My generation started fighting for civil rights as teenagers (My generation squandered our golden opportunity, 29 December). as young men and women we fought for women's rights, reproductive rights, equal pay, rights for gay people. We stood up against wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and elsewhere; we deplored and stood up against both Soviet tyrannies such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and american crimes such as the CIa-supported overthrow of Chile's allende. For decades we boycotted all South african goods until Mandela and his people were freed.  at home we mobilised against nuclear weapons; we challenged their presence around the country. In the 80s we also fought against Thatcher and her brutal cuts; her war on the miners. We were then betrayed by so-called New Labour; we are now betrayed by Clegg. Still we fight on for the survival of the human race in spite of climate change and for a decent society for our children and grandchildren.  We have been up against a huge technological revolution; vicious propaganda; a privately owned rightwing press; unscrupulous politicians. We have lost our pensions, our security in old age; many of us have lost jobs - certainly job security. We fight on. We have seen our children betrayed and we continue to support them and their fight for their own future. We produced, built and expressed the modern world. We did not produce its evils. I am proud of my generation: the first teenagers, we did our best and it looks as though our wonderful, confident pragmatic children will follow us in battle. We are proud of them.  Geoffrey Wheatcroft's article is despicable. How dare he! Let him slink off if he wishes; we are too busy still trying to help, improve things, make things work, learn, as we always have. Stop playing the generations off against each other. anyway, possibly unlike him, the rest of us can't afford to slink off anywhere!  Olivia Byard  Witney, Oxfordshire 
 at the end of this UN-led International Year of Biodiversity, I would like to thank the Natural History Museum for its efforts in bringing together the 450 or so organisations from across the worlds of environment, academia, faith groups, business and wider civil society, with the aim of engaging and exciting people about our wonderful natural environment. Since May, we have taken some real steps forward in highlighting how valuable the natural world is to our livelihoods and how close the link is between biodiversity, climate change, our economy and well-being. The success we achieved in reaching a new global conservation agreement in Nagoya (Report, 30 October) was one such step. It will halt the loss of habitats and species, helping to protect the planet's variety of life. and a package to help poorer nations fulfil their biodiversity obligations represents real progress.  Of course there is still much more work to do. Next year we will publish the natural environment white paper. We want everyone to have their say in shaping its development and have been encouraged by the fantastic response to our discussion document, an Invitation to Shape the Nature of England. This shows that people really care about the natural environment and want a say in how it is managed - and we will take these views forward as we develop our new vision for the natural environment.  Caroline Spelman MP  Environment secretary 
 David Toke et al (Letters, 27 December) argues for feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, as opposed to technologically neutral support for low-carbon electricity generation. The weather over the last month (intense cold and negligible wind) has shown that dependence on renewables alone is unlikely to replace our existing generation capacity, let alone provide the power needed to replace burning of fossil fuels for domestic heating, as proposed by Chris Huhne. Polls may show "that the public wants payments to be reserved for renewable energy, not nuclear", but their first priority is likely to be that they have the energy to heat and light their homes.  The challenge is that to ensure sufficient power for conditions like those seen recently, we will have excess low-carbon generation capacity in the summer. a feed-in tariff when there is not a continuous demand is unlikely to be a suitable solution. The government is to be congratulated on starting to address the complex problems of how to decarbonise our energy use. To meet the objectives of the Climate Change act, we will need both renewables and nuclear and we need to start construction, rather than continuing to debate the options.  Professor Roger Kemp  Lancaster University 
 Glaciers in the European alps could shrink by 75% by the end of the century, according to new research into the expected impact of global warming.  The study, published in the journal Nature: Geoscience, concludes that, globally, mountain glaciers and ice caps are projected to lose 15-27% of their volume by 2100. The analysis suggests glaciers in the European alps and New Zealand will shrink by more than 70% but about 10% in Greenland and high-mountain asia.  The researchers argue this will result in "substantial impacts" on regional water availability. Retreating glaciers and ice caps threaten the water supplies of cities such as Kathmandu in Nepal and La Paz in Bolivia, which depend heavily on glacial meltwater for drinking and farming.  The scientists from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, predict that melting glaciers and ice caps will be responsible for increases in sea levels of 8.7-16.1cm by 2100.  "What is surprising here is the contribution to sea level rises of up to 16cm just from the melting of small glaciers and ice caps," said Dr Valentina Radic, one of the study's authors. 
 Britain's greenest city has launched a hunt for virtually free hot water more than a mile below its central streets. Drilling has started in Newcastle Upon Tyne on a borehole which hopes to tap inexhaustible supplies of groundwater naturally kept at 80C (176F) by geothermal heat.  The project, based at the former home of the city's most famous previous liquid - the old Scottish and Newcastle brewery - expects to tap the water and start pumping in early June. By then, the drill operated by scientists and engineers from Newcastle and Durham universities will have reached 2,000m (6,500ft).  The ?900,000 project is confident of pumping out enough steady supplies to heat the 24-acre Science Centre, which has replaced the brewery, and large parts of the city centre. Newcastle's main shopping mall, Eldon Square, is expected to be an early customer, using the recirculated water to heat 140 shops.  The Newcastle project is part of a programme which earned the city top place in the Forum for the Future's 2009 and 2010 sustainability tables. The borehole, funded by the local Newcastle Science City partnership and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, follows a successful trial of geothermally heated water in Upper Weardale, County Durham. 
 Hosni Mubarak, even in the death throes of his regime, did not have the temerity to blame al-Qaida for his downfall. Not so Colonel Gaddafi, who says Osama bin Laden has been drugging Libyan youth to foment violence. Both the accusation of involvement in narcotics and domestic unrest have long pedigrees. Many have claimed Bin Laden is involved in the heroin trade, though no evidence for such a link exists. and dozens of unsavoury and repressive regimes (mainly allies of the west) have invoked the name of the al-Qaida leader to gain diplomatic, military, financial or commercial benefits, or to explain away internal discontent and dissent.  The truth is al-Qaida's leadership is physically, culturally and ideologically too distant from current events to play a significant role in them. This is demonstrated by the failure of Bin Laden or his lieutenant ayman al-Zawahiri to even issue a timely, pertinent comment on events. all we have had is a longwinded statement by Zawahiri, released weeks after it was recorded, and an online pledge from an unidentified spokesmen "to help in any way possible".  That recent events pose a challenge to al-Qaida is clear. Its rhetoric was already tired before the "arab spring". a sudden interest in global warming last year was a feeble attempt to rejuvenate it. Zawahiri even took his glasses off in one video. But to no avail. The slogans of Cairo or Benghazi are an explicit rejection of al-Qaida's message. They make no references to faith or the "Crusader-Zionist alliance". If Gaddafi and Mubarak are described as traitors, it is the nation - an idea seen by al-Qaida as an illegitimate western creation - that they have betrayed, not the ummah, the global community of Muslims.  Read the full blogs and join the debate guardian.co.uk/commentisfree 
 all it took was a single tweet to send the Chinese government into panic last Sunday. The tweet, originating in the US, publicised a call posted on the US-based website Boxun for Chinese citizens to assemble in cities across the country to start a jasmine revolution, inspired by events in the Middle East.  The tweet did not produce nationwide protest but it certainly had an impact, despite the fact that Twitter is blocked in China. Saturday saw the first wave of arrests of human rights activists, lawyers and other citizens known to disagree with the regime. The detentions continued on Sunday morning until the list of names passed 100. On Sunday afternoon, outside the McDonald's on Wangfujing, one of Beijing's biggest shopping streets, police both uniformed and plainclothed, outnumbered the curious, the passersby, the shoppers and even, no doubt, some potential protesters.  Online, explosive words like "tomorrow", "today" and "jasmine" fell under prohibition. The Boxun website was targeted with a severe distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and users of social media in China found themselves unable to post photographs, forward posts or search. There was no revolution last Sunday, but as an exercise in tweaking the tiger's tale it was hard to beat.  Now, the anonymous organisers of last Sunday's "citizens' stroll" have called for it to be repeated every Sunday at 2pm. The question is not so much how many people will show up to protest at the usual list of grievances - corruption, lack of accountability, abuse of the law, arbitrary use of power - but the fraying of sensitive official nerves each week as the authorities wonder if this might be the day it does take off.  It would be unwise to exaggerate the parallels between discontent in the Middle East and in China. Certainly discontent in China exists, but for many people the last two decades have brought rising living standards and a sense of personal freedom. Given that, it is not easy to explain the evident fears of the regime. according to a study last year by Beijing's Qinghua University, the government now spends more on internal security than it does on external defence. If those figures are accurate, it offers an interesting snapshot of where the regime thinks its most dangerous enemies are.  Images of successful nonviolent protest, then, are deeply unwelcome, because they recall similar images of Tiananmen Square in 1989 and serve as a reminder for the discontented that change is possible, and that there is unfinished political business to attend to.  The suggestion that the examples of Tunisia or Egypt have anything to say to China brings on the government's jitters, but while the regime can clamp down on the news periodically, it can no longer keep the outside world at bay. China admits to 30,000 Chinese citizens in Libya, for instance  
 Last week a once-in-a-lifetime oriental turtle dove landed in a Chipping Norton garden and more than a hundred twitchers paid a fiver each to get a view from the kitchen window. I hear an echo of the orient in my own back garden right now. The "coo, coo-coo" song comes again, heard every day but rarely listened to. Two notes short of a woodpigeon, the monotonous refrain of the collared dove carries an underlying fuzzy vibrato that speaks of the tropics. This bird first arrived in Britain nearly 60 years ago.  This morning, a visibly exotic arrival turned up in the most mundane of surroundings by Girtford Bridge. a brilliant white shape pulled my eyes down from the treetops into a roadside ditch. I almost passed it off as a swan, but a narrow, steep-sided channel with only a thin stream of water was hardly the place. Besides, though it was partially obscured by a sallow bush, the bird was making animated, jerky movements and swans do not do jerky. after a moment, the little egret pranced out from behind its twiggy curtain. a stiletto beak on a vacuum hose neck made constant little stabbing motions into the water and down the sides of the banks, then the spindly legs pattered a few steps forwards and the bird repeated its gleaning ritual. It reached a concrete culvert and I expected the egret - all angles and points - to swoop up and away on great sheets for wings. Instead, it tripped off into the tunnel.  I can still - just - remember every egret sighting within walking distance. But the map is turning white, for the egret's climate change-driven spread north is happening apace. How long before the extraordinary becomes ordinary?  Derek Niemann 
 Environmental pressure groups are calling on governments in the US, India, China, Turkey, and Indonesia to abandon new nuclear power stations and large waste dump projects or greatly raise safety standards after it emerged that many of  
 How can Europe shake off its political and economic woes? The Guardian's five-nation poll suggests citizens in EU's leading nations fear their countries are trapped in a cycle of high debt and low growth - and do not think their governments have the ability to respond.  The results of the unique Guardian ICM poll of Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Poland show common trends and some distinctive differences between countries. It reinforces national stereotypes in some places but highlights real divergence in views elsewhere.  The main message from all five is that European citizens do not trust their governments or the honesty of their politicians, and think that their countries are more likely to become poorer than richer over the next decade. But they also see themselves as socially liberal and, on balance, are likely to support the single currency in those countries that use it.  They also share a similar picture of the threats facing the EU. Climate change, for instance, stands out as an issue few Europeans see as a leading risk. Only about one in 10 people place it as one of the top two challenges, with Germans the most concerned, and Britons apparently the least. a fifth say the rise of China's economy is a major threat, but very few say the same about India.  By contrast, a third say the scale of government debt is a risk, and almost the same proportion pick the rise of Islamist terrorism. a quarter fear migration from outside the EU or more general political and civil unrest, the latter apparently a particular concern in Poland. People seem less concerned by the prospect of the rise of far-right extremists - picked by a little over one in 10 as a threat - or by cuts in government spending.  That last result ties in with an anti-government trend that runs through answers to the poll. There is substantial - although not majority - support for spending cuts and a strong shared belief that EU states are spending too much.  This does not equate to a belief that cuts will promote economic growth, however. Results from Britain in particular suggest people are becoming alarmed by the consequences of the coalition's deficit reduction programme.  State borrowing and growth  across Europe, people are divided about whether cuts should begin now or wait until economic growth is established. While only 10% say there should be no cuts, 42% say they are a priority and 41% think boosting growth should come first. Together, opponents of cuts and those who want to delay them form a majority.  In Britain, only 34% think cuts are the priority against 51% for growth. In Germany those figures are almost exactly reversed. Germany is in favour of cuts, which may be a consequence of funding the bailout of other EU states.  almost everyone thinks their governments are profligate. across the countries surveyed, 78% agree with the statement "the government has been spending too much", against only 8% who disagree. Britain seems the least convinced that the state has been overspending and France the most concerned.  along with that come worries about the scale of state borrowing, with 69% overall saying it is a worry. again in Britain, despite the coalition's emphasis on a debt crisis, people are less concerned about borrowing than those in other EU states which have yet to begin such a sharp deficit reduction programme.  Britain diverges from the four other EU countries in the poll on several answers. Britain, for instance, seems more opposed to migration within and from outside the EU. But France is the outlier on economic prospects: its citizens are twice as pessim  
 The EU commission's 2050 low-carbon road map released last week needs to raise Europe's sights beyond its current 2020 emission reduction targets (Report, 7 March). While the EU has agreed that emissions must be reduced by at least 80% by the middle of the century, it has not so far set out how to do it. Now is the right time to discuss the most cost-effective route to achieving our 2050 goals, maximising growth, jobs and prosperity throughout Europe. We are not starting from scratch; the EU has already cut emissions by 17% from 1990 levels by 2009. The commission's road map demonstrates both that the current 20% target is not a cost-effective route to the 2050 goal, and that we already have the tools and policies to cut emissions by 25% domestically.  The European Energy Efficiency Plan is welcome and shows the big impact reducing energy consumption can have. The case to move to a 30% target by 2020 is now stronger as a result. at a time when the price of oil is soaring, putting in place an ambitious plan for Europe's low-carbon future has wider benefits than tackling climate change. It will increase the continent's resilience against oil price spikes and reduce its dependence on imported energy. and it will help Europe compete with emerging economies in the fast-growing markets for green goods and services. We call on all member states to enter into this urgent debate on Europe's future and agree how the road map is put into action.  Chris Huhne Secretary of state for energy and climate change, UK, Tina Birbili Minister of environment, Greece, andreas Carlgren Minister for the environment, Sweden and four others,  See gu.com/letters for full list 
 In February 2007, as shadow minister of the environment, Chris Huhne said: "The doubling of our electricity generation from wind in a little more than a year shows what renewables can do and gives the lie to the need for a new generation of nuclear power . . . On a windy island surrounded by waves and tides, we should never be short of envi ronmentally friendly energy sources." By the autumn of 2010, however, he was telling the Lib Dems to back a new generation of nuclear power stations.  Having seen the dangers to life and the environment that may be approaching from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, it is high time Huhne turned full circle and swung round to his earlier sane and rational position.  Rae Street  Littleborough, Lancashire 
 Perhaps you should draw your article to the attention of the transport minister, Philip Hammond (Cut your speed, cut your petrol bill, 12 March). He is pressing for an increase in the motorway speed limit at the same time as his colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change are looking to reduce the country's oil consumption in the face of fluctuations in oil prices, in addition to climate change pressures.  Martin Quick  Stroud, Gloucestershire 
 Chris Huhne has won the support of six other European governments to push for a toughening of the EU's climate targets, to be discussed in Brussels today. The energy and climate secretary is spearheading a growing movement in favour of a target of 30% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, instead of the current 20%.  He will join his counterparts from Germany, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Greece to argue for the higher target at a meeting of all 27 member states.  In a letter to the Guardian, Huhne and his fellow ministers say: "at a time when the price of oil is soaring, putting in place an ambitious p lan for Europe's low-carbon future has wider benefits than tackling climate change. It will increase the continent's resilience against oil price spikes and reduce its dependence on imported energy. and it will help Europe compete with emerging economies in the fast-growing markets for green goods."  The push was boosted last week with publication of the EU's 2050 low-carbon roadmap, which showed the EU was on track to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020, if current policies were fulfilled.  The roadmap said a cut of 25% would offer the most cost-effective way for Europe to meet its 2050 target of cutting emissions by at least 80%. as the EU has already cut emissions by 17% compared with 1990, a 30% target would "stimulate the right investment in low-carbon infrastructure and technology", according to the environment and energy ministers.  High profile opponents of the higher target within the European Commission include Gunther Oettinger, the energy commissioner, who said it would lead to "faster de-industrialisation". 
 a Dish of Tea With Dr Johnson  a rare and civilised treat in Out of Joint's touring production. Salisbury Playhouse (01722 320333/www.outofjoint.co.uk) tomorrow to Thursday. Then touring.  Fen  Caryl Churchill's magnificent 1983 feminist play about the lot of Fenland women. Finborough, London (0844 847 1652), until 26 March.  Moment  Deirdre Kinahan's gripping variation on the prodigal-son story. Bush, London (020-8743 5050), until 26 March.  Frankenstein  Danny Boyle's galvanic production carries its own shocks. Olivier, London (020-7452 3000), today until Thursday.  The Heretic  Juliet Stevenson shines in Richard Bean's pugnacious play about climate change. Royal Court, London (020-7565 5000), until Saturday. 
 You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. as a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.  a crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.  Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com (bit.ly/guv6QC). It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.  If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.  Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). as the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.  The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a certain grid penetration - 50% or 70%, perhaps? - renewables have smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has smaller impacts than renewables.  Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.  But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the small print.  at high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it's not much use in Birmingham.  and how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces and electric railways - not to mention advanced industrial processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with local energy production. a national (or, better still, international) grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.  Some greens go even further: why waste renewable resources by turning them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the industrial revolution.  The damming and weiring of British rivers for watermills was small-scale, renewable, picturesque and devastating. By blocking the rivers and silting up the spawning beds, they helped bring to an end the gigantic runs of migratory fish that were once among our great natural spectacles and which fed much of Britain - wiping out sturgeon, lampreys and shad, as well as most sea trout and salmo  
 The political dividing lines in education have never been entirely consistent. attitudes to public investment and to selection have remained cornerstones of party differences, but, as Labour championed the academies programme with its private sector partnerships and the Conservatives talk about closing the social class achievement gap, each party encroaches on the other's traditional territory.  as the government moves from words to actions and the Labour policy review concludes, I've no doubt that the direction of each party will become clearer and the differences between them sharper. There are some early signs of at least part of the upcoming battle ground.  Given the importance the parties place on teaching quality and school leadership, the political debate surprisingly centres on what we teach not how we teach. Even before its curriculum review reports, the government has abandoned vocational diplomas and vocational equivalence qualifications; launched the English baccalaureate and dropped subject specialisms. In response, the shadow education secretary, andy Burnham, has firmly positioned Labour against the English bac and in favour of a broader curriculum.  Three questions seem to shape this debate. First, which subjects are relevant - should science and design be favoured over Latin and ancient history? Second, which subjects are more likely to engage a generation used to multimedia and personalised communication? Third, which subjects will give young people progression to top universities or good quality employment?  Relevance, engagement and progression are good questions to ask, but the political interpretation of them has created a rather old fashioned "traditionalist"/"progressive" divide.  Michael Gove's analysis seems to push him to a curriculum of yesteryear. He is passionate about history and Greek; he would go to the wall in favour of team games over individual sports but is not likely to defend sociology or drama - and I can't imagine the phrase, "cross curricular theme", passing his lips.  He defends an important principal of   
 Britain's latest coalition government took office in Edinburgh yesterday when alex Salmond, doughty champion of renewed Scottish independence, was formally elected first minister in tandem with the moderate Scots pragmatist, alex Salmond.  It's a job share. Between them the pair have won an outright majority in the Holyrood parliament and now face the difficult task of governing without the problems that beset Cameron and Clegg.  The kind of pressures which may tear the Two alexes apart were evident throughout yesterday's brief election process in the spectacular parliament building at the far end of the Royal Mile. all the party leaders made speeches, including the two Mr Salmonds. Both of him was brilliant, as befits the most successful politician currently practising anywhere in the British Isles, Celt or Saxon.  The day's ceremonies were the climax of the 6 May election, which saw the once-derided SNP trounce its historic enemies. It now forms the first majority since devolution in 1999: 69 MSPs out of 129 with once-mighty Labour reduced to a rump. at just four the Lib Dems in  
 alex Salmond yesterday stepped up his demands for Westminster to relinquish more powers to Scotland as he was confirmed as the first minister of his nationalist government.  Salmond celebrated his unopposed election as the head of the devolved government at Holyrood by calling for the Scottish parliament to be allowed to set its own excise duties, be given control over domestic broadcasting and have the right to send Scottish ministers and officials on all UK delegations to the EU.  The demands increase the prospects of a confrontation with David Cameron's government, which is already preparing to cede powers to Holyrood over setting income tax rates and immediate borrowing powers of at least ?2bn.  Cameron is expected to consider some changes to the legislation - particularly on borrowing powers - but Westminster sources have hinted that ministers would be prepared to see the bill rejected by Salmond if his demands were unreasonable or too difficult to implement.  Salmond said his party's lan  
 Filter is an experimental company famed for its sonic virtuosity: David Farr is a writer/director with the language-driven RSC. So there is a  
 National Grid has welcomed the government's decision to set tough new carbon emission targets, saying it gave the company "confidence" as it proceeds with a programme of investing ?16bn to upgrade the UK's energy infrastructure by 2015.  The business behind the pipes and pylons that carry gas and electricity around Britain said the overhaul is creating 5,500 jobs and it is devoting ?3.6bn to modernising the power network this year alone.  "It is a huge task to put in place the kind of changes we need to tackle the twin threats  
 aberdeen is a city with only one thing on its mind: oil. The roundabouts are pockmarked with signs for the "oil capital of Europe". The old-money granite houses in the West End have been turned into offices for the big energy firms, their former servants' quarters crammed with accountants and lawyers poring over contracts. and to get to the Patricia Cornwells at the airport's WH Smith you must first squeeze past shelves of books on all things crude, from Deepwater Horizon to a memoir called Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs (subtitle: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse).  It's oil that gives aberdeen a special status in the litany of national grievances. Early in the North Sea bonanza, Scottish nationalists argued that the gusher of cash could be used in one of two ways: to prop up the British economy or to transform Scotland: "What do you want to be, rich Scots or poor Brits?" That question was settled decades ago - by a woman from Grantham.  "Margaret Thatcher destroyed British industry, and she paid off the unemployed with benefits using North Sea oil," says allan Macaskill, a petroleum engineer for more than 30 years. Macaskill is not a dispassionate observer - he joined the SNP when he was 18, and has a brother, Kenny, in the Scottish cabinet - but on this issue he seems to be voicing the local consensus.  Nationalist movements usually seek sustenance in stories of ancient wrongs and recent lost opportunities. Over the past few years, however, the SNP has had less recourse to What Might Have Beens and more scope to exercise greater power. Then came the elections of a fortnight ago, when the party won 53% of all seats at Holyrood, under an electoral system designed to prevent such majorities. "You were just watching the map of Scotland flip from orange and red to (SNP) yellow," says Karen, the PR manager showing me round the local harbour. "and there were all these people on telly chanting, 'Scotland! Scotland!'"  That night, the idea of an independent Scotland lurched from counterfactual fantasy to outside possibility. What that possibility amounts to might well be decided in aberdeen. The biggest, most seductive election promise  made by Salmond was that he would "re-industrialise Scotland", starting here. Those who say the oil is running out overstate rather than fabricate: more than half the local reserves have already been extracted and what's left will be harder and more expensive to pump out. In a manifesto festooned with pictures of windmills looming out of the water, the SNP laid out a plan to succeed North Sea oil with a giant renewable-energy industry.  Macaskill likes the idea so much he recently jumped tanker from the oil industry to set up an offshore-wind business. "You'll have cutting-edge technology developed right here, in aberdeen; you'll have wind turbines made in Glasgow and throughout the central belt. We'll have jobs again where our industries used to be." There is more to his enthusiasm than profit-seeking; this is the Scots' riposte to "the old Thatcherite idea of a post-industrial future".  For anyone bored with Ed Miliband and David Cameron arguing whether the spending cuts are "too far, too fast", the political debate north of the border can seem as starkly different as switching from black-and-white to colour.  In place of desiccated managerialism, Salmond and his finance minister John Swinney have come up with an economic strategy that serves also as a job-creation policy and a metaphor for national renewal. a re-energised Scotland: in the nation where it was once said that Clydeside built not only ships but men, such rhetoric resonates.  It's also pie in the sky, say critics. across town, a huddle of oil executives is having lunch with Brian Wilson, former energy minister under Tony Blair. "Nationalism is a fundamentalist belief, which uses economics as a rationale," he says, to nods around the table. "Scottish nationalism existed before the oil industry, but then oil became the answer. The SNP was around before renewables, but now alex Salmond talks about the North Sea becoming 'the Saudi arabia of wind'." My neighbour quotes some research showing that on present trends renewables will bring only 5,000 jobs to the north-east of Scotland: hardly an economic renaissance.  It's true that the clean-energy revolution is not yet visible to the naked eye. There's money for a European offshore wind centre, and talk of a green-manufacturing hub in the old oil platform-building site of Nigg on the Cromarty Firth - but the most noteworthy recent local development is Donald Trump's ?1bn golf course at Balmedie.  This vacuum neatly expresses the big economic problem for nationalists: in the 70s and 80s, their key task was to figure how best to spend the oil money; nowadays, the challenge is the more fundamental one of how to generate the cash for a post-North Sea future. In the 90s, nationalist pound notes were staked on hi-tech industry. But as foreign businesses bolted from Silicon Glen to asia, 20,000 people lost their jobs. after that came finance: Edinburgh was going to be "the Zurich of Scotland". Then came the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland. "It would be wrong to describe the SNP as making it up as they go along," says Brian ashcroft,  an economist at the University of Strathclyde. "But they are trying one thing after another."  Right now, though, the oilmen round this table are fuming over George Osborne's decision in March to jack up taxes on North Sea profits. "London behaves like an absentee landlord that just racks up tenants' rates," says one, to murmurs of agreement. That complaint is at the heart of the economic case for an independent Scotland. The SNP promises that self-determination will mean a smaller, closer government that tends to Scottish industry alone rather than trading it off against, say, the City.  How will that help? To find out, I speak to Graeme Bell, head of Green Ocean Energy and a poster boy for Salmond's renewables policy (not that he'll tell me which way he votes). We begin a game of Home Rule tennis, in which I serve the obvious question: what would an Edinburgh government give you that a London one couldn't?  "Regulatory clarity?" ah, but you can get muddled regulation out of Holyrood just as easily as Westminster.  "More funding to develop new technology?" There's plenty of cash in London and Dubai.  "We'd hope to have access to the Green Investment Bank." What, the institution brought to you by 11 Downing Street?  The point is almost mine, but then Bell lobs this in: "Sometimes you need an event to get people and things and an economy moving." and that event could be a severing of the union? "Possibly. I haven't seen a balance sheet that lays out the costs and benefits of independence, but I suspect that the result would be slightly positive."  If it's a cost-benefit analysis you're after you probably need an economist. Three hours south, in a glass-fronted cafe in the University of Edinburgh, I put Bell's challenge to a group of academics.  Simon Clark, head of the university's economics department, remarks that money would never be the deciding factor in any case for independence: "That would be like becoming a monarchist for economic reasons." But if Scotland were to cut itself loose now, what would its economy look like? Well, pretty similar to the rest of the UK.  Debates about the economics of independence often understate that it's London and the south-east - with its turbocapitalism and its chokehold on the Treasury - which is the regional anomaly. In Scotland, the public sector is a bit larger than the rest of the UK, providing employment for 25% of the workforce, above the national average of around 21%. Scotland's economy is more sluggish, growing by an average of 2% a year between 1997 and 2007, against 2.4% for the country as a whole. That may not sound much, but over the decades it adds up to a significant shortfall.  Notice what's missing from the economists' discussion: an argument about whether an independent nation could pay its way. That's partly because, so soon after Salmond's rout, the terms of separation are vague - how much of the oil revenues would go to Edinburgh; the public debt that Westminster would dump on Holyrood; even what currency it would adopt over the long run. But it's also because those Kelvin MacKenzie-isms about Scotland the Subsidy Junkie are - shock! - not wholly true.  The last set of figures from Holyrood statisticians show that for 2008-9, Scotland provided ?1.3bn more in revenue than was spent north of the border. at less than 1% of Scotland's GDP, that's not a huge surplus, and it does include a due share of North Sea revenues. Strip out crude and the deficit goes up sharply, to ?10.5bn (or 9% of GDP).  If those were your family's accounts you wouldn't want to be depending on one source of income that yo-yos so much (oil prices hit a record-high in 2008). But beware of double standards: hardly anyone put such objections to chancellor Gordon Brown during the bubble years.  The larger question that preoccupies the Edinburgh economists is what the business model for a stand-alone Scotland would look like. Unlike Graeme Bell, academic Stuart Sayer does not think the very fact of independence would change much: "It's like faith-healing. If you believe, wonderful things can happen - but I'd hate to rely on it as my sole treatment."  Follow Sayer's taxonomy and that makes Stephen Noon faith-healer-in-chief. He was in charge of putting together the SNP's manifesto for the last elections; and when we meet in in Edinburgh's George Street, he makes the case for nimble government: "Under our own government we could act now, rather than lobby the UK government for five years."  There would be extra money coming in too, he thinks, from revenues collected by Westminster but which belong to Scotland. "Because of Crown Estate, London collects hundreds of millions from renting out the UK seabed to offshore firms. That could be ours."  The argument that Edinburgh stands to rake in a tax bonanza is a familiar one to Michael Keating, a political scientist at the University of aberdeen. For him it's the flipside of a devolution system in which Westminster passes most of Scotland's budget to Holyrood, which then spends it.  No wonder Salmond now talks of an interim Basque option, based on the Spanish system. In this system, the majority of tax is raised locally and Edinburgh pays London for services such as defence and foreign embassies.  But as things stand, Edinburgh is about as fiscally autonomous as a teenager living off pocket money.  The result, says Keating, is a nationalist movement that hugs both the Swedish model of high public spending and the Irish example of low business taxes. "It's voodoo economics," he says.  It's also voodoo politics. This result is an SNP of both left and right, with frontbenchers well to the left of Labour and business supporters such as Sir George Mathewson, the former chairman of RBS. In the lobby of a hotel outside Holyrood, he tells me that "independence is the best way to deal with Scotland's dependency culture.  If the country stops taking money from London, then perhaps that will encourage our welfare claimants to stop taking benefits from the state."  Still, the left of the party would share Mathewson's view that separation would make for a more productive Scotland. In this argument, the country that brought you David Hume and adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment still has what urban theorists call the three Ts: "talent, technology, tolerance". Small and energetic, coffee-drinking and open-necked: the image projected is of Catalonia in woolly jumpers.  There is one problem wi  
 Power:  1707  Scotland, like England, is ruled by the last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen anne. But power is held locally by the Queen's commissioner in parliament, the Duke of Queensberry (above), credited with procuring Scotland's vote in favour of union.  2011  Scotland, like England, is ruled by David Cameron - who at least has a good Scots name in his favour. But power is held locally by alex "Wee Eck" Salmond (above), and by a Scottish parliament whose building incorporates his predecessor's home, Queensberry House.  Parliament:  1707  145 nobles and 160 commoners sit in the Scottish parliament, representing Whig and Tory, Jacobite and Cameronian interests.  2011  129 elected MSPs and two law officers - the lord advocate and the solicitor general - sit in the Scottish parliament, representing SNP, Labour, Tory - oh, and vestigial Liberal Democrat - interests.  accountability:  1707  In the words of Walter Scott: "When we had a king, a chancellor, and a parliament o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stones when they werena gude bairns." Thus are Scotland's rulers kept in check in the 18th century.  2011  In the words of the News of the World: "Mr Sheridan has been jailed for lying to a court to secure victory when he sued (us) for defamation in 2006." Thus are Scotland's rulers kept in check in the 21st century.  Population:  1707  One million, of whom 25% live in the Highlands - an area soon to be depopulated by sheep farming.  2011  Five million, of whom 7% live in the Highlands - an area  now fast repopulating thanks to universal broadband.  Religion:  1707  The 20-year-old student Thomas aikenhead is accused  of blasphemy and hanged, for arguing in a private  conversation that the Holy Scriptures are "a rhapsodie  of faigned and ill-invented nonsense".  2011  The Celtic manager Neil Lennon is sent bullets in the post and attacked during an SPL game against Hearts, because "I am a high-profile Catholic," he says, "and some people don't like that in this country."  Diet:  1707  In the so-called "ill years" of the 1690s, Scotland suffered repeated famines and major crop failures, depriving the population of anything resembling a nourishing diet.  2011  In the so-called "Irn-Bru and Tunnock's Tea Cake years" of the 2000s, only 23% of the population of Scotland meet the recommended daily intake of five or more portions of fruit and vegetables.  Quality of life:  1707  Edinburgh is notorious for its filth, its noxious odours and its residents' habit of throwing raw sewage from upstairs windows with only a cry of "gardyloo!" (from the French gardez l'eau) for  
 I welcome the agreement on the fourth carbon budget (Editorial, 18 May) and the efforts of the energy and climate secretary to secure it. Unfortunately, cabinet infighting has delivered a flawed deal, with the government failing to heed advice from the Committee on Climate Change on three key points. First, it is refusing to toughen up the existing targets for 2013-23, making the fourth budget harder and more costly to achieve and stunting ambition in the here and now. Second, the concessionary review clause slipped in by the Treasury will allow the government to backtrack on the budget in 2014, depending on progress elsewhere in the EU, reducing long-term certainty on emissions cuts and potentially harming the investor confidence in green technologies which the Climate Change act is designed to build.  and on the fundamental issue of how we meet the targets, the government has shunned the CCC's recommendation that the budget should be met through domestic action alone. Exporting carbon pollution is not the same as reducing it. allowing trading mechanisms such as offsetting is, in effect, outsourcing our responsibilities to other countries - and weakening the drive to build green industries here. With the right political leadership and commitment to ambitious reforms, the green jobs of the future can become a reality now.  Caroline Lucas MP  Green, Brighton Pavilion 
 * Chris Huhne deserves congratulations for winning the cabinet battle over climate targets, as does the prime minister for backing him. The decision will give a boost to the coalition's tattered green credentials. David Cameron must now get on with the urgent task of fast tracking the policies that will ensure that the UK's bold climate targets are met. This means strengthening the energy bill to slash energy waste in our homes and communities, putting electricity decarbonisation by 2030 at the heart of electricity market reform and ensuring that the fight against climate change is central to UK transport policy.  andy atkins  Executive director, Friends of the Earth 
 Our party stood at the general election on a manifesto promise to oppose plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants because it is a far more expensive way of reducing carbon emissions than promoting energy conservation and renewable energy. Our party also rejects nuclear subsidies - there is no justification for paying extra to support nuclear, which is a mature technology, when we could use the money to invest in innovation to bring down the cost of new renewable technologies. We managed to win a commitment to this in the coalition agreement, which states that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear power and allows Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power.  We were proud that our party democratically decided at our conference in September 2010 to "ensure that any changes to the carbon price do not result in windfall benefits to the operators of existing nuclear power stations". We are therefore dismayed that the finance bill will result in a windfall of ?50m per year from 2013 to 2030 to existing nuclear operators for doing nothing different - pushing up consumer electricity bills.  Support for a Conservative party-inspired policy on nuclear power must not become another tuition fee debacle for our party. We need to make a stand and ensure that the nuclear industry does not benefit from being an unintended beneficiary of tackling carbon emissions.  Cllr Louise Bloom, David Boyle, Gareth Epps and John Leech MP 
 Energy companies should be forced to insulate every empty loft and cavity wall in the UK within four years. That was the call this week from the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which says the move would cut national carbon emissions.  In the UK, 10m lofts remain unlagged and 8m houses with cavity walls have yet to be insulated.  according to a CCC report, the number of professional installations of loft and cavity wall insulation fell by 30% between 2009 and 2010.  Friends of the Earth says: "Forcing energy companies to carry out all the necessary energy efficiency improvements is an attractive idea." 
 a group of Liberal Democrat MPs are gearing up to rebel next week against a section of the government's finance bill which they believe gives a subsidy to the nuclear power industry.  The coalition agreement rules out any new subsidy for nuclear power, and backbenchers in the party believe such a measure would represent as great a breach of trust with voters as breaking their promise on tuition fees.  a large group of Lib Dems are concerned about clause 78 o  
 an Oxford academic has won the right to read climate change data held by the University of East anglia (UEa). The decision, by the government's information commissioner, Christopher Graham, may mean thousands of British researchers are required to share  
 Today's birthdays: Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive, British Library, 61; Brian Clarke, painter and stained-glass artist, 58; Kenneth Clarke (pictured), Conservative MP, justice secretary and lord chancellor, 71; anton Edelmann, chef, 59; Jerry Hall, model and actor, 55; Chris Huhne, Lib Dem MP, energy and climate change secretary, 57; ahmad Jamal, jazz pianist, 81; Peter Kay, comedian, 38; Eva Lambert, artist, 76; Imelda Marcos, politician, 82; Dennis Marks, broadcaster, film-maker and writer, 63; Ferdinand Mount, author and journalist, 72; Lord (David) Owen, former Labour minister and SDP leader, 73; Bryan Redpath, rugby coach, 40; Tim Rodber, rugby player, 42; Prof Geoff Shepherd, psychologist, 63.  Tomorrow's birthdays: Evelyn anthony, historical novelist, 83; Fontella Bass, soul singer, 71; Vince Clarke, singer-songwriter, 50; Tom Cruise, actor, 49; Judith Durham, folk singer, 68; Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano, 72; David Gandolfo, racehorse trainer, 73; Sir Richard Hadlee, former cricketer, 60; Joanne Harris, novelist, 47; Charlie Higson, actor, director and writer, 53; Sian Lloyd, weather presenter, 53; Iain Macdonald-Smith, yachtsman, 66; Nicholas Maxwell, philosopher of science and writer, 74; Rohinton Mistry, novelist, 59; Susan Penhaligon, actor, 62; Ken Russell, film director, 84; Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, playwright, 74; Sebastian Vettel, racing driver, 24. 
 For the next month, I'll be waving the flag for the great watermills and windmills of Britain, because the flour they produce is essential for the best breadmaking. Most are centuries old, their wood and stone me  
 In 2008 prizewinning environmentalist author Mark Lynas experienced a "eureka moment". Reading the hostile comments underneath an article outlining his objections to GM foods on the Guardian website, he decided his critics were probably right.  a couple of years later, Lynas had another eureka moment when he read Stewart Brand's book, Whole Earth Discipline, in which the american writer tore up the green rulebook and came out in favour of urbanisation, nuclear power and genetic engineering. a few months ago, Lynas appeared in a TV documentary, What the Green Movement Got Wrong, alongside Brand - and inside the ruins of Chernobyl which, he argued, had not been nearly as devastating a disaster as most people think.  Next week Lynas publishes a new book, The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the age of Humans, in which he takes his argument with the green movement a step further. The book accuses the greens of having helped cause climate change through their opposition to nuclear power, and calls this a "gargantuan error, and one that will echo down the ages".  "anyone who still marches against nuclear today," he writes, "as many thousands of people did in Germany following the Fukushima accident, is in my view just as bad for the climate as textbook eco-villains like the big oil companies."  The idea for Lynas's new book came to him in another "moment of revelation" two years ago. Lynas, who is a part-time climate adviser to the Maldives government (he is also a visiting researcher at Oxford university), was invited to sit in on the meetings of a group of scientists in Sweden. The group were aiming to flesh out the concept of "planetary boundaries", coined by sustainability expert Johan Rockstrom.  The best-known of these so-called boundaries is the climate-change one - the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But there are boundaries too for biodiversity, nitrogen, and ocean acidification. The idea is that, beyond these limits, Earth's systems will begin to break down.  Lynas's revelation was that these new rules about how to live on Earth should immediately replace many older green ideas, and over drinks he and Rockstrom agreed that Lynas would write a book with the aim of popularising them. But the most attention-grabbing passages in the book come in Lynas's denunciations of the green movement, and when we talk he makes no attempt to play them down. Instead he draws my attention to his blog, where over the past fortnight he has enthusiastically joined in attacks on a recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report on renewable energy. and he argues that "the green movement in itself is dying - I'm an environmentalist but not a green".  Lynas, who describes himself as a "recovering activist", was involved in direct action in his student days. He joined protests against the Newbury bypass and Manchester airport, and was heavily involved in the anti-GM movement of the 1990s, ripping up sweetcorn and sugarbeet crops from fields in East anglia, and on occasion being chased by police and police dogs.  But is he a maverick iconoclast, stirring up controversy for the media by turning on his old allies? Or are the views expressed in his book symptomatic of broader divisions?  Eighteen months after the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, there are signs of wider frustration. With no sign of progress in setting global emissions limits, a steady stream of reports gives cause for alarm to those who are already worried. Last week it was the turn of the oceans, with a warning about pollution and overfishing, last month a sudden upsurge in amazon deforestation. This week climate sceptic Michele Bachmann launched her bid to become the next US president, while the EU was forced to put off a vote toughening emissions targets following reports that Tory MEPs were planning to reject it.  "People think that getting some publicity, having some tea with a minister and civil servants, lobbying parliamentarians, is making a difference, but it's not," says Charles Secrett, the former Friends of the Earth director who two weeks ago wrote an article accusing the organisation of being bureaucratic and out of touch. "Protest ain't going to win the day. Nor is a sort of incremental engagement with government and industry. The movement as a whole has got to collaborate more, pool resources - money, staff, ideas - and generate real cross-party pressure."  Novelist Ian McEwan spent years researching renewable energy for his 2010 novel, Solar, and says when he began "there was a positive mood for action, a public awakening. Now I think everyone has fallen back to sleep. Copenhagen was something of a fiasco, and the UEa emails didn't help. and the ideological deniers are well organised. at this point I don't see change coming from a bottom-up process, from a kind of peasants' revolt. I think the consumer moment has passed and people have got bored."  This feeling of a missed opportunity, and of 2009 as a high-water mark in public engagement with the issues, finds many echoes. Though activists trumpet their recent successes in having seen off the third runway at Heathrow and a new fleet of coal-fired power stations, as well as helping persuade David Cameron to commit the UK to a strict timetable for cutting emissions, they admit that disappointment after Copenhagen, and uncertainty about the future, have been difficult to manage.  Tamsin Omond of direct action group Climate Rush remembers this is a heady time. "2009 was the year we said we would do one action a month, and we did. Everyone saw this as the one chance and the feeling of momentum - that we only had to work really hard until December, and then we could have a rest - was really present. Everything we did would get in the papers and journalists were phoning up all the time. I was completely caught up in it."  I was caught up in it myself: in 2009 I joined the Green party and stood as a candidate in a council byelection a few months before Caroline Lucas was elected Britain's first Green MP. It was the year age of Stupid director Franny armstrong had the idea for 10:10, on her way to a debate with Ed Miliband, and launched the campaign at Tate Modern and in a special issue of G2. and it was the year newspapers around the world, led by the Guardian in an unprecedented gesture of editorial solidarity, printed the same leading article demanding action on global warming on their front pages.  Post-Copenhagen, consensus is harder to find. The recent ructions boil down to three issues. The first is nuclear power, with Guardian columnist George Monbiot, former Greenpeace director Stephen Tindale and McEwan among those to agree with Lynas that atomic energy is vital if we are to wean the world off fossil fuels.  another disagreement is summed up by Charles Secrett's complaints about Friends of the Earth. Some activists believe that the big, long-established NGOs need to get better at mobilising their supporters and achieving a greater degree of focus and coordination, as well as building up links with nimbler and more dynamic direct-action campaigns.  But the biggest issue of all is the nature of environmental politics. Is the green movement a leftwing, anti-capitalist movement? Mark Lynas believes it is, and that those who style themselves as greens should be marginalised and allowed to die off so that they can be replaced by a new breed of market-friendly environmentalists like him. "If it becomes a culture war like the debate over abortion or something, you can't win," he says. "I want an environmental movement that is happy with capitalism, which goes out there and says yes rather than no, and is rigorous about the way it treats science. The green movement needs a clause-four moment - the Labour party had to go through that."  Those within the green mainstream reject this analysis outright. Jonathon Porritt argues that social justice is intrinsic to the sustainability agenda, while Greenpeace director John Sauven points out that the charity has worked closely with all the main political parties in Britain and with multinational corporations abroad. "It's a very broad camp, isn't it? On the one hand you've got the anti-capitalists, and then you've got quite a strong body within the Conservative party that takes the environmental agenda very seriously - John Gummer's quality of life report was an excellent piece of work."  He believes Lynas over-eggs the nuclear point, and that the power of the economic and political interests aligned against change - above all the US fossil fuel lobby - must be understood. Others point out that there is already a strong emphasis on green growth and development, and the economic opportunity represented by the new industrial revolution that we need to carry us into a post-carbon world.  But Lynas is not alone in believing that the intense focus on aviation has been offputting, and there is general agreement that Britain must learn from the US, where many Tea Party supporters believe climate science is a socialist conspiracy. This week energy minister Greg Barker suggested that a debate started by Margaret Thatcher had been hijacked by the centre left.  Campaigners c  
 Stephen Moore was on a last-minute Christmas Eve trolley dash in Waitrose when his phone rang. On the other end of the line was Ian Cheshire, chief executive of B&Q's owner, Kingfisher. He was also in a Waitrose at the other end of the country, but Cheshire wasn't calling for advice about turkey stuffing.  He wanted to offer Moore a job. Not as a high-flying executive at Kingfisher, but as the boss of a MediCinema, a charity that builds cinemas in hospitals so that patients can enjoy a modicum of normality.  Moore, former president of 20th Century Fox's international division, applied for the job after returning to Britain to continue his career in the film industry, before becoming disillusioned. He admits he was the "left-field candidate" to run MediCinema but suspects he was selected because the charity, which Cheshire chairs, needed a "businessman's head to get to the next level".  although he misses the Hollywood lifestyle and movie star-sized pay cheque, Moore says he has "absolutely no regrets" about leaving showbusiness to work in a utilitarian office in a south London hospital.  "I did have all the trappings of the corporate world, but there's a price to pay for that. I was really unhappy," he says of his former life. "I mean I was almost depressed."  Moore had moved to La from London in the 1990s after winning over his wife. "My wife didn't want to go. We had long negotiations and agreed to go for a year or so, but we ended up staying there for 10 years," he says. "It was either divorce or coming back. and coming back was cheaper."  Climate change  Returning to Britain may have saved his marriage, but his children were less keen on leaving California's sunshine for a traditional British winter. "'Thanks very much dad, you've ruined my life' is the quote that stands out," he says. "It wasn't helped by the fact that it seemed to piss it down with rain and my youngest didn't have any shoes - she's only ever worn flip-flops."  after introducing his daughter to delights of sensible footwear and tights - "She'd never heard of them before" - Moore worked as chief operating officer of aardman animations, the Bristol-based animation company behind Wallace & Gromit. after a couple of years of schlepping back and forth between London and Bristol, he joined Disney in London as vice-president of Europe, the Middle East, africa and Canada in 2009.  But he left last year after becoming frustrated by Disney's "internal crisis of confidence", which he says had made it almost impossible to make decisions. "after a while I thought: Is this the way I want to live my life?" He stopped to remember the "hundreds of thousands, but not millions" he was making every year and the knowledge that "if I do this for another 10 years then I can give up and do whatever I like".  "But then I thought, why the hell would I want to waste another 10 years doing this?" He quit and set his heart on working in sport or the charity sector, and when he spotted a newspaper advert for a new chief executive of MediCinema he had a "this is it moment".  The charity, which is backed by big names from the film industry including Lord attenborough and Kate Winslet, was founded by campaigner Christine Hill in 1996. "She saw nurses wheeling kids out of the wards at St Thomas' hospital on to the (Thames) Embankment to watch the boats go by," says Moore, who has become firm friends with Hill. "She stopped to ask the nurses what they were doing and was told 'it keeps them busy for a few hours'. 'What they need is a cinema,' she said, with a blinding flash of genius that hit on the obvious solution."  It took Hill four years to raise enough money for the first cinema at St Thomas' and it was seven years before it opened. "It took a herculean effort to build three in 15 years," Moore says. "Now the trustees want to build three to five a year to build a decent infrastructure."  a new cinema is about to open at Guy's hospital in London, funded by a charity day at Icap, the interdealer broker run by former Tory party treasurer Michael Spencer. It will join others in Newcastle and Glasgow and there are also screens planned for Newport, south Wales, and the Headley Court rehabilitation centre for service people in Surrey.  "The idea is that someone in hospital can have the same experience you can have on a Saturday night, complete with surround sound and tiered seating," he says. "They're as good as any preview theatre . . . The only difference is, it's nil-by-mouth, so there's no popcorn."  Best medicine  a cinema may not sound like the most pressing requirement for our cash-strapped hospitals, but Moore has the nurses on his side. "One of them said that if laughter is the best medicine I think MediCinema is the best medicine," he says. "When you've been in hospital for a long time you get kind of institutionalised. You don't go outside, every day is the same."  Moore tells the story of a teenager with terminal cancer in Glasgow Royal Infirmary who hadn't spoken to his father in months because they "just didn't have anything left to say to each other". "as soon as he got back from the movie the first thing he did was ask his mum if he could borrow her phone and he rang his dad excitedly to say 'I   
 The headline of your leader column obscures the salient points it makes (United Nations: Weak leaders wanted, 15 august). It correctly states that the UN "confronts a vast array of problems", including many "its founders could not have imagined". UN agencies feed, clothe and shelter millions of people, and UN peacekeepers operate in some of the most fragile states.  It rightly concludes that "deeper currents are making the UN more, not less relevant": issues from climate change to nuclear proliferation cannot be tackled by countries unilaterally. It also identifies the many challenges facing the UN, performing its life-saving work on a shoestring - it employs fewer people than McDonald's and its core budget doesn't come close to that of the London 2012 Games. The UN has indeed been "sorely neglected" by world leaders.  Which is why it is frustrating that your editorial - at least its eyecatching headline - gives them a free pass by implying that responsibility for the UN rests solely with the secretary-general. It is the world leaders, not he, who agree the UN's budgets and programmes. It is they who confirm high-level appoi  
 London's major airports will be full by 2030, the government has admitted, as the capital's mayor, Boris Johnson, stepped up pressure on the coalition to abandon its opposition to building new runways.  The growth forecasts showed that Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted would reach capacity within 20 years, leaving regional airports to cope with the overspill.  Daniel Moylan, the deputy chairman of the mayor's transport authority, said the figures were an "urgent wake-up call. Britain is in serious danger of running out of aviation capacity where it is needed. The government has to react with some urgency because 2030 is not far away."  The Department for Transport (DfT) published forecasts yesterday in response to a report on aviation emissions by the Committee on Climate Change, which was set up by the Labour government to advise on carbon dioxide reduction targets.  The document estimated that by 2030 Heathrow would handle 85m passengers a year, compared with 65m no  
 Hooo! Thundercats has returned, with Cartoon Network airing a new reboot of the 80s kids TV staple. In an attempt to put to bed those playground arguments about who got to play as lead Thundercat Lion-O, and who got stuck with being rubbish cat-thing Snarf, we've compiled a quick Cosmo-style quiz. answer honestly, and no cheating . . .  1  'EVER-LIVING SOURCE OF EVIL' MUMM-Ra IS GETTING a BIT LaIRY IN a THIRD EaRTH KEBaB HOUSE. HE'S aLREaDY TIPPED OVER a TUB OF GaRLIC MaYO aND IS THREaTENING TO IMPRISON THE SOULS OF THE OTHER PaTRONS FOR aLL ETERNITY. THINGS LOOK LIKE KICKING OFF. WHaT DO YOU DO?  a) ah, Mumm-Ra. Face like a pickled whelk and very sensitive about his looks. Just show the old crone his reflection. That usually shuts him up.  b) Frankly you find these displays of testosterone-fuelled supervillainry pathetic. Deny him the attention he craves.  c) Curl up in the foetal position and hope that things resolve themselves peacefully.  d) Blissed-out synths and a hypnotic 5/4 time groove should quieten this Mumm-Ra guy down.  2  EVERY THUNDERCaT NEEDS SOME SORT OF BLUDGEONING, SLaSHING OR GORING IMPLEMENT. WHaT'S YOUR WEaPON OF CHOICE?  a) The Sword Of Omens, of course! Offers Sight Beyond Sight, fires laser beams, and now comes with hedge trimmer attachment.  b) The Bo-Staff, though you like to think that your true weapon is y  
 Saturday 27 august  Thunderball  (Terence Young, 1965)  3.05pm, ITV1  Bond of a slightly inferior vintage fourth time round: Sean Connery's 007 starts to struggle to keep his end up against growing gimmickry as suave spying gives way to hi-tech invention. But M, Q and co are all present, Spectre boss adolfo Celi and his man-eating sharks are worthwhile opponents, and there's plenty of well choreographed underwater action.  Sex and The City  (Michael Patrick King, 2008)  9.15pm, Channel 4  This first big-screen outing of the celebrated TV series is set several years on, with Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie attempting to wed that Big boyfriend (Chris Noth), Cynthia Nixon's Miranda worrying about her pubes, Kristin Davis's Charlotte suffering from the runs, and Kim Cattrall's Samantha still chasing men, the gals simultaneously trying to empty New York's upmarket stores of all their clothes and shoes (buying, not looting, obviously).  The Bourne Supremacy  (Paul Greengrass, 2004)  10.15pm, ITV1  The middle part of the superbly crafted trilogy, with Paul Greengrass taking the directing reins from Doug Liman and driving the action along at a lethal rate. It's another relentlessly paced blend of convoluted hi-tech espionage and crunching violence, with Matt Damon in the career-defining role of amnesiac CIa assassin Jason Bourne.  Confetti  (Debbie Isitt, 2006)  11.10pm, BBC2  When lifestyle mag Confetti offers a ?500,000 house to the creators of the most original wedding plan, the competition is whittled down to three set of nuptials: two naturists rerunning adam and Eve, a tennis pair playing mixed singles and a Fred'n'Ginger-ish dance number for loving movie buffs. a gently humorous mockumentary.  a History Of Violence  (David Cronenberg, 2005)  1am, Film4  Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) seems an ordinary smalltown guy running a modest diner, until two hoods show up, and he dispatches them in short order. The publicity brings more heavies, more adept violence from Tom, and makes his wife Edie (Maria Bello) wonder who she's married to. It's a  brutal, top-notch thriller that wryly undermines the happy-families idyll.  Dial M For Murder  (alfred Hitchcock, 1954)  5am, TCM  Hitchcock apparently did not care much for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's Broadway hit, but out of his experiments - shooting the whole thing in one apartment in a sometimes disorientating 3D - comes a typically gripping thriller. Ray Milland is the past-it tennis star, planning to have his wife (Grace Kelly) murdered for her money; Kelly, moving from anxious to terrorised, is terrific, and it's loaded with claustrophobic suspense.  Sunday 28 august  The Queen  (Stephen Frears, 2006)  4.35pm, ITV1  an intelligent and moving account of the week in the life of the royal family following Diana's death: holed up in Balmoral, dazed at the news and bemused by the extraordinary outpouring of public grief, while public anger at their apparent indifference grows. Helen Mirren's magnificent, Oscar-winning performance commands sympathy for the Queen, and admiration for her dogged instinct for survival. Frears's excellent drama is also surprisingly funny.  The Da Vinci Code  (Ron Howard, 2006)  7.10pm, Channel 5  Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's blockbuster contains most of the book's faults - including two-dimensional characters and a confusing plot that has Tom Hanks's Harvard prof and French cryptographer audrey Tautou chasing hither and yon for the Holy Grail - and adds a new one: it's so gloomy you can rarely see what's going on.  Hot Fuzz  (Edgar Wright, 2007)  9pm, ITV2  Their hilarious debut with the zombie-slacker comedy Shaun Of The Dead was a hard act to follow, but Wright and his co-writer and co-star Simon Pegg pulled it off with this fall-about parody of the US action movie. It's set in a quiet Somerset village, but that doesn't stop odd-couple cops Pegg and Nick Frost reworking every cliche in the Hollywood handbook.  The Fugitive  (andrew Davis, 1993)  10.15pm, ITV1  Harrison Ford takes on David Jansen's TV role as poor doc Richard Kimble, fitted up for his wife's murder by a mysterious one-armed man, and interminably on the run while trying to prove his innocence. Ford looks suitably hunted and haunted, and gallops through the big action set-pieces, but Tommy Lee Jones as the wily marshal on his trail is the real star.  The Hours  (Stephen Daldry, 2002)  10.40pm, BBC2  Incisively adapted by David Hare (who also wrote for Daldry in The Reader) from Michael Cunningham's novel, this is a fascinating tale of three women, in three eras. In 1923 Richmond, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, in much-remarked upon prosthetic nose) is stifled and struggling to write; in the 1950s, Julianne Moore's all-american mom Laura is on the verge of breakdown; and in the present day, Meryl Streep's Clarissa is a New York book editor organising a party for aids-stricken poet Ed Harris. Shadowed by suicide, the lives and emotions of the women interweave in an emotionally draining study of love and the pursuit of happiness.  Monday 29 august  Mutiny On The Bounty  (Lewis Milestone, 1962)  1.35pm, Channel 5  This spectacular screening of the infamous 1787 uprising palls before the compulsive backstage story. Production was nightmarish: the Bounty turned up late, Carol Reed was paid off and replaced by Milestone, and superstar Marlon Brando exercised lordly powers over all. a true Hollywood epic, with Brando's affected gentility struggling for screen space against Trevor Howard's cold-fish Bligh and Richard Harris's short-fused gunner's mate.  The Incredibles  (Brad Bird, 2004)  3.25pm, BBC1  The Pixar people behind the Toy Stories, Wall-E et al hit on another sublimely crafted, funny and touching animated adventure with this super tale of superheroes. after years of retirement occasioned by legal writs, Mr Incredible (very strong) and his wife, Elastigirl (figure it out), come bounding back into action to save the world from supervillain Syndrome. Incredible is the word for it.  Good Will Hunting  (Gus Van Sant, 1997)  11.45pm, BBC3  The film that showed hot young actors Matt Damon and Ben affleck could write, too: they scripted this well-crafted drama about Damon's Will Hunting, a university janitor-cum-maths whiz who is far brighter than the students. He has to learn to trust himself and others, such as Minnie Driver's loving Brit student, and Oscar-winning Robin Williams's volatile shrink.  Tuesday 30 august  The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas  (Mark Herman, 2008)  9pm, BBC2  Two boys sit on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence: on the outside is Nazi commandant's son Bruno (asa Butterfield) and on the inside, the Jewish boy in the striped pyjamas, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). Their friendship is a powerful counterpoint to the looming evil of the Holocaust, in an affecting adaptation of John Boyne's novel.  I Was a Male War Bride  (Howard Hawks, 1949)  3.55am, Channel 4  a late flowering of the screwball comedy genre, featuring a sparkling combination of Cary Grant and ann Sheridan. In postwar occupied Germany, he's a suave French officer, she's a bright-as-military-brass US lieutenant, and it requires hilarious tactics before the pair can unite their forces.  Wednesday 31 august  Even Cowgirls Get The Blues  (Gus Van Sant, 1993)  1.05am, TCM  Van Sant's version of Tom Robbins's cult 70s novel is every bit as wacky and infuriating as the book. Uma Thurman stars as Sissy, who uses her unfeasibly large thumbs to hitchhike around the States. The cast features such 60s alumni as Ken Kesey and William S Burroughs: pure hippy-dippiness.  all about My Mother  (  
 The Saatchi Gallery has become the place to discover artists from far-off climes in the past few years, hosting work from China, the Middle East, India and Korea. But, it must be said that the results have been patchy: a profusion of blunt, showy works instead of coherent exhibitions with consistent quality. Thus, the latest survey, focused on Indonesia, might be approached with some trepidation. Its 17 artists suggest this could be a lively affair with its share of surprises. Work ranges from Richter-esque pixelated and photo-realist paintings to creepy drawings mixing carnival grotesques with Manga cartoons and photos created by placing objects on a scanner. Indonesian history, including the legacy of Dutch colonialism, blends with global concerns such as climate change and consumer culture.  Saatchi Gallery, SW3, Thu to 9 Oct 
 The Obama administration gave an important approval yesterday to a controversial pipeline that will pump oil from the tar sands of alberta to the Texas coast.  In a blow to campaigners, who have spent the last week at a sit-in at the White House, the State Department said the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would not cause significant damage to the environment.  The State Department in its report said the project - which would pipe more than 700,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude to Texas refineries - would not increase greenhouse gas emissions. It also downplayed the risks of an accident from piping highly corrosive tar sands crude across prime american farmland.  Campaigners accused the State Department of consistently overlooking the potential risks of the pipeline.  "The State Department. . . failed to acknowledge the true extent of the project's threats to the climate, to drinking water and to the health of people who would breathe polluted air from refineries processing the dirty tar sands oil," Friends of the Earth said in a statement.  But Kerri-ann Jones, the assistant secretary of state, rejected the charges. She argued that other government agencies had still to sign off on the project.  "This is not the rubber stamp for this project," Jones told reporters, adding that the pipeline would not lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, claiming alberta was going to produce the crude anyway.  "The sense we have is that the oil sands would be developed and there is not going to be any change in greenhouse gas emissions with the pipeline or without the pipeline because these oil sands will be developed anyway," she said. 
 In 2008, at a Downing Street reception, Gordon Brown presented a young man, a member of Plane Stupid, with a Transport Campaigner of the Year award. During the ceremony, the young man superglued himself to the premier's sleeve. The prize is sponsored - ?10,000 a year - by Simon Phillips Norton, a rich recluse and public-transport obsessive who lives, surrounded by timetables, ticket-stubs, packets of Batchelors Savoury Rice, in a run-down multi-occupancy house in Cambridge. a former child prodigy, he is still believed to be one of the world's great living mathematicians, although he hasn't held down an academic position since 1985, when he was 33. and he used to be alexander Masters's live-in landlord, which is how he comes to find himself the subject of this book.  "I don't like your books, alex," Simon says in the epigraph to one of Masters's chapters. "Your representation of me as interesting is inaccurate," he says in another. "You must be very careful not to jump to easy answers," says John Horton Conway, a fellow mathematician. "Oh dear, I have a feeling this book is going to be a disaster for me," Simon comments in the epigraph to the book.  Masters's first book was Stuart: a Life Backwards (2005) won the Guardian first book prize. Masters told the story of how, as a mathematics postgraduate at Cambridge, he got a part-time job at Wintercomfort (a drop-in centre for homeless people, where a director and a manager were jailed in 1999 for allegedly allowing drug-dealing on the premises). Clients, staff, friends campaigned to support them: and so, Masters found his lot thrown in with Stuart Shorter, a young man struggling with a past that included heroin, Largactil, solvents, progressive disability and repeated childhood rape. The book had in it press cuttings, Masters's own Ronald Searle-ish line drawings, and Stuart's running commentary on the work as it went: "It's bollocks boring . . . Nah, alexander, you gotta start again." Polyphonic and reticulate, warm and harsh and very funny, the book was a triumph, a brilliant piece of authored documentary. Stuart died in 2002 before it was finished - the coroner recorded an open verdict after he stepped in front of a train.  Like Stuart, The Genius starts with Masters finding himself unexpectedly intimate with an unusual person. (In fact, Simon had a walk-on part in the earlier book - "Twice winner of a Mathematics Olympiad gold medal, co-author of atlas of Finite Groups, my landlord is a generous, mild man, as brilliant as the sun" - "One fact to get right, and you got it wrong in four different ways," Simon protests in the present one.) and as with Stuart, Simon's story is presented in an engagingly open-textured and multivalent way. There are photos of his mother, brothers, the family business. There's an exam report from Eton: "!!" is all it says for maths. There are Masters's own drawings, animating the basic principles of group theory, the area of maths that was Simon's passion. There's the newsletter Simon now edits for the Cambridgeshire Campaign for Better Transport. There's a picture taken by Masters of Simon himself, smiling broadly, holding up a tin of John West mackerel fillets in sunflower oil.  as you can imagine, much of this is delightful - the bloggy, scrapbooky aspect, the kipple and backchat and disgusting food. In her still-unsurpassed The Last Samurai - another tale of childhood prodigiousness - the novelist Helen DeWitt imagines "the writers of the future" learning to do with words what Cezanne and Schoenberg were doing close on a century ago with painting and music, and in its best moments Masters's work has something of that excitement, something new and open and risky and humane. The drawings, for example, depicting the basics of group theory: rows and ranks of squares rotated through 90, 180, 270 degrees, apparently unchanged, if it were not for the way the moves are represented, with flailing little humanoid arms and legs - a lovely insight into the synaesthesia of giftedness. "Mathematics was simply there: the setting for existence; the touchstone for all activity. It was to Simon what green fields and dark woods were to other schoolboys: the enjoyable places that you rushed to, whooping, as soon as the afternoon bell rang."  Other bits, however, get whimsical and overegged. So yes, the squares are nice - but was it really necessary to invent "Saucy Miss Triangle" with her high-heeled shoes and bloomers? I could also have done without the chapter printed in white on black (because it's dark in Simon's basement) and the joke about calling him "Simon MINUS Norton" (because he features not as presence but as absence, ho ho). and the bit with Masters imagining himself turning into his subject - there's a picture of him going to a party dressed up as the number 7.  also, there's something odd about the book's subtitle - The Biography of a Happy Man; call no man happy until he's dead, the Greeks used to say, and surely they were right. Of Masters's many virtues, the topmost is the way he refuses easy copout labels for a tricky person, his commitment to human variety and unfathomability. No matter what dreadful things Stuart did or what horror he suffered, he was not to be mollycoddled or monstered or let off any hooks. Simon's life - externally at least - does not appear so abysmal. But to call a person "happy"? Doesn't it soften the edges, dismiss the reality of a person's struggles, render a grown man cuddly and belittled, like a sort of gonk?  Besides which, if Simon's really that "happy", why does he keep talking about grief? "It's a cliche that mathematicians are over the hill by their mid-30s, but often it's not loss of mathematical intelligence that weakens their ability, but loss of   
 EDF, one of Britain's Big Six power suppliers and a significant nuclear generator, admitted last night that the public had lost confidence in the energy industry and said that a Competition Commission inquiry might be needed to clear the air.  The surprise admission came as the French-owned company became the latest to raise its UK retail prices - putting up gas bills by more than 15% and electricity by 4.5% - bringing condemnation from consumer groups.  "We recognise there remains a widespread lack of understanding and suspicion of the industry as a whole, among the public, customers in general, politicians, regulators and others," said Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy.  "It is important this perception is addressed. The energy challenges Britain faces are far too important and can only be addressed in a world with trust, open dialogue and mutual understanding.  "If a Competition Commission inquiry is necessary to build this trust, then it is a step that should be taken. We would welcome the opportunity to explore all the issues fully and openly. as a fair company, we have nothing to hide," he added.  EDF, the worst-performing energy firm in a recent customer satisfaction survey, said the tariff increases, which it blamed mainly on rising wholesale power costs, would be introduced on 10 November, taking the average dual-fuel household bill to almost ?1,300 a year.  Consumer Focus said the price rises - along with recent increases from ScottishPower, British Gas, and others - would mean "millions of people" would be cutting back on other essentials if they wanted to keep warm.  almost 7 million households - 27% of the UK total - are now said to be living in fuel poverty, defined as households spending more than 10% of their net income on fuel to heat their home.  The Consumer Credit Counselling Service warned that almost a third of people seeking its help in the first six months of this year were already in fuel poverty and this number could grow if energy bills continue to rise. For every 1% increase in gas and electricity bills, it is estimated a further 40,000 households are plunged   
 Twenty years ago, the UN framework convention on climate change gave as its objective achieving a safe and stable greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, and in 2004 the UNFCCC executive stated that that requires contraction and convergence of per capita greenhouse gas emissions internationally. The lack of success so far relates largely to the blame-based politics generated by some of the green organisations mentioned by Damian Carrington, who have, sadly, lacked focus and punch. The US has, in effect, walked out because of the divisive model on offer. Progress is still hostage to this unresolved row.  The UK government attempted to break this deadlock at Copenhagen in 2009 with convergence to one tonne per person per annum by 2050. This was rejected by China, which emphasised the difference between actual emissions and tradable entitlements to emit. In reality this is the only substantive issue still to be negotiated.  aubrey Meyer  Global Commons Institute 
 Mike Bartlett has moved from writing minimalist dramas to maximalist epics without any intervening stage of development. Having tackled climate change in Earthquakes in London, he now comes up with another big phantasmagoric fable, one that acquires urgency and force by asking if there is any alternative to freemarket capitalism and unbridled military adventurism.  Bartlett's structure takes time to grasp but employs something of the collage technique of a movie such as Robert altman's Short Cuts. In the first half, set in a nightmarish modern London, we are introduced to a bewildering mix of characters: militant protesters, a coarse solicitor, an atheist academic, an american emissary and the Tory prime minister who happens to be a lonely, post-Thatcherite woman. They are all subject to the same bad dreams and are either drawn to, or connected to, a charismatic youth named John who preaches the need to reject the prevailing worship of money, materialism and success.  Only in the second half does Bartlett's purpose become clear. as the government edges towards support of an american invasion of Iran, Bartlett stages a set-piece debate between the missionary John, the pragmatic PM and the cancerous, Islamophob  
 When the Labour leader Ed Miliband outlined his view of the future of the British political economy last month in Liverpool, he spoke of drawing a distinction between good and bad capitalism: a choice between "wealth creators" and "asset strippers" - or, more pithily, "producers" and "predators".  For some, it was time-warp politics - a mixture of continental-style state intervention and industrial policy, which is where the Labour party left off before it was rudely interrupted by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But to party insiders, this interpretation was wrong.  "What Ed was talking about was that employee benefits were given a greater priority than the role of equity ownership. That idea has underpinned the Labour party for 100 years," says Tessa Jowell, shadow cabinet office minister.  Next month, the government will publish its plans to open up public services, following its consultation paper in the summer. Labour's thinkers say this is the kind of transfer that needs to be examined using Miliband's resonant language.  While Cameron's key lieutenants Steve Hilton and Oliver Letwin talk about letting citizens and users seize control of the "big state", the Labour party's brains see such policies as cover for letting private capital creep in and take over public services.  That is one of the central messages of a new pamphlet by the centre-left thinktank Policy Network, entitled What Mutualism Means for Labour: Political Economy and Public Services. Jowell, who wrote the foreword, says there is a race between the parties "to see who can come up with the best version of a moral capitalism".  For Jowell, mutuals provide the riposte to the Tory advancement of private equity. "In the wake of the credit crunch, the public have made it very clear that they are unwilling to put their trust in organisations that they feel are not run in their interests and operate outside of their control." She points out that co-operatives have thrived in Europe. although we have the worker-owned John Lewis department store, with sales of ?8bn a year, this is half the size of Spain's Mondragon co-operative - a bank-to-bikes international conglomerate.  The latest research from CECOP, the European lobbying group for mutuals, shows that co-ops have not only outpaced their private sector rivals in terms of creating jobs during the recession but they have also experienced fewer failures.  So great is the success that in some countries, such as Sweden, 15% of the economy is mutualised. However, this seems unreachable in the UK, given the government's direction of travel, says Tristram Hunt, historian and Labour MP for for Stoke-on-Trent Central. He argues that renewable energy co-operatives have seen funding cuts, as have co-operative schools, while ministers have shelved plans for more co-operative Sure Starts and housing trusts. Hunt says "co-operative values are deeply embedded in the Labour party's DNa; for David Cameron, they are only skin deep".  While the coalition agreement promised to "foster diversity and promote mutuals", Labour says the government is failing on three key areas. The Cabinet Office says it wants a million public sector workers owning their own firms by 2015, but so far just 45,000 have done so, it points out, and the Treasury has rejected remutualising the Northern Rock bank.  The most significant failure, says Labour, is that ministers are not really promoting true co-operatives. Rather, the government is redefining co-ops to include entities that are majority-owned by private shareholders but where there is a minority stake held by workers.  Circle Healthcare, which is in line to run NHS hospitals, is 51% owned by City investors and pays them a dividend but is classed as a mutual by the government. In contrast, a true co-operative and all its profit is owned by members.  "This is really a trick of language," says Jowell. "The coalition calls them mutuals but they are in fact corporates. Our concern is that there is no asset lock and so when we are transferring public assets to these so-called co-ops, which are in effect private equity firms, they can make easy money by selling off (the assets)".  What happens when an asset lock is not in place - and money is dangled before once community-minded mutualists was proved in the mid-1980s when building societies were given the right to demutualise. Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock both seized on this, then were brought to their knees in the financial crisis.  Gregg McClymont, Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East, also points out that the coalition wants mutuals to compete with private firms. This means they will need large war chests to vie with companies that will eventually "hollow out" the mutual with private equity taking ever-larger stakes.  "at 80% ownership the private equity firm has complete control over the company, not the employees. at 75% ownership a shareholder can, under company law, amend the articles of association in any way the majority shareholder sees fit," says McClymont.  In a response to the government's consultation, unions today warn that the coalition is increasing the private sector takeover of public services. "When multimillion-pound public service contracts are up for grabs, any pretence of empowering public service workers goes out of the window," says TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, pointing to the failure of employee-owned Central Surrey Health to win a recent contract awarded to a private provider 75% owned by the Virgin Group.  McClymont is no dewy-eyed enthusiast for co-ops. They have been unpopular with trade unionists who fear the differences in pay and conditions that decentralisation gives rise to. He writes in the Policy Network pamphlet that when "(public services) at the local level are mutualised . . . one can argue that they could possibly become more responsive. Currently, the best one can say is that it is too early to accept the evidence whic  
 More than 200 areas of public spending faced real-terms cuts in the first year of the coalition government, with departments having to find ?10bn in savings from services such as GP care, prisons and the rail network, an analysis by the Guardian shows.  The survey highlights the challenge the government faces in implementing its austerity plan as major service cuts are offset by rising spending in other areas.  George Osborne announced ?6.2bn of in-year cuts during his first year as chancellor, a more significant cut to budgets than had been proposed by the previous Labour administration, which was worried spending cuts might stifle growth.  Details extracted from departmental accounts during the Guardian's annual data survey of government spending show that cuts far larger in total than this were required to offset spending on benefits and debt repayments, which soared during the economic downturn.  Overall government spending actually increased year on year by ?22bn, a 0.3% increase after inflation is taken into account.  Investment in infrastructure dropped markedly, with rail spending down 41% to ?2.9bn and road spending down 18% to ?3.8bn. These drops were largely a consequence of Labour's decision to bring forward infrastructure projects from 2010-11 to 2009-10 in an attempt to boost government spending during the recession.  Despite an overall budget increase of 0.28%, areas of NHS spending including GP   
 Polar bear sex. It's surprisingly lovely - gentle, cosy, fluffy, touching even. Until this other fella polar bear turns up, sniffing around, wanting a piece of the action. after a little scuffle, he's sent packing.  another male arrives, a bigger one, enormous when standing. There's a proper heavyweight fight this time. Terrifying, it's hard not to think of that poor boy a few weeks back. This second one is defeated too, but now our original hero, Mr Lover Lover Polar Bear, is bloodied and torn. Heroic though, surely Mrs Polar Bear will reward him most generously . . . No, she's not interested. Bored waiting, she's gone off the whole idea. Women! They're a mystery. and that seems to include lady polar bears. Still, I imagine that in a later episode of Frozen Planet (BBC1) we'll see adorable little polar bear cubs tumbling out of a hole in the snow.  Winter is ending, the pack ice is melting, shearwaters are arriving by the million, the sea is boiling with birds and whales and krill. Boiling with life. Over in Greenland, a sapphire-blue melt lake forms, spill water runs off, carving its way along channels, until suddenly it reaches a big hole and plunges vertically down into the ice. How am I supposed to feel about this? I wouldn't know if it wasn't for the music, which after crescendoing along the channels, now reaches a big swirling orchestral climax. This is obviously something profound, so I am moved.  Somewhere else a beautiful Harry Potter owl hunts in the snow. and in the tundra a gang of asbo wolves harasses some bison, hoping to separate one off for tea. They give chase, accompanied by chase music. The bison don't come out of this well; they are stupid and cowardly, one even helps the wolves by taking out one of its own young, runs it over. The wolves tuck in. Mmmm, bison. It's both thrilling and sad - though not as thrilling, or as sad, as the Weddell seal later on in the antarctic. arrr, did you see his poor sad whiskered face, exhausted and resigned, as he was finally pulled backwards by the tail off his tiny ice floe and into the jaws of the killer whales that had hunted him down?  To be honest, I'm not sure I'm learning much. It's dark in the winter, for a long time. Cold, obviously, flipping freezing. Harsh as hell. But rich in life, and important, to everything. I think I knew most of that. That you get polar bears at the top and penguins at the bottom. and that, though it's mainly white around these parts, it's red in tooth and  
 *For the second time in a year, George Monbiot has included in his regular column the sentence: "We are not born with our values." There is much scientific evidence to the contrary. In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker states clearly that liberal and conservative attitudes are "largely heritable". Experimental evidence shows, Pinker says, that many of our core beliefs are in our internal circuitry by the time we are born, waiting for us to grow up and develop from them opinions on climate change, attitudes towards rioters and perhaps even responses to adverts.  Dominic Rayner  Leeds 
 Which European leader would not want to swap places with Shell boss Peter Voser? He has just doubled the company's profits in the third quarter, amassed $30bn (?18.7bn) of cash over the last nine months and is now buying back shares at the rate of $800m every three months for want of anything better to do with the money. Voser has the advantage of having everything to gain from higher energy prices. The social and political fallout from rising fuel poverty and mutinous motorists rarely touches the parallel universe that is Shell Centre in London.  are there any Shell-shaped worries, then? Well, one of them - in  
 This weekend, Commonwealth heads of government meet in the glorious setting of Perth, Western australia, for CHOGM, their biennial get-together with the Queen. But apart from enjoyable Commonwealth holidays on public funds - an old joke made fresh each time by its fundamental truth - concern has penetrated right to the heart of the 61-year-old organisation about what purpose it actually serves.  an internal report, according to early accounts, has been critical of the body's failure to hold member states to account for breaches of democracy and human rights. Concerns are particularly grave over Sri Lanka but stretch to Nigeria via Bangladesh and beyond. Four years ago the summit was held in Uganda, a country where homosexuals are threatened with the death penalty. The summit displaced hundreds of families, cost $130m and left in its wake bitter protests about corruption. The Commonwealth has defenders, like the Foreign Office minister Lord Howell, who insist it remains an important forum for the exercise of soft power. It certainly played an illustrious role in the downfall of apartheid in South africa in the 80s. But if it is to continue to be valuable, it needs commitment, self-belief and a willingness to stand up to states that transgress. In return, it must deliver for its members on the economy and climate change. Otherwise it will look increasingly like an anachronistic self-indulgence - and it will be time at last for the sun to set on the aftermath of empire. 
 The art of Science's subtitle, "a Natural History of Ideas", suggests a narrative but this is, in fact, an anthology or commonplace book, with passages by scientists and a few from artists with scientific relevance, along with comments by Richard Hamblyn. Science is certainly broad enough to accommodate any number of anthologies, and this takes its place alongside such collections as Humphrey Jennings's Pandaemonium (1985), John Carey's Faber Book of Science (1995) and Richard Dawkins's Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008). Jennings's book focused on art, science and the industrial revolution, with Blake as its presiding spirit. Dawkins's selection (restricted to 20th-century writing by scientists in English, apart from Primo Levi) is intellectually bracing, best approached, to use a Dawkins phrase, while wearing one's "intellectual running shoes". Carey's book is probably the benchmark: a compendious, international survey from the Renaissance on, including a fair amount of poetry.  But Hamblyn's is by far the most relaxed, sunny and domesticated of these books. In an afterword, he writes that he had been surprised to discover how much attention he had paid to "the science of everyday life, from wet towels to coffee stains, via rusty nails housework, boredom, and the barcode on the back of this book". In this way, the science emerges naturally, and reflectively from our familiar world. The prevailing mood of The art of Science is that which Italo Calvino divined in Lucretius: a lightness of touch.  Lucretius is in fact Hamblyn's presiding deity. The Roman poet of atomism is represented by three prescient passages of demonstration - that the universe is infinite, that the dance of dust motes in a sunbeam is powered by the eternal motion of atoms, and, most astonishing of all, that the evolution of complex organs such as the eye and tongue did not come about in order that we might see and speak: "Nature did not the limbs for use compose, / But th'uses out of their creation arose". This is now known as the theory of exaptation and it was not formally proposed until 1982, by Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba.  alongside the kitchen chemistry, there are the great themes - the big bang, relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, DNa, evolution, global warming, chaos - and Otto Frisch's personal account of his role in the discovery of atomic fission tells most people all they will ever need to know in just four and a half pages. as befits the author of The Invention of Clouds and Terra, Hamblyn adds a strong dose of geology and meteorology.  He also has some wonderful surprises: Lewis Carroll on weightlessness, Oliver Goldsmith damning the supposed pedantry of naturalists who study tiny creatures. This makes a fine little cameo of the Two Cultures two centuries before CP Snow, whose famous piece is also included. Commentating on naturalists such as abraham Trembley (1710-84), who wrote a paper on that familiar creature from school biology, the hydra, Goldsmith wrote: "their fields of vision are too contracted to take in the whole . . . Thus they proceed, laborious in trifles, constant in experiment, without one single abstraction, by which alone knowledge may be properly said to increase." Poor Goldsmith could not have been more wrong: the great abstractions of biology have come through studying precisely these contemptibly tiny organisms: DNa was confirmed as the genetic material through work on the even tinier bacteria and viruses. Goldsmith could not have suspected any of this in the 18th century, but his representatives are still with us.  In his introduction, Hamblyn quotes the crass remark of an unnamed colleague: "I don't get on with scientists because I'm not on the autistic spectrum." Hamblyn regrets that he couldn't at the time summon the perfect riposte, but he has found it in time for this book: "If it's a spectrum, sunshine, then everybody's on it."  In fact science and art al  
 The Durban climate conference may have agreed a deal - or at least a deal to agree a deal - but the scale of the work that still needs to be done became plain yesterday.  although talks are supposed to start immediately, america's special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, infuriated the EU by warning that much preparatory work had to be done before the negotiators could sit down to haggle.  "(In drawing up) the Kyoto protocol, there was a period of a year to year and a half of scoping out so I expect that will go on . . . for a year or two," Stern said. "Then you still have two to two and a half years to negotiate, and finish in 2015." EU officials are acutely aware that the time to forge a deal is short, and the issues to be resolved vastly complex.  The Durban conference ended on Sunday with a last-ditch deal whereby developed and developing countries will for the first time work on an agreement that should be legally binding on all parties, to be written by 2015 and to come into force after 2020.  But while the UN and most of the countries present hailed the deal as a breakthrough, getting an agreement that all countries sign up to will be intensely complicated. "Many political agreements put off the difficult actions for the next regime and that appears to be the reality for the Durban platform," said David Symons, director of environmental consultancy WSP. "No one should underestimate the difficulty of arriving at a legal agreement between the developed and developing countries, let alone one that for the first time includes China, India, Europe and america.  "The Durban platform provides an anodyne set of words, with much of the detail yet to be agreed and the teeth not really coming for eight years. The real challenge will be in agreeing the fine print."  Jonathan Grant of consultancy PwC said the scale of the task was daunting, as G20 countries would need to cut their carbon intensity (the amount of CO2 released as a proportion of energy produced) by 5% a year to 2050. France's vast nuclear power programme of the 1980s delivered a 4% per year cut for 10 years, he said, and the UK's "dash for gas" to replace coal-fired power stations in the 1990s only produced cuts of 3% a year for a decade.  The timetable is significant, particularly in relation to the US electoral cycle. Striking a deal at Durban was crucial, because by next year's conference there could be another president, and none of the Republican candidates would have signed up to the Durban platform.  an incoming Republican would have to make a public renunciation of the climate talks in order to get out of the 2015 deadline. If Barack Obama wins another term, however, in 2015 he will be facing the final year of his presidency. That may spur him to try to ensure a global climate agreement is part of his legacy.  any new agreement will come down to targets - how far each country will have to cut its emissions. The motivation to increase ambitions could come from several sources, said Michael Jacobs of the London School of Economics, including people power. "By 2015 the world's young people in particular can be expected to demand greater action as the evidence of future damage becomes clear." He also cites the ambition of China's next five-year plan, due in 2015, and demands from investors for stronger, clearer policies as important.  Grant suggests Britons will have a simpler motivation: "It will be people's wallets. If energy bills continue to rise as they have, people will eventually start to manage their demand much more efficiently than now. People are left a bit cold by the climate negotiations but energy bills impact them directly."  The magic number is two - a temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial levels is estimated to be the limit beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible. In order to have even a 50:50 chance of staying within that limit, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates that emissions must peak by 2020 at the latest and fall rapidly thereafter. Carbon output must be roughly halved by mid-century, compared with 1990.  In 2014 the IPCC will produce its fifth assessment report. The overwhelming majority of climate research shows the situation is growing more serious, with increasing evidence that human activity is harming the climate and a clearer picture of what the consequences will be. This may mean governments could have to raise their targets even further.  If life were simple, it might be possible to work out a formula for dividing up the cuts needed among the countries, according to emissions per head of population, perhaps also taking into account emissions per unit of economic output.  That sort of thinking will not work in these talks, which have been running for 20 years. One key issue is historic emissions - industrialised countries started burning fossil fuels earlier and so bear responsibility for most of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. Balancing that, some countries have worked harder to reduce emissions than others - the EU, for instance, has, while China has invested heavily in renewables in recent years - so they will all want credit for these actions. Then there are the differing capabilities of each country - for instance, those with large forests provide a valuable service in absorbing carbon, while others' circumstances afford less opportunity to use low-carbon power. Japan is a case in point: having pledged to phase out nuclear power, it will be hard-pressed to find enough renewable alternatives.  Just how difficult it will be to resolve these issues was apparent in Durban. India's environment minister made an impassioned speech in which she insisted that equity - taking into account developing countries' economic capabilities, large populations still to be lifted out of poverty, and low responsibility for historic emissions - must be the foundation of the negotiations. She said: "Equity is the centrepiece, it cannot be shifted. This is not about India. Does fighting climate change mean we have to give up on equity?"  China's minister Xie Zhenhua backed her up strongly.  The International Energy agency estimates that by 2020 China's emissions per head will be equal to or higher than the EU's. That will make it difficult for China to base its argument for easier targets on its large population. The vast   
 In China and India - the world's two biggest developing nations - the media reaction to the Durban climate talks agreement was cautiously upbeat.  The China Daily, the government's mouthpiece to the English-speaking world, was optimistic: "The flexibility all parties have shown to reach an agreement at the end of the Durban climate summit offers a glimmer of hope for our children and grandchildren," one of its commentators said. The article noted that much work still needed to be done but placed the blame firmly on nations that industrialised earlier.  No Chinese media have the freedom to strongly criticise their government's position. China's Xinhua news agency noted that environmental NGOs were dissatisfied with the deal. The state-run agency said the onus was on developed nations to do more before the next round of talks in the Middle East at the end of 2012.  "The lack of political will is a main element that hinders co-operation on addressing climate change in the international community," it quoted Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation, as saying. "We expect political sincerity from developed countries next year in Qatar."  Elements of the Indian media struck a more nationalistic and triumphalist tone. "India took over centre stage as a force to reckon with, regained its position as the leader and moral voice of the developing world as the EU and the US were forced to address its demands," claimed the Times of India, which added that environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan had become "the voice" of the developing world.  The Hindustan Times also painted the outcome as a victory for India. The two main players at the conference were European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Natarajan, who ultimately prevailed, it said, thanks to an impassioned speech that "ensured India's main concern - the inclusion of the concept of equity in the fight against climate change - became part of the package". 
 Whoever wrote the political rulebook needs to start rewriting it. It used to be an iron maxim that voters' most vital organ was neither their head nor their heart, but their wallet. If they were suffering economically, they'd throw the incumbents out. Yet in Britain a coalition presiding over barely-there growth, rising unemployment and forecasts of gloom stretching to the horizon is holding steady in the opinion polls, while in the US Barack Obama is mired in horrible numbers - except for the ones showing him beating all-comers in the election now less than 11 months away. Even though the US economy is slumped in the doldrums, some of the country's shrewdest commentators make a serious case that Obama could be heading for a landslide victory in 2012.  How to explain such a turnaround? In the United States, at least, there is one compellingly simple, two-word answer: Fox News.  By any normal standards, Obama should be extremely vulnerable. Not only is the economy in bad shape, he has proved to be a much more hesitant, less commanding White House presence than his supporters longed for. and yet, most surveys put him comfortably ahead of his would-be rivals. That's not a positive judgment on the president - whose approval rating stands at a meagre 44% - but an indictment of the dire quality of a Republican field almost comically packed with the scandal-plagued, gaffe-prone and downright flaky. and the finger of blame for this state of affairs points squarely at the studios of Fox News.  It's not just usual-suspect lefties and professional Murdoch-haters who say it, mischievously exaggerating the cable TV network's influence. Dick Morris, veteran political operative and Fox regular, noted the phenomenon himself the other day while sitting on the Fox sofa. "This is a phenomenon of this year's election," he said. "You don't win Iowa in Iowa. You win it on this couch. You win it on Fox News." In other words, it is Fox - with the largest cable news audience, representing a huge chunk of the Republican base - that is, in effect, picking the party's nominee to face Obama next November.  This doesn't work crudely - not that crudely, anyway. Roger ailes, the Fox boss, does not deliver a newspaper-style endorsement of a single, anointed candidate. Rather, some are put in the sunlight, and others left to moulder in the shade. The Media Matters organisation keeps tabs on what it calls the Fox Primary, measuring by the minute who gets the most airtime. It has charted a striking correlation, with an increase in a candidate's Fox appearances regularly followed by a surge in the opinion polls. Herman Cain and Rick Perry both benefited from that Fox effect, with Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, the latest: in the days before he broke from the pack, Gingrich topped the Fox airtime chart. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney cannot seem to break through a 20-to-25% ceiling in the polls - hardly surprising considering, as the league table shows, he has never been a Fox favourite.  But it works in a subtler way than the mere degree of exposure. Fox, serving up constant outrage and fury, favours bluster over policy coherence. Its ideal contributor is a motormouth not a wonk, someone who makes good TV rather than good policy. Little wonder it fell for Cain and is swooning now for Gingrich - one of whom has never held elected office while the other messed up when he did, but who can talk and talk - while it has little interest in Romney and even less in Jon Huntsman, even though both have impressive records as state governors. The self-described conservative journalist andrew Sullivan says that the dominant public figures on the right are no longer serving politicians, but "provocative, polarising media stars" who serve up enough controversy and conflict to keep the ratings high. "In that atmosphere, you need talk-show hosts as president, not governors or legislators."  Fox News and what Sullivan calls the wider "Media Industrial Complex" have not only determined the style of the viable Republican presidential candidate, but the content too. If one is to flourish rather than wither in the Fox spotlight, there are several articles of faith to which one must subscribe - from refusing to believe in human-made climate change, and insisting that Christians are an embattled minority in the US, persecuted by a liberal, secular, bi-coastal elite, to believing that government regulation is always wrong, and that any attempt to tax the wealthiest people is immoral. Those who deviate are rapidly branded foreign, socialist or otherwise un-american.  Some wonder if it was fear of this ultra-conservative catechism that pushed a series of Republican heavyweights to sit out 2012. "The talent pool got constricted," says David Frum, the former George W Bush speechwriter who has been boldest in speaking out against the Foxification of his party. Fox sets a series of litmus tests that not every Republican can or wants to pass.  This affects those who run as well as those who step aside, setting the parameters within which a Republican candidate must operate. What troubles Frum is that it pushes Republicans to adopt positions that will make them far less appealing to the national electorate in November, with Romney's forced  
 The outcome of last week's Brussels summit was economically inadequate and politically damaging for Britain. There was no real plan for jobs and growth, no credible plan for reducing deficits and no steps taken to properly empower the European Central Bank as the lender of last resort. The risk of further economic crisis remains but, inexcusably, the British government did little to address it.  Despite the best efforts of the prime minister to present Friday's meeting as the last word on the issue, we still have the chance to make a bad situation better. There is a common view across Europe, as well as within the UK, that what happened was undeniably bad for business and bad for Britain. What is vital now is for Britain to chart a way forward economically, politically and diplomatically in Europe, or we will risk being locked out of the room and bereft of influence just as the economic storms worsen.  The best route for Britain to protect our national interest requires two immediate steps - first, to rebuild alliances and, second, to get a seat at the table. Before David Cameron's decision to walk away from the summit, a number of countries were prepared to make a deal with Britain. Chancellor Merkel said recently that there was "a lot of common ground" between Britain and Germany, and we had potential allies in such countries as Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.  Cameron should now engage in a serious and concerted diplomatic campaign to repair the damage and secure the influence necessary as another year of fresh economic turmoil   
 DEPaRTMENT for Environment Food and Rural affairs Secretary Caroline Spelman told delegates at the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday that European farmers should become less reliant on direct farming subsidies and earn more for their environmental efforts and the work they do to enhance the countryside.  Ms Spelman s speech was a clear indication of her intended approach to the current negotiations on the new Common agricultural Policy (CaP) to be in place from 2014, which she believes needs to be fundamentally different.  Ms Spelman said:  The CaP continues to distort trade by maintaining high EU prices. This gives rise to high import tariffs and the use of export subsidies to clear market surpluses   all of which undercuts production in developing countries. This is morally wrong.  To continue as we are threatens to snuff out the transition we need towards a market that can sustain   
 a FUND worth ?10.3 million can help Scottish communities play a vital role in tackling climate change, Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said. The ?10.3m set aside for the scheme in 2011/12 is up from ?9.3m in 2010/11.  Since 2008 the fund is said to have helped cut carbon emissions by 696,212 tonnes. 
 CaSH-STRaPPED Scottish universities are facing an unexpected bill of up to ?20 million after the introduction of a new tax to cut carbon emissions.  Research shows higher education institutions north of the Border will face the estimated charges between 2012 and 2016 under the UK-wide Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.  Businesses that use large amounts of energy will have to pay a sum of money to the Government depending on the amount of carbon they generate. The sum reduces as their energy efficiency improves.  Previously, the intention was to return some of the money to businesses involved, but the Westminster Government has now decided to keep all the funding to reinvest in low-carbon technologies.  although universities have publicly supported efforts to reduce carbon emissions , privately they will be concerned about the scale of the payouts.  The tax comes at a difficult time for higher education in Scotland with universities facing reductions in their teaching budget of nearly 11% for 2010/11. That means funding for universities will fall by ?69m, from ?678m to ?609m.  What makes the situation more acute is the fact tuition fee rises in England will take effect from 2012/13, giving universities there another stream of income to offset reductions in public spending.  Kevin Houston, a partner in Carbon Masters   a UK company that advises businesses on ways they can reduce carbon use   said the university sector would be hit hard. He has compiled a table of Scottish universities showing how their energy costs are likely to increase in the future, alongside carbon tax.  He s  
 SEVERaL lucrative business and Government contracts are due to be signed with China next   
 SCOTLaND and China celebrated a groundbreaking new union as the man widely expected to become the next Chinese premier met business and political leaders in Edinburgh yesterday at the start of a four-day visit to the UK.  Li Keqiang, vice-premier, and First Minister alex Salmond confirmed a green energy deal initially worth ?6.4 million, between a Sino-Scots company and a Dumfriesshire-based engineering firm for processing domestic waste into energy.  The Chinese statesman was met at the city s airport by Scottish Secretary Michael Moore as he began the trip aimed at boosting political and trade ties.  Mr Salmond later welcomed the licensing agreement between Shanghai Huanuan Boiler and Vessel Co/Cochran and engineering company, W2E Engineering Ltd Scotland, which means that technology pioneered in Scotland will be introduced into China with the building of a renewable energy conversion plant.  Security was tight with police cordons across the city as the motorcade with 14 vehicles  ferried the VIPs around.  Police said there had been no protests connected to the visit.  Mr Li is leading a delegation which includes six Chinese ministers to discuss future trade, social and cultural links between the two countries.  Following a meeting with Mr Moore, Mr Li then met Mr Salmond for bilateral talks. Later the delegation toured Pelamis Wave Power in Leith to learn about some of Scotland s offshore wind, wave and tidal energy capabilities.  The event was to showcase Scotland s world-leading wind and marine energy technology developers and manufacturers, an  
 MOST of the Parliament s committees are in session tomorrow and Wednesday. Main chamber business starts on Wednesday afternoon with a ministerial statement on Reform of the Police and Fire and Rescue Services followed by debates on the autism (Scotland) Bill and the Government s draft report on its climate change targets. The day ends with a Members  Business debate on a motion by Glasgow SNP MSP Bob Doris:  Paying tribute to Scotland s Irish diaspora.  The Labour Party choose the business for Thursday morning and will be seeking to increase pressure on Education Secretary Mike Russell over class sizes and teacher numbers before First Minister s Questions at noon.  The afternoon session starts with themed questions on health and wellbeing, followed by a Government debate on electricity market reform. 
 THE jobs of more than 2000 workers have been secured after the owners of the Grangemouth oil refinery, Ineos, signed a partnership deal with PetroChina   the biggest company in the world by stock market value.  The Chinese giant yesterday confirmed details of a joint venture with Ineos which will help protect the long-term profitability of the refinery and petro-chemical plant on the Forth.  around 1400 workers are employed at the site and Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe said another 7000 jobs at other firms, particularly in central Scotland, were dependent on the plant.  He claimed the deal would be  hugely beneficial , adding there would be further mutual benefits through an agreement on sharing technology.  Finance Secretary John Swinney said the joint venture enhanced security of supply for customers as well as retaining the jobs and skills that had been built up over many years at Grangemouth.  The refinery has direct access to crude oil and gas from the North Sea and processes 210,000 barrels of crude oil a day   the equivalent of nine million litres of clean fuel. It supplies petrol and diesel to Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland.  The signing of the agreement yesterday was witnessed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the Chinese Vice-Premier, Li Ke Qiang. Both men said it represented a strengthening of links between the UK and China.  Following just 24 hours after the conclusion of a ?6.4 million green energy deal between Scottish and Sino-Scottish firms, concluded when Mr Li visited Edinburgh on Sunday, Mr Swinney said it was further evidence of the strengthening ties between Scotland and China.  He said:  Scotland has unrivalled energy resources and expertise and the Scottish Government is committed to working with China across this sector.  The Grangemouth refinery is a strategic asset for Scotland and this announcement represents good news for Scotland and Scottish jobs.  It further embeds the successful relation  
 THE world will not be able to tackle and cope with climate change successfully if we do not take steps to protect wildlife, Government scientist Bob Watson is warning.  Speaking at a conference in London today on climate change and conservation, Professor Watson will also warn that much of the natural world will find it difficult to adapt to rising temperatures   making it even more important to protect it.  Professor Watson, chief scientific adviser for the Environment Department, is expected to tell the two-day conference:  Our natural environment and climate change are inextricably linked. We cannot expect to successfully prevent further climate change or properly adapt to increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns without addressing the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity.  Loss of biodiversity, which includes wildlife and habitats, and climate change, need to be seen together and treated with equal importance, he will tell the conference organised by Natural England and the British Ecological Society. They affect the fundamentals of our way of life   our ability to find food and clean water, our health and the economy. Protecting our wildlife and our ecosystems can help us to lessen the future impacts of climate change, and to adapt to the warming we know will happen.  He also says protecting crops and livestock could prevent species which are naturally resilient to the effects of climate change, such as hotter summers and more likelihood of flooding, from dying out when they are needed most.  and he will warn that for every 1C rise in global temperatures, a further 10% of species will face a high risk of becoming extinct. 
 SCOTLaND S newest hub for health, science and sports education opened its doors to 5070 students and staff yesterday.  The Edinburgh Napier University building, designed by RMJM architects and Buro Happold engineers, was built on the existing campus in Sighthill, in the west of the city.  Students from the faculty of health, life and social sciences will use the campus.  Low carbon emissions and effective overall energy performance play a key part of the design. During construction, 8000m3 of demolition material was recycled and incorporated into the building.  Dame professor Joan Stringer, principal and vice chancellor of Napier, said: The architectural wow  factor and innovative facilities combine to make it a first-class environment in which to learn. 
 Inspections of  
 THE deadlock over the sale of the Nigg fabrication yard seems certain to be finally broken, heralding the creation of more than 1500 jobs at the Easter Ross facility within months.  The five-year standoff between the two current owners had led to threats of a compulsory purchase order. But it is now set to be resolved with the news that Global Energy has been named as preferred bidder with plans to make it a main player in the offshore renewable energy revolution.  Nigg is one of 11 Scottish sites earmarked to play a key role in the anticipated offshore wind energy revolution, which will see 7000 offshore turbines built in the UK by 2020 in a massive ?80 billion investment programme.  Engineering giant KBR owns two-thirds of the yard, but 76 acres are owned by the Wakelyn Trust of the Nightingale family, who own the Cromarty Estate.This land was leased by KBR, although the two owners have never agreed over the way forward. a clause stated that if KBR sold before the lease expired, it would have to reinstate the yard as a greenfield site or pay the multi-million-pound equivalent costs.  Global chairman Roy MacGregor, who runs a leading oil and gas service company employing 3500, was quick to assure local people there would be no decommissioning of toxic ghost ships or redundant oil rigs at the yard. 
 MORE than four million barrels of oil could leak into the North Sea in a worst-case scenario spill at a new well proposed for Scottish waters.  US energy firm Hess admitted that anything up to 683 million litres could be spilled in a disaster echoing the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico.  a catastrophe on that scale could engulf the Shetland coast and penetrate as far south as Norfolk, the company told the UK Government.  However, such a large spill  
 In announcing the proposed study for an electricity interconnector between Scotland and Norway ( Plan for Norway energy sea link , The Herald, February 2) our First Minister once again draws attention to Scotland s potential to become, in his own words,  the Saudi arabia of green energy  and cites a potential offshore renewables resource of 206 gigawatts.  adding onshore wind brings the total close to 300GW but this begs the question as to whether this huge amount of generation capacity is actually needed, given that Scotland s annual consumption was satisfied by an average of a mere  3.66GW in 2006 according to a Scottish Government study. We can put this figure of 300GW in context if we co  
 ED Miliband struck a real chord with British voters yesterday by voic  
 PYREOS, the Edinburgh-based infrared technology specialist, has secured a ?2 million, third-round funding package from Scottish Enterprise and business angel syndicate Braveheart Investments.  The company, which was formed in 2007 to exploit technology acquired from industrial  
 The number of individuals, businesses and communities who have registered for the Government s renewable energy incentive scheme since it began in april last year. areas such as Cornwall are seeing the beginnings of a solar power  gold rush .  The number of stage performers who have already been injured performing stunts for the new broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark. The show, which has cost ?40 million to produce, hasn t opened yet. 
 WHILE oil and gas giants are raking in huge sums on the back of strong oil prices, many small and medium-sized firms are putting their eggs in the renewable energy basket. This week s SME Focus highlights one of the Scottish firms that have been benefiting from the growing interest of farmers and the like in producing their own power. But the experience of the company s owners provides a reminder that all entrepreneurs need to expect the unexpected.  Names: Jim Paterson and Stephen Hamilton  ages: 31 and 40 respectively.  What is the business called?  The new name is VG Energy (formerly known as Ventus Green Energy), explains Jim Paterson.  What services does it offer?  VG Energy was set up to offer everything from planning consent to installation of wind turbine and solar solutions to farmers, landowners and householders. The staff offer advice on wind turbines from 15kw to 500kw in size, which can power anything from farms to factories and also feed back into the national grid.  We have also just launched  a solar division, which is  expanding into different technologies and materials, offering renewable power to clients with suitable roofs or ground space. We also are on the look-out for good sites for our own turbines, that gives the landowner or institution a rental income from the turbine output.  The planning team is rapidly expanding with a mix of surveyors and experienced architects. This gives us the strength to manage planning applications all over the UK and line surveys for the likes of ScottishPower or Southern Energy.  We are well known in the agricultural sector, especially Scotland where we have the majority of our clients.  What is the turnover?  Our turnover to 2010 was ?5m and we are predicted to do ?20m in this financial year.  When was it formed?  We were formed in October 2008 and started the business from a wing of Stephen s farmhouse above Newmilns with four staff. Now we have 40 people in modern, rural offices just outside Galston, ayrshire.  What were you doing before you took the plunge?  I was a farmer and agricultural contractor with a plant hire business and Stephen was a property developer, although he was originally from a farming family in Northern Ireland.  We had always been self- employed, and discovered that we were both looking for a new  opportunity. around the time we met, farming as an industry was declining, and the same was true of the property market, in which Stephen was involved, so we had a lot in common.  Why did you take the plunge?  I d just moved house and popped in to introduce myself. When I arrived, Stephen was meeting with a wind turbine salesman because he was considering buying one. I stayed and sat in on the meeting, and when the salesman left, we chatted on for another four hours, and believed that we could do a better job than the salesman, so decided to combine our resources and start our own company. We saw, and still see, renewable energy as an exciting long-term business.  What was your biggest break?  We had been building up our potential client list for four months, but despite research across the globe hadn t found a wind turbine company whose products suited the wild  Scottish climate.  It was almost by chance that we discovered that there was a company, located 10 miles away, (Proven) who had been manufacturing wind turbines for 27 years. We set up a meeting, and secured the rights to sell his product over the whole of Scotland. In addition, alex Salmond announced the  Scottish Government s ambitions of achieving 80% of  electricity from renewables and we grew from there.  What was your worst moment?  We had spent the best part of two years building Ventus Green Energy s name and reputation within the agricultural community, and had just launched a solar division aimed at the consumer market when, in November 2010, we were threatened with legal action by a financial, London-based company, who claimed we were trading on their name. There was a real possibility that they would   
 Protesters against high petrol prices took their campaign to Whitehall yesterday.  Led by TV presenter Quentin Willson, a delegation from the FairFuelUK campaign lobbied the Treasury and handed in a letter addressed to Chancellor George Osborne.  The letter urged him to abandon a planned april fuel duty increase of 1p a litre and to announce measures to bring down and stabilise the cost of fuel.  While at the Treasury, the delegation unfurled a banner showing a picture of a fuel tanker set out as a graphic, indicating just how much of the price of petrol and diesel is made up of Government fuel duty.  Mr Osborne has said he is considering the april rise.  The delegation also handed in letters to all MPs in Parliament.  The FairFuelUK campaign is backed by the Road Haulage association (RHa), the Freight Transport association (FTa), the Fuel Card Company and the RaC, as well as other businesses, trade bodies and members of the motoring public.  after the protest, campaign organiser Peter Carroll said:  The whole nation has to get behind this campaign to help boost the economy, which is being hurt by high fuel prices.  Some MPs are supporting us and are saying that the fuel problem has now become a crisis. Scrapping the planned april fuel duty rise is a start, but we need a long-term solution.  Geoff Dunning, of the RHa, said:  The recovery of the economy and its long-term future rely massively on stable fuel prices.  Theo de Pencier, of the FTa, said:  It is within the Government s gift to loosen the noose from around the industry s neck, but this will only happen if we all come together and make our voices heard.  Friends of the Earth s transport campaigner, Richard Dyer, said:  Motorists are paying the price for the failure of successive governments to wean our transport system off its addiction to oil.  Ministers and the motor industry must develop urgent plans to tackle the twin challenges of rising fuel prices and climate change. 
 BOEING has unveiled its latest  environmentally friendly  passenger 747 jumbo jet. Company officials claim the 747-8 Intercontinental offers the lowest seat-mile cost of any large commercial jetliner, while being quieter and creating less carbon emissions than its predecessor, the 747-400. 
 THE recent VaT rise is likely to attract more  Carousel  fraudsters to the UK as the amount of money they can pocket increases, according to accountants and advisers RSM Tenon.  It says ?2 billion a year has been reclaimed by HM Revenue & Customs in its crackdown on the fraud, where VaT is claimed back on goods obtained VaT-free and laundered through a chain of buyers.  However, the new 20% rate risked a new wave of attacks on the UK by the fraudsters, particularly in electronic equipment and carbon trading certificates. 
 BORDERS farmer and vet Nigel Miller has been elected as the new president of NFU Scotland at the union s annual meeting held in St andrews yesterday.  Mr Miller s presidential team was completed with the election of allan Bowie and John Picken   both from Fife   as vice-presidents.  RURaL affairs Secretary, Richard Lochhead, pictured, used his address to the NFUS annual meeting to announce that a further ?2.4 million is being made available in 2011-12 to the Communities and Renewable Energy Scheme (Cares) Loan Fund.  The additional money comes on top of the ?5.35m already allocated to the scheme, which from april will be opened up to farmers and other land managers for the first time.  Cares is designed to take the ri  
 JaPaN is in the grip of the worst nuclear disaster since  Chernobyl, atomic energy experts claimed yesterday as problems escalated at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.  Late last night, a fresh explosion rocked the damaged plant where engineers have been pumping sea water into a reactor to prevent a catastrophic meltdown.  Japan s nuclear safety agency said the third explosion at the plant was caused by hydrogen.  The International atomic Energy agency has yet to raise the danger level from Saturday s score of four on a seven-point scale. However, French safety authorities warned that it was now a level five or six catastrophe   putting it on a par with Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, and making it the most serious breach of nuclear safety since th  
 JaPaN is in the grip of the worst nuclear disaster since  Chernobyl, atomic energy experts claimed last night as problems escalated at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.  a hydrogen explosion occurred at a second reactor at the site yesterday and technicians were battling to stabilise a third in the wake of Friday s earthquake, after its cooling systems failed, leading to fears that it could be in meltdown.  The International atomic Energy agency has yet to raise the danger level from Saturday s score of four on a seven-point scale. However, French safety authorities warned that it was now a level five or six catastrophe   putting it on a par with Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, and making it the most serious breach of nuclear safety since th  
 at least 13,000 jobs could be created by storing carbon dioxide deep below the sea off the Scottish coast, a new report has claimed.  a study by the Scottish Government said the Moray Firth could be the site of an emerging carbon capture and storage industry.  Researchers said a rock formation, known as the Captain Sandstone   buried half-a-mile beneath the Moray Firth   could store at least 15 years and potentially a century s-worth of CO2 output from Scotland s power industry.  Professor Eric Mackay, of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage, said:  The Captain Sandstone is just one of many rock formations filled with salt water in the North Sea. It could store massive amounts of CO2, helping the UK meet its targets for carbon emissions reduction.  The research, funded by the Scottish Government and businesses within the energy sector, said carbon capture and storage could create 13,000 jobs in Scotland by 2020, and another 14,000 elsewhere in the UK.  The report claimed the UK s share of worldwide carbon capture and storage business could be worth more than ?10 billion a year by 2025.  Energy Minister Jim Mather yesterday unveiled the report   Progressing Scotland s CO2 Storage Opportunities. He said it strengthened Scotland s position as the world s top location for the development of carbon capture and storage technology.  He added:  In depleted oil and gas fields and in its natural geology, the North Sea has an amazing carbon storage potential, the largest offshore storage capacity in Europe.  Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said:  This report confirms Scotland is a great place to make this new technology work. 
 THE issue of emergency legislation to deal with the UK Supreme Court judgment on the Cadder case, concerning legal representation for suspects questioned by the police, will dominate this morning s meeting of the Justice Committee. Last week lawyers and human rights experts condemned the reforms, claiming there had not been time for consultation on reforms which increased from six to 24 hours the period suspects can be held. Justice Secretary Kenny Macaskill and a senior police representative will face questions today.  Most of the day s other committee work relates to various technical orders and regulations, and work on legacy papers as they continue to wind up their business with the end of the session looming this month. The Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee will take further evidence on the new Forth Crossing from senior officials in charge of the project. 
 Urban areas of Scotland are being urged to take advantage of up to ?60m of lottery funds through a similar scheme to the one which helped transform the island of Gigha.  Gigha was bought by islanders nine years ago after the lottery funded Scottish Land Fund gave them ?3.5m made up of  a grant of ?2.5m and a loan of ?1m which was subsequently repaid.  The Big Lottery Fund in Scotland is now launching the second phase of its Growing Community assets (GCa) fund, which is designed to have the same transformative effect in Scotland s towns and cities. an event in Glasgow on Friday will bring key figures in the area of community asset development together with existing GCa grant holders.  The first phase of the programme saw more than ?48 million spent between October 2006 and april 2010, funding 127 projects, and Big expects to hand out another ?60m by 2015 after applications for GCa reopen in June 2011.  Existing successes include Glasgow s Whiteinch Centre, which was taken over by members of the local community after they received a grant of ?116,092 in 2009 to help the centre support 80 local organisations and offer learning, health and employability services to 850 people each year.  Jackie Killeen, director of Big in Scotland, said:  These projects work because local people themselves are best placed to identify what their own community needs to develop. Our job is to support them in doing this, not just through awarding funds, but also by using our experience of supporting communities through the Scottish Land Fund and Growing Community assets programme.  However she urged public bodies to see the bigger picture and su  
 aLLIaNCE Trust chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox has ended the Dundee investment company s four-year experiment with private equity by announcing the closure of the ?110m unit.  Edinburgh-based alliance Trust Equity Partners (aTEP), which has its roots in the British Linen bank, will be run down within months.  Three of its six-strong team have already been laid off. The remaining three will stay with the business until they sell the remaining investments.  The move is i  
 US stocks fell yesterday in the aftermath of Japan s devastating earthquake, but other than specific industries such as nuclear power, the broad impact on equities was expected to be short-lived.  Trading volume was unusually low when compared to other sell-offs, coming in at 7.54 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the american Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, lower than last year s daily average of 8.47 billion. The recent pullback in stocks had been accompanied by high volume.  I m encouraged that we re seeing lighter volume on a down day since that could suggest less enthusiasm for selling,  said Hank Herrmann, chief executive of Waddell & Reed Financial in Overland Park, Kansas, which manages $90 billion in assets.  Nuclear power stocks fell after explosions at a Japanese plant. The Market Vectors uranium and nuclear energy exchange traded fund slumped 12%, while the Global X Uranium ETF sank 17%. But the Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF of alternative energy shares climbed 7.2%.  General Electric, which has combined nuclear ventures with Hitachi, dropped 2.2%.  The Dow Jones industrials  fell 51.24 points, or 0.43%, at 11,993.16. The S&P 500 lost 7.89 points, or 0.60%, at 1296.39. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 14.64 points, or 0.54%, at 2700.97. 
 an air of panic swept parts of Japan yesterday as scientists continued to battle radiation leaks from earthquake-damaged reactors made worse by explosion and fire.  Last night reports said a fourth blast had occurred around reactor four at the Fukushima plant, following two explosions on Monday and the first at the weekend after the complex was engulfed by Friday s giant tsunami.  a fire had also broken out in reactor four, with spent fuel rods in reactors five and six said to be overheating in a similar way to the other reactors.  although experts had earlier said the nuclear plant could not turn into a Chernobyl-style disaster, more than 140,000 people in surrounding areas were warned to seal themselves indoors.  Prime Minister Naoto Kan and others urged calm, but yesterday s developments fuelled growing fears in Japan and around the world amid widespread uncertainty over what would happen next.  The disaster has so far killed 3300 people, although the death toll is expected to top 10,000, and has ravaged the world s third-largest economy. Tens of thousands are still missing, and there are fears some Britons may be among the dead.  The nuclear accident in Japan is the world s most serious since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.  In the worst case, one or more of the reactor cores would completely melt down, which could spew large amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere.  Mr Kan admitted radiation had spread from the four reactors along Japan s north-eastern coast.  Japan told the International atomic Energy agency that the reactor fire was in a fuel storage pond   an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool   and that radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere .  Despite assurances that low levels of radioactivity detected in Tokyo were for now  not a problem , residents and tourists there decided staying in Japan s capital was simply too risky.  Several companies evacuated staff. Visitors cut short holidays. Some airlines cancelled flights and the US Federal aviation administration said it was preparing to re-route flights if the nuclear crisis worsened.  Those who remained in Tokyo hoarded food and supplies, fearing the worst from the radiation threat that spread panic in this bustling, ultra-modern and hyper-efficient metropolis of 12 million people.  as several European countries scaled back their own nuclear ambitions or backed calls for a continent-wide safety review, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne accused counterparts of  rushing to judgments .  Speaking after Germany announced it would close down seven older reactors, he urged the UK to keep nuclear safety in perspective.  I think that in this country we have a good, long-standing tradition of trying   to base public debate on informed assessment,  he told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee.  I know it can be frustrating in terms of those who want to come to more rapid conclusions but we should not rush to judgment. Let s wait until we have the full facts.  and I regret the fact that some continental politicians do seem to be rushing to judgments on this before we have had the proper assessment.  Mr Huhne was scathing in the face of claims that he had acted too slowly to quell public fears, saying a planned review by nuclear inspector Dr Mike Weightman  is going to be more reassuring to public opinion, whatever conclusions he comes to, than if I was to start grandstanding, shooting my mouth off, saying something was X when it is frankly too early to tell .  Japanese authorities have told hundreds of thousands of people living near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant to clear the area or stay indoors with their windows closed, but experts have largely played down the risks of a nuclear catastrophe.  Three explosions have now damaged the plant s reactors, leaving fuel rods dangerously exposed, but although radiation was detected more than 100 miles from the site yesterday  
 aS MSPs cram in as much as possible before this Parliament rises for the last time next week, they are, in an unusual move for a Wednesday, having an all-day sitting and a slightly later finishing time.  Four pieces of legislation have reached their final stage and are expected to be passed   the Certification of Death Bill, the Public Records Bill, the Local Electoral administration Bill and the Domestic abuse Bill.  There will also be two ministerial statements   one by Education Secretary Michael Russell on higher education funding, the other by Roseanna Cunningham on climate change targets.  They will also squeeze in a Government debate on local government finance and a Member s Business debate on a motion by the SNP s Michael Matheson on Denny town centre regeneration. One committee is sitting. MSPs on the Justice Committee will process issues under subordinate legislation. 
 THERE have now been explosions at three reactors in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. The stated cause is the explosion of an air/hydrogen mix in buildings adjacent to the reactors.  The explosions are relatively small but what worries the public is that any explosion in such a vicinity conjures images of Chernobyl, and some people will not be convinced that these are not atomic  explosions. The physics of nuclear weapons is against small atomic  explosions: you either get a big atomic explosion or you don t.  The containment vessel of the reactor is of very thick steel, and designed against rupture. The reactor itself cannot behave like an atom bomb, but loss of cooling water is a heat hazard. If the reactor is not cooled the reactive elements will possibly melt.  This has to be made good in some way and it seems that sea water will be used. That will have the major effect of making the reactor unsalvageable. Sea water contains every known element, but apart from sodium and chlorine the concentrations are small. Nevertheless, some of these elements dissolved in the impure cooling water will become radioactive, although insignificant in quantity compared with the normal background radioactivity of the Earth s crust and the sea to which the contamination will be returned. The elements of steam, oxygen and hydrogen do not become radioactive and can be safely vented.  The Japanese reactors have been well designed in that radioactivity has been well isolated and contained. The incident will give ammunition to those opposed to nuclear energy, and it will be a difficult task for the Japanese to get new reactors built.  Chris Parton,  40 Bellshill Road, Uddingston.  as Japan faces the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl ( Meltdown fears grow in worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl , The Herald, March 15) we must question whether a reliance on national grids and base load is the safest and most economical way of producing and supplying power.  Maybe we need to consider moving away from a national grid to a more localised Scottish grid, where power is more commonly generated at source.  Despite the Government s 80% emission reduction target and electrical tariff system, there is little incentive for utility companies to provide connections for smaller micro-generation. Connection charges can be prohibitive and even with the new Renewable Heat Incentive there may be insufficient profit in schemes that plan to sell power back to the grid.  Furthermore, the lack of regulation in the micro-generation market means there is no control over the type of generator chosen in a particular area or commitment to long-term maintenance. Utilities companies are therefore reluctant to reduce base load provision and this leads to calls for new expensive nuclear, gas or coal power plants.  Having attended a Scottish Enterprise workshop on micro-generation last week, I know there is an urgent need to stimulate innovatio  
 SaC s (Scottish agricultural College) latest research facility gives it and Scotland a significant lead in global efforts to help farming, food and rural businesses address the challenges of climate change .  That was the view expressed by the SaC chief executive and principal, Professor Bill McKelvey, yesterday, as he invited Cabinet Secretary for Rural affairs, Richard Lochhead to open the  GreenCow  building, a new installation on SaC s Edinburgh research campus. The building houses special equipment for accurate measurements of livestock inputs and outputs.  Work at the new GreenCow unit will complement research already under way at SaC s Beef Research Centre outside Edinburgh where, for example, hi-tech feeding analysis systems have been installed.  Mr McKelvey reminded his invited audience of the tough greenhouse gas emission targets set by Scottish   
 a nuclear power plant exploding on live TV is an indelible image. Even at 8000 miles, it burns into the retina. Suddenly the dream of cheap, clean low carbon energy powering mankind into the future seems to look like a Faustian bargain we should have refused. Is an evil genie out of the bottle?  The anti-nuclear lobby has been quick to predict the sudden death of an industry that was only just recovering after Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. Meltdown: a powerful word, conjuring up The China Syndrome, the ultimate disaster movie, which raises the prospect of a complete meltdown within a reactor setting off an uncontrollable nuclear chain reaction. The invisibility of radiation lends such ideas a unique potency. and who can blame the Japanese for regarding it with particular horror?  The future of nuclear power must now hang in the balance because at such times science and sense part company. Yesterday parts of Tokyo looked like a ghost town because of what broadcasters in hushed tones called  raised levels of radiation , even though these turned out to be the equivalent of a tenth of a dental x-ray.  The struggle to contain the disaster at Fukushima is desperately worrying but are we in danger of losing our perspective? More than 11,000 people are missing presumed dead, following Japan s worst earthquake. Even Chernobyl, a catastrophic explosion at a clapped out death-trap of a reactor that spewed huge plumes of radiation for days, was ultimately responsible for no more than a few hundred deaths, fewer than are killed in coal mines every year. Modern reactors are not only incomparably safer. They use less fuel and generate little waste.  My father, a nuclear physicist, died last month content in the knowledge that after a generation out in the cold, nuclear power was back on the global agenda. Some 60 reactors are under construction around the world and 350 more are planned. Calling a halt would be like banning all trains after a rail crash. There are certainly lessons for Japan, a country uniquely vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. Not building nears faultlines or the coast looks sensible, though it s easy to read   
 THE Scottish Government yesterday approved the installation of the  world s largest tidal farm for the  seabed between Islay and Jura.  The project will produce enough electricity for more than 5000 homes. Using the tide s daily ebbs and  flows, ScottishPower Renewables s ?40 million project will generate  enough energy for more than  double the number of homes on  Islay   operating 23 hours a day,  every day.  Page 13 
 Prime Minister David Cameron s article for  The Herald:  This weekend at our party conference in Perth, the Conservatives have one clear message for the Scottish people: we are delivering for Scotland.  We re delivering in Westminster, restoring the earnings link to pensions, capping immigration, reforming welfare, abolishing ID cards, doubling the operational allowance for our troops and rebating fuel duty for people in the Highlands and Northern Isles.  and Conservative MSPs are delivering in Holyrood, securing more police on the streets, the regeneration of town centres, a council tax freeze, a new national drugs strategy and more help for first-time buyers.  all these things are vital to a stronger society, a stronger Scotland, a stronger UK. But ask me what my priority is and it s this: delivering a growing economy and good, well-paid jobs in Scotland.  To make that happen this government has embarked on an aggressive drive for economic growth. That starts with us sorting out our debts. When we came to office, the Government was spending ?120 million every day just on the interest on that debt.  We were at risk of a collapse of confidence in our economy   higher interest rates, lower investment, more job losses   so we acted without delay, saving  ?6 billion last year and setting out a plan   
 When the First Minister gets to his f  
 FISHING communities are being given the opportunity to bid for funding worth ?4.5 million.  The Scottish Government said 12 coastal councils can set up groups to consider applications and decide on projects, particularly those in tourism, food and drink, environmental protection and renewable energy.  The Highlands and islands will receive ?1.5m, while the rest of the country will get ?3m. Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead said:  By making our fishing communities more resilient and successful, we can encourage diversification beyond traditional fishing and create new employment opportunities.  He said the funding would also help to bring more  visitors to coastal areas.  The news came as provisional figures showed a 3% drop in the value of fish landings last year.  about 366,000 tonnes of fish, worth ?428m, were landed by Scottish vessels. The value of pelagic landings fell 18% to ?124m, shellfish rose 6% to ?152m and whitefish rose 2% to ?152m, the Government said.  Despite the overall drop, the total was higher than every year in the past decade except 2009.  The price of mackerel landed abroad fell 19% last year, but it remained the most valuable species to the Scottish fleet in 2010.  Mackerel is the subject of a row between the EU, Iceland and the Faroe Islands over quota sizes.  The number of fishermen employed on Scottish fishing vessels at the end of the year was 5218   a decrease of 4% on the previous year.  Mr Lochhead said:  These figures show an industry producing high yields in difficult times, but we must also remember that profitability remains fragile due to fuel prices and other running costs.  Bertie armstrong, of the Scottish Fishermen s Federation said:  The fish landing statistics have to be taken in the context of significantly increased operating costs for the fishing fleet ...which means many boats are  operating on the edge of economic viability. 
 THE Government s former chief scientific adviser is expected to recommend today that the UK embraces a new generation of nuclear power stations despite the ongoing crisis at the  Fukushima plant in Japan.  Sir David King s intervention   in a flagship report   comes as the future of nuclear power emerges as a key battleground in the Holyrood election on May 5. He will argue its use as an energy source is vital to combat global warming.  Sir David s analysis was due to be published earlier this month, but was delayed because of the problems affecting the Dai-ichi reactors in northern Japan following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this month.  He is understood to believe that concerns over safety should not hold back the building of new nuclear power stations in Britain, including potentially in Scotland.  a furious row broke out at the weekend after First Minister alex Salmond accused Labour of being  obsessed  with the technology.  His claim came after Labour confirmed that, if elected, they would remove a presumption against new nuclear power stations in Scotland.  Labour in turn hit back,  accusing Mr Salmond of  exploiting Japanese grief for political points.  There were continuing warnings yesterday about highly radioactive water which has leaked from the Fukushima plant.  In response to the problems in Japan, the Tory-LibDem Coalition has ordered a report on the security of all of Britain s nuclear power stations, although this is not expected to be  finalised until May.  But Sir David, director of the Smi  
 THE man who will chair the biggest inquiry into the operation of the Crown Estate for 60 years has questioned why the body has involved itself in owning estates and shopping centres in Scotland.  Glasgow Labour MP Ian Davidson, who chairs Westminster s Scottish affairs Committee, yesterday visited Inverness to discuss a separate inquiry into the Crown Estate with different bodies such as Highland Council; Highlands and Islands Enterprise; Community Land Scotland; Tenant Farmers  association and Scottish Coastal Forum.  Mr Davidson said the meeting was to begin work on the inquiry s terms of reference and it would be next year before the report would be completed.  He said proposed development of offshore renewable wind, wave and tidal energy projects had heightened interest in the Crown Estate, and its role in granting leases to the seabed.  He admitted that he did not know too much about the Crown Estate but its ownership of certain properties in Scotland had rather bemused him. The Crown Estate owns The Glenlivet, Fochabers (Moray), applegirth  (Dumfriesshire) and Whitehill (Midlothian) estates, which are administered by the Crown Estate Commissioners (CEC).  Mr Davidson said:  I must confess I don t immediately see why the CEC do some of the things they do in Scotland. They seem to run some farms and estates and presumably they run them reasonably well, but what is the point?  They have just bought a shopping centre near Edinburgh, Fort Kinnaird. What s the point of that? 
 BRITaIN has rejected proposals from the EU which call for a ban on petrol and diesel cars from city centres by 2050.  The European Commission said phasing out  conventionally fuelled  cars from urban areas would cut reliance on oil and help cut carbon emissions by 60%.  UK Transport Minister Norman Baker said it should not be  involved  in individual cities  transport choices.  a transport plan to be put to EU governments insists phasing out oil-burning cars is not an assault on personal mobility.  Coupled with proposals and targets covering road, rail and air travel, the European Commission says its transformation of the  transport system can increase mobility and cut congestion and emissions by 60% by 2050.  The proposal says that by 2050 the majority of medium-distance passenger journeys   those above 180 miles   should be by rail.  More than half of road freight travelling more  than that distance should move to rail or boat   30% by 2030.  all core network airports should be connected to the rail network by 2050, with all core seaports  sufficiently connected to the  rail freight and, where possible, inland waterway system .  EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas said:  The widely held belief that you need to cut mobility to fight climate change is simply not true. 
 Jim Guthrie looks out of his window, across the lovely wooded valley of the River Duisk. Beneath his house a bridge crosses the river, carrying the a714 road from Girvan up to Barrhill.  Suddenly there s a great roaring din. a huge 12-wheeled truck is having trouble crossing the narrow bridge, and then negotiating the sharp bend at the far side. Jim sighs and says:  at least that one didn t smash the bridge. It s been damaged so often, the council doesn t bother to do the repairs any more .  The a714 is a narrow, steep road but its a-road status makes it in theory suitable for all types of traffic. These days many very long trucks are using it because of windfarm developments in the area. Land needs to be cleared, and this often requires the felling of timber. Scarring new tracks are built across virgin country, and there is much disruptive construction work. Big loads including the colossal turbines themselves   are transported up totally unsuitable roads.  Jim Guthrie is a retired Church of  Scotland minister. Like so many Scots, he is all in favour of renewable energy. But local, harrowing experience has made him deeply sceptical about windfarms.  Through the recent severe winter, when there was a big demand for electricity, Jim monitored the turbines in his immediate area. He counted 73 days when there was little or no turbine activity.  The turbines don t operate if there s a hard frost, or if the wind speed is less than 15mph or  more than 45 mph. So they simply don t work for long periods,  he says.  are they worth all the bother they cause? I don t think so .  With Jim is Claire Perrie, secretary of the local community council. She tells me:  I don t think that people in Glasgow or Edinburgh understand what it s like living near these things. and I don t think some politicians understand what they ve agreed to. The landowners and the  contactors make a lot of money, the rest of us just suffer.  She a  
 a SECRETIVE Canadian millionaire who campaigned against the controversial Beauly/Denny transmission line may be forced to give those building it access to his land.  Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) yesterday confirmed it had applied to the Scottish Government for a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) in respect of a small piece of land, 245 square metres, on the Eilean aigas Estate near Beauly.  SSE said it needed access to the land so minor road the C1108 could be widened to ensure the safety for construction traffic and people in the area. The land is owned by Brendan Clouston, the former executive vice-president of Tele-Communications Inc.  Mr Clouston, whose estate house is on Eilean aigas, an island in the River Beauly, has been an opponent of SSE s plans for the 137-mile line, which will transmit green electricity generated in the Highlands and Islands to Denny on 600 giant pylons. He helped finance the campaign against the ?350 million project.  Four years ago he argued an underground line would cost half as much as has been claimed by SSE and would prevent damage to some of Scotland s most beautiful scenery.  a spokeswoman for SSE said  We do not undertake CPOs lightly. It is the last option for us and in the vast majority of cases we get a voluntary agreement. 
 LaBOUR has launched an online campaign urging voters to back its plan for the right to see a cancer specialist and get results within two weeks.  The move follows a poll that showed cutting cancer waiting times was the top priority of voters in the Holyrood election.  Labour leader Iain Gray, who once again focused his attack  on the Westminster Coalition s health plans, said:  While the Tories are busy trying to break up the NHS, Labour is bringing forward plans to improve it in Scotland.  Visiting a medical practice  in Bridge of allan, Stirlingshire, Mr Gray said cancer cast a   dark shadow  over too many families.  We must up our efforts in  the fight against cancer so we can diagnose it more quickly,  he added.  That is why Labour will introduce a new right to see a cancer specialist and get results within two weeks, halving the current waiting time.  Too many Scots suffer from unnecessary anxiety as a result of the length of time they have to wait from referral from their GP as a result of a cancer scare to seeing a cancer specialist.  Now the Tories are back, we see what they really want to  do to our NHS. Here in Scotland we have an opportunity to do things differently.  For the second day in a row First Minister alex Salmond revealed a ?50 million investment from the ?250m Scottish Futures Fund, which he announced last week.  The latest tranche will be invested in green transport technology through a Future Transport Fund.  Mr Salmond, speaking at Dundee University s Centre for Renewable Energy, claimed the cash would deliver economic and environmental benefits by encouraging Scottish firms specialising in low carbon transport technologies.  He said it could be used to transform Scotland s bus fleet  to low carbon vehicles, investment in advanced technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, electric vehicle infrastructure including setting up  
 FORMER foreign secretary David Miliband revealed  last night he no longer has ambitions to become Prime Minister.  During a BBC Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman, Mr Miliband, beaten to the Labour leadership by his brother Ed, was asked:  Do you still dream of being prime minister?  He replied:  No, I don t .  Mr Miliband added:  The important thing is that I sleep soundly and the thing that wakes me up in the morning is my kids coming to jump on top of me.  He added: One of the causes that matters to  me is foreign policy, one of them is environmental policy and climate change, and one of them is the determined attempt of the Labour Party, under Ed s leadership, to win the next election. 
 Candidates  James Reekie (Con)  alex Rowley (Lab)  Jim Tolson (LibDem)  William Walker (SNP)  2007 notional results  Taking in boundary changes. LibDem 9030 (33.18%) Lab 8953 (32.89%)  SNP 6553 (24.08%)  Con 2277 (8.37%)  Others 406 (1.49%.  Notional LibDem majority 77.  Voting History:  Scott Barrie, who had been Labour MSP for the area after winning with a majority of 4080 in the 2003 election, was overturned by the LibDems when Jim Tolson, who was fourth the previous time round, snatched the seat.  The LibDems insist they are still in the running but Labour have a big party gun who has made it over a few hurdles in the past.  Profile  Fife has a history rooted in agriculture and coal mines but it also has a rich seafaring past, with fishing and Rosyth docks playing key roles. In Dunfermline, however, textiles once dominated the economy.  Now sustainable energy is seen as a future employer in Fife, while in Dunfermline financial sector and service jobs account for 87% of the employment. 
 NFU Scotland was quick to condemn EU proposals announced yesterday to scrap the special tax concession on diesel used by agricultural machinery that allows them to buy  red diesel  at about half the price motorists pay at forecourt pumps.  Currently, those involved in agriculture and fishing in the UK and most EU countries are allowed to use the cheap fuel that is the same as regular diesel except for the red dye that is added to prevent ordinary motorists from using it. That distinctive colour allows police and customs officials to easily detect it  in vehicles that are not exempt, and there are reports that there has been an increase in its illegal use recently as fuel prices soar at the pumps.  The European Commission s proposals look to remove existing tax   
 SNP leader alex Salmond s pledge to produce 100% of Scotland s electricity needs through renewable energy by 2020 has been branded  pure fantasy  by Labour.  The party s manifesto targets a renewable energy target of 100% in just nine years, as well as the creation of 130,000 jobs in the  low-carbon economy .  Mr Salmond, who launched the manifesto at the Royal Scottish academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, said:  We are going to engineer the 21st century, just as this city and this country engineered the 19th century.  He said he wanted to  reindustrialise Scotland through the green energy revolution where we lead the world .  Scotland s vast renewable power sources are an enormous opportunity,  he added.  The proposal says the 100% target can be reached because of the scale of Scotland s offshore renewable potential. It predicts Scotland will be a major exporter of electricity with  no upper limit to our ambition .  However, Lewis Macdonald, the Labour Party energy spokesman, said:  Labour is behind the drive to produce more electricity from renewable sources but alex Salmond s manifesto pledge is pure fantasy.  The current target of 80% for 2020 is already extremely ambitious and will be difficult to achieve, so to go beyond that is simply unrealistic.  This pledge is from a party that when in government for the past four years failed to process many applications for new wind and hydro power projects within their own targets.  While they dithered, thousands of megawatts of potential renewable energy was going to waste.  He said the SNP was yet again in danger of making promises they knew they could not keep.  But the targets were welcomed by Dr Richard Dixon, director of environmental group WWF Scotland. He said:  The SNP s new 2020 renewable electricity target is a vital step in moving towards a low-carbon economy.  This excellent commitment will help Scotland meet climate targets, create green jobs and exports, and sends a strong message to other countries.  a widely publicised report from energy consultants Garrad Hassan, sponsored by Friends of the Earth Scotland, RSPB and the WWF, claimed last year Scotland could comfortably meet 100% of ele  
 BUSINESS  l 100,000 training places each year, including 25,000 modern apprenticeships  l Cities Minister to create jobs and sustainable growth  l Scottish Water to be kept in public ownership and freeze in water bills for next two years  l Small business bonus retained to help 80,000 businesses  l accelerate delivery of super-fast broadband in rural areas  l Boost exports through export support initiative  l Reform investor support to attract inward investment  l No compulsory redundancies in public sector  TRaNSPORT  l ?1bn commitment to Borders railway, improvements to M8 and M74, the aberdeen western peripheral route, the a90 and a9  l Improve rail times between Glasgow and Edinburgh  l Faster rail links between the central belt and Inverness and aberdeen  l ?40m for phase one of Glasgow s Fastlink project  l Forth replacement crossing  LOCaL GOVERNMENT  l Council tax freeze  
 IF elections were decided on the style, tone and presentation of the political parties  manifestoes, the SNP would be a shoo-in for a second term at Holyrood. Its slick magazine-style document boasting the party s achievements, lauding its ministerial team and unveiling 10 key policy objectives, was finally delivered yesterday to the party faithful in the appropriately theatrical setting of the Royal Scottish academy of Music and Drama. Moses delivering his tablets of stone cannot have been better received than alex Salmond.  It was an impressive performance. Like a super salesman, he reeled off sheaths of figures to lure the would-be buyer. Mr Salmond, a natural showman, has an unerring sense of timing. By holding back until after most of the other parties had laid out their political wares, he sought to divert voters  attention away from Westminster, where anti-Tory sentiment is more likely to boost Labour. It also gave him the opportunity to trump some of his opponents  policies, especially those that seem to be gaining traction. So, in place of Labour s two-year council tax freeze, the SNP promise to hold present levels for five years. and in place of the reduction in hospital waiting times for cancer tests, he offered money for earlier cancer diagnosis. By 2020 all of Scotland s electricity will be generated by green energy, he claims. Whether any of this is deliverable in the current climate is for the voter to judge.  The SNP bases its pitch on its track record, its team of ministers and the power of its vision. Yesterday the party s publicity video reeled off achievements ranging from the abolition of bridge tolls to free prescriptions, though many items from its 2007 manifesto were significant by their absence: dumping student debt, the ?2000 hand-out to first-time buyers, local income tax and the independence referendum to name a few. Others, such as 1000 extra police officers, owe more to the Conservatives.  The claim to have helped all of Scotland s citizens, including the poorest, seems to rest largely on the council tax.  Freezing a regressive tax is by definition progressive,  claims Mr Salmond but the poorest 10% do not pay it. arguably, the biggest beneficiaries are the better off, especially as it is also the poorest who rely most on council services. Mr Salmond also claims credit for Scotland s improving unemployment figures, though there are 90,000 more Scots out of wo  
 BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and safety chief Sir Bill Castell survived a big shareholder rebellion at a stormy investor meeting marked by protests over the Gulf of Mexico disaster and work in the Canadian oil sands.  Meanwhile, BP kept alive plans to move into the arctic region by securing a postponement to a key share swap deal with Russia s Rosneft, which has been blocked by the partners in its current joint venture TNK-BP.  Some 7% of votes cast were against the reappointment of Mr Svanberg, who critics said avoided the spotlight when the oil spill occurred. Sir Bill, the senior non-executive in charge of BP s safety committee, was backed by just 75% of shareholders.  The typical vote against a FTSE 100 director is just 1.7%, according to data from shareholder advisory group PIRC.  Five people from the fishing communities of the Gulf coast affected by the spill, including Texan shrimp farmer Diane Wilson who was daubed in an oil-like substance, demonstrated outside after being prevented from entering the meeting.  They were joined by climate change activists, trade unionists in a dispute at a BP biofuel site in Hull, and people from Canada s indigenous nations concerned about oil sands development.  BP shareholders and some bemused joggers attending a London Marathon event in the same building faced stormy scenes at the doors to the Excel Centre in London s Docklands as police and security guards fought to stop campaigners entering. a protesting jazz band added an avant-garde note to proceedings.  Mr Svanberg told shareholders:  In the past 12 months BP has been through a crisis almost unprecedented in corporate history. We are a different company from a year ago. We are emerging from the challenges of 2010 as a wiser and stronger company.  BP s directors said repeatedly that  several parti  
 Legislation of the day  anti-knives campaigner Caroline Johnston and former homeless sector worker Mev Brown, standing as indepen  
 THE SNP have published their  long-awaited report card of four years in office, asserting the claim   much-derided by opponents   that as a minority Government they achieved 84 out of 94 main pledges.  Rival parties were quick to denounce the document yesterday, but detailed analysis of flaws in the SNP claims were much slower to emerge and less clear even than the SNP s original claims about what constituted headline pledges.  SNP Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon insisted:  Our achievements range from freezing the Council Tax, delivering 1000 more police officers, introducing the Small Business Bonus and restoring free education, to pledges such as meeting the cancer waiting times target   which the previous administration failed to do and passing world-leading climate change legislation.  In four years   despite being a minority government   84 of these headline pledges have been delivered. Of the other 10, some   such as the referendum on independence and scrapping the Edinburgh Trams   were blocked by all the main opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament.  Of those self-confessed failures, the SNP claimed three   Local Income Tax, scrapping Edinburgh Trams and holding an independence referendum   were directly linked to the inability to win a Holyrood vote as a minority Government, while others such a using the Fossil Fuel Levy money were vetoed by the Treasury.  Five of the failures came in education but they insist that on nursery education, primary class sizes and extra physical education progress was made short of their pledges.  Scottish Labour Leader Iain Gray said:  The SNP promised to abolish Council Tax, write off student debt, give grants to  first-time buyers, maintain teacher numbers, reduce class sizes   all promises made, all promises broken.  Under the SNP, child poverty and unemployment are up, but teachers and classroom assistants are down. Their only approach in this election is to ask for people s votes by way of thanks for things they haven t even managed to do.  Murdo Fraser, Scottish Conservative deputy leader, said:  People will not be fooled by this document. They remember that i  
 SCOTTISH and Southern Energy has sold three wind farms, including two in Scotland, but said it still plans to increase its renewable generation north of the Border.  Perth-based SSE, owner of Scottish Hydro Electric, raised ?173.6 million by selling its 30-megawatt Dalswinton and 36.8MW Minsca facilities in Dumfries and Galloway as well as Slieve Divena, with 30MW of capacity, in Northern Ireland.  The deal doubles the wind energy capacity of buyer Infinis, owned by private equity group T  
 THE  race  between oak and ash trees to leaf which was said to forecast summer weather may be a thing of the past because of climate change, according to experts.  The Woodland Trust said the last year ash trees are recorded as having leafed before oaks was in 1953, the year of the coronation.  The data, which comes from the Trust s Nature s Calendar records of the changing seasons, shows that the chance of seeing the two species coming into leaf together is becoming increasingly rare.  The Trust said in the past, cooler springs ensured a fair race to see which of the two trees would leaf first   with the winner traditionally thought to determine the summer s weather.  according to folklore, if the oak appeared before the ash, then the summer would be dry with only  a splash  but if the ash produced leaves before the oak, then we ll surely have a soak .  But warmer springs advance oak much more than ash, and rising temperatures are accentuating the difference between the two trees with oaks repeatedly leafing earlier, the Woodland Trust said.  This year is the earliest year for ash on records dating back to the Second World War   but it is still beaten by the oak.  Professor Tim Sparks, founder of Nature s Calendar, said:  It s quite clear the driving factor for oak leafing is temperature. In recent years oak has tended to leaf quite early. We have had two decades of quite warm springs and this year is no exception, it s another early spring for oaks. 
 IT hardly matters whether it was a panic re-launch or the long-planned second phase of Labour s campaign for the Scottish parliamentary elections. The fact remains that the speech from Iain Gray at The Lighthouse in Glasgow yesterday was the one he should have delivered on the first day of the campaign. He sought to rebuff those who say the Labour leader lacks both passion and vision.  With the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats reduced to also-rans in most constituencies, it never made sense to focus opposition on the Westminster Coalition. This speech s intention was finally to set  
 CLIMaTE change protesters will converge on St andrew s House in Edinburgh today to urge the new SNP Government to turn its manifesto pledges into reality.  The party s Holyrood manifesto pledged that Scotland would meet all electricity demand from green sources by 2020.  Today s event will see 25 senior representatives from Scotland s largest civil society coalition, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, come together to hand in a giant postcard at the government offices.  The action follows a disappointing performance for the Scottish Greens, with just two MSPs returned. 
 aLEX Salmond s landslide victory means Scotland will get a definitive judgement on the SNP s promise to meet all electricity demand from green sources by 2020.  His pledge was branded  pure fantasy  by Labour, and UK leader Ed Miliband accused the First Minister of dreaming up  fairy stories  with the ambitious goal.  However, many believe the 100% target is achievable if billions of pounds are channelled in the right direction.  The challenge the Nationalists face is in mounting projects, and the renewable energy lobby will clash with pressure groups every step of the way.  Roughly a three-fold increase in wind power is needed to set Scotland on the right track, but it becomes harder to secure permission for each new project.  Biomass plants and waste incinerators will spark  Nimby  battles with local residents, and offshore power is costly, requiring infrastructure improvements to reach homes and businesses.  Demand-reduction tactics such as taxes are unpopular and Scotland faces a skills gap in renewable know-how. While Strathclyde University and other centres rush to plug this, expertise needs time to grow.  However, the winnings if the gamble pays off are enormous: in Mr Salmond s own words, 130,000 jobs in the  low-carbon economy  and a chance for Scotland to engineer the 21st century just as this country engineered the 19th .  Though his self-imposed deadline is well beyond the five-year term of this Parliament, the time it takes to plan new projects means his cards will be on the table when voters go to the polls in 2016. 
 at present we have a subsidy-driven  renewable industry which gets money for generation and also for not generating, which is a licence to print money. It should be a requirement of all intermittent forms of generation to have a set percentage of available storage within the schemes proposed and so investing in the  infrastructure rather than just sucking money out of the public purse.  Storage of intermittently produced renewable energy is the only way to remove baseline coal, oil and nuclear power production from the grid. an industrialised country working only when the wind blows is not a possibility. There are few viable options. Gordon Murray refers to compressed air storage but this runs at an efficiency of 40 to 50% and at present requires air-tight caverns produced by solution mining of salt (Letters, May 7). I am aware of no such sites available in Scotland. Pumped storage is possible and exists but it is land-hungry and is about 65% efficient. Batteries can be used to even out load but are high-maintenance and have a limited life span. Fly wheels are useful for evening out wind production but useless for long-term storage.  Hydrogen production is possibly the best use for surplus power as it can be stored for later utilisation and gas-fired power stations can be built quickly and relatively cheaply. These displace normal fossil stations and produce only water as a  by-product. If located in urban settings their efficiency can be improved dramatically by using waste heat to heat homes and businesses. as a fuel source for vehicles, hydrogen could reduce or replace the need for oil and could be used as a fuel in homes.  Offshore production would require the gas to be pumped ashore but a network of pipes exist for oil/gas collection already and we have the expertise to do it. The present problem of balancing the grid with more than 20% wind power is resulting in constraining of supply when there is too much wind for the grid to cope. Localised hydrogen productio  
 The United Nations has come up with a way for airlines to help offset the impact of aeroplane carbon dioxide emissions - and 10 airlines are expected to sign up this year, according to officials at the International air Transport association (IaTa). The scheme works by enlisting airline companies to invest in clean development projects, such as geothermal plants. The airlines then earn carbon credits which can be used to offset their carbon dioxide emissions.  The aviation sector contributes about 2% of total global carbon emissions. 
 Emergency Budget unveiled ?6.2bn of cuts. Credit ratings agencies said UK no longer in danger of losing triple-a rating.  Plan to eliminate deficit in this parliament with ?81bn of cuts.  The Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded growth forecast for 2011 from 2.6% to 1.7%. Growth in last quarter of 2010 -0.5% and first quarter of 2011 0.5%. Critics insisted economy flatlined for six months.  Net borrowing ?148.9bn, 10.2% of GDP.  Government measures included: VaT rise, bringing in ?1bn a month; National Insurance rise; 750,000 more people brought into higher tax bracket; 850,000 of the lowest paid taken out of income tax; public-sector pay freeze; corporation tax cut by 2% to 26%; and ?2bn a year windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas giants, which led to predictions of up to 40,000 job losses.  Credibility rating: 6 out of 10.  Plan to hand control of much of England s NHS budget to GPs and open up NHS to greater competition from private sector.  Serious concerns expressed particularly from LibDems. PM took charge as Coalition announced two-month period to  pause, listen, reflect and improve .  May provide biggest Lib-Con split so far.  Credibility rating: 2 out of 10.  Major overhaul planned to cut ?113bn annual welfare bill with universal credit to replace mix of benefits. Sanctions for those turning down jobs and cap on benefits paid to single families.  New tests for 1.5 million people on incapacity benefit began. almost 30% of those tested in pilot schemes in aberdeen and Burnley were declared fit to work.  Credibility rating: 7 out of 10.  after an embarrassing LibDem U-turn on tuition fees, the Coalition Government secured a Bill to allow universities to charge up to ?9000 per year, up from ?3290.  Ministers insisted the move was  progressive  and would maintain high standards.  Some LibDems, notably ex-leaders  Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy, voted against. The move prompted dramatic protests at Westminster. Car carrying Prince Charles was attacked.  Ministers suggested universities  would only charge top rate in  exceptional circumstances   but so far two-thirds have said  they will.  Education Secretary Michael Gove was forced to apologise over school closure plan in England.  Credibility rating: 4 out of 10.  Review of defence and security   in light of ?38bn black hole in MoD budget resulted in closure of RaF Kinloss and scrapping of Nimrod spy planes, which will save ?2bn.  Threat still hangs over RaF bases at Lossiemouth and Leuchars.  Political campaigns launched to save them. Decision due before summer.  Flagship HMS ark Royal is scrapped.  Contract for two new aircraft carriers reluctantly kept. Yet only one to be fully operational by 2020, other likely to be sold.  Carriers  ?5bn cost already set to rise to ?7bn because of modification to allow French and US planes to operate from them.  11,000 redundancies announced across three forces. First tranche due in September.  Credibility rating: 3 out of 10.  UK unemployment stayed roughly same as last year at just under 2.5 million or 7.8%. Scotland s rose over year from 208,000 to 219,000. Concerns over UK youth unemployment which almost hit one million.  Public-sector job cuts rose by 132,000 but Government boasted 300,000 private  
 If the National Grid was unable to cope with the amount of electricity generated by the present number of windfarms  in the recent breezy weather, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation, why are we building more of them ( Windfarms paid to switch turbines off , The Herald, May 2)?  Fiona Downie,  49 St andrews Drive,  Bridge of Weir. 
 While the fragility of the UK s economic recovery along with concerns over rising inflation continue to trouble Scotland s companies, keeping them cautious about growth prospects, there are a good many positives to take from the present state of affairs. as Eddie Rintoul, managing director, corporate and institutional banking at Royal Bank of Scotland notes, there have been far fewer business failures in Scotland than had been feared, and companies generally are in good shape.  The larger businesses in Scotland generally have come through the recession with their balance sheets looking in very reasonable order,  he says. In particular, companies have both the finances to achieve accelerated growth through acquisitions and they also have the appetite for it   news which will be welcomed by Scotland s corporate advisory community.  as Rintoul points out, in a recent survey of Scottish businesses with turnover in excess of ?25 million, over one-third said that they were planning to grow through acquisitions before the end of 2011.  But so far, as we edge ever-closer to the end of the first half of 2011, continued weakness in the recovery in the UK in general and in Scotland in particular has kept many companies suspended in wait-and-see mode.  according to Rintoul, RBS itself is now very much back on track after its well-publicised difficulties, and is meeting and exceeding all the milestones set out by the RBS board.  We are ahead of target so far in 2011 and I believe we will continue to make solid progress through the rest of this year and beyond,  he says.  The troubles of the two major Scottish banks, RBS and Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), created space in all areas of the market for other banks and new players to enter the Scottish market. In particular, the sale by RBS of its seven National Westminster branches in Scotland  (the 311 NatWest branches in England and Wales remain with RBS) to Santander has extended the Spanish bank s platform in Scotland, one  it already has from its takeover of alliance & Leicester.  Other banks such as the Co-op and Clydesdale are all extending their presence and trying to win business at the larger end of the scale even as they look to grow their presence in the SME market.  Rintoul hails this as a good thing for Scotland s businesses.  Scotland needs a healthy, competitive and vibrant banking sector if the economy is going to achieve its potential,  he points out.  Competition in the banking sector keeps everyone on their toes and helps both businesses and the banks themselves. as and when larger deals get going again in Scotland, a thriving corporate banking market will make it much easier for syndicated loans to be put together to support larger deals.  as Rintoul notes, RBS is comfortable taking the whole of the senior lending side of a deal in excess of ?50m if it has a high level of confidence in the management team and the company s strategy and track record. Nevertheless, the bank likes to see other banks coming in on the larger deal sizes. It spreads the risk and helps to generate confidence.  Rintoul says he is optimistic about the prospects for 2011, but warns that the market also has to be realistic. There are at least three hurdles that have to be overcome during 2011 en route to stronger growth. These are the  triple whammy  made up of January s VaT rise, continued increases in fuel costs and the austerity measures introduced by the coming public-sector cuts.  all of this adds up to consumers having much less surplus spending money and that impacts business at all levels,  he says. The continuing ramifications of the European sovereign debt crisis, with its ability to destabilise markets, is another problem for companies since anything that adds uncertainty to the already-difficult economic climate is bad news.  Nevertheless, RBS has been expanding in Scotland, with a number of appointments recently.  We are on track and very much open for business,  Rintoul says.  Paul Frame, head of the Glasgow branch of Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, says he is particularly pleased with the fact that the bank s high-net-worth clients are in  a pretty positive situation . Clients were generally not overleveraged when the global downturn took hold in 2008 and they have come out of the financial crisis in very good shape. There are now plenty of opportunities for us to help them to grow their wealth through the recovery period,  he says.  In particular, Deutsche Bank is looking to play a major role in Scotland in supporting the   
 OIL services magnate Sir Ian Wood questioned official estimates of how fast the country s offshore renewable energy capacity could be developed, saying it could take twice as long as the Scottish Government expects.  The chairman of the Wood Group services business highlighted the scale of investment required to develop offshore wind energy capacity in a speech that underlined the challenges that the Scottish Government will face in meeting its ambitious targets.  With the First Minister alex Salmond an enthusiastic champion of the potential of renewables, the Scottish Government wants 80% of Scotland s gross annual electricity consumption to come from such sources by 2020. Offshore renewables will play a key role.  However, Sir Ian told industry leaders:  The Scottish Government are estimating two gigawatts per annum coming on stream for something like 20 years. This would require  ?6 billion per annum capex (capital expenditure) and ?2bn per annum opex (operating expenditure). It s my view this investment will take place over probably double that period.  Sir Ian said even if investment does proceed at the slower pace there will still be huge sums for the industry to play for off Scotland in coming years:  That s still ?3bn capex and ?1bn opex pa beginning to build up from 2015 onwards,  he told the all Energy conference in aberdeen.  Sir Ian said oil and gas services firms could provide huge amounts of expertise that could help in t  
 SEaENERGY dampened expectations that it is close to completing the delayed sale of its wind farm subsidiary following a surge in the share price in recent days.  Formerly called Ramco Energy, SeaEnergy said:  The Company notes the recent movements in its share price, and confirms that there is nothing further to add at this point in time to the announcement which it made on 3 May 2011, in relation to the potential disposal of the Company s 80.13% subsidiary, SeaEnergy Renewables Limited. While there can be no certainty that current negotiations will result in a sale of SERL, these negotiations are continuing at present.  On May 3, the aberdeen-based company said it had reached agreement with a consortium of major European energy companies to grant a period of exclusivity to negotiate the sale of its interest in SERL. 
 ROYaL Bank of Scotland and NatWest are creating a dedicated ?50 million fund and renewable energy team to help meet demand from businesses looking to install wind turbines and solar panels.  Research by RBS and NatWest indicates that 33% of agriculture businesses wish to deploy renewable energy at their farm to cut running costs, as well as carbon emissions.  More than half of agriculture businesses surveyed said they would need financing from their bank to take this forward. 
 aQUaMaRINE Power has announced that it has won leases from the Crown Estate to deploy 30 megawatts of its Oyster wave energy converters off north-west Lewis, and a separate 10MW demonstration lease for an area between Siadar and Fivepenny.  Edinburgh-based aquamarine is planning to install as many as 40 Oysters across both sites along a two-kilometre coastline, potentially generating up to 40MW enough energy to power 38,000 homes.  But the company will need to get planning consent from Shetland Islands authority Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and regulator Marine Scotland.  aquamarine Power will now compete with Pelamis Wave Power, also based in Edinburgh, and ScottishPower Renewables for the Scottish Government s ?10 million Saltire Prize, which will reward a commercially viable marine energy device that can generate at least 100GWh over a two-year period.  Vattenfall, a Swedish energy group, and Pelamis also confirmed they have been awarded a lease agreement to take forward the 10MW aegir wave farm off south-west Shetland. 
 Roseanna Cunningham has been made a deputy to Justice Secretary Kenny Macaskill, with a brief to tackle sectarianism.  aileen Campbell, who has only just turned 31, becomes Minister for Local Government and Planning. Other newcomers are Michael Matheson, now Minister for Public Health   freeing Shona Robison to become a dedicated Minister for Sport and the Commonwealth Games   and alasdair allan, as Minister for Learning and Skills.  Within education angela Constance takes responsibility for Children and Young People.  Former Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson, who resigned over the winter weather crisis, returns as Environment and Climate Change Minister. Brian adam is the new Minister for Parliamentary Business following the elevation of Bruce Crawford to Cabinet status. Fergus Ewing becomes Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism.  Labour s outgoing leader Iain Gray had a shadow cabinet reshuffle, handing justice to deputy leader Johann Lamont and moving Richard Baker to finance. Jackie Baillie remains at health and Sarah Boyack at environment.  Malcolm Chisholm returns to the fold at education, Lewis MacDonald covers infrastructure and Ken Macintosh shadows culture and external affairs. 
 l First Minister: alex Salmond  l Deputy First Minister and Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Cities Strategy: Nicola Sturgeon,  l Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport: Shona Robison  l Minister for Public Health: Michael Matheson  l Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth: John Swinney  l Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism: Fergus Ewing  l Minister for Local Government and Planning: aileen Campbell  l Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning: Michael Russell  l Minister for Children and Young People: angela Constance  l Minister for Learning and Skills  (with responsibility for Gaelic and Scots): alasdair allan  l Secretary for Parliamentary Business and Government Strategy: Bruce Crawford  l Minister for Parliamentary Business and Chief Whip: Brian adam  l Secretary for Justice: Kenny Macaskill  l Minister for Community Safety and Legal affairs (with responsibility for tackling sectarianism): Roseanna Cunningham  l Secretary for Rural affairs and the Environment: Richard Lochhead  l Minister for Environment and Climate Change: Stewart Stevenson  l Secretary for Culture and External affairs: Fiona Hyslop  l Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment: alex Neil  l Minister for Housing and Transport: Keith Brown  l Law Officers  Lord advocate: Frank Mulholland  Solicitor General: Lesley Thomson 
 BUCCLEUCH Estates, the sprawling business empire owned by the family of the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, has sharply narrowed its losses on the back of a turnaround strategy that has seen a major  rationalisation  of the group s activities.  Latest accounts for the group, obtained by The Herald from Companies House, show pre-tax losses were cut to ?4.4 million for the year to the end of October, compared with pre-tax losses of ?7.2m the year before.  Its so-called  rationalisation  has consisted of a more concentrated focus on the commercial property, renewable energy, tourism and hospitality aspects of the business.  During the year, Buccleuch disposed of its animal nutrition and veterinary supplies businesses to Carrs Milling. Its equine products and Game and Country businesses were also sold back to their original owners. at the same time, the group regained full control of Buccleuch BioEnergy and was awarded a major biomass installation contract for aberdeen Royal Infirmary.  The group also cut a foods-operation merger deal with Campbell Brothers that resulted in the planned closure of a meat plant and the loss of badly needed jobs in Dumfries and Galloway. at the time, the group said:  It s with regret and great sadness, but we ve been trying to make this work for six years.  It also launched Buccleuch Rural Solutions, a new rural services business, and, in spite of a  difficult sporting season  its rural estates division came close to breaking even.  Turnover at the group, including its share in joint ventures, climbed to ?40.6m, compared with ?38.4m 
 SCOTTISH and Southern Energy (SSE) has upped its dividend by 7.3% after overcoming rising wholesale prices and tough winter weather to deliver a 1.6% rise in pre-tax profit.  The board of Perth-based SSE is recommending a final dividend of 52.6p per share to be paid on September 23. This is up from 49p last year.  This takes the full-year pay-out to 75p, 7.1% higher than 2010 and a real terms rise of 2.2% over retail prices index inflation.  The owner of Scottish Hydro Electric made an adjusted pre-tax profit of ?1.3 billion for the year to March 31, in part because a new pricing deal meant SSE could charge other power companies more for the electricity it generated.  This helped to offset falling hydro-electric and wind generation due to still, dry conditions over the winter.  SSE chief executive Ian Marchant said:  Despite  lower-than-expected output of renewable energy and higher-than-forecast wholesale gas prices, SSE also achieved another increase in adjusted profit before tax.  He warned that if wholesale prices for gas and electricity remain high, consumers face bill increases.  One of the most disappointing things about last year was having to put retail prices up.  However, wholesale prices are high. They are significantly above the level they were in the autumn when we last adjusted our prices.  The more that continues the more we come under pressure to put retail prices up.  Mr Marchant said criticism by regulator Ofgem that energy companies were quick to put prices up whe  
 FRESH from his reappointment as First Minister last week, alex Salmond will be in London today to discuss a political shopping list with UK ministers.  He will take time out after talks with Chancellor George Osborne to address the Foreign Press association, before meeting Energy Secretary Chris Huhne this evening. Tomorrow he will have wide-ranging discussions with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.  a Government spokesman outlined the agenda:  The meetings are expected to cover a range of issues including: how the UK Government s Scotland Bill legislation can be improved to strengthen the Scottish Parliament s economic powers; Scotland s ?200 million Fossil Fuel Levy funds; electricity market reforms; and industry fears over t  
 SCOTLaND S largest Orange parade will be three hours shorter than usual this year. It will avoid large parts of central Glasgow and see upwards of 20 so-called  feeder processions  eliminated, its organisers claim.  But the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland has accused Glasgow City Council of trying to squeeze  further unreasonable concessions  from it ahead of July s Boyne Celebrations.  The Order has also threatened to defy a council date-change for its Divine Service processions in June, which clash with an armed Forces commemoration.  Order Grand Master Henry Dunbar said 1300 Orangemen would walk along the pavements of the route carrying bibles to a church service.  The antipathy with the city council centres on the new parades policy, which seeks to have more say on the number, timings and routes of all parades.  The city has more parades than Belfast and Derry combined, and with most of these being Orange marches, the policy is largely aimed at them.  But in recent months everyone from the EIS to climate change protesters have had their routes and timings changed.  Mr Dunbar said:  This is purely a libertarian issue. Our position is that our rights to civil and religious liberty and to march and peaceful assembly are being denied. 
 IT is decision time for the Church of Scotland. The increasingly impractical imposed silence on the issue of the ordination of openly gay and lesbian Christians will be broken at last today when the General assembly debates the issue openly.  The Kirk hierarchy may wish to stagger on with the uneasy truce that has existed for two years but among both conservatives and liberals, there is a feeling that the matter must now be confronted. There is no painless resolution. Either way the church stands to lose members. If gay ordination gets the go-ahead, whole congregations are likely to leave, either by joining the Free Church or by staying put in their buildings but declaring the ecclesiastical equivalent of UDI. If the vote goes the other way, many individual church members are likely to walk away. They will include not only gay and lesbian Christians, who would feel snubbed by such a decision, but also heterosexuals appalled that in a world facing so many pressing problems, that the Kirk  
 although it s unlikely to help alex Salmond in his quest for 100 per cent renewable energy for Scotland, new scientific research confirms the existence of dark energy  abroad in the universe.  Two new surveys, examining more than 200,000 galaxies, supports the theory that the universe is in fact made up of 74% of dark energy. The rest of the universe consists of only 4% of normal matter   stars, planets, galaxies, us   and 22% dark matter.  What dark energy is, of course, is not certain, but it is believed to be the force that is behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. and according to one theory it might prove that the universe is flat too. 
 THE Scottish Tories  environment spokesman has been accused of hypocrisy after signing a potential ?2 million deal for a windfarm on his Highland estate despite his party s hostility to turbines in scenic areas.  Sir Jamie McGrigor stands to make a fortune by leasing part of his 3500-acre farm, above Loch awe in argyll, to a German energy giant. The deal with RWE NPower Renewables could earn Sir Jamie, who has been an MSP since 1999, at least ?70,000 a year for 25 years.  However Struan Stevenson, the Tories  only Scottish MEP, claims windfarms are a scam promoted by  rapacious speculators  ready to destroy the landscape  for a quick buck .  Three years ago, Sir Jamie also signed a parliamentary motion demanding new rules on windfarms  to end the numerous and speculative applications ... threatening scenic areas.  Labour s Sarah Boyack said:  It is clear the Tories are at sixes and sevens on wind power   saying one thing in Strasbourg and doing quite the opposite at Holyrood.  an SNP s  
 WORK has started on the construction of a ?60.5 million plant at Rothes in Speyside that will use co-products of the Scotch Whisky distilling process to generate electricity and feed for animals.  a collaboration between a group of distillers, an energy firm and a Dutch bank, the development will include a biomass plant capable of generating enough power for 9000 homes.  The plant will use material such as the residue of grain husks, and most of the output will be supplied to the national grid.  It will also produce animal feed while reducing carbon emissions.  First announced in March 2008, the project will create 100 jobs during the construction phase.  The plant should be completed in 2013.  approximately 20 people will work full time at the plant when it is operational.  Gavin Hewitt, chief executive of the Scotch Whisky association, said:  The innovative project is an excellent example of what can be achieved through collaboration between Scotch Whisky distillers.  It will be a welcome boost to the region in these challenging economic times.  The plant is being developed by Helius CoRDe   a consortium that includes seven whisky producers, Helius Energy and Rabo Project Equity.  The distillers involved are BenRiach, Chivas Brothers, Diageo, Edrington, Glen Grant, Inver House and John Dewar & Sons. 
 OCEaN acidification caused by fossil fuel  emissions may be turning fish deaf.  Clownfish reared in seawater acidified by carbon dioxide grow up with impaired hearing, a study has found.  This could have devastating consequences for the colourful star of the 2003 animated movie Finding Nemo, say scientists.  Not only would it leave the coral reef fish vulnerable to predators, but it could impact on their early development and survival.  For the study, researchers reared newly hatched clownfish in water with different levels of acidity.  after 17 to 20 days, the juvenile fish had their hearing tested by being played the sounds of a predator-rich coral reef.  We kept some of the baby clownfish in today s conditions, bubbling in air, and then had three other treatments where we added extra CO2 based on the predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for 2050 and 2100,  said Dr Steve Simpson, from the University of Bristol.  We designed a totally new kind of experimental choice chamber that allowed us to play reef noise through an underwater speaker to fish in the lab, and watch how they responded.  Fish reared in today s conditions swam away from the predator noise, but those reared in the CO2 conditions of 2050 and 2100 showed no response.  The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.  Since the Industrial Revolution, more than half the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels has been absorbed by the oceans.  The effect has been to increase the acidity of the oceans at a faster rate than at any time in the last 650,000 years.  
 HaRD as it might sometimes be to believe, the human race has never had it so good. Hideous exceptions aside, we are healthier, longer-lived, better-educated and better fed than at any time in the history of the species. We enjoy technological benefits that would have seemed astonishing even a generation ago. and some of us think we know the reason.  In the short version, markets work. Capitalism delivers, creating efficiencies where none would otherwise exist, and distributing resources to where they are needed, when they are needed.  Some people are so awe-struck by this miracle they believe it should never be questioned. Even when the system fails catastrophically (and repeatedly) they hold that everything will work out sooner or later, that the markets will correct  themselves..  They have a point, however. Oxfam can observe that a billion people are still going hungry each night, but look, say the evangelists, at the rest of us, with our  supermarkets and cars. Why quibble? We ll get around to the last billion in time.  Oxfam is less sanguine. Just after the commodities trading firm Glencore achieved a ?37 billion listing on the London Stock Exchange   making billionaires of six  executives and multi-millionaires of others   the charity has said, in effect, that human progress might be approaching its end.  Not for the fine folk at Glencore, of course. By dealing in the basic stuff of life, in natural resources generally and food above all, they face a rosy future. But that fact, says Oxfam, is one part of a vast, impending crisis.  Food prices have doubled in the past 20 years and the trend is continuing. By 2030, the average cost of staples could increase by between 120% and 180%. The world s population is predicted to reach nine billion by 2050, yet the growth in agricultural yields is  falling. already, the poorest are spending up to 80% of their incomes on food.  Oxfam s report, Growing a Better Future, is no blunderbuss. It does not indict commodities dealers alone, but it scarcely vindicates anyone s blind faith in salvation through market forces, or give much credence to the notion that markets work best when regulation is  light .  The charity points out, for  example, that biofuels, so recently championed by investors, have proved to be a particularly stupid idea, taking vast tracts of land out of the food chain. Oxfam argues, too, that half of the predicted rise in food prices will be caused by climate change, a phenomenon still to be addressed seriously for fear, supposedly, of  damage to the economy .  The report is not naive. The emergence of a wealthy class in India and China has affected the demand for meat, a product that is greedy for land. Western greed is meanwhile plain: we waste food in immense quantities   to the tune of at least ?10 per week per household   while agonising over our  obesity epidemic as one billion go hungry. as anyone who visits a supermarket knows, market mechanisms have a lot to do with that, but  individuals bear a responsibility.  Oxfam s main point, nevertheless, is that the global food system is  broken . It causes  hunger, along with obesity, obscene waste, and appalling environmental degradation . Why would that even count as rational? Because  power above all determines who eats and who does not . The system has been  constructed by and on behalf of a tiny minority   its primary purpose to deliver profit for them .  Which brings us back, neatly enough, to the billionaires at  Glencore. If Oxfam is even close to the truth, they are dealing not in commodities but in lives, hundreds of millions of lives. They are not just trading in maize, like merchants from centuries past,  but gambling on the futures of  societies. The price movements that make them very rich are in fact   and the statement is in no sense melodramatic   matters of life and death.  So Oxfam s report talks both of subsidies for international agri-business, and of investors  playing commodities markets like casinos . Predictably enough, the charity therefore calls on  
 SCOTLaND S largest city is to create thousands of green energy jobs as the UK emerges from the downturn, a report has found.  Glasgow, which was once known as the second city of the Empire for its industrial strengths, is on course to repeat its success in the field of renewables.  It came after HSBC named it as the first industrial  super city  north of the Border thanks to its burgeoning base in research and engineering expertise.  The banking giant identified it along with Bristol as one of two new business powerhouse cities in its latest Future of Business report. It revealed the downturn is a catalyst for trailblazing green businesses and entrepreneurs.  Europe s biggest windfarm, the 140-turbine Whitelees in East Renfrewshire, and the 152-turbine Clyde windfarm near Glasgow, which began production this week, were cited as examples of successes. Other ventures include the Centre of Engineering Excellence in Renewable Energy, set up with Strathclyde University, that is co-ordinating a partnership between Scottish and Southern Energy and Mitsubishi to develop low-carbon energy sources.  Organisers of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games have also pledged to make the event the most environmentally friendly in history. Other projects that won praise include Sustainable Glasgow, which aims to make the city one of the most green in Europe within a decade.  The report described Glasgow as a  leading international force in the renewable energy sector .  Jim Whyte, who was involved in the research for Future Laboratory, said: Glasgow is using the opportunity of renewable energy to revitalise its traditional strength in engineering. The rise in offshore windfarms is fuelling growth already with more expected as countries across the world aim to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels. It is the city s research capabilities that will ensure its position at the forefront of developments.  Strathclyde University, previously anderson s College, where the first electricity-g  
 aLEX Salmond has claimed that increasing tax on North Sea oil and gas will cost 15,000 jobs.  The First Minister has also warned Chancellor George Osborne that while he may not be about to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,  he s in danger of disabling it .  Mr Salmond spelled out his concerns at a briefing on a paper the Scottish Government is sending to Mr Osborne setting out alternatives to ?2 billion supplementary charges the Chancellor announced in the Budget through a tax rise from 20% to 32%.  Mr Salmond said:  If nothing was done about the supplementary charge, the likelihood is there will be 15,000 less jobs than would have been the case without the supplementary charge.  What that means in revenue terms is, over the next 10 years, there will be one billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent less.  The options paper, UK Continental Shelf Tax Regime   Options For Reform, sets out three proposals Mr Salmond claims would be  more progressive , and reduce the tax on less profitable projects that would otherwise be shelved. His preferred option is the  investment rate of return allowance , which guarantees oil and gas companies a minimum rate of return on their investment.  The other two options are the  investment uplift allowance , which would also guarantee companies a minimum rate of return on investments before the supplementary charge was applied, and  extended field allowances    which would reduce the amount of tax oil and gas firms pay on their profits.  Mr Salmond, a former oil economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland, said: Putting forward these proposals is done with the intent of recognising that it is a legitimate objective of government to maintain the maximum income from oil and gas but to say that to make it optimal you have to look at sustaining investment over the longer term.  The industry s activity Survey  
 Bill Brown (Letters, June 10) suggests resources would be allocated from the UK to Scotland on a population basis, in the event of independence. This is incorrect. If Scotland were independent control of all the resources within her land mass and internationally recognised areas of control of the surrounding seas would revert to her. Money held by London would be a matter for negotiation.  Oil and gas revenues from the relevant areas of the North Sea and North atlantic would flow to the Scottish treasury. Some believe the alterations to boundaries in the seas carried out by Westminster some years ago are sustainable post-Scottish independence. They are not. The International Law of the Sea will apply and if an English Government were to attempt to deny this, Scotland would have recourse to the International Court which could do no other than rule in her favour.  Equally, despite the fact that the revenues from the single most profitable UK export, whisky, flow to Westminster, the day after independence they would flow to Edinburgh.  There is no mechanism for a state to leave the EU and none has ever wished to do so.  Finally, I have to re-state the obvious. Mr Brown claims Scotland would be weeping for a return to Westminster administration in a week  if she became independent. If so, why are Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia or New Zealand not pleading to be allowed to join a larger neighbour? Why is Eire, one of the countries worst affected by the financial hiatus, not asking to be governed from London again?  Councillor alan Grant,  Deputy leader, Perth and Kinross SNP Group,  2 High Street,  Perth.  The Herald got it right:  The issue is more complex than a straight choice between independence and the status quo   ( appetite for real debate abut Union recognised , The Herald, June 10).  Complexity is at the very heart of the debate, made more challenging with the inherit ambiguity in Scottish politics. This creates the conditions for a nuanced subtle debate. Shouting yes or no or perhaps yes and yes might simply become crude (and expensive) political and intellectual graffiti.  It was Dennis Canavan while commenting on The Claim of Right in 1989 who posed the classic ambiguity question: is the first loyalty of Scottish MPs to the British state or to the people of Scotland? That is a critical question to those who will join David Cameron.  The other element of complexity surrounds the formulation of an independence definition. We should be discussing independence as a process towards greater sovereignty; an incremental continuum rather than a single act of settled will.  The scholar and distinguished constitutionalist Sir Neil MacCormick posed a challenge with this subtle classification of independence:  The members of a nation are as such in principle entitled to effective organs of political self-government within the world order of sovereign or post-sovereign states; but these need not provide for self-government in the form of a sovereign state.  We must hope the debate will recognise and respect the necessary elements of complexity as we proceed in this vital discourse on Scotland s future.  Thom Cross,  64 Market Place,  Carluke.  Bill Brown claims that a  small poor country  like Scotland is unlikely to be able to join the EU.  Scotland is the third richest part of the UK per capita after London and the south-east of England and if one were to take London with its financial centres out of the equation it would be the richest of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom.  In terms of international comparisons, Scotland would likely be one of the world s 20 richest countries per capita and richer than the majority of other EU countries, including many in western Europe.  Iain Paterson,  6 Methven avenue,  Bearsden.  It does not surprise me in the least that the anti-independence campaign is boasting how much money it is attracting ( The Union fights back , The Herald, June 10). Scotland is a rich prize well worth hanging onto, not just for its oil and renewable energy resources but even more so for its water.  The south-east of Britain is experiencing more and more problems of drought and envious eyes are looking northwards to see how out plentiful supplies can be brought under control. already two of the Unionist parties in Scotland, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, have expressed a willingness to privatise this most precious of resources and thus give away control of how it is used.  What puzzles me is how this desperation to hang on to Scotland can be squared with the message churned out by the London media, that Scotland is a basket case made viable only by the generosity of English taxpayers.  andrew M Fraser,  Cradlehall Cottage,  Caulfield Road North, Inverness.  Bill Brown reiterates the canard that on independence Scotland would have to apply to be a member state of the EU. If that were so the principle would also apply to England (with Wales and Northern Ireland). The UK would no longer exist.  Like many, he seems to be unaware that UK membership of the EU and the UN does not consist of England alone.  John Scott Roy,  42 Galloway avenue,  ayr.  Bill Brown paints a desperate picture of an impoverished Scotland once the Scots had taken the bold step of gaining  independence, and because of being a poor and small country it would be unlikely that Scotland would be accepted as a member of the European Union.  Last year the Office for National Statistics claimed that   
 YOUR report that Mackay Consultants claim the Scottish Government s target  of generating 100% of Scotland s electricity from renewable sources by 2020 is unrealistic and unachievable. This is simply not the case ( Experts warn 100% green energy plan is unrealistic , The Herald, June 10).  a recent report from one of the world s leading energy consultants, GL Garrad Hassan, shows that Scotland s renewable electricity generation can grow to comfortably exceed our electricity needs, and that the Scottish Government s target of 100% renewables by 2020 is completely and relatively easily achievable.  In fact, Scotland could phase out all fossil fuel and nuclear power by 2030, maintain a secure electricity supply, and have renewables providing 185% of Sco  
 Why should such threatened subjects  as geography and sociology matter at Strathclyde University? as a Strathclyde visiting professor linked to those subjects, let me give an example.  I serve, by choice unpaid to avoid conflict of interest, on a consulting panel for a major cement company. We advise on emerging world issues, helping to raise the level of the playing field on which social and environmental issues unfold.  In recent years we have helped the group pioneer industry-  
 Just before we went on holiday last week there was shock and horror that a Scottish power company had increased its tariff by a large amount. We got home yesterday to find, among the mail, an announcement from EDF that our tariffs are being changed. There was nothing to indicate the amount of the change and a quick search online finds no announcement of the percentage increase.  I run my own comparison based on my annual usage and the published rates of all of the main cartel members. So far I have not been through them all but EDF have increased my  fixed rate online saver  by almost 20% for gas and almost 30% for electricity. Needless to say, I will update my spreadsheet on  
 SCOTLaND is on course to generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, according to First Minister alex Salmond.  He made the comment as he met the head of the world s largest wind power company, ScottishPower Renewables (SPR), to officially open two windfarms in South ayrshire.  Mr Salmond joined Ignacio Galan to open the  28-turbine Mark Hill and 60-turbine arecleoch windfarms, near Barrhill, which together can power 100,000 homes. Glasgow-based SPR now operates 24 windfarms, 15 of which are in Scotland.  SPR has spent ?1 billion on developing wind energy in the past decade and said more than 2000 people have worked on building and managing its windfarms.  Mr Salmond said:  It is through the leadership of companies such as SPR that we have made such progress and why, as we increasingly develop our offshore energy resources, I am confident that we will achieve our target for Scotland to generate from renewables the equivalent of 100% of our own electricity needs by 2020.  However, a report last week by Inverness-based Mackay Consultants said the goal to generate 100% of energy needs from green sources by 2020 was unrealistic, unachievable and not in the best interests of energy consumers. 
 In the debate about rising fuel prices and who is to blame, I note with disappointment some prevailing misconceptions and prejudices about nuclear and renewables ( More power bill misery on way, warns Centrica boss , The Herald, June 13).  These misconceptions are that renewables means wind power, that wind power is expensive, and that the only  clean  way to provide base load power to the grid is by nuclear energy.  Wind power is one renewable form of energy, but not the only one.  The present cost of investment  
 So, great news about the Scottish Government having powers over borrowing and spending our own money. apparently we re getting ?12 billion.  Or it might be just ?200 million. I m not entirely sure, having difficulty with sums of money above a tenner.  I hope now we ve got this shiny new credit card, we ca  canny.  Don t go mad buying a new sofa out of DFS when we don t need one.  Folk do silly things when they get access to a bit of cash. Big car, holiday, a set of new breasts for the missus.  Before we flash the plastic, think: do we really need a new Forth bridge?  Couldn t we give the old one a wash and brush-up.  Get the Big Society in to do a paint job. (Or am I on the wrong Forth bridge here?)  I urge Finance Secretary John Swinney to pay off the national credit card debt each month so we don t incur interest charges but still get the cash rewards.  We don t want to be like the US Government which recently hiked its credit card limit to $14.2 trillion. Whatever a trillion is.  We should follow the economic philosophy of our grannies who refused to go into debt.  Save up for new consumer durables, such as renewable electricity windmills, and buy them cheap on amazon.  Don t get into hock with private finance initiative companies who are the worst kind of loan sharks.  Swinney could, however, look at some of the useless items lying around the Scottish economy and take them down to the pawn shop.  Or Cash Converters as I believe it is now known.  Let s see what they offer for a brand new, life-size tram set, unused, most of the kit still in the box.  Would suit a city half the size of Edinburgh.  Other stuff could go on eBay: former nuclear submarine base in fabulous scenic location, ideal for change to leisure business use or as a home for a reclusive billionaire.  The new thrift will be like going on a financial diet.  The early days (to use a  favourite phrase) of a leaner, fitter nation. 
 a GaTHERING of heavy hitters from asia in a plush Tokyo hotel earlier this month had important ramifications for Scotland.  More than 2000 senior business people and politicians spent three days pondering the future of two powerhouses at the inaugural India Japan Global Partnership Summit.  The brainchild of Vibhav Upadhyay, an Indian businessman with longstanding ties to Japan, the summit was held to promote ties between the countries in the belief that both had much to gain from closer links.  With talk about the need for an  environmentally responsible  development model and altruistic business, there was an idealistic tone to the event.  This was reinforced by the repeated thanks that senior Japanese figures including ex-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori offered for the help India provided following the terrible earthquake in March.  The presence of many sharply dressed young executives suggested both countries felt the summit could generate good money-making opportunities.  as Japan grapples with the legacy of the financial crash that left its economy in the doldrums for more than a decade and the strong yen, its leaders will want to make the most of any opportunities that may be created by the emergence of new economic powers such as India.  Earlier this year India and Japan signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, under which tariffs on many Indian products will be reduced or scrapped.  This should boost exports to Japan from India, where production costs are often lower.  The real action, however, is happening in India. The message from presentations was that if India sustains the growth rate it has achieved in recent years, the country will generate demand for unprecedented inputs of materials and expertise.  There are obvious implications for developed countries trying to boost anaemic growth rates, including Scotland.  Earlier this month, Finance Secretary John Swinney put increasing Scotland s exports to emerging markets at the heart of the Scottish Government s updated economic strategy.  Statistics of what is set to happen in India are mind-boggling.  Planners are targeting 9% annual growth in Indian s Gross Domestic Product for the next 40 years. This will transform one of the world s most populous countries, where 250 million people are expected to move from rural areas to the cities.  Some believe this process can not be left to the market.  For example, if car-ownership in India reached Western levels, the strains on fuel supplies and the environment would be immense.  India can t afford to have 1.2 billion cars,  Mr Upadhyay told The Herald.  Technocrats have developed plans to address the challenge that involve directing development along clear lines.  They plan to build huge numbers of urban centres for industries such as advanced manufacturing in a development called the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor. These will be  smart  cities using renewable energy and intelligent grid systems to help minimise strain on the environment.  But production from conventional sources like oil and gas will have to increase massively.  India s urbanisation will create opportunities for infrastructure and technology firms and the expected growth will accelerate the emergence of a new middle class adopting Western habits in food and drink.  Soccer will be the centre of attention in India,  said Naho Shigeta, a Japanese marketing expert who has spent 15 years in India.  a recurring summit theme was that it would make obvious sense to combine the expertise available in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector in Japan with the lower-cost labour resource and armies of young people  that India offers.  You have the wisdom, we have the workforce,  Randeep Singh Surjewala, a member of the cabinet for Haryana state, told Japanese listeners.  as in the UK, the SME sector is Japan s main economy driver, where the workforce is ageing.  The benefits could extend well beyond the productive sector.  While India s banking system emerged unscathed from the credit crunch, local lenders cannot provide debt to fund some long-term infrastructure programmes at rates needed to make them viable.  This leaves a gap that overseas banks with experience of funding infrastructure projects could fulfil.  Indian ministers also want banking services and investment products such as pensions to be supplied to hundreds of millions of people on timescales that will mean providers have to use technology to serve customers rather than branches.  With the population expected to include 500 million people below the age of 25 by 2020, India needs a quantum increase in the number of people who get a university education, with  
 SOCIaL Investment Scotland (SIS) has appointed  alastair Davis as its new chief executive.  Mr Davis joined SIS in May 2009 from Bank of  Scotland Community Banking and has a wealth of experience dealing directly with social enterprises. Before being appointed chief executive, Mr Davis was the lead fund manager for the Scottish Investment Fund, which SIS manages on behalf of the Scottish Government.  alf Young, the chairman of SIS,  said:   We had a very strong field of candidates for the chief executive s position  and we are delighted to appoint alastair. He has extensive experience of working alongside socia  
 SOCIaL Investment Scotland (SIS) has appointed  alastair Davis as its new chief executive.  Mr Davis joined SIS in May 2009 from Bank of  Scotland Community Banking and has a wealth of experience dealing directly with social enterprises. Before being appointed chief executive, Mr Davis was the lead fund manager for the Scottish Investment Fund, which SIS manages on behalf of the Scottish Government.  alf Young, the chairman of SIS,  said:   We had a very strong field of candidates for the chief executive s position  and we are delighted to appoint alastair. He has extensive experience of working alongside socia  
 LITTLE is known of adam Werritty   described in equal measure as a  Walter Mitty or an  honourable  man   beyond his key role in Liam Fox s demise.  Whatever his motives and nature, there is no doubt that he enjoys first-class travel, opulent hotels and a reputation for influence.  Kirkcaldy-born Mr Werritty, 33, is the son of climate change professor, adam Werritty, of Dundee University. His mother Irene works for Dundee City Council.  Raised in St andrews, he attended Madras College, where he excelled at rugby.  He first met Dr Fox while studying public policy at Edinburgh University. The pair forged a strong bond after the politician, then opposition spokesman on constitutional affairs, spoke at a student society meeting.  a shared viewpoint on relations with the United States and other political issues is said to have helped surmount the 17-year age gap between the two men.  after graduating, Mr Werritty moved to London to work for a healthcare company before becoming a consultant at UK Health.  around 2002 or 2003, he moved into the spare room of Dr Fox s London home. In 2004, by which time Dr Fox had moved to a role as co-chairman of the Conservative Party, his protege worked as a paid intern in his office and received a Commons pass. He later became a director of UK  Health Group, of which both  he and Dr Fox were shareholders.  Mr Werritty was best man when Dr Fox married  doctor Jesme Baird in 2005.  Dr Fox was then appointed to the defence brief by incoming leader David Cameron and Mr Werritty soon after became director of a group called Security Futures, which later folded.  By 2007, after other defence-related ventures, he had been appointed UK executive director of Dr Fox s atlantic Bridge charity.  Friends of Mr Werritty have insisted that the pair are  just mates . 
 STEPHEN Hamilton, chief executive of beleaguered green power company Icon Energy, will tell customers on Monday whether he has found a buyer for the business.  Kinross-based Icon, which sells and installs wind turbines, was forced into voluntary liquidation after ayshire turbine manufacturer Proven Energy fell into receivership following the discovery of a potential fault in one of its models. Icon had attempted to buy Proven with the support of local MSP Roseanna Cunningham but lost out to Irish group Kingspan.  Mr Hamilton has said he is hoping to find a buyer for Icon, which has 35 employees. The company s predicament has also caused consternation among customers, many of whom are farmers, who put down five-figure deposits for a turbine. 
 SCOTS could be forced to subsidise fossil fuel bills south of the Border even if the country reaches its goal   set by alex Salmond   of being entirely reliant on green energy sources by 2020, environmentalists have warned.  Friends of the Earth said in a report that UK consumers can expect electricity bill rises of around ?300 a year by 2020 as a result of a continued reliance on fossil fuels to provide energy.  a spokesman said even with the Scottish Government s ambitious green energy targets, the rises will still hit  Scottish households.  It came as Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy  
  
 Scottish Politician of the Year (presented by The Herald)  Best Scot at Westminster (sponsored by ScottishPower Renewables)  Public Campaign or  Campaigner of the Year  Donald Dewar Debater of the Year (sponsored by Carillion)  Political Impact of the  Year  Local Politician of the Year (sponsored by Improvement Service and Robertson Group)  Lifetime achievement award (sponsored by Scottish  Gas)  Newcomer of the Year 
 The ComRes poll results which, across the UK, found a six-point increase in those for independence to 39%, while those opposed fell to 38%, is a cheery boost for the SNP as their conference approaches.  Even so, a quick squint at the numbers suggests alex Salmond should probably wait a bit before dashing off a letter to the Holy Father along the lines of the celebrated one sent almost 700 years ago. The Declaration of arbroath could claim that  as long as but one hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under the dominion of the English .  The total sample by ComRes of those north of the border was 176 which, at first glance, means we re only sure that about 68 1/2 people have expressed their readiness to fight  not for glory, or for riches, or for honour alone, but for freedom alone  or   since we don t yet know with certainty what the referendum will offer   perhaps for  servitude lite  or  supernumerary layer of local government max . actually, although the poll s sample may be uselessly small, it is slightly better than that: Scottish responses in favour of independence were 49%, a figure which would have been unthinkable even in the heady days of the 1970s.  So there has certainly been a shift in public opinion in the direction of the Nationalists, as the last election result conclusively demonstrated.  What s more, there can be no doubt that Mr Salmond and his followers now make the political weather. Whatever they do, the Scottish Tories and Liberal Democrats seem unable to gain any real electoral support; while the Scottish Labour party is currently in a catastrophic state.  That, I d argue, is a function of the party s current lack of a political narrative, its disastrous handling of the economy at UK level, and the complacency and ineptitude of too many of its politicians, created by its long-standing dominance in Scotland. But it means that the SNP has no effective opposition just now   an alarming state of affairs, to say the least, in the run-up to a vote of such importance.  Exhilarating, of course, by those who are convinced by the case for full independence. But, despite this poll, I m very far from convinced that anything like a majority of Scots are ready to vote for that   though I can readily believe they would considering voting for the Nationalists. That s because the party has played its hand very cannily since the creation of the Holyrood parliament   vindicating, in the process, those from both sides who argued that devolution would be likely to strengthen the moral and political case for nationalism, rather than pull the rug from under its feet. Gradualism has served the SNP well, and Mr Salmond s government (whatever you think of it) has, at the very least, been no less inept than his predecessors  were.  On the other hand, it certainly hasn t been a tale of unalloyed success. The many social provisions unavailable in England are simply not affordable in the long term, at least without varying the basic rate of income tax, the devolved power the SNP administration already has, but which it has not only failed to employ, but allowed to fall beyond effective use.  Nor has  Plan MacB  been the triumph that Mr Salmond claims: only a fraction of a percentage point separates the unemployment figures north and south of the border. Given the greater size of the public sector in Scotland, and the fact that male unemployment is actually worse here (and that the larger percentage of women in employment are still, unjustly, much more likely to be in part-time, low-paid work), it is in fact highly debatable whether Scotland s economic position differs greatly from other parts of the UK.  From a Nationalist perspective, these are all healthy arguments for increasing the powers of the Scottish government. If we want a different political settlement, different social provision or education spending, the power to handle much of macroeconomic policy, let us live with and pay for the consequences of those budgetary priorities.  Herein lies the probl  
 THE result of Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne s meeting with the big six energy suppliers was that we should shop about  for better deals   
 THE Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee will take evidence this morning from enterprise body chiefs on the budget and spending review, and will then hear from energy, consumer and voluntary sector witnesses. The committee will then discuss the scrapping of plans for a carbon capture project at Longannet. Finance Committee will take expert evidence on the budget, as will Infrastructure and Capital Investment.  Rural affairs, Climate Change and Environment will question the Minister on the budget. Local Government and Regeneration will also hear views on the budget from voluntary bodies, while Public audit will take evidence from the auditor General on on telehealth. The main issue in the Chamber this afternoon is a debate led by Transport Minister Keith Brown on preparations for winter weather. Labour MSP Jenny Marra will have a Member s Debate on fuel poverty. 
 In an era of flat to low growth one of the major drivers for future contracts for both the construction and the civil engineering sectors will come from the UK s government-led transition to a low carbon economy. There is a high level of awareness in both Westminster and Holyrood of the importance of sustainability as a theme and of the urgent requirement to continue with efforts to lower the UK s overall carbon footprint.  This creates opportunities in at least three major areas for companies such as Raynesway Construction. First, there are the infrastructure projects that are likely to be forthcoming as bold new initiatives such as carbon capture are rolled out. Second, there is a considerable body of work required by both wind and marine renewable energy projects. Then, of course, there is the built environment, including new and existing manufacturing facilities, all of which need to be moved to a low carbon agenda.  Peter Hansford, the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) recently singled out the importance of the low carbon agenda to the sector when he welcomed the reappointment of Paul Morrell as Chief Construction advisor to the Government.  Paul s work on the low carbon agenda and the Green Construction Board has been notable,  he said.  a report commissioned by the UK Government into the role of the construction industry with respect to the low carbon agenda, (The  Final Report of the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team), looked at the implications of a low carbon approach for both major build and infrastructure projects. The latter, in particular, the report s authors pointed out, are vital to the quality of life of citizens across the UK.  There would be little societal and economic activity without energy generation and distribution, water supply and disposal, transportation by rail, road, sea and air, waste reuse and disposal and communications,  the report noted.  all  
 THE First Minister is under pressure after he personally invited an energy company boss to become a member of an international business group.  ScottishPower chair Ignacio Galan, whose firm pushed through a 19% increase in domestic gas charges, accepted alex Salmond s approach to join the GlobalScot Network.  a Labour MP described the move as an  embarrassment .  ScottishPower, owned by Spanish-based Iberdrola, matched this year s gas hike with a 10% electricity price rise. The jump led to other members of the  Big 6 power giants implementing similar changes.  The move was criticised for risking plunging people into fuel poverty at the same time as maintaining the firms  huge profits.  Salmond called for a  fuel summit  to address the impact of the rises but stopped short of condemning individual companies.  The First Minister has a close relationship with Galan, as ScottishPower is involved in various renewable projects north of the Border.  Last year Salmond invited the Spanish businessman to become a GlobalScot.  Labour MP Tom Greatrex said:  alex Salmond s fixation with writing fawning letters is becoming a national embarrassment.  a Scottish Government spokesman said Mr Galan  is one of 750 GlobalScots, all of whom are written to by the First Minister. The appointment is made on the basis that they are senior business people who are bringing investment and jobs to Scotland . 
 aN energy company has withdrawn its application to build a 29-turbine wind farm on a  site important for a threatened bird of prey.  Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) said  
 Shops in the Thai capital have begun imposing emergency rationing as the Prime Minister warned parts of Bangkok could be flooded for up to a month and authorities called a  five-day holiday to give people the chance to flee.  an evacuation warning to residents of a riverside district some way from swamped northern parts of the city deepened anxiety, as residents scrambled to stock up on food and water.  after assessing the situation, we expect floodwater to remain in Bangkok for around two weeks to one month before going into the sea,  said Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.  However, we shouldn t face water as high as two or three metres staying for two or three months as we ve seen in other provinces.  Thailand s worst flooding in half-a-century has killed at least 366 people since mid-July and disrupted the lives of nearly 2.5 million, with more than 113,000 in shelters and 720,000 people seeking medical attention.  With a high tide approaching in the Gulf of Thailand, climate change experts said the city s fate rested with river dykes holding.  In the worst-case scenario, if all the dykes break, all parts of Bangkok would be more or less flooded,  said Seri Supharatid of Rangsit University s Centre on Climate Change and Disaster.  The economic damage is difficult to quantify, but the central bank has revised its growth forecast for southeast asia s second-biggest economy to 3.1% from 4.1% earlier this month.  Flooding has forced the closure of seven industrial estates in ayutthaya, Non-thaburi and Pathum Thani provinces bordering Bangkok, disrupting supply chains and putting 650,000 people temporarily out of work.  The floods are expected to take a toll on the  tourism industry, which employs more than two million and accounts for 6% of gross domestic product. Tourism Minister Chumphol Silpa-archa said arrivals could be 500,000 to one million below the Government s target of 19 million this year. 
 GENERaL Electric, the US-based technology and services group, has announced it is supplying nine of its 2.75-megawatt wind turbines for the  Little Raith Wind Farm project that recently announced construction near Lochgelly in Fife.  The project marks the commercial debut of  GE s 2.75 megawatt wind turbine technology in Europe.  Little Raith is the first commercial wind farm to be built in Fife.  The nine turbine  wind farm will have an installed capacity of 24.75 megawatts of green energy which represents an important step in reducing Fife s carbon emissions by 25% by 2013.  GE said it expects to complete the wind turbine installation by 2012. Manchester-based Kennedy Renewable owns the Little Raith project. 
 EUROPEaN leaders  such as the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are congratulating themselves on finally delivering a credible package to resolve the sovereign debt crisis. In part, this is deserved. The initial verdict of the stock markets has been positive, largely because eurozone leaders have finally put some real numbers on the table. Private investors in Greek debt will have to accept a 50%  haircut  or write down on their bonds. That s a big loss, and it will damage the balance sheets of banks in Britain, France and Germany who hold Greek debt. To address this, the summit has agreed a 106bn euro package of bank recapitalisation.  Eurozone leaders have also enlarged the  firepower  of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the eurozone bail out fund, from 250 billion euros, to 1 trillion euros through leverage, or financial engineering. Provided this doesn t turn out to be the kind of financial jiggery-pokery that helped cause the 2008 financial crash, this should allow the EFSF to immunise countries like Spain and Italy against sovereign debt contagion   at least for the next couple of years. The immediate result of the package will be to reduce Greece s sovereign debt to  only  120% of GDP by 2020    but at least that gives the country a fighting chance of getting its economy back on an even keel. Whether the Greeks will welcome the presence of  inspectors  from Brussels camping out in their treasury to ensure austerity measures are implemented is another matter.  So far, so good, however. The problem is that even 1 tr  
 SCOTTISHPower s owner said the controversial hike in energy charges that it imposed on consumers from august will boost profits in the last quarter after falling demand for electricity weighed on UK earnings in the first nine months.  Iberdrola said it expected profitability to improve in the three months to December, reflecting the increase in prices from 1 august. The subsidiary increased average gas prices by 19% and electricity by 10%.  While all six of the leading UK energy firms have announced price hikes since the summer, the comments will likely spark anger over  ScottishPower s move.  The rise in energy prices has been one of the main causes of the surge in inflation which has put household finances under pressure across the UK.  However, ScottishPower reiterated claims that the price rises were necessary following increases in wholesale gas prices.  ScottishPower pointed to the fact that earnings in its liberalised business, including retail energy supplies, fell by 47% annually in the first nine months, to  229 million (?202m).  It said:  Retail margins were impacted by rising wholesale costs in 2011 which led to ScottishPower passing on these increases to customers in august.  The fall in profits in ScottishPower s liberalised business was offset by an increase in earnings from regulated activities, including power transmission.  Profits in the regulated business increased by 8.5% to  593m (?522.5m).  Bilbao-based Iberdrola said group Ebitda increased by 0.4% annually in the first nine months, to  5,6bn (?5bn), reflecting good performance from its renewable energy operation.  Iberdrola chairman Ignacio Galan said:  Iberdrola remains fully committed to continuing its strategic ambitions for the UK. 
 ENERGY Secretary Chris Huhne has been challenged to  come clean  over the UK Government s decision to pull out of the groundbreaking carbon capture and storage project at Longannet in Fife.  Bill Walker, the SNP MSP for Dunfermline, said it was time for straight answers after ScottishPower s chief corporate officer Keith anderson said cost was the reason for its cancellation.  Mr Walker said Mr Huhne had been caught out over claims there were technical problems and both he and Scottish Secretary Michael Moore owed Fife residents an explanation.  Mr Walker hit out after Mr anderson said the engineering and design study for the project had been a huge success but the companies involved in the consortium had reached a point where the question was asked if the Government believed in the current climate if this was a sensible use of ?1.5 billion, half a billion more than the Government wanted to spend on the trial.  Mr anderson said:  They came back and told us    No, therefore we have to bring the process to an end .  Mr Walker said:  UK ministers were happy enough to visit Longannet for publicity and pictures but were not willing to put up the long-term investment that would put Scotland and Fife at the front of clean-energy generation and boost employment across the area.  Chris Huhne has been caught out. ScottishPower is clear it could be done and that there are no technical difficulties. The LibDems and UK Government owe the people of Fife a straight answer.  The more information that emerges about the UK s actions over Longannet the bigger the questions over what the Scottish Secretary has actually been doing for Scotland. 
 IN March 1903 when the four Ferguson brothers launched themselves into the uncertain world of shipbuilding, nobody could have predicted that 108 years later, after every other civilian yard on the Clyde had fallen silent, the clang of the jackhammer and the thud of the riveter would continue to ring around their yard in Port Glasgow.  Fergusons has gone through a number of changes of ownership in the intervening century and much uncertainty, interspersed with periods of frenetic activity when a rush was on to finish a big order. In recent years the yard has lost out on several government orders under EU tendering rules that sometimes appear to be applied more strictly in the UK than elsewhere. at times, with no new orders in sight, there were fears that the yard would close with the loss of specialist skills. Over the last four years the yard has survived on a diet of marine contract work.  So it is especially pleasing to report that Fergusons has won an order for two 900-tonne ferries, against stiff international competition, securing the yard s 75 jobs, with the prospect of 100 more. There will even be 20 apprentices. The ferries will operate on the Sconser to Raasay route in Skye, operated by Caledonian MacBrayne and are due to enter service in 2013. and, as befits a country with extremely ambitious green energy targets, the vessels will be the world s first hybrid ferries, using a low-carbon mix of diesel and battery power. The huge lithium ion batteries will be recharged each night. If windpower is used to generate this electricity, these will be among the most environmentally-friendly ships on earth. Emissions from shipping are said to account for 4% of carbon dioxide emissions, so the future of this technology is vitally important.  Far from being a relic of a bygone age, let us hope that Fergusons can show the way to the future and mark the beginning of a shipbuilding renaissance on the River Clyde. 
 THE Scottish National Party s energy policy could be either its trump card or its achilles heel. Perhaps the most eye-catching pledge in the last SNP manifesto was to generate 100% of Scotland s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. To achieve that ambitious target would require a massive ramping-up of wind, wave and tidal power in the next nine years, especially when low-carbon nuclear generation is due to be wound down. Of course, it does not mean that no oil, gas or coal will be burned in Scotland by the end of the decade. Rather, that it will be balanced by the amount of surplus renewable energy Scotland is able to export. at least, that is the theory.  With the opposition parties in disarray since the Holyrood elections, there has been remarkably little detailed scrutiny of the Nationalist dream of turning Scotland into the Saudi arabia of renewables. Politically, there is a reluctance to fall into the trap of appearing to be anti-Scottish for daring to question whether this grandiose ambition was anything more than pie in the sky. as a result, the Scottish Government has not been under any significant pressure to explain exactly how it would pull off this remarkable feat. and so two reports this week, both from respected sources, both questioning the viability of the Scottish renewables target, make interesting reading.  Yesterday the Institution of Mechanical Engineers claimed the SNP s energy policy could turn Scotland into a net importer of energy and increase fuel poverty. and rather than shrinking the country s carbon emissions, they could increase, especially if the wind does not blow and, without nuclear power, Scotland is forced to import power from non-renewable sources. The Herald has deployed a similar argument over several years and supports the retention of nuclear as part of the energy mix. The institution also claims around two-thirds of households are opposed to the closure and non-replacement of nuclear stations, if it means having to   
 SCOTTISH business leaders have called for the remit of the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) to be widened, to help far more companies than those export-led, high-growth businesses that it is targeting as the economic situation deteriorates.  They are concerned that the flagship Scottish Government initiative to help small and medium sized enterprises raise cash is doing nothing for the vast majority of firms during a challenging period for businesses.  The slowdown in the economy has added fresh urgency to complaints that SMEs are being hit hardest by the shortage of bank funding resulting from lenders efforts to rebuild their balance sheets.  However, the SIB is concentrating on a narrow band of firms in sectors such as life sciences and renewable energy that are reckoned to be capable of achieving rapid growth.  Critics complain that established businesses in other sectors are excluded, although these provide the bulk of private sector jobs in Scotland.  Liz Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce said:  We need to stop artificial barriers or restrictions being placed as to which sectors can apply,  said.  Construction, infrastructure developments, retailing, tourism, general business operations   they all collectively employ millions of individuals and need to be sustained to enable them to work through the economic conditions. They cannot do this if they do not have cash.  She said the SIB should develop a new fund to provide short-term working capital for firms with private sector support.  Colin Borland, head of external affairs for the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland, said:  They (the SIB) are of limited relevance to our members.  He added:  These times are fairly unusual. You can t take it as read that the business base will always exist.  We should be looking at ways of expanding and sup  
 The ongoing scare stories on the Scottish Government s Green energy policy are based on two reports, a professionally conservative assessment by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a highly biased and simplistic report by Citigroup.  Ian Bell rightly draws our attention to that bank s past history of insolvency and fraud, which do not inspire confidence in their opinions ( Fond kiss and a spanner among the parting shots , The Herald, November 4).  However, the nub of their argument, that without a United Kingdom to buy and subsidise electricity generated in Scotland by renewables, power would be over-expensive in an independent Scotland, does not bear scrutiny.  In the event of Scotland gaining independence, the re  
 Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall grinned with delight as they were given a loud welcome to Tanzania yesterday by a brass band.  a saxophonist and trombonist from the 12 wind group blasted out their tune as they crouched a couple of yards from the couple, who met the Tanzanian Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda.  Fantastic,  the prince said to  the PM, while his wife said:  It s  so loud.  The couple, on a three-day tour of the former British colony, grinned and waved at the performers during the sunset show in the major commercial city of the country, Dar es Salaam.  around 15 drummers and more than 25 dancers completed the energetic troop alongside the red carpet.  One of the themes of this Commonwealth tour is climate change. Earlier, in a speech at Cape Town University, South africa, the prince said:  My wife and I are seeing how a diverse range of rural and urban communities are facing up to these challenges. 
 aLEX Salmond has signed a deal with a world-leading renewables company to help fund research into green energy.  During a five-day tour of Qatar and the UaE last week, he brokered an agreement with alternative energy company Masdar that will encourage university research into renewable energy sources.  Salmond met Dr Sultan ahmed al Jaber, Masdar s chief executive, during a visit to Masdar City, an experimental showcase of renewables technology.  The First Minister said:  I firmly believe this agreement will yield great results for abu Dhabi, great results for Scotland, and I do believe it will lead to significant advances that will benefit this entire planet. That s the importance of what s been talked about.  Dr al Jaber said:  Masdar is pleased to partner with Scotland on a number of upcoming renewable energy initiatives. 
 PLaNS to begin drilling for gas using a controversial method that was blamed for an earthquake in a seaside resort has been given the green light in Scotland for the first time.  The process of fracking is believed to have led to tremors in Blackpool and along parts of the Lancashire coast. Now an energy firm has been granted a licence by the Scottish Environmental Protection agency (Sepa) to extract gas trapped in coal near the mining village of Canonbie in Dumfries and Galloway.  The area has been chosen because it is rich in minerals and built on a quartz bed.  Greenpark Energy, based in Berwick-upon-Tweed, is believed to be planning to tap into gas trapped in 400,000 tonnes of coal which was once mined near the village, and is reported to have already carried out testing by drilling boreholes.  It comes despite concern over earthquakes thought to have been caused by the fracking   or hydraulic fracturing   at an offshore plant near Blackpool. an independent report last week concluded it was  highly probable  that the method was the cause of earth tremors which hit the Lancashire coast in april and May.  The quakes measured 2.3 and 1.4 on the Richter scale, and oil and gas firm Cuadrilla Resources later admitted they have caused 50 quakes in the area in eight mon  
 GLaSGOW City Council last night unveiled plans for a ?150 million plant to turn rubbish into power amid protests from environmental campaigners.  The council is set to strike a 25-year deal with waste giant Viridor to process up to 200,000 tonnes of household rubbish at a major  recycling and renewable energy  complex in Polmadie.  The deal will create 250 jobs and is expected to be sealed next month. It comes as councils in Scotland face huge rises in environmental landfill taxes and struggle to hit recycling targets.  Leader Gordon Matheson yesterday said:  This facility is part of the next generation of sustainable infrastructure. It will end the city s reliance on expensive and unpopular landfill.  Friends of the Earth Scotland and other environmental groups slammed Mr Matheson s green credentials. They believe such  energy-from-waste  plants   while different from the 1970s  toxic incinerators   give local authorities a licence to fail on recycling.  Green leader Patrick Harvie said:  This is just a rebranded incinerator, which will still lead to pollution. 
 GLaSGOW City Council last night unveiled plans for a ?150 million plant to turn rubbish into power amid protests from environmental campaigners.  The council is set to strike a 25-year deal with waste giant Viridor to process up to 200,000 tonnes of household rubbish at a major  recycling and renewable energy  complex in Polmadie.  The deal will create 250 jobs and is expected to be sealed next month. It comes as councils in Scotland face huge rises in environmental landfill taxes and struggle to hit recycling targets.  Leader Gordon Matheson yesterday said:  This facility is part of the next generation of sustainable infrastructure. It will end the city s reliance on expensive and unpopular landfill.  Friends of the Earth Scotland and other environmental groups slammed Mr Matheson s green credentials. They believe such  energy-from-waste  plants   while different from the 1970s  toxic incinerators   give local authorities a licence to fail on recycling.  Green leader Patrick Harvie said:  This is just a rebranded incinerator, which will still lead to pollution. 
 a MaJORITY of the population are opposed to higher motorway speeds and would feel pressurised into driving faster if the current limit was raised to 80mph, a leading transport academic has claimed.  Jillian anable, who has undertaken research into driver behaviour, accused the UK Government of pandering to a vocal minority of  die-hard  motorists who are unconcerned about the effects of speeding on other road users or the environment.  The Department for Transport is currently consulting on raising the 70mph motorway speed limit, which was set in 1965, with a view to introducing the higher limit in 2013.  The Scottish Government has yet to say whether it would follow suit or stick with a 70mph limit if this happens.  However, Dr anable, a senior lecturer at aberdeen University, said a majority of drivers travelled at 70mph or less on motorways and only one in five supported higher speed limits.  at a lecture due to be delivered to Westminster s Parliamentary advisory Council for Transport Safety tonight, Ms anable, who has previously been commissioned by the Scottish Government to examine ways of reducing carbon diox  
 BUSINESS goes ahead despite public sector strikes but not quite as usual. Labour and the Greens will not be crossing picket lines but the SNP, Tories and LibDems will be at work. That gives them the opportunity to debate the reason for the strike: public sector pensions. The Government s motion registers its  strong opposition  to the UK Government s action claiming it is a  cash grab  and urging Westminster to reverse its policy.  Two committees are scheduled, Economy, Energy and Tourism and Rural affairs, Climate Change and the Environment. Fuel poverty is the only item on the agenda at Economy which will be hearing from a range of officials from organisations including age Scotland, Energy action and Money advice Scotland.  Rural affairs will be considering the Common agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. Business ends with a Member s debate on a motion by SNP MSP Kevin Stewart on St andrew s Day. 
 MaITLaND Mackie,  chairman of the Mackies of Scotland ice-cream firm, has won recognition for his commitment to environmental issues in a business awards scheme.  Dr Mackie was presented with the first Lifetime achievement award at the Vision in Business for the Environment of Scotland (Vibes) awards in Edinburgh yesterday.  Gillian Bruce, chairwoman of Vibes, said:  The Vibes Lifetime achievement award recognises individuals who have dedicated their careers to the pursuit of environmental excellence in their business as well as the promotion of these ideas throughout Scotland.  Family-owned Mackies has demonstrated its commitment to low-carbon strategies by a range of actions. These include installing three wind turbines which allow Mackies ice-cream to be produced using renewable energy.  Dr Mackie said:  Saving the world for our grandchildren has to be the most over-riding and crucial objective of our generation. I would be delighted if I have helped in any way.  The best management award for a large firm went to Brand-Rex, the Fife-based cabling specialist. Glasgow-based Freshlink Food and FIS Chemicals of aberdeenshire won the awards for medium and small companies respectively.  Edinburgh-based Rabbies Small Group Tours won the changing behaviour award.  Vibes is a partnership between Environmental Protection UK; Scottish Environment Protection agency; Scottish Government and Zero Waste Scotland. 
 GREaTER Government help to encourage motorists and public bodies to invest in electric vehicles is needed if ambitious targets set by the Scottish Government to reduce climate change are to be met, an environmental charity has claimed.  WWF Scotland called for Government grants of ?10,000   twice the level provided by the UK Government   for the first 25,000 electric vehicles sold in Scotland to act as a catalyst for change and for a scrappage scheme.  The Scottish Government has pledged to achieve a  wholesale shift  to electric and low carbon vehicles by 2050 in order to achieve an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. WWF Scotland said this would require at least 290,000 electric cars to be in use north of the Border by 2020.  a report by transport consultancy atkins, which was commissioned by WWF, found that local authorities and other major public bodies were more likely to be early adaptors  of electric vehicles as they had bigger purchasing budgets.  However, public sector fleet managers said they were unlikely to buy electric vehicles unless Government help was on offer, atkins found.  Work was also needed to install public charging points, the report said.  The Scottish Government consulted on how to encourage electric and low carbon vehicle use a year ago and is due to set out a strategy on the subject. 
 One of the major developers of onshore wind farms has launched a ?90 m  
 For moss green, read mint cream. Remember the famous photo of David Cameron driving a team of huskies across the imperilled arctic ice or his bold declaration that his would be the  greenest government ever ? Compare that with this week s autumn statement from George Osborne, which bore only the palest of mint cream tinges.  There were brief references to the disappointingly small and restricted green investment bank and a bit of rail electrification. The anglo-Scottish sleeper will be spruced up (if the SNP at Holyrood can conjure up matching funding at short notice. Big if). However, future historians trying to pinpoint the death of the Coalition Government s green ambitions, need look no further than the Chancellor s words on Tuesday.  We are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers,  or what about the  ridiculous costs  foisted on British businesses by countryside protection legislation or the  burden  of environmental goals? The overall message, designed to appeal to the Tory right-wing, was that environmental aims should come second to the economy.  Mr Osborne has always been the palest green member of the Government. He was the one who told the Tory conference that the UK would not lead the EU in the effort to cut carbon emissions. But until now the climate change optimists among us had allowed ourselves to believe that environmental ministers like Greg Barker and Chris Huhne understood the issues and would ensure that Britain showed leadership on the issue. Silly us.  after all, he who pays the piper ... So now we have ?250 million more being pumped into energy intensive industries like cement works to offset carbon-related taxes, reducing yet further their incentive to save energy. He also whipped off the table the ?1 billion set aside for a prototype carbon capture and storage scheme, despite the well-developed Shell/SSE plan for Peterhead. and he announced road-building schemes and runway development and cancelled the 3p a litre fuel duty due in January, tilting the  
 Colin Borland, public affairs manager, Federation of Small Businesses  Our manifesto for the May Scottish Parliament is focused around jobs. Many of the 200,000 self-employed people in Scotland want to move to become employers. We know the only place that the jobs are going to come from are from small business. What is stopping people taking the plunge and employing people? Half of self-employed people would like to take on an additional employee but they need more help to make it cost-effective for them. It s a daunting, even terrifying, step, but it shouldn t be. We need clearer explanation of the liabilities and responsibilities. Jobcentre Plus has a small business support service which does a lot of that work. I think this sort of grassroots work is what is most needed in Scotland and this should be the cornerstone of what Business Gateway does: asking how many self-employed people it can help through the process.  Heather Macleod, businesswoman and founder of Social Justice Foundation  If Scottish businesses are looking towards the future, they need to think about the workforce of the future and that means how we will support the unemployed. This means working with young people. We are doing a lot of inter-generational work and trying to foster more understanding of people with mental health problems; they need support from all sections of society. The private sector will create the jobs and the opportunities to stimulate the economy but in no shape or form can they replace the jobs that are being lost in the public sector. Businesses, especially those accepting grants from the Government, should give back to society by giving apprenticeships. They need to  work more with the third sector. We also need to value the older worker.  austin Lafferty, vice-president elect of the Law Society of Scotland  2011 will be a big year for the Scottish legal profession and for me personally as I take up my post as vice-president of the Law Society in May. Scottish lawyers are in the midst of a national conversation, as it were, about a new constitution fit for the 21st century. as you can imagine, among 10,000 solicitors there is more than one opinion on lots of issues, and keeping everyone together will be a big ask for the office-bearers, council and executive of the Society. However, I genuinely believe in goodwill and common sense as being among the armoury of the legal profession, so I go forward with optimism. We are still wrestling with the alternative business structure regime Tesco Law is a totally inadequate label for the firm membership and investment changes going through.Legal aid is a problem and some of my Society colleagues are working really hard to ensure access to justice and fair wages for solicitors. and day-to-day, there will still be a whole population of Scots requiring bread-and-butter legal services.  Liz Cameron, director, Scottish Chambers of Commerce  In 2011 the target must be to ensure that the culture of success experienced by many businesses in 2010 spreads throughout Scotland and that our economic recovery takes a firm foothold on the path back to sustained growth. We all appreciate this is not going to be an easy journey. We need an environment in which we are able to conduct our business freely, flexibly and fast. To enable this to happen my message to our aspiring and experienced politicians gearing up for the forthcoming Scottish elections is that we need you to be brave, decisive and effective leaders, able to tackle the difficult decisions ahead ensuring that business is truly at the centre of all your policies. It would be foolish to go for short-term electorate votes to the detriment of job creation and sustainability.  Oli Norman, founder of PR and marketing company, DaDa  I, for one, am thoroughly fed up hearing about recession and doom and gloom. In my view, 2011 is all about going for it. The only way we are going to pull our way out is to change and adapt, and there has never been as big an opportunity for business to grow as in 2011. We are investing a six-figure sum in what we are doing next year. There s a huge amount of incredibly talented people from the public and private sectors coming onto the jobs market, people whose skillset is exactly what we need. People are well aware that the banks aren t open, which means that if you want to do something you have to do it off your own resources and largely bypass the banks.  Graham Bell, managing director, Graham Bell associates, public policy consultants  Heading into a Holyrood election we have the opportunity to build a new platform for the next four years based on a belief in Scotland s ability to perform on the world stage. The real secret lies in collaboration to achieve improved performance in international markets.  We have many great players in Scotland s business team, and significant  investment in sunrise industries, renewable energy, and life sciences in particular. add in cross-party support for creating effective pathways to encourage business success and we can leave behind the perception that we cannot achieve recovery, and go for it.  Polly Purvis, executive director, ScotlandIS  Innovative use of technology will play a vital role in driving productivity gains and enabling the creation of new local businesses, export sales and skilled jobs that will fuel economic recovery. One of the key enablers of growth for the coming year will be the ICT sector. I expect to see significant levels of investment in software and IT services from the smallest local business to multinationals. Much of this will be through web-enabled or  cloud  services. This, combined with the roll-out of next-generation high-speed telecoms infrastructure, will provide businesses with new channels to market, opportunities for efficiency improvement and more ways to communicate with customers and suppliers alike. It s the perfect playing field for small Scottish companies because it eliminates geography and size barriers.  Ron Hewitt, chief executive, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce  We must achieve firm commitments and new ways of funding infrastructure development   this offers all the wins: construction jobs, improving the prospect for attracting inward in  
 ONE of Scotland s top companies has accused the Scottish Government of threatening its competitiveness by scrapping a scheme that helps firms switch their goods from road to rail.  Highland Spring (HS), the UK s biggest supplier of bottled water, also says ministers  actions are  absolutely inconsistent  with their own environmental policy by ending the ?7 million-a-year Freight Facilities Grant (FFG).  The firm has been working for more than a year on plans for a rail terminal at its Perthshire base, but the closure of FFG this april means the scheme is no longer commercially viable.  It will continue to send 10,000 HGV lorryloads a year on to the roads around auchterarder instead of switching water destined for the English market to rail.  Started in 1974, FFG has paid companies up to 75% of the cost of new rail works.  as part of his draft budget two months ago, Finance Secretary John Swinney closed FFG to new applicants from april. annual Government support for freight will fall from ?10.3m to ?2.9m.  The end of FFG also jeopardises plans for a railhead next to William Grant s Girvan distillery.  In a letter to Holyrood s Transport Committee, HS said there is a clear environmental case for moving to rail, but it is only viable with grant support.  Supermarkets, which are among its biggest customers, want suppliers to be greener,  so not only could the scrapping of the FFG ... compromise the company s environmental performance, but also the future competitiveness of this highly successful Scottish business and important local employer,  it said.  Industry body the Rail Freight Group said it was  particularly concerned  by the end of FFG, which was  counterintuitive  given pledges to cut carbon emissions and to support businesses.  Government agency Transport Scotland said the decision was  regrettable  but it had to cope with a Westminster-imposed ?800m cut to its funding. 
 WE expect police to go undercover at times. To catch terrorists before the bombs go off. To apprehend really violent baddies. Check what ou  
 BP has struck what it describes as an  historic  agreement with the Russian government, in a  ?10 billion deal to exploit potentially huge deposits of oil and gas in the arctic.  The UK energy giant, recovering from its Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, will swap 5% of its shares, valued at $7.8bn, for 9.5% of Russia s state-controlled Rosneft in an agreement that immediately raised concerns about US economic security from at least two american lawmakers and criticism from environmentalists.  The deal covers huge areas of the South Ka  
 Bashir Maan writes that as a Muslim he must believe in the virgin birth because it is confirmed by the Koran (Letters, January 9). However, the sources of the doctrine   the story of the annunciation in Luke 1:26-38 and the mention in Matthew 1:18 of Mary s pregnancy  from the Holy Spirit    appear to be late additions to the text. In the two genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 it is the ancestry of Joseph that is traced, which implies that Joseph had originally been regarded by Christians as the actual and not merely the supposed father of Jesus.  a second objection is that the Koran contains not only biblical paraphrases and allusions but extra-biblical legends about a number of patriarchs from adam to Solomon and beyond, and episodes from writings excluded from the New Testament on account of their late date and unreliability. Indeed, two such episodes concerning the miraculous provision of dates and water to Mary in the desert when the birth of her child was imminent, and a speech made by Jesus as a newborn infant   almost immediately follow the passage quoted in part by Bashir Maan.  a Muslim who believes the Koran to be divinely inspired in the fullest sense must necessarily accept the veracity of all these materials. a more rational stance would be to regard it as a purely human creation incorporating traditions which came to Mohammed from his pious contemporaries.  Paul Fletcher  Glasgow  Bashir Maan describes the virgin birth as  the most important doctrine of Christianity , yet two of the gospels fail to tell of it, and Paul also manages to write his letters without referring to it. What is central is the incarnation the belief that Jesus is  the visible likeness of the invisible God , as Paul says. The virgin birth is a marvellous, poetic story embodying this belief. It is a pity that our literal, scientific mentality seems incapable of distinguishing  truth  from  fact .  It is beyond belief that Mr Maan should be surprised by a former minister of the Christian church questioning belief in the literal understanding of the virgin birth. Thoughtful people   believers as well as unbelievers   have been doing so for a very long time, not least David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, who hit the headlines repeatedly with his views on this very subject.  Far be it from me to say how Muslims ought to interpret the Koran, but I do hope that they, like Christians, can see that there are different ways of expressing truth.  (Rev) Jim MacEwan.  Nethy Bridge  Your editorial about the juror who posted jury room deliberations from the Sheridan trial on Facebook is an instance of the atmosphere of parochialism which permeates Scots and English law (The consequences of social media, Leader, January 9). Our laws which are the result of social evolution in one country are held up to be the revelations of universal natural law. In, for example, the USa, jurors are entirely free to talk about what has gone on in the jury room. The american justiciary does not appear to think that this  undermines justice for all .  The British rule of juror silence is just one way of  doing  justice. The problem that our courts face is that any juror can now send an encprypted message to anywhere in the world. It can then be published on a server in a jurisdiction which the British courts cannot influence. In fact, I propose such a system; let s call it  WikiCourts .  The juror who posted about the Sheridan trial may be prosecuted, but if the authorities are hoping that a successful prosecution will be a successful deterrent, they are deluded. It is they, not us, who, in the words of the Sunday Herald leader writer, have had a  wake-up call .  Ronnie Somerville  Lenzie  I totally agree with Iain Macwhirter (Who runs Britain? The Bankers, Comment, January 9). Sadly, the reason why the banks get away with it is because their existence is guaranteed. Having recently started a small business, I had no choice but to grovel and beg the bankers to open a company bank account, since this is a legal requirement.  Bankers get away with pay rises and bonuses because we cannot work or do business without them, unless we step into the black market. The position of bankers is absolutely assured.  Dr Malcolm Sutherland  Skelmorlie  Colin Donald shines yet more light on the  success  hyperbole of the Scotch whisky industry (Report finds Scotch on the rocks in its homeland, Business, January 2). The SWa may be technically correct in claiming a  2% rise in sales between 2009-2010 in the UK . That, however, needs to be set against a rise in UK inflation of 4.6% during the same period.  The discovery that the global sales volume of Scotch whisky has been flatlining for the last 30 years is put into sharp relief by other global macro-economic indicators which show annual increases in the range of 1.5%-3%. This is the basis of my claim that the near-static performance of the industry has cost 50,000 jobs during these years.  Instead of coming to grips with the long-term failure of Scotland s only truly unique and iconic industry it appears we would prefer to bet the public purse on new tech  
 Scotland s nascent rural datafarm sector, seen as a key to the country s future digital and green economy, is regrouping this weekend after the shock suspension  of Lloyds Banking Group s well-advanced plans for a ?250 million datafarm investment in Ecclefechan.  The decision   which came just days after Lloyds had presented plans for the scheme to the local community   is understood to relate to the advent of a review of spending across the group ordered by incoming chief executive antonio Horta-Osorio, who takes over from Eric Daniels next month.  But supporters of the Dumfriesshire project, including the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Dumfries and Galloway Council and promoters Internet Villages International (IVI), have vowed to exploit new opportunities to establish the viability of datacentres, reaffirming determination to promote the Scottish sector.  Jim Mather, the Enterprise Minister, pictured right, said:  This is obviously disappointing news and we understand it results from Lloyds reassessing their options. It is the Scottish Government and Scottish Development International s belief that this country retains real competitive advantage when it comes to attracting data cen  
 although there are sceptics even among scientists, most people accept global warming as fact and realise it will affect them in one way or another. But if it s an issue that concerns   
 Susan Rice  Managing director of Lloyds  Banking Group in Scotland  Nominated by Wendy alexander MSP  Ostensibly, Susan fails the  influential Scotswoman  test. She is an american; she is a member of the reviled tribe of  bankers ; and she lacks her own Wikipedia profile, that barometer of status in our celebrity-driven age. If influential simply means successful, Susan certainly passes muster. Having started as an academic and Yale University dean, she later switched to banking, becoming the first woman to lead a British clearing bank. She is currently managing director of Lloyds Banking Group in Scotland.  But real  influence  is surely about more than simply success. It is about significance; the determination to make a difference. and Susan s  significance stems from the contribution she makes to Scottish life.  Susan not only has a social conscience but a civic, artistic and environmental one, too. Our paths first crossed 10 years ago when I was Scotland s communities minister and she was a banker committed to supporting the right of everyone to a proper bank account. She was a founding director of the Charity Bank. She has served both the Scottish and UK governments i  
 It is becoming increasingly clear that the Scottish Government s concentration on so-called renewable energy sources to the exclusion of m  
 aLEX Salmond s pitch to his spring conference and the country this weekend is clear: the SNP has a track record, a ministerial team, and a vision for Scotland of which to be proud.  On all three points, this paper is in substantial agreement.  The first Nationalist government has proven itself sure-footed, confident and more innovative than its predecessor. It has removed bridge tolls, ended prescription charges, frozen council tax, recruited an extra 1000 police officers and restarted council house building.  Its support for the construction industry has helped secure jobs through the downturn.  as the First Minister acknowledged yesterday, some things could have been done better.  But taken as a whole, it seems to us Scotland has benefited from a change of administration and Salmond s enthusiastic leadership.  That enthusiasm was to  
 Dispensing second-hand books by astronomer Carl Sagan at the end of his gigs, comedian Robin Ince has become accustomed to suggesting further reading to audiences, filling out tangential routines that flit between quantum physics, evolutionary biology and Schr?dinger s cat in the disorganised leaps of his passionate delivery. He s getting more ambitious though, even as he s grounded in the self-awareness of an  excited idiot who each year knows a little bit more and each year appreciates how much he doesn t know .  It s the eve of the UK s first Uncaged Monkeys show, a live adaptation of Radio 4 s irreverent science series The Infinite Monkey Cage featuring an intellectual supergroup of Wonders Of The Solar System presenter Brian Cox, his fellow physicist Simon Singh, NHS doctor and scourge of Bad Science reporting Ben Goldacre, musical comic Helen arney and assorted heavyweight guest brains. ahead of that Glasgow premiere, Ince admits that  my dream is that when I m 70 years old, I get a letter from a Nobel Prize winner for physics, explaining that watching you tell a childish joke about the human genome made me want to become a scientist!  Is he delusional? Committed political comics like Mark Thomas notwithstanding, comedy s recent boom arguably consolidated the notion that it s an art form that can t inspire change, facilitate the transmission of important ideas or be a crucible for debate. Yet such defeatist, uncritical thinking is anathema to the scientific method. Not only will the Monkeys be tailoring specific material to whichever town or city they re playing in but, via Twitter, they ll be inviting the audience to challenge them with questions during the course of the show.  We re saying: investigate things, be properly sceptical when you see bad science in the news,  Ince states.  If you look back at some of the misreporting of MMR, you can see the holes in it.  The Monkeys are an opinionated troop at any time. Denunciations of  charlatans and bamboozlers  led to Singh being sued unsuccessfully by the British Chiropractic association; Goldacre similarly, by vitamin pill magnate Matthias Rath; and both Cox and Ince had to defend themselves against accusations of attacking religion. On the live stage, therefore, they ll appreciate the freedom of not needing to adhere to BBC guidelines on balance. Ince flags up dissent within the group about certain recent discoveries and maintains he would hate the show to  come across as consensus science . Selling fewer tickets than psychics and spiritualists in the same venues would irk him more, however.  There s something so inspiring about not seeing an afterlife when I die,  he says,  that every atom that ceases to make up me and my consciousness will go on to make other things ... I ll be depressed if more people want to hear Sally Morgan s answer to death, which is that they re over on the other side and they know where your cufflinks are.  Partly as a response to such snake-oil salesmanship, there s been a discernible trend for science-inspired live comedy shows in recent years. Ince s Yuletide celebrations of rationalism, Nine Lessons and Carols For Godless People, featured the likes of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sharing a stage with Ricky Gervais, Stewart Lee, Dara O Briain and Jarvis Cocker. Elsewhere, Professor Richard Wiseman and Dr Peter Lamont s recently established Edinburgh Secret Society held clandestine talks on the darker side of the human psyche and self-improvement.  Look further through the Comedy Festival programme, and you ll find environmental journalist George Monbiot s Left Hook political deb  
 IT was September 1978, somewhere between the heyday of punk and the Ghost Town years. at Torness in East Lothian, a group of 400 protesters had gathered to demonstrate against the nuclear power station planned by the South of Scotland Electricity Board. The site at that stage had just a big pit in its middle, so scores of them began jumping in to halt the diggers.  a founder member of the so-called Torness alliance, Pete Roche, was there that day. He recalls it was the latest step in a concerted campaign against the station. a hardcore of 25 alliance members had commandeered a ruined cottage on the site a few weeks earlier and had been renovating it to create an obstruction.  The nuclear plant builders had bulldozed it the week before. Scotland s fledgling anti-nuclear faction had been so incensed that it had answered the call from all over the country to get down there and demonstrate in the pit.  It felt like we were inventing the anti-nuclear movement at the time,  says Roche.  The alliance had had good relations with the police, but now conflict was inevitable, with large numbers being arrested.  This was the start of the environmental movement that blossomed in the 1980s to become perhaps second only to the miners in the prominence of its conflicts with the Thatcher Government.  Roche remembers clambering over the Torness fences a few months later beside a young Robin Cook as they argued about whether the new Tory Government would make any difference. Cook shouted back that nothing would be the same again.  Roche believes these protests played their part in killing the UK nuclear construction programme, along with the fact that the economics of nuclear electricity simply didn t stack up next to burning coal or gas.  By the time Chernobyl exploded in 1986, the game was already almost up. The only new stations after that had already been years in the pipeline. Torness opened in 1988 and remains the last Scottish station to have been built.  The world has moved on since then, with many mainstream politicians now ready to consider a new generation of nuclear stations. There aren t many in the SNP, however, which remains firmly against. To the great irritation of successive Westminster Governments, it has used planning law to impose its will and get around the fact that energy policy is supposed to be reserved.  Those in favour of nuclear power have long argued it is the only low-carbon solution to the fact that the current generation of power stations will soon need to be replaced, starting with Hunterston B, Scotland s other nuclear plant, in 2016. Since wind turbines produce no power on still days, they say, we ll need new nuclear base-load to  
 Outside of wartime, no UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has had such an ominous international background to a Budget, or had such a mountain of domestic economic woes to conquer.  Only his most committed political enemies will fail to appreciate the pressure on George Osborne as he gets to his feet in the House of Commons on Wednesday.  In terms of public perception, the Etonian wallpaper heir has low expectations on his side. But never mind the personality and politics, can he spring some credible surprises to hasten the UK along a path towards jobs and growth? The Treasury has already pre-leaked the move  from rescue to reform  in the Budget announcement, but there is a pressing need for measures that clear the way for business to employ more people and sell more goods and services at home and overseas. Everything else is secondary.  Or, as Liz Cameron of Scottish Chambers of Commerce puts it:  We are looking for the Government to provide a clear road map  to growth to accompany the necessary reductions in public-sector spending which are well documented and understood.  Well documented and understood they may be, but there are large and well-organised forces afoot to whom reductions are neither necessary nor acceptable. If Osborne wishes to be remembered as a successful Tory chancellor he must defeat their arguments by conjuring  credible growth-inducing rabbits from his hat.  The Coalition Government needs to show political courage and thinking for the long term   also known as leadership. any display of this quality will show up his Holyrood counterparts, whose response to the crisis has been to offer more free sweeties to the electorate in a race to the bottom of political credibility.  To Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland, the Chancellor s task is to provide business with  respite and inspiration . as he sees it the Budget must decisively move the UK beyond reliance on consumer credit cards, financial services alchemy, and politically directed dollops of taxpayers  cash.  Lest we forget, McMillan points out that the UK Government is borrowing ?149 billion this financial year, the largest amount in peacetime, and is committed to adding to the national debt mountain for several years to come.? annual interest payments on the national debt are already ?43bn this year and will rise to ?63bn in the next five years, around double the current budget of devolved Scotland.  The gap between the State s spending and its revenues must be closed   and fast, McMillan said in a speech last week.  about ?50bn of the deficit will go as economic growth increases the tax yield and the costs associated with recession come down. But the remaining annual deficit of nearly ?100bn is structural.? It will not just melt away, and that is the extent to which the cost of the UK s public services exceeds our ability to pay for it   [it] has to be tackled, or it will shackle our economy for many decades to come.  ?For the CBI and other business lobbyists next week s Budget is all about freeing up UK business to compete internationally, by fulfilling the Coalition s promise to make Britain s corporate tax system the most competitive in the G20. Given that the banks are not lending, then it is retained profits that will fund future investment plans. Plans for reducing the headline rate and smaller firms rates of corporation tax will therefore be welcome.  Osborne is under pressure to find ways of encouraging the public sector to make export finance more accessible to small firms   an approach pioneered in Scotland with the ?7.5 million Scottish Chambers of Commerce collaboration with Scottish Development International on the Smart Exporter programme.  Other CBI wishes include reforms to the unfair dismissal laws that discourage recruitment, and signposts towards the eventual reduction in the 50p income tax rate, politically symbolic rather than fiscally beneficial, and with no positive effect on jobs, business formation, growth, international investment or recruitment.  With Scotland s private-sector job figures, revealed on Friday, showing private-sector employment growing faster than public-sector lay-offs, the future reputation of Osborne s epoch-defining Budget will stand or fall on the degree to which it is seen as  a Budget for jobs .  according to Graeme Smith, the general secretary of the STUC, a deficit dove who regularly invokes the shadow of Mrs Thatcher:  The Chancellor must decide whether he is content for unemployment to remain high for longer than is necessary, thereby repeating the mistakes of past recessions.  The Budget must include measures to boost job creation and provide effective help to the  unemployed. a reversal of the  VaT increase would be a good  place to start.  although not impossible   the Czech government has just moved back from 20% to 17.5%   a UK reversal of VaT is a forlorn hope, even in the case of fuel, advocated by the Labour party. Ministers claim cutting the VaT on just fuel would be illegal under EU rules, however politically popular it might be.  as recent price hikes are estimated to have increased the cost of a litre of fuel by 3p and oil prices are likely to stay high due to uncertainly in the Middle East, Osborne may well decide to cancel the planned fuel duty increase, rather than introduce the automatic  fuel duty stabiliser , which raises and lowers fuel duty in line with prices, but which would prove complex  to administer.  Complexity, whether in the tax or regulatory system, is scheduled for a rhetorical pasting from Osborne on Wednesday, not least because as a theme it is full of opportunities to remind the nation of the devil-in-the-detail Budgets that Gordon Brown unveiled year after year.  Given the hints that Osborne and his team intend to be bold, we could conceivably see a complete merger of income tax and national insurance, as recommended by the Office of Tax Simplification.  Small businesses would welcome the reduction in the administrative burden, particularly on businesses employing fewer than 10 people, on whose capacity to employ more people rests any hope for a future marked by public-sector job cuts.  according to the OTS:  The integration of income tax and national insurance, including reducing the differential between rates applicable to different incomes and legal forms, could, for example, remove much of the pressure on the employment and self-employment boundary and should result in [burdensome avoidance systems] becoming obsolete.  If the pre-briefing is to be believed, Osborne is minded to fall in with Sir James Dyson s call for  an enhanced R&D tax credit  to encourage UK firms to spend more on research and innovation.  Measures to boost small business and start-ups might also include plans to extend tax breaks to business angels, by expanding the current Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), which offers 20% tax relief for investments up to  ?500,000 in companies with less than ?7m in gross assets and fewer than 50 employees.  The CBI has recommended that the scheme be widened to offer more relief, a higher investment ceiling, or to permit the inclusion of larger companies. The point would be to encourage more business-angel  activity, and perhaps to encourage more overseas   particularly US   venture-capital companies to invest in British start-ups.  Ian Williams, aberdeen-based chairman of accountants Campbell Dallas, is hopeful of changes to the EIS that would work in favour of Scotland s burgeoning renewables sector.  I have   
 Scottish Power risks being overtaken by US companies in the race to build the first full-scale demonstration of carbon-capture and storage (CCS) at Longannet in Fife, experts have warned. They blame Government delays for the threatened loss of prestige and commercial opportunities that would accompany a global first in this technology.  Dr Vivian Scott and Dr Stuart Gilfillan, researchers at the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage at Edinburgh University, told the Sunday Herald that the target to have a 400MW demonstrator operational by 2014, covering one-sixth of the power station, would now be  very tight .  They said the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) had not kept up wit  
 Leading Scottish companies Forth Ports and Cairn Energy will demonstrate their abilities to soldier on as independent businesses this week as they await imminent takeover news.  Forth Ports, which has opened its books to potential bidders at the arcus infrastructure fund, is expected to produce a solid 10% lift in underlying annual profits to around ?36 million on Tuesday and will confirm robust trading at its six Scottish ports, as well as increasing activity at its Tilbury operations in the run up to the Olympics.  But most interest will centre around a revaluation of the group s docklands properties following planning consent for the harbour development, higher rental from the Ocean Terminal shopping centre and increasing potential for green energy developments.  Experts say this should lead to a sharp increase in current book ?74m value of the properties, although few expect a return to the ?285m valuation of 2008.  arcus already owns 23.5% of the shares and has indicated it is ready to offer the equivalent of ?16.50 a share for the rest, valuing the business at ?755m.  Followers at arbuthnot say it does not feel like a knock-out bid but better terms would depend on  bullish assumptions  on the landbank and energy opportunities.  Cairn Energy, which is waiting government approval to sell control of its main assets in India, could replace previous losses with annual profits of as much as ?362m on Tu  
  
 IF you were looking for someone with particularly good reason to worry about global warming, Yvo de Boer would be a pretty good candidate. The former United Nations climate change supremo oversaw the failure of the Copenhagen conference 15 months ago.  He has previously talked about his  depression  following the gruelling 11-day event, a few months before he quit the organisation. Last week he told the Sunday Herald he remains deeply unsure of our ability to overcome the problem.  I am worried about lack of global resolve to come to grips with these issues in time,  he said.  42 developed countries and 40 developing countries have made commitments, but they are nowhere near enough to get this issue under control.  I see a lack of global leadership. I don t think in the foreseeable future President Obama is going to be able to move the climate change agenda in the US. If the US doesn t show greater ambition then China, which has overtaken the US to become the largest emitter, will be less inclined to show ambition beyond a certain point.  If China and the US fail, there will be a lot of resistance from European industry. We need to see the international community moving together and that requires leadership.  Having visited Glasgow to attend last week s Scottish Renewables Conference, De Boer paid tribute to the country s potential as a world leader in clean technology.  a former Dutch civil servant who lives in the south of Holland, he is also buoyed by signs that companies have become much more environmentally responsible than in the past.  The business community in many parts of the world is not waiting for governments but seeing real imperatives to have a climate change agenda,  he said.  There is a bottom line focus on reducing costs by being more efficient. There is more emphasis on the effect [of bad environmental behaviour] on reputation. They are putting products with greater social value into markets. 
 l aLEX Salmond has been accused of exploiting the unfolding tragedy in Japan after saying nuclear power would be a major issue of the Holyrood election campaign.  The SNP leader said Labour was  obsessed  with expanding nuclear power, and had only a paper-thin commitment to renewables. Labour leader Iain Gray, whose East Lothian seat includes the Torness plant, says nuclear should be part of the UK s energy mix.  Salmond said:  Scotland has huge advantages in all other energy technologies renewables, carbon capture, and combined cycle gas   rendering Labour s pro-nuclear position in Scotland an absurdity.  Lewis Macdonald, Labour s candidate for aberdeen Central, said the remarks were tasteless given the continuing emergency at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima plant.  This is desperate electioneering in the face of an unfolding tragedy for Japan and her people.  l THE Scottish Liberal Democrats have launched plans to cut the red tape they claim is strangling business.  Leader Tavish Scott said he wanted a 25% cut in the current bureaucratic burden, and a moratorium on new regulations for small firms in the next parliament.  Under the  cutting regulation action plan , all major policy decisions would be tested for their impact on business, and small employers helped to take on new staff.  Scott said:  Evidence suggests that action on regulation could help create 10,000 new jobs for Scotland. We have the solutions for Scottish business.  l THE SNP says it remains committed to the principle of replacing council tax with a local income tax (LIT), despite the policy s failure in the previous parliament.  Goaded by Labour into saying whether alex Salmond was sticking with LIT, the Nationalists confirmed it would be part of their manifesto next month.  The statement delighted Labour, which has launched a poster claiming Scottish residents would be the highest taxed in the UK if the SNP brought in the new tax.  In 2007, Salmond said council tax would be replaced by 3p on income tax, but the policy collapsed amid doubts over its feasibility and opposition at Holyrood, leaving the stop-gap freeze on council tax as its only legacy.  Sarah Boyack, Labour candidate for Edinburgh Central, said:  The SNP s obsession with local income tax shows they don t get the concerns of families or small businesses. This is not the time to bring in measures that will stop investment in Scotland and lengthen dole queues.  l aNNaBEL Goldie, the Scottish Conservative leader,   
 THIS is the end of the blanched tarmac, where the even farmlands near the western edge of Orkney slope down to the beach. Workmen wander between tools and machines outside stone buildings by the shore. The blue-grey waves heave and spit froth into the spring sunshine and the wind rushes across gnarled grass that looks built for stern punishment.  This is Billia Croo, old Orcadian for  sheep enclosure , yet now arguably the foremost place for testing wave energy devices in the world. There are none testing at present, but the next generation will soon arrive. Pelamis, the Edinburgh developer, is in the process of putting two of its latest floating snake  devices in the water, while a new hopeful known as the  penguin  will be arriving from Finland in the summer. So continues a beauty contest of passionate inventors, which can turn entertainingly bitchy up close as they edge towards the day when fate separates the successes from the failures.  If alex Salmond s hopes to provide enough renewable energy to power the country by 2020 are realistic   a source of heated election-season debate last week much depends on what happens at Billia Croo and at the sister testing site for tidal devices on the isle of Eday to the northeast. Operated by the Government-backed European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), their proximity to some of Europe s fiercest waters has handed these islands an economic opportunity of the kind that is unlikely to come twice. If it succeeds, its value to Orkney should be many times the combined value of mainstays like beef, ale and tourism.  The national vision is not only to fill the waters in the Pentland Firth to the south and off the Western Isles with turbines, but to build a new green industry on the back of it. This is different to wind energy, where the UK s failure to keep pace with the Danes and Germans in the 1980s and 1990s has meant that our national ambitions are restricted to importing foreign intellectual property and building businesses in final assembly and maintenance. In marine energy, where technologies have not yet matured, there is still everything to play for.  While not all of the technologies that have tested at EMEC are Scottish or even British, the combination of the energy resource and native engineering excellence have meant that a disproportional number of the leading players are based here. The Scottish Government has helped by offering subsidies to anyone producing electricity from these technologies that are considerably more generous than in England or elsewhere.  and as a strong statement of intent to encourage investors to back them, The Crown Estate, which controls UK territorial waters, last year became the first such authority in the world to allocate substantial sites to future marine farms when it handed out licences to produce 1.6GW of energy (targeting 1GW by 2020). Equating to about three-quarters of Longannet power station in Fife   the country s biggest   this is enough to power around 20% of the country.  Yet despite these efforts, there is a sense that many of the developers have been holding back in recent months, particularly those that need new funding. Everyone is waiting for the outcome of the UK Government s electricity markets reform (EMR), due to conclude in the summer. Potential investors want to see a timetable for reforms to the electricity grid that would make it possible to pipe serious power from the Scottish north, costing circa ?1 billion, but they re also hoping for more carrots to spur the industry. They have been lobbying hard for subsidies equivalent to the Scottish ones for the rest of the UK, improved tidal subsidies to bring them into line with the more generous ones for wave, and a pot of new money to assist extra investments across the industry.  However far the industry might have come already, in other words, it is not there yet. Look no further than regulator Ofgem s figures for who has been selling electricity to the grid. So far, the only two companies to have reached this stage have been Marine Current Turbines in Northern Ireland and Wavegen in Lewis (the others would argue they ve been preoccupied getting their technology right to worry about making money).  Tidal and wave energy have been developing separately for well over a decade. although wave stole a march in 2000 when Inverness-based Wavegen became the first developer to install, tidal is now unquestionably several years ahead. Its technologies are much more homogenous, benefiting from its similarity to hydroelectricity, with all except Scotrenewables of Orkney developing variations of turning blades that sit on the seabed and look like sunken wind turbines. Wave is much more weird and wonderful, with devices ranging from the Pelamis floating snake to aquamarine s seabed-based Oyster to Wavegen s Limpet, which avoids direct contact with the water altogether (see table for full comparisons).  The two technologies present quite different challenges for developers. Tidal presents more of a maintenance problem, because objects that are completely submerged face the extra costs of raising them to the surface or using robotic repair vehicles (diving is a no-no because the force of the tides is too strong). With wave the technology is much less proven, and the devices have to be resilient enough to cope with the wilder conditions. On the other hand, the wave resource is much greater than the tidal resource, with the potential for perhaps double the electricity in the medium term.  Despite the pros and cons of both technologies and the world economic crisis, they have both managed to raise substantial amounts of money so far.  Most of the main developers have drawn in upwards of ?30 million, although few if any individual backers have risked more than a few million pounds so far. They have been a motley assortment, including engineers (Rolls-Royce, Siemens); utilities (Iberdrola, Scottish  and Southern Energy and Germany s Voith Hydro); private equity (Blackrock, Tudor Capital) and oil companies (Total, Shell, Statoil).  In most cases this has paid for a near or full-sized prototype, with the leading developers in tidal such as Hammerfest Strom and MCT now preparing demonstrator farms in the 5MW to 10MW band, off Islay and Skye. These are seen as necessary to secure orders for bigger farms of 50MW to 100MW and beyond.  The fact each demonstrator is set to cost up to ?50m per developer makes it likely that a shakeout is coming once the results of the EMR see light. Most developers will say that their devices are moving in line with expectations, while quietly pointing to the flaws of their rivals. Several talk about  smoke and mirrors  pervading claims.  Simon Grey of Inverness-based wave developer aWS questions the heft of some of the devices in the field.  Steel is the biggest driver in terms o  
 In next month s Scottish elections the direction of the economy must be the defining issue of the campaign. The three previous elections have taken place with booming UK, European and global economies, with Scotland sharing significantly in that growth. Now we face a choice between two competing visions for Scotland in tough times. My personal view is that Scottish Labour s vision of a high-skilled, high-value economy rooted within the United Kingdom will lead to prosperity and growth.  The Tory/Liberal Democrat Coalition has embarked on massive and risky cuts in public expenditure which, as well as threatening valued public services, also takes money off the high street. Coupled with the surging price of commodities and foodstuffs, Scottish families and businesses face a toxic combination of lower income at a time of higher costs. We need to get the basics right in Scotland. The choice is clear: either we invest for success or we manage decline. There is little middle ground.  While we have to cut out unnecessary waste and we should do so vigorously, the only way forward for Scotland is to grow our way out of the current economic crisis and that is the central tenet of Labour s economic approach. This requires careful investment in people, transport and technology infrastructures and while the methods of executing such a policy may be different in Westminster and Holyrood, the central approach is the right one.  I know at first hand the challenges of growing a business from scratch and how you need all the support that you can get. When I started Peoples 28 years ago, I struggled to raise the necessary funds; regrettably I am still waiting a response from one of the clearing banks! The then Scottish Development agency and Bank of Scotland were my core funders along with two London-based venture capital banks.  Fast forward to the present, and I would be reasonably sure that if I was to approach the SDa   Scottish Enterprise as it is now known   with the same business plan, I doubt I would get past an initial meeting. It is therefore heartening that Scottish Labour will look at re-aligning the priorities of Scottish Enterprise to encompass a broader range of companies to address the gap beyond the Business Gateway stage.  Small businesses in Scotland face continuing difficulties in getting credit extensions at competitive rates, even when backed by a proven track record. That s also why I welcome Scottish Labour s plan to use the Scottish Investment Bank to match-fund from Europe to support small business when they need it most. Think of it: if only 20% of the 200,000 single-handed enterprises in Scotland moved to take on a single member of staff, it would create an additional 40,000 jobs in the Scottish economy.  although I now employ more than 400 people across the UK and have built a leading brand, the role of sole traders and small business as a driver of the economy cannot be underestimated. Small businesses play a significant part of my business model. The commercial division of my company relies heavily on supplying to small businesses and I also rely on small businesses to source specialist parts and to purchase goods and services from me.  Scotland needs radical and new ideas to support that sector. I have been impressed by Iain Gray s thoughtful and serious approach. The plans for a new Plus One  scheme, delivered through Business Gateway, will assist with payroll, personnel and legal issues and will remove major barriers to businesses hiring their first employee. Nobody can kid me that being in employment is tougher or more soul-destroying than being on the dole. I spent nine of the 11 months it took me to raise my working capital in that hell. a scheme such as this would have helped me hugely in the early days when I was starting out.  The role of apprenticeships is vital too and Scottish Labour must get real credit for making this issue their own. Innovation is key to a coherent apprenticeship strategy. We need more flexibility, allowing smaller employers to pool apprentices with others as work ebbs and flows. Firms need to be able to deploy their resources strategically and this would help challenge the perception held by some firms that taking on an apprentice is too risky for a small firm.  If we are to grow our economy, we need to equip our workforce with the skills employers need today and predict the skills we will need a decade from now. I am worried about the twin problems of rising long-term youth unemployment, which has risen 220% in the last four years. Only a few years ago we had significant skills shortages in most sectors.  as the economy recovers we can expect them to return. It s not hard to imagine a scenario where we have lots of vacancies but can t fill them because we don t have people with the right skills. That is why I support the Future Jobs Fund where employers are supported to take on an employee who d otherwise be unemployed and I would want to see greater penetration in the private sector. Scotland cannot afford another lost generation who have never experienced work because they don t have the skills. Scotland needs to continue to be  open for business  for international investors and indigenous start-ups alike. We have some of the best universities in the world with academics and researchers of international renown. However, we haven t done enough to foster links between business and industry and, in particular, developing partnerships of universities can develop revenue streams.  Scotland needs political leaders with vision and ambition, people who are prepared to talk big and act big. Iain Gray s plan to double the value of exports over 10 years speaks to my vision for Scottish manufacturing. Long gone are the days when businesses like mine sold cars made in Scotland; those older industries have given way to new ones. The key for Scotland s success will be to capture the jobs they bring.  When the oil industry first came to Scotland, some seven in 10 jobs in the supply chain were based here. The similar figure for today s renewable industry is closer to one in 10. If we are to capitalise on tomorrow s big technologies, we need to up our game significantly. Time was that the words  made in Scotland were the most valuable part of products exported. It is right that Scotland s aim is to recreate the value of that brand. We must set our sights high.  Not all our jobs will be in the high-skill, high-value sector. Scotland needs to get building again. The construction industry was the first to enter the downturn and in previous recessions it has been the first to leave. First-time buyers are essential to kick-start the house-building sector. I do not believe this can happen at the pace necessar  
 THE UK Government last night gave the green light to a referendum on Scottish independence, conceding alex Salmond has  the majority and the authority  to ask whether to break up Britain.  Michael Moore, the Liberal Democrat Scottish Secretary, said the Westminster Coalition would not put up any obstacles to a referendum, or try to stage a rival referendum on its own terms in the hope of securing a No vote.  He also said he believed a Salmond-led referendum would be legally competent in spite of some Unionist politicians questioning its validity, adding that the UK Government would not put up legal or constitutional hurdles to it.  The hands-off approach clears the way for Salmond to hold a referendum with a question of his choosing, when he chooses, using his overall majority to pass the legislation at Holyrood.  The First Minister has said the vote would be in the second half of the five-year Parliament, but delay could allow a No campaign to build up a head of steam and ruin his chance of success.  Years of public sector cuts could also deflate the feel-good factor around the SNP in the wake of its historic election win on Thursday.  Westminster s insistence that everything now rests with the First Minister allows a No campaign to mobilise, and means the pressure is now on Salmond to deliver a Yes vote or suffer a backlash from his own party.  Following the election,  Lord Forsyth, the former Conservative Scottish Secretary, called for the Scotland Bill currently at Westminster to be amended to include a referendum in order to take control of the question and the timing of a poll away from Salmond.  However, after discussions with Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday, Moore said the ball was entirely in Salmond s court.  The First Minister has made clear his intention to proceed with [the referendum],  he said.  He has the majority and the authority to proceed on that basis. It s for him to determine when he wishes to do it, and what order of priority he gives to it. as a UK government we will not be putting obstacles in the way of any referendum.  However, Moore added that he personally saw an independence referendum as a two-stage process, with an initial ballot leading to negotiations between Edinburgh and London, then a second vote on whether to ratify the product of those talks.  asked if he thought a referendum led by Holyrood would be legal given the Scotland act reserves constitutional issues to Westminster, Moore said:  It entirely depends on how this is structured. We will not stand in the way of this happening.  How it s structured will need to comply with the law to avoid challenge, but I think we ll all understand what it is we re being asked to vote on.  He added that as a LibDem and supporter of the union, he would campaign for a No vote.  and he said Cameron and Salmond would hold further talks on the issue, saying: We ll work through the detail with the First Minister should he bring forward that proposal.  Salmond said Moore and Cameron were showing a  very sensible attitude  to the referendum. On Lord Forsyth s proposal to amend the Scotland Bill, he added: Lord Forsyth s days are over  I think the debate should be among those people who ve been elected as opposed to others.  Deputy First Minister Nicola  Sturgeon said the economy and jobs would be at the heart of a Yes campaign.  She said:  Independence is not an abstract process. It s about our ability as a country to grow our econo  
 as the sun went down on  Friday, the newly re-elected Green MSP, Patrick Harvie, sat sharp-suited and sleepless on a bench outside the Scottish Parliament and trie  
 Why do journalists give so much support for atheistic writers (In gods we trust, Comment, May 1)? Barry Didcock s essay of the week suggested that religion is superstition and it s bad for you. Given that many of the world s leading scientists and philosophers have religious leanings, it is a little opinionated for journalists to be so anti-religious.  Mr Didcock quotes aC Grayling as saying:  In 10,000 years time ... people might look back at the last 2000 to 3000 years and see it as a period when humanity was having to shake off [religious] thinking . He was voicing a naive faith that we are getting better and better. This was quite in contrast to the sensible view taken by Tom Devine in his November essay, The lion, the tiger, and the fat cats. He claimed that the dishonesty which caused banks to become casinos shows that society as a whole needs to make changes in behaviour. This morality drum is the one journalists need to keep beating. More Devine and less Didcock, please.  The idea that there will be anybody here to look back on us in 10,000 years time seems to me to be ridiculous, given our destruction of the environment, our overuse of oil and the myopic complacency which characterises our political establishment. a moral political solution to our debt crisis would involve more taxes on the middle class, and then there would be less need for unemployment. The middle class might even give up its avaricious appetite for fast cars and foreign holidays; we might conserve oil, and keep down greenhouse gases.  andrew Vass  Edinburgh  Barry Didcock s article betrays the usual sloppy thinking about belief in God it appears he, philosopher aC Grayling and historian alistair Moffat attribute everything to social conditioning, and dismiss it arrogantly as superstition to be  overcome . They ignore what our old Professor JG McKenzie used to say 50 years ago (he had been one among the first to treat Freud seriously):  God is a fact of human experience.  Kevin Nelson s neurological approach might begin to address this part of the evidence   though the account is far too sketchy to tell. We need to look beyond medical trauma and narrow reductionism.  I wonder why Mr Didcock ignores the studies which indicate that people with an active faith are happier and healthier both physically and mentally than the average, though this is no reason for belief. Those who  overcome  may not have much to be thankful for.  Bob Philip  Shieldhill  Iain Macwhirter fully and succintly covers the important factors that voters should have considered before casting their votes in the Scottish Parliament election (It s time for Labour to walk on the wild side, Comment, May 1). His column highlights the policy and leadership chaos in the Scottish Labour Party, and the weaknesses inherent in the other two Unionist parties.  There is, however, an aspect which underlines the hypocrisy of the so-called socialist members of the politico-social class and that is their readiness to maintain a class-based society, best exemplified by the apparent readiness of Labour politicians and members to accept honours based on nobility, such as knighthoods, and outdated British Empire awards. The sooner everyone realises that a society quite obviously built on inequality will probably lead to the disintegration of this dis-United Kingdom and, to the benefit of a more equal Scotland, independence.  Ian FM Saint-Yves  Whiting Bay, Isle of arran  I m surprised Iain Macwhirter didn t mention the gaffe which was quite contrary to the inclusive  British  spirit of the royal wedding (The royal wedding: what did it tell us about Britain today? Special Report, May 1). Why did they have to sing a hymn all about England, a work which a Kirk minister once defined as jingoistic and theologically unsound ? Maybe that s why the Scottish state coach was given pride of place, to compensate for the lack of sensitivity, but that last hymn spoilt for me an example of otherwise enjoyable theatre.  Jane ann Liston  St andrews  Iain MacWhirter asks:  Why do we all seem to be on our best behaviour when members of the Royal Family are around?  It s by no means  all , but the significant number that fall into this category can be described as the boot-licking brigade, people who, devoid of rational thought, see anyone as automatically better because they happen to be  royal .  Sandra Busell  Edinburgh  The letters published in response to my feature on sectarianism make for sad reading, arguing as they do that the existence of denominational schooling in Scotland is a root cause of sectarianism (Two schools of thought, Letters, May 1). I honestly thought that this hoary old myth had been consigned to history. Your respondents fail to consider the international context. Catholic schools exist throughout the world. Nowhere else but in Scotland (and to some extent in Northern Ireland) are they criticised for causing sectarianism. Similarly, no nation where such schools are established suffer from sectarianism of the Scottish kind. Do your correspondents therefore not comprehend the absence of logic and contextual understanding in their remarks? The sources of our problem lie in distinctive influences associated with our history and culture, not in institutions which are commonplace across the globe b  
 Congratulations are certainly due to the SNP for their stamina, flair and organisation, and to winning MSPs of all parties. They would be offered more enthusiastically but for the evasiveness and downright hypocrisy with which most of Scotland s politicians conducted the campaign.  Hypocrisy here means saying things that you don t really believe  
 US President Barack Obama, under pressure from Republicans and the public to bring down petrol prices, announced new measures yesterday to expand domestic oil production in alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. High fuel prices have dented Obama s ratings in opinion polls and threaten to dampen the economic recovery that is critical to his re-election in 2012.  The president has pushed for reducing US oil consumption and expanding renewable energy while also focusing on domestic oil and gas production   which Republicans want to expand dramatically. 
 a systematic study of future provision in Scotland would need to consider a dizzying array of factors, across a regionally and sectorally fragmented landscape. It would need to weigh legitimate profit motives of private businesses large and small with the social, consumer and, of course, planning issues. There is also employment   a report in March by Scotland s Verso Economics, which has been picked up around the world, concluded that  for every job created in the UK in renewable energy, 3.7 jobs are lost. In Scotland there is no net benefit from Government support for the sector, and probably a small net loss of jobs .  Discrete technical areas that need to be analysed and synthesised include capacity security, frequency security, fuel security, security of transmission, inclusive costs, carbon emissions, incentives to invest, pricing strategy and the risks of fuel poverty.  Things were much simpler in 1926 when Westminster commissioned two Scots industrialists, Lord Weir and Lord Forres, to oversee an investigation into Britain s electricity provision, then in a chaotic state. Their report, seen as a model for what is now needed, led to the establishment of the national grid and a Central Electricity Board, led by  strongly technical  commissioners.Their conclusions still hold good:  Great expenditure is being incurred in many directions ... in our view that expenditure is not being employed to best advantage, not only is waste taking place, but further obstacles are being placed in the way of rapid and efficient development along the right lines. 
 In the afterglow of election triumph, First Minister alex Salmond was enough of a statesman to disavow a  monopoly of wisdom  in the Scottish Parliament. But does deference to external expertise stretch beyond politics to Scotland s future energy provision?  The question is becoming urgent. a report last week by accountants PwC raised doubts about the affordability of offshore wind-power generation in its projected starring role in Scotland s future energy mix. This came days after a report by the UK Government s Committee on Climate Change, whose new coolness towards offshore wind on the same grounds, suggested changing presumptions in this ever-shifting, lobbyist-rich landscape. There are now many technically competent and genuinely disinterested voices expressing unease about the Scottish Government s gamble on expensive and unproven technologies to replace decommissioned power stations in an age of a privatised, fragmented power supply landscape. They believe that Scotland is risking what Blair armstrong, a civil engineer and former renewables chief for Scottish Enterprise, calls  a major energy deficit , threatening brownouts [drops in power supply] and increased bills for the consumer. The bureaucrat-speak for the renewable capacity target is  a challenge . armstrong prefers  crazy risk .  In the minds of engineers, which work differently from those of politicians, civil servants and profit and subsidy-hungry business people, technical uncertainty is a serious matter. To them it reaffirms the need for a state-sponsored, unprejudiced commission to analyse Scotland s future energy needs, and direct the complex business of servicing them as securely, cleanly and cheaply as possible.  Doubts over the direction have been robustly expressed by Dr Peter Hughes, head of the influential industry group Scottish Engineering, who described the SNP s campaign promise to generate 100% of energy from renewables as the stuff of cloud cuckoo land . Hughes, whose organisation includes companies from across the energy and  clean tech  spectrum, earned a phone call from the First Minister for that remark. The banter was good-humoured, but Salmond s explanation as to why the target was either possible or desirable still did not convince.  I said  alex, I m an engineer and you are an economist. I know what I m talking about .  Hughes is a Fellow of the Royal academy of Engineering, the elite technical fellowship that has 78 fellows in Scotland, which some see as best qualified to review the thorny questions of how to provide electricity  baseload  (to compensate for wind intermittency) and  distribution throughout the grid, buying and selling to a friendly neighbour at times of dearth and excess.  Hughes said:  Scottish engineering companies are excited by the opportunities which will arise in the coming decades, and it s good to set challenging targets.  However, we need to be realistic, completely frank, and transparently honest with the public. If we get even 50% of our energy from renewables we will be doing well. To suggest that we can get everything from renewables is just not true.  For engineers, uncertainty supports the case for a root-and-branch risk analysis of the alternative options. The process must be deaf to the special pleading and political spin that, critics argue, subjects the national interest to the lobby with the most silver-tongued advocates or the cosiest Government contacts. a commission with teeth, chaired by an authoritative, unswayable figure, fed evidence by specialist technical experts could, the argument goes, inspire confidence that imminent big decisions on commissioning future capacity are the right ones.  Decisions that the civil service has no option to accept are currently being made on the basis of the personal preference and political expediency,  says Iain MacLeod, head of the 150-year-old Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilding in Scotland (IESIS), which has argued for a fundamental review since 2009, and will be seeking an early meeting with whoever is appointed energy minister.  We want the Government to succeed in its aims, but it is not using an engineered approach to energy provision.  Macleod defines  engineered approach  in contrast to the existing one, which works backwards from political aspirations, an approach which the IESIS suggests is at odds with Scotland s great tradition of science and engineering.  To those with more intimate knowledge of how the grid works, including the IESIS s Colin Gibson, a former network director of the National Grid, the preferred approach is a standard methodology in civil engineering: to gather information and data on alternative solutions, weigh them in the balance, and work out a timetable of implementation.  We have to get this right first time,  says MacLeod.  Civil engineering is not like mechanical engineering, you can t build prototypes and go back and tweak things. Engineering the process does not eliminate risk, but it does reduce it.  Yes, the Scottish civil service contains smart people but their approach is to hire consultants to confirm an existing strategy   they are more confirmatory than explorative. What you really need to do is take a step back and ask what is the best way ahead? There is a lot of very complex calculation and modelling of the grid to be done and you can t approach it in a piecemeal fashion. You need the right people asking the right questions about how to keep the lights on. You certainly don t start by saying  we want lots of renewables and no nuclear . It is simply not acceptable to use a non-engineering-led approach to generate policy decisions.  Did someone say nuclear? any mention of the power source that provides Scotland with 20% baseload power presses buttons that make dispassionate discussion difficult beyond the technical sphere. But dispassionate calculations are exactly what secure power supply relies on.  In the world of the layman, or the lobbyist, matters such as the Fukushima disaster can impact heavily on the debate. But if the question is  how do we achieve secure, low-carbon energy?  Japanese tsunami damage is as much a red herring, as is the recent revelation that Scottish wind-farm operators demanded hundreds and thousands of pounds in  constraint payments  for a few hours in april when their power input was not required by the grid.  according to Hughes, the time for pussyfooting around nuclear is over.  If [the projected renewables component] is not possible and it is necessary to extend the life of our nuclear Plant at Torness beyond the current planned 2023 closure date as [former enterprise and energy minister] Jim Mather suggested, then we need to be up front and tell the public that.  Niall Stuart, chief executive of trade body Scottish Renewables, does not support calls for an independent technical commission on the grounds that Scotland already has a plethora of expert forums. He cites the Scottish Government s Energy advisory Group constituted for  effective, high-level, open and informed engagement between ministers, the energy industry and other relevant bodies , chaired by Professor Jim McDonald principal of Strathclyde University, himself a fellow of the Royal academy of Engineers in Scotland.  None of these forums are competent to conduct the kind of analysis advocated, and Stuart concedes that all of these forums are swayed by vested commercial interests   which these days include academics. But he makes the unan  
 Thanks to our obsession with digital living, data centres are in high demand. London s Docklands area, the UK s biggest data hub, is running out of capacity, creating a prime opportunity for Scotland to take control of the market. Organisations are actively seeking new locations outside the capital. Scotland must compete with the Midlands and the north of England before it s too late.  Unless the SNP Government and Scottish Enterprise fight our corner now, we will watch as the rest of the UK reaps the benefits. Not only would they bring in jobs, data centres would attract inward investment and consolidate our technical skills.  and it shouldn t be a hard sell. Not only does Scotland benefit from open spaces, secure and remote locations and cheaper land, it also boasts renewable power sources to excite the data-centre industry, which consumes 2% of the world s electricity.  In the US, Yahoo! and Google are leading the way by locating their data centres near sources of hydro power, while Microsoft has signed a contract to buy wind power for its data centre in Dublin.  If Ireland can do it, SDI should be shouting louder about our resources and securing investment.  Scotland s cooler climate enables data centres to battle another problem: wasted power. according to IT analyst Gartner, energy is the fastest-rising cost in data centres and much of it is for cooling. New technology, which uses fresh air, means that Scottish data centres would benefit from free cooling for much of the year, cutting costs.  More visible support for data centres would be a mark of the Government s intent to strengthen Scotland s recovery.  Future generations should not be left to question why we didn t secure this anchor for a truly digital Scotland when we had the chance.  John Smykala is managing director of RMD Power & Cooling 
 Cynics who know about politics tell agenda that the energetic campaign by Edinburgh Chambers of Commerce and others to secure the location of the Green Investment Bank has been successful. Why? Because if the decision had not been taken by the Coalition Government, LibDems would not have been campaigning for it so loudly.  If true, this success will have many fathers, as keen new Edinburgh Central MSP Marco Biagi illustrates:  Edinburgh is already a world-renowned financial centre and sits at the forefront of the emerging green industries due to the political leadership shown by this Scottish Government in encouraging green energy investment and more than doubling our green energy targets. Ultimately offshore energy will offer returns on the same scale as the oil industry   this time Scotland must see the benefit of our natural resources.  We will know for sure soon enough.  We suspect that not many people know that  next week is Scottish Franchise Week, sponsored by Lloyds TSB and celebrating the ?800 million  and 30,000 jobs franchising contributes to the Scottish economy.  There are nearly 500 different franchise brands operating in Scotland today, accounting for approximately 2000 individual franchisee businesses. Franchising fans point out that it is a win-win sector, providing businesses with the ability to expand at a reduced risk while offering franchisees the chance to buy into a tried-and-tested business model.  For more information see www.thebfa.org  It s not a great reflection on the Scottish Parliament that the fearlessly independent-minded Hugh Henry was not elected as presiding officer. Let s hope he is willing and able to return to his old perch as chair of the Public audit Committee, where he did the nation great service holding the otherwise unaccountable civil service to account. 
 In-Flight Entertainment by Helen Simpson. Vintage, ?7.99  Helen Simpson s fifth short story collection is less about the trials of child care, like her previous volumes, than it is concerned with climate change, which offers a new focus for guilt and generational conflict. She even throws in a sci-fi story set after oil runs out.  More Money Than God   Hedge Funds and The Making Of a New Global Elite by Sebastian Mallaby. Bloomsbury, ?10.99  What do hedge funds do? Can short selling really boil down to making a profit by selling something you don t own? Mallaby s history of hedge funds is largely sympathetic, although he can t stop disquieting elements entering his chronicle. Interesting to learn that alfred Winslow Jones, who invented hedge funds, was a Marxist.  The Bedwetter   Stories Of Courage, Redemption and Pee by Sarah Silverman. Faber, ?8.99  Controversy-courting comedian Sarah Silverman is in memoir-mode here. She was a bedwetter, which only made childhood harder. One of the few Jews in her hometown, she got depression as a teenager, her parents divorced, and a sibling died, all of which she skates over on her way to the next wisecrack.  The Life Of an Unknown Man by andre? Makine. Sceptre, ?8.99  abandoned by his young lover and feeling washed-up, Shutov, a writer, returns to his homeland, Russia, after a long exile in France. In St Petersburg he encounters Volsky, a survivor of the siege of Leningrad and five years in the gulag. Through listening to Volsky s story, Shutov (and perhaps the reader) finds hope.  Colin Waters 
 LIBDem Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne came under renewed fire yesterday as two former councillors accused him of fiddling his election expenses.  The LibDem members, from his Eastleigh constituency, submitted a formal complaint alleging that he made a  false declaration .  The allegation is based on a recording of a local party meeting where treasurer anne Winstanley is heard saying that the elections  have cost more than we declared . Huhne has strongly denied the charge. 
 Holly Rakotondralambo is on a mission to save her native Madagascar from being ripped apart by multinational companies exploiting tar sands for oil.  So she is coming to Scotland this week to confront the bank she blames for backing big oil: Royal Bank of Scotland.  RBS is implicated in the environmental destruction facing Madagascar from tar sands mining,  she said.  We call on them to switch their investments away from these polluting fossil fuels and into renewable energy.  RBS is alleged to have helped finance the French oil giant, Total, with more than ?300 million over the last three years. Total has been exploring two areas of the african island thought to be rich in tar sands, Bemolanga and Tsimiroro in Melaky.  Rakotondralambo, pictured right, is a spokeswoman for an alliance of community groups. Exploiting the tar sands would have  devastating consequences  for people and the environment, she warned. There are fears that drinking water and land could be polluted, while Madagascar s rich and unique wildlife could also be threatened.  Rakotondralambo is speaking at meetings in Glasgow and Edinburgh tomorrow and Tuesday organised by the World Development Movement.  Since the banking crisis in October 2008, RBS has received more than ?45 billion of public money.  The bank insisted that it did not directly fund the mining of tar sands in Madagascar.  a spokesman said:  We regularly review our lending policies with regard to environmental, social and ethical matters and discuss these issues with our customers. 
 Some of the biggest and most powerful employers in Scotland have been blasted by environmentalists for failing to back tough targets to cut climate pollution.  Companies with major Scottish interests such as BP, Microsoft, Volkswagen Lafarge, Veolia and Maersk are under fire for being  climate laggards .  They are criticised by environmental group Green  
 Good news for the job market last week: the number of people out of work fell by 8000 to 208,000 between January and March 2011, the sixth consecutive reported drop, taking Scotland s joblessness rate below that of all but the richest regions of England.  Like any politician worth his salt, re-appointed Finance Secretary John Swinney took the credit for his administration, saying the figures  emphasise the importance of the measures we are taking to support the creation of new employment and training opportunities .  But there is a far bigger helping of political credit at stake on jobs. Paradoxically it relates to last week s bad news on jobs, reported a day or two earlier.  a new UK-wide survey by the TUC found West Dunbartonshire   which includes post-industrial Clydebank, Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven   has overtaken London s poorest boroughs to record some of the worst unemployment statistics in the whole of Britain.  according to the survey, there are more than 40 dole claimants in the region for every vacancy in March this year. In other words, there were 3786 people chasing  the 94 opportunities advertised in local jobcentres.  But West Dunbartonshire s statistic are the ones that we should be watching for good news.  Most people are aware that slight increases in the national employment figures are down to many factors often unrelated to political interventions. But to impact Scotland s blighted post-industrial corners signals far more exciting prospects for accelerating Scotland s GDP growth. and bad publicity notwithstanding, West Dunbartonshire can claim to be transforming itself in ways that statistics have not yet caught up with.  If and when they do, this overlooked post-industrial pocket may provide the key to transforming Scotland s chronically weak growth performance.  Bad publicity on a national scale has not fazed Councillor Ronnie McColl, head of the minority SNP-led West Dunbartonshire Council. To him, the figures describe the past. He has already made  tough decisions  to improve the future, and has staked his reputation on making it work.  It s always hard to read headlines that single us out, it s a knock that we don t need. We can t argue with figures, they just make me more determined to ensure that we don t have headlines like that any more.  McColl, a shrewd, no-nonsense former small business operator who likes to lead from the front, has a clear view of what has gone wrong here in the past few decades, and of how it has to change.  Things have stagnated to a certain extent. There has been no willingness to look at how things are in the 21st century. The industry is not going to come back, not just because West Dunbartonshire is not good at it, but because it s not needed, not just in the west of Scotland but anywhere.  We need to look at what we can bring to the area. There has been an unwillingness to look at changes to the economy to fit with modern reality. Why isn t this area involved in manufacturing for the green economy? We should be skilling people up to work in that sector as it s only going to get greater and greater in the next 10 or 20 years. We should be skilling people to work in tourism because that s something we can do, and which can be done a lot better.  For McColl and community planning chief Peter Barry, the public sector s role in a small and manageable council area of multiple deprivation is to find ways to get those  furthest away from the jobs market  into a state of confidence that leads to sustainable jobs, and to make it a matter of common sense for businesses to take them on. The council has stripped out the  too many cooks agencies and initiatives that cluttered the landscape and wasted a lot of time. McColl remains wary of externally generated interventions that confuse the picture.  We have the intelligence about the area and we can react quickly, which is good as I like things done yesterday. Having looked at the outcomes that have been achieved, or rather not achieved over the last 10 years, we have to start getting a more confident and skilled workforce, and to get partnerships going between the public sector and small business.  Most of the work available now is in service-industry jobs. Tourism is a big thing here, Loch Lomond is known worldwide. We have got to make sure that the workforce knows what their job is, it s not just about going in and pulling a pint if we want people come back and spend money here.  West Dunbartonshire s practical approach, some of it borrowed from other councils, is to use its outsized public and third-sector welfare apparatus as an ally in its efforts to promote employability. It takes a pro-active approach to determining what small businesses need, and helping to supply it.  Peter Barry outlines schemes such as job brokerage   matching former benefit claimants to jobs; wage subsidy   offering incentives to employers by topping up wages for new workers for a 28-week trial period that will benefit the worker and is expected to lead to a sustainable job; and job rotation   where a business that needs to upskill workers by sending them for training can fill in the gap from a pool of interns keen to get work experience.  The council, adept at extracting money from central government, is also trying innovations like the securitisation of assets, borrowing ?35m against future rents from its property for investment in building new schools, restoring shopping centres, and other infrastructure work. all such spending is on a spend-to-save  basis, with future returns having to be clearly evident.  West Dunbartonshire now demands to be judged on the difference it makes,  not just tick-box outcomes, but real differences to real lives , says McColl. He lacks patience with the post-1980s West of Scotland way of  saying what s wrong and how it s not their fault, but don t say how you would fix it. I m not saying that everything we do will work, but we are sure as hell trying .  That view is supported by Gordon Barraclough, a business consultant who heads the 200-member Dunbartonshire Chamber of Commerce. He sees the area starting to defy decades of stagnation.  I am a fairly critical person but the council s economic development team are very much on the ball in their knowledge of the business in the area. They have a very focused, well thought-through programme,  says Barraclough.  There are too many people who are doing too much good work for it not to have a good medium and long-term outcome. In fact you can already see the difference. These are not  council jobsworths, they are committed to making a difference.  The difference needed should not be underestimated. The headline unemployment figure sits at the tip of a pyramid of negatives, which can easily become self-reinforcing (see panel). This being Scotland, it is of course the bad news that has dominated perceptions of West Dunbartonshire since the de-industrialisation of the 1960s and 1970s and the loss of giant employers like John Brown Shipyards, which at its peak employed more than 10,000 people, and sewing machine-makers Singer with 22,000 staff, mostly women.  In the decades that followed, a one-party political culture disgraced the nation (Google the X-rated 2007 audit Scotland report on council behaviour), generating screeds of targets, strategic waffle, and futile measurements of money spent and people processed. None of which made a difference to West Dunbartonshire s reputation as problematic Scotland in microcosm, or to the complicated lives of the long-term unemployed and their often academically low-achieving children.  Unglamorous, long-term, and unlikely to attract political, media or corporate attention, the grass-roots drive to make West Dunbartonshire a place where people choose to live, work, visit and invest has far more transformative potential for Scotland than other more fashionable growth areas like offshore renewables or bioscience.  Says McColl:  In the past we focused on how many people went through the system and how much money we spent, which didn t tell us how many people went to a different place. We need to find measures that stay with people, so that if someone knocks on our door once, they   
 aN SNP-led council faces a crunch decision about whether to provoke a showdown with the Scottish Government over the fate of 11 proposed wind farms in southwest Scotland   which could power more a tenth of the country.  East ayrshire Council will, on June 16, decide whether to formalise its objections to six proposed upgrades to the electricity network by Scottish Power. The upgrades form a substantial chunk of a wider ?130 million programme of grid improvements across the region that are necessary to allow the wind farms to go ahead.  If East ayrshire upholds the decision against the upgrades that it reached in December, affecting numerous different developers, it will go down as one of the most significant council interventions against the wind industry in Scotland.  The decision would be likely to lead to a public inquiry and put a new obstacle in the way of the Government s ambitions to achieve 100% renewable energy in Scotland by 2020. The grid proposals involve building six transmission lines between power substations that would link up the new wind farms to the national grid.  These sit alongside Scottish Power s proposal to build new substations and other transmission lines in the adjacent council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and South ayrshire, all of which have been given approval by those two councils. But unless East ayrshire follows suit, the whole programme could be in doubt. all 11 of the wind farms involve the developers Scottish and Southern Energy, Scottish Power, E.ON, Fred Olsen Renewables and North British Windpower. The proposed sites are afton, Pencloe and Dersalloch in ayrshire, and Brockloch Rig, Whiteside Hill, Lorg, Blackcraig, Margree, Loch Hill, Sanquhar and Ulzieside in Dumfries and Galloway.  also affected is Kyle Fo  
 Securing investment, jobs and prospects for the next generation requires boldness. The Committee on Climate Change s recent Renewable Energy Market Review reflects a lack of commitment by the UK Government that could suffocate the renewables industry in its infancy.  The CCC report says:  The precise level  
 a loan agreement signed on Friday by the European Investment Bank fund has been hailed as a milestone in the establishment of an ?89 million technology and innovation centre (TIC), part of the University of Strathclyde s ?300m investment plan for its Glasgow city-centre campus  The TIC is intended to transform business-academic collaboration in Scotland,  
 It goes by the ugly name of  fracking , it could poison our water and it s on its way to Scotland.  an australian-owned company is about to apply for permission to drill the country s first exploratory hydraulic fracturing well in a bid to exploit the shale gas that could be locked in the rocks deep beneath the earth.  Stirling-based Composite Energy, taken over by the australian multinational methane gas extraction firm Dart Energy in February, wants to sink a ?1 million test bore 2000 metres deep at airth, near Falkirk before the end of the year.  If it finds what it hopes, then full-scale fracking, as hydraulic fracturing to extract gas is known, could follow. as well as opening up a whole new energy frontier in Scotland, it would unleash an unprecedented environmental conflict.  Environmental groups say that fracking can contaminate water supplies, and will greatly add to the pollution that scientists say is disrupting the climate. Shale gas, they say, should stay in the ground to help save the planet.  according to WWF Scotland, fracking would be disastrous for Scotland.  Scotland saw the birth of the shale-oil industry over 150 years ago but times change and shale gas is the last thing we need,  said the environmental group s director, Dr Richard Dixon.  It is ridiculous for a country with the world s best climate targets and supreme ambitions on renewable energy to be home to a proposal to produce a new fossil fuel even dirtier than coal. Scotland should instead be playing to its natural advantages in clean, green renewable energy.  He pointed to evidence from the US that gas and toxic chemicals leak into drinking water as a result of fracking.  Shale gas is a disaster for the climate and its production can contaminate groundwater,  he said.  Dixon urged Scotland to follow the example of France, and ban fracking before it starts.  If this proposal goes ahead it will be an embarrassment for the new Government,  he said.  any shale-gas projects in Scotland will quickly tarnish our global claim to green credentials.  Peter Roles, the managing director of Composite Energy in Stirling, defended the search for shale gas. The geology of central Scotland suggests it would be there, he said.  He told the Sunday Herald:  It s worth the investment.  Contamination of groundwater could be avoided by ensuring fracking was contained in certain areas, he claimed.  There has been a lot of negative publicity, but I don t think it s well-founded, Roles said. He argued that indigenous su  
 adrian Gillespie, head of Scottish Enterprise s energy and low-carbon technology division, has vowed to assemble  the most convincing case  for a newly-announced UK Government offshore energy centre to be based in Scotland.  The centre is intended to  bridge the gap between development and commercialisation of offshore wind and marine-energy technologies .  Gillespie said a heavy-hitting industry-led consortium supported by Scottish Enterprise would respond to the announcement last week by Business Secretary Vince Cable that offshore renewables would be the basis of the third of the strategic ?200 million Technology Innovation Centres (TICs).  Professor Jim McDonald, co-chair of the Scottish Government s Energy advisory Board, is also closely involved in the Scottish submission. From June, the Technology Strategy Board will be seeking bids from bodies around the UK for the offshore renewables TIC, and the jobs and investment stemming from it.  Gillespie said:  Our job is to put together the most convincing case and we feel that Scotland plc has a very strong offer. We know a lot about offshore energy from our experience in the oil and gas sector   we know the challenges, especially of keeping the costs down.  Gillespie pointed to Scotland s success in attracting a strong research and design base in offshore technology, including participation by Gamesa, SSE, Doosan, Mitsubishi and Iberdrola.  The other TICs cover advanced manufacturing and cell therapies. 
 To Dundee One, one of two giant office blocks by the Tay Bridge, for a reception for the great Jap  
 Iain Macwhirter s examination of alex Salmond s  two nations  speech made interesting reading (The new word for socialism ... independence, Comment, May 29). Salmond s admonishment of the people for sectarianism and alcohol abuse was genuine, down-to-earth stuff, eloquently delivered. He also signalled his nationalism was not about superiority of race that could degenerate into hatred.  However, I was surprised that, though an economist, he seems to know there s more to life than GDP, and humans are something more than economic animals. My belief is that countries are facing crises. People have lost faith. They have seen their life savings and pensions disappear, faced the prospect of redundancy and unemployment, while witnessing the arrogance and over-consumption of the prodigal rich, indifferent to the welfare of the nation. Modern societies are failures, for unequal societies cannot survive. Beyond that lies the spectre of oil shortage, food scarcity and havoc caused by climate change.  all these changes cause bewilderment and disorientation and when people feel threatened they will seek to punish others. already journalists in other newspapers are writing (again!) about  benefit cheats , while others ask if we can really afford to save the poor.  alex Salmond only has his people. He seems to realise we can only survive as a nation if he can draw all together with a common aim   that of a fairer and just society. Let s remember his words,  the poor won t be made to pick up the bill for the rich  and  that profit from the land shall go to all . We can only hope for  calm seas, auspicious gales .  Morag McKinlay  Falkirk  The greatest challenge so far not engaged with or faced up to by the SNP lies in alex Salmond s words:  The profit from the land shall go to all.  With Scotland having the greatest concentration of privately-owned land in the fewest number of owners anywhere in Europe, alex Salmond and the SNP have a major land reform package to consider before Scotland comes anywhere near the social democracy standards of the favoured Fennoscandian analogues they frequently quote.  The signs that the SNP are ready for such a challenge are not good. They cannot engage with the concept of Scotland s national parks being owned by the Scottish nation, yet support the hostile buy-out concept, brought in by the previous Labour administration and now in prospect at Pairc in Lewis. However their greatest policy void is in not realising what comprises  the profit of the land , namely societally created land rental values, the 100% collection of which would cause land reform by  democratic osmosis  rather than by expensive expropriation and at the same time secure public revenue and stimulate job creation.  Ron Greer  Blair atholl  Regardless of what executive producer Ewan angus claims, I believe there are children featured in The Scheme who have received scant attention from either their parents or the programme-makers (Broken Schemes, Broken Dreams, Essay of the week, May 29).  Take Kendall McCutcheon, the lovely and articulate Primary 1/2 child who is always so appealing on camera, if sometimes seriously inappropriate for a five or six-year-old child. In this age of the superinjunction, doesn t she have the right to privacy of family life allowing her to grow and develop away from prying eyes and perhaps sneering attitudes?  If her parent should choose to abdicate that right for short-term fame or notoriety where does that leave Kendall? We can only hope she will not end up haunted by images of her younger self in later life or suffer long-term negative consequences in the future as a result of her appearance on the show.  Those who work with children are obligated to act within the legal proviso of in loco parentis , but who is acting in the best interests of Kendall and the other children involved in the show? I think that Ewan angus and the programme-makers of The Scheme are being disingenuous in aiming to defend footage of children which may make good telly but in terms of impact on those individual children is indefensible.  Here s the test as I see it. Would the programme-makers be happy to have their own children served up for public consumption in this way?  Fran Whitmore  address supplied  The UK Government s agenda of cuts and privatisation is the key issue facing the people of Scotland. The consequent loss of jobs and services in the public sector will be devastating. Indeed, the post-election cut announcements have already begun. at least one university has announced the closure of several courses. In the last year 13,000 jobs have been lost in the Scottish public sector, and another ?1.3 billion in cuts has been outlined for the 2011-12 budget. at least another 40,000 jobs, or 7% of the public sector, is expected to be slashed over the next four years.  We believe that we cannot wait a moment longer to organise and mobilise the millions of people across Britain who want to fight the cuts. The half-a-million-strong TUC demonstration on March 26 proves that we can build a mass movement against the austerity agenda.  We extend our support to the various national initiatives against unemployment, cuts to disability services, and other campaigns. But we believe more has to be done to unify the movement into a powerful mass campaign against austerity, with local anti-cuts groups affiliated in every town and city. as a means to this end, as activists and campaigners in Glasgow, we intend to establish a Coalition of Resistance group.  a Coalition of Resistance group that meets up regularly to provide support and solidarity for those fighting back is a necessity. The planned co-ordinated strike action on June 30 by at least three public-sector unions requires that we immediately build support and mobilise all those suffering from the cuts in support of the strike action.  To begin this process in Glasgow we call on all those who want to organise the fightback to attend an open planning meeting this Thursday to establish the Coalition of Resistance in Glasgow (coalitionofresistance.org.uk). We support this statement in the spirit of unity and urgency as not just our future, but t  
 IES, one of Scotland s most successful technology export companies, has made a strategic breakthrough in the high-growth southeast asian market, with a supply deal with building consultancy Jurong International of Singapore.  The company claims the deal puts it on course to double its turnover to ?10 million within the next two years.  a spin-off from Strathclyde University led by building physicist Don McLean, one of 12 PhDs on the firm s worldwide payroll, Integrated Environmental Solutions designs and markets complex software that monitors the environmental performance of buildings.  The business sector is seen as poised for exponential growth as global building standards become more stringent in response to environmental concerns.  The significance of this six-figure deal is not the size, but its place in the strategic plan,  McLean said.  Teaming up with a local company in Singapore, and being perceived as the market leaders, helps make us the main builder of compliance tools for Singapore, and gives us an opportunity to control the market as premier supplier of product. Other countries in that territory such as Thailand and Indonesia will then follow.  Based at the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow, IES sells to 130 countries and has offices throughout the US, Europe, australia and asia. In the last  two years, with recession blighting the UK construction market, the firm has dramatically increased its exports from 20% of total turnover to 65%.  IES s confidence that it can continue to double turnover every two years is based on its proven success at establishing its product as the industry standard for architects and construction firms. McLean said the firm was working towards a strategic goal of hundreds of millions in annual turnover.  I have always seen incredible potential for this business in that  we are recognised in the US and elsewhere as market leaders. The last 30 years I have been in this business have been about creating the market and we are already way way ahead.  The development we have put in place means that we would be getting ?1000 a year from each year [an ongoing revenue stream] in each building we are installed in. If you multiply that by the millions of buildings you are installed in then it doesn t take long to reach a billion in turnover.  McLean added:  Megalomania is a perfectly acceptable form of business plan.  The asia-Pacific region is seen as a continuing bright spot for the construction industry.  according to market intelligence agency ICIS, construction growth in India, China and the rest of asia Pacific, Latin america, the  
 a chat with Crawford Gillies, the persuasive, ever-positive chairman of Scottish Enterprise, on the subject of Regional Selective assistance (RSa) allocations, this year amounting to ?52.2 million, creating or  safeguarding  7160 jobs in Scotland. Since last year, Scottish Enterprise has taken over responsibility for administering RSa, making it easier, Gillies says, to streamline interventions.  If you take the recent amazon announcement of 950 jobs in Edinburgh, one of the things they said attracted them to Scotland was the speed with which we are able to move. It s now easier for us to target ambitious account-managed companies.  Gillies sees  real progress  on inward investment, and even suggests that we may be seeing the stirrings of a repatriation of high-value manufacturing that had previously gone abroad.  Other bright spots include progress  on multiple fronts  in renewables and the continued emergence of Glasgow as  the engineering hub of renewables in Europe .  We are seeing the development in supply chain and the oil services sector is starting to get interested,  Gillies says, citing the multiplier effect of Glasgow s new International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone.  as for SE itself:  Over the last couple of years, we have shown we can respond to downturns and reassess the priorities. If we had more resources we could achieve more, but I am realistic given the state of the public finances.  Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce is taking nothing for granted in its bid to secure the Green Investment Bank in the capital, but its main rival, Bristol, is not putting up much of a fight.  It s not a big part of our economic development plan,  a spokesman for the Business West Initiative tells agenda. Bristol is more focused on next week s announcement of the location of the new enterprise zone, which the Treasury asked if it wanted the day before it was announced in the March Budget. 
 a coastal nature reserve that s home to sea  
 BaCK in 2008, the big hype in right-wing american politics was self-declared Mama Grizzly  Sarah Palin. When she ran for vice-president on a ticket with John McCain, she caught the imagination of conservative Christians and Republican women. Last week in New Hampshire, another Mama Grizzly staked out her territory in a debate between seven Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential race, and it seemed like a rerun of an old story with just a slightly different face.  Here was another woman, Michele Bachmann, leader of the Tea Party caucus in Congress, who was also an evangelical Christian and known for outrageous political statements. Crucially, she also sold herself on a  family values ticket that made Palin s parenting of five kids look paltry. Bachmann raised five of her own children and fostered 23 teenagers. Commentators have declared each of these women as an american Margaret Thatcher. (Indeed, Palin has expressed a desire to visit her idol, Lady Thatcher.) One blogger for the Telegraph even declared, following the New Hampshire debate:  If anyone s looking like the new Mrs T, it s Mrs B.  In truth, however, the grand-matriarch-meets-hockey-mom presented by these women is almost the antithesis of the Thatcher persona. Margaret Thatcher might have raised two children, made breakfast for Denis and occasionally, in early interviews, talked about her sauces, but she certainly wasn t pretending that she was the essence of Mom   rather, she was the iron lady, and you don t get much more muscular than that.  There s a reason, however, that Bachmann and Palin play up the mama element of their grizzliness. It is key to their electability among their evangelical Christian supporters, many of whom believe that woman should not have leadership roles within the church but instead should be helpmeets to their husbands. This view is often described as  complementarian , emphasising God s creation of man and woman as complementary to each other.  Thus, if the prospect of these women assuming political power is to be made palatable to such evangelicals, each must be portrayed as the epitome of the good Christian wife and mother. Both draw attention to their pro-Life beliefs.  It s hard for us Brits to get our secular heads round this package, but for america s hard-right, social conservatism is the partner to their economic liberalism, creationist beliefs and conviction that global warming is a hoax. The Bible is everything.  Bachmann has even assessed appropriate tax rates according to Biblical tithing advice:  We render to God that which is God s and the Bible calls for   maybe 10%.  Yet at the same time, even to americans, the paradox is inescapable. It is the elephant in the room. Though chances still seem slim of either Bachmann or Palin (who hasn t entered the race) becoming president, their prospects are substantial enough to be worth contemplating.  If either were to achieve the ultimate political prize, then the first female president of the United States would have emerged from a patriarchal religious culture that pretty much believes that women should submit to their men.  When Palin ran for vice-president, that paradox was much debated, but at least she had a man, John McCain, as her superior. Now, however, Bachmann really is going for the top job.  It s easy to see why Republicans embrace these women   they have huge popular appeal, and, it could be said that they bring to the party a charm, charisma, and accessibility. But how do those evangelicals square them with their beliefs about a woman s place?  For Christian complementarians there has already been considerable theological debate to explain why it s OK to vote a woman into power. They do this, mostly, by saying that the Bible does not condemn women for taking political leadership, but for leadership within the church. Queen Esther and the Queen of Sheba, we are told, get a positive spin as power figures in the Bible.  For some more hard-line believers, however, this is not enough. Evangelical minister William Einwechter criticises those Christians wh  
 It seems astonishing that John Swinney has complained to Scottish Power about its fuel-price hike when he knows full well that it is his Government s ludicrous renewable energy policy that is to blame (Swinney demands Scottish Power justifies huge price rises, Cover story, June 12). Its fanatical brand of on-shore and off-shore wind  religion  is funded by massive subsidies which all have to be paid for by the beleaguered consumers.  The Renewable Obligation Certificates and feed-in tariffs will continue to pour money into the pockets of landowners, the Crown Estate and greedy power companies for years to come, until Scotland is bristling with 6000 turbines and our electricity bills have trebled. By that stage the Scottish Government will have presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in Scotland s recent history.  Moreover, with wind turbines only producing electricity for around 21% of their active life, Scotland will still need to build gas-fired power plants or import nuclear-generated electricity to provide base-load backup. What a shambles.  I hope Mr Swinney has the good sense not to express surprise or cast blame too widely when Scotland s tourist industry collapses because no-one wants to visit our vandalised landscape anymore.  Struan Stevenson MEP  European Parliament, Brussels  There is no doubt whatsoever that oil-rich Scotland is being dragged into unacceptable poverty by Westminster Unionist parties for being part of the UK. according to the Institute of Economic affairs, Scotland s debt is increasing year after year due to Westminster s poor running of our economy.  MSP Margo MacDonald said that Scotland had the highest income from oil in the whole of Europe, but it had been squandered by successive UK Governments for the past 30 years. One can only wonder how an oil-rich nation like Scotland can get into a debt of ?110bn while under the stewardship of Westminster.  It is quite obvious why Westminster wishes to hang on to us until the wells run dry. Norway has ?542bn in its coffers for the nation s future wellbeing, and is now considered the richest nation in the world. It is about time all Scots voted for freedom and become a nation to be proud of once again.  Donald J Morrison  Buckie  Your article on alex Salmond s referendum challenge to David Cameron (Come and have a go if you think you re hard enough, Politics, June 12) reminded me of the old New Labour anthem, Things Can Only Get Better. For Nationalists it is a case of: and how!  I watched Newsnight Scotland in amazement recently, as Gordon Brewer demolished Michael Moore s two-referendum brainwave. Unionism in chaos: it seemed too good to be true.  Now, however, we learn the boy David will be the Union s champion in the battle with the Goliath Salmond. This is a total mismatch: the biggest cost-cutting Tory since Thatcher against the most popular Scottish politician in modern history. I fear David will need more than a slingshot and a belief in God to topple the mighty alex.  Bill Cruickshank  Dinnet  IaN Bell has once again written a prescient article on an individual s right to die (Please can we let the Godless die in peace, Comment, June 12).  The living will is still not legally binding in Britain but surely it is not beyond the scope of the legal, medical and religious branches of our society to ensure that a person wishing an assisted suicide is not breaking the law, by assessing each request made by the terminally ill based on an unbiased view at the time of the request. It is irresponsible of the Government and religious groups to block this request, for it leaves the terminally ill patient, who does not have the necessary wealth to travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, to die miserably in this country. It is interesting to note that a poll suggested that four-fifths of adults in Britain support the right to assisted death for the terminally ill. Why not make it an openly political decision at every general election?  Ian FM Saint-Yves  Whiting Bay, Isle of arran  I REaD with great interest Iain Macwhirter s column on aC Grayling s new  for profit  college (Fancy a PhD in Loadsamoney? Ker-ching!, Comment, June 12). He makes excellent points about the dangers of allowing our educational establishments to become even more the plaything of the rich.  a few weeks ago, the Sunday Herald broke the story of how  one of the best universities in the world    Edinburgh   has pocketed a cool ?1.7  
 THE allentown steel works in Pennsylvania is a great place to hold a Republican campaign event. The windows are boarded up and there are weeds thriving in the cracked concrete. When Barack Obama toured the plant in December 2009, to promote his economic stimulus package, he delivered a speech about  good news just in time for the season of hope  that is remembered by factory workers as the type of empty promise politicians pack in their overnight bag, as reliably as a hard hat and sturdy boots.  Hope has been in short supply here for decades. Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, union membership has declined and wages have fallen. Billy Joel s song about allentown    they re closing all the factories down    was written in 1982, but the brutal political truth is that voters have short memories and are apt to blame a struggling economy on the party in power. No president since Franklin D Roosevelt has been re-elected when the unemployment rate has been above 7.2%. It is currently 9.1%.  Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made the most of the post-industrial setting.  The plant here had been open 100 years. It survived the Great Depression. It couldn t survive the Obama economy,  he said.  Now the president says,  Just give me more time  and,  It could have been worse.  It couldn t have been worse for the people who worked at this plant.  Romney never mentioned his Republican rivals, concentrating his fire on the present occupant of the White House. This is partly designed to suggest that the outcome of the primaries is inevitable and so any intra-party bickering would be a waste of effort. But it is also in keeping with what has been, so far, a very cordial nomination contest. Well over a year before the election, the Grand Old Party s candidates are running against Obama, rather than each other.  Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has stripped her critique down to the essentials: This is the Obama debt, this is the Obama deficit and this is the very poor working Obama economy.  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had a little more flair:  The Obama administration is an anti-jobs, anti-business, anti-american-energy destructive force.  The first GOP debate was notable for its collegiate spirit. Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty declined the opportunity to attack Romney s prior support for gay marriage, abortions and state-run health care. Bachmann gave a polished performance that introduced her as a force to be reckoned with.  In six months, the primary season will begin in Iowa. There is every chance of a bitter fight before the eventual nominee is chosen. In 2007, Hillary Clinton started out with an inevitability strategy much like Romney s, while Obama initially pretended to float above the fray, but their struggle for the Democratic nomination descended into an ugly slanging match. Romney still wears the scars from his losing battle with John McCain.  Romney has been running a slow-motion campaign ever since that defeat, seeking to establish his conservative credentials and distance himself from his record as governor of Massachusetts. He presents himself as a safe pair of hands, a businessman who understands that  every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that s the right direction. and if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that s even better .  according to the most recent nationwide polls, he leads the field, with the support of 24% of registered Republicans, almost double his nearest rival, Sarah Palin, who has yet to announce whether she will enter the race. In socially conservative Iowa, he is tied with Bachmann, following her strong showing in the debate.  Romney s problems are essentially the same as four years ago: 22% of the electorate say they would never vote for a Mormon and no matter how vociferously he claims to be pro-life, Christian conservatives remember that he sanctioned abortion rights and failed to stop gay marriage in Massachusetts.  One hurdle that is significantly higher this time is the health care law he passed as governor, subsidising coverage for the most needy and requiring residents to take out insurance or pay a fine. Massachusetts has the fewest uninsured people in the nation and more than two-thirds of residents support the law, but it is something of a model for Obama s Patient Protection and affordable Care act, and thus loathed by conservatives.  It has been a good month for Romney. The economic recovery has faltered and Pawlenty s campaign has struggled to gain traction, highlighting a lack of charisma that even the best organisation and most consistent conservative message cannot overcome. Better still, Bachmann, a Congresswoman from Minnesota, has emerged as his main challenger.  as a Tea Party favourite with an extremely thin legislative record and a history of making inflammatory, factually incorrect comments, Bachmann is the perfect foil for Romney s reassuringly corporate style. His best hope of winning the nomination is convincing party elites to rally behind his candidacy to stop her. She must convince them that she could win an election.  The response to Bachmann s first official week of campaigning was summed up by liberal pundit ari Berman:  She seems far less crazy in person than she does on TV.  Bachmann is from the Christian right, with a record of picking fights about Sharia law, picketing abortion clinics and demanding a symbolic constitutional amendment against gay marriage in a state that already bans same-sex unions. She says God called her to run for the Minnesota state senate:  I had no idea, no desire to be in politics. None.  Bachmann considers global warming to be  voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax . She accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of spending $100,000 on alcohol on government business trips without any evidence, and similarly suggested Obama s state visit to India was costing taxpayers $200 million a day. She once noted that swine flu pandemics only tend to occur under liberal presidents.  But none of this matters because she has perfected the stance of small town american victimhood that Palin has used to such effect. When journalists jumped on a silly mistake in her announcement speech, confusing John Wayne s birthplace with that of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, she brushed it off. The more the political class ridicules her, the more popular she becomes with people who share her faith and her resentments.  When Fox News presenter Chris Wallace asked if she was a  flake  she responded furiously, saying:  I have a post-doctorate degree in federal tax law. My husband and I have raised five kids, we ve raised 23 foster children. We started a charter school for at-risk kids. I ve also been a state senator and member of the United States Congress for five years.  Wallace apologised.  Bachmann has a proven capacity for hard work and desperately wants to be president, something that seems less true of Palin the longer her extended media tease continues. For the time being, Bachmann is relatively unknown outside her Tea Party fanbase, with none of the baggage Palin carries, in the form of an approval rating of just 24%. While Palin schemes with her husband, Todd, Bachmann has surrounded herself with top Republican strategists, notably Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan s 1984 re-election campaign.  In her opening speech, Bachmann described a coalition similar to the one Reagan assembled in that landslide victory.  It s made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who ve never been political a day in their life, libertarians, Republicans,  she said.  We re people who simply want america back on the right track again.  However, Bachmann s wilder pronouncements may yet hurt her. as a  small government  crusader she will be reminded of the fact that her family clinic received $137,000 in Medicaid payments and her father-in-law s farm took in more than $250,000 in subsidies. The early Republican primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are open, meaning Democrats and Independents can vote, so it will be more difficult for an energetic group of Tea Party activists to make an impact.  There is still time for another candidate   
 Tim Pawlenty: The former governor of Minnesota has been playing a long game, building an organisation in key primary states and presenting himself as the mainstream conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Once viewed as a potential front-runner, his campaign has  
 FORMER US vice-president turned climate change campaigner al Gore is to appear in Edinburgh at a conference on carbon emissions.  The Nobel Laureate will speak at the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference in September, which will be opened by First Minister alex Salmond.  Salmond said:  I am delighted that former vice-president Gore will be attending this year s conference. His words will provide great encouragement to delegates and to others. 
 In the international Failed States Index, Somalia has this year again come bottom of the pile. Indeed, it has held this unwelcome championship, awarded by the Washington DC-based independent Fund for Peace, for four undisputed consecutive years, defeating by a wide margin even such serious challengers as afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sudan and Zimbabwe.  So it comes as little surprise that the benighted country in the Horn of africa is yet again at the epicentre of drought and epic human suffering being variously described by aid organisations as a  vision of hell,   the worst drought for half a century  and  a crisis of unimaginable proportions .  This last, however, it is not. We know it only too well, to the point of near-fatigue ourselves. We have been here in africa almost non-stop in various degrees following the man-made Ethiopian famine of 1984 and the subsequent Band aid circus, whose fruits remain to this day a matter of huge controversy as to whether it helped or blighted the needy. Former United States president Bill Clinton became so weary of non-stop Somali disasters that he referred to its thin and hungry citizens as  the skinnies .  We know almost in advance the kind of heart-rending stories emerging from the triangle of hunger where the borders of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia meet in a perfect storm  of inadequate rains, war, costly food, failed politics and useless diplomacy.  Stories like that of Nasir Ibrahim, 40, a father of five queuing at a food depot at the giant Dadaab refugee camp   built for 90,000 people but home to nearly 400,000   just over the border in Kenya. about 1400 people arrive each day at Dadaab from southern and central Somalia, controlled by militant Islamist group al-Shabaab, telling of indiscriminate taxes, of savings stolen and cattle seized.  Ibrahim says:  When we ve had droughts before, we could depend on aid agencies to help us. But al-Shabaab has banned them. That s why we came here.  He has arrived with the cash equivalent of less than ?5. Bandits en route stole his other money, about ?35, and also his shoes.  Still, Ibrahim is one of the  lucky  refugees. He has managed to get inside the United Nations refugee depot where ration cards are issued entitling families to a weekly supply of maize flour. Others struggle outside for days to get cards, either too weak to fight their way forward in the huge queues or unable to bribe local bureaucrats who stand between them and food for survival.  across Dadaab s sprawling 20 square miles, the small mounds of earth marking graves are multiplying: most cover the withered corpses of young children, according to the UN. Children under five often arrive malnourished and dehydrated, wrinkled skin hanging off their ribcages, flies covering their sunken faces, and die within a short time of their arrival.  The agencies of the Disasters Emergency Committee, the UK s umbrella organisation that launches and co-ordinates responses to major disasters overseas, say they face a shortfall of ?85 million for their emergency response to the Somalia drought. Oxfam   which estimates that 12 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are in dire need of clean water, food and basic sanitation   is launching its largest-ever emergency appeal for africa to raise ?50m to reach 2.5 million people.  The chief executive of the British Red Cross, Sir Nicholas Young, says it is hard to blame people who are tired of hearing about africa s troubles, and it is understandable if they are torn between humanitarian concern and a feeling that whatever they give, and whatever aid agencies do, it will never be enough to make a difference to an apparently intractable problem.  Nevertheless, he urges people to donate as much as they can afford to save lives in the short term. But, he asks rhetorically, will such donations ensure that the people of the region are not in a similar dire situation this time next year?  That s harder to guarantee,  he confesses.  as indicated by the Failed States Index, Somalia, as well as being afflicted by drought, is also beset by widespread lawlessness, crime, ineffective government, anarchy, terrorism, insurgency, abysmal development and the well-publicised problem of piracy off its shores. Its unending woes and disarray are the stuff of which hopelessness is made   15 internationally organised conferences seeking Somali peace and reconciliation have failed.  Young says that while emergency food aid is the only realistic immediate option in a calamitous situation and does save lives, it can actually destabilise local markets and lock families into dependency. This is why his own organisation is running food security programmes in the afflicted areas of Ethiopia and Kenya that incorporate environmental rehabilitation, tree planting, development of water access, repair of boreholes and pre-crisis distribution of seeds.  If it s difficult to convince appeal-weary donors to give during a full-blown emergency, it s even harder to garner financial support when rains have fallen, crops are growing and livestock is multiplying,  he says.  But it is exactly those times when this longer-term work must be done to try to change genuinely the prospect for communities in the Horn of africa.  He says this long-term aid needs to be rolled out alongside emergency food aid, and concludes:  We in the aid sector must do better at making the case for investment at the times when there are no harrowing stories to relate.  If we are to begin building resilience within Somalia itself, then somehow the international community will have to find a way of engaging with al-Shabaab ( The Movement of Striving Youth ) which, in its Islamic purity, has imposed a reign of terror. This has included chopping off thieves  hands, stoning alleged adulteresses to death and banning television, music   widely enjoyed by ordinary Somalis, who historically have tended to interpret their Islam liberally   and even bras in its quest to create a seventh century-style Islamic state. The movement also claimed responsibility for co-ordinated bomb attacks that tore through crowds in Uganda s capital, Kampala, watching an open-air screening of the 2010 football World Cup final, killing more than 70 people, including a US aid worker.  al-Shabaab, which has links to al-Qaeda, has repeatedly threatened Uganda and Burundi for contributing troops to the african Union s efforts to stabilise the country and in 2009 banned aid organisations from the swathes of territory it controls, accusing them of being anti-Islamic and hosting spies.  But last week, in an indication of  the seriousness of the crisis and the group s embarrassment about the exodus of Somalis from areas it controls in search of food, al-Shabaab reversed its stance and said all charities,  whether Muslims or non-Muslims  wanting to  assist those suffering  will now be given access to give emergency aid provided they have  no hidden agenda . a spokesman said the movement had formed a committee to deal with the drought, and aid agencies must liaise with it.  Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, said he hoped the lifting of the ban might stem the flow of refugees to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, where the biggest camp, Dollo ado, has been receiving an average of 1700 fleeing Somalis every day since early June.  among recent arrivals at Dollo ado   designed for 45,000 but already housing more than 100,000   malnutrition and mortality rates are alarmingly high. Visiting the camp last week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, former Portuguese prime minister antonio Guterres, said:  I have seen exhausted mothers who have walked for days to reach safety, losing children along the way or arriving too late for doctors to be able to save them. Seemingly a whole population is on the move.  al-Shabaab has waged war against Somalia s transition government and african Union peacekeeping forces since 2006. Originally the militant wing of the United Islamic Courts, the group that controlled Somalia prior to a disastrous Ethiopian invasion in 2007, al-Shabaab has an estimated 3000 hard-core fighters and 2000 allied gunmen. Many are from the Hawiye, Somalia s largest pastoral clan.  al-Shabaab has been able to extend its footprint in Somalia with relatively small numbers for two reasons: Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991, and many of the clan warlords who filled the vacuum have proven willing to co-operate with al-Shabaab in the south and centre of Somalia.  as the group has drawn increasingly close to al-Qaeda, deploying suicide bombers and attracting jihadists from around the world, it has raised fears in the US that it may be spreading into Kenya, Yemen and beyond. It has severely challenged president Barack Obama s efforts to bolster Somalia s puny central government and try to s  
 RESIDENTS at West Loch awe near Oban are to seek a last-ditch European intervention to prevent a ?5 million tie-up between a wind-farm developer and the Forestry Commission after the First Minister refused to help them.  avich and Kilchrenan Community Council objects to plans by the Commission and wind-farm developer Green Power to build a 36km forest road near the loch. It would be used to supply the nearby consented 20-turbine Carraig Gheal wind farm and for timber haulage. Green Power proposes to pay 80% of costs, with the Commission paying most of the remainder.  The council has a history of wind farm objections. It is concerned the route will threaten a golden eagle pair. It claims an alternative route was rejected without consideration, contravening the EU s Good Practice Wind Project. This scheme, to which the Scottish Government is a standard bearer, seeks to reconcile the needs of wind energy developers and the environment. The council has received a letter from alex Salmond declining to reconsider, pointing out that it has Scottish Natural Heritage s approval. The Commission claims the alternative route was rejected as too steep and too close to hydroelectric infrastructure.  Christine Metcalfe of the council showed the Sunday Herald a letter from SNH confirming it would have preferred the alternative had it been an option.  She now intends to lodge a complaint with the EU Wind Project.  a Commission spokesman said:  The part of the route that is close to the eagle s nest will be relatively lightly used. 
 Modern St andrews is overrun by golfers and international students, and its photogenic ruins attract large numbers of tourist snappers in this digital age. Robert Crawford s latest book reminds us that it wasn t always so. In the 19th century St andrews struggled to attract students and its ruins were seen by some (including Dr Johnson in the preceding century) as symbols of the town s decay. There were few golfers and the links saw the passage of strolling thinkers as well as frantic hackers.  One of these thinkers was Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope, conceived as a matter of physics and optics but eventually marketed as a toy. His interests expanded into the  natural magic  of photography and intersected with the investigations into  the art of fixing the shadow  already being conducted by Englishman William Talbot.  Brewster found common ground with local photographer John adamson, brother of Robert, who formed the famous co-operative with David Octavius Hill, and St andrews Provost Hugh Lyon Playfair, who struggled with Brewster to perfect the use of Talbot s new calotypes. The  Lit an  
 Outsourcing giant Capita, one of Scotland s biggest employers, could be poised to confirm a groundbreaking deal with Edinburgh City Council to take over the running of back-office services.  The group claims that its extra efficiency could save the council up to 30% of costs and is due to produce an update on talks with the Scottish authority when it releases half-year trading figures on Thursday.  Typically, the move would mean a transfer of staff to Capita which already employs more than 3500 in Scotland. However, Birmingham City Council caused a storm recently when it became the first local council to announce plans to move up to 100 IT jobs to India in partnership with Capita.  Capita already employs more than 4000 people in India and is also set to open a major new centre in Poland.  an agreement with Edinburgh City Council would be seen as a major coup for Capita, which faces a drive to bring down its own costs as a result of the Government s austerity drive and moves to bring in extra competition from voluntary organisations and employee groups.  Capita, headed by chief executive Paul Pindar, earns almost half of its money from the Government and local authorities although much of its current order book is coming from the life and pensions sector.  Brokers expect news of little or no organic growth at the half-year stage but say the company has a healthy   
 Scots entrepreneur angus MacDonald is poised to tighten his grip on the UK s only quoted biomass-to-energy company Helius Energy following the completion last week of a ?1 million debt-and-equity deal that left him in command of 24% of the company.  MacDonald is a non-executive director of aim-listed Helius and chairman of Specialist Waste Recycling, which processes waste for firms including arnold Clark, Dobbies garden centres and Baa Edinburgh. He is also the owner of 1500 hectares of forest in southwest Scotland, a vast potential source of raw material for the emerging biomass sector.  MacDonald increased his holding in Helius from 19.12% to 24.12% following the London-based firm s issue of 4,360,674 new shares at 16p each, less than half the price of most analysts  valuations.  a recent report by Will Wallis of Numis Securities noted that current valuations of Helius  imply almost no value  in Helius s promising pipeline of biomass plants, noting that the shares look  fundamentally very undervalued .  Last week s cash injection coincided with the publication of the Westminster Government s electricity market reform white paper, seen by industry observers as being  good for biomass .  MacDonald said:  There is clearly a disconnect between the share price and what the brokers think [Helius s] shares are worth.  He said it was down to the fact that  aim is very illiquid right now .  Until recently, biomass projects were not financially viable because of the lack of grandfathering [the guaranteeing of prices granted to rival renewable technologies], the state of financial markets, and the price of electricity being too low.  a lot of these things are coming right now. The energy market review was good for biomass which, unlike wind, has the constancy required for baseload electricity.  MacDonald supplemented his own share purchase, which raised ?700,000 for the company, with an unsecured loan of ?302,300, giving the company an extra ?1m of breathing space while its in-development projects move towards production and earn-out.  I have now got 25% and I would be delighted to increase that holding,  MacDonald told the Sunday Herald.  It is not my plan to take over the company, but as a plc we have some good funding options, which we are considering as part of the strategic review to be concluded by Christmas.  Other options could include soliciting further investment from high net-worth individuals known to MacDonald from previous business ventures, which include his 11 years as publisher of eFinancial Group, sold for ?79m in 2007.  Helius   founded by current chairman John Seed   is building a 7.2MW biomass plant in Rothes, Morayshire, with a consortium of leading whisky d  
 German utility firm RWE npower renewables has withdrawn its backing for the world s largest  wave farm , throwing the future of the 4MW facility in doubt, the Sunday Herald can reveal.  RWE npower renewables s decision to abandon the project at Siadar Bay off the north coast of Isle of Lewis leaves Inverness firm Wavegen, developers of the world s first commercial-scale wave energy device the Limpet, seeking a new developer or owner of the projected  ?30 million Hebridean scheme.  a Wavegen statement confirmed that RWE would  not proceed  with Siadar, adding we are in discussion with a number of parties in order to seek an owner and investor in the plant ... work on the civil engineering solutions is ongoing .  The Siadar project was the first of its type to be approved in 2009 and was originally scheduled to open this year. The project has been allocated a conditional ?6m grant from the Scottish Government.  While npower s withdrawal is understood to be linked to an  internal review  by its heavily-indebted parent company based in Essen, senior marine energy sources see the setback as symptomatic of wider funding, commercialisation and grid-connection problems in the emerging marine power sector, where Scotland has strong claims to lead the world.  Recent setbacks include Edinburgh-based company Pelamis Wave Power s decision in May to cut around 20 jobs at its Leith manufacturing plant, blaming the  shift ... from the completion of a manufacturing focus to an operational phase . In april the Crown Estate reopened tendering for a wind and tidal development zone in the Pentland Firth when ?300m plans by Singapore s atlantis Resources foundered after Norway s Statkraft pulled out of the joint venture to deploy deep-water tidal turbines.  The costs of developing wave and tidal power remain formidable obstacles to the sector, which is not expected to deliver substantial power to the grid until an indeterminate date after 2020. Most projects require ?30-50m to take a paper concept to full scale. although there is a plethora of ingenious devices in development in Scotttish waters, where incentives are more generous than in the rest of the UK, even the first 5-10MW  arrays  will  require large capital grants and five renewables obligation certificates (ROCs    the tokens used to subsidise the production of renewable power) to be viable.  Niall Stuart, chief executive of trade group Scottish Renewables, said:  The decision on the Siadar project looks more like a refocusing of operations by R  
 Waste incineration is fundamentally unsustainable, recovering only a tenth of the energy used to make the products in our rubbish. Recycling recovers four times more energy than incineration.  Incinerators always undermine recycling. Dumfries & Galloway Council abolished kerbside recycling of paper, plastics and textiles to feed its new incinerator. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is spending sweetie money on recycling   just ?5 million to improve plastic recycling since 2009.  Scotland should be following the example of places  like San Francisco, which is recycling 77% of waste and aims for 100% by 2020 with no incineration or landfill.  The Scottish Government claims that its new  zero-waste  regulations will prevent recyclable waste being burned. In fact, the regulations state there will be no minimum standards for the extraction of recyclable materials at waste treatment facilities. Worse, the Government has removed the 25% cap on waste incineration, leaving the way open for unlimited incineration.  The waste industry falsely claims that councils will need to burn waste to avoid fines for breaching European landfill quotas. In fact, these quotas only apply to the biodegradable portion of municipal waste, i.e. things that can rot and produce methane.  Waste incinerators emit hundreds of dangerous chemicals. Many, such as carcinogenic dioxins and heavy metals, are only measured twice a year. The Scottish Environment Protection agency (Sepa) refuses to demand continual monitoring of dioxins, despite the fact that this is required in other countries.  The Government states that in 2014 it will carry out an  initial survey  to check that recyclable waste is not being incinerated. By then it will be too late. The incinerators will have been built, and local communities will be condemned to 30 years of breathing poisonous fumes under Sepa s discredited monitoring regime. 
 It s an issu  
 Your coverage of the various Scottish political party leadership battles makes fascinating reading for those interested in the country s future (Leadership battles, News, September 11). The two main Unionist parties, reforming their policies, renewing their leaders and realigning their commitment to Scotland: interesting times indeed. alex Salmond claims that the SNP s legislative programme is a future for the independence generation, with Unionism in its death throes. Who would bet against him?  Bill Cruickshank  Dinnet  WHaT a fine line to be making such a fuss about (New constitution aims to breathe life into Tory party, News, September 11). I mean the hair-splitting that is apparently splitting the Conservatives in Scotland. What is the difference whether they admit to being run by Westminster or deny it? They have never hitherto admitted it anyway, to my ken. I thought Ms Goldie was boss up here anyway. But until the Conservatives   along with Labour and the Liberal Democratss   expound policies that do not forbid independence for Scotland, they will all flap around like seals on a football park.  Ian Johnstone  Peterhead  That was a good joke by Tom Gordon (Shake-up of Scottish Labour devolves power and loosens ties with London, News, September 11). Reporting on Scottish Labour s  historic break from London control  he managed a straight face while detailing the  reforms  before hitting us with the punchline   the  reforms must be ratified by the next UK party conference in Liverpool.  Sandy Thomson  Cromarty  Ian Bell takes a swipe at the Liberal Democrats in his article about university tuition fees (a poisoned Ivy League of our own, Comment, September 11). In fact, most Liberal Democrat MPs did not vote in favour of raising tuition fees. However, there was no consensus in Westminster for this view. alex Salmond had a similar problem, saying he could not keep his major promises in his last administration, such as abolishing the council tax and abolishing student debt, not to mention publishing a referendum bill, because there was no consensus in Holyrood for these measures.  Incidentally, prior to the 1997 General Election, the Labour Party promised that they would not introduce tuition fees. However, after they had won their landslide majority, they did. Of course in Holyrood the substantial Liberal Democrat participation in the Government, more so than in the current Westminster administration, was able to quickly bring about the abolition of fees in Scotland.  Of the three major UK parties, only the Liberal Democrats opposed increases in tuition fees for students in England in the 2010 General Election. However, the vast majority of those who voted did not vote Liberal Democrat and most voted Labour or Conservative, who were in favour of such increases. It could therefore be argued that, as the electorate rejected the Liberal Democrat manifesto, the will  of the people was, in fact, to increase tuition fees.  Jane ann Liston  St andrews  You write that  elitism has never been the Scottish way  (Universities  sums just don t add up, Editorial, September 11). The writer clearly did not attend a Scottish senior secondary in the days before comprehensive education.  I was at Falkirk High School in the late 1950s and our prize-winners were sent out like gladiators to take part in the university scholarship exams. The wonderful old heads of department in the great state schools competed with each other through their bright boys and girls. Far from working-class boys like me needing protection from public-schools pupils they needed protection from us.  Dr John Cameron  St andrews  I commend alex Salmond and the SNP Government for their readiness to  welcome the increase in the number of nuclear submarines based at Faslane from five to 11 (SNP accused of inconsistency on anti-nuclear policy, News, September 11). This welcome U-turn in SNP policy by alex Salmond and the SNP Government, in order to boost jobs, is the correct decision. as the main, some say only, clear aim of the SNP is independence and the only post-independence detail of the SNP s defence policy is a nuclear-free Scotland, will these hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs (when you consider ancillary employment) go?  Surely the SNP have a defence policy for a post-independent Scotland? The people of Scotland are entitled to this before they vote in an independence referendum.  Gordon M Taylor  Wishaw  The Sunday Herald is one of the very few media outlets to get it right by seeing hope in the aftermath of 9/11 (Glimmer of hope a decade on from tragedy of 9/11, Editorial, September 11).  There was widespread (unreported) arab revulsion of the 9/11 atrocities. Unfortunately, much of that (chiefly middle-class/university-based) shame and pain was trampled on by the clumsy, inappropriate, revenge aggression by George W Bush. However, the Iraq war/US Republican team  was soundly defeated by Barack Obama.  It was the new US President s finest moment to date   his truly remarkable speech at Cairo University   that stimulated democratic consciousness across the Middle E  
 THE Scottish Government s new Economic Strategy resembles one of those dreams where you are looking for something you never quite find. all the right jargon is there   a  supportive business environment ,  sustainable growth . But concrete measures are largely absent.  alex Salmond s administration performs a curious balancing act. It wants to look competent without actually doing too much. If it implements meaningful reform then its case for more powers to be devolved is undermined, and this lengthy document is replete with complaints tha  
 TWO years after the planning system was overhauled, audit Scotland last week published its verdict. Or at least it published findings on the first few months, since the authorities are unable to provide any information until about 18 months after an event.  The findings were discouraging. Where planning turnaround should have improved, it has been stagnant for minor applications and considerably worse for larger ones. Councils are also spending 17% more in real terms to process applications than in 2004, even though applications fell 29%.  Don t expect aS to have an explanation for these phenomena, though. Councils don t measure costs closely enough to know why they rose, and the Government has not developed a system for measuring performance.  The report doesn t exactly tear strips off anyone for these failings, but they are a serious black mark against four years of SNP administration. If alex Salmond is serious about step-changing Scottish growth and meeting renewables ambitions, the system had better have improved. audit Scotland needs to repeat this exercise soon, and give everyone both barrels if the results are no better.  according to the World Green Building CounciI, in 2003 only 24% of builders considered the complexities of energy conservation when constructing new buildings. By 2013 the figure is expected to rise to 94%.  a seminar to discuss the business implications of this shift will be held at a World Green Building Week event at Glasgow s Lighthouse at 6pm tomorrow.  Speakers will include Lori McElroy of architecture+Design Scotland, Don McLean, the founder of Glasgow s pioneering green building specialist IES, and David McNeill, technical director of Buro Happold, who will give insights into groundbreaking Scottish projects including the new Glasgow Riverside Museum. Networking drinks to follow. Contact events@iesve.com 
 INSPECTORS should use undercover surveillance to monitor failing care homes in Scotland and impose stiff financial penalties when they fail to heed warnings about improving standards, a  Scottish Parliament inquiry has been told.  a series of submissions to Holyrood s health committee, which is investigating the regulation of all types of care services in Scotland, from bodies ranging from councils and NHS boards to unions and care providers, has revealed a raft of concerns over weaknesses in the system meant to protect vulnerable elderly members of society.  Concerns about the regulatory system have been amplified by the number of care inspection staff being cut by 10% in a year.  More than a third of the submission stated that the regulator   Social Care and Social Work Inspection Scotland (SCSWIS)   is not managing to pick up on poorly performing services and only a quarter had full confidence in the regulatory system.  Questions have been raised about whether SCSWIS is being adequately resourced, over the lack of support for whistleblowers to alert officials to cases of neglect, and whether there is enough scrutiny of the financial viability of care services. Staffing problems have also been highlighted, with questions raised about whether enough is being done to ensure sufficient numbers of trained staff are in place.  Concerns have also been raised over low pay, with claims some care homes in Edinburgh experience shortages during the summer because workers can get better pay by taking on casual jobs during the ca  
 Jessica Eagers-Hardie, the mother of three young boys, confesses to being genuinely terrified.  For my children s sake I would do anything I could to stop it,  she says.  Local feelings about the proposal for a massive waste incinerator at Loganswell Farm, near Newton Mearns, run deep.  These plans would put at risk the lives and wellbeing of thousands of children, including my own, just so that one group of men can line their own pockets,  argues Eagers-Hardie.  We will fight this until the bitter end because there is nothing that could justify jeopardising our children s  health.  Eagers-Hardie, who lives in Newton Mearns, has helped set up the Facebook protest group, Mums against the Incinerator. She is one of thousands opposing the scheme for a high-temperature gasification plant to treat a million tonnes of commercial and municipal waste a year put forward by Lifetime Recycling Village.  The ?640 million plant has succeeded in uniting political parties against it, with Labour s leadership contender, MSP Ken Macintosh, on the same side as the Conservative leadership contender, Jackson Carlaw MSP. Two weeks ago more than 2000 local people turned out for an anti-incinerator protest march.  But it is strongly defended by Neil Gallacher, the managing director of Lifetime Recycling Village. Technically, he argues, it will not be an incinerator.  It will use thermal treatment in its renewable power station for gasification, not burning, of carefully prepared waste-derived fuel mix for maximum efficiency in generating electricity,  he says.  It would be unique in Scotland. Environmental safety is central to our proposals. 
 Waste incineration is fundamentally unsustainable, recovering only a tenth of the energy used to make the products in our rubbish. Recycling recovers four times more energy than incineration.  Incinerators always undermine recycling. Dumfries & Galloway Council abolished kerbside recycling of paper, plastics and textiles to feed its new incinerator. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is spending sweetie money on recycling   just ?5 million to improve plastic recycling since 2009.  Scotland should be following the example of places  like San Francisco, which is recycling 77% of waste and aims for 100% by 2020 with no incineration or landfill.  The Scottish Government claims that its new  zero-waste  regulations will prevent recyclable waste being burned. In fact, the regulations state there will be no minimum standards for the extraction of recyclable materials at waste treatment facilities. Worse, the Government has removed the 25% cap on waste incineration, leaving the way open for unlimited incineration.  The waste industry falsely claims that councils will need to burn waste to avoid fines for breaching European landfill quotas. In fact, these quotas only apply to the biodegradable portion of municipal waste, i.e. things that can rot and produce methane.  Waste incinerators emit hundreds of dangerous chemicals. Many, such as carcinogenic dioxins and heavy metals, are only measured twice a year. The Scottish Environment Protection agency (Sepa) refuses to demand continual monitoring of dioxins, despite the fact that this is required in other countries.  The Government states that in 2014 it will carry out an  initial survey  to check that recyclable waste is not being incinerated. By then it will be too late. The incinerators will have been built, and local communities will be condemned to 30 years of breathing poisonous fumes under Sepa s discredited monitoring regime. 
 It s an issu  
 Your coverage of the various Scottish political party leadership battles makes fascinating reading for those interested in the country s future (Leadership battles, News, September 11). The two main Unionist parties, reforming their policies, renewing their leaders and realigning their commitment to Scotland: interesting times indeed. alex Salmond claims that the SNP s legislative programme is a future for the independence generation, with Unionism in its death throes. Who would bet against him?  Bill Cruickshank  Dinnet  WHaT a fine line to be making such a fuss about (New constitution aims to breathe life into Tory party, News, September 11). I mean the hair-splitting that is apparently splitting the Conservatives in Scotland. What is the difference whether they admit to being run by Westminster or deny it? They have never hitherto admitted it anyway, to my ken. I thought Ms Goldie was boss up here anyway. But until the Conservatives   along with Labour and the Liberal Democratss   expound policies that do not forbid independence for Scotland, they will all flap around like seals on a football park.  Ian Johnstone  Peterhead  That was a good joke by Tom Gordon (Shake-up of Scottish Labour devolves power and loosens ties with London, News, September 11). Reporting on Scottish Labour s  historic break from London control  he managed a straight face while detailing the  reforms  before hitting us with the punchline   the  reforms must be ratified by the next UK party conference in Liverpool.  Sandy Thomson  Cromarty  Ian Bell takes a swipe at the Liberal Democrats in his article about university tuition fees (a poisoned Ivy League of our own, Comment, September 11). In fact, most Liberal Democrat MPs did not vote in favour of raising tuition fees. However, there was no consensus in Westminster for this view. alex Salmond had a similar problem, saying he could not keep his major promises in his last administration, such as abolishing the council tax and abolishing student debt, not to mention publishing a referendum bill, because there was no consensus in Holyrood for these measures.  Incidentally, prior to the 1997 General Election, the Labour Party promised that they would not introduce tuition fees. However, after they had won their landslide majority, they did. Of course in Holyrood the substantial Liberal Democrat participation in the Government, more so than in the current Westminster administration, was able to quickly bring about the abolition of fees in Scotland.  Of the three major UK parties, only the Liberal Democrats opposed increases in tuition fees for students in England in the 2010 General Election. However, the vast majority of those who voted did not vote Liberal Democrat and most voted Labour or Conservative, who were in favour of such increases. It could therefore be argued that, as the electorate rejected the Liberal Democrat manifesto, the will  of the people was, in fact, to increase tuition fees.  Jane ann Liston  St andrews  You write that  elitism has never been the Scottish way  (Universities  sums just don t add up, Editorial, September 11). The writer clearly did not attend a Scottish senior secondary in the days before comprehensive education.  I was at Falkirk High School in the late 1950s and our prize-winners were sent out like gladiators to take part in the university scholarship exams. The wonderful old heads of department in the great state schools competed with each other through their bright boys and girls. Far from working-class boys like me needing protection from public-schools pupils they needed protection from us.  Dr John Cameron  St andrews  I commend alex Salmond and the SNP Government for their readiness to  welcome the increase in the number of nuclear submarines based at Faslane from five to 11 (SNP accused of inconsistency on anti-nuclear policy, News, September 11). This welcome U-turn in SNP policy by alex Salmond and the SNP Government, in order to boost jobs, is the correct decision. as the main, some say only, clear aim of the SNP is independence and the only post-independence detail of the SNP s defence policy is a nuclear-free Scotland, will these hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs (when you consider ancillary employment) go?  Surely the SNP have a defence policy for a post-independent Scotland? The people of Scotland are entitled to this before they vote in an independence referendum.  Gordon M Taylor  Wishaw  The Sunday Herald is one of the very few media outlets to get it right by seeing hope in the aftermath of 9/11 (Glimmer of hope a decade on from tragedy of 9/11, Editorial, September 11).  There was widespread (unreported) arab revulsion of the 9/11 atrocities. Unfortunately, much of that (chiefly middle-class/university-based) shame and pain was trampled on by the clumsy, inappropriate, revenge aggression by George W Bush. However, the Iraq war/US Republican team  was soundly defeated by Barack Obama.  It was the new US President s finest moment to date   his truly remarkable speech at Cairo University   that stimulated democratic consciousness across the Middle E  
 THE Scottish Government s new Economic Strategy resembles one of those dreams where you are looking for something you never quite find. all the right jargon is there   a  supportive business environment ,  sustainable growth . But concrete measures are largely absent.  alex Salmond s administration performs a curious balancing act. It wants to look competent without actually doing too much. If it implements meaningful reform then its case for more powers to be devolved is undermined, and this lengthy document is replete with complaints tha  
 Yorgos Galanis, 40, civil servant  Galanis has been active in the protest movement since he lost his job at the culture ministry, where he managed funds for archaeological projects, last March. He said:  My life changed for the worse overnight, and I now face the prospect of long-term unemployment. I have some savings and occasional work at an accounting office, but it s not enough to get by. We have no choice but to protest.  For seven years he held short-term, renewable contracts, part of a special class of civil servants   he says two-thirds of culture ministry employees are on short-term contracts.  The worst part is that our jobs were not eliminated, but rather others filled them. These layoffs are not designed to save money on salaries. They are party-based persecution,  he says, noting he was hired in 2004, under conservative rule.  Though they cover permanent needs in a variety of ministries and state agencies by law they are supposed to be granted permanent jobs after some years successive governments, both socialist and conservative, have dangled the prospect of tenure, only to fire the workers and replace them with party faithful after coming to power.  In 2010 the government stopped renewing contracts, and half of the 60,000 or so in such a position will be laid off by the year s end. Their protests have been regular.  at the same time, they are waging a protracted legal battle, which in april culminated in a Supreme Court victory for contract workers at the state betting company. Galanis believes it will be a potent precedent for the rest.  Katerina Notopoulou, 23, unemployed  Katerina lost her job at the OTE phone company. Greece s young people are among the hardest hit by the deepening crisis, and have the highest unemployment rate.  She said:  The outlook for Greece is the worst possible. Conditions are unprecedented. People are fired every day and they have a real struggle for survival.  Katerina has been active in the protest movement in the northern port city of Thessaloniki since finishing her psychology degree there.  If there is not a massive reaction immediately, things will become insufferable,  she says.   
 You are right,  there is a real need for reasoned and rigorous debate  in the run-up to the referendum and that can only come about with a  decent opposition leadership  (We should all care about the future of the Scottish Tories, October 2).  You are also correct in your assertion that all four Tory candidates  lack sparkle ; however, the same could be said of the Labour leadership candidates. Hence it is difficult to see where the  reasoned and rigorous debate  will be coming from. There is a feeling of d?j? v? with all the opposition leadership candidates. They all trot out the same old tired arguments about defending the Union, saving Scotland from separation and declaring their pride in being British as well as Scottish. all good, wholesome, scaremongering stuff, but little in the way of a  reasoned and rigorous debate .  For the sake of Scottish democracy, I hope that new, high-quality candidates do emerge to lead Scotland s opposition. Unfortunately, I think I hope in vain.  Bill Cruickshank  Dinnet  aS SNP candidate in Edinburgh South in 1970, I was invited to meet with the South Edinburgh Young Conservatives. I came away from the meeting feeling that half of them favoured Scottish independence.  This suggests that if the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party is to be rebranded [Future of Scottish Tories, October 2] it might do well to leave out unionism from both its name and its stated aims. The new party would still contain unionists but could also be a home for those who envisage a right-wing party contributing to the politics of an independent Scotland. Perhaps the Labour Party in Scotland might also one day transmute into a party of the patriotic left.  David Stevenson,  Edinburgh  Your article (October 3) detailing opposition to the Health Lottery and Richard Desmond from the charitable sector in Scotland failed to acknowledge the significant support the new lottery scheme has received from charities across Great Britain keen to see how they can benefit from some of the ?50 million of new funds which will be available.  In particular, the comments you carried from SCVO are very different to the feedback we are receiving from the voluntary sector. More than 100 charities have contacted us directly and really welcome this injection of new money for good cause projects.  This is genuine and substantial new funding which can transform the lives of many people and which is very much needed by communities at this time. Parts of Scotland will be first to receive grants from next week.  as the independent charity in charge of funding strategy and distribution, it will be the role of the People s Health Trust to engage with communities over how the money will be best used.  This new and important money raised by the Health Lottery has the potential to do enormous good in communities in Scotland and across the rest of Great Britain at a time when organisations are struggling to access new funding.  additionally, we will shortly be launching a small grants programme which will provide further opportunities for organisations in Scotland to get involved.  John Hume  Chief executive  People s Health Trust  The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) reported that the amount of power generated from renewable sources fell last year.  Niall Stuart, of Scottish Renewables, retaliated with the excuse that it was an exceptionally dry and calm year. Scottish Renewables is the mouthpiece and lobbying body for the highly subsidised renewables industry.  I suspect Niall Stuart is getting mixed up between  consumed  and  generated when he talks about  30% consumed from renewables .  Even Denmark with 6000 turbines can only generate 20%, of which half is consumed  and the rest wasted as it cannot be stored.  Clark Cross  Linlithgow  Songs Of Praise should not be abolished but it should be changed (Barry Didcock, On a Hymn and a Prayer, October 2). It increasingly reflects establishment Christianity. It frequently promotes the royals, the armed forces and celebrities. Rarely, if ever, is a voice given to Christian republicans, Christian pacifists or working-class recipients o  
 GREEN energy firms ready to start work on schemes supported by a new UK Government incentive have been hit by a last-minute delay to its launch.  Suppliers and installers of renewable energy systems were infuriated by news that the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was to be postponed.  Industry figures say projects which would have helped achieve dramatic cuts in Scotland s carbon emissions are being threatened by political dithering   and claim some firms may even go out of business.  The incentive had been due to come on stream when a last-minute announcement from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) threw plans into turmoil.  We were dismayed and insulted by the email we received,  said Richard de Silva, director of Greenflame Technology in Kincraig.  They talk of understanding our frustration but it s people s livelihoods that are at stake here.  He said the uncertainty was creating mistrust among customers considering installing renewables like woodfuel boilers, solar thermal systems and heat pumps. The RHI for both domestic and commercial systems was originally due to be launched in april. a review saw the launch dates split, with incentives for commercial schemes to be introduced on October 1, and domestic in autumn 2012.  a DECC spokesperson said:  The European Commission state aid approval for the RHI will be subject to a reduction in the large biomass tariff. This means we now need to change the regulations   we hope to open the scheme before the end of November. 
 SCOTLaND S chances of becoming a global hub for carbon capture will be severely reduced if the project at Longannet power station in Fife collapses, industry experts have warned.  Should Scottish Power and the UK Government fail to reach an agreement on the troubled ?1.2 billion project, which is supposed to lead to the world s first carbon-capture demonstrator project by 2014, it will mean that the central North Sea risks missing out on being the main storage centre for the technology, to be used by all adjacent power stations here and in Europe.  This is despite the fact that Scottish waters are thought to contain roughly half the storage capacity for the whole Continent. It also greatly endangers the Scottish Government s targets to de-carbonise the country.  There have been suggestions that Scottish and Southern Energy s gas-fired Peterhead power station could pick up the mantle instead, but the Sunday Herald understands that it will be delayed by the fact that the first phase of the European New Entrant Reserve (NER300) scheme favours subsidising carbon-capture and storage (CCS) demonstrators on coal-fired stations.  Were Peterhead to be selected for a subsidy in the second phase, it is highly unlikely that it would be built before 2017. This would be two years later than various plants elsewhere in Europe are likely to be built.  Two other project options for the UK are equally unlikely to favour the central North Sea. The proposed Hunterston station in ayrshire wants to pipe its waste south to the Irish Sea while the proposals at Don Valley in Yorkshire are likely to pipe into waters off that coast.  Stuart Haszledine, the Scottish Power Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage at Edinburgh University, said:  We are still in a global race here. The people that get in first have a very good chance of capturing CCS delivery for the next 30 to 40 years. Storage in the central North Sea would be an extension of life for North Sea enginee  
 Meeting the future and now former defence secretary Liam Fox was probably the most significant thing Kirkcaldy-born adam Werritty did in his four years at University in Edinburgh.  an unremarkable student, Werritty achieved a 2:2 in public policy. The campus newspaper, which reported the frolics of the more politically ambitious students, did not mention Werritty once in four years. The pair met when Fox was an opposition spokesman on Scotland.  after graduation, Werritty left Edinburgh and forged a career that seemed to coincide with whichever area Fox was involved in. It was the two men s continued association in p  
 BRITISH oil giant, BP, has repeatedly breached legal safety rules on its rigs in the North Sea over the last year, according to the Government watchdog, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).  The multinational company has continually failed to comply with the HSE s statutory instructions to improve risk assessments after a series of alarming near-misses on several oil platforms, including Clair and Schiehallion west of Shetland and a network of nine fields in the central North Sea.  The revelation comes after BP and its partner oil companies last week announced a massive ?10 billion investment in exploiting new oil and gas reserves around the UK, triggering warm congratulations from Prime Minister David Cameron and the Scottish First Minister, alex Salmond.  The investment is centred around opening up the more dangerous waters west of Shetland, and promises to reverse the decline in UK oil production. It is forecast to create 3000 jobs in the oil and gas supply chain, sustain the Sullom Voe terminal in Shetland for decades and bring in billions of pounds of tax revenues.  at a time of economic recession, this has been greeted as good news by many. and it was heralded by BP on Thursday as proof that the 40-year-old story of the North Sea oil industry was far from over, with drilling now projected to continue to 2050.  But the resurgence of the black stuff has also attracted the ire of the industry s critics, who question unfettered exploitation. They highlight BP s poor safety record, its sometimes disastrous environmental legacy, and the climate pollution that more oil will inevitably cause. BP is still plagued by the memory of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which became a global scandal over three months in 2010.  The most immediate allegation is about BP s safety performance over the last year. Last November it was served a legal improvement notice by the HSE, which applied to all 40 of the company s offshore oil and gas fields around the UK.  On the Clair rig, HSE said the risks from an oil leak had been inadequately assessed. This involved workers carrying out monitoring  that caused them to deactivate fire detection and suppression systems and open the door of the enclosure thus exposing them to risk should a fire have broken out .  On the Eastern Trough area Project, known as ETaP, which covers nine oil and gas fields, BP considered carrying on when only one of three lifeboats was available. If there had been an accident, it might have been impossible to evacuate all the staff, HSE suggested.  HSE initially gave BP a deadline to fix the problems by the end of May 2011. The deadline was extended to the end of august, and then again to the end of October. The matter is still formally  ongoing .  BP believes that it has now completed the improvements demanded by the HSE, but this has not yet been agreed by the Government regulator. HSE pointed out that because the improvement notice applied to all BP s UK offshore installations there were difficulties in predicting a  realistic  compliance date.  BP has recently communicated to HSE it considers it is now in compliance with the improvement notice, and HSE is now in the process of testing that compliance,  said an HSE spokesman.  In the five years prior to the latest improvement notice, BP breached health and safety rules 54 times with lapses that put workers and the environment at risk.  Inspectors from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change also said that fou  
 SCOTLaND S First Minister has joined arnold Schwarzenegger as a winner of an international climate change award.  alex Salmond has been awarded the third South australia International Climate Change award.  The prize recognises efforts made by governments in responding to the challenges of climate change.  The award was established in 2009 by the South australian Government.  Mike Rann, the outgoing state premier, made the announcement at a conference of European climate change leaders meeting in Lyon, France. Rann said the award honoured Salmond s long-term commitment to leading Scotland towards a low-carbon future.  Previous award winners are former California governor Schwarzenegger in 2009 and Quebec premier Jean Charest in 2010. 
 SINCE Independent MSP Margo MacDonald first coined the phrase in her previous life as an SNP icon, it has lost little of its clout. Launched in 1972, the rallying cry  It s Scotland s Oil  quickly embedded itself in the national consciousness, summing up the sense of injustice that Scotland was missing out on the income from her own natural assets.  as the scale of the riches lying under the North Sea became clearer, the slogan and the idea behind it helped the SNP record their best-ever result in a General Election, when the party won 11 MPs and 30% of the Scottish vote in 1974.  Now, as Treasury cuts, rising inflation and the threat of a double-dip recession suggest a miserable decade ahead, the old refrain is being revived for the SNP s independence referendum.  London has had its turn out of Scottish oil and gas,  First Minister alex Salmond told his party conference last week.  Let the next 40 years be for the people of Scotland.  So could that pitch be as successful as before? More to the point, what does it actually mean?  If Scotland were independent, how much wealth would come Edinburgh s way from oil and gas, and what would be done with it? Would it be spent, saved, used to pay off debts, or a bit of all three?  The choice is familiar to every household; the numbers are somewhat different. Scottish oil production may have peaked in 1999, but the North Sea still yields billions in tax.  In the 1970s, the UK Government invented a new economic region, the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), and assigned all oil tax revenues to it, rather than assign them to Scotland.  Since then, around ?300bn at today s prices has gone to HM Treasury in tax from the UKCS   around 90% of which is from fields in the seas off Scotland.  The UK Office of Budget Responsibility estimates another ?230bn over the next 30 years. However, the expansion of the Clair field, west of Shetland, where BP recently announced a ?4.5bn  investment, means there may be even more to come.  So what would change if Salmond had his way? The most obvious SNP policy would be an oil fund. almost alone among countries with a big, finite natural resource, the UK simply spends all the tax raised from its oil and gas rather than investing some for future generations.  In other countries, oil funds are used to smooth out economic turbulence, invest in long-term infrastructure and provide a financial legacy for when the oil runs out. But not in the UK, where the money has been used to top up revenue spending and service debt.  Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz, who has called for a Scottish oil fund, recently said the Thatcher-era boom was largely based on our short-term spending of oil wealth,  leaving future generations impoverished .  Yet if just 10% of the tax take from the North Sea since 1980 had been invested, there would now be ?25bn to ?50bn in the kitty. By comparison, Scotland s budget this year is around ?35bn.  In July 2009, Finance Secretary John Swinney published a 60-page consultation, an Oil Fund for Scotland, as part of the Government s National  Conversation on independence, which asked a series of questions about what a Scottish oil fund would look like.  How much would be paid in and for how long? What would it invest in? How much would be withdrawn and when? What would it be spent on? Would it have an ethical investment policy like Norway?  The basic rule is the more money invested at the start, and the longer it s left alone to generate returns, the fatter the fund and the bigger the sum which can be withdrawn annually thereafter.  asked this weekend about what progress has been made on fund specifics, the Government would only say  work continues  on the matter.  That s not good, because those questions are key.  Perhaps the Government has gone quiet because the dire economic picture has torpedoed its plan.  There s no potential for any oil fund at the moment because if we were independent, Scotland, like the UK, would be so far in debt that we would not have anything to save,  said John McLaren, an economist with the Centre for Public Policy for Regions at Glasgow University.  Even with oil income, Scotland would be significantly in deficit. So an oil fund is irrelevant at the moment.  However, that doesn t mean all is lost.at some point, the public finances will return to balance, and a fund could be possible.  So what would it actually look like?  When he set out the case for an oil fund, Swinney highlighted the experience of Norway, alaska and the Canadian province of alberta.  Norway, as a near neighbour of comparable size, has long been an inspiration for a Scots fund.  Salmond visited the country in august last year to drive the point home.  Known as the  Government Pension Fund   Global , though it is used for far more than pensions, Norway s oil fund is fabulously wealthy. Since the first deposit in 1995-1996, it has grown to more than ?350bn. To avoid warping the economy and Norway s currency, the krone, all the money is invested overseas   around 60% in shares, making it Europe s largest share owner.  While much smaller, the alaska Permanent Fund (currently ?24bn) and the alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund  (?9bn), offer interesting alternative ways of operating such funds.  The first thing to note is that, for a variety of reasons, Scotland is no second Norway.  For one thing, Norway s fund has two sources of income   taxation from private industry but also revenue from state-owned oil and gas assets which have no Scottish parallel.  Norway also managed to accumulate its wealth by diverting huge sums into its fund   but only when its overall national budget was in surplus. To have saved while the country was in deficit would have forced it to take money out of basic services such as health, education and roads.  But Scotland doesn t have much cash to spare. Even between 2005-06 and 2008-09, assuming it had received its geographical share of oil taxes, the Scottish current budget would have been at its peak ?787m in surplus, and ?3m at its lowest.  But in 2009-10, when North Sea revenues slumped, Scotland would have had a deficit of ?9bn.  and the economic outlook is bleak. With a frail economy predicted for years to come, politicians would have little appetite for raising taxes or imposing cuts to put money aside for a rainy day, even with debt under control.  as Swinney admitted in his 2009 paper, building a fund  is likely to be especially challenging during periods when there are immediate short-term pressures on the public finances .  alaska took a hair-shirt approach by always putting a fixed percentage of its oil income into its fund, but alberta found things tougher.  after initially investing 30% of oil income, it dropped it to 15%, and now money only goes in on an ad hoc basis. For many years it saved nothing.  McLaren added:  There will be a big call from people saying,  We ve got that money, let s spend it now.  It s difficult for politicians to give up spending money on populist things in the short-term versus saving it up for future generations. It takes a lot of self-discipline.  at the moment, we have a lot of free universal services. That doesn t suggest self-discipline is going to appear overnight.  But assuming Scotland did get an oil fund off the ground, what would it invest in? again, Scotland would be different from Norway. The latter is  relatively unique , said Swinney, in investing exclusi  
 LaST weekend in Inverness, the SNP fired the starting gun on the referendum campaign to deliver an independent Scotland. The decision on independence will, of course, be one for the people. and in order for them to be properly informed about the choices that lie before them, it is crucial they are properly informed of the facts.  Facts are something that have been sadly lacking from the anti-independence side in the debate on Scotland s constitutional future over the years. Myths, fantasy dressed up as fact, and downright falsehoods permeate the discussion on how Scotland would fare as an independent country.  Thankfully, the people of Scotland are increasingly seeing through these attempts to talk down their own ability to make a success of themselves, their communities and their country.  To take one of the most repeated, pernicious and damaging myths head-on, there can no longer be any doubt that Scotland more than pays its own way in the UK. The latest Government Expenditure and  Revenue Scotland (GERS) reports shows that Scotland has run a current budget surplus in four of the five years to 2009-10, while the UK was in current budget deficit in each of these years, and hasn t run a current budget surplus since 2001-02.  Scotland accounts for 8.4% of the UK population, but in 2009-10 contributed 9.4% of overall UK tax revenue   ?1000 extra for every man, woman and child in Scotland. The international comparisons also bear out the fact Scotland is more than capable of paying its way. Our ratio of debt to GDP as an independent country would be lower than the EU and G7 averages.  One of the reasons, of course, for that healthy position in comparison to other leading industrialised nations is that Scotland has a trillion pound asset base in the form of our remaining abundant North Sea oil and gas reserves. and here we run into another myth   the suggestion that Scotland s oil wealth is fast dwindling, nearly depleted and not worth factoring into future economic assumptions.  as recent announcements have shown, nothing could be further from the truth. It is calculated that more than half of the total value of North Sea reserves have yet to be extracted.  BP s recent announcement of its  major investment in the Clair Field west of Shetland even prompted David Cameron to admit that Scotland s oil will be flowing for  many, many years  to come   and it is imperative that it is Scotland that benefits from the next 40 years of offshore activity rather than another four decades of Scotland s wealth pouring into Westminster coffers.  The Unionist case has now resorted to claims that, even with its North Sea wealth, an independent Scotland would have had a ?41 billion deficit between 1981 and 2010, and is therefore dependent on a generous Tory Treasury.  The truth is the opposite. What Scottish Secretary Michael Moore neglected to tell people when he recently recyc led this attack previously used by Labour s Jim Murphy was that the UK ran a deficit of more than ?715 billion over the same period.  In other words, Scotland is in a far, far stronger position than the rest of the UK   actually in surplus relative to the UK as a whole to the tune of ?19bn and by the Unionist parties own risible logic, Britain could not possibly afford to be independent.  One of the most preposterous myths peddled about an independent Scotland is that we would not continue to be members of the European Union. For a start, we are already an integral part of the EU   and as an independent state would be in exactly the same position as the   
 Your report on the educational postcode lottery was shocking, but not altogether surprising (Locked out, News, October 23).  Schools matter, but the effect on life chances of where you live, what level of education your parents had and your socio-economic status accounts for around 85% of the total. The question is whether we really want a more egalitarian society.  Scotland, argues John Swinney, could be the sixth most prosperous nation in the world, yet poverty is still the single biggest determinant of educational success. But prosperity is not the most important factor in a country s success; equality is.  Last week, Tom Shields noted that research on IQ confirms poor kids are no less bright than affluent ones, and test scores are not accurate predictions of future success. Where  setting  exists, boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately represented in bottom sets.  The solution is available, if we are willing to let it work. Comprehensive schools, with no selection, should be  the norm for all children, with no requirement for private schools. But  housing policy, from the 1950s onwards, subverted the comprehensive ideal and now many city schools do not have a representative cross-section of the population.  Mrs Thatcher couldn t stop the growth of comprehensives but she introduced the so-called Parents  Charter, again to subvert them. Perhaps it is time local schools got the support of the whole of their communities, including the middle classes. Our aim should be to move towards a system closer to the Nordic countries where inequalities are much less pronounced than in the UK and all young people are nurtured to realise their potential as successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.  Brian Boyd  Emeritus Professor of Education  University of Strathclyde  Following the 1981 decision to give parents choice of schools, it was predictable that aspirational, concerned parents, faced with the choice between two schools, one of which regularly outperformed the other, would be more likely to opt for the former.  after a generation, the rich have indeed become much richer, and the poorer are working under a tremendous handicap. Even the most well-run school in a poor area struggles to reverse the trend, not least because it takes six years for a new intake to show up in the destination figures. Many universities are sympathetic to the problem, but parents of children in state schools in privileged areas and private schools apply pressure to maintain their advantage.  Can nothing be done? Should we look at the Texas 10% scheme, whereby the top-performing 10% of pupils in any state school are guaranteed a university place? This might make parents think twice before moving children to a school in a nearby leafy suburb.  Secondly, is it not incongruous that newly-qualified teachers are paid a premium to teach in remote areas, but not in our challenging city schools? If we are to avoid reading the same  investigation  in another 25 years we need to look at radical solutions   above all, those who have all the advantages at present must be willing to share them more equably.  Roy Crichton  Edinburgh  Last year only 1% of looked-after children went on to higher education, compared to 36% of all school children. The tragedy is that over half of looked-after children will be unemployed six months after leaving school.  Barnardo s Scotland would like to see the Scottish Government and education institutions do more in supporting looked-after children into further and higher education, with educational, living and financial support, as well as working directly with children in schools to help with the transition.  Every child has the right to an education, and should be given the chance to fulfil their potential in spite of early disadvantages.  Sallyann Kelly  acting director  Barnardo s Scotland  From the moment my children were born I, like most parents, had the overwhelming desire that they achieve their educational potential, graduate from university and live happy, fulfilling lives. So I enrolled them within the independent sector, trusting that they would soak up every learning opportunity placed in front of them.  Having myself attended both private and state secondary schools, I chose the one where I had found greater security, confidence and success within a motivated peer group. However, I did not legislate for the acrimonious divorce, the house move to another area and the stress of increasing debt as I try to maintain emotional stability and consistency by continuing their education within the independent sector. I have come to the point where I have decided I have failed as a parent   more so than any state school could have.  Parents are the primary educators in children s lives. Parents encourage motivation and a desire to learn. I now have to withdraw my children from schools where they are happy and achieving, as in I can no longer afford the fees. I can only hope they will continue to achieve through resilience and a determination to succeed as this is something they have learned at home. Children learn what they live   despite the postcode.  Name and address supplied  It was a delight to read Tariq ali s Essay of the week (Revolution generation, Comment, October 23). I, too, applaud the people, young and not so young, who are demonstrating against  a system of despotic finance-capital: a greed-infected vampire that must suck the blood of the non-rich to survive .  I liked, too, his description of our politicians as  extremist politicians of the centre . The only word I d add to this description is  supine    but only when dealing with the greed-infected vampires who run our banks and international corporations. Not so when it comes to using intimidation, lies and doctored statistics to present the case for Unionism in Britain.  It is a certainty that, with the discovery of accessible oil in the waters off Shetland, the Westminster Government will revive the old lies laid bare by the 30-year rule in order to present a completely false impression of an independent Scotland s financial viability.  Lovina Roe  Perth  The dispute over so-called  gay marriage  is now going from the sublime to the ridiculous   or vice versa (SNP backer Sir Tom Farmer speaks   
 Disappointment over the UK Government s decision to cancel the Longannet coal-fired pow  
 a high-powered delegation of Chinese finance officers will visit Edinburgh and Glasgow next week as part of a fact-finding tour by members of the Shanghai National accounting Institute.  The visit is being hosted by Scottish legal firm Dundas & Wilson, which helped design a programme that will involve meetings with companies, university business schools and public-sector agencies after an approach from the international accountancy training company Emile Woolf International.  David Knox, partner at Dundas & Wilson, said:  The Chinese government is encouraging Institute members to understand UK accounting and business practices so that they can collaborate with, and invest in, Scottish businesses.  The delegates  interests cover many areas from traditional industry through to forestry, financial services and renewables to high-tech university spin-off companies. advising these delegates is in line with Dundas & Wilson s experience of helping multinational clients on their objectives in Scotland and across the UK.  We hope that new business advising inward investors in Scotland may well follow hosting these high-ranking Chinese finance directors.  Dundas & Wilson partners will make presentations to the delegation on subjects including UK law and regulation, collaborations with utilities, renewables companies and universities.  The Chinese delegation will also hear from six doctors of science, four professors, and three Government agencies at Heriot-Watt University, University of Glasgow and at Edinburgh s Business School and BioQuarter Life Sciences Park. They will also meet a number of Scottish firms that are expanding in China. 
 a SPECTRE is haunting Scotland   the spectre of Salmond. In the past week the First Minister has been compared to the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe. He has been cast as a  Jekyll and Hyde  character whose true  bullying  tendencies have come to the fore since the May election. He has governed, some say, with a sinister centralism .  To the London press the First Minister is a devious trickster, playing politics with the constitution. Meanwhile, City analyst Citigroup says his determination to plunge Scotland into the  uncertainty  of an independence referendum will destroy the Scottish renewables industry and deter investment.  SNP ambitions to transform Scotland into a leading provider of renewable energy and to export power after independence to England and even beyond became the focus of determined attacks throughout last week.  No sooner had Citigroup warned investors that independence would threaten their investments in renewable energy in Scotland than the Institute of Mechanical Engineers tore into alex Salmond s renewable targets, saying meeting them would cost billions and leave consumers facing a rise in energy prices.  Nicola Sturgeon, standing in for Salmond at First Minister s Questions in Holyrood, countered that Citigroup was wrong, that renewables were on target and that, anyway, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, there was still ?376 billion in North Sea Oil, waiting to be exploited.  Those attacks followed days of criticisms of Salmond. The outgoing Labour leader, Iain Gray, used his farewell speech last Saturday to condemn the  ugly side of nationalism  under Salmond s leadership, which he claims is spreading vile poison  across public life.  The image he conjured up was of Salmond as the Dark Lord, presiding over his cybernat  demons to pollute the internet with what Gray called  smears and lies against anyone who disagrees with him.  Salmond has been here before, of course, and he s well used to Unionists attempting to link him to the  dark side of nationalism , as Labour s former shadow scottish secretary, George (now Lord) Robertson used to put it. In the 1990s, Labour portrayed Salmond as a cross between Umberto Bossi of the Italian Lombard League and the Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. Salmond was famously dubbed the  toast of Belgrade  for his opposition to allied bombing during the Kosovo conflict. More recently, before the 2007 Scottish election, the SNP leader was excoriated in the Scottish tabloid press as  the most dangerous man in Scotland . During the recent Supreme Court row, the advocate general, Lord Wallace, accused Salmond of challenging the rule of law itself by his  aggressive interventions  against English judges.  The First Minister naturally dismisses these charges and points out that he remains hugely popular where it counts    among Scottish voters. They don t seem to think Salmond has horns on his head. The FM s personal popularity has been a huge electoral asset to the SNP, so it s not surprising Unionists have been doing their best to tarnish it. What is surprising is how inept they are at doing so. Lord Cormack s comparison last week with Robert Mugabe was as ludicrous as it was offensive   no-one, not even Lord Cormack, seriously believes that the FM intends to lock up opposition politicians and foment violence on the streets.  In the same debate, the former Tory Scottish Secretary, Lord Forsyth, claimed, under parliamentary privilege, that the SNP leader had told the Chancellor, George Osborne, privately that if Westminster tried to stage its own referendum on independence, Salmond would  use the police  to frustrate it. The SNP say they ve no idea what Lord Forsyth was talking about.  What the Unionists never quite seem to grasp is that many Scottish voters   even some Unionists   regard such remarks about Scotland s elected leader as a slight against them. Treating the First Minister of Scotland as a devious anti-colonial demagogue or a proto-dictator is offensive toward the Scottish people.  Similarly, the charge that Scotland is too wee or too poor to govern itself is counter-productive and flies in the face of constitutional reality in Europe. Yet, hardly a week goes by without some politician claiming that Scotland would be in the red to the tune of ?4 billion   the figure quoted by annabel Goldie in her swan song as Tory leader.  There has also, in recent weeks, been a succession of  leaks  from  Government sources  questioning Salmond s policy on Europe. One claimed it would take three years and  billions  in lost revenue, before an independent Scotland would be allowed to rejoin the EU. another said if Scotland did remain in Europe, there would have to be border posts to control emigration to England.  It was all rather similar to the debates before the creation of the Scottish Parliament, when Edinburgh financiers warned of a flight of investment because of the  uncertainty  of devolution.I doubt there is a conscious conspiracy to demonise alex Salmond. Scotland s Unionist parties are in no shape to mount anything so coherent just now. Rather, there are signs Westminster politicians, and the London media, are becoming more aware of what s happening in Scotland and are starting to ask more searching questions, not just about independence, but also of  devolution max    which many believe is a ruse by Salmond to  rig the referendum so he can t lose.  It has to be said that many questions are legitimate: there are, indeed, gaps in the SNP s independence prospectus. If Scotland keeps the pound after separation, is that really independence? Do the SNP still support the euro, and how would it be introduced? Would England set up border controls if Scotland had a more liberal policy on immigration?  There has also been a more considered strand of criticism from liberal commentators such as the journalist Joyce McMillan, who sat on the devolution constitutional steering committee in the 1990s. Last week, she warned Scotland was becoming, by default, a  one-party state .  It s time,  she said,  for the people of Scotland to wake up to the dangers of this largely unforeseen situation; and perhaps to start developing some new and imaginative mechanisms for challenging the SNP s dominance, forcing it to clarify its ideas, and holding it to account.  The SNP s decision after the Scottish elections to  hog  the chairmanships of parliamentary committees is regarded as a sign of this centralism   though it has to be said that packing committees is what all governments do.  Since the May election, Salmond has certainly lost no time in sweeping aside opposition to his legislative programme. Last week, he pressed ahead with minimum pricing of alcohol, a measure that had been defeated by the opposition parties before the 2011 election.  The SNP have also introduced a supermarket levy and Salmond seems determined to drive through the controversial Offensive Behaviour at Football Matches Bill in the teeth of opposition. Whatever h  
 MaRINE RENEWaBLE ENERGY  Last year the Offshore Valuation Group, a collection of academics, industry and Government experts, concluded that marine renewable energy from the North Sea would be worth at least as much as oil has been, and could power the whole of the UK by 2050. The Scottish Government estimates that by 2020 the industry could be employing 40,000 people and bringing in ?30 billion  of investment.  Wind pOWER  Scotland s onshore wind capacity is now greater than both our nuclear stations put together and plenty more is possible while still protecting our most important landscapes. Scotland s peak electricity demand is 5GW and onshore wind can now provide up to 2.7GW, with another 10GW in the pipeline. Offshore wind is going to be even bigger but is just  beginning to take off, with Donald Trump s favourite scheme off aberdeen part of the 10GW already planned.  Wave and tidal  Scotland really is leading the world on wave and tidal power development,  with major companies coming here  from abroad and several Scottish companies with successful medium-scale machines already in the water.  Up to 1.6GW is expected to be running by 2020 but the long-term potential is more like 20GW.  Hydro  Large-scale hydro was the major renewable energy success of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, bringing electricity and jobs to the glens of Scotland. There are still some big schemes that could be developed but much of the focus is on schemes at the estate, farm or community scale.  Solar  Solar photovoltaic panels make electricity, solar thermal   
 Let s call it the CitiGroup Baton. It was unsheathed on Tuesday to take a swing at the Scottish Government s ambitious plans to become the renewable energy powerhouse of Europe. The baton was a finance sector research note put out for institutional investors by Citigroup s head of european utility research, Peter atherton.  Bills for residential consumers could rise by ?875 per annum,  atherton predicted. The analyst calculated that in a post-independent Scotland money to support the fledgling renewable energy sector, which currently comes from a levy on all UK domestic and business energy bills, would have to be met by a much smaller pool of consumers.  The problem with the report is that it makes no assessment of the likely revenue available to a newly independent Scotland. It assumes that the transition to independence would be revenue neutral, that there would be no revenue boost from Scotland s oil and gas resources.  The atherton report also assumes any future independent Scottish Government would be happy to retain the flat-rate levy on consumers which pays for our electricity infrastructure. In fact, it is far from certain the levy would be retained.  If Finance Secretary John Swinney takes the keys of the Scottish Treasury, one of the first tasks he and his civil servants would face would be to review the tax system inherited from Westminster.  Under the current system, energy watchdog Ofgem calculates that environmental costs account for 4% of gas bills and 10% of electricity bills. With the average household spending ?424 on electricity per year the levy amounts to ?42 for every household annually.  These environmental costs are levied on domestic energy bills without any assessment of a consumer s ability to pay. Rich or poor the levy is the same. The reality is that most people use about the same amount of electricity each day. Those with relatively high consumption tend to be in poor housing with low-energy efficiency or the unemployed, in short the most vulnerable in our society.  Were this levy to rise by ?875, as atherton predicts,  it would be seen for what it is: a regressive tax. In effect,  a poll tax. To borrow a phrase from the Occupy Wall Street movement, it favours the 1%-ers.  an independent Scotland would also be free to take new money-raising measures, free of the devolution settlement that stops it from borrowing. That would open up alternative models, such as new municipal infrastructure bonds supported by future revenue streams or directly from Government coffers.  There are other flaws in atherton s report. He suggests, for instance, that England and Wales may eschew electricity exports from an independent Sc  
 a MaJOR financial company has dismissed claims that investors should be cautious about backing Scotland s renewable energy industry because of the upcoming referendum on independence.  Investment firm altium Securities has released a report rubbishing rival company Citigroup s research, published last week, which said that the referendum process would create  huge uncertainty  for those looking to fund green energy projects north of the Border.  an international firm with offices in eight countries and a history of billion pound deals, altium Security s views will carry a lot of weight within the business community.  Their findings were seized upon by the SNP Government, with Energy Minister Fergus Ewing saying the report makes it clear that investment will continue whatever Scotland s constitutional status,  including under independence.  In its own study, Citigroup warned that a Scotland which had broken from the UK would not be able to afford the ?4 billion subsidy it would require to fund enough renewable energy projects to meet targets on emissions, and that investors could risk seeing their assets  stranded .  But altium Security s own findings claim Scotland is the best-placed country in Europe to capitalise on environmentally-friendly energy from wind and tidal power, and that without the flow of energy from north of the Border, England would struggle to achieve its own climate change objectives. although it does not name Citigoup directly, saying only that it is in response to a recently-published rival s study, the report is clearly aimed in its direction.  It is scathing of the assertion that Scottish renewable energy would not be a safe investment, stressing that with its wealth of natural resources, Scotland can be the lowest-cost generator of wind energy in Europe as its higher-capacity wind farms can generate electricity more cheaply than the rest of the UK and most of Continental Europe.  analyst David Cunningham, the report s author, said:  The energy market is resolutely agnostic towards politics. Companies may take notice if they are operating in a country where there s a volatile situation, but otherwise it s immaterial if a country like Scotland is independent of the rest of the UK.  The SNP were clearly delighted last night to have received backing from such a highly-regarded firm.  Ewing said:  The report demolishes nonsensical claims made recently. The fact is there will be a continuing need for Scottish renewable electricity to be exported to help keep the lights on in the UK.  International corporations and domestic firms are investing for the future in Scotland s world leading renewables industry. For as long as the wind blows and the tides turn, that investment will continue.  according to green energy firm Scottish Renewables, international businesses have invested more than ?750 million in environmentally-friendly projects in Scotland, including building wind farms and the turbines they use, to developing tidal power and building low-carbon heaters for homes.  It is estimated that potential investment in renewable energy will be worth ?46bn to the economy in the coming years, with major investors lined up to pour money into an industry Scotland is uniquely placed to capitalise on.  One insider at a major power company said that the Citigroup report had led to a great deal of confusion, as global companies hav  
 TO a political strategist at the Scottish Government, there is nothing like finding a cause to use as ammunition against the Westminster coalition. Oil remains the SNP s favourite, of course. Nuclear has been a lot of fun. High-speed rail will run and run. But since London published its review of the subsidy system for renewable energy a couple of weeks ago, the Nationalists have been trying out a new weapon. This one may not have sharp edges or any high-tech gadgetry attached, but what better than trees for battering against the door to Scottish nationhood in the run-up to the referendum?  Led by Energy Secretary Fergus Ewing, the Scottish Government has been raising concerns about the future of the timber industry. The root of its gripes, if you ll pardon the pun, is biomass power: burning wood to produce heat and electricity. The Government is all in favour of both small-scale biomass generators and the domestic wood-fired boilers that will be subsidised from next October. But it has come out against big biomass of the kind that would power many thousands of buildings, which is generally defined as 50MW and upwards.  The Government s argument, which echoes what the timber industry has been saying in Scotland for some time, is that biomass will severely damage timber processing businesses. This includes sawmills, panel makers, cabinet makers and paper mills. These industries, plus customers ranging from joinery firms to furniture shops, are naturally vulnerable to changes in timber prices. The industry is afraid that heavy new wood demand from biomass generators could make the main material unaffordable. It is not talking about a little bit of extra pressure, either. as Stuart Goodall of industry association, Confor, says: Demand from these big stations is in some cases more than one million tonnes of wood a year, in a country that produces about seven million tonnes [10 million in the UK as a whole]. and that s just one plant.  across the UK, biomass plants are already burning four million tonnes of various materials   mostly wood but also things like straw and paper sludge, mostly imported. and that demand for the equivalent of nearly half the annual UK wood supply is almost entirely from small plants, with the exception of the 222MW operation at Drax in Yorkshire.  Yet this is nothing compared to the 20 new plants that have been approved by the authorities. With eight planning to produce more than 100MW of power each, and several at 750MW, which is getting on for the size of a traditional power station, these will burn 31 million tonnes of mostly wood each year. If you add on those that are either in the planning stages or being proposed   including plants in Dundee (120MW), Grangemouth (120MW), Rosyth (120MW), Leith (200MW) and Hunterston (224MW)   the total extra wood demand will be at least 50 million tonnes. With this huge wood requirement, the industry is obviously expecting to import most of the supplies. But this doesn t assuage any concerns from the industry and the Scottish Government. They argue that the combined wood demand from these and other plants in other major economies will drive up world prices of timber.  Even with long-term supply contracts, eventually, they say, there will be so many biomass plants worldwide that supply will be too tight and biomass companies will be forced to raid local markets. any timber processor still left after the initial surge in prices will find it can t get wood. Moreover, they argue, importing wood comes with its own issues: it reduces the security of our energy supply and it means we are burning large amounts of transport fuel to get the wood to the plants   thus undermining the carbon neutrality of the technology.  The answer, according to the Scottish Government, is to kill all subsidies for big biomass forthwith. It is particularly worried about plants that produce only power, since this is a huge waste of the heat that they give off at the same time. and with Scotland producing most UK trees and more than half of all sawn wood, the Nationalists are also putting pressure on Westminster to follow suit. as Ewing recently said:  Extensive use of large-scale biomass for electricity-only is likely to push up timber prices and risk hundreds of jobs in traditional wood industries.  Interestingly, there seems to be no split between the processors and the foresters on this issue, even though the latter ought to gain from higher prices. Stephen Vickers, group strategy director at the Buccleuch Group, which owns 10,000 hectares of forest and also has interests in small biomass, says that forest owners need to think beyond short-term gains.  The timber processors have always been there, helping turn our crop into what end-customers need. What if something replaces biomass a few years later? Where would that leave us if many of the processors have gone out of business?  he says.  He also rejects a common counter-argument from the biomass industry, which is that wood for burning is lower quality than wood for sawing, and that they re not competing in the same markets. He says biomass on a small scale will buy up the so-called forest residue. Demand from big biomass would make this stuff more valuable, however, and he believes it would expand further down the tree and eat into higher-quality stocks.  So do these arguments stack up? One point to note is that the UK Government is not as keen on big biomass as the Scottish Government seems to be suggesting. It is true that they are proposing to continue subsidies, but in their consultation document they cite research by engineering consultancy arup that found that big biomass was not economically viable at the subsidy levels being proposed (one-and-a-half times the standard power price, or two times if it includes heat). If this is correct, it will make no difference that 20 plants have been approved and many more are on the drawing board. They won t get built because the returns won t be there. In other words, the argument between the UK and Scottish Governments is really a debate about how best to encourage small biomass while discouraging bigger plants.  There are also arguments in favour of big biomass. Notwithstanding the imports issue, it still contributes to carbon reduction targets and is better for the planet than getting electricity from burning coal or gas, which are also often imported.  Calum Wilson, managing director of Forth Energy, the joint venture between Scottish and Southern Energy and Forth Ports that is behind the plant proposals for Leith, Dundee, Rosyth and Grangemouth, argues that his industry is simply not interested in UK wood. It is too slow-growing, has too much moisture content, and the foresters are not able to offer the suitable long-term supply contracts. So not only would his plants use more or less 100% imported wood now, they would not want to use UK wood in the future, either.  He points out that they would produce heat as well as power, and claims they are not, therefore, the main target of the Scottish Government s concerns. Yet each plant will harness at least two or three times the amount of power as heat, even though burning wood to produce electricity gives off about three times as much heat. This means most of the heat the plants give off would be wasted, which environmentalists argue is inevitable with big plants. Wilson argues though that the proposals are designed to harness as much heat as required for nearby local district heating networks or businesses.  There is still the question of whether big biomass will push up world timber prices. Wilson says:  While demand for biomass may well increase on a global scale, I would also anticipate that growers will respond to that by growing biomass crops. There is already evidence of growers and processors responding to increased demand for sustainable biomass.  This may be right, but increasing the biomass crop might be hit by the same problem that has bedevilled biofuels: if you take land away from agriculture, you might push up food prices and leave people starving.  Opponents such as Vickers of Buccleuch concede that world timber prices are a fact that we may not be able to control . If so, the bottom line is that the debate about subsidies between Scotland and London may be a side show. The real choice m  
 THE French power giant alstom looks to have decided not to build a plant for making offshore wind turbines in  Scotland, putting extra pressure on the government to attract other manufacturers, the Sunday Herald has learned.  The French group, which intends to create a 6MW turbine, is understood to have looked closely over a long period at Scottish ports like Leith and Dundee that are vying to be at the forefront of the coming push to develop offshore wind farms. But several sources, including a senior Scottish official, have said the company is now concentrating on the English east coast, although alstom insists it has yet to make a decision.  The loss will be a disappointment to the Scottish Government in a week where the UK Government finally confirmed that it would release ?100 million through the fossil fuel levy for the Scottish renewables industry. Holyrood has so far had to settle for announcing research projects that might later lead to manufacturing commitments by Mitsubishi near Edinburgh, Doosan Babcock near Paisley and Gamesa in Lanarkshire. In contrast, England has secured two manufacturing commitments from Siemens at Humberside and Vestas at Sheerness in Kent. The German and Danish companies are respectively the number one and two wind turbine manufacturers in the world.  The Scottish Government is under mounting pressure to secure manufacturers as the industry gears up for the so-called Round Three phase of offshore wind farms in three or four years time. By far the biggest round so far, the size and number of turbines required for what will be much greater water depths and fiercer conditions than the current rounds effectively dictate that the devices are at least assembled and probably also manufactured in the UK.  Lewis Macdonald, infrastructure spokesman for Scottish Labour, said:  This demonstrates that Scotland is behind in the race for offshore wind and needs to catch up if we are to get a share of the market.  We are very well placed because of aberdeen s expertise in oil and gas and deployment in harsh and difficult conditions. Th  
 aNY way you cut it, the unemployment figures look as bad at the end of the week as they did earlier. One in four young people in Scotland workless. a million in the UK. a dearth of ideas about what to do about it, except blame migrants coming here and taking our jobs. according to reports last week, young people are now being press-ganged into working for nothing in Tesco and Poundland for two months  unpaid  work experience .  When a society abandons its young people, it loses its moral integrity. The contract between the generations breaks down. We saw some of the consequences on English city streets last summer. We see a more constructive response in the tents being erected by the Occupy movement in city centres. What we don t see are the hundreds of thousands who end up resorting to drugs and alcohol. In the 1980s, when last we had youth unemployment at this level, Scotland was ravaged by a drug-addiction binge from which the nation has yet to recover.  How did we get here? How could a society that was enjoying   if that s the right word   the most profligate consumer boom in history suddenly, within a few years, end up in the middle of an economic depression with millions facing poverty?  The short answer is debt: public debt and private debt. We spent and spent on goods we mostly didn t need, from flat-screen televisions to overpriced cafe lattes. Monster cars that block the roads. Piles of cheap clothing that make instant landfill. The state-hired legions of extravagantly paid bureaucrats.  But mostly we spent the money on houses. If you look at where the biggest debts lie, they are in real estate, and when you look at the roots of the current financial crisis, they are all to do with housing. The banking crisis really began the day Northern Rock started offering those 125% mortgages   the ultimate lending madness. The US property bubble collapsed first in the third quarter of 2006, when house prices started to fall. That undermined the value of those subprime mortgage bonds the banks had been trading, which triggered a global credit crunch. The Bank of England still holds hundreds of billions of toxic mortgage-related paper. Countries such as Spain, which at the height of the boom were building 800,000 houses a year, are now drowning under debt as whole estates lie empty.  The eurozone turmoil might look like a crisis of political leadership or fiscal incontinence, but what lies beneath is the banking crisis caused by the collapse of the great noughties property bubble   a bubble of which everyone, including the governor of the Bank of England, denied the existence until it popped. The sovereign debt crisis is a kind of pass-the-parcel   everyone trying to get out from under their huge pile. It s important to remember this as Britain blames Germany for forcing the pace on the eurozone; Germany attacks Britain for protecting the City of London; France blames Berlusconi; and everyone blames the Greeks.  and here s the funny thing about debt: it isn t tangible. You can see a house it is a physical object   but you can t see the debt that relates to it. Moreover, if all the debts and all the assets were to come together in some great financial reckoning in the sky, the books would eventually balance, and there would still be all the physical assets. The factories and ships, the amazon warehouses filled with stuff, the laboratories and universities: all of these would still exist. That s a gross over-simplification but it s important to remember because what happens in a debt-driven depression is a wanton destruction of these productive assets.  This is happening right now across Britain, as factories close because they are denied credit from the banks or because they have no buyers for their goods. The machines rust, and the skills of the workers deteriorate as they become unemployed. Young people don t get jobs, don t learn skills, and after a while become unemployable. This means lost production in future as well as human misery today. Britain lost much of its manufacturing industry during the bubble years, and now the remains are rotting.  John Maynard Keynes analysed all this in the 1930s. It requires some political agency to stop the  
 SUPPORTERS of Scotland s burgeoning solar power industry, estimated to be worth ?50 million to the Scottish economy, have warned that the UK Government s threat to slash consumer subsidies for solar projects by 50% threatens  thousands of jobs  in the emerging sector.  Scotland has 140 companies listed as supplying solar power equipment. Industry figures  are warning of mass lay-offs if the planned cut drives down demand and companies go out of business. Daniel Borisewitz of industry group Scottish Renewables told the Sunday Herald that the move would have  a real impact on the feasibility and economic viability of businesses supplying and installing while also damaging consumer and investor confidence in renewable energy incentive schemes.  The Department of Energy & Climate Change s (DECC)  review consultation  for solar feed-in tariffs (FIT), announced  last month, proposes to halve subsidies for solar projects between 1kW and 50kW, with a further FIT cut for buildings that are not up to the required energy-efficiency ratings. The changes come into effect from December 12, four months earlier than previously announced.  according to the DECC the latter measure could rule out up to 86% of households in the UK which do not meet the minimum efficiency requirement.  andrew Lyle, managing director of Edinburgh-based Locogen, told the Sunday Herald:  It s an absolute nightmare. People are rammed with work between now and December, and it s going to be dead after that.  The issue is threatening to split the Coalition Government after reports last week that Liberal Democrat politicians were organising against the proposed move.  The proposed cuts have already provoked a furious reaction from SNP, Labour and Green politicians, environmentalists and industry figures.  Last Friday,  a  day of action  or  mass lobby of parliament  to urge MPs to block Government plans to cut the feed-in tariff was announced for December 12, to rally political opposition to the early cut-off date.  The consultation deadline, originally planned for april 2012, has also been brought forward to December, leading to complaints that the sector has had too little time to adjust business plans. any FIT application now received on or after December 12 will be affected by the new proposals.  Under the new regime, promised rates of return for solar power users are likely to drop from 11% down to 4.5-5% in the domestic sector, 11% to 3% in the social housing sector, from 15% to 7% in the small commercial sector and from 15% to 8% in the larger commercial se  
 IT has been a long time coming for Richard Branson, but the C  
  
 l Kyoto, Japan (1997): The Kyoto Protocol set binding obligations on industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. after years of negotiations, it finally went into force in 2005 and almost all countries have now ratified the treaty with the notable exception of the US.  l Some countries and regions, including the EU, were on track by 2011 to meet or exceed their Kyoto goals, but other large nations were falling short. The two biggest emitters, the US and China, have churned out more than enough extra greenhouse gas to erase all the reductions made by other countries during the Kyoto period.  l Copenhagen (2009): This was supposed to decide the new post-2012 treaty and include stronger action on mitigation by all countries. It resulted in no legally binding agreement and a deal that environmentalists claimed did little to cut emissions.  ENDS 
 another  world summit on climate change, another set of desperate hopes and promises ... and another feeling that we re heading for a fall. The 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) opens in Durban, South africa, tomorrow. Ministers and officials from 200 countries, including Stewart Stevenson, Scotland s Climate Change Minister, will gather to try to hammer out progress on cutting the pollution that is wrecking the climate.  However, prospects for the summit are bleak. No-one expects any major breakthroughs, and no-one believes that a legally-binding agreement   promised for Copenhagen two years ago and again for Cancun last year   will be reached.  In fact, the latest intelligence suggests all the major industrialised nations have given up on making such an agreement until 2016, and even then it wouldn t come into force until 2020. For the poorer countries struggling to survive the droughts, floods and storms already being triggered by climate change, that is much too late.  Perhaps that is why the former president of Costa Rica, Jos? Mar?a Figueres, has called for an extension of the worldwide Occupy Durban movement provoked by the South african banking crisis.  I have called on all vulnerable countries to occupy Durban,  he said.  We need an expression of solidarity by the delegations of those countries that are most affected by climate change, who go from one meeting to the next without getting responses on the issues that need to be dealt with.  The delay in reaching agreement has been condemned by the United Nations, and many of the developing countries vulnerable to climate change.  It has been described as  reckless and irresponsible  by the alliance of Small Island States, which represents those most at risk from rising sea levels.  The biggest problem is that President Barack Obama s US administration will not contemplate binding limits on pollution because of fierce opposition from Congress. and critics are wary of challenging Obama too forcefully in case it helps a Republican become the next president.  If the US won t back legal limits, neither will Russia, Japan, China or India, leaving only Europe in favour of them   and it is lukewarm and divided.  So delegates are likely to leave Durban in two weeks without replacing the emissions reductions promised in the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire at the end of this year.  Progress on an agreement giving poor countries access to a promised $100 billion green fund to help them cope with the ravages of climate change also stalled last month. The US and Saudi arabia withdrew support at the last minute, provoking ire from developing countries.  as an analysis for WWF, put it:  If the negotiations continue on the same path they have been on this year, COP17 is doomed to fail.  The deepening global financial crisis, coupled with looming threats o  
 Scottish ministers are under mounting pressure to reverse their  embarrassing failures to put in place the policies needed to cut climate-altering pollution.  as Environment and Climate Change Minister Stewart Stevenson arrives in Durban, South africa, for the world s next round of climate talks, his Government is under fierce fire at home for slashing spending on environmentally friendly travel and not doing enough to save energy in homes.  a powerful coalition of groups representing substantial  
 When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?  So asked the celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes. We hope that Chancellor George Osborne will show similar intellectual flexibility in his autumn financial statement on Tuesday.  The facts are these: growth is flat, Government debt is getting bigger, one million young people in Britain are unemployed, Europe is in chaos. The Chancellor may have right on his side when he says Britain has not had a sovereign debt crisis because of the  hard choices  he made over public spending 18 months ago. But things change. If he sticks to the same policies, Britain will assuredly have a crisis before long, because those very same public spending cuts, in the absence of private-sector investment growth, mean the economy will stall, tax revenues will fall and Government debt increase even further. This is simple arithmetic, and it is happening right now.  The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says Britain is heading for recession in the new year. The dreaded double dip is already upon us. The OECD and the International Monetary Fund have warned the British G  
 MURDO Fraser MSP, new convener of the Economy, Enterprise and Tourism Committee, tells agenda that majority governments need robust independent-minded scrutiny, and the SNP-dominated committee is choosing its subjects astutely, notably with a projected enquiry into the SNP Government s renewable energy targets slated for the New Year. Is the 100% equivalent renewables target achievable or desirable? agenda prefers to hear answers from scientists rather than spin doctors, and the committee will be calling on such expertise in the New Year. also on the cards is evidence-taking on carbon capture and storage in the wake of the Longannet decision, with Chris Huhne due to make an appearance.  The committee will be meeting this Wednesday, despite the strike.  STaYING with broadband issues apologies to Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt whose department is, of course, DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport), not DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) as appeared in last week s Sunday Herald business feature on the subject.  also for the garbling of DCMS s point that Scotland s broadband infrastructure allocation  IS based on gaps on existing infrastructure provision, NOT on population . 
 OF all the long-shot Republican candidacies for president, Newt Gingrich s was the first to be pronounced dead. In May, at a campaign event in Iowa, the former House Speaker was approached by a voter, Russell Fuhrman. as television cameras rolled, he shook Gingrich s hand, looked him in the eye, and said:  You re an embarrassment to our party. Why don t you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself?  Gingrich angered hardline Republicans by describing Congressman Paul Ryan s budget plan as  right-wing social engineering  and revelations of a debt to Tiffany s jewellers of at least $250,000 made him look profligate and out of touch with ordinary americans. When he interrupted his fledgling campaign for a two-week trip to the Greek islands with his wife, Callista, his staff resigned in protest. Veteran conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer declared  Newt Gingrich is done ,  and practically the entire political class agreed.  Through the summer, Gingrich was a marginal candidate, contributing to debates from the sidelines, as first Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry and finally Herman Cain stumbled from the spotlight. Now, a month before Republicans first go to the polls to choose their nominee at the Iowa caucus, Gingrich is the undisputed front-runner in the race, having emerged as the Tea Party alternative to Mitt Romney.  according to the latest polls, Gingrich has a 10% lead in Iowa and is rapidly closing the gap in New Hampshire, previously regarded as a Romney stronghold. In Florida, two surveys, conducted by CNN and Public Policy Polling, show Gingrich with a 20% margin, the preferred candidate of the radical and moderate wings of the party. His support among pensioners, who can be relied upon to vote, is particularly strong.  The nomination contest has been so volatile that few would be surprised by another twist, but at the moment it looks like the choice is between Romney and Gingrich.  Romney has run a slick campaign, without any major mis-steps, but his attempt to project an air of inevitability has been undermined by a persistent failure to convince more than 25% of likely Republican voters to back him. Many in the Christian right are turned off by his Mormon faith. Others point to his comparatively liberal track record on abortion, gay rights and universal healthcare as governor of Massachusetts, and wonder if his vehemently expressed conservative convictions can be trusted.  The  anyone but Romney  coalition is broad, but it is astonishing that Gingrich has been the beneficiary. an attack a  
   
 Friday, December 2  an early-morning start after a particularly busy week but at least I m flying to Paris from aberdeen, so nearer home. Here I meet up with anne MacColl, chief executive of Scottish Development International, who will be with me throughout the eight-day, four-city visit. From Paris it s on to Beijing. Without doubt, having a direct air link with China would help our ambitions in the Far East.  Saturday, December 3  arrive in Beijing in the morning, when it s still dark outside. I realise I haven t packed my tartan trews for this evening s event, but we manage to get some made up at very short notice   truly you can buy anything in Beijing.  One of my first engagements is an interview with Phoenix TV s anthony Yuen. This interview, on his Meet The Leaders programme, will be broadcast to an audience of 325 million people   an important early opportunity to sell Scotland. On to the St andrew s Day Ball. The new Chieftain of the Caledonian Society is Ewan Smith.  Sunday, December 4  Pandas! The pandas have arrived back home and are already VIPs   Very Important Pandas! I will be passing on all our thanks when I meet Vice Premier Li Keqiang later tomorrow. Two Pandas going to Scotland as one First Minister goes to China seems like quite a good deal. On to the magnificent Eastern Qing tombs which are the final resting place of some of China s best-known emperors   and are now going to be part of the  Scottish 10  digitally scanned sites. They are awe-inspiring.  a long road back due to freezing fog, but later I meet Spirit Empire chairman Ding Wei who has ambitious plans for whisky sales in China.  Monday, December 5  Start with a packed media conference, then on to the grand setting of the Chinese Civil aviation authority. It s good news. We could have that much-needed direct air link sooner rather than later.  The team grab a quick bite of lunch and then on to the Ministry of Culture for the signing of three major cultural agreements sealing links between the two nations. These cultural links are very important to me, and it is great to see them already bearing fruit   an agreement between the Edinburgh International Festival and the China International Culture association, and Historic Scotland digitally mapping the Eastern Qing tombs.  The afternoon brings one of the highlights of the visit, when I meet with Vice Premier Li Keqiang. His warmth towards Scotland is evident and he agrees to take forward further co-operation between Scotland and China.  The day ends with a Scottish cultural reception and the pipes played by our local Chinese piper George   a reminder of how global Scotland s reach is.  Tuesday, December 6  Early start, heading to the Central Party School   training ground for all Chinese Communist party leaders   where I will deliver a keynote speech. Travelling with me is a stunning bronze of adam Smith.  Sculpted by Sandy Stoddart, and gifted by Sir angus Grossart, this I intend to present to the school.  The auditorium is packed and I tell the audience there are lessons to be learned in Scotland and China from Smith s teachings of moral philosophy and economics. He lived at a time when Scotland was leading the world in thinking, innovation and invention   Scottish traits that continue to this day.  I then used his teachings on sympathy, empathy and compassion from The Theory of Moral Sentiments to raise critical issues of human rights and climate justice, referencing the vital ongoing UN climate talks in Durban.  I know that the opportunity to speak to the Central Party School is a great honour and relish every moment. and our statue of adam Smith now stands in the school as a constant reminder.  F ormer UN Human Rights ambassador Mary Robinson and I issue a joint call to the governments at the climate talks for more action on this issue.  Wednesday, December 7  Up early in Beijing to appear on Tuesday evening s BBC Scotland Newsnight programme. Chatted to Glenn Campbell from BBC Scotland who is out in China reporting this week. Beijing station next, then travel by bullet train to Dezhou. an amazing journey and an opportunity to see what high-speed rail could do for Scotland. Today we announce the collaboration between Scotland s world-leading wave and tidal testing hub, the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, with counterparts Ocean University of China, in Shandong Province. I visit the impressive Himin Solar Valley site to show support for potential investment in Scottish research on renewables, and see the worlds greenest hotel the Sun-Moon Mansion.  Back on the train I travel to Jinan and another media conference. Shandong is the second most populous province in China with 94.7 million people. I meet with the Scotland-Shandong working group and sign a renewed Memorandum of Understanding. From Jinan I fly to Shenzhen, the fastest-growing city in all of China.  We have now travelled from the sub-zero temperatures of Beijing to a sub-tropical climate in the south of China   such is the vastness of the country.  Thursday, December 8  Just one day in Shenzhen and we make the most of every minute. We kick off by meeting the Mayor of Shenzhen, Mr Xu Qin, who enthusiastically welcomes an agreement to explore Shenzhen  twinning  with a major Scottish city   and gave his commitment to work together on areas of collaboration in the future. a very productive meeting. It s then on to Huawei industrial base, which has links to Scottish universities. I m a passionate believer in the power of education to bring people together.  It s a huge city. Scottish Development International has targeted Shenzhen as offering the biggest trade and investment opportunity of all of China s 274 provincial cities, so the stakes couldn t be higher   and we are backed in Shenzhen by a 20-strong business delegation from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. Scotland and Shenzhen have a great future.  I meet with the China Development Bank to push Scotland as an ideal venue for them to invest in. It s then back to the hotel to gather our bags and on again to our last city   Hong Kong.  No-one can stop themselves from looking at the view as we go over the bridge from mainland China and see the iconic city of Hong Kong stretch out before us especially in the dark with the lights glowing ahead.  I m in the hotel for around seven. I speak to the team and catch up with the lunchtime news back home. I m briefed on the gales predicted to batter Scotland and receive regular updates on what s happening back home.  Friday, December 9  Into the studios of the american television network CNBC, where   
 EUROPEaN ministers were last night racing against the clock to secure the strong climate deal they have been seeking from the latest talks on global warming.  The UN talks in South africa, had been due to finish on Friday night, but carried on throughout yesterday as the European Union continued to press for agreement to negotiate a new legally binding treaty by 2015.  UK Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said they were prepared to go on as long as it took to secure the  credible  agreement the EU was looking for, but admitted time was running out to get a deal. 
 WE had the Cold War. Now get ready for the Very Cold War. Scotland, military strategists warn, is back on the frontline of a new geopolitical conflict. This time the battle is for control of the arctic, as global warming frees up new shipping passages and opportunities for tourism, oil and underwater mining.  Navy expert Lee Willett of RUSI is seriously concerned that the UK is still fixated on warmer climes as Russia, america and even China (which is said to be trying to buy a port in Iceland) eye the arctic and North atlantic.  The Russians showing up stirs up a lot of Cold War memories,  he says of the arrival of an entire carrier group in the Moray Firth last week.  But it is more than that. There are significant strategic issues in this part of the world and we have been distracted elsewhere.  During the Cold War, Royal Navy ships and subs, often based in Scotland, picketed the seaways between Greenland and Iceland and Iceland and Britain. Russia plans at least one new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for the arctic while Willett questions if the UK is even planning to build ships that are capable of thriving in such waters. 
 Throughout the Cold War the defence of the British homeland was underpinned by a need to maintain sufficient naval and air force assets in Scotland to protect the county from a Soviet threat in the northern ocean and the skies above.  as a result, the Scottish land mass was a floating aircraft carrier, with fighters stationed at RaF Leuchars and RaF Lossiemouth and Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft based at RaF Kinloss. at the same time, the Royal Navy stationed ships at Rosyth and Faslane.  With the regular downsizing of the armed forces all that has changed and Scotland s role has diminished. In last year s hastily conceived Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) Scotland lost the bases at Leuchars and Kinloss. Shrinkage has also left the navy s surface fleet at its smallest in modern times.  Some idea of the problems caused by that shrinkage can be seen in last week s arrival of a Russian naval battle group in the Moray Firth, investigated by HMS York, a destroyer based in far-off Portsmouth.  The carrier admiral Kuznetzov and its escorts claimed to be sheltering from a storm that hit whi  
 I intend to make some significant changes to the no pain, no gain portfolio. The new year provides an ideal opportunity for such an exercise which will, I hope, allow my little collection of shares to face the vicissitudes that probably lie ahead.  Progress in the past year was not as strong as I had hoped. True, profits moved ahead. But the advance should have been more compelling. Perhaps some ins and outs will have the desired impact.  My guess is that shares will again make headway this year although the going is likely to be exceedingly tough. The Footsie index could, I believe, close 2011 at around 6,300 points. attempting to predict is always a hazardous exercise and the observation that there are only two kinds of forecaster - those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know - is never far away. Many believe that attempting to predict Footsie's level in 12 months' time is a waste of time (and space). Still, its an exercise I have attempted, with varied success, for many years and I do not see any reason to switch off now.  The economic outlook is not encouraging, with consumer spending under increasing pressure, There is also the possibility that many companies will only be able to increase profits by again slicing costs and not through growth. Hardly a happy prospect. But the stock market always endeavours to look ahead. There could well be some indications that the world's economy is really on the mend as the year progresses and shares should respond to any prospect of happier times. Such an improving atmosphere could provoke a revival in corporate activity which would add fuel to any recovery.  But a collapse of the euro - a distinct possibility - could destroy any wellbeing. although, in the long run, the demise of such a controversial and politically inspired currency, would be beneficial, the short-term ramifications could be huge, shattering confidence in stock markets around the world. With so much uncertainty abounding I feel obliged to reshape the portfolio. I am dumping Printing.com and Private & Commercial Finance. The departure of Printing.com is rather sad. It is the longest serving constituent, having clocked six years of membership. But I fear there is a grave danger that the  
 a CLOSE ally of Ed Miliband has urged Labour to rally behind him and accept that he has a mandate for his policies to make the 50p rate of income tax permanent and bring in a graduate tax.  In an interview with The Independent, Maria Eagle, the shadow Transport Secretary, hit back at sniping at Mr Miliband's performance since he defeated his brother David for the Labour leadership. He clocks up 100 days in his job tomorrow.  "Ed won, fair and square," she said, dismissing criticism that he relied on trade union support and won fewer voters than his brother among MPs and party members. "Everyone who entered that contest knew what the electoral college was and how it worked. That is the end of it," she said.  Ms Eagle, a minister for nine years in four different departments when Labour was in power, was one of only five of the 19 elected Shadow Cabinet members to support Ed Miliband's leadership campaign.  Insiders admit there are tensions over whether Labour's official policies are those in the party's general election manifesto or "Ed's policies". Ms Eagle argued that the central issues on which Mr Miliband fought his leadership campaign were now the "starting point" for Labour's wholesale policy review. They include a permanent 50p rate of tax and a graduate tax to fund universities - both of which have been opposed by alan Johnson, the shadow Chancellor - and incentives to encourage employers to pay a ?7.60 an hour "living wage", higher than the ?5.93 an hour national minimum wage.  Ms Eagle said these three flagship policies show that the Labour leader is in touch with people in the real world. "Ed gets it; he connects with people," she said.  On calls for the 50p tax rate to be temporary, she insisted: "The idea that the priority might be to offer tax cuts for people on ?150,000 a year... that is not where the country is at."  The MP for Liverpool Garston and Halewood rejects criticism that Mr Miliband has lost momentum. "We are all having to adjust to opposition. That is not easy after you have been in government for a long time. There is a lot of Westminster village chat but I think he has done pretty well," she said. "He has made the right calls on the central economic argument and that is coming through in the polls."  Ms Eagle urged Mr Miliband to ignore sniping from Blairites who claim he was wrong to dump a New Labour brand which won three general elections. "Ed is right to emphasise a break with the past, and to move on from that argument between old Labour and New Labour," she said.  Does Mr Miliband's edict that Labour should call the Government "Tory-led" reflect its fears that the Coalition might be popular with the public? "The word [coalition] is quite a cuddly word," she said. "I don't think we have got a cuddly government."  On her transport brief, Ms Eagle said a key issue for Labour's policy review will be the balance between what the user pays and public subsidies. She claimed the Tories do not see the wider social value of transport or public spending generally.  "Their attitude is that spending benefits only the person who receives the service," she said. Labour must show t  
 Shame, vanity, laziness and the desire to fit in are all to be used as tools of Government policy by ministers acting on the advice of a new psychology unit in Whitehall.  The first glimpse into the confidential work of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insight Team came on Tuesday when ministers suggested members of the public should be able to make small charitable donations when using cashpoints and their credit cards.  On Friday, the Cabinet Office again followed the unit's advice in proposing that learner drivers be opted in to an organ donation scheme when they apply for a licence, and also floated the idea of creating a lottery to encourage people to take tests to prove they have quit smoking.  These initiatives are examples of the application of mental techniques which, while seemingly paradoxical to the Coalition's goal of a smaller state, are likely to become a common feature of Government policy.  The public will have "social norms" heavily emphasised to them in an attempt to increase healthy eating, voluntary work and tax gathering. appeals will be made to "egotism" in a bid to foster individual support for the Big Society, while much greater use will be made of default options to select benevolent outcomes for passive citizens - exemplified by the organ donation scheme.  a clue to the new approach came early in the life of the Coalition Government, in a sentence from its May agreement: "Our Government will be a much smarter one, shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past and finding intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves," it read.  The Prime Minister, David Cameron, established the seven-strong unit in July, since when the Government has declined to divulge all its members and the full extent of its work. However, The Independent has learnt its guiding principles and some of the projects that have used its favoured techniques.  One experiment involved Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) secretly changing the wording of tens of thousands of tax letters, leading to the collection of an extra ?200m in income tax.  Other ideas tried elsewhere that have been studied by the unit include reducing recidivism by changing public perception of ex-prisoners, and cutting health costs by encouraging relatives to look after family members in "patient hotels".  The unit draws inspiration from the Chicago University professor Richard H Thaler and his colleague Cass Sunstein, whose book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness is required reading for Conservative frontbenchers.  Professor Thaler, who advises the UK team, suggests that instead of forcing people to behave more virtuously through legislation, governments can guide them in the right direction using psychology. Ministers should become, in his jargon, "choice architects", making virtuous choices more attractive than unvirtuous ones. In his books he quotes the example of automatically opting workers into company pensions to raise the amount saved for old age, which will come into force in the UK in 2012 having been enacted by Labour. another is from amsterdam's Schiphol airport, where flies were etched on to urinals to give men something to aim at, reducing spillages in the gent's toilets.  Mr Cameron embraced nudge theory two years ago in a speech about "Broken Britain", but has subsequently placed more emphasis on his own idea of the Big Society, where individuals and charities play a much greater role ias the state shrinks.  Both ideas, however, fit neatly into the work of the insight team, which reports to key Government figures including Jeremy Heywood, the Prime Minister's Permanent Secretary, Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron's director of strategy, and Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary.  Central to this is limiting regulation and cost, according to the unit's director, Dr David Halpern, a former Cambridge University social psychology lecturer.  In comments to policymakers and businesspeople in Brussels recorded by The Independent last month, Dr Halpern said: "One of the policies of this new administration is essentially a 'one in, one out' approach to regulation, so departments wanting to introduce a new form of regulation have to get rid one at the same time. One of the fashionable things to say is: 'Well, what are the alternatives to regulatory instruments?' - spending money - which they're not very keen on. So it tends to support this shift towards behavioural economics."  Dr Halpern has experience of seeking unconventional solutions to policy problems via his role as chief analyst at Tony Blair's Strategy Unit, which looked into ways of increase happiness in the UK that - in common with other western countries - have not kept pace with economic growth.  Dr Halpern's approach, carried over from his days with Mr Blair, centres on his favourite term, "Mindspace," an acronym that stands for: Messenger (i.e. he who communicates information affects its impact); Incentives; Norms (what others do influences individuals); Defaults (pre-set options tend to be accepted); Salience (revelance and novelty attract attention); Priming (sub-conscious cues); affect (the power of emotional associations); Commitments (keeping public promises); and Ego (the stroking of which encourage positive action).  Seeking to explain Messenger he told his Brussels audience: "It matters who tells you. If you are go to say something about vaccination, you are much better off having the Chief Medical Officer say it than a Cabinet minister ... if you want anybody to follow the advice."  Similarly, tax officials who reinforce "norms" dramatically increase their collection rates. The authorities tend to be "quite aggressive and assertive" when chasing late payers, Dr Halpern said. "We will send you a rude letter and say: 'We're going to come and find you and break down your door and take away your children.' So [HMRC] officials had been reading a bit of [nudge] literature and they changed letters on just one block of letters [chasing] ?600m in unpaid tax.  "The normal repayment rate is about 50 per cent. The [new] letter says: '94 per cent of people pay their tax on time', so now you emphasis the underlying social norm - and then: 'Even if one person doesn't it has a significant impact'. The repayment rate went up to 85 per cent, [collecting] ?200m just in that experiment."  Intriguingly, closer co-operation between the unit and HMRC was referred to in passing by the Cabinet Office on Friday. at the centre of the unit's work, though, are its priorities: well-being, public health, the environment and philanthropy.  While there are few details so far on how the unit will tackle happiness, plans for public health are more advanced. Britons have one of the worst records in Europe when it comes to rates of obesity, drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The Health Secretary, andrew Lansley favours nudging rather than legislation and has controversially recruited food and drink multinationals, who profit from unhealthy behaviour, to devise appropriate strategies.  One is likely to see signs placed at supermarket checkouts reinforcing social norms about the amount of fruit and vegetables bought by the average shopper. another is the idea of "patient hotels", a Continental innovation where relatives can sleep alongside patients, cutting costs and improving outcomes. This has the added attraction of reducing health spending at a time when the NHS budget will come under increasing pressure from rising demand.  Public health campaigns on STDs are likely to replace factual warnings with questions designed to emphasise social norms. So, instead of advising people of the likelihood of sexual partners having an STD, posters would ask: "What would your girlfriend think of you if you say you don't want to use a condom?"  Some professional health organisations, such as the British Medical association, are concerned that nudges will be used at the expense of new legislation on tobacco advertising, tax on junk food and other issues.  But Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, who is not involved with the unit, welcomed the new emphasis on psychology. "Broadly speaking, I think it's a valid approach," he said.  "If you are interested in changing people's behaviour for their own or the collective good, then regulation is often a blunt tool and it often doesn't harness goodwill. But it's misleading to think with a few nudges consumer behaviour will head off in another direction. [Behavioural economics] is definitely an additional tool, [but] I don't see it as a way to eliminate regulation or redistribution."  THE NUDGE UNIT'S PRIORITIES  * Health  Public health is a priority for the unit, because half of UK health spending goes on treating the consequences of unhealthy behaviour such as drinking, smoking and having unprotected sex. Yet only one half of one per cent of NHS spending goes on promoting healthy behaviour. The unit suggests using respected medical fi  
 Lush green tea plantations, so bright they often look fluorescent, blanket the hills of assam in northeastern India. Women plucking the leaves in black aprons with large baskets on their backs dot the gardens that contribute to India's production of nearly a third of the world's tea. But this picturesque industry that the British began in the early 19th-century faces a very modern problem: climate change.  Researchers and planters worry that a rise in temperatures and change in rainfall patterns are threatening the production and quality of assam's famous tea.  There is also a fear that environmental changes will affect the quality of the tea by weakening its powerful taste.  "We are indeed concerned," Rajib Barooah, another tea planter in Jorhat, told the associated Press. "assam tea's strong flavour is its hallmark."  about 850 tea gardens in assam produce 55 percent of India's tea, but crop yields are decreasing and amid fears of a correlation with environmental change. Production in the state fell from 564,000 tons in 2007 to 487,000 tons in 2009, and the crop was estimated to have fallen to 460,000 tons in 2010, according to the assam Branch Indian Tea association. "Climate changing is definitely happening," said Mridul Hazarika, the director of the Tea Research association, which is conducting studies on how the changes are hitting tea production. "It is affecting the tea gardens in a number of ways."  In the tea-growing areas of assam, average temperatures have risen C and rainfall has fallen by more than a fifth in the past 80 years. Globally, 2010 was the hottest year on record, according to temperature readings by Nasa's Goddard Institute o  
 Conservative ministers introduced a series of pro-car measures yesterday and declared the end of Labour's alleged "war on motorists".  The Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond scrapped rules forcing councils to impose higher parking charges, limit car spaces in new housing developments and obtain planning permission for recharging points for electric vehicles. They said drivers would benefit from lower parking fees and more space, while streets would become less congested.  Labour accused the Coalition of trying to distract drivers from sharp rises in petrol prices caused by this month's rise in duty and VaT. John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, introduced the parking rules a decade ago as a way of promoting greener forms of transport such as walking, buses, trains and cycling.  Claiming they had been part of a counter-productive campaign against driving, the Coalition said they had unfairly penalised motorists, led to over-zealous parking enforcement and increased on-street parking congestion, putting at risk walkers and drivers.  "Whitehall's addiction to micromanagement has created a parking nightmare with stressed-out drivers running a gauntlet of unfair fines, soaring charges and a total lack of residential parking," complained Mr Pickles.  "The result is our pavements and verges crammed with cars on curbs, endangering drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, increased public resentment of over- zealous parkin  
 FOOD RIOTS, geopolitical tensions, global inflation and increasing hunger among the planet's poorest people are the likely effects of a new surge in world food prices, which have hit an all-time high according to the United Nations.  The UN's index of food prices - an international basket comprising wheat, corn, dairy produce, meat and sugar - stands at its highest since the index started in 1990, surpassing even the peaks seen during the 2008 food crisis, which prompted civil disturbances from Mexico to Indonesia.  "We are entering danger territory," said the UN Food and agriculture Organisation's chief economist, abdolreza abbassian.  Global food prices have risen for the sixth month in succession. Wheat has almost doubled since June, sugar is at a 30-year high, and pork is up by a quarter since the beginning of 2010.  The trends have already affected the UK where the jump in food prices in November was the highest since 1976. Meat and poultry were up 1 per cent and fruit by 7.5 per cent in one month.  Food producers have been told to expect the wheat price to jump again this month, hitting bakers and the makers of everything from pasta to biscuits.  More is sure to follow and that in turn will add to pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates to control rising prices. Higher mortgage bills by the end of the year will add to the unpleasantness facing "middle England" from a year of tax hikes and below-inflation pay rises.  However, the biggest impact of the food price shock will be felt in countries in the developing world where staple items command a much larger share of household incomes.  Economists warn that "soft commodity" food prices show little sign of stabilising, and that cereals and sugar in particular may surge even higher in coming months. In addition, long-term trends associated with growth in population and climate change may mean higher food costs become a permanent feature of economic life, even though the current spike may end in due course. Speculation, too, may be part of the crisis, as investors climb on to the rising food-price bandwagon.  Mr abbassian said the UN agency is concerned by the unpredictability of weather activity, which many experts link to climate change. He said: "There is still room for prices to go up much higher, if for example the dry conditions in argentina tend to become a drought, and if we start having problems with winterkill in the northern hemisphere for the wheat crops."  One concern, especially in Ukraine and Russia, is that the cold winter, following disastrous droughts and summer fires, will have damaged the seeds for next year's crops, leading to an even more acute crisis than seen last year. Government policies, especially the export bans imposed by nervous Indian and Russian governments, have exacerbated such problems in world markets.  Meanwhile, burgeoning consumption in the booming economies of east asia and the pressure exerted by the demand for crops for biofuels rather than food, especially in the US, is adding to the unprecedented squeeze on world food supplies.  The latest surge in crude oil prices adds to the risk of turmoil. Many experts say oil prices show few signs of abating, and the price of a barrel is set to breach the $100 barrier again soon. Opec officials yesterday said they were happy with such a level. Oil peaked at just under $150 a barrel in 2  
 In the end, of course, it is all about the money. The Energy and Climate Change Committee's announcement today that a moratorium on deep-water drilling off the coast of the UK should not be imposed does not imply there is no risk of the sort of disaster seen in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Whatever your views about the safety record of oil and gas explorers, that risk can never be entirely discounted. No, this is a decision based on a head-headed economic view: that such is the demand for oil and the cost of switching to less risky alternative sources of energy, deepwater drilling needs to continue.  There will, no doubt, be tighter regulation of those companies operating in the North Sea. But no British government is going to block development of the 100 or so deepwater sites at various stages of exploitation in UK waters. These resources account for around 25 per cent of the country's identified reserves - to give up on them would be to extend our dependence on imported oil from Opec nations.  Opec enjoys this dependence. The International Energy agency warned yesterday that the oil price, which has been hovering around $90 a barrel for some weeks, is slowly but surely moving back towards $100 and to levels that threaten to undermine the economic recovery of the world's developed economies. Yet Opec has not even begun to talk about raising the production caps it imposed before that recovery got going and demand began to rise.  Even in the US, the victim of last summer's spill, the deepwater moratorium has been lifted. President Obama's administration has, in recent days, hinted it is now close to granting applications for new licenses.  In this context, today's report makes the right call. British safety regulations are among the strongest in the world. There is room for improvement - certainly for better policing of the rules - and we should continue to invest in alternatives to oil. We are not yet at a stage, however, where we can afford to turn our back on deepwater resources.  HMV's chairman will be busy at M&S  HMV is beginning to look as if it faces a battle for survival. Shareholders in the music retailer have a well-regarded chief executive in Simon Fox, but they could be forgiven for wondering about Robert Swannell, their chairman. Not because Mr Swannell is not up the job - it is just that since Tuesday this week he has had a new demand on his time.  Mr Swannell is, of course, the new chairman of Marks & Spencer. The post is a demanding one, requiring much of Mr Swannell's attention, even though he already knows the company well.  Strictly speaking, there is nothing to prevent Mr Swannell keeping both roles. Corporate governance rules prohibit one person serving as chairman of more than one FTSE 100 company at the same time, but since HMV is a FTSE 250 constituent, the edict does not apply in this case. Nor is there any conflict of interest: HMV and Marks & Spencer both inhabit the high street, but that's about all they have in common. They are certainly not competitors.  Still, with HMV struggling against such difficult headwinds, shareholders will be anxious that their chairman is able to devote his full energy to the company, particularly since he was paid ?200,000 for his efforts last year.  For that matter, Marks & Spencer shareholders, shelling out ?450,000 for Mr Swannell's services three days a week, will want to be sure their chairman isn't spending too much time worrying about HMV's problems.  Can Mr Swannell combine both jobs? In better times for HMV, maybe, but the company now deserves a c  
 aSTONE-aGE archaeological site in the arabian peninsula has become the focus of a radical theory of how early humans made the long walk from their evolutionary homeland of africa to become a globally-dispersed species.  Scientists have found a set of stone tools buried beneath a collapsed rock shelter in the barren hills of the United arab Emirates that they believe were made about 125,000 years ago by people who had migrated out of eastern african by crossing the Red Sea when sea levels were at a record low.  The age of the stone tools and the fact they they appear similar to those made by anatomically-modern humans living in eastern africa suggests that our species, Homo sapiens, left africa between 30,000 and 55,000 years earlier than previously believed. This casts new light on how modern humans eventually inhabited lands as far apart as Europe and australia.  Genetic evidence had suggested that modern humans made the main migration from africa between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, although there was always a possibility of earlier migrations that had not got much further than the Middle East. However, all these movements were believed to have been made into the Middle East by people walking along the Nile valley and over the Sinai Peninsula.  The stone tools unearthed at the Jebel Faya site about 50km from the Persian Gulf suggests another possible migratory route across the Bab al-Mandab strait, a tract of open water which separates the Red Sea from the arabian Ocean and the Horn of africa from the arabian Peninsula.  The scientists behind the study said that at the time of the migration, about 125,000 years ago, sea levels would have been low enough for people to make the crossing by foot or with simple rafts or boats. They also suggest that the waterless Nejd plateau of southern arabia, which would have posed another barrier to migration, was in fact at that time covered in lakes and lush, game-filled vegetation.  "By 130,000 years ago, sea level was still about 100 metres lower than at present while the Nejd plateau was already passable. There was a brief period where modern humans may have been able to use the direct route from East africa to Jebel F  
 THE INSURERS dominated the top line after surging in the afternoon, with traders speculating that the move was linked to a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  There had been some head-scratching across the City over the sector's strength but several traders said they were hearing positive noises leaking from a meeting between UK insurance and banking executives and US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Shares in Prudential, whose chief executive, Tidjane Thiam, attended the meeting, closed up 20.5p to 704p, but top of the pile was Old Mutual, which rose 5.7p to 131.1p.  The miners also enjoyed a strong session, following updates and broker support from Citi in a sector note. Randgold Resources was up after HSBC upgraded its rating from "neutral" to "overweight", saying the stock was undervalued after "recent disappointments", adding: "We believe the shares are oversold, opening a buying opportunity." It closed 70p up at 4809p. Elsewhere in the sector, Kazakhmys rose 8p to 1541p as it said copper production would meet full-year targets, while zinc and silver production would be better than expected. Evolution Securities upped its rating from "reduce" to "add".  The FTSE 100 struggled for direction throughout the day, closing down an almost apologetic 4.1 points at 5965.  On the downside, shoppers deserted Next over negative readacross from poor results at Sweden's H&M chain, which said it had been hit by the rise in cost of raw materials. Earlier this month, Next said sales had fallen in the run-up to Christmas and, along with a host of other retailers, said prices could rise up to 10 per cent this year. The shares dropped 47p to close at 2028p. It has been a topsy-turvy week for the stock, which plunged on Tuesday in the wake of the shock fall in fourth-quarter GDP in Britain, but rallied the following day after support from Nomura, which upped its rating from "neutral" to "buy".  ON THE second line, Heritage Oil picked itself up, dusted itself down and recovered some of its losses from the previous day, when it gave up almost a third of its value. arbuthnot said Wednesday's gas find in Iraq was "a very different proposition for both Heritage and the investment community" from the oil that had been expected. The broker said it was sceptical over the global gas market, which the International Energy agency has said will be oversupplied to 2020, advising that Heritage should sell its interest in the field. Other analysts said investors had overreacted, and the stock recovered 6.5 per cent yesterday, rising 20.3p to 330.3p.  also toasted on the FTSE 250 was pub and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers, after the market welcomed its interim management statement. The stock increased 14.2p to 357p as it revealed punters had flocked to its joints - which include Harvester and all Bar One - over Christmas.  The worst performer on the index, showing a distinct lack of "MMMBop", was Hansen Transmissions as it confirmed revenues would be a tenth lower than in 2010. The company, which makes gearboxes for wind turbines, said it has been hit by a cut to government subsidies and third-party financing for the wind industry. Its shares plunged in October, when the company first revealed it would miss targets. It was down 3p yesterday to 54p.  IN THE wider market, Hansard Global was among the top small-cap risers, increasing 7p to 170p. The financial company, which specialises in the life assurance sector, was in favour after new business revenues soared by half in the second quarter to ?62.7m. This was helped by a doubling of business won in the Far East.  another solid performer was Eaga, the outsourcing company that is one of the largest national suppliers of heating and renewable energy. The 3p boost to bring the shares to 74.5p came despite the company missing market expectations in the first half. Profits halved and revenues were down 21 per cent as the Government's spending cuts kicked in. Yet investors were happy as the group said negotiations with the Department of Energy were ongoing, and the business had started the second half of the year well.  at the other end of the table was Severfield-Rowen, after it warned on profits. The UK steel group said falling demand coupled with soaring house prices meant profits would miss full-year expectations. The shares plunged almost a fifth, 55.75p lower, to 240p. Broker altium responded by dropping its recommendation from a "buy" to "hold", while KBC Peel Hunt dropped its target price by 30p to 330p.  Tiddler Fyffes was looking as fruity as a Carmen Miranda hat on aim yesterday   
 Rupert Murdoch is so old now that he no doubt hopes there won't be too many of us around who remember what happened when he bought The Times almost exactly 30 years ago. The same doubts about editorial independence were then being expressed just as they are now in relation to Sky News. If Murdoch gains total control, the critics say, what is to stop the Sky News channel from becoming like the Fox News channel in america, notorious for its strident right-wing propaganda and support of Tea Party nutters?  Murdoch's response is to propose the setting up of a board of impartial arbiters to guarantee the editorial independence of the Sky News editors. This is precisely the same proposal as was made and accepted in 1981. Not only did Murdoch make a personal pledge that his editors would be free to express news that might directly conflict with his business interests, but he also announced the formation of a board of independent directors who included the distinguished historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to make sure that editorial integrity was preserved.  Where are they now, we might very well ask, now that The Times quite shamelessly reflects the political opinions of its proprietor, while attacking the BBC and doing its best to promote friendly relations with the Chinese?  Children are growing up in an age of fear  The headmaster of a Catholic primary school in Lancashire was encouraged by the authorities to stage a re-enactment of the Blitz. He announced to the school assembly that war had broken out, whereupon an air raid siren started up and all the children were led down into a cellar by their teachers.  But the project had to be abandoned when several children became upset. The headmaster admitted that many of them had later suffered from nightmares. Such reactions may not be unique to Lancashire, when children all over the country are currently being spoon-fed the history of the Second World War, including all the horrors of Hitler,   
 THE INSURERS had dominated Thursday's session with traders pointing to positive news leaking from Davos. The rise continued yesterday morning, but this time it followed reheated takeover chat and RSa Insurance was once again the focus. Rather than Zurich Financial in the frame though, aviva was being linked.  Bid rumours circled the stock 10 days earlier, with few results. The momentum failed to hold yesterday as wider events overtook the sector. The GDP numbers from the US showed growth but missed forecasts and the unrest in Egypt dragged the FTSE 100 lower, only exacerbated by weakness on the Dow. The blue chip index fall turned into a rout as the week ended down 83.7 points to 5,881.3. The insurers fell with it. RSa closed down 1.3p to 135.3p. aviva fell 2.3p to 450.2p.  The lacklustre morning had been dragged lower by the miners, as commodity prices waned. Worst of the day was Vedanta Resources, which ended down 109p to 2,291p.  The retailers also struggled for a second day. after being dragged lower by unexpectedly poor results from Sweden's H&M, the losses extended as consumer confidence hit its nadir for almost two years, according to a GfK NOP survey. Worst hit was Next which gave up 34p to close at 1,994p.  Of the few to remain with their heads above water at the close, satellite group Inmarsat was the strongest. It rose 16p to 681.5p after LightSquared, a partner in the US, paid the first $20.1m of a spectrum-sharing deal. The announcement brought backing from Liberum Capital, which said uncertainty had been removed, and upped its target price from 900p to 950p in response. The deal, which will allow mobile phones to use the satellite spectrum, will see Inmarsat receive $115m a year over the five-year deal.  There was a bullish note in Tesco from Nomura, but it just failed to drag the stock into positive territory. analyst Nick Coulter expects food inflation to be a "long-run phenomenon, providing support to the earnings of food retailers". He thinks Tesco represents a microcosm of the trends in the sector, adding its UK business is "unappreciated". He believes its savings, services growth and expansion of small Extra hypermarkets will drive "mid to high single-digit EBIT growth". The shares still closed 0.7p lower at 397.1p.  TOP OF the second string was gambling group Partygaming, storming up 5.8 per cent as the FTSE 250 fell, to close up 10.8p at 196.7p. This followed news that shareholders in bwin, its austrian rival, had voted through the ?3.3bn all share deal to merge the companies. The new company will be listed on the London Stock Exchange.  There was plain sailing at amlin, with a slight bump in stock as the group announced a deal to buy Lead Yacht Underwriters, a company which provides superyacht insurance. It expects to handle $34m of gross written premiums this financial year. The shares rose 1.8p to 392.1p.  aveva Group, which provides engineering data and design IT, scraped into the black at the close yesterday after a mixed update. The investors were sated by talk that the year would be a success, yet it admitted the tough conditions in central Europe would persist and recovery would remain slower than other regions. The shares closed 3p up at 1,649p.  The housebuilders were under pressure after a review of the sector from Liberum Capital, which cut its price targets across the board. The update came on fears over "all the things that matter to housing decisions especially job security," as well as an "imminent rate rise". It picked on Persimmon as the most likely to underperform most starkly, cutting its recommendation from "hold" to "sell" sending the shares 16.7p lower to 402.2p. Despite a "buy" recommendation on Barratt Developments, it ended the worst sector performer on the day, closing down 4.8p to 92p.  THERE WaS a similar narrative to the day before among the premium risers and fallers on the small-cap index. Outsourcing group Eaga was up again after Thursday's well received update. It rose a further 2.25p to 76.7p yesterday. There was also more of the same from Severfield-Rowen, the UK steel group after its Thursday update. The profits warning continued to weigh and the shares closed the day 10p down at 230p.  Shares in Renewable Energy Generation raged up the growth market yesterday, gaining 27 per cent as it revealed an approach at 67p per share. The fact it had rejected the bid that valued the company at ?70m did not dampen investor enthusiasm. The wind farm operator said it had rejected the approach from the unnamed financial suitor after consulting large shareholders "on the basis that it very significantly undervalued the company". The stock ended up 9p at 53p.  Things were not so rosy for spread betting group Worldspreads which tumbled 15.35 per cent as it warned on profits. The group said it could tumble into a loss this year rather tha  
 The airship was the very last thing Charles and David Koch expected when they arranged for 200 of their most wealthy and influential friends to spend the weekend in the desert east of Los angeles.  Sponsored by Greenpeace, it hovered over the luxury spa where they had gathered. On its side were pictures of the billionaire brothers along with a words "dirty money".  Then there was the angry mob. around a 1,000 liberal activists spent Saturday and Sunday outside the gates of the Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs. Most waved placards condemning "corporate greed" and "crimes against the environment". By close of play, 25 had been arrested, for trespassing.  It was a circus all right. But a fascinating and quite possibly game-changing one: the trade unionists, environmentalists and assorted lefties assembled outside the resort were staging the first major public protest against the Koch Brothers. They are two of the most influential men who, until now, you may very well have never heard of.  The secretive brothers, aged 75 and 70, have built a fortune of around $35billion (?22bn) through their firm Koch Industries, which has oil, timber, chemical and other energy interests and is the second-largest privately-held company in the United States. Much of that money is quietly spent supporting political advocacy groups which advance what critics call a radical right-wing agenda.  In recent years, the Koch Brothers have given tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates. Millions more of their dollars have been given to think tanks such as the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, and lobbying organisations like the US Chamber of Commerce. They have also helped bankroll dozens of cleverly-named pressure groups, including americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Justice.  Most organisations which benefit from the Kochs' largesse have one thing in common: they help advance an unflinching brand of libertarian conservatism. Some lobby against environmental regulation, or seek to undermine public perception of the threat of climate change, others battle taxes, trade unions and Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.  Many play a crucial role in organising the Tea Party, the headline-prone right-wing movement which likes to tout its "grass-roots" credentials.  Until recently, the Brothers have operated largely in the shadows. But now questions have begun to be asked about their growing role in public affairs. Before November's mid-term elections, the New Yorker ran a lengthy investigative article detailing their "war on Obama". It quoted Greenpeace calling them the "kingpin of climate science denial" and described the ideological network they preside over as the "Kochtopus."  Ever since, public interest in Charles and David Koch's affairs has been quietly brewing; and when the New York Times revealed in October that they had booked the entire Rancho Mirage resort for one of their twice-yearly gatherings of the wealthy and the influential, the seeds of the weekend's protest were sown.  a leaked invitation to the retreat, which finished yesterday, informed guests that they were meeting "to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy america as we know it". These apocalyptic threats included "climate change alarmism and the move to socialised health care", as well as "the regulatory assault on energy". In his covering note on the invitation Charles asked: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"  as news of the event spread, a loose collective of leftist groups - including Greenpeace, several trade unions and citizen's lobby group Common Cause - seized the opportunity to stage a public protest at what it sees as the malign influence of the Koch Brothers and their wealthy friends, who the  
 FIVE ENERGY companies have joined forces to plan a power cable of between 1,200 and 2,000 megawatts to connect Scotland and Norway by 2020.  Britain's Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), Norway's agder Energi, E-CO and Lyse, and the Swedish company Vattenfall have created NorthConnect to study laying an underwater power interconnector between Scotland and Norway. The Scottish European Green Energy Centre - an not-for-profit organisation which supports renewable energy projects - has contributed Euro 50,000 (?43,000) to find the best route.  Sweden's Vattenfall said the cable will allow the two regions to link Norway's flexible hydroelectricity production with Scotland's intermittent wind power and help reduce reliance on fossil fuels.  "Scotland and Norway have rich and diverse natural resources from which to produce large amounts of electricity, and an interconnector could allow the potential of those complementary resources to be fulfilled," SSE's chief executive Ian Marchant said.  Britain's power market is connected to France and Ireland; a new 1,000 megawatt cable to the Netherlands will open on 1 april. 
 The oil giant BP announced its first annual loss for nearly two decades yesterday, dragged down by a whopping $41bn (?25bn) charge to pay for the Gulf of Mexico disaster last summer which unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in history.  Despite fourth-quarter profits of $4.4bn, the company recorded an annual loss of $4.6bn, compared with profits of $14bn in 2009. But BP was keen to stress its confidence in its financial future, reporting underlying earnings of $20.5bn and reinstating the dividend at 7 cents per share, about half its level before it was axed to help meet the slick clean-up costs. The company also announced plans to sell two US refineries, at Texas City and Carson, to concentrate on more competitive assets at Whiting, Toledo and Cherry Point.  But of greater significance than either the black hole in the company's finances or the decision to halve its North american refinery capacity, or even the reinstatement of the dividend, was the vision of the future set out by the newly installed chief executive, Bob Dudley.  BP faced nothing short of an existential crisis in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion last april, which left 11 people dead, vast swaths of US coastal waters polluted, and the company's reputation in ruins. BP stock dropped to well below half its pre-spill value. Mr Dudley's predecessor, Tony Hayward, was forced out of his job after a series of PR gaffes left him as public enemy number one in america. and there were questions about whether BP had a future in the Gulf of Mexico at all, let alone other environmentally sensitive regions such as alaska or the Canadian tar sands.  When Mr Dudley took over in October, the priority was to improve the company's safety procedures. and there is every suggestion that Mark Bly, the man appointed to lead the charge, is making progress. The company has suspended operations at several rigs around the world in recent months in response to newly stringent safety rules.  But there were also longer-term questions about the future of the company. Mr Dudley laid out unequivocal answers yesterday. BP will stick to its core strength: exploring and drilling for oil. The company is to double its exploration investment in the coming years, focusing on either giant or technically challenging fields and selling out of areas which no longer fit the more focused portfolio profile. Of crucial importance will be partnership arrangements with national oil companies. Notwithstanding the row that has blown up with BP's Russian joint venture TNK-BP (see report, right), the $10bn share-swap deal with Rosneft to explore the arctic's Kara Sea is the first of many.  Mr Dudley was clear yesterday that the company would not be cowed by the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, but must put it to use. "after the Gulf of Mexico we had the choice of stepping back, of losing confidence in our ability to operate with these technologies and in these conditions," he said. "But we don't think that is the right thing: it would be irresponsible of us not to take the lessons and change the company to the core, and then take that around the world and help change the global industry."  He was also unforgiving in his analysis of what options are available to international oil majors in a world where just 9 per cent of reserves are outside the grip of national companies, compared with 90 per cent 30 years ago. "The role of an international oil company like BP is the technology and know-how at the more difficult ends of the spectrum, working with the national oil companies," Mr Dudley said. "If it cannot do that, it probably doesn't have a future."  Hence Mr Dudley's plans for BP. The company remains committed to its renewables portfolio, and to refinery assets it is keen to expand in fast-growing asian economies such as China and India. But the upstream division is the core of the smaller, more flexible BP that will emerge from the $30bn divestment programme set in train to raise money to pay for the Gulf of Mexico spill. The company made final investment decisions on 15 projects last year, including several in the North Sea, angola and azerbaijan.  Such a rate of activi  
 EUROPE MUST bridge a Euro 2.2trillion (?1.9trn) "carbon capital chasm" if it is to meet 2020 carbon emissions reduction targets.  The EU needs to invest Euro 2.9trn in changes to its buildings, energy and transport infrastructure to reduce emissions. and given the state of public finances most of that will have to come from financial institutions, a study from accenture and Barclays Capital said.  The headline number is equivalent to about 2 per cent of Europe's GDP, while finance to the low-carbon sector has fallen by around three-quarters since before the global financial crisis. But with tweaks to government policy and new financial instruments such as "green bonds", the 2020 target can still be met, accenture's managing director of sustainability, Peter Lacy said.  "The problem is that because of the downturn capital flow trends are heading in the wrong direction," he said. "But if governments and financial institutions get behind this, then there's room for cautious optimism."  In part the situation reflects investor concerns over policy uncertainty. But there has also been an impact from some of the financial reforms in the wake of the global crisis that militate against riskier investment by banks.  To break the jam governments must implement long-term financial incentives - such as capital gains tax credits for low-carbon investments - as well as continuing support for subsidies such as feed-in tariffs (rewards for producing green electricity) and green car grants.  The study said Europe needs a secondary market in "green bonds" - constructed by securitising debt from the low-carbon sector - to unlock capital. Partnerships between banks and technology companies, and the creation of new advisory services within the financial institutions would also help.  Mr Lacy said: "Early action comes with a premium not only in terms of the carbon targets, but also in terms of Europe becoming a leader in global low-carbon finance." 
 a WIDESPREaD drought in the amazon rainforest last year caused the "lungs of the world" to produce more carbon dioxide than they absorbed, potentially leading to a dangerous acceleration of global warming. Scientists have calculated that the 2010 drought was more intense than the "one-in-100-year" drought of 2005.  They are predicting it will result in some eight billion tonnes of carbon dioxide being expelled from the amazon rainforest, which is more than the total annual carbon emissions of the United States. For the second time in less than a decade, the earth's greatest rainforest released more carbon dioxide than it absorbed because many of its trees dried out and died.  Scientists believe that the highly unusual nature of the two droughts, which occurred in the space of just five years, may be the result of higher sea-surface temperatures in the tropical atlantic, which could also be influenced by global warming caused by the release of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The anglo-Brazilian team of researchers has emphasised that there is as yet no proof that the two highly unusual droughts in the amazon are the direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but the scientists have warned that the world is gambling with its future if it fails to curb fossil fuel emissions.  Simon Lewis of Leeds University, the lead author of the study, said: "If greenhouse gas emissions contribute to amazon droughts that in turn cause forests to release carbon, this feedback loop would be extremely concerning. Put more starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest rainforest.  "Two unusual and extreme droughts occurring within a decade may largely offset the carbon absorbed by intact amazon forests during that time. If events like this happen more often, the amazon rainforest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change to a major source of greenhouse gases that could speed it up. Having two events of this magnitude in such close succession is extremely unusual, but is unfortunately consistent with those climate models that project a grim future for amazonia."  The study, published in the journal Science, analysed satellite data on rainfall across two million square miles of rainforest during the 2010 dry season. The scientists were able to make a direct comparison with an earlier study of the 2005 drought, which also looked at the effect of the low rainfall on the growth of trees.  In the 2005 drought, the scientists estimated that the rainforest turned from a net absorber of about two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to an exporter of some five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is almost as much as the 5.4 billion tonnes emitted annually by the US.  However, the drought last year was more widespread and more intense than the earlier drought, with a far bigger impact on the growth and death of trees,   
 Christine Lagarde, one of the most powerful women in the world, says she would like to spend more time with her "beautiful roses" in Normandy. She says she would like to spend more time cooking for her family or making apricot and quince jam.  What? Is the first woman ever to become finance minister of a large industrial country, a former "FT finance minister of the year", tired of politics? Is she bored with defending the embattled euro and - since France currently holds the presidency of the G8-G20 - saving the planet?  Or is it simply that the elegant Ms Lagarde is weary of the world of suits? Does she think that politics, and especially financial politics, should be left to the boys after all?  Not at all. Christine Lagarde believes that women in high places are essential. Men, left to themselves, will usually make a mess of things. The 2008 financial collapse was, at least in part, she says, driven by the aggressive, greedy, testosterone-fuelled mood of male-dominated, hi-tech trading rooms.  Ms Lagarde spoke to The Independent in her large office with sweeping views over the Seine, in the modern university-like campus of the French finance ministry at Bercy, in eastern Paris. "Gender-dominated environments are not good... particularly in the financial sector where there are too few women," she said. "In gender-dominated environments, men have a tendency to... show how hairy chested they are, compared with the man who's sitting next to them. I honestly think that there should never be too much testosterone in one room."  Christine Lagarde, 55, the Finance Minister since 2007, has become, next to President Nicolas Sarkozy, the best known face of the French government outside France. Because she speaks fluent English, and is comfortable and eloquent on television and radio, she is a frequent performer on the BBC, CNN and other non-French networks.  She is a different kind of French politician for other reasons. Ms Lagarde did not clamber into the French elite by the narrow, winding, stairs of the "grande ecoles" or tribal, party allegiance. She joined a large american law firm Baker and McKenzie in Paris in 1981 and rose, by the elevator of her own talent, to be its global chairman in Chicago.  Ms Lagarde, lawyer-turned-politician, says she now regards France, and the French people, as her "client". For the last year, her client has also been the ailing euro.  She is confident, she says, that the euro will now survive, and thrive, but she admits that there was a weekend last May when she feared that it might collapse. She also spoke of France's ambitious plans for regulating the world financial system and why these should be seen as a way of saving international markets from their own excesses, and not a French "dirigeiste" conspiracy against "anglo-Saxon" interests.  a distinction can and should be made, she suggests, between the kind of excessive speculation in "virtual" markets which produced the 2008 crash and "real" markets linked to a "real world".  Ms Lagarde, a divorcee with two sons, also spoke a little of her career, her family and her beloved country retreat, north of Rouen, in upper Normandy. It turns out that one of the forgotten victims of last year's euro crisis - and all those weekend ministerial meetings - was Christine Lagarde's gross domestic product of home-made jam. Perhaps than many politicians, she knows the "real world". She was born Christine Lallouette on 1 January 1956 in Paris. Her father, Robert, a university lecturer, died when she was 17. Her mother, Nicole, a teacher, was left to bring up Christine and her three younger brothers.  as a teenager, Christine Lallouette was on the French national synchronised swimming team. She was educated in Paris and Le Havre and then spent some time in the US, including a stint as an intern on Capitol Hill. Back in France, she trained as a lawyer and made two unsuccessful attempts to enter the elite French civil service college, the Ecole Nationale d'administration (ENa).  Had she been successful, she now agrees, it is "very unlikely" that she would have fought her way through the male-dominated world of French politics to reach her present, eminent position. Instead, at 25, she joined the Paris office of Baker & McKenzie, a law firm present in 35 countries. By 1999, she was chairman at company HQ in Chicago, the first woman to hold the position. In 2005, she was headhunted to become Trade Minister in the French government. after a one month stint as agriculture Minister in May 2007, she became Finance Minister and is now a few months short of being the longest-serving finance minister of the Fifth Republic (ie since 1958).  Is the euro crisis now over? For the whole of last year, the financial markets were one step ahead of EU governments in speculating against the Greeks, the Irish, the Portuguese and against the survival of the euro itself. Berlin and Paris have been using the present uneasy calm to try to jump ahead of the markets. "We're working at the moment on what I call the foundation strengthening of the eurozone," Ms Lagarde said. "Our deadline is the March council [EU summit] and we'll deliver on time."  The Germans have given up their opposition to the idea of euroland-wide economic governance. The French have accepted that all euroland members should become more German: through corporate tax harmonisation, constitutional limits on deficits and curbs on pay rises. Other countries are squealing. Ms Lagarde says "compromise" will be needed on all sides, but not too much...  The euro was given "fragile foundations" by its "founding fathers", she said. "Founding fathers not mothers, notice. Regrettably there was no woman at the table at the time... We are now working on [foundations] which are bigger, which are stronger."  Looking back, she says, the insistent speculation against the euro last year was not, as some suggest, a deliberate assault on the European currency by euro-hating "anglo-Saxon markets". Nor was it truly a question of the markets being "worried" by Greek or Irish debt. "Markets love volatility," she said. The markets simply saw an opportunity to create, and then profit from, volatility which the weak, founding rules and the inherent tensions in euroland made it impossible to calm.  Was she ever worried that the euro might not survive? "I think during the weekend of the 9th and 10th of May, yes," she said. "We put together this bilateral loan and bilateral instrument to support Greece. Much to our regret we then saw that the markets were still... undermining confidence in the zone and in the currency... Over the weekend, from Saturday to the early hours of Monday morning, we worked hard to put together the financial stability fund. It was a make or break then. Yes, I certainly had that feeling."  and now? British and american commentators remain obsessively negative about the euro's prospects but Ms Lagarde points to signs that "the markets" themselves are betting on the currency's long-term survival. a recent offering of bonds denominated in euros for the new European stability fund was "oversubscribed by a factor of nine or 10", she said. "I think the maturity of the bond was 10 or 15 years," she said. "It shows that [the markets] assume that in 10 years' time the euro will still be there."  Ms Lagarde's Norman roses may continue to be neglected this spring and summer, whether the euro crisis revives or not. France holds the presidencies of the G8 and G20 groups of developed and rapidly developing countries. President Sarkozy has outlined an ambitious agenda for new global regulation of financial markets to be discussed at the Cannes summit in November.  Some of the ideas - especially the proposal for what she calls a "teensy-tiny" tax on each international financial transaction - have already been shot down by market fundamentalists in Britain and the US.  The "transaction tax" idea is not dead, she insists. a group of countries may go ahead in the hope of shaming others. The idea was originally conceived by the american economist James Tobin as a way of "putting a little grain of sand in the currency transaction machine in order to reduce the volatility" of markets. This may still be justified, she said, but the real reason for pushing ahead now is the need to raise the $100bn a year promised, from 2020, to help poor countries invest to cope with climate change.  "There are multiple transactions going on every day, at lightning speed ... and that could constitute a very large [tax] base if everyone was to play the game. We could assess a teensy tiny, minute tax... on every transaction."  There was much opposition to the idea, Ms Lagarde admitted, "but we could very well try a coalition of the willing. If it's just France on its own it's going to be difficult, but if it were a larger a number of countries then we could show that it works."  But wouldn't that just mean that traders would shift their operating bases to those countries which did not charge the tax?  "It's possible, it's possible. So we need to explore who is prepared to play the game," she said. "We need to see what public opinion thinks about those that always say 'no, no, no, you've got to leave financial transactions alone'."  One of the other ambitious French proposals for G8-G20 is to regulate "futures trading" in commodities from oil, to wheat, to copper, to cocoa. Immoderate speculation in commodities is blamed by some people (not all) for the recent sharp spikes in food and metal prices. Mr Sarkozy and Ms Lagarde spent much time at the Davos World Economic Forum last month assuring other delegates that their idea was not to ban futures trading but to curb new and dangerous forms of speculation.  But isn't all futures trading speculative by its very nature? Yes, says Ms Lagarde, but there is legitimate speculation and there is speculation which has lost all touch with physical reality. In some futures markets, she says, the amount of money in play at any one time can be "35 or 40 times" the value of the entire stocks of that commodity available in the world.  This, she says, is "scary" and reminiscent of the kind of virtual trading in "credit default swaps", or insurance policies on debt, which lay behind  
 TONY HaYWaRD has held talks with abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund about launching a new oil company, which could mark a remarkable turnaround for the former chief executive of BP.  Mr Hayward stepped down four months ago after the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, but the fund's representatives approached him in rec  
 VICKY PRYCE, one of the country's top economists, quit her job as a government adviser because of the conflict of interest created when her husband, Chris Huhne, joined the Cabinet as Climate Change Secretary.  at the same time, however, the Liberal Democrat MP was harbouring a conflict of interest of his own: a relationship with his 44-year-old former aide, Carina Trimingham. Mr Huhne ended his 26-year marriage, and set up home with Ms Trimingham. So Ms Pryce was bemused to receive a call from a headhunter touting the post of chief economist and director of analysis, with a salary of ?100,000, at her former husband's department. Ms Pryce, 57, has turned down the job. 
 This is the moment when the world's largest predator came face-to-face with two small children padding in the same pool. Instead of imminent danger there was mild curiosity on both sides.  For all is not as it seems. The interested children were separated from the polar bears - among the animal world's finest swimmers - looming over them by 10in of thick Plexiglass.  The coming together of children and beast was part of a unique initiative by the owners of the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat in Canada, which only takes in bears rescued from the wild.  It allows visitors to get close enough to the creatures to try to promote understanding of their plight.  The polar bear's existence is in danger from the shrinking arctic sea ice. They swim from land to ice floes as they hunts seals - but global warming is forcing them to cover ever-larger distances. 
 a glimpse of the university lifestyle of the future is emerging from one of Britain's newest universities, the University of Worcester. Soon, with the introduction of substantially higher tuition fees in 2012, students are likely to look at their future employment prospects before settling upon where they plan to study for their degrees. Employment chances could soon be the major factor in determining where youngsters plan to study.  It may surprise some potential undergraduates that, if they are thinking of studying in the West Midlands, it is Worcester that has the best record rather than its Russell Group neighbours, Birmingham and Warwick. Worcester, the fastest-growing UK university in terms of student numbers, also does better than Oxford in securing jobs for its undergraduates. Last year, 93 per cent of its graduates gained employment, placing it sixth in the country for its employment record.  By no means all potential applicants will be surprised by this, though, because the numbers seeking to go to Worcester are already increasing at a far faster rate than the average for higher education. "We've already had 10,000 applications for this September. Seven years ago it would have been 4,000 and that would have been by July," says Vice-Chancellor David Green. "There is no doubt we'll have 14,000 applicants by then. For those applicants we've got about 2,800 places."  The university places great emphasis on equipping its students for the world of work. Business students, for instance, spend a year on paid work placements in the course of their their four-year courses.  Twenty-two-year-old James Sheehy spent a year with air Technology Systems, a company based in nearby Bromsgrove, which supplies heating and ventilation systems. He admits to having had no experience of ventilation or how it works when he started - but picked it up while shadowing its sales manger for six weeks. He was then set a target of bringing in ?1 million worth of sales - and ended his secondment having netted ?3.4m. "They actually offered me a job full-time when I finished my degree," he says. They also paid him a bonus for his efforts and offered to pay for all his final-year books.  Both he and his former schoolmate Brandon Witkowski, who was also offered full-time employment after spending a year with Lidl, reckon spending a year in the real world would enhance any student's employment prospects. "Some things you can't learn in the lecture room," says James. "Working in an office is something you can't learn in a university."  Graduate recruitment experts would concur with that. a survey by High Fliers of the top 100 graduate recruiters in the country, published last month, revealed that this summer's graduates would stand little or no chance of getting a job with a leading employer if they had had no work experience.  Professor Green is adamant that students who go on internships should be paid a wage while they do their jobs. "We've been very clear that we can't expect these young people to go and work for nothing," he says. "Unfortunately, there are a lot of places where people do unpaid work during the summer but - if they do that - it then depends on their family background as to whether they can sustain themselves in that work. also, from the employers' point of view, how can you ensure that they complete the work if you are not paying them? What have you got to hold over them? We insist on a minimum wage-plus."  In addition, the university also offers employment to students on its campus - they can work as "ambassadors" for the university, doing a variety of jobs such as conducting campus tours for visitors and packing prospectuses for potential students.  Jonathan Hunter, aged 21, who is studying for a Ba in human geography, enlisted under the scheme and has been deployed to schools to try and lure potential students to the university. "It is not only good for the university but you talk about student life to the pupils - what it's like moving away from your home for the first time, the difference between a-level and university work," he says.  Fellow student Will Patz, aged 23, who is taking an MSc in sport coaching, wants to become a lecturer. "It projected me into that career path," he says. "It was the networking, meeting people and socialising with them. It builds people's confidence."  Worcester started off as a teacher training institution and won full university status seven years ago. Its strengths still lie in training teachers and offering courses in nursing and midwifery. Much of these courses centre around training in the job. Overall, it has around 10,000 students and three-quarters are female (as a result of the concentration on teaching, nursing and midwifery). It has a slightly older age profile than many universities, with 70 per cent of its students being mature on entry - ie over 21.  The university is anxious to dispel the myth that a concentration on work-related learning puts students studying for creative and drama degrees at a disadvantage. "a lot of students study creative and digital media," says Professor Green, "and go off and do a placement in a firm." It is also pioneering a new postgraduate internship scheme whereby students spend four days a week at work and one in college.  Ruth Johnson, who is studying for a postgraduate qualification in applied management, is working as a sustainability officer with Worcester City Council. During that time, she also works with Transition, a community group dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. David Thorpe, who is her boss at Worcester City Council, thinks the decision to employ her has proved invaluable. "If we hadn't, when it came to issues like sustainability, it would have been allocated to an existing officer, who maybe could have given it 15 minutes of their time," he says.  Those who question whether - at a time of austerity in public spending - the council should pay to take on a student for four days a week, have their answer in the recommendations Ruth makes: often, simple things, such as ensuring all the lights are switched off after work, can end up saving the council money.  Worcester also invests time in its relations with its student union. at a time when there is growing hostil  
 THE ENERGY giant E.ON has been given approval from the Government to build a 230-megawatt wind farm in the North Sea, five miles off the Yorkshire coast. Once fully operational, the Humber Gateway installation will have the capacity to provide power for up to 150,000 homes from 77 turbines, the company said. Humber will be E.ON's fifth offshore wind farm in the UK. Construction is expected to start within two years and provide around 1,000 jobs. The farm will create 30 permanent posts.  The Humber Gateway scheme is the first offshore farm to gain planning consent since December 2008. Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said: "a new wind farm off the Humberside coast will be a further jobs and investment boost for the region." 
 For Him or Her  Bear-watching weekends in Finland  Enjoy an exciting mini-break and make it an ethical one with a trip that offsets all travel carbon emissions, uses local tour guides and resources and minimises impact on the environment. Explore Worldwide offers many environmentally friendly trips including a four-day break to spot Brown Bears in Finland in the heart of the wilderness near its border with Russia. Walking the easily manageable forest trails and visiting a nature centre are among the activities available - with the ubiquitous Finnish sauna, followed by a swim in the lake, offering the perfect end to a day.  Where from: www.explore.co.uk  How much: ?749 including flights  For Him  Citizen World Perpetual aT-Watch  This stylish watch comes from the light-powered Eco-Drive range. absorbing sun and artificial light through the dial, it converts it to electrical energy which powers the watch for a lifetime of use. This technology has enabled the company to keep more than 20 millio  
 EaGa, ONE of the UK's biggest suppliers of heating and renewable energy services, has agreed to a ?306m takeover by the support services giant Carillion. Founded in 1990, Eaga employs about 4,000 people and is one of the UK's largest installers of central heating systems.  It provides emergency breakdown cover and servicing for 160,000 local authority and social housing properties, and works to lower carbon emissions and energy consumption, principally in low-income households. 
 Solar power companies are considering a legal challenge to Government plans for a review of the "feed-in tariff" (FIT) scheme, set up last year to boost investment in green energy schemes.  after months of uncertainty, the announcement by the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne last week of a fast-track review has created "pandemonium" in the industry, critics claim, leaving all but the smallest domestic projects "impossible to finance" and costing Britain's stuttering economy anything up to 18,000 new jobs.  The Government says the review is vital to avoid large-scale solar "farms" hogging funding and squeezing the domestic market for which the subsidy was intended. Solar companies are incensed. Not only does the move create yet more uncertainty for a nascent industry struggling to establish itself, they claim, but including projects of more than 50 megawatts (MW) in the review will catch out community solar schemes from schools, hospitals and housing associations, as well as truly large-scale farm installations.  "This is bad news for the solar industry and bad news for the big society," said Jeremy Leggett, the executive chairman of Solar Century. "What the Gove  
 The CBI is launching a campaign today calling for government action on Britain's waste policy, as part of an initiative aimed at helping the country meet its climate change targets and improve energy security.  The employers' organisation wants a review of government policy to make sure Britain is making the most of its rubbish, in the context of 300 landfill sites set to close in the next 10 years, and the need for 2000 new waste management facilities to replace them, at an estimated cost of ?10bn.  Dr Neil Bentley, the CBI's deputy director-general, said a move to a "zero-waste economy" would be a major opportunity for British business. "We risk missing a trick by not harnessing the huge potential of waste," Dr Bentley said. "Waste management should be seen as an important part of the green economy and our growth strategy."  The Government should start with a full audit of the existing regulations, the CBI says. It must also clarify planning rules affecting landfill sites and other rubbish-related schemes, work on plans for creating energy from waste, and develop an incentive scheme for recycling that is aimed particularly at small and medium-sized companies.  "ambitious waste policies will allow the Government to hit a broad range of its objectives from cutting emissions to bolstering energy security," Dr Bentley said. "We should also be encouraging councils to share recycling and waste facilities, while businesses could be incentivised to sell their recyclable waste." 
 THE CO-OPERaTIVE Group said it wants to increase its membership to 20 million over the next decade, as it unveiled 47 new targets to improve its ethical credentials.  Peter Marks, the chief executive of the group, which includes food retailing, funeral care services and high-street pharmacies, said he was "very confident" of hitting the growth target for members, who receive a dividend based on the organisation's profitability and amount they spend with it.  Founded in 1863, the Co-op has more than doubled its membership from three million to six million in the past three years. The group will amend its dividend scheme to reward "ethical consumerism", though details were not disclosed yesterday. The group set out a "new benchmark for corporate sustainability in the UK", with 47 targets. These include the Co-op's corporate bank increasing its lending to small businesses which are involved in renewable energy, from ?400m to ?1bn by 2013, and massively growing the number of Fairtrade products it sells. 
 Plans to move UK clocks forward in line with most of Europe could soon become a reality, as proposals are due to be published this week.  The "Lighter Later" campaign, initiated by the 10:10 climate change campaign, would move the clocks forward an hour to result in lighter evenings. Campaigners say the move could cut almost 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.  The plans are also backed by the tourism industry, and they will form part of the Government's tourism strategy in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.  a parliamentary Bill which called for the Government to investigate the costs and benefits of switching the clocks received MPs' backing in December. 
 alexei Miller will have to perform a careful balancing act when he goes into European energy policy negotiations later this week. The chief executive of Gazprom - the state-owned Russian giant that supplies more than a fifth of Europe's gas - will be called upon to champion the role of natural gas in Europe's energy mix, while playing down the implications of price pressures from shale gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG). at the same time, he has to instill confidence in the security of Russian supply and argue against a policy package that threatens to undermine the company's hopes for a merger with Ukraine's Naftogaz Ukrainy.  But Mr Miller is undeterred. "The 20th century was the century of oil, and the 21st century will be the century of gas," he says with conviction. "Gas is the key fossil resource that will ensure the energy balance of Europe in the short term and in the long term."  Not everyone agrees. European governments are working hard to diversify away from a reliance on imported Russian gas. In part, the moves are designed to encourage investment in alternative, green technologies such as wind farms. But they are also a security measure in the wake of the series of disputes over transportation via the Ukrainian pipeline, the most recent of which saw supplies cut off for 13 days in 2009.  For Gazprom, the political crisis in the Middle East is an opportunity for some positive comparisons. "as far as the events in the Middle East and North africa are concerned, first and foremost we must reconsider the question of the reliability and sustainability of supply of hydrocarbons from that region to Europe," Mr Miller says.  He also takes sideswipes against what he characterises as a US and European media-generated image of Gazprom as an arm of the Kremlim, using energy as a political weapon. according to Mr Miller, Gazprom's image problem is not with European consumers, who have been supplied with gas for 40 years, during which time the company has "never ever broken its contractual obligations".  "But the image created by the mass media in the US and Europe is a completely different story," Mr Miller says. "It is highly politicised and has nothing to do with the economics of Gazprom."  Image is not Gazprom's only challenge. The company is also struggling to come to terms with what some experts identify as a revolution in the global gas market, transforming the industry from one based on long-term, fixed-price contracts supplied through a highly costly pipeline infrastructure, to a more liquid market with a global price index, much like that of oil.  The driving force behind the shift is twofold: the sudden surge of unconventional gas supplies such as shale in the US and coal-bed methane in australia, and the development of LNG from major suppliers such as Qatar that can be shipped around the world. Between them, LNG and US shale gas have sent gas prices on the spot market plummeting, pushing European buyers to insist that a proportion of the prices they pay under long-term Gazprom contracts fluctuate with the spot price.  Mr Miller gives unconventional gas supplies short shrift. Such gas is unsustainably expensive to produce, he says. and the buzz that it is a game-changer in the global gas industry is a just a media campaign. "Shale gas is a very well-planned public relations campaign in the mass media, as are global warming and bio fuels," he says.  Gazprom remains confident of Europe's rising appetite for gas, despite European governments' forecasts that the Continent's gas consumption will fall over the coming decades as alternative energy sources kick in and energy efficiency measures such as household insulation take effect.  according to Gazprom, in the future gas-to-liquid technology will see demand for gas to power clean cars balloon. But even in the shorter term, climate change targets across Europe will push energy companies to invest in gas-fired power stations at a fraction of the environmental impact of their coal-fired cousins and a fraction of the cost of renewable alternatives, the company says.  The global financial crisis has sealed the future of cheap Russian gas in the European market, says Mr Miller. He brands European governments' subsidies for alternative energy sources as "no longer morally valid" while governments struggle to balance their budgets.  It is a point that could come up in negotiations with EU policymakers later this week over the bloc's "third energy package", which is aimed at boosting competition by separating supply and production from transmission, but also includes measures to encourage investment in alternative energy sources. according to Mr Miller, the scheme drawn up before the global economic crisis - and due to come into force next month - is no longer viable. "Even with subsidies the future of alternative energy didn't look very bright, but now, after the financial crisis, it looks even dimmer than before," Mr Miller says.  But the biggest issue at the talks is the question of enforcing the separation of supply and transmission, which has huge implications both for Gazprom's proposed merger with Naftogaz Ukrainy, and for its investments in new pipelines into Europe avoiding Ukraine.  Gazprom's main argument focuses on the risk to investments. "The attractiveness of gas transmission networks for Gazprom and large European energy companies which buy big volumes of gas from Russia will become problematic for investors," Mr Miller warns.  But the hit will not o  
 DRaX, THE owner and operator of the Drax coal-fired power plant, blamed the Government for not making full use of its biomass renewable energy facilities as it reported higher annual profits last night.  Drax Power Station accounted for around 7 per cent of the country's renewable power in 2010, "more than twice as much as any other facility in the UK," its chief executive Dorothy Thompson said. But she added that this was "despite not using our renewable facilities at full capacity because of low regulatory support for biomass".  "With appropriate regulatory support, we stand ready to expand our biomass capability significantly," she explained as the company reported ?255m in pre-tax profits for 2010. 
 CENTRICa SIGNED the UK's first long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) contract with Qatar yesterday, to coincide with a trade mission to the Gulf led by Prime Minister David Cameron.  Under the deal, signed in the Emir's palace in the presence of Mr Cameron and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the British energy giant will import 2.4 million tons of LNG into the Isle of Grain terminal in Kent each year for the next three years.  The contract has a total value of ?2bn, using the current gas price, and represents about 10 per cent of the UK gas market, enough to heat 2.5 million homes.  Centrica said the deal is groundbreaking because it is Britain's first ever long-term LNG supply contract. In the past, the company has bought only on a short-term "spot" basis.  It is also vital to efforts to strengthen the UK's energy security as home-grown supplies from the North Sea continental shelf begin to dry up.  "as domestic supplies of gas begin to dwindle, this is an important deal for UK energy security and for our customers," Mark Hanafin, the managing director of Centrica Energy, said. "The important thing is that where we were buying literally month-to-month, now we have secure supplies for three years."  Centrica said that support from the UK Government was an "important factor" in securing the deal, which will be pri  
 THE JaPaNESE emergency prompted the German Chancellor, angela Merkel, to order the immediate closure of seven of the country's 17 atomic power plants yesterday as public opposition to her nuclear energy policies started to threaten her coalition.  Ms Merkel's conservative-liberal coalition had planned to extend the life of the seven oldest reactors by 12 years to allow green technologies enough time to replace them. Yesterday, however, she announced that the events in Japan meant the r  
 THERE WaS a renewed appetite for associated British Foods yesterday as analysts turned sweet on the group, arguing investors have missed how much of a boost it will get from sugar.  The world's second largest producer of the commodity advanced 9.5p to 949.5p after Credit Suisse upgraded its rating to "outperform", saying "the market seems to have ignored the huge hike in sugar prices around the world".  Pointing out that aBF has been the blue-chip index's weakest stock in 2011, its analysts said fundamental changes in the sugar market "should mean a rethink on aBF", adding that the group is "in the right market, with the right assets at the right time".  aBF, which also owns the clothing chain Primark, has been harmed recently along with the rest of the retailers by the increased cost of cotton, but Credit Suisse said "all the rhetoric and concerns about the Primark margin are of small significance for aBF's earnings when compared with movements in the world sugar price".  analysts from Collins Stewart were similarly positive, starting their coverage of the group with a "buy" recommendation. Praising the ingredients companies generally, they said the sector operates "in a favourable environment with sales growth and profitability ahead of the market and food producer averages".  "Companies which have built dominant positions in attractive niche areas of the market and are now focused on margin improvement should be the first to return value to shareholders at long last," they added, choosing aBF as one of their favoured plays.  Overall, it was another day in the red - the sixth in a row - for the FTSE 100, as it was knocked back 97.05 points to 5,598.23. Events in Japan, North africa and the Middle East continued to worry investors, while disappointing economic data from both the UK and the US added to their concerns.  attention was also refocused on the economic health of the eurozone thanks to the decision by Moody's to cut Portugal's credit rating to a3 from a1. Many of the banks were left weaker, with Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group declining 10p to 282p and 0.93p to 59.45p respectively. HSBC was also down, 23.5p behind at 622.5p, as it went ex-dividend along with Standard Life, which was 11.2p lower at 199.5p.  Rumour mongers had something to excite them, however, with vague speculation spreading that the Belgian giant anheuser-Busch InBev (aBI) could be considering a potential merger with the Grolsch-brewer SaB Miller.  Market voices responded cautiously to the chitter-chatter, pointing out that aBI has other issues on its plate, although atif Latif, director of trading at Guardian Stockbrokers, said that if such a deal did materialise it would allow the group "to gain exposure to africa and Latin america [where growth is still strong] and counteract the slow growth of the US market". However, despite the gossip, SaB Miller failed to catch light, edging up just 1p to 1,984.5p.  The tragedy in Japan continued to knock arm Holdings over worries about its production, and the chip maker retreated 13.5p to 504p. Its mid-tier rival, Imagination Technologies, retreated even further, closing 31.8p worse off at 430.8p, after analysts criticised the group for not upgrading its estimates enough in its interim management statement.  at the other end, Hansen Transmissions - which has seen its share price rise as investors look for renewable energy options rather than considering nuclear power operators - was still moving up, increasing 2.03p to 48.94p. The favourable breeze behind the wind turbine gearbox manufacturer was given extra impetus by Peel Hunt's andrew Shepherd-Barron initiating coverage with a "buy" rating.  a COUPLE of big staffing changes were spooking investors; one of these took place at InterContinental Hotels, which slipped back 27p to 1,228p after announcing that its chief executive, andrew Cosslett, is to leave at the end of June. Evolution Securities' Nigel Parson, who praised Mr Cosslett for his stewardship of the group, said the "market will be disappointed at [his] departure but he has a good sense of timing".  The analyst was less charitable, however, about the resignation of Mitchells & Butlers' chief executive, adam Fowle, saying the "soap-opera that is M&B continues to run and run". The pubs group said it had not chosen a permanent replacement yet, and retreated 10.2p to 289.3p.  Back on the top-tier index, Tullow Oil was driven up 6p to 1,355p as investors had their first chance to react to the announcement on Tuesday evening that it had finally gained approval from the Ugandan government for its project in the c  
 Some bad news for those who want to see more women running Britain's biggest businesses: the meagre number of female chief executives at the top of FTSE 100-listed companies will shrink by one today.  alliance Trust, the Dundee-based investment business where Katherine Garrett-Cox is the chief executive (the company is also chaired by a woman, Lesley Knox, for that matter), is due to drop out of the blue-chip index at the reclassification that will take place at the close of trading.  aside from the issue of women on the board, alliance's demotion from the blue-chip index will offer additional ammunition to its critics, including Laxey Partners, the activist investor that holds a stake in the investment trust.  Laxey's complaint is that alliance has not done enough to combat the discount at which its shares trade compared with the value of its assets, currently around 17 per cent. The danger is that this discount will now widen further as index-tracking funds that follow the Footsie automatically sell their alliance holdings.  Laxey wants to see alliance implement a discount control mechanism, as around half the investment trusts in its immediate peer group have already done. This would require the trust to automatically take steps to try to bring its discount down should it hit a specific level - 10 per cent, say. Share buybacks are the most obvious way to achieve that goal.  One can see Laxey's point. although it is an investor with short-term horizons rather than one with the long-term interests of alliance at heart - if the discount narrows sharply, it makes money without having to rely on underlying investment performance - a share price that undervalues the holdings of a company by almost one-fifth is an issue that needs to be addressed.  alliance's objection to an automatic mechanism of this type is that it could inhibit investment flexibility. any investment decision it is forced to make for reasons that are not related to market fundamentals - particularly if it is forced to sell assets to raise finance for a buyback programme - could jeopardise its performance.  The trust also points out that Ms Garrett-Cox is a relatively new appointment at alliance who needs to be given time to overhaul its investment processes and restore its performance (and she has already begun to conduct ad hoc buybacks).  That may be true in the context of alliance Trust's 120-year history, but Ms Garrett-Cox is now in her fourth year at the business (she joined in 2007 as chief investment officer). The discount slide likely to occur in the next few weeks will rightly be blamed on a tracker fund sell-off, but alliance's investors have been patient long enough. If the discount doesn't start coming down soon, Laxey's case will become compelling.  Money will decide new nuclear's fate in UK  Despite the catastrophe in Japan, Greenpeace seems unlikely to get its way after calling yesterday for Britain's process of approving new nuclear stations to be suspended. But a full-scale moratorium - effectively what Greenpeace wants - is not necessary to derail the nuclear element of Britain's energy policy.  at a rough estimate, private sector companies are being asked to find ?50bn to invest in new nuclear plants over the next decade in the UK. They do so not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they expect to make a return on that money. If they judge the return less likely to be delivered, they are less likely to make the investments in the first place.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, has put his anti-nuclear past behind him but has only been able to persuade fellow Liberal Democrats to do the same by pledging that there will be no publi  
 THE UNFOLDIN  
 aMEC SURGED up the top-tier index yesterday after investors were told that nuclear energy still "remains an area of significant potential" for the engineer, despite the ongoing events in Japan.  Rising as high as 1,151p during the session, the group - whose nuclear services division contributed nearly 10 per cent of sales last year - eventually closed 17p ahead at 1,128p, halting a seven-day losing streak in which it shed nearly 10 per cent of its share price. Helping it upwards was Investec's decision to initiate coverage with a "buy" rating, describing amec as "undervalued and well positioned for growth".  "Our focus is on the strong balance sheet," said the broker's analysts. "The pace of acquisitions appears to be increasing and the pipeline has strengthened, a situation we believe will continue."  although admitting the tragedy in Japan "will once again highlight the risks associated with nuclear and may slow developments both in the UK and other geographies", they added that nuclear still "offers material potential" and argued that it does not have a feasible alternative in this country.  They also noted that "concerns over nuclear could also improve the opportunities in the renewables and bioprocess arena, another strong growth area [for amec], with the accessible market estimated by management to be growing at 8 to 10 per cent per annum."  The broker examined two other oil services groups as well, but only gave Hunting - which increased 15.5p to 751.5p - and Wood Group - 14p better off at 633p - "hold" ratings because of their current valuation.  Overall, the FTSE 100 climbed 22.02 points to 5,718.13, maintaining its recovery from its recent bad run, although at the bell it was still 110.54 points lower than at the start of the week. Sentiment was helped by the Libyan government's decision to call a ceasefire, which halted the rise of oil prices, and the decision by G7 finance ministers to help steady the yen.  National Grid took the top spot, powering up 24.5p to 577p despite market voices disagreeing on Ofgem's report on the regulatory body's new price review regime. angelos anastasiou, an analyst at Investec, said it "confirmed a number of the negatives previously indicated", and kept the utility group's "sell" rating.  However, Killik's head of equities Jonathan Jackson described it as good news for both National Grid and Scottish & Southern Energy, which increased 29p to 1,234p, and said the report was "more positive than the consultation document published at the end of last year".  ON THE FTSE 250, Jupiter Fund Management slid to the bottom of the index, slipping 20.3p to 298p after the release of its final results. The group's revenue failed to meet expectations, despite growing over 25 per cent last year, and the numbers failed to move Peel Hunt's Stuart Duncan from his "hold" recommendation, with the analyst citing its "premium valuation".  also updating the market was Berkeley, which was lifted 36p to 1,040p following its interim management statement, helped by its positive comments on its full-year earnings.  None of the other housebuilders looked as strong, however, as the Council of Mortgage Lenders' latest figures showed lending last month had failed to see a significant increase. Barratt Developments crept back 0.6p to 102.8p and Bovis Homes stayed steady at 442.5p, despite Deutsche Bank choosing them among its top picks in the sector in which it sees "over 25 per cent upside ... even without a housing market recovery".  Go-ahead was driven up 55p to 1,384p after the transport group said that, together with the French company Keolis, it would continue to run the Southeastern rail franchise until March 2014.  Meanwhile, SDL edged back 0.5p to 669p despite Jefferies International taking a positive first look at the software group. The broker's analysts clearly liked what they saw as they gave it a "buy" rating and told investors to "expect consolidation to continue" in the sector. Saying it was "now a market- leading player in its area of specialism within the wider Enterprise Content Management space", they added that they expected to "increasingly see SDL as an attractively placed sector asset".  THERE WaS a spurt of 38.25p to 161.75p for Gulf Keystone on the alternative Investment Market after the oil exploer issued a statement that "substantial smoke and/or the oil flare" could be seen coming from its Shaikan-2 well in Kurdistan, indicating "that a significant flow has been encountered".  Meanwhile, assetCo - which runs London's fire engines - announced that des  
 BRITaIN'S SOLaR industry was in uproar yesterday, branding the Government's proposed changes to the feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy scheme as "nonsensical", "disgraceful" and "a horrendous strategic mistake".  The furore over the future of the nascent solar photovoltaic sector - which one industry group described as "strangled at birth" by the changes - comes against the backdrop of growing concerns about plans for new nuclear power stations given the crisis in Japan.  Under the new proposals, the solar power subsidies will come down by around half for medium-sized schemes, and by two-thirds for the biggest installations. The changes are now open for consultation, with a view to taking effect in august.  The Government says the move is necessary to avoid extra-large commercial solar "farms" hogging all the available funding and squeezing out the domestic projects for which the scheme was intended. It also says that solar costs have dropped 30 per cent since the FIT was introduced last april.  But solar power companies said that any scheme larger than a few households is now completely unviable. "This is far worse than anticipated," Ray Noble, the solar specialist at the Renewable Energy association, said. "This industry has been strangled at birth."  Critics claim the changes betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the industry, which needs large-scale schemes to bring down the cost of smaller projects. and the cost model used by the Government is based on fossil fuel price projections that are wildly out of kilter with reality, they claim.  West Oxford Community Renewables, a social enterprise which has set up solar panels on a local school and supermarket, says plans for another school scheme nearby will now not go ahead."The Government came in saying they are all about the Big Society, but this is big government writ large," Barbara Hammond, the chair of West Oxford Community Renewables, said. 
 More than 20 green groups are boycotting this week's Climate Week activities, blaming the "cynical" sponsorship by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which provides finance to the coal industry.  Taxpayer-owned RBS provided finance worth nearly $8bn (?4.9bn) to the world's biggest coal mining and coal-fired electricity generators over the past three years, more than any other UK bank, according to a report to be published this morning by campaign group Platform.  a string of campaign groups including the Centre for alternative Technology, artist Project Earth and Platform itself have withdrawn from Climate Week as a result, accusing the financial institution of "greenwash" when it is bankrolling production of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.  Other groups are planning to focus on RBS's lending activities in the fossil fuel sector as part of their Climate Week activities. The central charge is one of hypocrisy. "For RBS to cynically appropriate the language around climate change action as a means of detracting attention and criticism from the promotion of climate-destructive industries and practices is totally reprehensible," Platform's Mel Evans, one of the report's authors, said. "You can't   
 "Running water would change everything," says Luz Caballero wearily as she stirs a huge pot of beans in the Santa Maria People's Restaurant in Villa El Salvador, a sprawling, dusty shantytown on Lima's southern outskirts. "Living without it is just too hard."  Ms Caballero and the other locals take it in turns to staff the co-operative restaurant, serving up 100 cheap but filling lunches every day. If cooking on this scale seems complicated, then doing so without tapwater takes on an epic quality, with a continuous time-consuming, energy-sapping shuttling of buckets from the plastic barrels in the street outside.  Ms Caballero and her neighbours are among roughly 1.2 million residents of the Peruvian capital without running water. They rely on unregulated private water trucks, which charge up to 30 soles (?6.70) per cubic metre - 20 times what more affluent Peruvians pay for their tapwater - and frequently leave their customers waiting desperately. The new mayor wants to end this exploitation, but she faces immense challenges in a city where climate change has put water sources high in the andes under unprecedented pressure.  Lima receives less than a third of an inch of precipitation a year and relies entirely on andean rainfall and glacier melt, both in serious long-term decline. The R?mac, the largest of the three rivers that feeds the capital, has seen its low season flow fall more than 20 per cent in recent years. Satellite photos of the Eulalia Glacier, which feeds into the R?mac, show it to have shrunk dramatically just in the last decade, due, scientists say, to global warming.  With a population of 8.4 million, Lima is the world's second largest desert city after Cairo. However, while the Nile flows at a rate of 2,830 cubic metres per second, the R?mac averages just 29 cubic metres per second.  Sandwiched between the Pacific and the andes, Lima is trapped in a thermal inversion, making its climate unusually stable and almost entirely preventing rain. The watershed around Marcapomacocha, a system of high-altitude lagoons that supplies Lima with almost half its water through a trans-andean tunnel, has also seen annual precipitation fall by 148mm per decade since it became operative in the 1960s. On current trends, Marcapomacocha could receive no rain at all by the middle of this century. Scientists are researching whether the fall is due to a natural, regional cycle or global climate change.  Peru, with its mountains and rainforest, is actually well-endowed with hydrological resources. But 98 per cent of the andes' run-off, including the source of the amazon river, flows east into the sparsely populated amazon basin, while two-thirds of Peru's 30 million inhabitants live on the arid Pacific coast.  "This mismatch began 500 years ago with the arrival of the Spaniards," says Jos? Salazar, president of the country's urban water regulator, Sunass, noting how the Incas and other pre-Columbian civilisations located their urban centres near water sources in the andes. To be closer to Spain the conquistadors established their capital on the coast: "Today, we are picking up the bill for this colonial legacy."  Many of Lima's poorest residents have now repeated that error by squatting on barren, unstable hills on the city's fringes. The cost of installing pipes and pumping water to their remote, ramshackle homes is often many times higher than in more developed neighbourhoods. Mr Salazar added: "Now the people are there, you can't kick them out, and somehow you have to deal with giving them water."  Villa El Salvador bega  
 Japan's nuclear crisis has stalled the growing support for a UK "nuclear renaissance", a new poll reveals.  as predicted by commentators last week, a substantial fall-off has occurred in numbers of people backing new atomic stations as part of Britain's energy future, according to the poll by GfK NOP, for Friends of the Earth.  More than a third of Britons - 37 per cent - say they are now more likely to oppose "new nukes" in the UK after the reactor catastrophe at Fukushima.  a  
 Fallers were in the minority yesterday, but Drax was one of them as fears were raised that the power station operator could face a large blow over carbon permits in tomorrow's Budget.  Last December the Government revealed plans to introduce a floor price for carbon emissions which would eventually rise to ?70 a ton by 2030, and a decision on the proposals - including how it would be structured - is expected to be announced on Wednesday.  Warning that "there is no good outcome here for Drax", and noting the current carbon price is below ?15 a ton, angelos anastasiou, an analyst at Investec, said he sees the decision "as varying degrees of bad news".  "The debate is on the path," said Mr anastasiou, who added that the "toughest case is for a straight-line increase to ?70 a ton from current levels".  He also pointed out that in 2013, as part of the EU emissions trading scheme, "fossil fuel generators will cease to get free carbon allocations". Once this disappears, the analyst calculated, if Drax produces the same amount of carbon as in 2010 "each ?5 increase in the carbon price would lead to an increased cost of ?110m".  There was some hope, he said, in the group's "plans to convert one, and then potentially more, of its six units to dedicated biomass burning [which] could extricate it from this carbon conundrum, but it does count on significant subsidies... coming from the Government".  Dipping 4.6p to 415.4p, Drax was also hit by JP Morgan Cazenove reiterating its "underweight" advice, saying that although rising power prices in the UK have helped its short-term outlook, things appear more challenging in the longer term.  The rest of the market, however, maintained its rally as worries over Japan's nuclear situation continued to recede. The FTSE 100 climbed 67.96 points to 5,786.09 and the FTSE 250 closed 165.42 higher at 11,511.24 despite - with air strikes in Libya ongoing - the price of oil rising.  Takeover news from across the atlantic was having an effect following Sunday's announcement from aT&T that it is spending $39bn (?24bn) on T-Mobile USa. Vodafone - which is involved in the US through its joint venture Verizon Wireless - advanced 6.05p to 176p, although not everyone saw it as good news for the telecoms group.  Deutsche Bank said that, although it would usually view "this substantial consolidation event as unambiguously positive", it could prompt Verizon to make acquisitions itself, potentially delaying dividend payments to Vodafone.  Investec's Morten Singleton, however, said the deal "sidelines [Verizon Wireless's] major US competitors in a focus on integration and synergy extraction", and added that a possible merger between Vodafone and Verizon has now been made a "little more likely".  Elsewhere, Weir was driven up 73p to 1,708p by Credit Suisse giving it an "outperform" rating, with the broker saying that despite its recent under-performance it "remains a strong organic growth story". The rest of the engineering sector was also doing well, with Invensys - around which vague bid speculation has recently been seen yet again - taking top spot after moving 17.1p to 353.2p.  at the opposite end, Essar Energy plummeted 34.6p to 440.4p following its first full-year results since it listed last year. The energy group's earnings did beat expectations, but it also revealed three of its power stations have been delayed by three months because of recent heavy rain in India.  On the FTSE 250, there was a much better reaction to Regus's update, with the serviced office provider shooting up 16.1p to 116.6p following the release of its preliminary figures. The company enjoyed the jump despite its earnings falling in 2010 by more than two-thirds, as it predicted it would see its revenue grow in the year ahead. Punch Taverns was lifted 4.6p to 73.55p after responding to reports regarding the future of its spirits business. The group said it had thought about demerging the unit as part of its strategic review, and said it would announce its conclusions today.  also issuing a statement was Gem Diamonds, which - following recent speculation - confirmed it is currently in preliminary discussions with Lucara Diamond over a potential merger, and investors bumped it up 14.2p to 284.2p.  on the alternative Investment Market, Rockhopper spurted up 70.75p to 287.75p after the explorer said its Falkland Islands oil well "is highly likely to prove commercially viable". The news also helped other groups operating in the area, including Desire Petroleum, which   
 Our view: hold  Share price: 116.6p (+16.1p)  Last year was a mixed one for Regus, the office rental company, but the City gave its annual results a resounding thumbs up yesterday.  The shares rocketed after Regus delivered a better-than-expected performance on underlying cash, which came in at ?109.7m, and a 22.3 per cent margin, despite getting little help from the macroeconomic conditions in many of the 85 countries where it operates. That said, 2010 was not a year without pain for Regus, particularly in the UK.  On home soil, it undertook a restructuring drive and incurred exceptional charges of ?15.8m, which related to measures including a combination of asset write-downs, dilapidation on premises and closure costs associated with three business centres. When these 2010 costs and a net exceptional gain in the prior year is taken into account, the group's operating profit tumbled by nearly 70 per cent to ?23.8m last year.  Its UK revenues also fell 7 per cent to ?178.9m while slipping to ?281.2m in Europe, the Middle East and africa. However, at a group level, Regus's revenues were flat at ?1.04bn, helped by growing sales in its biggest markets: the americas, primarily the United States, and the asia-Pacific region. These regions will be key to Regus, whose offering includes a network of video-conference rooms serving more than 200,000 clients every day, and should help drive operating profit to ?126.4m over the next two years, according to analysts.  The company laid the foundation for this growth by streamlining its operations and ramping up its marketing spending last year. Regus also boasted a 69 per cent uplift to 540,000 in its Businessworld card members, such as those who may need a meeting room at short notice, as more companies embrace more flexible or remote working practices.  However, while Regus appears to have turned a corner, we find it hard to recommend its shares, which trade on on a lofty forward earnings multiple of 22 times.  Given such a demanding rate, we would advise caution until they cool down a bit after yesterday's powerful surge.  Netcall  Our view: buy  Share price: 18.5p (+0.25p)  Ever telephoned a customer service helpline and end up in a queue for what s  
 a BREED of blood-sucking ticks normally found in continental Europe has been discovered in Britain for the first time.  Researchers from the University of Bristol also found that the number of dogs infested with all species of the parasite was far higher than previously thought.  They raised fears that there is an increased risk of disease carried by the ticks, including some brought in for the first time by the foreign tick, Dermacentor reticulatus, thought to have arrived here because of climate change.  Dog ticks can be infected with diseases that, if left untreated, can damage the heart and nervous system of humans. The research, published in the journal Medical and Veterinary Entomology, studied 3,500 dogs. It found that at any one time 14.9 per cent of dogs were infested with ticks. 
 THE BBC'S budget for covering foreign news ran out "some time ago" and funds are so tight that the corporation's executives are in talks with other British broadcasters to pool resources on stories in order to save money.  The cash shortage follows an unprecedented run of major and long-running foreign stories stretching back to the Haiti earthquake last year and covering the mining accidents in Chile and New Zealand, the Christchurch earthquake, the uprisings in North africa, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the ongoing conflict in afghanistan.  The demand on resources has come at a time when the BBC is identifying 20 per cent savings across its output, following the recent settlement with the Government that saw the licence fee frozen for the next six years. The BBC's news room and the unrivalled network of foreign bureaux will be expected to take significant cuts.  The BBC's world news editor Jon Williams today makes a public appeal to the director general Mark Thompson to find extra money for covering global stories with lasting repercussions.  "The money that I've got is under pressure and ran out some time ago, truthfully. But other people have got deep pockets," he told The Independent. "Clearly the money that I get at the start of the financial year is only one piece of a much bigger budget that [BBC] news gets which is one piece of a much bigger budget that the BBC gets.  "The BBC is a ?4 billion-a-year corporation and how it chooses to spend that ?4bn a year is in the gift of one man." Williams hopes Thompson will increase the news budget overspend. "Even allowing for the savings that are coming up down the line, the BBC is still going to be a fantastically well-resourced organisation and if it can't spend its money on telling the biggest stories of the moment then we are not doing our job," he warned.  The current demands on Williams and his team are immense - BBC journalists are "running on empty", he says. He was in the process of organising  
 a group of climate change activists who plotted to shut down the UK's second largest power station have been invited to launch appeals against their convictions.  The 20 protesters received letters from the Director Of Public Prosecutions after a review of the activities of an undercover police officer surrounding planned demonstrations at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.  The group, convicted of aggravated trespass, were among more than 100 people arrested when police raided the Iona School in Sneinton, Nottingham, on 13 april last year. Keir Starmer QC has invited the protesters to appeal against the convictions after a review into the "non-disclosure of material" relating to the activities of the undercover officer. The protesters were convicted at Nottingham Crown Court in December.  In February, the head of the association of Chief Police Officers (acpo) said undercover policing operations should have to be authorised in advance by a judge. Sir Hugh Orde, acpo president, said the change was needed to restore public confidence after concerns about the role played by ex-Metropolitan Police constable Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist. 
 a liberal democrat Cabinet minister has warned David Cameron that the "outrageous" Conservative-led No campaign ahead of next month's referendum on the voting system risks inflicting permanent damage on the Coalition.  Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, told The Independent that the Prime Minister should intervene to stop the No camp telling "downright lies". He cited its claims that a switch to the alternative vote (aV) would require electronic counting machines and cost ?250m that could be spent on vital public services.  "There is no truth whatever in these outrageous allegations," he said. "It is absolutely astonishing that it could come from our Coalition partners. I fear it could damage the Coalition and diminish the respect his Coalition partners have for him [Mr Cameron]. There is no doubt that if you behave in a thoroughly reprehensible and underhand manner you are going to lose the respect of people."  asked whether the increasingly bitter referendum campaign could shorten the planned five-year life of the Coalition, Mr Huhne replied that he could not make predictions about the future and that the two parties still "have a job of work to do".  But he warned that there would be "a lot of bad feeling" after the 5 May referendum unless there was a "fair fight", saying the two Coalition parties should observe a political equivalent of boxing's Queensberry rules. He accused the No camp of resorting to "out of order" behaviour that went "way beyond the normal cut and thrust of a general election campaign. I cannot remember a campaign where one side resorted to such underhand tactics."  Mr Huhne rejected Mr Cameron's claim that he was responsible for the Conservative No campaign but not the wider No campaign. Describing the latter as a "Conservative front organisation", he said "all the moving parts" - such as the funding and the people running it - came from the Tories.  "The only way you can explain why the Conservatives are acting in this way is desperation. They are clearly very worried about losing the vote," said Mr Huhne. "It seems the Conservatives are prepared to say virtually anything to try to win it." He said the Tories had enjoyed power for about two-thirds of the 20th century under first-past-the-post, even though they had won more than 50 pe  
 If you like to do your bit for the environment, you don't have to stop when it comes to improving your home. There are lots of lovely, ethically minded companies out there who have developed high quality products to keep your home beautiful and your emissions low. One of the best places to start is to think long-term; as oil supplies dwindle, we could all be using natural energy to heat and light our homes in future - and it could save us money, too. Solar panels are a good investment and even if you don't intend to stay in your home long, they add to the house's value when you sell. although there are lots of companies who will install them for you, this is one of the most expensive parts of the operation, so why not buy some panels and install them yourself? You can buy a starter pack for around ?2,000 to ?3,000 and you can get advice from the Government's Department of Energy & Climate Change (go to www.decc.gov.uk and type "solar panels" in the search box). You can even, if you're a budding scientist, build your own panels, though for many this will be a step too far. If you're keen to have a go, however, look at www.earth4energy.com.   You'll need a large, preferably south-facing expanse of roof and the panels should be positioned at a 20-50 degree angle. Decide if your roof has the correct slope to allow you to install them on the roof itself, or if you need them to be free standing on a frame - on flat roofs, for example. There are good resources to take you through the process step-by-step at www.solarpanelmanual.com and the Energy Saving Trust (www.energysavingtrust.org.uk). Once the panels are installed, you'll need to hook them up to your home's electrical system - best to get expert advice here. Then you can choose to heat your water alone, or add lighting, too.  another great green DIY project is to install a Sedum roof. Little plants that thrive with little or no soil, Sedum can create a living environment in an area that would otherwise be barren, attracting insects and birds, eating bad carbon dioxide and helping create biodiversity. It can be used on flat roofs of houses, sheds, stables and garages and requires little or no maintenance or mowing. Buy mats already sown with plants (www.enviromat.co.uk) that arrive ready to lay on your chosen surface and within days you'll have a new green space for your home.  Inside the house, there are lots of ways to improve and freshen without resource to polluting chemicals. Eco-friendly paint is now readily available from many stores and online retailers and it comes in many colours and finishes - see the great range by Earthborn Paints (www.earthbornpaints.co.uk). You can also add an ingenious insulating paint additive to create a thermal insulating layer and cut fuel bills. Choose a re-usable paint tray made of cardboard, not plastic and paint it on with brushes that have bamboo handles, all from Nigel's Eco Store (www.nigelsecostore.com).  Insulation is another great way to save energy that an avid DIY-er can take on. Loft insulation is a relatively simple task that can be achieved over a weekend. Look for insulating material that's at least 300mm thick and made from an environmentally friendly substance such as surplus newspapers, recycled glass, hemp or sheep's wool, which you may find in your local B&Q; or check out Black Mountain Insulation (www.blackmountaininsulation.com). Draughty gaps between floorboards should be filled, as you can lose around 15 per cent of the heat in your home through a badly fitting floor. an environmentally friendly and unobtrusive sealant can give you a draught-free floor in hours (www.nigelsecostore.com) and you can then re-finish the floor with a water-based floor varnish or wax (www.auro.co.uk) . Then it's time to tackle other draughty places. Buy and fit a letter-box draught excluder, use insulating tape around poorly fitting doors and windows and put chimney balloons in fireplaces you don't use.  Done all that? To complete your green home, furnish using reclaimed, recycled and environmentally friendly substances. Bamboo flooring is a more sustainable alternative to hardwood (www.bambooflooringcompany.com). Reclaimed teak protects forests in Indonesia from being cut down and you can buy furniture that is resilient, durable and has a beautiful patina of age. Look for wardrobes, cabinets, tables and chairs from companies such as Raft (www.raftfurniture.co.uk). Or go retro and buy second-hand kitchen cabinets from a site such as Preloved (www.preloved.co.uk).  There's something for everyone, whether you want to paint a wall or build a completely eco-friendly house. and with excellent resources available for those who want to keep our homes fresh and green and who want to reduce our energy bill and carbon footprint all in one go, what's not to love?  SIX OF THE BEST ECO PRODUCTS  Taschelini Little Bag  This cute and colourful bag (pictured) is made from 100 per cent recycled plastic and can be used to store all your DIY essentials. Get hold of several colours, colour-code your collection, and you'll never lose a tool again! Brilliantly versatile, it can also be used as a vase or a cute gift bag for a house-warming gift.  Price: ?4.99  From: www.homegardenliving.co.uk  Cardboa  
 Fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas - powered the economic growth of the past century. But along with improved living standards and increased life expectancy came new fears about potentially devastating climate change. One decade into the 21st century, there is little sign that these old-fashioned hydrocarbons are loosing ground to the new green technologies designed to mitigate carbon-related climate change. If anything, in the wake of the radiation release at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, fossil fuels are consolidating their position as the energy supply if not of choice, then of necessity. as countries around the world rethink their commitment to nuclear power, which in recent years has been rehabilitated as the answer to the world's quest for a low-carbon future, it is increased flows of oil, gas and coal that look set to step into the supply breach - at least in the short term.  Indeed, a recent report from the International Energy agency, the energy watchdog of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), points out that surging demand for fossil fuels is outstripping deployment of clean energy technologies. Coal met 47 per cent of the global new electricity demand over the past decade, eclipsing clean energy efforts made over the same period of time. This continued appetite for fossil fuels puts at risk the UN Cancun climate agreement to limit the growth in global average temperatures to less than 2C.  Renewable energy is attracting more investment as countries struggle to meet climate pledges for 2020 and beyond. Solar and wind power lead the pack. according to the IEa, at least 10 countries have sizeable domestic solar energy markets, up from just three in 2000, while installed wind power capacity has increased more than 10 fold, from 17 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2000 to 194GW at the end of 2010. In the UK, wind power delivered more than 10 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2010, up 7.7 per cent on 2009, enough to supply more than two million homes. at least 3GW of new wind power is expected be added to the current installed capacity of 5.2GW by the end of 2012, increasing the annual contribution to around 22TWh.  There are many, however, who are openly hostile to wind power, seeing the turbines as a blight on the landscape and the technology as a waste of taxpayer-funded subsidy. This is because installed capacity doesn't truly reflect the contribution of wind power, which is, of course, dependent on the wind blowing. according to the wind and marine energy lobby group RenewableUK, wind turbines generate electricity for 70-85 per cent of the time, but not always at full output. While load factors vary according to the site and the type of turbine, the typical figure for wind is around 30 per cent. Issues of variability and intermittency mean the national power system is reliant on back-up base-load generation. This is not as dire as critics would have us believe, as wind power does not have the market penetration to create a need for major standby capacity (which is already in place in case of outages at a large conventional power plant). as renewable energy takes more market share, however, smart energy storage solutions will be required to ensure system reliability. These include the much-talked-of smart grid, or the promising emerging technology of interseasonal heat transfer (storing heat captured during the summer months for use in the winter).  This is where biopower - burning energy crops, forestry residues or municipal waste - has an advantage. It provides base-load capability and can be implemented quickly and inexpensively compared with large scale wind and solar power (it already accounts for more power generation than wind and solar combined on a global basis.) There are downsides, however, not least public concern about competition between food crops and energy crops.  "The challenge is to use the feedstock in a sustainable manner which gains public support," says Margaret Garn, editor of BioEnergy Insight magazine, which covers this fast-growing sector. "Bioenergy uses an abundant, often waste feedstock, can provide energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and above all has the potential to be cost-competitive with traditional forms of energy."  Marine energy also looks very promising given the vast natural resource of this island nation. Scotland's  
 When it comes to reducing man's impact on the world, businesses are often at the receiving end of a hefty dose of scepticism from the public: a recent survey by the Carbon Trust suggested that some 66 per cent of people question whether companies are honest when it comes to reporting the cuts in their carbon emissions.  Nevertheless, organisations of all sizes and across all industries are making an effort to green up their act. Bottles comprise at least 40 per cent recycled glass, while cosmetics giant L'Oreal boasts a carbon neutral, biomass-fuelled factory in Belgium. On the other side of the world, Chilean wine producer Cono Sur uses 1,000 free-roaming geese to eat insects and bugs around the vines of their Chimbarongo estate, removing the need for pesticides. Closer to home, Dogs Trust is currently building the world's most sustainable animal rehoming centre, which will feature a biomass boiler, under-floor heating, and rainwater recycling.  If wandering geese or canine rehoming don't dovetail with your company's business plan, there are still plenty of things you can do on Earth Day - and beyond - to make a difference. Perhaps the easiest measure is to cut down on paper use and move where possible towards paperless working.  "By putting in place simple and effective measures, such as only printing when it's essential and setting printers to print double sided, we've been able to drastically reduce our waste," says Helen Holland, CEO of communications consultancy The Reptile Group. The firm's paper consumption has fallen by 45 per cent, and a formal "end of day office exit procedure", where the last remaining staff member powers down all electrical equipment, has contributed to a 23 per cent drop in energy consumption.  Energy use is always an issue for companies, particularly where computers are concerned. To make them more efficient, you might consider a power management system. Some systems, such as 1E's NightWatchman and WakeUp solutions, will automatically switch machines off and on, removing the energy wastage associated with employees leaving their workstations running overnight. "Since the deployment of NightWatchman and WakeUp, we've seen a reduction of around 33 per cent in our energy costs," says Richard Barnes, associate and automation team leader of engineering firm arup. That's a reduction equivalent to the annual energy use of 40 homes. It's even possible to reduce your computer's power use while working. Free software such as granola (www.grano.la), launched on Earth Day last year, can regulate the activity of your CPU, effectively switching off your PC's engine while you're idle and reducing your energy use in the process.  Engines were very much at the forefront of Martin Whitmarsh's mind when aiming for the Carbon Trust Standard (created by the Carbon Trust as an objective way of assessing corporate carbon performance). as team principal for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One team, he acknowledges that the sport is not perhaps the first thing people would think of when it comes to sustainability. "For many people outside the sport there was a surprise that a sports car manufacturer was tackling its emissions," he says.  However, by reducing use of their wind tunnel and using measuring and improving the efficiency of their truck drivers (among other things), the team became the first in F1 to achieve the standard, saving 1,400 tonnes of CO2 a year. While few other firms will need to be concerned with wind tunnels or the baffling speed of Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, the team's efforts point to the fact that any company can reduce their environmental impact by focusing on efficient transport - whether that's car-pooling with fellow employees, using public transport for business travel, or encouraging people to cycle to work where possible, which will of course have added health benefits.  If staff need more incentive than losing a few pounds by getting on a bike, perhaps you could suggest they gain a few by signing up to a personal allowance carbon tracking scheme, like the one run by WSP Environment & Energy. Participants track their emissions against an annual allowance - those who emit less receive a financial reward, while those who exceed their limit pay into the fund. Organisations taking part include aviva, the Co-operative and Cisco. David Symons, director at WSP Environment & Energy, says the benefits are clear: "already we've seen that introducing personal carbon tracking can help firms engage with employees and deliver meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. Members who took part both in 2009 and 2010 cut their annual emissions by an average of 0.5 tonnes of CO2."  Whether it's through larger recycling bins or state-of-the-art cooling systems to make data centres more efficient, there are many ways companies can perform green acts. It can even mean working to  
 Earth Day's campaign to attract pledges for a billion acts of green might seem unattainable at first, but there are many things we can all do to reduce our impact on the environment. Whether these are quick changes in the home, or more profound shifts in the way we live our lives, Earth Day is a chance to take stock of our current habits, and consider how we could be more green in the future.  The simplest place to start is at home, with activities the whole family can take part in until they become second nature. For example, turning off electrical appliances rather than leaving them on standby, can make a big difference to your household's energy use (and consequently to your bills). Greenpeace estimates that 12 per cent of all electricity use worldwide is taken up by appliances on standby - so flicking that switch can have a real effect.  For a sobering reminder of exactly how much juice your home is guzzling, try plugging in a home energy monitor (widely available online and from some energy suppliers), which will show your expenditure in real time. Directgov figures suggest the average household saves between five and 15 per cent on their bills during the first year of using a monitor - or between ?25 and ?75 on a ?500 bill.  Other simple acts that the whole family can get on board with include only filling the kettle with the amount of water you need (getting children to create reminder signs for the kitchen is fun for them and a handy aide memoire for coffee-deprived adults in the morning), and reducing the amount of hot water you use in the bathroom. "Showering is much better than a bath, but if you must have a bath, try not to make it too hot," says Steve Chasan of Ecohip (ecohip.co.uk), a company specialising in natural homecare and cosmetic products. "Up to a third of energy used in the average household goes on heating water."  For every room in the house, the other quick and practical change to make is to install energy saving bulbs. They're available cheaply from most supermarkets and do make a difference, saving you up to ?45 over the lifetime of the bulb according to the Energy Saving Trust.  Once your energy saving bulbs are spent (which should take a few years), they can usually be recycled. although kerbside recycling schemes are now part of everyday life for most of us there's still a lot that isn't taken - but which can be recycled at larger out of town centres. There's also the option of freecycling (freecycle.org), where unwanted items are simply given away to those with a use for them, keeping them out of the landfill sites. Similar to freecycling are websites allowing users to swap and borrow tools, equipment and other items - the borrowing site ecomodo.com allows users to create a lending circle with people they trust.  Naturally, we can't freecycle or borrow everything we need, but shopping can still be an environmentally conscious activity. Lush cosmetics has been creating innovative solutions to packaging for many years and encourages its customers to bring back their old plastic pots of moisturisers and lotions, which are then recycled into "pillars of fizz"; tubes to hold the company's signature bath ballistics. "We've seen a clear increase in the number of pots we get back," says Ruth andrade, who heads up the company's green initiatives. "People always want to do the right thing, you just have to give them the opportunity."  There are even opportunities to make your holiday greener, whether you're under canvas or aiming to stay somewhere swish. Website campingninja.com will let you search for eco-friendly sites that recycle, use local wood and produce solar power. In the city, Manchester's Midland Hotel - favoured haunt of novelist anthony Burgess - is one of the few UK establishments to attain the Carbon Trust Standard and a Gold award from the Environmental Business Pledge, growing its own plants and flowers and encouraging staff to use greener forms of transport.  Green transport is a clear way to reduce your footprint - walking and cycling where possible or getting public transport all make a difference, even if we only alter one journey a week. But an even greater change might actually come from moving towards a meat-free diet. according to some UN reports, the global animal farming industry is the cause of 18 per cent of climate change gases, compared to around 14 per cent for all transport and travel. a University of Chicago study even suggested that switching to a vegan diet would be more beneficial to the environment than switching to a hybrid car.  "The typical British diet takes about three times as much fertile land, fresh water and energy to produce as a well-planned vegan diet would," says  
 "It was a gamble, but it worked," said United States Senator Gaylord Nelson about the first Earth Day, which he founded back in 1970. No kidding. Today, Earth Day, which falls on 22 april, is celebrated in almost 200 countries and is the single biggest day in the sustainability calendar. With more than a billion people now participating in Earth Day activities each year, it is the largest civic observance in the world and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement.  Whether greening schools or promoting green economic policies at home and abroad, all of Earth Day's activities aim to inform and energise populations, so they will act to secure a healthy future for themselves and their children. Indeed, the remit is broad, with the definition of "environment" including all  issues that affect our health, our communities and our surroundings, such as creating green jobs and investment and promoting activism to stop air and water pollution.  This year, the focus is on creating one billion acts of green. "The idea is to inspire and reward simple individual acts right through to huge organisational initiatives that further the goal of measurably reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainability. We want to register one billion actions in advance of the Earth Summit in Rio in 2012," explains John Maleri, who is in charge of Earth Day outreach across Europe.  He is optimistic. "at over 95 million actions to date, a Billion acts of Green - the largest environmental service campaign in the world - is steadily building commitments by individuals, corporations and governments in honour of Earth Day," he says.  The official website, www.billionacts ofgreen.org, quantifies acts of green though an easy-to-use online registration tool. It shows a vast range of pledges, including helping to green an area outside a college, not using electricity for an hour a day, eating more local food, changing light bulbs to energy saving ones, refusing to use toxic cleaning products, bringing reusable shopping bags to the shops and organising a community event encouraging others to go green. any such action counts in the march towards the target. For people struggling to think of something to do or who want to be part of a collective activity, the website features an event locator where people can find out information on any Earth Day-related activities in their area.  Indeed, the Earth Day Network has formed partnerships with organisations up and down the country, such as Trees4Scotland, which is promoting its 22 Days of Green event by doubling their tree planting efforts throughout the month, and the UK Youth Climate Coalition, which is campaigning to reduce CO2 emissions.  Companies are also working hard. Throughout april, for example, Disney Store is enabling customers to buy the new Earth Day shopping bag, raising money for the Woodland Trust. The new design features Pooh, Piglet and Tigger hugging a tree. They are on sale for ?2.50, with ?1 from each purchase being donated to the Trust. "Over the past two years, Disney has raised over ?213,000, which is helping to create a Magical Wood at Heartwood Forest," says a spokesperson.  Other companies, such as Citrix Online, have several activities lined up. "We are inviting external exhibitors to educate employees about ways to become more green," says a spokesperson. "We also have internal exhibitors with information about how to be more green in your work life. Finance, for instance, has a table inviting employees to sign up for paperless pay slips, while community connection has a table teaching employees about local environmental non-profit-making organisations where they can use the volunteer day they're given each year to help out. Facilities has a table reminding people of what they can recycle - it's not just cans and plastic bottles."  among the charities getting involved in Earth Day this year is Compassion in World Farming. "Our big hope for Earth Day is that more people than ever before see factory farming for what it is," comments CEO Philip Lymbery. "Our aim is to get people to recognise the huge damage it does to animals, people and the environment. Important Earth Day pledges could include going meat-free for a day, committing to be meat-free one day a week or switching to food raised humanely and sustainably, such as free-range."  Earth Day was born out of the student anti-war movement. Inspired by what it achieved, then Wisconsin governor Nelson realised that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda. "Senator Nelson announced the idea for a 'national teach-in on the environment' to the national media," says Maleri. "He persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican congressman, to serve as his co-chair and he recruited Harvard graduate Denis Hayes as national co-ordinator. On 22 april 1970, 20 million americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection agency and the passage of the Clean air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts."  as the years went on, Earth Day continued to achieve great things, and as 1990 approached, a group of environmental leaders asked Hayes to organise another big campaign. "This time, Earth Day went global, mobilising 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage," says Maleri. "Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. as the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. With 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries reaching out to hundreds of millions of people, Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990."  More than 40 years on from its beginnings, Earth Day is not without its cynics, who claim that the celebration itself has outlived its usefulness. But just last year, Earth Day accomplishments included the logging of over 40 million environmental actions towards the goal of a Billion acts of Green, from large-scale climate petition drives to city-wide light bulb change-outs to massive coral reef and beach clean-ups. Earth Day 2010 also saw the Earth Day Network partner with the Carbon War Room to convene 200 of the world's most important entrepreneurs for the Creating Climate Wealth Summit, which examined groundbreaking ways to solve climate change and create a new green economy based on renewable energy. a commitment to planting a million trees in 16 countries was also made.  In Kolkata, India, plans for a small series of sponsored events evolved into a movement across 17 cities nationwide. In China, 10 universities participated in month-long efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of their communities, with students making lifestyle changes, such as recycling and using public transportation. and in afghanistan, Earth Day Network worked with more than 40 government and village leaders across the country on environmental practices, including recycling programmes, clean water and alternative energy. There are many more examples of such initiatives.  The beauty of Earth Day, believes Richard Hebditch, campaigns director at Campaign for Better Transport, is that literally everyone can do something that counts. "Urgent action is needed to reduce rising CO2 emissions from transport in the UK, for example, and by making a simple pledge on Earth Day to reduce our transport carbon footprint and walking or cycling to work or catching the train instead of a plane, can make a huge difference."  'PLaNTING a TREE ONLY COSTS a TENNER '  For 22 days from the beginning of april, every tree that is planted via www.trees4scotland.com (at a cost of ?10 per tree ) is being matched by the organisation, which will plant another.  In the campaign from 1 april to 22 april, Trees4Scotland is getting individuals and companies alike to plant at least one tree.  "The Earth Day Network contacted us," says angus Crabbie (right), founder of Trees4Scotland. "We do a lot of work to raise awareness of the lack of woodlands in the UK generally and so they saw value in partnering up with us. For us, it's an interesting experiment to see just how much interest we can get from the general public, on an issue that has a few myths surrounding it."  People think planting a tree is expensive, but it just costs ?10, says Crabbie. "also contrary to popular opinion, it's really easy. It takes 100 years to grow a tree, it takes five minut  
 a SURVEY of some of Britain's leading gardening experts, including the former Gardeners' World presenter alan Titchmarsh, shows less than half use peat-free compost, .  The results of the survey by the RSPB wildlife charity look set to reignite the debate over peat extraction, which has raged for 20 years. Last week, alan Titchmarsh was criticised by Friends of the Earth for arguing in Gardeners' World magazine, that sometimes there was no alternative for gardeners.  The RSPB wants a Government tax on peat products - such as ?1 on the average bag of compost - to encourage people to buy greener alternatives. Conservationists say extracting peat for use in gardens in the UK, much of which is from Ireland and the Baltic, leads to carbon dioxide emissions and damages natural habitats and wildlife.  according to the survey of 27 gardeners, broadcasters and writers, two-thirds backed the Government's aim of phasing out peat products. Most also thought consumers did not know enough about the environmental impact of peat extraction to make an informed decision.  alys Fowler, former presenter of the BBC's Gardeners' World and The Edible Garden, who does not use peat, said a levy on peat products would make "a real difference". She said: "I think there needs to be more education about the benefits of the non-peat compost - it can be just as effective as peat.  "as well as reducing carbon emissions and protecting peat bogs, peat-free compost is also a great way of recycling our waste. Just as we do not have endless peatbogs, we also do not have bottomless landfill sites."  Writing in Gardeners' World, Mr Titchmarsh defended his green credentials, saying he mostly gardened organically, conserved water and supported wildlife in his garden. But he said he used peat compost for seedlings that would otherwise fail to thrive. Other gardeners who still used peat include Noel Kingsbury, Christine Walkden, Helen Yemm, Bob Flowerdew and adam Pasco, editor of Gardeners' World.  The RSPB said some of those who responded to their poll were concerned that the lack of decent and widely available peat-free alternatives was a problem for gardeners keen to make the switch from peat.  Olly Watts of the RSPB said: "Peat extraction is a significant source of carbon emissions and causes destruction of natural habitats. Many gardeners understand this and are redu  
 The strained relations between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats reached a new low yesterday amid an increasingly bitter campaign ahead of next month's referendum on the voting system.  Doubts were expressed about whether the Coalition would last as planned until 2015 after Nick Clegg launched his strongest attack on the Tory-led No campaign and did not exempt David Cameron from criticism. Officially, both parties insisted it will be "business as usual" inside the Government after the 5 May referendum. But insiders believe the scars from the referendum battle will mean that the relationship between the Coalition partners will never be the same again.  The Liberal Democrats raised the stakes yesterday as they sought to combat what Mr Clegg called the "lies, misinformation and deceit" of the No camp. He told The Independent on Sunday that opponents of the alternative vote (aV), including Mr Cameron, were the "death rattle of a right-wing ?lite, a right-wing clique who want to keep things the way they are".  Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, will complain to the elections watchdog the Electoral Commission about "untruths" pumped out by the No campaign.  Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary, suggested his party might sue the No to aV organisation unless it retracted its claims about aV - including a statement that it would mean spending ?135m on electronic vote-counting machines. He warned that the credibility of Mr Cameron, the Chancellor, George Osborne, and the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, would be undermined unless the allegations were withdrawn.  He told the BBC: "Let's be clear - if they aren't prepared to come out with any substantiation for this extraordinary allegation that we're going to need voting machines for the system when none of the other countries actually have [them], there is a very simple legal redress. My colleague Simon Hughes today is talking about getting the Electoral Commission to look at this, and there will be other legal means as well - so they'd better come clean pretty fast."  Mr Huhne refused to say whether he might resign from the Cabinet over the aV row. "The key point is that we have a very difficult job to do, and obviously it is substantially easier to do if we have a good personal relationship - and it is, frankly, worrying if you have colleagues who you've respected and who you've worked well with who are making claims which have no foundation in truth whatsoever. If they don't come clean on this, I'm sure the law courts will."  Senior Tories and Liberal Democrats expected the two parties to diverge ahead of 5 May, when they will do battle in elections to English councils, the Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly as well as on opposite sides of the aV campaign. But the acrimony of the battle over voting reform has surprised both sides. "We have both gone off script," one source said. "We didn't think it would get this nasty. It's a learning curve for both of us."  In some ways, it suited both parties to have a degree of what marketing men call "product differentiation" ahead of 5 May. If anything, the Coalition had worked so well that there were fears in both parties that Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg were a bit too close for their parties' own good.  a lot has happened since then. The Li  
 Britain is failing to attract the level of investment needed to build a low-carbon infrastructure and meet emissions reduct  
 at first sight, the data published yesterday by Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, tells you exactly why George Osborne is so determined to get Britain's borrowing under control. There, in third place in the league of shame, sits Britain, with a deficit of 10.4 per cent of GDP for 2010. Only in Ireland, at 32.4 per cent, and Greece, at 10.4 per cent, did spending relative to revenues get more out of hand last year. and we know what happened to them.  Indeed, the UK was a much worse performer than Portugal, which has already followed Ireland and Greece down the bail-out route. Its deficit was only 9.1 per cent. Even Spain, which could be next for a sovereign debt crisis, had a smaller deficit than us, at 9.2 per cent.  These are the statistics with which the Chancellor has pummelled critics who do not accept his Plan a for deficit reduction. If we go on borrowing at the same rate as countries such as Greece and Portugal, Mr Osborne argues, we must expect to suffer the same fate as them.  Well, yes, to a point. But Eurostat's budget deficit figures tell you only what happened last year. To get an accurate picture of Britain's indebtedness, one also needs to consider our total borrowing. Statistics on this were also helpfully provided by Eurostat yesterday, and they tell a rather different tale. On total Government debt as a proportion of GDP, the UK is only the ninth worst performer in Europe. Our debts totalled 80 per cent of GDP by the end of last year, compared to 143 per cent, 96 per cent and 93 per cent for Greece, Ireland and Portugal respectively. In Italy, the figure was 119 per cent, while France came in at 82 per cent. Even that model of fiscal rectitude, Germany, was worse than us, at 83 per cent.  Now, this second comparison will be much less easy on the eye for Britain in the years ahead unless the deficit begins to come down. But it is part of the explanation of why the UK continues to enjoy a aaa rating from the credit rating agencies - and why our borrowing costs are not much higher than the Germans'. Other factors are the fact the UK has emerged from recession, albeit modestly, and that our debts are due to be refinanced over a longer period than those of many neighbours.  None of which is to say that the Chancellor is wrong to tackle the deficit as a priority. But in defending the case for a more aggressive approach than almost any other country in the world, Mr Osborne does tend to be rather selective with the figures he uses.  another chance to bash the bankers  For anyone with even a hint of antipathy for the banking sector - most of the population, in other words - the idea that the likes of Barclays might be responsible for causing hunger or even starvation in the developing world looks to be an open goal. You can certainly expect a noisy protest from the World Development Movement on this topic at Barclays' annual general meeting today.  Barclays is getting it in the neck because it is a big player in food commodity trading - Goldman Sachs has copped flak for the same reason. The WDM says the growing sums invested in food commodities for speculative reasons is one cause of food prices spiking this year to an all-time high, as measured by the United Nations' Food and agriculture Organisation.  Still, while anyone with a heart is going to side with, say, hungry african children rather than Barclays' well-paid traders - or the billionaires at Glencore, also in the firing line in recent days - where is the proof that investments in food commodities have caused the latest price spike? It is certainly true this is a rapidly-growi  
 THE GOVERNMENT yesterday signed up to cutting Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half - but with no clear agreement on how to achieve the target. The Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne announced that ministers had accepted proposals by the Committee on Climate Change to enshrine in law reductions in carbon emissions to 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2027.  Environmental groups welcomed the move but warned that the policies were still not in place to achieve the ambitious target. In recent months the Government has cut the public funds for clean-energy technologies such as carbon capture and solar power.  Meanwhile, the new Green Bank - crucial for getting the investment to replace Britain's ageing power plants - will not be able to borrow money for renewable energy projects until 2015.  The Treasury is fighting a rearguard action to prevent Mr Huhne from producing carbon-reduction proposals that could potentially damage industry and derail economic recovery. But the Department of Energy and Climate Change argues that investment in green technology will improve Britain's long-term economic prospects.  Yesterday's decision to adopt the Committee on Climate Change is a first-round victory for Mr Huhne and makes Britain the first country in the world to set legally binding commitments to reduce carbon into the 2020s. The Treasury won concessions for energy-intensive industries such as steel manufacturing - which are likely to be given tax breaks to compensate them for rising electricity prices.  There is also an option to review the target in 2014. But any attempt to lower it would require consultation with the Committee on Climate Change and a change in EU emissions targets. Sources close to Mr Huhne said in practice it would be almost impossible to renege on the commitment - especially as it would come just one year before a general election.  announcing the agreement in the House of Commons, Mr Huhne said it sent a clear signal that the Government was serious about the transformation to a low-carbon economy in the UK. "We are demonstrating our desire to drive the changes needed to turn the UK into a dynamic, low-carbon economy that is attractive to investors in the new and growing low-carbon sectors," he said. "We are also sending a clear signal to the international community: that the UK is committed to the low-carbon economy."  He said the Government would continue to press for higher EU targets for 2020 and ambitious action in the following decade.  David Kennedy, chief executive of the CCC, which was set up to advise the Government on meeting its legally binding targets to cut emissions under the Climate Change act, said he was "delighted" the recommendations had been accepted. "Setting and meeting the carbon budget will place the UK in a strong position, both in terms of meeting the 2050 target, and building an economy very well-placed to prosper in a low-carbon world," he said.  asked about reports that he had personally had to step in and overrule objections from the Chancellor George Osborne and Business Secretary Vince Cable to the new regime, David Cameron told a Commons Committee: "No 10 is always involved. In this case, my office was involved in trying to encourage a solution.  "The Business Secretary and others had very legitimate concerns about energy-intensive industries and how we should try to put together a package to help them, because they are being affected, not just by the carbon budget but by also changes to the electricity market and other costs.  "It doesn't actually help climate change if you simply drive an energy intensive industry to locate in Poland rather than Britain. That was one sticking point."  The decision was broadly welcomed by environmental campaigners. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said: "The Prime Minister deserves credit for putting a stop to attempts by the Treasury to derail the UK's opportunity for being a leader in green growth."  IS BRITaIN REaLLY GETTING GREENER?  The Green Investment Bank  Unveiled in the budget, the Green Bank is the centre-piece of the Coalition's promise to be the "greenest government ever". It will invest exclusively in low-carbon infrastructure, renewable energy and financially support the development of new clean technologies. Current Government proposals stipulate it will not have powers to borrow or raise money (such as issuing ISaS and bonds) until 2015. Until then it has ?3 billion of public money to invest. Not allowing it to borrow earlier, green groups say, is disastrous as investment decisions on replacing Britain's power generation plants need to be taken long before 2015.  The Green Deal  The Green Deal will allow 14 million UK households to apply for up to ?10,000 to pay for energy efficiency improvements on their homes such as insulation, double glazing and energy-efficient boilers. The money will be provided upfront by the private sector and paid back in energy savings by homes over a 20-year period. The first Green Deals are expected to appear in autumn 2012 after consultation and review, so for now it isn't working at all.  Investing in renewable energy  Greening our electricity is key to reducing emissions. The need for a shift fro  
 CHRIS HUHNE, the Energy Secretary, soldiered through a gruelling hour in the Commons yesterday, setting out the Government's policy on climate change, as he awaits a decision from Essex police on whether he is to be the subject of a criminal investigation.  His Commons appearance was preceded by a day's speculation on whether he would show his face at all. Downing Street had said the previous day that the Government's ambitious plans for carbon reduction would be set out in a written statement. But Mr Huhne reportedly insisted on making a personal  
 MPs claimed they wanted to know how the Golden Rule was going to operate in the Green Deal to make the Heat Incentive scheme improve the Quarterly Renewable Waste strategy. Or so my notes say.  The Energy Secretary rose. There was a sudden silence in the gallery. Chris Huhne was taking his first question time since  
 ELLIOT MORLEY, the most senior politician to face trial over the expenses scandal was sentenced yesterday to 16 months in jail for fiddling more than ?30,000.  The former Labour MP, who has been praised by environmentalist as one of the best "green" ministers to serve in any British government, left court in a prison van, a man ruined by what his lawyer, Jim Sturman QC, described as "an absolutely ridiculous and inexplicable course of criminal conduct". Mr Morley sat hunched in the crowded courtroom during the two-hour hearing, and twice wiped tears away. Once was after Mr Sturman had pointed out his client was facing judgment alone, because he did not want his wife and children to have to pass the cameras outside the court.  He was also reduced to tears after Mr Sturman had read from a tribute to his ministerial career by The Independent's Environment Editor, Michael McCarthy, written soon after he had been exposed as an expenses cheat.  Mr Morley pleaded guilty to the largest fraud by any MP to come before the courts, but drew a comparatively light sentence, partly because the crime was so unsophisticated.  He was entitled under Commons rules to reclaim the interest paid on the mortgage on his second home, near Scunthorpe. For three and a half years he submitted claims for ?800 a month, which, despite written requests from the Fees Office, were never backed by any documents.  Between May 2004 and February 2009, the mortgage he was paying varied between ?52 and ?5.85 a month. In February 2009, the mortgage was paid off, and Mr Morley was told in writing by his building society that there was no longer a charge on the property. But he carried on claiming, and the Fees Office carried on paying, despite the absence of any evidence to back his claim, until he had defrauded taxpayers of more than ?30,000.  He rapidly repaid the money after the fraud was uncovered by the Daily Telegraph in May 2009, explaining he was "horrified" to have discovered he had committed "an embarrassing and inadvertent oversight". But passing sentence, Mr Justice Saunders said: "I am satisfied from the nature of the mortgage transactions and the correspondence that the excessive claims were made deliberately and are not explicable, even in part, by oversight."  Mr Morley was Labour MP for Scunthorpe from 1987 to 2010, and served for nine years as an environment minister, before being abruptly sacked in 2006 after a dispute with the treasury about government policy on climate change.  Mr Sturman pointed out that, at the age of 59, Morley faced an "uncertain future". Because of his dishonesty, he has forfeited the ?64,000 re  
 SSE?  Scottish and Southern Energy. It's one of the country's biggest energy companies,  So how's business?  They're doing very nicely thank you. Mr Marchant announced yesterday that SSE made a profit of ?2.1bn last year, almost a third more than in 2009/10.  So can I turn the heating up?  Best not to. SSE may be making money hand over fist but Mr Marchant is still concerned he may have to raise prices later this year.  How can he justify that?  SSE is making all its money from generating power. It says big increases in the cost of gas and electricity on the wholesale markets have left it losing money on its household business.  Should we believe him?  Well, he's right about the wholesale market. But regulators accuse the big energy companies of being too quick to raise their prices in such circumstances and too slow to cut when wholesale markets fall. Ofgem is investigating them for exactly that right now.  Is Mr Marchant worried?  It's difficult to tell. SSE, like all the energy companies, rejects Ofgem's analysis. But Mr Marchant almost never gives interviews.  What's his background?  He's a high-flyer. SSE appointed him as its finance director in 1998 at the tender age of 37. Four years later, he got the top job - on appointment at SSE in 2002, he was the youngest chief executive in the FTSE 100.  and since then?  He's managed SSE astutely, steering clear of the big deals that have tempted rival energy providers. He's also sound on the issue of climate change - SSE still burns fossil fuels of course, but Mr Marchant has invested in renewables businesses and is also a campaigner for greater energy efficiency.  What else do we know?  Not a great deal, he's pretty private. He earned ?1.2m last year and friends describe him as a rugby nut. 
 David Cameron and Ed Miliband set out contrasting visions yesterday of how to bolster family life and rebuild a sense of community in Britain in the wake of the budget squeeze on public spending.  The Prime Minister announced plans to increase charitable giving and volunteering as he sought to breathe new life into his struggling "Big Society" agenda. The Labour leader, meanwhile, said he wanted to be judged in office by his success in boosting the job opportunities and supply of affordable housing for young adults.  Mr Cameron promised an extra ?42m in help for the voluntary sector in an attempt to encourage people to spend more time and money on good causes. The ambition of fostering a "Big Society" has been a constant theme for the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly returned to it in the face of colleagues' scepticism and public indifference.  Speaking yesterday in Milton Keynes, he insisted that it was fundamental to his determination to improve the quality of life in Britain over the next decade.  "as our debts are paid off, this is what I want to endure as the lasting legacy of this administration - helping to build a society where families and communities are stronger, where our nation's wellbeing is higher, and where all these things are accepted as central, not peripheral aspects of what modern governments should hope to achieve," he said.  "So the Big Society is not some fluffy add-on to more gritty and more important subjects. This is about as gritty and important as it gets: giving everyone the chance to get on in life and making our country a better place to live."  Ministers have been encouraged by the announcement that the Link network   
 The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) throws open the gates of the Chelsea Flower Show today with a message for Britain's gardeners: the humble urban backyard can help save the planet.  It's something that keen horticulturalists have always suspected, but for the first time, the RHS has brought together all the published evidence in a scientific review entitled Gardening Matters: Urban Gardens.  Collating the evidence reveals four key areas in which gardens make a difference. They help control urban temperatures, mitigating the effects of extreme heat and cold. They help prevent flooding by absorbing rainwater that would otherwise overload drainage systems. They support human health by easing stress and providing physical exercise. and they have effectively become some of Britain's nature reserves, supporting a range of wildlife including birds, mammals and invertebrates.  There is growing evidence that some declining species, once common in low-intensity farmland, are now more abundant in urban areas. These include the song thrush, the common frog and hedgehogs. One study found that in Sheffield's domestic gardens, the density of birds was six times that of the nation as a whole.  Dr Tijana Blanusa, who led the RHS   
 Doctors and nurses at the main hospital in the US town of Joplin, Missouri, had just minutes to rush patients away from windows and outside walls before it was ravaged by a massive tornado that ripped a wide path through, leaving at least 116 people dead and countless more injured. Officials said the death toll was expected to rise.  "I've heard people talk about being in tornadoes and saying it felt like the building was breathing," Rod Pace, a manager at the ruined nine-storey hospital said. "It was just like that."  He held on to double doors fitted with magnets to keep them closed at up to 100lbs of pressure. They flew open anyway, tossing him into a hallway. With its windows blown in and its car park resembling a scrapyard the hospital was a ruin yesterday. X-rays were found 70 miles away. The devastation elsewhere in Joplin was even more alarming. Shopping complexes, churches, schools had been crushed or badly damaged.  It's never easy to comprehend what destruction a strong tornado can wreak. They strip bark from trees. "You see pictures of the Second World War, the devastation with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," said Kerry Sanchetta, the headmaster of the town's demolished high school. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building."  One resident, Tom Rogers, said his house had been destroyed. "We heard the tornado sirens. all of a sudden, everything came crashing down on us. We pulled our heads up and there was nothing. It was gone," he told The Joplin Globe.  Melodee Colbert-Kean, a Joplin councilwoman who serves as vice mayor, said: "It is just utter devastation anywhere you look to the south and the east - businesses, apartment complexes, houses, cars, trees, schools: you name it, it is levelled."  as more rain fell on the town, tales of heartbreaking loss and of survival were exchanged. Rescue workers reported finding bodies in cars around the town that had been picked up and dumped by the twister. Others perished in homes shattered by the wind.  Survivors told of split-second decisions that saved their lives, like Jeff Lehr, a reporter for The Joplin Globe, who had to abandon a cat that wouldn't come out from under his bed and sprint to the basement of his apartment building, or Isaac Duncan who fled into the cold storage room of a petrol station shop.  "There was an awful, pulsing, hectoring noise outdoors before the windows began imploding, and flying glass forced me to the stairs without him [the cat]," Mr Lehr said. "I literally slid down them as something wooden shot past me, and a large chunk of insulation from who knows where slapped my face."  Mr Duncan and a friend found themselves crammed into the shop's cooler with about 20 strangers. The sound of their terror and of the tornado passing overhead was captured by Mr Duncan's mobile phone and yesterday was playing on cable news stations around the world. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," one woman is heard groaning.  "We all just jumped in the cooler," Mr Duncan told CNN. "There was glass everywhere, most of the people got cut pretty bad."  When the roar was gone they came out. "The only thing that was left standing was the cooler that we were in - everything that was around it was gone."  another man told a reporter that downstairs in his house he thought the end had come when the floor started to buckle under his feet.  "We thought we were going to be sucked up the chimney," he said.  It is a tornado season that has already entered the history books. The terrible storm that struck Tuscaloosa, alabama, last month killed 236 people. So far this year, 453 people have died in tornadoes across the US.  With winds in excess of 200mph, the Joplin twister gouged a path that was a mile wide and six miles long. It was survivable only for those inside the sturdiest of structures. and then there is the peril of debris flying through the air - planks, bricks, cars, whole lorries. as well as the dead, there were hundreds with injuries yesterday.  Officials said that a quarter of the town was heavily damaged and 2,000 buildings strafed by its winds. The hospital, St John's Regional Medical Centre, was wrecked in under a minute. as the door-to-door search for survivors continued, the Missouri Governor Jay Nixon warned that the final death toll was likely to rise. "I don't think we're done counting," he told the associated Press.  a RECORD YEaR FOR TORNaDOES IN THE US  Tornadoes can occur in many parts of the world, but are most frequently found the United States east of the Rocky Mountains during the spr  
 Every gum tree contains a koala, or so most australians assume. But complacency could be killing off the emblematic native animal, according to scientists, who want it listed as an endangered species.  already under pressure from habitat loss and disease, koalas now face a new threat: climate change. They cope poorly with the droughts and heatwaves that are expected to become more common in southern australia in years to come. To make matters worse, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is reducing the nutrient content of eucalyptus leaves, their sole food source.  Scientists say koala numbers have already declined sharply in some areas, and they warn that unless more energetic conservation measures are taken, the mammal's viability could be in doubt. "This species is supposed to be common, yet it's slipping to extinction under our noses," Christine Hosking, a nature conservationist at the University of Queensland, said yesterday.  Ms Hosking, who is researching a PhD on the impact of climate change on the koala, was one of several experts who recently gave evidence to a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the animal's health and status. She said that listing it as endangered would be a first step towards developing a national action plan to safeguard its future.  Koalas are difficult to spot in the wild, where they perch high up in gum trees, their speckled fur camouflaged against the branches. Nevertheless, with their very wide range, which encompasses much of eastern australia, they have always been thought to be extremely numerous.  While that was once true, it may not still be the case. Population estimates are difficult to come by, because the animals are hard to count, but Clive Mcalpine, a landscape ecologist at the University of Queensland, believes that there are no more than 50,000 to 100,000 left in the wild. In some areas, such as Queensland's Gold Coast, he says, populations have decreased by as much as 80 per cent over the last 10 to 15 years. another koala expert, Bill Ellis, says that in places where researchers used to find 30 to 50 koalas in one day, only three or four are now being sighted.  Large-scale land clearing, for urban development, industry and agriculture, has progressively deprived the koala of much of its traditional habitat.  In recent years, the species has also been crippled by chlamydia, which leads to infertility and sometimes death, and a retrovirus similar to HIV, which causes various infections as well as, possibly, cancer and leukaemia.  according to Dr Mcalpine, some scientists believe that the retrovirus, currently sweeping through koala populations, has the potential to be as destructive as the facial tumour disease that has almost wiped out the Tasmanian devil.  Koalas are not only being squeezed out by encroaching development, but are in danger of being run over or attacked by dogs. Now climate change is set to add to those pressures. Koalas are ill-equipped to deal with high temperatures; during heatwaves, they suffer dehydration and heat stress. Hot, dry conditions also drain the moisture out of eucalyptus leaves, from which they get most of their water. On particularly scorching days, koalas literally fall out of trees.  Ms Hosking's research shows that temperatures above 37 degrees celsius are intolerable for them. "Once you get ove  
 LEaDERS OF the "real" and "virtual" worlds will meet, en masse, for the first time in northern France today. at the G8 world economic summit in Deauville in Normandy, the future of the internet will join the arab Spring, africa and nuclear safety as an official "problem" on the agenda of the most powerful men, and women, on earth.  But which of the two groups present can be said, truly, to be the most powerful men, and women, on earth? Barack Obama (US), Nicolas Sarkozy (France), angela Merkel (Germany), David Cameron and friends will receive a delegation from cyberspace led by, among others, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) , Eric Schmidt (Google), Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten, the Japanese on-line shopping giant) and Yuri Milner (a Russian billionaire investor).  The usually reclusive Mr Zuckerberg and others have been selected to convey to the first day   
 Sometimes, you encounter a house that is not just special architecturally, but miraculous. Oak House, brought into existence by David and Jane Smith and a young practice called Baca architects is just that. Standing with the Smiths in their garden and gazing up at the curved segments of their new home, it seems inconceivable that such a radical design could have come to fruition on the edge of an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Chilterns.  Oak House is described by Baca as a "bespoke five-bedroom luxury eco-home". But the market-speak obscures what has been achieved on the edge of a Buckinghamshire hamlet. Indeed, that phrase could have been cut-and-pasted from the estate agent's blurb that would have accompanied countless other designs by architects seeking to create a grand building in a secluded site.  Ultimately, the Smiths - David is an oboe and drum-playing London law firm director and Jane's a local music teacher who runs several choirs - rejected "tasteful" To The Manor Born-style historic architectural pastiche; and, in doing so, the couple are firmly on the side of the great 19th-century artist and historian John Ruskin, who reviled the spread of "Villa Frankensteins" in the shires and home counties. The Smiths wanted a home whose architecture revolved around the pursuit of music, yet would be thoughtfully innovative in form and environmental performance.  Seen in artistic terms, Baca's co-founder Robert Barker has given them an oak-clad, green-roofed sculpture, gracefully embedded in the hillside. Oak House has been designed with a striking combination of brave form-making and environmental innovation. It goes to show that award-winning eco-homes needn't be worthily clunky in form and hair-shirty in detail. Oak House, rather strangely perhaps, would not look out of place in the trendiest parts of, say, London, Sydney or Los angeles; nor would its design and construction cost, which came in just short of ?1m.  But think of the hundreds of ?1m-plus new-build homes out there that have made you think: "Good God, for that money they could have bought a really beautiful Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian home." Wealth does not, of course, guarantee the desire, or ability, to understand architectural qualities - or possibilities.  Eight years ago, the Smiths had the idea of selling their sizeable but architecturally unremarkable home, but keeping part of its large garden and building a new house that would suit their musical requirements, and those of their university-age (and equally musical) daughters, Tasha and Jessie. "I went on to Royal Institute of British architects search engine and put in something like 'eco-friendly architect' and Baca was at the top," recalls Jane. End of research. "They spent a lot of time finding out how our existing house worked. They even measured all the furniture. The big thing was that the music room was the centre of our old house, and our lives, and Robert picked up on that." Barker adds: "I've honestly lost track of whose ideas were whose." and he confirms that the Smiths were immersed in the design process from beginning to end.  "It was an absolute revelation when Baca came back with three outline proposals," says David. "One was open-plan, one conventional, and one pretty much as built. They had done sun-path modelling and had turned the house sideways on the site." Crucially, the final design reduced the width and height of the building: the Smith's pre-Baca attempt to get a house design through planning had failed because it was deemed too bulky. "Robert had also demanded that the planners be involved in the designs at an early stage." The result: they rapidly became intrigued by the design concept.  "We were very, very excited by what Baca proposed," says Jane of the year-long design and planning approval process. "We had loads of time to look at the drawings, and did a lot of tweaking. We would put in ideas, and were spending all our time just imagining what would work. as a family, we made a list of things we wanted - such as more space, en suite bathrooms for the girls. and with the music room at the centre of things." David describes the process as having been "a completely time-consuming hobby. and it became obvious to us that the position the planners were taking was much more supportive".  The architecture of Oak House is an outstanding demonstration of internal spatial organisation and environmental consideration. The house is entered from the top edge of the slope, with the living spaces on the upper level, and bedrooms and a big utility-boiler-washroom on the lower level. The south-facing fa?ade is segmented into three arcs whose angled and glazed facets look out into the Chilterns, rather than towards the house and garden that lie beyond a screen of trees along the lower, southern edge of the site. The upper level is immediately beguiling. The entrance leads straight into a bright, full-height clerestory spine that runs the length of the home's east-west axis. The first rooms you see are the dining room, beyond a glazed screen, and the capacious music room - piano, Clavinova and drum kit in evidence - under a gently barrel-vaulted ceiling. The music room has a sound-damped floor and ceiling, and can be fully isolated by 3.1m-high acoustic sliding-and-folding glass doors.  The east-west spine is a simple design move, but highly effective in the way it establishes, with great clarity, an armature for the living, sleeping and utility spa  
 aN "INHOSPITaBLE lump of rock" several days sailing from the nearest civilisation has been revealed as more valuable to wildlife than the Galapagos Islands.  South Georgia is the last stop before the icy wastes of the antarctic and is battered by the elemental forces of the Southern Ocean. Yet beneath the surface of the chill waters that surround the island lives a greater range of wildlife than on the Galapagos, which seemingly offers a much more benign environment.  The first comprehensive survey of the waters of South Georgia, a UK overseas territory, has revealed that despite being just 600km (373 miles) from the antarctic Peninsula, it boasts 1,445 recorded species.  Many of them are found nowhere else in the world and most of them are rare. They include fish, sea urchins, free-swimming worms, sea spiders and a host of crustaceans. Some are vast, such as the sperm whale, killer whale and blue whale. More than half the world's elephant seals breed there and South Georgia is the most important nest site for king penguins.  Being found in cold waters many of the animals are slow-growing, making the eco-system fragile because losses take so long to be replaced.  Oliver Hogg, one of the research team at the British antarctic Survey (BaS), said: "It shows you don't have to be a tropical island or in a hot part of the world to support a lot of marine life. These lumps of rock may look inhospitable and cold but once you are under the surface of the water they can support a diverse eco-system. South Georgia, in terms of the number of species, is the richest place known in the Southern Ocean. It has more reported species than have been shown to occur on the Galapagos Islands, which are examples of really rich diversity."  almost 1,500 species were identified in the region through analysis of records produced in 130 years of research in the antarctic. While some date back more than a century, many species are only now being detected off South Georgia.  Divers investigated two areas of the sea close to South Georgia at the end of last year and came up with so many examples of sealife that they still don't know how many they found. "They turned up a ridiculous amount of specimens which they are still working their way through. It looks like they have found a lot of species we didn't know were at South Georgia," Mr Hogg said.  More dives are planned for later this year off the southern side of the island, which is the least known and explored area, and it is quite possible that researchers will find creatures that are unknown to science.  There are several reasons why South Georgia is so rich in wildlife. It's remoteness and lack of human interference helps but the chief reasons are thought to be the age of the island and its positioning by currents which transport nutrients - and new species - from cold and warm waters.  Mr Hogg, a marine ecologist, said: "One of the reasons it's so rich is, we suspect, that it's a really old island. It separated from the continental land mass of South america and antarctica about 45 million years ago so it's had a lot of time to evolve new species and develop a really diverse ecosystem."  The information put together by the BaS team, which was part-funded by the South Georgia Heritage Trust and the Darwin Initiative, will be used as a source against which changes to the spread and quantity of wildlife in the region can b  
 EUROTUNNEL HaS unveiled plans to run an electricity link through the Channel Tunnel as part of efforts to bolster UK power supplies. The proposed interconnector cable with France will help to smooth supply volatility relating to offshore wind power, meaning that energy generated from places where the wind is blowing can be shared around.  The 500 megawatt cable will run in the existing service tunnel and connect at Sellindge in Kent on the UK side and the Les Mandarins substation near Coquelles in France.  In 2008, Eurotunnel had a fire in one of its tunnels but project leaders said yesterday there would be no risk to travellers because the cables will be 10cm wide and heavily insulated, and laying it in the service tunnel will make maintenance easier. The project, which could take two years, will cost an estimated Euro 250m (?217m) with Eurotunnel owning 49 per cent and Star Capital, an infrastructure-focused fund manager, the remaining 51 per cent. The new link, to be called ElecLink, will not have a major impact on total UK power usage, which at peak times in winter is 60,000MW.  But concerns have been growing over the security of future UK electricity supplies because of an EU commitment to generate 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020.  Eight other interconnectors are planned between the UK and parts of Europe, which together could handle more than 6,000MW. 
 Imagine a London where, instead of firing up your noisy diesel or petrol saloon and blasting a cloud of fumes into the air as you set off for work or the shops, your car glides silently, elegantly - fumelessly - along the road. Rather like rolling downhill, with the engine off.  Pipe-dream? Not if Mayor Boris Johnson's plans to make London the electric car capital of Europe come to fruition, and the good news is that our journey into this bright, clean future is already well under way.  a decade ago just 9,000 pure electric and electric hybrid vehicles were registered in the UK, but today more than 72,000 are in use according to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing agency. Now, experts are predicting, the number of "EVs" could rise to 85,000 by 2015, racing on to 600,000 by 2020.  Better news still is that the capital is at the forefront of this technological revolution, with 17,000 EVs registered in London - some 23.5 per cent of the nation's total.  Mr Johnson painted a compelling picture of London's green future transport network when he switched on the capital's new electric vehicle scheme - Source London - in May. The capital's first city-wide electric charge-point network and membership scheme, it makes it simpler for EV owners to charge up while on the move. Promising a total of at least 1,300 charge points by 2013, it will even outstrip the number of petrol stations in London.  "I want to rapidly accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles and make London the epicentre of electric driving in Europe," he pledged. "Increasing numbers of motorists are opting for cleaner, greener electric transport, delivering a host of benefits to the driver. This is set to deliver considerable environmental benefits to our city."  Simultaneously announcing a 100 per cent discount on the congestion charge for electric vehicles, Mr Johnson reminded motorists that there were further savings from the Government's ?5,000 consumer incentive grant available for electric cars, which also qualify for nil-rate vehicle excise duty. But are his targets realistic? One man who has made environmental motoring his speciality is Jay Nagley, managing director of automotive analysts Redspy automotive. "The target of 600,000 EVs, including hybrids, by 2020 is certainly achievable," he said.  "Every major manufacturer will make a plug-in hybrid, starting with a plug-in version of the Toyota Prius, a new plug-in Ford and VW Golf, in 2013. Plus the extended-range Vauxhall ampera hybrid will be on sale next year. all the car makers are following a similar script."  Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders figures reveal steady growth in electric car registrations, with 289 put on the road last year compared to 450 so far this year.  already, of course, it is possible to buy or lease an impressive range of electric cars including Peugeot's iOn, Citroen's C-Zero, Mitsubishi's i-MiEV, Nissan's Leaf and Smart's fortwo EV, to name but a few.  But it couldn't have happened without support from the power industry and one of the breakthroughs was the installation by EDF Energy - a leading player in the development of electric vehicle technology and the UK's largest producer of low-carbon electricity - of around 100 public charging points across the UK, many of them in London. It has been working with Elektromotive, a leading provider of EV recharging infrastructure, since 2007.  "Britain is in the enviable position of leading the electric vehicle revolution in Europe and the considerable momentum we have built up will not be lost," promised Calvey Taylor-Haw, founder and managing director of Elektromotive. "Elektrobays in London are generating an extremely high level of round-the-clock usage, which provides a clear template for how the creation of a proven infrastructure is essential for electric cars to become widely accepted. Our journey into a clean future has well and truly begun."  ELECTRIC VEHICLES  What they cost - and where to charge them  INFRaSTRUCTURE  Will you be one of the 600,000 motorists whizzing around in an electric car in 2020? Very possibly, but according to research by EDF Energy and EV maker smart, your support is not unconditional.  a survey they conducted shows that two-thirds of Britons are willing to consider an EV, but only if the right infrastructure is created first.  Over three-quarters of 500 people surveyed also said that petrol/diesel emissions needed to be lowered, with 87 per cent calling on councils to invest more in away-from-home electric recharging points. Other findings were that 69 per cent believed that owning an EV would reduce their carbon footprint, while 61 per cent said it would cut their motoring costs.  In fact, the typical annual electricity cost for an EV, say EDF Energy and smart, would be ?236 based on three charges a week - a saving of well over ?850 a year compared to a conventionally powered car.  EDF Energy has been investing in low carbon electricity generation, while consulting with central and local government and car makers to ensure it is ready to meet the growing demand that the thirst for EVs will place on the infrastructure. It is investing to ensure that there is sufficient generation of electricity with its plans for four new nuclear plants, and it has been actively engaged in influencing the standardisation of EV recharging at UK and European levels, to maximise the carbon and cost-saving benefits of electric vehicles.  The energy firm is also working to ensure it can offer customers bespoke recharging solutions at home and in the workplace, where it believes 90 per cent of recharging will take place.  But could growing demand for electricity by 2020 swamp the system? EDF Energy says that at this take-up, the additional demand will be less than one per cent of total electricity demand, so it will not necessitate a proportionate increase in generation capacity. Longer term, it adds, demand will be managed through off-peak tariffs and smart meters, enabling EVs to maximise their carbon-saving potential.  RESEaRCH/RECHaRGING  Driving a silent, electric car will certainly cut your motoring costs if you decide to set out on your own "green" journey; energy costs for an EV are around 3p a mile, compared to 8p for the most economical diesel. But there is more at stake than that, with detailed research by EDF Energy with Peugeot UK and Citroen UK showing that the take-up of clean, electric transport, combined with low-carbon electricity, is crucial to Britain meeting its carbon reduction targets. Based on today's grid mix, "pure" electric cars deliver 30-40 per cent carbon savings compared to a petrol vehicle. But as the grid decarbonises further, these savings will also increase. Underlining its investment in low-carbon generation, EDF Energy was selected by the manufacturers of the Peugeot iOn and the Citroen C-Zero to offer new-car purchasers a "fully bundled" recharging package for ?799. Following a free home survey and the installation of a dedicated charging point, drivers can benefit from faster charging times of more than 35 per cent.  The EV point package ensures households cut costs by receiving 20 per cent cheaper electricity during evenings and weekends, so that charging an iOn or C-Zero from empty will cost ?1.93 - around three pence a mile. "We are encouraging millions of people and businesses to make changes that will contribute to a more sustainable Britain before the attention of the world turns to our shores for London 2012," said Bethan Carver, B2C Product Development manager at EDF Energy.  RaNGE/TRIaLS  Every new technology creates a language of its own, and the  
 MINISTERS WERE facing growing pressure last night to investigate the safety and environmental impacts of drilling for shale gas after fears that it could have triggered two small earthquakes in Lancashire.  Critics say the released gas can contaminate local water supplies and that seismic activity could be linked with the technique. They also argue that prospecting for shale gas - which is banned in France, as well as New York and Pennsylvania states - leaves a far worse carbon footprint tha  
 Lucky old Lloyds Banking Group found itself singled out for praise by the Business Secretary yesterday as the bank doing the most to stick to the targets for small business lending agreed under Project Merlin. and why shouldn't it get a little praise from Vince Cable? after all, it has so far met its targets - unlike its fellow state-backed bank Royal Bank of Scotland, which came up short in the first quarter.  In fact, Lloyds is an interesting case study for policymakers to consider further as they ponder how to force the banks to do more for SMEs.  The bank currently has more to gain than any other from keeping ministers onside. While the sale of 600 branches has been forced upon it by European competition authorities, Sir John Vickers' Independent Commission on Banking has made it clear that he could yet recommend further asset sales - or even more draconian reforms such as the unwinding of Lloyds' merger with HBOS. Whatever Sir John recommends, however, will only be implemented if the Chancellor agrees - so Lloyds needs all the friends in Government it can get just now.  Indeed, it may be that the Commission is a much more powerful stick with which to beat the banks than the sort of measures being threatened by Mr Cable yesterday. In particular, it seems unlikely Mr Cable is really going to persuade George Osborne to impose new levies on the banks. In any case, it would be difficult to do so if, as seems likely, some banks hit their targets while others do not.  a coalition of Sir John and Government ministers would be well placed to crack down on Royal Bank of Scotland, in particular, given that it is 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer. But it is within the Commission's powers to target the other banks too. as for Mr Cable's other ideas yesterday, greater transparency on the link between lending targets and pay looks the best bet because this is something that can be applied bank by bank. My colleague Sean Farrell revealed in The Independent last month that moves were afoot in Westminster to force the banks to spell out how executives' remuneration would be hit were they to miss their targets. It is encouraging to see Mr Cable follow through on that, since in the absence of any specific detail, the banks' pledge to put such a link into their pay structures was beginning to look a little hollow. Finally, to return to the Business Secretary's singling out of Lloyds, the bank's success is good news for its borrowers, of course, but also for everyone else. after all, if one bank is capable of hitting its targets, it rather damns the argument of its rivals that the demand for loans is not there.  Russia is the big winner from the Opec debacle  For anyone wondering why BP has been prepared to put up with so much grief as it strives to increase its presence in Russia, yesterday's ill-tempered Opec meeting provides an answer. In a world where Opec is incapable of agreeing a common goal, let alone exerting the control it once did over global oil production, Russia becomes even more powerful than its status as the world's largest oil producer might already suggest.  With Opec failing to agree how to proceed yesterday, it looks as if we may now see a small increase in production from those members who backed this strategy - particularly Saudi arabia.  But that is unlikely to reduce the upwards pressure on the oil price. For one thing, most of the countries, including Saudi arabia, are already operating at close to full capacity. For another, they are increasingly heavy users of their own oil, limiting export supplies.  Where might future increases in oil production come from? Well, BP's latest Global Energy   
 BRITISH GaS has been fined ?1m after it miscalculated how much of the electricity that it supplies to its business customers had come from renewable sources.  The company will also have to repay more than ?2.8m in rewards to the Government because it did not come as close to meeting its renewable energy targets as it previously claimed.  The energy regulator Ofgem said that British Gas Business would have received a "much higher" penalty had it not reported the error itself and co-operated with the investigation.  The error, which went unchecked for seven years before it was reported in May, was caused by British Gas Business's incorrect interpretation of the reporting requirements and insufficient procedures, Ofgem said. 
 THE COaLITION Government's green credentials were called into question yesterday after it scrapped plans for a nationwide network of recharging points for electric cars.  The Department for Transport, which had planned to have 9,000 recharging points by 2013, has decided that the programme is not viable. The scheme offers matching funds to local businesses and public sector partners who install the points.  at present there are about 700 points. The 8,600 electric vehicles expected to be sold by the end of this year would require some 4,700 points.  In a new strategy document, the department said: "Most recharging is likely to take place at home and at work, so an extensive public recharging infrastructure would be under-utilised and uneconomic."  It wants most recharging to take place at night, a  
 PRINCE CHaRLES has been accused of hiding behind stringent new Freedom of Information restrictions to conceal lobbying of the Government for changes to policy after it was revealed that he met at least eight ministers in a 10-month period.  Campaigners called for an urgent review of changes to the Freedom of Information act ushered in during the final days of the last Labour government which granted the heir to the throne - who is obliged to be politically neutral - an absolute exemption from the release of details about his contacts with ministers and senior civil servants.  The amendments mean that the prince, who has been accused of exceeding his constitutional powers - notably last year when he intervened to halt a ?3bn property development by the Qatari royal family - is no longer the subject of a public interest test to decide whether the content of his communications with the Government should be published.  Suspicions that Prince Charles is straying into political territory were increased yesterday with the revelation that he had held nine private meetings with ministers, including the Chancellor, George Osborne, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, and the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman  
 It's 8.15am. You're going to be late for work if you're not careful. again. at this time of day, the truth is that you're more concerned with whether you remembered to iron your shirt, feed the cat or prepare for that important meeting than with the environmental impact of your journey to work.  But, according to new research commissioned by EDF Energy, the rush-hour is boom time when it comes to consuming carbon. In fact, across the UK, rush-hour carbon adds up to 29.7 million tonnes of CO2. and if that's not making you cough and splutter already, that's the same as 280,000 lorries driving 100,000km each year.  Different parts of the UK show wide variations in carbon emissions at these times of day. Greater London, you would be right for thinking, comes at the top of the table. But it may surprise you to learn that it's there because it's the best, not worst, for emissions, which were measured as 1.3kg of CO2 per person per day.  London's low emissions are thanks to the widespread availability of public transport: 43 per cent of London's rush-hour trips are serviced by public transport. Drilling deeper into the data shows that trips during rush-hour are undertaken for many different purposes, from holiday outings with the kids to shopping, visiting friends and for educational purposes, such as dropping the little ones off at school.  While the biggest nationwide motivation behind rush-hour traffic is commuting, in London this accounts for 37 per cent of trips, against an average of 26 per cent elsewhere. But the capital's dependence on public transport also means that a lower proportion of people are making private car journeys. London isn't the "Big Smoke" any more.  Professor Nigel Brandon, head of Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab, said: "The research commissioned by EDF Energy has indicated that a large use of public transport, walking and cycling in Greater London has managed to make the busiest UK city the leader in reducing harmful carbon output from travel commutes. Often thought of as one of the biggest strains on the environment, London has shown it's doing its bit in reducing the carbon footprint. Other regions of the UK should follow its lead."  The highest emissions are in the East Midlands (2.5 kg) and Eastern (2.51kg) regions. Rural areas have far less comprehensive public transport - only 1.9 per cent of rural rush-hour trips use public transport. as a result, these areas have emissions more than twice those of London. Rural places in the North-east of England emit the most carbon of all, measuring 4.64kg of CO2 per person each day.  Londoners have the longest commutes at just under 36 minutes on average and a distance of 5.41km, but rush-hour journeys in Wales are much quicker, 22 minutes, although not much shorter at 5.07km. The East Midlands claims the longest average journey distance (7.01km) but at an impressive journey time of only 25 minutes. Do they just drive really fast?  However, the town and country are linked in one way. although London has the most gas-guzzling vehicles, with 48 per cent of cars from band J and higher, the rural areas aren't far behind at 44 per cent. The most efficient vehicles (band E or better) are found in Scotland (14.5 per cent), followed by the East Midlands and North-east, both at about 12.5 per cent.  So that's how things are. But we can improve our carbon levels - and even our fitness - by thinking differently about the rush-hour. Your journey is probably unavoidable, but could you do it in a more carbon-efficient way?  Gareth Wynn, director of EDF's London 2012 programme, said: "Team Green Britain is about encouraging people to change the ways in which they use energy every day - particularly in the home and in their modes of transport.  "We firmly believe that the take-up of low-carbon transport is crucial to Britain meeting its carbon reduction targets and it is an important part of helping to reduce the country's carbon emissions. By following the example set by our Team Green Britain ambassadors we hope this will inspire people to look at an alternative, more carbon-friendly route to work."  Walking is obviously best for reducing carbon emissions, but unless you're going from one end of the village to the other, it's scarcely practical for most of us. Cycling is similarly carbon-friendly and many companies have responded to the Government's Cycle to Work scheme, which offers big discounts to employees buying bikes.  Paul Whitehead from BikeBuddies, a company set up to encourage us on to our bikes, knows not all employers are the same.  "It's more than just providing bike racks so they can tick boxes to show improved environmental performance," he said. "BikeBuddies is a corporate one-stop shop. The barriers to cycling are convenience, safety and cost. We can offer travel advice, provide briefings on safety and more."  Services include a buddy arriving at your home to escort you to work on your first day on the bike, to show you how your journey could feel less pressured by choosing to ride through a park, for example. There are also mobile maintenance teams that can service bikes at your place of work.  Whitehead encourages companies to provide cyclists with showers, lockers to keep their bike kit in, racks that are secure and accessible, and even vending machines where you can buy essentials such as inner tubes.  "Companies which are more proactive see significant increases in employees cycling to work," says Whitehead. "We can provide quarterly roadworthiness tests, tightening brake cables and so on. Cycling is fun and entertaining, so we help people see that. and, of course, we advise them on how to stay safe: a whistle on a lanyard is much better than a standard bike bell for making yourself heard, for example."  Employers are also coming up with original ways to change the commute. London-based communications agency Forster bought four fold-up bikes which are made available to staff, and offered five minutes of extra holiday per return journey made on foot or by bike. These provisions, plus others including cycle-confidence training and 40p per mile expenses for business cycling, saw commuting by bike rise from 13 per cent to an impressive 31 per cent. What's more, taxi bills dropped by about 10 per cent.  GlaxoSmithKline provides another example. By partnering with a local cycling business that set up an advice centre and shop on site and introducing training sessions for cycle newbies, the number of registered cyclists commuting to work rose by 70 per cent and now accounts for 15 per cent of the 3,200 staff. The pressure on car parking has been reduced, too.  Of course, cycling or walking to work won't suit everyone and there may be things about your commute that just can't be improved, but just thinking about the journey in new ways is refreshing in itself.  So you'll still need to remember to walk the dog and make sure your shirt's clean in the morning, but follow one of these ways to get to work and your carbon footprint is one less thing to worry about. Which is good news for all of  
 SULPHUR POLLUTaNTS from coal-fired power stations in China have tended to cool the global climate over the past decade in contrast to the warming effect resulting from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, scientists have found.  a study has shown that the levelling of global average surface temperatures between 1998 and 2009 can be explained by the cooling effect resulting from the sulphur-containing gases emitted from mainly Chinese power stations over the same time period.  although carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past decade, surface temperatures have not followed the same rapid increase seen in the previous three decades, which has led some climate sceptics to suggest that global warming this century has "stopped".  However, a stu  
 BRITaIN'S CONSERVaTIVE MEPs are poised to deliver an embarrassing rejection of the Government's global warming stance today in a European Parliament vote on toughening climate targets.  Many, if not most, of the 26 Tories are likely to vote against the proposal that the EU should tighten its proposed 20 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020 to 30 per cent.  The shift is the centrepiece of the Government's climate agenda - it is in the Coalition document, and British ministers have campaigned for it with other EU countries - so a rejection by Tory MEPs will be seen as a snub to David Cameron.  It is possible their votes could make the difference between the proposal being won or lost.  If it is lost it will be another blow to Europe ahead of the next global climate conference in Durban, South africa, in December.  Two weeks ago Poland blocked the EU's first attempt at agreeing on the move saying it would be too damaging for Polish industry. 
 CONSERVaTIVE MEPS yesterday defied Prime Minister David Cameron and narrowly swung a vote against tougher European climate change targets.  Tory opposition helped make the difference in a European Parliament vote which watered down a call for an unconditional increase in Europe's emissions reduction target from 20 per cent to 30 per cent. Tories instead backed a successful centre-right amendment for a 30 per cent target "provided that conditions are right" - an alteration to a climate change report that a majority of MEPs then voted down.  The report's author, Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout, said afterwards he had been forced to recommend rejecting his own report because it had been "hijacked" by Conservative and other centre-right MEPs.  Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies had warned that the Tory MEPs risked ruining the UK's reputation as a leading voice in the fight against global warming. But Tory euro-leader Martin Callanan argued that a unilateral increase would put European companies at a competitive disadvantage globally. 
 The forecast for Cornwall is patchy: clouds, showers, even rain.  But drizzly weather will not take the shine out of Britain's biggest solar farm, which is connecting to the grid near Truro today, just in time to qualify for the last of a generous  
 as soaring fuel bills force homebuyers to act green, many movers are opting for the lower running costs of a new-build property which, on average, are six times more energy-efficient than older homes. The message coming through is that you do not have to compromise on comfort, style and luxury, or even pay a premium, for a low-energy new home that offers a better, cheaper lifestyle.  Green design has entered the mainstream housing market, with most developers leaning towards contemporary architecture and utilising hi-tech factory production.  all new-builds are covered by the Government's Code for Sustainable Homes, a green standard that works on a points system and grades properties on a scale of one to six, using criteria such as water-saving features and on-site power generation, from solar panels to mini wind turbines and ground source heat pumps. Level six is the top rating and requires all energy supplied to come from zero-carbon sources.  Hanham Hall, being built by Barratt in Bristol, is Britian's first large-scale level six development - 185 homes around a listed former hospital. Properties will be connected to an on-site combined heat and power plant, have rainwater harvesting systems, greenhouses, allotments and "smart meters", which enable householders to monitor their energy consumption as they use it.  Four modern town houses at aubert Park, Highbury, north London, are so energy-efficient that virtually no heating is required. Triple-glazed, south-facing and thoroughly insulated, they promise an astonishing 90 per cent saving in energy. The 3,000sq ft homes use a German construction method dubbed Passivhaus, which has ground-source heat pumps and an air-cooling and ventilation system. The timber frame structure has a thermal skin wrapped in white render, wood and zinc cladding. Internally, every room has a full-width wall of glass allowing light in. Bedrooms have terraces, and the galleried lounge looks out over the garden. Hot water and heating costs are around ?30 a month. Prices from ?2.25m. Call Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward on 020 8222 7200. While in Notting Hill architect Seth Stein has created a ?9m luxury eco-home in the space behind a traditional terrace fa?ade (www.aylesford.com).  London architect Justin Bere specialises in Passivhaus new-builds and retrofits, and has completed one-off projects in Camden and Stoke Newington. Because developers have to meet eco-ratings based on everything from how close a home is to public transport to how thermally efficient it is, how well it tackles recycling and whether it uses sustainable materials, green housing is not just about technology it is about how it fits into the local environment.  Seven luxury town houses at Crabtree Fields in Fitzrovia conform to code level four by enhancing wildlife habitats through nesting boxes and sedum roofs. Biomass boilers use woodchips, resulting in cheaper fuel consumption. Prices from ?2.99m. For details call Ea Shaw on 020 7240 2255.  architect Luke Tozer ingeniously squeezed a low-energy house on to an 8ft-wide plot between two listed houses in a Bayswater conservation area. Called Gap House, its traditional, white-rendered fa?ade hides a Tardis of contemporary living -  
 JUST FOUR days away from the country running out of the means to honour its bills, Congress and the White House were being held to ransom by the Tea Party wing in the House of Representatives, as it became more emboldened in its mission to radically curtail spending and the functions of government.  a gigantic effort is unfolding on Capitol Hill to forge a final deal to allow the United States to raise its debt ceiling before the Tuesday deadline. Last night the Republican majority managed, by 218 to 210 votes, to adopt a bill to cut costs and raise the debt ceiling in two stages. However, there is still a lot of wrangling to go before the crisis can be declared over and the problems that remain are all to do with the rump of Republican conservatives.  The Tea Party's clout first became apparent when an attempt on Thursday night by the Republican leadership to pass its two-step plan that would initially raise the ceiling and cut spending by roughly $1 trillion each had to be shelved. as many as 25 conservatives in the party, mainly Tea Party-backed, refused to fall in line, making passage at that point impossible.  Its passage last night came with an additional concession to the Tea Party. It stipulates that a second stage for further raising the debt ceiling in six months and making more cuts would only start if Congress embarks on seeking a constitutional amendment obliging the federal government strictly to balance its budget in perpetuity, a step that will be anathema to most economists.  Making success even more urgent was news yesterday that america's economy had only increased by 1.3 per cent in the second quarter, a GDP rate that was worse than expected.  The Boehner blueprint will not survive as passed. Mr Obama has said he could not countenance the constitutional amendment idea and that the two-stage model was also unacceptable because it would ensure that the crisis would only return at year's end.  "It's like a form of economic terrorism," the Wall Street financier Steve Rattner said. "These Tea Party guys are like strapped with dynamite standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour and saying either you do it my way or we are going to blow you up, ourselves up and the whole country with us."  Hovering also is the threat of a downgrade of america's triple a credit rating by the ratings agencies. Even if numbers emerge close to what Mr Boehner has proposed, few people seem to know where the cuts would come.  Mr Obama himself said it is a mess born of sabotaged politics on Capitol Hill. If the US defaults, he said, it will be "because we didn't have a triple a political rating to match our triple a credit rating".  The revised Boehner plan will be voted down in the Democrat-controlled Senate this weekend. Then the really hard part begins. The Democratic leader there, Senator Harry Reid, must now negotiate with the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to craft a new package. We will see how much of the House version it retains. They then face negotiations with Mr Boehner to settle a final deal that they can sell to both chambers before submitting it to Mr Obama for his signature. It will be tough.  It looks as if the only path through will require new   
 Days ago it was fashionable to dismiss warnings of a default by the US government as scare talk. after a nail-biting moment, Republicans opposed to raising the debt ceiling would back down and a last-minute compromise would enable everyone to relax. But as the wrangling continues in Washington, and Tuesday's deadline looms, a solution that enables Barack Obama's administration to pay its bills is looking as if it might not materialise.  One problem is that it's no longer clear that there are just two sides to this dispute. While Democrats want the debt limit lifted far enough to allow the crisis to be pushed beyond the 2012 presidential election, the fractured Republicans barely agree on a way ahead. Last night the Republican House leader, John Boehner, scrambled to put together an alternative Republican plan, cutting spending by $900bn in the longer term while temporarily raising the debt limit for a few months.  as a sop to the Tea Party, whose supporters torpedoed a similar bill on Thursday, Mr Boehner tacked on an absurd-sounding proposal making the package contingent on a constitutional "balanced budget" amendment, which would then of course have to go to the states for ratification. as that will be wholly unacceptable to the Democrat-controlled Senate, it is not clear that the passage of Mr Boehner's plan brings a resolution of the crisis before Tuesday much closer. If the logjam has moved at all, it is by an inch.  Just possibly House and Senate will discover some hitherto invisible piece of common ground, b  
 Croydon, regarded by many as a concrete wasteland, is to get lottery money to protect its "spectacular scenery" as part of a programme designed to conserve the nation's best-loved views.  It is one of Croydon's best-kept secrets - even to the people who live in the town - that the River Wandle starts there before winding its way, sometimes under concrete, to join the Thames at Wandsworth.  The Wandle's "green corridor" - much of which is in Croydon - is one of 11 glorious landscapes that has won a share of ?18.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Others on the list include Lindisfarne, the Gower Peninsula, and the Lomond Hills - landscapes traditionally more associated with the descriptions "beautiful", "stunning" and "worth protecting".  Dame Jenny abramsky, chairman of the HLF, said: "Landscapes speak to the heart, inspiring people in all sorts of ways."  Lindisfarne  The exposed North Northumberland coastal landscape combines beauty and heritage. as the Cradle of Christianity in the UK, it boasts a unique place in history.  aLaMY  Stiperstones and Corndon Hill  Two ridges in Shropshire and Powys that are closely associated with a heritage of mining and quarrying. among the projects created from ?1.4m of Heritage Lottery Fund money will be a new apprenticeship scheme.  HERITaGE LOTTERY FUND  Morecambe Bay  a ?2m grant will fund training, archaeological digs, oral history and address the potential of climate change in and around the vast and sometimes deadly inter-tidal sand and mudflats.  aLaMY  South Dorset Ridgeway  One of  
 Kenny Thompson's heart was in his mouth one spring morning 30 years ago as he watched a small plane bounce down the earthen air strip across the road from his house, mud caked on its wheels, its engine screaming in a way he had never heard before. "He was revving her up so tight and there was a point, you know, when either he pulled her up or put on the brakes. I didn't honestly know if he was going to make it".  The pilot, he was to find out later, was Rick Perry, who had grown up in the same remote community of Paint Creek, here in North Texas, and had just finished five years in the air Force. He missed the crown of the road by inches, recalls Mr Thompson, a county commissioner here. The plane in bright yellow colours then passed below the power lines on the other side before finally lifting into the sky.  This was Perry all over. He was the kid who had once pushed a huge snowball from a classroom roof meaning to hit members of the girl's basketball team; it landed on the school superintendent instead. "If everyone knew everything he done as a kid, they would be shocked," says Don Ballard, a childhood friend and schools superintendent today. at university he dropped firework bombs into the upstairs plumbing so they would explode inside lavatory bowls three floors below, under unsuspecting bottoms.  There is affection in these tales because Little Rick, as they used to call him, was later to start a political career that eventually led him to the governor's mansion in austin, four hours south of here. But as Perry makes his late bid for the Republican presidential nomination, there are some in Paint Creek and in austin who wonder whether this time the gamble is too big. They see mud on his wheels again.  all his political life, Mr Perry has been blessed with good luck, even going back to 2000 when the Supreme Court crowned George W Bush president. Then Lieutenant Governor, Mr Perry replaced Bush as Governor of Texas without an election. This year, he's been lucky too. The weak economy has made President Barack Obama suddenly vulnerable; and other Republicans - notably Governors Hailey Barbour and Mitch Daniels - who might have leapt into the nomination race and blocked his path chose not to.  and when on 12 august, Mr Perry travelled to South Carolina - a key early primary state - to confirm his candidacy, the impact was immediate. Pundits and the polls reached the same conclusion: if no one else jumps in, the race for the GOP nomination will end up being between him and the former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, with Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party darling, playing a strong game but probably not making it all the way.  The Governor has a good story to tell. In Paint Creek, his tenant farming parents lived for the first few years of his life in a cabin without indoor plumbing: all that remains today is a lonely tree across a dirt road from a collapsing chicken shed. If Bush had a silver spoon, Perry had an outhouse and a shovel.  "It gave everyone a good work ethic," says Mr Ballard. "Most everyone would start at five in the morning and for all I know the Governor is doing that to this day. You go to work, you go to church, and come back home and go out to work again. That's how it was. These are the values those kids grew up with."  However, in an election that will be dominated by the economy and the unemployment crisis in america, Mr Perry has a tale no other candidate can match. Relative to the rest of america, Texas is booming. In the last two years, there has been a net increase of more than a quarter of a million jobs in the state. That accounts for half of all the new jobs created across the entire nation since the end of the last recession.  Throughout his tenure, Mr Perry has been assiduous in maintaining Texas as a business-friendly haven with low taxation, minimal red tape, and assorted other incentives, including help from job creation and investment agencies he set up to increase the Lone Star allure. along the way, he has made sure that many of his appointees to those bodies have been friends ready to return the favour with big campaign donations.  The model has worked well in Texas, which, since he himself defected from the Democrats in 1989, has increasingly become Republican territory. His Texan supporters don't much question the ethics of the money that washes back and forth in austin - the state's campaign funding laws are among the most lax in the country - or see anything wrong in his wearing his Christian beliefs on his sleeve or expounding relentlessly conservative views, whether about blunting federal government or dismissing global warming.  On the national stage, however, Mr Perry may find much lower levels of tolerance. His record of conservative governing and conservative views - he has even expounded in favour of creationism over Darwinism - means he probably has the Christian evangelicals who dominate the primary process sewn up, but winning the hearts of moderate and establishment Republicans, not to mention the critical slice of independents, whom he will need in the general election, will be much harder.  "It's just not clear to me how he gets past that," says Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas. "His policy positions are of a sort that will not appeal to independent voters. His tendency towards extremist positions are controversial in his own party let alone among independents."  The economic circumstances would have to be "truly dire" for someone who "raises as many red flags as Governor Perry seems to" actually to take the White House next year, suggests Professor Buchanan, who for now has his money on Romney. "Perry has to reassure people on the question of electability."  Since declaring, Mr Perry has twice said things that are likely to unsettle independents. He rehearsed his doubts about global warming being man-made and suggested that the money-printing policies of the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, made him a traitor.  "Perry's task right now is to hew between two different sides," says Mark Jones, chairman of the politics department at Rice University in Texas. "at one level he needs to compete for social conservatives, but at the same time he can't alienate the establishment and more moderate Republicans who are Romney followers. He must demonstrate to all camps that he represents a real option to defeat Obama."  Professor Jones also warns that beyond the job numbers - and even they are a little deceiving because a high proportion are low-paid or energy sector jobs - voters may not like what they see in the "seamy underbelly of Texas society and politics, particularly if they look at the underbelly of Texas education, health care, and environment policy. It's going to be really tough for Rick Perry to prevail."  Back in Paint Creek, Mr Thompson, who is fixing "Road Closed" signs in a sun-baked corrugated iron barn on his farm, sees a problem too. Mr Perry's statements on global warming bother him, and he is disturbed that underfunding of schools has put Texas at the bottom of many national education rankings. "I think a political leader needs to be compassionate," he says, banging a spanner against the tailgate of his pick-up. Maybe it goes back to his decision more than 20 years to cross to the Republicans, but Mr Perry is not the universally popular man you might expect in this community.  "I'm gonna say right here, he scares me," admits Wallar Overton, a 72-year-old farmer and school board member, who was Perry's scoutmaster when he was a young teenager.  Driving along the gravel roads here, he points to the house Perry's parents still live in today, with pecan trees in the front garden, and towards the dirt pond where the Governor learnt to swim. "I'm scared of the different programmes he would cut. I am not going to vote for him and he knows that."  The last stop on the tour with Mr Overton is an empty, parched field. But squint and you see a straight stretch running towards the road that's of a slightly darker hue, and in the distance a tattered windsock drooping from its pole. It's the old airstrip where Mr Perry almost came a cropper in his single-engine plane all those years ago.  Mitt Romney - and even President Obama - might eventually have reason to wish he hadn't made it that day. But that will only be the case if the Governor manages shake off some of his Texas clay.  PERRY VS BUSH  as he emerges as a top contender for the Republican nomination for president, Rick Perry will come under fierce scrutiny from voters across the US. Things that may give them pause for thought include his loudly proclaimed Christian views, his questionable records in areas such as education, the environment, and slash-and-burn budget management. But there is something else: the country may simply not be ready for another Texas governor in the White House. But how similar would he be to George W Bush, really?  Background  * Bush's upbringing was a privileged one, hailing from a long political dynasty. To his critics he was a man who got his start in politics by way of Yale University and by rifling through his daddy's Rolodex.  * Perry's start was tougher. He came from a part of the state his father called "The Big Empty", an  
 SIX BRITISH adventurers were "on top of the world" yesterday after they became the first team to row to the magnetic North Pole.  They were exhausted by their 28-day journey but were jubilant to have set a record they had been told was impossible. They rowed 450 miles from Resolution Bay in Canada, but found the last three miles so badly congested by ice floes and lumps of broken ice that they had to drag the rowing boat for several hours to complete the last stretch of the journey.  Jock Wishart, who has previously set records rowing across the atlantic, said the scale of their achievement had "yet to sink in". But he confessed to leaping about on the ice in excitement when it was confirmed that they had r  
 When it comes to weaning the world's motorists off their addiction to fossil fuel, few would have bet on finding part of the solution in the pungent depths of elephant droppings and a Swiss compost heap.  a biochemical cocktail based on enzymes and micro-organisms found in elephant faeces and in rotting vegetable matter has the potential to revolutionise biofuel production by making it possible to mass-produce eco-friendly gasoline for the first time without relying on food crops, say the scientists.  a Dutch technology giant, DSM, has signed deals to introduce its new fermenting technique in test plants across Europe and the US, meaning ethanol, which currently makes up 4 per cent of all petrol in Britain, derived from crop waste and wood chips, could be available at the pump by 2015.  Research shows the new technology, along with other second generation or "2G" biofuels, could produce up to 90 billion litres of bio-ethanol in Europe by 2020 and displace more than 60 per cent of conventional petrol use as well as reducing reliance on crops such as maize, which has been blamed for fuelling the global fo  
 Economic uncertainty amid the ongoing slowdown in the global recovery and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis is likely to threaten investment in renewable energy projects, an Ernst & Young report warned today.  The consultant said that investors in renewable energy installations were seeing the cost of financing such projects rise, especially in countries most exposed to uncertainties. In some cases, that might mean projects are cancelled or delayed.  E&Y said investors in the UK were less worried about financing issues but warned planning complexities and regulation continued to hinder large-scale renewables developments. 
 The birds are Br?nnich's guillemots, cliff-nesting arctic seabirds. They have evolved to nest on inaccessible precipices, close together, to be safe from predators such as foxes or ravens. But what's coming for them here is something that evolution hasn't remotely prepared them for: a polar bear.  This remarkable sight of the great white beast risking its neck to satisfy its hunger astonished the veteran australian wildlife photographer Dylan Coker, when he photographed it from a boat in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Russian arctic last month.  "The height that the bear was at and the sheerness of the cliff face were absolutely amazing," said Dylan, who with others watched the bear, a young male, for several minutes as it tried to grab guillemot eggs. "Everyone was terrified it was going to fall. Every so often there would be a gasp from someone on the boat when the bear slipped. It was slipping quite a bit and at one point it was stretched right out to reach for eggs in a nest."  after losing its footing several times, the bear returned to the top of the cliff without enjoying a full meal.  Dylan believes that a scarcity of arctic ice has led to bears seeking out food in more dangerous locations.  "There's a real problem with the ice disappearing due to climate change," he said,  "Traditionally, the bears sit by an air hole in the ice waiting for a seal to poke its head out so they can grab it. But because there's less and less ice, the bears are looking for alternative sources of food and have discovered the birds' eggs." 
 There are striking parallels between the attempt by the tobacco industry to seek academic research data held by Stirling University using the Freedom of Information law and the campaign to gain access to research data held by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East anglia.  In both cases, researchers were collecting the information in the belief that the data would be used only by themselves or shared with colleagues at other universities or research institutes engaged in the same line of work  
 CHINa IS emerging as the dominant force in the manufacture of solar panels in a world desperate for renewable sources of energy, as collapsing prices and disillusion over government subsidies has hobbled US efforts to take a lead in the development of the new industry.  Prices of solar panels have fallen by more than 40 per cent in the past year, as a result of increased manufacturing capacity and disappointing demand, and the US was reeling yesterday from news that taxpayers may have lost more than half-a-billion dollars on one solar energy firm that shut its doors this week.  Solyndra, whose plant was visited and praised by President Barack Obama last year, said it would file for bankruptcy protection in the next few days, making it the third US solar firm to go under in the past month. Solyndra had been the beneficiary of a Department of Energy loan guarantee programme funded by the Obama administration's economic stimulus in 2009, and loans from the Treasury department. In all, $527m (?326m) in taxpayer funding had been advanced to the company, along with about $1bn in private sector investment. More than 1,100 employees were told this week that they would be losing their jobs.  "This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate," Solyndra's chief executive Brian Harrison said. "Regulatory and policy uncertainties" made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation."  also last month, Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts firm which had once been a stock market darling, and SpectraWatt, a private firm spun out of Intel, said they were filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said the bankruptcies "are unfortunate warnings that the United States is in danger of losing its leadership position in the clean energy economy of the future. We should be doing everything possible to ensure the US does not cede the renewable energy market to China and other countries."  China manufactured about 40 per cent of the solar panels produced in the world last year, from a standing start five years earlier, and t  
 BRITaIN'S SOLaR sector is reeling from an overhaul of the government incentives offered to those installing the technology, the head of the industry's trade association warned yesterday.  Howard Johns, the chairman of the Solar Trade association, said forecasts that last month's revamp of the feed-in tariff rules would damage the sector - and Britain's efforts to generate more energy from renewables - were already proving correct.  The revamp, introduced at the start of august, saw the Government reduce what is paid to those who generate more power than they need from solar installations. In most cases, the tariffs on offer to installations feeding such energy back into the national power grid are now much lower.  While the cuts did not affect the smallest solar installations - with domestic homes that have fitted the technology still benefiting from higher rates - these projects provide far less energy than panels on large commercial premises. However, Mr Johns warned that in many cases, these bigger projects, which could have substantially increased the amount of energy generated by solar power, were not economically viable under the new feed-in tariffs.  "We cannot understand why, at such a critical point, the UK is turning its back on a major opportunity to strengthen its position in what will be the biggest and cheapest energy generation technology," Mr Johns said.  However, the Government has insisted the feed-in tariff scheme was never meant to incentivise large commercial solar projects - and that such schemes were taking the lion's share of resources put aside with the aim of encouraging domestic households to install the technology.  Mr Johns added: "It isn't just large-scale solar that has been affected - communities, hospitals and schools have also been forced to halt their own solar panels." 
 and that stands for?  It's the International Energy agency, where Ms van der Hoeven took over in the top job from Nobuo Tanaka of Japan yesterday.  Is it a tough gig?  It can be. The IEa's job is to represent the major energy consuming countries of the word, which effectively makes it a counterpoint to Opec, the oil producers' cartel. Energy precious, of course, so the IEa often finds itself in sensitive positions.  Give us an example?  Earlier this summer it intervened directly in the oil market for only the third time in its near 40-year history, with members releasing reserves in an attempt to drive down high prices. It was criticised as a political move, motivated by Barack Obama's desire to appease american voters. and though it did prompt a fall in the oil price, the effect was short-lived.  So tell us about the IEa's new executive director?  Ms van der Hoeven is from Maastricht in the Netherlands and spent the second half of her career in Dutch politics. She served in the Dutch cabinet for eight years, latterly as minister for economic affairs.  and the first half of her career?  She was a teacher. She's taught in both primary and secondary schools, as well as adult education.  Those who can do, those who can't teach?  That's not fair at all. Ms van der Hoeven was well-regarded in Dutch politics and on the European scene, where she was a key player in energy policy negotiations - hence the IEa job.  What are her big challenges?  Well, the oil price remains high, which is affecting the ability of Western economies to bounce back from recession. There's also the matter of climate change: the IEa isn't concerned only with oil.  Go on...  There have been claims that the organisation is too focused on fossil fuels because it is US-dominated. Ms van der Hoeven will have to address those worries. 
 IN a surprise move which risks consolidating the growing perception of him as a back-down, back-off leader, President Barack Obama announced yesterday he was giving up his plans to impose stricter air quality regulations for fear it would add to the country's economic and employment woes.  Waving the white flag to the business lobby and to Republicans who had vowed to make the new ozone rule a litmus-test issue in 2012, Mr Obama instructed the administrator of the Environmental Protection agency, Lisa Jackson, to scuttle impending regulations designed to tighten standards set by the Bush White House in 2008 that had been labelled too lax by many environmental scientists.  It came as employment data released yesterday showed job creation in the United States during august had essentially hit the buffers, further darkening the economic horizon. The grim results, which left the unemployment rate at 9.1 per cent, were far short of what Wall Street had expected.  In a letter to the House Speaker, John Boehner, earlier this week, Mr Obama conceded imposing the standards would have cost the economy between $19bn and $90bn. Eric Cantor, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, said it would also cost the country millions of jobs over ten years.  It appears Mr Obama saw himself in an impossible vice squeeze. While he has championed the environment, he also knows that the right was preparing to attack him for failing to respond to the joblessness crisis by lifting regulatory burdens and easing uncertainties for businesses.  He may also be calculating that his retreat, which is sure   
 It's the melting of the arctic ice, as the climate warms, that makes it possible - and you can understand why they're all piling in. In July 2008, the US Geological Survey released the first-ever publicly available estimate of the oil locked in the earth north of the arctic Circle.  It was 90bn barrels, representing an estimated 13 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil resources. If you're an oil company, or an oil-hungry economy, that's more than enough to make your mouth water.  But wait. Less than a year later, the geologists involved in the programme, known as Cara, the Circum-arctic Resource appraisal, had radically revised their estimate - upwards. Now - in June 2009 - they said the arctic might in fact hold as much as 160bn barrels, which would amount to more than 35 years of US oil imports, or five years of total global oil consumption, and be worth, at current prices, more than $18 trillion dollars (?11.17trn). Forget mouthwatering. Think drooling.  No matter that the polar regions are the most inhospitable parts of the whole globe. and no matter, either, that the arctic constitutes the world's most untouched ecosystem. The oil industry's motto has always been "Can Do", and in the arctic, it's already doing.  Cairn Energy, an Edinburgh oil exploration company founded by the former Scotland rugby player Sir Bill Gammell, was the first in: it is now in the process of drilling four test wells in Baffin Bay, off the west coast of Greenland (it began last year with three wells, none of which struck oil).  Next year Cairn will be followed into the high north by Shell: the anglo-Dutch giant has already spent more than $2bn on seabed leases and hopes to start a massive programme of oil exploration in July 2012, with up to 10 wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the north coast of alaska, a region that, according to US Geological Survey estimates, holds 25bn barrels of oil. Shell will be followed in turn by the biggest of all the oil "supermajors", and the world's largest company - ExxonMobil.  Last week it was announced Exxon had formed an arctic exploration partnership worth $3.2bn with Rosneft, the Russian state oil group, to look for oil on the other side of the arctic, in the Kara Sea off the coast of Siberia. In doing so, Exxon was t  
 THE FUTURE for Kiribati, one of the low-lying Pacific nations threatened by rising seas, is so dire that the government is contemplating relocating the entire population to man-made islands resembling giant oil rigs.  "We're considering everything... because we are running out of options," the President of Kiribati, anote Tong, said yesterday in auckland, where he is attending the Pacific Islands Forum. He said that his small, impoverished country - where the highest land is no more than two metres above sea level - urgently needed the world to take action on climate change.  Vulnerable Pacific nations have acquired a powerful new ally, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who visited Kiribati on his way to the auckland conference. In a speech on Tuesday, Mr Ban warned: "For those who believe climate change is about some distant future, I invite them to  
 "We are in debt crisis. You can't borrow your way out of debt"  What George Osborne did not mention in his speech is that Britain is in a growth crisis, too. Our gross domestic product grew by just 0.7 per cent in the first half of this year, well below expectations. a lack of demand is the central problem. No one is spending so the economy is not growing. The Chancellor has argued that cutting government debt will boost demand by encouraging businesses to invest. But it is not happening. The credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, said yesterday that "the official assumption that the private sector will quickly step in to replace the withdrawal of public spending may prove optimistic". S&P projects growth next year of 1.8 per cent, well below the official forecast of 2.5 per cent. The alternative put forward by the Chancellor's critics is not for Britain to "borrow its way out of debt", but to ease up on the pace of cuts and tax rises in order to protect demand in the short term.  "For generations to come, people will say 'thank God we didn't join the euro' "  Mr Osborne showered William Hague with plaudits for his warnings in the late 1990s about the potential dangers of the single currency. But the British politician who played the key role in preventing Britain from joining the euro was Gordon Brown. as Chancellor, Mr Brown frustrated Tony Blair, who was keen on taking Britain into the single currency. and while euro membership would indeed have been economically disastrous for Britain, it will not be much better if the single currency unravels. Our three largest banks have extended some ?180bn to companies and governments in the struggling eurozone periphery. If those nations crash out of the single currency our banks will go bust and they will have to be rescued again by British taxpayers.  "I have set the Treasury to work on ways to inject money directly into parts of the economy that need it such as small business... it is known as credit easing"  This am  
 aFTER a period in the doldrums, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has bounced back to emerge as the Liberal Democrat politician most highly rated by the party's members.  The survey of 550 grassroots activists by the Liberal Democrat Voice website suggests that Mr Cable would be a strong candidate to succeed Nick Clegg if he stands down as the party's leader before the next general election.  It confirms a remarkable comeback by Mr Cable. Liberal Democrat insiders believed that his prospects of leading the party were over last December after he told undercover journalists posing as constituents he had "declared war" on the media magnate Rupert Murdoch over News Corp's bid to raise its stake in BSkyB from 39 to 100 per cent.  The takeover was abandoned this summer in the midst of the phone-hacking scandal at Mr Murdoch's News of the World. Friends believe Mr Cable, who is 68, still has an appetite for the party's top job. Mr Clegg has insisted he will lead it into the next election but there is speculation he may quit in 2014 to become Britain's European Commissioner.  In april, Mr Cable had a net satisfaction rating of 51 per cent among party members, according to Liberal Democrat Voice. That has now jumped to 72 per cent and he has overtaken his two most likely rivals for the leadership.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, has seen his net satisfaction rating drop from 63 to 53 per cent in the past six months. He has been the subject of a police investigation over allegations, which he strongly denies, that he asked his former wife to take points on her driving licence for a speeding offence he committed.  Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat president, could emerge as Mr Cable's main rival. He has a net satisfaction rating of 70 per cent and is seen by many party insiders as Mr Clegg's most likely successor. While he lacks ministerial experience, being outside the Government could prove an advantage if the Coalition   
 WaTCH OUT. Break no mirrors. Walk under no ladders. The emblem of death has been seen again.  The death's-head hawkmoth, Europe's most infamous insect, which bears the likeness of a skull upon its back, has turned up in England as part of the biggest influx of continental moths for many years. Several specimens have been spotted along the south coast.  Last weekend's extraordinary hot, caused by a mass of warm air surging up from southern Europe, brought with it hundreds of moths of numerous rare species from France, Spain and even the Mediterranean.  The most extraordinary of these is acherontia atropos, named in Latin after a river in Hades over which the souls of the dead were ferried and one of the three goddesses, or Fates, who spun the thread of human destiny.  With wings as big as a bat's, and a body the size of a shrew's, the death's-head hawkmoth has three distinctive characteristics: when disturbed it makes a noise, a mouse-like squeaking through its proboscis (no other moth does makes a sound in this way); it invades beehives with impunity and feeds on the honey; and it carries that amazing likeness of a human skull prominently upon its thorax.  For centuries, it has been viewed   
 SOaRING ENERGY costs have left a quarter of households struggling to pay their bills. The average cost of gas and electricity is now ?1,293 a year and getting closer to a ?1,500 a year affordability ceiling.  Research from uSwitch suggests that if that level is reached, three-quarters of households will start to ration energy, three-fifths will go without adequate heating and more than a third of homes will be forced to turn their heating off entirely.  There are now no energy deals costing less than ?1,000. The last - a dual fuel ?990 deal - was pulled by Scottish Power earlier this week. The cheapest deal, reckons Energyhelpline.com, is now EDF's Energy Discount Plan v5, which costs ?1,024 a year.  If bills reach ?1,500, 26 per cent of people say they would be forced to borrow to be able to afford to pay energy costs. While that sounds like a situation you'd expect to find in a third world country, the notion of fuel poverty - when energy costs account for a tenth of more of your income - is fast becoming a reality for millions.  "We are now just ?207 or 14 per cent away from hitting an affordability ceiling after which consumers will start rationing their usage as though they are living in the third world," warns ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.  Richard Lloyd, executive director at Which?, says: "The overwhelming majority of people tell us the price of gas and electricity is their biggest financial worry. The rising cost of living has already forced almost half of us to cut back on essentials, and this was before some of the recent energy price hikes had even taken effect."  The latest figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change estimate that 5.5m UK households are already in fuel poverty. By comparison, uSwitch research puts the figure at 6.3m households, or 24 per cent of the population.  "People should not be in a position where they are forced to choose between whether they heat or eat, espec  
 THE MP Tom Watson won a dramatic promotion to the Shadow Cabinet yesterday in recognition of his dogged campaign to expose phone hacking as Ed Miliband moved to give Labour's top team a sharper edge.  He installed new faces in the key health and education posts and promoted five MPs elected for the first time in 2010. They include Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna, both 32, who were handed prominent posts marking them out as the party's fastest-rising stars.  Mr Watson resigned as a minister more than two years ago to pursue claims that News of the World journalists had routinely hacked mobile phones. He is rewarded with the post of Labour's deputy chair and campaign co-ordinator, but will retain his seat on the Commons Culture Select Committee, which is investigating phone hacking.  Mr Miliband was free to remould his team after pushing through a rule change that scrapped elections for the Shadow Cabinet amongst Labour MPs.  The nine new names include Stephen Twigg, the former Schools Minister who lost his parliamentary seat in 2005 but returned last year. He was made shadow Education Secretary in succession to andy Burnham, who takes over the health brief. Mr Burnham will spearhead Labour's opposition to andrew Lansley's controversial NHS reforms.  Ms Reeves, a former economist, was promoted to shadow Chief Treasury Secretary, where she will oppose the Liberal Democrat Danny alexander who is overseeing spending cuts and reform of public sector pay and pensions. Mr Umunna, who along with Ms Reeves has been tipped as a future Labour leader, was appointed shadow Business Secretary, where he will have to prove his mettle against Vince Cable. He takes over from John Denham, who steps down from the Shadow Cabinet.  another member of Labour's "Class of 2010", Margaret Curran, was made shadow Scottish Secretary with the task of leading the fight-back against the resurgent Scottish National Party.  Two other MPs landed plum jobs after only 18 months in the Commons. Liz Kendall was made shadow minister for Care and Older People and Michael Dugher a shadow minister without portfolio. The Conservatives described the reshuffle as a Brownite takeover, claiming that almost two-thirds of the Shadow Cabinet are known supporters of Gordon Brown. Labour dismissed that as "nonsense", saying the faction-fighting of the Blair-Brown era is over and that Mr Miliband had appointed people on merit.  The Labour leader's main goal was to sharpen up the performance of his top team after criticism that it was not landing enough blows on the Government. He also wants to ensure a more co-ordinated assault on the Coalition. "We have been a collection of individuals rather than playing as a team," one opposition frontbencher admitted.  Mr Miliband said: "My decision to appoint half a dozen members of the 2010 intake shows the talent that Labour has and the way in which this new generation can join us in taking Labour's agenda forward."  THE NEW FaCES IN THE SHaDOW CaBINET....  TOM WaTSON  Labour Party Deputy Chair and Campaign Co-ordinator  Confidant of Gordon Brown who fought a lonely battle against News International on phone-hacking. Is now a Labour hero; his name was cheered at the party conference.  STEPHEN TWIGG  Shadow Education Secretary  Defeated Michael Portillo in true-blue Enfield Southgate in 1997, but lost the seat in 2005. Returned as MP for Liverpool West Derby. Former schools minister.  VERNON COaKER  Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary  Former deputy headmaster who was police minister in the last Government. ally of Ed Balls, and popular within the party.  MaRGaRET CURRaN  Shadow Scottish Secretary  Only an MP for 17 months, but has long experience of Labour politics in Scotland. Was defeated at Glasgow East by-election in 2008, but won it back in 2010.  LIZ KENDaLL (below)  Shadow Minister for Care and Older People  Has a background as special adviser (to Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt) and policy wonk, regarded as one of the brightest of the 2010 intake.  MICHaEL DUGHER  Shadow Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)  Earned his spurs as Gordon Brown's spokesman. Born and bred in South Yorkshire and now MP for Barnsley East. Strong union links.  EMILY THORNBERRY  Shadow attorney General  Former barrister who has been MP for Islington South and Finsbury for six years. Previously a health spokeswoman.  RaCHEL REEVES  Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury  There was little doubt Rachel Reeves would be handed a financial brief. Before her election, she worked as an economist at the Bank of England (specialising in quantitative easing), the British Embassy in Washington and the Bank of Scotland. Her husband is a senior Treasury official.  She is by instinct a New Labour-style moderniser, but is respected across the party and persuaded Gordon Brown to write the foreword last year to her book Why Vote Lab  
 Showered in savi  
 In august 1976, British troops had been deployed in Northern Ireland for exactly seven years. There seemed no prospect of any resolution to what had become known as the Troubles. On 10 august, a tragically pointless event took place. British forces shot at an IRa fugitive called Danny Lennon in his car, and killed him. The car drove off the road, and killed three children. Their mother, anne Maguire, survived. The horrifying accident was witnessed by Betty Williams, driving in her car.  She went to help, but could do nothing.  Immediately, Betty Williams started a petition with the Maguire children's aunt, Mairead Corrigan; shortly afterwards they founded an organisation called Women for Peace, later becoming the Community for Peace People. Marches of tens of thousands of people took place, denounced by the IRa.  Who was the petition addressed to? What were the demands of the organisation? Well, to some active participants, their involvement seemed naive. But it came from a belief without which nothing would ever get better; this situation can't go on. We must do something. We must have peace.  and in 1977, Corrigan and Williams were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was an extraordinary thing for the Nobel committee to do. The women were not politicians; they hardly had a programme. They had merely stood up in an entrenched situation and said, "Neither this way, nor the other way, but things must change." Only a year after that brave gesture, the Nobel committee members came to the conclusion that that was good enough for them, and that they should bring it to the world's attention.  This year, the Nobel prize went to two Liberian women and a Yemeni woman activist: the elected Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, and the Yemeni Tawakul Karman, who at 32 is the youngest winner of the prize since Mairead Corrigan. The theme of this year's prize is the non-violent contribution of women to democracy and politics. It's well within the best traditions of the prize.  Repeatedly, the Nobel Peace Prize has sought to find a third way between entrenched positions by focusing on the role of women in the political process.  The Nobel prize for peace is often remembered for its occasionally bizarre decisions which subsequent events have not justified. Tom Lehrer said that he gave up the practice of satire on hearing that Henry Kissinger had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The bien-pensant opinion of the moment led the committee, on occasion, to reward President Obama while he was still deciding whether he wanted to keep or change the carpet in the Oval Office; one wonders, too, whether the justification for rewarding al Gore for climate change activism will really stand up, or whether, in time, it will look as tattered as 1994's award to arafat, Peres and Rabin.  Still, the Norwegian committee has shown an admirable tendency to avoid the safe option, and to award prizes while the issues involved are still very much alive. It showed itself at its absolute best last year in giving the prize to Liu Xiaobo. It gave Chinese dissidence a face and a cause; it confronted a government that the West is too apt to cower before; and, best of all, it made the Chinese government look incredibly stupid in creating a rival "Confucius Peace Prize" for politicians that the Chinese government approved of.  The committee has shown a robust taste for interfering in national politics when it considers that its values of liberal democracy and freedom could be propagated. Think of the award to Carl von Ossietzky in 1935 for his resistance within Nazi Germany; andrei Sakharov in 1975; or Lech Walesa in 1983, no more than three years after the founding of Solidarity.  Most consistently, however, it has been inclined to award it to women when they can act, as Corrigan and Williams did, as an alternative to a situation of impasse. aung San Suu Kyi is a genuine alternative to the Burmese generals and offers a future for her country; after the prize, many more people knew of her. The same is true of Shirin Ebadi and Rigoberta Menchu and perhaps, of Mother Teresa too.  The significance of the award of the prize to the Yemeni Tawakul Karman is that she stands outside the familiar scenario Western governments work with. In this region, the West has a bad tendency to support dubious governments on the basis that they are, at least, bulwarks against al-Qa'ida and other unruly groups - the Roosevelt doctrine, based on the apocryphal statement that the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza (or, in other telling, the Dominican Trujillo) "may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch".  The Yemeni situation is not currently under consideration by the UN Security Council. It can be thought of as one of those zero-sum analyses governments so enjoy: if not our dictator, then it can only slide into the hands of our enemies. The award of a prize to Karman, who stands for freedom of speech and opposition to President Saleh's government, presents a difficulty to the Yemeni government and its Western supporters. Suddenly, the situation no longer looks like a zero-sum game; there is another player, and its name, for the moment, is Karman's Women Journalists without Chains.  Some commentators would suggest that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's administration doesn't deserve this honour; despite statemen  
 The Government is preparing to announce the construction of a new multi-billion pound nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield just weeks after an identical facility had to be closed because it was unfit for purpose.  Officials have advised ministers to reject a "third way" of dealing with Britain's civil plutonium stockpile - the biggest in the world - and forge ahead with a second mixed oxide (Mox) fuel plant at Sellafield costing up to ?6bn.  Independent scientists have suggested that instead of building an expensive new Mox plant to deal with the plutonium stockpile, Sellafield could use its existing plant to make inexpensive, low-grade Mox fuel that could be buried underground rather than being burned in nuclear reactors.  However, it is understood that ministers have been advised that this option is unviable, which leaves them a choice of either encasing the plutonium in ceramic blocks for burial as high-level waste, or gambling on yet another Mox plant costing ?3bn to build with lifetime costs nearer ?6bn.  The impending decision follows the report of the nuclear chief inspector, Mike Weightman, into lessons from the Fukushima disaster in Japan which will say that there is no need to cancel the decision to launch a major nuclear rebuild programme in Britain - despite the problem of waste plutonium still being unresolved.    
 an ambitious mission to search for life that has been buried beneath 3km of ice in an antarctic lake for hundreds of thousands of years begins in earnest this week.  a team of British scientists and engineers will start transporting the 70 tonnes of drilling equipment needed to penetrate the West antarctic Ice Sheet and sample the lake's water column and mud-covered floor. They hope to discover a "lost world" of microbial lifeforms that have survived in solitary isolation from the rest of the biosphere when Lake Ellsworth, which is nearly the size of Lake Windermere, froze over for the last time between 200,000 and one million years ago.  although buried beneath a cap of ice some 3.2km thick, the lake's water remains liquid because of the immense  
 BP's plan for a controversial deep-water oil well off Shetland should be halted by the Government, four of Britain's biggest green groups said last night.  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends of the Earth urged the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, to refuse consent for the oil giant's proposed North Uist well as any spill from it would pose a "significant risk to wildlife" in one of the UK's most environmentally sensitive areas.  In a joint letter to Mr Huhne, the groups' leaders expressed anger that none of them had been made aware of BP's "public consultation exercise" about the well - which ended last week without a single response from the public - and raised concerns about the difficulty of coping with a deep-water oil leak in the hostile conditions of the North atlantic.  The Independent disclosed yesterday that BP's own   
 Did it stir something in the memory, by any chance, the extraordinary heat of a fortnight ago, when Britain met with its hottest-ever October day, and numerous places experienced their hottest day of the whole year? Did the sheer, seasonal abnormality of its glare give pause, and revive a concern which has faded almost completely, in the face of scepticism and the economic crisis - the concern that the climate might be drastically changing, with potentially deadly consequences?  If so, I suspect that the revival was brief, and that most people have gone back to worrying about their jobs. Global warming is an issue which has dropped off the pubic agenda almost completely. Yet in less than eight weeks' time it will dominate the headlines once again, when, at the UN climate conference in Durban, South africa, the gaping split in the world community over how to tackle climate change will come to a crunch.  The essence of this split is simple; developing countries (like India, say) think the rich, developed countries should do it; the rich developed countries (like us) think that everyone should do it. The first position was enshrined in the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which the rich world agreed to cut its carbon emissions, while the developing countries were obliged to do nothing; and now Kyoto, which in its present version runs out on 31 December 2012, is up for renewal.  Is there to be a new Kyoto? Or is there to be something else, a more comprehensive treaty obliging the developing countries also to cut their soaring carbon emissions? This was the issue on which the global climate negotiating process came within a whisker of total collapse at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009; the process was damaged, but mended at the subsequent meeting in Cancun, Mexico, last December, by the expedient of parking the Kyoto question, shoving it on one side.  Now it can be avoided no longer. at Durban, the issue of Kyoto 2 will come to a head, and the positions which countries have been taking in advance are not encouraging. China and India, and a group of Latin american nations led aggressively by Bolivia, are insistent on a renewed Kyoto. Britain and the European Union, and a large group of other states, will accept a Kyoto renewal as long as there is also a parallel agreement to move to a comprehensive new climate treaty which would oblige all countries to act to cut carbon. But Japan, Canada and Russia will not be part of a new Kyoto, which would oblige them to act while major economic competitors did nothing.  That's a car crash in prospect. Wait for the bang. Looming car crashes can be avoided, though: brakes can be slammed on, steering wheels wrenched around. The best we can hope for out of Durban is disaster-avoidance, fudge: an agreement to disagree, perhaps, which allows the painfully-constructed climate negotiating process to continue.  Yet even two years ago, it wasn't like this. Then we were looking for the Copenhagen conference to deliver a solution, as thousands of young people f  
 Fed up with the returns and attitudes at mainstream finance firms, the Shropshire teaching assistant Sue Boulding and her partner, Steve, decided to look elsewhere for a more suitable home for their finances.  "We'd had our fingers burned by investing in pension schemes and an endowment mortgage with conventional financial companies, and it was all the more upsetting when we realised what these companies invested our money in," Sue (pictued below) says.  The couple opened investment and savings accounts with Triodos Bank and the Ecology Building Society. "They both offer a gimmick-free investment that doesn't harm the environment, or abuse animals, and doesn't rely on some poor devils working all hours in lousy underpaid jobs to pay our interest rates.  "I also like the idea that our investment with Triodos helps a start-up and sustainable businesses that the usual companies wouldn't consider."  The couple have also switched current account from Lloyds TSB to the Co-op Bank. "They don't support armaments manufacturers, oil and mining companies and so on, which is important to me."  Importantly, Sue believes the couple haven't lost out by turning to green and ethical finance firms. "We've had a fair return - certainly comparable and competitive with non-ethical institutions."  Choosing ethical finances is a growing trend. EIRIS, the non-profit sustainable investment research firm, reports that the amount of money invested in Britain's green and ethical retail funds has just reached a record high of ?11.3bn. In the last decade the number of ethical investors tripled from 250,000 in 2001 to three-quarters of a million today.  National Ethical Investment Week launches tomorrow to highlight the opportunities and issues around green finances. Barry Tootell, chief executive of the Co-operative Bank, says the lack of trust in mainstream banks has led many more people to think about the ethics of their finances.  "The financial crisis has led to increased awareness of how financial services providers use customers' money," says Tootell. "as a result an increasing number of consumers   
 Blue Cross sale offers 70% savings  Debenhams' Blue Cross sale is underway with up 70 per cent of fashion, furniture and fragrances in store and online. all purchases over ?30 come with free standard delivery or there's the option of free in-store pick-up for items bought online. Items include a white and rose "Floozie" dress by Frost French, reduced from ?30 to ?9, and Egyptian cotton towels by Fine Linens, down from ?36 to ?10.80.  Healthy grazing for half the price  Healthy snack food retailer Graze is running a promotion on selection boxes. Customers can order a free Graze box - which includes four separate snack packs of nuts, seeds, chocolate or fruit - and get a second box at half price. The boxes usually retail at around ?3 and be ordered from Graze.com/signup.  Hundreds of Very good offers  Very launched its mid-season sale this week with 60 per cent off hundreds of fashion products online. You'll find a full inventory at http://bit.ly/ohkfDG.  Showerhead deal extended  Ecocamel has extended its exclusive Bargain Hunter reader offer for another week. The entitles readers of this column to a ?10 (or 20 per cent) discount, on the new look graphite coloured JetStorm showerhead, plus free postage, reducing its cost to just ?39.95. Ecocamel claims the showerhead can cut hot water bills by up to 40 per cent, save up to 56,000 litres of water a year (based on a typical family of four) and drastically reduce energy use and carbon emissions.  j.hall@independent.co.uk 
 Ministerial resignations normally clear the air. The temperature cools immediately and political business resumes as usual. But not in this case. Liam Fox's departure leaves a cloud of unanswered questions over the precise role of his friend, adam Werritty, in the Ministry of Defence. Had Mr Werritty just been a freeloader on the former minister's multifarious overseas trips it would only be a matter of a friendship that went too far. But as the growing calls for a fraud investigation into Mr Werritty's business activities indicate, much more is at stake here.  What is disturbing about those activities is that they involved members of a number of groups with SMERSH-style acronyms such as Bicom, not to mention a now defunct group, atlantic Bridge - all lobby groups for various countries or foreign political interests - obtaining privileged access to a senior minister. Labour has made a great brouhaha over the now defunct atlantic Bridge and its links to climate change sceptics and Tea Party supporters in the US Republican party. More worrying than that is the possibility that Israel's right-wing government and even its security services enjoyed a kind of hotline to Mr Fox via Mr Werritty's friends in atlantic Bridge and Bicom.  The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre describes itself as a "British organisation dedicated to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in Britain". But as the tributes on its own website from Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, show, it is seen as very close to the Israeli government, as was atlantic Bridge. Whether either organisation paid Mr Werritty for lobbying work remains to be seen and will presumably be addressed in this week's report on Mr  
 Household electricity bills could be pushed up by around ?300 a year by 2020 as a result of a continued reliance on fossil fuels to provide energy, environmentalists claimed today.  Friends of the Earth hit back at claims that "green taxes" were causing energy bills to rise with a report suggesting investment in fossil fuel plants rather than renewables would leave UK households paying the increasing costs of coal and gas to make electricity.  according to the report, electricity bills rose by 30 per cent between 2000 and 2010, while gas bills rose 78 per cent. The rises were largely due to increased costs of coal, which rose by 71 per cent, and natural gas, which rose 90 per cent, in the decade.  If gas and coal costs rise in the coming decade by the same amount as they did between 2000 and 2010, an additional ?8bn a year would be needed by 2020 to generate electricity, costing the average householder an extra ?300 compared with lower costs if the UK met its targets to boost renewables, Friends of the Earth claimed. 
 Maryland looks up as it starts to run out of space  Maryland, state of salty cookies and The Wire, isn't very big. It aso provides much of outlying areas of two huge cities - Baltimore and Washington, whose workers' desire for suburban homes has fuelled an urban sprawl into the countryside. In short, space is running out.  It's for this reason that its Governor Martin O'Malley has unveiled Plan Maryland. This will encourage high-density (and higher-rise) residential and commercial building based around existing infrastructure (ie, train stations). The aim is to combat the suburban sprawl that has filled up farmland and to reduce commutes.  By 2035 it aims to have introduced one million citizens into more walkable, less car-reliant places, thus attracting them back into city areas. It sounds exactly like the kind of policy that planning experts, environmentalists and thinkers like Edward Glaeser (we recommend his book Triumph of the City) have been extolling for years. O'Mally sold the plan to The atlantic thus: "Maryland commute times average 32 minutes, which is now longer than New York and New Jersey. The 700-plus million hours we wasted commuting during 2009 [has an estimated] $9 billion value."  Rural officials, worried about their planning power, have already reacted angrily to the plan and, weirdly, British climate change denier Lord Monckton, also spoke against it at a forum on the plans on Monday. If Monckton is dead against it, then O'Malley must be thinking along the right lines.  Read more: ind.pn/planmar  It's the Microsoft future - and it looks like Minority Report  We're not quite sure what the ethics are on creating a promotional film for products that don't actually, er, exist yet. But - annoyingly - that doesn't make this new seven-minute concept film for Microsoft's office suite of the future any less cool.  [at this point, we'd like to make clear that Bill Gates has not made a direct investment into the Ideas Factory's pockets (yet).]  Set an optimistic five to 10 years in the future, it follows an executive and mother as she connects with her business and husband and daughter at home via ultra-smart phones (thin bendy screens with augmented reality interfaces - drag a recipe on to the wall, why don't you?) There are also glasses that translate languages and fridges that give you a graphical summary of what's left inside. PowerPoint it isn't but, to be fair to the PC giants, it does look exciting - like Minority Report, as one friend put it on Twitter.  One assumes Steve Ballmer and colleagues won't be adding PreCrime Reports to Excel's spreadsheet functionality just yet.  Watch the film: ind.pn/minrepoffice  Strike out - can an eBay baseball trade prove the power of racism?  a market cannot work properly if factors such as race influence pricing. It's basic economics. But research from a trio of US academics on the biggest second-hand market of them all - eBay - suggests that, consciously  
 Fifty separate earth tremors have been caused in the Blackpool area by "fracking", the drilling method used to extract shale gas, The Independent has learnt.  The huge number of seismic movements was admitted yesterday by one of the authors of a report into two very noticeable earth tremors likely to have been caused by the fracking operations of Cuadrilla Resources, which says it has discovered enormous supplies of shale gas in the Blackpool area.  The report, which the energy firm commissioned, concluded it is "highly probable" that Cuadrilla's operations were responsible for two tremors which hit Lancashire. The first, of magnitude 2.3 on the Richter scale, hit the Fylde Coast on 1 april followed by a second of magnitude 1.4 on 27 May. The report, which is being sent to the Government, has intensified the controversy around "fracking", or hydraulic fracturing, which involves pumping water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into shale rock, to release the gas it holds.  The company sought to play down the impact of its activities, saying that it had probably triggered "a number of minor seismic events". But when The Independent interviewed Stefan Baisch, one of the report's authors, he admitted that the actual number was 50.  In the same interview, Mark Miller, Cuadrilla's chief executive, accepted that 50 sounded like a lot of tremors but dismissed their significance. "There's a certain level of seismic activity that can occur even with a truck going past a house," Mr Miller said.  "But just because it doesn't do any damage, doesn't mean we're not concerned about it. It's not good for us if the public is concerned and it's not good for the production of gas."  Mr Miller said the report's findings were not sufficient to stop the company from using the controversial method. "Cuadrilla is working with the local and national authorities to implement the report's recommendations so we may resume our operations," he said.  Cuadrilla stopped fracking at its site in Weeton and commissioned yesterday's report into whether the practice causes seismic activity on 31 May, after concerns were raised about the tremors.  David Loveday, a shale gas expert at the Inenco energy consultancy, said the report demonstrated a "pressing need to understand the mechanism which potentially caused these earth tremors to prevent a re-occurrence".  a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: "The implications of this report will be reviewed very carefully before any decision on the resumption of these hydraulic fracture operations is made."  The findings coincided with a day of environmental opposition to the practice, as protesters from the Frack Off campaign grou  
 New energy bonanza or new energy nightmare? That's the swing in extreme opinions about shale gas, the "unconventional" fuel which has boomed in the United States and now could be taking off in Britain.  although mainly methane, and chemically similar to natural gas, it is termed unconventional from the way it is extracted: the gas is contained not in underground reservoirs but in shale rock formations.  as the shale has low permeability, it has to be blown apart to release the gas by hydrological fracturing, or "fracking", which involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the rock at high pressure (which caused the Lancashire earth tremors).  The rapid development of the technique, along with horizontal drilling, has allowed a massive expansion of US shale-gas production, especially in the Barnett Shale in Texas, under Fort Worth.  But there are substantial downsides, principally related to contamination of groundwater by the fracking chemicals, highlighted in the 2010 american documentary film Gasland by Josh Fox. In Britain, a senior official of the Environment agency, Tony Grayling, told a conference yesterday that "there are significant environmental risks associated with the exploration and exploitation of shale gas", although he said the risks could be managed.  Months ago, the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee gave shale gas a cautious welcome, but the Co-op, which had commissioned a report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, called for a moratorium on development. The Co-op believes investing in shale gas will take away funds which could have been invested in renewable energy. 
 Prince Charles, who has called on the world to wake up to the threat of catastrophe from climate change, has been accused of environmental vandalism.  The Duchy of Cornwall, which the Prince of Wales holds in trust and which provides him with an annual income of almost ?18m, was ordered by a court yesterday to hand over environmental data about a controversial oyster farm it owns.  The Duchy of Cornwall Oyster Farm at Port Navas, on the River Helford in Cornwall, cultivates Pacific oysters, a non-native species which local campaigner Michael Bruton believes is damaging the natural habitat of a Special area of Conservation.  Mr Bruton was celebrating yesterday after the First-tier Tribunal on information rights ruled that the Duchy of Cornwall must hand over documents relating to the environmental impact of the oysters on the native wildlife.  The ruling by John angel, the tribunal's principal judge, opens the Duchy to further challenges to its attempts to keep its dealings private, after he declared it to be a public authority rather than a private  
 I imagine most people would be hard put to place Burkina Faso on a map; it neatly fits that clich? of a faraway country of which we know nothing. It is a landlocked state in West africa, a bit bigger than Britain, once a French colony; it used to be called Upper Volta. Burkina is in the Sahel, that semi-arid belt of savannahs, grasslands and dry forest which runs across africa below the Sahara, the transitional zone between the desert to the north and the rainforest to the south.  There is a peculiarity about its economy, which is noticeable if you visit, as I did a few years ago: more than 90 per cent of its energy needs are supplied by wood. The vast majority of the people rely on wood fires to cook the daily meal of millet, and carts stacked high with firewood throng the roads leading to the capital, Ougadougou. They really do. Cart after cart.  This wood is gathered from the countryside, from the dry forest which covers it - or used to. For it has been so overexploited that much of Burkina is now a deforested wasteland, a dusty wrecked moonscape as shocking as anything in the amazon - it simply hasn't been publicised. In the villages I visited, the women who go out at dawn to gather wood were having to go further every year, four kilometres, then five, then six, as the area around each village became exhausted.  These people were visibly, and tragically, trashing their own natural resource base: not only was the forest gone, the soil itself was disappearing. Who could blame them? It was done out of need. They were only trying to survive. But they were consuming their own future. Many were aware of this, of course, and their attempts at reforestation - struggles might be a better word - were moving and inspiring, and I reported on them. But one specific factor means that these struggles will get much harder - population increase.  When I visited Burkina in 2003, its population was just under 13 million. Now it is closer to 17 million. By 2015, it will have doubled - in just 20 years - to about 20 million. (You can find all these figures in the UN's 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects). Then it really takes off. By 2050, according to the UN's central estimate, it will be 46.7 million. If you want to be optimistic, their low variant gives 41.8 million; if pessimistic, the high variant gives you 51.8 million. That's in less than 40 years.  Where on earth, where in God's name, are all these peop  
 The head of an influential cross-party energy committee yesterday threw his weight behind "fracking" for gas, a day after a report linked the controversial process to earthquakes for the first time in the UK.  Tim Yeo, the chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, said that "on the information available at present, there is no need to impose a moratorium" on drilling for shale gas. Mr Yeo, pictured, whose committee is a key adviser to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, said he was aware of the concerns raised by an independent report into hydraulic fracturing on Wednesday, which linked the drilling of a single well in the Blackpool area to 50 tremors, most of them tiny.  The process involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the rock at high pressure to release the gas. Mr Yeo said people needed to recognise that there is a "degree of risk" associated with recovering all fossil fuels, whether oil, gas or coal. He argued that, on balance, the apparent benefits of fracking appear to outweigh the risks, so long as the safety and environmental actions of the practice are closely monitored.  Britain's recently discovered, apparently vast, reserves of shale gas "have the potential to be a game-changer", Mr Yeo said. 
 The new figures on global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 from the US Department of Energy make sobering, not to say chilling, reading. They show that, although much of the world may be facing a financial, economic and industrial crisis, the remorseless growth of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming continues unchecked.  The headline figure is that world CO2 jumped by its largest ever amount in a single year, from 31.6 billion tons to 33.5 billion tons. However, close scrutiny of the data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reveals other patterns that are just as disturbing. The key one is the explosive and seemingly unstoppable growth in emissions from China, which leapt by 9.3 per cent over the year, to 8.15 billion tons of CO2. The Chinese are now producing 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and have firmly taken over from the US the role of the world's biggest polluter.  america's still-enormous output of 5.49 billion tons now represents 16 per cent of the world total. This means that, from being behind the United States in carbon pollution until 2007, the Chinese proportion of the total is now 50 per cent greater than that of the US.  The other trend worth noticing is just how fast India, the world's third-biggest emitter, is increasing its carbon pollution. It has reached 2.06 billion tons, which is 6.1 per cent of world emissions. But its increase over the year was 9.4 per cent - the highest rise from any country.  What makes these figures chilling is that none of these nations - not China, nor the US, nor India - has any interest in signing a legally binding treaty to bring CO2 down, in accordance with the Kyoto protocol, which will once again be the principal item on the agenda of the UN climate conference in Durban next month. The role of Britain and the European Union in pressing for such a treaty - never more obviously needed than now - is an increasingly lonely one. 
 What self-possession they have, these delegates in the UK Youth Parliament. The ease on their feet. MP Sir George Young was chatting to one at lunch. "You spoke didn't you? Well done. Was it an ordeal?" The young man did not even consider this: "No, not really."  We closed our mouths again. He explained that they did it all the time. The House of Commons Chamber was impressive, but they were used to campaigning. a hostile audience might have been more alarming, but they all knew each other. "We keep in touch on Facebook," he said. What used to be Bugsy Malone for politicians is now a training camp for the political class.  I saw a group of four or five on the platform at Paddington and immediately clocked them. Not just by the way they were embracing and welcoming each other, not just by the underarm document wallet one carried or the clever hair and glasses of another, and not just by the 12-year-old boy wearing a suit. But by the whole package - a combination that could not be anything else that day.  You have to start early these days, and these children are laying the foundations for a lifelong career. Personally, I'm very much against it - and not just because I'm old and envious. I ask, again, that young people consider the merits of heroin addiction instead of "passionately working to make the world a better place".  Having said that, let me report the positive side. They are more attractive than you would expect politicians to be. They look much older than their years - some, indeed, seemed 30. The facial metal is discreet. Not one fiddled with his or her mobile in the chamber.  When one of them went on too long the rest didn't shout: "Sit down! Too long! Drivel!" - they just laughed and applauded when he left a gap. No one used the phrase "Shame on you!" and, being elected on a regional basis, there wasn't a particular party-based antipathy between them. The speeches were short. There was no jeering, heckling, or any obscene gestures - even from Wallasey MP angela Eagle, who addressed them early on.  In delivery, the front bench speeches weren't at all bad. Harrison Carter had a textured voice and intimate manner that gave him weight beyond his years; alec Howells, who lives in Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg's constituency, had been well-schooled there. Mu-Hamid Pathan stood for mayor in the East Midlands at the age of 18, and will probably get somewhere as he has no idea when to stop. alex Huston had a good crack at demanding that MPs pay back the cost of their university fees.  From the floor, the best received speech came from a tall, mature-looking student in Islamic dress who th  
 Soaring carbon dioxide emissions from China and the US have driven the world's output of greenhouse gases to its highest level, alarming new figures reveal.  Global CO2 emissions in 2010 reached 33.51 billion tonnes, up from 31.63 billion tonnes in 2009 - an increase of nearly 6 per cent. This is believed to be the highest-ever percentage increase year on year, despite growth in many industrial economies being sluggish or non-existent.  However, the figures from the US Department of Energy show clearly that it is the surging Chinese economy that is driving the growth: China's emissions in 2010 were 8.15 billion tonnes, up from 7.46 billion tonnes the year before - a 9.3 per cent increase in 12 months.  The 694-million-tonne increase alone dwarfs all the carbon emissions that Britain produces in a year. China now accounts for 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and has taken over the role, held by america for decades, of the world's biggest polluter.  The US, whose emissions totalled 5.49 billion tonnes in 2010, up from 5.27 billion tonnes in 2009 - an increase of 4.1 per cent - now accounts for 16 per cent of emissions worldwide. So although the Chinese did not overtake the US in carbon emissions un  
 Britain's carbon emissions grew faster than the economy last year for the first time since 1996, as a cash-strapped population relegated the environment down its league of concerns and spent more money keeping warm, according to a new report.  The rise in Britain's so-called carbon intensity increases the danger that the country will miss legally binding targets on reducing emissions, warns PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consultancy behind the report.  Furthermore, it found that Britain's rising carbon intensity is part of a worldwide trend which threatens to push global warming above a two-degree Celsius increase on pre-industrial levels.  This is the temperature that the G8 group of leading economies has pledged not to breach in the hope of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change.  Leo Johnson, partner for sustainability and climate change at PwC, said: "Our analysis points unambiguously towards one conclusion, that we are at the limits of what is achievable in terms of carbon reduction.  "The G20 economies have moved from travelling too slowly in the right direction to travelling in the wrong direction. The results call into question the likelihood of global decarbonisation ever happening rapidly enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius," Mr Johnson added.  Experts calculate that limiting  
 Herman Cain, the pizza mogul who would be US President, looked in danger of becoming the latest shooting star of the Republican field to fall back to earth, as a poll yesterday showed his inept response to sexual harassment claims had dented his credibility with potential voters.  While Mr Cain's campaign had initially tried to dismiss the allegations as a media confection and supporters called it a witch-hunt with potentially racist motives, the scandal has continued to dominate the Republican race and rival candidates piled in over the weekend to demand that Mr Cain puts "all the facts on the table". It emerged last week that the National Restaurant association paid a legal settlement to an employee who made a written complaint about Mr Cain's behaviour towards her wh  
 a majority of professional conservationists believe it is time to consider shifting efforts away from some of the world's most famous species, such as the panda, to concentrate on others which have a greater chance of success.  a survey of nearly 600 scientists involved in wildlife protection found that more than half agree with the idea of species "triage", where conservation efforts are concentrated on certain animals and plants that can be saved at the expense of species that are too difficult or costly to preserve in the wild.  The highly controversial idea has been discussed for several years among conservationists with little consensus, but it seems that there is now a growing appetite for taking it more seriously, given the scale of the extinction crisis facing the natural world in the coming century, as a result of loss of natural habitats, a growing human population and climate change.  The overwhelming majority of the 583 scientists who took part in the survey believe a serious loss of biological diversity is "likely, very likely or virtually certain". In that context, some 60 per cent of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the idea of triage - a medical term where limited resources are concentrated only on those individuals who can survive with some help.  "They argue it is time to move beyond outright rejection of triage. Results from my survey suggest that a shift in attitude may have already happened or that it always existed," said Dr Murray Rudd, an environmental economist at York University, who carried out the study published in the journal Conservation Biology. "The challenge in conservation is to know what's beyond help and what's not. In some cases, we don't know what the costs of species conservation are going to be," he added.  Many experts have rejected the idea of wildlife triage on the grounds that it is impossible - and perhaps immoral - to make judgements about one species at the expense of another, given the complexity of the ecological interactions in the natural world. However, others are starting to question the value of spending millions of pounds on one celebrated species, such as the panda, or a big predator such as the tiger, where loss of its habitat is almost inevitable.  "When considering conservation values and priorities the scientists said understanding interactions between people and nature was a priority for maintaining ecosystems. However, they largely rejected cultural or spiritual reasons as motivations for biological biodiversity. They also rejected human 'usefulness', suggesting many do not hold utilitarian views of ecosystem services," Dr Rudd said.  The Canadian government, for example, has poured millions of dollars into efforts to save the atlantic salmon. However, there are questions about whether the money could have been bett  
 It would be reassuring to know dilemmas of global proportions can always count on getting a degree of world attention, but as some 200 leaders assemble today for the climate change conference in Durban, most eyes seem averted from the life-and-death issues up for debate.The US public is preoccupied with forthcoming elections and america's relative decline in the world while Europe is gripped by the euro-zone crisis. Fears of economic meltdown trump concerns about melting ice caps - though the former are surely easier to fix than the latter.  But the stakes in Durban are higher than ever as countries wrestle over ways to halt rising temperatures and, specifically, over renewal of the 1997 Kyoto protocol - a sub-treaty of the 1992 UN framework treaty agreed in Rio - which all countries signed but which only impacted on the old industrialised West and Japan.  Kyoto bound what were then the world's major polluters to cut carbon emissions by 2008-12, working on a baseline of emissions in 1990. at the time, there wasn't much argument about which countries would have to do most to cut emissions. The US was then the world's biggest polluter, producing 25 per cent of C02.  The problem is that since 1997 the world economy has been transformed. In the 1990s China was industrialising fast but few grasped the scale of its coming explosion in economic activity. China's role as a polluter has expanded accordingly. From 1996 to 2007 its carbon emissions doubled and in 2007 it took over from the US as the world's largest polluter. China now is responsible for 24 per cent of C02 emissions while the US is "only" responsible for 16 per cent.  This shift leaves the Kyoto provisions looking out of sync with the new economic reality, as Kyoto did not oblige China or India to do anything to cut emissions, while giving Ja  
 amid the furore over the eurozone crisis and   
 The European Commission is threatening to take the Government to court over its controversial decision to cut solar-power subsidies by half.  The commission became the latest party to question the move publicly yesterday, revealing that it had contacted the Government as it investigates the impact of the cut.  G?nther Oettinger, the EU Energy Commissioner, said: "Whenever member states revise their support for support schemes for renewable energy, they need to do so in a manner which does not destabilise the renewable-energy industry or risk undermining their plans to achieve their 2020 targets."  The Government is legally obliged to generate 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.  "Should the UK weaken policies in such a way that it would threaten progress towards their targets, the commission would take a  
 The chance of a binding new climate deal involving the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitters, China, the US and India, looks increasingly unlikely as the UN climate conference in Durban draws to a close today. In an outcome that would dash the hopes of thousands of people and many countries who feel themselves threatened by global warming, an international treaty that would make the planet's biggest polluters cut back by a definite timetable on their carbon emissions is looking like an impossible dream.  More than 120 nations of the 194 present at Durban, including the whole 43-strong bloc of the Least Developed Countries, were yesterday supporting the plan put forward by Britain and the EU to agree a "road map" to a global, legally-binding climate pact, involving all nations, to be signed by 2015 and come into force not later than 2020.  But, despite emollient noises being made in public by the "Big Three" emitters, the Chinese, american and Indian line in negotiations was much harder, and their participation in a credible deal was looking very doubtful.  Xie Zhenhua, the avuncular, broad-cheeked and smiling Chinese Climate Change Minister, who looks like a Chinese Santa Claus, said at the start of the week that China might accept a legally-binding climate deal, but in the talks between officials there were no concessions coming out of his sack.  and Todd Stern, the US climate envoy who by contrast is a lean and bony Harvard lawyer, said yesterday that the US supported the EU idea of a road map, but other countries said they would believe it when they saw it. "Thank you very much, let me see that in the negotiation room," Grenada's Foreign Minister, Karl Hood, said in response.  Participation of the leading emitters is crucial because the three nations alone account between them for 46 per cent of global emissions - China for 24 per cent, the US for 16 per cent and India for 6 per cent - yet none of them shows any sign of making emissions cuts, and Chinese and Indian emissions in particular are growing at nearly 10 per cent annually. The mere increase in Chinese CO2 between 2009 and 2010 of 694 million tonnes dwarfs all the carbon emissions that Britain produces in a year.  The US has taken on a target, but given no sign of how it will achieve it, while the other two have said they will reduce the energy intensity of their economy, but not the emissions themselves. all are reluctant to cut their carbon for fear it would damage their economies. The americans are wholly constrained by a Republican-dominated, climate-sceptic Congress, while the Chinese and Indians are desperate to maintain their growth rates.  There is no doubt there will be some sort of agreement in Durban, probably in the early hours of tomorrow morning, presented in the best light possible - but it may do virtually nothing to save the planet. For if the negotiations do fail to get a credible deal, 20 years of effort to slash the gases causing the atmosphere to warm will run into the sand.  It will mean a "lost decade" for climate change in which no real steps are taken to curb emissions until after 2020. Emissions now total more than 32 billion tonnes of CO2 globally and are growing at an unprecedented 6 per cent per year. This is despite the fact that to have any chance of holding global warming below the danger threshold of 2C, scientists agree that, before 2020, emissions must peak.  The present climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, only covers about 15 per cent of global CO2, because when it was signed in 1997 it only covered what were then the rich industrialised countries. This was for reasons of historical equity - the rich nations put most of the excess CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place, and in 1997 america, with 5 per cent of the world's population, was alone producing 25 per cent of the world's CO2.  But in 2001 George W Bush withdrew the US from Kyoto, and since then the globe has changed in a way nobody predicted. The explosion of the Chinese economy has led to its soaring greenhouses gases: Chinese CO2 doubled from three to six million tonnes between 1996 and 2006 and the following year it overtook the US as the leading polluter.  China, India and other developing countries have hitherto been insistent on a renewal of Kyoto without wanting a further treaty: it was over this issue that the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference foundered. But since then more and more countries have come to see a renewed Kyoto as less important than a new global deal involving everybody.  The EU has proposed that it will renew Kyoto, but the price is a new over-arching, legally-binding, time-limited agreement. Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, who is leading the UK's talks at Durban, has been one of the most enthusiastic proponents of a new global deal and last night he said he was still hopeful.  "The vast majority of countries here in Durban are behind the programme we have put forward, and support our vision of a genuine, over-arching global climate agreement, with a road map on how to get there," he said. "  
 a new international deal to combat global warming looked increasingly unlikely last night as the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban moves to its close.  The majority of the 194 nations assembled in the South african port city support the EU plan for a legally binding climate change pact for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to be signed by 2015 and to come into force by 2020.  Emissions need to peak by 2020 for the world to have any chance of holding global warming below the danger threshold of 2C above the pre-industrial level. Failure to achieve this target could have catastrophic consequences for millions of people.  But the "Big Three" carbon emitters - China, the US and India, who alone account for nearly half of world CO2 emissions, and without whose participation such a treaty would be meaningless - are holding out against it.  Negotiations, in which Britain's Climate Change and Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, is playing a leading role, are likely to go down to the wire late tonight. 
 Fears of trouble brewing Down Under, as well as disappointing trial results from one of its drugs, left GlaxoSmithKline on its sickbed last night. Britain's largest drugs maker was driven back 16p to 1,424p amid warnings from the City over evidence of a slowdown in australia.  Saying recent results from, among others, consumer goods makers associated British Foods and PZ Cussons have produced signs trading in the country is deteriorating, Panmure Gordon announced it was "increasingly concerned by consumer slow-down".  analysts from the broker - who said they were taking the "opportunity to advocate taking profits" - pointed out the consumer side of GSK now provides almost 20 per cent of revenues and added that "if the market collapses [in australia], this will have a significant impact on profits".  GSK was faced with another bitter pill to swallow after its Tykerb drug failed to perform as hoped in clinical trials with women suffering from early-stage breast cancer. as a result, Deutsche Bank said the chances of Tykerb being used in treatment for breast cancer after initial surgery or chemotherapy was "very unlikely", making current sales expectations"very optimistic".  It was a poor session for the defensives in general, with SaB Miller another in the red. The Grolsch owner slipped 16p to 2,184p despite UBS's Renier Swanepoel reiterating the brewer's "neutral" rating and saying it was "priced to perfection".  although there was a consensus in the Square Mile that the eurozone summit in Brussels had not produced an instant solution to the region's woes, the FTSE 100 still managed to climb 45.44 points to 5,529.21. Strong consumer confidence data from the US helped, as did reports claiming China's central bank may create a $300bn vehicle to invest in both Europe and the States.  Despite Moody's deciding to downgrade its credit ratings on three French banks, their UK peers were all charging ahead, with some dealers suggesting they were cheered by David Cameron's strict stance against a financial transaction tax.  Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland ended up taking the three top places on the blue-chip leaderboard, powering up 1.64p to 26.72p, 9.8p to 190.23p and 1.07p to 21.99p respectively  Lloyds' move came in the wake of reports its boss antonio Horta-Osorio will have to reapply for his job if he wants to return from sick leave, and one company hoping the issue is sorted out soon - according to Panmure Gordon's Barrie Cornes - is St James's Place.  Lloyds has a 60 per cent stake in the mid-tier financial adviser, which it has seemingly been poised to sell forever. The lack of a permanent chief executive will delay the disposal even further, claimed the analyst, who argued that once completed St James's share price would "bounce".  Down on the FTSE 250,takeover talk made a return around Hays after Shore Capital's David O'Brien said it could attract a bidder. The recruiter has dropped nearly 14 per cent in December following dismal updates from its rivals SThree and Michael Page, and the analyst said that "should the share price not recover in due course there is a possibility that predators may well look to take advantage".  However, given Mr O'Brien also slashed his earnings estimates, the comments did not stop Hays creeping down 0.1p to 63.2p.  Premier Foods continued to rise in the wake of its announcement on Thursday that the owner of Mr Kipling has agreed to sell its Brookes avana chilled foods unit to 2 Sisters Food.  It climbed a further 0.15p to 5.88p after Investec's Martin Deboo praised the deal as "a positive step on [the] path to recovery" for Premier, which is among the stocks moving to the small-cap index at the end of next week as part of the latest indices reshuffle.  It was a good day for punters' favourite Desire Petroleum, which powered up 10.34 per cent to 24p on the alternative Investment Market. Traders noted its peer Rockhopper, which was 12p stronger at 251p, is expected to release drilling results soon from the field off the Falkland Islands in which Desire has a large stake.  Elsewhere among the explorers, oil and gas tiddler Max Petroleum slipped back 1p to 12.5p after admitting it had been unable to find "viable reservoirs" from further drilling of its aSK-2 well in Kazakhstan.  Having seen its share price drop more   
 Negotiators from nearly two hundred countries were still arguing early today over the possibility of a new climate deal forcing all nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.  On one side of the argument at the UN Climate Conference in Durban were the member states of the European Union and a large number of developing countries, in a 120-strong bloc calling for a tough new pact to tackle global warming.  On the other side were the three biggest greenhouse gas emitters, China, the US and India, still resisting after two weeks of talks the idea of any agreement that would bind them legally to cut their soaring CO2 emissions by a definite date.  Between them the "Big 3" CO2 emitters account for nearly half the world's greenhouse gases yet none is taking action to cut emissions, and they must be included in any global warming deal for it to be environmentally credible.  The EU is proposing a deal "road-map", the key points of which are the timetable - it should be signed by 2015 and come into force by 2020 - and the condition that all major economies will take on legally binding emissions cuts.  The text being negotiatedt included the timetable, but in place of "legally binding" contained the phrase "a legal framework." The differenced may seem small but as one negotiator said, it contains "a lot of wriggle room", and may be something that EU countries, including the UK whose team is being led by the Energy and Environment Secretary, Chris Huhne, find they cannot accept. a deal is not being ruled out but it was impossible to call late last night. 
 Right up to the last minute, the danger was that the Climate Change Conference in Durban would end in fiasco or in an agreement so vague as to be meaningless. Inst  
 The current estimate for global temperature rise by 2100 is 3.5C. This is a devastating conclusion that underlines why many people, including myself, believe global warming represents the biggest threat to mankind. The international consensus that has emerged is that: global temperature rise should be limited to 2C; that emission policies should be determined at regional (eg. European), national and city level; and that the United Nations should monitor and co-ordinate these.  While a limited deal was reached at Durban, securing a comprehensive, global agreement is unlikely soon. a key problem is that governments are focused upon immediate issues such as financial fragility. There is   
 an extraordinary face-to-face encounter between two powerful women, sitting in the midst of a giant huddle in a packed conference hall, finally sealed the Durban climate change agreement as dawn was breaking yesterday, when many had given it up for lost.  after a fortnight of talks and two final all-night negotiating sessions, with the meeting on the edge of collapse, Connie Hedegaard, the Dane who is the European Union's leading climate negotiator, persuaded her Indian opposite number, Jayanthi Natarajan, to accept a form of words meaning that all countries in the world - India included - would be legally bound, in a future climate treaty, to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.  Ms Natarajan finally agreed to the disputed text despite the fact that her senior officials were telling her she did not have the latitude to do so, and that she had to refer the matter back to the Indian cabinet. Her show of independent-mindedness saved the meeting, and made possible the prospect of a new way forward for dealing with global warming.  The Indians had all along been the main objectors to the idea of a legally binding agreement, and in the early hours proposed text which EU negotiators believed undermined the idea, though you need to be an expert in the arcane dialect of UN treaties to understand this.  They suggested that the new treaty should have "a legal outcome"; but EU negotiators were convinced this could refer merely to decisions of future meetings of the UN Climate Convention such as the Durban one, and   
 The world's three biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China, the US and India, will be legally bound to cut their emissions for the first time under a new global warming treaty prefigured at the close of the Durban climate conference early yesterday.  The move, finally agreed at 5am after the meeting of 194 countries overran by more than 24 hours, is a substantial step forward in fighting climate change, as between them the "Big Three" emit 46 per cent of the 33.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere annually, yet they are not currently obliged to cut this back in any way.  The fact that their soaring emissions - China's and India's growing by more than 9 per cent annually, america's by 4 per cent - will now be brought into a binding reduction framework, gives some hope that the world may hold the expected rise in global temperatures under the danger threshold of 2C above pre-industrial levels.  Without their participation, the chances of this were zero. Yet only a fortnight ago, at the start of the conference, all were resolutely opposed to any moves forcing them to cut back their CO2, fearing it would harm their economies.  The fact that they were persuaded to change their minds was a victory for the European Union, which came to Durban with the explicit aim of negotiating a "road map" to a new climate pact binding every country of the world - the three biggest polluters included. The current climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, does not cover them, and deals with only 15 per cent of global CO2.  The EU succeeded in its three aims - a new legal treaty, with a signing by 2015, and an entry into force by 2020 - because it managed to put together a coalition with developing countries, many of which greatly fear global warming's impending effects.  This "high-ambition coalition" eventually included more than 120 nations, and put what turned out to be irresistible pressure on the three top polluters, although it was a close-run thing. The US agreed first, then China - but the Indians, desperate to keep their surging economic growth which is bringing the country out of poverty, held out until the bitter end over the language which will now commit them to cutting their CO2 back.  The conference teetered on the brink of collapse and was finally saved by a face-to-face deal between two women - the EU Commissioner for Climate action, Connie Hedegaard from Denmark, and the Indian Minister of Environment affairs, Jayanthi Natarajan, who agreed on a final formula.  Formally entitled the "Durban Platform", this agreement commits the world community to "develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force... applicable to all parties" - which means a wholly new legally binding climate treaty for everyone. Work on it will begin "with urgency" in the first half of next year and it will be signed no later than 2015, and will come into effect and be implemented no later than 2020.  a major fear of environmentalists was that a new treaty coming into force by 2020 would mean "locking in a decade of inaction", but the agreement deals with this in two ways. Firstly, it explicitly recognises for the first time the so-called "emissions gap" - the fact that when all the pledges that all the countries in the world have made about reducing CO2 are combined, that is still far from enough to halt global warming. Secondly, it established a group to work on raising the carbon-cutting ambitions of all countries, in the years before the new treaty comes into force.  In return for the agreement on the new treaty, the EU agreed to a new version of the Kyoto Protocol, which has in the past been important to the developing countries as a talisman of rich countries' good faith, but is increasingly seen as less important than an overarching new treaty.  The concerns of countries such as India and China about climate action harming their development have been recognised by the setting up at Durban of the Green Climate Fund, which will channel much of the $100 billion per year of climate finance which wealthy nations have promised by the end of the decade.  Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, led negotiations for Britain at Durban and played a central role in securing the agreement.  He said yesterday: "This deal is a very significant step forward and makes it credible again that we can hold global warming to below two degrees above the pre-industrial level, as long as we use this framework to determine ambitious levels of curbs on greenhouse gases which respect the science.  "It is a very optimistic result at Durban and I think it will be seen as an absolutely key turning point," Mr Huhne added.  
 The world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters, China, the US and India, will be legally bound for the first time to cut their emissions in a new international climate change treaty to be signed by 2015 and to come into force by 2020.  The "Big Three" polluters finally agreed to a legal regime of emissions cutting at the close of the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South africa, at 5am yesterday morning, after most observers had thought deadlock was certain. The conference outcome is a substantial achievement for the European Union, which had proposed the new treaty and wanted, and obtained, a "road map" towards it.  Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary, who led the British team at the talks, said pointedly last night: "This is a very good example of how the European Union can act crucially in the British national interest, in a way we could not possibly achieve on our own."  The deal was finally clinched in a face-to-face talk between two women negotiators - the EU's Connie Hedegaard, and India's Jayanthi Natarajan. 
 There are some certainties and many unknowns when it comes to climate change. We know that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas, that we are pumping huge quantities of it into the atmosphere, and that this is pushing up temperatures. Of all the uncertainties, however, perhaps the most alarming is what may become of the vast stores of methane under the arctic.  For many thousands of years, such methane - many times more warming than CO2 - has been trapped by the ice. as temperatures rise, it is starting to seep out, raising fears of a sudden, catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere, massively accelerating climate change.  It may be a low-risk possibility, but it would certainly be a high-impact event. We must start exploring all possible solutions now. By the time the methane "time bomb" starts ticking, it will be too late. 
 Investment by companies into renewable energy projects in the UK has risen sharply this year but is still well down on 2009 levels.  The Government said ?2.5bn of new privately funded projects had been announced since april. That marks an improvement on the ?2.1bn measured in the whole of 2010 by research group Pew Environment. The projects will create nearly 12,000 jobs across the country.  Companies held off investing in new projects in 2010 because of uncertainty around the policies of the new Government. However, with more details published, the investment taps appear to be turning back on.  Levels of investment are still far from the ?7.1bn levels recorded by Pew in 2009. Shadow Energy Secretary Carolyn Flint said: "The UK has fallen from third to 13th in the world for investment in green growth, behind countries like Brazil and India." 
 a British cyclist who smashed the round-the-world cycling record three years ago is aiming to set a new first - this time on the water.  Mark Beaumont will be part of a crew of six rowers hoping to complete an atlantic crossing in less than 30 days - a feat which has been described as the four-minute mile of ocean rowing.  Departing from Trafaya in Morocco as early as Monday, the team will row for two hours on and two hours off, around the clock, in a bid to shave at least three days off the current record.  The gruelling shift pattern means that non  
 The West End's N?el Coward theatre gets adventurous in mid-January, presenting the Muscovite Sovremennik company's Three Sisters, Cherry Orchard, and Into the Whirlwind - memories of Stalin's gulags. Cheek by Jowl's extraordinary Russian ensemble tours with The Tempest, from March.  Hotshot Rupert Gould stages The Merchant of Venice at Stratford's rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre in May. Come June, Kevin Spacey steals the limelight as Sam Mendes's Old Vic Richard III.  Next month, Robert Lepage wings his way to the Barbican for The Blue Dragon: a sequel to his epic Dragon's Trilogy. In March, a sinister new Neil LaBute, In a Forest, Dark and Deep, slinks into the Vaudeville, starring Olivia Williams.  The Holy Rosenbergs marks playwright Ryan Craig's National Theatre debut, in March: Henry Goodman plays a Jewish father whose offspring radically disagree over Gaza. In February, climate change creeds are scrutinised, in an NT documentary drama, Greenland, and in polemicist Richard Bean's new black comedy, The Heretic, at the Royal Court.  The one to watch: Jessica Raine, having caught the eye in edgy teenage roles, will star in Clifford Odets' Rocket to the Moon at the NT in March. She plays the ferocious seductress Cleo Singer, sending Joseph Millson's repressed Ben Stark into a spin. 
 Barely had the post-Christmas sales begun, and the average town centre become a place of thronged, Gadarene horror, than what might be called the great fiscal paradox of 21st-century economics kicked in. Still suffering from the adverse effects of a fortnight's bad weather, and with the spectre of a 2.5 per cent VaT rise lurking just around the corner, spokesmen for the big retail chains positively fell over themselves in their anxiety to implore the public to get out there and spend money.  Stephen Robertson, director-general of the British Retail Consortium, was heard to remark that the high street would need "at least 5 per cent" sales growth before next Tuesday to be able to "tough out" 2011. It was apparently nothing short of our patriotic duty to invest in some of the electronic gadgetry and designer bathrooms on offer at discounts that in some cases were thought to approach 75 per cent.  amid reports that British shoppers are expected to spend ?5.2m in the January sales, there lurked a suspicion that all this was, to use that elegant modern phrase, counter-intuitive, and that, with bad times inching across the horizon and hundreds of thousands of redundancies in the pipeline, the last thing the specimen consumer wanted to do was to rack up credit card debts that would have to be settled some time in the dim and increasingly uncertain future. Every private instinct counsels prudence, sober caution and not laying out all your wherewithal on a mobile phone that you don't actually need, but no, expert opinion still maintains that the only thing guaranteed to keep the economy going is limitless credit and not worrying about what tomorrow will bring.  although no word has yet been heard from the Chancellor, you can't help noticing that the retail trade's urgings are in direct opposition to the Government's own long-term fiscal policy, which seems to be predicated on paying off debt as soon as possible. Naturally, one can hardly blame the retailing gurus for their zeal: after all, informed observers have suggested that as many as 1,000 businesses may go bust unless these sales targets are met. What one can complain about is the unspoken assumption, to which the leaders of all political parties subscribe, that the only way out of our difficulties is economic growth and - the acme of all modern human achievement - higher living standards. Sooner or later, as anyone who has attempted to calibrate the aspirations of the developing world with the drying up of the planet's natural resources soon comes to acknowledge, Western economies are going to stop expanding, and belt-tightening, now regarded as a periodic inconvenience, become a settled habit. It would be far better if governments had the guts to admit this now rather than have to deal with its consequences 10 years down the line.  ?????????  Politics has been slow to re-animate itself after the festive break, but some particularly dreary partisan voices began echoing around the newspapers once it became known that Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, has taken on the job of selling the Government's higher education reforms to prospective students. Mr Hughes, who abstained in the Commons vote on raising tuition fees, will assume the role (unpaid) of "access advocate", whose brief is to persuade poorer children that they will be able to afford a university education when the new arrangements start to take effect.  Inevitably, the elevation of Mr Hughes to this new post was marked down by his Labour opponents as a very bad thing: "cynical window-dressing", as somebody nicely put it. But on what grounds, exactly? Mr Hughes's 28-year career in the House of Commons has been marked, more or less, by adherence to principle, by support for the policies which he believes in and disparagement of those he dislikes. Like the Labour Party's Frank Field, he has sometimes been prepared to see the merit of schemes not dreamt up by his own colleagues. Whatever you may think of the Government's higher education policies, no one to the right of the Socialist Workers Party could doubt that Michael Gove is genuinely committed to widening the social basis of university entry. It could even be argued that his determination to allow disadvantaged children to "better themselves", as Samuel Smiles might have put it, knocks anything his Labour predecessors did into a cocked hat. There was plenty of cynicism befouling the atmosphere on the day of Mr Hughes's appointment. Most, alas, came from Opposition benches.  ?????????  as a devotee of the folk myth, I was rather saddened to read this week's debunking of the widely held belief that, with the onset of global warming and the break-up of the ice-caps, polar bears have begun to arrive on our shores. There were apparently two sightings in 2010: a report from the RSPB that one had been washed up, still alive, on the Hebridean island of Mull; and the occasion in September when Naomi Lloyd, a presenter on ITV's West Country breakfast bulletin, assured viewers that a sodden corpse had been discovered on the sands at the Cornish resort of Bude. alas, neither was bona fide. The Hebridean appearance turned out to be an imaginative april Fool, while the Cornish specimen was eventually unmasked as a drowned cow, bleached white by seawater.  all this struck me as a wonderful example of media continuity, in this case hitched to that inexhaustible public appetite for bizarre natural occurrences which persists from one century to the next. a Sunday newspaper staple from the early 1900s, for example, was the story of the man swallowed by a whale in the Red Sea and taken out some days later, still alive but bleached by the whale's gastric juices. Naturally, this defies all scientific and medical precedent, but there are references to it in popular fiction until at least 1939. all the evidence suggests that while the desire to construct folk myths is a constant, their content changes in response to the materials that lie to hand. Thus the cautionary tale from the Red Sea probably derives from the biblical story of Jonah. The migrant polar bears, alternatively, are a by-product of public alarm at the prospect of impending environmental catastrophe. and how long, you wonder, before the first genuine escapee surfs into Falmouth with an ice floe disintegrating under its paws?  ?????????  The ecstatic national response to Wednesday's ashes victory over australia reminded me of one or two of the behavioural forecasts that prophetically minded people used to go around making in the early 1980s. One of them was that, 30 years hence, the film industry would have ceased to exist. another was that office workers would stay at home and "tele-commute". a third - equally misguided, as it turned out - was that cri  
 Since it was founded 21 years ago, this newspaper has been in favour of change to a fairer voting system. In the past, we have voiced support for more radical reform than the alternative vote (aV), which is to be put to a referendum on 5 May. But now we are urging people to vote Yes in four months' time on the merits of the case, because aV would be a valuable democratic improvement on the existing system.  The debate about electoral reform has taken an unexpected turn in the past year. Last May's election produced a hung parliament, the kind of result assumed to be more likely under aV, and hence offered a window into a reformed future. But the arithmetic of the result confronted a number of people, and The Independent on Sunday, with a challenge.  among those who supported a fairer voting system, there were a number who did so because of its presumed consequences, rather than for the principle of fairness itself. Their objective was to keep the Conservatives out, and they assumed that the Liberal Democrats were part of the ramparts against a Tory government. This newspaper half-shared that assumption, supporting tactical voting against David Cameron at the election last May.  That view has been blown apart, which forces electoral reformers to face up to what they think about the intrinsic rights and wrongs of different designs of democracy, rather than trying to second-guess the policy outcomes according to their own political preferences.  This is a paradoxical benefit of an uncertain election result. Electoral reformers ought to be driven back to first principles. To try to calculate the case for different voting systems by party advantage (or disadvantage) is not only wrong, it is also a mistake. although we can guess how past elections might have turned out under aV, based on opinion-poll evidence of voters' second preferences (as we report on pages 14-15, there might have been a hung parliament in 1992 and a Lib-Lab deal might have been more possible last year), people would behave differently under a different system.  Now it is time, therefore, to consider the philosophical or pure case for the alternative vote. In this, we commend the Yes campaign in focusing on the voters rather than the politicians. From the voters' point of view, being able to number candidates in order of preference is a significant improvement on voting with an X. It allows people to express a full range of   
 Inflation worldwide is back with a vengeance - and with distressing social consequences. World food prices hit a new all-time record last week, passing their previous peak in 2008. The oil price is within a whisker of $100 a barrel, which, while below its previous peak, is nevertheless going to put pressure on all other prices as it feeds through the economic system.  We here are very aware of the oil price every time we fill up our cars, for thanks to further increases in taxation and a weak pound, British petrol and diesel prices seem set to pass previous records. We are aware too of other rising prices, with the consumer price index likely to be up well over 4 per cent this year, double the official ceiling. There will be a lot of pressure on the Bank of England to start the long upward push of interest rates in the months ahead. But what we in Britain do not see is the misery that the surge in food and energy prices is causing to the rest of the world.  In a developed country such as Britain, food typically accounts for 15 to 20 per cent of a household budget. If prices in the supermarkets go up, we spend a bit less on something else, or choose a cheaper cut of meat. But in most of the emerging world, food typically accounts for half people's income, sometimes three-quarters. So a surge in food prices is an utter catastrophe.  The Food and agriculture Organisation, a UN body based in Rome, announced a few days ago that food prices had risen 32 per cent in the second half of last year. Its composite index for the past five years is shown in the main graph, while last year's rise of specific types of food, notably sugar, cereals, and oils and fats, are shown in the small one on the right. as you can see, not everything is up: meat and dairy prices have so far been contained. But that must be a lag, for a rise in cereal prices pushes up the cost of feeding livestock, which in turn is bound to push up these prices too.  You can see the effect of this around the world. Rising food prices seems to be one of the immediate causes of the riots in Tunisia and algeria. The governments of Libya, Jordan and Morocco have all taken steps in the past few days to control food prices in the wake of this unrest. The Indian government has taken a number of measures, including a ban on exporting onions, to try to hold down vegetable prices. China has cut road tolls for food lorries. In Indonesia, the price of chillies has risen five-fold and fears of unrest have been one of the reasons share prices have fallen sharply in recent trading.  Even relatively developed countries have been affected. The South Korean government has released emergency stocks of cabbages, pork, fish and so on.  This is worrying enough. More worrying is that there is, at the moment, no end in sight. a number of exceptional things are happening, mostly associated with weather, that are driving prices up, but even if you strip those out real concerns remain. There are a number of reasons to believe that higher food prices may have become a long-term trend. For a start, it is a bit ominous that this surge in prices is coming early in the growth phase of the economic cycle. Back in 2008, there had been several years of strong growth. This time, the developed world has hardly escaped from recession, though it is true that most of the emerging world did not experience any recession at all.  Other reasons to expect that food will generally become more expensive include, obviously, a rising world population, and, less obviously, the social shift towards higher meat consumption. (It is more efficient to eat grain rather than feed it to an animal and then eat the animal.) But perhaps the greatest single driver of higher food prices will be a higher oil price. That is because increasing food yields requires fuel and fertiliser. If the price of hydrocarbons rises, these go up in step.  So what will happen to the oil price? In the short term a lot will depend on Opec. That is where the "spare" supply is - spare in the sense that it is these countries that can make a quick decision to pump more oil. We will have to see whether the members are prepared to do so. But in the longer term, you get into huge debates about the ultimate peak of oil supplies: what level that will be and whether it will be reached in five, 10 or whatever years' time.  You also get into debates about the wisdom of subsidising bio-fuels: is it really a great idea to take food crops such as maize and convert that into stuff to stick into motor cars?  But when looking at the demand side of the equation there is no doubt that future trends will be shaped by the emerging world, not the developed one. Total oil demand is back to its pre-recession levels of a little under 90 million barrels per day. But demand from the developed world is stable, actually lower than it was a decade ago, while that from the emerging world has continued to climb and is about to pass that of the developed world. That does not absolve the developed countries from trying to use less oil, indeed use less energy generally. Energy consumption per head naturally remains much lower in most of the emerging countries than in the developed ones - through there are exceptions such as in the Middle East. But it does mean that the future costs of energy will be determined by asia rather than by Europe or North america.  The big point here, surely, is that energy conservation is not just about carbon reduction, climate change and all that. It is also about feeding the world. It is about social pressures and, as we can see in Tunisia, social conflict. Markets will eventually adjust, we will figure out ways to increase the global food supply, we will become better at energy conservation and so on. But I fear it   
 When is a lie morally justifiable? By coincidence, two of Britain's leading public watchdogs have just set themselves the task of answering that question, though in rather different circumstances. and their answer might be: not when sex is involved.  The bizarre case of the undercover police officer who spent seven years posing as an eco-warrior, before seeing the light on climate change and switching sides, is to be investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. among the issues it will address are whether PC Mark Kennedy crossed the line from covert surveillance to become an agent provocateur. He also had sex with a series of women activists who fell for the crustie copper with his long hair, eco-stubble and exotic tattoos. He cut a romantic figure with his eagerness for clambering up trees and protest cranes - and plenty of what turned out to be taxpayers' money to splash around in the cause of the climate.  On the same day, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) announced that, after 200 letters from the public, it is to launch an inquiry into the Daily Telegraph's subterfuge last month of sending two glamorous reporters, posing as young mums with benefits problems, to pretend to be constituents of various Lib Dem ministers - and coax a variety of tape-recorded indiscretions from them. The most high-profile casualty of the sting was the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who imprudently boasted that he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch.  Telling lies to get to the truth has a chequered history among both police and press in modern Britain. Which is why the PCC has a code of practice which declares that "clandestine devices and subterfuge" can be justified "only in the public interest and when the material cannot be obtained by other means". The problem is that this merely shifts the problem to a different level.  Some subterfuge is perfectly proper. The police undercover unit to which PC Kennedy belonged began life in the late Nineties to infiltrate animal rights militants who were sending letter bombs to scientists, intimidating researchers at home and, most notoriously, digging up a grandmother's grave. Few would question the ethics of the then National Public Order Intelligence Unit penetrating such a cell by deception.  But the single greatest impulse of any institution is self-perpetuation. When the threat of animal rights extremism had been vanquished, those who ran such units looked for new targets to justify their existence. They got their brief expanded to cover all "domestic extremists", from far-right racists to deep-green eco-activists.  Virtually any protester became fair game, including activists who wanted to shut down a coal-fired power station for a few days as a global warming protest. That was a serious threat, said Sir Hugh Orde, president of the association of Chief Police Officers, this week, since the electricity supply for two million people, including hospitals and a lot of vulnerable people, could be affected. But it is hard to put that in the same category as those who want to kill scientists or blow up Tube trains.  Of course, climate change actions can be hijacked by violent individuals whose primary motivation is to seek street conflict with the police. But the vast majority of climate campaigners are, in the words of a judge in a related case, "honest, sincere, conscientious, intelligent, committed, dedicated and caring".  So a key question is whether the response is proportionate. Equivocations, concealments, exaggeration, half-truths, disguises and downright lies can be justifiable, but who decides, and how. To judge from the volume of complaints about the Telegraph's covert recording of government ministers, of one party only, the public sees countervailing ills from journalistic stings. Words such as dishonest, low, deceitful and cheating were used by critics. Reporters had done great damage to the confidentiality of the relationship between MPs and constituents, which was akin to that between doctors and patients or lawyers and clients.  That is a fair point, even if what the MPs said smacked of the silly boasting of middle-aged men anxious to impress young women, one of them described as "really quite attractive".  The sexuality was less latent in the case of PC Kennedy. In the course of his eco-activism he had relationships with a number of women who believed him to be a fellow activist. Whether he was sleeping with them to extract information or because he was seduced by their cause is unclear. But Kennedy did not merely watch from the back of the bus. Rather, he drove it, ferrying people and goods to protests, hiring vans and paying the court fines of his fellow activists.  What was his motivation? Was he diverting protesters into activities that police regarded as less dangerous, as when he proposed targeting buses of a racist group rather than confronting them in a mass disorder in Bradford city centre? Or was he cleverly undermining act  
 The Fukushima prefecture lies near a fault line off the Pacific coast of Japan. The area is mountainous, with volcanic slopes filled by lakes, swamps and settlements. The 1888 eruption of Mount Bandai carved much of the landscape. The small town of Okuma is now the centre of the world's attention, its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant sprayed with tonne upon tonne of water in attempts to prevent the spread of radiation in the wake of the massive tsunami and failed cooling systems.  Hinkley Point is on a headland in Somerset. Nearby, the River Parrett flows gently and birdwatchers stare through their binoculars at Bridgwater Bay.  Okuma and Bridgwater are nearly 6,000 miles apart; their environments totally different; one is suffering the biggest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl; the other is best known for its annual Guy Fawkes carnival. Yet plans by EDF to build a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point, which should replace the existing station shortly after it is decommissioned in 2016, could be delayed by events in a volatile area of asia.  Fukushima has changed the world's attitude to civil nuclear programmes, to the extent that people wonder whether they will be largely discarded.  as energy prices rose and fossil- fuel supply became more and more subject to the whims of geopolitics, so nuclear power was identified by governments as the best way to keep the lights on. China was forecast to expand its nuclear industry by 8.4 per cent a year to 2035, while the UK has identified eight sites, including Hinkley Point and Hartlepool, for new plants to be operational from 2018.  But angela Merkel, froze operations at all German plants built before 1980 last week, and Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy, ordered a high-level report into the events in Japan and any potential lessons for the UK.  Businesses that have staked much of their futures on the growth potential of the nuclear industry are dismayed that the Government's new-build plans are under such massive scrutiny. Robert Clover, the global sector head of alternative energy at HSBC, warns: "We believe that events at Fukushima could change national energy policies in nuclear countries, with, potentially, both shut-downs of existing nuclear plants and fewer new nuclear installations." as a result, financial commentators and analysts are advising investors to take a punt on the stocks of coal and gas producing companies. On Thursday, Shore Capital tipped Xstrata shares - noting that 30 per cent of its revenue is dependent on coal - and Nat Rothschild's Indonesian coal-focused vehicle Vallar.  Officials in Whitehall are privately trying to reassure energy firms and their contractors that the nuclear programme is not under threat. "We're not building reactors in areas of seismic activity," huffs a civil service source. "The designs of these reactors will be two generations on from Fukushima."  The two reactor designs that will be the centrepieces of the new wave of UK nuclear plants are at the final stages of detailed technical evaluation by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. approval for the reactors, known as generic design assessments (GDa), was expected in June.  However, the report that Huhne has asked Dr Mike Weightman, the chief nuclear inspector, to write might not be completed for six months. Huhne said: "The tragic events in Japan are still unfolding. We should not rush to judgment." The civil servant stresses that Huhne is trying to emphasise that any judgements will be "fact-based not emotional". But Huhne did emphasise that the Government needed to understand the implications of what happened in Fukushima on any new programme in the UK, heartening environmental groups which believe this offers a slight hope that nuclear expansion could be limited, or even canned.  What seems clear is that GDa will be delayed, as will a later national nuclear policy statement which will basically give the green light to the whole programme.  Even though an Energy department source insists any delay would be "small", probably just a few months, it could still be significant. already there is going to be a severe energy gap as many existing plants start to shut down from 2014. Originally, it was hoped that the new plants would be operational from 2017, but that has already slipped to 2018 and these latest delays will almost certainly mean that the life of ageing nuclear reactors will have to be extended to plug the energy gap.  "This process has been much too slow," says Graham Hand, the chief executive at professional services trade body British Expertise. "We mustn't be deceived into the potential of renewable energy - that's important but it  
 01  a perfect night in with ...  a) Corrie  b) the curtains shut and a US boxset  c) Brucie, Tess, Bruno, Len, Craig and alesha  d) David attenborough and Brian Cox  e) singing spinsters, dancing dogs and ant and Dec  f) Milligan, Cleese, Everett ... Sessions  02  I worry about ...  a) the boiler blowing up  b) being outsourced  c) the kiddies  d) the nanny state  e) my overdraft  f) them all coming over here  03  a hard day'swork ...  a) ... and they take it all back in tax  b) ... is clock watching till 5pm  c) ... won't stop climate change  d) ... is pottering in the garden  e) ... is just counting down to payday  f) ... never did anyone any harm  04  Spare time ...  a) Spare what?  b) Pumping iron  c) Big Society  d) Getting away  e) Seeing the children  f) Seeing the grandchildren  05  Feeling peckish  a) Pop to Tesco  b) Pizza Express  c) Nibble some Green & Blacks  d) Country pub  e) Takeaway  f) Lovely bistro place I know in the village  06  Coffee?  a) Got anything stronger?  b) Where's Costa?  c) Is it Fairtrade?  d) The National Trust has a lovely tea room  e) Cafeti?re  f) Do you have tea?  07  a little retail therapy  a) Maybe next week  b) Downloading an app or two  c) Browsing in M&S  d) Hitting John Lewis  e) Bidding on eBay  f) Clocking up air miles  08  Voting  a) Sticking with Labour because the cuts are not being spread fairly  b) Didn't bother last time but Labour at heart  c) Nick Clegg's doing his best  d) Proud to be Conservative  e) Can't stand David Cameron  f) The country is ruined and the Tories will clean it up  09  Children  a) Children under 10 shouldn't have mobiles  b) TV and computer games keep the kids from under my feet  c) Parents should think about what their children eat  d) One parent should stay at home with the children  e) It's about boundaries and discipline  f) Children are wrapped in cotton wool  10  The next generation???  a) ... will really struggle  b)  
 Talk of climate change is no longer fashionable in winter sports. In any case, when you try to analyse one winter compared with any other, it's hard to say what is "normal".  Yet, as we enter the last month of winter 2011, it's possible to say that it has "generally" been a good year for snowfall across North america, and a fairly average one in the alps. Closer to home, Scotland has had its third good winter in a row.  Meanwhile, a  
 This is a public service message. You have had an hour's less sleep than usual. This could affect you over the next few days more than you think. Unless you are of Icelandic descent. The clocks went forward at 2am this morning and chronobiologists - pay attention - suggest that the after-effects on your circadian body clock can last for weeks. So watch out for drastically lower productivity, increased susceptibility to illness and general tiredness. You are at greater risk of having a heart attack or committing suicide over the next three days. Perhaps you should just go back to bed.  When I was a boy, I loved the wintertime with its darkening afternoons. I can remember sitting in my primary school classroom by the big old iron radiator, making woollen pom-poms, the school wrapped securely in a blanket of night. But, as the years have passed, my favourite season has shifted inexorably to the spring.  These days, my spirits lift towards the end of January, when the working day no longer begins in the dark and the iris-tipped crocuses first pierce the iron soil. Next comes the forsythia and the early camellia, an unknown white blossom on the tree next door, and now the daffodils. The greyness disperses and blue comes to the sky along with a rejuvenated spirit of optimism. Hullo clouds, hullo sky, as Fotherington-Thomas, no fule he, would put it.  The thing about having missed an hour of sleep is that your serotonin may be depleted. One hour might not seem that significant, but most of us are chronically sleep-deprived already these days. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that relays information to different parts of the brain. It can have a direct impact on emotions, mood, behaviour, sexual appetite and much more. It is the happy hormone, which the body produces only in daylight but which governs the production of its polar opposite melatonin, the hormone of darkness, which prompts us to sleep as the evening descends. Between them these two maintain the body's diurnal rhythm.  Scientists in China have just discovered something startling about serotonin. Male mice bred without it lose their preference for the opposite sex. Presented with a choice of partners, these serotonin-free beasties were far more likely to mount a male mouse introduced into their cage, emitting the mating call normally sounded when a straight mouse sees a female. a preference for lady mice can be restored by injecting serotonin into the brain. according to the scientific journal Nature, it is the first time that a neurotransmitter has been shown to play a role in sexual preference in mammals.  "No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered life, you were born this way," as Lady Gaga puts it - though that lyric was last week banned by radio stations in Malaysia fearful of government disapproval. Indignant at this censorship, the avant-garde techno-rockist responded by urging her Malaysian fans to protest on the streets. This may sound a good idea to a glam-rock US citizen safely ensconced in Google's Californian HQ. But it is an altogether different prospect in a country with a dodgy human rights record, where bloggers and peaceful demonstrators are subject to arbitrary arrest and abuse in detention camps. It may be brain chemicals other than serotonin that Gaga is low on.  But back to the gay mice. It's important not to make a species leap to humans here, because sexual behaviour in mice is largely driven by their sense of smell, and human sexual preference is governed by a more complex cocktail of factors than what the scientists delicately call "odour cues", notwithstanding Walter Davis's 1930s Mississippi blues classic, "I Can Tell by the Way You Smell".  The most graphic instance of the impact of serotonin can be seen in people who use the recreational drug Ecstasy, which floods the brain with all the body's available serotonin. This produces a heightened awareness of emotion and an intensified sense of intimacy, followed by a low caused by the resulting serotonin deficiency, which can lead to depression.  That feeling, in a form which is less intense but more prolonged, is what is experienced by people who suffer from "winter blues". Now known as Seasonal affective Disorder (SaD), it was first described by a 6th-century Goth scholar as being common among the inhabitants of winter-darkened Scandinavia, though the people of Iceland seem to have developed genetic immunity. at its worst in December, January and February, its symptoms include lethargy, anxiety, irritability, loss of libido, withdrawal from company, finding it hard to stay awake during the day and difficult to sleep through the night. There is also a craving for carbohydrates and sweets which makes sufferers fatter. In the UK, around seven per cent of people are affected, women more than men, young more than old. It is said to particularly affect those in their twenties.  SaD is also common among creative types. The poet Emily Dickinson wrote three times as many poems in the spring and summer as she did in the autumn and winter, the former being more joyful and the  
 a Burmese woman has been jailed for 15 days for violating recycling laws. according to local media, Yan Marayi, a market vendor in the city of Manderlay, was found to have failed to recycle more than 180 plastic bags at her shop, and has received a prison sentence as a result. Manderlay has some of the strictest recycling regulations in the whole of Burma, although other cities have also introduced custodial sentences for environmental crimes. 
 Shocked by the apocalyptic images of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, the German Chancellor, angela Merkel, surprised many by pulling the plug from seven outdated nuclear reactors but is now receiving even more surprising support from the unlikeliest of backers.  It's clear that the glowing love affair between the atomic industry and Ms Merkel's conservative CDU party is now a liability - too hot to handle - and the Germans are scared.  But the big energy companies, E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall, are fighting back and are already warning of dark ages for Germany: an energy shortage and exploding energy costs. They want to extend the lifespan of all 17 nuclear plants and get the old reactors back on the grid after the safety checks and the three-month moratorium set by Merkel.  But political support for the nuclear industry, which has received Euro 100bn (?88bn) in government grants, is fading. Soon after the news of nuclear contamination and melting fuel rods in Japan, some 60,000 people demonstrated against the continued operation of the ageing Neckarwestheim plant, forming a 45km human chain from the plant to the city of Stuttgart.  The EU Energy Commissioner, G?nther Oettinger, a close Merkel ally, said that Europe needed to consider whether it could live without nuclear energy. His radical U-turn is a big surprise. In his time as CDU premier of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Oettinger was a stout defender of a "safe and clean" nuclear energy. Now he modestly comments on the incidents in Japan with: "We are all in the hands of God".  Merkel, the daughter of a protestant priest, also refers to some "higher forces" in order to combat the fierce attacks of her offended former friends. The hard-nosed nuclear lobby accuses her of sacrificing the atomic industry for selfish reasons, such as opinion polls and elections.  Only a couple of months ago, the powerful lobby suppressed a law that said all of Germany's nuclear power plants were to go off line by 2022 at the latest. This time, after Fukushima, Merkel is determined to remain an iron lady and to finish nuclear power once and for all. She needs new friends - new confedera  
 We should never, of course, condone vandalism. But it was hard not to feel that there was something apt in the news that the fence had been hacked down around the ?1.2m lighthouse holiday home belonging to Jeremy Clarkson on the Isle of Man. The boorish culture that the Top Gear presenter celebrates so exuberantly has come back to bite him on the bum.  It's important not to get this out of proportion. The "grim discovery", as one portentous tabloid dubbed it, that vandals had pulled down the cliff-top fencing comes at the end of a six-year right-of-way dispute with local ramblers in the 40 acres of coastland Clarkson and his wife have bought on the picturesque Langness peninsula. The government of the island has ruled in the walkers' favour and the dispute is now before the High Court. But clearly some disgruntled locals have decided on a bit of unilateral ramblers' revenge.  Clarkson's wife, Frances, speaking from their family home in the Cotswolds, said she felt they were being targeted. "It's not the first time it's happened. It makes me feel rather sick. It's upsetting," she told journalists. But the celebrated wit of the man himself, who has complained in the past about the island's "militant dog walkers", seemed momentarily to have deserted him. He was reported as being unavailable for comment.  We see a lot of Jeremy Clarkson in our house. Endless repeats of Top Gear appear to be the default option on our 11-year-old's preferred channel, Dave, "the home of witty banter" as it calls itself - in a tag that seems as convincing as those lines in dating magazines which proclaim the advertiser to be possessed of a Good Sense of Humour. Then there is the programme's latest BBC2 series, which in some weeks is the BBC's most popular show. Top Gear is the most watched programme of the year on iPlayer, and is broadcast to more than 100 countries, reaching 300 million viewers round the world.  You can see the attraction. You start with the obvious "speed thrills" premise of driving round Europe in a Bugatti Veyron. But Top Gear long ago ventured further into an adolescent-male fantasy world - destroying its most hated cars by crushing them with a tank, catapulting them with a trebuchet, dropping them on to a caravan or shooting them up with a helicopter gunship. all of which is done against a failsafe formula of races between the programme's three protagonists in increasingly exotic locations. all that has changed, as the last decade has passed, has been Clarkson's girth, the ageing of the baby-faced boy-racer Richard Hammond and the length of the hair of the group geek, James May.  Hammond and May are essentially the straight men to Clarkson's gagster. He is genuinely funny. But his humour is rooted in the caricature of a lovable saloon-bar rogue. He is a white middle-class male not-afraid-to-speak-his-mind-in-a-world-of-political-correctness-gone-mad. Like Dick & Dom shouting "bogies" in the polite quiet of an art gallery, the point of his vulgarian humour is to cause offence.  So he is rude about cyclists, caravans, vegetarians, women, gays, health and safety, and green activists whom he dubs "eco-mentalists" and says in a previous life were failed trade unionists and "CND lesbians". Foreigners, and their stereotypes, are all fair game: Korean car designers eat dogs, Mexican motors are lazy, German cars have their satnavs set to invade Poland and Malaysian vehicles are built "in jungles by people who wear leaves for shoes".  He suits the action to the words. Rather than enthusing over lower-emission sports cars, Clarkson will drive a 4x4 through a Scottish peat bog, wreaking destruction that will take decades to make good. at one point he so resisted the notion that cars, or any other human activity, were accelerating climate change that some MPs wanted to summon him to a select committee to explain his "curious and misguided attitude to the real and major threat posed by climate change".  But this is not the satire of Loadsamoney or alf Garnett. Clarkson means it. Thus Gordon Brown, then prime minister, was a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" and, in one unbroadcast warm-up, "a silly c*nt". There is about him the casual cruelty of the public school bully. (He was expelled from Repton.) It is the core of his relationship with pretty-boy Hammond and clever-boy May.  Yet Clarkson is clever too; he plays the misogynist homo-allergenic xenophobic boor with the highest level of articulacy. Clarkson's defence is not satire but irony. In a post-feminist world, he implies, it is now acceptable to say: "You'd pay half-a-mill to spend some time with a girl who had Mrs Thatcher's drive, Victoria Wood's sense of humour and Scarlett Johansson's body, would you not? Well, that's what this car is." But he fails to understand, or perhaps to care, that hundreds of viewers will complain when he jokes about lor  
 Once, a marriage announcement was a reason for celebration; now, it's a cause of embarrassment. God forbid Ed Miliband's forthcoming nuptials should offend anyone and lose him a single vote. Here's the deal: he's not bothering with a best man. There won't be a big party. In fact, the couple are not even going to stay the night at the nice hotel where they're having a small reception. and any honeymoon (however modest) will probably be postponed. I doubt Justine will wear white. She probably won't buy a new dress but do a bit of recycling. In other words, it's going to be a low-key event, in complete contrast with the royals.  So is this wedding a sign of the times? Mr Miliband claims that he proposed ages ago and hadn't got round to organising the formalities because he was "too busy". He's not exactly handing out a ringing vote of confidence in the institution of marriage - in fact, his pathetic stance sums up our "whatever" society. When asked if he thought marriage was a good idea, he told one interviewer: "It's up to everyone to do what they think is right." Talk about hedging your bets.  What's so wrong with saying, "I am proud to be getting married" and "I want my kids to grow up with a mum and dad. I think marriage is a good framework for raising families"? Rest assured, those words will never pass Ed Miliband's lips. In modern society, saying you believe in marriage is more shocking than saying you've snacked on crack. If David Cameron says (as he has on many occasions) that he thinks marriage is an important institution, it's all too predictable that Cleggie and Milibandroid would never dare to concur. agreement in politics stinks of emasculation.  You could say they're only reflecting public opinion - statistics suggest that marriage has never been more unpopular, and the average age for women tying the knot has risen steadily to 30, and for men, 32. One theory is we've dumped marriage in favour of having fun. Why make sacrifices or reduce your life choices to be with just one individual? There's a bizarre idea that marriage means the end of the impromptu, enjoyable stage of your life, and the beginning of the dark, dreary years. Spend your twenties out with your mates - drinking, shopping, working, putting yourself first - and sod monogamy. But look at the result: huge numbers of single mums, kids with no rules at home, and parents who don't want the responsibility.  Is it reactionary of me to expect political leaders to offer some kind of role model to the people they are paid to represent? Why can't Ed Miliband celebrate marriage, instead of treating it like another bullet point to be ticked off on his carefully crafted political agenda? He's certainly put work first - being "busy" getting elected leader of the Labour party, attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, making a speech to the protesters on the anti-cuts march last weekend. But he wasn't too busy to sire two children, and, once he was a dad, shouldn't his family have been considered before everything else?  Labour has always claimed to be the party that stands up for women, but its leaders seem weirdly reluctant to endorse marriage, the single act that makes women equal. Most women with children would secretly prefer to be married: it gives them financial and emotional stability and ensures maintenance if they are dumped. If fewer people are getting married, perhaps Miliband dared not risk alienating them by appearing too enthusiastic for this arcane institution.  How we regard marriage is more complex than the statistics imply, however. Most of middle England - the people who vote, not the young - still value marriage highly. If Ed Miliband cares about women's rights, then he should endorse marriage because it ensures children will be protected by law and, in the event of a marriage failing, women will be able to obtain a better settlement. Living together gives dads no guarantee that in the event of a relationship ending they will get access to their children without spending a great deal of money on legal fees. Miliband should grow up and endorse marriage. What's wrong with moral leadership?  Tell us about your cancer, men, but not your sex lives  Did andrew Lloyd Webber stop and think before he told Piers Morgan and a television studio full of strangers that his operation for prostate cancer had left him unable to have sex? I wonder what the impact of the revelation has been on his wife, Madeleine, and their three teenage children? It's not hard to understand why andrew (below) decided to reveal so much. I know quite a few chaps who have had the disease, and they all want it to be publicised as much as possible. Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer for men (rates have trebled over the past three decades), and the more it is discussed openly and without embarrassment, the more men will seek help if they suspect so  
 The Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, will this week share a platform with Chinese ministers in an attempt to persuade other polluting countries to curb emissions. a new study reveals that though a global deal on climate change has faltered, individual countries including Brazil and Mexico have developed national legislation. The Chinese government has also pledged a 17 per cent cut in carbon intensity. The US is the only major country without federal legislation on global warming. a Whitehall source said: "We need the same commitment and focus from all countries." The next round of climate talks are in Durban in December. 
 Corruption is threatening global steps to combat climate change, a new report from Transparency International (TI) warned yesterday. Billions of pounds will be plundered and wasted, it says, unless stronger measures are introduced against embezzlement and misappropriation.  The organisation warns that 20 nations most vulnerable to climate change - where millions in grants and aid will be targeted - are judged to be among the most corrupt in the world - and stronger oversight is needed to ensure the funds are properly spent. None of the countries, which include Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Vietnam, scores higher than 3.6 on TI's influential Corruption Perception Index, where 0 is wholly corrupt and 10 "very clean".  any siphoning off of green grants would undermine efforts to reduce the impact of climate change by developing projects such as wind farms or solar power plants, improving sea wall defences, irrigation systems and housing capable of withstanding natural disasters, says TI.  "Corruption holds nothing sacred, not even our planet's future," said Huguette Labelle, chair of TI. "Failure to properly govern climate change measures now will not only lead to misallocated resources and fraudulent projects today, but also hurts future generations," The report, Global Corruption Report: Climate Change, estimates the total investment into combating global climate change will reach almost $700bn (?420bn) by 2020. "Where huge amounts of money flow through new and untested financial markets and mechanisms, there is a risk of corruption," it says.  Carbon markets, the main financial tool for combating climate change, have already been hit by fraud, the report points out. In January, the European Union's   
 Today, we publish the fourth annual Independent on Sunday Happy List, naming 100 outstanding examples of people who volunteer, care, educate, or do something special to make Britain a more contented, better-adjusted, and supportive place. Our selection includes a pair of foster parents who have given homes to more than 60 children, the lifeboat coxswain who has saved 337 lives, the mother of a murder victim who tours jails to talk to violent prisoners, the country's most eccentric cancer research fund-raiser, and our most astonishing doctor.  The Happy List began as an antidote to The Sunday Times Rich List - that annual worshipping at the shrine of wealth, bonuses, large inheritances, and sharp elbows. We wanted to celebrate a different set of values: the people who put good work ahead of fat profit. Our list honours those who give back, rather than take; those who help others or do something worthwhile without thought of enriching themselves, and, in many cases, at considerable personal cost.  The result, this year, is 100 Britons ranging from the man who has run an animal rescue centre for 35 years and the founder of a project which has helped disaster victims in 65 countries, to an ex-dealer in drugs who is now a youth mentor. There are charity founders, wildlife conservationists, community stalwarts, and a mother who lost three of her own babies and who has since helped thousands of other women avoid the same fate.  This year, we have made a special effort to include those who add to our cultural and scientific life, and so here are classical musicians, a comedian or two, and the country's top apostle for space exploration. and there are those who have made our heritage - natural or historical - better known through outstanding television documentaries. Hence the appearance of the best kind of public educator, people such as Tony Robinson and Michael Wood.  Britain, despite all you might read in the more churlish, materialist wing of the press, is a country full of volunteers, carers, community activists, fund-raisers, and those whose first instinct, when confronted with a need, is to roll up their sleeves and get involved - the real Big Society, if you like. Many of the people listed here do their good work in a town, village, or limited area. Their remarkable efforts are included not just because they are intrinsically worth it, but because they stand as representatives of the hundreds of thousands who do similar work across the country.  Our list, regarded as an upstart enterprise when it began, has taken on a life of its own. This year we were nearly overwhelmed with nominations from charities, campaign groups, and regional organisations. Space does not permit them all to be thanked here by name, but our gratitude remains undimmed.  David Randall  Tom Daley  Diver  From Plymouth, a brilliant sporting role model, making an amazing comeback after taking a battering at the 2008 Olympics. Currently, World and Commonwealth Champion, he performed the second perfect dive of his career at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, with 10s from all seven judges.  Maggie aderin-Pocock  Space scientist  Leads large projects that develop space and satellite communications for Nasa, and kit that monitors climate change. She has also given inspirational talks to 25,000 children about becoming astronauts, engineers and scientists, and slaying myths about careers, class and gender. Kids say she's a blast.  assader ali  Philanthropist  Restaurateur who prepared massive batch of turkey jalfrezi for Edinburgh's homeless people on Christmas Day. He said: "Not doing anything that day, I decided to put my time to do something for others." He also rallied other curry houses to donate ?1 from every meal to the Pakistan flood appeal.  Sophie andrews  Samaritan  First contacted the Samaritans as a caller when self-harming and suicidal. Now national chairperson, she credits the Samaritans for having turned her life around. She joined as a volunteer, and rose through the ranks. Colleagues say she is "extraordinarily together, and full of energy, drive and wit."  Maggie appleton  Educator  Passionate about heritage, she initiated and runs Stockwood Discovery Centre and gardens in Luton, one of Britain's most imaginative local history museums. as chief executive, her enthusiasm and love of artefacts and atmosphere from bygone eras has created a vibrant centre.  Helen Bamber  Campaigner  In 1985, she set up the Helen Bamber Foundation, to help rebuild the lives of victims of torture and human rights violations. at 20, she went to Belsen to help rehabilitate survivors, later taking responsibility for auschwitz orphans. She's still working at 86, advising organisations from Belfast to Sri Lanka.  andy Barrs  Charity founder  London-based commercial property adviser who founded Wherever the Need, a charity raising money from businesses to fund sanitation and water facilities in India and africa. The projects are long-term and sustainable; investors can see what is being done. Brings dignity as well as clean water.  Jane Basham  Campaigner  Chief executive of Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality working to build links across a diverse population. Generates events of "honest talk and careful listening", where young and old discuss problems, and develop mentoring projects. Said to have "a tiny budget, a large heart and tireless energy".  Trevor Bayliss  Inventor  Former stuntman, swimmer and entertainer, he invented wind-up radios which bring news and entertainment to places where both batteries and electricity are sparse. Since 2003, more than 400,000 Lifeline radios have gone to communities in at least 40 countries, and reached some six million people.  Dea Birkett  Campaigner  after her family was thrown out of a museum for being "too noisy", this writer and film-maker set up Kids in Museums to make the places more family friendly. Dea believes a museum visit can transform a child's life, and every child should have that opportunity without being told off.  Jilly Bradshaw  Nurse  a children's eye nurse from Kent who devised a procedure to help youngsters with squints manage wearing their patches. Has lectured in Vancouver and New Zealand, preventing children from becoming functionally blind. Colleagues say: "She is charismatic - someone you'd never forget."  Paul Bromley  Inventor  Improved the simple and economical waterwheel from 500BC, for use in developing countries through his and wife Ingrid's Pedley Waterwheel Trust. Since bringing power to an isolated Sri Lankan village in 1998, the trust has kitted out six villages with efficient waterwheels, saving on kerosene.  John Caudwell  Philanthropist  The founder of Phones4U also started the Caudwell Children charity in Stoke-on-Trent, and covers its costs. Rapidly expanding and, with Robbie Williams as an ambassador, it has helped raise and donate more than ?13m for equipment and therapy for sick and disabled youngsters in the UK since 2000.  Helen and Dave Channing  Foster carers  They have given a caring home to more than 60 children in Torpoint, Devon over 33 years. Their nominator says: "They demonstrate unswerving commitment to all the children they look after, always going the extra mile. They never look for any returns, just to make a positive and lasting difference."  annie Chapman  Fund-raiser  an example of how imagination can make a fortune for charity. Since 2004, her idea of 100 "pink ladies" on decorated tractors driving around Norfolk has raised more than ?150,000 for Cancer Research UK. Her determination and organisation have grown the event, she aims to reach ?200,000 this year.  Dave Chapman  Football coach  Working with the Man Utd Foundation, he educates and motivates young people to build better lives and communities. The nominator says: "Inspirational. His contribution is phenomenal, nothing is too much trouble. Simply a coach grafting day in, day out, to make a difference for kids in Wythenshawe."  Miriam Clegg  Lawyer  Passionately highlights the case for a national network of umbilical cord blood banks. This material can be used to treat around 80 diseases and conditions, from spinal disorders to diabetes and leukaemia. She's also a model for political spouses who want to use their position to make a difference.  Lyn Connolly  Educator  When Lyn's son was murdered, she forgave his killers and used her tragedy to help others. Through the Prison Fellowship's Restorative Justice course, this Liverpool woman tells prisoners her story to help them realise the impact that crimes have. Her testimony has inspired many to change course.  David Constantine  Charity founder  Following a diving accident 29 years ago, David became confined to a wheelchair. He continued his design studies, and with two friends formed the Bristol-based charity Motivation, which sets up workshop training for wheelchair users all over the world to design and manufacture wheelchairs.  amanda Cottrell  Local champion  The Big Society in one person. She is, or has been, chairwoman of Visit Kent, trustee of Canterbury Cathedral and Kent Wildlife Trust, vice president of the Canterbury Festival, chair of young people's charity Fairbridge Kent, magistrate for 20 years, school governor, and president of the Kent Girl Guides.  Cuckoo  Summer resident  Much-maligned bird and producer of one of the happiest sounds in nature - unless, of course, you're a meadow pipit, dunnock, or reed warbler. Its call is one of the great harbingers of spring, and cuckoos also perform the useful function of hoovering up large quantities of hairy caterpillars.  Ben Darvill  Conservationist  Director of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust whose work has led to habitat improvements - meaning more flowers and more bees. He manages the BCT team, based at the University of Stirling, and is now trying to reinstate the short-haired bumblebee, which is extinct in the UK.  Charlie and Lola  Children's friends  Billed as "everyone's favourite brother and sister", appearing in books and on TV, they've given great pleasure to many children by their capering through everyday escapades. They released an 18-track album in 2007 and their Best Bestest Play is touring this year. Brainchildren of Lauren Child.  Jessica Ennis  Role model  It is not often that gold-medal winning talent is combined with modesty and good manners, but world heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis has all three in spades. a rare role model in sport, Jessica, from Sheffield, could teach Wayne Rooney a thing or two about how to celebrate success.  Gillie Davidson  Charity founder  This Edinburgh nurse gave up her job to develop Scottish Love in action, a charity that feeds, clothes, houses, educates and provides medical care for more than 500 destitute children in India. The children, who before her help scavenged rubbish, call her Gillie amma, meaning Gillie mother.  Steve Dayman  Fund-raiser  The chief executive of Meningitis UK, from Bristol, he lost his 14-month-old son Spencer to the disease in 1982. Since then, he has raised millions of pounds to fund vaccine research into meningitis B, the most common form. Has walked the equivalent of halfway around the world to save lives.  Ray Dedicoat  animal rescuer  Runs Hollytrees animal Rescue in Birmingham which answers calls 24 hours a day. With 35 years' experience, he is expert at coaxing and caring for scared creatures. Using his specially adapted net made from four football goals, he is an ace at catching loose animals on motorways.  Clare Dimyon  Campaigner  Made history in 2008 by persuading British embassies across Europe to fly the rainbow flag to highlight the lack of gay rights in former Soviet republics. First prevailed upon our man in Latvia to hang the flag outside the embassy for Riga's Pride parade, with repeat performances in Warsaw and Brazil.  David Earle  Genealogists' godsend  a fine example of the dedicated volunteering which helps the nation's family-tree tracers. Has spent every spare moment since 2005 surveying and plotting approximately 10,100 graves in Ryde cemetery, Isle of Wight, on to 56 maps. Even a map showing the layout of his maps is available online.  Wendy Ebsworth  Theatre signer  Described as having "a voice in her hands", she signs for the hard-of-hearing for the National Theatre, English and Welsh National Operas, GMTV, and even on film sets. Standing on stage alongside performers, she sometimes has to express the dialogue of six or seven characters at a time.  Rich Emerson  Disability activist  Through Surf action, this former Gulf War soldier helps combat veterans with disabilities to rehabilitate by surfing off Cornwall's beaches. Surf instructors working with those injured in Northern Ireland and Iraq see huge improvements to the vets' balance, mental strength and confidence.  Mick and Linda Fitter  Conservationists  This retired couple have been wardens at Butcher's Wood, West Sussex for decades. They coppice, cutting sticks of hazel for wattle-and-daub building, with proceeds going to Woodland Trust funds. Their stewardship improves wildlife habitats, and the woods supply sticks for the Ditchling Morris Dancers.  David Goodfellow  Super-volunteer  Volunteers with the Kindness Offensive who specialise in persuading companies to give away food and toys. Last year, they distributed 40 tonnes of food and toys to the homeless and needy in London. "Our aims are to have fun, be kind, and inspire as many people as possible to do the same."  Sue Gorton  Teacher  an inspiring Gravesend woman who is representative of the many adult literacy teachers. For five years she has run her class despite funding being cut. Her nominator says: "The group supports each other through illness and depression while striving to unlock the world of reading. Lovely lady."  Susie Gregson  Fund-raiser  Susie's parents died 17 years ago, and had been supported by the North London Hospice. She organised a concert in her local church, St Jude's, to raise money for the hospice, and the concert's success encouraged her to hold more. Since then, the Proms at St Jude's music festival has flourished.  Mo Green  Environmentalist  Turned an eco crusade into a successful community project in Swansea. Since 2002, she has collected unwanted household, office, or garden items for the project's shop - a godsend for homeless people moving into accommodation, or those on low incomes. The shop is also a community drop-in.  Veronica Griffiths  Community lifeblood  a shining example of a village stalwart. She is 79, and runs a farm with her husband, but still tirelessly raises funds for Knowles Tooth Children's and Family Centre in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, delivers eggs to villagers, is a steadfast member of the parish church, and much more besides.  Tom Henderson  Charity founder  awarded an OBE for services to humanitarian aid after launching Shelterbox in 2000, now the world's largest Rotary Club project. The Cornish charity delivers emergency shelter, warmth, and dignity to tsunami, typhoon, hurricane, volcano, earthquake and conflict victims in 65 countries.  Carole Hicks  Lollipop lady  For 30 years she has kept Swing Gate School youngsters safe in Berkhamsted, diligently and cheerfully turning out in all weathers. She remembers all the 172 children's birthdays, and gives each a handmade card and tiny gift - every one personally delivered, even during the school holidays.  Leslie Howard  Liszt ambassador  Concert pianist and classical artiste, but also unpaid president and ambassador for the Liszt Society which celebrates the bicentenary of the composer's birth this year. Does untold hours of lecturing to increase people's enjoyment of Franz Liszt, and extend his music to wider audience.  Reginald D Hunter  Comedian  One of the funniest men in Britain, as he proves whenever he appears on Have I Got News For You? Born in the United States to the kind of mother and father who don't win parenting awards, he came to Britain, trained as an actor, and found his vocation at a pub's comedy night.  Ruth Ibegbuna  Social activist  Previously a Moss Side teacher producing some of the UK's best GCSE results, she now leads Reclaim, an award-winning preventative youth crime project in Manchester. Runs successful projects for young people of afro-Caribbean descent, and for teenage Muslims, helping build confidence.  Jonathan Ive  Designer  The brains behind the designs of the iPod, iPad and iPhone, bringing pleasure to millions. Even those who are fed up with apple slapping an "i" in front of a gadget and claiming it is a "must-have" can appreciate what this Essex boy has done for Britain's standing in the world of style.  andrew Jackson  Wildlife champion  Here as representative of the BBC Natural History unit in Bristol. The unit pioneered computer-controlled time-lapse camera techniques, non-invasive infra-red-triggered "boulder-cam", "bamboo-cam" filming wild pandas, and mini cameras on backs of birds. Now that's reality TV.  Nathan James  Youth worker  as a drug dealer who was shot in the leg and jailed twice before he was 23, he was in a cell with a man coming off heroin and "I realised what my profession did." Through the Prince's Trust, he developed mentoring skills, and now runs Just4Youth courses in Middlesbrough on money and drug awareness.  allison John  Doctor  If anyone knows how to reassure anxious patients, it's this abergavenny doctor who took 14 years to complete her studies. She was the first Briton to have all her major organs transplanted - heart, lungs, liver and kidney - the result of cystic fibrosis, diagnosed when she was six weeks old.  Pat and Ian Johns  Lifeboat volunteers  Sailing into well-earned retirement after 37 years at the station in Newhaven, East Sussex, coxswain Ian has been out on 630 services saving 337 lives. Meanwhile, wife Pat has put in 31 years as volunteer press officer. Just two examples of the dedication and courage of those in the RNLI.  Rich Jones  Youth worker  Deserted his music career to create the Joshua Project in Great Horton, Bradford. By organising youth clubs, football training, boxing, and one-to-one relational support, he's fighting crime, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and dysfunctional family life. More than 250 young people benefit every week.  Stephen Jones  Postman  Had just begun his round in Llanfairfechan, when he saw flames at the top window of a house. after repeated searches in dense smoke, he found an elderly lady and two dogs inside, and led them to safety. an example of what can happen when someone puts people before risk assessments.  abdullah Ben-Kmayal  Charity founder  Started the Greenhouse Bethwin Football Club in Peckham in 2000, which now has 520 players. In a poor part of London troubled by gang culture, he's making a positive difference to the community. The club also runs holiday training programmes, mentoring and guidance.  Judy Ledger  Charity founder  Coventry woman who turned the heartache of losing three babies at birth into a mission to save thousands of mothers and newborns from the same fate. Founded Baby Lifeline 30 years ago, and has raised more than ?8m to pay for neo-natal equipment, training and research.  annie Lennox  Singer  as well as three decades of chart hits, she is also an Oxfam ambassador. She initiated the Sing campaign, inspired by Nelson Mandela in 2007, that helps women and children affected by aids. Has donated tour profits to amnesty International and Greenpeace, and is a Unesco goodwill ambassador.  Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow  Charity founder  after meeting Edward, a 14-year-old in Malawi whose mother was dying of aids and who had insufficient food to attend school, MacFarlane-Barrow founded Mary's Meals, a Scottish charity feeding half a million children daily in 16 of the poorest countries. Now has 30 staff and 10,000 volunteers.  Neil MacGregor  Educator  Director who has reinvigorated the British Museum, captivating nearly six million visitors last year. His compelling Radio 4 series, a History of the World in 100 Objects, presenting world history through British Museum treasures, was rightly regarded as a "triumph and a classic".  Graeme McDowell  Golfer  No sportsman did more to put a smile on our faces in the past year. While England flopped at the World Cup, this Northern Irish golfer did what only one other Briton has done since 1920: he won the US Open. He then clinched the Ryder Cup. Supports diverse charities - Premier League footballers please note.  Tamsyn King  Pet fosterer  Provides care for animals from homes that have been torn apart by domestic violence. after leaving a violent partner, she became an animal fosterer in Devon through the RSPCa's Pet Retreat service and now helps when pets aren't allowed into refuges or temporary housing.  Caryll McFadyen  Fund-raiser  Has won the Gold badge, the highest honour the RNLI conveys on its fund-raisers, for her 27 years of volunteering. Her husband and son are both volunteers at Jersey's St Catherine's lifeboat station. Between them the family has been involved with the island's RNLI for more than 60 years.  Michael McIntyre  Comedian  Stand-up comic entertained 500,000 during his 54-date sell-out arena tour in 2009 - a lot of happy people. But he's included for a show he didn't give, cancelling 30 minutes before curtain up after discovering the audience was mostly debt collectors - a "profession" he'd had experience of before success.  Pat McKay  Super-volunteer  Pat, from Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, has spent the past 10 years volunteering for the Huntington's Disease association after losing both her son and husband to the illness. Now her second son is symptomatic, and another child is at risk, but she still manages a 24/7 helpline for sufferers and relatives.  Ryan McLaughlin  Health campaigner  after his mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, this teenager campaigned on the importance of vitamin D in preventing the disease. He organised a march and petition to the Scottish Parliament, plus a summit, with experts from 19 countries. Scotland has a public awareness programme now.  Sonia Maffeis  Educator  Bubbly actress, born in Namibia, who speaks five languages, she brings history to life for youngsters as a guide on the Golden Hinde, a replica of Sir Francis Drake's ship. Working in costume every day, she runs school groups' living history sleepovers, Tudor battle and maritime workshops.  Miriam Margolyes  actress and campaigner  Harry Potter's Professor Sprout, and a proudly Jewish actress speaking out against injustice in Gaza. Dedicated to understanding both sides of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, she visited charity projects in the West Bank last year, and is patron of a Middle East peace and justice organisation.  Denise Marshall  Campaigner  Thanks to her tireless work, Eaves housing and the Poppy Project have provided shelter and help for hundreds of victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. This year, she handed back her OBE, saying that cuts would leave her unable to provide proper support to vulnerable women.  Sir George Martin  Record producer  Made honorary Doctor of Music by Oxford University, still active in music business and charitable work. after the capital of Montserrat was devastated by a volcano, he spearheaded the funding for a $2m arts and events venue where islanders can stage festivals, exhibitions and debating contests.  Francesca Martinez  Comedian  a stand-up who has no choice but to perform sitting down, Francesca Martinez has faced down stereotypes about disability while making the nation laugh. Her latest project is a documentary where she goes in search of a "normal" person called What The Hell Is Normal!?!'  Victor Mizzi  Charity founder  In 1991, this Surrey man founded Chernobyl Children's Life Line, which brings youngsters from Belarus and Ukraine suffering effects of the 1986 nuclear disaster to stay with UK families. around 46,000 have benefited, caesium levels in their blood are lowered, and they return home in better health.  netmums.com  Website  UK's fastest-growing online parenting organisation. Community-centred, it gives advice and information on local activities, support groups, and organisations. Highlighted post-natal depression and kids' junk food. advises MPs and food industry. Professional online "drop-in" clinics assist with problems.  John Nettles  actor  Shakespearean actor and the best pantomime villain in the business. Brilliantly solved recherch? murders in sleepy Middle England villages while never taking any of it very seriously. Then, detecting looming Midsomer row over racial purity in imaginary rural communities, he retired.  Emily Nuttall  Hospice volunteer  Youngest team-member in Les Bourgs' hospice shop, in Guernsey, Emily lost her sight in one eye at age 11 and only has moderate vision in the other. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy, she is mildly autistic, asthmatic, and has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Engages a young audience about hospice work at school.  Chi-chi Nwanoku  Musician  Double bass player, academy professor and brilliant ambassador for music. She is also a founder of the world-renowned Orchestra of the age of Enlightenment that plays classical music on original instruments, as it was intended to be heard. She plays a 17th-century instrument made in 1631.  Toby Ord  Role model  Not a billionaire philanthropist, but may do more to address poverty as his "Giving What We Can" scheme catches on. The Oxford academic has pledged to give ?1m over his lifetime by donating a third of his salary. Has recruited more than 100 people to give at least 10 per cent of their salary for life.  aleksandr Orlov  Meerkat  along with his Russian aristocratic and intrepid relatives, he illuminates our lounges expounding his proud struggle to live a simples life running compare themeerkat.com. This is despite being plagued by people seeking car insurance. Example of how ads can be more entertaining than TV programmes.  Chris Packham  Wildlife enthusiast  Natural scientist, photographer, and bringer of expert knowledge and a friendly manner to the BBC's stunningly pleasureful Springwatch and autumnwatch. He is also president of such bodies as the Bat Conservation Trust, and involved with many more, such as The Wildlife Trusts.  Bryn and Emma Parry  Charity founders  When former soldier Bryn Parry and his wife Emma organised a bicycle ride to raise ?10,000 for wounded servicemen, they could hardly have predicted the enormous charity it would become. Now Help For Heroes raises more than ?20m annually, funding rehabilitation projects across the country.  Kevin Pearson  Role model  Chief officer of avon Fire authority who volunteered a 22 per cent pay cut to help save frontline services. He says: "I promised to start at the top with the cost-cutting exercise. The savings will protect jobs in the longer term." If only over-paid council chiefs would do the same.  Tom Pey  Campaigner  Former investment banker who first encountered the Royal London Society for the Blind on losing his sight at 39. Now chief executive, his team works to ensure that every blind or partially sighted child gets the same life chances as their sighted peers. also president of the European Guide Dog Federation.  Steve Prescott  Charity fund-raiser  St Helens and international rugby league player who, despite being given just months to live when diagnosed in 2006 with a rare form of stomach cancer, has raised vast amounts of money by undertaking a series of gruelling runs and challenges. His Steve Prescott Foundation is an inspiration to many.  The Rev Jean Prosser  Conservationist  a priest in charge of a Monmouthshire parish, she set up the Village alive Trust after renovating Llangattock Lingoed church, abergavenny, in 2003. Farmers with derelict listed-buildings got in touch and the group has since renovated 10 listed buildings and is restoring its third church.  Neil Ranasinghe  Fund-raiser  Since his daughter anne was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2004, aged three, Neil has thrown himself into helping Cancer Research UK. He supports the Little Star awards, is a Cancer Campaigns ambassador, helps write books for the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group, and competes in triathlons.  Mark Robinson  Charity founder  Previously working in advertising, he founded Prison Radio for inmates across the UK, equipping them with not only a service of their own but also employable skills. also chairman of the London advisory Group of Common Purpose, and sits on the Development Board of the Royal Court theatre.  Tony Robinson  Television presenter  His brilliant Birth of Britain series did for geology what his Time Team has done for archaeology. His questing approach, free of silly voices and larky nonsense, brings intelligence to the popularising of complex subjects. His name on a series guarantees it will be accessible, but not dumbed-down.  Jasvinder Sanghera  Campaigner  Derby-born, at 15 she ran away from an arranged marriage, and was disowned by her British asian family and community. She founded Karma Nirvana, a charity that supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and "honour"-based abuse, and raises awareness of these issues.  Robin Standing  Volunteer  This Edmonton man has been a Red Cross volunteer for an astonishing 58 years, specialising in giving first aid lessons to the deaf. He completely lost his hearing at the age of two after a bout of meningitis. He then took first-aid lessons, and was soon helping with the Red Cross.  Nick Stanhope  Inspiration  Created We are What We Do, encouraging millions of people to do more small, good, enjoyable things for others - planting a tree, teaching someone how to use the internet, starting a car pool. Ideas from local community consultation are acted on through schools or other programmes.  Juliet Stevenson  Campaigner & actress  While continuing to entertain the nation with her acting, Juliet Stevenson seems to dedicate every spare moment to campaigning. She says she deliberately chooses "unsexy" subjects, such as the plight of asylum seekers in Britain, in the hope that she can help raise awareness of their cause.  Helen Stradling  Nurse  "an angel on Earth, serene, calm and reassuring" is how patients have described this Macmillan cancer nurse. She makes a massive difference to people's lives at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, and was named as the country's top cancer nurse by the Nursing Times in 2010.  Maciej Szukala  Super-volunteer  When not studying at West Cheshire College, he translates for Polish migrants in Wrexham - everything from insurance forms to helping pregnant women at the doctor's. Young gold ambassador for the Olympics and Paralympics, he's also won a Diana award for commitment and citizenship.  Shahien Taj  Charity founder  Co-founder of the Henna Foundation, a Cardiff-based group which helps asian women, children and families affected by "honour"-based violence, forced marriage and domestic violence. Shahien's no-nonsense, committed attitude has won her respect from community groups, police, judges and ministers.  Clare Tickell  Campaigner  Chief executive of action for Children, the charity which helps the UK's most vulnerable and neglected youngsters and their families, powered by her passion, commitment and drive. She is also involved with Praxis, which supports refugees and migrants, and the Guinness Trust, a housing charity.  Treo the Labrador  Dog  Now retired, won the Dickin Medal (the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross) for sniffing out bombs in Helmand, afghanistan, while with 104 Military Working Dog Support Unit. Treo, from Rutland, joins 32 Second World War messenger pigeons, three horses, a cat, and 26 other dogs in the honour.  Kelsey Trevett  Campaigner  a lion-hearted eight-year-old who, since losing his sight to cancer, has championed the rights of disabled children. attends mainstream Watford school, and plays football and dodgeball. Member of Hertfordshire's Children's Forum, spoke to 40 delegates on the inclusion of kids with disabilities.  Viagra  Pill  alias Sildenafil citrate, (patent WOWO9849166a1), and originally a drug to lower men's blood pressure. But, since 1999, Viagra has enabled millions of males to raise their game in other respects. It's small, it's blue, and it's included here because it's given pleasure to so many.  Wenlock and Mandeville  2012 Olympic Mascots  Globular duo representing London 2012 Games. Named after Baron Pierre de Coubertin's inspirational visit to Much Wenlock Games, resulting in modern Olympics, and Stoke Mandeville's 1948 Paralympics birthplace. The pair, with their single-camera eyeballs, have engaged youngsters with sport.  Diana Whitmore  Innovator  Tireless charity worker for more than 40 years, she brought Teens and Toddlers over from the US. The organisation helps disadvantaged teens mentor similar nursery tots. It teaches responsibility and helps the young fulfil their potential. Since 2001, it has aided 7,000 young people and children.  Tony Whitston  Campaigner  Mancunian who runs asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum (England), an incredible support network for those dying from asbestos-related cancers. Forcefully speaks out on compensation decisions and continued international asbestos mining. Heads support groups for asbestos victims and their families.  Eddie and Pat Williams  animal rescuers  Retired husband-and-wife team runs Willow Wildlife Rescue from their home in Chislehurst, caring for foxes, geese, sheep and other animals. Their ambulance operates 24-hours a day, equipped with cages, boxes and nets for any casualty, and animals are treated with homeopathic remedies.  Rob Wilson  Charity founder  as an undergraduate at the University of Nottingham, he collected schools' unused textbooks and shipped them to schools in Tanzania, where the curriculum is similar to ours. Founded Read International, and has now sent almost a million books to Tanzanian and Ugandan teachers and children.  Michael Wood  Historian  Made the most innovative television history programme ever with his Story of England, chronicling the country's development through the tale of one village, Kibworth in Leicestershire. at last a television historian who thinks the story he has to relate is more important than he is.  Neil Woodmansey & his dog Holly  Search and rescue dog handler  Neil is Lincolnshire team manager for UK International Search and Rescue, the agency responsible for responding to overseas disasters. a member since 1995, he is on stand-by 365 days a year. He and Holly received an MBE for bravery and dedication to duty in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake.  Jon Snow  Broadcaster  Famous for sharp news sense and techni-coloured accessories, he is also patron of several charities including Reprieve, which helps prisoners facing the death penalty or rendered to secret prisons. He also champions Trees for Cities, which not only plants them, but trains youngsters in caring for them.  Who did we miss out? Have your say  Because this roll call of the top 100 Britons eschews the celebration of wealth and celebrity as ends in themselves, The IoS Happy List relies on you, the readers, to sing the praises of the otherwise unsung. So, who have we missed? Let us know who you would like to see on the Happy List and we will publish the results and consider your nominations for next year.  Send suggestions, with reasons why you think they deserve to be on the list, via email to: Sundayletters@independent.co.uk or write to: The Editor, The Independent on Sunday, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5HF  the happy quiz  Happiness is ... puzzling over some daft questions in your favourite newspaper  Grin and bear it (picture round):  10 great (and not so great) British smiles. But can you identify their celebrity owners?  Quote me happy  Five famous sayings. Who said what?  1) "Pleasure is spread through the earth/ In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find"  2 ) "If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion"  3) "My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy"  4) "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony"  5) "Start every day off with a smile and get it over with"  Happiness is ...  1) ... a warm gun - according to The Beatles. But what inspired the title?  2) ... a warm puppy - according to a much-loved Snoopy cartoon. But what was Charles M Schulz's pet beagle nearly called?  3) ... a cigar called Hamlet - according to one of the greatest commercials of all time. But in what year were tobacco ads banned from British television?  4) ... the greatest gift that I possess - according to Ken Dodd's hit song of the Sixties. But what wiped the smile of the comic's face in 1989?  5) ... the name of an acclaimed cult movie by director Todd Solondz. But what is ironic about the title?  The science of happiness  1) We know laughter is the best medicine, releasing endorphins and lowering blood pressure. But, according to William Fry of Stanford University, a hearty laugh five times a day is the cardiovascular equivalent of how long in the gym?  2) Many researchers link happiness with altruism - especially with the satisfaction gained by volunteering and helping others. But what percentage of Britons regularly volunteer with a formal organisation, charity or local group?  3) Proposed policies in which country must pass a seven-point Gross National Happiness review, to assess their likely impact, before being made law?  4) anatomically speaking, laughter is the result of the larynx being constricted by the epiglottis. But what name do scientists give to the study of laughter's effects on the human body?  5) Introduced in 2006, the Happy Planet Index measures both the quality of life and the ecological footprint of countries around the world. Which three countries topped the 2009 list?  Laughing matters  1) In the third century BC, the Greek philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after doing what to his donkey?  2) It may be the most heard laugh in the history of popular music - but which veteran horror movie actor provided the sinister chuckles at the end of the soundtrack to Michael Jackson's "Thriller?"  3) In a lecture entitled Funny Business, Rowan atkinson explained that a person or object can become funny in three different ways. What are they?  4) Douglas  
 The British, it is said, love to talk about the weather. Personally, I've always found that to be an exaggeration: Britain's weather, to be honest, is not very interesting, though it can be a useful conversational filler if other topics are exhausted, or too ticklish to embark upon.  No, it's here in america that people really talk about the weather. One reason is the national addiction to numbers: rainfall, snow amounts, temperatures, windspeeds and so on are paradise for statisticians. a bigger one, though, is that american weather mirrors america itself, larger than life and prone to the most violent changes and contradictory extremes. It truly is worth talking about, and never more so than now.  I am no expert. But whether the reason is global warming, El Ni?o, La Ni?a, the alignment of the constellation Sagittarius, or simply punishment meted out by a capricious deity, this spring of which we have not yet reached the midpoint is already one for the record books.  The focus of the action, as usual, is the central and southern midsection of the country, a vast swathe of mainly flat territory bounded by the Rockies in the west, the appalachian mountains in the east, and the Gulf of Mexico in the south, where cold air originating in the arctic collides with the moist, warm airstream from the Gulf. In this region anything can happen, and this year it has.  You will already have read about the tornados. One day, 27 april, alone produced the deadliest single crop since 1974, in which some 300 people died in alabama and five other southern states. It was once flippantly said that tornados were God's answer to trailer-parks. Not however the mile-wide monster that bore down on the university town of Tuscaloosa 11 days ago, reducing sturdy homes to rubble and laying waste entire neighbourhoods.  and yet worse may be ahead. Last month may have been the most severe april ever for tornados, with 300 separate ones registered, a figure eclipsing even 1974. But april is not even the most tornado-prone month. More usually occur in May and June, the outbreaks edging north along with the frontier between the cold and warm airmasses.  Then there are the floods. Obscured by the savage fury of the tornados is the fact that this is shaping up as one of the most serious flood years ever along the lower Ohio and lower Mississippi. a heavy snow melt to the north is partly to blame; also, the colliding warm and cold air masses got stuck for weeks, causing local rainfall near the rivers to exceed 2ft in some places during april alone.  On the lower Ohio, just before it joins the Mississippi, they're talking about the worst flooding since 1937. On Monday night army engineers had to blow a hole in a levee, creating a mile-long breach that deliberately flooded thousands of acres of some of the most fertile farmland on earth - all to lower water levels upstream, and prevent the town of Cairo, which sits at the confluence of the two rivers, from being submerged.  Cairo now seems safe but more levee breaches downstream may be necessary. There, the benchmark year is 1927, when in one of the worst natural disasters in US history, 27,000 square miles (over half the land area of England) were flooded, mostly in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and arkansas, and hundreds of thousands were made homeless.  Could it happen again? Probably not, given the vast im  
 The election results on Thursday were bitterly disappointing for electoral reformers. a modest change to our voting system was rejected overwhelmingly. The people have not spoken, but shouted. any good democrat has to accept such a decisive response. The alternative Vote is now dead and buried. When change comes, as it will, it is likely to be more radical.  The problems to which electoral reformers are responding have not gone away and will continue to demand an answer. British society is increasingly pluralist, and the trend to diversity is accelerating. In the Fifties, only 4 per cent of voters rejected Labour and the Tories. Now the figure is a third. Once Labour and the Conservatives dominated our politics. Now Liberal Democrats, Greens,Nationalists and others demand a voice.  The attempt to squeeze diversity into the fraying corset of two-party politics is likely to lead to more and more unfair results. already, the regional representation of the parties is distorted, with the Tories underrepresented in the north and Scotland despite substantial votes, and Labour similarly anorexic in the south. Both parties speak first to their regional bases, respectively ignoring urban deprivation and aspirational affluence.  Nationally, electoral results are likely to look odder and odder. The last Labour government won a firm overall majority of parliamentary seats with just 36 per cent of the vote, the lowest ever recorded in our parliamentary history. How low will that proportion have to sink before defenders of the status quo confess its illegitimacy?  The No campaign argued that compromise was a dirty word, because parties could not deliver every promise in their manifestos. But there is a word for political programmes imposed by a small minority on the majority, and it is tyranny. Every other democracy in Europe - and every new democracy since the great post-communist spring of 1989 - has recognised the importance of fair representation by rejecting first-past-the-post.  Ironically, on the very day that the alternative Vote was so decisively rejected, the British party system took another lurch towards diversity with the breakthrough of the Scottish National Party. This is a development that unionists in England, Wales and Ireland ignore at our peril, not least because the one type of small party that benefits from our election system are nationalists that can concentrate their vote in one area.  That is why there was a consensus that Edinburgh and Cardiff should have parliaments elected by proportional representation. Labour wanted to block the SNP from winning a false Holyrood majority under first-past-the-post, but alex Salmond's exceptional political skills have won him a fair majority even under PR.  This is not, of course, yet a vote for Scottish independence. Scottish voters may revert to the unionist parties at the Westminster election as they have done before, but if they do not there will be a large block of Scottish nationalist MPs in London that will make it more and more difficult for any party to form an overall UK majority on its own.  That is what happened in Canada with the rise of Quebec nationalism, and in the United Kingdom before the First World War with the rise of Irish nationalism. The first-past-the-post system magnifies regional and national parties, and therefore has the potential to accelerate the break-up of multicultural states such as the United Kingdom.  If alex Salmond wins his promised referendum on independence, the consequences for the rest of Britain will be enormous. Scotland is a crucial part of Britain's eco-system. Every radical government of the modern age - 1906, 1945 and 1997 - has had Scotland at its beating heart.  The Conservative party is so strong in England that our-first-past-the-post system tends to give it English majorities even more often than British ones. Without Scotland, the Tories would have an overall majority now, plus another two since the war. Scottish independence would force electoral reform just to avoid incessant Tory governments in England.  Last week, David Cameron proved that he is a real Tory, because he fell in line with the long tradition of Tory leaders who resisted devolution, votes for women, and even votes for all men. The Conservative Party only embraces constitutional change after it has happened, but it is very likely that his very personal big No will prove a Pyrrhic victory.  The lessons of Irish Home Rule are clear. By resisting even the smallest improvement in our constitutional arrangements, the Conservatives set Ireland on course to the 1916 Easter rising and independence. The rejection of the alternative Vote, combined with the rise of the SNP, is going   
 David Cameron could be forgiven if he can't quite believe his luck. Twelve months after failing to win an outright majority against an exhausted Labour government, his dream of deep spending cuts is realised, the Tory brand decontaminated, and he has pulled off the rare feat of leading a governing party into council elections in which it increased its hold on town halls.  Despite public talk of "no gloating", there remains a swagger about the top Tories that everything is going just fine. Liberal Democrats, by contrast, feel as if they have been had. Having got into bed with the devil, they are now damned for trying to make it work. So desperate were they to prove that coalitions could function, they took responsibility for everything. at the ballot box, that translated to taking all of the blame - blame which many Lib Dems lay squarely at the door of the Prime Minister, and notably his Chancellor, George Osborne, who signed off the cuts and has since escaped public scorn.  They are particularly angry at the No to aV campaign targeting Nick Clegg for broken pre-election promises. "It beggars belief that they had a leaflet attacking Nick Clegg for breaking his word on increasing VaT, when we only did that to sign up to their economic strategy," said a furious ally. The Lib Dems have been damned for doing the only thing open to them - entering a coalition with their sworn enemies, and have paid a heavy price in polling booths.  as the full horror of the electoral wipeout emerged on Friday, Clegg hit the phones, contacting more than 50 party figures around the country, many of whom had lost their seats. The charm offensive - which some note has been too rare an occurrence since the coalition was formed - seemed to pay off. all but a handful of defeated councillors came out to defend both Clegg and the coalition.  Clegg has admitted to friends that the "bro-mance" with Cameron went too far: the rose garden ... tales of late-night texting. "He knows that there has got to be a new phase," confesses one adviser. Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne adds: "We need to make a clearer explanation of our liberalism and what we are in government in order to achieve."  There has been much talk about concessions being made to the Lib Dems to "shore up" their position, after losing more than 700 seats on Thursday night. The Tory right, though, won't stand for it. Geoffrey Cox, another Tory MP, said the Lib Dems were in a "difficult transition from being a party of protest to a party of government .... It all depends whether they have the political maturity to live up to their responsibilities."  For the coalition fall guys, this will not do. Senior Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott said: "We have taken far too many bullets for coalition policy while the Tories have dodged them." Lib Dems plan a co-ordinated effort to claim credit for more of what the Government is already doing. after the electoral rout, "battle-hardened" Lib Dems are preparing to "flex their muscles", according to strategists.  Senior Lib Dems have already drawn up a list of key policy areas where they are uneasy and will demand change. They are determined to remind the Conservatives that their leader failed to win last year's general election, and needs their support to get legislation through. So plans for elected police commissioners - described as "ridiculous" by Lib Dem ministers - will be targeted, climate change policy and Lords reform accelerated, and there will be no let-up in the criticism of the City. Vince Cable tells The Independent on Sunday today he wants the coalition to go further on banking reform and taxing the wealthy. "I will fight the Lib Dem corner," the Business Secretary says.  Top of the agenda, though, are andrew Lansley's health reforms. The Lib Dems have already set out non-negotiable amendments. From tomorrow, two trusted aides from No 10 - health adviser Sean Worth and press officer abbie Sampson - will be seconded to the Department of Health to rescue Lansley and his reforms. But as one Tory admitted: "It is impossible to square the circle and please both the Lib Dems and Lansley." a Lib Dem source close to Nick Clegg went further, suggesting the scale of the changes they will demand might mean that Lansley "cannot stomach it" and quits.  If he did, it could present the perfect opportunity to bring back David Laws, who quit the Cabinet over an expenses scandal a year ago. The idea is being discussed at the highest level of government and the outcome of the sleaze inquiry into Mr Laws's case is expected in the next fortnight.  However, say cabinet sources, this is likely to be the extent of the consolation prize offered to "help Nick" after a period of discomfort for the Deputy Prime Minister. "David will hug Nick and Danny [alexander] close, but after the behaviour of Huhne and Cable, they are not going to get much leeway."  Relations between Huhne and Osborne in particular are at a new low. The Lib Dem Energy Secretary confronted the Chancellor in Cabinet last week over the aggressive turn the No campaign took. Huhne, it is understood, was also not informed in advance that Mr Osborne was to introduce a ?10bn tax on North Sea oil and gas companies in the Budget.  The Tories believe it is all a storm in a teacup. a No 10 source stressed: "The priority over the next two or three weeks is to steady the ship. The Lib Dems might have a fit of pique but will settle down into realising where their best interests are." The dynamic between Cameron and Clegg is key to the success of the coalition. a year ago, it seemed the pair agreed on everything. Now the two camps cannot even agree on how to mark their first anniversary in coalition.  Danny alexander, the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and Tory policy chief Oliver Letwin, who are both conciliatory voices in the Cabinet, are planning a "mid-term" coalition agreement with new policies that would herald a "fresh start" to the Lib-Con arrangement.  alexander told the IoS: "We have talked about doing an agreement for the second phase of the Government which is something which is being worked on." Dubbed Coalition 2.0, both parties see it as a chance to pull the agenda in their direction. Some Lib Dems, including Mr Cable, warn that there is too much "unfinished business" in the existing agreement to justify a new one.  a study by University College London suggest 75 per cent of Lib Dem manifesto pledges made it into the original coalition programme, compared with 60 per cent of the Conservatives'. Lib Dems fear a new agreement would be overwhelmingly Tory in its nature.  Senior Lib Dems privately admit to being "astonished by the power and unity" of the right-wing establishment, which "galvanised" big money donors and their supporters in the media to defeat the alternative vote. Some have begun to doubt if the much-heralded progressive majority in Britain can ever be united, or that it even exists.  at least some in the Labour Party believe it does, and will seek to reach out to Lib Dems at their lowest ebb. On Wednesday, andy Burnham, the shadow Education spokesman, will table amendments to Michael Gove's free schools plans based on a motion passed by last year's Lib Dem conference calling for the reinstatement of local admissions forums. Burnham said: "Lib Dems have to decide whether they want to put their names to right-wing reforms of public services and the creation of a free-for-all in our schools system."  Labour leader Ed Miliband will attempt to make further overtures to Lib Dems, including Cable and Huhne, to hold out the prospect of the allusive "progressive alliance" in the event that the coalition falls apart. There seems little prospect of that happening soon. But while the Tories float around government confident in their birthright to rule, the Lib Dems know deep down this is a fight to the death.  LEaDING aRTICLE PaGE 41  George Osborne  The Chancellor is targeted by top Lib Dems as a blocking force in the coalition, and they want him to be reined in by Cameron. Success of No campaign and of Tories in local elections is attributed to his ability tactically to outsmart opponents.  David Cameron  The Prime Minister wants it to be "business as usual" and to "help Nick" with a Lib Dem concession or two. But he's also under pressure from the right of his party after a year of U-turns and a   
 The Prime Minister is well qualified for the job in at least one important sense: he is lucky. He is lucky that Nick Clegg has absorbed most of the opprobrium directed at the coalition in its first year. From some of the press coverage recently, a Rip Van Winkle might rub his eyes and conclude that Mr Clegg was the most evil man in Britain. Yet anyone who has actually been awake during the past 12 months must know that Mr Clegg is trying to promote the values of social justice and toleration for which his party stands. as John Rentoul argues opposite, one may disagree with the way he has gone about it, but one should not doubt his sincerity or seriousness of purpose.  David Cameron has been lucky, too, to face a weak leader of the opposition. Ed Miliband has barely registered with the British electorate. While the Labour Party was right last year and remains right now to argue that public spending should be cut on a shallower trajectory than the Conservative plans, it failed miserably to turn last week's local elections into a referendum on George Osborne's spending cuts. Labour made 800 gains, but they were at the expense of the Liberal Democrats and independents, while the Conservatives actually increased their representation on local councils.  Mr Cameron was lucky that Labour was hopelessly divided over electoral reform, and that Mr Miliband was unable to show leadership on the issue. Mr Cameron was lucky that the fate of the referendum turned partly on how much of the centre-left electorate felt about Mr Clegg. The Prime Minister was also ruthless enough, when the outcome of the referendum seemed in doubt, to mobilise anti-Clegg sentiment when it suited him. and he was lucky, both in the referendum and in everything else, to have most of the press behind him.  He has, of course, been lucky from birth - and he has always been lucky in his ability to cram for an exam at the last moment. at Eton he was an indifferent student until his a-levels; at Oxford he rose to the challenge of a First. as a new MP, he was lucky that David Davis, such a certainty as "next Tory leader" that he had signed up nearly every careerist in the parliamentary party, ran such a poor campaign.  as Paul Goodman, the former MP, pointed out on the Conservative Home website on Friday, he was lucky to become Tory leader when he did, "towards t  
 The Government is to set out plans for massive reform of the electricity market on Tuesday, which will lead to further hikes in bills in the coming years.  after a long period of consultation, the coalition is unveiling its White Paper on electricity market reform to encourage investment in the industry and tackle carbon emissions. Countries that followed the UK and privatised their utilities are looking on with interest, as they are expected soon to follow suit.  The White Paper will propose four key areas of reform: a carbon price floor, an emissions performance standard, contracts for difference and a capacity mechanism.  The carbon price floor was introduced in this year's Budget, whereby an amount is charged for every tonne of carbon produced, encouraging companies to switch to lower-emitting technologies. However, costs could be passed on to consumers. The White Paper reiterates that it will come into effect in 2013.  The emissions performance standard puts a limit on the amount of carbon any new plants would be allowed to produce. This is likely to be set at 450g per tonne - more than a typical new gas plant emits but less than coal plants produce.  a Whitehall source said this and other policies would mean electricity com  
 all too familiar pictures of hunger in the Horn of africa have returned to our screens as recurrent drought, soaring food prices, conflict, and entrenched poverty leave 12 million people across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya without enough food and water to live.  Rainfall has been exceptionally low and as the region enters the three-month dry period, with malnutrition already widespread, there is a real risk of large-scale loss of life. The prices of staple foods such as rice and maize are at record levels in many areas, while the value of livestock, many people's main asset, has plummeted. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of animals leave many unable to provide for their families.  Dealing with the immediate crisis, the lack of food and water, will be immensely challenging and requires a rapid injection of emergency relief. That is why the Disasters Emergency Committee has launched its appeal. But we urgently need to break the cycle of emergency response, which leaves donors and affected communities limping from one crisis to the next.  Several years of inadequate rainfall has meant low crop yields and weakened herds. Pasture, grazing land and migration routes that semi-nomadic herders have traditionally used in times of emergency have been sold off, or allocated for tourism, or national parks. Pastoralists have suffered years of neglect through lack of investment in basic services, such as education, animal health and improving roads that help them to get to market. More live i  
 Some 60 babies are dying each day in one camp. Every 24 hours, more than 3,000 malnourished people arrive at camps already too crowded to accommodate them. The lives of half a million children are at imminent risk. and, in total, no fewer than 12 million people are fighting for their very survival.  These are the dry, statistical facts of life - and, increasingly, death - in the Horn of africa this weekend. Behind them are uncountable numbers of human trials and tragedies: Somali children arriving at refugee camps so weak that they are dying within a day, despite receiving emergency care and food; the tens of thousands a week, like Somalian Hawo Ibrahim and her seven children, who trekked for 15 days before reaching a refugee camp in Kenya; and the mothers and children who get lost or die along the way in the 50-degree heat.  This is already a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions - worse, much worse than the one that inspired Band aid, says Louise Paterson, director of the British medical aid agency Merlin in Kenya and Somalia. "We haven't seen anything like this for decades," she told The Independent on Sunday on Friday. "Hardened aid workers are weeping at what they see."  Small wonder. Vast numbers of families are walking barefoot for days in search of food in a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. as the most unrelenting drought for 60 years continues to bear down, killing unknowable quantities of livestock and driving food prices beyond what most families could contemplate spending, images of children with skinny, malnourished bodies are becoming commonplace in this corner of africa. Save the Children said more than a quarter of children in the worst-hit parts of Kenya are now dangerously malnourished, while malnutrition rates in Somalia have reached 30 per cent in some areas. In a hospital in Wajir, an ethnically Somali area in north-east Kenya, Dr Mohamed Hassan said that most children in the ward are suffering from severe malnutrition. "You will find severely wasted children here," he said.  Marixie Mercado, a Unicef spokesman, told a recent news briefing: "We have over two million children who are malnourished. Half a million of these children are in a life-threatening condition at this stage - a 50 per cent increase over 2009 figures. Child malnutrition rates in some camps are at least 45 percent, triple the emergency threshold, Mercado said. Child mortality rates are also very high.  at Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya, now the largest refugee centre in the world, some 382,000 people are crammed in a place designed for 90,000. around 1,400 more desperate people, most of them children, turn up every day. at Ethiopia's camps, each day brings 1,700 new arrivals. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Ethiopia have set up a cluster of camps at Dolo ado to accommodate the influx of refugees. The cluster of crowded camps scattered around the town now shelter almost 100,000, and the UN is frantically building more centres for another 120,000 people. "This," said UNHCR head antonio Guterres said during a trip to the area on Wednesday, "is the worst humanitarian disaster we are facing in the world."  Word of the desperate conditions has spread back to Somalia, a quarter of whose 7.5 million people are now either internally displaced or living outside the country as refugees, says the United Nations. Even the country's top militant group is now asking the aid agencies it once banned from its territories to return. and now, according to a BBC report yesterday, impromptu camps are forming, and the numbers there have doubled within days. Some now hold more than 5,000 people. There are medicines here, but, as yet, no food. The inhabitants wait and hope. and those who have not yet done this, or attempted the long trek to the camps - for some, a weeks-long trudge of hundreds of miles in oppressive heat - they are flocking to Mogadishu, a city now filling with the hungry begging in the streets.  abdi Jimale arrived in Mogadishu two months ago but said he found no help. "We were thinking the aid agencies would be helping us in Mogadishu, but we found nothing," he said. "I want to go to Kenya when I can get assistance. The situation we are living in is totally unbearable." Maryan Qasam, a 41-year-old mother of seven, said her 35 cows died after the pastures dried out. She makes about 50 cents a day from the generosity of strangers. "That cannot quench our needs," she said. "Our children occasionally cry for food and we can't get enough food for them. Our farms dried up and our cows perished so we have no options."  Southern Sudan, the world's newest country, is also hit by the food crisis. It can ill afford to be. Children form nearly half the population, and one in nine of them dies before the age of five. For a population of around eight million, there are only 100 trained midwives, and fewer than 500 doctors.  Meeting this emergency is a daunting task. The British government has pledged ?38m to the food programme of the United Nations (enough to feed 1.3 million people for three months), and the European Commission has said it is sending $8 million in emergency funding to Dadaab, having already contributed nearly $100 million to the drought crisis this year.  But it is the aid agencies which bear the brunt.   
 Ben Rigley, a student at aberystwyth University, reflected: "Dangling on the end of a rope inside an 80ft crevasse - not how I expected to be spending my summer." Other members of the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES), a youth development charity based in London, have noosed caiman in the amazon, watched for polar bears at night, or kayaked down the Zanskar Gorge - none of sorts of activities you'd expect to be doing at 18 and away from home for the first time.  Gap-year experiences are valued not only by gappers, but by universities and employers too. "They provide life skills such as teamwork, leadership and self-awareness that give young people real confidence in their abilities," says Dr Ceri Lewis, NERC research fellow at the University of Exeter. But with tuition fees rising and the scramble for university places increasingly fierce, round-the-world trips and island-hopping odysseys are starting to sit less comfortably with paying parents, forcing disappointed school leavers to reconsider.  The BSES thinks it has a solution: it has invited today's teenagers to consider remodelling, rather than doing away with, their gap-year dreams. Joining month-long expeditions to jungle, polar and mountain wildernesses, BSES members condense their gap-experiences into five worthwhile weeks, sandwiched between finishing their a-levels and starting university. "With conservation research embedded into each expedition, young explorers have the opportunity not only to go somewhere truly remarkable, but also to do something of value while they are there," explains Peter Pearson, BSES's executive director.  My first experience of a BSES expedition was as a science leader. Seventy-eight degrees north, I was in arctic Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago where mirror-like fjords reflect flat-topped mountains, and crystal glaciers lick through sweeping valleys. My team of 10 youths were investigating evidence of climate change, measuring the vertical ablation of glaciers in Spitsbergen, Svalbard's largest island.  With not a day of prior polar experience between them, my group spent their first week gaining vital arctic survival skills. Under the guidance of chief mountain leader Neil Gwynne they learnt how to rescue a team-mate from a crevasse fall, ward off polar bears and make freeze-dried beef and powdered rice pudding more appetising.  Survival-skill proficient, we trekked past antlered caribou and arctic foxes into frozen mountains to begin our glaciology research. But we quickly ran, or hiked, into a problem: the glacier we wanted to measure was missing. after double-checking our GPS systems and matching the iced land forms that rose around us to the contours rippling across our maps, we gazed at the grey mound of moraine where, according to the Ordinance Survey, a 600m-wide glacier should have been. We stood staring climate change right in the snout and listening to it trickle through the glacial debris beneath us.  Our final week was spent trekking across the Lomonosov ice cap, en-route to a 1,000m peak the team was intent on reaching. We journeyed across the ice, somewhere between Norway and the North Pole, and while we'd become pretty slick at glacier-crossing, progress is slow when you're carrying your bedroom, kitchen and - in compliance with Svalbard's laws on polar-bear safety - a 5kg aK47. When a storm began to blow and we lost sight of our peak, I refuelled on a frozen   
 You could almost hear the pips squeak when Scottish Power and British Gas announced massive energy price rises. With energy costs spiralling, homeowners are looking for greener, cheaper ways to run their homes and renewable energy is big news.  The Government's feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme offers cash payments to homes generating their own electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, but cowboy companies are marring the industry by employing high-pressure sales techniques and offering poor advice.  In a recent investigation by consumer organisation Which?, three-quarters of the companies selling solar PV panels overestimated how much energy the panels would produce and underestimated the payback time. Furthermore, seven of the 12 salespeople did not take into account that they would be installing panels in a shaded part of the roof and eight didn't ask the homeowners how much energy they used.  "This last one is really important," says Jenny Driscoll, a Which? energy campaigner. "If you live alone and are in the house only at night, solar is probably not going to pay off for you. But if you are at home during the day and you can put on the washing machine and dishwasher, the chances are you are going to benefit from it."  There is a code in place to protect customers - the Renewable Energy assurance Limited (Real) scheme - but there clearly are problems enforcing these rules. The code bans firms from using pressure-sell tactics, but Which? found that one firm, Green Sun, gave the customer only 24 hours to make a decision.  The onus is on you to do the homework. You need to be sure that your roof is mainly south facing with little or preferably no shade, and robust enough to take the weight. If you live in a conservation area or in a listed building, your local authority may refuse permission for solar panels to be fitted.  You've also got to think about your long-term plans; if you are going to move house this could affect the resale value and you may even have to pay for them to be removed.  If you decide to go for it, ensure that the installer is certified by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), and ask for a technical survey, rather than just a salesperson's visit.  Get at least three companies to visit and ask them lots of questions to ensure you're dealing with someone who knows what they are talking about, rather than someone who is purely focused on getting the sale. any figures you are given are guidance and the installer should explain how they arrived at those figures, pointing out anything that will affect the performance such as the angle of your roof and your location.  Use the online tool from the Energy Saving Trust (energysavingtrust.org.uk/ cashbackcalculator) which allows you to estimate the payback time and profit you could make.  Familiarise yourself with the Real code of conduct so that you know how installers should and should not act in your house. They should explain that the inverter, which you need to convert the energy produced by the solar panels into usable electricity, must be replaced within the 25-year lifespan and cost at least ?1,000.  On average, the EST says that solar PV costs ?5,800 per kWp installed and most domestic systems are between 1.5kWp and 3kWp, but as is often the case, it won't simply be about finding the cheapest quote.  When you are comparing quotes, consider whether the price accounts for any extra costs covering removal of your old roof, internal wiring work, electrical connection work and any displays meters.  You should also ask about warranties and guarantees. above all, be wary of any firm that offers you an on-the-spot discount.  "If any installer asks you to sign something straight away, I would show them the door. The Real code obliges companies to give cooling-off periods," says Mark Krull from Logic4training, which trains PV installers. "Don't be rushed, don't be bamboozled and do your research."  Many companies such as Sainsbury's Energy, British Gas and Eon do offer rent-a-roof schemes in which you lease your roof for 25 years in exchange for free installation and ma  
 Until recently, a consensus has been maintained on staging the 2012 Olympics. The prospectus on which it was sold to the public did not, of course, have a great deal to do with sport. It was accepted, almost from the outset, that only a fraction of those keen to attend had any serious interest in the various competitions. Essentially the sales pitch was one of prestige, spectacle, and economics. an Olympic stadium would naturally create jobs and help towards the regeneration of east London. No doubt there would be complaints about corporate sponsors ganging up to acquire tickets, but this, alas, is how the modern sporting extravaganza gets its subsidy.  Just lately one or two cracks have begun to appear in this consensual fa?ade. In particular, Iain Sinclair's new book, Ghost Milk, an exploration of the Olympics and other New Labour-inspired grand projects, is a wounding assault on what he calls "the scam of scams", in which the legacy, he insists, will be one of lasting shame. The curious thing about the reaction to Sinclair's polemic is the difficulty that even sympathetic readers have had in staying the course. "I never thought I could feel sorry for the Olympic organisers until I read this book," noted the historian Dominic Sandbrook in the Financial Times, before amusing himself with Sinclair's claim that the 2012 committee are the spiritual heirs of the people who directed the Berlin Olympics of 1936.  all this confirms a profound truth about our national life, which is that there comes a time when ideological objections to some notional abuse have to be abandoned in the face of people's determination to enjoy themselves. Mr Sandbrook ended his review by suggesting that there are punters who like shopping at the Westfield Centre (another of Sinclair's modern plague-pits) not because they are corporate drones or have been brainwashed, "but simply because they fancy buying some new clothes or a better television or even the latest book by Iain Sinclair". I was reminded of Frank Richards' famous riposte to George Orwell's essay "Boys' Weeklies", in which Orwell, having analysed the political underpinning of Richards' Billy Bunter stories, diagnosed a capitalist plot. Should he then remind his specimen reader that his father was an ill-used serf, Richards wondered. No, he didn't think it was fair to take the boy's twopence for telling him that. and even Orwell makes the point somewhere that the last thing you should deny the working classes is their materialism.  ?????????  There was a delicious irony in the speech in which a newly emboldened Ed Miliband discussed some of the implications of phone hacking. The irony lay not in Mr Miliband's conclusions - "a far greater sense of responsibility in our country" - but in the venue at which it was delivered: the London headquarters of the international accountancy firm KPMG.  I am biased, of course, having spent several years working in the marketing departments of two of our leading bean counters, but if any organisation needed to be read a lesson by a senior politician on the need for greater responsibility, it is an international accountancy firm. The role of chartered accountants in shoring up vested interests is not explored often enough by journalists, but this week's Private Eye thoughtfully enumerates some of the recent exploits of Ernst & Young. This is the firm that missed the ?1.5bn Equitable Life black hole and the $50bn inflating of the Lehman Brothers balance sheet, not to mention an audit of News International that has no record of the six-figure payouts to Max Clifford and Gordon Taylor. Perhaps they simply weren't "material".  Then there is the disastrous part played by certain big firms in government IT procurement; the disappearance of much-needed tax revenue through avoidance; and the regular complaints about auditors warning a bank that a client is in trouble and then contriving to emerge from the wreckage with a commission to wind it up. One of the first acts of an incoming Labour government ought to be the setting up of a royal commission to investigate the fitness for purpose of Messrs Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the others. It would have the makings of the City's very own phone-hacking scandal.  ?????????  I was highly amused by the Tesco survey of Britons' top 20 holiday hates. apparently, holidaymakers' pet peeves include not being able to drink water straight from the tap, the lack of a decent cup of tea, excessive heat, "weird food",  
 Organisers of next year's Olympics believe there is a greater threat of disruption to the Games from anarchist protesters than Islamist terrorism, The Independent on Sunday has learned.  Boris Johnson and Lord Coe, the chairman of London 2012's organising committee, will mark one year to go to the opening ceremony on Wednesday at an event in Trafalgar Square. But planners are braced for widespread disruption to transport, security and the sporting events themselves by groups such as UK Uncut, which led the student-fees protests last year.  Olympics sources say the Games are a likely target for anarchists because of the heavy corporate sponsorship of the events - firms including Lloyds TSB, adidas, British airways, BT, Deloitte and EDF are paying a total of ?1.4bn - and insiders fear that specially designated traffic lanes for dignitaries on roads leading into the Olympic Village at Stratford, east London, could be blocked by UK Uncut "flash mobs".  Earlier this month the terror threat to the UK was lowered from "severe" to "substantial". While there remains a "strong possibility" of an attack from militant Islamists, police resources have shifted towards anarchists and anti-government movements after the series of anti-cuts protests on the streets of London, and elsewhere in Britain, over the past 12 months, including the attack on the car carrying the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.  Organisers and police are keen to keep security at a discreet level to create a "party atmosphere" in London for the Games. Building on 2012's "World in One City" slogan, parts of London will be transformed into mini-versions of competing countries. Sixteen nations have so far signed up to high-profile locations, from Marble arch to Somerset House, to showcase their countries and cultures.  But, while a number of the venues are billed as extended trade missions, some promise to become "party houses" for international celebrations during the Games. The Jamaicans expect up to 50,000 people a day to visit their base at Finsbury Park, the Dutch promise a campsite and a beach in Greenwich, and the Russians are preparing an ice-rink at Marble arch.  Kunal Dutta and Matt Chorley judge London 2012's performance so far, awarding Gold where things are on track, Silver for promise, and Bronze if they are falling behind:  Security  authorities have reason to be vigilant. The 7/7 attacks on London occurred less than 24 hours after London won the bid in 2005. The security budget has risen from ?600m to ?757m. a high-security Northern Retail Lifeline will be carved through the Olympic Park, including a military-style road with an electrified fence, emergency roadblocks and steel barriers. Organisers fear anarchists pose a greater threat than religious extremists. The resignations of the Metropolitan Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson and assistant Commissioner John Yates will have done little to instil confidence.  Medal: Bronze  Budget  London won the bid at the height of the economic boom, but the original estimate for the cost has risen from ?2.375bn to ?9.3bn. The financial crisis, which wiped millions from the resale value of land and of the Olympic Village as housing, risked creating costly white elephants. Organisers held their nerve, investing in temporary venues and scrapping costlier ones. With 88 per cent of infrastructure complete, the construction bill could come in ?850m under budget.  Medal: Bronze  Tickets  Unlike other Games, so far it's a sell-out. Money was taken from bank statements before people knew which events, if any, they were going to see. Prices ranged from ?20.12 to ?2,012. Boris Johnson described the process as an "administrative oddity". Premium seats were almost twice the price of comparable seats in athens in 2004 (?820) or Sydney in 2000 (?990). The International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge denied claims that tickets were being sold purely for the "greedy and rich".  Medal: Silver  Transport  Expect chaos. Stratford's Overground station has been bolstered with new infrastructure, while an extension to the Docklands Light Railway is due to open shortly. But the London assembly warns that transport conditions for commuters will be "extreme". More than a million Olympics-related journeys are scheduled for the tournament, with 700,000 ticket holders expected to descend on the capital. Londoners will be told to work from home, change their travel routines or organise video-conferences instead of meetings.  Medal: Bronze  Tourism  The fifth biggest sector of the economy hopes to cash in on a guaranteed feel-good factor, hot on the heels of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. But while sports fans may flock here, fears of over-crowding, over-priced hotels and a seized-up transport network could deter millions more.  Medal: Silver  Venues  a real success story. Five of the park's six sporting venues, as well as the press and broadcasting centres, are complete. On Wednesday the last of the major venues - the ?2  
 The future of mankind should be bright, with tomorrow's generations set to be healthier, wealthier and better educated, but the planet could become a far more unstable and dangerous place if urgent action isn't taken to fight organised crime, corruption and climate change, that's according to a major new report published tomorrow.  Despite the current famine in East africa, the 2011 State of the Future report claims access to water, food, healthcare and education are all improving. It claims important improvements are also being made in reducing poverty, extending longevity, cutting conflicts and securing advancement for women in positions of power.  The battles against growing carbon emissions and rising temperatures, unemployment, corruption and terrorism are being lost, it warns. In 2010, 90 per cent of global natural disasters - that killed 295,000 people at an approximate cost of $130bn (?85bn) - were weather-related and fit in with climate-change models.  and although there are fewer wars, down to 10 from 14 the previous year, the number of unstable states grew from 28 to 37 between 2006 and 2011.  "Half the world continues to be vulnerable to social instability and violence," the report says. Inequalities are compounded by the rising costs of food, water and energy which could result in 400 million migrants by 2050.  Demand that outstrips the supply of natural resources along with global organised crime are both cited as major challenges. It says the world is "waking up to the enormity of the threat of transnational organised crime" - which has an estimated income of up to $3trn - but "a global strategy to address this globa  
 a sports car that runs on fuel made from cheese or wine, another that can run for more than 200 miles on a 10-minute charge of electricity, and a "Bio-Bug" powered by gas from sewage are among 20 vehicles of the future taking part in an eco-rally today.  Starting at Oxford this morning, the cars were due to make a two hour pit stop at the Building Research Establishment Innovation Park in Watford - allowing electric powered vehicles to recharge before continuing to The Mall in central London.  Now in its fifth year, the rally, sponsored by Bridgestone tyres and organised in association with the Prince of Wales's environmental initiative, Start, is designed to showcase low- and zero-emission vehicles.  Road transport accounts for almost a quarter of Britain's carbon dioxide emissions. While electric cars still cost more than their petrol rivals, a recent study by the Department of Energy and Climate Change claimed that the costs can be balanced out in the long run because electric cars are far cheaper to run. In a bid to promote electric cars earlier this year, the Government approved the construction of 11,000 charging points over the next 18 months, siting them in supermarkets, streets and car parks at a cost of ?400m.  Rising petrol prices and the recession are helping to steer people towards greener cars, according to andy Dingley, a spokesman for Bridgestone UK. "Vehicles that use fuels other than petrol or diesel are no longer concept cars of the future, but production cars of today," he said. This year has seen a number of car makers, including Mitsubishi, Nissan and Peugeot launch electric models. an electric version of the Ford Focus is due in 2013.  Last week, Ecotricity announced the first national charging network - with plans for charge points at 27 motorway service stations across the UK by 2014.  MOTORING PaGE 101 
 Flaws in the proposed ?32bn High Speed 2 rail project connecting London and Birmingham could hurt the environment, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Its head of policy, Paul Davies, said the case for HS2 relied on some flawed assumptions. "For example, not considering the effects of aerodynamic drag from environmental mitigation measures such as tunnels could lead to an increase in carbon emissions," he said. Engineering conglomerates are expected to be asked to bid for HS2 development in the coming weeks. 
 One of Britain's grubbier little secrets is out of the closet. Clothes moths appear to be making an annoyingly widespread return - their numbers swollen by the insects' love for our bulging, and not always impeccably laundered, wardrobes.  Reports of infestations have risen sharply in the past six months. Some have attributed this to the demise of the traditional mothball, others to global warming. But, it seems, the real problem is us and our over-heated bedrooms full of more clothes than ever before, not all of which are as clean as they could be.  The larvae of the common clothes moth, or Tineola bisselliella, can live for up to two years among our clothes - and these days they have an awful lot more to lunch on. Consumer expert Lucy Siegle said research by Cambridge University indicates that the average British woman buys about 62lb (28kg) of clothes each year and has four times as many clothes in her wardrobe as she did in 1980.  an added inducement f  
 Britain is pursuing Egypt for debts of up to ?100m that funded the purchase of arms under the regime of General Hosni Mubarak.  Critics say the move contravenes the Government's pledge to audit all outstanding global debt, while writing off any past lending "recklessly given to dictators" or not used for the specific purpose of development.  The money lent to Egypt is part of a larger portfolio of more than ?150m of Treasury lending that critics say has funded some of the world's most illiberal regimes in countries such as Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Campaigners yesterday demanded an investigation, and called for a scaling back of the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD), the government agency that underwrites international lending.  Peter Frankental of amnesty International UK said export credit to assist despotic regimes had become a "recurring theme" of British trade. He demanded a root-and-branch overhaul of the ECGD ahead of at least 14 trips to promote UK defence technology next year, in countries such as Kazakhstan, Saudi arabia and Libya. "The department is failing to reflect the human rights obligations of the UK government," he said. "The screening procedures are simply not adequate."  Critics are increasingly concerned about the scheme as it has emerged that Whitehall did not hold records of many of the contracts, or their specific details, despite demanding that the debts be repaid. Campaigners last night described it as "unjustifiable".  Egypt owes the money for up to 400 export contracts finalised before 1986. They include ?40m of loans for arms sales to President anwar al-Sadat in the late 1970s, among them Swingfire missiles and Lynx helicopters. The deals were financed between the UK loans for Egypt and funding from Saudi arabia. The documents also uncovered Britain underwriting loans of up to ?85m to buy numerous Rapier missiles from British aerospace, months before the tenure of Hosni Mubarak.  The revelations are an acute embarrassment to Downing Street. Less than a month ago, Nick Clegg used a visit to Cairo to  
 Getting into the London Stock Exchange last week was trickier than usual. The main doors in Paternoster Square were closed because of the protesters by St Paul's, so you had to go to the Newgate Street back entrance, where police cordoned off a "safe" area.  Eventually I made it to the seventh floor to meet the LSE chairman, Chris Gibson-Smith, whose office has the most stunning views across the City - from Smithfield to the north, to the Gherkin in the east and round to St Paul's Cathedral. You can't quite see the tents of the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters, who had to occupy the space by St Paul's instead when they weren't allowed near the LSE - the real object of their anger.  So, the first question which has to be asked of the chairman is, what does he think of them? He doesn't hesitate: "The exchange is a misplaced symbol; I think many of the protesters have confused capitalism with materialism, and that might be part of the problem of how they see the causes of the crash. Capitalism is self-evidently still the best and most efficient way of delivering wealth creation. We have seen that wealth has been created, and redistributed, around the world from China to Brazil, when you open up economies to the markets."  However, he adds: "There are unintended consequences of free markets. It's not capitalism that has been the problem, but irresponsible governments and politicians who have allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage. No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating. That's where people over the past few decades have got it wrong, and many are still in denial - look at alan Greenspan, the [former chairman of the Federal Reserve], who is still defending free markets."  and it's the exchanges and regulators that are left clearing up the mess, or trying to. "Bringing order back to the markets is an awesome task, but that's what we, and the regulators in the US and Europe, are trying to do. There is the most unprecedented co-ordination going on to avoid regulatory arbitrage; it's being called conscience parallelism."  and the task really is awesome. If the numbers are right, then there is $600trillion or so of notional off-balance sheet swaps and other derivative products somewhere in the shadows - far bigger than the banking system.  Gibson-Smith says voters should blame the politicians for much of the mess: "How on earth did governments - here and in Europe - get away with spending so much? Just look at the last Labour government, which increased public spending every year from 1997, when it was?300bn, then another ?100bn three years later and so on and on until nearly one trillion this year. How did we let that happen?"  That's what the voters should be asking, he says, particularly when most of the spending over the past 20 years has gone mainly on two areas - health and welfare payments. "Even the education budget has hardly increased - one area where we should be spending more, instead of absurd tuition fees. Then they had to increase taxes to fund all this spending. That's why we got Gordon Brown's raid on the pension funds and on pensions - scandalous," he says. "Politicians, and the civil service, lost control of the system. Where has all the money gone?"  It's a good question and one which Gibson-Smith says business should be asking more: "Businessmen and women are constantly too polite to government. It's time for business and the job creators to be more vocal about what they really think of policies."  He's doing his bit. The way the tax system unfairly favours debt over equity fills him with despair, and the Exchange is still lobbying the Treasury for it to be changed. "It's extraordinary that there should still be tax relief on debt, but when you buy shares in a company ... you are taxed four times - corporation tax, dividend tax, share-trading tax and personal tax - at a time when we are trying to reduce debt. all this pushes up the cost of capital; our share turnover in London is much smaller than in Europe, where they don't have a share-transaction tax. Nobody here is interested in equity."  But using equity as an alternative form of finance has never been so important, as so many SMEs struggle to get bank finance. "There are many problems we need to deal with - the banks are building their capital base so don't want to lend. Many of the loans banks are offering are uncompetitive ... We need to fix the tax system if we are to encourage equity - and retail share ownership - which is so low compared to Italy and elsewhere in Europe."  Holding the fort at the exchange hasn't been the easiest of tasks; during his nine years in the hot seat, he's had to mastermind and defend a stream of takeover bids, the last being the rather bitter battle with Nasdaq. But it was his friendship with the Qataris that led to the QIa, the sovereign wealth fund, taking a big stake.  Then there were the glitches in new trading systems which triggered murmurs that Gibson-Smith has been running out of patience with his chief executive, Xavier Rolet, a notion which can be dismissed as he describes Rolet, and his team, as "brilliant". Some of the back-biting could be inspired by envy, particularly at the speed with which Gibson-Smith and Rolet are marching the LSE into new areas; the takeover of Turquoise Trading and Millennium, for example, and the tie-up with the Mongolian exchange.  Still, it seems to be working - the cash equities business - share trading - now contributes about 19 per cent of overall profit. and the LSE's own shares, which had their own mini-crash, are creeping back up, at ?9.40.  and London is still the place to come - new figures out last week showed that there are 604 foreign firms listed on the LSE, more than on the NYSE or Nasdaq, and that the 21 companies floated last year made up 12 per cent of the world's IPOs. This year, firms have raised 35 per cent more new money, a total of ?22.9bn. The LSE's half-year results, in two weeks' time, are likely to show another healthy increase.  Meanwhile, Gibson-Smith is "ready and waiting" for the new rules from Mifid on opening up the European derivatives market (now dominated by the new NYSE Deutsche B?rse group), which will force open access and fundibility in derivatives clearing. Bad news for Deutsche B?rse - but good for the LSE, which is itching to compete. But EU plans for a new financial transaction tax are "bad for all of Europe", he says. "I don't think it will get through."  So what next? How about doing a deal or joint venture with Hong Kong or the Nordic countries, natural stopovers for a global exchange such as London? "Stop fishing," he says. "We are always talking."  Final talks are indeed taking place over the purchase of LCH Clearnet, the clearing house for London's trades, which Gibson-Smith says will be a great deal for the capital. But he is still annoyed that the LSE's bid for the Toronto Stock Exchange was blocked by "parochial politicians and five banks who didn't want to lose control".  So what does he say to Big Bang critics who chose last week - the 25th anniversary of the reforms - to speak out against them? Is Terry Smith, boss of Tullett Prebon, right to say that opening up the City floodgates to US and foreign capital was a "colossal mistake", bringing a host of conflicts of interest that contributed to the crash?  He doesn't think so. "The City needed light shone into a closed system," he says. "Big Bang allowed London to thrive. Self-regulation and the closed sanctity of 'the club' made for an opaque system ... I am in no doubt that London and the UK's pre-eminent global role in supporting and nurturing international business has been in part due to Big Bang. Our economy has been the beneficiary of those changes and we should look to continue to capitalise on one of this country's best assets, our finance and capital-markets industry."  as a geologist, he's dived publicly into the climate-change debate because he was so fed up with the scientific illiteracy of what he had been reading and hearing in the press. It's not global warming we should fear, he says, because we are in an "ice age". The real crisis is one of resource depletion, which is why taxing 4x4 cars is "meaningless", and why punitive green taxes on business just make the UK uncompetitive.  On women in business he's equally forthright. "I'm gender blind, if that's the right expression," he laughs. "We are working on building up the numbers of women executives because that is the best way to get them to board level. at last, 20 of our 50 top executives are women and it's rising. at British Land [he is chairman] we have appointed the ferociously clever Lucinda Bell as our finance officer. She was working part-time because of young children; we waited until we thou  
 There is water everywhere. It runs off the tin roofs of farm buildings in a clattering rush, making great red rivers in the sand. Our Land Rover aquaplanes, chased by bolts of lightning, as cracks of thunder fall like boulders around us. Through curtains of rain, I can see vast, water-filled clay pans that look like permanent lakes, yet given just two weeks of hot dry weather they will burn off to dust.  at the moment, that seems unimaginable. australia's red centre is green. The biblical rains that have pummelled the population of the country's east coast out of their houses, making thousands homeless, have turned the desert to floodplain. Here, on the fringes of South australia's outback, kangaroos hop in sodden clumps across mossy fields and the clouds of flies that usually pepper the sky are nowhere to be seen. "We are in the driest part of the driest continent on Earth," says my co-passenger, Bertina, in her matter-of-fact German accent. "It says so in my guidebook." She's laughing, until we slide and stall in some rutted tire tracks running with water like guttering.  another ribcage-shaking clap of thunder and Geoff, our driver and host, guns the engine, spraying mud across the windows. We sit in darkness listening to the storm snarling as Geoff rodeos the 4X4 back and forth, finally lurching us free. "We could do with getting out of here before it really starts raining," he says with an easy smile. If you're going to be in the outback with anyone, Geoff Scholz is your man. Born and raised in the bush, this former farmer and opal miner is unflappable when faced with pretty much anything the elements throw at him. and in this part of the world the elements are not kind.  Geoff and his wife, Irene, organise tours into the 1,500-million-year-old volcanic landscape of the Gawler Ranges National Park, based on a concession camp on the border of the reserve. This 600sq mile tract of sheep stations, salt lakes and sculptural rock formations sits at the northern tip of the Eyre Peninsula and is one of australia's oldest volcanic terrains. Despite the area being tantalisingly sandwiched on the map between Eyre's pristine, white-sand beaches and popular outback sights such as the Flinders Ranges and Coober Pedy, few people make it to Gawler - and that is very much a part of its appeal.  To get here I have taken a 50-minute flight from adelaide to Port Lincoln, where the airport is composed of one check-in desk, no luggage carousel and a rickety vending machine. as the crow flies, Eyre lies just 250 miles from adelaide but that distance encompasses two massive gulfs: St Lawrence and Spencer. Circuitous road access means Port Lincoln's airport is one of australia's busiest regional hubs. But with its white clapboard houses, corn silos and fishing harbours, it reminds me of a sleepy Connecticut town.  We head inland towards Geoff's outback camp on a road that runs ramrod straight through golden-green fields, flanked by the narrow-gauge rails of a "grain train". Not far from here, the wider tracks of the mighty Ghan train run from adelaide deep into the Red Centre. In the days before it became a three-class, smart tourist service, the Ghan would regularly be washed out and stranded passengers would rely on food drops. "There were plenty of marriages on that train," says Geoff. "Ghan couples, we call them."  I love being in this part of the world where a scant and scattered population makes an odyssey out of work-a-day services such as trains, post and doctors. We are passed on the road by the Koongawa bus as it travels on one of the longest school runs in australia: 55 miles from Wudinna to Cummins, twice daily, carrying children as young as five. It's hard not to be overwhelmed by scale here - both the sheer size of the land mass and the human responses to it. But technology is doing its best to master this overwhelming wilderness.  Cattle roundups are no longer done on horseback but by helicopter, while 50m-long road trains or epic narrow-gauge railway transport farm goods, and giant GPS-driven tractors harvest crops. En route to camp, Geoff offers to call in on a friendly farmer who lets people ride in one of these $400,000 space-age tractors. "You don't even have to touch the wheel," says Geoff. "It knows where it's going."  But I am keen to push on, moving inland spotting the eucalyptus trees that signpost our progress into the outback. The one-stem gum tree that stands as an elegant coastal sentinel gradually gives way to shorter mallee and finally acacia - whose silhouette conjures the african plains but here provides shelter for kangaroos and rare yellow rock wallabies.  From top to toe, Eyre is the size of Tasmania. It is home to a population of only 18,000, most of whom are scattered along the coast. By the time we reach Wudinna, the closest settlement to camp, residents number just 600 or so. This could soon treble if Iron Road Limited, a South australian mining firm, moves in. Prospectors have struck the mother lode of magnetic ore in Wudinna's backcountry and the company plans to create services and accommodation for some 1,200 workers, plus a processing plant and commercial airport. But, for now, Wudinna remains a quiet jumping off point for expeditions into the Gawler wilderness.  Beyond town, an angry purple storm rolls in on the horizon, sending out forked licks of lightning. We bump on to one of the "hundreds" roads, dirt tracks that delineate pioneer-era farming subdivisions. Their outer reaches mark both the beginning of the outback and the place where the concept itself was born.  In 1864-65, South australia suffered one of the worst droughts in its history, prompting surveyor-general George Woodroffe Goyder to venture out into the margins of the settled country where farming had been worst hit. In one year alone, while valuing pastoral leases, Goyder covered some 30,000 miles on horseback. His stamina outshone that of his mounts, which he changed twice daily; standing barely 1.5m tall, he earned the nickname Little Energy. These wilderness travels allowed Goyder to make some remarkably prescient observations about australia's inconsistent climate, and he mapped a series of lines, the southernmost indicating the limits of reliable rainfall. This eventually became viewed as a way to calculate the reasonable reaches of safe agricultural development - land beyond which became "the outback".  But this line, as rock steady as its rainfall predictions have proved to be, even now, was not without harsh critics. In the late 1860s, a string of good seasons fed the land and Goyder was ridiculed everywhere from the pub to parliament, but it took only a few seasons more for this resilient man to be proved right. The ruined remains of stone farmhouses found across South australia, just beyond Goyder's Line, stand as a crumbling testament to the blind folly of the 1870s push north.  Technology has now made it possible and profitable to farm beyond the line - soil can be chemically altered, crops encouraged, and machines bring in harvests quickly. and farmers here have become savvy, learning how to diversify crops and livestock to survive in the harsh, dry climate. Yet, climate change is lately blurring Goyder's maps and Geoff talks in a haunted voice of farmers recently ruined by drowned crops. He is much happier rounding up tourists than cattle.  Evidence of Geoff's farming past is found everywhere in camp. Old chains, cogs and axles from agricultural machinery have been cleverly converted into towel rails, hat stands and chairs, combined with natural materials such as driftwood and local stone. The effect is rustic, stylish and laid back. Guests are housed in three comfy safari-style tents with raised wood floors and annexe bathrooms fed by rainwater, or in a fabulous "Swagon" - a renovated covered wagon where you can stargaze as you fall asleep. The camp doesn't operate like a resort but has set dates for arrival and departure to accommodate group safaris.  My co-travellers, Bertina and her husband Cristophe, have just arrived from Cologne and are having trouble keeping their eyes from drooping with jet lag. But from the camp's open dining room it's possible to spot an impressive 146 species of bird. Bright flashes of scarlet-breasted parrot and the sweetly named splendid fairy wren, making chirruping darts at the ground, provide lively distraction.  Still, there are bigger natural wonders. The entire Gawler Ranges National Park sits within an enormous volcanic crater. "It blew off in one hit," says Geoff. "This is what america's Yellowstone will be like when it goes." We head into the park and have been on the road only a few minutes before three emus make a comedic, leggy dash towards the car and run alongside, keeping pace while training beady eyes on us passengers. I'm not sure whether to laugh or salute them. The birds, capable of 30mph sprints, soon outstrip our vehicle. The sun has finally burnt through the clouds and water lies in mercury pools on the red topsoil; fallen leaves of eucalyptus shine like shattered glass. ahead of us, groups of eastern grey kangaroos and smaller 'roo-like euros bound across the gleaming grassland, mothers confidently driving the skittish young ahead of them.  Over coming days, we park up in the wilderness to trek t  
 The man who helped David Cameron to burnish his green credentials by fitting solar panels to the roof of the PM's home accused him yesterday of "lying" over his commitment to the environment.  Brian Evans, who installed the system at the Camerons' London home in 2006, criticised the PM for "destroying" the solar electricity industry by slashing state subsidies for feed-in tariffs by more than half.  Mr Evans, who runs his own solar panel installation business, said he was being forced to lay off his only two employees because the Government was cutting funding for homes that generate solar electricity.  Mr Cameron paid about ?4,000 to have three solar panels fitted to the roof of his house in North Kensington in 2006 - at a time when the Tory leader was laying claim to the environmental agenda.  But the Prime Minister now stands accused of selling out the green movement by authorising a drastic cut in the rate of feed-in tariffs for householders with solar panels. The new rate - 21p per kilowatt hour, cut from 43p per kwh - is being introduced next month, to the anger of environmental campaigners and businesses.  Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed how Mr Cameron was facing a widespread revolt over solar electricity, with a letter signed by 55 business groups and individuals condemning the move.  Mr Evans, 47, told The IoS that Mr Cameron's decision to install the solar panels - alongside a solar thermal system and a wind turbine - now appeared to be "tokenistic". He said: "Installing the three systems meant he could lay claim to his green credentials. It enabled him to say he had renewable energy on his property. It is the case that Cameron wanted his green credentials to be visible to the world. But I don't think he has any green credentials. I think he has yellow credentials - making decisions from a cowardly position. He and others in government got into government through lies. Even though they weren't lies at the time, they became lies because they don't have the strength to stic  
 There is water everywhere. It runs off the tin roofs of farm buildings in a clattering rush, making great red rivers in the sand. Our Land Rover aquaplanes, chased by bolts of lightning, as cracks of thunder fall like boulders around us. Through curtains of rain, I can see vast, water-filled clay pans that look like permanent lakes, yet given just two weeks of hot dry weather they will burn off to dust.  at the moment, that seems unimaginable. australia's red centre is green. The biblical rains that have pummelled the population of the country's east coast out of their houses, making thousands homeless, have turned the desert to floodplain. Here, on the fringes of South australia's outback, kangaroos hop in sodden clumps across mossy fields and the clouds of flies that usually pepper the sky are nowhere to be seen. "We are in the driest part of the driest continent on Earth," says my co-passenger, Bertina, in her matter-of-fact German accent. "It says so in my guidebook." She's laughing, until we slide and stall in some rutted tire tracks running with water like guttering.  another ribcage-shaking clap of thunder and Geoff, our driver and host, guns the engine, spraying mud across the windows. We sit in darkness listening to the storm snarling as Geoff rodeos the 4X4 back and forth, finally lurching us free. "We could do with getting out of here before it really starts raining," he says with an easy smile. If you're going to be in the outback with anyone, Geoff Scholz is your man. Born and raised in the bush, this former farmer and opal miner is unflappable when faced with pretty much anything the elements throw at him. and in this part of the world the elements are not kind.  Geoff and his wife, Irene, organise tours into the 1,500-million-year-old volcanic landscape of the Gawler Ranges National Park, based on a concession camp on the border of the reserve. This 600sq mile tract of sheep stations, salt lakes and sculptural rock formations sits at the northern tip of the Eyre Peninsula and is one of australia's oldest volcanic terrains. Despite the area being tantalisingly sandwiched on the map between Eyre's pristine, white-sand beaches and popular outback sights such as the Flinders Ranges and Coober Pedy, few people make it to Gawler - and that is very much a part of its appeal.  To get here I have taken a 50-minute flight from adelaide to Port Lincoln, where the airport is composed of one check-in desk, no luggage carousel and a rickety vending machine. as the crow flies, Eyre lies just 250 miles from adelaide but that distance encompasses two massive gulfs: St Lawrence and Spencer. Circuitous road access means Port Lincoln's airport is one of australia's busiest regional hubs. But with its white clapboard houses, corn silos and fishing harbours, it reminds me of a sleepy Connecticut town.  We head inland towards Geoff's outback camp on a road that runs ramrod straight through golden-green fields, flanked by the narrow-gauge rails of a "grain train". Not far from here, the wider tracks of the mighty Ghan train run from adelaide deep into the Red Centre. In the days before it became a three-class, smart tourist service, the Ghan would regularly be washed out and stranded passengers would rely on food drops. "There were plenty of marriages on that train," says Geoff. "Ghan couples, we call them."  I love being in this part of the world where a scant and scattered population makes an odyssey out of work-a-day services such as trains, post and doctors. We are passed on the road by the Koongawa bus as it travels on one of the longest school runs in australia: 55 miles from Wudinna to Cummins, twice daily, carrying children as young as five. It's hard not to be overwhelmed by scale here - both the sheer size of the land mass and the human responses to it. But technology is doing its best to master this overwhelming wilderness.  Cattle roundups are no longer done on horseback but by helicopter, while 50m-long road trains or epic narrow-gauge railway transport farm goods, and giant GPS-driven tractors harvest crops. En route to camp, Geoff offers to call in on a friendly farmer who lets people ride in one of these $400,000 space-age tractors. "You don't even have to touch the wheel," says Geoff. "It knows where it's going."  But I am keen to push on, moving inland spotting the eucalyptus trees that signpost our progress into the outback. The one-stem gum tree that stands as an elegant coastal sentinel gradually gives way to shorter mallee and finally acacia - whose silhouette conjures the african plains but here provides shelter for kangaroos and rare yellow rock wallabies.  From top to toe, Eyre is the size of Tasmania. It is home to a population of only 18,000, most of whom are scattered along the coast. By the time we reach Wudinna, the closest settlement to camp, residents number just 600 or so. This could soon treble if Iron Road Limited, a South australian mining firm, moves in. Prospectors have struck the mother lode of magnetic ore in Wudinna's backcountry and the company plans to create services and accommodation for some 1,200 workers, plus a processing plant and commercial airport. But, for now, Wudinna remains a quiet jumping off point for expeditions into the Gawler wilderness.  Beyond town, an angry purple storm rolls in on the horizon, sending out forked licks of lightning. We bump on to one of the "hundreds" roads, dirt tracks that delineate pioneer-era farming subdivisions. Their outer reaches mark both the beginning of the outback and the place where the concept itself was born.  In 1864-65, South australia suffered one of the worst droughts in its history, prompting surveyor-general George Woodroffe Goyder to venture out into the margins of the settled country where farming had been worst hit. In one year alone, while valuing pastoral leases, Goyder covered some 30,000 miles on horseback. His stamina outshone that of his mounts, which he changed twice daily; standing barely 1.5m tall, he earned the nickname Little Energy. These wilderness travels allowed Goyder to make some remarkably prescient observations about australia's inconsistent climate, and he mapped a series of lines, the southernmost indicating the limits of reliable rainfall. This eventually became viewed as a way to calculate the reasonable reaches of safe agricultural development - land beyond which became "the outback".  But this line, as rock steady as its rainfall predictions have proved to be, even now, was not without harsh critics. In the late 1860s, a string of good seasons fed the land and Goyder was ridiculed everywhere from the pub to parliament, but it took only a few seasons more for this resilient man to be proved right. The ruined remains of stone farmhouses found across South australia, just beyond Goyder's Line, stand as a crumbling testament to the blind folly of the 1870s push north.  Technology has now made it possible and profitable to farm beyond the line - soil can be chemically altered, crops encouraged, and machines bring in harvests quickly. and farmers here have become savvy, learning how to diversify crops and livestock to survive in the harsh, dry climate. Yet, climate change is lately blurring Goyder's maps and Geoff talks in a haunted voice of farmers recently ruined by drowned crops. He is much happier rounding up tourists than cattle.  Evidence of Geoff's farming past is found everywhere in camp. Old chains, cogs and axles from agricultural machinery have been cleverly converted into towel rails, hat stands and chairs, combined with natural materials such as driftwood and local stone. The effect is rustic, stylish and laid back. Guests are housed in three comfy safari-style tents with raised wood floors and annexe bathrooms fed by rainwater, or in a fabulous "Swagon" - a renovated covered wagon where you can stargaze as you fall asleep. The camp doesn't operate like a resort but has set dates for arrival and departure to accommodate group safaris.  My co-travellers, Bertina and her husband Cristophe, have just arrived from Cologne and are having trouble keeping their eyes from drooping with jet lag. But from the camp's open dining room it's possible to spot an impressive 146 species of bird. Bright flashes of scarlet-breasted parrot and the sweetly named splendid fairy wren, making chirruping darts at the ground, provide lively distraction.  Still, there are bigger natural wonders. The entire Gawler Ranges National Park sits within an enormous volcanic crater. "It blew off in one hit," says Geoff. "This is what america's Yellowstone will be like when it goes." We head into the park and have been on the road only a few minutes before three emus make a comedic, leggy dash towards the car and run alongside, keeping pace while training beady eyes on us passengers. I'm not sure whether to laugh or salute them. The birds, capable of 30mph sprints, soon outstrip our vehicle. The sun has finally burnt through the clouds and water lies in mercury pools on the red topsoil; fallen leaves of eucalyptus shine like shattered glass. ahead of us, groups of eastern grey kangaroos and smaller 'roo-like euros bound across the gleaming grassland, mothers confidently driving the skittish young ahead of them.  Over coming days, we park up in the wilderness to trek t  
 The man who helped David Cameron to burnish his green credentials by fitting solar panels to the roof of the PM's home accused him yesterday of "lying" over his commitment to the environment.  Brian Evans, who installed the system at the Camerons' London home in 2006, criticised the PM for "destroying" the solar electricity industry by slashing state subsidies for feed-in tariffs by more than half.  Mr Evans, who runs his own solar panel installation business, said he was being forced to lay off his only two employees because the Government was cutting funding for homes that generate solar electricity.  Mr Cameron paid about ?4,000 to have three solar panels fitted to the roof of his house in North Kensington in 2006 - at a time when the Tory leader was laying claim to the environmental agenda.  But the Prime Minister now stands accused of selling out the green movement by authorising a drastic cut in the rate of feed-in tariffs for householders with solar panels. The new rate - 21p per kilowatt hour, cut from 43p per kwh - is being introduced next month, to the anger of environmental campaigners and businesses.  Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed how Mr Cameron was facing a widespread revolt over solar electricity, with a letter signed by 55 business groups and individuals condemning the move.  Mr Evans, 47, told The IoS that Mr Cameron's decision to install the solar panels - alongside a solar thermal system and a wind turbine - now appeared to be "tokenistic". He said: "Installing the three systems meant he could lay claim to his green credentials. It enabled him to say he had renewable energy on his property. It is the case that Cameron wanted his green credentials to be visible to the world. But I don't think he has any green credentials. I think he has yellow credentials - making decisions from a cowardly position. He and others in government got into government through lies. Even though they weren't lies at the time, they became lies because they don't have the strength to stic  
 Britain's trees face environmental change at an "unprecedented scale", with the challenges and opportunities greater now than at any time in the past 100 years, according to a new report backed by 20 of Britain's leading forestry and wildlife bodies.  Organisations ranging from the Forest Stewardship Council to the Woodland Trust have joined together for the first time to highlight the state of British woodlands and are urging the Government to take action.  Threats to woods and forests include climate change, increasing pests and diseases, pollution, invasive species, overgrazing, and disappearing habitat.  Targets to maintain, restore and protect priority woodland habitats are generally not being met and in some cases, baseline information and monitoring is inadequate, says the report.  The most pressing issues include increasing woodland cover to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. 
 Britain and other rich countries are using aid money as a lever to bully developing countries over climate change, according to a new report by an anti-poverty pressure group.  With international climate change negotiations beginning in South africa tomorrow, a report by the World Development Movement reveals that threats and bribery are often attached to aid packages.  The report also highlights how wealthy nations use secret meetings to produce last-minute deals - presenting poorer countries with a fait accompli, as happened in Copenhagen two years ago, when delegates had an hour to read the final document drawn up by 26 countries.  The negotiations in Durban are the last chance to set binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions before the Kyoto agreement expires next year.  Murray Worthy, of the World Development Movement, said: "The US, UK and EU are using the same strong-arm tactics to bribe developing countries that we saw at Copenhagen. abandoning their previous commitments to provide finance to help developing countries deal with climate change, they are now saying finance will only be available to countries that agree to a new deal that effectively abandons the Kyoto treaty."  The report accuses countries such as america and Britain of using "unfair, undemocratic and even deceitful means to skew the climate change negotiations in their favour".  at Copenhagen, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have treated leaders of small island states as "naughty school children". 
 Families may be tightening their belts this year but many still want to do their bit to help others in need. Charity Christmas cards are a simple way to give, but with many of the high street retailers less generous than others, be careful which ones you pick.  Now in its 10th year, the Charities advisory Trust (CaT) Scrooge awards survey names and shames the stingiest charity Christmas cards. although there have been improvements, some companies still give less than 2 per cent of their card sale price to the good cause. This year the online company CCa Occasions has the dishonour of winning the Scrooge award offering a donation of only 1.1 per cent on some cards.  "The problem is people think they are buying a charity card, but very little money actually goes to the good cause. If it were a meat pie with less than 10 per cent meat, you could not call it a meat pie," says Dame Hilary Blume, the director of CaT. "The retailers have stolen the charity Christmas market away from the charities."  Many other companies were equally mean spirited; of the 40 online companies surveyed, more than two-thirds of the publishers give less than 5 per cent to charity and more than a quarter (27.5 per cent) give less than 2 per cent to charity.  On the high street, Peter Jones, which is part of the John Lewis Partnership, donates a paltry 6 per cent of the sale price on its art Beat cards to the chosen charity Shelter. Sellers are legally required to print their donation amount on the back of each pack, but consumer organisation Which? says that only a third of people buying Christmas cards bother to check the small print.  "Buying Christmas cards can be a great way to give to charity. But, there's such a wide disparity between the amounts given by retailers that consumers need to check how much is actually going to their chosen," says Martyn Hocking, Which?'s editor.  WH Smith is way ahead of the pack, donating 70 per cent of the price its Children in Need cards to the charity. Even better, it told CaT that they give the full donation to charity even if the card pack is included in a three for two offer.  John Lewis and Clintons also offer cards donating 25 per cent, but even within the same store the onus is on you as the buyer to read the back of every pack you pick up. John Lewis also offers cards giving only 10 per cent to various charities including Mind, NSPCC and Shelter.  Former "winner" of the Scrooge award, Cards Galore, has now been given the new title of "Reformed Sinner" after increasing its donation to 10 per cent, although there are still six designs which give only 7.5 per cent.  The big problem is that even if you do check the back of each pack, it may still be difficult to work out how much of your money is going to charity. While some include VaT, others do not, and some use the money donated for the trading arm of the charity, rather than directly funding the charitable work itself.  "You need to do a doctorate in charity Christmas cards," says Dame Hilary. "We awarded our first 'clear as mud' award to one retailer because it took so long to work out what was going where."  If you really want to maximise your donation it is much better to buy directly from charity shops or through CaT's Card aid which hands over all profits, working out to between 40 and 60 per cent to charity after all costs. Dame Hilary says that stronger rules are needed to prevent the public from becoming disillusioned about giving to charity including a requirement that something sold in aid of charity has a minimum donation of at least 10 per cent of the selling price.  The actual donation isn't the only consideration when buying, however. To complicate matters further, CaT says that many charities are falling short of its own standards: for example, charities campaigning against global warming agreeing to have cards printed in China and shipped all over the world, or UK poverty charities having their cards printed in China rather than at home to support the dwindling UK printing industry.  again, Card aid is a good alternative here, with all printing taking place in the UK using card from sustainable forests and environmentally friendly envelopes.  Cards sold by the Sreepur community in Bangladesh als  
 Britain's trees face environmental change at an "unprecedented scale", with the challenges and opportunities greater now than at any time in the past 100 years, according to a new report backed by 20 of Britain's leading forestry and wildlife bodies.  Organisations ranging from the Forest Stewardship Council to the Woodland Trust have joined together for the first time to highlight the state of British woodlands and are urging the Government to take action.  Threats to woods and forests include climate change, increasing pests and diseases, pollution, invasive species, overgrazing, and disappearing habitat.  Targets to maintain, restore and protect priority woodland habitats are generally not being met and in some cases, baseline information and monitoring is inadequate, says the report.  The most pressing issues include increasing woodland cover to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. 
 Britain and other rich countries are using aid money as a lever to bully developing countries over climate change, according to a new report by an anti-poverty pressure group.  With international climate change negotiations beginning in South africa tomorrow, a report by the World Development Movement reveals that threats and bribery are often attached to aid packages.  The report also highlights how wealthy nations use secret meetings to produce last-minute deals - presenting poorer countries with a fait accompli, as happened in Copenhagen two years ago, when delegates had an hour to read the final document drawn up by 26 countries.  The negotiations in Durban are the last chance to set binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions before the Kyoto agreement expires next year.  Murray Worthy, of the World Development Movement, said: "The US, UK and EU are using the same strong-arm tactics to bribe developing countries that we saw at Copenhagen. abandoning their previous commitments to provide finance to help developing countries deal with climate change, they are now saying finance will only be available to countries that agree to a new deal that effectively abandons the Kyoto treaty."  The report accuses countries such as america and Britain of using "unfair, undemocratic and even deceitful means to skew the climate change negotiations in their favour".  at Copenhagen, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have treated leaders of small island states as "naughty school children". 
 Families may be tightening their belts this year but many still want to do their bit to help others in need. Charity Christmas cards are a simple way to give, but with many of the high street retailers less generous than others, be careful which ones you pick.  Now in its 10th year, the Charities advisory Trust (CaT) Scrooge awards survey names and shames the stingiest charity Christmas cards. although there have been improvements, some companies still give less than 2 per cent of their card sale price to the good cause. This year the online company CCa Occasions has the dishonour of winning the Scrooge award offering a donation of only 1.1 per cent on some cards.  "The problem is people think they are buying a charity card, but very little money actually goes to the good cause. If it were a meat pie with less than 10 per cent meat, you could not call it a meat pie," says Dame Hilary Blume, the director of CaT. "The retailers have stolen the charity Christmas market away from the charities."  Many other companies were equally mean spirited; of the 40 online companies surveyed, more than two-thirds of the publishers give less than 5 per cent to charity and more than a quarter (27.5 per cent) give less than 2 per cent to charity.  On the high street, Peter Jones, which is part of the John Lewis Partnership, donates a paltry 6 per cent of the sale price on its art Beat cards to the chosen charity Shelter. Sellers are legally required to print their donation amount on the back of each pack, but consumer organisation Which? says that only a third of people buying Christmas cards bother to check the small print.  "Buying Christmas cards can be a great way to give to charity. But, there's such a wide disparity between the amounts given by retailers that consumers need to check how much is actually going to their chosen," says Martyn Hocking, Which?'s editor.  WH Smith is way ahead of the pack, donating 70 per cent of the price its Children in Need cards to the charity. Even better, it told CaT that they give the full donation to charity even if the card pack is included in a three for two offer.  John Lewis and Clintons also offer cards donating 25 per cent, but even within the same store the onus is on you as the buyer to read the back of every pack you pick up. John Lewis also offers cards giving only 10 per cent to various charities including Mind, NSPCC and Shelter.  Former "winner" of the Scrooge award, Cards Galore, has now been given the new title of "Reformed Sinner" after increasing its donation to 10 per cent, although there are still six designs which give only 7.5 per cent.  The big problem is that even if you do check the back of each pack, it may still be difficult to work out how much of your money is going to charity. While some include VaT, others do not, and some use the money donated for the trading arm of the charity, rather than directly funding the charitable work itself.  "You need to do a doctorate in charity Christmas cards," says Dame Hilary. "We awarded our first 'clear as mud' award to one retailer because it took so long to work out what was going where."  If you really want to maximise your donation it is much better to buy directly from charity shops or through CaT's Card aid which hands over all profits, working out to between 40 and 60 per cent to charity after all costs. Dame Hilary says that stronger rules are needed to prevent the public from becoming disillusioned about giving to charity including a requirement that something sold in aid of charity has a minimum donation of at least 10 per cent of the selling price.  The actual donation isn't the only consideration when buying, however. To complicate matters further, CaT says that many charities are falling short of its own standards: for example, charities campaigning against global warming agreeing to have cards printed in China and shipped all over the world, or UK poverty charities having their cards printed in China rather than at home to support the dwindling UK printing industry.  again, Card aid is a good alternative here, with all printing taking place in the UK using card from sustainable forests and environmentally friendly envelopes.  Cards sold by the Sreepur community in Bangladesh als  
 Small and medium enterprises can access a new pot of European money. The EU plans to make up to Euro 80bn available to support research and innovation in fields such as climate change, health, energy and food security in a new version of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, which is coming to an end. Last week its successor, Horizon 2020, was confirmed as part of the proposed EU budget for 2014-2020, with about 15 per cent going to SMEs. 
 When it was announced a few weeks ago that the multimillionaire producer and rock star's wife Trudie Styler was to guest edit The Big Issue, there was an outcry in the press. The Daily Mail called it a cruel irony that someone with six homes, "and lavish ones at that", should edit a magazine that homeless people sell. Barbara Ellen on The Observer called it "one of the most bewildering, tactless charity mismatches of all time". and even on the normally benign Mumsnet it was described as a "Marie antoinette moment".  "It was all so stupid," says Styler. "Barbara Ellen even invited the vendors to set light to their editions. That's setting fire to their livelihoods. It's such an ignorant remark. I knew anita Roddick and Gordon [Roddick's then husband]; we both started work in the amazon at a similar time. I would actually run into them in the rainforest, of all the places you could run into anyone. Well, anita and Gordon are multi-homed people. and guess what? They founded The Big Issue."  The issue that Styler produced hits the streets tomorrow. and, just as John Bird, editor-in-chief, anticipated when he asked her to do the job, she has dipped into her famously bulging contacts book and drawn out some big names. There's Robert Downey Jnr on the cover, a series of portraits of Big Issue vendors by Bryan adams, as well as a touching piece by archbishop Desmond Tutu in which he reveals what he would change about himself if he could go back in time.  Styler is just one of a long line of Big Issue guest editors -Damien Hirst, David Cameron, Jamie Oliver and Richard Branson among them - all of whom, at the last count, own more than a few homes (and an island) between them. No one batted an eyelid when they took on the job, so why is it that Styler came in for so much stick?  "You're the journalist - you tell me," she says. "I have absolutely no idea why they don't like me. But I don't have a poor-little-me syndrome. I don't think it's just me. I think there are a lot of people that are targeted that shouldn't be. and why - who knows?"  In fact, a quick flick through Styler's press cuttings and you'll see her vilification is pretty complete. Depending on whom you read, the 57-year-old is the bit-part actress who snagged a rock star. She's the eco warrior who'll fly in her own personal chef to knock up a bowl of soup. Or - Barbara Ellen again - she's just a jumped-up lady-who-lunches with an ego that's out of control. "I am sensitive and it does hurt," Styler says, "but there's just too much to do, so you dust yourself off and get on with it. It doesn't deter me. I don't live by people's approval. I never have done."  I ask if, after all her harsh treatment at the hands of the press, she has been enjoying the Leveson inquiry. "When you see the terrible behaviour of these journalists that are involved in the crumbling Murdoch empire, you just think, well, you brought it all on yourselves. The amount of people that had their lives wrecked because of you - how can you ever justify that?"  She thinks that she may have been hacked on a couple of occasions. "But I don't know and I'm certainly not going to waste any time finding out."  Ultimately, though, she thinks the kind of bad publicity she has received just acts as a deterrent. "I think it discourages people who have wealth," she says. "Wealthy people should be encouraged to be giving more and doing more and not getting rapped over their knuckles for trying to help."  She has a point. as George Osborne's autumn Statement demonstrated, we are living in a world where the gap between the rich and poor keeps growing and the very wealthiest seem to be running away with it all. It's true that Styler has six homes (New York, London, Malibu, the Lake District, Tuscany and a castle in Wiltshire). and it's true that she and her husband, reputedly worth nearly ?180m, inhabit a parallel world of private jets and waiting staff, but wouldn't it be worse if she didn't do anything at all?  Styler's philanthropic career began back in 1989 when she formed the Rainforest Foundation with Sting. Nine years ago, she became a Unicef ambassador after witnessing children as young as two living and working on the dump sites of Ecuador. "Children raking through shit. That is fundamentally wrong. So you say, what does it take to fix that? It takes somebody's money and somebody's effort."  admittedly, she is conspicuous in her giving, calling on high-profile friends and organising high-profile events - that's how she makes it work. Perhaps that's also what people don't like. "I have got great connections," she says. "I move around the world and meet a lot of famous people. I connect those people to something useful. If I didn't know a lot of powerful people I couldn't do the things I do."  For a glimpse of these connections you have only to look to Sting's 60th birthday party held recently at New York's Beacon Theatre. Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel all did a turn on stage. after seeing the Edinburgh Military Tattoo when she was doing a play at the Fringe last summer, Styler decided to hire the whole band for a surprise finale. "I flew all these pipers and drummers over to New York and adapted a piece of Sting's music for them to play. Then they did "Scotland the Brave" and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Sting was bawling."  I ask how she squares this - the throwing of parties on the most lavish scale and the flying of large military bands across the world - with her environmental convictions. "This lifestyle was given to me courtesy of my husband," she says. "It wasn't always like that. I was raised in a council house in the Midlands and had a very modest upbringing. Sting, being a successful rock musician, brought wealth and a lifestyle with it. I don't feel guilty about that lifestyle. I enjoy it. But I keep it in proportion, and being a Unicef ambassador and giving money to those who need it is something that I do with great pleasure. So I guess if I reconcile it that way, that's the way I reconcile it."  What about her carbon footprint? "If you read the Stern report, you'll find that it is deforestation that accounts for the majority of carbon emissions. That is something me and Sting have been working on for 22 years," she says. "We'd like to get to a place where there are more incentives to find alternatives, but I think that's a long way off. If there was an aeroplane run by electricity, I'd be on it."  Styler is residing in her New York home while her youngest child, 15-year-old Giacomo, finishes school there. Her three elder children all live in the city. She says she misses the UK and just as soon as Giacomo finishes school she'll be back. New York has been an eye-opener. She went to an Occupy demonstration in Times Square and her son Jake has been shooting footage at the protest in Wall Street. The irony isn't lost on her.  "Living in america, you see the divide between rich and poor very sharply. That gap is colossally wrong," she says. "Occupy Wall Street is a very big symbol of how angry and let down people feel. In america the rich are not taxed nearly as much as they should be. I'm not a politician, and I don't want to get bogged down in how laws should be changed, but the divide is so colossal at this point people are killing themselves or giving up entirely."  although she describes herself as an optimist, she is feeling quite bleak about the future and she's looking forward to getting out of america for Christmas. She'll be coming back to Wiltshire, the house tha  
 a few days after the last election, David Cameron made a bold promise: to lead the greenest government ever. In opposition, Cameron brandished his green credentials to show the Conservative Party had changed, and prove he was in touch with young people and everyone who cared about the environment. arctic photo-shoots were hastily arranged, complete with huskies. The public were exhorted to "vote blue and go green". Eighteen months later, as Chris Huhne, the Climate Change Secretary, jets off to Durban for the latest round of negotiations, all that remains is a trail of broken green promises.  The stakes at Durban could not be higher. We have to make progress on a binding legal global agreement to cut carbon emissions and deliver on climate finance. But the omens are not good. Since the election, Cameron has failed to make a single speech, or attend a single conference, on climate change. He's snubbed next year's landmark Rio+20 conference, even though it was re-arranged to allow him to attend. In Europe, the Government has cosied up with extremists, and opposed controls on oil extracted from tar sands - a notoriously high polluting fuel, which almost every other European country wants to tackle. This, and its lax attitude to arctic drilling, are turning the UK into a clearing house for the world's dirtiest oil projects.  In the autumn Statement last week, Cameron and George Osborne showed they would rather pander to the Tea Party tendency in the Tory Party - the rump of Tories who either don't believe in climate change or don't think it's worth bothering about - than get serious about tackling climate change. Osborne revelle  
 Two multinational conclaves will make decisions on Friday that will test journalistic hyperbole. In Brussels, the European Union summit may decide the fate of the eurozone and therefore the quality of life of our children. But the decisions made by the 194 nations of the world at the United Nations climate-change summit in Durban, South africa, on the same day could make an even bigger difference to the quality of life of our children's children.  The Brussels summit could make the difference between plunging Europe into depression and a return to the kind of growth experienced since 1945. The significant decisions are likely to be made in Paris tomorrow by angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, but formally they will be made by all the EU leaders on Friday.  The narrow focus of British commentary is on the domestic problems that this will present to David Cameron, who has promised his Eurosceptic party that he would hold a referendum on proposed treaty changes. That is part of a wider problem, which is that the response to the euro crisis seems to involve technocrats suspending democracy for the greater good. The appointment of unelected prime ministers in Greece and Italy did not look good, although their governments command majorities in elected parliaments. But the search for devices to avoid referendums in Ireland and elsewhere hardly helps the EU's claim to democratic legitimacy. Nothing could be more damaging to Mr Sarkozy's grand talk of "refounding Europe" than its being seen as a conspiracy of elites against peoples. But one other item of business on Friday will be Croatia's accession treaty, providing for it to join the EU, subject to a referendum, in 2013. The EU is still something that more people want to join than to leave.  The paradox of Brussels, of course, is that the summit is trying to get Europe back to the kind of economic growth that threatens the sustainability of human life. Important though it is for our next 20 years, the decisions made - or avoided - at Durban this week are even more important for the next 100. The caravan of UN climate-change conferences has, since Rio in 1992, stopped in a different city each year (last year was Cancun, next is Qatar), some of which have been more important (Kyoto 1997, Copenhagen 2009) than others. Durban could still be important, or it could be another stop at which all the hard choices are put off for another year.  Despite Mr Cameron's protestations, just before and just  
 The big question in Durban is whether an extraordinarily obstructive Obama administration is days away from killing this long climate process and burying its corpse next to the Doha round of trade talks.  The stakes really are that high. Chris Huhne, the UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary, and his colleagues are facing a host of complex issues. But for me, three stand out. Do we keep the Kyoto protocol alive? Can we set up a fund to pay for poorer countries to cope with climate change and build clean energy? and when do we sign the next deal, the one that really nails the carbon beast? But in the end a good deal can't be struck here unless President Obama orders his delegation radically to change course.  First, Kyoto. The popular misconception is that this treaty expires next year. In reality, the first period of emissions cuts under the treaty runs out in 2012, but it was always the intention that we'd then have other commitment periods, each one forcing countries to cut their carbon deeper. Regressive governments have come to Durban determined to make africa the graveyard of the protocol, to be replaced with some kind of wishy-washy voluntary agreement. But keeping Kyoto is important because it's the global rulebook on how to cut carbon across dozens of countries in a way that's verifiable and legally binding. If you kill the KP you take us back to square one, and a new rulebook to replace it becomes almost impossibly hard to agree.  Next up, the Green Climate Fund. This is a body set up to administer a pot of money to pay for the poorest countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. One of the essential things Durban shoul  
 The world's ministers and their mandarins gather in their thousands this weekend to hammer out a plan for the small matter of saving the planet. Yet few of us appear to have noticed.  Despite apocalyptic warnings about temperatures reaching record levels and carbon emissions rising faster than ever, the delegates at the vast UN climate conference in South africa this weekend could not be further from reaching a deal - or further from the thoughts of a global population gripped by economic fears.  More than 10,000 ministers, officials, campaigners and scientists from 194 countries are meeting in Durban in an attempt to counter the devastating effects of global warming. With little hope of a major agreement, many are happy to be out of the spotlight.  Not long ago, politicians were insisting that climate change was the greatest threat facing the world. David Cameron drove a pack of huskies across a glacier, proclaiming that the Conservatives had to lead a "new green revolution and recapture climate change from the pessimists''. Today, amid the preoccupations of a global recession, the future of the world itself seems a secondary concern for the political classes.  The key villain remains the United States, which a year before presidential elections will not sign up to a new green target. China will not play ball either. Japan, Russia and Canada have pulled out of the current negotiations.  Britain has witnessed the dramatic slide of environmentalism down the political agenda. Last night, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, accused Mr Cameron of being "desperately out of touch with anyone who cares about our environment". Liberal Democrats claimed their coalition partners no longer saw electoral advantage in their "vote blue, go green" message. Even the Prime Minister's own "green guru", Steve Hilton, confesses he has doubts about the climate-change argument.  However, the issue will be placed centre stage this week when Sir David attenborough's acclaimed BBC series Frozen Planet concludes with a personal testimony from the veteran broadcaster about how polar bears and other species remain on the front-line of the environmental threat.  George Osborne, the Chancellor, signalled a major shift in Tory positioning last week when he suggested cutting carbon emissions would threaten jobs: "We are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers." His anti-green rhetoric sparked a rift in a coalition that had pledged to be "the greenest government ever". The Liberal Democrat president, Tim Farron, accused Mr Osborne of adopting climate-sceptic language "to placate 50 or 60 climate deniers on the [Tory] back benches, people who read the Daily Mail and people called Jeremy Clarkson".  Mr Farron suggested Mr Osborne's "disconcerting" rhetoric was tailored to appeal to restless right-wing Tories. He also warned that, if climate change is not tackled, it could lead to mass migration, loss of farmland, a run on the food markets and mass starvation. He said: "What's coming even sooner is the increasing price of fossil fuels, increasing cost to the economy, to business, and every other citizen, and an increasing reliance for those fossil fuels on countries that we probably can't rely on."  Last night, an alliance of countryside campaigners and green activists, in letters to The Observer, said Mr Osborne and the coalition were on course to become the "most environmentally destructive government" since the green movement was born.  Labour also accused Mr Cameron of abandoning his environmental credentials. Mr Miliband, who was climate change secretary in the Labour government, dismissed the PM's environmental policy as "nothing more than a temporary rebranding exercise" - but warned that the international community's approach to the issue was a greater concern. The Labour leader told The Independent on Sunday: "The progress we made at [the 2009 UN conference in] Copenhagen towards tackling climate change together is now in danger of stalling because too many governments are retreating behind short-term and short-sighted excuses. I fear the consequence of this will be a worse future for the generations that come after us."  Durban, the 17th annual Conference of the Parties (COP17) to be held since the United Nations' first co-ordinated attempt to grasp the nettle and bring down global temperatures, represents the best hope for rescue.  The 1997 Kyoto Protocol bound developed countries to cuts of about 5 per cent in global emissions by 2012, against 1990 levels. President George W Bush rejected Kyoto in 2001, saying it did not impose emissions limits on emerging industrialised nations, chiefly China and India. The targets expire at the end of next year; COP17 is the last chance for the world to renew commitments it agreed 14 years ago.  The failure to get a binding international agreement in Durban is underlined by continuing steep rises in annual global CO2 emissions - up 6 per cent, to 33.5bn tons, in 2010. Levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. Securing a commitment from major polluters such as China and India to sign up to a Kyoto II in the future - a move spearheaded by the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, and his EU colleagues - may be the best chance of salvaging any progress from Durban.  UK ministers will seek to demonstrate their commitment to the green cause with a series of announcements this week. Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will today pledge ?10m to reduce deforestation in Brazil, while Mr Huhne will pledge "very significant" funding, likely to run to hundreds of millions of pounds, to help african communities adapt to climate change, and use renewable energy.  But as he prepares to travel to South africa today the green credentials of Mr Huhne's own government are being questioned at home. The IoS revealed last month that the Prime Minister's decision to cut funding for household solar energy had sparked a revolt among business leaders, councils, environment campaigners and unions. His aide Steve Hilton, who suggested the husky trip, has told officials he is "not sure" he believes the climate-change theory. Mr Hilton has become a big fan of the former chancellor Nig  
 Popular science books range from complex theoretical texts to glossy coffee table tomes, but it's unusual to have an example from each end of the spectrum contributed by the same author. Brian Cox is the country's highest profile scientist thanks to his television appearances, but any novices coming to The Quantum Universe (allen Lane, ?20), co-written with Jeff Forshaw, are in for potential brain freeze. It's a well written account of contemporary quantum theory, but even without lots of explicit maths it's uncompromisingly highbrow and if you're looking to give it as a present, make sure that the recipient has some knowledge of modern physics already.  a more mainstream gift would be Cox's other book, Wonders of the Universe (Collins, ?20), co-written with andrew Cohen. a tie-in to his television series, it's a big, shiny hardback made with the same high production values; sumptuous, cinematic in scope, and often mind-blowing. Covering astronomy and cosmology, it works as both a companion to the series and as a good stand-alone introduction to its subject matter.  Even better looking is The Magic of Reality (Bantam, ?20) written by Richard Dawkins and illustrated by Dave McKean. Here, Dawkins takes time out from bothering religious types to do what he does best: writing lucidly and enthusiastically about science. The book is primarily aimed at teenagers, but plenty of adults will get a kick out of it too, as Dawkins asks, and then answers, big questions such as "What are things made of?" and "Why do bad things happen?". McKean's drawings bring the text to life brilliantly, and while the chapter on evolution - inevitably given his background - is the best, Dawkins writes convincingly about everything from chemistry to statistics.  Consensus these days is that earth and humanity are heading for hell in a handcart, but two of this year's finer books argue otherwise. The f  
 The BBC can be bashful about the place of Christianity in our national life: it recently sanctioned the substitution of the lovely terms Before Christ and anno Domini by the thumpingly prosaic and Welsh examination boardesque Before Common Era and Common Era. Yet Rev, one of its most successful sitcoms, is a little Pilgrim's Progress. Its star and co-writer, Tom Hollander, told me that he considered theming the series along the lines of the Ten Commandments, but it did not work structurally.  Instead, each episode is a self-contained morality play. Last week, the subject was charity. The Christmas programme will be about forgiveness. although the series was filmed long before the St Paul's protest, the characters and struggles of conscience were prescient. Many situations in life could end in the question: what would Jesus do? The fictional vicar examines the limits of his responsibility towards the oddballs and the rarely washed who pitch up at the vicarage - just as the clergy at St Pa  
 I was putting the rubbish out the other day. Beside the green bin and the grey one I had a half-broken plastic Batman tower that been discarded in a seasonal room-tidy. as I picked it up to put it in the bin a man sped by on a bike - it had to be a bike, of course - and shouted at me: "Citizen of Planet Earth, 2011!"  I was duly stung. I like to think I do my bit for the planet, sorting into the four recycling bins and taking the batteries and fluorescent tubes to the appropriate recycling centre. But to see ourselves as others see us ....  The same thing, writ large, has been true of the wider world at the climate change summit in Durban. Outside eyes have been turned upon the ponderous attempts by world leaders to find an international agreement on how to combat climate change. Local communites, meanwhile, have been more exercised by their efforts to attract Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May to choose their city to be home to the Top Gear festival for the next three years. There's the rub. We want to save the planet but we want the thrill of fast cars and their high-octane greenhouse gas emissions.  a jaded campaigner at the summit, Peg Putt of the Ecosystems Climate alliance, put it thus: "Countries want to turn up and say stuff that sounds all right when you skip across the surface of it, that plays well to an uninformed audience at home. But they're in no way going to take on vested interests or change direction to do anything real."  This is the real climate change conundrum. If the science is so convincing that humans are melting the ice, acidifying the oceans and making sea levels rise, why is everyone dragging their feet about doing something? and repeatedly so - remember the farce of the previous eco-summit at Copenhagen in 2009, when Hopenhagen slid into Hopelesshagen, disappointment and failure.  a chap named Geoffrey Beattie was bugged by the same question last year and wrote a book called Why aren't We Saving the Planet?. Beattie is not an environmentalist; he is professor of psychology at the University of Manchester. He concludes that we all have explicit and implicit attitudes to such matters, and that the two do not always coincide. Politicians are no different here. Because we are social creatures we do not want the opprobrium that would go with ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus. That's the explicit level. But we have deeper instincts, formed over time, so that we still see gas-guzzling cars as the status symbols they have been for decades, or red meat as a treat. "People cannot change their emotional valence that quickly," he says.  What the good prof has done is set up a series of experiments that focus, not on our words, but on our gestures or even eye movements as people in a supermarket pick up items which bear a carbon footprint information label. "Our eye-tracking methodology shows that people spend between five and seven seconds choosing a product," he says. "Choices are determined by implicit values. Products have an emotional impact on us."  There are psychological barriers at work. One is a straightforward lack of adequate information. We know that every time we switch on a light, get into a car or reach to a supermarket shelf we are casting an ecological vote of some kind. But most of us are confused about the relative merits or demerits of those choices.  another problem is that we live in skewed short-term time frames. That is clear on health. When Beattie asks his students why they smoke, the women most often say it is to keep their weight down. But there is also the youthful delusion of immortality; cancer will happen to an older self who is somehow not them.  Then there is the business of free riders. Some eco-practices, such as recycling, make us feel good about ourselves. But others make us feel bad about others. China, India and the US between them produce almost half of the world's annual carbon emissions. None of them is committed to the Kyoto protocol. So wh  
 Parents of lazy, badly behaved teenagers, take heart. When David Jones was 18, after a chequered school career, he found himself alone in a German college on the first ever European Union-sponsored business course. He had failed to get into a British university. Then the pampered eldest son of a Cheshire businessman had a moment of awakening: "It was incredibly tough listening to lectures in German, I didn't know anyone and it was difficult and expensive to phone home," he recalls. "It made me realise that I had been incredibly lucky, my parents had been amazing and I had been a complete shit."  The experience was his making. Chance led to an internship at an advertising agency which catapulted him into a meteoric career in the industry. Early this year he was appointed chief executive of the French-quoted Havas, which, although way behind giants such as Omnicom, WPP and Publicis, is one of the top six advertising and marketing groups in the world.  Fluent in French and German, Jones is the only British chief executive of a quoted French company, which makes a refreshing change from continentals running UK businesses.  at 45, in his dark, immaculate Paris-made suit and white shirt with matching pocket handkerchief, Jones not only looks like the ad man from central casting but is apparently living the dream. He and his well-connected French wife, Karine, have a house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with their four young children. When he is not in London, Paris or travelling elsewhere - more often than he would like - he makes his children breakfast before walking the two eldest to the Lyc?e Fran?ais a few blocks away. From there, it is a short journey to his office to begin his working day.  Jones has been in London to promote his book Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business is Better Business, about how nice companies do better than nasty ones. It is a not-terribly-original concept, slickly repackaged for the digital age, and published by Pearson, which is, of course, a "nice" company. Havas, too, is a nice company, tuned to the twin zeitgeists of conservation and good works. There is some pretty obvious advice in his book - which he wrote in 10 days - such as "be prepared", but it also makes some interesting points about increased transparency in a world where Facebook and Twitter can start revolutions and phone hacking can close newspapers.  as co-founder of the charity One Young World, which sponsors talented young people from all five continents to do great things, Jones was also hosting a "Young Leaders" question and answer session with Olympics supremo Lord Coe and London Mayor Boris Johnson. "I have always believed that we can use the power of creativity to effect positive change," he says. "In our business, we try to change people's views, attitudes and behaviour for commercial purposes, but you can also change people's behaviour about some of the big issues in our world." In 2009, Jones helped create Kofi annan's TckTckTck campaign on climate change; 18 million people signed up. although commendable, let's not pretend that all this do-goodery is ultimately about anything else than winning business - in essence the message of the book.  We meet in the St Pancras Grand restaurant, on the upper concourse of the wonderfully renovated London station. Jones is catching the Eurostar and needs to check in by 10am. For the next hour he barely pauses for breath. Relentlessly upbeat, he spatters his conversation with "amazing", "incredible" and "massively".  Jones is a Scorpio, something he imbues with importance. "Every boss I have ever had was a Scorpio," he says. His mother was an artist turned teacher, while his father ran the textile group Vantona until 1982, when Lord alliance merged it with Viyella to create Vantona Viyella. His father was ousted in the deal, a crisis that may have provided the psychological kicker to give Jones his drive later on. Having a brilliant elder sister, Zoe, may also have played a part - although, while growing up, rather than compete, he chose another route to gain attention. "I thought being bad was a better strategy," he says, laughing. He did, however, compete in sport. "I was a sports freak - rugby, tennis, cricket, athletics - we were a massively sporty family. My dad was captain of the county's first tennis team, and me and my brother played first couple."  His career path is a Who's Who of advertising agencies, starting with BDH (now BDH/ TBWa) in 1989 when he was still at the Reutlingen Fachhochschule in Germany. after two y  
 a British government decision to underwrite a billion-dollar loan to one of the world's biggest oil companies came under fire from environmentalists last night. Groups including WWF and Greenpeace accused ministers of reneging on a pledge not to support investment in "dirty fossil fuel".  The deal, which will see UK Export Finance guarantee a loan to the Brazilian oil firm Petrobras for deep-water oil drilling, is contrary to a government commitment that the department, which is headed by Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and the trade minister, Lord Green, would champion British firms involved in green technologies "instead of supporting investment in dirty fossil-fuel energy production".  Joss Garman, a Greenpeace energy campaigner, said: "Ministers explicitly ruled out using taxpayer's money to support dirty fossil-fuel projects in their coalition agreement. So it's brazen hypocrisy for them to be risking hundreds of millions of pounds of our money backing dangerous deep-sea oil drilling off Brazil's coastline when they should be supporting clean energy projects. It's yet another broken promise."  Petrobras was involved in 18 major oil and gas spills between 1975 and 2001, in which 141 people were killed and about 29 million barrels of oil spilled, according to Greenpeace Brazil. In 2001, the world's larg  
 Some sort of binding deal on climate change looked set to emerge from the Durban climate conference amid signs in the early hours of this morning that a new agreement could be reached by the 194 countries meeting in South africa.  The apparent breakthrough occured after the conference ran into protracted extra time which had, during the unscheduled Saturday sittings, seen some delegates leave. But the late initiative received overt backing from the notoriously recalcitrant United States. Details, however, had yet to emerge of the final text agreed after a 13-day conference that was extended by more than 24 hours.  In closing speeches to the Durban conference, delegates appeared to have agreed on key points including a second commitment to the Kyoto protocol, the establishment in 2015 of a legal agreement with a much broader scope, and a commitment to equity in the imposition of rules governing emission.  at 2.40am South african time, South african foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane called for a 10-minute "huddle" in which differences could be settled over a compromise phrase to cover the extent to which the agreement would be legally binding. Earlier in the night, the EU had led a range of delegates, including India, in impassioned speeches calling for a legally-binding agreement.  Breakthrough was then far from certain with sticking points that included an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact enforcing carbon cuts. Talks seemed then to have boiled down to a tussle between the US, which wants all polluters to be held to the same legal standard on emissions cuts, and China and India which want to ensure their fast-growing economies are not shackled.  But while Durban talked, and some delegates even left for more pressing engagements, the Earth moved on. Unfortunately, it was not in a good direction. In the past few days, Brazil's senate has voted to loosen controls considerably on deforestation; new studies have found that glaciers in three continents have been shrinking faster than previously thought; Holland has announced plans to ease protection for wildlife; and yesterday 10 of the world's leading conservation bodies issued fresh warnings about the accelerating degradation of the oceans and land habitats and about species loss.  among the new alarms raised are: demand for soy, palm oil and biofuels is threatening forests in Brazil, Borneo, Indonesia and across africa; the area of the planet covered by trees falling by 300 million hectares since 1990; oceans plundered by a fisheries industry subsidised to the tune of $27bn every year; a glacier in Chile shrinking by more than half a mile in 11 months; increased levels of carbon dioxide causing widespread acidification of the seas; an entire genus of mammal heading towards extinction for the first time in 75 years; oil exploration off Russia helping reduce the population of western grey whales down to 26 breeding females; and, among the plants endangered, Taxus contorta, a species of Himalayan yew used in the production of drugs for chemotherapy.  Many of the conservation bodies told The Independent on Sunday that these and other ongoing environmental calamities - some either contributors to, or sufferers from, climate change - are as serious as the failure to address global warming effectively. Bob Keefe, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defence Council, said: "Climate change is taking a toll on our planet - but so are we, in myriad ways. From digging up ancient boreal forests in Canada's tar sands to spilling oil in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to the constant introduction of chemicals into our lands and into our everyday lives, we're finding new ways to hurt our environment every day."  The veteran conservationist Tony Juniper said: "One consequence of the recent focus on carbon is that many see climate change as the only environmental challenge - but it is one of many. These include the loss of biological diversity, degradation of ecosystems, ocean acidification and the depletion of natural resources."  The same sense of clarity was not apparent in Durban. On Saturday afternoon, there were informal plenaries at which delegates expressed their grievances. But by then some participants had gone. Tosi Mpanu Mpanu said nine-tenths of african negotiators had left and questioned the legitimacy of any agreement reached after so many departures.  The European "roadmap" aims to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive beyond its deadline at the end of next year. But Kyoto's carbon constraints apply only to rich economies that have ratified it and do not reflect the emissions reality of China and India. In exchange for keeping Kyoto alive, nations at Durban would mandate talks for a new pact, due to be concluded in 2015, that would draw all major emitters into a single, legally binding framework.  But as they talked, the despoiling of the planet went about its usual damaging business, not least by deforestation. Marie Reynolds of Friends of the Earth said: "Soy farming and biofuel farming are two areas we have identified as key drivers of environmental destruction in the world right now. Massive swathes of forest are cut down in South america and South-east asia to make way for plantations for these industries - but lots of people in the UK still don't realise it's our lifestyles and high biofuel targets that are causing the problem." It now requires more than a million hectares of land to supply the UK's demand for soy.  Efforts to limit, or slow, the clearing of trees were dealt a blow last Tuesday when the Brazilian senate voted to loosen restrictions on deforestation in the amazon and give amnesty to those who illegally cleared land before July 2008. President Dilma Rousseff pledged during her campaign for the presidency last year to veto any portion of an environmental bill that provides amnesty for those who illegally cleared land in the past. But she now faces a tough battle dealing with a strong agriculture lobby.  about 20 per cent of the Brazilian rainforest already has been cut down, and Paulo adario, amazon campaign director at Greenpeace Brazil, described the proposed law as "a disaster for the amazon and all Brazilian forests". David Norman, director of campaigns at WWF-UK, said: "Deforestation rates continue to alarm, and the changes to legislation in Brazil passed last week will make matters worse. Irresponsible land use for commodities such as soy and palm oil is threatening hugely important areas such as the Cerrado in Brazil, the forests of Borneo and central africa." Friends of the Earth claims that if current trends continue, cattle ranchers and soy farmers alone will destroy 40 per cent of amazon rainforest by 2050.  Tropical deforestation is the second biggest cause of climate change, and its most palpable symptom is retreating glaciers. In the past few days, a study of 600 French alpine glaciers has shown they have lost 25 per cent of their area since the 1970s; a further repo  
 What is a right-minded liberal to make of Britain's sudden isolation in Europe? First, a confession. along with pro-European political leaders, and along with other pro-European newspapers, we may have been too forgiving of the naive and idealistic, and not forgiving enough of those who questioned the way in which the European elite pursued the goal of ever closer union.  The term Eurosceptic, for example, has not always been helpful. By corralling those who were opposed to any form of European co-operation with those who were properly sceptical of specific expressions of solidarity, we may have helped to limit open debate.  This applied in two areas in particular. One is democracy. It should have been more embarrassing to pro-Europeans than it was that the European Union's structures were so distant from the peoples in whose names decisions were made. This provoked two unsatisfactory responses: one was to strengthen the power of the European Parliament, which is all very well but still lacks general acceptance; the other was to hold or demand referendums, only occasionally an effective democratic device.  The other area in which the pro-Europeans failed was in the construction of the single European currency. Many economists pointed out that there were problems not only with the design of the euro but also with the way in which those design rules were ignored, but there was a tendency to brush such concerns aside. a currency union of Germany, France and the Benelux countries might have worked, but the rules were bent to allow other countries to join and then to allow them to stay.  The pro-Europeans were right to see that unity with Britain's neighbours was in our strategic interest, although they may have played down too many of the flaws in the EU. However, what happened in Brussels early on Friday morning was a different order of mistake. This was quite different, too, from the British demanding and securing an opt-out from something we did not like, as John Major did from the single currency at Maastricht. This was a fundamental test of European unity, and David Cameron was found wanting. Our Prime Minister, who is capable of being statesmanlike, chose to play the part of a party leader instead. He was finally overtaken by one of his early manoeuvres, promising to pull the Conservatives out of the main centre-right group in Europe in exchange for votes in the leadership election in 2005. Needless isolation from angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy was compounded by George Osborne joking about the French pre  
 With just six weeks' notice, the Government announced that it would be slashing the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) payments for solar panels by more than half. The cuts, which came into force last Monday, could threaten 25,000 jobs in the renewables industry but, as a homeowner, if you were thinking about improving your home's energy credentials, is it still worthwhile fitting solar panels?  "We knew and accepted that the current subsidy level of 43.3p for smaller domestic and commercial solar PV installations was coming to an end. What shocked us and the industry as a whole was the extent of the cut and the speed with which it is being implemented," says David Hunt, a director with energy company Eco Environments.  The FIT scheme has been understandably popular; you get cash payments as an incentive for having solar panels on your roof to generate your own energy. However, the Government has reduced these payments from 43.3p a kilowatt-hour to 21p (from next april) for any new installations registered after 12 December.  Those who already have solar panels in place get to keep the top rate for 25 years but, in the scramble to beat the deadline, many customers have been left unhappy after failing to get their installations completed in time. They will now earn less than half of what they had hoped from their investment.  Solar panels used to be a fairly easy sell with the more generous feed-in payments but the cuts are likely to put many people off.  "It used to take nine or 10 years for the systems to pay for themselves, and now that is increasing to around 17 or 18 years. On the old rate, you could make ?1,200 a year. But with the new rate, that drops to ?650 and the payments are only guaranteed for 25 years so you haven't got many more years to make a profit on it," says Sylvia Baron, a Which? energy expert.  There is no doubt there is now a big gulf between those with existing solar PV systems and anyone getting one installed today, but it is important to remember that these feed-in payments are still tax-free and inflation linked (to the retail prices index). also, because the electricity companies pay for all the energy generated, whether you use it or not, any excess electricity is exported back to the national grid for extra cash.  Rising fuel prices and lower installation costs going forward could mean that solar panels still offer a decent combined return and saving. The cost of having solar panels fitted has already fallen some way in the past 12 months, while electricity bills have continued on an upward spiral and in an industry that has had the rug pulled out from under its feet, there are bargains to be had.  "Considering the economic climate the prospect of a Government-backed, income-tax-free and index-linked investment return at above 5 per cent means that it is still very worthwhile to invest in solar energy," says Toby Ferenczi, a co-founder of energy company Engensa. "Prices have fallen so much that the returns are almost as good as they were when the scheme was first introduced last year."  One company, EvoEnergy, has now cut the price of its cheapest system by over ?3,000 so a 3.92kw system with 16 solar panels could be fitted for ?9,777. EvoEnergy say that a typical south-facing home could earn ?759 a year from the FIT and save ?219 on their annual electricity bill, equating to a 10 per cent return.  However, the sticking point could be that from next april, full payments will only be available to those with an energy performance certificate graded C or above. This essentially means you'll need loft and cavity-wall insulation, although the Energy Saving Trust says this makes sense as there is little point generating energy only to lose it through the roof and walls.  Even so, it may be that only very new homes qualify and everyone else could receive less than half of the reduced standard payments. The message, therefore, is to do your research, make the calculations, and if you're looking at this purely from an investment point of view, consider other options.  There are so-called "free solar" or "rent-a-roof" deals where you can get the panels fitted for nothing (and still benefit from energy bill savings) on the proviso that the supplier gets to keep the feed-in payments. Several companies, including British Gas and Eon, have already stopped taking on new applicants in light of the cuts but you can still get free financing with the likes of HomeSun, Isis Solar and Engensa. These deals are potentially more attractive now that you have less to lose in terms of feed-in payments and more to gain from rising energy prices.  "These might become slightly more competitive. Before we said don't go for a rent-a-roof scheme because you would lose out on a lot of money but that is not the case anymore. However, be careful about the contract; in the past we have seen a few problems in the terms and conditions to watch out for," says Ms Baron.  It is important to remember that you have to lease your roof for 25 years and any financial contract of this length is a serious undertaking so legal advice is a must.  Watch out for contra  
 Charging points for electric vehicles will be allowed on streets and in car parks without planning permission.  Ministers hope this will encourage thousands of points to be built, helping the faltering sale of electric cars. The Green party leader, Caroline Lucas, welcomed the move, but warned: "Ministers must take action as well to boost the renewable energy industry."  Mark Townsend 
 Britain's terminally ill should receive a new cash rebate brought in by energy companies for "vulnerable" customers because many cannot afford their fuel bills, ministers are being urged.  Leading health charities and doctors want all those dying of conditions such as cancer, heart problems, aids and motor neurone disease to qualify automatically for a ? 130 annual discount. They often have high gas and electricity bills because they are forced to stay at home during treatment, and most struggle to find the money because they are jobless.  Macmillan Cancer Support, the British Heart Foundation and representatives of people with other medical conditions have signed a joint statement which they hope will persuade the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, to make sure the terminally ill get the rebate.  Britain's six biggest energy suppliers will start giving annual rebates of ? 130 from april after the government told them to do more to help people in fuel poverty. The three-year scheme will cost an initial ? 250m.  Under the new Warm Home Discount a core group of vulnerable energy users, including older people receiving pension credits, will automatically receive the rebate. a second broader group, including families with young children, the disabled and those with a long-term condition, will have to apply for it.  In their joint statement the charities warn that people dying of cancer or other terminal conditions will lose out unless they are seen as core recipients. "More often than not the higher bills come at a time their household income drops because they are unable to work. Terminally ill people must be included  
 Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Howard Overman have all reminded us this year that great screenwriting doesn't have to be niche or worthy. So move over, Stephen Poliakoff, and welcome, Jack Thorne, a former Skins writer who last autumn shared credits with Shane Meadows on This Is England '86. The 32-year-old's first BBC series The Fades - an apocalyptic supernatural thriller about a geeky guy whose ability to see the dead holds the key to saving the world - is already creating industry buzz and will air later in the year; Thorne has also been commissioned to adapt Nick Hornby's a Long Way Down for the big screen. But first comes climate-change play Greenland, this month's groundbreaking National Theatre collaboration with Matt Charman, Moira Buffini and Penelope Skinner, and a national tour of his Edinburgh award-winning play Bunny. 
 No balance of power lasts forever. Just a century ago, London was the centre of the world. Britain bestrode the world like a colossus and only those with strong nerves (or weak judgment) dared challenge the Pax Britannica.  That, of course, is all history, but the Pax americana that has taken shape since 1989 is just as vulnerable to historical change. In the 1910s, the rising power and wealth of Germany and america splintered the Pax Britannica; in the 2010s, east asia will do the same to the Pax americana.  The 21st century will see technological change on an astonishing scale. It may even transform what it means to be human. But in the short term - the next 20 years - the world will still be dom  
 Providing sufficient food, water and energy to allow everyone to lead decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a means, not an end, but a necessary means. With 6.7 billion people on the planet, more than 50% living in large conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than 9 billion and 80% later in the century, returning to a world that relies on human and animal muscle power is not an option.  The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of importance, the rest comes from burning biomass and waste, h  
 When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now.  By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both.  Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports.  In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein.  The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject. In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from genetically modified crops. as climate change lays waste to the productive fields of southern Europe and north africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production.  The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the methods used to do so unappetising.  Jay Rayner  TV presenter and the Observer's food critic 
 Canada. Parry visits the village of Old Crow, just inside the arctic Circle and the Yukon's northernmost community. although the village has no road access, it is located on an ancient natural highway, and each spring almost 200,000 caribou (above) pass close by as they migrate north to their summer calving grounds. For the Gwich'in people the migration has formed a vital part of their existence for centuries, but global warming is affecting the rhythm of the migration and they fear that oil companies will soon invade the calving grounds. Next he heads to Northern alberta, where another native people tell how oil has changed their way of life for ever. Mike Bradley 
 HIGHLIGHT:?JaMES HOOPER: PULLED INTO THE VOID: They were fearless adventurers; the youngest Britons to climb Everest. But when Rob Gauntlett died in the alps aged 21, James Hooper found himself in debt, in mourning and struggling to find meaning in his life. Two years on, award-winning author David Vann - who knew both men personally - reveals their astonishing story: There was a distinctive crack, then I could feel the water, like knives everywhere: I think of James calling out in that cold darkness, stepping down into nothing   T  he arctic Ocean was close beneath them. a thin layer of ice, but they could believe it was the earth's crust, could believe this entire plain of white was land, attached to the coastal bluffs of Greenland, still very clear 20 miles away. Here, looking west, they could imagine the world a globe, a curve of white stretching on beyond horizons. and it seemed they should be able to travel easily, plan their route and fly along it, blown by  wind or even spirit alone. James Hooper and Rob Gauntlett were only 19 years old, fresh from summiting Everest, and their optimism, their exuberance, was a force of nature itself. But they were hitting obstacles now.  The dog sleds were falling through snow to fresh water below, puddles over the ice. This was something new for the Inuit hunters - the ice melting from above rather than from below. and when they fell through past their knees they could feel the ice flexing, bowing under their weight. So they turned around. They were heading north again, back to Savissivik, back to solid land, trying to outrun the melt.  It was a clear day, bright and blue. The only clouds off to the west, forming over open water, a break in the ice. Beside the sleds, a long thin crack, a floe of exposed water. James was on the first sled, Rob on the second, sitting sideways, back to back with Peter, an Inuit hunter who had shot off his own jaw trying to commit suicide. He had watched his brother killed by  a walrus; lost his wife and daughter, too.  The dogs were struggling in the slush, the sled going four or five miles an hour, hardly faster than a walk. The air was warm, about zero degrees, much warmer than the 40 below they'd had recently. Rob took off the outer layer of his three sets of gloves and then, after a minute or two, realised he had dropped one. They stopped the sled and Rob walked back along the track. He was up to his knees in snow and slush, but he made it back to the glove.  "There was a distinctive crack," Rob told me later. "and for a second I knew exactly what was happening. I remember thinking: 'Man, this actually isn't that bad', but then I could feel the water, like knives everywhere." With all his bulky clothing and the slush on top, the fall through was slow - slow enough for him to feel the water flood his clothing to his skin, but then he hit his head on the ice and lost consciousness. The current underneath was pulling at him, his clothing caught. He was dangling  at the roof of the world below.  Peter ran back for him but was 200m away. James saw the fall from the sled farther in front and ran immediately, too, but he was more than 300m away. It took him four minutes to cover that distance, struggling through all that snow. and when he arrived, exhausted, he found Peter trying to pull Rob out, but Peter just wasn't big enough. He was less than 5ft tall,  a small, thin man. James lay down on the ice and snow, bridging out with his legs and reaching for Rob's red parka. He managed to pull him out to the waist but then was stuck again, Rob's legs still in the water. So he slid farther forward and got hold of Rob's waist and pulled him the rest of the way out.  Rob was blue from the cold. The water below freezing, the air zero degrees. His pulse was faint, his breathing very light and shallow, and he was unconscious.  The hunter paired with James had arrived with their sled, so James grabbed a sleeping bag, a towel and some furs. He laid the furs beside Rob on the ice and took off all of Rob's wet clothing, dried him with the towel, and then put him in the sleeping bag. The hunters had built a tent over the sled and lit a camp stove inside the tent, so they set Rob in his sleeping bag inside and tried to get the tent as warm as possible. James hugged Rob to try to warm him up, but he was still just blue and cold.  One of the hunters took James's place at Rob's side and James used the satellite phone to call for a rescue helicopter. The pilot would call en route with more instructions, but for now James should prepare a small bag of their things to take on the helicopter and leave the rest of their stuff with the hunters.  It's an odd thing that tragedies so often become ordeals of housekeeping. James had to sort through all their stuff out there on the ice. They had provisions for several more weeks on the ice, the first leg of a year-long expedition (named "180 Degrees") from geomagnetic north pole to geomagnetic south pole by  dog sledding, sailing and cycling. The cycling alone would be 11,000 miles, from New York  to the tip of South america. But this kind of ordeal, of aftermath, was something James was destined to repeat. It would become, overwhelmingly, his future.  aT THE aGE OF 23, James Hooper has already had fame and seen it slip away into nothing. at 19, he and Rob Gauntlett had been the youngest Britons to summit Everest, the culmination of years of training. Then they embarked on "180 Degrees", intending to inspire youth and call attention to climate change. They succeeded, despite all the risks and problems, and their website had 10m hits. They were on weekly television in the UK and interviewed in many other countries. I profiled them for National Geographic adventure's "adventurers of the Year" in November 2008. They became Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society. National Geographic was interested in a film, and I was going to write the book.  Then Rob died in January 2009, climbing in the alps. He was eulogised by David Beckham and many others, and the book and film were still going to happen. James was even more motivated to tell Rob's story and make sure he wasn't forgotten. He wanted to spread his message about inspiring youth. But then  everything just kind of faded away.  It's difficult to describe how nothing happens and how a life, once large, slips into despondency so quickly. James was left with ? 90,000 in debt from "180 Degrees". He had this ferocious determination to pay it back, but the movie deal didn't quite happen. The book deal didn't happen, either. My UK publisher, Viking/Penguin, had already signed another adventure book, and  I didn't want to switch publishers, so that was just bad luck. a dead end. James tried to give talks as a motivational speaker - something he and Rob had done to fund "180 Degrees" - visiting schools and corporations, but nothing much came of that. He was forced to take a low-paying desk job in London, and a friend lent him a place to stay, but it was lonely and empty. James was devastated by the loss of  Rob, and as everything else turned into nothing, he quickly became despondent.  In the autumn of 2010 he left for university in South Korea, a place that pays him to study there (it is trying to attract foreign students), because that's the only way he can afford university. But I don't think money is the only reason he's moved to the other side of the world. He's desperate to find a new life.  FIVE YEaRS aGO, James was dangling mid-air on a rope, waiting to fall. Rob was below him, dangling at the other end of the rope. The two of them slowly twirling over 60ft of air and then rocks - the sea cliffs at Swanage. all the small bits of climbing gear that anchored them to the overhanging cliff above had ripped out, one by one, and only one piece was left, a temporary piece, something not meant to hold for long. They expected to die.  It must be an intimate moment with another human being, to be tied together literally as you're about to plunge. This is how Rob died later in the alps with another friend, plummeting down snow and ice and rock. I think it's difficult for most of us to understand the weight of the friendship between James and Rob and what it means to lose this friendship.  Rob and James met during their first autumn at Christ's Hospital school in West Sussex at the age of 11, scheming together, their first project a letter-writing campaign to chocolate manufacturers complaining about "strange objects" such as small pieces of wood or rotten apples found in their chocolate bars.  It was a welcome friendship for James, who was homesick. He and Rob shared a study, and Rob got on well with everyone, always sociable, but James wasn't as popular. Kids sat on his bed to use his roommate's PlayStation, so he was often telling people to get out. after one of these tirades, Rob opened cod-liver oil capsules all over James's pillow. When James lay down to sleep, he retched from the smell then ran out the door with his pillow to throw it away, everyone laughing. He found out eventually that it was Rob, and he resented this prank deeply.  It didn't feel like a prank. It felt like betrayal. He didn't have a pillow for several weeks.  Rob did something worse at the start of their third year. James had a cuddly toy named Bryn, which means "hill" in Welsh. James wasn't Welsh, but he'd lived there for most of his childhood. The kids teased him mercilessly. They'd put on a fake Welsh accent and say: "Hello, I'm from Wales. I like shagging sheep." This toy named Bryn was a little brown sheep, and Rob stole it and locked it in a tool box they used to store sweets. They were 13 years old, but Bryn was important to James - a bit of home. So he tore into this tool box, managed to get one end open and scraped up his forearms rescuing Bryn. By now he didn't consider Rob such  a good friend. The two were falling out - and then Rob played another mean trick.  James liked a girl named Pandora and sat next to her in class, so Rob wrote on the front of James's homework notebook: "I love Pandora." When James pulled the book out, he saw this right away and had to hide it, had to tell his teacher he hadn't done his homework and got into trouble for it.  and so Rob and James didn't become friends again until two years later, through the cycle-touring club. Rob enlisted James's help  to play a prank on another friend, hoisting  a bike into a tree, out of reach. Everyone laughed, and Rob gradually started to become friends again with James. Rob was a great friend to have but a terrible friend to lose.  IT WaS ON a CYCLING trip to the Lake  District that Rob and James came up with the idea for Everest. It was 29 May 2003, the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest. They decided they would do it.  In each episode of their adventures together, though, it was Rob leading and James, pushed to the edge, often having to save them.  The climbing route at the sea cliffs of Swanage, for instance, had been Rob's idea. James had wanted an easier route. He was hungry for lunch. But he didn't protest.  James found himself dangling higher than Rob, closer to the rock. His legs were shaking so badly he couldn't do anything at first, but then he got his head together and managed to calm down a bit and pull himself up carefully to where he could place another cam into the rock. It wasn't a good placement, and might just fail, but he moved on and placed another and another. He saved their lives.  Rob came very close to death many times, and I think part of James's despondency now comes from having saved Rob so many times, only to lose him in the end. The worst was when Rob fell through the ice in Greenland. But even before that, on their first expedition together at the age of 16, cycling in Norway in November in ice and snow, Rob fell over in the middle of the road and a truck skidded for 100m and came to a stop just short of him.  James was often terrified during their adventures. Their first climb in snow and ice took place where Rob would eventually die, in Chamonix. Early one morning, they took the aiguille du Midi cable car to an unbelievable station perched high in jagged pinnacles. They arrived in a warren of tunnels carved into the rock, crossed an unlikely bridge between two outcrops, the mountainside falling away beneath, and finally passed through another tunnel  into an icy chamber with a door at the far end. The door opened on to the ridge, just like that. a doorway into another realm.  Rob was the first out, roped to James and then their guide, Jean-Marie. as James waited his turn, he was cold and having trouble breathing the thin air. Perhaps he was already starting to panic a little. and when he stepped out on to that snowy, rocky ridge, he felt instantly the exposure, both sides dropping away into vacuum, the ridge itself falling away steeply in front of him. He shouted at Rob, because Rob was moving too fast. James felt almost pulled off his feet by the rope, and this struck him quickly as a kind of metaphor for their friendship. He was at his limit here. It was a stunning day, very little wind, bright sun in a pale blue sky, and this removed some of the menace, but not all. James felt the beginnings of vertigo, of being pulled into the void.  But he kept moving, kept picking his way down that ridge, trying to keep up with Rob, and somehow they made it to the bottom, to the glacier. Then they trudged through heavy, deep snow and climbed up to another ridge. and here the exposure was even worse than before. The drop to the left, down to Chamonix, was severe: vertical for a long way. James felt overwhelmed by fear. He couldn't understand why he would want to be doing this. He wanted to be anywhere else at that moment.  as they stepped along the rocky outcrops, James tried to focus on his breathing and not look down towards Chamonix. and after a while he came to a kind of dull resignation which was better than fear, not as debilitating. He could see more clearly and move more  easily. If he wanted to achieve his goals he'd just have to get on with it. "I'm here now," he told himself. "Just deal with it. Keep moving."  By the end of the day, after stepping across abyss after abyss and clinging to tiny ledges, James was moving naturally. He and Rob both felt an intense exhilaration, nothing less than elation. They felt they could achieve anything.  So the next morning they headed up to argentiere, without a guide. They'd do a little climbing on their own.  It was a bright, sunny day. Much of the snow had melted, so the ice cliffs were clearly  visible. "I want to do some lead climbs today," Rob said. "a few vertical sections. a challenge." It seemed too soon to James. He didn't like this. They had almost no experience, after all, but Rob seemed determined.  They put on their crampons and other equipment at the base, then Rob started climbing. They had only four ice screws, so he had to make abalakovs. He bored into the ice at an angle with a screw, then bored again at another angle so that the two holes met at the back. Then he passed a small bit of cord through. Done correctly, this made a strong anchor point. The risk, of course, was in going too shallow or too close together or creating cracks, any of which could make the entire thing rip out under pressure.  all of Rob's anchor points held, though. He was good at this. He worked his way up the cliff and took on some of the vertical sections, hanging from his ice axes, driving his boot tips in and pushing out away from the face, using good technique and feeling no fear.  James was amazed. Rob was tremendously talented. They kept climbing through the long, perfect day, and the only problems they faced came from James following some of the more difficult vertical sections.  They were having such a perfect day that they weren't thinking about time. They started a new route late, and as they rose on the cliff the light was disappearing. By the time they reached the top it was very nearly dark.  They had made a mistake now. They knew that. There wasn't much to say. "I guess we just go down," James said. It would take them quite a while. They'd be finishing the descent in utter darkness. Neither of them had a headlamp or any other kind of light. There were no other climbers left in the area. Everyone had gone home. and descents are always more dangerous than climbs, trying to work your way back down, unable to see what's coming.  So they did the only thing they could do. They started climbing down, going carefully but trying to make it as quickly as possible. Before they were all the way down, it became pitch black. They couldn't see a thing. They called out to each other in that darkness, shouting encouragement, each letting the other know what he was doing next, t  
 The old Inuktun word for February is hiqinnaaq - the time when the sun reappears. In this part of Greenland, the sun rises above the horizon again on 17 February, finally bringing to an end the kapirdaq (the dark period) which lasts for three and a half months.  There has been much discussion in Greenland and elsewhere about the first sunrise this year in Ilulissat, down the coast. For the first time in living memory, the sun rose above the horizon two days early - a phenomenon that has baffled Greenlanders and scientists.  Currently, some believe that the most plausible explanation is, as you might expect, global warming. It is thought that the Greenland ice sheet and the glaciers surrounding the town are melting so rapidly that it is now possible to see a lower part of the horizon that was previously hidden by the ice. Recent data shows that the ice sheet melted at a record rate in 2010. If the entire body of ice were one day to melt, global sea levels would rise by more than seven metres, putting many major cities around the world under water.  Both November and December were unusually mild in this part of Greenland with the temperature often at least 10 degrees warmer than the 1961-1990 historical average for the region. On a number of days throughout the Christmas period, it was colder in parts of the UK than it was here.  The sea ice is still quite thin in places, which has meant that starving polar bears are now coming close to the town, looking for food at the rubbish dump only a quarter of a mile from my home. Unless you want to be the subject of much gossip, it is now not advised to leave the settlement on foot without a rifle.  as with so much in the arctic, the climate is a paradox: you wait for months for the sun to come back and when it does it is the coldest part of the year. February, March and april can be significantly colder than the dark months.  Before I came to the High arctic, I was told about an orange tinge on the horizon that would provide some light in the darkest months. With the odd exception of a smidge of transient light, the occasional spangled sky with shooting stars or the glow cast by Venus sitting like a light bulb in the western horizon, it has been predominantly overcast and the darkness has been monochromatic and at times intoxicating.  I have been using this dark period to work intensively with the elders, documenting what I can of the local language and culture. One elderly informant told me on our first meeting and in a matter-of-fact manner: "In the old days, there was not much need for language."  They lived in an experiential world where language was used to communicate basic facts and intentions, but she insists that nothing was ever discussed and that abstraction was alien. Whispering implausible palindromes over black coffee in my hut, she tells me that her strongest recollection of her childhood is the silence. Hunters would have been away for days or weeks at a time, living a short, semi-nomadic life and having relatively little contact with their children. Until the early 1950s, life expectancy for Greenlanders was no more than 35 and to this day a child's six-month birthday is still cause for a major celebration in the town. according to my informants, it was only with the subsequent introduction of the radio and schooling that people learned to discuss and debate things.  There was, however, a strong tradition of storytelling and indigenous beliefs would have been passed down through this. Writing down this body of material in the unwritten local language is highly problematic. Many of the younger people do not have the same phonemic inventory as the older generations and the initial question might be which language is it that you wish to commit to writing, before you even begin to tackle the question of how you write sounds which impressionisticallyare not dissimilar to the sound of the garrulouswind blowing down the chimney of my oil heater.  In certain key areas, such as the weather and family, Inuktun terminology is particularly rich. There are no more than half a dozen families in Qaanaaq and the kinship ties in this small, highly networked community are enforced, and you might say even exaggerated, through the use of a micro-system of kinship terms whereby first cousins of the opposite sex refer to each other as "younger brother, older sister" etc, and male second cousins once removed are called "paternal or maternal uncles".  Rockwell Kent, the american artist and writer who spent some time in Greenland, describes this country in his 1930 book, N by E, as "closed" and thinks the objective of Danish colonisation was to preserve a country for the enjoyment of its own people.  at the beginning of the 21st century, the status and position of Greenland in our consciousness is surely about to change significantly. The self-rule government is bent on exploiting the country's largely untapped mineral wealth and using this revenue as a basis for a strong economy, enabling the Greenlanders to gain independence from Denmark. Greenland is currently dependent on an annual subsidy from Denmark worth nearly $600m, but the intention is to gradually phase it out.  The drilling for oil off the west coast of Greenland and the potential environmental hazards were much discussed last summer, but now large-scale mining projects dotted around the rocky coastline are being considered for iron, gold, nickel, platinum and diamonds, to name but a few. With a relatively uneducated and tiny workforce, it is inevitable that Greenland will require thousands of foreign workers to explore and mine these resources - a prospect that concerns many people here in the north because they think their previously "closed" country, with a population of just over 50,000, will be rapidly overwhelmed by people from different cultures.  Iron deposits have been found in Inglefield Land, which is only 70 miles north of Qaanaaq. Some speculate as to whether in years to come a mine will be in operation there run by a multinational, employing foreign workers and  
 M  artha Lane Fox remembers the first time she heard about the internet. She was in her final year of university and a friend called Toby, whose gap year in Japan had left him technically savvy, had a new gadget. "He showed me this weird little device and said he was sending an email over the internet and I had no idea what that meant," laughs Fox.  Even when Fox was building what was later to become the dotcom boom's flagship success, lastminute.com, her biggest struggle was convincing hotel chains and tour operators that the internet could be the future of business. "The majority of them just didn't believe it was going to survive."  Having proved them wrong and made  millions in the process, Fox is turning her attention to the internet as a societal tool. Two years ago, she was asked to become the UK's "digital inclusion champion" ("which has an unfortunate acronym," she grins) and find ways of helping the most disadvantaged in society through technology. Naturally, she set her sights even higher. "Rather than  looking at individual projects and trying to replicate them I thought, screw that, we have a real opportunity, right now, to help get as many people online as possible. Because  a networked nation, with everybody knowing how they can get on to the internet, could really change the dynamics of the country."  Fox's aim is to reach the 9.2m people in the UK who have never used the internet, almost half of whom are among the country's lowest-income households.  "  
 conomist ann Pettifor puts her success down to being an outsider.  "I was born in South africa - I'm african - so was very interested in why african countries built up such large sovereign debts after the 1970s." This not only provided the impetus for her groundbreaking campaign Jubilee 2000, which resulted in the cancellation of $100bn of debt owed by more than 35 countries, but also led to her spotting the looming credit crunch. When she became director of international finance at the New Economics Foundation in 2001, she arrived worrying about the debts of poor countries, but then was shocked at rising debt levels in the west.  "I was like the boy in the Emperor's New Clothes," she says. "I hadn't been immersed in neo-liberal economics so I looked at the situation with fresh eyes." Pettifor edited a book accurately predicting the credit crunch in 2003 and wrote another in 2006, detailing the extent of the problems with the current global financial architecture, so you'd think economists and bankers might sit up and listen now - but her approach is still at odds with the mainstream. "Bankers tell us that for government to find the resources to deal with climate change, private bankers must be paid high rates of interest. That need not be so. The question is, how do we exercise control over our monetary system?"  She says that what she wants to contribute is Keynes's great insight - "that we can afford what we can do" - and that quantitative easing has shown that the banks can create money out of thin air. "Billions were conjured by Mervyn King to bail out the financial  system, now we need to use the banking  system to make things happen for the ecosystem. Saying we can't afford to deal with climate change is like saying we can't afford to survive. We have the highest youth unemployment in history. How foolish to suggest we can't afford to use the energy, talents and skills of young people to tackle climate change." 
 T  otnes is an ancient market town on the mouth of the river Dart in Devon. It has the well-  preserved shell of a motte-and-bailey castle, an Elizabethan butterwalk and a steep high street featuring many charming gift shops. all of which makes it catnip to tourists. a person might initially be lulled into the belief that this was somewhere with as much cultural punch as, say, Winchester.  But bubbling below the surface is a subversive hub of alternative living, a legacy of the radical goings-on from Dartington Hall, just down the road, where Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst's vision of a rural utopia gathered steam in the 1920s. Indeed, there are more new age "characters" than you can shake a rain stick at, more alternative-therapy practitioners per square inch than anywhere else in the UK and the town was once named "capital of new age chic" by Time magazine.  My family moved here when I was 10. a child of relentlessly suburban mindset, I found the town's granola outlook unsettling. I balked at the indigenous footwear worn by Totnesians - multicoloured pieces of hand-stitched leather called "conkers" - and longed for a world where it was not atypical to own a TV and talk about Dallas rather than nuclear disarmament. My fear growing up in this neck of the woods was that people would continue to get even weirder. So it was probably just as well that I had left when Rob Hopkins arrived in 2005 and let loose the Great Unleashing, aka the launch of Transition Town Totnes (TTT).  Six years on, the Transition initiative, which attempts to provide a blueprint for communities to enable them to make the change from a life dependent on oil to one that functions without, seems to me one of the most viable and sensible plans we have for modern society. I write this on the day it is announced that the UK economy shrank by a "shock" 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010. Everyone is blaming the weather. Hopkins isn't. Neither is he particularly shocked.  "I think the unravelling of the debt bubble has only really started," he says. "Up until 2008 it was all about a growing economy and cheap energy. Then we had expensive energy plus economic growth, then we had cheap energy and economic contraction. So the next phase is volatile energy and economic contraction. It's not rocket science."  HOPKINS WaS IN KINSaLE, Ireland, working as  a teacher of permaculture - a sustainable, design-based horticultural technique where growing systems mimic the ecology of the natural world - and establishing an eco village, when he attended a lecture on "peak oil" in 2004. It was his Damascene moment. according to theorists such as Richard Heinberg, whose tome The Party's Over charts life without oil, we have passed the point at which oil supplies peak (that was back in May 2005). From there on in oil production declines and we attempt ever more audacious land grabs to get it. But oil remains the lifeblood of our economy and lifestyle. What happens when the oil runs out or is disrupted? In 2000 UK truck drivers brought the UK's food chain to its knees by blockading oil terminals. at the height of the protest the UK was 72 hours away from running out of food. If there were scant emergency measures in place, there was absolutely no vision of a life after oil.  Hopkins began to see how dependent he was on his car, to ferry his kids around and get to work. as a constructive response he began to develop an Energy Descent action Plan for Kinsale with his students. They looked for historical examples of when the area had been more robust, more resilient to shock changes, such as when it had possessed a more localised food system. The plan split life up into categories - energy, food, transport, homes - all of which had their own solutions.  Critically, it dealt with practical considerations - for example, how much well-managed woodland would it take to heat  a town? Central to the whole plan was the idea that permaculture gardening could be scaled up to bring food resilience to town centres. It offered Plan B, because Plan a was doomed to failure.  In search of a town big enough for the plan to have a wider effect, Hopkins moved back to Totnes, with its population of 23,000, with his wife Emma and their four children, and he worked on a version of the Energy Descent action Plan with local resident Naresh Giangrande. "after I'd been involved in Kinsale I wanted to live somewhere where there were examples of a more resilient community already up and running, pieces of the jigsaw such as a good local food system, so that people could envisage how we could develop a community."  Ben Brangwyn, a relatively recent arrival to Totnes who was to become co-founder of the Transition Network was sold as soon as he heard Hopkins giving a lecture. "It was pretty clear to me, having studied re-localistion efforts around the world, that what Rob and his students had developed in Kinsale was pretty much the smartest bottom-up  response to climate change and peak oil that we had seen," says Brangwyn. He wasn't the only person that thought so. Word that there was a man with an actual plan had spread fast and Hopkins was deluged by interest from all over the world. It was clear his ideas needed to be worked up into a more formal movement. "The leap of brilliance in the energy plan was the idea that you can segregate responses to these pressures into energy, food, education, use of transport, local economics, etc," explains Brangwyn. "That's one of  the secrets of transition: anybody who has a passion can find a place."  "IT'S NOT MY MOVEMENT," Hopkins explains, clearly uncomfortable at being portrayed as the face of the Transition Towns movement. "We're not Coca-Cola, we don't send out a franchise model. It's up to individual communities to interpret Transition however it works best."  The Transition movement works on the basis that if we wait for government to act on issues such as climate change we'll be waiting until hell freezes over; and if we only act as individuals, that's too little. So it's working together as communities where the real change will happen. In offices on that steep high street, squeezed between the pet shop and a travel agency, Transition Town Totnes was formed, swiftly followed by the Transition  Network, to support the growth of the movement outside Totnes.  There are now more than 350 Transition movements, 200 of them in the UK. Last month the first australian region, Sunshine Coast, became an official Transition Town. Hundreds more communities  are mulling over the idea of embracing Transition (they are known as mullers). While there has been some debate among greens as to whether Transitioners are right to put so much emphasis on peak oil, and whether climate change should really be the main driver for change,  it is clear that the strategy laid out in the latest Energy Descent action Plan  is one that will protect communities in the event of both oil shocks and climate change (and possibly economic shocks, too). It certainly beats stockpiling  tinned food and buying a firearm.  as I leaf through the neat action plan, it brings order to apocalyptic scenarios and creates a vision of how Transition Town Totnes could be in 2030. Some strategies are niche, but some strategies are the stuff of market-town revolution. George Heath ran a flourishing market garden in the 1920s; his son inherited the business, opening a shop on the high street to sell the local, fresh produce. Today David Heath, his grandson, shows me the site of the market garden and large urban greenhouse in the centre of town. Since 1981 it's functioned as one of the town's main car parks. The Transition plan is to convert it back to a market garden by 2030. How close is the town to realising its alternative narrative?  "We did have a German visitor who was very disappointed," says Brangwyn, "because there were still cars in the town and there were no goats on the roof." Totnes hosts an increasing number of Transition pilgrims who want to see what's going on, and, says Brangwyn, "People have different expectations. We're not going to make big visual changes overnight. Transition is ground up, it's about people doing the work for themselves. So the culture has to change first.'  I look for visual signs of change regardless. Walking through town, the most obvious is the 74 photovoltaic panels on the roof of the civic hall. I wander down an alleyway in the centre of town to observe some gardens belonging to householders who were previously too busy or lacking the green fingers to make them productive. They are now little engines of town-centre production, part of the Transition Network's garden-share scheme run by Lou Brown.  "I began the project because I spent a long time in rented accommodation wandering around the town with my  husband, coveting bits of garden," says Brown. "We have up  to 30 gardeners across 16 gardens producing a lot of food.  a quarter to a fifth generally goes to the garden owner. Kale, flowers, beetroot, you name it, it gets grown. Obviously this is great for developing local food resistance, particularly because we have a shortage of allotments in Totnes and  a big waiting list. The allotment society is trying to find  new land all the time, and the garden share is like a seedbed for some growers while they are waiting."  I find resident Steve Paul delighted with his ten 1.85 kW photovoltaic panels, bought through Transition's Street Scheme. "I've already avoided 0.55lb of carbon this morning," he says, checking the monitor. One notable aspect of Transition Town Totnes is that you find renewables on perfectly normal housing. Last year the Transition Street Programme was one of 20 projects to win funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It invited streets to get together to change  behaviour, improve energy efficiency and then to install renewable energy systems. What's more it provided  quantifiable data: more than 500 households became part of the scheme, 70% were households on a limited income, and every household cut their carbon by an average of 1.2 tonnes, saving  pounds 600 a year.  Not everything has gone as swimmingly. a local currency is central to the Transition plan. "Think of a leaky bucket," explains Brangwyn. "any time we spend money with a business that's got more links outside the community than in it, we leak money from the local economy. What local  currency does is allow that wealth to bounce around in that bucket. We've barely touched the surface of systems that will benefit the local economy. We don't just need our own ? note but a credit union, electronic means of transaction,  a time bank." and although you can detect a certain fondness for the Totnes ? note on the local high street, it hasn't been as successful as Transition currency in Lewes, Brixton and Stroud. There's still work to be done.  But Hopkins reckons TTT is still ahead of schedule. "When I wrote The Transition Handbook (published in 2008) I was working up to the Energy Descent Plan, a sort of blueprint for the development of any community. But we did that in Totnes a year ago. So strictly speaking we've finished and we can pack up and go home feeling good about ourselves. But that was just the beginning. The aim of Transition is to try to relocalise the economy where it's happening, and be a catalyst for that process of intentional relocalisation."  There is a fine line between making residents aware of initiatives such as the Transition Street Project and haranguing them until they sign up. Transitioners seem of the opinion that the latter would be fruitless; the drive needs to come from the community to join up. So at the moment it is perfectly possible to visit Totnes and not be aware it's a Transition Town at all. But that will inevitably change. Local councillors already report that when they introduce themselves at national conferences and say "from Totnes", other delegates comment, "ah, Transition Town Totnes." Word is spreading.  Hopkins is keen to stress that this is very different to David Cameron's interpretation of localism, devolving power from central government. "It doesn't mean putting a big fence up around Totnes and not letting anything in or out. It doesn't mean Totnes will be making its own laptops and frying pans. But it means in terms of food, building materials, a lot more of that can be done locally. Which in turn makes the place much more resilient to shocks from the outside."  and funnily enough Transition principles seem to appeal to politicians. as the Guardian journalist Madeleine Bunting put it, in May 2009: "If you want to catch a glimpse of the kinds of places outside the political mainstream where that new politics might be incubated, take a look at the Transition movement. Ed Miliband. . . was one of the first to spot its potential. . . and last year The Transition Handbook came fifth in  
 as we've heard repeatedly over the past  couple of years, the bees are disappearing, which, since they pollinate around 16% of the world's flowering plants, can only be bad news. But here's the good news. One of the simplest and most effective measures to speed their return - alongside restrictions on pesticides and better commercial beekeeping techniques - could also be the most attractive.  around 1.3m hectares of wildflowers and hedgerow have been lost in the industrialisation of British agriculture, and 3m acres of wildflower meadows have gone since 1945, causing both birds and bees to struggle to find enough to eat. But Landlife, the charity which established the UK's first wildflower centre in Merseyside in 2000, has been creating new habitats in derelict industrial spaces - sowing wildflower meadows among brick rubble and crushed concrete - and has since found both bees and birds thriving there. "We now have fields where we can count eight different types of bumblebee per square metre," says Richard Scott, senior project manager. "That's 80,000 bees per hectare, so you can really hear it."  It's a far less costly method of treating wasteland than topsoil and grass, which offers very little for wildlife, and a beneficial side-effect has been a decrease in antisocial behaviour in areas where they plant. Landlife believes a concerted effort to replicate these projects in every town and city could create a huge matrix of bee habitats nationwide. "Very often these solutions are overlooked," says Scott, "but in almost every case, in the places where we sow, people are demanding more." 
 Through the co-ordinated efforts of government and public action, wartime Britain achieved feats that would be considered extraordinary today. In just six years, British homes cut their coal use by 25% (a total of 11m tonnes) and their use of personal motor vehicles by 95% (public transport use increased by 13%). So could some Blitz spirit be the answer to climate change? Green MP Caroline Lucas thinks so, and has launched the New Home Front, a project that aims to learn the lessons of World War II-era Britain and apply them to the new global crisis. Think of how relevant some of those wartime posters sound today: "Is your journey really necessary?"  Lucas is collating ideas from those who lived through the war on ways the country can face the new realities of changing climate - whether that's growing our own food, eating seasonally and locally, or creating a new national bank. "If we are to overcome the  climate crisis," says Lucas, "we must move on to the equivalent of a war-footing, where the efforts of individuals, organisations, and  government are harnessed together - and directed to a common goal."  To join the New Home Front, visit newhomefront.org 
 Part of the long, historical struggle for better quality of life has been the fight for a shorter working week. But recession-hit Britain is scarred by cultures of overwork and high unemployment. While some don't have enough, others are caught on the consumer treadmill, working crazy hours to buy things that they don't need, that won't make them happy and that the planet can't afford.  When the recession hit Utah, in the US, and the municipality put its workers on a four-day week out of necessity, they were amazed by the results. absentee rates went down, staff morale went up and carbon emissions dropped by 14%. Could it work here? andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation, suggests that a flexible, non-compulsory new norm of a 21-hour week would give us back the time for the greener, more engaged lives that so many people want.  "We'd save money by being able to do more things for ourselves," says Simms, "and with more people around to care for each other and help each other out it would take the pressure off public services and reduce the stress of retirement." He adds that innovations in home ownership and finance could remove the obstacle many face of high mortgage payments. "a voluntary shorter week could create time to be better friends and citizens, and do things that really raise our wellbeing."  For more ideas, read andrew Simms's Eminent  Corporations: the Rise and Fall of the Great British Corporation (Constable, ? 8.99) 
 When we entrust our cash to traditional financial institutions, we tend to wonder how secure they are, rather than what we're investing in. But, argues Jeremy Leggett, founder of SolarCentury, the short-termism of the current banking system is worsening the coming energy and climate crises. "asset managers are investing people's pensions and insurance premiums much more in coal and gas than in renewables," says Leggett. "The giants of finance are allowed to place no value on  a survivable future, and they act accordingly: in a suicidal manner, deploying our money as they go blindly about their bonus building."  But there is an alternative: people power. Community-energy companies are being formed that make use of the feed-in tariffs introduced by the government to accelerate deployment of renewables. Ecotricity, a wind power company, has raised a ? 10m bond from small investors and Zopa.com has pioneered peer-to-peer lending that takes banks out of the equation. Birmingham city council said it intends to raise bonds for financing energy efficiency and solar power on the ? 100m-plus scale.  all these activities repay investors at rates of return better than high-street banks can offer. If the financing of clean-energy companies can be taken to a larger scale, it could have a material impact on the nation's energy choices.  and if you have a pension, you already have a voice, and a choice about where your money goes. Why not investigate what your pension is invested in?  To find out how to make your power as a pension holder count, visit gobeyondoil.org 
 Vivian Blick - who was one of the team for the revolutionary wind-up radio Freeplay, invented by Trevor Baylis - has a thing about renewable energy devices: his latest, the H2O shower radio (? 34.99, tangogroup.net) harnesses the flow of water in your shower. "The British public loves two things: a shower and a radio," Blick, 48, says confidently. "They want these two things together. Hundreds of thousands of shower radios are sold each year, but the batteries corrode - and although these radios could be salvaged, more than half are chucked into landfill." He wondered why we shower-radio obsessives didn't just use the energy from the flowing water to power our devices. He built a crude prototype, spending two years to get a shower-friendly shape.  But hang on a minute - one of the first rules of eco living is that showers should be brief, thus saving water and the electricity required to heat the water and pump it through the system. Doesn't a radio encourage people to spend eons in the shower? "Exactly," says Blick. "Which is why my second prototype incorporated a shower timer that fits in line with the shower head."  The third - ready next year - will be the energy-saving model. Not only will it harness the flow of the water to power the device, but it incorporates a small LCD screen that tells you in cold, hard currency how much you are spending on your shower. This, he has found, tends to be motivating, even for hot-water addicts. "I just love the idea of grabbing something for free," says Blick, "whether it be solar or wind-up. and I hate planned obsolescence in consumer goods. My message is to get yourself an H2O-powered radio and keep it forever."  PHOTOGRaPH aNDY HaLL 
 Once Jeremy Hunt has finished waving through Rupert Murdoch's competition-shredding BSkyB takeover, our highly ambitious culture secretary should turn his attention to betting.  Betfair, a British success story which has grown from a standing start in 1999 to become one of the world's largest online sports betting providers, has become the latest in a stream of bookmakers to go offshore. The company, which takes six million bets a day, is getting a Gibraltar betting licence to avoid Britain's 15% tax on betting profits - a likely saving of ? 18.5m annually.  This is a classic tax dodge. Chief executive David Yu cheerfully admits that the company's 1,200 staff will stay in Britain: "We remain sitting in Hammersmith." Betfair will have a skeleton operation in Gibraltar, including a customer services department in miniature, to satisfy the Rock's regulatory rules. But the business will still be run from west London, Stevenage and Halifax. It will still pay corporation tax and payroll tax in Britain. But its betting tax will fall from 15% to 1%.  Yu argues that his company hasn't got much choice. Virtually all of its rivals, including Ladbrokes, William Hill and even the government-owned Tote, have shifted varying degrees of their internet operations offshore. Yu says Betfair has to compete on a level playing field (the same "everybody else is doing it" argument used by banks to justify seven-figure bonuses).  The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is in the middle of a review of remote gambling. The present situation is a dog's dinner. The government either needs to rethink the way it taxes betting or restrict the activities of those who don't pay dues here - by preventing offshore bookies from advertising to UK consumers. Sort it out, Mr Hunt.  Deep in the heart of Oklahoma, something is stirring in the sleepy prairie town of Cushing. a modest settlement of about 8,300 people, Cushing is the oil hub of north america. a handful of shops, barbecue restaurants and the Buckhorn Bar are dwarfed by hundreds of storage tanks capable of holding 45m barrels of oil.  Cushing, heavily defended by the US authorities as potential national security target, is the official delivery point for oil orders placed on Nymex, the commodities exchange. It is the junction at which pipelines running south from Canada's oil sands meet oil coming north from the Gulf of Mexico. and just at the moment, the town's oil tanks are 90% full - stocks stand at more than 40m barrels, a quantity of oil worth $4.6bn (? 2.9bn).  a high oil price - it is currently about $113 a barrel - mean furious activity in speculation, hedging - and storage in Cushing. The town enjoys a renaissance each time the price soars. But for the rest of the developed world, oil inflation means misery. Petrol prices in Britain hit ? 6 a gallon, or 132p a litre, last week, which, according to the aa's Edmund King, marks "the point at which the wheels start to come off mobility in 21st century Britain". Filling up a family car costs about ? 80 - a substantial chunk of the average gross weekly wage of ? 499. Supermarket chain Morrisons became the latest British business to squeal with pain last week, declaring that the fuel price has sapped consumers' spending power by ? 400m in a year.  The uprising in Libya, with fighting around the refinery in Ras Lanuf, has all but eliminated output from a nation with the world's ninth biggest oil reserves. With unrest rippling across the Middle East, Friday's "day of rage" in Saudi arabia unnerved traders. Elections are looming in Nigeria which, historically, have meant violent disruptions to that nation's oil output. and militants bombed a major oil pipeline in Iraq on Thursday.  as western economies stagger haphazardly towards a fragile recovery, this oil spike has come at a dismal moment. Nouriel Roubini, the endearingly pessimistic economist dubbed "Dr Doom", has suggested that a sustained oil price of $140 could push the US and European economies into a double-dip recession. In a more extreme scenario, a price of $200 could mean global economic growth grinding to a complete halt.  With take-home pay barely rising and inflation running at 4%, Britons were already facing their worst squeeze in disposable income for a generation. Doug McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economic and Business Research, says that oil has knocked the coalition's strategy for six: "With  
 With the budget 10 days away, George Osborne is under scrutiny to show that he is more than a one-trick chancellor. Cuts are all very well, but the coalition needs a growth agenda to show it can make Britain's recession-blighted economy bloom again. Government insiders were alarmed by news that GDP contracted by 0.6% in the final three months of last year, even before the steepest budget cuts in a generation started to bite.  Unrest in the Middle East has dealt another blow to the prospects of a spring bounce for the economy, creating what environment minister Chris Huhne has called a 1970s-style oil shock, squeezing firms and consumers hard. Ministers have been hauled before Osborne, business secretary Vince Cable and David Cameron's blue-skies thinker Oliver Letwin to explain what they can do to kick-start economic growth, in a process Cable says has been as rigorous as last year's spending review.  The results, to be published alongside the budget in a "growth review", must bear fruit quickly if the coalition is not to lose the public's trust in its ability to manage the economy. Unemployment has been rising, yet the government wants the private sector to pick up many of the thousands of workers who will be laid off from the public sector in the coming months. But surveys suggest that most firms are still too nervous about fragile demand to start hiring.  CBI boss John Cridland has called for an "all-action" budget on 23 March to put the recovery on a secure footing: "I think they should focus on what I call the 'squeezed middle of companies': those are the businesses that create jobs."  The CBI wants the government to help create a new bond market, aimed at financing these middle-sized firms. "We have lots of short- and medium-term capital that's expecting a quick turnaround; but if these businesses are going to export to China, India, Brazil, they need the chance and the space."  Some business demands will be wearyingly familiar to Whitehall officials scrambling to finalise Osborne's "budget for growth" - cut red tape, reduce the tax burden, cancel the rise in petrol duty - but many make more unusual suggestions. The Observer asked a selection of entrepreneurs, chief executives and business lobbying groups to come up with more imaginative - and less well-worn - plans for restoring Britain's economy to health.  SIR JaMES DYSON  Inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner  It's time to invest in hi-tech Britain, supporting start-ups with potential but few means to realise it. This will sustain, and ultimately grow, Britain's export capability. Each year tens of thousands of ideas and inventions are developed here. Too few are transformed into commercial success. R&D is inherently risky, but we have to think long-term. George Osborne has to make it easier for startups to access capital.  an enhanced R&D tax credit will encourage more companies to undertake the risk of inventing in the first place, and in turn ensure a flow of exportable technology to narrow the trade abyss. Singapore's stands at 250%. The government should raise ours to 200%.  LEE HOPLEY  Chief economist at  manufacturers' group EEF  We need changes to the capital allowances regime. Manufacturers, even small ones, are mobile. They are already reliant on overseas consumers and the question for them is: do they serve those customers from the UK, or do they go elsewhere?  It's things like a strategic approach to environmental taxes. at the moment there's a climate change levy on heavy energy users, carbon reduction targets, and an EU emissions trading scheme. In addition, the government recently said it wants to put a floor under the carbon price. There's different things going on in different parts of government. It's about certainty, and also about having a sense of what the overall cost will be.  LaRa MORGaN  Founder of hotel toiletries supplier Pacific Direct  The government is making gestures towards supporting private sector growth. Unfortunately, much more needs to be done. The chancellor should call a halt to legislation targeting heavier taxes on "non-dom" individuals based in Britain but domiciled elsewhere. This forms a barrier to international entrepreneurs. and we need a central platform where everything about enterprise can be gathered so that people don't have to search all over the internet to find the support they need to build businesses.  WILLIaM CHaSE  Boss of vodka exporter  Chase Distillery  The first thing they could do is to help all those who are exporting: give them breaks on their tax or national insurance - different ways to help them. We need to get aggressive and get all our businesses exporting. I did it, and it was really hard. It's painful to start with. The government should put some money in so firms can get the advice they need, but there's nobody in government with any commercial business sense.  aNDREW CaVE  Chief spokesman, Federation of Small Businesses  There's a clear need to incentivise job creation. For the smallest businesses, we would like to see a national insurance holiday for the next two people they take on. This is a policy designed for the returning-to-growth period. It's a very aspirational thing. The average business in the UK has four people; in the US it's six. We are also calling for an increase in the minimum wage for apprentices (currently ? 2.50 for under-19s, and anyone in the first year of their training). We're very supportive of the government's drive to create more apprenticeships, but to make that realistic we need to remove the red tape around taking on an apprentice and also give more value to the apprentices themselves.  MaRK PRICE  Managing director, Waitrose  We're going to see a surplus of young people trying to get into the workplace and there needs to be some imaginative thinking on how to give them better skills and experience. at Waitrose we're developing a scheme to get 16-to-18-year-olds in for a month or two months' experience. The "big society" concept aims to involve business in supporting the broader community and the government should work with companies to make these approaches easier.  I'm also keen on the development of philanthropy. The government might want to think  
 With the budget 10 days away, George Osborne is under scrutiny to show that he is more than a one-trick chancellor. Cuts are all very well, but the coalition needs a growth agenda to show it can make Britain's recession-blighted economy bloom again. Government insiders were alarmed by news that GDP contracted by 0.6% in the final three months of last year, even before the steepest budget cuts in a generation started to bite.  Unrest in the Middle East has dealt another blow to the prospects of a spring bounce for the economy, creating what environment minister Chris Huhne has called a 1970s-style oil shock, squeezing firms and consumers hard. Ministers have been hauled before Osborne, business secretary Vince Cable and David Cameron's blue-skies thinker Oliver Letwin to explain what they can do to kick-start economic growth, in a process Cable says has been as rigorous as last year's spending review.  The results, to be published alongside the budget in a "growth review", must bear fruit quickly if the coalition is not to lose the public's trust in its ability to manage the economy. Unemployment has been rising, yet the government wants the private sector to pick up many of the thousands of workers who will be laid off from the public sector in the coming months. But surveys suggest that most firms are still too nervous about fragile demand to start hiring.  CBI boss John Cridland has called for an "all-action" budget on 23 March to put the recovery on a secure footing: "I think they should focus on what I call the 'squeezed middle of companies': those are the businesses that create jobs."  The CBI wants the government to help create a new bond market, aimed at financing these middle-sized firms. "We have lots of short- and medium-term capital that's expecting a quick turnaround; but if these businesses are going to export to China, India, Brazil, they need the chance and the space."  Some business demands will be wearyingly familiar to Whitehall officials scrambling to finalise Osborne's "budget for growth" - cut red tape, reduce the tax burden, cancel the rise in petrol duty - but many make more unusual suggestions. The Observer asked a selection of entrepreneurs, chief executives and business lobbying groups to come up with more imaginative - and less well-worn - plans for restoring Britain's economy to health.  SIR JaMES DYSON  Inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner  It's time to invest in hi-tech Britain, supporting start-ups with potential but few means to realise it. This will sustain, and ultimately grow, Britain's export capability. Each year tens of thousands of ideas and inventions are developed here. Too few are transformed into commercial success. R&D is inherently risky, but we have to think long-term. George Osborne has to make it easier for startups to access capital.  an enhanced R&D tax credit will encourage more companies to undertake the risk of inventing in the first place, and in turn ensure a flow of exportable technology to narrow the trade abyss. Singapore's stands at 250%. The government should raise ours to 200%.  LEE HOPLEY  Chief economist at manufacturers' group EEF  We need changes to the capital allowances regime. Manufacturers, even small ones, are mobile. They are already reliant on overseas consumers and the question for them is: do they serve those customers from the UK, or do they go elsewhere?  It's things like a strategic approach to environmental taxes. at the moment there's a climate change levy on heavy energy users, carbon reduction targets, and an EU emissions trading scheme. In addition, the government recently said it wants to put a floor under the carbon price. There's different things going on in different parts of government. It's about certainty, and also about having a sense of what the overall cost will be.  LaRa MORGaN  Founder of hotel toiletries supplier Pacific Direct  The government is making gestures towards supporting private sector growth. Unfortunately, much more needs to be done. The chancellor should call a halt to legislation targeting heavier taxes on "non-dom" individuals based in Britain but domiciled elsewhere. This forms a barrier to international entrepreneurs. and we need a central platform where everything about enterprise can be gathered so that people don't have to search all over the internet to find the support they need to build businesses.  WILLIaM CHaSE  Boss of vodka exporter  Chase Distillery  The first thing they could do is to help all those who are exporting: give them breaks on their tax or national insurance - different ways to help them. We need to get aggressive and get all our businesses exporting. I did it, and it was really hard. It's painful to start with. The government should put some money in so firms can get the advice they need, but there's nobody in government with any commercial business sense.  aNDREW CaVE  Chief spokesman, Federation of Small Businesses  There's a clear need to incentivise job creation. For the smallest businesses, we would like to see a national insurance holiday for the next two people they take on. This is a policy designed for the returning-to-growth period. It's a very aspirational thing. The average business in the UK has four people; in the US it's six. We are also calling for an increase in the minimum wage for apprentices (currently ? 2.50 for under-19s, and anyone in the first year of their training). We're very supportive of the government's drive to create more apprenticeships, but to make that realistic we need to remove the red tape around taking on an apprentice and also give more value to the apprentices themselves.  MaRK PRICE  Managing director, Waitrose  We're going to see a surplus of young people trying to get into the workplace and there needs to be some imaginative thinking on how to give them better skills and experience. at Waitrose we're developing a scheme to get 16-to-18-year-olds in for a month or two months' experience. The "big society" concept aims to involve business in supporting the broader community and the government should work with companies to make these approaches easier.  I'm also keen on the development of philanthropy. The gove  
 The triple disaster in Japan - earthquake, tsunami, radioactive leaks - has, in addition to the natural human sympathy for the Japanese people, produced an outpouring of forecasts about possible implications for the world economy.  Yet, as the recent, indeed ongoing, financial crisis should have brought to the fore, economics and finance should be the servant of the world, not its master. There have been a number of assessments (most notably, of course, by my colleague Heather Stewart, above) of the consequences for the Japanese yen, the world supply chain, the future of nuclear power and ordinary power, and policies towards climate change.  But the aspect of the media reaction that interests me is the frequency with which commentators have referred back to 1945, the end of the second world war, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. all this is by way of reminding oneself, and readers unfamiliar with Japan, how vulnerable that country has felt ever since.  Europe benefited from Marshall aid, and from the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (later to become the OECD). Japan also benefited from US reconstruction efforts, and was indeed, under General Macarthur and others, a kind of US satrapy for many years. When, in the late 1970s, I made the first of many visits to Japan, there was a kind of mystique attached by the west to the economy and the people. Having been considered a producer of rather second-rate machines and goods, the economy was gaining admiration for the quality of its products. Into the 1980s, Japan became the envy of the rest of the G7, its ministry of overseas trade being credited with possessing magical powers. "How do the Japanese do it?" was a frequently asked question.  Meanwhile, Japan had been the object of much hostile criticism from the rest of the G7 for its allegedly mercantilist approach to overseas trade; in the US, which had helped to prop it up after the war, Japan became an object of hostility and fear for its perceived economic success.  But Japanese policymakers turned out to have no secret formula. They worked hard, moved from imitation to invention, and supplied the world with many familiar products. and it is arguable that Japanese management techniques, and investment in the UK, was as important as anything done by the Thatcher government in improving Britain's industrial performance after the monetarist devastation of the early 1980s.  Yet Japanese economic policymakers still felt they were running a siege economy, vulnerable to disruption because of the country's paltry endowment of natural resources and dependence on imported oil. Hence the aggressive approach to exporting, to pay for imported energy, and the investment in nuclear energy.  Then came some major macro-economic policy errors. Obvious comparisons are being made with the Kobe earthquake of January 1995 and the remarkable reconstruction effort. But before that there had been an asset price boom whose collapse caused the kind of "balance sheet recession" with which other members of the G7 have become familiar. and the economic policy machine committed the fatal error of almost doubling VaT that year and stifling an economic recovery, thereby making a major contribution to   
 Some analysts have been quick to look for opportunities. Mick Gilligan, head of research at Kil  
 There was never such a week of fearful images. as if mankind was a political prisoner, shown a run of blinding photo panels designed to shatter hope and force surrender. Those Libyan rebels in rags, facing the empty road down which the tanks will come. The silent flash and puff over Fukushima, as science's boldest dream turns to poison; the dignified old ladies of Japan waiting in snowy wreckage without food or warmth. The hospital in Bahrain, where people lie in their blood who only yesterday thought they had become free.  That long, long line of spotlessly new armoured vehicles, motoring in second gear across the causeway from Saudi arabia to destroy something else new and shining: liberty in a small country. That sea, thick-brown with timbers and minibuses and mud and corpses, heaving itself over the land so slowly and yet so much faster than a car can drive or a man can run.  as usual, WB Yeats was here first: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned. . ."  and another artist comes to mind: the weird and doomy Victorian painter John Martin, whose colossal canvases of apocalypse are currently on show in Newcastle. The Great Day of His Wrath shows a dark landscape bursting apart in flame; the oceans rising from their bed; the sinful millions slithering into the abyss; a steam train with top-hatted passengers plunging off a cliff.  But Martin, tempting as his imagery is, won't do. Not even for north-eastern Japan in the month of March, 2011. He won't do because so much of what has happened in the world in these weeks, and is still happening, didn't have to happen. Even earthquake and tsunami are only partial exceptions. It's true that little significant could have been avoided: Japan on 11 March was better prepared for seismic disaster than any nation on earth, but the Great Day of His Wrath rolled over the Japanese emergency plans and washed them away.  But it's still possible to say that without those plans and preparations it would have been worse - far worse. Tokyo, now standing on springs and shock absorbers, would have been shaken to rubble without its patient, expensive underpinning in the 20th century. Some people on the coast - not very many - were able to escape the tsunami because everyone had been taught at school about what can follow an earthquake, and they had the luck and time to reach higher ground.  So human prudence and foresight can at least mitigate the worst natural disasters. and it remains true that many of them - global warming, or the impact of Hurricane Katrina - are not so much natural as the outcome of our own stupidity. Some consequences, such as rising sea levels, become unavoidable and we have to adapt to what we can no longer prevent. But others, such as the hole in the ozone layer or the accumulation of greenhouse gases, can be reduced, if not reversed. and still other catastrophes - including many of last week's fearsome scenes of cruelty and blunder - could have been prevented altogether.  Long ago in Karamoja, in the limitless nothingness of northern Uganda, I met a dotty old English engineer. He was a freelance wanderer, giving advice about road building which nobody listened to. He said to me one night: "as an engineer, I can tell you the root of all human mistakes. It's people putting things right, before they have finished finding out what's wrong".  I thought of him often last week. Most obviously as the Tokyo Electric Power Company frantically threw one dud solution after another at reactors whose damage they had not yet diagnosed. Sea-water dropped from helicopters? New cables to restart a cooling system which, for all they know, may have been burned away? But in a wider sense, the old engineer's maxim applies to the political dramas unfolding in the Middle East.  We have decided to use armed force against Libya. This was meant to stop Gaddafi's tanks reaching Benghazi, but they were already in the suburbs before the first French or British warplanes took off. Kosovo should have taught the west that it is hard to change a dictator's mind from a height of 30,000 feet. But have we really found out what's wrong with Libya before we start putting it right?  Gaddafi is what's wrong, and it's inconceivable that this intervention won't "creep" towards regime change. But half-cock recipes for dealing with Gaddafi have a long history. Plenty of people have tried to put the Gaddafi dysfunction right by ignoring the underlying problem - himself - and instead addressing the symptoms: his appalling behaviour to the outside world. and at that level he responded. Would anything in Libya really change, he reflected, if he junked his nuclear programme, sold el-Megrahi to the Scots and offered oil bargains to his critics?  Tony Blair was far from the first to make that mistake. a previous owner of the Observer, the buccaneer financier and cynic Tiny Rowland, also thought that all the colonel needed was a bribe and a hug. I once dared to ask him why he was so intimate with that murderous regime. "Dear boy", he replied, "Gaddafi is a mere retailer in death. The americans are wholesalers!"  Common to most of these horrors is the world's convulsive greed for energy - whether nuclear or fossil. It'  
 The Fukushima nuclear power plant was designed, as are most buildings in Japan, to withstand a huge earthquake. In a sense, it did.  The tectonic shock that struck the country last week was much more powerful than any in recent memory and yet the tremor itself did not cause an atomic calamity. It was the following tsunami that overwhelmed power supplies at Fukushima, resulting in overheating, fire and panic at the prospect of radiation leaking into the atmosphere.  Which particular facet of a natural disaster broke Fukushima hardly matters to those engineers bravely struggling to bring the reactor under control. Nor does quibbling over causes comfort those people who have had to flee their homes. What good is a nuclear power plant on a coastal fault line that survives earthquakes but not tsunamis? The point is worth making, however, to underline quite how unusual the seismic event that devastated Japan was and so to put in some perspective the problems at Fukushima.  That perspective is vital because the plant's problems are already having an impact on debate over the long-term viability of civil nuclear energy.  It is 25 years since a fire at Chernobyl sent a plume of radioactive smoke into the skies over Europe. It took many years, a concerted public relations effort by the nuclear industry and advances in safety technology for  
 Exhausted engineers attached a power cable to the outside of Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant yesterday. The operation raised hopes that it may be possible to restart the pumping of water into the plant's stricken reactors this weekend and cool down its overheated fuel rods before there are more fires and explosions.  "We have connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied," said a spokesman for the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, in a statement.  However, officials said further cabling would have to be completed before they made an attempt to restart the water pumps at the Fukushima plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo.  It was also reported that health workers had detected radiation levels above safety limits in milk and spinach from farms in Fukushima and in neighbouring Ibaraki, although it was claimed they represented no risk to human health. Officials have asked people living near the plant to follow basic safety advice when going outside: drive, don't walk; wear a mask; wear long sleeves; don't go out in the rain.  Radiation levels in Tokyo were also said to be within safe limits. Nevertheless, the city has seen an exodus of tourists, expatriates and many Japanese, who fear a blast of radioactive material from Fukushima.  at the nuclear plant yesterday, firefighters continued to spray water to cool the dangerously overheated fuel rods in order to keep cores in its reactors from overheating and melting. The UN's atomic agency said yesterday that conditions at the plant remained grave but not deteriorating badly, following Japan's decision on Friday to raise the severity rating of the nuclear crisis from level 4 to level 5 on the seven-level international scale. It put the Fukushima fires on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in the US in 1979. The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 - which sent a plume of radioactive material into the skies 25 years ago - is the only incident to have reached level 7.  Fires and explosions occurred at four of the six reactors at Fukushima last week after the 8.9 Richter earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March. The earthquake triggered an automatic shutdown of the three reactors that were in operation. The tsunami then damaged diesel generators that were providing back-up power for the pumps driving coolant through these reactors.  as a result, heat could no longer be pumped away and temperatures inside the reactors' cores began to rise, eventually setting off a series of chemical fires. "Hollow rods made of zirconium hold each reactor's uranium fuel pellets in place," said Professor andrew Sherry, director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute in Manchester. "When temperatures rise too much, that zirconium starts to react with the reactor's water. This chemical reaction raises temperatures even further. Hydrogen is also produced. When this hydrogen exploded, it destroyed the buildings that act as each reactor's outer protective shell."  The explosions also damaged two storage tanks in which fuel rods - still hot because of the radioactive material inside them - were being stored in water. Water levels dropped, exposing fuel rods and triggering further chemical reactions between zirconium fuel cladding and the steam that had begun to build up. These set off fires in storage tanks at reactors three and four.  as a result, plant workers, emergency services personnel and scientists have been battling for the past week to restore the pumping of water to the Fukushima nuclear plant and to prevent a meltdown at one of the reactors. a team of about 300 workers - wearing masks, goggles and protective suits sealed with duct tape and known as the Fukushima 50 because they work in shifts of 50-strong groups - have captured the attention of the Japanese who have taken heart from the toil inside the wrecked atom plant. "My eyes well with tears at the thought of the work they are doing," Kazuya aoki, a safety official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency, told Reuters.  Little is known about this band of heroes, except for the few whose relatives have spoken to the Japanese media. One woman said that her father, who had worked for an electricity company for 40 years and who was due to retire in September, had volunteered. "I feel it's my mission to help," he told his daughter.  On Wednesday, the government raised the cumulative legal limit of radiation that the Fukushima workers could be exposed to from 100 to 250 millisieverts. That is more than 12 times the annual legal limit for workers dealing with radiation under British law. Each team works as fast as possible for the briefest of periods. The pilots of the helicopters used to "water-bomb" the plant have been restricted to missions lasting less than 40 minutes.  Nevertheless, the workers have not only managed to link a power cable to one of the plant's reactors, No 2, but they have also connected diesel generators to the No 5 and No 6 reactors, which have so far not suffered serious damage. "If they are successful in getting the cooling infrastructure up and running, that will be a significant step forward in establishing stability," said Eric Moore, a nuclear power expert at US-based FocalPoint Consulting Group. However, the government has conceded that it was too slow in dealing with the crisis at Fukushima. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said that "in hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and co-ordinating all that information, and provided it faster".  The fires at Fukushima have also triggered serious criticism of the plant's design. The decision to place storage tanks close to reactors has been pinpointed as a key design error. When those reactors caught fire, they quickly triggered reactions in the storage tanks which themselves caught fire, and so the fires spread.  In addition, the failure to build defences that could withstand the huge tsunami that struck Japan has also been attacked. "The geological evidence in Japan indicates a history of giant tsunamis over the past several thousand years," said Professor Rolf aalto, an Exeter University expert on tsunamis. "Unfortunately, an engineering and political decision was made to design protection and plan cities around a hypothesized five-metre tsunami - about the size of those experienced in Japan over the last century. However, it was not a surprise to geologists that a tsunami two to three times larger appeared. Both the earthquake and tsunami were exceptional, but were both well within the realm of what can occur within that tectonic setting."  However, Professor Sherry defended the ageing plant - whose six reactors came on line between 1970 and 1979. "These reactors were designed in the 1960s and we have learned a lot since then. Modern plants are much safer. Think of cars in the 1960s: they didn't have crumple zones, airbags or seat belts - features we all take for granted today. It is the same with nuclear reactor design."  The Fukushima reactors, known as boiling water reactors, have active safety features - you have to do something to prevent dangerous heating, such as ensuring that the pumps are activated.  "By contrast, new reactors are designed to include 'passive' safety systems that are   
 Britain may back away from the use of nuclear energy because of safety fears and a potential rise in costs after the Fukushima disaster, says Chris Huhne, the energy secretary.  In an interview with the Observer, Huhne insisted that he would not "rush to judgment" until the implications of the disaster were known and a report into the safety of UK nuclear plants by the chief nuclear officer, Dr Mike Weightman, was complete. The interim findings are due in May.  "I am not ruling out nuclear now," said Huhne. But he said events in Japan could have profound long-term implications for UK policy, which is based on a three-pronged "portfolio" approach: a commitment to nuclear energy; the development of more renewable energy, such as wind and sea power; and new carbon-capture technology to mitigate the damaging environmental effects of fossil fuel-fired power plants and industrial facilities.  Huhne, a Liberal Democrat, said that Britain was in a very different position from Japan, which was vulnerable to strong earthquakes and tsunamis. The UK also used different types of reactors. But he conceded that the Japanese disaster was likely to make it more difficult for private investors to raise capital to build the eight new reactors planned by the government. "There are a lot of issues outside of the realm of nuclear safety, which we will have to assess. One is what the economics of nuclear power post-Fukushima will be, if there is an increase in the cost in capital to nuclear operators."  Huhne said he remained wedded to the "portfolio" approach, but added that nuclear energy's future, as part of the mix, had become more uncertain as leaders of other nations, including the German chancellor, angela Merkel, openly questioned its future. "Globally, this undoubtedly casts a shadow over the renaissance of the nuclear industry. That is blindingly obvious," he said.  any move away from nuclear - while certain to be welcomed by many Liberal Democrats - would alarm many in the Tory party. Tim Yeo, the Conservative chair of the environment and climate change select committee, said any such shift would be a huge mistake. "If Britain abandons or significantly delays its programme of building new nuclear power stations, there are three inevitable consequences. First, electricity prices will rise. Second, Britain will not be able to meet its carbon emission reduction targets; and third, the risk that the lights will go out will significantly increase.  "This is because other forms of low carbon energy, such as solar or offshore wind, are more expensive than nuclear. Solar and wind are not reliable generators of electricity - on cloudy, still days they produce nothing. So they have to be backed up by reliable sources of power. I  
 Here we are, almost 7 billion of us, on a planet we have pushed too far in places and whose global tolerance we are testing. The more acutely we perceive its degradation, the more intensely we map, image and quantify its condition. Here we are on Earth like bystanders with mobile phones, recording mishaps and misdeeds, sharing them but not undoing them. The question facing us is whether we can channel the torrents of information we are generating into systems that will enable us to live in peace with the planet and one another.  Tim Flannery is a one-man model for this challenge, having contributed to scientific knowledge as a zoologist, communicated its implications as a popular author, and applied it in his work as an environmentalist. He introduces this book as a twin biography of Earth and our species, in which understanding the nature of each yields an optimistic outlook for both. a healthy planet is a "community of virtue", promoting productivity and interdependence, and humankind's imperative is to cultivate its share of planetary virtue. Human progress is impossible, "if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves".  He treads lightly on the Earth, as environmentalists are supposed to do. Despite the immensity of his twin subjects, Flannery does not amass the biblical levels of detail that Richard Fortey presented in The Earth: an Intimate History, or display the encyclopaedic determination that Richard Dawkins brought to his genealogical survey of life on Earth, The ancestor's Tale. Instead he sketches out a way of seeing humankind and its planet, signposted by figures from the history of evolutionary thought. His central character is alfred Russel Wallace, the self-taught naturalist who grasped biology's most profound insight, the principle of natural selection, while Charles Darwin was still keeping the idea to himself.  Flannery considers that the reductionist approach to evolution, introduced by Darwin and exemplified by Dawkins, is not sufficient - although he embraces sociobiology and recognises evolution's influence on human nature. It's not sufficient for characters either. In making Wallace iconic, Flannery reduces the complications and contradictions that make Wallace interesting. He repeats the canard that Wallace was working-class, heightening the contrast with the gentleman naturalist Darwin. In fact Wallace's father qualified as a solicitor but failed to provide adequately for his large family: alfred didn't quite fit into any social niche, which may have made him more open to unorthodox ideas. Nor does he fit the role Flannery casts him in, as the holistic thinker who saw cooperation where Darwin saw ruthless competition. It was Wallace who urged Darwin to use the phrase "survival of the fittest" instead of "natural selection", and who claimed to be more Darwinian than Darwin himself.  Flannery aligns Wallace with James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that Earth seeks to optimise conditions for life upon it. That does not necessarily imply a place for human life, but Flannery is drawn to the idea that Earth is a super-organism for which humankind could provide a brain and nervous system. This is the ultimate vision of humanity as nature's steward, at once both an organ of the great natural body and its intelligent, purposeful overseer.  His concept of a super-organism is expansive, encompassing ant colonies and human civilisations, and correspondingly loose. The term implies a degree of integration among individuals comparable to that among cells within individuals. It requires that conflicts of interest are removed or suppressed. among ants this has been achieved by the natural selecti  
 The triple disaster in Japan - earthquake, tsunami, radioactive leaks - has, in addition to the natural human sympathy for the Japanese people, produced an outpouring of forecasts about possible implications for the world economy.  Yet, as the recent, indeed ongoing, financial crisis should have brought to the fore, economics and finance should be the servant of the world, not its master. There have been a number of assessments (most notably, of course, by my colleague Heather Stewart, above) of the consequences for the Japanese yen, the world supply chain, the future of nuclear power and ordinary power, and policies towards climate change.  But the aspect of the media reaction that interests me is the frequency with which commentators have referred back to 1945, the end of the second world war, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. all this is by way of reminding oneself, and readers unfamiliar with Japan, how vulnerable that country has felt ever since.  Europe benefited from Marshall aid, and from the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (later to become the OECD). Japan also benefited from US reconstruction efforts, and was indeed, under General Macarthur and others, a kind of US satrapy for many years. When, in the late 1970s, I made the first of many visits to Japan, there was a kind of mystique attached by the west to the economy and the people. Having been considered a producer of rather second-rate machines and goods, the economy was gaining admiration for the quality of its products. Into the 1980s, Japan became the envy of the rest of the G7, its ministry of overseas trade being credited with possessing magical powers. "How do the Japanese do it?" was a frequently asked question.  Meanwhile, Japan had been the object of much hostile criticism from the rest of the G7 for its allegedly mercantilist approach to overseas trade; in the US, which had helped to prop it up after the war, Japan became an object of hostility and fear for its perceived economic success.  But Japanese policymakers turned out to have no secret formula. They worked hard, moved from imitation to invention, and supplied the world with many familiar products. and it is arguable that Japanese management techniques, and investment in the UK, was as important as anything done by the Thatcher government in improving Britain's industrial performance after the monetarist devastation of the early 1980s.  Yet Japanese economic policymakers still felt they were running a siege economy, vulnerable to disruption because of the country's paltry endowment of natural resources and dependence on imported oil. Hence the aggressive approach to exporting, to pay for imported energy, and the investment in nuclear energy.  Then came some major macro-economic policy errors. Obvious comparisons are being made with the Kobe earthquake of January 1995 and the remarkable reconstruction effort. But before that there had been an asset price boom whose collapse caused the kind of "balance sheet recession" with which other members of the G7 have become familiar. and the economic policy machine committed the fatal error of almost doubling VaT that year and stifling an economic recovery, thereby making a major contribution to   
 Some analysts have been quick to look for opportunities. Mick Gilligan, head of research at Kil  
 There was never such a week of fearful images. as if mankind was a political prisoner, shown a run of blinding photo panels designed to shatter hope and force surrender. Those Libyan rebels in rags, facing the empty road down which the tanks will come. The silent flash and puff over Fukushima, as science's boldest dream turns to poison; the dignified old ladies of Japan waiting in snowy wreckage without food or warmth. The hospital in Bahrain, where people lie in their blood who only yesterday thought they had become free.  That long, long line of spotlessly new armoured vehicles, motoring in second gear across the causeway from Saudi arabia to destroy something else new and shining: liberty in a small country. That sea, thick-brown with timbers and minibuses and mud and corpses, heaving itself over the land so slowly and yet so much faster than a car can drive or a man can run.  as usual, WB Yeats was here first: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned. . ."  and another artist comes to mind: the weird and doomy Victorian painter John Martin, whose colossal canvases of apocalypse are currently on show in Newcastle. The Great Day of His Wrath shows a dark landscape bursting apart in flame; the oceans rising from their bed; the sinful millions slithering into the abyss; a steam train with top-hatted passengers plunging off a cliff.  But Martin, tempting as his imagery is, won't do. Not even for north-eastern Japan in the month of March, 2011. He won't do because so much of what has happened in the world in these weeks, and is still happening, didn't have to happen. Even earthquake and tsunami are only partial exceptions. It's true that little significant could have been avoided: Japan on 11 March was better prepared for seismic disaster than any nation on earth, but the Great Day of His Wrath rolled over the Japanese emergency plans and washed them away.  But it's still possible to say that without those plans and preparations it would have been worse - far worse. Tokyo, now standing on springs and shock absorbers, would have been shaken to rubble without its patient, expensive underpinning in the 20th century. Some people on the coast - not very many - were able to escape the tsunami because everyone had been taught at school about what can follow an earthquake, and they had the luck and time to reach higher ground.  So human prudence and foresight can at least mitigate the worst natural disasters. and it remains true that many of them - global warming, or the impact of Hurricane Katrina - are not so much natural as the outcome of our own stupidity. Some consequences, such as rising sea levels, become unavoidable and we have to adapt to what we can no longer prevent. But others, such as the hole in the ozone layer or the accumulation of greenhouse gases, can be reduced, if not reversed. and still other catastrophes - including many of last week's fearsome scenes of cruelty and blunder - could have been prevented altogether.  Long ago in Karamoja, in the limitless nothingness of northern Uganda, I met a dotty old English engineer. He was a freelance wanderer, giving advice about road building which nobody listened to. He said to me one night: "as an engineer, I can tell you the root of all human mistakes. It's people putting things right, before they have finished finding out what's wrong".  I thought of him often last week. Most obviously as the Tokyo Electric Power Company frantically threw one dud solution after another at reactors whose damage they had not yet diagnosed. Sea-water dropped from helicopters? New cables to restart a cooling system which, for all they know, may have been burned away? But in a wider sense, the old engineer's maxim applies to the political dramas unfolding in the Middle East.  We have decided to use armed force against Libya, and once again american and British missiles are thundering down on foreign cities. It's called 'Odyssey Dawn' - a name fit for a package holiday - but is it 'Shock and awe' under another name? Gaddafi's tanks were already in the Benghazi suburbs before the first French or British warplanes took off. Kosovo should have taught the west that it is hard to change a dictator's mind from a height of 30,000 feet. But have we really found what's wrong with Libya before we start putting it right?  Gaddafi is what's wrong, and it's inconceivable that this intervention won't "creep" towards regime change. But half-cock recipes for dealing with Gaddafi have a long history. Plenty of people have tried to put the Gaddafi dysfunction right by ignoring the underlying problem - himself - and instead addressing the symptoms: his appalling behaviour to the outside world. and at that level he responded. Would anything in Libya really change, he reflected, if he junked his nuclear programme, sold el-Megrahi to the Scots and offered oil bargains to his critics?  Tony Blair was far from the first to make that mistake. a previous owner of the Observer, the buccaneer financier and cynic Tiny Rowland, also thought that all the colonel needed was a bribe and a hug. I once dared to ask him why he was so intimate with that murderous regime. "Dear boy", he replied, "Gaddafi is a mere retailer in death. The americans are wholesalers!"  Common to most of these horrors is the world's convulsive greed for energy - whether nuclear or fossil. It'  
 The Fukushima nuclear power plant was designed, as are most buildings in Japan, to withstand a huge earthquake. In a sense, it did.  The tectonic shock that struck the country last week was much more powerful than any in recent memory and yet the tremor itself did not cause an atomic calamity. It was the following tsunami that overwhelmed power supplies at Fukushima, resulting in overheating, fire and panic at the prospect of radiation leaking into the atmosphere.  Which particular facet of a natural disaster broke Fukushima hardly matters to those engineers bravely struggling to bring the reactor under control. Nor does quibbling over causes comfort those people who have had to flee their homes. What good is a nuclear power plant on a coastal fault line that survives earthquakes but not tsunamis? The point is worth making, however, to underline quite how unusual the seismic event that devastated Japan was and so to put in some perspective the problems at Fukushima.  That perspective is vital because the plant's problems are already having an impact on debate over the long-term viability of civil nuclear energy.  It is 25 years since a fire at Chernobyl sent a plume of radioactive smoke into the skies over Europe. It took many years, a concerted public relations effort by the nuclear industry and advances in safety technology for  
 In the forest, there are no horizons and so the dawn does not break but is instead born in the trees - a wan and smoky blue. I twist in my hammock. The total darkness, which has been broken only by the crazy dance of the fireflies, is fading and now shapes are forming - branches, fronds, vines, bushes, leaves, thorns, the soaring reach of the canopy, the matted tangle of the understorey. The crazed clamour of the night - growls, hoots, croaks - has died away and for a moment there is almost hush. This is also the only time of cool and I can see thin fingers of mist curling through the trunks and drifting across the river beyond. a butterfly passes in the quavering grace of its flight. Then, suddenly, the great awakening begins and the air is filled with a thousand different songs, chirps, squawks and screeches - back and forth, far and near, all around. So loud and so raucous and so declarative of life is this chorus that nothing anywhere in the world can prepare you for it.  I am camped deep in the Brazilian amazon with my guide.  Like most people, the first time I arrived in the amazon, in 2003, I knew almost nothing about it. I had only a vague first-world notion of "deforestation" and this being bad. I did not know why, specifically, it was bad, or for whom, or how, or in what way any of this actually mattered. But in a place called Puerto Maldonado, a forest-frontier town in south-eastern Peru, a woman told me a story about a scientist who disappeared in terrifying circumstances. and I knew that I was at the beginning of a long process of self-education.  In the past few months, the amazon has made a return to the news for several reasons. In February, startling aerial footage of uncontacted tribes on the Brazil-Peruvian border, brought to us via the great Brazilian anthropologist, Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, was released (you may have seen the footage on the BBC's Human Planet). a subsequent letter from the Peruvian government "recognised the situation of the peoples living in isolation and/or initial contact" and promised, for the first time, that five new reserves for indigenous communities were "in the pipeline". We shall see. . .  In March, three tribal leaders arrived in London to make their case against several huge hydroelectric dams being built in Brazil and Peru, which they argue will force their people from the land and threaten their way of life. and within the past few weeks, Peruvian security forces have launched an unprecedented operation to destroy the unlawful gold-mining dredgers that are now killing off river habitats by pumping up river-silt.  Part of the reason we struggle to understand the region is that there is so much to take in. and because there has been some (partial) good news on the headline problem - deforestation - it has faded in our collective consciousness in the past few years. So it's worth stepping back and reminding ourselves of some of the fundamentals.  The area of the amazon rainforest - roughly 2.3m square miles - is larger than Western Europe and the forest stretches over nine countries: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Surinam and Venezuela. There are approximately 1,250 tributaries that service the main river, 17 of which are more than 1,000 miles long. The river is bigger in volume than its six nearest rivals combined and discharges into the ocean about 20% of the total freshwater of all the rivers in the world. Roughly a fifth of the earth's oxygen is produced in the amazon rainforest ("one breath in five" as a guide once put it to me) and more than two-fifths of all the species in the world live there. You can find over 200 species of tree in a single hectare of amazon rainforest and one tree can be home to 72 different species of ants alone. Over its 4,000-mile length, no human bridge crosses the amazon river.  IGNORaNT aS I WaS, the most surprising discovery when I first visited was that oil is one of the main resurgent threats to the region. Since my first visit to Peru in 2003, the amount of land that has been covered by oil and gas concessions has increased fivefold - almost 50% of the entire Peruvian-owned amazon. This means that the government has effectively sold off half of the rainforest it owns for the specific purpose of oil and gas extraction in return for taxes, bonuses, royalties - 75% is forecast by 2020.  Every time there is oil exploration, there is major disruption and destruction to the forest, starting with seismic testing and following through with helicopters, roads, oil wells, crews and so on; each development brings a chaos of unplanned settlement and more deforestation. and inevitably, whenever oil is found there are catastrophic spills and accidents. a lawsuit is being brought to court by members of the indigenous achuar tribe for contaminating the region. Health studies have found that 98% of their children have high levels of cadmium in their blood, and two-thirds suffer from lead poisoning.  There are hundreds of Indian groups from one end of the forest to the other - many of them now enmeshed in legal cases or "integration projects" or other demoralising fiascos - but those that most often capture international attention (ironically) are the uncontacted. There's some dispute as to what exactly is meant by the term. Beatriz Huertas Castillo works out of Lima and (along with Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles in Brazil) is one of the  people who knows most about the subject, having spent much of her life travelling in, researching, documenting and writing about the very remote areas these peoples inhabit.  "The uncontacted are indigenous peoples," she explains, "who, either by choice or by chance, sometimes as a result of previous traumatic experiences, sometimes not, live in remote isolation from their national societies. There are at least 14 such tribes in Peru. We think 69 in Brazil. Maybe 100 in the amazon area as a whole."  The best way to think about the remaining tribes in 2011 is to imagine a series of concentric circles, all of which interact on each boundary. There are the tribes that stay on their own homelands in the forest (or seek to do so), but who have regular relations with the outside. These retain a strong tribal identity, but they are coming to know the world all too well; they will travel to fight legal battles for their territories and their children will leave for the cities. Then there are a good number of tribes (or parts of tribes) who have been contacted, but who have very circumscribed dealings with the outside world; while no longer in isolation, these live (or try to live) as they always lived. Then, in the heart of the forest, there are these few remaining uncontacted peoples. They may have heard rumours from their grandparents, but they are among the handful of peoples left alive on the planet who have next to no idea of what the world has become. They live as they have done for thousands of years - before the internet, the world wars, the United States, the Tudors, Christ, aristotle or abraham.  "I spoke to Mashco-Piro women when they were first contacted," says Castillo. "and they were terrified of disease, of being slaughtered, of their children being taken into slavery. In the past, every encounter has bought terror for them - they have no immunity to our diseases and they were thought of as animals, even hunted. and now they see the loggers and the oil companies coming in a little further every year. and for them it's the same thing so they flee into neighbouring territories."  Then there's the ongoing damage caused by illegal logging, not to mention the cocaine problem. Besides the loss of the trees themselves, it is the incursions and what follows that have the most impact. (although it's important to note that there has been a victory of sorts in Brazil - the mahogany trade, in particular, has been tackled.) It is estimated by the UN that coca plantations in the area of the Peruvian amazon increased by roughly 25% between 2003 and 2008. Leaving aside all the other issues that swirl around narcotics, the way the cocaine base is prepared leads to the dumping in the water of millions of gallons of kerosene, sulphuric acid, acetone, solvent, and tonnes of lime and carbide. The extraction of gold is equally toxic because of the use of mercury.  But it's what the explorer, writer and amazon expert John Hemming calls "the bloody mess of the dams" that is causing the latest round of acrimony, fear and dispute. a series of new hydroelectric dams (more than 100 in total) are planned across Brazil and Peru, including the most controversial of all - the Belo Monte Project on the Xingu river, which is intended to be the world's third largest hydroelectric plant. It was to raise awareness of these that the indigenous leaders toured Europe last month. These really caught me out. Surely a good idea, I thought, but, sadly, it's not so straightforward. . .  The problems, as Hemming explained, are these: first, they will flood the territories of the tribes; the dams release vast amounts of the greenhouse gas methane, due to rotting vegetation; they release all the carbon in the forest that is destroyed to make way for them; they bring further roads and colonisation in their wake; they change the flow and run of all the river systems, which affects untold numbers of aquatic species, not least the fish that so many people in the amazon eat, meaning that they will have to import more food, meaning more roads, more beef, and so grimly on.  It is important to acknowledge that not everything is getting worse. Some of the campaigning in the past 20 years has worked and there are cautious grounds for hope and good reasons to continue. When, in 2006, I was in Manaus, the great river city right in the heart of the amazon, I heard contradictory accounts of progress and regression. Paulo adario is a veteran ecologist who lives there. He is probably one of the individuals to have done most in the service of conservation alive today, and he is happy to bring me up to date.  "Since the 2004 peak of 27,000 sq km of forest destroyed, matters have improved with regard to deforestation," he says, when I call him. "Last year we lost 6,500 sq km. You can say productivity is better with cattle and with soya. We're seeing more yields in existing areas that have already been cut. You can also say that the Brazilian government's approach to the uncontacted people is very enlightened. and that - yes - the satellites have helped combat illegal logging: there have been arrests and maybe we are winning the mahogany battle."  The 6,500 sq km lost last year is still an area more than four times the size of Greater London. adario is also very worried about imminent changes in the laws in Brazil, which will once again relax the strictures against forest development. "They are going to send out a big message that if a law does not work for you, then don't feel you have to respect it. Only an idiot would follow the rules in the  forest if all his competitors were making fortunes by ignoring them."  TIME ON THE RIVER is like time at sea. It's not measured in minutes, but in the way the light changes the colour of the water. at dawn, there are mists and the river appears almost milky. By noon it is the colour of cinnamon. and then, in the evening, when the trees seem almost sinister in the intensity of their stillness, the low sun shoots streaks of ambers and gold from bank to bank before the dusk rises up from the forest floor and the shadows begin to stretch and everything turns to indigo.  One such evening, we went to visit a fisherman whose grandfather had been among the first of his tribe to be contacted. His own sons were wearing football shirts and his eldest was training to be a guide. Using his son as an interpreter, he put it like this: that the amazon matters because right now it is where humanity - you, me - is ma  
 On the surface it looks good. Some 95% of dishwashers and 98% of washing machines now claim to be a-rated. Until you realise that for an appliance not to score an a it would need to belch out a visible cloud of soot during every wash. The point of energy ratings for machines is to reduce environmental pressures through better efficiency and to let the consumer make that choice. The biggest carbon-emission impact of the wearing of clothes is in the heating of the water to wash them. So the energy used per kilogram of washing determines your emissions.  Unfortunately there's extensive greenwashing. Rumours began swirling some time ago that the standard for a and a+ was set too high. a machine might test at a B or C rating, and this was bumped up as manufacturers claimed its poor performance represented a blip. Instead of recalibrating and downgrading high-energy appliances, a series of + signs has been added. You can now get an a++++++ washing machine.  Some manufacturers are attempting to bring clarity: the new Bosch Ecologixx7 Tumbledryer represents its superior energy efficiency with an a-40% badge (meaning it rates 40% better than an a rating). and yes, I appreciate that many of you will find an eco-friendly tumble dryer to be an oxymoron, given the massive availability of carbon-free washing lines. Overall our tolerance need not be so high. Go to sust-it.net, the energy-efficiency website for electricals that actually rates eco claims based on average use. The current system would be lucky to score a D-. 
 Following on from where he left off in a History Of ancient Britain, Neil Oliver returns to continue the journey, from the height of the Bronze age through to the Iron age, the Celts and the first kings to the age of Rome, and the end of pre-history itself. In the opening programme, he discovers how an age of bronze collapsed into social and economic crisis set against a period of sharp climate change. 
 THE DILEMMa I have noticed that there is a lot of bamboo in eco clothing and towels, but I have also read something that suggests it isn't very green to use bamboo in these products. I try to run an ethical household, is bamboo something I should buy?  Materials that scream "ethical" give me a headache. Especially bamboo. The introduction of this super-fast-growing grass into UK homes in the form of plates, bowls, paint brushes, bathroom towels and bedlinen was accompanied by much loud noise about its eco credentials. Bamboo textiles, in particular, were explicitly labelled as eco, green and/or good for the planet, suggesting that your towels or yoga leggings could single-handedly halt climate change.  Then last year regulators in the US and Canada stopped the party. They ordered the re-labelling of some 450,000 clothing and textile products from the marketable "eco-friendly" bamboo to the less-appealing "rayon". Less appealing from a green point of view because producing rayon, aka viscose, is a highly polluting activity. Under the microscope scientists could see no difference between "bamboo" products and viscose, where the finished fibre is extruded from cellulose by applying a large amount of chemicals and results in hazardous air pollutants.  Bamboo's eco credentials were in tatters. But this is unfair. as a material it has big plus points. Lately, product designers Kenneth Cobonpue and albrecht Birkner have used it to make a lightweight concept car, the Phoenix, which surely deserves to wear an eco tag. The bamboo is woven  
 6.10 Hoobs (R) 6277413 & 7614697 7.00 Formula Ford Championship 69581 7.25 The Grid 7.55 The Morning Line 8623500 8.50 T4. Programmes for kids of all ages, starting with Friends (R) The One Where Eddie Moves In 7288790 9.20 Koko Pop 7448500 9.50 Friends (R) The One Where Doctor Ramoray Dies 2068603 10.25 Glee 2640264 11.20 Great British Hairdresser 12.25 The Big Bang Theory (R) The Hot Troll Deviation & The Desperation Emanation 6061968 & 9903351 1.20 That Paralympic Show 7581264 1.55 Racing from Newbury and ayr 43729968 3.55 The Secret Supper Club 2964210 4.25 Come Dine with Me Extra Portions (R) 3501429, 8229264, 332 & 245  6.30 News (T) 857061  6.55 4thought.tv (T) 818332  7.00 River Cottage Every Day (T) (R) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall turns his attention to treats, with recipes for Genoese sponge cake and lemon curd muffins, game pies, cheesy tarts and real ginger beer. Last in the series. 2429  8.00   The Day after Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004) (T) Blockbuster starring Dennis Quaid as climatologist Jack Hall, who predicts that global warming will lead to a new ice age. He is ridiculed, but his fears swiftly come true when a temperature rise in the antarctic causes the world's weather to go mad, with New York inundated by floods then overwhelmed by a killer cold snap. a few survivors, among them Jack's son Sam, take refuge in a library and Jack  sets out to save them.  With Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Ian Holm, Dash Mihok.  10.20 Stand Up for the Week  11.10   The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito, 1989)  a couple decide to divorce, but their breakup turns into an acrimonious battle. Black comedy with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and director Danny DeVito.  1.20 Sex, Secrets and Frankie Howerd (R) 2.20-3.45 Privileged (R) 3.45-5.10 Ugly Betty (R) 5.10 Countdown (R) 
 THE DILEMMa  I have noticed that there is a lot of bamboo in eco clothing and towels, but I have also read something that suggests it isn't very green to use bamboo in these products. I try to run an ethical household, is bamboo something I should buy?  Materials that scream "ethical" give me a headache. Especially bamboo. The introduction of this super-fast-growing grass into UK homes in the form of plates, bowls, paint brushes, bathroom towels and bedlinen was accompanied by much loud noise about its eco credentials. Bamboo textiles, in particular, were explicitly labelled as eco, green and/or good for the planet, suggesting that your towels or yoga leggings could single-handedly halt climate change.  Then last year regulators in the US and Canada stopped the party. They ordered the re-labelling of some 450,000 clothing and textile products from the marketable "eco-friendly" bamboo to the less-appealing "rayon". Less appealing from a green point of view because producing rayon, aka viscose, is a highly polluting activity. Under the microscope scientists could see no difference between "bamboo" products and viscose, where the finished fibre is extruded from cellulose by applying a large amount of chemicals and results in hazardous air pollutants.  Bamboo's eco credentials were in tatters. But this is unfair. as a material it has big plus points. Lately, product designers Kenneth Cobonpue and albrecht Birkner h  
 One of the world's most dramatic wildlife rescues is coming to a successful conclusion on Tristan da Cunha in the South atlantic. Thousands of endangered northern rockhopper penguins, which were caught in thick oil slicks, have been saved in a month-long operation involving virtually all of the islands' 260 inhabitants.  The penguins were trapped in oil released by the freighter MV Oliva when it ran aground and broke up last month off Nightingale island, 20 miles from the main island of Tristan da Cunha. Thousands of these delicately feathered birds - known locally as pinnamins - were coated in thick oil and all would have died but for the extraordinary intervention of local people.  "Just about everyone on the island has played a part in this operation," Katrine Herian, an RSPB project officer based on the island, said. "It was an amazing, co-operative effort. Some people took boats to Nightingale to pick up oiled penguins - a very tricky task given the swells and winds there. Carpenters on the main island built pens to keep them in. The main store - where tools, cement and machinery are stored - was cleared out and sand put down on the concrete floor so we could keep the penguins there.  "Then the island's swimming pool was drained of nearly all its water and used as a home for cleaned birds. People even ransacked their freezers to find fish they could thaw out and use to feed the rockhoppers. They would have starved otherwise." In the end, about 4,000 rockhoppers were saved, although Herian warned that it was impossible to say how many others may have died: "We won't really know until next year when the birds start breeding again and we can get a proper chance to count numbers and see how badly they were affected."  The northern rockhopper penguin, Eudyptes moseleyi, is found on only a few islands in the atlantic, with 99% of its population making homes on the British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha, a lonely, volcanic archipelago considered to be the world's most remote inhabited group of islands. There is no airstrip and the nearest major ports are in South africa.  Keeping track of the northern rockhoppers in such a location is not easy. Nevertheless, ornithologists have discovered that their numbers have plunged by more than 90% since the 1950s, with factors such as climate change and over-fishing of squid and octopus - the penguins' main source of food - being put forward as possible causes. as a result, the northern rockhopper is now classified as an endangered species. The wrecking of the MV Oliva, therefore, posed a significant threat to them. The ship was carrying 65,000 tonnes of soya beans from Brazil to China when it ran aground on 16 March on an islet off Nightingale island. all 20 crewmen were rescued by islanders, but the vessel broke apart and released more than 1,500 tonnes of oil on to the waters around the island, coating the rockhoppers.  Within a day, islanders and RSPB workers began their remarkable rescue operation. When winds and the swell were low, they sailed to the island in small boats and, using Tristan's principal fishing vessel, the Edinburgh, as a command vessel, began shipping oiled rockhoppers back to the main island.  "The birds get very distressed when they are coated in oil," said Herian. "They lose body temperature very quickly in the water and preen themselves to get rid of the oil.  
 Literary wisdom has it that you write what you know, and one detects a heartfelt conviction in Roddy Doyle's insightful collection of stories that for a man of a certain age - and, like the author himself, all his protagonists are men of a certain age - nothing is more keenly known than what one of them calls "death becoming real". It's a complaint about "getting older, slower, tired, bored, useless", but it adds up to a creeping mortality that casts a shadow on every page.  This is midlife crisis painted as an awakening - that is, an awakening to something more than the desire for a younger woman or an earring or an electric guitar. It is the less mocked world of illness, empty nests, parental regret, marriages and family life drifting into entropy. The names change but Doyle's men of the "manopause" bend in the same direction, their worried heads blowing in the wind like dandelion clocks.  There's some irony at play. In "Teaching", a lonely teacher, his opportunities for a more fruitful life squandered, urges his pupils to seize the day; in "Recuperation", a lonely convalescent pounding the streets for the good of his health can summon thoughts only of the vanished past. Everywhere you look is a double edge. The unemployed stand for Ireland's economic ruin but also for their dwindling usefulness as husbands and fathers; a man reduced to skin and bone by cancer is mirrored by a friend shrunken in worth after years of pandering to kids who no longer need him.  all but one of the stories have appeared singly elsewhere - mostly in the New Yorker - but here they give the impression of being related to one another, or at least of having come to the same funeral. It can get a bit gloomy. There's more than one tunnel of interior monologue to get through, and there are moments when Doyle's trademark deadpan, unadorned prose seems unsuited to its constraints, its flatness if anything drawing attention to its subject's grim sameness of tone.  He succeeds more convincingly when he has his characters bounce off one another to produce the rolling, demotic blarney and craic of his early, funny novels with their triumphant highs and maudlin lows. The best and most vividly drawn is the title story - about a group o  
 Electric cars have taken their time to return to our roads. a century ago, they were serious rivals to petrol-fuelled vehicles, with early versions including a New York fleet of electric taxis built in 1897. However, the cheap power of petrol let the internal combustion engine monopolise road transport by the early 20th century.  Since then, the electric car has struggled to make a return, despite low emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Hopes have risen recently, after audi, Honda, Nissan and others announced electric vehicle projects. Ford joined them last week by revealing European plans to launch three new vehicles: a battery-powered Transit Connect van and two hybrid versions of its Fusion range of cars and Escape range of SUVs. The hybrid vehicles have separate electric and petrol engines, with the latter taking over at higher speeds.  all three were presented to the press at the company's aachen research centre in Germany and each demonstrated how the electric car has progressed as a rival to the power of petrol. The all-electric Transi  
 "and so it begins," I muttered bitterly to myself as I read the article. I could so easily have missed it, nestling amid news of vegetables that cause or preclude cancer or both, and personality traits that attract or repel the opposite sex or both. Its claim seemed modest: "Four in 10 women over 50 told a survey that some of their most trusted beauty essentials cost less than ? 5." It went on to list some of the cheaper products that women apparently prefer to top-of-the-range beautifying agents.  You could be forgiven for thinking that this is the very definition of non-news - a minor coup for the marketing department of a petroleum jelly conglomerate. But in a world where Richard Hammond, that pocket battleship of masculinity, can be accused of having age-defying injections, it means so much more. It is the harbinger of a profound societal shift.  The terrifying conspiracy that grips us is finally becoming clear. It's a conspiracy to reverse a great unfairness - to free half of humanity from an unjust yoke by transferring it to the other half. This is nothing as trivial as global warming or the rise of the Bric economies. The appalling burden of sartorial and cosmetic effort is being shifted from women on to men.  The slow rise of male grooming products, the march of the gels and balms, the replacement of the shirt and the haircut with the "shirt" and the "haircut", were the first signs - rejected by many as suggesting only that men's grooming conventions were coming into line with women's, which would be regrettable enough in itself. But now, with the first sign that women are starting to reject cosmetics, the sheer scale of the forthcoming makeover is becoming clear.  I imagine myself, in extreme old age, my face surgically taut, painted and powdered, my feeble limbs lacquered with fake tan, bunioned feet shoved into vertiginous shoes, wigged, dyed and pierced all over, reminiscing about the time, decades earlier, when I last saw a woman apply lipstick. The Two Ronnies' cross-dressing sketch, "The Worm that Turned", will finally be recognised as the work of prophetic genius that it was.  It can't be long before all my moaning about the prevalence of moisturiser, about TV adverts depicting men in bathrooms unselfconsciously and approvingly caressing their own faces, will be vindicated. "Stop sneering at designer clothes!" male friends told me. "Wearing an ironed shirt is not an act of surrender!" they insisted. "The fact that your hair is cut in such a wilfully displeasing way is just your choice, not an example of gender heroism!" they claimed.  Well, we'll see. We'll see where all the styling and back-waxing gets them. What starts as personal choice born out of self-esteem - a bit of self-pampering because you're worth it - can grow into a terrifying network of conventions which is bigger than any of us. Luxuries can morph into necessities; choices, however initially eccentric, can become rules. Bound feet are a high price to pay for a thriving retail sector.  But I'm a traitor to my cause. For so long I was strong. I washed my face with soap and water. I never wore aftershave, aspiring instead to smell of nothing at all. I rejoiced in the long white hairs that occasionally grew out of my ears. Then one day I found myself buying some "leave-in" conditioner. From that moment, they had me.  Of course, the first fix was free. The make-up lady on a TV show gave me this stuff that you squirted on your hair after you washed it so that it was less frizzy when it dried. That seemed reasonable at the time. Only much later did I realise I'd been duped into aspiring to have "more manageable hair".  So I took to using it. I don't know if it did much good but, thereafter, to stop applying it would seem like deliberately choosing to have worse hair. It's one thing to resist making beautifying changes but quite another to make actively uglifying ones. Spraying the stuff on had become the status quo. To stop doing so would be like saying that my hair looked too good, that its manageability was oppressing others, that they might be dazzled by its gloss.  That would be so vain! Suddenly, continuing to condition my hair - and that phrase genuinely makes me shudder - felt like the only modest course  
 The race to provide Britain with a sustainable water supply is already generating the first of what is likely to be a long list of controversies.  as the UK basks in temperatures that put athens in the shade and with rivers already running low, utility companies are under increasing pressure to preserve water. But the most comprehensive study of its kind suggests the leading option for ensuring the UK enjoys a sustainable water supply - metering - is hitting the poorest hardest and is viewed with suspicion by consumers who believe it is a ruse by utility companies to increase their profits. The study by Wessex Water, which supplies water to more than one million households in the west country, found the introduction of meters reduced customer demand by 17%, higher than previous estimates.  The reduction was even greater if the meters were tied to a tariff system that saw the price of water rise in the summer, an increasingly popular option being considered by the utility companies, but one which has caused widespread anger among consumers.  The Wessex study, the largest since metering was introduced 20 years ago, found 15% of customers saw their annual bills rise by more than ? 100 after flat-rate metered systems were installed. a quarter of the poorest customers saw their bills increase by more than ? 50. Phil Wickens, tariffs manager at Wessex Water, acknowledged his company had one of the highest water rates in the UK, but said that it was vital the industry introduced a new charging system if the UK was to have a sustainable supply.  "We want a charging system that gives us the ability to meet future challenges in the long term," Wickens said. "Climate change and population growth are going to place pressure on the need for increased investment. In order for us to secure that investment we really need all of our customers to be willing and able to pay their bills. There is a commercial incentive for raising these issues now."  Household water bills have increased by more than 50% in real terms since 1989, partly due to investment costs. But the financial burden on customers is becoming a key issue, with an increasing number refusing to pay their bills. Wessex estimates its underlying bad debt has doubled over the past decade, with the figure expected to rise further given economic conditions.  It is estimated that the average customer now pays an extra ? 12 a year to cover unpaid water bills. Experts suggest establishing a fair charging system is vital if more schemes, such as the new ? 270m Thames Water desalination plant that filters salt from water in the Thames estuary, are to get the go-ahead. a failure to address water sustainability could have serious repercussions for the UK. The current spell of hot weather has already triggered warnings that farmers in some regions will have to limit their use of water. Several rivers in England and Wales are reportedly at "exceptionally low" levels, raising fears there will be a need for hosepipe bans. The Environment agency said two months of unusually dry weather has left 11 rivers at extremely low levels of the kind seen only once every 20 years.  The government is currently consulting on water sustainability, and environment minister Caroline Spelman is reportedly in favour of metering as a key part of its response. all new homes built since 1989 have had to be fitted with water meters, and an increasing number of people opt for them. Just under half of all UK customers now have a water meter, and it is predi  
 I am at Dyson HQ in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, the beacon of British industrialism, which is not a dark satanic mill but all light, contoured glass and bridges over placid water between sculptures. This is the birthplace of the bagless, see-through vacuum cleaner that offers 100% suction (so well known it need only be referred to as "the Dyson") and the planet's most powerful hand dryer, the airblade. Bright young engineers emerge from testing rooms wearing non-business dress (an informal rule) and mingle in the sunshine. People are smiling and holding lattes from the shiny canteen. I'm starting to wish I'd listened harder in science classes.  "I was hugely encouraged recently to hear that 13% of girls in school now actually want to become scientists," says Dyson. He has the wiry build of a long-distance runner and  a look of Nigel Havers. and he bounds up the stairs in polka-dot Yamamoto trainers. "OK, so 37% still want to become models, but 13% are aspiring to be scientists!" He stops. "But then  I discovered that they all wanted to be pathologists because of that TV show, CSI." For every problem, James Dyson suspects there is a solution waiting to be designed. So he spends a few minutes contemplating a drama series that could similarly shift engineering in the aspirations of teenage girls.  "Of course there was that film about a chap who invented the windscreen wiper then allegedly got ripped off," he says; I think of the 2008 film Flash of Genius. "Then he won some money, which went on the horses. actually the film was more about the horses than it was about the invention. Same with Howard Hughes. His engineering activities are rather interesting, actually, but the film centres on his drug taking and so on," he laments.  Hughes was also, famously, a recluse. Dyson is not. He has become as well known for his robust opinions as for the bagless cleaner. "The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues. But just look at the viewing figures for Tomorrow's World. They were phenomenal, and that just showed pure technology. You don't need to sex things up. These subjects [technology and engineering] are sexy in their own right."  although I spent my childhood happily watching Judith Hann and team riding around in Sinclair C5s, I have a hunch that this next generation is more demanding. But, in an effort to inspire the next crop of engineers and designers, he is running the 2011 James Dyson award through his eponymous foundation. The last winners to bag the ? 10,000 on offer to develop their invention - plus ? 10,000 towards their university education - were Yusuf Muhammad and Paul Thomas, who came up with a way to adapt kitchen taps to respond to domestic fires, thereby minimising casualties and deaths.  YOU WONDER IF THESE young innovators know what's headed their way. Because becoming an inventor also seems to mean opening yourself up to the possibility of betrayal. "at some point you're going to feel ripped off," says Dyson. One of his early inventions was the Ballbarrow - a wheelbarrow centred on a large, pneumatic red ball that gave it stability and made it easier to steer. and it was this odd-looking wheelbarrow that afforded the first professional "betrayal" when Dyson's business partners, having become majority shareholders, sold the invention to a US manufacturing firm that wrote Dyson out of the equation.  "If you invent something, you're doing a creative act," says Dyson. "It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment. The Ballbarrow was just the start. Terrible things happen all the time with the vacuum cleaner. People copy it. Society allows and encourages it. But it is theft, and I wish courts and society regarded it as such. Theft or rape, that's what it's like."  Perhaps to relieve an awkward pause after the rape reference, he is up on his feet collecting a series of components to demonstrate the inner workings of the Dyson. His enthusiasm and ability to humanise the workings of the materials and the structure is infectious (next day I find myself googling magnets to find out what they are actually made from). But in the corner of his office, filled with different evolutions of the vacuum, I also spy an example of a Dyson failure: the Contrarotator, a double-drum washing machine that never took off. "It was too expensive to make." He pauses. "We should have charged more for it, then it would have been a great success, probably." The inventor is seemingly at ease with failure.  "I have failures all day long, every day. I made 5,126 prototypes for the Dyson vacuum. all failed until number 5,127."  and what a winner number 5,127 proved to be, arguably the totemic aspirational consumer product of our times, catapulting Dyson into Rich List territory. It didn't just suck up dirt efficaciously; it became a cultural signifier. In the Royle Family Christmas Special, Barb is moved to exclaim: "Ooh Valerie. What a Christmas! Implants and a Dyson!"  "Yes, and there's also a bit when Jim says: 'I can't even afford a bloody Dyson,'" says the inventor, looking quite delighted. In a time when British retail, from fashion to garden furniture, all seems to be about discounting and cheap-as-chips products with the excuse that this somehow democratises consumer goods by making them "affordable", Dyson is strikingly comfortable about his brand being perceived as expensive. "It's a consequence of spending so much on R&D. It's expensive. and I refuse to design down to a cost."  In fact he scorns the idea of a brand at all. "I don't believe in brands. Here, we believe people should only buy because they want a vacuum cleaner that does what ours does. I know we sell a lot of Dysons to poor people. They regard it as a significant investment. Someone who is less well-off is more likely to take an interest in their vacuum cleaner. The well-off just say: 'Oh, the cleaner deals with that.'"  But isn't this all a bit overengineered, I wonder. I think of my own vacuum, a simple canister on wheels: I've never found its reliance on bags or lack of suction cause for concern. "are you competitive about other hoovers, like the one I have? It's red and black with big eyes and a smile," I ask him. Dyson is cool. "I'm not going to comment on competitors.  I know exactly which one you mean. We do what we do: do away with bags, 100% suction. Henry can do what it wants."  Dyson does not have a problem speaking his mind, or indeed being heard, and he's done a good job of keeping the topic of industrial design in the news. Take his recent suggestion that Chinese students were stealing intellectual property from UK universities, which caused a minor storm. "What that article was really about was the tragic situation that 80% of postgraduate students are non-British. It is great to have more undergraduates doing science, but for blue-sky research - important risky research that translates into new technology which we can sell to the rest of the world - we need them to stay on and do postgraduate research. This is not xenophobia - it's the simple fact that we need postgraduate scientists here to create wealth. That's my point, more than the theft of intellectual property from universities."  So is there a problem with the thieving of intellectual property from British universities by Chinese students? "Well, I'm told there is. Yes. I have heard of a few instances. Of course it may not be confined to the Chinese."  Ultimately the thing that appears to drive the inventor of the fastest electric motor in the world is a desire to reboot manufacturing in the UK. "When I was growing up, the balance of trade was on the news every night because it was of such desperate concern. Now it's so bad it's disappeared entirely. If we import more than we export, we're a declining economy." But you moved your manufacturing base overseas, I venture. "No, I didn't," he says. "You did. In 2002," I refer to the newspaper cuttings of the time. "No, I didn't. I moved my assembly. and that's because they wouldn't let me expand over there," he gestures towards a large house, the head office of a construction company.  It's a careful distinction - to the lay person, assembly is part of manufacturing, and the media lamented the loss of 800 "manufacturing jobs" at the time. In 2009 there was  a similar tussle with the Environment agency over a proposed Dyson academy in Bath which never happened. (The Environment agency claimed the proposed site was a flood plain, and plans were dropped. Much was made of the fact that the Labour government ran with plans for a "rival" academy with Peter Jones of Dragons' Den.  He does, however, seem to feel that this government speaks his language. H  
 THE DILEMMa I would like to consume more ethically, but some elements of ethical consumption - like flying in Fairtrade items from overseas - seem paradoxical. Is it worth doing, and will it help?  I love saying I don't own a car because it seems to afford me loads of hypothetical green points. But is my lack of car attributable to my desire to de-link humankind from oil, or to the fact that I don't need one, as I live near a station? I shall never tell.  What I can say is that there is now a whole load of research on the fickleness and self-interest of "eco" private-sphere behaviours. This is coupled with a trend within the green movement for denouncing "green" personal activities and choices as pernicious. The thinking is that because you buy a pair of hemp pyjamas you will feel so virtuous that you'll wear them on a long-haul flight to the Maldives - global warming be damned. But this is to credit the population at large with the collective brain of a gnu.  Yes, there are paradoxes. Many consider "ethical consumerism  
 If you turn off the M6, on the ragged edge of Preston, and follow some brown badger signs through a series of truck-filled roundabouts and ramps, you suddenly see a huddle of roofs above a lake, which look like a bronze-age settlement. The view recalls those meticulous yellow-brown reconstructions you get in old, earnest children's books, and you half expect to see men carrying spears and dead deer, and the smoke of a campfire.  It is in fact a brand-new visitor centre for the just-opened Brockholes nature reserve, and rather than spear-carriers you see citizens of local cities wearing sensible outdoor clothes. It is a complex of buildings with claims on the future rather than the distant past, in that it aims to be extraordinarily sustainable. and it floats.  Brockholes sits on a concrete raft, made buoyant by hollow chambers, held by four steel posts to stop it drifting across the lake. This is the building's way of dealing with flooding, to which the site is prone. It can rise up to three metres, which would only be necessary in a catastrophe, but will regularly go up and down by 400mm over a year. Whether we are immersed by the effects of climate change or simply persist in our fondness for building on flood plains, floating buildings might come to seem like a very good idea. "People have been in denial about flood risk," says the building's architect, adam Khan.  Brockholes is an overlap of wildness and industry. It has been formed over 10 years out of a former gravel quarry, with a range of habitats added to existing woodlands and water to "create a microcosm of what old Lancashire was like". It has been "carefully crafted" to attract different species and is aimed less at dedicated bird-watchers and nature lovers than the general public of the big cities an hour's drive or so away - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds - and at tourists on their way to the nearby Lake District. The idea is to introduce people to nature who don't see enough of it.  Its buildings serve the usual needs of such places - cafe, shop, information - but also host a large education space and a series of conference rooms that will be rented out to generate income. Naturally, in such a place, they have to be scrupulously environmental, and so they are designed to achieve the "outstanding" category in the official measure of such things. (The British Research Establishment Environmental assessment Method, if you really want to know, or Breeam.) Until recently, buildings could only be "good" or "excellent"; Brockholes is on course to be the first building in its particular niche to achieve "outstanding", although the final judgment will not be made until it has been in use for a while.  Breeam concerns itself with everything from heating and ventilation to the height of light fixtures off the ground, to the sources of materials, the energy that goes into materials, their durability, their potential for recycling, and the distance they travel to the site.  Often, the pursuit of Breeam's approval leads buildings to pursue a box-ticking series of technical fixes, and an assembly of products designed to fulfil their requirements without much thought to how they look and feel. at Brockholes, adam Khan wanted to challenge this "factoid-led" approach, and use the pursuit of sustainability as the means to create more beautiful buildings, not less.  So he designed high, steep-pitched roofs enclosing large volumes (good for air circulation and extraction), clad in oak shakes - rough tiles formed out of tree stumps, which would otherwise be burned as waste. Gutters are in copper (long-life, recyclable), which adds a touch of luxury. Ventilation is entirely natural. The roofs are held up with timber beams made in a precise German process, and arrive on the site "as sharp as pencils". Insulation is a cheap but effective stuff made from recycled newspapers.  Then, charmingly, the building connects with its natural surroundings in a way that cannot be measured by technical indices. Because it floats, it has an intimacy with the water that it would lack if it were ringed with defences against flooding: the water is turned from an enemy into an ally. Reed beds have been planted around the building so that when they are fully grown the roofs will seem to emerge from them. From within, visitors will - in places - be able to look into the reeds, and into spaces carved out of them "like crop circles". In other places they will look onto open water.  The complex's buildings are arranged around a series of courtyards, which provide both a sense of enclosure and openness to views, and one of which is planted with a little orchard. The oak roofs change in the weather, from black in rain to gold in sun. Nor is it a matter of sight alone: t  
 The south pole is under invasion. Scientists have discovered that thousands, possibly millions, of king crabs are now clambering their way over the sea floor towards the antarctic.  "They are coming from the deep, somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 feet down," said James McClintock, of the University of alabama, Birmingham. It sounds like a scene from a science fiction film - king crabs were thought not to tolerate low temperatures until, in 2008, scientists spotted one on the seabed near the antarctic. The scientists returned earlier this year and carried out a full survey: their results were dramatic.  "We discovered hundreds and hundreds of king crabs, which could translate into millions across broad expanses of coastal antarctica," said McClintock. "They appear healthy and have all the ingredients needed to produce a healthy population."  Just why this crab invasion is taking place is unclear, though most scientists believe human changes to the atmosphere, triggering global warming, are involved. as to the impact of this underwater invasion, this is now causing considerable alarm. The antarctic environment is pristine but fragile and could be badly damaged by invading king crabs.  "The whole ecosystem could change," said McClintock, who revealed that he has already been contacted by fishermen who want to start catching king crabs in the antarctic. 
 Bijan Sheibani, 31, is a British-Iranian theatre director. after a stint as artistic director of aTC theatre, last year he was made associate dir  
 I am at Dyson HQ in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, the beacon of British industrialism, which is not a dark satanic mill but all light, contoured glass and bridges over placid water between sculptures. This is the birthplace of the bagless, see-through vacuum cleaner that offers 100% suction (so well known it need only be referred to as "the Dyson") and the planet's most powerful hand dryer, the airblade. Bright young engineers emerge from testing rooms wearing non-business dress (an informal rule) and mingle in the sunshine. People are smiling and holding lattes from the shiny canteen. I'm starting to wish I'd listened harder in science classes.  "I was hugely encouraged recently to hear that 13% of girls in school now actually want to become scientists," says Dyson. He has the wiry build of a long-distance runner and  a look of Nigel Havers. and he bounds up the stairs in polka-dot Yamamoto trainers. "OK, so 37% still want to become models, but 13% are aspiring to be scientists!" He stops. "But then  I discovered that they all wanted to be pathologists because of that TV show, CSI." For every problem, James Dyson suspects there is a solution waiting to be designed. So he spends a few minutes contemplating a drama series that could similarly shift engineering in the aspirations of teenage girls.  "Of course there was that film about a chap who invented the windscreen wiper then allegedly got ripped off," he says; I think of the 2008 film Flash of Genius. "Then he won some money, which went on the horses. actually the film was more about the horses than it was about the invention. Same with Howard Hughes. His engineering activities are rather interesting, actually, but the film centres on his drug taking and so on," he laments.  Hughes was also, famously, a recluse. Dyson is not. He has become as well known for his robust opinions as for the bagless cleaner. "The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues. But just look at the viewing figures for Tomorrow's World. They were phenomenal, and that just showed pure technology. You don't need to sex things up. These subjects [technology and engineering] are sexy in their own right."  although I spent my childhood happily watching Judith Hann and team riding around in Sinclair C5s, I have a hunch that this next generation is more demanding. But, in an effort to inspire the next crop of engineers and designers, he is running the 2011 James Dyson award through his eponymous foundation. The last winners to bag the ? 10,000 on offer to develop their invention - plus ? 10,000 towards their university education - were Yusuf Muhammad and Paul Thomas, who came up with a way to adapt kitchen taps to respond to domestic fires, thereby minimising casualties and deaths.  YOU WONDER IF THESE young innovators know what's headed their way. Because becoming an inventor also seems to mean opening yourself up to the possibility of betrayal. "at some point you're going to feel ripped off," says Dyson. One of his early inventions was the Ballbarrow - a wheelbarrow centred on a large, pneumatic red ball that gave it stability and made it easier to steer. and it was this odd-looking wheelbarrow that afforded the first professional "betrayal" when Dyson's business partners, having become majority shareholders, sold the invention to a US manufacturing firm that wrote Dyson out of the equation.  "If you invent something, you're doing a creative act," says Dyson. "It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment. The Ballbarrow was just the start. Terrible things happen all the time with the vacuum cleaner. People copy it. Society allows and encourages it. But it is theft, and I wish courts and society regarded it as such. Theft or rape, that's what it's like."  Perhaps to relieve an awkward pause after the rape reference, he is up on his feet collecting a series of components to demonstrate the inner workings of the Dyson. His enthusiasm and ability to humanise the workings of the materials and the structure is infectious (next day I find myself googling magnets to find out what they are actually made from). But in the corner of his office, filled with different evolutions of the vacuum, I also spy an example of a Dyson failure: the Contrarotator, a double-drum washing machine that never took off. "It was too expensive to make." He pauses. "We should have charged more for it, then it would have been a great success, probably." The inventor is seemingly at ease with failure.  "I have failures all day long, every day. I made 5,126 prototypes for the Dyson vacuum. all failed until number 5,127."  and what a winner number 5,127 proved to be, arguably the totemic aspirational consumer product of our times, catapulting Dyson into Rich List territory. It didn't just suck up dirt efficaciously; it became a cultural signifier. In the Royle Family Christmas Special, Barb is moved to exclaim: "Ooh Valerie. What a Christmas! Implants and a Dyson!"  "Yes, and there's also a bit when Jim says: 'I can't even afford a bloody Dyson,'" says the inventor, looking quite delighted. In a time when British retail, from fashion to garden furniture, all seems to be about discounting and cheap-as-chips products with the excuse that this somehow democratises consumer goods by making them "affordable", Dyson is strikingly comfortable about his brand being perceived as expensive. "It's a consequence of spending so much on R&D. It's expensive. and I refuse to design down to a cost."  In fact he scorns the idea of a brand at all. "I don't believe in brands. Here, we believe people should only buy because they want a vacuum cleaner that does what ours does. I know we sell a lot of Dysons to poor people. They regard it as a significant investment. Someone who is less well-off is more likely to take an interest in their vacuum cleaner. The well-off just say: 'Oh, the cleaner deals with that.'"  But isn't this all a bit overengineered, I wonder. I think of my own vacuum, a simple canister on wheels: I've never found its reliance on bags or lack of suction cause for concern. "are you competitive about other hoovers, like the one I have? It's red and black with big eyes and a smile," I ask him. Dyson is cool. "I'm not going to comment on competitors.  I know exactly which one you mean. We do what we do: do away with bags, 100% suction. Henry can do what it wants."  Dyson does not have a problem speaking his mind, or indeed being heard, and he's done a good job of keeping the topic of industrial design in the news. Take his recent suggestion that Chinese students were stealing intellectual property from UK universities, which caused a minor storm. "What that article was really about was the tragic situation that 80% of postgraduate students are non-British. It is great to have more undergraduates doing science, but for blue-sky research - important risky research that translates into new technology which we can sell to the rest of the world - we need them to stay on and do postgraduate research. This is not xenophobia - it's the simple fact that we need postgraduate scientists here to create wealth. That's my point, more than the theft of intellectual property from universities."  So is there a problem with the thieving of intellectual property from British universities by Chinese students? "Well, I'm told there is. Yes. I have heard of a few instances. Of course it may not be confined to the Chinese."  Ultimately the thing that appears to drive the inventor of the fastest electric motor in the world is a desire to reboot manufacturing in the UK. "When I was growing up, the balance of trade was on the news every night because it was of such desperate concern. Now it's so bad it's disappeared entirely. If we import more than we export, we're a declining economy." But you moved your manufacturing base overseas, I venture. "No, I didn't," he says. "You did. In 2002," I refer to the newspaper cuttings of the time. "No, I didn't. I moved my assembly. and that's because they wouldn't let me expand over there," he gestures towards a large house, the head office of a construction company.  It's a careful distinction - to the lay person, assembly is part of manufacturing, and the media lamented the loss of 800 "manufacturing jobs" at the time. In 2009 there was  a similar tussle with the Environment agency over a proposed Dyson academy in Bath which never happened. (The Environment agency claimed the proposed site was a flood plain, and plans were dropped. Much was made of the fact that the Labour government ran with plans for a "rival" academy with Peter Jones of Dragons' Den.  He does, however, seem to feel that this government speaks his language. H  
 THE DILEMMa I would like to consume more ethically, but some elements of ethical consumption - like flying in Fairtrade items from overseas - seem paradoxical. Is it worth doing, and will it help?  I love saying I don't own a car because it seems to afford me loads of hypothetical green points. But is my lack of car attributable to my desire to de-link humankind from oil, or to the fact that I don't need one, as I live near a station? I shall never tell.  What I can say is that there is now a whole load of research on the fickleness and self-interest of "eco" private-sphere behaviours. This is coupled with a trend within the green movement for denouncing "green" personal activities and choices as pernicious. The thinking is that because you buy a pair of hemp pyjamas you will feel so virtuous that you'll wear them on a long-haul flight to the Maldives - global warming be damned. But this is to credit the population at large with the collective brain of a gnu.  Yes, there are paradoxes. Many consider "ethical consumerism  
 Over the years, I've had a troubled relationship with English wines. No other country has provided so many candidates for my list of all-time worst bottles, nowhere else has commanded such a high average price per unit of pleasure.  and yet I've continued to believe in English wine, and not simply out of a misguided sense of patriotism. The hit rate may have been low, but there were always bottles - generally sparkling (which now accounts for more than 50% of total English production), but also distinctive aromatic whites - that proved it was possible to make good, maybe even great, wine in the damp and chill of England.  What's more, every year the proportion of good bottles has increased. It's not quite got to the stage where I expect a bottle of English wine to be competently made and drinkable but, with the exception of red wines, I've long since passed the point where I'm surprised if it turns out to be enjoyable. In the past few years I've even enjoyed some days trips in English vineyards (try the excellent online guide, drinkbritain.com if you want to do the same).  Vines arrived in Britain with the Romans, but winemaking all but died out in the Middle ages and was not revived as a (vaguely) commercial proposition until Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones planted his vineyard in Hambledon, Hampshire in the 1950s. It is only since the turn of this century, however, that investment on any serious scale has begun to take root.  French producers, particularly those in Champagne, are, if not exactly worried by the progress made by English sparkling wine, then certainly impressed by the quality produced by top English estates such as Nyetimber and Ridgeview in Sussex and Camel Valley in Cornwall. at last month's annual international wine trade fair in London I lost count of the number of Champagne producers I met who, unbidden, confessed they had been looking to buy land in southern England.  You can see why they might be attracted. Though the South Downs is more than 200 miles northwest of Reims in Champagne as the crow flies, the chalky soil is very similar and the climate only marginally cooler. The effects of global warming suggest that, in the next couple of decades, southern England might become a more suitable place than Champagne for producing the kind of high acid base wines required for quality sparkling wine. and agricultural land in southern England is as much as 10 times more affordable than in Champagne, where the average price of land is more than ? 500,000 a hectare.  So far, French interest in English vineyards has not translated into acquisitions. The scale of English wine remains tiny, too: the total combined area of vineyard in the UK of 1,300 to 1,400 hectares - there are single vineyards in Chile and australia of that size - means there are simply not the economies of scale to keep prices down. and, for all the awards - the latest being the excellent Denbies Chalk Hill Rose 2010, the best rose in the world, according to the International Wine Challenge - there are still too many bad bottles being made.  Still, it's been hard, in an unusually warm and sunny spring and early summer, not to feel optimistic about English wine; harder still to av  
 Energy consumer organisation the International Energy agency (IEa) has invited Russia and the Opec oil producers to join it, in a desperate bid to broker a peace between buyers and sellers over soaring crude prices.  The olive branch was extended yesterday by the IEa's executive director, Nobuo Tanaka, to Russia's deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin, but has already run into powerful opposition from the country's state-owned gas group, Gazprom.  In an exclusive interview with the Observer, Tanaka said it was time that producers and consumers realised they were on the same side. "We all really have a common interest. You cannot take oil in isolation from gas security, energy efficiency and electricity from renewables.  "The issues of energy security and climate change need to be tackled collectively and we think Russia and other key producers can learn a lot from [the IEa's] experience."  Producers and consumers have been at war with each other over who is responsible for high oil and gas prices. The IEa has repeatedly called on Opec to increase production, while producers blame western banks and other speculators for the volatility. Russia has recently called for the establishment of a gas cartel to match the oil cartel of Opec, something the IEa wants to avoid.  The initiative from Tanaka comes as the spike in oil and gas prices continues to make life miserable for already struggling UK households, whose living standards are being eroded by inflation. On Friday the aa said it had written to the European Union's competition commissioner asking him to investigate price volatility at the pumps, as drivers were being "ripped off". In the last month the oil price has fallen back from $126 a barrel to $110, but the aa says this change has not been reflected in retail prices.  Russia, along with China and India, already has observer status at the IEa but Tanaka said it would be a good thing if they became full members. Countries such as Indonesia and Mexico already want to become members, so "why not Russia?" he said.  Tanaka has also held preliminary talks with Saudi arabia and other Middle East oil producers about playing a role inside the Paris-based IEa. The agency was set up in the wake of the 1970s oil price shocks and has been largely regarded since then as a US-led group representing consumer nations against the power of the Opec cartel.  all the countries ins  
 as a co-founder of Greenpeace in the UK and a member of the first board of Greenpeace International, I am deeply saddened by the organisation's decision to spend ? 14m on a ship when it already has perfectly serviceable vessels in which to operate ("The Warrior returns", Magazine, last week). Largely due to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, Greenpeace has enjoyed a massive growth in income and support in the last 25 years.  Yet it seems so far removed from reality that it chooses now, in these times of economic and political strife, to plough ? 14m not into a sustainable energy demonstration project, nor into a joint effort with a development charity to unite the causes of poverty and environment but into a new ship which will be as alien to the peoples of the amazon as Greenpeace is in danger of becoming to a generation hoping for it to realise its true potential.  Pete Wilkinson  Halesworth  Suffolk 
 antarctica is the coldest, most desolate place on Earth, a land of barren mountains buried beneath a two-mile thick ice cap. Freezing winds batter its shores while week-long blizzards frequently sweep its glaciers.  Yet this icy vision turns out to be exceptional. For most of the past 100 million years, the south pole was a tropical paradise, it transpires.  "It was a green beautiful place," said Prof Jane Francis, of Leeds University's School of Earth and Environment. "Lots of furry mammals including possums and beavers lived there. The weather was tropical. It is only in the recent geological past that it got so cold."  Prof Francis was speaking last week at the International Symposium on antarctic Earth Sciences in Edinburgh. More than 500 polar researchers gathered to discuss the latest details of their studies, research that has disturbing implications for the planet's future. Drilling projects and satellite surveys show the whole world, not just antarctica, was affected by temperature rises and that these were linked, closely, to fluctuations in levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  "Fifty five million years ago, there were more than 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Professor Stephen Pekar, of City University of New York. "That heated the world enough to melt all its ice caps. Sea levels would have been almost 200ft higher than today. "  at present, there are 390ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, a rise - c  
 Your article "Italy's elite dismayed by vanishing beaches" (News, last week) refers in the standfirst to "rising sea levels eat[ing] away at the coast". Once again, an article is only newsworthy if the spectre of the sea rising to cover all our cities can be foretold.  The article goes on to say: "Experts blame development along Italy's rivers. . . which have slowed down the. . . flow out to sea of sediment needed to replenish beaches after storms." This happens all around our own coast and is most often a manmade change to the natural sediment flow that causes erosion of our favourite beaches.  The sea level in the Mediterranean changes for a variety of very complex reasons, of which an increase in global sea levels is just one.  Peter McEwen  Reading 
 antarctica is the coldest, most desolate place on Earth, a land of barren mountains buried beneath a two-mile thick ice cap. Freezing winds batter its shores while week-long blizzards frequently sweep its glaciers.  Yet this icy vision turns out to be exceptional. For most of the past 100 million years, the south pole was a tropical paradise, it transpires.  "It was a green beautiful place," said Prof Jane Francis, of Leeds University's School of Earth and Environment. "Lots of furry mammals including possums and beavers lived there. The weather was tropical. It is only in the recent geological past that it got so cold."  Prof Francis was speaking last week at the International Symposium on antarctic Earth Sciences in Edinburgh. More than 500 polar researchers gathered to discuss the latest details of their studies, research that has disturbing implications for the planet's future. Drilling projects and satellite surveys show the whole world, not just antarctica, was affected by temperature rises and that these were linked, closely, to fluctuations in levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  "Fifty five million years ago, there were more than 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Professor Stephen Pekar, of City University of New York. "That heated the world enough to melt all its ice caps. Sea levels would have been almost 200ft higher than today."  at present, there are 390ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, a rise -   
 David and Victoria Beckham may have been overjoyed to welcome their new daughter, Harper Seven, last week but, according to a growing group of campaigners, the birth of their fourth child make the couple bad role models and environmentally irresponsible.  as the world's population is due to hit seven billion at some point in the next few days, there is an increasing call for the UK to open a public debate about how many children people have.  Now the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has joined other leading environmentalists in calling for the smashing of what TV zoologist Sir David attenborough has called the "absurd taboo" in discussing family size in the UK.  Lucas said: "We need to have a far greater public debate about population, whether it focuses on improving family planning or reducing global inequality - and looking again at how we address the strain on our natural resources. The absence of an open and honest discussion about this issue means most people don't give much thought to the scale of global population growth in recent years. In 1930, just one or two generations ago, the world's population stood at around two billion. Today it is around seven billion, and by 2050 it is projected to rise by a third to 9 billion.  "We live as if we have three planets instead of just one. It is interesting that public figures, environmental groups and NGOs in general have tended to steer away from population to the extent that it's become a taboo issue. The horrific consequences of China's one-child policy and of other draconian efforts to regulate procreation have, for many, rendered discussion of the subject completely unpalatable. Yet as long as an issue remains a taboo subject where no one talks about it, then there's very little chance of finding the solutions we need."  It is a view that is being pushed by the UK-based Optimum Population Trust, whose chief executive, Simon Ross, is calling for the government to tackle the UK's high rates of accidental pregnancy and to give child benefits and tax credits only for the first two children. "That would send a clear signal that the government will support sustainable families, but after that you are on your own," he said. "There is a big issue there, family planning is cheap, yet many people don't use it properly and accidental pregnancy rates are very high. We need to change the incentives to make the environmental case that one or two children are fine but three or four are just being selfish.  "The Beckhams, and others like London mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families. There's no point in people trying to reduce their carbon emissions and then increasing them 100% by having another child," he said. "England is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and the fastest-growing in population terms in Europe. In 15 years we'll have an extra 10 million people here."  attenborough has attacked the last two UN climate summits in Cancun and Copenhagen for ducking the population issue. Giving the President's Lecture at the Royal Society of arts in March, he made a passionate speech about how the world's baby-making was damaging the planet a  
 David and Victoria Beckham may have been overjoyed to welcome their new daughter, Harper Seven, last week but, according to a growing group of campaigners, the birth of their fourth child make the couple bad role models and environmentally irresponsible.  as the world's population is due to hit seven billion at some point in the next few days, there is an increasing call for the UK to open a public debate about how many children people have.  Now the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has joined other leading environmentalists in calling for the smashing of what TV zoologist Sir David attenborough has called the "absurd taboo" in discussing family size in the UK.  Lucas said: "We need to have a far greater public debate about population, whether it focuses on improving family planning or reducing global inequality - and looking again at how we address the strain on our natural resources. The absence of an open and honest discussion about this issue means most people don't give much thought to the scale of global population growth in recent years. In 1930, just one or two generations ago, the world's population stood at around two billion. Today it is around seven billion, and by 2050 it is projected to rise by a third to 9 billion.  "We live as if we have three planets instead of just one. It is interesting that public figures, environmental groups and NGOs in general have tended to steer away from population to the extent that it's become a taboo issue. The horrific consequences of China's one-child policy and of other draconian efforts to regulate procreation have, for many, rendered discussion of the subject completely unpalatable. Yet as long as an issue remains a taboo subject where no one talks about it, then there's very little chance of finding the solutions we need."  It is a view that is being pushed by the UK-based Optimum Population Trust, whose chief executive, Simon Ross, is calling for the government to tackle the UK's high rates of accidental pregnancy and to give child benefits and tax credits only for the first two children. "That would send a clear signal that the government will support sustainable families, but after that you are on your own," he said. "There is a big issue there, family planning is cheap, yet many people don't use it properly and accidental pregnancy rates are very high. We need to change the incentives to make the environmental case that one or two children are fine but three or four are just being selfish.  "The Beckhams, and others like London mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families. There's no point in people trying to reduce their carbon emissions and then increasing them 100% by having another child," he said. "England is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and the fastest-growing in population terms in Europe. In 15 years we'll have an extra 10 million people here."  attenborough has attacked the last two UN climate summits in Cancun and Copenhagen for ducking the population issue. Giving the President's Lecture at the Royal Society of arts in March, he made a passionate speech about how the world's baby-making was damaging the planet  
 Thomas Huxley, the British biologist who so vociferously, and effectively, defended Darwin's theory of natural selection in the 19th century, had a basic view of science. "It is simply common sense at its best - rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic."  It is as neat a description as you can get and well worth remembering when considering how science is treated by the UK media and by the BBC in particular. Last week, a study, written by geneticist Steve Jones, warned that far too often the corporation had failed to appreciate the nature of science and to make a distinction "between well-established fact and opinion". In doing so, the corporation had given free publicity to marginal belief, he said.  Jones was referring to climate change deniers, anti-MMR activists, GM crop opponents and other fringe groups who have benefited from wide coverage despite the paucity of evidence that supports their beliefs. By contrast, scientists, as purveyors of common sense, have found themselves sidelined because producers wanted to create controversy and so skewed discussions to hide researchers' near unanimity of views in these fields. In this way, the British public has been misled into thinking there is a basic division among scientists over global warming or MMR.  It is a problem that can be blamed on the media that believe, with some justification, that adversarial dispute is the best way to cover democracy in action. It serves us well with politics and legal affairs, but falls down badly when it comes to science because its basic processes, which rely heavily on internal criticism and disproof, are so widely misunderstood.  Yet there is nothing complicated about the business, says Robert May, the former UK government science adviser. "In the early stages of research, ideas are like hillocks on a landscape. So you design experiments to discriminate among them. Most hillocks shrink and disappear until, in the end, you are left with a single towering pinnacle of virtual certitude."  The case of manmade climate change is a good example, adds May. "a hundred years ago, scientists realised carbon dioxide emissions could affect climate. Twenty years ago, we thought they were now having an impact. Today, after taking more and more measurements, we can see there is no other explanation for the behaviour of the climate. Humans are changing it. Of course, deniers disagree, but that's because they hold fixed positions that have nothing to do with science."  It is the scientist, not the denier, who is the real sceptic, adds Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society. "When you carry out research, you cannot afford to cherry-pick data or ignore inconvenient facts. You have to be brutal. You also have to be sceptical about your own ideas and attack them. If you don't, others will."  When an idea reaches the stage where it's almost ready to become a paper, it has therefore been subjected to savage scrutiny by its own authors and by their colleagues - and that is before writing has started. afterwards, the paper goes to peer review where there is a further round of critical appraisal by a separate group of researchers. What emerges is a piece of work that has already been robustly tested - a point that is again lost in the media.  Over the centuries, this process has been honed to near perfection. By proposing and then attacking ideas and by making observations to test them, humanity has built up a remarkable understanding of the universe. The accuracy of Einstein's theories of relativity, Crick and Watson's double helix structure of DNa and plate tectonics were all revealed this way, though no scientist would admit these discoveries are the last word, as the palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould once pointed out: "In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'," he admitted.  Certainly, things can go wrong, as Huxley acknowledged. Science may be organised common sense but all too often a beautiful theory created this way has been skewered by "a single ugly fact", as he put it. Think of Fred Hoyle's elegant concept of a steady state universe that is gently expanding and eternal. The idea was at one time considered to be philosophically superior to its rival, the big bang theory that proposed the cosmos erupted into existence billions of years ago. The latter idea explained the expansion of the universe by recourse to a vast explosion. The former accounted for this expansion in more delicate, intriguing terms.  The steady state theory continued to hold its own until, in 1964, radio-astronomers arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson noted interference on their radio telescope at the Bell Labs in New Jersey and tried to eliminate it. The pair went as far as shovelling out the pigeon droppings in the telescope and had the guilty pigeons shot (each blamed the other for giving the order). Yet the noise persisted. Only later did the two scientists realise what they were observing. The static hiss they were picking up was caused by a microwave radiation echo that had been set off when the universe erupted into existence after its big bang b  
 across our planet, a range of ancient habitats provide eerie testimonies to the lives of creatures that once ruled the land. In Brazil, more than 100 tree species produce giant fruit that evolved to be dispersed by elephant-sized creatures called gomphotheres, while in Madagascar many plants grow thin zigzag branches to protect themselves from 10ft-high elephant birds, which used to populate the island.  These animals, like the mammoth and mastodon, are now extinct - their disappearances having followed the relentless conquest of the globe by Homo sapiens. Few doubt there is a link. Environmentalist Mark Lynas is certainly convinced that humans slaughtered these huge animals, creatures whose only living legacy today are those specialised fruits and protective thorny bushes that still await their attention. and with no living animals to disperse their seeds properly, these trees and plants are now themselves endangered.  Humans have a lot to answer for, in short. We have wiped out countless species and are now heating the planet, poisoning the oceans, and transforming the atmosphere. Having culled so many of the world's large beasts, we are now preparing to eradicate animals and plants of every size. as Lynas states: "Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do."  and you can see his point. Homo sapiens have acquired God-like powers to transform the world and destroy life. Hence the title of Lynas's book, in which he outlines the measures he believes that humans - as responsible, benign deities - should now adopt to save the planet. Many of these proposals are surprising, coming, as they do, from a former green activist who once trashed GM plant trials and railed against corporate greed.  Consider nuclear power. an anathema to greenies but which turns out to be a particular favourite of Lynas: an energy source that should be seen as "one of the strongest weapons in our armoury against global warming". Those who protest against its introduction are dismissed as doing as much harm to the climate as big oil companies.  Genetically engineered crops also get the thumbs-up. Only they can provide the food for the billions of future inhabitants that will populate our planet, Lynas claims. as for those midnight raids he carried out against plant trials, they occurred because "I was caught up more in an outbreak of mass hysteria than anything resembling a rational response to a new technology".  as Damascene conversions go, this is a belter. With luck, it might even start a trend - for as Lynas now admits, it is now "time for a change of tack by the Green movement, for the benefit of farmers, consumers and the environment". amen, is all I can add.  The core of The God Species relies heavily on the work of the "planetary boundaries" group, a collection of scientists who recently produced strict recommendations about levels of disturbance beyond which humanity should not push the planet. These propose specific limits on carbon dioxide emissions, farming land use, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and ocean acidification. Stick to these and earthly life should remain tolerable, Lynas states.  Nor is there a need for an economic revolution to achieve these goals. Good old-fashioned capitalism is quite sufficient. as Lynas says: "a successful environmental movement must work with people's aspirations for prosperity and comfort, not try to suppress these impulses." This is a fair point, though Lynas is vague, to say the least, about how un  
 Thomas Huxley, the British biologist who so vociferously, and effectively, defended Darwin's theory of natural selection in the 19th century, had a basic view of science. "It is simply common sense at its best - rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic."  It is as neat a description as you can get and well worth remembering when considering how science is treated by the UK media and by the BBC in particular. Last week, a study, written by geneticist Steve Jones, warned that far too often the corporation had failed to appreciate the nature of science and to make a distinction "between well-established fact and opinion". In doing so, the corporation had given free publicity to marginal belief, he said.  Jones was referring to climate change deniers, anti-MMR activists, GM crop opponents and other fringe groups who have benefited from wide coverage despite the paucity of evidence that supports their beliefs. By contrast, scientists, as purveyors of common sense, have found themselves sidelined because producers wanted to create controversy and so skewed discussions to hide researchers' near unanimity of views in these fields. In this way, the British public has been misled into thinking there is a basic division among scientists over global warming or MMR.  It is a problem that can be blamed on the media that believe, with some justification, that adversarial dispute is the best way to cover democracy in action. It serves us well with politics and legal affairs, but falls down badly when it comes to science because its basic processes, which rely heavily on internal criticism and disproof, are so widely misunderstood.  Yet there is nothing complicated about the business, says Robert May, the former UK government science adviser. "In the early stages of research, ideas are like hillocks on a landscape. So you design experiments to discriminate among them. Most hillocks shrink and disappear until, in the end, you are left with a single towering pinnacle of virtual certitude."  The case of manmade climate change is a good example, adds May. "a hundred years ago, scientists realised carbon dioxide emissions could affect climate. Twenty years ago, we thought they were now having an impact. Today, after taking more and more measurements, we can see there is no other explanation for the behaviour of the climate. Humans are changing it. Of course, deniers disagree, but that's because they hold fixed positions that have nothing to do with science."  It is the scientist, not the denier, who is the real sceptic, adds Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society. "When you carry out research, you cannot afford to cherry-pick data or ignore inconvenient facts. You have to be brutal. You also have to be sceptical about your own ideas and attack them. If you don't, others will."  When an idea reaches the stage where it's almost ready to become a paper, it has therefore been subjected to savage scrutiny by its own authors and by their colleagues - and that is before writing has started. afterwards, the paper goes to peer review where there is a further round of critical appraisal by a separate group of researchers. What emerges is a piece of work that has already been robustly tested - a point that is again lost in the media.  Over the centuries, this process has been honed to near perfection. By proposing and then attacking ideas and by making observations to test them, humanity has built up a remarkable understanding of the universe. The accuracy of Einstein's theories of relativity, Crick and Watson's double helix structure of DNa and plate tectonics were all revealed this way, though no scientist would admit these discoveries are the last word, as the palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould once pointed out: "In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'," he admitted.  Certainly, things can go wrong, as Huxley acknowledged. Science may be organised common sense but all too often a beautiful theory created this way has been skewered by "a single ugly fact", as he put it. Think of Fred Hoyle's elegant concept of a steady state universe that is gently expanding and eternal. The idea was at one time considered to be philosophically superior to its rival, the big bang theory that proposed the cosmos erupted into existence billions of years ago. The latter idea explained the expansion of the universe by recourse to a vast explosion. The former accounted for this expansion in more delicate, intriguing terms.  The steady state theory continued to hold its own until, in 1964, radio-astronomers arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson noted interference on their radio telescope at the Bell Labs in New Jersey and tried to eliminate it. The pair went as far as shovelling out the pigeon droppings in the telescope and had the guilty pigeons shot (each blamed the other for giving the order). Yet the noise persisted. Only later did the two scientists realise what they were observing. The static hiss they were picking up was caused by a microwave radiation echo that had been set off when the universe erupted into existence after its big bang b  
 across our planet, a range of ancient habitats provide eerie testimonies to the lives of creatures that once ruled the land. In Brazil, more than 100 tree species produce giant fruit that evolved to be dispersed by elephant-sized creatures called gomphotheres, while in Madagascar many plants grow thin zigzag branches to protect themselves from 10ft-high elephant birds, which used to populate the island.  These animals, like the mammoth and mastodon, are now extinct - their disappearances having followed the relentless conquest of the globe by Homo sapiens. Few doubt there is a link. Environmentalist Mark Lynas is certainly convinced that humans slaughtered these huge animals, creatures whose only living legacy today are those specialised fruits and protective thorny bushes that still await their attention. and with no living animals to disperse their seeds properly, these trees and plants are now themselves endangered.  Humans have a lot to answer for, in short. We have wiped out countless species and are now heating the planet, poisoning the oceans, and transforming the atmosphere. Having culled so many of the world's large beasts, we are now preparing to eradicate animals and plants of every size. as Lynas states: "Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do."  and you can see his point. Homo sapiens have acquired God-like powers to transform the world and destroy life. Hence the title of Lynas's book, in which he outlines the measures he believes that humans - as responsible, benign deities - should now adopt to save the planet. Many of these proposals are surprising, coming, as they do, from a former green activist who once trashed GM plant trials and railed against corporate greed.  Consider nuclear power. an anathema to greenies but which turns out to be a particular favourite of Lynas: an energy source that should be seen as "one of the strongest weapons in our armoury against global warming". Those who protest against its introduction are dismissed as doing as much harm to the climate as big oil companies.  Genetically engineered crops also get the thumbs-up. Only they can provide the food for the billions of future inhabitants that will populate our planet, Lynas claims. as for those midnight raids he carried out against plant trials, they occurred because "I was caught up more in an outbreak of mass hysteria than anything resembling a rational response to a new technology".  as Damascene conversions go, this is a belter. With luck, it might even start a trend - for as Lynas now admits, it is now "time for a change of tack by the Green movement, for the benefit of farmers, consumers and the environment". amen, is all I can add.  The core of The God Species relies heavily on the work of the "planetary boundaries" group, a collection of scientists who recently produced strict recommendations about levels of disturbance beyond which humanity should not push the planet. These propose specific limits on carbon dioxide emissions, farming land use, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and ocean acidification. Stick to these and earthly life should remain tolerable, Lynas states.  Nor is there a need for an economic revolution to achieve these goals. Good old-fashioned capitalism is quite sufficient. as Lynas says: "a successful environmental movement must work with people's aspirations for prosperity and comfort, not try to suppress these impulses." This is a fair point, though Lynas is vague, to say the least,  
 Robin McKie's thoughtful comment on the state of science in the media is very apposite ("Science and truth have been cast aside by our desire for controversy", Comment, last week). Currently, the science national curriculum for schools is being reviewed. Michael Gove has called for a return to a more "traditional" curriculum based on facts.  at first sight, this may seem reasonable and could lead to the removal of controversial issues such as climate change and GM foods, but, more importantly, it could lead to the removal of a very positive recent change in the science curriculum that determines how science is taught, ie from the perspective of "how science works", meaning that children should understand the nature of science, the process of science and how scientists get their ideas accepted.  What better reason for teaching children about how scientists arrive at explanations for natural phenomenon than the need to develop a better understanding of the reliability and validity of published science?  The constant yet sometimes irrational drive for "balance", as demonstrated by Professor Steve Jones, has had completely the opposite effect; it has allowed extreme minority views to capture a disproportionate amount of air-time and column inches in the media.  another example to add to those listed is intelligent design creationism, which constantly seeks to invade our curriculum with a demand that untried, untested, unscientific ideas are accorded equal status with the accepted, tested and scientific standpoint of evolution.  James D. Williams  Lecturer in science education, Sussex School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex  Robin Mckie might call upon the eminent historical figure of Thomas Huxley to support his   
 Sting is sitting on a bar stool in a white T-shirt and grey camouflage-patterned combat trousers, playing a harmonica. In front of him,  a 20-piece orchestra is half-way through a classical arrangement of one of his songs, producing a swelling crescendo of sound that fills the stage. Behind him rise the steep, stone-hewn seats of a Roman amphitheatre in Lyon where, later tonight, Sting will play to a packed crowd of French fans as part of his Symphonicity world tour.  In the middle of the sound-check, he shakes his head and stops playing. The harmonica wheezes gently in protest.  Everyone falls silent. Something is bothering him and no one is quite sure what. Will he throw a diva-esque tantrum a la Mariah Carey, and demand that his dressing room be re-stocked with  lilies? Has someone forgotten to fulfil his rider request for eight dwarf strippers and a bowl of M&Ms (no blues)?  "That should be an F sharp," Sting says after a few seconds of tense silence, pointing at the clarinettist. There is a collective sigh of relief. The music resumes and, this time, the clarinettist gets his notes right. Sting looks over and gives him the thumbs-up. The clarinettist beams with pleasure.  It is, perhaps, precisely this attention to detail that has given Sting such staying power. His musical career has now spanned a quarter of a century and along the way he has scooped 16 Grammy awards, sold more than 100m records and written some of the most memorable songs of the past three decades ("Roxanne", "Message in a Bottle", "Englishman  in New York"). By the time we meet, the Symphonicity tour, which features orchestral re-workings of his substantial back catalogue, has been playing to packed venues for the best part of 18 months.  It becomes clear, throughout the rehearsal, that the members of the orchestra both respect Sting's musical instinct and want to please him, as though he is a favoured teacher they are desperate to impress. Even the world-weary roadie next to me, who has spent most of his adult life on tour with various rock stars (Rod Stewart was, he confides, a nightmare) speaks about him like a mooning teenage girl. "Sting has such respect for other people," the roadie says. "He's just a great guy."  Oh please, I think to myself. He can't be that perfect. What about all those awful press articles you read about him? The ones with the yoga lessons, the constant preaching about saving the rainforest, the overly earnest attempts to paint himself as some kind of eco-warrior when his carbon footprint must be the size of Pluto? What about the rumours of arrogance and stubbornness, the fact that when the Police broke up in 1984 - one of the most successful British rock bands of all time - the drummer Stewart Copeland said that an on-going argument with Sting about what drum machine to use in a recording session was "the straw that broke the camel's back"?  What about the tantric sex with Trudie, the networking events they hold in their Tuscan villa for spiritual gurus and creative thinkers, the biodynamic vineyards and the fact they were responsible for introducing Madonna to Guy Ritchie at one of their glitzy celebrity parties and, by extension, for subjecting us to all those photographs of Madge in tweed caps and tracksuits?  What about the accusations of unabashed grandeur, the rambling country pile in Wiltshire, the penthouse in New York, the chef who supposedly had to travel 100 miles to make Trudie a bowl of soup? What about the time when Elvis Costello, of all people, once called Sting's music "appalling"?  But then, just as I am thinking of every single negative press cutting I have ever read about him, Sting walks across to introduce himself. He fixes his eyes on mine, touches my arm and says: "are you who  I think you are?" and the effect is totally disarming. Embarrassingly,  I hear a giggle, then realise it is coming from me. It is hard to convey the impact of his sheer physical presence. He is not especially tall, but his body is powerful: thick-set and muscled, the veins in his neck sticking out like a wrestler's.  Later, of course, it will strike me that it was a particularly clever opening line, managing simultaneously to give the impression that he knew who I was without actually needing to remember my name.  "I have to wash before I speak to you because I stink," he continues, his voice a weird transatlantic potpourri of vowels and dropped consonants. He smiles, blue eyes glinting, then walks briskly off stage. Everyone turns to watch him go  The roadie looks at me, raising his eyebrows. "Told you," he says, grinning.  aFTER STING HaS showered and changed into a T-shirt and combats that look exactly the same as the ones he was wearing before, we walk to a nearby cafe and sit on the open terrace, facing each other across a wooden picnic table. He is turning 60 in October (taking advantage of this milestone to release a 25-year retrospective box-set of CDs and DVDs) and so, to break the ice, I ask him if this makes him a Libra, believing that my feigned interest in astrology will doubtless appeal to his "spiritual" side.  "Well I'm actually an asparagus," he says, deadpan. "Unique sign."  Then, after he has ordered a miso soup and a shredded vegetable salad with Tahini dressing from his personal chef, I ask him about his diet. Is he strict about what he eats? "Officially yes. Unofficially: it's ice cream, chocolate, wine." But doesn't Trudie tell you off? "No, no, no. I mean, she tells me I'm being silly when I'm being silly. When I have too much wine, it's 'Darling!' She's pretty disciplined."  Well, this is most unexpected. Five minutes in and Sting has already demolished the mung-bean-eating myth of himself as pop music's answer to the Dalai Lama. The next thing I'll find out is that he's fed-up of tantric sex. . . is he? "That story is 20 years old," he says, protesting. This is slightly disingenuous - in January, he and Trudie, his film-producer wife of 18 years and mother to four of his six children, gave a joint interview to Harper's Bazaar in which he claimed: "I don't think pedestrian sex is very interesting. . . we like tawdry." To which the near-universal response was: put  it away, love.  "If you want to ask me seriously what tantric sex is, I might try and give you a coherent answer," Sting says now, sipping spoonfuls of  miso soup. "It's using every aspect of your life - whether it's walking, breathing, eating, speaking, making love - as an act of devotion or an act of gratitude. That's all it is. The whole idea of seven hours of fuc - " he stops himself, "of intercourse -  I mean, please!"  We laugh. In person, Sting seems to take himself much less seriously than the public image of him would have us believe. Given all the flak he has attracted over the years in the press, does he care what people think of him?  "In some ways I consider it an advantage to know how other people view you. You're under no illusions about how you're thought  of. You have to strike a balance: there's people who can't stand the sight of you, there's people who really love you and obviously the truth is somewhere in the middle. That's  the passage I'm navigating. . . I don't get unduly hurt. I might get a bit crazy. . ."  What - you might punch someone (the Police were well known for their impromptu back-stage fist-fights)? He gives a lazy smile. "No, I wouldn't do that. I might rehearse it in my mind, but I wouldn't do it."  He spears a sliver of carrot with his fork and chews, thoughtfully. The sky darkens and a few droplets of rain fall on the ground. Within minutes, we are in the grip of a thunderstorm and four separate minions have come to bring him an umbrella, stacking each one up against the side of the table. "Thank you," he says, every time someone brings him another, obviously worried lest he appear ungrateful. By the time the storm clears, he looks like a cloakroom attendant.  IT IS aLL a VERY long way from Wallsend, Newcastle, where Sting - born Gordon Sumner - grew up in a house "where literally the ship yard was at the end of the street - surreal!" His mother, audrey, was a hairdresser and his father, Ernie, a milkman. as a boy, Gordon helped his father on the round, but secretly dreamed of being a musician, plucking away at home on an old Spanish guitar left behind by an uncle who had emigrated to Canada.  "My ambition initially was just to make a living as a musician," he says. "I thought that was a very honourable way to make a life, to pay the rent, put some food on the table."  His parents' marriage was an unhappy one and his mother eventually eloped with one of his father's co-workers. In his critically acclaimed 2003 autobiography, Broken Music (written without a ghost-writer), he describes audrey as "always looking longingly away from home for her salvation".  as the eldest of four children, Gordon bore the brunt of much of the marital strife: "because my siblings were younger I was trying to protect them from what I knew and that was a big strain for me. I was basically the keeper of secrets."  He grimaces. "Still am." He says that, at the age of seven, he was "detached, lonely and driven" and that his personality has barely changed since. "That's basically where I am now - detached, really detached."  and it is true that no matter how charming Sting can be, there is a definite sense that you only get so far with him and no further. It is not guardedness exactly - in fairness, he answers every question I put to him - but more a sense that you are speaking to him through a layer of glass; that he is more comfortable in his own company, with his own thoughts, than with having to explain them to anyone else. He strikes me as  a loner who, by dint of his profession, finds himself spending a lot of time around other people, explaining things he would rather leave unsaid. "I'm not usually happy," he says, "but at the same time happiness can be thought of as a kind of bovine state - cows are happy; I'm curious."  after attending a Catholic grammar school, he got  various jobs - at one point working in his local tax office - before becoming a primary-school teacher in a nearby mining town. In the evenings, he played in local jazz groups, earning the nickname "Sting" from a band leader after performing in  a bee-like black-and-yellow striped jumper.  But it wasn't until the late 1970s, after years of gigging, that Sting got his big break. He moved to London with his then wife, the actress Frances Tomelty and their baby son, Joe, and met the drummer Stewart Copeland. They formed the Police along with guitarist andy Summers. Their first album was released in 1978 and included the track "Roxanne", about  a man who falls in love with a prostitute. Sting never looked back.  He spent seven years with the Police before calling time on the band and pursuing a highly successful solo career. Copeland and Summers allegedly never forgave him (although a 2008 reunion tour, which raked in ? 108m, must have helped ease the tension somewhat).  Whatever you think of his music - and there are oft-repeated accusations of creative unoriginality, the sense that his songs are little more than hyped-up elevator musack - it has enjoyed remarkable longevity. "I don't think there's very much original in what I do," he admits. "In pop music, there's no such thing as composition. We collate from pre-existing tropes and then the originality comes in the interpretation."  Given that he put in years of hard graft as a performer, Sting has understandably mixed feelings about the modern narrative of reality TV show fame. "I think the idea of going straight from school and then becoming a TV star is bizarre because it doesn't give you any perspective. You know, I held  a job down, I paid a mortgage, paid my taxes, before any of this happened so it allowed me at least to keep a balanced view of what was happening to me.  I really value those times when I struggled. You know, we were poor. So I don't envy kids who go straight from X Factor to record deals. It's a kind of dangerous trajectory. That's my opinion.  "People nowadays say, 'I want to be famous,' not: 'I want to be a musician. I want to be an actor.' The first thing on their minds is: 'I want to be famous.' You've got to be careful what you wish for." He gives a dry little chuckle.  Sting's path to success certainly came with its own ups and downs -  his first marriage was an early casualty, put under strain by financial insecurity and endless touring. Of course it  didn't help that Sting fell in love with  a next-door neighbour while the couple were living in Bayswater, London. The neighbour's name was Trudie Styler and the first time he saw her, Sting thought she looked like  "a damaged angel".  The subsequent messiness as his marriage buckled was, he says now, "a huge psychological event. My first marriage is the only thing I've ever failed at and I failed miserably." He still feels bad about it - is that because of some lingering Catholic guilt from his childhood?  He pauses. "I don't think it ever goes away, that feeling of conscience, but I think I have a conscience anyway. . . I don't regret my Catholic upbringing, but I really don't like certainty in spiritual matters. I find that very dangerous. You end up with massacres and you end up with 9/11. Certainty is wrong. Uncertainty is a much more sensible position."  Sting and Tomelty had another child, Fuchsia, but eventually divorced in 1984, and he went on to have four children with Trudie. Does he think he is a good father? "I wouldn't say I'm a good dad. You know, I'm a travelling musician rather than a dad. But I take my job seriously and when they need to talk to me or need a shoulder to cry on, I'm definitely there for them. and as they get older, their problems become more interesting. Young kids, I'm not that keen on, but as they get older you can actually talk to them, about relationships, about the meaning of life - now that's fun."  He admits that he "adores" being on the road. "I enjoy it. It keeps me out of trouble."  What sort of trouble would you get in otherwise? "Oh God knows. Crime. . ." he laughs. "I can't imagine life without working. I think one of my anxieties is the idea of doing nothing terrifies me. I love the feeling of forward momentum. It's become an addiction."  Does he think, in some ways, he is like his mother - always looking for stimulation outside the home? He ponders this. "It's very hard to stay in one place. But at the same time,  I like somewhere to orbit. I like the fact there's a family home somewhere. Without that central point I think I'd go crazy, I'd spiral off into. . ." He leaves the thought unfinished. "My family have sort of learned to deal with it - they understand it's what Dad does. I get anxious being still. It's really a discipline to settle down." Is that why he took up yoga? "To calm me down?" He nods. "I think so."  Of course, the problem with this ceaseless wanderlust is that it does rather conflict with his stated desire to save the planet. When you combine it with the fact that Sting owns several glamorous homes in various countries and travels between them by aeroplane, you have to question how it is that  he squares his carbon emissions with his 20-year-long campaign against deforestation (he and Trudie set up  the Rainforest Foundation in 1989). Is he a hypocrite?  "Well that's the narrative: venal celebrities preaching to the world about climate change. The fact is none of us can help but do the wrong thing. I'm assuming you didn't come here on a donkey, right? Tomorrow, I'm going to get on a plane and go to another city and admittedly my carbon footprint is massive. at the same time, I say we shouldn't rip up the forest because if you read the Stern report, all of us could stop travelling tomorrow, industry could stop tomorrow, but the largest contribution to global warming is  
 THE DILEMMa  Is tap water really safe to drink? I know it's the eco thing to do, but I worry about drinking recycled sewage.  I was surprised last week when a friend recently relocated from Italy expressed doubts about good old London tap water. But then she was even more surprised by my jauntily ordering it with a meal. "Is it really safe?" she whispered. apparently I could neither quench nor quell her fears. after a heated exchange she bottled it, opting for the packaged H2O option she finds comforting.  But I concede that "recycled  
 The government is expected this week to try to use a post-Fukushima green light from Britain's chief nuclear safety inspector to inject momentum into its stuttering nuclear power and anti-climate-change programmes.  The move will run into a hail of criticism from environmentalists who believe the latest inquiry into the nuclear industry has been rushed through and fear that ministers are backing off from their commitments to green issues.  On Tuesday, Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, is scheduled to release the final report by Mike Weightman, chief inspector for nuclear installations, into what lessons should be learned from the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan. The report is understood to contain only small amendments to an earlier, interim, report which made only minor recommendations.  an upbeat message from Huhne will be aimed at countering a series of setbacks in the energy sector as deteriorating financial conditions encourage companies to pull back from   
 Frack off {fr-a-ck of'f}  verb, imperative  Derived from hydraulic fracturing, a method of shale gas extraction being trialled in Lancashire. Employed by green campaigners, "Frack off!" is a heated response to increasingly extreme energy habits, as traditional methods become scarce and we fail to embrace renewables. . . 
 6.00 CBeebies 7.00 CBBC 9.00 Live 'n' Deadly 23776 10.00 Who Let the Dogs Out? (R) 48912 10.30 I Want My Own Room 24757 11.00 Deadly art (R) 3902202  11.15 Sorry, I've Got No Head (R) 1873115 11.40 MOTD Kickabout (R) 1030486 12.00 Top Hat (1935) See picks of the day, above. 418221 1.35 Racing from ascot. Clare Balding presents live coverage of British Champions' Day. Continues on  BBC1 1807979 2.15 Coast 13990221  2.30 Escape to the Country 36573  3.30 The Great British Bake Off Masterclass (R) 93592 4.30 Gymnastics 2011: World Championships. The first  day of apparatus finals from Tokyo.  6.10   Six Days, Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) a headstrong fashion journalist and a grouchy pilot find themselves stranded on a desert island, and their initial hostile feelings soften with the passage of time. Romantic adventure with Harrison Ford, anne Heche, David Schwimmer and Jacqueline Obradors.  7.45 Flog It! (T) (R)  8.15 Dad's army (T) (R) Classic comedy with arthur Lowe.  8.45 a History of Celtic Britain age of Iron (T) (R) Diving for 3,000-year-old treasure and potholing through an ancient copper mine, Neil Oliver discovers how the bronze age collapsed into crisis set against a period of sharp climate change, eventually to be replaced by a new era, of iron.  9.45 QI XL (T) (R) Extended edition of the comedy panel game.  10.30 Lulu: Something To Shout about (T) Documentary charting the Scottish singer's decades in showbiz. 346234  12.00   My Year Without Sex (Sarah Watt, 2009) a woman recovering from an aneurysm is advised to give up sex, which proves hard advice for her and her husband to follow. Comedy drama with Sacha Horler and Matt Day. 45581 1.30 Later. . . with Jools Holland (R) 1776500 2.35   The Hearse (George Bowers, 1980) Horror 4.05 Ceefax 5.45 Live MotoGP: Round 16: Phillip Island 7879061 
 The government is expected this week to try to use a post-Fukushima green light from Britain's chief nuclear safety inspector to inject momentum into its stuttering nuclear power and anti-climate-change programmes.  The move will run into a hail of criticism from environmentalists who believe the latest inquiry into the nuclear industry has been rushed through and fear that ministers are backing off from their commitments to green issues.  On Tuesday, Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, is scheduled to release the final report by Mike Weightman, chief inspector for nuclear installations, into what lessons should be learned from the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan. The report is understood to contain only small amendments to an earlier, interim, report which made only minor recommendations.  an upbeat message from Huhne will be aimed at countering a series of setbacks in the energy sector as deteriorating financial conditions encourage companies to pull back from   
 It is not only global warming that is destroying the Himalayan paradise (" Climate change may leave Mount Everest ascent ice-free", 25 September); tourists from Pakistan, India, China and Russia are also bringing pollution to these heights. But nothing is so damaging as the Indo-Pakistan war on the longest and most spectacular mountain glacier in the world: the Siachen.  The two countries have been at war since 1984 on this highest and coldest of battlefields. Thousands of soldiers are encamped on the glacier. The detritus of war, the garbage and human waste produced by so many men on the ecologically fragile mountains is beyond belief.  a ceasefire has been in force since 2003 but several attempts at a settlement have foundered on mistrust and on the touchy issue of honour. a solution would be to establish a trans-boundary nature park. as the area has no resident population, a Siachen peace park would be relatively easy; it would also eliminate the need to argue about a frontier. Honour on both sides would be enhanced and what a fitting tribute it would be to the many men who have sacrificed their health and their lives. The massive pollution would end and at least some of it could be cleared. and the sia (the wild rose) would return.  aamir ali  Geneva 
 Frack off {fr-a-ck of'f}  verb, imperative  Derived from hydraulic fracturing, a method of shale gas extraction being trialled in Lancashire. Employed by green campaigners, "Frack off!" is a heated response to increasingly extreme energy habits, as traditional methods become scarce and we fail to embrace renewables. . . 
 David Cameron's folly in giving power to the people  I fear that in his enthusiasm for moving "state power" to the "people", David Cameron has not thought through the implications and consequences ("Please explain your true values, Mr Cameron", Leader comment, last week). Surely, assessments and decisions will come to be made by special-interest groups.  The people likely to become involved will probably have political, financial or religious reasons to be interested. They will not be representative of communities and will not be answerable to anyone. Yes, there will be a few altruistic people involved, but this is not the way to get decisions made that are fair and in the interests of the whole community. Local councils should surely retain a dominant decision-making role.  John Chubb  Cheltenham  Europe's poor will go hungry  The UK government is expected to vote with Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden to block some euros 480m intended to feed Europe's poorest through the European Programme of Food aid for the Most Deprived Persons. I'm surprised this initiative wasn't covered in Jay Rayner's article ("Sharp rise in demand for handouts of free food", News, last week). The programme distributes 400,000 tonnes of food in 20 states. Surely its expected demise must worry those providing basic food handouts in the UK?  Robin Swaddling  Blaenavon, Gwent  Obviously Jay Rayner sees nothing bizarre, or even repellent, in going from piously handing out food to the poverty-stricken in Leicester to spending (no doubt on expenses) ? 110 for two on a meal in the West End (both in the same issue of the Observer last week). and you seem to see nothing contradictory in this either. Odd, that.  ann Keith  Cambridge  Give George Monbiot a break  What a miserly response from Catherine Bennett to George Monbiot's "register of journalists' interests" ("Even if you show me yours, I'm not showing you mine", Comment, last week). I have looked at Monbiot's declaration of interests on his website. The salary he declares for the words he produces has made me weigh his words more carefully when I read them. It is an excellent way of engaging the readership and letting them know the cost of the words they read. Your newspaper could claim the ethical and moral high ground if the editor and Bennett followed suit.  Terence Henderson  Camberley, Surrey  Where's the shadow cabinet?  William Keegan notes in his column last week: "It is the conventional practice now in the UK for the Conservatives, their supportive press and the general public to blame Gordon Brown for all our ills." However, he goes on to point out: "It was not just New Labour which put its faith in tax revenue from the City of London", but that the Tories were also "up to their necks in the policy of deregulation and the view that the City was the   
 What do the following have in common? angela Merkel, cold weather, Ed Balls, Silvio Berlusconi, the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton, British civil servants, Brussels bureaucrats, people concerned about global warming, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, Liberal Democrats, energy prices, Gordon Brown and the world?  The answer is that they have all been deployed as excuses by members of the government for why the economy is so dire. The proliferation of alibis offered by ministers, and their inability to stick to the same one, is a symptom of increasing desperation about the unravelling of their economic strategy.  anxiety is certainly an understandable response and panic might be a more appropriate one to the release of the latest slew of dismal economic data. Unemployment in the three months to September rose at the fastest rate in 17 years. The number of the young jobless has surged over a million, rightly stirring fears of a Generation U going from school into long-term unemployment without ever knowing work. "The lost generation charge is very dangerous for us," says one government strategist. "That gives Labour a really good line of attack." It is agitating ministers as unalike in so many other respects as Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith. One of the odder alliances within the cabinet, they have joined forces behind the scenes to press for much more government activity to stem the flow of the young straight on to dole queues. Whatever schemes they come up with, and even if some are admirable, these will be palliatives, not cures, for the curse of youth unemployment.  There will be a very dark economic backdrop to the autumn financial statement that George Osborne delivers in less than a fortnight. This time last year, the chancellor was predicting growth of 2.6% in 2011, rising to 2.9% in 2012. His forecast for this year is already shredded. as for next year, the Bank of England has slashed its growth projection for 2012 to just 1%. Since Threadneedle Street tends to err on the side of optimism things may well turn out even worse. Mervyn King gave a recent interview in which he mused: "Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?" I suppose we might admire him for being candid enough to admit that he is as clueless as everyone else, but it doesn't much help confidence when the governor admits they are all driving in the dark.  The great gamble that George Osborne took when he elevated deficit reduction above all other considerations was that he would set Britain on a benign path in which the expansion of the private sector compensated for the squeeze on the public sector and the resumption of vigorous growth helped bear down on debt. This virtuous circle has not materialised. The chancellor finds himself presiding over a negative feedback loop of feeble growth, weak tax receipts, higher unemployment and rising demands on welfare, making it daily less plausible that he will meet his deficit targets.  There has been one undoubted achievement of his chancellorship to date. That has been to secure market tolerance for the scale of Britain's debts. The austerity programme which he announced at the beginning of the coalition's life did win credibility with international lenders with the result that they have been prepared to allow Britain to borrow at interest rates not that much higher than those asked of Germany. Britain has thus far escaped the terrible convulsions that have seized Greece, now grip Italy and Spain, and menace France.  But even that success is now in peril because the chancellor is at risk of being caught in a credibility catch-22. If he concedes that it looks increasingly unlikely that he will meet his main deficit reduction target by the end of this parliament, the markets will threaten to turn on him, shoving up the cost of British debt and making it even more likely that we will slither back into another recession. If he attempts to maintain a pretence that his strategy is still intact, this is likely to sound so incredible to the markets that Britain will end up in the line of fire of bond traders that way too.  No wonder ministers are in such a sweat that they can no longer even co-ordinate their alibis. Responding to the grim jobless totals, the employment minister, Chris Grayling, blamed "what we're seeing in the euro-zone". Vince Cable flatly contradicted his Tory colleague. "I would certainly not blame the euro crisis," said the business secretary, assigning fault to "the legacy we have to deal with". In other words: blame Gordon Brown. The chancellor opted to try and make the guilty party the rest of the globe: "I accept it's a very difficult time for the British economy and the world economy."  are any of them right? Labour did leave Britain with unsustainably high levels of public and private indebtedness and acknowledged that by committing itself to a deficit-reduction plan which would have been draconian, albeit not quite as severe as that implemented by the coalition. It is still the reflex action of some members of the government to try to blame it all on Gordon Brown, hoping to blacken Eds Balls and Miliband in the process. But this excuse - "It wasn't me, guv, it was the other guy" - is bound to have diminishing political returns as time passes. Recent experience, from the travails of Barack Obama to those of the Greek government, suggests that modern rulers get a breathing space of about 18 months to two years when they can dump on their predecessors before the electorate starts to focus pitilessly and unforgivingly on the incumbent's mistakes.  So ministers have increasingly shifted the emphasis on to Europe. For weeks now, the chancellor has been privately briefing and publicly implying that the single biggest obstacle to a British recovery is what he likes to call the "chilling effect" of the serial crises in the eurozone. He is correct to suggest that the nightmarish dramas in Britain's largest export market have had a destabilising effect and a depressive impact on business confidence. But to attribute all of Britain's problems to backwash from across the Channel is just not supported by the facts.  The weakening of our economy has been evident since January, when the chancellor's preferred alibi was bad weather. The run on sovereign debt in the vulnerable eurozone countries did not become intense until the summer. The latest economic forecasts for all EU states place Britain 20th out of 27. The chancellor is on even weaker ground when he vaguely attributes Britain's problems to the state of the world. Much of the globe is still growing quite vigorously. The Chinese are more worried about their economy running too hot rather than too cold.  So to the latest twist in the blame game, which is for members of the coalition to turn against each other, invariably an ominous sign for a government. Some of the Tories are trying to make anti-growth villains of civil servants and Lib Dem ministers. Recalcitrant officials and soft coalition partners - so goes the complaint of these Tories - are obstructing a "bonfire of red tape" tha  
 When New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, sent stormtrooper cops - equipped with batons, pepper spray and ear-splitting pain compliance devices - to sweep the Occupy protesters from Wall Street, he was attacked by the american TV commentator Keith Olbermann as "a smaller, more embarrassing version of the tinpot tyrants who have fallen around the globe this year".  That will have pricked Bloomberg's technocratic vanity, yet there he is, three months away from his 70th birthday and worth approximately $19.5bn, ordering his police chief, Ray Kelly, who has already hit 70 but is still, incidentally, a familiar figure on the Manhattan party circuit, to unleash a shocking level of force against young people who were simply agitating for a better economic system, more equity and transparency.  It is not a good look in a country where, as Joseph Stiglitz revealed in Vanity Fair, 1% of the population now takes nearly 25% of the nation's income. Justly or not, Bloomberg will be lumped with that international class of rich, often kleptomaniac, elderly men who have been brought down or who are looking shaky as demands for reform circle the world in what I believe to be a surge of optimism and, crucially, reason.  The age of Downfalls, inaugurated when the 74-year-old President Ben ali of Tunisia flew into exile and a coma, has claimed a surprising number of his generation. and it's not just the toppling of tyrants such as Ben ali, the 83-year-old former President Mubarak of Egypt, or the 69-year-old Muammar Gaddafi, but also the demise of such men as Silvio Berlusconi (75), the former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss Khan (62) and the variety of threats faced by many Middle Eastern leaders, Rupert Murdoch (80) and the president of Fifa, Sepp Blatter (75).  Obviously, the same forces are not responsible for each man's troubles, but a year ago each of them seemed bombproof. We had no inkling that the world was about to be remade in such astonishingly short order; that history would decide, for whatever reason, that these men have had their time and the pathetic fiction of the dictator's hair dye would no longer work. If neutrinos can travel the length of Italy faster than the speed of light, calling into question our most fundamental assumptions about the universe, just about anything can happen.  One of the important traits of the age of Downfalls is the exposure of myths and lies, a characteristic established in its initial months last winter by Wikileaks, which told us how things really were - that Saudi arabia urged the US to bomb Iran; that the CIa tried to collect the UN general secretary's DNa; that China ordered the hacking of Google; that Ben ali's family were looting Tunisia.  Much more has followed - a proper understanding of Greece's fraudulent application to join the euro; the revelations about oil companies owned by the Koch brothers paying for inaccurate and misleading information on climate change; the relentless uncovering of News International's evasions about hacking and police corruption; the protests when China started burying the wreckage of a train crash; and the exposure of the hopeful falsehood of the euro project, which suggests countries with widely varying economic performance and different cultures can unite in a single currency.  Whether through the market or the media, the internet or the instincts of the masses, truth has become the revolutionary weapon in the age of Downfalls. That is surely a cause for optimism.  Indeed, the reason for hope is reason itself. across the world, millions have demonstrated for fairness and enlightenment values. The chants of young people that echoed through the cities of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Dubai, Syria, Greece, Spain, Italy, Israel, Chile, america and Britain are very similar - they are about freedom, self-determination, fairness, justice, access to education and jobs, as well as the corruption, mismanagement and greed of their elders.  In Burma, demand for reforms have led to aung San Suu Kyi's announcement that she will stand in the next election. Even in Pakistan, a country generally regarded as beyond repair, Imran Khan's recent rally in Lahore struck the familiar notes of the arab Spring. according to Tariq ali in the London Review of Books, Khan's limited programme to end corruption, institute a strict tax regime, restore public services and terminate the servile relationship with the US was cheered as loudly by "young women in jeans and T-shirts. . . as those in hijabs". It is now possible to believe that Khan and Suu Kyi may both end up bringing a very different eye to the government of their peoples.  Reason has not won the battle against mythomaniac religions and greedy interests, particularly with the right of american politics, whi  
 What do the following have in common? angela Merkel, cold weather, Ed Balls, Silvio Berlusconi, the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton, British civil servants, Brussels bureaucrats, people concerned about global warming, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, Liberal Democrats, energy prices, Gordon Brown and the world?  The answer is that they have all been deployed as excuses by members of the government for why the economy is so dire. The proliferation of alibis offered by ministers, and their inability to stick to the same one, is a symptom of increasing desperation about the unravelling of their economic strategy.  anxiety is certainly an understandable response and panic might be a more appropriate one to the release of the latest slew of dismal economic data. Unemployment in the three months to September rose at the fastest rate in 17 years. The number of the young jobless has surged over a million, rightly stirring fears of a Generation U going from school into long-term unemployment without ever knowing work. "The lost generation charge is very dangerous for us," says one government strategist. "That gives Labour a really good line of attack." It is agitating ministers as unalike in so many other respects as Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith. One of the odder alliances within the cabinet, they have joined forces behind the scenes to press for much more government activity to stem the flow of the young straight on to dole queues. Whatever schemes they come up with, and even if some are admirable, these will be palliatives, not cures, for the curse of youth unemployment.  There will be a very dark economic backdrop to the autumn financial statement that George Osborne delivers in less than a fortnight. This time last year, the chancellor was predicting growth of 2.6% in 2011, rising to 2.9% in 2012. His forecast for this year is already shredded. as for next year, the Bank of England has slashed its growth projection for 2012 to just 1%. Since Threadneedle Street tends to err on the side of optimism things may well turn out even worse. Mervyn King gave a recent interview in which he mused: "Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?" I suppose we might admire him for being candid enough to admit that he is as clueless as everyone else, but it doesn't much help confidence when the governor admits they are all driving in the dark.  The great gamble that George Osborne took when he elevated deficit reduction above all other considerations was that he would set Britain on a benign path in which the expansion of the private sector compensated for the squeeze on the public sector and the resumption of vigorous growth helped bear down on debt. This virtuous circle has not materialised. The chancellor finds himself presiding over a negative feedback loop of feeble growth, weak tax receipts, higher unemployment and rising demands on welfare, making it daily less plausible that he will meet his deficit targets.  There has been one undoubted achievement of his chancellorship to date. That has been to secure market tolerance for the scale of Britain's debts. The austerity programme which he announced at the beginning of the coalition's life did win credibility with international lenders with the result that they have been prepared to allow Britain to borrow at interest rates not that much higher than those asked of Germany. Britain has thus far escaped the terrible convulsions that have seized Greece, now grip Italy and Spain, and menace France.  But even that success is now in peril because the chancellor is at risk of being caught in a credibility catch-22. If he concedes that it looks increasingly unlikely that he will meet his main deficit reduction target by the end of this parliament, the markets will threaten to turn on him, shoving up the cost of British debt and making it even more likely that we will slither back into another recession. If he attempts to maintain a pretence that his strategy is still intact, this is likely to sound so incredible to the markets that Britain will end up in the line of fire of bond traders that way too.  No wonder ministers are in such a sweat that they can no longer even co-ordinate their alibis. Responding to the grim jobless totals, the employment minister, Chris Grayling, blamed "what we're seeing in the euro-zone". Vince Cable flatly contradicted his Tory colleague. "I would certainly not blame the euro crisis," said the business secretary, assigning fault to "the legacy we have to deal with". In other words: blame Gordon Brown. The chancellor opted to try and make the guilty party the rest of the globe: "I accept it's a very difficult time for the British economy and the world economy."  are any of them right? Labour did leave Britain with unsustainably high levels of public and private indebtedness and acknowledged that by committing itself to a deficit-reduction plan which would have been draconian, albeit not quite as severe as that implemented by the coalition. It is still the reflex action of some members of the government to try to blame it all on Gordon Brown, hoping to blacken Eds Balls and Miliband in the process. But this excuse - "It wasn't me, guv, it was the other guy" - is bound to have diminishing political returns as time passes. Recent experience, from the travails of Barack Obama to those of the Greek government, suggests that modern rulers get a breathing space of about 18 months to two years when they can dump on their predecessors before the electorate starts to focus pitilessly and unforgivingly on the incumbent's mistakes.  So ministers have increasingly shifted the emphasis on to Europe. For weeks now, the chancellor has been privately briefing and publicly implying that the single biggest obstacle to a British recovery is what he likes to call the "chilling effect" of the serial crises in the eurozone. He is correct to suggest that the nightmarish dramas in Britain's largest export market have had a destabilising effect and a depressive impact on business confidence. But to attribute all of Britain's problems to backwash from across the Channel is just not supported by the facts.  The weakening of our economy has been evident since January, when the chancellor's preferred alibi was bad weather. The run on sovereign debt in the vulnerable eurozone countries did not become intense until the summer. The latest economic forecasts for all EU states place Britain 20th out of 27. The chancellor is on even weaker ground when he vaguely attributes Britain's problems to the state of the world. Much of the globe is still growing quite vigorously. The Chinese are more worried about their economy running too hot rather than too cold.  So to the latest twist in the blame game, which is for members of the coalition to turn against each other, invariably an ominous sign for a government. Some of the Tories are trying to make anti-growth villains of civil servants and Lib Dem ministers. Recalcitrant officials and soft coalition partners - so goes the complaint of these Tories - are obstructing a "bonfire of red tape" tha  
 When New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, sent stormtrooper cops - equipped with batons, pepper spray and ear-splitting pain compliance devices - to sweep the Occupy protesters from Wall Street, he was attacked by the american TV commentator Keith Olbermann as "a smaller, more embarrassing version of the tinpot tyrants who have fallen around the globe this year".  That will have pricked Bloomberg's technocratic vanity, yet there he is, three months away from his 70th birthday and worth approximately $19.5bn, ordering his police chief, Ray Kelly, who has already hit 70 but is still, incidentally, a familiar figure on the Manhattan party circuit, to unleash a shocking level of force against young people who were simply agitating for a better economic system, more equity and transparency.  It is not a good look in a country where, as Joseph Stiglitz revealed in Vanity Fair, 1% of the population now takes nearly 25% of the nation's income. Justly or not, Bloomberg will be lumped with that international class of rich, often kleptomaniac, elderly men who have been brought down or who are looking shaky as demands for reform circle the world in what I believe to be a surge of optimism and, crucially, reason.  The age of Downfalls, inaugurated when the 74-year-old President Ben ali of Tunisia flew into exile and a coma, has claimed a surprising number of his generation. and it's not just the toppling of tyrants such as Ben ali, the 83-year-old former President Mubarak of Egypt, or the 69-year-old Muammar Gaddafi, but also the demise of such men as Silvio Berlusconi (75), the former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss Khan (62) and the variety of threats faced by many Middle Eastern leaders, Rupert Murdoch (80) and the president of Fifa, Sepp Blatter (75).  Obviously, the same forces are not responsible for each man's troubles, but a year ago each of them seemed bombproof. We had no inkling that the world was about to be remade in such astonishingly short order; that history would decide, for whatever reason, that these men have had their time and the pathetic fiction of the dictator's hair dye would no longer work. If neutrinos can travel the length of Italy faster than the speed of light, calling into question our most fundamental assumptions about the universe, just about anything can happen.  One of the important traits of the age of Downfalls is the exposure of myths and lies, a characteristic established in its initial months last winter by Wikileaks, which told us how things really were - that Saudi arabia urged the US to bomb Iran; that the CIa tried to collect the UN general secretary's DNa; that China ordered the hacking of Google; that Ben ali's family were looting Tunisia.  Much more has followed - a proper understanding of Greece's fraudulent application to join the euro; the revelations about oil companies owned by the Koch brothers paying for inaccurate and misleading information on climate change; the relentless uncovering of News International's evasions about hacking and police corruption; the protests when China started burying the wreckage of a train crash; and the exposure of the hopeful falsehood of the euro project, which suggests countries with widely varying economic performance and different cultures can unite in a single currency.  Whether through the market or the media, the internet or the instincts of the masses, truth has become the revolutionary weapon in the age of Downfalls. That is surely a cause for optimism.  Indeed, the reason for hope is reason itself. across the world, millions have demonstrated for fairness and enlightenment values. The chants of young people that echoed through the cities of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Dubai, Syria, Greece, Spain, Italy, Israel, Chile, america and Britain are very similar - they are about freedom, self-determination, fairness, justice, access to education and jobs, as well as the corruption, mismanagement and greed of their elders.  In Burma, demand for reforms have led to aung San Suu Kyi's announcement that she will stand in the next election. Even in Pakistan, a country generally regarded as beyond repair, Imran Khan's recent rally in Lahore struck the familiar notes of the arab Spring. according to Tariq ali in the London Review of Books, Khan's limited programme to end corruption, institute a strict tax regime, restore public services and terminate the servile relationship with the US was cheered as loudly by "young women in jeans and T-shirts. . . as those in hijabs". It is now possible to believe that Khan and Suu Kyi may both end up bringing a very different eye to the government of their peoples.  Reason has not won the battle against mythomaniac religions and greedy interests, partic  
 I can't recall if there was a significant event that set me on my renewable journey. Perhaps it was the realisation that my carbon footprint, which had, I reckon, been trudging along at a complacent 5.5, really needed some attention. and although I would never have considered myself to be a climate-denier, I was always sceptical of the Hallelujah chorus proclaiming the environment to be the new global religion. Like Chicken-licken and Hen-len, I took to venturing out each morning wondering if today was the day when the sky would fall in. all I can say is that, having been washed in the renewable waters of sustainability, I'm having a jolly good time.  an early test of just how profound has been my conversion was when I came recently to buy a car. Previously, I had deployed a regrettably jejeune attitude to carbon emissions. Does anyone really gives a tinker's toerag about fuel emissions as long as the Chinese are singlehandedly wrecking the planet? This time, I bought myself an unfussy and low-emission wee jalopy that is as carbon-friendly as a soya bean supper.  It seems that the motor had qualified for a low-emission badge on account of the engine automatically cutting out when it becomes stationary at traffic lights. Unfortunately, I was trying to look for the cigarette lighter when the chap from the dealership was telling me about this. On the first few occasions it happened, I was taken by surprise and thus accosted by impatient motorists with that unseemly highway semaphore that all male drivers use to convey impatience on the road. But I overcame these early jitters and am now quite smug and supercilious when the engine cuts out. That's another couple of arctic terns I've saved, I tell myself.  In the last few weeks, many of my light bulbs have chosen to expire. One by one, they have popped their last and thus began my usual pitiful struggle to identify them and try forlornly to match them at Tesco. Now I've just decided not to replace them and am using aromatic candles instead. How green is that? If everyone followed suit, that hole in the ozone layer would be patched up in no time.  I've also been injecting wee shots of vodka into my lunchtime oranges and at this rate will have reached the recommended five a week target in no time. It gives you a small, sustainable glow, knowing that you're eating healthily and avoiding all those pre-packaged comestibles. One of my chums even suggested a very biodegradable exercise to do with recycling cigarette butts. Instead of chucking them away, you can use them to construct a sort of soft decking for the veranda.  I've even started to record Frozen Planet and am assiduously following the adventures of Sir David attenborough's arctic beasties in their diurnal struggle for survival in the world's most bleak and beautiful region. Last week, it was the turn of the caribou to take centre stage. These boys knock the bejesus out of each other to win the right of becoming a lady caribou's swain during the breeding season. and happily there was no sight last week of the cognitive killer whales which all do the Rubik's Cube before jumping a stray seal.  So I feel very happy and comfortable being the renewable and sustainable me. But being Scottish, and living in the most paternalistic state in Europe, I know it can't last. It occurred to me as I watched, transfixed, a two dozen strong herd of male caribou chasing the female and fighting to become the grand fromage that in an independent Scotland such scenes would probably fall foul of the censor's scissors. They would be deemed to be reinforcing sexual stereotypes and promoting a Dickensian approach to equality.  For last week we had another new example of the SNP's drive to make us the most miserable country in the world. They've already targeted cheap alcohol in supermarkets, and have banned glass tumblers in pubs. On their watch, Scotland led the world in banning happy hou  
 "Turn down heating in art galleries to cut carbon emissions, urges Tate director", News, page 11, last week, said that the Indianapolis Museum of art (IMa) allows temperature and humidity to fluctuate a little to either side of the global standard. The IMa stresses that its temperature and humidity ranges are more conservative than the Bizot Group and Smithsonian recommendations and are within the global standard. New ranges have been implemented with small monthly adjustments to achieve efficiencies in energy consumption without adversely affecting the condition of collection objects and loans.  "The 10 biggest show-offs" feature in last week's New Review, page 6, unfortunately showed an image of Sasha Frolova as aquaaerobika, not, as captioned, Veronica Thompson, Fancy Chance. In addition, the photo-credit on the Binnie Sisters' entry should have been for the Neo-Naturist archive.  a pull-quote from a report on the re-opening of the Casino de Paris in Jerusalem attributed it to Tom Segev, Israeli historian. That should have been Eli Mizrahi, the cafe's owner and amateur historian ("Bordello where spies danced the tango with British officers reborn as cool cafe", News, last week).  Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers' Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, tel 020 3353 4656 or email reader@observer.co.uk 
 Judging by the run of successful natural disaster films in the past few years, people are fascinated by the idea of the end of the world. In Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a virus ravaged the UK and beyond; an asteroid was the world-ending threat in Deep Impact and armageddon; and climate change got a starring role in The Day after Tomorrow  In the real world, we don't know how the Earth (or humanity) might meet its end or when that will happen. Pondering and predicting the event has usually been a job for the world's great religions: all of them have some idea about how humans will meet their maker. Indeed, "the end" (or judgement day) is usually a deity's way of cleansing our planet, to allow a fresh race of people who are morally purer to repopulate the resulting clean slate. Usually, there is too much sin or debauchery and the time has come to start again.  Stories of brimstone, fire and gods make good tales and do a decent job of stirring up the requisite fear and jeopardy. But made-up doomsday tales pale into nothing, creatively speaking, when contrasted with what is actually possible. Look through the lens of science and "the end" becomes much more interesting.  Since the beginning of life on Earth, around 3.5 billion years ago, the fragile existence has lived in the shadow of annihilation. On this planet, extinction is the norm - of the 4 billion species ever thought to have evolved, 99% have become extinct. In particular, five times in this past 500 million years the steady background rate of extinction has shot up for a period of time. Something - no one knows for sure what - turned the Earth into exactly the wrong planet for life at these points and during each mass extinction, more than 75% of the existing species died off in a period of time that was, geologically speaking, a blink of the eye.  One or more of these mass extinctions occurred because of what we could call the big, Hollywood-style, potential doomsday scenarios. If a big enough asteroid hit the Earth, for example, the impact would cause huge earthquakes and tsunamis that could cross the globe. There would be enough dust thrown into the air to block out the sun for several years. as a result, the world's food resources would be destroyed, leading to famine. It has happened before: the dinosaurs (along with more than half the other species on Earth) were wiped out 65 million years ago by a 10km-wide asteroid that smashed into the area around Mexico.  Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at the Open University, says it is a question of when, not if, a near-Earth object (NEO) collides with our planet. "Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth's atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km wide will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one."  Other natural disasters include sudden changes in climate or immense volcanic eruptions. all of these could cause global catastrophes that would wipe out large portions of the planet's life, but, given we have survived for several hundreds of thousands of years while at risk of these, it is unlikely that a natural disaster such as that will cause catastrophe in the next few centuries.  In addition, cosmic threats to our existence have always been with us, even thought it has taken us some time to notice: the collision of our galaxy, the Milky Way, with our nearest neighbour, andromeda, for example, or the arrival of a black hole. Common to all of these threats is that there is very little we can do about them even when we know the danger exists, except trying to work out how to survive the aftermath.  But in reality, the most serious risks for humans might come from our own activities. Our species has the unique ability in the history of life on Earth to be the first capable of remaking our world. But we can also destroy it.  "Existential risks are a relatively novel phenomenon," writes Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, in the World Economic Forum's annual publication, Global agenda. "With the exception of a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an extremely rare occurrence), there were probably no significant existential risks in human history until the mid-20th century and certainly none that it was within our power to do anything about."  all too real are the human-caused threats born of climate change, excess pollution, depletion of natural resources and the madness of nuclear weapons. We tinker with our genes and atoms at our own peril. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic modification offer much potential in giving us better food to eat, safer drugs and a cleaner world, but they could also go wrong if misapplied or if we charge on without due care.  Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and former president of the Royal Society, warned in his 2003 book, Our Final Century?, that the odds of human civilisation surviving beyond 2100 are no more than 50%, given the easy access to technologies that could have global impacts, such as biological terrorism, or the potential adverse impacts of molecular nanotechnology.  The first manmade existential risk, said Bostrom, might have been the first detonation of the atomic bomb. "at the time, there was some concern that the explosion might start a runaway chain-reaction by 'igniting' the atmosphere. although we now know that such an outcome is physically impossible, an existential risk was nevertheless present then."  Potential points of danger continue to come from the more successful achievements of our recent past. Our society is connected and computerised like never before and this has brought us big benefits in terms of trade, access to knowledge and education and better communications. But those same interconnections can spread viruses (human and computer) ever faster. a skilled terrorist cell (or intelligent machine) could compromise power systems, steal or delete financial data and wreck supply chains, all of which are crucial for the modern world to function. a failure in a digital system in the United States can spread to China or australia in seconds.  It is perhaps ironic that the shadow of potential threats becomes ever longer the more light we shed on our understanding of the universe.  Imagine that we took some of the most learned figures of the enlightenment period in western Europe - Isaac Newton, say, or Francis Bacon, or Bishop George Berkeley - and asked them how they thought the world would come to an end. There might be tales of divine intervention (Newton believed doomsday would be in the 21st century, calculated from clues in the Bible), or the idea that a bloody war would end up causing so many casualties that nations would suffer and wither away. There might be serious consideration of other fantastical theories, but none of these clever people could have told you about the doomsday potential of nuclear bombs, or black holes, or rising sea levels due to climate change.  You can only know that the world could pop out of existence in a bout of vacuum decay, and be wiped out in a blink, if you know about quantum particles and the evolution of the universe since the big bang. We are beginning to understand that what we conceive of as "time" might one day disappear from our universe, giving us no sense of movement or direction.  and let us hope we never run into a clump of the deadly strangelet matter anywhere in the universe. This is a substance nominally so very close to being made of the same stuff that makes up everything we see around us, yet coldly destructive of our way of life.  Jason Matheny, a program manager at the US government's Intelligence advanced Research Projects activity, routinely considers potential ways that humanity might be threatened. In a 2007 article for the journal Risk analysis, he pondered the inevitable death of the sun. "In one billion years, the sun will begin its red giant stage, increasing terrestrial temperatures above 1,000 degrees, boiling off our atmosphere, eventually forming a planetary nebula, making Earth inhospitable to life," he wrote. "If we colonise other solar systems, we could survive longer than our sun, perhaps another 100 trillion years, when all stars begin burning out. We might survive even longer if we exploit non-stellar energy sources."  Which all sounds very positive. But the universe has some further tricks up its sleeve. It is hard to imagine, wrote Matheny, how humanity will survive beyond the decay of nuclear matter, which is expected in 10[cubed][squared] to 1041 years. "Physics seems to support Kafka's remark that there is infinite hope, but not for us. While it may be physically possible for humanity or its descendents to flourish for 1041 years, it seems unlikely that humanity will live so long. Homo sapiens has existed for 200,000 years. Our closest relative, Homo erectus, existed for around 1.8 million years. The median duration of mammalian species is around 2.2 million years."  Should any of this doomsaying concern us, particularly in a credit-crunched world? Yes, argues Bostrom. "attempts to quantify existential risk inevitably involve a large helping of subjective judgment. and there may be a publication bias in that those who believe that the risk is larger might be more likely to publish books," he writes in Global agenda. "Nevertheless, everybody who has seriously looked at the issue agrees that the risks are considerable. Even if the probability of extinction were merely 5%, or 1%, it would still be worth taking seriously in view of how much is at stake."  It is sad, he concludes, that humanity as a whole does not invest much in improving its thinking on how to enhance its own survival against the threats about which we might do something (vacuum decay and the death of the sun notwithstanding). addressing the World Economic Forum's 2006 panel, which was convened to consider global catastrophes, he gave this advice: "a great leader acts in awareness of the big picture and accepts responsibility for the long-term consequences of the policies he or she pursues. With regard to existential risks, the challenge is neither to ignore them nor to indulge in gloomy despondency, but to seek understanding and to take the most cost-effective steps to make the world safer." In short, better safe than sorry.  alok Jha is the Guardian's science correspondent and author of  The Doomsday Handbook: 50 Ways  to the End of the World (Quercus, ? 9.99) and How To Live Forever  and 34 Other Really Interesting  Uses for Science (Quercus, ? 9.99)  DEaTH BY EUPHORIa  Many of us use drugs such as caffeine or nicotine every day. Our increased understanding of physiology brings new drugs that can lift mood, improve alertness or keep you awake for days. How long before we use so many drugs we are no longer in control? Perhaps the end of society will not come with a bang, but fade away in a haze.  Danger sign: Drugs would get too cheap to meter, but you might be too doped up to notice.  VaCUUM DECaY  If the Earth exists in a region of space known as a false vacuum (a left-over from the moments after the big bang), it could collapse into a lower-energy  state at any point. This collapse would grow at the speed of light and our atoms would not hold together in the ensuing wave of intense energy - everything would be torn apart. In 1980, the Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman called vacuum decay the "ultimate ecological catastrophe".  Danger sign: There would be no signs. It could happen half way through this. . .  STRaNGELETS  Quantum mechanics contains lots of frightening possibilities. among them is a particle called a strangelet that can transform any other particle into a copy of itself. In just a few hours, a small chunk of these could turn a planet into a featureless mass of strangelets. Everything that planet was would be no more.  Danger sign: Everything around you starts cooking, releasing heat.  END OF TIME  What if time itself somehow came to a finish because of the laws of physics? In 2007, Spanish scientists proposed an alternative explanation for the mysterious dark energy that accounts for 75% of the mass of the universe and acts as a sort of anti-gravity, pushing galaxies apart. They proposed that the effects we observe are due to time slowing down as it leaked away from our universe.  Danger sign: It could be happening right now. We would never know.  MEGa TSUNaMI  Geologists worry that a future volcanic eruption at La Palma in the Canary Islands might dislodge a chunk of rock twice the volume of the Isle of Man into the atlantic Ocean, triggering waves a kilometre high that would move at the speed of a jumbo jet with catastrophic effects for the shores of the US, Europe, South america and africa.  Danger sign: Half the world's major cities are under water. all at once.  GEOMaGNETIC REVERSaL  The Earth's magnetic field provides a shield against harmful radiation from our sun that could rip through DNa and overload the world's electrical systems. Every so often, Earth's north and south poles switch positions and, during the transition, the magnetic field will weaken or disappear for many years. The last known transition happened almost 780,000 years ago and it is likely to happen again.  Danger sign: Electronics stop working; skin cancers shoot up.  GaMMa RaYS FROM SPaCE  When a supermassive star is in its dying moments, it shoots out two beams of high-energy gamma rays into space. If these were to hit Earth, the immense energy would tear apart the atmosphere's air molecules and disintegrate the protective ozone layer. all life forms on the surface would be exposed to the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays.  Danger sign: The sky turns brown and all life on the surface slowly dies.  RUNaWaY BLaCK HOLE  Black holes are the most powerful gravitational objects in the universe, capable of tearing Earth into its consti  
 Edward Linacre from the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne is the winner of the 2011 James Dyson award for his airdrop - a low-cost, low-maintenance aid to the problems of farming in arid areas.  James Dyson said: "airdrop shows how simple, natural principles such as the condensation of water can be applied to good effect through skilled design and robust engineering." Linacre and his university department each received a ? 10,000 prize.  What was your inspiration for the airdrop?  It came out of a project I was doing at university. There was a huge drought gripping australia at the time, the worst in 100 years. I spent a lot of time talking to an orange farmer who explained to me the problems farmers were having because of the lack of water. What really drove it home to me were the increasing rates of suicide among farmers as a result of the years of mounting debt and failing crops.  I started by looking at what was happening to the soil. all the water was evaporating from the soil and the water vapour was continuing up into the atmosphere and contributing to greenhouse gases. I thought that there had to be a way of capturing that water vapour and feeding it back down into the roots of the plants where it belongs - to hydrate the soil once more and stop it from reaching up into the atmosphere.  You also found inspiration from how nature copes with arid conditions?  I discovered that nature efficiently captures water from the air in countless ways. There's the self-irrigating desert rhubarb, which can harvest 16 times more water than other plants in the region where it grows by deep, water-channelling cavities in its leaves. Then there's the Namib desert beetle, whose habitat is one of the driest places on earth (half an inch of rain per year). It lives off the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back in the early mornings. These stories inspired me to investigate low-tech atmospheric water harvesting solutions. We need to look to nature for inspiration because these plants and creatures have been living for so long, overcoming many of the problems that man is tackling at the moment.  How much water is there in desert air?  It depends where you are. For example, in the Negev desert in Israel, the average humidity is 54% which means that in each cubic metre of air there is 11.5ml of water. What you need to do is get the temperature of that air down to a level where the air reaches 100% humidity - exactly what happens when you take a glass of iced water out on a cold day: the condensation forms on the outside of the glass. That's what the airdrop does, but in reverse: it uses the temperature of the soil on the outside of its underground piping to create moisture on the inside of the pipes.  Can you explain a little more about  how the airdrop works?  It's a low-tech solar-powered system because I want farmers to be able to install and maintain it. First, a  
 I can't recall if there was a significant event that set me on my renewable journey. Perhaps it was the realisation that my carbon footprint, which had, I reckon, been trudging along at a complacent 5.5, really needed some attention. and although I would never have considered myself to be a climate-denier, I was always sceptical of the Hallelujah chorus proclaiming the environment to be the new global religion. Like Chicken-licken and Hen-len, I took to venturing out each morning wondering if today was the day when the sky would fall in. all I can say is that, having been washed in the renewable waters of sustainability, I'm having a jolly good time.  an early test of just how profound has been my conversion was when I came recently to buy a car. Previously, I had deployed a regrettably jejeune attitude to carbon emissions. Does anyone really gives a tinker's toerag about fuel emissions as long as the Chinese are singlehandedly wrecking the planet? This time, I bought myself an unfussy and low-emission wee jalopy that is as carbon-friendly as a soya bean supper.  It seems that the motor had qualified for a low-emission badge on account of the engine automatically cutting out when it becomes stationary at traffic lights. Unfortunately, I was trying to look for the cigarette lighter when the chap from the dealership was telling me about this. On the first few occasions it happened, I was taken by surprise and thus accosted by impatient motorists with that unseemly highway semaphore that all male drivers use to convey impatience on the road. But I overcame these early jitters and am now quite smug and supercilious when the engine cuts out. That's another couple of arctic terns I've saved, I tell myself.  In the last few weeks, many of my light bulbs have chosen to expire. One by one, they have popped their last and thus began my usual pitiful struggle to identify them and try forlornly to match them at Tesco. Now I've just decided not to replace them and am using aromatic candles instead. How green is that? If everyone followed suit, that hole in the ozone layer would be patched up in no time.  I've also been injecting wee shots of vodka into my lunchtime oranges and at this rate will have reached the recommended five a week target in no time. It gives you a small, sustainable glow, knowing that you're eating healthily and avoiding all those pre-packaged comestibles. One of my chums even suggested a very biodegradable exercise to do with recycling cigarette butts. Instead of chucking them away, you can use them to construct a sort of soft decking for the veranda.  I've even started to record Frozen Planet and am assiduously following the adventures of Sir David attenborough's arctic beasties in their diurnal struggle for survival in the world's most bleak and beautiful region. Last week, it was the turn of the caribou to take centre stage. These boys knock the bejesus out of each other to win the right of becoming a lady caribou's swain during the breeding season. and happily there was no sight last week of the cognitive killer whales which all do the Rubik's Cube before jumping a stray seal.  So I feel very happy and comfortable being the renewable and sustainable me. But being Scottish, and living in the most paternalistic state in Europe, I know it can't last. It occurred to me as I watched, transfixed, a two dozen strong herd of male caribou chasing the female and fighting to become the grand fromage that in an independent Scotland such scenes would probably fall foul of the censor's scissors. They would be deemed to be reinforcing sexual stereotypes and promoting a Dickensian approach to equality.  For last week we had another new example of the SNP's drive to make us the most miserable country in the world. They've already targeted cheap alcohol in supermarkets, and have banned glass tumblers in pubs. On their watch, Scotland led the world in banning happy hou  
 "Turn down heating in art galleries to cut carbon emissions, urges Tate director", News, page 11, last week, said that the Indianapolis Museum of art (IMa) allows temperature and humidity to fluctuate a little to either side of the global standard. The IMa stresses that its temperature and humidity ranges are more conservative than the Bizot Group and Smithsonian recommendations and are within the global standard. New ranges have been implemented with small monthly adjustments to achieve efficiencies in energy consumption without adversely affecting the condition of collection objects and loans.  "The 10 biggest show-offs" feature in last week's New Review, page 6, unfortunately showed an image of Sasha Frolova as aquaaerobika, not, as captioned, Veronica Thompson, Fancy Chance. In addition, the photo-credit on the Binnie Sisters' entry should have been for the Neo-Naturist archive.  a pull-quote from a report on the re-opening of the Casino de Paris in Jerusalem attributed it to Tom Segev, Israeli historian. That should have been Eli Mizrahi, the cafe's owner and amateur historian ("Bordello where spies danced the tango with British officers reborn as cool cafe", News, last week).  Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers' Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, tel 020 3353 4656 or email reader@observer.co.uk 
 Judging by the run of successful natural disaster films in the past few years, people are fascinated by the idea of the end of the world. In Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a virus ravaged the UK and beyond; an asteroid was the world-ending threat in Deep Impact and armageddon; and climate change got a starring role in The Day after Tomorrow  In the real world, we don't know how the Earth (or humanity) might meet its end or when that will happen. Pondering and predicting the event has usually been a job for the world's great religions: all of them have some idea about how humans will meet their maker. Indeed, "the end" (or judgement day) is usually a deity's way of cleansing our planet, to allow a fresh race of people who are morally purer to repopulate the resulting clean slate. Usually, there is too much sin or debauchery and the time has come to start again.  Stories of brimstone, fire and gods make good tales and do a decent job of stirring up the requisite fear and jeopardy. But made-up doomsday tales pale into nothing, creatively speaking, when contrasted with what is actually possible. Look through the lens of science and "the end" becomes much more interesting.  Since the beginning of life on Earth, around 3.5 billion years ago, the fragile existence has lived in the shadow of annihilation. On this planet, extinction is the norm - of the 4 billion species ever thought to have evolved, 99% have become extinct. In particular, five times in this past 500 million years the steady background rate of extinction has shot up for a period of time. Something - no one knows for sure what - turned the Earth into exactly the wrong planet for life at these points and during each mass extinction, more than 75% of the existing species died off in a period of time that was, geologically speaking, a blink of the eye.  One or more of these mass extinctions occurred because of what we could call the big, Hollywood-style, potential doomsday scenarios. If a big enough asteroid hit the Earth, for example, the impact would cause huge earthquakes and tsunamis that could cross the globe. There would be enough dust thrown into the air to block out the sun for several years. as a result, the world's food resources would be destroyed, leading to famine. It has happened before: the dinosaurs (along with more than half the other species on Earth) were wiped out 65 million years ago by a 10km-wide asteroid that smashed into the area around Mexico.  Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at the Open University, says it is a question of when, not if, a near-Earth object (NEO) collides with our planet. "Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth's atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km wide will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one."  Other natural disasters include sudden changes in climate or immense volcanic eruptions. all of these could cause global catastrophes that would wipe out large portions of the planet's life, but, given we have survived for several hundreds of thousands of years while at risk of these, it is unlikely that a natural disaster such as that will cause catastrophe in the next few centuries.  In addition, cosmic threats to our existence have always been with us, even thought it has taken us some time to notice: the collision of our galaxy, the Milky Way, with our nearest neighbour, andromeda, for example, or the arrival of a black hole. Common to all of these threats is that there is very little we can do about them even when we know the danger exists, except trying to work out how to survive the aftermath.  But in reality, the most serious risks for humans might come from our own activities. Our species has the unique ability in the history of life on Earth to be the first capable of remaking our world. But we can also destroy it.  "Existential risks are a relatively novel phenomenon," writes Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, in the World Economic Forum's annual publication, Global agenda. "With the exception of a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an extremely rare occurrence), there were probably no significant existential risks in human history until the mid-20th century and certainly none that it was within our power to do anything about."  all too real are the human-caused threats born of climate change, excess pollution, depletion of natural resources and the madness of nuclear weapons. We tinker with our genes and atoms at our own peril. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic modification offer much potential in giving us better food to eat, safer drugs and a cleaner world, but they could also go wrong if misapplied or if we charge on without due care.  Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and former president of the Royal Society, warned in his 2003 book, Our Final Century?, that the odds of human civilisation surviving beyond 2100 are no more than 50%, given the easy access to technologies that could have global impacts, such as biological terrorism, or the potential adverse impacts of molecular nanotechnology.  The first manmade existential risk, said Bostrom, might have been the first detonation of the atomic bomb. "at the time, there was some concern that the explosion might start a runaway chain-reaction by 'igniting' the atmosphere. although we now know that such an outcome is physically impossible, an existential risk was nevertheless present then."  Potential points of danger continue to come from the more successful achievements of our recent past. Our society is connected and computerised like never before and this has brought us big benefits in terms of trade, access to knowledge and education and better communications. But those same interconnections can spread viruses (human and computer) ever faster. a skilled terrorist cell (or intelligent machine) could compromise power systems, steal or delete financial data and wreck supply chains, all of which are crucial for the modern world to function. a failure in a digital system in the United States can spread to China or australia in seconds.  It is perhaps ironic that the shadow of potential threats becomes ever longer the more light we shed on our understanding of the universe.  Imagine that we took some of the most learned figures of the enlightenment period in western Europe - Isaac Newton, say, or Francis Bacon, or Bishop George Berkeley - and asked them how they thought the world would come to an end. There might be tales of divine intervention (Newton believed doomsday would be in the 21st century, calculated from clues in the Bible), or the idea that a bloody war would end up causing so many casualties that nations would suffer and wither away. There might be serious consideration of other fantastical theories, but none of these clever people could have told you about the doomsday potential of nuclear bombs, or black holes, or rising sea levels due to climate change.  You can only know that the world could pop out of existence in a bout of vacuum decay, and be wiped out in a blink, if you know about quantum particles and the evolution of the universe since the big bang. We are beginning to understand that what we conceive of as "time" might one day disappear from our universe, giving us no sense of movement or direction.  and let us hope we never run into a clump of the deadly strangelet matter anywhere in the universe. This is a substance nominally so very close to being made of the same stuff that makes up everything we see around us, yet coldly destructive of our way of life.  Jason Matheny, a program manager at the US government's Intelligence advanced Research Projects activity, routinely considers potential ways that humanity might be threatened. In a 2007 article for the journal Risk analysis, he pondered the inevitable death of the sun. "In one billion years, the sun will begin its red giant stage, increasing terrestrial temperatures above 1,000 degrees, boiling off our atmosphere, eventually forming a planetary nebula, making Earth inhospitable to life," he wrote. "If we colonise other solar systems, we could survive longer than our sun, perhaps another 100 trillion years, when all stars begin burning out. We might survive even longer if we exploit non-stellar energy sources."  Which all sounds very positive. But the universe has some further tricks up its sleeve. It is hard to imagine, wrote Matheny, how humanity will survive beyond the decay of nuclear matter, which is expected in 10[cubed][squared] to 1041 years. "Physics seems to support Kafka's remark that there is infinite hope, but not for us. While it may be physically possible for humanity or its descendents to flourish for 1041 years, it seems unlikely that humanity will live so long. Homo sapiens has existed for 200,000 years. Our closest relative, Homo erectus, existed for around 1.8 million years. The median duration of mammalian species is around 2.2 million years."  Should any of this doomsaying concern us, particularly in a credit-crunched world? Yes, argues Bostrom. "attempts to quantify existential risk inevitably involve a large helping of subjective judgment. and there may be a publication bias   
 Edward Linacre from the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne is the winner of the 2011 James Dyson award for his airdrop - a low-cost, low-maintenance aid to the problems of farming in arid areas.  James Dyson said: "airdrop shows how simple, natural principles such as the condensation of water can be applied to good effect through skilled design and robust engineering." Linacre and his university department each received a ? 10,000 prize.  What was your inspiration for the airdrop?  It came out of a project I was doing at university. There was a huge drought gripping australia at the time, the worst in 100 years. I spent a lot of time talking to an orange farmer who explained to me the problems farmers were having because of the lack of water. What really drove it home to me were the increasing rates of suicide among farmers as a result of the years of mounting debt and failing crops.  I started by looking at what was happening to the soil. all the water was evaporating from the soil and the water vapour was continuing up into the atmosphere and contributing to greenhouse gases. I thought that there had to be a way of capturing that water vapour and feeding it back down into the roots of the plants where it belongs - to hydrate the soil once more and stop it from reaching up into the atmosphere.  You also found inspiration from how nature copes with arid conditions?  I discovered that nature efficiently captures water from the air in countless ways. There's the self-irrigating desert rhubarb, which can harvest 16 times more water than other plants in the region where it grows by deep, water-channelling cavities in its leaves. Then there's the Namib desert beetle, whose habitat is one of the driest places on earth (half an inch of rain per year). It lives off the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back in the early mornings. These stories inspired me to investigate low-tech atmospheric water harvesting solutions. We need to look to nature for inspiration because these plants and creatures have been living for so long, overcoming many of the problems that man is tackling at the moment.  How much water is there in desert air?  It depends where you are. For example, in the Negev desert in Israel, the average humidity is 54% which means that in each cubic metre of air there is 11.5ml of water. What you need to do is get the temperature of that air down to a level where the air reaches 100% humidity - exactly what happens when you take a glass of iced water out on a cold day: the condensation forms on the outside of the glass. That's what the airdrop does, but in reverse: it uses the temperature of the soil on the outside of its underground piping to create moisture on the inside of the pipes.  Can you explain a little more about  how the airdrop works?  It's a low-tech solar-powered system because I want farmers to be able to install   
 What do the following have in common? angela Merkel, cold weather, Ed Balls, Silvio Berlusconi, the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton, British civil servants, Brussels bureaucrats, people concerned about global warming, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, Liberal Democrats, energy prices, Gordon Brown and the world?  The answer is that they have all been deployed as excuses by members of the government for why the economy is so dire. The proliferation of alibis offered by ministers, and their inability to stick to the same one, is a symptom of increasing desperation about the unravelling of their economic strategy.  anxiety is certainly an understandable response and panic might be a more appropriate one to the release of the latest slew of dismal economic data. Unemployment in the three months to September rose at the fastest rate in 17 years. The number of the young jobless has surged over a million, rightly stirring fears of a Generation U going from school into long-term unemployment without ever knowing work. "The lost generation charge is very dangerous for us," says one government strategist. "That gives Labour a really good line of attack." It is agitating ministers as unalike in so many other respects as Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith. One of the odder alliances within the cabinet, they have joined forces behind the scenes to press for much more government activity to stem the flow of the young straight on to dole queues. Whatever schemes they come up with, and even if some are admirable, these will be palliatives, not cures, for the curse of youth unemployment.  There will be a very dark economic backdrop to the autumn financial statement that George Osborne delivers in less than a fortnight. This time last year, the chancellor was predicting growth of 2.6% in 2011, rising to 2.9% in 2012. His forecast for this year is already shredded. as for next year, the Bank of England has slashed its growth projection for 2012 to just 1%. Since Threadneedle Street tends to err on the side of optimism things may well turn out even worse. Mervyn King gave a recent interview in which he mused: "Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?" I suppose we might admire him for being candid enough to admit that he is as clueless as everyone else, but it doesn't much help confidence when the governor admits they are all driving in the dark.  The great gamble that George Osborne took when he elevated deficit reduction above all other considerations was that he would set Britain on a benign path in which the expansion of the private sector compensated for the squeeze on the public sector and the resumption of vigorous growth helped bear down on debt. This virtuous circle has not materialised. The chancellor finds himself presiding over a negative feedback loop of feeble growth, weak tax receipts, higher unemployment and rising demands on welfare, making it daily less plausible that he will meet his deficit targets.  There has been one undoubted achievement of his chancellorship to date. That has been to secure market tolerance for the scale of Britain's debts. The austerity programme which he announced at the beginning of the coalition's life did win credibility with international lenders with the result that they have been prepared to allow Britain to borrow at interest rates not that much higher than those asked of Germany. Britain has thus far escaped the terrible convulsions that have seized Greece, now grip Italy and Spain, and menace France.  But even that success is now in peril because the chancellor is at risk of being caught in a credibility catch-22. If he concedes that it looks increasingly unlikely that he will meet his main deficit reduction target by the end of this parliament, the markets will threaten to turn on him, shoving up the cost of British debt and making it even more likely that we will slither back into another recession. If he attempts to maintain a pretence that his strategy is still intact, this is likely to sound so incredible to the markets that Britain will end up in the line of fire of bond traders that way too.  No wonder ministers are in such a sweat that they can no longer even co-ordinate their alibis. Responding to the grim jobless totals, the employment minister, Chris Grayling, blamed "what we're seeing in the euro-zone". Vince Cable flatly contradicted his Tory colleague. "I would certainly not blame the euro crisis," said the business secretary, assigning fault to "the legacy we have to deal with". In other words: blame Gordon Brown. The chancellor opted to try and make the guilty party the rest of the globe: "I accept it's a very difficult time for the British economy and the world economy."  are any of them right? Labour did leave Britain with unsustainably high levels of public and private indebtedness and acknowledged that by committing itself to a deficit-reduction plan which would have been draconian, albeit not quite as severe as that implemented by the coalition. It is still the reflex action of some members of the government to try to blame it all on Gordon Brown, hoping to blacken Eds Balls and Miliband in the process. But this excuse - "It wasn't me, guv, it was the other guy" - is bound to have diminishing political returns as time passes. Recent experience, from the travails of Barack Obama to those of the Greek government, suggests that modern rulers get a breathing space of about 18 months to two years when they can dump on their predecessors before the electorate starts to focus pitilessly and unforgivingly on the incumbent's mistakes.  So ministers have increasingly shifted the emphasis on to Europe. For weeks now, the chancellor has been privately briefing and publicly implying that the single biggest obstacle to a British recovery is what he likes to call the "chilling effect" of the serial crises in the eurozone. He is correct to suggest that the nightmarish dramas in Britain's largest export market have had a destabilising effect and a depressive impact on business confidence. But to attribute all of Britain's problems to backwash from across the Channel is just not supported by the facts.  The weakening of our economy has been evident since January, when the chancellor's preferred alibi was bad weather. The run on sovereign debt in the vulnerable eurozone countries did not become intense until the summer. The latest economic forecasts for all EU states place Britain 20th out of 27. The chancellor is on even weaker ground when he vaguely attributes Britain's problems to the state of the world. Much of the globe is still growing quite vigorously. The Chinese are more worried about their economy running too hot rather than too cold.  So to the latest twist in the blame game, which is for members of the coalition to turn against each other, invariably an ominous sign for a government. Some of the Tories are trying to make anti-growth villains of civil servants and Lib Dem ministers. Recalcitrant officials and soft coalition partners - so goes the complaint of these Tories - are obstructing a "bonfire of red tape" tha  
 Gdynia, near Gdansk, does not compare to San Francisco or Shanghai as one of the great urban centres of ideas and invention. But last month it was giving both cities a good run for their money when it came to buzz and intellectual energy.  This former fishing village in Poland, now a city of 250,000 people, was chosen to host the first international winter school in social innovation, which attracted 70 experts from all corners of the globe, including South Korea, the Netherlands, Nigeria, australia and the UK. all were seeking new, creative solutions to the increasingly serious social challenges of our times. Some were looking to solve problems relating to health; others were exercised by the problem of wealth (or rather the lack of it). Youth joblessness was a theme, as was ageing. No profit motive was attached or product pitch involved. This was just people offering ingenuity and services.  The passion for social innovation is not new. But, as the success of the event in Gdynia demonstrated, an exponential rise in interest seems to be taking place, partly because of the impact of the internet and partly because government coffers are running empty and some of the bigger challenges appear intractable. Often, successful innovation means the addition of a new ingredient to what is already familiar. The arrival of television, for example, plus long-distance learning, created the Open University. add cars to older people in need of a regular lunch, and meals on wheels is born. Hospices, charity shops, the Samaritans, the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides are all examples of social innovation that eventually became part of the nation's furniture.  The first three-day summer international school for social innovation was held in 2008 in San Sebastian in the Basque country. It was organised, among others, by the Young Foundation, Cisco and the Social Innovation Exchange, which allows social innovators around the world to exchange ideas. But Gdynia represented the movement's first foray into the winter months.  In a former wartime Messerschmitt factory, now converted into an innovation centre, the group of 70 came together to assess what's coming round the corner in 2015 and how best we can all cope. The immediate impression was that coping would involve the use of a lot of Post-it notes.  Jim Dator, an expert in futurology (who also acknowledges that almost everything foretold is bound to be wrong - rights for robots and paperless offices instantly come to mind) is fond of saying that, for any prediction to come true, it must first sound ridiculous.  Hence, several years ago, when Gorka Espiau, one of those in Gdynia, and his colleagues at DenokInn, the Basque Social Centre for Innovation in Bilbao, first began to collaborate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a group of videogame designers on a low-cost folding electric car that opens from the front (so a wheelchair-user can roll in), is "driven" via a laptop by a motorist of any age and ability, and can store secrets about the way we behave (for instance, the vehicle can be programmed not to exceed 50mph), the plan probably sounded too daft for words.  Several million euros later, Hiriko, meaning "from the city" in Basque, launches next month, in Berlin, Malmo, Barcelona, San Francisco and Quito in Ecuador (London missed out).  Espiau says that the car is low-cost, around euros 12,000 and it will be rented out by the hour at a low rate, but whoever wants you parked in their forecourt - supermarket, cinema or optician - also foots the leasing charge. It will be small-scale in production, with factories sited in areas of high unemployment. So in Malmo, Sweden, according to Espiau, there is 90% unemployment among the largest population of Iraqis living outside their home country. Now a number of them will work on Hiriko.  "This isn't just about a car," says Espiau. "This is about bringing together people from very different professions, architecture, videogames, the web, who are driven by the belief that the poorest can be mobile; even the long-term out-of-work can have jobs. Social innovation sometimes means nice people losing money. Hiriko will show we can make social change."  Some of the original attendees of San Sebastian in 2008 were also at this first winter school. They were told by Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of Nesta, the organisation that promotes social innovation in the UK, that the challenges have not changed in the last four years, only their scale.  In many parts of the world, people are living longer, but spending more of their final years in poorer health. Health and social care is eating into national budgets. So how, for instance, will new social media and different services and organisations help to ride to the rescue on a range of issues such as education?  Femi Longe, based in Nigeria, tells us that 10 years ago the country had only 866,000 telephone lines. Now, in a population of 116 million, there are 88 million mobile subscribers - mostly young people. His newly established Co-Creation Hub, independent from government, is working on 16 different ventures. They include apps that will tell citizens about their constitutional rights (Your Rights in Your Pocket), apps to help students with study, and apps to encourage greater transparency and less corruption in the government's budget (BudgeIT).  In Gdynia, we heard how a partnership between food companies Danone and Lubella, supermarket chain Biedrinka, and the Institute of Mother and Child in Warsaw had produced a breakfast porridge offering 25% of a child's daily vitamins and minerals, costing a few pence and cleverly marketed for "supermums of all income groups". Since its launch in 2006, 50 million portions of Mleczny Start (Milky Start) have been sold, 27% to Poland's poorest families. Profit goes back into promotion. "One bright idea doesn't solve the causes of infant malnutrition," said one of the team, "but at least it gives a child a better start."  Simon Tucker, chief executive of the Young Foundation, said: "Social innovation is the only way to build a future we might actually want to live in. Even after the current financial crisis, challenges such as ageing populations and climate change mean we just cannot continue as we are with minor improvements. Social innovation is a more constructive response than protest, more active than trusting in technocrats - we are together taking responsibility for shaping our future and our children's future."  Yvonne Roberts is a fellow of the Young Foundation  Five social innovations across the world:  Hello Sunday Morning: Staying Sober  In 2008, Chris Raine decided to say goodbye to his habitual Sunday morning hangover and try sobriety for a year. "I wanted to know why I drank, and what it would take to influence the way other people looked at [drinking]. Nobody thought I'd last the 12 months," he said. Hello Sunday Morning was born.  People sign up to the website, pledge not to drink for three months and then blog on the site about their progress. Research into behaviour change has shown that a public pledge reinforces resolve.  Raine, 24, of Brisbane, resumed drinking after 12 months. "It's part of life," he says, "but Hello Sunday Morning is about when it becomes a problem, when you depend upon it psychologically to have certain experiences or fun."  In 2010 the australian Centre for Social Innovation, which was established a year earlier, selected Hello Sunday Morning as one of eight projects and schemes to fund and support from 258 ideas submitted from all over australia.  Hello Sunday Morning has been hugely popular, especially among younger people. The target this year is for it to reach 10,000 supporters and then become a worldwide movement towards a better drinking culture. "I signed up to HSM," says Brenton Caffin, the head of the Centre for Social Innovation. "I didn't have a problem with alcohol, but I wanted to see if I could do it. It worked for me."  hellosundaymorning.com.au  The Hiriko Electric Car: Mobility for the poor  Gorka Espiau and colleagues at DenokInn, the Basque Social Centre for Innovation in Bilbao, began to collaborate several years ago with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and some video game designers to produce a low-cost folding electric car that opens from the front to allow wheelchair-users to enter and can be controlled via a laptop by a motorist of any age or ability. To discourage speeding, it can be programmed not to go above 50mph.  Next month Hiriko, meaning "from the city" in Basque, will be unveiled simultaneously in Berlin, Malmo, Barcelona, San Francisco and in Ecuador. Espiau says the car will sell for about euros 12,000 (? 10,300) and will be rented out by the hour at a low rate. Businesses that agree to have them parked in their forecourt will also foot the leasing charge.  There will be small-scale production of the vehicle, with factories sited in places where there is a big unemployment problem. In Malmo, Sweden, says Espiau, there is 90% unemployment among the largest population of expatriate Iraqis. Some will now be employed by Hiriko.  "This isn't just about a car," says Espiau. "This is about bringing together people from very different professions - architecture, video games, the web - who are driven by the belief that the poorest can be mobile; even the long-term out-of-work can have jobs. Social innovation sometimes means nice people losing money. Hiriko will show we can make social change."  The Kafka Brigade: Cutting through the red tape  Established in the Netherlands in the 1990s, the Kafka Brigade now has a UK counterpart in Wales. Its aim is to reduce red tape, regulations and bureaucratic dysfunction. Frontline workers, the public, managers and policymakers are asked to analyse what's wrong and solve it.  In 2007 in amsterdam, 37,000 people left prison only to reoffend because of homelessness, delays in receiving benefits and unemployment. The Kafka project helped prisoners to begin applying for benefits before their release, support them in their search for work and give homeless ex-offenders special housing support.  The Kafka Brigade UK has helped to reduce the numbers of young people not in employment, education or training (Neets) in Cardiff and Swansea. a review this year described the Kafka Brigade's contribution as "a valuable process that helped clarify performance indicators, rationalised the action plan and led to individuals and organisations taking more responsibility for reducing the proportion of young people not in employment education or training".  The Kafka Brigade is a partner with the thinktank Kennisland (Knowledgeland)  www.kafkabrigade.nl  www.kafkabrigade.org.uk  The Water Hackathon: Cleaning up  The Water Hackathon took place over two days in October simultaneously in Bangalore, Cairo, Kampala, Lima, London, Nairobi, Tel aviv and Washington DC.  Lack of adequate safe water and sanitation is the world's single largest cause of illness, responsible for more than two million deaths a year. as the global population grows, and demands on natural resources increase, the sustainable management of water is ever more urgent.  Technologists, engineers, programmers, designers, water experts and people with ideas worked together over one weekend to come up with solutions. at the Co-creation Hub in Lagos, represented at the winter school in Gdynia by Femi Longe, a co-founder, 32 people worked together a  
 The waters around the British Isles could soon be home to several new species of mammals as a rising number of foreign visitors are being reported around our coasts. Experts believe the rare sightings of cetaceans from tropical climes could mean sea creatures are scouting for new territories to settle as global warming takes effect on sea temperatures.  animals from the tropics, including the dwarf sperm whale, the pygmy sperm whale, and the Fraser's dolphin have all made recent appearances here, and the Cuvier's beaked whale, another warm-water species, has been recorded increasingly regularly in the west of Britain. The melon-headed whale, a squid-loving relative of the killer whale, has been seen in the Channel, off the coast of Brittany. Before too long we may see giants such as the 16-metre grey whale nudging into deep water around Cornwall and into the Irish Sea.  "We are now seeing a number of species far from home, and they probably will continue to recur with increasing frequency," said Peter Evans, director of the Sea Watch Foundation. "Several are normally found off west africa. For the moment they tend to be seen at times of year when our sea temperatures are at their warmest. Whales and dolphins can cope with a wide range of temperatures but their fish and squid prey tend to be more constrained, and their ranges are extending significantly northwards."  He said cetaceans would follow their favourite food, and many species rare in colder waters just a decade ago had moved into British seas. This autumn a dwarf sperm whale was spotted in Mounts Bay, Cornwall, while a pygmy sperm whale, its close relative, was found beached on Seil island, near Oban.  "They were both very big surprises: they are rarely seen even where the populations are known to exist," said Evans. "If the fish are extending their range, as we know many are, then the whales and dolphins will follow. anchovies, for example, were really quite scarce in the North Sea 10-20 years ago. Now they are widespread and m  
 The hostile reaction to George Osborne's refusal last week to let environmental issues play a part in restoring Britain's ailing economy is unsurprising. as a swath of enraged ecologists, academics and NGOs has claimed, his party - put in power on a promise to be the greenest ever elected - is now set to acquire the mantle of being the most environmentally destructive in recent history.  You can see their point. Threatening to weaken planning regulations, reducing subsidies for solar panels, scrapping plans to increase fuel duty and providing tax subsidies for our most polluting industries - on the grounds that "endless social and environmental goals" will cause businesses to fail - are not the actions of a chancellor sympathetic to green causes.  For his part, Osborne has made it clear that short-term expediency motivates his actions: we cannot save the planet until we have saved our economy, he argues. This view is straightforward but mistaken in many ways. Consider the political issues. Exposing parts of our finest countryside, such as Chesil Beach or the Norfolk Broads, to the threat of industrial development risks alienating the strong Tory vote of these areas. David Cameron, who made much of his championship of green causes at the last election, has also been made to look foolish.  Then there are the economic concerns. Slashing support for renewable energies and providing tax relief for heavy, energy-intensive industries will only increase Britain's reliance on fossil fuels. By contrast, committing the country to the development of wave, tide and solar energy projects would have helped Britain wean itself from oil and gas, which we are importing at ever-increasing costs. This investment could also have helped create technologies, including tide and wave power plants, whose sales round the world could have made billions for Britain in future decades. a golden opportunity has been lost.  The fact that Osborne has chosen this moment to reveal his climate-sceptic colours is also intriguing. In Durban, delegates from across the globe have gathered in a bid to revitalise international agreements to curb carbon emissions and global warming. Those who looked to Britain for a lead will have noted the signals sent out by our chancellor: there is no rush and we have other priorities. Like Canada, the US and several other developed nations, Britain appears to be happy to sit back and watch as hopes of reaching a binding international deal to cut carbon emissions fade away.  Two years ago, the Copenhagen climate summit was alive with the belief that an agreement would be reached. No such expectations have been voiced in Durban, where climate negotiations seem beset by political complacency and the prospect of failure. Yet scientists' warnings have never been clearer. Organisations such as the Royal Society, Nasa, the Met Office, the national science academies of virtually every country on the planet - as well as several dozen Nobel laureates - have made it clear they think greenhouse gases are having a major impact on the planet. a US poll of 1,380 climate scientists found that 97% backed the belief that carbon emissions are raising global temperatures. The science is straightforward. Yet politicians appear less and less inclined to listen or act.  In the US, this attitude has reached extraordinary levels. Most Republican candidates for the presidency openly doubt that climate change is real and have even accused scientists of fiddling facts in a bid to garner research grants. as New Scientist put it: "When candidates for the highest office in the land appear to spurn reason, embrace anecdote over scientific evidence, and even portray scientists as the perpetrators of a massive hoax, there is reason to worry."  Britain, until recently, has escaped the worst of these anti-intellectual excesses. There are signs that this state of affairs may not last, however. Climate sceptic groups, in particular Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, are increasingly influencing the media. Last week, a welter of stories that openly doubted any link between climate change and humanity's industrial actions appeared in the British press. a plurality of views about global warming is healthy, but the accusation that scientists are fiddling facts simply to attract grants is extraordinary. Nevertheless, most deniers' arguments rest on this assumption. It is a distressing trend which reveals that the desire to avoid uncomfortable truths is spreading.  It is therefore worth emphasising the dire consequences of our continued failure to address climate change. If humanity cannot get its emissions to peak by 2020, there is little chance of holding down temperature rises to under 2C by 2100. Major changes to our planet will then occur. Deserts will sp  
 an extraordinary alliance of countryside campaigners, wildlife groups and green activists today launches a savage onslaught on the government over its "stunning disregard" for the environment.  The attack - backed by organisations including the RSPB and the Campaign to Protect Rural England - is a significant embarrassment for David Cameron who claimed at the last election that his would be the "greenest government ever".  However, in letters to the Observer, green groups - including the umbrella organisation the Wildlife Trusts, which has more than 800,000 members - ridicule this claim and vent their fury over last week's autumn statement by George Osborne. With the government outlining cuts in solar energy subsidies, reforming planning regulations and introducing tax support for energy-intensive industries, the chancellor infuriated the green lobby with the tone of his comments. "Far from being the greenest government ever, this government is set to seize the mantle of most environmentally destructive in recent history," states one letter, signed by the green campaigners Tony Juniper, Jonathon Porritt, Caroline Lucas, who is the leader of the Green Party, and others.  a second letter, from the heads of the RSPB, Greenpeace and others, says: "Rarely have we been as incredulous as we were on Tuesday, upon hearing the autumn budget statement.  "The stunning disregard shown for the value of the natural environment not only flies in the face of popular opinion but goes against everything the government said in June, when it launched two major pieces of environmental policy - the natural environment white paper and the England biodiversity strategy."  The backlash comes as serious tensions are developing inside the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition over green policy. The Observer understands that the Liberal Democrat energy secretary Chris Huhne was not consulted by Osborne about his comments in the autumn statement on green issues.  In terms that many MPs saw as at odds with the government's professed enthusiasm for the environment, Osborne told the Commons on Tuesday: "We are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers. all we will be doing is exporting valuable jobs out of Britain." Several leading Liberal Democrats are known to be furious, and fear that the government is back-tracking on its commitments. One senior minister said that he failed to understand why Osborne had chosen to question the green agenda, both in the autumn statement and his party conference speech in October. The minister said: "If George goes down this route, he fires an Exocet missile right through David Cameron's political integrity."  Ministers insist that, despite some hostile rhetoric on green issues, the government is still pursuing a radical agenda including subsidies for other areas of renewable energy, and the signing earlier this year of the fourth carbon budget that commits the UK to bold cuts. Tim Yeo, the Tory chairman of the energy and climate committee, said: "We are getting a change of rhetoric, with more emphasis on the burdens that green rhetoric could put on the econ  
 IT'S that time of year. Every advert that isn't trying to flog you a sofa is flashing up tape measures diets, and WeightWatchers scales. You've been sitting on your own take-home-now-pay-for-the-rest-of-your-life sofa for so long the cushions have moulded into your backside like a snug pair of egg cups. You only vaguely remember the world out there, with its emails, January blues, and responsibilities but you know it's waiting for you. and deep down you know what you must do. It is time to make some New Year's resolutions.  Some might say, why bother? From sorting out your finances to sorting out your sock drawer, how many resolutions do we really bother keeping? Not many, it seems, but that doesn't stop us from trying. This year nearly two thirds of us plan to make resolutions and losing weight is once again top of the list. Next up is improving finances, hardly surprising after a year in which Britain was blighted by one of the deepest recessions in decades. Other popular resolutions are eating more healthily, looking for a new job and cutting down on alcohol. Meanwhile, the British Humanist association has launched a Resolution Revolution campaign to try and get people to commit to helping others more. But what about the great and the good of Scotland? How do they plan on improving their lives in 2011? From politicians to panto actors, singers to comedians, artists to sportspeople, we decided to find out ...  Mark Cousins  filmmaker and author  I've got two New Year's resolutions. The first is to get a window cleaner. The second is to read Plutarch. My windows have been minging all year and it's been horrible. I want to read Plutarch because I've been reading Montaigne and in his essays he goes on and on about Plutarch as the greatest classical writer. I spent a lot of 2010 sitting on the cheap seats in aeroplanes making a world history of cinema that will be shown on More4 next summer over 12 weeks. It's taken me more than three years to make, starting in Japan and working westwards. I'm pretty knackered. So in 2011 I want to travel less and spend more time in Edinburgh, looking through my clean windows and reading Plutarch.  Vicky Featherstone  artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland  Watch all The Wire, empty my inbox every day but not by deleting everything. Not fall asleep on the sofa at 9pm. Drink less cheap wine. Drink more expensive wine. Learn piano. Get more five-star reviews. Not be such a slave to the star reviewing system. Eat more fruit. Walk to work. Swim the channel. Finish the pile of books by my bed. Stop buying books I don't have time to read. Get everyone in Scotland who has never been to the theatre to come to the theatre. Get everyone in Scotland who has been to the theatre to come again and bring a friend. Stop agreeing to do these kind of lists at short notice - it seems to throw up a whole world of contradictions.  John Burnside  Poet and novelist  I have made one resolution this year. To enjoy life more. I feel as though something has crept up on us, we are always busy and preoccupied and burdened down with stuff. My theory is that if I do keep that resolution to enjoy life more I will actually lose weight and get more healthy and eat less and drink less. Those mostly seem to be compensatory activities for being bored from what you've done, or exhausted by the day and thinking about what you have got to do still.  SUSaN CaLMaN  COMEDIaN  In my experience the resolutions that don't work are the ones which attempt to change the fundamental nature of a person overnight. I hate exercise so why should I suddenly decide to become a gym bunny? I love drinking so why should I suddenly become a paragon of virtue because a new year has started? at the age of 36 I can honestly say I have never ever stuck to a New Year's resolution that involved changing something about me. I still drink, I still bite my nails, I can still eat an M&S tub of ready-whipped cream in under a minute and I still refuse to join any friends who do any activities on a Sunday morning that involve the words "walking", "running" or "climbing". If you didn't want to do it in November you won't want to do it in February. For a month you will be walking on air as you suddenly become the person you always wanted. Then the person you always were will sneak in, batter the "new you" over the head and your gym kit will remain under your desk at work until New Year's Day 2011 when it starts all over again. Don't do it to yourself. Don't decide to "change". I don't want to change. I think I'm ok, which is why my New Year's resolution is always the same: just do what I did last year but muck it up less. Easy, and not a gym membership in sight.  aLISON CRaIG  WRITER  New Year's resolutions are tradition and traditionally mine are to lose weight and join a gym, but this year I'm not doing that. I've realised that it's a waste of a good resolution because I know I'm always going to break them. In the past I've always had a whole clutch of them and the only one I've ever stuck to is to stop smoking. It's not really a good ratio of success. So this year my resolution is to live each day as if it's my last because one of these days I'm going to be right. and let's be honest, there are days during the year when you really just can't be bothered, but in 2011 it's going to be about just getting up and getting on with it. I'm fed up of all this doom and gloom and I'm just going to rise above it.  George McNeill  Former world sprint champion, now after-dinner speaker.  To lower my golf handicap. It's 14 at the moment and it would be nice to get it down to single figures, although at archerfield where I play that could be quite tough. Then, later in the year, my resolution is to go and see - and speak at - the Melbourne Cup horse race in australia. It's one of the great events in australian sport. I've already spoken at the Stawell Gift race, which I won, and at the australian rules Grand Final, so doing the Melbourne Cup would complete the hat-trick.  Ed Monaghan  managing director, housebuilder Mactaggart & Mickel  This year's New Year's resolutions are split in two, very much like how I see the year panning out. In the first half of the year I intend to remain positive and upbeat at a time when the economic news is not likely to be good. The second half of the year will see a slightly improved trading position, with my second resolution being: be bold when the data says be cautious. Oh yes, and running that marathon I didn't get to last year.  Gavin Brown  Conservative Lothians MSP  Middle age is catching up on me and my resolution is to lose ten kilos over the course of the year. I used to run to work quite bit, but that's dropped off so I want to run to work and home twice a week. It's five miles from where I live in Edinburgh to the Parliament. The run in isn't too bad, because its mainly downhill, but the run home is all uphill. I used to do it quite a lot when I was training for the Edinburgh marathon, but in the last six or seven months I've piled on the pounds, so I've decided to do it twice a week. I'd say my "fighting weight" would be about 80 kilos and I'm currently about 90 kilos. Diet is something I will look at as well, although I find it easier to exercise than cut down on food.  Tommy Sheppard,  director of The Stand Comedy Club and the Glasgow Comedy Festival  I'm on the detox from 1 January. I'll be giving up everything - no alcohol, low carb diet. and I'm going to try to get fit. I was thinking of doing the 5k run on 8 January - but I haven't run for so long I might have to give it a miss. But I'm going to start training again.  I always give up the drink for at least two months a year - just to prove I'm not an alcoholic. If you are a social drinker and you work in this industry it's sometimes hard to know where to draw the line.  I'll do the GI diet - high protein and low carb. I always feel so much better when I do it. a couple of weeks in you begin to feel really good - you sleep better - and then for some reason you stop being good and it starts all over again.  Maybe eventually I'll manage to do it in a way that's sustainable throughout the year - but it is better to be good for two months than not to do it at all.  THE DUCHESS OF HaMILTON  I have been emptying packages and I have decided I must try to be more green this year - to make a real effort to recycle. I also have to catch up with writing - to write back to all the people who have been in touch with me - particularly over Christmas. This year I hope to begin some serious writing. I would like to write a book which would raise money towards alzheimer Scotland. We have raised GBP22,000 so far, which means we have got about one and a half million to go - the idea is to raise enough money to pay for a specially trained dementia nurse for every health authority in Scotland. My biggest goal this year is to really make a difference for people in Scotland who are suffering from alzheimer's disease and dementia.  GRaNT STOTT  DJ and "Fleshcreep" in Jack and the Beanstalk at The King's, EDINBURGH  I always aspire to maintain the weight loss I manage to achieve during panto season. I could spend all year eating Chinese food and drinking white wine and it gets to November and I start my regime of running around in my leathers of villainy for seven weeks. Trust me, if you do that twice a day for nearly two months, it's amazing the pounds you lose. I usually get to my ideal fighting weight by the end of January and I always vow to try and maintain that but inevitably slip into bad habits. I also always promise my accountant that I will get my finances properly organised so that this will be the year I get everything done and don't rush to him in the middle of January with a shoebox full of papers so that he can sort out my tax. Those are the two big ones I go for and although I never really see them through I still think it's a good thing to do. It's a chance to take a wee look at your life and have a think about how you can improve it or do something better.  Sir Tom Hunter  Entrepreneur  Work hard, play hard and give something back, but this time not to the banks.  Ian McLauchlan  SRU President  I used to say, to stop fighting on the rugby field, but I never kept it, so what I wish for now is Scotland beating England twice in one year for the first time since I played in 1971, in the Six Nations and the World Cup. But that is going to need help from others.  Richard Wiseman  Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire  My resolution is to prevent as many people as possible from achieving their resolutions. So, for example, a good friend of mine is trying to lose weight and I have just sent her a large cake as a gift. another friend has said that he is going to go to the gym each day, and so I have stolen his training shoes. It is great because you then get to revel in someone else's failure, and also help provide much-needed work for psychotherapists. For me, it is a win win situation.  David Shrigley  artist  If a resolution is worth making then I suppose it should be done immediately, regardless of the date. I seem to remember that I made a resolution last year to be more healthy after a particularly debauched Burns supper, having spent the evening sitting next to someone whose fitness (and moderation) put me to shame. also, I seem to remember when I quit smoking about ten years ago it was in the summertime; it would have seemed ridiculous to wait until the New Year. New Year's Day is a bad time to start any kind of resolution, since one's resolve is usually compromised by being hung over.  John Byrne  artist and writer  I have two resolutions. I've started the first one already because I reckon as soon as you make a resolution you should start keeping it. I don't mess around. So the first is not to be so disparaging about contemporary art. I'm just sick of banging on about it and being a total bore about it. I always go on about how people can't draw to save their lives. and the second resolution comes with the first. It's to be a benevolent face in 2011. I could definitely do more of that. Do more and do it better. In fact, that's it. My resolutions are more and better.  Craig Brown  aberdeen manager  I am not really one for resolutions because I think they are a bit like superstitions and I have never really been one for them, either. I'm not one of those people who stops to take stock just because it is the turn of the year and suddenly thinks I'm going to stop smoking, or makes   
 TWO of the biggest Scottish players in the electric vehicle market are calling on political parties north of the Border to help the industry "step up a gear" ahead of this year's Holyrood elections.  Glasgow-based allied Vehicles and Dundee battery maker axeon have joined forces with environmental charity WWF Scotland to push for the roll-out of more electric vehicles (EVs) and public charging points.  The trio has challenged political parties to outline how they would help deliver the "widespread and rapid take-up of EVs" as part of their manifesto commitments in the run-up to May's Scottish Parliament elections.  Paul Nelson, allied Electric's managing director, said that, as well as the environmental benefits of EVs, the growing industry could also offer a jobs boost.  "This is a technology that has the potential to create hundreds of much-needed manufacturing jobs right here in Scotland," Nelson said.  "Scotland's renewable potential must be matched by a strong committment to electric vehicles. We have the fantastic opportunity to be powering our cars with green electricty by 2020 that we cannot afford to miss."  axeon - which is one of Europe's biggest producers of Lithium-ion battery packs for EVs - is already well placed to capitalise on the industry's expansion.  Chief executive Lawrence Berns said: "Our battery and charger systems are designed and manufactured to exacting automotive standards in Scotland, drawing on many years of battery experience."  The three organi  
 MaJOR tourism projects in the Highlands and Islands are in line for an GBP18 million cash boost from the European Regional Development Fund.  a new visitor centre for the chambered tomb of Maeshowe on Orkney and the Highlanders Museum Redevelopment Project near Inverness, which last year was backed by actor Hugh Grant, have received cash from the European fund, it was revealed yesterday.  Roads, ports and other infrastructure projects have also been awarded grants through the scheme, designed to regenerate areas suffering economic hardship.  Ian Johnstone, chairman of Orkney Island Council's development and regeneration committee, said the Maeshowe investment was welcome for such an important historic site.  Currently, the attraction's visitors' centre requires tourists to cross a main road and has very limited access.  The new project will provide access, education and community facilities on the mainland of Orkney.  Mr Johnstone said: "The site has struggled for a while and there were safety implications. This will make the whole experience better, and I think the new centre will help attract visitors."  Maeshowe will receive GBP1.14m, while the Highlanders museum project will benefit from GBP924,000.  The   
 THE Scottish Conservatives yesterday said they would back an increase in speed limits on major roads to 80 miles an hour - despite calls from environmental groups for a reduction.  Jackson Carlaw, the party's climate change spokesman, said that the Scottish Conservatives would oppose using new powers framed in the Scotland Bill to reduce the speed limit.  Environmental campaigners have called for the speed limit to be dropped to 50mph on main roads in a bid to cut down on carbon emissions.  Mr Carlaw added: "I can confirm today that Scottish Conservatives will not support this and that it will not feature in our manifesto. Indeed we may well seek - were such powers delegated to this parliament - to increase the speed limit to 80mph on certain highways."  His contribution came as the transport committee delivered its response to the SNP administration's plans to achieve climate change targets.  Green MSP Patrick Harvie, convener of the transport, climate change and infrastructure committee, welcomed the government's aims.  The Scottish Government has set ambitious targets including a 42 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and an 80 per cent reduction by 2050.  Mr Harvie said: "There is little benefit in setting challenging objectives and making ambitious estimates of the reductions we can achieve, if government budgets don't contain sufficient financial provision to allow delivery." 
 ONE of the leading figures in Britain's oil and gas industry has called for a major drive to prevent key university graduates being poached by the growing renewable energy sector.  Malcolm Webb, chief executive of trade body Oil and Gas UK, told a business breakfast in aberdeen the multi-billion-pound industry had become Britain's "best-kept industrial secret."  and he said there was a pressing need to raise the sector's profile if oil companies were to continue to recruit and retain the best people.  Mr Webb said: "The problem at the moment is that the offshore oil and gas industry is not known about. We say it is Britain's best-kept industrial secret. The fact that the industry has an image problem is a growing concern. We need to continue to raise the profile of oil and gas in order to keep attracting skilled people, especially in areas that have to compete with renewables."  He said a recent survey had underlined the lack of knowledge about the industry by people in Britain. It showed 71 per cent of Londoners thought the UK got the majority of its oil either wholly or mainly from abroad. Even 35 per cent of people in aberdeen - Europe's oil capital - thought likewise.  a spokesman for Oil and Gas UK said: "Many people living outside key industry centres like aberdeen and the north-east of England are completely unaware of how important our oil and gas is to the UK economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, contributing millions every year to the Treasury and supplying the vast majority of the country's energy needs. Therefore, raising the profile of the oil and gas industry and changing old-fashioned perceptions is vital if companies are to recruit, nurture and retain the next generation of skilled engineers and talented business leaders." 
 When plans were first announced last year for a rise in VaT to 20 per cent, few imagined that retail price inflation would be grazing 5 per cent just ahead of the increase. and when the government pre- announced another rise in fuel duty to take effect this april, even fewer imagined the oil price would be touching dollars 100 a barrel and that petrol ahead of this latest impost would be costing as much as GBP1.40 a litre at the pumps. Such prices are of particular concern in Scotland, where distance travel is often unavoidable and where fuel costs are significantly higher for rural industries.  This is the background against which finance minister John Swinney has written to Chancellor George Osborne demanding action to tackle rising fuel prices. He has called for the establishment of a fuel-duty regulator which would aim to cut the tax take on petrol when the oil price went up, and raise it when prices were low. at present, about 70 per cent of the cost of a litre of petrol at the pumps comprises tax in one form or another.  In petrol price politics, it is easy to play the card calling for lower prices. But it presents two awkward problems. The first is the stated commitment of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to bear down on the budget deficit and debt. It was to help bring about this reduction that a further fuel duty boost was planned, rather than resort to yet further cuts in government spending. If the Chancellor does succumb to Mr Swinney's strictures, he puts these deficit reduction targets at risk.  The second is the stated policy of both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems to bear down on CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption: the green agenda. Tory leader David Cameron talked of a fair fuel mechanism that would put taxes up when the oil price was low and falling, and cut them when the price was high. This would be a relatively less painful - or less obvious - way to extract higher tax from the motorist. However, being seen to cut fuel taxes now would risk vocal opposition from the Green lobby and create difficulties for the minister for climate change, Christopher Huhne.  On the balance of argument, there would seem to be a case for the Westminster government to cancel or postpone the forth- coming fuel duty increase. First, inflation is now a serious policy worry within the Bank of England. There is a growing likelihood that the Bank's monetary policy committee may move to raise interest rates considerably earlier than had been expected. This would be a big setback for recovery prospects.  anything that helps to mitigate inflationary pressures would be helpful. and such is the effect of a higher oil price that the government will already be enjoying oil tax revenues appreciably higher than those budgeted for. This would provide some leeway for a postponement until price pressures subside.  Oldham offers few clues to coalition's prospects  So MUCH has changed since the General Election last May that the first by-election test of the coalition and of Labour under the leadership of Ed Miliband was bound to attract close scrutiny. In the febrile commentary of the spin doctors, all the main parties laid claim to some satisfaction.  The Liberal Democrat vote did not suffer a widely predicted meltdown, with the candidate securing 11,160 votes. Indeed, the Lib Dem share of the vote actually rose. However, Debbie abrahams, the Labour candidate, was a comfortable winner with 14,718 votes, a result that will have been greeted with huge relief by the party's leader. The Conservatives, widely thought to have run a low key campaign to boost Lib Dem prospects - a claim strongly denied by the leadership - saw their vote tumble to just 4,481. The Tory Right is deeply unsettled.  Ju  
 alex Salmond yesterday called for air passenger duty (aPD) to be cut in an effort to increase the number of international air routes from Scotland.  The First Minister pledged to campaign for Scotland to win control of the tax in May's Holyrood election, to put pressure on Westminster to devolve the issue.  Mr Salmond said: "If you doubled the number of flights, you could halve the tax."  He was speaking as he officially opened Ryanair's enlarged maintenance base at Prestwick airport, with the no-frills airline claiming aPD was restricting Scottish route growth.  The tax has also been widely criticised by other airlines and airports. Passengers at UK airports are charg  
 amid the gloom, the smallest chink of light on the employment front. The latest quarterly job figures show Scotland is faring better than the rest of the UK, creating more jobs and seeing fewer people thrown on the scrapheap. But that's as good as it gets.  The SNP has been crowing over the figures, taking credit for a better than UK average performance, which apparently proves the Scottish Government's policies are working.  Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, takes a less optimistic view, conceding the need to create the conditions that enable all businesses to thrive and create more sustainable jobs.  While we should be grateful for seeing the Scottish numbers moving in the right direction, they cannot conceal some worrying trends. The number in work over the year was down. The number out of work and claiming Jobseekers' allowance rose by 1,400, the fourth monthly increase in a row.  This situation is unlikely to improve as the Budget cuts kick in and Scotland's recovery lags the UK.  Getting Britain back to work in any meaningful way will rest on the shoulders of Chancellor George Osborne, who's Budget next month offers an opportunity for new measures to tackle the problem.  The feedback I am getting is that the private sector is not creating jobs at the rate required to mop up those being displaced in the public sector, a process that is likely to accelerate.  While some sectors are thriving and creating work - renewables, oil and gas and even financial services - demand does not match supply and a skills and culture gap exists that means many of those being tipped out simply do not suit private sector employers. Of those jobs that are being created, many are part-time, including many of the much-lauded supermarket jobs that we hear so much about.  Youth unemployment is a particular worry. The number of 18-24 year-old claimants has increased by 70 per cent since the recession began and there are now 39,000 fewer young Scots in employment than two years ago, a so-called lost generation.  There has been much talk around the Scotland Bill that it could provide the taxation powers the country needs to help stimulate economic growth. This is a complex issue that divides opinion, but the case for a package of measures that would incentivise businesses to invest should be promoted with or without further legislation.  mervyn King was expected to show he was about to bow to the pre  
 THE latest tax increase for air travellers could cost Scottish airports 1.2 million passengers over three years and jeopardise routes, Baa warned yesterday.  a report commissioned by the owner of Edinburgh, Glasgow and aberdeen airports also predicted last November's hike in air passenger duty (aPD) could lose Scotland GBP77 million in tourism. The airports handle 18 million passengers a year.  It is understood that long-haul routes, such as from Edinburgh and Glasgow to New York, could be the most vulnerable.  The fears came amid speculation the UK government might scrap plans to replace aPD with a per-plane tax and increase the tax on short-haul UK flights instead in next month's Budget.  Earlier this week, First Minister alex Salmond called for Scotland to take control of aPD so it could be cut in an effort to increase the number of international flights.  aPD was increased in November by GBP1 to GBP12 for flights from UK airports up to 2,000 miles, and by up to GBP30 to GBP85 for longer routes. Premium class passengers now pay up to GBP170 per flight - an extra GBP60.  The Baa report, by analysts York aviatio  
 MOTORISTS struggling to cope with rising prices at the pumps may be increasingly tempted by the prospect of making their own fuel.  Glasgow firm apple Fuels is among those offering assistance to would-be home fuel producers, as well as selling biodiesel at 99p a litre - more than 30p less than average Scottish diesel prices.  Its website states: "By running your vehicle on professionally made biodiesel, you will not only save money, but the environment. Burning biofuel will add very little carbon dioxide to the environment, and is a renewable resource unlike regular diesel."  It added that there was "no need to modifiy your vehicle to run on our biodiesel. You can mi  
 LaNDOWNERS can expect much higher rents from wind farm developments in future as demand for sites increase, according to a new report.  Consultants CKD Galbraith say that between 2002 and 2008, rents under new leases increased on average by 200 per cent.  In addition, from 2009 to 2010, rents rose by more than 10 per cent with early indications they will continue to increase this year as demand for available sites grows.  The firm has carried out advisory and consultancy work for private landowners, developers, community groups and statutory national bodies on over 850Mw of wind farms.  according to the report, landlords of pioneering wind farm sites throughout Scotland will soon be undertaking rent reviews on the earliest leases and evidence suggests they can expect significantly higher rental returns for thei  
 FRaUD and market abuse among European "green" projects is set to grow unless controls and systems that protect them are strengthened, a new report has warned.  accountancy firm Price- waterhouseCoopers (PWC) said programmes such as the dollars 120 billion (GBP73.8bn) EU Trading Scheme, which covers half of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions, are attracting the serious attention of professional criminals. Recently a "phishing" scam and cyber attacks caused the theft of Euros45m from several companies and the closure of national carbon registries across the EU.  Richard Neave, forensic services director at PWC in Scotland, said: "In recent months there has been a surge in frauds with a green element. Often this is down to a lack of mature information security policies and controls. Fraudsters are using the latest techniques to attack weak points in the system, but these are essentially old frauds applied to new markets."  PWC said weak information security measures subject to phishing scams - on-line exercises in illicit information gathering - were a "classic" entry point for fraudsters. PWC recently conducted a test for a multinational client which found more than 2,000 employees clicked though to a fake internet page.  Neave said: "Companies need to apply the same diligence to their sustainable business activities as they do to their core financial reporting and controls." 
 THOUSaNDS of Scottish homes will be heated by renewable energy if Labour wins power in May's Holyrood election, the party has promised.  Under the plans Labour says are worth about GBP70 million over the next four years, 10,000 homes would produce their own, renewable energy.  Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray claimed the "green housing revolution" would create hundreds of jobs and hand households massive fuel bill savings.  Mr Gray said the scheme would involve the Scottish Government working with local authorities to fit mainly existing social housing with solar panels, or other forms of community energy schemes such as renewable heat.  Labour said it would fund the policy with income generated through the UK government's feed-in tariffs scheme, under which households that generate their own electricity from renewable energy receive payments from energy suppliers.  Mr Gray pledged the scheme would be started within 100 days of a Labour administration being elected, with an agency called Energy Scotland launched to take forward the plan.  Mr Gray also said it was the party's ambition to make green-energy powered homes the standard way of fuelling social housing by 2020.  He said: "Labour's green deal will create hundreds of skilled jobs for young people, with an initial ambition of retro- fitting 10,000 homes and business premises with insulation, household and community renewables over the next Scottish Parliament.  "My ambition is to have more homes producing renewable energy than anywhere else in the UK. I want Scotland to lead the green housing revolution.  Labour said that the plan will create over 300 jobs and 750 traineeships and would deliver an annual saving on domestic fuel bills of GBP133 per house. 
 On the face of it, it is alarming that 202 Scots guilty of attempted murder or serious assault received jail sentences of less than 12 months last year. additionally, despite the crackdown on knife culture, 712 people were given similar sentences for carrying offensive weapons.  However, appearances can be deceptive and the spin put on the release of these figures by the Labour Party is designed to deceive. attempting to paint itself as the party of law and order ahead of the Holyrood elections, Labour is using these statistics to flail the SNP in the hope that its stance will pay electoral dividends. There are several reasons why such a blatantly populist strategy should fail.  The first is that these figures are only that, figures. They do not tell us the context in which the sentences they record were handed out. It would be wrong, of course, if sentences for serious crimes were too lenient, but there is little hard evidence of this. Indeed, according to the Scottish Government, the average length of custodial sentence in 2009-10 was at the highest level in the past ten years. There is also nothing in the figures which allows for any mitigating factors there may have been in the sentencing.  Furthermore, as we report today, nine out of the country's 14 closed prisons are overcrowded beyond their design capacity: there were 447 more prisoners behind bars than there were places designed to house them on 18 February. So even if prison was a deterrent, and there is a lot of evidence it is not, we do not have anywhere to put more prisoners.  So, as the party has raised the issue, we are entitled to ask what Labour would do it if takes power at Holyrood after May. Increase sentences? No. Richard Baker, the party's justice spokesman says only that they are thinking about setting up a sentencing "commission". ah, the commission, the last refuge of the political scoundrel anxious to head off a difficult decision. What about building more prisons? No again. all Labour will say is it needs to look at the books if it wins, the second last refuge of said scoundrels.  There is an obvious conclusion from all of this. Were Labour really concerned with crime, punishment and law and order it would hesitate before issuing more anti-SNP press releases and consider the root causes of crime in Scotland, where our society is still bedevilled by poverty, deprivation and dependency; a society over which, in many parts of the country, Labour politicians have presided for much of the post-war period.  One of Labour's most famous soundbites, coined by Gordon Brown but articulated by Tony Blair, was the party would be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime". Yes, it was slick and promised more than it delivered, but it contained an essential truth about how politicians should approach justice. Labour in Scotland appears to think just doing the "tough on crime" bit is enough to get them to May. If only it was that simple.  Scotland's unspoiled wilds get that shrinking feeling  among Scotland's most valuable assets, her breathtaking scenery and unspoilt landscapes must figure highly. They are our signature on the world and one of the key reasons why millions come to Scotland each year. So new research showing that Scotland's visually unspoiled wild land is fast diminishing is cause for concern. a report from Scottish Natural Heritage shows that the proportion of Scottish land which could be counted as being "without visual influence of built development" has shrunk from 31 per cent to 28 per cent in 2009. The loss is equivalent to an area 14 times the size of Glasgow, and it shows every sign of accelerating.  The reason is not hard to find. Wind turbines, power lines and giant pylons are the main  
 RENEWaBLE power group Sea-Energy has increased its stake in Mesopotamia Petroleum Company (MPC) after shareholders pumped in GBP50,000 to the Iraqi-focused drilling outfit.  MPC had been trying to buy drilling assets but yesterday revealed it had been unsuccessful.  aberdeen-based SeaEnergy will see its share rise from 32.7 per cent to 40.21 per cent in the deal, under which new shares in MPC will be issued.  Steve Remp, chairman of both aim-quoted SeaEnergy and MPC, will see his stake rise to 5.09 per cent, while SeaEnergy finance director Steven Bertram's share will rise to 0.45 per cent.  MPC won a drilling contract from the Iraqi government in 2009. Ramco set up MPC before renaming itself SeaEnergy and shifting its focus from oil and gas to renewable power.  SeaEnergy said MPC had agreed to delay payments to its creditors until it is able to raise finance to drill in Iraqi. In the meantime, MPC has "reduced its activities and expenditure". 
 OFFSHORE wind farms could generate enough electricity to power all Scotland's homes within a decade, according to ambitious Scottish Government plans published yesterday.  The blueprint said nearly 3 gigawatts could be produced by 2020, sufficient for three million households.  Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy for WWF Scotland, said: "This announcement marks a major step toward Scotland fully realising the massive renewable resource around its coastline and ending our reliance on dirty coal and nuclear power."  aedan Smith of RSPB Scotland, said: "The plan is key to ensuring the necessary growth in offshore renewables is delivered without having an impact on Scotland's sensitive marine environment." 
 ROYaL Bank of Scotland has come under fire after it emerged the bank - a main sponsor of a climate-change initiative - is a major investor in the coal sector.  Friends of the Earth Scotland said a report, put together with a consortium including Platform and People & Planet, reveals RBS was involved in providing finance worth nearly ???8 billion to the world's biggest coal mining and coal power generating companies over three years.  The Edinburgh-based bank is a sponsor of Climate Week, which begins today. Mary Church, of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Instead of using initiatives like Climate Week as greenwash, RBS should put its money where its mouth is and start financing the urgently needed transition to a green economy."  Entitled Dirty Money, Corporate Greenwash and RBS Coal Finance, the report claims RBS provides more financing to coal mining and power companies than any other UK bank.  a spokesman for RBS said: "We are committed to supporting the economy through the transition to more sustainable forms of energy generation." 
 The new Forth Road Bridge could be built for up to GBP700 million less than original estimated.  The Scottish Government unveiled the consortium that is set to spearhead the biggest building project in Scotland in a generation after it was chosen as the preferred bidder for the scheme by ministers yesterday.  But the announcement was branded "blatant electioneering" by opposition parties and campaigners, who said the decision ties the hands of the incoming government after the May election.  Ministers say the condition of the existing bridge, linking Edinburgh and Fife, is deteriorating. The new Forth road bridge is due for completion by 2016.  The Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors (FCBC), which has been chosen as the preferred bidder, comprises Scottish firm Morrison, as well as Dragados, Hochtief and american Bridge International. It beat competition from Forthspan after an 18-month tender process.  FCBC's successful bid for the design and build contract is GBP790m, representing a saving on the initial estimated cost of GBP1.2 billion.  a spokeswoman for the winning consortium said: "This project has been on the drawing board for many years and we are delighted to be making a positive contribution in bringing it to reality."  The cost of the project has fallen to a figure of between GBP1.47bn and GBP1.62bn, significantly down on the original estimate of between GBP1.7bn and GBP2.3bn.  Government transport agency Transport Scotland said the cost had gone down because of a reduction in price of the principal contract and the removal of other costs due to UK Treasury changes.  Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "It is a testament to the robust competition we put in place that it has delivered a bid representing a significant saving for Scotland's capital budget.  "The Forth Replacement Crossing project will be essential in protecting and promoting Scotland's sustainable economic growth, safeguarding a vital link in the country's transport infrastructure, protecting thousands of jobs and securing more than a billion pounds in economic revenue.  "The successful FCBC consortium includes world-class bridge building and civil engineering firms with strong records of successfully delivering similar projects throughout the world."  Scottish Labour transport spokesman Charlie Gordon said the party welcomed the progress being made on the bridge project.  But he added: "You have to question the motives of the SNP government in making this announcement so close to the election. as alex Salmond heads towards the exit door it is becoming clear that he is abusing his position for the purposes of blatant electioneering."  It is now expected that the contract itself will be formally signed in the "purdah" period next month after parliament has dissolved and the election campaign is under way.  Green MSPs yesterday wrote to Sir Peter Housden, Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government, challenging his decision to allow SNP ministers to sign contracts. Co-leader Patrick Harvie said constitutional convention prevents ministers from taking decisions like this during this period.  Mr Harvie said: "The routine and uncontroversial business of government has to continue, but this decision is anything but - it's an extravagant, unnecessary and unpopular project being awarded by the SNP as an election stunt.  "Opposition to this timing is growing, with MSPs from Labour and the Lib Dems as well as Greens all signing a motion urging a prudent delay until the new parliament and government are chosen."  Liberal Democrat transport spokeswoman alison McInnes said: "It is unprecedented to award a contract of this scale after parliament has dissolved.  "The SNP are playing politics by announcing the consortium to build the bridge the day before parliament dissolves.  "This is almost certainly the largest single contract in the Scottish Parliament's history. While we want work on the bridge to begin, the new, incoming government should have had the chance to scrutinise the detail of the contracts."  Local campaign group the ForthRight alliance called on Sir Peter to re-consider his decision to allow the contract to be signed next month.  Chairman Lawrence Marshall said: "No-one can pre-judge the outcome of the May election. No-one should negate the ability of any party to put this important policy and financial issue   
 THE first hostile buy-out of an estate in Scotland has been given the go-ahead, with the local community granted the right to purchase land the owner does not want to sell.  Environment minister Roseanna Cunningham yesterday paved the way for crofters to acquire the 26,800-acre Pairc Estate in Lewis.  But the decision may yet face a legal challenge from Barry Lomas, the Warwickshire businessman whose family has owned the land since 1924.  almost 400 people currently live on the estate, which has 11 crofting townships and 208 crofts spread over an area the size of Edinburgh.  The Pairc Trust, the body seeking to buy the land on behalf of the community, first mooted a buy-out in 2004 but talks with Mr Lomas broke down. It later applied to acquire the estate using the Land Reform (Scotland) act 2003, which gives crofting communities the right to buy the land they croft and adjacent land whether or not the owner wishes to sell, if ministers approve.  a decision on the buy-out has been awaited since October after a consultation on the move, and ministers had been accused of procrastination.  But Ms Cunningham said yesterday that approval will now be followed by the appointment of an independent expert who will determine the market value of the land. The trust will t  
 'We WILL make sustainable economic growth our No 1 priority!" Count the number of times you will hear this from Scottish politicians between now in 5 May and you will quickly run out of fingers and toes to keep score. Economic growth has been the stated "No 1 priority" of the major political parties since the onset of devolution. a paper just out from the Centre for Public Policy for Regions finds that, over the past decade, there has been a modest improvement in Scotland's economy, a verdict properly qualified by the continuing repercussions of the global financial crisis and economic downturn. We have certainly avoided the worst fears a year or so ago of a massive rise in unemployment, though there has certainly been no game-changing break-out. However, this verdict, too, needs to be qualified as the string of announcements on investment in renewable energy and offshore wind in particular gives rise to hope that Scotland may be on the brink of building serious critical mass in this area that could put us on the world map.  What is desperately needed is a focus on economic policy in the new crimped, post recession landscape, rather than a lazy return to the "Lollipop politics" of yesteryear as if nothing has changed.  But first, a reality check. There are limits to what can be done. Corporation Tax, for example, cannot be slashed but will be at the UK rate, 28 per cent - though this is coming down in stages, to 27 per cent from april and down to 24 per cent by the end of the Westminster parliamentary term (small business rate 20 per cent).  Second, because of demographics, welfare spending, particularly care for the elderly, is set to increase, not diminish, so talk of a major shift in spending from welfare to capital projects is unrealistic.  Third, measures to help small business through de-regulation and relaxation of planning are bound by political constraints and in any event may can take a long time to have a discernible effect. Low business formation rates and "entrepreneurialism" have bedevilled Scotland for decades and the problems are deep-seated. It will require a significant culture shift to effect change.  Fourth, infrastructure and capital projects are constrained by a combination of budget cuts and lack of availability of bank finance, likely to persist for the foreseeable future.  Fifth, there is no reward for the Scottish Government (in terms of revenue gain) for measures to improve private sector productivity and competitiveness. But  
 THE bid to make Edinburgh a global centre of renewable technology and investment was launched yesterday when Scottish Secretary Michael Moore was presented with the case to bring the new Green Investment Bank to the city.  Led by Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce president Robert Carr, the bid team said the capital was "uniquely qualified" because it was a major centre for technology, finance and academia. He described Edinburgh as the "sweet spot" and said it was the only city outside London with all the factors needed for the bank to succeed.  Carr the bid was not a "case of special bargaining", but was being put forward because Edinburgh "is the right place to come to in the UK". He also warned against a London-centric view, suggesting the bank would be lost in the City, but would have "a distinctive identity" in Edinburgh.  The bid was launched at a business breakfast in the House of Commons arranged by Edinburgh MPs Mike Crockhart, of the Liberal Democrats, and Labour's Mark Lazarowicz. It received cross-party backing, including alistair Darling, also an Edinburgh MP.  The former chancellor reminded the audience that Edinburgh is the fourth-largest financial centre in Europe and "therefore is well-qualified to become the home of the Green Investment Bank."  a decision on the location is expected later this year. 
 IN a nice turn-up on the Biblical adage, it seems the rich bankers are always with us. The new chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, antonio Horta-Osorio gets a GBP9.7 million pay package, while his predecessor, Eric Daniels, graciously accepts his leaving bonus of GBP1.45m. and the top-paid guy at Lloyds - we are not given his name, but we assume it is a "he" - gets close to GBP5m.  Is there nothing that can be done to bring sky-high bank remuneration closer to the ground? apparently not. Jens Hagendorff, senior lecturer in banking and finance at the University of Edinburgh Business School, says that the issue is complicated. "There is a widespread belief in banking that individuals make a big difference and will increase performance," he observes.  He argues this comes from the history of banking, where the profits of once privately-owned banks, particularly the old Goldman Sachs-style investment banks, went to the proprietors.  Unless the UK or Europe wants to see its bank employees go elsewhere, global salaries must be comparable. and anyway, caps on salary don't work because there is plenty of evidence that remuneration committees come up with even more ingenious ways of rewarding their top staff, through options and the like.  In the end, it is the fault of the shareholders, argues Hagendorff, who don't want to risk losing the bankers they pay so handsomely and vote to let them pay as they do.  Lloyds' own remuneration report insists it uses other UK banks, as well as comparable FTSE 250 companies, to make sure its pay is not out of whack. In this, it turns out that Lloyds' pay remains well below that of many rival banks. Barclays' new boss, Bob Diamond, and two other top directors were paid a collective GBP28m last year. But whether this drives one to tears for the poor fate faced by Horta-Osorio and Daniels is, let's face it, unlikely.  aS RaDIaTION from the Fukushima meltdown starts raining gently down on our shoulders, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) has backed the nuclear option in it its Holyrood election policy document.  The Scottish Government is strictly no-nukes and with hysteria mounting over the spectre of radioactive particles in the water, surely the chamber's argument that it's time to build new reactors in Scotland is misguided?  The SCC says that although it's keen on renewables, it provides a fretful list of things that need to be addressed before green energy can be made a dead certainty. These are mainly to do with the need to expand and upgrade the grid - not just in Scotland, either - and the uncertainty of costs around the development of wind farms, on and offshore, let alone questions of the viability of using tidal energy, which we have only just begun to capture.  Before Fukushima, a very strange thing was happening to the image of nukes. For a  
 "Fish, fish! Fish!" Not the canapes at the end of the packed Scotsman Leaders' Debate last night, but quite the best line in the debate.  It came from the Conservative leader annabel Goldie over alex Salmond's efforts to justify resort to the courts to block the publication of a document on the financial impact of local income tax.  Whatever was in the document - compiled, Mr Salmond told us, by the Scottish Government's chief economist andrew Goudie - didn't sound at all like good news for voters. Little from Mr Goudie ever does, But he wasn't going to tell us - ministerial advice, he insisted, is covered by confidentiality.  This defence brought the outburst from Miss Goldie: "I smell fish, fish, fish! I want to know what is in that memo!"  and with that there began a Salmond-Goldie Chuckle Brothers performance. It left the two other contenders, Labour leader Iain Gray and Liberal Democrat Tavish Scott, out in the cold - or wriggling like fish.  Here surely is a coalition being forged in badinage and jokes. Miss Goldie, with a start-ling crimson blouse and feisty manner, fired by her success in the STV debate on Tuesday evening, looked like a girl out for mischief. Indeed, so relaxed was it all with the SNP leader that Lesley Riddoch might have had to hose them down had not the next question not been on tuition fees.  It was clear from contributions by academics in the audience that there is deep scepticism that the funding gap will be as low as the GBP93 million figure both Salmond and Gray sought to defend against university estimates of GBP200m and more.  In truth, no-one knows for sure at this stage. But the concern among several academics was clearly that it would be very considerably more. This was the issue that brought the debate alive and again enabled annabel Goldie to gain prominence through a distinctive line that separated her from the three other party leaders. It will not be the most popular policy on the block. But in this she at least showed honesty and courage: qualities not greatly in evidence in modern politics.  all candidates pledged in their opening statements to make economic growth their "top priority". Once declared, not much was heard about economic growth thereafter. Or about public sector reform for that matter. But hey, this was an election meeting.  Iain Gray managed a competent if pedestrian performance. There were no slips and no glitches, though there was some verbal entanglement as he sought to position himself below the line of fire on nuclear power: "There should be no presumption against nuclear in our energy mix". But oratorical sparkle there was none.  "This", he declared, "is an important election". What a glancing blow to the Unimportant Party. "We need," he said repeatedly, "to focus on young people." If he says this once again I think his advisers should march him off to Specsavers. It's not oratory in the Barack Obama class. In fact, it is utterly vapid. His summary was dead on arrival. His speech-writers need to work on coloratura, voice variation and above all some means by which he can deliver the big climactic phrases and make them sound as if he really means them.  Tavish Scott had some good thrusts and give an occasional flash of the wit of which he is capable. But for how long will, Tavish be on these election platform? On the latest poll findings, the Greens are going t  
 The banking sector dragged the London market into the red in the closing auction yesterday as stress tests revealed the full scale of the Irish bank bailout.  Four banks need an extra Euros24 billion (GBP21.2bn) to survive the financial crisis, taking the final bill for the Irish bailout to an eyewatering Euros70bn.  The figures saw the FTSE 100, which had managed to stay ahead for most of the session, close 39.54 points or 0.7 per cent lower at 5,908.76. Markets across Europe were also down on the news.  Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets, said: "We saw equity markets suddenly slide very rapidly towards the close with the banking sector slipping back quite considerably. What we saw in the closing auction is an early indication of what the market thinks of it."  HSBC led falls, down 2 per cent or 15p to 641p, while Barclays was down 6.2p to 277.5p. Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, which are both heavily exposed to the Irish economy, were down 0.4p at 58p and 0.3p at 40.79p respectively.  High inflation in the eurozone saw the single currency strengthen on the prospect of an interest rate hike at the European Central Bank. The pound was consequen  
 SCOTLaND'S onshore wind farms were idle for record periods last year because of unusually calm weather, which industry analysts claimed could lead to higher power bills.  Turbines operated on average for just 21.9 per cent of the time - more than five percentage points less than in 2009, the Renewable Energy Foundation claimed. They are expected to operate at an average output of about 30 per cent of maximum capacity.  The group, which has warned of over-reliance on the power source, said onshore wind farms also produced the least electricity during cold weather, when demand was greatest. It said another factor in the cut in average output was wind farms being developed in less windy places because the windiest spots had been taken.  The foundation's comments followed UK government figures, published on Thursday, which showed UK onshore wind farms generated 7.7 per cent less electricity last year than in 2009, the first drop after years of steady increases. They contributed just over one quarter of the UK's electricity from renewable sources and less than 2 per cent of the total generated.  The figures als  
 SCOTLaND'S onshore wind farms were idle for record periods last year because of unusually calm weather, which industry analysts claimed could lead to higher power bills.  Turbines operated on average for just 21.9 per cent of the time - more than five percentage points less than in 2009, the Renewable Energy Foundation claimed. They are expected to operate at an average output of about 30 per cent of maximum capacity.  The group, which has warned of over-reliance on the power source, said onshore wind farms also produced the least electricity during cold weather, when demand was greatest. It said another factor in the cut in average output was wind farms being developed in less windy places because the windiest spots had been taken.  The foundation's comments followed UK government figures, published on Thursday, which showed UK onshore wind farms generated 7.7 per cent less electricity last year than in 2009, the first drop after years of steady increases. They contributed just over one quarter of the UK's electricity from renewable sources and less than 2 per cent of the total generated.  The figures als  
 a HISTORIC hydro-electric scheme once used to power a sanatorium is be revived by a Highland community after 70 years.  Kingussie Community Development Company was yesterday given the go-ahead by the Cairngorms National Park authority to redevelop the 100-year-old scheme on the Gynack Burn.  The GBP180,000 project will use the archimedes Screw method, a system that has been used since ancient times to lift water to higher levels.  Remains of the old scheme, which was last used in the 1930s, are visible less than a mile upstream of the point where the main street in Kingussie crosses the burn.  It originally provided power for St Vincent's Sanatorium to the south, and a plaque has been erected to explain the link between the old scheme and St Vincent's.  The electricity from the new scheme will be fed to the national grid and the community is set to receive income of about GBP15,000 a year to fund other local projects.  The devel  
 Ruby McGregor-Smith is highly competitive and has recently taken up running, setting herself targets for each race.  It's a similar story in her day job. Running support services firm Mitie means helping clients achieve their goals.  "Outsourcing can help innovate and really let you get more for less," says the 48-year-old economics graduate. "What we're talking about is smarter thinking that saves you money."  McGregor-Smith, who has a speaking engagement in Edinburgh tonight, says an energy contract with one hospital saved enough to allow it to carry out 110 more transplant operations a year. "That's the bit we are really passionate about," she says. "It's incredibly exciting when you can talk to your clients and introduce some quite simple innovations that allow them to think differently about their budget."  It was that buzz which led the former trainee accountant to move into outsourcing, initially at Serco, and then with her current employer.  She rose to the top job in 2007 and is concentrating her ambitions on where she can take the company, hoping to make it a global player.  She points out that outsourcing is still a relatively young industry, having taken off in the UK in the 1980s, and says many companies are yet to be convinced of its benefits. Often it isn't until things start to go wrong that organisations think about changing their approach.  "It's still an industry that has a lot to offer and a lot of people don't understand its potential," she says. "It doesn't always come back to what people fear, which is cuts in jobs."  Mitie's latest growth area is energy efficiency, where it uses advisers to suggest changes to buildings and working practices. Training, and regularly reminding staff to switch off lights, close doors and be energy conscious, can provide big savings. McGregor-Smith says most organisations that have looked carefully at their energy spend have saved up to 30 per cent of their costs.  The recession has provided a boost to Mitie - the FTSE 250 firm has grown every year since McGregor-Smith joined as finance director in 2002 - but since the financial crisis growth has accelerated. Group revenue was GBP1.7 billion last year, up from GBP935 million in 2006.  McGregor-Smith admits that it is budget constraints that tend to make organisations think about outsourcing, but says that once they've tried it, they're unlikely to go back to doing everything in-house, even if times improve.  Tonight she will tell the assembled guests at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce dinner that global recession and climate change have fundamentally changed the way corporations need to operate and behave.  She believes most will have to become more efficient in terms of both cash and carbon.  So far, Mitie does slightly more business with the private sector, where clients in Scotland include Cable & Wireless, RBS, Rolls-Royce and Standard Life.  With the post-recession spending cuts about to kick in, there is a perception that the public sector will turn to outsourcers to help make savings, and that Mitie could enjoy a further spell of rapid growth.  But McGregor-Smith points out that companies who work for the UK government are as likely to require efficiencies as the state itself.  Many in business might expect that the savings to be made within the public sector are larger, due to its perceived inefficiency, but she says that is not necessarily the case.  The size of efficiency savings depends on how much an organisation has concentrated on the aspect of the business it seeks to outsource, she says. If it has built up spending on a certain area, usually a fresh look at how objectives can be achieved will make for a large saving.  She does think that some of the problems around the current public sector deficit can be greatly alleviated by outsourcing. But for Mitie at least, that will continue to be in support services only.  Business organisations such as the CBI have recently argued that almost all the functions of the state should be put out to tender, to give the private sector a chance of ru  
 THE UK government is to open talks with Edinburgh's financial sector about the possibility of locating the new Green Investment Bank there.  Scotland's capital was the first city to launch a bid to host the GBP3 billion bank, which from 2015 will be the driving force behind investment in green and renewable projects in the UK.  Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, who formally accepted the bid from a delegation led by Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, held discussions yesterday with Business Secretary Vince Cable about the location.  Mr Moore confirmed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was to hold talks with representatives from Edinburgh.  He said: "I have always made a strong case for the Green Investment Bank coming to Scotland and will continue to do so within government and elsewhere.  "No decision has been made on the location yet and I welcome the fact that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be speaking directly to the financial sector in Edinburgh on the issue in the near future."  at the moment Edinburgh's main rival is the City of London, although bids are also expected from Liverpool and Sheffield. 
 WIND farms are much less efficient than the industry claims, according to new research.  a report produced for the conservation charity the John Muir Trust (JMT) says turbines are producing below 10 per cent of capacity for more than a third of the time.  It claims that for extended periods, all the wind turbines in Scotland linked to the National Grid produce less than 20MW of energy - just enough power for 6,667 households to boil their kettles.  Helen McDade, JMT's head of policy, said: "This report is a real eye-opener for anyone who's been wondering how much power Scotland is getting from the fleet of wind turbines that have taken over many of our most beautiful hillsides. The answer appears to be, much less than is routinely claimed."  The research was carried out by Caithness-based Stuart Young Consulting, on electricity generated from UK wind farms between November 2008 and December 2010.  The wind industry and government have regularly said turbines will generate on average 30 per cent of their rate capacity over a year.  The study concludes there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the implications of reliance on wind for any significant proportion of our energy requirement.  Scottish Renewables policy director Jenny Hogan said it had no confidence in the figures.  "Yet again the John Muir Trust has commissioned an anti-wind farm campaigner to produce a report about UK onshore wind energy capacity output." 
 IT'S the economy, stupid! Modern elections are about jobs. No incumbent US president has been re-elected with unemployment running at over 8 per cent. It is currently 8.8 per cent, which must be causing Barack Obama some sleepless nights.  In this respect, Scotland is no different from america. In their Holyrood manifestos, the main parties are vying with each other to promise more jobs. The Lib Dems offered a paltry 100,000, ostensibly to be funded by selling off Scottish Water. (Sadly, no one told Tavish Scott that the Treasury would dock the GBP1.5 billion receipt from Scotland's block grant.)  Launching Labour's Holyrood manifesto, party leader Iain Gray upped the ante and declared: "I think Scotland needs bold and ambitious plans now and that's why we've committed ourselves to creating 250,000 jobs by the end of the decade."  a bold claim indeed, even assuming politicians can create jobs by fiat. It would mean securing an average of 25,000 jobs every year for a decade in the current economic climate of slow growth, weak consumer demand and intense competition from asia.  according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), there were 2.46 million Scottish jobs in 1997 when New Labour came to power at Westminster. By 2008, at the top of the biggest economic boom Britain and the world has ever seen, there were 2.74 million jobs north of the Border - an increase of around 280,000.  Mr Gray is promising to do roughly as well on the jobs front as during the late, great international bubble. He says he will pay for it from "savings" in the Holyrood budget - the very same budget now being slashed by the Treasury.  The SNP manifesto is published next week. It too is certain to focus on the economy. alex Salmond is running hard on his record. Despite the lack of powers under devolution, the SNP government made a good fist of protecting jobs during the 2008-9 recession and its aftermath.  Scotland entered the downturn after the UK and spent less time in recession. By frontloading capital spending, John Swinney, the finance secretary, engineered a rise in the number of jobs in the Scottish economy in the latter part of 2010. In the same period, the number of UK jobs went into decline. The latest ONS figures show that a larger proportion of the workforce is in a job in Scotland, than in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, or the UK.  However, unemployment remains at 8.1 per cent in Scotland. That's better than London (9.4), the English North East (10.2) or the West Midlands (9.9). Yet the SNP government could find itself judged on how it plans to get Scotland back to work.  Where might new jobs be found? In the new social networking technology, perhaps? according to The Great Stagnation, a provocative new book by american economist Tyler Cowen, the answer is a big, fat "no". Tyler argues: "Web activities do not generate jobs and revenues at the rate of past technological innovations".  For example, the iPod has created fewer than 14,000 jobs in america. Facebook employs fewer than 2,000 people in the US economy and Twitter under 300.  Tyler's pessimistic conclusions point to a world where economic recovery is going to result in no increase in jobs, at least in the West. Where does that leave Scotland? Fortunately, we have one unique home advantage - wind and sea energy to exploit and export in a world desperate for power.  The SNP will put such an industrial revolution at the heart of its manifesto. Hard on adopting the SNP's policies on free prescriptions, no university tuition fees, and a council tax freeze, Iain Gray has also been converted to the economic potential of renewables. He is promising 60,000 new jobs in green energy by 2015. However, an election bidding war over job numbers will prove futile. Instead, we need to focus on what has to be done to create a market for private investment that can successfully exploit Scotland's wind p  
 CHaNCELLOR George Osborne's GBP10 billion tax raid on the profits of North Sea oil and gas companies risks undermining the Government's credibility on taxation, MPs have warned.  The Commons Treasury Committee said yesterday that Mr Osborne's Budget announcement last month that he was raising the levy on the firms to fund a cut in fuel duty had come less than a year after he promised the industry a stable tax regime.  It said the measures set out in the Budget on energy prices - from scrapping the fuel duty escalator to the introduction of a carbon "price floor" to encourage cleaner energy sources - "lack overall coherence" as a package. The decision to increase the supplementary oil and gas levy by 12 per cent drew a furious response from the industry, which complained there had been no consultation. Some firms warned they would now be reviewing their North Sea investments.  The committee said that the way the issue had been handled "may weaken the Government's credibility in seeking to establish a stable tax regime in this and other areas".  It added: "Such reversals of policy in the absence of changes of circumstances that would warrant  
 aLEX Salmond didn't get a bet on. around Christmas time, when Labour was flying high in the polls, the SNP was 5-1 against to win Thursday's Holyrood elections. Today, he is 7-1 on to get back into office by the end of the week.  "I only bet on reliable things, like horses," he concedes, when asked whether he got some cash on when the odds were good. "But the way some of my staff are smiling at the moment I have a sneaking suspicion that they did."  Mr Salmond is ending a day's campaigning with a cup of tea at his party's headquarters. There is a quiet confidence here that whatever bets were placed in the winter are set to be collected on Friday. There are the usual caveats; the party is not being complacent, will be fighting right down to the wire, and is not taking anything for granted. But - never short of confidence anyway - Mr Salmond is anticipating success.  He says he was surprised by "only the speed" of the sudden swing in the polls towards the Nationalists since the start of the campaign (the weekend's polls tightened but showed the SNP still clearly ahead of Labour). Once people began to think about the choice of government in Scotland, he always thought the SNP's support would grow.  Labour's campaign hasn't worked, he adds. Warnings that Iain Gray's party was needed "now that the Tories are back" misunderstood the nature of the campaign.  "The mistake is forgetting what the parliament is for. It ain't just a pressure group for Westminster. They seem to have forgotten that what the Scottish Parliament is for is to form a government to run Scotland." and Labour has been too negative, he adds. "a positive campaign will always beat a negative campaign. We are fighting essentially a positive campaign."  That campaign has focused heavily on the personal appeal of Mr Salmond, and of the SNP's key election pledge to maintain a council tax freeze over the next parliament. But one thing it hasn't done, say his opponents, is sell independence. and as the campaign has reached its climax, so the focus has shifted once again on to the SNP's independence strategy.  Roll back to 2003, when the SNP last lost to Labour at Holyrood, the party had a dual strategy: "Better and Best". Policies for devolution came under "better", policies under independence came under "best". This year, tellingly, its slogan is "Be Part of Better". No mention of Best.  "We lost the 2003 election," Mr Salmond replies when reminded of the change. So, the lesson he learnt was simply to negate independence as an election issue then?  "No," he replies a tad impatiently. "We make the point that independence is an issue that should be decided in a referendum." Everyone knows the party backs independence, he argues, but voters now are happy to agree that a Holyrood election isn't the place to decide on it.  "It's now an accepted part that we are not joking; we're not going to try and sneak it in when nobody's looking. This is a consistent part of the SNP's policy programme over seven years and it now has broader appeal."  That referendum, Mr Salmond acknowledges, would not happen immediately if the SNP get back in. He says the first priority would be lobbying to put "economic teeth" into the UK government's Scotland Bill which is handing Holyrood extra powers.  SPECIFICaLLY, Mr Salmond wants to get hold of corporation tax, immediate borrowing powers, and power over the Crown Estate, in order to push through his plans for renewable energy.  Mr Salmond has not said when he would like to hold a referendum, but if the Scotland Bill is his priority, presumably the referendum would come after that? "Correct, " he says.  Could you join the SNP if you didn't believe in independence? "Yes of course you can ... if you look at the membership card, it defines independence and then the furtherance of all Scottish interests. If you sign up to that then you are a member. We don't exclude people."  This kind of debate is all in the past, he infers. "all that has been swept away. We know exactly our direction of travel, we know exactly what we are doing. We know exactly what we are doing. We are doing what we think is good for Scotland and we are comfo  
 Sir Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  as we near the end of the tortuously long and often profoundly frustrating election campaign for the fourth Scottish parliament, we would do well to bear in mind these wise words. We may have found much of what our would-be MSPs had to say evasive, populist, cloying, sometimes bordering on the dishonest, but recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria should remind us how fortunate we are to live in a democracy, with all its flaws. Given this, what can we make of the 2011 election campaign which will result, lest we forget, in the formation of a Scottish government for the five-year term of the next parliament, thanks to the move to avoid a clash with the next Westminster election, due in 2015? What have we learned about those who seek to govern Scotland and what can we conclude in terms of what is best for the national interest?  This newspaper has consistently been in favour of home rule for Scotland within the United Kingdom, or devolution as it came to be known. as far back as the first debates over home rule, which divided the then Liberal Party, editorials on these pages have advocated the creation of a body elected to represent Scotland, a distinct nation within a larger union. We did so on the basis of addressing what in modern terminology became known as a democratic deficit, and not for partisan political reasons of support for a particular party. In this context, the arguments put forward by Labour in this election that Holyrood was created merely to resist Toryism in London or, deployed by some in the Scottish National Party, that it is the inevitable forerunner to independence, do a great disservice to the democratic ideals of the founding principles of devolution.  Which brings us to today and the battle for Holyrood. The third Holyrood parliament was remarkable in at least one respect, in that it produced Scotland's first Nationalist government under First Minister alex Salmond. It was also Scotland's first minority administration as, after he boldly claimed victory on the basis of winning just one more seat than Labour, Mr Salmond found it impossible to form a coalition, encountering particular hostility from the Liberal Democrats.  O, IN looking at the record of the Nationalist Scottish Government as it seeks re-election, we have to acknowledge that its hands were tied by virtue of being a minority administration. This meant key policies on everything from local income tax to the referendum on independence were defeated or abandoned because of a lack of a parliamentary majority. Other key pledges, such as wiping out student debt or cutting primary school class sizes to 18, which did not need the consent of parliament, were not delivered and, even for a minority government, can be classified as broken promises.  In other areas, the SNP had more success. Populist policies, such as the council tax freeze, abolishing bridge tolls, phasing out prescription charges and increasing the numbers of police, were delivered, as well as a reduction in the burden of rates for small businesses. In criminal justice, a presumption against jailing those convicted of relatively minor offences was achieved.  So, the SNP's record is mixed. It failed on some big-ticket items but delivered in other areas. What has been more important, however, has been the style of government, and particularly of Mr Salmond as First Minister. He has dominated his party for many years - his party's fortunes in the years he stepped back from the leadership are in stark contrast to its success today - and he came to dominate the machinery of government in a way that some believe is overbearing, even bullying. But dominate it he did. He grew in government from the astute street fighter of opposition to become the most popular First Minister since Donald Dewar, a fact our Scotsman/YouGov polls confirm. Like him or loathe him, Mr Salmond is, as we have said in these columns before, the only Big Beast of Holyrood politics.  The question for this election must, therefore, be whether he deserves to continue in Bute House. The SNP manifesto was a masterpiece of Hello!-style propaganda, complete with soft-focus pictures of various SNP worthies and their babies. But it contained a series of proposals that most objective analysts viewed as optimistic to say the least. Student tuition fees could be avoided by a bridging a supposed funding gap with England of just GBP93 million - the figure is at least double that, probably more. Putting off the introduction of local income tax, it promises to freeze the council tax for the full five years of the parliament. It says Scotland's entire energy consumption could be met from renewable sources in less than a decade. The NHS budget would be protected. and there would be a referendum on independence at some point in the next parliament, probably nearer the end. Other benefits in the gift of the Scottish Government, such as free bus travel for all those over 60, would remain.  at a time when Holyrood is facing a huge cut in its budget from a Westminster government having to deal with the aftermath of the banking bail-out, and when an excellent report by SNP-leaning businessman Crawford Beveridge commissioned by Mr Salmond shows a projected cut of 12.5 per cent in real terms in the Scottish budget, such promises are rash at best. Funding them on the basis of cost savings on a construction project that hasn't even left the drawing board - the second Forth road crossing - sets new standards in creative accounting.  Given this, one might have hoped the principal opposition party, Labour, would present a more realistic alternative. To its shame, it did the opposite, performing a U-turn on student contributions and matching virtually all of the SNP's impossibilist promises. Labour differed from the Nationalists only on the issue of independence, which it belatedly raised in an attempt to scare the electorate on separatism after our Scotsman/YouGov polls showed their once substantial lead over the SNP disappearing and Mr Salmond moving ahead.  In contrast to the statesman-like presence of Mr Salmond, Labour's Iain Gray, though clearly a sincere and decent man, often looked ill at ease as a front-line politician. His retreat to a sandwich shop when pursued by an anti-cuts activist seemed to symbolise his party's campaign. Instead of being bold on telling voters of the hard choices ahead, Labour tried to hide. For reasons of political timidity, for their failure to spell out any compelling vision for Scotland and for Mr Gray's lack of leadership, we cannot support Labour at this election.  HE Liberal Democrats, once the king-makers of Scottish politics, have suffered an awful campaign, paying the price for the duplicity of their colleagues in London who entered the coalition with the Tories and dumped what was always a foolish pre-election promise not to bring in tuition fees. Tavish Scott, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, is a serious politician with experience as a minister in the coalition with Labour, but he was always on a hiding to nothing. Despite a slightly more realistic manifesto than Labour or the SNP - suggesting some free services may be curtailed and scope for university reform - the Lib Dems seem destined for ignominy. Whilst we have some sympathy for Mr Scott and his party as they try to distance themselves from Nick Clegg and his colleagues south of the Border, this has led them up the dark alley of rejecting student contributions. Further, they still back what would be crippling and unstable local income tax and oppose any reform of police administration. a distinct Scottish entity they may be, but we find support for the Lib Dems hard to justify.  The beneficiaries of the withering support for the Lib Dems may well be the Green party. No-one can accuse the Greens of obfuscating or dissembling. They are clear in their policies, which include increasing income tax, the tartan tax levied by Holyrood, by 0.5p. Their manifesto sets out almost GBP7 billion to be raised through the land value tax, as well as ditching costly transport schemes such as the new Forth road bridge and aberdeen bypass. Thanks to the legacy of their retiring leader Robin Harper, the Greens are often seen as cuddly people, who just want us all to recycle more rubbish. They are not. They are a serious party, but with left-wing policies we believe would seriously damage the Scottish economy. They cannot, therefore, command our support.  Which leaves the Tories. Usually the subject of knee-jerk derision in Scotland, the Conservatives are still battling the legacy of Thatcherism, but they have endeavoured to move beyond that under their feisty Scottish leader annabel Goldie. In this election, the Tories have distinguished themselves as being the only party to come close to telling the electorate the truth: that cuts will have to be made, that graduates may have to contribute to the cost of the education they receive, that everything cannot be free. For this, they deserve praise, and this honesty combined with the very Scottish humour and good sense of Miss Goldie are helping, finally, to rehabilitate the Conservatives. But, despite something of a revival, the Tories cannot hope to be the party of government.  What does that leave in terms of the future administration of Scotland? Like the voters, this newspaper can choose only on the basis of the politicians in front of us, not the politicians we hope to see. There are significant areas of the SNP prospectus with which we disagree - not least in terms of tuition fees, the need for a diversity of provision in public services, and the ultimate objective of independence. But there are other areas where we agree - for example, their commitment to keeping more police officers, the pledge on maintaining health spending, a cut in the number of police forces, a focus on growing the economy and boosting small businesses. Their idea of devolving corporation tax to Holyrood is worth exploring.  But beyond where we agree and disagree, there is a more fundamental point: there is no other credible candidate for First Minister beyond Mr Salmond. Despite his party's apparently staunch commitment to statism, we also know the SNP leader is passionate about the role of business and free enterprise in generating jobs and growth for Scotland, within or outwith the Union. In that, he and many of his colleagues - finance secretary John Swinney is one - share the beliefs of the Tories, and we feel there may be common ground between them.  COTLaND needs a strong First Minister and a strong government, and only the SNP under Mr Salmond has the potential to provide that. However, what the SNP and   
 IF PROOF were needed of the two-tier performance of the financial services sector then just look to aberdeen asset Management.  While the banking sector was imploding and storing up billions in toxic loans, fund managers were among those keeping the wheels of the financial services industry turning.  aberdeen's long haul back from the brink of its own crisis - the split capital trusts debacle in the early part of this century - is well told. It was a disaster that practically engulfed the company, left its reputation in question and put chief executive Martin Gilbert's future in doubt. Gilbert not only survived but led the firm's recovery, though he has admitted how close aberdeen came to the brink.  after a series of shrewd acquisitions and a strategy of targeting growing asset classes, the firm has been turned into a darling of the fund management sector. It is now the second-biggest independent in Britain behind Schroders and yesterday reported a record first-half profit.  The company's balance sheet is in good shape and cash flow is healthy, allowing it to pay progressive dividends. It is comfortable enough with its growth strategy that Gilbert sees no need for further big acquisitions for the time being.  analysts are encouraged by the figures, particularly the strong performance in stemming of an outflow of funds in fixed income investments which appeared to be the main blot on the accounts.  Gilbert himself accepts that a period of volatility lies ahead, but he seems to be one skipper capable of steering his ship through any troubled waters ahead.  But, ScottishPower still awaits a new leader  It's hard to imagine a FTSE-100 company operating without a chief executive for six months and with no appointment in sight. OK, Standard Life took a long time to replace Sir Sandy Crombie, but he stayed on until his successor was appointed.  ScottishPower, leaderless sinc  
 MINISTERS have rejected claims that their GBP10 billion tax raid on North Sea oil and gas would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs and cost billions in investment, after industry leaders warned of a "dramatic drop in confidence" in the sector.  appearing before the Commons energy committee yesterday, Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne and Tory Treasury Secretary Justine Greening insisted the effect on investment would be "marginal at worst".  and Mr Huhne claimed that there would be an increase in jobs as a result of the whole tax package rather than the predicted loss of up to 30,000 jobs predicted by the oil and gas sector.  The ministers were giving evidence on Chancellor George Osborne's fuel stabiliser, which saw the cancellation of a 5p a litre increase and a reduction in duty of 1p.  To pay for this he increased taxes on North sea profits by 12 percentage points, equating to an extra GBP2bn a year.  The comments by the two ministers came after industry body Oil and Gas UK raised concerns to the same committee about a "dramatic drop in confidence" since the supplementary tax on production was lifted from 20 per cent to 32 per cent to fund a cut in fuel duty.  But giving evidence to the energy and climate change committee  
 MINISTERS have rejected claims that their GBP10 billion tax raid on North Sea oil and gas would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs and cost billions in investment, after industry leaders warned of a "dramatic drop in confidence" in the sector.  appearing before the Commons energy committee yesterday, Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, below, and Tory Treasury Secretary Justine Greening insisted the effect on investment would only be "marginal at worst".  and Mr Huhne claimed that there would be an increase in jobs as a result of the whole tax package rather than the predicted loss of up to 30,000 jobs predicted by the oil and gas sector.  The ministers were giving evidence on Chancellor George Osborne's fuel stabiliser, which saw the cancellation of a 5p a litre increase and a reduction in duty of 1p.  To pay for this he increased taxes on North sea profits by 12 percentage points, equating to an extra GBP2bn a year.  The comments by the two ministers came after industry body Oil and Gas UK raised concerns to the same committee about a "dramatic drop in confidence" since the supplementary tax on production was lifted from 20 per cent to 32 per cent to fund a cut in fuel duty.  But giving evidence to the energy and climate change committee,  
 alex Salmond was last night on course for a second term as First Minister as voters across Scotland turned away in large numbers from Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  Former Labour minister andy Kerr became the first major scalp of the Holyrood election, losing to the SNP's Linda Fabiani in the East Kilbride constituency. Mr Kerr, who was Labour's finance spokesman in the last parliament, lost a notional majority, picking up 12,410 votes to Ms Fabiani's 14,359.  Labour's Tom McCabe also lost his Hamilton seat to the SNP's Christina McKelvie.  Elsewhere, there were widespread signs of a collapse in the Lib Dem vote, with Tavish Scott's party losing their deposit in the first seat of the night to be declared in Rutherglen, where the SNP vote surged by 16 per cent.  The broad picture looks set to deliver an SNP victory and a return to Bute House for alex Salmond with an increased mandate.  If his re-election is confirmed today, Mr Salmond is expected to press ahead with his preferred plan to run a second SNP minority government for the next five years.  Early indications last night suggested clearly that he will be in a far stronger position than over the past four years, when he held a one-seat majority over Labour.  Labour sources were last night indicating they expected the SNP to beat them in several previously secure seats, and that their rivals could have a double-digit lead in seats by the time all the results came in.  The last opinion poll of the campaign, published last night, suggested the SNP had double the support of Labour, and was in sight of a majority on its own.  The Progressive Opinion poll gave the SNP 51 per cent on the constituency vote and 53 per cent on the regional list.Labour, meanwhile, would win just 26 per cent in the constituency vote and 21 per cent on the list.  Mr Salmond will, however, have to wait until this afternoon to discover the final result, with some councils not beginning counting until this morning. The full list of 129 seats is therefore not expected until lunchtime.  But within minutes of polls closing, the SNP was confident enough to predict it was heading for a sensational result. Education secretary Mike Russell said: "I think the SNP will have a record night in terms of the percentage of the vote won."  But the Nationalists, along with the other main parties, have been accused of holding a "competition" to match each other's spending commitments, while "avoiding the big issues" of the looming cutbacks.  The incoming Scottish Government is facing an GBP800 million gaping chasm in Scotland's finances, with some of the country's leading experts warning that politicians failed to address the "reality" of public spending cuts in the election campaign.  One expert even warned that they will not be able to afford measures such as the council tax freeze and subsidies to fund the renewable energy revolution - and that the scale of the cuts ahead could be worse than first feared.  The Nationalists insist their key priority will be to gain increased economic powers for Scotland to stimulate growth.  Research by Professor David Bell, of Stirling University, shows the cost of the council tax freeze is set to reach more than GBP535m by the final year of the next parliament.  But the SNP manifesto indicates that a figure closer to GBP280m will be set aside to fund the freeze in council tax in 2015-16, leaving a shortfall of more than GBP250m.  Writing in The Scotsman today, Prof Bell also raises questions over the kind of people at which the measure - backed by all the main parties in the election campaign - is targeted.  "The main beneficiaries from a council tax freeze are middle-income families," he writes. "Poorer families' council tax is paid by the Department for Work and Pensions through council tax benefit."  He adds: "This is GBP535m that will have to be taken from other parts of the Scottish budget, or fudged in a way that will mean even larger cuts to local authority budgets." The SNP is committed to freezing the council tax throughout the five-year period of the new parliament.  The freeze was in place throughout the last parliament. Councils were given GBP70m a year to finance the measure - but faced additional cuts in their cash if they did not agree to it.  Prof Bell also warns that increased student tuition fees in England will see the funding gap between Scottish and English universities reach about GBP300m.  Mr Salmond has pledged to fill any gap from the public purse, but these figures are far higher than originally expected, with initial Scottish Government estimates placing the gap at about GBP100m.  The controversial increase in fees south of the Border will see the average annual tuition fee for students reach a higher-than-expected GBP8,500.  Only the Tories have suggested some form of graduate contribution in Scotland, with Mr Salmond dramatically proclaiming that the "rocks will melt in the sun" before he allows fees to be introduced in Scotland.  However, Prof Bell adds: "Scottish politicians have spent much of this year's election campaign avoiding the big issues.  "In the last two years and over two elections, politicians have failed to allow public services to plan adequately, because of their wish not to commit to making cuts prior to an election.  "This has not served the UK and Scottish public well."  Economic output fell 3.5 per cent over the course of the last parliament, the academic added. "This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the ability of our politicians to produce an economy that is capable of supporting the wide range of public services which the Scottish people seem to want," he writes.  Mr Salmond has pledged to spare public sector workers from compulsory lay-offs, protect NHS funding and continue with universal benefits, such as free prescription charges.  Professor John McLaren, of Glasgow University's Centre for Public Policy for Regions, and a former adviser to ex-first ministers Donald Dewar and Henry McLeish, endorsed Prof Bell's figures. He said the campaign was marked by a lack of discussion about "serious economic policy", as well as facing up to the "difficult" decisions stemming from a diminishing budget.  "Most of the parties have been concentrating on protecting budgets, rather than talking about the budgets that they will have to necessarily cut," Prof McLaren said.  The biggest capital project in Scotland over the next generation is the new Forth road bridge, which will cost GBP1.5 billion, but Prof McLaren warned the money had been allocated from funding sources such as borrowing powers.  "If you borrow, you still have to pay the money back and pay interest, so it eats into what you can buy because you've got to make those increased payments back," he said.  "We've had a spending review, so we did have some figures to discuss in more detail, yet politicians have still delayed it.  "The difficult decisions have now got to be made after the election in private, whereas they haven't been outlined in the manifestos so that voters can have a clear choice on what parties are expecting to do."  Professor Brian ashcroft, of Strathclyde University's Fraser of allander Institute, said the full picture of the options ahead had not been set out for voters.  He said: "I think it's almost certain the parties were not clear about the extent to which it's possible, and even probable, that there will have to be cutbacks in expenditure, but also that jobs would go in the public sector.  "It's largely predicated on efficiency savings, which will be very, very hard to realise, and a wage freeze which will last for two years," said Prof ashcroft.  "It's not clear what will happen afterwards, but it's highly probable, given the commitment to maintain free prescriptions and the size of the funding gap for universities, that there will have to be cuts."  Economic consultant Tony MacKay sai  
 The incoming Scottish Government is facing an GBP800 million gaping chasm in Scotland's finances, with some of the country's leading experts warning that politicians failed to address the "reality" of public spending cuts in the election campaign.  SNP leader alex Salmond looks set to be returned as First Minister with an increased mandate, when the result of the fourth Scottish Parliament election is unveiled later today.  But the Nationalists, along with the other main parties, have been accused of holding a "competition" to match each other's spending commitments, while "avoiding the big issues" of the looming cutbacks.  One expert even warned that the new Scottish Government will not be able to afford measures such as the council tax freeze and subsidies to fund the renewable energy revolution - and that the scale of the cuts ahead could be worse than first feared.  The Nationalists insist their key priority will be to gain increased economic powers for Scotland to stimulate growth, but new figures indicate a looming financial black hole lies ahead.  The cost of the council tax freeze is set to reach more than GBP535m by the final year of the next parliament, according to research by Professor David Bell of Stirling University.  But the SNP manifesto indicates that a figure closer to GBP280m will be set aside to fund the freeze in the council tax in 2015-16, leaving a shortfall of more than GBP250m.  Writing in The Scotsman today, Prof Bell also raises questions over the kind of people that the measure - backed by all the main parties in the election campaign - is targeted at.  "The main beneficiaries from a council tax freeze are middle-income families," he writes.  "Poorer families' council tax is paid by the Department for Work and Pensions through council tax benefit."  He adds: "This is GBP535m that will have to be taken from other parts of the Scottish budget, or fudged in a way that will mean even larger cuts to local authority budgets." The SNP is committed to freezing the council tax throughout the five-year period of the new parliament, but all the main parties support the measure over the next two years.  The freeze was in place throughout the last parliament, when the Nationalists were in power.  Councils were given GBP70m a year to finance the measure - but faced additional cuts in their cash if they did not agree to it.  Prof Bell also warns that increased student tuition fees in England will see the funding gap between Scottish and English universities reach around GBP300m.  Mr Salmond has pledged to fill any gap from the public purse, but these figures are far higher than originally expected, with initial Scottish Government estimates placing the gap at about GBP100m.  The controversial increase in fees south of the Border will see the average annual tuition fee for students reach a higher-than-expected GBP8,500.  Only the Tories have suggested some form of graduate contribution in Scotland, with Mr Salmond dramatically proclaiming that the "rocks will melt in the sun" before he allows fees to be introduced in Scotland.  However, Prof Bell adds: "Scottish politicians have spent much of this year's election campaign avoiding the big issues.  "In the last two years and over two elections, politicians have failed to allow public services to plan adequately, because of their wish not to commit to making cuts prior to an election.  "This has not served the UK and Scottish public well."  Economic output also fell 3.5 per cent over the course of the last parliament, the academic added.  "This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the ability of our politicians to produce an economy that is capable of supporting the wide range of public services which the Scottish people seem to want," he writes.  as polling closed last night, the SNP seemed set to increase the one-seat advantage it enjoyed over Labour in the last parliament.  Polling evidence placed the Nationalists between seven and 18 points ahead of Iain Gray's Labour Party, which could leave Mr Salmond's party with around 60 seats, while Labour were left with around the 46 they had in the last parliament, or even fewer.  Mr Salmond has pledged to spare public sector workers from compulsory lay-offs, protect NHS funding and continue with universal benefits, such as free prescription charges.  Professor John McLaren, of Glasgow University's Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR), and a former adviser to both Donald Dewar and Henry McLeish when they were first ministers, endorsed Prof Bell's figures.  He said the election campaign was marked by a lack of discussion about "serious economic policy", as well as facing up to the "difficult" decisions stemming from a diminishing budget.  "Most of the parties have been concentrating on protecting budgets, rather than talking about the budgets that they will have to necessarily cut," Prof McLaren said.  "Obviously, council tax and tuition fees are key areas in that discussion."  The biggest capital project in Scotland over the next generation is the new Forth road bridge which will cost GBP1.5 billion, but Prof McLaren warned that the money had been allocated from funding sources, such as borrowing powers.  "If you borrow, you still have to pay the money back and pay interest, so it eats into what you can buy because you've got to make those increased payments back," he said.  "We've had a spending review, so we did have some figures to discuss in more detail, yet politicians have still delayed it.  "The difficult decisions have now got to be made after the election in private, whereas they haven't been outlined in the manifestos so that voters can have a clear choice on what parties are expecting to do."  Professor Brian ashcroft, of Strathclyde University's Fraser of allander Institu  
 The incoming Scottish Government is facing an GBP800 million gaping chasm in Scotland's finances, with some of the country's leading experts warning that politicians failed to address the "reality" of public spending cuts in the election campaign.  SNP leader alex Salmond looks set to be returned as First Minister with an increased mandate, when the result of the fourth Scottish Parliament election is unveiled later today.  But the Nationalists, along with the other main parties, have been accused of holding a "competition" to match each other's spending commitments, while "avoiding the big issues" of the looming cutbacks.  One expert even warned that the new Scottish Government will not be able to afford measures such as the council tax freeze and subsidies to fund the renewable energy revolution - and that the scale of the cuts ahead could be worse than first feared.  The Nationalists insist their key priority will be to gain increased economic powers for Scotland to stimulate growth, but new figures indicate a looming financial black hole lies ahead. The cost of the council tax freeze is set to reach more than GBP535m by the final year of the next parliament, according to research by Professor David Bell, from Stirling University.  But the SNP manifesto indicates that a figure closer to GBP280m will be set aside to fund the freeze in council tax in 2015-16, leaving a shortfall of more than GBP250m. Writing in The Scotsman today, Prof Bell also raises questions over the kind of people at which the measure - backed by all the main parties in the election campaign - is targeted.  "The main beneficiaries from a council tax freeze are middle-income families," he writes.  "Poorer families' council tax is paid by the Department for Work and Pensions through council tax benefit."  He adds: "This is GBP535m that will have to be taken from other parts of the Scottish budget, or fudged in a way that will mean even larger cuts to local authority budgets." The SNP is committed to freezing the council tax throughout the five-year period of the new parliament, but all the main parties support the measure over the next two years.  The freeze was in place throughout the last parliament, when the Nationalists were in power.  Councils were given GBP70m a year to finance the measure - but faced additional cuts in their cash if they did not agree to it.  Prof Bell also warns increased student tuition fees in England will see the funding gap between Scottish and English universities reach around GBP300m.  Mr Salmond has pledged to fill any gap from the public purse, but these figures are far higher than originally expected, with initial Scottish Government estimates placing the gap at about GBP100m.  The controversial increase in fees south of the Border will see the average annual tuition fee for students reach a higher-than-expected GBP8,500.  Only the Tories have suggested some form of graduate contribution in Scotland, with Mr Salmond dramatically proclaiming that the "rocks will melt in the sun" before he allows fees to be introduced in Scotland.  However, Prof Bell adds: "Scottish politicians have spent much of this year's election campaign avoiding the big issues.  "In the last two years and over two elections, politicians have failed to allow public services to plan adequately, because of their wish not to commit to making cuts prior to an election.  "This has not served the UK and Scottish public well."  Economic output also fell 3.5 per cent over the course of the last parliament, the academic added.  "This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the ability of our politicians to produce an economy that is capable of supporting the wide range of public services which the Scottish people seem to want," he writes.  as polling closed last night, the SNP seemed set to increase the one-seat advantage it enjoyed over Labour in the last parliament.  Polling evidence placed the Nationalists between seven and 18 points ahead of Iain Gray's Labour Party, which could leave Mr Salmond's party with around 60 seats, while Labour would be left with around the 46 they had in the last parliament, or even fewer.  Mr Salmond has pledged to spare public sector workers from compulsory lay-offs, protect NHS funding and continue with universal benefits, such as free prescription charges.  Professor John McLaren, of Glasgow University's Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR), and a former adviser to both Donald Dewar and Henry McLeish when they were first ministers, endorsed Prof Bell's figures. He said the election campaign was marked by a lack of discussion about "serious economic policy", as well as facing up to the "difficult" decisions stemming from a diminishing budget.  "Most of the parties have been concentrating on protecting budgets, rather than talking about the budgets that they will have to necessarily cut," Prof McLaren said. "Obviously, council tax and tuition fees are key areas in that discussion."  The biggest capital project in Scotland over the next generation is the new Forth road bridge which will cost GBP1.5 billion, but Prof McLaren warned that the money had been allocated from funding sources such as borrowing powers.  "If you borrow, you still have to pay the money back and pay interest, so it eats into what you can buy because you've got to make those increased payments back," he said.  "We've had a spending review, so we did have some figures to discuss in more detail, yet politicians have still delayed it.  "The difficult decisions have now got to be made after the election in private, whereas they haven't been outlined in the manifestos so that voters can have a clear choice on what parties are expecting to do."  Professor Brian ashcroft, of Strathclyde University's Fraser of allander   
 SCOTLaND BILL alex Salmond will push the UK government to hand over powers such as corporation tax, immediate borrowing powers, and power over the Crown Estate through the Scotland Bill. The SNP leader has criticised the UK government's Scotland   
 THE case for reducing the "prohibitive" transmission charges for electricity produced in Scotland has been put by First Minister alex Salmond at a meeting with energy regulator Ofgem.  In what was described as a "constructive" meeting, Mr Salmond put the case against a charging regime that the Scottish Government believes is acting as a disincentive against renewable energy projects north of the Border.  as a result of the strong "locational pricing" element in the charging methods used by Ofgem, generators in the north of Scotland have the highest charges in the UK, at GBP20.17 per kilowatt hour compared with a subsidy of GBP5.87 per kWh in Cornwall.  The First Minister said: "Our long-standing objective has been to secure fundamental change to the transmission charging regime." 
 The SNP's new team of ministers was branded "alex Salmond's independence army" as it was formally approved by parliament.  MSPs voted unanimously to confirm the Cabinet secretaries, ministers and law officers put forward by the First Minister.  Mr Salmond said that the party's election victory manifesto was founded on "record, team and vision".  But Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said that the new majority administration at Holyrood now has "nowhere to hide". He added: "I fear that instead of a focus on jobs, on growing the economy, our excellence in education and public services, what we will see is a focus on breaking up Britain. I fear that what we see before us this morning is alex Salmond's new independence army.  "But the First Minister's loyal foot soldiers have a choice, and that choice should be services over separation - picking up the economy, not picking fights with Westminster."  The new line-up sees an increase from six to eight Cabinet secretaries, with the addition of alex Neil at enterprise and Fiona Hyslop at culture.  In the junior ministerial ranks, former transport minister Stewart Stevenson becomes minister for environment and climate change.  Newcomers to the ministerial team include Michael Matheson, as minister for public health, while aileen Campbell becomes minister for local government and planning and Brian adam joins the team as chief whip and minister for parliamentary business.  MSPs also approved the appointments of Frank Mulholland QC as Lord advocate and Lesley Thomson as Solicitor General for Scotland. 
 an aYRSHIRE marine business whose vessels operate around the world has secured a GBP20 million funding package as it looks to expand its fleet and push further into the renewables sector.  Maritime Craft Services (MCS), which is based at Largs Yacht Haven, has been providing support craft including tug boats, crew launches and crane barges since 1977. It operates throughout Europe, the Middle East, India and africa.  The new funding, provided by Clydesdale Bank, will allow the family-run firm to add four vessels and grow its offshore wind farm services. MCS's Dutch-born managing director and former sea captain Dirk Kuyt said: "The expansion of our fleet is an integral part of our strategy to grow the company by entering new markets and, in particular, the offshore wind farm sector."  The company, which employs more than 110 staff, including 65 seafarers, is expected to increase its turnover to GBP13m next year.  Clydesdale Bank is providing the financing through its "Investing for Growth" initiative. 
 IT HaS been 125 years since the first car was built. But what is not often remembered is that, in the first 20 years of the development of the automobile, a debate raged - how would these new-fangled motorised vehicles that were set to replace the horse-drawn carriage be powered? The late 19th-century development of the car was in flux until the electric car was supplanted by the efficiency and ease of use of the internal combustion engine in the early 20th century. Once the manufacturers and buyers reached this consensus, roads and service stations were built, and oil became one of the world's most important commodities.  Fast forward a century and the flux over the future shape of motoring has returned with a vengeance. Pollution, traffic congestion, oil wars and the skyrocketing price of petrol - not to mention the cost of governments around the world cracking down on carbon-belching gas guzzlers - has driven customers and manufacturers alike to search for a better way. add to this expectation that, as the middle classes expand in India, China and South america, the number of cars on the world's roads is projected to more than double to 1.6 billion by 2050.  Just for comparison, the world's existing 750 million cars burned up about 60 per cent of all the oil produced in 2010. If you make even the most rudimentary calculation weighing the balance between rapidly diminishing global oil reserves and rampant demand for the autonomy of a car, the problem is clear.  In Berlin last week, a potential solution - or rather a whole range of them - was on display. The Challenge Bibendum, an annual event that takes place across the globe, brings together a host of car, truck and even motorised bike manufacturers - from Germany, France, the US and Japan - to show off the latest in future car technology, all aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and petrol consumption.  Hosted by the French tyre manufacturer Michelin, there were 280 different vehicles on show at the event, hosted at Berlin's historic Templehof airport. These included a whole panoply of ways of getting around, from electric tuk-tuks, to fuel cell-powered motorised bikes - where the cells can be used to power light and cookery facilities when camping - to massive biodiesel-powered hybrid engine lorries. There was even a tiny but largely unfeasible - at least for Scotland - prototype solar-powered vehicle.  When it comes to energy-conserving, emission-friendly cars, most people think about hybrids, vehicles that combine internal combustion engines and electric drive-trains. The most common and best-selling of these is the Toyota Prius. Until quite recently, the high costs of hybrids for consumers have often outweighed the benefits. Prices have come down considerably as more drivers seek to show off their green credentials. a typical Prius now costs around GBP20,000, with a GBP5,000 discount available from the UK government. Yet despite the benefits of hybrids - most of which come from zero road tax incentives - some newer combustion engines, if driven carefully, easily compete with hybrids on fuel use and emissions.  But if they haven't already got some form of hybrid engine vehicle in production, most manufacturers have joined in the hybrid craze, including Honda, Lexus, Ford, Volvo and Vauxhall. In autumn, even Porsche will bring out its next generation Panamera in the UK, priced from GBP85,000.  The technology is hardly straightforward. There are micro and "mild" hybrids, which both increase the fuel efficiency of petrol engines with "start-stop" technology where the engine shuts off when not in use and which also use the energy given off by applying the brakes to charge batteries. There is a wide range of "full" hybrids like the Prius, but there are also the next generation of "plug-in" or parallel hybrids which extend the range the vehicle can be powered by an electric battery from about 1.2 miles (2km) to 12 miles (20km). Toyota will bring this to market in 2012.  In Berlin, the real buzz of the show came from the next step in green motoring, the pure electric vehicles (EVs), which have no engine in them whatsoever - no exhaust, no spark plugs, pistons, hoses nor belts.  The first mass-market full electric car is the Nissan Leaf. But for the more discerning motor-head, there is the US/British electric supercar, the Tesla Roadster. The Tesla has been on the market since 2008. Strong sales in the US and Europe - about 1,500 by the start of the year - demonstrate how an ambitious and well-funded start-up company can move faster than traditional car makers to bring cutting-edge technology to market.  Earlier this month, drivers took a Tesla 874 miles from Land's End to John o' Groats using a new network of electric car plug-in stations installed at hotels and tourist destination, overturning preconceptions that EVs are unsuited to long distances. In Scotland, the low-slung roadster stopped and recharged at the Macdonald aviemore resort as well as a Marriot in Kirknewton outside of Edinburgh where the points are installed. The drivers estimated the trip cost them GBP20 for electricity - albeit the 2.5 roadster will set you back around GBP100,000.  In Berlin, the Porsche team was causing a stir with its prototype, all-electric Boxster-E. Unlike other electric cars coming to the market, the Porsche makes no concession to the need for smaller, lighter bodies or thinner tyres.  as a test drive was on offer, I took it.  The Boxster-E has the same deep, bottom hugging seats and sleek looks of the traditional Porsche. The driver, Guenther, a Porsche engineer, moved the machine slowly out of the display area to the former Templehof runway where the test drives were taking place.  "Can you show me what it can do?" I asked. Guenther merely smirked while my head was thrown back as he pressed the accelerator. He explained the Boxster-E goes from 0-60 (zero to 100km per hour) in 9.55 seconds. Yet as we powered along the runway-turned test track, the most notable thing was the complete silence of the engine. Oddly, while the European Union is currently putting rules in place to reduce the noise made by car tyres, car manufacturers are concerned about the lack of noise made by EVs, with a number of manufacturers considering whether or not they should install noise makers. Guenther, who like many sports car enthusiasts enjoys the roar of the engine, says another electric prototype Porsche already has a sound generator.  Yet the main trouble with electric vehicles is that batteries (the latest tend to use lithium ion fuel cells) are heavy, which shortens the distance they can drive - and expensive.  Igo Besselink, a research engineer at the Eindhoven University of Technology, was displaying a Volkswagen Lupo that had been converted to an electric car. He was proud of the fact the four-seater could drive for 102 miles (170km) without need for charging the battery but admitted its range was still a problem. "Most will not go more than that," he said. "It's fine for day-to-day driving but you can't make it to south of France on holiday. Sorry."  David Tonery, the founder of the sole Scottish company at the exhibition in Berlin, said battery-powered electric vehicles would only become feasible when there was a "great leap forward" in battery technology. Tonery's firm, Oxy-Gen Combustion, is developing an engine that dramatically reduces fuel consumption. He is one of a growing section of the industry that believes combustion engine technology still has a long way to go in terms of becoming more efficient, easier to use and still cheap to produce.  Dr Thomas Weber, of Mercedes-Benz manufacturer Daimler, says unequivocally that while the future of the automobile is electric, hybrids are currently an "indispensable option for the future"  "They are needed, first of all, simply because electric drive units will not initially be able to be produced in required quantities and at viable costs in the high volume segment - and because the necessary infrastructure is still lacking.  "Over the next few decades the quality of the internal combustion engines will, therefore, continue to determine how much fuel is in fact saved and what levels of emission can thereby be prevented."  and there are serious concerns that if everyone bought an electric Nissan Leaf tomorrow, the UK's electricity infrastructure - which is still largely powered by coal anyway and thus prone to CO2 emissions - would collapse. This is why hydrogen is now being seriously considered as the "sustainable travel" endgame by many manufacturers.  The trouble with hydrogen, which is used in fuel cells to power electric vehicles, is that the technology is not quite there yet as a viable alternative. There are hydrogen fuel cell cars on the market, most of which are in California and Germany. Daimler's Mercedes-Benz F-Cell was one of the first to be manufactured in a small series, but other manufacturers, including Ford and Renault, have discontinued research in this area.  Many hydrogen fuel cell designs require rare, and expensive, substances such as platinum in order to work properly. Researchers are also working on ways to produce and store hydrogen that do not require fossil fuels. One answer may come from using wind energy to produce synthetic methane - which can be used to safely store hydrogen. But these plans are still works in progress. add to this predictions that the cost of installing enough fuel points to service a million fuel cell vehicles in Europe would cost ???3 billion (GBP2.5bn), and the challenge looks daunting.  although most car makers are working on a range of options for motoring, the only agreement to be found on the way people will d  
 GERMaNY'S decision to shut its nuclear power plants has sparked a furious row in Scottish politics, as a leading SNP politician claimed the move was the same "route that Scotland wishes to go down".  The German coalition government's plans to phase out all of its nuclear power stations by 2022 mean the country is the biggest industrial power to give up on the controversial form of energy.  Nationalist MSPs at Holyrood seized on yesterday's announcement, with energy minister Fergus Ewing saying that the move "adds further weight" to the SNP's plans to generate all of Scotland's energy from renewables within ten years.  But Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Conservatives' spokesman on energy issues, told The Scotsman that the SNP's plans for 100 per cent reliance on renewable energy by 2020 was "extreme recklessness" and could lead to Scotland being forced to buy nuclear power from England if nuclear power stations north of the Border were closed.  The row came at Holyrood after Germany's environment minister, Norbert Rottgen, announced the nuclear power station closure programme yesterday following late-night talks.  Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors - which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis - would never be used again.  an eighth plant - the Kruemmel facility in northern Germany, which was already offline and has been plagued by technical problems - would also be shut down for good, he said.  He added: "It's definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision."  German chancellor angela Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the catastrophe at Fukushima in Japan in March, with a wave of mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of the explosions, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.  Mr Ewing claimed that the German government's move highlighted the dangers "associated with nuclear power" and said that Scotland was "ideally placed" to follow a similar route.  He said: "We welcome this announcement from the German government, which adds to the growing international realisation of difficulties associated with nuclear power.  "It adds further weight to our view that Scotland does not need a new generation of costly nuclear plants and is instead ideally placed to become a green energy powerhouse. That's why we have a new target of generating 100 per cent of Scotland's electricity needs from renewables by 2020 - one of the most demanding anywhere in the world."  But Mr Carlaw said there were "severe risks" with the SNP's plans to replace nuclear power with a policy of relying on renewables for all energy.  Mr Carlaw said: "The German decision owes more to internal politics and a strategy to maintain the coalition government in the country than anything else.  "The SNP government has been unable to show that renewable energy will generate enough power. We have to keep Scotland's existing power stations open to avoid the lights being switched   
 Germany's bold declaration that it intends to be nuclear-free by 2022 - the biggest industrial power to renounce nuclear energy - is set to trigger powerful chain reactions of its own. It will have major repercussions for its economy, as about a quarter of its energy is currently derived from nuclear. and it also raises the bar for other western countries, already locked in an intensifying political race to announce ever-more impressive targets for the switch to renewables.  No details have yet been provided by Berlin as to the cost implications for business and household energy users, or from where the alternative energy will come. But the announcement was immediately welcomed by the Scottish Government. The SNP is pledged to generate the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scotland's own electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020. The German move will be seized as a double boost, seeming both to validate the Scottish Government's ambitions in the face of public scepticism while strengthening its opposition to nuclear plants. But how much of an exemplar is Germany for the administration here?  Whether its decision was driven by environmental conscience or political convenience is moot. In March the Green Party won the Christian Democrat stronghold of Baden-Wuerttemberg. German ambitions to scale down its nuclear plants were already well established before the Fukushima crisis in Japan triggered massive anti-nuclear protests. Chancellor angela Merkel took the country's seven oldest reactors offline for a safety review and set up a panel to reassess nuclear power. These seven will not now be reopened, while a problem-hit facility in northern Germany will also be shut down permanently.  Fanfaring the end of nuclear is one thing; finding an alternative source of 23 per cent of the country's energy supply quite another. and it is on the question of a reliable, sustainable and environmentally clean alternative supply on which the nuclear-free policy will flourish or founder. It faces opposition from environmentalists to giant pylons and high voltage cables dividing the country - concerns all too familiar here. But the immediate worry is supply. If wind farms can't fill the gap, coal power could be a beneficiary.  Here, some GBP200 billion will be needed for energy infrastructure to meet existing carbon reduction targets. age UK calculates another 250,000 people will be forced into fuel poverty as energy bills climb further, while the chemicals industry is warning of plant shutdowns and an energy price regime that could force companies overseas.  If the Scottish Government wishes to follow Germany, it needs to move beyond emissions targets to real transparency and honesty about the costs for households and businesses - the very ones now being hammered by the worst cost increases and spending squeeze for a generation.  Trust landed with a thorny problem  Christina McNiven must have believed there was no safer custodian of her GBP1 million of assets than the National Trust for Scotland. She left her estate to the trust in 1978 including her home in Duddingston with instructions that it be used to benefit Duddingston village.  That, by any standards, was an extremely generous legacy, and one to be respected. Funds were in due course put towards environmental improvements in the village as well as the purchase of a plot of derelict land which was transformed by virtue of the funds into a village green.  Now the trust wants to sell the garden to a local conservation society. Objections have been raised over the NTS requirement for a sale at market value, particularly in view of the fact that the estate has in the meantime accumulated some GBP600,000. The trust, which in recent years has had to se  
 UNDER-fire energy giant ScottishPower and the Scottish Government have agreed to work together on a GBP10 million campaign to improve household energy efficiency after finance secretary John Swinney yesterday presided over a high-level meeting to discuss the firm's recent inflation-busting price hikes.  ScottishPower's UK retail director, Raymond Jack, and chief executive for generation, John Campbell, were summoned to talks after the firm earlier this month raised the average yearly household bill for both electricity and gas to just under GBP1,400.  The campaign will see some households benefit from upgraded insulation and heat  
 THE SNP has a mandate to govern Scotland for the next five years. In May, the party achieved what the system had been devised to prevent, or at least make very unlikely: an overall majority in the parliament. The electoral system wasn't actually adopted to thwart the Nationalists. On the contrary, its purpose was to prevent one-party rule by Labour. Without the PR element laid out in the green paper Scotland's Parliament, Labour would not have secured the wholehearted support of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP in the 1997 referendum. Neither party would have backed an electoral system that would then have been likely to give Labour an overall majority in the new parliament. The SNP has, however, achieved that, and can therefore govern as it chooses, within the limits set by the Scotland act. No-one can dispute this. alex Salmond has power, and also authority.  Yet it's instructive to compare two elections: this year's for the Scottish Parliament, and last year's for Westminster. Which did the Scottish people think the more important? Clearly, Westminster. The turnout last year was 63.8 per cent. That figure was matched in only one Holyrood constituency and the overall turnout was just over 50 per cent. More people voted for a parliament in which the 59 Scottish MPs make up less than 10 per cent of members than for one charged with the internal government of Scotland.  The 20010 general election showed no clamour for Scottish independence. The SNP got 20 per cent of the vote, in contrast to its 45 per cent in the Holyrood election. The three unionist parties got 77 per cent of the Westminster vote, as against just over 50 per cent of the Holyrood one.  Nationalists may object that the comparison is unfair. They may say it is natural people should vote for parties capable of forming the UK government as long as Scotland remains in the Union, because the decisions of that government will have an effect on their prosperity. The Holyrood result, they may argue, offers a fairer reflection of opinion.  There is something in this argument. It shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. There is, however, an interesting historical comparison. In the 19th century, as the demand for Irish home rule intensified, the unionist parties - Liberals and Conservatives - were swept aside in much of Ireland. The 1885 general election, for instance, saw 86 Irish home rulers returned to Westminster where, as it happened, they held the balance of power. The SNP has never come close to matching this. Its best general election result was achieved in October 1974, when it won 11 out of the then 72 Scottish seats. It is reasonable to conclude that, up to now at least, we have shown ourselves fairly well-disposed to devolution (home rule) but, by a considerable majority, opposed to independence; that we are happy to have a SNP government at Holyrood ("alex Salmond for First Minister"), but no more than that  This may change, as Mr Salmond is convinced it will. admittedly, the demand for independence was not prominent in he SNP's election campaign, which concentrated, first, on the party's ability to offer good government, and, second, on the need to take devolution forward by securing further powers for the Scottish government and parliament. Of course, everybody who voted SNP knows the party's ultimate aim is independence, but the increase in its vote doesn't necessarily mean support for independence has risen accordingly. The SNP benefited from the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote (from 16.2 to 7.9 per cent in the constituencies) and the more modest fall in the Tory one (from 16.6 to 13.9 per cent). In contrast, though Labour lost seats everywhere, its constituency vote actually held firm, falling only by 0.4 per cent since 2007. One may fairly judge that many who voted SNP were voting against Labour - and against the coalition government at Westminster. The unpopularity of the coalition here in Scotland may well boost support for independence.  Yet one wonders just how many people, outside the political class and the media (which must now include those who make their opinions known by way of the internet) are greatly interested in the question. How many, indeed, are interested in politics at all? after   
 ENERGY giant ScottishPower has mounted another defence of its steep price rises, saying it will have to spend GBP15 billion over the next nine years to help the UK government meet its "ambitious" carbon reduction targets.  The firm, which came under attack after hiking bills by as much as 19 per cent, said it would be investing heavily in a number of clean energy projects between now and 2020.  Power companies argue that the UK will need to find hundreds of billions of pounds over the next ten years to upgrade infrastructure if the UK and Scottish governments both want to meet goals of sourcing a greater proportion of energy from renewable sources.  ScottishPower claims it was forced into inflation-busting increases due to sharp spikes in wholesale gas and electricity prices, combined with investment in government environmental and social programmes.  Ignacio Gal??n, chairman of ScottishPower and its Spanish parent company Iberdrola, yesterday waded into the increasingly bitter battle between the firm and politicians, who claim it is profiting at the expense of hard-hit households. It was the first time Gal??n revealed such a long-term investment figure. He said: "It is clear that the UK needs major investments to upgrade its energy gene  
 OPPONENTS of the controversial Beauly-Denny powerline have called for alternatives to be reconsidered after it emerged the project's cost has almost doubled.  The overall bill for the 137-mile line to take renewable energy from the Highlands to the central belt has risen from GBP323 million to nearer GBP600m in seven years.  The project, which aims to replace the existing 132kV line with a 400kV overhead line, was approved by energy minister Jim Mather last year despite widespread opposition from environmental campaigners. the decision followed a lengthy public inquiry in 2007.  Last night the Scottish Government insisted the powerline remained vital to its flagship renewables drive.  But Helen McDade, head of policy for the John Muir Trust, said: "The economics alone make it vital to reconsider, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this line will lead to wanton destruction of the Highland landscape.  "Given that the energy regulator Ofgem is increasingly recognising that sensitive landscapes need to be given more consideration when planning transmission routes, it would be ironic if Scotland remained stuck with this white elephant."  a Scottish Government spokeswoman said that investment in infrastructure was vital to achieving its target of generating 100 per cent of Scotland's electricity needs from renewables by 2020.  "Beauly-Denny is essential to harness the vast renewable potential in the north of Scotland. The initial costs of the Beauly-Denny project refer to 2004 figures and have been subject to revision over time and we understand that estimated costs have increased due to the detailed engineering studies.  "The costs of transmission represent 4 per cent of an average domestic bill and it is for the regulator to determine what costs can be passed to consumers.  "The long-term enhancements to the grid are a necessary part of the development of a secure, affordable and sustainable fuel mix and a low-carbon future."  Scottish & Southern Energy's (SSE's) estimate for its section of the route was GBP245.2m in 2004. It has now told Ofgem the construction costs have risen to GBP473.3m, although the regulator has restricted the investment to GBP458m.  ScottishPower, which is responsible for a 12-mile section of the line in Stirlingshire, says its costs have risen from GBP77.7m to at least GBP100m.  The rising costs have been attributed to the delay in getting to the construction stage, the increased cost of the raw materials needed, particularly steel, and measures imposed by the government to mitigate against environmental damage which were not factored in to the original estimates.  Ofgem, however, says that the cost rises affecting the project will have little impact on consumers who will have to pay just 10p a year extra for the next 20 years as transmission costs make up only a very small part of a domestic bill.  SSE says preliminary work is already under way on the project, with full construction on the replacement line, including the erection of new pylons, ready to begin later this year. It is due for completion in 2014.  a SSE spokeswoman said: "The original estimate did not include a rise in the cost of raw materials, improvements in safety and construction standards and additional costs of rationalis  
 after the last couple of weeks, you could be forgiven for being completely sated of discussions about media ethics and what the news we're given says about us as a country. Well, tough, for you'd be a mug to miss THE HOUR, the BBC's much-touted new drama series which is all about such things and aims to show that stylish, wordy, snappy shows needn't just be the preserve of america's upmarket cable channels.  The obvious inspiration for abi Morgan's script is Mad Men, as viewers may experience a similar nostalgic swoon at the period setting. Here it's 1956 London, where men wore suits and hats, while women had to battle both sexism and uncomfortable girdles to get ahead. But I'd be surprised if she hadn't watched the underrated 1987 film Broadcast News as well, which presciently showed the dumbing down of news values. There, Holly Hunter's smart producer found herself drawn to her handsome but superficial presenter, William Hurt, to the chagrin of nerdy, ethical reporter albert Brooks; here, Romola Garai's equally capable producer (looking gorgeous in natty 1950s outfits) seems impressed by Dominic West's charming star presenter while frustrated, fiery reporter Ben Whishaw tries to uncover a story.  Yet The Hour is really coming from a different, more optimistic place, one which celebrates the virtues of journalism - which may make it a hard sell at the moment but could prove more interesting as drama. The characters aren't trying to dumb down the news, they're trying to brain it up; to create a new type of current affairs show which actually looks at what's going on in the country, rather than the staid, banal newsreel-type broadcasts read by men in dinner jackets, giving a top-down view of the world of socialites, royalty and unquestioned official pronouncements. Instead, the colleagues want to bring viewers the truth and drag the country into a more modern age.  There is, clearly, a certain irony here and it's interesting to ponder the changes since then. But even placing the big themes of the series to one side, there's a lot going on: Whishaw's Freddie getting sucked into a murder investigation, Bel (Garai) trying to fit into the male-dominated newsroom, the sexual tension between her and West's possibly phony, possibly genuine Hector and the unrequited love between her and Freddie. Not to mention the hats and frocks. In fact, there's almost too much going on, but after this first cluttered episode, it could develop into a fine, engrossing series.  In Richard Hammond's Journey To The Centre Of The Planet, the sniggering sidekick and Mexican-mocker from Top Gear unforgivably keeps referring to the world as "the Earth machine," a phrase which sounds like something from a forgotten 1950s pulp sci-fi: Flash Hammond Versus Dr Chaotica's Deadly Earth Machine! He then regales us with a curious story about seeing a donkey from his childhood bedroom window, which looked like it had fallen into a sinkhole but turned out not to have done: for the sake of this less-than-fascinating anecdote, a camera crew is sent out to the very spot where the donkey didn't sink so we can all imagine the junior Hammond's experience.  Now, things do hot up once the BBC graphics department start showing off with nifty images of Trafalgar Square being lifted up to reveal the layers underground and visualisations of magma spiralling up from under the earth. But the programme's start does sum it up, presenting the kind of big scientific ideas which would once have been the preserve of beardie academics on Open University programming, but are now allowed on TV only if there is a celebrity chummily mincing their way through a "journey" because they've "always wanted to know" what lies bene  
 THE iconic hills above Loch Ness could become blighted by a proliferation of more than 200 wind turbines, campaigners have warned.  Scottish & Southern Energy Renewables (SSER) is presently consulting on plans to create a wind farm with up to 130 towers on moorland at Balmacaan, near Invermoriston. It has also identified a site for another potential wind farm site in the wider area, at Stronelairg.  Developer RidgeWind also wants to build 25 turbines opposite the existing 26-turbine Millennium Wind Farm at Glenmoriston. and a further 23 turbine development is earmarked at Druim Ba, between Drumnadrochit and Kiltarlity.  Denise Davis, who is leading the campaign against the Druim Ba plans, said cumulatively the developments, all within a short distance of each other, would create a small area containing more turbines than Europe's largest wi  
 GROWING numbers of jellyfish are lurking in UK waters, just as many people are heading for the beach during the holidays.  Swarms of the creatures have been seen in many coastal areas this year and even caused the shutdown of the Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian by clogging up a seawater inlet.  Experts are now urging people to monitor numbers of the species as part of a national survey aimed at explaining the increase in population.  The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) said it expects to find evidence of increasing numbers of particular types of jellyfish, including barrel, moon, compass, blue and lion's mane.  It says that some areas of the UK waters already resemble a "jellyfish soup" - including the Irish Sea where large numbers of moon, lion's mane, blue and compass jellyfish have already been reported. Other sightings have been made from North Somerset to the Firth of Clyde.  Last month, the Torness power station switched off both its reactors for two days after moon jellyfish, which are less than a foot in diameter, were discovered in the seas near the site where they clogged seawater filter screens.  Since 2003, more than 6,000 jellyfish encounters have been reported and the MCS said it hoped the survey would help improve understanding about where and when jellyfish occur around the UK.  Peter Richardson, biodiversity programme manager for the MCS, said: "The  
 a FUND specialising in renewable energy has pulled out of buying Scottish & Southern Energy's (SSE's) stake in a wind farm after it decided against raising the money under current market conditions.  Climate Change Capital said it had postponed a fund-raising that would have allowed it to buy SSE's 50 per cent interest in the Braes of Doune wind farm near Stirling for GBP61.3 million, as agreed last month. The fund blamed "financial market conditions" for its decision.  SSE owns half of the Braes of Doune facility but electricity generated at the site is used by Scottish Gas-owner Centrica, which holds the remaining stake in the development.  When the sale was agreed, Perth-based SSE said the proceeds would support its plans to invest about GBP1.7 billion in the current year.  Yesterday, however, finance director Gregor alexander said that money was not needed for the company's plans.  He said: "While it is disappointing that the sale of Braes of Doune has not been completed, these things have to be looked at in context.  "The asset will continue to deliver revenue for SSE and the proposed proceeds were not required to help fund SSE's investment programme."  In april, SSE sold two Scottish wind farms and one in Northern Ireland for GBP178.4m. Yesterday, the group confirmed that those sales had been completed. 
 aLEX Salmond's hopes for a power grab over Crown Estates assets in Scotland have been thwarted by the Treasury which will today announce two new coastal towns funds for Scotland.  Lib Dem Chief Treasury Secretary Danny alexander will use a visit to Stornoway to unveil a new scheme to support economic development in coastal communities from half the money raised by the Crown Estates from marine sources.  The scheme will be run independently of government by the Big Lottery and will be split into five areas including Highland and Islands, the rest of Scotland and one each for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Overall, the pot of cash is worth GBP23.7 million and in Scotland there will be GBP1.85m to be used in the Highlands and Islands and GBP2.05m for the rest of Scotland.  The other 50 per cent of money raised from marine sources will continue to go to the Treasury to fund services.  However, as Scotland and the UK begins to invest more in offshore renewables - including wind turbines and wave power - it is expected that the amount will increase significantly.  The announ  
 TWO things jump out regarding the latest EU attempt to bail out Greece. First, it has taken nearly 18 months of dithering for Europe's leaders to agree on the only solution to the crisis recognised by the financial markets, namely a bond swap in which Greece's creditors roll over their loans in return for paper guaranteed by the eurozone authorities.  The full details of the swap are unclear - and could still unravel. However, Europe's banks seem willing to play ball. Technically, this deal will trigger a formal default notice by the global credit agencies (Fitch has already signalled it will declare a "temporary" default status). But the extent of credit default swaps outstanding on Greek sovereign seems mercifully small, so there shouldn't be a Lehman Brothers-esque catastrophe.  The other big development contained in the package is the elevation of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the limited bailout mechanism invented in May 2010 in the first attempt to prevent a Greek default. according to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the EFSF will be transformed into a veritable "European Monetary Fund", along the lines of the International Monetary Fund. Given that France traditionally always gets to appoint the head of the IMF, and given that the IMF's previous boss (the tainted Dominique Strauss-Khan) lined up the organisation to support earlier eurozone bailouts, why all the fuss?  The answer is that the root cause of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis lies in the lack of a mechanism to enforce fiscal discipline on members of the monetary union. The reason Germany and the European Central Bank seem to have relented on their earlier resistance to a bond swap (aka technical default) is they see a beefed-up EFSF as the first step in imposing EU-wide control over the lax borrowing and spending of member states. But will it work?  I have doubts. ask yourself: why did the markets lend to Greece in the first place? Because they assumed the EU would always rescue its members to preserve the euro. The creation of a European Monetary Fund might actually reinforce this moral hazard unless it is given genuine powers to sanction recalcitrant member governments. But how long will that take to agree? Plus, any shift to a eurozone fiscal policy wil  
 HaPPINESS is a doll in a pushchair, a Big Mac and large fries and a loving circle of friends and family. The Office of National Statistics has identified a range of factors to assist in the complex calculation of national well-being.  The results of a five-month national debate, "What matters to you?" found that the British public believe their well-being should be measured in terms of health, friends and family and job satisfaction.  The research, which involved a survey of 34,000 people, will be used to help statisticians create the UK's first set of national well-being indicators. The new set of questions will allow the government to measure Britons' subjective quality of life and the figures will be published at regular intervals, perhaps alongside figures on gross domestic product (GDP).  as part of the research, which involved 175 public events involving 7,250 people, as well as an online questionnaire, the ONS discovered that happiness changed as people age. Children said what made them happy was eating breakfast, computer games, dolls and pushchairs, Christmas and birthdays.  For young adults the formula for contentment involved make-up, stylish clothes, music, fast food and alcohol. Older adults put more emphasis on jobs, health and financial securi  
 They built the iconic pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza, which still stand as a monument to their skills and tenacity to this day.  But the fall of the great Egyptian Old Kingdom may have been helped along by a common problem which remains with us now - drought.  Researchers from the University of St andrews have confirmed that a severe period of drought around 4,200 years ago may have contributed to the demise of the civilisation.  Using seismic investigations with sound waves, along with carbon dating of a 100-metre section of sediment from the bed of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, the team were able to look back many thousands of years. They were able to see how water levels in the lake had varied over the past 17,000 years, with the sediment signalling lush periods but also times of drought.  Lake Tana - the source of the Blue Nile river - flows to the White Nile at Khartoum and eventually to the Nile Del  
 THE cost of renewable energy devices is preventing people installing them on their homes in Scotland, according to new research.  a survey showed almost two thirds of Scots are interested in renewable energy technology such as solar panels.  However, they are put off by the price, which can be as high as GBP12,000 for an array of solar panels or GBP23,000 for a home wind turbine.  The survey of 1,002 people in Scotland, carried out by Ipsos-Mori for the consumer advice website GreenEnergyNet.com, found that 64 per cent of adults would be interested in installing some type of micro-renewable device.  However, half of those questioned, and 59 per cent of those who said they were interested in the technology, said   
 FRENCH engineering firm Technip has joined a ScottishPower-led consortium that is bidding for a pair of offshore wind farm licences in France.  Technip, which earlier this year rescued aberdeen-based under water cable-laying firm Subocean out of administration in a GBP10 million deal, will be the construction and engineering partner for the group, which also involves turbine maker areva.  The news came as First Minister alex Salmond yesterday officially opened Technip's offshore wind headquarters in aberdeen, which had been announced in February 2010.  Keith anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower Renewables and also head of Spanish parent company Iberdrola's Glasgow-based Global Offshore Division, said: "Technip's offshore wind offices in aberdeen are a welcome addition to Scotland's growing renewable energy sector. We established our global headquarters for offshore wind in Glasgow over a year ago and, since then, a number of world-leading companies have set-up offices in Scotland.  "We are also very pleased to welcome Technip into our consortium to bid for offshore wind projects in France. as a well-established company, with a strong presence in France and in all major energy capitals they are an ideal partner to help us bid for these major projects."  Ron Cookson, senior vice-president at Technip Offshore Wind, said: "Joining the consortium represents a key milestone for us." 
 a LEaDING land reform campaigner and a noted conservationist are backing a small Highland community's efforts to run their own forest.  aigas Community Forest has until next June to raise GBP690,000 to buy the 700 acres of woodland at Lower Strathglass, Inverness-shire, after Forestry Commission Scotland agreed to sell.  The charity wants to create forest crofts, a small-scale timber production centre and a renewable energy scheme. It also wants to expand wildlife tourism in the area which is close to the renowned aigas Field Centre. The centre is run by Sir John Lister Kaye, who is supporting the forest purchase.  The community takeover is also backed by Professor Jim Hunter, a historian and active campaigner for land reform.  Sir John said: "I believe that imaginative community ownership would permit creative management of the forest for the best interests of conservation." 
 PLaNS have finally been submitted for the construction of a GBP150 million offshore demonstration wind farm off the coast at aberdeen - eight years after the project was first announced to underpin the city's drive to become Europe's energy capital.  The 11-turbine wind farm, being established as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, will stretch from aberdeen to an area off Blackdog at Balmedie, on the outskirts of the city.  Plans for the ambitious development were first released in September 2003 as part of a major strategy to develop aberdeen as a key centre for the renewables industry.  The demonstration development is being spearheaded by Swedish electricity company Vattenfall and the aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.  The consortium behind the scheme, which also includes subsea company Technip, announced yesterday that a consent application to allow the project to go ahead had been submitted to Marine Scotland.  David Hodkinson, the UK manager of Vattenfall, said: "Our consent application will now be subject to the formal consultation and decision process. We believe we have made a good case for the development, which places aberdeen at the heart of the development of new technologies to serve the growing European offshore wind sector.  "We would build the project with the same attention to detail in respect of environmental and community considerations, as we have for our previous developments".  Ron Cookson, senior vice president of Technip Offshore Wind, said: "It is our belief that this project could, with considerable EU support, be the catalyst which 'kick starts' the region's rapid emergence as an industry-leading player in marine renewables."  The project is being backed by Scottish Enterprise, the renewables industry and local business leaders. 
 PLaNS have finally been submitted for the construction of a GBP150 million offshore demonstration wind farm off the coast at aberdeen - eight years after the project was first announced to underpin the city's drive to become Europe's energy capital.  The 11-turbine wind farm, being established as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, will stretch from aberdeen to an area off Blackdog at Balmedie, on the outskirts of the city.  Plans for the ambitious development were first released in September 2003 as part of a major strategy to develop aberdeen as a key centre for the renewables industry.  The demonstration development is being spearheaded by Swedish electricity company Vattenfall and the aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.  The consortium behind the scheme, which also includes subsea company Technip, announced yesterday that a consent application to allow the project to go ahead had been submitted to Marine Scotland.  David Hodkinson, the UK manager of Vattenfall, said: "Our consent application will now be subject to the formal consultation and decision process. We believe we have made a good case for the development, which places aberdeen at the heart of the development of new technologies to serve the growing European offshore wind sector.  "We would build the project with the same attention to detail in respect of environmental and community considerations, as we have for our previous developments".  Ron Cookson, senior vice president of Technip Offshore Wind, said: "It is our belief that this project could, with considerable EU support, be the catalyst which 'kick starts' the region's rapid emergence as an industry-leading player in marine renewables."  The project is being backed by Scottish Enterprise, the renewables industry and local business leaders. 
 MORE than 177,000 timber lorry journeys will be taken off some of Scotland's most fragile rural roads over the next ten years, the Scottish Government has announced.  The reduction in heavy traffic - and four million tonnes of timber - is being carried out under the government's Strategic Timber Transport Scheme (STTS) to make communities quieter, safer and cleaner.  The scheme was set up in 2005 and has distributed GBP14.1 million in grant support among 38 projects with an overall value of nearly GBP30m.  Some areas are experiencing traffic from the 44-tonne lorries for the first time with forest harvesting coming on stream from maturing plantations.  Projects aimed at off-setting disturbance include building new gravel roads through the forests to bypass villages or sections of fragile public road, diverting heavy traffic on to better roads or upgrading the fragile sections of road.  The scheme has also funded projects to transport timber by sea from ports in argyll and from coastal forests at Glenelg and Loch Etive.  Stewart Stevenson, the environment and climate change minister, said: "The scheme is proving to be very successful. The grants have drawn in an equivalent amount of f  
 WHEN its latest financials were released two weeks ago, the numbers looked good for Brodies. Turnover was up 3 per cent, pre-tax profits and profit per equity partner had risen 13 per cent. But what lies beneath? Brodies is doing well, no doubt, but what makes it culturally different? What is in Brodies' DNa, what runs through its veins?  Bill Drummond should know. Managing partner for 13 years, he will have been at the helm for a decade and a half when his current three-year term ends in May 2013.  So what makes him tick? How does he retain that focus after so long in the top job? "I have a real work ethic. There has not been a year in my life that I haven't worked. I remember when I was nine or ten, doing jobs for a penny - or maybe ten shillings.  "I took this job when I was relatively youthful - 38, and must have been seen as a massive risk, inside and outside the firm."  Clearly, the risk paid off as Brodies grew, pushing turnover up from GBP8million in 2000 to almost GBP40m in 2008-9, snaffling up Bishops in 2006 to get a real foothold in Glasgow, and moving into aberdeen in March. ask how the aberdeen operation is going and Drummond spews adjectives like Jim Bowen on Bullseye: "It has been terrific, I am delighted, we are dead pleased. I am very happy with the people we have hired."  Some of the hires have given Brodies expertise in oil and gas, with Greg May and Clare Munro joining from Transocean and Total. Yet aberdeen is not all about oil and gas, Drummond insists: "We advise the Drum Property Group on the development of the new prime business park. Oil and gas are important but core services are vital - Brodies is about helping to find solutions for clients and the wider Scottish economy."  This is a repeated refrain - client service and wider economic impact really matter to him. When asked what is in the firm's DNa, he replies: "We have a culture which demands of us a constant improvement in what we do. What are our clients about? How can we serve them better? We have a gene that is about reviewing and developing for the benefit of our clients - and the other side of the equation is getting better as a business. There is total transparency in what we do. Transparency is driving so many things - client communication is instantaneous and they have a wide choice of law firms."  Drummond is not a fan of the popular legal mantra that Scottish firms are competing for a bigger slice of a smaller cake. "I struggle with that concept," he says. "Nothing stands still. Look at the changes we have seen with devolution, the economy, human rights, renewables, changes in employment law and so on. We may be at capacity in terms of lawyer numbers but not in terms of adapting and changing, providing new solutions. There is no fixed cake.  "The firms who will survive are those willing to change, invest and develop talent, those who get better at following clients' changing agendas, and provide them with relevant services when they need them - and those who look forwards, not back. We cannot rely on the world turning full circle and coming back to where we were in 2005 and 2006. That world is not coming back."  What is also in Brodies' DNa, says Drummond, warming to the genetic theme, is its status as a Scottish law firm cutting across sectors: "We are not as focused on specific sectors as others might be," he says. "Our focus is on our client base in Scotland and solutions required by businesses, institutions and people operating in, or from, Scotland. That leads to us having a diverse range of services that operate in a complementary way and at the top end of the scale."  Brodies works on three-year strategy cycles. How did the last strategy review, held in November and implemented in May, judge the previous strategy, drawn up on the eve of economic doom?  "It was fascinating We had to constantly refresh our thinking and inevitably make some alterations. I don't like the phrase 'flight to quality', but we had to show we were top-notch in every area. We did that, and in all our practice areas the core principles we set ourselves were spot-on. One example was the recognition we were underweight in the insurance sector, so we significantly increased our capacity; that was exactly the right thing to do."  Drummond makes no grand claims of perfection - "Of course we don't get everything right - absolutely not" - but says the available empirical evidence suggests Brodies did pretty well in the eye of the perfect storm. The firm made nine redundancies, remaining debt-free with a sound balance sheet. Yet Drummond admits he can be pessimistic; on the day we meet, the markets are tumbling: "The markets were down in the Far East and the FTSE had fallen sharply in the first hour. I thought I might just go back to bed."  But of course, he didn't: "It's impossible to predict where the economy is going, but we just have to constantly challenge ourselves, to review, to improve and to focus. Let's not get stupid in terms of overexpanding."  This might sound ironic after Brodies' move into aberdeen, where it already has 23 staff after taking over city firm Davies Wood Summers LLP - but Drummond is clear this was strategic rather than opportunistic, as was the decision to continue hiring in the darkest days. Last week, 13 of the firm's own trainees were taken on as newly qualified lawyers. "We never stopped recruiting throu  
 COMMERCIaL law firm Burness has raised the warning flag over conditions in Scotland's embattled legal market, cautioning that there is no prospect of improvement in the "short to medium term".  The Edinburgh-based firm, which employs more than 230 at its two central belt offices, delivered its bleak evaluation as it posted a 14 per cent rise in net profit to GBP10.5 million against what it described as a "very tough" environment.  Chairman Philip Rodney said Burness had benefited from many of its clients, which include offshore wind developer SeaEnergy, private equity firm BlueGem and Standard Life, continuing to roll out "ambitious" plans.  Its corporate finance team has bucked market trends to secure work on a string of major corporate deals, including BlueGem's acquisition of the iconic London store, Liberty, in June, while the flow of work handled by the renewables team was also "very buoyant", Rodney said.  Turnover grew 10 per cent to GBP23.4m during the 12 months to 31 July while profit per equity partner rose 21 per cent to GBP373,000. as a result, Burness yesterday revealed that staff, excluding partners, would receive a 10 per cent bonus for the year.  However, Rodney warned that times ahead would be extremely difficult in Scotland's over-crowded legal market.  "a lot of firms are finding it very tough; at best many are flatlining," he said. "The market for legal services here will not, in our view, improve in the short to medium term and indeed may contract in 2011/12." 
 SCOTLaND'S first commercial-scale tidal turbine has been connected to the electricity grid off the Orkney coast and begun generating power.  The gigantic machine which resembles an underwater wind turbine weighs 1,500 tonnes and stands 70 feet off the seabed.  atlantis Resources Corporation hopes the 1MW device, known as aR1000, will generate enough electricity annually to power about 1,000 homes.  If the project proves successful, within the next decade, the company is hoping to install hundreds of the machines in the turbulent waters of the Pentland Firth off Scotland's north coast.  The machine was lowered into the sea at the European Marine Energy Centre (Emec) off Orkney and will undergo a further two years of tests. atlantis chief executive Tim Cornelius said that he was proud of the achievement of the team that successfully installed the machine.  "By connecting a 1MW single rotor device in Scottish waters to the national grid, they have achieved something that has never been done before," he said.  He added that he was "very confident" the turbine would work effectively as it is monitored over the next two years. We will measure success by showing that we can match theoretical output with actual output," he said.  
 SCOTLaND'S busiest airport clocked up new records last month, with the most passengers since civilian flights started there 64 years ago.  Edinburgh handled nearly one million travellers in July, and Saturday the 16th was the airport's single busiest day, with more than 36,000 passing through the terminal - 4,000 above the month's average.  The records, attributed to an increase in international flights and routes, helped to bolster Edinburgh's position as Scotland's fastest-growing large airport.  It follows the airport achieving its busiest ever March, april and June this year.  However, Glasgow and aberdeen, the country's two other main terminals, benefited from route growth, too, and saw passenger numbers rise for a seventh successive month.  Glasgow finally halted a six-year decline in annual passenger numbers, but UK traffic at all three airports continued to fall.  Edinburgh's passenger total last month increased to 992,500, up 3.3 per cent compared with the same month in 2010, according to figures published by owner Baa.  That accelerated the airport's annual growth to 5.7 per cent and nearly 9.2 million passengers - a stark turnaround when the total was shrinking by 3 per cent a year ago.  EasyJet and Ryanair, the main carriers at Edinburgh, have both added new European routes and expect to carry nearly 4m passengers from the airport between them this year.  airport managing director Kevin Brown said: "This fantastic performance is testament to the continued appeal and resilience of Edinburgh as a place in which to live, work and visit and to the hard work and dedication of the team at Edinburgh airport. We're continually adding new routes and upgrading our facilities."  an airport spokesman added: "July's success was driven in the main by international passengers. Our scheduled European market has performed extremely well, showing the benefit of our strategy to increase Edinburgh's links across the continent."  aberdeen recorded the largest passenger increase of the three main airports last month, up 8.7 per cent to 301,000.  Managing director Derek Provan said it had also been fuelled by route growth.  He said: "We are delighted with our performance in July and particularly pleased with the strong demand for international services.  "This reflects the introduction of new routes such as Baku with azerbaijan airlines. There have also been other domestic routes come on stream, for example the EasyJet service to Gatwick."  Glasgow airport's passenger total grew slightly last month, by 0.5 per cent to 793,200, halting a decline that started in 2005. It was overtaken for passenger numbers by Edinburgh four years ago. July's growth was largely attributed to the arrival of Jet2, whose seven routes contributed to the airport's European traffic increasing by nearly half.  Glasgow also attracted more transatlantic passengers, especially from the United States.  Glasgow managing director   
 SCOTLaND'S busiest airport clocked up new records last month, with the most passengers since civilian flights started there 64 years ago.  Edinburgh handled nearly one million travellers in July, and Saturday the 16th was the airport's single busiest day, with more than 36,000 passing through the terminal - 4,000 above the month's average.  The records, attributed to an increase in international flights and routes, helped to bolster Edinburgh's position as Scotland's fastest-growing large airport.  It follows the airport achieving its busiest ever March, april and June this year.  However, Glasgow and aberdeen, the country's two other main terminals, benefited from route growth, too, and saw passenger numbers rise for a seventh successive month.  Glasgow finally halted a six-year decline in annual passenger numbers, but UK traffic at all three airports continued to fall.  Edinburgh's passenger total last month increased to 992,500, up 3.3 per cent compared with the same month in 2010, according to figures published by owner Baa.  That accelerated the airport's annual growth to 5.7 per cent and nearly 9.2 million passengers - a stark turnaround when the total was shrinking by 3 per cent a year ago.  EasyJet and Ryanair, the main carriers at Edinburgh, have both added new European routes and expect to carry nearly 4m passengers from the airport between them this year.  airport managing director Kevin Brown said: "This fantastic performance is testament to the continued appeal and resilience of Edinburgh as a place in which to live, work and visit and to the hard work and dedication of the team at Edinburgh airport. We're continually adding new routes and upgrading our facilities."  an airport spokesman added: "July's success was driven in the main by international passengers. Our scheduled European market has performed extremely well, showing the benefit of our strategy to increase Edinburgh's links across the continent."  aberdeen recorded the largest passenger increase of the three main airports last month, up 8.7 per cent to 301,000.  Managing director Derek Provan said it had also been fuelled by route growth.  He said: "We are delighted with our performance in July and particularly pleased with the strong demand for international services.  "This reflects the introduction of new routes such as Baku with azerbaijan airlines. There have also been other domestic routes come on stream, for example the EasyJet service to Gatwick."  Glasgow airport's passenger total grew slightly last month, by 0.5 per cent to 793,200, halting a decline that started in 2005. It was overtaken for passenger numbers by Edinburgh four years ago. July's growth was largely attributed to the arrival of Jet2, whose seven routes contributed to the airport's European traffic increasing by nearly half.  Glasgow also attracted more transatlantic passengers, especially from the United States.  Glasgow managing director amanda McMillan said she was encouraged but still cautious about the airport's performance, particularly since BMI had axed its r  
 The expertise of Scotland's oil and gas industry could help reduce costs of offshore wind operations by at least 20 per cent, according to new research.  Scottish Enterprise has calculated that GBP330 million of savings could be made over the life of an average offshore wind farm by the oil and gas sector.  They have created a Guide to Offshore Wind and Oil and Gas Capability to highlight the opportunities for the oil and gas industry from getting involved in the offshore wind sector.  Potential crossovers highlighted in the guide include installation skills, maintenance activities and personnel.  The authors calculated that a 500-megawatt project over 20 years of operation would cost GBP1.558 billion to set up and GBP40m a year to run, without oil and gas expertise.  However, by using the expertise from the oil and gas sector these costs could reduce to GBP1.347bn set-up costs and GBP33.9m-a-year running costs.  Over the two decade life of the project, this would work out as a GBP330m saving.  The UK, Germany and China are currently the three largest offshore wind markets in the world and together over the next four years are expected to install 11GW of new offshore wind capacity - almost 83 per cent of the total global capacity.  The UK is forecast to be the largest market during 2011 to 2015 as the UK completes the first phase of projects   
 IS THE wind of public opinion blowing against renewable energy? Within the last fortnight, it has been denounced as a "white elephant" industry and been criticised for overstating the job numbers it can deliver for the Scottish economy.  Yet when alex Salmond stands up at the second Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference (SLCIC) today, the chances of him being blown off his policy course are nil. John Swinney has put renewable energy and the wider low-carbon economy at the heart of the SNP government's growth strategy, and the latest number of jobs expected to be created in the sector has reached an eye-watering 130,000.  When the First Minister speaks at the SLCIC (which also has former US vice-president al Gore on the bill), he will continue to act as cheerleader-in-chief to the low-carbon community and pull more green rabbits out of green hats to deliver positive news for the sector. Since last year's inaugural event, there has been plenty of good news, with Gamesa, Mitsubishi and Doosan bringing renewable R&D operations to Scotland, and the establishment of the International Technology Renewable Energy Zone in Glasgow.  However, despite the underlying progress, the conference must address the economic elephant in the room - the lack of momentum in getting turbines turning in the North Sea. Offshore wind and its complex, job-heavy supply chain is the "big ticket" item for Scotland; it can deliver large amounts of energy and its success is crucial to employment and economic progress, as well as the government's 2020 carbon reduction targets.  Yet momentum towards delivering offshore wind projects since last year's conference has been slow. The "installed capacity" is only 190MW, against a target of 10GW, more than ten times higher, by 2020 - a date which once seemed far away but now looks relatively close in the lifetime of offshore wind.  The fundamental problem remains simple - money. Offshore wind is a new industry and too great a risk for many investors, who won't be comfortable until a number of large projects are up and running - proving the technology works and the returns are good. This means developers are funding early projects themselves, and, with significant risks and huge costs attached, only a limited number of companies are capable, or willing, to do this.  The other financial problem relates to the huge cost of offshore wind. at the moment, it is estimated that delivering one megawatt hour (MWH) of electricity from offshore wind will cost around GBP130-GBP140. This has enormous implications - for the cost of developing projects and for consumers. a taskforce in England has been asked to try to cut the cost to GBP100 per MWH, but Scotland's ambition is greater - to bring it down to around GBP80 per MWH.  This is a big ask, but there is talk of a knight on a white charger ready to ride to the rescue - in the shape of the oil and gas industry. Is this a realistic hope? It is a mantra repeated ad nauseum at conferences. as the oil and gas industry tails off, the narrative goes, offshore firms migrate into renewables, transferring knowledge, skills and expertise to help the new industry flourish.  There are encouraging signs. Oil and gas firms Technip and Subsea 7 have dipped their toe in renewables waters within the last year. There was also an event - described as "game-changing" - when oil and gas guru Sir Ian Wood and Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy, a key developer of offshore wind, brought the two industries together.  a similar event will be held next month, but are oil and gas operators ready to jump from an established, buoyant industry into unpredictable new waters? Estimates suggest North Sea oil and gas could last three more decades, while many engineers earn six-figure salaries in the industry and there are opportunities in newer overseas markets.  against this backdrop, what of the claims that the oil and gas industry - not known for being cheap - can play a big part in driving down the costs of offshore wind? Some in oil and gas scoff at the idea. "You can pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to hire a suitable vessel to go far out into the North Sea," says one source. "Oil and gas companies won't blanche at that - the renewables lot fall off their chairs."  It seems an unlikely marriage anyway - one partner is much older, and more experienced in hostile offshore environments. The callow younger partner still gets pocket money from his parents, and needs to prove he can pay his own way.  It all comes back to money. Unless offshore wind can attract significant investment and drive down costs relatively soon, it could find itself in a vicious circle. Investors won't come in because they need to see a rising number of large, successful projects - but it will be difficult to develop such projects without the investment.  The same argument applies to the oil and gas industry - if big players are to make the move into renewables, they need to know the industry is economically sound, they need to see more momentum in offshore wind projects, and they need to be assured they can make money.  If the oil and gas industry can be persuaded to jump, Scottish Enterprise insists that this will drive down costs. Research published yesterday suggests oil and gas expertise could cut 20 per cent from the lifetime costs of an offshore wind project.  The oil and gas supply chain is so large, the argument goes, that a modest shift could have a big impact. Scottish Enterprise has produced a guide to offshore wind to share information with oil and gas businesses, explaining areas where they might have compatibility - from fabrication, installation and operations and maintenance through to health and safety and staff training and deployment. at the SLCIC today, Sir Ian Wood leads a session on Oil and Gas into renewables: Risk and cost reduction.  Marchant - whose company is set to pull out of a consortium bidding to build a nuclear power station at Sellafield, Cumbria - will also continue his efforts to form the partnerships needed to make the big breakthrough into offs  
 Private equity investors are showing fresh interest in the renewables industry and playing an increasing role in plugging the funding gap.  Investment in renewables projects in the first half of the year has risen almost tenfold to GBP585 million compared with 2010, according to research by law firm McGrigors.  McGrigors' analysis of statistics, compiled by investment data firm Preqin, has shown that the trend in the UK is reflected across Europe, where more than ???2 billion (GBP1.7bn) has been raised for investment in renewable energy projects.  McGrigors released the data to coincide with the Scottish Low Carbon Investment (SLCI) conference, which kicks off in Edinburgh today. It will be addressed by former US vice-president al Gore tomorrow.  Euan McVicar, a partner in the energy and infrastructure practice at the firm, said: "These figures clearly demonstrate that private equity is well-placed to fill the project finance vacuum."  In addition to signs of increasing investment, Scottish Enterprise produced a report yesterday which said that the knowledge and expertise of Scotland's oil and gas supply chain could help reduce the costs of offshore wind operations by at least 20 per cent.  Some of the biggest players in the energy sector will convene at the SLCI conference over the next two days to discuss how the country can meet the Scottish Government's ambitious target of having 80 per cent of Scottish electricity consumption come from renewables by 2020. Jorge Calvet, chairman and chief executive of Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa, will be at the conference to launch its GBP14 million research and design Centre at Strathclyde Business Park. 
 Private equity investors are showing renewed interest in the renewables industry and playing an increasing role in plugging the funding gap.  Investment in renewables projects in the first half of the year has risen almost tenfold to GBP585 million compared with 2010, according to research by law firm McGrigors.  McGrigors' analysis of statistics, compiled by investment data firm Preqin, has shown that the trend in the UK is reflected across Europe, where more than ???2 billion (GBP1.7bn) has been raised for investment in renewable energy projects.  McGrigors released the data to coincide with the Scottish Low Carbon Investment (SLCI) conference which kicks off in Edinburgh today. It will be addressed by former US vice-president, al Gore, tomorrow.  Euan McVicar, a partner in the energy and infrastructure practice at the firm, said: "These figures clearly demonstrate that private equity is well-placed to fill the project finance vacuum."  In addition to signs of increasing investment, Scottish Enterprise produced a report yesterday which said that the knowledge and expertise of Scotland's oil and gas supply chain could help reduce the costs of offshore wind operations by at least 20 per cent.  Some of the biggest players in the energy sector will convene at the SLCI conference over the next two days to discuss how the country can meet the Scottish Government's ambitious   
 FORMER US vice-president al Gore will give the keynote speech at this year's Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference.  The Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist and author of an Inconvenient Truth is expected to attract delegates from around the world to listen to his presentation at the conference tomorrow.  First Minister alex Salmond will deliver the opening address at the two-day event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre this morning.  The conference will look at what needs to be done to meet Scotland's ambitious environmental targets, which include generating 80 per cent of the country's electricity needs from renewable resources by 2020.  Other speakers include Lady Susan Rice, managing director of Lloyds Banking Group Scotland, andrew Cave, head of group sustainability at Royal Bank of Scotland , Sir Ian Wood, chairman of The Wood Group, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy, Keith anderson, chief corporate officer of Iberdrola, and Bob Hull, managing director of Ofgem. Tomorrow, following the conclusion of the conference, Mr Salmond will join Jorge Calvet, chief executive of wind-turbine firm Gamesa, for the official opening of the company's new GBP14 million Research and Design Centre at Strathclyde Business Park.  Friends of the Earth Scotland is planning to stage a protest outside the conference today against RBS, which is one of the sponsors. 
 the brakes have been applied to the Tesco juggernaut. Growth in sales is now mainly overseas and new chief executive Phil Clarke will no doubt be peering under the UK bonnet for answers to the slowdown in sales in its home patch.  Half-year figures showed a still impressive 8.8 per cent expansion in overall revenue, but investors are now seeing most of that coming from international stores, up 11.9 per cent in asia and an eyebrow- raising 32 per cent in the US, where losses at its Fresh and Easy chain are also significantly down and break-even is on the horizon.  Clarke has already instigated his GBP500 million "Big Price Drop" in an attempt to revive UK sales, where the company may still be market leader but is no longer getting things all its own way. The new focus will on products that consumers buy most frequently and less on subsequent buys through the Clubcard.  Tesco Bank, based in Edinburgh, has been troubled by technical issues, customer complaints and a poor response to its in-store banking operations. The full-year trading profit at the bank is expected fall GBP40m below target.  Clarke is expected to be patient while these teething problems are ironed out, but further difficulties and delays in rolling out products such as its mortgages could pose more questions about its future.  Despite these setbacks, the company's international footprint makes it an attractive play for investors through the spread of risk, even though the shares are not likely to see much in the way of capital appreciation in the shorter term due to the general lack of consumer confidence.  Sainsbury's boss Justin King will be the happier of the two supermarket bosses, after reporting second-quarter and half-year figures ahead of expectations. Raising the number of non-food products means it can now compete on better terms with its big rivals and its focus on own-brand ranges has reaped rewards.  Its shares have been weak in the market, perhaps undeservedly so, and these figures show it performing strongly in a tricky market, though analysts prefer Tesco because of the returns on its international businesses.  The bottom line for both supermarkets is that they have been slapped down by cash-strapped consumers who are being forced to choose more carefully how they spend their stretched household budgets.  as petrol prices rise, less is spent on food, and as the cost of basics goes up so shoppers deny themselves the little extras. Growing sales in such lean times will be testi  
 a GROUNDBREaKING project to store emissions from Scotland's largest coal-burning power station under the sea could be close to floundering.  ScottishPower, which runs the Longannet plant in Fife, was reported to be on the verge of pulling out of the scheme following lengthy negotiations with the UK government.  It is understand the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is unwilling to increase funding of the GBP1 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) experiment to make it commercially viable for ScottishPower.  CCS involves forcing liquefied carbon dioxide i  
 It was billed in advance as the big showdown. Tough-talking Prime Minister Dave Cameron and his trusty sidekick, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, were going to read the riot act to the "big six" energy companies over the soaring fuel bills which have so angered the consumers of gas and electricity in this country.  The reality after the grandly titled "energy summit" was rather different, as Mr Cameron and Mr Huhne emerged with a raft of puny proposals, none of them earth-shattering. The three ideas they choose to highlight - telling customers to switch supplier to secure a better pricing deal, to change their payment method to direct debit and to better insulate their homes - were underwhelming statements of the obvious.  Ministers will argue that if the summit managed to get even these ideas across it will have succeeded, but useful though these messages may be, such a claim would stretch consumers' credulity beyond breaking point. It is true that the simplification of suppliers' suspiciously complex tariff schemes that energy watchdog Ofgem is pushing through will help customers make a more informed choice. However, as anyone who has ever switched their supplier knows, the truth is that there is not much difference between most price packages on offer, making a mockery of the idea that there is proper competition in the UK domestic energy supply market.  and if this were not depressing enough to voters who want to see the government take their side against exploitative big businesses, there is a further cloud on the horizon, in the shape of a warning from the European Commission that average prices for households could rise by up to 100 per cent up to 2050 as a way of paying for investment in renewable energy, in particular wind turbine generators.  What might Mr Cameron and Mr Huhne have done yesterday? First they could have announced a move towards proper competition in the domestic energy market, perhaps encouraging the entrance into the market of a no-frills supplier, a kind of "EasyElectricity" that would genuinely force the others to consider their charges.  They could also have got tougher. Ofgem has predicted a rise in firms' prospective profit margins from GBP15 to GBP125 per customer, figures the industry says it "does not recognise". Even the threat of more regulation would have helped to apply more pressure for prices to come down. Finally, they could have become more serious about insulation - boosting the programme for homes would not only help cut bills but be the kind of new deal initiative which could help create work to absorb high levels of unemployment.  In short the coalition should have read the big six the riot act. Timid chastisement during a cosy chat is simply not good enough. The public, who were led to expect more, have been badly let down.  Scottish Baftas all glaur and greeting  Scotland's Downton abbey, where are you? This year's Scottish Bafta nominations make clear there is no room for anything to do with the upper classes. The list is dominated by costume dramas of another sort - grim, gritty depictions of working class life: less Cliveden, more Clydebank. angst and misery are driven home with the subtlety of shipyard rivets. There is Peter Mullan's film Neds, a hard-hitting portrayal of teenage gang life in 1970s Glasgow, and Morag McKinnon's working class portrayal, Donkeys. The entertainment category includes Rab C Nesbitt, Limmy's World and Burniston. The drama series Field of Blood, about a journalist investigating a serial killer in 1980s Glasgow, is nominated in three categories. and in case all this smacks too much of Edinburgh New Town frippery, the controversial documentary The Scheme has been nominated f  
 Controversial plans for a GBP3 billion power station have attracted more than 20,000 objections, which campaigners claim is a record high for any project in Scotland.  The proposal for Hunterston in North ayrshire would be the first coal-fired power station built in Scotland since the 1970s, and comes as the nearby Hunterston B nuclear power station is being prepared for decommissioning.  about a quarter of the UK's ageing fleet of power stations are expected to close over the next 15 years and the firm behind the proposal, ayrshire Power, says that failing to replace them could jeopardise future electricity supplies and push up bills.  However, environmentalists say the power station would be "climate-wrecking" and could damage a nationally important wildlife site. The Royal Society for the Protection for Birds said more than 74 acres of a coastal site used by tens of thousands of wintering water birds would be "destroyed" if the new power station was built.  aed??n Smith, head of planning and development at RSPB Scotland, said: "I think these figures demonstrate the strength of public feeling against the building of a new Hunterston power station, and the level of local opposition is clear to see.  "We hope that the views of local people will be taken into account when North ayrshire Council considers its position on the proposals."  WWF Scotland director Dr Richard Dixon said: "The huge public oppos  
 JaCKSON Carlaw says he can pinpoint the moment when the emotional bond between him and the Conservative Party was sealed. It was on the night of 12 October, 1984, when the IRa blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives were holding their party conference.  "I was in a guesthouse a couple of hundred yards away," he recalls. He was woken up by the blast and roused the group of Young Tories with whom he was lodging.  "I was there within 20 minutes of it. We were bringing deckchairs up from the beach for people to sit on. I remember journalists being just as shellshocked as us.  "That understanding of what it meant to be part of the UK Conservative party and family seared itself into my consciousness. In terms of my core beliefs, if not shaped then, they were absolutely reinforced by it."  The ability to tell that kind of story is the reason why the 52-year-old MSP, who has largely remained under the media radar in this deeply contentious race, is a contender to win the Scots Tory leadership next month.  alone out of the candidates, Mr Carlaw has the kind of back story which may give him a special bond with some of the party members who are to elect their new chief - particularly those from a certain vintage.  He first became politically conscious in the 1970s, leaning initially to Labour. Then, as a schoolboy at Glasgow academy, he remembers doing his homework by candlelight during the three-day week, and feeling angry with the industrial militancy of the unions.  Once Margaret Thatcher arrived in 1979, promising to shake things up, he was sold. as a 20-year-old, he was in Blackpool at her first conference, where the young 'uns were given polystyrene boaters and told to sing "Hello Maggie". "Just ridiculous," he admits.  Yes - very. But also the kind of stuff that many members of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party just love.  Rivals are pretty blunt about Mr Carlaw. "He might have been around for 30 years, but then people have had 30 years to get to know what he's like," says one, about his claim to experience. He has won the support of just one of his fellow MSPs, Mary Scanlon.  But, meeting him in his tiny office in Newton Mearns last week, it is clear this is not a man whose confidence is easily punctured. Watching his two main rivals for the job, Murdo Fraser and Ruth Davidson, he claims to be amused by what he says are their "sycophantic" entourage.  "I don't think a leader is well served at all by being surrounded by people who tell them they're the best thing since sliced bread. It just leads inevitably to difficulty. Even Margaret Thatcher latterly was only surrounded by people who told her what she wanted to hear, and it's fatal."  He says he wants people around him who will question where he is going. He makes great play of the fact that, unlike Murdo Fraser and Ruth Davidson, he had a career outside of politics - running a car dealership (although he claims: "I've never actually sold a used car").  "I've always been of a generation that you should come into politics bringing an experience of life into it," he says.  But the car dealership did not end well. "We expanded too quickly and the business went into administration. It was broken up and sold off a decade ago," he says. Then he took the road to Holyrood.  Of Mr Fraser's plan to dissolve the Scottish Conservative party and create a new one from its ashes, Mr Carlaw challenges it on practical business terms, but also because he believes it will not change anything.  "We stopped being the Tory party in 1841 when Sir Robert Peel broke from the Tories because of the Corn Laws. [In Scotland], we have never been the Tories. But that is how we are known."  The point is, he says, that you can call a new party what you want, but people will still call them the Tories, "probably with an expletive attached".  Mr Fraser says his new party MPs will still take the Conservative whip. So the whole thing is self-defeating, says Mr Carlaw. "That is not an independent party in any sense at all. So this new party, which is taking the Conservative whip at Westminster, will be the Tory party too."  He says he has a lot of time for Mr Fraser, however. He has been "tested in battle". But mention Ms Davidson, who has emerged as perhaps his main challenger for the top job, and a more venomous tone comes out.  Won't she be a breath of fresh air; a walking, talking sign that the Tories in Scotland have changed? "You cannot simply say I'm the new kid on the block and therefore the world is going to come and flock to vote Scottish Conservative & Unionist - someone who has been parachuted in from absolutely nowhere, who we know nothing about, who has no political agenda that we know about, who has fought no campaigns.  "Ruth Davidson's own performance in Glasgow [at the May election] wasn't terribly impressive. Moreover, she failed to win the list-ranking ballot i  
 Most savers believe banks should be more socially responsible and make efforts to raise their ethical standards, according to research.  Just one in ten savers feels their bank has high ethicalstandards and three-quarters feel banks should domore to help society, a survey by ethical bank Triodos found. It revealed that just 15 per cent of savers say helping society is not the role of the banks, while one in fve think the industry should support arts and culture.  Two-thirds of savers want banks to investmore in community and social groups and a similar proportion claimbanks should do more to support renewable energy initiatives. 
 FaIR maid of Edinburgh, city of elegance and grace, where, oh where, art thou? Buried, it seems, under unending tramworks rubble. Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair: seldom has Scotland's capital, one of the most graceful and pleasing of Europe's great cities, seemed so beleaguered.  Visitors to Edinburgh today can be forgiven for thinking they have stumbled onto the set of a Hollywood disaster movie, a reconstruction of some pocket civil war as we battle with street upheavals, closures and diversions. There is the constant din of pneumatic drills. Utility repairs, scattered like jagged shell holes after a relentless bombardment, pockmark the city centre.  There is the mushrooming of road sign admonitions. Every crawling route through the rubble is marked by snaking lines of traffic cones leading to yet another set of temporary traffic lights teasingly flashing green for a fraction of the time they are stuck at red. Delay, disruption, anger and despair attend every journey through a city so proud of its decorum and repose. What has happened to the noble capital at peace with itself? Where has it gone?  and what a metaphor all this seems for a deeper misery that has clouded a face so fair: the grey, impenetrable haar of economic downturn. Unemployment is up. Vacancies are down. Shops and businesses are closing. Development sites have long been abandoned to tattered boarding, rusty fencing, dog mess and bindweed. The two pillars of a once-confident financial sector mark the business landscape like bleeding stumps. New Town fund managers trip over the cobbles as their BlackBerries ping with the latest stock market slide. Seldom has the city looked more down at heel, and the prospect of new shoes so remote.  Were this a fair or comprehensive summary of the city's fortunes, we might as well throw in the towel now. Fortunately, I am glad to report that it is not. The outward and visible mess of the tramworks has masked a more enduring and positive reality: Edinburgh has fared better through this downturn than comparable UK cities and has every prospect of growth and expansion in the years ahead. There is great potential in sectors such as life sciences, renewable energy, arts and creative industries, education and, yes, even financial services.  What a modest and deceptive story Edinburgh presents to the world. It trades, with great success, on its attraction as a city steeped in culture, history and Hanseatic architecture, its spires and closes untouched by time. But beneath this noble exterior, seemingly indifferent to the world of economic activity, much has stirred. This genteel lady of mature years, borne into the 21st century like a dowager duchess in a sedan chair, has been growing like the clappers.  Over the last decade, the population of Edinburgh and its wider city region has grown at a faster rate than that of Scotland and the UK. a similar trend is projected for the next ten years. Between 1998 and 2008, the economy of Edinburgh and the city region measured in terms of gross value added (GVa) increased at a faster rate than the UK economy. The increase, from GBP8.9 billion to just over GBP16bn, marked an annual average growth rate of 6.2 per cent - a pace more akin to a developing country economy.  While GVa dropped in 2009 in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis, its resilience has been remarkable. The consensus across various key forecasters is that future growth will average 2.7 per cent a year, accompanied by strong employment growth.  The city has a higher than average representation of large employers. The city region accounts for a quarter of Scotland's businesses and, on a per capita basis, Edinburgh is home to more businesses than Manchester, Leeds or Glasgow.  It is a haven for small firms. almost 90 per cent of all businesses in the city and city region employ fewer than 50 people. Business start-up rates compare well with Scottish standards (but lag other parts of the UK).  The city's economy benefits from a highly skilled workforce: nearly half the working-age population is educated to degree level, more than 10 per cent higher than the Scottish and UK averages.  The city region has performed strongly in attracting inward investment, with Edinburgh recently ranked as the fourth most attractive location across Europe.  The visitor economy has continued to thrive, with the city attracting five million  
 colin Matthews put on a brave face yesterday as he surrendered to the inevitable sale of one of Baa's Scottish airports. The only surprise was that the board opted for Edinburgh when the betting had favoured Glasgow.  Matthews, group chief executive, admitted to me during a visit to Edinburgh that this was not an ideal time to be selling and that the company would not be disposing of any airports if it was not being ordered to do so by the competition authorities.  at least passenger numbers are not falling, which was the case last year and in the run-up to selling Gatwick. Since the turn of the year, Edinburgh has seen passenger growth of 9.4 per cent - twice the rate of Glasgow which has been recovering from the collapse of XL and Zoom airlines.  aviation experts had expected Baa to hold on to Edinburgh in order to build a dual-capital axis with Heathrow. Baa itself had never hinted at which one would be sold and at the weekend there was talk of it putting both on the block to see which would command most interest.  But Edinburgh's potential is also why it will be put up for auction. Baa knew it could get a better price for its east coast asset and, therefore, a greater return for its shareholders, essentially the Spanish infrastructure firm Ferrovial, which holds 49 per cent of the company. Further growth in passenger numbers next year should help to push up the price.  aside from speculation about the new owner for Edinburgh, questions are now being asked about Baa's plans for Glasgow and, of course, aberdeen, which will also remain in the shrinking Baa portfolio. It looks as though the programme of investment in both, and in Edinburgh, will continue unchanged by this announcement.  Baa has been forced into this situation by those demanding a more competitive and efficient market for airlines and ultimately passengers. The Baa position remains unchanged on this, its argument being that the real problem is capacity rather than competition, and only this week Matthews was refusing to give up hope that a third runway may be included in the coalition's next aviation policy document.  In its case for retaining its Scottish airports, Baa also dismissed the competition argument, insisting that there was little passenger cross-over between Glasgow and Edinburgh, proving that the two airports operated in distinct, rather than rival markets. Some business leaders supported its case on the grounds that an integrated business could bring cost and operational efficiencies that multiple ownership could not.  However, we are where we are and by next summer Edinburgh will have a new owner whose task will be to prove Baa and its supporters were wrong.  the abandonment of the GBP1 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at the Longannet power station in Fife has driv  
 a PIONEERING GBP1 billion climate- change project in Scotland's biggest power station has been scrapped amid escalating costs, it has been confirmed.  The carbon capture and storage (CCS) scheme at Longannet coal-fired power station, in Fife, was to be the first of its kind in the UK, with the ability to trap harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the plant.  The decision came under fire from environmental groups and First Minister alex Salmond, who said it was an "enormous lost opportunity".  Dr Richard Dixon, director of environmental charity WWF Scotland, added: "This news is massively disappointing and threatens Scotland's - and the rest of the UK's - ambition to be at the forefront of developing this new technology.  "If technical and economic hurdles can be overcome, CCS has the potential to help reduce emissions at thousands of coal-power stations around the world.  "However, almost four years after launching its funding competition, plans for CCS in the UK have descended into farce.  "Four years have effectively been wasted in the battle to tackle climate change. "  UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne told MPs yesterday there were "specific problems" with the Longannet scheme over the leng  
 a PIONEERING GBP1 billion climate change project in Scotland's biggest power station has been scrapped amid escalating costs, it has been confirmed.  The carbon capture and storage (CCS) scheme at Longannet coal-fired power station, in Fife, was to be the first of its kind in the UK, with the ability to trap harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the plant.  The decision came under fire from environmental groups and First Minister alex Salmond, who said it was an "enormous lost opportunity".  Dr Richard Dixon, director of environmental charity WWF Scotland, added: "This news is massively disappointing and threatens Scotland's - and the rest of the UK's - ambition to be at the forefront of developing this new technology.  "If technical and economic hurdles can be overcome, CCS has the potential to help reduce emissions at thousands of coal power stations around the world.  "However, almost four years after launching its funding competition, plans for CCS in the UK have descended into farce.  "Four years have effectively been wasted in the battle to tackle climate change. "  UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne told MPs yesterday there were "specific problems" with the Longannet scheme over the le  
 CLOTHING retailer M&Co is moving into the renewable energy market after yesterday unveiling plans to erect GBP20 million-worth of wind turbines on farms in Scotland.  Mackays Stores Group, M&Co's Inchinnan-based parent company, will use the electricity generated by the turbines to power its network of 300 UK stores.  The company already buys renewable energy but now wants to generate its own power to insulate itself against rising electricity prices.  Mackays changed its shops' names to M&Co in 2006. The group was founded as a pawnbrokers in 1834 and switched into selling clothes in 1961 when brothers Len and Iain McGeoch took over full control of their family business.  Neil McGeoch, Iain's son and managing director of the new MEG Renewables subsidiary, hopes his background as a beef farmer in ayrshire will help him to win over landowners to host wind turbines.  The group wants to erect between one and three turbines o  
 aMBITIOUS plans have been unveiled to transform the mothballed Nigg fabrication yard on the Cromarty Firth into a service hub for the energy industry.  The announcement, which includes a pledge to create 2,000 jobs in the next four years, was hailed by First Minister alex Salmond as marking the "potential renaissance of marine engineering in the Highlands". He promised GBP 1.8 million of government funding to help kick-start the revival of a yard that once had a workforce of 5,000 and was worth GBP 100m a year to the Scottish economy.  Major work at the yard effectively ceased in 2000 and the 238-acre site has been lying dormant since 2003.  It was first offered for sale in 2005 by american engineering giant KBR and the Wakelyn trust, which owns part of the site.  It was confirmed yesterday the site has now been bought for an undisclosed sum by Inverness.-based company Global Energy Group, which plans to turn  
 a SURPRISE new partnership has been formed involving Scottish Enterprise, the City of Edinburgh Council and Forth Ports to turn the capital's docks into a hub for renewable energy manufacturing.  a new Memorandum of Understanding has been formed between the group to develop an ambitious new masterplan to create a "21st-century gateway port" at Leith.  The partnership means previous plans to build 15,000 new houses and a shopping esplanade have been torn up in favour of "reshaping the vision" to focus on turbine manufacture.  It is not yet known how much public money will be ploughed into the new initiative, but Scottish Enterprise has confirmed it will fund technical and feasibility studies that will form the basis for future plans. a spokeswoman could not confirm how much money this would involve.  First Minister alex Salmond said: "This agreement signals the dawn of a new era for Leith, which will ensure it plays a central role in supporting economic growth in the Lothians and in the wider Scottish economy.  Forth Ports chief executive Charles Hammond told The Scotsman: "This is a new direction that we are going in. It's something that we have been pursuing for a while.  "We believe the best commercial direction and   
 FOR the 14th year Scotsman Publications has joined forces with Glenfiddich, the world's most awarded single malt Scotch whisky, to give you, our readers, the chance to vote in the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards.  This is the last chance to vote for this year's category nominees and also for the Top Scot. Top Scot is the premier accolade in the Glenf?ddich Spirit of Scotland awards and recognises individuals who have furthered Scotland's reputation at home or abroad. Previous winners have included serial adventurer Mark Beaumont, internationally acclaimed authors JK Rowling and Ian Rankin and sporting achievers, including Chris Hoy and Walter Smith.  There is a raft of potential winners this year, including social entrepreneur Mel Young, Mark Muller Stuart, barrister, mediator and chair of the pro-bono Bar Human Rights Committee, writer alexander McCall Smith, who is spearheading the creation of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, and Dr Gordon Rintoul, who has headed the transformation of the National Museum of Scotland. Top tennis player andy Murray and golfer Catriona Matthew are also among the many potential candidates for Top Scot, as are many of the nominees in the other categories of this year's awards.  The winners will be announced at a glittering ceremony at the Mansfield Traquair, Edinburgh, on Tuesday, 29 November.  GLENFIDDICH ... a PIONEERING SPIRIT  Over the years the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards have paid tribute to some of Scotland's most talented individuals: from household names such as Paolo Nutini, James Mcavoy, Ewan McGregor, Ian Rankin, Sir alex Ferguson, Kirsty Wark and JK Rowling to less well-known individuals who excel out of the public eye. This year yet again the awards will recognise Scotland's pioneering spirits who lead the way and who, through their dedication and talents, are helping to push forward Scotland's reputation for excellence both at home and on the international stage.  Glenfiddich is proud to be an integral part of the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards, recognising those who, through their pioneering spirit, inspire others.  Food  MaRTIN WISHaRT  CHEF/RESTaURaTEUR  Wishart, from Shetland, opened Restaurant Martin Wishart in Leith in 1999 and won a Michelin star two years later. Now Wishart's empire includes a cook school, a restaurant in Cameron House and a new brasserie.  NORMaN MaCDONaLD  RESTaURaTEUR  MacDonald, proprietor of Cafe One in Inverness, offers customers the finest Highland produce. Famous customers include Lee Westwood and Prince andrew, but his loyal locals are true testament to his food's quality.  JaMES ROBB  SMOKEHOUSE OWNER  Robb owns the East Pier Smokehouse in the East Neuk of Fife. The Pier won Gold in the Great Taste awards 2011 for smoked Scottish salmon and cold-smoked venison. Robb is working on the launch of a new cafe next year.  HEaTHER aNDERSON & PETE RITCHIE  FOUNDERS OF WHITMUIR THE ORGaNIC PLaCE  In 2000 anderson and Ritchie swapped city life to set up their food and farming business in Lamancha. It is now an award-winning enterprise, employing more than 20 people  Writing  JaCKIE KaY  WRITER  Kay was born in Edinburgh. She is a poet, novelist and writer of short stories and has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize.  JULIa DONaLDSON  aUTHOR  Glasgow-based Donaldson has written over 100 books and plays for children, including the award-winning rhyming story, The Gruffalo. In June she became the Children's Laureate for 2011-2013.  aLaN BISSETT  NOVELIST/PLaYWRIGHT  Falkirk-born Bissett's novel, Pack Men, was described by Irvine Welsh as "a landmark in Scottish fiction". His play Turbo Folk was also shortlisted for Best New Play at the Critics' awards for Theatre in Scotland 2010. acclaimed?show, The Moira Monologues, which he wrote and performed, has been bought by the BBC to develop as a TV series.tumsandigna feugiam duis accumsan henibh eugiat  DENISE MINa  WRITER  Mina is the author of three graphic novels and nine prose novels, the last of which, The End of the Wasp Season, has been short-listed for the 2011 Gold Dagger Book of the Year prize by the Crime Writers' association.  Business  JIM WaLKER CBE  CO-DIRECTOR, WaLKERS SHORTBREaD  The grandson of Joseph Walker, who founded Walkers Shortbread in 1898, Walker is approaching his 50th year with the company, which now employs more than 1500 people.  SIMON HOWIE  BUTCHER/ENTREPRENEUR  Howie's butcher's business, which he started in 1986, now supplies more than 200 hotels and restaurants and four major supermarkets. During the past 25 years he has also grown a range of other businesses.  BILL DOBBIE  CHIEF EXECUTIVE aND CO-FOUNDER OF CUPID  Dobbie co-founded Cupid six years ago. Having captured a sizeable portion of the UK online dating market the company was floated on aIM in 2010 and has since become a global player.  KEITH NEILSON  CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CRaNEWaRE  Neilson co-founded software company Craneware in 1999. Based in Edinburgh, the publicly traded company also has four US offices and employs more than 200 staff.  Music  PRIMaL SCREaM  BaND  Primal Scream was formed in Glasgow in the early 1980S. Their 1991 album Screamadelica is widely recognised as the record that took the then underground acid House scene into the mainstream.  DaVID PaUL JONES  COMPOSER, PIaNIST, VOCaLIST  Paul Jones is an Edinburgh-based composer, pianist and vocalist best known for his soundtracks and live performances for multi-award-winning Scottish theatre companies.  KENNY aNDERSON (KING CREOSOTE)  SINGER/SONGWRITER  anderson has released more than 40 recordings in the UK, primarily through his own label Fence Records. Based in Crail, he is regarded as one of Scotland's leading voices in alternative folk.  EMILE SaNDE  RECORDING aRTIST/SONGWRITER  Sande was raised in alford, aberdeenshire, and studied medicine at Glasgow University. In 2010 she was signed by Virgin, and released her first solo single Heaven in august. Her debut album will be out next year.  Sport  NEIL FaCHIE  PaRa-CYCLIST  aberdonian Fachie, originally a track athlete, switched to cycling and started training with the GB Para-Cycling team in 2008. He has now competed at two World Championships, winning four gold medals.  LINDa CLEMENT  HOCKEY  Clement captained the Scottish women's hockey team for an exceptional 100th time in June. She was born in Fortrose, and has represented Scotland more than 170 times and Great Britain on 18 occasions.  KaTHERINE GRaINGER  ROWER  Grainger is Britain's most successful female rower. She's originally from Glasgow, and has won six World Championships - the latest in august this year at Bled, Slovenia, where she qualified for London 2012.  HaNNaH MILEY  SWIMMER  Miley, a Garioch amateur Swimming Club member, won gold for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October last year and took silver at the World Championships in Shanghai in July.  Screen  MaRK COUSINS  FILMMaKER  an Edinburgh-based documentary film-maker, author and curator, Cousins' feature The First Movie won the Prix Italia, and his latest project, The Story of Film: an Odyssey, was produced entirely in Scotland.  CHRISTOPHER YOUNG  PRODUCER  In 1986, he set up Young Films - an independent film and television production company based in Skye. Feature films produced by Young Films include Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Two Girls.  LYNNE RaMSaY  WRITER/DIRECTOR  Ramsay's debut film Ratcatcher won critical acclaim and awards around the world. Her latest project, We Need To Talk about Kevin, which she wrote and directed, is tipped to be an Oscar winner.  KaREN GILLaN  aCTRESS  Gillan, born in Inverness in 1987, currently plays the  
 ICE-cream tycoon Maitland Mackie has been elected rector of aberdeen University.  Dr Mackie, a graduate of the university and now chairman of the aberdeenshire-based Mackie's of Scotland ice-cream company, will take up his post on 1 January, succeeding Scotland the What? star Stephen Robertson.  The businessman, who is a member of the University Court and a leading advocate of renewable energy, said: "I am very privileged that the students have chosen me. I am very aware from my experience on the University Court that the student body is the principal customer of the university - and the customer is king. It is an honour to be representing the principal customers of the university."  Tessa Birley, the student president, said: "The Students' association looks forward to installing him as our new rector in the traditional way. We are confident he will be a real champion for aberdeen students." 
 Fruit and nuts on native British trees are ripening on average 18 days earlier than they were a decade ago, data from the Woodland Trust has shown.  Observations from Nature's Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust, in which members of the public record the timing of natural events, have suggested that the changing climate is altering the fruiting patterns of a range of trees.  The trend of earlier ripening has been seen across 12 different species, with acorns in Scotland ripening 18 days earlier than in the period 2000-2002, beech nuts 21 days earlier and rowan berries almost a month before they did a decade ago.  Experts believe the shift is down to the trees flowering earlier in the face of warmer springs.  Professor Tim Sparks, nature adviser for the Woodland Trust, said: "There is a suggestion that the average ripening dates have some correlation with mean temperatures recorded for april, so we presume that the link is through earlier flowering leading to earlier ripening.  "However, to see such a uniform advance across so many species is most unusual and we need many years' more data from the public to try to better understand the reasons for these changes."  The trust also said it had data showing that trees including oak, rowan and hazel had all produced increased crops of fruit and nuts over the past ten years.  and 2011, the trust said, was likely  
 HUNDREDS of campaigners have gathered at a conference to join forces against wind farms in Scotland.  The event in ayr was organised by Communities against Turbines Scotland (Cats) and was billed as Scotland's first National Windfarm Conference.  Organisers said about 250 people from across the country attended the ayrshire event to listen to speeches from politicians, sleep experts, noise researchers and energy industry engineers.  MEP Struan Stevenson, who gave the keynote address, said: "It has been a spectacularly well- attended conference. People have come from all over Scotland and even the north of England to express their concerns.  "I hope the government will take notice of this and start to accept that the policy they are pursuing is damaging to Scotland's economy and landscape."  He said the event, at ayr Racecourse, heard "heart-rending tales" from people whose lives were blighted by turbines, including a woman who lived with hundreds directly outside her house.  He said: "She can't sell her property and she hasn't been offered any compensation. It's scandalous what is going on."  Susan Crosthwaite, from Cats, said they now planned to form a single group encompassing all organisations fighting wind farms in Scotland, to give a single voice to the cause.  The group would then call on the Scottish Government to put a halt to any new wind farms.  "We want a moratorium on turbines until they really do look at all the facts," she said.  The event was chaired by South Scotland Labour MSP Graeme Pearson.  He said he had witnessed "a real concern" among communities across the south of Scotland about wind farm development and its impact.  He added: "at the same time fuel poverty and the economics behind these developments seemed mired in complexities.  "This conference will give an opportunity to the public to better understand the issues."  Other speakers included Iain MacLeod, professor of structural engineering at the University of Strathclyde, and former Power Network director at the National Grid, Colin Gibson.  Dr Chris Hanning, honorary consultant in Sleep Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester, also spoke.  Since retirement in 2007, he has spent a lot of time fighting wind turbines because of the effect they have on people's sleep.  Mathematician Dr Malcolm Swinbanks was invited to talk about his research into the noise of wind turbines.  Helen McDade, head of pol  
 HUNDREDS of campaigners have gathered at a conference to join forces against wind farms in Scotland.  The event in ayr was organised by Communities against Turbines Scotland (Cats) and was billed as Scotland's first National Windfarm Conference.  Organisers said about 250 people from across the country attended the ayrshire event to listen to speeches from politicians, sleep experts, noise researchers and energy industry engineers.  MEP Struan Stevenson, who gave the keynote address, said: "It has been a spectacularly well- attended conference. People have come from all over Scotland and even the north of England to express their concerns.  "I hope the government will take notice of this and start to accept that the policy they are pursuing is damaging to Scotland's economy and landscape."  He said the event, at ayr Racecourse, heard "heart-rending tales" from people whose lives were blighted by turbines, including a woman who lived with hundreds directly outside her house.  He said: "She can't sell her property and she hasn't been offered any compensation. It's scandalous what is going on."  Susan Crosthwaite, from Cats, said they now planned to form a single group encompassing all organisations fighting wind farms in Scotland, to give a single voice to the cause.  The group would then call on the Scottish Government to put a halt to any new wind farms.  "We want a moratorium on turbines until they really do look at all the facts," she said.  The event was chaired by South Scotland Labour MSP Graeme Pearson.  He said he had witnessed "a real concern" among communities across the south of Scotland about wind farm development and its impact.  He added: "at the same time fuel poverty and the economics behind these developments seemed mired in complexities.  "This conference will give an opportunity to the public to better understand the issues."  Other speakers included Iain MacLeod, professor of structural engineering at the University of Strathclyde, and former Power Network director at the National Grid, Colin Gibson.  Dr Chris Hanning, honorary consultant in Sleep Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester, also spoke.  Since retirement in 2007, he has spent a lot of time fighting wind turbines because of the effect they have on people's sleep.  Mathematician Dr Malcolm Swinbanks was invited to talk about his research into the noise of wind turbines.  Helen McDade, head of pol  
 HOUSEHOLDERS face a rise of more than GBP170 in annual electricity bills to cover the massive subsidies shelled out to power firms for shifting to green energy sources over the next decade, experts have claimed.  Leading economists attacked the "excessive" GBP15 billion UK-wide pay-outs and warned they would lead to growing public anger, during a conference on the economics of renewables organised by The Scotsman.  The cost of the subsidies would be split between domestic and business customers, with households likely to pick up about a third of the outlay, amounting to an extra GBP170 a year on their bills.  The Scottish Government is committed to generating enough power to meet all of Scotland's electricity needs from renewable sources, such as wind farms, by 2020.  But energy minister Fergus Ewing told the conference yesterday Scotland's power supplies would always come from a "balanced mix" of sources.  Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said that subsidy levels for renewable energy would be about GBP8bn by 2020, with grid management costs of about GBP5bn a year  
 HOUSEHOLDERS face a hike of more than GBP170 in annual electricity bills to cover the massive subsidies shelled out to power firms for shifting to green energy sources over the next decade, experts have claimed.  Leading economists attacked the "excessive" GBP15 billion UK-wide payouts and warned they would lead to growing public anger, during a conference on the economics of renewables organised by The Scotsman.  The cost of the subsidies would be split between domestic and business customers, with households likely to pick up about a third of the outlay, amounting to an extra GBP170 a year on their bills.  The Scottish Government is committed to generating enough power to meet all of Scotland's electricity needs from renewable sources such as wind farms by 2020.  But energy minister Fergus Ewing told the conference yesterday Scotland's power supplies would always come from a "balanced mix" of sources.  Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said that subsidy levels for renewable energy would be about GBP8bn by 2020, with grid management costs of about   
 DELEGaTES clashed on the subject of power bills, with one contributor claiming policies on renewable energy and climate change would continue to have a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable in society.  However, Professor Tony Mackay's claim was rejected by both Fergus Ewing and David Wilson, director of energy and climate change in the Scottish Government. Wilson said additional costs to consumers were offset by the benefits, especially in terms of energy efficiency.  Mackay quoted a 2010 report by the Department for Energy and Climate Change which suggested the impact of renewable energy and climate change policies added 14 per cent to the costs of generation by 2010, but that this would rise to 26 per cent by 2015 and 33 per cent by 2020, raising the cost per megawatt hour by GBP40.  This meant renewable energy policies added about 5 per cent to domestic energy prices in 2010, predicted to rise to 19 per cent by 2020. There would be a greater impact on non-domestic users from these policies, Mackay added - up an average 26 per cent. But he said his biggest concern was the impact on the poorest communities in Scotland: "The impact will be greater for those on the lowest incomes, and as far as Scotland is concerned, that is a very serious issue."  Energy bills are alrea  
 FERGUS Ewing admitted that driving down costs was one of the key challenges in ensu  
 THIS week's VaT hike could lead to a surge in fraud in the UK energy industry which would cost unwitting firms millions, legal experts have warned.  Revenue and customs officials warned the industry as long ago as July that they believe criminal gangs are looking at gas and power trading as a method to commit VaT fraud on a grand scale. The new year rise to 20 per cent will heighten that risk.  Jason Collins, a parter with Scottish law firm McGrigors, said: "The worry is that the impending higher VaT rates make the UK gas and power market a more attractive venue for fraud than before. Businesses in that sector must be extra vigilant to try to avoid dealing with fraudsters."  Over the years, so-called "missing trader intra-community" (MTIC) fraud has cost the UK government billions in lost tax revenues. However, the fraud has been on the wane, partly because much of the criminal activity has moved to continental Europe to take advantage of the even higher tax rates there.  "Much of the VaT fraud that was being engineered by criminal gangs had shifted to continental Europe where VaT rates are higher," said Collins.  "Their reasoning was that if you are going   
 a STRING of deals including work in the offshore wind and hydro-electric sectors is expected to give a GBP4 million boost to the Scottish practice of an international risk consultancy firm.  Environmental Resources Management (ERM), which has offices in aberdeen and Edinburgh, has won a contract to carry out the environmental impact assessment (EIa) and manage the consent process for the Beatrice offshore wind farm off the coast of Caithness.  The project - which is being developed by Perth-based utilities giant Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) and aberdeen-based consultancy SeaEnergy Renewables - proposes to erect 184 turbines about 13.5 kilometres off the coast.  ERM said it would sub-contract the work to up to 15 specialist consulting companies and would itself be "heavily involved" in consulting with the public on the proposals.  SSE and SeaEnergy expect to submit an EIa and other planning consent documents before the end of the year.  In a second deal, ERM will also be carrying out an EIa for power company RWE Npower Renewables on a hydro-electric scheme in the Highlands.The scheme at Easter aberchalder, about 25km south of Inverness, will generate some 750,000 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power about 1,000 homes.  RWE Npower's "run-of-river" scheme covers a 1.5km stretch of the aberchalder Burn. Water taken from the river will be returned further downstream once it has been used to generate electricity.  aileen McLuckie, ERM's principal consultant in Scotland, said the firm was also servicing many of its international clients from its Edinburgh office.  "We are pleased to be working with a number of high profile companies," she said. "Our services to these businesses, in Scotland and internationally, range from strategic advice to industrial safety and environmental impact assessment." 
 THE inquiry into the banking sector reached another milestone yesterday when the man leading the government-appointed commission offered hints of a compromise that may only frustrate both sides of the argument.  Sir John Vickers, chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking, spoke of ringfencing the core elements of the banks that will allow for some form of disconnection between retail and investment banking operations, without actually carving them up.  It won't satisfy the bloodlust of the bank bashers, and nor will it please those who feel that it was poor management and not the structure of the banks that caused the financial crisis.  While these initial thoughts suggest a bit of a fudge, there is at least an acknowledgement of the growing opposition to a split from those who believe such a solution is not only undesirable but undeliverable.  Last year Vickers described the Lloyds-HBOS merger as a mistake and Clare Spottiswoode, one of the ICB members, let slip that the ICB could recommend ripping it apart. Those such as the Liberal Democrats who support a break-up scented victory.  But opposition to any enforced splits has gathered momentum: from Lloyds' Scottish managing director Susan Rice to Peter Sands, chief executive of Standard Chartered. In an interview yesterday Sands defended the universal model as the best means of ensuring the future stability of the banks.  With powerful voices lined up to oppose a full-scale dismantling of the banks it has looked increasingly likely that the ICB would step back from an outright break up.  If yesterday was the hors d'oeuvres, the starters will be served up in april when we get an options paper that is expected to contain more details than originally planned, followed by the main course in September when the commission delivers its recommendations to the Government.  There are still a lot of ingredients to consider, starting as early as tomorrow morning when Vickers' speech will be assessed by the markets. added spice to the mixture will be Peter Sands' rejection of the so-called subsidiarisation model as misguided, impractical and costly. He warned that Balkanisation will raise the chances of failure.  It is also likely that tomorrow the government will announce the outcome of its talks with the banks on bonuses and lending, in which more give-and-take will again allow both   
 ONLY a third of Scots believe that ambitious government targets to tackle dangerous climate change can be achieved, according to a new survey.  The SNP administration wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions - mainly made up of carbon dioxide (CO2) - by 42 per cent by 2020, as set out in the Climate Change act.  But the survey has revealed that only one in three Scots think the carbon reduction pledge is attainable, while almost half of the population do not know what the targets are.  The opinions of 1,000 people surveyed in the quarterly Scottish Nature Omnibus will come as a blow to the SNP, which needs the support of the wider population to reach what are some of the most ambitious climate change targets in the world.  
 BRIGGS, the Fife-based marine services company, has secured a five-year contract with Scottish & Southern Energy that will see it maintain hundreds of miles of cable in some of the harshest waters in Europe.  The family-owned firm, which operates a fleet of more than 30 vessels, will use the deal as a catalyst for a major drive into the offshore renewables market.  It plans to transfer the skills and expertise gained working in "challenging environments" to a sector experts believe could be worth GBP75 billion to the UK economy by 2020.  Under the agreement with SSE, Briggs will provide round-the-clock support for the utility giant's network of 102 live cables totalling almost 300 miles that link some of Scotland's most remote island communities.  The contract will encompass network survey work, cable protection and cable installation, repair and testing through all seasons in locations where currents can reach speeds of eight knots.  News of the deal follows a string of recent contract wins for Burntisland-based Briggs, which was founded in the 1970s and now operates in Europe, the Caspian region, Middle East and South america.  One of the biggest agreements, worth some GBP39 million and unveiled in September, will see the firm provide vessels, crew and onshore support to the UK Environment agency's marine monitoring services throughout England and Wales.  Craig English, operations director for salvage and subsea cables, Briggs Marine, said: "The skills and expertise that we have developed working in challenging environments will also support our growth within Scotland's fast growing renewable energy sector. We see significant opportunities from the initial cable installation for the wind, wave and tidal devices and then on-going maintenance support throughout the lifecycle of the projects."  The company, which in 1995 was involved with the first deployment of a tidal device in Shetland, is launching an "integrated maintenance solution" for windfarm operators. 
 THE exploding Japanese power stations have failed to turn Scots against nuclear power with more than half still believing that nuclear power should be part of Scotland's energy mix.  For every Scot who believes that there is no place for nuclear power in Scotland, there are two others who believe that the controversial method of generating electricity has a future in the country, a poll for Scotland on Sunday reveals.  The findings are a blow to alex Salmond, who has made a no-nuclear stance a key strand of the SNP election campaign. Iain Gray's Labour Party has argued that there should not be a presumption against building new nuclear power stations resulting in the issue becoming one of the few policies that divides the two main parties apart from independence.  The YouGov poll found that 52 per cent of those sampled agreed that Scotland needed nuclear power along with other forms of energy. On the other side of the argument 26 per cent disagreed, suggesting they believed there was no need for nuclear power.  The results of the poll, which was carried out after the series of explosions that threatened to trigger nuclear meltdown in Japan, were remarkably similar to one carried out six years ago - suggesting that the disaster not had much impact on public opinion when it came to energy provision. a poll in 2005 found that 53 per cent of Scots favoured nuclear being part of the energy mix as opposed to 24 per cent who disagreed. Some 30 per cent of Scotland's electricity comes from the country's two nuclear power stations, Hunterston in ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian. Salmond has championed a "renewable revolution" with three-quarters of Scotland's energy supply coming from green sources within a decade.  Yesterday an SNP spokesman said: "Energy and the hazards of nuclear power have emerged as a major election issue, and there can be no doubt that the overwhelming case for re-industrialising Scotland by developing our comparative advantages in all other energy technologies - renewables, carbon capture, and combined cycle gas - will win the energy debate over Labour's position of importing expensive and uninsurable nuclear technology from other countries. The last parliament specifically rejected a new generation of nuclear power stations, in a vote on 17 January 2008."  But Labour accused the SNP of using the Japanese experience to try and make political capital. Lewis Macdonald, Labour candidate for aberdeen Central, said: "This (poll] shows the SNP is completely out of kilter with most Scots. Labour strongly supports our renewable revolution, but we a need a broad mix of low-carbon energy sources. Ever since the tragedy in Japan, the SNP have prosecuted a cheap and distasteful campaign to try and make this a political football in the Scottish Parliament election. Clearly people are turned-off by that kind of politicking." The results of the poll, were welcomed by those politicians who believe that nuclear power must play  
 TWO SCOTS entrepreneurs have signed a contract with the largest utility company in the Balkans to advise the region on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.  Colin armstrong-Bell and Duncan Spinner, both former officers in the argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, have secured the project, potentially worth as much as GBP40 million, following a public tender in Bosnia Herzegovina.  Through armstrong-Bell's consultancy firm Trade Greener, the pair will work with the Bosnian state-owned energy firm, JP Elektroprivreda, on the carbon reduction project, which is understood to be the largest of its kind in the Balkan region.  The project will include advising the utility on how to modernize its power plants in various parts of Bosnia, making them both more efficient and environmentally-friendly.  along with its local consortium partner, Trade Greener is also bidding for a second round of work, valued at a further GBP40m, to assist with the construction of four hydro plants and a wind farm.  armstrong-Bell, originally from ayrshire, said the contract win comes after three years of negotiations.  "Having taken three-and-a- half years to bring the project to signature, we have taken a long-term view on the Balkan region as a whole.  "I believe this landmark project will pave the way to many other high-quality environmental projects within the region that we have diligently been working on. We are presently working on developing renewable energy projects in the region. Bosnia sources 40 per cent of its energy from hydro plants." 
 If you don't finish your tea I'm going to wrap it up and send it to africa. There are starving children who'd be very glad of that food." I can't be the only person who had this phrase hurled at them repeatedly during childhood. Thirty years on and the leftovers are not sent to africa, but will soon be sent to the local council's recycling plant to be turned into compost.  Details of the Scottish Government's Zero Waste Plan for 2011-14 have been published (www.zerowastescotland.org.uk). The bit we are interested in is the "GBP4 million Food Waste Programme to support collections of food waste from homes and businesses". a number of trials have already taken place, but these will soon become normal practice to meet the target of sending a maximum of 5 per cent waste to landfill by 2025. It's only a matter of time before every home has a slop bucket alongside their other recycling bins.  Compost awareness Week will soon be upon us (1-7 May, www.recyclenow.com/home_composting) and while it's of particular interest to gardeners, the relationship between waste reduction and compost will be relevant to all of us once food waste collections kick in. The case in favour of composting is overwhelming (full details of how to do it well are on the Recycle Now website). around a third of households are alr  
 TaKE a look at your glass of orange juice/Irn Bru/alka Seltzer/G&T (select your drink of choice for this time of day on a Sunday). Is it half full? Or is it half empty? Your answer to that question may decide who gets to govern Scotland for the next five years. This Holyrood campaign is shaping up into a classic contest between optimism and pessimism, between hope and fear. and this weekend it's the sunny side of the Scottish character that's firmly in the ascendancy.  The SNP lead in our exclusive YouGov poll today is testament to an exemplary, pitch-perfect manifesto launch by one of the most impressive political machines in the UK, never mind just Scotland. There's little to choose between Scottish Labour and the Nats in terms of manifesto commitments, but in tone and feel their campaigns could not be more different.  The political orthodoxy today is that you win elections by being more optimistic than your opponent. Last year in the UK general election, David Cameron painted himself as the candidate who represented "hope, optimism and change". The famous Shepard Fairey poster of Barack Obama's face and the word 'HOPE' has lost none of its hold on the imagination. On becoming Labour leader, Ed Miliband tried to steal the prize from Cameron, saying: "We are the optimists now."  That old smoothie Bill Clinton once spelled out what he called "Clinton's law of politics". He said: "If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is trying to get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you'd better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope." (It was a message his wife apparently forgot when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination some years later, and tried to raise fears about Obama's youth, idealism and inexperience.)  and yet, at the risk of sounding like John Knox with the toothache, this is Scotland. This is the land of Jekyll and Hyde, Private Fraser, the Rev I.M. Jolly and the Caledonian antisyzygy. Yes, we are capable of looking to the sunny uplands and seeing possibility in the world. But let's face it, at other times we can be a nation of grumpy bastards. and at the moment, given the state of the economy, there is much to be grumpy about.  What's more, recent political history shows Scots can be persuaded to vote in accordance with their fears and not their hopes. In Scotland, Clinton's law need not apply. For thirty years up to 2007, Labour beat the SNP in campaign after campaign by playing on voters' fears about independence. and last year in the UK general election, Scottish opinion switched decisively in Labour's favour, largely because of an almost primeval fear of the return of a Tory government. That's why Scottish Labour's manifesto begins with these words from Iain Gray: "Now that the Tories are back we need a government in Scotland that will fight for what really matters."  I thought the party that best tapped into the current despond about wage freezes, job insecurity and youth unemployment would be best placed to win this election. I thought the leader who most convincingly demonstrated that he felt the voters' pain, and promised to do something about it, would win. I still think that's going to be a powerful message come polling day.  But Labour has come up against an SNP campaign of such relentless optimism it's proving well nigh irresistible. Modern, attractive personalities like alan Cumming and Mark Millar coo reassuringly in our ears. There's an SNP gig by Midge Ure at the aBC in Glasgow where you can dance away your recession cares to cheesy Ultravox hits. The socially  
 SCOTLaND must embrace renewables as there is no alternative to new forms of energy generation, given the world's dwindling reserves of oil, coal and uranium, a senior industry figure has argued.  Rick Eggleston, the managing director of wind turbine manufacturer REpower UK, threw his weight into a debate that has been raging since First Minister alex Salmond vowed to see renewables produce 100 per cent of Scotland's electricity by 2020.  Last week industry experts lambasted the SNP's policy as being "impossible" and a threat to the Scottish landscape but others, including Ignacio Gal??n, the head of Spanish power firm Iberdrola, which owns ScottishPower, said the ambition was "entirely credible".  Eggleston, whose firm is working with Scottish and Southern Energy to develop a 35-turbine wind farm at Gordonbush in Sutherland, agreed that renewables are currently among a cluster of "expensive" ways to produce energy, which has an impact on the price charged to customers.  He said: "Cost is a big area  
 The date is circled on the calendar. The polling card is on the mantelpiece, along with all the parties' propaganda. Their population analysis seems to have told them that if I live in the south of Scotland I must be either a farmer or an elderly person in need of healthcare. Well. I'm a floating voter. Floating on a great big lily pad of indifference, knowing that round these parts, it's a two-horse race. One of the frontrunners is greener than the other so I'll probably vote for them. What of my second vote? Tactical? Is there any point voting for a smaller, greener party? Would we be better under aV? Let's leave that one. Instead, a round-up the main parties and the key environmental issues.  First, the Conservatives. On the positive side they support city cycle schemes, a thumbs-up for a carbon-capture trial at Longannet, a requirement for public bodies to draw up targets to reduce their energy consumption and, er, that's about it.  The Lib Dems get a pat on the back (they don't get many these days) for pledging GBP250 million to insulate homes. Further gold stars are awarded for promoting the use of electric vehicles but boos from the crowd for supporting more road-building. Still, they are in favour of the notion that 100 per cent of Scotland's electricity should   
 FORTH Ports has hoisted the "for sale" sign over Edinburgh's Ocean Terminal as the recently acquired group focuses on investing tens of millions of pounds in the "re-industrialisation" of its assets on the capital's waterfront.  The group is seeking GBP100 million for the flagship shopping centre which comes with about 10 acres of adjacent development land.  The Waterfront Plaza to the east of Ocean Terminal has planning consent for a mixed-use "urban village" development including a hotel and other business and leisure facilities.  It is expected that the eventual buyer, likely to be a retail fund, will have to refinance Ocean Terminal's GBP68m of debt. The centre, which opened in 2001, was formerly a joint venture between Forth Ports and HBOS. In 2009, the bank's new owners, Lloyds Banking Group, sold its 50 p  
 THERE is a pub on Duke Street at the foot of Leith Walk that opens at six o'clock in the morning. In Leith's industrial heyday the bar was filled at dawn with thirsty dock workers who stepped in for a pint at the end of a night shift. But as industry declined in Edinburgh's historic port, the pub's clientele now no longer work on the docks.  While some of them have retained the habit of taking a drink or two first thing in the morning, the area is now bustling with younger residents who pass by in suits and heels on their way to offices in town.  Since the 1990s, there has been significant progress in transforming the industrial grit of the port of Leith into a haven of smart restaurants, bars and balconied flats. albeit, as the morning drinkers on Duke Street would probably agree, there is still a long way to go.  In 2008, an ambitious masterplan to tackle a further 350 acres stretching from Granton harbour to the Leith docks was approved by City of Edinburgh Council, sanctioning the development of 16,000 flats, offices, shops and much more.  But even though the planning application was passed in record time, the economic crisis rendered the plans for Edinburgh's waterfront as worthless as the not inconsiderable amount of paper on which the proposals were drafted.  The dawn of 2008 ushered in no ordinary year. In January 2008, australian infrastructure fund Babcock & Brown took a sizeable 20 per cent stake in Forth Ports - the area's largest landowner - sparking rumours it was looking to take control of the last publicly-listed ports business in the UK.  But the investor that would eventually become known as arcus Infrastructure Partners only managed to get its hands on the prize in March of this year with a GBP746 million buyout of Fort Ports.  Despite the deal's long delay, it would have been early on that the true extent of the ravages of the property recession became clear to Forth Ports' chief executive Charles Hammond.  Several developers who were either planning to build or were actually on site in Leith collapsed or simply downed tools to weather the storm.  By the end of 2008, the value of Forth Ports' land was knocked down from GBP282m to just GBP60m, with more than 80 per cent of it deemed of "no immediate value" by property evaluators DTZ.  What this number made clear was that the investment model that had so far driven the transformation of Leith from a declining industrial zone to a shiny new waterfront haven would need to be scotched, forcing a massive about-face in how the area would develop.  The result, three years later, is nothing less than a plan for the "re-industrialisation" of Leith. The core of this is a proposal to develop a massive 200 megawatt biomass plant, to be built in a joint venture with energy giant Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) on the eastern-most dock which houses a - now mothballed - grain silo.  But what is only just coming to light is that the biomass plant is simply the first step in this re-industrialisation.  In 2008, the plan for the dock was to build houses, parks and possibly a museum or arena over the next 20 years, depending on market demand.  But instead, Forth Ports is set to scrap this plan entirely and make the dock the new manufacturing centre of a potential GBP100 billion industry developing offshore wind turbines for the North Sea.  This radical shift in approach was underpinned by last week's revelation in Scotland on Sunday that the flagship Ocean Terminal shopping centre was to be put up for sale by Forth Ports for GBP100m.  For Hammond, who has been a director of Forth Ports for a decade and who saw hundreds of millions come into the firm's coffers on the sale of overpriced land, the property game is over.  "Regeneration is now broader than flats and shops. It is about jobs and new industry," he says. "The renewables industry is about creating new income-generating assets. What encourages me is we have already received a number of expressions of interest from a number of parties."  One of these is Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe, which is eyeing the Leith port as a base for its GBP100m Centre for advanced Technology. The Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa has also indicated it will move into the Dundee docks, where Forth Ports has a similar biomass plan.  The biomass plants are necessary to power the factories envisaged for the two ports.  Hammond also dangles the prospect that the facility, which would produce heat as well as electricity, could be used as the source of a new district heating system for the residents of Leith.  
 BORN under a bad sign. That's what bluesman albert King sang in the late 1960s and it's what I'm singing now. If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all. This is what happens when you try to do the right thing. If I'd anticipated embarking on a home-made damson ice cream extravaganza would result in such a bout of melancholy I'd have steered clear.  I have a damson tree in my garden. Every year it is weighed down by hundreds of juicy purple fruit. It'd be such a shame to waste them, so I end up spending hours cooking then forcing the darn things through a colander to get rid of the stones and skins. This brow-furrowing, messy activity formed stage one in the ice cream fiasco. Next came the sugar syrup. It solidified in the pan. Next the custard came close to scrambling. Then the piece de resistance. Mr Green knocked the brand new ice cream maker off the worktop, smashing the lid and reducing the two mixing arms to one. admit defeat? Never. I watched as the lone arm limped round the bowl, creating an icy damson delight. It was a bittersweet reminder that the green way is not always the easy way.  The average Brit gets through nine litres of ice cream every year. There are more than  
 CLOSE your eyes and imagine the perfect summer picnic. The sun is shining but there are trees nearby offering shade if you need it. There's a gentle breeze and a lake just over yonder, in case you fancy a paddle. a red checked cloth is spread out on the grass and atop it lies a delectable selection of home-made treats. Baguettes, cheeses, rose wine, Victoria sponge cake, juicy strawberries and so much more are being enjoyed by friends and family while laughter fills the air. Time for a reality check. The grass is wet. The insects are biting. You forgot to bring a corkscrew. The sandwiches are squashed and soggy. Your perfect peace has been broken by someone blasting tartan techno out of a ghetto blaster. Didn't those die out in the 1980s?  Picnics are something I dream about. a successful one is yet to happen. Mostly it's wasps that have been to blame, or the weather. But let us put the past behind us and focus on the ideal picnic. This can be an exceedingly eco-friendly experience, or a high-impact activity, depending on the choices you make. The food bit's easy. You know the sort of virtuous-yet-delicious stuff you should be taking with you. Fresh produce from farmers' markets or treats with the organic or Fairtrade stamp. Job done. What we don't want to see hitching a ride is a load of plastic packaging. I've become rather taken with the notion of bundling it all, Dic  
 ITS song is an iconic British sound that each year heralds the arrival of s  
 THE leader of the school party who tackled a killer polar bear was hailed for his bravery yesterday as organisers announced the expedition was being abandoned.  Michael "Spike" Reid shot the bear which mauled to death 17-year-old Horatio Chapple in the early morning horror.  Reid, 29, and Edinburgh-based co-leader andy Ruck, 27, were last night preparing to be transferred to a British hospital after undergoing surgery for serious head and neck injuries in the "vicious" attack.  Two teenagers sleeping in the same tent as Chapple when the bear attacked, and who were less seriously hurt, were also due to be flown home.  Reid's father said his son had described the drama in an e-mail sent from his hospital bed.  The former headteacher said: "He told us the bear attacked the tent with three people in it, and he and another leader went to help and were viciously attacked by the bear.  "He managed to get away, ran to get a gun and shot the bear."  The father said he did not want to use the word "hero" to describe his son but added: "The other members of the group said he was very, very brave."  He added: "We were devastated and very worried.  "a lot of the day, we've been thinking about the family of the boy who died. There's a family in Wiltshire who have lost their son. For us, their grief must be unimaginable.  "This was such a rare and unlikely event, it was inconceivable."  The drama, which happened at 7:30am on Friday on the northern Norwegian islands of Svalbard, has now led to the rest of the month-long trip being cancelled.  The campsite which was attacked housed 13 of some 80 members of the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) party, who will now all come home.  More details of the desperate struggle to tackle the rampaging animal emerged yesterday, but it remained unclear whether or not a trip-wire warning system that should have triggered flares to scare off the bear had activated.  It is thought the animal may have been so hungry it ignored any alarm that went off.  One of the injured teenagers, 16-year-old Patrick Flinders punched the bear on the nose and another attempted to fire at the animal.  Reid, from Plymouth, then grabbed a rifle and shot the bear. The two injured schoolboys, who were less seriously hurt, were Scott Bennell-Smith, 17, from Cornwall, and Patrick Flinders, 16, from Jersey.  The four are recovering from surgery in hospital in Tromso, 400 miles to the south of Svalbard, on the northern Norwegian mainland.  Some of their parents, including Flinders' father, Terry, have flown to join them.  The group had set up camp on Thursday on barren, rocky ground near the Von Post glacier, 25 miles north of Longyearbyen, the islands' main settlement.  Reid's sister, Juliet, 33, said the family had heard that the bear did trip warning wires placed around the camp.  She said: "We believe one of the young explorers tried to shoot the bear with a rifle but didn't manage to hit it.  "We believe Michael took the gun and shot the bear but didn't kill it."  The animal is thought to have been killed by another member of the group.  Reid is an events coordinator for the Royal Geographical Society in London where the BSES is based.  Flinders is said to have repeatedly punched the bear on the nose after it lunged into the tent.  His father, Terry, said: "The bear got into the tent where Patrick was with two friends, and he just, for some reason, grabbed hold of the other boy and just killed him.  "I don't really know why he chose the other boy - perhaps he was the closest one.  "Patrick, I think, was probably in the middle, because he grabbed hold of his head next, and then his arm, and I don't know how Patrick got out to be honest.  "Unless it was when the guy came in and shot the bear and maybe that's how Patrick got away with it, because they actually shot the polar bear, but the young lad was already dead."  Flinders said he had been told trip-wire failed to work.  He said: "This time it didn't happen apparently, and one of the other chaps came out with a rifle and tried to kill the polar bear and didn't do it.  "and then the leader tried to kill the polar bear, but just before he killed him apparently, the bear mauled him and he's really, really bad."  a school friend of Flinders said he was stunned to hear of the attack.  Wesley Riant, 16, said: "It's a bit of sh  
 LET'S not beat about the bush or wait till next January for the Scottish Government's "aye late" statistics to tell us what we already know: the economy north of the Border may already be in recession - and with no exit in view.  at the micro level there are chinks of light in this gloom. Many individual niche companies should continue to do well. Technological change and innovation in "high-end" manufacturing, IT businesses, renewable energy and service companies will help the fleet of foot.  and, over time, "bottom fishing" and bargain hunting will make their presence felt as entrepreneurs pick their way through the rubble of distressed sales and failures. The wheel of the business cycle will turn, but it is set to be slow.  a faster speed at the Scottish Government's economic statistics department would help. Detailed Office for National Statistics (ONS) data for the economy UK-wide is already published. But second-quarter estimates for Scotland's economy will not be released until late October. and it may not be until next January that there is an official pronouncement of a recession that took hold the previous summer.  This is a ridiculous delay. No-one wants to make light of the complexity of economic statistics or that they require time to get right. But the regular spectacle of Scottish Government economists ambling in months behind their UK counterparts is now beyond a joke.  Given the seriousness of the situation we face, and the urgency that should attend official response to an economy facing material reversal, I again urge First Minister alex Salmond to give this matter his attention.  If the ONS can provide an early "flash estimate" indication of the course of the UK economy, several times the size of Scotland's, why is it that St andrew's House cannot at least match this for the economy here? Until it does, we might as well consign the entire department to the refurbished National Museum to take its place beside the Millennium Clock to highlight this striking difference: when our economics clock hits 12 we won't hear the chimes till 25 past.  Good and timely data is vital to shape and reform official response. and it is equally vital for anyone doing business in Scotland. While the news at present may not be of the type that business and households would rush to hear and digest, it could make a significant difference to the national mood and to business confidence if we were told of an upturn as early as practicable. as matters stand, an official reading of recession would still be standing up to five months after we emerged from this state.  So what do the runes currently show? Official data for the UK economy in the second quarter showed a truly miserable performance: growth of just 0.2 per cent, following growth of 0.5 per cent in the first quarter.  Now we were quickly told that a clutch of special factors may have accounted for this poor reading. They included the Royal Wedding (extra bank holiday), the disruption to Japanese component supplies in the wake of the tsunami, and unseasonably warm weather. Without these, growth might have been 0.5 per cent higher. But special factors are at work in all quarters. and it would be wrong to imagine that the current third quarter might be entirely free of them.  How is Scotland faring? We won't know the estimates for the second quarter until late October, and the estimates for the current quarter until next January. But the figures for the first three months of the year were not good. These showed the economy in Scotland grew by just 0.1 per cent, well below the 0.5 per cent registered for the UK as a whole.  Now, if that underperformance relative to the UK persisted into the second quarter, it is likely that Scotland suffered negative growth in this period, the UK having managed just 0.2 per cent growth. as for the current quarter, the bulk of survey data has been negative. There are some honourable exceptions to this, but not many.  and it has been the range and depth of these poor business confidence and data surveys tha  
 I have never been a fan of museums. all those dusty cabinets full of ancient artefacts dug up by someone long dead have never held any fascination for me. as a child I was dragged around many and never really enjoyed the largely static experience.  Then, finding myself with two pre-schoolers to amuse on a rainy day, I was eventually tempted in to what was then the Royal Museum of Edinburgh. Up the steps we went, into the Victorian grand hall where the airy surroundings and the fish ponds were just the start of a captivating few hours. In the children's innocence - and their lack of knowledge about  
 THERE are just a few days before the majority SNP Government launches its grand new economic strategy, but Enterprise Minister Fergus Ewing manages to squeeze in a few prosaic appointments.  While advisers and aides spend Thursday frantically putting the finishing touches to the department's master plan - ahead of its launch in Edinburgh tomorrow - Ewing nips out to address the World Plumbing Conference which opened in the capital that day.  The Loretto educated solicitor points out how these types of conventions, which attract an international audience, have put both Edinburgh and Glasgow on the map as key "business tourism" destinations.  Ewing inherited the Energy, Enterprise and Tourism brief from Jim Mather four months ago and he has made a point of getting out and about to address conferences and meet businesses across Scotland. He boasts that in July alone, he made 77 visits, making a day in parliament almost restful even if he does have to dash off to First Minister's Questions (FMQs).  although Ewing is a former small business owner himself, those visits have been crucial in getting the former Community Safety Minister up to speed with the major challenges confronting Scotland's enterprises ahead of tomorrow's big launch.  The economic strategy could not come at a more critical time. Last week saw a raft of negative data pointing to a serious slow-down in the UK economy in the third quarter of the year, including the worst monthly performance for a decade by the key services sector in august. Oil and gas production also dipped 1.5 per cent in July. The Scottish outlook is similarly bleak. The economy expanded by just 0.1 per cent in the first three months of the year compared with 0.5 per cent growth for the whole of the UK.  Ewing cautions against an over-emphaisis on statistics. His visits to businesses around the country have "given me a hugely positive picture of the economy", he says.  "There's another way to form a judgment and that's by going out and listening to and engaging with businesses and also our universities, who are increasingly playing a more important part in business in all sorts of ways."  He may also point to numerous success stories among Scottish companies - Weir Group, aggreko, Craneware and Cupid. Nevertheless, Ewing has to concede that growth drives the economy and will determine the success of his own government.  "Plainly these are difficult times," he admits before entering into the SNP's well-honed arguments about Scotland's reduced settlement from Westminster and the "mismanagement" of the economy in the past, "notably by Gordon Brown".  But the Scottish Government does have some levers at its disposal and tomorrow's strategy is designed breathe optimism into a private-sector that is struggling with a worsening macro-economic outlook and poor consumer confidence.  So what does Ewing believe will help Scotland's economy out of the doldrums and on to a firmer footing?  He argues that renewable energy, which for several years was more of a "theoretical debate", has started to translate into real jobs and investment.  ScottishPower-owner Iberdrola, Scottish & Southern Energy, Mitsubishi and Spanish firm Gamesa are among the major multi-nationals that have thrown their weight behind Scotland's burgeo  
 FIRST Minister alex Salmond set out yet again last week his solution to our economic ills: "Time for Plan B". He has called on the UK government to relax the deficit reduction programme and find resources for more capital spending and infrastructure works.  So far, these calls have met with little public scrutiny or questioning. all of this begs the question: were "Plan B" as straightforward and effortless as it sounds, why is it not being adopted?  "Blocked by the blind obstinacy of the London government" is the immediate retort. It is one with the added convenience of closing down discussion on two black holes that lie at the heart of the Plan B case. One is immediate: the doubts it raises over the administration's grasp of the financial crisis and events in Europe. The second is the black hole that lies ahead for the SNP in its pursuit of "independence".  The advocacy of Plan B has proceeded by virtue of the omission of some key numbers. You will find little reference in the First Minister's statements to the size and implication of the debt and deficit totals we currently face. In fact, there is nowhere in the Scottish budget a reference to these totals or to Scotland's share of these.  These are no mere abstractions but lie at the heart of the current cutbacks. For reference, the figures are as follows: the UK budget deficit this year is forecast at GBP122 billion or 7.9 per cent of GDP. The UK net public debt for 2011-12 is GBP1,046 bn or 66 per cent of GDP. and the annual debt interest charge is currently GBP48.6bn. Scotland's proximate pro rata share of this, based on its population share, is GBP11bn for the deficit, GBP101bn for the debt and GBP4.5bn for the annual interest bill.  I mention these not just because of the direct relevance to Scotland's budget situation but also because they are critical to public understanding of what we are up against and the choices that we face. Do we wish to incur more debt or pay it down? Bear a greater or lesser annual debt interest charge?  Insofar as we can make choices, let's make informed ones and not pretend that we are somehow immune from the struggle across the Western world to bring debt and deficit totals under control - never popular, I concede, in democracies that have been perverted by political appeals based on ever rising spending and borrowing.  This is the burden bearing down on us, just as similar debt and deficit burdens are bearing down on the governments of Eurozone countries, threatening default and possible expulsion from the single currency. It is this debt and deficit burden that is confronting continental Europe with the most painful and profoundly worrying problems in its post-war history. The debate in Scotland about "Plan a" or "Plan B" is an integral part of this crisis and is not somehow immune or unaffected by it.  It is to relieve the UK debt burden that the coalition government put in hand a five-year deficit reduction programme. and it is by virtue of this programme that the UK has so far successfully avoided a flight out of government bonds.  Plan a has also brought the immediate and tangible benefit of the lowest interest rates on government debt funding in living memory. Maturing debt can now be replaced at lower interest cost.  This benefit is the direct result of market confidence - so far - that the UK government will stick with the programme to bring these debt and deficit totals down. This is a critical constraint that does not apply to the SNP administration. It has no bond market breathing down its neck asking awkward questions about how a Plan B might be funded, how existing debt and deficits will be brought down and requiring assurance that budget discipline will be met - and debt honoured.  Nor in its Plan B does there appear to be any recognition of the need for action by the Holyrood administration to reform the public sector and raise productivity.  What of the criticism that the deficit reduction programme is deepening the economic slowdown by cutting public spending and reducing numbers employed in the public sector? Here there is room for genuine argument. But there is another feature of Plan a seldom mentioned in the First Minister's critique. It does allow for growth measures. These were ably spelt out last week by the Bu  
 aLEX Salmond last night showed his determination to take on the UK Government when he launched a blistering attack on David Cameron and declared that the respect agenda between London and Edinburgh was now "dead".  The SNP leader claimed that the Prime Minister did not understand Scotland and signalled that any Westminster-based attempt to take over the independence referendum would be fiercely resisted.  In his keynote speech to the party faithful at the SNP conference, Salmond said that "no London politician" would "determine the future of the Scottish nation".  "The Prime Minister should hear this loud and clear," Salmond said. "The people of Scotland - the sovereign people of Scotland - are now in the driving seat. The days of Westminster politicians telling Scotland what to do or what to think are over. The Scottish people will set the agenda for the future."  Salmond claimed that the promise made by Cameron when he came to power to set an "agenda of respect" that would see Westminster and the Scottish Parliament work in partnership was now meaningless.  as he did so, he also ridiculed the UK Government's Scotland Bill that was intended to give the Scottish Parliament more teeth.  "The UK Government haven't even gone through the motions of considering the views of the Scottish Government. The respect agenda lies dead in their throats."  George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny alexander were also singled out by the First Minister as he attacked the UK Coalition's attempts to wrestle with the independence issue. "They have formed a Cabinet sub-committee to attack Scottish independence," Salmond said.  "Let's get this right. Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and alexander sit in a committee working out how to do down Scotland and they engage in this while the European monetary system teeters on the brink of collapse, while the jobless total in England is at a 20-year high and inflation more than double its target.  "Th  
 SCOTLaND'S businesses would adjust comfortably if the country eventually voted for independence, the head of a prominent lobby group is set to tell members this week.  Simon Walker, who took over as director general of the Institute of Directors this month, is also set to use a conference in St andrews to call for the UK government to go further with its controversial austerity programme.  Speaking to Scotland on Sunday ahead of Friday's meeting, Walker said he was relaxed about the possibility of Scotland becoming independent.  He cited the example of lower corporate taxes in Ireland that could be replicated in Scotland to the advantage of the business community.  "It's for the people of Scotland to decide," Walker said. "If they want independence, I'm sure business will adjust. If it leads to the sort of tax competition that has made Ireland such a ma  
 IT WaS a bright but cool October sun that came out to shine on alex Salmond's presentation at the Nigg Yard on the Cromarty Firth. although the long-awaited deal to sell the former fabrication yard to Global Energy had been signed the week before, the First Minister was particularly gratified to see Nigg, a key part of the SNP government's vision for jumpstarting a GBP30 billion offshore renewables industry, move closer to its realisation.  Salmond met the site's new owner, Roy MacGregor, the executive chairman of the Inverness-based Global Energy Group, who not only reckons he's a descendent of Rob Roy but also believes that Nigg will be one of the first places in Scotland to manufacture the massive turbines required to build the offshore windfarms that will produce 40 per cent of the UK's renewable energy. With other ports and yards jostling for turbine-related investment, he's out to convince the market's leading players that Nigg is their best bet.  The deal wasn't easy to do. Jointly owned by an american industrial conglomerate, KBR, and an Oxford don, the site had been mothballed for a decade. In its heyday the site employed 5,000 building oil rigs for the North Sea, its sheltered position ideal for working so close to weather roughened seas.  "It wasn't an easy transaction but in the end we managed to understand a multinational mindset as well as that of a Scottish professor working at Oxford University," says MacGregor. "He wanted his asset protected and carefully managed. at the end of the day the chemistry between the three parties was right whereas before that it wasn't right."  MacGregor says the whole process took about 16 months since interested parties were invited to bid for the site and its sale to Global Energy. Before that Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) had attempted to force a sale through a compulsory purchase order.  Global Energy funded the acquisition - for an undisclosed price - through its own retained earnings and a little debt supplied by Lloyds Banking Group.  The firm is young, but massive. It has 40 different facilities, 18 in the Cromarty Firth, 11 in aberdeen, another seven in Fife. adding Nigg to the firm's operations turns them into the biggest fabricator in the UK, more than double the size of its nearest rivals.  He says he expects his firm to take advantage of a massive increase in investment in the offshore oil and gas sector but renewables is also a major part of his agenda. "The First Minister is driving it very hard. This is the biggest and best facility in the UK to do that. It is five times the size of the facility at Bifab in Fife. as we get bigger turbines offshore and more fabrication facilities to build these turbines, it needs a lot of land with deep water. and Nigg has that."  Scottish Enterprise is currently evaluating up to four major investments by foreign manufacturers of wind turbines that are set to benefit from a GBP70 million National Renewables Infrastructure Fund (NRIF). These are understood to include Spain's Gamesa, Japan's Mitsubishi as well as South Korea's Samsung and Doosan.  The enterprise agency is remaining tight-lipped about what is being evaluated, although three of the four major wind turbine manufacturers have recently been dipping their toes in Scottish waters and making hopeful noises.  allan McQuade, director of business infrastructure at Scottish Enterprise said: "There is strong market interest in the ports outlined in the National Renewables Infrastructure Plan. We are in negotiation with the port owners, existing account managed companies, potential inward investors and other partners on options which will unlock investment. We anticipate that announcements will be forthcoming in the next couple of months."  Last month Gamesa, which is part-owned by ScottishPower's owner, Iberdrola, opened its GBP12.5m technology centre in Bellshill and is deliberating whether to establish a manufacturing plant in Dundee - on a proposed site owned by Forth Ports - or in Hartlepool.  Last December, Mitsubishi Power systems Europe also promised to base a GBP100m centre for advanced technology, and that this too could lead to the establishment of a manufacturing site. Its location was indicated generally as being "somewhere" in the Lothians, with the understanding that Forth Port's property in Leith was a serious contender. The firm also announced its acquisition of Loanhead-based hydraulic drive technology firm, artemis Intelligent Power.  a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi declined to comment, but said that any announcements about its R&D hub were "a long way off".  The third firm to flirt with Salmond's GBP70m NRIF pot was Doosan Babcock. In March, the government announced it had entered a memorandum of understanding that Doosan would establish a renewables R&D centre at its existing plant in Renfrewshire, but that this, too, could lead to eventually establishing a turbine manufacturing operation in Scotland representing an investment of GBP170m.  MacGregor for one is confident that his site will prove more attractive than other sites - particularly those of arcus-owned Forth Ports - that are attempting to lure the manufacturers. He expects to seal a deal as early as the first quarter of 2012.  "Both Gamesa and Mitsubishi have been in our facility in the last week," says MacGregor.  "There are four major manufacturing R&D projects going in Scotland right now - Gamesa, Mitsubishi, Samsung and Doosan.  "They are all circling around the number of ports to find out where would the best location be to site a turbine manufacturing facility. No decisions have been made but we hope that Nigg will eventually land one of them.  "This site is ready to go. all the others require planning permissions. It will take half the time to get it up and running at Nigg. The disadvantage of Nigg until a week ago is it wasn't on the market.  "When we didn't own it we had all these manufacturers on the site three or four times. Since we have owned it demand has gone through the roof. That change in ownership is what the industry wanted." Niall Stuart, the chief executive of the Scottish Renewables Forum, says: "It is a very strategic site and meets all the criteria required for large-scale manufacturing, which is why it would have been a tragedy if it had been prevented from happening over land ownership."  But the rivalry between the seven sites outlined in the Scottish Government's National Renewable Infrastructure Plan (NRIP) - three will be major manufacturing sites - is now hotter.  Since being acquired by the infrastructure fund arcus, Forth Ports has radically shifted its plans for the Port of Leith, scrapping long-term plans for mixed use development and green space to make way for a wind turbine manufacturing and R&D facility as well as a biomass combined heat and power plant.  In Dundee, similar plans involving a biomass plant and 60 acres of land alongside the port have long been considered ideal for offshore renewables development.  Charles Hammond, the chief executive of Forth Ports, insists he is not worried about the competition and says that demand for landing in Leith and Dundee is fierce. "I wouldn't say I see this as a race," he says. "We are experiencing a large volume of renewables enquiries, particularly for Dundee but also for Leith.  "The NRIP plan said the two best locations for renewables were Leith and Dundee. The reason for that is there is access to a skills base, deep water and land availability together.  "Given the volume of interested parties we have got, I would feel confident we will play a significant part in renewables development.  "What is important here is we build a sustainable supply chain for the next 20 years plus. That involves talking to developers, manufacturers, and making sure all of that works together well."  Forth Ports is also understood to be working closely with Edinburgh Council and Scottish Enterprise on a funding package from the NRIF pot to look at widening the loch entrance as part of works to ensure the site is ready for an investor to move in.  But this week the Scottish Government is expected to complicate Forth Ports' plans for large scale biomass electricity plants, which the company wants to see taking a major role in the industrial facilities earmarked for both its sites. already plans for the plants, particular in Edinburgh have met with fierce opposition from local residents.  Tomorrow, energy minister Fergus Ewing will meet his counterpart in Westminster, Charles Hendry, in order to persuade him to "rethink" investment support for biomass electricity on the grounds that supplying so much wood for electricity production on its own is unsustainable.  a Scottish Government spokesman insists this will not rule out the plants in Edinburgh and Dundee which are still in the process of getting planning permission.  Hammond says that the proposed energy plants already meet the Scottish Government's latest expectations that any biomass plants should provide electricity as well as heat.  Hammond says: "We are happy with the prospective thermal efficiency of the plants we are proposing. If you look at the government renewable heat target by 2020, biomass could make a significant contribution to the heat target."  But difficulties with the biomass plants on the east coast pale in comparison to the anger among the local community at Peel Ports' development of a new coal-fired plant at Hunterston, which has received more objections than any other development in Scottish planning history, according to an environmental charity.  But the power plants will be necessary to support the necessary expansion of Scotland's manufacturing industry if the country is to be able to meet Salmond's ambitious vision for the offshore renewable energy industry.  For the wider array of sites listed in Scotland's NRIP there are opportunities in the unproven but promising tidal and wave energy technologies, in addition to turbine manufacturing support, services and assembly.  Global Energy has built five existing tidal machines being trialled in Orkney, and MacGregor expects a further 400 machines will be built, a GBP2.2bn investment.  Engineering entrepreneur Jim McColl has said he intends to manufacture turbine transmission systems in Huddersfield with assembly to be carried out in Scotland.  For his part, MacGregor, who has built his GBP250m company in just six years, says the offshore renewables industry presents a major opportunity for engineering and manufacturing in Scotland.  "Scotland is the most innovative place in the world but sometimes we hide it. Look at what we have invented - television and the phone. Scotland has got to wake up and don't hide its light under a bushel."  East coast cluster  Leith: Forth Ports/arcus is planning to turn 158 hectares of land into a manufacturing site potentially for Mitsubishi, to be powered by a large-scale biomass plant.  Dundee: also owned by Forth Ports, is one of the potential sites being considered by Gamesa. Plans for a large-scale biomass plant are currently on hold subject to environmental impact assessment.  Energy Park Fife: The former Kvaerner oil fabrication yard on 54 hectares at Methil is a joint venture between Scottish Enterprise and Fife Council, which has submitted a plan to raise GBP17m through tax incremental financing. also home to Bifab Methil site.  Northern cluster  Nigg: a 96-hectare site that is already dedicated to fabrication, with extensive  
 FROZEN PLaNET  BBC1 Wednesday 9pm  SPOOKS  BBC1 Sunday 9pm  THE SLaP  BBC4 Thursday 10pm  IT'S 18 years since Sir David attenborough's Life In The Freezer but one stunning image has stayed with me: that of a penguin narrowly escaping becoming lunch for a psychotic porpoise. as it hirpled back on to the ice, white front spattered with blood, barnet askew, Pingu looked like young George Osborne in full Bullingdon Club attire after a town vs gown altercation with local yobs (though, of course, back in 1993, George was not yet known to the wider world and may still have been calling himself Gideon).  Frozen Planet returned Sir David to minus 70C temperatures for a look at life, and the obligatory sex and death, at both poles. He's never been north before but some of the opener felt quite familiar, though that's probably down to previous attenboroughs being so brilliantly vivid and this palpable truth: there are only so many ways to skin a penguin. Everyone remembers the killer whale vacuuming up a beachful of seals in Life On Earth; here a gang of them toyed with Sammy on its lonesome on a crumbling floe before dragging the exhausted animal to the depths.  Improved filming techniques enable Sir David to describe the killings in ever-finer detail. Great, if that's what rocks your floe. Is it just me or does this series feature more death than earlier ones? Maybe satellite channel fang-fests of gorillas being eaten by crocs which are flattened by heffalumps which are killed by lions before a python swallows everything whole have caused the BBC's Natural History Unit to up the gore score. But it could be just me, for I've always been jessie-ish about depictions of the animal kingdom's natural order.  Incredible footage all the same. In an ungodly Roger Dean snowscape (none more ungodly, as all prog-rock fans know), I followed those wolves right up to   
 SCOTLaND should have its own time zone if it does not want to fall in line with the rest of the UK over permanently moving the clocks forward by one hour, according to a leading Tory MP.  The UK Government insists proposals to put the clock forward to provide lighter evenings all year round would only go ahead with the support of the devolved administrations, but the SNP has already declared its opposition to the move, saying there is "no case" for a change.  However, supporters of a three-year-experiment to provide an extra hour of daylight say that it should not be vetoed by the Scots. Tim Yeo, the Conservative chairman of the Commons energy and climate change committee, said there was "no good reason" why Scotland could not have a different time zone.  "Many other countries have two time zones, there are different time zones all over Europe and there are three in the United States," said Yeo, who has previously put forward draft legisla  
 IF THE BBC were to commission CBeebies to investigate the rapid rise in energy bills over the last few years, it would get a more thorough report than that churned out by Panorama.  Much has been said about the decline of the once peerless Panorama in recent years. a distinguished reputation for forensic investigations into issues that TV otherwise skims over has been tarnished by a series of unbalanced reports that would have embarrassed the Beeb's children's channel.  Last Monday was perhaps a new low, when the programme's probe into rising energy bills contrived to ignore the biggest factor driving them up: wholesale gas prices.  anyone would have thought the oil and gas industry had been given editorial control, such was the focus on the impact of renewables on energy bills.  There are numerous reasons why we're bracing for the biggest energy bills on record over the winter. Renewables are a factor, as Panorama was at pains to point out, yet only one of many.  If there's one thing that suppliers, the regulator and independent analysts agree on, it's that higher wholesale gas prices have been the biggest single influence on energy bills in recent years.  Ofgem has estimated that wholesale costs are responsible for more than half our energy bills, with the recent spike caused by a surge in global oil and gas prices.  The disagreements start from that base, thanks to the failure of suppliers to reflect changing wholesale costs in domestic energy tariffs.  The BBC's agenda is anyone's guess, but an investigation into the energy market that fails to examine the tendency of the big six to raise their tariffs at the same time and by the same amounts - even while they pay different rates for their wholesale supply - is a waste of time.  BTL hits first-timers  THE summer green shoots in the Scottish housing market may be as good as it gets for this year, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors talking of an "early hibernation" after activity slipped last month.  But one area of the housing market is thriving - buy-to-let (BTL). Lenders advanced 46 per cent more in loans to BTL landlords in the last quarter than in the same period last year, while the number of loans given jumped by almost 40 per cent over the year. and with the squeeze on first-time buyers set to push demand for rental accommodation for some time yet, the BTL market is in the midst of a mini-boom.  No one can blame those with surplus cash and struggling to secure income from other sources for buying up first-time buyer properties to let out. But as BTL bounces back, the return to health of the wider housing market becomes more distant.  For those hoping to get a foothold on the property ladder, signs of a BTL revival are bad news. Firstly, investment landlords are helping support property prices at a time when they need to fall further to give more first-time buyers a chance of saving the deposits needed. and, as in the housing boom of the mid-noughties, homes that would typically be marketed towards first-timers are being snapped up by landlords, reducing the already limited stock of cheaper properties on the market.  So even more would-be buyers are renting for longer and trying to save the   
 ENERGY regulator Ofgem is poised to hand the Scottish renewables sector a substantial benefit by lowering the cost of transmitting the power generated from wind and wave technology.  The proposal, contained in a paper seen by Scotland on Sunday, would mean huge savings for green energy companies and make Scotland more attractive to investors.  a 32-page report produced for Ofgem by consultancy firm Redpoint Energy, will go out for consultation early next month and has already encouraged lobbyists to expect the cost of transmission to come down.  Sign  
 RENEWaBLES firm Pelamis Wave Power is searching for a "strategic partner" that will allow it to become a large-scale manufacturer of marine energy devices.  The Leith-based company, known for its "sea snake" technology, announced in September that it had hired Ernst & Young to conduct a review of the business and to explore growth options.  But new chief executive Per Hornung Pedersen, who was appointed from German wind turbine manufacturer REpower Systems last month, told Scotland on Sunday that this review would centre around the search for a new funding "partner" capable of taking the 13-year-old company "to the next stage".  "Pelamis is actually on the edge of going to the next level," Pedersen said. "You can also say we are going to have some different owners in there."  Pedersen said that until now Pelamis had primarily been a research and development company. although it has sold wave machines to several major energy firms, it needed to become a "manufacturer on a different scale".  It would also need to team up with a larger company that had the experience and ability to carry out functions such as marketing on a much wider scale, Pederson added.  When asked if the changes in ownership would involve a sale or takeover of the business, he said: "The phrase... is strategic partner."  Negotiations with potential funders are due to commence shortly and Pedersen hinted that he hoped to speak to several companies headquartered in Scotland, saying: "I could also see a couple of Scottish companies that would be relevant."  Pelamis currently has contracts with ScottishPower Renewables and E.ON. Its shareholders include Emerald Technology Ventures, Norsk Hydro Technology Ventures, BlackRock Investment Managers, 3i, Carbon Trust, Nettuno Power, Tudor BVI Global Portfolio and Scottish Enterprise.  The latest accounts for the firm, filed recently at Companies House, show it made a loss before finance charges and taxation of almost GBP1.5 million in 2010 on turnover of GBP5.1m.  But the company also warns that at the "date of approval" of the accounts, which were signed off on 31 October, it had a cash balance of GBP1m, unaudited net liabilities of GBP2.6m and had "insufficient secured funding to continue as a going concern".  Pedersen said this was "normal" for a technology developer such as Pelamis and the company had plenty of cause for optimism.  The accounts state that among other developments, discussions with customers for "substantial" future orders were "well-progressed".  RENEWaBLES firm Pelamis Wave Power is searching for a "strategic partner" that will allow it to become a large-scale manufacturer of marine energy devices.  The Leith-based company, known for its "sea snake" technology, announced in September that it had hired Ernst & Young to conduct a review of the business and to explore growth options.  But new chief executive Per Hornung Pedersen, who was appoi  
 aRE you celebrating Universal Children's Day? What do you mean you had no idea it was happening? If you're a parent, every day is probably children's day. Noisy children's day, cute children's day, messy children's day and so on. If you're a 30-something woman who remains childless, like me, Children's Day has probably set you wondering if there's enough time to create a Walton's-style brood of loveable offspring.  Ever since the UN announcement a few weeks back that the world's population has swollen beyond seven billion, talking heads galore have been wading in with their tuppence-worth about the connection between population and the environment. My interpretation of their combined natterings is that it's not the big families of developing countries that pose the real threat to the planet, it's the resource-guzzling little misses and misters of the West. This notion is fuelled by studies that show having a child is the naughtiest thing you can do in terms of a carbon footprint.  Two years ago, research by the Oregon State University concluded that in the USa, the greenhouse gas impact of a child is 20 times more influential than any other factors, such as driving a gas-guzzling vehicle. These sorts of stats have led some environmentalists to proclaim that they will remain child-free so as not to f  
 He may be one of the original hippies - imprisoned 40 years ago for conspiracy to pervert the course of public morals as one of the "Oz Three" - but today, Felix Dennis, the maverick publisher, is breaking ground again. Together with cutting-edge architects Glenn Howells he has planned what could possibly be described as the most extraordinary new home in the country.  With a steeply pitched thatched roof and lime wash-rendered wattle and daub walls, at first sight the house, which will be set in 26 acres of woodland in Warwickshire, looks as though it could be the nostalgic reproduction of an ancient British chieftain's hut.  It will even use prehistoric insulation techniques such as a turf roof and wood-burning heating. Yet 21st-century materials and technologies, such as rainwater harvesting, a combined heat and power scheme and renewable energy systems, combine to make the building both carbon neutral and architecturally outstanding.  approval for the plans was given under the "PPS 7" rules for a landmark design and provides a rare exception to the rule banning development in rural areas.  James Way of agent Knight Frank (01789 297735), who is selling the site, called Blenheim Hall, with planning approval in place, says he has never seen anything like it. "It's a very large house, yet will tread lightly on the planet and virtually all the materials for building it will be sourced from the Dennis estate."  Dennis worked closely with the architects over a long time, testing and rejecting various models. He says everyone was determined "from the outset to create a spectacular house that would be as close to carbon neutral as was conceivable.  "Because Blenheim Hall is on a spectacular site on the brow of a hill we knew we would have to strive for a design that incorporates as many natural and local materials as possible, and that if we did so we would have a better chance of such a huge building sitting comfortably in its own skin. Not being an architect it's a miracle that this has been achieved," he says. The property will have a master suite, guest suite, staff quarters and luxurious leisure wing.  another futuristic "eco" house on an ancient British theme, this time designed around the earth-sheltered long-barrow idea, is also seeking planning permission under PPS 7. Wickfield House, designed by DSH architects for a plot near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, is designed to generate its own electricity, collect its own water and treat its own sewage. The home will feature a domed, turf-covered limecrete roof built from excavated stone from the site.  The design, which has not yet received permission, has attracted mixed comments, including the expected "Teletubby" criticism. architect Dan Stainer-Hutchins says the earth-sheltering is both paying homage to the Neolithic sites in the area and also, with the use of on-site natural materials, is an obvious choice for a low-carbon building. Plot and build costs start from ?600,000.  Large country houses are usually notoriously profligate in their energy use, which is why Blenheim Hall and the earth-sheltered dwelling, both designed on country house scale, are so unusual. Indeed, whatever the size, until very recently, good design and low carbon have not sat together well with architects, says John Christophers of associated architects, himself the proud architectural awards.  "You either get beautiful, profligate architecture or rather uninspiring 'eco' homes. I hope my house shows you can combine the two, " he says.  Very different to Blenheim Hall is John Christophers's modest four-bedroom end-of-terrace in Balsall Heath, Birmingham - but with some rather exciting extensions.  While the front of the 1840s red-brick semi has been largely unaltered, the side is extended with timber and render cubist boxes and the rear is modernist, its simple white render and deeply recessed windows reminiscent of Le Corbusier. The house is dizzying in aspect, but despite its avant-garde appearance, inside it is a lovely family home. With no bills.  "Even on a cold winter's day the hot water from the solar panels is a delightful 63 degrees," says John, who lives in the house with his wife Joe and five-year-old son Theo. "Despite all the technologies, you don't need a physics degree to run it - it flies by itself."  another futuristic eco house, this tim  
 Before I begin may I just make a delayed apology for any increase in VaT you might be having to fork out? I don't think VaT is actually payable on this article, and strictly speaking it wouldn't be my fault if it were, so it's an English sort of sorry, born of good manners rather than blame.  The word 'tax' comes from the Latin taxo meaning 'I estimate', which hardly seems a precise concept, but then it turned out the word 'prudence', which we spent a decade hearing about, was a rather looser term than had been supposed.  It was the ancient Egyptians who first thought of tax. Twice a year the pharaoh would tour the country gathering money. I like to think of him striding on stage at large venues wearing a range of dynastic merchandise while a slave bellowed: 'Good evening, Memphis! Let's give it up for the Pharaoh!'  apparently our VaT hike is needed because the country has run out of money. Now, I only know this because many trustworthy politicians have stated it as fact, but I haven't actually been to the bank to check. I know I didn't overspend. I'm not sitting at home with unopened boxes of flat screen televisions that I scooped up on a whim.  Perhaps the Coalition have been going mad with the Downing Street credit card insisting that they must have two of everything. The fact is I don't know how much money is missing. Truth has become a slippery fellow and you sometimes wonder if we aren't all the victims of a giant hoax. Perhaps there is plenty of cash in the government vaults and the extra tax is merely a slush fund for those poor bankers fallen on soft times.  I think it would be worth checking for we, the public, can be terrible mugs if we are not careful. It was today in 1749 that a riot took place at the Haymarket Theatre in London when the assembled throng (who had paid as much as 7s 6d to be present) realised they had been conned. an unknown person had taken out an advertisement declaring that 'he would, on the stage, get into a tavern quart bottle, without equivocation, and while there, sing several songs, and suffer any spectator to handle the bottle'. Even from here the only thing you can smell from the advertised 'quart bottle' is the noxious fumes given off by a mountebank yet that evening the place was packed with the good and the great, including the Duke of Cumberland still glowing from his triumph at Culloden.  apparently the duke was the first to get into a rage when the bottle-dwelling charlatan failed to appear. 'Butcher' Cumberland drew his sword and soon the theatre was in uproar and most of its contents demolished.  I'm not suggesting, as some do, that riots should be ? la mode, but perhaps we all need to be a tad more sceptical. I have a dreadful tendency to accept official statements.  I had always believed it, for example, when the FBI declared that Kate 'Ma' Barker (who died today in 1935) was a rare female mastermind in the public enemy era of american crime. It is true that Ma Barker had three boys who fairly rapidly turned to crime. What is not true, I recently read with regret, is that she had much to do with it. Indeed, the Barker boys probably took up naughtiness because  
 Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane's floods were made infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the obsession of the australian authorities with global warming. Inevitably, the country's warmist lobby has been voluble in cla  
 Is there to be no rest for us from blasted "ageism"? Just as "Global Warming" changed to "Climate Change" so giving some poor old TV presenter the elbow is now "Social Engineering". Producers who decide to dispense with the services of anybody over 50 can expect to be accused in open court of not only the aforementioned Pol Pot-type slur, but obsession with "ethnic diversity" and attempted "rejuvenation" into the bargain. The BBC has apologised cravenly to Miriam O'Reilly, and is now honour-bound to find her a job, probably for life.  Stand back! The floodgates are about to open, and here come Dame Joan Bakewell, anna Ford, Selina Scott, arlene Phillips and a hundred breakfast television presenters cruelly cast aside, sacrificed on the altar of youth.  I'm bound to say that Ms O'Reilly looked ver  
 Many people will think you are pulling their leg if you tell them that you can quite literally get cash for free. But you can - and millions of savvy savers are raking in the pounds every time they go shopping.  Lynn Nicholson was a doubter, too, until she looked at her bank statements over the past 12 months and was shocked to see that she missed out on ?718 in cashback from cashback websites.  Ms Nicholson, 31, does around 80pc of her shopping online. She missed out on ?232 cashback when she moved house in June and purchased a new home insurance policy from aviva, and signed up for new contracts with BT and Sky. Other retailers with missed cashback opportunities include Ryanair, Gap, Dorothy Perkins and Oasis.  She said: "With some money-saving websites you find you may actually spend more money just to save a few pounds. But I can see from my bank statements how I could have earned cash back with normal spending habits." Ms Nicholson said she would be signing up for a Quidco membership after seeing her potential savings.  She is not alone. Cashback websites are hugely popular and boast an estimated 2.3 million consumers. The sites list product providers and retailers that pay commission when shoppers click on their links. In turn, the cashback website passes on the commission to the consumer. Some retailers pay a fixed sum, while others pay a percentage of your spend.  The concept behind these websites is simple: each will pay a cash reward when you visit one of their retail partners via the site. all you do is sign up and provide your bank details. Membership costs about ?5 a year - although you will not be charged if you do not earn any cashback - so you really have nothing to lose.  To use the sites is relatively simple - register with the site and then, every time you buy online, visit the retailer via your chosen cashback operator rather than directly. The retailer typically pays a commission into your account at your cashback site, which in turn sends your cut direct to your nominated bank or PayPal account.  Here we look at the five biggest cashback websites.  1 QUIDCO  www.quidco.co.uk  With more than 2,842 retailers signed up, this is the biggest and highest-paying cashback website. You can earn ?70 when you buy car insurance from aviva or ?62 when you sign up for dual fuel at Scottish Power. Unlike other cashback websites, you can also earn money in stores. Simply register your credit or debit card details and every time you make a transaction at one of the partnered retailers the money is sent directly to your Quidco account. For instance, you can earn 4.5pc cashback at NCP car parks and Cineworld, and 2pc at Debenhams and B &Q.  You can also search for shopping vouchers and discount codes that can be entered into the retailer's website, so you receive the discount as well as the cashback.  2 TOP CaSHBaCK  www.topcashback.co.uk  This website boasts it offers the best earnings as it does not charge an annual fee. With 2,550 partners, Topcashback is the second biggest cashback website. Shoppers can earn ?120 if they take out an iPhone contract from Vodafone, or you can earn ?65 if you sign up for a Virgin Media entertainment bundle. Other examples include 8pc on online purchases at House of Fraser and 5pc on down  
 What an odd fellow is Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director for the lavishly-funded Grantham Institute on Climate Change at Colonel Gaddafi' s favourite British university, the LSE. Mr Ward seems to see it as one of his main roles to act as chief attack dog for the global warming industry, firing off incessant complaints, letters and articles savaging anyone who dares question its cherished dogmas.  On our letters page last week, he yet again took me to task for suggesting that autumn 2000 was not the wettest in south-west England since records began. But to make his point, he had to misquote what I said. What I referred to were the figures for maximum one-day rainfall. according to Met Office records, in November 1931 this was slightly higher, at 50.5mm, than the figure for October 2000, which was 49mm.  Mr Ward may be tireless in the ingenuity with which he tries to make his points, but it is uncanny how often he falls flat on his face. When he twice wasted untold hours of other people's time by hauling me (in vain) before the Press Complaints Commission, he triumphantly cited a chart which, he claimed, showed sea-levels around Tuvalu to have been rising. His chart in fact showed the very opposite, that sea levels in that part of the Pacific had been falling.  Mr Ward's most celebrated initiative, however, was the mammoth series of complaints he made to Ofcom, on behalf of "37 professors", against the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. Not one of his complaints about the film's contents did Ofcom uphold. 
 The scaremongers were certainly out in force last week, with talk of "meltdown" and claims that the Japanese nuclear power plant emergency threatened a disaster "worse than Chernobyl". There is, of course, no parallel with Chernobyl at all. The problem at Fukushima was not the explosion of a working nuclear reactor (all its reactors had been automatically shut down). The main problem was the lack of water to cool spent fuel rods. Even if the overheating rods caught fire, the worst-case scenario was never more than that some radioactive particles, given an unfavourable wind, might reach as far as Tokyo. There was never any chance that this could compare with Chernobyl, although even the long-term effects of that 1986 disaster, as it turned out, were very much less serious than scaremongers at the time predicted.  The excessive stockpiling of fuel rods at Fukushima only arose because pressure from anti-nuclear groups has made the safe dispersal of nuclear waste so difficult. But the effects of this unique accident on the renewed drive for the nuclear energy that the world so desperately needs may be seriously damaging. In the forefront of those countries which have now responded by closing down reactors or abandoning plans for new ones is Germany, where angela Merkel was booed in the Bundestag for suggesting that we should move on to "the age of renewable energy as soon as possible". at least here in Britain our energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has so far refrained from saying anything so fatuous; although how he is going to persuade our German and French-owned electricity companies to build the nuclear power plants needed to keep Britain's lights on will be more of a puzzle than ever.  almost the only feature of our 32-page Census form that one commentator said he couldn't object to was its references to "same-sex civil partnerships". But could he not at least have wondered why it was necessary to mention them no fewer than 45 times? 
 With the eyes of the world watching, Japanese soldiers and workers continue to battle to keep the six nuclear reactors at Fukushima from meltdown.  The most technologically advanced nation in the world has been forced to resort to using police water cannons and buckets of water hurled from helicopters to cool exposed fuel rods. authorities admit they may have to bury the plant in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic release of radiation.  The frightening situation is far from resolved, but the crisis has already sent shockwaves through global energy markets.  The dangers of nuclear power have been thrown into the spotlight - halting building projects all over the world; while the third largest economy in the world is desperately importing fossil fuels just to turn the lights back on after the earthquake ripped through the power supply, leaving 1.3 million people without electricity.  In the short term, the need for energy has dropped as factories sit idle and there is little movement around the country.  But that will change rapidly as the reconstruction effort begins. Leo Drollas, chief economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, says: "Imagine all the girders needed to rebuild houses, cement for the flyways that have been destroyed, shipping fleets rebuilt, steel going into the trawlers."  Japan has shut down 11 nuclear reactors in four different power plants. With talk of burying the Fukushima plant, it seems likely that at least six of those are lost for good. The question then is, what will replace them?  The country has more than 50 nuclear reactors - one in ten of the world's total - squeezed on to its geologically unstable, densely populated land mass. Drollas says: "Obviously in Japan, there will be a major rethink."  But it is not just Japan. German Chancellor angela Merkel has already said she will close seven of the country's 17 nuclear plants; while China has put its plans to build 110 new reactors on hold.  Mark Lewis, head of energy research at Deutsche Bank, says: "The obvious beneficiary of all of this is gas. If you want to build new power stations with relatively low emissions, the advantage of gas is that it's much cleaner than coal, you can build it within three years, and it is ideal to build in conjunction with renewable capacity."  Gas works well as a back-up for alternative fuels such as wind or solar, because its output can be altered quickly as levels of renewable output change.  Liquefied natural gas prices shot up 15pc to peak on Wednesday, dropping back slightly by the end of the week.  Coal will also enjoy a renaissance if nuclear's future is defined by the ongoing Japanese situation, even though this could have disastrous effects for the environment as coal emits one tonne of CO2 for every megawatt of power that it generates, compared with nuclear, which emits no CO2.  Subsequently, the cost of carbon surged this week to its highest level since 2008.  These prevailing forces will boost the market for renewable power. as fossil fuels get more expensive, alternative energy needs less subsidies.  But, argue nuclear advocates, the world cannot build renewable capacity fast enough. Kevin McCullough, chief operating officer of RWE npower, the German-owned company seeking to develop two nuclear power stations in the UK, said: "We mustn't forget about climate change, the impending UK energy gap and the need to keep bills affordable. None of those challenges has gone away.  "No one source of energy can deliver all that, even if you take the most optimistic view of energy effi-ciency gains. The country needs new nuclear as part of its mix and we must focus on delivering that with safety as the priority."  Safety is, of course, the sticking point. Nuclear power was only just emerging from the shadow cast by the catastrophic explosion in Chernobyl in 1986. Now Fukushima has given critics the ammunition they need to urge governments to halt their nuclear ambitions. although this crisis has been much less severe than Chernobyl, commentators say it is worse for the industry as it happened at a modern reactor in a first world country.  Barclays commodity analysts said the Japanese nuclear plants were constructed with an extremely high level of technological sophistication to withstand earthquakes, with safety mechanisms including a tsunami wall.  In response to these safety concerns, the Nuclear Industry association (NIa) came out fighting. NIa spokesman John Mcnamara said: "Effectively that power station shut down safely. When the earthquake struck, the station shut down and the safety systems kicked in. Obviously there are going to be learning points about the strength of the tsunami."  around the world, governments have ordered reviews of nuclear programmes, to "learn the lessons" from the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.  In the UK, Liberal Democrat Energy Minister Chris Huhne commissioned a report from chief nuclear officer Mike Weightman.  The UK has 10 existing power stations, nine of which are scheduled to close by 2023. The previous Labour-led Government committed in 2006 to building a new generation of plants and eight sites have so far been shortlisted for replacement. But final investment decisions have not yet been made. as Deutsche's Lewis points out: "No-one is close to the stage where they can start pouring concrete into the ground. This is going to push the timeframe back further still."  He says it is inevitable that the cost of nuclear power will go up. "The amount of capital investment required to build a nuclear power station to the level needed for public confidence will be greater. and the perceived risk will go up, so the cost of financing it will go up. On an economic level it makes nuclear less competitive."  Funding a nuclear power station is particularly risky in the UK, where the energy market has been liberalised.  "all the nuclear power stations in the UK were built before electricity markets were liberalised," says Lewis. "You would expect to recover your cost because of the price of electricity. Liberalisation changes the game completely."  Chris Huhne, energy and climate change secretary, has admitted there is an "ongoing potential risk" that investors will lose appetite for nuclear power in the UK following the crisis.  anecdotal evidence suggests his fears may be realised. Gerard Reid, cleantech research analyst at investment bank Jefferies, says: "From the investor community, the energy funds I am speaking to, not alternative energy funds but funds who have had complete '360s' on this and were   
 What an odd fellow is Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director for the lavishly-funded Grantham Institute on Climate Change at Colonel Gaddafi' s favourite British university, the LSE. Mr Ward seems to see it as one of his main roles to act as chief attack dog for the global warming industry, firing off incessant complaints, letters and articles savaging anyone who dares question its cherished dogmas.  On our letters page last week, he yet again took me to task for suggesting that autumn 2000 was not the wettest in south-west England since records began. But to make his point, he had to misquote what I said. What I referred to were the figures for maximum one-day rainfall. according to Met Office records, in November 1931 this was slightly higher, at 50.5mm, than the figure for October 2000, which was 49mm.  Mr Ward may be tireless in the ingenuity with which he tries to make his points, but it is uncanny how often he falls flat on his face. When he twice wasted untold hours of other people's time by hauling me (in vain) before the Press Complaints Commission, he triumphantly cited a chart which, he claimed, showed sea-levels around Tuvalu to have been rising. His chart in fact showed the very opposite, that sea levels in that part of the Pacific had been falling.  Mr Ward's most celebrated initiative, however, was the mammoth series of complaints he made to Ofcom, on behalf of "37 professors", against the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. Not one of his complaints about the film's contents did Ofcom uphold. 
 The scaremongers were certainly out in force last week, with talk of "meltdown" and claims that the Japanese nuclear power plant emergency threatened a disaster "worse than Chernobyl". There is, of course, no parallel with Chernobyl at all. The problem at Fukushima was not the explosion of a working nuclear reactor (all its reactors had been automatically shut down). The main problem was the lack of water to cool spent fuel rods. Even if the overheating rods caught fire, the worst-case scenario was never more than that some radioactive particles, given an unfavourable wind, might reach as far as Tokyo. There was never any chance that this could compare with Chernobyl, although even the long-term effects of that 1986 disaster, as it turned out, were very much less serious than scaremongers at the time predicted.  The excessive stockpiling of fuel rods at Fukushima only arose because pressure from anti-nuclear groups has made the safe dispersal of nuclear waste so difficult. But the effects of this unique accident on the renewed drive for the nuclear energy that the world so desperately needs may be seriously damaging. In the forefront of those countries which have now responded by closing down reactors or abandoning plans for new ones is Germany, where angela Merkel was booed in the Bundestag for suggesting that we should move on to "the age of renewable energy as soon as possible". at least here in Britain our energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has so far refrained from saying anything so fatuous; although how he is going to persuade our German and French-owned electricity companies to build the nuclear power plants needed to keep Britain's lights on will be more of a puzzle than ever.  almost the only feature of our 32-page Census form that one commentator said he couldn't object to was its references to "same-sex civil partnerships". But could he not at least have wondered why it was necessary to mention them no fewer than 45 times? 
 WHEN GEORGE Osborne sits down at the despatch box just after 1pm on Wednesday lunchtime after delivering his second Budget, the eyes of the business world will not be on him. Nor will they be on the age-old red case from which his speech sprang forth, nor even on Ed Balls as he delivers his riposte.  No, all eyes will be on the "Red Book", the 100-page-plus budget document published in print and online by the Treasury the moment the Chancellor sits down. It was that document for example, which, at last October's spending review, revealed details of the ?1bn green "stealth" tax in spite of Osborne making no mention of it in his speech. and it was also in that document two years earlier that alistair Darling hid a ?250m tax evasion push that again did not figure in the then-Chancellor's speech.  as ever with the annual take on the state of the nation's finances, the devil will be in the detail. It will be that detail which will really explain how much pain or gain will be meted out to the business world.  Osborne has said he wants this Budget to be one about "reform" rather that "rescue". He wants to make it a "Budget for growth", mapping out how the Government will support the private sector and create the employment and the profits needed for a healthy economy.  Business will be watching warily - will any of their demands have been listened to? Will Osborne get it right?  One of the big-ticket items from business is a call for tax reform. Osborne is known to be looking at whether it is possible to bring together income tax and national insurance, although Treasury sources said the issue was "very complicated" and any fundamental changes will probably only be achieved over a series of Budgets.  Treasury officials also say that the Chancellor wants to see a much simpler tax system with more generous allowances and fewer exemptions. The reform of VaT, condemned by the OECD as one of the most inefficient taxes in the UK because of its myriad of exemptions and low rates, will be left for another time.  The Institute of Directors has demanded a commitment to abolishing the 50pc top rate of tax by the end of the current parliament and an extension of the reduction of corporation tax to 15pc by 2020.  The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has called for an end to over-bureaucratic government red tape, calling over-regulation "one of the most burdensome and complex issues" for the sector.  "It's what would business like and then what they might expect [which is important]," explains Ruth Lea, economic advisor to arbuthnot and the former director of the Centre for Policy Studies.  "Business would like the 50pc tax rate to go but that's a political no-no, even though it arguably doesn't bring in that much revenue." Ms Lea, who will watch the Budget with fellow members of the TaxPayers' alliance, believes that the startling reality of Budget 2011 is that "whatever we would like to see by way of tax cuts is simply not affordable".  "What George Osborne has to try and do is find things that stimulate growth that don't actually cost anything," she argues, pointing to the sizeable government deficit.  Lea, who firmly believes that the vast swathes of red tape should be cut, does not think it will be in spite of some likely "tinkering" from the newly formed Office of Tax Simplification, led by Michael Jack and John Whiting.  Lea argues that Osborne's room for manoeuvre is limited, given a lack of funds, the preponderance of European Union directives that the Government cannot unilaterally repeal and the need to placate the Conservatives' coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.  "His hands are tied," she said. "No doubt George will do his best to make his rather paltry collection of policies seem rather substantial, but I'm afraid expectations are low."  To date, the Chancellor has said he will present his measures as a "Budget for growth", but by necessity, there will be no giveaways. The Chancellor has relatively little wiggle room to either cut taxes or increase spending dramatically as he has pledged to "stick to the course" and deliver ?111bn of austerity measures over the next four years.  What he is expected to do, however, is deliver a framework for growth - of competitive and simpler taxes, reduced regulation and compelling reasons for businesses to invest, all spelled out in the Growth Review to be published alongside the Budget.  Planning, as Lea points out, is expected to be reformed, unleashing a potential housebuilding boom that will not only stimulate growth and jobs but provide much-needed social housing and increase the built stock sufficiently to take some of the froth out of future house price rises.  Carbon taxes will be simplified, research and development tax credits enhanced and the controlled foreign companies regime will finally be made workable - all of which should help encourage businesses to invest in the UK.  The over-arching feeling among the business community is that the Chancellor has little option but to embrace the private sector. "Britain became in many ways the most indebted and unbalanced major economy in the world. In short, the debt-fuelled model of growth pursued in Britain over the last decade is fundamentally broken," the Chancellor himself admitted last week.  It is an analysis backed by the statistics. Between 2000 and 2005, public sector employment rose by around 12pc compared with just 3pc for private sector employment - financed by a wave of spending that transformed a ?15.9bn budget surplus into a ?38bn budget deficit.  Osborne and his supporters want to rebuild Britain on firmer foundations, with stronger export and business sectors. In the short-term, growth will be subsequently slower than expected, but as angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), argued: "Rewards will come when you can sustain higher growth without putting the economy in danger."  Growth could be slowed by changes to monetary policy - namely an increase in interest rates - as well as by a slowdown in the rate of exports. The UK has enjoyed a 20pc depreciation in sterling and yet "export recovery is weak compared to both other OECD countries and previous recessions", the OECD has cautioned.  There will be both good and bad news on the public finances, too. The Government is expected to have borrowed about ?5bn less than forecast for 2010/2011, giving it ?5bn of extra headroom. Osborne is expected to bank it, rather than lavish the electorate with tax cuts. and with good reason.  The official forecasts for growth in 2011 of 2.1pc will almost certainly be revised down, with most economists in the 1.5pc-1.8pc bracket. Unemployment is also expected to rise above the official 8pc forecast. Ray Barrell, of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), believes it will be 8.8pc.  The combination of lower growth and higher unemployment will mean the Government will have to borrow more in 2011/2012 than it hoped. Having a little extra in the bank at the start of the year will help. For Osborne, whose "Budget for growth" will start with a growth downgrade, it will be uncomfortable. He will stress he's laying the foundations for growth.  Beyond the economic debate, however, will be a debate on how Osborne's decisions effect real businesses. In the Square Mile, hopes are almost zero that there will be any major changes to the banking levy, which is projected to bring in ?2.5bn to prop up Treasury coffers.  The manufacturing sector - whose output grew by 1.1pc in the last quarter of last year at a time the whole economy fell by 0.6pc - will be looking for a boost, whether financially or verbally, that the sector is key to the Government's future economic plans.  The Chancellor should "lay out the intention to have a formal industrial strategy so that manufacturing can begin to forge a closer working relationship with government", argues Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, who hopes such a strategy would help the UK to repeat some of Germany's manufacturing success.  To do so, Wheeldon argues Osborne should attempt to craft a strategy which allows manufacturing to grow from its current 13pc of gross domestic product (GDP) to 25pc within 15 years. Such a strategy would also provide a considerable boost to private sector employment, a key area of the focus for business in the Budget, as employers attempt to work out quite how they will be able to mop up the tens of thousands of civil servants displaced as a result of the Government's public sector spending cuts.  Other help for manufacturing and industry could come from tweaks to the export credit guarantee system to allow small and medium-sized companies to take advantage of tax breaks when exporting overseas.  One demand from the manufacturing sector is for the UK to reconsider its energy policy, particularly the push to renewables, which one senior manufacturing source told The Sunday Telegraph is "highly damaging". "Wind power and the like is something this country cannot afford," said the businessman, adding that a wholesale "rethink" of how energy works alongside industry is needed.  Investment is another area - and the need to attract funds - in which business is hopeful of change. Sir Nigel Rudd, better known as chairman of Baa, spoke out on behalf of entrepreneurial investment.  as chairman of Longbow Capital, a healthcare investment business co-run by his son Edward, he has personally urged the Chancellor to support British innovation.  Calling for simplification of tax relief for venture capital trusts and the need to make business property relief available to such trusts, Sir Nigel is not shy in demanding what he wants.  "Strong British business will be the catalyst for the UK pulling away from recession and into consistent, durable growth," he says. The Budget "provides a clear opportunity for the Government to get behind British business and encourage innovation".  One way in which smaller investors and small companies might be helped is through a focus on the regions, areas that will be adversely hit by the public sector job cuts.  "The regional development authorities had a role to prepare proper strategies for their economies, and there is a worry this focus won't be there in what they will be replaced by," argues Vicky Pryce, former director general, economics, at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.  "Business will be worried about the regional focus, is it right and is there enough money for the regions?" continues Pryce, now senior managing director at FTI Consulting. "The issue for bigger companies is the links between public and private sector investment - construction, schools etc - and whether there might be some positives here in areas where the Government has retreated a bit on its earlier staunch plans."  Pryce is also "looking for something on capital allowances", which businesses can use to increase capital expenditure, providing reinvestment into the economy.  "Investment depends quite significantly on that. If there was a bit of money available, then the Chancellor may be able to find something in terms of that."  In the end, most commentators and business people agree, this Budget could offer considerably less than has been the case in previous announcements.  "The major decisions of this Parliament were made in the emergency Budget last June and the spending review in October," concludes Lea.  "Osborne's vamped this up as a Budget for growth. But I don't think he's going to be anywhere near as robust and radical enough to really put growth back at the heart of the UK economy."  WHaT BUSINESS WOULD LIKE TO SEE FROM THE BUDGET: FIVE COMPaNY CHIEFS GIVE THEIR VIEWS  LaURa TENISON  MaNaGING DIRECTOR, JOJO MaMaN B?B?  What we need more than anything from this budget is a move to help the private sector create these new jobs we're theoretically going to create. The single most practical way is to give us a tax incentive which means we can roll over corporation tax into job creation.  What I'd be looking for is some system of having a corporation tax rebate if it was being invested in capital expenditure directly linked to jobs. Put simply: tax cuts for job creation. This system of "cash for jobs" has been there for years via Regional Selective assistance grants and can be cost effectively audited.  Rather than putting private sector money into the Chancellor's pocket let's use it to create jobs. We create 100 good quality, long-term jobs a year, but with a rebate we could probably increase that number by 50pc and possibly even double it.  My second plea would be further encouragement and material help for start-ups. There has been talk about cutbacks to regional development authorities (RDas) and this must be redressed. I also think the point of these RDas must be clarified and I'd like to see more low budget yet practical workshops for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). It would be a huge advantage for growing businesses to have access to subsidised accountants, lawyers, marketers and business analysts.  I'd love to see a tax incentive to encourage more employees on to public transport. at JoJo, we are very pro the Government bike scheme - allowing staff to buy bikes tax-free. It would be a huge help to our teams if we could offer them interest-free season tickets.  aLISTaIR COX  CHIEF EXECUTIVE, HaYS  I'd like the Chancellor to put in place real incentives to encourage SMEs to invest in their businesses and create more jobs. Businesses, particularly SMEs, have struggled under a creeping increase in regulation that has made it more onerous and expensive to employ people.  There are currently 4.8m SMEs in the UK and they account for 60pc of all private sector jobs. Historically, they have been the engine of job creation so it is important that support is given to these businesses. One such incentive would be to extend the NICs holiday scheme to more SMEs or to scrap employers' NIC entirely for employers with less than 50 staff.  I want the Chancellor to make it easier for businesses to hire new employees. Since 2007, more than 50 employment regulations have been introduced. It's time to roll back some of this legislation - not introducing more laws that will hit the fragile jobs recovery. For example, we need to look carefully at all areas of the imminent agency Workers Regulation, as this will certainly create more onerous administration for employers.  The UK has the highest youth unemployment since records began in 1992 with nearly 1m young people not in employment, education or training. The Government needs to urgently look at ways to get them into work and equip them with skills so they may contribute to the economy and society. More needs to be done to encourage businesses to take apprentices, such as subsidies or NI holidays.  It will also create internships where there are skills shortages.  KaTHERINE GaRRETT-COX CHIEF  EXECUTIVE, aLLIaNCE TRUST  There is an urgent need to get the country producing again. The Chancellor should look at all the Government-imposed costs of doing business both in terms of its impact on unemployment and the balance of payments.  The costs of regulatory compliance and indirect taxes are inflationary and act as a disincentive to produce. Where subsidies are available, efforts should be made to ensure that they are targeted at industries that need developmental support and that they are not aimed just at sustaining the unsustainable.  Such reductions in disposable income, before inflation, act as a disincentive to save, which will only act to create a dependency culture which increases the burden on the state. as much as we need to get the country working, we also need to ensure that people are more self-sufficient in the provision of their retirement. Increasing the incentive to save, by, say, significantly increasing the annual ISa limit, would be a start.  In addition, according to research conducted by our own economics desk, CPI understates the inflation suffered by all sections of the population. It would be of great benefit if this anomaly was rectified.  The Chancellor should level the playing field on Child Benefit. a family with two earners on ?40,000 each per annum qualifies for Child Benefit, while a family with a single earner on ?45,000 does not. Gross income is assessed for family tax credit and for means-tested loans for university students, so why not for Child Benefit?  aDaM CROZIER  CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ITV  The UK's creative sector can be an engine for growth, but needs to be able to compete fairly in today's global media environment. a Budget for growth should recognise the importance of investment in original UK content and create the right incentives for it to happen - not least by ensuring regulation keeps pace with the changing market place.  Creating a level playing field in the creative industries means removing regulations that grew in the UK during the analogue era, when choice was limited for consumers and advertisers. Today, the digital marketplace is global, very competitive and people are watching more TV content on multiple platforms. Revenues are spread more thinly, and without deregulation, investment in UK creative content will continue to decline.  The competition regime needs to be reformed to recognise the public interest in creating great content for UK viewers and exporting it globally. The UK needs creative enterprises of sufficient scale to invest and compete internationally.  Convergence and globalisation make traditional definitions of markets irrelevant and the UK needs to move towards a more dynamic competition regime for the media that encourages growth and innovation rather than stifling it. It's also important that copyright protection, which rewards innovative content creation and promotes investment, is maintained and enforced.  The Government should also implement the provisions of the Digital Economy act that help tackle infringement and ensure the results of the Intellectual Property review recognise the value of copyright in stimulating innovation.  aNDREW MOSS  CHIEF EXECUTIVE, aVIVa  I'm optimistic for the UK. We mustn't talk ourselves down - we're too often rather good at that in the UK. Despite the country's c  
 BOTH the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are braced for heavy losses in this week's local elections, with the Coalition partners on track to lose up to 1,500 seats between them.  Labour will be the big winner, with Ed Miliband's party expected to record its biggest share of the vote in council polls for a decade.  The Lib Dems could lose 600 seats on Thursday - a third of all those it holds that will be contested.  a loss on that scale - together with a failure to win the concurrent referendum on changing to the alternative Vote (aV) system - could be enough to prompt discussions about how long Nick Clegg could continue as party leader.  He has already faced criticism from some activists over a U-turn on big increases in university tuition fees and support for Government spending cuts. Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Climate Change Secretary, is suspected by fellow ministers of being "on manoeuvres" as a possible alternative leader.  In particular, Lib Dem chiefs are braced for losing control of some prized northern councils, including Newcastle upon Tyne and Hull. In Sheffield, where they are currently the largest party, control could pass back to Labour in what would be a significant psychological blow in the city that contains Mr Clegg's parliamentary seat.  However, the Conservatives are also expected to suffer big losses, possibly more than 800. David Cameron's party is defending more than 150 councils and more than 5,000 seats as well as the directly elected mayoralty in Torbay.  "We know we are going to get a kicking and I'm sure the Lib Dems will as well," said one official. "Governing parties always suffer heavy losses in midterm elections. We're currently at a high point in terms of seats."  In 2007, the last time equivalent elections were held, the Tories achieved 40 per cent of the national vote, with Labour on 26 per cent in the dying days of Tony Blair's premiership and the Lib Dems on 24 per cent. Mr Miliband has attempted to play down suggestions that his party will gain 1,000 seats on Thursday, but some polling experts are predicting that they could gain as many as 1,500.  Mr Miliband has campaigned hard in areas such as East anglia and the South West - parts of the country where the party failed to make much of an impact even in the early days of Mr Blair's leadership.  The Labour leader has sought to capitalise on Lib Dem unpopularity in areas where Mr Clegg's party has traditionally been the main opponent of the Conservatives, and used an interview in The Sunday Telegraph last month to burnish his credentials as the candidate for Middle England.  as well as retaking Sheffield, Labour has its sights on Redcar and Cleveland, Bolton, Ipswich and Blackburn, among others, according to research for this newspaper by John Curtice, the professor of politics at Strathclyde University.  Mr Cameron has warned that Labour councillors will repeat what he sees as the tax-and-spend errors of Gordon Brown's government.  "Labour ran our country into the ground. Don't let them do the same to your council," he said last month while campaigning in Darlington. "Put another way - don't let Labour do to your council what they did to our country."  Big overall gains for Labour, however, are likely to be tempered by results of Thursday's elections for the Scottish Parliament, where polls suggest that the Scottish National Party is on course to be well ahead as the largest party with about 60 of the 129 seats.  Such a result would cement alex Salmond's position as First Minister and make a referendum on Scottish independence more likely.  The result of elections to the Welsh assembly are on a knifeedge, with some polls suggesting Labour will just obtain a majority.  Up for grabs on Thursday in England are every seat on 127 shire district councils and 30 unitary councils, as well as a third of the seats on 67 shire district councils, 19 unitary councils and all 36 metropolitan district councils - a total of more than 9,400 seats. There are no local elections in London.  PETER OBORNE: PaGE 24 TOP 25 COUNCILS THaT COULD CHaNGE HaNDS ON MaY 5 Research by John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University Lib Dems No overall control Other Conservative Labour Districts voting Not voting Labour hopes to gain from no overall control 1 Redcar Targeted personally by Ed Miliband who cited Lib Dem broken promises 2 Bolton Just one seat would give Labour control of council it last held in 2002 3 Sheffield Lib Dems are the largest party in Nick Clegg''s backyard - loss to Labour would be a huge blow 4 Ipswich another small gain for Labour would hand it control in a key area for th  
 JON Moulton, the venture capitalist, has hired a former senior employee of BP to help run his new ?200m green energy fund.  Mr Moulton, chairman of Better Capital, has recruited Vince Julier to co-manage Greensphere Capital.  The Sunday Telegraph unveiled Mr Moulton's plans to launch Greensphere in March, revealing the fund would focus on sustainable energy and infrastructure.  Mr Julier was formerly head of structured finance for Europe, Middle East and africa at BP, with a special focus on renewable energy.  He will work alongside Divya Seshamani, a former Goldman Sachs banker who most recently worked at the infrastructure arm of Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC, to manage the fund. Greensphere will be based in offices on London's St James's Square, with Mr Moulton acting as non-executive chairman.  Fundraising is not yet under way, however, with regulatory approval still pending from the Financial Services authority.  Venture capitalist Moulton hit the headlines again earlier this week when Better Capital was connected to all Saints, the retailer which has been up for sale. However he decided not to join with Goode Partners and Lion Capital in a consortium bid.  He founded and ran alchemy Partners for 12 years until 2009, after which he set up Better Capital, which has investments in Reader's Digest and Santia, the latter being made up of some of the subsidiaries of collapsed support-services group Connaught. 
 a couple of years back, in the course of one of my articles on Britain's looming energy crisis, I promised that the following week I would write about an astonishing revolution which could solve all of the UK's and the world's energy problems for centuries to come. I never followed this up, but what I was referring to was the incredible technical breakthroughs of recent years that allow almost unlimited amounts of cheap gas to be extracted from the world's vast reserves of shale, our commonest sedimentary rock.  It had long been assumed that nat  
 'The single thing that keeps me up at night is arrogance," says Muhtar Kent, the chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola. "arrogance was what almost brought us down in the 1990s." as Coca-Cola turns 125 today, there are reasons why the world's biggest beverage company might be forgiven a small smile of satisfaction.  The recipe for Coke hasn't changed since John Pemberton, a chemist, created it in atlanta, Georgia on May 8 1886. Its name and the distinctive lettering hasn't been tampered with since Frank Robinson, Pemberton's bookkeeper, came up with the ideas shortly afterwards. By the middle of the First World War, the company had agreed the design of its bottle after holding a public competition to come up with one (a sort of early experiment in social marketing). It would seem that the first instruction to anyone running Coca-Cola should be not to touch anything.  and that's why Coca-Cola's failed attempt to rewrite Pemberton's original recipe is so painfully etched in the company's memory. New Coke was introduced on april 23, 1985. 79 days later the old Coke - rebranded Coca-Cola Classic - was back on the shelves and the episode was destined to become a chapter in how not to do things for MBa courses across the world. a customer wrote to Roberto Goizeuta, the man behind the debacle, asking for his signature because the autograph of "one of the dumbest executives in american business history" would one day be worth something.  The Coke story is one of the business narratives of the past 100-plus years. Its success has made it both a poster boy for globalisation as well as a target for critics concerned by the reach and power of modern multi-nationals. From its humble beginnings to the giant it now is, anyone wanting to understand how global behemoths operate needs to understand Coke, a company not often given to throwing open its doors and seeking to explain its successes and failures. Last week the company invited media from around the world to its home in atlanta to do just that. The Sunday Telegraph was the only British newspaper in attendance.  For Goizeuta - who, the "new-recipe" episode aside, is generally regarded as one of Coca-Cola's best chief executives - didn't launch New Coke on a whim. He was losing market share in the US to an aggressive PepsiCo that had made Michael Jackson the face of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign.  The dilemma Goizeuta faced underlines the danger of taking anything for granted even if you do have a brand that was last year judged the world's most valuable at almost $71bn (?43.4bn), according to the consultancy Interbrand. Fast forward a quarter of a century and Kent, who joined the company in 1978 and has been at its helm since July 2008, faces a different but arguably just as exacting set of challenges.  Rather than ceding market share to PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and its rival both face a decline in the overall size of the carbonated soft drinks market in the US as more health-conscious americans choose to plump for energy drinks, teas and bottled waters instead. Outside america, and often thousands of miles away from its atlanta headquarters, Kent's challenge is to drive sales as rapidly as possible in the world's fastest-growing major economies.  "Coke is an iconic brand which people relate to and recently has done very well pushing the brand," said ali Dibadj, who covers the industry for Sanford C Bernstein. "Long-term, the question is: 'What will the next 125 years bring? Where else can they go in the emerging markets? How much more Coke can people drink?' " he said.  Selling abroad isn't new to Coca-Cola. Robert Woodruff, who led the company between 1924 and 1954, drove it into overseas markets, including China. Kent seems well suited to pick up that baton at a time when the company's growth is coming from outside North america, which accounted for 22pc of revenues last year.  The Pacific region, which includes China, generated 18pc; Europe accounted for 16pc; africa another 16pc and Latin america 28pc. Born to Turkish diplomats in the US, the 59-year old Kent ran Coca-Cola's Turkish and Central asian operations before becoming head of its international operations. It's that overseas experience that prompted Kent to gather Coca-Cola's top executives, as well as those who run its key bottling operations, in south Florida in 2008 to carve out a strategy for the next decade.  "We saw a number of things that would fundamentally and dramatically reshape our world and our industry," Kent told those who made the trip to atlanta. "Changes that were going to make the previous 10 years seem downright tranquil." These forces included a bigger middle class, major urbanisation, a rebalancing of the world away from two superpowers to several - and the rise of a much more engaged youth around the world. It is a list that is likely to sound familiar to those at the top of other large, global companies, where there seems to be a common conviction that the world is changing at a pace that has rarely, if ever, been matched in history.  Kent, who has a degree in economics from Hull University and a masters in administrative sciences from London City University, is convinced it is a world in which more brands Coke can be sold and that aim is central to "2020", the name of the strategy that executives journeyed back from Florida with. It calls for the company to double its system revenues, which include those of its bottling companies that are largely run on a franchise basis, in less than a decade from now.  "We had a vision of the '80s, we had a vision of the '90s or a vision even of the 2000s," Kent explained to the audience in a vast auditorium named after Goizeuta. "Those were corporate, company visions. What we tried to do in this new iteration of our vision, which we call 2020, was to create a vision for the entire system."  Those who have tracked Coke for years, say that Kent's experience of bottling operations in Turkey and elsewhere means he's determined to ensure their interests are aligned with those of Coca-Cola. "It's the day-today execution that really counts for Coke," said Caroline Levy, an analyst at Credit agricole. "They've got strong leadership in place."  It's a strategy that also carries radical implications for a company already, for example, facing up to $700m higher commodity costs this year because of the level of oil prices. The current volatility in commodity prices is not an aberration, says Kent. Coca-Cola has a team working on developing plastic bottles made out of renewable plant material.  The sweeping change described by Kent is distilled more bluntly by John Farrell, the company's chief strategy officer and a Coca-Cola veteran. "This is just basic macro-economics here," he said. "You've got 800m people coming into the world economy over the next 10 years. It's important to know where they are, who they are and that they've got some change in their pocket in terms of disposable income."  The profits from developing markets are uneven with Latin america - a traditional powerhouse for Coca-Cola - enjoying higher margins than China, according to analysts. The prospect of ever more Coke being drunk overseas is a prospect that alarms those who are campaigning against the soft drinks industry in the US, where anxieties about the effect on consumers' health have contributed to a shrinking of the market.  The volume of cases - a standard measure for the industry - of carbonated soft drinks sold in the US fell 0.5pc to 9.36bn last year, according to Beverage Digest, which tracks the industry. Volumes last went up in 2004 after enjoying annual growth of about 3pc throughout the 1990s.  That said, the US has delivered better news of late. It grabbed more market share from PepsiCo to widen its lead in the carbonated soft drink market to 42pc compared with its rival's 29.3pc, according to Beverage Digest. Meanwhile, its North american sales climbed 2pc in the first quarter of this year. The US consumer, along with the German and British, says Kent, is in a better position than 12 months ago, though Italian, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese consumers continue to struggle.  But the unhealthy headwinds in the US seem unlikely to go away. More than 30 states currently have a sales tax on fizzy drinks, and campaigners are looking for a tax that would see a penny charged for every ounce of liquid sold.  Given Coca-Cola, like arch rival PepsiCo, appears to be losing the argument, the company has been pushing new Coca-Cola, including energy drinks, waters, juices and teas. Coke Zero, a zero-calorie drink launched in the US in 2005 and now available in 93 countries, has proved a hit.  Before becoming chief executive, Kent had helped to drive the company's expansion beyond the stable of fizzy drinks that its success in the US had been built on. He helped negotiate the $4.1bn purchase in May 2007 of Energy Brands, the maker of VitaminWater, a vitamin enriched water drink.  Such drinks are proving a fierce new battleground with PepsiCo. Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo's chief executive, is aiming to turn the company's "good-for-you" division of products from a $10bn business into a $30bn business in the next decade. Her company remains bigger in energy drinks after its 2001 purchase of Quaker handed it Gatorade, the market leader in energy drinks. It is a market that is enjoying some of the strongest rates of growth, with Coca-Cola's sales in the final quarter of last year climbing 20pc in North america.  With a black can and use of the word zero, rather than diet, marketing has been key to Coke Zero's success in appealing to male consumers. Coca-Cola spent $2.9bn on marketing last year and it is arguably the variable that is most critical to the success or failure of its more than 500 brands.  "Coca-Cola is more than a drink," Kent explained in atlanta. "It's an idea, it's a vision, it's a feeling." Whatever you think of the marketers' language, the explosion of social media means that keeping the brand relevant is an increasing challenge.  Coca-Cola's Facebook page has 26m "friends" but for Wendy Clark, the executive in charge of social media, that's not the figure to focus on.  Rather it is the millions of people connected to that number.  Thanks to the technology, "there's a real referendum out there" from consumers that demands transparency, says Clark. "Companies are no longer controlling the message." It represents a significant change of attitude for a company that, like many others, has been used to enjoying total control of the brand.  If the ultimate brand is having to relinquish more control than ever before to consumers, its geographies are in as rapid a state of flux. Kent says he doesn't make predictions, so declined to forecast how fast China would ascend the company's rankings - it's currently the company's third-biggest market. But earlier this year Minute Maid Pulpy, a fruit juice, became the first drink developed by Coca-Cola just for the Chinese market to reach $1bn in sales. It will be interesting if Coca-Cola is still celebrating its 200th birthday in atlanta.  COCa-COLa LaNDMaRKS  May 1886: John Pemberton, a chemist from atlanta, Georgia, fashions the first glass of Coca-Cola after taking a caramelcoloured liquid down to Jacobs Pharmacy, where fizzy water is added. Frank Robinson, Pemberton's book-keeper, names the drink Coca-Cola and writes it up in a formula that is still used today. Pemberton, who died in 1888, did not r  
 HOUSEHOLDS should be prepared for further rises in their power bills of the magnitude of Scottish Power's inflation-busting 19pc increase in gas prices and 10pc hike in electricity tariffs, Centrica chairman Sir Roger Carr has warned.  Sir Roger, who is also president of the Confederation of British Industry, says in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph that last week's action by the Spanish-owned Scottish utility should not have come as a surprise as wholesale power prices have been rising by more than 20pc.  He say  
 Sir Roger Carr could be forgiven for wondering whether he might have picked a better week to begin his new job at the voice of British business.  The Confederation of British Industry president began his role last Monday, unveiling a report backing the Coalition Government's austerity plan for cutting Britain's deficit and calling for more action on moving to a low-carbon economy, increasing labour market flexibility and reducing employment red tape.  Then the sections headed "working towards a low-carbon economy" and "developing a strong banking system" became rather overtaken by events.  as chairman of British Gas owner Centrica, Sir Roger, 64, was instead being asked about the inflation-busting energy price rises of rival utility Scottish Power and the decision by Opec to add to energy price pressures by deciding against increasing global oil supplies.  His membership of the court of the Bank of England also made him more than a casual observer of the latest appearance of the nation's top retail bankers before the Treasury Select Committee to discuss how they should be regulated.  It's all in a week's work for the portfolio director and Sir Roger is no stranger to controversy, having been at the centre of Kraft Food's hostile takeover of Cadbury as the chocolate-maker's chairman 18 months ago.  He's still keen to discuss that CBI report, however, challenging the Government to shape the right economy.  It's the growth part he seems most exercised about. The issue, he argues, is Britain's competitiveness, with the economic health of many of its traditional European and North american markets fragile, and global inflation rising.  "The problem is clear, as is the resolution," he says. "The only solution for the difficulties we have is new growth and it's something only business can provide.  "The Government is not the solution but they're the people that one looks to to create the environment in which businesses can deliver the necessary outcome."  On taxation, he welcomes the Government's first steps to reduce corporation tax with the "notable exception" of Chancellor George Osborne's raid on North Sea oil and gas producers.  Sir Roger also argues for reduction in personal tax, including changes to Labour's 50pc top income tax band.  "I think that at a time of extreme adversity it's not unreasonable for the burden to be shared," he says carefully. "But the reality is that for growth to be achieved, people at every level need to be incentivised and an improving tax rate to ensure that effort and retained reward by the individual is something that occurs is absolutely an appropriate agenda item.  "What's pleasing is in its very early stages the Government took positive steps on corporation tax, which I think makes the whole business of being in the UK a more appealing proposition."  This is traditional CBI territory. What is slightly less so is the energy market and here Sir Roger finds himself in the uncomfortable position of wearing two hats.  Let's start with Centrica's position. Sir Roger says the "shock horror" of the 19pc gas price hike and 10pc advance in electricity tariffs by Scottish Power, resulting in an extra ?187 a year on "dual fuel" household bills, was more to do with the way it was reported.  "If you look at virtually all of the media over many, many weeks and months from all quarters: government, industry commentators, the industry itself and the Bank of England in its inflation forecasts, they all suggested that, because of wholesale prices, retail prices would go up materially," he says.  "I think the Bank said 15pc as a guide and I have seen figures as high of 20pc. I think the hope is that wholesale prices will start to soften and it won't be required but the fact is that hasn't occurred and therefore Scottish Power decided it was the moment to implement the price increase. Moving wholesale prices have been very material, well over 20pc, in recent months. In those circumstances, it is just a commercial fact that those things convert into price increases."  Experts have argued that energy trading speculation, rather than global demand, is what is driving wholesale prices higher but Sir Roger disagrees. "There's no doubt that the energy price is utterly related to the global position," he says. "We're seeing huge demand for energy in those countries that are growing very rapidly and there doesn't appear to be any foreseeable change in that in the short-term. This is fundamentally demand-led. That's the primary driver. There's always the risk of some speculation but it's not our view that this is a manipulated market.  "It's our view that it's being consumed and that demand is taking the price higher."  So will Centrica raise its prices too? "We never comment on anything to do with forward pricing," says the chairman.  "all we've said is we have to run a business to make a reasonable profit and have a sustainable model in the interests of the company and the UK power supply."  With his CBI hat on, Sir Roger is also keen to deal with a criticism of a mounting "stealth tax" on energy bills.  Headlines after Scottish Power's price rise complained of a hidden ?200-a year "green tax" on energy bills to subsidise expansion of wind farms, solar panels and environmentally friendly heating schemes.  However, Sir Roger says it's common knowledge that the cost of the carbon reduction measures will have to be paid for partly through fuel bills.  "Ofgem has said that it would see over the next decade a dual fee bill going up by about ?500 a year for a typical consumer," he says. "and that's related to decarbonisation rather than market forces.  "So there's a cost of decarbonisation but if as a country you're committed to managing climate change then you have to accept that the process of doing that is not free of cost."  a firm proponent of climate change mitigation, he believes it is "entirely appropriate" to move towards a decarbonised economy and says energy producers believe the Government's target of an 80pc reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 is manageable.  However, he says that halving emissions by 2025, compared to 1990 levels, which the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, has committed Britain to achieving, is "potentially a bridge too far".  Sir Roger believes that encouraging businesses and consumers to become more energy-efficient and mitigate their own bills can help prevent a backlash against the cost of being green.  Last month, Tata Steel cited uncertainty over UK carbon cost rises as a key reason behind a decision to restructure its long products division which could see up to 1,500 British jobs lost and Sir Roger accepts that the issue is a potential threat to investment in Britain.  The CBI is therefore lobbying the Government for action to help energy-intensive companies.  "If you're a UK industrial consumer, not every country in the world has the same commitment to climate change and therefore you may feel commercially disadvantaged as those costs flow through," he says. "That gives you cause for thought as to where you want to invest.  "Large energy consumers who are part of the UK manufacturing infrastructure do need some sort of dispensation or support to make sure they are not made uncompetitive or encouraged to move their manufacturing elsewhere.  "It's the CBI's job on behalf of those big energy consumers who are doing all the things they can in selfhelp and still need assistance to b  
 Millions of energy customers face a 20pc increase in their utility bills this winter, just months after gas and electricity providers raised prices by more than 10pc. Scottish Power is the first of the big six to make the move and others are expected to follow. The shock increases come at a time when turning up the thermostat will be furthest from people's minds.  From august, Scottish Power will increase the cost of its gas and electricity bills by 19pc and 10pc respectively - adding an additional ?175 a year to the average bill.  audrey Gallacher, head of energy at Consumer Focus, the statutory consumer champion, warned: "Suppliers like the comfort of the pack and, because of that, price rises often come in waves."  Energy providers have been accused of profiteering and many consumers will also be questioning the steep rises they are about to face.  Last winter, all the big six energy suppliers announced price rises, with Scottish Power raising electricity by 8.9pc and gas bills by 2pc last November. E.ON added 9pc to electricity prices and 3pc to gas prices, while British Gas raised both its gas and electricity prices by 7pc. Scottish and Southern Energy increased gas prices by 9.4pc and npower added 5.1pc to gas and electricity prices. EDF raised electricity bills by 7.5pc and gas by 6.5pc.  It all means that the average dual fuel bill will have increased by 50pc since 2007 to around ?1,450, once households factor in another 20pc rise this year.  Providers vehemently deny accusations of profiteering and argue that they have had little choice but to inflict steep increases on customers because of the wholesale price which has risen 30pc since November.  However, industry experts argue that wholesale prices are still lower than they were three years ago during the financial crisis, yet household bills are reaching record levels.  andrew Horstead, risk analyst at energy and carbon management specialists Utilyx, said that the wholesale price of gas is around ?410 per year, compared with March last year when the cost was ?485 per year.  according to Bloomberg, the wholesale price for gas in autumn 2008 hit prices above 70p a therm. This compares to 59p per therm today, showing that wholesale gas prices have actually dropped 15pc since then.  Similarly, prices in the wholesale electricity market reached ?120 per Megawatt hour in autumn 2008. Today, they are ?51.20 per Megawatt hour - less than half the price back then.  When the prices peaked more than two years ago, the average household needed to find ?1,100 a year to pay their gas and electricity bills. However, despite lower wholesale prices now, households will have to pay more like ?1,400 per year, once Scottish Power's increases come into effect in august.  "The latest tariff hike should set alarm bells ringing within the Government," said Mr Horstead. "It comes at a time when its forthcoming energy White Paper detailing its measures to stimulate investment in low carbon generation will also feed through to higher prices."  Raymond Jack, UK retail director at Scottish Power, said: "Wholesale prices for gas and electricity have increased significantly since the end of last year and continuing unrest in global energy markets means future prices are volatile.  "The rising burden of non-energy costs faced by Britain's energy suppliers, including the cost of meeting government environmental and social programmes, has also placed further upward pressure on energy bills."  On the environmental programmes, Mr Jack has a point. Whether you have an ethical conscience or not, every household is footing the bill for the Government's target to meet 30pc of the country's energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.  For instance, gas and electricity customers pay ?48 a year towards the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target and ?13 towards the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. all the extras add around ?80 to the typical household bill.  Tim Yeo, Conservative MP and the chair of the Commons Energy and Climate Change select committee, said that energy companies should be forced to publicise the prices paid for wholesale energy to prove their reasoning for price increases.  He said: "There is a very strong public suspicion, probably justified, that prices tend to go up faster than they come down."  In March, Ofgem said that when it conducted a retail market review of the sector it had found evidence that energy providers raised prices faster than they cut them. It also said tariffs were complicated and pricing was unfair.  Ms Gallacher of Consumer Focus said: "It is ironic that the [Scottish Power] announcement comes exactly when the regulator is deciding whether energy firms are serious about treating consumers properly and if energy prices are fair.  "Ofgem has put the big six in the dock, saying suppliers have been quicker to raise prices than to cut them and are bamboozling consumers with complex tariffs. Scottish Power itself is under investigation by the regulator for unfair pricing and miss-selling."  again, energy providers deny any wrongdoing. In its official response to the review, npower said: "Ofgem claims to find evidence that prices rise faster than they fall in response to changing wholesale costs, but concedes there are limitations to the work and found no clear evidence of consumer detriment. The review has not found any evidence of excess profits."  Consumer group Which? said that all energy tariffs should be structured in the same way so that customers can easily compare different deals.  Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, said: "This latest price rise is yet another example of the big six blaming the wholesale energy market, but energy companies have a lot of work to do to convince consumers that energy prices are fair."  WHaT CaN CUSTOMERS DO?  There is little doubt that Scottish Power's announcement is a fresh blow to households whose budgets have been squeezed after repeated increases in inflation.  Research by the website  
 In an interview we publish today, Sir Roger Carr, the new president of the CBI, warns that the rising cost of energy will lead to many British manufacturers relocating their businesses abroad. He is right to sound this warning - for it is not just business that will affected. as Christopher Booker has pointed out many times in this newspaper, the Coalition's commitment to phasing out the production of energy based on burning fossil fuels is going to cost at least ?100 billion over the next 18 years.  David Cameron's determination to make the present Government "the greenest ever" will increase each household's electricity bill by at least ?200 a year. But it will cost industry far more to comply with the carbon reduction targets that have been imposed as legally binding by the Coalition. One consequence, as Sir Roger suggests, is that manufacturers who use large amounts of electricity (which is to say, just about all of them) will move to countries where power is cheaper. Britain will end up importing the goods rather than making and exporting them, the country will be poorer, and the world's output of CO2 will not have diminished one iota. We will have made a futile gesture: one that hurts Britain, to no benefit for anyone. Indeed, we will not even profit from the increased sales of wind turbines, since they too will be made abroad, where the costs of doing so are lower because energy is cheaper.  The Coalition's carbon-reduction targets may have seemed sensible, or at least ethical, at the time that the decision to implement them was made. But the evidence suggests that this is no longer the case: instead, they are going to inflict grave economic harm, without significant benefits. We hope the Government will recognise its error, and modify its energy policy accordingly. 
 BUSINESS leaders' willingness to cut carbon emissions has fallen since the launch of a raft of green taxes on industry, according to a report.  Just 37pc of executives said investment in energy efficiency was a priority for their company, down from one half when the Carbon Reduction Commitment was launched last year.  The survey of chief executives, board members and chief financial officers from 200 leading companies including easyJet, Coca Cola and B&Q, was carried out by TSystems, the IT provider, and the Economist Intelligence Unit and will be published on Thursday. It found 35pc of businesses plan to spend no money on reducing emissions this year, while another 38.6pc will spend less than ?250,000.  Only 4.6pc said they were putting "maximum possible effort" into responding to the CRC cap-and-trade scheme, with 28.2pc saying they would make "no effort at all".  Just 8pc of directors said shareholders were pushing for green technology.  The CRC is now under review after angry businesses said it was a needles burden. It forces 5,000 large companies to register their electricity usage and then buy "permits to pollute". a league table will be published to "shame" inefficient firms.  More than 40pc of respondents said the business case for green technology was unproven and the period of payback unclear. One in five cited lack of capital.  "Somewhat counter intuitively, corporate interest in efficiency has dropped from a year ago, when the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme was introduced. Numerous interviewees noted a drop-off in engagement with the CRC scheme after various revisions wer  
 Scattered across an emerald green sweep of Pembrokeshire countryside are a handful of rustic-looking dwellings: some have turf roofs, others smoothly sculpted cob walls; finely wrought hinges adorn massive wooden doors and the comforting smell of wood smoke rises from stove chimneys. Fat hens scratch for grubs and grain and children have the run of the land, climbing trees and making dens.  This is Lammas eco-village, Britain's first low-impact, genuinely low emissions settlement, on track to provide three quarters of its inhabitants' food, water and energy needs from its own land and about to celebrate its second birthday since winning planning permission.  The village is completely "off grid" with no mains water, gas or electricity. Most of the nine proposed homesteads are now under way and three are complete; it is a model for possible future ways of living as energy costs rocket and concerns about climate change grow.  One resident, Jasmine Dale is currently enjoying a bumper strawberry crop. "We've got so many I don't know what to do with them, the children go foraging in the strawberry plants whenever they want," she says. The vegetable patches are bursting with sweetcorn, spinach, beans and squash. It appears, on the surface, to be an earthly paradise.  But there is trouble in paradise and the trouble could have a fatal effect on the whole concept of "low impact" living, or, as its exponents call it: "living for a living".  Earlier this month, Pembrokeshire County Council issued summonses against some of the pioneers for breaching building regulations. Breaches relate to fire hazards, outside lavatories, the use of ladders for staircases and the uncertain specification of some of the recycled materials the homes incorporate.  The summonses are a huge blow for the residents of Lammas, most of them families with young children.  One resident, Cassie Lishman, mother-of-three, who has built a pink cob reciprocal-framed roundhouse says she is in breach for her cotton ceiling and for the lack of a plastic radon barrier under her handmade earthen floor.  "as for my cob bath, which is heated from underneath with a fire, well the inspectors just didn't know what to make of it." She says there is "no way" she is going to dig up her floor "to put a piece of plastic under it. We're in an untenable situation. There are huge tensions between building regs and low-impact living."  Some materials such as the timber from their woodland and recycled windows do not have standardised ratings recognised by inspectors.  Jasmine's home does not comply because the composting lavatory is not inside the house and there is no mains-connected fire alarm. "How can we have a mains-connected fire alarm if we have no mains?" she asks. "We need to start a debate about an alternative building code for low-impact homes."  It took Lammas pioneer Paul Wimbush four years and a planning appeal to win permission for the village. He and other residents like Simon Dale have built their own homes, with help from volunteers who have come from all over the world to support the project.  Simon has already had experience building a low-impact home, which nests in a hillside in another part of west Wales and which he used as a model for some of the features of the Lammas homes.  Part of the planning permission, which was won on appeal in august 2009, is that within five years, residents should source 75 per cent of their water, fuel and food, from the 76-acre site. "Water is fine as there is a spring on the land," says Jasmine. "We make enough electricity from solar panels to power a laptop, charge a mobile phone and keep the lights on. None of us have televisions." The village is about to switch on a micro hydro turbine which will provide further electricity.  Despite the revolutionary ideals of Lammas, the village's inhabitants are ordinary people: teachers, graphic designers, engineers and craftsmen who want to "live lightly on the land".  Planning permission requires they earn an income from their plots and they plan to do so by rearing Christmas geese, making and selling willow products, growing rare herbs and keeping milk-producing sheep.  Some now are wondering whether their dreams of a simpler life are to be wrecked by rules made for standard brick-and-mortar houses, not sculpted mud biodegradable ones. "a house can be safe and wellbuilt without complying with building regulations," says Cassie.  In a statement, the county council confirmed it has issued summonses. "although planning permission was granted, plot owners in the Lammas Eco village are still required to meet building regulations. Failure to co  
 Sir John Beddington may have thought he was earning his ?165,000 a year as the Government's Chief Scientific adviser when he was last week reported as proposing that it should "use climate-related disasters overseas to persuade British voters to accept unpopular policies for curbing carbon emissions". The sort of disasters Sir John had in mind included last year's Russian heatwave, the floods in Pakistan and Queensland and the current drought in East africa, all of which climate zealots have rushed to blame on global warming. But Sir John, who is a professor in "applied population biology", may not be aware that each of these examples has been shown by scientific studies not to be evidence of "climate change".  a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters confirms that the parts of Russia affected by last year's heatwave "show no significant warming trend" over the past 130 years. Similar studies have shown that the 2010 Paikstan floods were no worse than those in 1929. The flooding in Queensland was lower than that in 1974. It was only turned into a disaster by the sudden release of water from a dam, which had been held back on the orders of state politicians who were obsessed with the need to store water because of their fear that global warming would cause droughts. Even the UN now says that the Horn of africa's worst drought for 60 years cannot be ascribed to climate change.  In a week when Chris Huhne, Energy and Climate Change Secretary, announced "carbon saving" measures which are predicted to double energy bills within nine years and drive more than half the population into fuel poverty, one can see that he might be desperate to "persuade British voters" that his absurdly costly gimmicks are justified. But if he wants advice on climate change more plausible than just scare stories that echo his own prejudices, he could do with someone better qualified in that field than a specialist in applied population biology - whatever that may be. 
 RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2011  BBC Two, 7.30pm; Wales, 8.00pm  The North shows it can throw a garden party to rival Chelsea with this annual bloomfest set in 50 acres of leafiest Cheshire. Over the next two evenings the Gardeners' World team will admire the show's vibrant flora as well the showpieces particular to Tatton, such as the National Flower Bed Competition. Tonight, Carol Klein will escort vi  
 In the film Billy Elliot, a boy strives to be a dancer against the backdrop of the miners' strike. Now, the place where they filmed it is the focus of another defining industrial struggle, with hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake.  It's not workers versus management this time: they're on the same side. It is workers versus wind farms. The enemy is no longer hard, Thatcherite Right-wingers. It is well-intentioned, impeccably progressive environmentalists: the very people, no doubt, shaking "Coal not Dole" collection tins in north London, circa 1984. The battleground now is not coal. It is electricity.  In the Billy Elliot village of Lynemouth, on the North East coast, all the pits have closed. But it is still home to the Rio Tinto alcan aluminium plant. In the last few years, the price of aluminium has more than doubled, and there are plenty of customers. Your mountain bike, your drinks can and parts of your Nissan car could well have started out here.  The Lynemouth plant is profitable. It is fairly modern, only 35 years old. It is almost at full production. It is the biggest private employer left in the entire county of Northumberland, contributing ?100 million to the local economy. Yet it is now at serious risk of closure, the first of dozens of potential victims of what one business spokesman calls Britain's industrial "suicide".  Last week, the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, announced further massive subsidies for wind farms, nuclear and other forms of low-carbon electricity - all part of Chancellor George Osborne's ambition to make this the "greenest" country in Europe. There was already going to be a "carbon floor price", effectively a tax on CO2 emissions, to subsidise wind and other renewables. Now Mr Huhne's further subsidies will be funded by consumers, through much higher electricity bills.  Lynemouth's problem is that it is probably the UK's single largest user of electricity. Producing just one ton of aluminium uses more power than the average family does in 15 years.  The new wind farm taxes will cost Lynemouth ?40 million a year, a third of its entire operating costs, effectively wiping out its annual profits. Last month, John McCabe, a spokesman for the company, said it was examining "how we cope with the huge cost implications of incoming legislation. a number of options are being discussed, one of which is the closure of the plant."  Lynemouth's 650 workers, and the hundreds of others it supports indirectly, are only the most exposed of the vast number at risk. Britain is still home to huge amounts of energy-intensive heavy industry, employing millions.  But Stan Higgins, chief executive of the North East Process Industry Cluster, which represents the region's chemical and pharmaceutical companies, says current government energy policies are "suicidal" and could end up destroying entire sectors of manufacturing. "Four or five years ago [in pharmaceuticals], energy was the twelfth most expensive element of manufacturing a tablet," he says. "Now it is second or third.  "We are trying to be the first country in Europe to introduce [a carbon floor price], but it's crazy to do this independently. Our energy costs are six to seven per cent higher than the European average and that's not sustainable. Most of our big companies are not UK-owned - they have no allegiance to the UK whatever. They will go where they get the best deal. We can compete with the world, but we just need a level playing field."  aluminium isn't even the most energyintensive manufacture. For the chlorine industry, electricity is up to 70 per cent of its costs. and if British chlorinemaking collapses, it takes with it thousands of jobs in other sectors that are wholly dependent on chlorine production. Some people have started talking of a "domino effect".  Jeremy Nicholson, of the Energy Intensive Users Group, says: "Employment in the sectors that are most directly affected by rising green taxes is 225,000. and if you look at the Government's projections, their CO2 proposals will hit even firms that are less electro-intensive - paper, glass, ceramics - with a further 600,000 jobs. Factories may not close immediately, but investment won't come here.  "The issue for us is the cost of electricity here compared with the rest of the world. Britain has the most ambitious targets for renewable energy growth in Europe and is introducing several measures which will only affect UK users."  The new green taxes will fund several forms of lowcarbon electricity, including nuclear. But it is ministers' attachment to wind farms, increasingly offshore, that is causing industry the greatest pain. "We don't take issue with the need to decarbonise energy," says Mr Nicholson. "But, for goodness' sake, let's do it cost-effectively. Offshore wind is one of the most expensive ways of reducing our carbon emissions, and one of the least cost-effective ways of generating electricity."  Last week, Mr Huhne scoffed at such claims. But, as is now widely known, wind farms' biggest problem is that for about three-quarters of the time, the wind does not blow at the right speed to turn the turbines.  Electricity cannot be stored - you have to generate it at the moment you need it - and the wind might not oblige when 10 million viewers want to switch the kettle on at the end of Coronation Street. So, at the same time as building new wind farms, you must build new conventional power stations as backup.  The Government does not include the costs of building these backup stations in its figures for wind. Nor does it include the cost of the thousands of miles of extra powerlines needed to collect electricity from wind farms, much more widely scattered than conventional power plants.  The Renewa  
 Science fiction, at its best, makes us question what we understand and doubt the world we live in. Even so, few works are as unsettling as The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz, ?12.99). This drily comic gazetteer of the Dream archipelago hides stories of horror, artistic rivalry and possibly murder. But even as you disentangle these stories, revealed piecemeal, out of chronological order, and from different viewpoints, other puzzles keep arising. There are no simple answers, but the endless questions make this one of the most complex, challenging and satisfying fictions from one of our finest novelists.  There are more puzzles in Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS, ?19.99), in which a detective roams a noirish landscape in search of the author of a series of pulp novels about Osama bin Laden: Vigilante. It is a world in which bin Laden's terrorist atrocities never happened, but which is none the less haunted by them. Nina allan's The Silver Wind (Eibonvale, ?18) also takes us into an alternate world, a dystopian England being the setting for one of the linked stories that make up this subtle and disturbing meditation on time.  Wind angels (PS, ?19.99) is a long-awaited collection of stories from Leigh Kennedy, shifting deftly from sci-fi to fantasy to mainstream. The title story, about an England submerging after climate change, shows how skilled a writer she is.  More stories in Manhattan in Reverse (Macmillan, ?17.99), a rare collection from one of sci-fi's more engaging storytellers, Peter F Hamilton. Like Tidhar and Priest, he uses crime as a way to open up profoundly different worlds, including two tales from his bestselling Commonwealth series.  PaUL KINCaID 
 So, the Prime Minister is "seriously considering a food levy to tackle Britain's obesity crisis". Give it a rest, Dave. This is a smokescreen everyone can see through. We'd prefer you to get the country off its backside first, then worry about our figures.  anyway, Prime Minister, I know it's the conker season but this is a very gnarled chestnut you're trying to play with. Four years ago, the Labour health secretary, alan Johnson, put it forcefully: "Obesity could be as big a crisis" - there's that "c" word again - "as climate change, unless the nation starts to lose weight soon."  at the time, some thinking people wondered how an increasing number of fat people could threaten all life on the planet. Perhaps, they speculated, heavier people have a deeper carbon footprint? Could the increase in weight make Earth fall out of it  
 What's the public mood?  In a recent YouGov poll, only two per cent of voters thought the economy was in good shape. More people believe Elvis Presley is alive. In this climate, any kind of optimism is a tough sell, but David Cameron used his speech to claim that Britain's best days lie ahead.  I believe him, but the mountain top looks a very long way off. Sir Mervyn King warned on Thursday that we're about to walk through a valley as deep and arduous as the Depression of the 1930s. In a week when Greece missed its deficit targets, a French-Belgian bank collapsed and Italy was downgraded, there is mounting evidence that the world is back at the edge of an economic cliff. If Europe goes over the precipice, it's hard to believe that Britain won't follow.  What do the Tories want us to do?  Some want the Government to take decisive action to pull Britain further away from the danger zone - ie, Europe. Others fear any rapid change of direction might create new forms of instability.  at conference, the leadership appeared to side with the second camp. The message was simple: we are not panicking, and neither should you. Cameron's message to the nation was that he had set a course and would stick to it.  What is that course?  Sticking to his plan to eradicate the deficit by the end of the parliament. a U-turn would mean that no one would ever believe him again. Twenty years after the Tories' reputation for economic competence was ruined by the ERM debacle, it would be wrecked again. Labour likes to claim that Cameron's deficit plan is ideologically driven. They're wrong: it's the minimum necessary to put Britai  
 How does the Carbon Reduction Commitment affect you?  Page 13 
 It was a bold claim to make. Last year, Be Green reported how residents of the Brecon Beacons village of Llangattock made it their aim that the 420-home settlement on the banks of the River Usk would be "carbon negative" by 2015.  This means that heating and powering the village's homes will not just produce zero carbon dioxide emissions, but that renewable activities will help contribute to lowering emissions from a wider area.  Last year, the villagers involved with the project were full of enthusiasm for their plans. There was a woodland group, an allotment group, a litter group and others, all focused on improving the environment around them and reducing the village's need for fossil fuels.  But optimism is one thing. Sheer hard graft is another. How have the pioneers got on in the past 12 months, and are they on their way towards their goal of becoming Britain's first carbon-negative community?  I can report that their enthusiasm is undimmed and that although the year has been far from an easy ride, they all still believe they are on track to be carbon-free in four years' time. There is also a strong feeling that the village has benefited from residents pulling together with a common goal.  "The whole village has been reinvigorated and re-energised," says Pete Bates, a retired teacher who coordinates the residential group. "Like many rural communities, Llangattock's spirit had been slowly declining, with four village clubs in 2000 compared to 26 in 1950. Today we've got a groundswell of community feeling and it's all because of the carbon negative project."  audited emissions reductions from homes taking part in the first wave of eco-makeovers show that over 14 months of monitoring, CO2 emissions have gone down by 16 per cent, according to a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). This has been through a combination of small-scale improvements such as draught-proofing and CHRISTOPHER JONES changing habits to large-scale measures such as installing solar panels.  Instrumental to the changes being made is the woodland group, organised by Jackie Charlton, whose volunteers manage 20 acres of alder, hazel and ash coppice and who sell the logs from the village wood store. "We've got chimneys popping up all over the place and at least seven new woodburners in the village," says Jackie. "We now need to employ our firs  
 HaVING BEEN badly caught out by last winter's ice and snow (see above), when its lack of road gritters provoked residents to a mood which, according to an official report, was "angry, vitriolic and even venomous", Brighton council has spent ?1 million on a new fleet of 4x4 gritters to ensure that, in the renewed blizzards predicted for this winter, the city's roads are kept clear. Bully for them, you might think - what a far-sighted council. Except that, in May this year, the people of Brighton voted in Britain's first Green council, electing 23 councillors who swept to power convinced that Brighton and the world were faced with catastrophe through runaway global warming. 
 ENERGY COMPaNIES are planning a huge increase in the number of British drilling sites for shale gas, as arguments rage over whether the controversial fuel is safe.  Under a new government "licensing round" early next year - the first since 2008 - bids for shale gas exploration licences are expected to surge, industry experts have told The Sunday Telegraph.  The company responsible for Britain's only active shale gas drilling, Cuadrilla Resources, recently claimed a gigantic 200 trillion cubic-foot find at its site near Blackpool, Lancashire, the biggest discovery in Europe if con-firmed.  Supporters say shale gas could be a "game changer" for Britain, restoring its selfsufficiency in energy, raising billions in taxes and cutting CO2 emissions by displacing higher-emitting fossil fuels such as coal. They claim Britain could follow the United States, where volume shale gas production has reduced energy prices.  Opponents say shale gas will stop Britain meeting its climate targets and condemn the controversial technique used to obtain the fuel, called "fracking," which involves fracturing the shale rock with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals. The "Frack Off" campaign group describes fracking as a "nightmare" causing "toxic and radioactive water pollution, tap water you can set on fire, earthquakes and runaway climate change".  Both sides agree that shale gas could prevent the installation of more than 4,000 large wind turbines - last week branded "useless" by the Duke of Edinburgh - but disagree on whether this is a good thing.  In a document seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the Department for Energy and Climate Change has identified large areas of eastern and southern England as having the "best shale gas potential". The main area identified runs from just south of Middlesbrough in a crescent through East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and the Cotswolds to Somerset and Wiltshire.  It then turns along the South Coast and Downs, including most of Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Shale gas sites are under investigation in the Sussex commuter belt, near Haywards Heath, the Mendip Hills, south of Bath, in Kent, Lincolnshire, south Wales, Staffordshire and Cheshire, as well as more sites near the existing find in Lancashire.  One firm, Celtique Energie, estimates that there may be as much as 14 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas in countryside south of Horsham, West Sussex, for which it already has a licence.  Bill Transier, the chief executive of Endeavour Energy UK, whose US arm controls 68,000 acres of shale in Pennsylvania, said his company would be "very active" in the licensing round.  Several of the potential sites will be controversial. The leader of Bath council has expressed concern that planned test drilling in the Mendips could taint the city's famous spa waters. In Lancashire, Cuadrilla has said that about 800 wells on 80 separate sites might be needed to extract its find, with a commensurate impact on the landscape.  The developments come as many arguments in the shale gas debate are exposed as misrepresentations. Frack Off, the British campaign group, says fracking is a "new method" that is being "pioneered" and "trialled" by Cuadrilla. It says that the shale gas exploration in Lancashire is "Britain's first fracking project".  In fact, fracking is not new and has been used without previous controversy since the 1940s. a spokesman for Cuadrilla said that an existing gas well at Elswick, near one of its sites in Lancashire, was fracked 20 years ago by its then owners, British Gas, in "almost exactly the same way" as at Cuadrilla's shale sites now.  The Elswick site has been producing conventional gas without controversy since 1996. The spokesman accused Frack Off of using "misleading information" to scare people.  Frack Off insisted that shale gas fracking was new and different because it would have to be done more often and at greater pressures.  among the most effective tools used by anti-shale campaigners is an Oscar-nominated film, Gasland, showing three residents of Weld County, Colorado, with water so contaminated that they could set fire to it as it came out of their kitchen taps. The dramatic scenes, blamed by the film on fracking, were described by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, this year as "extremely alarming" and "a bit of a wake-up call".  However, the state government of Colorado said the film's director, Josh Fox, ignored or dismissed investigations by scientists that found that the contamination in two of the cases was caused by naturally-occurring methane gas and had nothing to do with fracking or the gas industry.  Mr Fox said that in the third case of flaming tap water, the state had found the contamination was partly related to the industry. In the other two cases, he said that natural gas could have migrated as a result of fracking. The process "is inherently contaminating, and no amount of regulation can make it safe", he told an american newspaper.  Cuadrilla insists that there is no prospect of water contamination because the fracking takes place far below the water table and the drilling shaft that passes through the water levels is thickly sealed with concrete. Jonathan Craig, the chairman of the Geological Society's petroleum group, told MPs on the energy select committee that "having bad cement jobs on your wells" can result in contamination, "but that is exactly the same in conventional [oil and gas] exploration ... The fracks themselves are not the cause of contamination."  Even many in the green movement do not support all the claims made against shale gas. Prof Kevin anderson, a shale gas expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: "The jury is out on there being a direct and causal link on environmental effects. With bad practice, there is a risk, but with proper regulation the environmental impacts could be brought to the levels we deem acceptable for natural gas."  Prof anderson warned, however, that current regulation of the industry was "inadequate" and depended too much on taking operators' statements on trust. Cuadrilla admits that its operations in Lancashire "triggered" two small earthquakes, one of 2.3 magnitude and the other of 1.5. Fracking has been suspended ever since.  
 SIR - We welcome the Government's intention to improve transport infrastructure and agree that it is desirable to promote growth, be environmentally friendly, narrow the North-South divide, increase capacity on the West Coast Main Line and improve connectivity between our major cities. But we do not believe the High Speed 2 project can achieve these aims.  We share the concerns of the Transport Select Committee that Manchester and Leeds will not benefit from any capacity relief for 20 years, that claims of HS2 delivering substantial carbon reduction do not stand up to scrutiny and that it is disappointing that a major project is   
 THE UK is set to pour around ?1 billion of taxpayers' money into helping african countries fight climate change.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, is expected to announce details of the aid package ahead of talks at a United Nations summit on climate change in Durban, South africa, which start this week. among the projects to be funded will be schemes to help african farmers insure their crops against flooding and drought. Other projects include installing solar power in villages and building slurry pits that can produce gas to power generators.  The move, however, is expected to attract intense criticism at a time when the British economy is widely considered to be at risk of a "double-dip" recession. One of the countries that will receive money is South africa, the most economically advanced in the continent.  Last year, its economy grew by 2.8 per cent while Britain's grew by just 1.8 per cent.  The package comes from a cross-departmental fund set up to tackle climate change in developing countries.  It will mark a significant increase in the level of aid for foreign climate-change projects on top of the ?282million already allocated for the next year, and means money will be used not just from the foreign aid budget but from domestic budgets held by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs.  Mr Huhne revealed the existence of the funding package during a speech to the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London on Thursday, but he refused to give details of the actual sum. Sources close to the Government, however, have revealed that it is expected to be as much as ?1 billion over the next four years. Mr Huhne said: "at Durban, the focus of much   
 To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture - each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.  On one hand, there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by "Climategate 2.0", the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.  It is hard to know where to begin, after a week which opened with The Sunday Telegraph's exclusive on a blast of realism from the Duke of Edinburgh over the folly of our official infatuation with useless windmills. Then came an excoriatory report from the House of Lords on how we have so run down our expertise that it is doubtful whether we can hope to run a new generation of nuclear power stations. Next, there was a report from a leading Swiss bank finding that the EU's "emissions trading scheme" has wasted $287 billion (?186 billion) over six years - paid by all of us, to achieve nothing in terms of reducing "carbon emissions". There was also a front page story in another newspaper, warning that (as readers of this column have long been aware) within nine years we could all be paying nearly ?300 a year to subsidise solar panels and those same useless windmills.  Let's start, however, with a form of insanity which has so far made few headlines - a Government policy which, in the next few years, will inflate the cost of a new home in Britain by as much as 66 per cent.  THE SOaRING COST OF 'ZERO CaRBON'  LaST WEEK, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were lamenting that house-building is at its lowest level since the 1920s, just when we desperately need millions of new homes (not least to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of immigrants flooding into Britain each year, as a result of policies they both support). Neither mentioned, though, that a major obstacle to any improvement in the figures is their own Coalition's building regulations, already being phased in. These decree that, by 2016, all new homes must be "zero carbon" in terms of energy use and emissions. according to official estimates in the Code for Sustainable Homes, this will increase the cost of building a house by up to ?37,793.  In rural areas, where there is already a serious housing crisis, this will be made still worse by the Government's wish by 2013 to abolish the "Fuel Factor", a relaxation of the rules for new homes in places without access to the natural gas grid. New houses built in outlying areas will no longer be allowed to install oil- or gas-cylinder-fired heating, but will have to rely on wood-pellet boilers or "heat pumps". a paper submitted to the Government by Calor points out that a polluting wood-fired boiler costs ?11,000, while "air-source heat pumps" (?15,000) and "ground-source pumps" (?18,000) have both been shown to be seriously inefficient.  But the Government, with its "carbon" obsession, seems determined to ignore such practical matters, even though they will push the cost of new housing through the roof and make a nonsense of their stated wish for a dramatic increase in the provision of new homes.  OUR DISaPPEaRING NUCLEaR CaPaBILITY  IN HIS annual Energy Statement to Parliament last week, Chris Huhne announced, through gritted teeth, that he is still hoping to see a new fleet of nuclear power stations to plug Britain's fast-looming energy gap, as older power stations are closed down by age or EU anti-pollution laws. This coincided with a devastating report from the Lords Science and Technology Committee on nuclear research and development, dismally depicting how Britain, which led the world in this field 50 years ago, has allowed its pool of expertise to run down so far that we no longer have the know-how even to operate a new generation of nuclear plants.  The authors begin their report, damningly, by saying that they were "struck by the extraordinary discrepancy between the view, on the one hand, of some senior Government officials and the Secretary of State [Mr Huhne] and on the other, those of independent experts from academia, industry, nuclear agencies, the regulator and the Government's own advisers. a fundamental change in the Government's approach to nuclear R&D is needed now to address the complacency which permeates their vision of how the UK's energy needs will be met in the future."  The fact is that we would be wholly reliant on foreign-owned companies to build new nuclear power stations. Britain's last world-class nuclear company, Westinghouse, was sold by Gordon Brown to the Japanese in 2006, at a knock-down price of ?3.4 billion. So if new "carbonfree" nuclear reactors are built here, it will most likely be by a German consortium of RWE and E.On - using a design from Toshiba's Westinghouse. and as the Lords point out, thanks to government policy, we would not even be able to provide engineers to run them.  INSIDE THE CLIMaTE CaBaL  WHILE OUR Government remains trapped in its green dreamworld, similar horror stories pile up on every side, from that UBS report on the astronomically costly fiasco of the EU's carbon-trading scheme, to our own Government's "carbon floor price", in effect a tax on CO2 emissions rising yearly from 2013. This alone will eventually be enough to double the cost of our electricity, and drive a further swath of what  
 TOMORROW  The first stages of parliamentary elections are due to be held in Egypt. The UN Climate Change Conference opens in Durban, South africa.  TUESDaY  George Osborne presents his autumn Statement and the Office for Budget Responsibility publishes its latest economic forecasts. Channel 4 broadcasts an interview with Wikileaks founder Julian assange, his first since his appeal against extradition was rejected.  WEDNESDaY  Public-sector unions go on strike to protest against changes to their pensions. Hillary Clinton becomes the first US Secretary of State to visit Burma in 50 years.  THURSDaY  The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh reopens after an ?18 million restoration. David Hasselhoff launches an advent calendar competition in Bristol.  FRIDaY  UEFa announces the draw for Euro 2012. The Queen attends the British Military Tournament at Earls Court.  SaTURDaY  Coldplay begin a UK tour to promote their new album, Mylo Xyloto. Cancer Research hosts a Christmas pudding race in fancy dress in Covent Garden.  SUNDaY  Russia holds parliamentary elections, with President Dmitry Medvedev first on the candidates list for the ruling United Russia party.  DaNIEL KNOWLES 
 IT IS a DECISION guaranteed to please the Duke of Edinburgh, who described onshore wind turbines as a "disgrace". Plans for a huge turbine in view of the Prince of Wales's bedroom window have been rejected.  Barrogill angus, a farmer, has lost his appeal against a decision by planners to refuse a wind turbine on his land near the Castle of Mey in Caithness, where Prince Charles, right, stays for a week every august.  an official appointed by Scottish ministers dismissed the appeal because neighbouring houses could be affected by the noise from the 67ft turbine. "I acknowledge the modest but nonetheless useful contribution which the proposal would make towards renewable energy targets," he said. "In this case, however, I find that to be outweighed by the potentially adverse impact on residential amenity."  Highland Council refused the application to erect a 20-kilowatt wind turbine near the Castle of Mey earlier this year because it would spoil the view of the property, which was the only home to have been owned by the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The 18 objectors included the area's former MP, Lord MacLennan of Rogart, who led the Prince's North Highland Initiative. 
 SIR - The Duke of Edinburgh often displays a fine range of medals. He deserves another for speaking out so forthrightly against useless, expensive wind turbines (report, November 20). Ralph Bradley Harrogate, North Yorkshire SIR - Investment in wind turbines would have been better spent on large plants for the anaerobic digestion of sewage to generate methane, which can be extracted and fed into the communal gas system.  Small plants have been successfully run in a number of countries. The feedstock is unlikely ever to fail and the residue from the process is claimed to be a valuable agricultural compost.  In my view, this would be an excellent example of natural renewable energy.  alan S Lindsey Great Bookham, Surrey SIR - In Fair Isle, in northern Scotland, where there are no trees, the wind is constant and the installation of a turbine has revolutionised the lives of the islanders. But this is a specific exception. In most cases, wind turbines are expensive disasters. Michael Plumbe Hastings, East Sussex SIR - From the standpoint of saving CO2 or of simple engineering efficiency, wind farms achieve very little. at best, their actual output is around 28 per cent of installed capacity.  This is poor compared to other electricity generation methods, and it does not seem to coincide with when it is needed in cold weather, as there is often little wind in periods of high pressure.  In addition, wind power needs at least 85 per cent back-up from other generation methods for when the wind stops blowing, which has to be kept on continuous "spinning" stand-by.  Denmark has not managed to switch off any conventional power stations 30 years after introducing wind power as an alternative, and Germany is disappointed with the results of its wind programme and is having now to build more conventional power stations.  The cost of our wind power programme is simply enor  
 The Chancellor's autumn Statement comes at a critical time for the British economy. Growth forecasts have already shrunk from the two and a half per cent predicted earlier this year by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development believes that the British economy will fall back into mild recession next year. The crisis within the eurozone continues unabated, threatening to derail every economy in Europe. as the poll we publish today shows, Britons are extremely anxious about their economic future: most expect to be worse off in the coming months.  The pressure is therefore on George Osborne to come up with measures that will promote growth - and rightly so. We understand that the Chancellor will probably freeze fuel duty, abandoning the increases that were planned for January and august 2012, and that he will allow rail companies to increase their fares by a maximum of six rather than eight per cent. Those measures will certainly be of help to the "squeezed middle" - but no one is pretending that they are more than a sticking-plaster solution.  Is there scope for the Chancellor to do more? Our poll today indicates that many wish he would. at the same time, the public's great fear is that the squeeze on disposable income will increase. One of the fastest ways for the Government to jack up inflation would be to abandon its strategy for reducing the deficit, and cover the gap between expenditure and revenue by printing money. Heeding the calls of the deficit deniers, and increasing spending, would shake the confidence of the bond markets, provoking a significant increase in interest rates that would choke off whatever chance there is of recovery.  The Chancellor's options are, therefore, extremely limited. Set against that background, we are surprised by the idea that Chris Huhne is set to announce that around ?1billion will be devoted to helping african nations deal with the effects of climate change over the next four years. While we appreciate the need to help the world's poorest people, and admire the moral zeal behind the Coalition's commitment to international development, it is not easy to endorse spending taxpayers' money in this way at this of all times. There are, after all, more than a million young Britons without jobs, and it appears that the economic situation will only deteriorate. The politics of this gesture are also difficult to understand. Hard-working families naturally, and rightly, believe that their Government's first duty is to protect their interests. While it is true that, ultimately, we all live on  
 It's no surprise that arts and Crafts architecture should be one of the most enduringly popular of domestic styles. The soundness of the building, the excellence of the details, and the mellowness of homes that look as though they have emerged from the soil on which they are built, would ensure a following.  But, perhaps, they offer something more. at a time of anxiety, disapproving of the glitz of financial excess, they offer a moral bulwark. The favourite word of the architects who built them was "honest".  Honest meant straightforward construction; if something looked as though it were stone or wood, it had to be solid, not a surface dressing. No short cuts were permitted: the whole thing had to be done by labourers and craftsmen, without the machinery that would often have produced the same result and saved time. Materials were not to be hauled from factories half way across the country but found as near to the site as possible. Localism wasn't invented by the Localism Bill now going through Parliament.  There was an element of madness to it, a very British King Canute-like eccentricity, seeking to hold back the tide that brought us shopping centres, motorways and urban sprawl. The movement's founders, John Ruskin and William Morris (above), had seen what the Industrial Revolution did to people, forcing them to live in squalid, smoke-blackened mill towns and work long hours at soullessly repetitive tasks.  They saw an antidote in nature and handwork. It seemed to them that the medieval craftsman must have been happier than the mill worker because he had some control over the ornament he produced. Folk traditions still persisted in agricultural areas of the country, but were disappearing fast.  Living outside Farnham, George Sturt, who gave up teaching to run a family business making farm carts, lamented, like many, "the invasion of a new people", unsympathetic to the old ways. The lights from their villas impinged on the primordial darkness of the night, the sounds of their pianos dispelled the immemorial silence, it was impossible to ignore "the affected excitement" of tennis parties and the "braying" of motor cars. I think he would have got on well with the Prince of Wales.  They knew they were fighting a losing battle - and their response was the same as that of many people today who feel helpless in the face of globalisation, climate change and the banks. They sought to turn home into a personal arcadia. They hoped their revolutionary example would be followed by the world; until that time, they rejoiced in doing - and being seen to do - the right thing. There was a degree of Puritanism, if not smugness: C Fa Voysey, one of whose houses, The White Cottage, in Wandsworth (through Knight Frank and aylesford) had little time for soft furnishings. Observe the name: even a house now valued at ?5m could partake of the noble simplicity of the cottage. Bare, unvarnished wood rather than upholstery was the note: austerity to a fault. It took the decorative genius of MH Baillie Scott to blend exposed wood, hand-wrought metalwork, tiles and stained-glass into a harmony that both seduced the eye and expressed a new way of living.  The Oak House at Iwerne Minster (Strutt & Parker, ?1.55m) is a good example of his planning: better to have one big "living hall", where all the activities of the house could take place, than a huddle of meaner rooms, some of which would only be used at Christmas.  The arts and Crafts architect par excellence was Detmar Blow. as a student on a travelling scholarship to France, he happened to meet the aged and intermittently mad Ruskin, who took him under his wing. He abandoned conventional architecture to become a builder, staying in Leicestershire with an old farm labourer whose trousers he would sometimes borrow - Blow was so handsome he could get away with it.  When he eventually began to design houses in his own right, they were shot through with idealism. One of the earliest was Happisburgh Manor, 1900, on the North Norfolk coast, bringing the maximum of sunlight into the house through an X-shaped or butterfly plan, and built of flint, brick and Norfolk reed thatch: only the glass did not come from the immediate surroundings. Blow appears also to have built the Pyghtle, a couple of years after the Manor, from similar materials (Savills, ?425,000). It radiates a happy zaniness; this was architecture that sought to change the world.  By comparison, Lynton,  
 ENERGY COMPaNIES are planning a huge increase in the number of British drilling sites for shale gas, as arguments rage over whether the controversial fuel is safe.  Under a new government "licensing round" early next year - the first since 2008 - bids for shale gas exploration licences are expected to surge, industry experts have told The Sunday Telegraph.  The company responsible for Britain's only active shale gas drilling, Cuadrilla Resources, recently claimed a gigantic 200 trillion cubic-foot find at its site near Blackpool, Lancashire, the biggest discovery in Europe if con-firmed.  Supporters say shale gas could be a "game changer" for Britain, restoring its selfsufficiency in energy, raising billions in taxes and cutting CO2 emissions by displacing higher-emitting fossil fuels such as coal. They claim Britain could follow the United States, where volume shale gas production has reduced energy prices.  Opponents say shale gas will stop Britain meeting its climate targets and condemn the controversial technique used to obtain the fuel, called "fracking," which involves fracturing the shale rock with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals. The "Frack Off" campaign group describes fracking as a "nightmare" causing "toxic and radioactive water pollution, tap water you can set on fire, earthquakes and runaway climate change".  Both sides agree that shale gas could prevent the installation of more than 4,000 large wind turbines - last week branded "useless" by the Duke of Edinburgh - but disagree on whether this is a good thing.  In a document seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the Department for Energy and Climate Change has identified large areas of eastern and southern England as having the "best shale gas potential". The main area identified runs from just south of Middlesbrough in a crescent through East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and the Cotswolds to Somerset and Wiltshire.  It then turns along the South Coast and Downs, including most of Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Shale gas sites are under investigation in the Sussex commuter belt, near Haywards Heath, the Mendip Hills, south of Bath, in Kent, Lincolnshire, south Wales, Staffordshire and Cheshire, as well as more sites near the existing find in Lancashire.  One firm, Celtique Energie, estimates that there may be as much as 14 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas in countryside south of Horsham, West Sussex, for which it already has a licence.  Bill Transier, the chief executive of Endeavour Energy UK, whose US arm controls 68,000 acres of shale in Pennsylvania, said his company would be "very active" in the licensing round.  Several of the potential sites will be controversial. The leader of Bath council has expressed concern that planned test drilling in the Mendips could taint the city's famous spa waters. In Lancashire, Cuadrilla has said that about 800 wells on 80 separate sites might be needed to extract its find, with a commensurate impact on the landscape.  The developments come as many arguments in the shale gas debate are exposed as misrepresentations. Frack Off, the British campaign group, says fracking is a "new method" that is being "pioneered" and "trialled" by Cuadrilla. It says that the shale gas exploration in Lancashire is "Britain's first fracking project".  In fact, fracking is not new and has been used without previous controversy since the 1940s. a spokesman for Cuadrilla said that an existing gas well at Elswick, near one of its sites in Lancashire, was fracked 20 years ago by its then owners, British Gas, in "almost exactly the same way" as at Cuadrilla's shale sites now.  The Elswick site has been producing conventional gas without controversy since 1996. The spokesman accused Frack Off of using "misleading information" to scare people.  Frack Off insisted that shale gas fracking was new and different because it would have to be done more often and at greater pressures.  among the most effective tools used by anti-shale campaigners is an Oscar-nominated film, Gasland, showing three residents of Weld County, Colorado, with water so contaminated that they could set fire to it as it came out of their kitchen taps. The dramatic scenes, blamed by the film on fracking, were described by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, this year as "extremely alarming" and "a bit of a wake-up call".  However, the state government of Colorado said the film's director, Josh Fox, ignored or dismissed investigations by scientists that found that the contamination in two of the cases was caused by naturally-occurring methane gas and had nothing to do with fracking or the gas industry.  Mr Fox said that in the third case of flaming tap water, the state had found the contamination was partly related to the industry. In the other two cases, he said that natural gas could have migrated as a result of fracking. The process "is inherently contaminating, and no amount of regulation can make it safe", he told an american newspaper.  Cuadrilla insists that there is no prospect of water contamination because the fracking takes place far below the water table and the drilling shaft that passes through the water levels is thickly sealed with concrete. Jonathan Craig, the chairman of the Geological Society's petroleum group, told MPs on the energy select committee that "having bad cement jobs on your wells" can result in contamination, "but that is exactly the same in conventional [oil and gas] exploration ... The fracks themselves are not the cause of contamination."  Even many in the green movement do not support all the claims made against shale gas. Prof Kevin anderson, a shale gas expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: "The jury is out on there being a direct and causal link on environmental effects. With bad practice, there is a risk, but with proper regulation the environmental impacts could be brought to the levels we deem acceptable for natural gas."  Prof anderson warned, however, that current regulation of the industry was "inadequate" and depended too much on taking operators' statements on trust. Cuadrilla admits that its operations in Lancashire "triggered" two small earthquakes, one of 2.3 magnitude and the other of 1.5. Fracking has been suspended ever since.  
 SIR - We welcome the Government's intention to improve transport infrastructure and agree that it is desirable to promote growth, be environmentally friendly, narrow the North-South divide, increase capacity on the West Coast Main Line and improve connectivity between our major cities. But we do not believe the High Speed 2 project can achieve these aims.  We share the concerns of the Transport Select Committee that Manchester and Leeds will not benefit from any capacity relief for 20 years, that claims of HS2 delivering substantial carbon reduction do not stand up to scrutiny and that it is disappointing that a major project is   
 THE UK is set to pour around ?1 billion of taxpayers' money into helping african countries fight climate change.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, is expected to announce details of the aid package ahead of talks at a United Nations summit on climate change in Durban, South africa, which start this week. among the projects to be funded will be schemes to help african farmers insure their crops against flooding and drought. Other projects include installing solar power in villages and building slurry pits that can produce gas to power generators.  The move, however, is expected to attract intense criticism at a time when the British economy is widely considered to be at risk of a "double-dip" recession. One of the countries that will receive money is South africa, the most economically advanced in the continent.  Last year, its economy grew by 2.8 per cent while Britain's grew by just 1.8 per cent.  The package comes from a cross-departmental fund set up to tackle climate change in developing countries.  It will mark a significant increase in the level of aid for foreign climate-change projects on top of the ?282million already allocated for the next year, and means money will be used not just from the foreign aid budget but from domestic budgets held by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs.  Mr Huhne revealed the existence of the funding package during a speech to the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London on Thursday, but he refused to give details of the actual sum. Sources close to the Government, however, have revealed that it is expected to be as much as ?1 billion over the next four years. Mr Huhne said: "at Durban, the focus of much   
 The Promise  Channel 4, 9pm  Peter Kosminsky's drama series about the fraught relationship between Palestinians and Jews is hugely ambitious and immensely watchable. It alternates between two different time periods; one that tells the story of a British sergeant during the mandate in Palestine in 1946; the other that is set in the present day, as his naive granddaughter (Claire Foy, left) on her gap year tries to retrace his footsteps in modern-day Israel. She uses his diary as a route map to learn about the events that destroyed his life and led to more than half a century of violence in the Middle East. It's a brilliantly clever dramatic device, because his conflicted loyalties and her ignorance act as a vacuum to be filled with wildly divergent points of view. "I'm sorry to be so thick," she says, "but ..." (See Pick of the week, page 24.)  Live Match of the Day  BBC One, 1pm  It may be a Sunday afternoon, but don't expect any Christian charity to be on show at the Liberty Stadium, where the South Wales derby between Swansea City and Cardiff City is sure to be a fiery affair.  Live Super Bowl XLV  BBC One, 10.55pm  Get in the Budweisers and popcorn for the biggest night in american sport a  
 Frankenstein Mary Shelley thought up the story of Dr Frankenstein in the cold, wet summer of 1816: experiments with electrical "galvanism" - making dead frogs twitch - were raising questions about the nature of life. She half-dreamt the tale, seeing "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the Thing". It became a deathless myth, but Nick Dear's play returns to the original book.  Under Danny Boyle's direction, the creator and monster alternate the roles, Jonny Lee Miller sharing with Benedict Cumberbatch (who already has a slight look of having been assembled from a kit). They can't switch between matinee and evening, as Nicholas Hytner revealed: "The Creature's make-up is extremely heavy." So, unlike most actors suffering prosthetic discomforts, they'll each have someone who really sympathises. Libby Purves National Theatre: Olivier, London (020-7452 3000), til april 17. Day seats only. Broadcast live to cinemas worldwide on March 17 The Wizard of Oz andrew Lloyd Webber's souped-up new version, starting previews on Monday, is already enjoying the benefits of being hyped by its own talent show, BBC One's Over the Rainbow - advance bookings are over ?10 million. Danielle Hope takes the no-pressure-then role of Dorothy, the beloved songs will all be there, plus a few new ones, and there'll be "a few surprises along the way". a stage blockbuster is born. James Jackson London Palladium (wizardofozthemusical.com 0844 4122957), Mon The Heretic While Greenland at the National shows the dangers of climate change, the naysayers take the stage at the Royal Court. Juliet Stevenson and The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet star in this black comedy, by Richard Bean, confronting scientific orthodoxy. Laura Silverman Royal Court, London SW1 (royalcourttheatre. com 020-7565 5000), until March 19) 
 Juliet Stevenson is absolutely tiny. She is a little pocket person - slim, short, petite in every way. She is not at all what I expected. I've seen her give so many towering performances that, in my mind, she was a big tall person. Yet here she is, all tiny and freezing, quietly drinking soup from a polystyrene cup.  She is, in many ways, unremarkable. I don't mean that as an insult, but if I saw her walking down the street, I might not recognise her. That seems incredible to me, how easily she would blend in with the crowd because, during her 30-odd years as an actress, she has pulled some pretty powerful performances from that tiny frame.  I first came across her when she took the lead in the 1991 anthony Minghella film Truly Madly Deeply. She played Nina, a woman grieving the sudden death of her beloved boyfriend. She spent the first third of the film crying big tears and snorting back snot flowing from her nose. It was ugly and beautiful at the same time. Then she won an Olivier for her portrayal of Paulina, a former political prisoner who has been raped, in the play Death and the Maiden. I saw her in that too and was blown away. I've also seen her in Shakespeare, Ibsen, Bend it Like Beckham and TV's a Place of Execution.  She is here, in the freezing cold rehearsal space in North London, to prepare for her next role of Dr Diana Cassell, a leading academic in earth sciences, in The Heretic, a new play by Richard Bean. "Well, she's a geophysicist who studies climate change and she won't jump on the bandwagon about the whole issue. She looks at everything scientifically and she rattles people's cages because she is at odds with the orthodoxy." Does Cassell, as played by Stevenson, not believe in climate change then?  "She believes in going her own way," Stevenson says firmly. Then, suddenly, she looks rather surprised. "It's a comedy, actually. Didn't I say that?  It's very funny. It's not banging a drum or anything."  Stevenson says that she wanted to do the play partly because she loves performing at the Royal Court in London and partly because Stevenson's character is a single mother with a teenage daughter. "I could really relate to the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter."  Stevenson has two children: Rosalind, 17; and Gabriel, 10. She also has two stepsons - Jonah, 22, and Jomo, 26 - whom she adores. "I get on so well with them and they've been so fantastic."  She has been with her partner, the anthropologist Hugh Brody, since they met at a supper party in 1993. "It was instant. Really it was," she says. "We were at a friend's house and he was opposite me and I couldn't stop staring at him. He must've thought I was mad, but after supper we ended up talking to each other and that was it."  She says that she had had her fill of actors by then. "I had certainly dated a few and I'd had enough really."  Why does she think that was the case?  "Well, I think I was looking for someone who wasn't in the industry because for most of my twenties long-term relationships and being a mother weren't on my mind. I was so focused on my career when I was younger. It was everything to me. I'd do lots of research, going off to Russia or wherever. It just doesn't work if two people who are focused on acting get together."  Until Stevenson had children she says she was resolutely undomesticated. "There was nothing in my fridge but mouldy yoghurt. I actually went to friends' houses just to get fed." What did she live off, then?  She laughs. "apart from other people's charity?  No idea." She did, however, have some vague notion that she wanted to be a mother. "It was there, I suppose, a latent maternal feeling, but I couldn't have done it in my twenties. I really wasn't ready for it. I was enjoying my life too much."  Her daughter shows every sign that she wants to be an actress. Is she happy about this?  She thinks for a bit. "It's not up to me though, is it?" she says. "She's a very grounded person, very emotionally intelligent. I think she'll make choices that are right for her." She concedes that Rosalind finds Stevenson's life glamorous. "Well, when I go to awards ceremonies and the like. She likes seeing me work, she loves coming to the theatre, but I tell her that it's not as glamorous as it looks. It's hard work."  She describes her life as one big rush. "The children tell me we have a sitting room in our house, but I call it the run-through because I am always rushing off from one place to the next. I do the kids, I work, I organise childcare. I wash uniforms, sports kit. There never seems to be enough time."  Her husband travels a lot. "He has spent the past 12 years working with the Bushmen of the Kalahari and he also does research at a Canadian university, so he goes backwards and forwards. "When I'm working he holds the fort at home. It's a juggling act for both of us." Does it bother her that he travels so much?  She looks surprised. "No," she says. "It's what he does."  It's something she is used to because she has spent much of her life on the move. Her father was in the army and the family travelled all over the world. "as a child I never stayed anywhere for more than about two years. It didn't bother me, but now I have my own children and our two stepchildren I can't imagine how my parents did it. There's all that packing up to do. It's almost impossible to think about it." It also meant that she never put down any roots. "I didn't really have any friends because I was never anywhere long enough." She became quite a solitary child who lived in her head.  Stevenson began to act when she went to boarding school, Hurst Lodge in Berkshire. "I had a wonderful teacher who was Welsh." It was this teacher who encouraged her to draw from her own experiences. "I hadn't realised that about acting then, the depths you could go to. For example, I had never really enjoyed poetry but she got me to read auden and my life changed."  at first, Stevenson didn't enjoy school. "I was homesick at first. There were no computers in those days, no mobile phones, so contact with my parents was only through letter-writing. I found it very awful. I was 9."  It wasn't the school's fault. "Oh no, I loved the school. We had a ball, us boarders." But at the end of holidays she would dread going back. "I'd have this awful sense of loss," she says. "I have used it a lot in my acting. God knows, I have other places in which to look for loss. My brother in a car crash died just before my son was born, and he was only 48. My father has died. You can't   
 Britain is to become the industrial centre for what is being claimed will be the world's most advanced wind turbines after Gamesa committed itself to opening three big installations in the UK.  as Jorge Calvet pitched the Spanish green energy group into a technology race against Mitsubishi, Siemens, General Electric and alstom, he told Britain to stop fretting about the effectiveness of wind power. Instead, the Gamesa chairman and chief executive said, it should believe that it had the skills and supply chain to deliver thousands of offshore wind turbines over the coming decade.  Mr Calvet pledged to make the country his company's global centre for offshore wind development. He said that Gamesa would build a manufacturing plant, likely to be either on the Tyne or the Humber, in addition to a research and development facility that it will open near Glasgow, teaming with Strathclyde, Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, and a manufacturing facility in Dundee. Gamesa will also open a corporate headquarters in London.  The Spanish investment bankerturned-wind energy champion said it was likely that Gamesa, which previously has had no presence in Britain, would directly employ 1,200 people in the UK, with a similar number of jobs created among suppliers.  Yet Mr Calvet was critical of green energy sceptics who question whether Britain has the capability or capacity to build the 30 gigawatts of renewable power, mainly through offshore wind farms, envisaged by the Government's policy of developing a low-carbon economy.  "The British should be a bit more optimistic," Mr Calvet told The Times. "The UK has centuries of industrial know-how and some of the world's great engineering companies, the likes of BaE Systems and Land Rover. There is a lot of knowledge in the universities and they turn out great engineers. We are looking at creating more than 2,000 high-quality jobs, high quality because of the level of knowledge that will be needed. Our preference is to source British engineers."  He said that he had no doubts about being able to construct a supply chain where there is none. "We had nothing in China five years ago and now we have six manufacturing plants." Gamesa will make its next generation of wind turbines in their entirety in Britain rather than ship in parts. It plans technology-stretching seven megawatt wind turbines, more than twice the size of the biggest turbines in the market that in length and weight would be the size of an airbus a340 super-jumbo aircraft. "These will be the most advanced turbines in the world," Mr Calvet said.  Sceptics fear that recent data showing negligible amounts of electricity being produced on still winter days could prove that tens of billions of pounds of investment in wind turbines is an expensi  
 The Government will take action to potentially block a rush of solar panel farms being proposed in the West Country and elsewhere after it emerged that green energy developers were eating up subsidies meant for householders and small businesses.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, has called for a review of the Feed in Tariffs scheme, in which solar panel installations receive artifically inflated prices for the power they produce via a ?360 million fund. Mr Huhne said that large solar installations of scores of panels were not meant to be the beneficiaries of the funding. He indicated that funding could be cut by the summer and that the tariff regime would be altered for all installations by april 2012. (Robert Lea)  Ian King, page 33 
 Guy Hands bounced back to dealmaking yesterday with a ?300 million bid for Chaucer, the Lloyd's of London insurer.  Mr Hands, who was humbled last week when his private equity firm Terra Firma lost control of EMI to its lenders, is understood to be targeting three further buyouts in Europe as part of his fightback.  Insiders said that Mr Hands, who sunk 30 per cent of two Terra Firma funds into the disastrous ?4.2 billion buyout of EMI in 2007, is confident that he can drag his under-water Terra Firma Capital Partners III (TFCP III) fund back to break-even. That fund has ?1.4 billion left to spend. It is understood that investors have asked Mr Hands to stick to medium-sized, solid buyouts to build up the portfolio's value with a minimum of risk.  Terra Firma lost ?1.7 billion on EMI and Mr Hands, who also lost a US court case in which he accused Citigroup, the music group's lender, of fraud, has only three years to turn TFCP III around.  However, the buyout boss, who lives as a tax exile in Guernsey, has made hundreds of millions of pounds for investors in the past and is understood to be confident he can raise another fund provided TFCP III breaks even.  Mr Hands's Terra Firma investment vehicle is understood to be one of two or three potential buyers to have made contact with Chaucer in the past week.  Trade buyers, thought to be from overseas, are also understood to have expressed an interest in Chaucer, which underwrites aviation, marine and property risks on the Lloyd's market. Chaucer also operates a specialist energy division and a motor unit that sells policies direct to the public through the Chaucer Direct brand.  Terra Firma has investments in a number of sectors including infrastructure, renewable energy, agriculture and leisure, but Chaucer would be the private equity firm's first financial services company.  It is understood that Mr Hands held talks with a number of German banks about potential takeovers last year, but walked away because he believed that the assets were overpriced.  Chaucer was forced by the Takeover Panel yesterday to confirm the approaches after a sharp rise in its share price. Shares in the company, seen as a perennial bid target, have risen by 25 per cent in the past week.  Shares closed up almost 17 per cent, at 61?p, after Chaucer said that it had received "a number" of approaches but emphasised that there was no certainty that a firm offer would be forthcoming. That closing price values Chaucer at about ?335 million, but it is thought Mr Hands has offered closer to ?300 million - a 10 per cent premium to Chaucer's undisturbed share price.  Terra Firma's interest in Chaucer comes amid a flurry of dealmaking in the Lloyd's sector, which is   
 Carillion: The Wolverhamptonbased support services group is to take over the heating and renewable energy group Eaga for ?306 million. Page 53 Linklaters: The London law firm faces a ?115 million negligence claim by Credit Suisse over advice it gave on a deal with Parmalat, the collapsed Italian dairy giant. Page 53 
 Holidaymakers heading for ski resorts in France and Switzerland should brace themselves for bumps, bruises and broken bones on rock-hard slopes produced by snow cannon after a month without so much as a flake.  In the main destinations for British tourists, most of the pistes are open but this is often because they have been pumping artificial snow. It is feared that the conditions will lead to even more injuries than usual.  Patrick Guillaume, a mountain guide in alpe d'Huez, said: "There is not too much difference between artificial snow and natural snow except that the artificial kind is harder in the afternoon. Falls can be painful."  His warning was echoed by Robert Bolognesi, a spokesman for M?t?orisk, a Swiss weather consultancy. "The slopes are smooth and the stopping distance is greater. People are not always aware of this. You need to learn to control your speed," he said.  With no snow since early January in much of the alps and the Pyrenees, only resorts such as Les Deux alpes, which are at the highest altitudes, claim to be snow-covered. Others, such as Val d'Is?re, have no more than a sprinkling. Jean Marc Silva, director of France Montagnes, the French winter holiday tourist office, said: "It's tr  
 "Mubarak steps down" flashed up on their screens and traders called a halt to "pyramid selling", as the City's wags have named Egypt-inspired weakness.  The President's departure after 18 days of mass protest gave hope for greater stability in the region, saw the price of a barrel of oil fall 53 cents to $86.21 in New York trading and the FTSE 100 reverse a near-47-point decline to sign off the day back in the black and back above 6,000 points.  London's leading index rose 42.9 points to 6,062.9 as fund managers set aside fresh concerns for the sovereign debt of certain European countries and regained their appetite for risk.  Mining shares tracked metals prices higher, although the ceiling for both remained China, whose latest interest rate rise this week frayed nerves about demand for commodities.  Still, the platinum producer Lonmin added 67p to 18.45 and anglo american advanced 113p to ?34.21?. There was demand for power companies, too. Centrica continued to be chased higher on the familiar mix of fact and speculation. Credit Suisse lifted its target price on the owner of British Gas from 340p to 380p, while rumours persisted of a possible lucrative bid from either France's GDF Suez or, more likely, Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly. Not new, but the shares ran 10?p higher to 344?p anyway.  BG was also lifted 51?p to ?15.24 by rekindled bid talk. BHP Billiton, the miner known as the "The Big aussie", up 41p at ?25.25, has been linked previously with the gas group.  SaBMiller, the owner of Peroni and Grolsch lager, rose 58?p to ?21.44 after a push from RBS, and Legal & General moved up 4p at 122?p after research from Nomura.  But it was a soggy end to the week for bank and shop shares. Banks, typically large holders of European government bonds, were marked lower generally after Portugal offered to buy back debt to try to soothe nerves about its ability to service it and Moody's Investors Service downgraded its debt ratings on half a dozen Irish lenders.  among those hit hardest was Barclays, 2?p lower at 311p before results on Tuesday. arturo De Frias Marques, Evolution Securities' banks analyst, urged clients to sell because, in his view, Barclays would struggle more than any other British lender to meet the new capital rules that he expects by the end of 2012. He told clients to switch from Barclays into Lloyds Banking Group, up 1p at 66?p. Losses were steep for retailers after the price of cotton ran past $190 a pound, a record, and another week of sales by the John Lewis Partnership, which includes Waitrose, proved something of a disappointment. In response, Next lost 63p to ?20, while Marks & Spencer fell 3?p to 368p. Kingfisher, Burberry and Supergroup were all lower, too.  Ocado, the grocery deliver company, tumbled 30p to 255p after the John Lewis pension fund sold   
 Royal Court, SW1 ***  after the preachy hysteria of the National Theatre's Greenland ("Mum, the ice is melting and I'm really scared"), we were owed a sharpener: an affirmation that we may question the new religion which says that global warming is our fault.  Richard Bean's painfully witty play will annoy some, but even believers may enjoy briefly cocking a snook at the Monbiotocracy. Especially in a play so artfully recognisable: from the first snap of "Stop sighing Mum, you sound like you're in The archers", through references to Paxman, WikiLeaks, Gary Glitter and "Caroline Spelman's fish pie suppers", it strikes home. The first act is one of the sharpest, funniest, most engaging hours you could spend.  We start in a university department of Earth Sciences, surprised at its new fashionableness. In a clever set which shows clouds, rain and snow through skylights, Professor Kevin (James Fleet, with a moulting air) observes that arts once ruled, then Sociology , until Psychology supplanted it in the 1970s and "made bullshit respectable, which paved the way for Media Studies". Now Earth Sciences is the trendy faculty, and big business is knocking on the door offering consultancy contracts, so Kevin prefers to forget that his first book was about the coming Ic  
 Each week, The Times will take a wry look at the events that may have passed you by and suggest what to look out for in the next seven days YOU MIGHT HaVE MISSED... Dale Vince, chairman of Forest Green Rovers and a vegan who runs a green energy business, stopped the club feeding the players red meat "on performance and health grounds".  Now he has taken it off the menu in the New Lawn Stadium's catering outlets. "If it wasn't good enough for our players, it wasn't good enough for our fans, staff and visitors," he said. So no more beefburgers, hot dogs and cottage pies, though free-range poultry and f  
 The global appetite for energy is likely to swell far more rapidly than available supply in coming decades as oil production hits a plateau and emerging markets see rampant economic growth, Royal Dutch Shell has said.  In a report published today, the oil giant predicts that by 2050 world energy demand may have tripled compared with 2000 levels, based on historical patterns of development. However, energy supplies may grow by only 50 per cent in the same period.  Improvements in energy efficiency could curb demand by 20 per cent. But the world still needs to figure out how to bridge a looming gap between supply and demand that is equivalent to the global energy industry's entire output in the year 2000, Shell calculated. By the end of this decade the world will run into a plateau in oil production, a development that will put "upward pressure" on oil prices.  Jeremy Bentham, the vice-president for Business Environment at Shell, said: "The coming surge in energy demand reflects the surge in developing nations. China will be continuing through its industrialisation period over the next ten years, and India is probably ten years behind that.  "This will be followed by the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, and so on. These successive waves of development will create a surge in underlying demand for energy. This is leading us to a vast zone of uncertainty."  The projections came in a report updating energy scenarios that Shell published in 2008. Since then the recession set global energy demand back by about two to three years, meaning that 2008 demand levels will be reached again only this year.  However the broader trend in energy markets is clear, the report said: the world faces rapid demand growth as emerging markets industrialise, coupled with increasing strains on traditional sources of energy. Oil production is likely to rise 16 per cent   
 Each week, The Times will take a wry look at the events that may have passed you by and suggest what to look out for in the next seven days YOU MIGHT HaVE MISSED... Dale Vince, chairman of Forest Green Rovers and a vegan who runs a green energy business, stopped the club feeding the players red meat "on performance and health grounds".  Now he has taken it off the menu in the New Lawn Stadium's catering outlets. "If it wasn't good enough for our players, really it wasn't good enough for our fans, staff and visitors," he said. So no more beefburgers, hot dogs and cottage pies, though free-range poultry and f  
 The global appetite for energy is likely to swell far more rapidly than available supply in coming decades as oil production hits a plateau and emerging markets see rampant economic growth, Royal Dutch Shell has said.  In a report published today, the oil giant predicts that by 2050 world energy demand may have tripled compared with 2000 levels, based on historical patterns of development. However, energy supplies may grow by only 50 per cent in the same period.  Improvements in energy efficiency could curb demand by 20 per cent. But the world still needs to figure out how to bridge a looming gap between supply and demand that is equivalent to the global energy industry's entire output in the year 2000, Shell calculated. By the end of this decade the world will run into a plateau in oil production, a development that will put "upward pressure" on oil prices.  Jeremy Bentham, the vice-president for Business Environment at Shell, said: "The coming surge in energy demand reflects the surge in developing nations. China will be continuing through its industrialisation period over the next ten years, and India is probably ten years behind that.  "This will be followed by the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, and so on. These successive waves of development will create a surge in underlying demand for energy. This is leading us to a vast zone of uncertainty."  The projections came in a report updating energy scenarios that Shell published in 2008. Since then the recession set global energy demand back by about two to three years, meaning that 2008 demand levels will be reached again only this year.  However the broader trend in energy markets is clear, the report said: the world faces rapid demand growth as emerging markets industrialise, coupled with increasing strains on traditional sources of energy. Oil production is likely to rise 16 per cent   
 Less than five minutes after arriving at the Eden Project in Cornwall, I am tasting an experience that has all but disappeared from modern British life. I am sitting in an office passively inhaling tobacco smoke. "It's my room and my rules," says Tim Smit, co-founder of the environmental attraction, as he puffs on his cigar.  The Dutch-born entrepreneur attributes his success partly to his refusal to accept the rules and norms imposed by others. He is also contemptuous of what he feels is a typically British aversion to taking risks.  When raising the money to create the Eden Project and his previous triumph, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, he ignored the hundreds of people who told him it couldn't or shouldn't be done.  Next month is the tenth anniversary of the opening of the "global garden", which continues to attract more than a million visitors a year to a former china-clay pit near St austell.  Despite being knighted in January for his success in engaging the public with the science of sustainable living, Smit, 56, seems to prefer being the outsider who is free to attack the Establishment when he sees it paying lip service to green causes.  I ask him his opinion of David Cameron's claim that he will lead the "greenest government ever".  "That's about as valid as my claim to be Donald Duck," he says. "There are a lot of people in government who want to do the right thing but there is an enormous poverty of bravery and leadership. and I have met most of them. The problem is the profound fear of being disliked. Blair had it and Cameron seems to have it.  "They use paper-tiger language of boldness and decisiveness but make jolly sure they haven't offended people really. It's a very skilful use of acting."  The highlight of any visit to the project remains the Rainforest and Mediterranean biomes, the world's largest conservatories. Clambering up a terrifyingly thin, wobbly steel staircase to stand on a viewing platform just below the roof, 150ft above the forest floor, I can see that the rainforest has grown abundantly since I last visited five years ago. The lush, tropical trees now brush the roof in places and are trimmed by staff using a huge helium balloon.  Eden contains more than a million plants but avoids littering them with conventional plant labels, which Smit calls "tombstones". Instead, there are colourful illustrations telling the stories of the species on which we rely for our food, fuels, medicines and materials.  New sculptures are added each year to underline key messages. The entrance to the Mediterranean biome is guarded by the menacing WEEE man, made from 3.3 tonnes of washing machines, TVs, stereos and other waste electrical equipment, the amount that the average person discards in a lifetime.  after two hours of being intoxicated by Smit's eloquence, wit and cigar smoke, it is not difficult to understand how, over five painstaking years in the mid-Nineties, he managed to raise ?140 million and gather a world-class team of horticulturists, architects and engineers to create Eden.  More recently, Smit was one of 90 prominent figures who signed a letter this month attacking the Government's proposal to privatise public forests. Within three weeks the policy had been abandoned in a humiliating U-turn.  Yet Smit is not celebrating. He says that he signed the letter not because he opposed private ownership of forests, but because he feared that the new owners would lack the resources to protect and enhance them.  "a lot of people objected because they hate change. Yet the Forestry Commission was responsible for some of the most inappropriate planting the world has ever seen." Smit believes that what matters most is not who owns the forests but how they are managed, and whether dark rows of conifers are replaced with broadleaf trees at ancient woodland sites.  In his book Eden, Smit's account of how conversations in pubs in the mid-Nineties produced a "great green cathedral" with the world's largest conservatories, he argues that a sustainable world can be delivered only by harnessing the forces of private capital. He expresses sympathy for anti-capitalist protesters "who bring the unacceptable to public notice", but adds "to assume that multinationals are of themselves bad things is too simple.Their capital, infrastructure and webs of connection make them necessary partners in the new future."  Yet the book, which is being republished next month with more photographs and a new postscript, is scathing about the "City suitors" who considered lending money towards the creation of Eden but decided that the risks were too great.  They failed to blunt his ambition but he has clearly never forgiven them. Despite his outstanding track record, he still encounters short-sightedness among banks when he seeks support for new ideas.  "at public school I developed a loathing of privilege without merit. That's why I find it difficult to get on in the City, where there is a patrician arrogance that doesn't recognise Britain as a country but sees it as a playground.  "There is a lack of boldness in investment which really isn't that risky. Banks in this country have lost track of the reason they were set up. They realised they could make more money on currency trading than making money available for trade. If I was prime minister, I would make trading of your own currency at the expense of your nation a treasonable event."  Smith is furious that the Government has cut support for geothermal power, on which he is pinning his hopes of making Eden energy independent by the end of 2013. He says the ?25 million scheme, involving twin shafts that will tap the heat locked in granite three miles underground, will still go ahead, with drilling commencing in august. But Smit fears that the cuts will delay the wider development of a sustainable source that could supply 10 per cent of Britain's energy. His determination to make the geothermal project a success is fed partly by the failure of his previous plan to erect Britain's biggest onshore wind turbine at Eden.  In 2008 he said that wind was the only affordable way for the project to produce its own energy. But he dropped the plan a few weeks later after local protesters had blocked the three main entrances to Eden.  "For many of our neighbours the only asset they have is their house, and their perception was that, because of the turbine, the value was going to go down for our benefit. We built Eden on the principle of listening and being good neighbours so it would have been really damaging to us if we had gone against that."  Having suggested that geothermal was too expensive, Smit now says that it will not only meet all of Eden's needs but provide the energy for an eco-town being planned for the neighbouring disused china-clay pits.  Smit is on the board of Eco-bos, a company set up by an Egyptian billionaire to build 5,500 new homes. Eco-bos claims that the development will be "net zero-carbon" by 2025. Smit says that he understands the suspicion of those who fear the word "ecotown" is a green figleaf for new housing estates. He knows that Eden's brand could be tarnished by association if Eco-bos fails to fulfil its green promises.  "If it messes up it will be partly my fault," he says. He does not intend, however, to use the geothermal scheme to apply the carbon-neutral label to Eden.  "Carbon neutrality is a phrase that comes with a lot of baggage. It is a very difficult concept to honestly put on a plate." Organisations that make the claim may not be counting all their emissions. Eden may eventually produce all its own energy but it will remain dependent on the fossil fuel powering the cars of its visitors. Despite a ?4 discount for those who arrive on foot, bike or bus, almost 90 per cent of visitors come by car. Smit hates the way that the language of environmentalism has been hijacked by companies to sell their wares: "When all those words - eco this, green that - get taken by the marketing industry and ascribed to all sorts of things which then muddy the water, you have almost a dead language."  He says that the relentless focus on carbon emissions has obscured other factors in sustainable living. "The world isn't sustainable if you are carbon neutral. Energy is just one of the four pillars of sustainability.  The others are food, water and equity, and they are fantastically intertwined."  Smit believes that Eden's greatest contribution to the sustainability debate has been to supply a fifth pillar, which he describes as "emotional landscape".  He means that Eden finds ways of presenting themes and ideas that help people to see the underlying truth that they have been overlooking. "We all need stories to live by. If you haven't got a story that makes the people imbue it in their culture, you won't get the changes you need."  Eden is packed with these stories, including one that Smit says is particularly effective at making children understand the absurdity of our cultural obsession with owning things.  "You tell them to count up all the lawns in their village or town and then count up all the lawnmowers. They just giggle when they realise how stupid it is. We need a new language in which the sharing of things doesn't feel like a hippy or communist statement.  Communities could collectively own stuff and people pay a small licence to be part of it."  His family background has given him an unusual perspective on British life: his English grandparents were wealthy British industrialists who lived at Hartford Hall in Cheshire, while his Dutch grandparents were working class from a "two up, two down" in arnhem. Smit studied archaeology and anthropology at Durham University but became a music producer. Then, looking for a change, he moved to Cornwall in 1987, where he discovered and restored what he called the Lost Gardens of Heligan, botanical gardens established in the 18th century that had been abandoned after most of the gardeners died in the First World War.  Smit says that he feels "ashamed" about not sharing his own possessions as often as he could. He has a small boat moored at Fowey, the village where he still lives after separating from his wife. "It sits there winking on its mooring at me and I know there are hundreds of people who'd love to have a go."  Far from claiming to embody everything that he preaches, Smit spends part of our interview listing his shortcomings. He volunteers that his car is a petrol-driven BMW 3 series, not the greener diesel version.  asked about his a  
 O n the evening of March 8, 1990, viewers of the BBC science programme, Tomorrow's World, were treated to a sight so unbelievable that argument has raged ever since over whether the footage was real.  The presenter Peter McCann lit an oxyacetylene torch and applied its 1,200C flame to an egg coated in a thin layer of paste. Five minutes later the surface of the paste was glowing red hot. Unperturbed, McCann picked it up with his bare hands and cracked it into a bowl. The egg was still raw.  The demonstration seemed to defy the laws of science. Everyone knows that you can't cook an egg for five minutes without it even getting warm. The secret, explained McCann, lay in the coating, a heat-defying plastic that he called Starlite.  as if that weren't enough, McCann went on to reveal that this "miracle" material was not the cutting-edge work of a university department or private research facility. It was invented by a former hairdresser called Maurice Ward. Ward had no formal training, no academic background, no special equipment, no funding and no help other than from his wife Helen and daughters Jane and Caroline.  No wonder many thought that the Tomorrow's World item was a hoax.  In the intervening two decades, many even more preposterous claims have been made for Starlite: that a sheet a few millimetres thick can withstand temperatures equal to the surface of the Sun; that it can withstand lasers that cut solid steel in seconds and, most implausibly, that it can withstand nuclear blasts equivalent to 75 Hiroshimas. It was even claimed that Starlite, which according to Ward is as easy to make as a cake, could make a significant dent in global carbon emissions by dint of its exceptional insulating powers. Recently it emerged that Ward, now 79 years old, has an inoperable brain tumour, raising the possibility that the secrets of one of the most intriguing and frustrating materials ever invented, could be permanently lost. Ward says that the only other person who knows the formula is his daughter Carrie. She learnt it two decades ago and, like him, has no formal training.  If even a fraction of the claims made for Starlite are true, it should have changed the world and Ward should be a billionaire. Yet 20 years on, he has failed to bring his miracle product to market, he is still living in his modest bungalow in a cul-de-sac in Hartlepool and his family is heartily sick of the whole thing. So what went wrong? Speaking late last year, a frail Ward ruefully explains that he has finally started the process of patenting his remarkable invention - or at least two comparatively minor applications of it: ballistics and a fire door (there are several different forms of Starlite it transpires). He tells me that the patents are due to come through in January. and then he pauses. "Unless I withdraw them. a patent makes all your secrets and special knowledge public, you see." a check with the Patent Office reveals that no patents have been granted.  Jane rolls her eyes at her father's behaviour. Carrie doesn't want to be quoted. But according to his wife Eileen, who has patiently spent the last quarter of a century, teetering on the edge of billionairedom, the remark with its blend of outlandish claims and cantankerousness was typical of Ward. "He's just so pig-headed. The trouble is he's so passionate and paranoid about everything. Sometimes I wish he'd never discovered it. No peace, constant interruptions. It has been a nightmare."  Now I know what you are thinking.  Surely no material, especially one created by an amateur, could do these things. The reason why nothing has come of Starlite is because all the claims are nonsense, the product of Ward's imagination. But what makes the story of Starlite so intriguing is that the utter implausibility of Ward's claims keeps on bumping up against hard evidence that they are in fact true.  Ward first became interested in heat-resistant plastic after seeing news footage of the Manchester aircrash in 1985, in which 55 people died. "It wasn't the crash or fire that killed them, it was fumes from the plastics in the plane. They were all using halogenated materials. So we started looking at what we can do that doesn't have halogens in."  He had dabbled with chemicals for 20 years as a hairdresser, mixing his own dyes and setting solutions. Then, in 1974, he went into plastics, buying waste and reforming it into damp-proof membranes. By the 1980s he had a 16,000 sq ft factory and a small area in which he could "try stuff out".  But it was definitely amateur hour, more a family project than anything. "I guess I was the lead chemist," Ward says. "The wife and I, and our daughters, would mix bits and pieces and apply them and control them."  In 1989, after mixing hundreds of formulations, he accidentally mixed a batch from some old plastic and it seemed to meet his aim of being able to resist heat. "We put an oxyacetylene torch on it and nothing happened. I thought, shit this is far better than anything I'd have ever expected."  Convinced that he had something truly exceptional on his hands, Ward recruited Sir Ronald Mason, former chief scientific adviser to the MoD, as a marketing consultant. With his heavyweight endorsement, Ward secured introductions to a string of multinational corporations.  But serial flirtations with ICI, British aerospace, numerous american investors, the defence contractor Hunting, Nasa and finally a half-billion-dollar deal with Boeing, all came to nothing. In each case Ward says a major factor was that they were either corrupt or tried to steal his formula. "ICI tried to stifle it ... a bloke from Bae wanted backhanders ... Even Boeing tried to pinch it," he claimed. Those who worked with Ward remember it differently. Ken Miller, then chief executive of Hunting now chairman of Colt International, recalls Ward being charming but difficult. "On the surface this stuff had huge potential. The issue was that he wouldn't trust anyone. He thought everyone would do him down and he wanted to retain control of the test programme. But we weren't prepared to invest in a product we couldn't test ourselves."  It's tempting to speculate that Ward was being difficult because he knew that Starlite couldn't live up to his claims. But tests by numerous UK and US government agencies prove otherwise.  Following Tomorrow's World, he received a call from the atomic Weapons Establishment at Foulness, Essex, which wanted to test Starlite's ability to protect against nuclear weapons. It passed with flying colours, withstanding a simulated 10,000C nuclear blast. That same year, the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, attacked a sheet of Starlite with lasers capable of cutting through steel. again it passed with distinction. according to the International Defence Review, which reported the tests in 1993, "Starlite showed little damage to the surface".  Professor Keith Lewis, head of the MoD's Electro-Magnetic Remote Sensing Defence Technology Centre, who conducted the Malvern tests, gives measured suppor  
 The arab awakening is an unfolding story that is barely two months old and which will most likely continue unfolding for years to come. But it is beginning to have consequences, and not just for the dictators and their families and cronies who are being overthrown.  One potentially important consequence can be seen in Saturday's vote by the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on the Gaddafi regime in Libya, to freeze its assets and to refer Colonel Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court. Welcome and appropriate though these gestures are, they are little more than gestures, given that the murderous Gaddafis holed up in Tripoli are not in much of a position to be affected by them. The true significance of the resolution lies in the unity of the Security Council and, in particular, in China's support, albeit reluctant, for the measure.  In effect, China has just voted to refer Colonel Gaddafi to the ICC for having acted against his opponents in pretty much the same way as it did in 1989 when faced with the Tiananmen Square revolt. Chinese troops then may have fired into the crowds from footbridges rather than helicopters or fighter aircraft, but there is little doubt that Deng Xiaoping would have ordered even greater force to be used had it been necessary.  Today's China, much more than that of 1989, is insistent on the importance of multilateral institutions and agreements. Its Government has now laid down an apparent marker in the leading multilateral institution that it considers the use of murderous force in the suppression of an uprising to be a crime for which government leaders can and should be held accountable.  It will be important to remind China of this marker when next Tibetans or the Muslims of Xinjiang go out into the streets. Until then, or a new Tiananmen protest in Beijing, we cannot know how seriously to take it. But it could well represent a kind of coming of age: the point when China's increasing exposure around the world (there are a reported 30,000 Chinese workers in Libya) forces it also to take a more responsible international stance. and perhaps, just perhaps, the time when it would respond to domestic dissent through a massacre has now passed.  The second clear consequence, which affects the West and China equally, can be seen in the rise in the price of oil. Whether oil continues to surge towards $120 a barrel, or even to pass its 2008 peak of $150, will largely depend on whether Libya's unrest really does turn into civil war, and even more on whether unrest spreads to Saudi arabia and the smaller Gulf oil producers.  The bet, surely, should now be that sooner or later it will. The same conditions of fast population growth, high youth unemployment, readier access to information, extreme income inequalities and inflexible, often gerontocratic regimes apply there in spades. So although this will not inevitably result in interrupted oil supplies or a big price shock, governments should be planning now for the possibility that such a shock might happen.  a sharp oil price rise would be like a big tax on all oil consumers, and would bring us clearly into double-dip-recession territory. The tempting response in Britain will be to cut our own fuel taxes to stem the rise in retail petrol prices. The right response, however, if the coalition really does believe in joined-up government, will be to leave fuel taxes alone and instead to cut other taxes - probably VaT or even income tax.  Supposedly, the Government wants greater energy efficiency and fewer greenhouse gas emissions, so it should let higher prices do their work, while compensating people's incomes and supporting the economy through these other means. For George Osborne, an oil shock would be just the sort of force majeure clause that he needs to invoke to bring on a fiscal plan B. The third broad consequence of events in Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya is one that casts us far into the future. It is the consequence for the European Union of the now possible - even likely - spread of a democratic revolution across a wide swath of North africa and the Middle East. We should be patient in assessing how far that revolution will go, just as we were in the first months after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. But also, like then, it will pay to plan ahead.  The evolution of the EU has consisted of a series of ideas that seemed far-fetched when they were first mooted but that later came to seem inevitable. The next such idea is likely to be the expansion of the EU to encompass the southern coast of the Mediterranean. Such a body, born let's say in 2030 or 2040, coul  
 T. S. Eliot was right: april is the cruellest month ... if you are forced to work indoors while the thermometer rises to record levels.  Temperature records were broken yesterday as Britain basked in the hottest day of the year, with forecasters indicating that the season could be more like North africa than the usual rainy British fare. The hottest place in the country, according to the Met Office, was St James's Park in London where an afternoon temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) was recorded, breaking the previous record for april 6 set as long ago as 1892. Santon Downham, Suffolk, was close behind with 23.5C.  Records tumbled the previous evening when Scotland and Northern Ireland recorded some  
 T. S. Eliot was right: april is the cruellest month ... if you are forced to work indoors while the mercury rises to record levels.  Temperature records were broken yesterday as Britain basked in the hottest day of the year with forecasters indicating that the season could be more of an arab Spring than the usual rainy British fare.  The hottest place in the country, according to the Met Office, was St James's Park in London, where an afternoon temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) was recorded, breaking the previous record for april 6 set in 1892. Santon Downham, Suffolk, was close behind with a high of 23.5C (74.3).  Records tumbled the previous evening when Scotland and Northern Ireland recorded some of their mildest night-time temperatures.  The Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh did not drop below 13.7C (56.7F) the entire night, its warmest minimum temperature since records began there in 1957.  But a spring heat-wave on Scotland's east coast contrasted with torrential rain in the west. aberdeen recorded temperatures of 20C (68F) as hundreds flocked to seaside amusement parks. But in the west of the country, the highland village of Tyndrum had 55mm (over two inches) of rain in just 24 hours. Elsewhere there were flood alerts.  For much of Britain, however, the sun shone. although still early in the month, the average temperature for april is over 4C (7F) above average in central England with forecasters predicting a sustained sunny period, thanks to conveyor belts of sub-tropical air wafting up from Portugal, Spain and North africa.  Temperatures are expected to reach at 20C (68F) today and tomorrow.  The weekend is also expected to be warm and sunny, with good conditions expected for the Grand National at aintree, although the ground will be very firm because of the lack of rain recently. 
 Iain Gray has made an unashamed appeal to traditional Labour voters in Scotland with a party manifesto that offers a vision of full employment and a pledge to launch a full-scale attack on youth joblessness.  The manifesto, launched yesterday by the Scottish Labour leader at Clydebank College, contains about ?1 billion of spending pledges over the next four years but also claims that, despite a declining Scottish budget, Labour could find savings of ?2.2 billion over the same period.  The document, constructed around the life and career experiences of seven Scots, is aimed at what the party says are the everyday concerns and aspirations of voters, and carries a heavy emphasis on creating jobs, tackling poverty and protecting public services.  It also plays to the party's key election theme that only Labour, rather than the SNP, can lead the fight against the cuts in public services and benefits instituted by the Conservative-led coalition at Westminster.  The party's headline pledge is to abolish youth unemployment in Scotland over the next four years and also to create 250,000 jobs and apprenticeships in the next decade.  This would be done through creating 10,000 jobs and training places, courtesy of a Scottish Future Jobs Fund, 120,000 apprenticeship places over four years, 60,000 "green" jobs and apprenticeships and doubling the value of Scottish exports to create a further 10,000 jobs.  There would also be a major effort on job creation in the small business sector and the construction industry as well as the funding of 1,000 school specialists to improve literacy among school-leavers. Labour would also invest in key industries such as life sciences, tourism, food and drink, technology and renewable energy.  Mr Gray called the plan "bold and ambitious" and described it as the party's "core purpose and driving vision".  The jobs pledge would be paid for through public sector reforms that would involve major savings, thanks to the merging of police forces and fire services, the integration of social care, shared services across local authorities and sundry other public sector efficiencies.  Frontline services would be protected, Mr Gray said.  But the SNP said that Labour's manifesto was a "damp squib", and argued that Scotland was the only part of the UK with rising employment and falling unemployment.  John Swinney, the SNP government's Finance Secretary, said that Labour's "economic incompetence" had caused the recession and high unemployment in the first place. "They have zero credibility on jobs", said Mr Swinney.  "People will put far more store on Labour's failed record than on Iain Gray's hypocrisy and empty rhetoric."  as expected, the Labour manifesto also highlights the party's promise to freeze council tax for the next two years and not to impose a graduate contribution on Scottish students - also SNP promises.  Mr Gray reiterated plans for mandatory six-month jail sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife. He said that Labour would set aside ?60 million over three years to pay for the extra prison places but also claimed that there was existing spare capacity in the country's jails.  There would also be a National Care Service to take on elderly care responsibilities from councils and there would be curbs on the pay and bonuses of high-earners in the public sector, including government ministers.  On higher education, Mr Gray sidestepped questions on why he had preferred to abide by the lower Scottish government estimate of the future funding gap between the university sectors in Scotland and England, after the increase in fees south of the Border. Labour has rejected the claims of university principals that the funding gap would be more than ?200 million rather than the ?93 million projected by SNP ministers. But Mr Gray emphasised that as First Minister he would find the cash required no matter the eventual size of the gap. He said: "a commitment is a commitment."  The party is also offering a "Scottish living wage" of ?7.15 an hour in the public sector. On health, Labour is also promising to cut cancer waiting times in half and to protect NHS jobs, with no compulsory redundancies fo  
 We live in some of the oldest and leakiest housing in the world. The majority of UK homes were built more than 50 years ago - and without any premonition of a world of carbon emissions and government targets to cut them by 80 per cent by 2050.  The Government has made "retrofitting" homes (improving existing properties with modern technologies such as better insulation and energy efficiency upgrades) one of its key priorities through the planned Green Deal, with ?6,500 loans to be offered to homeowners. Unfortunately, estimates from Forum for the Future (a body advising on the Green Deal) suggest that for many older properties the full costs will be closer to ?65,000.  The potentially vast cost of retrofitting is just one part of the problem. We also need to start thinking about not repeating the mistake and ensuring new buildings of all kinds are more "resilient". Not just more energy efficient but flexible and adaptable enough to deal with challenges from climate change, changes of use and ready to integrate new technologies without the need for major rebuilding and retrofitting.  at the core of the issue is the lack of reliable information and advice on what improvements will actually make a difference and how individuals and property own  
 a hard-hitting documentary, critical of Donald Trump and his aberdeenshire golf resort, has become a runaway success in Canada after being turned down by the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) and refused funding by Creative Scotland.  Last night its director, anthony Baxter, accused the festival organisers and Scotland's publicly funded arts agency of turning their backs on a controversial film because they were not prepared to upset the Scottish Government, which has backed the ?1 billion Trump project.  Mr Baxter invited the public to "draw their own conclusions" after You' ve Been Trumped sold out in cinemas at Canada's Hot Docs festival in Toronto, and garnered good reviews from critics.  The film is a spirited account of the confrontations between Mr Trump and the naturalists and local residents who opposed the building of the course and housing on unspoilt land.  Given the headlines the project has garnered, Mr Baxter was taken aback when he was told by Creative Scotland that his film would not deliver an audience.  He said he had also been advised by the EIFF that he had created "a political hot potato" and was denied the chance to have his British premiere at next month's festival.  "By the time it was rejected by the festival it came as no surprise," said Mr Baxter. I have had closed doors everywhere I have gone in Scotland. Creative Scotland rejected it on the grounds of audience interest but this has turned out to be the most talked-about film at the biggest documentary festival in the world and it is packing out cinemas."  Mr Baxter's appraisal of the film's commercial appeal is supported by the press. Variety said the film would have "more traction than most" documentaries, simply because it showed him getting under the skin of Mr Trump. The Hollywood Reporter devoted a full page to the film, while such is the interest in Mr Trump - who aspires to the US presidency - that its festival screenings have attracted the   
 Made in Chelsea E4, 10.15pm Hoping to cash in on the success of The Only Way is Essex comes this new reality drama series (above), set in the opulent London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, with a cast that features polo players, Harrovians, heirs to diamond fortunes and a socialite called Binky. If this one is part-scripted, in the style of Essex and its US progenitor The Hills, the writer is from the Ricky Gervais school of horribly awkward exchanges. One thing is clear: having loads of dosh does not guarantee personality. an emotional void.  Noggin the Nog BBC Four, 7.30pm From the ridiculous to the sublime ... To open the Wonders of Iceland season, the Oliver Postgate animation set in Viking times and based on the principles of the Norse saga, is showing in various time slots this week. The narration alone is enough to send people of a certain age into a reverie, but the stories are also incredibly evocative.  Storyville: Last Days of the arctic - Capturing the Faces of the North BBC Four, 9pm Tapping into similar themes explored by Bruce Parry in his last series, arctic, this edition of Storyville follows the photographer Ragnar alexsson as he endeavours to capture the vanishing lifestyles of people from far-northern countries. The film explores the inspiration for his latest work, which is to preserve the cultures of arctic people who are being affected by climate change.  Night Shift BBC Four, 10pm a comedy set on the night shift at a petrol station in Reykjavik may not sound like a recipe for success, but it has been a phenomenon in its native Iceland. The 12-part series was the first in a trilogy that was concluded by a film that beat avatar at the box office in Iceland. The country is alien but the themes and characters are familiar, especially the jobsworth boss (J?n Gnarr, right). Jack Black's production company picked up the rights for a US remake. 
 During the Pakistani army occupation of Bangladesh during that country's war of liberation, soldiers captured women - many young village girls - and set up camps in which they were turned into sexslaves, chained and systematically raped. In 1971, after nine months of atrocities, compared by international observers to the Nazi reign in Poland, Bangladesh ceded from Pakistan but was left with thousands of women impregnated by the enemy.  While Bangladesh's first leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, named the violated women "birangona" - heroines - and said that families should not deem them shameful but should welcome them home, he also declared that their war babies were not wanted. This harrowing point in her country's history - largely forgotten by the world at large - is the starting point for Tahmima anam's second novel, The Good Muslim.  "It was a terrible contradiction," she says. "These women literally contained the seed of the oppressive foreign army. So what followed the rape camps were abortion camps, tacitly sanctioned by the Government or run by aid agencies, which got rid of the problem." In Bangladesh's pressing desire to cleanse itself, to start its national history afresh, many babies were adopted abroad: at a book tour in america, a woman introduced herself to anam and said that she was the product of such a rape.  and yet The Good Muslimendeavours to examine how horrific events affect the dynamic of a single family. It centres on Maya, a doctor who tries to assist the women victims of the war and her brother Sohail who, devastated by what he witnesses as a soldier when rescuing a girl from a rape camp, turns to fundamentalist Islam. Maya, returning home to Dhaka after many years, finds her mother's house transformed into a makeshift mosque and Sohail sending the son he refuses to have educated at an ordinary school to a madrasah.  It is a novel filled with secrets, experiences that are literally unspeakable, psychological wounds that refuse to heal because they are not exposed to fresh air.  It has taken Bangladesh 40 years to bring perpetrators of war crimes and collaborators with the Pakistan army to justice. The first tribunals will be conducted this year: arrests have been made. and anam believes that her country has suffered incalculably from not expurgating its pain through a truth-and-reconcilation process.  "People of that time are still alive today, in their sixties and seventies. I think it is really important for Bangladesh as a country to move on and deal with the trauma of the past and get some closure." anam, 35, grew up listening to endless tales of that period. Her grandfather, a prominent political dissident and satirist, narrowly escaped death in Pakistan's calculated scorched-earth massacre of 250 Bangladeshi journalists, artists and intellectuals four days before war officially ended. Her parents were both Marxist freedom fighters: they would tell stories of the humilations inflicted by occupying Pakistan, how soldiers stopped men in the street and told them to drop their trousers to prove that they were circumcised. The implication was that Bangladeshi Muslims were less "pure" because they were Bengalis and their country still contained many Hindus.  anam's upbringing was peripatetic because her father worked for the United Nations and her family lived in Paris, New York and Bangkok. She took her PhD at Harvard and her accent is american East Coast. Tiny and delicate of feature, she wears a traditional kurta - a loose shirt - with jeans and sandals, yet retains impeccable american grooming. She lived in Dhaka for only a few years in her late teens when her father, Mahfuz anam, returned to fulfill his dream of founding the English-language newspaper, the Daily Star. But she says that a sense of alienation - physical and psychological - has provided a helpful writer's distance from her homeland.  an anthropologist by training, she turned to fiction - to the relief of her parents who feared that she'd become an actress - after attending a creative writing class at Royal Holloway, London, taught by Sir andrew Motion, the former poet laureate.  Her first novel, a Golden age, which won the Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, depicted Sohail and Maya's childhood, and their mother's perilous efforts to assist freedom fighters by protecting their ammunition: it was based upon the life of anam's grandmother.  The state of Pakistan, as created by postwar partition, comprised two totally separate territories, East and West, 1,000 miles apart, with no common language or culture, only a shared religion. It appears to have been, as anam puts it, "an historical hack job" destined to fracture in two.  But the legacy of Bangladesh's history is more than scars and suffering. Bangladesh had a strain of Marxist atheism that entered the cultural DNa, to the benefit of its nation's women. "Boys and girls were thrown together through political activism and all the years leading up to the war, when they were on the streets and called each other comrade," anam says. "a lot of traditional barriers broke down. I have this theory that people who came out of that war skipped several steps in terms of women's rights."  Many, such as her own parents, had love marriages, not arranged matches, and the feminist movement is still strong in Bangladesh: anam's mother is a prominent campaigner.  and the country has had two women prime ministers.  "I grew up in a secular family," anam says. "My parents came out of a war that was about dividing Muslims, so many people killed in the name of Islam."  Yet in The Good Muslim, anam is careful not to present Sohail's journey to faith in a crude and reductive manner. His fundamentalism is not overtly political, more a retreat from the world. "I purposely didn't have him join an organised party. For me it was important to talk about how one man's conversion dismantles his intimate relationships." While Sohail does not tell his doctor sister to cover herself or leave her job, he hurts her deeply by rejecting their shared childhood, burning the books they once both loved.  While Pakistan is in ferment, Bangladesh is relatively stable after 15 years of military rule. Its Supreme Court recently reaffirmed its constitutional status as a secular nation. Extreme Islamic parties such has Jamaat-e-Islami have never gained mass support, indeed it was discredited by its collaboration with Pakistan in forming a militia that allegedly helped to identify victims and took part in the killings. The party has been partially dismantled since its leaders were arrested to stand trial in the forthcoming war tribunals. However, anam is nervous of the growing power of Saudi arabia, which funds universities and mosques, pushing home its fundamentalist Wahabi brand of political Islam.  When we turn to discussing a question that must tire all Muslim women writers, the issue of the burka and hijab, anam says that what interests her is that Bangladeshi women in their home country are not covering up in greater numbers: it is expat Muslims who champion the veil. "I was at my cousin's wedding and there were a lot of young girls from america," she recalls. "They were all wearing jeans and tops with headscarves. all of the local cousins were really shocked. They were asking why.  Because in Bangladesh, for the most part, urbanised, middle-class girls don't cover their heads. and those girls who came in from america were quite exotic."  anam, who has lived in London for seven years, recently married an american designer of electronic musical instruments, a son of Quakers, who she met at Harvard. The wedding was held in Bangladesh last year: "He loved visiting for the first time. We had an amazing wedding. He was embraced as the first white member of the family and he did a great job of fitting in."  It grieves her that Bangladesh's reputation is of a beleaguered nation, devastated by floods and poverty, a pitied victim state that no one would consider visiting for pleasure, despite its great beauty and great developmental leaps in recent years. But she wonders if she could ever live there again. Her parents try to lure her home, suggest it is her duty to work for the good of her homeland. But instead she enjoys a yearning, long-distance relationship interspersed with regular visits.  Her third novel, the final book in the trilogy about Sohail and Maya, will concern their family less and focus more on the consequences of global warming for Bangladesh, which is likely to lose 17 per cent of its land to flooding in the next 50 years, displacing 30 million people.  But she wonders if her next book could feature British characters. She is certainly deeply in love with English literature. I meet her having just attended a screening of the new movie version of Jane Eyre, and anam interrogates me keenly about it. Is the Rochester appropriate? Is the Jane too pretty? Nineteenth-century novels are deeply popular in the subcontinent, the restrictions of Victorian Englishwomen echoing those of many in traditional societies now. "People can relate to Jane Eyre's story so much even now in Bangladesh," she says. "The social conventions are very similar. But things are changing, albeit slowly."  The Good Muslim is published by Canongate on May 19 at ?16.99. To order it for ?15.29 inc p&p call 0845 2712134  asia House festival  Tahmima anam is appearing at the asia House Festival of asian Literature on May 12. The only festival in the UK dedicated to the celebration of writing about asia and asians, it is held in asia House, an 18th-century London townhouse that hosts cultural events throughout the year.  Reader offer  Times readers get concession rates to all Festival of asian Literature events. Bookings must be made by phone (020-7307 5454) or e-mail (enquiries@asiahouse.co.uk), quoting FaL555-Times offer.  Times readers are also offered 50 per cent off annual membership of asia House.  applications by phone or e-mail by May 31. Members are entitled to the Friends' ticket rate (usually half price) for all events, including festival events.  festivalofasianliterature.com  Rising stars of asian writing  adrienne Loftus Parkins, director of asia House Literature, picks five female authors to watch  Sonia Faleiro was born in Goa, studied in Edinburgh and now lives in the US and has contributed to aids Sutra: Untold Stories from India (Vintage) and reported for Tehelka, India Today and Elle India. Her first nonfiction book, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World o  
 The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson  Bloomsbury, ?7.99 ?7.59; 384pp  "a password to madness. Jew. One little word with no hiding place for reason in it." So thinks Sam Finkler, a celebrity philosopher, big shot and professional ashamed Jew anxious to escape his heritage. Julian Treslove, his friend and whipping boy since childhood, could not agree less. He sees "Jew" as a password to success.  Treslove, a failed producer of late-night Radio 3 documentaries, failed father and failed lover, whose romances all end like his favourite operas with a song of goodbye, makes a living as a celebrity impersonator - Brad Pitt being a speciality - but the role he most wants to play is that of a Finkler, the name he gives, with self-pity as much as envy, to all Jews.  When he is mugged by a woman as he walks home from dinner with Finkler and their former teacher, Libor, Treslove's sense of self is given a shaking. "You Jew," his assailant hisses at him (or so he perceives) and so, convinced that he had been m  
 The pavilion of the Times Eureka Garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show is "the nerve centre of the garden", according to the designer, Marcus Barnett. He has created it in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The structure has been designed by NEX architects, working on the germ of an idea from Barnett, to resemble leaves under a microscope. and leaves are what this garden is all about: our complete dependence on the plant world for our survival.  It's a thoroughly modern, cuboid structure. Complex, angular arches of precisely engineered and laminated wood interlock to form a rigid matrix of ribs or veins. The spaces are filled with "cells" of translucent plastic. as it is based on the geometry of nature, it is also very strong.  Garden design and construction has been a new field for alan Dempsey and his team at NEX, and, Dempsey says, they have learnt an enormous amount about plants, "not least about plant biology and the mathematics of plant growth and formation". The pavilion has been born of technological exploration. according to Dempsey, he used "intensive computation and 3-D digital modelling", which was then supported by the physical testing of models and full-scale mock-ups. "We went back and forward between the material and the virtual to get it right. This can be done so rapidly today, with developments in digital manufacturing, and it has transformed how we work," he says. Part of that exploration process involved the plastic cells in the pavilion's walls. The entire garden, bar the odd bit of electric lighting, is recyclable or biodegradable, and bioplastics were first considered for the pavilion's cells - but proved unsuitable. "Most architecture needs to last," Dempsey says, "whereas the goal of bioplastics is to degrade as quickly as possible, so they are not suitable for outdoor use. In the end we chose a recycled pl  
 ? It is a beautiful beast that had even hardened observers stifling a gasp when it was unveiled at last autumn's Paris Motor Show (Robert Lea writes). Now Jaguar Land Rover has pressed the ignition on the Jaguar C-X75, its hybrid electric supercar.  at a top-of-the-range price tag approaching ?1 million, the C-X75 could displace the Toyota Pruis , selling for circa ?23,000, as the ultimate status symbol of the eco-friendly wealthy. The cars will be exclusive, as Jaguar admitted that it will make only 250. Its Indian parent Tata will bankroll a launch for sale by the end of 2013.  The C-X75 will have a top speed of 200mph and will be able to reach 60mph in three seconds. With its electric battery fuelling the car for the first 50 miles, carbon emissions could be lower than a Fiat Cinquecento.  Meanwhile, new car registrations in Britain are still falling. at 137,746 last month, they were down 7.4 per cent year-on-year. 
 aweek aft  
 ? It is a beautiful beast that had even hardened observers stifling a gasp when it was unveiled at last autumn's Paris Motor Show (Robert Lea writes). Now Jaguar Land Rover has pressed the ignition on the Jaguar C-X75, its hybrid electric supercar.  at a top-of-the-range price tag approaching ?1 million, the C-X75 could displace the Toyota Prius , selling for circa ?23,000, as the ultimate status symbol of the eco-friendly wealthy. The cars will be exclusive, as Jaguar admitted that it will make only 250. Its Indian parent Tata will bankroll a launch for sale by the end of 2013.  The C-X75 will have a top speed of 200mph and will be able to reach 60mph in three seconds. With its electric battery fuelling the car for the first 50 miles, carbon emissions could be lower than a Fiat Cinquecento.  Meanwhile, new car registrations in Britain are still falling. at 137,746 last month, they were down 7.4 per cent year-on-year. 
 The gardens of Prestonfield House, that most stately of Edinburgh hotels, are home to peacocks. Yesterday afternoon, the First Minister of Scotland was the proudest of them all.  alex Salmond walked from his helicopter into the arms of his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, to the cheers of the party faithful. as the map of Scotland had turned SNP yellow throughout the day, so the sun finally cut through the fog and bathed the grounds in light. Mr Salmond proclaimed it "sublime".  He landed a little late, at 5.25pm, to allow the final results to come in. So as he disembarked, the waiting crowds knew that he had pulled off the remarkable fea  
 The Co-operative Bank joined a shareholder rebellion last week over "excessive" executive pay at Xstrata, voting against the miner for the eighth successive year.  The Co-operative asset Management was part of a revolt that led to Xstrata's remuneration report being endorsed by only 68 per cent of shareholders at its annual meeting last week. The Co-op, which manages ?21 billion in funds, criticised Xstrata for paying excessive bonuses during the downturn. Mick Davis, the miner's chief executive, was paid $9 million (?5.5 million) last year, up 17 per cent from $7.7 million the year before. Xstrata was one of seven UK companies shamed by the Co-op for consistently failing to address investors' concerns about corporate governance. The publication of the C  
 TMO Renewables, which is privately owned and is chaired by Tim Yeo, the Conservative MP and former environment minister, will announce two deals today to build ethanol plants in China. It will build the plants for the Chinese oil company CNOOC and China's largest food importer and exporter, Cofco. They will produce ethanol from cassava waste products. 
 Britain must build 14 new nuclear plants, setting aside fears over radiation leaks, because that is the cheapest way of meeting compulsory carbon reduction targets, according to the Government's climate change watchdog. The number of offshore wind turbines planned for 2020 should be cut by up to third, because they are too expensive. The Committee on Climate Change says heavy reliance on offshore wind could result in unacceptable increases in fuel bills.  The committee today delivers recommendations on how to meet Britain's EU obligation to increase the share of energy from renewable sources from 3 per cent to 15 per cent by 2020. It will also dismiss concerns over safety raised by the leaks from the tsunamihit Fukushima reactors in Japan. It says nuclear power, which produces no carbon dioxide, should play a central role in meeting its recommended target of cutting emissions by 60 per cent by 2030. The cost of meeting the target is expected to add at least ?50 to the average household's annual energy bills in the next ten years.  The watchdog's intervention comes amid nuclear industry fears that Japan's disaster could result in a delay in the approval of new reactors and an escalation in the cost of safety systems.  Dr Mike Weightman, the Health and Safety Executive's chief nuclear inspector, is due to deliver an interim report commissioned to review safety in the wake of the Fukushima leaks.  The committee expects him to concur with its own conclusion that "the likelihood of natural disasters of this type and scale occurring in the UK is extremely small". It adds that the reactor designs proposed in Britain "have benefited from considerable technological improvement since the 1960s Boiling Water Reactors used at Fukushima, including the incorporation of secondary backup and passive cooling facilities".  The committee's r  
 Incoming  The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk  ***  The time has passed when the chief duty of a Poet Laureate was to write fawning ditties on royal engagements. andrew Motion used his ten years in the post to address the social problems of his time. Homelessness, bullying and climate change all feature in his work, and in 2003 he wrote a poem protesting against the invasion of Iraq. It seems inevitable that his first stage play should attack this country's fondness for going to war.  It is directed by Steven atkins  
 Today  Thomas Cook will report widening seasonal losses of about ?170 million in the first half of the year, about ?40 million worse than in the same period last year. There will be a ?20 million hit from the political unrest in Egypt and Tunisia and a similar impact from the later timing of Easter this year. TUI Travel, the travel company's bigger rival, is tipped to report similar trends the following day.  Lonmin is expected to continue its recovery with profits of about $247 million for the six months to the end of March when it reports today. However, analysts are concerned that the platinum producer may be forced to cut its full-year 2011 production target of 750,000 ounces amid recent concerns about worker safety in its South african mines. It sold 706,000 ounces of platinum in 2010.  Centrica publishes its trading update on the same day as its annual meeting. analysts at Investec expect the update to be relatively upbeat, particularly as they think that a referral of the industry to the Competition Commission is looking unlikely. Centrica will also present to the Energy and Climate Change Committee evidence sessions on Ofgem's Retail Market Review this week.  Tuesday  BG Group's first-quarter results are expected to show pre-tax profits of $2.2 billion, a 12 per cent increase on last year, after a surge in commodity prices. Production is predicted to be down slightly as a result of disruption to its operations in Tunisia and maintenance activity in the North Sea. The chief executive Frank Chapman will be questioned on the oil windfall tax.  InterContinental Hotels Group is tipped to report further signs of recovery in the first quarter as slowdown in the building of new hotels during the recession, in core markets such as america, has helped to push up demand. The Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza operator is forecast to announce operating profits up from $83 million to about $110 million.  Wednesday  HSBC's chief executive Stuart Gulliver is expected to unveil a cost-cutting drive at the bank's British retail division as part of its strategy review. Investors in  Prudential will be hoping that the insurer follows Standard Life and Legal & General into a roaring start to the year as Britain's biggest insurer reports on first-quarter trading, likely to be driven by asia.  The Restaurant Group, operator of the Garfunkel's and Frankie & Benny's chains, is expected to tell shareholders at its annual meeting that its like-for-like sales growth, running at 3 per cent after the first two months, may have slowed as poor cinema attendances hit its outlets on leisure parks. But total sales are likely to be strong as new openings kick in.  Thursday  BT will issue its fourth-quarter and full-year results. analysts at Deutsche Bank predict a headline decrease of 4.1 per cent, largely because of tougher competition in global services and weaker wholesale growth. a full-year dividend of 7.2p is expected. Evidence of consumers signing up to superfast broadband in droves will be   
 The Midcounties Co-op picked a good day to announce plans to enter the home energy market. British Gas owner Centrica's warning about soaring wholesale gas and electricity prices will encourage even the most passive of households to consider shopping around before winter comes round again.  If it does what it promises to, the cuddly mutual will get a warm reception from many domestic energy users fed up with the confusing tariffs, lock-in clauses and sometimes shabby marketing tactics of the Big Six.  This is more than just a re-selling exercise of the kind done by Marks & Spencer, which simply plonks its brand name on a service provided by Scottish & Southern. The Co-op is acting as principal, going into the wholesale markets and shouldering serious risk.  It won't be easy, especially since it wants to eschew power from dirty coal-fired stations and favour renewable sources of energy. But if it persuades serious numbers of customers to defect, it may do more to improve industry behaviour than a dozen limp initiatives from Ofgem. 
 Uncertainty over the Government's energy policy risks creating an "investment hiatus" that will stall Britain's renewable sector, according to a survey by KPMG.  Three quarters of companies said they would have invested more in Britain over the past three years if regulation was clearer and more consistent. The Government infuriated backers of large-scale solar photovoltaic schemes in February when it reduced the agreed level of subsidies that they could earn.  The change - together with the Chancellor's unexpected windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers - has led senior executives at some renewable energy companies to complain that funding is harder to attract because of the perceived "sovereign risk" involved in doing business in Britain. a planned overhaul of the British energy market, and a pending subsidy review for renewable technologies this year, have added to the uncertainty.  Nevertheless, the UK is still regarded as the second-most attractive renewables market for European investors, behind Germany.  andy Cox, head of energy and natural resources at KPMG, said: "There is a feeling in the market that there is an investment hiatus because people are waiting to see what reforms the Government makes to the energy market and renewable subsidies. The top of investors' list of concerns for the UK is uncertainty."  The annual survey into the renewables sector also found that Europe was struggling to attract investment from asia and that it would have to rely on domestic investors to hit challenging green targets. 
 Uncertainty over the Government's energy policy risks creating an "investment hiatus" that will stall Britain's renewable sector, according to a survey by KPMG.  Three quarters of companies said they would have invested more in Britain over the past three years if regulation were clearer and more consistent. The Government infuriated backers of large-scale solar photovoltaic schemes in February when it reduced the agreed level of subsidies that they could earn.  The change - together with the Chancellor's unexpected windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers - has led senior executives at some renewable energy companies to complain that funding is harder to attract because of the perceived "sovereign risk" involved in doing business in Britain. a planned overhaul of the British energy market, and a pending subsidy review for renewable technologies this year, have added to the uncertainty.  Nevertheless, the UK is still regarded as the second-most attractive renewables market for European investors, behind Germany.  andy Cox, head of energy and natural resources at KPMG, said: "There is a feeling in the market that there is an investment hiatus because people are waiting to see what reforms the Government makes to the energy market and renewable subsidies. The top of investors' list of concerns for the UK is uncertainty."  The annual survey into the renewables sector also found that Europe was struggling to attract investment from asia and that it would have to rely on domestic investors to hit challenging green targets. 
 Scotland's economic recovery remains fragile and may yet suffer reverses despite surveys showing strengthening private-sector growth, business leaders warned.  Though the SNP has invested much hope in a rapid expansion of offshore wind power to drive the re-industrialisation of manufacturing, the renewables lobby has conceded that costs will have to fall sharply if the dream is to be realised.  The cautionary notes follow a business survey from the Bank of Scotland, which showed that manufacturing and service output rose in april more than in the UK as a whole. The index of activity in Scotland rose to 55.8, above the 50 level which indicates a standstill. 
 Huhne battles on Chris Huhne is fighting claims that he persuaded someone to accept points for speeding just as he seems poised to win backing for a deal to cut carbon emissions. News, page 3 
 Chris Huhne is looking precariously like the biter bit. The Lib Dem cabinet minister who tablethumpingly accused the Conservatives in the coalition of playing dirty in the recent referendum on the alternative Vote is himself now being accused of playing dirty. He is alleged to have asked someone to take on to their driving licence penalty points that he had accrued for a speeding offence in 2003. Mr Huhne, the MP for Eastleigh, denies the allegation. The police say they will decide this week whether to investigate the claim (see facing page).  If Mr Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is forced to step down, the political damage will spread far beyond his own career. Coming so soon after a damning verdict by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner on David Laws' expenses claims, which made it clear that the former Lib Dem cabinet minister would be unable to return to the front bench any time soon, Nick Clegg would begin to look not only unlucky but lonely.  Mr Clegg, the party's leader and the Deputy Prime Minister, is doubly cursed by the actions of his colleagues. First, the wayward behaviour of a few Lib Dems threatens to taint the reputation of many. Both Mr Huhne and Mr Laws are men of outstanding intellectual ability and political talent.  Yet no politician can be trusted to run the country whom the country itself cannot trust. Whether guilty or not,  
 Chris Huhne is looking precariously like the biter bit. The Lib Dem cabinet minister who tablethumpingly accused the Conservatives in the coalition of playing dirty in the recent referendum on the alternative Vote is himself now being accused of playing dirty. He is alleged to have asked someone to take on to their driving licence penalty points that he had accrued for a speeding offence in 2003. Mr Huhne, the MP for Eastleigh, denies the allegation. The police say they will decide this week whether to investigate the claim (see page 5).  If Mr Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is forced to step down, the political damage will spread far beyond his own career. Coming so soon after a damning verdict by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner on David Laws' expenses claims, which made it clear that the former Lib Dem cabinet minister would be unable to return to the front bench any time soon, Nick Clegg would begin to look not only unlucky but lonely.  Mr Clegg, the party's leader and the Deputy Prime Minister, is doubly cursed by the actions of his colleagues. First, the wayward behaviour of a few Lib Dems threatens to taint the reputation of many. Both Mr Huhne and Mr Laws are men of outstanding intellectual ability and political talent.  Yet no politician can be trusted to run the country whom the country itself cannot trust. Whether guilty or not,  
 Centrica: British Gas's owner is buying PH Jones, which provides central heating services to social housing, for ?30 million cash.  Camco: a plant that will convert manure from a dairy farm into gas for a 4.5 megawatt power plant is under construction in Idaho. Camco, which develops projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says that it is the biggest biogas scheme in North america. 
 a career in forestry will not make you rich - even at the top of the tree - so it is surprising that professionals are giving up jobs as lawyers and doctors to retrain for woodland life.  The desire to work in the open air and to help to protect the environment are the big attractions: those and being surrounded by birdsong rather than ringing telephones.  Three universities run degrees in forestry with others offering ecological sciences, arboriculture, tree management and urban forestry as well as conservation and forest protection. This plethora of academic courses may astonish those who think forestry involves little more than sticking trees in the ground, root-side down, and felling them decades later.  Dr Mike Hale, a lecturer in environmental, forest and wood sciences at Bangor University, says that until public sector cutbacks started to bite, good graduates could be assured of finding employment within the industry and that some mid-career jobs were hard to fill, possibly because foresters are happy doing fieldwork.  "We have two BScs in forestry, one a full-time, three-year degree and the other a sandwich course with a year out working with organisations like the Forestry Commission, conservation bodies, private estates or companies using forest products," Hale says. "This practical year teaches things that we do not, such as climbing the trees or using chainsaws. "as well as school-leavers we have applications from mature students who decide on a career change and in some cases go on to earn much less than they did previously."  Hale sometimes suggests to mature students who already have a degree in an arts subject that they should do a master's in forestry - which can be taught by distance learning - rather than a BSc, first taking a short Open University access to science course.  The University of Cumbria also teaches forestry via degree or shorter courses at the National School of Forestry (NSF) near Penrith, which was originally set up to train supervisors at the Forestry Commission. andrew Leslie worked in forestry in Somalia and Guyana before joining NSF, where he is now a senior lecturer.  He says: "There is more to managing woodland than sticking trees in the ground and harvesting them. There is more biodiversity in forests than anywhere else and wood is a renewable resource. One of our former students is managing one of the biggest new native woodlands for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, another is heading flood control prevention on the North York Moors. Others are in production and education or with local authorities in tree care and safety."  Ros Large, 32, a former student at Cumbria, switched careers from stage management to forestry and is now a community recreatio  
 The soft, chittering sound of young blue tits calling for food can be heard in the trees. This is another event in nature that is distinctly early this year. Like the flowering of the wild roses, which are already rampaging in the hedges, it is something one expects to notice in the first week of June. It is not easy to see these fledgelings, who lurk deep in the foliage, but if one gets a glimpse one finds that their cheeks are yellow, unlike their parents' cheeks, which are white. Young tits depend considerably for food on the tiny moth caterpillars that feed on oak leaves, or hang on silken threads from the twigs. It has been feared that if global warming brought forward the nesting of the tits, the caterpillars would not yet be available for the young when they needed them. However the caterpillars too are out early, munching away, so it seems that the warm spring has had the same effect on them as it has on the birds. a hopeful sign.  Derwent May 
 about 150 years ago Joseph Bazalgette was asked to create a sewer network for the burgeoning metropolis of London. It was a lucky choice of designer. In those days London was a vast scattering of interconnected villages, not the urban sprawl that it is now.  Bazalgette, however, did not simply base his 1,100-mile-long sewer system on existing demand. Instead, he calculated the required capacity by working out demand in the areas of densest population and then applying that across all of London once the villages had been "infilled". Then, just to be on the safe side, he doubled it.  Had Bazalgette not foreseen future needs, the system would have collapsed long ago. as it is, his system is still in use today. His foresight, and that of the municipal leaders who drove this innovation in London and our other great cities, created the basis for modern Britain. The safe development of our cities, with the building of canals, railways and roads, created the enormous markets and industrial powerhouses that made Britain the manufacturing capital of the world for almost a century.  Today we face a similarly great challenge. Britain is trailing the world in digital infrastructure, the fibreoptic network that supports fast broadband. Next year South Korea will have one-gigabit broadband direct to every home - ten times the speed of the most ambitious British plans. as it stands, only 0.2 per cent of UK households have a superfast broadband connection, compared with 34 per cent in Japan. Two million UK households cannot get a broadband connection of at least 2 Mbps, the minimum required for full internet functionality. More remote parts of the country, such as Cumbria, are littered with "notspots", which have no broadband service at all.  Why does this matter? Well, broadband is more than a technology, it is a whole modern marketplace. It is not just useful to techno geeks. The small pine furniture manufacturer in a remote village in my constituency, the young woman who designs and sells handbags, the wildlife photographer who sells pictures online: all depend on the internet for their customers.  Broadband can transform how we work: high-quality teleconferencing means managers do not have to commute every day, reducing traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Broadband can benefit healthcare in rural areas too. Remote medical technology will soon allow doctors to give patients diagnoses online, allowing the elderly to remain at home rather than travelling miles to a surgery.  Britain is fantastically talented at digital content, from video games to music, and a new broadband network would be a huge boost for this growing part of the economy, which now generates ?130 billion every year and employs 1.7 million people. Fast broadband will deliver between 280,000 and 600,000 new jobs; lack of it will undermine our competitiveness.  That's why we must create a national, superfast broadband network that takes fibreoptic cable to every front door in Britain. at the moment, the Government intends to direct about ?530 million from the BBC licence fee to enable BT to invest ?5 billion in laying cable to about 60 per cent of the population, mainly in urban areas. This is not enough. There is already a digital divide between rural and urban Britain. There is a real risk that superfast broadband will be an exclusively urban luxury and that rural households and businesses will be left farther behind.  But the ?25 billion cost of making superfast broadband available nationwide is more than the Government can afford and more than the ponderous, monopolistic companies i  
 The independent panel appointed to advise the Government on the future of publicly owned forests could recommend that more woodland is bought by the State, according to the bishop leading the review.  In an interview with The Times, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, said that the panel could decide to call for the expansion of the 640,000-acre public forest estate in England.  The Bishop was appointed chairman of the panel in March after a public outcry had forced the Westminster Government to abandon its plan to privatise the entire estate. Bishop James said that he was interpreting his remit broadly, regardless of the Gover  
 Sir, Your interview (May 26) with the Bishop of Liverpool was timely as it coincided with the publication of new figures that show we have more tree cover than we thought ("Forest sale advisers may tell coalition to buy instead", May 26). This is good news but we should be in no doubt that for good economic, environmental and social reasons, we need much more.  Economically trees provide the green wonder product, capturing carbon in their timber, creating green fuel and providing thousands of jobs in a range of industries from tourism to manufacturing. Environmentally they have a huge role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change and providing first-class wildlife habitats.  But the Right Rev James Jones also picked up on the spiritual attachment people have with trees and forests. It's a theme that is close to my heart - we instinctively know that trees are good for us. Increasingly research backs up what our instincts tell us - that trees provide health, wellbeing and community dividends. Where industrial areas and work places include trees, employees are more productive and have a greater sense of job satisfaction.  This attachment with trees is something we work to understand better as we begin to realise the importance of this natural life support system to our own happiness. pam warhurst Chair, Forestry Commission 
 Hosepipe bans are a more realistic solution to drought than a national network pumping water from wet parts of the country to the driest, Britain's largest listed water business has claimed. The Government is to publish a White Paper looking at how to restructure the industry. One idea is allowing water to be traded more easily between regions, which would enable the UK to cope better with climate change as the country experiences more extreme weather.  Water trading would also boost competition as it would allow new entrants into the market to supply larger customers, the Government says. The biggest water companies enjoy virtual monopolies in their regions, where they are the principal supplier.  But Steve Mogford, the chief executive of United Utilities, which owns North West Water, said that the advantages of a national pipeline network were "overblown" and would be too energy intensive. He added that hosepipe bans had been effective for his company.  "Why do we need to be trading water in volume? We are supposed to not be using power. Water is so heavy. It uses a lot of power to pump. You have to think quite carefully about why ... you need to do trading and for how long.  "We had pretty dry months here recently. We dealt with the issue with a hosepipe ban. The water trading issue is overblown."  He also warned that   
 French nuclear power will fill a looming generation gap in Britain thanks to a new cross-Channel, (EURO)250 million interconnector being built by Eurotunnel.  The electricity cable will be installed in the service tunnel, enabling the link to be in place quicker and for less money than if the project had to be built from scratch.  The 75-kilometre interconnector will have a capacity of 500 megawatts, enough to power about five million homes. It is being built together with European investment fund, Star Capital Partners, which will hold a 51 per cent stake with the remainder owned by the operator of the Channel Tunnel. When it is operational by early 2015, it will boost capacity between the two countries by a quarter, enabling British-generated electricity to be exported to France when there is a surplus.  Jacques Gounon, Eurotunnel chief executive, said that energy experts had told the company that there could be shortage of supply in the UK between 2015-2017. More than 11 gigawatts of old coal plants will be shut down in 2015 because of new European environmental legislation, while the next wave of nuclear reactors will also begin to come offline shortly afterwards.  The Government is drawing up incentives to try to ensure that companies invest in new plant to plug the gap but many executives fear that it may not be built in time. Electricity supply will also become considerably more variable across Europe as the amount of intermittent renewables come online, requiring greater interconnectivity to make sure power is always on tap.  Mr Gounon said: "It's good for Eurotunnel to strengthen ties between France and the UK."  This month a new electricity interconnector linking the UK to the Netherlands was opened.  Mr Gounon added that the cables would be attached to the ceiling of the service tunnel and there would be no danger to train passengers in the event of an evacuation. The service tunnel is about 4.6 metres high. 
 a shale gas producer has been forced to suspend drilling near Blackpool after scientists linked earthquakes to its operations (Tim Webb writes).  Cuadrilla Resources, which is backed by the former BP boss Lord Browne of Madingley, uses a controversial process known as "fracking" that involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into rock formations to release gas.  Scientists from the British Geological Survey said that the company's shale gas exploration may be connected to two small quakes in the area on april 1 and May 27. It said: "any process that injects pressurised water into rocks at depth will cause the rock to fracture and possibly produce earthquakes. Injection of water or other fluids during oil extraction and geothermal engineering, such as shale gas, can result in earthquake activity."  Drilling is likely to be suspended while experts analyse seismic data.  The suspension is particularly embarrassing for the Energy and Climate Change Committee, chaired by the former Environment Minister Tim Yeo. It ruled last month that there should be no moratorium on shale gas activities in Britain and that the process was relatively safe.  France is proposing to ban shale gas exploration over safety fears. 
 The investment giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has formed a 50:50 joint venture with the Italian energy company Sorgenia to build wind farms in France in a deal valued at about (EURO)236 million. It is KKR's first European investment in renewable energy. Sorgenia will manage the operations. 
 Bristol and Glasgow will become key hubs for economic growth in the next few years as Katherine Griffiths the UK transforms itself into a world-leading manufacturer and innovator in high-tech businesses, according to a report by HSBC.  "Super-cities" across the UK will drive growth by acting as centres for specialised industries. Bristol, a centre for advanced manufacturing, and Glasgow, which has a concentration of renewable-energy businesses, have been classified as new super-cities alongside Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Brighton and London, which were identified by the bank in 2009.  The upbeat report is in sharp contrast to those who fear the UK will struggle to cut its dependence on financial services and that building a vibrant manufacturing industry across several sectors will take years if not decades.  Jacques-Emmanuel Blanchet, HSBC's head of commercial banking in the UK, believes that small businesses are showing themselves to be "adaptable" as they emerge from the recession,   
 The former train boss brought in to run Northumbrian Water a year ago has pledged to make it Britain's greenest utility by using the ancient technology of reed beds to clean up water, and sewage sludge to power its energy-hungry facilities.  Heidi Mottram, who ran Northern Rail for 24 years, said the only thing she had changed at Northumbrian since her arrival was to focus the company on becoming a beacon of renewable technologies.  Northumbrian is already leading the way in anaerobic digestion, the use of giant steel tanks to hasten the breakdown of organic matter and produce gas that is in turn used to create electricity.  The company uses sludge from its treatment works at its anaerobic plant at Bran Sands on Teesside and is constructing another plant at Howden on Tyneside. The two are expected to produce 20 per cent of Northumbrian's power needs.  Ms Mottram has also given the green light to the largest constructed reed bed in the world at Hanningfield near Chelmsford, where the company operates Essex & Suffolk Water. She says it will produce a natural filter that will be cheaper than mechanical treatment.  The greening of Northumbrian came as the company produced the sort of steady financial results that investors now expect from the sector. Pre-tax profits were 6 per cent better at ?181 million in the year to March 31. Revenues, helped by a rise in the regulated price cap, increased 5 per cent to ?738 million. The dividend is 7.9 per cent higher at 14.29p.  The recent reporting season proved controversial in the water sector. South West Water, owned by Pennon, cranked up its dividend after accepting a handout from the Government and Severn Trent Water admitted it is under investigation by two different regulators. 
 Eight million households are to receive advice on how to cut energy bills by an average ?100 as the Government tries to shield people from high fuel costs.  The "big six" energy companies are to send letters spelling out the savings to be had from switching to direct debit payments and dual fuel bills. They will also pledge to spell out on bills whether customers are on the best tariff while making it easier to switch suppliers.  Separately, the Government will write to four million vulnerable households who are eligible for free insulation, urging them to take up the offer.  David Cameron and Chris Huhne will announce the moves at an "energy summit" today, attended by the biggest energy companies, consumer groups, ministers and the regulator Ofgem.  The Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary said last night that the summit marked the start of a more active government role designed to make the energy market more "trusted, simple and transparent" for consumers.  The companies will use today's summit, at the Department of Energy and Climate Change offices, to insist they are serious about transparency and helping customers navigate their way to better deals.  However, Ofgem figures showed last week that the profit margin for energy firms had risen sevenfold over the past four months, to ?125 per customer per year.  4m households could benefit from free home insulation Source: Ofgem 
 There are few things more Texan than a cowboy. But now, in the teeth of the worst drought that the Lone Star State can remember, cattlemen are leaving in droves. This year, Texas endured one hell of a summer - the hottest and driest on record. "There's been days when it's been 114 degrees [45.5C], with a 30mph wind," said Dennis Braden, the general manager of the Swenson Land & Cattle Co, a ranch that has reared cattle since the 1850s. "Imagine a blow dryer in your face; I ain't never seen a summer like it." When there was no rain last winter, the ranchers sat tight for the spring deluge. When that failed, they started getting nervous. after the summer showed no respite, the Swenson ranch moved its cattle north, out of Texas for the first time. Last month more than 1,000 Black angus and Herefords were taken by rail to leased pastures in West Nebraska and Wyoming. "How long are they going to stay there? I don't have a clue," said Mr Braden.  In previous droughts, ranchers would have sold their h  
 Six years ago David Cameron promised to build a modern, compassionate Conservative Party. He made the NHS his No 1 priority, visited a Norwegian glacier, embraced gay marriage and replaced white males with ethnic minority and women candidates.  It is now clear that these changes didn't go far enough and, in some cases, were the wrong ones. YouGov finds that Mr Cameron is still fishing for support in a smaller pond than Ed Miliband. While 58 per cent say that they will consider voting Conservative, 70 per cent are open to supporting Labour. The Tories score 8 out of 10 for closeness to rich people and big business but only 3 for understanding families struggling to make ends meet.  In one of the biggest surveys of the British public, Lord ashcroft concluded that the "party of the rich" label is still the biggest barrier for the Conservatives' target voters. There's a north-south gap too. The Tories are doing less well in Northern England than when Margaret Thatcher was first elected.  These weaknesses have been swept under the Downing Street carpet since Mr Cameron lost the election but still became Prime Minister. The Tory brand problem has been hidden by the weakness of the opposition. Mr Miliband simply doesn't look prime ministerial. Nick Clegg has lost half of his voters. The Conservative leader has no internal rival. These facts look unlikely to change, but the Tories would be very vulnerable against a leader with Tony Blair-sized gifts.  Mr Cameron cannot be blamed for weaknesses that mean his party hasn't won an election outright for 20 years. Nonetheless, he is responsible for recent decisions that have begun to recontaminate the brand. Voters, for example, are most anxious about jobs and incomes but the coalition spends too much time talking about the deficit. The shambolic health reforms erased the lead on the NHS that he spent five painstaking years building.  His flagship project to define his compassionate conservatism, the Big Society, may be intellectually potent but has confused the public. Rather than arguing that poverty is beaten by strong families, good schools and work, the Government has often reinforced the left-wing idea that compassion is measured by how much taxpayers' money it spends.  The priority must be to go back to creating a modern compassionate Conservative Party. Compassion isn't When tax cuts become affordable, give them to low-income households just about helping the very poorest. It's about the working poor and rebooting social mobility. The party's "C2" and northern weaknesses are much more serious than declining support among women, although they exercise Team Cameron less. Ronald Reagan, John Howard, Stephen Harper and Margaret Thatcher would all testify that "the strivers" have been the backbone of every successful modern conservative majority.  When tax cuts become affordable, low income households should be at the front of the queue. Lower petrol duty and national insurance must come before a cut in the 50p tax rate. Before then the tax system needs rebalancing. Extra taxes on high-end properties should fund emergency tax relief for families hurt by inflation. Few things would send a more electric signal about changed Tory priorities than unearned wealth being taxed more and low-income households less.  The Tories must also be the party of competition and the little guy; not vested interests and big business; for customers who want more choice between banks and energy companies; for job-creating small businesses; for Tube passengers who can't get to work because a minority of union members can trigger a strike; for citizens who want a vote on Britain's membership of an EU built for the 1950s, not today.  Some in the Tory leadership have given the impression that right-wing policies made the party toxic. In reality, the greater problem has been rich people's policies. While these can overlap, they ar  
 The First Minister, alex Salmond, said with some force last Thursday that the collapse of the ?1 billion Longannet carbon capture and storage project would be bad news for Scotland, the UK, and the rest of Europe. He was speaking at an event to welcome a ?4.5 billion investment by BP west of Shetland, in a project designed to produce a great deal more oil for our eager use. Is Mr Salmond interested in taking carbon out of the ground or in putting it back? He is rightly interested in both and in this breadth of vision he has company within the oil industry. Shell is a leading player in the Longannet venture, prospectively storing carbon dioxide captured at the coal-fired power station in Fife, safely under the North Sea. Why would Shell even think about providing this waste disposal service? T  
 Sir, as one of the campaigners opposing GM crops in the UK (letter, Oct 13), I recently drove across the US Midwest and was shocked to have witnessed a virtual monoculture of Roundup Ready corn and Roundup Ready soya. Repeated spraying with herbicide has eliminated all other plants. These GM crops and the livestock fed on them now form the lion's share of the US staple diet.  I spent several hours in the combine of a farmer harvesting GM corn. He said that no farmer in the region is happy with this total dependence on monoculture, GM seeds and herbicides but they now have little option if they want to stay in business. I feel certain it would not be in the interests of farmers or consumers if we allowed a similar situation to develop here.  There is also mounting concern about evidence that GM crops may not be safe, due to the high levels of toxins in some commercially grown varieties. That is why thousands of US citizens are currently marching between New York and Washington DC, calling for the mandatory labelling of GM foods.  The pro-GM signatories of your letter are capitalising on the need to increase food production against a background of climate change and resource depletion, but I challenge them to a public debate on whether GM crops are necessary to achieve this.  patrick holden Director, Sustainable Food Trust 
 The End of the Line (Rupert Murray, 2009) The campaign advocated sustainable fishing policies by illustrating the effects of overfishing in the world's waters and the possible extinction of the bluefin tuna. The result Major successes with retailers  
 Quote of the day 'Short-termists, armchair engineers, curmudgeons and fault-finders' Chris Huhne, the Energy Minister, takes aim at green power critics. Page 49 
 Statoil, the Norwegian energy group that supplies about a quarter of Britain's gas consumption from the North Sea, warned that the UK could become a less attractive market if renewables and nuclear power were favoured at the expense of gas plants. "There are other places we can export the gas to apart from the UK," Rune Bjornson, a senior Statoil executive, said. "We have the gas you need if you want it." Page 49 
 Just as the senseless decision not to go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow has become the toughest policy for any government minister to defend to a business audience - sadly unlikely to be revoked after the appointment of the Putney MP, Justine Greening, as Secretary of State for Transport - the energy portfolio looks the most hazardous for Opposition politicians.  That said, Caroline Flint, who since you ask is Labour's Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is not covering herself in glory.  Take her stunning response to a report, published this week, from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee: "The select committee's worrying forecast about our dependency on foreign sources of energy, where prices cannot be controlled, makes it all the more vital that the Government gets tough over domestic energy prices now."  No one disagrees on the need to reduce UK dependence on foreign energy supplies. But "getting tough" on the very companies whose investment will be critical in achieving that aim is a curious way to go about it. 
 Most of us, on discovering that we had accidentally married Jeremy Clarkson for a few years in our early twenties, would be happy to draw a veil over it. Leave it out of the autobiography, if you know what I mean. accidents, as Clarkson demonstrates all the time, do happen.  But who can really know the desperation that others feel? alex Hall, the first Mrs Petrolhead, had two failed marriages and was a single mother of two teenage sons. The company that she had set up to sell bar snacks - called The Big O - to pubs was struggling. She had even been rejected on Dragons' Den, for goodness' sake.  We can only imagine that times were so hard that Mrs Hall felt angry because nobody knew that she had been the first wife of the Top Gear presenter and bestselling author, who, after they divorced, went on to become a household name worth millions of pounds. and not only that, but she engaged the publicist Max Clifford to claim that she and Clarkson had an affair after he had remarried.  It is important for legal reasons to pause here and note that although Clarkson yesterday lifted the injunction on Mrs Hall, allowing her to make her claims in public, he has denied her allegations. Not that Clarkson himself will be reading this: he has said that he is spending the week filming in a nuclear submarine. Proving that there is no crisis - climate change, or otherwise - that he cannot run away from in a boy's toy.  allegations of affairs, however false, are, of course, upsetting for Clarkson's wife and children, but I'm not sure if they really damage the reputation of the man himself. He cultivates the image of one so red-blooded that he injects raw steak into a vein for breakfast and follows it with a shot of diesel chaser. He has made a fortune trading in being a naughty boy. If it would stick a finger up to the politically correct brigade, he gives the impression that he would party the night away with a baboon, perhaps the one that his mate a. a. Gill shot dead for a stunt.  No, what is interesting is the question that this raises about the power of first love. Let's set a little test - purely hypothetical, let me emphasise yet again: if your husband or wife had to have an affair, would you rather it was with (a) someone new or (b) with their first big love? It's got to be (a), hasn't it? Because, by the way, this is only a small refinement of another one that you can all play at home: if your partner had to have an affair, would you rather it was with (a) a prostitute or (b) someone they were emotionally involved with? More difficult this one, but I think that we would mostly plump for (a) again.  affairs with random totty are immature. affairs with first loves put the adult into adultery. They move the tawdry into territory that is dark, complicated and fascinating. The former could, perhaps, be explained away by physical urges, the latter, well, it speaks of an inner life that can't be explained away. Never go back, they say, but we all understand the human compulsion when people can't seem to help thems  
 The Environment agency, which has suffered a 10 per cent reduction in government funding, has said the cut will put parts of the country at risk of flooding.  In a report compiled by the National audit Office, the agency, which manages flood risk, said that it needed an annual increase of ?20 million, or 9 per cent more on its budget, to maintain protection from flooding in light of climate change and ageing defences. Communities would be increasingly reliant on locally secured money to maintain flood defences, the agency warned. 
 Frozen Planet (BBC One) Mummifying alan: Egypt's Last Secret (Channel 4) at the bottom of my garden is a wrongness, a brightness - a patch of milky-green yellow that shouldn't be there. The primroses are out; confused.  They should be underground until March.  Under the apple tree, the narcissi and daffodils are coming up - expecting april; finding October. The tree itself has pink blossom next to red fruit; as joltingly wrong as a pregnant child, or a plane falling to earth. The earth is still fidgety and mild, when it should, by now, be silent under frost. It still feels loud out there. There's a conversation going on. I can hear it every time I look out of the window at the long lawn; the insanity of damask roses lolling on the pergola at Hallowe'en. We've jumped straight from summer to spring. all that greenness is ... shouting.  On Frozen Planet Sir David attenborough stands at the South Pole in a red thermal jacket that makes him as wide as he is tall. Under a white-lamp sun "that never rises high enough in the sky to warm my back", attenborough explains that his final epic series is about the frozen places of the world: "Places that seem to be borrowed from fairytales."  We are here "to witness its wonders: perhaps for the last time".  For as the opening credits of Frozen Planet rise on the screen - accompanied by low, slightly dissonant brass - there can scarcely be a viewer unaware of the context: the world is cooking. Even prominent sceptics such as the physicist Richard a. Muller are worried: reviewing climatic data to disprove global warming, Muller found that - contrary to what he had desired - the evidence proving that it was alarming, and this week wrote a quietly terrifying piece in The Wall Street Journal that concluded: "You should not be a sceptic. Not any longer."  The frozen planet that Frozen Planet covers, then, is smaller than the frozen planet we had even 20 years ago.  "What happens here - in these remote, ice-crusted caps - affects us all, whereever we are," attenborough says, braced against an antarctic wind that, within our lifetime, has started to blow over lukewarm water instead of ice.  But facts such as these would be focusing on the awful, drowning, catastrophic pity of global warming. What Frozen Planet does is even more affecting than that. It shows us what we will lose in terms of the awe and beauty of these places - the magic of being on a planet topped and tailed with these outrageous landscapes; white like teeth and cloud and pearl; wild like ecstacy, or the moon. Heaped, blown, billowing snow: a world of fatal ice cream, punctuated by volcanoes and aqua meltlakes, and penguins leaping out of wave foam like girls out of a cake.  God, look at this! a break in the ice no bigger than the average municipal swimming pool - this could be the baths in Bexley, or Bilston - and six killer whales facing up out of the water, giant heads split with teeth, jostling for space like Year 5 kids at a swimming lesson. Their scale is dizzying - you could sit in their mouths. Their design is sharp: black and white, in simple curves, they'd look good on a record sleeve, or as a tile.  The orca are here for one of the natural world's signature manoeuvres - combining "extreme play" with "lunch". The menu consists of a seal on a raft of ice: as long as the seal is on the ice, the orca can't get it - however often their huge, toothed faces snap. So, like the cast of Reservoir Dogs made out of wet PVC, they surge, black and white and fatal, rocking the ice until it flips. The seal looks like a mum on a lilo in Lanzarote, being hassled by the kids: it looks as if it's about to shout: "Stop mucking around, Cameron - you'll get my hair wet!" before flip, snap - it's in the water, under the water, split between the pack: lunch.  You won't believe where they've got cameras filming this: on the ice, overhead, in the water, between the orca - at one point a whale's tail slaps the camera as all six weave around. anyone who had ever seen killer whales like this before would have been very cold, and, six seconds later, very dead. It's like the kind of show that they have at SeaWorld - but wild, live, in a landscape as plain, white and potent as an empty page.  Frozen Planet roamed across both poles, showing us new and astonishing things every six minutes - like an excited child showing off its toys on Christmas Day. Look! another! and another! and another!  Underground snow-crystal caves; mountains crumbled to skeletons by antarctic storms; 100-year-old pines bent double, swathed in never-melting, white fox-fur snow. and in the water - as bright and blue as the Pacific - creatures that looked like they'd fallen out of Gothic fairytales: a sea spider half a metre across that looked like eight orange pencils; icefish; woodlice the size of dinner plates. Things that looked like winged babies, falling into the dark.  In this white, wondrous world, attenborough became rhapsodic. as Greenland thawed, an aerial shot showed a whole country turning into a gushing Olympic luge course and he sighed in sated amazement: "The water courses through an icy delta, like blood along the arteries of a coldblooded monster. a monster that is ... stirring."  attenborough is a vitaphile. Life, all life - all energy and motion - fascinates him. as Van Gogh saw the night sky whirl above him, attenborough sees the Earth seethe and the ice grind, and the meat pulse under the fur. He knows so much - miles underground, millions of years back - that when we travel with him, we, too, become omnitemporal, 3-D, thrilled. He has a way of hitting you with a thought that can leave you thinking for days. It may have been 42 years since Neil armstrong first walked on the Moon, but it was only 58 years before that that Roald amundsen first left his footprint at the South Pole - "coming inland over the highest, driest and coldest mountains on Earth", as attenborough puts it. Getting to the pole was almost as hard as catapulting ourselves free of gravity and on to another heavenly body. The ice is as titanic, brutal, alien and kaleidoscopic as the sky. We press against the iron hardness and know what we are.  Not that we even have to get to the poles for this kind of wonder. again, look - here is attenborough showing us snowflakes as they form, in dazzling close-up; each blooming around a mote of dust. Crackling and feathering like a diamond etching on a windowpane, falling across the screen like frizzled stars. attenborough claims that there are no two alike, and while I'm going to have to call him up on that one - I've thought about it and it's just not that likely, love - you are, once again, joy-struck: snow falls on Dudley, and dogs, and the seafront in Brighton. Frozen Planet comes here. and - while it still lies solid, and white, above and below us - we go to the frozen planet, with David attenborough. While it still lies there.  From life to death, with Channel 4's big show of the week: Mummifying alan: Egypt's Last Secret, where an all-expert team pulled together to mummify the body of alan Billis, a 61-year-old taxi driver from Torquay.  Previously, the superlative mummification methods of the 18th Dynasty have been undocumented and wholly mysterious.  after 18 years of research, however, the archaeological chemist Stephen Buckley claims that he has finally cracked their method. "We need salt, beeswax and natural oils," he said, briskly - leading the viewer to exclaim: "Hang on! You're going to Lush Bath Bomb alan into immortality? Why not chuck in some tiny dried rosebuds and gli  
 This week there was confirmation that BP has surged back into profit after 2010's annus horribilis. There was talk of a "clear turning point", not just in the company's fortunes but also in its direction. Is it time to buy for recovery? What is it? One of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, it is also one of the UK's most active investors in renewable energy, such as solar and wind projects.  What are its strengths? The Deepwater Horizon disaster last year continues to cast a shadow over BP. The explosion at the Gulf of Mexico rig resulted in the largest accidental oil spill in US waters, the resignation of Tony Hayward, BP's former chief executive, and the cancellation of the company's cherished dividend. Since then there has been disquiet about the strategy of Mr Hayward's replacement, Bob Dudley, particularly after the collapse of a ?10 billion arctic exploration deal with Rosneft, the Russian state-backed oil company . Those grumbling investors may draw comfort from the strategy outlined on Tuesday, which sets out steps to recovery. The company plans to boost its financial firepower by selling another $15 billion (?9.4 billion) of assets, in addition to the $30 billion already targeted.  Mr Dudley is expecting BP's cashflow to grow by about 50 per cent by 2014 - meaning greater returns for shareholders. There is also going to be a move towards a less indebted balance sheet, which the company says will give it more flexibility.  The past 12 months has also been its most successful for a decade in gaining new exploration licences - 67 . For those yet to be convinced, a strategic review will be completed in February.  and its weaknesses? The Gulf of Mexico oil spill means that there are potentially years of litigation ahead. It has settled with anadarko and MOEX, the co-owner  
 alex Salmond and the SNP were dealt a blow by a new survey last night which found that only one in 20 companies north of the Border believe that independence would have a positive effect on their business.  More than two thirds, 67 per cent, of the 109 companies that responded to the survey said it would not have a positive effect, 5 per cent said it would have a positive effect, 17 per cent said they did not know what effect independence would have, and the rest said it would have no effect.  The survey comes only a few weeks after Citigroup, one of the world's biggest financial institutions, warned its clients to exercise "extreme caution" and take a "precautionary approach" to investing in the renewables sector north of the B  
 Some easy measures will make you greener and save you money: laying down more insulation in the loft and putting panels behind radiators on external walls.  But as you follow the hints you are likely to start wondering: when will all homes automatically be built in a planet-friendly way that's also kind to the wallet?  In Kettering, Northamptonshire, outline planning permission has just been granted for a 5,500-home eco scheme, which will also include new schools, offices and transport improvements. Kettering Council is keen that the developers, Bee Bee Development and Buccleuch Property, consider CarbonLight homes, designed by HTa architects, as green housing for the mass market.  Some prototypes have already been built on the site. My wife, son Freddie, daughter Jemima and I spent the weekend in one of the CarbonLight four-bedroom semis to test the experience.  as we discovered, this was authentic eco-living, complete with grey water harvesting, by which water from showers, baths and washing machines is recycled to flush lavatories. Paul Hicks, CarbonLight's design and construction co-ordinator, enumerates the home's green credentials: "The houses are largely energy self-sufficient, using solar heating combined with air-to-water heat pumps for hot water and space heating, and natural ventilation for cooling. as a result, fuel bills are expected to be at least 70 per cent less than the average for a similar-sized new home."  The first striking point about the house is the number of windows. Velux, the window giant, is very involved in the CarbonLight project. Plenty of windows means plenty of natural daylight, another thing that saves on energy bills. The houses are part of Velux's Model Home 2020 initiative, based on the European Union energy policy to reduce total energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, with 20 per cent of energy consumption to come from renewable sources.  Inside the house, a climate-control system opens and closes all the windows, blinds and shutters automatically when the weather changes.  Before long Freddie, 5, who has enough energy to power 5,500 new homes east of Kettering, was playing with the WindowMaster system and calling himself a WindowMaster Jedi knight.  a building management system monitors the temperature and ventilation levels in every room along with solar energy and heating and water consumption. The open-plan design, which includes a triple-height atrium, produces a natural "stack" ventilation effect, which allows fresh air to move in and replace stale overheated air.  During our mild winter sleepover the house temperature hovered at about a comfortable 20C, but should the outside temperature have plummeted,the wood-burning stove in the living room had "Plan B"' written all over it.  The drawbacks were the need to dance around in the shower in order to get wet and the fact that I had enough time to sink a bottle of wine while running the water for the kids' bath - the hot water courtesy of the solar system. During supper the lights in the dining area kept going out as they responded to body movement. Romantic mood lighting is one thing, but pitch darkness is another.  In March two families will move in to a pair of semi-detached CarbonLight homes and live rent-free for a year to monitor long-term the carbon emissions, water use and air quality of the properties before they are sold on the open market at an estimated price of between ?275,000 and ?300,000.  CarbonLight homes aim to reduce onsite carbon emissions by 80 per cent, with the other 20 per cent to be offset by making energy-efficient improvements to council homes in the borough - so in effect the homes are carbon neutral. Velux believes that CarbonLight will conform to level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes - the likely future carbon compliance level. It currently stands at level 6.  Hicks says: "CarbonLight, rather than the specific architecture or build solution, provides the basis for a viable   
 Chief executives of the four biggest airlines in Britain and Ireland put their business rivalry and personal animosity aside yesterday to make a united call on the Chancellor to abandon passenger taxes.  air passenger duty (aPD) is costing jobs, deterring inward investment and depriving families of their "right" to a foreign holiday, Willie Walsh, of British airways, said. "It is driving us towards a recession at a time when we need to be creating growth and creating employment," he said. "This is a failed policy of Gordon Brown that is being perpetuated by George Osborne."  Sharing a podium with Michael O'Leary, the abrasive boss of Ryanair, Mr Walsh said that there was no other issue that could unite all airline executives in the same way.  Mr O'Leary said: "Why has George Osborne not got rid of the tax? Because he lacks the courage and he lacks the balls to get rid of the tax."  along with Carolyn McCall, chief executive of easyJet, and Steve Ridgway, the Virgin atlantic boss, they have written a joint letter to the Chancellor asking him to abandon the tax and commission independent research to determine its economic cost.  The letter says: "For hard-working families, aPD is a tax too far for the privilege of taking a well-earned holiday.  It is also a tax on tourism and a tax on business."  Passenger numbers in Britain fell by 7.4 million in 2010, the third consecutive year of decline. The airlines claim that taxes are partly responsible.  aPD is due to rise by 10 per cent next april. From January, the industry will also have to buy permits for some of the carbon it produces.  The airlines said that they supported British entry into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme from January 1. "That is the environmental tax on airlines. aPD is a tax on families and consumers," Ms McCall said.  She added that the combination of the two taxes next year was "completely unjustifiable". Economic research co  
 It took the CBI nearly five years to realise that befriending the previous Government was not worth the candle. While the employer's body, led then by adair Turner, acquiesced, billions of pounds of extra taxes and regulations were piled on to British business during Labour's first term in office. The CBI woke up to the danger only when Digby Jones became Director-General.  His successor-but-one, John Cridland, looks to have decided to save time by picking a fight with the coalition within months of starting and, in highlighting the vacuum in aviation, rightly identifies the key area where ministers are failing business.  That is not to say that all his battles are worth fighting. In blaming the coalition's drive for more renewables for the closure of Rio Tinto's aluminium smelter in Lynemouth, Northumberland - which will cost 550 jobs - Mr Cridland has picked the wrong fight. aluminium smelting is vastly energy-intensive, and it is no coincidence that the nations best at it, Russia and Canada, have vast and cheap hydroelectric power sources.  With no such supplies available locally, Lynemouth was doomed, just as another former Rio site at anglesey was forced to shut when the nuclear power plant next door to it closed. 
 The unusually warm weather and the reluctance of households and businesses to switch on their heating because of record energy bills led Centrica to issue a profit warning yesterday.  The owner of British Gas also admitted that it had lost 200,000 customer accounts after it raised bills by almost a fifth in august.  The group is now expected to make a full year pre-tax profit of ?2.4 billion, compared with ?2.5 billion previously forecast. Shares in Centrica closed down 1.6 per cent at 290p on the warning.  Residential customers of Britain's biggest gas supplier have used on average 17 per cent less gas over the past 10 months compared with the same period last year, while electricity consumption has fallen by 3 per cent over the same period.  Business customers' consumption fell by 15 per cent for gas and 12 per cent for electricity. Centrica blamed the recent "unusually warm weather" and energy efficiency measures such as loft insulation and the use of energy saving light bulbs for the decline.  The average temperature in Britain for the first ten months of the year was 10.2C, one degree higher than the same period last year, according to the Met Office.  Mark Todd, a director of the price comparison site Energyhelpline.com, said: "People are increasingly turning down their heating to save money as they can't afford their energy bills. This trend occurred after the 2008 price rises and it appears to be happening again."  British Gas's average annual residential electricity and gas bill is now ?1,288, with average bills for all domestic consumers at a record ?1,345.  Centrica also hinted that more job losses could be on the way as a result of a cost-cutting review. This week it announced that 850 jobs from its energy services division would be cut, on top of existing plans to reduce the headcount by 270 elsewhere.  Energy consumption by households has been falling since 2005 as bills have risen and the Government's insulation programme has taken effect. But consumption rocketed last winter, one of the coldest on record.  Industry has been particularly badly  
 The CBI is setting itself on a collision course with the Government over what it regards as the coalition's failure to face up to the need for new runways in the South East.  John Cridland, the Director-General, has identified airport expansion as one of the big policy battlegrounds of 2012. Britain will be left behind the "premier league of nations" if it is not addressed, he warned.  Speaking to The Times before next week's annual CBI conference, Mr Cridland was also scathing about the Government's implementation of industrial policy and warned the Chancellor that his autumn Statement must address youth unemployment, lack of infrastructure spending, and high energy prices. Mr Cridland said: "We desperately need a bold vision for the UK to have a world leading airport.  "The coalition agreement says no more runway capacity in the South East of England. I can't cope with that. Surely if we want to stay in the premier league of the world economy, if we are going to access export markets of the world's emerging economies, we have got to have a world-leading airport."  He said the coalition had come up with a bold vision, thinking a generation ahead and committing tens of billions of pounds for a high speed railway from London to Birmingham and beyond. Yet for ministers, airport expansion "is the issue that dare not speak its name, " Mr Cridland said.  The CBI had not yet done detailed analysis on where it believes airport expansion should take place. "People in the industry think it should be built on Heathrow because there is so much sunk capital and connectivity already there," he said. "That is why it would be quite radical to start somewhere else.  "There is a lot of thinking to do on this but there is no point  
 alex Salmond and the SNP were dealt a blow by a new survey last night which found that only one in 20 companies north of the Border believe that independence would have a positive effect on their business.  More than two thirds, 67 per cent, of the 109 companies that responded to the survey said it would not have a positive effect, 5 per cent said it would have a positive effect, 17 per cent said they did not know what effect independence would have, and the rest said it would have no effect.  The survey comes only a few weeks after Citigroup, one of the world's biggest financial institutions, warned its clients to exercise "extreme caution" and take a "precautionary approach" to investing in the renewables sector north of the B  
 The West arms/Cennin  Some weeks ago, possibly months, I reported to you from a half-decent Nepalese restaurant in Chatham and bemoaned as I did so the paradox by which I was travelling around Britain for a new BBC2 series in praise of British food and farming, while facing every night the horrors of this island's execrable provincial restaurant scene. and I hadn't even been to Norwich yet.  ;Kent was bad enough, but Norwich and greater Norfolk, ye gods. as a restaurant spot, it made one long for the Ukraine of Stalin's murderous mid-Thirties famine campaign. It was here, after long days embedded in mustard factories and mint fields, on crab boats off Cromer and wending through wheatfields on ancient wherries, that I found pubs selling Skol and Harp and Panda Cola, where they haven't quite even got the same chains as the rest of England (it's all "Burger Kong" and "Kentucky Boiled Chicken") and where chefs squint at you villainously through thick spectacles if you ask for a menu, before revealing the names of such boil-in-the-bag fare as they would have been prepared to serve if you had been in the dining room by 7.59pm ("dining room closes at 8"), while in the background other people's dinners are dropped on carpetless floors by tiny, lame waiters from the village, employed in contravention of every child-labour law introduced since the birth of Dickens.  ;Scotland was mostly the same. Barring a great fish shop in Glasgow and a two-star Michelin job half an hour from Edinburgh (to be reviewed here eventually), it was generally nothing but mouth-murdering pucks of industrial haggis, hard little turds of overdone venison, tinned vegetables and the pervading flavour of grey, morbid things that had been cooked in the same oil as your dinner many months before.  ;The only exception to this rule of restaurant misery as I travelled round our island (and I am denigrating the restaurants of these regions, not the food they grow, or cook at home, or the people, or their way of life) was Wales.  ;God, I love Wales. and I love the Welsh. They are so much more mellow, more at peace with themselves and with the world, than the people of this United Kingdom's other smaller nations. They're not all up in your face with their tedious folklore and nationalist yearnings and the anti-Imperial truisms of long, fighty memory. They're not all wiry and shouty and drunk and thinking they invented poetry. They just chill their boots in their gorgeous country, and speak to each other in the lilting calypso of their magical language - no doubt about what terrible bastards the rest of us are - and sing their songs and eat their wonderful food and look out at the sea.  ;Even at Oswestry, not quite in Wales, just at the edge, while giving the once-over to some 250 quality store cattle at the Wednesday morning cattle market (focusing on the bare few pure Welsh Blacks still there among the Charolais and Limousin crosses), I had a pork pie for ?1.10 that was the best I have had in years. It came from the Pedigree Pantry, a brick cube of a works' canteen, no more cosy than an anderson shelter, full of farmers in boots and girls in blue pinnies: cup of tea for a pound, bacon or sausage sarnies for not much more. and for ?1.10 you get a good big pie, size of a six-footer's fist, made from their own pigs, with the meat good and pink from plenty of bacon in with the pork, and strong wet jelly, cased in a brilliant hot-water crust so full of lard that in the mouth it comes on almost flaky. Eaten under strip lights and with the sound of yet unfattened cattle lowing hungrily all around, I would rate it over any poncey plateful I have had in a restaurant lately.  ;Thence northwards into Wales, following the old cattle-droving roads backwards towards anglesey, and another, even better pie at a beautiful old drovers' inn called the West arms, in the Ceiriog Valley at the foot of the Berwyn mountains. Being less well-known than Snowdonia, Berwyn is considerably less tourist-trammelled. The downside to this is that these days places such as the West arms can really only survive by the shotgun shilling - brought by lisping, knock-kneed weeds in plus fours and giant cars (too rugged for the pansy suburbs in which they live, but not nearly tough enough for the land round here), who come to massacre slow, fat, semi-flightless birds with guns they bought yesterday using money they'll make tomorrow, when the bonuses come in.  ;These fat, idle offshoots from the evolutionary chain (can you tell if I'm talking about the pheasants or their foe?) litter the roadside round here, both dead and alive. Bred to be nothing more than aerial targets (never eaten by men, but dug into landfill or sent for dogmeat), shorn of wit and natural function, these house-trained game birds seem a self-inflicted plague. I killed six on the windscreen just going to get a newspaper, a slaughter that would have cost me hundreds had I used a gun.  ;This pie I had there was steak and kidney. Fearing the familiar ladleful from a big tin of stew with an a4 sheet of Jus-Rol on the top that I've been faced with mostly on my travels, I was overjoyed to get, instead, a deep, rich, sticky, well-seasoned braise encased in a suet basin with a lid of hot-water pastry on top, glazed like a pork pie.  ;The room we ate in was small and red and creaky, with a wonderful old confessional along one wall. a perfect piece of plain Welsh furniture. and sitting in it the next day I slurped a perfect piece of plain Welsh cooking: a cawl of six-year-old local mutton whose rich, slick, sticky fat informed every spoonful, sweetened with carrots and leeks and swedes and I don't know what. and there were local mussels, too, and good fresh fish. Just great, great Welsh cooking. Not modern gastro-ponce imposed on a pretty building, but heartfelt country-inn cooking from a chef, Grant Williams, who has been here nearly 20 years.  ;and from there, reversing the old drovers' run, we cut across to anglesey, where the Welsh Black cattle started (they used to cross the Menai Strait, swimming, in their eagerness to get to London and be killed) and stopped in pretty Beaumaris, with its views of Snowdonia and the water, for as good a steak as I will ever eat, at a restaurant called Cennin.  ;Cennin is the Welsh word for both "daffodil" and "leek", which explains an awful lot from the national symbol perspective, but luckily the chef here, aled Williams, knows the difference, not only because he is a former Gordon Ramsay scholar but because he is very local, coming as he does from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, just up the road. Yes, he r  
 a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  a report on extreme weather by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by these outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting.  But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala, Uganda, that its credibility remained intact and that its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban, South africa, next month.  The two-year study involving 100 scientists and policy experts is far more confident about the prospect of intense heatwaves and heavy downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. 
 From the vertiginous arctic cliffs the young guillemot prepares for his virgin flight. Teenage wings are stumpy, yet poised on the 1,000ft ledge he looks plucky, game-on. and as he descends, less flying than a Buzz Lightyear "falling with style", you urge him to reach the sea. Oh, but he doesn't ... a soft baby body bounces on rock. But wait, he's alive! Well, until the arctic fox, seeing his chance, snaps the winded fledgeling in his jaws.  This week's Frozen Planet was hard to bear. Not just because its soaring score left us expecting triumph rather than horror. Or that, watching with my teenage sons, I identified too well with guillemot mothers releasing tenderly raised chicks. But because the news all that same day was devoted to the plight of our nation's fledgelings. One million young people unemployed: excitedly leaving nests only for crash landings and predators. a whole generation who may never reach the sea.  This series is not only among the finest in television history, but an accidental allegory of our times. It feels we are entering our own arctic winter.  The economy frozen, growth stunted, Britain battered by icy katabatic winds blasting off the eurozone, we are entering a perhaps interminable darkness. In economics news stories I keep catching the word "armageddon": from a report about doomed Britain by the brokers Tullett Prebon and in reported conversations with bankers who think that Europe is an insoluble disaster and are shiftily relocating their wealth, buying land in Canada or New Zealand, just in case.  Even taking into account hyperbole or black humour, it feels for once in my adult life that no one knows what they are doing. Even the clever people are flummoxed. Their solutions are comprised of gaffer tape and bluff. Italy and Greece put technocrats and economists - the geniuses who invented the euro, who persuaded us to trust unleashed markets - in charge of solving the crisis they created. Labour suggests a cut to VaT costing ?12 billion to kick start consumer spending. Shop our way out of recession? Seriously? again?  Visiting New York this month, I was struck less by the few voluble anti-capitalist protesters in Zuccotti Park than the long, silent queue of the hungry waiting for food handouts a mile away in Tompkins Square Park.  all across the West, the snow crystals are forming, the money rivers grow sclerotic, the separate outcrops of ice solidify into a single impenetrable sheet. "Some winters," says the God-like voice in Frozen Planet, "whole colonies can be lost."  and yet, this series is curiously soothing. Sir David attenborough has remarked about the great solace of Nature. "In moments of deep grief, the only consolation you can find is in the natural world," he told Radio Times. "People write to me and tell me this - people of great distinction ... 'When so-and-so died, the only thing that made life tolerable was to watch programmes on plants and animals.' and I thought, 'That's true for me, yes.' Because we are part of a big, enduring thing."  For the most part, I'm indifferent to Nature, content to know that elephants or grey crowned cranes exist without rising at dawn to be jiggled in a Land Rover on safari or visit a hateful, penetentiary-like zoo or even turn to the Discovery Channel. So why, on blue afternoons, do I find that nothing rallies my spirits like poring over silly feline photos on Lolcats.com? Oh bless, a kitten snuggled up asleep with a rabbit: my heartbeat steadies. It is why newspapers intersperse grim new stories with a baby wombat in a teacup or the world's biggest puppy. They transport us beyond our own species: we are freed, momentarily, from thinking about ourselves.  and Frozen Planet is all that: lush, expansive, revealing fresh wonderment in every snowflake, each surfacing whale. It makes us feel both microscopically insignificant and part of a mighty, unfathomable plan. But it is also a parable of life, the heaviness of its burdens, its brief joys. "at the frozen ends of our planet the struggle for survival never eases," warns the God-voice even as wolf cubs enjoy a rare meal. "If she can raise them all to independence it will be a rare achievement," he says of the polar bear mother of three cubs who, in the next sequence, has only two.  While Nature in the tropics or savannah seems lewdly abundant, in the arctic each creature makes you boggle not just at how it can exist here, but how it does so with apparent joy. Why does a poppy bother to bloom iridescent yellow in the momentary summer? Why do white whales travel a thousand m  
 Severe heatwaves and flooding 'more likely' a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  an Intergovernmental Panel report on Climate Change suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting. But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala that it was still credible and its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban next month.  The two-year study is more confident about the prospect of heatwaves and downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. "a small change can have a big impact on extremes," said Gerald Meehl, one of the report's reviewers. 
 Severe heatwaves and flooding 'more likely' a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting. But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala that it was still credible and its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban next month.  The two-year study is more confident about the prospect of heatwaves and downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. "a small change can have a big impact on extremes," said Gerald Meehl, one of the report's reviewers. 
 The West arms/Cennin  Some weeks ago, possibly months, I reported to you from a half-decent Nepalese restaurant in Chatham and bemoaned as I did so the paradox by which I was travelling around Britain for a new BBC2 series in praise of British food and farming, while facing every night the horrors of this island's execrable provincial restaurant scene. and I hadn't even been to Norwich yet.  ;Kent was bad enough, but Norwich and greater Norfolk, ye gods. as a restaurant spot, it made one long for the Ukraine of Stalin's murderous mid-Thirties famine campaign. It was here, after long days embedded in mustard factories and mint fields, on crab boats off Cromer and wending through wheatfields on ancient wherries, that I found pubs selling Skol and Harp and Panda Cola, where they haven't quite even got the same chains as the rest of England (it's all "Burger Kong" and "Kentucky Boiled Chicken") and where chefs squint at you villainously through thick spectacles if you ask for a menu, before revealing the names of such boil-in-the-bag fare as they would have been prepared to serve if you had been in the dining room by 7.59pm ("dining room closes at 8"), while in the background other people's dinners are dropped on carpetless floors by tiny, lame waiters from the village, employed in contravention of every child-labour law introduced since the birth of Dickens.  ;Scotland was mostly the same. Barring a great fish shop in Glasgow and a two-star Michelin job half an hour from Edinburgh (to be reviewed here eventually), it was generally nothing but mouth-murdering pucks of industrial haggis, hard little turds of overdone venison, tinned vegetables and the pervading flavour of grey, morbid things that had been cooked in the same oil as your dinner many months before.  ;The only exception to this rule of restaurant misery as I travelled round our island (and I am denigrating the restaurants of these regions, not the food they grow, or cook at home, or the people, or their way of life) was Wales.  ;God, I love Wales. and I love the Welsh. They are so much more mellow, more at peace with themselves and with the world, than the people of this United Kingdom's other smaller nations. They're not all up in your face with their tedious folklore and nationalist yearnings and the anti-Imperial truisms of long, fighty memory. They're not all wiry and shouty and drunk and thinking they invented poetry. They just chill their boots in their gorgeous country, and speak to each other in the lilting calypso of their magical language - no doubt about what terrible bastards the rest of us are - and sing their songs and eat their wonderful food and look out at the sea.  ;Even at Oswestry, not quite in Wales, just at the edge, while giving the once-over to some 250 quality store cattle at the Wednesday morning cattle market (focusing on the bare few pure Welsh Blacks still there among the Charolais and Limousin crosses), I had a pork pie for ?1.10 that was the best I have had in years. It came from the Pedigree Pantry, a brick cube of a works' canteen, no more cosy than an anderson shelter, full of farmers in boots and girls in blue pinnies: cup of tea for a pound, bacon or sausage sarnies for not much more. and for ?1.10 you get a good big pie, size of a six-footer's fist, made from their own pigs, with the meat good and pink from plenty of bacon in with the pork, and strong wet jelly, cased in a brilliant hot-water crust so full of lard that in the mouth it comes on almost flaky. Eaten under strip lights and with the sound of yet unfattened cattle lowing hungrily all around, I would rate it over any poncey plateful I have had in a restaurant lately.  ;Thence northwards into Wales, following the old cattle-droving roads backwards towards anglesey, and another, even better pie at a beautiful old drovers' inn called the West arms, in the Ceiriog Valley at the foot of the Berwyn mountains. Being less well-known than Snowdonia, Berwyn is considerably less tourist-trammelled. The downside to this is that these days places such as the West arms can really only survive by the shotgun shilling - brought by lisping, knock-kneed weeds in plus fours and giant cars (too rugged for the pansy suburbs in which they live, but not nearly tough enough for the land round here), who come to massacre slow, fat, semi-flightless birds with guns they bought yesterday using money they'll make tomorrow, when the bonuses come in.  ;These fat, idle offshoots from the evolutionary chain (can you tell if I'm talking about the pheasants or their foe?) litter the roadside round here, both dead and alive. Bred to be nothing more than aerial targets (never eaten by men, but dug into landfill or sent for dogmeat), shorn of wit and natural function, these house-trained game birds seem a self-inflicted plague. I killed six on the windscreen just going to get a newspaper, a slaughter that would have cost me hundreds had I used a gun.  ;This pie I had there was steak and kidney. Fearing the familiar ladleful from a big tin of stew with an a4 sheet of Jus-Rol on the top that I've been faced with mostly on my travels, I was overjoyed to get, instead, a deep, rich, sticky, well-seasoned braise encased in a suet basin with a lid of hot-water pastry on top, glazed like a pork pie.  ;The room we ate in was small and red and creaky, with a wonderful old confessional along one wall. a perfect piece of plain Welsh furniture. and sitting in it the next day I slurped a perfect piece of plain Welsh cooking: a cawl of six-year-old local mutton whose rich, slick, sticky fat informed every spoonful, sweetened with carrots and leeks and swedes and I don't know what. and there were local mussels, too, and good fresh fish. Just great, great Welsh cooking. Not modern gastro-ponce imposed on a pretty building, but heartfelt country-inn cooking from a chef, Grant Williams, who has been here nearly 20 years.  ;and from there, reversing the old drovers' run, we cut across to anglesey, where the Welsh Black cattle started (they used to cross the Menai Strait, swimming, in their eagerness to get to London and be killed) and stopped in pretty Beaumaris, with its views of Snowdonia and the water, for as good a steak as I will ever eat, at a restaurant called Cennin.  ;Cennin is the Welsh word for both "daffodil" and "leek", which explains an awful lot from the national symbol perspective, but luckily the chef here, aled Williams, knows the difference, not only because he is a former Gordon Ramsay scholar but because he is very local, coming as he does from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, just up the road. Yes, he r  
 a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  a report on extreme weather by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by these outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting.  But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala, Uganda, that its credibility remained intact and that its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban, South africa, next month.  The two-year study involving 100 scientists and policy experts is far more confident about the prospect of intense heatwaves and heavy downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. 
 From the vertiginous arctic cliffs the young guillemot prepares for his virgin flight. Teenage wings are stumpy, yet poised on the 1,000ft ledge he looks plucky, game-on. and as he descends, less flying than a Buzz Lightyear "falling with style", you urge him to reach the sea. Oh, but he doesn't ... a soft baby body bounces on rock. But wait, he's alive! Well, until the arctic fox, seeing his chance, snaps the winded fledgeling in his jaws.  This week's Frozen Planet was hard to bear. Not just because its soaring score left us expecting triumph rather than horror. Or that, watching with my teenage sons, I identified too well with guillemot mothers releasing tenderly raised chicks. But because the news all that same day was devoted to the plight of our nation's fledgelings. One million young people unemployed: excitedly leaving nests only for crash landings and predators. a whole generation who may never reach the sea.  This series is not only among the finest in television history, but an accidental allegory of our times. It feels we are entering our own arctic winter.  The economy frozen, growth stunted, Britain battered by icy katabatic winds blasting off the eurozone, we are entering a perhaps interminable darkness. In economics news stories I keep catching the word "armageddon": from a report about doomed Britain by the brokers Tullett Prebon and in reported conversations with bankers who think that Europe is an insoluble disaster and are shiftily relocating their wealth, buying land in Canada or New Zealand, just in case.  Even taking into account hyperbole or black humour, it feels for once in my adult life that no one knows what they are doing. Even the clever people are flummoxed. Their solutions are comprised of gaffer tape and bluff. Italy and Greece put technocrats and economists - the geniuses who invented the euro, who persuaded us to trust unleashed markets - in charge of solving the crisis they created. Labour suggests a cut to VaT costing ?12 billion to kick start consumer spending. Shop our way out of recession? Seriously? again?  Visiting New York this month, I was struck less by the few voluble anti-capitalist protesters in Zuccotti Park than the long, silent queue of the hungry waiting for food handouts a mile away in Tompkins Square Park.  all across the West, the snow crystals are forming, the money rivers grow sclerotic, the separate outcrops of ice solidify into a single impenetrable sheet. "Some winters," says the God-like voice in Frozen Planet, "whole colonies can be lost."  and yet, this series is curiously soothing. Sir David attenborough has remarked about the great solace of Nature. "In moments of deep grief, the only consolation you can find is in the natural world," he told Radio Times. "People write to me and tell me this - people of great distinction ... 'When so-and-so died, the only thing that made life tolerable was to watch programmes on plants and animals.' and I thought, 'That's true for me, yes.' Because we are part of a big, enduring thing."  For the most part, I'm indifferent to Nature, content to know that elephants or grey crowned cranes exist without rising at dawn to be jiggled in a Land Rover on safari or visit a hateful, penetentiary-like zoo or even turn to the Discovery Channel. So why, on blue afternoons, do I find that nothing rallies my spirits like poring over silly feline photos on Lolcats.com? Oh bless, a kitten snuggled up asleep with a rabbit: my heartbeat steadies. It is why newspapers intersperse grim new stories with a baby wombat in a teacup or the world's biggest puppy. They transport us beyond our own species: we are freed, momentarily, from thinking about ourselves.  and Frozen Planet is all that: lush, expansive, revealing fresh wonderment in every snowflake, each surfacing whale. It makes us feel both microscopically insignificant and part of a mighty, unfathomable plan. But it is also a parable of life, the heaviness of its burdens, its brief joys. "at the frozen ends of our planet the struggle for survival never eases," warns the God-voice even as wolf cubs enjoy a rare meal. "If she can raise them all to independence it will be a rare achievement," he says of the polar bear mother of three cubs who, in the next sequence, has only two.  While Nature in the tropics or savannah seems lewdly abundant, in the arctic each creature makes you boggle not just at how it can exist here, but how it does so with apparent joy. Why does a poppy bother to bloom iridescent yellow in the momentary summer? Why do white whales travel a thousand m  
 Severe heatwaves and flooding 'more likely' a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  an Intergovernmental Panel report on Climate Change suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting. But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala that it was still credible and its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban next month.  The two-year study is more confident about the prospect of heatwaves and downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. "a small change can have a big impact on extremes," said Gerald Meehl, one of the report's reviewers. 
 Severe heatwaves and flooding 'more likely' a warning of increasingly common severe heatwaves, flash floods and droughts was given by scientists yesterday (Hannah Devlin writes).  an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggested that developing countries would be hit hardest by outcomes of climate change.  a report by the panel in 2007 was found to contain an exaggerated claim about how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting. But Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chairman, said at a conference in Kampala that it was still credible and its findings would be a vital contribution to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban next month.  The two-year study is more confident about the prospect of heatwaves and downpours than the effect of climate change on hurricanes and tornados. "a small change can have a big impact on extremes," said Gerald Meehl, one of the report's reviewers. 
 The world's largest defence company is to establish a cyber security division in Britain to counter the growing threat from digital attacks.  Lockheed Martin will open its Security Intelligence Centre at Farnborough in Hampshire next week and expects to employ up to 300 people there by 2015.  The american company is hoping to challenge rivals such as BaE Systems, EaDS and Thales, which already provide cyber protection in the UK.  Cyber attack has been identified as one of the four most serious threats to national security as amateur hackers and criminal gangs, as well as nations, look to exploit system weaknesses.  according to a recent report from the Cabinet Office, cyber crime costs British business about ?21 billion a year. This includes ?9.2 billion from the theft of intellectual property and a further ?7.6 billion from industrial espionage. Lockheed Martin, which builds fighter jets and missiles, is one of the most frequently attacked companies in the world and suffered a severe attack on its systems earlier this year.  The Farnborough facility, which has cost ?2.5 million to build, will initially focus on protecting Lockheed's operations in Britain and its work for the Government. The company works with National air Traffic Services to provide air traffic control equipment and software, military equipment and support (including for Trident nuclear missiles), and also manages the census. However, the company expects to offer its cyber security services to private sector customers once the facility has been established. Lockheed cyber intelligence analysts will examine attacks by breaking them into phases, called the "kill chain", which allows them to identify patterns and develop strategies to protect against the attacks.  Giri Sivanesan, Lockheed's head of cyber in the UK, said: "There's a growing realisation at government level of the impact this growing threat could have on individuals, business and the national infrastructure."  The scale of the cyber threat was demonstra  
 Government ministers have heralded it as "the biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War", but their own economists predict the number of homes insulated under the Green Deal will slump, not rise.  The revelation could undermine confidence in the programme that Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, is banking on to deliver efficiency savings and slash b  
 Britain's first bank-financed biomass plant for 12 years is set to get the goahead after a three-year struggle to raise the cash.  David Williams, chief executive of Eco2, the company behind the plant, which burns straw to make electricity, told The Times that the tortuous process underlined how scarce credit was for biomass developers.  Royal Bank of Scotland, UniCredit, Siemens Financial Services and NIBC are expected to sign off in the next fortnight on ?120 million of financing to build the Lincolnshire plant, although completion could be delayed again.  The 40MW plant, which will be large enough to supply power to 40,000 homes, was given planning permission in November 2008. But with the onset of the credit crunch and uncertainty and delays over government subsidie  
 The world's largest defence company is to establish a cyber security division in Britain to counter the growing threat from digital attacks.  Lockheed Martin will open its Security Intelligence Centre at Farnborough in Hampshire next week and expects to employ up to 300 people there by 2015.  The american company is hoping to challenge rivals such as BaE Systems, EaDS and Thales, which already provide cyber protection in the UK.  Cyber attack has been identified as one of the four most serious threats to national security as amateur hackers and criminal gangs, as well as nations, look to exploit system weaknesses.  according to a recent report from the Cabinet Office, cyber crime costs British business about ?21 billion a year. This includes ?9.2 billion from the theft of intellectual property and a further ?7.6 billion from industrial espionage. Lockheed Martin, which builds fighter jets and missiles, is one of the most frequently attacked companies in the world and suffered a severe attack on its systems earlier this year.  The Farnborough facility, which has cost ?2.5 million to build, will initially focus on protecting Lockheed's operations in Britain and its work for the Government. The company works with National air Traffic Services to provide air traffic control equipment and software, military equipment and support (including for Trident nuclear missiles), and also manages the census. However, the company expects to offer its cyber security services to private sector customers once the facility has been established. Lockheed cyber intelligence analysts will examine attacks by breaking them into phases, called the "kill chain", which allows them to identify patterns and develop strategies to protect against the attacks.  Giri Sivanesan, Lockheed's head of cyber in the UK, said: "There's a growing realisation at government level of the impact this growing threat could have on individuals, business and the national infrastructure."  The scale of the cyber threat was demonstra  
 Government ministers have heralded it as "the biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War", but their own economists predict the number of homes insulated under the Green Deal will slump, not rise.  The revelation could undermine confidence in the programme that Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, is banking on to deliver efficiency savings and slash b  
 Britain's first bank-financed biomass plant for 12 years is set to get the goahead after a three-year struggle to raise the cash.  David Williams, chief executive of Eco2, the company behind the plant, which burns straw to make electricity, told The Times that the tortuous process underlined how scarce credit was for biomass developers.  Royal Bank of Scotland, UniCredit, Siemens Financial Services and NIBC are expected to sign off in the next fortnight on ?120 million of financing to build the Lincolnshire plant, although completion could be delayed again.  The 40MW plant, which will be large enough to supply power to 40,000 homes, was given planning permission in November 2008. But with the onset of the credit crunch and uncertainty and delays over government subsidie  
 Buckingham Palace  20th November, 2011  The Viscount Hood (Lord in Waiting) was present at Heathrow airport, London, this afternoon upon the arrival of The President of the Republic of Turkey and Mrs G?l and welcomed Their Excellencies on behalf of The Queen.  Buckingham Palace  21st November, 2011  The President of the Republic of Columbia and Mrs. Santos visited The Queen this evening.  The Duke of Edinburgh, Colonelin-Chief, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, today presented Campaign Medals in Fallingbostel, Germany.  Clarence House  21st November, 2011  The Prince of Wales this morning visited the Six Bells Miners' Memorial and subsequently opened the newly-renovated Community Centre at Ty Ebbw Fach, Chapel Road, Six Bells, abertillery, Blaenau, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Gwent (Mr Simon Boyle).  His Royal Highness, President, Business in the Community and The Prince's Trust, and Patron, the Young Dragons, this afternoon visited Pillgwenlly Millennium Centre at Courtybella Terrace, Newport.  The Prince of Wales afterwards  
 David Cameron signalled his support for a gas-fired future yesterday when he threw his weight behind a ?13 billion supply agreement with Norway.  amid mounting concern about the cost of renewables and nuclear delays, the Prime Minister predicted that gas would play a "central role" for decades as he backed a big gas deal between Centrica and Statoil.  Centrica, the company behind British Gas, will purchase 50 billion cubic metres of gas from Statoil in a ten-year deal starting from 2015, enough to supply 3.5 million homes. That is equivalent to 5 per cent of Britain's total annual gas demand, Centrica said.  Centrica will also purchase ?1 billion of oil and gas-producing assets from the state-controlled Norwegian group and will sign up to a gas exploration partnership.  The deal will tie in a chunk of Norwegian gas supplies as Britain's domestic North Sea reserves dwindle and competition for stable gas supplies grows across Europe. Gas powers half of Britain's electricity and nearly 70 per cent of its heating. The deal will allow Statoil to maintain its 16 to 18 per cent market share in Britain.  David Hunter, an analyst at M&C Energy Group, said that Britain was likely to embark on a "second dash for gas" in the second half of the decade as old coal-fired capacity is retired and doubts hang over new nuclear production and renewables.  "There is a big concern over energy security, and a lot of unanswered questions on the extent of the role for renewables and role that nuclear can play," he said.  "From the point of view of energy security, obtaining sources of longterm supply is important," he said. Taking it from our near-neighbour Norway made "good strategic sense".  Centrica will also   
 Call it the second dash for gas. George Osborne's conference speech hinted strongly at a trade-off between keeping prices down and hitting emissions targets, and now the Government, in supporting Centrica's gutsy ?13 billion supply deal with Norway, has made its choice.  after all the talk about a diverse energy mix, with renewables and nuclear playing a bigger role, the UK's main source of energy until 2025 will be the one to have dominated since the original 1990s dash for gas.  The decision is bold and pragmatic. It recognises that, with new nuclear power stations set to be delayed and with the cost of renewables pushing up household bills, gas is the best way to ensure affordable security of supply.  Competition for gas in Europe is rising: the retirement of Germany's nuclear plants has been accelerated, post-Fukushima, European Union rules are disincentivising the use of coal and carbon capture looks a dead duck.  Centrica had already lined up big reserves of LNG. But pumping natural gas straight from the North Sea is preferable to LNG shipments from the Middle East that can be diverted to Japan or anywhere else at short notice. 
 One of the candidates in the Scottish Labour leadership race is urging the party to come out in favour of the construction of new nuclear power stations north of the Border.  Tom Harris, the MP for Glasgow South, said that the party should put aside its equivocation on the issue and recognise that nuclear generation was the only way of ensuring that any future energy gap was filled.  He told a meeting of Labour students that increased nuclear power was also the best way of meeting targets for cutting carbon emissions. He said: "We are in love with renewables and while renewables have an important place in the energy mix, they cannot meet all our energy requirements.  "If there is scepticism about nuclear power it is because politicians in the Labour party and in other political parties have not made the case. [It] is safe, environmentally-friendly and efficient." More than 300,000 ballot papers are being sent out this week for the Labour leadership contest. Members of affiliated trade unions and other organisations can also play a part in choosing the new Scottish Labour leader.  Colin Smyth, the party's Scottish general secretary, said the race to succeed Iain Gray was "not just an election for party members, but party supporters".  Of the three candidates for the post, Johann Lamont, the party's current deputy leader, has secured the most nominations, winning the support of 27 MSPs, MPs and MEPs.Her rivals Ken Macintosh, MSP, and Mr Harris are backed by 26 and 13 elected Labour politicians respectively.  The candidates will take part in a hustings in Edinburgh tonight. 
 Buckingham Palace  20th November, 2011  The Viscount Hood (Lord in Waiting) was present at Heathrow airport, London, this afternoon upon the arrival of The President of the Republic of Turkey and Mrs G?l and welcomed Their Excellencies on behalf of The Queen.  Buckingham Palace  21st November, 2011  The President of the Republic of Columbia and Mrs. Santos visited The Queen this evening.  The Duke of Edinburgh, Colonelin-Chief, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, today presented Campaign Medals in Fallingbostel, Germany.  Clarence House  21st November, 2011  The Prince of Wales this morning visited the Six Bells Miners' Memorial and subsequently opened the newly-renovated Community Centre at Ty Ebbw Fach, Chapel Road, Six Bells, abertillery, Blaenau, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Gwent (Mr Simon Boyle).  His Royal Highness, President, Business in the Community and The Prince's Trust, and Patron, the Young Dragons, this afternoon visited Pillgwenlly Millennium Centre at Courtybella Terrace, Newport.  The Prince of Wales afterwards  
 David Cameron signalled his support for a gas-fired future yesterday when he threw his weight behind a ?13 billion supply agreement with Norway.  amid mounting concern about the cost of renewables and nuclear delays, the Prime Minister predicted that gas would play a "central role" for decades as he backed a big gas deal between Centrica and Statoil.  Centrica, the company behind British Gas, will purchase 50 billion cubic metres of gas from Statoil in a ten-year deal starting from 2015, enough to supply 3.5 million homes. That is equivalent to 5 per cent of Britain's total annual gas demand, Centrica said.  Centrica will also purchase ?1 billion of oil and gas-producing assets from the state-controlled Norwegian group and will sign up to a gas exploration partnership.  The deal will tie in a chunk of Norwegian gas supplies as Britain's domestic North Sea reserves dwindle and competition for stable gas supplies grows across Europe. Gas powers half of Britain's electricity and nearly 70 per cent of its heating. The deal will allow Statoil to maintain its 16 to 18 per cent market share in Britain.  David Hunter, an analyst at M&C Energy Group, said that Britain was likely to embark on a "second dash for gas" in the second half of the decade as old coal-fired capacity is retired and doubts hang over new nuclear production and renewables.  "There is a big concern over energy security, and a lot of unanswered questions on the extent of the role for renewables and role that nuclear can play," he said.  "From the point of view of energy security, obtaining sources of longterm supply is important," he said. Taking it from our near-neighbour Norway made "good strategic sense".  Centrica will also   
 Call it the second dash for gas. George Osborne's conference speech hinted strongly at a trade-off between keeping prices down and hitting emissions targets, and now the Government, in supporting Centrica's gutsy ?13 billion supply deal with Norway, has made its choice.  after all the talk about a diverse energy mix, with renewables and nuclear playing a bigger role, the UK's main source of energy until 2025 will be the one to have dominated since the original 1990s dash for gas.  The decision is bold and pragmatic. It recognises that, with new nuclear power stations set to be delayed and with the cost of renewables pushing up household bills, gas is the best way to ensure affordable security of supply.  Competition for gas in Europe is rising: the retirement of Germany's nuclear plants has been accelerated, post-Fukushima, European Union rules are disincentivising the use of coal and carbon capture looks a dead duck.  Centrica had already lined up big reserves of LNG. But pumping natural gas straight from the North Sea is preferable to LNG shipments from the Middle East that can be diverted to Japan or anywhere else at short notice. 
 One of the candidates in the Scottish Labour leadership race is urging the party to come out in favour of the construction of new nuclear power stations north of the Border.  Tom Harris, the MP for Glasgow South, said that the party should put aside its equivocation on the issue and recognise that nuclear generation was the only way of ensuring that any future energy gap was filled.  He told a meeting of Labour students that increased nuclear power was also the best way of meeting targets for cutting carbon emissions. He said: "We are in love with renewables and while renewables have an important place in the energy mix, they cannot meet all our energy requirements.  "If there is scepticism about nuclear power it is because politicians in the Labour party and in other political parties have not made the case. [It] is safe, environmentally-friendly and efficient." More than 300,000 ballot papers are being sent out this week for the Labour leadership contest. Members of affiliated trade unions and other organisations can also play a part in choosing the new Scottish Labour leader.  Colin Smyth, the party's Scottish general secretary, said the race to succeed Iain Gray was "not just an election for party members, but party supporters".  Of the three candidates for the post, Johann Lamont, the party's current deputy leader, has secured the most nominations, winning the support of 27 MSPs, MPs and MEPs.Her rivals Ken Macintosh, MSP, and Mr Harris are backed by 26 and 13 elected Labour politicians respectively.  The candidates will take part in a hustings in Edinburgh tonight. 
 aradical new MBa programme seeks to create a generation of industry leaders sensitive to the impact of business on the environment and society. The One Planet MBa began at the University of Exeter Business School this autumn.  Professor Malcolm Kirkup, director of the programme, says: "We want to create agents of change, people who can go out and make a difference - do something within companies to improve the decisions that are being made and develop more sustainable strategies.  "Three years ago we had a choice. We could develop a sustainable pathway through our existing MBa or have the One Planet MBa. We chose the latter because, if we really want to change management education, there cannot be an alternative programme. We also want to encourage other universities around the world to launch such degrees.''  Exeter was well placed to create the degree because its special areas of research and scholarly expertise include climate change, the environment, renewable energy and waste management.  "Open Planet is a challenge to the traditional MBa,'' Kirkup says. "It is based on different assumptions, notably that resources on this planet are limited and business needs to respond to that. We need managers and leaders in the future who are more focused on the environment and the impact of business and how we can be more sustainable rather than focusing on short-term profit.''  The MBa has been developed in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which is helping big corporations around the globe to lessen their impact on the environment. It wants future managers and leaders to think more about the environment when making business decisions. The WWF gives the MBa course access to its technical specialists and many contacts in global companies. It also offers student placements in projects around the world.  The course, which is the first of its kind in the UK, embeds the idea of sustainability throughout its programme and not just in its elective modules. accounting, one of its core modules, does not just look at the financial figures but also meas  
 The aspen Institute's ethical and sustainable approach to MBas has been embraced by the University of Exeter Business School. Its new One Planet MBa course is ranked second in the UK by Beyond Grey Pinstripes.  Shannon Springer, a former strategist and programme manager with Saatchi and Saatchi S, the global sustainability and marketing consultancy, enrolled on the course in September.  a graduate of the department of communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, Springer, 27, has wide experience in helping big firms to become more sustainable.  "My passion is working with business to create a positive impact," she says. "This has led me constantly to challenge the status quo. So when I came across the new MBa programme the university was running with the World Wildlife Fund I decided to join it. I have found the course incredibly inspiring and stimulating - it's a very collaborative environment.  "We look at the core concepts, principles and techniques across the disciplines of finance, economics and operations but also go further and ask questions such as what impact does this have on where we are today in business? With the financial crisis? Climate change? What could be done differently?  "The MBa programme is built in the same manner as companies should be building themselves: it systematically embeds sustainability into the business management discipline. It is not an add-on elective course.  "It is fundamental to everything we study to look at all the aspects - the financial, of course, but also to look at the environmental, the social - and how to integrate all these. Sustainability has to be at the core of everything we do. The One Planet MBa represents the next generation of programmes. We will hit a point where business and sustainability are naturally one and the same. This is a very forward-thinking programme."  SIMON MIDGLEY 
 There are few greater luxuries in life than a piping hot bath. I shall never forget the deep relief of a tub laced with tea tree and lavender oil after the birth of my first child, or the joy of a peaty soak in soft Jura water after a hair-raising tussle with the Corryvreckan whirlpool. There is something about submerging the body in warm water that both calms and revives the mind.  In recent years, the delights of bathing have been made all the more piquant by the fact that baths have become a symbol of unecological profligacy, the kind of selfish behaviour that only the most perfidious of climate-change deniers would indulge in. The shower, with its brisk eco-efficiency and no-nonsense approach to bodily cleansing, has taken over.  But what's this? It turns out that certain types of high-tech shower are, in fact, much worse than the sinful old low-fi bath. They're not quick at all: the average shower lasts for eight whole minutes. They're not eco-friendly, either: research by Unilever has found that some showers use nearly twice as much water as the average bath: up to 136 litres compared with 80 for a bath. That amounts to 200,000 litres of hot water per year for a four-person family, at a cost of ?918. a lot of money down the drain.  Personally, I have always been suspicious of the shower's supposed superiority. Not just because of our house's quintessentially English plumbing (uniquely unsuited to showers: someone has only to flush the loo for the thing to go from warm to freezing to boiling in the space of a few seconds, leaving the unfortunate occupant of the cubicle squealing like a scalded cat); it's also that people who claim to prefer showers to baths are so unbelievably pleased with themselves.  "I'll just jump in the   
 another day, another wind-farm project. Or, as Prince Philip might put it, another "useless" waste of public money on a source of energy he described as "an absolute disgrace" - a blot on the landscape, or in this case seascape.  Wind turbines, he remarked in a recent conversation - or should one say diatribe - are inefficient, unreliable, and supported only because of public subsidies. anyone who believes in them, he said, believes in "fairytales."  It would   
 It will be the world's largest offshore wind-farm development - 300 turbines erected out at sea, 13 miles from the Caithness coast. and, when they are completed, at a cost of ?4.5 billion, they will generate enough electricity to power a million homes.  Remarkably, environmental campaigners welcomed the project, despite Prince Philip's dismissive comment this week that wind power was a "useless" form of energy. Friends of the Earth described it as a "significant" contribution to a low-carbon economy, and the SNP government said that it was an important contribution to its aim of making Scotland self-sufficient in renewable energy by 2020.  although the development is seen as a boost to local jobs, the actual construction will be undertaken by a joint Spanish and Portuguese company, and its profits are unlikely to stay in Scotland.  Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd - a partnership between EDP Renewables and Repsol - won the rights to develop the offshore facility, capable of generating 1,500MW of power, from the Crown Estate. Dan Finch, managing director of EDPR UK, said the consortium was keen to work with the UK Government and business to create jobs and economic growth. Up to 1,400 jobs could be supported during construction, and 130-280 during operation.  The Scottish government said the scheme was proof that companies were still keen to invest in Scotland despite George Osborne's claims that the debate over independence was deterring business.  Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said the scheme had the potential to play "a significant part in both the transition to a low-carbon economy and in reducing carbon emissions".  He added: "This development, and other offshore renewables developments like it, could form a welcome addition to the proposed Europe-wide supergrid, connecting a diverse range of renewable energy sources from around Europe and securing the supply of clean, green electricity for British consumers.  "Our only concern is that the wind farm is being proposed and developed by Spanish and Portuguese interests and not domestic ones, which will ultimately see the income produced leave the UK. It's a r  
 Not for nothing was the grizzly bear called Ursus horribilis in Latin. The beasts can weigh a third of a tonne and run at 35mph. They also have filthy tempers and will eat almost anything - humans included.  Now, thanks to a landmark court ruling, more americans can look forward to calling them neighbours.  Since 1975 the grizzly has been listed as threatened under US Federal law, which makes hunting them illegal. For the past five years, however, the US Government's Fish and Wildlife Service has argued that the species has become so abundant in the Greater Yellowstone region of the Rocky Mountains that protection should be withdrawn.  This week, conservationists won a milestone victory when a court ruled against the Government by deciding that the bears are endangered by climate change. The judgment makes the grizzly only the second species after the polar bear to earn protection in recognition of harm caused by global warming.  It also means that hunting is off the cards for now, which is good news for the bears but will heighten the anxieties of many humans. as one of the judges in the case noted, the region around Yellowstone, which includes parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, is a "living laboratory for the coexistence of people and grizzlies in close proximity".  The grizzly once lived as far east as the Dakotas and as far south as Texas. Only relatively recently was it driven to the mountains by human hunters.  Over the past 35 years grizzly populations have rebounded in their mountain redoubts and there are signs that they are seeking to reclaim lost ground. Experts say they are appearing in habitats where they have not been seen for generations. In Yellowstone the population has tripled to about 600 and their range has expanded nearly 50 per cent.  Tales of stolen chickens and dead sheep are testament to their spread. Towns have erected bear-proof fences around primary schools. Reports abound of housewives being confronted by ursine invaders.  In July, a grizzly killed a hiker in Yellowstone when he and his wife surprised the bear and her cubs - the first such killing for 25 years.  The rise in encounters between bears and humans has led to record action by wildlife officials. about 75 grizzlies were killed or removed from the wild last year.  The irony is that the fate of the fearsome grizzly depends largely on a tiny beetle. The bears eat everything from trout and elk to moths andrubbish, but for the fat reserves that see them through the winter they rely on the nuts of the whitebark pine, a tree that grows at high elevations. Warmer temperatures have brought an outbreak of mountain pine beetles, a pest that has spread to higher slopes and killed millions of acres of whitebark pine.  according to conservationists, the bears are being forced to forage i  
 Iain McMillan is the latest in a long line of prominent people to have put his head above the parapet on the issue of Scotland's constitutional future only to find himself on the receiving end of a less than gracious put-down from the ruling SNP administration.  after posing a series of questions about Scotland's future membership of the EU and the euro on behalf of the business community this week, the business leader at the Scottish CBI was summarily dismissed as "the man who has said it all before", on the basis that he also asked some hard questions in the run-up to devolution.  Chided like the schoolchild who has spent too much time gazing out of the window, he was told that he should know the answers, had he done his homework on the nationalist's White Paper Your Scotland, Your Voice.  Last week it was the turn of Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the former Secretary-General of Nato, who was branded out of touch after he questioned the wisdom of Scotland's withdrawal.  The week before that it was the Citigroup financial giant that was accused of being ridiculous for suggesting that investment in Scottish renewables might not be wise given the constitutional uncertainty.  This strategy of playing the man not the ball is bound to succeed in deterring some business leaders and institutions from voicing their concerns about independence.  However, the only way the SNP can win an independence referendum is by carefully examining the questions posed by those sceptical of separation and addressing their fears.  alex Salmond should be wary of allowing his propaganda machine to make too many enemies in the run-up to his independence referendum. When it takes aim at Mr McMillan it's not just one former adversary that is hit but everyone else in the business community who shares his views.  The way to convince people of your argument is to engage constructively - not to question their right to enter the debate. 
 Not for nothing was the grizzly bear called ursus horribilis in Latin. The beasts can weigh a third of a tonne and run at 35mph. They also have filthy tempers and will eat almost anything - humans included.  Now, thanks to a landmark court ruling, more americans can look forward to calling them neighbours.  Since 1975 the grizzly has been listed as threatened under US Federal law, which makes hunting them illegal. For the past five years, however, the US Government's Fish and Wildlife Service has argued that the species has become so abundant in the Greater Yellowstone region of the Rocky Mountains that protection should be withdrawn. This week, conservationists won a milestone victory when a court ruled against the Government by deciding that the bears are endangered by climate change. The judgment makes the grizzly only the second species after the polar bear to earn protection in recognition of harm caused by global warming. It also means that hunting is off the cards for now, which is good news for the bears but will heighten the anxieties of many humans. as one of the judges in the case noted, the region around Yellowstone, which includes parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, is a "living laboratory for the coexistence of people and grizzlies in close proximity".  The grizzly once lived as far east as the Dakotas and as far south as Texas. Only relatively recently was it driven to the mountains by human hunters.  Over the past 35 years grizzly populations have rebounded in their mountain redoubts and there are signs that they are seeking to reclaim lost ground. Experts say they are appearing in habitats where they have not been seen for generations. In Yellowstone the population has tripled to about 600 and their range has expanded nearly 50 per cent.  Tales of stolen chickens and dead sheep are testament to their spread.  Towns have erected bear-proof fences around primary schools. Reports abound of housewives being confronted by ursine invaders.  In July, a grizzly killed a hiker in Yellowstone when he and his wife surprised the bear and her cubs - the first such killing for 25 years.  The rise in encounters between bears and humans has led to record action by wildlife officials. about 75 grizzlies were killed or removed from the wild last year.  The irony is that the fate of the fearsome grizzly depends largely on a tiny beetle. The bears eat everything from trout and elk to moths andrubbish, but for the fat reserves that see them through the winter they rely on the nuts of the whitebark pine, a tree that grows at high elevations. Warmer temperatures have brought an outbreak of mountain pine beetles, a pest that has spread to higher slopes and killed millions of acres of whitebark pine.  according to conservationists, the bears are being forced to forage i  
 My parents were always terrified of letting me have a chemistry set when I was younger - they thought I'd blow myself up because, as well as being interested in chemistry, I was really clumsy. When I got to secondary school, I was inspired by a science teacher who really loved her subject and I thought: "That's it!"  after training as a chemist, I joined British airways 16 years ago to work in their engineering operation. I was the environment manager for our global engineering business, which was a great job. When I came back to work after my third child was born, I moved into carbon management, where the first task I had was to completely redesign our carbon-offset programme.  about three vears aao. we started workina more on biotuels and, because or my background, it seemed like the  { natural thing for me to take on that side of things. So now I've got this great job, which is part science, part policy and part economics. It's really varied and I absolutely love it.  The main problem we face is that biofuels are not produced on a commercial scale. at the moment, you can only fly with a 50/50 mixture of biofuel and regular jet fuel. One of the many projects I'm now involved in is working with Rolls-Royce - we're testing biofuel blends that are completely new and have never been put through an aircraft engine before. We're playing with all the chemical constituents and technologie  
 Global warming and cancer are the starting points for some of this year's most enlightened, original and, yes, upbeat science books of 2011.  This year a new star emerged in the constellation of great science writers, with Siddhartha Mukherjee's "biography of cancer", The Emperor of all Maladies (Fourth Estate, ?9.99 ?9.49). Mukherjee's gripping narrative is littered with pioneers, maveric  
 Buckingham Palace  25th November, 2011  The Duke of Edinburgh, Colonel, Grenadier Guards  
 It is, you will have read, the 25th anniversary of the privatisation of British Gas. all three successor companies have been in the news of late, and all three neatly indicate the virtues and dangers of diversifying off your original patch.  First, a bit of context. The old state utilities were mainly privatised with the original board intact, though the odd finance director was drafted in from the City to give a bit of financial nous.  This threw on to the public stage some civil servants who could hold their own with the very best in British boardrooms.  One thinks of Sir Denis Rooke, the former British Gas chairman, who died in 2008, a man never afraid to take on Whitehall in defence of the industry he loved.  But in many cases, and I will name no names, the head of the local water or power utility found himself, and I use the pronoun deliberately, the chief executive of a publicly quoted company. For some, it rather went to their heads.  They were easy meat for money-grubbing investment bankers advising them to do deals outside their range of competence. Several could probably have been persuaded of the synergies available from buying a chain of sweetshops, should said investment banker happen to have one such for sale.  United Utilities, for example, was created by the merger of North West Water and Norweb, the regional electricity distributor, in 1995. It bougth a New Jersey water company. It went to work in Malaysia, Mexico City and Sidney.  The company had a telecoms business. It bought into australia, the Philippines, even Estonia. Not all were a disaster.  But over the past few years United has been retreating back into its core business, a local water company, which is what it is today. I have suggested, with a degree of seriousness, that the company is so tight these days it will not even pay for a change of name back to North West Water.  There were any number of such deals done. Some were more successful. National Grid, into which was merged Lattice, British Gas's daftly named pipelines network, in 2002, has built a power distribution business in the US which is now equal in size to the UK and serves about seven million customers in the north eastern seaboard.  This allowed it to escape from the heavily regulated UK market. The experience has not entirely been a happy one. The US market, where it serves, is if anything even more regulated. The earnings are subject to peaks and troughs. On balance, though, the decision to escape the shackles of the UK has been positive.  International Power was created by the demerger of National Power, once part of the old Central Electricity Generating board, in 2000 with the specific intention of creating a vehicle that would highlight the company's diversification overseas and the growth prospects there.  It is now 70 per cent owned by GDF Suez of France and has ambitious plans to spend ?4 billion a year building more energy projects around the world in high growth markets such as Latin america, the Middle East and asia. The demerger must be judged a success; the shares are up by more than 50 per cent since they first listed in October 2000.  Sometimes demergers do work. One of the reasons for breaking up British Gas into Centrica and BG Group was to emphasise the attractions of the latter. The   
 Not for nothing was the grizzly bear called Ursus horribilis in Latin. The beasts can weigh a third of a tonne and run at 35mph. They also have filthy tempers and will eat almost anything - humans included.  Now, thanks to a landmark court ruling, more americans can look forward to calling them neighbours.  Since 1975 the grizzly has been listed as threatened under US Federal law, which makes hunting them illegal. For the past five years, however, the US Government's Fish and Wildlife Service has argued that the species has become so abundant in the Greater Yellowstone region of the Rocky Mountains that protection should be withdrawn.  This week, conservationists won a milestone victory when a court ruled against the Government by deciding that the bears are endangered by climate change. The judgment makes the grizzly only the second species after the polar bear to earn protection in recognition of harm caused by global warming.  It also means that hunting is off the cards for now, which is good news for the bears but will heighten the anxieties of many humans. as one of the judges in the case noted, the region around Yellowstone, which includes parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, is a "living laboratory for the coexistence of people and grizzlies in close proximity".  The grizzly once lived as far east as the Dakotas and as far south as Texas. Only relatively recently was it driven to the mountains by human hunters.  Over the past 35 years grizzly populations have rebounded in their mountain redoubts and there are signs that they are seeking to reclaim lost ground. Experts say they are appearing in habitats where they have not been seen for generations. In Yellowstone the population has tripled to about 600 and their range has expanded nearly 50 per cent.  Tales of stolen chickens and dead sheep are testament to their spread. Towns have erected bear-proof fences around primary schools. Reports abound of housewives being confronted by ursine invaders.  In July, a grizzly killed a hiker in Yellowstone when he and his wife surprised the bear and her cubs - the first such killing for 25 years.  The rise in encounters between bears and humans has led to record action by wildlife officials. about 75 grizzlies were killed or removed from the wild last year.  The irony is that the fate of the fearsome grizzly depends largely on a tiny beetle. The bears eat everything from trout and elk to moths andrubbish, but for the fat reserves that see them through the winter they rely on the nuts of the whitebark pine, a tree that grows at high elevations. Warmer temperatures have brought an outbreak of mountain pine beetles, a pest that has spread to higher slopes and killed millions of acres of whitebark pine.  according to conservationists, the bears are being forced to forage i  
 Idon't know what there is to laugh about these days, but there was more than a hint of frivolity about the Scottish Parliament yesterday. It may, of course, have been because our dear leader was away, in China, arranging the next swap of pandas or other furry creatures, possibly even including himself, thus allowing MSPs to indulge their lighter side.  Or it may have been because there were storms raging around the building, and the Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, had warned us about the risks incurred in merely stepping outside. Those who had turned up (which was, in fairness, most of them) seemed to have acquired that air of light-hearted bravado that can sometimes overtake hardy souls who have faced the elements - and survived.  anyway it gave the new Tory leader Ruth Davidson the   
 as the old saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows no good and it is a saying that air Partner would agree with. The supplier of planes at short notice to governments, companies and wealthy individuals did well this year out of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and the arab spring. Now though, the wind may be turning against it.  The company said yesterday that because of the financial turmoil in the eurozone, the trading environment was "very difficult" with government and corporate budgets increasingly squeezed. Revenues from its main division, which supplies larger commercial aircraft, are lower than this time last year but in line with expectations, it said. Shares in the company dived by as much as 8 per cent in early trading but recovered much of the loss to close down 2.4 per cent, or 5p, at 312?p.  The FTSE 100, which closed up 0.83 per cent at 5,529, was remarkably sanguine despite the latest Brussels summit ending yesterday morning without a convincing plan to tackle the crisis. British banks were the biggest gainers on the index. after the market had closed on Thursday the European Banking authority confirmed that the UK's banks would be able to meet new capital requirements without going cap in hand to the government or shareholders.  This was widely expected but nevertheless provided some comfort to skittish bank investors.  There was also a fillip for the banks after David Cameron saw off plans to introduce a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions, a Tobin Tax, which would have hit the City hard. Lloyds gained 1?p, or 6.5 per cent, to 26?p, followed by Barclays, up 9?p at 190?p and Royal Bank of Scotland, 1p higher at 22p. Shares in insurer aviva shrugged off analysts at Exane BNP Paribas who cut its rating to "neutral" amid concerns about its exposure to Italian sovereign debt, recovering to close up 2.26 per cent, or 7p, at 321?p.  There was some rare good news from the housing and construction sectors, which the Government is now banking on for economic growth. Shares in Bellway gained 20?p to 749p after the Britain's fourth-biggest housebuilder hailed the "remarkably resilient" interest from home hunters, saying reservations were 14 per cent higher compared to last year. Morgan Sindall also announced that it had won a ?103 million contract to refurbish affordable housing for Barnet council in London and that it had been selected as preferred development partner for a ?145 million regeneration project in Stockport. Shares gained 21p, or 3.8 per cent, to 572?p.  In times of economic distress, gold is widely seen as a safe haven for investors but miner african Barrick Gold is having some problems getting it out of the ground. Because of power cuts in Tanzania the FTSE 250-listed miner said that it would miss its annual production target. analysts at Investec cut their target price from 634p per share to 621p after the news. Shares dropped 11p to 509p.  Self-storage firm Big Yellow Group has a slightly differ  
 as the old saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows no good and it is a saying that air Partner would agree with. The supplier of planes at short notice to governments, companies and wealthy individuals did well this year out of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and the arab spring. Now though, the wind may be turning against it.  The company said yesterday that because of the financial turmoil in the eurozone, the trading environment was "very difficult" with government and corporate budgets increasingly squeezed. Revenues from its main division, which supplies larger commercial aircraft, are lower than this time last year but in line with expectations, it said. Shares in the company dived by as much as 8 per cent in early trading but recovered much of the loss to close down 2.4 per cent, or 5p, at 312?p. The FTSE 100, which closed up 0.83 per cent at 5,529, was remarkably sanguine despite the latest Brussels summit ending yesterday morning without a convincing plan to tackle the crisis. British banks were the biggest gainers on the index. after the market had closed on Thursday the European Banking authority confirmed that the UK's banks would be able to meet new capital requirements without going cap in hand to the government or shareholders.  This was widely expected but nevertheless provided some comfort to skittish bank investors.  There was also a fillip for the banks after David Cameron saw off plans to introduce a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions, a Tobin Tax, which would have hit the City hard. Lloyds gained 1?p, or 6.5 per cent, to 26?p, followed by Barclays, up 9?p at 190?p and Royal Bank of Scotland, 1p higher at 22p. Shares in insurer aviva shrugged off analysts at Exane BNP Paribas who cut its rating to "neutral" amid concerns about its exposure to Italian sovereign debt, recovering to close up 2.26 per cent, or 7p, at 321?p.  There was some rare good news from the housing and construction sectors, which the Government is now banking on for economic growth. Shares in Bellway gained 20?p to 749p after the Britain's fourth-biggest housebuilder hailed the "remarkably resilient" interest from home hunters, saying reservations were 14 per cent higher compared to last year. Morgan Sindall also announced that it had won a ?103 million contract to refurbish affordable housing for Barnet council in London and that it had been selected as preferred development partner for a ?145 million regeneration project in Stockport. Shares gained 21p, or 3.8 per cent, to 572?p. In times of economic distress, gold is widely seen as a safe haven for investors but miner african Barrick Gold is having some problems getting it out of the ground. Because of power cuts in Tanzania the FTSE 250-listed miner said that it would miss its annual production target. analysts at Investec cut their target price from 634p per share to 621p after the news. Shares dropped 11p to 509p.  Self-storage firm Big Yellow Group has a slightly diffe  
 Ministers worked through the night in a desperate bid to salvage a new global deal to tackle climate change at the conference in South africa.  In a week in which China, India and the US had consistently taken a h  
 Tens of thousands of homes were still without power yesterday as the cost of the hurricane-force winds that battered Scotland on Thursday was estimated at ?100 million. Some are not due to be reconnected until tomorrow.  While the central belt recovered from the worst storm in a decade, areas farther north were still being battered by wind and heavy snowfall.  The power cuts, early closures of businesses, blocked roads and people heeding advice to stay at home all contributed to the predicted loss to the economy.  Caroline Roxburgh, from PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that more harsh weather could worsen the problems.  "Retailers who are already facing arguably the toughest trading conditions in recent  
 Sometimes energy efficiency is simple: turning off lights at night, not leaving computers on standby or regulating office heaters. None of that is rocket science, yet it can generate surprising savings on fuel bills and carbon emissions.  But the benefits of such behavioural change tend to have a limited life. However well-trained a company's staff, after a couple of years the energy-saving message needs repeating or reinforcing. So to make a lasting difference to the bottom line and its carbon footprint, a business needs to look at its operational methods and changes in capital equipment.  The newly launched Carbon Trust Implementation Services is designed to help companies to take just such a look, offering energy-use surveys, introductions to approved equipment suppliers and a path to finance for those who need help with investing in new equipment.  a survey of 525 businesses, commissioned by the Carbon Trust, found that more than 75 per cent were either concerned or very concerned about rising energy costs, yet 35 per cent had no plans in place to manage costs. When asked about the difficulties faced by energy efficiency projects, they listed lack of time and resources, problems quantifying the returns, and lack of technical expertise and finance. Only 22 per cent had any plans for capital investment.  "Yet there have been huge advances in equipment across a range of sectors from offices to heavy industry: lighting, heating, refrigeration, ventilation, motors and air compressors and in control systems," says Myles McCarthy, managing director of the new company. "Investing in some of this new equipment can pay back very quickly."  One example is Maxim Logistics, a haulage company in Corby, Northamptonshire, where a Carbon Trust survey established that 93 per cent of the annual energy bill went on warehouse lighting. a ?60,000 investment in energy-saving lighting made the warehouse brighter, improved working conditions and cut costs by ?22,200 a year, as well as reducing carbon emissions by 114 tonnes annually.  The company took a ?44,400 loan from the trust towards the re-equipment and was able to pay it back in less than two years.  astrum Steel, in Stanhope, Co Durham, which makes track systems and running gear for tanks and earthmoving equipment, was able to borrow ten times that amount to replace energy-intensive air compressors used in making moulds for castings. Two new variable-speed compressors proved much more flexible and efficient, cutting ?80,000 a year from energy bills and reducing carbon output by 600 tonnes annually. "Effectively the replacement is cost neutral for the first four years; after that we'll be saving 50 per cent on electricity costs," says Mike Hutchinson, operations director at astrum, who is confident that the reduced cost will give his company a competitive advantage.  For larger companies, the savings can be spectacular. Marks & Spencer estimates that energy efficiency measures across its stores and distribution depots made a ?13.5 million contribution to its profits last year. PepsiCo says it has saved ?2.4 million over the past three years through energy efficiency, with two thirds of that coming from its Walkers Crisps operation.  The Carbon Trust has set up its new company because from next year it will lose its core funding from the Government. So although it will continue in its role as a non-profitmaking company taking a lead in reducing emissions, it will need to finance itself through commercial activities.  "Energy efficiency has not always been a focus and still is not a focus for many businesses. But once they start looking, it's often a 'no-brainer'," McCarthy says. "It's possible to finance the capital outlay from savings in running costs over future years. It's a switch from energy spending to investment spending - it may not have any impact on cash flow. Because in the past finance was often seen as an obstacle, we were anxious that implementation should not put any new barriers in place, so there is no upfront charge. We introduce a company to selected suppliers from our accredited list, and suppliers tender. On successful deals, the supplier   
 all that goes before and after making a product or providing a service is now being increasingly recognised as sources of carbon emission, and they must be included when calculating the carbon footprint of the product or service.  Whether it is making a tiny component for a computer or compressor or disposal of the item at the end of its life, emissions generated by suppliers and customers in the development and use of products and services are key to combating carbon.  Pankaj Bhatia, greenhouse gas protocol director at the World Resources Institute, says: "For many companies a majority of their emissions and cost reduction opportunities lie outside their operations. The companies that have a full understanding of their emissions, including from their suppliers and customers, will be better able to manage their emissions and be more efficient and competitive."  Hugh Jones, managing director of Carbon Trust advisory, adds: "Tackling the vast subject of supply chain emissions is the way forward for most major businesses." Research carried out for the trust by Dynamic Markets indicated that six out of ten multinationals - in a survey of 1,000 - have yet to consider indirect emissions but most said they would address the issue in the next two to three years.  Jones and his team advise organisations about understanding the full carbon impact of their products and services and how to help their major suppliers to reduce it. This might include looking at substitutes for scarce raw materials, the use of renewable energy and efficient disposal of goods.  among companies engaged with the trust is BT, which is striving to ensure that components for p  
 The vital importance of investing in green businesses, despite pressures on public and private budgets, is underlined by Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, the nonprofit making agency leading the drive to cut carbon emissions.  The move to a sustainable lowcarbon future will drive efficiency into every aspect of the economy, he says. If the nation fails to pursue a green agenda, UK plc will be fundamentally weaker in ten years' time. "We must open our eyes to the world. Real sustainable products and services are already coming out of India and Brazil and, while China is building power stations to meet present energy demands, it is also growing the renewable energy market faster than anywhere else in the world."  The trust is practising what Delay preaches because it is already engaged on projects in China, where it is working with a state-owned company with $5bn in assets and 30,000 employees.  It plans to extend its operations across South-East asia and is looking for work in South america and South africa.  This expansion overseas is possible because of the transformation the trust is undergoing, moving from being a Government-funded agency to a private non-profit company limited by guarantee.  Delay says: "We are right to make this change. Government funding is likely to be constrained for some years and we will be free to do new things, such as international work, which was a sensitive issue when funded by the British Government.  "We have been building up commercial activity for five years and will now rely on work with our partners and from providing services for customers.  Our aim is to earn ?8 of private money for every ?1 of revenue from the public sector."  The trust will continue to provide specialist advice and finance to help UK businesses to cut carbon emissions and save energy and thus stimulate the move to meet international targets for lower emissions and increased energy security. It does this by opening markets for low-carbon technologies, investing in start-up companies and initiating collaborative programmes.  Delay outlined the trust's aims and the argument for green growth at a high-profile gathering of 50 business leaders, who met in London last month to debate the question: Can UK plc afford not to go green? Organised by The Times and the Carbon Trust, it attracted executives from leading industries, including BaE Systems, British Gas and Rolls-Royce, and from environmental agencies and professional services companies.  The consensus was that it is e  
 The weary delegates may still be too tired to begin the battle for ratification, but after 14 days of protracted wrangling, including more than 50 hours of nonstop negotiation beyond the deadline, the climate conference in Durban has achieved more than anyone initially expected. The unwieldy conference of 194 delegates has, for the first time, committed all the main producers of greenhouse gases to reducing carbon emissions and to a roadmap for a future accord. It has bound all nations in a single legal framework. and it has risen above national interests to show a heartening global commitment to fighting global warming (see page 15).  after the fiasco of the Copenhagen summit in 2009, when inflated ideals were punctured by the self-interest of China and other big carbon producers, there were scant hopes for this follow-up conference to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year. Each of the three big polluters, China, america and India, was still reluctant to accept any limits on its emissions without a commitment from the other two. The poorer countries were still determined that the richer industrial nations should compensate them for costly curbs on their carbon emissions. and those forecasting potentially catastrophic change were reluctant to accept anything less than legal commitments to drastic measures to limit warming to two degrees celsius.  after hard-won compromises, the Durban Platform now includes China, the world's biggest emitter, and India, both of whom refused to sign Kyoto, and america, which signed but did not then ratify the protocol. This is a substantial achievement. It is all the more surprising, given the political climate. China's relations with america and the West have frayed as Beijing promotes its global interests and ambitions. India has become increasingly prickly and erratic as its weak government hankers for the world stage without being able to muster the necessary political focus. and as americ  
 alex Salmond's vision of a Scotland powered by wind, wave and tidal energy has suffered a setback with a report warning that the SNP's plans for a renewables revolution will never work. News, page 3 
 alex Salmond's vision of a Scotland powered by wind, wave and tidal energy has suffered a major setback with the publication today of a highly critical report warning that the SNP's plans for a renewables revolution will never work.  The report, compiled by the rightleaning think-tank the adam Smith Institute, claimed that renewable energy was too unreliable ever to replace gas, coal and nuclear generation. Researchers insisted that wind energy, on which the First Minister has placed considerable emphasis, would never be economically viable and it concluded that wind turbines were doing little to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel consumption.  One of the authors of the report, Martin Livermore, of the Scientific alliance, said that Scotland was in danger of following the course taken by Denmark, which has to sell renewable-generated electricity when it has a surfeit and import electricity when the wind is not blowing.  He said: "If Scotland keeps going on this course, it will have to dump electricity cheaply when there's a glut but import expensive electricity at other times. This is because renewable energy is intermittent."  He added: "The more wind farms you have, the more you need stand-by capacity and the only reliable method of low-carbon energy is nuclear."  The report, Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage, represents the latest in a series of critical investigations into the drive for renewables, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK.  Last week, audit Scotland warned that the Scottish government had no clear plan to find the ?11 billion it needed to meet its ambitious target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent in less than a decad  
 alex Salmond yesterday claimed Scotland could "once again be the land that shapes the world into the future" and said that Scots had to take more control of their destiny in order to maintain their country's international role. In his New Year's Message, the First Minister struck what was even by his standards an optimistic note for 2012 by saying that the image of Scotland abroad was as a land of innovation which was shared and validated by international observers. "We must now live up to that," he added.  Mr Salmond said his priority for the new year was to ensure that all Scots had the security and fulfilment that came from the opportunity to work. That was, he said, why his devolved government was investing in "a range of capital projects to create jobs, guaranteeing an education or training place for every 16 to 19-ye  
 Pulse  by Julian Barnes  240PP, JONaTHaN CaPE, ?16.99 T?14.99 (PLUS ?1.25 P&P) 0844 871 1515 ****  In an interview a few years back, Julian Barnes described talking to a cross-Channel reader about the popularity of his books in France. Over there he is the only foreigner to have scooped the M?dicis and the Femina, two of the top literary prizes: and presumably, speculated Barnes, this interest had something to do with the French strand in his books.  Besides the obvious contenders, such as Flaubert's Parrot and Cross Channel, several of his other works also draw inspiration from French literature and society. Certainly in England he's well known, sometimes to the point of suspicion, as a "European" writer. But not a bit of it, said his interlocutor: here in France we like your stuff because it's so English.  Behind the jolly story of vive la diff?rence lies a serious point. Of course, when it comes to France, Barnes knows his stuff to a slightly intimidating degree. ("Spare us your Froggy wisdom for one night," implores one dinner party guest in Pulse, his latest collection of stories.) Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008), his cross between a family memoir and a tactical literary strike on his fear of death, draws heavily on the work of the novelist and diarist Jules Renard, while a few years before that Barnes also translated a littleknown work by the 19th-century writer alphonse Daudet. and there he was in the LRB not a month ago, delivering an essay on Flaubert in translation.  But the inspiration that Barnes takes from his most conspicuous influences, Flaubert and his prot?g? Maupassant, is also crucial to what makes him so good on the English. along with that other great Europhile writer VS Pritchett, he realised early on that the best tricks of the French proto-modernists - half-buried irony, tactical selfeffacement, a sharp ear for coded language and a penchant for intricately prosaic detail - were also those that lent themselves best to describing British social life.  Barnes's precise, acerbic novels and stories are a million miles from the state-of-the-nation stuff that tends to dominate modern writing about "Britishness": but in the fictional works about the psychology of these isles, they're very near the top.  Pulse is Barnes's 17th book, and as a collection of stories it lacks some of the structural tightness that made earlier volumes, in particular the excellent Cross Channel, so impressive. But many of these pieces are still masterclasses in the form, full of the sidelong wit and intelligence that make the writer one of our most consistently deft short-form stylists.  The collection splits into two parts. The first is composed of stories with a contemporary setting, yoked by a quartet of pieces under the title "at Phil and Joanna's", which describe a sequence of dinner parties attended by several married couples in their fifties and sixties. The setting is contemporary; the tone, as so often in Barnes's work, an elusive mixture of lampoon and sincerity.  Topics under discussion at this middle-class version of the Symposium include "whether the Labour Party was any longer distinguishable from the Conservatives, the suitability of London's streets for bendy buses, the likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack on the 2012 Olympics and the effect of global warming on English viticulture", as well as social truth and falsehood, the fear of approaching death, and, in true Platonic style, "what we don't talk about... Love".  Brief introductions and excipients apart, each of these Phil and Joanna stories is composed entirely of dialogue. Drama is a form Barnes has always resisted, shrewdly observing that "the history of the theatre is littered with novelistic failures": but these excellently turned conversations, dense with non sequiturs, interruptions and concealed humour, give a glimpse of the playwright he might have been.  Interleaved with the prose playlets are denser pieces, most with a distinctly autumnal feel. The opening piece, "East Wind", takes place on one of those bleak East anglian shinglescapes in November, as Vernon, an estate agent, shuffles his way into an affair with a waitress in a seaside caf?.  What begins as a post-divorce fling soon edges into a relationship of power and control, as Vernon, obsessed with the details of his lover's previous life, makes his way towards a horrid revelation.  In "Gardener's World", a childless couple's divisions and rapprochements are figured in their patch of kitchen garden. and in the devastating "Marriage Lines", a grieving husband looks for comfort on the tiny Hebridean island where he and his late wife used to go on holiday, but only finds that "he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him."  Several of these stories will have been written after the death of Barnes's wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, in 2008. But setting aside "Marriage Lines" and certain passages of the Phil and Joanna stories, there's not much here for biography-prospectors or griefvultures.  Certainly the tone of this collection is darker than much of Barnes's other work, but then Nothing to be Frightened Of was hardly free of shadows either: still, many of these stories might have been written by a different author from the Barnes who wrote the glorious, tripping satire England, England.  Consider the endings, some of which are delivered in a downbeat tone that borders on the vicious. "He thought about this for a while, and chose direct debit." "Jane sighed, reached for the remote and change  
 1 Who was anton du Beke's supposed dancing partner in the last series of Strictly Come Dancing? 2 Who has written Beyond the Crash, a book promising a unique insight into the current financial crisis? 3 Which statesman has been the fatherin-law of investment banker Marc Mezvinsky since July? 4 Who was the first man to renounce his peerage, just 20 minutes after the 1963 Peerage act came into force? 5 Who hosted the Camp David summit which brought peace between Egypt and Israel?  6 Who was notoriously photographed holding a banana at the 2008 Labour Party Conference? 7 Which former prime minister released the book More Than a Game about the early years of cricket, in 2007? 8 Which former minister upset the inhabitants of Montserrat when she criticised them for asking for more aid after they were devastated by a volcanic eruption? 9 Who was responsible for the film an Inconvenient Truth, which put the case for the existence of global warming? 10 Which cabinet minister has written biographies of William Pitt the Younger and William Wilberforce? 1 Who wrote about Captain John Joseph Yossarian in the novels Catch-22 and Closing Time? 2 Who was awarded the 2000 Whitbread Prize for best first novel for White Teeth? 3 Born Chloe ardelia Wofford, who was the first african-american writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1993? 4 Which Nagasaki-born writer has seen his novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go turned into films? 5 The author of the Booker Prizenominated Number9Dream and Cloud atlas, which writer did Time magazine include in its 100 most influential people in the world in 2007? 6 Which prize-winning author wrote the libretto for Michael Berkeley's 2008 opera For You? 7 Which South african writer was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature because "her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity"? 8 Who criticised his debut novel The Rachel Papers during interviews in 2010 for what he perceived to be its crudeness? 9 Who has acted in a production of Porgy and Bess, released an album called Calypso Lady, directed the film Down in the Delta, campaigned for civil rights as well as releasing more than 30 bestselling titles? 10 Which noted american writer was posthumously awarded the Bad Sex in Fiction award in 2007 for a passage in his novel The Castle in the Forest? 1 Who was inspired to found Band aid after seeing footage of an Ethiopian famine? 2 after Stuart Sutcliffe left the Beatles, who took over as the band's bassist? 3 Nicknamed "Gorgeous George", which jazzman, according to his Telegraph obituary, "leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades"? 4 Which singer, raised on a sheep farm in Dorset, won the 2001 Mercury Music Prize for her album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea? 5 Which opera singer helped pay for a railway station on the Welsh Highland Railway in his home town of Bontnewydd? 6 Which singer, winner of a Grammy for best female pop vocal in 2001 for her song I Try, was kicked offstage at a concert in Barbados in 2007 for uttering a banned profanity? 7 Which Northern Irish singersongwriter's 1968 album astral Weeks is a regular fixture in lists of the greatest albums of all time? 8 Which singer found acting on DoctorWho to be scarier than meeting the Pope? 9 Which folktonica artist from Norfolk came to prominence with the 1996 album Trailer Park? 10 Which singer-songwriter, whose hits include Luka and Tom's Diner, was the first artist to perform live as an avatar in the online game Second Life, while her voice played a key role in the algorithms behind the creation of MP3 files? 1 Who played Beattie in a number of advertisements for British Telecom? 2 Which comedian created the Cardiff cab driver Keith Barret? 3 Which former winner of the Irish Times National Debating Championship accompanied Griff Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath in a boat and on a trip to Ireland on television? 4 Who, with Guy Jenkin, has created the sitcoms Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered? 5 Who played the titular Peter in the 1992 film Peter's Friends? 6 Which comedienne has developed a stage show about her bipolar disorder with singer-songwriter Judith Owen, which toured all 12 branches of The Priory? 7 Teenage Lauren Cooper and cockney grandmother Joanie Taylor are among the characters created by which comedienne and actress? 8 Which former psychiatric nurse has written the comedy series Getting On about the NHS for BBC4? 9 Which comedian published a book concerning family history, My Family and Other Strangers, in 2010? 10 Who toured a Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra? 1 Who presented a major series called aHistory of Britain for the BBC between 2000 and 2002? 2 Whose acerbic performances on Radio Four's The Moral Maze earned him the tag "the rudest man in Britain"? 3 Who wrote Must You Go? about her 33-year relationship with Harold Pinter? 4 The author of a Short History of Nearly Everything, who is the head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England? 5 Which former literary editor of The Daily Telegraph wrote The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, about a real-life Victorian murder mystery in Wiltshire? 6 Which historian and travel writer has written a number of prize-winning books, such as The Last Mughal, as well as presenting several television series on Indian history? 7 Which Marxist historian wrote The age of... tetralogy covering European history from 1789 to 1991? 8 Which historian's 2007 book austerity Britain was the first in a projected sixvolume history of post-war Britain? 9 Which historian advised Mrs Thatcher on foreign policy, has been Professor of International Relations, Bilkent University, ankara since 1997 and released a work on the Cold War in 2010? 10 Which former Telegraph editor was the first journalist to enter Port Stanley on its liberation from the argentines and has written a number of works on military history? 1 Describing the series as "Die Hard - with Fairies", who has written a number of books concerning teenage criminal mastermind artemis Fowl? 2 Which former Children's Laureate wrote the poem "These are the Hands" to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the NHS? 3 as well as portraying comic characters such as Swiss Toni on television, who has written a number of books concerning the teenage adventures of James Bond? 4 D?mons, physical manifestations of a person's soul in a parallel universe, appear in which writer's His Dark Materials trilogy? 5 Dani Harmer played Tracy Beaker on television, a character created by which writer? 6 The How to Train Your Dragon series of books are the works of which writer, who also created Hiccup the Viking? 7 The former head of the illustration department of the Royal College of art, who notably produced a number of illustrations of the works of Roald Dahl? 8 The Noughts and Crosses series, which uses a dystopia to explore racism, is the work of which writer? 9 Who threw away a career as a medievalist to become a writer, created Horrid Henry and is shortly to publish a novel about the Lewis Chessmen? 10 The National Theatre's hit play War Horse, set in the First World War, is based on a book by which former Children's Laureate? 1 Who was the "man in a white suit" who unseated Neil Hamilton in Tatton at the 1997 General Election? 2 Which writer, recently diagnosed with cancer, has written lengthy critiques of Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa as well as the antireligious work God Is Not Great? 3 Who became the first female editor of The New Yorker in 1992 and subsequently founded the online magazine The Daily Beast? 4 One of the International Press Institute  
 Towards the end of 1996, one of Gabriel Orozco's lungs collapsed. It was a freak occurrence and, after a painful week in hospital, the artist spent the winter convalescing in New York. For someone used to continually travelling the world, it was a testing time. But during this period of enforced recovery, Orozco created one of his most recognisable and profound works of art: Black Kites.  Once seen, this piece is not easily forgotten. It consists of a real human skull on which Orozco painstakingly drew a checkerboard-like grid in heavy graphite. as the drawing delves into the eye sockets, and loops across the bumps of the cranium, the skull's knobbly surfaces and cavities distort the regimented squares of the design. Orozco completed the pattern after six months. 'I remember, when I finished, I thought it was kind of horrible, really weird. a shocking thing,' he says. 'I couldn't see it any more so I put it in the closet and left it there.' Black Kites belongs to the tradition of the memento mori, but it also alludes to the prevalence of decorated skulls in the art and popular culture of Mexico, where Orozco was born in 1962. It is also a sophisticated meditation on the processes of thought. The geometrical grid stands for knowledge, learning and rational deliberation; the skull stands for the strangeness of organic reality and the inevitability of death. Culture and nature are opposed, yet melded together; one cannot escape the other.  Later this month, Black Kites will be shown as part of an important retrospective of Orozco's work at Tate Modern in London, where it will present a fine example of the dense poetic effect that the artist has been summoning since he first excited curators and dealers around the world in the early 1990s. But although it is one of Orozco's most familiar pieces, Black Kites is not especially representative of his wider work. Indeed, it is hard to point to a single work that is emblematic of his style. Primarily a sculptor, Orozco also produces drawings, paintings, photographs and installations.  No two works by him look the same: a 1960s Citro?n car sliced lengthways into three parts and then meticulously reassembled, minus the central section; an oval billiard table without any pockets; a photograph of a sleeping dog: all of these are part of his extensive repertoire.  He is forever reinventing himself and surprising his audience. Some of his artistic statements are modest, such as the melon that he placed on a shelf in the bookshop of London's Institute of Contemporary arts when he exhibited there early in his career in 1993. Some are spectacular, like the skeleton of a whale that he decorated with a drawing and suspended in the national library in Mexico City four years ago.  In his infinite variety, Orozco perpetually eludes the esoteric formulations of art critics, who tie themselves up in knots attempting to define his work. Yet he is one of the most respected contemporary artists working anywhere in the world today. The Tate retrospective will be the latest incarnation of an exhibition that has already travelled to Paris, Basel and New York, where it originated at the prestigious Museum of Modern art. Orozco is only 48, but already he has achieved a level of recognition usually reserved for grand old masters.  During the 1990s, Orozco earned a reputation as an artistic nomad. He resisted being labelled as a Mexican artist, but equally refused to be pigeonholed as part of a new generation of artists from New York, which became his adopted city when he started renting a small apartment there in 1992.  Instead, he travelled the world, carrying little more than a toothbrush, a notebook and an automatic Nikon camera. He started producing work that reflected his perpetual migration, wandering from one medium to another. He used foreign banknotes and airline ticket stubs as surfaces for drawings and paintings. He made sculptures out of cars and bicycles, suggesting ceaseless motion. He even exhibited his own suitcase.  He once fashioned his own weight in Plasticine into a giant, greasy, lopsided sphere, and rolled it down Broadway in New York before placing it inside a nearby museum, so that the malleable material became encrusted with dust and debris, and marked with the impressions of everything that it had touched. (Yielding Stone, as this piece is called, can be understood as a self-portrait of the protean contemporary artist, whose life is continually in transit, and who is forever open to chance encounters with the world.) Throughout these years, famously, Orozco never had a proper studio, preferring to work quickly, on the move, inspired by his ever-changing surroundings.  Yet nearly two decades on, the nomad has become a man of property. as well as New York, which is where I meet him, Orozco owns homes in Mexico City, Paris and rural France, where he spends his summers. His house in New York, an attractive brownstone reportedly worth nearly $9 million, is situated in the West Village, an affluent and artistic district of Lower Manhattan. Orozco's next-door neighbour is the Brazilian model Gisele B?ndchen.  after ringing the doorbell, I am greeted by a maid, who guides me through a beautiful reception room strewn with the leftovers of a birthday party for Orozco's six-year-old son, Sim?n, his only child with Maria Gutierrez, whom he married in 1994. I discover Orozco inside his kitchen, eating lunch. (Gutierrez, who works for the Climate Change Secretariat of the United Nations, is in her study upstairs.) Orozco has tanned skin, unruly grey hair and a beard. He wears tortoiseshell sunglasses, and absent-mindedly plays with an elastic band on his wrist as he talks.  There are no formalities, and he begins the interview at once. He wants to make it clear that, despite the trappings of substantial success, he feels as unencumbered as he did when he left Mexico City in his mid-twenties to spend a year in Madrid.  'I am changing all the time,' he says, while tucking into a steaming cactus stew. 'I travel between my houses, and still have no primary studio. Mostly I draw and plan in my notebook, so my notebook is my studio. I change so much from project to project that even if I had a studio I wouldn't know what tools to have or what type of assistant to employ.' He pauses, picks up a knife and dissects an avocado.  'The idea of a workshop has never appealed to me,' he continues. 'For me, it's important to move, and to leave my work exposed to things I don't know. For each project I do something different. I make things - provisional things - and the only thing that is consistent is that I travel on my own and do things on my own.' He smiles ruefully. 'Look: I am even eating alone.'  To understand the reasons for Orozco's restlessness, you need to understand the context in which he grew up, and against which he fashioned himself as an artist. Orozco was born in Jalapa, in the eastern Mexican province of Veracruz. His mother was a classical pianist. His father was a communist, and a third-generation mural painter in the tradition of Mexican artists such as Jos? Clemente Orozco (no relation) and Diego Rivera.  The history of Mexican art, though, left Orozco cold. 'I was very tired of this image of Mexico as a Surrealist country,' he says, referring to the paintings of Frida Kahlo. 'Mexican culture is permeated by this exoticism of reality - which I don't find to be true, and is not important to me. I find Surrealism boring.'  Orozco attended art school in Mexico City, but was frustrated by its parochial conservatism. In 1986 he moved to Madrid, where he learnt about the work of avant-garde artists such as Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark, and studied an emerging generation of British sculptors, including Tony Cragg and antony Gormley. He also became enamoured with the american modernist composer and polymath John Cage.  'I remember reading a small booklet about John Cage and getting very excited by his Zen attitudes about art and life, and the use of chance encounters and provocations and accidents.' On returning from Madrid, Orozco began a series of simple, rough-and-ready sculptures, including Recaptured Nature (1990), a misshapen rubber sphere patched together from the inner tubes of salvaged truck tyres, and My Hands are My Heart (1991), a lump of brick clay which he squeezed into the approximate shape of a human heart.  Both works engaged with the world in an unaffected, modest manner: Orozco was subtly refashioning reality, rather than making something 'exotic', and using materials not usually associated with 'high' art. They were shown in his first major international exhibition, a group show at the Royal Museum of Fine arts in antwerp in 1992.  Orozco also developed  a burgeoning interest in photography (he had used a camera to document Mexico City's ruined streets in the aftermath of the earthquake that killed 10,000 people in 1985). His pictures look like casual snapshots, but are in fact highly orchestrated. Crazy Tourist (1991), for instance, depicts an empty Brazilian market, abandoned except for a number of oranges carefully positioned on ramshackle wooden stalls as far as the eye can see.  In his sculpture and photography, Orozco was honing an aesthetic that favoured cheap, improvisational gestures, instead of anything more substantial. He would often build temporary sculptures out of detritus that he encountered in the street; he would photograph these objects, dismantle them, and move on.  In doing so, he was deliberately reacting against the prevailing contemporary art scene in New York, which had been characterised by overblown, expensive pieces by artists who always seemed to have one eye on the market.  'There were many things about the way of doing art in the 1980s that I was not so crazy about,' Orozco says. 'It was the climax of market speculation, and the objects were made to behave in a market of commodities. They were trying to impress with shininess, as products. Obviously Jeff Koons is one of the main characters of this type of art. I was sceptical of art like this, and still am. I also found it really tedious - stiff, dead, not intriguing. So my work started to do something different.'  One thing Orozco reacted against was 'the obsession with the big studio in which you have all this space to create: the glamour of the artist selling for millions of dollars and having a big loft in SoHo. at that time, the dream for many artists was to come to New York, have a big loft and become famous. I was not so impressed by that - particularly coming from an art world family. So I remember saying, it's not about having money, it's about what mentality you have. I found it much more interesting to be out in the street, engaging with everyday life.'  Orozco still believes that the art market can have a negative effect on artists. 'In general, I think the market makes art very bombastic,' he says. 'I try not to follow that path. There are many other ways to do art.'  The way Orozco likes to 'do' art is to keep in touch with reality. 'It's not about screaming at people or trying to mesmerise people with spectacular strategies. I believe that a small gesture can have a much bigger impact.'  after the art market crashed in 1990, Orozco's unostentatious approach won him many admirers. He was like a prophet who had been preaching humility under the decadence of the Romans and, by 1993, he was inundated with offers to exhibit at respected institutions around the world. at that year's Venice Biennale, he provocatively showed an empty white cardboard shoebox placed on top of its own lid - the antithesis of the baroque aesthetic of the 1980s. He was also invited to mount a show at New York's Museum of Modern art. In the empty space between the escalators he unfurled Dial Tone (1992), a Japanese scroll decorated with dense columns of numbers cut and pasted from a Mexican phone book.  Towards the end of 1993, he created one of his biggest, most dramatic pieces: La DS, the sliced-up Citro?n that is a distillation of sleek, streamlined speed. In contrast, the following year, for his first solo exhibition in a commercial space in New York, he bemused onlookers by showing nothing but four transparent plastic yogurt pot lids, stamped with sell-by dates and price tags, attached to the four walls of the Marian Goodman Gallery. Yogurt Caps (1994) has since been hailed as a courageous masterstroke of conceptual art. Does Orozco see any connection between these early successes? How does he join the dots of such a varied career? 'I have no idea,' he says. 'I don't think in those terms at all. One of the things that people recognise about me is that I change all the time. They don't know what to expect for the next exhibition. They only know that it's probably going to be different from the last one.'  He pauses. 'That was not always easy for people to accept. Maybe they were expecting me to cut more cars, or to go on to cut a truck, and then cut an airplane. You know, when you have a piece that has some success, you can develop a line of production based on it that will definitely have a life in the market and please the crowds.'  So why did he resist following such an easy path? 'Because I get bored,' he says. 'I don't want to be doing the same thing again and again. I wake up and I like to do something different, something that makes me feel intrigued. I enjoy research, I like to learn new techniques, and every idea demands a different approach. I am a person who has many interests. I like a bit of science, a bit of philosophy, politics, sports.' Indeed, Orozco is a keen player of football and ch  
 Global warming: does it exist? telegraph.co.uk/earth 
 Sitting outside under a starlit sky listening to owls is a perfect winter fireside pastime. If you think about what you burn, how you light it and how you burn it, you can keep warm without a soaring carbon footprint. Ostentatious gas-guzzling patio heaters have become an icon of excess, but there are many creative variations on a garden firepit or firebowl to warm chilled extremities.  In these days of reducing carbon footprints and tighter budgets, gardeners and garden owners are reserving the fire ritual for parties and entertaining rather than a way of disposing of garden rubbish. Fuel in general has become a precious, and in some areas a limited, resource.  a variety of materials can be used as firelighters, kindling and fuel, creating the potential for a carbon-neutral beacon, party fire, firepit or barbecue. Dried prunings, leaves and even fir cones can be used to catch a flame and transform it into a burst of energy to light a fire. I gather dead leaves from my bay laurel hedge and use them to ignite both the wood-burning stove and the garden chiminea.  Mixed with a few scrunchedup bank statements, some dead rosemary stems (which also make great barbecue skewers), a few lavender flower stems and some dried sticks from the local wood, these ingredients obviate the need for chemical firelighters and smell wonderful as they burn.  Kindling aside, the next consideration is fuel. assuming you are not going down the gas route, the most eco-friendly and carbon-neutral fuel you can use is home-grown wood. It needs no transport, has already captured carbon from the atmosphere as it grew and will release about the same amount as it burns, just as it would if left to decompose.  Don't assume you need to fell huge trees for firewood; any garden shrub material, wheth  
 When I toured Government House in Sydney a couple of months ago, I was struck by how the guide made no reference to a fine portrait of the Queen which takes pride of place in the hall, and instead dwelt on a likeness of William Bligh, the former governor of New South Wales who is still most commonly associated with his eventful captaincy of HMS Bounty.  This sort of republicanism has no place on these shores, but, even so, it never seemed to occur to anyone to hang an image of the monarch at 3 Whitehall Place, the home of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, during Labour's period in office.  Happily, Greg Barker and Chris Huhne have rectified this. They have acquired a photograph of the Queen by Dorothy Wilding from the Government art Collection and it now hangs in the reception area. Barker tells me: "When I realised there was no picture of the Queen, I was determined to get one - we are Her Majesty's Government, after all." 
 WIND farms in Britain generated practically no electricity during the recent cold spell, raising fresh concerns about whether they could be relied upon to meet the country's energy needs.  Despite high demand for electricity as people shivered at home over Christmas, most of the 3,000 wind turbines around Britain stood still due to a lack of wind.  Even yesterday, when conditions were slightly breezier, wind farms generated just 1.8 per cent of the nation's electricity - less than a third of usual levels.  The failure of wind farms to function at full tilt during December forced energy suppliers to rely on coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on - meaning more greenhouse gases were produced.  Experts feared that as the Government moved towards a target of generating 30 per cent of electricity from wind - while closing gas and coal-fired power stations - cold, still winters could cause a problem in the future.  Prof Michael Laughton,   
 FILM 127 Hours Danny Boyle's film based on the true story of a mountain climber who gets trapped under a boulder.  FILM The King's Speech Colin Firth is already an Oscar frontrunner for his performance as a stuttering King George VI in Tom Hooper's rousing movie.  CLaSSICaL MUSIC Polar The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra provides a live soundtrack to a cinematic journey through the polar ice caps. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool (0151 709 3789) aRT a masterpiece a month To celebrate its 200th birthday, the UK's oldest purpose-built gallery shows a magnificent painting a month from collections around the world. Dulwich Picture Gallery (020 8693 5254) DaNCE Giselle Carlos acosta and Marianela Nu?ez are among the stars in the Royal Ballet's production of the classic story of love and betrayal. Royal Opera House (020 7304 4000) until Feb 19 THEaTRE Twelfth Night Rebecca Hall plays Viola, directed by her father Sir Peter Hall. National Theatre, London (020 7452 3000) until March 2 FILM The Green Hornet Seth Rogen and Cameron Diaz star in a hectic reimagining of the cult comic superhero. Directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).  DaNCE London International Mime Festival a mixture of visual theatre, circus and dance take over the capital - all without a word. assorted locations around London (www.mimefest.co.uk) until Jan 30 EXHIBITIONS Gabriel Orozco The first major UK retrospective dedicated to the playful Mexican artist. Tate Modern (020 7887 8888) until april 11 THEaTRE The Comedy of Errors and Richard III Propeller, Edward Hall's all-male troupe, brings two new Shakespearean interpretations to the stage. Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield (0114 249 6060) until Jan 29 aRT Modern British Sculpture.  This survey of British sculpture since 1900 includes anthony Caro, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and others. Royal academy (0844 209 0051) until april 7 THEaTRE The Children's Hour Keira Knightley and Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss star in Lillian Hellman's 1934 drama set in a girls' boarding school Comedy Theatre (0844 871 7627) until april 2 MUSIC Bruno Mars, Doo-Wops and Hooligans Debut album from the Hawaiian co-writer of international hits for the likes of Cee Lo Green (Forget You) and Flo Rida (Right Round).  MUSIC adele, 21 Highly anticipated, Rick Rubinproduced second album from the Grammy-winning London songbird.  CLaSSICaL MUSIC Gustavo Dudamel The charismatic conductor leads the Los angeles Philharmonic in Bernstein and Beethoven. Barbican (020 7638 8891) until Jan 28 BOOKS The Telegraph Hay Festival, Cartagena Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa, Germaine Greer, Gary Shteyngart and Philip Glass are among the guests of the literary knees-up in this Colombian city on the Caribbean Sea. (01497 822 629) until Jan 30 CLaSSICaL MUSIC Infernal Dance Finnish maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts two of Bart?k's most extraordinary works. Royal Festival Hall (0844 875 0073) FILM Barney's Version Golden Globe-nominated Paul Giamatti plays a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Richard J Lewis's charming adaptation of a 1997 novel by Canadian author Mordecai Richler.  CLaSSICaL MUSIC Maurizio Pollini The celebrated pianist performs five recitals of pieces from Bach to Boulez. Royal Festival Hall (0844 875 0073) until May 25 THEaTRE Clybourne Park Bruce Norris's Royal Court hit starring Sophie Thompson transfers to the West End. Wyndham's Theatre (020 7565 5000) until May 7 aRT The Poetry of Drawing The largest survey of Pre-Raphaelite drawings and watercolours ever staged, which will include key loans from both public and private lenders. Birmingham Museum and art Gallery (0121 303 1966) until May 15 OPERa Lucrezia Borgia English National Opera gives the premiere of Mike Figgis's production of Donizetti's opera, starring soprano Claire Rutter. London Coliseum (0871 911 0200) until March 3 aRT Susan Hiller a rare retrospective of the work for the american artist who is a pioneer of video art and mixed-media art. Tate Britain (020 7887 8888) until May 15 THEaTRE Goodnight Mister Tom a new adaptation of the classic wartime children's novel. Chichester Festival Theatre (01243 781312) until Feb 5, then touring OPERa The Portrait Opera North presents the British premiere of the rediscovered Soviet composer Weinberg's opera about a cursed portrait. Grand Theatre, Leeds (0844 848 2706) until Feb 12 THEaTRE Plenty Thea Sharrock directs David Hare's play about Nazi-occupied France in a season that features Racing Demon and The Breath of Life. Sheffield Crucible (0114 249 6000) until Feb 26 FILM Brighton Rock Graham Greene's thrilling 1939 novel is updated to the era of the Mods, starring andrea Riseborough.  FILM The Fighter Based on the true story of Irish boxer Mickey Ward and starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.  THEaTRE The Heretic Richard Bean's new play about climate change opens at the Royal Court. (020 7565 5000) until March 19 THEaTRE Frankenstein Danny Boyle returns to the stage with Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch alternating as the scientist and his monster. National Theatre (020 7452 3000) until april 17 THEaTRE The Wizard of Oz This revival is the latest andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza, cast via reality television series Over the Rainbow. London Palladium (0844 412 2957) until Sept 17 THEaTRE The Million Dollar Quartet a rock'n'roll jukebox show inspired by a recording session between Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. No?l Coward Theatre (0844 482 5141) until Oct 1 THEaTRE Guys and Dolls a welcome revival of the great american musical about gamblers and their Salvation army saviours. Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold, North Wales (0845 330 3565) until March 5 FILM Never Let Me Go Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and andrew Garfield star in the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's science-fiction fantasy.  FILM True Grit The Coen brothers remake a John Wayne western. Jeff Bridges leads a stellar cast (including Matt Damon and Josh Brolin) as a US marshal who helps a young woman track her father's murderer.  THEaTRE The 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee a Tony award-winning american musical about the drama surrounding a spelling competition. Donmar Warehouse (0844 871 7624) until april 2 FILM The Debt Directed by John Madden, this film follows three Mossad agents on their mission to capture a Nazi criminal.  MUSIC PJ Harvey Let England Shake is her first album for two years, and she follows it with two live dates in London at the end of the month.  aRT Watercolour an exhibition looking at the history of this popular medium. Tate Britain (020 7887 8888) until august 21 THEaTRE The Blue Dragon Robert Lepage presents his sequel to the famous Dragon's Trilogy. Barbican (020 7638 8891) until Feb 26 THEaTRE King Lear The first production at the RSC's new theatre is directed by David Farr and stars Greg Hicks. Stratford Upon avon (0844 800 1110) until april 2 aRT Jan Gossaert's Northern Renaissance Fifty paintings by the Flemish artist noted for his sensuous nudes. National Gallery (0844 847 2409) until May 30 MUSIC Stormtroopers in Stilettos an exhibition charting Queen's rise to success. Old Truman Brewery, London (www.queenonline.com) until March 12 OPERa The Mikado a 25th anniversary revival of Jonathan Miller's classic production of this G&S favourite. London Coliseum (0871 911 0200) until March 11 CLaSSICaL MUSIC BBC Symphony Orchestra a Total Immersion in the work of contemporary composer Brian Ferneyhough. Barbican (020 7638 8891)  DaNCE Lord of the Flies William Golding's story of teenage boys marooned on an island gets the Matthew Bourne treatment. Glasgow Theatre Royal (0844 871 7647) until March 5 THEaTRE Blithe Spirit alison Steadman and Ruthie Henshall star in No?l Coward's enduring 1941 play. apollo Theatre (0844 412 4658) until June 18 MUSIC Beady Eye Liam Gallagher's muchpraised new band set off on their first ever tour. Glasgow Barrowlands (0141 204 5151) aRT afghanistan: Crossroads of the ancient World Surviving treasures from afghanistan's ancient culture. British Museum (020 7323 8181) until July 3 MUSIC Justin Bieber The teen-wonder's 2011 tour. National Indoor arena Birmingham (0844 388 8000) FILM Rango In an animated Western, Johnny Depp provides the voice of a chameleon who wants to be a hero. FILM The Tempes  
 Wind turbines are 25 per cent less effective than the renewable energy industry claims, according to research.  The John Muir Trust (JMT), one of Scotland's leading conservation bodies, has challenged the assertion that wind farms run at an average of 30 per cent capacity over a year. a study carried out for the trust into the energy generated by dozens of wind farms, the majority of which are in Scotland, between November 2009 and last month, found they ran at 22 per cent of capacity.  Niall Stuart, the chief executive of Scottish Renewables, which represents the industry, said the winter of 2009-10 was one of the calmest on record and that it was "no surprise" figures for the year were below average. 
 DEEP-WaTER drilling could take place at hundreds of sites off the British coast after MPs ruled out a moratorium, despite concerns that the work could lead to a disaster worse than BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Following the Deepwater Horizon accident last year, the energy and climate change committee was asked to look into the risks of drilling in deep water off Britain. Oil companies have admitted that plans for deep-water drilling off the Shetland islands could cause an oil spill worse than the Gulf of Mexico disaster.  But Tim Yeo, the chairman of the committee, said the energy supplies and national security of Britain depends on the newly discovered oilfields.  He said safety procedures could be "tightened up" but on the whole the industry is safe and the regulatory system "robust" following the reforms brought in after the Piper alpha oil rig disaster in 1988.  "although we heard evidence it is not always done right - and I am sure it is not always done right - nevertheless, I think the concerns are nothing like big enough to justify stopping the process," he said.  a quarter of Britain's discovered oil and gas reserves, about four million barrels, lie in deep water off the west of Shetland.  Oil companies are drilling in the  
 Deep-water drilling could take place at hundreds of sites off the British coast after MPs ruled out a moratorium, despite concerns that the work could lead to a disaster worse than BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Following the Deepwater Horizon accident last year, the energy and climate change committee was asked to look into the risks of drilling in deep water off Britain. Oil companies have said plans for deep drilling off the Shetlands could cause a spill worse than the Gulf of Mexico disaster.  But Tim Yeo, the committee chairman, said Britain's energy supplies and national security depended on the new oilfields.  He said safety procedures could be "tightened up" but on the whole the industry was safe: "I think the concerns are nothing like big enough to justify stopping the process."  Ben ayliffe, of Greenpeace, said that Health and Safety Executive figures showed an increase in serious accidents and spilt oil at British rigs.  "They are pressing ahead regardless of the holes in their own regulatory system. It is like they have learned nothing from the Deepwater Horizon spill," he said. 
 aLEX SaLMOND was under pressure to overhaul his green energy policies last night after new evidence indicated wind farms produce a quarter less energy than developers claim.  The John Muir Trust (JMT), one of Scotland's leading conservation bodies, published research showing 47 wind farms north and south of the Border run at an average of 22 per cent of capacity.  But the wind farm industry has claimed that over the course of a year, a turbine operates at an average of 30 per cent efficiency, with the precise figure dependent on the weather.  The trust said the figures show that dozens of wind farms in Scotland have been approved on the basis of "inflated" claims of their output and called for SNP ministers to urgently review their policies.  Mr Salmond has refused to approve a new generation of nuclear power stations north of the Border, instead claiming that all of Scotland's energy needs can be met through wind and wave power.  But he faced embarrassment in November when the head of one of the country's largest energy generators branded the blueprint "bonkers" and warned Scotland was in "serious danger" of suffering power shortages.  
 aRNOLD Schwarzenegger will depart public office today, ending a seven-year stint as the "Governator" of California that has sharply divided opinion.  His replacement, Jerry Brown, a Democrat who was also governor from 1975 to 1983, will be sworn in amid uncertainty over what the former Hollywood actor and bodybuilder will do next.  Having taken the helm of the troubled state declaring "failure is not an option", Mr Schwarzenegger, 63, leaves with an approval rating of just 22 per cent and a tripled $28 billion (?18 billion) budget deficit. His decision to focus on tackling climate change was criticised by opponents and commentators who said he should have prioritised fixing the state's economy, the eighth largest in the world.  The departure of the Terminator actor, which comes amid fears that California could become insolvent, has prompted headlines in the US media such as "Hasta la vista, failure". Yet it is thought that Mr Schwarzenegger is keen to press on with efforts to reduce global warming, possibly taking on a role as an independent statesman akin to that of al Gore, the former US vice-president.  "There are a lot of important things that I want to say," he has said on Twitter. "My struggle for reform will continue, my belief in environmental issues and in protecting the environment will continue."  It is also presumed that Mr Schwarzenegger will seek to make money in publishing and public speaking, having spent $25million (?16million) of his own in two election campaigns.  Cartoon: Page 18  The Telegraph  The highs and lows of Schwarzenegger's reign telegraph.co.uk/world 
 FaRMERS will be expected to do more to protect the environment in future if they want European subsidies, a minister is to warn.  In a speech to the Oxford Farming Conference on Wednesday, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will set out Britain's position on reform of the Common agricultural Policy (CaP).  The scheme has long been criticised for producing grain mountains and butter lakes. Mrs Spelman will say that in future subsidies should be focused on "public good" so that farmers are paid for looking after the landscape, in addition to a basic rate of income support.  She will als  
 Idon't know whether anyone else has ever prayed that the Duchess of York could be exiled to the Moon - but I'm fairly sure I'm the only person who's done so for purely professional reasons.  In 1989, The Daily Telegraph asked a group of futurologists to predict what the unimaginably distant year of 2010 would look like, and asked me to write up the findings. This year, as the months ticked by, I waited for validation of one of the prophecies: namely, that lunar landings would become so commonplace that the Duchess would become the first member of the Royal family to visit outer space. alas, it was not to be. Still, the experts did claim that america would have a black president - so thank you, Barack Obama, for sparing their blushes in the nick of time.  aside from the forecast that Britain would be back in the space race, courtesy of Russia giving us a piggyback ride to Mars, most of the predictions by applied Futures, a consultancy specialising in long-term strategic planning, were rather more serious than whimsical: there were some big misses, some near misses and a fair sprinkling of accurate forecasts. But they all offer food for thought, not to mention casting an intriguing light on the late-Eighties mentality.  One of the project's worst excesses was its optimistic view of the world of work. The British worker in 2010, the experts confidently predicted, would be able to qualify for sabbaticals of up to a year, in a newly liberalised nation. Society would be more geared to leisure than work: indeed, Britain would be driving a fundamental change from a world based on materialism to a "general consciousness" that people mattered. Our standard of living, measured in material terms, would no longer be regarded as a measure of wellbeing - a sentiment David Cameron would doubtless agree with.  The team, led by Christine McNulty, had few reservations in predicting a greater focus on shopping, partly because the signposts were already well illuminated. Shopping by TV, with the help of cash-dispensertype ordering terminals and delivery within 24 hours from automated warehouses controlled by robots, would take the drudgery out of proceedings. People would be healthier and live longer, through advances in medicine and science - although predictions that aids would be a thing of the past were premature. The team also suggested that many homes would be equipped with medical equipment for regular check-ups through the development of DIY doctoring (which is now, finally, starting to happen).  The experts made a modest attempt to predict changes in social behaviour. By now, marriage should be almost oldfashioned and there should be fewer divorces. Why? The evolution of the "seven-year itch" - a partnership or marriage contract renewable or abandoned every seven years. Economically speaking, the North-South divide would disappear as the "vibrancy and dynamism" of the South East were exported to the rest of the country, and technology would turn the computer into the nerve centre of households. The team also forecast fewer traffic jams, thanks to automated systems maintaining distance between vehicles and goods vehicles that were able to run on road or rail. Driverless mini-trains (as seen on the Docklands Light Railway), smaller, quieter aircraft and "single-person heli-systems" were also envisaged to help the mobile executive get around faster.  In politics, there was no expectation that Britain would be governed by a coalition - although the prime minister would, we said, be able to speak three languages (in fact, David Cameron goes one better with four, while his deputy, Nick Clegg, can boast five).  Proportional representation and voting via television would be part and parcel of the democratic set-up, rather than the subject of an imminent referendum and a staple of Saturday-night television respectively.  Overall, McNulty acknowledges that the team were perhaps too optimistic. "We thought we were doing pretty well for the first 15 years. There were things we missed - the financial crisis, the internet and wars - that have had a huge effect on the economy and budgets. We also missed global warming, but we still got many things rights. I think that on a score basis we did better than 50 per cent." and the trips to the Moon? "Nasa had to cut its budgets."  Yet even though the report failed to predict the internet - a rather significant omission - there was a general understanding of the ways in which communications technology would shape our lives. The study visualised our communication centres becoming part of expanded leisure centres, with children using their home computers to play chess or Space Invaders with friends in other countries. Books and magazines would be produced on a collaborative basis, while those with particular interests would sign up for clubs that communicated via electronic mail.  One failed prediction was that the intelligent use of computers would transform homework for youngsters, allowing them to experiment with body sensors and activate real images. Viewers should have had the ability to adapt films to enable them to superimpose their own image on screen, or recreate Dickens's London or a trip along the seabed, complete with sights, sounds and smells. Heady stuff, but all relatively practical - the basis for the technology is still kicking around, as are the screens that would give runners or rowers the sense that they are jogging along the Great Wall of China or sculling along the River Cam.  So what would happen if you took another 21-year look t  
 Trisha Hollingworth knew that it was time to evacuate her home on the outskirts of Rockhampton when she awoke to floodwaters lapping at the front steps. She had been told that the water was coming, but the speed with which it arrived took her by surprise. The front garden, where she had celebrated New Year's Eve with a barbecue with her neighbours, was one foot under water by the morning of January 1. Two days later, the rust-coloured water had reached the fifth step of her home, just inches shy of her front door. It was time to go.  By then, the only way out was in the "tinnie" - a small aluminium boat usually reserved for fishing on the nearby Fitzroy River. But ever since the river burst its banks, the boat has replaced the family car. "You have to boat in and boat out now. If you tried to walk, the water would be up to your chest and it is running so fast it would just drag you away," Mrs Hollingworth says. "The road has become part of the river, it is like living in the middle of the ocean."  Rockhampton, a city of 77,000 people 370 miles north of Brisbane, lies close to the coast and the mouth of the Fitzroy, one of australia's largest river systems. It is among the biggest of the 22 towns affected by the tide of flooding that has swept across the eastern australian state of Queensland over the past three days, and also one of the worst hit.  all main routes to the south, north and west of the city have been cut by the rising water. Rail lines and the airport runways are also submerged and the floodwaters stretch for several miles in each direction. On the Bruce Highway to the south, one of the few things to rise above the water is the "Welcome to Rockhampton" sign.  "Rockhampton is an island," the city's mayor, Brad Carter, says. "You can look down a street for a kilometre and see nothing but water." as well as the human residents, the local wildlife has been caught off-guard by nature's excesses. Bewildered and hungry kangaroos can be seen gathered together on any scrap of high ground and at night the sound of bellowing cattle, lost and confused by the water, fills the air.  and the water is still rising. Floodwaters stand at about 30ft and over the next 48 hours the Fitzroy River is expected to swell another 15in, to levels not seen since 1954. at that height, an estimated 1,400 homes in Rockhampton will be inundated. In an attempt to prevent any more deaths or serious injuries in the floodwater, forced evacuations are under way across the city, with residents directed to emergency shelters where they can expect to spend at least a week waiting for the waters to subside.  Mrs Hollingworth and her husband, Frank, decided to evacuate to a caravan in the centre of the city. Their neighbour Lee Carol chose to join them after she realised that her low-lying home would be engulfed by the rising waters overnight. "I've put the chooks [chickens] and the turkeys on the roof and the birds on the kitchen table, but I'll lose everything else," she says. Speaking last night from the bar of the Great Western Hotel, where many Rockhampton residents had gathered to swap stories about the flood, she said she was desperately worried about her property, "but there is nothing I can do to save it."  Miss Carol said she wanted to stay at the house for as long as possible, but was put off by the arrival of scores of deadly brown snakes. "I shot 17 in one day, and a woman down the road shot 26," she says. "They come out of the water looking for dry ground all day, but they can kill you just as quick as the floods can."  The Hollingworths and Miss Carol, who live in the Rockhampton suburb of Port Curtis, are just a few of the 200,000 people displaced by the Queensland floods that have submerged an area the same size as France and Germany combined, turned towns, mines and farms into a muddy inland sea and killed three people so far. Two of those who died had been trying to flee the floodwaters in their cars when they were swept away. The floods - triggered by torrential rain which fell on the Sunshine State before Christmas - have been blamed on the La Ni?a weather pattern, during which the tropical seas of the Pacific Ocean cool, prompting heavy rains and storms over the east coast of australia.  The floods came just months after the end of a 10-year drought and two years after bush fires that killed more than 170 people in the southern state of Victoria. But farmers who had been used to praying for rain are not celebrating, for these floods are devastating.  The storms, cyclones and flooding are the latest examples of extreme weather to hit australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth, which is considered to be highly vulnerable to climate change. While australians are the largest per capita carbon emitters on the globe, political debate over how to deal with global warming stalled last year after the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, failed to push his carbon trading scheme through parliament. His successor, Julia Gillard, has since pledged to put a price on carbon, but faces strong opposition from Tony abbott, the leader of the conservative Libe  
 PETE POSTLETHWaITE, who died on January 2 aged 64, was marked out by, and blessed with, one of the most remarkable faces of any British actor this past half century.  Equipped with prominent cheekbones and equally conspicuous penetrating eyes, he was able to convey, with the most imperceptible shifts in emphasis, whole worlds of pride, perturbation, suffering, resignation, wonder and warmth. The quiet mournfulness of his flinty physiognomy anchored many of the roles he undertook with a rare quality of humanity, integrity and vulnerability.  at the dawn of his career, the head of Bristol Old Vic drama school advised him that with a face like "a stone archway" he couldn't go wrong. He himself would later concede that he owed much to that "carved out face". Rarely short of work from the moment he left the school in 1970, Postlethwaite grew from being a jobbing actor into a widely admired star - although with typical modesty he declared after a string of high-profile screen successes that he was "not a bankable name, not an a-list star".  He achieved a mainstream breakthrough with his distinctive, linchpin contribution to the 1995 Hollywood thriller The Usual Suspects, in which he played Mr Kobayashi, the lawyer and enforcer of the mysterious Keyser S?ze; and that success underlined the way Postlethwaite could achieve maximum impact with the slenderest of means.  So expressive could he be, in fact, that one of the most peculiarly distinctive aspects of his work on celluloid is how often he featured in sickness and deathbed scenes, where dialogue was kept at a rasping minimum. Examples include acclaimed British films such as Terence Davies's Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), in which he played a brutal patriarch; Brassed Off (1996), in which he was a defiant colliery bandleader; and last year's blockbuster Inception, in which he cropped up briefly as a dying tycoon.  Steven Spielberg famously dubbed Postlethwaite "the best actor in the world" after casting him a dinosaur hunter in the The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The actor's jokily self-effacing explanation of that endorsement was: "I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, 'The thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world'."  While it is hard to claim that Postlethwaite should be placed among the very finest British actors of his generation - not least owing to the fact that he didn't push himself into the front rank - he brought to every role the same degree of scrupulous attention to detail, understatement and instinctive intelligence. If there was a through-line that informed all his playing, it was that he kept his ego out of the limelight. "The first thing you must do is leave 'you' in the dressing room," he counselled. "Don't try and make the character 'you'."  Born on February 16 1946 in industrial Warrington, Cheshire, into a working-class Roman Catholic family, Peter William Postlethwaite was the youngest of four children. His father, William, did a variety of jobs, from wooden barrel-making to working as a school caretaker. In contrast to the brutal post-war working-class world depicted in Distant Voices, Still Lives, Postlethwaite maintained that his was a happy and secure childhood.  as a teenager he attended a boarding seminary, and felt he had a vocation to become a Catholic priest. aged 17, though, he started to see his first plays - Look Back In anger, Murder in the Cathedral and Waiting For Godot - and his thoughts turned instead to acting. Not hailing from a theatrical background, he decided to train first as a teacher - in drama and PE - at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill.  He suffered from an abiding feeling at this stage that the acting life was not for his sort: "Those were the days when you were expected to have a dinner suit and bow tie. It really was 'anyone for tennis?'" he recalled. Eventually, following a brief career teaching at Loreto College, a girls' school in Manchester, he enrolled as a student at the Bristol Old Vic at the relatively mature age of 24, having worked at a sheet-metal factory to try to meet the costs of his tuition.  Following his graduation, he worked in London (particularly at the Royal Court) and in provincial theatres, notably the Liverpool Everyman from 1974, which had been galvanised by a prodigious intake of talent that included Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy, antony Sher - and Julie Walters. He formed a strong attachment with Walters; the pair were lovers in the latter half of the Seventies, and lived a bedsit life in Soho.  Julie Walters, instantly taken by his "extraordinary, mad, impish eyes either side of a big, battered nose and high wide cheekbones", recalls the unpredictable daring of his early turns in her memoirs. Once he was performing in Brecht's Coriolanus when two girls in the audience started to giggle. "He leapt from the stage and aimed a good portion of his monologue at these poor girls, as if they were part of the crowd in the play. They screamed as he approached them and then sat there in petrified silence."  His early stage engagements included performing classics with a company established by Timothy West in Billingham, after which Prunella Scales sent him a telegram saying that he was the best Restoration truck-driver she'd ever worked with.  He worked at the Bristol Old Vic, and at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, where his work took in a notable Duchess of Malfi, starring Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins (1980). and there was stalwart work too at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which he joined in 1982, where his credits included the role of Bottom in a Midsummer Night's Dream during the 1986 season.  Postlethwaite never landed the plum roles at the RSC, though, and it wasn't until his later years - when he undertook a touring Macbeth in 1998, delivered a luminous, quavering Prospero in The Tempest at the Royal Exchange (2007) and then, to more mixed reviews, played King Lear for Rupert Goold at the Liverpool Everyman (2009) - that he showed the world the potency he could bring to the leading parts.  In  
 It seems that, almost by the day, the question of how we source, use and conserve energy is growing more demanding. Now - if we are to believe the politicians - we are on the eve of the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution.  On Tuesday, March 1, The Daily Telegraph and Shell will host the second age of Energy debate at the Telegraph offices in Victoria, central London. With a focus on the key issue of sustainable transport, this debate is your opportunity to question a panel of experts on one of the energy matters that concerns you most.  Sustainable transport is a concept which demands that the access and transport needs of society are met with due regard to human and environmental health. This will necessitate a new mix of technologies, such as electric/hybrid cars and cleaner fuels, but is Britain well-placed to lead the way on low-carbon transport? Will investment in this new technology provide a boost to jobs and trade? and what part should be played by public transport and urban planning initiatives?  The age of Energy debate takes place between 5.30pm and 8.30pm and it will be presented in a Question Time format, which will allow the audience to get to the heart of the transport issues that we all face here in the UK.  The expert panel will comprise Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport; executive vice-president at Shell Mark Gainsborough; Stephen Joseph, chief executive officer of Campaign for Better Transport; and award-winning journalist and broadcaster and associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research andrew Pendleton, whose many areas of expertise include climate change.  If you want to be involved in the age of Energy debate, register now at telegraph.co.uk/ageofenergy.  Key times on March 1  5:30pm registration for a prompt 6pm start for question time.  7:30pm drinks reception until 8:3  
 Face the Facts  Radio 4, 12.30pm  John Waite explains why Northern Ireland Water made so many of its customers suffer over Christmas and into the New Year. If you recall, after the big December freeze the sudden thaw burst water pipes serving thousands of people who were, as we heard in their own words on news bulletins throughout the period, left without running water for up to and even over a week. Bottled water and standpipes were provided but what Waite uncovers is why the provider was so unprepared for a disaster on such a scale. There's also the question of who now pays the bill.  In Denial: Climate on the Couch  Radio 4, 9.00pm  Jolyon Jenkins (so many and various are this man's programmes on Radio 4 any regular listener is bound to wonder when he sleeps) on why, given all the warnings we get about climate change and its effects, so many people seem so unconcerned. People are finding apparently reasonable arguments to justify travelling on planes, not recycling, not listening. This isn't about people who deny climate change. It's about the climate of opinion. The direr the warning, the less its effect. Fear and guilt don't alter habits. He finds out what does. 
 I'M a trained chemical engineer with more than 15 years' experience. I'm Swedish and have worked across Europe and Pakistan - most recently as a project manager at Enercon, the Pakistani government's energy conservation department. I'd now like to work in the UK as a chemical or environmental engineer but am struggling to find a job.  Malik, via email  It is ironic that in the very week UK employers announce thousands of apprenticeships - to tackle skills shortages in engineering, among other things - someone of your experience should write to me unable to find a job, Malik.  Over the past few days, high-profile companies from Centrica to BaE Systems announced plans to hire apprentices to train the next generation of engineers. They warn the ageing demographic in the engineering sector will lead to severe skills gaps. In your case Malik, you seem to be just the sort of person the sector needs, but employers still won't hire you.  according to Paul Gosling, of engineering recruiter allen & York, your situation is not uncommon.  The problem stems, he thinks, from highly-qualified people being too expensive to hire. Employers are turned off by taking on a ?65,000-per-year engineer when they can get a less experienced one with potential for ?30,000, Gosling says. ap  
 'If you're walking down the road and see a poster that said, 'Tonight, Bob Geldof', people wouldn't recoil from that," muses the man himself. "Then 10 yards up the road they'd go, 'Doing what?'" Geldof laughs. "They've forgotten that music is what I do. Everything else is peripheral. The spine of my life is entirely music. I think in terms of it, frame my references to the world through it, articulate myself through it."  Geldof recalls listening to Radio Luxembourg, late at night, during a very unhappy childhood in the Sixties. "age 11, I was struck with the absolute realisation that these boys and girls were articulating other possibilities, other universes, the necessity of change, the desirability of change, the inevitability of change. Here was the language for change, and here was the instrument to implement change. It was a musical eureka moment: the possibility of change."  Geldof became a musician but he also became an agent of real political and cultural change, through his instigation of Band aid, Live aid and relentless campaigning for Third World debt relief and other global poverty issues. With his new wave band, The Boomtown Rats, he briefly topped charts in Britain and Europe in the late Seventies, but he only really achieved worldwide fame as a belligerent, fearless and frequently foul-mouthed charitable activist.  "You know the John Lennon song, Julia: 'when I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind'? Well, I have every opportunity to speak my mind," says Geldof. "If I want to write about economics, I can write for the FT or the Telegraph. I have done! If I want to make a speech about debt reduction, I can make a speech to world leaders. If I want to get on Newsnight and talk about global poverty, I'll be on. What I'm not allowed to do is sing my heart. and that's something everyone needs sometimes."  Geldof has just made an album, called, with self-mocking irony, How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell (released this week by Mercury). It is his first in nine years, and easily his best since the early albums of The Boomtown Rats. alternately intimate and pugnacious, reflective and uplifting, richly melodic, lyrically eloquent, hugely stylistically diverse and bristling with hooks, he seems to have rediscovered his pop nous, his musical mojo. Bob Harris, the veteran Radio 2 DJ, has already called it the "album of the year", and it has put Geldof at number two in the Irish charts, the dizziest heights he has occupied since his all-star, charity singalong Do They Know It's Christmas held the number one spot for five weeks in 1984. "My thing was get inside, have hits, talk about things that were important, change it. But what somehow got lost was the music. Playing live, without any question, is my greatest pleasure. I've got an amazing band that I can relax into, enough people come and see me, out of curiosity, probably, and it is entirely cathartic, I disappear into it."  I have encountered Geldof over the years, and he is almost visibly a happier person now, somehow lighter and less burdened, a state his songs appear to confirm. There are spikey, dark moments but it is a very uplifting album, full of celebrations of the redemptive power of love. "all things considered, my fifties were the best decade for me. You never expect that. I'm at the beginning of my old age, things get easier. The sexual , professional and economic imperatives are less. It's not less important, just less driven."  The last time Geldof released an album, Sex, age and Death, in 2002, it was a brittle, angry, depressed affair. Its chief inspiration seemed to be his "faithless wife" (as he calls her on Popular Songs). Paula Yates left Geldof in 1995 for rock star Michael Hutchence, instigating a tawdry, drug-fuelled drama that left both Yates and Hutchence dead, and Geldof assuming custody of their daughter, Tiger Lily, to raise alongside his own daughters, Fifi, Peaches and Trixi. Geldof 's own mother had died, suddenly, when he was just seven, and the Yates affair seemed to breach a dam of dark emotion. "I've been around a lot of death, in africa and personally, seen too much dying," he says. "all of that stuff, your mum, when you're a kid, it just happens, you get on with it. I don't remember grief for my mum, or bewilderment, so that surges out with all the Paula stuff. Bereavement, absolutely unbound. It was overwhelming, this amorphous mass of loss and pain." Songwriting, he believes, was crucial to his recovery. "The impulse to music is about framing your references to the world. You're trying to flesh out a sensation, find something that is essentially incoherent, certainly inchoate, and make it tangible. Until I'd done that, I couldn't understand what had happened to me."  The new album, then, could be said to celebrate the woman who saw him through tragedy, his long-term girlfriend, the French actress Jeanne Marine. "When you're at your most detestable, most ugly, not capable of responding to another person's emotions, that somebody would stay the course with you tells you there is still something in you that's loveable. and it turns out that all those crappy, corny songs are true. Love is all you need, love is the answer; it's hugely redemptive and powerful, as we all know, except it took me a long time to get there."  The album comes on the end of a period of some personal grief. Geldof's father, Robert, and his sister Chloe (who effectively had to mother him as a teenager), died within three weeks of each other in October.  Geldof speaks very movingly of both, although his acceptance of his father's death at 96, tired of the indignities of ageing, ("my sisters held his hand and kissed him, as I did, but I said 'nothing bad happened here, it's all good stuff'") is very different to his response to his sister's sudden and unexpected passing, aged 69. "That was the worst. Because your siblings are rivals, you support each other, they are the ones who tell you ruthlessly to your face who and what you are. Then that unit is no more, so your mo  
 COMMUNITIES will be offered council tax discounts or cheaper electricity in return for accepting wind farms under government plans to increase significantly their number in Britain.  Charles Hendry, the energy minister, will announce a new approach today to try to encourage residents to voluntarily accept wind farms, rather than "hectoring" them into submission.  Under the plans, business rates paid by owners of wind farms would be chanelled back into the community rather than going to the Treasury.  The money could be used to reduce council tax bills or to invest in local services. Communities could also buy their own wind turbines to run for a profit.  Thousands of turbines will need to be built across the countryside over the next 10 years in order to meet strict climate change targets on renewable energy. However, many of the best sites for onshore wind farms are in areas of natural beauty and their development has in many cases been fiercely opposed by communities.  Mr Hendry said the Labour government's approach of "hectoring" people into accepting wind farms - for example by comparing opponents of the turbines to those who once opposed seat belts - had not worked.  Instead, he believes the Coalition should encourage communities to accept wind farms by ensuring that they brought financial benefits to the area.  Campaign groups said it was naive to expect communities to give up their opposition to the "inefficient technology" simply for the sake of a "bribe".  In the past, the Tories have sided with those who oppose wind farms because of the visual impact of the 300ft turbines on the countryside. Mr Hendry insisted the new approach would ensure   
 CLIMaTE change sceptics are "playing a reckless game of roulette" with the future of their grandchildren, the Prince of Wales told a European Union conference on global warming yesterday.  Sharing a platform with the most senior officials in Brussels, the Prince attacked those who "corrode" the EU's environmental policies by denying "the vast body of scientific evidence" that climate change was caused by industrial activity.  "I would ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they failed their future; that they ignored all the warning signs," he said. "Will such people be held accountable for the absolute refusal to countenance a precautionary approach, for this plays a most reckless game of roulette with the future inheritance of those who come after us?"  The Prince accused critics of using conspiracy theories to undermine the authority of experts and environmental campaigners, such as himself.  "Their suggestion that hundreds of scientists and those who accept their dispassionate evidence, including myself, are somehow unconsciously biased, creates the implication that many of us are, somehow, secretly conspiring to undermine and deliberately destroy the entire capitalist system," he said.  Earning the audience's applause, the Prince called on the EU to "make it cool to have less stuff" by winning over consumers to their policies.  "Can I ask if you will be courageous enough to seize the moment, set Europe on a co  
 THE polar bear population could plunge with climate change, according to a study that shows females are giving birth to fewer cubs due to the loss of sea ice.  Researchers at the University of alberta studied how melting sea ice in the 1990s affected breeding of the bears. The females hunt seals on the ice in spring and summer to build up energy for autumn and winter when they give birth.  The study found the early melting of the ice made it more difficult for the bears to hunt seals and build up energy.  In the early 1990s 28 per cent of pregnant polar bears in the Hudson Bay region failed to have even a single cub.  The study, published in Nature Communications, found that if spring comes one month earlier than in the 1990s, 40 to 73 per cent of pregnant female polar bears will not reproduce.  The polar bear population of western Hudson Bay is about 900, down from 1,200 in the previous decade. 
 THE European Commission is to demand direct taxation powers to generate one third of the EU budget by 2020 under proposals that will impose ?3billion a year in "stealth taxes" on Britons.  The measure would add an extra tax burden to the average British family of more than ?200 a year for the EU financial period 2013 to 2020.  Janusz Lewandowski, the European budget commissioner, wants tax-raising powers to shift EU funding from national government transfers to taxation on ene  
 BRISTOL and Glasgow will join the ranks of the UK's "super cities", poised to deliver business growth and job creation, an analysis has forecast.  The two locations will join Newcastle, London, Leeds, Brighton and Liverpool as the business hubs of the next decade, with small firms and entrepreneurs set to spawn development in niche industries, a report by HSBC Commercial Banking suggested.  Made-in-Britain goods will make a comeback, with manufacturing enjoying a major revival, the report claimed. The upbeat predictions bring a glimmer of hope to gloomy manufacturing figures published yesterday.  Jacques-Emmanuel Blanchet, head of HSBC Commercial Banking, said: "Out of recessions come new trends and this report crystallises how adaptable entrepreneurs and small businesses are shaping a new business landscape."  Bristol is set to become a centre of advanced manufacturing, while Glasgow will become known for renewable energy, the report claimed.  Plastronics and photonics are among the hi-tech markets set to contribute to Britain's manufacturing resurgence, the report said. Many local businesses were aware of potential growth industries in their area, even if such technologies were not recognised nationally, the study added.  The Telegraph  analysis: industries that will bring about resurgence  In pictures: the seven 'super cities'  telegraph.co.uk/finance 
 BRITaIN is at "high risk" of energy price shocks in the short term, with a dependence on imports making it just as vulnerable as Uganda, according to new research.  Maplecroft, the risk-analysis firm, has found that the UK is one of the most exposed developed nations and is more likely to suffer supply disruption than France, Germany or the US.  Only Italy, Spain, Greece and Japan are at greater risk than Britain in the short   
 SIR - Germany's decision to scrap nuclear power by 2022 is ridiculous. Germany does not regularly suffer magnitude 8.9 earthquakes like Japan.  Nuclear power is a good intermediate step between fossil fuel and renewables, which are still in their infancy.  Sam Pyne Westbury, Wiltshire  SIR - Ellis Field (Letters, May 31) is right to say that nuclear power does not suffer from the weaknesses of all renewables. Indeed its strengths lie in the areas where renewables are weak: reliability of energy supply, need for back-up and the number of power lines needed.  Safety is axiomatic. Modern reactor design presumes "passive safety": autonomic shut-down in the case of a fault and natural convective cooling that does not require external power.  The present programme for a 37-fold increase in wind power is a Shirley Temple dream for Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, but a nightmare to the rest of us. Richard Phillips Wickham Heath, Berkshire 
 BRITaIN needs more television gardening programmes to cater for the increasing number of people who want to grow their own fruit and vegetables, according to a presenter of Gardener's World.  Speaking at the Telegraph Hay Festival, Carol Klein said: "It is seen as a minority interest and therefore only deserves a certain amount of airtime, when in fact I think it is very major. There are 11million gardeners in this country and nearly everybody has something to do   
 THE European Commission has spent more than ?8million on private jet travel, holiday resorts and cocktail parties, an investigation has found.  Commissioners travelled in limousines, stayed in five-star hotels and bought gifts including Tiffany jewellery as their governments faced savage budget cuts and rising EU taxes.  an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into spending by the EU executive has shown that more than (EURO)7.5million (?6.6million) was used on private jet travel for commissioners between 2006 and last year. Commissioners stayed at resorts in locations as far-flung as Papua New Guinea, Ghana and Vietnam and spent (EURO)300,000 on cocktail parties, including an event in amsterdam costing (EURO)75,000 which was described as "a night filled with wonder like no other".  The Commission spent thousands hiring orchestras to play at parties, while guest speakers at its events were presented with expensive gifts, including cufflinks, fountain pens and jewellery.  a further ?118,000 was paid for limousines to chauffeur commissioners between official engagements.  Conservative ministers and MEPs said the commission was acting "like a medieval monarchy", days after it demanded a budget increase of 4.9 per cent which would cost Britons ?3billion a year.  David Lidington, the Europe minister, said the figures proved that the demands could not be countenanced until the commission reduced its own budget.  "Taxpayers across Europe are facing tough decisions about their own housekeeping budgets and its time for the commission to look long and hard and its own spending priorities," he said.  "any evidence of extravagance and waste will damage the standing  
 SIR - On Tuesday I picked and ate my first ripe whinberry (bilberry) of the year in Yarner Wood, on the edge of Dartmoor.  This is at least a month earlier than in years past, and must be yet another sign of the changing seasons and climate.  John Pollard  Bovey Tracey, Devon 
 CaROLINE LUCaS, Britain's only Green MP, wants a return to the "wisdom" of the wartime generation to fight climate change, the recession and obesity.  During an impassioned debate in the Telegraph Tent at Hay, she said the ethos of "Keep Calm and Carry On" had helped a generation through the difficulties of the Second World War. In the same way, she said the current generation must work together to fight climate change.  "Climate change is a matter of security," she said. "Carbon rationing has to be part of the solution, which means investment in public transport, learning to make do and mend and saving fuel." 
 air Passenger Duty (aPD) should be scrapped in favour of a tax on hotel stays, the chief executive of Ryanair has suggested. Michael O'Leary said a ?1 per night tax on rooms could recoup a significant proportion of what is now raised by aPD, while cutting costs for British holidaymakers and encouraging more foreign travellers to visit Britain.  "Visitor numbers to Britain have fallen from 33million to 29.5million since 2007," Mr O'Leary said, in an interview with Telegraph Travel. "That represents around ?2billion in lost revenue each year, going by Visit Britain's own statistics, or roughly equivalent to what aPD brings in.  "I understand that the Government needs to raise tax, and aPD has nothing to do with emissions - it's just a tax grab. a more sensible way of raising money would be a tax on hotel rooms. There are far more hotel beds than plane seats, and it would raise money from domestic and business travellers, too. No one will notice ?1 on top of their hotel room, but ?12 or more on top of a plane ticket is putting off travellers."  Hotel occupancy taxes are imposed by authorities in the United States, but would be resisted by hoteliers here. "any additional taxes on accommodation would be unnecessary and ill-timed," said Simon Vincent, who manages Hilton hotels in Europe.  "The UK hotel industry is subject to the second-highest rate of VaT in the EU, and we face strong competition from our European counterparts with their lower rates of VaT. This is a time when we should be supporting our tourism industry and providing more compelling reasons for people to visit rather than suggesting additional taxes," Mr Vincent added.  The Government is due to conclude its consultation on the future of aviation tax on June 17. among the options it is considering are an increase in aPD on shorthaul flights - in order to fund a reduction on tax on longer journeys; the extension of the tax to cover private jets; and the scrapping of the controversial banding system used to calculate aPD payments.  Passengers currently pay between ?12 and ?24 on all short-haul flights from Britain, and between ?60 and ?170 on all medium-haul and long-haul journeys. Under the banding system - based on the distance from London to the capital city of the destination - anyone flying from Britain to Hawaii will contribute less than someone visiting Barbados, even though Hawaii is 3,000 miles farther away.  Last month Carolyn McCall, chief executive of easyJet, claimed that any changes to aPD in favour of long-haul travellers would see Britain's annual GDP fall by ?2.6billion, force 77,000 people out of work and result in a large rise in CO2 emissions.  However, Julie Southern, chief commercia  
 his is a picture of the next prime minister. Her name is Ellie ashton, she comes from Monmouth, and she is 13. I imagine she will be running the country by the time an election rolls around. She comes to Hay every year and tells me she was born a climate change campaigner. "I hope to have read all the austens by the time I am 15." Has she read a Brief History of Time? "I dip into it from time to time, but it is what I call a 'sitting on the loo' book."  Ellie is the only one in her class who doesn't have a PlayStation and a mobile, because of their impact on the environment. She is teased a bit for it, but she doesn't mind. Instead, she plays bass guitar and climbs trees. "and I love children, because I have grown up around them." With her frightening intellect, she could have fooled me. 
 My best hour at the Telegraph Hay Festival was spent not listening to one of the many literary superstars on display, but talking in the Telegraph tent with a group of eager Welsh teenagers about careers in writing. So it is great that the festival's organisers are about to increase their work with young people dramatically.  Extraordinarily, in this supposedly dumbed down age, Hay brings tens of thousands of people every year to a wontedly wet field in wildest Wales to talk about ideas. But the young people who come are usually the children of those who care about books anyway. So from next spring, the festival is to take its mind-expanding mission to schools in the depressingly disadvantaged areas that still dot the principality.  The Scribblers programme will bring 10,000 pupils, aged 12 or 15, to universities around Wales for a day of meeting and talking with well-known authors, having their horizons widened at ages when they are making crucial choices about their future education. These "Hay days" will concentrate on climate change and other environmental issues, as "the biggest challenges they are likely to face in their lives".  The Duchess of Cornwall turned up to launch the programme - and to read Dog Loves Books to children at the festival - as well as stocking up on chocolate brownies. as patron of the National Literacy Trust, it's very much her bag, while all that greenery (and perhaps the brownies) will doubtless please her old man, too. 
 NOT even Boeing could deny that airbus has had a barnstormer of a week at the Paris air Show, racking up record orders day after day.  airbus executives have been stunned by the huge success of the fuel-efficient a320neo (an acronym for "new engine option"), which the European plane maker had deliberated for years whether to bother building.  The only thing missing for airbus this week was a substantial agreement with an airline to buy a batch of a380s - the European company's flagship and the world's biggest passenger plane.  The a380, after all, did not have the best start to the week - one of the enormous wings of the demonstration plane had a close encounter with a building as it taxied into the show on Sund  
 Schumacher's Big Society  RaDIO 4, 8.00PM  Mellifluous environmentalist Jonathon Porritt presents this tour of the BBC archives in search of material on the late Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher, a German economist whose ideas are said to have inspired David Cameron's "Big Society" drive. In a nutshell, Schumacher believed that man shouldn't become a slave to technology; that the world cannot rely on non-renewable energy; that large societies would function better if they were broken down into smaller, autonomous units; and, perhaps most famously, "that there is more to life than GDP". Porritt digs up all kinds of treasures, including a neverbefore-aired recording of one of Schumacher's public lectures and a clip that suggests Margaret Thatcher was, at least up to a point, a fan.  Political incorrectness abounds in Taboo be Doo (R4, 10.30am) - a documentary about some of the 20th century's more risqu? songs, presented by Terence Blacker and with pithy contributions from Dillie Keane, Kit Hesketh Harvey and Steve Knightley. Elsewhere, listeners wishing to transport themselves to a muddy field in Somerset are spoilt for choice, with Glastonbury coverage dominating BBC radio's musical output. To pick a handful: adam and Joe (BBC 6 Music, 10.00am) present their jovial brunch show live from the festival; Sean and Cerys (BBC 6 Music, 8.00pm) review the day's musical events; and Radio 2 in Concert sees Stuart Maconie and Steve Lamacq (R2, 10.00pm) present highlights of tonight's set from Coldplay. 
 Wen Jiaboa, the Chinese prime minister, will hold talks with David Cameron and other ministers today. Our concerns with human rights in the world's second biggest economy will doubtless be raised. Beijing's decision to release ai Weiwei, the dissident Chinese artist, and Hua Jia, another prominent human rights activists, to coincide with the visit makes such a discussion inevitable.  But the release of the two dissidents suggests that China's rulers are not wholly insensitive to western opinion on this issue. However, that should not lead the West into the mistake of thinking that hectoring the Chinese on human rights is anything other than counter-productive. This is a regime that will instinctively kick back against such outside pressure. and the more powerful it becomes economically, the harder that kick will be. This was recognised by Hillary Clinton when she made her first visit to Beijing as Secretary of State and insisted that human rights "can't interfere" with issues such as the economy, climate change and security.  Mrs Clinton was right and it makes sense for this country to adopt a similarly realistic posture. The big topics that should dominate today's discussions are trade, the plight of the euro and the global economic recovery. In addition, China can be an important partner in the global battle against terrorism. It has its own experience of Islamic fundamentalism and could prove a crucial ally in the years ahead.  These are the issues that should define our future relations with this economic powerhouse. It is all too aware of our distaste for its harsh treatment of dissent but that should not be allowed to get in the way of a close and constructive relationship that works to the benefit of both countries. 
 CHINa will support European economies facing a financial crisis by lending them yet more billions, the Chinese premier has said.  Wen Jiabao made the pledge as he arrived in Britain for a visit aimed at deepening the commercial ties between Britain and China.  China's fast-expanding economy means its government has huge financial surpluses, money it has lent to Western governments by buying their bonds. Most investments have been in US bonds, but Beijing has also lent to European nations. Mr Wen said that would continue as eurozone nations such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland struggle to raise money on financial markets.  Before arriving in Britain, Mr Wen was in Hungary, where he agreed to lend to the government in Budapest.  He told the BBC: "We reached agreement on the Chinese government buying a certain amount of government debts of bonds on the Hungarian side - that is China len  
 BRITaIN'S biggest energy companies will be handed a ?7billion windfall by government plans to boost "green" power generation, analysts have said.  Power companies which are already imposing sharp increases on household energy bills are set to benefit from measures to encourage the building of new nuclear power stations and windfarms, according to a report by Credit Suisse.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, will tomorrow set out plans to encourage low-carbon energy generation. The electricity market reform White Paper will offer financial incentives to low-carbon generators, guaranteeing them a fixed price for their power above the market price.  The incentives will be funded by households though their power bills.  according to the report, higher prices will bring in an extra ?24 billion for power companies between 2013 and 2020. Their costs are forecast to rise by ?17billion, giving a profit of ?7billion.  Companies' profits will be determined by the level at which the carbon "floor price" is set, something the bank said was subject to "unc  
 aLMOST half of all applications for onshore wind farms were rejected last year, as local communities united to oppose turbines amid concern about their noise and effect on the landscape.  Freedom of Information figures showed 32 applications out of a total 66 for onshore wind farms were turned down for planning permission last year, the lowest number of successful applications since 2005.  In 2009 a third of applications were refused and in 2005 it was just 29 per cent, according to the figures obtained by the commercial law firm McGrigors.  Campaigners say the rise is prompted by growing fears about the impact of wind farms - and the accompanying pylons - on tourism and house prices. a couple are currently taking a wind farm to the High Court claiming problems with the noise from turbines.  a recent study found green measures, such as subsidies for wind farms, are adding 30 per cent to bills, even though protesters claim that the technology is inefficient.  Trish Pemberton, of the National association of Wind action Groups, said many beautiful areas were facing a significant increase in applications.  Yet wind farms only generate electricity for a third of the time.  "The true facts about wind farms are becoming more publicly known and people are starting to realise the impact they have on people's lives," she said.  "People are just beginning to realise what is going on and they are outraged."  ambitious government aims for renewables to meet a third of electricity demand by 2020 mean thousands of new onshore wind farms need to be built because it is the cheapest and quickest option.  McGrigors partner Jacqueline Harris said town halls refusing planning because of "local interests" could derail climate change targets.  She said the problem would get worse with the Localism Bill, which gives more planning power back to communities. 
 as cities and nations around the world battle to reduce traffic congestion, cut carbon emissions and improve air quality, the UK has quietly stolen a march on its global competitors by introducing technology thatlooks set to transform bus services to a greener, cleaner generation of low-carbon vehicles.  Behind the success lies a unique partnership between two established technology pioneers, alexander Dennis Limited (aDL) and the advanced power management and energy systems division of global corporation BaE Systems.  Together, Britain's biggest bus and coach builder, which is currently storming new export markets in the USa, Canada, Hong Kong and New Zealand, and BaE Systems have developed a range of hybrid-electric buses that are achieving 35 per cent fuel and CO2 reductions.  almost 150 are already operating in London, Reading, Thames Valley, Oxford, East Yorkshire and Manchester, so far saving almost one million litres of fuel - and reducing CO2 emissions by seven tonnes daily. These figures will increase 130 per cent when a further 200 take to the streets of Newcastle, Sheffield, Glasgow and Edinburgh over the next nine months.  The aDL-BaE Systems partnership began in 2007 when they agreed an exclusive deal to develop hybrid technology for low-floor, easyaccess buses, the lightweight type that dominate British and European markets.   "Early on we recognised that with BaE Systems' expertise in hybrid power management systems and our know-how in the design and packaging of buses, we had a unique opportunity to bring something radically different to market - and to tackle the green transport agenda head-on," says Colin Robertson, CEO of aDL.  "Our partnership with BaE Systems has been a great success and we are now Europe's leading supplier of hybrid-electric buses, leading the world not only in fuel and CO2 reductions, but in terms of reliability.  "Bus operators have demanding schedules, monitored stringentlyby the powers that be, and the one thing they need is a reliable bus that does what it says on the tin. Our hybrids are now achieving 98 per cent  reliability, which is on a par with conventional diesels and this has been a critical factor in their acceptability."  Robertson is the first to admit that the ?100,000 premium on a double-deck hybrid, lifting the standard price from circa ?200,000 to ?300,000, remainsahurdlebutbelievesthatwith government support production volumes can be moved towards a level that will enable aDL and BaE Systems to close the price differential significantly.  He says: "The government introduced various green bus funds that provided gap funding and this has stimulated early hybrid purchases, reducing the risk for operators. It has helped them to see at first hand that these buses really do make a difference.  "If you are running 8,000 buses, as some of the big operators do, and the penny drops that you have the potential to reduce your fuel bill by 35 per cent, suddenly the premium takes on a new dimension. add to this the reliability factor and it's a different ball game."  Robertson's aim now is to drive the payback on a reduced premium to about seven years, which means that operators, who typically run vehicles in the UK for 12 to ISyears, will break even on their capital cost in year seven and reap the benefits for the next five to eight years.  He says: "It's a challenge but we can do it. The issue now is that we need continued government support to stimulate purchases and increase volumes. We are in the vanguard of this technology and despite what is said about potential hydrogen power, the reality is that it is a very long way off- and at around ?lm per bus isn't anywhere near commercially viable.  "In the medium term, say over the next ten years, hybrid is the practical solution. If we were a car company successfully introducing a vehicle 35 per cent more fuel and CO2 efficient the whole world would be crowing about Britain's success. Government would be doing everything possible to support our efforts and to promote the potential internationally."  This is a sentiment echoed by Rob Lindsay, director of power and energy management, BaE Systems. "The government's support for hybrid technology through the green bus funds was a fantastic launch pad for British technology and know-how, and really made a difference," he says. "What we have now is a unique opportunity for the government to provide some reduced level of financial assistance to help maintain that momentum, and enable the flow of these vehicles into the market to continue and therefore drive costs down and improve the economic payback."  BaE Systems' goals for the bus market do not stop at the existing hybrid-electric propulsion systems. Plans are already well advanced to further reduce fuel consumption and emissions through increased vehicle electrification and improved power management, leading eventually to an all-electric vehicle. Lindsay says: "T  
 Helping a  
 For hauliers, the ability to offer customers a green transport option can be vital in clinching a deal.  Many hauliers' clients now look closely for green credentials as they must meet environmental commitments given to their own customers and shareholders. The business case for going green is now indisputable, but how do hauliers prove that their environmental claims are not just "greenwashing"?  Eurotunnel suggests a way that can benefit hauliers and their customers - and it can supply figures to prove it. according to John Keefe, head of communications for Eurotunnel: "Using Eurotunnel's Shuttle service to transport a lorry across the Channel produces CO2 emissions that are 18 times lower than sending the same lorry on a ferry."  He cites the average CO2 emissions per freight vehicle on Eurotunnel as 8.8kg, compared with 158kg for vehicles sent on a Calais to Dover ferry.  What's more, Eurotunnel does not emit sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides - all particularly harmful to public health - which are a feature of maritime transportation.  Eurotunnel is keen to emphasise that its statistics are independently verified. "The figures come from a study by specialist consultancy JMJ Conseil, appointed by Eurotunnel, and validated by the French environment and energy management agency (aDEME)," says Keefe.  Hauliers can easily check how much CO2 they can save by using Eurotunnel's Shuttles, as the freight section of its website gives access to a carbon counter (see www.eurotunnelfreight. com/counter/). This helps customers to calculate howmuch CO2 is saved according to the number of lorries they send on the Eurotunnel freight service.  "Hauliers can use the figures not only to demonstrate their own commitment to addressing environmental concerns, but also to sell their own services to end users," says Keefe. "Many end customers now have their own green pledges to fulfil, and the reduced carbon footprint of freight transport can count towards that."  One of the main reasons Eurotunnel beats ferry services in terms of carbon emissions is  
 a WINTRY Watford seemed an unlikely place for a spot of glad-handing when the man tipped to become China's next premier visited the UK earlier this year.  However, Li Keqiang (pronounced "Lee Ker-chang") was there to see the UK's pioneering Building Research Establishment (BRE).  as the man about to become second-in-command of a nation that plans to build the equivalent of a new Chicago every year until 2030, Mr Li didn't have to feign interest as he inspected a zero-carbon home, a house built from recycled steel, and a modernised Victorian stable block.  In the next 20 years, China plans to urbanise as many as 300m of its rural people, driving a near-insatiable demand for energy and materials.  Fast-forward six months and BRE was signed up by the Chinese to create a ?100m, 4.8m sq ft innovation park along similar lines in Beijing, together with Vanke, China's largest property developer.  The Chinese park aims to adapt BRE's research for the skyscrapers and climate variations of the Chinese market.  "Britain is arguably leading the world i  
 ERE'S a statistic that probably keeps China's leaders up at night: last year, China became more dependent on imported oil than the United States.  In the past decade, China has doubled the amount of oil it consumes but only marginally raised its own oil production. The result is that China now depends on foreign oil for 55pc of its needs.  and the future is not looking rosy. Even though 14m new cars are hitting the roads each year, only 5pc of Chinese are car owners.  There are over a billion people still to learn to drive, and even if you assume that only a minority of them will actually buy a car, China's thirst for petrol is looking ominous. We believe the number of cars on the road is going to nearly triple to 185m by 2020.  Electric cars are one solution, although Chinese companies have had the same difficulties with the technology that has troubled car companies in the West, and biofuels might be another.  In Brazil, ethanol is already providing over half of all motor fuel. In the US, it is powering almost 9pc of cars, up from 3pc in 2005. In fact, american petrol consumption has shrunk in that period by 121,000 barrels a day.  So far, however, ethanol has not been much used in China, which needs corn to feed people, not to convert into fuel. China is already a net importer of food and does not have any grain to spare. Grain consumption is rising by 2pc each year and there are questions over whether China will be able to keep meeting its domestic needs, as more and more grain-fed meat becomes part of the national diet. But what it does have is agricultural waste, almost a billion tons a year, most of which is currently burned.  
 Deep beneath the ocean floor, drilling through thousands of feet of solid rock in extremes of temperature and under tonnes of pressure: the task of recovering fossil fuels has always been challenging, and never more so than today.  "With traditional fields in decline and new reserves increasingly being found in remote locations, extraction is becoming more difficult. In the past, the UK's oil and gas was extracted from the relatively shallow North Sea," says Neil Gordon, chief executive of Subsea UK, which represents the interests of the subsea supply chain. "That's still happening, but new reservoirs in the deep waters west of Shetland require the highest level of technical expertise and cutting-edge technologies to bring them to refineries."  Globally, this push to explore in remote areas, and often in pristine environments such as the arctic, means conservation is now a top priority. Civil unrest in oil-rich Middle Eastern nations has also thrust the issue of supply towards the top of the political agenda. Prior to the current drop in oil prices, impacted by developments in Libya, prices had soared in recent months. all this flux is set against a backdrop of deadlines for lowering carbon emissions.  With such challenges, perhaps it is no surprise that the key issue facing UK oil and gas firms is their ability to attract appropriately skilled staff, according to the latest Labour Market Intelligence Survey commissioned by Opito and Skills Development Scotland.  "Without the right people the issues facing the industry cannot be tackled," explains Mike Duncan of Opito, the UK oil and gas industry's focal point for skill and workforce development. "Even if everything else is up in the air - the price of oil, the stability of governmental tax regimes and uncertainty about supply - there should be a stable investment in skills."  a predicted skills shortage, caused by an ageing workforce and too few young people taking STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at school and university, makes this even more crucial. Opito predicts that the oil and gas sector will need 10,000 more employees over the next five years, simply to meet demand. But it could yet adjust this figure downwards, due to an unexpected tax increase levied by the Government on UK oil producers at the last Budget. "It has hit investor confidence and may mean planned projects are put on hold," says Duncan.  Oil & Gas UK, the trade association for the offshore industry, has said the tax increase will reduce momentum in the industry. Mike Tholen, its economics director, points out that a report by consultancy firm Deloitte showed that North Sea drilling activity fell by 52 per cent between april and June this year, compared to the same period in 2010. "This is not what we would expect," he says. "It is increasingly apparent that there is a link between this and the tax levy."  He is pleased that the Treasury has already signalled a concessionary stance, even tweaking the tax levy in July to lighten the burden on start-up companies and those breaking new ground in exploration and developing fields.  Charles Hendry, Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), says: "The Government is committed to supporting investment, which is why the Chancellor announced at the Budget that we would work with industry to consider the case for new categories of field qualifying for field allowance. as part of this discussion, we have already increased the Ring Fenced Ex  
 Organisations and companies in the oil and gas sector are working hard to ensure that they will have the talent they need in the future. Here, we profile three initiatives that stimulate young people to think about oil and gas as a career, and ensure that students receive the right training to join the workforce.  SCHOOLS CHaLLENGE  Imagine you are part of a team searching for undiscovered reservoirs of oil and gas in a remote corner of the world. You have a strict budget, but you must acquire and interpret seismic surveys, secure licensing rights, rent rigs and sell shares in your company.  Pupils who take part in PetroChallenge are being asked to do just that. Its twoday events around the UK, aimed at 16- to 18-year-olds, are sponsored and run by Opito, the industry's focal point for skills, learning and workforce development.  additional funding from Chevron, Taqa, BP and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) this year brought the events to the Shetland and Western Isles for the first time.  The aim of PetroChallenge is to give students studying maths, science, engineering, IT and business-related subjects first-hand experience of what it is like to be part of an oil and gas company. The pupils work in "virtual" companies on a computer-based simulation programme.  "They are given maps of certain areas and are asked to work out where oil might be found by using clues such as rock formations," says Diane Johnston, skills and learning development coordinator at Opito.  Pupils can also find out about the job options open to them in the oil and gas industry, and discover how skills they are developing at school can be applied in real life. "PetroChallenge is meant to spark the imagination, and we are on hand at the event to offer any further information about careers," adds Johnston.  POSTGRaDUaTE SCHOLaRSHIPS  Britain is a world leader in the subsea sector and specialised engineers are already greatly in demand. From this September, Subsea UK, which represents the subsea supply chain, is offering scholarships to encourage students to stay on at university and study for postgraduate degrees in subsea engineering. The scholarships are offered at a number of universities across the country, including Cranfield, Strathclyde, aberdeen and Newcastle.  "Over the next three years, 10,000 more people are going to be needed in the industry, in many different disciplines," says Patrick O'Brien, group director of strategic business and marketing for industry solutions provider Wood Group Kenny, and a board member at Subsea UK. "With student fees going up, many people nearing the end of their undergraduate courses are unable to consider postgraduate degrees. These scholarships enable them to study subsea engineering and go on to employment in the sector, helping the industry get the talent it needs."  The scholarships are open to UK students, and study can be full- or part-time, the latter allowing candidates to continue working. Those with an engineering background who are looking to switch careers can also apply.  JOBS FOR THE GIRLS  In hard hats and orange boiler suits, the young women from Meldrum, Ellon, Huntly and Turr  
 Women are still in a minority in the oil and gas sector, making up only around 20 per cent of the entire workforce, but a growing number are reaching senior positions and helping others to follow in their footsteps. We talk to three women who have broken through the glass ceiling.  LOUISE KINGHaM 40, chief executive of the Energy Institute  Louise Kingham, OBE FEI, has been chief executive of the Energy Institute for the past eight years. She previously headed up the Institute of Petroleum and the Institute of Energy.  "I didn't expect to go into this field when I was studying for my original business degree in Design and Media Management at Ealing College of art. But then I was given the opportunity to do some marketing and development work for the Institute of Energy and I was hooked. Energy is fundamental to life and affects societies everywhere. Whether you are involved with domestic supply or interested in global energy policies, there is no likelihood of ever getting bored.  "I haven't got enough digits to count off the number of times when, in my early days as a chief executive, at the age of 27, I was mistaken for my own personal assistant and expected to bring the coffee. But that's history, and things have really changed for the better over the past 10 years or so. There are now quite a few women in senior roles here at the Energy Institute.  "I have been on rigs in the North Sea, and attitudes have shifted there too, in my experience - away from a macho culture to one that is very accepting of women. The last time I made a visit, a team of women from angola were there, training to be operators on oil rigs back home. They were warmly welcomed.  "I think there is now a problem with perception rather than reality for women working in the oil and gas sector. It is our job to make sure that women realise this sector needs their talents, on their terms. I have two small children, aged five years and 18 months, and I have remained in my post thanks to flexible working. It's perfectly possible to have both a family and a career in the energy sector, if that is what you want.  "In my experience, more women are coming into this sector because they are concerned about issues such as climate change, and they want to be part of the solution. But I don't think they want to be singled out for special treatment through quotas and targets. They hope to make it on their own merits, and there is no reason why they can't go right to the very top."  RUTH CaIRNIE age undisclosed, vice president, group strategy and competitive intelligence, at Royal Dutch Shell  In her current role with Royal Dutch Shell, Ruth Cairnie is based in The Hague. Previously, from 2005 to 2010, she was responsible for Shell's global Commercial Fuels business. She is also the mother of four grown-up children.  "I joined Shell Research straight after leaving the University of Cambridge, where I had been doing research into cosmology and black holes. I had previously graduated with a joint-honours degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Bristol. I was looking to continue doing high-quality research, but with a more practical application, and Shell Research was right at the cutting edge in what I wanted to do.  "It was a very male-dominated working environment at Shell Research back then, but I was used to that, having studied physics at university where women were in the minority. Throughout most of my career I have been the only woman in the team. It is only recently, over the past five years, that I have found myself working more often in teams with other women. But it hasn't made a difference to how I have been accepted or made to feel included in the workplace. I have always felt valued and able to contribute in the fullest possible way. Indeed, next month I take over as executive vice president, with overall responsibility for Shell's strategy and planning at group level.  "In terms of the battle for talent, we do need to ensure that we offer an attractive work environment for women and for those with different backgrounds. Diversity in the workplace makes for much more robust decision-making and aids a better understanding of our customer base.  "It's important to get the next generation of women seriously considering oil and gas as a career option. In my role as an ambassador I visit universities to talk about my experiences  
 Men and women who make maps have always had a vitally important job to do. In past centuries, the accuracy of hand-drawn charts showing shipping lanes and underwater hazards meant the difference between a safe passage and a wrecked vessel with significant loss of life.  Today, cartographers working in the oil and gas industry no longer work at the drawing board. Instead, they use sophisticated software to create maps showing both the surface and sub-surface of the seas around the UK.  What they produce helps determine the location of oil and gas platforms with pinpoint accuracy, or indicates where exploration teams should start drilling for new reservoirs of fossil fuels.  With so much information available, selecting what to include in a nautical chart has become a skill in itself. Map-makers are now tasked with interpreting data and survey information, and deciding what is relevant and what is not.  Peter Jones, head of profession for the Mapping and Charting Group at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO), says: "You still need to bring human skills to bear. The old adage that what you leave out is as important as what you put in is even more critical these days. We've gone from a data-poor environment to the other extreme - we've got too much information now."  "What was once referred to as marine cartography would be defined today as geographic information systems (GIS)," adds Peter Doheny, GIS manager in the Energy Development Unit at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). "GIS is a digital mapping system that links maps to data, allowing both the production of traditional maps and spatial data analysis."  Remote sensing and survey techniques provide a wealth of information that the cartographer has to analyse and prioritise. "Cartography offshore doesn't just include map-making, but also covers a multitude of other skills, from understanding how the survey sensors acquire information about the sea bed, and interpreting information and bringing all the survey data together, to understanding the different ways information can be projected onto maps," says Jonathan Everest, deliverables surveyor for marine solutions firm Offshore Marine Management.  "The positioning of offshore facilities needs to be as accurate as possible, to within four inches. Inaccurate positioning of structures on the sea bed could result in having to re-engineer newly installed pipelines. Whether it is the position of a cable, pipeline, wreck or sea-bed feature, without maps detailing this information, accidents would occur."  a background in GIS is a distinct advantage for aspiring map-makers, and today, according to Jones, most recruits are graduates. "The typical disciplines are GIS, geography, geology and environmental sciences. Cartography as a branch of science is not widely available in UK educational institutions. It's not seen as sexy enough."  Everest studied Marine Geography at Cardiff University in the Nineties. He says, "It wasn't specific to what I do now, but it gave me a broad understanding of the marine environment and how we interact with the oceans."  Recent graduate Sam Gillchrest, 22, began working at the UKHO nine months ago, as a trainee cartographer. He will soon finish an 18-week in-house training course that will qualify him to produce his own charts. "I have a marine background and was drawn to the area because I'm an RNLI lifeboat navigator," says Gillchrest, who studied geography, GIS and remote sensing at the University   
 IT seems clear that the UK is lacking in confidence right now. Reigniting that confidence will be key to bringing about the economic upturn that we all wish to see.  Of course, the retail industry in particular and business as a whole have had a tough few weeks.  However, it is important to remember that the current state of affairs is not new. The economic downturn began in 2008 and has been with us ever since.  When we entered the recession, many predicted that Sainsbury's, with our focus on quality and value, would suffer as consumers flocked to budget retailers in a singleminded attempt to save money. Instead, we flourished, consistently reporting strong, market-beating growth.  What we have seen is that, while people were feeling the pinch, they were not prepared to sacrifice quality or their ethical beliefs. as a result Fairtrade has grown at a record rate over the past few years, as have sales of RSPCa Freedom Food and MSC-certified fish.  Consumers began shopping smartly, reducing their costs or offsetting inflation by shopping through the ranges, content to add "basics" products to their baskets alongside "Taste the Difference". More recently, we've seen a trend towards smaller weekly shops and more frequent top-ups, as people plan their shopping more carefully and seek to reduce waste.  With this long period of austerity and uncertainty as a backdrop, how, then, do we inject confidence back into UK consumers to get our economy moving again? addressing rising costs would be a good place to start. Energy prices are going up, so too are public transport and fuel costs. Fuel is a particularly tough area as, with 80pc of the pump price going to the Treasury, customers feel - with some justification - that they are paying far more than they should.  all businesses should do everything they can to keep prices as low as possible and government must play its part in this, avoiding further tax rises or legislation which burdens business with costs.  Job creation is also key. When people feel uncertain about their future, they cut back and save more, just in case the worst should happen. The Government's growth strategy highlights the retail sector as a key source of employment growth. at Sainsbury's, we have created over 13,000 jobs in the past two years and, thanks to our ambitious expansion plans, we will create a further 20,000 by 2014. Many of these jobs will be taken up by young people, setting them on the path to a promising career.  By creating jobs such as these, we can reassure the public that, although times are tough, there is reason to be hopeful for the future.  However, businesses also need reassurance from government if they are g  
 Thame, in Oxfordshire, makes an unlikely battleground. The small market town is a symphony of saltglazed brick and old shop fronts, wobbly half-timbering and Georgian sash windows. a market is held every Tuesday, as it has been since ancient times. It's a miracle that Thame has survived as it is, given the pressures on Oxfordshire in recent years. That it has done so is due in large part to the vigilance, not to say vociferousness, of its inhabitants: flag-wavers for David Cameron's vision of localism to a man.  This is the heart of Toryland - and the people of Thame will have felt especially glad when the Coalition came to power. Not only did it bring their preferred Prime Minister to Downing Street, but it seemed to spell the end of John Prescott's regional strategies, with their dirigiste targets for housing growth. These had earmarked Thame, with its population of 11,000, for nearly 800 new houses. according to angela Willson, chairman of one of the residents' associations, the town simply could not absorb an addition on this scale.  When the present Government threw out the South-East Plan, Thame breathed a sigh of relief. But it is now amazed to find itself preparing for another fight - with ministers who are meant to be champions of localism. Recently, the Coalition announced a radical overhaul of the planning system, which aims to throw out the old rulebook, the size of a telephone directory, and replace it with a pamphlet of 52 pages. George Osborne summed up its intent during the Budget: "The default answer to development will be 'yes'." anyone wanting to halt the bulldozers will, in the words of the planning minister Greg Clark, be guilty of "selfish nihilism".  The object is to let development rip through those parts of Britain that aren't formally protected as National Parks or part of the Green Belt. This is most of what us still regard as our green and pleasant land - "all fields, high hedges, and deep-rutted lanes", as George Eliot put it. Labour pursued, with varying degrees of success, the commendable policy of directing development to brownfield sites: postindustrial wastelands that do nothing to enhance the urban environment. That has been thrown out of the window. Nor is any protection being given to agricultural land, which is now fair game for development, even though climate change and increased demand for food make it ever more likely that we will need it in future.  as a consequence, it isn't only Thame that's up in arms. Lydd, among the dunes of Romney Marsh, doesn't want to swallow more housing when its young people are leaving. The Slad Valley - Cider with Rosie country - is similarly dismayed. This month, George McDonic, a past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, wrote to Wiltshire council on behalf of local groups. He warned that building 37,000 homes across the county over the next 15 years, with 20,000 concentrated in the north and west, would "lead to massive estates on greenfield sites, more characterless car-based suburbia, more traffic congestion and pollution, declining town centres, damage to the environment and loss of agricultural land". Patrick Kinnersly, secretary of the White Horse alliance, senses "mounting resistance in all parts of the county" to plans that would "dump a sprawl of urban extensions and industrial estates into the open countryside".  One might think it axiomatic that the Conservatives would be in favour of - well, of conservation. But their behaviour is horribly reminiscent of the 1980s, when Nicholas Ridley, a gent and watercolourist in his spare time but a card-carrying laissez-faire zealot in public life, introduced the term "Nimby" into public discourse.  Reforming the planning system isn't such a bad idea. But there's a reason that bodies such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England are furious about the new National Planning Policy Framework. a carefully evolved (if frequently cumbersome) system of checks and balances has been junked in favour of a presumption that big development will get its way.  The National Planning Policy Framework is supposed to be a consultation document - although you couldn't tell from the odium that ministers have been heaping on those who object to it. But advice from the Planning Inspectorate suggests that, even in its draft state, it "is capable of being a material consideration" in planning cases. In other words, this radical change to the way our environment is managed is already being introduced, without so much as a parliamentary debate, much less a vote.  You'd think that Tory MPs would be up in arms. Certainly, there are some fierce champions of their localities. When the South-East Plan threatened to foist 6,000 new homes on the constituency of Tunbridge Wells, its elected representative lashed out. "One of the delights of our area is that there is scarcely a neighbourhood that is not within a short walk of the green fields that surrounds us," he fumed. Who was that valiant MP? The selfsame Greg Clark who now excoriates conservationists for their nihilism. No wonder the residents are more than usually disgusted.  No wonder, too, that the National Trust is up in arms. For more than a century, it has showed a gentlemanly disdain for campaigning. But the Tories have gone so far out of their way to pull its tail that the beast has reared up. and instead of mollifying it, the local government minister Bob Neill has felt the need to blame criticisms of the National Planning Policy Framework on "a carefully choreographed smear campaign by Left-wingers within the national headquarters of pressure groups". Reds under the state beds? Don't make me laugh. To pick a quarrel with the National Trust - whose membership dwarfs that of any political party - the Government must have a pretty compelling argument, especially since it's nursing a bloody nose over the sale of the forests. and it does: we need more houses, right?  Well, no. If there were a demand for new housing, builders would be putting up properties left, right and centre on their   
 as we enter late summer, that new and fashionable "fifth season" in British horticulture, the garden is decorously winding down and it's a good time to start thinking creatively about our plots. an exciting crop of summer books is out, tempting us towards new departures and beginnings. Here is a selection of the best.  Landscapes in Landscapes  by Piet Oudolf with Noel Kingsbury  THaMES & HUDSON, ?35  The white-haired, apple-cheeked giant of a Dutchman is credited with "revolutionising" British gardens since the mid-Nineties, causing us all to throw out our shrubs and replace them with grasses and swaying drifts of perennials.  It's not quite like that, of course, but there's no doubting the international prestige of the world's most celebrated contemporary planting designer, responsible for the elevated Highline park in Manhattan and a chunk of Chicago's Millennium Park. This catalogue of his most recent work has huge double-page photographs, comprehensive planting lists and an incisive, platitude-free text from Noel Kingsbury.  I rather liked the eccentricities of the design, such as the captions to plants rendered as matching colour tints, though cynics might snigger at the way each project is not given a name, just its size in square metres (Potters Field Park in London is given as "2,500m2"), as if to imply Oudolf can roll out his work like a fitted carpet. a rather singular publication, but an important one.  Great Gardens of Britain  by Helena attlee  FRaNCES LINCOLN, ?16.99  a surprisingly slim, medium-format volume, given the blockbuster subject, but perhaps that, and the low price for an illustrated book, is another symptom of these recessionary times. The book does not stint on quality, however. attlee's text is lively, accessible and just about informative enough for an undemanding canter through the horticultural highlights of Britain - all those usual suspects, such as Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Wisley, Tresco and Powis Castle.  I'm not sure about some of the advice. For example, "don't go to Hidcote in a hurry". But it's good to see gardens such as Mount Stewart and Crathes Castle given their due - Crathes was favoured by Gertrude Jekyll of one generation and Graham Stuart Thomas of the next.  The emphasis is on horticultural extravaganzas, with the poor old English landscape garden represented by Stourhead alone. alex Ramsay's astutely composed photographs create constant variation. a bargain.  The Universe in the Landscape  by Charles Jencks  FRaNCES LINCOLN, ?40  It's back to the blockbuster with this stupendous volume, which it appears has been designed and packaged up by the "landscape starchitect" himself, replete as it is with working drawings, graphs, computer models and, of course, astonishing images of the finished "cosmological" landforms which are his speciality. Recent projects such as the soon-to-be-completed Parco Portello in Milan and the landform for the CERN scientific institute in Geneva are presented in detail. and what are we to make of the plan to create a gigantic landform of a naked woman in Northumberland?  Everything is "content-driven", which means everything needs to be explained (at length). It's an overrich mix in many ways, but the book is leavened by frequent bursts of self-deprecating humour, such as the typing skeleton Jencks has inserted into his own garden, and the story of his exploding sculpture at Clare College, Cambridge, which triggered a terrorist alert.  The finale is an investigation into ancient sites on Orkney and elsewhere, an exciting new source of inspiration.  Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden  by Judith B Tankard  aURUM PRESS, ?30  The author has been the doyenne of "Saint Gertrude" studies for some years and this handsome volume is a fine summation of her work to date (as well as Jekyll's, of course). It does not illustrate all of the gardens - that would be a multi-volume publication - but it does show off the best, including Hestercombe, Deanery Gardens and Folly Farm, using photographs drawn exclusively from the Country Life picture library.  These are complemented by new photographs of Jekyll gardens that have been restored in the right spirit; images of The Manor House, Upton Grey, and Jekyll's own Munstead Wood triumphantly justify inclusion. a decision to devote an early chapter to those old, sequestered gardens which Jekyll visited and wrote up for Country Life is intriguing and justifiable, since it throws light on the kind of tone she was aiming at in her own designs.  There have been several books on Jekyll over the years but this is certainly the most attractive yet.  Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City  by Dan Pearson  CONRaN OCTOPUS, ?28  This is an exceptionally elegant production, as one would expect from this designer and the photographer Howard Sooley (who was responsible for the great garden book of the past quarter century: Derek Jarman's Garden).  Seasonally arranged in intense, bite-sized essays, it chronicles the garden Pearson made over a decade behind his tall Victorian terrace house in south London. If plants are your thing, this is the book for you, as it's almost exclusively concerned with plant-talk.  While browsing in a bookshop, turn to page 126 and read the threepage disquisition on epimediums, those most connoisseurial of subjects. If you are in heaven, buy the book; if not, you can always judge it by the exquisite pictures (though I hope that publishing some of them at postage-stamp size does not catch on).  The book is not overly rarefied, however, and I greatly enjoyed some of Pearson's tactile, sensuous writing, such as the section on Hamamelis, with the buds of 'Jelena' described as "super matte and a velvety cinnamon brown".  Contemporary Colour in the Garden  by andrew Wilson  TIMBER PRESS, ?20  Colour has been rather neglected as a topic by garden writers over the past decade, made unfashionable by the prescriptions of the "New Perennials" movement, which sought to persuade us that form and structure are the most important elements of planting design. Colour can always sort itself out, they said.  Well, colour is back, at least to judge by this thoughtful publication from one of the country's leading garden-design tutors. Ostensibly it is a picture-driven book, filled with striking images of colourful garden scenes, with plants and "hard materials" playing off each other. The accompanying text will provide food for thought for professional designers and serious amateurs alike (the rest of us, on the other hand, might think, "That's nice," before resuming the weeding).  Killer picture: Ivan Hicks's brick-and-rock-stuffed gabions at the sadly defunct Future Gardens show, a veritable gateau of colourful rubble.  Gardening in a Changing Climate  by ambra Edwards  aQUaMaRINE BOOKS, ?14.99  We are often exhorted to garden in a "Mediterranean" manner in order to accommodate climate change, but it has taken several years for the penny to drop that Great Britain is not actually in the Mediterranean, so the style may be inappropriate.  Edwards's new book takes this sensible line by using the Mediterranean look as a starting point only, encouraging us to try gravel gardens, jungle gardens and even a dry riverbed theme (I'm not sure that one will catch on). The basic idea is that we should make it up as we go along, in timehonoured horticultural fashion.  Speaking of fashion, there is even a recipe for a "summer cactus bed", something rarely seen outside botanical gardens nowadays. Will cacti make a comeback? The book is well laid-out, clearly written and does not overburden the reader with long lists of useful plants. Instead, a mini catalogue is provided at the end, making it ideal for the average gardener who thinks it might be time for a change of direction.  Vauxhall Gardens: a History  by David Coke and alan Borg  YaLE UNIVERSITY PRESS, ?55  The celebrated pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, just south of the river in central London, are long gone, but the story has always attracted historians. The fact that Vauxhall was essentially the first public art gallery and nursery of the Rococo style in Britain has been well attested by other writers, as has the startling mix of social classes who mingled there - dukes and ne'erdo-wells cheek by jowl.  Despite the competition, this sumptuous new volume has to be considered the definitive history to date. The authors go into every aspect of the 200-year-old life of this extraordinary open-air fun park, art gallery, concert hall, restaurant and (at times) brothel. We learn about its entrepreneurial owner Jonathan Tyers, while scores of illustrations and new ground plans bring the site to life as never before.  Twilight Garden  by Lia Leendertz  PaVILION, ?20  a beguiling book on a topic of apparently dubious practical interest - the fact that many of us like our gardens best as night begins to fall.  Leendertz takes this one step further by exhorting us to create a "twilight garden" specifically designed to be enjoyed when the owner returns home from work, or has finally packed the children off to bed - "a Gloom of One's Own"? The author recommends whites, blues and purples as the best night blooms, and lists those that have the b  
 aNDREI KaPITSa, who died on august 2 aged 80, was a Russian geographer who discovered Lake Vostok, one of the world's largest fresh water lakes.  Five hundred metres deep, with a surface area of 14,000 square kilometres (the size of Lake Ontario), the lake had gone undiscovered for so long because it lies some 4,000 metres below the ice cap of antarctica.  The largest of more than 140 subglacial lakes found under the surface of the continent, Lake Vostok is thought to have lain isolated and undisturbed for between 15 and 25 million years, raising the possibility that it may contain undreamed-of life forms that have evolved in a unique environment.  at the end of the 19th century the Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin had theorised that the tremendous pressure exerted by thousands of metres of antarctic ice could increase the temperature at the lowest levels of the ice sheet to the point where the ice would melt; and on the first of four visits to antarctica, in 1956, Kapitsa noticed that the area around the Soviet Vostok research base, high above the polar ice cap, was unnaturally flat.  He wondered, based on Kropotkin's theory, whether there might be a lake under the ice. He called the putative reservoir Lake Vostok and mentioned the possibility of its existence in his PhD thesis on the morphology of the Eastern antarctic ice cap, in 1957.  In 1964, and again in 1966, Kapitsa and his colleagues worked in teams taking seismic measurements to calculate the thickness of the ice. The first time he got a blur of "noise" which obscured waves reflected from the base of the ice. The second time, using seismometers buried in the ice, he got much better results, which led him to conclude that the ice was up to four kilometres deep.  None the less, some of the readings remained baffling, and when most of the data were destroyed in a fire in Moscow, Kapitsa forgot all about them.  It was only in the mid-1990s, when Kapitsa was invited by the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge to join a symposium on antarctica that the significance of his readings became clear. British scientists had been studying airborne echosoundings of the Vostok area and were getting mystifying results. Kapitsa remembered his own bafflement and, on his return to Moscow, found that the seismometer readings that had caused him such problems had survived the fire.  "I looked at them and saw the mistake," he recalled. "When seismic waves go through water, longitudinal waves return and latitudinal waves do not. There were no latitudinal waves." Kapitsa's data proved the presence of water in the ice.  Together, the Scott Polar team and Kapitsa wrote a paper about Lake Vostok, published in Nature in 1996. The paper suggested the possibility that the lake might harbour life, and subsequently an international team of scientists from america, Russia, Britain and France began boring down through the layers of ice towards the lake.  So far, ice samples taken from above the lake have been found to contain bacteria and other microbes such as algae, diatoms and other micro-fungi, raising hopes that the lake itself could yield a biological treasure trove. But drilling for sample cores was halted in 1998, at roughly 100 metres above the suspected waters, due to the lack of a secure means of taking samples without risking contamination to the waters of the lake. a further consideration was that, if Lake Vostok harbours toxic bacterial life, humans would in all likelihood have no defences against it.  Last year, however, the scientists claimed to have come up with methods of probing the lake without the risk of contamination, and drilling has resumed.  andrei Petrovich Kapitsa was born on July 9 1931 in Cambridge, where his father, the Soviet Nobel Prizewinning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, was working with Sir Ernest (later Lord) Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory. His mother, anna, the daughter of admiral aN Krylov, a celebrated Soviet mathematician and naval architect, had trained as an archaeologist.  Pyotr Kapitsa had been allowed to travel abroad relatively freely by the Soviet authorities; but in 1934, on one of his regular visits to Moscow, he was told that his permission to leave the country had been revoked. The rest of the family returned to Moscow the following year, and Pyotr Kapitsa was subsequ  
 a British explorer said he was ''exhilarated'' after he and his crew became the first people to row to the magnetic North Pole.  Jock Wishart and his five-man team took just under four weeks to complete the 450-mile route.  They encountered polar bears and collided with icebergs as they travelled through arctic waters in their specially designed boat-cum-sledge, the Old Pulteney, which has runners on its underside enabling it to be hauled over the ice.  The trip has only recently become possible because of an increase in seasonal ice melt in the arctic. Mr Wishart organised the expedition to highlight the effects of climate change on the ice in the region.  He said: "It is an enormous achievement, and a privilege for our team to have been part of what is one of the world's last great firsts.'' The group set out from Resolute Bay in Canada on July 29.  They slept in shifts between rowing stints and were fuelled by 7,000-calorie a day dry rations.  Mr Wishart has had a lifelong interest in polar exploration and in 1992 was part of the first team to walk unsupported to the magnetic North Pole. 
 It will take a technological revolution to build the green economy, but this is already under way Much of the technology necessary to create low-carbon prosperity is available or being developed - and costs are falling fast The guestion is whether Britain will be in the vanguard of developing and using it, reaping the rewards in exports and jobs, or whether; as often in the past, it will stumble along behind more far-seeing economies. In this - the second of seven pages sponsored by Shell under the editorial control of the Telegraph - leading figures describe how green technologies are taking root in such key areas as energy, transport, infrastructure and urban living. You can take part in the debate by contributing reactions and views online. By Geoffrey Lean  During its first 15 months, the Coalition Government has been grappling with a series of tough challenges: restoring sustainability to the public finances, rebuilding our economy and delivering our climate change commitments.  Conventional wisdom dictates that supporting economic growth is incompatible with cutting carbon. Like most conventional wisdom, this is way off the mark. But, although reducing carbon on its own is relatively easy, doing so while generating growth and spreading prosperity is a far tougher challenge: one requiring co-operation and commitment from both government and industry.  This is a challenge that this Government is tackling head-on. We are investing in the transport infrastructure and technologies that will help us build a dynamic, balanced economy, while achieving our goals for carbon reduction.  We have announced a major electrification programme to reduce the carbon footprint of our railways. Our plans for a national high-speed rail network would encourage passengers to switch from short-haul aviation to rail, while bridging the north-south divide and spreading prosperity right across the country.  and because, unlike our predecessors, we believe that the enemy is the carbon, not the car, we have also placed Britain firmly in the global vanguard of the green motoring revolution.  Thanks to the ground-breaking Plug-in car grant, which gives motorists a 25pc subsidy of up to ?5,000, new, ultra-low carbon cars are much more affordable.  We have set out a comprehensive electric vehicle infrastructure strategy that identifies how a national recharging network can develop in a way that is targeted, convenient and safe. and, through our ?30 m Plugged-In Places programme, a network ofvehicle recharging points is being established in eight areas across the UK- from homes and workplaces to streets, car parks, retail and leisure facilities - to allow us to learn how real consumers use public charging infrastructure.  Initiatives like this are paying real dividends in terms of growth and jobs. Major companies are now launching innovative low-carbon vehicles in Britain and being a launch market makes the UK attractive as a manufacturing location. So Nissan is building a plant to manufacture its electric vehicles and batteries in the North East - and others will follow.  Meanwhile, Chargema  
 Wall Street has developed an aversion to solar-company stocks. Yet in the USa, solar jobs now outnumber steel jobs and in Germany so  
 We face a crisis. If we are to rebalance our energy needs with what we can produce cleanly through renewable sources, we need a revolution in terms of the way we build.  and along with that we need to renew our transport infrastructure. Before the Industrial Revolution, buildings evolved over centuries.  Vernacular traditions were established to suit place and climate, using local materials and techniques. But traditions eroded during the steam age were finally discarded in the age of oil. Plug in an air conditioner and a building in Dubai can be identical to one in London, despite climates of opposite extremes.  The realisation that we need to relearn lessons embedded in those vernacular responses was our starting point for the design of Masdar [being built in abu Dhabi as the world's first sustainable city].  We looked at traditional settlements in the region. We found that the streets were narrow and oriented to maximise shade, and that the buildings and public spaces incorporated fountains, greenery and wind towers to encourage cooling air currents.  By applying those principles we developed buildings that require significantly less energy. Of course, you need power for lighting and the amenities of contemporary life. But by examining energy usage holistically - and generating renewable energy within the city itself - we have established a comfortable, self-sustaining environment and reduced overall consumption drastically. The result is a blueprint for a high-density, carbonneutral, zero-waste community.  Now consider that in industrialised societies buildings, and the movement of people betw  
 Like, I suspect, many readers of this column, I probably value the beauty of the English countryside more than any other visual aesthetic experience. I grew up on a small Sussex farm, and about 15 years ago, we returned to the area, buying our own house. We live on the edge of a village, and from our bedroom window I can see green fields, what estate agents call "river frontage" (a tiny stream), and hornbeam woods. No houses are visible. I love it.  So when various bodies such as the National Trust, and this great newspaper, announce their wish to defend the loved land, I hear the "bugles calling from sad shires", and want to rally to them.  But over the years, as the rows about building new homes have recurred, I have come to think that the argument is not what it seems. Now the Government wants to simplify, devolve and liberalise the planning system. With the exception of specially designated areas - green belt, national parks etc - it will create a presumption in favour of development and let localities decide what that development should be. In my view, this is right - not only on the grounds of overall national need, but for the good of rural life itself.  People often speak of landscape as "natural", but it very rarely is, certainly not in England (bits of wild Wales and Scotland are different). Its appearance is the result of human engagement with the land - mainly agricultural, but also, for many centuries now, industrial. Near what could be grown or bred, mined or quarried, harvested or milked, watered or drained, habitations arose. With the habitations came shops, churches, bridges, roads, mills and potteries, forges and barns.  The result, on the whole, was beautiful. The building made good use of what was available. Round us, reddish tiles often cover the walls as well as the roofs. I don't suppose anyone worked this out solely for aesthetic effect - it arose simply because there wasn't as much local stone as in, say, the Cotswolds - but the result is attractive and characteristic.  The people who did the building had practical sense. Their main motive and support was the economic growth which, the National Trust now perplexingly tells us, is antithetical to "the needs of people and places". More often than not, they would, literally, have to live with what they had constructed, so they built carefully and pleasingly. In 1733, someone built Flatford Mill in Suffolk. about 80 years later, John Constable, whose father owned it, used it as the inspiration for the great paintings which, more than any other, encapsulate our view of rural England. I bet the mill would not have got past the planners if such things had existed in 1733. I bet the National Trust would have accused this "industrial unit" of being "out of keeping" with the rural scene. Someone would have slapped a noise abatement order on the hay wain as it creaked and splashed through the ford.  The landscape we love, then, developed out of the normal human need to make a living. I cannot believe that its interest is best served by making future livelihoods almost impossible. The men who put up those rustic dwellings did so in the hope that their children would be able to live and work there. If they had been told, as they are today, that it was an anti-social act to build more houses to accommodate them, they would scarcely have understood what was being said. In southern England today, you have to have access to an amount more than 10 times the average wage to buy a country cottage which was once inhabited by some of the poorest people in the land. This means that such villages can offer no place for the next generation, which is another way of saying that we are killing the thing we say we love.  "Planning", that socialist concept which so many intensely conservative people in Britain oddly love, did almost nothing to create this beauty. I do not believe that it preserves much of it, either. It is not a coincidence that in the era of planning, the ugly developments with which we are all familiar have become so common. It is because planning, being essentially a bureaucratic process, decrees what you cannot do, rather than letting you do what you do best.  People rightly complain about mean, uniformly ugly new housing being crammed into villages and on the edge of towns. But this happens because planning restricts space, making the land where development is permitted vastly expensive. People correctly observe that a small number of large building firms sit on land banks which provide most of the new (usually dreary) building in this country. This is because planning rules (1,300 pages of them, which the Government is replacing with 52 pages) have become so petty, slow, restrictive, and complicated that few ordinary mortals can fight their way through them and actually get a house put up. Only the giants have the resources to work the system. They need to hold capacity back for the years it takes to get permissions.  In this paper yesterday, a lady writing from Tunbridge Wells, the constituency of Greg Clark, the planning minister, complained that the place is too crowded already and would get worse if Mr Clark got his way. She did not ask why it is so crowded. It is partly because the "plan-led system", shaped by Chris Patten and taken to heights of lunacy by John Prescott's "regional spatial strategies", encouraged density. Obsessed with the virtues of brownfield sites,   
 THE number of wind turbines will treble under the Coalition's planning reforms, campaigners have warned. Experts say more than 4,500 turbines will be built to meet the Government's climate change targets as it adopts "a presumption in favour of sustainable development".  The planning policy has been criticised by groups such as the National Trust and concerns are growing among senior Conservative MPs about its impact on the countryside.  The draft national planning framework states that local authorities should identify "suitable areas for regeneration" where it   
 HOUSEHOLD energy bills will rise by more than ?300 a year as a result of the Coalition's green policies, a senior Downing Street adviser has told David Cameron.  The Prime Minister has been warned that government plans to get people to reduce their bills through efficiency measures are likely to fail.  Mr Cameron's senior energy adviser pours scorn on claims by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, that rises in gas and oil prices will be offset by people using less power. a note by the adviser describes his department's analysis as "unconvincing".  It warns that the Government's move to increased nuclear power, wind turbines and other measures will add 30 per cent to the average family's annual energy bill of ?1,069 by the end of the decade.  Mr Cameron is said to be "very worried" about the figures in the paper, written by Ben Moxham, his senior energy adviser who was recently brought in to beef up the Prime Minister's policy unit.  The private note, seen by The Daily Telegraph, is titled "Impact of our energy and climate policies on consumer energy bills". It was sent to Mr Cameron and offers a blunt assessment of how Coalition energy plans, in particular a series of green policies, will affect householders.  It concludes: "Over time it is clear that the impact of our policies on consumer bills will become significantly greater."  Rising energy bills represent a problem for the Coalition at a time when wages are being squeezed and inflation is high.  Mr Cameron has vowed to bring down energy prices by giving the regulator Ofgem tougher powers, but this year he has had to watch as energy companies increase their prices. The disclosure that Mr  Cameron's own policies are likely to add "significantly" to the burden on householders will anger voters. Just two months ago, Mr Huhne described calculations by researchers at Cambridge University that the Coalition's reforms would increase bills by 32 per cent as "rubbish".  The six-page document, dated July 29, says: "DECC's [Department of Energy and Climate Change] mid-case gas price scenario sees policies adding 30 per cent to consumer energy bills by 2020."  The report then identifies four policies that it says will increase bills, including the Government's demand for energy to come from more renewable sources and the plan to guarantee power companies a fixed price for electricity if they use low carbon methods to generate it. The paper, addressed to the Prime Minister, is copied to just 12 of his No10 aides, including Jeremy Heywood, his permanent secretary, Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff,  
 HIGGIDY  Camilla Stephens ran away from school at 16 because she wanted to go to a cookery school. She has never stopped running. The passion for cooking has been channelled into a successful business with a name that reflects the product and the character of the founder.  Higgidy sounds like a recipe for confusion or a variation on higgledy-piggledy. Seven years ago when Ms Stephens started making pies in her kitchen there was hope, but little organisation. Pie-making the Stephens way means putting the filling in by hand with flavours that reflect the seasons. The end result is that no two pies are the same. "They have a 'higgidy' uneven finish," she says.  The interest in pies developed after she graduated from the Prue Leith school of cookery and helped to build up the Seattle Coffee Company in the UK - before it was swallowed by Starbucks. There are now 150 pie makers producing 140,000 pies a week at the company's base at Shorehamby-Sea in West Sussex. Quiche has been added to a menu with a total of 20 pie varieties and flavours and there are plans to add to the product range. "I do love dreaming up new recipes and coming up with new ideas and flavours," says Ms Stephens.  The business has been growing fast after struggling to get off the ground. Ms Stephens and her husband, James Foottit, sold their homes to provide the start-up capital; until Sainsbury's came to the rescue, they were limited to local sales in shops and garden centres. The business was losing ?4,000 a week when the supermarket chain's "Sell Something New" scheme picked Higgidy as one of its early "winners".  Turnover has been growing at a heady 75pc a year on the back of supermarket demand, and this year should reach ?12m as the owners face up to another big challenge - expansion or marking time. Space problems at Shoreham mean it will be difficult to scale up. "We are certainly not going to stay the size we are," says Mr Foottit. " The company is built on growth. The problem is how we do it. Do we go for a big move or a second building?"  Husband and wife are also pondering another logistical problem posed by the structure of the shopping market in the UK - the no-man's-land between the corner shop and the supermarket. Mr Foottit, who ditched architecture to join his wife, is just back from the United States where he found that the missing link was filled by mid-sized supermarkets. He says: "Over here there is nothing between the corner shop and Waitrose and that makes it harder to grow the business.  "There are risks and benefits of being tied too closely to the supermarket. If the product works then you are dealing with a central point which can put your products in an enormous number of stores. The advantage is volume. The disadvantage is that you are dealing with a very powerful customer and your negotiating position is weaker - but we are grateful to Sainsbury's for launching and watching us."  Tight controls have helped keep Higgidy on a sound financial basis backed by an invoice discounting arrangement with HSBC. Mr Foottit says: "Food is a low-margin game and low margins combined with high growth means you are in danger of running out of cash. We have managed to stay ahead and invoice discounting has been an important part of it. Customers are no different from anybody else in the food industry. They are relatively slow payers but invoice discounting means that you get the money straight away."  Roland Gribben  LCE aRCHITECTS  Energy efficiency is the name of the game at Brighton-based LCE architects, and teamwork, from designers to bricklayers, is the key to success. "Basically we are looking at the products that go into a building, looking at new materials and design methods of construction, " says projects director Graham austin.  The practice is small - 40 employees turning over ?3.5m a year - but it has punched above its weight at home and abroad. It is heavily involved in eco-homes with 10-12 projects in the domestic market and has made a distinctive impact overseas.  It ventured into Libya eight years ago, and has high hopes of making a breakthrough in the Brazilian market. In Libya, it has experienced a roller coaster of a business ride, in the construction of education, sporting and cultural projects. LCE had just built a university for the Gaddafi regime when the conflict began, and hopes to have a considerable presence when the new regime begins to exercise control. The practice was forced to leave Libya, but has maintained contact with the provisional government. Mr austin says: "We're recognised by the people in the government as having contributed to the infrastructure. There are between 15 and 20 potential projects for us in Libya, and we hope the new government takes them up."  LCE hopes to repeat the experience in Brazil, where it is backed by HSBC, and plans to add Qatar and abu Dhabi to a list of countries it expects to account for 40pc-50pc of its business in the next two to three years.  THE FaBULOUS BaKIN' BOYS  The 1987 crash brought Wall Street futures trader Gary Frank back to Britain with an appetite for doughnuts, flapjacks and muffins. Since 1989 he's had a stab at selling all of them. The Fabulous Bakin' Boys, founded in 1997, produces 20,000 muffins and cupcakes and 25,000 flapjacks an hour at Witney, Oxfordshire; Tesco and Sainsbury are customers. The staff of 150 work around the clock and the business is heading for turnover of ?23m this year.  THE WaND COMPaNY  There is no manufacturing plant, just four people working from home developing a business w  
 SIR - a senior Downing Street adviser has told the Prime Minister that energy bills will rise by more than ?300 a year (report, September 5).  Scottish Power increased my annual electricity bill by 41.5 per cent on august 1, including a 53 per cent increase on the Economy 7 night tariff, despite its claim that prices were rising by 10 per cent.  Is this a record?  Robert Hood-Wright  Bodmin, Cornwall  SIR - Your report highlights the unexpectedly sharp rises in energy bills that have shocked households this year. This is a result of rising international fossil fuel prices. Renewables will add ?19 to average energy bills of ?1,232 this year, according to Ofgem - a fraction of the price of our fossil fuel dependency.  This dependency will be increasingly costly; 75 per cent of gas prices are linked to oil prices and the International Energy agency warned this year "the era of cheap oil is over". almost a third of Britain's ageing electricity generation infrastructure requires replacement by 2020, so investment cannot be avoided. Our gas reserves are in decline. The case for investing in homegrown renewable energy is overwhelming even before you get to climate change.  Leonie Greene  Renewable Energy association London SE1 
 CLaRENCE HOUSE  September 6th  The Prince of Wales, President, this evening held a Reception at Clarence House to mark the Thirtieth anniversary of Wateraid.  The Duchess of Cornwall this afternoon visited Walworth Garden Farm, 206 Manor Place, Braganza Street, London SE17, and was received by Mrs Jennifer Bianco (D  
 Throughout the past two centuries, the post of Foreign Secretary has - beside that of Prime Minister - been the grandest and the most cherished by ambitious politicians. The Foreign Office was one of the great departments of state, with the position of its superb Gilbert Scott building in the heart of Whitehall speaking eloquently about Britain's position in the world.  as we prepare to mark the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is clearer than ever that Britain's relationships with the rest of the world - its alliances, its trade links, its diplomatic endeavours - are vitally important. Today, William Hague will make a speech setting out his vision for his department. Yet he will do so after a period in which the Foreign Office's standing has gone into shameful decline.  There is no question that in recent years - and, in particular, since Douglas Hurd stepped down in 1995 - the Foreign Office has been worryingly neglected. Robin Cook, for example, was desperately upset when he was made shadow foreign secretary, which he regarded as a demotion. after the 1997 election, Tony Blair set up his own informal foreign policy apparatus, using the Foreign Office largely as a source of political patronage. a number of ambassadors' jobs were given to No 10 cronies, disregarding the Civil Service career structure, while the Blairs themselves started to view the diplomatic service, with its cut-price access to large houses in desirable locations, as a kind of travel agent. On one occasion, our honorary consul in Toulouse was put to work finding the Blairs a villa to rent; on others, the couple installed themselves in official residences overseas.  Sir Michael (now Lord) Jay, the department's permanent secretary for much of this time, seems to have gone along with it all. More damagingly, he joined in the fashionable attack on the ethos and values of the FCO itself. Its language school was closed, a sign that the importance of language skills and a deep understanding of cultures and nationalities was being downgraded. Instead, Jay imposed a regime that favoured management-speak and administrative abilities.  Then, in a barbaric and near-criminal act, David Miliband ordered the closure of the Foreign Office library, containing the records of 500 years of Britain's overseas entanglements, including the original copies of all our treaties. This institution was described by Gladstone's foreign secretary, Lord Granville, as "the pivot on which the whole machinery of the Office turned". Recently, I inspected its empty shelves, their contents having been dispersed, some turning up on eBay: it was both too sad for words, and a piquant symbol of New Labour's neglect of the lessons of history, for which British soldiers have paid such a price in afghanistan and Iraq.  Rory Stewart, the diplomat turned Tory MP, has just published a fascinating and wise little book, Can Intervention Work?, which provides sobering examples of the consequences of this approach. By 2009, he records, our 300-strong embassy in Kabul contained only two officials with a mastery of Dari, one of the most important local languages - this in a country where almost no one speaks English. and here is Stewart's verdict on the consequences of Lord Jay's tenure: "British civilians in Kabul were... well equipped for those processes of the international community connected with 'management best practice' and 'multilateral diplomacy', accounting, human resources, and 'global' policy around climate change, trade or heritage. But their knowledge about afghanistan itself was generally much more limited than that of a previous generation of foreign service officers." Health and safety became paramount. Diplomats were tied to their desks, answering emails and coping with the latest edicts on management. Last year, the post of deputy high commissioner in Pakistan became vacant. No one applied.  Even worse, New Labour allowed the stature of the FCO to collapse within government. This was true both of budgets - with resources switched from diplomacy to international development - and influence. The Iraq war remains the telling moment: sceptical advice from Middle Eastern ambassadors, those despised arabists who understood the culture of the countries they worked in, was ignored. Corners were cut. Policy was captured and executed by No 10, with disastrous results. The treatment of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the heroic legal adviser who warned that the invasion was illegal and resigned from the Foreign Office in protest, remains a matter of shame.  Yet there are some very welcome - and long overdue - signs that things are beginning to change, and that some of the traditional pride and rigour of the diplomatic service is being restored. above all, William Hague is the first Foreign Secretary for years to have a sense of the weight and magnitude of the FCO's role.  This can express itself in small ways. all visiting foreign ministers are now met personally at the steps of the building by Mr Hague. He also takes trouble to discover their enthusiasms. The Turkish foreign minister, ahmet Davutoglu, is a keen antiquarian: Mr Hague took him to inspect rare books in the British Library. avigdor Lieberman of Israel was hauled off to the Cabinet War Rooms. Sergei Lavrov of Russia enjoyed a whisky tasting with his British counterpart at Berry Brothers' ancient offices in St James's.  More importantly, Mr Hague exercises greater clout in Whitehall - and gets on better with his senior colleagues - than any foreign secretary since Hurd. This means he can fight his department's battles in a way his predecessors could not. David Miliband, for example, was bullied into giving away the special exchange-rate protection that shielded embassies   
 It is the stuff of science fiction, but climate change has forced the government of the low-lying Pacific archipelago of Kiribati to consider building "floating islands" as rising sea levels threaten the nation.  Speaking at the Pacific Islands Forum in New Zealand, where climate change was high on the agenda, anote Tong, the country's president, said islanders were so desperate that they were willing to consider several radical options. One of the most outlandish ideas involves building floating islands similar to oil platforms off the coast. The project would cost about $2billion (?1.25billion). The funds would have to be provided by the international community because Kiribati, which is halfway between australia and Hawaii in the South Pacific and has a population of 103,000, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr Tong said he had seen models of the floating islands and believed they could work. UN research suggests sea levels will rise by 20in by 2100, submerging most of Kiribati's arable land.  Bonnie Malkin 
 SIR - Leonie Greene (Letters, September 7) writes that "renewables" will add only ?19 to the average energy bill this year. But the Ofgem website states that the anticipated cost of the Renewables Obligation scheme in 2011-12 is ?1.487 billion.  By my reckoning, this equates to an average cost of ?57 for each of the 26 million households in Britain.  To be sure, the cost of renewables will be met by consumers, directly through our electricity bills or indirectly in the cost of the goods we purchase.  Clive Marshall  Curthwaite, Cumberland 
 MaNKIND faces extinction, the Prince of Wales has warned, unless the way we live can be transformed to stop mass consumption, climate change and destruction of wildlife.  In his first speech as the new president of the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF) UK, Prince Charles suggested replacing the famous fight to save the panda with a new "cause c?l?bre" - to save the entire environment.  Referring to himself as "an endangered species", he warned that the world was already in the "sixth extinction event", with species dying out at a much faster rate than at any time since the death of most of the dinosaurs 65million years ago. He said climate change, an issue that he has campaigned about for years, was not the only problem but was speeding up the "rapacious" destruction of natural resources such as water, land and food that humans needed to survive.  The Prince said if the world carried on "business as usual" then the human race itself could be in danger.  "We are, of course, witnessing what some people call the sixth great extinction event: the continued erosion of much of the Earth's vital biodiversity caused by a whole host of pressures, from the rising demand for land to the corrosive effects of all kinds of pollution," he said.  "This is an important point that needs to be stressed more than it is, because its ultimate impact is plainly not at all clear to most people: without the biodiversity that is so threatened, we won't be able to survive ourselves."  alluding to his "spiritual connection to na  
 CLaRENCE HOUSE  September 8th  The Prince of Wales, President, this morning attended a Reception at St James's Palace to mark His Royal Highness's patronage of World Wide Fund for Nature UK.  Princess alexandra, formerly President, World Wide Fund for Nature UK, was present.  The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall later arrived in Belfast and were received by the Rt Hon Owen Paterson, MP (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), and Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of the County Borough of Belfast (Dame Mary Peters).  Their Royal Highnesses this afternoon visited Kilkeel fishing port, Kilkeel Harbour, and were received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of County Down (Mr David Lindsay).  The Prince of Wales, President, The Prince's Trust, and The Duchess of Cornwall later visited Mourne Maritime Centre and Mourne Seafood Cookery School, Nautilus Centre, Rooney Road, Kilkeel, and met Prince's Trust young people participating in a cookery course.  His Royal Highness afterwards attended a Meeting with the anglo North Irish Fish Producers' Organisation and the Northern Ireland Fish Producers' Organisation at Nautilus Centre.  The Prince of Wales later received the Rt Hon Peter Robinson, MLa (First Minister, Northern Ireland assembly), at Hillsborough Castle, County Down.  His Royal Highness, President, The Prince's Regeneration Trust, received Mrs Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle (Trustee) and Mr John Smylie (architect) at Hillsborough Castle.  The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall this evening received the Rt Hon Owen Paterson, MP (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), and the Hon Mrs Paterson at Hillsborough Castle.  The Duchess of Cornwall this afternoon met local fishing families at Nautilus Centre.  BUCKINGHaM PaLaCE  September 8th  The Duke of York this morning attended a Meeting at the offices of Scottish Power, Dealain House, Cumbernauld, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant   
 Former General Motors boss Fritz Henderson described making petrol hybrid cars as "expensive squared. But making diesel hybrids," he added, "now that's expensive cubed."  So welcome to the world's first diesel/electric hybrid car, an expensively cubist creation from Peugeot-Citro?n. First shown in Paris last year, this new driveline goes on sale in the 3008 SUV in November and in the following five months will appear in the 508 range and the RXH, an upmarket all-road estate. Yet even as it was being launched, rivals were muttering darkly that the Peugeot would be noisy and smelly.  Early drives of the prototype 3008 Hybrid4 were certainly the former, with graunches from the driveline and little evidence that it would be any more economical than a half-decent petrol/electric hybrid. Diesel hybrids haven't been used outside of the locomotive and heavy-plant industries because the fuel economy advantages over a petrol hybrid have been tiny. There's also the fact hybrid cars are principally designed for urban driving in countries that don't like diesels; think Japan and the United States.  So this is the first European hybrid, if you like. Under the bonnet is a standard 161bhp, 2.0-litre turbodiesel attached to a robotised manual six-speed transmission driving the front wheels. a hefty 8kW generator recharges the nickel-metal hydride battery, which lives in the back along with a 36bhp aC electric motor driving the rear wheels.  This provides four-wheel drive without the heavy transfer boxes, propeller shafts and differentials of a mechanical system. Not that a 3008 will do much mountain climbing, but it's difficult to see many drivers not being attracted to the idea of 200bhp and fleet managers spurning the fiscal advantages of 99g/km emissions of CO2 with the all-weather capability of four-wheel drive.  There are some drawbacks, however, not least the ?26,995 price. The cheapest petrol 3008 is almost ?10,000 less and even the cheapest 1.6 diesel costs just ?18,895, delivers 54mpg in the Combined cycle and emits a highly respectable 135g/km. and while the Hybrid4 sports more power and performance, it's also carrying an additional 441lb, which is a rear seat's worth of passengers.  Provided the battery has sufficient charge, the 3008 will proceed in electric mode for a maximum of 2.5 miles at no more than 31mph, although it will maintain a cruise using the battery alone at up to 40mph.  There are four operating modes: auto, which optimises diesel and electric power for efficiency; Sport, which combines engine and motor for maximum performance, but the engine stop/start system remains on; 4x4, where the engine and motor act similarly to Sport but stop/start is disabled and torque build-up is limited at the rear to prevent the wheels spinning; and ZEV, where the car will run as an electric vehicle for as long as possible, whereupon it will automatically change to auto mode. You can shift between modes on the move, but the systems will take a second or two to set up the car as directed.  First impressions are of great refinement, especially compared to early prototypes. The restarting of the diesel engine is particularly smooth, as is the transition between electric and internal combustion drive. The gearbox is smoother than most robotised rivals, too. This has been an extraordinary feat of calibration - Peugeot's engineers have done well.  Sport mode proves that this is a serious performance machine, with a lovely addition to the torque curve in the midrange for ease of overtaking. You can feel the additional weight in the back, especially if you lift off in a corner, bu  
 Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign is fading fast after an unmemorable performance in the Republican debate. I can't say I'm sorry. The Tea Party is, on the whole, a force for good, and the last thing america needs - apart from a second Obama term, of course - is a country-club Rino (Republican in name only) in the White House. But Bachmann is a creationist - that is, she espouses scientific claims that can be shown to be untrue.  This drives me nuts. Evolution is technically a "theory", but it is one without which the entire science of biology would collapse. Please don't confuse it with manmade global warming, which is supported by a far more fragile consensus. Conflating the two suits both Right and Left. Don't fall into the trap. 
 The most encouraging development in tackling climate change for ages happens on Monday in Mexico City - yet who has noticed? For the first time, ministers from around the world are meeting to talk about curbing a range of pollutants responsible for as much global warming as carbon dioxide.  The talks - called by the Mexican, Swedish and US governments and the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) - are addressing "short-lived climate forcers" such as black carbon, which gives soot its colour, and ozone. a Unep investigation this year concluded that a range of straightforward measures would delay dangerous climate change by over three decades, buying vital time to deal with CO2.  These would be desperately needed even if man-made climate change did not exist, for the pollutants ruin harvests and are among the world's biggest killers. Indeed, the report calculated, its recommended measures would save 2.4 million lives and 52 millions tons of grain every year.  Forty countries - ranging from China to Micronesia - will be represented at the meeting, and Bangladesh will host a similar get-together next month.  Happily, tackling these pollutants does not require a new international treaty - they can be dramatically cut with already available technologies by local and national authorities using existing laws.  While the main climate talks sputter, and splutter on, we can - and must - just get on with it. 
 Investors are being courted as never before by money managers. But with so many thousands of registered collective investment funds, information and analysis are even more important.  It was with this in mind that, exactly a year ago, Your Money launched a new column linked to our weekly video, Your Money Their Hands. Each week we interview a leading fund manager; then in the column we select highlights and ask the independent information provider Trustnet to check the track record of the manager in the spotlight.  To celebrate the first anniversary of "Why should I invest with you?", we have selected 10 managers from a list of 51 columns.  Evy Hambro  BlackRock Gold & General  This fund reflects investors' appetite for gold and other precious metals. according to Trustnet, funds under management grew from ?800m in November 2008 to ?2.5bn in July 2010.  In one of the early interviews for this column, Mr Hambro was speaking as the price of gold hit a "sweet spot" of $1,265 an ounce. at that time many analysts were warning about a price bubble about to burst.  Mr Hambro took the opposite view. Given that the precious metal has since spiked above $1,900, he made this timely prediction: "You have to wait to see the gold price rise in a range of currencies before you can have a true bull market. We're starting to see that happen."  Guy de Blonay  Jupiter Financial Opportunities The long-term performance of this fund in late September 2010 was what investors dream of. The value of ?1,000 invested 10 years ago had grown to ?2,870.  Mr de Blonay, who comanages the fund with Philip Gibbs, correctly predicted that the public and political anger directed at the banks, and their role in the financial crisis, would "continue for some time to come". More importantly, he pointed out: "We've seen deterioration in the US and even in the UK economy. Some economies are struggling to recover, especially in the West."  Jim Leaviss  M&G Global Macro Bond  at the end of 2010 there were significant worries about eurozone government bonds but nothing to predict the rolling financial crisis that has engulfed the single currency this summer.  Jim Leaviss therefore showed considerable foresight when he told the Telegraph he had already sold down his large investments in the eurozone sovereign debt market. and he added: "In places like Greece, bond investors might have to take a haircut."  M&G's solution to the eurozone problems also remains pertinent. Mr Leaviss predicted: "For the eurozone to continue you need fiscal transfers from the rich core of Europe, and that really means Germany, out to the periphery."  Meanwhile, he is encouraging better communication with investors through a useful website, www.bondvigilantes.co.uk.  Trevor Greetham  Fidelity Multi asset Strategic  Trevor Greetham kicked off the new year with two solid investment tips. First, he was bullish about commodities, which enjoyed a strong first half.  But his best forecast concerned the UK and the housing market. He was talking about the possibility of the Bank of England extending its quantitative easing or asset purchase scheme by another ?50bn.  "You've got to remember," he argued, "that this big mountain of consumer debt we all talk about is secured against housing and if house prices start falling again I think the Bank will want to prop them up and they'll be printing money to try to do that." House prices fell by the most in 10 months in august.  Paul Mumford  Cavendish Opportunities  Paul Mumford's devotion to research in seeking undervalued investments is as rigorous as ever and he urged investors to do the same. "Every year," he explained, "I order all the annual and interim reports from the Financial Times. There are about six boxes. I refresh myself on companies I know and look for new companies, which is always an interesting trawling ground."  But he also has other sources of inspiration. Shortly after Prince William and Kate Middleton got engaged he spotted that it was possible to buy a ring in the style of their engagement ring for just ?34 using a tanzanite gemstone. So he added to his investment in the tiny ?11m african mining company Tanzanite One (now called Richland Resources). For a while at least the shares doubled in value.  Walter Price  RCM Technology Trust  Living in California, some of Walter Price's biggest investments are on his door step. and for a long time he had 4pc of the trust portfolio invested in the hugely successful apple Inc.  But when news emerged earlier in the year of the return of health problems for Steve Jobs, the driving force behind the company, Mr Price began "trimming" his investment.  His explanation was simple. "There's only one Steve Jobs when it comes to envisaging a product and being a perfectionist to develop something that feels good in your hand and works as well," he said. "He is one of a kind so I think they will probably slow down in the future."  Since that interview with Mr Price in March, Steve Jobs has resigned as apple's chief executive.  David von Simson  Qatar Investment  When David von Simson was interviewed in april, the arab uprisings were gaining traction and the Middle East was seen as an investment destination to avoid.  But he explained that the protests in the region fell into two categories: those countries with high unemployment and failing economies and those where there was a mismatch between the governing group and the majority of the population. "Neither circumstance applies remotely in Qatar," he said.  as well as advancing a robust investment argument for his fund, Mr von Simson also made one of the most astonishing predictions of the year. He said: "There is political risk everywhere. It may be that we have problems on the streets of London before long." So it came to pass.  Jerome Booth  ashmore Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond  Jerome Booth believes in putting his own money where he invests on   
 THE Coalition is facing a backlash from Tory MPs and peers who fear the Government's new planning reforms will give developers a licence to build in their constituencies.  More than 80 parliamentarians will next week attend a meeting raising concerns about the number of wind farms being built in the countryside.  Many believe the Government's plans to relax planning laws could lead to unchecked development. Bill Cash, the Tory MP for Stone, Staffs, who is organising the meeting, said: "This is a demonstration of the deep concern and the first shot across the bows.  "The developers will have the whip hand. When you are talking about economic benefit, the benefits of England's green and pleasant land to tourism and the scenery is as important as anything else."  The guidance states that there should be a "presumption in favour of sustainable development", which campaigners have warned would give developers "carte blanche" for new developments across the countryside.  another senior Tory MP, who did not want to be named, said the reforms were a "state licence to print money". He said:  
 The Prince of Wales is often accused of being woolly-minded by critics of his green views. and this week he set out to prove them right. Indeed, the other night he was urging a flock of supporters, ranging from the Duke of Montrose to Lily Cole, to become "just a little bit more woolly" themselves.  It was the launch of Wool Week, part of a campaign he started five years ago to boost "a wonderful, versatile and sustainable substance ignored in favour of products made from non-renewable fossil fuels". Though the foundation of the country's wealth for centuries, wool then fetched farmers less than the cost of shearing it.  Things have improved, but while Charles II caused acts of Parliament to be passed to increase consumption by decreeing all bodies should be buried in the stuff, his namesake has to resort to making us feel a bit sheepish. But the Prince does recommend wool coffins (which, he says, are "to die for").  He urged his star-studded audience to "insulate your houses with it". It does the job well, lasts the lifetime of the building, and captures carbon while growing. But it's more expensive in the short term, so official energysaving drives neglect it; fewer than 200 of the 1.7 million lofts insulated under the main scheme have it.  Perhaps ministers should stop following the flock and consider helping the greener material that is better longterm value. 
 There is something sinister in the term Homeland Security. Homeland sounds a little too like Fatherland for comfort, a place demanding unthinking loyalty. Very un-american, one might imagine, but then americans are not as free-wheeling as they like to think they are. Most of them like rules, enforced with a brand of passive aggression all the more unsettling for being delivered with a smile as bright as it is indifferent  They don't even manage the smile at JFK when you hand over your passport. Well, some do. Things have lightened a little since the early post 9/11 era when any foreigner was an object of suspicion. The Orwellian technology remains, however: the fingerprint scanner and camera, adding you to some vast, churning database, and increasingly for those boarding flights in the United States, the hugely intrusive whole-body scanner. Land of the Free-ish.  Yet, this stuff, billions of dollars worth of it, doesn't work. On Thursday night, the minute after President Barack Obama finished his speech to Congress on how he proposed to get 14 million unemployed americans back to work, aBC News cut into the broadcast to report that a team of al-Qaeda operatives was loose in the United States. Citing intelligence sources, it claimed that three people, one an american, had entered the country in august with the aim of conducting attacks, possibly using truck bombs.  Paranoia was always going to be part of the tenth anniversary of September 11, a partner to grief. Security in New York has been ramped up in advance of tomorrow's commemoration at Ground Zero, to be attended by Obama and George W Bush, and people are a little more jumpy. There is something else, though, articulated rarely on grounds of taste: 9/11 fatigue. a lot of people are getting out of New York this weekend to breathe fresher air.  Tim Kelleher, who works for T3 Live, an online financial information service, is one of those going in search of a less oppressive atmosphere. The exodus from the area around Wall Street, he says, began on Thursday. ''Down in Front Street, bars like Nelson Blue or Stella Maris are usually packed with bond traders, and it was a ghost town," he says. "They've left town already; and for the week, too.  "I was telling a friend this at another place I go to and some drunken guy misunderstood and started telling me I lacked respect. Don't tell me how to respect people - that's why I want to leave town."  The events of 9/11 adhere to New York, even as the years pass. The wicked ingenuity of the assault devised by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden's principal planner, lay not only in economy of force - just 19 men and a budget of $500,000 - but in its changing of the city's motif, its skyline. One can date television programmes from their cutaway shots of Manhattan: Twin Towers or no Twin Towers. New Yorkers, believers in reinvention, are saddled with a constant reminder, constructed of thin air.  There is another reminder, too. Two square holes in the ground, the footprints of two giants where once some 50,000 people worked, 2,606 of them for the last time on September 11 2001. Ground Zero, as Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, prefers it not to be known, must in future function as a place of work, a shrine and a final resting place, the repository for remains identified and unidentified. The holes have been turned into monuments to the dead, their sides imprinted with their names, arranged by association, by friendship, rather than by alphabet. Water flows through them, disappearing as if into the centre of the earth.  This being america, money is an issue. The tower that will replace the doomed twins, One World Trade Centre, known as the Freedom Tower in the early days of its protracted gestation, will cost the american taxpayer $3.3 billion, double the cost of a normal skyscraper its size. Over-engineered to ensure maximum survivability, it is the centrepiece of a construction project that has produced cost over-runs of $2.2 billion.  The construction industry is not the only beneficiary.  Charities have sprung up around 9/11, some of dubious utility but almost all of them good payers to the executives who run them. and then there is the biggest beneficiary of all: the security state.  The September 11 attacks were most damaging to the long-term security of the United States not in the destruction they wrought but in the response they provoked. The War on Terror can be seen as one long lost opportunity, a decade-long struggle that, while drawing most of the teeth from hydra-headed al-Qaeda, has distracted america from much greater challenges, not least competition from new economic rivals.  Joseph Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel prize for economics, estimates that the wars fought by america in Iraq and afghanistan and their consequences have cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, contributing to a crippling national debt of $14.7 trillion. Twenty-two years after the Soviet Union called time on the Cold War, the US feels it necessary to command a defence budget representing half the global total. annual spending is $700 billion, a 70 per cent increase on 2001. Other costs range from rises in the price of oil to losses sustained by airlines, but one figure stands out: homeland security. The bloated department that carries that name is now second only in size to the Pentagon. Together with other federal departments interested in security it has consumed $360 billion during the past decade, while domestic intelligence gathering has cost another $110 billion. The treasure expended, or rather borrowed from China, is out of all proportion to the threat, according to John Mueller, an american academic and expert on the security industry. He says that america would have to endure almost 1,700 successful or abortive bomb attacks every year to justify the scores of billions lavished on domestic security annually.  "There has been a massive increase in surveillance to deal with a limited problem - I wouldn't even call it a threat," he says. "Fears of terrorism are exaggerated. If you say your chance of being killed by terrorism is one in 3.5 million per year if you are an american - which it is - the danger is that someone will say, 'How come we are giving you so much money?' There is an incentive to inflate and play to fears. The thing is that terrorism sells, there is a responsive audience. Genetically modified food doesn't sell as a fear; global warming is selling better now but it took a long time. There is a genuine fear of terrorism that what I call the terrorism industry can play on."  The wars drag on and the casualties mount. More than 6,000 americans hav  
 Tomorrow night, the BBC unveils its latest blockbuster series, Planet Dinosaur. Billed as the successor to 1999's Walking with Dinosaurs, it features creatures that are "bigger, badder and more bizarre than any you've seen before", from the monstrous argentinosaurus, a 75-ton brute that roamed prehistoric South america, to "Predator X", the most powerful marine reptile in history, with a bite four times stronger than a Tyrannosaurus rex.  The series has prompted grumbling in some quarters that the BBC is simply flogging a dead horse (or reptile). Indeed, one of the most frequent questions people ask me when they learn that I am a palaeontologist specialising in dinosaur evolution is: "Haven't we already discovered everything there is to know?" actually, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge - understandably, given that the creatures ruled the planet for roughly 160 million years. But recently, an impressive influx of new information has vastly increased our understanding of our predecessors as the rulers of the planet.  One of the key factors in this process has been an astonishing increase in the rate of discovery of new fossils. The first dinosaurs were recognised by scientists in the 1820s, resulting in classic names such as Megalosaurus and Iguanodon; the name for the entire group, Dinosauria ("terrible lizard"), was coined in 1842 by Sir Richard Owen, the creator of the Natural History Museum.  Since then, there has been a steady trickle of new discoveries, punctuated by occasional bursts, such as the "Bone Wars" of the 1870s and 1880s, when Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh combed the western reaches of the United States in an effort to find, and name, the most new species. Yet the pace of discovery is now accelerating dramatically: it is estimated that we have discovered and named as many new species in the past 10-15 years as we did between 1820 and the late 1990s.  Many countries, including the UK, continue to unearth dinosaur fossils, some of which are new to science. However, the driving force behind recent discoveries are countries such as China, Brazil and argentina.  These nations already possess some geological and climatic advantages. Extensive areas of desert or semi-arid land tend to expose fossil-bearing rocks at the surface. These areas can also contain valuable natural resources - so economically driven exploration results in the mapping of these rocks, and the reporting of any fossils that are ripe for collection. When we throw into the mix the national prestige associated with owning the "largest dinosaur" or the "earliest feathered dinosaur", plus the cash that museums and travelling exhibitions can make, it is easy to see why countries such as China have been eager to support palaeontological research.  To see the impact of such discoveries, just look at what we know about the origin of birds. Before 1990, palaeontologists were fairly convinced that modern birds had evolved from the bipedal meat-eating theropod dinosaurs (think Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor and so on), but the only piece of evidence to fill the anatomical gap was the archaeopteryx, with its dinosaur-like teeth, bony tail and bird-like wing feathers. Creationists were fond of pointing out these gaps and claiming that, if evolution had indeed happened, we palaeontologists should be able to provide the "missing links".  Well, over the past two decades, we have done exactly that: numerous small, feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been discovered, in China and elsewhere. These show how feathers first appeared as fine filaments that might have helped keep small dinosaurs warm, before evolving into larger structures that would have been useful for social displays and slowing the animal down as it "parachuted" out of trees. Eventually, these protofeathers were transformed into flight feathers that appear indistinguishable from those of modern birds.  The tremendous influx of new information has not been driven merely by the discovery of more fossils. Our ability to glean information from what we find has also been transformed. Palaeobiological research has become a highly computerised and statistical science, which draws upon increased computing power, large databases and a wide array of analytical approaches. Fossil specimens can now be CTscanned (the CT stands for "computed tomography"), modelled in 3-D in virtual environments to see how they looked and moved, probed for carbon and oxygen isotopes, assayed for various biological molecules, and examined using electron microscopes.  an excellent example is the impact of CT-scanning. Often, we come across specimens that cannot be studied with the naked eye, because they are obscured by rock that cannot be removed without risk to the fossil itself. There are also many small and delicate structures (such as the inner ear system) that cannot be easily studied, because they are surrounded by bone.  CT-scanning provides a nondestructive way of looking "inside" fossil specimens in order to extract new data. The size and shape of skeletal features can also be captured by CT-scanning or laser-scanning, and then converted into detailed and accurate 3-D models of the skull and skeleton inside our computers. These skeletons can then be made to walk or run in various ways, allowing palaeobiologists to test ideas about dinosaurs' locomotion and behaviour. These 3  
 aLEX SaLMOND has been forced to abandon a series of "absurd" SNP economic policies and pursue a different blueprint for growth, according to a document published yesterday.  John Swinney, the Scottish Finance Minister, unveiled the SNP's updated economic strategy with a promise to create thousands of jobs in the renewable energy industry and increase exports by 50 per cent. But the document made no mention of key targets set out in the original version, published four years ago, after they were missed or shown to be fundamentally flawed.  a promise in the 2007 strategy to raise the incomes of poorer Scots by replacing council tax with a local income tax has disappeared after The Daily Telegraph revealed that the levy would cost 50 per cent more than Mr Salmond claimed.  Large tracts of the original blueprint for growth focused on emulating the "lessons and approaches" of nations in a so-called "arc of prosperity". However, all references to this phrase have also been struck out after the economies of two of the countries - Ireland and Iceland - collapsed during the recession. There is also only one oblique reference to the main target in the 2007 document, to increase Scotland's economic growth ra  
 THE telecoms regulator has banned so-called "rollover" contracts - which trap more than 1m BT customers with their landline provider - following a Daily Telegraph campaign.  The year-long contracts renew automatically without the customer having to opt in to them, and consumers are then charged to leave the provider. Ofcom said yesterday that the contracts "raise barriers to effective competition by locking customers into long-term deals with little additional benefit".  The contracts for both landline and broadband internet services will be banned from December, while those who have already signed the contracts will have to be moved over to different deals by December 2012.  BT is by far the largest provider of such contracts - with an estimated 1.5m customers on rollover deals - although other providers such as TalkTalk offer rollover contracts to businesses.  The Daily Telegraph has campaigned against rollover contracts, and wants to see them banned f  
 THE Government must do more to create private-sector vacancies after a study warned the UK is up to 2m jobs short of its pre-recession employment levels.  Reducing corporate tax rates and the creation of new enterprise zones to boost job creation are "inadequate" responses to the ongoing jobs crisis, according to the report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).  ahead of fresh unemployment figures today, the analysis warns there is "little evidence" the private sector will pick up the slack from public-sector job losses in the next four years.  But the report calculates that between 1.5m and 2m jobs need to be generated to return the UK to its pre-recession employment rate of 73pc. The current level is 70.7pc.  The left-leaning think tank said the public sector had been filling in for insufficient private-sector job creation over the past two decades, adding there had to be a "massive turnaround" in private-sector growth, particularly in the North East, Yorkshire and Humberside, West Midlands and Scotland.  Between 1993 and 2008, employment increased by 27pc in London but by just 10pc in the North East and the North West.  The report coincides with new research from the Work Foundation, which urges the Government to throw its weight behind key sectors which could pull Britain out of recession, including renewable energy, healthcare and business services.  a failure to act will risk people becoming increasingly disengaged from the labour market, with thousands forced to leave work permanently as their skills become redundant, the IPPR warned. It called on the Government to introduce a jobs guarantee scheme for the long-term unemployed.  Elsewhere, new research showed nine in 10 jobless Britons believe there are no jobs suitable for their skills. a further half lack confidence their skills will get them a job, the survey of 1,023 jobless people by Learndirect found. 
 From the spectacular Grand Canyon to the Las Vegas "Strip" and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge: there are few places brimming with more iconic imagery than California and western USa.  Through forests and deserts, this 15-day tour takes in the glamour of Los angeles, the charm of San Diego, and the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.  TRaVEL DIaRY  Day 1  Fly to Los angeles. afternoon arrival and transfer to the four-star Marriott Hotel for one night.  Day 2  Enjoy a tour of this glamorous city, including Beverly Hills, Sunset Boulevard and Venice Beach. Later, you head to charming San Diego, staying two nights at the three-star Best Western Bayside.  Day 3  San Diego is the classic Californian city, set around a sweeping white-sand bay. after a city tour, you are free to experience San Diego's attractions. Visit the Maritime Museum with its historical ships, including HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th-century frigate.  Day 4  Drive inland to Phoenix, passing through the Cleveland National Forest, descending towards the Mojave Desert to stay at the three-star Hampton Inn Glendale-West.  Day 5  Leaving Phoenix, you drive through the Sonora Desert, Oak Creek Canyon and on to the Grand Canyon. More than a mile deep, its grandeur is overwhelming, and you visit all the best viewing points. Your hotel is the three-star Canyon Plaza hotel.  Day 6  This morning, experience the Grand Canyon's colours in a truly magical display. From the Desert View Watchtower, have your final, lingering look before crossing into the vast Navajo Indian Reservation towards Monument Valley.  arriving a few hours before sunset, this is the best time to view the buttes - huge flat-topped towers of red sandstone rising dramatically from the surrounding desert - which include the iconic "Mittens" formations.  Tonight, you stay at the three-star Holiday Inn in nearby Kayenta.  Day 7  an early start to see the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. You cross into Utah and climb to almost 8,000ft, arriving at Bryce Canyon National Park. Created by countless years of erosion, Bryce Canyon presents a spectacular rocky landscape. You stay in the three-star Best Western Ruby's Inn.  Day 8  This morning, you continue on to Zion National Park with its petrified sand dunes, cliffs and gorges. Late afternoon, you arrive in Las Vegas, staying two nights at the four-star Tropicana Resort, situated in the vibrant heart of the Las Vegas "Strip".  Day 9  Explore the self-styled entertainment capital of the world. an almost surreal apparition seemingly growing out of the desert, it's where the world's most renowned sights, including cities such as Venice, Paris, and New York - and even the Egyptian Pyramids - have been recreated in incredible detail. You can even take a gondola trip in a hotel.  Day 10  You leave Las Vegas, through the barren Mojave Desert, skirting the famous Edwards air Force Base (landing site for  
 a rising sea level is not the only risk Britain faces from climate change, according to a paper that warns that warmer oceans also mean more storm damage, disease and job losses.  Previous studies on the effect of rising temperatures on the oceans around Europe have concentrated on coastal erosion and rising sea levels.  The new study suggests the rise in temperature will cause storm surges and flooding across coastal Europe. In Britain that will mean 20 per cent more damage from extreme weather events every year. In warmer seas bacteria is able to thrive. In the UK, this will mean a rise in poisoning from infected shellfish.  Ocean acidification and less oxygen in the sea will harm many species. as certain fish move north, some jobs will be lost.  a collaboration of European institutions, known as Project CLaMER, looked at reports on climate change and the marine environment published since 1998. Carlo Heip, director of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said: "We must all heed the clear warnings of the hazards we face from what amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on the marine environment." 
 BLUSTERY weather and stormy seas certainly give the UK an advantage when it comes to growing the renewable energy industry.  Tens of thousands of offshore wind roles have been created in recent years and the sector is tipped to be a huge job creator in the coming decade. But where exactly will future green jobs come from and just how feasible are projections for growth?  Unemployment figures yesterday darkened the UK outlook, with a surge in jobless youths contributing to the biggest unemployment rise for almost two years. any talk of future jobs growth seems like fantasy when 2.5m Britons are still out of work.  a major report for The Daily Telegraph by the Work Foundation, however, argues that looming regulations - including a requirement that the UK reduce its carbon emissions by 34pc by 2020 - give the Government little choice but to invest in a low-carbon economy. Ministers have also pledged to obtain 15pc of the country's energy from renewables, against just 2.3pc in 2008, making the sector a high growth target.  The volume of "green" jobs created depends heavily on the level of government support, the Work Foundation argues.  But current estimates from trade body RenewableUK are optimistic - despite the current doom and gloom. The offshore wind industry could be worth ?8bn by 2020, generating 70,000 jobs, the organisation says. The entire renewables sector already employs 250,000 people and is worth ?33bn a year to the economy.  The Work Foundation report argues that the vast majority of low-carbon jobs, perhaps surprisingly, are unlikely to centre on high skills - at least in the short term.  Homes account for about a quarter of the UK's carbon emissions, meaning the "retrofitting" of existing buildings to cut their energy use is a government priority, report author Paul Sissons says. The bulk of jobs growth here will be in low to medium-skilled jobs, putting the technologies gleaned from high-skilled engineering into practice. These include plumbers, electricians, insulators and maintenance specialists to help make homes greener. as Will Day, low-carbon adviser at PricewaterhouseCoopers, puts it: "Britain does not need an army of Nobel-prize winning scientists to develop a low-carbon economy."  But Sissons warns that a number of young people entering the jobs market don't appear to be interested in the roles going, whic  
 PHEW! The Department of Energy and Climate Change knows how to talk.  But whether they are quite so au fait with decision making and action taking is up for debate.  This summer, once again, a group of 25 DECC civil servants traipsed off to Bonn for the annual climate change talks. at the summit - branded as "all talk and no action" - they racked up a bill of ?42,000.  a DECC spinner said they endeavoured to drive down costs: "In keeping with this, the hotel was chosen as it was also the venue for the conference itself."  How very sensible. Not only have they saved on taxi fares but civil servant security is clearly paramount.  Far safer to crawl up the stairs to bed after a boozy night in the hotel bar than wander the streets of Bonn. 
 after the hollow realpolitik that tolerated genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the pendulum of British foreign policy swung to the ill-focused exuberance of the Blair-Brown era. From military overreach to implausible environmental targets, Britain has fallen short of many of her dizzying international ambitions. Now, amidst austerity at home, our foreign policy must be re-defined. Britain rightly sees herself as a global good citizen, but she must reconcile ambition with power, ends with means - shedding utopian idealism in favour of a more rugged internationalism, putting the national interest first, not last.  Take military intervention. Shrouded by the "dodgy dossier", which warped opaque intelligence, none of the stated war aims in Iraq spoke to the British national interest. Illusory dreams of bringing Western-style democracy to the Middle East were punctured by failures of planning and strategy, as catalogued before the Chilcot Inquiry. a similar chasm between ends and means haunts the brave efforts of troops in afghanistan. a surgical operation against al-Qaeda after 9/11 morphed into nationbuilding that one military chief estimates will require a military presence for up to 40 years. Likewise, humanitarian intervention, such as in Libya, requires international resolve, achievable goals and an exit strategy. Britain should scale down her current commitments and, in the short term, limit herself to wars of necessity.  Beyond immediate operations, our priorities must reflect our interests and capabilities. First, that requires robust affirmation of the right of self-defence to protect territory, allies, citizens and shipping - against judicial erosion by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.  Second, it means replacing ill-defined nation-building and regime change with support for fledgling democracies, and UN peace-keeping operations that combine international backing with local buy-in. Paul Collier, an Oxford economist, estimates that every ?1 spent on such UN deployments saves ?4 averting the costs of civil war. We have moral and selfish interests in containing the number of failing states fuelling terrorism, international crime and refugee flows. Third, as Lord ancram argues, a more independent foreign policy would allow Britain to become a major player in "peacemaking" - exerting influence by combining her diplomatic expertise with London's niche in mediating commercial disputes.  Beyond conflict resolution, our pledges to cut CO2 emissions should bind the major emitters and reflect viable plans to meet the targets. Given the failure to broker global agreements at Copenhagen and Cancun, Britain should pursue a deal with the 20 countries responsible for 80 per cent of CO2 emissions. UK targets should be shaped around domestic development of nuclear power - even after Fukushima, still the only affordable source of clean energy that can realistically meet the demands of businesses and consumers.  Taxpayers also want a further focusing of UK aid. Development strategy should be overhauled around a single objective: helping the poorest countries build infrastructure to strengthen economic growth, good governance and basic human rights. Middle-income countries with poorer regions should take greater responsibility for their own people - like India, in 2009/10 the largest recipient of UK aid, and now setting up its own aid agency. Too much aid leaks into military spending - Collier reckons 40 per cent of military spending by governments of the poorest "bottom billion" is funded by aid. British investment should reward governments that spend less on arms. aid should be harnessed more tightly to the national interest - it should, for example, tackle human trafficking, now  
 What is our planning system for? That is the question the Government is grappling with through its reform of England's planning rules - and the answer it has come up with is proving to be a lot more controversial than it expected.  The Daily Telegraph has taken up cudgels on behalf of those concerned that the proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will not protect our countryside from the march of urban sprawl. The public backlash is growing, as is the pressure on ministers to take a step back and reconsider where they are taking our planning system.  With my background in planning and nature conservation, I was asked to help to write the new reforms. But I certainly cannot support the proposals on the table. The essence of good planning is meeting the needs of people, the economy and the environment - and these reforms are threatening that approach.  Greg Clark, the planning minister, invited four experts to write a first draft of the NPPF. as well as myself, from the environmental sector, there were three others drawn from the local authority sector, developers and the housebuilding industry, although we were all there in a personal capacity rather than representing the views of our organisations.  It was a novel and challenging approach.Put four experts in a room who all think they are right and sparks will fly. Over five months we had plenty of lively debates as we battled over the text. Some battles I won, some I lost, and on others we found a compromise. By the end we had a succinct, but flawed document.  I can see why the Government wants to streamline planning policy - not least to make the system more accessible to the public. Back in the early 1990s, working as a local authority planner, I helped to write a lengthy development plan. Looking back, that weighty tome must have been a real headache for people wanting to build a house in our patch. But it was invaluable experience for writing a succinct national policy. That, I think, was the real achievement of the expert group.  after we published our draft, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) beavered away to turn it into an official government draft. That meant changes not only from them but from other departments across government, including those who don't place a high value on either the environment or the planning system. With changes like that on top of a flawed draft, the result is a document that sets out a markedly different emphasis for the future planning system.  I believe there are some welcome ideas in the text. There are new policies on restoring habitats and protecting local ecological networks. There's a tougher stance on peat extraction - no more planning permissions, even for extended sites - and there's a new designation to protect green spaces.  But the big argument isn't really over the environmental policies. It's over the "presumption in favour of sustainable development" and the overall tone of the document, which puts the economy first. This marks a profound shift in emphasis for planning policy.  Ideally, the presumption in favour of sustainable development would be just that - a presumption that unless development can prove it is sustainable, against a robust series of tests, it should not go ahead. In the draft NPPF, however, it reads more like a presumption in favour of d  
 Halfway up the mountain, the boy began to shake uncontrollably. Frozen to the spot, he started to stutter. He was, he said, terrified of heights. The 17-year-old and his classmates from Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College were climbing Tryfan, in Snowdonia, a mountain with exposed ridges and daunting peaks.  "He was very, very uncomfortable - nervous and shaky," recalls Flight Lieutenant Trudy askew, the member of staff responsible for training the group. "But he didn't back out, and ultimately he made it to the top. "That's what we facilitate - that sense of achievement that pushes people on."  Welbeck, near Loughborough in Leicestershire, offers teenagers from all backgrounds a science- and technology-based curriculum designed to give them a head start in training for a career as an officer within the armed services, or as an engineer within the Ministry of Defence Civil Service. Most of its students are MoD-funded but a small number pay the ?18,000 annual fees.  at Welbeck, an academic education is necessarily combined with outdoor activities to develop the levels of physical and mental strength pupils will require for a military career. But more and more independent schools are recognising the role that outdoor education plays in ensuring their students leave school not only healthy and active but also with skills that extend beyond coursework and exams.  at abbotsholme, a private boarding and day school in Staffordshire, where boarding fees peak at ?9,225 per term, pupils have access to an on-site equestrian centre as well as a working farm. They bale hay, muck out stables and help with the births of cows, sheep and horses.  "I've seen the roughest, toughest rugby players in tears when they're holding a newborn lamb," says headmaster Steve Fairclough. "It's not only about learning respect and humility, it's about knowing how to care for a living thing. That helps them deal with people in a more humane way."  Staff at Welbeck also believe that being outdoors helps to develop strength of character. School-based workouts are complemented by "adventurous training" in Snowdonia, and trips to the Scottish mountains in winter. and pupils regularly suggest outdoor challenges - a three-mile outdoor swim or a 45-mile mountain trek, for instance - which teachers help them achieve.  "By overcoming challenging situations, your confidence grows," says Flt-Lt askew. "Later on, when faced with a real-life situation, you are hopefully able to find the inner strength to deal with it."  aCS Cobham International School in Surrey, which takes children aged from two to 18 (and where day fees cost up to ?20,820 per year), places a similar value on outdoor activities.  Pupils engage in outdoor learning opportunities in a customised woodland clearing. By the age of nine they have learnt to build a shelter, light a fire without matches and cook their own meals. The risks, uncertainties and potential surprises can provide an invaluable grounding for life beyond the school gates.  "They're not afraid," says Lacy Chapman, principal of the Lower School. "We're teaching them to be in control of their environment."  From the age of two, her pupils are introduced to aquatic life at the school pond and help tend an on-site vegetable garden. "You can't make an eight-year-old take on global warming as an issue," says Chapman. "But you can encourage them to take responsibility for their own garden. One hopes a feeling of achievement, however small, will instil a wider sense of responsibility."  This is a common refrain among teachers: it is one thing to read about environmental awareness in textbooks, quite another to understand it through practical experience.  at abbotsholme, the heavy frost last winter killed several trees. Subsequently, pupils were drafted in to chop up the wood. "First they understand why the trees died. Then they begin to realise what the seasons mean and why they're important," says headmaster Steve Fairclough.  at Dolphin School, a preparatory in Berkshire that charges up to ?3,730 per term, outdoor lessons are deemed so worthwhile that they constitute an intrinsic part of the curriculum.  From Reception onwards, Dolphin pupils are taken on a residential field trip every year. Each is deliberately tied to a topic within the curriculum - so, for instance, younger pupils might be taken on a visit to East Sussex for two nights to enhance history lessons about the Battle of Hastings, while Year-4 pupils will study coastal erosion in Dorset, as well as complementing their English lessons with a visit to Thomas Hardy's house.  "The classroom is a bit of a sterile environment," says deputy head Christopher Leakey. "You're trying to learn about something that didn't take place there, which relies on a dynamic teacher. But seeing first-hand how a river can erode its way through the land, or how castles are built, does make a difference. Taking children to see what's going on in the real world makes it stick."  Such excursions also ensure that a child's knowledge is not defined by individual subjects on a timetable. a trip to a quarry, for example, will not only highlight geological formations but also provide an opportunity for discussion during a visit to a castle built from local stone. Inevitably, this cross-curricular perspective and flexible thinking is appealing to universities.  Other types of outdoor work can provide similar breadth of perspective, with commensurate levels of benefit. abbotsholme pupils, for example, commit to looking after the school's cattle for an extended period of time. "The difference between this activity and a maths lesson is the recognition that if they don't turn up something living will suffer," says Fairclough. "That enforces repetition and gets kids used to routine. The opportunity to learn [basic life] skills are often lost today."  Jon Gray, head of the ?3,990-a-term Hornsby House School, takes this one step further, believing that outdoor activities can be character building. at his south London prep, all the year groups take turns at clearing the playground of litter. and, during a final-year field trip, 11-year-olds conduct a littersweep of a Scottish beach.  "If you're the type of person who leaves an environment in better shape than you found it, you'll live a happier life," says Gray. "and you'll also be an easier person to get on with. In the vast majority of jobs, the ability to get on with people plays a huge part in your success."  Flt-Lt askew agrees. When her 17-year-old mountaineer   
 LORD Lawson has accused Sir David attenborough of "sensationalism" in the final episode of Frozen Planet, which focuses on the effects of global warming.  During the BBC television programme, Sir David claims that the arctic could be free of ice in the summer by 2020 and that polar bears are already dying as a result.  Writing in Radio Times, Lord Lawson says  
 ENERGY intensive-industries such as steel making, cement and chemical manufacturers were granted a ?250m package from George Osborne yesterday to help counteract rising power costs.  The autumn Statement confirmed that a tax relief and compensation package would be used to shield British businesses from costly environmental legislation.  The measures include compensation for key businesses to help offset the indirect cost of the carbon price floor and the EU emissions trading system, and also increase the level of relief from the climate change levy on electricity to 90pc.  "This package is a welcome recognition of the significant competitive pressures facing energy intensive companies and should go a long way to address them," said Terry Scuoler, chief executive of the manufacturers' organisation EEF. John Cridland, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) was also positive, saying the move was "important for jobs and growth".  However, representatives of the ceramics industry said Mr Osborne had not gone far enough, with Dr Laura Cohen, chief executive of the British Ceramic Confederation, saying it was a "welcome first step".  Environmental groups were cautious on the proposals. WWF argued that data used to justify compensation should be "transparent" and assistance should be directed to those sectors genuinely at risk. "The Government shouldn't just cave into lobbying by industry," Nick Molho, head of energy policy at WWF-UK, said. 
 EU  
 POLaR bears might have breathed a sigh of relief at Cairn Energy abandoning two more wells in Greenland, but the news was not such good news for shareholders.  Having already drilled three dry holes this year, the oil explorer yesterday confirmed that it had plugged and abandoned the final two wells drilled in 2011, further illustrating the challenges of striking black gold in the vast, little-explored terrain.  Cairn, whose Greenland programme has cost around $1bn (?637m) so far, said it would review the data gathered and that it was in discussions with potential partners about buying into its Greenland licences.  "Whilst we have yet to make a commercial discovery we remain encouraged that all of the ingredients for success are in evidence," said Simon Thomson, Cairn's chief executive.  But Richard Rose, an analyst at Oriel, said the update offered little further encouragement and he thought it "highly unlikely" that there would be any drilling in Greenland next year.  "This now concludes the latest drilling programme in Greenland which, whilst having some minor encouragement, has failed to yield a discovery," he said. He added that although the news should not be a surprise to the market, the shares were likely to come off, but this could open up a buying opportunity. after earlier sinking as low as 258.8p, Cairn later pared its losses, closing down just 2.7 at 272.3p as the large-caps staged a turnaround.  after Standard & Poor's cut its ratings on 15 major lenders, the blue-chips began the session in a grim humour. But moves by China and then the central banks prompted a recovery and the FTSE 100 finished up 168.42 points - 3.16pc - at 5,505.42 while the FTSE 250 soared 283.71 points - 2.83pc - to 10,315.29.  Sentiment was boosted by central banks taking concerted action to lower interest rates on US dollar loans, which should encourage lending between banks. as such, high street lenders reversed their earlier losses, with Royal Bank of Scotland putting on 1.47 to 20.99p. Barclays advanced 11? to 180?p.  Miners helped haul the benchmark index higher after China cut its banks' reserve ratio requirements, easing credit strains. Hopes that such a move will fuel China's demand for raw materials heartened the likes of antofagasta - up 100p to ?11.84 - and Xstrata, up 62p to ?10.17.  Insurers joined the rally, with aviva rising 8.9 to 311.7p and Old Mutual advancing 4.1 to 113.4p. Lifting the latter was a push from RBC Capital Markets, which was on bullish form following a recent visit to Old Mutual's South african business. analyst Gordon aitken said the insurer was well-placed to take advantage of "wealth and insurance penetration in the rest of africa".  Having also recently visited Prudential's asian business in Kuala Lumpur, Mr aitken thought that Old Mutual's operations had "several of the characteristics of Prudential's asian businesses, yet the valuation is markedly cheaper". Old Mutual put on 4.1 to 113.4p while Prudential rose 12? to 623p.  There was also talk that Haverford, the bidder for 25pc of Lloyd's of London insurer Omega Insurance, had replaced a proposed tender offer of between 70p and 83p-a-share with a fixed price offer of 74p-a-share. Omega shares were up 2 at 67.75p.  Only five stocks were left under water, with National Grid and Tate & Lyle trading without the rights to their most recent dividend.  Profit-taking continued to hit mid-cap Thomas Cook, with the beleaguered tour operator easing 0.61 to 18.29p following Monday's surge after the business - which has issued a string of profit warnings - secured a rescue package from its lenders.  Suffering the sharpest fall, however, was SDL. The translation software company retreated 30? to 609p as rival alterian - for which SDL recently made a 110pper-share offer - indicated that it expected double-digit revenue growth in 2013 thanks to strength in its US and asian markets.  alterian, which posted an interim loss of ?18.6m compared with ?601,000 profit last time, edged up 1? to 101?p.  Climate change consultancy aEa Technology was 0.2 - or 40pc - warmer at 0.54p. Last month, its shares tumbled after the business issued  
 aN ENERGY company has settled a High Court action for damages with a couple who said they had been driven out of their home by "unbearable" noise from a wind farm.  The decision to settle by EDF could have implications for other wind farms and those in the planning stages over where turbines are sited.  Jane and Julian Davis said the "whoom, whoom, whoom" and the low-frequency hum of the blades forced them to leave their farm in Deeping St Nicholas, Lincs, in 2006.  Mrs Davis, 55, a former nurse, and her husband, 46, began a ?2.5million compensation action claiming that the sound disrupted their sleep, made them feel ill and was so severe it warranted a reduction in council tax. They were accused of being oversensitive to the noise, "exaggerating" and "over-reacting".  In July, they became the first people in Britain to take a noise complaint against wind farms to the High Court. They have now reached a con-fidential out-of-court agreement with the defendants, who include Fenland Windfarms Ltd and Fenland Green Power Co-operative Ltd.  Mr and Mrs Davis were seeking an injunction to bring about modification of the wind farm operation, plus ?400,000 to compensate them for noise nuisance. alternatively, they asked for damages plus a "like for like" replacement for their farm, worth an estimated ?2.5million.  Dick Bowlder, an acoustic consultant, said the Davis's case will force wind farm operators to carry out more surveys before building.  RenewableUK said operators already carried out careful surveys and worked with communities to ensure there were no problems. 
 THE refusal of the United States to negotiate legally binding cuts to carbon emissions risks derailing the UN climate change summit, environmental groups have warned in a letter to Hillary Clinton.  The letter, from 16 organisations to the US Secretary of State, said President Barack Obama had broken the pledge he made in November 2008 to "engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world towards a new era of global co-operation on climate change".  Instead, the letter claimed, the US is being seen as a "major obstacle" to progress. Signatories included Greenpeace USa, the Natural Resources Defence Council, Oxfam america and the World Wildlife Fund.  after it was made public, the EU delegation at the summit criticised the US for "overlooking the facts" of climate change and suggested it was not doing enough to cut carbon emissions. The EU bloc wants the current talks to agree on a timetable for all major polluters to sign a legally binding agreement to cut their emissions by 2015.  at the opening of the summit in Durban on Monday, the US said it would not consider the EU's proposals until major developing countries such as China and India sign up. China, the world's biggest emitter, is against the 2015 deadline.  Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, added that he believed voluntary cuts agreed by countries at the previous summit in Cancun, Mexico were sufficient until 2020.  However, artur Runge-Metzger, the EU's chief negotiator, said he was "overlooking the facts". "The message from the science is crystal clear: we have to act now," he added.  Mr Runge-Metzger agreed with the letter writers that a refusal by the US to negotiate could stall the summit. "It will always have an effect," he said. "The bigger countries, the major economies, will always look towards the US." 
 BRITaIN is almost certain to suffer drought in some areas next summer because poor rainfall is forecast this winter, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, said yesterday.  The South East already had low water levels after the drought in spring and reservoirs and rivers have failed to refill during what appears to have been the second warmest autumn on record.  Central, eastern and south-eastern England are also unlikely to see a full recovery from drought conditions in 2012. If there is a sustained drought in these areas, then hosepipe bans are possible.  It is expected to be declared the second warmest autumn since records began 352 years ago but winter officially begins today as forecasters say colder weather is on the way.  Mrs Spelman said yesterday that people needed to start saving water now, by fitting water-saving shower heads and devices in the lavatory; taking short showers rather than baths and only watering plants that really need it. "Everyone has worked hard to stave off any threat of hosepipe bans this year, and help keep our rivers flowing," she said.  "Unfortunately if we have another dry winter, there is a high risk that parts of the country will almost certainly be in drought next summer, so it's   
 REDBUSH tea, the popular nutty-tasting brew, could be the latest victim of climate change without drastic action, farmers and scientists have warned.  The tea plant, known locally by its afrikaner name rooibos, was first used by the San bushmen of South africa and harvested for its medicinal qualities.  It became popular in the 1990s as a caffeine-free and mineral-rich alternative to black tea. It was popularised in alexander McCall Smith's detective series involving Precious Ramotswe.  But it can be grown in only one region, a stretch of the desert known as the Suid Bokkeveld, in western South africa.  The area sits on the edge of the Cape winter rainfall region, so is particularly susceptible to changes in climate.  The 300 farmers who make their living from the arid land say they are struggling to keep crops alive amid droughts and erratic rainfall.  alida Strauss, general manager of the Heiveld Co-operative, which represents 54 farmers, said if rain were delayed by just one month from its usual arrival in June, crop yields were cut dramatically.  "One year, we lost 50 per cent of our crop," she said. "We are seeing changes in the climate and we are getting less rain. It will make things more expensive but farmers are trying to adapt."  attempts to cultivate redbush in other, more forgiving landscapes have failed.  Farmers are trying to adapt to the climate changes by using windbreaks to prevent soil erosion and water catchments.  Dr Rhoda Malgas, a redbush expert at the University of Stellenbosch, said farmers should develop the wild redbush plant, which is hardier and more heat resistant than its cultivated relative. 
 BRITaIN'S plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations have suffered another setback after being delayed by at least a year.  The first of the new plants will not be built until 2019 because of extra safety checks following Japan's atomic disaster.  Ministers originally hoped to get the first nuclear power station built by 2017, before revising this to 2018.  Now there has been a further slippage, after an updated timetable showed the first station in Somerset is not expected until nearer the end of the decade.  The Government has placed its hope on nuclear power to stop Britain being vulnerable to energy shortages when coal power stations start retiring from 2015.  The Coalition's plans for building eight to 10 nuclear plants over the next decade were described last week as "simply lacking credibility" by peers in the House of Lords.  There have been concerns about the high cost and whether the plants can be built quickly enough to meet Britain's growing need for electricity.  EDF Energy, the company building the first plant, has refused to give a "firm and final completion date" for nuclear power. a spokesman for the company said the 2019 date was only "indicative".  The Government disclosed in its Carbon Plan yesterday that tripling the UK's nuclear power would be the cheapest way for the country to tackle climate change by reducing emissions.  Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, claimed that nuclear power and wind farms will be much cheaper for the consumer than relying on oil and gas.  He said going green would stop Britain being "vulnerable" to imported oil and gas.  The Government concedes that bills will have to rise sharply   
 aLEX SaLMOND'S claims that English subsidies would continue to fund Scotland's green energy industry after independence are "highly unlikely", a bank told its clients last night in a fresh warning about investing here before a referendum.  Peter atherton, Citigroup's head of utilities research, said England and Wales imports just 3.3 per cent of its electricity from north of the Border, most of which comes from Scotland's two ageing nuclear stations and could "easily be replaced".  It is "hard to imagine" England and Wales buying power generated by offshore wind in Scotland when this would probably be the most expensive option and they could develop it more cheaply themselves, he said.  He also rejected Mr Salmond's claims that large companies investing north of the Border provided evidence that the referendum was not causing  
 MITT ROMNEY, the Republican presidential candidate, has been ridiculed by opponents after a Fox News presenter said he had complained that an interview was "overly aggressive" and "uncalled for".  During the interview on Tuesday, Mr Romney, who is facing a stiff challenge for the Republican nomination from Newt Gingrich, was visibly annoyed by questions from Br  
 I sat in the new Swift Sport at the Frankfurt show a couple of months ago. This wasn't a particularly professional moment. There's no time for indulgences such as this on the press day of this sprawling German show, even if you do happen to like the car. I glanced around the bonsai cabin and noted the new dash, the contrasting stitching and a general, pleasing absence of bling. Six speeds on the shift, I noted, wondering if they'd shortened the gearing to give it more fizz and then banged on a ludicrously overdriven top ratio to keep emissions and consumption down (they have).  I liked the old model, a giantkilling act of some aplomb. While it couldn't match the sheer brio and firepower of today's Renaultsport Clios, it was a fine warm, rather than hot, hatchback. This is a type of affordable, everyday car with enough vim to bring a smile to your face when the road starts to curl and curve. Funnily enough, Renault used to produce the best-ever warm hatch in the Nineties, the Clio RSi; bad name, great car, terrific prices.  I had wondered what might happen to cars like the Swift when Volkswagen, which owns a fifth of Suzuki, started throwing its weight around. The Germans wanted the Japanese to do as they were told, mop up VW's surplus capacity in engines and suspensions and give VW the key to Far Eastern markets such as India, where Maruti Suzuki is the leading brand. It was all one-way traffic and VW sniffily dismissed any suggestion that it could learn something from Suzuki about making small cars. Finally, at this year's Frankfurt show the Japanese signalled that they had had enough of this patronising - the deal is currently being unwound. Which leaves Suzuki independent, with the world's most eclectic model range and the Swift Sport unmolested by Germany's finest.  The new car is slightly larger and heavier than the old, but retains the Nautilus-style wraparound windscreen and Giugiaro-inspired window line. The 1.6-litre twin-cam fizzes out slightly more power with better emissions and its 136bhp with 118lb ft of torque is enough to throw this oneton, three-door hatch up the road at a top speed of 121mph and accelerate from 0-62mph in 8.7sec, yet give a Combined fuel consumption of 44mpg and Band F CO2 emissions of 147g/km.  Climb inside and it's hard to avoid a nostalgic rush as you contemplate the old-school Fun, fun, fun: the Suzuki Swift Sport should be 'driven to the V&a and parked in a big glass case' - although it will be in a showroom near you in the New Year plastic trim and simple twodial binnacle. Only the pianoblack centre console pumping Metronomy instead of Duran Duran reminds you this isn't the Eighties and this isn't a Peugeot 205 GTi. Even the seats are those tight-fitting buckets that make you feel like a rally star but attack your spine after half an hour.  The steering wheel is, wait for it, perforated leather; how Young Guns is that? No, you aren't going to be very comfortable in the back seats and the boot is small, but that's not what this car is about.  Fire it up and it's hard not to blip the throttle as it warms, except at my age people might assume I've stolen my son's car. The little mill fizzes through the frame and the revcounter bounces around like a demented space hopper. The new gearbox doesn't have the mechanical-feeling change of the old one and that's a shame, but it slots cleanly and fast, which is what you need to keep this engine on the boil. The clutch is absurdly light.  Pull away and the lack of low-down torque isn't as bad as you expect, well not quite. a complicated two-stage intake system and variable valve timing give a boost to the midrange, but this engine is really all about revs. Which makes it surprising that the Japanese have given it a long stroke, so from 6,000rpm it labours on to a peak of 7,000rpm with all the spring of a climber negotiating Everest's Hillary Step.  That takes away a bit of the joy, but not much. This little car is a perfect hoot. Well planted, but with a fine ride quality and accurate steering, it's a smashing thing to drive fast. The body does roll a little, but that's also part of the fun, when the inside front wheel starts to lose traction and you feather the throttle, holding a big screaming slide out of the corner. There is an electronic stability system, but it's as discreet as Jeeves.  The main trait is understeer, but you can kick the nose into line with a lift of the throttle, although the mechanical grip from the 195/45/17in tyres and chassis dynamics means it never hangs its tail out like the infamous 205 GTi of yesteryear. The brakes are strong and linear so you can dance around the pedals pushing the car along like a football in the yard, with a grin as wide as the goalposts.  at ?14,250, this is automotive fun of the type that should be driven to the V&a Museum and parked in a big glass case. The glass you'll see it through, however, is the showroom window in January. Nip down there after Christmas and I guarantee that New Year will never have looked as good.  The rivals  FORD FIESTa ST  Price watch this space  Now that the Fiesta is a World Rally contender, a proper hot hatch version is on the cards for next year, with a 180bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged engine and a six-speed manual box. Handling seems assured, but prices might be steep.  VaUXHaLL CORSa VXR  Price ?18,900  a sweet-handling and subtle rework of the Griffin's B-class hatchback. The turbocharged 1.6 engine spits out a blistering 192bhp and performance is suitably brisk, with 140mph and 0-60mph in 6.8sec. a fizzing if expensive competitor.  RENaULT CLIO RENaULTSPORT 200 CUP  Price ?16,930  The R?gie might have cynically relaunched its Gordini badge as a mere paint job, but this fantastic 200bhp, 141mph hot hatch with 0-62mph in 6.9sec is unsurpassed except in build and ride quality.  Behind the wheel of Hyundai's new family hatch  ,It's not just us who are starting to take Hyundai seriously. So are the South Korean car-maker's rivals, writes andrew English.  at this autumn's Frankfurt motor show, a posse of Volkswagen management, including the chairman Martin Winterkorn, descended on next year's i30 replacement and gave it the third degree, including waggling the steering adjustment while complaining it is better than VW's system and measuring the door-mirror obscuration.  We tracked down a prototype of the new i30 in Copenhagen for our own grilling. It is slightly longer, wider and lower than its predecessor, which is Hyundai's European bestseller and which has sold more than 350,000 since its 2007 launch. Like the old model, the new i30 will be built in the Czech Republic. Thomas Burkle, Hyundai's design head and formerly of BMW, might not have the high profile of Peter Schreyer, his opposite number at Kia, but he's designe  
 MEaT should be eaten only on feast days, to prevent obesity and climate change, according to a government adviser.  Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, said meat consumption was "out of control". He suggested we should go back to ancient traditions whereby meat was considered a treat and eaten only on feast days, such as Christmas.  "Let's go back to where culture has been for thousands of years, which is meat is an exception," Prof Lang said. "If you were growing meat yourself, it is an incredibly slow process and killing and eating an animal is a special day.  "at Christmas if we were well off we had beef. It was a big deal. We killed an animal as an exception, for a feast."  In medieval times, there were far more feast days for saints or changes in the season, and Prof Lang said he was not advocating eating meat only once a year, but once a week at the most.  Prof Lang, who advises the World Health Organisation, as well as the Department for Environment, on food policy, said eating too much meat can cause obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Last year, Sir Liam Donaldson, then Chief Medical Officer for England, said cutting consumption of meat by 30 per cent would prevent 18,000 premature deaths a year.  Producing meat is harmful for the environment as growing animals requires energy and water, and cows produce the greenhouse gas methane.  Sir Paul McCartney has advocated Meat-Free Mondays but Prof Lang said: "I am saying instead of having one day where you do not eat meat, eat meat once a week and have really good, grass fed meat." 
 NEXT year, 2012, must be the year the UK finally stops agonising about rebalancing its economy and actually does so, said the head of the CBI in his New Year message.  a fundamental shift from debt-fuelled household and government spending towards business investment and exports is the only way to put growth on the right track, according to John Cridland, director-general of the business lobby group. "There are no easy answers when it comes to securing fut  
 MEaT should be eaten only on feast days to prevent obesity and climate change, according to a government adviser.  Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, said meat consumption was "out of control".  He suggested we should go back to ancient traditions whereby meat was considered a treat and eaten only on feast days, such as Christmas.  "Let's go back to where culture has been for thousands of years, which is meat is an exception," Prof Lang said. "If you were growing meat yourself, it is an incredibly slow process and killing and eating an animal is a special day.  "at Christmas if we were well off we had beef. It was a big deal. We killed an animal as an exception, for a feast."  In medieval times, there were far more feast days for saints or changes in the season, and Prof Lang said he was not advocating eating meat only once a year, but once a week at the most.  Prof Lang, who advises the World Health Organisation and the Department for Environment on food policy, said eating too much meat can cause obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Last year, Sir Liam Donaldson, then Chief Medical Officer for England, said cutting consumption of meat by 30 per cent would prevent 18,000 premature deaths a year.  Producing meat is harmful for the environment as growing animals requires energy and water, and cows produce the greenhouse gas methane.  Sir Paul McCartney has advocated Meat-Free Mondays but Prof Lang said: "I am saying instead of having one day where you do not eat meat, eat meat once a week and have really good, grass-fed meat." 
 BRITISH companies are to invest a total of ?2.5bn in renewable energy projects, according to the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne.  The plans, announced in the financial year so far, could create almost 12,000 jobs across the country, according to research by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  The news came as The Daily Telelgraph revealed yesterday that cutting the UK's dependence on fossil fuels would cost the country ?60bn a year until 2050 - the equivalent to ?4,600 per person annually - although doing nothing could prove more expensive.  Mr Huhne reaffirmed the Government's commitment to meeting the European Union's target for the UK, which would see 15pc of energy generated from renewable sources by 2020. The wider EU target is 20pc.  "Renewable energy is not just helping us increase our energy security and reduce our emissions. It is supporting jobs and growth across the country, and giving traditional industrial heartlands the opportunity to thrive again," Mr Huhne said.  a separate report to the European Commission showed the UK's consumption of renewable energy increased by 27pc between 2008 and 2010, when it represented 3.3pc of total energy consumed. Wind generation rose by 46pc over the same period and the use of biofuels in transport rose threefold. 
 TRaVELLERS on public transport can cause more damage to the environment than those using a limousine, according to government statistics.  a typical bus outside London emits 184.33g of carbon dioxide per kilometre per person if it carries the average load, 7.2 passengers.  a BMW 730d limousine emits 178g/km and can carry five people, The average car emits 138.4g/km but a Volkswagen Polo Bluemotion TDi supermini, emits 91g of carbon dioxide per kilometre - 22.75g/km per person if it is carrying four people.  The figures appear in a report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs and the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  In London, where public transport use is higher, buses still emit 85g/km for each of their average 16.6 passengers. They are, however, still greener than Hackney cabs, which emit 198g/km.  The coach is the greenest method of public transport with the average trip emitting 50g/km per person, ahead of national rail (53g/km), trams (71g/km) and the London Underground (73g/km).  Edmund King, the president of the aa, said: "There's a lot of misinformation about 'green' travel. It's time for a balanced, fact-based discussion on this issue." 
 The period covering Christmas and the new year is notorious for family breakdown. Fractious partners look back at the year that is passing, look ahead to the one coming - and decide to strike out on their own, if that is financially possible.  This logic can also be applied to the troubled cohabitation that is the Coalition. Nick Clegg is in the position of a cashstrapped partner who cannot afford to leave the family home: the polls suggest that an election now could halve the number of Liberal Democrat MPs. However, David Cameron has money in the bank, at least as far as those same surveys are concerned. The last poll of 2011 found his party ahead of Ed Miliband's. The penultimate one saw its ratings touch 40 per cent - a four-point increase on its general election total.  Conservative members and activists have been encouraged by these findings: one survey found that over half believe that a snap election would produce a Tory majority. Some of the more excitable spirits among the grassroots continue to enthuse about a poll. and there is no reason to suppose that the recent surge in the party's ratings won't be repeated, especially if the Prime Minister follows through his EU summit veto. So, given the agonies of the Liberal Democrats and the weakness of Ed Miliband, why won't Cameron call the election which would give the country the Tory government it needs?  The question should meet a brutal threepart answer. First, this happy outcome simply wouldn't happen. Under the present constituency boundaries, the Tories must be roughly eight points ahead of Labour to win a majority. Even the sunniest poll for the party shows them nowhere near achieving and sustaining a lead of this size.  Second, Cameron can't call an election. Supporters of an early contest have forgotten about the Fixed Term Parliaments act. Conceived during the Coalition negotiations and effected this year, the measure ended the practice whereby the Prime Minister can simply go to the Palace and ask for an election - which was precisely why the Liberal Democrats insisted on it.  Third, such a gambit would be dubious even had the act not been passed. Voters may not love the Government. But they detest unnecessary elections. and despite record back-bench rebellion rates, the Government has an emphatic and workable majority in the Commons of more than 80. It has given itself the task of eliminating the structural deficit. Until or unless the deficit is under control, it would be a dereliction of duty to break up the Coalition.  In short, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs may be restive (and the parties' activists even more so) but the Cameron and Clegg relationship, however tense and strained, will remain in place, based on mutual need and convenience. There is, however, an alternative both to wistful dreams of separation and the chafing reality of their present life together.  Last spring's referendum rejection of aV ended the rose garden politics of the Coalition's opening year. The ease that the two leaders displayed in their first (and only) joint press conference was succeeded by edginess. Under pressure from his party, Clegg began to define the Liberal Democrats not by what they were achieving in government, but by what they were preventing the Conservatives from doing.  Thus they came out against andrew Lansley's health reforms. against any reduction in the 50p tax rate. against the Beecroft report's original plans to boost small businesses. against plans for a Bill of Rights. and against the support for marriage in the tax system championed by Iain Duncan Smith a  
 Ever since Benjamin Franklin got his knuckles burned when flying a kite in a thunderstorm, many scientists - and even more quacks - have been curious about the possibilities of what has been called electro-horticulture.  The logic is inescapable - most things react in some way to an electric current. Why shouldn't plants react too, and perhaps grow better/faster/bigger?  While I'm not prepared to speak authoritatively on this subject in general, I have had a bit of experience with one aspect of electro-horticulture: the use of electric lights - fluorescent lights to be precise - in a contraption intended to start seedlings indoors. It had three shelves illuminated by bulbs casting a special kind of light (I'm not sure how special it really was) and provided space for a couple of dozen seed trays. at the time I was working on the 29th floor of an office building, and inevitably the contraption ended up in the corridor outside the ladies' room, which was the only place I could find to put it.  The plants didn't seem to mind. In fact, under the benevolent rays of the Gro-Lux, watered from time to time and admired by most of my fellow office workers as they passed by, the infant courgettes, tomatoes, snapdragons and the rest thrived. If they resented the low status of their situation, they could at least look forward to being transplanted.  So far as I know, there is no particular controversy about the effectiveness of artificial light in growing plants. It works fine, and can be employed to good purpose even by those who, like me, are only modestly competent in technical matters. But the world of electro-horticulture involves more - and stranger - things than fluorescent tubing.  This is where we get into the fun stuff, though, as we shall see, it's as well to be careful.  apparently the first man to explore the potential was one Dr Maimbray (or Mainbray or Von Maimbray - sources differ) of Edinburgh who in 1746 undertook to electrify two myrtle bushes. He used a primitive electrostatic generator to produce the power. after being zapped for the entire month of October, according to Maimbray, the shrubs put out new branches and blossomed. a paper on the effects of electricity on vegetables read to the Royal Society in London the following year resulted in a wave of enthusiastic experiments, none of which seem to have come to anything. "The most striking feature of these experiments," a historian remarked later, "is that they are always contradictory."  He might have been speaking for succeeding generations of frustrated electro-horticultural researchers, because inconsistency appears to have dogged their efforts from the start. Triumphs were no sooner announced than failures followed. Nevertheless, work continued. The abb? Pierre Bertholon, a French priest and pioneer electrical researcher, published De l'?lectricit? des Vegetaux, in which he described his method of spraying electrified water on growing crops from a special "electrovegetometer", thereby encouraging them to grow. Results were ambiguous.  In Italy, less ambiguous results were obtained by a Dr Gardini, whose experiments in Turin backfired. Wire netting installed in the previously productive garden of a monastery there reduced its fertility to such an extent that the infuriated monks tore down the apparatus and ejected Dr Gardini. (In fairness, it must be said that Gardini could claim to have proved what he set out to prove - that plants deprived of atmospheric electricity by being covered with fine mesh metal cages would wilt and die. and so they had.) Given the rudimentary understanding of electricity itself during this period, it is not surprising that scientific opinion about the way it might or might not affect plants was severely divided, if not fragmented. The great alexander von Humboldt, in a work on plant physiology published in 1794, declared that there was scarcely any subject upon which learned men differed so profoundly. and if you did believe that electricity was important in horticulture, the questions about how and why crowded in. Did it increase fertility? Did it make atmospheric chemicals like nitrogen more available? Did it serve to break up soil particles? Did it make sap move faster inside the plants? What sort of electricity - static or voltaic - was most significant? The puzzles seemed endless.  Meanwhile, theories and experiments multiplied. For centuries farmers had sworn that thunderstorms make crops grow quicker. (Bertholon went so far as to blame the failure of the hop crop in 1787 to a shortage of lightning.) attempts were made to simulate or trap atmospheric electricity by stringing wires across fields or by erecting high antennae. One researcher maintained that this could be achieved by sticking a conical coil of stiff wire wound with nine turns (clockwise in the southern hemisphere, counter-clockwise in the northern) one foot north of a plant. Results, as usual, were mixed, with enthusiasts claiming success and sceptics the opposite.  In the 1840s there was a considerable stir. a Dr Forster, of Findrassie, near Elgin, reported that after stretching wires in particular directions over a crop of barley, he had produced a highly luxuriant crop. Fresh trials were projected all over Britain, even in the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Chiswick. according to John Claudius Loudon, the premier gardening journalist of the day, "in all cases the result was a complete failure". But then Loudon never was a believer.  What electro-horticulture did get was plenty of fashionable publicity. One especially delightful story tells of a demonstration conducted by the Marquis of anglesey at a dinner party.  (This noble lord is perhaps best remembered for his exchange with the Duke of Wellington during the battle of Waterloo. anglesey: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!" Wellington: "By God, sir, so you have!") When the guests sat down they watched cress seeds being sown into flats containing a mixture of sand, manganese oxide and salt, the whole moistened with diluted sulphuric acid and electrified. Five hours later - it was a leisurely dinner - the cress was harvested and served up in a salad. at least that was the way the story went.  The years before the First World War saw the last real flowering of electrohorticulture, stimulated by the work and writings of several European experimenters. Most important was a Finnish scientist named Karl Selim Lenstr?m, who noticed how rapidly and vigorously plants grew in the short Lapland summer and concluded that, as shown by the aurora borealis, it was because there was so much electricity floating in the arctic air.  Lenstr?m strung up current-carrying wires, first over pots and later over whole fields, finally concluding that electricity encouraged everything from parsnips to strawberries (though not turnips and tobacco).  The Great War did not bring electrohorticultural experimentation entirely to an end, but during the rest of the 20th century it was fairly desultory. The British Board of agriculture and Fisheries set up an Electro-Culture Committee in 1918, which conducted a number of hopeful experiments before closing down, somewhat dejected, in 1936. Worst of all, occasional findin  
 Prediction, as they say, is tough - especially when it's about the future. But this is the time of year to have a punt, so here are mine for 2012.  Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach a record, but international negotiations on cutting emissions will make slow progress. Poor people in developing countries will continue to suffer from a changing climate, even as many in comfortable circumstances carry on arguing over whether it is happening.  at home, the EU will start legal proceedings against Britain for failing to meet air pollution standards. Badger lovers will go to law to stop culling, starting in the autumn. and ministers will struggle to amend their controversial planning reforms sufficiently to satisfy their supporters.  Electric cars will proliferate, Israel and Denmark starting nationwide programmes, but they will not catch on here. Ministers will launch the biggest drive for insulating houses and some firms will achieve carbon neutrality.  The Treasury will bear down hard on green measures, as conventional wisdom holds them irrelevant in harsh times. But grassroots initiatives will emerge, as the public becomes increasingly convinced that the world is changing and that the path back to prosperity must be greener. See you then. 
 SIR - You call (Leading article, December 21) for Greg Clark, the minister responsible for redrafting the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), to "produce another draft that is more precise and better defined". One important area that requires urgent clarity is the positioning   
 SIR - You call (Leading article, December 21) for Greg Clark, the minister responsible for redrafting the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), to "produce another draft that is more precise and better defined". One important area that requires urgent clarity is the positi  
 THE PERFECTION POINT Predicting the absolute Limits of Human Performance by JOHN BRENKUS Macmillan ?12.99 pp260  aN OPTIMIST'S TOUR OF THE FUTURE by MaRK STEVENSON Profile ?12.99/ebook ?11.06 pp329  Predicting the future may be a fool's game, but the authors of these two infectiously enthusiastic books play it with gusto. Both are fascinated by the future limits of the human body. John Brenkus's hugely entertaining The Perfection Point sets itself the narrower task, seeking to discover how often world records can be broken before they break forever. Just how good, in other words, can athletes get?  It is the kind of engaging topic that has stirred up the public bar since Roger Bannister proved popular wisdom wrong by running a mile in under four minutes. actually, says Brenkus, the idea of a fourminute-mile "barrier" was just a myth put about by newspapers. This doesn't mean that there are no limits at all. Statistics show records falling by ever-smaller increments, so we are surely edging ever closer to the "perfection point" - the feat that can never be bettered.  Brenkus begins with Usain Bolt's blistering time for the 100 metres at the 2008 Beijing Olympics: 9.69sec. Then, with a deft hand for imparting suspense, he starts adjusting downward. First he improves on Bolt's "downright pedestrian" reaction time, then allows for the less-than-optimal wind speed and altitude. What if Bolt hadn't started showboating at the finish? What if he had been a bit older, and closer to a sprinter's career peak? What if his weight, height and strength had been nearer to sprinterly perfection?  a perfect 100-metre sprint, it seems, could be run - will be run - in 8.99 seconds, though it might take 900 years. More immediately, in the next 250 years or so, we'll see the mile run in 3.18.87 (almost exactly the same pace as won the 1925 women's 100-metre sprint), and a boggling 921lb benchpressed ("nearly the rated cargo-carrying capacity of a Ford F-150 half-ton pickup"). The chapter on the longest golf-drive (530 yards) gets sidetracked by the issue of equipment and regulations. But in one of his enjoyable fictionalised mini-scenarios, Brenkus conjures a champion Kenyan marathon runner in 2245, fleeing hostile soldiers and trying to make it 26 miles to the Tanzanian border. His time? - 1.57.58 - a staggering 6min off Haile Gebrselassie's current record.  British readers may yawn over the highest basketball dunk or furthest-hit home run, but the chapter on competitive breathholding (static apnea) is a winner - if only for revealing that such a sport exists. The record stands at 11min 35sec. In the distant future, that could be 14min 47sec.  During competition, we learn, breath-holders endure dreadful contractions and seizure-like fits known as "having a samba". Competitive self-destruction is, of course, the dark side of athletic boundary-pushing. Brenkus observes that male wheelchair athletes have boosted their blood pressure, and thereby their performance, by "using rubber bands to restrict output from their bladders" (he doesn't explain how). He believes that underwater swimming is not an Olympic sport because too many athletes would die trying. He deals with performance-enhancing drugs thoughtfully, but fails to consider a world where genetic and technological meddling are routine.  If Mark Stevenson's excitable an Optimist's Tour of the Future is to be believed, however, such a time is close at hand. Stevenson presents us with "a world where we start to have the same control over biology that we have over software". Tellingly, he finds this prospect thrilling. He learns that Skywalker-style artificial hands are already being wired into patients' nervous systems, that people are regrowing their own bones using stem cells and that, by the 2016 Olympics, if not before, paralympic athletes outrun the able-bodied, thanks to ever-more advanced prosthetic limbs.  More disturbingly, an Oxford "transhumanist" professor predicts that he, Stevenson, may live for thousands of years - as long as he can survive until the moment of "longevity escape velocity", that is, when medical advances increase life expectancy by more than a year for every year that goes by.  The problem with Stevenson's book, which is really the problem with the future, is that it is not mome ty", ces in ng ment ", an venson's Steve pr at discussnge, always clear when we're discussing real, imminent change, and when we're playing fantasy futures. In the latter two sections of his book, on non-biological technology and climate change, he claps eyes on real, present-day futuretech objects. He sees a working "spaceplane" in a hangar in the Mojave desert and "meets" a robot in the MIT Media Lab that can learn to push buttons by generalising from experience. He is given a list of currently available nanotechnology-based consumer products, including antimicrobial bandages, anti-odour socks, sunscreen and pregnancy tests. The Greeks are even working on a selfhealing anti-earthquake house using nanopolymer particles.  His journey into the environmental future feels almost like a different book, as the problem is all too clear and the solutions, on the whole, admirably practical. es. environst st bl i He calls in on living algae in a New Zealand municipal wastewater pond   
 Before deciding whether to invest in solar energy, make sure you understand the jargon and the rules of microgeneration, the small-scale generation of heat and power by individual households. Photovoltaics uses energy from the sun to create electricity via cells cont  
 Ten years ago, installing solar technology to produce energy in your home was the preserve of the eco-show-off or the wealthy and super-committed environmentalist. Things are different today. Rising energy prices, advances in technology and government legislation have all made the task of producing energy simpler and more cost-effective.  The technology behind solar energy is relatively simple. Solar electricity systems, also called photovoltaic (PV) systems, use solar panels made of interconnected silicon cells that convert energy from the sun into direct current (DC) power. The power is converted into alternating current (aC) power - the type we use in our homes - through an inverter. The system is wired into a household's existing electrical set-up and a meter records how much energy is being generated.  Solar water systems also use panels.  They contain a fluid that heats up throughout the day and is pumped, via insulated pipes, into a solar coil inside a hot water cylinder. The coil helps heat some or all of the water in the cylinder. On average, depending on the amount of water needed, a solar system could heat all of a household's water in summer and over a year could supply 30%-50% of its requirements.  "The technology behind solar energy has developed over the last 10 years," says Jaryn Bradford, a development manager at the Energy Savings Trust (EST). But he adds that the popularity of the technology is what has led to lower costs. "Solar photovoltaic cells are manufactured from silicon, so the cost of these are not going to suddenly come down. But what has changed are the economies of scale - installers are doing more business, so installation costs have come down. Small-scale renewables are becoming more mainstream."  He points to the government's feed-in tariff (see panel opposite), introduced nine months ago, as an important incentive. Since the tariff came into effect, inquiries to the EST on solar energy have doubled, he says. The scheme pays a fixed amount for the electricity you generate, so whether or not you use the energy, you can expect some return on your investment each year. additionally, if you produce a surplus of electricity you can sell it to the National Grid.  David Pitt, a senior product manager at anglian Home Improvements, agrees. "The feed-in tariff has made solar energy attractive," he says. "Until recently, you wouldn't get the returns you get with the feed-in tariffs. Not just at anglian but nationally, the interest in photovoltaics has been huge."  But the up-front costs of solar schemes are high. The EST says a typical solar PV system costs about ?12,000 to install. "It will take around 10-15 years to pay that back from the money you will receive from the feed-in tariff," says Bradford. "But before the feed-in tariff, it would have taken around 25 years, so that's a significant improvement."  So what do you get for ?12,000? Bradford is at pains to point out that although there is no such thing as an average family, a typical solar electricity system of about 2kWp (see panel) will generate 1,600-1,800kWh of electricity a year - enough for roughly a third of the household's needs.  anglian's estimates are more generous. It reckons that a typical scheme of 10 to 16 solar panels could generate 1,870kWh of energy a year, about half the amount an average household uses. This is worth ?722 in cash based on the feed-in tariff.  additionally, homeowners can sell kWhs they generate but do not use (in summer, perhaps) to the Grid and receive an extra 3p per unit. as Pitt points out, at this rate "it's more beneficial to use energy than sell it".  and of course solar panel owners will still have to buy from the Grid (average unit cost 13p) when not generating their own power, at night, for example, or when their needs outstrip their capacity. So if you're thinking of installing solar technology, ensure your home is energy-efficient to start with, advises Bradford. So as well as double glazing windows and insulating your home to the maximum, small things such as installing low-energy light bulbs, buying only the most energy efficient, a-rated appliances and never leaving them on stand-by will make a difference to your energy consumption. "It means you'll get even more benefit from microgeneration technology - and you'll make more money from having it installed," says Bradford.  In terms of whether this adds value to your home, the jury is out. Most people installing PV panels or solar water schemes do so because they intend to stay put. Nobody has yet shown such schemes increase house prices. But with the cold winter biting and energy costs rising, self-generated power is not to be sniffed at.  Green dream  Karl and Jane Godden moved with their two young daughters to Sloley, a hamlet about 12 miles north of Norwich, to pursue what Karl calls "the rural dream. We got into things like growing vegetables, recycling, composting and collecting rainwater."  They had already used an  
 They are the new shoppers along Oxford Street, high spenders at boutiques on the Via Condotti in Rome, hard-nosed investors in City boardrooms and avid consumers of all the luxury and wealth that western civilisation has to offer.  The Chinese are coming. Their currency, the renminbi or "people's money", is no longer a Maoist joke even though the late chairman''s head still adorns every banknote.  It buys more pounds than ever before.  Flush with cash, growing in confidence, China feels its rise is assured. Investors from Shanghai are buying up British factories and China's state bankers are buying government bonds from Greece and Portugal, helping to hold the troubled eurozone together.  In Chinese minds, western weakness after the worst financial crisis since the 1930s equals an opportunity. They believe that in 2011 China will become the decisive agent of change for the way we live and that the choices it makes will have an impact around the world.  China's businessmen lecture the West on economics. Its leaders proclaim that one-party rule is superior to the chaos of democracy. From Burma to Zimbabwe, its diplomats prop up despots. Its army follows the dictum of Deng Xiaoping to hide its strength and bide its time. a strident nationalism grows daily among its youth.  as Paul Kennedy, the historian, has warned, the rich nations of the West need to think hard and react creatively in a strong yet flexible way - or face inevitable decline as the balance of power shifts east.  When Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, appears with his waxwork smile during a state visit at the White House later this month, he will come as america's banker and manufacturer with the fate of millions of jobs - and the chances of President Barack Obama's re-election - in his manicured hands.  Obama might ruefully reflect that, in a phrase, it's the economics, stupid. Chinese factories make our iPhones and iPads, our cheap children's clothes at Tesco or Wal-Mart and almost any plastic item you care to imagine. Chinese exporters suck in billions of pounds, dollars, euros and yen. The Chinese government takes the money and issues its own currency in exchange.  It has piled up the dizzying sum of $2.65 trillion (?1.69 trillion) in foreign reserves. The money has to go somewhere. and China invests a lot of it in american government debt.  That is how China became america's biggest creditor. Its thrifty people have subsidised the spendthrift american consumer and housebuyer by keeping interest rates low. Now they are funding a good deal of Obama's controversial $600 billion plan to revive the american economy.  China's own economy may be running too hot, however. The price of pork in the street markets of Shanghai and the prices of the soaring new apartments around them are rising fast. Inflation worries the Communist party. It can lead to mass discontent, for many people are still poor and 200m exist on less than $1 a day.  When the Chinese central bank raised interest rates by just a fraction on Christmas Day, stock markets around the world trembled and the values of western pensions and investments fell. That is a warning of what may be to come.  In recent weeks there have been increasing discussions among investors, especially the giant secretive hedge funds that move billions, about what could go wrong in China.  One scenario is a sharp slowdown that could cut Chinese growth from its dazzling rate of 10% during 2010 with what economists at RBC Capital Markets call "serious implications for the global economy".  THE problem the world faces is clear. Most economists think the merry-go-round across the Pacific - american consumers paying Chinese factory owners to finance more spending on credit by american consumers - cannot last.  andy Xie, an independent economist in Shanghai, says that 2011 is "a race between the US and China to see who goes down first".  american congressmen have fired a warning shot at the Chinese president, saying the country's currency is unfairly cheap and demanding that it rise in value. Chinese businessmen have fought back, accusing the americans of printing money to stoke inflation and thus erode their debts to China.  add in a host of disputes - from Tibet to Taiwan, over Iran's nuclear programme and the North Korean bomb, about climate change and the Nobel peace prize for a Chinese dissident - and the world's most important two-way relationship is looking toxic.  Yet, to adapt Henry Kissinger's joke that the reason why academic politics is so bitter is that the stakes are so small: the stakes for america and China are so big that bitterness is not an option.  after Kissinger's secret diplomacy to Beijing in the 1970s, the reform and opening up of China changed the world. So much so that it takes a recent classified cable from an american ambassador to remind us of some astonishing facts.  The cable, published by WikiLeaks, provides a confidential view of the next three decades in the US-China relationship by Clark Randt, the longest-serving american envoy in China. Written for the incoming Obama administration in January 2009, it predicted that China would be essential to solving global problems such as climate change, poverty and war.  It is on track to become the biggest economy in the world, as it was in the centuries before the industrial revolution.  Over the next few years, 300m of its people will move from the countryside to the cities. This is the greatest mass urbanisation in human history, requiring new transit systems in 170 cities. More than 50,000 skyscrapers will be built. a billion Chinese will be city dwellers and it will no longer be a peasant nation.  By 2025 China will have the biggest middle class in the world. The aviation, tourism, fashion and luxury goods industries will never be the same again. The potential rewards for western financiers, engineers, educators, consultants and service industries are huge.  Randt's cable spells out the awesome scale and costs of such a huge leap forward.  More than a thousand cars a day are coming on to China's lethal roads. Its consumption of oil has multiplied 10 times since 1980. By 2030 it will consume a fifth of all the energy in the world. China has already become the biggest consumer of iron, copper and aluminium. In the next 20 years it will add to its electricity grid more than the total american generating capacity. Most of its power will be fuelled by coal - one reason why China surpassed the United States as the biggest polluter in the world - yet it is also developing the biggest renewable energy industry in solar and wind power.  Randt's cable is fascinating because it predicts neither a Chinese triumph nor a Chinese crash. He pointed out the terrible price it had paid for growth - a ruined environment, 656,000 deaths a year from pollution-related diseases and 95,600 deaths from poisoned water. The cost of the clean- up will be huge.  Harsh birth control policies, restricting most couples to one child, have turned China into a society that is "greying" faster than the United States. By 2050 one working person will have to support five family members.  By 2040, even though the overall size of its economy should rival the United States, its 1.3 billion people will only be one quarter as rich.  THE american ambassador warned that the People's Liberation army had turned into a lean modern force that could be a formidable adversary. and he reminded his readers in Washington that whatever their own worries about jobs, trade and debts, the toughest issue between the United States and China is still the fate of Taiwan.  Lying off the coast of China, the island became a refuge for anti-communist forces in 1949 and evolved into a vibrant industrial democracy under its own government. It is the "third rail" of Chinese politics, a litmus test for patriotism, strength and resolve. It tempted risk-takers in Beijing to consider invasion in 2003 before secret american diplomacy warned them off.  "In the years to come we will need to use every diplomatic and strategic tool we have to prevent intimidating moves toward Taiwan," said Randt.  although the idea seems unreal that anyone would risk a war that could wreck globalisation - all over a small island - the americans are prepared to think the unthinkable.  Today's leaders face huge problems, such as a bleak divide between rich and poor, mass unemployment among graduates, endemic corruption, inflated property prices and irresistible worker pressure for higher wages. So, the ambassador counselled, while the outlook for China is optimistic the United States should also "gird itself" for a worse outcome. Think tankers and academics in Beijing are already urging the leadership to get america out of China's back yard.  Intelligence sources say some Chinese leaders believe Obama is a weak president and that america would buckle in a test of morale over Taiwan or North Korea. They think the americans will be unable or unwilling to pay the price for military supremacy after the financial crisis. But the US ambassador's cable suggests this would be a dangerous miscalculation.  The americans still think China will move towards a more democratic future to become a thriving modern society that plays a responsible role in the world. It is classic US optimism writ large, but it tells of a brighter outlook tha  
 THE wind-farm industry has been accused of misleading the public after a study showed turbines are 25% less effective than claimed.  The John Muir Trust (JMT), one of Scotland's leading conservation bodies, has challenged the renewable energy industry's assertion that wind farms run at an average of 30% capacity over a year.  a study of energy generated by dozens of wind farms, the majority of which are in Scotland, between November 2009 and last month, found they actually ran at 22% of capacity.  Campaigners insist the figures, drawn from data provided by the National Grid, blow a hole in claims that wind farms are an efficient source of renewable energy. They said hundreds of wind farms had secured planning permission across Scotland based on inaccurate assumptions of their output.  "This analysis shows that over the course of a year, the average load factor fell well short of what the industry claims, yet the 30% figure is peddled at every public inquiry into a proposed wind farm," said Helen McDade, head of policy at the JMT. "This data is needed to counter that hype."  The JMT examined the performance of 47 wind farms capable of producing 2,430 megawatts (MW) of green energy.  They include Whitelee wind farm, near Glasgow, which comprises 322 turbines, and the 164-turbine Crystal Rig 2 development in East Lothian. apart from Burbo Bank, Barrow and Thanet, which are offshore sites south of the border, all of the wind farms are in Scotland.  The research found over 395 days, the wind farms could have produced 17,586,000M  
 Of Scotland's leading bodies has called on ministers to ditch their "obsession" with wind power amid evidence that turbines produce about a quarter less energy than developers claim.  The John Muir Trust (JMT) said a study of 47 wind farms in Scotland and England over a 13-month period revealed that they ran at 22% of capacity.  The wind farm industry has claimed that, during the course of a year, a turbine operates at an average of 30% efficiency.  Helen McDade, head of policy at JMT, said dozens of controversial wind farms had been approved in Scotland based on "inflated" claims of their output. She called for an urgent review of the government's renewables policy.  "Many wind farms in spectacular, wild areas have been approved on the grounds of inflated claims of wind power's contribution to the country's electricity needs," she said.  "Wind farms are costing huge amounts of money, much of it from consumers' bills, yet it isn't delivering what the industry claims. The economics of this is a scandal and needs to be urgently reviewed."  a spokesman for the Scottish government insisted that it was seeking to generate electricity from a wide range of renewable sources including hydro, wave, tidal and biomass.  Claims branded bluster, page 7 
 Paul Welch was just another entrepreneur who dreamt of growing his small business into a big company. Then last year he took a step closer to that dream when Jon Moulton, the venture capitalist who made his name with headline-grabbing deals such as a bailout of Reader's Digest, bought a 10% stake in Welch's Largemortgageloans.com. The deal was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.  Welch has since doubled his turnover and bought out his partners.  He hopes to float the firm on aIM within three years.  Welch seized his chance when he discovered Moulton was going to be speaking at an industry event in late 2009. "I had only one venture capitalist on my list of people to ask for financing, and that was Jon. I introduced myself, told him I was looking for investors and handed him my business card. Within a month he had done due diligence and agreed to the deal."  as Moulton's investment in Welch's firm shows, investors are still willing to back small firms despite the sluggish economy. Indeed, Moulton joined Welch's venture when the mortgage market was mired in some of its worst difficulty. He said he was attracted by Largemortgageloans' niche of lending to people needing mortgages of more than ?500,000.  "I couldn't imagine the mortgage market would get much worse," Moulton said. "They had found a niche and were doing well in it."  according to figures from the British Venture Capital association (BVCa), there is ?1.5 billion of private money looking for investment this year. So what do entrepreneurs need to do to attract some of this capital? Moulton, who said he gets asked to consider two investments a day, said his approach to investing hasn't changed much despite the downturn.  First, he disbelieves most business plans. "I'm close to exiting a firm I've been involved with for 11 years, on the basis of a business that wasn't even in the business plan," he said. Rather, Moulton focuses on the cost of becoming involved in the project as well as the "dynamics of the sector", the people involved and, crucially, whether the managers are willing to relinquish some control.  Indeed, nowadays entrepreneurs are coming under as much scrutiny as their ideas.  David Glick, founder of Edge Group, which runs venture capital trusts raising money from private investors for entertainment and digital projects, said: "Give me the choice between a first-class management team with a business plan that's still evolving or the best business plan in the world fronted by lesser executives, and I would go for the best people every time."  Last October, Gary Robins, chief executive of Hotbed, the investor syndicate, announced a ?3.4m investment in No Saints, a new venture by Stephen Thomas, who built the Luminar nightclub business.  No Saints will operate high-end restaurants and live music venues, with Robins expecting turnover in the first year of ?10m.  Hotbed raises money from its 900 wealthy members, who each contribute in ?25,000 units for investments of between ?1m and ?5m in a project. It is often considered a bellwether for the venturecapital industry.  "In 2009, support for earlierstage companies fell off the cliff," said Robins, who made his name at 3i, the private equity firm. "appetite came back only last year. In the summer of 2010 we saw the stirrings of people willing to make riskier investments again. Today we are seeing a strong recovery. One thing driving this is that private investors have a lot of assets such as cash, which is giving almost no return because of low interest ra  
 Energy revolution is hard on King Coal YOU appear to have found in Lancing, Sussex, the answer to all our prayers - an energy-from-waste plant that is "creating energy with virtually no carbon emissions", according to the interviewee ("Hope and a skip to make electricity", December 19). as one tonne of cellulose produces about 1.63 tonnes of carbon dioxide when burnt, someone must be turning a blind eye.  This also seems to have been the case with the government calling time on the free-market model for the electricity industry ("Low carbon comes at a high price", same issue) and continuing to subsidise energy from waste, tree burning, biomass burning and gas burning, all of which produce carbon dioxide.  Yet carbon dioxide from dear old coal, without which we would be truly in a mess, is judged dirty, does not receive assistance and must close down. How ridiculous and unrealistic we have become.  The artificial upward manipulation of energy prices is the last thing we need to get our economy back on track. Subsidising caveman burning practices is lunacy.  Michael Hill Escrick, North Yorkshire 
 PaUL POLMaN is used to feeling uncomfortable. The 54-year-old ran the New York marathon in November and climbed Kilimanjaro in 2005. The challenge that is causing the Dutch-born chief executive of Unilever most pain, however, is the consumer-product giant's plan to go green.  The Sustainable Living Plan aims high. Unilever, which makes 400 of the world's best known household goods, including Persil, Ben & Jerry's and Dove, wants to halve its impact on the environment over the next decade - and double sales at the same time.  "It's very ambitious," said Polman, "and it makes us feel a bit uncomfortable. We are creating a new model that will decouple growth from overall impact on society."  The growth part of the story - doubling its 2010 sales of ?39.8 billion (?34.4 billion) - appears to be the easy bit.  at least, it's the part causing Polman least discomfort. He expects to attract another 1 billion customers in the next decade from developing countries.  "There are people in many parts of the world who aspire to our standard of living. But growth at any cost is not viable," he said.  The plan has been two years in the making. It was started by Polman, who joined from Nestl? in January 2009. So far Unilever has been measuring the effect its products have on the environment - no easy task, as the group supplies thousands of individual products and deals with hundreds of suppliers.  The analysis covered the life cycle of the products. "Most companies just stick to their own shop and say 'hey, I've reduced carbon output in my factory by 30% or I've turned the lights off in my office'," said Polman, "but we look at the total impact."  Unilever's own operations - manufacturing and distribution - account for only about 5% of the total environmental damage. Most of it happens at the beginning of the cycle, in the way raw materials are sourced, and at the end, in how people use and dispose of products. For example, 60% of the greenhouse gases emitted in the life cycle of a cup of tea occur when the consumer boils the kettle. To reach his target, Polman needs to get people to switch to energy-efficient kettles and to boil just enough water for one cup.  Personal hygiene presents even greater challenges. In the West, people can use up to 20 litres of water each time they wash their hair, which means more than 95% of the water usage of a bottle of shampoo is in the hands of the consumer.  On top of that, 70% of its greenhouse gas emissions come from the hot water needed for its soaps, shower gels and shampoos to work.  Surely, Polman can't start telling us to spend less time in the shower? "You can change people's behaviour," he said.  "Remember it was quite normal to drive without a seatbelt or have kids in the front seat. It wasn't just the law that changed, people realised it was dangerous. Increasingly in homes there is an awareness that excessive water usage is not socially acceptable behaviour."  The company has form in changing consumer habits. Polman points to the Cleaner Planet Plan, which educated the public about the benefits of washing clothes at lower temperatures and using shorter spin cycles.  To get anywhere near achieving the ambitious objective of doubling sales while halving environmental impact, Unilever needs to start providing customers with hygiene solutions that require less water and energy. It aims to reach 400m people with these products by 2020. But there is still a long way to go. The report admits: "We do not yet know how we will do this."  Polman, howeve  
 Steve Warner did everything right when he bought a ski property in the French resort of Morzine a little more than three years ago. He researched the area - which has plenty of traditional Savoyard properties and reliable snow - did his legal homework and settled on a project from a reputable firm. Yet even this due diligence didn't protect him when the builder, who was also the managing agent, went bust.  "I wanted a sensible long-term investment," says Warner, 42, a sales director from Ipswich and a keen snowboarder. "I liked the location, bought from a developer with a track record and was offered a guaranteed rental income of 5%. It all stacked up."  The two-bedroom flat - one of 12 in the luxury aiglon de Morzine complex, where prices ranged from ?225,000 to ?670,000 - was bought via the leaseback scheme introduced by the French government more than two decades ago. Intended to increase the volume and quality of holiday accommodation available, it offers off-plan investors tax incentives and guaranteed rental returns. Buyers purchase the freehold of a furnished property, which they then agree to lease back to a preselected management company for a fixed period, initially between 9 and 11 years, renewable for 18 years. after this time, the owner is exempt from the 19.6% Vat levied on property purchases and does not have to pay tax on any capital gains.  "We received income through 2008, but in March 2009, all the owners received letters saying that the developer had gone bust and there was no money left," Warner says. "It was totally out of the blue. We were shocked."  The owners also discovered that the French legal system offers little support when a management firm goes into liquidation. "Legal action can take at least two years," Warner says. "It's expensive and you have no guarantee of redress." In addition, if a leaseback agreement is broken, owners no longer qualify for Vat exemption. This left everyone with the prospect of having to find a further 19.6% of the purchase price to pay to the government.  The owners got in contact with each other and arranged a meeting in London. "There was a lot of anger," recalls Maria Priestley, 48, a finance director from Dublin. "We were all so worried." They tried to find another company to take on the site, but with only a dozen properties, it was too small for any firm to consider. So, after weeks of discussion and negotiation, they came up with the obvious solution: to run it themselves.  "as a group, we had a lot of expertise," says Joanna Yellowlees-Bound, 50, owner of the London-based tour operator Erna Low, who invested in a four-bedroom flat in the block. "We had sales and marketing professionals, a finance director and a property developer - and I've worked in the ski industry for decades."  The group came up with a takeover plan that meant agreeing to drop all legal action against the developer. In return, he would surrender the leases to a UK-listed company set up by the owners. "Not everyone was happy, but it was our only choice," says Priestley, who owns a three-bedder. "Several of us were in arrears on mortgages due to the lack of rental income, but when we took into account the cost of taking the developer to court and the loss of Vat relief, it was a no-brainer."  The new firm, aiglon Morzine Ltd, took over management of the properties and had new leaseback contracts drawn up. "We needed all 12 apartments, because leaseback schemes must have at least 100 beds," Priestley says. "We had just enough if we all complied."  It wasn't easy, as there was no legal precedent for owners taking over a leaseback arrangement this way. Now all are equal shareholders in the company, with three directors responsible for the overall management.  The group was then pitched into the mechanics of running the resort. "It was a real learning curve," Yellowlees-Bound recalls. "We had to organise things like rubbish collection, utilities, maintenance and cleaning. We needed someone on site to sort out any problems."  The team appointed a trustworthy local agent, employed by the hour, to oversee the running of the development, using email and Twitter to stay up to date.  L'aiglon de Morzine opened again for the 2009-10 season, but the owners saw returns of only 1% in the first year. They expect that to increase to a little more than 3% by the end of this year and, all being well, to 5% by 2015. any profits have been invested in the development and used to cover unexpected costs.  "We have a vested interest in making the flats as successful as possible," Yellowlees-Bound says. "a normal management firm wouldn't put the same effort into upgrading, redecorating or adding personal touches. This isn't just any rental business - it's ours, and we take pride in it."  There is another, unexpected benefit to being the leaseholders. "There's no cap on what we can earn," Priestley says. "With the original management, we'd only get 5% returns - irrespective of what the properties were actually bringing in. Now there's no limit, and everything we make will come straight back to us."  Warner and his fellow owners have been lucky. What happened at L'aiglon de Morzine isn't an isolated story. Investors in other locations have been affected by developers or letting agents going bust, and in some cases owners have taken a similar approach. Buyers in the Canadian resort of Humber Valley pooled financial resources and took over the running of basic services such as waste collection and snow clearing when the developer went bankrupt in 2008. They managed to keep the resort viable until it could be sold this year. and, in Bulgaria, owners' groups have formed at various developments in the Bansko area, with the aim of doing something similar.  The success of the Morzine group has made them keen to act as a role model for others. "We offer a template for an ownerled management system and we're happy to advise others," Warner says. "Our case is specific to France, and there are lots of owners elsewhere whose properties haven't been completed or managed as promised. We can't help everyone, but maybe we can inspire them, because we've proved it can be done."  For details of holiday lets, visit aiglonmorzine.com or contact Erna Low; 0845 863 0525, ernalow.co.uk Take control n You should engage an independent English-speaking lawyer to check sales and rental contracts, as well as the legal position of all parties. Someone familiar with local law is best, as you will also need advice on business laws and financial issues such as taxes. n Try to get all the owners together:  
 If your parents become too frail to care for themselves, what will you do? Is such a thought conveniently buried in the sand? Perhaps it's because the options - a care home (morbidly depressing), home nursing (prohibitively expensive) or you as the carer (bye-bye, life) - are easiest left in the sand. But there is another option: the multigenerational household, or a return to the fabled extended family, where the caring is shared.  Justin Green, 41, lives with eight other family members, with some 97 years' age gap between them. There is his wife, Jenny, 36, their three children, Toby, 9, Jamie, 6, and Fleur, 3. There is his father, Jeremy, 76, his grandmother, Joyce, 100, and his mother's parents, Ian, 90, and Wendy, 91. at Christmas, it's dinner for 20, when Justin and Jenny's brothers and broods descend. Running a country hotel, Ballyvolane House, near Cork, which Green inherited from Jeremy while the hand was still warm, so to speak, there's room for all. Joyce has her own apartment - while she's incredibly healthy, she's growing forgetful and is "like a fourth child", Jenny says. She needs a lot of minding as she might forget to put another log on the fire or feed herself (Jenny gives her a hot meal daily). Meanwhile, Wendy and Ian live in their own house on the estate.  Green, whose previous job was running Babington House, Nick Jones's private members' club and hotel in Somerset, returned to the fold after his mother died. "The main reason was to ensure the older generation was happy," he explains. and, he adds, it's wonderful for the children to see the whole process. "I think it's very important to see the older generation respected." What's more, the children get to reap all those years of wisdom, as well as training in old-fashioned manners and, no doubt, some toffee-pushing to boot. "The children learn a lot from them, and the grandparents get a huge kick from being able to provide that," Green says.  Yet supporting the older generations is not easy: they may have the rambling property, but, financially, "everything is against us", Green says. They've also sacrificed their own personal space. Green could, he says, return to Jones's empire and "shut the door, but it's not about the bottom line - I feel I have a responsibly to do this".  Of course, life at the Greens has its "moments" - but, despite it all, they say that the rewards more than compensate. "It's very satisfying to see everyone being looked after," Green says. "We're all great friends - it's a social life to us. I hope the kids will do the same for us." Would you?  ballyvolanehouse.ie  COHOUSING, THE EaSY WaY TO LIVE IN a COMMUNE  Imagine if you could choose your neighbours. Imagine splitting the swimming pool costs with them, or if they'd baby-sit your kids, or share the gardening and harvest with you; if they cooked you the odd meal. Previously, the only route to this was to live in a commune.  Now, with climate change, pinched purses and a renewed hunger for community, a new utopia hovers on the horizon: cohousing, or the cul-de-sac commune. From th  
 CORRECTION: In the article " 'Slash and burn' councils spare pet projects" (News, last week), we stated that Manchester city council had spent ?150,000 erecting a statue. The bulk of this money was, in fact, a European Union grant and was spent on a series of sculptures. The title of the "Twitter and Facebook czar" mentioned in the article is "new media communications manager". The same article stated that Haringey council had spent ?2m on its website and ?100,000 on electric-car charging points. The correct figure for the website is ?1.25m, and the cost of charging points was met by Transport for London and central government grants, not by the council. We apologise for these errors.  REBELLIOUS councils are being accused of choosing to make cuts that will embarrass the government while frittering away millions on their own pet projects.  Ministers are studying some of the "slash and burn" tactics to see if they have powers to enforce councils to deliver certain services.  Labour-controlled councils are at the forefront of making politically motivated cuts and price hikes, but even some Tory authorities have found themselves vocally criticising the cuts in their grants from central government.  Lambeth council in south London, a Labour stronghold, has spent ?600 on posters in bus shelters targeting commuters outside Waterloo station. They show a pair of scissors cutting into a blue-coloured ? sign with the message, "The government has cut our money so we are forced to cut services".  The posters have been referred to the district auditor with a complaint that the council is using taxpayers' money for political purposes.  Some of the spin is already beginning to have an effect. Labour-controlled Nottingham city council has almost trebled the price of caring for the elderly in their own homes. Such increases were reflected in front-page headlines last week based on a Which? survey of prices saying "?900 monthly bill for care in your home".  Ministers think council leaders may believe that bad publicity -- such as the opprobrium heaped on David Cameron last week after a mother claimed that he had broken a promise because Tory-run South Gloucestershire council was not increasing respite care for her handicapped daughter -- will put pressure on the coalition to release more money to town halls.  Even Tory-run Birmingham council has been consulting on proposed cuts, which would pare back home help to only the most "critical cases".  The government has encouraged councils to safeguard frontline services by cutting bureaucracy and pay to chief officers. Councils are supposed to list all expenditure over ?500 online by the end of this month. Many have still to comply with this.  Keith Wakefield, the Labour leader of Leeds city council, the second largest metropolitan authority in the country, has claimed that his authority faces cuts "the likes of which have not been seen since the 1930s". The council, which is responsible for delivering more than 600 services to 760,000 people, is facing ?90m cuts in the next financial year. Last week it announced a public consultation on its proposal to close 19 care homes for the elderly and 16 day centres for older people.  at the same time the council is going ahead with a ?30m project to insulate 90,000 homes in Leeds for free. The ?30m insulation is needed to guarantee that two Green party councillors continue to support the minority Labour group.  Camden council in north London has spent ?1,000 on posters that state, "National government spending cuts mean tough decisions for Camden's future".  as part of its cuts, it plans to chop ?3.2m from services to young children and reduce social care services. Meanwhile, it has become the first council in Britain to launch a fleet of vehicles powered entirely by renewable energy.  Manchester city council erected a ?150,000 statue last year, just months before it announced 2,000 job losses. One job that will not be axed is that of its new ?38,000-a-year "Twitter and Facebook czar"..  Barnsley council has announced that "free swimming is to be withdrawn as the effects of the government's comprehensive spending review begin to be felt". But Phil Co  
 Long-time residents of Lewes, in East Sussex, still recall with a shudder the great floods of 2000, which turned their high street into a river and forced hundreds of people to flee their waterlogged homes. Since then, only one property development has been built beside the River Ouse, a pair of semis - with a difference. They are raised, Thai-style, on stilts, 10ft above the ground, and 2ft above the highest recorded flood level. This is an example of architectural ingenuity Britain's housebuilders will need to employ to reconcile the need for new homes with the growing threat of floods.  "Even if the water rose as high as it did in 2000, it would still be several feet below the main house," says Steve Guthrie, 55, who lives in one of the semis with his wife, Marisa, 39, and their one-year-old daughter, Lana. "The worst-case scenario is that our car would get a good wash."  The fear of being woken up in the night with one's home awash with muddy water is becoming a reality for an increasing number of homeowners. With climate change being blamed for more extreme weather patterns, flooding is a growing risk across Britain - insurers have paid out ?4.5 billion to customers whose homes and businesses have been hit since 2000, a 200% increase on the previous decade.  Last weekend, as Britain was hit by gale-force winds and torrential rain, with up to six inches falling in 48hr in places, the Environment agency issued 33 flood alerts and 66 warnings. "One in six homes in England and Wales is at risk of flooding, and the latest UK climate-change data, and our science, shows that this risk is likely to increase due to rising sea levels and more frequent and heavy storms," says David Rooke, the agency's director of flood and coastal risk management.  The increase in the rate and severity of flooding in towns and cities has also been blamed on poor planning decisions that have all too readily allowed homes to be built on flood plains, as well as cheap design and the use of nonporous surfaces that don't allow excess water to drain away naturally.  all of which makes the stilt house a model for the future. Despite recent extreme weather, the worst Guthrie has had to cope with in the past six years is river water encroaching a few feet into the garden during spring high tides. "Thousands of houses are built every year that are at real risk of flooding," he says. "This shows you can build safely on a flood plain if you do it sensibly."  Guthrie bought the house in 2005, a year after it was completed. He had long harboured an interest in sustainable architecture and was living alone in nearby Brighton when a friend invited him to have a look at the newly built property out of pure curiosity. "I had no intention of moving to Lewes, but I thought it was fantastic looking over the river," he recalls. "I saw it in summer, when it is really at its best - the light is amazing - and I just had to have it."  The design was inspired by the industrial heritage of the town and its once thriving shipyards. The barrelshaped roof, made of zinc, is designed to last a lifetime. Then there are the huge steel posts that lift the building off the ground, giving a useful space underneath, with enough parking for both properties, as well as endless storage - a practical by-product of the flood-proof design.  The house itself is entered via an aluminium-clad walkway that leads into a roomy open-plan kitchen and living room. Upstairs are a second living room, with toweringly high ceilings and its own balcony and staircase, and two bedrooms. (There is a third on the floor below.) The master bedroom is ensuite and there is a family bathroom, while the second bedroom takes advantage of the high ceiling, with a mezzanine level that can hold a double bed. a decked balcony leads off the living room, which in turn leads, via a spiral staircase, down to the garden.  To make the most of the riverside location, the back of the property is entirely glazed, giving an uninterrupted view over the garden and across the river to the nature reserve on the far bank. as if a wall of windows were not enough, Lap Chan, the architect, added an internal atrium into the design, which floods light into the heart of the house. The family have a front-row view during Lewes's famous bonfirenight celebrations: one of the main blazes is lit directly opposite the house.  If they have their way, though, the Guthries will not be there to enjoy this year's event. Gardens with direct river access and tiny children are not the greatest mix, and the property has become a little too small for their needs - so they have put it on the market for ?825,000.  Steve's daughter Liberty, 17, spends part of the week with the couple while she studies for a-levels, and Skye, 23, the son of his ex-wife, who is studying engineering at Plymouth University, is a regular visitor. They also need office space for Marisa, who works from home as a small-business consultant.  another imperative is the need to raise some equity for an overseas project. Steve pl  
 Over the past 350 years, we have placed a great deal of trust in science. You have only to look at the world in which we live to see what science has done for us. But is there a new mood in the land that is questioning that trust in science? This is important because the challenges the world faces, such as climate change, feeding a growing population, meeting the increasing demands for energy and tackling disease, are all issues in which science plays a crucial role. When society makes decisions on these issues, it is vital that they are based on science - but if the public is losing trust in science, that will be difficult to bring about.  One area where trust has been eroded to the point that science is under attack is climate science. There is strong evidence that over the past 150 years CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased due to human activity and that this has led to a temperature rise of about 0.8C. There is a consensus among climate scientists that the temperature will continue to rise due to human activity, although by how much is uncertain.  The majority of climate scientists also think that this is likely to have a significant effect on the way we live, changing agriculture and our environment, and that there needs to be a concerted effort to control CO2 emissions to reduce these problems. This will require globally agreed action, and significant intervention in the way the world's economy is run.  Despite the evidence, there are some who disagree, probably because of their concern that such action will cause economic harm, and they have influenced a substantial swathe of public opinion.  Why is this the case? Several factors are important. The first is the complexity of the science involved, which leads to uncertainty in predicting the outcome. Climate science is complicated and it is difficult to understand fully the influence of the sun, clouds, vegetation and chemical composition of the atmosphere on overall climate change. and where there is uncertainty, alternative points of view can prosper, even if they are in a small minority.  a second factor is the greatly increased influence of people other than mainstream scientists who are posting analyses and opinions through blogs and social media. This can result in strongly argued opinion holding sway with the public even though it is not backed by robust scientific evidence.  Sometimes such polemicists will attack the consensus simply because it is the consensus. What such arguments tend to ignore is that consensus emerges within a scientific community from informed and critical discussion, and if over time the consensus view holds up, then that consensus is likely to be correct. Consensus is not a dirty word; it is a consequence of long and detailed arguments among experts.  a third factor is that if the scientific area of interest - for example, climate change, nuclear power, GM crops or the causes of and treatment of human disease - has great sociological, political or economic impact, then ideological, political and religious opinions get mixed up with scientific debate. Commentators distort sc  
 a LEaDING academic has challenged ministers over claims that the vast majority of electricity in Scotland will be generated from renewable sources within the decade.  Professor atilla Incecik, from Strathclyde university's  
 JaMIE andrew, the Scottish mountaineer who had his hands and feet amputated following an accident in the French alps, has called for the last of Scotland's world-famous wilderness to be protected before it is destroyed by development.  The climber is backing demands by the John Muir Trust (JMT), a leading conservation body, for ministers to improve the protection for areas of wild land.  The body is concerned that large tracts of unspoilt land are being destroyed by "inappropriate" development, such as onshore wind turbines.  It will lodge a petition with the Scottish parliament this week, calling for the creation of a national environmental designation to protect wild land. andrew, who lost his hands and feet to frostbite in 1999 after five nights stranded near the summit of Les Droites in the Mont Blanc mountain range, is among high-profile figures backing the campaign. Others include John Michie, the actor who plays DI Robbie Ross in Taggart. More than 3,500 members of the public have signed up.  "as a mountaineer and lover of the outdoors I am very aware of the fantastic natural resource that Scotland has in its wild places," said andrew.  "It is a resource which is limitlessly reusable and will be there long after other natural resources such as oil and gas have been used up.  "It is free for everybody to use and yet is worth a fortune to the Scottish economy. But if we don't look after it, to preserve it for future generations, it is a resource which once gone will be gone forever. Our wild land is Scotland's greatest asset."  according to the JMT, wild land is defined as large areas with spectacular scenery and high wildlife value. There is little evidence of human activity in such areas which typically include mountains, tracts of blanket bog, river margins and rugged coastlines. It is estimated that wild land attracts thousands of v  
 aN independent Scotland would be saddled with debt despite booming oil prices, according to an independent economic consultancy.  While the SNP claims a separate Scotland would have a comfortable budget surplus, limiting the need for public spending cuts, Mackay Consultants suggests it would be about ?2 billion in the red.  Tony Mackay, the firm's managing director, described Scottish government claims as "over-optimistic" and warned that the outlook would become bleak as oil revenues tumble. His comments threaten to undermine the nationalists as they approach May's Holyrood election looking to build support for independence after budget cuts imposed by David Cameron's government.  Last year a report from the SNP administration said a ?10 billion gap between public spending and taxes collected from Scotland would be closed if Scotland received a 91% share of North Sea oil and gas revenues.  This, it said, would have put the country's finances ?1.3 billion in the black in 2008-09.  The nationalists contrast Scotland's position with Britain, which is facing a nearrecord public spending deficit of ?156 billion.  Mackay said it was more realistic to expect that Britain would only allow an independent Scotland an 84% share of North Sea revenues.  Based on figures from the department of energy and climat  
 IaN CHESHIRE, the head of Britain's biggest DIY chain, is poised to bring some fix-it skills to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).  The chief executive of B&Qowner Kingfisher is expected to be drafted into the DWP as a lead non-executive director in the next fortnight by Francis Maude, minister for the cabinet office. Talks are at an advanced stage but no final agreement has been reached, Whitehall sources said.  Cheshire, a key supporter of David Cameron, will be one of Maude's biggest-name hires since he outlined plans to lure heavy hitters from the private sector to shake up government departments. He will join andrew Witty, chief executive of Glaxo Smith Kline, who is lead non-executive at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Sara Weller, managing director of argos, who has gone in at the Department for Communities and Local Government.  The first batch of directors started this month and it includes Iain Ferguson, former chief executive of Tate & Lyle, at rural affairs, and Baroness Hogg in the Treasury. as well as work and pensions, appointments in health, defence and energy and climate change are expected imminently.  The DWP, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state, is viewed as one of the most challenging departments.  Its responsibilities range from employment and benefits to disability issues and child poverty.  Non-executives have been tasked with steering their department's "strategic and operational leadership". "They will also provide advice and support to ministers and civil servants, challenge discussions and discuss any performance issues with the prime minister," according to the cabinet office. 
 Down in the concrete sprawl of Essex's Lakeside shopping centre, something stirs. Mikael Ohlsson, global boss of Ikea, is refusing to have his picture taken. "I don't like that idea," he says in his singsong Swedish accent, when the photographer suggests the carpet department.  "Maybe there is something better here," he adds, gesturing around.  Ohlsson, 53, blond and rosy-cheeked, has already insisted I interview him in a busy shopfloor kitchen, with customers pressing behind him to fiddle with the hotplates.  Our photographer is exasperated, but the Ikea boss is obdurate.  I know what he is up to. Earlier he had told me that Ikea was running away with the kitchen market elsewhere in Europe but failing to impress in Britain.  "We have a big focus on kitchens now. We have developed that over the past decade. Every second kitchen purchased in Norway is Ikea, every third in Sweden, every third in France, but here the customer hasn't really discovered Ikea kitchens ..." So crafty Ohlsson is hijacking our photo shoot to plug them, saving himself the cost of an ad. That's very Ikea, always looking to cut someone out of the supply chain. It's how it keeps its prices down - just ask the customers requested to collect, unpack and assemble their own purchases.  and in a recession that works. Ikea, the world's No 1 furniture retailer, has just posted record profits, up 6% to ?2.7 billion (?2.3 billion) on revenues up 7.7% to ?23.1 billion. The privately held group now has 280 warehouse stores across Europe, north america and asia, and aims to open up to 15 new outlets a year.  "Because when the economy is tough, the need for a beautiful home remains, and value consciousness goes up," beams Ohlsson. "and that's our strength."  Casually dressed in chinos and jumper, the Ikea boss is a surprise. affable, bright and deceptively tough, he says his greatest pleasure is playing guitar with his amateur rock band. Yet he looks like a seriously determined schoolboy.  The very fact he has asked me here is remarkable enough. Ohlsson took the top slot at the group two years ago, and promised a new approach: more openness about its business and its numbers.  In the past, Ikea didn't do that. Founded by the veteran entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad, now owned by a charitable foundation based in the Netherlands, it has expanded globally with minimal transparency or discussion.  Consequently a good deal of rumour swirls round. Kamprad, 84, heads the foundation that owns Ikea and, according to some, still pulls the strings. He has led a chequered life, admitting to alcoholism and an early flirtation with the Swedish Nazi party. His three sons are also heavily involved in the web of firms round Ikea. So what does that make the group chief executive - a puppet? Ohlsson blinks earnestly behind his spectacles. "I get asked this quite often but Kamprad is 84. I see him maybe five times a year, his sons maybe two times. If we couldn't run the company along the lines we on the board wanted, why would I have taken this assignment?" For the money? He sighs. The truth is more mundane. The way ownership is structured allows Ikea to reinvest profits and focus on long-term growth, so there is no obsession with short-term results, and no threat of takeover.  "The whole goal is that Ikea should stand free from banks and investors, and be really long term. That's one of the reasons I like it - the aim is to satisfy customers, not stock markets. and we haven't paid a dividend for five years."  It is certainly tax-efficient. Ikea wraps itself in Sweden's blue and yellow yet now keeps its head office in the Netherlands. and a recent book by a former executive - The Truth about Ikea, by Johan Stenebo - accuses it of regularly putting profit before ethics and showing little diversity in its male, Swedish top team.  Not true, says Ohlsson, 40% of his top 200 managers are women. "and I find the criticism rather odd. The only areas where we were not so open were structure and financials. Therefore, we decided we would make yearly summaries for co-workers."  So would he have taken the top job if they hadn't? "I was one who always wanted it. But I had taken the job before the decision was made."  With 31 years at the company, working through store management and heading design and production, he is not short of experience. Born in Helsingborg, the coastal city that is closest to Denmark, to teacher parents, Ohlsson has a reputation as both a strategist and a communicator.  Former colleagues say he should have had the top slot before anders Dahlvig, his predecessor, but was passed over because he questioned Kamprad diktats too often. That makes his arrival at the top piquant.  His current managers say he has shifted the emphasis at Ikea. "It's about understanding the space people live in, where size and affordability are key," says Martin Hansson, Ikea's UK boss. "and Mikael is a good ambassador for Ikea values - down to earth, non-hierarchical, humble."  In Britain, Ikea's fourth-biggest market, humility is not the issue. Ikea's 18 stores here have been too successful for their own good. Often crowded and difficult to negotiate, they repel as many as they attract. The problem is planning, says Ohlsson. "We would like to have 10 more stores in Britain, but we have not been able to with existing planning policies as they are."  Yet he promises that Ikea will prevail. a new planning application for a 36,000 square metre store outside Reading will be filed next month, he says, the result of a new approach addressing local concerns.  Ohlsson also promises investment in photovoltaic systems to power stores, and in wind farms across Europe so that Ikea becomes "100% renewable" in energy. Sustainability is now a priority. Wouldn't it be much easier to expand outside Britain? "No, I would rather open another 10 stores here than open on a new continent. We have customer trust here. We are doing so much now to hook up with environmental, traffic and planning solutions ..." He uses that to start a long speech about the retailer's aims and the hopes of his 130,000 employees, citing the charitable work Ikea does in India, centred on mothers and children, as evidence of its determination to "do good".  India, of course, is another focus for expansion. But the company won't open a store there until politicians change the law that forces foreign retailers to take a local partner. Too costly, says Ohlsson, claiming that this law will change soon.  The group is already in China. It has also been mired in a bribery scandal in Russia. Rumour is never far behind. Some believe Ikea's drive for more stores, rather than selling on the internet, is simply because Ingvar Kamprad doesn't use computers.  No, says Ohlsson. Slow and careful is just the Ikea way. "We believe people want to feel and touch our products, but we also know time is restricted and some people live too far away from a store, so we have started online services in 10 countries." These services offer a fraction of the range. Further tests are being run in Britain, america and Germany. a full service will be tested in one country - possibly here.  Why so long? "Because first we want to have a fully functioning distribution set-up that is not so costly, and we don't want store customers to subsidise it. It will be ready soon."  and will he last the course? Stenebo, in his book about Ikea, praises Ohlsson as the best Swedish retailer of his generation, but now he wonders if the Ikea boss will eventually fall foul of the Kamprad family. "When the sons finally take over from Ingvar, the whole ownership structure will become very volatile," predicts Stenebo. "That's what will worry Mikael most."  Ohlsson won't discuss it. The point is the products, he says, and Ikea's desire to fur  
 The aa called it VP Day - Victory for Petrol. It was 1950 and Philip Noel-Baker, the minister of fuel and power, had just announced the end of fuel rationing. Imposed in 1939 after the outbreak of the second world war, the abolition of rationing signalled a return to normality after an extraordinary time in history. Now rationing could be about to make a comeback.  an influential cross-party group of MPs last week published a 60-page report calling for the introduction of personal energy quotas as the best way to "radically and rapidly restructure our society" to deal "with the reality of diminishing access to energy".  The report from the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, comprising 20 MPs from the main parties, is timely. Petrol is selling for a record average of 128p a litre. Crude oil is nearing $100 a barrel. The price of raw materials from iron ore and copper to wheat and sugar is soaring as demand is pushed up by growth in the world's emerging economies.  The parliamentary group's central argument is simple. It believes that global oil production has already passed its peak. an energy crisis is inevitable at some point in the future, and so we should get a system in place now so that, when it does hit, we are already well down the road of shifting away from fossil fuels toward low-carbon alternatives.  "We are running into danger. Energy shortages will occur. We do not know when but the event is undoubted and it is not far distant," the report said.  "There is a real possibility that this will happen before a rationing system is in place. The combination of energy scarcity and the absence of rationing provision has lethal potential and it needs to be corrected without delay."  The heart of the regime advocated is what would be called tradeable energy quotas, or TEQs. Every adult would be allocated a free annual TEQ, which would be made up of energy units based on their carbon intensity. One litre of petrol, for example, would be equal to 2.3 units. a kilowatt hour of household electricity would be 0.2 units.  The free allocation to individuals would comprise 40% of the overall TEQ budget, reflecting the share of emissions accounted for by households.  The remaining 60% would be sold to businesses, industry and government. The proceeds would be recycled into initiatives to accelerate the transition, such as subsidising insulation or providing "carboncoaching" to families and businesses. TEQs would not set a hard cap on energy consumption, but those who use more than their allotted share would have to buy permits sold by companies or individuals who use less.  The overall pool would shrink over the years in line with the government's carbon reduction goals - 80% by 2050. The system would, the report argues, "bring into each individual's own life a direct encounter with the reality of diminishing access to energy" and free the government from having to micromanage the shift.  It's not a new idea. TEQs are in effect personal carbon footprints. They were first discussed in the House of Lords in 2004. David Miliband advocated the idea of a personal carbon account when he was environment secretary.  Luke Bosdet at the aa dismissed it as an "academic's brainwave typically out of touch with reality". He added: "I understand the principle, but the reality is that this would mean making some people choose between driving to work or not having a job at all. They will tell [the report's authors] in no uncertain terms where to stick th  
 Becky Shaw almeida Theatre ****  Here, the american playwright Gina Gionfriddo deals with the ripples caused by a lethally depressing blind date. I went along expecting a Neil Labutelike comedy of noxious manners, but this has hidden depths as well as surface fizz, and is largely free from the misanthropy that infects Labute's work. The titular character is a penniless, perennially disappointed singleton keen to get her life on track. The newlyweds Suzanna and andrew set her up with Max, who was adopted by Suzanna's parents. In the aftermath of the date, the quasi-incestuous passion that flickers between Max and Suzanna threatens to reignite, while andrew finds himself drawn to the weepy Becky. Whether Becky is vulnerable or conniving is almost the least interesting question raised by this nimble and very funny play. The dramatist takes the changing moral temperatures of all her characters without succumbing to finger-wagging. and David Wilson Barnes proves himself a star in the making in Peter DuBois's deft production. His tricky, deadpan Max manages to become touching without ever ditching his arsenal of cynical, amusingly rude remarks. MS  Less Than Kind Jermyn Street Theatre ****  The centenary year of Terence Rattigan's birth is launched, unusually, with a premiere, a comedy inspired by Hamlet that combines a lively sense of humour with real emotional pain. Michael, a young radical, returns to London in 1944 and discovers to his disgust that his widowed mother, Olivia, has moved up in the world and is living with an industrialist and cabinet minister, Sir John Fletcher. Rattigan pits youth against experience, idealism versus selfishness, and priggishness against a wry understanding of life's absurdities. at 33, he must have been distancing himself from his own youthful ideals, since Michael (David Osmond), in whom politics and an Oedipus complex are uncomfortably mixed, is given a rough ride. Not everything in the plot makes sense, particularly the mother's behaviour, but Michael Simkins as Rattigan's Claudius sinuously conveys both the power of the politician and the guile of a middle-aged man in love, and adrian Brown's deft production is ample justification for bringing this lost play to life. JE  Little Platoons Bush Theatre ****  Steve Waters likes to handle political hot potatoes. Having tackled climate change in The Contingency Plan, here the playwright turns to free schools. Rachel (a luminous Claire Price) is a music teacher disheartened by her job in a west London comp, where h  
 The bathroom can seem to be the space design forgot. It hasn't evolving into a multitasking family room with sofas andWiiSports,likethekitchen. It continues to take care of the same old, er, business, so much of what is new in bathroom interiors - freestanding furnishings, natural wood finishes - is rather familiar.  Yet amid the timber veneers and white tubs, the traditional bathroom is quietly teching up: you can now access your iTunes library while you floss your teeth. Freestanding bathroom furniture has been popular for a couple of years.  These ensembles score high on looks - check out Fired Earth's Jura and Bastide ranges (0845 366 0400, firedearth.com) - but aren't as space-efficient as a fitted suite. So the latest designs combine slimline forms and extra height for maximum storage: John Lewis's arctic range, which features a tall, thin lacquered towel cupboard (?130; johnlewis.com) and Villeroy & Boch's new Petrol Blue Subway shelves (from ?630; 020 8871 4028, www.villeroy-boch.com) are good examples.  Lincoln Rivers's innovative rotating storage pulls off a similar trick, with a dressing-length mirror on one side and bamboo shelving on the other (arena Revolve 3100, ?310; 0844 848 4000, conranshop.co.uk). Natural wood, warm in colour and relatively unshiny in finish, is the perfect foil to fresh white ceramics, and is the material that's in vogue right now. It's not a look that can be acquired on the cheap, so if I were in the market for a new bathroom, I'd plan to pick up a plain sink and bath (Bathstore and Ikea have plenty of good-value options) and splash the cash on some hunky timber cabinetry.  My pin-ups at present are Wetstyle's M collection, with renewable hardwood storage units (from ?802; 0845 600 1950, cphart.co.uk), and the solid teak artline range at aston Matthews (from ?1,345; 020 7226 7220, www.aston matthews.co.uk). Though properly new designs emerge infrequently in the bathroom, techie accessories are multiplying.  Withings has WiFi scales (pictured top right) that will measure and record your weight and BMI, allowing you to access the results via iPhone.  The Innova mirror has an integrated radio and touch-pad controls for your MP3 player (from ?1,320; 01530 830080, roca.com) - a welcome advance on the soggy newspaper as bathtime entertainment.  Too much information? ?109  These WiFi scales from Whitings measure and store the fitness profiles of up to eight users, calculating their BMI and showing their fitness - or fatness - in graphs that can be accessed via your iPhone. 020 7692 4001, madeindesign.co.uk  Home and dry from ?4  Orla Kiely adds a splash of colour and retro pattern to bathroom textiles with these face cloths (?4), bath mats (?16) and towels (from ?15). 0870 024 0780, heals.co.uk  Big on bamboo from ?129  The new Nagoya freestanding bathroom furniture range, from M&S, is made of bamboo and includes a tallboy (?199), a cabinet (129) and a sink unit (?179). 0845 302 1234, marksandspencer.com  Here's the tub ?2,995  Fired Earth's Jura freestanding bath is set off by intense blue Hacienda tiles, (?2.95 each), hand-decorated in Tunisia. 0845 366 0400, firedearth.com  On the tiles from ?100  Screen-printed tiles from Iznik Revivals are based on originals in the ashmolean and the V&a (20cm square, minimum order 10). 020 8876 0201, turkishceramics.co.uk  INVEST  Simon Horn specialises in handmade solid-wood beds in classic styles from rococo to Regency - not cheap, but the kind of furnishing you hand down the generations. The metamorphic models, which turn from a sofa into  
 MaRK DRIVER, a hedge fund manager turned wine producer, has good reason to hope that the South Downs will one day rival the Champagne region.  He believes that climate change will help British wine to compete with some of the best regions of the world, and he hopes to cash in.  Driver certainly knows how to turn a profit. assets at the Horseman Global fund at Horseman Capital rose from $14m to $5 billion when he ran it from 2000 to 2009.  In 2009, he decided to leave to establish a 600-acre vineyard, called Rathfinny Estate, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, with his wife. He says it will be the sunniest vineyard in England.  Driver has gone back to college to learn about making wine and is studying for a degree in wine production.  Now 46, he lives with his wife, Sarah, 47, and their children, Brook, 20, Millie, 18, Faye, 15, and archie, 12.  How much money do you have in your wallet? I take out about ?300 a week. after it's raided by my wife and teenagers and I pay for the cleaner, I don't have a lot left. What credit cards do you use? I use a John Lewis Partnership card for the points. I used to have an British airways american Express card but I could never spend the miles. Every time I wanted to go somewhere, there was never a flight available. I eventually cancelled the card.  are you a saver or a spender? Definitely a saver, although I go for funds rather than traditional saving accounts.  For 10 years I invested mainly in the Horseman Global fund, but more recently I've gone back to doing my own thing, picking individual stocks.  How much did you earn last year? I didn't make a lot because I stopped working for Horseman Capital full time. I still go in one day a month or so as a consultant, for which I'm paid a salary of ?60,000.  Have you ever been really hard up? When I started in the City in 1985, I lived in a bedsit in Brockley, southeast London, with my then-to-be-wife, Sarah. We got married and our wedding list was from the argos catalogue. Do you own a property? I own the house where I live in Twickenham, southwest London, and Rathfinny farm in East Sussex, which is about 60 miles away. It takes about an hour and 20 minutes to get there by car. We've got two houses on the farm. One is being redeveloped for us and the other is where the vineyard manager is going to live.  We've lived in Twickenham, on the same road, for 15 years. We moved to the latest property about three years ago. It's a six-bedroom, Victorian red-brick house.  How much did it cost to set up the farm? I bought 600 acres for ?6,000 an acre, so ?3.6m, but the total set-up cost is going to be double that.  I've ordered 72,000 vines at about ?1.70 each. Planting them will add another 40p each. That alone is more than ?150,000. We will make predominantly sparkling wine from classic varieties including pinot noir, pinot meunier, chardonnay and riesling.  We're also building a winery so we'll be making our own wine on the farm. We'll be employing people full-time and between 50 to 100 on a seasonal basis to pick grapes and to brew.  I'm very keen on trying to develop local talent. There are lots of people around the Sussex area who I think would love to work on a farm, particularly on a vineyard.  In the 1940s and 1950s, lots of people from London had working holidays where they would pick hops in Kent and Hampshire, but fewer people do it today.  How hard is it to produce wine in Britain? It's getting easier. Wine producers are benefiting from climate change. If you look at the weather data for Eastbourne, the average temperature has risen by about half a degree over the past 50 years.  It's just a marginal increase but it's enough to increase the ripeness within the grapes. I think the South Downs is the new Champagne.  Several English wine producers are now winning the top international awards for their sparkling wines. In September 2010, Ridgeview won the Decanter award. It is the first time it has gone to a producer outside France. Nyetimber and Camel Valley, other UK producers, have also been winning awards.  When will your business become profitable? We'll start producing wine by 2014 but will be fully up and running by 2016.  We're looking to sell in stores, off-licences and restaurants in England but I think that there's an export market we can get involved in too.  a bottle will cost me between ?10 and ?12 to produce, but quality English sparkling wine is selling for ?25 to ?26 a bottle today. What was your first job? I did a Saturday milk round when I was 13. I grew up in Pyrford, Surrey.  What has been your most lucrative work and did you use the money to buy anything special? One of the best investments I ever made was in a Chinese infrastructure company, which is now called Longgong - it is China's answer to Caterpillar.  I bought in 2005 when others were worried that China would try to curb growth to prevent its economy overheating. The valuation was just a steal. I bought a 20% stake. after about two years, it had increased in value tenfold. I sold just before the credit crunch.  I banked the money, but am now using it to set up the farm. Do you invest in shares? I've got a small portfolio, which I manage myself. It is mainly in high-yielding shares to supplement my salary. They tend to be large, stable businesses that produce 5%-8% yields. I like Vodafone, the mobile provider, and Catlin and amlin, the insurers, for example.  are you better off than your parents? almost definitely. My father was an NHS dentist and my mother was a very busy woman looking after a big family - I was one of seven children.  What's better - property or pension? I'd do neither at the moment. It's a very challenging investment outlook for the next 10 years. Property is expensive and yields are still low - they're half what they should be.  I do have various company pension plans but I don't invest anymore. I find pensions quite restrict  
 as I write, the Michelin ratings have been announced, and the irregular collective of restaurant critics, food writers and loquacious bon viveurs have all dropped their trousers to anoint them with a trencherman's ordure.  It is a given that we all hate the Michelin ratings. We despise, mock and abhor them, and just as I write, in other spare bedrooms-cum-offices, there will be others chewing a PR's freebie cinnamon wafer, typing that, once again, the Frogs have got it all wrong. They will list kitchens that are inexplicably unawarded, and ones that laughably are, going on to mention, more in anger than in sorrow, that Michelin is responsible for ruining chefs and interior decoration, breeding zombie waiters, maintaining archaic menus, snobbery and Francophone elitism. Michelin will be blamed for racism, cronyism, conservatism and faddery. It will be held responsible for the extinction of ingredients, the rape of habitats, global warming, heart attacks, strokes and possibly the banking crisis. and those of you who bothered to get to the end of this spittle-flecked rant may wonder why so much ire is devoted to something as negligible as a tyre manufacturer's touring guide.  Why indeed? Well, in truth, there is a grudge here, a bone whose marrow is being sucked, a little professional competition. We hiss at Michelin stars, while awarding our own.  Critics hate Michelin because chefs love it obsessively and pathetically. They should be more in awe of our reviews. We despise the creeping guide examiners as vampires despise werewolves. We both dine off the same lifeblood, but guide inspectors are sad, friendless Gollums, eating solitary suck-foam meals, watching others with money, friends and futures enjoy themselves. and Michelin undoubtedly distorts restaurants at the top end of the business, although that rather depends where you consider the top to be. I know quite as many people who would use the guide for where not to eat, as to make a detour. and if your preference is for non-European food, then it's next to useless. For most diners, Michelin is irrelevant. The star is only a warning that you're going to be paying a premium for some chef's ego. What we should do is regard the annual awards as the edible Oscars - an act of slightly mad, tasteless, partisan and hysterical industry self-love. We can take a passing celebrity interest, but it really has very little to do with hunger, happiness or hospitality.  Last week, I did something I rarely do: went back for seconds. Restaurant guide inspectors always return, like dogs to vomit. They have to pretend their views last a year; mine are only good for one Sunday. I'd been to Les Deux Salons with Tom Craig and Bay Garnett (who both adored it), but the distance between eating and writing grew too long, and I needed to go again, which was no hardship, because my memory was of some exceedingly catchy food, a finger-clicking menu and a buoyant atmosphere in a nice corner of London.  Les  Deux Salons is a dining room with a bar that looks like it was designed with enthusiasm, but not much money and not quite enough thought. The bar's in the wrong place; the tables, even by West End standards, are too damn close. But, this being Trafalgar Square, it's perfect for pre- and post-theatre dinners, doing what the Ivy does, but without the stress, the glitz, and rather cheaper. We took Emeric, the movie producer, whom I seem to be feeding every week, Beeban Kidron, the film director, and Caroline Hickman, who does something about dressing and movies. The room was humming and jammed. They're open all day; tea slides into pretheatre, where there's a three-course set menu for ?15.50. We were fitted like cogs in a watch next to a table of drunk fat men. It's odd how tables of women look self-contained, happy and confident, while tables of men look like sad losers. and fat drunks are always more worrying than thin ones: it's the Weeble thing. You notice from the corner of your eye that if they start toppling, they'll take everything else with them. Fat people are clumsy when sober; drunk, their stomachs and arses clear tables. So that was the neighbours.  The menu is still very good: full of Frenchish bistro dishes, stuff you remember from summer holidays in southern towns, and occasional modern variants, such as snail and bacon pie. We began with warm cod brandade, which was light and nicely made, but you're still left with that metallic, fishy breath, like Portuguese kiss chase, and an onion tart that was a bit of a fiddle: a slab, rather than an individual tart, sweet enough, but not dense enough. It was like a savoury apple tart fine, and its accompanying goats' cheese was more curd than ch?vre. a ravioli of rose veal was a bit of a slippery french letter that suffered from rose veal not being veal, but rather watery and unwanted dairy-herd boy calves. autumn wild mushrooms on toast with an egg was a good idea, or it would have been before Christmas. It's nearly spring now.  For main course, the best was american aged beef. I love american steak, with its corny, grainy sweetness. This one was ordered rare, but came medium. Cooking a steak to order is tricky for a busy kitchen; it's tough to judge distinctions in the middle of service, and satisfy customers who may have very singular views about what rare should look and taste like, but our table was hungry, and we ate it anyway. But at ?70 for a single slab shared among three people, really you should get what you want. I chose a cheeseburger, mainly because it was a dish that didn't belong: a sort of an exchange student brought over to learn some manners.  
 Fiona Reynolds had not taken much notice of the government's plans to sell swathes of Britain's forests until Thursday. That day the director of the National Trust was sent an internet link to documents detailing what the coalition has in mind.  When she got round to reading the documents after a busy conference, she was shocked. The government, she discovered, wanted to sell, or hand over control of, Forestry Commission land covering not just commercial woodlands but also sites important to Britain's heritage.  Reynolds called an emergency meeting of her top team, who gathered on Friday at the trust's headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire. They discussed what action their organisation, which has 3m members, could take.  She said yesterday: "We were very surprised the government is actually putting some of our most iconic woodland at the top of list to be handed over.  "These much-cherished places have been in public hands for centuries, enjoyed by everyone for generation after generation. We have a long history of stepping in when heritage has been placed at risk in this way."  Suggestions that the trust might try to buy the forests outright are wide of the mark. "We are certainly in no position to take it over completely at the moment," said Reynolds.  However, she is keen to do whatever is within the trust's power to prevent historic sites falling into the hands of private enterprises that might subsequently deny the public access to them.  Even if the trust can forge schemes with other charities and local bodies to acquire forests in some form, the effect might well be limited. Woodlands that are classed as "heritage" sites, which might be given to charities, make up only 50,000 hectares of land, less than 20% of the 258,000 hectares owned by the Forestry Commission.  an online petition opposing the sale has collected nearly 300,000 signatures. Prominent public figures, including the archbishop of Canterbury and Dame Judi Dench, have signed an open letter to the government in which they said the sale was "misjudged and shortsighted" and "the most destructive of all possible options". With a YouGov survey for The Sunday Times today showing that 71% of people are opposed to the government's plans, a battle looms.  THE Forestry Commission was set up in 1919 to ensure a healthy supply of timber for the nation. Forests had been dwindling since the middle ages, and the industrial revolution burnt so much wood that Britain had to rely on imports to meet its wartime needs for timber.  after decades of the commission cultivating woodland, proposals to sell its property were announced last year when the forestry minister Jim Paice told parliament of plans for a "very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it".  amid all the talk of public spending cuts, few took much notice. The government claims the sale is an economic necessity for the cash-strapped Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra), and will raise between ?150m and ?250m over 10 years.  Ministers also argue that the commission needs to be modernised, saying there is a conflict of interest in its role. Caroline Spelman, the department's secretary of state, said: "These proposals give us the opportunity to address the quirk of the Forestry Commission's position, whereby it is the regulator of the very market of which it is the largest player."  Such aims, and the sums involved, have appeared thin to many and concerns have grown as the nature of the sale has emerged. The majority of the Forestry Commission land has been classified by Defra as "commercial forest", which the government, after toying with outright sale, now proposes to put on the open market under 150-year leases.  The government says the leases, alongside amendments to planning regulations, will allow ministers to exert some control over the forests, ensuring that the land is accessible to walkers, cyclists and horse riders.  Critics have serious doubts about whether such a system would be effective. They cite the example of Rigg Wood in the Lake District, which was among 13,000 hectares of Forestry Commission land quietly sold by the previous government.  The wood had been widely used by local residents and tourists, partly because of its convenient car parking. Once it was bought by a timber company, though, locals found access to the parking area was blocked and signs were erected warning that the woods were "private property".  Timber companies say access routes for the public will have to be blocked if they are to "manage" woodland effectively.  Stuart Goodall, chief executive of the Confederation of Forest Industries (ConFor), said: "You can't have people walking past if you are cutting down trees."  Despite the commercial opportunities, ConFor has its own concerns. It believes that the big winners from any sale would not be timber companies but energy groups who could reap large subsidies, under the government's agenda to encourage renewable energy, for burning the wood as a biofuel.  Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), already harvests wood from Scottish forests for its plants in Fiddler's Ferry, Cheshire, and Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire. It has expressed an interest in acquiring some of the Forestry Commission's holdings.  SSE said last week it was too early to discuss the specifics of any purchase, adding that there were many environmental benefits to using timber as biofuel. However, Goodall says companies buying forests for energy purposes could be damaging to other interests.  "Small and medium-sized timber companies are going to find themselves squeezed out by these energy giants who will benefit from having subsidies," he said. "It will completely change the way these forests are managed, as trees won't be grown for quality but just to be burned.  "We want to use these forests to build homes and create jobs, not stuff them up a chimney."  WRITING in The Sunday Times today, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, says the government's safeguards will be insufficient to protect the forests once they fall into private hands. He also argues that the present system is inexpensive and the sale of the land would raise only modest sums.  according to Miliband, the Forestry Commission land costs each ta  
 a ROW has erupted between two of Britain's top plastic recycling firms over a ?1m public subsidy for a new bottle-handling plant.  Green Tech, a recycling firm, has received the funding from the London Waste and Recycling Board to support the construction of a new plant at Enfield, north London, capable of recycling 25,000 tonnes of plastic bottles a year.  The plant will compete with a site run by Closed Loop Recycling in Dagenham, some 13 miles to the south, which has revealed plans to double its capacity to 60,000 tonnes.  Combined, the two new sites would have enough capacity to process more than double the amount of plastic bottles collected in London each year - or 30% of all the bottles gathered across the UK.  Chris Dow at Closed Loop has criticised the decision to hand out the ?1m grant when there is no shortage of bottle recycling capacity.  His rivals, however, claim that the new plant could absorb some of the millions of tonnes of plastic that are being exported to China by recycling firms.  Dow said: "It's inefficient to build another plant so close to an existing one. If the government is going to financially support plants it should be making sure the correct infrastructure is in place to ensure they have the right material to recycle."  Closed Loop and Green Tech are both now fighting to secure finance for their plans at a time when it is hard to get loans and find new investment. Closed Loop has already had to delay plans to build a second plant in Wales because it has been unable to finalise ?30m of funding.  Green Tech is hoping to have its plant operating by the end of next year but has yet to secure the final ?4m of the total ?8.5m it needs. It received the ?1m funding package from the recycling board in December.  Javed Mawji of Green Tech said that despite all the new capacity, there was more than adequate room for recyclers to develop.  He said: "UK Customs estimate that between 50,000 and 80,000 tonnes of recovered plastics are exported to China every month. Not all of that would be suitable for us,   
 Q To get to my new job I have to drive through 10 miles of stop-start traffic each way. I therefore need to swap my audi a4 convertible for something more economical, with low carbon emissions. It needs to have boot space for a set of golf clubs or two and be child friendly as I plan to start a family soon. I have looked at the Honda CR-Z hybrid and the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion, but am concerned about the boot space. My budget is ?15,000-?25,000.  SB, Epsom, Surrey  a With such a low daily mileage you could consider an electric car, such as the Nissan Leaf, which, after allowing for a government incentive payment of ?5,000, comes in at ?25,990 and has a potential range of 109 miles on a single charge (although much less if you accelerate hard and drive at high speeds). It has 330-litre boot. 
 Regulars  7 Daisy Waugh It began with a desire to shine among the beautiful people and ended with the ugliest T-shirt of them all  8 Relative Values The playwright Jez Butterworth and his brother John-Henry  11 Chat Room Wittering on: the comic Sue Perkins on prawn balls and being the world's biggest fibber; the secret soul mates of Levi Roots; is it wrong to swear?  12 ask Dr Ozzy Unbearable mums, poison dust and annoying therapists  62 a Life in the Day Lady Elizabeth anson, cousi  
 Report  In a basement in London, in probably the smallest office in the world, an american television crew is demanding to know what the weather will be like on april 29, the day Prince William marries Kate Middleton. any mainstream meteorologist would tell them their question is unanswerable so far in advance. But Piers Corbyn is not mainstream.  "It looks like being a cool day with blustery showers, although we do have to see if there will be a blocking high pressure to keep things away. But to do it properly we need a little more time."  Corbyn, who is the brother of the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, has the air of a Dickensian clerk - crazy hair, disordered clothes, and he sniffs persistently through a giant nose. "He comes across," muses one climate scientist, "as mad as a hatter, but he's not daft."  Not being daft makes him, to the vast majority of climate scientists, a very dangerous man indeed and one in serious need of a good slap.  "He is... an utter prat."  That was Professor Philip Jones of the University of East anglia Climate Research Unit. His view of Corbyn appeared in one of the leaked emails in the "Climategate" scandal, which proved to global warming sceptics that scientists like Jones were prepared to rig the evidence to advance their case. Corbyn, you see, thinks that global warming is a scam, a fraud, bad science, you name it. "There is no evidence whatsoever," he says, "for any long cycle connected with carbon dioxide, absolutely none."  Later, over breakfast at his club, Brooks's, the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley - pinstripe suit, clashing shirt and tie - tells me that he also thinks warming is a scam, a fraud, etc. "Selfsustaining nonsense," he calls it, "where anybody who wishes to be part of the establishment dare not stand up and say it's nonsense."  Christopher Monckton, joint deputy leader of Ukip, the anti-immigration party, is perhaps the most high-profile warming sceptic on the planet. Though not a scientist, he is highly scientifically informed. "If it were him versus al Gore or him versus David Cameron, he's vastly better scientifically qualified," says Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Monckton is lapped up by sceptical americans for two reasons. First, he has a plummy English accent and he peppers his talk with classical references. Secondly, he has a habit of suggesting that warming is a quasi-communist plot. The believers, he says, are those who once would have been communists. They are intent, he claims, on a form of world government capable of overruling democratically elected leaders. He is very self-conscious and aware that he might be taken as bonkers. at one point, in the middle of a long story about a cold war Soviet plot, he stops and looks at me. "I watched your face and you looked as if you were thinking, 'Oh, my God, what kind of a nutter am I talking to?'" There are good reasons to treat Corbyn and Monckton with caution. Corbyn bases his weather forecasts and his carbon denial on a system he will not divulge; he maintains that climate change is the result of solar activity rather than manmade.  "The thing about Piers," says Professor Chris Rapley of University College London, one of our most distinguished climate scientists, "is that he will not reveal his methodology and therefore cannot be taken seriously as a scientist."  Monckton, meanwhile, has a nasty habit of rewriting his own story. To me, for example, he denies he advocated quarantining those infected with HIV in an article in the american Spectator in 1987. He says he simply said they should be warned about the dangers. In fact, he was very specific about quarantine. The infected, he wrote, should be "isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently... Carriers need not be isolated from each other... and carefully supervised visits from uninfected people would be possible."  Both of them tend to alienate other sceptics. One anti-warmist had doubts about Monckton when he argued that coal was as clean as wind and solar.  and Corbyn's assertion that there is no carbon effect is dismissed by even hard sceptic scientists. Neither man, in short, is strictly credible. But they are on a roll, both making regular appearances on american TV. The question is: what should the reasonable person now think? Since I wrote about being converted to warmism in this magazine just over a year ago, the greens - and I - have been on the run. They are so much on the run that, on key issues, they have fallen silent. The last few months have seen a series of spectacular weather events - floods in Pakistan, Brazil and australia, cyclones hitting australia, huge snowfalls on the eastern coast of america, and two very cold winters in Britain.  Such extreme events were, in fact, predicted by global warming models. But nobody has dared to claim them for the climate change case.  "Not a single climatologist," says Rapley, "has even dared to discuss the possibility that these events are linked to climate change... The truth is you cannot attribute any one of these things to human-induced climate change, but they represent a series of coincidences that seem very unlikely."  The climate scientists have been demoralised by a series of heavy blows to their credibility - among them the Climategate affair. The Labour MP Graham Stringer was on the select committee that questioned Dr Philip Jones about his emails. "It was quite a shock," Stringer says. "It was not just the emails, which were probably over the top, but when you look below at what they were actually doing, they weren't doing science."  Stringer, a scientist by training, is one of the few politicians to come out as a warming sceptic. But there are plenty of closet sceptics. "With Labour MPs, it's become more of an issue like racism: 'Of course you're against it, and if you're not, you're not going to be invited to my dinner party.' " There was also the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, at which world leaders got together to do almost nothing, and then last year's Cancun summit, at which the poor accused the rich of failing to deliver the $30 billion promised to help mitigate the effects of warming. and, finally, the science itself turned weird. after decades of temperatures increasing steadily, the trend levelled off in the noughties. It did not, as some sceptics claimed, go flat. It was still the warmest decade on record, but the rise had dropped to one-tenth of what climate models had predicted.  In america the Republicans' success in the midterm elections has given the sceptics' cause what it does not have here: important mainstream representation. But that could be about to change.  Down in the leafy lanes, something is stirring.  "We prefer not to use the word 'sceptic'," says Fay Kelly-Tuncay. "We prefer 'realist'." She is the Surrey housewife organising a campaign to repeal the 2008 Climate Change act, which commits the UK to cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.  "We've become very aware that data has been manipulated, and the most annoying thing is the closing down of debate. There have been complaints about the BBC having meetings to decide that all scientists agree, so let's stop talking to sceptics. I think that's undemocratic... "We've had a scare story running since the 1970s. It started off as global cooling. Then they said the Earth was warming and it would be catastrophic, there would be tipping points - and those things just haven't happened."  Zeroing in on the 2008 act potentially gives the campaigners real political traction. "We think MPs rushed to judgment on global warming and made a catastrophic policy blunder," she continues. "We feel energy subsidies will be too high. Wind farms and solar, they're uneconomic. also, the government is ignoring gas from shale and shale oil, which is very cheap and in plentiful supply... We don't really understand why."  Graham Stringer adds the jobs issue into the anti-act mix. "Gradually, those MPs who take the global warming arguments at face value are beginning to realise they'll have to explain to their constituents why industries are closing down and why their domestic fuels bills are going up. Making renewable energy three times as profitable as traditional energy, and making my constituents pay for it - that's a very bad idea."  Finally, there is the moral issue. The Rev Philip Foster is now retired from his job as vicar of St Matthew's, Cambridge. about 10 years ago he was talking to a scientist who asked him how much he thought temperature had risen in the last 120 years. "I said about two or three degrees. He said about half a degree." Foster was shocked that so much was being made of so little, and in retirement he has immersed himself in warming science. He is now a card-carrying realist. He does not believe rising carbon dioxide levels cause warming, rather that warming causes rising CO2.  I ask him why he thinks the warmists believe otherwise. "Scientists of a certain kind say, 'There's a problem. Will you give us money to research it?' It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."  But the real issue for Foster is moral. "If africa is told it mustn't touch its coal, mustn't touch its oil, when it desperately needs electricity to run basic services, that's morally shocking. This western obsession is actually killing people. It is Christian charities pushing this, and it distresses me."  Repeal the act, the campaign to overturn the 2008 Climate Change act, will be launched formally at a meeting in St Ives, Cambridgeshire on March 19. This immediately precedes Climate Week, which runs from March 21 to 27.  Climate Week, and green politics in general, show that, if sceptics rely on dubious science, warmists rely on bad politics. The week is, as the website says, "a supercharged national occasion that offers an annual renewal of our ambition and confidence to combat climate change". Nothing damages a cause in secular Britain like quasi-religious language; it spreads suspicion.  Well, there is one thing even more damaging, and that is the pursuit of clearly unattainable goals. Caroline Lucas is the Green party leader and our first Green MP. She recently came up with the idea of the New Home Front initiative. Based on our performance during the second world war - when we cut coal use by 25%, we saved waste to feed pigs, car use plummeted and so on - it calls for Britain to get onto a war footing again to combat climate change. The glaringly obvious objection to this is that slowly rising temperatures do not have quite the same persuasive power as the Luftwaffe and massed panzer divisions on the French coast. So I asked Lucas how on earth she expected people to be talked into joining the new Home Front. The answer is leadership.  "If you think of the political capital that Tony Blair expended on persuading people there was a genuine threat from Iraq, if he had used that same political capital he had back in 1997, that charisma, that leadership, around the issue of climate change... you could communicate in a clear way what the threat is, what the benefits are of acting, and you could galvanise people."  This is the Greens shooting themselves in both feet prior to standing on a rake. If evoking the war as a model for our response to climate change is a mistake, then evoking Iraq is an egregious blunder. Blair did not get us into that war on the basis of his popular leadership skills; he got us in against massive popular resistance and on the basis of wrong intelligence and extremely dodgy dossiers.  So, torn between bad politics, grass-roots unease, eccentric deniers, terrible weather and unbelievably complicated science, what should you, the reasonable person, think? First, the heart of the matter is science, not politics. The kneejerk right-winger who embraces hard-ass scepticism as a necessary political accessory is as stupid as the kneejerk left-winger who embraces radical, back-toausterity warmism for the same reason. These people are pre-programmed ideologues.  Nevertheless, the science says that global warming is happening and that human activity is almost certainly the cause. There are important arguments to be had about the rate of warming, about its impact, and about "climate sensitivity", the degree to which the climate responds to small changes. But the simple truth is, unless some staggering new development reveals factors at work that have concealed themselves for 40 years from the best scientists in the world, denying the basics of the case is irrational, mere prejudice. Piers Corbyn claims to have such a revelation but, since he refuses to share his methods, he need not trouble the reasonable person.  Secondly, that rational formulation of the issue does not in itself solve any of the political problems. Our uncertainties about rate and impact entail profound uncertainties about action. How much should we spend, how much should we change our lives? The short answer is neithe  
 JOHN MORETON, the serial entrepreneur, hopes to become one of Britain's biggest solar electricity investors - in spite of the government's review of incentives for large-scale green energy producers.  Moreton, 66, is best known for establishing and selling care home businesses, including Southern Cross. He netted about ?25m when the company was sold in 2002.  He trained as an electrical engineer and made his first fortune on the back of Britain's conversion to North Sea gas in the 1960s. JM Gas, which he set up when he was 21, converted home appliances to natural gas.  Moreton is also Britain's largest walnut farmer, with a 1,000-acre farm in the Meon valley, Hampshire, where he lives with his second wife, Karen, 44.  He has had high-profile backers, including Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, and Oliver Stone, the Hollywood director, who have both put money into his software venture Global Data Centre Management.  Moreton has eight children: alexander, 29, and Philip, 26, with his first wife, and Niamh, 13, triplets Daniel, Luke and Jessica, 9, and Bethany, 8 and Olivia, 6 .  How much money do you have in your wallet? about ?120. I don't usually keep a lot more than that. I prefer to use my debit card.  What credit cards do you use? I have an invitation-only american Express Centurion, which is made of titanium and costs ?1,800 a year. It's worth it, though. It offers good deals on flights and hotels.  are you a saver or a spender? I've saved a lot more than I've spent over the years, but I do enjoy spending. People who say they don't like to spend just haven't found the right shops.  I remained in cash following the credit crunch, but in the past year or so I've been investing in new companies. I recently founded MO3 Power, a renewable energy firm that sets up large-scale solar panels. Each of the systems will produce electricity for about 300 homes.  We have projects near Usk in South Wales, Whimple, near Exeter, and eight other locations in Britain. We're hoping to benefit from the government's feed-in tariffs.  Isn't there a review of these tariffs? Yes, but I'm sure the government will understand the advantages of solar over, say, wind and continue the payments. Solar generators last longer and are less of a blight on the landscape. Over the long term, it is a better way to achieve the government's goals to reduce carbon emissions.  also, if a system is set up and plugged into the grid by summer 2012, the rates are guaranteed and index-linked for 25 years. We're hoping to have our projects up and running by then.  My initial investment was just over ?3m, but there is a lot of interest from international businesses - despite the government's review - with the potential for ?1 billion of investment overall.  How much did you earn last year? Because I was investing, the main source of income was the farm. It returned a six-figure sum. I use 400 acres for wheat and 600 for walnut trees. I've just planted another 80 trees - an old English variety called Northdown clawnut, which grows to about 18-25 metres.  I expect to rely on the farm for another couple of years as my investments mature. Why farming? agriculture is making a comeback in Britain. about four years ago I could get ?50 for a tonne of wheat. I'm getting more like ?200 a tonne now.  It's mainly because of demand from emerging markets. also, climate change is having an adverse effect on traditional wheat- and walnutgrowing countries, such as China and australia, while it is benefiting growers here.  Have you ever been really hard up? Only as a child. I remember getting up with my father at about 4.30am on a Sunday to go to Petticoat Lane market in east London to sell bits and pieces that he'd collected. We would sit in front of the entrance of a synagogue because it wasn't open on Sundays.  We'd make ?2 or ?3 over the day - perhaps ?200 to ?300 today. It really helped over Christmas.  What property do you own? The farmhouse goes back to Roman times, and we have Saxon burial grounds on the land. It has eight bedrooms. I've had it for nine years and it cost ?6m, including the land.  I also have a property in New Zealand, which I've owned for the past 10 years. It's in Tauranga, on the other side of the South Island from Christchurch, so there wasn't any damage from the recent earthquake. It has six bedrooms.  My father moved to New Zealand in 1973 and I plan to retire there too.  What was your first job? I started cutting hedges when I was nine. I'd get anything up to five shillings a hedge.  What has been your most lucrative work and did you buy anything special with the money? Setting up JM Gas. I raised about ?3,000 from an uncle and ended up employing 70 people.   
 The European commission's proposal, put forward on Tuesday, to scrap rules that force fishermen to throw millions of dead fish back into the sea provoked scepticism and applause.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the television chef who started the campaign against the discarding of dead fish, was pleased with the result. "I would like to think it's hard to ignore more than half a million signatures," he said. "Now discards are at the heart of common fisheries policy reform."  This will not solve the difficulty, however, argued Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. "The problem is that it is a common fisheries policy. Fish stocks in EU waters are defined as a "common resource" to which all members have "equal access", he wrote. "The way to preserve fish stocks in the North Sea - what's left of them - is to give fishermen an incentive to treat them as a renewable resource."  Others were delighted to see a ban.  "These fish don't swim away to live another day," wrote annalisa Barbieri in The Guardian. "Mostly they are dead, so they are wasted. This would be immoral if we had more than enough fish, but we don't, so it's both immoral and uneconomic." 
 n and what are they doing, all these people beavering away at the climate change department? David MacKay, itschief scientific adviser, is urging us all to turn down our thermostats. He hopes "the promotion of sweater-wearing by sexy personalities" will help keep out the chill. This, then, is our new weapon against global warming - Lady Gaga in an arran pullover. 
 n The public finances are in such a desperate state that Vince Cable may soon have to be sold into private hands. Yet it seems we can still afford to recruit the people who really matter - civil servants at Chris Huhne's Department of Energy and Climate Change.  Responding to a question from the Tory MP John Redwood, the department reveals that it employed 1,036 people last May but has now expanded to 1,154 - a rise of more than 11%. 
 HOMEOWNERS and firms who switch to sustainable fuels to heat their properties will be able to reclaim part of the cost from the taxpayer under a ?4.5 billion government scheme to be launched this week.  The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) will offer subsidies for various kinds of green heating technology including boilers that run on wood chips, solar panels for heating water, groundand air-source heat pumps and the production of methane from sewage.  Households and firms installing, for example, an approved wood-chip boiler will be able to claim payments for generating "green" heat. These could halve their heating costs.  Heating accounts for about 47% of Britain's CO2 emissions, so switching away from fossil fuels is vital to achieve carbon reduction targets.  Greg Barker, the climate change minister, who is overseeing the scheme, said he hoped it would reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, particularly amid fears Middle East turmoil will send oil prices soaring.  "The aim is to help new technologies get started in the face of competition from established energy sources like gas and oil," he said. "We are offering long-term support until at least 2020 so the manufacturers know just where they are."  Introduction of the scheme, the first of its kind in the world, follows a campaign by Friends of the Earth and the Renewable Energy association (REa).  Leonie Greene, the REa's head of external affairs, said it could be a "breakthrough moment for renewables".  She added: "If the levels of support are right, it will empower people to change how they heat their homes, schools and workplaces, while also generating thousands of new jobs in green industries." 
 Saab 9-5 2.8T aero ?38,585  Saab's recent history has been uninspiring to say the least. It's a long time since it made a truly competitive car, a fact that loyal fans blame on the way the Swedish manufacturer was run by General Motors. There's a certain irony, then, in the fact that the company's best car in two decades has arrived just as control has passed to Spyker.  When The Sunday Times tested a 9-5 diesel last year it was clear that it couldn't compete with the best of audi and BMW. But this top-of-therange 2.8T aero is a different story altogether.  The super-smooth 296bhp twin-turbo V6 motor works in perfect harmony with a slick, six-speed automatic gearbox, directing power to all four corners of the car so effectively that perhaps the worst rainstorm I've encountered in Britain could not throw it off its stride. Some of you will be old enough to remember when Saabs felt like impregnable fo  
 Frogs, we are told, will not leap out of the water in which they are being cooked, just so long as the temperature is increased very gradually. British governments have long applied the same principle to public taxation, and especially fuel taxes.  Every now and then, however, sharp rises in the crude oil price belatedly alert the public to the fact that they are being cooked and they leap into action. Thus Britain's most popular daily paper, The Sun, has launched a campaign - Keep It Down - to make the chancellor, George Osborne, scrap the planned rise in fuel duty on april 1, which will add a further 3p to the cost of a litre at the pumps. It has also co-opted the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, who has become one of the 150,000 or so signatories to the paper's petition, despite having been part of the government that originally proposed this increase.  Rather than just point out that Balls is one of the architects of the monumental publicsector deficit that the latest fuel duty increment is designed to reduce by ?500m a year, the government briefs nervously that it is "actively considering" the "fair fuel stabiliser".  This is a wheeze that Osborne first mooted in opposition when oil prices reached their peak in 2008. The idea, as he then described it, is that at times of sudden and temporary swings in the oil price, the rate of fuel duty charged would fall if crude prices rose, and rise if the cost of crude slumped.  Politics is an inherently chancy business, but here is a prediction on which you could safely bet as much as the price of a gallon of diesel: the government will not - not now, not ever - introduce its frequently touted "fair fuel stabiliser".  I say this not just because the Office for Budget Responsibility told the chancellor that it was intellectually incoherent: "In practice, the distinction between what constitutes a 'temporary' and a 'permanent' oil price shock is highly subjective. It is extremely difficult to identify in real time whether movements in the oil price are temporary or are likely to persist beyond the near term."  No, the real problem is not so much intellectual as practical, as James Spencer, of the Fuel Trading Company, pointed out to me. "How often will the fair fuel stabiliser change? Every week? Every month? Every quarter?" he asked. "For it to be relevant and cover price spikes, it will need to be changed frequently, which only very sophisticated IT systems could cope with. I have experienced nothing in government that tells me that its IT systems are ready for such a programme. I can't see it being anything but an absolute disaster."  Then there is the peculiar politics of the coalition to consider. The Liberal Democrats never liked the whole idea of Osborne's fair fuel stabiliser, as it sounded to them like a plan to reduce the level of tax on fossil fuels below the maximum that could be wrung from a public who, they believe, should be discouraged by all means possible from burning the stuff.  Thus the one member of the government who seems positively elated by the recent surge in crude prices - the result of oil traders' concerns over events in the Middle East and north africa - is the Lib Dem climate change secretary, Chris Huhne. In a speech last Thursday, Huhne proclaimed that at a price of more than $100 a barrel of oil, it actually becomes cheaper to move from hydrocarbon-fuelled energy to such green alternatives as wind power.  This is, of course, spectacularly misleading.  Not only will the government continue to make us subsidise its ?100billion wind turbine programme on a monumental scale; even when the thing is up and going, it will probably not lead to the decommissioning of a single fossil-fuel power station (what do you think will provide the back-up when the wind isn't obligingly strong?).  as Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, recently pointed out: "Offshore wind is one of the most expensive short-term ways you can conceive of to reduce CO2 emissions. It's economic nonsense."  Helm argues that the most effective way of "de-carbonising" Britain's energy, at least in the short term, would be to switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas in power generation: "If you take out four to five gigawatts of coal and replace it with gas, the CO2 savings would be similar and it would only cost ?5 billion-?7 billion, compared with ?100 billion for offshore wind."  although Huhne seems strangely reluctant to admit it, there is a gas glut: prices have been falling spectacularly as new exploration and production techniques have unlocked vast untapped reserves and the link between oil and gas prices has been broken. Yet because natural gas cannot be described as " renewable", Huhne regards it as ideologically unsound.  On the other hand, Huhne is not opposed to the absurd EU programme of mandating the substitution of crop-based biofuels for petrol, although this almost certainly does not reduce our carbon emissions and does force up food prices.  america is even more insanely committed to biofuels: more than 40% of its corn belt is now being burnt in its cars - involving tax credits to producers of about $8 billion (?5 billion) a year. The former vice-president al Gore last year admitted that he had originally promoted these enormous subsidies for reasons that were not entirely to do with saving the planet: "I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."  It is President Barack Obama who now confronts the anger of an american public shocked by the prospect of paying $4 (?2.50) a gallon for its petrol after the   
 and what are they doing, all these people beavering away at the climate change department?  David MacKay, its chief scientific adviser, is urging us all to turn down our thermostats. He hopes "the promotion of sweater-wearing by sexy personalities" will help keep out the chill. This, then, is our new weapon against global warming - Lady Gaga in an arran pullover. 
 The public finances are in such a desperate state that Vince Cable may soon have to be sold into private hands. Yet it seems we can still afford to recruit the people who really matter - civil servants at Chris Huhne's Department of Energy and Climate Change.  Responding to a question from the Tory MP John Redwood, the department reveals that it employed 1,036 people last May but has now expanded to 1,154 - a rise of more than 11%. 
 DEEP in the heart of the Midlands, a former double-glazing factory is churning out homes on a production line manned by former car workers.  Persimmon, the housebuilder, took over the factory in Castle Bromwich after its ?643m acquisition of Westbury, a rival builder, in 2005. The Space4 plant has since been expanded and is capable of producing 5,000 flat-pack homes a year.  The economic benefits are clear: it takes Persimmon only a few hours to erect the shell of one of the Space4 houses. But there are also substantial environmental benefits, not least the fact that the construction process produces little waste.  Persimmon estimates that about a third of the energy consumed by UK industry goes into making and transporting building materials. That represents about 10% of all UK energy consumption. as the flat-pack homes arrive largely complete, there is a huge reduction in transport costs.  While the Space4 boxes may not be to everybody's taste, no ozone-depleting substances are used in their construction and their high thermal performance means that less heating will be needed and so carbon dioxide emissions will be kept to a minimum.  So far, they account for about 20% of all Persimmon houses sold, some 2,000 a year. Mike Farley, the chief executive, believes that this could rise to 50% as more homebuyers come to appreciate their environmental benefits.  Rising numbers of eco-conscious house hunters are encouraging the industry into these uncharted waters. There is also the pressure of meeting the government's target for new homes to be zero carbon from 2016.  But what does zero carbon mean? There is still much confusion, but the definition currently used is contained in level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, a national standard produced by the Building Research Establishment. This is one of the most stringent regimes in the world, demanding that all emissions from the home and any activities that take place within it have a net zero carbon impact over a year.  It sets the bar so high that only a handful of flagship schemes have qualified.  One is Hanham Hall, near Bristol, developed by Barratt Homes with the Homes and Communities agency, which owns the former hospital site.  The project began with the demolition of a 22-metre chimney in 2009 and it will include revamping the Grade II* listed Hanham Hall, which will be the centrepiece. The first homes are scheduled to be available this year.  Hanham Hall, billed as a zero-carbon village, will have a combined heat and power system, powered by a biomass boiler, to generate hot water and electricity for every home.  Residents will have access to allotments to grow their own produce, and fruit trees have been planted. They will be encouraged to set up a carshare scheme and to use public transport, and there will be cycle routes through the site.  Hanham Hall will be an exemplar of eco-living - and is likely to continue to be the exception rather than the rule for some time. The main reason is that the green-home dream comes with a big price tag.  Mark Clare, chief executive of Barratt, told the annual Zero Carbon Hub conference this month that designing and constructing homes to meet the emission-free target is not the problem; the barrier is the extra cost.  "On cost, some would say: if we can't reduce the cost dramatically, the industry will simply shrink f  
 ICELaND's largest energy firm is working on ambitious plans to supply Britain with power generated by volcanic heat.  Landsvirkjun, the stateowned giant that produces 75% of the island's electricity, is examining the feasibility of laying a 1,170km (730 mile) cable between Iceland and Scotland.  The cable would be the longest of its kind in the world, transporting up to six terawatt hours (TWh) of energy to Britain every year - enough to power 1.5m households.  The move comes as politicians are trying to create a European "supergrid". Better links would allow Europe to share renewable energy, meaning that wave and wind power generated in the North Sea could be used across the continent.  The EU wants to obtain 20% of its energy from green sources by 2020.  Landsvirkjun's proposed conduit between Iceland and Scotland would cost about $2.1 billion (?1.3 billion) to build. a further $2.4 billion would need to be spent on the construction of several geothermal plants and hydroelectric dams to generate the 6TWh of energy.  Geothermal plants exploit volcanic terrain by filtering water through hot rocks and then using the steam to drive electricity generators.  Iceland hit the headlines last year when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted for the first time in almost 190 years, sending out a cloud of ash that disrupted flights across Europe for a week.  The proposed undersea cable to Scotland would produce annual revenues of about $400m, which would help Iceland repair its public finances after the collapse of its banking system in 2008.  Valdimar armann, an economist at Gamma, a Reykjavik asset manager, said the project would require foreig  
 In america they call it "trophy or trauma". On one hand, investors from all over the world are pouring money into glittering skyscrapers and historic buildings. On the other, property in regional cities that were savaged by the recession in 2008 and 2009 has not yet recovered.  The same polarising effect could be said to be gripping the British property market. When the decade-long bull run came to a screeching halt in mid 2007, the value of commercial property plunged by half in the worst-hit parts of the country. Banks such as HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which had between them almost sustained the industry, turned off the lending taps. Deals struck in the era of easy debt collapsed and a generation of tycoons went from billionaires to bankrupts.  London's three largest listed property companies - Land Securities, British Land and Hammerson - each went cap in hand to their shareholders for hundreds of millions of pounds in rights issues, as did several smaller players. Minnows disappeared: Brixton, the industrial specialist, was swallowed by its larger rival Segro, and cash-strapped operators such as Minerva were put into play.  Walk through London's Soho or Canary Wharf today and it is hard to imagine a crash ever happened. From the low point in the spring of 2009, values have bounced back vigorously. Property in the West End has recovered by 51% while in the City it is up by 62%. Mayfair rents are on track to pass ?100 per square foot this year, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, the consultant.  In the City, rates could pass ?60 per square foot and head toward the pre-crisis level of ?66.  Bill Page, head of offices research at Jones Lang LaSalle, said: "London corrected very heavily on the downside during the credit crunch. The strong recovery since then has been fuelled by yield compression and a lack of quality supply, which has driven up rents."  a raft of development projects put on ice during the credit crunch has been brought to life. Last October, Land Securities teamed up with Canary Wharf to restart work on 20 Fenchurch Street - otherwise known as the Walkie Talkie. a bulbous 36-storey structure designed by the Uruguay-born architect Rafael Vi?oly, the tower has an hourglass shape that will mean its upper floors are larger than those in the middle.  In direct competition is British Land and Oxford Properties' 47-storey skyscraper at 122 Leadenhall Street known as the Cheesegrater. Great Portland Estates and Brookfield, the Canadian investor, are waiting to secure a tenant before starting work on their 40-storey tower at 100 Bishopsgate.  Other projects were never suspended. The veteran developer Gerald Ronson is about to complete his Heron Tower, a 46-storey structure near Liverpool Street whose foyer will feature a 700,000-litre aquarium with sharks. a Middle Eastern consortium, arab Investments, is pressing on with a 63-floor tower on Bishopsgate called the Pinnacle, or the Helter Skelter. Irvine Sellar's Shard, a 72-storey monster taking shape behind London Bridge station, increasingly wows passers-by as huge slabs of glass are added to its sides.  Peter Rees, planner-in-chief for the City of London, believes the changing skyline is "a good way to demonstrate the capital's economic success". "You don't improve a place by building tall - you need to have a successful place in the first instance," he said. "Those Norfolk church spires were built from wool, not piety."  The picture outside the capital is more challenging. Every regional city apart from Manchester suffered falling office rents last year, according to Drivers Jonas Deloitte, the consultant. In northern towns such as Doncaster and Stockport one in five shops stands empty.  although areas outside London will be worse affected by the government's austerity measures, there is hope. The difference in returns is striking - average London yields stand at 5.8%, compared with 7.6% in the regions - sending a growing band of investors further afield in search of more bang for their buck.  "You can never say, 'we won't touch certain areas because of the spending cuts', because you will miss opportunities," said Robert Gilchrist of Rockspring, the asset manager. "Underneath the gloomy headlines many parts of the country are still prospering."  Property giants such as Land Securities and British Land have recently bought shopping centres in locations such as Dundee and Devon. Nimbler players such as Helical Bar, Town Centre Securities and St Modwen have squeezed profits from outof-favour stock.  St Modwen's secondary properties - which include malls in London's Elephant & Castle and Edmonton and Manchester's Wythenshawe - were the engine behind the group's ?37.5m pre-tax gain last year. Bill Oliver, chief executive, said: "We have been pushing back against the view from City analysts that prime property is good and everything in the provinces is no good. There is life outside London. With the right management and the right location it can perform quite well."  Meanwhile, looming like a mountain behind Britain's property market is the ?163 billion of debt that needs to be renewed in the next three years. Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Ireland's "bad bank", the National asset Management agency (Nama), need to resolve large bundles of loans made at the top of the market, whether by refinancing them, massaging borrowers back to health or selling them on in some form.  Lloyds disposed of ?4 billion last year and is expected to shift a similar   
 YOUR Energy and Environment pages have carried several articles regarding future transport energy, many of them influenced by Professor David Mac-Kay's book, Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot air. In it he makes the claim that electric vehicles are up to five times more energy efficient than fossilfuelled cars. This claim is not based on similar vehicles and does not allow for generating losses at power stations. Professor MacKay has apologised for any misunderstanding his statement may have caused.  For mixed driving conditions, a modern turbo diesel will always be more efficient than a similarsized electric car whose energy comes from fossilfuelled power stations, because there are fewer losses involved. Electric vehicles are only cheaper to run because the government has not got round to taxing transport electricity - yet. If we compare ultimate efficiency, we find that the electric aptera does 190mpg equivalent while VW's diesel 1-litre car does 280mpg. The Volkswagen will also have greater range and enough "waste" heat to power a cabin heater.  We need to face facts, not green dreams. Electric vehicles will only make any sense once we have converted to an all nuclear power generation system. In order to transfer to all-electric road transport, we will have to double the number of power stations in the UK. That is how much energy road transport uses.  Ralph Ellis Shrewsbury, Shropshire 
 COCa-COLa has struck a landmark deal to build Europe's biggest plastic bottle recycling plant in North Lincolnshire.  The world's biggest drinks maker has set up the ?200m joint venture with Eco Plastics, a recycling firm backed by Eddie Truell, the veteran private equity investor.  Eco Plastics already operates Britain's largest plastic r e c y c l i n g f a c i l i t y i n Hemswell. Coke will invest ?5m of the ?15m required to construct a new plant that will feed its growing requirements for reused plastic. It has signed a 10-year agreement to take the plant's output.  Coke aims to use 100% recycled material in its packaging by 2020. In the UK, it produces more than four billion bottles and cans a year.  Truell said: "This really transforms the prospects for Eco Plastics as a business." 
 a Horizon Guide To armageddon (BBC4, 9pm) anyone dissatisfied with their lot might find it comforting to tune into this, a depressing kind of greatest hits from Horizon. Drawing on doomsday scenarios the science flagship has covered over the years, Dallas Campbell hosts a guide to the end of the world that will make any little human worries seem trivial.  Climate change might be the biggest threat, but there is a chance an asteroid will make its presence felt before the destruction of the Gulf Stream causes disaster. Super-volcanoes, influenza, nuclear war: the possibilities aren't so much endless as horribly final. Yet those who don't want to scare themselves to death can take comfort from the work scientists are undertaking to ensure the planet's survival, with the story of how smallpox was eradicated a humbling insight into humanity's resilience. 
 DISPUTED LaND by TIM PEaRS Heinemann ?12.99 ebook ?13.56 pp210  Tim Pears's seventh novel presents a comedy of middle-class manners through the lens of science fiction. The year is 2058, and Britain is short of both food and fuel. To explain how this came about, the narrator, Theo, looks back to a family Christmas with his grandparents five decades earlier, when he was 13. His story is dramatic - featuring a brawl and three fatal shootings - but the interest lies less in its uniqueness than in its potential to sum up what Pears clearly believes is our present-day decadence.  It begins with Theo's parents driving to Shropshire. Theo switches off his MP3 player to listen to them discuss their loft conversion and "the historically proven impossibility of an occupying army imposing peace in afghanistan". a teasing tone here lays down a formula for the portrayal of some predictably odious relatives from Hampstead: Uncle Jonny, a wouldbe property developer whose mobile phone keeps bringing bad news about cash flow; his argentine trophy wife Lorna; and their obnoxious twins Baz and Xan, who are baffled by their grandad's use of a barograph to forecast the weather (they have an app for that).  Environmental themes are aired amid this parade of stereotypes by Theo's grandmother, who rants about overpopulation and climate change. Because these dinnertable tirades turn out to be the symptom of a serious illness, rather than the result of rational reflection, nobody takes much notice; except for Theo, who, in the future, has to resort to burning books to keep warm.  The solemnity with which   
 TWO million British homes could get their electricity from the sun by 2020 under multi-million-pound government subsidy plans targeted at households that fit solar panels.  Greg Barker, the climate change minister, wants to reform a scheme set up by the previous government which was designed to promote solar power for householders and small businesses. He believes the scheme has been exploited instead by City investors who he says were making "bumper profits" at consumers' expense.  This is because people who generate solar power can claim subsidies of up to 40p for each kilowatt hour of electricity generated - four times more than the cost of buying electricity via the National Grid. In the past 18 months, however, the cost of solar panels has declined sharply, allowing investors who set up solar farms to reap vast profits.  Barker said: "These subsidies should not be vacuumed up by the City. They should go to small users." It means solar power will remain the most highly subsidised of all renewables, with the money being raised by a general levy on power bills. Barker believes the 2m target will be reached provided prices keep falling.  Leonie Greene, of the Renewable Energy association, said focusing on homes and small businesses could exclude schools, housing organisations and community groups. "Solar has incredible potential ... we should increase our solar ambition in line with other EU economies," she said. 
 The bungled desert mission: SaS had computer codes in their pockets P4 Put happiness into your policies, Cameron tells ministers P6 Gun smuggler boasts of sway over Prince andrew P12 Crooks grab ?43m of carbon credits in global warming heists P18 West has sold us out, scream Libyan rebels P30 
 BRITaIN'S organised crime squad has been brought in to tackle gangs who are mounting Mission Impossiblestyle heists to steal carbon credits and crippling Europe's chief weapon against global warming.  So many credits have been stolen and resold that it threatens a meltdown of the European Union's carbon trading system.  Greg Barker, the climate change minister, is so concerned that he has called in the Serious Organised Crime agency (Soca) to thwart the criminals who are mounting cyber thefts worthy of the intricate plots of Hollywood films such as Mission Impossible and Oceans 11.  The credits were designed to encourage 11,000 industrial sites across the 27 EU states to reduce their pollution but now they are being hijacked.  More than ?43m of credits have been stolen in the past year, paralysing the trading system in many EU countries.  In addition, Interpol estimates that more than ?4 billion has been lost in tax revenues because of carbon credit scams involving Vat fraud.  In one raid in January at the headquarters of the Czech Republic's carbon allowances bank, staff were ordered over the public address system to leave because of a bomb threat. While they were completing the evacuation, hackers broke into the system and stole ?6m worth of carbon credits.  The EU has been so alarmed that it suspended trade in January and temporarily ordered each country's national registry to close while more security was installed. Britain was among the first to reopen but the registries in 13 other countries remain shut.  Now detectives in London have mounted a covert operation against the cyber crooks to stop them striking in the City. Soca will seek to infiltrate the gangs and use phone taps and covert surveillance to stop any attempts to carry out a multimillion-pound sting in Britain. The credits, which each represent a ton of carbon, are sold to companies which have failed to meet their emissions limits. Once they meet the targets, they can sell unused allowances to firms still polluting. The credits, each with their own serial numbers, are sold like shares and 87% of EU trades take place in London. Most are sold on the derivatives market, which is regarded as generally safe because of its existing security checks. But it is the "spot" trades outside this forum which are less secure.  Gangs have wasted no time in exploiting the system, which   
 JaPaN was fighting to stop a nuclear meltdown last night at a reactor crippled by a giant earthquake and tsunami that are thought to have killed thousands of people.  a huge explosion blew apart the containment building walls around one of the reactors at the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant yesterday afternoon, panicking local people and raising alarm around the world. It was triggered by an aftershock from Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake.  The blast occurred as engineers tried to cool the hot core of the 40-year-old reactor after automatic coolant systems failed. It could have been caused only by a partial meltdown of the reactor's core, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency confirmed.  Four workers were injured and three people were exposed to radioactive material. They were taken by helicopter for decontamination by military medics. about 140,000 residents were moved from a 12-mile area around the plant amid fears of a large-scale release of radiation.  as the number known to have died throughout the disaster zone rose to 1,700, it emerged that more than 9,500 people were officially listed as missing from one town alone. The figure, released by officials in Minamisanriku, suggested more than half its population of 17,000 may have been lost. Only a few concrete structures, including the hospital, remain standing.  a powerful series of aftershocks that affected buildings in Tokyo last night rocked the area around the Fukushima nuclear plant. Radioactive caesium and iodine were detected around the facility. Further radioactive material was still leaking from it last night.  The Japanese government was reported to be distributing potassium iodide tablets to prevent radiation sickness - a highly sensitive subject in the only nation ever to have come under nuclear attack.  an unprecedented operation began to pump seawater into the reactor container in an attempt to avert a meltdown. a turbine made by Hitachi will be brought in to speed the process.  Boric acid will also be added to stop the atomic chain reaction, according to Yukio Edano, Japan's senior cabinet official, who predicted that the shutdown could be completed within a week. He emphasised that the explosion had not damaged the reactor itself and said overall radiation leakage would be low.  However, Walt Patterson, a nuclear physicist at the Chatham House think tank in London, warned that the operation was not guaranteed to succeed and the risk of a meltdown remained.  Too little was known about the status of the fuel in the reactor core, warned Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting," he said.  John Large, a British nuclear consultant, disputed the authorities' claims that the reactor was undamaged. "This plant has been devastated by an explosion, it's lost all its containment and I would expect to see a significant amount of radioactive release," he said.  Japanese officials said last night that levels of radiation had fallen at the first plant but admitted that they could not control the pressure inside a second nuclear plant nearby, raising the spectre of a multiple meltdown.  a meltdown occurs when uranium fuel rods become so hot during atomic fission that they burn through the floor of the heavy steel reactor shell and spread radiation into the environment.  Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, said Britain was ready to send nuclear physicists and other experts to help the Japanese authorities tackle the worst incident in the history of their nuclear programme.  The two plants in the Fukushima prefecture were in the path of a gigantic tsunami that tore at the northeast coast of Japan, wrecking towns and drowning its victims in 30ft high waves.  Since the quake, nuclear plants have been shut down and last night parts of Toky  
 JaPaN was fighting to stop a nuclear meltdown last night at two reactors crippled by a giant earthquake and tsunami that are thought to have killed thousands of people.  a huge explosion blew apart the containment building walls around one of the reactors at the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant yesterday afternoon, panicking local people and raising the alarm around the world. It was triggered by an aftershock from Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake. Last night the cooling system of a second reactor at the Fukushima 1 plant failed and there were fears about the safety of a second plant nearby.  The blast occurred as engineers tried to cool the hot core of the 40-year-old reactor after automatic coolant systems failed. It could have been caused only by a partial meltdown of the reactor's core, said Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency.  Initially, four workers were injured and three people were exposed to radioactive material but, by early today, 160 people were reported to have been contaminated.  about 200,000 residents have been moved from the area around the two nuclear plants in the Fukushima prefecture amid fears of a large-scale release of radiation.  By early today 3,000 people had been rescued from the quake area.  as the number known to have died throughout the disaster zone rose to 1,700, it emerged that more than 9,500 people were officially listed as missing from one town alone. The figure, released by officials in Minamisanriku, suggested more than half its population of 17,000 may have been lost. Only a few concrete structures, including the hospital, remain standing.  a powerful series of aftershocks that affected buildings in Tokyo last night rocked the area around the Fukushima 1 plant. Radioactive caesium and iodine were detected around the facility.  The Japanese government was reported to be distributing potassium iodide tablets to prevent radiation sickness - a highly sensitive subject in the only nation ever to have come under nuclear attack.  an unprecedented operation began to pump sea water into the reactor container in an attempt to avert a meltdown. a turbine made by Hitachi will be brought into speed the process.  Boric acid will also be added to stop the atomic chain reaction, according to Yukio Edano, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, who predicted that the shutdown could be completed within a week. He claimed that the explosion had not damaged the reactor itself and said overall radiation leakage would be low.  However, Walt Patterson, a nuclear physicist at the Chatham House think tank in London, warned that the operation was not guaranteed to succeed and the risk of a meltdown remained.  Too little was known about the status of the fuel in the reactor core, warned Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting," he said.  John Large, a British nuclear consultant, disputed the authorities' claims that the reactor was undamaged. "This plant has been devastated by an explosion, it's lost all its containment and I would expect to see a significant amount of radioactive release," he said.  Japanese officials said last night that levels of radiation had fallen at Fukushima 1 but admitted that they could not control the pressure inside the nearby Fukushima2 plant, raising the spectre of a multiple meltdown.  a meltdown occurs when uranium fuel rods become so hot during atomic fission that they burn through the floor of the heavy steel reactor shell and spread radiation into the environment.  Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, said Britain was ready to send nuclear physicists and other experts to help the Japanese authorities tackle the worst incident in the history of their nuclear programme. Hundreds of Britons are unaccounted for and British humanitarian aid teams are due in Japan today.  The two plants in Fukushima prefecture were in the p  
 The bungled desert mission: SaS had computer codes in their pockets P4 Gun smuggler boasts of sway over Prince andrew P12 Crooks grab ?43m of carbon credits in global warming heists P18 Put happiness into your policies, Cameron tells ministers P19 West has sold us out, scream Libyan rebels P32 
 Security is tight at the Liberal Democrats' spring conference in case protesters get in and harass Nick Clegg. But it wasn't tight enough yesterday to keep out a senior member of the Labour party. The shadow health secretary, John Healey, with his coat collar turned up in secret squirrel style, registered cheekily as the representative of "a non-profit organisation".  The real threat to Clegg is actually from disgruntled Lib Dems, but at least they won't burn the leader in effigy. Not without first offsetting the carbon emissions.  ? as if rugby fans won't have enough of a treat this afternoon as England face Scotland at Twickenham, campaigners for an alternative vote system will be on hand outside the stadium to offer leaflets and advice, just as they did during England v France.  "a surprising number of French fans were stopping to find out more," says one campaigner. "They invariably made a beeline for the lady leafletters." 
 POWER companies are preparing a fresh round of gas and electricity price rises that will pile the pain on to consumers already struggling to cope with soaring living costs.  Prices are expected to go up by 10% to 15% as early as this summer, industry sources said, as providers pass on the soaring cost of gas and oil. The price of wholesale gas has jumped by a third in the past two months thanks to production cuts in Libya and increased demand in Japan, where nuclear plants have been shut down.  Meanwhile, the wholesale power price, which is linked to gas and coal costs, has gone up by one-f  
 Not everybody regards electricity pylons as blots on the landscape. The so-called pylon poets of the 1930s, who included Stephen Spender and C Day-Lewis, saw them as exciting symbols of a new industrial age and celebrated their raw beauty. There is, believe it or not, a Pylon appreciation Society.  For most of us, however, pylons are a gruesome desecration of natural landscapes. Windfarms may run them close, but there is no better way to destroy countryside than to plonk down row after row of ugly pylons. If anyone set out wilfully to vandalise views and natural bucolic beauty, they would be hard pushed to find a better means.  Yet that is exactly wh  
 SaM CLaRKE was struggling to sell electric scooters to commuters over the internet. Having travelled extensively in China, where the scooters are common, Clarke thought the British would enjoy the cheap and green form of transport too.  Back home, however, commuters proved hard to convince and, as the credit crunch hit, business was tough. Each container-load of scooters he imported seemed riskier and less financially rewarding, and he began to consider whether it might be better to use them for some kind of service, rather than trying to sell them.  Meanwhile, Matt Linnecar had spent two years working for Bank of New York Mellon but was tiring of the City and looking for green projects to invest in.  He thought electric vehicles were the future and, while researching on the internet, came across one of Clarke's scooters. He got in touch and the pair found they were the same age, 27, and lived near to each other.  They hit it off and in November 2009 launched Gnewt Cargo, a delivery service run entirely with electric vehicles. It is a green alternative for companies that want to deliver lots of small parcels in central London.  Most of the deliveries are made on electric rickshaws that can weave through the traffic jams. after starting small from a base on the City fringe, Gnewt is preparing to open three more depots across London.  Start-up funding came from two angel investors whom Linnecar met through a friend.  Gnewt handles about 1,000 parcels a day from its Tower Hill base. "We are trying to pinpoint clients who are consistentl  
 GUY HaNDS is rebranding. The private equity tycoon is best known for losing hundreds of millions of pounds on a disastrous investment in EMI, the music company. But his private equity firm, Terra Firma, which in February finally ceded control of the label behind Katy Perry and adele, "is bigger than EMI", Hands said.  "We are by far the world's largest private equity investor in renewable energy generation, and we have been for some time."  Last week Hands sealed the largest takeover in the solar industry, spending (EURO)641m (?566m) on Rete Rinnovabile (RTR), an Italian company that owns sites capable of powering 150,000 homes from the energy of the sun.  The deal is the latest in a string of big bets on low-carbon technologies and came as he put another of his investments, Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, up for sale.  In Britain, Hands owns Infinis, the country's bigges  
 The jobs market continues to improve: 216,000 jobs were added in March. Company profits are exceeding forecasts for about three out of four firms, and shares had their best first quarter in 12 years. Real consumer spending (adjusting for inflation) is up a bit, and researchers at State Street Global Markets report that their index of investor confidence is up, with investors in North america the cheeriest of all. Better still, there is talk in Washington that the politicians are now serious about agreeing to spending cuts for this fiscal year, and to a longer-term combination of plans to rein in deficit spending. That would help to halt the dollar's decline.  Unfortunately, this is only part of the picture. Home sales remain more than 9% below the level in 2010, even after a bit of improvement in February. Four million unsold homes overhang the market, and four out of every ten homes sold were put on the market by owners who could not pay the mortgage, or decided that the value of the home was so far below the mortgage that it paid to send the bank a jingle mail - an envelope containing the keys and a note, "It's all yours". No surprise that prices continue to drop.  all of this matters so much because the effect of these woes is not confined to the housing industry. Home values make up an important part of total personal assets, and a depressed housing market has a negative wealth effect, cuts into spending and has an outsized effect on consumers' outlook.  Similarly, petrol prices have an outsized effect on consumers' perceptions of the level of inflation. Petrol is a repetitive purchase; you watch the dials on the pump spin as you fill up; you see signs announcing rising prices as you drive to work or the shops; you conclude that your income will be squeezed.  and you are right. Inflation is rising faster than incomes, leaving consumers worse off. Bill Simon, chief executive of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, says inflation is "going to be serious": consumers will pay more for food, clothes and most other items. The effect of the flood of dollars being turned out by the Federal Reserve Board, and rising wages in China and other asian suppliers, is likely to hit consumers hard in coming months.  Developments beyond the control of american policymakers are adding to a growing sense of unease. Periodic oil price spikes seem to have been replaced by an oil price plateau. Even when Libyan production is restored, oil company executives and traders will remain fearful that supplies could be interrupted by rumblings and popular uprisings in oil-producing countries. Higher risk means demands for higher returns, which in turn means higher prices, especially since it now seems that Saudi arabia no longer has sufficient excess capacity to provide as robust a buffer against shortages as it once did.  add another factor to the oil-price equation: bribes. No, not the sort we usually think of when discussing who gets drilling rights, and where. These "bribes" are paid to the increasingly restive people who threaten the illiberal regimes that control the bulk of the Middle East's oil production. The Saudi rulers have decided that it is a good idea to share some more of the revenues from the kingdom's oil sales with the people whose money it really is, and have raised benefits of various sorts by about $130 billion. This means that for the Saudi budget to remain in balance, the oil price cannot go below about $85 a barrel now and $100 by 2015. If this turns out to be a new floor, the days of $50, $60 and $70 oil will become grist for the mills of economic historians and of no relevance to economic forecasters.  That would be less of a problem for the resilient, flexible american economy were it not for two policies of the Obama administration. The first is to inhibit the development of domestic oil production, a process that predated the offshore oil spill by "British Petroleum". The second is to make the shift to other fossil fuels more costly. The administration seems to believe that the wind blows and the sun shines all the time, and in places where consumers of electricity live, and so is placing its bets - well, taxpayers' be  
 Big isn't any better with wind power YOUR article on windfarms managed to avoid the fundamental truth about generating electricity from wind ("Giant steps towards a low-carbon future", last week). It is erratic, unreliable and unpredictable. It always was and it always will be.  Imagine the furore if power stations were only supplied with fuel on average two days a week and some weeks not at all. Unless, of course, comments from Steve Holliday, the head of National Grid, are meant to imply that this is precisely what we can expect in the future.  Wind turbines depend on massive subsidies from you and me, otherwise they are totally uneconomic. Shell has already pulled out of the London array scheme, so one suspects that even with the subsidies and renewables obligation certificates, the economics are borderline.  The article suggests that making wind turbines even more gigantic will somehow solve the problem; frankly, making them as tall as the Empire State Building won't make an iota of difference. as I write, the contribution that wind is making to electricity demand is the same as before Christmas 2010 - 0.1%.  David Simmons Cambridge 
 THE RaTIONaL OPTIMIST  How Prosperity Evolves  by MaTT RIDLEY  Fourth Estate ?9.99  Global warming is the latest apparently existential threat to every person on earth, born or unborn. Ridley, in glorious contrast, tells us that the human species has overcome all the challenges that have ever confronted us, and will do so in future. His contribution is to combine the insights of adaS m Smith with those of Darwin. He calls this "ideas having sex"; in our modern interconnected world ideas are increasingly having it away with each other ("the telephone had sex with the computer and spawned the internet").  Many important people, including Prince Charles and his landowner chums of the Soil association, say "sustainability" can be achieved only through self-sufficiency and a rejection of agricultural science. The organic movement's claim to be acting altruistically was for years based on the idea that introducing chemicals into the food chain would increase cancers. Remarkably, when agricultural science came up with GM, the movement tried to discredit it, initially by persuading middle-class mums that their kiddies would be killed by "Frankenfoods". Trillions of GM meals later, and not a known casualty, they now argue that nature is at dire risk if we make genes cross the species barrier. Ridley, with heroic restraint, reminds us that "wheat... is an unnatural 'polyploid' merger of three wild plant species" and, with a scientist's deadpan humour, that "a variety of barley especially popular with organic brewers was first created in an atomic reactor in Britain in the 1950s by massive mutation of its genes followed by selection". Cheers. Ridley's deft demolition of the scaremongering of the organic movement is merely part of a book breathtaking in its sweep and scope.  Dominic Lawson 
 INFLIGHT SCIENC  
 British Gas has teamed up with Nissan to offer motorists an escape route from record pump prices by allowing them to power their cars free - after an outlay of nearly ?40,000, that is.  The energy company has launched a package that offers customers the chance to generate enough electricity at home to recharge their cars and sell some back to the national grid. The catch is that they must own an electric vehicle and have a roof large enough to accommodate an array of solar panels.  after buying Nissan's ?25,990 electric Leaf and 14 solar panels costing ?13,168, customers can expect to save about ?1,560 a year on running their car - based on the aa's figures for an average petrol car travelling 12,000 miles annually - as well as an estimated ?117 by using home-generated electricity for domestic appliances during the day.  That means the solar panels will pay for themselves in about eight years, although it may actually be longer, as most people will charge their car overnight, when the solar panels are inactive. and what happens if the sun isn't shining? That shouldn't be a problem, as British Gas claims the panels need only daylight, not direct sunlight, to work. Best of all, customers can take advantage of a government incentive called the feed-in tariff, which pays them generously to produce green electricity, whether they consume it or sell it back to the grid. The utility company claims this could amount to ?1,280 a year with its 14-panel solar array, potentially reducing the payback period to 4? years.  "a lot has been made of charging points at the roadside, but our research suggests that more than 80% of electriccar charging will be done at home," British Gas said.  Dominic Tobin 
 Funny that nobody's mentioned it lately, but you may vaguely remember the promise that Britain would produce 10% of its electricity from renewable sources - mostly wind - by the end of the last decade. Now, do you remember anyone leaping about and saying it was wonderful we kept that promise and that we are on course for a green, low-carbon future?  No, because it didn't happen. We didn't even come close. It is time to think again.  The figures that exposed the scale of our country's failure were published last week by a charity called the Renewable Energy Foundation. The Department of Energy and Climate Change remained entirely silent on this decadal failure. By the end of 2010 Britain had managed to generate a pathetic 6.5% of its electricity from renewable sources, despite spending ?5 billion on wind farm subsidies and stifling all local opposition to wind turbines. Compare that record with Germany or Spain, each of which produces 16% of electricity from wind and solar (although Spain has almost stopped as it can no longer afford the subsidy).  You may think that with China building two new coal plants a week, adding vastly more carbon to the Earth's atmosphere than we do, it makes little difference that Britain came 35% short of reaching the target for renewables announced by Brian Wilson, then the Labour energy minister, in 2001. and you'd be right. You also might say that "targets" were the Blair government's way of having something to say on Question Time while doing very little. Right there, too.  The sad truth is that policies on renewables under this government are as ineffective as under the last one. So why, if they don't work, are we doing more of the same? That seems to be what Chris Huhne's energy department has in mind. It now has a glossy, legally binding European Union target that will require Britain to generate 30% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. That means harnessing about 10 times as much offshore wind as we have managed since 2001 during the next nine years.  Does anyone seriously think that will happen? Privately, officials don't, because investment has dried up. Publicly, our politicians go on saying it will, because nobody wants to be the first politician in Europe to say the EU renewables target will have to go. However, it will, because not only do we have little hope of meeting these targets, but there are also signs that the cost attached to Huhne's plans for electricity market reform will be too much for the consumer to bear.  These are gloomy times for those of us who want a low carbon future, even if it is nuclear - particularly after Japan last week upgraded its estimate of the level of damage to the reactors at Fukushima to level 7, the same as Chernobyl, which is bound to create all sorts of obstacles to getting the first new nuclear plant built by 2018.  So here's a cheerful thought: there is a way to reduce our carbon emissions as much as we need, and on time, far more cheaply than by building renewables. We just have to give up the green mantra that the only way to cut our carbon emissions is renewable energy. If we step back and look carefully at the problem, we see the fastest way of cutting our carbon emissions is to burn gas, which produces half as much carbon as coal. The discovery of shale gas in frie  
 aN INVESTIGaTION has been launched into a flagship government emissions monitoring system after revelations that Britain's biggest firms are by-passing it.  The Department of Energy and Climate Change set up its Quality assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting two years ago to guarantee the quality of carbon credits used by companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.  The move followed complaints about so-called carbon cowboys who were accused of generating the credits by unsustainable or underhand means.  However, new research has shown FTSE 100 companies are shunning the governmentbacked scheme in favour of cheaper options with lighter regulation.  Only 0.4% of the carbon offsets bought by FTSE 100 firms complied with the monitoring system, according to a report by Carbon Retirement, one of the offsetting companies working with the government.  The Department of Energy said there would be a review of the low number of firms taking up the programme and the potential implications of this.  The Quality assurance Scheme is not being widely used because the criteria are particularly robus  
 Peter Lloyd is a patient man. The managing director of Mabey Bridge has waited 10 years for the right time to take the South Wales bridge-builder in a new direction.  Since 1849, the family-owned firm has been constructing bridges in Britain. It has built more than 1,000 railway bridges and worked on landmarks such as the Severn crossing.  Now, Lloyd is propelling the company into the green economy. He has staked ?38m of the firm's cash on a move into the production of huge towers for wind turbines.  It is a bold move. With public finances under pressure, the bridge-building industry is quite literally running out of road. Yet Lloyd, the managing director, believes that hitching the company's future to the green bandwagon will reap rich rewards, especially now that wind power is taking off.  He estimates the new operation, based about a mile from Mabey's Chepstow headquarters, will create about 250 jobs and support up to 800 jobs at suppliers.  It's a perfect time to switch from old industry to new. "In our minds it's not very radical," said Lloyd. "There are a lot of similarities to the bridgebuilding business. Turbine towers are made of steel plate - the same as bridges - because they have to withstand huge fatigue."  Lloyd pointed out that it will be greener to buy British-made towers - today about 90% of the towers are imported from the Continent. The market has been dominated by Danish and German suppliers.  "We are indigenous, we are bringing jobs into the community, and we use British steel," he emphasised.  Mabey Bridge buys the raw material to build the towers from the former British Steel plant at Scunthorpe, now owned by India's Tata Group.  The company appears to have taken to heart George Osborne''s message from last month's budget, when the chancellor called for the words "made in Britain" to drive the economy back to growth.  although Mabey's expansion into green energy ticks all the right boxes on the government's growth agenda, it has received no financial assistance from the state.  This is clearly something that rankles Lloyd, who approached the Welsh assembly to ask for grant funding. He was told that the company could qualify for regional development assistance only if he were to locate the factory farther west, in the former industrial heartland of south Wales. Lloyd declined because he wanted to keep the business in the Chepstow area.  Mabey Bridge's new venture is still in its infancy - it has just secured its third order. The market is gathering strength, however.  The government's renewable energy strategy states that the ambitious target of generating 15% of all Britain's energy from renewable sources by 2020 means that up to 45% of electricity will have to come from green sources. The lion's share of that is likely to be wind.  according to Renewable UK, the wind and marine power association, a 2.5 megawatt (MW) turbine located at a reasonably windy site could be expected to generate enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 1,400 households for a year, make 230m cups of tea or run a computer for 2,250 years.  The latest statistics show that the UK has 3,910MW of onshore wind power capacity - enough to power 2m homes, or 3% of total power usage.  That compares poorly with Germany, which has 23,903MW installed, equal to 7% of total energy consumption; Denmark, at 3,180MW, or 20% of total power used; and the Netherlands at 2,216MW, or 4%.  If Britain is to catch up with its European neighbours, it will have to build a lot more wind turbines.  When Lloyd first looked at the wind energy market a decade ago, he decided to keep his powder dry. Britain was slow to develop its wind power potential compared with other parts of Europe.  a few years ago, he realised that the market had firmed up, with about 400 towers erected in a year.  "There was also a reasonable view forward. Since that time we have seen a deep recession, which  
 THREE years ago, Ranbir Gill decided to transform a corner of Hounslow Heath in west London. The heath had once served as a royal hunting ground, but Gill's spot had been a landfill site in the 1970s and then became a hangout for drunks.  The 47-year-old property developer came up with a plan to turn the area into a community activity centre, with landscaped grounds. The design was centred on two manmade hills built with fly ash - the grey powder that is left over when coal is burnt in power stations.  He discovered that piling coal ash on landfill stops methane - a greenhouse gas - escaping into the atmosphere.  His redevelopment plan fell through, but Gill, an engineer by training, has put his new-found knowledge to good use.  He realised that if the methane could be trapped, it could be tapped and used to produce energy. Now the 47-year-old wants to generate power at landfill sites across the country - using more of the ash from coal-fired power stations.  "Every year, Britain's coal-fired power stations produce about 6m tonnes of ash. Half goes into cinder blocks or tarmac but 3m tonnes sit in big piles behind power stations around the country. We want to put some of it to good use," Gill said.  There are 22,000 uncapped waste dumps in Britain leaking methane, according to the Environment agency. about 1,500 produce enough to worry the regulator.  as a result, Gill reckons his new business, Lichen Renewal, has a big market to tap. Success will depend on the support of the industry - Gill wants the power stations to deliver the ash to him. He thinks they will get involved if the government agrees to o  
 REPRESENTaTIVES of the wind energy industry are to call on Ireland's energy minister Pat Rabbitte to reject recommendations in the report on state assets by Colm McCarthy to cut targets for the sector.  McCarthy, the UCD economist, recommended that the goverment should lower targets for wind energy because, the report says, there will be plenty of gas available to use instead.  The economist is known as a sceptic on renewable energy and has said there could be "a Nama [National asset Management agency] for windmills".  The previous government set onerous targets to raise the proportion of electricity produced by renewable energy, which is about 15%.  Michael Walsh, the chief executive of the Irish Wind Energy association (IWEa), said it would contact the minister to point out what it says are flaws in McCarthy's analysis. "If you want to put something out there, do it on the basis of data and facts and figures," said Walsh.  McCarthy said he was "not surprised" the wind energy industry rejected his recommendations. 
 Iwonder. Have we lost the ability in this country to rejoice in the good fortune of others? To be happy for someone else? Buy a big house and "it's all right for some". Have the big house taken away and "it serves you right".  Let us take the case of Kate Middleton's mum. Her daughter is marrying a prince and so we should be happy for her. But we keep being told that she's a social mountaineer who has been engineering this marriage since the days when Kate was a foetus. and that she used to be an air hostess. a bloody trolley dolly. Pushy cow.  We saw the same sort of thing when Judith Keppel became the first person to scoop the big prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Because she lived in Fulham and said "bath" properly, we were invited to despise her on a cellular level. Lucky cow.  and woe betide the celebrity who dares to take a stroll on the beach while on holiday. Look at her! She may have fame, success, money and a pretty face but her swimsuit is disgusting and she has cellulite and we hope that very soon she catches cancer and dies a screaming, agonising death.  Have you ever looked at the comments left by readers on a newspaper's website? They're just a torrent of bile and vitriol. Protected by the anonymity of the internet and freed from the social niceties of physical contact, people go berserk. Lottery winners are particularly vulnerable, it seems. and Nigella Lawson? Fat cow.  No one can earn more than the prime minister, no one can be better looking than Ena Sharples, and good luck to anyone who dares to appear on the television talking like Brian Sewell. Did your parents go to university? Well, you've had all the chances that life can afford, so you can clear off.  This unwillingness to be happy for others is now so acute that we don't even seem to be able to be happy for ourselves. I realise, of course, that people in Birmingham have suffered from this for centuries. Joy is not a Brummie thing. Everything, even if you've made it yourself, is rubbish. There is no word in the West Midlands for "wow".  Now we're all in the same boat, a point that was proved exquisitely on the BBC local news programme that was transmitted in my area on Tuesday evening. It had been an absolutely beautiful day: cloudless, warm and awash with the scent of blossom. The sort of day that made you glad to be alive.  In the olden days, a local news programme would have shown us spring lambs frolicking about on their rickety legs and small children dribbling ice cream in the park. Not any more. Now you could see the news team desperately trying to persuade the water company that the good weather would mean a hosepipe ban very soon. and then when that failed, calling the local hospital to see if anyone had been admitted suffering from sunstroke. "Well, what about a malignant melanoma, then?" Doubtless they will have scanned the Daily Mail to see if there is a link between warm spring sunshine and the arrival of more immigrants, or a catastrophic fall in house prices. and then The Guardian to see if it was yet more conclusive proof of global warming and that soon we would all perish in terrible heathland fires.  The news editor must have been tearing his hair out: "We can't tell people that it's been a lovely warm spring day. There must be some danger. Some terror. Some death. Get me some misery." and boy, oh boy, did one of the reporters come up trumps.  We were told that the warm weather may appear to be lovely but that there is a hidden menace out there: the tick. a perfectly healthy-looking woman was brought in front of the cameras to explain that she had been bitten by a tick two years ago and her life had been ruined as a result. Then a professor was wheeled out to say that the long warm spell followed by a late Easter would cause many more people to be out and about in the countryside and that we were facing a ... please say "perfect storm". She didn't. She said it was a "high-risk situation".  It turns out that w  
 Methane changes the equation IN last week's report "Spread ash to turn landfills into power stations", the effectiveness of this method for capturing methane was underestimated by a factor of 2.5, as methane's global warming potential, relative to 1kg carbon dioxide, is 24.5 over 100 years and 62 over 20 years. If global warming is to be taken seriously, the 20-year figure should be used and hence only 112 landfill sites (not 280) would need to be capped to neutralise coal-fired power's CO2 output.  Perhaps coal has a well-deserved place in Britain's energy portfolio after all. This technological development should receive similar funding to that of highly variable wind power.  andrew Porteous emeritus professor of environmental engineering, The Open University 
 Citro?ns used to be the most glamorous, technically advanced cars on the road - so distinctive that in the Forties and Fifties their extravagant engineering and flamboyant styling made them the choice of high-rollers and heads of state. Then in the 1980s the French car maker lost its panache, and only now are its derring-do and audacity returning, as embodied by the world's first mass-produced, purpose-built, diesel-electric hybrid car.  Launched last week at the Shanghai motor show, in a country where hybrids and electric cars are much in demand to address choking pollution, the new DS5 takes on the BMW 3-series and Mercedes-Benz C-class with the same upstart attitude of its smaller DS3 sibling.  The DS5's bold styling stands out in an   
 1S 1S John Kobal Foundation It has been a long election campaign for Iain Gray. The Labour leader has visited 46 constituencies in the past few weeks - "Quite a few more than once," he says with feeling. His waxy pallor attests to days holed up in dank rooms, so perhaps he can be forgiven for switching to autopilot.  It's a gloriously sunny day in the roof garden atop Labour's Glasgow headquarters, but Gray has some dark truths to face. after a month of hard campaigning - Labour claims its activists will have spoken to 1m voters by May 5 - he has seen his 15-point lead over the SNP collapse. The day after we meet, an Ipsos Mori poll puts alex Salmond's party firmly ahead with 45% on the constituency vote to Labour's 34%. On the crucial list vote, the SNP are 10 points ahead of Labour, on 42%. It translates to 61 seats for the SNP against 45 for Labour. It's not looking good for the quiet man of Scottish politics.  Labour denounces the poll as "rogue" and it may indeed overstate the extent of Salmond's support. However, Gray sought to shrug off the last poll that put the SNP ahead as "a one-off" too. The SNP is steadily garnering support from across the political spectrum. Labour's core vote may indeed be holding up as Gray claims, but every poll since November has shown overall support for the party dropping. There is no denying the trend. Except here is Gray, squinting into the april sunshine, in full-on trend denial.  "The polls that showed us up at 49% I didn't believe," he says. "at the time, I said it was closer than that and the nearer we got to the election the closer it would get. In February, there was a poll that put the SNP ahead and this week there was a poll that put them slightly ahead. I'm not sure there is a trend there. We're in a fight for this election. There's a lot to play for. all the polls show that there are a lot of 'don't knows' and our work on the ground shows that too."  Gray maintains that while Salmond has been waging a high-profile "air battle" - all celebrity endorsements and media launches - Labour has conducted a quiet but successful ground campaign on the doorsteps which will pay off on May 5. It's not how the bloody infantry sees it. There have been mutterings by Labour MSPs and MPs about the haplessness of the campaign.  Gray's approval ratings have put him below the Tory leader, annabel Goldie. Many voters simply do not know who he is and, as his recognition factor increases, Labour's support slips. Only 23% believe he would make the best first minister, with 53% for Salmond. "We started the campaign with alex Salmond being better known," says Gray. "That's not surprising. He's been first minister for four years and he's been in the front line of elected politics for 20 years. But he is a one-man band. If you change the name of your party on the ballot paper to your own name, you can't say you are not a one-man band."  It's not just the fiscal deficit Gray has to grapple with, it's the personality deficit. His approach is laid-back to the point of soporific. Even on a one-to-one basis, he is difficult to engage fully. It seems remarkable that in the three years Gray has been leader of the Labour party, nobody has tackled this obvious problem.  It's not as though he is lacking a hinterland. He spent two years in war-torn Mozambique teaching physics in Portuguese to traumatised african children. as Oxfam's campaigns director in Scotland, he jetted into Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide, saw the effects of Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, and turned up in Chile in the week that General Pinochet left office.  There's even a hint of sexual intrigue. In his Oxfam days, Gray was a close friend of Kevin Dunion, who worked for Friends of the Earth and is now the Scottish information commissioner.  Gray's first wife, Linda Malloch, is now married to Dunion. Gray's second wife, Gill, originally worked with his first. Gray has said that there was no impropriety and that both his and Gill's first marriages were over before they teamed up.  YET Gray's spin doctors seem unable to help him release his inner James Bond. The only time recently that he has alluded to his past, it backfired. Sean Clerkin and the anti-cuts protesters caused him to hightail from a walkabout in Glasgow and seek shelter in a sandwich shop. Gray, asked whether he was shaken by the confrontation, remarked to universal derision that he had "walked in the killing fields of Cambodia".  "It doesn't look great on YouTube, I don't deny it," he says of the incident. "I offered to speak to Sean Clerkin. He wasn't interested and he just carried on screaming in my face so I walked away. Stopping on the way for a sandwich probably wasn't the best thing."  The questions over his leadership style don't mask the concerns about substance. Gray went into the campaign with a negative message, warning that now the Tories were back in Westminster, Scots needed to elect Labour as a safeguard. The battle here, however, is not with the Tories but the SNP. Labour is now switching its message to play on voters' fears that a vote for Salmond is a vote for independence by the back door, but it may be too late. The SNP has waged a largely positive campaign. Salmond's attack-dog tendencies have been reined in for fear of offending female voters. He famously said Gray would make a "wonderful" first minister.  It's not a compliment the Labour leader is keen to return.  "The SNP have been trying to turn this into a personality contest for some time because they don't want to be examined on their track record and they have no forward offer," he says. "I don't think alex Salmond has served Scotland well."  But personality counts, particularly when it's hard to get a cigarette paper between the policies of the two main parties. Labour's massive support in Scotland at the general election, which Gray is trying to hold on to, had much to do with Gordon Brown. Brown, who never seemed to have a great deal of time for Labour's Scottish leaders, has kept a low profile in this campaign. He appeared with Gray last week, but has refused to campaign outwith Fife. By contrast, Ed Miliband, who is due back in Scotland next week, does not command the same respect. His latest approval rating here is minus 13. Gray denies the Miliband factor has been a drag on Labour's campaign, saying the national leader has been a great support personally.  Gray insists he will win this election but says he won't resign as leader if he loses, although he may be left with no option. The politician he most resembles is Iain Duncan Smith, a decent, able minister with a social conscience who failed to ignite his party as leader but went on to be well respected for his work on social problems. Poverty and youth unemployment are also Gray's hobby horses.  Holes have appeared in his manifesto largely because of an element of wishful thinking in the funding - something he shares with the SNP - and partly because of sloppy figures and badly designed policies. His reduction of cancer treatment times, however, is the most popular policy of any party, and his flagship policy of "abolishing youth unemployment" and creating 250,000 jobs by giving an apprenticeship to every youth who wants one, is also popular in many quarters.  It's a hugely ambitious, and some would say naive, policy. Gray cites Babcock and BaE Systems as two big companies who have agreed to help but is vague as to the extent of their contribution. Of the new jobs, 60,000 will be "green" positions in the renewables sector but most will come from sole traders, such as plumbers or electricians, being encouraged to take on an apprentice.  In the past, Labour has led in coalition with the Lib Dems, and Gray doesn't rule out doing so again, although he is eyeing Patrick Harvie of the Greens as a political bedfellow, and minority government is also looking attractive now that the SNP has shown it can work.  "The Greens launched their manifesto last night," he says. "Some of the polls show them doing better than the Lib Dems, so the electorate might say that they should be part of those discussions.  Is there any common ground with the Greens? Yes, I think there is."  How the Lib Dems feel about this is anyone's guess. Tavish Scott, the party's leader, is proving elusive. The Sunday Times's promised interview has failed to materialise. His team is notably more chaotic and less experienced than those of the other parties. "Tavish is all interviewed out," says his press officer, halfway through the campaign. It's a remark that inadvertently chimes with Labour concerns that its Lib Dem colleagues in the previous coalition lacked stamina.  Scott has had the most torrid time, with John Farquhar Munro, the senior Lib Dem MSP in the previous parliament, backing Salmond, and voters mistaking the Lib Dem leader for the disgraced RBS boss Fred Goodwin. Early polls put the party fifth behind the Greens, as the Lib Dems seem to be paying the price for broken promises at Westminster over tuition fees and health reforms.  Recently, Scott has recently distanced himself from Nick Clegg and expressed "discomfort" over his party being in coalition with the Tories at Westminster.  It may belatedly be working for him. In the most recent poll, the Lib Dems fare better with nine seats, just behind the Tories and ahead of the Greens but still a far cry from the 16 seats they held in the previous parliament.  There is a chance that Gray and Scott, despite their low approval ratings, may yet form the next government. Labour has been the dominant party in Scotland since the 1960s and the SNP won by the slimmest of margins in 2007. The Lib Dems have been in power in every parliament but the last.  But Scottish Labour politicians, most of whom are uneasy about working again with the Lib Dems, are becoming increasingly pessimistic about their chances. "We're screwed," is how one Labour MP puts it. "Iain isn't exactly a charismatic, dynamic leader with a compelling vision for Scotland."  another said: "We've been outwitted by the nats ... We've failed to get a positive message out there about what Labour intends to do in Scotland.  "It's basically been about being hostile to Salmond, standing up to the Tories and being tough on knife crime - and it's not working. Not only is Iain dull, the team around him isn't setting the heather on fire and it's difficult to see how he can get out of this."  With each passing day, the chances of winning power seem slimmer and the quiet man of Scottish politics may find himself silenced by the electorate.  Party promises: the view of the experts a FEW weeks ago Reform Scotland published a collection of policy ideas designed to help bring about long-term economic growth and effective public services.  Summarising its 17 reports published since 2008, its central theme is the need to devolve responsibility, not just through increased financial powers to the Scottish parliament and local authorities, but to individuals and communities.  Reform Scotland has used this work to grade the main parties' manifesto commitments ahead of the Scottish elections on May 5. Its report card is not an assessment of all the policies of the main parties, but a reflection of how well they meet Reform Scotland's prescription to improve the country's long-term prospects.  This has been a disappointing campaign: it is about who can promise the most, without offering any long-term solutions either to the economic situation or the challenges facing public services.  The current fiscal structure of the Scottish Parliament is partly to blame. Holyrood''s reliance on the block grant limits its accountability. It provides little incentive for politicians to come up with ideas to boost economic growth or improve public services. This is because however poorly the economy performs, the money still rolls in via the block grant. If the economy did grow faster, the benefits would accrue to the chancellor at Westminster and not the Scottish government.  The Liberal Democrats deserve credit for at least identifying in their introduction that centralised control is the root problem, in particular stating "many politicians believe that the best decisions made about public services are those made from behind the ministerial desk. They are wrong. Public services are at their most efficient and effective when they are run by local people, to meet local needs." However, many of their policies fail to live up to this ambitious start.  This aside, there are reasons to be optimistic with a number of policies, from all parties, taking steps in the right direction and echoing recommendations made by Reform Scotland: Labour''s expansion of vocational education; Conservative policies for free schools and tuition fees; the Lib Dem and Green position on localism and the SNP call to strengthen the Scotland Bill. In addition, all parties make encouraging pledges on transport, digital infrastructure and expansion of the third sector.  However, one of the biggest areas of disappointment is local government, where four of the five parties are effectively calling for further centralisation of what little fiscal responsibility our councils have left.  Most Scottish politicians would object if Westminster started dictating how Holyrood used its powers but this is exactly what Scottish politicians are proposing for local government, with the council-tax freeze and other pledges. Effectively removing local authorities' control over council tax will make a bad situation worse. Council-tax freezes may be popular, but council-tax levels have to be a matter for councillors, not MSPs, or why bother having local taxes? If councillors choose to put up tax to meet spending commitments, local voters will be able to vote them out of office. Equally, if councillors keep bills low, that should be to their credit. Blurring these lines of responsibility blurs accountability.  In contrast, Reform Scotland has argued that local authorities should, over time, raise at least half of their own revenue. This would enhance their autonomy and accountability, which would also help councils become more responsive to their communities. Giving councils full responsibility for council tax and business rates would be a good first step.  These are not new arguments. They are the same ones made by Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and the SNP in their calls for more fiscal powers for the Scottish Parliament. If it is right for parliament, then surely it is right for local government. In this regard, credit must be given to the Scottish Greens for arguing that "local community empowerment is an agenda Holyrood must embrace instead of seeing it as a threat".  Reform Scotland believes that we need to find new ways to provide our public services and to allow people choice, so that they can decide how they want the service delivered. This is in contrast to the manifestos of the main political parties. Government needs to facilitate the infrastructure that will help build a strong economy, it needs to protect its citizens and ensure proper competition. It does not, however, need to run all the services it currently provides - and in many cases provides inefficiently.  The financial and public-sector crisis is not a short-term problem and will not be solved by tinkering. It has highlighted that there are long-term structural problems that need to be addressed.  We need to have a plan for Scotland for the next 20 years that enables the next generation to compete without the benefits of our oil resources, which will diminish over time.  Reform Scotland hopes that whichever party or parties form the next Scottish government they heed our long-term vision that seeks structural reform across all areas of the public sector. They must be a lot bolder and more far-sighted today to create a stronger Scotland for tomorrow.  alison Payne is research director of Reform Scotland Party Grades Fiscal Framework Sentencing / Prisons NHS Schools Tuition Fees Code: a: full marks - F: wrong direction Source: Reform Scotland SNP Wants more tax and borrowing powers to be added to the Scotland Bill also backs independence a: additional fiscal powers are greatly needed Establish sentencing council to address unconditional early automatic release C: It is judge's role to pass sentence and government's role to enforce that sentence Protect spending; single integrated system; committed to publicly-funded and publicly-delivered NHS D: Fundamental reform of the system needed Create conditions for every child to learn two languages; develop Scottish studies strands for schools D: Good ideas but should be developed by schools No tuition fees or graduate contribution F: Higher education is paid for by taxpayers; unfair given funding gap between England and Scotland Labour Supports Scotland Bill plan for more financial powers C: Credit for recognising need for greater responsibility for spending but no detail of how new powers to be used Mandatory jail for anyone caught carrying a knife; bring in alcohol-treatment orders D: Mandatory terms take away judges' ability to take all circumstances into account Protect spending; introduce national care service; cancer waiting times targets; cut special health board numbers D: Central control through targets limits scope Give head teachers more responsibility on curriculum and deployment of resources D: Greater responsibilities for head teachers welcomed, but strategy too centralising No up-front or back-end tuition fees F: Education is not free but paid for by taxpayers; unfair given funding gap between England and Scotland Tories Supports Scotland Bill but won't use existing or new taxvarying powers C: Responsibility for raising money it spends would give incentive to improve efficiency Re-introduce sentences of less than 3 months; end automatic early release C: Credit for wanting to end automatic release and harder community sentences Protect spending;   
 Has alex Salmond been abducted by aliens? I only ask because the relaxed, expansive Salmond sitting in the aberdeenshire sunshine on Easter Monday is so unlike the pugilistic Salmond we''ve come to know that the possibility cannot be entirely dismissed.  For one thing, he's on a diet.  While his aides tuck into burgers, he is having the mackerel p?t?. He has the same honest, sonsie face, the same labrador eyes under beetling eyebrows and the same Thatcherite level of self-belief he has always had. But today there is a reflectiveness and magnanimity at odds with his reputation for braggadocio. We're into the final days of an election campaign which could give him a second term in office, bringing his life-long ambition of an independent Scotland within his grasp. a helicopter is on standby to whisk him in true presidential style to the remaining constituencies. He has a royal wedding to attend and there's been a muddle-up with Moira Salmond's hat which is exercising him more than the barbs directed at him by Labour's leader Iain Gray. But if the pressure is on, it doesn't show.  Four years ago, on the threshold of power, you could virtually feel the triumphalism, pride, fear and anticipation coursing through his veins. Today there is a quiet certitude.  Days before the election, a poll of polls translates to 60 seats for the SNP, 13 more than last time and 17 ahead of Labour on 43. Perhaps he thinks he has it in the bag.  "a week's a long time in politics," says Salmond. "If the election was today, we'd win but the election is not today. I'm not assuming victory, but if we were to get a big victory it would put me in an enormously strong position to look at issues such as giving the Scotland Bill some economic teeth." It's a remarkable turnaround given that as recently as the middle of March the polls put Labour ahead. But undecided voters, who still account for a sizable minority, could yet make life difficult for Salmond.  JaMES MITCHELL, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, says the SNP have run a slick, tight, highly disciplined campaign. By contrast, there is disorganisation and disintegration in the Labour campaign which relaunched last week. But Mitchell points out that in the last week of the last Scottish election, the SNP lead over Labour narrowed dramatically. The SNP may have ended Labour's hegemonic grip in 2007 but by one seat and only after a recount.  "It will be interesting to see what the SNP can pull out of the bag for the last few days," says Mitchell. "They need to maintain the momentum."  any sign that the SNP is coasting to victory could breed apathy among the party's core voters - and opponents detect signs that it is motivating their own supporters to turn out on Thursday - but a second SNP victory will see a quantum leap in the political profile of Scotland.  Labour's 50-year reign will be well and truly broken. No longer will it be able to portray itself as the natural party of government in Scotland, a fundamental shift akin to the decline of the Liberals at the turn of the 20th century or the demise of the Scottish Conservatives in the 1950s.  THE prospects faced by Scottish Labour on May 6 look stark. Defeat would not only be a humiliating blow to Ed Miliband, who has been counting on Scotland to lead the Labour fight-back, but could see this once all-powerful party enter its wilderness years with pressure on Gray to resign and no obvious successor.  But even if the SNP gets the strong showing of which Salmond dreams, he is extremely unlikely to win a majority. Minority government is his preferred option but he has not ruled out coalition with any party except the Conservatives, whom he says, are diametrically opposed to him on independence.  Ironically, it was the Tories who kept Salmond in power by allowing him to push through a number of his key policies. and this time round they will be looking for some payback for their support.  Some senior Tories, who expect their vote to hold up on Thursday, want a New Zealandstyle "confidence and supply" arrangement with an agreed programme for government. a Conservative cabinet minister or two would also go down well.  "It's nothing personal," says Salmond. "I like annabel Goldie. I think she is a good stick. But coalitions where two parties fundamentally disagree lead to grief and strife. We're seeing that with the coalition at Westminster."  a coalition with Labour is, he admits, at the "extreme end of likelihood". With the Lib Dem vote expected to collapse over their deal with the Conservatives, that only leaves the Greens. If he is insistent on minority government, he may find it considerably more difficult to get his policies enacted this time.  "If you have Labour, the Tories, the Greens and the Liberals and they are all much of a muchness, you only need one of them to back you on any issue," he says, a streak of the old smugness showing. "Come on; one out of four. I can manage that."  Both Labour and the SNP are keen to attract voters disillusioned by the Lib Dems. How can Salmond reassure those who are implacably opposed to independence? "You cannot judge a constitutional issue in an election campaign. Our commitment is to hold the referendum at some point in the next five years."  Christopher Harvie, a former SNP MSP, has questioned the commitment of the Salmond regime to independence, suggesting the policy was "kept around to pacify the party faithful". He has highlighted "internal division". Salmond's aides insist the party is united on the referendum strategy. However, a source said there will be no referendum until "well into the second half of the five-year term".  Salmond admits that if he loses the referendum, it will not be re-introduced for a generation.  Support for independence, running at around 33% , is lower than support for Salmond.  Defeat would blow an enormous hole in the party's policies. How will he cope? "He either fears his fate too much/Or his deserts are small/ That dares not put it to the touch/ To gain or lose it all," he says, quoting the Marquis of Montrose. "First we were told there would never be a Scottish parliament. Then we were told there would never be an SNP government. Now we are told there will never be independence.  Scotland has changed."  "alex probably needs a one to two-year period to build support before a referendum because at the moment I don't think people really understand what we mean by independence," says a senior member of the SNP's team.  Salmond insists his constitutional priority is not independence, however, but the Scotland Bill. He believes a beefed-up Scotland act could prove the catalyst for the economic growth necessary to bring the conditions in which to hold a referendum. Chief among his demands if he is reelected are faster access to enhanced borrowing powers, devolved corporation tax, the release of the fossil fuel levy - a ?200m fund held in London to promote the use of energy from renewable sources - and granting Holyrood control of revenue generated through Crown Estate land and property, currently paid to the Treasury. "David Cameron has to learn that if he promises something, he has to deliver. He said that he would deal with the fossil fuel thing and he hasn't. He's piling up a list. We'll be kicking down the door to ensure these things are delivered."  Salmond's critics point to a manifesto which is fiscally irresponsible.  In a time of unprecedented economic pressure, he has frozen the council tax, a policy he plans to continue for another five years, abolished prescription charges, extended free school meals, abolished tuition fees, pledged that there will be no compulsory redundancies in the public sector and continued Labour's policy of free personal care for the elderly.  While the Westminster Tories have been diminishing the reach of the welfare state, Salmond has proffered a largesse for which Scots have not had to pay an extra penny. No wonder he is in the lead in the polls. But it can't last for ever.  The Centre for Public Policy and the Regions has analysed all the main party manifestos and found them wanting. They have advised voters to be sceptical of extravagant promises. Salmond, in particular, has been accused of "Braveheart economics" - as in touch with reality as Mel Gibson's portrayal of William Wallace. "The debate is whether or not we can achieve 2% efficiency savings," says Salmond. "We have achieved more than that in the last four years. I agree it becomes more challenging but if you've done it for four years there is at least the possibility you can do it for another five."  How will he feel if, as ac  
 Robots sent into a reactor at Japan's Fukushima power plant last week recorded the highest levels of radiation there since it was hit by a tsunami a month-and-a-half ago.  Workers, meanwhile, are using the crudest of measures to stave off a full meltdown: dousing the reactors with millions of litres of water.  Japan's daily struggle to prevent a full-blown disaster may have fallen off the front pages here, but it brings into sharp relief what energy executives say is a moment of truth for Britain.  Nuclear power is at the heart of government plans to reshape our energy infrastructure for a low-carbon world. In June, the government will publish its final plan to get us there.  Based on the initial version, released before Christmas, it will involve a cocktail of big subsidies for nuclear and offshore wind, harsh penalties for coal, and a doubling, at least, of household energy bills.  The electricity market reform is a return to aggressive state intervention - ministers argue the market alone cannot deliver the "green revolution". The scale of the task is on a par with North Sea gas conversion in the late 1960s - only more expensive: ?200 billion, by current estimates.  Increasingly, though, there are concerns the government has got its sums badly wrong. The industry has lobbied frantically for changes to the new market structure but the consultation period has ended. "The ramifications of this will be profound," said a senior industry source. "If we choose to go down this route, the UK will end up with an energy system three to four times more expensive than others and our economy will be rendered uncompetitive, full stop." Consider nuclear power.  Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, ordered a safety review in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.  Mike Weightman, the Nuclear Industry association's chief inspector, is due to publish his provisional report next month before a final one in September.  It is highly unlikely he will produce an authoritative report on nuclear safety while Fukushima remains too radioactive for close examination. Industry insiders are now factoring a delay of two years or more into EDF Energy's plans to build Britain's first new reactor by 2018. Such a delay would be a big problem.  More than 20 coal, oil and nuclear plants will shut over the next decade. If the new generation of nuclear plants is delayed, other power stations would have to be built to fill the gap - probably gas-fired, which would hinder Britain's carbon emission reduction.  and there are other problems.  Ofgem, the regulator, predicted that, in the worst-case scenario, household energy bills could double to ?2,000 a year within a decade. Industry insiders now acknowledge that this figure looks low.  Extra safety for nuclear plants will add to the predicted ?5 billion price tag for each reactor. Ofgem's prediction was based on a world where oil was about $110 a barrel. Last week it closed at $128 - analysts at Barclays Capital predict it could hit $184 by 2020, though new gas finds in america could keep gas prices lower.  To make matters worse, the industry has lost faith in the government. The multi-billion pound investments that companies are being asked to make will be underpinned by subsidies for the more expensive low-carbon technologies. The more firms spend, the bigger their profits. Spending ?200 billion will generate ?10 billion to ?15 billion in additional profit for Britain's big six utilities.  So, companies have been unsettled by chancellor George Osborne's surprise "windfall" tax on North Sea oil firms in the budget.  "The risk for companies is that this scale of investment will lead to rising profits just as consumers are experiencing large increases in their utility bills," said M  
 a YORKSHIRE company has developed a rooftop wind turbine that it claims could produce up to half a family's energy needs without being an eyesore.  The Ridgeblade is a narrow box that sits along the ridge of a pitched roof. Inside are turbines that turn like the reel of a combine harvester. Its developers say it benefits from the natural acceleration of wind speeds at the top of pitched roofs, will work even in mild breezes, and can cope with most wind directions.  It would cost about ?5,000 to install and could, its makers claim, generate up to 2,000 kilowatt hours a year, 10 times more than conventional domestic turbines. The average British household uses 4,000kWh.  also, the device is likely to be less of a headache for planners as the box is unobtrusive, unlike traditional pinwheel turbines.  The Ridgeblade is being developed by the Power Collective and was designed by one of its directors, Win Keech, a former RaF pilot and Rolls-Royce turbine engineer.  Traditional rooftop turbines can be hampered by airflow disruption in built-up areas. They may also encounter noise and planning objections. Research from the Energy Saving Trust found some even used more energy than they produced.  "Win has found a way of realising the benefits of the urban environment," said Simon Pringle, a fellow director at the Power Collective.  "a pitched roof acts like an aircraft wing. as the wind hits, it   
 THE coalition government has signalled its intention to direct the Green Investment Bank's fund towards investment in low-carbon technology. The Institution of Engineering and Technology, however, believes the bank should also support energy efficiency innovations in the manufacturing sector. The investment mandate for the bank is to deliver the government's aims on economic growth, facilitate the transition to a green economy and support Britain's industrial transformation. Much of the focus to date has been on investment in the manufacture of low-carbon goods and the rollout of green infrastructure.  Energy conservation and efficiency should be among the priorities of a sustainable energy policy. Energy is set to become increasingly costly and, to survive in the global market, British firms will not only need to produce new products but produce them at competitive prices. This means driving down costs.  The manufacture of low-carbon technology is often seen as a panacea to meet Britain's carbon reduction requirements while at the same time creating a renaissance in manufacturing. Yet the manufacture of low-carbon goods is not in itself automatically green. a green industrial revolution should first focus on greening manufacturing processes to reduce energy and resource use.  For Britain to achieve its targets on carbon emissions, there needs to be extra support for green manufacturing processes. Energy conservation and efficiency in the manufacturing sector should be a priority for the government.  In addition, access to the Green Investment Bank for small and medium-sized companies will be paramount.  Smaller companies are able to develop and commercialise products rapidly in niche areas. They should have priority access to the Green Investment Bank to spur green growth and technology.  Tony Whitehead Institution of Engineering and Technology London WC2 
 It is springtime for China's aerospace business. Banquets, toasts in fiery spirits and a 3D video show have been used to launch the nation's first passenger jet, the C919, at air fairs in Beijing and Hong Kong, throwing down a challenge to western aviation champions Boeing and airbus.  More celebrations followed when the Beidou 8 orbiter lifted off to complete China's system of satellites for a precision navigation system to rival america's GPS and Europe's stuttering Galileo project.  The triumphs owe much to Chinese determination. They also show how the country is racing to become a competitor in high-tech sectors in which western companies thought they had an edge. The implications for multinational businesses are sobering.  Yet american firms are lining up to supply systems for the C919, a single-aisle jet seating 150 that will compete with the Boeing 737 and airbus a320. It will use the best western avionics - and it will be cheap. Ryanair is already in talks with the makers.  With 2,900 aircraft orders in China to play for in the coming years, firms such as GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell cannot afford to stay away. Rolls-Royce is banking on engine sales to the Chinese airlines. Until, that is, the day when the Chinese can build their own.  From trains and planes to genetic engineering, the scale of China's plans for science and technology is only just becoming clear - and its ambitions are sowing tension between Beijing and foreign firms. Donald Trump, the would-be Republican presidential candidate, says he would put a 25% tariff on goods from China. Opinion polls track american middle class unease, fed by 8.8% unemployment and slow economic growth while China booms at 10% and the US-China trade deficit stands at $273 billion (?164 billion). Most american voters say they see China as an economic threat.  IN Beijing, officials dismiss western fears as scaremongering, claiming China has been exploited by foreign firms and is only seeking a fair deal.  The details of a Chinese blueprint to excel in new industries emerged slowly, in a series of complex directives from ministries and the state planning authorities. They confirmed multinational executives' belief that China intends to strip their technology as the price for contracts, then turn itself into a fearsome competitor by copying it.  Targets identified in key docu ments of the last fiveyear plan include sectors in which British companies have been staking their hopes on a future flow of contracts and profits from China. They include aerospace, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, pollution control, railways, oil and gas exploration, renewable energy, telecommunications, data security and software.  an example came when Siemens won a contract for 60 high-speed trains. Ultimately, three were built in Germany and 57 at a joint venture plant in China, while Siemens trained 1,000 Chinese technicians at its German factories. When the next big order came up, Siemens' Chinese partner won the ?3.6 billion contract, leaving the Germans to pick up just ?620m for supplying components. The policy has been directed at the highest state level and is known as zizhu chuangxin or indigenous innovation.  a report for the american Chamber of Commerce calls it "a policy that is increasingly viewed by american, European, Japanese and other developed country governments and companies as a protectionist plan that will encourage massive global science and technology theft by China".  The report's author, James McGregor, a counsellor at apco, a consulting firm, said foreign companies have only just woken up to the campaign to force them to disclose technology and then to make "national champions" out of Chinese firms that are often, in effect, still run by the state.  Cabinet-level negotiators from america and China are set for a confrontation over the issues when they meet for a strategic dialogue session this month.  IN 2006, rival bureaucracies in the Chinese system united to generate a "National Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Deve l o p -ment of Science and Technology". Its scope was breathtaking. It identified 11 key sectors, 27 "breakthrough technologies", 18 targets for scientific research and an overarching goal to raise research and development spending in China from 1.3% of GDP to 2.5% in 2020. (Chinese spending on research and development in 2010 was about ?64billion, a quarter of america's ?251 billion).  The breadth of these aims spoke to a deep-seated belief in state planning and control. Officials want to oversee projects as diverse as coal liquefaction, genetically modified crops, deep-sea mining, quantum physics and stem cell research.  In a glimpse of the mindset that still governs Chinese rulers, the plan blandly noted its intention to ensure that the population remained under 1.5 billion and that the percentage of birth defects was be  
 MINE OF INFORMaTION at least it is warm, I tell myself for the 100th time as I stand in the queue at Los angeles airport. It's so crowded that the queue winds its way out of the terminal, along the pavement and towards the taxi stand. Note to self: never travel from Los angeles during a Jewish holiday that involves families getting together.  I am going to three US universities to speak about my documentaries. Critiquing the environmental movement was not how I started out in journalism. a few years ago, while in Romania, I discovered people in a remote mining community were being denied the chance of jobs and a better life because of a campaign based on exaggerations by environmentalists.  When I started reporting the story I believed the usual narrative: mining companies are bad, greedy and destructive; environmentalists are good, true and pure; local people need outsiders to defend them. Nothing of that was true.  In 2006, together with my husband, the Tyrone journalist Phelim Mcaleer, I made a documentary entitled Mine Your Own Business. In it we follow an unemployed Romanian miner who was angry about how his opportunities had been destroyed by wealthy environmentalists. a sad tale.  LOT OF HOT aIR Our latest documentary, Not Evil Just Wrong, is a sceptical look at global warming hysteria. It examines how global warming solutions are not going to change the climate, which changes naturally, and will instead hold back the development of many people desperate to get out of poverty.  The Climategate emails controversy has led to a change in perceptions. For me it has meant getting a lot of invitations to discuss my work and show my documentaries. The invitations are generally from conservative student groups, and environmentalists turn up to disrupt.  and that's how it turns out at The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Minnesota where a protest has gathered, but is reasonably polite. Certainly not as nasty as the environmentalist who sent me an email recently saying that as myself and my husband loved pollution so much, he hoped our children would be born handicapped.  INCONCEIVaBLE IDEa The greatest trick of the environmental   
 "CaR PaRK full" signs drive most motorists potty. Not Sam Tilley. He sees them as a business opportunity. a former oil analyst in the City of London, Tilley, 35, has started a company that puts solar panels into car parks.  The concept is straightforward.  He installs a canopy with a solar panel in the roof. The devices can be made small enough to cover a single bay, or large enough to cover a row or many rows of cars.  The power generated from the panels can be used to charge an electric car through a charging point built in to the structure. alternatively, the new panels could help to keep the lights on for whoever owns the car park.  although the panels are no different to the solar cells being strapped to the roofs of buildings across the country, Tilley thinks his device has big advantages.  Fitting a solar farm in the company car park, he says, is a clear sign of dedication to the green energy cause.  "These panels are more visible [than rooftop intallations]," said Tilley. "Companies can demonstrate their commitment to the environment in a much more visible way."  Tilley's company, Infinite Energy, has been talking to large businesses - including retailers - and local authorities to gauge their interest in installing the canopies in their car parks.  Those who do so would benefit from the government's feed-in tariff, a financial incentive to encourage the take-up of renewable energy schemes. The cost of installing the system becomes cheaper the more bays are covered. a row of up to 16 would cost up to ?6,000 per bay to cover with solar-powered canopies.  Tilley founded his company last year after more than a decade working in the City. He spent seven years at Sucden, one of the world's bigges  
 ON THE test track at Berlin's now-defunct Tempelhof airport, a black audi a3 swings into view. It looks and sounds much like any other audi apart from a logo on the door bearing the letters TCNG.  This is the German car giant's answer to the future of green motoring, entered in a competition run by the tyre company Michelin.  The lettering indicates that the car's turbocharged engine runs on compressed natural gas (CNG), the same stuff that is piped to our homes.  Using gas as a motor fuel is nothing new - several manufacturers offer CNG cars in continental Europe and taxis and buses in Beijing run on it. although "cleaner" than petrol or diesel, it does not contribute much to lowering carbon emissions.  With audi, however, the twist is that the gas has been created, indirectly, by wind turbines in the North Sea. audi is ploughing tens of millions of euros into the scheme. If all goes to plan, the first of its a3 TCNG vehicles will be on sale in 2013.  audi calls its fuel e-gas. It is, in fact, methane, chemically identical to natural gas, and will be fed into the public gas network in Germany.  That's the clever part. By running cars on conventional gas, there is no need to set up a new pipe network or complex delivery system - the infrastructure is already in place.  Michael Dick, audi's chief of technical d  
 How the Cairo plant will work  Waste is fed into the compactor before being heated to 1,200C. The process uses less oxygen than normal incineration, burning some of the waste and setting off a series of reactions. The main products are synthetic gas, which can be used to power turbines, plus salt, zinc and various minerals  Mohamed Tawfick sat in his north London living room, watching the television anxiously. Cameras panned round the crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square before Egypt's vicepresident delivered the news everyone had been waiting for: Hosni Mubarak, the country's discredited ruler, would step down and let the army take control.  Four months later, Tawfick is due to meet the interim prime minister, Essam Sharaf, as one of the first British-based businessmen trying to tap into the opportunities thrown up by Egypt's revolution.  Tawfick's company, Global Renewable Environmental Energy, hopes to build an ?880m plant in Cairo that will convert household waste into energy. He plans to use a funding model based on the Private Finance Initiative. a 35-year deal to process rubbish and supply gas to the government would be securitised by a regional bank.  "It's one of the first contracts of its kind," Tawfick said. "Egypt has a problem with waste, because it buries most of it and it's harmful for the environment.  This is a green business, there's no corruption and it's straightforward."  Tawfick has a colourful past.  The 58-year-old trained as a lawyer in Cairo and made his money in quarrying before moving to Britain in the late 1970s. He built a buy-to-let property portfolio, but was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to steal by Middlesex Guildhall crown court in 1996. The appeal court later quashed his conviction and Tawfick won a landmark payout for an unfair trial from the Home Office in 2000.  Global Renewable Environmental Energy struck a provisional agreement to build the waste processing plant with Egypt's previous government, and kept the idea alive as the spring uprising swept a new administration into power. Tawfick is often described by colleagues as being well-connected, with a talent for lobbying politicians.  The potential deal comes at a time when Egypt is eager to show it is open to overseas business.  William Hague, the foreign secretary, and David Cameron have both visited Cairo since the overthrow of Mubarak to discuss ways of ushering the country into the international community.  Philip Turner of EC Harris, one of the consultants advising Tawfick on the project, said: "Egypt is looking to invest in waste management and energy infrastructure and has a growing desire to get this done. The new government seems even more keen to go ahead than the last one."  Tawfick plans to build the plant on a 130-acre site in a suburb of Cairo called Qulubiya.  Waste in Egypt tends to be thoroughly sifted, with any metals being taken out and reused.  Tawfick's unit would receive the kind of household and clinical refuse that is otherwise sent to landfill.  The process Tawfick aims to use is known as gasification. Waste is fed into the plant on a giant conveyor belt and compacted bef  
 Fission chips 2 Germany angela Merkel, the country's chancellor, has committed to shutting down all of the country's nuclear reactors by 2022, a task said by one minister to be as mammoth as the project to reunite East and West Germany in 1990. Monday's announcement, prompted by protests following Japan's nuclear disaster, will make Germany the first big industrialised nation to go nuclear-free in decades. It gives the country just over 10 years to find alternative sources for 23% of its energy.  "We will generate our own electricity from other sources," said Merkel, who added that the plans would give Germany a chance to be a "trailblazer" for renewable energy, and could eventually earn, rather than cost, the country money. 
 Cover story: The generation game Our three-part guide to green energy begins with solar panels: how they work and why it pays to catch some rays 14 Secure network The Facebook-inspired website that brings neighbourhood watch online 4 Checkout time a portfolio of luxury properties, including Cliveden, is on the market following the collapse of the von Essen hotel group 6 Walking on water The ?3.85m harbourside home with a pool that turns into a dancefloor 10 European champions The sunshine spots where property has weathered the financial storm 18 Death becomes him The Dutch designer who became a worldwide star by not pruning plants 22 Plus Beyond the brochure 26 PROPERTY aDVERTISING Private advertising 020 7680 6833 8am - 7pm Monday - Thursday, 8am - 6pm Friday or email adbooker@newsint.co.uk Trade advertising 020 7680 6204/5 9am - 5.30pm Monday - Friday or email propertyads@newsint.co.uk  "HE CaME UP WITH THE CONCEPT LaST YEaR aFTER CHaSING a TRIO OF BURGLaRS DOWN THE STREET IN HIS PYJaMaS" ? PaGE 4 
 THE world's first test-tube hamburger made out of meat grown from artificially cultured cells could be just a year away, scientists have said.  The burger will be grown from 10,000 stem cells extracted from cattle and then multiplied a billion times to produce muscle cells similar to those found in natural beef.  "We're trying to prove to the world we can make a product out of this," said Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in Holland, who is behind the project. Some of his colleagues have already succeeded in producing strips of "meat" using the technique. Post said he thought he could make the first burger in 12 months.  He is one of a growing band of scientists who believe that the world's surging population is leading towards a food crisis that could see billions facing shortages as it rises from 7billion to about 10 billion by 2040. "In vitro meat will be the only choice left," Post told Scientific american magazine. "I don't see any way you could rely on old-fashioned livestock in the coming decades."  Livestock farming accounts for about 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and global meat consumption is predicted almost to double by 2050. The test-tube burger is seen by scientists as the first stage: eventually tissue engineering would be used to manufacture a wide range of meat products. Livestock would still be needed but it would mean that the current practice of slaughtering millions of farm animals every year would cease.  The first step would be for technicians to extract stem cells from a cow, pig, chicken or other suitable animal. Stem cells are a primitive form of cell that have the power to grow and divide into almost any other form of cell.  Post believes the cells could be manipulated using chemicals, electrical stimulation and other techniques to divide and grow into replicas of the muscle cells. The final stage would be to "bulk up" the cells by stimulating them in the same way that animals build muscles by exercising.  about a decade ago Morris Benjaminson grew fish fillets in a laboratory. The   
 The first large solar farm to take advantage of government subsidies for green power has been switched on. Rockspring, the property investor, completed the 1,500-panel solar farm on the site of a second world war airfield in Buckinghamshire last week. The project is eligible for state help through the feed-in tariff scheme, although changes to the rules mean large farms will no longer receive generous funding after the summer. 
 SHaZIa aWaN, 28 The market for stretchy, body-shaping underwear may be tightly packed, but awan knew she could do it better. Since launching her Peachy Pink range in 2009, turnover has rocketed, sometimes doubling or tripling month on month. She now sells to 20 countries.  aNNa BaNCE, 30 Every girl knows the problem of finding the perfect frock. But with Girl Meets Dress, Bance, once a PR manager at fashion house Temperley who dressed Kate Winslet and Natalie Imbruglia, has found the solution: instead of spending hard-earned cash on designer gear, rent it for a fraction of the price. Since the company was launched in 2009, it has gained legions of fans - not least the style bible Vogue, which called it "the answer to all your prayers".  JO BEHaRI, 32 Behari started her property maintenance company, Home Jane, which employs only tradeswomen, in 2006. More recently, she co-founded the Goodlife Centre, teaching the art of DIY. Behari has also co-presented the Channel 4 show Make, Do and Mend.  KaTE BENTLEY, 28, and HaYLEY MaRSDEN 31 Bentley and Marsden collaborated on their first fashion project - a head-to-toe vintage clothing and stylist service - while holding down full-time jobs. Bentley is a criminal defence lawyer, runs a vintage frock shop with her husband and acts as a consultant for the premium skincare and cosmetic range arbonne. Marsden is an art textiles teacher as well as a milliner. Her headwear is sold in two upmarket boutiques in Liverpool, her hats have been featured in Vogue and she was involved in this year's Comic Relief alongside Dame Vivienne Westwood. Fans of Bentley and Marsden include the designer Zandra Rhodes.  SOPHIE BIRSHaN, 33 This Cambridge graduate is director of strategy at Mothercare. Formerly an engagement manager at McKinsey and a policy analyst at No 10 under Tony Blair, she joined the retailer, which turns over ?790m a year, early in 2010. She runs customer relationship teams for its Early Learning Centre and Gurgle brands.  JaNE BURSTON, 30 Burston's Carbon Retirement is an attempt to make the challenge of carbon offsetting more effective by buying up carbon credits to remove them from the EU trading scheme. Fans include Richard Ellis, head of corporate social responsibility at alliance Boots, and Joseph Romm, who was environmental adviser to Bill Clinton when he was the US president.  ROSaLIND CaMPION, 31 after training as a commercial lawyer, Campion decided she would prefer to work in the civil service. She is now head of the newly established Office of the Sentencing Council. She lists a spell at Soca (Serious Organised Crime agency) and a stint in Syria as a human rights lawyer on her CV. She will be leading a drive for more consistent sentencing.  aIMEE DI MaRCO, 32 With degrees from Cambridge and Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, Di Marco is a specialist registrar in general surgery with Imperial College NHS trust in London and is at the leading edge of robotic surgery. She received the best clinical care award at St Mary's and Imperial College in 2009. She is also medical officer for all Stars Boxing Gym.  NaTaLIE DUNN, 26 as senior advertising manager for J Sainsbury, Dunn controls a budget that runs into tens of millions of pounds and is responsible for managing the relationship with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. The Lancaster University graduate worked her way up at the supermarket - she started on the checkout, aged 16.  KaTHRINa FITZGERaLD, 32 a former investment banker at JP Morgan, where she spent seven years in corporate finance, FitzGerald began working for the media giant DMGT in 2007 and was promoted to director of strategy development in 2009. a competitor through and through, she enjoys triathlons, windsurfing and horse-riding.  HaYLEY GaIT-GOLDING, 31 aerobics enthusiast Gait-Golding is an evangelist for healthy living. Her company, Bear, makes wholesome snacks with "no added nonsense". Bear, launched in 2009, now has a turnover of ?3.5m and its products are stocked in Waitrose, Holland & Barrett and the Co-op. She runs the firm with her husband, a former professional cricketer.  CLaRE GILMaRTIN, 35 German-speaking Gilmartin joined eBay UK in 2003 and has worked her way up to become vice-president of marketplaces, Europe. She is responsible for a team of 250 that supports eBay Europe's 50m buyers and 500,000 registered businesses. In her spare time, the mother of two is a marathon runner.  CaROLINa GONZaLEZBUNSTER, 28 after quitting Goldman Sachs, Gonzalez-Bunster set up the Walkabout Foundation, inspired by her paralysed brother. The charity donates wheelchairs to the disabled in developing countries. She has supporters in high places: her 35 Women Under 35 entry included a recommendation from Bill Clinton.  aNNMaRIE HaRRIS, 33 australian-born Harris was a founder of Nude skincare. Despite offering fewer than 20 products, the firm generates $2m to $4m in revenues annually, retails in 200 locations in Britain, america and australia and was sold to LVMH this year. She is now working on a men's skincare line, due to be launched in New York next year.  KaTE HENDERSON, 31 as the first female (and youngest) chief executive at the Town and Country Planning association, Henderson plays a leading role in shaping planning policy around social justice and environmental demands. She has a master's in environmental technology from Imperial and a first class degree in geology from UCL.  KaTE HERSOV, 30 This New Zealand-born paediatrician founded Medikidz with Kim Chilman-Blair in 2009. Their aim is to educate children about a wide range of medical conditions, from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to scoliosis. Since its launch, presided over by archbishop Desmond Tutu, Medikidz has published 40 themed comic book titles, distributed 1m copies worldwide, grown to a staff of 25 and counts corporate giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and GE Healthcare among its partners.  LUCY HUTCHINGS, 29 The jewellery designer is based in London but her inspiration comes from growing up in Suffolk. Hutchings honed her skills at the Erickson Beamon studio before creating her own high-end jewellery range, which is now endorsed by Swarovski and stocked in Liberty, Harvey Nichols and Harrods. Its fans include Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga and Cheryl Cole.  DEBRa LaM, 29 Lam joined the engineering and consultancy firm arup in 2007 and specialises in climate change, sustainability and low-carbon issues. Fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, she is advising the Vietnamese government on managing its carbon footprint. Lam contributed to a report for the World Economic Forum presented at Davos this year.  JULIE DIEM LE, 34 Diem Le was an eye surgeon before she began her business, Zoobug, producing safe sunglasses for children in 2006. The idea came to her when she couldn't find a pair of shades for her niece that were both safe and (crucially) cool. The company has come a long way since then: Le's glasses are sold in 21 countries and she is working on Olympics-themed eyewear for next year.  aNGELa LEMOS, 29 With a degree in statistics from UCL, Lemos made short work of the career ladder, becoming director of financial trading at Dresdner Kleinwort at 27. Now executive director, financials trading desk at Nomura, Lemos provides market commentary and valuation and credit quality advice to institutions and hedge funds.  SOPHIE LIVINGSTONE, 34 a winning combination of third-sector vision and private-sector savvy, Livingstone made her name running the Private Equity Foundation, a financial sector children's charity. She is now chief executive of City Year London, a volunteering programme for high-flyers in the Square Mile, and joined President Barack Obama's entourage during his visit.  LIZ McCaRTHY, 34 In 2008, McCarthy co-founded audacity, a communications agency that counts BT, Malibu and Unilever as clients and has billings of more than ?25m. She has worked in the industry for 12 years, and spent five years running a nightclub in Brixton, London.  HaNNaH McCaUGHEY, 34 McCaughey has been at the forefront of research on climate change and low-carbon energy investment for 10 years. as well as responsibility for one of the largest windfarms in Europe, she heads Centrica's piece of a ?2.3 billion joint venture with EDF to build four nuclear power plants. Her first child was born last year.  LYSSa McGOWaN, 33 after Oxford and Harvard Business School, McGowan became customer strategy director for BSkyB. She runs partnership businesses that deliver tens of millions in annual revenues to the broadcaster. a mother of two, her third child is on the way this summer.  LOUISa MOGER, 34 When Moger became managing director of the family printing business, Richard Edward, in 2002, it was at crisis point with ?2.2m of debt and high client attrition rates. after a strategy overhaul led by her, the company has paid off most of its debts and now turns over ?5.3m a year. She has two daughters and also runs her own consultancy.  STEPHaNIE NIVEN, 27 after taking a double first in history at Oxford in 2005, Niven joined Goldman Sachs, becoming an investment analyst. Four years later she helped set up Goldman-owned Javelin Capital, a hedge fund with assets of ?157m, where she is the portfolio manager. Last year, she completed an Ironman triathlon.  MISHa PaTEL, 31 Previously a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Clifford Chance, Patel recently rose to assistant general counsel at KPMG. She has advised blue-chip companies including aBN, Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and accenture and will continue to work on mergers and acquisitions at KPMG. The UCL graduate has been recognised by Financial News as a rising star.  aLEXaNDRa POPa, 28 In 2007 Popa launched Bordelle, an underwear range inspired by S&M. Her big break came when a substantial order was placed for Britney Spears' Circus tour. Selfridges followed and within a day of her couture girdles hitting the shopfloor they sold out. Popa and her creative partner sell to more than 30 countries, and fans include Lady Gaga.  aLEX PUMFREY, 32 With a ?22m budget and a team of 66, Pumfrey is the programme director of Digital UK, the organisation set up by broadcasters to make the switch from analogue to digital TV as pain-free as possible. Pumfrey is a keen athlete, competing in half-marathons and triathlons.  ZU RaFaLaT, 29 Rafalat founded Zuneta, described by  
 a COMPaNY that built one of Britain's first wind farms two decades ago has landed a key role in australia's flagship ?3.2 billion renewable energy programme.  Wind Prospect, based in Bristol, is part of a consortium that will build a 250MW solar power plant in Queensland. Output will be supplemented with a gas-fired boiler so that the plant can deliver yearround reliable power for 70,000 homes.  "This is the biggest project we have worked on," said Euan Cameron, Wind Prospect's chief executive. "You often see the combination of solar farms and gas-fired power stations in California, but this can run at 250MW solar or gas, which makes it a p  
 The world's longest volumeproduction airliner touched down safely on the rain-soaked airfield northeast of Paris at 5.35pm last Monday. The sheer scale of the updated Boeing 747-8 - which, at 250ft long, is nearly one and a half times the size of Nelson's Column - drew admiring glances from onlookers at the Paris air show.  The interesting stuff, however, was happening out of sight. This was the first transatlantic flight of a large commercial aircraft powered by a green jet fuel.  The plane flew from Everett, Washington state, to Le Bourget close to the French capital, with all four engines powered by a blend of 15% biofuel mixed with 85% traditional jet fuel.  "It was an important mental leap to make, to show this is a safe fuel and in many ways superior to traditional jet fuel," said Darrin Morgan, director of sustainable aviation fuels at Boeing.  He also said the plane maker was only "weeks away" from getting official approval to use a 50-50 fuel blend for commercial flights.  a few months ago, the US Navy flew an F-18 on a 50-50 blend - without a hitch and with no impact on the fighter jet's performance.  The supersonic military flight added to Morgan's confidence that the days of jetting round the world on 100% biofuel are only a "year or two" away.  Boeing's transatlantic flight used fuel derived from camelina, a crop grown in Montana by farmers every three to four years, which allows the land to be recharged with nutrients. Camelina, which needs little water, looks like wheat. It produces seeds, which are gathered and crushed to produce triglyceride oil. This is then refined to produce synthetic kerosene that can be used as a fuel.  Boeing has also set up a biofuels partnership with the Gulf carrier Etihad and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, established by the abu Dhabi government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  The partners are running a pilot scheme to test the effectiveness of biofuel derived from halophytes - plants that flourish in hot, desert conditions and which thrive on salt water instead of fresh water. These also produce oil seeds that can be crushed and refined to produce green fuel.  Morgan said scientists in Eritrea, in the Horn of africa, first discovered the potential to develop a sustainable biofuel from the plants. But a bloody coup against the government led to the research being abandoned and all the documentation was lost. Boeing's green fuels guru said the partners in the abu Dhabi pilot are looking for the scientists involved in the original study to piece together their findings.  Morgan is excited about the potential of this project because the plants can be produced on desert land instead of displacing food crops on arable land, and they can be irrigated with sea water.  He noted the vast swathes of desert that may be available to grow the large amounts that would be needed for commercial production in australia, China, africa, the Middle East and parts of america.  Just as important as proving the effectiveness of the fuel is establishing a robust supply chain to produce and distribute it.  Morgan added that there is now a groundswell of support across the globe. Projects are starting in China, the Middle East, australia and Europe, where governments, airlines, manufacturers, financiers and academic institutions are now coming together to establish green fuel networks.  Last week, the European Commission, the plane maker airbus, leading airlines and biofuel producers signed up to an aviation biofuel accord with a target of producing 2m tonnes a year by 2020.  Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, chief executive of air France KLM, said: "The suitability of biofuels for aviat  
 JUST 14 electric cars a month are being sold in the republic, despite a (EURO)60m (?53m) state grants scheme aiming to have 220,000 on the road by 2020.  after two months, the Sustainable Energy authority of Ireland (SEaI) has had just 35 grant applications, 28 of them from private customers.  When the initiative was launched in December, the target was for 2,000 electric vehicles to be on the road this year and 4,000 by 2012. Eamon Ryan, then the republic's energy minister, said: "2011 will be the year electric cars become a common sight on Irish roads."  The introduction of grants, due to start in January, was delayed until april, but the number of pre-orders and sales has been low. Critics claim the state plans are too ambitious and the public is not ready to trust the costly technology, especially when the number of cars available is limited and the infrastructure to charge them is not fully in place.  William Smith, a lecturer at UCD's school of electrical and mechanical engineering, felt many people were put off by "probably ju  
 CHRIS HUHNE, the energy secretary, will this week unveil the most radical overhaul of the energy industry since privatisation two decades ago.  The government wants to slash Britain's reliance on fossil fuels by switching to new nuclear reactors and offshore wind farms. The move will cost ?200 billion and could see household energy bills double.  On Tuesday, Huhne will lay out a regime of penalties on old coal- and oil-fired plants and subsidies for low-carbon alternatives.  The white paper is a key step towards putting the new framework into law, probably next year.  It follows  
 JIM RaTCLIFFE, the founder of Ineos, paid himself and staff a (EURO)27m (?23m) dividend after the chemicals giant swung back into profit last year.  The payout marks a dramatic comeback for the company, which was nearly taken over by its banks in the recession.  Ratcliffe took drastic steps to keep Ineos afloat, including moving the headquarters from Britain to Switzerland to save ?100m a year in tax.  In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, he revealed that pleas to the Labour administration for assistance, including a temporary holiday on Vat payments, had fallen on deaf ears.   
 Infection Decline in Infection in Decline Decline Decline BRITISH birds including sparrows, chaffinches and nightingales are dying from malaria in a wave of infection that is believed to be caused by climate change.  at least 30 common types of bird are now infected. In some species the disease was unknown as recently as the mid-1990s but is now being regularly diagnosed by monitoring projects. Only 20 years ago less than 10% of house sparrows in Britain were infected. That figure has now reached 30% and is rising rapidly.  The screening of birds such as blue tits, great tits and owls has shown even greater proportionate increases since the mid-1990s, when almost none were infected.  The bird form of malaria cannot be transmitted to humans but, just like human malaria, it kills by destroying oxygen-carrying red blood cells and is transmitted by mosquito bites. The rapid growth in mosquito populations is being attributed to a rise of about 1C in global average temperature.  The study that identified this new epidemic was carried out by Laszlo Garamszegi, a world expert on avian malaria who is attached to the Spanish government's Do?ana biological station near Seville.  In the largest analysis carried out so far, Garamszegi compared malaria infection data from more than 3,000 species around the world, dating back to 1944. The results have just been published in the journal Global Change Biology.  The findings follow disturbing studies from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds that reveal a fall of up to 68% in the British house sparrow population since the mid-1990s. a survey of nightingales by the British Trust for Ornithology found a 90% decline in the past 40 years. The studies have raised concern that the birds face extinction.  It is not possible to establish any link between bird malaria and the dramatic decline in numbers. "We don't know how many of the heavily infected birds die before they can pass on the infection," Garamszegi said, "but it does show trends we ought to be worried about."  Ben Sheldon, professor of ornithology at Oxford University, is also concerned. "There is very convincing evidence that a wide range of biological processes are altering in response to changing climate," he said. "Malaria is a significant cause of mortality, but how it is transmitted is not straightforward. It is quite hard to predict."  Matt Wood, a bioscientist at the University of Gloucester who has tracked malaria infection among blue tits, said there was at present no way of knowing how virulent a new strain of the disease could become.  "Things are changing very fast and we need to understand much more about which mosquito specie  
 HE is close to completing the tallest skyscraper in Europe. Now Irvine Sellar, the septuagenarian property tycoon, is mulling a venture in outer space.  Sellar, who is building the 72-storey Shard near London Bridge, is considering investing in a solar energy firm based in Switzerland. Space Energy is raising funds to launch a satellite that wo  
 In the countryside outside aberdeen, seven turbines spin in the breeze. The wind farm near Huntly may look like any other, but it is not owned by a power company or local entrepreneur. This month it was bought by Ikea, the Swedish flat-pack furniture behemoth.  Ikea is not always associated with environmental friendliness.  Its big out-of-town stores are difficult to reach by public transport, forcing customers to drive. Its products are cheap and disposable. In the past the Environmental Investigation agency has linked it to the use of illegally felled timber from China - although Ikea denies this and now campaigns for tougher laws on logging.  Nonetheless, the company plans to use its Scottish purchase as the first step in a drive to power its British stores from entirely renewable sources. The Huntly wind farm generates up to 25m kilowatt hours of electricity each year, equal to 30% of Ikea's consumption. Ikea said it would look for similar sites to get closer to its target.  The chain is also installing solar panels on the roofs of its stores. Branches in Milton Keynes, Edmonton (north London), Southampton and Warrington have each been fitted with 4,000 panels in the past few weeks. In all, Ikea expects to install 39,000 panels across the nation at a cost of ?4m.  The moves will cut the company's environmental impact. Just as important, they will help its bottom line: Ikea spends about ?10m on fuel each year.  a handful of other wellknown firms are experimenting with sourcing their own renewable energy. audi, the carmaker owned by Volkswagen, is investing tens of millions of euros in North Sea wind power. Toyota recently built a solar farm at its assembly plant in Derbyshire.  Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer at Ikea, said he expected more companies to follow, but added that the longterm nature of investing in renewables made it difficult for publicly listed firms.  "We are owned by a Dutch foundation, so we haven't got any shareholders. all the profits we make are reinvested or given away," Howard said. "We have money in our treasury and we would much rather invest it in renewable energy than invest it in government bonds. [In contrast] there's a real challenge for listed companies. I have talked to many chief executives and they would love to do the sorts of things we do, but they can't because of the ownership model - it's too short term."  Ikea was started during the second world war by the 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad, using money his father gave him for doing well at school. Kamprad took the name from his initials plus the first letters of the farm where he grew up - Elmtaryd - and his home town, agunnaryd in south Sweden.  The company boomed as western consumers got richer and demand for affordable homewares soared. Last year, Ikea made a profit of (EURO)2.7 billion (?2.4 billion) on sales of (EURO)23.5 billion. It has more than 300 outlets in america, Europe and asia. Kamprad, now 85, is among the richest people in the world with an estimated fortune of ?3.7 billion.  Ikea's size has exposed it to reputational issues. It processes about 13m pine logs each year for its products, making it one of the biggest consumers of virgin forest. Four years ago, a paper submitted by the Environmental Investigation agency to the US House of Representatives named Ikea as one of the main companies sourcing timber from the Sino-Russian border region, where illegal felling is endemic. Ikea insisted it tried not to use illegally logged timber and said   
 David Clarke has a ?23m plan for a fantasy power station. From the outside, it would look like any other coal or gas power plant. There would be one big difference, however - it would not emit greenhouse gases.  "The project will see a plant capable of capturing up to 95% of carbon dioxide emissions built by the middle of 2015," said Clarke, boss of the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) - a research lab in Loughborough backed by government and companies such as BP, Shell, Rolls-Royce, Eon and EDF.  Clarke reckons ETI has mastered a technique called carbon capture and storage (CCS). He believes it can remove the carbon from power station emissions so we can go on burning coal and gas to create electricity. The carbon dioxide would be extracted, piped away and then injected into the ground instead of being released into the atmosphere.  The idea has been championed for years by a number of academics and energy experts. although dozens of projects are under development around the world, critics have insisted the technology is too expensive - and potentially dangerous.  Residents near the world's largest test site in Saskatchewan, Canada, have been evacuated from their homes after claims that carbon dioxide may have been leaking from an old mine where the gas is stored.  Clarke thinks he and his colleagues at the ETI have a "next generation" technology that can answer all the questions. He is now looking for sites to build a power plant to prove it is viable.  If he is right, it may be possible to fit the system in power stations all over the world - radically cutting emissions. a new generation of power stations could be built to run on fossil fuels but without the usual emissions. Clarke said this was an important step.  "By the time we get to 2020 all coal power stations will be close to being retired so then we are going to need new ones to be built," he said.  First, Clarke, a former Rolls-Royce research scientist, and his team need to prove that the technology works. Critics claim rolling out CCS would be so costly it would add as much as 25% to consumers' power bills.  Clarke, however, said the technology ETI is working on is so efficient that consumers' pockets are unlikely to be hit. "With the technology today you are looking at electricity prices rising more than 10%, but that's today. CCS is quite new but we are looking to demonstrate technology that will avoid that price rise."  CCS is a three-step process.  It begins with the removal of carbon dioxide from the coal to be burnt in the power plant. This is done in a "gasifier", where the fuel is blasted with oxygen and steam to produce carbon monoxide and water. The gas is converted into carbon dioxide and hydrogen.  Requiring temperatures of up to 700C, it is a highly energyintensive process that gobbles up a large chunk of the power the plant produces, making it by far the most expensive part of the process.  "We think the capturing [equipment] accounts for about 70% of the overall cost of CCS and adds 25% to 90% to the cost of building a power station," Clarke said.  The second stage is transportation.  The carbon dioxide is cooled to a liquid and pumped through pipelines. This also requires additional power, bumping up the costs. ETI says these can be kept to a minimum by locating the plant close to the storage site.  ETI hopes it can use some of Britain's existing oil and gas pipelines but it expects new ones will also have to be built.  "In theory what we are doing is just reversing the process that extracts oil and gas from the North Sea. Our ability to use current infrastructure will be important to minimising the costs for any site," Clarke said.  Storing the carbon dioxide is the final step and the one some experts say there is the most concern about. ETI plans to inject it thousands of feet underground into old, disused oil fields and saline aquifers, underground rocks saturated with salt water.  The scale of available storage is unclear - some estimates suggest there is only enough space to store carbon equivalent to 10 to 20 years of power station output,   
 SIR RICHaRD BRaNSON and the billionaire family behind Wal-Mart are among a group of investors who stand to lose up to $1.5 billion (?930m) after the collapse of a large american solar panel firm.  Solyndra went bust last week, causing a stir in america. President Barack Obama made a high-profile visit to its California plant last year after the government lent the company $535m.  The failure highlighted the dramatic shifts in the industry that have sent several other once high-flying firms into administration.  Tom Murley, head of renewable investing at HG Capital, the private equity firm, doesn't expect Solyndra to be the last failure. "Prices have come down ferociously, and there is a glut of manufacturing globally," he said. "There will be other [bankruptcies]."  Since 2008, the average price of solar panels has dropped from $4 a watt to $1.30, a twothirds decrease, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  The reduction has been driven mainly by a rapid expansion of supply from China, where many solar panel manufacturers can get cheap government finance.  Indeed, over the period global manufacturing capacity more than tripled, from 10.8 gigawatts a year to 33GW. The problem is that just as the industry geared up, governments reduced the subsidies companies were counting on to keep the orders rolling in.  Spain was once the largest solar market in the world. after the cash-strapped government slashed subsidies last year, new projects dried up. Italy is about to do the same, while Britain cancelled a generous tariff regime before it   
 SHE is the former president who has become a champion of the world's poorest people, but Mary Robinson is also proving adept at winning over the world's richest.  The Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice (MRFCJ) has raised funding of more than (EURO)1m (?876,000) in its first year. The charity, which seeks to educate and empower victims of climate change in the developing world, has received donations from funds and foundations, including those operated by Richard Branson, the airline owner, Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, and Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser al-Missned, a wife of the Emir of Qatar.  Other contributors include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ireland Funds, the Blum Family Foundation and the Oak Foundation.  Silatech, the foundation run by the Qatari royal family, is the organisation's largest donor, giving (EURO)262,113 in 2010, according to the charity's accounts.  The Oak Foundation, founded by alan Parker, a British billionaire who made his money from duty-free shopping, was the secondhighest donor, contributing (EURO)113,190, while the Rockefeller Foundation, established by John D Rockefeller in 1913 when he was the world's richest man, gave (EURO)101,101.  The Ireland Funds, founded by Sir anthony O'Reilly, a shareholder in Independent News & Media, and Dan Rooney, now the US ambassador to Ireland, contributed (EURO)24,914 each.  The Irish state  
 Mary Francis has a simple piece of advice for people who ask her how they can become a non-executive director: you have to work at it. "Boards do not appoint people because they are lovely human beings - they appoint them because they have the relevant experience and ability.  "Talk to headhunters and your other contacts about how you could match what you can offer to what companies or other organisations need. Nobody has a right to this kind of job. Sometimes there is a feeling that you can choose a Ned career just as you can choose any other career, but ... not everybody can walk straight into it."  Francis, who is a Ned at aviva, Cable & Wireless Communications and Centrica, where she is the senior independent director, is used to people wanting to talk to her about this sort of thing - she is, after all, a high-profile woman in the business world - but the speaking invitations have increased since she won two categories in last year's Ned awards - for the FTSE 100 and the overall prize.  "One of the nice things since winning is that I have had more contact with individual people, often women, who are interested in having more of a portfolio career. Very often they ask me how to get their first board appointment, because it is difficult to establish the credibility to secure that first role."  The awards have also increased the number of calls she receives from headhunters, she added.  "The other thing that people ask me is what constitutes a good board. There are three things: the first is an excellent chairman; the second is focusing on big strategic issues rather than trying to second-guess executives on detail; and the third is that, when necessary, they share bad news as well as good at board meetings."  The other key issue on which she is asked to speak is boardroom diversity, particularly how to increase the number of women nonexecutives.  Lord Davies's report and his recommendations - including setting targets of at least 25% by 2015 for FTSE 350 companies - sits alongside executive pay as one of the biggest topics of discussion at boardroom tables over the past 12 months, she said.  Her own views on diversity have changed slightly as the debate has developed. "I started in the camp of 'I have not encountered overt discrimination so what's the fuss about' but actually when you look at the statistics it's shocking that there are so few women on boards," she said. "and it's not just about boards of big companies - it is also about the top of the judiciary, the medical profession and so on.  "I believe that there is an issue and I have been really struck by the effect that Lord Davies has had with his recommendations on targets and public explanation of boards' position on them. Companies that do not have good gender diversity on their boards are really making a big effort to get themselves into better shape in order to be able to report some acceptable progress. although it is sad in a way that it is the recommendations and targets that are driving these changes, they are definitely having an effect."  Francis is pleased that the changes are happening, but she is still concerned that newly appointed women Neds could be seen as making up the numbers rather than deserving the position in their own right.  "I don't think that this will happen, because I think that there are sufficient good quality women candidates for that not to be the case, but it is a potential danger and I would be really distressed if it did happen."  Ensuring that there continues to be enough good women candidates will take a lot of work as well. Increasing the number of women Neds means that organisations need to increase the number of women in executive leadership positions, which was not something that Davies's report addressed in any depth, she said.  "Getting good candidates depends on there being a deep pool of women who have experience at senior levels in business, the professions and the third sector. You are not going to really change things just at the board level.  "I am not sure that Davies will be enough to make a real difference at executive level. although Lord Davies talked about and looked at executive levels, the main focus was the board, so I feel there is more work to be done. I would like to see more in-depth inquiry into increasing the proportion of women in senior executive positions."  This is not to say she is criticising Davies, she said. Focusing on one aspect of the debate meant that the report was more effective. "You h  
 ON TOLERaNCE: a Defence of Moral Independence by FRaNK FUREDI Continuum ?16.99 ebook ?13.99 pp224 Voltaire summarised the Enlightenment notion of tolerance when he proclaimed: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The sociologist Frank Furedi argues in his new book that we have lost sight of this original idea, the essence of which was later enshrined in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Whereas tolerance for Voltaire and Mill required "conviction and judgment", Furedi claims, the modern multiculturalist version "frequently conveys the idea of respectful indifference". While tolerance was once a way of engaging with differing opinions, today it has become a way of not taking other views seriously.  Furedi rails against a culture that treats the individual as "vulnerable", in need of constant guidance, and argues that people are more robust than we give them credit for, and capable of making moral decisions. He decries any obstacles to this process of individual decision-making as a sinister species of New Intolerance. He accuses the writer George Monbiot of encouraging a modern-day witch hunt for not allowing climate-change "sceptics" to air their opinions, and argues that all state intervention into private life underestimates individuals' capacity to make independent decisions.  Furedi has a knack for pointing up contradictions in public discourse and capturing social shifts with pithy labels such as "therapy culture" and "recognition politics". However, he fails to practise what he preaches when he doesn't fully address the main philosophical and scientific traditions that contradict his world view, hastily dismissing, for instance, neuroscience research that has highlighted the degree to which actions bypass rational decision-making.  ? available at the Bookshop price of ?15.29 (including p&p) and ?13.99 (ebook) on 0845 271 2135 
 So much for the past 10 years: what will the next decade bring? Here are our predictions - to see if we were right, make sure to check Home on September 12, 2021.  ? after a wobbly year or so, house prices will recover. The Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts a rise of 14% by 2015 - to an all-time high - because of the continued failure to build enough homes. This will be less than the rate of inflation, however, leaving property cheaper in real terms.  ? Getting onto the housing ladder will be a challenge unless banks relax their lending criteria. The National Housing Federation predicts that the proportion of people in England living in owneroccupied homes will fall to 63.8% by 2021 (from a peak of 72.5% in 2001).  ? Sustainability will continue to be the watchword, although there are signs that the government's requirement that all new homes built from 2016 should be "zero carbon" will be watered down.  ? Those building or refurbishing their own homes will maintain their enthusiasm for fancy green kit, although the government will be obliged to scale back the subsidies it pays for home-energy generation by reducing the levels of "feed-in tariffs". With concerns about climate change and fewer pesticides on the garden-centre shelves, our gardens will be greener, too.  answers How close were you? Here are the prices at which our four houses were on the market in September 2001: Norfolk: ?195,000 London: ?1.795m Cornwall: ?205,000 Cotswolds: ?225,000 
 Less spa, more spartan  Back in 2001, when the property boom looked as if it would go on for ever, our interiors reflected the market's confidence, with flash kitchens and bathroom furnishings inspired by boutique spas. Decor was designed to preserve the resale value, and taupe was king. In our living rooms, sofas morphed from I- to L- and even U-shaped, and plasma-screen televisions came to dominate the walls.  Recently, a more austere aesthetic has emerged: show-offy restaurant-style kitchens have been replaced by cosy rooms for family meals, with freestanding furniture in painted and natural wood. and bathrooms have moved on from the luxury property developer's vision of wet rooms, rain showers and bookmatched marble. Sometime in 2007, we stopped caring what the smart spas in Bali were doing. Perfectly in tune with the times in 2005, Philippe Starck's Bonze stool (pictured top left) now looks like the relic of a bygone age.  The glitz has gone, but colour and pattern have transformed our homes. We have become so fearless in our use of bright wallpapers, multicoloured rugs and printed cushions, the only shock now is plain, natural materials.  Katrina Burroughs  The green machine  Time was, converting the loft and filling in the side return were seen as the ultimate home improvements, with an architect-designed minimalist glass ex  
 THE chancellor has infuriated No 10 and cabinet colleagues by refusing to endorse a key component in the policy to boost renewable energy.  In an extraordinary move last week George Osborne was rebuked by David Cameron's aides for failing to come on board for a key green policy.  at a meeting on Monday the prime minister's most senior official, Jeremy Heywood, gave a dressing down to an Osborne adviser over the chancellor's failure to rubber stamp the new price that power companies will pay for renewable energy such as solar, wave and wind power.  The prices have already been approved by Cameron, Vince Cable, the business secretary, Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, and Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, and will now go out for consultation.  Danny alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, and Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, also support the pricing structure.  Whitehall sources say Osborne's delay is threatening billions of pounds of investment in renewable technology. One senior government source accused Osborne of "meddling" and of angering No 10 with his tactics.  Last week Osborne used his address to the Tory party conference to declare war on environmental regulations for "piling costs on to energy bills".  His  
 Broughton is a jewel for the aerospace giant. Yet fears remain we will lose valuable work to our EU partners.  By Karl West agiant grey metal box, bigger than Wembley stadium, perched in the North Wales countryside is the unlikely home of the future of British manufacturing.  Inside airbus's 46,000 square metre factory, huge yellow cranes slide almost silently across the ceiling 23 metres overhead. They carry the large panels that will be pieced together into the complex's prize product - aircraft wings.  about 8,500 piles were driven 20 metres into the ground to support the 8,000 tonnes of steel and concrete that make up the grey box. It is held together with 250,000 bolts and, at last count, 58,000 metres of cable have been installed - enough to stretch all the way from Broughton to Manchester.  It is calm and quiet inside at the moment. This time next year, however, this "factory of the future" will be a hive of industry. at full production it will have 600 workers producing airbus's first all carbon composite wings for the new long-range a350.  These lightweight wings will contribute to what airbus hopes will be an aircraft 25% more efficient than one of its rivals, the american Boeing 777.  as growth is stalling in other parts of the economy, the hightech factory is precisely what George Osborne was referring to when he suggested that a "march of the makers" was needed to drive exports and rebalance the economy.  The aerospace sector is key to this - it supports about 360,000 British jobs and exported more than ?16 billion of equipment last year.  Tom Enders, chief executive of airbus, was clearly chuffed to have David Cameron on hand last week to celebrate the factory opening. "This government wants to underline its support perhaps more strongly than previous governments," Enders said. "His presence here is a message in itself."  Enders is clear as to why airbus, owned by EaDS, the pan-European defence group, keeps bringing the work for its wings to these shores instead of to its other national stakeholders - France, Germany and Spain: because Britain has world-beating know-how in the aerospace sector.  Broughton - which produced the Wellington bomber in the 1940s - and its sister factory at Filton in Bristol, form airbus's centre of excellence in wing design and production.  The two plants are responsible for almost all the wings on the company's planes. allied to this, Enders is acutely aware of the strength of the supplier base in Britain. Rolls-Royce makes some of the best engines, airbus buys landing gear from Messier-Dowty and components from GKN.  Wing production is technical and high-value and is often referred to as the jewel in the airbus crown. This precious gem is coveted by the firm's factories in France, Germany and Spain. and aerospace executives fear that anything less than total commitment from government for future projects could see these factories get their wish, leaving Britain out in the cold.  Enders laughs off the suggestion: "This is a very British thing. You always think others want to take it away, but there is nobody in France and Germany that can do what you do in the UK."  Broughton has produced 14,000 wings over the past 40 years. Enders noted that airbus currently has a backlog of some 4,200 aircraft, including 567 firm orders from 35 customers for the a350.  "all these aircraft will be winged by the UK," he said. "I don't see any reason why the UK won't remain the centre of excellence in wing design and production into the future."  The British paranoia is not completely without foundation, though. The "work share" split, which determines how much work will go to the four countries that form airbus's core stakeholders, seems to suggest that Britain is already losing out. Our share for the a380 was 20%; it is to fall to 15% for the a350.  The work share has previously been linked with the amount of repayable loans that each of the four countries stumps up to help develop aircraft.  For the a350, Britain's aid totals ?340m, while France and Germany pledged a combined (EURO)2.5 billion (?2.2 billion) and Spain (EURO)400m.  airbus executives said that while most of the work remains concentrated in France and Germany, the company will continue to outsource more to low-cost manufacturing countries such as China and India in the future.  The threat of growing expertise in these countries poses a further potential headache for Britain's aerospace sector.  This know-how is a huge benefit, providing 10,000 highly skilled jobs at airbus in the UK - 6,000 at Broughton, and 4,000 at Filton. The company estimates it supports about 100,000 jobs around Britain through its supply base.  another reason for Enders's buoyant mood is the success of the revamped a320, which promises to cut fuel consumption by 15% with its new, cleaner jet engine.  With the price of oil hovering around $100 a barrel for some time, the prospect of making a 15% fuel saving had airline chief's banging down Enders's door for the plane.  The decision to press ahead with the "new engine option" for the short-haul workhorse caught rival Boeing on the hop as it dithered about what to do with its 737.  as a result, the new a320 already has more than 1,000 orders, and it has forced Boeing to finally say it will re-engine the 737 in response. Enders said: "That was a major strategic decision for us, no doubt."  He noted that the singleaisle market is the company's "bread and butter" business, adding: "So to make the right move at the right time was incredibly important. Sometimes you   
 When Bridget Mead's husband passed away, she had few options. The retired dinner lady from Rochdale was living on a small pension and had a mortgage to cover. She went back to work - for another eight years.  "I couldn't have kept my house if I didn't go back to work," she said. "I''m very proud of that."  Now 75 and retired again, she has a different worry: her energy bill. Last month it jumped from ?97 to ?104 - a 7% increase. s She was one of millions to be hit by price increases pushed through by the "Big Six" energy suppliers.  For Mead, who gets by on a monthly pension of ?671, even a few extra pounds is tough. "I'm terrified. I don't know how I'm going to pay it, and they say it's going to go up again this winter," she said.  "It's not just me either. all my friends are terrified. They don't know where the money is going to come from."  We've had price rises before. This time, though, was different.  The outcry from politicians was predictable, but the tone was not. It was more strident than usual.  Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, accused the utilities of "predatory pricing". Ed Miliband, the opposition leader, called for them to be broken up. "The energy companies have defied gravity for too long ... Let's call a rigged market what it is," he said.  On Friday alistair Buchanan, head of Ofgem, the regulator for the gas and electricity markets, fired the latest salvo, publishing new figures that suggested the Big Six are now making as much as ?125 from each household, up from ?15 in July. The latest round of rises brought the average annual bill to ?1,345, nearly double the ?740 average of five years ago.  "a radical break with the past is needed," Buchanan said. The industry countered that the figures were vastly inflated.  What is certain is that the penny has finally dropped. One in four households is now "fuel poor", which means that more than 10% of its net income goes on energy bills. Things are going to get worse - and not just because unemployment last week hit a 17-year high.  Britain is on the cusp of a ?200 billion low-carbon overhaul.  The government wants to replace our dirty coal-fired stations with expensive offshore wind farms and nuclear reactors to meet climate change targets. The makeover is the biggest since North Sea oil and gas came on stream in the 1970s - and you and I will pay for it. analysts said the average domestic energy bill could hit ?1,800 a year by 2020.  after years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover.  "It's here now. Cheques are going to have to be written to build this stuff," said Mark Powell at KPMG. "But the world has changed and all of a sudden the question of affordability has come front and centre."  That is what the government aims to tackle tomorrow. Huhne has called a "consumer energy summit" at his department's offices in Whitehall. The showdown will bring executives, consumer groups and Ofgem into the same room.  Ostensibly, the purpose is to hash out how to help the hardup get through the winter. Yet for the industry the meeting is about much more than the next few months. It is about one of the world's biggest industrial undertakings. It is about the government's faltering attempts to shape it, while at the same time bashing the industry for the inconvenient consequences of the very policies it has chosen to pursue.  The Big Six are tired of carrying the can. "We need an honest debate about the consequences of the investment required and the impact on bills," said Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, the country's biggest energy supplier.  "The energy industry isn't trusted and we accept we have to do something about that. But we also want honesty about the data. If the government is quoting misleading numbers, it makes everyone look stupid and confuses the public."  GEORGE OSBORNE, the chancellor, dropped a bombshell in Manchester this month. There he was at the Tory party conference, holding forth on his plan to revive the flagging economy. and then he said it. "We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business ... so let's at the very least resolve that we're going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe."  It was a stunning reversal. after all, it was the chancellor who just seven months earlier had unveiled a new carbon tax on industry, which would make Britain the first country in the world to impose a domestic carbon levy.  Civitas, the think tank, said it amounted to "economic suicide".  Industry revolted, and Osborne seems to have listened.  Yet just down the road from No 11, Huhne seems to have different ideas. In May the energy secretary made Britain the first country in the world to commit to emission reduction targets beyond 2020. By 2027, he wants us to halve carbon dioxide emissions from the 1990 level.  Osborne may be slowing down, but Huhne shows no such signs. an executive said: "The Treasury seems to be moving in one direction, while Huhne is going another. It's hard to tell who is actually driving the bus."  One thing they can both agree on, however, is that the energy companies deserve a good kicking. They haven't done themselves any favours. an investigation by Which?, the consumer group, found that when the Big Six were asked by callers for the lowest tariffs, a third of the time the best deals were not offered.  In an interview with The Sunday Times, Huhne said: "We know what's wrong with the energy market and we are addressing it. There have been clear examples of malpractice and Ofgem has found that people don't switch even though it could provide them with big savings.  "The best possible way to encourage investment and new entrants is a truly competitive and transparent market. We are doing everything we can to make it easier to invest here."  The heart of his plan is the so-called Electricity Market Reform, or EMR. First proposed last year, it is a cocktail of subsidies to support a new generation of low-carbon power sources, and harsh penalties designed to speed up the death of fossil-fuelled stations. Huhne wants it on the books by 2013.  There has yet to be a clear explanation, however, from government or industry of just how high prices are likely to go and why.  Take Ofgem's Friday report. The quarterly retail review was meant to be published in two weeks' time. When it hit the wires on Friday instead - three days before the Whitehall energy summit - it was hard to conclude that its publication wasn't orchestrated for maximum impact.  Volker Beckers, chief executive of Npower, accused the regulator of "playing games" and "deliberately confusing" customers about the profitability of the sector.  "Ofgem is claiming that energy companies are making just over ?9 profit on every ?100 we receive for getting energy to your doorstep, " he said. "Earlier this year, Ofgem's same analysis showed the industry was making just ?1.50 on every ?100; and that between 2004 and 2009 we were making a loss. These are not the figures associated with an industry that is profiteering or uncompetitive.  Publishing incorrect figures like this is counterproductive."  The consequences are more than a few hurt feelings and a bamboozled public. Last year the industry invested ?3 billion in new projects. If we are to meet the government's green goals, companies will have to invest nearly seven times that every year for a decade.  Uncertainty over whether the government will hold its nerve on subsidies, or slap windfall taxes on profits - as Osborne did earlier this year on oil companies - means investors are factoring in political risk. The price of money is going up. That helps nobody.  British Gas recently commissioned a survey of 2,000 Britons that asked a simple question: how many would be willing to pay another ?400 annually to ensure the lights stay on? The answer was 1%.  aBOUT 12 miles off the coast of Margate, Kent, a small fleet of special barges is h  
 Q I need a practical family car with four proper seats, but I also want a convertible. Can I combine the two? I plan to keep it for at least five years and do 100,000 miles, so it needs to be  
 In the second half of July, when most of us were preparing to set off on our summer holidays, the BBC Trust published a lengthy review of the impartiality and accuracy of the corporation's coverage of science, most of which was taken up with what was described as an "independent assessment" by the geneticist Professor Steve Jones.  a substantial section of Jones's assessment was, understandably, devoted to the important issue of global warming. Regrettably, that section was characterised chiefly by ignorance and intolerance. I was saddened not only by these general defects but also by an unwarranted attack on me personally. So, to be completely fair, I should quote the section in full.  Claiming that there is no longer any scope for serious debate over global warming, and that the media "face the danger of being trapped into a false balance, into giving equal coverage to the views of a determined but deluded minority and to those of a united but less insistent majority", Jones complains: "The impression of active debate is promoted by prominent individuals such as Lord Monckton and Lord Lawson. The BBC still gives space to them to make statements that are not supported by the facts: that (in a February 2011 The Daily Politics show) 95% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, while in fact human activity has been responsible for a 40% rise in concentration, or (a November 2009 Today programme) that volcanoes produce more gases than do humans (the balance is a hundred times in the opposite direction).  For at least three years, the climate change deniers have been marginal to the scientific debate but somehow they continued to find a place on the airwaves."  The false accusation that I am in the habit of making statements about global warming "that are not supported by the facts" was highly damaging not only to me personally but also to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which since its inception in November 2009 has become a respected and reliable source of information relevant to the global warming debate, and of which I am founding chairman.  and not only had I not made either of the statements complained of - leaving aside the question of their veracity; I had not appeared on either of the two programmes. (Nor, for that matter, had Christopher Monckton, whose position on this issue is, incidentally, not the same as mine.) I immediately emailed the chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, to complain. Receiving no reply, and after consulting the trustees of the GWPF, I instructed my lawyers to demand an apology and retraction.  This the BBC did on the BBC Trust's website in the following somewhat grudging terms: "On 8 august 2011, the trust published an updated version of Professor Steve Jones's independent review of the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC's science coverage due to an ambiguity [sic] in the section on climate change ... "The trust and Professor Jones now recognise that the passage as originally published could be interpreted as attributing statements made in those two programmes to Lord Lawson or to Lord Monckton. Neither programme specifically [sic] featured Lord Lawson or Lord Monckton and it was not Professor Jones's intention to suggest that this was the case. Professor Jones has apologised for the lack of clarity in this section of his assessment, which has now been amended [by the removal of my name and that of Lord Monckton]."  But that does not dispose of the matter. The thrust of the Jones review is that in its coverage of global warming the BBC gives too much airtime to dissenters from the conventional wisdom such as me.  The very reverse is the case.  Despite the authoritative role of the GWPF, invitations to either me or its excellent director, Dr Benny Peiser, to appear on air on this issue are almost as rare as hen's teeth.  This is not because of any hostility to me personally. I am frequently invited to appear on BBC programmes about the economy, and from time to time I do so. But on global warming the BBC has a clear party line, and anyone who might provide an informed challenge to the party line is not wanted.  Jones's mindset is revealed by his use of the term "climate change denier" to describe anyone, such as me, who is a dissenter about any aspect of the global warming orthodoxy.  It is a term I find particularly disreputable and offensive, as it is clearly intended to group climate change dissenters with Holocaust deniers.  In its letter to my lawyers containing Jones's grudging apology, the BBC litigation department wrote that "Professor Jones does not, however, resile from the statement ... that your client promotes the impression of active scientific debate on the issue of global warming when in fact there is clear consensus to the contrary".  In fact, as the name of my think tank makes clear, our concern is primarily in the area of policy: in the light of the facts, to the extent that we know them and understand them, what policy is it rational and proportionate to pursue? We are, of course, interested in the views of well-qualified scientists.  It was for this reason that we recently published The Truth about Greenhouse Gases, a briefing paper by William Happer, an eminent professor of physics at Princeton University. The paper should be read in its entirety, but at one point Professor Happer provides his own summary of the main thrust, in these terms: "Let me summarise how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist with a better knowledge than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really is a greenhouse gas, and, other things being equal, adding CO2 to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and natural gas will modestly increase the surface temperature of the Earth ... The combination of a slightly warmer Earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of food, wood, fibre and other products by green plants, so the increased CO2 will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative effects. Supposed calamities l  
 Growing firms such as those on the Top Track 250 are seizing opportunities created by changes in technology, society and geopolitics to create new wealth and jobs for the British economy, a recent report by HSBC has highlighted.  Exporting to emerging economies is one of the biggest growth opportunities for British enterprise, according to more than half of the business leaders we polled for The Future of Business 2011. The report highlighted a number of sectors considered to offer huge growth potential. These include providing healthcare for ageing populations, reducing carbon emissions, manufacturing low-carbon vehicles and composite materials, and even exploiting opportunities in space.  Some of this year's leaguetable companies are already exploring these dynamic new sectors, according to Top Track 250 research. Of 115 firms with overseas subsidiaries, 53 now have at least one base in a developing country. For example, Environmental consultancy ERM (No 26) is working with both Tesco and the government of Chongqing in China to identify carbon savings. Luxfer Group (No 127), which has subsidiaries in eight countries, including the Czech Republic and India, makes alloys used in aerospace manufacture as well as oxygen cylinders that were used to help rescue the trapped Chilean miners last year.  HSBC, which works with many companies on this year's league table, including restaurant operator Gondola (No 5), baking group Warburtons (No 12), and the supercar manufacturer McLaren Group (No 97), is firmly committed to supporting mid-sized private firms working to become tomorrow's global superstars. We believe we have both the capability and responsibility to work in partnership with these talented entrepreneurs as they expand at home and abroad.  Our strong domestic capabilities and international footprint enable us to offer support across a full range of products that extends beyond traditional loans and transaction services to embrace risk management, capital raising and corporate-finance advice.  Today, our 10 corporate banking centres have experienced global relationship managers who can help British firms to maximise their international potential by drawing on HSBC's presence in 87 markets around the world. For ambitious firms, our global network of expertise and contacts really does open doors.  Take our partnership with asco, the oil-and-gas logistics company at No 9 on the league table. We are working with the aberdeen-based private-equitybacked business as it takes the experience it has accumulated with North Sea clients to new markets around the world.  In the past five years the firm, led by Billy allan and Derek Smith, has diversified its customer base and expanded overseas sales from only 10% of total revenue to 90% of the ?515m recorded in 2010. Building a balanced portfolio of clients to protect asco against any upsets in its market is a key strategic goal, says its head of communications, David Wallace.  HSBC has supported the company with banking facilities and local expertise as it has expanded abroad. Over the past couple of years the firm has agreed a joint venture in India, unveiled an alliance in australia and opened a new office in Oman, helping to raise turnover by 32% and adding about 150 staff to the payroll in the last financial year.  We have also been working closely with the family-owned brewer and pub operator Charles Wells as it seeks new markets both at home and overseas.  The firm, at No 151 on this year's league table, has made strong progress, notwithstanding the challenging times of late, due in part to the work done over the past 15 years in building brands to help create and grow Britain's specialist beer category, according to the company's finance director, Justin Phillimore.  Earlier this year, we sent one of our relationship managers to spend two weeks on secondment with the Bedford-based company, to help us understand the opportunities and challenges facing mid-sized firms in this fast-changing market. as a result, we have further strengthened our relationship and gained an even clearer understanding of its business. For example, back in 2009, when other lenders were str  
 SaDLY, once again Nigel Lawson has muddied the waters with respect to our understanding of climate change ("Listen up, BBC, the climate debate is far from over", News Review, last week). He incorrectly states that "there has been no recorded global warming at all so far this century". The facts are that the observed warming in the 2000s has been relatively slow - between 0.05C and 0.13C, compared with a long-term trend of 0.16C per decade since the late 1970s - and that last year was the second-warmest on record, according to the Met Office.  Lawson quotes William Happer, who contends that the Earth's climate will warm by only about 1C over 200 years, and that the positive effects outweigh the negative effects.  The vast majority of climate scientists would strongly  
 SOME of Britain's worst polluters will tomorrow meet Greg Barker, the energy minister, to press their case for a ?2 billion exemption from green taxes they say will force tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas.  The meeting of the Energy Intensive Industries all-Party Parliamentary Group is part of a last-ditch effort by firms who say the government's climate change policies are in danger of strangling an already struggling sector.  Big energy users - steel makers, chemicals groups and cement companies - are most worried about the carbon floor price, a Britain-only emissions tax that comes on top of the carbon permits polluters must buy for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit.  Civitas, the think tank, said that imposing it amounted to "economic suicide".  The cost of the coalition's green policies has led to a bitter dispute between Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, who is pushing ahead with the reforms, and chancellor George Osborne, who warned against, "saving the planet by putting our country out of business".  Some of the country's biggest employers, including Tata Steel and Ineos, the chemicals giant, have written to David Cameron, asking for an exemption from the carbon floor price and other allowances. This would amount to up to ?300m a year from 2013, when the new tax takes effect, until 2020 when the current targets end, said Jeremy Nicholson, head of the Energy Intensive Users Group.  Nicholson recently led a delegation, including the energy minister Barker, to Germany to highlight the measures the German government has taken to protect manufacturers.  He said: "In Germany green subsidies amount to about (EURO)35 a megawatt hour. Big energy users pay only 50 cents." He hopes Britain will replicate the system, which he said would apply at most to a "few dozen" firms.  Osborne has promised to announce mitigating measures in his autumn statement on November 29. 
 In Mike Bartlett's ambitious new drama at the National, 13, a large cast of characters are all having bad dreams - "explosions, monsters, all kinds of shit", as one character puts it.  It's London, now, and the air is thick with doomy portents, internet factoids, apocalypto-nuggets about how it's all going down. Nobody is sleeping well, the Conservative government is imposing cruel cutbacks on a traumatised nation, and there's even talk of a pre-emptive strike against Iran. But do we have the right to invade Mr ahmahavinajihad's thermonuclear theocracy?  Protests build, the people taking to the streets, shouting: "Not in our name!" They are angry about the cuts, about tuition fees, the NHS, the approaching war. They turn to rioting and looting, we are told, because they want "a reason to live", and are explicitly compared to those being tortured and killed in Syria, trying to overthrow the assad regime.  Meanwhile, the prime minister, ruthless Ruth (Geraldine James), is the spirit of Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher reincarnate, in blue dress, high heels and a tight bun. There are half-hearted attempts to make her human at times, but in the end she is revealed - surprise, surprise - as a kind of Judas Iscariot, or perhaps Pontius Pilate.  Yes, to add to the already heavy mix, dollops of sickly-sweet religiosity are slapped on top. For, out of the midst of the protesting crowds of idealistic and ethnically diverse yoof, demanding a just society and free Nike air Jordans for all, there arises a messiah, in the form of a smelly homeless Welshman called John. There was a man sent from God whose name was John... Not just a new Jesus, but a Welsh Jesus. Jesus Llewellyn-Christ.  By this point, you will already have figured out the play's handy dress codes, so you know a scruff-bag such as John is a saint the moment you clock him. White man in a suit: baddie. any colour you like in DMs, leggings or a hoodie: goodie. all very convenient, like the characters in a medieval Mystery play.  Sure enough, John is soon up on his soapbox, preaching to us, with the house lights up, although his style isn't always quite so compelling as the original. His sermon on the mounting crisis in the nation starts: "There are things we want. We want the very best health care and education, free at the point of use, for all."  Perhaps this is the problem. John's supposed idealism is really just another form of self-interest, demanding free services from the state - that is, other people. If such heretical thoughts do arise, however, you'd better keep quiet. This isn't the sort of theatre you're supposed to disagree with, you know. The play doesn't want you to think for yourself, it wants you to think correctly.  John effortlessly attracts tens of thousands of followers,  
 The small plant in my hand is a miracle. The potential saviour of millions of lives. This is one extraordinary sprout of lifesaving shrubbery, and the strange thing is that if I were to walk out of this sealed laboratory in Norfolk with this totally harmless sprig of wheat in my hand and take it into the open air, I could be arrested.  Welcome to the crazy world of genetic hysteria - an irrational terror that is threatening the ability of our species to feed itself as it peers into a demographic abyss.  Just after midnight tonight, the world's human population passes a milestone. Somewhere, perhaps in an african or Punjabi slum, a child will be born and arbitrarily designated by the United Nations as the 7 billionth human alive. The growth in population in the past century has been astounding, perhaps the defining statistic of the modern world. Humanity has added a whole billion to its number since 1999, when a Bosnian baby, adnan Nevic, was identified as the 6 billionth person.  The growth in human population is, arguably, the biggest problem facing our species and our planet. It is hard to imagine any current issue, from food security to habitat loss, climate change or energy shortages, that would not be alleviated by fewer people. and of course humanity will not stop growing at 7 billion: depending on which estimate you believe, the total will peak some time in mid-to-late century at about 8 billion (the most optimistic scenario) or, alternatively, continue to swell well beyond 10 billion and still be growing in the 2100s.  The big question is - even if the optimists are right - how are we going to feed, water and power the equivalent of between one and two extra Chinas in just a generation or two? Nearly all of these extra people will be in africa and southwest asia - places where crop yields are a pitiful sixth of what they are here, and that are faced with periodic droughts and riddled with disease and pests. Even here in Britain the population is expected to grow by about 5m a decade, hitting 70m in 2027, an increase largely fuelled by immigration.  Britain is rich, but africa, in particular, cannot feed itself right now. One billion people are permanently hungry and dependent on food aid, and food prices are at an all-time high. If we are not to see famine and food insecurity on an unprecedented scale, something drastic is going to have to be done.  Of course, the sceptics will say, we have been here before. In 1798 the economist and cleric Thomas Malthus predicted famine as population growth outstripped food supply. Then, in the 1960s, we had a new demographic panic when the american ecologist Paul Ehrlich claimed that the world faced a population timebomb. By the late 1990s, he predicted, american supermarkets would be empty.  So-called cornucopians mock Malthus and Ehrlich for producing some of the most inaccurate forecasts in history. Both failed to take into account improvements in agriculture and the "demographic transition", when population growth rates begin to fall as greater prosperity and female emancipation drive down birth rates.  But as we pass the 7 billion barrier the world enters a dangerous new phase, at risk of what the British government's chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, has called the "perfect storm" of food, water and energy shortages. Now, finally, the Malthusians may be proved right.  What the optimists sometimes ignore is the often precarious role of technology in keeping humanity fed. Since Malthus made his grim predictions, we have had three agricultural revolutions: the advent of technologies in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Jethro Tull's seed drill; the advances resulting from Gregor Mendel's 19th-century insights into inheritance; and finally the "green revolution" of the post-war decades - the development of new strains using systematic artificial selection and husbandry.  The brilliant, Nobel peace prize-winning work of Norman Borlaug and others in creating new varieties of short-stem wheat (less likely to blow over in a storm and rot) and "miracle rice" averted mass famines in asia in the 1960s.  The brutal reality is that, were it not for the green revolution, 2 billion people would be starving today. To feed another 2-3 billion on top of what we have now, we need a doubling in productivity. and this means, say scientists and even a growing number of renegade environmentalists, we are going to have to jettison our squeamishness about genetic manipulation.  at the John Innes Centre for plant research, near Norwich, Brande Wulff and his colleagues have been working on a new strain of wheat that is resistant to what has been called the "polio of agriculture". Stem rust is a nasty fungus that kills wheat and has been responsible for many famines. So feared was it, the Romans prayed to the god Robigus and sacrificed a red-furred animal every year to keep the plague at bay.  One of the triumphs of Borlaug's green revolution was to develop, using conventional hybridisation techniques, a stem-rust-resistant strain of wheat. For 40 years this kept southwest asia and much of africa fed. But in 1999 a new variety of stem rust emerged, in Uganda, to which the new strains have no resistance.  The Ug99 fungus has been sweeping across africa, north through Kenya and Somalia, and in 2005 crossed the Red Sea into Yemen.  "If it reaches the Punjab, which grows 19% of the world's wheat, we face a looming humanitarian crisis. It has been calculated that 200m people could die," explains Wulff.  To date, african farmers have tackled the threat with vast quantities of expensive and environmentally damaging fungicide, but this approach is not sustainable. What is needed is a variety of wheat that is immune to the disease, and here in Norwich they have made one.  It gets better: the wheat I am holding is not only immune to stem rust; it also happens to be highly drought-resistant - and africa is subject to often apocalyptic droughts. Could this be grown in africa? asia? "absolutely," everyone tells me.  The technology takes protective genes isolated in existing wheat varieties, cultivates them in bacteria and then inserts them into the DNa of the target plants. Here, they are also growing transgenic, blightresistant potatoes and nitrogenfixing wheat that would remove the need for costly fertilisers.  NGOs, aid agencies and Third World governments ought to be beating a path to the genetic engineers' doors. But they are not.  The reason is the continuing global resistance to GM technology, a hatred fuelled largely by NGOs such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and GeneWatch UK. So successful have these campaigns been that in recent years both Kenya and Zambia have turned away food aid because it contained GM products.  "The argument of the NGOs is that it is better to let people die of starvation than eat GM," says Professor Giles Oldroyd, an executive at the John Innes Centre. "I think these NGOs are responsible for thousands of deaths."  Mainstream greens detest what they persist in calling "Frankenfoods".  "This is inherently uncertain and risky technology," says Lord Melchett, policy director of the Soil association and veteran anti-GM campaigner. There is no way, he says, he will ever embrace GM. activists claim transgenic crops carry unquantifiable risks, such as the possible transfer of herbicide resistance to the wild plant population, creating an army of "superweeds".  The genetic engineers counter that these fears, while legitimate, have been addressed, and in any case conventional agriculture with its reliance on huge quantities of chemicals is hardly "natural".  In fact, there are signs that the anti-GM movement may be running out of steam. Here at John Innes they are in the second year of a GM field trial of blight-resistant potatoes, and despite substantial media coverage there have been no significant protests; certainly the days of shrieking white-suited activists tearing through experimental crops in the dead of night with scythes and strimmers see  
 Smartphone-using travellers, who have long suspected that charges for accessing data overseas are a rip-off, have found an unlikely ally - the chief executive of one of Britain's leading mobile-phone networks.  From July 2012, the wholesale cost of data - essential for browsing the internet, sending and receiving emails, and using social networking sites - is to be capped at 26p a megabyte (MB) across the EU, and the retail cost to consumers at 81p a MB. The intention is to limit what the competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, has called the "outrageous profit margins" enjoyed by telecoms operators. Now David Dyson, the chief executive of Three UK, has called for far deeper price cuts.  "We support the European commission's objective of bringing the cost of roaming data down to UK levels, but to achieve that they need to go further," he said. "They should focus on driving wholesale rates down to three cents (2.6p) a megabyte or less."  The call comes as research from Heilbronn University, in Germany, revealed that two in three British travellers routinely switch off the data-roaming facility on their phones. Those who don't risk what the industry calls "bill shock" - in one case, Robin Bayne, from Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, received a ?4,000 data bill after a two-week trip to america. When he claimed he had been misled on charges, the service provider, Orange, reduced the bill to ?500.  With electronic guidebooks, podcasts, travel apps and mapping technology revolutionising tourism, smartphones are now second only to passports as a travel essential - but the costs soon add up. The fee for 1MB of data overseas is between ?1 and ?8, depending on your location and provider. That will give approximately 15 minutes on Google Maps or 30 emails at 34kb each.  None of the phone companies we called would reveal its mark-up on data-roaming fees, but the discrepancies between charges in this country and overseas are staggering. O2 customers can buy 1 gigabyte (1024MB) of data access in Britain for ?10. Outside Europe, the company can charge as much as ?6,144.  So, is there a way to beat the rip-off charges? Yes. In fact, there are four:  For zero fees, switch off data roaming before you leave the country - on an iPhone, go to Settings, then General, then Network.  Use your provider's pay-per-day package.  Vodafone's Data Traveller, for example, cuts the cost to ?2 for 25MB.  Make use of local wi-fi hot spots. If your phone is unlocked, buy a local Sim card that gives access to data services.  chris.haslam@sunday-times.co.uk  Controversial full-body scanners of the type used at Heathrow airport have been found to fail up to 54% of the time in trials at Hamburg and two australian airports. The L3 ProVision scanner uses high-frequency radio waves - known as millimetre waves - to see through clothing and detect hidden items. Yet studies in Sydney and Melbourne involving 23,500 passengers showed false readings in as many as four in 10 scans.  Despite the apparent unreliability of the machines, which cost about ?62,500 each, Paul Retter, executive director at the australian Office of Transport Security, said they would be deployed at the country's eight international airports. That won't be the case in Germany, where a year-long trial of more than 800,000 passengers returned a failure rate of 54%, with alarms triggered by zips, folds in clothing and even perspiration. Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister, has shelved plans to roll out the scanners.  Meanwhile, Heathrow said: "The trial is ongoing, so we're not yet in a position to provide comment."  OVERHaUL FOR QM2  Cunard has announced a large-scale refurbishment of the Queen Mary 2, starting on November 24. Since its launch in 2004, the company flagship has received   
 I have an interest to declare this week, though I actually intend to argue against it. I come from a family that can trace its links with flour-milling back 600 years and has therefore benefited more than most from harnessing the power of water. My father ran one of the most famous mills depicted in western art: the one at Dedham, in Essex, once painted by John Constable. By my father's time it ran on electricity, but raising the floodgates after rain was still part of the job - the valley flooded if he didn't manage it in time. Built into the floodgates are eel traps, now disused because the eels have mysteriously disappeared. Gone, too, are the sea trout my father used to catch in the estuary, victims of a 1960s tidal barrage.  I thought I knew about all the compromises involved in taming a wild river. I was unalarmed by the prospect that we might need to compromise again in small ways in our quest for green, carbon-free energy by exploiting hydropower. But then I saw a shocking thing that made me think again. It was a picture of seven plump, healthy perch sliced in half by turbine blades on a river in Holland. It was on the cover of a report by the angling Trust into what is called run-of-river hydropower - small dams, weirs and in-river turbines, as opposed to power generated from big reservoirs, mainly in Wales or Scotland.  The circumstances in which the perch got chopped up are unclear, but the fact that they got so brutally sliced confounds two widely held beliefs; first, that small-scale hydro schemes are environmentally friendly and, second, that coarse fish, such as perch, pike and even minnows, do not migrate. In fact, anglers know that most coarse fish migrate to spawn, feed or move out of water that is either too warm or too cold. Shoals of minnows can be seen hurling themselves at weirs, and in France pike are regarded as migratory fish.  These erroneous beliefs used not to matter, but now they do. For the number of hydropower schemes submitted to the Environment agency (Ea) has risen from fewer than 20 to 100 a year and could exceed that because of the generous subsidised price offered by the feed-in tariff. and the Ea's guidelines for hydropower seem to have been drafted with little understanding of what one of its own advisers has warned could be a "looming tragedy" for fish populations everywhere - to the dismay of the Ea's own fisheries staff.  While it seems largely to be a myth that wind turbines kill birds - at least it seems they don't if the blades are large and slow - it is accepted that hydro turbines kill fish. a hydropower scheme on the Trent near Nottingham, licensed by the Ea, is actually allowed to kill 110 fish every 24 hours - up to 100 coarse fish and eels and up to 10 salmon and sea trout, of which the Trent has vanishingly few. The limits are unenforceable, unless Ea staff hang around trying to reassemble bits of minced-up fish.  The effect of hydro schemes on salmon, sea trout and other fish universally acknowledged as migratory is even worse than on coarse fish, for they have to run the gauntlet of more obstructions. On the west coast of america, the Fish Passage Center, a scientific body funded by the power companies, has found that 100 salmon smolts migrating downstream through a single turbine tend to be reduced to 15 by the time they reach the river mouth, not just as a result of being chopped up or bruised by the turbine blades, but because dams alter the flow and ecology o  
 Green energy plants are destroying our fish  NEWS P27 
 JOSEPHINE LISLE has barely slept since the government revealed deep cuts to solar panel subsidies three weeks ago.  The 71-year-old put down a ?4,500 deposit this summer on 16 panels to go in a field next to her East Sussex home, yet she won't be able to install them before the subsidies are slashed next month as she is still waiting for planning permission. "It's an absolute panic," Lisle said. "I'm chucking thousands of pounds of my savings away unless I can somehow get it done before the deadline, because it isn't worth doing on the lower tariff."  Customers aren't the only ones up in arms. The solar industry has been in revolt since the Department of Energy and Climate Change said it would reduce the rate paid to householders by more than half, from 43p per kilowatt hour to 21p, for new installations.  The change will come into effect on December 12 - just six weeks after the announcement and before the government's consultation on the topic closes on December 23.  The department claims it is reacting to an unexpected boom in solar panel installations, driven by falling prices and the lure of double-digit returns on offer through the feed-in tariff.  More than 100,000 families across Britain have solar panels on their roofs. The take-up accelerated 300% in the three months to October, according to government figures, eating into the ?867m subsidy pot.  Greg Barker, the energy minister, said: "The key thing is that I'm not closing the scheme, I'm reducing the tariff to a reasonable level. We suddenly had this bubble and huge growth in demand, and it's neither sustainable nor right that people should get these kinds of returns from a scheme funded by taxpayers."  The solar industry sees it differently.  although cuts to the tariff had been expected, the December deadline came as a shock. Solar firms warn that 25,000 jobs could be lost in a matter of months.  The CBI, the business lobby group, described it last week as "the latest in a string of government own goals".  Barker's department faces at least three separate legal actions. Solar Century, a panel installer, is leading a group comprising ardenham Energy, Encraft and Second Nature Partnership, which is seeking a judicial review of his decision. Friends of the Earth, the environmental charity, and Home Sun, another panel installer, are doing the same.  Solar Century's case rests on the argument that December's deadline is illegal because it pre-judges the outcome of the government's consult  
 LaST WEEK's letter "Renewables will pay rich rewards", from David Nussbaum, Dale Vince, Ben Caldecott and Juliet Davenport, illustrates the blinkered thinking of some renewable energy groups.  Let there be no doubt, the main purpose of solar and wind farms is to grind out cash for landowners and investors; whereas the public, including the very poor, are compelled to pay.  There is nothing wrong in making money - it's a question of how it is done. In these cases, electricity companies are forced to pay the investors whether the unpredictable levels of electricity produced are used or not. Huge amounts of wind power in particular are wasted in the small hours. The single greatest reason for an average bill increase of ?200 a year per household is to pay for these inefficient wind farms.  Efficient renewable energy can be excellent. There is, for example, enough wave and tidal energy surrounding Britain to supply our energy needs five times over. That is where our investment should go.  Philip Sullivan Frolesworth, Lutterworth 
 THE BUSINESS Support services Cleaning for the Home Office, engineering at the Royal Opera House, and painting and plumbing for Crawley borough council in West Sussex are just a few of the outsourcing services provided by Mitie. The Bristolbased company has 61,000 employees and sales of ?1.8 billion. Founded in 1987 as an engineering services group, it floated on the stock market the following year.  THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE Ruby McGregor-Smith Mitie has changed under the unorthodox leadership of Ruby McGregor-Smith, a chartered accountant who came to Britain from India as a child. Security, cleaning and maintenance are its core markets but the firm has diversified. a ?130m acquisition in 2009 saw Mitie become big in energy services, helping companies to cut their carbon emissions.  THE RESULTS Profits on the up The firm reports interim results this week. analysts forecast an 18% rise in full-year sales and a 14% jump in pre-tax profit to ?97m. Public spending cuts have helped Mitie win big contracts, including a ?455m deal for the cleaning, security and maintenance of courts in southern England. Some customers, such as drinks giant Diageo, have asked Mitie to provide more services.  THE FUTURE Overseas growth The company is seeking expansion opportunities overseas. Currently a tiny proportion of sales comes from foreign markets. as the government spending cuts continue, there will also be substantial work available in courts and prisons. The company's shares are up 20% over 12 months to 244p, giving it a market value of ?859m. 
 WE OWE it all to climate change. Scientists have suggested that the intelligence and adaptability of modern humans only arose because our ancestors faced repeated challenges from massive shifts in prehistoric climate that forced them to evolve.  The researchers have looked back over 2m years of human history and found that humanity has evolved and spread fastest during times of climatic instability - when the Earth has undergone rapid warming or cooling.  It means, they suggest, that Homo sapiens may be intrinsically adapted to cope with climatic complexity and rapid change rather than stability.  "Climate change has been a major player in our evolution," said Chris Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum and author of The Origin of Our Species.  "It created the conditions that encouraged our early ancestors to come down from the trees and later to spread out of africa and across the globe. It made us what we are today."  Details of the research will emerge this week at a conference on human evolution organised by the Royal Society.  The scientists are not suggesting that modern global warming is beneficial. "What intrigues them is the growing evidence that human evolution and climate change have been inextricably linked for hundreds of thousands of years," said co-organiser Rhiannon Stevens, of Cambridge University. Stringer has identified five crucial eras when big changes in climate seem to have accelerated humanity's genetic and social evolution. The earliest was about 2m years ago when the forests covering east africa, where the first humans evolved, dried out and turned to savannah. This led to the emergence of Homo erectus, an early human evolved for running and hunting in the open grasslands rather than for life in and among trees.  "  
 THE government's chief energy scientist has warned that vast areas of countryside will have to be covered in wind turbines, solar farms and biofuel plantations if Britain is to meet its renewable energy targets.  Professor David MacKay, chief science adviser to Decc, the energy and climate change ministry, has calculated that even if 10% of the country was covered with wind turbines, it would generate only a sixth of the nation's energy needs.  The problem with renewable energy, he said, was that it was "inherently diffuse" meaning huge tracts of land were needed to generate significant amounts of energy.  It was a problem, he said, that applied to all forms of renewables. Powering a single car on biofuels for a year, for example, "would take a strip of land 80 metres wide and 8 kilometres long".  Similarly, he calculated that if a country opted for solar power to "dominate" its energy supply, it would need to cover a third of the land in solar panels.  MacKay, a Cambridge physics professor, revealed his calculations at a meeting held at the Royal Society last week to discuss the future of solar power. His point, he said, was not to undermine the country's plans to meet 20% of energy demands from renewables by 2020. He simply wanted to make clear the scale of the engineering challenge and the environmental impact of covering so much land with turbines, solar farms or biofuel plantations.  "There's a general message, you can run through all renewables and you find that all of them are diffuse, so to make a difference they have to be country-sized," he said.  In his talk MacKay referred to more detailed figures contained in his book, Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot air.  There, he wrote: "Let's be realistic. What fraction of the country can we really imagine covering with windmills? Maybe 10%? Then we conclude: if we covered the windiest 10% of the country with windmills we would be able to generate 20 kilowatt hours per day per person."  This compares with Britain's energy consumption of about 125kWh per day per person - more than six times higher.  Britain already has 3,400 onshore and offshore turbines which last year supplied about 2.5% of the nation's power.  MacKay has also calculated the land needed to supply all Britain's energy with renewables.  In his talk he said: "We don't have to use wind alone but if all renewables are in the same ball park and if we want to have a renewable-dominated future, then the message is the same.  "Whatever mix of renewables you take, they all deliver about 2.5 watts pe  
 Ifound myself in Monaco last week at talks about a 2012 global summit on the "green economy", just as George Osborne, the chancellor, was making his autumn statement, with its radically un-green promises not to burden industry with social and environmental goals, its let-offs for high energy users, its continued attack on the planning system and its undertaking to review EU protections for the habitats of newts, bats and migratory birds.  I might have been persuaded that this dirty onslaught was necessary given the state of the economy had I not noticed the striking contrast between the aspirational thinking going on at the meeting hosted by Monaco - a small euro nation that might have been forgiven for being wholly preoccupied with the "debt storm" - and what was happening at home.  Just as striking was the large part played in the dialogue by developing countries such as China, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico about how the world's economy should grow out of recession. "We had to drag the north European countries to the table," one organiser told me. The United States was preoccupied, though it will engage next year. "The leadership and vision is coming from the south," he added. That is a sign of the times.  'a COMMITMENT TO We were in Monaco because a Brazilian president, in 2007, had invited world leaders to Rio de Janeiro to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in June 2012, and to review progress in dealing with global problems. a series of meetings were set up to draft an agreement that they could sign next year under the heading of the "green economy". Some of the most interesting proposals at Rio+20 - labelled "sustainable development goals" - have been put forward by Colombia and Guatemala. Some of the most interesting ideas GREEN SPENDING IS CLEaREST IN THE EaST, NOT THE WEST' about making the world's top companies report on their environmental impact come from Mexico and from a coalition of 50 companies led by the UK insurance giant aviva. So far, meetings on how to make the world's economy greener have been hosted by Monaco, Germany (four times), India and China.  What has Britain done? Britain was asked to do three things: to send David Cameron to Rio+20 next summer; to host a meeting on its themes; and to appoint a UK "green ambassador" for the summit. So far the "greenest government ever" has done none of those things. Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, to whom I spoke last week, still holds out the possibility that Cameron might go. Spelman is sceptical of the proposal for a new "UN Environment Organisation", which the EU has already agreed unanimously. as a Brit, I find this disconnection from the global conversation worrying.  The UK did not send anyone to the Monaco meeting on the "blue economy" (which focused on our depleted oceans). Some of the organisers were British, and a retired British official was present, but given our many overseas and maritime interests, it was a poor show. Where only 20 years ago we were a world leader, we are now Little Britain.  The commitment to making economies more green is most evident in the spending plans of the East, not West. South Korea allocated 84% of a stimulus package last year to green recovery measures - renewable technology, urban transport, water and so on - China allocated 33%, the US 12% (though i  
 PETROL and diesel cars and vans will disappear from Britain's roads by 2050, replaced by electric vehicles that get their energy from wind turbines and nuclear power stations, according to proposals put forward by Chris Huhne, the energy secretary.  He wants Britain's 30m or so cars and light vans, almost all powered by internal combustion engines, to be replaced by a new generation of batterypowered vehicles that can be recharged from low-carbon sources of electricity, such as wind farms.  The controversial scheme is set out in Huhne's new carbon plan, which describes how Britain might cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.  Its key underlying idea is that Britain will replace fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel in vehicles, or the gas used in heating homes and businesses, with electricity generated by low-carbon technologies, such as wind and nuclear.  If implemented, it will mean a huge increase in the demand for power by 2050 to about double that of today. Since that power will have to be green, the carbon plan can be achieved only through the construction of tens of thousands more wind turbines, along with new nuclear power stations.  Perhaps the greatest impact will be felt by drivers. In the plan, Huhne warns that road transport produces 130m tons of CO2 a year - almost a quarter of the nation's emissions. He wants that cut to between 20m and 40m tons by 2050.  The switch to new -technology vehicles will, however, have to begin much earlier than that, ideally in the early 2020s. Huhne said: "The average emissions from new cars will need to fall by at least a half by 2030."  The benefits would be potentially huge. Quite apart from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, it would also dramatically reduce urban pollution, blamed for about 500,000 premature deaths each year. It would also make cities much quieter because low emission engines make less noise.  However, such vehicles could cost significantly more, at least until the technology has advanced. The government would also have to oversee the rewiring of Britain's streets and car parks to provide millions of charging points for electric cars, which are seen as the technology most likely to succeed. In the report, Huhne said Britain would need at least 100 gigawatts of low carbon generating capacity by 2050. at the moment, Britain has only about 80 gigawatts of total generation capacity, and most of that is based on coal and gas.  He said: "Beyond 2030, as transport, heating and industry undergo electrification, lowcarbon power generation will need to rise significantly. Renewable electricity has the potential to provide 40% of power generation by 2030."  Such thinking is proving increasingly controversial, especially because most low carbon power generation systems,  
 aS a man endowed with an unnaturally large head and an ego to match, Newt Gingrich is frequently described as grandiose.  Last week alone, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives called himself a celebrity and boasted of commanding $60,000 (?38,000) a speech. He also suggested poor children should scrub floors to learn the work ethic and said that if elected president, he would give americans an online course in citizenship.  Yet as he stepped down from the stage after laying out his vision to Republicans from Polk County on a sleety Thursday night in Iowa, he seemed uncharacteristically unsure of himself.  a month from now Iowa will vote for a candidate to face President Barack Obama in next year's election. In the latest twist in the rollercoaster ride for the Republican nomination, Gingrich was speaking for the first time as the clear frontrunner.  "We were expecting a wave but this has been a tsunami," he said. "I have to confess this is disorienting. It's such a rapid change that we're having to rethink our own internal operations and where we are."  Gingrich has rocketed from 3% in polls two months ago to 38%. He tops three of the four key primary states - Iowa, South Carolina and Florida - and is catching up with Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in New Hampshire. In Iowa he is 15 points ahead.  as one candidate after another has risen to the top only to implode - culminating in Herman Cain's decision yesterday to suspend his camaign - the race is narrowing into a tussle between two old-timers: Newt v Mitt.  Many of the 400 people attending the Polk County dinner said the 68-year-old Gingrich had not even crossed their mind until the last couple of weeks. They had gone through flings with Congresswoman Michele Bachmann until she said one crazy thing too many; Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, until a series of what americans call "flubs" in debates (last week he even got the voting age wrong); then Cain, the former pizza executive and Baptist minister, until a bevy of women alleged sexual harassment.  "I liked Perry until I just didn't see him debating well, then Cain, well ..." said Pattie Johnson, a nurse. "With Newt, the more I hear, the more I like. He's rising to the top like cream and I think he'll stay there."  For a thrice-married man with a reputation as a philanderer, it is startling that Gingrich should be the main beneficiary of Cain's shenanigans. "Newt is just the latest in a series of primal screams the party's going through," shrugged an aide to Romney. "Given the half-life of these surges, the question is can he last another 30 days?" Others disagree. "We're past the flavour of the month phase," said Kevin McLaughlin, chairman of the Polk County Republicans. "The mood of people after listening to him was of unbridled enthusiasm."  There is little love lost between the professorial know-all Newt and the suave businessman Romney.  David Corn, of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, compared it to a high school brawl. "You have the big male on campus, the student body president who looks good - Romney. and then you have Gingrich, the snarky nerdy guy who knows how to get under the other fellow's skin."  Round one will be the Iowa caucuses on January 3 when one of america's smallest states will gather in homes, churches or community centres to listen to candidates' representatives and cast their ballots.  With polls showing as many as two-thirds of the state's 600,000 registered Republicans undecided, it presents an unexpected opportunity for Gingrich and Romney, neither of whom had a campaign office there until last week "Iowa is going to be ground zero for national politics for the next four weeks because there is tremendous uncertainty even who will be in the top three," said Matt Strawn, chairman of the Iowa Republicans.  "My advice to all candidates is spend as much time here as possible."  Four years ago, Romney campaigned hard in Iowa, devoting much time and $10m, only to lose heavily to Mike Huckabee, another Baptist minister.  Burnt by that experience, he has played down Iowa this time, convinced he cannot win when 60% of the voters are evangelical Christians, many of whom would never vote for a Mormon. Instead, he has focused his efforts on more liberal New Hampshire, which votes a week later.  He has made only five visits to Iowa in this campaign. However he did not give up altogether, said Doug Gross who chaired his campaign last time. "He's playing rope-a-dope - acting like he didn't care while they've been mounting a major effort," he said. "Iowa is a big deal. If he wins here he could seal the nomination.  I'd be advising him to go all out in Iowa now."  One advantage is the fact that with so many social conservatives in the field, the evangelists have been unable to agree on a candidate.  "My own team can't agree among themselves, let alone all the groups," said Bob Vander Plaats, head of Family Leader, a conservative organisation. "The dilemma we have is if we in the conservative base don't coalesce around one candidate, our voice will be fragmented and a Mitt Romney skates to victory."  Last week Romney broadcast his first Iowa television commercials and opened a large campaign office. The Sunday Times found it deserted apart from two men at desks.  Some Romney advisers fear that if he steps up campaigning in Iowa, he will raise expectations and his campaign will be damaged if he loses again.  "Our focus is on the national," said one. "There's a path to the nomination for Romney that doesn't involve Iowa. Whereas Gingrich must win here as he doesn't have the organisation we have nationally."  Compare