Supermarket chain claims to be addressing fat cat pay excess hoping to head off a repeat of last year's shareholder revolt
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cartoon/2011/may/31/tesco-bonuses-executive-pay
Boxing Poland Art Australia cricket team Communities Lee Carsley
Probably not. They're the Doctor Who villains that keep coming back
The announcement by Steven Moffat, executive producer of Doctor Who, that the Daleks are to be given "a rest" (he called them "the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe") has a touch of d�j� vu; the BBC have long had mixed feelings about the most famous baddies in British television.
Back in 1963, when writer Terry Nation submitted the scripts for the first ever Dalek story, BBC executives were unimpressed. "This is terrible," said the head of serials. "I don't want you to make it."
Sydney Newman, the man who had created Doctor Who, was no more enthusiastic, shouting: "I told you, goddamit, no bug-eyed monsters." Luckily a shortage of scripts and a need to fill the schedules meant that The Daleks went out that Christmas. And was an immediate hit.
Its popularity ensured the survival of Doctor Who, and a guaranteed return 12 months later, much against the judgment of many at the BBC. "This is positively their last appearance," insisted a Television Centre spokesperson.
It wasn't. The Dalek Invasion of Earth was an even bigger triumph, with audiences touching the 12 million mark. And Christmas 1964 saw the outbreak of Dalekmania, with replica toys the must-have gift of the year, and everything from Dalek soap to slippers flooding the shops.
The merchandising success took Nation and the BBC by surprise. It made Nation a rich man, earning ? it was said ? the equivalent of �4.5m at today's prices in the first 18 months, while the public acclaim and commercial opportunities finally changed the Corporation's attitude. From that moment on the Daleks were used any time the show needed a ratings boost. When the series was revived in 2005, they were back to send a new generation scurrying behind the sofa.
They've survived so many attempts to kill them off that Moffat's "rest" will surely prove to be just one more failed attempt to exterminate the ultimate Doctor Who villains.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/31/doctor-who-television
Royal Bank of Scotland Wolverhampton Wanderers Jonny Wilkinson Nuclear power Gabriel Agbonlahor US foreign policy
Move prompted by mass protests against nuclear power following Japan's nuclear disaster
Angela Merkel has committed to shutting down all of the country's nuclear reactors by 2022, a task said by one minister to be as mammoth as the project to reunite East and West Germany in 1990.
Monday's announcement, prompted by Japan's nuclear disaster, will make Germany the first major industrialised nation to go nuclear-free in decades. It gives the country just over 10 years to find alternative sources for 23% of its energy.
The move, hammered out at a mammoth 14-hour overnight sitting at the Kanzleramt, came amid mass nationwide protests against nuclear power and at a low point for the chancellor's Christian Democratic party (CDU), support for which has crumbled at the ballot box in five regional elections this year.
Although the proposal was welcomed among the general population, who have long been opposed to nuclear power, it was a move derided by one of Merkel's own MPs as "knee-jerk politics".
The plan is to keep shut eight reactors which were suspended in March in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, and to close the rest by 2022.
The phase-out must be ratified in parliament and is likely to face strong opposition from utility companies. On Monday a spokesman for the energy giant RWE said that "all legal options" were on the table.
Last week, grid operators warned the phase-out could result in winter blackouts ? a prospect Merkel scoffed at . She insisted the decision would not lead to Germany simply importing nuclear power.
"We will generate our own electricity from other sources," the chancellor told a press conference in Berlin. She said the plans would give Germany a chance to be a "trailblazer" for renewable energy, suggesting it could eventually earn, rather than cost, the country money.
Energy firms warned that the decision ? a total policy reversal ? would require significant investment in energy infrastructure. Philipp R�sler, new head of the FDP party, which rules in coalition with the CDU, agreed, likening the task ahead to that which faced Germany in 1990 after reunification. A study in 2009 showed that ?1.3 trillion (�1.1tn) had been transferred from the West to rebuild the East.
This comparison was also made in an editorial by the left-leaning Tageszeitung newspaper on Monday, which said Merkel's decision was "historic" and "a moment like the fall of the Berlin Wall".
The government's vocabulary seemed to consciously echo the reunification process, with Merkel heralding an "Energie-Wende" ? "die Wende" is the word for change which became shorthand for the fall of communism and reunification.
Die Welt, a conservative daily, said the policy U-turn demonstrated a "creeping rejection of the economic model which has transformed Germany into one of the richest countries in the world".
The French poured scorn on Germany's decision. "Germany will be even more dependent on fossil fuels and imports and its electricity will be more expensive and polluting," said the French industry minister, �ric Besson. German households pay twice as much for power than homes in France, where 80% of electricity comes from atomic plants, he said.
Germany last year was a net exporter of power to France, according to data from the French grid operator, RTE. This trend was reversed last month after the accident at Fukushima and Merkel's decision to halt Germany's oldest reactors.
"Germany's energy policy will only work if there are improvements at the same time," the EU energy commissioner, G�nther Oettinger, said on Monday.
He said there was a need for better grid infrastructure, storage capacity and forward planning as well as a more pronounced rise in renewable supply.
Germany plans to cut electricity usage by 10% and double the share of renewable energy to 25% by 2020.
Merkel first mooted an accelerated exit from nuclear power within days of the Fukushima meltdown, ordering a three-month "moratorium" during which nuclear power could be debated.
It was a remarkable U-turn. In September 2010, she had committed to extending the lives of Germany's 17 nuclear plants.
Many of her party are unhappy with her handling of the situation.
"Knee-jerk politics like the reaction to Fukushima does not pay dividends," said Mike Mohring, the head of the CDU faction in the Thuringian state parliament, last week.
Among other G8 nations, only Italy has abandoned nuclear power.
? This article was amended on 31 May 2011. The original said that the 14-hour overnight sitting was held at the Bundestag. This has been corrected.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/30/germany-to-shut-nuclear-reactors
Dubai Andrew Cole Banking Allied Irish Banks Cancún climate change conference 2010 | COP16 Skiing
It's time we stop devaluing as 'women's work' tasks such as baking and give them the respect they deserve
"Baking is the less applauded of the cooking arts, whereas restaurants are a male province to be celebrated. There's something intrinsically misogynistic about decrying a tradition because it has always been female.
I'm not being entirely facetious when I say it's a feminist tract."
Nigella Lawson's recent comments that her bakery cookbook, How To Be A Domestic Goddess, should be read as a "feminist tract" may at first sound bizarre ? how is baking a cake a feminist act? Here's how.
If we are working toward a society in which women are valued equally with men, it's not enough to champion what I (here in New York) call the "Hillary Clinton route": women accessing careers that have historically been the provenance of men. Of course, this needs to be done ? there are glass ceilings to smash and equal wages to fight for aplenty ? but we need to do the opposite, too: we need to champion what has traditionally been devalued as "women's work" and respect it for what it is ? work. And valuable.
It's absolutely true, as Lawson points out, that in our current food-obsessed culture, savoury cooking ? the meatier and manlier the better ? is slavishly praised by a foodie elite. Women chefs are only just now becoming accepted at top restaurants, and the food culture definitely has a weakness for the women who present themselves as ultra-tough; matching the current nose-to-tail fetish by serving exotic animal bits is, at least in the US, a quick way for a woman restaurateur to grab some press.
But feminism was never supposed to be about just making women more like men. In my view, mainstream feminism has lost focus in the past 20 years or so because of its tunnel vision for the Hillary Clinton route as the only path to liberation.
I want to see a society in which not only can women attain positions of power in government and business based solely on their qualifications, but, more than that, I want a society in which child-rearing and baking and laundry and cleaning and cooking ? not cheffy restaurant cooking, but everyday dinner-on-the-table cooking ? are seen as equally important contributions to a balanced society.
And since we're at it, I want to see that the qualities usually associated with women ? a certain softness, a gentleness ? are not thrown away in the race to prove how tough (and therefore manly) women are, thus deserving of rights previously only granted to men.
All these silly gender-assigned qualities have just got to go, don't you think? They're so tiresome, after all. Straight men are, it seems to me, increasingly fed up with holding up their end of the deal, and would be relieved to be able to cry in public and take care of the house while their female partners work on their career for a while without worrying if they will look soft to their friends.
The great gift feminism can give to the mainstream world is precisely this: that the qualities we associate almost exclusively with women will, if allowed to flourish and given adequate respect, vastly improve society across all levels.
I wish we could take all the traits we think of as "feminine" and "masculine", toss them on the floor and let each person pick up a few randomly. What would happen? Women CEOs would no longer be "women CEOs" and if one of those women CEOs brought in an elaborate home-baked confection for an office party, her power and respect at the office wouldn't somehow diminish.
We've bought into stereotypes that are no longer useful ? that women who thrive in positions of power can't also enjoy "girly" hobbies like baking, for example. Or that men who bake must be either gay or somehow weak.
After all, what's more hardcore and deserving of awe and respect, really, than baking? Every baker I know is much smarter than your average chef, who tosses ingredients into a saut� pan with no thought of maths or ratios. Bakers ? even everyday home bakers known for their birthday cakes and Christmas puddings ? have an understanding of chemistry and maths and a certain exactitude deep in their bones.
Baking is a feminist act. It's time to celebrate it as such. Sponge cakes for all!
International criminal justice Endangered species Tottenham Hotspur Psychology Work & careers Alex Reid
? Emirates the latest sponsor to put pressure on Fifa
? Coca-Cola and Adidas have also voiced their concerns
Emirates has become the latest corporate sponsor of Fifa to express concern about the corruption scandal within world football's governing body.
"Emirates, like all football fans around the world, is disappointed with the issues that are currently surrounding the administration of the sport," the airline said in a statement. "We hope that these issues will be resolved as soon as possible and the outcome will be in the interest of the game and sport in general."
Coca-Cola and Adidas have also voiced their concerns after the Fifa executives Mohamed bin Hammam and Jack Warner were suspended on Sunday over bribery allegations in Bin Hammam's now-abandoned presidential bid.
It comes as the Football Association calls on Fifa to postpone Wednesday's presidential election, in which Sepp Blatter is standing unopposed.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/may/31/fifa-sponsor-emirates-corruption-scandal
Bradford Bulls Mark Bright Carlos Tevez Fifa Democrats Italy
UK Met Office changes projections as steam replaces ash from Gr�msv�tn crater and airlines report flights without incident
UK airspace will be free of a dense volcanic cloud for the rest of the week, allowing the half-term getaway to begin without threat of disruption, according to the latest forecasts.
The Met Office believes that projections showing a heavy cloud of ash blanketing the UK on Friday are no longer valid because the Gr�msv�tn crater in Iceland is now emitting only steam as the eruption subsides. The information emerged in a conference call involving the UK aviation industry on Wednesday afternoon and the national weather forecaster is expected to produce a new, detailed forecast later this evening.
According to an aviation industry source, the latest development has headed off a potentially embarrassing development for the Met Office and the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Friday.
If the previous forecast had remained unchanged, US and middle eastern airlines would have taken off and landed in the UK on Friday anyway because they do not use Met Office forecasts and their charts ? produced by the WSI corporation ? apparently showed no high density ash over the UK.
This could have resulted in British Airways and Virgin Atlantic flights being grounded while Emirates and American Airlines services took off and landed.
The news comes as UK airlines return to normal operation following severe disruption to flights in Scotland earlier this week. The head of British Airways and Iberia joined the clamour over the handling of the volcanic ash cloud after claiming that a BA test flight "found nothing" after flying through a smoke plume deemed by regulators to be too dangerous for normal commercial flights.
Echoing criticism from Ryanair, Willie Walsh said the plane flew through an ash "red zone" for 45 minutes over Scotland and northern England on Tuesday and encountered no difficulties. The chief executive of International Airlines Group, the parent of Britain and Spain's national carrier, spoke as the cloud from the Gr�msv�tn volcano moved away from UK airspace and began to affect travel in Germany this morning.
Walsh told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the flight operated at different altitudes, through a zone designated by the Met Office to contain high densities of ash ? a level at which no commercial carrier has received safety clearance to operate. "Initially it flew over the north of England, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, back to Newcastle. The aircraft then returned and has been examined. All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing."
Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, defended the new ash regulations, which use Met Office forecasts to place ash clouds into three categories: low, medium and high. Airlines must produce safety cases, vetted by the UK CAA , to prove which density they can fly through. Currently, all UK airlines are clear to fly through the medium zones that have drifted across much of British airspace in recent days, but none have clearance to go through the high density "red zone" that has hit services in Scotland and has been the target of BA and Ryanair test flights.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast News, Hammond said the Met Office models could not be 100% accurate and the BA flight did not necessarily contradict the regime. He added: "The red zone is not indicating that every square inch of air within that zone ? contains a high density of ash. This is a modelled zone in which concentrations of ash at dangerous levels may exist. So it will be perfectly compatible with that model that an aircraft could fly through that zone and not encounter ash, but another aircraft could fly through on a different track and encounter high levels of ash."
About 500 flights were halted ? and others delayed ? across Europe on Tuesday as the eruption of Gr�msv�tn volcano in Iceland caused havoc at airports in Scotland and northern England.
Last night the Met Office had forecast a plume of high density ash over the UK on Friday, at a height of 35,000ft and above. This prompted the CAA to look at changing the ash regulations just in case a cloud hits the UK at 35,000ft on Friday. Current rules prevent "underflying" the cloud even though 35,000ft is roughly the maximum cruising height for airlines. This would prevent aircraft at Heathrow and other major airports taking off and landing even though they would not reach the cloud's altitude while in the area.
The government is also seeking to borrow an atmosphere monitoring plane from Ireland or Germany because the one it has ordered ? specifically for ash purposes ? will not be ready until July. On Tuesday the International Air Transport Association wrote to Hammond bemoaning the lack of monitoring aircraft. In the meantime the UK government is co-operating with commercial carriers such as BA to monitor the cloud.
The ash cloud ruined the plans of thousands of travellers travelling to and from northern Germany, when airports in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin were shut as a safety precaution, hitting flights operated by BA, BMI, easyJet and Ryanair.
The flight ban issued for Hamburg and Bremen was lifted at midday after six hours. It remained in place for Berlin's two airports, Tegel and Sch�nefeld, which were closed between 11am and 2pm local time, the German air traffic control authority said.
Flights from Frankfurt were also affected, with domestic passengers for affected Lufthansa flights being given replacement rail tickets where possible. There were knock-on effects for travellers in the southern airports of Stuttgart, Munich and Nuremberg.
The closures caused anger among many passengers who thought they were unnecessary. This belief seemed to be confirmed when the scientific research centre J�lich issued a statement saying the concentration of ash in the current cloud appeared much lower than last year.
"If you look at the pictures we took last year, you can tell the concentration [of ash] is not as high," said Cornelius Schiller, after J�lich took measurements with their laser system, Lidar, in Schleswig-Holstein. But he said it was difficult to ascertain how much of a threat the current cloud posed. "We need to look closer at our data for that," he said.
In an interview on German TV on Wednesday morning, the German transport minister, Peter Ramsauer, insisted there was a "solid legal basis" for the flight ban, which has been criticised as too draconian by airlines.
Other European countries have adopted the German guideline of banning flights when the concentration of ash exceeds 2mg per cubic metre. "Safety comes first," Ramsauer told the public ARD TV network on Wednesday morning.
The number of German flights affected was not clear, but aviation authorities said at least 270 flights were cancelled in Bremen and Hamburg alone.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/volcanic-ash-cloud-flight-disruption
Noel Coward Manchester United Asia The FA Insects Television industry
Simon Cowell is battling for X Factor in the US over judges, with American Idol, as well as organising ITV and Britain's Got Talent
Simon Cowell is back in Britain, with one or two things on his mind. It's Britain's Got Talent week ? although the show seems to have just about managed without him on the judging panel ? and, more to the point, The X Factor auditions are just about to begin in Birmingham on Wednesday and Thursday. Actually, the auditions were supposed to have begun nearly two weeks ago in Manchester, but somehow it wasn't proving possible to get everybody in the right place at the right time. Which is probably a fair summary of where the ITV X Factor is right now: a last-minute scramble to get everything done on time.
There are, at the time of writing, no confirmed judges. There have, of course, been plenty of leaks to the media ? Gary Barlow of Take That, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child and Louis Walsh of Louis Walsh. Maybe Tulisa from N-Dubz ? or even a newly available Cheryl Cole from California. But no public confirmation, no dried ink, and many complications ? such as fitting in a summer Take That tour (there are dates on Tuesday and Friday next week to fit around those Birmingham auditions). No doubt, though, everybody at ITV is relaxed about the situation.
Meanwhile, if the balance of power in Britain means that Cowell has the whip hand over ITV, making key decisions late, and expecting the broadcaster to cheerfully fall in line ? last week's events in the United States tell a different story. So much for the hype of Barack Obama's "essential relationship"; across the pond even the most successful Brits have their chains jerked by the Americans. And immigrants further down the ranks, like Cole, haven't a chance if their TV footage isn't up to snuff (and that's before the accent). If Fox doesn't like a presenter, then that presenter isn't going on air ? even if the format belongs to somebody else ? which is not quite the conversation you can imagine the folks at ITV managing with Mr Cowell.
Cowell, of course, has repeatedly confounded expectations, but as the Cole fiasco demonstrates, there is no shortage of pressure this time. American Idol, which he quit to bring The X Factor to the US, has been surprisingly resilient. Jennifer Lopez as a judge proved to be a hit with the public. The ratings may have been down 7% for the series overall compared to 2010, yet they have been rising as the run has progressed. Last week's final was up 21%. And what with Simon Fuller, Cowell's rival, still taking 10% of the profits of Idol ? The X Factor has a battle ahead to become number one in the world's most lucrative TV market.
Meanwhile, NBC is due to run its second series of The Voice ? the singing competition in which the judges turn their back on the contestants to judge them purely on their vocal ability. Helped by the fame of judges like Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green, its first series performed fairly well on NBC (although still some way behind Idol) and its return promises to help saturate the singing-reality space to the point where it resembles the boxing market with its preposterous number of world titles. Next up, no doubt, will be The Look ? where the judges watch beautiful people like Katie Waissel perform in silence, judging them before finding out if they can sing.
Anyway, even the BBC is thinking seriously about bringing The Voice to the shores of BBC1. It is likely to be a Saturday night show, but because the Beeb is a serious broadcaster that does not do derivative or copycat, there is no chance that it will hire Dannii Minogue to act as a judge.
Somewhere, amid all this competition and chaos, Cowell will have to reassert himself. It has often been written how dependent ITV is on the impresario for its big money hits; however, the question, at this point, is whether its top man has actually peaked as he aims for simultaneous domination on both sides of the Atlantic.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/may/30/simon-cowell-x-factor-stretched
Taxonomy Sunderland Recession Aston villa Economic growth (GDP)
What's it like to dance naked on stage? And how does it feel if the audience walk out? Seasoned nude performers talk to Judith Mackrell
When Sally Marie was told she had to strip off in the name of contemporary dance, she was happy to oblige ? in theory, anyway. The British dancer had been cast in Dear Body, a 2009 work by Luca Silvestrini that satirised the hard dieting, gym-bound madness of body beautiful obsessives. Marie approved of the work's politics, which she felt applied to her own profession, too. "I'd been arguing for ages that we needed a greater variety of bodies and ages in dance," says Marie, who readily admits to being a stone heavier and a decade older than most of the other dancers. "It felt like an important statement to be on stage showing my tits."
But in practice, when it came to getting naked, Marie was petrified. "When you're in a sauna, it feels completely natural. But on stage, you're really exposed." Ironically, by the time she came to perform Dear Body, she was much slimmer. "I'd been too frightened to eat."
Javier de Frutos, the Venezuelan-born choreo-grapher, understands her terror. In the 1990s, his own compact buttocks and bobbing penis became a familiar sight to audiences, in works such as the solo Gypsy and the trio Grass. Yet at first, De Frutos found crossing over into nudity traumatic. "When I was young, I was the guy at the gym who had to wait until the changing room was empty before I could take off my clothes." His mentor, the US dancer and choreo-grapher Sara Rudnor, persuaded him to change. "Sarah told me I needed to explore as many emotions as possible on stage. She told me to do what I feared most. For me, that was being naked."
De Frutos and Marie may feel some sympathy with the cast of Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde!, which arrives in Britain this week. A Little Tenderness for Crying Out Loud!, in its English translation, was created by Canadian choreographer Dave St-Pierre. It's a work exploring the fears and fantasies of 22 characters as they search for love in a brutal world. But it's also a work in which the dancers have to perform naked for much of the time; in fact, even more exposingly, they have to bring their nakedness right down into the auditorium, clambering over the stalls and fighting in the aisles ? with their breasts, genitals and buttocks in wobblingly close proximity to the audience.
What's the justification for such aggressive nudity? St-Pierre, who is fascinated by taboos and the breaking of them, is trying to create a raw physical intimacy between dancer and audience, and he wants to make us laugh, too. Michael Watts, one of his dancers, says most people find the naked scenes funny. But, he adds, "we're being very childlike ? we're behaving like six-year-old boys, and we get a lot of taps on the bottom from old ladies". They do occasionally encounter angry resistance, though. "One woman just hid her face completely," recalls Watts. "She put her jacket over her face. Another man got up and tried to run away. And a few dancers have got hit or pushed."
Choreographers may have many serious motives for nudity ? be they political, aesthetic or psychological ? but what some people find beautiful and expressive, others will inevitably find titillating or arousing, and others embarrassing or disgusting. What is certain, though, is that the issue of how much flesh a dancer shows has always been controversial. In 1725, when ballerina Marie Camargo shortened her skirts to ankle length to gain extra freedom of movement, there were many who went to the Paris Opera not to applaud her virtuosity but to catch a flash of calf or thigh. Camargo was credited with inventing an early form of knickers to preserve some modesty as she danced.
For Isadora Duncan, the American who began performing her radiant, radical dance recitals around 1900, the body was sacred. When she abandoned corsets, danced barefoot and occasionally let a bare breast spill out of her loosely draped tunic, Duncan wasn't simply serving the cause of dance, she was celebrating the human spirit. And her inspiration, as well as her notoriety, led to more dancers stripping off in the name of high art. Canadian Maud Allan became a superstar of Edwardian Britain thanks her near-naked Salom� routine, and Josephine Baker was dubbed the Ebony Venus when she danced in Paris wearing nothing but a belt of pink feathers or a tiny skirt of fake bananas.
When stage censorship laws were relaxed during the 1960s, however, even a coy veil could be dispensed with. The cast of musicals such as Oh! Calcutta! paraded their bodies with joy, while avant-garde choreographers began to explore the gamut of what nudity could signify. Yvonne Rainer, in 1970s New York, danced naked in front of a US flag to protest against the Vietnam war. And veteran British dancer Diana Payne-Myers developed an entire second career when choreo-graphers such as Lloyd Newson started to explore the potential of putting a much older, naked dancer on stage.
Since the late 1990s, Payne-Myers's tiny, wrinkled, supple form has evoked images of survival, defenselessness and even the joy of supposedly inappropriate elderly behaviour.
For De Frutos, as he explored the feelings of vulnerability created by dancing naked, other issues arose. He became fascinated by his audiences' natural voyeurism and by the ways he could deflect it. "I wanted to take their attention away from my genitalia to all the small muscles in the body, and show how eloquent they are. There is something irreplaceable about the sensual reality of skin, and the beauty of light falling on skin. I was always thinking how that could best be achieved."
Visually, De Frutos was inspired by none other than Caravaggio and El Greco. But in real life, the human body can be an unruly beast: it gets rashes and bruises, it's subject to weight gain, hairiness and menstrual cycles ? as well as other kinds of normally private activity. De Frutos swears he never worried about getting an erection on stage when performing with other nude dancers: "Dancing naked," he says, "is the least sexy thing I've ever done." And Sally Marie was convinced that all the men in Dear Body were "very anxious. During contact, everyone was trying to keep a distance between their pelvises. It was very funny. "
For Arthur Pita, the London-based choreographer of the pastoral comedy Camp, the issue was simply his own vanity. He hadn't expected to dance in Camp, but when he had to take over from an injured cast member he went straight into an intensive regime of "squats and press-ups" to prepare for his naked scene. "I really didn't want anything to be wobbling for the audience."
Pita envies the lack of self conscious-ness shown by Payne-Meyers, with whom he has worked. "She knows full well she is an 83-year-old woman, but she is completely committed to her art and completely unembarrassed. Her body is amazing to look at. It's only skin and bone and muscle, but it's very old skin and bone and muscle. I admire that healthy, honest approach; it's something all dancers should be inspired by."
Tendresse comes with a guidance rating of 18, and all its publicity contains warnings of "explicit adult material". What's more, Michael Watts is keen to point out that if anyone in the audience obviously hates what the dancers are doing, they won't get picked on. "We can usually tell how people are feeling," he says. "They won't actually have a hairy man in a wig clambering over them."
Sally Marie
Try to avoid being naked in a photocall. Otherwise you will find pictures of yourself all over the national press and the internet. And they never go away. At run-throughs, keep your T-shirt on. It's amazing how many extra "techs" show up when they think there may be some tits on show.
Javier de Frutos
You need to know the reason why you are dancing naked. And when you have found that reason, forget that you are dancing naked.
Arthur Pita
Do whatever you have to do ? work out, whatever ? so that you can actually enjoy the experience. And make sure you have a good lighting designer. It can make all the difference.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/may/30/dancing-naked-peu-tendresse-bordel
Japan Darren Bent Credit crunch Sheffield United London Stoke City
Michael McFaul, architect of Obama's detente with Russia, given position to show US intent on enhancing ties with Kremlin
Michael McFaul, the architect of the Obama administration's policy of "resetting" US-Russian relations, will be the new American ambassador in Moscow.
The appointment of Barack Obama's chief adviser to a post normally filled by a diplomat is intended as a message to the Kremlin about the importance Washington puts on improving an often testy relationship.
McFaul has been a constant White House advocate of the need to pay close attention to Moscow's views to reduce friction in the UN security council and achieve further progress in arms control.
One of the diplomatic high points of the Obama administration so far, the new Start treaty with Russia on limiting long-range nuclear missiles, which entered into force in February, was largely a result of the White House's decision to "reset" bilateral relations,after years of poor relations. McFaul was one of the policy's leading proponents.
"It is our intention to build a multidimensional relationship with Russia, not simply one about arms control," McFaul said after a meeting on Friday between Obama and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during the G8 summit in Deauville in France. "The two presidents have pledged to that and particularly on economic relations, to try to expand the scope of things we do together."
McFaul's priorities in his new job will be to negotiate Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation, maintain US supply routes to Afghanistan through Russia, and work towards a deal on missile defence.
The Bush administration's plans to set up a system of radars and missile interceptors in eastern Europe was the main source of tension in US-Russian relations. The US said it was a defence against a future Iranian missile threat, while Moscow saw it as an American bid to undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent.
The Obama administration has opted for a more gradual, "phased adaptive" approach, but it has only served to postpone a confrontation with Russia until the system reaches its later phases in the next seven years.
The Russian chief of the army general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, said on Friday: "I am certain that this moment will be the start of a new stage in the arms race that no one wants, particularly in the current economic climate."
William Perry, a former US defence secretary, said that back-channel talks he was chairing between US and Russian had been making progress.
"It is plain that the experts on both sides believe it is possible to build a system in which the two countries exchange data. Their radar system are better located and we have better radars. Both sides can benefit," he said.
Moscow however wanted control over the eastern sector of Nato's missile defence systems and a written pledge that the system will never be used against Russia.
Perry thought neither proposal was acceptable to the US. "I think if we try to make it a treaty, we are not going to get anywhere," he said.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/us-appoints-moscow-ambassador
Japan Darren Bent Credit crunch Sheffield United London Stoke City
Damian Collins MP leads demand for independent commission to spearhead greater transparency at Fifa
An influential Conservative MP on the House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport has intervened in Fifa's corruption allegation meltdown in Zurich by calling for Sepp Blatter's re?election as president to be suspended, and a manifesto for change to be introduced at the organisation. Working with the campaign group ChangeFifa, Damian Collins has set out a five-part "reform agenda", inviting politicians from around the world to sign up to it.
"We are asking members of parliaments and national assemblies to sign up to this agenda to demonstrate the growing concern about the leadership of Fifa," Collins says on his blog. "When a global institution of great importance loses its way, it is the duty of those entrusted with its care to chart a course of correction. When the leaders of such an organisation lack the credibility that is required to do so, a valuable function of parliaments and governments is to offer sound and independent intervention and support."
Despite the deluge of corruption claims disfiguring Fifa's credibility, the organisation here in Zurich, at its manicured $100m headquarters, gives the impression it still feels insulated from the outrage and calls for reform. The Swiss government is investigating whether the sports governing bodies clustered in the country should still enjoy their freedoms from tax laws and anti-corruption treaties, but there is no organised political momentum strong enough to force change on Fifa from the outside.
Collins is hoping that with his and ChangeFifa's reform agenda, he can kickstart that political groundswell.
Their plan for reform is based on five principles:
1) An independent commission to lead an inquiry into Fifa and then ensure all Fifa proceedings become transparent and open to the public.
2) All 208 Fifa member football associations should vote on "major decisions affecting the international game", particularly the award of the World Cup to host countries, a decision currently made by the 24-man executive committee.
3) Every decision, vote and action taken on international football to be open to the public.
4) For membership of the Fifa executive committee to be limited to fixed terms, and the Fifa president not to serve more than two terms of office.
5) Fifa's finances to be published in detail, including all sources of funding and the salary packages of all its staff.
For now, as all 208 member associations are gathering in sun-soaked Zurich for Wednesday's Fifa congress, there is not enough unified political pressure to delay the election; Blatter still looks set to be anointed president unopposed. Only the English FA has said so far that it will abstain.
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Declining standards, expensive tickets and plummeting crowds but Chris Gayle still offers full value with bat in hand
Given that it is the Indian Premier League, it was perhaps fitting that the key performers in the final were two local boys who have benefited immeasurably from rubbing shoulders with the world's best. Chennai's Murali Vijay smashed six sixes in a 52-ball 95 and shared a 159-run opening partnership with Michael Hussey that put one hand on the trophy. With the ball R Ashwin, lucky to escape serious injury after stopping a straight biff with his head in the previous game, had Chris Gayle caught behind fourth ball on his way to stunning figures of three for 16.
Vijay and Ashwin have both represented India, but there were other unheralded names that caught the eye. Paul Valthaty, who has not even played a first-class game for Mumbai, finished with 463 runs, including the innings of the season ? a 63-ball 120 that was a mix of aggression, timing and audacity. The Pune Warriors' Rahul Sharma, a tall leggie whose methods are not too dissimilar to what Anil Kumble's used to be, took 16 wickets. His economy rate of 5.46 was by far the best of the leading wicket-takers.
That was the good. But the expansion to 10 teams also saw a dilution in standards. More than a few games were decided by one or two poor overs bowled by those out of their depth. The insistence on seven Indian players in every XI means that there have to be 70 players of requisite class. There are not. Increasing the foreign quota to five or six will mean an increase in quality and an end to the eyesore that is world-class talent stuck in the dugout.
Given that it started just days after India's World Cup win, the IPL was always in danger of falling victim to the morning-after feeling. Even players like Virat Kohli spoke of how weird it was to play against India team-mates in the opening week of the competition. Crowds struggled not only with feelings of satiation, but also with identity.
Most of the teams were unrecognisable from the squads of the first three seasons, and a combination of oppressive heat, ridiculously expensive tickets and an itinerary that never seemed to end [74 games, instead of the previous 60] meant that few stadiums were full on match days.
According to a study done by Cricinfo, TV ratings were down by as much as 25% in the major cities and the nadir was reached when the Mumbai Indians played Kolkata Knight Riders at the Wankhede Stadium in what was effectively a quarter-final. Not even the presence of Sachin Tendulkar could fill the seats. Two of the stands were nearly empty. The price of a ticket in the upper tier of the Garware pavilion? More than �100.
The cheerleaders are still there, as are the fan-boys and -girls masquerading as presenters and commentators. Lalit Modi may no longer have been around ? his tweets, both self-promotional and anguished, were good value ? but the hype machine rumbled on, piloted by the likes of Danny Morrison and Robin Jackman, as well as a retinue of the IPL's version of homegrown politburo members reciting faithfully from the Little Red Book.
In other ways, though, things improved, with the post-Modi dispensation keener to focus on the cricket. There was no closing ceremony featuring a geriatric pop star, and no officially sanctioned after-parties. Best of all, we didn't have to endure team owners in the dugouts, acting out deluded Sir Alex Ferguson fantasies or jumping around like five-year-olds who'd been allowed a glass of Red Bull.
There was no interest in Gayle at the January auction, with most franchises assuming that he'd be busy with West Indies playing Pakistan in the Caribbean after the World Cup. But with Ottis Gibson and the selectors deciding otherwise, it needed an injury to the Royal Challengers' Dirk Nannes to ensure that Gayle would get some playing time. Called up as the Victorian's replacement a fortnight in, he arrived to play his first game at Eden Gardens, his old stomping ground with the Knight Riders.
It took him just 55 balls, during which he pounded 102, to prove that jet-lag is for uncool people who don't wear 333 [his highest Test score] on their backs. There was also a 46-ball century against Punjab and a withering 47-ball 89 that dumped the Mumbai Indians out of the competition. Even in the final Chennai, with 205 on the board, did not breathe easy till he started that languid walk back to the pavilion.
He finished with 608 runs at 67.55 and only Virender Sehwag came anywhere close to matching his strike-rate (183.13). Cricket's coolest dude also clubbed 44 sixes. MS Dhoni, in second place, had 23.
Spare a thought for Sri Lankan fans. With the bowling attack in Cardiff having more gums than teeth, there must have been a fair few who winced on seeing Lasith Malinga's IPL figures ? 28 wickets in just 63 overs for the Mumbai Indians. The performance dipped towards the end ? only two wickets in the last five games ? but he and Gayle were at the forefront of the club-versus-country debates that raged throughout the IPL.
Until now, the perception seemed to be that it was an issue affecting those countries that could not give their players lucrative central contracts. But injuries to Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir ? both will miss the Caribbean tour and are far from certain to play the Tests in England ? have started a bout of navel-gazing back home in India as well. The board usually doesn't allow its players to take up county contracts or assignments elsewhere, the rationale being that they need time to recuperate before a home season.
Yet, despite some stalwarts being knackered, not one was asked to rest during the IPL. As long as the board continues to run a domestic T20 competition and aspire to No1 status in international cricket, it will be hard to find a solution that makes everyone ? players, fans, sponsors and TV companies ? happy.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/may/30/ipl-2011-chris-gayle
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Sir Arthur Arnold's achievement in rethinking social housing endures
In case you missed it, yesterday was Arnold Day. Arnold Day? This new annual celebration marks the birthday of the Liberal politician, newspaper editor and reformer Sir Arthur Arnold, chairman of the London county council in the mid-1890s. It was Arnold who led the council in its attempt to raise local authority housing into something approaching an art form, if not quite an earthly paradise. The LCC's Boundary Estate, off Shoreditch High Street, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1900. Its 20 five-storey housing blocks were designed and built to enviable standards set by William Morris's Arts & Crafts movement. Radiating from a circus crowned with a handsome bandstand, this was not just a replacement for some of the most infamous of all Victorian slums, but architecture, designed by Owen Fleming and his young LCC team, of a very high order. The estate was feted throughout Europe. The circus at its heart was named after Sir Arthur and yesterday summer planting around the bandstand was completed by local residents working with the Friends of Arnold Circus. A band played. Tea was served with Arnold Biscuits baked on the estate. Council housing has rarely been so prized. Arnold himself was concerned that the new estate might shift the poorest people into new slums further away from the city centre ? it did ? yet his achievement in rethinking social housing endures. Arnold Day is now a fixture in the calendar of London life, European architecture and British city planning.
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Craving a last burst of irresponsibility and armed with precious insider information, Paul Carr decided to see whether he could live ? not only well, but cheaply ? in hotels for a year
I don't notice the man in the grey suit taking my bag.
I mean, I do notice him ? but in his smart grey Savile Row suit and his patent-leather shoes, he looks just like any other hotel guest. I'm dimly aware of him gliding past me as I'm signing the guest register, but by the time I turn around he's gone.
And with him, my bag.
A professional.
I smile.
The receptionist hands me back my debit card, having pre-authorised it for any incidentals I might incur during my stay. In other hotels they take as much as �200 or �300. But the Lanesborough ? one of the most expensive hotels in London ? has swiped a grand from my current account, just in case.
Given the cost of a room at the hotel, the pre-authorisation wasn't too outrageous. The standard ? or "rack" ? rate for my suite is a little over �800 a night. I do the maths: �6,000 a week, �312,000 a year. Plus tax and gratuities, of course. No wonder the Lanesborough is one of the few hotels in the world where they don't charge you extra for the in-room pornography.
I was here to celebrate my 30th, so pushed the boat out a bit, though I didn't pay anything like that.
For me this isn't a break from the pressures of my normal, everyday life ? a nice birthday treat before returning to the rat race. This is my normal, everyday life. And it's all because of my membership of a very unusual club. A club with no joining fees and where anyone is welcome ? even losers like me. All I had to do was to make one simple, life-changing decision.
I've always loved hotels. I love drinking in their bars, I love eating in their restaurants, and above all I love staying in their rooms. Which is lucky as, for much of my childhood, that's how I lived.
My parents have been hoteliers for their entire career ? some 80 years, combined. The day after I was born they carried me, in a little basket, back to their suite at the King Malcolm Hotel, Dunfermline, where my dad was the manager. I spent my first Christmas in a hotel, I ate my first solid food in a hotel restaurant and I drank my first Diet Coke (not entirely legally, I suspect) in a hotel bar. Before speaking my first word, I dialled nine for an outside line. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that I've always felt more comfortable in hotels than I do living in a house.
It's also perhaps unsurprising that, when I found myself nearing 30, feeling stuck in a rut and craving one last burst of youthful irresponsibility, my first thought was to run back to the world of hotels.
Specifically, the idea I had was to give up my flat, pack a few possessions into a suitcase and embark on a year-long experiment. Rather than renewing my lease for another year, I'd spend that year on the road ? exploring whether it was possible to live in nice hotels in other cities for the same cost as surviving on cold pizza in my small flat in London.
The idea isn't entirely without precedent. Lots of travelling salesmen live in hotels for extended periods ? spending most of the year shuttling from Holiday Inn to Hilton, surviving on room service and takeaways and missing their (ex-)wife and kids. But they live that way out of necessity rather than choice.
My theory was that if you do it through choice, on your own terms, living in hotels ? as a kind of high-class nomad ? could actually be a practical and luxurious alternative to home. And history agrees with me?
America in the mid-1800s was growing rapidly, with hundreds of new towns and cities springing up every year. As each new town was founded, one of the first buildings to be erected was usually a hotel, to provide essential accommodation for new inhabitants. What started out as a temporary housing solution soon became established as a permanent way to live for many of those early city dwellers. It made sense: even for the relatively well off, the cost of buying a family home and employing servants to run it was prohibitive. A good hotel provided all the comforts of a luxury home ? complete with porters, cooks and maids ? at a far more affordable cost. Why not make that hotel your home?
The idea took off, and by 1844 a Chicago census found that one in six of the city's residents was living permanently in hotels. In New York the number was even higher ? according to AK Sandoval-Strausz's book Hotel: An American History, in 1856 nearly three-quarters of the city's middle and upper classes gave a hotel as their primary address.
If history was on my side, then so was my own experience. Through seeing my parents at work, I know how hotels operate. A hotel bedroom is a highly perishable commodity ? if it hasn't been sold by the end of the day, it's gone forever. I know the times of the year when rooms are hardest to sell and, as a result, when bargain rates are there for the taking. In most cities the first couple of months of the year are slow, so I knew I'd find some good deals on rooms in New York as long as I didn't stay much beyond the middle of March. After that I could head to second-tier cities, or even small towns, where cheaper rooms are available all year round.
I also know that the longer you stay in a hotel, the better the deals get. Hotels love long-staying guests: not only are those guests filling a room for a month or longer, but they're also very likely to use other hotel services like laundry and room service and the bar. For all these reasons, there isn't a hotel on the planet that won't give you a decent discount for a long stay. You don't even have to haggle: just ask. One little-known but extraordinarily useful fact is that in most cities you don't pay local tax (10?15% in most US cities) on stays for more than 30 nights. In the UK, stays of more than 28 nights are VAT free.
Armed with just this basic information ? and a willingness to learn more as I travelled ? I was confident that living in hotels was a perfectly feasible way to spend a year.
Wednesday, 20 February 2008. I had booked into the Pod hotel on East 51st Street for a month. I really like staying at the Pod: not only is it centrally located but it's inexpensive in the off season and has flat-screen TVs, iPod docks, rainhead showers and free Wi-Fi. And for all of those reasons it's incredibly popular with young foreign travellers, making the place one giant pick-up joint.
With just a couple of emails to their reservations department, I'd managed to negotiate a double room for $89 a night ? less than �45. I'd decided to set my accommodation budget at �50-�100 per night, about equal to the amount I'd be paying to stay in London if I'd accepted the increase in rent. The numbers looked good. Which was good, as I was past the point of no return: the last thing I'd done before going through to departures was to drop the key to my flat in the post to my (former) landlady along with a letter, politely but firmly telling her where to stick her rent hike.
The final plan I'd made, in the cab to the hotel, was to cut down on drinking for a while. London had given my liver a thrashing.
I remember checking into the hotel and putting my bag in my room. I remember having a shower and changing my shirt. I remember deciding to head out for a walk to orientate myself ? to get a feel for where the local dry cleaners and restaurants and bars could be found. I remember ? ah, here we go, yes ? I remember finding an Irish pub that looked friendly, Something O'Something's, and I remember noticing the pretty brunette with the ponytail wearing a CUNY sweatshirt and sitting on her own. She was reading Down and Out in Paris and London, which I remember I'd used as my opening line. "I've always found the Rough Guides to be more reliable than Orwell?"
I shook my head, hoping it would hasten the return if not of my memory then at least of the rest of my vision. I had a dim recollection of a bottle of wine and a conversation about how she was studying contemporary world literature. I'm pretty sure we left the Irish bar and went to another place down the street where her friends were celebrating ? what? ? something. There was a bottle of champagne. But after that ? nothing. I can't remember how I got back to the Pod. And I have absolutely no idea what possible set of circumstances led to my being slumped on the floor, head leaning against the closed door of my room.
I shook my head again and slowly I started to focus on how long my hotel room was. And narrow. Weird.
And that's when I realised the first of my two problems. I was slumped against my hotel room ? I had that right ? but rather than being inside the room, I was outside, in the corridor. The second of my problems ? and certainly the most pressing ? was that I was stark naked.
I tried the door. Locked, obviously. I gave it a half-hearted shove with my shoulder and immediately fell back down to the floor, still drunk.
I had no other option: I'd have to go down to the lobby and ask someone to let me in. My only lucky break was that I'd been given a room right opposite the lifts. I pressed the call button and the door opened straight away, which was good ? it meant less time in the corridor ? but also potentially bad, as it meant someone had evidently arrived at my floor not long before.
Finally the doors opened and I peered out into the lobby, trying my best to keep the rest of my body out of sight. All was calm and still, thank God; the clock behind the reception desk said 4.25am. The only witness to my humiliation would be a solitary night porter sitting behind the reception desk, reading a magazine.
"Ay Dios m�o!"
And a tiny Hispanic cleaner, mopping the floor right next to the lift. I hadn't noticed her.
"Lo siento," I said. My two words of Spanish.
"Don't worry, Maria, I'll go," said the night porter, looking up bored from his magazine. It was an interesting choice of words: "I'll go", as if this kind of thing ? naked men walking out of the lifts at four in the morning ? happened at the Pod every night. He picked up a master key from behind the desk and ambled towards the elevator.
"Sorry about this," I said.
He didn't say a word.
A few hours later ? 11am ? I woke up in my hotel bed and, for a few blissful minutes, I completely forgot about my naked elevator adventure. And then the first flashback came.
There was no other mature course of action; I had to get out of there. There was simply no way I could face another 30 nights in the same hotel, with the same night porter and the same small Hispanic cleaner.
A significant advantage of hotel stays over apartment rental contracts is that they're easy to renegotiate or cancel. Most hotels insist that you give 24 ? or occasionally 48 ? hours' notice if you decide to leave early. If you can't give notice ? say, because you hadn't planned on waking up naked in a corridor ? then you're still free to leave early, but they will usually charge you for the notice period. But that's all they'll make you pay. Some will try to insist on a small "early check-out" penalty, but the trick to getting rid of those is to be extremely apologetic, and to make it abundantly clear that you're looking forward to coming back to the hotel in future.
That last part was a lie, obviously ? I knew I could never set foot in the place again.
? This is an edited extract from Paul Carr's latest book, The Upgrade, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at �12.99
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/may/22/travel-living-in-hotels-paul-carr
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Poet and songwriter was hailed as 'Godfather of Rap' after penning The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron ? best known for his pioneering rap The Revolution Will Not Be Televised ? has died at the age of 62, having fallen ill after a European trip.
Jamie Byng, his UK publisher, announced the news via Twitter: "Just heard the very sad news that my dear friend and one of the most inspiring people I've ever met, the great Gil Scott-Heron, died today."
Scott-Heron's spoken word recordings helped shape the emerging hip-hop culture. Generations of rappers cite his work as an influence.
He was known as the Godfather of Rap but disapproved of the title, preferring to describe what he did as "bluesology" ? a fusion of poetry, soul, blues and jazz, all shot through with a piercing social conscience and strong political messages, tackling issues such as apartheid and nuclear arms.
"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks', which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," Scott-Heron wrote in the introduction to his 1990 Now and Then collection of poems.
He was best known for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the critically acclaimed recording from his first album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, and for his collaborations with jazz/funk pianist and flautist Brian Jackson.
In The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, first recorded in 1970, he issued a fierce critique of the role of race in the mass media and advertising age. "The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning or white people," he sang.
He performed at the No Nukes concerts, held in 1979 at Madison Square Garden. The concerts were organised by a group called Musicians United for Safe Energy and protested against the use of nuclear energy following the meltdown at Three Mile Island. The group included singer-songwriters such as Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt.
Scott-Heron's song We Almost Lost Detroit, written about a previous accident at a nuclear power plant, is sampled on rapper Kanye West's single The People. Scott-Heron's 2010 album, I'm New Here, was his first new studio release in 16 years and was hailed by critics. The album's first song, On Coming From a Broken Home, is an ode to his maternal grandmother, Lillie, who raised him in Jackson, Tennessee, until her death when he was 13. He moved to New York after that.
Scott-Heron was HIV positive and battled drug addiction through most of his career. He spent a year and a half in prison for possession. In a 2009 interview he said that his jail term had forced him to confront the reality of his situation.
"When you wake up every day and you're in the joint, not only do you have a problem but you have a problem with admitting you have a problem." Yet in spite of some "unhappy moments" in the past few years he still felt the need to challenge rights abuses and "the things that you pay for with your taxes".
"If the right of free speech is truly what it's supposed to be, then anything you say is all right."
Scott-Heron's friend Doris Nolan said the musician had died at St Luke's hospital on Friday afternoon. "We're all sort of shattered," she told the Associated Press.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/28/gil-scott-heron-dies-rap
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When photographer Tony Ray-Jones returned from New York to Britain in 1965, he toured seaside towns, villages, cities and festivals, documenting the English way of life 'before it became too Americanised'. An exhibition of his work will be on show at the 2011 Guernsey Photography Festival from 1 June.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/may/30/tony-ray-jones-the-english
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Prime minister to promise more money for immunisation despite growing outcry over UK's aid budget
David Cameron will use a conference in London to promote plans to raise a further $3.7bn (�2.25bn) in global aid to increase immunisation programmes, further antagonising those in Britain who claim he is putting overseas aid before squeezed living standards in the UK.
With his modernising credentials damaged by the row about NHS reforms, Cameron is determined to show that he is committed to a generous UK aid budget, and reassure those on the centre left he is a centrist Conservative. He also believes he can see off the aid sceptics in his own party, mainly from the right.
In his most high-profile intervention on overseas aid since becoming prime minister, Cameron will host the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) conference in London on 13 June.
The conference, discussed by Barack Obama and Cameron last week, is regarded as vital to efforts to lower child mortality in Africa. In a sign of the scale of pledges being sought, the Obama administration is being asked to give $450m to the programme over three years.
Britain will also announce a substantial extra contribution to help reach the $3.7bn required to scale up immunisation programmes between 2011 and 2015, and save an estimated 4 million children's lives.
The funding will specifically enable Gavi to distribute two vaccines, pneumococcal and rotavirus, tackling the two biggest killers of children in the developing world: pneumonia and diarrhoea. It is thought the vaccines will save more than 4 million lives by 2015. Pneumonia accounts for 20% of all deaths of children under five.
Britain gave �150m to Gavi in March last year, and since 2005 has been the second most generous contributor to the alliance after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gavi was praised by the Department for International Development in a review on multilateral aid published three months ago. Officials at the department were reassured by steps Gavi is taking to be more transparent about the differing costs of vaccines from different producers. Two pharmaceutical industry representatives sit on the board of Gavi.
Germany announced last week that it would give ?30m (�26m) to GAVI in 2012, up from ?20m in 2011. Cameron made passionate remarks at his press conference at the close of the G8 summit of industrialised nations in France last week, insisting he would not backtrack on a commitment to increase the amount of overseas aid given by DfID. It is the only UK department not facing budget cuts.
Cameron added he would not solve the UK deficit on the backs of the world's poor, and lambasted some other world leaders for forgetting their promises on aid. Some of this passion was driven by the knowledge of what the Gavi conference could achieve next month. He regards practical vaccines that are shown to have tangible results in terms of saving lives as one of the best ways of combating the aid fatigue currently gripping the UK.
Gavi claims it has saved more than five million lives in its first decade of existence.
Alan Duncan, the international development minister, sprung to Cameron's defence telling Sky News that "aid-bashing does not actually get us anywhere. If we were to cancel the aid budget altogether it wouldn't solve all the other problems, so this sort of balancing of the aid budget versus all other problems isn't entirely logical.
"The fact is, if you had a pound, would you give a halfpenny to stop someone dying in the street? The answer is you probably would, and what we are doing is stopping millions of people dying from disease, we are helping educate people and make them healthy."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/may/29/david-cameron-makes-vaccine-pledge
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