| Back in time What happened when a family lived an 1890s life for a TV series? bbc.co.uk |
The clean up of the River Thames Fifty years after being declared biologically dead, the Thames has been hailed as an environmental success story. But how has the iconic river been transformed? telegraph.co.uk |
The Bullingdon boys want to finish what Thatcher began | Seumas Milne The Tories and Lib Dems are forcing through a battery of cuts for which they have no mandate. It is a kind of political coupThe savagery unveiled today by George Osborne doesn't only amount to the deepest programme of public spending cuts since the 1920s. As the chancellor's fog of spin started to clear, the scale of the political ambition behind them also became apparent. The Tory-led coalition is using the economic crisis not only to rein in the state, but to reorder society.This is to be Britain's shock therapy. It is the culmination of the Conservative project to dismantle the heart of the welfare state – or, as Osborne put it today, to "reshape" public services – that began more than 30 years ago.Neither the Conservatives nor their Liberal Democrat cheerleaders have a mandate to do any such thing – or for the string of decisions they have handed down in blatant violation of pre-election pledges, from the abolition of universal child benefit to the privatising top-down transformation of the NHS. This is what most people at the May general election in fact voted against.So coalition leaders have used the absurd claim that the country is on the brink of bankruptcy to force through an array of sweeping changes, any one of which would normally be the focus of a prolonged political battle. It is a kind of political coup, and the result has been policymaking chaos, with a 16% cut in the BBC's budget imposed in the middle of the night and a Ministry of Defence deal that promises aircraft carriers without any actual planes.But when it comes to choreography, the Bullingdon boys, Osborne and David Cameron, a former PR executive and a master of the darker political arts, have played a blinder. Months of leaks of staggering cuts and carefully timed announcements of raids on middle-class incomes, from child benefit to tuition fees, were used to soften up the public for today's package with the preposterous theme of "we're all in this together".It got to the point where some coalition supporters even started to suggest this was actually a sort of leftwing administration, while Nick Clegg was regularly wheeled on to bolster the coalition's claim to progressiveness and rightwing commentators grumbled that there was to be no overall cut in cash spending at all.Now the brutal reality has been spelled out. Government departments will in fact take an average hit of 19% in real terms over the next four years. The heaviest cut, however, of at least £18bn, is to welfare, targeted on the poorest in the country.This was the moment in Osborne's otherwise polished peroration when he started to gabble, as the chancellor rushed through a series of technical announcements, the impact of which will be anything but technical. They include a new one-year cutoff to the revamped incapacity benefit, another squeeze on housing benefit and a sharp net cut in child-related tax credits.It is women, families and the sick who, it turns out, will be picking up the bill for the bank-triggered meltdown, along with low-income teenagers and public sector workers in their millions – while Cameron and Osborne are hoping local councils will take the blame for their 30% cut, universities for the 40% bite taken out of higher education funding and local operators for the 20% cut in bus subsidies.When it comes to welfare, the calculation is cynically straightforward. The poorest and most vulnerable have least political clout, while the military are cosseted and the majority of pensioners, who are highly likely to vote, are treated with kid gloves by comparison.Osborne's insistence yesterday that those with the "broadest shoulders" would "bear the greatest burden" and that his cuts would hit the richest hardest is risible. A similar claim at the time of his emergency June budget was shown in short order to be the opposite of the truth.The chancellor's own figures show that the poorest 10% will bear the largest share of yesterday's spending review announcements. Even when all tax and spending measures are taken into account, they come off the second worst of all income groups – and that is only because the government calculation boosts the impact on the top 10% by including Labour's 50% tax rate.When it comes to the seriously rich, of course, the coalition's cuts and tax changes hardly register at all. Osborne's bank levy barely matches the cut in child benefit, while corporation tax is to be reduced year after year. Those who actually caused the crisis that blew a hole in the public finances are being asked to pay almost nothing all.Meanwhile, close to a million jobs now stand to be lost as a direct result of the chancellor's announcements in the public and private sectors. Potentially even more disastrously, by squeezing demand out of the economy Cameron and Osborne's cuts risk tipping it back into recession, at a time when governments across Britain's main trading markets are doing exactly the same thing.As the same IMF which last month backed the coalition's cuts now argues, the level of fiscal tightening in Britain would cut growth sharply even if it were being done in isolation. In the context of Europe-wide austerity mania, the deflationary impact is likely to be much worse. If that then translates into lower tax revenues and higher unemployment, the government will have to make still deeper cuts or carry out a dramatic and humiliating U-turn.For the moment Cameron and Osborne are banking on the private sector to ride to their rescue, while relying on public acceptance of the endlessly repeated falsehood that Labour profligacy created the deficit the coalition is now having to clear up. In reality, the ballooning of Britain's budget deficit mirrors the average deficit rise across the 33 most developed countries, from 1% of GDP in 2007 to 9% in 2009, as tax receipts slumped and dole payments mushroomed in the wake of the 2008 crisis.But Labour's ability to champion the growing public opposition to cuts, along with an alternative of public investment and growth, remains hobbled by its own pre-election commitment to halving the deficit according to an arbitrary timetable, rather than the state of the economy – which Osborne tried to exploit today. That will have to be overcome quickly if yesterday's class-driven folly is to be derailed.George OsborneDavid CameronSpending review 2010Tax and spendingFinancial crisisBankingEconomic policySeumas Milneguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Could you stay silent for eight days? With constant communication and 24hr television, it is hard to find even eight minutes of silence. But what would happen if you were asked to stay quiet for over a week? bbc.co.uk |
The power and the gory Welcome to the Northerner, guardian.co.uk's weekly digest of the best of the northern pressIt is the time of year when the wise keep a wary ear cocked for ghosts, demons and other things that go bump in the night, but this week one man surpassed all terrible imaginings with a real tale of inconceivable horror. Paul Irwin, a father of two from Heaton, Newcastle, told his local paper of the day when he peered into the abyss and his "world collapsed".Readers of a nervous disposition should look away now, as I link to the Chronicle story that recounts how the 33-year-old edged into a branch of the Tyneside-based bakery chain Greggs only to find he was … unable to purchase a ham and pease pudding stottie. Fortunately, like even the most vivid sweat-soaked nightmare, this parlous commercial deficiency was destined to come to an end. Irwin contacted Greggs with his spine-chilling tale and managed to persuade the company to restore the traditional local sandwich to its shelves. "It just wasn't right that they weren't stocking them," the youth worker explained in the Chronicle. "I'm a Geordie born and bred and it is part of our heritage. "When I realised Greggs no longer sold ham and pease pudding stotties I thought: 'Is this what it has come to?' My whole world collapsed. It is as synonymous with Newcastle as the football team or Newcastle Brown Ale. It wasn't so much that I love the stottie, although I do, it was that I thought Greggs had forgotten its roots."After a year's absence, the stottie has returned to 52 Greggs shops in the north-east, the company confirmed.********************While Greggs was busy trying to soothe its customers' most primal fears, other retailers were going out of their way to put the willies up potential patrons. A party shop called Bubbles and Bows, in the Old Swan district of Liverpool, attracted complaints, the Liverpool Echo reported, with a gruesome Halloween window display. The eye-catching work featured three bleeding corpses hanging from their feet – one of them afflicted by a sawn-open head – alongside jars of eyeballs and severed heads. You suspect it would be enough to put even the proudest Geordie off their stottie. Cathy Fayal, 43, who runs the shop, and has made such hair-raising set-pieces a speciality over the past few years, was unrepentant, despite protests that the display had "gone too far"."Every year we do the display and every year we get complaints," she told the Echo's Gary Stewart."I admit this year is probably the worst we've done but we're competing against the big supermarkets and if it gets people looking in our window it's worth it."She added: "We had a letter from the local councillor last year and we had the police phone up as well but they said there was nothing they could do about it." *********************Confronted with tasteless Halloween excess, some councillors would not have a leg to stand on. Harrogate borough council leader, Mike Gardner, for example, failed to set the bar for this year's fancy dress particularly high. Gardner was deselected by the Conservative party, the Yorkshire Post reported, and faces a difficult political future after pictures emerged on Facebook of him attending a birthday party dressed as Adolf Hitler."I don't dress up as a Nazi normally. This was an exception. I am not a Nazi and I don't behave like that," he said, comfortingly.Highlighting his unerring political instincts, he confirmed he had checked with the party organiser to see whether his outfit would be acceptable.********************The Liverpool Echo managed to balance these blood-curdling stories and once again prove its pre-eminence among local newspapers in the field of photographic baby features with its pre-Halloween collection of Little Horrors. How cute.********************Are we all feeling a bit mushy now? In that case it's time to spring upon you these two touching tales of love. The story of Tony Holland's secret 1,500-mile bus trip, told previously by the Huddersfield Daily Examiner's Sam Casey, touches not only upon the power of love, but quite possibly also the love of power. For the 66-year-old lollipop man undertook a 28-hour pilgrimage in order to see his wife, Sue, win gold at the World Masters powerlifting championship.Sue, a 58-year-old schoolteacher from Ravensthorpe won the 90kg class of the over-50s section for the ninth year in a row in Pilsen, Czech Republic. Her husband had been unable to see any of her previous victories in far-flung countries, but managed to sneak into the event without his wife's knowledge after finding out he could make the journey to eastern Europe from Dewsbury, by bus.He told the Examiner: "I didn't want her to be put off – I thought if she sees me she will think something is the matter. It's her thing, her glory, I just wanted to be there, in my Union Jack shorts, cap and shirt, to see her do it. So I just got myself a seat behind a pillar, where I could peer out." His devotion is surely admirable; his dress sense less so.Many a man has made rash promises in the heat of passion, poured forth with protestations of steadfastness, only to retreat hastily once commitment reared its head. But never let it be said that Christopher Brooker is a fellow who will not put his money where his mouth is.The Durham University student has, as the Northern Echo's Gavin Engelbrecht reports, made the ultimate pledge, the most romantic of gestures, placing a £100 bet that he and his girlfriend, Hannah Grayson, will stay together until they graduate. He told the Echo: "We were sitting on the sofa one afternoon talking about how it was especially difficult for students to make commitments with time spent studying and with extra-curricular activities."I decided there and then to make a gesture of commitment and went to the bookies. I never told Hannah about it at first and got in touch with special bets expert Joe Crilly to finalise the details with him. I then told Hannah, because I would not have been able to do it without her."It was unclear what evidence of togetherness William Hill will require before paying Brooker his anticipated £600 winnings in June 2012.The woman on whom Brooker has gambled so handsomely, fellow philosophy scholar Grayson, was suitably touched, describing the wager as "a really lovely gesture".In case there was room for doubt, the aforementioned betting expert, Crilly, spelled out the enormity of the act: "Being a student, Mr Brooker has had very little time to juggle studying, playing tennis, sleeping and having a girlfriend, and so his commitments were stretched. Christopher has taken the ultimate student sacrifice, spending the equivalent of seven cases of beer on a long-term commitment to his girlfriend."********************Few northerners of recent vintage have been able to attack the grand public gesture with quite as much gusto as Tony Wilson, and even death has failed to diminish his ability to make an impression. The late lamented TV presenter and music impresario's headstone was finally unveiled this week, the Manchester Evening News pointed out, three years after he lost his battle with cancer. Designed by Factory Records designer Peter Saville, the 1.5m x 0.91m [5ft x 3ft] granite tablet is supposed to look like the monolith from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey."Anthony H Wilson. Broadcaster. Cultural Catalyst. 1950-2007," the inscription reads. The MEN's pictures suggest the memorial accurately reflects the man, or at least the media persona he created for himself – magnificent, unabashed, thought-provoking, but with a hint of folly.Robert Clark recommendsPhil Collins at the Cornerhouse, ManchesterCollins's video installations take a wryly humorous yet always empathetic look at those who suffer from political repression and media misrepresentation around the world. Influenced by astute cultural outsiders ranging from Genet to Morrissey, Collins's videos at their best are poignant with a disarming pathos. Even his 2006 Turner Prize exhibition treated victims of TV reality shows with a degree of social sensitivity. Here the artist presents Marxism Today, an installation following the uncertain fortunes of Marxist-Leninist teachers from the former communist East Germany. The format might be typically simple, yet the implied social commentary resonates.Phil Collins at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, until 28 NovemberRegional & local newspapersNewspapers & magazinesNewspapersRetail industryHalloweenIan J Griffithsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |