Andy Roberts

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  Ash cloud moves towards UK airspace

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/23/ash-cloud-moves-towards-uk-airspace

  Ash from Iceland’s Grimsvötn volcano could affect Heathrow by the end of the weekThis article titled “Ash cloud moves towards UK airspace” was written by Dan Milmo and Adam Gabbatt, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 23rd May 2011 10.04 UTCAirlines and airports have been warned to expect ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano to arrive in UK airspace by Tuesday, with the possibility that it could affect Heathrow airport by the end of the week.The safety watchdog for British airlines and airports, the Civil Aviation Authority, said today that particles from the Grimsvötn volcano could reach Scotland by midnight tonight and western England by Thursday or Friday, depending on wind direction.If airspace in western England, Ireland and the Atlantic is affected by the smoke plume transatlantic flights in and out of Heathrow could suffer delays later this week as planes are diverted around the most dense parts of the cloud.However, the Civil Aviation Authority said it was confident that a new Europe-wide safety regime introduced after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year would reduce disruption significantly and avoid the continental shutdown that stranded millions. Under the new operating procedures, it is understood that the effect of last year’s plume on commercial routes would have been 75% smaller.Nonetheless, some disruption is expected as airplanes divert around the heaviest parts of the cloud. According to the latest forecasts, Inverness and Aberdeen are the most likely airports to suffer disruption tomorrow, although the most accurate estimates can only predict six hours ahead.“Our number one priority is to ensure the safety of people both on board aircraft and on the ground. We can’t rule out disruption, but the new arrangements that have been put in place since last year’s ash cloud mean the aviation sector is better prepared and will help to reduce any disruption in the event that volcanic ash affects UK airspace,” said Andrew Haines, CAA chief executive.Under previous guidelines, aircraft were summarily grounded if there was any volcanic ash in the air. Now, airlines can fly through ash plumes if they can demonstrate that their fleets can handle medium or high-level densities of ash.The Met Office’s volcanic ash advisory centre will identify the density and location of the cloud, aided by satellite images, weather balloons and a radar specially installed for monitoring purposes in Iceland last year. Once those zones are relayed to airlines, they will need to prove that they can fly through them by producing “safety cases” that will include information from aircraft and engine manufacturers on the airline’s tolerance to volcanic ash.A CAA spokesman said all major UK airlines already had safety preparations for medium-density ash clouds.“We are in a much better position than last time,” he said. “Safety will still be paramount but we will be able to drastically reduce disruption compared to last time, provided there is not a huge amount of high-density ash.” The spokesman said a similar level of ash to the Eyjafjallajökull incident would not result in a mass-grounding. “It will be a different picture.” However, jets will have to divert around high-density clouds, causing delays on some routes, because no UK airline has submitted a safety case for flying through heavy ash plumes.BAA, the owner of Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports, has convened a crisis support team to prepare for a reduction in flights, as airlines and airports await a further briefing from Eurocontrol and the UK air traffic controller, Nats. “We are working closely with the CAA and Nats in preparing contingency plans if ash enters UK airspace,” it said.Under the new ash guidelines, cloud densities are split into three levels: low, medium and high. Once the Met Office assigns a particular density of ash to a section of airspace, airlines must prove they have the safety case to fly through it. A low density cloud is 2g of ash per 10 cubic metres of air, with medium being 2g to 4g of ash per 10 cubic metres. Anything above 4g is deemed high density.The Grimsvötn volcano began erupting on Sunday, causing flights to be cancelled at Iceland’s main Keflavik airport after it sent a plume of ash, smoke and steam 12 miles into the air. Experts have said the eruption was unlikely to have the dramatic impact that the Eyjafjallajökull volcano had in April 2010.“At the moment if the volcano continues to erupt to the same level it has been, and is now, the UK could be at risk of seeing volcanic ash later this week,” said Helen Chivers, a Met Office spokeswoman. “Quite when and how much we can’t really define at the moment.”She said the weather situation was likely to be different from last year, with the wind direction set to change continuously. She added: “If it moves in the way that we’re currently looking, with the eruption continuing the way it is, then if the UK is at risk later this week, then France and Spain could be as well.”While the ash has grounded aircraft in Iceland, it is not anticipated that it will have a similar impact in the rest of Europe.Dr Dave McGarvie, volcanologist at the Open University, said the amount of ash reaching the UK was “likely to be less than in the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption”, and the last two times Grimsvötn erupted it had not affected UK air travel.“In addition, the experience gained from the 2010 eruption, especially by the Met Office, the airline industry, and the engine manufacturers, should mean less disruption to travellers,” he said.The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in south-east Iceland in April 2010 caused the worst disruption to international air travel since 9/11. Flights across Europe were cancelled for six days, stranding tens of thousands of people, and the eruption was estimated to have cost airlines £130m a day.Eurocontrol said in a statement: “There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours. Aircraft operators are constantly being kept informed of the evolving situation.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAsh cloud moves towards UK airspaceRelated posts:How to pronounce EyjafjallajoekullAsh Grounds Planes, Rest Of World Cut OffTag Cloud

  

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  May 23 2011, 4:09pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/18/london-olympics-organisers-appeal-to-protesters-not-to-disrupt-flame-route

  Lord Coe says he is confident balance can be struck between security and celebration as he unveils locations of the Olmpic torch’s 70-day journey around the UK to herald the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games.This article titled “London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route” was written by Owen Gibson, sports news correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2011 16.03 UTCLondon 2012 organisers called on protest groups not to disrupt the 8,000-mile journey of the Olympic flame around the UK, after unveiling its route for the first time.Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), said he was confident the balance could be struck between guaranteeing the safety of the 8,000 torchbearers and ensuring a celebratory atmosphere.“We will make sure that the torch flame gets around the UK in the safest and most secure way, but at the same time we want communities to celebrate it and not [put it] behind a cordon of steel. I think we’ll get the balance right,” he said.He appealed to protest groups not to target the route of the torch, which according to tradition will be lit on Mount Olympus before beginning its journey around the UK at Land’s End on 18 May next year.“This is friendship, this is respect, this is showcasing extraordinary talent in local communities. I really don’t sit here thinking this will be a catalyst for massive demonstrations. I think people get this,” he said.The Beijing torch relay in 2008, the last that ventured beyond the borders of the host country before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed its policy, was chiefly remembered for protests and heavy-handed security. In Vancouver, protesters disrupted the last few days of the event, sparking counter-demonstrations from those supporting it.Coe, unveiling the first 74 locations on the torch’s 70-day tour of the UK, said the relay would be vital in igniting enthusiasm for the London Games beyond the capital and insisted that it would not be a giant marketing exercise for sponsors.“I am proud and excited as I envisage the moment that really marks the start of our Olympic celebrations in the UK and far beyond,” said Coe, who ran with the torch ahead of the Vancouver Games.“As it made its way around Canada, it drew renewable power from every community it passed through. As it made its journey across that huge land mass, Vancouver’s Games became Canada’s Games.“That is London 2012′s intention too. Ours will be a Games that takes place on your doorstep.”The 8,000 torchbearer places are divided between Locog and the three “presenting partners” – Coca-Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung – who will help fund the events that will take place at each overnight stop.As the only part of the Olympics that can be branded, it is likely the sponsors will have a heavy presence but, like Locog, they have promised to make the vast majority of their torchbearer places available to members of the public.Coe said more than 90% of places would be taken by the public, with half of the torchbearers aged between 12 and 24.Locog has already launched its own nominations campaign, inviting the public to put forward members of their community with inspiring stories.The sponsors will take a similar approach in distributing the tickets to the public and staff. The cast of public torchbearers is likely to be augmented by athletes and celebrities.The announcement has also sparked speculation about the likely identity of the final torchbearer who will light the cauldron in the Olympic stadium at the climax of the opening ceremony, with bookmakers installing Sir Steve Redgrave as favourite.The final route will take the torch to within an hour of 95% of the population across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and six outlying islands. It will visit the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Lewis. Coe said Locog was also in advanced talks to take the torch to Dublin.British IOC member Sir Craig Reedie said the route would also pass UK sporting landmarks including Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St Andrew’s and Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the birthplace of the modern Olympics.The event will also be crucial to the cash-strapped British Olympic Association. Under the terms of its recent settlement with Locog after it backed down in a row over the division of any surplus from the Games, it will receive the royalties to two branded items of Olympic merchandise.In Vancouver, more than 3.5m pairs of red mittens were sold to those who lined the route to raise money for Canadian sport. The BOA will unveil its branded merchandise next year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeRelated posts:London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment processLondon 2012 Olympics countdown clock stopsIran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells ‘Zion’

  

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  May 18 2011, 11:57am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Wildfires blaze across parts of Britain after hottest April on record

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/04/wildfires-blaze-across-parts-of-britain-after-hottest-april-on-record

  Wild Fires hit Northern Ireland, north-west England, and several areas of Scotland including the Balmoral estate, as well as Swinley Forest in Berkshire

  This article titled “Wildfires blaze across parts of Britain after hottest April on record” was written by Helen Carter, for The Guardian on Wednesday 4th May 2011 12.53 UTC Heathland fires have been burning across parts of the UK for days amid unprecedented dry weather, with no respite on the horizon until the weekend. The hottest April on record, which registered only 21% of expected rainfall in England and Wales, has hampered the efforts of firefighters and caused vast areas of parched land to go up in flames. Blazes fanned by high winds have been seen in areas of Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, with hundreds of firefighters called in and helicopters used to drop water in the worst-affected regions. The weather forecast shows little chance of any substantial rain falling before Thursday, with central and eastern England having to wait until the weekend. Roads have been closed and 170 firefighters have been called to the Swinley Forest area of Berkshire, where a number of fires broke out. In the north-west of England in Lancashire, fires began on moorland in Belmont, near Bolton, as well as in Ormskirk and Bacup. Police in Northern Ireland are investigating reports of a man seen with a petrol can close to one of the worst gorse fires for years in the Mourne mountains. There were reports of two youths lighting fires in south Armagh. Hundreds of acres of land are being destroyed and homes and livestock threatened by fires which burned for much of the bank holiday weekend in counties Down, Armagh and Tyrone. Scotland, where the royal estate of Balmoral is affected among several other areas, and Northern Ireland had just two-thirds of the rain normally expected in April. The average temperature in England was the hottest since records began 353 years ago. Despite the dry weather, the Environment Agency is not planning a hosepipe ban. A spokesman said: “We feel confident there is enough water to see out spring and summer without restrictions on the public supply.”

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  Related posts:Smallest cities in the United Kingdom Isles of Scilly turn heat on Jersey over ‘warmest place in Britain’ claim Ireland, Portugal … Britain? George Osborne only has Plan A

  

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  May 4 2011, 10:56am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Supermarkets kill free markets as well as our communities

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/supermarkets-kill-free-markets-as-well-as-our-communities

  Across the country local shops have been wiped out by supermarkets.

  This article titled “Supermarkets kill free markets as well as our communities” was written by Peter Wilby, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 20.00 UTC A few weeks ago our last local butcher closed. When we moved to this suburban Essex town 40 years ago, it had six specialist shops selling fresh meat. The last independent greengrocer disappeared nearly two decades ago. Happily, we still have an independent baker close by, and even a fishmonger a brisk 25-minute walk away. But for how long? Across the country the small retailer is being wiped out. In the whole of Britain there are fewer than 1,000 specialist fishmongers, 7,000 butchers and 4,000 greengrocers, and barely 3,000 independent bakeries. In all these categories, the number of specialists has fallen by 90% since the 1950s, and at least 40% in the last decade alone. They have been driven out by supermarkets, which now sell 97% of our food, with four chains accounting for 76%. Next to the motor car, nothing else has so radically changed the look and texture of our environment over the last half-century – creating what the New Economics Foundation calls “clone-town Britain” where every high street has the same shops. Until now politicians have had almost nothing to say about it. However, last Sunday the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was asked about the “Tesco-isation” of high streets – a subject prompted by two riots in Bristol over a Tesco store – and said: “I think that is an issue, yes, and it is something that we’re looking at.” Hardly a rallying cry, but an encouraging change from the standard political response, endorsed by the Competition Commission in 2008, that consumers like the low prices, range of goods and quality offered by supermarkets. An advance too from Labour’s position in Scotland: in February it helped defeat the SNP minority government’s proposal to impose a “supermarket tax” on retail premises worth £750,000 or more. Even the “good for consumers” defence of the big stores requires scrutiny. Supermarkets may offer mangoes and kiwi fruit as a blessed relief to generations who recall the surly greengrocer grunting “no demand for it” when asked for anything out of the ordinary. But the option to buy locally grown produce is increasingly closed off; many varieties of English fruit disappeared long ago. Supermarkets stock food not for its taste, but for its longevity and appearance. Conventional economists count numbers, assuming that a huge increase in toilet roll colours represents an unqualified gain to the consumer. They neglect more subtle dimensions of choice. The central issue, however, is whether “what the consumer wants” should close down the argument. What people want as consumers may not be what they want as householders, community members, producers, employees or entrepreneurs. The loss of small shops drains a locality’s economic and social capital. Money spent in independent retail outlets tends to stay in the community, providing work for local lawyers and accountants, plumbers and decorators, window cleaners and builders. US research finds that every $100 spent at a local store generates 60% more local economic activity than $100 spent in a chain store down the road. It also finds that, after the arrival of a big supermarket, participation in local charities, churches, campaign groups and even voting declines sharply. As Jane Jacobs argued in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1960), communities are created by myriad small daily encounters: getting cooking tips from the greengrocer, hearing about a job from the butcher, recommending a good plumber at the bakery, exchanging opinions in the pub. “The sum of such casual, public contact at the local level,” wrote Jacobs, “…is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust.” Supermarkets minimise human contact in the interests of efficiency and convenience, most recently by introducing self-service lanes for payment. As one critic put it, they “cut the threads that hold an engaged community together”. Such issues should concern the right as much as the left: indeed, the most hard-hitting recent report on supermarkets came from ResPublica, the “red Tory” thinktank, and points out that only 12% of Britons hold business assets – and that, when monopoly goes unchecked and a sector of the economy is in effect closed to new entrants (as the grocery sector largely is), we start to “practise capitalism without capitalists”. Becoming a small retailer once allowed an ordinary working man or woman, and particularly an Asian migrant, to aspire – often after redundancy – to independence, self-reliance and upward social mobility. Moreover, supermarkets have become not only a monopoly, giving consumers a diminishing choice of food outlets, but also a monopsony, giving suppliers little choice of buyers for their produce. They have used this power ruthlessly, forcing down prices and increasingly dictating to suppliers what they produce, where they produce it and how they package it. The casualty rate for small producers, unable to survive on the supermarkets’ terms, is almost as great as for small shops. The effect on wages and working conditions in the food industry is well known, but the effect on what is supposed to be a free market is less often considered. Eastern European regimes, dictating from remote, central offices who could grow how much of what, were once regarded with horror. Even western governments were denounced when they adopted industrial policies to choose “winners” and “losers”. Tesco does that every day, and its suppliers have as little recourse to legal or political redress as a Soviet peasant.

  The supermarkets are classic examples of what has been called the tyranny of small choices. Any rational individual will buy most of his or her food and household goods from a big store because prices are lower, choice greater, quality more consistent, and service speedier. I may have the time and money to tour smaller shops. My neighbour, while recognising he may get something better from a specialist retailer, may judge that it will not be so reliably better (for my parents’ generation, supermarkets were liberators from the risks of mouldy cheddar and maggoty apples) as to justify the extra cost and time. Neither of us will take much account of community cohesion or local employment, still less of the dangers of monopoly and monopsony. This is where we should look to politicians for a larger view. They need not confront supermarkets directly, which clearly terrifies them. But they can partially re-create, and preserve what is left of, the independent retail sector through, for example, tax concessions; a community right to take over or find buyers for threatened businesses; and enhanced powers for local councils to protect retail competitiveness. This is an issue – straddling political and ideological boundaries and putting flesh on the abstractions of communities, big societies and social mobility – that Miliband and the Labour leadership, encouraged by the stirrings in Bristol, should seize.

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  May 3 2011, 5:17pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Scottish critics shouldn’t write off George Galloway

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/24/scottish-critics-shouldnt-write-off-george-galloway

  If the Respect candidate George Galloway is chosen as a Glasgow list MSP, he will be a force to be reckoned with at Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament.

  This article titled “Scottish critics shouldn’t write off George Galloway” was written by Kevin McKenna, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 22nd April 2011 15.30 UTC The sun was out for George Galloway this week as he campaigned vigorously in Buchanan Street, Glasgow’s main shopping thoroughfare. And so too were a few hundred of his fellow citizens. Karen Millen and Hugo Boss could wait for a while, for here they were witnessing a rare thing: a Scottish politician who could speak without notes for 15 minutes, and whom they all recognised. Galloway on a soapbox and with a megaphone in his hand can be irresistible and the handful of curious passers-by had swelled to a throng by the time he had finished a rodomontade which excoriated Labour and the Conservatives for neglecting his city. “The life expectancy of people in parts of this city is 10 years worse than in Kabul,” he bellowed. “The people who purport to represent you have let you down. But if you send me to Holyrood I will make you proud of me.” It was the usual mixture of braggadocio and grandiloquence we have come to expect from a politician who was born on the edge but probably found it too comfortable. Several of the seeming vast army of psephologists and political academics – the only industry that has grown in Scotland since Holyrood came into being – dismiss Galloway. He is an incurable self-publicist, they howl and cannot be taken seriously, especially after his antics in a leotard with Rula Lenska on Big Brother. More people though, still remember what they were doing when they saw Galloway eviscerate a three-man senate sub-committee in Washington in 2005. They had been sent to hang him but suffered their very own TV execution when this chippy Scot destroyed the defence of US foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Galloway reckons he needs around 12,000 second preference votes on May 5 to make it into Holyrood as a Glasgow list candidate. It would be foolish to write him off or dismiss him as a political force. Few remember now that Galloway was chairman of the Scottish Labour party at 27. A few years later he was taking Hillhead from the redoubtable Roy Jenkins. His victory in Bethnal Green for his new Respect party in 2005 was simply astonishing. His expulsion from the Labour party came after he had condemned Tony Blair for Iraq one too many times. Yet just a few years previously the late John Smith would have made him minister for youth in his first cabinet. But Smith’s death and the accession of Blair meant Galloway’s marriage to the party would soon be over. There are even some, like the Daily Telegraph’s formidable Scottish editor, Alan Cochrane, who, while despising Galloway’s politics, have stated they would welcome his presence in parliament. The Holyrood debating chamber can be a sterile and soulless place when there is business to be discussed. As a succession of civic Scotland’s finest rise to speak, blinking and stuttering their way through a prepared address, you wonder how they ever got elected. Of what few articulate and genuinely bright MSPs there have been in post-devolution Scotland, the SNP has had the vast majority. A characteristic of the last nationalist administration is how easily their cabinet stars lord it over Labour’s hapless and inarticulate front bench. If Galloway gets in they will have to start printing tickets for the occasion that he first takes on Alex Salmond in debate. Each of them was a lion in debate at Westminster and the prospect of them locking horns at Holyrood is a spicy one. If Iain Gray, Labour’s increasingly vulnerable Scottish leader, had even half of Galloway’s recognition factor he would be Scotland’s first minister after May 5. An insistent press photographer is trying to persuade Galloway’s campaign manager to pose beside the statue of Donald Dewar that stands atop Buchanan Street. Wisely, he resists the snapper’s entreaties, for surely that would hint at hubris. George Galloway could have led his party too but no statue of his would ever remain vandal-proof for more than a week.

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  April 24 2011, 4:11am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Osprey webcam thrills bird lovers as Lady of the Loch awaits mate

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/05/osprey-webcam-thrills-bird-lovers-as-lady-of-the-loch-awaits-mate

  Thousands log on worldwide to the Osprey webcam to watch the oldest breeding osprey keep vigil beside a Scottish loch.

  This article titled “Osprey webcam thrills bird lovers as Lady of the Loch awaits mate” was written by Tracy McVeigh, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 23.14 UTC Inside a wooden hide at the edge of a Perthshire loch, there is a flurry of excitement and a crackling of waterproof clothing. Binoculars are raised and whispered instructions exchanged. But hopes quickly fade as the alarm proves a false one. The bird that has swooped into sight is not the one they’d been waiting for. “She is taking a defensive stand; it’s not Him,” said seasonal ranger Anna Cheshier. “Look, she’s seeing him off. It’s just an interloper trying his luck.” There is a palpable feeling of disappointment in the hide, where half a dozen people sit glued to the goings-on on a platform of sticks less than 200 yards away, 60 feet up a Scots pine tree. Inside the nearby visitor centre, many more are watching the action in real time on two large HD television screens. More than 100,000 people have already viewed the webcam. The object of all the attention is Lady, the osprey, who stands in her giant nest and looks out to the blue skies. Having confounded the experts by not only living to the age of 26, against the eight years’ lifespan the bird was thought to have, but also by producing 48 fledglings, she is now waiting for Him – a 10-year-old male with whom she mated last year. He is due to land any day after a 3,000-mile migration back from west Africa. Ospreys mate for life so, if he has survived, he should be on his way. But if he doesn’t get here within the next few days, Lady is likely to presume him dead and move on to another male. In her lifetime, she has already outlived two mates. “The interest is huge,” said Cheshier, 25, from the Scottish Wildlife Trust‘s Loch of the Lowes nature reservation outside Dunkeld, an hour’s drive north of Edinburgh. “Lady is a star attraction and also very important. She has been coming back to her nest here for 19 years, but last year she was very ill and we all thought she was going to die, so no one imagined she’d be back this year.” Lady survived her near-death illness and arrived back from her African winter late last Monday night. She is not chipped or ringed, so it wasn’t until later, when the cameras got a look in her eyes, that the rangers were sure the remarkable raptor had returned. “She has a unique defect in the iris of her right eye – it looks like a lightning bolt,” said Cheshier. “It was amazing to see her come back; she is bucking every trend, rewriting the books.” Since her return, Lady has been helping herself to the loch’s supplies of perch and trout, even visiting the nearby Tay to catch herself a salmon, tidying up the nest, and waiting. Meanwhile, she is being closely watched by experts and fans. On the branches around her are positioned discreet cameras trained on the nest, one for day and one for night, and two microphones that pick up every ruffle of her feathers and her occasional piercing hawk cry. Live pictures are being eagerly watched around the world. Last year 33,000 people viewed the webcam online, but this year 120,000 have viewed the Lady of the Loch. “We will have the computer on all day in the background, just having a look every now and again,” said Jenny Hillier, up from Southampton with her husband, Pete, on a short break to see the bird. “We followed her on the webcam last year and the year before, but assumed she’d be dead. It’s amazing she’s back.” Pete Hillier has been writing about their trip on a wildlife blog to envious bird lovers around the country. “It’s quite something to see her – I think it’s the age of her, and the fact you can see her so close up here, that makes her so special,” he said. Colin and Dorothy Wilson from Dunfermline, Fife, are rooting for Lady, taking a detour from their spring break to make a pilgrimage to the nest. “We were here last June to see her and then we heard she hadn’t been so well, so we were astonished that she was back, and we had to come. It makes such a difference to be able to see wildlife like this,” said Dorothy. Two other diehard osprey fans, Alan Barraclough, 77, and Hazel Studham, 74, have come up from Cumbria to see Lady. “She’s a very special bird; we didn’t think she’d make it through the winter. I hope her beau turns up,” said Studham. Smaller than an eagle, larger than a hawk, the osprey disappeared as a species from the UK in 1916, when the last pair was killed by egg and bird hunters such as Victorian collector William Dunbar, who guiltily wrote to a friend that their obsessions “had finally done for the osprey”. Even when they returned in the 1950s to recolonise old haunts, their small numbers remained under threat, especially from postwar pesticides such as DDT. But now the osprey’s tenacity gives real encouragment to environmentalists. Roy Dennis, a conservation veteran and honorary director of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife, said Lady’s return was an astonishing feat. “It’s a real emblem, the osprey. People can see it [while they are] having a picnic on the side of a loch and you’ll see one dive in, so it’s very visible, distinct and identifiable, unlike a lot of birds. “It’s a great ambassador. But the reason osprey came back is that the habitat and the food supply are still here. It’s the persecution of the species, the shooting, that has stopped. With some of our other birds, it will be harder as their habitat is going. If Scotland isn’t becoming entirely the nature reserve of the UK, then it’s certainly its lungs – the successes with sea and white-tailed eagles, red grouse are great, but we need to do more for conservation, encouraged by these successes.” But as Dunkeld’s aged raptor enchants wildlife lovers around the world, Dennis thinks Lady may have a wait ahead of her. “I was out checking on osprey nests near me today and of 12 only two birds had returned. The weather hasn’t been so good and the closest of the tracked males is still in Spain, so it’s early days,” he said. “It could be another three or four days.”   Find the webcam at swt.org.uk/wildlife/webcams/loch-of-lowes2/

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  April 5 2011, 2:49pm | Comments »

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  UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/uk-uncut-accuses-police-of-politically-motivated-arrests

  The UK Uncut Campaign group are claiming that the police are trying to disband it following arrests at Fortnum and Mason sit-in.

  This article titled “UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests” was written by Mark Townsend, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 20.44 UTC Protest group UK Uncut signalled its intention to continue occupying high street stores as police released images of individuals wanted in connection with violent disorder. A spokesman for the tax avoidance campaigners insisted they would not be cowed, despite concerns that the Met is intent on disabling the group’s command structure and has “politically targeted” its ringleaders. The Met has charged 138 people – practically the movement’s entire leadership – with aggravated trespass after a UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason in central London during the anti-cuts march. A meeting of UK Uncut supporters heard that those charged have had their phones confiscated. The mobiles contain details of the group’s secure networks and email accounts used to mobilise and organise its actions. The group believes the decision to charge all those inside Fortnum & Mason was an attempt by police to crush the movement. Only two of its chief ringleaders were outside the store at the time. “Practically the entire UK Uncut was inside, but it’s definitely not the end of that tactic because most people can see that this is political policing,” said the spokesman. The group is baffled why Scotland Yard, which rejects claims of politically motivated policing, decided to charge its members while previous peaceful occupations had seen officers take no action. Video evidence reveals a senior police officer assuring protesters on the day that they would not be detained upon leaving the store. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard has released 18 images of protesters, unconnected to UK Uncut, that they are keen to identify in the wake of the disorder. The investigation, Operation Brontide, is expected to publicise more images, mainly from CCTV. The Met is eager to disrupt those engaged in “black bloc” tactics, and is believed to have footage showing anarchists removing black clothing, bandanas and scarves before changing into civilian gear to evade detection. Detective chief superintendent Matthew Horne, leading Operation Brontide, said: “A significant minority came to London to cause violence and damage. There is an extensive operation to identify these people.” Fresh claims of politically motivated policing have also surfaced in a report alleging that officers prevented Muslims from attending counter demonstrations against a major English Defence League rally. Leicester constabulary operated a policy of stopping elements of the Muslim community protesting against the EDL during a high-profile march in the city last October, according to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol). It said that the force attempted to dissuade Muslims through mosques and schools from protesting against the EDL demonstration at an authorised protest by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) on the same day, and issued leaflets advising that young people could be picked up and held in “safe areas”. Val Swain of Netpol said: “This is a strategy that we have seen up and down the country, and it appears to have been sanctioned at the highest levels. “The way in which the police are interfering in communities to deter people from organising and participating in lawful, legitimate protest is deeply disturbing. It is not for the police to decide which sectors of society are allowed to protest and which are not.” Saqib Deshmukh, a youth worker in the East Midlands, said it appeared that officers were willing to facilitate the EDL’s right to protest at the expense of the Muslim community, adding: “Certain groups of people are being denied the right to protest. It seems that the government is far more worried about the mobilisation of Muslim people than they are about the EDL.” Police in Lancashire adopted another tactic, imposing a limit of 3,000 on both an EDL march and one by counter-demonstrators in Blackburn to reduce the possibility of violence. The report by Netpol claims the reaction by Leicester constabulary could breach articles 10 and 11, the freedom of assembly and expression, of the European convention on human rights. It also reveals widespread disquiet over why the EDL was allowed to congregate in city centre pubs before the march and move close to Muslim areas. One community worker described their treatment as a “policy of appeasement”. The Leicester force has previously stated that it adopted polices to reduce the risk of public disorder and that it engaged with the Muslim community and acted in its interests.

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  April 2 2011, 4:17pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Why we must make the adder count

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/why-we-must-make-the-adder-count

  More research into adder genetics may prevent small isolated colonies from dying out. Our only venomous snake is an important part of UK wildlife heritage.

  This article titled “Why we must make the adder count” was written by John Baker, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 2nd April 2011 09.00 UTC One of only six reptile species native to Britain, the adder is a fussy creature. Its restriction to specific habitats, and its frequent disturbance by human activity, well-meaning and otherwise, have made its populations isolated and prone to the effects of inbreeding. The Institute of Zoology, Natural England and Oxford University is undertaking a survey of adders (also known as vipers) to identify whether their population in the UK is suffering from a lack of genetic diversity. This is encouraging, and I fully support further research into adder genetics. Two of the other reptile species in Britain, the sand lizard and smooth snake, have always had limited natural ranges here. Because of this, they have strict legal protection and have been the subject of conservation programmes to protect and manage the few sites where they occur, and to reintroduce them to places from where they have disappeared. The adder is one of the remaining four species that we call “widespread” because they have much larger natural ranges in Britain. The adder can be found from the very south-west of England all the way north to Scotland. This does not mean that Britain is brimming with them or any other reptile species: within their apparently large ranges, they are restricted to certain types of habitat. The adder prefers grassland, scrub and woodland edge, primarily on sandy soils. There are also other factors that make it a particularly vulnerable species. Back in 2004, English Nature (now Natural England) contacted naturalists around the country who had good knowledge of adder populations and asked them to evaluate the health of “their” adders, with some interesting results. In their opinion, “disturbance” was the greatest threat. But analysis of the data revealed some other trends. A third of the adder populations were small (estimated as fewer than 10 adult snakes), and more than a third of the populations were isolated. Population declines tended to be more frequent among these small or isolated populations, as is to be expected due to chance fluctuations, but also as you would expect from inbreeding. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation co-ordinates Make the Adder Count, a project encouraging local adder conservation and long-term monitoring of populations, pooling information from a small but dedicated band of adder-watchers around the country. They, too, have consistently reported that the greatest threat to adders is disturbance. On further questioning, it become apparent that disturbance can have different causes. In some cases it refers to destruction of habitat – something that can happen even on protected sites, unintentionally, through “habitat management”. Adders are also still being killed by humans, through overly heavy-handed management of some of the areas they inhabit. Sometimes disturbance can also result from people visiting well-known adder sites. So, can the general public help at all? Certainly. They can visit the Sliding Scales campaign website, a project for recording current or recent distributions of any snakes, as well as visiting the Add an Adder site – which aims to collect “records from the past” (both from personal experience and anecdotes from friends and relatives) to get a better idea of not only where adders are, but also where they used to be. If people find shed skins (or “sloughs”) of adders, they can also be sent to the ARC Trust – those will be used in a research project to better understand adder genetics. The animals we love face a range of threats. We herpetologists wait with interest to learn more about the genetics of our adder populations.

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  April 2 2011, 2:33pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips

  Arts Council cuts have hit many of this week’s theatre companies, from Shared Experience to Manchester’s Greenroom. All the more important to go on theatre breaks and see them – now.

  This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 1st April 2011 14.06 UTC There’s plenty of great theatre around this week, but the question after this week’s cuts is whether the same will be true in five years’ time – or even a year. The Arts Council is not to blame for the hand it’s been dealt by the government, but has it really done enough to realign the landscape and redirect money away from the haves to the have-nots? Most importantly, has ACE’s strategic thinking been as robust as it needs to be to ensure that theatre continues to thrive and audiences grow both in numbers and diversity? So let’s start What to see this week with fine companies who have been unlucky in the recent funding round. Shared Experience have been excluded from the National Portfolio but who – as their multi-layered production Brontë confirms – can deliver probing and beautiful work. Catch it at Oxford Playhouse until tomorrow, and then at London’s Tricycle Theatre from next Tuesday. Another casualty – and one of several small touring companies who have been cut, including Northumberland Theatre Company and Oxfordshire Theatre Co – is Forest Forge, which is out on the road playing village halls and venues with Peeling (tonight at the Lighthouse, Poole). Then there’s Manchester’s Greenroom, which for 28 years has been supporting artists making performance and live art in a city dominated by the Royal Exchange, and who are this week playing host to Kings of England and Levantes Dance Theatre through their Method Lab, a scheme that previously helped nurture Nic Green’s Trilogy and Drunken Chorus. Remove the venue, and where do the artists find the support they need? Despite an 11% cut for many organisations, regional theatre buildings are going to have to do a great deal more to nurture talent, support companies and present work. Feeling the pinch will be no excuse and it can’t be business as usual. Every bit of theatre is now reliant on collaboration. This week Coventry’s Belgrade theatre, which took almost a 15% hit, has a new version of Uncle Vanya, which will then transfer to London’s Arcola (which, with an 82% rise, was one of the day’s big winners). North in Bolton, the Octagon opens its tale of local hero and steeplejack Fred Dibnah, The Demolition Man, in the same week that its highly acclaimed revival of The Price transfers to the Stephen Joseph, which says goodbye to Paines Plough’s touring show, Love Love Love, which in turns is heading into the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It’s all connected, and my hunch is that it will have to be more so in the years ahead. Staying in the north, Birmingham Rep’s teenage drama of life and death, Notes to Future Self, goes into the Royal Exchange Studio, the excellent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf continues at Sheffield Crucible before heading to Northern Stage, and Alan Bennett’s tale of the woman who took up residence in his garden, Lady in the Van, is revived at Hull Truck. While we’re in Yorkshire, do think about booking for Harrogate’s Two’s Company Festival in May, a mini version of BAC’s brilliant One-on-One Festival, which features Laura Mugridge’s delightful camper van show, Running on Air, a new piece by Analogue, and Tea is an Evening Meal, a collaboration between Northern Stage and Third Angel, (the latter very mysteriously cut by ACE). Two successes in the funding round are Freedom Studios who are behind Mill – City of Dreams in Bradford, and Theatre in the Mill, which this weekend offers the interactive thriller, The Falling Sickness, and follows it with Instant Dissidence’s One on One, When Night Falls, from Tuesday. Let’s head further south to the Royal and Derngate in Northampton, where Rattigan’s In Praise of Love opens next week, and from there into London, where the lively young Colombian circus, Circolombia, which is made up of former street kids, returns to the Roundhouse (another funding winner). Looking ahead, at the Roundhouse you should be booking for The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories, Mark Storor’s participatory show made with teenagers. The Almeida may have suffered a substantial 39% funding cut, but it still gets £704,000, which should be more than enough to ensure that it continues projects such as Crawling in the Dark, a new play for young people inspired by the current main house hit, David Eldridge’s addiction drama, The Knot of the Heart. Soho Theatre – another significant loser but with new artistic director Steve Marmion at the helm – has Bryony Kimmings’ Sex Idiot, a tale of STDs and pubic hair. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre bring Mark O’Rowe’s play about Dublin life Terminus to the Young Vic, which has a small uplift in funding. Cheek by Jowl take their Russian Tempest into the Barbican. Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton collaborate on The Quiet Volume, a unique experience in a library as part of the London Word Festival and check out Chisenhale Art Club, which always happens on the first Wednesday of the month. I rather like the sound of Hotel Confessions, too, which is performed in a Bermondsey hotel. Just outside London, Lee Hall’s terrific The Pitmen Painters sets off from the Theatre Royal in Windsor on a nationwide tour. Derek Jacobi’s King Lear is at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Fevered Sleep’s delightful children’s show And the Rain Falls Down goes into Bristol Old Vic, Comedy of Errors continues at the Tobacco Factory, Journey’s End goes into the Theatre Royal in Brighton and at the Basement choreographer Ivana Muller considers her place on the stage in 60 Minutes of Opportunism. Circus did well in the funding shake-up and its happy birthday to Circomedia in Bristol who are celebrating in style. Marivaux’s A Game of Love and Chance opens at Salisbury Playhouse. In Scotland – which is, of course, unaffected by ACE funding decisions – Liz Lochhead’s Educating Agnes, a version of Molière’s School for Wives, is at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in the capital, the Jimmy Boyle-inspired The Hard Man is at the King’s, and Catherine Wheels’ new version of Beauty and the Beast, Caged, is at the Traverse today before moving to Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree tomorrow, with more tour dates to follow. Head to The Arches in Glasgow from Tuesday for a double showcase of award-winning work, which includes Me and the Machine’s dislocating love story When We Meet Again, Claire Duffy’s Money… the Game Show, Thickskin’s tale of teenage catastrophe, Blackout, and Gareth Nicholls’ Pause With a Smile, which lingers on everyday coincidences.

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  April 1 2011, 3:47pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  March for the alternative – live updates

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/march-for-the-alternative-%E2%80%93%C2%A0live-updates

  More than 250,000 people are expected to march against the governing coalition’s cuts. Protesters gather in London in the biggest demo for eight years. Organisers warn against infiltration by police provacateurs.

  This article titled “March for the alternative – live updates” was written by David Batty and Rowenna Davis, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 26th March 2011 10.01 UTC

  1.15pm: Tom Wills, a student journalist based in Brighton, has posted a set of photos from the march on Flickr, which give a sense of the mass turnout.

  1.10pm: EastLondonLines, a news website run by the journalism department of Goldsmiths, has posted this Twitpic, which shows the protesters marching past police lines near Parliament.

  1.04pm: Paul Lewis has sent through an update, describing the wide range of groups who have joined today’s protest. “Standing here watching hundreds of thousands of people stream past, you get a real sense of the broad coalition against the government. I noted down every banner that past through over a couple of minutes. “Somerset Teachers Association, Vulnerable Chinese Migrants Association, Society of Radiographers, Prison Officers Association, Don’t Cut Out The Disabled, Southend On Sea Unison Branch, Ipswich Labour Party, Cut Trident, Nurses Uncut, Met Police Group PCS Union, Calderdale Division of the NUT, Chelsea Anti Cuts Alliance, Colchester NHS SOS, South Ribble Children, The Bohemian Storm is Rising, Parents Alliance of Community Schools, Isle of Wight Uncut.”

  1.02pm: Matthew Taylor says thousands of people are still joining the march, with the total number estimated at around 400,000. “I am now on a footbridge overlooking the Embankment and people have been streaming underneath us for about an hour. People are queuing as far back as I a can see and tens of thousands more are still arriving from side streets. Organisers are suggesting there could be as many as 400,000 here today. That is impossible to verify at this stage. But it is clear that this is a very big demo.”

  1.00pm: While this photo from Mary shows crowds gathering at Embankment.

  12.58pm: This photo by Mary Hamilton pokes fun at undercover police officers – whose activities have recently been investigated by the Guardian.

  12.45pm: Journalist Mary Hamilton – aka newsmary – has been posting photos of the march on Twitpic.

  12.35pm: The Public and Commercial Services Union has set up its own live blog of the march.

  12.30pm: Here’s a map of the march route

  12.20pm: PA news agency has been speaking to some of the protesters: Peter Keats, 54, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, who works for Jobcentre Plus, said: “We’re toasting the success as so many people have turned out. The press were saying 100,000 people but I think we have far exceeded that. I’m hoping for half a million. I’m hoping the government will start to listen with this many out. “Personally, I think it’s wrong the way we are hitting the poor. I’m not so much worried about myself but the customers I deal with are vulnerable and I’m worried about them and I’m worried about the kids of this country.” Alan Dowling, 40, who works for the UK Border Agency in Sheffield, said: “The other day the immigration minister was on TV saying we need to do more. How are we going to do more enforcement when we are cutting enforcement officers?”

  12.17pm: Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, estimates there are half a million people taking part in the protest. He told PA: “This is an absolutely incredible turnout and display of anger which the government will have to take notice of.” Hundreds of police officers lined up outside parliament behind metal barriers as the marchers passed by and moved down Whitehall.

  12.09pm: Matthew Taylor, who has been following the education feeder march, has now joined the main protest. In this audio report, he says the main march dwarfs the scale of the education protest: “The student block has suddenly become much quieter than it was now they see the scale of the TUC march.”

  11.58am: Paul Lewis is on the Golden Jubilee Bridge near the Embankment, overlooking the march. He says the turnout is huge, stretching from the Houses of Parliament to St Paul’s Cathedral. He says the atmosphere is good natured. The only scuffle he’s seen was a protester heckling the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

  10.49am: My colleague Matthew Taylor is with the education feeder march, which set off from the University of London in Mallet Street, Bloomsbury, around 20 minutes ago. Groups of Scottish students who set off at 11pm last night are leading the chanting. Student organisers had said ‘more than 10000′ people would meet here but so far there are probably month more than 2000 – although more are arriving all the time. Students and lecturers are being joined by various activist groups and so far the mood is vocal but pretty good natured. We’re at Russell Square now. There’s a small police presence. The police and the organisers don’t seem clear on the route but we’re on our way down to join the main march.

  10.34am: My colleague Paul Lewis has just sent in his thoughts about the potential for trouble between protesters and the police. “I don’t think anyone doubts that the main march will be in large part good natured and peaceful. Most protesters will spend several hours marching through London, seeing little more than the placards in front of them, and finish with sandwiches in Hyde Park. But that isn’t to say there won’t be pockets of trouble, and if past experiences are anything to go by they could flare into some quite nasty confrontations with police. “Flashpoints could come when a handful of unofficial feeder marches, coming from across the capital, plan to join the main march. Will police let them? Many of the seasoned activists – those police like to call ‘trouble-makers’ – are likely to be on these fringe processions (watch out for delegations gathering right now in Kennington Park, Camden and Mallet Street) and the instinct of police, who at times exhibit an almost medieval vision of crowd psychology, is often to prevent groups mixing. That would spell trouble. “The other likely hotspots will be Oxford Street at 2pm, where UK Uncuts plan to close down shops, and Trafalgar Square late in the afternoon, which there are plans to occupy. Both of these locations, and others we don’t yet know about, are likely to be magnets for those intending to peel off from the slow procession through London in search of “direct action”. Coping sensibly with all these splinters from the main march will be a policing nightmare for Scotland Yard. It all comes down to how much coercion police use. Stop people from walking where they want and sparks fly.”

  10.29am: Here’s some more comments from union leaders ahead of the march. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, will tell the demonstrators that every time the government votes through more cuts, they should hear the “angry voices” of public sector workers losing their jobs. He also warned it faced being wiped out in May’s elections. “Every day when they discuss squeezing NHS budgets I want them to remember the nurses here on the march, the paramedics – workers who keep our NHS going. Workers who see every day the effect of the cuts on patients who are having vital pain-relieving operations cut or delayed. “Workers who worry about patient care suffering, because job cuts mean there are not enough staff on the ward. NHS workers and the public fearful that the Health and Social Care Bill will mean the break-up of the NHS – the end of our much loved health service as we know it. A new dawn of privatisation for the Tories’ friends in big business. “Every month when a library closes, a care home shuts its doors, or services for struggling young people are withdrawn, I want them to feel the fear, and anger of the people who have come here today from every part of the UK to vent their frustration and to stand up for a fairer future.” Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “Cameron and Clegg have launched a war on working people and today’s demonstration is the start of the fightback. They expect us to suffer tax increases, pay cuts, unemployment and devastation of our pensions to pay for the crisis their friends in the City caused. They should expect the fight of their lives.” Len McCluskey, leader of Unite, said those taking part in the march were the “tip of the iceberg” because millions were opposed to the cuts. “There is growing anger, which will build and build as the impact of the cuts take effect.”

  10.13am: Labour politicians will join the march and party leader Ed Miliband will address the rally in Hyde Park. He will use the speech to set out Labour’s alternative to the cuts and to accuse the coalition of fomenting the “politics of division” not seen since the “rotten” Thatcher era. Labour is calling the demonstration the “march of the mainstream”. But Gove told the Today programme there were “really big dangers” for Miliband in addressing the rally at the end of the march. “One is that people will say ‘You are calling for a plan B from the government, you don’t even have a plan A. More than that, you are associating yourself with a march which could, I’m afraid, move from being family event into being something darker.”

  10.10am: Education secretary Michael Gove said today that he recognised the public concerns about the planned cuts. But he insisted that the government would not be deflected from its strategy. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Of course people will feel a sense of disquiet, in some cases anger, at what they see happening, but the difficulty we have as the government inheriting a terrible economic mess, is that we have to take steps to bring the public finances back into balance.”

  10.02am: Barber will tell today’s rally that there is an alternative to the “brutal” spending cuts. Ahead of the march, he accused the coalition government of threatening the NHS and destroying communities with the scale of the job cuts. “No part of our public realm is to be protected. And don’t believe it when ministers say that the NHS is safe in their hands. With over 50,000 job cuts already in the pipeline – nurses, doctors, physios, midwives – in the name of so-called efficiency savings of £20 billion, the NHS as we know it, is already in intensive care. “With David Cameron talking about selling it off to any willing provider out to make a profit, the NHS is facing the gravest threat in its history. “Today let us say to him: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build. Let’s be brutally clear about these brutal cuts. They’re going to cost jobs on a huge scale – adding to the misery of the 2.5 million people already on the dole. “They’re going to hammer crucial services that bind our communities together, and they’re going to hit the poorest and the most vulnerable hardest. Anyone who tells you different is a bare-faced liar. “The government claims there is no alternative, but there is. Let’s keep people in work and get our economy growing. Let’s get tax revenues flowing and tackle the tax cheats, and let’s have a Robin Hood Tax on the banks, so they pay us back for the mess they caused.”

  9.45am: A Guardian/ICM poll published today shows that the public are divided over the cuts, while two other polls last night put the balance more strongly against cuts. The Guardian/ICM poll of 1,014 found that 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% think they strike the right balance and 29% think they don’t go far enough; 8% don’t know. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagreed with that view. Speaking ahead of the march, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said of the Unison survey: “I’m sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest. This poll nails that lie. “The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.”

  9.15am: Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the mass protest in London against the coalition government’s public sector cuts. Around 300,000 people are expected to join the March for the Alternative organised by the TUC, the biggest union-organised event for over 20 years and the largest in the country since the protest against the Iraq war in 2003. More than 800 coaches and 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. Union members are expected to be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters, to football supporters and anarchists. My colleague Matthew Taylor has written a guide to all the organisations – both official and unofficial – who will be taking part. The Metropolitan Police believe a small minority will try to hijack the anti-cuts march to stage violent attacks on property and the police. The TUC organisers of the event say they have organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But there are concerns that unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square could turn from peaceful civil disobedience into stand-offs with the police. The march assembles on the Embankment from 11am but it will still be leaving at 2pm and possibly even later. The TUC has drawn up a set of tips for those planning to join the march. The protest will culminate in a rally in Hyde Park. Guardian reporters Matthew Taylor and Paul Lewis will be out on the streets covering the protest as it happens. If you’re at the demo and want to send me any comments – or share any pictures, audio clips and videos – you can contact me either on david.batty@guardian.co.uk or on Twitter – @David_Batty

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  March 26 2011, 8:38am | Comments »

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  Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/anti-cuts-campaigners-plan-to-turn-trafalgar-square-into-tahrir-square

  Student activists draw inspiration from Egypt protests at Tahrir Square and call for 24-hour occupation of London‘s  Trafalgar Square

  This article titled “Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square” was written by Matthew Taylor, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 08.01 UTC Campaigners against public service cuts are calling for a 24-hour occupation of Trafalgar Square – drawing inspiration from revolts in the Middle East – to coincide with Saturday’s trade union protest in London. Student activists who organised last year’s demonstrations say there will be a rolling programme of sit-ins and protests on the day and have called on people to occupy the central London square turning “Trafalgar into Tahrir” – a reference to the gathering point in Cairo that was at the heart of the revolution in Egypt earlier this year. “We want Trafalgar Square to become a focal point for the ongoing occupations, marches and sit-ins that will carry on throughout the weekend,” said Michael Chessum from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. “There are a lot of smaller scale demonstrations and actions planned and, just as we have seen in recent protests in the Middle East and north Africa, we want to create an ongoing organising hub.” Saturday’s main demonstration has been organised by the TUC and is expected to see more than 200,000 people – including public sector workers, families and first-time protesters – take to the capital’s streets to oppose government cuts. This month the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, promised a barrage of protests against the cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and “peaceful civil disobedience” to petitions by Tory voters in the shires. The plan to occupy Trafalgar Square is the latest in a wave of proposed sit-ins, occupations and “people’s assemblies” that activists have branded a “carnival of civil disobedience”. “We have seen time and again that marches from A to B do not achieve their objectives,” said Chessum. “This is about creating an ongoing movement that will put pressure on the government. This is the start of what is going to be a hot summer of protest against the ideological nature of what this government is doing.” The call for an occupation of the London landmark is backed by student groups, activists and two Labour MPs – John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. In a joint statement they have called on people to “stay in Trafalgar Square for 24 hours to discuss how we can beat this government and to send a message across the globe that we stand with the people of Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin and with all those fighting for equality, freedom and justice. “We want to turn Trafalgar Square into a place of people’s power where we assert our alternative to cuts and austerity and make it a day that this government won’t forget.” Alongside the main march, which will set off from the Embankment before making its way to Hyde Park for a rally, anti-cuts campaigners say they plan to occupy some of the capital’s “great buildings”, close down scores of high street stores and occupy Hyde Park. UK Uncut, a peaceful direct action group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and protest against corporate tax avoidance, is planning to occupy and force the temporary closure of scores of shops on Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, student groups will meet at the University of London student union building in Bloomsbury at 10am. Some are then expected to make their way to the main assembly point in a “feeder march”; others will peel off to take part in various “direct actions” . “Since Christmas the movement has become much more autonomous,” one veteran of last year’s protests told the Guardian last week. “There are smaller, semi-independent groups planning small-scale direct action against a range of targets. It will be a bit of a disappointment if we get to the end of the day and one of London’s great buildings is not occupied. We have to make an impact.” Online, other groups are calling for more widespread direct action on Saturday. An organisation calling itself Resist 26 claims it will stage a number of “people’s assemblies” along the route of the march. Under the banner “Battle of Britain” it is calling for a 24-hour occupation of Hyde Park and “after parties” at famous London landmarks including Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace. Scotland Yard says it has worked closely with the TUC to ensure the demonstration passes off peacefully and senior officers are due to give a detailed briefing on police plans on Tuesday morning.

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  March 23 2011, 3:56pm | Comments »

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  UK nominates 11 sites for Unesco world heritage status

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/22/uk-nominates-11-sites-for-unesco-world-heritage-status

  The Forth bridge, St Helena and Lake District have been put forward for consideration as worthy sites alongside Stonehenge for Unesco world heritage status. The decision will be made in June not in Bahrain, as originally planned but in Paris.

  This article titled “UK nominates 11 sites for Unesco world heritage status” was written by Maev Kennedy, for The Guardian on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 01.00 UTC

  The Forth bridge, the remote island of St Helena in the South Atlantic where Napoleon died in 1821, and the Lake District are among 11 places the government will nominate today as worthy of becoming world heritage sites to be ranked alongside the Pyramids and Stonehenge. The government will also make a third attempt to have the corner of Kent where Charles Darwin wrote the book that changed the history of science recognised as a world treasure. John Penrose, the tourism and heritage minister, said: “Few places in the world can match the wealth of wonderful heritage we have available in the UK. The 11 places that make up the new ‘UK tentative list’ are fantastic examples of our cultural and natural heritage, and I believe they have every chance of joining famous names like the Sydney Opera House and the Canadian Rockies to become world heritage sites.” Places that failed to make the ‘tentative’ list include Blackpool, the former RAF airfield at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, the Rows shops and half-timbered houses in Chester, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway. The government has been consulting on the type of sites which Britain should put forward after concern from Unesco, which has maintained the list since 1972, that it was increasingly dominated by castles and cathedrals in western Europe. There has been a conscious determination to broaden the geographical spread of the list and the types of sites nominated, leading to the inclusion of penal sites for transported convicts in Australia, four hydraulic boat lifts on a Belgian canal and the wonderfully named Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump prehistoric butchery site in Canada. Britain is nominating a judicious mixture of natural, built and industrial sites, including the slate industry of north Wales with its spectacular shale heaps still bearing witness to the days when Welsh slate roofed half the world, the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, Scotland’s beautiful Flow Country, the endlessly repainted Forth railway bridge which had the longest single cantilever span in the world when built in 1890, Gorham’s cave complex in Gibraltar, and Cresswell Crags, the limestone gorge honeycombed with caves which has some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in Britain and the country’s only known Ice Age rock art. The list is completed by two leftover scraps of the British Empire: St Helena and the Turks and Caicos. The government has still not given up on Darwin’s home, now in the care of English Heritage, where he wrote On The Origin of Species. Once the scientist found Down House in 1842 he left as rarely as possible for the rest of his life. He wrote the Origin and all his later work there and conscripted his children as assistants in taking observations on the fauna and flora in his own garden and the surrounding fields, which are remarkably unchanged. The government first nominated it in 2007 but withdrew on being warned the Unesco advisers were not convinced of its genuine scientific importance. It was resubmitted, with the ingeniously coined description “landscape laboratory” in 2009 to mark the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, but still failed to make the cut. The government, undaunted, will again add it to the list of proposed sites. The list of sites judged among the world’s most precious now runs to 911 in 151 countries: 704 cultural, 180 natural and 27 mixed. The new nominations were due to be considered by the world heritage committee in June in Bahrain but, due to the turbulent state of politics across the Arab world, the meeting has been switched to the Unesco headquarters in Paris.

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  March 22 2011, 10:31am | Comments »

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  Goodbye to a beauty, hello to Asda’s eyesore

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/10/goodbye-to-a-beauty-hello-to-asdas-eyesore

  The world gets uglier.

  This article titled “Goodbye to a beauty, hello to Asda’s eyesore” was written by Deborah Orr, for The Guardian on Thursday 10th March 2011 09.00 UTC Big business and small towns . . . they mix really badly. Standing outside the horrible behemoth of a white cube that is Motherwell’s Asda last week, I stared at the beautiful half-demolished building opposite, wondering why it had come to this. Built as a school in the Victorian era, the building was being knocked down because it was too expensive to maintain, or so said the local gossip. Goodbye honey-coloured stone, and graceful astragal windows; hello, whatever the blank walls of the Asda stores are clad with. I couldn’t help feeling that if just some of the people who made a profit from that huge shop, and the townspeople who use it, had had a presence in the community and a will to save its remaining beauties, then my view and that of citizens for many years to come, could have been different and so much more lovely. Not that the few remaining small shops of Motherwell are not stimulating. I was very taken by a novel item I spotted in one window – a blanket with sleeves! At first I sneered: “Hey! Like a coat! Except totally shapeless and would fasten up the back if it had any fastening!” Then I remembered how miserable it was to sit in the cold watching telly with your coat on, and counted my many blessings.

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  March 10 2011, 3:06am | Comments »

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  Libyan opposition leaders to get advice from UK military

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/04/libyan-opposition-leaders-to-get-advice-from-uk-military

  Noooooo, don’t accept it.Masses reject foreign intervention Western Intervention can only serve to try and derail the Region-wide revolution of the Arab people

  This article titled “Libyan opposition leaders to get advice from UK military” was written by Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor, for The Guardian on Friday 4th March 2011 19.57 UTC Britain is to send a team of experts capable of giving military advice into eastern Libya to make contact with opposition leaders as the struggle for control of the country escalates. The move is a clear intervention on the ground to bolster the anti-Gaddafi uprising, learn more about its leadership and see what logistical support it needs. Whitehall sources said the diplomatic task force would not be providing arms to the rebels, as there is an international arms embargo. It came as Interpol issued a global alert against Muammar Gaddafi and 15 other Libyans, including his daughter and seven sons, in an effort to enforce sanctions. David Cameron has been determined to back the resistance partly because, following advice this week by experts and Libyans in the UK, he believes that it is neither simply tribal nor Islamist, but is built round democratic demands that could in the medium term mark a decline in anti-western mood in the Middle East. The foreign secretary, William Hague, has been in telephone contact with General Abdul Fattah Younis Obaidi, the former Libyan interior minister, now based in Benghazi, who is seen as a likely successor to Gaddafi. Obaidi was placed in charge of military defences in the city in a sign that he is at the helm of the opposition. British officials know the identity of all the members of the broad-based Benghazi committee currently focused on keeping essential services and defences going. As the situation regarding international involvement developed rapidly , Nato commanders were instructed to draw up plans for a wide range of military options, including a no-fly zone. Cameron had earlier faced criticism – including from the Pentagon – for raising the idea of a Nato no-fly zone. The UK government believes the national council in Benghazi is focused on keeping essential services running, but where it can is “now thinking about how they can take the struggle forward to other parts of the country. They are not yet calling themselves a government in waiting and we have not yet seen a coherent programme”, one source said. The UK diplomatic task force is to assess humanitarian need and keep the opposition leaders in the east of the country better informed about diplomatic activity. The national council is focused most on what it can do to help the isolated rebel towns close to Tripoli. British diplomats quit Libya last week as the fighting escalated. They remain unable to access the largely pro-Gaddafi west of Libya, from which all aid agencies, including the Red Cross, have been barred. Ambassadors representing the 28 Nato countries instructed military commanders to start planning for what an alliance spokesperson described as “all eventualities”. However, the spokesperson added that “operational steps” had not yet been taken and that the UN security council had not authorised the use of force. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s secretary general, has made it clear that in his view a no-fly zone would require a specific UN resolution. The decision to draw up contingency plans was not officially announced, because of the sensitivity surrounding an issue on which the alliance is far from united.   The decision to task Nato commanders with contingency planning was taken despite serious reservations expressed by Robert Gates, shared by British military chiefs. “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences … and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down,” Gates said earlier this week. However, President Barak Obama subsequently said he was placing US military assets near Libya to ensure he had the “full capacity to act” if the situation deteriorated further. But the government has placed on alert air, sea, and ground forces that could quickly intervene in the conflict if ordered to do so. Typhoon jets would be deployed to RAF Akrotiri in one of the two sovereign base areas in Cyprus, while 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland – the Black Watch – is on 24 hours’ notice to help in evacuation and humanitarian operations, defence officials said. An RAF airborne radar and early warning aircraft is based in Malta where the MoD has also set up a forward joint task force headquarters. Officials declined to say what intelligence they had gathered on the quality and number of pro-Gaddafi aircraft and armour. Meanwhile, a ship understood to contain £100m worth of Libyan dinars has been seized and escorted into Harwich docks in Essex by the UK Border Agency Vigilant, the Home Office said. The vessel had returned to the UK after failing to dock in Tripoli last weekend. She was tracked by British authorities and intercepted off the coast. The chancellor, George Osborne, froze Gaddafi’s £900m of UK-based assets last Sunday.

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  March 4 2011, 2:12pm | Comments »

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  Wales votes to loosen lawmaking tie to Westminster

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/04/wales-votes-to-loosen-lawmaking-tie-to-westminster

  Lord Roberts, of Llandudno is happy. And on the same day the Liberal Democrats got pushed into 6th place in a by-election.

  This article titled “Wales votes to loosen lawmaking tie to Westminster” was written by Helen Carter and Hannah Waldram, for The Guardian on Friday 4th March 2011 18.01 UTC The people of Wales have wholeheartedly endorsed giving their assembly more power to make laws without having to ask Whitehall or Westminster for approval. At the declaration at the Welsh Assembly Senedd in Cardiff Bay, 21 out of 22 districts agreed to give the body direct new powers to leglislate in specific areas, bringing Wales closer into line with Scotland and Northern Ireland. More than half a million people voted yes while fewer than 300,000 opposed the change. Only Monmouthshire sounded a lone note of dissent. People there voted no by the narrowest of margins – a mere 320 votes, or 50.6% no to 49.4% yes. As the last result, for Cardiff, came in there were large numbers of the yes camp gathered, eagerly anticipating the result amid cheers. First minister Carwyn Jones said: “Today an old nation came of age. “Our country has united in a way that perhaps it wasn’t in 1997. It means, of course, that for us politicians we have a duty to show those people who voted for us that we can use the powers we have for the benefit of the people. We can now do things, instead of talking about doing things.” Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams expressed delight, with the caveat that the campaign had exposed widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of the Welsh government “which has presided over Wales becoming the poorest part of the UK, with standards in our schools and hospitals slipping behind England and Scotland”. She called for a new era of devolution in which a culture of blame is replaced by a culture of responsibility. The areas that delivered the biggest yes votes – 70% and more in favour – were Neath Port Talbot, Gwynedd, Carmarthenshire and Rhondda Cynon Taf. When the first result from Baenau Gwent was declared, yes campaigners cheered the 11,869-5,366 vote in their favour. Results from Denbigshire and Wrexham soon followed. Lord Roberts, of Llandudno, a yes campaigner, said: “No longer will the bills passed in Cardiff have to be signed in Westminster and that will save time and money and the work of many staff. Cardiff can say today and can do tomorrow. We aren’t asking for any more powers or any more money, but a streamlined system.” In the lead up to the referendum, some voters criticised the lack of information available to them or claimed they did not fully understand the technicality they were being asked to vote on. In some areas, turnout was below 30%, which first minister Jones described as “not brilliant, but then not apocalyptic which some people predicted”. Roger Lewis, chairman of the Yes for Wales campaign, said: “Wales has said yes – laws which only affect Wales will henceforth be made in Wales. Together we can take Wales forward, today we have found our voice.” Defeat was conceded early by Rachel Banner, the Pontypool teacher who led the True Wales campaign against the change. She claimed the result should not be seen as an endorsement of the assembly’s record and said she was concerned about a fragmentation of the UK and “an obsession with lawmaking from Welsh politicans”.   Shadow Welsh secretary Peter Hain described the result as a fantastic vote of confidence in devolution and for the way the first minister had led the assembly government. Darren Millar, a Conservative member of the assembly, said: “It’s fantastic to see this result. I’ve been campaigning for a yes vote with my colleagues.” He said the referendum was about the lawmaking process, not about independence, and changes needed to make the assembly more efficient.

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  March 4 2011, 12:25pm | Comments »

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  Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/02/leeds-paris-eurostar-high-speed-rail-plan-protests

  Leeds to Paris by Eurostar in four hours when the high speed rail network is completed.

  This article titled “Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests” was written by Dan Milmo and Martin Wainwright, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 19.51 UTC The battleground over a £32bn high-speed rail network moved from the shires to the north after the government outlined the case for a second phase linking Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. Undaunted by a backlash in Tory heartlands over plans for a 225mph London-to-Birmingham line, the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, backed plans for joining it to a Y-shaped national network. The proposals include a link to the Channel tunnel rail route that would transport passengers in Manchester and Leeds to Paris in less than four hours without a London stopover. However, the proposals for 200 miles of new track are likely to be of more immediate concern to the thousands of households that line the potential routes in Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said the economic arguments in favour of the northern extension of High Speed Two (HS2) could be drowned out by protests over blight. “As this proceeds, we are going to hear some very different voices from the north, arguing passionately about the beautiful local countryside,” said Ralph Smyth, CPRE’s senior transport campaigner. “Take the Cheshire area around Wilmslow, which lies right on the likely route of the Birmingham-to-Manchester line. You have got very wealthy, very influential people there, who are not going to take happily to HS2 driving through.” Launching a consultation on a national high-speed network, Hammond was confident that the economic case would prove more powerful with residents in the north than it has in the home counties, with the full route forecast to produce a £44bn boost to the UK. “Ironically the further north we get the easier it will get. Once you get further away from the south-east people seem to understand more clearly the argument on jobs and growth.” According to the Department for Transport, the first phase alone would help create 40,000 jobs. Hammond said the northern section could open in 2032, six years after the London-to-Birmingham route. A consultation on the specific route will start next year after detailed plans are published. It is understood that more than a dozen routes are under consideration for phase 2, which will be reduced to a shortlist by early 2012. If the proposals receive the green light, journey times to Manchester and Leeds from London will be reduced from more than two hours to 73 and 80 minutes respectively. Sources said planning for the Birmingham-to-Leeds section has proved particularly challenging, due to the hilly landscape and the number of small mining communities and former collieries dotted along the potential route. “It is a complicated landscape,” said one expert. Hammond said ramblers in the Peak District would not be disturbed by bullet trains tearing through an area of outstanding natural beauty, with the Birmingham-to-Leeds line likely to pass between Derby and Nottingham, and to the east of one of Britain’s most stunning national parks. However, the Chiltern Hills, another area of outstanding natural beauty, have been less fortunate and the first phase of the network will pass through the area when the line opens in 2026. Hammond said environmentally friendly amendments to the London-to-Birmingham route published in the consultation, such as deeper cuttings, would be repeated when the northern extension is drafted: “We will be doing exactly the same as we are doing in the Chilterns. We will work with communities and engineers to minimise the effect on sensitive landscapes.” The Department for Transport is confident the rail route will challenge one of the major bastions of domestic aviation – the London to Scotland route – with a forecast journey time of three-and-a-half hours. Rail would take half of the air-rail market, the consultation argued. The current figure stands at 20%. Under the proposals high-speed trains will leave the network at Manchester and Leeds and travel to Scotland on conventional lines. The consultation argues that high-speed rail is the obvious solution to a looming capacity shortage on England’s major rail routes, pointing out that passengers are already forced to stand up on peak-hour services on those lines. The document states: “Long-term forecasts have been developed on demand growth on these three main north-south lines out of London which connect the majority of Britain’s major cities. These forecasts look forward to the early 2040s and show that, even allowing for a range of enhancements to these lines, crowding levels on long-distance services will continue to rise.” However, the debates over blight and economics are likely to rumble on. Critics of the programme pounced on revised figures in the consultation, which showed that the economic benefit of the first phase would equate to £2 for every £1 spent, instead of the £2.70 that was forecast last year. “That is mediocre value for money by official Treasury standards,” said Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation. A government source said that earlier estimates had been based on “fantastical” forecasts by the Labour government.

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  March 2 2011, 12:44pm | Comments »

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  How to pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2010/04/15/how-to-pronounce-eyjafjallajoekull

  Airports all over the UK have been closed by a volcanic ash cloud spreading from Iceland where a volcano has erupted. The fragments in the ash cloud are said to represent a serious threat to airline engines, so the closures however inconvenient, are on safety grounds, starting with Scotland and now affecting London’s Heathrow Airport as well.  But how do you pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull?

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  April 15 2010, 4:10am | Comments »

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