Natural gas has role in UK energy mix | Letters

January 16, 2018, 9:15 am

≫ Next: Stop and search not the solution | Letters

≪ Previous: Ban heavy fuel use in sensitive waters | Letters

40% of UK primary energy was derived from natural gas in 2016, a 50% increase from 1990, writes Ken Cronin

Your editorial (Fracking’s day may have passed, 10 January) was keen to downplay the role of onshore gas in the UK’s future energy mix, and was deeply concerning. Natural gas has a role to play for many decades, and this is backed up by the National Grid, the government and other forecasters. 40% of UK primary energy was derived from natural gas in 2016, a 50% increase from 1990. In the UK, a projected annual gas demand of 68bcm in 2030, which is 90% of 2015 economy-wide consumption, is in keeping with the Committee on Climate Change’s fifth carbon budget. Natural gas is the largest energy source for UK homes and businesses, providing us with heat, power and vital feedstocks needed for our industries.

The site at Balcombe is not a site that will use hydraulic fracturing as there is not a need to – that was made clear by the company. You also refer to Ineos wanting to access gas in sensitive areas – this is despite the company confirming they have no plans to access site of special scientific interest (SSSI) areas for the purposes of the survey being carried out in the East Midlands, and this being confirmed by the governing authority, the local council.

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Stop and search not the solution | Letters

January 16, 2018, 9:15 am

≫ Next: Lessons to be learned from Carillion’s collapse | Letters

≪ Previous: Natural gas has role in UK energy mix | Letters

Last year black people were stopped by the Metropolitan police on 30,000 occasions without any further action

David Lammy is right to express scepticism about the mayor of London’s recent enthusiasm for the increased use of stop and search (Lammy says Khan wrong to increase use of stop and search, 15 January). For five years Londoners have been told that stop and search was being better targeted. Yet last year black people were stopped by the Metropolitan police on 30,000 occasions without any further action being taken. That’s hardly “intelligence-led” policing.

Polling by YouGov for the Criminal Justice Alliance found that three quarters of black, Asian and minority ethnic Londoners aged 16-30 think that stop and search is targeted unfairly at their communities. Almost one in three say it deters them from thinking about working for the police.

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Lessons to be learned from Carillion’s collapse | Letters

January 16, 2018, 9:15 am

≫ Next: Fast & Furious Live: it's got ice, tanks, a plane, a submarine – and lots of explosions

≪ Previous: Stop and search not the solution | Letters

Readers respond to concerns over pensions and the wider supply chain after the insolvency of construction company with 450 public sector contracts

You report that Carillion has a pensions deficit of £600m (Scramble to save jobs as Carillion crisis deepens, 16 January). How is it possible for companies to allow this to happen? It not only causes members of the pension schemes to lose the value of their savings, but results in the pensions lifeboat fund having to cover the parent company’s failure to discharge its responsibilities to fund the pension scheme. Why are companies that mismanage their pension funds in this way not only allowed to do this, but also awarded government contracts? Why not simply rule out any company with a significant deficit from being allowed to bid for government contracts?

It also highlights how little has changed since Robert Maxwell in the way companies like Carillion today and BHS under Philip Green are still able to ruin workers’ lives by failing to provide the promised pensions. Companies cannot arbitrarily reduce workers’ pay, but it appears they are able to fail to fund their pensions as a contractual benefit. Company pensions should be much more clearly separated from the parent company and tighter actuarial control applied to avoid deficits which are inexcusable.
Ian Reissmann
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

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Fast & Furious Live: it's got ice, tanks, a plane, a submarine – and lots of explosions

January 15, 2018, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Steve Bell on Carillion's continued troubles – cartoon

≪ Previous: Lessons to be learned from Carillion’s collapse | Letters

As the fast-car phenomenon spawns a live show, our writer pulls in for a backstage tour

The Liverpool Echo Arena looks like it is in the grip of a military coup, one in which some international playboys and some camp policemen have unaccountably become embroiled. There are toolkit buggies and gigantic tanks, slicked-up sports cars and Beemers all dressed in white, as if they’re wearing giant nappies – but those are just LED coatings, to make them light up like fast-moving car Christmas trees.

This is the rehearsal for Fast & Furious Live, a tyre-shredding extravaganza that has cost £25m to put together. The arena is 50 metres by 25, which would look enormous for any normal purpose. But for driving cars in, the sheer level of accuracy required just to go from one bit to another, let alone chase each other and have near scrapes, is absurd. It’s like asking someone to do open-heart surgery with a baseball bat.

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Steve Bell on Carillion's continued troubles – cartoon

January 16, 2018, 12:12 pm

≫ Next: The Guardian view on returning the Rohingya: a bad deal, worsened by haste | Editorial

≪ Previous: Fast & Furious Live: it's got ice, tanks, a plane, a submarine – and lots of explosions

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The Guardian view on returning the Rohingya: a bad deal, worsened by haste | Editorial

January 16, 2018, 10:09 am

≫ Next: The Guardian view on Carillion’s collapse: no hiding place | Editorial

≪ Previous: Steve Bell on Carillion's continued troubles – cartoon

Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed to repatriate the 650,000 refugees who have fled violence in Rakhine state within two years. Many are concerned – and rightly so

The 650,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled what the UN human rights chief has called “a textbook case of ethnic cleansing” must have the right to return to their homes in northern Rakhine state, Myanmar. To say otherwise would be to concede to those who forced them out – the security forces and militias who have raped and beaten civilians, burned houses and killed even infants. Authorities say the campaign is directed against militants who attacked police, but the civilian toll speaks for itself. Despite this, some of the Rohingya now living in wretched conditions across the border in Bangladesh have said they wish to go back.

It is equally clear that refugees must not be forced to return. Many more of them, according to NGOs supporting them, are determined never to go back or are terrified of doing so without guarantees of their security, property, livelihoods and freedom of movement. Some were persuaded to return after escaping previous waves of violence, only to find their lives in peril again. Previous episodes of displacement and return “do not inspire confidence”, the House of Commons international development committee has warned, noting the failure to consult refugees and expressing its grave concerns about plans to send them back.

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The Guardian view on Carillion’s collapse: no hiding place | Editorial

January 16, 2018, 10:09 am

≫ Next: The Victorian slums are back – and housing developers are to blame again | David Olusoga

≪ Previous: The Guardian view on returning the Rohingya: a bad deal, worsened by haste | Editorial

It’s clear what went wrong with the giant outsourcing company. Those responsible must pay the penalty

The smoke from Carillion’s billion-pound disaster is beginning to clear and the wounds are starting to hurt. Subcontractors do not know when they will be paid what they are owed or if they will be paid for work outstanding. As a result they are having to make people with mortgages and car loans redundant. Councils are making panicked arrangements to cover school dinners. Ministers are making urgent arrangements to replace a major defence contractor. Accident investigators are moving in. Yet it is clear enough what went wrong. The urgent matter now is to understand why it did, and act to stop it happening like this again.

The roots of the crisis in private finance projects lie in austerity. The dramatic fall in the number of public sector contracts after the coalition came to power in 2010 and abruptly slashed funding for schools and other public projects intensified competition between the major suppliers. Margins were cut, profits eroded, and the number, rather than the size, of contracts became the way of generating cash flow. No surprise then that when two of Carillion’s biggest building projects, the new hospitals in Liverpool and the West Midlands, hit problems, Carillion itself was in trouble. That may explain why ministers handed it a further £2bn of contracts after the first of three profit warnings last summer. Meanwhile Carillion’s bankers were getting nervous. Reports suggest that the state-owned RBS was the first creditor to say “no more”.

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The Victorian slums are back – and housing developers are to blame again | David Olusoga

January 15, 2018, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Bankrupted by giving birth: having premature twins cost me everything | Jen Sinconis

≪ Previous: The Guardian view on Carillion’s collapse: no hiding place | Editorial

The housebuilding of the 19th century paved the way for slum tenancies. As inequality rises, miserable living conditions have returned

Same place, different time. It was in the early 1990s that I first walked down Falkner Street in Liverpool. Twenty-five years later and I’ve been back to make the BBC Two series A House Through Time, which tells the story of a single house and the generations of people for whom it was home.

Thinking back to the 1990s, when I was a student in Liverpool, I struggle to remember ever taking much notice of the city’s grand Victorian houses. Part of what made them unremarkable was that they were where many of us students lived and partied. It was only when friends studying in other cities came to visit, and were astonished by the grandeur of the houses local students called home, that we were reminded that these elegant terraces had been built for an altogether better class of occupant.

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Bankrupted by giving birth: having premature twins cost me everything | Jen Sinconis

January 15, 2018, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: An Ancient Greek idea could foil Brexit’s democratic tragedy | Nicholas Gruen

≪ Previous: The Victorian slums are back – and housing developers are to blame again | David Olusoga

After Jen Sinconis had twins 16 weeks early, requiring millions of dollars to save their lives, bills drove her family into debt

Why does it cost $32,093 just to give birth in America?

My journey into motherhood began 11 years ago. My husband and I had been married for two years, and we got the surprising news 12 weeks into the pregnancy that we were having twins. Everything was great until I went into premature labor at just 24 weeks. My placenta detached and I was hemorrhaging. I was rushed to the hospital and my children were born two hours later. At 16 weeks early, they were classified as micro-preemies, weighing in at 1lb 6oz and 1lb 14oz.

It’s hard to imagine what a 1lb baby looks like. The boys were smaller than a beanie baby. Their skin was translucent, still covered with a downy hair, their eyes were fused shut, they hadn’t developed cartilage yet so their ears were just little flaps of skin, and their thighs were about the size of my pinky finger.

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An Ancient Greek idea could foil Brexit’s democratic tragedy | Nicholas Gruen

January 16, 2018, 2:00 am

≫ Next: Sitcoms seem stuck in the 70s. Is there still a place for them in today’s world? | Jack Bernhardt

≪ Previous: Bankrupted by giving birth: having premature twins cost me everything | Jen Sinconis

Given the chance to think on each others’ views, we become more tolerant: a citizens’ assembly is how to fight illiberalism

There’s a chasm between the will of the British people as expressed in their 52% vote for Brexit and their considered will. It turns out that ordinary Britons deliberating with their peers think things through, “unspinning” much of the surrounding media hysteria.

In late 2017, a group of universities selected 50 people by lot to be representative of ordinary Britons in a “citizens’ assembly”. Between the referendum and the end of two weekends spent deliberating on Brexit, a group exemplifying the referendum’s 52:48 Brexit vote had swung to 40:60 against.

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Sitcoms seem stuck in the 70s. Is there still a place for them in today’s world? | Jack Bernhardt

January 16, 2018, 4:22 am

≫ Next: Britain’s shameful treatment of Chagos islanders must end | Benjamin Zephaniah

≪ Previous: An Ancient Greek idea could foil Brexit’s democratic tragedy | Nicholas Gruen

The sitcom’s gig might be over, with audiences’ lust for comedy being served by competitive baking shows and reality TV

It’s always the stupidest questions that stick in your head. Does Vin Diesel mean “Wine made out of petrol” in French? Do Shetland ponies feel inadequate compared to regular horses? Do Henry Bolton and his racist girlfriend actually exist, or are they just very active figments of Nigel Farage’s imagination? The one that has been going around my head recently is one that’s borne out my own insecurities about my career choices, and it’s one that’s been nagging at my brain since I caught the last few minutes of the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special this year: what’s the point of sitcoms today?

That’s unduly mean to Mrs Brown’s Boys, really – I know that Brendan O’Carroll has worked hard developing the character of Mrs Brown, almost as hard as the rest of the cast has worked on developing ways to avoid the British tax system. The existential “what is the point of sitcoms” crisis was less triggered by the quality of the episode, and more by the achingly traditional end credits, where Mrs Brown leads the cast in bows to the studio audience.

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Britain’s shameful treatment of Chagos islanders must end | Benjamin Zephaniah

January 16, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: What happens when the jobs dry up in the new world? The left must have an answer | John Harris

≪ Previous: Sitcoms seem stuck in the 70s. Is there still a place for them in today’s world? | Jack Bernhardt

A bill going before parliament today will cut the prohibitive cost of UK citizenship for families, victims of a disgraceful exile

I bang on about the plight of the people of the Chagos Islands a lot, and sometimes even I might use statistics too much, so let me tell you about Jeanette. Jeanette’s mother, Monique, was born on the Chagos Islands and was therefore a British subject. But her time living there was destined to be short. In the late 1960s, she, like the rest of the population, was forced to leave.

Her removal came when the UK leased the islands to the US military, so it could build a base on the largest island, Diego Garcia. Chagossian deportees were dumped on the docks of Mauritius and Seychelles. Compensation was promised but those exiled to Seychelles, such as Jeanette’s mother, never received a penny. Even for those in Mauritius, meagre compensation arrived almost a decade late.

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What happens when the jobs dry up in the new world? The left must have an answer | John Harris

January 15, 2018, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: How government policy is forcing poor people into catastrophic debt | Abi Wilkinson

≪ Previous: Britain’s shameful treatment of Chagos islanders must end | Benjamin Zephaniah

We need to address the questions raised by rapid automation, and find new ways to redistribute power

If modern Britain has a defining problem, it boils down to an across-the-board failure to leave the past behind. Brexit, self-evidently, is a profoundly retrogressive project, helmed by Tory politicians split between continuity Thatcherites and devotees of a supposed one-nation Conservatism who still yearn for a quiet, sepia-tinted England. The latter are personified, in her own shaky way, by the prime minister. Labour, meanwhile, has a clear set of moral responses to an obvious social crisis, and the first stirrings of a convincing programme for government. But it, too, has a tendency to take refuge in fuzzy dreams of yesteryear: 1945, old flags and banners, the idea that a dependable job in a factory is still a byword for emancipation.

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How government policy is forcing poor people into catastrophic debt | Abi Wilkinson

January 16, 2018, 5:10 am

≫ Next: Sam Rockwell got his award for playing a racist cop, not being one | Ryan Gilbey

≪ Previous: What happens when the jobs dry up in the new world? The left must have an answer | John Harris

The benefit cap, zero-hours contracts, and now universal credit have all exacerbated the debt burden on people already struggling to eat and pay rent

It is extraordinarily expensive to be poor. The less money you have, the more expensive many things are likely to cost. Those with the lowest incomes are often forced to access electricity and gas via prepaid meters – forking out hundreds of pounds more annually than those who pay by direct debit.

And when your income is only just enough to cover your basic living costs, even modest unexpected outgoings can push you into debt. New school shoes, perhaps. Or a train ticket to visit a hospitalised elderly parent. The situation is even scarier with larger buys. What are you supposed to do if you live in a rural area and your car breaks down – borrow the money to fix it, or risk losing your job because the patchy local bus service won’t get you in on time?

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Sam Rockwell got his award for playing a racist cop, not being one | Ryan Gilbey

January 16, 2018, 12:00 am

≫ Next: The Carillion scandal must bury the rip-off PFI dogma for good | John McDonnell

≪ Previous: How government policy is forcing poor people into catastrophic debt | Abi Wilkinson

His Three Billboards critics seem to expect fiction to deliver justice. Go on like this, and we’ll have to say goodbye to Chinatown and The Godfather, for starters

Those of us unconvinced by the claims of greatness surrounding the Oscar-touted film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri are likely to feel there are any number of reasons why it should go unrewarded. It could be the way Martin McDonagh’s movie sacrifices dramatic consistency in favour of crowd-pleasing stand-offs orchestrated by the avenging angel Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), who first mocks the law, and then takes it into her own hands, when her daughter is murdered. Or it might be the amount of character detail that plainly doesn’t fit with the characters (a sheriff name-checking Oscar Wilde, a pair of hicks watching Don’t Look Now) or the self-reflexive dialogue that keeps commenting on its own supposed smartness. Perhaps it is the plenitude of calculated ironies, beginning when Mildred angrily tells her daughter that she hopes she gets raped – right before she gets raped.

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The Carillion scandal must bury the rip-off PFI dogma for good | John McDonnell

January 16, 2018, 8:14 am

≫ Next: The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity | Jill Filipovic

≪ Previous: Sam Rockwell got his award for playing a racist cop, not being one | Ryan Gilbey

The Tories still can’t see the utter failure of outsourcing. Only a Labour government will demolish this sordid economic model

This week 20,000 Carillion workers and many more in the supply chain have had their livelihoods put at risk. The responsibility lies with this shambolic Tory government and mismanagement by Carillion’s fat-cat bosses.

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The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity | Jill Filipovic

January 16, 2018, 6:16 am

≫ Next: Will Abbas’s ‘Eff off, Trump’ fury play into the hands of rightwing Israelis? | Ian Black

≪ Previous: The Carillion scandal must bury the rip-off PFI dogma for good | John McDonnell

We can – we must – wade into the messy, complicated nature of sex in a misogynist world. But this celebrity exposé doesn’t do the job well enough

It was bound to happen. In the midst of women sharing stories of harassment and assault via the #MeToo movement, and a brewing backlash of hand-wringers wondering if women have perhaps gone too far, it was only a matter of time before a publication did us the disservice of publishing a sensational story of a badly behaved man who was nonetheless not a sexual assailant. The publication: Babe.net. The man: Aziz Ansari. The story: a coercive, dehumanizing sexual interaction.

It’s a shame. Not because these stories shouldn’t be told – if anything, we need to talk more about how pervasive power imbalances benefit men and make sex worse for women. But instead of telling this particular story with the care it called for, it was jammed into a pre-existing movement grounded in the language of assault and illegality.

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Will Abbas’s ‘Eff off, Trump’ fury play into the hands of rightwing Israelis? | Ian Black

January 16, 2018, 4:53 am

≫ Next: The PFI bosses fleeced us all. Now watch them walk away | George Monbiot

≪ Previous: The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity | Jill Filipovic

The Palestinian leader’s Ramallah speech reads like a two-state epitaph, but his principled realism is an enduring point of light

Mahmoud Abbas is not known for coming up with catchy lines, and he has always painfully lacked the stature and charisma of the late Yasser Arafat. But the Palestinian president is now likely to be remembered for telling Donald Trump – in effect – to eff off. The Arabic Yakhrab baytu means “May his house be destroyed”. He didn’t literally mean the White House or Trump Tower. But its wider sense is unmissable. And Abbas came up with some memorable wordplay as well: the US president’s promised Middle East “deal of the century” was in fact the “slap of the century”. And, as he quipped on Sunday: “We will slap back.”

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The PFI bosses fleeced us all. Now watch them walk away | George Monbiot

January 16, 2018, 10:45 am

≫ Next: #MeToo isn’t enough. Now women need to get ugly | Barbara Kingsolver

≪ Previous: Will Abbas’s ‘Eff off, Trump’ fury play into the hands of rightwing Israelis? | Ian Black

When contracts fail, the legal priority is still to pay firms like Carillion. Money is officially more valuable than life

Again the “inefficient” state mops up the disasters caused by “efficient” private companies. Just as the army had to step in when G4S failed to provide security for the London 2012 Olympics, and the Treasury had to rescue the banks, the collapse of Carillion means that the fire service must stand by to deliver school meals.

Two hospitals, both urgently needed, that Carillion was supposed to be constructing, the Midland Metropolitan and the Royal Liverpool, are left in half-built limbo, awaiting state intervention. Another 450 contracts between Carillion and the state must be untangled, resolved and perhaps rescued by the government.

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#MeToo isn’t enough. Now women need to get ugly | Barbara Kingsolver

January 16, 2018, 11:00 am

≫ Next: The killer question for Donald Trump | Letters

≪ Previous: The PFI bosses fleeced us all. Now watch them walk away | George Monbiot

‘Don’t say that to me, don’t do that to me. I hate it.’ I armed my daughters with these words to deal with harassment. Let’s no longer mollify powerful men

In each of my daughter’s lives came the day in fifth grade when we had to sit on her bed and practise. I pretended to be the boy in class who was making her sick with dread. She had to look right at me and repeat the words until they felt possible, if not easy: “Don’t say that to me. Don’t do that to me. I hate it.” As much as I wanted to knock heads around, I knew the only real solution was to arm a daughter for self-defence. But why was it so hard to put teeth into that defence? Why does it come more naturally to smile through clenched teeth and say “Oh, stop,” in the mollifying tone so regularly, infuriatingly mistaken for flirtation?

Women my age could answer that we were raised that way. We’ve done better with our daughters but still find ourselves right here, where male puberty opens a lifelong season of sexual aggression, and girls struggle for the voice to call it off. The Mad Men cliche of the boss cornering his besotted secretary is the modern cliche of the pop icon with his adulating, naked-ish harem in a story that never changes: attracting male attention is a woman’s success. Rejecting it feels rude, like refusing an award. It feels ugly.

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