Saudi Arabia bans all marches as mass protest is planned for Friday

Extra troops are sent to north-east to quash any Shia protest as King Abdullah's regime gets jittery and oil prices soar in response to the region's continued unrest

By David Randall

Sunday, 6 March 2011

AFP/Getty Images

The ruling House of Saud had drafted security forces, possibly numbering up to 10,000

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and the regional domino whose fall the West fears most, yesterday announced that it would ban all protests and marches. The move – the stick to match the carrot of benefits worth $37bn (£23bn) recently offered citizens in an effort to stave off the unrest that has overtaken nearby states – comes before a "day of rage" threatened for this Friday by opponents of the regime.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said the kingdom has banned all demonstrations because they contradict Islamic laws and social values. The ministry said some people have tried to get around the law to "achieve illegitimate aims" and it warned that security forces were authorised to act against violators. By way of emphasis, a statement broadcast on Saudi television said the authorities would "use all measures" to prevent any attempt to disrupt public order.

Already, as The Independent reported yesterday, the ruling House of Saud had drafted security forces, possibly numbering up to 10,000, into the north-eastern provinces. These areas, home to most of the country's Shia Muslim minority, have been the scenes of small demonstrations in recent weeks by protesters calling for the release of prisoners who they say are being held without trial. Saudi Shias also complain that they find it much harder to get senior government jobs and benefits than other citizens.

Not only are the Shia areas close to Bahrain, scene of some potent unrest in recent weeks, but they are also where most of the Saudi oil fields lie. More than two million Shias are thought to live there, and in recent years they have increasingly practised their own religious rites thanks to the Saudi king's reforms.

But the day of protest called for this Friday was – perhaps still is – likely to attract more than restive Shias in the east. There have been growing murmurs of discontent in recent weeks; protesters have not only been much emboldened by the success of popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, but online channels of communication by those contemplating rebellion have been established. Some estimates indicate that as many as 20,000 were planning to protest in Riyadh, as well as in the east, on Friday.

The jitters of the Saudi regime will be at least equalled in many parts of the world where sympathy for democracy movements is tempered by a reliance on petrol, which most people – for all the special pleading of the haulage industry – can just about afford. Saudi Arabia sits on a fifth of the world's oil reserves.

The past week, with conflict disrupting all but a trickle of Libya's oil production, has seen the Brent barrel price climb to $103, with UK pump prices swiftly going up to £1.30 a litre. The rise in the price per barrel was caused not just by the Libyan strife – the country produces only 2 per cent of the planet's oil needs – but also by the prospect of further unrest in the region, although not the threat of full-scale breakdown in Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, alarmist voices were not slow to exploit fears. Alan Duncan, an international aid minister and a former oil trader, raised the prospect in an interview with The Times of the price of crude rising well beyond 2008's record of $140 a barrel, to $200 or more.

"Do you want to be paying £4 a litre for petrol?" he asked. "I've been saying in government for two months that if this does go wrong, £1.30 at the pump could look like luxury." He outlined a "worst-case scenario" in which serious regional upheaval could propel the price to $250 a barrel, and thence to British drivers paying £2.03 a litre. London is now considering not imposing the planned 1p rise in fuel duty.

Portraits of courage: Meet Egypt's revolutionaries

The world was gripped as youthful crowds stormed Tahrir Square – but who were the Egyptian revolutionaries? The award-winning photographer Kim Badawi endured beatings, bullets and tear gas to find out

By Jonathan Owen

Sunday, 6 March 2011

These are the faces of a generation that changed history, their grim expressions of defiance testament to surviving weeks of violent protest that were to result in the overthrow of one of the Middle East's most powerful dictators.

The individuals in these pictures, taken by the award-winning American photographer Kim Badawi, come from all walks of life, from interpreters and students to café workers and the unemployed. And in the breadth of their backgrounds, they symbolise a wider movement challenging decades of authoritarian regimes across the Middle East.

Change, however, comes at a price. Hundreds died and many more were injured during the violent clashes in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square, which became the centre for a protest that refused to buckle under an onslaught of tear gas, beatings, water cannon and bullets.

The popular demands for an end to President Hosni Mubarak's rule began on Tuesday 25 January – Egypt's Police Day, a national holiday made official by the president in 2009 to recognise the efforts of the police in maintaining a secure state. The protests were prompted by a Facebook group set up in the name of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Egyptian man beaten to death in Alexandria last year by two undercover policemen.

Events were given momentum by the example set in Tunisia, where widespread demonstrations forced the country's president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee to Saudi Arabia in January. He was ousted after public anger was sparked by the death earlier that month of a 26-year-old who had set himself on fire outside the governor's palace in central Tunisia when his only means of income, a fruit and vegetable stand, was confiscated by the authorities.

The victory of the people in Tunisia inspired the Egyptians to overcome a deep-seated fear of police and security forces. A campaign spread through word of k mouth was accelerated via Facebook and Twitter, galvanising hundreds of thousands into action, and resulting in scenes of chaos. It was at this moment of turmoil that Badawi, a 30-year-old documentary photographer of French-Egyptian descent, arrived on the scene in downtown Cairo. "Shots would be randomly fired, sometimes followed by screaming and waves of frightened masses," he explains. "No one knew who had been shot nor by whom. In the days and nights that followed, the number of demonstrators grew.

"People from all professions, factions and religious backgrounds were gathering in the square day and night, and started to engage in peaceful debate and conversation in public spaces and transport. This was the first sign of change. There was no more guarded speech. And this, in Egyptian society, was unheard of."

Badawi followed various youth activists over the course of the protests; one such, Mood Salem (top row, second from left, page 17), recalls: "Against all odds, we succeeded in gathering hundreds of thousands of people and getting them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by anti-riot police using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorise our neighbourhoods."

In a single day alone, Salem was shot at twice, "one time with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we, the people, took joy in pummelling". The protests, he adds, involved "people from all social classes and religious backgrounds... choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on an hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive".

It was not just the protesters who were caught up in violence. Badawi himself was lucky to escape with just a beating when a mob of pro-Mubarak protesters turned k on him. "The intensity of the strikes grew until I put my elbows out to put my hands to my head, and then I was down. It was as if I had invited the mob to turn me into a human pinball... people were coming at me from everywhere, hitting me everywhere."

Yet, some time later, he witnessed a moment when the barriers between protesters and police were broken: "A young 'street' boy standing right next to me among the line of protesters, obviously recognising a relative among the riot police, threw himself around the policeman's neck and they embraced. For a second, their faces illuminated as they both turned toward the sky and smiled."

After 18 days of what had become a stand-off between the Egyptian people and the regime that had maintained a stranglehold on democratic protest, their world changed: on 11 February, Mubarak stepped down as president – an event that could yet result in Egypt becoming a democracy.

There is still a long way to go. Tens of thousands returned to Tahrir Square last Friday, calling on the military-led transitional government to scrap the long-standing Emergency Law allowing detentions without trial, and for the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force general appointed to the role by Mubarak on 29 January. The demonstrators were met with force, as soldiers and plain-clothes security officers beat them and tore down their tents.

But that will not slow the wave of popular protests taking place throughout the region. In neighbouring Libya – at the time of writing – these have tipped over into near-civil war, with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on the brink of being defeated by a popular movement united in its hatred of the repressive dictator. Time yet, then, for many more faces like those pictured here to make themselves (and their rights) known.

Robert Fisk: Week 3, day 16, and with every passing hour, the regime digs in deeper

Our writer sees Cairo's protesters rally again in Tahrir Square

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of anti-government supporters wave national flags as they gather for the 15th consecutive day to demonstrate in central Cairo's Tahrir Square on 8 February 2011, demanding the ouster of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Blood turns brown with age. Revolutions do not. Vile rags now hang in a corner of the square, the last clothes worn by the martyrs of Tahrir: a doctor, a lawyer among them, a young woman, their pictures strewn above the crowds, the fabric of the T-shirts and trousers stained the colour of mud. But yesterday, the people honoured their dead in their tens of thousands for the largest protest march ever against President Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship, a sweating, pushing, shouting, weeping, joyful people, impatient, fearful that the world may forget their courage and their sacrifice. It took three hours to force our way into the square, two hours to plunge through a sea of human bodies to leave. High above us, a ghastly photomontage flapped in the wind: Hosni Mubarak's head superimposed upon the terrible picture of Saddam Hussein with a noose round his neck.

Uprisings don't follow timetables. And Mubarak will search for some revenge for yesterday's renewed explosion of anger and frustration at his 30-year rule. For two days, his new back-to-work government had tried to portray Egypt as a nation slipping back into its old, autocratic torpor. Gas stations open, a series of obligatory traffic jams, banks handing out money – albeit in suitably small amounts – shops gingerly doing business, ministers sitting to attention on state television as the man who would remain king for another five months lectured them on the need to bring order out of chaos – his only stated reason for hanging grimly to power.

But Issam Etman proved him wrong. Shoved and battered by the thousands around him, he carried his five-year- old daughter Hadiga on his shoulders. "I am here for my daughter," he shouted above the protest. "It is for her freedom that I want Mubarak to go. I am not poor. I run a transport company and a gas station. Everything is shut now and I'm suffering, but I don't care. I am paying my staff from my own pocket. This is about freedom. Anything is worth that." And all the while, the little girl sat on Issam Etman's shoulders and stared at the epic crowds in wonderment; no Harry Potter extravaganza would match this.

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Many of the protesters – so many were flocking to the square yesterday evening that the protest site had overflowed onto the Nile river bridges and the other squares of central Cairo – had come for the first time. The soldiers of Egypt's Third Army must have been outnumbered 40,000 to one and they sat meekly on their tanks and armoured personnel carriers, smiling nervously as old men and youths and young women sat around their tank tracks, sleeping on the armour, heads on the great steel wheels; a military force turned to impotence by an army of dissent. Many said they had come because they were frightened; because they feared the world was losing interest in their struggle, because Mubarak had not yet left his palace, because the crowds had grown smaller in recent days, because some of the camera crews had left for other tragedies and other dictatorships, because the smell of betrayal was in the air. If the Republic of Tahrir dries up, then the national awakening is over. But yesterday proved that the revolution is alive.

Its mistake was to underestimate the ability of the regime to live too, to survive, to turn on its tormentors, to switch off the cameras and harass the only voice of these people – the journalists – and to persuade those old enemies of revolution, the "moderates" whom the West loves, to debase their only demand. What is five more months if the old man goes in September? Even Amr Moussa, most respected of the crowds' favourite Egyptians, turns out to want the old boy to carry on to the end. And woeful, in truth, is the political understanding of this innocent but often untutored mass.

Regimes grow iron roots. When the Syrians left Lebanon in 2005, the Lebanese thought that it was enough to lop off the head, to get the soldiers and the intelligence officers out of their country. But I remember the astonishment with which we all discovered the depth of Syria's talons. They lay deep in the earth of Lebanon, to the very bedrock. The assassinations went on. And so, too, it is in Egypt. The Ministry of Interior thugs, the state security police, the dictator who gives them their orders, are still in operation – and if one head should roll, there will be other heads to be pasted onto the familiar portrait to send those cruel men back into the streets.

There are some in Egypt – I met one last night, a friend of mine – who are wealthy and genuinely support the democracy movement and want Mubarak to go but are fearful that if he steps now from his palace, the military will be able to impose their own emergency laws before a single reform has been discussed. "I want to get reforms in place before the man leaves," my friend said. "If he goes now, the new leader will be under no obligation to carry out reforms. These should be agreed to now and done quickly – it's the legislature, the judiciary, the constitutional changes, the presidential terms that matter. As soon as Mubarak leaves, the men with brass on their shoulders will say: 'It's over – go home!' And then we'll have a five-year military council. So let the old man stay till September."

But it's easy to accuse the hundreds of thousands of democracy protestors of naivety, of simple-mindedness, of over-reliance on the Internet and Facebook. Indeed, there is growing evidence that "virtual reality" became reality for the young of Egypt, that they came to believe in the screen rather than the street – and that when they took to the streets, they were deeply shocked by the state violence and the regime's continued, brutal, physical strength. Yet for people to taste this new freedom is overwhelming. How can a people who have lived under dictatorship for so long plan their revolution? We in the West forget this. We are so institutionalized that everything in our future is programmed. Egypt is a thunderstorm without direction, an inundation of popular expression which does not fit neatly into our revolutionary history books or our political meteorology.

All revolutions have their "martyrs", and the faces of Ahmed Bassiouni and young Sally Zahrani and Moahmoud Mohamed Hassan float on billboards around the square, along with pictures of dreadfully mutilated heads with the one word "unidentified" printed beside them with appalling finality. If the crowds abandon Tahrir now, these dead will also have been betrayed. And if we really believe the regime-or-chaos theory which still grips Washington and London and Paris, the secular, democratic, civilized nature of this great protest will also be betrayed. The deadly Stalinism of the massive Mugamma government offices, the tattered green flag of the pathetic Arab League headquarters, the military-guarded pile of the Egyptian Museum with the golden death mask of Tutankhamen – a symbol of Egypt's mighty past – buried deep into its halls; these are the stage props of the Republic of Tahrir.

Week three – day sixteen – lacks the romance and the promise of the Day of Rage and the great battles against the Egyptian Ministry of Interior goons and the moment, just over a week ago, when the army refused Mubarak's orders to crush, quite literally, the people in the square. Will there be a week six or a day 32? Will the cameras still be there? Will the people? Will we? Yesterday proved our predictions wrong again. But they will have to remember that the iron fingernails of this regime have long ago grown into the sand, deeper than the pyramids, more powerful than ideology. We have not seen the last of this particular creature. Nor of its vengeance.

Egyptians dismiss power plan

Reuters

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Egyptians staged one of their biggest protests yet today demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down now, their wrath undiminished by the vice president's announcement of a plan to transfer power.

Protesters, many moved by a Google executive's tearful account of detention by Mubarak's state security, poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square to pack a space that can take a quarter of a million people.

While the government refuses to budge on the demonstrators' main demands, Vice President Omar Suleiman promised there would be no reprisals against the protesters for their campaign now entering a third week to eject Mubarak after 30 years in office.

But they dismissed his promises, accusing the government of playing for time, and swore they would not give up until the current "half revolution" was complete.

Wael Ghonim, the Google executive whose tears in a television interview appear to have boosted today's turnout significantly, addressed the cheering crowd in a protest movement that has yet to produce a leader.

"You are the heroes. I am not a hero, you are the heroes," said Ghonim, who had described on Monday night being blindfolded by state security during his 12 days in detention.

Activists say Ghonim was behind a Facebook group that helped to inspire the wave of protests. His interview also appears to have persuaded many Egyptians to side with the protests.

"Ghonim's tears have moved millions and turned around the views of those who supported (Mubarak) staying," website Masrawy.com wrote two hours after the interview. In that short span, 70,000 people signed up to Facebook pages supporting him.

Later Ghonim expressed his sorrow for the victims of the violence that has claimed an estimated 300 lives during the current wave of protests.

"My condolences to the fathers and mothers who lost sons and daughters who died for their dream," he told Reuters. "I saw young people dying and now the president has a responsibility to see what the people demand," he said, adding that these demands include Mubarak, 82, stepping down.

Google had launched a service to help Egyptians circumvent government restrictions on using the social network Twitter, enabling them to dial a telephone number and leave a voice mail that would then be sent on the online service.

The state news agency said 34 political prisoners had been released, the first to be set free since Mubarak promised reforms to quell the popular uprising.

Protesters completely filled Tahrir Square for the third time since the demonstrations began on January 25.

"I came here for the first time today because this cabinet is a failure, Mubarak is still meeting the same ugly faces," said Afaf Naged, 71, a former member of the board of directors of the state-owned National Bank of Egypt. "He can't believe it is over. He is a very stubborn man," she said.

Vice President Suleiman, a long-time intelligence chief, has led talks this week with opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood - Mubarak's sworn enemies.

In comments broadcast on state television, he said: "A clear road map has been put in place with a set timetable to realise the peaceful and organised transfer of power."

So far the government has conceded little ground in the talks and Mubarak has promised only to stand down when his term expires in September.

Many in a country where about 40 per cent of people live on less than $2 a day are desperate to return to work and normal life, even some of those wanting to oust Mubarak.

For Cairo cab driver Mustafa Fikri, the last thing on his mind was protesting against Mubarak's rule. He couldn't even be at his wife's hospital bedside when she gave birth to their first son on Monday, as he was working.

Fikri cried for joy at the news but could not stop work and go to the hospital. "If I don't work my family will starve. There isn't any money left in the house."

People on Tahrir Square were sceptical about the talks and suspicious of Mubarak's motives. Youssef Hussein, a 52-year-old tourist driver from Aswan, held up a sign saying: "Dialogue prolongs the life of the regime and gives it the kiss of life. No dialogue until Mubarak leaves."

"This dialogue is just on paper, it is just political manoeuvring to gain time," said Sayed Hagaz from the Nile Delta.

Ayman Farag, a Cairo lawyer, said the protesters' work was far from complete. "What has happened so far is only half a revolution and I hope it will continue to the end," he said.

Suleiman promised that the harassment of protesters would end. "The president emphasised that Egypt's youth deserve the appreciation of the nation and issued a directive to prevent them being pursued, harassed or having their right to freedom of expression taken away," he said.

Today's rally and another called for Friday are tests of the protesters' ability to maintain pressure on Mubarak.

Opposition figures have reported little progress in the talks with the government. The official news agency said Mubarak issued a decree ordering the establishment of a committee to study and propose legal and constitutional amendments.

The Muslim Brotherhood, by far the best-organised opposition group, said on Monday it could quit negotiations if protesters' demands were not met, including the immediate exit of Mubarak.

The United States, adopting a cautious approach, has urged all sides to allow time for an "orderly transition" to a new political order in Egypt, for decades a strategic ally.

In Washington, Defence Secretary Robert Gates urged other countries to carry out reforms, taking heed of Egypt, and of Tunisia whose president was overthrown last month.

"My hope would be that other governments in the region - seeing this spontaneous action in both Tunisia and in Egypt - will take measures to begin moving in a positive direction toward addressing the political and economic grievances of their people," he told a news conference.

Can Egypt's revolution stay the distance?

Increasing signs of normality in parts of Cairo belie a continuing stalemate.

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

AP

After thirty unbroken years as President of Egypt, it had seemed as if Hosni Mubarak's charmed career was finally coming to an end.

But yesterday, Cairo's famous traffic jams were back. Businesses, shops, and banks were open across the capital. Barack Obama spoke of the "progress" the Egyptian government was making towards reform. And though still in tens of thousands, the numbers at Tahrir Square were probably down on the previous day.

Meanwhile, Mr Mubarak, the great survivor, was using all the guile that has kept him in power for so long to produce a series of sweeteners – including a 15 per cent pay rise for state employees – to widen his public support. He even held the first meeting of his new cabinet: the group he had hastily cobbled together as another means of staving off the end. His regime was doing everything in its power to suggest that things were calm once more. In another symbolically conciliatory move, the regime released Wael Ghonim, a local marketing manager for Google, who is a prominent youth activist involved in the protests and was detained three days after they began.

But the increasing signs of normality in parts of Cairo yesterday belied a continuing stalemate between the two sides in the fortnight-old conflict. Even as the regime tried to suggest that it was back to business at usual, the protesters who remain in Tahrir Square angrily argued otherwise.

There may have been fewer of them than the day before, but they showed no sign of backing down, with the vocal rejection of the regime's insinuations of growing agreement on constitutional reform only the most obvious sign of their determination to carry on. The protesters are deterred from ending the struggle in Tahrir Square by a real fear of arrest, victimisation and revenge by the authorities if they give up.

But there were also signs of splits within the negotiating committee that represents them. Some within the 25-strong "wise men" group of prominent Egyptians argued that the protesters should take the regime's promises of reform at face value and that Mr Mubarak should stay for the six-month departure period he outlined last week.

Naguib Sawiris, a prominent business tycoon and one of the 25 negotiators, yesterday used a BBC interview to call on protesters to allow Mr Mubarak to stay until a clear mechanism for transition was in place. Mr Sawiris said Mr Mubarak had lost his legitimacy but that a big segment of the country did not want to see the President – a war hero – humiliated. He also warned protesters that chaos could ensue along with increasing exploitation by religious movements, and possible moves by the army.

Mr Sawiris' comments followed similar remarks by other senior negotiators. On Sunday the popular Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian-American scientist Ahmed Zweil said that while there were some who wanted Mr Mubarak to go immediately and there was a problem of "trust" in the talks, others felt that Egypt respected "the elderly" and that Mr Mubarak should be allowed to stay for the "relatively short time" before the planned presidential election.

But several other representatives of the demonstrators announced their intention to stand firm. Zyad Elelaiwy, 32, a lawyer who is a member of the umbrella opposition group founded by Mohamed ElBaradei, told The New York Times there was a generational divide in the movement. The older figures "are more close to negotiating, but they don't have access to the street," Mr Elelaiwy said. "The people know us. They don't know them."

The paper also reported that one of the groups that started the protest with a hitherto anonymous Facebook page had broken cover to demand a general strike today. After his meetings on Sunday with various opposition groups Vice-President Omar Suleiman declared in a statement widely reported on state television that there was now "consensus" about a path to reform. But this version of events was challenged by some prominent youth activists as well as by a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsy, who insisted: "We did not come out with results."

Whether protesters will take to the streets today in the kinds of numbers that they did at the end of last week remains in doubt. Whatever happens in Tahrir Square, it is not clear that reporters will be able to assess it first hand. Yesterday journalists attempting to access the area were told they would need press cards to do so from now on – and that it would take a further 48 hours to issue them.

Timeline

Day 1: 25 January

Inspired by the ousting of Tunisia's president on 14 January, thousands protest across Egypt to demand President Mubarak's resignation.

Day 2: 26 January

Police use tear gas and water cannon against thousands of demonstrators who defy a government ban on anti-Mubarak protests. Around 500 people are arrested.

Day 3: 27 January

Nobel peace laureate and reformist Mohamed ElBaradei arrives in Cairo. He is later placed under house arrest.

Day 4: 28 January

Internet services are severely disrupted. Protesters set fire to the ruling party's headquarters. Mubarak deploys the army to control demonstrators, but the protesters welcome the tanks.

Day 5: 29 January

Mubarak sacks his cabinet and appoints a vice-president, but refuses to step down. Looting and vigilante attacks are reported, and hundreds of prisoners escape.

Day 6: 30 January

US President Barack Obama calls for Egypt to make an "orderly transition" to democracy, but does not ask Mubarak to step down.

Day 7: 31 January

The Egyptian army refuses to use force against peaceful protesters. A new cabinet is sworn in. The death toll stands at 100 people.

Day 8: 1 February

Up to a million Egyptians march through Cairo demanding Mubarak's resignation. Mubarak announces his decision to step down in September, when his term ends.

Day 9: 2 February

At least three people are killed and 600 injured as Mubarak supporters and demonstrators fight with petrol bombs and iron bars. ElBaradei, the White House and the United Nations condemn the fighting. Internet services are mostly restored.

Day 10: 3 February

Mubarak tells reporters he is fed up with being in power, but thinks chaos will ensue if he steps down straight away. The UN estimates that around 300 people have been killed in the unrest.

Day 11: 4 February

Thousands continue to gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand that Mubarak steps down. President Obama puts pressure on Mubarak to listen to the protesters' demands.

Day 12: 5 February

Demonstrators maintain occupation of Tahrir Square. Mubarak removes his son from a senior party post and asks his deputy to invite opposition groups to negotiate reform.

Day 13: 6 February

After being closed for more than a week, banks begin to reopen. The Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups discuss reform with the government, but many say this concession is not enough.

Day 14: 7 February

People return to work, but protesters remain in Tahrir Square and Cairo's stock exchange stays closed. The Muslim Brotherhood says government talks did not offer substantive concessions.

Diary: Beware the Trojan panda, Nick

By High Street Ken

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

GETTY IMAGES

The Chinese gift of pandas have preceded many a political decline over the last 40 years

The Chinese state can be devilishly ingenious. Consider, if you will, giant pandas: the world's most effective sleeper agents. As the latest issue of Prospect points out, Nixon was presented with a pair of pandas on his 1972 visit to China; just four months later his cronies broke into Democrat headquarters at the Watergate. Later that year, Japanese PM Kakuei Tanaka took delivery of the deceptively cuddly Lan Lan and Kang Kang; he was soon ousted, and embroiled in a bribery scandal. Ted Heath, too, was given a pair of bears mere months before yielding No 10 to Harold Wilson. In 2000, the outgoing Clinton-Gore administration accepted pandas in recognition of years of careful diplomacy with the Chinese. A week later, Gore conceded the presidential election to Bush. And who signed for the UK's new pair of pandas this month? None other than Nick "29 Shags" Clegg. Canny one, that Cameron.

* The press has certainly been gallant in defence of Sian Massey's honour, but Andy Gray's least-favourite linesperson will probably be less than grateful to hear that hacks from certain red-tops have been busy trying to track down her ex-boyfriends – offering, I'm told, hefty cash incentives in return for "raunchy shots" of the 25-year-old. The game, as they say, has gone mad.

* Sadly, the treatment for my sitcom Anyone But Lembit (in which Lembit Opik plays himself failing to persuade the Lib Dems to let him run for Mayor) never gained traction in the commissioning departments of BBCs 1 to 4, ITV2, Channel 4, Five or Dave. But a new project beckons, inspired by the newly Oscar-nominated The King's Speech, and the fashionability of parliamentary films (viz Meryl Streep's Thatcher movie): a joint biopic of the Chancellor and his shadow, provisionally entitled A Cock And Balls. It tells the story of two posh young chaps, both hampered by embarrassing names – Gideon and Balls – and by their speech impediments. Ed Balls recently admitted he's a stammerer, while George (né Gideon) Osborne employed a Harley Street vocal coach to help him stop squeaking. Both overcome their afflictions to become the most powerful, ruthless and unpopular men in their respective political parties. Casting suggestions welcome: I'd like to get Alan Cumming and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but David Walliams and Steve McFadden would do. Lembit may merit a cameo.

* The presidency of the Oxford Union is a coveted post, previously held by three prime ministers of the UK and one of Pakistan. But I hear the incumbent has aspirations to outdo even his famed forebears: since assuming the role this term, James Langman has beefed up his staff of eager students, giving them such grand titles as "Director of Strategy", "President's Counsel" and "Chief of Staff". (This on top of the 34 elected officials who already run the, er, student society). A comely first-year has even been named "President's PA". I'd insert a snide joke, but it seems unwise to make an enemy of one so clearly destined for greatness.

highstreetken@independent.co.uk

World's rarest bird pictures: A dance in search of a partner

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

HUAJIN SUN

A Red Crowed Crane pictured in Yancheng, Jiangsu, China

Birds don't only fly, they run, they jump, they dive, they swim, and occasionally, they even dance – as this red-crowned crane is doing, in this remarkable image taken in China.

Cranes dance when looking for a mate, as part of an elaborate courtship ritual, and the sight is one of the most notable spectacles of the natural world. The image is part of a series of prize-winning pictures of the world's rarest birds, shot in an international competition launched last year to photograph the 556 most threatened bird species on earth.

The results will be published next year by the ethical publishing company WILDGuides, and profits from sales will go to BirdLife International's Preventing Extinctions Programme to help support conservation projects worldwide.

Many of the species are not only rare and difficult to photograph – they tend to have retreated to remote places – but are among the most strikingly beautiful of birds. The red-crowned crane, Grus japonensis, captured here by Huajin Sun, is one example.

Breeding in China and wintering in Japan, it is an iconic bird in the culture of both nations, featuring prominently in their art and poetry. The world population now numbers only 1,700 mature birds and is continuing to decrease, due to the loss and degradation of wetlands through conversion to agriculture and industrial development.

UK jobless total rises again to 2.5 million

By Alan Jones, PA

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Unemployment has soared by 49,000 to 2.5 million, with a record number of young people out of work, new figures showed today.

One in five 16 to 24-year-olds are jobless after an increase of 32,000 in the quarter to November to 951,000, the highest figure since records began in 1992.

Employment levels have fallen, redundancies have increased and the number of people classed as economically inactive has reached 9.3 million, today's grim figures revealed.

The only bright news from the Office for National Statistics was a 4,100 fall in the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance last month to 1.46 million.

The unemployment rate is now 7.9%, but for 16 to 24-year-olds it is 20.3%.

There were 157,000 redundancies in the latest quarter, up by 14,000 on the previous three months.

The inactivity rate is now 23.4% after an 89,000 increase in the number of people classed as economically inactive, including students, those looking after a sick relative and people who have given up looking for a job.

The number of people who have taken retirement before reaching 65 increased by 39,000 to 1.56 million, the highest figure since records began in 1993.

Employment fell by 69,000 to 29 million, the biggest drop since the summer of 2009.

Public sector employment fell by 33,000 to six million between last June and September, while the number of private sector employees remained unchanged at 23 million.

Long-term unemployment - those out of work for more than a year - rose by 15,000 to 836,000.

Other data showed that average earnings rose by 2.1% in the year to November, unchanged from the previous month.

Average weekly pay in November was £455, up by 2.1% on a year earlier.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: "These figures serve to underline the scale of the challenge we face. We inherited the largest budget deficit in peacetime history and high levels of worklessness, which we are determined to bring down by rebalancing the economy and supporting private sector jobs growth.

"We are already seeing some improvement in the number of vacancies in the economy.

"More personalised support for jobseekers will be on offer through Jobcentre Plus and for the long-term unemployed who need extra help we are introducing our Work Programme in the summer, which will offer support tailored to individuals' needs so that they can get into jobs and stay there."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Today's grim jobless figures show that rising unemployment is more than an autumn blip, and that it could get much worse in 2011.

"With more than a fifth of young people out of work, we face a real danger of losing another generation of young people to unemployment and wasted ambition.

"By abolishing EMA, pricing young people out of university and cutting support to get them back into work, the Government is punishing youngsters for a mess they didn't cause.

"Employment is now falling at its fastest rate since the recession and many of those finding work are settling for insecure temporary work.

"With the worst of the cuts still to come, this government risks making high joblessness a permanent feature of our economy. It must change course before it's too late."

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said: "It's no surprise that the job loss totals are creeping up. The coalition's policies are poisonous for our recovery, and risk a downward spiral for our economy.

"Drastic cuts have hit the public sector, which is shedding jobs. These cuts dampen demand and hit private firms dependent on public sector contracts. The private sector is no knight on a white chariot waiting to come to our rescue.

"It's misery for families, hit with a toxic cocktail of high inflation which is pricing them out of everyday living, and dwindling job opportunities. Meanwhile it's easy street for the bankers who caused this crisis, and are still making off with billions in bonuses."

Martina Milburn, chief executive of youth charity The Prince's Trust, said: "Britain is now perilously close to seeing one million young people struggling to find work. At this time when there is huge pressure on the public purse, Government, charities and employers must work together to help young people into jobs and save the state billions."

Paul Kenny, GMB general secretary, said: "This rise in the number of people unemployed at a time when the economy is recovering from the bankers' recession is linked to not filling vacancies right across the public sector and to people of working age volunteering for redundancy being added to the dole queues. The Government is in denial that it is deliberately creating unemployment, but the fact is that it is driving up the level of unemployment."

The GMB said 125,894 job losses had now been announced by 165 authorities, adding that it was difficult to see the private sector creating enough new jobs to make up for the cuts.

David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "These figures are disappointing and once again slightly worse than expected. For the second month in a row unemployment is up, employment is down and the level of inactivity has seen a marked increase.

"Employment has declined for both full-time and part-time jobs and the number of people working part time because they could not find a full-time job rose to its highest level since comparable records began in 1992. In addition, a record number of young people are out of work.

"While longer-term trends still show that the UK labour market remains relatively robust, the new figures highlight the challenges facing the economy in the months ahead when the austerity programme is implemented more forcefully.

"In light of these figures, we reiterate our forecast that unemployment is likely to increase to 2.6 million over the next year, a further net rise of around 100,000. With the prospect that private-sector employment could decline over the next year, it is critical that private-sector businesses are able to create new jobs."

John Walker, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "The true effects of the public sector cuts are beginning to show as growth remains weak, so these figures are worrying reading. The Government has said it is putting its faith in the private sector to pull the economy on to firm ground and create jobs, yet our research shows that small businesses expect job creation to weaken in coming months because they lack confidence in the economy - 12.4% of small firms expect to decrease their number of staff.

"It is now imperative the Bank of England keeps it nerve and holds interest rates at 0.5%, and crucially that the Government brings forward plans for growth, including a competitive tax system, and holds off on any new employment laws to boost job creation and instil confidence. Without this, growth will be difficult for small businesses to achieve."

Unemployment in the regions between September and November was:

North East / 120,000 / plus 5,000 / 9.6%

North West / 260,000 / minus 17,000 / 7.6%

Yorkshire/Humber / 241,000 / minus 6,000 / 9.2%

East Midlands / 186,000 / plus 15,000 / 8.1%

West Midlands / 264,000 / plus 48,000 / 9.9%

East 199,000 / minus 5,000 / 6.6%

London / 382,000 / plus 5,000 / 9.2%

South East / 273,000 / minus 8,000 / 6.1%

South West / 159,000 / plus 6,000 / 5.9%

Wales / 123,000 / plus 4,000 / 8.4%

Scotland / 225,000 / minus 5,000 / 8.4%

N Ireland / 65,000 / plus 7,000 / 7.8%

Hot tips for a warmer winter

The British summer is still months away, but there's no need to despair. Harriet O'Brien reveals how to turn seasonal blues into sun-drenched bliss

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

ALAMY

Where the sun keeps shining: beach life on the Mayan Riviera

We say

With the festive season over and spring still some way off (it begins with the vernal equinox, on 20 March), the dark, damp days of British winter may be getting you down. Don't worry: there is a host of options for escaping for some winter sun. We've sought out some of this season's most appealing new itineraries for breaks over the coming month.

They say

"Sun: The source of light and heat, and consequently of life to the whole world; hence regarded as a deity and worshipped as such..." Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

"One day you'll look to see I've gone. For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun."

"I'll Follow the Sun" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (released in 1964).

Far to go?

It's with good reason that the Canary Islands are regarded as a classic winter sun destination. This Atlantic archipelago is as close as you can get to a near-guarantee of perfect conditions in January and February, with a four-hour flight. Daytime temperatures hover around 22C at the moment.

Monarch (08719 40 50 40; www. monarch.co.uk), Thomas Cook Airlines (0871 230 2406; www.fly thomascook.com) and Thomson (0871 231 3235; www.thomson.co.uk) have frequent flights to Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife from airports across the UK, often as part of package holidays.

Airtours (0844 871 6636; www.airtours.co.uk) has an extensive choice of packages including new family holidays this winter to Sunstar Resorts' Sun Tropical hotel at Playa Blanca, Lanzarote. A one-week break for a family of three sharing a room costs from £1,086 (£362 per person), covering flights from Gatwick to Lanzarote and all-inclusive accommodation.

Romance and culture

This season, Thomson has added Egypt's southernmost city of Aswan to its winter itinerary. So felucca rides on the Nile and the ruins of ancient Abu Simbel are now accessible at a reasonable price. You can expect a good seven hours of sunshine per day here and temperatures of around 24C, which is pleasantly cool compared with the roasting heat Aswan endures during the summer. Accommodation is at the Mövenpick Resort, sited on Elephantine Island about a 10-minute boat trip from the centre. A one-week holiday costs from £625 per person (based on two sharing, as are all other prices below) including flights to Aswan from Gatwick and accommodation with breakfast.

Sail away

Combine a beach break with learning how to sail – and make for Oman. Shangri-La's Barr Al Jissah Resort south of Muscat offers daily programmes in association with Oman Sail, catering for everyone from experienced sailors to novices. The resort is set around a cove backed by craggy cliffs, and presents a wide range of water sports, as well as a large spa, six restaurants, three swimming pools and a private beach. Go now to enjoy temperatures of around 23C and to see hawksbill turtles coming ashore.

Turtle nesting and hatching takes place from January to June, when the resort's "Turtle Ranger" will advise guests on the best and least obtrusive areas to observe these creatures. Trailfinders (0845 050 5874; www.trailfinders.com) can arrange a week here from £1,499 per person (or less if you book by the end of January) including flights from Gatwick via Doha to Muscat on Qatar Airways, transfers and accommodation with breakfast.

Golden shores

Mexico's Mayan Riviera has become a haven of chic, five-star accommodation. The coastline has a tropical climate, which means that it is warm and humid throughout the year, with its drier season running between November and April. Right now, temperatures are around 25C.

BA (0844 493 0758; www.ba.com) flies twice weekly from Gatwick to Cancú* at the northern tip. A week at the Fairmont Mayakoba, which is set in lush grounds bordering turquoise waters, costs £1,382 including breakfast.

Plenty of action

Take an all-inclusive break in Jamaica. Virgin Holidays (0844 557 3859; www.virginholidays.co.uk) has added Breezes Rio Bueno Resort to its portfolio. Set midway along the northern shores of the island, the property has been built to resemble an old-style Jamaican village, with cobbled streets and a town square. It offers an extensive choice of activities from kayaking to windsurfing, beach volleyball, snorkelling and scuba-diving, plus two Olympic-size swimming pools. A week here costs from £1,386 including flights from Gatwick to Montego Bay, transfers and all-inclusive accommodation. Temperatures are currently around 27C.

Go wild

This year, some specialist companies are featuring Zimbabwe on their itineraries. The political and social problems here are by no means over but, they argue, the country needs tourist income – and in return Zimbabwe offers wonderful game viewing in under-visited parks. Expert Africa (020-8232 9777; www.expertafrica.com) suggests combining a wildlife adventure with a trip to the spellbinding Victoria Falls.

You'll spend two nights at elegant Ilala Lodge at the Falls before setting out on a "Klipspringer Safari" that takes you to two of Zimbabwe's best game parks: huge Hwange (particularly rich in elephants as well as herds of buffalo) and the small and lush Matobo Hills (which is a safe haven for rhinos). You'll also visit the charming city of Bulawayo. The total 12-night trip costs from £2,545 per person including flights from Heathrow to Harare via Johannesburg, internal flights and road transfers, all game drives, all accommodation and most meals.

What Google will tell you

A skiing holiday in Pamporovo, Bulgaria, will find you high up amid the vast, deep green pine forests of the Rhodope Mountains. This is a gorgeous place, and the resort's 270 days of annual sunshine make skiing in Pamporovo a bright, cheerful affair. In fact, skiing holidays in Pamporovo treat visitors to the sunniest ski resort in Europe. (www.inghams.co.uk)

What Google won't tell you – until now

Dr Sneh Khemka, medical director of Bupa International, says: "Getting away for some sunshine when it is scarce at home is actually beneficial for your health. We need sunlight to help us produce vitamin D, which increases the amount of calcium we absorb from our bloodstream, essential for keeping bones strong. Holidays are great for our mental wellbeing, too. Light stimulates a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which controls mood and sleep, and there's evidence to confirm that seasonal affective disorder can be combated by sun exposure. I always take a holiday in the winter for this very reason, and would recommend it to others."

Waste crisis means 80 giant furnaces set for go-ahead in 2011

By Jonathan Brown

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

Alamy

According to the Environment Agency there are 21 facilities in the UK currently treating municipal waste

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A grassroots revolt is growing over a new generation of controversial incinerators planned across the UK, which would see the amount of household waste sent to be burnt more than double. Incinerators are currently being planned on more than 80 sites under the so-called "dash for ash".

The Coalition must decide this summer whether to give its blessing to the £10bn roll-out of the new incinerator chimneys, which continue to meet fierce levels of local resistance from those who would live in their shadow. Concern over possible health risks and impact on property prices looks likely to make incineration one of the most toxic political issues of 2011.

Vehement opposition also comes from environmentalists, who claim that incinerators contribute to greenhouse gases and discourage councils from meeting more ambitious recycling goals.

According to the Environment Agency there are 21 facilities in the UK currently treating municipal waste, while a further eight have been given the go-ahead but are not yet operational. It is estimated that a further two dozen "energy from waste" schemes are still making their way through the planning process or awaiting a final decision from the Secretary of State.

And the waste industry is promising a "step change" in burning Britain's annual rubbish mountain. It believes that "many more" will still be needed in the medium term to meet the previous government's goal of turning 25 per cent of municipal waste into energy to heat homes and provide electricity over the next decade, and prevent Britain from paying millions of pounds in future EU landfill fines.

The UK Without Incineration Network has 80 active groups opposing local developments. One of its co-ordinators, Shlomo Dowen, a former teacher, opposes a new incinerator on a former mine near his home in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. The campaign is becoming a test of wills between local people and big business, he said.

"This about people power. Typically people start off from a situation of not giving much thought to what happens to their waste when it goes in the bin. They don't know and they don't want to know.

"But when an incinerator is proposed they become alarmed at the health impact and this gets them to take to the internet. Then they realise they are very expensive and that there are other viable alternatives such as anerobic digestion which is renewable.

"No one is arguing that incinerators improve people's health. The debate is about how much local people's health will be depreciated.

"The waste companies underestimate the level of resistance. They don't care as passionately as people do for their own neighbourhood. To them it's just a job. The more people scrutinise the process the more likely it is to come off the rails."

That resistance now includes the Chancellor, George Osborne, who has added his support to campaigners against a new incinerator in his Cheshire constituency. The Liberal Democrats have have opposed incineration at national and local levels. Political support for incineration looks increasingly uncertain as the amount of waste generated each year by households has been falling steadily and recycling rates increasing. Waste companies however claim there will always be a limit to how much rubbish can be recycled – at around 70 per cent of what we throw away – leaving millions of tonnes each year as a valuable untapped energy resource.

Julian Kirby, Friends of the Earth's resource use campaigner, rejects industry claims that incinerators could help remove 34 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere by preventing rubbish being buried in the ground where it continues to produce harmful greenhouse gases. "Scratch the surface and you see that, because of all the oil-based materials they burn, such as plastics, they emit a third more CO2 than gas-fired power stations. Add in emissions from biogenic materials such as paper, textiles and food, and they can be more than twice as bad as coal-fired power stations," he said.

But with further capacity for 1.2 million tonnes of waste-burning already planned, the industry is not having it all its own way – despite the backing of business leaders including the CBI, which earlier this year urged councils to bury their objections to building new incinerators.

Both coalition parties are committed to the growth in the emerging anaerobic digestion industry in which biodegradable matter is recycled into renewable energy.

Meanwhile in October seven projects due to be funded under a private finance initiative were scrapped by the Coalition, in several cases on cost grounds – but not before local authorities had spent millions of pounds investigating and consulting on the matter during the lengthy planning stage.

David Sher, policy adviser for the Environmental Services Association, which represents the waste industry, acknowledged the level of opposition.

"While all large infrastructure projects are challenging to deliver, energy from waste projects are still shaking off occasionally held misconceptions that increase that challenge," he said. "These surround their impact on recycling rates and uncertainty over the health and environmental effects of emissions.

"In recent years, significant work has gone into debunking the myths surrounding energy from waste, notably by the Health Protection Agency, showing that any potential damage for well-regulated incinerators is very small or so small as to be undetectable."

Mr Sher insisted: "Energy from waste is a clean, proven and reliable technology and must form a component of sustainable waste management and energy strategies."

HOUSEHOLD WASTE BY NUMBERS

23,700,000 tonnes of household waste collected in England in 2009-10 and 1.5m tonnes in Wales.

1,036 kg of waste from typical English households in 2009-10, of which 411kg was recycled.

4,000 Number of landfill sites in the United Kingdom.

9.4 million tonnes of England's household waste is now recycled – 3.3 times the figure in 2001.

70 per cent of what we throw away can be recycled.

25 per cent: the Government target for the amount of municipal waste it wants burnt and converted into household energy over the next 10 years.

21 incineration facilities in the United Kingdom treating municipal waste, with a further eight soon coming into operation.

24 "energy from waste" schemes are in the planning stages or awaiting imminent Government approval.

£48 per tonne – current rate of landfill tax. It is due to rise every April for the next three years.

international top tracks on Last.fm: Rihanna, Kanye West, Daft Punk

Relaxnews

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

US recording artist Rihanna remains in the top spot in the Last.fm singles chart the week of December 12 for her hit track "Only Girl (In the World)." US pop star Katy Perry remains a strong contender with two tracks from her hit album Teenage Dream in the top ten. Also this week: Kanye West and Daft Punk.

Rapper, producer, and recording artist Kanye West claims three spots in the top ten with tracks from his fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Released November 22, the album has reached number one in album charts in the US and Canada. New this week: the track "All of the Lights (Interlude)" jumps 25 spots into eighth place with 22,037 listeners. "All of the Lights" climbs into third with 26,896 listeners, while "Dark Fantasy" drops to fourth with 26,883 listeners.

Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo and Thomas Bangalter of the French house duo Daft Punk released their soundtrack to TRON: Legacy, the sequel to 1982's Tron, on December 7. Since, the soundtrack has reached number one in dance/electronic music charts in the US and UK. This week, the album's lead single "Derezzed" jumps two spots into sixth place with 124,526 listeners. Renowned internationally as electronic music innovators, the duo has received two Grammy Awards and seven nominations.

Last.fm's top tracks for December 12 through 19:

1. Rihanna - "Only Girl (In the World)" (34,998 listeners)
2. Katy Perry - "Firework" (30,101 listeners) (+1)
3. Kanye West - "All of the Lights" (26,896 listeners) (+1)
4. Kanye West - "Dark Fantasy" (26,883 listeners) (-2)
5. Florence + the Machine - "Dog Days Are Over" (24,755 listeners)
6. Daft Punk - "Derezzed" (24,526 listeners) (+2)
7. Katy Perry - "Teenage Dream" (24,128 listeners) (-1)
8. Kanye West - "All of the Lights (Interlude)" (22,037 listeners) (+25)
9. Bruno Mars - "Just the Way You Are" (21,898 listeners)
10. The xx - "Crystalised" (21,560 listeners) (-3)

Last.fm claims more than 40 million active users based in more than 200 countries. Available in 12 languages, the site's radio service is free for users in the UK, the US, and Germany; elsewhere, a subscription costs €3.00 per month. Using a system called "scrobbling," Last.fm's charts measure everything its users listen to through the Last.fm website as well as hundreds of other music sites and services, including iTunes, Spotify, and The Hype Machine.

http://www.last.fm

Watch Rihanna's music video for "Only Girl (In the World)": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa14VNsdSYM

John Rentoul: Take a peek into my crystal ball for 2011

Predictions are a dangerous business. Serious risk of opening oneself up to ridicule,and possibly even contempt. So, let's do it

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

I predict that next year will be a prime number. Anything beyond that is risky. I do not want to be in the same position as Craig and Jane, who predicted that this year "quantum physicists discover extraordinary way to generate electricity from water". Although there are still four days to go. Craig ("£1.50 per minute – pay by credit card or add to your phone bill") claims credit for some of his other predictions: "France did make some threats about leaving the euro. Many clergy became Catholics – a trend that is still continuing now. Holiday firms, building companies and aviation companies went bust. However, Victoria Beckham did not get pregnant as predicted, and I was wrong about Gordon Brown being forced out of office before the election." Mind you, he was not alone there.

As I say, a dangerous business. Serious risk of opening oneself to ridicule and possibly even contempt. So, let's do it.

Oldham East and Saddleworth. By-election on 13 January. Labour gain.

Welsh referendum, 3 March. Labour-Plaid Cymru gain.

Alternative Vote referendum, 5 May. Lib Dem loss.

The economy. Petrol prices, VAT, National Insurance and public spending cuts. Conservative gain.

That just about wraps up the political year. There are also several ball-based public entertainments. The cricket seems to be going well. Later will be the other kind of cricket that they play quickly (it's a relative term) in their pyjamas. Before that, I have high hopes that the Philadelphia Eagles will make it to the Super Bowl on 6 February. Later in the year, the rugby World Cup is in New Zealand.

But perhaps I had better explain my politics predictions. The first scheduled test of the year will be the "Old and Sad" by-election. Describing it as a Labour gain is not strictly accurate, as the prediction is that Labour will hold the seat vacated by Phil Woolas, whose election by 0.3 per cent of the votes has been declared void by the electoral court. However, in the circumstances, for Labour to keep the seat would be a morale-booster for Ed Miliband. Those circumstances being the London view that Woolas was disgraced, that Miliband's leadership is in trouble and that the Liberal Democrats think they can win it.

None of those is really true. I was in Littleborough and Saddleworth, as much of the constituency then was, when the Lib Dems won the 1995 by-election. I was in the pub that was their campaign HQ as they were singing "Walking in a Liberal Wonderland" into the small hours. Woolas lost, but he won the redrawn seat in the general election and he was popular there.

So I doubt that many local voters care that much about his rough tactics in the last election. Those who do care would probably never vote Labour anyway and, in any case, Labour's new candidate, Debbie Abrahams, is, as far as anyone knows, innocent by dissociation.

Unless there is a big surge of local anti-Labour sentiment, therefore, Abrahams is likely to win. In national opinion polls, Labour is 10 percentage points up on its general election vote, and the Lib Dems are 13 points down. Having been neck-and-neck in the constituency, that means that Elwyn Watkins, the Lib Dem who brought the court case against Woolas, starts from a long way back – and his party's change of policy on tuition fees hardly helps him.

That is why, incidentally, there is discontent among Conservatives that the Prime Minister wished the Lib Dems well in the contest, and has let it be known that he wants to soft-pedal the Tory campaign to assist Watkins. The Tory vote nationally has held firm since the general election, which means that a simple extrapolation suggests that they should be Labour's main challenger in the by-election. This view is attractive to the bone-headed tendency on the Tory backbenches, and overlooks the dynamics of tactical voting: Tories might vote Lib Dem in the constituency, but Lib Dems are unlikely to vote Tory. In any case, Cameron is merely being polite. He knows it is a lost cause, but at least he can tell Nick Clegg he tried.

So, a good day for Ed Miliband on 13 January. And another bad day for Nick Clegg on 5 May, when the referendum will be held on changing the voting system. The Labour Party – which had been bounced by Gordon Brown into supporting electoral reform in its manifesto – has decided that it does not like coalitions (can't think why), so now anything that smacks of proportional representation, even if it isn't, is seen as an evil Cleggy plot.

The Alternative Vote – which simply means numbering candidates in order of preference – might be a bit more proportional in Britain; but only if the third party continues to attract a lot of votes, which may be a bit doubtful after five years of coalition. And if Labour is not campaigning enthusiastically for a Yes vote, it is hard to see how the forces of small c conservatism and misrepresentation can be beaten back. Especially when so many Lib Dems and electoral reformers themselves are so lukewarm about AV, which they regard as a "miserable" (Clegg's word) pigeon-step towards the fully proportional systems they really want.

Which is a shame, because AV would be a small step towards giving voters a little more power – hardly any need for tactical voting and fewer wasted votes. But that is by way of an aside, because the political consequences are likely to include the further erosion of Clegg's credibility and the Lib Dems' standing.

Nor is there much prospect of a respite for the Lib Dems in the other festivals of democracy in the next year. The referendum in Wales is likely to approve greater law-making powers for the Assembly there, which will be seen as an advance for the Labour-Plaid coalition. There is not much reliable polling on the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish elections in May, but we do not expect much change and certainly no advance for the Lib Dems in Edinburgh or Cardiff.

If we put Clegg to one side, then, as the voters seem inclined to do, what will influence the contest between Cameron and Miliband over the next year? The assumption among left-wing clairvoyants is that, once next week's VAT rise, the National Insurance rise in April and the spending cuts start to bite, the voters will flock to Labour's standard. Just as they did in the last two periods of fiscal retrenchment, in 1979-81 and 1990-92. Oh.

Only this week, Labour folk were congratulating Andy Burnham, now education spokesman, on forcing a second policy reverse on Michael Gove; this time on a free book scheme of which I had never heard; last time it was over school sports, which everyone agrees is a Good Thing but no one actually cares about. These are chimera. The compilers of "Cameron's U-Turns" do not realise that they are enumerating his strengths. A liberal conservative Prime Minister who is flexible enough to adjust his policy details while taking credit for the big, hard decisions needed to balance the nation's books.

I predict a bad year for Nick Clegg; a bad year that will feel like a good one for Ed Miliband; and only one winner.

John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday

twitter.com/JohnRentoul

independent.co.uk/jrentoul

Record number of millionaires created by National Lottery

By Tom Pugh, PA

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

A record-breaking number of millionaires were created by the National Lottery this year, figures revealed today.

A total of 158 people joined the exclusive millionaires' club over the past 12 months, an increase of 26 on 2009.

The lottery paid out £775 million in jackpot prizes alone this year, up £285 million on 2009 and the highest amount ever paid out in one year.

A National Lottery spokesman said: "This has been an extraordinary year for our players with so many new millionaires and multi-millionaires created.

"There have been some huge prizes paid out during the last 12 months, and we've also been told that many of our big winners have created additional millionaires themselves as a result of their win, which is fantastic news."

In October, the National Lottery hit the landmark of creating more than 2,500 millionaires since its launch 16 years ago.

A series of lottery records have also been smashed in what has been regarded as an unprecedented year.

In February, Nigel and Justine Page, from Gloucestershire, scooped the £56 million jackpot prize on EuroMillions.

The win was then followed by two even bigger payouts, one of £84 million in May and then £113 million in October. Both ticket-holders opted to remain anonymous.

Other big winners included George Sturt and his family, from Dorking, Surrey, who collected £26 million between them, and a £39.7 million ticket-holder who remained anonymous.

August saw the highest number of millionaires created when 19 people joined the wealthy club, while October saw the highest amount of prize money paid out, totalling more than £167 million.

A further 25 millionaires were created on Christmas Eve when the National Lottery held a one-off Millionaire Raffle draw.

So far, 15 out of the 25 ticket-holders have come forward to claim their £1 million prize money, a spokesman said.

Only 89 major prizes became classed as unclaimed in 2010, meaning that they remained unclaimed two weeks after the draw.

But 54 prizes were subsequently reunited with the winner within the 180 day deadline, the largest of which was a £5.6 million jackpot in the Port Talbot area of South Wales.

Of the remaining prizes, 15 went over the 180 day deadline and were added to the £25 billion raised for good causes by the National Lottery, while 20 remain still available to claim.

Trillions of sums, but we can't predict a white Christmas

The 'big freeze' is set to return today, but forecasts that look even 10 days ahead always need an element of luck

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

PA

A satellite image of a snow covered Britain, taken earlier this month

When it comes to dreaming of a white Christmas, don't believe all you read in the papers – such as the assertion, prominent yesterday, that it's certain to happen. It might, say the latest forecasts. They also predict the return of the "big freeze" today, which may or may not last as long as a month. But the truth is that modern weather forecasting is all down to sums – and to forecast accurately a weather event 10 days away is simply too big a sum to carry out. Even for the brightest mathematical prodigy.

To calculate current forecasts, which stretch six days or 144 hours ahead, half a million pieces of data have to be put into a mathematical model of the atmosphere run on one of the world's fastest supercomputers at the Met Office's HQ in Exeter.

The computer then performs 7,500 trillion calculations every minute for 90 minutes to carry out the forecast, for a total of 675,000 trillion calculations (or 675 times 1015). The further out you go, the more the number of sums increases, and the less reliable the forecast becomes. Ten days away is simply too far, the Met Office says, for any forecast to be accurate.

Gone are the days when forecasting was based on checking the barometer, poring over old records, looking at present weather conditions and glancing quizzically at the sky. For the past half-century, since the advent of modern computers, foretelling the sunshine, the wind and the rain or snow has been based on a system known as numerical weather prediction (NWP), which tries to make what were once educated guesses into a more exact science.

NWP takes observations of conditions throughout the atmosphere at a given moment, such as the wind speed, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, and calculates how they will influence each other, using the laws of physics, to develop a weather pattern at a subsequent moment. It was first conceived by the British mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson in 1922, but it was not until modern computers became available in the 1950s that the huge amount of data necessary to model atmospheric conditions could be handled in real time.

Since then, the science has steadily improved with increasing computer power, and the Met Office says it can now give a five-day forecast as good as its two-day forecast was 30 years ago. But it can never be perfect – because to be perfect, you would need an infinite amount of data.

It's all down to the fact that a tiny difference at the beginning of an enormous calculation can make at enormous difference to the calculation's end, a phenomenon known as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions".

This is sometimes illustrated with the much-misunderstood metaphor of the butterfly's wing – the idea that the flap of a butterfly's wing in China can eventually be responsible for a hurricane in the Atlantic.

It does not mean that the butterfly has directly caused the hurricane, rather that the flapping of its wings one way or another – a tiny difference at the beginning of a process – might have a huge effect at the end, such as the presence or absence of a hurricane. The atmosphere is continuously full of tiny movements and forces, and, to model their reaction upon each other and predict the outcome, you would have to know them all. "The atmosphere is very complicated," said Dave Britton, a Met Office spokesman. "If you wanted accurately to predict the weather every time, you would have to know where every single air molecule was and where every single water droplet was and how the wind was blowing in every part of the atmosphere. The amount of data would in effect be infinite, and then you would have to calculate how it would all work out."

Meteorologists are surprised at just how accurate they can be, at short time scales of up to six days, using an amount of weather data a long way short of infinity.

It is collected by constructing a grid across the world, one "box" of which is shown in the graphic, which goes up into the atmosphere for up to 70 levels (and also down into the ocean for up to 30 levels.)

The illustration is of a grid of 100km squares, but actual forecasts are done at a finer resolution: 40km squares for the world weather, and 12km squares for Britain.

In terms of accuracy, the Met Office says the next-day forecast is "good advice 85 to 86 per cent of the time". But the farther out you get, the more the accuracy diminishes, and yesterday's widely reported assertion by an independent weather forecaster based in Wales that a snowy Yuletide is a racing certainty is regarded as scientific nonsense.

"It's simply too early to tell," Mr Britton said. "The six- to 15-day forecast looks like it will remain cold, but which will be the less cold days, and whether it will rain or snow on Christmas Day, is very difficult to say."

Forecasting: A history

A red sky at night, they used to say, is a sailor's delight (or a shepherd's) - that is, a guarantee of fine weather on the morrow.

That sort of folklore, the observation of repeated patterns and the hope that they would repeat again, was the basis of attempted weather forecasting for thousands of years. It was not until the mid-19th century that scientific weather forecasting was developed, led by Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the senior naval officer who 25 years earlier had commanded the survey ship HMS Beagle on which Charles Darwin sailed to South America as resident naturalist.

In 1854 Fitzroy was appointed as head of what eventually became the Meteorolgoical Office and began the systematic and scientific collection of weather data; the invention of the electric telegraph was also found to be a great help in forecasting as it could quickly send news of distant weather conditions.

But it was to be another century before the advent of the computer was to make possible numerical weather prediction, the method which turned forecasting (at least in the short term) into something approaching an exact science.