarthy admitted late last month that methane
emissions from existing sources in
the oil and gas sector are [much] higher than we previously understood.
The EPAs industry-based estimates
suggest less than 2 per cent of the gas
produced by fracking leaks nationwide. If that was right, shale gas would
be cleaner just than coal. But satellite measurements over two of the
fastest-growing regions for exploiting it, East Texas and North Dakota,
found leakage of 9 and 10 per cent. Yet
another major study put leakage at
about 5.4 per cent nationwide.
But many wells, still more research
shows, have kept leakage to below
1 per cent, and the Obama administration has introduced measures to
slash emissions from new wells. But
rms are reluctant to curb them at
existing ones due to low gas prices,
and official monitoring and enforcement is often scanty at best.
10

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
David Cameron
at an RAF base
before the vote
for air strikes in
Syria AFP/GETTY
Civilian deaths
from air strikes
set to top 1,000
Cameron under pressure to update MPs on
impact of RAF campaign in Syria and Iraq
By Tom McTague
POLITICAL EDITOR
The civilian death toll from Western air strikes against Islamic State
ghters is set to pass the 1,000 mark
within days, independent monitors
told The Independent on Sunday.
The revelation comes as David
Cameron faces mounting pressure
to honour his pledge to update Parliament on the impact of Britains
military contribution to the war.
After the vote on 2 December authorising RAF air strikes in Syria, Mr
Cameron pledged quarterly updates to Parliament. In the three
months since, the Prime Minister
has left it to Philip Hammond, the
Foreign Secretary, and Justine Greening, the International Development
Secretary, to inform MPs about the
situation in Iraq and Syria.
MPs and peers, however, insist Mr
Cameron left the clear impression
that the updates would be on the
UKs military campaign including
the number of air strikes and civilian casualties and the success in
driving back Islamic State rather
than on the wider diplomatic or humanitarian situation in the region.
An amendment laid in the House
of Lords by the Conservative peer
Lord Hodgson last week would make
it a statutory requirement to publish
civilian casualty gures every three
months. The Government insists
British air strikes in Syria and Iraq
have not killed a single civilian.
However, according to the independent NGO Airwars, 967 Iraqi and
Syrian civilians have died as a result
of air strikes by the 12 coalition states
engaged in attacks on IS. The gure
was described in Parliament last
week as credible. A source at the
monitoring organisation said the gure would top 1,000 within days.
Britain has carried out 591 air
strikes in Iraq and 36 in Syria
making up around a quarter of the
2,000 attacks carried out by countries other than the US in the
international coalition against IS.
Russian air strikes are estimated to
have killed up to 2,900 civilians.
But despite the gures, 11 out of 12
members of the coalition, including
the UK, claim no civilian casualties
have resulted from their strikes.
Lord Hodgson, a member of the
all-party parliamentary committee
on drones, told peers on Thursday
that this would be unprecedented
in a major military engagement and
naturally invites questions about
how civilians are being classied.
The former Conservative deputy
chairman said it was crucial to be
transparent about the scale of civilian deaths. He said: We need to
spend a lot of time making sure we
carry the country with us.
This is a particularly important

area for our minority population. I
do think it needs to be done with a
degree of seriousness if it is to
demand condence.
When civilians get killed in the
course of war it is a recruiter for the
extremists. But when women and
children are killed it also destroys
the fabric of society.
The Liberal Democrat MP Tom
Brake, the partys foreign affairs
spokesman, said it was incumbent
on Mr Cameron to update MPs on
the UKs military campaign.
He said: Parliament voted to support the Prime Minister and support
military action by the RAF in Syria.
Parliament is entitled to detailed,
quality reports by the Prime Minister setting out what impact that
military action has had on Daesh [IS]
ghters and Daesh nances and
also conrmation of the number of
civilian casualties caused by RAF
When women and children

are killed it also destroys
the fabric of society
Claims of zero casualties
invite questions about how
civilians are being classified
action. We are well past a quarter in
terms of the number of days.
Labours shadow Defence Secretary,
Emily Thornberry, added: As the reported toll of civilian casualties from
coalition bombing in Syria continues
to rise, we need answers and accountability from the Government about
the role that Britains air strikes are
playing in this crisis. David Cameron
promised quarterly reports to Parliament on the impact of his bombing
campaign; keeping that promise is the
least the British public deserve.
A spokesman for Michael Fallon,
the Defence Secretary, said he had
updated MPs in two private sessions
attended by between 90 and 100 MPs.
He said there had also been two
updates in the Commons since the
December vote rst by Mr Hammond, then by Ms Greening.
The spokesman suggested it was
Mr Fallons turn next and that he
would address the house shortly.
But Chris Woods, the director Airwars, said the gulf between military
claims and credible reports from the
ground continues to grow ever wider.
He added: In downplaying its own
casualties so heavily, the alliance undercuts any leverage it might command
with Russia which continues to kill
scores of civilians weekly in Syria.
LEADING ARTICLE PAGE 43

6 MARCH 2016
11
NEWS
SPARKS FLY
Labour shows
George
Osborne in a
Google-brand
dodgem car, and
mocks tax deals
Labour revs up dodgems for May polls

Campaign posters attack the Tories deals with big business and pledge to stand up to cuts, not stand by
By Tom McTague
POLITICAL EDITOR
Jeremy Corbyn will kick off

Labours local election campaign
today with posters accusing George
Osborne of being in hock to big
businesses that dodge tax.
A series of billboard-style adverts attack the Chancellor for
failing to raise more tax from Google. Last week the social networking
site Facebook voluntarily agreed
to pay more tax in the UK, piling
pressure on other US tech giants
to follow suit.
Mr Osborne sparked widespread
criticism in January after hailing a
deal in which Google agreed to pay
130m in back taxes dating to 2005.
Critics attacked the settlement as
derisory, claiming the company
was in effect paying a corporation
tax rate of just 2.7 per cent.
In one of the new Labour posters
published online, Mr Osborne is
mocked up sitting in a special
Google-branded dodgem car under
the slogan: Roll up, roll up to the
unfair. The poster says the Tories

dont seem to understand fair tax
contributions before adding: Perhaps they should Google it.
Labour says the poster highlights
the unfairness of Georges Osbornes
approach to tax avoidance secret
deals with large corporations while
millions pay more. A source said it
was an example of how the Tories
are in hock to vested interests and
are letting working people down.
The poster campaign features
Labours new slogan Standing up,
not standing by, which has divided
opinion in Westminster. Speaking
yesterday, Mr Corbyn said the local
and devolved elections on 5 May
were a chance to vote for a party that
will stand up for you against
government cuts.
The nationwide elections are Mr
Corbyns rst real election test with
critics waiting to pounce if the party
performs badly. The election experts
Rawlings and Thrasher have said
Labour could lose 200 seats this May
a disastrous result that could spark
Mr Corbyns first real leadership
JARVIS SETS
OUT HIS STALL
Labour backbencher Dan Jarvis will

outline his economic ideas to the
Demos think-tank this week in a
move touted as the opening salvo of
his bid to replace Jeremy Corbyn.
Many MPs think Mr Jarvis, a
former soldier, has the best back
story to help return Labour to
power. He decided not to stand
for the leadership last summer for
family reasons: he has three young
children and had recently remarried
after his rst wife died of cancer.
Senior Labour MPs said they have
advised Mr Jarvis on the direction
Labour could take under a more
centrist leader. A source close to Mr
Jarvis said: Inevitably, the leadership is going to get talked about.
Hell be looking at the economic
agenda Labour should be following.
Mark Leftly
challenge. To stand any chance of

winning power in 2020 Labour needs
to pick up around 300 town hall
seats, pollsters say.
Excluding general election years,
over the past 40 years the main opposition party has always gained
seats. In 1982, a divided Labour lost
225 seats but the Conservatives lost
98 seats despite winning support for
the Falklands War. In 1985 Labour
lost 124 seats. However, the Tories
did even worse losing 202 seats.
As well as being at risk of losing
hundreds of council seats, Labour
also faces losing overall control in
Wales and failing to win a single
constituency seat in Scotland.
However, the partys candidate in
London, Sadiq Khan, is seen as the
favourite to succeed Boris Johnson
as Mayor.
Sources close to Mr Corbyn insist
it will be hard for Labour to limit
council election losses because they
will be defending seats won four
years ago at the height of public
anger over Tory cuts.
Mr Corbyn told The Independent
on Sunday that the elections were a

chance to reject the damaging
choices the Tories are making.
Deep Tory cuts are putting the
public services we rely on at risk,
with thousands of police officers
axed and the NHS going backwards,
with longer waits and financial
crisis, he said.
Labour will stand up for working people to build an economy
which works for all one where
prosperity is shared, pay is fair and
jobs are secure.
We will stand up for families and
individuals struggling to buy or rent
a home, by delivering more and
better housing. And we will stand
up against the unfair Tory cuts to
protect the vital public services we
all rely on. We will protect the police
from deep Tory cuts. And we will
invest in the NHS to rescue it from
Tory neglect.
Thats the choice at this election:
a Tory government which is putting
the living standards of millions of
working families at risk, or a Labour
Party that will stand up for you.

6 MARCH 2016
13
MMMM
ANDREW FOX
THE INTERVIEW
Breaking the mould

Nicky Morgan talks to Political Editor Tom McTague about bucking the trend and cross-dressing in the Commons
he Secretary of State for Education

may be the mother of a school-age
child, but shes rather more nuanced than the working mum cliche. In fact, Nicky Morgan is hard
to pin down. One moment its all
a bit Middle England family nances, childrens rugby and the
school run. The next its classroom
sexism, trans rights and crossdressing MPs.
In many ways, shes a classic
suburban Tory the daughter of a
barrister from south-west London,
educated at the local private school,
trained as a solicitor. But shes no
stereotype. Like George Osborne,
her former boss, shes comfortable
on classic liberal lefty turf.
On feminism, she certainly
doesnt hold back attacking the
unconscious bias of old-fashioned
head teachers and school governors
holding back women in schools.
Speaking ahead of International
Womens Day, Mrs Morgan whose
husband stays at home to look after
their son hits out at the lack of female heads, labelling it a crippling
waste of talent. Three-quarters of
teachers are women, she says but

only 37 per cent are school heads.
To tackle the problem, Mrs Morgan
calls for a revolution in part-time
working in schools and reveals that
the Government is to set up a datingstyle website for teachers looking for
job-share partners as well as a new
programme of classroom mentors
to help mothers back into schools.
Mrs Morgan, who is also Equalities minister, revealed that a 1m
fund will tackle transphobic bullying. She warns parents not to
stereotype their children and predicts a future in which all the top
political jobs are lled by women.
And of education, she says: Only one
in four female teachers work parttime, compared with nearly half the
women in the workforce nationally.
A programme will be launched
to make teaching a more attractive
long-term career for women, with
1,000 new career coaches to push
female teachers into the top school
jobs. Mothers hoping to return to
paid work will be given personal
coaching and training to smooth the
transition back to the classroom.
Mrs Morgan also wants highflying teachers to sign a pledge
offering their time to coach at least
one woman to develop their career.
The programme, she says, is about
giving women the condence to
come back into the classroom.
It prompts the question, is teaching a sexist profession? I doubt that
it is worse than many others, she
says refusing to deny that it is. The
issue is, until you help women to senior positions to become role models
its a self-perpetuating cycle. Actu-
The only reason I am

able to do this job is
because my husband
is at home with our
son. We want people
to do what is right
for themselves
ally, what you need is to help women

to get to those senior positions.
Youve got to get the people who
make the appointments, who draw
up the job specication.
If you have a chair of governors
who has a very xed view of what a
head teacher looks like then you
are never going to change the mould
and thats what we must change.
She says there is a danger of group
think, if all the top positions are
dominated by men, which is closer
to unconscious bias than institutionalised sexism.
Isnt all this a bit patronising,
though? After all, she managed to go
back to work after having a child
why cant other women? The only
reason I am able to do this job is because [my husband] is at home with
our son, she says. We want people
to do what is right for themselves
and their family circumstances.
If things go right for Mrs Morgan
her circumstances could change
dramatically over the next few years.
She is one of the few MPs to declare
that she wants to be the next Tory
leader. And shes keen to practise
what she preaches when it comes to
women in top jobs. There are no
jobs around the Cabinet table that
are jobs for men or jobs for women.
They are jobs for the right person.
Can she foresee a time when there
will be a female Prime Minister,
Chancellor and Home Secretary?
Oh, yes, absolutely. We will have
achieved some equality in politics
when nobody talks about it. They
would never talk about there being
three men in those jobs.
But asked whether the truest test
of equality is when an average

woman can reach the top, shes quick
as a ash after laughing out loud:
Thank you for inviting me to speculate on average men in politics, but
maybe not at this point.
She clearly detests all forms of stereotyping from the classroom to the
Cabinet. And shes unafraid to tell
parents they also have a duty to tackle
sexism. There will be some girls who
love pink. But there will be as many
girls who absolutely loathe pink. Children should be free to choose these
things. I think its incumbent on all of
us parents and others not to fall
into the trap of stereotyping.
Its a dangerous road to go down
giving family advice. But she is
insistent: Its too easy to say sometimes, thats not a boy thing or a girl
thing. You have to stop yourself.
Mrs Morgan is unafraid of wading
into controversial rows. She is quick
to rule out banning rugby in schools
over safety fears insisting it is good
for developing character.
She is even happy to side with
Labours celebrity backer Eddie
Izzard over David Cameron in the
debate of proper attire in the
Commons chamber.
Should cross-dressing men be
allowed to wear womens clothes in
the Commons? It would be great to
see, she says. Im pretty sure the
House of Commons in the 21st century can absolutely cope with that ...
we want great people to be MPs. If we
are going to represent a country we
have to be as diverse as the country
we aspire to represent.
TEACHERS LOANS PAGE 22
14

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Write off degree

loans to teaching
staff, say heads
Teachers conduct
lessons in
subjects outside
their eld in
many schools
PETER MACDIARMID/
GETTY IMAGES
Alarm at number of graduates who abandon

the profession prompts range of proposals
By Richard Garner
EDUCATION EDITOR
Teachers should have their student

loan debts written off after spending 10 years in the classroom, as
part of a package to help solve the
recruitment crisis in schools, head
teachers declared yesterday.
The idea is one of a series of
measures being put forward by the
Association of School and College
Leaders (ASCL) to the Secretary
of State for Education, Nicky
Morgan, and aimed at overcoming
teacher shortages.
In a speech to the ASCLs annual
conference yesterday, Mrs Morgan
admitted schools were struggling
to attract the brightest and best as
she unveiled a raft of measures
designed to address the problem.

She suggested schools could recruit
teachers from overseas to meet the
shortfall.
Previous research has found the
majority of schools (73 per cent) are
making teachers conduct lessons in
subjects that they are not trained in.
Malcolm Trobe, acting general secretary of ASCL, said: Once you start
earning over 21,000, youre paying
your National Insurance, pension
contributions which have gone up
and youve got your tax. Then you
stick another 9 per cent on top of
that to repay your loan. Thats a big,
big chunk of your money. The repayments just kick in as teachers start
to move up the pay scale.
For teachers, he argued, the
situation was exacerbated by the
decision to limit pay rises to 1 per

cent a year until 2020. As a result,
teachers were leaving the classroom
to pursue more lucrative careers.
Figures showed 28 per cent of teachers left after ve years service.
Something has to be done about
the situation, said Mr Trobe, and
the 1 per cent cap that the profession
has to face will actually create an
additional pressure when it competes with salaries from other
professions. Also, if it [the student
loan] was written off completely
after a period of time, thats an encouragement to come into the

profession. Its a little bit of carrot
rather than a stick.
Mrs Morgan told the conference
that she planned to take steps to
support more teachers, women in
particular, to return to the profession
part-time.
She also said she was considering
setting up a national database to advertise teachers jobs and urged
schools to look abroad for recruitment, particularly of modern foreign
languages staff. Heads should talent

spot among their A-level students
and encourage those who would be
the most suitable to enter the profession, she added.
We know, I know, ministers know,
that recruitment is a challenge. We
hear your concerns, she stressed.
The reality on the ground for many
heads is that they are struggling to
attract the brightest and the best
(teachers). We have a growing economy and leading employers are
increasing recruitment.

6 MARCH 2016
15
MMMM
NEWS
Beatles are
true poets,
said fan Iris
Murdoch
Letters reveal that the Booker Prize-winning
novelist and philosopher wanted the Fab Four
to step into laureate Lord Tennysons shoes
By Nick Clark and
Richard Jinman
Iris Murdoch, the poet and Booker

Prize-winning novelist was a secret fan of pop music who went
to Rolling Stones concerts and
believed the Beatles should have
been appointed Poets Laureate, a
cache of letters has revealed.
Murdoch was a prodigious correspondent, and more than 700 of
her missives are published in Living on Paper: Letters from Iris
Murdoch 1934-1995. The books editors, Avril Horner and Anne Rowe,
from the Iris Murdoch Archive
Centre at Kingston University, told
an audience at The Independent
Bath Literature Festival last week
that some of letters contents had
made them sit up.
Two of the letters in which Murdoch talks about the Beatles are
published in the book. In one, she
writes: I think the Beatles should
be Poet Laureate.
That was a real surprise, said
Professor Horner. Heres this philosopher writing these complex
novels and yet she was really interested in this popular culture.
Murdochs devastation over
the murder of John Lennon in
1980 was also articulated in her
letters, and she had expressed
The Beatles in 1965. Iris Murdoch (inset) was shocked by the murder of John Lennon in 1980 REX; BRIAN HARRIS
PICK OF
THE POPS
Andrew McMillan
A judge of this years Ted Hughes
Award, which is backed by the Poetry
Society, nominated Ticket To Ride
(1965)
She said that living with me/ Was
bringing her down, yeah/ For she
would never be free/ When
I was around, oh
Im struck by its simple power, its
layering of jaunty rhythm over
something much sadder the tension
of whats being said and how its
being said, which is surely the
tension in all poetry.
Sabrina Mahfouz
Poet and playwright, chose
I Am the Walrus (1967)
Sitting on a cornflake waiting for
the van to come/ Corporation
T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday/ Man
you been a naughty boy
I have fond memories of this due to
my friend in French class swapping
the GCSE listening tape in the tape
deck with this song and us always
getting in trouble for singing it out

loud instead of asking for directions
to the train station in cockney
French.
Blake Morrison
Poet and novelist, chose Eleanor
Rigby (1966)
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in
the church where a wedding has
been/Lives in a dream/ Waits at the
window, wearing the face that she
keeps in a jar by the door
Other Beatles songs might work
better musically, but none can match
Eleanor Rigby for poetry. The
imagery is wonderfully economical:
when Eleanor Rigby picks up the
rice in the church where a wedding
has been thats enough to tell us she
herself has never married).
Jackie Kay
Poet and novelist, chose The Fool on
the Hill (1967
The man of a thousand voices/
Talking perfectly loud/ But nobody
ever hears him/ Or the sound he
appears to make/ And he never

seems to notice
I always loved [the song] when I was
a teenager the idea that there was
someone outside of society who had
a lot of wisdom. I guess thats the role
of a poet in society: someone who
might possess true knowledge and a
curious vantage point.
Attila the Stockbroker,

aka John Baine, performance poet,
chose Taxman (1966)
Should five per cent appear too
small/ Be thankful I dont take
it all/ Cos Im the taxman, yeah
Im the taxman
All hail the days of the 95
per cent tax bracket! This
song comes from an age
where the rich were
taxed properly, until
the pips squeaked.
And my, how they
moaned about it.
Wouldnt happen
now.
her admiration for the Rolling Stones

in a letter to the author Brigid
Brophy.
She [Murdoch] wrote about going
to a [Stones] concert and said
something like, their appearance
was sufficiently androgynous to
please even me, said Professor
Horner.
The idea that the Beatles should
have been installed as Poets Laureate met a mixed reception from
contemporary writers and poets.
The poet and Liverpudlian Roger
McGough, a huge fan of the band,
said a more appropriate honour
would have been Masters of the
Queens Music. The idea that John,
Paul, George and Ringo should have
been installed as Poets Laureate was a playful
suggestion, he said, but
the Liverpool group
would have been embarrassed by it.
The Independent on
Sunday asked a diverse group of
five poets and
novelists to
pick a favourite Beatles
song and
explain
its appeal.
Youre getting old even before youre born, study finds

By Paul Gallagher
The level of oxygen given to

pregnant rats dictated the rate
at which their offspring aged
as adults, in a study using rats
to model foetal development.
Female rats with lower levels of
oxygen in the womb which, in
humans, can be a consequence
of smoking during pregnancy or
of pregnancy at high altitude
gave birth to offspring that aged
more quickly in adulthood.
The scientists concluded that
giving pregnant women antioxidants would probably prevent
or delay some types of cell
damage and allow their children

to age more slowly in adulthood.
An international team led by
the University of Cambridge
measured the length of telomeres in blood vessels of adult
laboratory rats born from mothers who were, or were not, fed
antioxidants during normal or
complicated pregnancy. Telomeres are the caps at the end of
each strand of DNA that protect
our chromosomes, like the plastic
tips at the end of shoelaces, and
an essential part of human cells
that affect how our cells age.
In the study, funded by the
British Heart Foundation (BHF)
Giving pregnant women antioxidants

could slow ageing in their children
and published last week in The

FASEB Journal, the team found
that adult rats born from mothers who had less oxygen during
pregnancy had shorter telomeres
than rats born after uncomplicated pregnancies.
They also experienced problems with the inner lining of
their blood vessels signs that
they had aged more quickly and
were predisposed to developing
heart disease earlier than normal. However, when pregnant
mothers in this group were given
antioxidant supplements, this
lowered the risk of their offspring
developing heart disease.
Even the offspring born after

uncomplicated pregnancies
when the foetus had received
appropriate levels of oxygen
beneted from a maternal diet
of antioxidants, with longer
telomeres than those rats whose
mothers did not receive the antioxidant supplements during
pregnancy.
The studys senior author,
Professor Dino Giussani from
the Department of Physiology
Development and Neuroscience
at Cambridge, said: Our study
suggests that the ageing clock
begins ticking even before we are
born and enter this world.
16
MMMM

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
Police ran what
are believed to
be the worlds
two largest
child abuse
sites ALAMY
Site takeovers
break internet
child abuse ring
Hundreds of arrests around the world follow
police operation that harnessed the dark web
By David Connett
A major international child abuse

ring has been dismantled by police
who controversially captured and
operated for several months online
sites which shared images of children being abused.
Police and other law enforcement
agencies actively ran the child abuse
sites, believed to be the worlds two
largest, in an effort to identify the
abusers who hid their true identities
on the Tor network.
Hundreds of arrests took place
worldwide following the operation.
One of the first Britons arrested
pleaded guilty at Blackfriars Crown
Court, south London, and was jailed
in January. Vithusan Puvaneswaran,
21, used the encrypted Tor software
to access anonymously one US site
and build up a massive collection of
photos and videos. National Crime
Agency officers found sickening
images of children in cots and other
abuse material when they raided his
home in west London last year.
His identity was uncovered by US
investigators who seized and then
began operating a US-based site
known as Playpen. US court documents describe the site as the largest
remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world.
In February 2015, FBI agents seized
control of the site and used it to hack
the computers of users to reveal their
true identities and arrest them. It is
claimed the FBI identied more than
1,300 users of the site in a two-week
period and passed on information
to forces all over the world. Arrests
as far aeld as Greece and Chile as
well as Britain followed, according
to one report by the website Vice
Motherboard.
The US operation was run jointly
with a Europol operation which targeted a second so-called dark web
child abuse site based in Europe
which also employed Tor encryption
software to hide users identities.
Tor which stands for The Onion
Router gives many layers of privacy
protection by routing the users
unique computer address through
thousands of servers before delivering it to the child abuse site. This
network makes it almost impossible
for law enforcement to trace the original source. The network was
developed by the US military to protect its communications but became
popular with political activists facing
persecution.
The FBI operation led to the arrest
of three US citizens alleged to have
administered the site. Two have
pleaded guilty while a third is still
being dealt with. The US site was uncovered following a joint investigation
by Australian and Europol police into
a separate child abuse site which has
proved crucial in cracking open the

international child sex ring.
Australian police gained access to
KidClub, one of the worlds biggest
child abuse networks with more than
400,000 members, allegedly controlled by a Danish citizen. To join and
access the images, members had to
provide graphic videos and photos
of their own abuse. Child victims
held signs bearing the words the
KidClub and their abusers
username.
The Australian officers were able
to identify an Adelaide man called
Shannon McCoole. McCoole, 34,
who was a key administrator of the
online site, was jailed for 35 years
for sexually abusing children in his
care last year. After arresting him
police impersonated him online for
several months, enabling them to
hijack the site and identify other
A Danish man was said to

have uploaded 3,696 photos
and 116 videos of abuse
Europol director said the
investigation had generated
more than 3,200 cases
abusers including the US website
organisers.
They also identied a key Danish
abuser, described as one of Europes
most prolic paedophiles, who they
say also helped control KidClub.
The 48-year-old was arrested after
the Australian detectives posing as
McCoole engaged him in an online
conversation while Danish detectives entered his house to arrest him
and gain access to his computer.
The arrested man, who cannot be
named for legal reasons, has gone
on trial in Denmark. Investigators
said there was evidence to suggest
that he was responsible for uploading 3,696 photos and 116 videos of
child abuse. Danish police said the
sites membership rules undoubtedly led to many sexual attacks on
children. Prosecutors told the court
that the man allegedly travelled to
Romania with the intention to buy
or in some other way acquire an infant for the purposes of abusing the
child sexually.
The man denies being a senior gure in the network. McCoole gave
evidence against him last December
via video from prison.
Europol director Rob Wainwright
said Operation Pacier had succeeded in shutting down the site and
securing its abuse images so they
could not be used again. He said the
investigation had generated more
than 3,200 cases.

6 March 2016
17
llll
news
Frontrunner for
feminism may get
a statue at last
Effigy equality is a long way off, but a Mary Wollstonecraft
memorial would help. By Tom McTague and Ian Johnston
n alien landing in
B r i ta i n to a ss e ss
h umanity based on
our great works of
art might take home a
strange view of the populace. For,
judging by thousands of statues
across the country, humans are a
species made up almost entirely
of males.
Of the 11 memorials in Parlia-
ment Square, London not one is of
a woman. Edinburgh honours three
named animals Greyfriars Bobby,
Wojtek the soldier bear and Bum
the dog but has only two statues
of a named woman. And they are
both Queen Victoria. In Manches-
ter, the city centres 17 statues are
also male with the one exception
of, again, Queen Victoria.
However, following a campaign
by Labour, Nicky Morgan, the Edu-
cation Secretary and Minister for
Women, has signalled that the
Government is interested in help-
ing to fund a statue to the mother
of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft,
and has also backed new sculptures
of other leading female figures
from history. I think women need
more statues in prominent places,
Ms Morgan said.
A Department for Education
source added that the minister was
eager to hear from campaigners
fundraising for a Wollstonecraft
statue in Newington Green, north
London, where the philosopher
lived and worked during the late
18th century.
She will be inviting them to sub-
mit a proposal on how we can help,
which may include support with
fundraising or with raising aware-
ness, the insider said. Nicky is
very keen that we ensure there is
better representation of women
across the board and, of course,
statues of critical figures in history
like Mary Wollstonecraft are a key
part of that.
The Wollstonecraft statue
capital
women
1
5
10
1 Sarah Siddons, actress

2 Virginia Woolf, writer, and Louisa
Blake, first female surgeon
3 Margaret Ethel MacDonald, social
reformer
4 Edith Cavell, nurse, executed by
Germans during the First World War
5 Florence Nightingale, nurse
6 Anna Pavlova, ballerina
7 Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette
8 Statue of Mary Seacole, nurse, is
planned
9 Violette Szabo GC, executed
Second World War spy
10 Jemina Durning Smith, library
founder
ampaign has already been backed

c
by the Labour leader, Jeremy Cor-
byn, and deputy leader, Tom Watson.
Mr Corbyn said: The overriding bias
of statues and memorials towards
men in our country is shocking. It is
time to redress the balance and hon-
our the millions of women who have
transformed Britain for the better.
Incredibly, there are no statues
to the outstanding writer and
womens rights campaigner, Mary
Wollstonecraft, despite her
inspiration to women and men who
followed her.
He also called for a statue to the
suffragette who died when she
stepped in front of King George Vs
horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.
A statue in Parliament would also
be a fitting tribute to celebrate the

commitment and sacrifice of Emily
Wilding Davison who gave her life
for womens suffrage in Britain, and
left a deep impact on our politics and
country, he said.
It is time to right the balance with
a clear plan to honour the extraor-
dinary women who have transformed
our lives and changed our history.
When asked about the cross-party
support, Bee Rowlatt, chair of the
Mary on the Green campaign and
author of In Search of Mary, said:
This is so great, this is fantastic.
Its completely unacceptable that
theres artistic representation that
people see and witness every day,
and more than nine out of 10 of them
are men, she said.
And of the few women you get,

they tend to be royals, so they are
not there by virtue of their personal
achievements. Young people have
to see a diverse range of figures cel-
ebrated on pedestals.
She described Wollstonecraft, au-
thor of A Vindication of the Rights of
Men and then A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, as the foremother
of feminism and an early human
rights campaigner. Her argument
that women were capable of reason
and only needed education was
d erided by the male-dominated
society of the day, but she was sup-
ported by some radical thinkers.
After her death in 1797 at the age
of 38, while giving birth to author
Mary Shelley Wollstonecrafts
grief-stricken husband, the philo
sopher William Godwin, wrote a
loving memoir that detailed her
affairs, suicide attempts and the birth
of a child out of wedlock.
She became toxic overnight. It
was like a really violent Twitter
storm. People circulated poems
about her being a slut. It was just
awful, Ms Rowlatt said. Her reputa-
tion only began to recover with the
birth of the suffragette movement in
the next century.
The Victorians fondness for statu-
ary means public sculpture is
dominated by wealthy men, but some
have found ways to redress the bal-
ance. In Manchester, the craftivist
duo Warp & Weft has crocheted
masks of notable female scientists
from the city and put them over four
of the all-male busts in the Sculpture
Hall at the town hall, for an exhibi-
tion called Big-Up Female Boffins.
Young girls need to see role mod-
els and need to know women have
achieved, said Jenny White, of Warp
& Weft, so it is crucial they [statues
of women] are a real prominent fea-
ture of public spaces. If you are
telling young girls, Look at all the
great men of the past, they are think-
ing, Where do I fit in?


6 March 2016
19
simmy
richman
out there
This is why Im sharing

When we have the answers to everything
at our fingertips, its refreshing to be
surprised by the odd curious lack of
knowledge. A case in point: who would
have thought that same-sex marriage was
yet to be legally recognised in Australia?
Last week, the Australian Marriage
Equality campaign (top right) received
a timely and heartbreaking boost from a
widely shared Facebook post by a woman
called Lara Ryan. After changing her
profile picture to reflect her support for
the campaign, she wrote: This is why.
Because having lost my partner in an accident last month I had to ask policemen if I
was allowed to write Spouse on incident
reports and I had to cross out boxes for
Husband on the death certificate.
Because we were never political, we
just tried to live by example to shift peoples hearts rather than pushing agendas.
BUT the amount of paperwork I am having to do to secure mine and my childrens
future welfare is just ridiculous when all it
would take is one marriage certificate. Feel
free to share widely. Consider it done.
Half-board for Bacon
chat. After a while he told us that he had

nothing to paint on, so my friend said,
Have that bit of board over there. Its a bit
big for me, said Tony. Ill cut it in half for
you, said my friend.
And had Page known then what we
know now, does he regret giving away that
particular piece of board? I wasnt bothered then, and Im not now, because it
was a reject, he says. The astronomical
prices for some artists work are shameful,
particularly when the majority make nothing. And, of course, none of us know for
sure if it is by Bacon, so if it were declared
not to be, it would become a valueless
bit of scribble on the back of a couple of
OMalleys that is to say, it has no intrinsic value at all, only gilt by association.
Leap trick
Backfiring promotion of the week? McGillins Olde Ale House (est 1860) is the longest continuously operating bar in Philadelphia and one of the oldest in the US.
Last week, as a special offer for Leap
Day, McGillins promised a $100 gift card
to the first five women to propose in the
pub. The bars owner, Chris Mullins, had
this to say about the non-event event.
Hundreds of couples have met, gotten
engaged and even married at McGillins
but, typically, none of them did so on
Leap Day. Weare sad and disappointed.
Willthey repeat the offer in 2020? Yes,
If you could buy a Francis Bacon

painting for the price of the
average wedding, you wouldnt
think twice, right? Well, you
can albeit a Bacon (middle
right) split in two and recently discovered on the back
of two works by the Irish
painter Tony OMalley (to
be auctioned on 17 March
at Christies; estimated
price: 20,000-30,000).
But how, precisely,
did this piece of hardboard come to be split in
the first place? Over to the
artist David Page, who was
working in a studio which had
been used by Bacon in St Ives in
the early 1960s.
Up near the door there was
a piece of hardboard with an
abandoned Bacon on the reverse. One
day, Tony OMalley came round for a
The tear-stained face of equality campaign

Bring home a streaky Bacon
Women fail to leap at cash-for-fianc deal
This mans a poet, but nobody knows it
says Mullins, but

well up the ante.
Double life of Brian

The man widely viewed
as thepoet Laureate
ofTwitter, BrianBilston, last
week posted thefollowing:
DONALD TRUMPTON
Skew/Spew/Barmy Hairdo/
Cut-throat/Bigot/and Smug.
Within hours, his words
had been superimposed,
unattributed, on to a
picture from the 1960s
childrens television
programme and were
doing the rounds on social
media. Does this sort of
thing bother Bilston?
Not at all, he tells me. The
main compulsion for writing [the
poem] was to ridicule this somewhat
unsavoury person. So, a meme that carries
that kind of sentiment cant be too bad.
And what did your friends make of it?
Brian Bilston is a fictional creation I hide
behind because the idea of being a poet
still strikes me as being rather ludicrous,
when were out of milk and theres
washing to be done, he says. Not many
people who know me, know of this
strange double-life I lead.
A collection of Brian Bilstons work will be
published by Unbound
in October
Om, oh sod it!
In the week it was

a nnounced that swearing was an arrestable
offence in Salford Quays,
one Canadian woman made
her own unique stand for
expletives. Ive created Rage
Yoga for all of us who want to become
Zen as fuck, says Lindsay Istace
(left). Whatever next? Moody
meditation? Incensed incense?
The wrong trousers

With sales down, mocking Instagram feeds and an association with
hipsters and hooray Henrys, these
are not good times for red trousers. Last
week, Country Life decided to fight back.
But the timing of its In defence of red trousers could not have been worse: as anyone
watching the BBCs The Night Manager will
know, the worst man in the world Richard
Roper is rarely seen sporting anything else.
Twitter: @simmyrichman
20

6 March 2016
news
Only 3,000 genes

are vital for life, so
who needs the rest?
Many mutations or knock-outs seem to have no effect on human
health, researchers find. Science Editor Steve Connor explains
Backup set
Redundancy
could explain
why some
mutations have
no effect on
health afp/getty
study into the genomes

of British-Asians has
forced scientists to
re-examine their text
books on medical genetics. It turns out that many supposedly vital genes are in fact quite
superfluous to a healthy life, while
some allegedly damaging mutations
have turned out to be harmless.
At the end of the 20th century,
most geneticists thought the human
genome contained between 80,000
and 100,000 genes. But when the
human genome was fully decoded
and analysed 15 years ago the true
number was found to be nearer to
20,000 a shock, given that a grape,
for instance, has 10,000 genes more
than a human.
And now the study of thousands
of Britons of Pakistani descent has
thrown up another surprise, suggesting that as many as 17,000 of
those 20,000 human genes can be
lost completely with no apparent ill
effects for the people who have mislaid them.
The findings suggest a remarkable,
built-in redundancy to the human
genome. As genetic conundrums go,
this is one of the most puzzling, given
the fact that the smallest possible
changes in the human genome can,
when they occur at certain points in
its structure, lead to serious illnesses
or death.
In another bizarre finding, the scientists investigated a particular gene
that causes infertility in mice when
lost or knocked out. However, the
researchers found that one woman
in the study who had lost both copies of this fertility gene was the proud
mother of three healthy children.
One of the reasons the scientists
chose to investigate the genomes of
British-Pakistani men and women
was because of the common practice
in Pakistani culture of first-cousin
marriages, which means there is a
high proportion of gene knockouts in their offspring.
A gene knock-out is when both
copies of the gene one from the
mother and one from the father are
missing or non-functional because
of mutations or DNA deletions.
Parents who are closely related are
more likely to have children with a
relatively high number of gene
knock-outs because of the effects of
genetic inbreeding which brings the
same gene mutations together in a
son or daughter.
Gene knock-outs are widely used
in laboratory mice as animal models
of many human illnesses caused by
genetic defects. But the researchers
now believe that past studies may
have given the wrong impression of
Parents who are

closely related are
more likely to have
babies with a high
rate of knock-outs
One woman who
had lost both
copies of a fertility
gene was a proud
mother of three
how vital any one particular gene is

for a healthy life.
This is the first time anyone has
looked for complete gene knock-outs
in healthier adult people at a large
scale. We found that there are lots
of complete gene knock-outs in
human adults and that, often, these
have no adverse effects, said Professor David van Heel, who co-lead
the study at Queen Mary University
of London.
We suggest that many previous
genetic studies may have overestimated or inaccurately estimated risk
of disease given a genetic variant,
when taken into larger populations,
Professor van Heel said.
Two sets of studies into the genes
of British Asians, one called Born in
Bradford and the other East London
Genes and Health, have provided a
potential cohort of 100,000 individuals who can take part in the research.
This particular gene knock-out study,
however, involved genomic analyses
of 3,222 British-Pakistani adults
whose parents were closely related.
Studying healthy people with
related parents allowed us to estimate that only around 3,000 of the
20,000 human genes are essential
for life, said Richard Durbin of the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in
Cambridge, the co-leader of the
study published in the journal Science last week.
Vagheesh Narasimhan, a PhD student at the Sanger Institute and first
author of the study, said about one
in four of the genomes analysed carried rare but naturally occurring
gene knock-outs.
We found over 20 people with
knock-outs of genes that were previously thought to have been
causative for disease, without any
sign of the expected disease, Mr
Narasimhan said.
But the biggest surprise, perhaps,
was finding a woman who was lacking both of her PRDM9 genes which
mouse experiments had shown to
be critical for fertility.
To our surprise, the woman with
a knock-out for this gene was a
healthy mother of three children,
clearly not infertile! he said.
But the study also indicated that
many gene knock-outs can still be
lethal. The scientists had expected
to find more than 900 gene knockouts in this group of people, but
found just 781, suggesting that the
missing number was because these
individuals had not survived.
As Mr Narasimhan explained: We
could estimate that approximately
15 per cent of genes when knocked
out would have led to lethality or
severe disease.

6 March 2016
21
news
The chefs special and the veg is too

Leeks will be the stars of the show at the Food Made Good Awards. Susie Mesure reports
rilled leeks might not

be the most obvious
main course choice
to feed 300 hungry
restaurateurs. But
Damian Clisby will elevate the
British winter staple to top billing
when he dishes up a special lunch
to celebrate the UKs most sustainable restaurants later this month.
The chef is on a mission to convince his industry that vegetables
deserve star status with the meatfree menu he has devised for the
Food Made Good Awards.
The trick to appreciating vegetables is Clisby says treating them
like a prize cut of meat. Imagine
saying, Im going to look at that
celeriac like Id look at a piece of
steak. Im going to cut it nice and
thickly, and Im going to season it
really well, maybe put a dry rub on
it, and roast it, he says.
When I was a young chef, I
didnt really understand about sustainability. It was all about how
pretty the plate of food looked, and
how good it tasted. Now, the chef,
who has worked for the celebrated
restaurateur and The Independents
long-term food writer Mark Hix,

values integrity when sourcing
ingredients above everything else.
At Petersham Nurseries, where he
has been head chef for two years,
customers eat more fish than meat,
he said. And vegetables feature
strongly on the menu.
For the Food Made Good Awards
lunch, to be held on 22 March at the
Royal Horticultural Society, Clisby
will serve a starter of salad leaves,
flowers, and chickpea fritters. He
still doesnt know if the dressing will
feature wild garlic or nettles; that
depends on what his forager can

obtain at the very last minute.
Then those leeks. Theyre so tender. When you grill them like that,
you get that lovely caramelised
flavour on the outside and a really
tender heart. Ill use some Kirkhams
Lancashire and a little bit of sage,
he added. Dessert will be a honey
and custard tart, with brown butter
ice cream, made using free range
eggs, naturally.
Clisby spent summers on his
grandfathers farm in Cork, Ireland,
where he honed his passion for food.
He applauded the work that the
Sustainable Restaurant Association,
which is running the awards in partnership with The IoS, is doing.
Youre rewarding people for
doing good, fastidious work. Its not
just about the restaurant and the food
and the chef being amazing, but has
more integrity.
You can vote for your favourite until
13 March by visiting foodmadegood.
org/peoplesfave16 or tweet
@foodmadegood using the hashtag
#fave and the name of your chosen
restaurant
Damian Clisby
(left), and one
salad-based
dish Ming
Tang-evans
22

6 MARCH 2016
NEWS
OUTSTANDING WORK
Coverage of the Paris

terrorist attacks, and
the artwork of Andr
Carrilho, earned The
Independent on Sunday
seven awards from the
Society of News Design
The IoS: a real

prize-winning
page-turner
The annual Society of News Design

awards are a global event, attracting
entrants from publications in every
continent. The 37th competition, for
work in 2015, was judged last month
in New York by a panel of experts
and we are very proud to announce
The Independent on Sunday has
won seven Awards of Excellence.
There were many distinctive newspaper front pages last year, so to be

recognised for the cover following
the Paris terrorist attacks was
wonderful. It, and the inside pages
that sought to make sense through
clear layout and concise coverage,
are testament to the technical skills
and imagination of Colin Wilson and
Sarah Morley, this papers art director

and deputy art director.
Our other awards were for pages
designed with the artwork created
by the masterful Andr Carrilho.
His caricatures and feature illustration are integral to this paper. As we
prepare to say goodbye to our print
edition, its great to go out on a high.

6 March 2016
23
news
Beatboxing street buskers are

live and unplugged, by law
By Serina Sandhu
Eagle
eather p2 puff
ssword p2 puff
twork | emails
Navigation
Fredy Beats and ABH Beatbox, aka

Fredy Garcia and Alex Hackett, are
champion beatboxers who found
inspiration in Camden Towns legendary north London music scene.
Ironic, then, that Camden Council has just prosecuted the pair for
busking without a licence.
The beatboxers who use their
amplified voices to mimic percussion are the first to fall victim to
the boroughs controversial busking licence which came into force
in 2014.
On Thursday, Mr Garcia and Mr
Hackett were ordered to pay 220,
including a 100 fine, at Highbury
Magistrates Court after they pleaded guilty to busking without a
licence near Camden Town tube.
They said the council had tried to fine

them 1,000, plus 675 in prosecution
fees, but mitigating circumstances
led to the reduced amount.
Camden Town, where Blur and
Amy Winehouse used to perform,
inspired Mr Hackett to become a
busker. Camden says [it is] a place
that promotes culture and creativity
and it did seem like that a few years
ago, he said. But now it just seems
like theyre trying to stamp it out.
The two-time UK Beatbox Tag
Team vice champion, who has been
busking in Camden since 2011, said
he was told about the licence in July
2015 when he was stopped by a council official. Mr Garcia, the 2015 Spanish
Beatbox Champion, was stopped by
a council official on 2 December, four
days after he had attempted to apply
for a busking licence online.
nEWS
IN BRIEF
:: attack
!
Travel
Police continue to question man

over stabbing of pregnant woman
Detectives in the West Midlands investigating the
stabbing of a pregnant woman in Sutton Coldfield
were granted more time last night to question a
man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. The
woman was described as being in a critical but stable
condition. Her baby girl was delivered by Caesarean
section and was reported to be doing well. Police
have praised five passers-by who rushed to help the
40-year-old as she lay injured on Friday.
The 80th anniversary of the first Spitfire flight

was marked with a flypast in Southampton
yesterday. The plane flew over the Supermarine
factory, which built thousands of the aircraft PA
:: Sport
Two arrested in fights between

Arsenal and Spurs fans
Football fans clashed in north London as mounted
police moved in to restore order near Tottenham
Hotspurs White Hart Lane ground. Two men were
arrested as home supporters fought rivals from
Arsenal before a lunchtime derby match. Pictures
of men with faces bloodied from the skirmish were
shared on social media, while eyewitnesses said
objects included bottles were thrown at police
officers trying to split up the crowd.
It was obvious it was impossible

for me to actually be accepted, said
the 24-year-old, referring to the restrictions set by the council.
It costs 47 to apply for a busking
licence in Camden, a sum that is nonrefundable if the application is
rejected. But the main impediment,
said the beatboxers, is the fact the
council restricts buskers to five-watt
amplifiers. Mr Hackett and Mr Garcia say that the amps that make
beatboxing possible need to be more
powerful than that, but they dont
necessarily exceed noise limits.
Camden Council continuously
connect noise nuisance with
buskers, said Mr Hackett.
However, all buskers want to do
is work with the local council, residents and businesses in order to find
a maximum appropriate decibel
Silenced: Alex Hackett (left) and Fredy Garcia Peter Macdiarmid
limit for each spot that does not

cause noise nuisance to anyone.
The licensing policy is changing
the essential fabric of the place, said
Jonny Walker, the founding director
of the Keep Streets Live campaign.
He has petitioned against the licence,
arguing that it makes busking an arbitrary offence even when it is not a
nuisance. I think the punitive action
taken towards buskers is indicative

of a wider trend, including selling
Camden Market to a billionaire
property developer, he said.
Camden councillor Jonathan
Simpson said: We encourage street
performers to play, but need to balance this with the needs of our local
residents, who can experience excessive noise nuisance.
24

6 March 2016
news
MPs may sue over Portcullis House flaws

By Mark Leftly
DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR
The atrium roof at Portcullis House
MPs want to sue the architecture

and engineering firms that built
their 235m office block, Portcullis
House, over the cracks and leaks in
its atrium roof.
Last week The IoS revealed that
consultants have been hired by the
House of Commons to work out how

the structure might be repaired. MPs
on the 11-strong finance committee
fear the consultants will recommend
installing a new roof that could cost
100m. Some of them raised the prospect of suing Hopkins, which
designed Portcullis, and the structural engineer Arup.
The atrium, where MPs, lobby
journalists and researchers plot and

gossip over coffee and tea, has been
littered with scaffolding and buckets
catching water ever since the building opened in 2001. Allowing for
inflation, Portcullis is one of the most
expensive buildings of its size ever
constructed in the UK; a tunnel links
it to the Palace of Westminster.
Sources close to the committee
confirmed that several MPs have
raised the prospect of legal action.
But the sources added this could be
difficult, given how many years have
passed since the problems started.
The situation is further complicated because Arup is also bidding
for work on a much bigger job: the
refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament, which could cost as much
as 7bn when it starts in the early
2020s. Arup is one of the worlds
most respected engineering groups;
its most famous project was the
Sydney Opera House. Hopkins is
considered to be one of an elite group
of British architecture firms; its work

includes the much lauded velodrome
in the London 2012 Olympic Park
and the National Tennis Centre in
Roehampton, south-west London.
Other MPs are more concerned
that the project proves Parliament
is unable to supervise its own estate
before the biggest revamp of the
buildings since they was devastated
by the Great Fire of 1834. A committee source said: If Parliament has
overseen such a shoddy project as
Portcullis, what confidence do we
have in the wider restoration?
Hopkins, Arup and the House of
Commons declined to comment on
possible legal action, but a Commons
spokeswoman added: A survey of
movements within the Portcullis
House atrium roof is under way and
is due to be completed in spring 2016.
Once all the required data has been
collected, recommendations will be
made on addressing the cause of
previous roof panel fractures.
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6 March 2016
25
jane
merrick
on politics
Lets take hold of humanity
Churchill was
right on Europe
A party divided
under Corbyn
Remembering
Wilsons century
What a bizarre
rule, Chris
Could there have been a greater contrast

between the scenes at the Macedonia
border last week and the latest squabbling
over the EU referendum campaign in the
UK? The row over whether the In campaign
was running project fear or project fact
did not seem to be on the same planet, let
alone the same continent, as the images of
hungry babies clutching at their mothers
faces, a woman refugee despairing that she
no longer feels human, or several members
of one family sleeping in thin tents designed
for two people.
The Out campaign uses migration and the
refugee crisis as a reason for Britain to leave.
Peter Bone, the Tory MP and co-founder of
Grassroots Out, says, in the event of Brexit:
If asylum seekers start arriving at Dover,
we will send them straight back. Brexit will
give Britain back control of its own borders,
and so the ability of migrants and refugees
to travel freely throughout the EU would
stop at the UK. David Cameron, on behalf
of the In campaign, says he has secured
tougher rules on migration as part of his
reform deal from Brussels. But this only
focuses on a narrow detail of a much bigger
picture. Shouldnt the Prime Minister use
the refugee crisis as precisely a reason that
the UK should stay in Europe?
In a House of Commons speech that will
take some beating to be the best of 2016, the
Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames, who
wants Britain to remain in the EU, quoted
from his grandfathers speech in The Hague
in 1948. Arguing why post-war European
co-operation was so important, Winston
Churchill said: If we all pull together and
pool the luck and the comradeship and
firmly grasp the larger hopes of humanity,
then it may be that we shall move into
a happier sunlit age, when all the little
children who are now growing up in this
tormented world may find themselves
not the victors nor the vanquished in the
fleeting triumphs of one country over
another in the bloody turmoil of war,
but the heirs of all the treasures of the
past and the masters of all the science, the
abundance and the glories of the future.
It is a tragedy that Churchills words can
be applied to Europe today, but they also
underline the reasons why EU countries
are stronger together in facing one of the
greatest challenges of our age the refugee
crisis. Britain took in refugees during and
after the Second World War, and it should
not turn its back on them now.
It is true that this country is helping
Syrian and Iraqi refugees in camps closer
to their home countries. But, on the eve
of a major EU summit on migration, it is
inescapable that there are also more than
amillion refugees in Europe. Instead of
History will judge David Cameron on his part in the EUs response to the refugee crisis AFP/Getty
etting bogged down in the detail of dosg

siers of what might happen if we left, the
Prime Minister should step back and
deliver a speech that captures the momentousness of the refugee crisis, and how
Britain can play a leading part, through its
continued membership of the EU, in tackling it. Because history will judge him on
this, whatever he says.
Churchills Hague speech showed that
part of what makes Britain great is its ability
to firmly grasp the larger hopes of humanity, not release the grip because our hands
are full.
Poison in the Labour Party

The referendum campaign may be threatening to split the Conservative Party, but at
least many of its MPs are insisting (as they
would) that after 23 June, whatever the outcome of the vote, there will be a period of
healing. The same cannot be said of Labour.
The bitterly fought election for its NEC
youth representative shows that the party
is already split. Under Jeremy Corbyn,
factionalism has taken hold. Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford North, says he cant
recall anything quite as poisonous as the
campaign between James Elliott, who was
backed by Momentum and Unite, and the
eventual winner, Jasmine Beckett.
What was disgraceful was the accusation
by Corbyns ally and the founder of Momentum, Jon Lansman, that Beckett was a
careerist when she is a 19-year-old from
a working-class background in Liverpool. It
is easy to focus only on the EU referendum,
but this Mays local and Scottish elections
will be the first electoral test of Corbyns
leadership. With Labour already so deeply
divided, what will the voters do?
Remember Harold in stone

Harold Wilson, who knew about Labour
disunity as the prime minister whose
cabinet split over the 1975 referendum,

was born 100 years ago this week. Barry
Sheerman, the Labour MP for Huddersfield
who has long campaigned for a statue
of Wilson to be erected in the House of
Commons alongside other great premiers,
told Cameron at PMQs that Wilson stood
up to the rebels in his own party and
secured a yes vote for staying in Europe.
This is only half the story, of course:
after the Yes vote Labour was still riven
over Europe, and this eventually led to the
breakaway SDP. However, Sheerman has a
point about a statue: Wilson served for two
terms and had wide popular appeal. Many
places in the UK have a connection to the
former PM: he was born in Huddersfield,
went to Oxford University, was MP for both
Ormskirk and Huytonin Merseyside and
became Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, after the
abbey in North Yorkshire. There are statues
and tributes to him all over the country
except in the Commons, so isnt it time he
was recognised in Parliament?
Graylings decision isnt funny

Chris Grayling, the Leader of the Commons,
dismissed calls for TV programmes such
as Have I Got News For You to be able to use
footage from inside Parliament. This is an
utterly bizarre anomaly, given that factual
programmes which deploy some humour,
such as the BBCs This Week, are permitted. Like MPs pay and pensions, this is yet
another area where politicians are allowed
to regulate their own business and we voters can do absolutely nothing about it.
Which I guess is satire, on one level.
Twitter: @janemerrick23
26
llll

6 March 2016
news
Vivienne westwood
Vivienne westwood
Junya Watanabe
Vivienne westwood
Femininity
uncaged
Vivienne westwood
The Paris shows of Rei Kawakubo and Vivienne Westwood should silence the
critics who say its all about insecurity, says Fashion Editor Alexander Fury
YOUR NEW
INDEPENDENT
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nt.
o d ay i s Mo t h e r i n g
Sunday at least, in the
United Kingdom and
Tuesday marks International Womens Day,
both falling slap-bang in the middle
of the autumn/winter 2016 Paris
womenswear season. Some will
see this as an anomaly the fashion
industry is frequently chided for
its attitudes towards femininity, its
perceived exploitation of female
insecurity, and the ever-raging
debates about body ideals. Isnt
fashion about caging women, literally and figuratively? No. It can be

6 March 2016
27
llll
news
Commes Des Garcons
Junya Watanabe
about setting them free, empowering them. That was the overriding
message of Rei Kawakubos Comme
des Garons show on Saturday.
Of an undeniably, unequivocally,
extremely pink strength.
Kawakubo presented outfits composed of ruffles and frills, gargantuan
rosebuds, piled-up boned panniers
and exaggerated flounces. Pink dominated, alongside rococo floral prints
and foliate brocades. A few of the
dresses and I use the term loosely
were articulated like plate armour
around the body. The overriding
mood was of the 18th century, of
Fragonard and Boucher, a whiff of
Versailles, the grandeur compressed
on to the body of woman in a
construction of fabric.
It wasnt the court Kawakubo was
aping; rather the rebels. She called
them 18th-century punks, and the
mood was of the Incroyables and
Merveilleuses, of change and rebellion. The anarchists who tore away
at the 18th century and brought in
the modern. Kawakubo does the
same in fashion.
What does it all mean? To begin
with, it contracted entirely the label
attached to these garments: Comme
des Garons. This was about woman
absolute and all-powerful, where the
perceived traps and trappings of an
archetypal femaleness heavy, wide
pannier skirts, boned stays, flowers
and ruffles became a kind of protection against the world. Totemic,
traditionally, of fragility, they became
something tougher a defence, not
an aggression. Those made me think
of woman in control, occupying a
space, emphasising her presence and
physicality through the clothing on
her back. Its a power play afforded
to women that men have never quite
been able to match.
These Comme des Garons
clothes were embedded in the 18th

century, in a manner quite unusual
in Rei Kawakubos work. That century, however, was packed with
powerful women rebels, but also
the establishment. They clustered
around the courts of France. Louis
XIV didnt invent the notion of the
matresse-en-titre the chief mistress
of the French king. But his mistresses
were afforded more political power
than any before; a notion taken to its
height by his successor, Louis XV,
and Madame de Pompadour. Her
influence also led to her personal
style shaping the aesthetic movement that we call rococo, crafting an
entire female universe.
Vivienne Westwoods show habitually butts against Kawakubos,
showing just an hour before. Westwo o d s wo rk a l s o e x p l o re s
hyper-femininity, empowerment
through clothing, and rebellion. In
her way she has shifted fashion as
significantly as Kawakubo she
helped invent the 20th centurys
punks, after all. The difference?
Kawakubo does so with a straight
face and a degree of abstraction that
ensures quiet contemplation, whereas Westwoods literalism has
occasionally fallen into farce. The
dynamic this season, however, was
different. Westwoods label had been
rechristened Andreas Kronthaler
for Vivienne Westwood, a reflection
of the impact her husband and design partner of some 27 years has
had on her aesthetic. It also changed
the entire tone of Westwoods presentation: the show notes (always a
soapbox eagerly mounted by Westwood) were written in his voice, not
hers. Westwood herself was at a distinct remove. Kronthaler was looking
at Bruegel when designing the collection, said he. Westwood was
readingRabelais.
Rabelaisian is a word easily applied to Westwoods clothes. Its
defined as marked by gross robust
humour and extravagance of caricature. Theres an argument that
Westwoods work has fallen into a
kind of caricature at the hands of
Kronthaler it is frequently cited
that Westwoods unique aesthetic
Commes Des Garcons
Commes Des Garcons
Commes Des Garcons
These Comme des Garons

clothes were embedded
inthe 18th century
Westwood took a bow with
Kronthaler, a presence here
as in the aesthetic values
came as a result of her being a

woman, sporting her own clothes
(she wears no other designer) and
reacting to their rapport with her
body. Kronthaler had a bunch of men
in this show, wearing garments wed
traditionally define as feminine (a
draped evening gown, a high-heeled
shoe). Perhaps he is taking that tactile mantle from Westwood, also?
Given the duality of Westwood
and Kronthalers creative process
over the past two decades, this felt
less like a passing of the torch and
more a handing over of the reins.
Westwood was still along for the
ride, and her name is still on the label.
Hence, perhaps she still has a hand
in the clothes, which this season
werent especially different but were
nonetheless handsome, in a palette
of Bruegel burgundies and peat-bog
browns. Westwood took a bow with
Kronthaler, a presence here as in the
aesthetic values. Nevertheless, it felt
like one of fashions grande dames
had been dethroned.
Succession is something fashion
is increasingly addressing. Again, its
very 18th century the various French
rulers were obsessed with their dauphins, and so it is in fashion. You want
someone in line to inherit your empire. In many cases, its pressing: Dior
and Lanvin are both without creative
directors; rumour-mongers insist
that Saint Laurent is ready to join,
with the departure of Hedi Slimane.
Kawakubo and Westwood are both
clever in that they have nurtured a
new generation of talent to succeed
them. Perhaps Westwood would
rather you didnt talk about her husband in that way, but certainly her
scaling back of her day-to-day design
role isnt unforeseen. Westwood has

advertised Kronthalers design influence in her collections, and in turn
promoted his talent, since the early
Nineties. Kawakubos approach is
different: to establish subsidiary labels under the umbrella of Comme
des Garons, most recently the Noir
line by Kei Ninomiya, and the menswear designer Gosha Rubchinskiy.
Call them a school, if you will. Westwood was a teacher, too. It implies
the authoritarian influence, and a
guiding hand.
One of the first for Comme des
Garons was Junya Watanabe, founded in 1993. His autumn/winter 2016
show wasnt a million miles from
Kawakubos both explored the notion of fabric constructions on female
bodies, abstraction and exploration
of decidedly three-dimensional
shape (the side-views of these clothes
are frequently far more arresting
than the front-on). But Watanabes
focus is, perhaps, stricter and simpler. This time his theme was hyper
construction dress his words, but
they are the perfect description of
garments engineered from the kind
of hi-tech, highly synthetic fabric
normally used to upholster car interiors. In a handful of industrial
colours acidic, fluorescent pink,
dull red, lots of black and battleship
grey it was cut into geometric
shapes to unfold about the body,
clothing studiously and fascinatingly
structured with mathematical precision. There wasnt much that was
corporeal, or instinctive, or warm,
honestly. This was a cold, scientific
fashion show that was, nevertheless,
extraordinary, in the way a complex
mathematical equation chalked out
on a board can fascinate. You werent
encouraged to unravel these mindboggling, complex clothes. But they
were interesting enough to encourage you to buy. If just to look at, rather
than wear.
28

6 March 2016
news
Cole Moreton
IN DEPTH
ow the hell can

a nyone who calls
themselves a
Christian vote for
Donald Trump?
Thats the question that needs to
be asked as this racist, misogynist
hate-monger who supports torture,
ridicules the disabled and wants to
ban all Muslims from America,
comes ever closer to winning the
Republican nomination and,
potentially, the White House.
The same can be asked of
atheists, Buddhists, Jews, Zoroastrians and anyone else in their
right mind; but it is said to be the
Christians that hold the power in
a nation that was built with a gun
in one hand and a Bible in the
other. God bless America.
And theyre the ones that The
Donald must woo if he is to win the
nomination and the presidency;
and in particular, the group the
commentators always call Evangelicals. Who are they? What do
they believe in? And how can they
square Trumps vicious, rabblerousing, violent rhetoric with what
it says in the Good Book?
Thank you Lord Jesus for
President Trump, said a placard
held up by one smiling woman at
a rally in Mobile, Alabama. She
wasa bit premature, or maybe it
was a prophecy.
But whatever happened to Jesuss
second great commandment to
love your neighbour as yourself?
Thats also found in religions and
cultures across the world. Trump
whirls it around above his head and
throws it out of the room faster than
a heckler being chucked out by his
security goons.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe in God. Evangelicals are
those Christians who believe in the
Bible as the word of the Lord (sometimes but not always literal) and Jesus
as their personal saviour, who died
on the cross to take away their sins.
Then theres the much wider cultural definition that takes in anyone
born into or associated with Evangelical churches and organisations,
from the Southern Baptists to
the Mennonites and from
Bible colleges that preach
against evolution to civil
rights groups that
work for peace.
There are something like 100 million
people who call
themselves Evangelicals in America,
making up nearly a
third of the population.
Not all of them are
potential Trump supporters by
anymeans.
A third are African Americans who are more likely to be
Democrats; and a good few
million more are members of
the small but growing
Evangelical left, which is
horrified and ashamed of the
support their fellow believers are giving Trump.
Whether Donald Trump
is a Christian or not is something between Trump and
God, but his vision for Americas future and his policies are
indeed contrary to the gospel.
Donald Trump is an anti-Christian
candidate. So says Jim Wallis, leader of the Sojourners community in
Washington DC, which campaigns
for social justice. He is spiritual
adviser to Barack Obama and author
of a hard-hitting new book called
Americas Original Sin: Racism, White
Privilege and the Bridge to a New
America (Brazos Press).
Its time to name Trumps dangerous rhetoric for what it is. It is
not only racist, but also fascist, with
all the dangers that ideology implies. The truth is that we have
seenthis before. And its time to tell
the truth.
His voice is a strong one, but there
are still 60 to 65 million conservative
Evangelical believers for Trump to
woo and it seems to be working. The
question is, why?
They believe in repentance, but
Trump is not repentant. His backing
of the pro-life cause they support
feels fake. He is undoubtedly immoral by Evangelical standards, owning
a casino and strip club. Hes been
divorced twice and married three
How The
Donaldtrumps
theChristians
His message of racism and hatred has struck
achordwith Evangelical Americans
byappealing to their sense of
alienation from the political class
times. He even said of Ivanka: If she

werent my daughter, perhaps I
would be dating her.
He makes fun of disability. He
calls Mexican immigrants drug
dealers and rapists. He wont condemn the Ku Klux Klan. He promises
to ban Syrian refugees from America. Trump wants a total and
complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our
countrys representatives can figure
out what is going on.
He would bomb the shit out
ofIsis and kill the
families yes, the
husbands, wives
and children of
terrorists. He
praises the use of
torture for
interrogation.
Jesus wept.

6 March 2016
29
news
Trump. Hes promising to act like a

Roman centurion outside the gate,
said the Post in an editorial. This
time around, Evangelicals are not
looking for someone like them.
Theyre looking for someone who
will protect them.
He was asking them to
choose: Who do you
want out there a choir
boy or a tough guy with
a loaded gun
and a
Who do you want out there

a choir boy or a tough guy
with a loaded gun?
When Obama came to
power they lost influence.
They lost faith in politics
illustration: Andre Carrilho
As The Washington Post put it: A

more scripturally, spiritually flawed
man than Donald Trump would be
hard to find. And yet the same people who opposed Bill Clinton on the
grounds of immorality because he
had an affair are now backing
Donald Trump.
You inspire us all, said Pat
Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and an
influential figure in older, white
conservative, Evangelical circles.
Trump, in return, vows to stand
bythem. We are going to
protectChristianity.
Ted Cruz is an Evangelical, but
he lost their support on Super
Tuesday last week, when Republicans in seven out of the 11 states
voting for their
candidate
chose
kick-ass demeanour? They voted for

the guy with the gun. Again, why?
Theyre angry at their loss of
influence during the Obama years,
and feel as if America is departing
from what they consider to be its
founding Christian principles. They
feel under siege in a country where
gay marriage which they oppose
is now legal.
Were being attacked. Were lite ra l ly b e i n g atta c ke d , o n e
Trump-supporting church worker
from Oklahoma said. This despite
America being by some distance the
most Christian nation on earth
(however much it looks like the kind
of Christianity that would turn
Christs stomach).
Most of all, theyre pragmatic.
Theyre prepared to make a deal with
the Devil if he protects them and
their culture.
The way America thinks about
God is changing. The younger you
are, the more likely you are to call
yourself moderate or progressive
when it comes to religion, and that
goes for two thirds of people aged
18 to 33, across all the faiths. But
theolder, white, conservative
Evangelicals are the ones with the
money, the organisation, the influence, the television stations and the
will to power.
Americas Evangelicals have become secular, more interested in the
pursuit of wealth and political influence than fidelity to the teachings of
Jesus, says Randall Balmer, professor of religion at Dartmouth College,
the Ivy League research university.
If racism is Americas original
sin, politically conservative evangelicals, neglecting the best of their
tradition, have been loath in recent
years to seek redemption. They
have devolved from theological
guardians to political operatives in
recent decades, he says.
The process started in the 1970s
with the rise of the moral
majorityled by the preacher Jerry
Falwell. His son Jerry Jnr is now
backing Trump.
Back then, families who refused
to watch movies because they were
too worldly and who believed
divorce was the Devils work found
themselves backing Ronald Reagan,
a divorced movie star. He ridiculed
evolution, said he would make abortion illegal and persuaded them
prosperity was a gift from God (via
the White House).
Evangelicals took over the soul of
the Republican Party and saw one of
their own achieve office when George
W Bush became president. God told
him to go to war, apparently,
and they supported that.
They backed
policies that
favoured the
rich over the poor.
Then when Barack Obama
came to power they lost influence.
They lost faith in politics.
Theyre ready as one commentator put it to smash things up
byvoting for an outsider they think
will shake up the whole system in
theirfavour.
But Peter Wehner, a senior fellow
at the Ethics & Public Policy Center
in Washington who has served three
Republican presidents, says:
Whatstuns me is how my fellow
Evangelicals can rally behind a man

whose words and actions are so at
odds with the central teachings of
our faith.
Wehner wrote speeches for
George W Bush, arguably the worst
president in living memory, but even
he is appalled by Trump. At its core,
Christianity teaches that everyone,
no matter at what station or in what
season in life, has inherent dignity
and worth, he says. Trumpism defies that. In embracing it, Evangelical
Christians are doing incalculable
damage to their witness.
But as one man at a Trump rally in
Oklahoma put it: Youre voting for
a president; youre not necessarily
voting for a pastor. Hes not necessarily orthodox, but I like the fact
that hes strong.
Trump showed off his strength by
starting a fight with the Pope, who
he said didnt understand the problem of Americas open border with
Mexico. Trump wants to solve it with
a huge wall. The Pope fought back:
A person who thinks only about
building walls, wherever they may
be, and not of building bridges, is not
Christian. This is not the Gospel.
Trump told the Pope hed soon come
running for help if Islamic State blew
up theVatican.
For many American Evangelicals,
picking a fight with the Pope is a
badge of honour. Some of them really do believe he is the Antichrist.
Then there are the Christians of
alldenominations, including Catholics, who worry that the Pope is
too liberal. Nobody can say that
about The Donald.
British Evangelicals are mostly
baffled and embarrassed by what
their fellow believers are up to in
America, but few leaders here have
spoken out against him.
The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby, who has Evangelical
roots, gave a rather measured English response to the prospect of
President Trump: It would certainly
be very challenging, wouldnt it?
So its left to Jim Wallis, on the
frontline in Washington, to tell it like
it is. White Evangelical Christians
who support Donald Trump are the
demonstration of how racism trumps
religion pun intended, he says.
White has trumped Christian.
Sociology has trumped theology.
Bigotry has trumped the Bible. Many
Christians are acting more white
than Christian.
This taps into the deep-rooted
problem of racism explored in his
book. Trumps campaign is the
death knell of white supremacy,
which will keep fighting for power;
and he has shown that white supremacy is very much alive in America as
both an ideology and an idol.
However, Wallis does find hope in
the deeper values of the American
people, and those believers who are
raising their voices against Trump.
The Bible says that idols separate
us from God; so white supremacy
separates white Christians from
God. But black, brown, young and
many other white Christians will
help America see that our diversity
is a gift and creation from God; a
blessing and not a threat.
The rest of the world can only
watch and pray that he is right.
Rupert Cornwell page 47
30

6 March 2016
news | special report international womens day

< US >
Adjustment made on the exchange

rate between countries in order for
the exchange to be equivalent to
each currency's purchasing power
Estimated earned income, US$

female
40,000 40,000 male
Labour force participation
66%
77%
Elected parliamentary representatives
84
350
Literacy
99% 99%
Time spent on unpaid work per day, minutes
248
161
Healthy life expectancy
71
68
Mind
the gap!
< UK >
70%
191
458
Literacy
99% 99%
258
141
69
s International Womens
Day approaches, if anyone is wondering why
females merit special
attention on Tuesday, it
might be time to revive the old joke:
you need one whole day devoted to
women because the other 364 (or
365 this year) are for men.
Yes, women might be half of the
worlds population but they are a
long way from being equal to men
on most of lifes key measures, as this
snapshot of the world shows. From
economic opportunity to political
representation, the gap between the
genders in many countries is as wide
as ever, prompting a global call for
parity from all the organisations that
support IWD.
Campaigners want the entire world,
from heads of state and corporate
chief executives, to elected parliamentary representative and family
members to tackle the glaring disparities still holding women back. The
World Economic Forum, which released the research that The
Independent on Sunday used for its
global health check, has predicted it
will take another 117 years until 2133
to achieve global gender parity.
In the vast majority of countries,
progress has stalled on the political
front, and remains glacial concerning
wage equality and labour force parity.
Shahrashoub Razavi, who heads UN
Womens data and research unit, said
it was important how equality was

reached. We want womens wages,
incomes and political representation
to catch up rather than to see the situation for men deteriorate, she said.
Saadia Zahidi, head of the global
challenge on gender parity at WEF,
which works with big companies, highlighted the tremendous progress
women had made in education. But
this had created an anomaly, she said.
Both policymaking and business
practices are designed for a world that
doesnt exist any more, in
which women were not
the equal owners of
< BRAZIL >
talent and capital
that they are
today.
12,019
Cros
Letters | social net
20,433
65%
GLOBAL GENDER GAP INDEX 2015
85%

Index based on annual WEF rankings to measure the gender gap.
Variables range from education to political power, and figures
come from international bodies including the International
Labour Organization and the UN Development Programme.
51
462
Literacy
92%
93%

Less equal no data
MEASURING THE GAP
X
female figure in red
X
male figure in grey
A red bar means the female value is greater; grey means the male value is
SOURCE THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP REPORT 2015
n/a
63
68
72
We
More equal
82%
Our global health check before a worldwide celebration

of womanhood shows that half the population in many
areas is still held back by gender. Susie Mesure reports
40,000
27,112

6 March 2016
31
< SWEDEN >
news
39,996
40,000
< SAUDI ARABIA >
79%
83%
17,745
152
40,000
197
21%
Literacy
80%
99% 99%
30
120
Iceland is the
worlds most
equal country
154
Literacy
207
91%
70
97%
73
n/a
65
66
< CHINA >

16,170
10,037
70%
84%
699
2,260
Yemen is at
the bottom
of the Gender
Gap Index list
Literacy
94%
98%
234
91
67
69
< RWANDA >

1,371
1,751
86%
< SOUTH AFRICA >

16,481
9,803
49%
64%
Literacy
68%
n/a
57
9,175
29%
83%
65
478
Literacy
96%
61%
92
257
49
2,257
73%
55
Literacy
93%
232
< INDIA >
51
29
168
88%
54
81%
352
52
56
59
32

6 March 2016
news
Spooked
Spy novelist
John le Carr
pictured in 1965
terry fincher;
getty images
Making a splash: the marriage made in Fleet Street

About 100 friends and about the same number of photographers and reporters
joined Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall for a blessing at St Brides Church, known
as the journalists chapel, near Fleet Street in London yesterday. The couple, who
have 10 children between them, married on Friday JUSTIN TALLIS/afp/getty
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Washington DC, New York City

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John le Carrs biographer reveals that the novelist could be the
subject of a new film. Arts correspondent Nick Clark reports
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iewers settling in to
enjoy tonights episode
of The Night Manager
may soon get a chance to
see the man behind the
BBC1 espionage thriller. A biopicof
the books author John leCarr, who
worked for MI5 and MI6, could be
headed for the screen.
Adam Sisman, who wrote John
leCarr: The Biography, told The
Independent Bath Literature Festival last week that the film rights
to his book had been snapped up.
The Ink Factory, the production
company behind the BBCs adaptation of The Night Manager and
several other Le Carr novels, has
secured the rights, he revealed.
Simon and Stephen Cornwell, the
sons of Le Carr, whose real name
is David Cornwell, founded the company in 2010. David has quite a say
in what the Ink Factory do, Mr Sisman said. I had to sell it to them,
really. What was I selling? The rights
to someone elses life.
The book lifts the lid on Le Carrs
troubled childhood as well as his decision to quit school and head to
Switzerland where he worked for
MI5 and subsequently MI6.
A year after writing The Spy Who
Came in from the Cold in 1963, he left
the intelligence service to become a
full-time writer and would go on to
write a series of bestselling espionage novels including Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy.
The Ink Factory first adapted A
Most Wanted Man, starring Philip
Seymour Hoffman and Rachel
McAdams, and is due to release Our
Kind of Traitor, starring Damian
I think its been a

bit of a bruising
process for him
and Im not
surprised by that
I got a letter on
publication day. It
said, Enjoy your
moment in the
sun. A bit barbed
Lewis and Ewan McGregor.

Mr Sisman added that as Le Carrs
biographer he could make an appearance in the film, and suggested
McGregor would be the perfect actor
to play him.
Le Carr is the first living subject
for Mr Sisman, who has written
biographies of Hugh Trevor-Roper
and James Boswell, as well as an
account of the friendship between
William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.
I havent seen [Le Carr] since
the book was published, said Mr
Sisman. I got a letter from him on
publication day, which said: Enjoy
your moment in the sun. It was
quite a nice letter but a little
barbed.
I think its been a bit of a bruising
process for him and Im not surprised by that. I dont think I would
have done my job properly if it hadnt
been. He added that he did not think
he would be invited to Le Carrs
home again.
Le Carr had toyed with the idea
of a biography since 1989. At one
point it was going to be written by
Robert Harris, before Mr Sisman
stepped in.
Le Carr will release his memoirs
this year. The Pigeon Tunnel will be
his first piece of non-fiction writing
and is set to unlock some of the mysteries of the books.
Mr Sisman said: He has a certain
amount of detachment from his public persona. The fact its a pseudonym
that he is John le Carr but he isnt
gives him a bit of detachment.
arts and books page 20

6 March 2016
llll
Patrick Cockburn
After its military crisis, Iraq

faces economic meltdown
P35
Putin out to sea
The Bosphorus has become

a catwalk for Russian power
P37
Back in Kansas
Trump skips key conference

to get back on the frontline
P38
WORLD
NEWS
cold comfort
A mother and
her child with
aid workers
yesterday in
Idomeni afp/getty
Hunger bites
as EU wheels
turn slowly
A summit tomorrow will attempt to tackle the
humanitarian crisis on the Greek border. By
Leo Cendrowicz in Brussels and Serina Sandhu
head of a summit tomorrow aimed at trying to

find a solution to the migration crisis engulfing
Europe, a Greek regional
governor has made an urgent call for
help, asking his government to declare a state of emergency over the
thousands of people stranded on the
Greece-Macedonia border.
Some 13,000 to 14,000 people are
trapped in the area surrounding the
Idomeni border crossing, while a further 6,000 to 7,000 are being housed
in refugee camps around the region,
according to Apostolos Tzitzikostas,
governor of the Greek region of Central Macedonia. That means the area
handles about 60 per cent of the total
number of migrants in the country.
Its a huge humanitarian crisis. I
have asked the government to
declare a state of emergency, Mr
Tzitzikostas said during a visit to

Idomeni yesterday to distribute aid
to the Red Cross and other aid
organisations. This cannot continue
for much longer.
The neighbouring former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia has
stopped all but a trickle of Iraqi and
Syrian refugees from crossing, follow
ing similar restrictions by countries
further north on the migration route.
The restrictions caused a huge bottle
neck in Greece, whose islands
proximity to Turkey has made it the
preferred entry point for both refugees and other migrants seeking
better lives in Europe.
Greek authorities said only 184
people crossed the border between
6am on Friday and 6am yesterday,
while another 100 crossed between
6am and 6pm yesterday.
Mr Tzitzikostas said: The former
Yugoslav republic needs to open immediately its borders, and the

European Union needs to implement
severe action against the countries
that are closing borders today,
whether they are members of the
European Union or candidate members. This is unacceptable.
He said his region needed the
emergency measures or for the law
to be amended so that regional
authorities could obtain the necessary emergency supplies and food
to support the refugees and improve
their living conditions. He also called
on the government to provide a comprehensive plan for handling the
migration crisis.
The refugee camp at Idomeni has
a capacity of about 2,000 but has visibly and dramatically overflowed,
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6 March 2016
world news
Travel
P33
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with new arrivals daily setting up

small tents along the railway tracks
next to the camp and spilling out
into surrounding fields.
The Greek call comes ahead of
the summit between the EU and
Turkey, which has also been seriously affected. More than two
million people have crossed its borders since the crisis began, fleeing
war zones in Syria and Iraq.
According to officials, Turkey is
ready to accept the return of failed
asylum seekers under a deal set to
be agreed at the summit in Brussels tomorrow.
The agreement, which Turkeys
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
is expected to endorse, would mean
that migrants landing on Greek
islands could be returned to Turkey if their asylum applications fail.
Even Syrians caught in Turkish and
international waters, including by
Nato patrol boats, would be taken
to camps in Turkey.
The deal is seen as a key part of
the EUs broader response to the crisis. About 130,000 have crossed the
Mediterranean to Europe already
this year, and there were 1.26 million
asylum applications last year.
Although the EU and Turkey
agreed a 3bn (2.3bn) deal last
November to prevent the two million Syrian refugees on Turkish soil
heading for Europe, it is only now
that Ankara is ready to take steps to
enforce it. Donald Tusk, the European Council President who will
lead the summit, says Turkey has
agreed to accelerated relocation,
in which migrants who do not meet
the requirements for international
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Migrants near the makeshift camps in Idomeni yesterday ALEXANDROS AVRAMIDIS/reuters
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Around 130,000
people have crossed
the Mediterranean
to Europe
alreadythis year
protection are sent back to Turkey

from Greece. At the same time, the
European Commission has agreed
the first pay-outs from the deal: more
than 95m for education projects in
the Syrian refugee camps.
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has accused the EU of dragging its feet on the funds. You can
pay up or not. We have not closed
our door to refugees like Westerners have. Weve kept it open, Mr
Erdogan said in remarks reported by
Turkish media yesterday, adding
that he wanted to build a city for
refugees in northern Syria near
the Turkish border, funded by
internationalmoney.
There are also doubts being raised
about whether the return programme
would slow the stream of refugees
from war-torn regions. Under UN
refugee rules, their claims cannot be
rejected as they are escaping war
and persecution.
The summit is something that
those in Idomeni are also watching
closely. Lets hope its a decision in
our favour [at the meeting],
Mohammed Ousou, a Syrian Kurd,
told Associated Press: All of us are
waiting for that day. Because here
the situation is bad
Mr Tusk met Mr Davutoglu in
Ankara and Mr Erdogan in Istanbul
last week, as well as leaders in
Vienna, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Skopje,
Athens and Belgrade mirroring the
route many migrants take as they
head towards northern Europe. Mr
Tusk says a European consensus
is emerging in the countries he
visited to end the policy of simply
waving migrants through.
A mother lay crying while her baby

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Migrants to Greece
would be returned
to Turkey if their
application for
asylum failed
I arrived in Idomeni, northern

Greece, two months ago, feeling
apprehensive. As a health promotion manager for Mdecins
Sans Frontires (MSF) I have
worked in cholera epidemics,
with Ebola, and in conflict areas
such as Central African Republic and South Sudan, but I knew
this was going to be different.
I essentially have two jobs.
People in the camp have been
registered by the Greek government, and have permission to
travel. I have to make sure they
get the healthcare they need. I
listen to their stories and try to
find answers to questions; this is
as much a crisis of information
as it is a humanitarian crisis.
My other job is to work with
the people who do not have permission to leave the country and
in most cases turn to smugglers.
Unable to access any services
I feel ashamed
that Europe has
turned its back
ondesperate,
vulnerable people
These people have
fled war, bombs
and gun shots, you
could see the terror
in their eyes
in Greece, they are extremely

vulnerable, desperate and suspicious. They tend to hide in forests
near the border with Macedonia, 10km from the camp. I am the
sole link between this vulnerable
group, the MSF medical workers,
and the teams distributing food
and organising shelter. I have to
try to gain the refugees trust,
which at times feels impossible.
The smugglers sometimes prevent us from helping them. I feel
ashamed that Europe has turned
its back on them and is acting as if
they dont exist.
On Monday, I saw Macedonian
police fire tear gas into a crowd
with children. In my three and
half years working in humanitarian aid, it was one of the most
shocking things I have seen. So
many of these people have fled
war, bombs and gun shots you
could see the terror on their
faces. A mother in our clinic lay
crying on the floor while her sixweek-old baby was treated for
inhalation of tear gas. I am due to
leave Idomeni at the end of the
month. Im scared of how much
more desperate it may become
for people, and of what the
impact may be on their health.
This may turn out to be one of the
biggest crises of our time.

6 March 2016
35
world news
Is it IS or the
economy that
will ruin Iraq?
civil unrest
Muqtada al-Sadrs
followers call
for government
reforms
Jihad is still a threat to the people of Baghdad,

but lack of oil revenue is inducing near-panic
Nabil al-Jurani/ap
Patrick Cockburn
WORLD VIEW
slamic State prepares its

murderous bombings with
chilling care and attention
to detail. Several months
ago, the Iraqi security
forces discovered a plan to bomb
al-Khadamiya, an ancient quarter
of Baghdad at the centre of which
is one of the holiest Shia shrines.
IS operatives first spent a month
watching the checkpoints protect-
ing the district, looking for weak-
nesses. Then they sent a woman
through the checkpoint they had
chosen as the most vulnerable, to
look at it more closely but without
carrying explosives. Soon after-
wards she was sent again, but this
time carrying a childs toy under
her robes. Nobody stopped or
questioned her, so IS had her do the
same journey, but this time with a
much bulkier toy which the secu-
rity men at this checkpoint should
have noticed but did not.
The next occasion the would-be
suicide bomber entered al
Khadamiya it would have been on
a one-way mission to blow herself
up and kill as many people as pos-
sible in the area of the shrine.
Fortunately, it never happened be-
cause the Iraqi security forces
received some quite separate intel-
ligence about what was intended,
and arrested the bombing team.
The elaborate nature of the prepa-
rations for the attack were typical
of the mixture of fanaticism and
expertise with which IS carries out
its terrorist acts.
Safa Hussein al-Sheikh, the
Deputy National Security Advis-
er in Baghdad and one of the most
experienced and cool-headed se-
curity experts in Iraq, told me the
story in an interview in Baghdad, to
illustrate the difficulty of stopping
IS slaughtering civilians. During
the 10 days I had been in Iraq, two
suicide bombers blew themselves
up at a Shia mosque in the Shuala
district, killing at least 15 people,
and a further 73 people were killed
in a market in Sadr City. An IS force
fought a pitched battle in Abu Ghraib

in west Baghdad, using suicide bomb-
ers and fighters in vehicles equipped
with heavy machine guns.
The purpose of these assaults is
in keeping with IS strategy of mask-
ing failure on the battlefield by
targeting soft civilian targets. It
sharpens differences between Shia
and Sunni with the intention of forc-
ing the Sunni community to look to
IS as its defenders. Mr Sheikh says
that the military aim of IS in carry-
ing out these atrocities is to spread
out the security forces so IS can get
superiority in numbers in one
particular sector.
Mr Sheikh does see IS as getting
weaker after losing several cities and
much of Salahuddin province, but
it is by no means defeated. He says
that overall it has between 20,000
and 30,000 core combat fighters, the
equivalent of special forces in con-
ventional armies, and they are backed
up by a further 40,000 to 50,000
fighters who are less well-trained
and ideologically committed. IS has
the capacity to replace casualties by
recruiting within the self-declared
caliphate, but they cannot recruit
foreign fighters who are at the core
of their military effectiveness.
Some 85 per cent of IS troops in
Iraq are Iraqi, say other security
sources in Iraq, but a limited number
of foreign jihadi units have been be-
hind many IS successes in the past.
Iraqi security officials I spoke to
in Baghdad all downplay the idea of
an attempt to recapture Mosul this
year, emphasising the political and
military problems there. More im-
mediate targets will be Hawijah and
al-Shirqat further south. Mr Sheikh
said that it will be a long road to
Mosul. He points out that even dur-
ing the counter-uprising within the
Sunni community against al-Qaeda
in Iraq in 2006-07, this never spread
to Mosul. In any case, he says that
IS can never be decisively defeated
so long as they have strategic depth
in Syria.
The bombings in Shuala and the
fear the Mosul dam might break
made the mood in Baghdad more
edgy, but not for long. People in the
capital may not enjoy living in a
country which is in a state of perma-
nent crisis, but they have become
used to it over the past half-century.
IS is not on the verge of defeat, but
it is on the retreat and no longer
capable of launching an all-out at-
tack on Baghdad as it might have
Seven million Iraqis are on

the $4bn state payroll, but
oil revenues are below $2bn
Even tomatoes come from
Iran they are cheaper than
those produced at home
Foreign
Reporter of
the Year
S o cie t y o f
e d i t o rs
P ress awa r d s
done in the summer of 2014. In fact,

Mr Sheikh says that the most danger-
ous crisis facing Iraq is not military
but economic and political, because
the country is running out of money
thanks to the low price of oil and the
weakness of the government.
People in Baghdad have been
targeted by suicide bombers since
2003, but until recently they always
had increasing oil revenues. Even at
the height of the sectarian warfare
in 2007-07 they were getting their
salaries. Seven million Iraqis are on
the state payroll at a monthly cost of
$4bn (2.8bn), but oil revenues are
now less than $2bn. The difference
has to be made up from reserves in
the Central Bank; this is now run-
ning low.
The private sector in Iraq is very
much parasitic on the state and
public investment projects have
stopped. I asked a woman in Karbala
in charge of the education sector if
teachers had been paid for February,
and she replied with relief: I just
checked with the bank and the
money arrived today. The fact that
officials are already checking if sala-
ries are going to get paid shows how
nervous they have become.
There is an air of half-suppressed
panic in Baghdad as people look for
signs of a higher oil price. Real-estate
prices stay high but few people are
buying or selling houses. The same
is true of cars. Aside from crude oil,
very little else is produced in Iraq;
even the tomatoes on sale in shops
in Baghdad are brought from Iran,

because they are cheaper than those
produced at home. This is the pat-
tern in all the oil producing countries,
but nowhere more than Iraq which
also has to pay for an enormous, if
dysfunctional, war machine and
security forces that number almost
one million.
With the frightening prospect of
an economic calamity if salaries are
not paid, there are growing protests
in Baghdad. On Friday the Shia cleric
and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr
called on 200,000 protesters gath-
ered at the entrance to the Green
Zone to bring an end to the govern-
ment of corruption and replace it
with one run by technocrats; but
even if this happens, it does not
resolve the problem that there will
still not be enough money.
Nobody doubts that the Iraqi gov-
ernment is corrupt and ineffective,
but it is a bit late to do anything about
this. Threats to get those who ben-
efited from the corruption to disgorge
their fabulous gains are unrealistic.
The whole political class in all parts
of Iraq have made money from plun-
dering state revenues since the fall
of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A large
chunk of the population have bene-
fited from a jobs-for-the-boys
patronage system. The economic
crisis of 2016 has replaced the mili-
tary crisis of 2014 and could be
equally devastating. One intelligence
chief told me: I cant even pay for
food to feed my men.
36

6 March 2016
WORLD NEWS
Mobile
phones to
fight police
gunsin
Rios favelas
street life
Morro da
Providencia;
Cosme Vinicius
Felippsen
(below) afp/getty;
RobsonCoelho
Frightened citizens will be able to use a new

app to report assaults and killings by officers.
ByJanetTappin Coelho in Rio de Janeiro
palpable sense of fear

pervades Morro da
Providencia the old
est favela in Rio de Jan
eiro on the morning
after a night of intense gunfire be
tween local criminals and police.
For three hours, hundreds of
bullets ripped through the public
square of Praca Americo Brum on
that recent night, in a location
known as Coracao (Heart) at the
top of the hillside Providencia.
It is where a local resident, Cosme
Vinicius Felippsen, sits to explain
how a new mobile app, being
launched this month, will beusedto
report violence in Riosfavelas.
Although no one was injured
inthe barrage, the favela itself, in
central Rio, feels wounded and
frightened. Mr Felippsen points
outevidence of the fierce gun
b attle.Bullet holes pockmark
thetowering concrete pillars that
form part of the structure of the
nearby cablecar lift, which was
opened in2014.
Its these types of incidents that
residents will be able to record and
report with our new app to show
the sort of conditions we live
under, Mr Felippsen said. He is part
of Forum de Juventudes (FJRJ) Rio
de Janeiros Youth Forum, the group
responsible for developing the
smartphone app Nos por Nos (Us
by Us).
Its a self-defence tool for people
to report violence, assaults and kill
ings, particularly by the police.
They can send videos, texts, record
witness statements and post pic
tures, and these will be forwarded
to human right bodies like Amnesty
International, government public
security organisations and the
media that can take official action,
explained the 26-year-old, who
works part time as a favela tourist
guide and street salesman.
FJRJ members will monitor
information, ensuring it is authen
ticated and that all complaints are
followed up.
For Alex Azevedo, 24, who lives
in Complexo do Alemao favela,
about a 30-minute drive from
P rovidencia, the application is

elcome news. He believes that it
w
would have helped him to report an
alleged case of police brutality a
month ago.
He said indignantly: The police
beat me in an alleyway for no appar
ent reason. I thought I was going to
die. A woman on her way to church,
who knew me, called my aunt who
came and vouched for who I was. I
am not a criminal.
Users of the new app can upload
complaints anonymously and access
advice and information about their
rights as well as draw on a com
munity support network in times
ofemergency.
The idea for the app emerged after
FJRJ carried out research analysing
the impact of the citys Pacifying
Police Units (Unidade de Policia
Pacificadora) on the lives of young
people living in 11 of Rios 763 shantytown communities, home to more
than two million inhabitants. The
first UPP was created in 2008.
The overriding complaint from
those living on the periphery was
the escalation in violence following
the installation of UPPs, whose pri
mary purpose is to reclaim territory
fromthe control of armed gangs of
drug dealers.
Rio has 38 favela-based pacifica
tion units, with the UPPs being an
important part of the citys strategy
to ensure the safety of visitors for
the Olympic Games later this year.
The most affected by any escala
tion are poor, black and mixed-race
youths aged between 15 and 29, say
human rights groups. According to
data published last month by Rios
Institute of Public Security Instituto de Seguranca Publica (ISP) of
the 644 people killed in violent
clashes with police in 2015 across the
state of Rio de Janeiro, 497 (77 per
cent) were black or mixed race.
Mr Felippsen has personal exper
ience of the violence in the favelas
his 17-year-old brother, Paulo, was
killed in 2010.
He was on a motorbike with his
friend when police opened fire, re
called Mr Felippsen. His friend
escaped but my brother was injured
The police beat me in an

alley for no apparent reason.
I thought I was going to die
If we sit back and do
nothing ... the injustice in
ourlives will never end
and alive. By the time police took

him to hospital he was dead. They
claimed he was selling drugs but
there has never been an inquiry.
The issue of police violence is
clearly on the minds of many in Prov
idencia. Electrical engineer Iuri
Velosa Santos, 23, complained: The
police use force as an excuse to
intimidate and humiliate us. He says
he was punched in the head by an
officer after being wrongly accused
of not paying his bus fare while on
his way to work three weeks ago.
But we are making them more
accountable because our mobile
phones are becoming our weapon
of choice in our battle for justice,
MrSantos said.
In a survey last year, Sao Paulo re
search body Data Popular reported
that slum dwellers are vigorous
users of social media, with the ma
jority using mobile phones with free
Wi-Fi connection. The data showed
that 74 per cent of hillside residents
in Rio access the internet at least
once a week, compared with 54 per
cent of those living in wealthier
neighbourhoods on lower ground.
Mr Felippsen said: The Us by Us
app is one more thing to help in our

fight against police violence. We
need to tackle institutionalised rac
ism in our police force and change
the attitude of officers who believe
slum dwellers lives dont matter.
Carlos Henriques 16-year-old son,
Carlos Eduardo, died with four
friends when their car came under
a hail of more than 100 bullets fired
by police in November last year.
The five youngsters, all black, and
aged 16 to 25, were out celebrating
their first pay packet in Costa Bar
ros, a suburb in Rio.
My son was an innocent, loving
and studious boy who was planning
to join the navy, said a grief-stricken
Mr Henrique. Witnesses said they
raised their arms and shouted they
were locals. The police are meant
to be our protectors but we live in
fear every day of being on the end of
excessive force at their hands.
The officers involved claimed the
exaggerated use of ammunition was
an act of self-defence as the car had
been used in a robbery. Investigators
confirmed that none of the boys had
a criminal record and that no shots
came from inside the car.
In a statement, Jose Mariano Bel
trame, Rios security secretary,
described the incident as indefen
sible unnecessary and exaggerated,
and promised a thorough investiga
tion. He denied police gun-handling
training was inadequate and added
that a new investigative unit had been
set up to help reduce the level of
criminal incidence by the police.
Four officers have been arrested
and are awaiting trial for murder.
Even so, Mr Felippsen warned:
Theres every chance they could
get off. We have no faith in the crimi
nal justice system. But if we sit back
and do nothing ... the injustice in our
lives will never end. Using modern
technology is the smartest way for
ward to fight back.

6 March 2016
37
WORLD NEWS
Turkey smarts as Bosphorus becomes

a catwalk for the Russian military
The strait that separates the Black Sea from the Mediterranean is where Putin flaunts Moscows naval prowess
By Laura Pitel
IN ISTANBUL
He has been watching boats on the

Bosphorus strait for two decades;
but, until recently, it had been years
since Serhat Guvenc had glimpsed
a Russian warship. Common in the
Cold War era and again during the
Balkans conflict, they had become
a rare sight on the mighty waterway that transects the ancient city
of Istanbul and separates Europe
from Asia.
Now, barely a day goes by when
the academic and amateur shipspotter fails to catch sight of a
Russian missile cruiser, landing
ship or submarine. They goad Turkey by sailing through the heart of
its biggest city to supply the conflict
in Syria. Its like rubbing salt on an
open wound, Mr Guvenc says.
Tu rke y a n d Ru s s i a h ave
supported opposing sides in the
Syrian conflict since the uprising
against President Bashar al-Assad
began in 2011. Since November,
when Turkey shot down a Russian
Sukhoi-24 jet, the relationship has
teetered on the brink of all-out war.
But thanks to a 1930s treaty, in
peace time foreign states enjoy
the freedom to send military and
commercial ships from the Black
Sea down to the Mediterranean.
For Mr Guvenc, 51, and a group of
four friends, the parade of military
hardware through their city is irresistible. Sipping coffee from a
stunning balcony with a panoramic
view of the channel, they explain that
the photographs they share online
are pored over by military strategists
and analysts around the world.
Usually these ships are out of
sight. We dont know what they are
doing, explains Devrim Yaylali, 45,
an economist who has been spotting ships for nearly 30 years. The
Bosphorus or the port is the only
place you can see them.
His friend Yoruk Isik, 45, an
international affairs consultant, chips
in: Here, you can be in Starbucks
with an espresso and a ship is literally
250 metres away. The sharp bends
and strong currents in the channel
means that the boats must slow right
down to manoeuvre, making them
easy to photograph. Theres no
other place on earth where you can
capture them so well.
The city provides a stunning
backdrop. The boats glide under
three imposing bridges before
sweeping past the Ottoman palaces
of Dolmabahce and Topkapi and
the spires of the Hagia Sophia.
It is not just Russian vessels that
come and go. Turkish warships and
submarines are a common sight
for commuters taking the short
ferry hop from one side of the city
to the other. Nato ships arrive on
port visits and training missions.
Vast cargo ships carry multi-coloured containers, and in summer
A Turkish flag flies from an Istanbul ferry as a Russian warship sails through the Bosphorus en route to the Mediterranean afp/getty
tourist cruisers dock in the city centre. But its the Russian ships that
have caught international attention
as President Vladimir Putin made
clear that he was reasserting Moscows muscle in Syria and the wider
region. The Bosphorus is a vital link
between Russias Black Sea ports
and its naval bases in the coastal
towns of Latakia and Tartous.
Already this year, Russian warships have made almost four dozen
trips up and down the strait. They
include the hulking Moskva, a
guidedmissile cruiser that is the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet
and provides air cover for Moscows
deployment in Syria. It sports a red
star on each side, and huge silver missiles that glint on deck in the sun.
One of the most frequent visitors
of 2016 has been the Yamal 156, a
rusting, Soviet-era, Ropucha-class
large landing ship that offloads
vehicles, cargo and troops on to
beaches. It has already made three
trips to Syria and back.
The 1936 Montreux Convention
gives Turkey control of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the strait
that leads into the Mediterranean;
but it also requires Turkey to grant
freedom of passage to commercial
and naval ships. Like all foreign powers, however, Russia must inform
Turkey before sending a military
vessel. This has led to surprising
cooperation between the two states,
You can be in Starbucks

with an espresso and a ship
is literally 250 metres away
We see exactly what they
want to show usits like
rubbing salt on a wound
despite the fraying of relations.

Weeks after the downing of the
Russian jet the Turkish coastguard
escorted the Rostov-na-donu, an
imposing black submarine armed
with Kalibr cruise missiles, as it
made its way down through the
city.According to the spotters, it was
trailed by a Turkish anti-submarinewarfare patrol boat for
intelligence purposes.
The escalating tensions between
the two countries has thrust the
group of amateur enthusiasts into
the spotlight. Weeks before President Putin officially announced
Russias military intervention in
Syria, they noticed dozens of
a rmoured vehicles and military
trucks barely hidden under tar
paulins on deck. All are convinced
that the insouciance was deliberate.
This is like a catwalk, says Alper
Boler, 41, a product designer by day.
We see exactly what they want to
show us.
Mr Isik broke the story of the Russian sailor standing on deck with a
missile launcher on his shoulder as
his ship passed through a city of 14
million people. After posting it
online, he was bombarded by phone
calls from news channels. Turkeys
foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador, and the Deputy
Prime Minister decried the episode
as a childish show.
The group feels uneasy about
being drawn into this kind of political spat. They bristled at seeing their
photographs used as ammunition by
various factions in Turkey and Russia, each with its own agenda.
The ships may be impressive to
look at and fun to catalogue, but the
group has been only too aware that
these vessels are fuelling a terrible
conflict that has killed an estimated
470,000 people so far. You get
excited when [you] spot a ship, says
Mr Isik. But then you think: you are
watching a very deadly machine
going past.
Though there is intense inter
national interest in the Russian
vessels that pass, the group logs
everything from small speedboats
that whizz up and down to the vast
cargo ships that hulk down the
centreof the channel. The war is
going on and [the straits have] come
to prominence, says Kerim Bozkurt,
36, an architect member of the
group.When it ends, we will keep
watching.
But even with the shaky ceasefire
that began in Syria last weekend,
Russian ships have continued passing through the city.
Among the vessels spotted by the
group in recent dayswere two boats
packed with military vehicles. Kremlin-watchers say that, whether
Turkey likes it ornot, Russia is back
in the Middle East. And its route runs
right throughIstanbul.
38
llll

6 March 2016
world news
< US >
female
Taliban vetoes
talks until
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Adjustment made on the exchange

rate between countries in order for
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40,000 40,000 male
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By Lynne ODonnell
IN KABUL
Literacy
The Taliban has said it will not

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By Tim Walker
ing to scream or how many names
conservatives reportedly planned 141
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There are signs the
US CORRESPONDENT
youre willing to call people. Neither
to stage a mass walkout during his
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pounds.
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life expectancy
may be yielding results unkind to Republican frontrunners:
cal Action Conference (CPAC) ourproblems.
forces of stepping up operations.
72 Zabihullah Muja69 Spokesman
There were signs yesterday that
John McCain was booed there before
in National Harbour, Maryland,
securing the nomination in 2008,
hid said there had been no order
is traditionally considered a key the anti-Trump onslaught may have
Being
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stop for Republican presidential started to yield results, with early
while Mitt Romney was mocked for
given to take part in talks. His
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candidates to court the partys con- returns from the Kansas caucuses
statement added that unless
servative base. But Donald Trump showing Texas Senator Ted Cruz
the occupation of Afghanistan is
names you call people described himself as severely
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stump in Kansas and Florida.
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candidate, his remaining rivals could
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how best to prevent the belligerent
Mr Trump has spoken at CPAC on
required to sew up the nomination.
set and no participants named.
billionaire becoming their nomi- several previous occasions and
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Direct talks between Kabul and
nee. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, donated a reported $150,000 (105,400)
looking ahead to Florida and Ohio,
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still believed by many to be the to the American Conservative Union
two delegate-rich, winner-takes-all
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Being a GENDER
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Mr Trump
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6 March 2016
39
< SWEDEN >
WORLD NEWS
39,996
40,000
Storm brewing over Japans sea wall

< SAUDI ARABIA >
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A 5bn concrete barrier would fail152
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Tepco report in 2008, however,
The same inflexible response has
Estimated
earned
income,
US$
predicted the potential for a maxi- been experienced across the northmum tsunami of 15.7 metres.
east, says
1,371
1,751Hiroko Otsuka, a
Mr Shuto, though not against all campaigner who grew up near
sea walls, is among a growing number
oizumi.
She says bureaucratic deLabourKforce
participation
of people pushing for a rethink. cisions made and funded from Tokyo
86%
64%
:: Spain
88%
51
29
Literacy
68%
73%
Raid on opposition
paper representatives
PM urges Socialists to form
sparks street protest
coalition with his party
168
232
to this is the fact that landowners

have been84%
contacted to sell their
now-useless land to the government
representatives
so it can
be used for seawall construction which would
699
2,260provide
residents with vital money to rebuild
their lives. So, Ms Otsuka argues, the
Literacy
authorities have created a senti94% ment that
98%
are almost impossible to reverse.
campaigning against the
There is no mechanism to make it sea walls would further delay the
Timemany
spentresion unpaid
work per day,process.
minutes
happen, no matter how
reconstruction
dents, environmentalists or
The 2011 deluge killed Ms Otsukas
234
91
academics are against it. Koizumis mother, and her brothers two chil14.7-metre wall, with a price tag
of dren. They could have been saved if
230 million yen (1.4m), will shelter they had fled 10 metres up a hill bea community that is no longer there. 67hind their
69 house, she says. They did
The village has been moved 3km in- not run because they thought the
land. Essentially, the money will go village sea wall would protect them.
to protecting rice paddies, says Mr Mr Abe was more fortunate: two decAbe, the Koizumi resident.
ades ago he moved his young family
Even more puzzlingly, the land to a nearby hilltop back from the sea.
ministry admits the new structures We lived when so many others
are not designed to withstand the didnt, he laments. It makes my
sort of seismic event that occurred heart hurt to think about that.
70%
49%
In 2011 they did not run

they thought the village sea
< CHINA
>
wall would
protect them
Fudai
Kamaishi
FUKUSHIMA
PREFECTURE
nEWSEstimated earned income, US$

IN BRIEF
9,803
16,481
!
:: Turkey
154
engulfed
< SOUTH AFRICA >

Navigation
in 2011. That quake is considered a

120
once-in-a-thousand-year
calamity
and nothing could block it, said a
Literacy
spokesperson for the ministry. Koizumis wall is less than half the size
91%
97%
of the highest wave that hit the area
five years ago. Still, the walls will save
lives, and many residents demand
n/a
them, insists the ministry.
Ms Otsuka disagrees. She says
coastal residents sheltering behind
the walls are lulled into a sense of
66
65
false security, and lose the ability to
read the sea.
Another issue, Ms Otsuka believes,
is that residents are so occupied with
30
Iceland is the
Like hundreds
communities along
worldsof
most
country
Japansequal
north-east
coast, the village
of Koizumi exists on maps only.
Five years ago, an earthquake
under the Pacific Ocean triggered
towering waves that carried
away nearly 18,000 people. The
deluge flattened Koizumi and
drowned 40 of its 1,800 residents.
In a country with about 20 per cent
of the worlds strong earthquakes,
and pummelled by a tsunami
roughly every seven years, the
survivors know that some day
c alamity will almost certainly
strike again.
Japans government wasted little
time announcing a tried-and-tested
solution: pouring concrete. A few
months after the March 2011 disaster, it pledged to build hundreds of
sea walls and breakers in the three
worst-hit prefectures. The cost?
About 4.8bn.
Many more are on the drawing
board. A joint report by the ministries of agriculture and land says
14,000km (8,700 miles) of Japans
35,000km coastline requires
tsunami protection. Its madness,
concludes Masahito Abe, a Koizumi
resident who opposes the plans.
The governments solution is
controversial, not least because the
evidence for the barriers effectiveness is mixed, at best. Fudai, a
village sheltering behind a giant
concrete shield once condemned
as a costly waste of time, escaped
unscathed in 2011. But in the city of
Kamaishi, a 1.1bn breakwater
crumbled when the tsunami hit.
Nearly 90 per cent of the sea
walls along the north-east coast
suffered similar fates, a blow to a
country considered among the best
protected from the fury of natural
disasters. Critics say they made the
impact of the deluge in many places
worse. There is simply no guarantee that sea walls will stop every
single tsunami, says Nobuo Shuto,
a tsunami engineer at Tohoku
80%
n/a
Police in Istanbul fired tearLiteracy

gas and
Mariano Rajoy, Spains acting premier,
plastic bullets yesterday to disperse
yesterday renewed his push for a
93%
96% coalition between his Partido Popular
around 2,000 protesters outside
the offices of the countrys biggest
(PP) and the Socialists after their
newspaper. A court had appointed
leader, Pedro Sanchez, failed to win
a state administrator
parliamentary
backing to form a
92 to run the
257
English-language Zaman on Friday,
post-election government. Mr Rajoy,
effectively allowing
the government
in a speech to PP supporters, scolded
Healthy
life expectancy
to seize control. Zaman is affiliated
Mr Sanchez for wasting time on a
49 cleric, 54coalition that lacked enough seats
with a US-based opposition
Fethullah Glen, who the governto govern and called on him to work
ment accuses of plotting a coup. (AP) with the PP or step aside. (Reuters)
55
57
< INDIA >

Australians
and foreign
2,257
9,175
visitors
took over
Labour
force participation
the streets
29%
83%
of Sydney
:: Chad
yesterday
African
states
agree
Electedat
parliamentary
representatives
the start
on
anti-jihadi
force
of the citys
65
478
38th Gay &
Lesbian Literacy
Mardi
Defence ministers from West Africas
Gras Parade.
Sahel region have agreed to set up a
61%
81% reaction force to counter
The event
special rapid
was launched
the threat from al-Qaeda and Islamic
Time spentinon
unpaid
day, minutes
1978
to work perState-linked
jihadists. At a meeting
mark the 1969
in Chads capital
352NDjamena, defence
52
Stonewall
chiefs from Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso,
Riots
in New
Mali and Mauritania the so-called
Healthy
life expectancy
York. GETTY
G5 Sahel countries have pledged to
59 form special units to respond quickly
56
to threats and attacks from Islamist
fighters. (AP)
40

6 March 2016
world news
Chinas leaders warn of tough battle ahead

Slowing growth and a big rise in labour unrest bring a change of direction, with promises of further industrial reforms
By Joe McDonald
IN BEIJING
China faces a tough battle to keep

its economy growing by at least
6.5per cent annually over the next
five years while creating more jobs,
Premier Li Keqiang has said.
Opening Chinas annual National
Peoples Congress yesterday, Mr Li
tried to quell anxiety about the
slowing economy after financial
turmoil and rising labour unrest.
In announcing the cut in the growth
target from last years around 7
per cent, he promised to open the
oil and telecoms industries to private competitors in sweeping
industrial reforms.
Our countrys development
faces more and greater difficulties
so we must be prepared for a tough

battle, said Mr Li, an economist by
training. Growth last year declined
to a 25-year low of 6.9 per cent.
In a wide-ranging speech lasting
nearly two hours, Mr Li said Beijing
would oppose separatist activities
in Taiwan, the self-ruled island
that China still considers to be a
renegadeprovince.
The annual meeting of the National
Peoples Congress, a 12-day event, sets
out both the economic and political
agenda for the country. In an address
to nearly 3,000 delegates, Mr Li said
efforts would be increased to clean
up Chinas badly polluted air, water
and soil, and more would be spent
on science and industrial research
as well as development to create
technology and better-paying jobs.
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Be Informed. Be Independen
nt.

6 MARCH 2016
Joan Smith
Men like Adam Johnson rely

on rife misogyny to operate
P42
Kate Grenville
My part in changing
attitudes to mothers
P46
Rupert Cornwell
The Republicans fall
as Trump rises
P47
COMMENT
HIGHER
THOUGHTS
Stuart Roses
response
to MPs was
more complex
than Leavers
wanted us
to believe AP
John Rentoul
ero of the week was

St u a r t Ro s e, t h e
former boss of Marks
& Spencer and former
Eurosceptic who now
leads the Stronger In campaign. When
Wes Streeting, the latest MP to enjoy
the title of Next Labour Prime Minister, asked him a straight question,
Lord Rose gave a straight answer.
Streeting, a member of the Treasury
select committee, asked him whether,
if Britain left the EU, the end of free
movement of workers could see an
increase in wages for low-skilled
workers in the UK.
Lord Rose replied: If you are short
of labour the price will, frankly, go
up. So yes. Thats not necessarily a
good thing.
What a refreshing exchange that
was. And how depressing that so
many journalists seized on it as a
gaffe and wrote about it only in relation to how it would affect the
horse-race of the referendum campaign. Politicians on the Leave side
of the argument trumpeted the embarrassment of their opponent, while
those on the Remain side confirmed
that they were indeed embarrassed
by forcing Lord Rose to issue a statement clarifying his comments.
Sometimes, politicians and
journalists conspire in what John
Birt and Peter Jay once called a bias
against understanding.
Lord Roses answer was right and
honest, and could have been the start
of a discussion about the complex
costs and benefits of EU membership.
Indeed, he started that discussion
after saying that Brexit would lead to
higher wages, but by then no one was
listening. He went on to say that free
movement works both ways: At the
moment we are seeing one-way traffic because our economy is growing
Lets hear it for a

man who told the
truth about the EU
Stuart Rose was vilified for his gaffe about wages rising
in the event of a Brexit. He should have been applauded
and the European economy has had
a very tough time. There will probably be a point in five or 10 years time
when it goes the other way and we
will want to go the other way and we
will all want to work in Europe. So
lets not shut the door before we see
that we want that opportunity for our
children and grandchildren.
He had, in fact, touched on a
traditional Labour argument that is
almost never expressed, namely that
UK wages would be more equal if the
supply of low-skilled labour from the
rest of the EU were restricted. Since
the EU expanded in 2004, the pro-EU
Labour Party has shied away from talking about the effect of free movement
It could have
been the start
of a discussion
about the
complex costs
and benefits of
membership
on wages. Jeremy Corbyn hasnt talked

about it, despite his anti-EU past,
because his supporters are overwhelmingly pro-EU.
This is a pity, because it is an important debate. Lord Rose is right, but the
effect of immigration on wages may
be small and short-lived. Jonathan
Portes, the former Treasury economist, estimates from a recent Bank of
England study that, in the eight years
after 2004, immigration cut the wages
of UK-born semi and unskilled workers
by about 1 per cent. Compare that with,
for example, next months 7 per cent
rise in the UK minimum wage to 7.20
an hour.
What is more, if we left the EU, the
boost to low wages might be only temporary. In the long run we might all,
including the low paid, be worse off.
Conventional economics suggests
that free movement, like free trade, is
in everyones interest. The problem
is the social dislocation caused by migration, just as the resistance to free
trade comes from sectors of the economy most disrupted by it. Lord Rose
was trying to say that lower wages in
the short term would be outweighed
by the benefits of EU membership in
the long run.
He also tried to point out that immigration from outside the EU is still
higher than that from within the EU.
Instead of engaging with these
important questions, Lord Roses
opponents shouted Gotcha! and
went back to accusing David Cameron
of running Project Fear.
Project Fear? It was Iain Duncan
Smith who said staying in would leave
the door open to Paris-style terrorist
attacks, and Priti Patel who compared
the EU to the Titanic. What the Outers
wont do is say that leaving has its
costs, but that they think the benefits
outweigh them.
The Prime Minister is quite right to
point out that the Outers wont say
what they want our relationship with
the EU to be if we leave. I think most
of those intending to vote to leave
mean to exclude Britain from free
movement of EU workers, which they
think depresses wages. There is a
trade-off. They know that free movement is a condition of full access to the
single European market. They accept
that ending free movement would
mean we would have to pay tariffs on
our exports to the EU. Tariffs are currently charged at an average of 3 per
cent on imports from outside the EU.
For most leavers, weighing costs and
benefits, that is a price worth paying.
However, Boris Johnson, who has
put himself forward as a candidate to
be the prime minister who negotiates
the terms of our exit from the EU, has
not said where he stands on these
points. Perhaps, on The Andrew Marr
Show today, he will follow Lord Roses
example and give a straight answer to
some straight questions.
Twitter: @JohnRentoul
42

6 March 2016
comment
Johnsons guilty, so why is his victim vilified?

Joan Smith
very time a public figure is

exposed as a sexual predator and it seems to happen
with alarming frequency
these days the condemnation that follows is swift and merciless.
Men such as Rolf Harris and Jimmy
Savile have been transformed overnight from popular entertainers into
perverts and paedophiles, heaped
with as much as calumny as they previously received plaudits. The latest big
name to undergo this process is Adam
Johnson, who was characterised as a
Paedo in his Speedos on the front
page of The Sun last week, next to a
picture of the disgraced footballer in
a pair of swimming trunks.
Whether it was an appropriate
image to publish the day after Johnson
was convicted of a sex offence against
a 15-year-old girl (he was cleared of
another charge) is another matter. The
former Sunderland winger and English international has been warned by
the judge to expect a substantial
ustodial sentence after pleading

c
guilty to two lesser charges at the beginning of his trial. He faces going to
jail for between four and 10 years for
grooming the girl, kissing her and for
sexual activity in his car.
It is not clear whether the use of an
explicit image was intended as mockery of Johnsons pride in his physique or
a reference to his reputation as a stud.
But as is often the way, todays no-holdsbarred condemnation of Johnson feels
like an unconscious attempt to compensate for past ambivalence to put it
mildly towards the player and his sexual history. I am not defending Johnson,
who was described by his own QC, Orlando Pownall, as immature, arrogant
[and] promiscuous, but not for the first
time I am disturbed by an inexplicable
(to me at least) tolerance of predatory
attitudes towards women and girls.
Sunderland AFCs officials dealt with
Johnson every day. The only time he
had to fend for himself was on the field,
cheered on by thousands of adoring
fans, Pownall said during the trial.
Didnt the club notice his immaturity
and arrogance, especially where sex
was concerned? And werent they worried by the vile misogyny of some
Sunderland fans, who responded to
news of his arrest in March last year as
though it was a tribute to his sexual
prowess? Just days later, they were
filmed, fists pumping, singing Adam
Johnson,he shags who he wants.
Werent
Sunderland
officials
worried by the
vile misogyny
of some fans?
Sunderland suspended him for all

of two weeks, then allowed him to go
on playing (and earning almost 3m)
for the best part of a year. Only days
before his trial, he was photographed
signing autographs for young fans at
the clubs Stadium of Light. Johnson
wasnt sacked until the first day of his
trial, when he pleaded guilty to the two
lesser offences.
Officials say that was the first they
knew of his intention to put in the guilty
pleas, but Durham police insists the
clubs chief executive was told at the
time of his arrest that he had allegedly
texted and kissed the under-age girl.
The club knew a year ago about the ser
ious nature of the charges and it knew
Johnson had a devoted following,
including very young girls.I absolutely
idolised Adam, his victim said in a
statement after the trial.
Few teenagers are mature enough to
understand that hero worship can be
dangerous, which is why organisations
such as football clubs and the BBC have
a responsibility towards fans. When
Dame Janet Smiths report on Saviles
crimes at the BBC came out 10 days ago,
there was much talk of different times,
as though his activities would not be
tolerated today. But Savile was never
arrested, and Sunderlands support for
a star who had been charged with serious sexual offences suggests things
have changed less than we imagine.
The other thing that hasnt gone away
is victim-blaming. Johnsons victim has

been viciously attacked on social network sites; she has been described as
a slag and a slut and accused of trying to make money out of the player. In
her statement, she talked about the effect of the horrible names she had
been called, saying she sometimes felt
broken. Its very similar to the abuse
heaped on the woman assaulted by
Ched Evans, the former Sheffield United player and Welsh international who
was convicted of rape four years ago.
Evans has always maintained his innocence and his case has just been referred
back to the Court of Appeal, but nothing can excuse the shrill misogyny of
the campaign against his victim.
What lies behind all this, I think, is
an inexcusable tolerance towards
attitudes that demean women and are
distasteful to more thoughtful, modern
men. Bragging about the size of your
sexual organ, as Donald Trump did in
a TV debate last week, isnt illegal and
it doesnt make someone a sexual predator. But the fact that it didnt instantly
destroy his credibility as a presidential
candidate shows that primitive versions of masculinity appeal to alarming
numbers of people. When macho
attitudes are so widely tolerated, no
wonder some men think they can get
away with behaving extremely badly.
Twitter: @polblonde
politicalblonde.com

6 March 2016
43
comment

Telephone 020-7005 2000
The Independent online: independent.co.uk
The facts, please, Prime Minister
his newspaper opposed

the decision to extend
British air strikes
against Islamic State
from Iraq to Syria in
December. We did not
disagree with the prin-
ciple of using military force to try to
defeat the monstrous cultists of death
and violence, but we felt that the case
for an additional British contribution
had not been made.
Nor did we question the Prime Min-
isters good faith. We accepted that his
arguments for this small extension of the
British role in the region were sincere
and well intentioned. In particular, we
were reassured by the undertaking in
the Governments motion, carried by
the House of Commons, to keep the
country updated on the progress of Brit-
ish military engagement.
However, we report today (on page
10) that the quarterly update promised
by David Cameron has failed to mate-
rialise. Downing Street claims that the
Foreign Secretary and the International
Development Secretary have kept MPs
informed, but they have done so in
general terms. Meanwhile, the Gov-
ernment insists there have been no
civilian casualties as a result of British

air strikes. This seems implausible. The
non-government organisation Airwars,
collating open-source information, sug-
gests that the civilian death toll from all
coalition strikes, mostly carried out by
the US air force, is close to 1,000. It is
on rendition and torture. Having shown

willing, as a new Prime Minister, to get
to the bottom of the involvement of
the previous government in some of
the darker corners of the US-led war
on terror, he is now falling short.
As we report on page 7, the Foreign
It is almost as if David Cameron

did not take seriously the
principle of accountability for the
use of military force abroad
almost as if Mr Cameron did not take
seriously the principle of accountabili-
ty to the House of Commons for the use
of British military force abroad.
In addition to his casual approach to
a solemn commitment to the House,
his Government has been evasive about
the use of drones. Michael Fallon, the
Defence Secretary, has suggested that
the convention that MPs must approve
military action does not apply to drones.
He has also refused to say whether Brit-
ish drones might be used in Libya.
Mr Cameron has also disappointed
ffice is obstructing the publication

O
of documents under US freedom of in-
formation law. Nine documents, which
shed light on discussions of the treat-
ment of Guantanamo detainees, have
been withheld.
How different things seemed in 2010,
when the new coalition government
launched a short and sharp inquiry,
under Sir Peter Gibson, a retired appeal
court judge, to look into British involve
ment in rendition and torture. The
inquiry was suspended in 2012 and then
wound up because legal cases prevented
a thorough investigation. Sir Peter even-

tually published a report, in 2013, but it
had a number of omissions. Meanwhile,
confidence in government assertions of
clean-handedness was further under-
mined by the apparent smoking gun
that emerged in the case of Abdelhak-
im Belhadj, whose rendering to Libya,
seemingly under Tony Blairs deal in
the desert with Muammar Gaddafi,
was described by an MI6 official as the
least we could do.
After the Gibson inquiry was sus-
pended, the Government said it still
intended to hold a judge-led inquiry,
once the court cases allowed. But the
Prime Minister instead passed respon-
sibility to the Intelligence and Security
Committee, a committee of MPs whom
he appoints.
Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney
General who chairs the committee, is
an MP of notable integrity, but we must
doubt that he has the forcefulness and
power needed to hold the Government
to account on such an important issue.
We look to him to prove us wrong.
The Prime Ministers commitment
to openness and accountability in de-
fence matters has failed to live up to his
brave and impressive words.
Todays Evelyn Waugh would be pretty in pink

Katy Guest
he Independent Bath Liter-

ature Festival, which ends
this evening, raised many
interesting philosophical
puzzles, not least of them
the concept of being over-feminist.
This is what Prue Leith said she
didnt want to sound like by broach-
ing a discussion about women in
publishing. I do think there is some-
thing in publishing which underrates
womens writing, she said. It will
be categorised as commercial fiction,

light fiction, romance or womens
fiction But if a man writes a love
story, they are [seen as] offering a
deep insight into the psychological
condition. They get reviews that take
them seriously.
Obviously she wasnt talking about
reviews in this newspaper but given
that women write as many books as
men and buy a lot more of them, I think
it is just feminist enough to look at
perceptions of womens writing.
When Evelyn Waugh was listed
recently among Time magazines top
100 female writers, it made me wonder
how Evelyns books would be reviewed
and marketed if she had written them
now. In 1928, Decline and Fall was
lauded as a viciously funny social
satire; but would the same novel by
Mrs Waugh be read as semi-autobio
graphical flimflam about a wedding?
We have the
male authors
to win us the
prizes, and
thewomen
tomake us
themoney
AHandful of Dust: a condemnation of

the futility of humanist philosophy, or
a thinly disguised roman clef? Vile
Bodies was a dark view of a decadent,
doomed generation, but todays Evelyn
would have had her novel forced into
pink covers, renamed Pretty Young
Things and marketed as a romcom.
You may think Im exaggerating, but
modern bookselling is a ruthless busi-
ness. A critically acclaimed novelist
once told me that a senior publisher
had confided in her: Oh, we have the
male authors to win us the prizes, dear,
and the women to make us the money.
Another said that a supermarket chain
had demanded changes not only to
the cover of her novel, but to the plot.
When I interviewed the bestselling
novelist Marian Keyes, whose work
tackles weighty, universal themes such
as addiction, illness and grief, I asked
what she thought would happen if her
pastel-covered fiction were packaged

instead like Howard Jacobsons or
Julian Barnes. I think an awful lot of
people would stop buying it, she
replied, with typical pragmatism. No
wonder Evelyn used a female pseudo-
nym to sell all that domestic fiction!
Im not sure what packaging fiction
in girlie covers really achieves, except
for making sure that men will never
read it. So I was intrigued to receive
an advance sample last week of a novel
that is not published until November.
The cover was black and white, with
no information or authors name on
it, and a note from the publisher asked
me to read without prejudice.
The novel, Small Great Things, is
about race, illness, morality and
i nequality, and the author is Jodi
Picoult. Here is a publisher taking its
author seriously. I hope readers will
do the same.
44
llll

6 March 2016
comment
Well, Ill go
to the foot
of our stairs!
Coronation Street, whose creator died last week,
used to depict a world that was already dying in 1960
DJ Taylor
t was the great Steven Morrissey

who, in lamenting the kind
of songs favoured by Radio 1
disc jockeys of the mid-1980s,
declared the music that they
constantly play, it says nothing to me
about my life. In filing this complaint,
the lyricist of the Smiths Panic
the original title, Hang the DJ, was
quickly forgotten was not only trying
to annoy the BBC taste-brokers; he
was also, in a roundabout way, making
an important point about the dilemma
which faces anyone who, having read
a book or watched a film, sits down to
make a judgement about it.
The Morrissey school of critics, to
which I would probably admit to
belonging, believes that art ought in its
broadest sense to be relevant that
is, should reflect or project or at any
rate comment on the world that the
people responding to it inhabit. But
there is another kind of cultural punter
who goes to art not in search of edification or to be informed about his or
her environment but to escape it. The
denizen of an inter-war slum, according
to this line of reasoning, didnt want to
go to the cinema to see films about backstreet squalor with titles such as Love
on the Dole he, or she, much preferred
Greta Garbo (right).
All of which brings us to Tony
Warren, the creator of Coronation
Street, who died last week at the age
of 79 and a man who has some claims
to be regarded as one of the sharpest
popular-cultural operators of the past
half-century. Having given up watching the series approximately 30 years
ago, I cant comment on its recent
incarnations, but in the period when
I never missed an episode 1975-1983,
say it was the best thing on British
television, a magnificently contrived
half-hour of drama, comedy and communal spirit, crackling with lines of
A-grade dialogue.
Certainly, the scriptwriter who
came up with Elsie Tanners description of her mother She was so
bandy-legged she couldnt stop a pig
in an entry was a genius. But what
did Warren think he was doing when
in 1960, as a 24-year-old, he took the

idea to Granada? The memorandum
placed before the stations executives
talks about exploring the driving forces behind life in a working-class street
in the north of England, with a brief
to entertain by examining a community of this kind and initiating the
viewer into the ways of the people
wholive there.
The mention of a community and
its ways makes the shows premise
sound very nearly anthropological a
descent into alien territory conducted
by intrepid explorers who will bring
useful data about the natives back to
civilisation. Granadas initial publicity
material plays up this line, with its talk
about life in an ordinary street in an
ordinary town. And yet, as the social
historian Dominic Sandbrook points
out in his reading of the show, Corries
framing, its opening titles with their
sepulchral music, the black-and-white
shots of terraced streets, was not so
much realistic as carefully contrived
to chime with a prevailing contemporary mood.
This, after all, was the early 1960s, an
age in which newspaper articles about
social questions positively thrummed
with analyses of lost regional identities and working-class communities
threatened by mobility and affluence.
Curiously, the artefact to which Warrens early episodes bear the most
resemblance is Richard Hoggarts The
Uses of Literacy, published only three
years before. As Sandbrook observes,
the anachronistic setting among
The shows
initial premise
sounds
like intrepid
explorers
descent into
alien territory
localshops, cobbled streets and cosy

northern sitting rooms seems
almosta direct response to some
ofHoggarts warnings about the
threat to working-class culture posed
by thepost-war consumer materialist tide, and in Ken Barlow, Warren
reproduced one of Hoggarts archetypal figures the bright but humbly
bornuniversity student caught
between the community he comes
from and the middle-class world
towhich his talents now entitle him
to aspire.
Some of the most fascinating
responses to the shows first couple
of years came from left-wing critics
who detected neither realism nor a
praiseworthy engagement with some
of the social issues of the day but
blatant tampering: a lie from start to
finish if it is supposed to represent any
recognisable aspect of life thought
the man from the New Statesman, who
also accused it of channelling the
working-class solidarity of its viewers
into banality and harmlessness. It
scarcely needs saying that at this point
Coronation Streets audience, working
class, middle class or anything else,
amounted to 20 million.
And what did the viewers of the
Macmillan era imagine that they found
in it? More or less faithful representations of themselves? The chance to
escape into a grandly conceptualised
alternative world radically different
from the one in which they reposed?
A mixture of the two whose ingredients
are quite beyond anyones power to

6 March 2016
45
comment
Why are central

bankers trying to
increase inflation?
Those who recall double-digit price rises and interest
rates struggle to see the problems deflation can bring
Hamish McRae
F
anthropology
or art?
The community
that gathered in the
Rovers Return was
dismissed by some
as a distortion
of working-class
reality PA
reconstitute? No art, it might be

a rgued, is narrowly Pavlovian, a
straightforward matter of cause and
effect. At the same time, the cultural
battles of the early 1960s for which
Coronation Street provided such compelling ammunition grind on today,
rendered that much more problematic
by demographic and aesthetic factors
yet more complex than those facing
Tony Warren and his scriptwriters.
Take, for example, that question of
relevance, as encapsulated in
Morrisseys demand. Hardly any modern television, for example, is
relevant in the sense of saying profoundly important things to the people
watching it about the way in which
their day-to-day existences are maintained. Certainly there is issue TV
of the kind in which some titan of the
soaps reveals him or herself to be gay,
has an abortion or suffers from a muchpublicised disease, but the continuous
small-screen representation of an ordinary community living a modest
and sensation-free life barely exists.
And why, one type of pundit will
enquire, should it exist? For television,
surely, exists to entertain, and its viewers would much sooner see a chartered
accountant commit adultery or stab
his wife with a fork over the supper
table than solve a particularly knotty
tax problem. Worse even than this is
the suspicion that class-based communal life of the sort that the original
Coronation Street tried (and apparently failed) to reproduce is beyond
the artists power to recreate, rendered
incomprehensible by a series of social

and economic factors that he or she
struggles to understand.
The critics of the 1840s who came
fresh to Dickens early books praised
them for the faithfulness of their
approach to a certain kind of newly
emerging lower-middle-class life
this at a time when society was still
narrowly stratified and the adjective
middle-class had a relatively precise
meaning. As with Coronation Streets
original brief, there is a strong whiff
of anthropology. A hundred and eighty
years later middle-class has as many
definitions as liberal and a writer
who announced that he was at work
on a study of middle-class life, in the
manner of a Victorian novelist, could
offer up a thousand different situations and groups of characters without
being false to his original concept.
The consequence of this long process of fragmentation is that nearly all
the old social categories that were so
useful to artist and politician alike have
very little present-day meaning. There
are no working-class communities any
more, in the way that Marx and Engels,
or even Hoggart, defined them; there
is only particularity. You or I may describe ourselves as middle-class but
that need not mean we have the faintest connection to the people who live
next door to us.
If Coronation Street was false to its
founding remit, then how much more
false is it 56 years later? None of which
in the least obscures my regret at its
creators passing.
or anyone who can remember the 1970s and 1980s it

should seem bizarre that
central banks should be
fighting to create inflation.
In 1975, the worst year, the retail price
index rose by 24.9 per cent, and while
it fell back a bit through the 1980s, in
1990 it was back up at 9.3 per cent. It
was a world where some people tried
to renegotiate their pay every three
months, and where a 10-year fixed rate
mortgage in 1981 cost 18 per cent.
Yet this Thursday the European
Central Bank is expected to bring in
some sort of stimulus partly to boost
prices, for inflation in the eurozone
fell to minus 0.2 per cent last month,
and partly to jack up some growth.
Since the ECB deposit rate the rate
it pays to banks to hold money with it
is already minus 0.3 per cent, it faces
a conundrum. If a negative rate has
failed to generate inflation, would
making it yet more negative do the
trick? Might it actually make matters
worse? The idea is to get banks to lend
the money instead of leaving it with
the ECB. But since the banks cannot
impose a negative rate on depositors
(one or two have tried) it just squeezes
their profitability and may make them
even more cautious. When the Bank
of Japan unexpectedly introduced negative rates last month the markets, far
from welcoming the move as a way of
boosting confidence, plunged.
There are two ways of looking at
this. One is to say, well if the policy is
not working, we need to fine-tune it
to make it more effective, and have
governments take additional measures, such as investing in infrastructure,
to generate more economic growth.
That is the mainstream response and
we are going to hear a lot more of it in
the coming weeks. Mercifully, we are
not quite in this position in the UK or
indeed the United States, for there has
been a decent economic recovery in
both countries (though the latest data
here are a bit worrying), and there is
some underlying inflation at a consumer level. Expect the recent fall of
the pound against the dollar to push
up prices a bit more. Still, concerns
about deflation both here and in the
US do linger.
The other way of looking at this
period of zero, near-zero, or even
slightly negative inflation is to ask
whether it matters. Would a world of

stable prices be such a bad thing? The
current view that there should be
some inflation around 2 per cent is
a new idea. Targets for inflation only
came in as a result of the searing
experience of the 1970s and 1980s,
when the central banks had lost control and the fabric of our societies was
threatened. For long periods in the
past, including periods of solid growth,
there was no overall change in price
levels. People did enjoy an increase in
their living standards, but these came
through as much from lower prices as
from higher incomes. Indeed, you can
argue that it is fairer for society to get
the benefits of growth through lower
prices, because everyone shares in
that. If the benefits come in higher
wages, the unwaged lose out.
You can catch a glimpse of the way
falling prices benefit everyone by what
has happened in information technology. It is not just that the price of a
mobile phone has fallen as its competence has increased. Many of the apps
you buy to use on that phone are
free. In that particular segment of the
world economy, deflation is extreme.
If you adjust for quality, prices fall
relentlessly year after year. Yet no one
worries about that; in fact most of us
welcome it. So, why should we worry
about the very small declines that have
come through in consumer prices in
recent months?
I think the answer is that the most
recent period of sustained deflation,
the 1930s, was a time of profound economic disruption and distress. That
shadow hangs over our policy-makers,
as indeed it should. But you can argue,
I think persuasively, that deflation then
was more the result of the disruption
than the cause of it. In any case, there
is another period when the long-term
trend of prices was downwards which
saw huge economic progress worldwide. It was the last great burst of
globalisation that took place from the
1820s through to 1914.
We know a lot about it. We know
that prices in the UK on the eve of the
First World War were roughly the
same as they had been 100 years earlier,
though of course the goods and services available were vastly different.
We know there were huge disruptive
swings in the business cycle. We know
about the misery of working conditions, and we know, looking around
the world, of the exploitation by the
European empires. But and this is
the big point overall living standards
in the developed world rose at a rate
that had never happened before.
To say all this is not to welcome
deflation now. It is just to say that we
are too frightened of it, and the cure
ultra-low interest rates may be
worse than the disease.
46

6 March 2016
comment
Heres to not being remarkable

Thirty years ago it was rare to be both an artist and a mother; not everythings in balance yet, but attitudes have improved
Turning point
The portrait by
Nigel Thomson
that marked
a swing in
societys attitude
to women and
mothers
Kate Grenville
heres a picture of me that

was hung in the Archibald
Prize, Australias most celebrated portraiture award,
in 1986. It didnt win, but it
gathered crowds. It was the first and
perhaps the only entry thats ever
shown a woman breastfeeding. On the
table in front of me and my six-monthold son are a fountain pen, my glasses,
and a half-written page of the novel I
was writing at the time. The painting
by Nigel Thomson is titled Kate
Grenville: Artist/Mother.
In 1986 this seemed like a forwardthinking sort of image, making an
important statement: a mother can write
and have a child! Now its got a quaint
trying-too-hard sound about it. After
all, who would call a portrait of a man
with his son Joe Blow: Artist/Father?
The baby in Nigels painting is now
a 6ft3in 30-year old, and his mother is
working on her 14th book. In 2016, the
idea that a mother can also be an artist
is no longer news.
But perhaps it should be. What isnt
in Nigels painting are the other parts
of the three-way juggle of a womans
life, then and now not only work and
children, but all the rest. He didnt put
in the mop, the washing-line, the stove
or the supermarket list.
Recent research gives us the
d iscouraging (but not surprising)
news that women even those with
a full-time job still do the overwhelming majority of the housework

and childcare.
This is probably one reason why my
daughter is part of a lively feminist
reading group (to which men are
welcome, and sometimes come). That
juggling act between identities is still
alive and well.
Feminist reading groups can do
their bit, lawmakers can do theirs, and
we can all write cranky letters about
ads that stereotype women. But
women have done their bit the rest
of the change in this area has to come
from men. Every man starts life as a
son. That gives mothers a particular
opportunity to get in early.
My own mother was a stirring
example of a woman bursting out of
I knew from
my mother it
was my duty
and pleasure
to grind
stereotypes
into the dust
the role written for a woman of her

time. She was a registered pharmacist
(one of a handful in the 1930s), ran her
own successful pharmacy businesses
(in the 1940s, that was unheard-of for
the mother of two young children),
laid the bricks for the family home
(something that might still turn
heads), and wore trousers when it was
supposed to be frocks and gloves all
the way.
She was bold and loud in a way that
was (to her timid daughter) both embarrassing and exhilarating. When I
became a mother I knew from her
example that it was my duty and pleasure to keep up the work of grinding
sex-role stereotypes into the dust.
When the wooden play equipment
at the childrens pre-school needed
repair, I brought it home and got out

the saw and the hammer. Perhaps a
man might have done it better I was
a self-taught handyperson but doing
it perfectly would have to wait for the
next generation. At least all the fouryear-olds the boys as well as the girls
had got a message about women that
they wouldnt get from TV.
I forbade both toy guns and Barbies
for our children. I bought a dolls house
for our son and a train set for our
daughter. My finest hour, though, was
my editing of the Enid Blyton books:
I went through with a pen and reversed
all the characters. Now it was Betty
and Anne who got to climb the cliff
and tie up the villain. John and Dick
had to stay at home and open the tin
of Spam for supper.
My children have told me they get
out the old Enid Blyton books at dinner parties and reduce their guests to
hysterics by reading a few excerpts.
Still, something must have worked:
for his last birthday my son wanted a
superior French frying pan, and for
hers, my daughter asked for a cordless
drill. My sons girlfriend is delighted
to have a partner who cooks and
cleans, and my daughters boyfriend
is equally happy to have a partner who
can mend a broken chair.
Nigel Thomson has won the
Archibald Prize twice, and both winners are great paintings. But that 1986
entry marks a moment that I like to
know I was part of. It was the moment
when things were slowly swinging on
a great hinge. When the swing was
complete, we had a world where the
idea of a woman being an artist and a
mother was something better than remarkable: it was ordinary.
Kate Grevilles One Life: My Mothers
Story is in paperback now (Canongate)
I dont dye with shame, but with joy

Fiona Sturges
have an addiction. My friends

and family know it its clear
just by looking at me but the
time has come to go public. My
natural hair colour is mid-brown
or at least it was the last time I looked,
which was roughly 25 years ago.
As a teen I first dyed it deep
mahogany, which was as much as my
school would allow. Later I coloured
it black. I wanted to look like Joan Jett
though, with my complexion, the
r eality was closer to Dawn of the

Dead. Since then its been red, copper, auburn and burgundy. Right now
it is, according to the packet, Crimson Promise.
You can keep your tanning, waxing,
threading and manicuring theyre
not for me. A fresh dye job, however,
makes me feel spruced up and new.
Its not very different from putting on
a new dress, although as a DIY-colourist, its a whole lot cheaper.
I mention this because our use of
hair dye is increasingly politicised.
Scientists last week revealed they had
discovered the gene responsible for
turning hair grey, which will aid the
development of methods to stop it.
On Radio 4 on Friday the classicist
Mary Beard presented Glad To Be
Grey, in which she looked at the
pressure on older women to colour
their hair, lest their salt-and-pepper
My hair has
been copper,
auburn, red
and burgundy.
Right now
it is Crimson
Promise ...
locks render them invisible or, worse

still, unemployable. Beard was dispirited to find that the overwhelming
majority of women over 50 choose to
hide their grey hair.
It is sad that in these supposedly
enlightened times women fret about
how their hair may affect their
employment prospects, while men
can age gracefully, their grey
a pparently making them distinguished and wise.
Its great to see Beard, Christine
Lagarde, Jamie Lee Curtis and Emmylou Harris with their grey hair, though
the fact they are in the minority among
their respective age groups shows that
there is indeed a problem. Pay attention to your hair, Hillary Clinton
cautioned Yale students 15 years ago.
Everyone else will.
But does this mean that, by colouring my hair, I am vain or shallow, or
engaging in some sort of deception?

Am I giving in to pressure and
betraying my feminist principles by
abandoning my natural shade?
I like to think not. Messing about
with how I look on the outside doesnt
make me empty on the inside and,
aside from one bleaching experiment
during which a white streak turned a
muddy green, it has always been a joyful experience.
And its certainly not about looking
younger though as I reach middle
age Ill admit that its a not unwelcome
side effect.
Whats important here is that its a
matter of choice. My hair is a canvas
on to which I can project my mood,
and I love doing just that. A sweep of
eyeliner and richly artificial hair colour is what keeps me feeling like me.
Twitter: @FionaSturges
We
Cros
Letters | social net

6 March 2016
47
comment
Abes shame
Marco Rubio,
Donald Trump,
Ted Cruz and
John Kasich do
not belong to
a Republican
party that the
16th president
would recognise
reuters
Republicans need rebirth, not revolution

Donald Trumps rise has exposed the deep rift between the grandees of Lincolns party and its traditional voters
Rupert Cornwell
out of america
re we witnessing the death

of a once-great American
political party? I stress
the qualifier once. To
describe todays Republicans as the party of Abraham Lincoln
is a smear of the countrys greatest
president. In its present diminished
and mean-spirited incarnation, it is
not even the party of its official latterday saint, Ronald Reagan. But it is a
party in the throes of a split that might
prove terminal.
The proximate cause of the disarray
is, needless to say, Donald Trump. The
events of last week were by any standards breathtaking. After Trumps Super
Tuesday successes, that make him
favourite to win the presidential nomination in 2016, John McCain and Mitt
Romney the partys last two nominees led an unprecedented uprising
by the Republican establishment.
Then came Thursdays vulgar and
acrimonious candidates debate, as
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Trumps
closest challengers, rounded on him.
Romney had savaged the property
mogul as a fraud and an impostor, taking aim at the bullying, the greed, the
showing off, the misogyny, the absurd
third-grade theatrics. All those qualities (barring misogyny) were on ample
display during the debate. Whether

that fact, or the unrelenting assaults
on Trump, make any difference is anyones guess.
Lets be clear. The Republican Party
has fissured before. Indeed, it was born
of a fissure, the 1854 rift in the then
Whig party over slavery, before the
civil war. There was 1912, when Teddy
Roosevelt ran as a third party candidate against his Republican successor
and incumbent William Howard Taft,
handing the White House to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Most recent
was the early 1960s showdownbetween conservative Barry Goldwater
and the partys traditional ruling East
Coast Wasp elite.
But these divisions were short lived.
Wilsons presidency proved to be a
brief Democratic interregnum. Goldwaters triumph set an ideological
template for the party that survives to
this day. Most important, neither crisis
created the rift between the party
establishment and ordinary voters that
Trump nativist, populist and toughguy outsider has now exposed. And
it is entirely the establishments fault.
For two decades, Republicans have
been riding a tiger created by former
Speaker Newt Gingrich and his
Republican Revolution of 1994,
thatturned Washington politics into
p erpetual war by other means.
Noncooperation was the new rule.
Compromise became the dirtiest word
in the political lexicon. Trust us, its
leaders promised, and the revolution
will come.
In the meantime, Republicans shored
up their position by rigging Congressional districts in their favour, and by
using every means to suppress the vote,
It faces what
could be an
existential
choice. Does
itaccept the
hostile Trump
takeover?
heavily Democratic, of blacks and other

minorities. Under Barack Obama,
whose election many Republicans
regarded as an affront to the proper
order of things, the obstructionism
grew even worse, forcing government
shutdowns, and slowing the pace of
confirmation of presidential appointments to key positions. By no
coincidence, the obstructionism has
reached new heights as the Republicancontrolled Senate, in total defiance of
its constitutional duty, refuses even to
consider an Obama nominee for the
Supreme Court to replace the conservative justice Antonin Scalia.
Republicans argue that the ideological balance of the court is at stake, and
that Americans should have a say in
the matter. In fact, Americans disagree.
Two-thirds want the Senate to hold
hearings and vote on a nominee, who
may be announced this week.
Helping to underpin this intransigence has been birtherism, the belief
still widespread among Republicans
that Obama is not really an American
citizen. In the meantime, the party has
long outsourced its PR to a slew of conservative talk-show hosts, excoriating
Obama, peddling conspiracy theories
and promising that, with one final
shove, the revolution would happen.
For a long time this con trick worked.
Millions of poorer Americans were
persuaded to vote against their economic interests, told by Republican
leaders that their country was being
stolen from them by a wicked liberal
elite propagating such godless evils as
abortion, gay rights and gun control.
The paradox has been around for
ages, most deftly exposed by the
political writer Thomas Frank in his
2004 book Whats the Matter with

Kansas explaining how people in
hisnative state, despite its history of
p o p u l i s m a n d fa r m e rs b e i n g
repeatedly betrayed by the agrobusiness corporations aligned with
Republican Wall Street, vote for the
party nonetheless.
Ever since, Ive wondered how long
this suspension of political gravity
(and common sense) could continue.
But Newtons law has finally reasserted
itself. The promised revolution hasnt
materialised. Instead, Donald Trump
has, riding this sense of betrayal by a
despised Washington establishment,
and an abiding fear among many white
Americans, especially poorer ones,
that the country was being destroyed
by immigrants, Muslim extremists and
a political correctness that prevents
them from speaking their mind. And
when it comes to speaking the
unspeakable, no one beats Trump.
Maybe the mass attack by a terrified
party elite will burst the Trump balloon. If not, the party faces what could
be an existential choice. Does it accept
the hostile Trump takeover? Or can it
somehow force an open convention
in Cleveland in July, where Trump
enters with the most delegates, but
short of an outright majority, and cook
up an acceptable alternative nominee?
The risk then would be uproar that
the will of the people had been thwarted by backstage manoeuvring by the
despised establishment.
In either case the real winner would
not be a Republican, but Hillary Clinton. And in either case, the party needs
a rebirth. Getting rid of Trump is not
enough. The party must change the
policies that opened the way for him.
48

6 March 2016
comment
Hamish finds two giant golden lin
ings for every cloud, he hardly ever
sees any clouds on the horizon.
Letters, emails
& online postings
Mike Jenkins
Bromley, Kent
...
May I remind members of the

G20 of some facts (G20: Brexit
will rock world economy,
28February).
1. The decision will be made by
the people of the UK, not foreign
financiers. The G20 will have to
live with the outcome.
2. The UK is a member of the G20
in its own right. It will continue
to be a member, regardless of the
vote, because of the size of its own,
national, economy.
3. It was these experts who
failed to foresee the economic
...
Its not that
Hamish McRae
finds giant
golden linings
for every
economic cloud,
he hardly ever
sees any clouds
on the horizon
David Ashton
Sheringham, Norfolk
I admired John Rentouls grace

ful apology to Nick Clegg (Better
late than never ... I agree with Nick
28February). I have always felt that
Clegg was sold down the river when
his party was no longer required to
shore up a government. Because he
did perform a valuable role in keep
ing the coalition more on the side of
compassionate rather than callous
or indeed cruel.
The deficit had to be tackled but
Clegg saw that the measures were, for
the most part, even-handed and fair.
The Tories appear to have taken the
kudos for raising the tax threshold
but this was a Liberal Democrat pol
icy. For the most part I trusted him.
Judith A Daniels
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
...
getty
The European Union is undemo

cratic, bureaucratic, corrupt, a con
duit for tax-evading multinationals,
and bent on creating a United States
of Europe. However, when I see the
rising number of far-right politicians
joining the Leave campaign I am
worried. It seems ordinary people
are between a rock and a hard place.
If we stay, nothing changes and
we continue to suffer the rightward
drift away from a social democratic
entity. If we leave we are at the mercy
of hard-right politicians whowant
toreduce our wages, our in-work
entitlements, and who would almost
certainly sign a TTIP-type agree
ment with the United States which
would see the end of the NHS,
and undermine our democracy by
putting the profits of big business
above the wishes of the people.
The only chink of light is the
desire of Jeremy Corbyn to unite the
left-wing parties of Europe (Cor
byn plans own EU reform, 28 Feb
ruary) and their reps in the EU
parliament to fight for real democ
racy and decent working conditions
for all. Should I now vote to stay in?
David Ashton
Sheringham, Norfolk
disaster of 2008. So, how much value

should we put on their opinion?
4. It is understandable that finan
ciers should focus on the economy;
but for many, although money is
important, other things are more
important such as the freedom to
determine ones own destiny.
Malcolm Morrison
Swindon, Wiltshire
...
Hamish McRae finds five signs

that there will be no global reces
sion. But since he regularly puts a
well-informed pangloss on eco
nomic data, from fractional reserve
banking to the coming accelera
tion of automation, even if the west
ern economy collapsed later this
year, he would still greet the event
as a useful preparation for wonder
ful things to come. Its not that old
HAVE YOUR SAY

Letters to the Editor,
The Independent on Sunday
sundayletters@independent.co.uk
online: independent.co.uk/
dayinapage/2016/March/6
Our commitment
We take seriously our responsibility to maintain high editorial standards. Under deadline
pressure errors can occasionally occur. If you
spot a mistake or wish to complain about The
Independent on Sundays editorial output
please use the complaints form at www.
independent.co.uk/codeofconduct or write
to: Managing Editor, The Independent, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry St, London, W8 5HF
I dont agree with DJ Taylor about

Jeremy Corbyns attire (Camerons
mum and my dad were well-suited,
28 February). I hate to see our poli
ticians looking the same, as it gives
the impression that not only are their
views similar, but that they are at
odds with the rest of us. For unless
you come from a professional back
ground, you only wear a suit for
a special occasion. And having to
dress up to escape Camerons child
ish barbs makes me think Parliament
remains stuck in a past which else
where has long since disappeared.
Tim Mickleburgh,
Grimsby, Lincolnshire
...
In 1939 my father and six others

were interviewed for several jobs
at the Portsmouth Dockyard. My
father was given the top job because,
he was told, he was the only one
wearing a suit and a tie.
Ralph Cousins
Havant, Hampshire
Whatever the trouble is, get your trousers off!

Dom Joly
ow do you feel?
The doctor looked
at me in a mildly
disinterested ma
nner over his un
tidy desk. I was here to be checked
over after my traumatic trip through
Panamanian jungles. Id been told
there was a strong chance Id picked
up some horrible bug, or worm, or
parasite and that it was best to find
them before they could do their
worst. Nevertheless, I loathe going

to the doctor, as I know it will only be
a matter of time before I am asked to
strip down to my pants ... for no reason.
I tried to block him off at the pass.
I feel fine ... except for the horrible
sandfly bites that I received. They are
slowly disappearing however, except
for the ones on my hands. I empha
sised my hands by waving them at him,
so that he would know that my hands
were not covered by any clothing and
that there was absolutely no need for
me to strip. I could just show him my
hands and we could move on.
Right ... well if you can just pop all
your clothes off, put them on the back
of that chair and lie down well have
a look. Unbelievable. There is nothing
that you can go and see a doctor about
that doesnt end up with them asking
you to strip to your pants. Im sure its
part of some elaborate gambling
Like a
compliant
sheep in an
abattoir, I
nodded and
stripped down
to my pants
scheme they amuse themselves with

each doc betting on how many
patients he can make do it in a day.
Nevertheless, like a compliant sheep
in an abattoir: I nodded, stripped off
and allowed the doctor to inspect my
hands while dressed only in my under
pants. We both knew that he had won,
and that this whole charade was
ridiculous but we kept up our thin
veneer of normality as we chatted
about the inclement weather.
Finally he moved away and back
behind his desk. Nothing was said
about putting my clothes on but I re
took the initiative and started to get
dressed. The doctor looked disapprov
ing but said nothing. Once fully clothed
I felt human again. I sat down opposite
him, an equal, but only for a moment.
He had a trump card to play. He opened
a drawer and removed a plastic tub, a
spatula and an envelope.
This is for your stool sample ...

There was a long silence. Eventu
ally I had to say something. You want
a stool sample ... now? This was worse
than the Spanish Inquisition.
No, not unless you can. You can
take this home and then, when you
next do your business, pop some of it
in this tub and post it in the envelope.
He smiled like this was a totally normal
thing to do.
Two days later and I am at home
dreading the inevitable call of my bow
els. Surely sending people poo in the
post is illegal? What if Im involved in
an accident on my way to the postbox?
The newspapers would have a field
day. The comedian Dom Joly was in
volved in a minor road accident this
morning. Upon arrival at hospital he
was discovered to be carrying a small
plastic tub of his own faeces. Its the
stuff of nightmares.

6 March 2016
49
CROSSWORDS & WEATHER

The Concise Crossword By Eimi
1
10
The Prize Crossword By Hypnos
No 1,359
11
Stuck? Then call

our solutions line
on 0906 751 0240
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13
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Answers to ? clues are suggested by words forming the puzzles title: TC FOR 12
ACROSS
1 Photographic device (6)
5 Intelligent (6)
8 ? (8)
9 Therefore (4)
10 ? (3)
11 ? (7)
12 See title (4,5)
17 Pirate (7)
19 Mineral spring (3)
20 French cheese (4)
21 Allergic reaction to pollen (3,5)
22 Kindly (6)
23 ? (6)
15
DOWN
2 Qualification (1,5)
3 Additional (5)
4 Greed (7)
5 Long seat (5)
6 Bitter (7)
7 Make void (6)
13 Middle-Easterner (7)
14 Get a move on! (5,2)
15 In short supply (6)
16 Summerhouse (6)
18 White-faced (5)
19 Curse (5)
Solution for last Sunday

Across: 1 Animal, 5 Gateau, 8 Quartz, 9 Maize, 10 Thai, 11 Squiffy, 13 Tipsy cake, 17 Coroner,
19 Each, 20 Merry, 22 Affray, 23 Fillip, 24 Notary.
Down: 2 Nought, 3 Martini, 4 Lazy Susan, 5 Gem, 6 Thief, 7 Aye-aye, 12 Uncertain, 14 Keep fit,
15 Scampi, 16 clair, 18 Rural, 21 Yap.
TODAYS WEATHER
21
28
29
ACROSS
1 Appeal in religious foundation
is top concern (8)
5 Wicket taken by bowler, say, with
one following? A hypothetical
scenario (4,2)
10/11 Dispelling of ridicule on air
about a foreign manager (7,7)
12 Vessel carrying you on the Seine in
reversal of direction (1-4)
13 Northern idiot entertaining rogue
in set showing spite (9)
14 Comedian has life reformed in
consequence after bother (5,7)
19 Outfit for retirement? (12)
22 A joy almost certainly found in
journalist thats discerning (5-4)
25 Eastern monk mentioned
animal (5)
26 Female musician cutting quiet
single? It could be her (7)
S T
E
O L
E
U P
H
NO
N
V E
B
T O
O
C K
R E
X
S T
R
E
M
P E
L
R Y
R T
I
T
A
I N
27 One on board is back working in

large house (7)
28 US city models, withholding
nothing, in slips (6)
29 Novelist rarely discontented in
feature of countryside (8)
DOWN
1 Notice small truck (4,2)
2 Priest heading off with American,
tragically flawed figure (6)
3 Edition in series on poet largely
superfluous (9)
4 Something prickly in old snooker
star, we hear (5)
6 Language retained by church in
difficulty (5)
7 Support before seen to be held by
Irish politician wobbled (8)
8 Disrespectfully light-hearted
element in family its less
HIGH
LIGHTING UP
1040
1000
1032
LOW
HIGH
1008
1024
1016
LOW G 1000
1016
HIGH
1016
LOW
LOW D
1000
LOW
1024
HIGH B
1032
LOW
HIGH X
Belfast.................6.12pm......to....6.55am
Birmingham......5.58pm......to....6.37am
Bristol..................6.01pm......to....6.39am
Glasgow..............6.04pm......to....6.49am
London................5.52pm......to....6.29am
Manchester.......5.58pm......to....6.39am
Newcastle..........5.54pm......to....6.38am
AIR POLLUTION
RURAL TOWN ROADSIDE
London....................2...............3..............3
S England...............3...............3..............3
Wales.......................3...............3..............3
C England...............2...............2..............2
Midlands................2...............3..............2
N England..............3...............2..............3
Scotland..................2...............3..............3
N Ireland................3...............3..............3
E Anglia..................3...............3..............3
Low (1-3) Moderate (4-6) High (7-9) V.High (10)
SEA FORECASTS
North Sea: Brisk winds. Showers. Mod
visibility. Rough seas. Dover Strait,
English Channel: Mod winds. Isolated
showers. Good visibility. Mod seas.
St Georges Channel: Light winds. The
odd shower. Mod visibility. Slight
seas. Irish Sea Channel: Light winds.
Patchy rain. Mod visibility. Slight
seas.
High B will build and remain centred near the Azores. Low D will fill and
move away to the north-east. Low G located to the south of Iceland will
push its associated frontal band towards Ireland.
HIGH TIDES

TRAVEL IN BRITAIN
AM HT(M) PM HT(M)
Avonmouth...............5.43 12.5 18.10 12.8

Cork..............................2.59 4.0 15.21 4.0
Dover...........................9.32 6.3 21.57 6.5
Greenock................... 11.13 3.3 23.36 3.2
Harwich....................10.24 3.8 22.44 3.9
Holyhead...................9.00 5.4 21.27 5.4
Hull (Albert Dk).......4.57 6.8 17.09 7.1
Liverpool.....................9.51 9.1 22.18 9.1
London........................0.08 6.5 12.31 6.8
Milford Haven.........4.45 6.6 17.10 6.7
Newquay....................3.39 6.6 16.03 6.7
Portsmouth............... 9.57 4.4 22.24 4.6
Pwllheli.......................6.44 4.7 19.07 4.8
POLLEN COUNT
Southern England:
Low
Midlands/E Anglia:
Low
Wales:
Low
Northern England:
Low
Southern Scotland:
Low
Northern Scotland:
Low
Northern Ireland:
Low
I
ND
L
E E
N
R E
S
E S
(for 24hrs to 2pm yesterday)
1000
1008
T
E
A
C
L
O
T
H
EXTREMES
1000
LOW
1000
R E E
U
X
S U E
T
T
I S E
C
R
familiar (4,4)
9 Clubs close to fans in modern
curved road (8)
15 Feature of tennis or another
sport? (8)
16 Self-employed person concerned
with style in football club bottom
of league (9)
17 Lone trip devised for anti-crime
organisation (8)
18 Peers say invested in a Greek
publishing company (3,5)
20 Ill-will shown in country clique
lacking heart (6)
21 Cheerful relative between start
and end of journey (6)
23 Show excessive feeling in demo
televised (5)
24 Object having bird in drive (5)
THE ATLANTIC NOON TODAY

1008
T CH
T
A
E R
I S
G N
CONOM
N
R A T E D
M S
R E V E R
N
L
E D
EM
M M
H E R E F
N
N
S T I T C
How to enter: include your name and address, mark your envelope
OUP Sunday Prize Crossword, and send it to Independent on Sunday,
2 Derry Street, London, W8 5HF. The first correct entry drawn from the
sack on Friday will win a shelf of books from The Oxford University
Press comprising: Concise Oxford Dictionary; Concise Oxford Thesaurus;
Oxford Crossword Dictionary; Oxford Dictionary of Etymology; Oxford
Dictionary of English Grammar. Five runners-up will win a copy of the
Concise Oxford Dictionary. Please note there are no alternatives to the
prizes offered. Prizes will be sent to you within 28 days.
Last weeks winner: Jan Wiczkowski, Manchester M25
Runners-up: Bill Stewart, Leicester LE2; J Tuthill, Merthyr Tydfil,
Glamorgan; David Seymour, London SE4; David Rolls, Market Harborough, Leicestershire; Michael Bridgland, Eastbourne, East Sussex
25
27
OUTLOOK
with sunny spells and a few sleet or

snow showers. Moderate winds. Max
temp 3-6C (37-43F). Tonight, clear.
Min temp -5 to -2C (23-28F).
N Wales, S Wales, SW England:
Mostly cloudy with scattered
showers, some wintry. Light breezes.
Max temp 4-7C (39-45F). Tonight,
clear. Min temp -3 to 0C (27-32F).
Cent S England, E Midlands, W
Midlands, NW England, Channel Is,
London, SE England: Sunny spells
and just the odd shower. Light winds.
clear. Min temp -4 to -1C (25-30F).
24
26
Monday will be a chilly day with

sunny spells and a few wintry976
showers.cold
Dry and fine in
984
the south and south-east
warm
for much
of Tuesday, but it 992
willoccluded
be cloudier elsewhere
with rain edging south-east 1000
during the day. Heavy rain
1008
and strong
front winds
line in many areas on
Wednesday, but becoming drier
1016and
clearer from the west later in the
day. Cloudy with occasional 1024
rain
or drizzle
Thursday, but staying
isobaron
line
1032of
largely dry in the far south. Lots
cloud around on Friday and Saturday
with rain in places. Becoming1040
very
mild in the south and feeling warm if
any sunshine breaks through. Sunny
spells on Sunday.LOW
LOW X
General situation: Many areas dry

today with sunny spells and just
a few showers, wintry in places.
Cloudier for Northern Ireland and
Cornwall with patchy rain.
East Anglia, Lincs, NE England,
Yorks: Sunny spells and some wintry
showers. Breezy. Max temp 3-6C (3743F). Tonight, wintry showers. Min
temp -3 to 0C (27-32F).
N Ireland: The chance of rain and sleet.
clear. Min temp -2 to 1C (28-34F).
SW Scotland, NW Scotland, W Isles, N
Isles, SE Scotland, NE Scotland: Cold
16
18
23
T A
T
P H
L
I E
T
O I
C
S
I
CON
A
P
T R A
T
R
Y E T I
20
To solve our
crosswords
and puzzles
online, visit
independent.
co.uk/games
23
Last weeks solution

A
Q
U
A
T
I
C
S
19
21
13
22
20
19
16
18
11
12
17
15
5
9
14
12
No 1,359, 6 March 2016
M1 J18-20 northbound and

southbound: Delays of up to
10 minutes, due to roadworks.
Expect disruption until 28
November 2017.
M6 J1 northbound and
southbound: Between the M1
and J1 of the M6, there are
delays of 10 minutes due to
roadworks. Expect disruption
until 28 November 2017.
A1 southbound: Between the
junctions with the A68 and the
A684, delays of 10 mins due to
roadworks until 11 May 2017.
Information from the Highways Agency
SUN & MOON

Sun rises 06.31
Moon rises 05.33
New Moon
Sun sets 17.52

Moon sets 16.02
9 March
Warmest............Usk 10C (50F)

Coldest................L. Rissington -4C (25F)
Wettest...............Bala 0.51ins
Sunniest.............Tiree 8hrs
AROUND BRITAIN
FOR 24HRS
TO 7PM FRIDAY
SUN RAINFALL
(HRS) (MM) C F
Aberdeen..................1.3......... 4.0..... 7....45

Aberporth................ 0.6......... 3.6..... 6....43
Aviemore................. 0.7......... 2.0..... 8....46
Barrow in Furness 0.8...... 21.0..... 7....45
Belfast....................... 2.9......... 5.8..... 8....46
Bexhill........................8.9......... 6.0..... 8....46
Birmingham............ 3.2......... 5.0..... 6....43
Bognor Regis...........8.5......... 3.5... 10....50
Bournemouth..........4.1......... 4.0..... 8....46
Bristol........................ 5.2......... 3.0..... 7....45
Camborne................. 1.7......... 4.4..... 6....43
Cardiff........................6.6......... 2.6..... 7....45
Cromer...................... 4.3......... 9.6..... 8....46
Durham..................... 0.3........11.0..... 7....45
Edinburgh.................2.1..........0.1..... 7....45
Falmouth.................. 3.2......... 4.4..... 7....45
Gatwick......................7.3......... 5.0..... 9... 48
Glasgow.................... 4.9......... 2.4..... 8....46
Guernsey.................. 2.9........11.0..... 8....46
Hereford.................... 3.1......... 2.0..... 6....43
Holyhead................. 0.2........11.0..... 7....45
Hull............................. 0.0....... 21.0......5.... 41
Ipswich..................... 8.4....... 10.0..... 8....46
Isle of Man.............. 0.4........11.6..... 8....46
Isle of Wight........... 5.4......... 5.0..... 8....46
Jersey....................... 3.6....... 12.0..... 7....45
Kirkwall.................... 2.9......... 5.0..... 7....45
Leeds......................... 0.0.......30.2..... 4....39
Lerwick...................... 1.6......... 4.0..... 6....43
Lincoln...................... 4.3....... 13.0..... 6....43
Liverpool................. 0.2....... 21.0..... 6....43
London...................... 8.3......... 2.0..... 8....46
Manchester............. 0.0.......22.0..... 4....39
Margate.....................6.8......... 6.0..... 9... 48
Northallerton......... 0.0........17.0..... 6....43
Nottingham..............1.0....... 13.2..... 4....39
Okehampton........... 3.8......... 5.0..... 6....43
Oxford........................5.8......... 6.0..... 7....45
Peterborough..........6.7....... 10.2..... 6....43
Plymouth................. 4.5......... 4.0..... 9... 48
Prestwick................. 4.0......... 8.6..... 8....46
Shrewsbury............ 0.7......... 4.0..... 4....39
Skegness.................. 3.4........11.0..... 7....45
Southend...................8.6......... 4.2..... 9... 48
Stornoway............... 3.8......... 2.2..... 7....45
Tiree............................7.5......... 6.0..... 8....46
Yeovil......................... 5.1......... 3.0..... 8....46
50
classified

6 March 2016

6 March 2016
By the book
Why it pays to plan ahead

when travelling abroad
P54
Turn up the heat
Helsinki prepares to
host its first Sauna Day
P57
Hello, Yellowstone
The worlds first national

park wakes up for spring
P59
TRAVEL
In the swim
Nows the time to book your summer holiday.
James Ellis offers some off-the-radar options
52

6 March 2016
travel
summer holidays
Dont delay,
its time to take
the plunge
Sterling may have taken a dive, making many popular
destinations off-limits, but theres still scope for a sunny
escape if you get in ahead of the crowd, says James Ellis
he pound may be sliding

against currencies in our
summer holiday favourites, but reduced spending power isnt having an
adverse effect on travel to popular eurozone destinations such as
Spain and Portugal. Indeed, political
instability and perceived danger in
previous summer hotspots such as
Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey has lead
to a surge in demand for holidays in
safer short- and mid-haul beach
destinations, according to Abta
The Travel Association. It claims
that bookings to Spain through its
travel company members are up 27
per cent this summer.
Youd be forgiven for thinking that
if you havent already booked your
escape, youll be limited to trips to
your local park or lido. However,
broaden your remit a little further
than the traditional sun-drenched
honeypots and youll find there are
holidays with decent availability and
a not-too-hefty price tag attached,
waiting for your custom.
WITH CHILDREN
Have a blast in Biarritz
Head away from the crowds on the

Med by dashing to Frances Atlantic
coast. The pretty Basque seaside
town of Biarritz offers a mix of French
and Spanish culture and is easily
accessible thanks to new British Airways (0344 493 0787; ba.com) flights
from Heathrow, launching in May in
addition to Ryanairs (0871 246 0000;
ryanair.com) existing Stansted link.
Manoir dAscain is a beautifullyrestored six-bedroom luxury villa in
the village of Ascain, ideal for large
families or groups. It comes with a
home cinema, lawned gardens and
a heated pool, while the sandy
beaches of St Jean de Luz are a short
drive away. Seven nights self-catering costs from 3,100 for 12 people
through Quality Villas, with good
availability in June, July, and August
(01442 870055; qualityvillas.com).
Croatia camping
Cut down on the cost of a summer

break with a camping holiday in
Croatia. Porecs Camping Lanterna
has a series of new moda lodges
stylish two- and three-bedroom
offerings with decks overlooking a
parkland setting. The site, set on a
bay on the Istrian peninsula, is home
to watersports, tennis and mini golf,
as well as a pool complex. Seven
nights self-catering in a three-bedroom lodge (sleeps eight) costs from
1,557 through Canvas Holidays
(0345 268 0853; canvasholidays
.co.uk). Ryanair flies from
Stansted to Trieste, around
90 minutes drive across the
border from Italy.
Island hopping at home
If you cant face the prospect of flying or driving

long distances this summer,
head to the sunniest part of the
British Isles for an island-hopping experience. A new trip offered
leap into action
Clockwise from
main: Costa
Navarino;
the Accursed
Mountains;
Rgen; Manoir
dAscain Biarritz;
Tivat; cycling in
Serjac; Camping
Lanterna;
Kalkan beach
by Channel Islands Direct takes in

Guernsey, plus car-free Herm and
Sark, where youll be closer to France
than England, but still able to spend
in sterling. The latter two islands
are all sand dunes, rock pools, and
undisturbed beach; on Sark, horsedrawn carriages and tractors ferry
luggage from the port to hotels.
Three nights B&B in Guernsey,
two nights on Sark and two on Herm
costs from 569pp, including ferry
travel from Poole (08444 937 095;
channelislandsdirect.co.uk).
WITH TEENS
Join the Crew in Greece
Costa Navarino, a luxury resort on the

southern Peloponnese coast, launches
a new teens club this year. Exclusive
to Scott Dunn customers, Crew will
offer a flexible 18-hour programme
split over six days for 10s and older.
Theres no clubhouse or timetable;
instead a mix of water and land-based
activities including wakeboarding,
paddle boarding, rock climbing and
go-karting are on offer. Parents must
make do with the fantastic restaurants,
spa, and high-end sporting facilities.
The region will soon become more
accessible thanks to a new BA flight
from Heathrow to Kalamata starting
30 April. Seven nights half-board starts
at 1,580pp with flights from Heathrow
(020 3355 6724; scottdunn.com).

6 March 2016
53
travel
holiday offered by Inntravel that

ventures down country lanes, taking
in towering chalk cliffs and fishing
villages, Belle Epoque architecture
and a ghostly holiday camp commissioned by Hitler. A weeks B&B
on the island costs from 995pp, including five dinners, cycle hire and
return Dover-Calais ferry crossings.
Departures available daily from May
to October (01653 617001; inntravel
.co.uk).
Albanias Alps
Hikers will find it hard to resist a trip

that takes in a range known as the
Accursed Mountains. Located a few
hours north of the capital Tirana, the
Dinaric Alps are home to ancient
shepherds trails that pass through
flower-filled meadows and past towering chalk cliffs.
Responsible Travel is offering a
new group walking holiday in the
region based in family owned guesthouses thus helping generate income for isolated communities. A
weeks B&B, with most other meals,
costs from 999pp, with flights from
Gatwick or Heathrow on various
dates throughout the summer (01273
823 700; responsibletravel.com).
Greener Greece
Stay cool in Kalkan
Tourism in Turkey is suffering thanks

to the war in neighbouring Syria.
Two specialist tour operators have
gone bust in the past year, Thomas
Cook has switched 800,000 seats to
alternative destinations this summer,
while Mark Warner has pulled out of
the country completely this season.
However, glitzy resorts such as Kalkan
are a good 600 miles from the Syrian
border, as well as Ankara and Istanbul,
where recent attacks have occurred.
Even so, visitors are staying away, so
summer bargains are available.
The Turquoise Coast hosts the
Lycian Food Festival in May and the
Festival of the Sea in July, while the
more adventurous can kayak over the
underwater city of Kekova and gaze
down at its ruined buildings.
Villa Sultaniye is a three-bedroom
house near Kalkan Town, with a private pool and sea views. Seven nights
self-catering cost from 950 in May,
and the villa is available for half term
(0113 2941834; kalkanmagic.com).
ROOM FOR TWO
Croatia for couples
The Zadar Riviera is a lesser-known

stretch of the Dalmatian coast combining the towns of Biograd Na Moru,
Vodice and Sibenik. The former
has great beaches, watersports and
a wide range of bars, restaurants
and shops, as well as being home

to the swish Hotel Adriatic, which
overlooks a marina, 20 metres from
the towns Blue Flag beach. Vrgada
i sland, with its golden beaches,
pretty coves and pine forests; and
the 89 islands of Kornati National
Park make for excellent trips.
A weeks B&B at the hotel costs
from 429pp, including flights from
Stansted on 2 May (01425 480400;
prestigeholidays.co.uk).
Make for Montenegro
On the heels of neighbouring

Croatia, Montenegro is making a
play for high-spending summer
visitors with the construction of the
exclusive Porto Montenegro marina
in Tivat. However, you dont have to
have pockets as deep as the former
military marina to enjoy this glittering stretch of coast. EasyJet is
launching direct flights from Manchester to Tivat from 27 March.
From here, head to the pretty fishing town of Becici, home to a 1.5-mile
beach that was voted Europes best
in the mid-1930s before it was closed
to western tourists by Titos communist regime. A weeks B&B at
the beachfront Montenegro Beach
Resort costs from 667pp with
flights from Manchester on 21 July
through easyJet Holidays (020 3499
5232; easyjet.com/holidays).
CULTURE CLUB
Sizzling Sicily
The British Museum (british

museum.org) unveils a new Sicily:
Culture and Conquest exhibition next month (21 Apr
to 14 Aug), showcasing 4,000 years of the
islands history and
casting its riches in
the spotlight.
If you want to sample the island like a
local, head to the laidback south coast with
its late Baroque towns
of Val di Noto, Ragusa
and Modica. Stay at Villa
Vendicari, a four-bedroom property owned
by fashion designer
Luisa Beccaria, with
a pool created from an
old vasca water tank. Set
on an estate with orange,
almond and olive groves, it
is just a few minutes walk from the
sandy beach of Vendicari. Seven
nights self-catering costs from
3,875 (2,996) for eight guests (020
7043 2188; avenueproperty.com).
Into Iran
Thanks to last years historic nuclear

deal, Iran is open to tourism for the
first time since 2011. Indeed, British
Airways will restore its route from

Heathrow to Tehran on 14 July.
Home to some of the finest
examples of Islamic architecture in
the world and landscapes
ranging from snow-clad
mountains to inhospitable deserts, its
a varied country
with excellent
cuisine and
friendly locals.
Exodus is leading the throng
returning to the
country by offering
a 15-night group trip
that takes in sights such
as the capital Tehran, Shiraz,
the troglodyte village of
Meymanden and the ruined
city of Persepolis: 15 nights
mixed board costs 2,599pp,
including flights from Heathrow on 27 August (0845 805
9418; exodus.co.uk).
ADRENALIN ADVENTURES
Germanys island hideaway
Say Germany and youre hardly

likely to think beach holiday, but the
Baltic Coast has some particularly
good stretches of sand, especially
on Rgen Island, a summer resort
hidden for years behind the Iron
Curtain. Discover it on a new cycling
When temperatures rise in Greece,

so do visitors to the coast. Go against
the flow and head inland to the rustic-chic Aristi Mountain Resort in
Zagori in the north-western Pindus
mountains. Newly added to National
Geographics Unique Lodges of the
World collection, its rooms feature
exposed stone walls and modern
furnishings. Guests can take part
in mushroom hunting, rafting and
swimming in rivers. Double rooms
start at 140 (108), B&B (00 30
26530 41330; aristi.eu).
HOLIDAYS TO SAVOUR
Wine-stay winner
Stay on a working French wine estate.

Chteau St Pierre de Serjac, a short
drive from Beziers and Ste, opens
this month. It has a luxurious hotel
and 36 stylish self-catering villas,
with beaches, national parks, fishing
villages, castles and canals all near
by. The vineyard is in the Languedoc, which is more affordable than
its glitzy neighbours, the Cte dAzur
and Provence. A weeks self-catering
in a three-bedroom pool villa costs
from 3,780 on select dates in July and
August (0345 686 6505; serjac.com).
Jerseys just royal
Jerseys lobsters, oysters, dairy and

potatoes mean its gaining a gourmet reputation, and that bountiful
larder also means that for a small
i sland it carries a big Michelinstarred punch, with four restaurants
offering the coveted guide-book
gong. Stay at the refined Atlantic
hotel for a fine-dining experience at
its Michelin-starred Ocean restaurant. A three-night Michelin package costs from 571pp, with flights
from Gatwick on 20 May (01534 496
650; jerseytravel.com).
54

6 March 2016
travel
The website
The experience
The RED TAPE
CruiseLates.com is a new website

with information on high-end,
small-ship cruises with last-minute
availability. The site lists vessels
that have spaces in the coming
few weeks (cruiselates.com).
Belmond has a new line-up of

celebrity chefs hosting dinners
aboard the British Pullman:
Aldo Zilli, Richard Corrigan, Tom
Kerridge, and James Martin.
Tickets 510pp (belmond.com).
Canada has postponed the demand

for airline passengers to obtain an
e-visa in advance from 15 March
until autumn. The Electronic Travel
Authorization (eTA) scheme has hit
teething problems (bit.ly/Canfly).
stay the night
A place with ideas

above its station
The artist-designed Alpine Apartments are a flamboyant
addition to Betws-y-Coeds train terminal, says Sian Lewis
OFFERS
Carcassonne, Cathar
Country and Catalonia
Seven nights from pp
No single
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in April and
October limited
availability
Cathar country in Languedoc-Roussillon

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scenery.
Discover the fantastically
scenic and mysterious
area of the Vallespir
valley in France and
visit the walled city of
Carcassonne and Rennesle-Chateau. In Catalonia
you can visit Dalis surreal
theatre-museum, enjoy
Barcelona, relax on the
coast and still have time
to visit the spectacular
Roman city of Tarragona.
Selected departures April
to October 2016.
The price includes:

Return flights from a
choice of UK airports
Seven nights
three and four-star
accommodation on the
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Vallespir Valley with
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Visits to Carcassonne,
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and Barcelona
Comprehensive, fully
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To book or to browse hundreds of other travel offers visit:
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charged at 5ppm.
ith its cosy pubs and

outdoor gear shops,
Betws-y-Coed, on
the edge of Snowdonia National Park,
may seem more suited to a walking
weekend than a chic escape, but it is
possible to combine the two thanks
to a quirky conversion in the heart
of this pretty stone village.
The beautifully designed Alpine
Apartments wont come as a surprise
to fans of the unusual Alpine Caf,
owned by artist Jacha Potgieter and
housed in the villages historic railway station. Hes taken his love of
international design and a passion
for ethical living and kitted out five
flats on the stations upper floors.
Each is uniquely charming and
known by a different number, with
the most recent, No 10, opening in
November 2015.
The apartments, sleeping between
two and six people, are a feast for the
senses. Hues are bold and each flat is
scattered with lovely little touches,
from a puzzle to complimentary wine
and ethically produced chocolate. On
the doorstep are windswept rocky
peaks, waterfalls and miles of empty
coast waiting to be explored.
The rooms
Each apartment is unique, and a love
of art and the unusual shines through.
From scalloped metal worktops and
chairs made of car tyres to feathered

flamingo lampshades and roll-top
baths you could get lost in, its visually enchanting. Some of the apartments also have balconies and small
outdoor spaces.
The hardest part of my stay was
deciding which apartment to book.
Tiny, hot pink and Mexican-inspired
No 10 is best suited to the amorous,
with a bedroom-cum-bathroom and
champagne on arrival. No 2, painted
in shades of grey and lime green,
sleeps six and would suit a group of
friends, while No 4, sleeping three, is
comfortable and relaxed ideal for a
small family.
In the end I plumped for No 10,
which was small but perfect for two,
though youd have to be very good
friends in this space, which is so
intimate one of you can cook dinner and chat to the other as they
soak in the bath. The industrial-chic
kitchen has everything you need
and feels more Brooklyn apartment
all change
The station
building (above)
houses the
apartments
(top right); hiking
in Snowdonia
(right)
Welsh Assembly
Government
than Welsh mountain hideaway.

Although the apartments havent
been planned with children in mind,
families are very welcome to stay.
However, all accommodation is
accessed via flights of stairs, and so
are not wheelchair accessible.
Out and about
Step outside and youre in the heart of
walking country. The beautiful Swallow Falls are close by, while an easy
hike from the village along a quiet forest track will take you to the lake of
Llyn Elsi, where the landscape opens
up into an epic vista of still water
reflecting the mountains.
North Wales is a playground for
adventurers of all kinds. Hikers can
climb Snowdon itself from Llanberis
village or head south to Dolgellau to
walk up Cadair Idris, a mountain
wreathed in folklore. Gwydyr Farm
pony trekking centre, just outside
Betws (01690 760248; horse-riding
-wales.co.uk), can take you out for a
cruise report caroline hendrie
Follow in the wake of those

daring early adventurers
Pretty much every corner of the
worlds oceans can be reached on a
cruise today, making it easy not to
give much thought to the extreme
dangers encountered by the first
explorers and navigators.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the naming of Cape Horn, the
point where the Atlantic and Pacific
meet, at the tip of South America. In
1616, the southernmost headland of
Tierra del Fuego was named by two

sailors after their hometown of Hoorn
in north Holland.
A number of mainstream lines offer
two-week around South America
cruises between Buenos Aires and
Valparaiso (the port for Santiago) in
Chile. On a March day, cruising with
Celebrity Cruises (0845 456 0523;
celebritycruises.co.uk), I experienced a
calm sea, with albatrosses soaring and
Shine on: See Cape Horns lighthouse on a cruise REX

6 March 2016
55
Globejotter
great getaways
travel
something to declare
Lovely Luxembourg
Map it out
The Grand Duchy will become

easier to reach once Flybe
launches daily direct flights from
Manchester and Birmingham on
1 and 5 September respectively.
The cheapest return ticket that
we found was 60, departing
from Manchester on 7 September
and returning three days later
(flybe.com).
Doing your
homework can
help ensure a trip
goes smoothly
istockphoto
Animal magic
Try to spot the Big Five in Kenya,

at Tsavo East National Park,
before relaxing on the beach in
Mombasa. Tropical Sky is offering
a one-night stay at the Ngutuni
Safari Lodge and six nights at the
Swahili-style all-inclusive Papillon
Lagoon Reef resort on the coast
for 1,089pp. Price includes Kenya
Airways flights from Heathrow
with to Nairobi on 1 July, accommodation, some meals and transfers (tropicalsky.co.uk).
gallop in the forests for 22 an hour,

while smaller explorers will love the
Bala Lake Steam Railway (01678
540666; bala-lake-railway.co.uk),
which chugs around the water from
a miniature station.
Spending a day in the village of Portmeirion (01766 770000; portmeirionvillage.com), 40 minutes away, is an
architectural feast for the eyes. The
brightly painted cottages and follies,
constructed on this gorgeous patch of
the coast in the 1950s by architect
Clough Williams-Ellis are a joy to wander around. And, as fans of the 1960s
television series The Prisoner never
fail to point out, it was filmed here.
The food and drink
A basic larder including olive oil,
spices, tea and coffee is provided,
and each apartment also comes
stocked with less essential but very
welcome chocolate and bottles of
red and white wine.
The apartments have all the kit you
a clear view through binoculars of Cape

Horns lighthouse. Holland America
Line (0843 374 2300; hollandamerica
.com) and Princess Cruises (0843 374
2402; princess.com) also cruise around
the Horn with fares starting at about
1,200pp, excluding flights.
Rare opportunities to go ashore at
Cape Horn are offered by the Chilean
line Australis (00 34 93 497 0484;
australis.com). Landing is by rubber
Zodiac to clamber up the basalt rock
to boardwalks crossing the bleakly
beautiful, tiny Cape Horn Island.
On a one-week cruise youll also
visit spectacular Glacier Alley and
Wulaia Bay, where Darwin landed
need to cook and there are grocery

shops in the village, but if youd rather
venture out for lunch you cant beat
the Alpine Caf (016 907 107 47;
alpinecoffeeshop.net), just downstairs. A wide range of vegetarian
mains, enormous all-day breakfasts,
and cakes are served up in a cosy
space crammed with ever-changing
art. Nab a sofa by the fire if you can.
For dinner, nearby Ty Gwyn Hotel
(016 907 103 83; tygwynhotel.co.uk)
serves award-winning posh pub grub
in a fire-lit interior. Further afield,
head to Beddgelert to try the best ice
cream in Snowdonia at Glaslyn Ices
(017 668 903 39; glaslynices.co.uk)
they also do homemade pizzas.
The essentials
Alpine Apartments, 6 Station Road,
Betws-y-Coed LL24 0AE, Wales (016
907 337 96; betwsaccommodation
.co.uk). From 450 for a one-bedroom apartment for a week. Dogs
are allowed for a 10 fee.
from HMS Beagle in 1833. Cruises,

departing from November to March
when the weather is best, are on
the luxury ship Stella Australis from
Punta Arenas, Chile, and start at
US$3,781pp (2,701), including trips
and drinks but not travel to the ship.
The centenary of Ernest Shackleton
saving his entire crew when their
ship Endurance was crushed by ice
in Antarctica also falls this year. He
and four shipmates arrived on South
Georgia in 1916 after a perilous 800mile journey in a tiny lifeboat. From
there, they organised the rescue of the
rest of the men who had been stranded
on Elephant Island for four months.
Spontaneitys great, but

even better if you plan it
Set sail
To celebrate National Ferry Fortnight (5-19 March), Stena Line is

offering attractive deals on day
crossings from Harwich to the
Hook of Holland. Two passengers
can travel free of charge when
a driver and car ticket is booked
for 98 return. The deal is available on various dates until
31 December (stenaline.co.uk)
train to Spain
Rail tickets for international

summer journeys in Europe are
now on sale, including the highspeed train from Paris to Barcelona and from Paris to Turin and
Milan. A return from Paris to
Barcelona currently costs 78
in early June. Also included is
the TGV Lyria between Paris and
Switzerland; all valid for travel
up to and including 28 August.
Domestic seats in France will be
released by the end of March
(voyages-sncf.com).
Most expedition cruises to South

Georgia (where Shackleton is
buried) stay for only three days,
but One Ocean (00 351 962 721 836;
oneoceanexpeditions.com) has a
South Georgia in Depth cruise, which
gives you eight days to explore.
The 14-day voyage departs on
15 October from Port Stanley in the
Falkland Islands, aboard polar vessel
Akademik Sergey Vavilov, which
costs from 7,652pp in a twin cabin.
The cost includes flights from Punta
Arenas to Stanley (flights from the
UK can be arranged), through Swoop
Antarctica (0117 369 0696; swoop
-antarctica.com).
Juliet Kinsman
I subscribe to GK Chestertons
belief: The traveller sees what
he sees, the tourist sees what
he has come to see. Youve
allocated that time away from
home to escape the predictability
of daily life, so, surely, the antidote is to be utterly capricious?
Having a tick list of tourist traps
is as tacky as my grandparents
panda-edged souvenir plate I
found in the loft the other day.
Photographed standing on
a boat in Hong Kong (Grandpas giant zoom-lensed Nikon
hanging around his neck), dear
old Vera and Eric were planners.
My mum rolled her eyes at them
being so gauchely itinerised,
more focused on minimising
mistakes than immersing
themselves in authentic local
experiences. The thing is, Eric
had a point. Flying by the seat
of your pants is all very well,
but book that flight somewhere
exotic only the week before and
chances are youll have to shell
out dearly for the brag that you
darted off on a whim.
How you travel is a little
like how you carry off fashion
nailing an image of easy
elegance generally takes the
commitment of an uptight
control freak. It requires a lot of
effort to look fabulously insouciant. Heres the compromise:
do all your prep in advance.
That way, your time abroad
goes smoothly. As any fellow
Type-A who suffers from fomo
(fear of missing out) will agree,
attempting to go with the flow

on holiday, and not timetabling
everything to a T, means that
you might rock up at a desired
address, and still miss out on
whatever it was you were
determined to experience, all
because you dont have that
all-important booking reference
and there are no tables/tickets/
spaces available.
What I dont do is rely on
review sites: I crowd-source
tips in advance from local or
jet-setting friends whose taste
I trust. To those who call me
neurotic for planning, I say this:
neuroscientists reckon theres
as much pleasure derived from
the dopamine-stimulating
anticipation as from the event
itself. Ever driven around offseason Sicily without access to
the internet and still managed
to end up at the most incredible
trattoria hidden away in a side
street? I only found somewhere
half decent on the hoof after
spending a small fortune in
roaming charges. Im happy to
live in the moment provided
that the moment goes exactly
how Id hoped it would.
Sure, Ill surrender to surprises;
on that unplanned afternoon Id
planned to have. Nothing beats
walking down New Yorks Lower
East Side, say, and just happening
to catch an avant-garde jazz duet
playing in a laundrette window.
It just wont be followed by dud
dumplings in Chinatown because
I didnt do my homework. I dont
get so locked into a schedule
that I cant stop and hang out
with locals and let them take me
on a tangent. I just make sure
Im always armed with the right
intel. Spontaneity: its all in the
planning.
Juliet Kinsman is founding

editor of Mr & Mrs Smith
(mrandmrssmith.com)
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57
travel
SLICE OF THE CITy
Eagle
Things are hotting up in Helsinki

Weather p2 puff
Crossword p2 puff
Creativity and communal bathing abound as the Finnish Capital prepares to host its first Sauna Day. Paula Hardy steams in
Central
n Arctic breeze blasts
2,000 feet
Railway
Navigation
Hietaniemi
down
the Helsinki
station
Beach
streets. Offshore, the
Baltic waves shimmer DONT MISS
Music
Ask
like liquid silver. Snow In early summer,
Centre
tries to fall. Make no mistake, the island
Helsinki Pool
Market
Mother Nature dictates life in this fortress and
Square
Nordic city, where winter brings Unesco World
Yrjonkatu
Swimming
long hours of darkness and sum- Heritage Site,
Hall
Hotel Lilla
mer days stretchTravel
for 19 dizzying Suomenlinna (00
Juuri Roberts
hours. Only the ritual of the Finn- 358 295 338 410;
HELSINKI
ish sauna regulates life through suomenlinna.fi),
the seasons, offering the heat of is engulfed in a
Moko
Market
summer in its roasting interior mist of purple
followed by a maniacal leap into lilacs. They come
from Versailles
the icy chill of the sea.
The ritual both an embrace of and were planted
nature and a defiant fist-shake in by Augustin
they have created the swanky new perfect finnish
its face reflects the affinity that Ehrensvard, the
Loyly Design Sauna in the up-and- The harbour (top
Finns have for their environment, forward-thinking
c o m i n g n e i g h b o u r h o o d o f left); Teurastamo
which is evident everywhere in military archiHernesaari. It is due to open towards in summer
Helsinki. Located on the Vantaa tect behind this
the end of May.
(top right);
River, the city enjoys 130km of extraordinary
Crouching on the shoreline, clad Suomenlinna
coastline and more than a third of collection of low- in silvery birch, the building takes (above)
Eagle
the city is given over to green space, profile bastions,
its cue from the forest and the sea, Hecktic Travels;
an urban archipelago of woods and tunnels, parks
and will add an exciting new archi- Jussi Hellsten
Weather p2 puff
and gardens. To
parks. Summers white nights can
tectural landmark to Helsinkis
just as easily be spent swimming reach it, take
already avant-garde skyline.
Crossword p2 puff
at Hietaniemi Beach as attending a the public ferry
It is also the perfect place for
symphony at the avant-garde Music (5/3.80 round
mind, body and nature to converge.
Eagle
Centre (00 358 20 707 0400;
musiik trip) from the
Stripped of clothes and status,
kitalo.fi) in Toolonlahti.
east side of
sitting in communal silence and
Weather p2 puff
In the 1920s and 1930s, there were Market Square.
embraced by the tendrils of the loyly
more than 100 public saunas in Hel- In summer, boats
(steam), you can gaze out at the
Crossword p2 puff
Eagle Baltic and practice
Navigation
sinki, of which only one remains,
return as late
shimmering
the lovely Neoclassical Yrjonkatu as 2am.
your omissa oloissaan (aloneness
Letters
| social network
| emails Finns
Weather p2 thoughts).
puff
Swimming Hall in
Kampi
where
with ones
plough up and down the length of
Crossword p2 puff
the pool in just their goggles. In the
intervening years public saunas
closed in favour of private
facilities, Travel
TRAVEL Letters | social network | emails
operates between the airport
Navigation
and the Central Railway Station
but the tide is turning once more.
ESSENTIALS
Next Saturday, the city will host its
(6.20/4.80 one way; 20 minutes).
first Sauna Day (helsinkisaunaday.fi)
when private saunas around the city
More information
Navigation
will open their doors to the public.
The Helsinki Card (helsinki
This might sound odd, butTravel
the sauna
Getting there
card.com) allows entry into major
ritual is as much about community
Paula Hardy flew with Finnair
museums and unlimited travel on
and getting to know people as it is
(0208 001 0101; finnair.com), which
public transport, including the
ferry to Suomenlinna. A ticket which
about relaxation and mindfulness.
services Helsinki from Heathrow
Finnish actor Jasper Paakkonen
and Manchester from 146 return.
is valid for 12 hours costs 44.
Travel
Line 615 and the Finnair City Bus
and restauranteur Antero Vartia,
visithelsinki.fi
couldnt agree more, which is why
its own vibe, featuring the likes of

pies filled with salt pork; soft-boned
Baltic herring dipped in rye flour;
gravlax and horseradish; and bitingly
tart pickles. Get to grips with it at
Juuri (00 358 9 635 732; juuri.fi), which
serves small plates of sapas (Finnish
tapas) topped with trout sausage and
spring chicken with celery.
For the very finest market-driven
menu, head to Michelin-starred Ask
(00 358 40 581 8100; restaurantask
.com) in Kruununhaka, where multicourse menus (from 49/38 per
person) are composed of organic
produce, foraged vegetables, game
and wild-caught fish.
Unpack
Step into the lobby of the Art Deco

Hotel Lilla Roberts (00 358 9 689 9880;
lillaroberts.com) and you might expect
Hercule Poirot to rise from one of the
Hans Wenger cigar chairs. Helsinkibased design firm Jaakko Puro has
done a stunning job of converting this
early 20th-century landmark building by Selim Lindqvist into a stylish
130-room boutique hotel. Its located
down a quiet side street in the fashionable Design District. Borrow one of the
hotel bikes for an easy urban tour. Doubles from 125, including breakfast.
Think local
According to the UN, Finland has the

cleanest water in the world, which
means that for wild swimming fans
theres no better place to dip your toes.
In June, youll be able to join locals at
the new Helsinki Pool (helsinkiallas.
fi; adults 9/7, children 6/4.60), a
sea spa by Market Square, where you
can cavort in three enormous pools,
carved out of a floating spruce-wood
platform, before making a dash for
the bio-gas sauna. There will also be
events and activities at the pool, from
yoga and Pilates to movies, live music
and circus acts.
Eat
Thanks to the countrys long border

with Russia, Finnish cuisine rocks
Drink
The Helsinki Distilling Company (00

358 40 648 4534; hdco.fi) is the latest
food and drink start-up to open in
Teurastamo, a former slaughterhouse dating back to 1933, in Kallio,
a district thats on the up. To prevent
the complex falling into disrepair,
city officials invited entrepreneurs
to pitch for premises and now its a
thriving hub of restaurants, bars and
live events. The distillery, which you
can tour, is the first of its kind to open
in Helsinki since the 1919 prohibition
laws were enacted in the wake of the
Great War.
Spend
Helsinki is a treasure trove of contemporary design, from Iittala

homewares and Jackie Kennedys
favourite Marimekko textiles to
Modernist furniture from Artek. If
you want to see whats coming next,
head to Kallios creative hub, Moko
Market (00 358 10 315 6156; moko
.fi) where Mad Men lookalikes and
graphic designers lunch inside an
airy warehouse filled with designer
products, home furnishings and
one-of-a-kind souvenirs. And, to
gain access to the citys coolest
studios visit during Helsinki Design
Week (helsinkidesignweek.com;
from 1-11 Sept).
58

6 March 2016
Photo : Barbara & Hartmut Roder
classified
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6 March 2016
59
travel
United states
An encounter
with the West
at its wildest
Winter recedes and Yellowstone, the worlds first
national park, springs to life for Simon Veness
he young black bear focused Yellowstone Association. In

was blissfully oblivious the two days that we spent with him,
of the two wolves as it my wife and I explored the regions
ambled aimlessly across unique tectonic nature, its ice-age
the Lamar Valley. The history, the dazzling geographic
wolves were keenly aware of the variety, and its flora and fauna. And,
intruder in their territory, though, oh, the fauna! Baby bison, by the
and, quicker than you could say dozen, nuzzled at patient mothers;
picnic basket, they were on the indolent elk rambled outside our
bears heels, sending it scurrying hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs; a
20ft up the nearest pine tree.
pair of week-old osprey chicks vied
Our nature guide, Owen, thought for their parents attention in a treethis was probably the bears first top nest; and families of Canada
season without its mum, so it was geese lazed alongside the rivers.
still learning the ups and downs of
Thanks to Owen and his high-powlife in Yellowstone. The whole ered binoculars, we learned how to
scene had played out in the national interpret the landscape before
parks animal-rich Lamar Valley. branching off on our own, driving to
Here, in late spring, the wildlife different vantage points around the
Eagle
goes into overdrive as new babies Greater Yellowstone area, an ecoarrive, making for a soul-searing system four times the size of Wales.
Weather p2 puff
vista of epic landscapes populated
We spotted beavers and otters; bald
by roaming herds of bison, elk, eagles and red-tailed hawks; bighorn
Crossword p2 puff
pronghorn sheep, and mule deer. sheep and mountain goats; and, on
You might also be lucky enough to one memorable occasion, a family
Eagle | social network | emails
Letters
come across harder-to-spot
spe- of moose protecting their newest
cies such as black and grizzly bears, member as they came down to the
Weather p2 puff
moose, red fox, lynx, and grey Gros Ventre River to drink at dusk.
wolves, the latter of which were
After a drive through the stunning
Crossword p2 puff
Navigation
successfully reintroduced
to the
panorama of the Grand Canyon of
area 20 years ago and are now the the Yellowstone a 24-mile chasm
| social network
| emails
Holy Grail forLetters
wildlife
watchers.
riven through the soft rhyolite by the
The wide, ice-carved valley
churns with bison at this time of
year and, with virtually no manmade structures in sight
thanks to Travel
TRAVEL
Navigation
the 1870s visionaries who petitioned
ESSENTIALS
Congress to create the worlds first
National Park (the National Park
Service celebrates its centennial this
year) it provides a window on to
Eagle
another epoch,
a reminder
of
Getting there
Travel
Natures claim to a planet we share.
The gateway airports to
Weather p2 puff
Yellowstone National Park are Cody
Our seven-day tour started in
West Yellowstone, one of the parks
and Jackson in Wyoming; Bozeman
Crossword p2 puff
main gateways,
with a gentle introand Billins in Montana; and Idaho
duction to the vastness within
Falls in Idaho.
Letters
|
social
network
|
emails
America As You Like It (020 8742
along the rock-strewn slopes of the
Madison River Valley, where boul8299; americaasyoulikeit.com) offers
ders the size of small houses had
a seven-night fly-drive to Yellowstone from 1,595pp, including Delta
crashed down in ages past. From
Navigation
there, we gravitated
to Mammoth
flights from Heathrow to Bozeman
via Salt Lake City, car hire, one night
Hot Springs, with its other-worldly
travertine terraces, eternally bubat the Best Western Grantree in
Bozeman, and six nights at the Old
bl i n g a n d s te a m i n g i n t h e
Faithful Inn, Yellowstone NP.
multi-coloured background.
This proved the perfect base
from which toTravel
explore the Lamar
Staying there
Valley in the company of Owen,
Hotel Terra, Jackson Hole
our guide from the education-
Eagle
Weather p2 puff
Crossword p2 puff
Navigation
A lone buffalo
grazes in the heart
of Yellowstone
Gordon McGregor/
Travel
Alamy
Bozeman
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel,

standard rooms from $140 (100),
room only (001 406 552 1657;
usparklodging.com/yellowstone).
MON TA N A
Mammoth
Hot Springs
Lamar Valley
Yellowstone
National Park
Cody
Old Faithful
Inn
W
Y
O
MING
IDAHO
Rocky
Eagle
Teton
Mountains
Mountains
Grand Teton
p2 puff
NationalWeather
Park
Teton Village
Jackson
Yellowstone River, which produces

two violent cascades, the 109ft Upper
Falls and 308ft Lower Falls we
descended to Teton Village, in the
shadow of the awe-inspiring Teton
Mountains. Here, where daredevils
ski the precipitous peaks in winter,
a burgeoning summer business is
building around the 200-plus miles
Parking space
Visiting there
The Yellowstone Association

(001 406 848 2400; yellowstone
association.org) offers guided tours,
nature programmes, group hikes
and other activities year-round. A
private guide, for up to five people,
costs $560 (400) a day.
Kurt Johnson (001 307 739 4010;
wildthingsofwyoming.com) charges
from $130 (93) per adult and from
$95 (66) per child under 13 for
half-day wildlife safaris, including
coffee, soft drinks and snacks.
Crossword p2 puff
40 miles
(001 307 201 6065; hotelterra

jacksonhole.com). One-bed suites
from $299 (214), room only.
Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone
NP
Navigation
(001 307 344 7311; yellowstone
nationalparklodges.com) standard
rooms from $208 (149), room only.
Travel
More information
Yellowstone National Park:

nps.gov/yell
visittheusa.com
of hiking and biking trails through

the park that provide extensive wildlife viewing opportunities.
In Grand Teton National Park, which
forms the lower part of the Greater
Yellowstone ecosystem, we enjoyed
an early-morning wildlife safari with
guide Kurt Johnson, a naturalist, author,
and photographer, who pointed out
several beaver dams (Beavers hate
the sound of running water and try
with all their might to stop it, was one
of his gems). He also introduced us to
a rare great grey owl, and the stirring
view of the Teton Mountains, mirrored
in a silver pond as the morning sun
struck the snowy peaks.
As always, there were bison.
Zoologists estimate there were up
to 60 million of these great shaggy
beasts across North America prior
to European arrivals, then the hunters took their terrible toll until
barely 1,000 remained, including
only two dozen in Yellowstone. Now
there are 4,900 in the national park,
and to see the Lamar Valley today
is to witness that timeless spectacle
in all its glory.
In the ethereal dusk of our final
evening, we spotted a herd of 12 elk,
led in majestic single file by a huge
bull, taking his herd to who-knowswhere but revelling in the wide-open
freedom of a landscape that treasures
its wildlife and provides the perfect
backdrop for us to enjoy it.
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6 March 2016
If we should leave
Will it be in or out for your

wealth if we quit the EU?
P62
Wealth check
All options explored for

buying a London home
P64
DIY letting agents
Should landlords do all the

work on rental properties?
P66
MONEY
T
he Budget looms and it

seems the writing is on
the wall for our disposable income. According
to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Chancellor will
either need to make larger spending cuts or increase taxes if he is to
meet his commitment of achieving
a budget surplus by 2020. In fact,
George Osborne has warned that
he will need to reduce spending
further due to gathering storm
clouds in the world economy.
That is going to make many voters jittery and explains the level of
public outrage at this years swathe
of banker bonuses and outsize pay
deals. Firmly in the line of ire is
Royal Bank of Scotlands chief executive following the revelation
that he has been handed a 3.8m
pay packet, even though the bank
reported a 2bn loss.
Against this background of public disquiet, more spending cuts and
the potential need for further tax
revenues, some campaigners have
demanded that the Chancellor look
again at a financial transactions levy
known, more dramatically, as the
Robin Hood tax.
Riding through the glen
A financial transactions tax (FTT)
gathered at a rate of 0.05 per cent
on deals such as the trading of
stocks, bonds, foreign currency and
derivatives has been demanded by
the Robin Hood Tax campaign
group. The movement claims it
could raise 250bn a year globally,
and billions in the UK. A conservative estimate from the consultancy
Intelligence Capital suggests the
British tax take would be 8bn a
year, while the Institute for Public
Policy Research believes 20bn is
not unlikely.
The UK already has an FTT of
0.5 per cent on shares, which is a
stamp duty. They often dont advertise that but it raises 3.1bn a
year, explains David Hillman,
spokesman for the Robin Hood
campaign. So we argue that there
are two things you can do: you can
strengthen the current stamp duty
on shares, which one think-tank
estimated could bring in an extra
1.2bn to 1.9bn a year; or the real
prize is to expand it from shares to
other assets that are traded, like
bonds and derivatives. These are
not traded by ordinary people; they
are traded by financial firms.
Will the arrow hit the target? Campaigners say a charge on City deals could raise billions for the economy
rex features
The case for Osborne

playing Robin Hood
With spending cuts and bigger taxes threatened in this months Budget,
Felicity Hannah asks if a financial transaction levy should be on the agenda
Mr Hillman claims that if just
10bn of that 20bn were used to
create and capitalise a new British
Investment Bank then it could be
lent out to boost business and generate a return, potentially earning
tens of billions over the course of
just one parliament. That kind of
money could make a big difference
in balancing the books and perhaps
averting some spending cuts.
Yet Mr Osborne has, in the past,
rejected the notion of such a levy,
calling it a tax on pensioners and
a tax on jobs because of the extra
costs it would impose on the firms
The UK already has a

transaction tax and it
brings in 3.1bn a year
Its a logical response to the
markets regulate them
more and tax them more
that manage our savings and investments. So should the man and
woman in the street be demanding
the financial sector pays a greater
share, or would this drive the economy back into difficulty?
Will they retreat?
Craig Hughes, director and tax specialist at the accountancy firm
Menzies, warns that such a tax could
lead to businesses leaving the UK.
The implementation of an FTT will
be viewed, by the big financial institutions in London in particular, as a
further disincentive to operating out
of the capital. An FTT combined

with the bank levy could lead to
some business leaders perceiving
the UK as unattractive, he argues.
However, Mr Hillman is scathing
about the idea that banks would flee
the City. This kind of threat is delivered regularly by the banking sector,
he says. Just recently HSBC were
saying they might relocate and then
they didnt surprise, surprise. They
didnt because there are just too many
advantages to being in London not
least the time zone. In the morning
you can trade in the east and in the
afternoon with America.
Of course there are other beneficial time zones, in continental
Europe, but companies are unlikely
to move there given that 10 eurozone
nations have already agreed to launch
a FTT by June this year, with rates
and reach still under discussion.
Those countries, including France
and Germany, will implement a tax
on shares, which the UK already has
in place, but also move further and
tax derivatives as well. Mr Hillman
says: For them it has been purely a
logical response to the financial markets that they would regulate them
more and tax them more.
Rob the rich, give to the poor,
charge the poor
Sarah Wulff-Cochrane, director of
financial planning at the British Bankers Association, says: The FTT will
tax certain types of transactions,
making them dearer. So, for instance,
depending on the portfolio and investment strategy, it will most likely
hit a pension fund, reducing the value
of the investment. Its also likely to
add to the cost of insurance (such as
for a home or car) and mortgages.
However, Mr Hillman argues that
this would not be the case: In terms
of pensions, you have a buy and hold
strategy. They are unlikely to be affected because on average they are
turned over once every two years.
A micro-tax will have no real effect
on the outcome of a pension.
Nor does he think that the UK public would ultimately pay the extra
20bn generated by the tax. This is
the mantra of the banking sector:
The customer will always pay.
It doesnt really stand up to scrutiny. If the banks pass on the costs,
it will be directly to the companies
that trade the bonds and derivatives.
It will hit financial firms, not ordinary people.
The impact of further cuts on ordinary people remains to be seen.
62

6 March 2016
MONEY | brexit
If we leave
the EU, will
our wealth
walk out too?
From house prices to wages and holidays,
industry experts tell Felicity Hannah what
Brexit would really mean for our finances
o one knows for sure

what a leave the
EU vote might
mean for the UK and
the rest of the world.
Politicians are promising project
fact but being accused of delivering project fear and the party
in-fighting risks becoming increasingly bitter as the four-month war
for our vote gathers momentum
More important for most undecided voters, however, is what a
leave result would mean for
their pockets and their childrens
future financial security. There
are no precedents for what might
happen no country has ever left
the EU so we asked some experts
in their fields to try to shed some
light on the prospects for different areas of our financial lives.
The housing market
UK house prices have soared over
recent years, with the latest figures
from the Land Registry showing a
7.1 per cent leap in the 12 months to
31 January 31 this year. Since we
joined the EU in 1973, the average
price of a house has increased by
more than 2,000 per cent.
However, analysis from the online estate agent eMoov suggests
that a British exit could reduce the
demand for housing and cool the
market, leading to a 5 per cent decline in prices and a potential loss
of 11,000 on the average home.
But not everyone agrees. Adrian
Whittaker, sales director at New
Street Mortgages, thinks Brexit
might be bad for house prices at
first, but that the market will swiftly recover. If we look beyond the
short term, the core issue with the
UK housing market is that the
number of buyers is growing faster than houses are being built, he
says. If the number of buyers does
drop for a time, that might reduce
the pressure temporarily but in
the medium to long term, our view
is that the ongoing lack of housebuilding will have a bigger effect
than the potential for Brexit.
Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the market could be
depressed over the next few months
simply because the vote is hanging
over it. Jeremy Leaf, a north London

estate agent and former chairman of
the Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors, says: The Brexit debate
will inevitably cause uncertainty,
which tends to keep buyers hands
firmly in their pockets. Activity is
likely to reduce accordingly.
Fortunately, we only have to wait
a few months for the referendum,
unlike the Scottish referendum
where the market had to suffer for
18 months before the vote.
Employment and wages
Plenty of British employment regulation is sourced in Europe so some
employees may be concerned that a
leave vote will lead to contracts
being torn up and working practices
changed. However, Karen Bexley,
head of employment law at the solicitors MLP Law, is relaxed about
the effects of Brexit
It will have an impact but it wont
be as drastic or immediate as people
think, she comments. Quite a lot
of our legislation comes from Europe
for example, the Equality Act. Some
of our legislation, like the Working
Time Directive, comes from the 1972
European Communities Act and if
we wanted that to be our law [after
Brexit], wed have to restate it in
law.
As for pay, she says change is very
unlikely: Wages are nothing to do
with Europe we set our own national minimum wage; thats a UK
Act. And although maternity pay, for
example, comes via Europe, we actually set it at a higher rate.
Ultimately, employees working
terms are governed by their contracts of employment, which will
remain in force even if breaking with
the EU resulted in changes to UK
regulations.
The cost of fuel
Petrol is a big cost for many people
and the recent low prices at the
pumps have been a welcome relief.
However, amid speculation that a
Brexit decision would reduce the
strength of the pound by 20 per cent
against the dollar, there have been
dire warnings that the price of fuel
could soar.
The AA says a leave vote would
almost immediately add an average

of 494 a year to a two-car familys
fuel bill, as the price of petrol would
climb by almost 19p a litre.
Yet RAC spokesperson Simon Williams believes the danger is
exaggerated. A 20 per cent fall in
the value of the pound would based
on current exchange rates only add
2 to the cost of filling up an average
55-litre petrol car, as a result of the
average price of a litre rising around
4p from 101.95p to 105.56p.
This would mean a two-car
household filling up with petrol
twice a month would spend 232 as
opposed to 224 [now].
Holidays
There has been no shortage of industry experts warning that Brexit
could make European travel harder,
while a weaker pound risks making
any travel far more expensive.
Both easyJet boss Dame Carolyn
McCall and Peter Long, former chief
of the Tui travel group, have warned

that Brexit would make foreign travel more expensive and potentially
more dangerous. Meanwhile Ryanair
chief executive Michael OLeary has
called on the airlines customers to
vote yes to Europe.
Of course, anyone worried about
the potential impact of a leave
vote might choose to comfort themselves with Nigel Farages cheerful
comments to Travel Trade Gazette
that while Brexit could drive up
the cost of overseas holidays, it
would be fantastic for tourism
within the UK.
But Caroline Bremner, travel industry expert at the market research
firm Euromonitor International,
warns: As a destination, a devalued
currency makes the UK more attractive to potential visitors.
However, the UKs travel and tourism industry has a negative balance
of trade, where outbound travel far
outweighs inbound, so the positive
impact would be limited. In 2016,

34 million inbound visitors are forecast, with 64 per cent coming from
Europe. Clearly, imposing restrictions on travel and introducing visas
and additional border controls would
have a major impact on inbound
tourism.
Pensions and investments
The possible impact of Brexit on
pensions and savings will be worrying many voters, particularly since
the worlds largest fund manager,
BlackRock, warned that Brexit could
lead to lower growth and investment
and higher unemployment and inflation, as well as damaging the
countrys financial industry.
However, Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at the adviser and investment
service Hargreaves Lansdown, argues that it would be wrong to make
investment decisions based on fear
of the referendum. We will probably
see some volatility in financial

6 March 2016
63
llll
comment | MONEY
George pulls back

from the brink on
pension taxation
But its unlikely the Chancellor has given up on
future plans to reform relief on contributions
Kate Hughes
personal finance editor
home comfort?
Some believe
that inbound
tourism could
suffer if we vote
for Brexit getty
arkets as we approach the vote,

m
particularly if it looks like being a
tight call, he says. But investors
shouldnt make decisions about their
savings based on whether they think
we will end up in or out of Europe.
Its infinitely more productive to simply spend time considering the
basics of investing, such as how
much to save, how much risk to take,
and how to pick the best investments
for your circumstances.
Or it may be quite mundane
Listening to some of the arguments
each way, its easy to assume that the
referendum will have a cataclysmic
effect on the UKs finance no matter
which way the country jumps. Yet
not everyone expects such an extreme outcome.
Those in favour of a leave vote
say it would save 250m a week in
payments to the EU, while the proponents of remain claim it could
take a decade to recover from the
economic shock of leaving. But the

consultancy Capital Economics carried out a study for Woodford
Investment Management and concluded there was little evidence for
arguing that the outcome would have
an extreme effect on the countrys
finances.
Although the impact of Brexit on
the British economy is uncertain, we
doubt that Britains long-term economic outlook hinges on it, the
report concludes. Things have
changed a lot since 1973, when joining the European Economic
Community was a big deal for the
United Kingdom.
We continue to think that the
United Kingdoms economic prospects are good whether inside or
outside the European Union.
Britain has pulled ahead of the
European Union in recent years, and
we expect that gap to widen over the
next few years regardless of whether
Brexit occurs.
t only took around two days

for George Osborne to halt
plans to radically overhaul the
way the nation prepares for
retirement. Strong hints in the
middle of last week that this years
Budget would include changes to
the way our pension savings would
be taxed were met with a full-scale
mobilisation of the pensions industry bellowing stark warnings about
killing long-term savings.
Charities, employers, investors,
even the pensions minister Baroness Altmann had publicly said it
was a bad idea. Throw in a revolt
by Tory MPs and it finally dawned
on the Chancellor late on Friday
that he really should back down.
But this is merely a stay of execution. Pensions funds are big money.
The success of the workplace pension in getting more people to set
aside more (though not enough)
for the long-term means billions in
saving. The tax relief on those sums
estimated to be around 21bn a
year is a far too unsustainable, not
to mention tantalising, source of
potential revenue for the Chancellor to leave alone.
Its an easy target in more ways
than one. Not least because, when
the effects of any lucrative tax raid
on pensions to bolster the bottom
line in the short-term are felt, in a
few decades time, those responsible will be long gone. Few voters
outside the pensions industry
would realise until it is too late.
Despite concerted efforts to
improve financial education around
the introduction of the workplace
pension, the nations workforce as
a whole simply doesnt understand
the way these savings vehicles
work, the risks involved, or how the
amount they set aside will alter
their financial future. Right now,
we save less than 5 per cent of our
take-home pay on average a long
way short of the 12 per cent minimum experts recommend and
huge swathes of the British workforce believes this will be enough
to secure the kind of retirement that
their parents enjoyed. (It might, but
only if they carry on working at
least into their late 70s.)
One particularly weighty report
released last week on the successes
and shortcomings of the radical pension reforms still working their way
through the system warned, yet
again, that millions of us need much
more help if theres any hope of getting us to save enough for the
retirement income that we expect.
And thats just the private savings
landscape. There are more significant state pension changes already
scheduled to come into effect in just
three weeks time that are confusing
millions set to be significantly
affected by them.
Against such a chaotic backdrop,
the fact that yet another ill-considered big idea got so close to
fundamentally damaging an already
fragile situation is in itself deeply
worrying.
Considering the radical reforms
that were still working through had
started with a Labour green paper
in 1998 and still wont be completed
until 2018, there is an odd sense of
Pensions are an easy target.

By the time effects are felt,
those responsible are gone
The fact that yet another
ill-considered idea got so
close ... is deeply worrying
urgency about all this. The need for
money and an opaque, badly
weighted pensions system thats ripe
for reform means you can guarantee
theres a new plan forming inside
No 11 even now one for which they
will need to carefully secure everyones backing this time.
Next weeks Budget could conceivably still include changes to the
Lifetime Allowance but experts suggest its the Autumn Budget that we
should really pay attention to. The
announcement, then, is likely to
reflect the other idea that was on the
table a straightforward flat rate of
tax relief for all.
Id be surprised if the plan that was
shot down so publicly last week is
truly dead though, for one key reason.
It was based around taxing retirement
savings when they are set aside a
reversal of the current system where
savings are taxed when we draw them
down. If youre not expecting that hit,
which most people arent, its quite
the unpopular body blow. Taxing our
savings at source is a different experience all together and an approach
that Im sure the Chancellor wont
drop in a hurry.
Meanwhile, though, the days of
generous tax relief are very definitely
numbered. So, get saving while the
sun still shines.
64

6 March 2016
MONEY | advice
WEALTH CHECK Esther Shaw
THE patient
Can I hurdle the price barrier

and buy a home in London?
James Walerych hopes that with Help to Buy, shared ownership or self-build, he will find a way
he desire of James Walerych is that he moves out

of his parents home and
buys a place of his own.
But even with disciplined
saving and some lateral thinking, he
is struggling with a limited budget
and the London property market.
The 25-year-old works in marketing on a salary of 20,000, and pays
around 350 a month to rent a room
in the family home in Kenton, northwest London, including contributions
for food and general bills.
Id love to buy my own place but
am finding it difficult to do so in the
capital on a budget of 150,000 to
200,000, he says. My job is at St
Pauls in central London, and I would
ideally like to buy a place no more
than an hours commute away.
James is exploring a range of different options, including shared
ownership and Help to Buy. I have
also looked into buying a plot of land
to build on, he says. But the capitals
plots are few and far between, and
those that are available are too expensive or in the wrong location.
The good news is that he has been
very disciplined about putting
money away and has amassed almost
24,000 in savings. He now plans to
increase the amount he sets aside
each month over the next year and
a half in a bid to build an even bigger
sum to put down as a deposit.
I have two Isas with the Halifax
one with 5,500, and one with
4,000 in it. I also have 13,000 in a
NatWest Isa, and try and pay in between 300 and 500 each month.
In addition, James recently opened
a NatWest Help to Buy Isa with
1,000, and is adding 200 a month.
Once Ive built up my deposit, I will
look again at whether I can afford a
one or two-bed new-build flat
through the Governments Help to
Buy scheme or if theres any way I
can afford a non-new-build property
on my own. I also want to revisit the
possibility of buying a plot of land.
James has a clean financial bill of
health with no debt other than a
20,000 student loan. And while he
is not currently paying into a pension,
he plans to start putting away up to
150 a month as soon as he can.
And they call it puppy love: how to collar the right policy if youre
Sarah Pennells
savvy money
e may be a nation of animal

lovers, but according to the
Association of
British Insurers, only one in four
dog owners and 15 per cent of cat
owners insure their pets. Thats
despite average vets bills coming
in at 300, surgery costing around

1,500 and ongoing treatment that
could amount to 5,000 or more.
Of course, you could simply save
to cover the cost of any treatment.
But if you do decide on pet insurance, what should you look for?
Third party only
If your dog bites someone or destroys their property, you could be
held liable. So a number of insurers sell third party only policies,
which cover you for this but not
the cost of treating your own dog.
You dont need this insurance if
you have a cat, as cats are seen legally as free spirits and therefore
their owners cant be held responsible for their behaviour.
Basic v premium cover

Like most types of insurance, you
can buy something pretty basic or
a top-of-the-range policy. The
cheapest option is accident only,
which does what it says on the tin
and will pay out for vet treatment
if your pet is involved in an accident but not if it falls ill. Some of
the biggest bills are the result of
sickness, so this policy will only be
suitable if youre happy to pay for
any other treatments.
The policy you choose may
come down to your own budget,
the breed and possibly how
much youve spent buying your
pet. Some breeds of dog are susceptible to particular illnesses.
Bulldogs, for example, can have
breathing problems, and labradors

and poodles are more likely to get
diabetes than some other breeds.
Vet cover limit
Some insurers let you claim up to
maximum annual limit for vets
bills, others set an amount as per
condition. The advantage of the
second option is that if your pet
were to suffer two unrelated illnesses within a short time, you
could use up the annual allowance
quite quickly.
Lifetime cover
This is the most expensive pet insurance. Whereas basic cover will
start at less than 10 a month for a
crossbreed dog, a lifetime policy
EU REFERENDUM POLLS
Leave
Remain
56%
52%
48%
44%
28
January
3
February
The British love affair with pets does

6 March 2016
65
in brief | MONEY
THE CURE
Our panel of experts agree that
James has done well to remain
debt-free and amass some decent
savings. Now he needs to continue
to building a deposit while his living costs are relatively low, and to
research the various possible routes
into home ownership.
Over time, further chunks can be

purchased to build or staircase towards full ownership, says Mr
Hollingworth. The Governments
Starter Home initiative is a relatively
new one but promises to build new,
affordable homes for first timer buyers that will be made available at a
20 per cent discount.
Saving and spending

James is being sensible in utilising the
new Help to Buy Isa, according to
Patrick Connolly from the adviser
Chase de Vere. He should continue
to save the maximum 200 a month.
By saving into one of these Isas, he
can benefit from a government bonus
of 25 per cent of the amount saved.
This is subject to a maximum of
3,000 based on 12,000 of savings.
While the idea of full ownership
may be very appealing, David Hollingworth from broker London & Country
says Jamess ability to buy on his own
will depend on the size of deposit he
can pull. There is a much broader
range of mortgage products on offer
up to as much as 95 per cent loan to
value [LTV]. Plus rates have been improving, although they are still higher
than those on offer to buyers with
bigger deposits.
As a rough guide, James may be able
to borrow around four times his income, according to Mr Hollingworth.
However, lenders will not only look
at income, but also his outgoings.
Think carefully about buying

land
Mr Hollingworth warns that finding
a plot on which to build is not only
difficult in London, but likely to be
expensive.
Michael Holmes from the National
Custom & Self-Build Association,
and Homebuilding and Renovating
Show, agrees that while self-build
can be an option for a first timer, it
can also be tough. The level of deposit required is significantly higher,
he says. Most self-build homes are
detached houses, and not typical
first-time buyer properties. This
makes self-build difficult to access
for those taking the first step until
they have saved up a significant deposit, started earning sufficient
income to get a larger mortgage or
are in a relationship where two incomes can be combined.
If James is serious about creating
his own home further down the line,
it is worth noting that self-build
mortgages come in stages, with the
plot purchase and then further funds
released as the house is constructed;
there are typically four or five payments, each made retrospectively as
work progresses.
The highest LTV to purchase a
plot is 70 per cent to 80 per cent, so
the average plot priced at 100,000
would require a deposit of 20,000
to -30,000 plus legal costs, says
Mr Holmes.
Constructing a 100 sq m home
would cost 135,000, plus around
25,000 in design fees, insurance and
utility connection charges.
He adds that a stage-payment
mortgage would fund 70 per cent to
80 per cent of construction costs but
would not typically cover fees.
A further 52,000 to 65,500 cash
would be required, he says. This
would take the total deposit required
to build up to 72,000 to 95,500. That
said, while self-build does not come
cheap, the rewards can be high.
Consider Help to Buy London

Mr Hollingworth adds that if James
is thinking about a new-build property, the recent introduction of the
London Help to Buy scheme could
be of interest. This enables an eligible buyer to put down a deposit of
as little as 5 per cent, with the Government providing an equity loan of
up to 40 per cent, he says. The remaining 55 per cent is then funded
by a mortgage.
The scheme is already supported
by a range of lenders, including the
Halifax, NatWest, Barclays and
Leeds.
DO YOU NEED A
FINANCIAL
MAKEOVER?
Investigate shared ownership

James could also explore the availability of shared ownership, which
allows the buyer to purchase an initial share of the property and pay a
below market rent on the remainder.
Write to Kate Hughes at

kate@fitforprint.co.uk, or
The Independent
on Sunday,
2 Derry Street,
London W8 5HF
buying pet insurance

can be several times that, depending on the breed and vet cover
19 February
limit. One advantage of lifetime
David Camerons Brussels deal
cover is that if youve made a claim
for a particular illness, it wont be
22 February
excluded afterwards.
Cabinet meeting: referendum
campaigns launched
What to look for

There is no point in paying more
than you need, but the cheaper
48%
policies mean cutting corners.
49%
49%
Some companies dont have a
48%
47%
great reputation for paying claims
in full or on time. If your pet needs
an expensive operation or an overnight stay in a diagnostic clinic, its
worth finding out which insurers
23 25
1 2 3 are well enough trusted that vets
March will wait for payment until after
SOURCE
not extend to insurance
ap YOUGOV
the claim has been settled and
51%
52%
51%
53%
52%
:: Gender
:: spending
Women win battle of sexes

for financial awareness
Britons run up 3,400 bill for

the costs of being employed
Women are more money savvy than

men, with lower debts, better rates
of interest on their borrowing and
greater awareness of financial risk,
according to a new study by investment manager BlackRock. Men have
an average of 3,000 more in debt
than women and are less concerned
about paying it off. Twice as many
millennialmen born in the early
1980s or later as their female peers
have a payday loan.
British workers spend 16 per cent of

their salary on work-related bills a
total of 91bn every year. Figures
from Santander show the 3,400
average bill includes commuting at
1,090, childcare at around 1,,000,
work clothes and computer equipment. Work-related food and drink
comes in at 550, spending on
colleagues and clients costs 140 and
personal grooming sets workers
back another 230 a year.
:: debt
We dont know the interest rate, but we borrow big anyway

Holidays, tropical fish and lavish meals in New York are just some of the unusual
answers provided by Briton for why they have got into debt, with almost half
admitting they have debt regret for spending on their credit cards, overdrafts
and personal loans. A survey of 2,000 people by TSB found that the average
personal debt, excluding mortgages and student loans, now stands at 3,598.
Many respondents said they didnt know what interest rate they were being
charged on their credit cards but still borrowed to pay for cars or trips abroad.
Others have since thought twice after splashing out on, for example, houseboats.
PARTNERS
Avoid NHS waiting lists

The Independent is introducing customers to AXA PPP
healthcare to provide affordable health insurance.
which arent. If youre with an insurer that isnt known for paying
out quickly, you could find you are
asked to pay the cost of an operation there and then.
At least one insurer (More Than,
which also provides insurance for
Tesco) has a network of preferred referral centres. If you
have insurance with Tesco and
want to use a centre thats not on
its list, you have to pay a 200 fee
on top of any excess on the policy.
If you have an older pet, find out
whether the excess will increase
once it reaches a certain age and/
or whether youll have to pay a percentage of the claim.
SavvyWoman.co.uk
GET A FREE
M&S
VOUCHER^ WHEN
YOU JOIN
With private healthcare insurance from AXA PPP healthcare, you are able to get
speedy access to diagnosis and eligible treatment when you need it.*
Tailor your cover to suit your needs and budget
A wide choice of hospitals and specialists
Access to the latest licensed medication and proven treatments
24-hour telephone health information from qualified healthcare professionals
Get an instant quote:

Visit independent.co.uk/healthquote
or call **
AXA PPP Healthcare Terms & Conditions: *Subject to medical history and cover options chosen. **Lines are
open 9am to 8pm weekdays. We may record/and or monitor calls for quality assurance, training and as a record of the
conversation. ^The Marks & Spencer voucher offer is for new customers only. The vouchers will be sent to you within 28
days of receiving your first subscription payment if paying annually. Or, if paying monthly, within 28 days of receiving your
second months subscription. This offer can not be used in conjunction with any other offer, apart from our 5% discount
for paying annually. Only one voucher will be issued per household. Offer may be withdrawn at any time.
The Independent is an Introducer Appointed Representative of AXA PPP healthcare limited. AXA PPP healthcare
limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the
Prudential Regulation Authority.
66

6 March 2016
MONEY | property
Time versus
money: a
landlords
dilemma
key decision
It is cheaper for
landlords to deal
with tenants
themselves, but
the workload
will be heavy
Eagle
TIMOTHY ALLEN
As the costs of being a buy-to-let investor soar,

Kate Hughes asks if its time to manage a rental
property yourself instead of paying agents
Weather p2 puff
Crossword p2 puff
lmost a quarter of all

Britains homes are
privatelyNavigation
rented up
from just one in ten
30 years ago and
half the property transactions in
any given year are now on a buyto-let basis.
However, the ranks of landlords,
Travel
now 1.5 million strong, havent
been
swelled by property magnates who
own streets at a time rather by
individuals with other lives, other
jobs and other time and money
pressures.
And the circumstances of these
people present a dilemma. Do they
eat into that money by forking out
fees to professional letting agents
for finding tenants and managing
the property, or do they eat further
into their time by taking on that
work themselves?
Its a particularly difficult decis i o n fo r t h e t h o u sa n d s of
accidental landlords who suddenly f ind themselves with
property on their hands and no
quick fixes usually after a change
in their personal lives.
And with landlords in the sights
of the Government both for helping
to overheat the property market and
as a good place to start raising revenue through increased stamp duty
and recouping tax relief, the number
of financial hoops to jump through
may only become more numerous.
Is it really worth paying hundreds
of pounds upfront to an agent, as
well as a 15 per cent cut maybe
more of the rental income?
diy lettings:
getting started
w Research your local rental market.

w Decide on the target audience
and whether you will accept, say,

people on benefits or smokers.
w Buy insurance for the property
and any contents.
w Set a realistic rental value and
decide if bills are included.
w Conduct a safety and security
inspection/risk assessment.
w Prepare a business plan that
accounts for the investment,
running costs, cashflow, rent level
and void periods (allow 7 per cent).
w Decide how and where you will
market the property.
w Order an energy performance
certificate, complete a gas safety
check and obtain a gas safety
certificate.
w Install and test smoke alarms and
carbon monoxide detectors.
w Conduct a PAT test on all electrical equipment.
w Conduct a legionella (bacteria)
risk assessment of water systems.
w Select a deposit protection
scheme.
w Create a full inventory.
w Have the property professionally cleaned before conducting
viewings.
Q A
Cash coup
More than 40 per cent of landlords
dont use letting agents at all, says
the National Landlords Associat i o n . A n o t h e r 4 0 p e r ce n t
consistently do and the rest turn to
a middleman from time to time,
spending an average of 1,318 per
property per year.
More and more landlords ditch
the traditional letting agent in favour of a DIY approach, says Nick
Marr, co-founder of TheHouseShop.

com, a property search service. A
letting agent will typically charge 10
per cent to 15 per cent of rent payable
over the whole tenancy, but coming
up with an exact figure for how much
a landlord could expect to save by
doing it themselves is tricky.
Many landlords claim that even
when they factor in the costs of
their labour, they are still making
a 50 per cent saving on cash costs
compared to a letting agents full
management fees.
But Mr Marr adds: Managing
their own rental property will not
be a practical option for all landlords,
especially those who dont have
much time to spare or who have multiple properties located far from their
home address.
For single-property landlords,
however, the private approach can
provide a level of control and transparency that you will rarely achieve
through an agent.
Issues with tenants are often resolved more swiftly, as direct
contact avoids a potential game of
Chinese whispers, and landlords
get the chance to establish a relationship that sets a good foundation
for the tenancy.
The time commitment

Of course many agents are having
none of it. You do save on agency
fees, but your workload will more
than triple, says Susan Cohen, head
of letting at Pastor Real Estate. If
youre new to the business, you may
spend a lot of time reading laws and
policies, and can get bogged down
putting together contracts and writing agreements, which would
otherwise be done much quicker by
a specialist agency. On top of this,
whoever manages the property is on
call 24/7. In the time versus money
debate, money would win. It is not
worth the time spent.
DIY do list
It is incredibly important that anyone who is considering letting a
property themselves take the time
to gain familiarity with the ins and
outs of property law, said Mr Marr.
Unfortunately, many landlords
dont put in proper time and effort
making sure that they have done
things by the book and have protected not just their own interests, but
also the interests of their tenants.
That can result in serious difficulties further down the line when
issues occur and landlords find
themselves dragged into drawn-out

legal battles that drain both their
bank account and their energy.
Once a tenant has been lined up,
checking their details and creditworthiness with their permission
is fairly straightforward, quick and
inexpensive: as little as 10 for a basic
search. Several credit-reference
agencies, including Experian, the
National Landlords Association and
other specialist organisations offer
services that range from basic boxticking to comprehensive profiles.
But recent policy announcements
suggest the admin landscape is likely
to become still more time-consuming. The Government has unveiled
a raft of new legislation that clearly
targets UK landlords; especially for
buy -to-let investors, these new rules
could have a huge impact on the profitability and practicality of managing
their rental properties.
New Right To Rent legislation,
for example, is now forcing all landlords and letting agents to act as
immigration officers when sourcing
potential tenants, says Mr Marr.
And for many accidental landlords,
who already feel intimidated by their
legal responsibilities, this extra burden is a serious concern.
el

6 March 2016
67
property | MONEY
five to view
carlisle
in association with
Q A
1
1 Longtown
625,000
Four-bedroom detached house
with garden, paddock and
outbuildings (The Express Estate Agency)
2 carlisle
550,000
Grade II-listed four-bed home
set in two acres with adjoining
paddock (Hayward Tod Associates)
3 Kirkbampton
450,000
4
Six-bedroom property with

gardens and outbuildings
(Cumberland Estate Agents)
4 Cotehill
349,000
Four-bedroom detached house
with garden, paddock, driveway
and garage (Cumbrian Properties)
5 Rickerby
250,000
Two-bedroom cottage with
exposed beams; garden and
courtyard (BPK Estate Agents)
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6 March 2016

NO OVEN NEEDED! ROBIN GILL

REFUGEE CHILDREN, WATCHING AND WAITING AS EU WHEELS GRIND ON

Torture and the UK:

Powell letters discuss questioning of

EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY JAMES HANNING P7

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

HS2 is in danger of coming off

Societys in-built misogyny

Get away! Your guide to

Emergency Brexit: What

Foxes in the clear: a draw

The 50bn High Speed Two

High anxiety: Can an elite

Crisp. Sun and

11, 19, 29, 37,

Recycled paper made up 78% of the raw

believes HS2 will help Northern

Turning up the heat:

help manage the project, last month.

Based on a mixture of instinct and

find a (brief) article about the

the bylines of people who have

the Happy List and the Rainbow List

Post: Lisa Markwell,

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

hen serial Oscar

An internet meme sparked by DiCaprios Oscar has

for example, is billed as a great way

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

he Tory civil war over

campaign are refusing to back ministers on key government business.

David Cameron has won the rst

Hes not being straight with

or will not vote). This compares

very integrity of those who make

The average of the three most

to women. I think, actually, saying

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Labour says the Governments treatment of parents is a disgrace AFP/GETTY

Benefit cuts leave

answer tough questions, because this

academic survey that interviews

on ourselves. There are a number of

of Remain from a similar poll

YouGov conducted seven online

Mothers will be 13bn worse off

changes. And a nurse and her

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

By Mark Leftly and

The Government has moved to

Conservative MP for Eneld Southgate, has tabled what has been

high streets. This would leave local

One rebel said this was a helpful

about the situation they should come

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

SPECIAL REPORT | NEWS

In 2005 Mr Straw said that

UKs apparent delivery of Belhadj

conditions for the return of UK detainees to the UK.

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Worry over rent

More than a million Britons have