The Guardian
Brown freezes doctors' pay at economic 'crossroads'
Prime minister announces pay freeze for doctors, dentists and hospital consultants as well as senior managers across most of the public sector
Gordon Brown drew the election battle lines around the economy today, announcing a freeze on public sector pay and declaring he had the strength of character to lead the country to recovery.
Brown stressed the country was at a "crossroads" and faced "crucial decisions" in the months ahead. He warned that "ideologically-driven" Tory plans for cuts risked tipping the country back into recession.
The prime minister said he would save £3bn by freezing pay for doctors, dentists, and hospital consultants as well as senior managers across most of the public sector.
Brown also used his address to confirm that the budget will be in two weeks' time, on 24 March, leading to speculation that the prime minister will announce the date of the election on 6 April.
Speaking at Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf, the same venue where the Tory leader, David Cameron, attacked Labour's record on the economy last week, Brown said the "resolve" and urgency felt during the 2008 banking crisis needed to be displayed again now.
He admitted that in hindsight, it was now clear just how close the world economy came to "economic meltdown".
The economy remained in "choppy waters", said Brown as he cautioned against any belief that the recovery would automatically continue.
"In my view we are nearly there ... but there is nothing preordained or automatic about the upturn either here or abroad," he said.
Brown turned the tables on those who accuse him of lacking character by insisting that the past 18 months had been a period demanding the "greatest test of character" as the country was brought through a "dreadful" economic storm.
The prime minister said: "I have heard people say it is about policy and I have heard other people say it is about character. But I don't think you can separate the two. It is for other people to judge.
"But I believe that character is not about telling people what they want to hear but about telling them what they need to know. It is about having the courage to set out your mission and take the tough decisions and stick to them without being blown off course, even when the going is difficult."
He told the audience that tough decisions needed to be made to keep the economy on course to recovery.
He said: "We face crucial decisions. The stakes are high. We dare not risk the recovery. We are weathering the storm and now is no time to turn back. We will hold to our course and will complete our mission."
This included a "disciplined approach" to pay and benefits right across the public sector.
Speaking on the day that the senior salary review bodies publish their recommendations for public sector pay rises, Brown announced he intended to freeze the pay of senior staff in the civil service, the military, the judiciary, the health service and the pay of consultants.
Salaried GPs and dentists – those employed by hospitals or other GP/dentist contractors – will receive a 1% pay rise, while contractor dentists and GPs – those that run practices and may employ other people – will effectively have their pay frozen.
He said that the government remained committed to halving Britain's record £178bn deficit within four years and that the curbs on public sector pay would save more than £3bn by 2013-14.
The government has decided to accept some, but not all, of the review body's recommendations.
It ignored a recommendation to increase the minimum pay for senior civil servants by £2,300 to £61,500 and has also rejected a recommendation to increase the pay for NHS managers earning less than £80,000 by 2.25%.
The announcement is likely to provoke fury among public sector unions just days after it was announced MPs will see an automatic rise of 1.5% in their pay.
The FDA, which represents senior ranking civil servants, described the decision as an "insult" to hardworking staff.
Brown reminded the audience that he has already ruled that government ministers will eschew pay increases of any kind next year.
The prime minister also stressed that, while the worst of the recession is over, the economic recovery remains "fragile" and could be undermined if spending cuts were pushed through too quickly.
Brown emphasised the need to ensure the recovery is balanced and sustainable on a global basis as he called for the G20 to inject "new urgency into the delivery of the international agreements we have reached".
He said: "I believe that around the world we have to rediscover that sense of urgency and collective ambition that guided us a year ago. For it is our choices – and the wisdom resolve and judgments we bring to bear in making them – at both a national and global level – that will determine whether we secure a lasting recovery and indispensable reforms to safeguard our economic future."
Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, said: "Gordon Brown's speech shows he is leading with a weak hand.
"It's very difficult to see how the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust can campaign on his stewardship of the economy after the greatest bust for decades. The only reason he is, of course, is because the Conservatives are even worse."
He added: "The budget must clearly spell out where Labour intend to make spending cuts in order to tackle the budget deficit."
- Gordon Brown
- Economic policy
- Green shoots
- Economics
- Public sector careers
- Public sector pay
- Civil service
- Doctors
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Let us jog your memory, Eliza ...
Former MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller denies knowing about mistreatment of detainees. Didn't she read the papers?
To be fair to Britain's security services, the gathering of intelligence can be the most difficult of jobs.
The claim on Wednesday from the former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, that the US hid from the UK security services the torture they were meting out to the Muslim men they had labelled terrorists, comes as a bit of surprise. In a lecture given in the Palace of Westminster, she related:
"I said to my staff, 'Why is he [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners and terrorists was that they never said anything …
"They said the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times."
She went on to claim that "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing."
It did not require a high degree of James Bond-style espionage for MI5 to realise – much earlier than she says it did – that Guantánamo and other US sites were places where torture was practised.
Before her retirement in 2007, then, all that Manningham-Buller needed to have been doing was read a decent newspaper or use a web search, either of which would have produced headlines and articles that would have pricked the curiosity of even the dullest of minds. Never mind those who see themselves as among the sharpest and brightest.
So, for the benefit of the former intelligence chief, the list of reporting of disturbing allegations and evidence of torture employed by the US and its allies in the war on terror starts here – but please add your own in the thread below:
Guardian: Father fears for son held by US in Afghanistan, 10 February 2003
Guardian: Briton held as terror suspect says CIA threatened torture, 4 October 2003
Guardian: Officials 'knew of beatings at Guantánamo', 15 May 2004
Observer: US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp, 16 May 2004
Guardian: US abuse could be war crime, 5 August 2004
Times: Britons accuse US Government of 'torture' at Guantánamo Bay, 28 October 2004
Times: Guantánamo report reveals 'torture', 1 December 2004
Guardian: Guantánamo Briton 'in handcuff torture', 2 January 2005
Independent: My nightmare of torture and assault, by Briton held in Guantánamo, 30 January 2005
Washington Post: Va. terror suspect testifies to torture, 20 October 2005
Guardian: Hunger strikers allege 'force feed torture' at Guantánamo, 21 October 2005
Guardian: Torture claims 'forced US to cut terror charges', 25 November 2005
ABC News: History of an interrogation technique: Waterboarding, 29 November 2005
Telegraph: Torture law victory for terror suspects, 9 December 2005
Guardian: US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects, 25 January 2006
Washington Post: Guantánamo force-feeding tactics are called torture, 1 March 2006
Guardian: Evidence against terror suspect extracted by torture, hearing told, 10 May 2006
Times: Bush admits that terrorist suspects were held in secret prison network, 7 September 2006
Guardian: Cheney condemned for backing water torture, 28 October 2006
- Torture
- Guantánamo Bay
- al-Qaida
- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
- MI5
- MI6
- Human rights
- United States
- Dick Cheney
- George Bush
- Global terrorism
- Terrorism policy
- UK security and terrorism
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One in seven schools 'inadequate'
Judgments from schools inspected last term lead teachers' unions to accuse Ofsted of 'moving the goalposts'
One in seven secondary schools inspected last term was branded inadequate under a new regime honing in on teaching quality and pupil progress, the schools inspectorate, Ofsted, revealed today.
Only half of all the 2,140 schools visited were judged to be better than satisfactory. Teachers' unions attacked the inspectorate for "moving the goalposts" as the overall proportion deemed inadequate more than doubled, rising from 4% to 10%.
Ofsted said the figures did not reflect the quality of provision across all the country, because it had focused more on weaker schools.
But a quarter of the schools it inspected between September and December last year got a lower grade than at their previous assesment. Another quarter improved and half stayed the same.
Of those 2,109 that had been ranked before, 10% were judged inadequate. Under the old regime, 5% of them had received that grade.
The chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, said the new framework was about "raising expectations". But Chris Keates, general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, said the results were misleading.
"The outcome that more schools would be deemed inadequate following the introduction of the new framework was entirely predictable," she said. "It is misleading and inaccurate to claim that Ofsted has 'raised the bar'.
"In reality, what Ofsted has done yet again is to move the goalposts. It is the equivalent of preparing to play a cricket match and turning up to find you are expected to do the high jump.
"Ofsted is losing the confidence of schools, staff and parents by building an inspection system on constantly shifting sands."
Good and outstanding schools are now inspected less frequently, while inspectors spend twice as long monitoring lessons.
Gilbert said: "These results are what we expected, given the sharper focus of the new inspection framework and the sample of schools inspected in the first few months.
"We introduced this new framework because we believe the upward trend in the quality of provision in recent years has masked wide variations.
"We wanted to concentrate more resources on the less-effective schools, particularly those with pupils in danger of underachieving, and offer clear recommendations for improvement.
"The new inspections have been designed to help schools improve so that children and young people get the best possible education.
"By focusing on weaker schools, introducing more classroom observation, giving more detailed recommendations and emphasising progress, the quality of teaching, and learning and overall achievement of all pupils, Ofsted is helping raise standards and promote improvement for all groups of children."
The Liberal Democrats said the results were not good enough. The party's schools spokesman, David Laws, said: "Labour has had 13 years to get a grip on education, but thousands of children still attend schoolthat are not considered to be providing good standards.
"In spite of the controversy about whether these figures can be compared with earlier years, the bottom line is that half of schools inspected were not good enough. We need more well-led and properly funded schools if we are to address the disadvantages faced by so many young people in Britain."
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Charles Allen to run EMI music arm
Former ITV boss to become executive chairman as troubled firm prepares last-ditch bid to raise £100m from investors
Former ITV boss Charles Allen is taking control of EMI's music business, home to acts including Coldplay and Robbie Williams, after the surprise departure of chief executive Elio Leoni-Sceti.
Leoni-Sceti will be leaving the troubled company at the end of March after just 18 months with the firm. His departure comes at a critical time for EMI, as the cash-strapped business puts the finishing touches to a new business plan which its private equity owners can present to investors.
Allen, who joined EMI as a non-executive director in January 2009, will become executive chairman of the music company. EMI Music Publishing will continue to be run by chairman and chief executive Roger Faxon. Allen's previous experience at ITV, which he created by merging Granada with Carlton Communications, is likely to increase speculation that EMI is being lined up for a merger with Warner Music.
EMI was bought by Terra Firma, run by City financier Guy Hands, for £4.2bn in 2007 but has run into severe problems, with key acts defecting and profits crashing. The company has suffered turbulent relations with some of its top acts, most recently ending up in court with Pink Floyd and plunged £1.75bn into the red last year. Crucially, unless Terra Firma can find more than £100m from investors to satisfy the terms of its loan from Citigroup, the bank which advised the private equity firm on the buyout and provided the lion's share of the funding, EMI will end up in the hands of its banks.
Leoni-Sceti, a former executive with consumer products group Reckitt Benckiser, was asked to come up with a plan that would persuade investors to get involved. That business plan is due to be presented and new money raised by the end of June. But Leoni-Sceti said today: "My job here is now done and it is time for me to move on."
Allen said he had been closely involved in the creation of the company's new business plan. "Elio and I have worked together for the last 14 months and he has decided that he has done what he came to do," he said.
He said that new business plan would be "very much an extension of things we have been doing", adding: "If you look at what Terra Firma did, they came in and rationalised the cost base and we have continued to tighten the business. But more importantly what you have now got is a real focus on how do we drive new music, a focus on hits. These things do not happen overnight, you have to nurture new talent but the early signs are pretty positive."
"The problem, the issue, is getting our message through. This is a good company with good people, we have got more to do but we are on track to deliver. We have a challenged cost structure."
But the storm clouds keep gathering over the business. Terra Firma is currently locked in a bitter legal fight with Citigroup, claiming the bank tricked it into offering too much for EMI by failing to inform it that other potential buyers had pulled out. A US judge will rule by the end of the month whether the case will be heard in the US or UK.
Allen said: "Would it be better if that wasn't there? Yes, but the team have got their heads down and just got on with it."
Hands made headlines when he bought the business, as a result of his at times heavy-handed dealings with artists. Since then the new management at EMI has been building bridges. Asked whether he would be involved in dealing with EMI's artists, Allen said he had already been meeting them. "I have spent a lot of time with the talent and the management," he said. "It's like ITV. Would you deal with Simon Cowell or Ant and Dec as chief executive? Yes you would. Here you would be dealing with Robbie Williams or Lily Allen or whoever."
One of the key acts that Allen will have to charm is Coldplay. The band's next album is rumoured to be the last under the existing deal with EMI, although last month the band's frontman, Chris Martin, said the band was "signed for a lot".
"I think there is a good relationship with Coldplay," Allen added. "They are really talented and really focused and great to work with. The team they deal with on a day-to-day basis is the team that's there delivering for them."
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UK 'least socially mobile' in developed world
The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says
Children from poor families in Britain have a greater chance of struggling on low incomes than their counterparts in the west's other rich countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said today.
Highlighting the UK's lack of social mobility, the Paris-based thinktank said the chances of a young person from a less well-off family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents was "relatively low".
The findings came in the OECD's latest Going for Growth report, which said the developed world faced a "daunting task" in restoring public finances to health after the most severe recession since the second world war. It stressed the need for stronger financial regulation and structural reform to labour markets in order to lay the foundations for sustained recovery.
"Policy reform can remove obstacles to intergenerational social mobility and thereby promote economic equality of opportunities across individuals," the OECD said.
Labour and the Conservatives have repeatedly clashed recently on whether it is now easier for young people to escape from poverty, and the issue is likely to feature strongly in the election campaign.
The OECD, which has more than 30 developed-country members, said the UK's record – along with a number of other rich countries – was unimpressive. "Mobility in earnings across pairs of fathers and sons is particularly low in France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, while mobility is higher in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada."
It added that there was a hefty wage premium associated with growing up in a better-educated household and a corresponding penalty for being raised in a less-educated family.
"The premium and penalty are particularly large in southern European countries, as well as in the United Kingdom."
In the UK, the OECD found that 50% of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers have over low-earning fathers is passed on to their sons. By contrast, in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries, less than 20% of the wage advantage was passed on.
Government ministers are likely to use the report to back policies such as Sure Start, intended to provide help in the earliest years of childhood to poor families, and to the expansion of higher education. The Conservatives say that 13 years of Labour government have resulted in less social mobility than before.
OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan said all governments facing ballooning deficits should seek efficiency gains from public spending, particularly in education and health, and avoid "harmful" labour and capital taxes.
He also said that the response to the crisis has left "new challenges in the form of moral hazard and weak competition" in the financial sector.
"Regulators across the OECD need to step up ongoing efforts to strengthen financial market regulation," he said in the 250-page report.
Larry Elliottguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Violence in Pretoria threatens World Cup
With only 93 days to go before the start of the 2010 World Cup, residents in Mamelodi townships are threatening to disrupt the tournament. They are demanding that the government immediately supply them with houses, electricity, running water and flushing toilets
6 Music drops Bruce Dickinson
Rock show with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson goes from 6 Music while Radio 2's Radcliffe and Maconie cut to three nights
Bruce Dickinson's BBC 6 Music rock show is to be axed and Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie's Radio 2 show cut to three nights a week in the latest changes to the two stations.
Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has presented a rock show on the digital station since it launched in 2002. It is the first 6 Music show to be axed since the BBC announced plans to close the station at the end of next year.
Radcliffe and Maconie's award-winning weeknight show, which has been running on Radio 2 since 2007, will be cut from four to three nights a week.
Their Thursday night outing will be replaced with a new live music strand, In Concert, which previously aired on Radio 1.
The Radcliffe and Maconie Show will switch to three nights a week from 12 April. Dickinson's 6 Music show, which currently airs on a Friday evening, will finish at the end of April.
6 Music is one of two BBC digital stations, along with the Asian Network, which will be closed following BBC director general Mark Thompson's strategy review last week.
Radio 2 is also undergoing a transformation, having been instructed by the BBC Trust to put more speech content and social action programming in its daytime schedule and to reverse a drop among its older listeners.
Breakfast show host Chris Evans has been the target of listeners' ire since he replaced Sir Terry Wogan. The first official Rajar figures for Evans's new slot will not be released until May.
But the Radcliffe and Maconie Show and Dickinson's 6 Music show are made by the Manchester-based independent production company Smooth Operations, which is run by John Leonard. Part of UBC Media, it also makes Radio 2's Mike Harding Folk Show and long-running comedy Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show on BBC Radio 4.
"I'm hugely disappointed but we are looking forward to other opportunities when the BBC moves [BBC Radio 5 Live] to Salford," said Leonard.
Radcliffe was named music broadcaster of the year at last year's Sony Radio Academy Awards.
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Samis can teach climate survival
As global warming and habitat degradation accelerates, people indigenous to the Arctic circle say they have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive
Elina Helander-Renvall comes from Utsjoki, a place so obscure that even many Finns have little idea where it is. Utsjoki, or Ochejohka, Uccjuuha, and Uccjokk, depending on which local language you are speaking, is Finland's northern-most municipality. Straddling the border with Norway, it shivers, unregarded, deep inside the Arctic circle, a few icy miles from the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Utsjoki, population 1,034, is home to Finland's largest concentration of Sami speakers, the indigenous people once loosely known as Lapps who have eked out an itinerant existence herding reindeer across the frozen wastes of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia since the last Ice Age. Nearly 50% of Utsjoki's population are Sami. In Finnish terms, it's the closest this eternal minority has got to being the majority.
Born and raised on the margin though she was, Helander-Renvall's message these days is strictly mainstream. As accelerating climate change and other man-made environmental degradations create growing alarm across the planet, the Sami people have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive, she says.
"There is a lot to learn from the Sami, they have the traditional ecological knowledge, they really know about nature," said Helander-Renvall, head of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples Office at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. "They have the most precise knowledge about the weather conditions, about the plants, the diet, the resources. The Sami people have an ethical relationship with nature; a respect for nature that also has a spiritual side."
The Arctic region is uniquely vulnerable to global warming, but if it is to weather the storm, it would do well to adopt Sami methods of land and resource management, communal co-operation and communication, local knowledge and best practice, she said.
In order to keep a reindeer herd out of trouble, for example, a knowledge of different types of snow could be decisive, Helander-Renvall said. Muohta (ordinary snow) or oppas (untouched snow) might be safe. But the presence of sievla (wet snow), skarta (thin, ice-like snow layers) or ceavvi (a hard layer that the reindeer cannot penetrate in search of lichen) could dictate a life-saving change of route or decision to move camp.
Local knowledge will also be vital to the large-scale industrial development on the fast-expanding oil and gas fields of western Russia's Yamal peninsula, and for the burdgeoning commercial and tourism industries in the Scandinavian north. Knowing where it is safe to build, how to site the foundations for a new road, airstrip or pipeline, what terrain to avoid, and how to do so responsibly while protecting biological diversity will all be increasingly important. "We need to preserve and transfer indigenous knowledge to future generations," Helander-Renvall said.
Professor Monica Tennberg of the Arctic Research Centre in Rovaniemi said the Sami had shown notable ability to adapt to changing climate conditions. "We've seen how the community adapts, for example finding new ways to deal with floods. We've seen better co-operation, better municipal leadership, better communications, better early warning systems," she said. Adverse effects of climate change on pasture and traditional herding trails had been met with new rotation and migration patterns and also by a tighter communal discipline.
The Arctic as a whole faces enormous challenges. Broadly speaking the region is warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, said Paula Kankaanpaa, director of the Research Centre, with local "hotspots" that fare even worse.
Symptoms include reduced sea ice; the opening of blue-water sea passages both east and west in summer, north of Canada and Russia; increased levels of carbon-carrying organic waste in the Arctic Ocean caused by melting tundra; coastal erosion due to increased wave activity; loss of habitat for large mammals such as seals and polar bears and growing disruption of indigenous human communities.
Governments still resist the idea that Arctic indigenous peoples have something unique to contribute. Canada announced this month that it will convene a foreign ministers' meeting of the five Arctic Ocean states (Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark/Greenland) in March "to encourage new thinking on responsible development" and "reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region".
To their dismay, Arctic indigenous people's organisations, including the Sami, Inuit and Inuvialuit, were not invited.
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News quiz: Wacky Wednesday
Take a walk on the odd side
Rachel Corrie civil action begins in Israel
Parents of American activist killed by Israeli bulldozer seven years ago take fight for justice to Haifa courtroom
A court today began hearing a civil suit brought against the Israeli government over the death of Rachel Corrie, the US activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago.
The case, brought before a Haifa court by Corrie's family, challenges the official Israeli version of events in which the military said its troops were not to blame. The family hopes the hearing will be a chance to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. If the Israeli state is found responsible, the family will press for at least $300,000 (£201,000) in damages.
Before the hearing began, Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, said the family had been on a "seven-year search for justice in Rachel's name".
"I think when the truth comes out about Rachel, the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal," he said.
Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised into her daughter's death.
"I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said.
The family's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, will argue that witness evidence shows the soldiers saw Corrie at the scene, with other activists, well before the incident and could have arrested her or removed her from the area before there was any risk of her being killed.
He will argue her death was either due to gross negligence by the Israeli authorities or was intentional.
Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed are to give evidence.
The first witness to give evidence was Richard Purssell, a Briton who was an ISM volunteer along with Corrie. He described how he had gone to Gaza to see the situation for himself and to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian houses.
He said the ISM told him it was a strictly non-violent organisation. "Our role was to support Palestinian non-violent resistance."
He briefly described the moment Corrie was killed. "Rachel disappeared inside the earth and the bulldozer continued for 4 metres and then reversed," he told the court.
Corrie, who was born in Olympia, Washington, travelled to Gaza to act as a human shield at a moment of intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians.
On the day she died, when she was just 23, she was dressed in a fluorescent orange vest and was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. She was crushed under a military Caterpillar D9R bulldozer and died shortly afterwards.
A month after her death the Israeli military said an investigation had determined its troops were not to blame and said the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and did not intentionally run her over.
Instead, it accused her and the group she was with, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), of behaviour that was "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous."
The army report, obtained by the Guardian in April 2003, said she "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death."
But several witnesses offered a different version of events, saying the driver had seen her but continued anyway, hitting her with the bulldozer blade. She was severely injured and died shortly afterwards in an ambulance.
While Corrie was in the Palestinian territories, she wrote vividly about her experiences. Her diaries were later turned into a play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has toured internationally, including in Israel and the West Bank.
Rory McCarthyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Berezovsky wins Litvinenko libel case
Russian oligarch awarded damages over claims he arranged polonium poisoning of friend and former KGB spy
The exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was today awarded libel damages of £150,000 over "savage" allegations he was behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned Russian dissident who was his close friend.
In a chaotic high court battle in London, the 64-year-old tycoon successfully argued his reputation had seriously been damaged by a Russian state television broadcast in April 2007.
The programme, available to view for free by satellite in the UK, included an interview with a man who claimed he had been offered £40m by Litvinenko – who was working for Berezovsky until his death – to falsely confess to being a KGB hitman tasked with killing Berezovsky with a poisoned ballpoint pen.
When he refused to take the bribe, the man said, he was drugged and then forced to make a false testimony used to bolster Berezovsky's asylum application in the UK.
The purpose of this lie-filled testimony, the man said, was to "prove" the oligarch would be in mortal danger if he returned to his homeland.
His evidence was indeed crucial in proving Berezovsky's political refugee status and he was granted asylum in 2003, the court heard.
In the same programme the presenter suggested that Litvinenko, who died from poisoning with radioactive polonium in London in November 2006, was killed at Berezovsky's behest because Litvinenko was a witness to Berezovsky's fraudulent claim for political asylum.
The logic was that Litvinenko would be an important witness for Russian prosecutors investigating allegations that Berezovsky's asylum was based on lies, and thus Berezovsky wanted him dead – just in case.
Berezovsky claimed he was a victim of "selective editing" after the programme began with a clip of him saying: "If I particularly dislike someone I'll kill him." The remark was clearly "ironic or jocular", said his barrister, Desmond Browne QC.
The oligarch pulled up to court most days during the trial in a blacked-out limousine and sat in court flanked by his security guards.
Giving evidence, he explained why he took action. "I cannot imagine a more offensive and damaging allegation. It would be damaging enough to allege merely that I bribed or drugged a man so as to force him to give false evidence in order to help me secure my asylum status; that I was accused of Sasha's [Alexander Litvinenko's] murder, and to think people may believe it to be true, was, and still is, deeply upsetting.
"I have been portrayed as a man whom people should fear; this affects my relationships with everyone who is not already a close personal friend."
In his judgment today, the judge, Mr Justice Eady, said: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it."
Berezovsky, who has an estimated wealth of $1bn (£667m) according to Forbes magazine, told the court that Litvinenko was a dear and loyal friend who had saved his life "on more than one occasion" – chiefly by refusing to assassinate him in 1998 when Litvinenko was a KGB agent.
The grateful Berezovsky then became Litvinenko's benefactor, arranging his family's escape to the UK. Once in London he gave Litvinenko a house and thousands of pounds a month in "research grants".
To back up his case, Berezovsky enlisted a roster of high-profile witnesses including Litvinenko's widow, Marina.
After Litvinenko fell ill in 2006 after ingesting a radioactive isotope in a London sushi bar, Berezovsky told British journalists that his friend had been poisoned because he was an enemy of the then Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The two-week trial was almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Browne quipped: "That must be Mr Putin on the line."
At least three Russian prosecutors were in court each day to assist Vladimir Terluk, the man accused of giving the contentious interview about Berezovsky's bogus asylum claim. They whispered in Terluk's ear, passed him notes and smirked or laughed as the evidence was heard.
At one point they asked for the opportunity to cross-examine Berezovsky. "I thought that a step too far," said Eady in his judgment.
Terluk, a Kazakh who came to the UK to seek asylum in 1999, had been left to defend the libel action alone and without a lawyer after the Russian Television and Radio Company refused to take part.
He denied being "Pyotr", the man in the offending broadcast, yet maintained that everything Pyotr said was true, including "that [Berezovsky's] associates tried to organised the falsification of the assassination plot with the purpose of obtaining refugee status by Mr Berezovsky and his associates … and the late Mr Litvinenko himself was the one who was trying actively to implement that falsification".
In his judgment, Eady said: "I have no doubt that Pyotr was indeed Mr Terluk and that he must have known he was being filmed." But Terluk did not himself accuse Berezovsky of murdering Litvinenko, which was, Eady said, "the overall message conveyed by the programme".
Moscow has made no secret of its desire to extradite Berezovsky, who has been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin since he fell out with Putin in 2000.
In April 2009 Russian prosecutors charged Berezovsky with "knowingly false denunciation of a involvement in a serious crime" – a charge peculiar to Russian law that relates to the allegedly fabricated evidence in support of his 2003 asylum claim.
One of the Russian prosecutors admitted to the Guardian he hoped Berezovsky would lose the case so his asylum status would be called into question by the Home Office and he would be returned to Russia to face trial.
They were also intent, Eady ruled, on blackening Litinvenko's character. "He was portrayed as something of a wild man. It was said that he was an unreliable fantasist who was prone to emotional outbursts." The purpose of this "wholesale attack", said Eady, was to undermine the credibility of evidence Litvinenko gave in support of Berezovsky's asylum claim.
Speaking after the judgment, Berezovsky said: "I have no doubt that, in making this programme the purpose of RTR and the Russian authorities was to undermine my asylum status in the UK and to put the investigation of Sasha Litvinenko's murder on the wrong track. I am pleased that the court, through its judgment, has unequivocally demolished RTR's claims. I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."
He was not optimistic about the prospect of recovering the £150,000 damages but said: "This was never about money." Mr justice Eady said in his judgment that "the quanitification of the damages may be academic in the sense that there are likely to be formidable obstacles in recovering the money".
Berezovsky is no stranger to London's law courts. In 1997 he sued the US magazine Forbes after it printed an article that asked: "Is he the Godfather of the Kremlin?" He won despite only 2,000 copies of the 785,000 sold worldwide having been purchased in the UK.
That case is often cited as an example of libel tourism – foreigners taking advantage of England's libel laws, which tend to favour the claimant by putting the burden of proof on the defendant.
In 2008 he began a £2bn legal tussle with another London-based oligarch, Roman Abramovich, over allegations Berezovsky was forced to sell shares in a string of huge Russian state companies. He is currently fighting the widow of his friend and business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili for half of the dead man's fortune.
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US praises Cameron over Ulster
State department makes a point of thanking Conservatives as well as Brown government for role in transfer of policing powers to Stormont
David Cameron has been praised by the US administration for giving "strong support" to the deal between the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin that will see policing and criminal justice powers devolved to Belfast next month.
In an important boost for Cameron, who has faced criticism for forming an alliance with the anti-agreement Ulster Unionist party, the US state department made a point of praising the Tory leader for his constructive role.
Philip Crowley, a spokesman for the US state department, said last night: "Obviously, for a milestone like this, a number of players have played significant roles. We, the United States, including Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton, have been actively engaged in helping Northern Ireland reach this point, as have a number of officials in the British government, including not only the Brown government but also the strong support that David Cameron and the Conservative party have given to the Hillsborough agreement."
The praise from the state department will be particularly significant because Crowley's remarks were scripted and were made in his opening remarks about Northern Ireland in the wake of the yes vote in the Stormont assembly yesterday.
Crowley gave a warm welcome to the overwhelming support for the final stage of the Good Friday agreement despite opposition from the 18 UUP members of the assembly.
Crowley said: "Devolution [of policing and justice] will mark a major milestone in achieving the aspirations of the Good Friday agreement, and the St Andrews agreement will help cement the hard-won gains over the past decade."
Washington had made clear to the Tories that it would make a point of praising Cameron, who issued strong support for the deal agreed between the DUP and Sinn Féin at Hillsborough Castle, County Down, last month. Cameron has faced criticism for interfering in the peace process by forming an alliance with the UUP, giving the struggling party the strength to oppose the policing vote.
Sir Reg Empey, the UUP leader, said he could not support the deal because he felt that the four-party power-sharing executive was not functioning properly. The UUP also criticised London for bullying their party.
George Bush, the former US president, telephoned Cameron last Friday to urge him to put pressure on Empey to endorse the deal. Congressman Richie Neal, the chairman of Friends of Ireland, today challenged Cameron to act as an "honest broker".
Cameron told Bush and US administration officials that he strongly supported the deal. But he said he could not force local parties in Northern Ireland to vote one way or the other.
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Tech chiefs' letter attacks internet bill
ISPs, Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo sign letter saying clause threatens free speech and could lead to blocking of sites
Amendments made to the digital economy bill by the House of Lords threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said today.
The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers – BT, Orange, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups, academics and the technophile television host Stephen Fry, objecting to amendment 120A to the bill, which was added to the bill last week with support from Liberal Democrat and Conservative peers.
Ministers had been seeking powers to amend copyright law and impose conditions or fees where infringements were taking place.
But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats succeeded in removing the measures from the bill last week, replacing them with a more specific amendment handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites.
In a letter to the Financial Times , the online giants argue that the rules, if they become law, would fail to tackle copyright infringement as intended. The amendment has "obvious shortcomings", the 16 signatories say.
The letter says: "Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take.
"There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option."
The amendment had been roundly criticised last week when it was added, as critics pointed out that it could be used to block sites such as YouTube.
But Lord Tim Clement-Jones, one of the backers of the amendment, said last week that the intention was to deal with "cyberlockers" – a system that allows individuals to swap large files directly, rather than sending them by email or storing them on websites.
The House of Lords passed the amendment last week, replacing a clause that would have given broad powers to ministers to change the Copyright Act to respond to new forms of online infringement without the need for primary legislation.
But the letter's signatories called the amendment "bitterly disappointing", and explained: "Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law-making."
Responding to the letter, the chief executive of UK music industry body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, said that the amendment provided a "clear and sensible" way of dealing with illegal downloading.
Taylor added that the signatories to the FT's letter have acknowledged that illegal downloading has to be dealt with.
"The amendment adopted by the House of Lords provides a clear and sensible mechanism to deal with illegal websites," he said.
"Contrary to the claims in the letter, service providers would in every case be able to ensure that the decision as to whether a site should be blocked is made by the high court. The court would be required to consider the extent of legal content on a website, any impact on human rights, and whether the website removes infringing content when requested. So the suggestion that the clause would lead to widespread disruption to the internet or threaten freedom of speech is pure scaremongering.
"The signatories to the letter recognise that dealing with illegal websites is a legitimate concern, and have argued in the past that action against illegal downloading should focus on commercial operators. Removing unfair competition from clearly illegal websites will encourage investment in legal online services and improve the legal internet experience for everyone."
The digital economy bill is expected to be pushed through before parliament is dissolved for the general election, widely expected to happen on 6 May. If it reaches a second reading by early April, when an election would be called, it could go into the "wash up" – the process at the end of a parliament when bills that have not been passed are hurried through. The government would need cooperation from the opposition to achieve that with the bill – but it is not clear whether the Tories, who have objected to elements of the bill, as the "landline tax" of £6 a year to help pay for next-generation broadband, would support it.
Lord Clement-Jones had said the provisions, approved by 165 votes to 140, would protect the creative industries by preventing access to websites where films and music were being provided illegally.
He told peers: "I believe this is going to send a powerful message to our creative industries that we value what they do, that we want to protect what they do, that we do not believe in censoring the internet but we are responding to genuine concerns from the creative industries about providing a process whereby their material can be satisfactorily accessed legally."
Lord Clement-Jones said the "blanket nature" of the government's original intention was "objectionable". He argued the new proposals were "more proportionate, specific and appropriate".
The bill extends the role of media regulator Ofcom to include communications infrastructure and media content, and to appoint providers of local news in ITV regions.
It also includes powers to stop under-age children getting hold of violent computer games and contains measures to help the switchover to digital radio.
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Gifts of the gab
From Petronius to John Steinbeck and Evelyn Waugh, the novelist considers books that have mastered the art of dialogue, ensuring that 'they always speak to us, not least between the lines'
Born in Chicago but educated in England, Frederic Raphael is probably best known as the author of Glittering Prizes, and its sequel Fame and Fortune, both of which he adapted into acclaimed TV and radio series starring Tom Conti as writer Adam Morris. This month, he publishes a third volume in this series, Final Demands, which finds Morris contending with middle age and its discontents and which he has also adapted for BBC Radio 4.
Raphael is also a prolific author of some 20 other novels, as well as history books, biographies and film screenplays. Last year he completed a strikingly contemporary translation of Petronius's Satyrica, (published by Carcanet, priced £12.99).
Buy Frederic Raphael books at the Guardian bookshop
"Dialogue brings a novel to life. It is possible to compose fiction without it, just as Georges Perec was able to write an entire book without using the vowel "e", but one had better be a genius to affect such forms of composition. And once is quite enough. It may also be possible to contrive great blocks of prose, in which landscapes are described and psychological states analysed as never before. But a writer who cannot make characters talk, and have their conversations require us to listen to them, is locked into airless formality.
"Dialogue tells us what people say and it hints at what they do not. It encourages readers to bring a book to life by enticing their participation in it. They then supply their own reading of how loudly or softly, truly or falsely, words are exchanged. When a writer allows his characters to talk among themselves, he grants them their freedom. If only because the subconscious can then chime in, his premeditated scheme never wholly dictates what someone will say.
"Dialogue in a novel is like stained glass, the surrounding prose is there to frame and support it. Even Marcel Proust, who certainly delivers paragraphs of dense prose, used dialogue brilliantly; and silence too. His greatest character, the Baron de Charlus, is arrogant, garrulous and caustic. But when an arriviste hostess finds the nerve to banish him from her house, his inability to find any kind of crushing retort signals the moment when the narrator, Marcel, is able to stand away from his mentor's shadow. Thenceforth he is free to depict him with merciless accuracy. Dialogue can be used in various ways and various registers, but a writer who masters its nuances will produce novels that always speak to us, not least between the lines."
1. Appointment in Samarra by John O'HaraO'Hara was a keen observer, above all of the Pennsylvania Dutch inhabitants of the town he called Gibbsville (a permeable disguise for his birthplace, Pottsville). He could mimic local speech and vocabulary so that the reader can overhear it. The story of the life and death of Julian English is a masterpiece of erotic suggestion and narrative economy.
2. The Satyrica by Petronius ArbiterPetronius, who lived during the reign of Nero, who ordered his suicide, wrote a sprawling picaresque novel of which only the chapters concerning the gross Trimalchio, a millionaire ex-slave, have survived in their entirety. Petronius was a master of elegance and of its low cousin, scorn. The adventures of Encolpius, his anti-hero, and his louche companions are salacious and farcical by turns, but they are brought to life by the often absurd and obscene chat which comes directly from the gutters of Roman life. As I discovered when translating Petronius, dead languages can still have raucous voices.
3. Babbitt by Sinclair LewisLewis was nicknamed "Red", more for the colour of his hair and livid complexion than on account of his politics, but his capacity for catching the vocabulary and aggressive philistinism of middle-western America was as boundless in print as it was, we are told, in person. In company, he was a mimic who did not know when or how to stop; in print, he made accuracy into satire. Babbittry entered the American language as the style of salesmanship and humbug to which John Updike surely paid rhyming tribute in his creation "Rabbit" Angstrom, a salesman in the Lewis tradition.
4. A God and His Gifts by Ivy Compton-BurnettThe last novel published in Ivy's lifetime was one of the first I ever reviewed. I am glad that I recognised genius when I saw it; a limited genius perhaps, but there it was. Ivy's novels were always a tapestry of dialogue, formally phrased but full of hidden poisons and traps. Her milieu was the Edwardian upper middle-class, on the surface polite, savage underneath. She described very little, but lust, violence and greed all emerged from the seemingly prim dialogue. Melodrama was never more elegantly articulate.
5. A Severed Head by Iris MurdochMurdoch was a philosopher and a romantic, with a sensuous intelligence and a keen ear. Her novels contain slabs of rather too colourful landscape and gushing description, but her great strength lay in the clever edginess of her conversations. I wrote the movie script of A Severed Head and it was, I confess, an easy job: unlike most writers', much of her dialogue sounded good out loud. I remember, for instance, an unfaithful wife saying, "It's all or nothing" and the husband's answer: "Let me recommend nothing." Facile? You do it.
6. Cakes and Ale by Somerset MaughamMaugham is regularly dismissed and as regularly resurrected. He had no grand opinion of his own work, but he learnt early on, when writing plays, that a capacity for amusing dialogue supplied the best means for capturing an audience. Cakes and Ale (the title comes from Twelfth Night) proves that the literary world of the 1930s, with its cliques and claques, is not very different from that dominated by today's Michaels and the ubiquitous Antonias. It is said that Hugh Walpole soon came to recognise his own voice, and character, in Alroy Kear and, no doubt, Thomas Hardy in Edward Driffield. What is a novel of manners without a serrated edge?
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John SteinbeckWhen I first opened Steinbeck's great novel about "the Okies" – migrant sharecroppers from the 1930s dust-bowl of Oklahoma – I found their dialogue, phonetically reproduced on the page, quite incomprehensible. But read it aloud and the voices of the Joad family come out fighting, as it were. The family's trek to golden California has plenty of cruel incident, but when I think of Rose of Sharon, for instance, I hear her name "Rosa-sharn" the way Tom Joad said it, and says it.
8. Scoop by Evelyn WaughMost pundits now proclaim Brideshead Revisited as Waugh's enduring masterpiece. Its purple passages have their nostalgic glamour, but isn't there something lamingly absurd in all that well-spoken snobbery? Waugh does so love a Lord. The earlier Scoop is a satire on pre-war Fleet Street and has a savage larkiness that never visits Bridehead. What does one remember in particular? The line "Up to a point, Lord Copper", the nearest an employee dares come to disagreeing with his tyrannical (Northcliffian) boss.
9. The Golden Fruits by Natalie SarrauteSarraute was one of the "new novelists" who set out to renovate French fiction in the early 1950s. Her novel, like Cakes and Ale, is a satire on the literary world, this time in Paris, written almost entirely in dialogue. Its title refers to a novel which is only talked about in her text. It is first saluted as a masterpiece and then slowly picked to pieces by critics and envious friends of the author.
10. A Roman Marriage by Brian GlanvilleThe story of an English girl seduced and enchanted by an Italian lover is told with appropriate irony by a man who knows and loves Italy almost as well as England. His novel Along The Arno is early evidence of his ability to bring characters to life by reporting them, so to speak, with curt accuracy. A Roman Marriage is a comedy of incompatible manners, Anglo-Saxon and Latin. I confess, if it is a confession, that A Roman Marriage is dedicated to me. It is not a sign of corruption to speak well of one's friends, not least when their work deserves it.
© Volatic Ltd 2010
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'Jihad Jane' faces terror charges
US woman accused of plotting to murder unnamed Swede and raising money for her cause on the internet
An American woman who called herself Jihad Jane has been charged over an alleged plot to murder a Swedish man.
Colleen Renee LaRose, 46, from Philadelphia, is also accused of conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, making false statements and attempted identity theft.
Irish police yesterday arrested seven people over an apparent plot to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had a bounty put on his head after depicting the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog – though Vilks has not been named as LaRose's alleged target.
Garda sources said the four men and three women were in their mid-20s to late-40s. Some of them arrested hold Irish citizenship and some are from the Middle East. Converts to Islam were among them, the Irish police said.
Vilks's cartoon, drawn in 2007, prompted al-Qaida to place a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head and offer a 50% bonus to anyone who slit his throat to ensure he was "slaughtered like a lamb".
At least three Swedish newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – published the cartoon today.
The US justice department declined to comment on whether the two cases were connected.
David Kris, the head of the department's national security division, said: "The indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face."
LaRose, who also called herself Fatima LaRose online, allegedly posted a comment on YouTube in June 2008 saying she wanted to help "the suffering Muslim people".
According to the indictment filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania she sent emails to unnamed co-conspirators offering to become a martyr as well as to use her American background to avoid detection.
The indictment accuses LaRose of agreeing in March 2009 to marry a co-conspirator from a south Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe. He is alleged to have urged her to go to Sweden, find the unnamed Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause and lied to FBI investigators.
LaRose was arrested after returning to the US in October 2009 on a charge related to the theft of a US passport, according to court documents.
If convicted on the four counts in the indictment, which was dated 4 March 2010, LaRose could face a sentence of life in prison and a fine of $1m (£670,000).
Michael Levy, the US attorney in Pennsylvania, said the case showed that terrorists were looking for Americans to join their cause. "It shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."
The Obama administration has grown increasingly worried about Americans and foreigners living in the US taking up the cause of anti-American militants.
Two recent cases have fuelled those concerns: the arrest of a Chicago man accused of helping plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks and an Afghan immigrant living in Colorado who pleaded guilty to plotting a bomb attack on the New York subway system.
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Driver discusses runaway Toyota Prius
Driver says his hybrid car accelerated out of control on a US freeway on Monday
Industrial production falls amid snow
Some economists believe the weak outturn was a blip and expect production to have bounced back in Februar
Britain's manufacturers suffered their biggest fall in production in six months at the start of the year when snow storms brought parts of the country to a standstill.
Factory output fell by 0.9% in January, official figures showed this morning, taking City economists by surprise who had pencilled in a 0.3% gain. This was the biggest monthly drop since last August and reversed December's strong 0.9% increase.
The pound fell more than half a cent to $1.49 on the news, which dented hopes that the economic recovery might have picked up more speed in the first quarter of the year. The figures were released as Gordon Brown warned in a speech: "Although the economy is growing, the recovery is still in its early stages and remains very fragile."
The Office for National Statistics said the decline came after a strong December and poor weather in January.
Some economists believe the weak outturn was a blip and expect production to have bounced back in February.
"Snow will have physically obstructed workers at manufacturers and their end customers from getting to work," said Alan Clarke at BNP Paribas. "Similarly deliveries in and out of businesses will have been impeded. We believe this was a temporary blip and a sharp snapback is likely next month. Past episodes of extreme snow have experienced an offsetting bounce when the big thaw arrives."
In the three months to January, manufacturers ramped up production at the fastest rate in nearly four years.
But Colin Ellis at Daiwa was more sceptical about industry's prospects. "The risk is that at least part of January's weakness reflects the soft underbelly of the economic recovery, and is another signal that GDP growth will struggle to pick up to around 3% by the turn of the year, as the Bank of England expects. At the very least, today's data mark an inauspicious start to 2010."
Overall industrial production, which also includes mining and utilities, fell by 0.4% in January, also the largest drop since August. The decline was less severe than in manufacturing because households cranked up the heating during the cold spell.
Hopes that the cheaper pound will power the UK to an export-led economic renaissance suffered a blow yesterday with the news the trade gap widened sharply in January.
"Industry now looks unlikely to drive any significant pick-up in GDP growth in the first quarter. What's more, with the latest trade figures still showing few signs of any real boost from the lower pound, the outlook for the export-sensitive industrial sector remains pretty fragile," said Jonathan Loynes at Capital Economics.
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Venables posed trivial risk, psychiatrist said
Evaluation of Venables before his release in 2001 concluded the likelihood of the killer re-offending was minor
A psychiatric evaluation of Jon Venables carried out before his release from prison concluded that he posed a "trivial" risk to the public and that the likelihood of him re-offending was "so negligible as to not amount to a serious consideration".
The document, which was prepared by a leading psychiatrist in 2000 and is excerpted in today's Times, also noted that Venables had made "exceptional psychological progress" and come to terms with his part in the murder of James Bulger in 1993.
"The Jon Venables of today is a very different person to the Jon Venables aged 10," the report noted. "It has been a very important part of his rehabilitation so far that he has come to terms in a wholly realistic way with the awfulness of his behaviour."
It emerged last week that Venables, who was given a new identity and released on licence in 2001, has been recalled to prison following "extremely serious allegations".
Media reports over the weekend suggested that Venables, now 27, had been returned to prison in connection with child pornography offences. It has also been suggested in the press that Venables has become mentally fragile, has been known to drink heavily and use drugs, and has revealed his true identity to others.
Although the psychiatric report estimated that the chances of Venables being rehabilitated were "exceptionally high", it stressed that his progress depended on him being able to maintain his anonymity and continuing to receive the "appropriate support and guidance".
It also recommended that he be released from juvenile custody rather than placed in the prison system, where exposure to drug taking and criminals would prove a "very major setback".
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, has refused to bow to pressure to disclose the reasons for Venables's recall to prison, and has been supported by the judge who granted the former prisoner anonymity.
Lady Butler-Sloss, the former president of the high court's family division, reiterated "the enormous importance of protecting his anonymity now and if he is released, because those who wanted to kill him in 2001 are likely to be out there now".
She said: "This young man may or may not be tried. He may or may not have committed offences. There is, of course, at least the possibility that he has committed no offence.
"And consequently, he may therefore be allowed again to be out (of jail) on licence."
James Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, has accused the government of treating the issue like a political football and of closing doors in her face.
She told ITV's This Morning that the days following the revelation of Venables' recall had been "a massive rollercoaster".
Fergus confirmed she found out about Venables's recall when officials visited her home in Kirkby, Merseyside.
"Any question I have asked them, I have had no answers and it's about time now I got some answers," she said.
"I am sick of them closing doors in my face. It's about time they started telling me what I think I should know. As James's mother I have a right to know."
However, Straw, who is due to meet Fergus later this week, said releasing further information was "not in the interests of justice" as it could threaten the fairness of any future trial.
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Ask Tom: your dilemmas answered
Lonely Planet's Tom Hall answers your questions on worldwide travel. This week: is Colombia really a safe destination and can you do Cairo in a day?
Email Tom for help planning your next trip
Why is it that we hear so little about Colombia? I know that they had trouble years ago with drug gangs etc, but I've heard that it's settled now and is an absolutely beautiful country. A couple of friends have travelled away from the usual coastal areas to the main coffee area around Armenia and said the Andean scenery was stunning. I'm thinking of going in the summer and would like to go to the central area, not the touristy coast. Can you help?
Name and address supplied
Once the South American country to avoid, Colombia is continuing a recent come-back, and is now far safer with a wild mix of destinations that take in the Andes, the Caribbean, the Amazon and the Pacific. The Guardian listed it as one of the destinations of the decade, and its South America correspondent only warned against the remote areas.
One of the great Andean destinations, actually, is Bogota, one of South America's most engaging capitals. The cobblestone core of La Candelaria is a student-filled area with a wonderful free museum of Botero's plus-sized sculptures and cafes selling canelazo tea (spiked with aguardiente), and the sushi bars and salsatecas around northern neighborhoods like Zona Rose and Parque 93 are for the dress-up crowd.
The classic Colombian route still hugs the coast, taking in Cartagena, Caribbean beaches and then hitting an island or two. If you'd rather take in the attractions of the interior, you could do a loop out of Bogota first heading north via colonial towns like Barichara and Mompos (or Mompox) to Cartagena. If you want to do the jungle trek to Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City), then you can head north-east from here to Santa Marta to arrange the hike. Then you can head back south to Medellin to explore the Zona Cafetera – the coffee lands that your friends were rightly raving about - and the nature reserves around Manizales and the Valle de Cocora outside Salento. You can reverse again at Cali, after you've visited the archaeological ruins at Tierradentro and San Agustin, before returning to Bogota via the striking landscape of the Tatacoa Desesrt. Ciudad Perdida is an ancient Tayrona site you trek in to over three days.
Provided you don't go too far off the beaten track, you're likely to come away thinking Colombia feels as safe as anywhere else in South America, though frequent military checkpoints are a reminder of a less stable past. Apart from the Colombian tourism authority's snappy assertion that "The only risk is wanting to stay", the main concern is of theft when out and about in big cities. Take taxis after dark and seek local advice on any no-go areas.
Are there any Buddhist monasteries near Nara in Japan that people can visit and then stay the night? If so, can you recommend an authentic one?
Marie Hynes, Ireland
Here are a few authentic options to try near Nara, recommended by the Japan National Tourist Office
• The temple at Hosenji, 40 miles and a couple of hours by train.
• Closer is the Soto International Zen Center at Nanyoji, 10 miles from Nara.
• Taizoin is located in north-west Kyoto but gets good reviews.
• The Temple Lodging in Japan website lists a number for Nara.
I am travelling to Cyprus in May and was considering going to Cairo on a daytrip. Is it safe for westerners and can you recommend a tour company?
James Mullaney, by email
These tours take advantage of Cairo's proximity to Cyprus – flying from Pafos takes less than an hour. It's a pretty breathless day, requiring an early start and taking in the Pyramids and the Sphinx before lunch. After a bite to eat, usually in a centrally-located hotel, it's off to the Egyptian Museum, sometimes with time for a quick Nile cruise and a couple of compulsory stops at shops for "demonstrations" of their wares. You'll get back to your hotel in the small hours. The trips run during the summer season. Cairo is a safe and exciting city and there's certainly no risk involved other than frustration at the time you spend stuck some of the Egyptian capital's traffic jams and not having longer to explore further. Regency Travel is the main company running this tour, charging around £324 for the all-inclusive day trip, but I don't have any experience of using them. If any readers do, please get in touch.
Your help would be hugely appreciated to plan our summer holiday. We would like to spend two weeks in Austria over the summer. A rough itinerary would be Vienna or Salzburg for two-three days, around eight days hiking (with some rest days in between) and then finish up in a really nice hotel for three days for some well needed R&R. For the hiking, we would like to see the best that Austria has to offer - stunning mountains, lakes, meadows, rural villages etc. We are both quite fit but don't want any hiking that would involve a lot of experience or technical climbing skills. We would like to stay in authentic Austrian B&Bs with homely food or stunningly located serviced mountain huts. What areas/rough itineraries would you recommend?
Also, do you have any recommendations for companies that transfer your luggage, as this is on option we are seriously considering? And we would like to finish up in a really nice hotel with spa and excellent food in a gorgoeous location ...
Carol Houlihan, by email
I asked Austria expert and guidebook author Neal Bedford for a few suggestions. He says:
"If they're looking for lakes and mountains, then they have the choice between Carinthia or the Salzkammergut. Both will be busy in July. The Salzkammergut is easily accessible from Salzburg, and offers some great hiking, for instance around Dachstein (near the former celtic settlement of Hallstatt), where there are cable cars to high altitudes and mountain huts all around. Or, if they're travelling by car, they could traverse the Grossglockner road in Osttirol, while heading from Salzburg to Carinthia, and end their drive at Weissensee."
The location, with a lake at 995m and chairlifts into the mountains with hiking all around is both fit for your purpose and and very traditionally Austrian.
"From there, they could drive east to Styria/Burgenland and the region's thermal spas. Bad Blumau was designed by noted Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and is a pretty funky place, but cheaper options include spas at Loipersdorf and Bad Waltersdorf. From there, it's an easy couple of hours by car or train to Vienna."
For more on Austria, visit: austria.info/uk
Tom Hallguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
