OF LONDON

thursday january 22 2015 | thetimes.co.uk | no 71412

My body is a temple

Have you been brainwashed

by the Wellness cult?
Pages 46-47

Hands of Sentamu ignite row over woman bishops ordination

Oliver Moody

Claims that parishioners will be tainted are threatening to overshadow the

consecration of the Church of Englands first female bishop next week.
The Archbishop of York, the Most
Rev John Sentamu, will ordain the Rev
Libby Lane as the Bishop of Stockport

on Monday. A week later, he will take

the unprecedented step of declining to
lay his hands on another bishop, the
Rev Philip North, it was said last night.
The move, breaking centuries of
tradition, would avoid conservative
parishioners of Mr North seeing their
bishop as tainted. The fear is that they
will refuse to take communion from Mr

North if his ordination has also been

carried out by Dr Sentamu. The archbishops refusal to lay hands would be
designed to appease traditionalists.
Next weeks ordination of Mrs Lane,
at York Minster, is the first ceremony of
its kind in the churchs history.
An influential group campaigning for
women in the church claimed yester-

day that the service could become a

symbol of discord if a traditionalist
bishop is not touched by the archbishop
at his own consecration a week later.
The church has yet to confirm whether Dr Sentamu and the Bishop of
Blackburn, the Right Rev Julian Henderson, will join in the service.
It is highly unusual for both the arch-

bishop of the candidates province and

the senior bishop in the diocese to avoid
the ceremony.
Women and the Church (Watch)
said the two ceremonies would be a
powerful visual signal of the deep split
in the church between progressives and
traditionalists that obstructed the

Continued on page 8, col 5

OWEN HUMPHREYS / PA

Are you looking at us? Deer huddling together against the snow at Raby Castle in Co Durham yesterday. Sunny spells are expected to provide some respite in much of the country today. Full forecast, page 17

SNP to vote on English laws

Nationalists gear up to hold balance of power as poll points to Labour wipeout in Scotland
Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor
Francis Elliott, Lindsay McIntosh

Scottish Nationalists would routinely

vote on English-only matters after the
next election, the leader of the SNP
declared yesterday as the party positioned itself to hold power in the next
parliament.
Nicola Sturgeon said that her SNP
colleagues at Westminster would abandon a self-imposed ban on taking part
in votes on key English issues such as
the NHS. Holyrood controls the health

service in Scotland. The move will

intensify the row over English votes
for English laws and stoke crossborder resentment. It is timed to
coincide with the prime ministers visit
to Scotland today, where he will
announce draft legislation delivering
the promises made by the Smith Commission of more devolution.
Ms Sturgeon justified the change by
claiming that, over time, decisions on
the role of the private sector in the NHS
in England might have consequences
for the Scottish budget. The move is

designed to reinforce the SNPs message that the party was willing to come
to the rescue of a minority Labour government, and to blunt claims within Ed
Milibands party that a vote for the SNP
would put the Conservatives in No 10.
Ms Sturgeons intervention came as
an Ipsos-Mori poll gave the SNP a lead
of 28 points in Scotland which would
hand them 55 of the 59 Scottish seats,
and mean wipeout for Labour north of
the border. Labour holds 40 Scottish
seats at Westminster and the SNP six.
The poll for STV put the SNP on

52 per cent, Labour on 24 per cent, the

Tories on 12 per cent and the Liberal
Democrats and Greens on 4 per cent
each. Three polls in four days have put
the SNP lead at between 10 and 28
points.
Last night Ed Balls stopped just short
of ruling out a coalition with the SNP if
there were a hung parliament after the
election. Ive got as close to saying no
without saying no, the shadow chancellor told LBC radio, claiming that this
was a decision for Mr Miliband.
Ms Sturgeons latest comments,

made in an interview on the BBC, deliberately ignore the prime ministers

promise to restrict votes on Englishonly laws to English MPs, as pledged
after the Scottish referendum last year.
On health, for example, we are
signalling that we would be prepared to
vote on matters of English health
because that has a direct impact
potential on Scotlands budget, she
said. So, if there was a vote in the
House of Commons to repeal the privatisation of the health service that has

Continued on page 2, col 5

IN THE NEWS
Deportation chaos

NHS on critical list

No stopping jihadists

Blow for Balfour

Advantage Spurs

Plans to deport nearly 2,000

European prisoners are in
disarray after several EU states
failed to sign up for the deal,
which was supposed to have
been ratified in 2011. Page 5

Two hundred operations are

cancelled each day and
waiting times are rising across
the board, according to a
report which warns that the
NHS is now critical. Page 6

Controlling Turkeys border

with Syria to stop the flow of
foreign fighters joining Islamic
State is impossible, the
Turkish prime minister has
told The Times. Page 24

Balfour Beatty, the company

working on the 154 million
conversion of the Olympic
Stadium, is expected to
announce today that its losses
have nearly doubled. Page 31

Tottenham Hotspur defeated

Sheffield United 1-0 in the
first leg of the Capital One
Cup semi-final at White Hart
Lane, courtesy of an Andros
Townsend penalty. Pages 62-63

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FGM

News
INSIDE TODAY

Tim Montgomerie

Step to it

ch is blighted by
The church
left-wing bias and
cognise
should recognise
fits of the
the benefits
oducing
wealth-producing
ctor
private sector

Is our obsession
with fitness
ess
getting out
of hand?

Wolf Hall

Francesca Hilton

Times2,
pages 46, 47

Opinion, page 19

The pack is
circling in the
TV adaptation
tion
of Hilary
Mantels novel
vel
First night, page 9

Daughter of Conrad Hilton and

Zsa Zsa Gabor
who missed
out on the
family
fortune
Obituary,
page 43

Opinion 17 Weather 17 Cartoon 19 Leading articles 20

Letters 21 World news 24 Business 31 Markets 40, 41
Register 42 Times2 46 Sport 52 Crosswords 45, 64
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Cigarettes will be sold in plain

packaging from next spring
Michael Savage
Chief Political Correspondent

Tobacco companies will be forced to

sell cigarettes in unbranded packs from
next year after ministers said they were
pressing ahead with the proposal
before the election.
Anti-smoking campaigners had
feared the government was backing
away from a vote on the introduction of
standardised packs before May.
However, ministers said last night
that they had decided that the ban on
cigarette pack advertising was proportionate and justified and pledged to
hold a free vote on the issue. Support for
the measure among Labour, Liberal
Democrat and Tory MPs means it is
almost certain to pass.
The cigarette branding ban would
come into force in May next year. It
paves the way for huge health warnings
on cigarette packs, warnings that
already appear on packs in Australia.
Jane Ellison, the public health minister, speaking in the Commons last night,
said that smoking remained one of our
most significant public health challen-

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Eric Pickles, the communities minister,

racially discriminated against gypsies
and travellers who applied to pitch their
caravans on green belt land, the High
Court ruled yesterday.
Mr Pickles broke human rights and
equality laws by using ministerial powers to apply special scrutiny to planning
applications made by the minority
groups, Mr Justice Gilbart said.
In a test case that could affect scores
more decisions, the judge said that the
ministers policies had indirectly discriminated unlawfully against a racial
group despite warnings from his staff.
Mr Pickles operated a legally flawed
policy of recovering for his consideration appeals by travellers who claimed
there were exceptional circumstances
for allowing them to live on green belt
sites.
The judge said that the case amounted to a very substantial challenge to
the policy and the departments treatment of gypsies and travellers.
These are not to be dismissed as
technical breaches, he added. Although the issue of unlawful discrimination was put before the minister by

his officials, no attempt was made by

the minister to follow the steps required
of him by statute.
Mr Pickles and his ministers made no
attempt to follow steps required by the
2010 Equality Act to avoid indirect
discrimination, and substantial delays occurred in dealing with the appeals in violation of Article 6 of the
European Convention on Human
Rights, the judge said.
An inspectors decision would normally be received within eight weeks of
the end of an inquiry, he said, but it
could take six months or more for a decision letter from Mr Pickles when the
decision was recovered or called in.
The case was a victory for the Community Law Partnership, which represented Charmaine Moore and Sarah
Coates, two Romany Gypsy women
fighting to remain close to their families
on green belt land in the southeast.
The judge quashed the decisions in
the cases of Ms Moore, a single mother
with three children who is under threat
of eviction from a site at North Cudham, in Bromley, and Ms Coates, a disabled woman, also with three children,
fighting to live temporarily on land at
Sutton-at-Hone near Dartford, Kent.

Peer switches cash to Labour

Lucy Fisher Political Correspondent

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ges. It is a major cause of cancer, heart

and respiratory disease and almost
80,000 people in England alone die
every year from ill health related to
smoking, she said. It places an enormous strain on the NHS and holds us
back in the battle against cancer. Most
smokers start young and we want our
children to grow up free from the
burden of disease that tobacco brings.
Having considered all the evidence,
I believe that the policy is a proportionate and justified response to the considerable public health harm from
smoking tobacco. The chief medical
officer has confirmed this view.
She added: I now propose that we lay
regulations for standardised packaging
in this parliament to allow for them to
come into force . . . in May 2016.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical
officer for England, welcomed the decision. I have reviewed the evidence and
agree that standardised packaging
would be a positive move for public
health, particularly the role it could
play in helping to prevent the uptake of
smoking by children, she said.
The move comes after MPs and

Pickles discriminated
against gypsy women
John Simpson

of LONDON

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

A former leading Liberal Democrat

peer has donated 300,000 to Labour
candidates to boost the partys
prospects of taking power in May.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay has
handed the generous sum to 30 Labour
candidates and matched it with an
equal donation to 15 left-leaning Lib
Dem MPs and candidates. He told the
Financial Times that he wanted to stop a
Tory government cringing to Ukip.
Another of his central aims is to avoid
a referendum on Britains membership
of the EU. He believes an in-out vote
would put millions of jobs and the
nations security at risk.
He gave 10,000 each to 30 Labour
candidates in marginal seats. Ed Mili-

band was aware of the donations, it is

understood.
Now an independent peer, Lord
Oakeshott was forced to resign from
the Liberal Democrats last May amid
growing tension with Nick Clegg. The
former Treasury spokesman mounted
a failed coup against Mr Clegg after the
European elections, hoping to elevate
Vince Cable to the leadership.
While the millionaire peer has
endeavoured to make the donations
discreetly over the past two months,
they are expected to be made public by
the Electoral Commission shortly.
Senior right-leaning Liberal Democrats in marginal seats have been noticeably passed over. Danny Alexander,
Jo Swinson and David Laws have not
received donations from the peer.

health professionals raised serious

doubts over whether the government
would introduce its proposals before
the election.
While the government said last year
that it was minded to proceed, ministers in both the Commons and the
Lords had said in recent weeks that
they were now undecided.
This angered anti-smoking campaigners and medical groups, who have
warned that the delay meant hundreds
of children were taking up smoking. Almost 4,000 health professionals had put
their name to a letter expressing anger
that the government may not pass the
proposals into law before the election.
An independent review, headed by
the paediatrician Sir Cyril Chantler,
found that standardised packaging was
likely to lead to a small reduction in
smoking. He said that it would also help
lead to a fall in the number of children
who started smoking.
Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem MP and
chairman of the all-party group on
smoking and health, said: The evidence from Australia is that the measure is making a difference there.

SNP accused
of fuelling
resentment
Continued from page 1

been seen in England, we would vote

for that because that would help to
protect Scotlands budget.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP
leader who will stand for a seat at Westminster in May, is expected to be at the
coalface of negotiations under a hung
parliament.
Ms Sturgeon denied that his re-election would mean that he was effectively
leading the SNP once more. The SNP
operates as a team, we always have and
we always will . . . Alex Salmond and I
are not in competition, she said.
The SNP votes on some English-only
issues, such as tuition fees, arguing that
the decision has consequences for the
Scottish budget. Yesterdays comments
prepare the way for the party to extend
the number of votes in which it participates. Angus MacNeil, the leader of the
SNP at Westminster, has taken part in
48 per cent of votes in this parliament,
according to the website Public Whip.
Anna Soubry, the Tory defence minister, accused Ms Sturgeon of undermining the Union. She is playing into
the hands of those people who get much
more irate than I do about English
votes for English laws. Youre just fuelling those people who want to see this
separation in our parliament, she said.
Mr Camerons spokesman confirmed
that the governments proposals envisaged Scottish MPs being barred from
voting on tax issues affecting only England. However, Sadiq Khan, the shadow
justice secretary, said that Scottish MPs
were entitled to vote on all issues. It is
really important that they do so, he
told the World At One on BBC Radio 4.
Mr Miliband has fuelled claims that
Labour could compromise on Britains
nuclear deterrent to secure a powersharing deal with the SNP. Shadow
ministers were told by Labour whips to
vote against an SNP motion to scrap
the renewal of Trident on Monday
night, but Mr Miliband failed to show
up. Moving or scrapping the nuclear
deterrent is a red line for the SNP.
Leading article, page 20

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

FGM

News

He liked it, so
put a ringtone
on it: Goves
gaffe revealed
Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor

For almost a week he has kept Westminster guessing, refusing repeated

requests to reveal the name of the
embarrassing ringtone unleashed on
an unwitting cabinet during a meeting
last week.
Despite badgering by colleagues and
journalists, Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, refused to buckle,
even joking at one Westminster dinner
that it would take a request under the
Freedom of Information Act to get this
piece of harmless trivia out of him.
Even the prime minister, quizzed in
Washington, tried and failed to name
that tune that riled him so much.
Yesterday, however, Mr Goves wife
obliged and, with her revelation,
took a good chunk of his street cred.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Sarah Vine
said that the ringtone was a song by the
hip-hop singer Beyonc.
The Texas-born diva, who released
her latest album Beyonc, Platinum Edition last year, is so ubiquitous that she
has entered Time magazines list of the
worlds 100 most influential people.
The revelation heaps shame on the
rest of the cabinet, whose lack of collective musical knowledge is laid bare.
One of those who witnessed the ringtone interruption last week called it Jazz
FM-style comedown music after a

INF PHOTO

heavy night out, while another described it as a female ballad.

Vine wrote in her weekly column
that the ditty from Beyonc earned her
husband a stern reprimand from the
prime minister. It actually played out
from a 100 Pebble smartwatch linked
to his phone, it emerged.
She wrote: Last week, during quite
an important work meeting, an urgent
email popped up in his inbox. Not wishing to seem rude by looking at his
phone, he instead turned to his latest
gadget, a Pebble smartwatch, which I
bought him for Christmas.
Despite its unprepossessing appearance, the Pebble is quite a powerful little thing. Not only can it tell the time, it
can also pick up emails and text messages, screen calls, check the weather
and, Im told, control the boiler.
Oh, and it can also play music. The
trouble is that it takes a bit of getting
used to. For if you press the wrong button, things can go disastrously wrong.
The technological mishap occurred during last
weeks
cabinet
meeting when, as
George Osborne
was explaining
a particularly
complex piece
of
fiscal
policy, Mr

Michael Gove accidentally played a song by Beyonc, above, in a cabinet meeting.

His wife revealed that the disruption was caused by his Pebble smartwatch, left

Gove mistakenly instructed his watch

to play Beyoncs latest oeuvre.
Vine wrote: Try as he might, he simply could not silence her warblings. The
more buttons he pressed, the more effusive she got. Eventually, he managed
to switch her off, but not before he had
received a stern reprimand from the
prime minister himself. Mr Goves ec-

lectic musical tastes had made the

guessing game all the harder. In an
interview last March he revealed that
he was a fan of chap hop rapper Mr B
The Gentleman Rhymer. He was also
captured on video performing Wham
Rap! to a group of schoolchildren.
However a part of the mystery lives
on as Vine did not reveal the songs title.

Storm in a D-cup as demise of page 3 is greatly exaggerated

Patrick Kidd

The demise of The Suns page 3 girl may

have been announced prematurely.
After a (semi) cover-up that lasted
three days, the tabloid has made a clean
breast of it and admitted that theres
still some nudes left to report.
The appearance of Nicole, 22, from
Bournemouth on page 3 today, wearing
little but a smile, will outrage campaigners who had celebrated the apparent end of topless models.
It is unclear, though, if this is just a

flash in the pan or a return to old ways.

Sources at the newspaper were being
coy, refusing to say whether Nicole and
the 12 other page 3 models would
appear topless in print again.
The Sun is keen, though, to direct
readers to its page 3 website. Tom
Jamieson, a writer for Private Eye, joked
on Twitter that the decision to take the
models behind an online paywall was a
plot to make the newspaper money.
Where else can you see naked women
on the internet? he asked innocently.
The newspaper had made only small

concessions this week to those who feel

that the 45-year-old feature is outdated
and sexist. Page 3 on Monday had a
story of debatable news value about a
lingerie model for Marks & Spencer.
Tuesdays first edition had a photograph of two bikini-wearing actress
running on a beach. It was later replaced by four pages on Anne Kirkbride, the Coronation Street actress,
who had died the previous evening.
Pages 2 and 3 yesterday were taken up
with a Sainsburys advert, but on page 5
there was an assessment of the cosmetic

surgery undertaken by two Celebrity Big

Brother contestants under the headline
thanks for the mammaries. At the foot
of the page was a plug for the website.
The No More Page 3 campaign
started in 2012 and attracted 217,000 signatures to a petition calling for a ban. A
more recent petition calling on the German newspaper Bild to remove its nude
models received 32,000 signatures.
While the campaign was praised on
social media for its victory, some writers pointed out that little had changed.
Deborah Orr wrote in The Guardian:

Replacing topless women with women

in bras only illustrates that The Sun
doesnt understand whats wrong with
its general approach to women.
However, Katharine Whitehorn, 86,
a veteran commentator on attitudes to
women, wrote: Compared to most of
the other ways women get exploited,
someone getting paid for taking their
bra off just doesnt seem that important
now. If you want to worry about something, get worried about trafficking or
FGM [female genital mutilation] or
something similar.

FGM

News
JAMES GRANT / CATERS

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

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Camerons top meal

David Cameron has snubbed the
celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay in
favour of a high street chicken
chain. When asked on Capital
Xtra to select where he would
take world leaders for a meal a
Harvester, a Gordon Ramsay
restaurant or Nandos he
replied that, having eaten at all
three, I think Nandos is the best
value for money. I had a very
good Nandos in Bristol.

Troops to train in Japan

Frozen north Bowfell, in the Lake District, looked more like the Alps yesterday after heavy snowfall. The cold bright weather is set to continue. Full forecast, page 17

Wages surge as jobless

rate falls to six-year low
Kathryn Hopkins, Alex Ralph

Britains jobless rate has tumbled to its

lowest level since 2008 and wage
growth is more than three times higher
than inflation, but there are signs
that the rapid pace of recovery in the
employment market is starting to slow.
The number of people out of work in
Britain fell by 58,000 to 1.91 million in
the three months to November, and the
unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 per
cent, official figures showed yesterday.
A year ago the rate was 7.1 per cent.
At the same time, average weekly
earnings, excluding bonuses, rose by
1.8 per cent, the Office for National
Statistics said. Including bonuses, the
figure was 1.7 per cent. Inflation grew at
1 per cent in November before diving to
0.5 per cent in December.
Michael Saunders, UK economist at
Citigroup, estimated that Britains socalled Misery Index, which he calculated by adding together consumer
price inflation and the jobless rate, was
now at its lowest level in about a decade.
The sharp drop in this gauge, along

with improving nominal wage growth,

points to buoyant consumer confidence in coming months, Mr Saunders
said about the index, which was first
coined by the economist Arthur Okun
in the 1960s.
However, there were signs of a slowdown in the latest labour market report.
If this trend persists, it could cause the
Conservatives a headache as Mays
general election approaches.
In particular, the quarterly fall in
unemployment was the smallest since
September 2013. While the number of
people in employment rose by 37,000 to
30.8 million, it was the weakest pace of
growth since May 2013.
The figures also showed that youth
unemployment had started to creep up
again, with the number of out-of-work
people aged between 16 and 24 rising by
30,000 to 764,000 in the three months
to November. This pushed up the
closely watched youth unemployment
rate to 16.9 per cent, up from 16 per cent
in the previous three months.
Nicola Smith, head of economics
at the TUC, said: There are now con-

cerning signs that young people are

being left behind, with long-term youth
unemployment failing to improve. Far
more must be done to ensure that
young people are protected from the
damaging effects of long periods out of
work.
David Kern, chief economist at the
British Chambers of Commerce, said
that the unexpected increase in youth
unemployment was disappointing after
a long period of steady decline.
He added: While youth unemployment is markedly lower than a year ago,
we cannot ignore the fact that it
remains consistently higher than the
adult unemployment rate.
Despite signs of a slowdown, the
figures were welcomed by George
Osborne, who said: Britain is pulling
ahead with record numbers in work,
falling unemployment and wages rising
significantly faster than inflation.
Rachel Reeves, shadow work and
pensions secretary, criticised the cost of
living, saying that wages remain
sluggish and working people are 1,600
a year worse off since 2010.

Reveal every
tariff, energy
price sites told
Mark Atherton

Energy price comparison websites will

have to show all tariffs on the market
and not just those that pay commission,
the energy regulator has ruled.
Ofgem finally bowed yesterday to
growing pressure for more transparency in how comparison websites present
their search results.
At the moment the sites can, in their
default search, hide deals from
companies that dont pay them commission. This means that unless customers seek out the all available deals
option, they may not see up to
one third of the tariffs on the market,
including some of the very best
available. This will now change in a
move that marks a victory for Times
Moneys campaign for greater openness
among energy switching sites.
Two of the five biggest comparison
sites, Gocompare and Comparethemarket, are not accredited by
Ofgem are therefore under no obligation to follow its guidelines. Both sites
have said, however, that they adhere
voluntarily to Ofgems rulings and will
continue to do so.

Rate rise unlikely after experts change their minds

Kathryn Hopkins
Economics Correspondent

The prospect of an interest rate rise this

year receded yesterday after it emerged
that two Bank of England policymakers
who had been supporting a rise since
last summer had changed their minds.
The disappointing news for savers
came with the publication of minutes of

this months monetary policy committee meeting which showed that Ian
McCafferty and Martin Weale, who
had been pushing for a rise to 0.75 per
cent since August, were now calling for
rates to be kept on hold.
This was the first time since last July
that the nine-strong rate-setting committee had been unanimous about
keeping policy unchanged. The change

of heart was driven by concerns that

low inflation, which has been caused by
the falling oil price, will persist.
The minutes suggested that there
was a roughly even chance that inflation would temporarily dip below zero
at some time during the first half of
2015. Interest rates have stood at the
record low of 0.5 per cent since the
depths of the downturn in 2009 and

several economists have now pushed

back their predictions of the first rise
until 2016.
A new report from Halifax showed
that the fall in inflation from 1 per cent
to 0.5 per cent last month corresponded
with a steep drop in the proportion of
consumers who viewed a potential rise
in interest rates as a barrier to buying a
property.

Britain could send troops to train

with their Japanese counterparts
and vice versa after the first
meeting between the defence and
foreign ministers of the two
countries. Japan has already
conducted joint training with US
and Australian troops. Shinzo
Abe, the prime minister, is
seeking to ease a constitutional
ban from taking part in offensive
operations overseas.

Facebook scam alerts

Spam news posts on Facebook are
to be tagged with warnings in an
effort to reduce the amount of
misleading reports on the social
network. Such posts will now
come with the warning: Many
people on Facebook have reported
that this story contains false
information. Facebook said that
this would discourage a small set
of publishers who are frequently
posting hoaxes and scams.

Abuse inquiry halted

The governments inquiry into
historical child sexual abuse has
been suspended. A statement on
the website of the inquiry, which
has seen two chairwomen resign
amid suggestions they were too
close to figures likely to be
involved in its investigation, said
it would not meet again until
Theresa May, the home secretary,
either appoints a new head or
says if the panel will continue.

Most read at
thetimes.co.uk
1 Heres why we all have reason
to be fearful of antisemitism
2 Hanoi Jane photo a mistake
3 Boko Haram taunts leaders
4 Jihadist faked own death
5 I fought Page 3 and tits won
6 Men shouldnt be at the birth
7 Blunts glossary of insults
8 Obamas attack on super-rich
9 May blocking Tehran deal
10 New rules for kids parties
will leave you unhinged

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

FGM

News

Worthless EU
deal means
2,000 prisoners
stay in Britain
Richard Ford Home Correspondent

Plans to deport nearly 2,000 European

prisoners are in disarray after several
EU countries failed to sign up to
the deal.
Ministers are also alarmed by a court
ruling that blocked the extradition of a
prisoner to Lithuania because jail conditions there could breach human
rights.
They fear it will set a precedent that
prevents the 460 other Lithuanians in

Worst offenders
Top 10 EU countries with prisoners
in jails in England and Wales
Poland 901
Irish Republic 750
Romania 521
Lithuania 461
Portugal 205
Latvia 192
Netherlands 130
Slovakia 119
Czech Republic 109
France 102

British jails from being returned to the

Baltic state.
Of the 10,500 foreigners in British
jails last year, nearly half 4,600
are citizens of other EU countries.
All 28 EU states were supposed to
have ratified a deal allowing the compulsory transfer of prisoners to their
home countries by December 2011, but
only 19 have done so.
Despite failing to meet the deadline,
the European Commission has not
taken infringement action against the
remaining nine but has instead given
them until March to put the agreement
into their national laws.
The nine states that have not ratified
the deal are Bulgaria, Estonia,
Germany, Greece, the Irish Republic,
Lithuania, Portugal, Spain and Sweden,
which together account for 1,600 of the
more than 4,600 EU nationals in jails in
England and Wales.
A statement from the commission
said that no infringement proceedings
had begun against member states that

had failed to transpose the framework

decision. Infringement proceedings
could result in a country being taken to
the European Court of Justice.
The European Commission sent out
a letter to all member states before
Christmas 2014 requesting them to
notify transposition of the framework
decision on transfer of prisoners by
March 15, 2015, at the latest, the commission said in a statement.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee,
said: This EU agreement is not worth
the paper it is written on. What is extraordinary is that those countries that
have not ratified have not faced any
action from the commission. Urgent
action needs to be taken.
The government believed that the
compulsory deal along with agreements with countries outside the EU
would enable them to reduce the 10,300
foreign national prisoners in jails, who
cost 350 million a year.
Officials hoped that compulsory
transfer would help to overcome the
obstacles that have prevented prisoners
being sent home to serve their sentence. Only 162 prisoners were sent to
EU and non EU states under transfer
agreements between 2010 and 2013.
A compulsory deal with Albania that
was brought into force a year ago has
resulted in three of the 334 Albanians in
prisons returning home.
Officials have already warned that
compulsory prisoner transfers could be
delayed or blocked if offenders go to
court claiming that their human rights
would be breached by prison conditions
in their home state.
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman
said: We are pleased that the commission has reiterated the requirement for
member states to have an implementation plan by March.
Once fully in place the EU PTA will
result in a significant increase in the
number of prisoners transferred.
Britain has already had to accept that
no Polish inmates will be transferred
until at least next year under a deal
giving Poland time to provide extra
prison places.
The government is also in talks with
the Irish Republic to transfer prisoners
despite an agreement several years ago
that Irish prisoners would not be part of
the compulsory deal.

EDDIE MULHOLLAND / REX

Test reveals
fatter side
of the thin
blue line

hey are
supposed to be
ready to act
quickly and fight
crime with the
full force of the law, but
when it comes to a
five-minute fitness test
involving walking and
then a gentle jog the
police need to be cut
some slack (Fiona
Hamilton writes).
Officers who are
unable to cope with the
twists and turns of the
back-and-forth shuttle
run could be allowed to
walk on a treadmill
instead under plans being
considered by their
professional body.
Although the fitness

test was only made

compulsory in
September, senior
officers are already
examining alternatives
for those age groups or
weight groups
presumably older,
plumper members of the
police who have a
higher rate of failure in
the 15-metre shuttle runs,
or for injured officers
who cannot handle the
quick turns.
An alternative to the
so-called bleep test
could also tackle
concerns about
discrimination, after
female officers performed
worse. One alternative,
the Chester test, involves
a graded walk on a
treadmill where the speed
would not surpass 3.9
miles per hour.
The College of Policing,
the professional body
which introduced the
compulsory tests, denied
that the alternative would
be easier. Officers would
only be able to take the

alternative for good

reason, such as a doctors
note, it said.
Hundreds of officers
across England and
Wales have failed the
bleep test, which involves
a series of 15-metre
shuttle runs in which the
speed, dictated by bleeps,
is increased every 60
seconds. Those who have
completed the test say
that breaking into a
proper run is not
necessary to pass.
Every warranted officer
must pass in three
attempts, with a six-week
interval between each
attempt to allow time to
train. Officers working in
areas such as firearms,
dog handling and search
and rescue must obtain a
higher level of fitness.
In June, while the
scheme was being piloted,
the College of Policing
found that the pass rate
was 99 per cent for men
but 92 per cent for
women. A spokesman for
the professional body said

An alternative to the bleep

fitness test could involve a
graded walk on a treadmill

yesterday that the data

would continue to be
assessed and other
options were under
consideration if this trend
continued. In the
meantime, forces have
been encouraged to make
positive efforts to
improve fitness for
disadvantaged groups
such as women and older
officers, by offering
fitness and diet advice.
Assistant Chief
Constable Rob Price,
leader of the national
fitness working group at
the College of Policing,
told PoliceOracle.com:
We will definitely have
to look at 12 months data
and assess who failed, in
terms of gender and age,
and assess the
community impact. It is
something we have to
manage with the service
to make sure we are not
discriminating.

Detectives one-man war on drugs sends 37 dealers to jail

Simon de Bruxelles

An undercover police officer who uses

the name Stan has been responsible
for the jailing of 37 drug dealers in three
months.
The dealers who sold drugs on the
streets of Boscombe, a run-down suburb of Bournemouth, have been sent to
prison for a total of 70 years thanks to
evidence gathered by the detective.
Stan took part in more than 100 deals,
buying heroin and crack cocaine from
street-corner dealers in scenes reminiscent of the American series The Wire.

He queued up alongside drug users to

meet dealers in exchanges that took
place in parks, phone boxes, churches,
beside schools and at a crown green
bowling club, often in broad daylight.
He usually agreed details on the telephone with male dealers but found it
was a vulnerable female addicts who
would appear to complete the trade. All
the time Stan was gathering evidence
against dealers and their suppliers that
led to a number of police raids.
Among those caught by Operation
Moped was Christopher Morrison, 51,
who was jailed for five years and eight

months for supplying heroin and crack

cocaine. George Byworth, 43, was jailed
for the same period for supplying
cocaine and diamorphine.
The youngest dealer caught was a 16year-old boy who received a two-year
youth rehabilitation order.
Inspector Chris Weeks, of Dorset
police, said: Our communities told us
that on-street drug dealing and antisocial behaviour is a real day-to-day
concern, and we acted.
One of the results is the high number of arrests and convictions achieved
through Operation Moped. This form

of police activity sends out a clear

message that if you deal drugs you will
be arrested and any financial gains
achieved by individuals through crime
will be confiscated.
The teams work to date has caused
significant disruption to those involved
in drug dealing and members of the
community have reported a reduction
in on-street drug dealing.
Since October Dorset police have
made 47 drugs-related arrests, seized
35 vehicles and reported 120 people for
traffic offences in an attempt to disrupt
drug-dealing activities. They have

seized 218 wraps of crack cocaine, 233

wraps of heroin with an estimated
street value of more than 4,500 and
confiscated 10,000 in cash from
criminals.
Mr Weeks added: This style of policing will continue throughout 2015, and
we want to reassure our communities
that drug dealing will not be tolerated.
I urge members of the community
to report individuals who they believe
are involved in drug dealing. The more
information we receive the more action
we can take to disrupt and stop onstreet drug dealing.

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

News Health

Hundreds of operations
are cancelled every day
as NHS crisis spreads

Chris Smyth Health Editor

The problems overwhelming the health service now stretch well beyond A&E

Under pressure
Cancelled operations Nov 4 to Jan 3

36
594
8,595

2012-13

22
2013-14

506
9,320

58
2014-15

Urgent ops 2
or more times
Urgent ops
within 24hrs
Elective ops
within 24hrs

626

12,345

Maximum 62-day wait for first

treatment: all cancers
urgent GP referral to treatment

%
88.0
87.0

Source: The Kings Fund

Two hundred operations are cancelled

each day and waiting times are rising
across the board, according to an
authoritative report which warns that
the NHS is now in critical condition.
Patients face even longer waits as
many hospitals predict they will run
out of money within months, with
problems spreading well beyond
accident & emergency units.
Experts warned that more than a
decade of progress in the health service
was now being thrown into reverse as
hospitals were overwhelmed by rising
numbers of older, sicker patients.
Patients are waiting longer than for
any time in seven years, with targets
missed for routine operations and
cancer treatments, as well as in A&E. A
third more operations are being cancelled at the last minute compared with
last year, as hospitals resort to drastic
measures to free up beds.
Services are stretched to the limit.
With financial problems also endemic
among hospitals and staff morale a significant cause for concern, the situation
is now critical, said John Appleby, chief
economist of the Kings Fund, which
today publishes its quarterly overview
of NHS performance. The [governments] big effort is to get through to the
election without things blowing apart
and what happens after that is in the
fog. I dont think its working.
The NHS has done better than anybody expected for quite a few years, but
in the last nine months its become
serious, he said. Its really hard to find
a statistic that is published by NHS England or the Department of Health that
is looking good.
Already almost two thirds of hospitals are being forced to rely on emergency bailouts from central government, and with budgets facing a further
squeeze from April, Professor Appleby
warned: You can expect to wait longer,
in A&E, for elective operations and
probably at all stages of the service.
Since November, 12,345 routine
operations have been cancelled at the
last minute, compared with 9,320 in the

86.0
85% target

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

85.0
84.0
83.0

same period last year. A further 626

urgent operations have been cancelled,
58 of them twice, as hospitals struggle
to cope.
Thats clearly a sign of the pressure
on beds. Its not as if they are not trying
to get the elective patients in, they just
need the operating theatres and beds for
emergencies, Professor Appleby said.
Mark Porter, chairman of the British
Medical Association, said: Every part
of the system from general practice,
to hospitals, to community care is
struggling to keep up with demand,
leaving some patients facing unacceptable delays for treatment. In some
cases, this means patients who have
been waiting weeks or months for treatment having their operation cancelled
as they are about to be taken to theatre.
Only 83.5 per cent of cancer patients
start treatment within two months of a
GP referral, the worst figure since an 85
per cent target was introduced five
years ago. Professor Appleby said missing targets has become normalised,
and its not because people are sitting

around with their feet on the desks. Its

so hard to make it.
More than 12 per cent of people wait
more than 18 weeks for routine operations, well beyond the governments
target of 10 per cent. Although the
figures include a push in the autumn to
treat more people who have been
waiting months for treatment, there are
still more than three million on
waiting lists. Professor Appleby said:
There is no way the NHS can get that
down to within the target within a
month.
Peter Carter, the chief executive of
the Royal College of Nursing, said: The
NHS is struggling and stretched far too
thinly . . . A&E departments are where
the pressures are most visible, but this
report shows that a lack of investment,
poor workforce planning and fragmented services have affected patients
across the whole NHS.
Bed blocking is at a six-year high,
with beds occupied 140,000 nights a
month by patients who are well enough
to leave. Two thirds of this is down to
problems with transport, prescriptions
and other delays within the NHS, while
the rest is due to problems getting older
people support at home.
Professor Appleby warns that waits
for home-care support have jumped by
50 per cent in a year and waits for
nursing home places by 42 per cent, as
councils cut back on social care.
Jamie Reed, a shadow health minister, said: The A&E crisis is intensifying
and spreading to other parts of the
NHS. This is down to the governments
failure to get a grip on it. People are
having their operations cancelled
because A&E needs more and more
beds this helps to explain why
waiting lists are at a six-year high
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: The NHS is busier than
ever which is why we have given almost
1 billion this year for almost 800 more
doctors, 4,700 more nurses, 6,400 more
beds and treatment for an extra
100,000 patients. We are backing the
NHSs plan for the future and have provided an extra 2 billion next year to
transform out-of-hospital care.

Our misery and frustration is their budgeting tool

First person
Melanie Reid

uckily for the NHS, nobody

dies of misery. Thats why
hospital administrators
get away with the
inhumane and cynical
practice of overbooking
operations.
In my case, to be in hospital at
7.15am on the day of my
operation, as requested, I had to
get up at 5am. I needed a
parastomal hernia repair and,
like most people waiting for
elective surgery, Id been
in the queue for six
months, in grinding,

low-level discomfort.
At 7.15, queasy from nil-by-mouth
for the anaesthetic, I joined a line of
the bleary-eyed, lame and suffering at
the Southern General in Glasgow,
one of the largest teaching hospitals
in the UK. I was told that my
operation would be late afternoon.
Around 8am, the anaesthetist
came to discuss my case. She
was concerned about my past
history and wanted a highdependency (HD) bed
available. A student nurse
arrived next, keen as
mustard, and started
asking me the same
questions I had
answered in the pre-op
assessment four days
earlier. By 10am I was

so nauseous from lack of fluids that I

began to retch (normally, I drink
three litres of water a day; vital with
an indwelling catheter). They allowed
me a sip.
At 10.15am, bad news. No HD beds
available. I thought my husband was
about to suffer a coronary from
suppressed rage. Then, suddenly,
word came that a bed might be free
after all. We sat back, empty and
beaten. The student, poor soul, was
sent back with another tranche of
asinine questions. Never forget that
the NHS is a parody-free zone. As I
wilted before her eyes, retching
gently, she asked me if a doctor had
ever warned me I was at risk of CJD.
By midday my surgeon arrived to
say that there was no bed so no
operation was possible. He apologised.

But why should he bear the brunt?

This is a system imposed on him by
managers who know that marching
non-emergencies up the hill and then
back down again does not endanger
life; and costs nothing in comparison
to staffing sufficient beds. Our daily
prolongation of misery is their
calculated budgeting tool.
We got home, wretched and weary,
just under 12 hours after we had left. I
tried to imagine what it must feel like
for elderly people, or those who live
alone, returning to a cold flat, no milk
in the fridge and the dog to be
retrieved from kennels. And the wait,
anxious and still in pain, for the next
appointment months hence.
NHS savings are necessary, but this
is a shoddy and underhand way of
trying to achieve them.

Nations Health Service

Total percentage of NHS staff
2009

2014

British

88.9%
89.1%

Irish

1.1%%
1.2%%

Spanish

0.2%
0.4%

Portuguese

0.1%
0.4%

Greek

0.1%
0.2%

Increase

New data reveals

changing anatomy
of the workforce,
Dominic Kennedy
and Kat Lay write

he proportion of Britons
working in the NHS has
been growing in recent
years, contrary to popular
perception. The Times has
obtained the largest ever
breakdown of staff by nationality
which shows that by head count,
hours worked and percentage, the
NHS workforce is increasingly
made up of Britons.
There has been a sharp rise in
workers from poorer European
countries but they have been
displacing the overseas staff
traditionally recruited from
Commonwealth nations, rather
than taking British peoples jobs.
The official figures show:
6 There was a sharp rise in workers
from Portugal, Ireland, Greece and
Spain, the countries sometimes
nicknamed PIGS because their
economies were the most badly
battered by the financial crisis.
6 Indian and Pakistani doctors,
stalwarts of the NHS since the

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

FGM

Health News

The good
news: fall in
childhood
cancer toll

So where do hospital staff come from?

Top 10 nationalities

Doctors
India

6,880
Pakistan

Ireland

10,265

2,218
1,945

Britain

1,389
1,458

British

2009
850,084

Indian

20,833

17,923

Philippines

12,839

13,096

Irish

10,346

13,062

Polish

3,508

6,148

Nigerian

4,555

4,979

Spanish

1,561

4,563

5,034

4,343

Zimbabwean

2009

Portuguese

61,033

Pakistani

2014

2014
926,326

1,175

4,312

3,208

2,928

Chris Smyth

Childhood cancer deaths have dropped

by more than half in recent decades.
Huge strides and modern drugs
mean that the number of people under
24 dying of cancer each year has fallen
from 1,300 in the 1970s to 550 now, according to Cancer Research UK.
The biggest reduction has been in
deaths from leukaemia. The disease,
which once killed nine out of ten sufferers, now has a 90 per cent survival rate,
thanks to a new generation of targeted
drugs such as Glivec.
However, campaigners warned that
there had been very little progress in
other types of cancers, with a big research gap opening up between common and rarer cancers.
Pam Kearns, director of the Cancer
Research UK Clinical Trials Unit in Birmingham, said: These figures are testament to the real progress were making
in treating children and young people
with cancer. But hundreds of young
people are dying from cancer each year
in the UK, which means theres still
much more we need to do.
Cancer is the most deadly illness in
childhood, but about three quarters of
patients now survive. In the mid-1970s,
57 in every million children under 14
died of cancer; this has fallen to 23 in a
million. Children still face the trauma of

78,115

Malaysia

1,122
1,330

Greece

697
1,458
Nurses
Philippines

Zimbabwe

9,239
8,006
3,822
2,994

Spain

Britain

406

2,725

2014

Portugal

210

Nigeria

2009

237,369
274,709

Exclusive to members

2,423

Read our series on the

future of the NHS

1,849
1,521

in British doctors and nurses

1960s, are dwindling in number.
6 Poles have been making an
increased contribution, mainly in
the infrastructure jobs which
include catering and maintenance.
The figures are from a huge
database of 1.2 million NHS
workers. It was often noted that the
health service was the worlds
largest employer apart from the
Indian railways and the Red Army,
and it still remains one of the
biggest workforces.
Politicians and trade unions in
recent years have seized on figures
showing sharp rises in European
health workers to demand the
imposition of barriers against
overseas recruits or increased
investment in training in Britain.
However, the numbers show that
the proportion of Britons has risen
from 88.9 to 89.1 per cent since
2009.
During this period, records show
an increase in doctors with British
nationality of 17,000, and nurses of
36,000.
The NHS has become better at
recording employees nationality
but the rate of the rise of Britons
cannot be put down to that change.
Britons tend to be employed in
larger proportions in job sectors
such as therapy. Medicine and
ambulance work remain fields

where there is a particular need to

rely on overseas recruits.
There has been a dramatic rise in
health workers from the austerityhit nations since the economic crisis
of 2008.
Spanish and Portuguese nurses
have risen from only 406 and 210
respectively five years ago, to 2,725
and 2,423 now. There has also been
an unexpectedly sharp rise in Greek
doctors from 697 to 1,458.
Indian and Pakistani doctors but
also nurses from Zimbabwe and
Nigeria have fallen in numbers, as
have nurses from the Philippines.
There has been a significant rise
in the number of Irish people
particularly among therapists,
scientific and technical staff where
their numbers have risen
significantly from 1,522 to 2,513.
The number of Poles has nearly
doubled. Many of them work in the
infrastructure jobs which keep the
NHS clean and well fed.
Chandra Kanneganti, chairman
of the British International Doctors
Association, said the service had
been relying on the Indian
subcontinent since the 1960s.
However, ambitious Indian
medical students now prefer to set
their sights on America where there
is a perception that they can go
further, especially since an ethnic

Indian, Vivek Murthy, achieved the

highest post of surgeon general in
2013, he said. Sometimes people
are saying they [western nations]
are brain-draining India but its not
a developing country any more. In
my state there used to be nine
medical schools, now there are 36.
Patient groups and unions tend to
call for more training of Britons to
plug gaps in the NHS rather than
importing people from overseas.

However, Dr Kanneganti said:

The public spend 200,000 or
300,000 to train individuals but
many UK graduates go to Australia,
New Zealand, Canada or Dubai.
They look for positions somewhere
else where there is sunshine, a
better work-life balance and the
media are not always complaining
about greedy GPs.
Southern European recruits face
the extra challenges of having
English as a second language and
being new to Anglo-Saxon culture.
The European Union insists that

qualifications are regarded as

equivalent across national
boundaries but Dr Kanneganti was
uncertain if that was the case. We
dont know whether it is equivalent
standard and quality. There are so
many European countries.
The General Medical Council
used to allow European doctors to
work in Britain without proving
their English language skills until a
German locum accidentally gave a
fatal dose of painkillers to a British
patient. Language competence is
now required.
Joydeep Grover, of the British
Association of Physicians of Indian
Origin, said: The NHS has relied
heavily on imported doctors since
its inception. The UK has benefited
immensely, as not only would it be
inconceivable for the NHS to have
survived without such numbers to
contribute to it, but also as it got
these doctors free of medical school
cost!
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive
of the Royal College of Nursing,
said: Although nurses coming from
abroad have always made a valuable
contribution to the NHS, the health
service has developed an
astounding over-reliance on
overseas nurses in the past few
years. The NHS is now panic-buying
nurses from overseas.

thetimes.co.uk/futurenhs

gruelling treatment and long-term sideeffects such as infertility and disability.

Research published last summer found
that almost all childhood cancer survivors will have at least one chronic health
condition by the age of 45.
Professor Kearns added: Every day I
see the extreme bravery of children and
young people going through difficult
treatments. Whilst many go on to live
full lives, they may have to deal with the
side-effects of treatment for years to
come. So it is vital that we continue to
increase funding for research into
kinder and better treatments.
Simon Fuller, director at the Teenage
Cancer Trust, said: Its heartening to
see significant improvements in survival. However, these figures still show
teenagers and young adults continuing
to have higher cancer mortality rates
than children. For teenagers and young
adults, survival varies by cancer type,
and treatments for some of their common cancers have barely changed in 30
years. Much more research is urgently
needed to improve treatments.
Fiona Barnett, of Wimbledon, southwest London, whose son Rufus was diagnosed with leukaemia aged six, said:
When they told me it was leukaemia
my first question was, is he going to
die?. Treatment started immediately
and over that first year Rufus had to endure seemingly non-stop lumbar punctures, injections and general anaesthetics, not to mention infections, horrible
medicines and hideous side-effects.
It felt like it would never end, but one
year after diagnosis we were so relieved
to hear that Rufus was responding well,
which indicated that he had a very good
chance of complete recovery.

FGM

News

Parents must check

mosques, says MP
Laura Pitel Political Correspondent

A Muslim MP has revealed that he once

pulled his young daughter out of classes
at a local mosque because of concern
for her wellbeing. Khalid Mahmood,
who represents the Birmingham seat of
Perry Barr, said that parents must take
charge of their childrens religious education and the guidance they receive.
He made the disclosure about his
family during a forum on countering
extremism and radicalisation organised by Hazel Blears, the former Labour communities secretary.
After the event, the MP told The
Times that, when his daughter was
about eight, he went to inspect the allfemale religious education class she attended. I didnt feel comfortable, he
said. There werent any child protection policies in place. I didnt think that
50 or 60 young children in class sitting
on a floor were able to learn. He decided to take his daughter, now a 21-yearold student, out of the lessons.
Mr Mahmood warned that privately
run religious classes in Britain were unregulated, but said it was no use for
parents to blame imams or community
leaders for failing to prevent teenagers
becoming radicalised. Where is their
responsibility in this? he said. Do they
go to the mosque and ask questions? If
they dont, what do they expect?
This week, the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, and the communities
minister, Lord Ahmad, wrote to imams

urging them to demonstrate how faith

in Islam can be part of British identity.
However, The Times understands
that their letter was sent only to about
two thirds of English mosques and
prayer rooms because ministers have
no contact with the remainder.
The department of communities and
local government, which is responsible
for promoting integration and cohesion, has about 1,000 mosques that it
actively engages with. By contrast, the
website Muslims in Britain, run by an
expert on Islam in the UK who has advised the Metropolitan police, records
the existence of 1,625 mosques and
prayer rooms. Mr Mahmood said he
was surprised the department held
such limited information. If you are
looking at these issues of engagement
with the wider Muslim community
then there should be regular collection
of information and data that allows us
that access to these people, he said.
Speaking at yesterdays event, Sara
Khan, who runs a counter-extremism
group called Inspire, said that she was
worried about the lack of suitable options for young Muslims seeking answers about their religion. Mothers told
her that mosques and religious organisations had fundamentally failed to
teach their children a narrative about
British Islam. She said: If you have a 16year-old Muslim in this country, where
do they go to learn about a contextualised, moderate British Islam?
Letters, page 21

CATERS NEWS

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Sentamu to
avoid laying
hands on
new bishop
Continued from page 1

Penguin suit Ralph, a Humboldt penguin who loses his feathers when he moults,
has been given a coat to protect him from the cold at Marwell Wildlife, Hampshire

ordination of women bishops for two

decades.
We are dismayed that it seems that
the Archbishop of York will not lay
hands on Philip North at his consecration as Bishop of Burnley, a spokeswoman said.
We believe it is unprecedented that
an archbishop should be present at a
consecration in his own province and
not lay hands on a candidate, and not
preside at the Eucharist.
Watch said that the controversy
risked detracting from the churchs
achievement in naming its first woman
bishop, two decades after the ordination of the first women priests.
We have known about the arrangements for the consecration of the
Bishop of Burnley for some time, but
have not commented publicly out of
courtesy to the individuals involved, it
said. Our focus has been on the earlier
consecration as the fulfilment of a long
and deeply held desire by so many, and
as a source of good news from the
church.
The churchs main office in London
declined to comment. The Archbishop
of Yorks office and the diocese of
Blackburn did not respond to emails or
telephone calls last night.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

FGM

News

Rylance reigns in King Henrys court

as a new chapter opens for Wolf Hall
Television Andrew Billen
Wolf Hall
BBC Two
HHHHH
Some say that Hilary Mantels novel
Wolf Hall is hard to get into and then
impossible to withdraw from: in for
the books 650 pages, in then for the
430 pages of its sequel. There is no
such difficulty in entering this TV
adaptation of both parts of the
Booker Prize winners retelling of the
story of Thomas Cromwell, the legal
hack from nowhere who became
Henry VIIIs chief minister and
designer of Anglicanism.
It began last night with those words
we all fear and can therefore relate
to but those in power fear most:
Youre out. They were gleefully
hurled by the kings messengers,
Norfolk and Suffolk, at Cardinal
Wolsey. In the role of the over-mighty

Inside today

Why Mark Wahlberg

wants to be pardoned
Times2, pages 50-51

lord chancellor, Jonathan Pryce

replied with insolent benevolence:
Youll have supper? From this
moment viewers knew that they
were in for a riot of British character
acting of the type reserved for BBC
classic serials, a category that this
Wolf Hall transcends by its
intellectual and emotional
intelligence.
For a while Pryces portrayal of
liminal resignation is so seductive you
wonder why the pre-publicity was so
much about Damian Lewis as the king
and you keep wondering because
Henry does not appear until the
opening episodes final four minutes.
The real action is in the shadows,
however, where Mark Rylances eyes,
glistening with sadness and acuity,
produce a Bafta-winning
performance by themselves. When
his Cromwell finally encounters
the king in a court garden we
enjoy not only a clash of
personalities but of acting styles.

Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn; Mark Rylance, left, is devastatingly realistic as Thomas Cromwell

Lewis, the old Etonian, is an actor at

his best when playing men, who, like
Brody in Homeland, play themselves.
Rylance, an outsider brought up
modestly by teachers abroad, replies
with devastating authenticity.
The blacksmiths lad from Putney
may be a mystery to his rivals such
as Thomas More (Anton Lesser,
another great foil for Rylance). At
home, we already know Cromwell.
A few deft scenes with his family
establish him as a man stubbornly

unbrutalised by his fathers violence

and, beneath the cynicism, loving.
The deaths of his wife and two girls
from fever is one of the most
upsetting things I have seen on TV
for a while. We need to know how
Cromwell can possibly carry on, and
where his grief will take him.
This is such a festival of thesps
Bernard Hill, Richard Dillane, Mark
Gatiss, Claire Foy who can resist
playing spot-the-actor? The Boleyn
girls father? David Robb, the good

doctor from Downton, of course. It is

also, despite, perhaps, one time-shift
too many, an exemplary work of
clarity by the screenwriter Peter
Straughan, who has reduced 1,100
pages to six hours. Yet what is
remarkable is that although the actors
and the story are so celebrated, this
account, directed by Peter Kosminsky,
feels as real and visceral as if the
wolves of Henrys court were panting
down our own necks.
Letters, page 21

Why standing up to bully bosses works Smart scarf heats up to

Hannah Devlin Science Editor

Browbeaten employees take note:

those who have hostile bosses tend to
be better off if they fight back and
return the hostility.
The news may come as a relief to
those who have spent years responding
cordially to unwarranted outbursts or
passive-aggressive emails from their
superiors. Rather than responding to
hostility with deference and grace,
researchers found that employees who
fought back experienced less psychological distress, greater job satisfaction
as well as more commitment to their
employer.
Bennett Tepper, who led the study at
Ohio State University, said: Before we
did this study, I thought there would be
no upside to employees who retaliated
against their bosses, but thats not what
we found. Employees felt better about

themselves because they didnt just sit

back and take the abuse.
In the study, published in the journal
Personnel Psychology, 169 people completed two postal surveys seven months
apart. In the first, participants rated
how often their supervisors did things
such as ridicule them and tell them that
their thoughts and feelings were
stupid, and reported their responses to
hostile treatment.
Seven months later, the same
respondents completed measures of
job satisfaction, commitment to their
employer, psychological distress and
negative feelings.
Results showed that when bosses
were hostile but employees didnt retaliate the workers had higher levels of
psychological distress, less satisfaction
with their jobs and less commitment to
their employer. These negative consequences did not appear to be suffered

by those who returned the hostility

mostly by ignoring their boss or giving
just a half-hearted effort.
These are things that bosses dont
like and that fit the definition of hostility, but in a passive-aggressive form, Dr
Tepper said. I expect that you dont
have too many employees yelling and
screaming at their bosses.
In a second survey of 371 people, the
researchers found that returning
hostility did not appear to worsen the
chances of a promotion or a pay rise.
Dr Tepper said he believed that
employees who fought back might earn
the admiration and respect of colleagues. There is a norm of reciprocity
in our society, he said. We have respect
for someone who fights back, who
doesnt just take abuse. Having the
respect of co-workers may help employees feel more committed to their organisation and happy about their job.

soothe stressed wearers

James Dean
Technology Correspondent

A mood-enhancing smart scarf that

warms or cools its owner according to
their emotional state is being developed by researchers at Microsoft.
The prototype scarf, which is linked
to a smartphone app, plays music and
displays lights to help to improve the
disposition of its wearer.
If the scarf detects stress, it tries to
cool its wearer and plays soothing
music. If a wearer is sad, the scarf plays
cheery music and tries to warm them
while flashing soothing light visualisations. If they reach a happy state, it tries
to maintain their body temperature
and plays upbeat music. When excited,
the scarf tries to cool the wearer down.

It is also designed to detect the feelings

of others nearby, which the researchers
believe could help autism sufferers to
understand the emotional cues of
others.
The scarf is composed of hexagonal
modules that contain lights, vibration
motors, heating coils, cooling fabrics,
computing units and batteries.
The scarf responds to cues from biosensors, such as heart rate monitors,
which it receives over wireless Bluetooth connections.
An owner could also adapt the scarfs
features to suit his or her preferences,
the researchers said. If they decided
that they wanted to hear downbeat
music when they were sad, they could
programme it to play a piano concerto
composed in a minor key, for example.

10

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

News

BBC head office costs 14,000 per worker

Alex Spence Media Editor

The BBC is spending three times as

much on its headquarters in London as
other comparable buildings cost to
operate, at almost 14,000 per employee, the National Audit Office has said.
New Broadcasting House, the corporations 1 billion flagship premises,
costs 89 million a year to run, the
equivalent of a third of the BBCs
annual property budget, the public
spending watchdog said in a report yesterday.
Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the
Commons public accounts committee,
said it was staggering that the BBC
was spending so much every year and
called on executives to give evidence in
parliament next month.
The two-year-old building, which
was lampooned in the BBC Two satire
W1A, has been criticised by staff for its
poor facilities.
One employee said in a letter to Ariel,
the BBCs in-house magazine, this
week: I could mention broken taps, the
constantly out-of-order lifts, or automated doors that no longer open. But
the single most annoying and embarrassing issue has got to be the toilets. Is
there a single toilet anywhere in [the
building] that hasnt been out of order
for an extended period during the last
12 months?
A reporter complained to Ariel about
faulty telephone and internet systems,
writing: How did a brand new building
with brand new equipment end up with
so many of its fixtures and fittings not
working properly? And is anyone being
held accountable for this? The NAO

BBC staff complain that lifts and toilets at New Broadcasting House are out of order. Running costs are 89 million a year

said that Broadcasting House costs the

BBC 1,422 per square metre every
year, nearly three times as much as the
UK average for similar buildings and 49
per cent higher than the benchmark for
central London.
Broadcasting House is not comparable to other buildings, said a spokesman for the BBC. It makes around half

of all BBC output, houses the biggest

newsroom in Europe and broadcasts
globally 24 hours a day, every day of the
week, which requires unique levels of
technology and security.
However, the NAO said that the
comparison with other buildings in
central London, including the offices of
Deloitte, Royal Bank of Scotland and

Transport for London, had taken account of specialist costs relating to

broadcasting operations.
The BBC has 154 buildings around
the UK which cost 273 million a year
to run, equivalent to 7.3 per cent of its
income from the licence fee. The total
area that the properties cover has been
reduced by 29 per cent since 1999. The

NAO said that the BBC had upgraded

many buildings, improved efficiency by
reducing the size of its estate and was
using less space per employee.
Anne Bulford, the BBCs finance
chief, said: This report shows that
better buildings have made the BBC a
better, more efficient broadcaster
which gives licence fee payers more for
their money.
Mrs Hodge also attacked the BBC for
doing a 200 million deal for its former
headquarters with a consortium of
investors that used a Luxembourgbased financial structure.
She said it was inappropriate for the
publicly-funded broadcaster to sell the
property at White City, west London, to
an offshore investment company,
which are frequently used in commercial property transactions to legally
minimise tax liabilities.
Insiders dismissed her criticism yesterday, arguing that such structures are
common in commercial property deals.
BBC executives will nevertheless have
to explain the transaction at the PAC
hearing next month.
The BBC sold Television Centre, its
distinctive doughnut-shaped headquarters, in 2012 to a consortium of
Stanhope, a property development
company, Mitsui Fudosan, a Japanese
investment manager, and Alberta Investment Management Corporation,
one of Canadas biggest pension funds.
Having obtained planning permission, the developers intend to transform the former BBC site into a development with 950 homes, offices, hotel,
leisure facility and a branch of Soho
House, the members club.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

11

FGM

News

Prepare for a
gold rush as
Royal Mint
bullion is back
Valentine Low

Bacchus is moving to Britain; annual consumption of wine in this country is expected to top 11.2 billion by 2018, pushing France into third place in the world rankings

Bon-vivant Britain splashes out

more than France on top wines
Valentine Low
Adam Sage Paris

There is, as yet, no suggestion that

Britons have started eating frogs legs,
or wearing berets, or doing anything
else that distinguishes the French
from us.
There is, however, one area previously regarded as their specialist subject
in which we are about to catch up
with our neighbours: the amount we
spend on wine.
According to new figures, wine
spending in Britain is recovering from
the downturn triggered by the financial
crisis and is set to overtake that of
France within four years.
The increased spending, say experts,
is partly because people are turning to
more expensive, quality wines, and
partly because Britons pay one of the
highest rates of duty in Europe on a bottle of wine.
According to Vinexpo, a wine exhibition, annual wine sales in Britain are
expected to increase between 2014 and
2018 by 6.2 per cent to hit 11.24 billion.
That will make the UK market the
second biggest in the world, behind the
United States at 21.83 billion but ahead
of France at 10.85 billion.
However, the French still drink
more by volume 266 million cases of
wine last year, compared with 123 million in Britain.
Pierpaolo Petrassi, head wine buyer
at Waitrose, said: Over the past few
years some of the wine-consuming
population has engaged with wine to
the point where they can see the sense

of spending more because they can get

more enjoyment from it.
He admitted that British drinkers
may not be getting as good a bargain as
their French counterparts. Some of it
will come down to simply more tax
being paid. Whether they are drinking
better wine, or paying more for the
same wine, I dont know.
Guy Woodward, former editor of
Decanter magazine, said that he would
not buy a 5 bottle of wine in Britain
because so much of the price went on
duty a fixed rate of 2.05 per bottle
and VAT at 20 per cent. Once
youve taken into account the tax, the
margins, the packaging and the marketing, you would be lucky if 50p of that
is in the wine.
Orianne Nouailhac, editor of
Frances Vigneron magazine, said that

Tipple tax
Percentage of duty and
VAT paid on an average
price bottle of wine
UK
56%
Greece
23%
Portugal
23%
Italy
22%
France
21%
Spain
21%
Germany
19%

Analysis Chris Orr, wine consultant

o were set to
overtake the
French in
wine-drinking
or at least
wine-spending. Great
news. Question is, do
we drink better wines
or do we simply get
charged more?
Well, if youre
drinking Chteau
Latour or Lafite, then
the price is pretty
much the same all

round the world. But

is it the same at 6 or
7 a bottle? When you
strip away tax, duty,
shipping etc, then the
money being spent on
the juice in the
bottle is going to be
greater in France. But
does that mean every
6 or 7 bottle of wine
in the UK is inferior?
Not at all. The benefit
of living in Britain is
you get wine from all

around the world.

Hell, we pretty much
made the market for
Australia, South
Africa and Chile in
the 1990s. Whats
more, try seeing what
you get in a French
supermarket if youre
bored with burgundy
or bordeaux. Needles
and haystacks spring
to mind, if youre
looking for anything
from the New World.

the French were drinking less wine and

buying cheaper bottles.
The French had an extraordinary
consumption of wine 50 years ago, but
it is falling because society has evolved
and people no longer drink wine like
they used to, she said. I first sipped
wine with my grandparents when I was
14, but young people today drink sodas
and that kind of thing.
The English, on the other hand,
have become passionate connoisseurs.
I think the British now drink better bottles than the French because there is
wealth in Britain, whereas the French
are impoverished by high taxes and the
economic situation. This means people
drink less expensively, less Bordeaux
and Burgundy and more from places
like Ctes du Rhne and Provence.
Alex Linsley, head of market insight
at the wine merchant Bibendum, said:
Rather than 5 bottles people are buying 6 to 9 bottles of wine, where volumes are up about 20 per cent. And
there is a big growth in volumes being
sold above 10.
The Vinexpo figures, provided by the
International Wine and Spirits Record,
show that Britons are also drinking
more sparkling wine than ever.
In the ten years from 2008 to 2018,
British drinkers are forecast to increase
consumption per person from 1.6 litres
to 2.2 litres a year.
Prosecco is particularly popular. In
2013 alone, there was a 43 per cent
grown in UK imports of the Italian
sparkling wine. Between 2008 and 2013
imports doubled from 1.38 million cases
to 3.57 million cases.

It is news which would bring a smile to

the face of Auric Goldfinger, and
anyone else who ever felt that their
money was not safe in the bank. For the
first time members of the public can
buy gold bars direct from the Royal
Mint.
The move has revived a bullion
brand, Royal Mint Refinery, which has
not been seen for nearly 50 years. The
historic initials RMR have not been
seen on newly minted bars since the
brand ceased production in 1968.
However, if anyone had their eyes on
buying the sort of 13kg bar that fill the
vaults of the Bank of England, they
would be out of luck.
The silver minted bars are available
in 100g units, while the gold bars range
from 1g to 100g in weight.
The price of the bars fluctuates as it is
linked to the constantly changing price
of gold and silver. Last night a 1g bar of
gold was priced up at 42.84, with a 100g
bar on offer for 2,843.97.
This week gold rose to its highest level
since August as investors sought safe
A 1oz bar of gold
could be yours for
just under 890

places to put their cash amid fears about

further weakening of the euro. Priced in
euros, gold is at its highest level since
early 2013.
The Royal Mint Refinery marque
dates back to 1852 and the brand became
known for handling much of the gold
and silver bullion sent to London from
across the world. The name survived
the First and Second World Wars until
production ceased in 1968.
The gold bars are likely to appeal
to people looking for a cost-effective
way to buy bullion, as they have the
added appeal of being VAT-free, the
Mint said.
UK citizens looking to enhance
their self-invested personal pension or
small self-administered scheme can
get up to 45 per cent tax relief on their
purchase of gold RMR bars if they
are bought through their pension
scheme.
Lisa Elward, the Royal Mints head of
international sales, said: We are
thrilled to be able to add minted bars
bearing the historic Royal Mint Refinery marque to our bullion range.
The RMR bars are available directly
through royalmintbullion.com, the
Mints online bullion trading platform
which was set up last September to help
people to buy and sell gold.

Out-of-date software in shops puts your credit card at risk

James Dean
Technology Correspondent

Retailers are putting their customers

credit card details at the mercy of computer hackers because they have failed
to upgrade an obsolete version of the
Windows operating system on their
machines, a leading online security researcher has warned.
A significant number of stores continue to run Windows XP even though
Microsoft stopped providing security

updates for the software almost nine

months ago, James Lyne, the head of
research at Sophos, said.
Windows XP, which was released in
2001, was one of the most popular operating systems in the world and many
companies built their computer networks around it. However, Microsoft
said last April that it would stop providing software updates for XP in order to
concentrate on developing new software instead. When operating systems
stop receiving security updates, they

become more vulnerable to new types

of cyberattack.
Most retailers in the UK are either
completely unprepared or unaware of
the danger, Mr Lyne said. Or, they are
over-confident. For a very small
amount of money, it is possible to get
your hands on kit that can wreak havoc
in their systems. And, because XP is not
being updated, it is way easier to infect
with malware.
Mr Lyne demonstrated how to perform a hacking attack on Windows XP

that was able to extract a string of credit

card details in less than a minute. He set
up a website, reallysaferetail.com, for
which he bought an SSL [Secure Socket
Layer] security certificate for 30 online. These certificates activate a padlock icon that appears next to the address bar on a web browser, indicating
to a user that their connection is secure.
From a cloud computing service
based in Ireland, he first infected the
Windows XP system with malware, or
malicious software, by exploiting one of

its security holes. He then instructed

the malware to download everything
that was held on the computers
memory in what is known as a RAM
[random-access memory] scraper
attack, something that is very difficult
to detect. Mr Lyne was then able to
search for credit card numbers in the
downloaded file.
He said that it was was also possible
to attack non-Windows XP machines,
although it was far harder to carry out
the initial infection with malware.

12

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

News
GRAEME HART / PERTHSHIRE PICTURE AGENCY

57 have been arrested in

connection with a
robbery in Crieff on
Sunday, January 18, and
a robbery in the
Perthshire area on
Monday, January 19 . . .
They are expected to
appear at Perth Sheriff
Court on Thursday.
Ann Gloag, 72,
founded the Stagecoach
transport group with her
brother, Sir Brian Souter,
in 1980, using their
fathers redundancy
money. He had been a
bus driver in Perth.
It is now an
international company
that also operates trains,
trams and ferries. In
2014 the companys
turnover was
2.93 billion.
The former nurse, who
trained at Glasgows
Royal Hospital for Sick
Children, is the second
richest woman in
Scotland after JK
Rowling.
In 2012, she set up
the Gloag Foundation,
which supports
projects that prevent
pr
or relieve poverty and
encourage the
advancement of
education, health
and religion.

Tycoons family tied up

and robbed of 500,000

he family of
Ann Gloag, the
Stagecoach
tycoon, were
recovering last
night after being tied up
by masked men in their
home and robbed of
500,000 worth of
jewellery and cash (Lucy
Holden writes).
Ann Gloags daughter,
Sarah, her husband and
two of their children
were bound with duct

tape at their property in

Perthshire. The family
described the incident as
a horrific ordeal.
The armed robbers
forced their way into the
house on Monday at
7pm. They gagged and
bound Sarah, 39, her
husband Sundeep Salins,
40, and two of their
children, Maddie, 9 and
Matthew, 17.
They escaped with
500,000 worth of

jewellery and cash, not

realising that the
couples other son,
Anthony, 20, was
downstairs playing
computer games. He had
been unaware what was
going on and untied his
family when he found
them. Duct tape had
been used to tie their
hands and feet together
and cover their mouths.
The family live close to
Ann Gloags home,

Kinfauns Castle, which

she has owned since
2004.
It is believed that
Sarah Gloag and her
family had only recently
returned to their home
after a refurbishment.
Police set up a major
incident team and used
sniffer dogs and took
DNA samples to try to
track the men.
A spokesman for Ann
Gloag said:

Ann Gloag, below, and her

home Kinfauns Castle, in
Perth and Kinross. Her
daughter, Sarah, left, and
her family were bound and
gagged during a robbery
on Monday

Understandably, this
has been a very difficult
time for the whole family
and we ask that their
privacy is respected at
this time.
Police confirmed
that two men had
been arrested and
were due to appear
in court today.
They said: Police
Scotland can
confirm that two
men aged 40 and

Women students shun sciences

Greg Hurst Education Editor

Students choice of degree is becoming

increasingly polarised along gender
lines, in a trend that has profound
implications for universities and
employers.
Women outnumber men in two
thirds of degree subjects after a steady
rise in the number of girls winning
university places.
However, male students have
tightened their grip on technology and
science courses that are key to Britains
economic growth, according to the
Universities and Colleges Admissions
Service, which for each of the past
seven years analysed places allocated
by degree subject according to gender.
More than 85 per cent of candidates
accepted on engineering or computer
science courses last year were men.
Overall, out of 512,370 acceptances
by candidates last year, women
outnumbered men by 57,800. Women
favoured subjects allied to medicine, art
and design courses, education and
social sciences.
In psychology, for example, 82.5 per
cent (15,950) were women, up from
81 per cent in 2008. In English, women
outnumbered men by 7,175 to 2,380,
compared with 6,125 women and 2,255
men seven years ago.
However, there was even greater
polarisation in the courses where male
students were in the majority.
Some 20,460 men accepted places on
computer sciences courses last year
and only 3,125 women, a rise of 2 percentage points to 87 per cent compared
with seven years ago, when 14,700 were
men and 2,580 women.
Across all engineering courses, there
were 24,710 new male students and

University choices

Analysis Greg Hurst

oes it
matter if
you go to
university
to study
engineering and find
that 85 per cent of
your fellow
undergraduates on
the course are male?
Or, if you choose
English literature,
that women will
outnumber men by
three to one?
In disciplines such
as science and
technology this
gender polarisation
on degree courses is
increasing. This is an
unexpected
consequence of
reforms that were
designed to empower
student choice to
reshape our university
system.
The early signs are
that many applicants
and their parents have

risen to the challenge,

researching courses
and universities more
carefully and thinking
hard about
employment
prospects on
graduating. Yet there
are signs, too, of the
limits of a supply-anddemand model for
higher education.
Language degrees,
for example, have
slumped in popularity
despite their value to
employers. Less
competition and
lower entry tariffs
have not revived
demand.
There are big
implications if student
choice entrenches
gender domination in
some subjects. It may
be a good thing, for
instance, if maledominated
professions such as
law are feminised

only 4,405 women, although the

proportion, at 85 per cent, was slightly
lower than in 2008 when 88 per cent
were men.
Boys were far more likely than girls to
study maths, outnumbering them by
4,890 to 2,880, and physics (3,850 to
1,045) and chemistry (3,045 to 2,225).
Biology was the only science with more

(15,375 women started

law degrees last year
and 8,320 men).
Yet in many
instances, applicants
choices entrench
rather than challenge
the status quo boys
go for the hard
sciences and geeky
degrees, girls for
subjects involving
creativity and
empathy.
The question is
whether this reflects
real choice or, in
many state schools, a
lack of expert advice
in how best to
navigate university
applications.
This advice starts
with GCSE options
and then A-level
subject choices.
Without it, teenagers
can unconsciously
limit their choice of
degree without even
realising it.

female than male undergraduates

(3,715 women and 2,720 men).
The figures will disappoint those in
government, industry and universities
who campaigned for a decade to
encourage more women to pursue
degrees and careers in STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering
and maths. Edwina Dunn, chairwoman

Engineering
Computer sciences
Physical sciences
Architecture, build and plan
Mathematical sciences
Technologies
Business and admin studies
1,225
1,535
2,940
3,165
4,405
6,060
7,050
18,130
12,020
13,080
13,130

More
women

20,305
17,335

3,825
2,275
2,155
1,600
1,435
Medicine and dentistry
European languages, literature and related
Veterinary science, agriculture and related
Social sciences combined with arts
Combined arts
Linguistics, classics and related
Law
Biological sciences
Difference in number
Social studies
of acceptances, 2014
Education
Creative arts and design
Source: UCAS

of Your Life, an industry-led campaign

to boost uptake in these subjects,
said: Too many young people,
especially girls, think of maths and
physics as inaccessible and difficult,
specialist subjects for a brainy few.
We want them to have better and
more current access to jobs of the
future . . . and know that studying these
subjects is a route to a rewarding career
in almost any field.
The broader pattern of more girls
going to university than boys is shared
across the developed world. Girls in
England do better than boys in primary
school tests, GCSE results and A-level
grades and so are better qualified to win
university places.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher
Education Policy Institute think-tank,
said: Certain professions, particularly
public service jobs like teaching and
nursing, have long recruited more
women than men and they now recruit
more university graduates . . . but the

More
men

gap also reflects the culture of some

schools and wider society, where some
disciplines and some jobs are seen as
best suited to one gender or the other.
This is proving resistant to change
and my worry is todays figures will be
part of a self-perpetuating cycle. If low
numbers of men opt for nursing and
low numbers of women opt for computer science, then there will be a shortage
of future mould-breaking role models.
Mike Boxall, a higher education
adviser at PA Consulting, accused
universities of failing to grasp how the
increasing proportion of women
undergraduates could re-shape the
sector. He said: I suspect that girls and
girls parents are more likely to favour
campus universities in nice, safe places
rather than urban campuses in cities.
There certainly will be some impact on
demand for courses and it will change
the nature of the student body and
learning experience.
Leading article, page 20

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

13

FGM

News

Unlucky break: why the cowgirl needs a health warning

Hannah Devlin Science Editor

The woman on top position may be a

symbol of female liberation in the bedroom, but scientists have linked it to an
unexpected danger for men.
A study has found that the position
was most likely to result in a broken
penis, a rare injury that can cause
deformities and erectile dysfunction if
not treated quickly.
In heterosexual couples, the cowgirl position was responsible for half of
penis fractures, the doggy-style position caused almost one third of injuries,
with the missionary position responsible for about a fifth, scientists found.
Our study supports the fact that
sexual intercourse with the woman on
top is the potentially riskiest sexual
position related to penile fracture,
concludes the paper, published in the
journal Advances in Urology.
The authors, from the University of

Campinas in Brazil, suggested that sex

with the woman on top was more risky
because her entire body weight could
land on the penis at an awkward angle
causing it to buckle, with minor discomfort for the woman but normally
severe pain for the man.
When the man is controlling the
movement, he has better chances of
stopping the penetration energy in response to the pain related to the penis
harm, minimising it, the paper states.
A penile fracture, or broken penis,
is an injury to the erect penis and the
fracture refers to tearing of a membrane, the tunica albuginea, which surrounds the spongy tissue in the centre
of the penis. The fracture is often accompanied by a distinct cracking noise,
followed by rapid bruising and swelling.
The study examined cases of fortyfour men who attended three hospitals
in the city of Campinas with a suspected fractured penis over a thirteen-year

TMS

diary@thetimes.co
diary@thetimes.co.uk | @timesdiary

Jackson pulps
polite thugs
English football fans have a bad
reputation round the world,
perhaps unfairly now, but even
at the peak of hooliganism they
knew how to behave to strangers.
So claims Samuel L Jackson, the
American actor, above, who tells
ShortList magazine about a run-in
he once had with some louts on a
London train. He was in a carriage
with a friend when a gang started
to beat up a drunk man who was
wearing the wrong colour scarf.
They then threatened Jacksons
friend with more of the same until
he told them: Man, were from
New York. Their attitude
suddenly changed. Oh, youre
Americans? the thugs said and
then began to apologise in a very
British way for being rowdy. You
guys are so proper. You have
manners, Jackson laughed. He
then punched a few of them in
case their politeness wore off.
It was not Michael Goves ringtone
that so enraged the prime minister
in cabinet the other week but a
song by Beyonc on his smartwatch
that the chief whip couldnt turn off.
Aptly, the singers latest release is
called Ring Off. Earlier singles
would also be suitable for use in the
cabinet room. Run the World, say,
or Beautiful Liar. Or perhaps
her first hit with Destinys
Child, the Thatcheritesounding No, No, No.

mr speakers sermon
John Bercow detained the
Commons after questions
yesterday to preach about
the birth of parliament.
His address, a sort of

sermon on de Montfort, did not

go down well. Sanctimonious and
tedious, says Michael Fabricant,
the Lichfield MP, who is no fan of
the Speaker. As Bercow droned on
and MPs looked at their watches
(or in Goves case tried to stop his
playing pop music), Im told they
placed bets on how long it was
compared with the Gettysburg
Address. Hansard has the answer:
Lincoln 271 words, Bercow 743.

no way to run a whitewash

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq
war is running so late it must have
been taken over by Southeastern
railway. Gordon Brown, on setting
it up in 2009, said it would be
modelled on the Franks report into
the Falklands conflict, a whitewash
that Edward McMillan-Scott, a
former MEP who was advising the
Falklanders at the time, says
should not be a model even for a
farce. On the flip side, though,
Lord Franks took barely six
months to bash out his cover-up.
Jock Wishart, the polar explorer, is
to lead the first expedition to play
rugby at the North Pole, he said at a
Burns Night dinner at Londons
Boisdale restaurant. In 1991, Wishart
was employed by the rugby World
Cup and somehow ended up with
the trophy after a boozy reception.
He took it home for the night but
was worried about burglars. I
stored it under the bed, he said. On
my wifes side, since no man would
be brave enough to take her on.

the mole of clarence house

Peter Hennessy, the historian and
former Times Whitehall editor (so
long ago that the first language of
your readers was Latin, he says),
gave an entertaining talk about
the establishment yesterday. He
recalled being asked at a literary
festival whether Britain had finally
lost its obsession with uncovering
foreign moles in high places.
Yes, he replied. That is, until
it comes out that the Queen
Mother [left] was working for
the KGB. Afterwards, a
credulous audience member
approached him and
asked in a whisper: Was
she really a Soviet spy?
patrick kidd

period. Most of the men had attended

hospital within six hours of their injury
and forty-two of the cases were
confirmed by doctors. Twenty-eight
fractures were sustained during heterosexual sex, four during homosexual sex,
six after penis manipulation and four
in circumstances which remained unclear. Half of the patients described
hearing a crack and feeling pain.
Outcomes are good if the injury
is surgically repaired, but the study
authors said that fear and embarrassment could mean that the patient
delayed seeking help, which may lead
to problems with sex and urinating.
Previous research suggests that

She prefers being

on top

penile fracture tends to occur more

often when men are having extramarital sex, or sex in unusual settings
such as lifts, cars or work lavatories.
If you are doing something in a weird
position or a weird situation . . . you do
have to be careful of fracturing the
penis, the studys author, Andrew
Kramer, a urologist at the University
of Maryland Medical Center, said
in 2011.
The authors of the latest report
were unable to confirm this finding,
mostly because a considerable number of patients preferred to keep
obscure the circumstances involving
the incident.

14

FGM

News
DEADLINE NEWS

Raising a child now

costs as much as a
three-bedroom home
Rosemary Bennett
Social Affairs Correspondent

Lucky escape The crew of an Irish fishing vessel are rescued from their overturned boat in rough seas off the Western Isles

Too much screen time causing depression

Kat Lay Health Correspondent

Children are spending longer in front of

screens every day than experts believe
is healthy, according to research.
Guidelines on screen time were
drawn up when tablets, mobile phones
and similar devices were not as prevalent, and may need to be reconsidered,
experts said.
Research found that screen time
increased with age, with girls particu-

larly drawn into social media as they

reached their mid-teens.
The American Academy of Pediatrics published recommendations in
2001 that children under the age of two
should have no exposure to screens,
and those over the age of the two no
more than two hours a day.
Researchers from the University of
Western Australia asked 2,620 children
aged between eight and 16 about their
use of screens. An average of 63 per

cent used a screen for more than two

hours a day.
Screen time appeared to increase
with age, with 80 per cent of 14-15-yearolds using screens for more than two
hours a day, according to the study published in the journal BMC Public Health.
In a briefing note, Public Health England said: Children who spend more
time watching TV and playing video
games tend to experience higher levels
of emotional distress and depression.

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Spiralling costs of childcare, school

trips, games kit and university tuition
fees have sent the cost of bringing up a
child to 229,251, the price of a modest
three-bedroom house in Surrey.
The annual cost of a child index,
compiled by the insurer LV=, found that
the total outlay from birth to the age of
21 has risen by 63 per cent in the past
decade, twice the rate of inflation.
The soaring costs are not just hitting
parents pockets, but having an impact
on the size of their families, it found
one in ten parents was postponing
having any more children because of
financial problems.
Forty-seven per cent of families have
only one child, up from 43 per cent in
2003, when the report was first
compiled. The Office for National
Statistics has predicted that by the year
2022, half of all UK families will have
just one child.
The largest rise over the past year was
for childcare, which became 2.2 per
cent costlier. Nurseries, babysitters and
after-school care now cost an average
of 67,586 per child, a 71 per cent
increase since 2003, and is the single
biggest drain on resources.
The bulk of expenditure is until the

age of four, at 42,389. These parents

can expect to pay out a quarter of their
household income on childcare.
Education comes next, with parents
facing a 74,319 bill on average for
expenses such as books, stationary and
uniforms if they send their child to a
state school. A private education will
add another 129,030 on average to that
sum.
Parents are trying their best to cut
spending where they can. Almost two
thirds have sought out cheaper products for their children in the past year
and almost half regularly use vouchers
and discount codes.
However, they have also benefited
from a fall in the cost of clothing, spending an average of 10,942 on clothing
over their childs life compared with
11,360 a decade ago.
Myles Rix, managing director at LV=,
said having children had never been
more expensive.
With costs such as childcare and
education continuing to rise, for many
families across the UK this is set to remain a pressure point, he said.
No parent wants their child to go
without and given a significant chunk
of a familys income is spent on children, it is important that parents take
steps to secure their households financial future.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

15

FGM

News

Homeowners at risk from local lords of manor

Frances Gibb Legal Editor

Ancient manorial rights are leaving

tens of thousands of householders
exposed to claims that could dramatically lower the value of their property,
according to MPs.
About 90,000 claims including
rights to hunt and shoot but also mine
or frack in other peoples property
have been lodged with the Land Registry. A report by the Commons justice
committee to be published today says
that property owners can be powerless
to resist such claims.
The committee is calling for the
present system to be replaced by one in
which those claiming manorial rights
have to make a case for their claim, with
evidence, and cannot make a claim unilaterally. It is also recommending that
the Law Commission examines the
case for a change in law.
Manorial rights, such as the right to
hold a fair or market, or to hunt and
shoot, were retained by lords of the
manor in the early 20th century in England and Wales when land became
freehold. The lordships of manors can
be bought and sold and some are held
by charitable institutions.
In the past such rights were rarely exercised and were not required to be listed on the register of title, but they were
still overriding and bound the landowner, who might not have
known about them.
Changes made through the
Land Registration Act 2002
aimed at making such rights
more transparent required
claims to be registered. As a result, thousands of people
discovered for the first
time that their properties were subject to
rights owned by
third parties.
The MP and
chairman of the
justice committee,
Viscount
Cranborne has
staked his claims

Locals fear Viscount Cranborne, owner of Hatfield House, could frack on their land

Alan Beith, QC, said: House owners

were astonished to find manorial rights
registered on their properties and worried that this would affect them when
selling the house or getting a mortgage.
The lack of understanding of such
rights and the way the registration process was carried out and communicated, has led to understandable concerns
and anxieties.
It is understandable that many
rights holders have responded to new
legislation by seeking to protect these
rights. Often they will have been advised that they should do so. We nevertheless consider that the situation
where a claim can be made over
areas of dense residential properties where rights are unlikely or impossible to be exercised is anomalous.
The committee received
numerous representations
from MPs on behalf of
constituents,
and
from the public affected by registrations on their
property, he
said, particularly in Anglesey and
in Welwyn
Garden
City.
The
Mar-

Fracking plans thwarted

by fear over drilling noise
Ben Webster Environment Editor

Plans to start fracking in Britain have

suffered a setback after planning
officers recommended the refusal of
two applications because a handful of
homes would be subjected to noise
pollution.
Lancashire county council officers
accepted that fracking could be carried
out safely and that the impacts on air
quality, greenhouse gas emissions,
landscape, water resources and seismic
movements were low.
However, they advised that Cuadrilla
be refused permission to test for shale
gas at two sites between Blackpool and
Preston in a vote to be taken next week.
The applications, covering Preston
New Road and Roseacre Wood, are the
first since Cuadrilla suspended hydraulic fracturing in 2011 after it caused two
minor earthquakes near Blackpool.
Supporters of fracking say that it
will reduce Britains dependence on imported gas and create thousands of jobs.
Opponents claim that it will hinder
efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions
and contaminate water supplies. Campaign groups delivered a petition with
267,000 signatures to Downing Street
yesterday, urging David Cameron to
reconsider his support for fracking.
The planning officers report said:

The principle of exploration and appraisal for shale gas would be acceptable. It added, however, that 24-hour
drilling operations would lead to a
significant increase in night-time background noise levels. On the Roseacre
Wood application, the officers also said
that it should be refused because of concerns about increased traffic in a very
rural location served by small lanes.
Francis Egan, Cuadrillas chief executive, said that the report was a setback
but certainly not the end of the road.
Cuadrilla said in a statement: In the
end councillors on the development
control committee with have to weigh
the relatively minor impacts . . . against
the wider local and national economic
and energy security benefits.
We will await the councillors decisions on both these applications and we
believe that all of the limited issues that
have been raised can be resolved.
The company said that it had supplied extra information on traffic
routes, which it believed addressed
issues raised at Roseacre Wood.
The recommendations were welcomed by campaigners, who called on
the council to protect communities
from fracking, which involves pumping
water, chemicals and sand at high
pressure underground to fracture shale
rock and release gas trapped in it.

quess of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne, who lives in Hatfield House in

Hertfordshire, sent letters in November 2013 to 400 residents saying that he
had access to land they owned and that
his mineral rights were most significant, prompting fears that he was considering fracking.
His lawyers, Bond Dickinson, issued
a statement at the time insisting that he
was just complying with the law but
registering his rights.
As a result of the Land Registration
Act 2002, all historic manorial rights
and ownerships had to be registered by
October 2013, the law firm said.
The Marquess of Salisbury has re-

corded his interests in the Hatfield Welwyn area (and elsewhere) and is keen to
emphasise that this is a process that
records pre-existing ownership. Homeowners should not be alarmed by it.
Grant Shapps, the Conservative
party chairman and MP for Welwyn
Hatfield, said at the time: Over my
dead body will he dig up someones
back yard in my constituency.
The residents have now begun a
national campaign to get the law abolished in England and Wales.
The system dates to William the
Conquerors coronation as king of England in 1066, when feudal rights
were introduced.

16

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

News
Betsy, 7, proves hacking
public wi-fi is childs play

Vegetarians offered the chance to become cannibals

Customers of a takeaway shop were
surprised to be offered baked
Aborigine as a vegetarian pizza
topping.
The chance to eat native
Australians appeared twice in
takeaway menu leaflets for Super
Pizza in Southend-on-Sea, Essex,
which were distributed to local
homes.
Richard Coombes, 27, from
Rochford, said: I couldnt

believe it when I saw it. Ive heard of

typos but this takes it to another level.
We definitely steered clear of the
vegetarian option after that. I love the
Aussies but I wouldnt want to eat
them on a pizza.
Staff at Super Pizza said that the
topping had been a typographical
error, and should have read
aubergine. A new version of the menu
has since been printed and distributed
to homes.
A spokesman
fo
for Super Pizza
Ltd said that
branche
branches were
re
responsible for
printin
printing their own
leaflets.

Betsy Davies searched online for how to access a laptop and did so in 11 minutes

Public wi-fi hotspots are so unsecure

they can be hacked by primary school
children, an experiment has found.
Betsy Davies, 7, took less than
11 minutes to gain access to a
strangers laptop after gaining the
knowledge online using basic search
terms. She was overseen by Marcus
Dempsey, an ethical hacker, for a
campaign by virtual private network
provider hidemyass.com to highlight
the vulnerability of Britains 270,000plus public wi-fi spots.
I know just how easily a layman
can gain access to a strangers device,
and in an age where children are
often more tech-literate than adults,
hacking can literally be childs play,
Mr Dempsey said.

Traffic warden in trouble

for ticketing wheelie bin

Police ditch helmets, with

a nod to practicality

A parking attendant is under

investigation for slapping a ticket on a
rubbish bin. The large red-wheeled
bin had been left on a double yellow
line, disrupting traffic in Carmarthen,
west Wales. Mike Jones, a salesman,
said: It appeared the warden slapped
the plastic ticket envelope on the bin
in a moment of high jinks after a
member of public pointed out it was
on double yellow lines. I just thought
it was a total waste of council
resources. John McEvoy, the
councils traffic and safety manager,
said: It is not possible to book
anything that is not motorised.
Although this was meant as a
humorous incident, we take this kind
of thing very seriously.

Police in West Yorkshire will no

longer wear the traditional helmet.
The force decided to replace them in
favour of peaked caps after officers
complained that they were
impractical. Helmets will continue to
be used on ceremonial occasions. Last
summer the force swapped white
shirts and ties for tops made from
lightweight black fabric.
A spokesman for West Yorkshire
police said a survey found that most
staff supported the helmet change:
As the duties carried out by officers
and their uniforms have evolved,
peaked caps have become more
appropriate and more in keeping
than the traditional helmets in
many situations.

Man aged 100 dies as family sing Happy Birthday

A man died on his 100th birthday as
his family sang Happy Birthday to
him. Sidney Doels relatives had been
invited to the care home where he
lived in Plymouth for a celebratory
lunch. However, Mr Doel, right,
deteriorated before the meal and his
family gathered round his bed. His
son Eric, 56, said: We got there at
about 10am and he died just after
12pm. The last thing that goes when
they are dying is their hearing, so we
all sang Happy Birthday. It was the
nicest way for Dad to go. Kathleen,
the former soldier and railwaymans
wife, died 12 years ago, aged 84. They
were married for 65 years and had
five children, 13 grandchildren and
14 great-grandchildren.

Spirits proved
fatal for M P
A Labour politician
died after drinking
spirits during a trip
to Poland organised
by the Council of
Europe, Rochdale
coroners court was
told. Jim Dobbin, 73,
MP for Heywood
and Middleton, had
taken a shot of
spirits with each
course of a dinner
in the city of Slupsk
last September. He
then went to bed,
saying that he felt
unwell. A postmortem
examination
showed that he had
food in his lungs
and a blood alcohol
level of 399mg per
100ml nearly
five times the UK
limit for driving.
Verdict: death by
misadventure.

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the times | Thursday January 22 2015

17

FGM

comment pages of the year

Welbys left-wing bias is

blighting the church
Tim Montgomerie
Page 19

Opinion

Chilcot is not there to purge the body politic

The purpose of the Iraq war inquiry is to find the truth, not to allay our distrust of politicians. And that takes time
David
Aaronovitch

@daaronovitch

f Nick Clegg is found dead

tomorrow in the House of
Commons library with a length
of lead piping beside him, I would
suggest that the police bother
taking the fingerprints only of Sir
John Chilcot.
Moreover, should the case come to
court Sir John will almost certainly
be acquitted by any reasonable jury
on the grounds of provocation.
Because when Mr Clegg served up
his chicken-flavoured soundbite
yesterday about Sir John possibly
sexing down his inquiry report, and
that being seen as the reason for its
delay, he must surely have known
how unfair he was being.
But he didnt care. My assumption
is that the Liberal Democrat leader
was simply relying on the press and
voters not really paying attention to
detail, but agreeing with the
sentiment that it was all a bad show
and somehow linked to dodgy
dossiers and false prospectuses.
So the first thing that needs to be
said is that the people politicising
Chilcot are those demanding that his
report be delivered before the
election, in 15 weeks time. The
report has nothing to do with that
election but there may be a few
Lib Dems who imagine that the
sandbagged defence of their existing
seats can be scraped together from
materials left over from old battles.
Second, some of those complaining
most loudly about the delay are
doing so in bad faith. When the Lib

Dem Norman Baker is given front

page treatment for his view that this
is a shocking development . . . You
have to ask what are the reasons for
this delay, it must be borne in mind
that the MP for Lewes has written a
whole book insinuating that Dr
David Kellys murder was a matter
of Tony Blairs convenience an
accusation with roughly the same
level of plausibility as that linking
the Duke of Edinburgh to the death
of Diana, Princess of Wales. Mr
Baker, I would suggest, does not care
what is in the Chilcot report, because
like many others he already
knows the troof.
More in the mainstream theres
what I call Snowism, after the Channel
4 News presenter, who has never been
able to hide his belief that Tony Blair
will eventually be found out and
prosecuted for what Jon Snow
believes he did. Chilcot may, Snowists
anticipate, be the vehicle of this
discovery as five previous inquiries
were not, and if it isnt then its all a
whitewash. But one day a letter, a

If the report doesnt

support their beliefs, it
will be a whitewash
transcript, a leaked email will establish
Mr Blairs guilt. There will be a trial of
some kind and that is all that matters.
Finally theres the remember
me? Tory huffers and puffers such
as Lord Hurd and the foreign affairs
select committee chairman Sir
Richard Ottaway. For Lord Hurd the
delay is a scandal. Sir Richard said
that there could be no justification
whatsoever for it, a statement that
renders his forthcoming questioning
of Sir John a little problematic. He
can scarcely now ask the inquiry
chairman to justify himself.

In fact we know why it has taken a

long time to get the Chilcot report
out. First, and most important, the
inquirys remit was huge. Our whole
policy military, economic and
diplomatic towards and in Iraq
from 2001 to 2009 was covered.
Second, one of its key members was
very ill for a time. Third, it took until
last October to agree with the
Cabinet Office which secret papers
could be reproduced in the report.
This meant that, fourth, it was only
in the late autumn that those
criticised in the report began
receiving the relevant passages. It is
not at all unreasonable for it to take a
few months for them to respond and
for those responses to be evaluated.
And it would have been most
unreasonable to speed that up.
I feel, even as I type this, my words
falling straight to the floor, unwanted
and unheeded. This is partly because
we are still suffering from inquiritis, a
condition caused by lack of trust that
results in an almost physical desire for
a purging of the body politic through
independent or judge-led inquiries.
Something like a national enema.
And who wants a slow enema?
Inquiritis sufferers expect too
much too quickly and it ends up
driving everyone mad. Consider. In
November 2012, after the Savile
revelations and during the
Entwistledmmerung at the BBC,
two particular inquiries were set up,
one by the corporation itself and one
by the government. Both had limited
remits. The Smith review was to look
at whether and to what extent the
BBC had allowed Jimmy Savile to
commit sexual abuse. The Macur
review was to review an earlier
inquiry the Waterhouse inquiry
that itself had taken three years to
examine sexual abuse at childrens
homes in north Wales.
The last posting on the Macur

Despite presumably knowing all

this, the home secretary felt impelled
last summer to launch an inquiry
whose remit was so impossibly broad
child abuse and what was done
about it by just about anybody
anywhere in England and Wales
since 1970 that it will be a miracle
if it ever reports. After six months it
has no one to chair it. It is utterly
unclear whether it is an inquiry
aimed at discovering the truth or is
about healing victims. This week at

To be thorough
and fair, things are
going to be slow

Many have already decided that they

know the truth about Blair and Iraq

website was in 2013. There is no

timetable whatsoever for a report,
and almost no one seems to be
interested. Dame Janet Smiths
review was originally due to
conclude in January 2014, was then
put back to last summer, then to the
new year. Isnt that now? I
telephoned the BBC press office,
which gave me a number for a press
contact for the Smith review, who
didnt return my call.
I am not complaining. The
Bloody Sunday inquiry into the
events of one day in 1972 in
Londonderry, itself the second
inquiry, lasted from 1998 to 2010 and
cost up to 400 million. To be fair
and thorough, these things these
truth-seeking pachyderms are
going to be slow. They can work,
but they cant be hurried.

the home affairs select committee it

became evident that there are big
divisions within its current panel on
the basic principles of how they
should proceed.
This impossible breadth, which
includes looking for abuse where
little hard evidence yet exists, is
being filled up with expectation,
intense and understandable desire
for justice and even fantasy. Hopes
have been created that cannot be
fulfilled.
This is cruel and I think politicians
need to be braver and explain to
voters the limitations of such
processes. Or if they cant, then
perhaps, as one tweeter put it rather
mordantly yesterday, the time has
come to have an inquiry into
inquiries.

Red Box
For the best political
analysis, comment and
exclusive YouGov pollingg
thetimes.co.uk/redbox

Today Heavy showers over the Mediterranean, with outbreaks of rain, sleet or snow elsewhere. Max 19C (66F), min -28C (18F)
Todays temperatures forecast for noon

Noon today
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Alicante
Amsterdam
Athens
Barcelona
Belgrade
Berlin
Brussels
Bucharest
Budapest
Corfu
Faro
Florence
Frankfurt
Geneva
Gibraltar

6
3
17
11
11
2
2
6
7
15
15
11
3
1
13

Drizzle
Fair
Sunny
Shower
Sunny
Sunny
Fair
Cloudy
Drizzle
Rain
Shower
Cloudy
Cloudy
Rain
Sunny

Helsinki
Innsbruck
Istanbul
Lanzarote
Las Palmas
Lisbon
Madeira
Madrid
Majorca
Malaga
Malta
Milan
Moscow
Munich
Naples

-1
1
14
17
17
14
15
6
11
8
17
7
-7
2
14

Shower
Cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Shower
Shower
Shower
Sunny
Cloudy
Shower
Rain
Cloudy
Cloudy
Cloudy
Rain

Nice
Nicosia
Oslo
Paris
Prague
Reykjavik
Rhodes
Rome
Salzburg
St Petersburg
Stockholm
Tenerife
Venice
Vienna
Warsaw

12
15
-4
3
2
6
18
12
3
-11
0
16
10
6
3

Fair
Sunny
Snow
Sunny
Cloudy
Shower
Fair
Shower
Cloudy
Fair
Snow
Sunny
Fair
Cloudy
Cloudy

1
24

11

Northern Germany, Denmark, Belgium,

the Netherlands, northern France
A frosty morning, but otherwise it will be a
largely dry day with bright or sunny spells.
Maximum 8C (46F), minimum -4C (25F).

Norway, Sweden, Finland, western Russia,

Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
Mostly cloudy with sleet or snow over southern
Scandinavia and the Baltics, but drier in the
north. Maximum 1C (34F), minimum -28C (-18F).

The Mediterranean islands, Italy, Malta,

Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia
Rather cloudy with scattered showers, heaviest
over southern Italy and thundery near coastal
areas. Maximum 15C (59F), minimum -1C (30F).

Spain, Portugal, southern France,

the Pyrenees, Switzerland, Austria
A mix of patchy cloud, sunny intervals and
showers, the greatest risk over northern Spain,
with the potential of some light snow over the
Alps. Maximum 14C (57F), minimum -22C (-8F).

6am to 6pm daily (calls

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plus network extras)

British Isles
A cold, but largely dry day with sunny intervals.
Maximum 7C (45F), minimum -9C (16F).

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www.weatherquest.co.uk weatherq

Southern Germany, Poland, Czech Republic,

Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria,
A cloudy day with outbreaks of rain or drizzle at
times. Maximum 4C (39F), minimum -4C (25F).
Albania, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Cyprus
Mostly dry and sunny but showers over Greece
later. Maximum 19C (66F), minimum -1C (30F).

Outlook
Heavy showers over Portugal and southeastern
Europe, with snow showers in the east.

12

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18

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Opinion

Dont blame the host for her guests rudeness

The woman who billed the parents of a child who failed to turn up at her sons party is right
Jenni
Russell

@jennirsl

eering, outrage, ridicule. Thats

been the public response to
Julie Lawrence, the mother
who invoiced the parents of a
boy who didnt turn up to her
sons birthday party. She was mocked
for expecting that an invitation that
had been accepted would be
honoured.
New York magazine labelled her an
obnoxious parent, while the BBC ran
an implicitly critical piece from its
legal correspondent on why
attempting to enforce the bill in the
small claims court could never
succeed. Gleeful commentators
speculated about her character, her
charm as a hostess, her mothering
skills. In an online poll by the
Plymouth Herald, the paper that
broke the story, 87 per cent of
respondents backed the no-show
parents and only 13 per cent agreed
that the invoice should be paid.
Meanwhile, Derek Nash, the father
of Alex Nash, who didnt turn up,
became more self-righteous by the
day.
Well, my sympathies lie with the
mother. Not with sending the invoice
for 15.95 that was a ridiculous
demand, which had no hope of
success but with what it expressed:
hope, hurt and, eventually, anger. By
throwing a party at a ski centre Mrs

Lawrence was being generous to

make her son and his friends happy.
By not bothering to turn up, or to let
her know in advance, or to apologise
in the weeks that followed, the
Nashes were demonstrating that they
were completely indifferent to her
and her sons feelings. The invoice
was a cry of dismay at being ignored,
an attempt to make the Nashes feel
as jolted as she had. It hasnt worked.
The Nashes embody a public mood
that says the only feelings that need
trouble us are our own.
Derek Nash expressed this
splendidly when he appeared on
Radio 4s World At One. He was
thoroughly aggrieved at Mrs
Lawrences action and outraged by
the idea that he had any
responsibility for what happened. He
explained that the important actor in
all of this was his son. Hes a fiveyear-old boy. He decided on the day

Are we liable for our

childrens actions? Yes
we damn well are
where he wanted to be. Am I liable
for the decision my five-year-old
makes?
The only sane response to that
rhetorical question is: yes, you damn
well are. Unless youre raising Kim
Jong Un, its a parents job to teach
five-year-olds that the world cant be
organised around their passing
whims. Our natural egotism has to
be tempered by the realisation that
other people matter too. We might
not want to go to a party, play with a
friend or visit a relative but we can

Julie Lawrence was being generous,

trying to make her sons friends happy

be made to imagine how sad we

would be if no one made the effort to
do the same for us. Life becomes a
much more anxious and difficult
business if we cant count on people
to be either responsible or kind.
That, though, seems to be the
current trend.
The stresses on the NHS are made
substantially worse by the numbers
of people who dont turn up for their
GP or hospital appointments,
currently running at between 9 and
10 per cent. Some restaurateurs,
despairing of a growing no-show rate
of up to 20 per cent in an industry
with low profit margins, are trying to
introduce cancellation charges. They
say the problem has been made
worse by the impersonality of online
booking, so that the prospective

diner feels far removed from the

reality of the proprietor catering for
them. Even among people who
might claim to be mindful of others
those booking for Buddhist
retreats thoughtlessness is
increasing. One Buddhist centre,
Gaia House in Devon, has just upped
its cancellation fee from 40 to 100
after 24 of its 52 booked places were
cancelled at the last minute.
A woman who paid to take 40
friends away for a 40th birthday
party in a country house was
devastated when two of them simply
didnt turn up. A bride had 120
acceptances for her wedding but nine
empty seats, without explanation, on
the day. Neither felt that it was
acceptable to say how unhappy
they felt. Teenagers and
twentysomethings say that among
the Facebook generation the sense of
social obligation is evaporating
because social media offers so many
opportunities to make choices at the
last minute. Facebook invitations are
routinely accepted, even if there is no
intention of going, because it would
appear rude to the hosts to publicly
decline their event.
Admitting that we expect anything
of others, or placing restrictions on
ourselves, is unfashionable. Our
culture urges us to put ourselves
first, and its not cool to be seen as
vulnerable or to care. It looks
like freedom but its a cruel
self-deception. Manners evolved
because mutual consideration makes
us happier. Julie Lawrence deserves
her apology and Derek Nash and his
supporters should wonder whats so
desirable about raising a generation
of selfish brats.

Janice Turner Notebook

The mystery
of Clint and
his weird
rubber baby

was gripped by American Sniper.

Not by the grunting gun battles
or the countless times our hero
coldly dispatches evil brown
people. (Spoiler: in this film all
brown people are evil.) These scenes
were like being forced to watch my
teenagers play Call of Duty.
It was the babies, the weird rubber
babies. When the US Navy Seal
Chris Kyle returns home for the
birth of his first child, his perspiring
wife tenderly hands him a doll. It was
carefully crafted and creepily
lifelike, with a newborns whorls of
hair and curled fingers, but it is
unmistakably a doll.
Sienna Miller breastfeeds it,
Bradley Cooper burps it. But it is
clearly inanimate and its weight is all
wrong. In this 30 million movie the
director, Clint Eastwood, wouldnt
have used an Apache helicopter
when it should have been a
Chinook or compromised on the
right calibre of a rifle. Weirder than

that, he thought a doll would do fine.

But this film, a National Rifle
Association hard-on, with its dearth
of nuance, doubt or moral
complexity, is a paean to guns.
Parental love is taking your son on
his first kill; sexual playfulness is
chasing your wife around the room
with a raised weapon, ordering her to
drop her drawers and a
traumatised veterans PTSD can be
cured on a shooting range. Clint
shows the full, rich complexity
of guns: its his humans who
arent real.

Male orientation

he announcement
of all the Oscar
contenders is
usually the greatest
solace of bitter January. But
apart from Selma (which I
havent seen) not a single
best picture nominee passes
the Bechdel test. Devised
by the US graphic
novelist Alison Bechdel,
this is the modest
requirement that a
movie should contain at
least two named
female characters who
speak to each other
about something other
than a man.
But this year, the only
movie women are wives:

selfless (Theory of Everything), crying

(American Sniper), nagging (Birdman)
or just a cypher (Foxcatcher).
Birdman does manage a scene in
which two actresses momentarily
discuss their careers before falling
incongruously into a lesbian clinch.
I enjoy plenty of allmale movies but there is
a limit. And Ive been
leaving the cinema
feeling glum that
Hollywood sees
womens lives as at best
domestic marginalia.

Flawedchurch

las, poor
Broadchurch, we
loved it well.
Why didnt it gather up
its first series Baftas,
take a bow and
disappear for ever, its
excellent cast and
writers dispersing to
stellar new projects?
Why bish-bosh
together a follow-up in
which everything we
previously learnt is
found to be nonsense,
just as when Bobby
Ewing awoke and it
was all just a dream.
The financial
imperative of
milking every last

atom of revenue out of a concept is a

bummer for creativity. Instead of
devising a new murder case or
relocating the detectives to another
town, Broadchurch just cranked up
the volume. Now the once-subtle cast
screeches in graveyards, intones like
panto villains in court, bellows their
rage as if the EastEnders theme tune
is about to strike up.

Birth-death experience

eading a study by University

College London that finds
women are more likely to
believe in the afterlife than men, I
wonder if this is down to the
mysterious experience of giving birth.
Please excuse this uncharacteristically
hippy-dippy reflection, but at the
height of labour I felt I was touching
some invisible membrane between life
and death. Afterwards I was fully
prepared to believe the world contains
forces we do not yet understand.
But men, it seems, are always more
earthbound, more certain: the same
study showed that of atheists 63 per
cent were men but only 35 per cent of
women believed death was the end.
How can men be so absolutist? This
unwavering conviction strikes me as
arrogance. The older I get, the more
open I am to wonder and doubt; the
less sure I feel about anything at all.

@victoriapeckham

If local bumpkins
hold up fracking,
its ministers fault
Ross Clark

ore localism is the

perennial cry of
parties in opposition.
When you have no
power, there is
nothing to lose in denouncing
Whitehall and promising instead to
put decisions in the hands of good
old local people. But what a pain
localism becomes when you are the
ones sitting in Whitehall and trying
to make national decisions without
the obstructive tactics of interfering
nimbys.
Yesterday Lancashires planning
officers recommended the refusal of
two applications by Cuadrilla to sink
exploratory wells for shale gas. It is
an industry deemed to be vital for
Britains energy security and
industrial competitiveness.
But the planners case was not
based on the big picture: fossil fuels
versus renewable energy. It was not
even based on broader
environmental objections to fracking:

The interests of the

many are trumped by a
few angry Lancastrians
the fantasy promoted by the green
movement that it will cause housecrumbling earthquakes and methane
seeping from kitchen taps.
The planners described fracking as
acceptable in principle. But they also
ruled that a few local residents
would suffer from noise and lorry
traffic. The interests of the many
have been trumped by a handful of
angry Lancastrians.
The recommendation is not quite
the end for fracking in Britain.
Lancashires councillors could ignore
their officials and vote to approve the
applications. Ministers could decide
to overrule the council. Then, after a
few public inquiries and judicial
reviews, we might eventually in 20
years time, to judge by the saga of
Heathrows Terminal 5 achieve
some commercial fracking in Britain.
But how much easier it might have
been had not the coalition, in one of
its first acts, strangled Labours
Infrastructure Planning Commission
at birth. That was a body, inspired by
the farce of Terminal 5, set up to
speed nationally important
infrastructure projects through the
planning system in 12 months flat,
with decisions made by remote and
dispassionate officials rather than
committees of bumpkins influenced
by marauding locals. If an elected
government decided the country
needed an airport or a power station,
it would get one.
It was all in the name of
democracy, the government boasted.
In its haste, it forgot that democracy
works on a national level too.
Sometimes we elect a government
because we want it to trample on the
barons of local government and get
on with making the country richer.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

19

FGM

Opinion

Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk. Watch how Peter Brookes creates his daily oasis of anarchy at foreverunquiet.co.uk

The church is blighted by its left-wing bias

Justin Welby should recognise the benefits of the wealth-producing private sector and curb his love of big government
Tim
Montgomerie

@montie

hristianity is in trouble in
Britain. In only two decades
the percentage of people
who say they have no
religious faith has grown
from under a third to just over a half.
Sixty five per cent of people
identified themselves as Christian in
1983. By 2013 it was only 42 per cent.
Identification with the Church of
England over the same period fell
even faster: from just over 40 per
cent to barely 16 per cent.
At the same time basic knowledge
of Christianity is collapsing. A survey
conducted just before Christmas (the
birthday of Santa Claus, apparently)
found that one fifth of British kids
aged between five and 12 thought
that Jesus Christ is a striker for
Chelsea. While this might just
possibly explain why Jos Mourinhos
team is leading the Premier League, it
also points to the Anglican churchs
failure to fulfil its fundamental
mission of spreading the Good News
to every corner of the country.

Perhaps its a coincidence that the

retreat of Christianity has happened
at the same time that the Church of
England has been issuing endless
reports on public policy, reports that
are notable for the ways in which
they echo the social thinking of the
left. If Bill Westwood, the former
Bishop of Peterborough, was still
alive, I imagine he would regard it as
more than a coincidence.
Bishop Bill, as he styled himself,
was never uncontroversial. He was
happy to sell church land to the
Ministry of Defence for a cruise
missile site. He attacked the idle,
whingeing and dishonest Boswell
family of the BBC sitcom Bread. They
lived on benefits on Merseyside. Im

The great success

story of the Church of
England is London
not sure it was wise for a bishop to
attack fictional TV characters but
there was great wisdom in his deeper
critique of his fellow Anglicans
obsession with politics.
Interviewed in 1989, a decade before
his death, Westwood speculated that
many Anglicans found it easier to
focus on social policy than theology.
Many of our young men, he said,
referring to what was then an all-

male clergy, want to head for the

inner cities, where the going may be
hard but where they can find people
waiting to be looked after. If you go to
the suburbs, on the other hand, half
the congregation may have been to
university, they ask a lot of questions
and youve got to be on your toes.
His words have been heeded by
many in the church. Holy Trinity,
Brompton (HTB), St Helens,
Bishopgate and All Souls, Langham
Place are just three Anglican
churches that have worked hard to
find ways to answer the questions
about faith posed by a universityeducated population. They are at the
heart of what is the Church of
Englands great success story
London. The nations capital city is a
diocese that, over two decades, has
benefited from the inspired
leadership of the Bishop of London,
the Right Rev Richard Chartres.
Throughout London the church is
acquiring property rather than seeing
former churches converted into bars,
homes or mosques.
I remain hopeful that Justin Welby,
a graduate of HTB and its famous
Alpha course, might oversee a
renewal of the whole Church of
England but Im increasingly worried
about his early focus. Look through
his press clippings and hes in danger
of failing Bishop Bills test. Weve
heard his views on banking reform,

Wonga, food banks, energy

companies and welfare reform but
where is his big intervention on the
miraculous nature of Jesus Christ?
This week, as part of a book of essays
edited by the Archbishop of York,
John Sentamu, he has published his
thoughts on what the next
government should do.
On Rock or Sand? may not be
overtly partisan but its ideological
biases are striking. On nearly every

Welby and Sentamu

are almost silent on
the role of the family
occasion when the free market is
mentioned it is done negatively, even
though Britains private sector has
created an astonishing number of
new jobs over the past few years. The
private sector has its weaknesses, of
course, but nowhere in the
contributions of Welby or Sentamu is
there any reflection on the failures of
the state. No awareness that every
billion pounds of extra tax means a
billion hours more that a mother or
father will have to spend away from
their children to earn enough to pay
the bills. No awareness of how public
sector unions have often become
self-serving often resisting
reforms that would benefit pupils,

patients and other users of public

services. No awareness that the
welfare state, while doing much
good, has also created perverse
incentives for the unemployed and
unmarried. Theres certainly no
acknowledgment of the efforts that
some church-going government
ministers are making to create
positive incentives to work or marry.
As well as disparaging the
consumerism that has powered the
unprecedented reductions in poverty
that we are seeing all over the world,
the two archbishops are almost silent
about wealth creation. Silent, too,
about the dangers of government
debt. Im particularly disappointed at
their near silence on the central role
of the family in tackling inequality.
The family is social penicillin able
to care for people in a way that the
state cannot begin to match. There is
just one mention of marriage in On
Rock or Sand? but hundreds of
mentions of the state, politics and
government action. This is a church
that wants the state to love our
neighbour when actually the state
should only be a last resort after
families and job creators have failed.
Im still hoping that Justin Welby
will lead the church in a new
direction, but at the moment hes
building on the sandy thinking of his
immediate predecessors rather than
on the rock of his church in London.

20

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Leading articles
Daily Universal Register
UK: The Scotland Bill sets out proposed new
tax powers for Holyrood; David Cameron
visits Edinburgh and the SNPs Nicola
Sturgeon is set to demand tax breaks for the
North Sea oil industry; US secretary of state
John Kerry visits London for talks on
fighting Islamic State.
Germany: The European Central Bank
makes an announcement on interest rates.

Scotch Corner

The SNP has pledged to support a minority Labour government and to vote on
matters that affect England. Such a move would create a constitutional absurdity
The permutations for the general election of May
2015 might well require some advanced mathematics. With both the main parties stuck between
30 and 35 per cent of the vote, and five parties in
England involved, the prospect of a clear result is
slim. And then there is the surge of the Scottish
National party (SNP).
The No side, which opposed Scottish independence in the recent referendum, has yet to recover
from its victory. The SNP, by contrast, has
emerged from the campaign strengthened. In the
latest poll it took 52 per cent of the vote, a result
that would give it 55 of the 57 Westminster seats
available. It is probable that Labour, under Jim
Murphys leadership, will claw back some of its
traditional support between now and May. But it
is clear that it faces a tough fight in Scotland.
In that context, comments by Nicola Sturgeon,
the SNP leader, are highly significant. Ms Sturgeon has said that her MPs will be prepared to vote
on bills affecting the English National Health Service if that will help to protect the Scottish NHS.
Ms Sturgeon said that the budget of the English
health service had an impact on its Scottish counterpart and she would be prepared to vote to repeal
what she described as privatisation.
Although the SNPs handful of MPs has partici-

pated in English-only votes before, on foundation

trusts and university tuition fees for example, this
is a change of tone that poses a political problem
for the Labour party. Jim Murphys message has
been that a vote for the SNP in Scotland is a vote
for the Conservative party in Britain. A surge for
the SNP would deprive Labour of a victory it
might otherwise win. However, Ms Sturgeons intervention raises the prospect that, with the help
of the SNP, Labour could command a majority in
the House of Common even on matters that pertain only to England.
This raises a serious constitutional question. It
cannot be right, surely, that legislation could pass
with respect to the English NHS, or English
schools, because of the votes of a party committed
to the break-up of Britain. The ultimate expression of this constitutional absurdity would be if the
SNP were to enter a relatively formal confidenceand-supply relationship with Labour in which it
demanded that the Trident nuclear deterrent be
decommissioned and Alex Salmond, who hopes to
return to the House of Commons, were de facto
deputy prime minister of a country he is committed to abolishing.
Labours response to the referendum outcome
was to propose a constitutional convention that

would have parked the question of English votes

for English laws until after the general election.
The complex arithmetic of the poll and the prospect that the SNP will vote on the English NHS
even though the Scottish government has complete control of the Scottish NHS means that option is no longer available. Labour will have to clarify its position. It has to say whether it is prepared
to allow contentious legislation to be carried by
the votes of a party that has no legitimate interest.
The draft Scotland Bill, the first outcome of the
Smith Commission appointed by the prime minister to work out proposals for devolution, is published today. It will seek to chart a course between
the various party demands. The Conservatives
want English MPs to have sole jurisdiction in
England. Labour rejects that demand and the Liberal Democrats are caught in the middle.
The former lord chancellor, Derry Irvine, was
fond of saying that the best answer to the West Lothian question, as this conundrum is known, is not
to ask it. For a decade and a half after devolution
that self-denying ordinance has worked. If there is
a possibility of a Labour government propped up
by an SNP prepared to vote on English matters, it
will work no longer. This would be bad for Labour,
bad for politics and bad for Britain.

Women in Science
young women away to less challenging and ultimately less rewarding fields. Every student should
be free to pursue his or her dreams, but that means
closing none off.
Last year alone 20,300 more men than women
won university places in engineering. For computer science the figure was 17,300. In maths and technology, as well as computer science, the gender
imbalance has actually worsened since 2007
despite high-level campaigns by government,
universities and lobbying groups.
Women outnumber men among first-year
students in medicine and biology, but the life
sciences are the exception that proves the rule.
Physics in particular remains dauntingly male
from the sixth form onwards. Only 10 per cent of
girls who sit a physics GCSE stick with the subject
at A level, and at half of all the state co-educational
secondary schools in England none do.
Universities themselves are failing or powerless
to reverse trends begun in schools, and these
trends only continue after graduation. Women
represent 30 per cent of students in stem subjects
as a whole, but only 13 per cent of those employed

in stem-related fields. Last year only two of the

Royal Societys 43 university research fellowships
were awarded to women, and women accounted
for roughly one in ten working engineers. That is
better than the 3 per cent when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, but nowhere near the goal
of 30 per cent set on her watch.
Every five to seven-year-old thinks like an
engineer, according to Dame Ann Dowling, the
first woman president of the Royal Academy of
Engineering.
Too many girls drop the habit as they grow. Too
few find suitable role models in science. Teachers
who reflexively pigeonhole girls as more methodical and less adventurous than boys are partly to
blame. The fashion in co-ed schools for girls to
favour humanities is undoubtedly a factor, and
inflexible working practices in some stem-related
fields discourage women from juggling families
and scientific careers.
Science and technology should not be male
ghettoes but they are heading that way. The new
figures must serve as a wake-up call to ministers,
universities and business to stop the drift.

Ghosts in the Machine

It is high time football referees adopted video technology

The magnificent German word Phantomtor came
into being after a Bundesliga match between Bayern Munich and 1. FC Nrnberg in 1994. Thomas
Helmer, a Bayern defender, found himself poorly
marked at the far post as a corner swung in.
Thrashing playdough-footedly at the ball, he contrived only to deflect it wide off his left calf. And
then, to the consternation of everybody on the
pitch including Helmer the referee ruled
that he had scored.
Ghost goals, as the phenomena are known in
English, are now little than a faded memory in the
Premier League thanks to its belated adoption of

goal-line technology in 2013. It is now time to exorcise a host of other egregious refereeing mistakes that haunt the game.
Nobody benefits when a match official misses a
reckless foul or a calculated dive. The means to
mitigate this have existed for decades: the first
instant replay was cut into a live sport broadcast in
1963. But an ornery mistrust of change has denied
referees the same footage that allows spectators
and commentators to deplore their every slip.
The Dutch football federation is in the middle of
a two-year experiment in ironing out this bizarre
disparity. An assistant referee, sitting in a van with

The wild swans that

visit us for the
winter are
wandering about
quite a lot at
present. There are
two species, the
whooper swan and Bewicks swan. To
identify them, the chief thing to look at is
the beak. This is yellow with black markings
in both species, while our own mute swans
have orange beaks. The whoopers, which
come here from Iceland, are about the size
of a mute swan, and are found mainly in the
north of Britain. The winter headquarters of
the Bewicks swans, which are smaller, and
which make the long journey from Siberia, is
the fenlands of eastern England. But small
flocks and even single birds are being
discovered just now on lakes and in wet
fields in all parts of the country. Frozen
water no doubt helps to get them travelling.
They feed on aquatic plants or on grass. Any
group of swans is worth studying carefully,
since odd birds or pairs, especially Bewicks,
often join up with resident flocks of mute
swans. One can also find mixed parties of
the wintering birds. Whooper swans are
named after their whooping cries. Bewicks
swans were named in honour of Thomas
Bewick, the 18th-century bird engraver.
derwent may

Birthdays today

There are not enough of them, and it is hurting the economy

In the latest university admissions figures a
depressing failure for women hides behind an
impressive success for girls. For the seventh
straight year girls have outperformed boys in the
overall number winning university places, but
they have failed to break the overwhelming male
dominance of key science subjects. This hobbles
an economy whose future depends on excellence
in science and technology, and it deprives young
women of some of the best opportunities the
world of work can offer.
The failure to draw more women into stem
subjects (science, technology, engineering and
maths) starts when girls choose A-level subjects. It
is compounded at the transitions to higher education and employment. As a result Britain has fewer
women engineers per capita than China, India and
any other European country, and a shortfall of
40,000 engineering graduates a year.
In pure and applied science as well as engineering, this country must choose which youngsters to
train from the widest possible pool. That selection
must be based on merit alone, undistorted by the
fads and unconscious biases that draw girls and

Nature notes

eight television screens for company, immediately

examines every controversy on the pitch. If he
believes his superior has made a gross error of
judgment, he has 15 seconds to tell him so. The delay is so slight as to be trivial.
It is in the interests of referees, players and supporters alike that this development be embraced
by Ifab, the sports rule-making body. Whether the
mass of these interests will suffice to sway its
chairman, Sepp Blatter, is dubious. He must bring
football into line with tennis, cricket and rugby.
Until he does, this intransigence will make a shambling ass of the law every Saturday.

John Hurt, pictured,

actor, The Elephant Man
(1980), 75; Nigel Benn,
boxer, former world
middleweight and supermiddleweight champion,
51; Lord (Paul) Bew,
historian, 65; Caroline
Dawnay, literary agent, 65; Jan du Plessis,
chairman, Rio Tinto, 61; Colin Graves,
chairman, England & Wales Cricket Board,
and founder, Costcutter, 67; Alan Grieve,
chairman, Jerwood Foundation, sponsor of
the arts, 87; Margaret Hall, head of design,
British Museum (1964-2001), 79; Russell
Hobby, general secretary, National
Association of Head Teachers, 43; Baroness
(Betty) Lockwood, first chairwoman of the
Equal Opportunities Commission, 91; the
Rev Dr Jeremy Morris, theologian and
master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 55; Sir
Bob Scott, chairman, South London
Business, 71; Baroness (Gillian) Shephard
of Northwold, former secretary of state for
education, 75; Francis Wheen, author
and journalist, 58; Brian Wildsmith,
childrens book illustrator, 85; Lady (Morag)
Wise, senator of the College of Justice in
Scotland, 52.

On this day
In 1924 James Ramsay MacDonald became
Britains first Labour prime minister; in 1944
the Allied landings began in Anzio, Italy; in
1946 President Truman signed a directive
establishing the Central Intelligence Group,
from which, two years later, the CIA was
created; in 1972 the UK, Irish Republic and
Denmark joined the EEC.

The last word

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad
to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his
country. Sir Henry Wotton, English
diplomat (1604)

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

21

FGM

Letters to the Editor

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF
Email: letters@thetimes.co.uk

Despite everything, its wonderful to be a Jew

Human rights
Sir, Lord Pannick, QC, is right to
deplore the way in which human
rights are being used as a political
tool to be manipulated for narrow and
partisan advantage (Dangerous
inmates to be stripped of human
rights, Jan 20).
There is nothing new in jumping on
an individual case as a justification for
overhauling laws so that a political
party can cast itself as the publics
saviour, but current proposals to
introduce a Bill of Rights go beyond
point-scoring. The draft of the
proposal we have seen is nothing
short of legally illiterate. It also
undermines the principle of the
universality of rights, set down in
Magna Carta.
Suggestions that decisions from the
European Court of Human Rights
will be rejected if wrong are
alarming. Who is to determine when
they are wrong? The very politicians
being challenged in that court?
We must ask if we are prepared to
allow Britain to become a country
where rights apply only to the
popular.
kate allen
Director, Amnesty International UK
Sir, The draft Bill of Rights is a
reasoned attempt to correct an
imbalance between rights and
responsibilities introduced by a
European Court that is now
intervening inappropriately in the
daily life of this country.
Many of us are confused at the
stream of bizarre and unbalanced
judgments that come from the
European Court of Human Rights.
Human rights should be judged
against human obligations.
tim howard
Corfe Mullen, Dorset

Nice NHS
Sir, I have experienced even prompter
service from the NHS than David
Aaronovitch (This is not the best
way to meet the readers, Opinion,
Jan 19).
I phoned my GP at 8am on
Thursday and was seen 90 minutes
later. I was referred to my local
hospital which phoned me at 5.30
that evening with an appointment for
the next day.
I was seen by a urologist who
arranged for me to have an MRI scan
on the Sunday, followed by a further
examination on the Monday and a
CT scan on the Wednesday.
Five appointments in seven days
well done NHS.
david lloyd
Stockport

Corrections and
clarifications
The Times takes complaints about
editorial content seriously. We are
committed to abiding by the
Independent Press Standards
Organisation (IPSO) rules and
regulations and the Editors Code of
Practice that IPSO enforces.
Requests for corrections or
clarifications should be sent by email to
feedback@thetimes.co.uk or by post to
Feedback, The Times, 1 London Bridge
Street, London SE1 9GF

Sir, Daniel Finkelstein doesnt say

why antisemitism is so persistent in
its different forms religious,
political, antizionist, superstition
(Heres why we all have reason to
be fearful, Jan 21). Wherever they
go, Jews are tolerated rather than
welcomed, treated as guests who
might outstay their welcome: one
moment the humble immigrant,
next thing beavering to take over.
Their prominence makes them
natural targets. To best them in an
argument a Kalashnikov comes in
handy.
Disproportionate contributions to
the arts, science, commerce, law and
medicine are meritorious but not
endearing. They can build a viable
state in 50 years, they make the best
capitalists, the deadliest
communists, even the most
ingenious crooks. And their greed
when it comes to Nobel prizes is
legendary.
This is great if you are one of us,
but uncomfortable for the rest.
Israel is the only country that
positively discriminates in favour of
Jewish immigrants; other countries
have been known to pass the
parcel when it was a matter of life
or death. Yet with all these
disadvantages and dangers, it is a
wonderful thing to be a Jew, to
belong this most exclusive of clubs. I
wear my invisible yellow star with
pride.
victor ross
London NW8
Sir, As a British Jew I was heartened
by the home secretarys public
support. However I fail to share
rabbis Solomons and JannerKlausners feeling of comfort as a
Jew in this country (letters, Jan 20).
This week my childrens school will
have to relocate some activities
because of security concerns. Until
Islamic totalitarianism is combated,

Page 3
Sir, Some years ago a colleague was
surprised to find a Page 3 girl in his
Church Times (News, Jan 20). It had
been inserted by his teenage
daughter. Is such simple pleasure
to be denied to future generations?
the rev canon basil jones
Exeter

on this day january 22, 1915

SIGNALS
FROM
MOTOR CARS
Mr Holcombe Ingleby, MP for
Kings Lynn, sends us the following
account of his experiences during
the raid: Your readers may like to
receive from someone on the spot
an account of the Zeppelin raid to
which we have just been subjected
in this corner of Norfolk. The
unwelcome intruder hovered round
Hunstanton and the adjoining
places for nearly an hour,
apparently undetermined what

including the facetious link between

the Arab-Israeli conflict and the
cold-blooded murder of Jews around
the world, Jews everywhere will
have to get used to a life of fear.
anthony cohn
London NW4
Sir, Roslyn Pine (letter, Jan 21)
makes a strong if disingenuous point
by confusing three different issues.
To be a Jew today has long meant
that you are a terrorist target,
wherever you live. Schools and
synagogues have had guards and
pupil security drills for decades. Our
government is not the Nazi regime,
and we have the caring support of
the police and security services. We
are nowhere near that black pit.
Roslyn Pine has seen the headlines,
and heard about the recent flawed
survey of attitudes of British
citizens. Like many of my fellow
Jews, quite reasonably, she feels
vulnerable.
By adding the three together it is
easy to come to the wrong
conclusion, and respond
inappropriately. In Israel there are
constant terror attacks. They have
armed security at shopping centres.
After 67 years they are still at war
with their neighbours. Would she
advise Israelis to leave, in the face of
their plight?
rabbi zvi solomons
Reading
Sir, I share the apprehension
expressed by Daniel Finkelstein. In a
week that has included Democracy
Day, we need to recall that
democracy protects us all from
tyranny. Hold our representatives to
account at every turn, but as Mr
Finkelstein notes, casual disdain
for politics has no place where there
is so much at stake.
ann-frances luther
Frant, E Sussex

Sir, All terrorism is evil. A sense of

proportion is needed when we talk
about the safety of Jews in Britain.
The King David Hotel bombing in
July 1946 of the British military and
administrative headquarters for
Palestine resulted in the deaths of 91
people, of whom 28 were British. To
the best of my knowledge there have
not been 28 Jewish deaths at the
hands of Islamic terrorists in the
UK during the almost 70 years since
that date.
adrian cartwright
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs
Sir, Daniel Finkelstein fears that the
evils that followed the Nazis
rejection of democracy can happen
here. Holocaust Day on January 27
is designed as a reminder because,
to quote the philosopher, Karl
Jaspers: Only in knowledge can it
be prevented.
jm carder
Anstruther, Fife
Sir, I await the day when I can mark
a Holocaust Day that includes all
victims of genocide such as the
700,000 Serbs in Jasenovac (1941-45)
and the Armenians in Turkey (1915)
and isnt tainted by modern
politics and shameful diplomacy.
anthony shelmerdine boskovic
Saddleworth, Oldham
Sir, The simple answer to the
concerns about the current heavy
security at Jewish schools is to
abolish all religious schools. Beliefs
are a private matter, which could be
passed on to the children of
religious parents in their own time.
judith stodel
Diss, Norfolk
Letters to The Times must be exclusive
and may be edited. Please include a full
address and daytime telephone number.

Sir, I have not seen The Sun for years,

but I can still despise those
politicians and campaigners who
think it appropriate to censor it. If a
woman is happy to be photographed
in her natural state and if people
enjoy looking at those pictures, what
business is it of others to interfere?
Its a sad day for freedom.
steve devereux
Beuste, France

Sir, One of the first page 3 girls

appeared not in The Sun but in a
Fisons advert in The Times. In 1971
I was the executive who raised the
clients idea for a picture of a naked
Vivien Neves with the editor, William
Rees-Mogg. After much thought, that
wonderful voice intoned: Yes,
provided she is not in colour.
michael brotherton
Chippenham, Wilts

course to take, or missing the

objects of its intended attack. For
obvious reasons I refrain from
indicating these. It then dropped a
bomb on the little watering-place of
Heacham. The bomb is stated to
have fallen into a tub of water and
to have destroyed the wall of a
house without injuring the inmates.
The airship then did me the honour
of circling round my house but
happily, considering me unworthy
of notice, it made off in the
direction of Snettisham.
I have myself tested the evidence
of some of the most trustworthy of
the inhabitants, and that evidence
seems to me worth recording. The
Zeppelin is stated to have been
accompanied by two motor-cars,
one on the road to its right, and the
other on the road to its left. These
cars occasionally sent upwards
double flashes, and on one
occasion these flashes from the car
on the right lit up the church, on
which the Zeppelin attempted to
drop a bomb. Fortunately the
missile fell on a grass meadow
separated from the church by the

high road, but the force of the

explosion was so great that most of
the windows on the south and east
sides of the church were blown in,
with some of the stonework of the
mullions. Snettisham Church is a
beautiful specimen of late
14th-century architecture, and it is
fortunate that it escaped more
serious damage.
After this attempted piece of
wanton mischief the Zeppelin made
for Kings Lynn, and here again
there is further evidence that it was
accompanied by a car with
powerful lights, which were at one
time directed on the Grammar
School. The car was stopped in the
town and attention was called to
the lights as a breach of the
regulations. Having put them out
the driver turned the car quickly
round and made off at a rapid pace
for the open country.
sign up for a weekly email
with extracts from
the times history of the war
ww1.thetimes.co.uk

Church numbers
Sir, As a leader of a charismatic
church with close links to our
Anglican friends, I am not surprised
that the number of people who hold
core Christian beliefs is not declining,
despite the fall in church attendance
(Leader, Jan 19). There has been an
explosion of churches such as ours.
We contain a huge number of
believers but do not register on the
surveys of church attendance.
Christian faith is not dying, it just
lives in a slightly different place.
phil gregg
Rugby, Warks
Sir, The Archbishop of Canterbury
should direct his clergy that no
sermon should last longer than five
minutes. Long, boring or poorly
presented sermons are the fate that
many churchgoers suffer weekly.
Even if content and presentation
cannot be improved, brevity should
be achievable by all.
james davis
London SW19

Pickless letter
Sir, One slipshod passage destroyed
much of the intended impact of Eric
Pickless letter to British imams
(News, Jan 20). By using can be in
the phrase faith in Islam can be part
of the British identity, he implied
that the Muslim community and its
faith is not part of the British identity,
that it is at the moment inherently
apart but need not be. How different
if Pickles had used is instead.
kenneth jordan
North Chailey, E Sussex

Cromwell pedigree
Sir, Everyone is discovering Thomas
Cromwell (Cromwell rules in
Westminsters Wolf Hall , Jan 20).
The first play about Cromwell was
written by George Calderon in 1909.
Calderon is the Russianist who
introduced Chekhov to the British
stage, was a Times reviewer, and died
at Gallipoli 100 years ago. He used
the same sources as Hilary Mantel,
but produced a pre-Shakespearean
morality play in iambic pentameter.
His message was as contemporary as
your writer Rachel Sylvester suggests
Mantels is: Calderons play was an
allegory of the rise of Lloyd George.
patrick miles
Cambridge

An off and no of
Sir, Ken Broad (letter, Jan 20) may be
as encouraged as I was to find that,
long after the original version was a
hit, Andy Williams re-recorded Cant
Take My Eyes Off You without the
superfluous preposition.
Unfortunately it came too late to
prevent the absurd use of . . . off of
. . . (instead of simply off) creeping
into the vernacular.
emeritus professor richard wilson
Bunny, Notts

Giving it straight
Sir, Manslamming (men sticking to
straight lines when walking in public
spaces) is alive and well in my gym
(Robert Crampton, Jan 20). I cannot
remember once having had a female
invade my exercise space, yet males
seem to do so with clumsy, oafish, and
arrogant regularity. Perhaps now this
manshaming will put an end to this
unedifying practice.
fiona phillips
London NW8

22

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News
DOGS TRUST

This litter handed to Dogs Trust have been named Dame Joan Collins, Sir John Hurt, Sheridan Smith, Steve Cram, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas and James Corden

Twice as many dogs abandoned

as buying a pet takes just a click
Georgie Keate

The number of abandoned dogs doubled over Christmas because the internet has made shopping for pets too easy,
according to rescue organisations.
At Dogs Trust, Britains biggest
rescue charity, 174 dogs were brought in
over Christmas and the new year,
almost twice the usual number.
Giles Webber, the organisations
operations director, said: It brings into
question the thought process that
people are applying to the process of
getting a dog.
With more and more puppies available at the click of a button it is more
essential than ever that our iconic
message A Dog is For Life, Not Just For
Christmas is ingrained in peoples
minds.
The charity said it believed that the
internet had fuelled a dramatic rise in
the number of dogs in Britain because
online prices tended to be far lower
than those from reputable breeders,

and that these dogs were often from

illegal traders abroad.
Research by Dogs Trust suggests that
an average of 211,000 people searched
for a dog for Christmas via Google last
year. Researchers found advertisements selling under-age animals,
banned breeds, illegally imported and
endangered species.
The charity said that many people
had told it about buying an animal
online only for it to become ill or die
soon afterwards.
The RSPCA also reported 3,169 calls
made to it about worries over the puppy
trade, double that in 2010.
While dogs are loving additions to
any family, it is a decision that should
have more consideration than choosing a new mobile phone, Mr Webber
said. He added that the charity would
not rest until dogs were not treated as
disposable items.
According to the animal welfare
charity PDSA, a dog will cost between
16,000 and 31,000 over its lifetime,

far more than owners expect, leading

many to realise that they cannot afford
to look after their pet any longer.
Blue Cross, one of the countrys largest rehoming centres, found twice the
number of dogs abandoned last
year as in 2013, while the
number of people handing in their dogs
because they could no
longer care for them
rose from 1,218 to
1,342. Mandy Jones,
head of rehoming at
Blue Cross, said:
Sadly, the number
of unwanted and
abandoned dogs remains high and Blue
Cross is always looking for
new ways so that we can help
as many pets as we can.
We are still seeing dogs being deliberately abandoned and wonder if it is
because their owners are afraid that
they will be judged by bringing their pet

to a charity. We would like to reassure

dog owners struggling to cope that we
are always here to help and will help
them however we can. We would far
rather they came and talked to us than
resort to abandoning a pet to
fend for itself.
Wendy Kruger, who
has worked at the
Cambridgeshire rescue charity Wood
Green, said that in
the run-up to last
Christmas it was
bursting. In midDecember we had
121 dogs and only 100
kennels, she said.
She also reported that
rescue dogs were staying
for longer because more were
being brought in than were being
rehomed.
Last year the number of dogs collected by the RSPCA was 8,923, up from
8,177 the year before and 7,265 in 2012.

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Marmalade is
toast at home
Dont tell Paddington, but purchases of
both peanut butter and chocolate
spread have now overtaken marmalade
in British homes.
Britains eating habits are changing,
with fewer families gathering together
for breakfast, preferring to grab something on the way to work or school.
In the year to October 2014, peanut
butter sales rose by 13 per cent to
62.4 million while chocolate spreads
soared by 19 per cent to 57.6 million.
Sales of marmalade fell by 2.4 per cent
to 54.8 million, according to the trade
journal The Grocer. Higher prices account for some of the rise, but volume
sales were up too, by 9 per cent for peanut butter and 14 per cent for chocolate
spread. The volume of marmalade sold
fell by 5 per cent. The volume of jam
sold fell by 5.7 per cent. The journal said
that honey, ham and yeast spreads were
also falling out of favour.
Robertsons Golden Shred said that
its sales had risen since the release of
the Paddington film in October, a period
not covered by The Grocers figures.

Charity body
misses target
David Brown

The charity regulator is failing to check

all high-risk groups fully and to ensure
that taxpayer subsidies for good causes
are not being used by criminals or
terrorists, the spending watchdog has
warned.
The Charity Commission was still
failing to carry out follow-up checks on
whether trustees for suspicious groups
had carried out its instructions, the
National Audit Office said in a report
published today.
It found that some fundraisers were
using a loophole in the regulations to
avoid monitoring by simply closing
down before the 18-month deadline for
filing the first set of accounts.
The NAO raised serious concerns
about the commission in December
2103, leading to the Commons public
accounts committee to declare it not
fit for purpose.
Despite the latest criticism, the audit
bodys report said that the commission
had made good early progress in its
aim to become a robust regulator.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

23

FGM

News

Sociopathic robots must be taught to serve

James Dean Technology Correspondent

Artificially intelligent robots should be the

Jeeves to humanitys Bertie Wooster, a
leading computer scientist has said, warning that humans risked a showdown with
sociopathic machines unless they were
taught to be subservient.
Stuart Russell said that the long-suffering valet in PG Wodehouses novels in
which stories were often set in the fictional
Drones Club did not need to be told
what his master wanted. Their relationship, therefore, should be used as a
blueprint for humanitys interaction with
artificially intelligent beings.
Professor Russell, of the University of
California, Berkeley, is one of hundreds of
scientists to have signed an open letter
calling for additional research to be
carried out into the development of AI.
Many researchers, including Stephen
Hawking, are worried that without extra
care, humans could be wiped out by
machines whose artificial intelligence
exceeded our own.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland, Professor Russell
said that humanity was in danger unless
AI was taught to be subservient to human
needs. He predicted that artificial intelligence would overtake that of human

beings within his lifetime. His forecast

chimes with that of Ray Kurzweil, Googles
director of engineering, who has been
described by Bill Gates, the former Microsoft boss, as the best person I know at
predicting the future of artificial intelligence.
Mr Kurzweil believes that artificial
intelligence will surpass human intelligence an event termed the singularity
in 2029. However, he believes that
super-intelligent beings would be naturally subservient to humans.
The open letter signed by Professor
Hawking and Professor Russell has also
been signed by Elon Musk, the technology
entrepreneur who owns SpaceX and Tesla
Motors. He suggested in August that artificial intelligence was potentially more
dangerous than nukes.
The letter, published by the Future of
Life Institute, says: Our AI systems must
do what we want them to do. The potential benefits of AI are huge, the letter says,
because everything that civilisation has
to offer is a product of human intelligence.
However, we cannot predict what we
might achieve when this intelligence is
magnified by the tools AI may provide, it
warns.
The researchers posed a number of
questions in a research paper accompany-

ing the letter. Among them, they ask whether autonomous weapons might result in
wars, or whether a self-driving car should
be allowed to weigh up a small probability
of injury to a human against the nearcertainty of expensive vehicle damage.
In an interview in December,
Professor Hawking said that the
development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the
human race. It would take off on
its own, and redesign itself at an
Robots should serve humans
as Jeeves served Bertie
Wooster, scientists say

ever-increasing rate, he said. Humans,

who are limited by slow biological
evolution, couldnt compete, and would be
superseded.
Artificial intelligence has become big
business. DeepMind, a secretive British AI
research company, was bought by Google
last year for an estimated 400 million.
Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, is another signatory to the Future of
Life Institutes open letter.
A poll of 1,900 technology experts by the
Pew Research Centre has suggested that
artificially intelligent robots would supplant lawyers, doctors, accountants and
other white-collar workers by 2025.

24

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

World

We cant stop jihadists going

to Syria, admits Turkish PM
Turkey

Roger Boyes Diplomatic Editor

Controlling Turkeys border with Syria

to stop the flow of foreign fighters
joining the ranks of Islamic State is
impossible, the Turkish prime minister
has told The Times.
In an interview shortly after holding
talks with David Cameron, Ahmet
Davutoglu said that sealing off the long
frontier was not practicable, for technical and ethical reasons.
The refusal will dismay European
states who are seeking to use todays
meeting of the anti-Isis coalition in
London, summoned in response to the
terrorist attacks in Paris, to tighten the
two-way traffic in jihadists between the
EU and the Middle East. Turkey is
regarded as a primary route.
We can close the border, but who
will save the refugees, who will give
them a safe haven? said Mr Davutoglu,
who has met Mr Cameron four times in
the past two months to discuss Syria,
Iraq and Isis. All those people who are
escaping by walking, should we close
the border to them? Is that ethically
acceptable?
He added: Its a 937-kilometre
border, its impossible to do. We cant
put a soldier on every inch.
The porous border through which
Hayat Boumedienne, a suspected conspirator in the Paris murders, reportedly slipped into Syria is at the heart of
the problems facing the 20 foreign
ministers meeting at Lancaster House
today. The meeting will be chaired by
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State,
and Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary. Many of the participants believe
that their specific security concerns are
being overlooked in the single-minded
campaign to destroy Isis.
We can, of course, declare the
border a military zone and say that nobody will enter, but then the same
people who are criticising us now will
say that barbaric Turkey closed the
border and people are being killed as a
result, Mr Davutoglu said. We will

Asma Assad, wife of the Syrian president, presents awards to students in

Damascus. The photograph was released on Syrias official Facebook page

Extremist menace helps Assad

Analysis Roger Boyes

he fate of President Assad,

the Syrian leader who has
presided over more than a
quarter of a million deaths in a
four-year civil war, is the faultline
in the coalition against Islamic
State and it is now being exposed.
It could prove to be the issue that
tears apart an already fragile
alliance.
The US is shifting in its public
rhetoric from saying baldly that
Assad must go. John Kerry, the
Secretary of State, now uses more
weaselly phrasing: Its time for the
Assad regime to think about the
consequences of their actions.
Assad, meanwhile, has never
looked stronger. The US consults
him through Iraqi intermediaries
about its bombing targets in Syria
and has reassured him that its
planes are not aiming for Syrian

army targets. The army, led by

Alawite commanders, seems still
to be loyal. The economy is broken
but there is enough cash coming in
from Iran, and other support
including arms from Russia.
Some salaries are not being paid
on time and there are shortages,
but the army and the security
police are well paid and well fed.
Mr Assads British-educated
wife, Asma, has been spotted out
and about for the first time in
months. She was photographed
beaming with a group of
schoolchildren who had just won
science awards. The clear message:
Syrias education system is still
functioning.
The hundreds of thousands of
refugee children, bombed out of
their homes and schools, are not
so lucky.

never do it. He said that Turkey had

come under pressure to control all suspicious foreigners flying into the country. Over the past year we have banned
7,000 people from entry and expelled
1,300, he said, but insisted that western
expectations were unrealistic. Turkey
attracts 35 million tourists a year.
The foreign ministers will try to work
out ways in which the sharing of intelligence between EU police authorities
and Arab states can be improved. However, there are legal limits on how much
information can be exchanged purely
on the basis of suspicion.
Mr Davutoglus particular mission is
to persuade the west that Turkey has
not become an ambiguous Nato ally.
The country has been criticised for not
allowing its Nato bases to be used in the
bombing campaign against Isis fighters.
Turkey is willing to budge on this, Mr
Davutoglu said, only if Nato takes into
account all the threats to his country.
If we develop an integrated strategy,
then we will fully participate, Mr
Davutoglu said, but not if other partners fail to understand the security
concerns of Turkey and just refer to one
[overriding] concern.
Turkey, in other words, wants a
unified line on the ousting of President
Assad of Syria before it is ready to take
military action.
It was all very well to tackle the jihadists moving into Syria, Mr Davutoglu
said, but simultaneously the foreign
fighters supporting the Assad regime
also had to be stopped. That included
Hezbollah units and other Shia militias.
Mr Davutoglu said a third force had
to be created so that the toppling of the
Assad government would not trigger an
Isis takeover. An army of moderate
Syrians should be trained and
equipped, and refugees offered a haven
shielded preferably by the United
Nations and protected by a no-fly zone.
It is a formula that Turkey has been
promoting for two years but which has
got nowhere because of international
reluctance to engage Isis or the Assad
regimes troops on the ground.

Injured Syrian children are comforted

France combats radicals with more guns, less dole Al-Qaeda

France

Charles Bremner Paris

More than 2,600 new police, intelligence and justice posts are to be
created in France to keep tabs on about
3,000 people with ties to Islamist
extremism at home and abroad, the
government announced yesterday in
its first policy response to the terrorist
attacks in Paris.
The police will also be given more
powerful weapons to match those used
by jihadists.
Manuel Valls, the prime minister,
said that strengthening intelligencegathering was the top priority in the
attempt to avert atrocities similar to
those carried out by three French-born
Muslim extremists two weeks ago.
The fight against terrorism, jihadism and radical Islam will be a long
haul. The No 1 requirement is to further
reinforce the human and technical

resources of intelligence services, he

said after a cabinet meeting chaired
by President Hollande. The security
services and police are to be given
broader powers to tap telephones and
internet conversations.
Mr Valls said that the government
was considering reviving a sentence of
national indignity, a postwar punishment used against Nazi collaborators,
which would strip convicted Islamist
extremists of certain civic rights. These
could include the right to vote and to
claim unemployment benefit.
Mr Valls said that the 2,680 new jobs
dedicated to fighting terrorism would
cost 325 million. The beefing-up of
intelligence capability comes after an
official acknowledgment that those responsible for the attacks at Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket
in Paris had recently been under surveillance but had evaded detection.
Officials said that the surge in Isla-

mist activities, including the departure of several hundred fighters to

Syria and Iraq, had swamped the
anti-terrorist agencies.
About 3,000 people are
known to have been active
in violent Islamist causes
and more than 1,200
French citizens and residents are fighting in the
Middle East or have
returned from doing so,
the government said.
It emerged yesterday
that Amedy Coulibaly,
who shot dead a police officer and four shoppers at
the Jewish supermarket,
had been stopped for an
identity check by a police
officer the previous week as
Police weapons will match
those used by terrorists

he drove Hayat Boumeddiene, his

partner, in a hire car. Coulibalys
name appeared on an anti-terrorist
alert list with a note not to raise his
suspicions. The officer reported
the check to the intelligence service but no action was taken.
Prosecutors brought preliminary charges yesterday
against four men who are
alleged to have provided
logistical support to Coulibaly, including weapons
and tear gas.
Mr Hollande announced that France
would cut 7,500 fewer defence jobs than planned
in the next five years to meet
security needs. With 10,000
troops on the streets and a
military campaign in Mali,
the armed forces are at
full stretch.

poised to
exploit coup
in Yemen
Yemen

Catherine Philp Beirut

Yemens American-backed president

was being held captive in his home in
the capital, Sanaa, last night, throwing
into question the future of the impoverished nation and the battle against alQaedas most dangerous wing.
An aide to Abed Mansour Hadi said
that the country was at the point of no
return after presidential guards fled
his home, leaving him surrounded
by Iranian-backed Shia rebels, known
as Houthis. Their leader gave a tele-

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

25

FGM

German anti-migrant
leader quits over
Hitler photo
Page 27

MOHMAD BADRA / REUTERS

Palestinian stabs 12 on
Tel Aviv rush-hour bus
Page 28

Hundreds of Isis
fighters killed in
battle for key road
Iraq

TURKEY

Sofia Barbarani Near Mosul dam

at a field hospital after what activists said were airstrikes by government forces in the suburb of Duma near Damascus

vision address calling the takeover a

revolutionary move.
He issued a list of demands to Mr
Hadi that would put the rebels in effective charge of the country, even as he
remains as nominal president. If they
were not met, the rebel leader said, the
revolution would know no limits.
The United States has relied heavily
on Mr Hadis co-operation in its fight
against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist branch
viewed as presenting the most dangerous threat to the west. AQAP claimed
responsibility for the attacks on the
Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, and issued a fresh call yesterday for lone-wolf
attacks to be carried out in its name.
Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the rebel
leader, denied that his actions amounted
to a coup, although it was labelled just
that by the Gulf Co-operation Council,
which brokered the transition that put
Mr Hadi in power after an uprising
against his predecessor. The labelling is
crucial. Should Washington determine
that events in Sanaa amount to a coup,
that would bring an immediate halt to

SAUDI ARABIA
200 miles

YEMEN
Sanaa
Aden

Houthis
Government
Al-Qaeda and others

the millions of dollars in economic and

military aid it is pouring into Yemen to
fight AQAP. More than $1.4 billion has
been sent to the Arab worlds poorest
nation since 2009. A further $232 million is to be handed over this year.
The fresh chaos, many months in the
making, has led to concerns about the
future of Yemen, which has emerged as
a cornerstone of Washingtons counterterrorism strategy, one that President
Obama has repeatedly praised as a
model for other operations.
The Houthis are also sworn enemies
of AQAP, but strongly oppose the US
military intervention in Yemen and its
drone programme.
Mr Hadi became president after the
overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who

subsequently teamed up with the

Houthis. Suspicions that the rebels
were working together with the expresident were reinforced yesterday
when transcripts emerged of recent
conversations between the two leaders.
Mr Hadis efforts to purge the military of Mr Salehs loyalists served only
to further fracture the already weak
force, allowing al-Qaeda to stage a
comeback after previous heavy losses.
Houthi rebels also exploited the
power vacuum, overrunning the capital
in September and forcing the resignation of the government.
They then demanded a powersharing deal that would put them in key
positions. The fresh fighting broke out
when Mr Hadi tried to press ahead with
a federalist constitution that the Houthis opposed.
Highlighting the countrys division,
authorities in Aden ordered the airport,
seaport and all land crossings to be
closed in protest at the aggressive coup
against the president. Aden, the main
city in the south, is far from the Houthis northern stronghold.

Kurdish forces succeeded in cutting off

a key Islamic State supply route to the
Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday after a
lightning day-long offensive.
Allied warplanes and peshmerga
anti-tank missiles bombarded Isis
positions along the strategic road from
Tal Afar, a jihadist stronghold, from
early in the morning.
This was followed by a peshmerga
ground assault that took 480 sq km of
territory across four fronts south of the
Mosul dam, Kurdish officials said.
More than 200 Isis fighters were
killed, several of them after launching
suicide attacks against the Kurds
during the fighting.
However, peshmerga fighters on the
front line claimed that morale among
the Sunni militants was low and that
resistance had been minimal.
The enemy has failed to resist, said
Masrour Barzani, head of the Kurdistan
security council, at a peshmerga operations centre.
Yesterdays assault was critical to
allied efforts to prepare the ground for
an attack later this year on Mosul, the
largest Iraqi city in Isis hands.
It ended with the Kurds in control of
a key junction on the road between Tal
Afar and Mosul. It is the first time since
last summer that Isis has not controlled
a continuous stretch of territory from
Mosul in the east to Raqqa, the headquarters of the Islamists self-styled
caliphate, hundreds of miles to the west
in northern Syria.
It significantly reduces the easy
movement of Isis, said Mr Barzani, son
of the president of Iraqi Kurdistan. It
would also make it harder but not
impossible for Isis to resupply territory it holds around Mount Sinjar.
Mosul is pivotal to Isis control in
northern Iraq. It was in Mosul that Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis leader,
emerged into public view to declare the
caliphate in a sermon from the citys
Great Mosque last July. John Cantlie,

Dohuk
SYRIA
1

Mosul
dam

Mount
Sinjar

Mosul

Sinjar
10 miles

IRAQ

Tal Afar

Isis control
Kurdish control

the British hostage, was seen in a recent

Isis propaganda video talking about life
in Mosul.
Much of the US-led training of Iraqi
forces is geared towards retaking the
city this year.
I hope freedom for these people [in
Mosul] is near, said Mr Barzani, urging
them to be ready when the time came.
They need to be proactive in terms of
not supporting Isis.
Yesterday plumes of black smoke
hung across the battlefield from half a
dozen incoming Isis mortar bombs.
They were dwarfed by larger clouds of
smoke from coalition strikes.
One young peshmerga fighter said
that the British had been involved in the
airstrikes. They began at 4am, three
hours before peshmerga ground forces
began their assault. By the afternoon
Kurdish forces had cleared the areas of
Tel Khdr, Kehrich, Jemrood and Aski
Mosul.
Their [Isis] resistance is not strong
because of the airstrikes, an elderly
peshmerga fighter said.
Fighters admitted that the Kurds
would have fared much less well without allied air support.
Our weapons are not good enough
against Isis, said one, clutching an old
Kalashnikov.
Mr Barzani said that the Kurds had
suffered injuries and some deaths and
hailed the fighters as heroes.

Journalist captured as he
tried to rescue war tourist
Japan

Richard Lloyd Parry Tokyo

The Japanese journalist kidnapped by

Islamic State was in Syria on a failed
mission to rescue the man with whom
he is now being held hostage.
Kenji Goto, a freelance war correspondent, faces death by beheading
tomorrow if the Japanese government
fails to pay a ransom of $200 million.
The demand was made in a video on
Wednesday in which Mr Goto was
shown kneeling in the desert beside
Haruna Yukawa.
The two men met in Syria last year,
shortly before the hapless Mr Yukawa
was seized by Islamic State (Isis) in
August, Japans Mainichi newspaper
reported. Mr Goto, who had already
made more than ten trips into Syria,

went back in late October, hoping to

secure Mr Yukawas release. People
who know him believe that he went to
save Yukawa, a source told The Times.
Mr Goto and Mr Yukawa had very
different reasons for being in Syria. Mr
Haruna, 42, described himself as a military contractor, but this was more of a
naive aspiration than an established
business. After a troubled life during
which he lost his wife to cancer, went
bankrupt and tried to kill himself, he
began visiting Syria last year.
Mr Goto, 47, by contrast, is an
experienced war correspondent and
film- maker. He has three children, and
his reporting has often focused on the
effects of war on children. His book,
We Want Peace Not Diamonds, about
child soldiers in Sierra Leone, won a
national award in 2006.

26

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

World
RICK WHITE / MERCURY PRESS

New Sri Lankan leader

pardons ex-army chief
Colombo President Sirisena of Sri

Lanka has pardoned and

reinstated a former army
commander who was imprisoned
after challenging the countrys
previous leader in an election in
2010.
Sarath Fonseka, who is said to
have led the army to victory in
the long-running civil war with
Tamil rebels, had been jailed
under the regime of Mahinda
Rajapaksa, who was defeated by
Mr Sirisena in a poll on January
8. Mr Rajapaksas property has
been searched after the discovery
of a weapons cache, leading to
claims that he had been planning
a coup to try to cling to power
after losing the election.

Netanyahu to tell US of
Iranian nuclear threat
Washington The prime minister

Hold on tight Up to 350 Indonesian farmers risked their lives to take part in the annual Pacu Jawi bull race in Sumatra to show off the animals strength to buyers

For the best reporting on world news

thetimes.co.uk/world

The Big Society comes

naturally to America.
Brought up in a we can fix
this culture, its natural for
people to rush towards
trouble, tragedy or disaster
Alexandra Frean
US Business Editor
One of 36 correspondents covering six continents

Boko Haram chief taunts

African leaders over raid
Nigeria

Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

The head of Boko Haram, the

Islamist group that killed up to
2,000 people on the banks of
Lake Chad, has challenged the
world to stop him after boasting
about the deadliest attacks of his
six-year insurgency.
In a message posted on the
internet, Abubakar Shekau
vowed to carry out more attacks
and challenged the kings of
Africa to halt his rampage.
It was the first claim of responsibility for the January 3
raids around the town of Baga,
in northeast Nigeria, which left
more than 3,700 homes damaged or destroyed. We will not
stop, he said. This is not much.
Youll see.
Shekaus whereabouts when
delivering his message are unknown. A secretive loner and
master of disguise, he has long
been elusive to those hunting

him, preferring to communicate

directly only with a small, trusted inner circle before disseminating video messages to a
wider audience.
He was born in the village of
Shekau, bordering Niger, before
studying Islam in Borno. He
speaks several languages fluently, and his precise age is unknown - estimated at between
38 and 49 by the US State Department.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, who is running
for re-election next month, said
that 13,000 people had been
killed by Shekaus murderous
insurgents since 2009. He declared a state of emergency in
three northern provinces in
2013.
Shekau, who wants to establish an Islamic caliphate, said:
We killed the people of Baga.
We indeed killed them, as our
lord instructed us in his book.
Hundreds of soldiers from
Chad were deployed in north-

ern Cameroon this week after a

spate of cross-border attacks by
the Islamist insurgents. The
kings of Africa, you are late. I
challenge you to attack me even
now. Im ready, Shekau said.
Cameroon, Chad, Niger and
Nigeria had agreed to fight Boko
Haram together in October but
the plan foundered over disagreements about how the soldiers should be deployed.
A multinational base in Baga
was overrun and human rights
groups said that the ferocity of
the attack may have been a form
of reprisal against local people
for co-operating with the army.
Nigerian officials have accused the US of hampering their
efforts to tackle the insurgency
by repeatedly refusing to sell
them heavy weapons, amid
longstanding concerns about
the armys human rights record.
Boko Haram abducted nearly
300 schoolgirls last year from a
boarding school in Chibok,
northeast Nigeria.

British mummy gang duped Vatican

Vatican

Philip Willan Rome

Alexandra Frean in Atlantic City after Hurriance Sandy

Scientific tests on two child

mummies in a Vatican museum
have established that they are
fakes likely to have been
assembled by a British team of
19th-century fraudsters.
The discovery raises the
possibility that collections
throughout Europe may be
tainted. Alessia Amenta, the
curator of the Vatican museums
Egypt and Near East collections, said there may be as many
as 40 counterfeit mummies in
important collections.
The fakes, which were discovered after seven years of tests

and scans, were likely to have

been manufactured in the hope
of profiting from mummy
mania in intellectual circles at a
time when Victorian colonialism in the Middle East was at its
height. They would have been
sold to museums for huge sums.
The Vatican museums own
two child and seven adult mummies that underwent x-rays, CT
scans, endoscopic explorations,
carbon dating and genetic tests
during the study known as the
Vatican mummy project.
Examination of the 60cmlong mini-mummies revealed
a potpourri of ingredients,
including authentic bandages
dating from about 2,000BC,

thin sheets of tin that probably

originated in Britain, and a dark
resin that did not exist in Egypt
at the time of the pharaohs. Its
a technique typical of 19thcentury England, Ms Amenta
told Corriere della Sera.
Tests on one of the bones
determined that it was a human
tibia, but belonged to an adult
and dated from the Middle
Ages.
Meanwhile,
the
Italian
authorities yesterday displayed
more than 5,000 looted archaeological artefacts worth about
40 million which were recovered from Swiss warehouses
before they could be sold to
museums and private collectors.

of Israel has been invited to

address a joint session of the US
Congress next month to outline
the threat his country faces from
Iran. John Boehner, the House of
Representatives Republican
Speaker, issued the invitation to
Binyamin Netanyahu after
President Obama said he would
veto new sanctions against Iran
over its nuclear programme. (AP)

Chewing gum killed

student in her sleep
Pennsylvania A basketball player
died after inhaling chewing gum
into her lungs while asleep at an
American university, a coroner
said. Shanice Clark, 21, from
Toronto, was found dead in her
dormitory at California
University of Pennsylvania.
Karen Hjerpe, the colleges
athletic director, said that
Ms Clark was a bright student
and talented player.

UN stands by Korean
report despite lies
Tokyo A UN report on crimes

against humanity in North Korea

still stands, its author has insisted,
despite one of its key witnesses
admitting that he told lies. Shin
Dong Hyuk changed parts of his
story about life in a political
prison camp, but Michael Kirby
said that this did not alter his
conclusion that the regime must
be held accountable for crimes
comparable to those of the Nazis.

Officials punished over

Shanghai stampede
Beijing Eleven district officials
have been sacked or punished
over the new years eve stampede
in Shanghai in which 36 people
were killed, the citys authorities
said in an attempt to draw a line
under the disaster (Leo Lewis
writes). The announcement was
met with fury on Chinese social
media, with many saying that
more senior municipal officials
should have taken responsibility.

Flying doctor delivers

baby over the Atlantic
New York A baby was delivered
during a transatlantic flight by a
doctor and nurse who were also
on board. The woman, 33, who
was travelling alone on a Royal
Jordanian Airlines flight from
Jordan to New York, gave birth to
a healthy daughter weighing
6lb 5oz. They were taken to
hospital after the aircraft landed
at John F. Kennedy airport. Both
were said to be doing well.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

27

FGM

World

Greek far-right
leader calls for
votes from jail
Greece

Tom Kington
Anthee Carassava Athens

The jailed leader of the Greek neofascist party Golden Dawn addressed
a packed rally from his prison cell
yesterday evening as pollsters predicted a surprise surge for the party
that could alter the result of general
elections on Sunday.
The fiery pre-recorded speech by
Nikolaos Michaloliakos, who is being
held on charges of running a violent
criminal gang, was played over
speakers to about 1,000 flag-waving,
chanting supporters who had gathered
at a conference hall in Athens.
In it he described his arrest as a
political witchhunt that will go down
in history and urged his supporters to
vote in numbers to prove them wrong.
He said: They wanted to destroy us.
Their goal has not been achieved. They
thought the party would die after putting us in jail, but they were wrong.
Golden Dawn soared to approval
ratings of 15 per cent in 2013 after it
pledged to bring down the countrys
political establishment, fight austerity
policies and halt illegal immigration.
In the same year, however, a brawl
involving a Golden Dawn supporter
in which a left-wing musician died
prompted a government crackdown
that stripped the party of nearly
700,000 in state funding and brought
the jailing of Mr Michaloliakos and
other party members, pending trial.
Recent opinion polls indicate that
Golden Dawns rating has fallen to 5 per
cent, well behind the anti-austerity
party Syriza, which is leading the polls
at more than 30 per cent, and the party
of the prime minister, Antonis Samaras,
New Democracy.
The number of undecided voters is
running at between 11 per cent and
17 per cent, and pollsters believe that
many of these may back Golden Dawn.
Theres no doubt that a chunk of that
hides secret support for Golden Dawn,
said Elias Nikolakopoulos, a pollster
and political scientist.
Pollsters believe that these voters

could boost Golden Dawns share to

7 per cent. Most of the undecided
voters are Golden Dawn voters, but are
afraid to say, said Ilias Panagiotaros,
one of the partys few politicians not
in jail.
One supporter at the rally, Nikolaos
Efthymiadis, 44, who attended with
his wife, daughter and in-laws, said that
he had not been afraid to tell a telephone pollster that he was voting for
Golden Dawn. But the moment I did,
they put the phone down on me,
he said.
We will get around 9 per cent, said
Mr Panagiotaros. Same as in the
European elections in 2014, meaning
third place. A coalition government
will have to include all parties, excluding us.
If that happens, Syriza could be
forced into a coalition with the
incumbent party, New Democracy, if it
wants to avoid a return to the polls. This
could lead Syriza to water down its
demands for debt relief and an end to
austerity.
Syrizas demands have irked Germany and the IMF and raised the spectre of Greece exiting the euro.
Golden Dawn, long viewed as
Europes most violent far-right political
grouping, has recently revamped its
image, softening its stance and broadening its appeal by fielding a fresh
line-up of middle-class professionals,
including doctors, lawyers and even a
former Nato commander.
The prime minister has been trying
to poach Golden Dawn voters. Days
after the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, Mr Samaras
promised to fortify Greeces borders
and firm up immigration laws a faint
echo of Golden Dawns high-octane
war on immigration.
As part of its immigration policy,
Golden Dawn has called for forced
labour camps for undocumented
migrants and landmines on Greeces
frontiers to stop illegal immigration.
Mr Panagiotaros predicted that the
partys leader, Mr Michaloliakos, would
be released in March. The whole case
sucks and the judges know it, he said.

KENT MEARIG / MEDIA DRUM WORLD

Anti-migrant
demo leader
quits after
Hitler photo
Germany

David Charter Leipzig

The founder of Germanys anti-Islam

movement has resigned after being
pictured posing for a photograph as
Adolf Hitler for a joke.
Lutz Bachmann, 41, a petty criminal
with convictions for house-breaking
and drug-dealing, was pictured on the
front page of German newspapers
sporting the late dictators moustache
and swept back hair.
The leader of the Pegida movement
has denied he is a Nazi sympathiser and
stressed that the picture, posted on Facebook last September with the caption
Hes back!, was an attempt to poke fun
at himself.
However the picture, which came to
light after being sent anonymously to
the to the Dresdner Morgenpost newspaper, caused uproar in Germany. Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy Chancellor,
said: Anyone who puts on a Hitler disguise is either an idiot or a Nazi.
Lutz Bachmann
said he posed for
the photo as a joke

The axeman cometh Corey Denton, a tour guide in Juneau, Alaska, scales a
15-metre crevasse in Mendenhall glacier, which has been in retreat for decades

Mr Bachmann told Bild newspaper

that he sent the picture in humour to an
actor who narrated the bestselling
book, also called Hes Back, that tells
the fictional story of Hitler returning to
modern Germany.
The newspaper also quoted an anonymous source saying Mr Bachmann
referred to immigrants and asylum
seekers as cattle, trash and brutes.
Mr Bachmann updated his Facebook
profile picture yesterday with Charlie
Chaplin in The Great Dictator, with the
caption: Hes allowed to do satire
. . . not Lutz.
However, faced with growing pressure, he last night quit. Yes, I can confirm that Lutz Bachmann has offered
his resignation and it was accepted, cofounder, Kathrin Oertel, said. She said
the group, which was holding another
of its trademark protests in Leipzig last
night, would go on.

9,000 Russian troops fight in Ukraine Foie gras maker on trial

Ukraine

Maxim Tucker Debaltseve

Ben Hoyle Moscow

President Poroshenko of Ukraine

accused Russia yesterday of sending
9,000 troops backed by hundreds of
tanks and heavy weapons into east
Ukraine as heavy fighting spread along
the front line.
He flew home early from the World
Economic Forum at Davos last night to
lead Kievs response to the violence.
At the forum, where he was seeking
loans to ward off a national default, Mr
Poroshenko said that Russia had more
than 9,000 troops in my territory,
some of them arriving in recent days, as
well as about 500 tanks, heavy artillery and armoured personnel carriers.
In Berlin, diplomatic efforts to stop
the fighting resumed with a meeting of
the foreign ministers of Ukraine,
Russia, Germany and France. Angela
Merkel, the German chancellor, sought
to play down expectations. I dont

Donetsk airport, scene of fierce clashes

want to get hopes up too much, she

said. It is clear that the ceasefire is
getting more and more fragile.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister, again dismissed suggestions
of Russian military involvement in the
conflict, in which 4,800 people have
died since it began last April.
The most brutal fighting has been at
Donetsk airport, where waves of heavy
rebel attacks have failed to dislodge

Ukrainian troops, who have been nicknamed cyborgs for their endurance.
Violence has also flared around Horlivka, Mariupol and Schastiya.
Rebel artillery has hammered
Debaltseve, northeast of Donetsk, for
days. The town straddles road and rail
links that connect Ukraine to southern
Russia and the rebel capitals of
Luhansk and Donetsk to each other.
Several thousand Ukrainian troops are
clinging on there, surrounded on three
sides by separatist forces.
Inside the town, a woman shrieked as
three explosions shattered the calm of
near-deserted streets. Two soldiers
ushered weeping old women into a
basement as more rockets fell.
For the inhabitants of Debaltseve,
deciding whether to flee or stay has become a life or death decision.
Yesterday one child was killed, an
11-year-old boy, Artem Lubkin, class 6,
the boys teacher, Viktoriya, said. His
father also died. His mother and sister,
aged 8, are in hospital now.

over force-feeding cruelty

France

Adam Sage Paris

A foie gras producer will go on trial

today in France in a ground-breaking
legal challenge to the practice of forcefeeding ducks and geese.
Ernest Soulard, a company that
supplies foie gras to some of the most
celebrated chefs in Paris, is accused of
serious mistreatment and cruelty.
It denies the charge and claims that it
is the victim of a misleading campaign
by animal rights activists.
The trial in La Roche-sur-Yon,
western France, will be followed closely
by the culinary establishment. A guilty
verdict is likely to open the way for
further prosecutions, lawyers say.
Activists have often sought to put foie
gras producers on trial in France, but
none of the cases has come to court
until now. L214, the French animal

rights group behind the private prosecution, succeeded where others have
failed after it published a video, which it
said showed geese being force-fed in
farms that supply Ernest Soulard.
The video split the world of haute
cuisine. Gordon Ramsay and the illustrious French chef Jol Robuchon
announced that they would no longer
use Ernest Soulard foie gras. Alain
Ducasse, Robuchons great rival, said
that he would continue to do so.
The company faces a maximum fine
of 30,000 (23,000) if found guilty. Its
managers could be jailed for up to two
years if they are found to be personally
responsible for unlawful practices.
The trial comes amid signs that
France is wavering in its love of foie
gras, which has been banned in
California and India. A study found
that 47 per cent of French people
wanted an end to force-feeding.

28

FGM

World

Palestinian stabs 12 on rush-hour bus

YEHOSHUA YOSEF / REUTERS

Israel

Gregg Carlstrom Tel Aviv

At least 12 people were injured in a

frenzied knife attack on a crowded bus
during the morning rush hour in Tel
Aviv, the latest in a spate of lone-wolf
attacks carried out by Palestinians.
The attacker boarded the bus at
7.15am on Menachem Begin Road,
according to police. He waited several
minutes before stabbing the driver,
Herzl Biton, 55, who tried unsuccessfully to subdue him with pepper spray.
Bentzi Sau, the Tel Aviv police commander, said: He attacked the driver
with a sharp object, injured him several
times, and then stabbed some other
passengers.
Witnesses described chaotic scenes,
with passengers rushing to the rear of
the bus while the injured driver struggled to open the doors to let them out.
Liel Suissa, a pupil, said that some passengers escaped through a broken
window. The pavement around the bus
was splattered with pools of blood.
Mr Biton called a colleague at the bus
company and told him that he was
seriously wounded. He told me, If I
die, take care of my children, his colleague told Israel Radio.
The attacker was identified as Hamza
Matrouk, a 23-year-old Palestinian
from the West Bank city of Tulkarem
who entered Israel without a permit.
He was shot in the leg and arrested by
officers from the Israeli prison service,
who were driving past.
One of them, Benny Botarshvili, said
that they ran to the bus when they
heard passengers screaming. We

Paramedics at the scene in Tel Aviv. Israels foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman,
released a statement accusing the Palestinian leadership of conspiring to kill Jews

spotted the terrorist and ran after him

. . . we shot in the air, and when he didnt
stop, we shot his legs, he said.
Mr Matrouk said that he carried out
the attack because of last summers war
in Gaza, in which nearly 2,200 Palestinians and 72 Israelis were killed, according to the Shin Bet security agency. He
said that he was also motivated by
recent unrest on Temple Mount,
known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif,
a site sacred to both faiths.
Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the public
security minister, said that it was unclear whether Mr Matrouk belonged to
any organised group.
Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, called the attack a heroic
and daring operation but did not claim
responsibility. It was a natural
response to the crimes of the occupation and its terrorism against our
people, said Izzat al-Rishq, a senior
member of the group.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli
prime minister, accused the Palestinian
president, Mahmoud Abbas, of inciting
the attack. The terrorist attack in Tel
Aviv is the direct result of the poisonous
incitement being disseminated by the
Palestinian Authority against the Jews
and their state, Mr Netanyahu said.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israels foreign
minister, went further: he blamed the
entire Palestinian leadership, saying
that they were all conspiring to kill
Jews. Its all part of the same process of
undermining Israels right to exist as a
Jewish state, he said in a statement.
Eleven people have been killed in
Palestinian stabbings, hit-and-runs and
other attacks since late October.

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Students too
badly burnt
for DNA test
Mexico

James Hider
Latin America Correspondent

Human remains believed to be those of

43 missing trainee teachers may never
be identified after forensic scientists
said that they were too badly burnt.
The
Mexican
students,
who
disappeared during a protest in the city
of Iguala on September 26, were allegedly murdered with the collaboration
of the police.
Austrian experts have been trying
without success to identify the remains.
Late last year the team said that they
had identified only one of the missing
students using DNA from tooth and
bone fragments. They will now try to
carry out a more advanced test, but this
could take about three months and the
chances of a conclusive result are slim.
The government has been struggling
to contain nationwide fury at the abductions. The mayor of Iguala and his
wife have been arrested and charged
with abduction, racketeering and
money laundering.
The mayors wife, whose brothers
were members of the local drugs cartel
Guerreros Unidos, was campaigning to
be elected mayor when the students
held their protest near by. The mayor is
accused of ordering police to open fire,
killing six. Police are alleged to have
rounded up the 43 students and handed
them to the gang to be murdered.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

29

FGM

World

Republicans defy
Obama over plan
to tax super-rich
United States

David Taylor, Matt Spence Washington

The Republicans delivered a swift

reality check to President Obama as
they rejected his policy agenda and told
him that America was ready to move on
from his leadership.
Mr Obama used his State of the
Union address on Tuesday to urge Congress to join him in the work of remaking America. He was in confident form
as he set an optimistic course, asserting
that the shadow of crisis had passed
after 15 years of war and recession.
He had barely sat down before the
repudiation began from the Republicans, who have taken control of both
houses of Congress and have the
capacity to ignore his middle-class
economics ideas for taxing the rich to
give to the millions who have worked
hard, and scrimped, and sacrificed.
Many of the contenders for the 2016
presidential race led the way, picking
apart the presidents record and
questioning his policies. Ted Cruz, 44,
the firebrand Texas senator who is the
most conservative in the Republican
2016 field, called the speech a powerful
demonstration that its time to move on.
Senator Rand Paul, 52, regarded as
one of the Republican frontrunners,

challenged Mr Obamas record on reducing inequality. He said that touring

places such as Ferguson, Detroit and
Atlanta, he had found an undercurrent
of unease in black communities.
I wish I had better news for you, but
all is not well in America. America is
adrift. Something is clearly wrong, he
said in a message posted on YouTube.
The official televised Republican
rebuttal, aired directly after the presidents address, came from the senate
newcomer Joni Ernst, 44, the pigcastrating former Iowa farm girl who is
an emerging Republican star.
A lieutenant-colonel in the national
guard, she wore camouflage-print high
heels to make her address, and spoke of
her humble origins when she was sent
to school in the rain with plastic bread
bags over her only good pair of shoes.
Two weeks into her Washington
career, she rejected the presidents
ideas, reminding voters that the Republicans had won the midterm elections
and were ready to do things differently.
She promised that Congress would
fight to repeal and replace the presidents health reforms and cut executive overreach by the White House.
We will propose ideas that aim to cut
wasteful spending and balance the
budget with meaningful reforms, not

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

President Obama greets Terri Sewell, a Democratic congresswoman from Alabama, after his State of the Union address

higher taxes like the president has

proposed, she said.
Mitch McConnell, 72, the new
Republican leader of the Senate, also
tried to bring the curtain down on the
Obama era. The biggest problem was
the president made a speech that made
it look like he was going to run for office
again, Mr McConnell said His time
for running is over. His time for govern-

ing is here. And in order to accomplish

things over the last two years of the Obama administration, he needs to work
with a Republican Congress.
Mr Obama said that he would veto
any bills that tried to unpick health and
immigration reforms, relax curbs on
risky Wall Street investors or give the
go-ahead to the controversial Keystone
oil pipeline. The Republicans have

vowed to send him bills in the coming

weeks on all of those issues, as well as
a law threatening fresh sanctions on
Iran. Mr Obama is trying to shape the
political agenda and his own legacy by
going into battle for the middle classes
against the super-rich. Commentators
on the left are celebrating because they
think he will force Hillary Clinton
towards a more left-wing agenda.

Suicide doubts grow as door to prosecutors flat found open

Argentina

James Hider
Latin America Correspondent

The locksmith called to open the flat of

Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian prosecutor found dead hours before he was
to give evidence against President
Kirchner, said yesterday that the
service door to the apartment was
unlocked and could have been opened
by anyone.
The locksmith, identified only as
Walter, said that he had been called to
Mr Nismans flat on Sunday when the
prosecutors mother and bodyguards

found the door locked and he did not

answer his phone. Walter said that the
main door had a numerical security
code and he could not open it, but the
service door had a simple lock that had
not been closed.
Mr Nisman, 51, was due to testify to
congress the following day, accusing
President Kirchner of agreeing to
whitewash Irans alleged involvement
in the bombing of a Jewish centre in
return for Iranian oil. Government
officials claimed that no one else had
been involved in Mr Nismans death,
because he died behind closed doors.
Anyone could have opened the door.

Sandra Arroyo added to doubts that

her ex-husband committed suicide

It took me two minutes to shoot the bolt

and it opened, Walter told reporters,
after making a statement to the lead
investigator in the case. The comments
will fuel doubts about official claims
that the prosecutor committed suicide.
Mr Nismans ex-wife said that she
also refused to believe that he took his
own life, despite him being found dead
in the bathroom with a pistol by his side
and a bullet wound to his head. Speaking to reporters, Sandra Arroyo, herself
an investigating judge, added: We
must let justice proceed. I cannot make
conjectures.
Mrs Arroyo, who had rushed back

from a trip to Spain after the news of her

ex-husbands death, is a federal judge
involved in an investigation into a spying network that had been hacking the
emails of Argentinian judges, politicians and journalists. Her colleague in
that inquiry, Alberto Gentili, has replaced Mr Nisman in the investigation
of the 1994 terrorist attack on the
Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that
killed 85 people and wounded 300.
A post-mortem examination found
no evidence that anyone else was
involved in Mr Nismans death, but the
lead investigator said she could not rule
out that his suicide was induced.

30

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

World
PLANET TALK / BARCROFT MEDIA

Somewhere over
the rainbow
Lukas Irmler
clings on, 100m
over Victoria
Falls in
Zimbabwe. It
took the German,
26, above right,
with Reinhard
Kleindl, 34, from

Austria, his
co-adventurer,
several attempts
to become the
first people to
walk a tightrope
across the
gorge. Spray
from the
waterfall added
to the challenge

The impressive girlfriend youre bound to click with

United States

Rhys Blakely Los Angeles

Its the digital equivalent of sending

yourself a dozen roses and pretending
that they came from a mysterious lover.
An online service, which was
launched in test form this week, promises to give singletons a weapon against
prying parents and friends who pester
them about their relationship status.
The Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend websites invite you to
create a romantic partner. This fake
lover will then chat with you via text

message, leave you voicemails and even

write postcards all for a fee.
These communications can then be
shown as proof that you are in an
exciting relationship with somebody
who happens to travel for work a lot.
It really helps people tell a better
story about a relationship theyre not
in, the company explains.
There is no dazzling new technology
behind the scenes. Texts are answered
by humans and sometimes it shows.
It took only a few minutes to construct Mary Arbuthnot, a fictional
girlfriend. You decide on a name and

age, and are presented with an array of

portraits, one of which you choose as
the face of your imaginary other.
You select a personality type from
options that include witty and educated and lovingly nerdy.
The site then provides an explanation of how you met, or you can write
your own. I learn that Mary lives in
Portland, Oregon. She travels a lot for
work so its difficult to plan dates, but
weve been texting constantly.
The website offers a list of reasons
why somebody might sign up, including
one of my co-workers wont leave me

alone and I want to make my ex

jealous. It is also marketing itself at gay
men and women who are not ready to
reveal their sexuality to their families.
It claims to create a safe space for
you to practise texting with a real
human if you are out of practice.
Yet only a few minutes into our first
text chat Mary appeared to be losing
interest. She had just said she was interested in seeing some of the films nominated for Oscars. Have you seen any
yet? Any you really liked? I asked.
You bet . . . Let me know your plans,
she replied. She later apologised I

am a little tired and spacey today. This

was credible: I was filing for a London
deadline and it was still painfully early
in Missouri, where the company is
based. The real person behind the fake
Mary was probably juggling several
fictitious relationships. Still, it was hard
to escape the idea that I was being
brushed off by a made-up woman.
Perhaps it was for the best: Mary was
really only in it for the money. The
service, available in only the US and
Canada at present, costs $24.99 (16.50)
a month. For that you get 100 texts, ten
voicemails and one postcard.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

31

FGM

If the cap
fits, wear it

Oil puts skids

under Ottawa

Top of the
hit parade

Page 33

Page 34

Page 38

Hedge fund made

$400m in Swiss deal

Canada cuts interest

rate ahead of QE

Business

Shazam hails its

billion-dollar deal

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT / EPA

Rate rebels could

soon have a cause
business commentary Alistair Osborne

nyone can be a rebel

for a day, or even five
months. But sustaining
it, James Dean-style?
That takes real attitude
and not the sort typically found
in such cerebral gangs as the Bank
of Englands monetary policy
committee. No big surprise, then, to
see its two rebels cave in at the first
sign of trouble.
Martin Weale and Ian McCafferty
have been calling for a rates rise
since August, when they produced
the first rebellion for 36 months,
splitting the committee 7-2. So the
eye-catcher from Januarys MPC
minutes was a 9-0 vote in favour of
holding interest rates at 0.5 per cent.
For the rebels, it was a finely
balanced change of tack.
Understandable, though, not least
because of the falling oil price.
In August, when oil topped $100 a
barrel, few spoke of deflation. Since
then, the oil price has more than
halved, while Decembers consumer
prices inflation has come in at
0.5 per cent, the joint-lowest since
records began in 1989 and below the
2 per cent target. Meantime,
deflation has taken hold in the
eurozone, while the MPC now sees a
roughly even chance that inflation
could dip below zero during the first
half of 2015. Momentum in the jobs
market is slowing, too, with the
latest 58,000 drop in unemployment
the smallest fall for 11 months.
In the circumstances, a rates rise
would be perverse, even allowing for
recent real wages growth. There are
other imponderables, too: the
impact, for example, of the ECBs
rumoured 50 billion a month of
full-blown QE, due today, or the
shape of Britains next hung
parliament in May and its appetite
for public spending cuts.
Yet thats not to say theres no
chance of a rates rise this year.
Despite the deflation fears, the MPC
is surely right to conclude that the
risks to inflation in the medium
term might have, if anything, shifted
to the upside. Low inflation, cheap
oil and real wage growth look just
the thing to trigger a rates hike. Or
at least give the rebels a cause.

Fracking liberty

lackpool Tower has been

standing strong since 1894.
So no wonder the locals were
miffed when those frackers from
Cuadrilla turned up in 2011 and
caused two minor earthquakes just
down the road. They werent
gruntled, either, to hear that getting
gas out of shale rock could also ruin
the water supply and pollute the air.
So, what good news for Cuadrilla
that planning officers at Lancashire
county council have dismissed those
fears and concluded that shale gas
exploration is, in principle,
acceptable. The bad news is that
theyve recommended refusing
Cuadrillas applications to drill and

frack at Preston New Road and

Roseacre Wood on rather more
prosaic grounds: noise and traffic.
Theres an outside chance the
councillors overrule that advice at
next weeks vote. But, barring that
miracle, the decisions a reverse for
Cuadrilla, which last May submitted
9,000 pages of documents, putting
its case to become the first company
to frack in the UK. Its a blow to the
government, too, a fracker backer in
the hope it creates jobs and lowers
energy prices even if the oil price
is doing that for now. Yet Cuadrillas
setback is no shock. In America,
landowners can make personal
fortunes from putting up with noise
and trucks. What explicit incentive
have UK communities got?

In the house

state agents are almost as

unpopular as journalists. So
how nice of Sir Charles
Dunstone to pop up with a plan to
cut them down to size. The
co-founder of Carphone Warehouse
reckons hes spotted just the market
for the sort of online disruption
Betfair brought to betting, Just Eat
to fast food and Uber to taxis.
With Carphone mucker Roger
Taylor, hes taken a 5 million,
minority stake in online estate agent
HouseSimple (report, page 51). The
logics clear enough: now that just
about every house sale is advertised
on Rightmove or Zoopla, who needs
an estate agents shop window to
sell their home? HouseSimple, with
160 local agents, can value a
property, photograph it, advertise it,
host viewings and pilot a sale to
completion at a fraction of the cost.
It charges a flat 290 to 475 fee,
depending on the services a punter
wants, rather than the average
1.8 per cent commissions of high
street agents, an average 6,000.
Online agents have 2 per cent of the
market today but thats forecast to
grow to 20 per cent in five years. Sir
Charles could be on to something.

Easy street

alking of which, Dixons

Carphone keeps defying critics
since their agreed merger got
such a raspberry last May. Like-forlike sales jumped 7 per cent during
Christmas, full-year guidance of
355 million to 375 million profits
beat consensus and it pulled off a
rare trick of maxing out on Black
Friday without wrecking Boxing
Days sales (report, page 51). The
Phones4u collapse and iPhone 6
launch have helped. But theres
another clue to the 50 per cent rise
in the shares since May. If you want
exposure to the UK high street,
where else do you invest? Not those
unravelling fashion retailers or
basket-case supermarkets, surely?

alistair.osborne@thetimes.co.uk

Chill-out zone Campaign group Action2015 built 193 snowmen on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, in a bid to highlight the need for world leaders to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change Pages 36-37

Balfour stunned as
losses reach 250m
Robert Miller

The company carrying out the

154 million conversion of the Olympic
Stadium in east London is expected to
announce a near-doubling of losses
today when it reveals the outcome of
an independent investigation into its
UK construction division.
Balfour Beatty has already made a
provision of 135 million related to its
British building business. However, it is
expected to announce additional losses
of more than 100 million.
The latest charge, which is likely to
lead to a drop in its share price, will take
the total provisions made by the FTSE
250 company to almost 250 million.
Some investors feared last night that
Balfour may be forced to admit that the
final scale of its losses has yet to be
determined.
Balfour held an emergency board
meeting yesterday to discuss the
conclusion of a report by KPMG into
its under-performing UK construction
group. Last September the company
issued its fifth profit warning in less
than two years and announced that it
had hired the accountancy firm to conduct a detailed independent review
into at least 25 problem contracts in
almost all regions of the UK.
We have continued to experience
programme slippage, resource and

skills shortages, poor operational

delivery and cost inflation pressures,
Balfour said in a statement to the
London Stock Exchange.
The construction group, which is
among Britains biggest, added that the
independent review would examine
focus on commercial controls, on cost
to complete and contract value forecasting and reporting at project level.
In its last profit warning, which
knocked a further 75 million from its
bottom line, Balfour detailed how

2016

Year West Ham are due to play their

first match at the Olympic Stadium

30 million came from engineering services, 20 million from large London

area building projects, 15 million from
regional construction and 10 million
from infrastructure programmes.
One of the most high-profile cost
overruns has been on the Olympic
Stadium conversion.
In October it emerged that the
company had reached agreement with
the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is responsible for the
development of the Olympic Park, over
the complexity of installing the new

stadium roof before it is handed over to

West Ham United FC. The corporation
said that it had agreed to increase the
value of the Balfour contract by
35.9 million to 189.9 million.
After the profit warning, a number of
senior figures left the company.
Andrew McNaughton, the chief executive was sacked and has been replaced
only recently by Leo Quinn, the former
head of QinetiQ, the defence, security
and aerospace specialist. Steve Marshall, the chairman, is expected to leave
soon.
It was announced this week that
Philip Harrison, the finance chief of
Hogg Robinson, the corporate travel
agent, had been appointed to the same
role at Balfour Beatty. However, his
arrival is not expected until later in the
year.
It was not clear last night whether the
large size of the newly announced
provisions would constitute a formal
profit warning for the current financial
year.
Many City analysts believe that
Balfour Beatty is now a takeover target.
Last year a 3 billion merger with Carillion, a British rival, collapsed.
KPMG declined to comment last
night. Balfour Beatty was not available
for comment about a report on Sky
News on the timing of publication of
the accountants independent report.

32

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

FGM

Business

Need to know Your 5-minute digest

UK interest rates: All nine
members of the Bank of
Englands monetary policy
committee voted for rates to
stay on hold at the record low
of 0.5 per cent this month for
the first time since the summer
of last year. Minutes of the
MPCs meeting showed that
Ian McCafferty and Martin
Weale, who had voted for a
quarter-point rise since
August, joined their colleagues
in calling for rates to remain at
0.5 per cent.
Unemployment: The number
of people out of work has
fallen to its lowest level in
more than six years and wages
have outstripped inflation for
the third consecutive month.
Those out of work fell by
58,000 to 1.91 million in the
three months to November
and the jobless rate dropped to
5.8 per cent, the Office for
National Statistics said.
Average weekly earnings,
excluding bonuses, rose by
1.8 per cent over the same
period. Inflation grew at 1 per
cent in November and fell to
0.5 per cent last month.
World Economic Forum: Lord
Mandelson has implored
business to get organised and
oppose those who are trying to
take Britain out of Europe,
warning that Eurosceptics are
formidable, well financed and
well organised. At a breakfast
meeting for business leaders
organised by WPP, the
advertising group, on the
fringes of the gathering in
Switzerland, he said: The idea
that we can stop the world, get
off and create an economic
nirvana on our own
somewhere between the US
and Europe is ridiculous.
Pages 36-37

Euro currency: A former top

policymaker at the European
Central Bank has raised
questions about the viability of
the single currency if
governments do not step up
their efforts at reform. Axel
Weber, the chairman of UBS
and a former head of the
Bundesbank, said that
countries needed to take tough
decisions on jobs and pensions
and that more action was
needed to centralise national
powers across the eurozone, or
there will always be questions
about the viability of the
project.
China: The country is moving
from a period of high-speed
growth to one of
medium-to-high-speed as
Beijing pushes through
reforms that will help it to
make the leap from a
developing to an advanced
economy, Li Keqiang, its
premier, said. He was
addressing the World
Economic Forum the day after
China revealed that growth in
2014 fell to 7.4 per cent, the
weakest in 24 years. Page 36

banking & finance

1.60%
Financial reforms: Financial
regulation has overshot and is
causing more harm than good
to the economy, top bankers
have warned. Although many

of the reforms since the

financial crisis have been
necessary, many changes are
causing undesirable
outcomes that store up huge
risks, they claimed. There is a
disconnect between economic
policy and regulation, Douglas
Flint, the chairman of HSBC,
told a panel at the World
Economic Forum. Page 37
Standard & Poors: The
ratings agency is to be
suspended for 12 months from
rating certain mortgagebacked securities in America
and fined $77 million by US
regulators, for giving inflated
grades to risky mortgage debt.

Page 35

Shareholder activism:
Freshfields Bruckhaus
Deringer, the law firm, said
that although shareholder
activism surged in the United
States last year, the number of
new investments by activist
investors in listed European
companies fell to 49 from 73 in
2013. Activism in Europe,
particularly in the UK, has
traditionally taken place in
private behind closed doors,
it said.
Metro Bank: The bank
suffered an 8.9 million loss in
the last three months of 2014,
down from 9.4 million in the
third quarter. However, it
continued to attract deposits
and increased its lending,
cementing its position as one
of the most serious challenger
banks on the high street. The
loss also reflected its focus on
deposits, which jumped 118 per
cent to 2.9 billion last year,
over loans, which rose by
112 per cent to 1.6 billion.
Page 38

business empire controlled by

Chinas second-richest man, is
to buy a 20 per cent stake in
the champions of La Liga,
Spains leading football
competition. The 45 million
deal unveiled in Beijing makes
Dalian Wanda the first
Chinese company to invest in
a top-flight European football
club. Atltico, who reached last
years Champions League final,
have run up debts of about
500 million. Dalian Wanda is
trying to wean its revenues off
Chinese property and to
remodel itself as a global
entertainments group, with
interests in sport, film, theme
parks and luxury hotels.
Dominos Pizza Group: The
takeaway restaurant group said
that Sean Wilkins, its chief
financial officer, had resigned
from the board and would
leave with immediate effect. It
accompanied the news with a
reassuring trading update,
indicating pre-tax profits for
2014 would be in line with or
marginally ahead of market
forecasts. Tempus, page 40
McDonalds: Mark Hawthorne
has stepped down as UK
managing director only a year
after succeeding Jill
McDonald, after she was made
head of its northwest division.
The burger chain said that he
was returning to Australia for
family reasons.
Intertain: Jon Moultons Better
Capital private equity vehicle is
to restructure the recently
acquired Walkabout bar
operator by halving its debt to
14 million and closing up to
seven outlets via a company
voluntary arrangement, with
the loss of up to 120 jobs.
Page 33

construction &
property
1.58%
Balfour Beatty: The company
working on the 154 million
conversion of the London
Olympic 2012 stadium is
expected to announce a
near-doubling of losses today
when it reveals the outcome of
an independent investigation
into its UK construction unit.
Balfour Beatty has already
made a provision of
135 million related to its
British building business. Now
it is expected to announce
extra losses totalling tens of
millions of pounds and likely
to top 100 million. Page 31

consumer goods
2.27%
Tootsie Roll Industries:
Melvin Gordon, the chairman
and chief executive of the
confectionery maker, has died
at the age of 95 after a brief
illness. His wife, Ellen Gordon,
the companys president and
chief operating officer, will
take over his positions. Mrs
Gordon was appointed to the
job as part of a succession
plan, the Chicago-based
company said in a statement.

leisure
0.92%
Atltico Madrid: Dalian
Wanda, the shopping centres

JD Wetherspoon: Like-for-like
sales growth slowed to 2 per
cent in December, and even
further since the new year, as
the pubs operator gave
warning of a further fall in the
operating margin in the first
half of the year amid rising
staff and utility costs and
supermarket price competition.
Page 39

Marriott International: The

American hotel operator said
it expected to have one million
rooms either open or under
development by the end of this
year as it accelerates its rate of
expansion around the world.

media
1.51%
Pearson: The educational
publisher indicated that
earnings per share would come
in at the top end of
expectations for 2014 after a
wide-ranging programme of
cost-cuts across the group,
although trading in some
areas, such as American
education, had been tough.
Tempus, page 40

natural resources
1.09%
Oil price: The plunging price
of oil has cut Iraqs tax revenue
in half, according to the
countrys deputy prime
minister. Rowsch Shaways,
from the oil-producing Kurdish
region, maintained Iraqs only
response to the fall in prices

World markets
FTSE 100
6,728.04 (+107.94)

6,800

FTSE 250
16,253.31 (+126.75)

16,400
16,200

6,600

16,000

6,400

Fri

Mon

Tue

15,800

6,200

Wed

Dow Jones
17,554.28 (+39.05)

18,400

Mon

Fri

Tue

15,600

Wed

17,800
17,200

17,600

16,600

17,200

Thu

Fri

Tue

16,800

Wed

Fri

Mon

Tue

16,000

Wed

Commodities
Gold
$1,290.67 (-5.18)

$
1,320

Brent Crude
$49.82 (-0.06)

$
54

1,300

52

1,280

48

1,260

Fri

Mon

1,240

Wed

Tue

Fri

Mon

Tue

46

Wed

Currencies
/$
$1.5116 (-0.0046)

Fri

Mon

$
1.560

Tue

Wed

/
1.3053 (-0.0060)

1.340

1.530

1.310

1.500

1.280

1.470

Fri

Mon

Tue

Wed

1.250

The day ahead

Challenging is not the
description that Royal Mail
was expected to use about
the parcels market, as it
breezed through a
controversial privatisation
and flotation on the stock
market with the promise that
the advent of mass online
shopping was a gift-wrapped
present for the nationwide
postal operator.
Except that, with the
growth of competition and a
loss of business from
Amazon.co.uk, its main
customer, challenging is the

word that Moya Greene, its

chief executive, used about
parcels in the run-up to
Christmas. Of course, the
group will be boosted after
City Link, a rival service,
collapsed into administration
over the festive season.
The use of the C word
or not when Ms Greene
unveils Royal Mails
Christmas quarter trading
results will determine
whether the shares, which
closed last night at 430p,
will continue their recent
mini-rally.

Graph of the day

The price of Brent crude rose by more than 2 per cent yesterday to
$49.07, after falling on Tuesday, ahead of the expected statement by
the European Central Bank on its bond-buying programme

58

Oil price US$ per barrel (March 2015 delivery)

56
54
52
50
48

January
02

05

06

07

08

09

12

13

14

15

16

19

20

21

46

Results in brief
Name

Pre-tax figure
Profit (+) loss (-)

Actual Experience (technology FY) -1.6m (-0.8m)

8.5m (8m)
Wynnstay (industrials FY)

Dividend
0p
10.20p f 6.80p p Apr 30

6 Results in brief are given for all companies valued at more than 30 million. f = final p = payable

The days biggest movers

Company
ScotGold Resources Lifts gold estimates
FirstGroup British bus and trains business doing better
Man Group A push by Morgan Stanley
Pearson A strong annual forecast
ARM Holdings Citi says buy
JD Wetherspoon A sales slowdown
Dominos Pizza Profit-taking
Poundland A disappointing Christmas
Sports Direct The founder sells shares
Afren Worries about its finances

was to continue to boost

production. This month Iraqs
government approved
spending cuts that had been
forced by lower oil revenues.
Brent crude has since fallen by
another 10 per cent to less
than $50 a barrel. Page 48

retailing
0.36%

Nikkei
17,280.48 (-85.82)

18,000

Source: Thomson Reuters

economics

Change
28.6%
7.0%
6.6%
4.9%
3.0%
-2.2%
-3.2%
-3.6%
-5.8%
-18.6%

Dixons Carphone: Sales of

ultra-high-definition
televisions and a rekindled
demand for laptops helped the
newly merged electricals giant
to upgrade its annual profit
forecast. Dixons Carphone,
which trades as Currys and
PC World, said it expected
pre-tax profit of 355 million to
375 million after sales rose
7 per cent in the nine weeks to
January 3. The company was
previously guiding investors to
354 million. Page 51
Halfords Group: The bicycle
and car parts group has
reported a strong third quarter,
with overall like-for-like sales
up by 6.7 per cent in the
15 weeks to January 9. The
group said that, while cycling
sales continued to be strong, its
car maintenance division had
been a standout performer,
with like-for-like sales up 11 per
cent during the period. Page 51
WH Smith: The retailer, which
is growing its business in travel
locations such as airports, said
that like-for-like sales from this
side of the group were up by
2 per cent in the 20 weeks to
last weekend, although at its
traditional high street
locations they fell by 5 per
cent. Tempus, page 54

technology
2.46%
Shazam: The fast-rising
technology group, which began
more than a decade ago as a
mobile phone gimmick for
identifying catchy tunes when
you were out and about, is
worth $1 billion (660 million)
after closing a deal with three
new investors, the west
London-based company said
yesterday. Page 50
OneWeb: Sir Richard Branson
is in talks with potential
financial and technology
backers about investing in his
OneWeb business, which aims
to provide internet and
telephone access to remote
parts of the world using
satellites in a low earth orbit.
The billionaire is understood
to be talking to sovereign
wealth funds, private equity
groups and Silicon Valley
technology companies, which
would invest alongside Virgin
Group and its existing partner,
Qualcomm, the American
chipmaker. Page 49

transport
0.49%
Ryanair: The budget carrier
will team up with global
long-haul airlines to offer
interconnecting short-haul
flights around Europe in a new
business model, which could
result in Ryanair feeding traffic
into Heathrow for British
Airways. Page 45

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

33

FGM

Business

Hedge fund made $400m in Swiss switch

Harry Wilson

The worlds largest macro hedge fund

made more than $400 million after
Switzerland removed its currency cap
last week, resulting in rivals losing millions or reaching the point of collapse.
Brevan Howard, which manages
more than $30 billion for investors, is
understood to be up nearly 2 per cent
for the year on the back of the soaring
Swiss franc after correctly predicting
that the cap against the euro was unlikely to be maintained for much longer.
Profits from the trade are reckoned to
have made Brevan Howards $24 billion
master fund at least $450 million,
a 1.88 per cent gain two weeks into the

year and helping to ease pressure on the

fund after it reported its first annual
loss last year.
Only a few months ago, the fund had
been positioned for a fall in the Swiss
franc, but it began to unwind the trade
and buy the currency, helping it to
avoid the chaos that hit rivals as the
franc rose by more than 30 per cent
against the euro and the dollar last
Thursday.
A spokesman for Brevan Howard
declined to comment.
The fund was not alone in calling an
end to the Swiss National Banks cap. A
big winner from the move was the
CERN pension fund, which manages
SwFr4 billion on behalf of thousands of

physicists and support workers manning the Large Hadron Collider that is
based in Switzerland. Unlike many
investment managers, the pension
fund had entirely hedged its Swiss franc
holdings, so when the cap that had held
the currency at a minimum rate of
1.20 was removed, it felt no impact.
We had been asked why we were
paying to hedge when the SNB was
doing it for us for free, but we were doing it as a fundamental part of our portfolio construction, Theodore Economou, chief executive of the CERN pension fund, said in an interview with
Chief Investment Officer magazine.
Publica, Switzerlands SwFr37 billion
public pension fund, was another to

foresee the end of the cap and also had

fully hedged its portfolio against the
move.
Stefan Beiner, the head of asset
management at Publica, told the magazine: We expected something would
change in the medium term. During the
last few months, the differences in fundamentals between the eurozone and
Switzerland have increased, compared
to September 2011 when the central
bank introduced the cap.
Mr Beiner said that no one at the
Swiss fund had any knowledge about
the decision before it was announced by
the SNB.
Several leading banks, including
Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, lost at

least $150 million on the move in the

Swiss franc, but spread-betting businesses were the most notable victims.
In the United States, FXCM lost
more than $200 million and was rescued only after the parent company of
Jefferies, an American investment
bank, agreed to inject about $300 million into the broker to keep it afloat.
In Britain, Alpari, the sponsor of
West Ham United, the Premier League
football team, called in administrators
after being caught out by the move and
forced to bear millions of pounds in
customer losses. Andrey Dashin, a big
shareholder in Alpari UK, said yesterday that he would be applying for the
business to be wound up.
MICHAEL STEELE / GETTY

Quorn grows fatter as

America goes on a diet

he problem was
a tricky one:
how can you
sell a meat
substitute
derived from fungus to a
population brought up
on the real stuff ? It
appears that Quorn has
found the answer
(Alexandra Frean
writes).
The North
Yorkshire-based maker
of vegetarian foods
revealed yesterday that
its annual sales had
risen by 7 per cent to
150 million against a
backdrop of flat sales
across much of the food
industry. More
surprising still, its

growth was driven by a

25 per cent increase in
the United States during
the second half of 2014,
tapping into a new
demand for healthier
food amid concern
about an American
obesity epidemic.
Of course, it helps to
have powerful friends in
the right places. Two
years ago Quorn
persuaded Walmart, the
worlds biggest retailer,
to stock its products in
300 stores. That trial
was such a success that
distribution has
increased to 2,300
Walmarts.
Cracking the US
market has involved

Mo Farah has become a poster child for the benefits of eating Quorn, which could help to fight obesity in America

certain compromises.
Kevin Brennan, Quorns
chief executive, said that
the company had been
surprised when it first
entered the American
market to find that its
competitors nuggets
were much darker than
its own.
We realised that in
America nobody put
them in the oven, where
the coating would get
browned with cooking.

They always went into

the microwave and came
out looking very, very
pale, he said. It came
as quite a shock. In the
UK, you wouldnt
imaging putting a
chicken nugget or an
escalope in the
microwave.
To compete, the
company changed the
coating from uncooked
to cooked breadcrumbs,
which were much

darker. It also added

fake grill stripes to its
burgers, to appeal to
Americans who
usually cook their
burgers on an
outdoor grill in fine
weather but who
cook them in the
microwave at
other times.
Quorns regular
British-made
arsenal of
meat-free mince,

Ryanair U-turn over feeder flights

Robert Lea Industrial Editor

Ryanair will team up with global longhaul airlines to offer interconnecting

short-haul flights around Europe in a
new business model, which could result
in the budget carrier feeding traffic into
Heathrow for British Airways.
Michael OLeary, Ryanair chief executive, admitted that the U-turn he
has spent 20 years lampooning flag
carriers and saying hed never operate
at Heathrow is a result of being
locked out of launching a transatlantic
airline by a lack of suitable, available
long-haul aircraft.
Mr OLeary said that Ryanairs conversion to long-haul feeder came as the
Stansted increases efforts to attract
American and Middle Eastern airlines

to the capitals third airport. There is

nothing we wont consider. It has to
work in a manner that does not delay
our turnarounds and where we dont
take responsibility for connections, he
added. The change of heart could even
extend to working with his old
enemy British Airways.
Go forward in Europe five or ten
years, the low-cost carriers, most
notably us and easyJet, will do a lot
more feeding of the major airlines like Lufthansa, BA and Air
France, he said. It is inevitable
because these airlines will focus
on the high yielding long-haul
business and say here, easyJet
Michael OLeary is prepared to
work with his old enemy BA

and Ryanair, you do the short-haul

feeds because well lose less money if
you do.
Mr OLeary said that he could envisage signing a contract with BA and
predicted Air France and easyJet would
take similar action. Of the proposed
takeover by BA parent IAG of Aer
Lingus, in which Ryanair has 29 per
cent, he said he may yet launch a
formal offer for the Irish flag
carrier.
There would be a delicious irony . . . if the UK
competition authorities, in
attempting to force Ryanair to sell down our
29 per cent stake, only
allow in British Airways to
come and buy it, he said.

ersatz sausages and

chicken-style nuggets
has been reinforced by
two products developed
especially for the
American market,
breakfast links sausages
and a breakfast links
patty. Breakfast is still
big in the US, Mr
Brennan said.
With roots dating
back to 1967, when a tiny
protein organism was
discovered in soil at a
field in Marlow,
Buckinghamshire, the
Quorn brand has been
around since 1985, when
the first Quorn
vegetable pie went on
sale.
Since then, the
business has been
through several different
owners, including
Zeneca, the drugs
company, and later
Premier Foods, before
being sold to Exponent
Private Equity and
Intermediate Capital
Group for 205 million
in 2011.
Two thirds of sales are
still in Britain but
exports now
account for 19
per cent of
revenue. Its
total sales
revenue in the
UK was
111.4 million
last year, while
sales in the
United States
hit $12.6 million
(7.6 million).

Walkabout returns Moulton

to line of fire over job losses
Dominic Walsh

Jon Moulton, the private equity tycoon

who placed City Link into administration, is risking further controversy
after announcing a restructuring of the
Walkabout bar chain that could cause
up to 120 job losses.
Better Capital, his quoted private
equity vehicle, bought Intertain, the
owner of the Australasian-themed
chain, in November for an estimated
20 million. The deal included 32 Walkabouts and six other bars, with five
of the venues operating Jongleurs
comedy clubs.
Yesterday, Intertain, which is being
advised by Zolfo Cooper, announced a

financial restructuring that will cut its

debt burden from 30 million to
14 million and provide 6 million to
fund a capital investment programme.
The debt deal at Walkabout is conditional on securing agreement from its
landlords for a company voluntary
arrangement to revise lease terms and
refocus the business on a smaller, more
profitable core estate. It is understood
that the CVA is likely to mean the
closure of seven loss-making bars in
March. Some staff will be re-deployed.
The move came as it emerged that
former employees at City Link are
considering plans to launch a group
employment action after the courier
groups collapse on Christmas Day.

34

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Business

Canada cuts interest rate as eurozone QE looms

Patrick Hosking Financial Editor

Canada became the latest country to

wrongfoot the financial markets by
announcing a cut in interest rates
yesterday after surprise moves by
Switzerland, Denmark and India.
Canadian shares soared and its dollar
slumped as the Bank of Canada reduced its main overnight interest rate
by a quarter-point to 0.75 per cent, the
first change for more than four years.
The move came on the eve of a key
announcement from the European
Central Bank, which is widely expected
to loosen its monetary policy by
embarking on a quantitative easing

stimulus package worth as much as

1.1 trillion.
The Bank of Canada cited the
plunging oil price as the key reason for
its surprise move. Canada has become a
big producer of oil, but its high-cost oilsands output is vulnerable to lower
prices.
The considerably lower profile for
oil prices will be unambiguously negative for the Canadian economy in 2015
and subsequent years, the central bank
said in its quarterly Monetary Policy
Report.
It also cut its forecast for Canadian
economic growth in the first half of
this year to 1.5 per cent, down on the

2.4 per cent it predicted last October.

The cut was a change in tone from the
central bank, whose deputy governor,
Timothy Lane, said last week that he
did not see any drastic effect on
growth because of the oil price slide.
Until yesterday, financial traders had
expected the next move in Canadian
interest rates to be upwards, although
the swaps market had started to price in
a small chance of a cut.
We didnt think things had deteriorated enough for the Bank of Canada
to move as quickly as this, Adam Cole,
head of G10 FX strategy for RBC
Capital Markets in London, said.
Stephen Poloz, governor of the Bank

of Canada, defended the move, saying:

All the ingredients for the rate decision
were out in the open. We took comfort
from the observation that the consequences of the drop in oil prices appear
to be well understood and that the possibility of a rate cut had begun to enter
markets in the last couple of weeks.
The Canadian dollar retreated by
2 per cent to 80.52 US cents, its lowest
for five years, while the S&P/ TSX index
of Canadian shares was 164 points
higher last night at 14,573.
Switzerland stunned the markets last
week by abandoning the ceiling for the
Swiss franc against the euro and slashing its official interest rate to -0.75 per

For QE

Ideal means
to generate
confidence
Christian Schulz
Berenberg Bank

he eurozone has
been beset by
deflation since
December, with
prices for shoppers
falling. The economy
is growing too slowly
for any prospect of
price rises in the near
future. If it does
nothing, the European
Central Bank risks
households and
companies expecting
inflation to stay low,
which would
perpetuate it and
mean that the ECB
had missed its legal
mandate on price
stability.
Somehow, the ECB
needs to boost growth
and make people

Against

Ministers
must tackle
reform
Patrick Hosking
Financial Editor

here comes a
point when
super-lax
monetary policy
doesnt work any
more and Mario
Draghi, right, is way
past that point.
Loosening things
further is like pushing
on a piece of string.
The eurozones
problems have little to
do with the price and
supply of credit and
much more to do with
a paralysing lack of
confidence that deters
companies and
households from
spending.
That wont be
solved by arcane
financial engineering

cent. India cut its main base rate from

8 per cent to 7.75 per cent in response to
lower food and oil prices, while the
Danish central bank cut its lending rate
to a record low of 0.05 per cent on
Monday.
The ECB is expected to begin or at
least signal some form of full-blown
QE, the purchase of sovereign bonds
using newly created euros, in response
to stagnation in the eurozone and the
deflationary threat posed by falling
prices. Its executive board has proposed
bond purchases of 50 billion a month
for at least a year, according to The Wall
Street Journal. The money creation programme could last until the end of 2016.

believe that it is
serious about its 2 per
cent inflation target.
With interest rates
near zero, large-scale
asset purchases are
the best tool to inject
that stimulus.
Quantitative easing
can lower borrowing
costs, increase credit
demand or boost bank
lending. Investors will
need to adjust their
portfolios as the ECB
buys their bonds,
which can spread the
effects from one asset
class to another.
Higher asset prices
can have a wealth
effect, a lower
exchange rate can lift
competitiveness and a
strong signal from the
central bank can
inspire confidence in
the economy.
The experience of
America and Britain
shows that some
channels are more
effective than others.
Certain aspects may
not work in the
eurozone: higher asset
prices are unlikely to
have as big an impact

on household
spending because
fewer households on
the Continent hold
shares. Others may be
more effective: a
weaker euro may
benefit Europes
export-dependent
economies more than
a weak dollar boosts
US companies.
Most important is
the QE impact on
expectations. If the
ECB can convince
investors, companies
and households that it
is serious about
re-igniting inflation,
the rise in inflation
expectations would
reduce the real cost of
borrowing, making
investment in
machinery and
housing more
attractive. That would
boost demand and
productivity and help
the eurozone to reach
the escape velocity
needed to normalise
monetary policy. It
worked in the US and
UK and it is the
eurozones best
chance now.

in Frankfurt, but by
forcing through
painful structural and
fiscal reforms in
uncompetitive
countries such as
Italy, Greece, Spain
and Portugal.
Either that, or
persuading the
German people to
contemplate
underwriting the
entire single currency
project in perpetuity
via full fiscal and
banking union.
Neither of those
outcomes is politically
palatable, so
financial
markets are
putting their
faith in a
third way
full
quantitative
easing.
The alpabet
soup of QE and
OMTs from the
technocrats who gave
us TLTROs (they
havent worked either)
may sound alluring. It
may push up asset
prices and so please a
few bond traders.

What it wont do is
stimulate the animal
spirits of business
leaders. Theres no
point in printing
money if no one
productive or
solvent wants to
borrow it.
QE risks becoming
an addiction for
financial markets,
which will always be
demanding one more
fix. It will raise fresh
worries that northern
Europeans are more
explicitly on the
hook for the debts of
their southern
neighbours.
And it will
be a
distraction
and an
excuse for
more
inaction by
eurozone
ministers, who
should be grappling
with the weightier
issues of convergence,
structural reform and
fiscal and banking
union. QE may end up
prolonging the euro
agony, not fixing it.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

35

FGM

Business

Patrick Hosking

S&P fined
$77m over
mortgage
rating failure

Osbornes expensive gesture on pensioner

bonds is tying the rest of us in knots

Patrick Hosking is Financial Editor of The Times

Pensioners are
bombarding the
National Savings
& Investments
website and call
centre with applications to buy
George Osbornes big new savings
wheeze. As the chancellor boasted the
other day, the 65+ Pensioner Bond
has generated the biggest opening
sales of any retail financial product in
Britains modern history. More than
1.1 billion-worth were snapped up by
113,000 people in the first two days
alone.
But portraying this stampede as
some kind of policy triumph is a bit of
a stretch, and for a chancellor who
still needs to preach the virtues of
austerity for many years to come, it
displays breathtaking chutzpah.
Giving away public funds is never
difficult and the bonds are the closest
thing to free money.
The investor who buys the
maximum 20,000-worth allowed
will be about 550 better off before
tax than from any similar private
sector savings products. Its not quite
the 1 million jackpot from Ernie, but
its a windfall not to be sniffed at by
rate-sensitive pensioners primed to
switch savings providers at the drop
of a hat.
So the cost to the Exchequer is
considerable and must now be far
higher than the 325 million pencilled
in when the bonds were announced
in the March budget. Even then, they
looked fabulous value to savers and
terrible value for taxpayers. The
subsequent slide in inflation
expectations and market interest
rates has magnified those features.
The chancellor has two ways to
borrow by issuing government
bonds or gilts, or by raising money
through NS&I products like Premium
Bonds and the pensioner bonds.
Today, he could borrow in the gilt
market for a year and pay interest of
only 0.3 per cent. Instead, he is
borrowing from pensioners and
paying them 2.8 per cent nine
times as much. Over three years he
could issue gilts at a price of 0.6 per
cent. Instead, he is paying pensioners
4 per cent a year, seven times as
much.
Its a ludicrously expensive way of
borrowing, according to Michael
Riddell, of M&G, a bond fund
manager who has crunched the
numbers. It represents a significant

A bad bargain
Current one-year yield in gilt
market 0.3%
Best private sector savings rate
1.85% (ICICI Bank)
Pensioner bond rate 2.8%
Treasury pays nine times more
than it needs to

Current three-year yield in gilt

market 0.6%
Best private sector savings rate
2.51% (Secure Trust Bank)
Pensioner bond rate 4%
Treasury pays seven times
more than it needs to
1.6
1.4

Three-year
gilt yield

1.2
1.0

One-year
gilt yield

0.8
0.6
0.4

All interest rates are before tax

redistribution to better-off pensioners

from all future taxpayers. Thats
awkward for NS&I, whose stated
raison dtre is to help the government
to borrow at the lowest possible cost.
Last year, for example, the Treasury
saved 346 million by borrowing
106 billion or so from NS&Is
25 million retail customers rather
than from wholesale investors in the
gilts market. Its mission statement
to help reduce the cost to the
taxpayer of government borrowing
now and in the future still stands,
according to unblushing NS&I
officials.
The product has been disruptive
and damaging, too. The phone lines
have been jammed and the website
crashed last week as investors
scrambled for the bonds. Claims that
there is no hurry and that the bonds
will be on sale for months look
optimistic. There are only 10 billion
of bonds available and NS&I has had
to slam down the shutters early
before when offering other popular
products. If less nimble pensioners
find the door barred, that wont
improve the organisations customer
satisfaction levels, which have been
falling.
Rival deposit-takers are miffed, too.
Graham Beale, the head of
Nationwide, Britains biggest building
society, has pointed out how bumper
deals such as NS&Is are disruptive to
the rest of the industry, which cannot
hope to compete on price. A level
playing field it isnt. NS&Is promise to
balance the interests of taxpayers,

0.2

Source: M&G, MoneySupermarket, NS&I

savers and rival banks looks badly out

of whack because of Mr Osbornes
intervention.
Of course, he is perfectly entitled to
order what amounts to a
redistribution in favour of pensioners.
Official policy in the form of
quantitative easing undoubtedly has
pushed down savings rates. This
amounts to a modest recompense.
But hijacking NS&I, supposedly an
arms length organisation with its own
board and strategy, is not the best way
of doing it.
Little is more important than a
smarter savings policy if Britains
long-term economic fortunes are to
be restored lastingly. Savings need to
go up dramatically if rising longevity
is not to turn from a blessing into a
curse for many. They need to go up if
Britain is to rebalance itself away
from consumption-led growth to
more sustainable investment-powered
economic success.
And, in a quite modest way, they
need to go up if huge numbers are to
escape from the vicious circle of
high-cost debt that blights so many
lives. Even very modest levels of
precautionary savings could
profoundly change the life chances of
many. Thirteen million people lack
sufficient savings to keep up with
essential bills for just one month if
their income dropped by a quarter,
according to StepChange, the debt
charity. Policy that helped those
13 million to move a few steps further
away from the cliff edge, beyond
which lies the desperate and

despairing world of payday loans,

bailiffs and county court judgements,
would be a tremendous blessing to
society and the economy.
Instead, we have pensioner bonds
clunky, crude and cynical. They
are seen as little more than a bribe to
better-off pensioners natural Tory
voters. Labours Child Trust Funds,
which were introduced in 2005 and
scrapped in 2010, were similarly
designed to appeal to one of that
partys stronger demographics
young couples about to have children.
Parents lapped up the 250 booty, but
theres scant evidence that it did
much to inculcate a more thrifty
philosophy in them or their children.
ISAs have been more of a success,
with more than 50 billion a year
going into them. Mercifully, ministers
have not tinkered too much with the
rules, so they have come to be
understood and embraced by the
public. Yet ISAs really favour higher
taxpayers.
Policymaking on savings has been
hamstrung by classical economics,
which hasnt been much use in
explaining the motives and behaviour
of savers. Consumers dont act
rationally, they are not perfectly
informed and they are not perfectly
numerate. They are subject to any
number of biases and
misunderstandings.
Behavioural economics has much
more to teach about how savers think
and how they can be nudged into
saving more. Yet policymakers have
been slow to adopt policies that might
do far more to re-awaken the
long-dormant Mr Micawber in us all.
The early success of
auto-enrolment should be giving an
emphatic thumbs-up to more subtle
policymaking. Fewer than 10 per cent
of the millions of employees
automatically enrolled in employer
pension schemes in the past couple of
years have opted out. Thats an
astonishingly good outcome.
Inertia, herd instinct, loss aversion
and the way savings propositions
are framed can have far more
influence on behaviour than raw
return rates or vague warnings about
poverty in old age. Applying those
kinds of ideas to the savings industry
could have a far
more lasting and
positive value than a
one-off bung to the
over-65s.

Alexandra Frean Washington

The United States has taken its first

enforcement action against a leading
credit ratings agency for giving inflated
grades to risky mortgage debt.
Standard & Poors will be suspended
for 12 months from rating new mortgage-backed securities in the US and
has been fined $77 million.
While the biggest banks have paid
billions of dollars in fines related to
alleged misconduct in the run-up to
the 2008 financial crisis and beyond,
the ratings agencies have not suffered
big penalties, until now.
However, the fact that the agencys
alleged wrongdoing took place
between 2010 and 2014, long after the
financial crisis, suggests that S&P was
unwilling or unable to recognise its role
in helping to create the sub-prime
mortgage bubble that triggered the
crisis.
Andrew Ceresney, the head of enforcement at the US Securities and
Exchange Commission, said that facts
uncovered by investigators pointed to a
deep cultural failure at S&P and a failure to learn the lessons of the financial

crisis. Standard & Poors elevated its

own financial interests above investors
by loosening its rating criteria to obtain
business and then obscuring these
changes from investors, he said.
Asked why S&P had not been
penalised for actions in the lead-up to
the financial crisis, Mr Ceresney said
that the regulator was always led by
evidence. The evidence was there and
we were able to bring charges, he said.
Because of a long-standing SEC
practice that often infuriates investors
and citizens alike, S&P will be allowed
to pay its fine without admitting or
denying wrongdoing. However, it did
agree to accept certain findings of fact,
including that it manipulated criteria
used for making ratings.
S&P is understood to be close to
reaching a $1.37 billion settlement with
the federal Justice Department in
Washington and several state attorneys
general, who are suing it in connection
with the crisis, according to The New
York Times.

36

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Business Davos 2015

Chinas growth slowdown is

its new normal, says premier
on the agenda today

davos 2015
Philip Aldrick Davos

China is moving from a period of

high-speed growth to one of medium-to-high-speed as Beijing pushes
through reforms that will help it to
make the leap from a developing to an
advanced economy, Li Keqiang, its premier, has said.
Speaking at the World Economic
Forum in Davos the day after China
revealed that growth in 2014 had fallen
to 7.4 per cent, the weakest in 24 years,
Mr Li claimed that the slowdown was
part of a move to a new economic
model that would depend no longer on
state investment and intervention.
In conciliatory words that will be
welcomed by Japan, its neighbour,
whose long-term dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea has
flared up recently, Mr Li also called for
political solutions to rising global tensions. A survey by the WEF found that
geopolitical tensions, including those
over the islands, posed the biggest risk
to global stability.
We have no intention to compete for
supremacy in the region, Mr Li said.
Addressing the broader issue of global
geopolitical threats, he added: We

6 The pace is frenetic

and the average
attendee is in a
permanent state of
anxiety about missing
the key meeting, the
star talk or the A-list
party. So todays 8am
session on
mindfulness will
offer execs
interested in
subjects such as
Cultivating
leadership
presence
through
Mindfulness
and

gratitude meditation a
much-needed chance to
exhale.
6 After that, its back to
earth with a thud to
hear Ana Botn, of
Santander, below, and
Gary Cohn, of Goldman
Sachs, discuss
ending the
experiment of
central banks
printing money
by the billion to
ward off
Armageddon.
6 Those who
dont believe
the end is

should all work together to uphold

peace and stability.
He focused his address on the economy. We have entered a state of new
normal. We are moving from highspeed to medium-to-high-speed, he
said. Regional and systemic crisis will
not happen in China and China is not
heading for a hard landing.
Dismissing concerns that a loss of
momentum in China could damage
global growth prospects, Mr Li emphasised that 13 million jobs had been
created in cities last year, more than in

nigh may hang on until

3.45pm GMT for a panel
discussion confronting
catastrophic outbreaks,
including the boss of
the WHO and Alpha
Cond, President of
ebola-struck Guinea.
6 For British journalists,
the most-anticipated
event of the day is the
reception thrown by the
Duke of York at 5.30pm,
who has not been
deterred from Davos by
sexual allegations,
which he denies,
levelled at him by a
former masseuse.

Exclusive to members

Breaking news and

the inside view
from Britains top
business leaders
On tablet and at thetimes.co.uk/business

2013. Growth last year equated to

$800 billion, which is larger than 10 per
cent growth five years ago.
China is facing a key period of transition if it hopes to bridge the dreaded
middle-income trap that separates
middle-income economies from highincome ones. Some, such as South Korea and Taiwan, have made it. Others,
including Brazil and Mexico, have not.
Mr Li said that the focus was no longer
simply faster growth but higher-quality growth in the long run.
To drive new engines of growth, we
need to foster entrepreneurship and
innovation. For the Chinese economy
to withstand downward pressure, we
need to say no to the traditional mindset and embrace innovation and structural reforms.
Pledging a raft of reforms from opening new free trade zones to liberalising
the exchange rate to financial reform to
levelling the playing field with foreign
companies, he outlined a general
modernisation of the economy. As the
growth rate slows, structural reforms
have become more necessary, he said.
China is trying to move away from a
dependence on state and infrastructure
investment towards greater consumption. Also at Davos, Min Zhu, deputy
director of the International Monetary
Fund, had earlier praised the Chinese
government.
China is growing slower but better,
he said. For the first time, consumption has been bigger than investment.

Iraq pays high price for keeping oil taps wide open
Marcus Leroux

The plunging price of oil has cut Iraqs

tax revenue in half, according to the
countrys deputy prime minister.
Rowsch Shaways maintained that
Iraqs only response to the fall in prices
was to continue to boost production.
Analysts say that increased production by Iraq and Iran explains Saudi
Arabias refusal to cut supplies to push
up prices. This month, Iraqs govern-

ment approved spending cuts that had

been forced by lower oil revenues.
Brent crude has since fallen by another
10 per cent to less than $50 a barrel.
Iraqs plight is starker than other oildependent countries because of the
task of fighting Islamic State (Isis).
Dr Shaways said: Because of these
challenges, especially the price of oil,
Iraq has to try its best to raise its oil
production and its exports.
Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at

Energy Aspects, said that Iraq, with

Libya, Iran and Venezuela, could not
afford to cut production. She said that
the seeds of the collapse in prices had
been sown at Opecs meeting in Vienna
in November: Once Saudi Arabia realised not all Opec members or the handful of non-Opec countries involved in
discussions in Vienna . . . were willing
to share the burden of an output cut, the
battle on the output front was lost.
Abdullah al-Badri, secretary-general

of Opec, told CNBC yesterday: It will

stay for another month at this low price,
but Im sure the price will rebound.
On the upside, there were hopes that
over-supply would help governments
to dismantle costly fossil fuel subsidies.
Claudio Descalzi, chief executive of
Eni, the Italian energy group, said that
crude could hit $200 a barrel later
because retrenchment by oil companies would hit supply, turning a feast
into famine.

Time for change Al Gore, the former

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

37

FGM

MICHEL EULER / AP

Branson closing on
launch of biggest
satellite company
Richard Fletcher

Sir Richard Branson is in talks with

potential financial and technology
backers about investing in his OneWeb
business, which aims to provide internet and telephone access to remote
parts of the world using satellites in a
low earth orbit.
The billionaire is understood to be
talking to sovereign wealth funds, private equity groups and Silicon Valley
technology companies, which would
invest alongside Virgin Group and its
existing partner, Qualcomm, the
American chipmaker.
We are starting to bring in other
pretty heavy-hitting partners, which
will be announced in the next few
months, Sir Richard told The Times on
the fringes of the World Economic
Forum in Davos.
It is going to be, by far and
away, the biggest satellite company in the world. If we do the
full 2,000 satellites, we will
have more satellites than are
currently in space. There are
only 1,500 satellites up there,
Sir Richard said.
Like most of our Virgin
ventures, it is a business
with a purpose, but it has
to be a business because
it is going to cost us
2 billion to do. We are
going to have to bring
in a lot of other investors
and we are going to have to
give a very good return.
Virgin hopes the network
will start to deliver mobile,
internet and wi-fi access at a
very competitive price to
far-flung corners of the
world within three years.
There are three billion
people who are not connected. Not just in Africa
and some of the poorer
countries, like India.
There are quite a few

US vice-president, delivers a talk on Whats Next? A Climate for Action at Davos

Inside Davos: the delegates view

Todays first top
meeting was the
one-hour International
Business Council
session with Li Keqiang.
The [Chinese] charm
offensive is proving
very effective. His only
visit on this European
trip is Davos and he has
signed a Chinese/WEF
partnership agreement.
The new leadership is
growing in stature and
gives a very strong
impression.
Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP,
founder and chief
executive
Much of the talk here is
understandably about
the expected
announcement by
Mario Draghi about
quantitative easing. It
will certainly help to lift

asset prices equities,

corporate bonds, high
yield but the question
is how much will drip
down to the real
economy. QE also wont
suddenly make Europes
economies more
competitive. That
requires structural
reforms, which will be
painful in the short term
but in Europes
long-term interests.
Martin Gilbert,
Aberdeen Asset
Management, chief
executive
Italys Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi showed
why he has real star
quality. He bemoaned
the fact that he had
turned 40 and was no
longer young, as he set
out an ambitious reform

programme for the next

four years, with
constitutional reform at
the forefront of his
plans. He voiced
disappointment of his
countrys EU presidency
in failing to tackle
reform.
Roland Rudd, Finsbury,
chief executive and
founder
I attended the global
shapers event, where I
spent time with 50 WEF
millennials, exceptional
in their achievement
and drive, and potential
future leaders. They
were discussing
Collectively a new
media platform to make
sustainable living the
new normal.
Keith Weed, Unilever,
chief marketing officer

Read the business delegates views in full at thetimes.co.uk/business

Sir Richard Branson:

passionate about
improving telecoms

Davos 2015 Business

people in America and Europe who

are not connected in rural areas, Sir
Richard said. It is earth-changing
literally and the team at Virgin know
how passionate I have been about this
over the last two years.
If you dont have a mobile phone,
you cant start a business, you often
cant get a job. You cant be educated if
you dont have the internet. It is going to
make a very big difference. It is going to
bring people out of poverty.
This project could change lives,
transform communities and have a
huge positive impact upon the world,
Sir Richard said.
Last week SpaceX a rival to OneWeb that is
controlled by Elon
Musk, the entrepreneur and inventor
said that it had raised
$1 billion of financing
from
Google
and
Fidelity.
The fundraising put
a value of $10 billion on
the company, which
builds space launch
vehicles and is now also
planning to develop a
network of communications satellites that can
provide internet access
to remote areas.
According to the
International Telecommunication Union, as of
the end of 2014, more
than half the worlds population
lacked
internet
access.
While in Davos, Sir Richard has met representatives
of the United Nations to talk
about giving organisations
such as the Red Cross free
access to the network he is
planning.
OneWeb believes that the
network will be able to provide emergency and first
responder access in disaster
situations, refugee camps
and other areas of desperate need.

New rules are making things

worse, warn leading bankers
Philip Aldrick

Financial regulation has overshot and

is causing more harm than good to the
economy, top bankers have warned.
Although many of the reforms since
the financial crisis have been necessary,
many others are causing undesirable
outcomes that are hindering growth
and storing up huge risks, they claimed.
There is a disconnect between
economic policy and regulation,
Douglas Flint, the chairman of HSBC,
told a panel at the World Economic
Forum in Davos.
Pension funds and insurers were
constantly being asked to invest in
infrastructure by politicians and policymakers but they were being disincentivised from doing so by regulation,
he argued. Rules restricting banks from
buying and selling such assets in the
markets make it risky and costly to
invest.
So were saying to the pension funds
and insurance companies: We want

you to invest in long-dated, illiquid

assets for which there will be very little
liquidity. And theyre going: Why
would I want to do that? Mr Flint said.
Anshu Jain, a co-chief executive of
Deutsche Bank, echoed Mr Flints
concerns that restrictions on proprietary trading and market-making were
storing up future liquidity risks, as
demonstrated by the sharp collapse in
US Treasury yields in October last year.
A disruptive credit event would be
at the top of my worry list, combined
with banks not being able to provide
liquidity, he said.
For Andr Esteves, the billionaire
founder and chief executive of BTG
Pactual, the Brazilian investment bank,
the biggest risk was quantitative easing
and excessively low interest rates. Central banks around the world were
sowing the seeds of a future crisis with
policies that are unknown, he said.
QE was causing huge distortions in
price and we dont know what the real
side-effects are, Mr Esteves said.

D AV O S
D I A RY
no badge, no dinner
Security is tighter than ever at
Davos this year, as Lord
Mandelson found out to his
cost on Tuesday night. Having
failed to register before going to
dinner, the Labour peer, along
with his host, the City PR man
Roland Rudd, found himself
barred by security from the
InterContinental Hotel no
WEF badge, no entry!
While the rest of the party
quaffed the fine wine laid on
for dinner, Roland did what he
does best and hit his phone. A
few calls later and Richard
Solomons, chief executive of the
InterContinentals owner IHG,
was welcoming Lord Mandelson
to the hotel. The only downside
his lordship had to spend the
entire dinner wearing a badge
emblazoned with the words
hotel temporary. Apparently
the colour of your badge
matters in Davos.

back of the plane

Talking of Roland . . .
the City PR man filled his
private jet with Davos-bound
FTSE 100 chief executives on
Tuesday his own staff were
banished to the back of the
aircraft. Intriguingly, not all of
those on board were clients.
Nervous times for his rivals, hey.

tighten your belts

Sage advice on austerity from Jeff
Greene, an American billionaire
who made a fortune betting
against sub-prime mortgages. We
should all tighten our belts:
Americas lifestyle expectations
are far too high and need to be
adjusted so we have less things
and a smaller, better existence.
The 60-year-old founder of
Florida Sunshine Investments
flew his wife, children and two
nannies on a private jet to Davos
for a week.
Were all in this together.

oil price challenge

It is all about perspective, says Sir
Martin Sorrell, Davos devotee
and WPP chief executive, who
has been demonstrating just that
by asking delegates what price
Brent crude was trading at in
2000 when BP bought Arco.
One of the few Davos delegates
to supply the correct answer
$10, if you really have to ask
was Carl-Henric Svanberg, the
BP chairman. His institutional
knowledge will surely please his
shareholders.

near miss
Holding a high-level conflab in a
secluded ski resort makes for
some interesting journeys. One
busload of delegates, including
Kevin Delaney, the founder of
Quartz.com, was heading from a
tech conference in Munich when
the vehicle became stranded on a
railway line. With a train
approaching.
All lived to tell the tale after the
train ground to a halt, although
we hear the coach driver took a
bit of calming down.

38

FGM

Business

Shazam feels like a

billion dollars on
top of the hit parade
Alex Spence Media Editor

It began more than a decade ago as a

mobile phone gimmick for identifying
catchy tunes when you were out and
about. Now Shazam says that it is worth
a billion dollars after closing a deal with
three new investors.
Only a handful of British technology
companies have reached a $1 billion
valuation and news of Shazams latest
fundraising has attracted the sort of
buzz normally reserved for start-ups in
Silicon Valley.
The company, whose smartphone
app has more than 100 million regular
users, said that it had raised $30 million
in new financing from the unnamed
investors, who will own about 3 per cent
of the shares.
It raised $20 million from investors
including Amrica Mvil, the Mexican
telecoms giant controlled by Carlos
Slim, in 2013 and a further $10 million
last year.
Andrew Fisher, the executive chairman, said that the extra cash would
strengthen Shazams balance sheet and
give it more options. However, the deal
will fuel speculation that Shazam is
lining up an initial public offering.
A host of fast-growing online services are thought to be considering listing this year after attracting valuations

in the billions, including Uber, Spotify,

Pinterest, Snapchat, Etsy and Dropbox.
Shazam is one of the few British players
to attract comparable numbers of
global users and the interest of heavyweight Californian investors.
Mr Fisher said: Quite frankly, we
believe were IPO-able right now, but in
terms of the strategy were pursuing we
can be more effective for shareholders
and investors if we remain a private
company, for now.
Were not giving any specific guidance in terms of when an IPO would
potentially take place. Its certainly one
of our strategic options.
Shazam, which is based in Hammersmith, west London, began in 2002 as a
simple mobile phone application.
Users could dial a number, hold up
their phone and receive a text
message identifying the name and
singer of a song they heard in a pub,
caf or shop. After the launch of the
iPhone in 2007, it was one of the
smartphones most popular
apps.
The technology evolved
to allow users to buy and
download tracks, buy
concert tickets and get
information about the
artists. Shazam began
working with broadcast-

JEWEL SAMAD / GETTY

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Metros red ink

underlines bank
challenger status
Katherine Griffiths Banking Editor

Taylor Swift is trailing Philip Georges Wish You Were Mine on Shazam this week

Best of all time on Shazam

1 Wake Me Up, Avicii, 19.7m hits
2 Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke
featuring T.I. & Pharrell, 18.3m hits
3 Somebody That I Used To Know,
Gotye featuring Kimbra, 17.1m
4 Let Her Go, Passenger,
15.8m
5 Rather Be, Clean Bandit
featuring Jess Glynne,
15.1m
6 Thrift Shop,
Macklemore & Ryan
Lewis feat. Wanz, 14.3m

ers so that its technology could be

deployed during television shows and
advertising breaks and it is trying to
broaden its services to allow users to interact with retailers to get special offers
when they are in a shop.
According to Shazams latest accounts, it had revenues of 31 million
and a pre-tax loss of 5.3 million in the
last six months of 2013. Mr Fisher said
that it would be in the red again next
year. Thats very deliberate and intentional. We are investing significantly.
Other investors include the Silicon
Valley venture capital firms Kleiner,
Perkins, Caulfield & Byers and Institutional Venture Partners.

Metro Bank suffered an 8.9 million

loss in the last three months of 2014,
down slightly from 9.4 million in the
third quarter.
However, it continued to attract
deposits and increased its lending,
cementing Metros position as one of
the most serious challenger banks on
the high street.
The loss, blamed on investment in
people and premises, also reflected
Metros continued focus on deposits,
which jumped 118 per cent to 2.9 billion last year, over loans, which rose by
112 per cent to 1.6 billion.
Sceptics of its model have said that it
will be hard for the start-up to break
into profit because it is impossible to
generate a return on deposits while
interest rates are so low.
Vernon Hill, the flamboyant
American who founded Metro after
making a fortune creating and selling
Commerce Bank in the United States,
said that Metro was growing loans
aggressively, but it was impossible for
sensible lending to keep pace with deposits as they have flowed in so fast.
I have never seen anything like this,
Mr Hill said of the 450,000 accounts
Metro has opened since it began in 2010
at a branch in Holborn, central London.
Metro, which opens seven days, has
31 branches, which it calls stores, in
London and the southeast and hired
500 staff in 2014. It plans to add the
same number this year.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

39

FGM

Business

Dixons Carphone swaps one hump for two

Dominic Walsh, Alex Ralph

Black Friday may have turned Christmas into something of a rollercoaster

for Dixons Carphone, but the electrical
goods chain rode the ups and downs so
well that it has upped its full-year profit
guidance.
The group, which owns the Currys
and Carphone Warehouse chains,
reported a 7 per cent jump in like-forlike sales yesterday for the nine weeks
to January 3 as demand for ultra-highdefinition TVs and juicers mitigated a
slump in tablet sales.
Although the Black Friday splurge at
the end of November was the busiest
trading day in the groups history, leaving stores a little quieter leading up to
Christmas, customers returned in
droves for the traditional Boxing Day
sale and margins were maintained.
Sebastian James, the chief executive,
said: We still had a record Boxing Day.

Were very happy with the way

Christmas trading went, but it changed
shape. I describe the shape as changing
from a dromedary to a Bactrian camel,
with two humps, and thats the way
were going to see it going forward from
now on.
The retailers domestic market was its
best performer. Like-for-like sales rose
8 per cent in the UK and Ireland, compared with a 6 per cent increase in
northern Europe and a 4 per cent fall in
southern Europe, where an improving
picture in Greece was offset by a quite
tough Spain and Portugal.
In Britain, Mr James said the shining
stars had included coffee machines, up
almost 50 per cent, and it sold more
than three times as many Nutribullet
juicers as last year and 13 times as many
fitness-related smart devices.
We also saw fantastic growth in big
domestic appliances, he said. I think a
number of people who had perhaps

6 He is best-known for founding

Carphone Warehouse, but now Sir
Charles Dunstone has turned to the
world of online estate agents
(Kathryn Hopkins writes). He has
invested 5 million in HouseSimple,
which was established eight years
ago and has sold or let almost
1 billion-worth of properties. It
represents about 2 per cent of the
British market, but this is projected
to reach more than 20 per cent over
the next five years. Sir Charles, who
made the investment with his
business partner Roger Taylor,
said: We believe that estate agency
is going to change considerably,
with the future increasingly
belonging to online estate agents.
HouseSimple has the potential to be
one of the industrys real online
winners, and we intend help it
achieve its full potential.

been deferring their big projects, like

kitchen renewals, during the difficult
economic times have begun to feel that
now is the time to do that work.
The company created from the
merger last year of Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail also enjoyed a
very good telly season, with a quarter
of sets sold on Boxing Day being
ultra-high-definition, and a doubling in
the number of TVs sold with screens of
55in or more.
While sales of laptops returned to
growth, tablet sales fell sharply, but Mr
James played down the significance.
Tablets as a category are here to stay
and very important to us, but last year
people were buying into tablet for the
first time and now were moving into
the replacement cycle, so weve seen
quite a sharp drop. The decline of prepay phone sales continued, but the
iPhone 6 proved a big hit.
Dixons Carphones stronger-than-

expected update prompted the group to

up its guidance for full-year pre-tax
profits from 354 million to a range of
between 355 million and 375 million.
The upgrade sent its shares sharply
higher in early trading, although they
later closed down 2p at 440p.
Mr James claimed that the group had
won market share from its rivals over
the Christmas period, although Charles
Stanley, the broker, said that this was
hardly surprising after Phones4u went
into administration.
The Dixons Carphone boss admitted
that the scale of Black Friday took us
by surprise, but it had expanded the
balloon for us.
Asked whther the shopping splurge
would ever become as big as it is in
America, he replied: I think its already
pretty close as a proportion of total
sales. A lot of people took the day off to
shop and I wonder how long it will be
before its declared a national holiday.

GETTY

Raised voices
at the bar as
sales stall at
Wetherspoons

Pets at Home
pampering
puts glossy
coat on sales

nimal advent
calendars and
doggie
stockings helped to
drive a surge in sales
at Pets At Home
(Edward Curwen
writes).
The group said that
like-for-like sales had
grown by 4.1 per cent.
Advanced nutrition,
health and hygiene
products helped to take
sales up by 6.5 per cent
to 168.2 million. The
Groom Room salons
lifted services revenues
up to 14 million,
a rise of 15.6 per cent.
Greg Bromley, at
Conlumino, said: The
market continues a
trend towards pet
humanisation and it is
common for pet owners
to purchase gifts to
indulge their animals.
Pets at Home shares
rose 7p to 210p.

Dominic Walsh

Pets, bikes and calendars mean a bumper Christmas

Halfords gears up
for sales and repairs

arents buying children

bicycles for Christmas
and a boom in car
maintenance helped
Halfords to pedal its way
to a strong third quarter,
with underlying sales up by
6.7 per cent (Deirdre
Hipwell writes).
It was a big
Christmas for bikes,
Halfords said as it
reported a
7.6 per cent rise in
like-for-like sales in its
cycle department in
the 15 weeks to
January 9. Overall,
like-for-like sales
were up 6.7 per cent
during the period
and had jumped

by a similarly strong 6.6 per

cent in the 41 weeks to
January 9.
Matt Davies, the chief
executive, said that the car
maintenance division had
achieved a standout
performance, with
like-for-like sales leaping by
11 per cent during the third
quarter. Sales in its travel
solutions division rose by
5.7 per cent, helped by a
campaign launched
with Jodie Kidd, left, to
abolish VAT on child
car seats. The model is
Halfords motoring
ambassador and is
working with the
retailer on
autumn and
winter
campaigns.
Online sales rose

by 16.5 per cent

during the period to a
record 12.9 per cent of its
total retail sales.
The group said that it
would continue to
refresh and refurbish its
stores. Shares in Halfords
rose 3p to 443p.

Poundland finds
work in the holidays

n unexpected delay to
planned shop
openings hit revenues
at Poundland Group, but it
is still on track to meet
profit expectations, thanks
to record sales at Christmas
and Halloween.
The high street discounter
sold 1.5 million Advent
calendars and 2,500 miles of

tinsel over Christmas,

which, added to strong sales
in the run-up to Halloween,
helped to make up for the
delayed openings.
Revenue, excluding the
companys Spanish stores,
rose by 9.8 per cent to
328.4 million in the 13
weeks to December 28.
Bolstered by the success
of the overseas spin-off
Dealz in Ireland, Poundland
is pressing ahead with a
two-year Spanish trial. Its
first Spanish store opened in
Torremolinos in July last
year.
Analysts backed the
groups European venture,
which Maureen Hinton, of
Conlumino, called a
welcome route to further
expansion. Its shares closed
down 13p at 350p.

Argos seals deal with

Cherokee clothing

rgos hopes to attract

shoppers looking for
the latest in
affordable clothing after
signing an exclusive deal to
stock a range of Cherokee
clothing, accessories and
footwear. The deal with the
American family lifestyle
brand will increase Argoss
small but growing fashion
list, which so far includes
Puma, Firetrap and Baby
Converse.
Cherokee goods
previously were sold
through Tesco, but the
company has confirmed that
from this summer it will be
distributing its clothes
exclusively through Argos
in Britain.

Tim Martin has become renowned for

his rants on everything from the euro to
property agents and City analysts. He
was on the attack again yesterday
and so were his rivals.
As JD Wetherspoon announced
slowing like-for-like sales and falling
margins, its chairman and founder
launched a blistering tirade blaming
unfair taxes, the supermarket price war
and even the pub industrys leading
trade magazine. Mr Martin said that although food sales were continuing to
rise, bar sales over the past two months
had been flat as drinkers opted to buy
cheap drink at their local supermarket,
where VAT-free food sales were subsidising beer prices.
This situation reflects the dire need
for the pub industry to campaign for
equal tax treatment for pubs and supermarkets, he said. The current wave of
pub closures, which continues at a high
level, will accelerate when economic
growth slows or reverses. He also
attacked both rival pub companies
and The Publicans Morning Advertiser
magazine for utterly failing to campaign for tax equality.
Rob Willock, group editor for the
trade title, said: Its fair to say I was a
little surprised to be blamed for Wetherspoons poor half-year margin and
new year sales performance. He
argued that the blaming of everyone
other than Wetherspoons own management was surely just a smokescreen for failures in the companys
own decision-making.
Ian Payne, the chairman of the rival
Stonegate Pub Company, tweeted:
Typical of the man whose JDW behemoths have closed 1,000s of small pubs
to blame it all on the government.
In the 12 weeks to January 18,
Wetherspoons lifted like-for-like sales
by 2.8 per cent, compared with a 4.6 per
cent increase in the first 25 weeks of the
financial year. The company, which expects to open 30 to 40 pubs over the
year, said that like-for-like sales growth
had slowed to 2 per cent in December
and even further in the last fortnight.
Wetherspoons nevertheless predicted a broadly satisfactory outcome in
the current financial year. Its shares
fell by 18p to 801p.

40

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

FGM

Business Markets
companies news

Martin Waller Tempus

Buy, sell or hold: todays best share tips

66p expected

2014 eps

Educating the markets

Pearson share price

13.5
13
12.5
12

Source: Thomson Reuters

pearson

11.5
11
10.5
10
2014
Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

9.5
Q1

nvestors in Pearson can feel

relieved that this years opening
MY ADVICE Avoid
trading update is relatively
WHY Proper growth not
positive. For the past two years,
expected to start again until
January has seen warnings from
the publisher about how challenging
2016, although there is the
its education markets have been.
advantage of cost-cutting and
Trading continues to be mixed, but
currency factors this year
the message is that this year there
will be some stabilisation in those
markets while 2016 should mark a
return to strong growth. Meanwhile,
control. The improving economy has
2015 earnings will enjoy the benefit
dissuaded youngsters from going to
of a couple of special factors, the cost
college because of the availability of
savings carried out during the
jobs; the rate of decline in new
past two years and currency
students is flattening, but there
movements. Pearson
will be little improvement in
indicated last February that
demand for textbooks and
720m
earnings per share would
digital learning products
Expected 2014
come in at between 62p
this year. The US
operating profit
and 67p. The outcome is at
curriculum is being
the top of that range, at 66p.
changed, which delays
This compares with 70.1p for
purchases by students, while
2013, itself down by 15 per cent
something similar is happening
after restructuring charges.
in Britain. In Brazil, reorganisation of
Pearsons American business,
its businesses there has meant some
60 per cent of revenues, has been
short-term distruption.
facing several challenges beyond its
Against this, Pearson has spent
wh smith
2% fall in LFL

sales at group

ne analyst describes
WH Smith rather well as a
play on international travel
with a high street cash machine. This
is the strategy put in place by Kate
Swann, the former chief executive.
If you have that many holes on the
high street and no one with any
sense would open them now then
the best thing to do is run them for
cash, stock the sort of goods on
which you can make a decent return
and use that cash to expand the
travel side by new openings while
handing it back to shareholders. So

Land Securities offloaded

702 million worth of property in
the final three months of the year
after a decision to abandon
smaller shopping centres. In a
confident update, the company
said that its business and markets
were in good shape. The shares
edged up by 10p to 12.63. Among
sites sold were Cabot Circus, in
Bristol, and Princesshay, in
Exeter. Larger complexes it owns
include Bluewater, in Kent, and
St Davids, in Cardiff. Net debt fell
from 4.6 billion to 4.2 billion.

dominos pizza group

travel sales were up 7 per cent, with

like-for-likes up 2 per cent, in the
20 weeks to last weekend while, in
the high street, sales were off by
5 per cent. WH Smith is bearing
down on inefficiencies in these and
so pushing up margins.
As high street leases expire, they
are considered on a case-by-case
basis, although there were no new
closures during the period. Within
travel, the performance was strongest
at large airports, benefiting from the
growth in passenger numbers.
WH Smith has been able to hand
back upwards of 50 million by
means of share buybacks in every
year since 2011 and is on track for the
same in 2015. This puts good

Revenue growth, first 9 months of 2014

2014 PBT

54.2m expected

t was probably sensible of

Dominos Pizza to put out a
reassuring if anodyne trading
statement to accompany the news of
the departure of Sean Wilkins, the
North America
6%
2%
2%
finance director, even if this has
Core markets
10%
7%
6%
nothing to do with the performance
of the business.
eg UK/Europe
Instead, it most likely reflects the
Growth
1%
11%
Flat
decision of David Wild, drafted in as
(emerging)
interim chief executive at the start of
markets
last year, to make the post a
Total excluding
permanent one. Dominos says that
fourth-quarter trading was good
Penguin/
6%
1%
Flat
enough and it will equal or just
Mergermarket
beat consensus forecasts for
200 million on controlling
earnings for the year as a
follow me
costs, such as halving the
whole.
on twitter
amount of warehouse
The shares still fell 22p
for updates
space used to store
to 676p. Any unexpected
@MartinWaller10 boardroom change will not
textbooks because of the
move to digital, and
be taken well and they have
annualised savings of
risen from about 560p as
150 million will kick in this year.
recently as October. Dominos
If the dollar remains where it is
continues to open 40 or 50 outlets in
against the pound, its higher value
the UK each year, although the
will add about 2.4p to earnings. Add
German operation remains a drag
those cost savings, with little benefit
and will take several more years to
from an improvement in those
come into profits.
markets, and Pearson feels it can
Like-for-like sales are still growing
forecast earnings per share of 75p to
by double digits. The shares are
80p this year. It continues to invest
changing hands on 26 times last
in new digital product, while the
years earnings and 22 times those
long-term drivers behind greater
for 2015. This is a high multiple for a
spending on education in markets
purveyor of a basic consumer
such as China and Brazil remain.
product, even if sales per outlet and
The shares added 60p to 12.96.
online are growing.
They have been recovering since the
spring and sell on almost 17 times
earnings. Though the dividend yield
MY ADVICE Avoid
of 3.9 per cent will provide some
WHY Shares look highly
support, the lack of any significant
valued for the sector
catalysts does not suggest much
progress for the shares for now.
g
in
rly
de
Un
nt
ta s
ns ate
co e r
At ng
a
ne
ch adli
ex
He

Playing
the long
game with
earnings

Land Securities sell-off

upwards pressure on growth of

earnings per share. With an April
financial year-end and the Christmas
trading period over, it is easy enough
to take a view on this years profits.
The shares, up 8p at 13.54, have
advanced from below 10 in October.
Therefore they sell on 15 times
earnings and yield about 3 per
cent. Fair value for now, though the
company is well positioned for any
upturn in UK consumer spending.

MY ADVICE Buy long term

WHY Shares by no means
cheap but support is there

Polish removes shine

SABMiller suffered a 5 per cent
fall in third-quarter net revenues
in Britain, as double-digit growth
of its Peroni Nastro Azzurro brand
was offset by a slump in sales of
Tyskie and Lech, its Polish lagers.
The group as a whole lifted net
revenues by 4 per cent in the
three months to the end of
December. Sales of soft drinks
rose by 4 per cent. The shares rose
99p to 34.42 amid continuing
talk of a bid by AB InBev.

Closure costs 900 jobs

Britains last remaining cigarette
factory will close, with the loss of
almost 900 jobs, after Japan
Tobacco International, the maker
of Benson & Hedges and Silk
Cut, said a consultation had
concluded that the plant in
Northern Ireland had become
unviable. It blamed plain
packaging proposals and the illicit
trade in tobacco for the decision
to close the former Gallaher
facility in Lisnafillan.

Were just dropping in

Dropbox is to open its first office
in Britain. The cloud storage
company has hired Mark van der
Linden, a former Google
executive, as its country manager.
Dropbox said that one in four
internet users in the UK used its
product. The company has
120 million users in Europe,
with 300 million worldwide.
Yesterday it announced that it
had acquired CloudOn, an Israeli
app maker.

And finally . . .

ipomas business strategy, as

it supplies specialist seals and
controls, is to grow the
existing business by a bit more than
the GDP of its various markets and
to add a bit more from making
acquisitions. The trading statement
for the first quarter shows this
strategy in place, underlying
revenues up 4 per cent and those
purchases adding 12 per cent,
although there was the inevitable
drag from the high pound. Diploma
remains a model of reliability,
despite the inevitable uncertainties
in those markets it serves.

All the latest

breaking news
thetimes.co.uk/
business

PRICES
Major Indices

London Financial Futures

New York
Dow Jones
Nasdaq Composite
S&P 500

17554.28 (+39.05)
4667.42 (+12.58)
2032.12 (+9.57)

Tokyo
Nikkei 225

17280.48 (-85.82)

Hong Kong
Hang Seng

24352.58 (+401.42)

Amsterdam
AEX Index
Sydney
AO
Frankfurt
DAX

441.09 (+3.17)
5367.40 (+80.60)
10299.23 (+42.10)

Singapore
Straits

3354.46 (+20.44)

Brussels
BEL20

3421.97 (+18.93)

Paris
CAC-40

4484.82 (+38.80)

Zurich
SMI Index
DJ EURO Stoxx 50

8008.55 (-170.35)
3269.73 (+24.81)

London
FTSE 100
6728.04 (+107.94)
FTSE 250
16253.31 (+126.75)
FTSE 350
3675.83 (+54.22)
FTSE Eurotop 100
2886.19 (+16.98)
FTSE All-Shares
3610.37 (+51.74)
FTSE Non Financials
4198.06 (+63.32)
techMARK 100
3616.55 (+30.72)
Bargains
n/a
US$
1.5104 (-0.0038)
Euro
1.3048 (-0.0067)
:SDR
1.06 (+0.00)
Exchange Index
87.4 (-0.6)
Bank of England official close (4pm)
CPI
128.20 Nov (2005 = 100)
RPI
257.10 Nov (Jan 1987 = 100)
RPIX
256.60 Nov (Jan 1987 = 100)
Morningstar Long Commodity
654.83 (-11.48)
Morningstar Long/Short Commod 4478.07 (-1.64)

Long Gilt
3-Mth Sterling

3-Mth Euribor

3-Mth Euroswiss

2 Year Swapnote
5 Year Swapnote
10 Year Swapnote
FTSE100
FTSEurofirst 80

Period
Mar 15
Jun 15
Mar 15
Jun 15
Sep 15
Dec 15
Mar 16
Mar 15
Jun 15
Sep 15
Dec 15
Jan 16
Mar 15
Jun 15
Sep 15
Dec 15
Mar 15
Jun 15
Mar 15
Jun 15
Mar 15
Jun 15
Mar 15
Jun 15
Mar 15
Jun 15

Open
121.84

Commodities

99.410
99.380
99.330
99.250
99.160
99.970
99.990
99.985
99.980
99.970
100.84
100.92
100.94
100.86
111.76

High
122.63
115.06
99.430
99.410
99.380
99.320
99.240
99.975
99.990
99.995
99.990
99.975
101.00
101.05
101.03
100.97
111.77

Low
121.52
113.50
99.410
99.370
99.310
99.230
99.130
99.955
99.970
99.970
99.965
99.955
100.83
100.90
100.90
100.86
111.74

128.20

128.28

127.96

151.24

151.24

150.67

6589.0
6541.5
4177.0

6672.5
6591.0
4177.0

6582.0
6541.5
4176.5

Sett
122.35
121.55
99.430
99.410
99.370
99.310
99.230
99.965
99.980
99.985
99.980
99.965
100.92
100.98
100.98
100.94
111.76
111.76
128.05
128.05
150.42
150.42
6659.0
6602.5
4346.5
4348.5

Vol
243315
111
98803
117458
138814
192425
130549
102665
100438
77358
68432
53552
7848
19782
10732
10016
827

Open Int
408978

551

11860

355

4938

110529
302
70

559641
2821
70

376758
453828
394333
338969
278299
415780
331902
354226
257115
238713
43068
70908
53155
62260
21054

May

ICIS pricing (London 7.30pm)

Crude Oils ($/barrel FOB)
Brent Physical
Brent 25 day (Jan)
Brent 25 day (Feb)
W Texas Intermed (Jan)
W Texas Intermed (Feb)

47.15
48.35
49.60
47.50
48.15

+0.20
+0.05
-0.35
+0.30
+0.25

Products ($/MT)
468.00
464.50
228.00
407.00

470.00
466.50
230.00
409.00

-7.00
-3.75
-1.50
+8.00

473.75-473.25
474.00-473.75
475.75-475.25

Brent (9.00pm)
Mar
48.87-48.84
Apr
49.99-49.95

Cocoa
Mar
Jul
May
Sep
Dec
Mar

1991-1973
1954-1873
1977-1861
1992-1805
1964-1721
1962-1731

Jan
Mar
May
Jul

1939-1911
2050-1841
2080-1962
2050-1810

May
Jun

May
Jul
Sep

1922-1805
1899-1750
1898-1725
Volume: 22991

500.00-478.25
482.75-482.25
Volume: 253599

Sep
Nov

2220-1910
2063-1900
Volume: 6193

White Sugar (FOB)

Reuters

ICE Futures
Gas Oil
Feb
Mar
Apr

Volume: 918330

RobustaCoffee

Spot CIF NW Europe (prompt delivery)

Premium Unld
Gasoil EEC
3.5 Fuel Oil
Naphtha

51.53-50.96

LIFFE

Mar
May
Aug

470.00-387.60
420.50-411.40
523.00-423.20

Oct
Dec
Mar
May

520.40-429.10
447.50-439.00
451.20-446.30
450.60-447.40
Volume: 8181

London Grain Futures

LIFFE Wheat (close /t)

Jun
Jul

52.24-52.15
54.20-52.97

Jan
Jul

126.80
132.10

Mar
Nov

128.80
137.00

May
131.30
Volume: 434

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

41

FGM

Markets Business

REX

Man takes step upwards

on evolutionary ladder
Gary Parkinson Market report

he renaissance of Man
continued after 2014s
best-performing FTSE 350
share pushed to its dearest
since autumn 2011.
From a 620p high-water mark in
August 2008, Man was laid low by the
roiling markets of first the financial
crisis then the Great Recession it
precipitated. Its AHL funds, run by
computer algorithms taking trading
decisions across 300 instruments and
36 exchanges, struggled to latch on to
trends.
By July 2012, amid redemptions of
clients cash, dwindling performance
fees and a black box that simply
looked broken, Man shares had sunk
south of 64p. After essentially trading
sideways until the start of 2014, they
have been dragged higher since then

Wall Street report

Wall Street couldnt wait to give its
round of applause to Europe riding
the quantitative easing bandwagon
and started early, ignoring IBMs
latest attack of the blues to lift the
Dow Jones industrial average by
39.05 points to 17,554.28.

Marco Pierre
White finds
Norfolk pubs
may be a
bridge too far

t has been a bad

week for celebrity
chefs (Edward
Curwen writes).
On Tuesday
Gordon Ramsay lost a
1 million legal battle
over rent on a central
London restaurant.
Now Marco Pierre
White, his one-time
mentor, may lose
1 million, with four of
his pubs in difficulties.
The Wayford Bridge
Inn and the Acle
Bridge Inn on the

Norfolk Broads and

the Chequers Inn and
Lifeboat Inn in
Thornham, Norfolk,
which operate under
the Wheelers of
St Jamess brand, were
put into administration
on Monday. The
establishments will
continue to trade while
buyers are sought or
an alternative solution
is agreed.
Zolfo Cooper, the
administrator, said that
the picturesque pub
restaurants were
experiencing cashflow
problems because of
the recent challenging
economic
environment.
The pubs are
subsidiaries of Horatio
Inns and Mr White is a
director of the

AHDB meat services

Average fatstock prices at representative
markets
(p/kg lw)
Pig
Lamb
Cattle
GB
75.79
unq
194.58
(+/-)
+0.00
+3.16
Eng/Wales
(+/-)
Scotland
(+/-)

75.79
+75.79

188.44
-3.26

193.13
+2.39

unq

190.97
-0.47

205.55
+8.77

London Metal Exchange

(Official)
Cash

3mth

15mth

Copper Gde A ($/tonne)

5630.0-5630.5
5599.5-5600.0

7310.0-7320.0

Lead ($/tonne)
1861.5-1862.0

1874.0-1875.0

1980.0-1985.0

Zinc Spec Hi Gde ($/tonne)

2090.0-2090.5
2094.0-2094.5

1943.0-1948.0

Tin ($/tonne)
19120.0-19125.0

19225.0-19275.0

Alum Hi Gde ($/tonne)

1830.5-1831.0
1832.0-1832.5
Nickel ($/tonne)
14760.0-14770.0 14850.0-14900.0

19265.0-19315.0
2280.0-2285.0
18770.0-18870.0

company. According to
its latest annual
accounts, filed in
December 2013, the
group owes him over
1 million and has bank
debts of 8.1 million.
Nick Cropper, of
Zolfo Cooper, said:
We believe the
businesses are
attractive to a range of
potential buyers and
we welcome
expressions of interest
from third parties to
acquire any or all of
the sites. He also
expressed thanks to
the staff for their
continued support
and professionalism
during this process.
A spokesman for
Marco Pierre White
did not respond to a
request for comment.

retailing

Ashleys various shades of blue

fter Mike
Ashley sold
15.4 million
Sports Direct
International shares,
the speculation was
all about what he
might do with the
proceeds.
The sale of nearly
2.6 per cent of his
Footsie trainer
empire, at 720p a
share and handled by
Goldman Sachs,
netted the Newcastle
United owner a touch
shy of 111 million.
While the favourite
theory was that he
might extend a
10 million emergency
loan to Rangers
International, a move
that effectively would

Mike Ashley: planning

a move to buy more
Debenhams shares?

deliver Mr Ashley
control of the
cash-strapped
Scottish football
club, Barclays floated
another idea.
Coincidental, perhaps,
and maybe nothing
at all, but the banks
analysts noted that

by AHLs recovery. After

Largely, markets across Europe
nearly doubling last year,
were buoyed by an
Man shares have pushed on
expectation that the
follow us
further in 2015. They were
European Central Bank will
on twitter
unruffled by last weeks
finally wheel out full-blown
for updates
turmoil in the currency
@timesbusiness quantitative easing today to
markets sparked by the Swiss
try to stave off deflation
central banks decision to scrap
across the eurozone. As
the francs peg against the euro
already demonstrated conclusively
and they were a further 10p better at in Britain and America, QE is
172p yesterday after a shove by
supportive of share prices generally.
Morgan Stanley.
Strength on Wall Street helped, too,
Anil Sharma, the banks analyst,
as did decent figures from companies
thought that the market was
quoted in London. Pearson, the book,
underestimating the likely
newspaper and textbook publisher,
performance fees from clients earned
added 60p to 12.96 after its forecast
by AHL last year. That, and his
for 2014 earnings proved surprisingly
expectation of a $220 million share
strong.
buyback, delivering Man a hefty 9 per
Not as many Americans are taking
cent yield this year, went down well
Greyhound buses, but FirstGroups
and Man contributed to the
British bus and train business more
126.8-point improvement by the
than made up for that. The shares
FTSE 250 to 16,253.3.
were 7p higher at 109p.
Its bigger cousin, the FTSE 100, ran
Worries about Afrens finances saw
on 107.9 points to 6,728, its highest
its shares tank 18.6 per cent to 21p.
since early December after extending
Meanwhile, Genel Energy, the oil
its winning streak to five trading days.
and gas explorer co-founded and

headed by Tony Hayward, the former

chief executive of BP, and exporting
from the contested Kurdish region of
Iraq, rose 23p to 688p after its trading
update showed strong production,
although the $80 million of
exploration writedowns was more
than expected.
On AIM, ScotGold Resources,
which is prospecting for precious
metal in the Highlands, jumped by
28.6 per cent amid applause for its
latest, higher estimate of resources at
its Cononish gold project. The
4 million minnow, which is also
quoted in Australia, is backed by Nat
Le Roux, the Scots-born former boss
of the spreadbetting group IG, who
owns 43.7 per cent of the shares.
Finally, Optibiotix Health, a
17.6 million food sciences company
floated at 8p a share last August,
jumped another 9.6 per cent to 24p,
a record. It is entering a 50-50 joint
venture with a Dutch food research
group to make and sell weight
management yogurt.

Gold/Precious
metals (US dollars per ounce)

Money rates %

Dollar rates

Base Rates Clearing Banks: 0.50 Finance House 1.0 ECB Refi 0.05 US Fed Fd 0-0.25

Bullion: Open $1292.05

Close $1290.42-1290.93 High $1304.48
Low $1285.28
AM $1298.00 PM $1293.50
Krugerrand $1277.00-1355.00
(845.75-897.41)
Platinum $1280.00 (847.74)
Silver $18.18 (12.04)
Palladium $776.00 (513.94)

Halifax Mortgage Rate 3.5

Treasury Bills (Dis) Buy: 1 mth 0.35; 3mth 0.41. Sell: 1 mth 0.30; 3 mth 0.39

Australia
Canada
Denmark
Euro
Hong Kong
Japan
Malaysia
Norway
Singapore
Sweden
Switzerland

1.2351-1.2353
1.2373-1.2373
6.4243-6.4268
0.8640-0.8644
7.7501-7.7514
118.02-118.03
3.6110-3.6150
7.6185-7.6218
1.3360-1.3367
8.1837-8.1885
0.8630-0.8633

Argentina peso
Australia dollar
Bahrain dinar
Brazil real
Euro
Hong Kong dollar
India rupee
Indonesia rupiah
Kuwait dinar KD
Malaysia ringgit
New Zealand dollar
Singapore dollar
S Africa rand
U A E dirham

13.004-13.007
1.8649-1.8652
0.5656-0.5734
3.9260-3.9411
1.3045-1.3050
11.702-11.704
92.826-93.035
18880-19526
0.4432-0.4459
5.3544-5.5631
1.9921-1.9936
2.0169-2.0182
17.421-17.449
5.5373-5.5438

Interbank Rates
Clearer CDs
Clearer CDs
Eurodollar Deps
Eurodollar CDs

European money
deposits %

1 mth
2 mth
3 mth
6 mth
12 mth
0.5038
0.5278
0.5631
0.6878
0.9628
0.55-0.45 0.55-0.45 0.60-0.50 0.78-0.63 1.05-0.90
0.55-0.45 0.55-0.45 0.60-0.50 0.78-0.63 1.05-0.90
0.22-0.40 0.30-0.45 0.35-0.50 0.40-0.60 0.76-0.86
0.18-0.10 0.20-0.14 0.25-0.18 0.40-0.25 0.55-0.40

Sterling spot and forward rates

Currency
1mth

3mth

6mth

12mth

0.10

0.15

0.23

0.48

0.50

0.56

0.69

0.96

-0.15

-0.08

0.01

0.15

Dollar
Sterling
Euro

Mkt Rates for

Copenhagen
Euro
Montreal
New York
Oslo
Stockholm
Tokyo
Zurich

Range
9.6341-9.7589
1.3129-1.2966
1.8217-1.8732
1.5081-1.5176
11.409-11.654
12.178-12.414
177.07-179.79
1.2847-1.3295

Close
9.7010-9.7023
1.3050-1.3046
1.8680-1.8682
1.5098-1.5099
11.502-11.509
12.356-12.364
178.14-178.22
1.3023-1.3032

1 month
84ds
4pr
3pr
4ds
76pr
49ds
10ds
51ds
Premium = pr

3 month
240ds
12pr
10pr
10ds
183pr
168ds
33ds
100ds
Discount = ds

Other Sterling

proceeds from the

sale equate to about
13.2 per cent of
Debenhams. Sports
Direct has a 12.7 per
cent exposure to the
department stores
group through put
options, a large
proportion of which
expire between here
and March.
Sports Direct,
potentially through
Mike Ashley, would
now have the money
to buy the associated
DEB shares, Barclays
noted. He owns stakes
in Tesco, House of
Fraser and MySale.
Debenhams edged
p higher to 72p,
while Sports Direct
fell 44p to 716p.

Exchange rates
Australia $
Canada $
Denmark Kr
Egypt
Euro
Hong Kong $
Hungary
Indonesia
Israel Shk
Japan Yen
New Zealand $
Norway Kr
Poland
Russia
S Africa Rd
Sweden Kr
Switzerland Fr
Turkey Lira
USA $

Bank buys Bank sells

2.020
1.760
1.990
1.730
10.470
9.180
12.230
9.730
1.430
1.250
12.650
11.130
458.080
376.880
21993.800
17543.500
6.560
5.600
194.890
168.790
2.210
1.870
12.580
10.870
6.260
5.130
n/a
n/a
19.570
16.580
13.220
11.760
1.460
1.250
3.930
3.140
1.660
1.450

Rates for banknotes and traveller's cheques as

traded by Royal Bank of Scotland plc yesterday

Data as shown is
for information
purposes only. No offer is made by
Morningstar or this publication

42

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Register
Obituaries

John Bayley

Scholar and literary critic who achieved greater fame for caring for his wife Iris Murdoch when she had Alzheimers disease
TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

John Bayley was inseparable, both in

the public mind and in those of his
friends, from his wife, the novelist Iris
Murdoch. He was a distinguished and
highly regarded writer and critic in his
own right, but when Murdoch fell ill
with Alzheimers disease, he looked
after her with a devotion that was
reflected in his book, Iris: A Memoir,
which he published disturbingly in
the eyes of some just before she died
in 1999.
He published two further books
about himself and Murdoch after her
death Iris and her Friends, and Widowers House, the latter creating some
scandal when he admitted that there
was an element of fantasy in it about two
women who wanted to go to bed with
the elderly widower. His name reached
an audience he could never have anticipated when the film, Iris, based on his
first memoir, was released in 2002. Kate
Winslet played the young Iris and Judi
Dench played the elderly novelist suffering from Alzheimers, while Hugh
Bonneville and Jim Broadbent played
the young and the old Bayley. Bonneville captured him particularly well.
All of this attention perhaps began to
disguise the fact that Bayley was a
remarkable man. He was a brilliant and
original literary critic, wittily at war
with the main currents of literary criticism in his time, and an inspiring tutor
at Oxford, provocative and idiosyncratic. He was also a prolific and much
sought-after reviewer for newspapers
and magazines.
Stories of his absentmindedness and
dishevelled appearance were legion;
how he would stand up in the middle of
a tutorial and go out for a cup of coffee
or, while driving, turn his head to carry
on a conversation with a passenger in
the back seat, to the alarm of all. Once,
at a party, he and Murdoch were in

He fell in love with Iris

when he saw her riding
a bicycle in Oxford
conversation with Martin Amis when
he took an olive out of his pocket and
offered it to his wife: Have one. Theyre
frightfully good.
As a critic he was the complete opposite of this ragged persona: shrewd,
funny and with a good line in puncturing the pretensions of writers. He once
accused Anthony Burgess of verbal
doodling and could deliver a sharp
put-down. He had, said one writer, the
enviable knack for saying the sorts of
clever things that make his readers feel
less rather than more stupid.
John Oliver Bayley was born in Lahore, where his father was in business,
in 1925 and educated at Highfield
School, Liphook, Hampshire, and at
Eton, where his mother came to live in
the country near him. He served in the
Grenadier Guards and in intelligence
from 1943 to 1947, and his excellent first
novel, In Another Country, published in
1954, was based on his experiences in
the Army. He did not take up fiction
again for another 40 years. After the war
he went up to New College as a scholar.
He gained a first in English, and after
some brief teaching appointments in
Oxford went back to New College as
fellow and tutor in English in 1955. He

Bayley and Murdoch together at home a few months before her death. Below, in Dorset in the summer of 1962

stayed there until 1973, greatly liked by

the dons and the undergraduates,
though unconventional in his teaching
style, wearing yellowing vests that
peeped out above his shirt collar. He
liked to cultivate the appearance of a
somewhat soiled dandy.
In 1973 he was appointed the first
Warton Professor of English Literature,
and moved to St Catherines College,
where he won the same affection, both
from the postgraduates he supervised
and from his academic colleagues. Bay-

ley would entertain in the senior common room, offering his guests a strange
mixture of different sherries that he
had experimented with and found to
his taste though at times such as
these his friends were often unsure
whether or not he was teasing them.
He fell in love with Murdoch when he
was looking out of an Oxford college
window and saw her riding past on her
bicycle. He immediately knew that he
wanted to marry her, though he had
never seen her before, and did so in

1956. He gave a vivid account of their

courtship in Iris: A Memoir. Bayley was
something of a sexual innocent; Murdoch was most definitely not. He admitted that sex hardly interested him at the
time and she continued to have affairs.
It was a tender but strange marriage,
conducted largely through private baby
talk (although they agreed from the
start not to have children) and jokes and
playful rituals, and indeed in Iris and
The Friends, Bayley wrote that he used
to think: Here I am married to the most
intelligent woman in England, and we
have never had a serious conversation.
They lived for years in a beautiful but
conspicuously untidy house in Steeple
Aston. Visitors were often appalled by
the squalor, but the couple regarded the
arrival of rats more with amusement
than alarm. In Murdochs final years,
their garden became so overgrown that
their car was lost in a tangle of weeds
and brambles. They bathed in a tiny
swimming pool in the garden, looked
over by a statue of Neptune. On one occasion burglars stole two wooden chests
that had been stuffed with LPs. Visitors
noticed months later that the records
were still on the floor where the thieves
had left them.

They later moved to Oxford and

when Murdoch became a victim of very
severe Alzheimers, Bayley looked after
her night and day for four years with exceptional devotion, and acknowledged
that in a curious way he was as happy
caring for her as if she were a child. He
took solace in familiar things, still
visiting a favourite stretch of the
Thames where they had always swam.
He soon realised that despite her
mental deterioration she was perfectly
safe in the water.
His dedication did not waver as her
condition worsened. They abandoned
any form of personal hygiene and when
Murdoch eventually lost control of her
bodily functions he was still happy to
clean up after her. Her terror of
strangers became so acute that he refused offers of outside help and it was
not until the final weeks of her life that
she went into a nursing home. Bayley
was by her side, holding her hand, when
she died.
The following year he married one of
their friends, Audhild Villers, who was
always known as Audi. It was a happy
union as they divided their time
between Oxford and Lanzarote. She
moved into his house and imposed
some order and cleanliness amid the
chaos. She also coped admirably with
the furore that followed the publication
of Widowers House in 2001 and Bayleys ambiguity about what was fact and
what was fiction in his amorous
encounters.
The success of his books and the film
gave Bayley a high public profile but it
did not make him immune to criticism.
Dame Muriel Spark was outspoken on
his decision to write about her illness
and he was even more sharply attacked
in AN Wilsons book Iris Murdoch as I
Knew Her. His friends, including
Murdochs biographer Peter Conradi,
rallied around.
Bayleys first book of criticism, The
Romantic Survival, came out in 1956, but
it was in The Characters of Love, in 1961,
that his distinctive critical approach
first showed itself clearly. The book was
full of a fine scorn for all the modern
killjoys that critics had invented
symbolic figures, moral exemplars,
embodied ideas.
He read widely, writing a book on
Tolstoy and the Novel (after he had
taught himself Russian) in 1966, a book
on Pushkin in 1971, and An Essay on
Hardy in 1978. These books brought out
with great finesse the distinctiveness of
each author, something as precious to
Bayley as the distinctiveness of each
character in a novel. He had a marvellously sharp mind and his ideas on
fiction coincided with his wifes, and
they would do a double-act on their lecture tours. But he was dismayed when
Terry Eagleton, a man of opposite
views, succeeded him in his professorial
chair.
He never forgot his first sight of Iris
Murdoch, cycling down the Woodstock
Road. A very ordinary looking girl I
thought, on an old-fashioned bicycle.
Im not sure it wasnt the bicycle I liked
most. I thought thats just the sort of girl
that would do.
John Bayley, CBE, Warton Professor of
English Literature at Oxford, 1974-92, was
born on March 27, 1925. He died on
January 12, 2015, aged 89

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

43

FGM

Register

John Duckworth

Physicist who survived being strafed by the Luftwaffe to drive forward major post-war projects in defence and nuclear power

John Duckworth spent a career cutting

through red tape to ensure that engineering projects crucial for Britains defence, power generation and competitiveness were delivered. Over a 40year-period, the physics graduate from
Wadham College, Oxford battled
against the system to push through vital scientific innovations on British soil.
What would be a distinguished
career was almost extinguished in its
infancy. While he and a colleague were
installing a radar station on the Isle of
Wight on one hot day in 1940, they took
their sandwiches to eat on a step outside. They assumed that an aircraft
buzzing around out at sea was one of
ours and gave the pilot a cheery wave
but it turned out to be German plane
that suddenly dived towards them. The
radar experts flung away their sandwiches and ran as machinegun bullets
kicked up the earth around them.
Duckworth narrowly escaped with
his life to play an important role in the
development of Britains wartime radar.
He later oversaw development of the
guidance and control systems of the
Bloodhound surface-to-air missile that
was Britains last line of defence against
Soviet bombers for four decades. He became Britains Atom Chief, project
managing the first generation of British
nuclear power stations in the 1950s, and
was credited with refining the hovercraft into a commercial product.
Such a track record made him the
perfect person to mastermind the
transformation of the Science Museum
from a collection of objects in glass
boxes to one of the earliest providers of
interactive displays.
Duckworth was a key figure in the
early harnessing of nuclear power as an
energy source. As part of Sir John Cockcrofts team at the Canadian Atomic
Energy Research Establishment at
Chalk River, Ontario, he was told to sit
close to Bruno Pontecorvo, the distinguished Italian physicist who later defected to the Soviet Union and whom
Duckworth found delightful, charming, extrovert.
He returned to the UK in 1947 to help
establish the new Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Ox-

Duckworth played a key role in the development of the Bloodhound missile

fordshire. There, his work included the

design of a linear accelerator to produce
a pulse of neutrons of greater intensity
than that being developed by the Americans. Just before Britain stopped collaborating with the Soviets on nuclear
energy, Duckworth made several trips to
Russia. When liberal amounts of vodka
were provided, he noticed that Russian
scientists were being served from different bottles. As a waiter walked by, he
helped himself to a shot from the Russians bottle. It was water.
Despite such intrigues, he grew tired
of research and became chief engineer
for Ferranti from 1950, working on the

Bloodhound missile. With its top speed

of Mach 2.7 and range of 85 kilometres,
it was installed at many British bases.
He returned to the public sector in
1954 at the Central Electricity Generating Board where he was in charge of the
design, building and operation of Britains first generation of nuclear power
stations. Having sent out tender documents, seven tonnes of paper arrived
from tenderers setting out their bids.
He told his team to cut each proposal
down to a one-page summary.
He gained a reputation as a man who
could get things done and in 1959 was
appointed managing director of the
National Research Development Corporation, founded in 1948 by the Attlee
government to transform inventions
into commercial products. He was
hard-headed enough to place a contract for the new hovercraft with Saunders-Roe rather than allow its inventor,
the engineer Christopher Cockerell,
endless state funds to refine the design.
The hovercraft was launched as a commercial service in 1962. One of his final
triumphs was the development of the
Lintott magnet, which was later used in
the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
during experiments that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
John Clifford Duckworth was born in
London in 1916. His father, Harold, was
a scientist and entrepreneur who developed a revolutionary face cream called
Radion. His young son recalled bottling
up the cream with his mother and sisters. It had a considerable vogue as a
beauty treatment in the 1930s, but just
as it seemed that vast fortunes were to
be reaped, the radioactive component
of Radion was suddenly seen to be a
danger, and alarmed potential customers. Shares plummeted.
Educated at Kings College School,
Wimbledon, Duckworth won an exhibition to study physics at Wadham College. In 1939 he joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment,
working on the early development of
radar, which was the key to air defence
during the Battle of Britain. At RAF
Poling in Sussex he met Dorothy Nancy Anne Willis, a WAAF sergeant in
charge of a radar operating crew. They

married in 1942 and had three sons:

John, a lawyer; Philip, a fine art consultant and lecturer; and Robert, a financial
software consultant, who all survive
him. Dorothy died in 2000.
In retirement in Cornwall he enjoyed
walking his dogs and cultivating parsnips and peas in his garden. His autobiography, Weighty Matters, Worthy
People, was published in 2007.
For some of his working life he used
an office in Bankside power station and,
as a thorough-going man of science
who thought music and art were a
complete waste of time, he deplored
the power stations metamorphosis into
Tate Modern after 2000. The decision
not to retain even one of the magnificent steam turbines failed even his dry
sense of humour. It particularly saddened him when the empty spaces
began to be filled with conceptual art.
Duckworth was an enthusiastic participant in the London to Brighton run
for classic cars. On one outing, in a 1904
Rolls-Royce, the car halted at a red traf-

He took a shot of the

Russian scientists
vodka. It was water
fic light, and the engine died. He realised that they had stopped on a steep
camber and that the cars fuel line ran
transversely under the vehicle from the
tank to the engine. Willing hands were
solicited from among the watching
crowd to get the vehicle levelled up.
The petrol supply was resumed and the
engine coughed into life to loud cheers.
As chairman of the Science Museum
advisory council from 1972, he helped
to develop interactive exhibits such as
Launch Pad (1986) where children
could conduct their own experiments. Duckworth took his own grandchildren to the revamped museum and
hoped that it would inspire many
others to devote their life to a pursuit
that had given him so much joy.
John Duckworth, physicist, was born on

December 27, 1916. He died on January 8,

2015, aged 98

Francesca Hilton

Daughter of Conrad Hilton and Zsa Zsa Gabor who missed out on the family fortune and based a comedy routine on her family

Francesca Hilton did well to live to the

age of 67. As the daughter of actress Zsa
Zsa Gabor and hotel magnate Conrad
Hilton, she was raised amid all the trappings of showbiz offspring, with seven
stepfathers, endless court cases,
paparazzi interest and failed attempts
to sustain a career. And although she
described herself as an heiress, she
never in fact received an inheritance.
Unlike her grand-nieces Paris and
Nicky Hilton, who she dismissed as
pole dancers and porn stars, she had
neither money of her own nor the
opportunity to translate her famous
parentage into cash. On her fathers
death in 1979 she was left just $100,000.
Her half-brother Barron, Pariss grandfather, successfully contested the will,
having taken over the family business
in place of his elder brother Nicky, a
former husband of Elizabeth Taylor
who also had an affair with Zsa Zsa.
When Francesca sued for more, she lost
even the original amount because of a
disinheritance clause.
She tried to look beyond it, saying:
You cant live in the past. That was his
decision. She tried acting, with small
parts in A Safe Place in 1971 and Cleopatra Jones, as well as photography and
publicity. She briefly took a job on the

front desk at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

When I gave them my name they said,
Surrrre, she recalled.
In 2008, she took up stand-up
comedy, drawing on her family for material. She opened her act by announcing, I am the original Hilton heiress.
Im older, wiser, smarter and Im
damn wider. Other lines included, My
mother and I, were the best of friends
now that were the same age, and, My
father was Conrad Hilton. Some of you
have our towels. Keep em!
In later years, much of her time was
spent in dispute over the care of her
mother, who suffered from dementia
and the effects of a 2002 car crash. Her
combatant was her mothers ninth husband, Frdric Prinz von Anhalt, the
son of a German policeman who was
adopted in 1980 by a princess. He had
himself been married six times before
his wedding to Zsa Zsa in 1986 and was
given to making curious announcements to the press, suggesting first that
he wanted the 94-year-old Zsa Zsa to
have a surrogate child, and then that he
planned to have her body plastinated by
the anatomist Gunther von Hagens
after her death.
In 2005, Anhalt and Gabor sued her
for elder abuse and fraud, saying that

GETTY IMAGES

Hilton, right, and her mother Zsa Zsa Gabor at a Hollywood event in 1983

Francesca had taken out a loan of

$3.75m against her mothers house in
Beverly Hills, and had stolen $2m of it.
Hilton countered by accusing von
Anhalt of manipulating her mother in
order to access her money, but the case
was dismissed after Gabor failed to turn
up in court. Seven years later, Hilton attempted unsuccessfully to take over her

mothers financial affairs via a legal

attorney. From then on, she was allowed
to visit her mother for one hour a week.
Constance Francesca Gabor Hilton
was born in 1947 in New York, the only
child of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Conrad Hilton
was Zsa Zsas second husband, who
maried her in 1942. They were separated by the time of Francescas concep-

tion, which Zsa Zsa described as rape.

Rumours abounded that the real father
was in fact her next husband, the actor
George Sanders.
Hiltons early childhood was spent as
a photo opportunity for her mother,
dressed up in various world capitals or
competing together in horse shows. Life
magazine reported on her 11th birthday
party, where guests arrived in formal
evening dress, drank ginger ale and
grenadine cocktails and danced till 10
oclock. Memories of her father were
limited. Wed occasionally have lunches at LEscoffier with my mom, she
recalled in 2008.
In adulthood, she briefly dated Peter
Sellers. In 1993 she married Joseph Piche at the Las Vegas Hilton, but they divorced in 2010. By the time of her death,
believed to be from a stroke or heart
attack, she was said to be living on social
security and handouts from her
mothers favourite furrier, and to be
sleeping in a motel or even her car.
Nonetheless, she was writing an autobiography, to be entitled Hotels,
Diamonds and Me.
Francesca Hilton, heiress, was born on
March 10, 1947. She died on January 5,
2015, aged 67

44

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Television & Radio/Announcements

Births, Marriages and Deaths

Todays television
BBC ONE

6.00am Breakfast 9.15 Wanted

Down Under 10.00 Homes Under
the Hammer 11.00 Saints and
Scroungers 11.45 Helicopter Heroes
Down Under 12.15pm Bargain Hunt
1.00 BBC News; Weather 1.30 BBC
Regional News; Weather 1.45
Doctors 2.15 Father Brown 3.00
Escape to the Country 3.45 James
Martin: Home Comforts 4.30
Antiques Road Trip 5.15 Pointless
6.00 BBC News 6.30 BBC Regional
News Programmes 7.00 The One
Show 7.30 EastEnders 8.00 Room
101 8.30 EastEnders 9.00 Death in
Paradise 10.00 BBC News 10.25
BBC Regional News; Weather
10.35 Question Time 11.35 This
Week 12.25am-6.00 BBC News

BBC TWO

6.05am Homes Under the Hammer

7.05 Saints and Scroungers 7.50
Helicopter Heroes Down Under 8.20
Sign Zone 10.35 HARDtalk 11.00
BBC News 11.30 BBC World News
12.00 Daily Politics 1.00pm Live
International Bowls: The World
Indoor Championships 5.15 Flog It!
6.00 Eggheads 6.30 Great British
Railway Journeys 7.00 Antiques
Road Trip 8.00 Winterwatch 2015.
Last in the series 9.00 Winterwatch
Unsprung 2015 9.30 Surviving the
Holocaust: Freddie Knollers War
10.30 Newsnight 11.20 The
Super-Rich and Us 12.20am
International Bowls 1.20-1.50 Sign
Zone: Trouble at Tesco Panorama
4.00-6.05 BBC Learning Zone

ITV London

6.00am Good Morning Britain 8.30

Lorraine 9.25 The Jeremy Kyle
Show 10.30 This Morning 12.30pm
Loose Women 1.30 ITV News;
Weather 2.00 Judge Rinder 3.00
Tipping Point 4.00 Mel & Sue 5.00
The Chase 6.00 Regional News
6.30 ITV News; Weather 7.00
Emmerdale 7.30 The Kyle Files 8.00
Emmerdale 8.30 Birds of a Feather
9.00 Bring Back Borstal 10.00 ITV
News at Ten and Weather 10.30
Regional News 10.40 The Late
Debate 11.10 Kids Behind Bars
12.10am Jackpot247. Interactive
gaming 3.00 The Jeremy Kyle Show
USA 3.40 ITV Nightscreen
5.05-6.00 The Jeremy Kyle Show

7.00 Channel 4 News 8.00

Location, Location, Location 9.00
Cucumber 10.00 Josie: The Most
Hated Woman in Britain? 11.00 24
Hours in Police Custody 12.05am
The CCTV Traffic Wardens: Caught
on Camera 1.00 One Born Every
Minute 1.55 Weighing Up the Enemy
2.50 Food Unwrapped 3.15 Low Pay
Britain: Channel 4 Dispatches 3.45
SuperScrimpers 4.40 Deal or No
Deal 5.35-6.00 Face the Clock

Sky1

2.30 Live Dubai International

Racing Carnival. Coverage of the
third meeting from the Meydan
Racecourse 6.30 Ringside 7.30
Barclays Premier League World
8.00 Capital One Cup Football 9.00
Ringside 10.00 A League of Their
Own 11.00 Capital One Cup
Football 1.00am SPFL Round-Up
1.30 Barclays Premier League World
2.00 Ringside 3.00 Live Tour Down
Under Cycling. Stage four
5.00-6.00 Football League Gold

Sky Sports 2

6.00am Brainiac: Science Abuse

7.00 Inside RAF Brize Norton 8.00
All Aboard: East Coast Trains 9.00
NCIS: Los Angeles 11.00 Hawaii
Five-0 1.00pm NCIS: Los Angeles
3.00 Emergency Animal Rescue
4.00 Futurama 5.00 The Simpsons
5.30 Futurama 6.30 The Simpsons
8.00 David Attenboroughs
Galapagos 9.00 Ross Kemp:
Extreme World 10.00 Ascension.
Sci- drama 11.25 An Idiot Abroad
12.25am Hawaii Five-0 2.15 NCIS:
Los Angeles 4.00 Road Wars
5.00-6.00 Stargate Atlantis

6.00am Ricky Ponting Masterclass

6.30 Capital One Cup Football
7.30 One-Day International Cricket
8.30 Live Big Bash Cricket: Sydney
Sixers v Sydney Thunder 12.00
One-Day International Cricket
1.00pm Best of ICC WT20 2.00 Big
Bash Cricket 5.30 Best of ICC
WT20 6.00 ATP Tour Uncovered
6.30 Big Bash Cricket 9.55 Live
One-Day International Cricket:
New Zealand v Sri Lanka 3.00am6.00 Live One-Day International
Cricket: Australia v England

BBC World

Sky Sports 3

6.00am BBC World News 6.30

World Business Report 6.45 BBC
World News 7.45 World Business
Report 8.00 BBC World News
8.45 World Business Report 9.00
BBC World News 9.30 HARDtalk
10.00 BBC World News 10.30
World Business Report 10.45 Sport
Today 11.00 BBC World News 12.00
GMT 1.00pm Impact 2.30 World
Business Report 2.45 Sport Today
3.00 Global with Matthew
Amroliwala 4.30 HARDtalk 5.00
Outside Source 5.30 Focus on
Africa 6.00 Outside Source 6.30
World Business Report 6.45 Sport
Today 7.00 World News Today
8.30 World Business Report
8.45 Sport Today 9.00 Business
Edition with Tanya Beckett 9.30
HARDtalk 10.00 BBC World News
America 11.00 Newsday 11.30 Asia
Business Report 11.45 Sport Today
12.00 Newsday 12.30am Asia
Business Report 12.45 Sport Today
1.00 Newsday 1.30 Asia Business
Report 1.45 Sport Today 2.00 BBC
World News 2.30 Asia Business
Report 2.45 Sport Today 3.00 BBC
World News 3.30 Asia Business
Report 3.45 Sport Today 4.00
BBC World News 4.30 MH17: In
Search of Truth 5.00 BBC World
News 5.30 World Business Report
5.45-6.00 BBC World News

6.00am Darts Gold 7.00 Max Power

8.00 Sports Unlimited 9.00
Watersports World 10.00 Max
Power 11.00 Racing News 11.30
Fishing: Hooked on Africa 12.30pm
Sporting Heroes: Peter Reid
Interviews Allan Lamb 1.30 Darts
Gold 2.00 Capital One Cup Football
3.00 Sporting Greats 3.30 Football
Gold 3.50 Live World Handball
Championship: Germany v
Argentina (Start-time 4.00) 5.20
Football League Gold 5.50 Live
World Handball Championship:
Russia v Denmark (Start-time 6.00)
7.20 Football League Gold 7.30
Tour Down Under Cycling 9.30
WWE Presents: The Ultimate
Warrior The Ultimate Collection
10.30 WWE Main Event 11.30 ATP
Tour Uncovered 12.00 Ringside
1.00am ATP Tour Uncovered.
Tennis news 1.30 Max Power 2.30
ATP Tour Uncovered 3.00-6.00
Live One-Day International Cricket:
New Zealand v Sri Lanka

British Eurosport

6.00am Countdown 6.45 According

to Jim 7.10 The King of Queens
8.00 Frasier 9.00 Everybody Loves
Raymond 10.00 Undercover Boss
11.00 Car SOS 12.00 Channel 4
News Summary 12.05pm Come
Dine with Me 1.05 Four in a Bed
2.10 A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun
3.10 Countdown 4.00 Deal or No
Deal 5.00 Come Dine with Me
5.30 The Simpsons 6.30 Hollyoaks

6.00am Football League Gold

7.00 WWE: Smackdown 8.00 Tour
Down Under Cycling 10.00 Football
Gold 11.00 Capital One Cup
Football 12.00 Tour Down Under
Cycling 2.00pm Sporting Greats

7.45am Live Australian Open Tennis.

Further coverage of day four
1.30pm Australian Open Tennis 3.45
Live Africa Cup of Nations: Zambia
v Tunisia (Kick-off 4.00) 6.00 Africa
Cup of Nations: Half-Time 6.45 Live
Africa Cup of Nations: Cape Verde v
DR Congo (Kick-off 7.00) 9.00
Africa Cup of Nations 10.00 Game,
Set and Mats 10.30 Football: Asian
Cup 11.30 Game, Set and Mats
12.00 Live Australian Open Tennis.
Day ve from Melbourne Park
2.00am-7.45 Live Australian Open
Tennis. Coverage of day ve

Radio 4

BBC World Service

Radio 3

Channel 4

Sky Sports 1

Todays radio

5.30am News 5.43 Prayer 5.45

Farming 5.58 Tweet of the Day 6.00
Today 8.30 (LW) Yesterday in
Parliament 9.00 In Our Time 9.45
(LW) Daily Service 9.45 Book of the
Week 10.00 Womans Hour 11.00
From Our Own Correspondent 11.30
The Real MacColl 12.00 News
12.01pm (LW) Shipping 12.04 A
History of Ideas 12.15 You and Yours
1.00 The World at One 1.45
Churchills Other Lives (r) 2.00 The
Archers (r) 2.15 Drama 3.00 Open
Country 3.27 Appeal (r) 3.30 Open
Book (r) 4.00 The Film Programme
4.30 BBC Inside Science 5.00 PM
5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00 News
6.30 Bridget Christie Minds the Gap
7.00 The Archers 7.15 Front Row
7.45 The Corrections 8.00 The
Report 8.30 In Business 9.00 BBC
Inside Science (r) 9.30 In Our Time
10.00 The World Tonight 10.45
Book at Bedtime: Curtain Call 11.00
Colin Hoults Carnival of Monsters
11.30 Today in Parliament 12.30am
Book of the Week (r) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As BBC World
Service 5.20-5.30 Shipping

5.00am Newsday 8.30 Business

Daily 8.50 Witness 9.00 News 9.06
The Thought Show 10.00 World
Update 11.00 News 11.06 Outside
Source 12.00 News 12.06pm
Outlook 1.00 News 1.06 Global
Business 1.30 Healthcheck 2.00
Newshour 3.00 News 3.06 Business
Daily 3.23 The Essential: From Our
Own Correspondent 3.30 Sport
Today 4.00 The Newsroom 4.30
Assignment 5.00 The Newsroom
5.30 World Business Report 6.00
World Have Your Say 6.50 News
About Ebola 7.00 The Newsroom
7.30 Science in Action. Science and
technology news 8.00 News 8.06
Global Business. 8.30 Assignment.
9.00 Newshour. The stories behind
the latest headlines 10.00 News
10.06 The Newsroom 10.30 World
Business Report. 11.00 News
11.06 Outlook 12.00 The Newsroom
12.20am Sports News 12.30 Science
in Action 1.00 News 1.06 Business
Matters 2.00 The Newsroom
2.30 World Football 3.00 News
3.06 Outlook 4.00 Newsday
4.30-5.00 Science in Action

6.30am Breakfast 9.00 Essential

Classics. With Rob Cowan 12.00
Composer of the Week: Franz
Joseph Haydn 1.00pm News 1.02
Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert. The
Atos Trio and Emerson Quartet
perform chamber music by Mozart
and Smetana in a recital given at
the 2014 Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Chamber Music Series
at St Georges Hall. (r) 2.00
Afternoon on 3. Bergs Wozzeck,
with the BBC Scottish Symphony
Orchestra 4.30 In Tune. With the
jazz group Empirical and the
harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani
6.30 Composer of the Week: Franz
Joseph Haydn (r) 7.30 Radio 3 in
Concert: Celebrating Simon Rattle.
The CBSO and Simon Rattle
perform Beethovens Symphonies
Nos 6 and 7 10.00 Free Thinking.
Daisy Hay discusses her biography
of Benjamin Disraeli and his wife
10.45 The Essay: The Book That
Changed Me. Lolita Chakrabarti
reects on A Tale of Two Cities by
Charles Dickens 11.00 Late Junction
12.30am-6.30 Through the Night

thetimes.co.uk/announcements

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

45

FGM

Games
Bridge Andrew Robson

Word Watching Paul Dunn

The 2014 Gold Cup semifinal was a Dealer: South, Vulnerability: North-South
nail-biting affair for your colum Q 9 8 7 6 4 Advanced
nists team (Allfrey). We were cruis- Teams
A 7 2
ing to victory until some brilliant
8 6
play by the opposing Mason team
5 3
pegged back our lead. We won by a
A 5 2
K J 10 3
N
paltry six imps (thats about a part10 8 5
6 3
W E
score) over the 64 boards.
4
Q J 7 3 2
S
KQ J 10 9 2 8 7
Our opponent (sitting South)
will be kicking himself for a rare
KQ J 9 4
careless moment on todays deal
A K 10 9 5
from the match. Make 4 and his
A 6 4
team would have reached the final.
S
W
N
E
West led the king of clubs,
1
2
2
Dbl(1)
declarer ducking and continued
4
End
with a second club. Declarer won
the ace and tried the ace-king of (1) Take-out.
diamonds, not best but understandContract: 4 , Opening Lead: K
able. West ruffed and would have
beaten 4 by returning a trump. In dummy sheds a spade.
practice he led a third (high) club and
We have reached this ending,
we have reached the key moment.
with West on lead and declarer
At the table declarer ruffed with needing all four tricks:
dummys two of hearts. A grateful
Q 9 8
2
East overruffed withe the three
and promptly returned the six. It
was hopeless for declarer from
A
K
N
here. He won in hand, ruffed a dia6 3
W E
mond, ruffed a spade, drew
Q
S
10 9 2 trumps, but had to concede two
diamonds at the end. Down two.
KQ J
Could you overruff dummy,
10
asked declarer to me at the end?
Im afraid not, I said not wishing West does best to lead a club, but a
to cause mental anguish.
spade goes from dummy and East
Say declarer (strongly suspecting has no winning play. Throw a diathat East held no more clubs given mond and declarer ruffs, draws
Wests 2 bid) ruffs the third club trumps and cashes the ten of diawith dummys seven (a play that monds. Throw a spade and declarcould hardly cost). This wins and he er ruffs and peacefully ruffs the
now ruffs a spade and leads a third fifth diamond with the lowly two
diamond, ruffed by Wests eight and of hearts, scoring the last two
overruffed with dummys ace. He tricks in hand with his high hearts.
ruffs a spade and leads a fourth dia- 10 tricks and game made rather
mond, ruffed with dummys ten and elegant. andrew.robson@thetimes.co.uk

Krio
a. A small dagger b. A variety of cabbage c. An African language
Eely
a. Slippery b. East Anglian c. Unwell
Repine
a. To clad in wood b. To recant c. To be in low spirits

Russian Super-Final
There were many upsets in last
months Russian Super-Final with
seven-times champion Peter
Svidler and the talented Alexander Morozevich both limited to
50%. Even more astounding was
the complete failure for Sergei
Karjakin, a world top ten player
before this setback. The most
important development was the
emergence of the energetic new
star Igor Lysyj who delighted fans
with his high total of decisive
games.
White: Igor Lysyj
Black: Alexander Morozevich
Russian Super-Final, Kazan 2014
Bogo-Indian Defence
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 Bb4+ 4
Bd2 Be7 5 Nc3 0-0 6 a3 b6 7 e4
d5 8 cxd5 exd5 9 e5 Ne4 10 Bd3
Bb7
A safer alternative is 10 ... Nxc3
followed by ... Ba6 to exchange
Whites dangerous light-squared
bishop.
11 0-0 c5 12 Re1 Nxc3 13 Bxc3 c4
14 Bf5 Bc8 15 e6 fxe6 16 Bxe6+
Bxe6 17 Rxe6 Na6 18 Ne5 Bf6 19

Qh5 Nc7 20 Rc6 Bxe5 21 dxe5

Nb5 22 Rd1

________
rD 1 4kD]
0 D D 0p]
0RD D D]
DnDp) DQ]
DpD D D]
) G D D ]
) D )P)]
D DRD I ]

22 ... Rc8
Mistakenly aiming for nebulous, indeed non-existent, counterplay. Instead simplification by
means of 22 ... Nxc3 23 bxc3 Qe8
24 Qxe8 Raxe8 25 Rxd5 Rf5 gives
chances to draw in the endgame.
23 Rxc8 Qxc8 24 Rxd5 Qc6 25
Qd1 Nc7 26 Rd7
In addition to his extra pawn
White now has a direct attack
against the black king.
26 ... Ne6 27 Bb4 Re8 28 Rd6
Qb5 29 Bc3 Nf4 30 Qg4 Nd5 31
Rd7 g6 32 Qh3 h5 33 e6 Re7 34
Rd8+ Re8 35 Qf3 Black resigns
35 ... Rxd8 and 35 ... Nxc3 both
fail to 36 Qf7+ mating quickly.

Russian Superfinal, Kazan 2014

1
1 Lysyj
*
2 Jakovenko
1
3 Svidler

4 Nepomniachtchi
5 Khismatullin
0
6 Vitiugov
0
7 Morozevich
0
8 Zvjaginsev
1
9 Grachev

10 Karjakin
0

2
0
*

1
0

5
1

*
0
0
1

6
1

0
1
*

7
1

8
0

0
1

0
1

5
5
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4

________
bD D i D] WINNING MOVE
0 D DpD ]
D DpD D] White to play. This position is variation
Khismatullin-Zvjaginsev, Kazan
D D ! D ] from
2014.
D D DKD] Black actually won this game but avoided
DPD DPH ] a trap along the way. He is a piece up
PD D Dqg] here but White can save the day. How?
D D D D ] For up-to-the-minute information follow
my tweets on twitter.com/times_chess.
Solution right

T2 CROSSWORD No 6616
Times Quick Crossword
1

No 6616

12

13
14

15
16

17

18

19

20

Killer No 4110
14

11

14

6 Vehicle feature to aid bad

weather visibility (3,4)
7 Small unit of weight (5)
9 Check on accounts (5)
10 No longer working (7)
11 Rendition (11)
14 Corrupt person in a group
(6,5)
17 Purple ; penguin (7)
Solution to Crossword 6615
Y AWN I
O H N
O U OWN
N R
GO L D I
S
N
OMN I A C
O M L
RD PO I
U O N
L URK I
U T N
I S
AG

NG
A
ER
A
NG
E
S
N T
I
NG
M
RA

19 Hindu sky god (5)

21 Ugly being of folklore (5)
22 Without guile (7)

How you rate

12 words, average;
17, good; 21, very good;
25, excellent

12

12

30

18

17

19

Down

1 Very old (4)

2 Action of beating the feet
together in a ballet leap (8)
3 Portuguese wine trade
centre (6)
4 Electrical unit (4)
5 Way in (8)
6 Source of linen (4)
8 Swirled (6)
11 Something intended to
deceive (3-2,3)
12 Liszt wrote four such
waltzes inspired by Faust (8)
13 Align by the compass (6)
15 Antenna (6)
16 Frans , Dutch artist (4)
18 Regulation (4)
20 Sketched (4)

Check todays answers by ringing 09067 577188. Calls cost 77p per minute.

Polygon
From these letters, make
words of four or more
letters, always including
the central letter. Answers
must be in the Concise
Oxford Dictionary,
excluding capitalised
words, plurals, conjugated
verbs (past tense etc),
adverbs ending in LY,
comparatives and
superlatives.

17

12
19

E A S Y
X A O
CAR I B
U T
S
S TOK E
E R S
I NS
O A
B A L L A
T
R
AC TOR
I
O A
NEME S

Tough 33min

22

Across

9 3
5 6
3 7
3 4
7
1
9
7
8

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits
1 to 9
Solutions tomorrow, yesterdays solutions below

21
21

1 9
3 9
5 4
9 1

10

11

Difficult

2
8
5

11

19

20

8
11

17

Codeword

No 2300

Numbers are substituted for letters in the crossword grid. Below the grid is the key.
Some letters are solved. When you have completed your first word or phrase you will
have the clues to more letters. Enter them in the key grid and the main grid and check
the letters on the alphabet list as you complete them.
18

14

11

23

17

14

23

23

13

10

13

Winning Move solution

17

17

5
10

16

14

14

11

23

16

17

15
24

19

10

13

11

12

18

13

23

11

23

14
12

13

13

10

17

25

21

10

12

26

14

3
12

21

14

13

14

19

17

11

16

8
13
17

20

20

24
24

1
18

12

22

16

13

11

18
19

19

10

11
26

13

25

Krio
c. The English-based creole widely used as a lingua franca in
Sierra Leone
Eely
a. Eel-like, slippery
Repine
c. To be fretful or low-spirited through discontent

10

12

Word Watching answers

16

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits
1 to 9. The digits within the cells joined by the dotted lines add up to the printed top
left hand figure.
Within each dotted line shape, a digit CANNOT be repeated.

19

Yesterdays answers
afire, afresh, fair, fake, faker,
fakie, fakir, fare, fash, fear, feria,
fire, fish, fisher, frae, fraise,
freak, freakish, fresh, frisk, kafir,
kerf, rife, safe, seif, serf, serif,
sharif, sheaf, sherif

10

14

11

1 Qc5+! forces a perpetual check draw, eg, 1 ... Ke8 (1 ... Kg7 2 Qg5+
and the king is trapped on the g- and h-files) 2 Qc8+ Ke7 3 Qc7+
Kf6 4 Qf4+ and the black king cannot escape the checks.

Chess Raymond Keene

Sudoku No 7106

17

19

13
22

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Sudoku, Killer and Codeword solutions

1
2
5
7
6
3
9
8
4

3
9
6
8
4
2
1
5
7

7
4
8
1
9
5
6
3
2

2
8
1
3
5
7
4
6
9

No 7104

4
7
3
6
8
9
5
2
1

5
6
9
4
2
1
3
7
8

9
3
2
5
7
4
8
1
6

8
5
4
2
1
6
7
9
3

6
1
7
9
3
8
2
4
5

9
1
8
2
7
4
6
3
5

3
6
5
8
9
1
7
2
4

7
2
4
3
5
6
1
8
9

4
8
9
1
6
3
2
5
7

No 4107

1
3
2
7
4
5
8
9
6

5
7
6
9
2
8
4
1
3

8
5
1
6
3
7
9
4
2

2
4
7
5
8
9
3
6
1

6
9
3
4
1
2
5
7
8

S
C
R
U
F
F
Y

UB SO I L
A
C
I
E L I C Q
S
A
U
L AGS H I
I
D
E L L OW
O N
P
SWUM
F I
T
N
E
R
ORGAN Z A
O
E
V
T
P ADD Y
E

No 2299

Q
U
UA
Y
P
S
T U
C
S H
L
I
K
J E

U E
X
N T
R
ME
M
X E

E N
Y
UM
P
S H

DO
V
CAK E
L
R
D L E D
O
I
C T E D

46

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

times2

Are you a better person because

If youre not improving yourself in todays world you are immoral. The two
professors fighting the sinister new wellness industry talk to Helen Rumbelow

arl Cederstrm was

smoking in the park
about a metre away
from his dog when
passers-by admonished
him: How dare you
smoke in front of
your dog! they said.
They really cared about the dog.
It was around this time that
Cederstrm and his friend and writer,
Andr Spicer, started to feel that the
wellness industry was getting out of
control. Both were living in Britain
but travelling internationally for their
work as business school professors.
Both were noting the increasing
moral repugnance that blurred
together the unfit, the unemployed
and the unambitious into one fat lazy
ball to be hated. There was a new kind
of pressure, not just from magazines
and TV shows, but from bosses and
the state, to improve body and mind.
If you didnt, then well, you were
probably an unfit employee and
member of society. Whatever misery
or poverty you suffered, you deserved.
Was this crazy, or were Cederstrm
and Spicer crazy for not getting with
the programme? When I read their
angry, hilarious book, The Wellness
Syndrome, I felt like I was being shaken
awake from a dream.
Wellness, states the book, is more
than just an obsession today. Its a
moral demand . . . when health
becomes an ideology, the failure to
conform becomes a stigma.
By now Cederstrm had moved
back to his native Stockholm, so I
interviewed him by phone and
instead met Spicer for lunch
near his office at the Cass
Business School in London.
I raise my eyebrows when
he chooses a slice of white from
the bread basket. Of course, he
says, white bread is delicious.

It would be lovely if Cederstrm and

Spicer were some kind of Ozzy
Osbourne hell-raisers, burning fitness
diktats in their bongs, but the truth is
theyre clean-cut, handsome
thirtysomething men who glow with
health. This is mostly because Spicer is
from New Zealand and Cederstrm is
from Sweden, where wholesome
comes with the passport. If we think
the health message is oppressive here
in the UK, they both agree that
Scandinavia is obsessed with the idea.
And that in the upper classes on both
American coasts, they are even more
fixated, to a degree that would be
comical if it wasnt always filtering
down to British culture.
Neither man does much by way of
the health programme we are
hectored into, in January more than
ever, and they do their best not to feel
like failures as a result.
Im very much like anyone else,

Harriet Green:
up at 5.30am
for a militarystyle workout

Spicer says. I beat myself up, think

Ive no longer got all these work tasks
to do, but I should be doing all this
health stuff too. Of course its fine if
you want to look after yourself, its the
extreme amount of pressure you feel
to do so from society, thats what were
interested in. Society begins to judge
you, morally, if you dont.
Later, when I tell Cederstrm that
nothing could be more positive than
looking after yourself, he snorts down
the line. This narcissistic project
does two worrying things, he replies.
It allows us to withdraw into ourselves,
and away from difficult problems in
the wider world. And it also becomes a
way in which bosses and governments
make their problems your fault.
There is a lot of confusion between
things that help personal mood or
fitness and solving broader problems,
says Cederstrm.
Take a few events from the past

Jools Oliver:
up at 5am
for boxing

months. Harriet Green, until recently

the iconic boss of Thomas Cook, told
The Times of her expectations of
employees. They may not, like her,
have to get up at 5.30am for a
military-style workout, but her team
were tough, you need to be really
resilient, so youd better be healthy,
have a good regime. Paul Ryan, the
Republican congressman and US
presidential hopeful, gave a speech in
which he said what the poor really
needed was a life coach. Which wasnt
so far from the various attempts by
Jamie Oliver and Conservative MPs to
equate poor peoples problems with an
inability to make a good focaccia.
Oliver also gets up at 5.15am four days
a week to run to his gym to workout
before his day; his wife Jools gets up at
5am to start a gruelling workout.
Last year an All Party Parliamentary
Group on mindfulness was set up, to
apply the meditative practice to a
range of policy areas, in the spirit of
David Camerons new wellbeing
index. Happiness and health was no
longer a private matter: a washboard
stomach was a sign you were
boardroom material.
And, by extension, bosses and
leaders at work or in public life, could
plaster over serious problems with
healthy-sounding gimmicks, argues
the book. You may work far too long
hours, but the office has a smoothie
bar! You may live in an area with no
jobs, but do what the government life
coach says or your benefits will be cut!
People will look back on this era as
very much revised versions of what
wed find in 1960s and 1970s, says
Spicer. Then, doing yoga and
meditation was part of dropping out
of corporate life. Even as late at the
1980s, City bankers blew off steam by
snorting coke and drinking champagne.
I think the end point was Brit Art,
with its humour; it wasnt about being

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

47

FGM

times2

you think your body is a temple?

COVER: GETTY IMAGES. BELOW: TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARK HARRISON, JON COMPSON/THE SUNDAY TIMES, EVA DALIN, EDWIN JIMENEZ/GETTY IMAGES

Carl Cederstrm, top, and Andr

Spicer: neither does much exercise

Ten signs
that you
are a
wellness
narcissist
1 Does yoga make you
feel righteous in a way
you cant quite explain?
2 Have you ever seen
a loaf of white sliced
bread or a multipack
of crisps in someone
elses shopping basket
and used it to judge
their education and
income?
3 Were you ever
influenced to buy a
meal or drink because

shop-bought biscuits
with the same
ingredients are not,
because they are part
of fashionable and
aspirational branding?

the words supergrain,

superfood or
superdetox appeared
on the label?
4 Do you believe that
blueberries have
near-magical
properties because of
something you read
somewhere one time?
5 Do you think
home-made cupcakes
are OK, whereas

6 When you find out

that your neighbour
runs to work, do you
assume he must be a
great employee?

7 Have you or anyone in

your family got really
boring about gadgets
that track sleep/steps/
standing/heart rate?
8 Do you agree with
Arianna Huffington
that mindfulness is a
proven competitive
advantage for any
business that wants
one?
9 Do you secretly
imagine that you would
manage better than
most on the breadline,
because you would
use it as an opportunity
to walk more/eat
more porridge?
10 Do you acknowledge
that a seriously
overweight party leader
would be unelectable?

healthy in any way, Spicer says. Take

Tracey Emins unmade bed: now the
bed would be made, the occupant on
her yoga mat. The humour has gone.
By the Noughties, the culture had
changed. Beginning with the west
coast of America, wellness started to
creep into corporate life: physically,
the new Stakhanovite worker was an
exercise-addicted corporate athlete,
says Spicer; and mentally, with the
adoption of chief happiness officers,
along the lines of Google.
These 1960s movements are
transported into the corporate world.
You dont have to go to work and just
do your job. You have to self-actualise
in some way.
So wellness went from drop-out
culture to corporate culture. As
Cederstrm says, that very antiestablishment vocabulary is now used
in organisations as a way of making
yourself even more productive, which
is the great irony.
By the same token, wellness also
underwent a political shift. Sitting
on a yoga mat was once seen as a
leftie, hippie-ish thing to do. Now it
is mixed in with the right-wing idea
of the poor being responsible for their
own failings.
You see that easily in the US, with
the correlation between body size and
income, says Spicer. The whole
discourse of loss of self-control and
not taking care of your health. But the
other side to it, the way the upper
classes mark themselves out, is
extreme health obsession.
Cederstrm tells me later that he
found the chav-bashing he witnessed
during his stint working in the UK
quite shocking. This is embodied by
Vicky Pollard of Little Britain, or, as
they say in the book, an overweight,
oversexed and out-of-control
working-class girl a menace to
middle-class aesthetics and morality.
Fat-shaming shows, such as The

Biggest Loser, are designed for

middle-class audiences, they write,
who seamlessly alternate between
feelings of disgust and sadistic
amusement.
The focus of judgment is not their
occupation, income, education . . .
but food, drink, fat and f***ing.
In a funny section entitled How
Focaccia Saved Britain, the pair take
down Jamie Oliver. They are not
against better school food, but more
the audacious assumption that
serious social policy issues, such as the
educational fate of poor children in
the UK can be put aside by making
your own organic passata.
He likes to tell that story, Jamie to
the rescue, Spicer says. But he gives
these very small solutions. Like
somehow telling someone how to
make focaccia bread is going to fix
their life problems. Thats how its
presented to us, right?
Likewise the language of some
fairly awful self-help books, such as
Rhonda Byrnes The Secret, in which
you can wish yourself rich, was used
in relation to the unemployed. There
are now no bad economic times, they
write in the book, only bad jobseekers.
For example, the idea of a
parliamentary group on mindfulness,
that might be a solution to stress, but
trying to deal with societal problems
is a fantasy.
What makes people happy is
stability in life, relationships that last,
a modest income. But all these
things are slowly eroded and people
feel unwell. Then they say:
Ah, we can fix that with a mindfulness
course. Its like a plaster on a bullet
wound.
Its nice, though, of bosses to care.
Better than sending you down the
mines and causing early deaths.
Of course, Spicer says. But why
that? Why try to make your job less
boring in engaging in mindfulness
training, rather than going to the pub
on a Friday night and getting drunk?
Spicer thinks the shallowness of the
wellness cult is pretty anti-politics too.
People are withdrawing into the
minutiae of their workouts, their diet,
their sleep, tracking tiny changes on
their smartphones. Theyve lost faith
in the institutions of religion or
politics, can only take their bearings
from their own bodies.
They end their book with the
entreaty to separate health from
morality: you are not a better person
because you run triathlons, and your
neighbours problems will not go away
if they eat more quinoa. Stop fixing
yourself so much you forget about the
sickness in the world.
Just allow that crack in your
self-righteous narrative, Cederstrm
says, and he too allows it a little. When
they were writing the book, they spent
time away from their young families to
work long hours on the manuscript,
it was a stressful period.
Andr turned to me at the end and
said, in a very serious confessional
way, Ive got a secret. Ive actually
been doing a bit of mindfulness.
Were you angry with him, I ask?
A bit, he laughs. No, not at all.
The Wellness Syndrome by Carl
Cederstrm and Andr Spicer is
published by Polity Press at 14.99

48

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the table
table

Ella Woodward, the

MPs daughter who
built a food empire
Shes beautiful, well-off and cooks great dishes. No wonder
weve all gone crazy for Deliciously Ella, says Lucy Cavendish

lla Woodward is sitting

in a caf off the Kings
Road in London sipping
something extremely
healthy-looking. It is
the colour of beetroot
and, given that the
caf is called Juicebaby
and sells gluten-free everything
including chocolate cake, probably
contains mixed berries, chia seeds
and ground brazil nuts.
This would suit Woodward for, at
the tender age of 23, she has become
the biggest thing in healthy eating. She
has a blog called Deliciously Ella that
receives millions of hits every time she
posts anything on subjects such as
refined sugars or a recipe for creamy
polenta; she runs cooking courses and
supper clubs and her first cook book,
Deliciously Ella, is about to be
published here and in the US.
It has proven so popular that the
print run was put back so that the
publishers could meet the order
demands. I kind of cant believe it,
says Woodward, shaking her long
mane of brown silky hair. I am not
used to this type of attention.
I find this hard to believe, given
that she is so ridiculously beautiful,
with thick dark hair, luminous skin
and perfect almond-shaped eyes.
Woodward is like a younger Gwyneth
Paltrow without all the irritating Id
rather die than feed my children a

Cup-a-Soup baggage. She is, in short,

a publishers dream. Importantly,
though, Woodwards empire isnt built
upon her looks but on recipes that
were created in a genuine attempt to
improve health, because she started
her culinary journey only after
suffering a serious illness.
I was at St Andrews studying
history of art when I suddenly felt
unbelievably ill, she says. I was fine
one day and the next day I just wasnt.
It came out of the blue. At first,
Woodward thought she had a bug.
I went back home to London to
stay with my mother and told her
I wasnt feeling well. My father [the
MP Shaun Woodward] was away and
when my mother told him I was ill he
shrugged it off, but when he came
back and saw me he took me straight
to the hospital.
Nothing conclusive was found but
Woodwards condition worsened. Its
hard to describe but I felt absolutely
wiped out. I could barely get up or get
dressed. Months of tests followed
during which she tried to finish her
degree. I lived opposite the faculty
and I thought I could do it but it was
almost impossible. Id stagger to my
lectures and collapse. It was such a
struggle. I lost my friends because
I couldnt go out and I found it
really difficult when theyd moan
about their lives. Id hear them talking
about their boyfriends or a night out

or what dress they wanted to buy and

Id want to scream, Look, I cannot
walk and none of this matters!
In the end she holed herself up for
more than six months, supported only
by her German boyfriend Felix, who
sounds like a candidate for sainthood.
He was amazing, totally amazing. He
is a bit older than me and he had an
accident when he was younger. He hit
his head and he was out of action for
a while and I think he understood
what I was going through.
Eventually Woodwards symptoms
were diagnosed as the rare disease
Postural Tachycardia Syndrome or
PoTS which, essentially, breaks down
the autonomic nervous system. I was
so relieved. Even though the doctor
was telling me I would have to take
pills for the rest of my life and even
then I wouldnt be that much better,
all I could hear was that I was going
to be able to function again.
Her condition improved marginally,
but when she and Felix attempted a
trip to Morocco it proved disastrous.
I couldnt cope at all, she says. We
had to fly me home and Felix wheeled
me out of the airport in a wheelchair.
It was on her return to the UK
that Woodward had her Damascene
conversion and adopted a healthy
lifestyle. I started looking online at
any cure, anything that could help.
I was desperate. She came across
a book by a woman in the US called

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

49

FGM

the table
table
the

TOMMY CLARKE

Kris Carr who claimed that changing

to a vegan diet helped with her own
illness. I just felt stunned, says
Woodward. I realised if this woman
could come back from stage 4 cancer,
then I could absolutely come back
from where I was too.
Lets put this into context. Until this
moment Woodward had eaten nothing
much more than sweets, more sweets,
endless carbs, takeaways and snacks.
She claims she had never cooked, had
no real idea of nutrition and lived off
chocolate mess, a gooey, chocolaty
concoction she made with her two
sisters and her brother.
Its true. We all went to boarding
school and when we were home my
mother cooked bog-standard food like
macaroni cheese and shepherds pie.
I had absolutely no idea how to cook
but I was at my wits end. I had to
try something.
She started by making banana and
blueberry porridge for breakfast,
buckwheat toast with mashed avocado
and roasted vegetables for lunch and
brown rice or pasta and veggie sauce
for dinner. Her friends laughed at her
but gradually, she says, she began to
feel better. She slowly broadened her

I had absolutely
no idea how to
cook but I was
at my wits end

diet, experimenting with flavourings

such as tamari and tahini, then pulses
and quinoa.
Before long, she was taking lemon
and ginger shots, whizzing up some
beetroot hummus or indulging in a
berry cheesecake made with almonds
and dates for the base. My idea was to
make the food I loved and wanted to
eat but to do them in my own way.

Food writer
Ella Woodward
and, right, her
key lime pie

Thus she created lentil Bolognese,

black and kidney bean chilli and sweet
potato brownies, which became an
internet sensation after she shared the
recipe for them on her blog.
She started writing Deliciously Ella,
she says because I was getting
physically better but I needed brain
stimulation. I knew my food was good
but it was getting annoying just
cooking for me. Also I had no sense
of future and everything still felt
rather futile. Within a year, the
popularity of her blog mushroomed.
In the first six months I had 100,000
hits but by nine months it had gone
mad and I was getting 900,000 hits.
People read my blog and try out my
recipes and they say that they love it
and thats just awesome.

Woodward uses the words

awesome and amazing a lot.
Recipes are amazing and awesome as
are ingredients and tastes and places
and people. Her blog is as young, fresh
and funny as she is. She just radiates
energy and posts pictures of herself
running up beaches, doing headstands
on the sand and leaping up in the air
making a star shapes.
Her enthusiasm is so infectious that
some of her friends and family have
converted to the Ella way of eating.
My family were so surprised I was
doing it because I had never cooked
a thing but they began to really enjoy
it, she says, Her sisters and mother
are now almost totally vegetarian.
I havent converted my father
or brother yet, she says, but at
Christmas my dad did cook lots and
lots of vegetables for me which hed
never have done before and it was a
range of foodstuffs hed never
normally have bought.
Maybe this is her final accolade,
the conversion of those nearest and
dearest to her. She has, by her own
admission, been brought up in a very
traditional family. Her mother Camilla
is a scion of the Sainsburys family
(daughter of Tim Sainsbury) and her
father owns seven houses dotted
around the UK and abroad in places
such as the Alps and Mustique.
A BBC researcher before standing
for the Conservative safe seat of
Witney now represented in
parliament by David Cameron
Shaun Woodward famously crossed
the floor in 1999 and later became
Labours Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland.
For a time he was notorious because
he refused to stand down as Witneys
MP, which led Conservative leader
William Hague to contend, If you
were a man of honour . . . you would
resign your seat now. Does Ella
remember getting a lot of attention
back then? She looks away, seemingly
slightly nervous. Um. I was at school
then. I dont think so.
Now, though, Shauns daughter is
getting all the attention. There will be
some who are rather sceptical of her
sudden rise to fame and there have
already been rumblings in foodie
circles that she is just another
new and pretty face in a long
line of other pretty faces that
espouse food not as something
yummy and delicious but as a
factor in choosing a healthy
lifestyle. For some, vegan food
is for rabbits not humans.
Yet this is what is selling now
food choices for health rather than
lashings of taste via cream, cheese
or meat-based dishes. Woodward
says that she is just pleased that her
recipes will really help people feel
good about themselves and their
food choices.
What she is most happy about,
though, is that one of the doctors who
told her he thought she was mad to go
on a vegan diet in order to cure her
uncurable illness has commissioned
a study on the back of her amazing
physical recovery.
It proved that I was on to
something, she says delightedly
as she finishes off her juice and
prepares to leave. I think there will
be new advice on diet now for PoTS
sufferers. If that is all I achieve
I am happy because I think that
is amazing!
Deliciously Ella by Ella Woodward
is published on January 29 by
Yellow Kite, 20

PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW.MARKSANDSPENCER.COM/STYLE&LIVING

Kalette or cauli
whats 2015s most
on-trend vegetable?

orget lavish beef cuts marbled

with fat or whole roasted
chickens served with their
gnarled claws on, everyone in
the know seems to be craving
plant matter. Of all the vegetables that
chefs and foodies are championing,
though, which will emerge as the
modish choice this year?
Wed suggest kalette, with its bijou
florets, but its so novel that Jasmine
Hemsley of the glamorous Hemsley
sisters, pictured below, confesses: We
havent really used them yet. Instead
the girls behind The Art of Eating Well
reckon old-school cauliflower is now
as au courant as Pisco Bars, vermouth
and, er, jumpsuits. Nuno Mendess
Chiltern Firehouse started the cheffy
surge in interest when he included
cauliflower florets in a spicy truffle
paste, while the Hemsleys turn it into
rice, mash and cauliflower tabbouleh.
At a recent Matthew Williamson
party we served it
and they didnt notice
they were eating
healthily,
Jasmine says.
For those who
arent big fans
of brassica,
though, several
greens are vying
to be 2015s mostt
fashionable veg:
0 Kohlrabi
One fan is chef To
Tom
Hill of Duck Soup
up in
Soho, London, who
ferments it to creat
eate a frisky
pickle burgeoning with live bacteria
that aids the digestion. Simon Rogan,
the trailblazing chef who runs Fera in
Claridges, is another devotee. You can
salt-bake it or pickle it, he explains.
At Fera a popular dish is the saltbaked kohlrabi served with smoked
egg yolk, crispy cavolo nero, a rich
cheese sauce and grated truffle.
How fashionable is it? It will peak
from summer to autumn. 8/10

0 Cavolo nero
Identified by Waitrose as the green
of 2015, with sales up by 343 per cent.
Vegetable-maven Bruno Loubet uses it
in a pan-fried fillet of arctic charr with
Jerusalem artichoke pure at his
London restaurant Grain Store. James
Lowe, ex-St John chef and now of
Lyles in Londons East End, is plating
up flank steak, cavalo and pickled
walnut this week, and Tomos Parry of
the newly opened Kitty Fishers in
Mayfair has put it on a pedestal in a
signature dish of seabass with apples
and cider.
How fashionable is it? Hot, hot, hot.
9/10
0 Seaweed
Want to know the secret behind
Victoria Beckhams skinny waistline?
A bladderwrack smoothie. Other algae
aficionados include Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley, and at east Londons Asianinfluenced Raw Duck, seaweed salad

sprinkled with toasted sesame is

hugely popular. For beginners, sea
spaghetti is selling for 5.50 at Yotam
Ottolenghis store ottolenghi.co.uk and
M&S is about to launch seaweed
pouches for al desko lunches.
How fashionable is it? Its on menus
across London. Very. 8/10
0 Kale
Like skinny jeans, kale refuses to be
consigned to last years veg. Youll find
the loose-leafed one championed in
kale crisps (for the eco set inSpiral kale
chips, air-dried using UK solar power,
are obligatory) and green smoothies,
both of which have been much
celebrated for some time by the likes
of Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica
Parker. New York chef Seamus Mullen,
who arrived in London to launch the
multimillion-pound Mondrian Hotels
Sea Containers restaurant, makes a
simply titled kale signature dish of
raw kale, apple, pecans,
avocado,
o, yoghurt,
chilliess and dill
vinai
naigrette. He
cites
es dinosaur
kale, also called
lacinato, black
lacinat
kale or Tuscan,
ka
as the stuff
to get your
mitts on.
mit
How
Ho
fashionable is it?
Destined to
remain
main de rigueur
until 2016.
201 7/10
0 Brussels sprouts
outs
I know, I know, the sprout is the
Christmas Day sine qua non, but these
days it is a strutting arriviste. And I
dont just mean in British-influenced
cuisine, or indeed the US, which is
where this craze originated.
Nodding to Korea, MasterChef
winner Shelina Permalloo, who
publishes The Sunshine Diet (Ebury,
14.99) this month with recipes
inspired by her Mauritian roots, has
released a brussels sprouts kimchi. The
live ferment is made by blanching the
sprouts, then brining them in salted
water. She then leaves them for four
hours before draining and saving the
brine. A piquant paste of garlic, ginger,
alliums, Sriracha, fish sauce, coriander
and fennel seeds plus some Kashmiri
chilli powder finishes off the mix,
How fashionable is it? Nascent. 7.5/10
0 Chard
Zero noodle soup with chard, anyone?
Thats the latest dietary prerequisite,
but for chefs such as Simon Rogan its
more than that. We love chards, he
says, and at his 12-acre veg farm in
Cumbria he grows several different
varieties. Rainbow chard is my
favourite. We cook it in clarified butter
and use it as it is, as the leaves are
beautiful. Keep it simple.
How fashionable is it? Watch this
space. Currently 6/10
Chloe Scott-Moncrieff

50

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Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

arts

This has been my life for 27 year

Its what I think about every day

Mark Wahlberg is worth 130 million and is one of Hollywoods biggest players yet he is still
haunted by an assault conviction from 1988. He tells Eric Hynes why he wants to be pardoned

ure, hes a touch shorter

than his bruiser persona
would suggest. And with
his V-neck sweater over
a white T-shirt and slacks
tucked into Timberland
boots, he looks less like a
movie star than a
weekending dad.
But at this point theres little use
in underestimating Mark Wahlberg.
The street hood who became a
bestselling musical act, the underwear
model who became a matinee idol,
the sturdy screen star who became
one of Hollywoods most versatile and
sought-after actors equally adept in
drama and comedy, character studies
and action Wahlberg has made a
living out of exceeding expectations.
For his latest film, The Gambler, the
man best known for playing cops,
soldiers and boxers has been inducing
double-takes by playing a clevererthan-thou literary professor.
Sitting across from him at the
Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York,
hearing him talk of his career with
both pride and umbrage, it seems that
at 43 Wahlberg still has something to
prove. Or is it that he needs to feel
that he has something to prove?
My idea of what Im capable of
doing may be different than others,
he says, his Boston accent largely in
remission from years of LA living, but
still with a rollicking, east-coast
rapidity. Yet his underdog stance isnt
an affectation its an ethic that
fuelled his passage from teenage
jailbird to Hollywood power broker
and that continues to drive him.
Its an ethic that may help to explain
the gap between his intentions in
requesting to have his 1988 assault
conviction pardoned by the state of
Massachusetts and the perception
among many that it was evidence of
a celebrity seeking special treatment.

One thing is clear: although many

stars try to leave their pasts behind,
Wahlberg is still wearing his on his
sleeve. And his past is a story again
because hes decided to make it one.
This has been my life for the past
27 years, he says. This is what I think
about every day.
At the age of 16, Wahlberg was
tried as an adult and sentenced to
two years in prison for assaulting two
Vietnamese Americans. Opinion is

People say, Now

hes a celebrity
he feels entitled
to a clean slate

split on whether he should be

pardoned. Judith Beals, a
prosecuting attorney for
another of the actors
teenage violations, wrote
in the Boston Globe: In
fact, a formal public
pardon would highlight all
too clearly that if you
are white and a movie
star, a different standard
applies. Meanwhile,
one of his victims, Hoa
Trinh, told the Daily Mail
that he supported a
pardon and clarified
that in the assault
he wasnt actually
blinded, referring to
a misattribution
that helped to
convict Wahlberg.

Above: Mark
Wahlberg
with Brie
Larson in
his latest
film, The
Gambler
and, left, in
his Marky
Mark pop
star guise
in 1991

So why does Wahlberg want to be

pardoned? Is it, as has been reported,
to help him to apply for a liquor
licence or to become a reserve
policeman in Los Angeles? No, he
says, its about his rehabilitation.
It does bother me a bit that people
say, Oh, now that hes a successful
celebrity he feels hes entitled to a
clean slate. This is my life, he says.
He talks gratefully about
Trinhs statements: Imagine
the weight lifted off of my
shoulders when this guy came
out and said that he forgave
me and that I wasnt
responsible for his eye
injury that it was
something that happened
in 1975. Thats why I was
tried as an adult.
Although Wahlberg
would serve only 45 days
of his sentence, being
in prison as a short,
eight-stone kid
was not a pretty
experience, he
says, wincing at the
memory. It was there
that he decided to
change his life,
which proved
extremely difficult
once he was back
on the street.
Thats when the
hard stuff started
to come, he says.
It wasnt about
the decision, it
was about actually
doing it on a
day-to-day basis,
going out there and
acting on that.
Wahlberg continues to channel
these demons into his craft, pursuing
self-discipline as a path to success and

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

51

FGM

arts

s.

BRIAN BOWEN SMITH; PARAMOUNT PICTURES; UNIVERSAL PICTURES; GETTY IMAGES

Left: Mark Wahlberg and,

above, with Julianne Moore
in the 1997 film Boogie Nights

perhaps redemption. His previous

roles have catered to his working class
Boston roots the soulful pugilist in
The Fighter, the acid-tongued detective
in The Departed, for which he received
an Oscar nomination. Yet in The
Gambler, a remake of the 1974 film
with James Caan, Wahlberg couldnt,
as he wryly puts it, fall back on my
eighth-grade education to play Jim
Bennett, an academic whos
determined to flutter away his
privilege in the Los Angeles
underworld. So he went to work.
After six months of hanging out
with professors and sitting in on
college classes, he was eager to prove
to director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of
the Planet of the Apes) that he wasnt
just prepared, he was ready to orate
a 15-page monologue on the first
day of shooting. I dont know if he
necessarily felt 110 per cent confident
in my ability to play this part,

Wahlberg says, remaining true to

underdog form. So I wanted him
to feel comfortable right away.
Wyatt insists that he never doubted
that Wahlberg could pull it off.
Knowing that he wants to do this
kind of role made it clear that I was
getting an actor, not a movie star, the
director says. Wahlberg does indeed
convince as a man so literate that he
loathes himself for being a less-thangreat novelist, but you can also tell
hes bottling instinct whenever his
character receives, and doesnt
retaliate against, rib-cracking blows.
Beyond learning how to pass for an
intellectual, Wahlberg also shed a
considerable amount of weight to
achieve the hollowed-out look of a
man who rarely eats or sleeps. This
kind of thing has become
synonymous with Oscar-hungry
grandstanding, but control over his
physicality has been a primary aspect

Wahlberg
in the 2012
comedy Ted

of Wahlbergs appeal. He broke

through as the shirt-shunning rapper
Marky Mark, topped the charts with
the bench-press dance anthem Good
Vibrations in 1991 and his big break
was as the well-endowed porn puppy
Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights (1997).
Rattling off the past two years of
weight fluctuation slimming to
165lbs for the crime flick Broken City,
up to 212lbs for the comedy drama
Pain & Gain, down 30 for the
Afghanistan war movie Lone Survivor,
up 15 for Transformers: Age of
Extinction, before plummeting 60 for
The Gambler he sounds less like a
braggart than an obsessive athlete.
I go to bed at 7 oclock at night
and wake up at 3 oclock in the
morning. That old saying, that I do
more before 9 oclock than most
people do in a day? Its true. Im just
that disciplined. Focused. And
hungry, he says, comparing his
approach to the American footballer
Tom Brady.
I feel like right now Im in my
prime. I want to be at my best, at my
most focused. Wahlberg is aware that
there are always young studs ready to
topple him from the A-list: There
should be if theres not, there
should be a hundred guys behind
me working twice as hard to come and
get my spot, he says, muscled arms
flexing against the table.
The father of fours schedule keeps
him away from home for much of
the year immediately after the
interview, he is flying to New
Orleans to shoot Daddys Home, a
new comedy with Will Ferrell, his
co-star in 2010s underrated
The Other Guys. Yet
Wahlberg says that
despite entreaties from
his wife, fashion model
Rhea Durham, he cant
slow down. Shes like,
You work too much,
and Im like, Well, Ive
worked so hard to get
to a position where I can
actually choose the kind of
things that I do, he says.
And I dont think I have
the luxury to just say, Well,
Ill stop for five or ten years
and just pick up where I left
off. God forbid you find
yourself in a situation where
yo
youre having to do things to
yo
pay the bills and youre not
passionate about it. Thats
when you start taking a
dark turn.
Of course, Wahlberg learnt
early on that one of the best
ways to remain in the game
was to develop his own
franchise. Sitting around

waiting for so-and-so to pass on a

movie Oh if this [actor] doesnt do
it theyre going to come to you next
I was like, I cant exist like this. I
have to try to figure out how to get
control of my own destiny. And so he
started to produce his own projects,
first on television, with series like
Entourage (in which Jeremy Piven
played an agent closely modelled on
Wahlbergs longtime agent, Ari
Emanuel), then with films such as The
Fighter and The Gambler.
Listen: I want to be an artist first,
but there is so much about the
business that you have to focus on
and youd be crazy not to, he says.
Theres too many movies being made
and theres too many people out there
doing the same thing. I dont want to
be caught with my pants down.
(An ironic turn of phrase from a
former underwear model, but
Wahlberg has long been the first to
point fun at or in the case of a
notoriously boozy appearance on The
Graham Norton Show, make a
spectacle out of himself. And from
Entourage to reality show The
Wahlbergers to What Up Wahlbergs, a
coming-of-age sitcom in
development for ABC TV, hes not
exactly shy about turning his high and

I go to bed at
7pm and wake
at 3am. Im
disciplined
lowlights into lucrative entertainment.)
Wahlberg says his entrepreneurial
instincts kicked in at a very young
age, when he was hustling and trying
to make my way, always figuring out
how I could get the things I didnt
have. Now that hes acquired more
than most people could ever imagine
a 30,000 sq ft mansion in Los
Angeles, an estimated net worth of
130 million, a CV featuring films by
Martin Scorsese, David O Russell,
and Paul Thomas Anderson he
admits to getting bored with tales
of his dark past.
People think, well now its a new
story, but its really still the same story.
If you ever go back to read any profile
or magazine piece Ive done, its always
the bad boy turned good, he says.
Still, everyone loves a good
redemption story, especially Wahlberg.
Witness The Gambler, in which his
character goes to elaborate lengths
to wipe his slate clean, and witness
Wahlbergs personal bid to clear his
name. Hopefully Ive done enough
to be given a second chance and if
not, it doesnt change how much work
Im going to put into what Im doing,
he says, noting his work with at-risk
teens and that he has stayed in touch
with friends who are still mired in
places he left behind. That could have
and should have been my life. Its a
miracle that Im not there, he says,
which tellingly leads into talk of his
devout Catholicism, and intimations of
daily penance.
You get the sense that the only
reason hes here, pouring into a parka
and ready to be ushered to the airport
by his real-life entourage, ready to
make another movie and walk down
another red carpet, is that theres a
part of him that will always remain
back there, fighting to get out.
The Gambler is released tomorrow

52

FGM

The Times: best for rugby

Sport

Owen Slot on the return of Nick Easter

and Danny Cipriani to the England fold
Rugby union, pages 56-57

King confident
that Smad Place
is prepared for
Gold Cup exam
Andy Stephens

Alan King has never won jump racings

most coveted chasing prizes, the Gold
Cup and Grand National, but could
have leading candidates for both by the
end of Saturday.
The Barbury Castle trainer will
examine the Betfred Gold Cup claims
of Smad Place in the BetBright Cup
Chase at Cheltenham and later his
focus will switch to Doncaster, where
Godsmejudge will make a belated
reappearance in the SkyBet Chase.
Godsmejudge, winner of the Scottish
Grand National in 2013 and runner-up
when defending his crown last year, has
been absent for nine months and King
gave warning yesterday that he will not
be at his peak.
He didnt come in until late because
we were quite hard on him in the spring,
when he was second in the Scottish
National and then third in the Bet365
Gold Cup a fortnight later, King said.
Hes had a good break and is in good
order but three miles is probably a little
bit sharp for him and he will come on
for it. The National is his target and he
will want two or three runs before.
King will also run Medermit in the
Town Moor feature. The 11-year-old,
who has negotiated 370 hurdles and
fences without falling or unseating his
rider, has earned his connections
338,000 in prize money but has not
won for more than three years.
Medermit has been a great servant
but is not easy to place, King said. Hes
not really up to graded races any more,
so we have to look at alternatives.

Rob Wright

1.50 Alzammaar
3.20 Briery Belle
2.20 Goodtoknow
3.50 Teaforthree
2.50 The Tourard Man (nb) 4.20 Royal Vacation
Thunderer: 1.50 Mantou (nap). 2.20 Goodtoknow.
Going: soft (heavy in places) 8am inspection
Racing UK

1.50
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Juvenile Hurdle

(4-Y-O: 4,224: 2m) (8)

1 MANTOU 25 (T,D) J Ferguson 11-5

33 ALZAMMAAR 42 (T) W Greatrex 10-12
SOLO HUNTER 86F M Meade 10-12
TACTICAL STRIKE 26F Shaun Harris 10-12
ULTIMATE ACT 85F J S Mullins 10-12
VA BENNY 162F J Jenkins 10-12
46 VERY INTENSE 12 (BF) T Lacey 10-12
3 TEA IN TRANSVAAL 19 T Vaughan 10-5

A mark of 154 and top weight is not

going to be easy but he retains all his
enthusiasm and Tom Bellamy, who
schooled him on Tuesday, will take 5lb
off.
Smad Place is officially rated 1lb
inferior to Medermit but the former
high-class hurdler has had only five
runs over fences and King is optimistic
that he can improve.
The grey, runner-up to OFaolains
Boy in the RSA Chase at the Festival
last season, will receive weight from
each of his seven potential rivals on
Saturday and has been given two
months to recover from his exploits in
the Hennessy Gold Cup, in which he
finished fifth to Many Clouds. The
winner is also scheduled to be in the
line-up but will reoppose on 12lb worse
terms.
Smad Place got tired in the
Hennessy and it took a lot out of him,
King said. He was quite quiet for a
good few weeks afterwards but is back
in very good form.
Hes easy to overcook and so you
have to tread a bit carefully but we are
very happy now. I would hope he will
come forward but hes got to.
On the overall Gold Cup picture, he
added: I was impressed with Silviniaco
Conti at Kempton and think he will
take a lot of beating.
King won the Queen Mother
Champion Chase with Voy Por Ustedes
in 2007 and is inclined to aim
Uxizandre, another French-bred
gelding, at the same contest.
Beforehand, he could clash with Sire
De Grugy in the Betfair Price Rush
2.50

Warwick

N Fehily
D C Costello
T Whelan
D Crosse
A Thornton
H Haynes
R Dunne
R Johnson

3-1 Vision Du Coeur, 5-1 The Tourard Man, 7-1 Adrenalin Flight, 8-1 Cannon
Fodder, 10-1 Vandross, 12-1 Vice Et Vertu, 14-1 Double Double, 16-1 others.

Wright choice: The Tourard Man shaped well at Ascot and

is unexposed Dangers: Adrenalin Flight, Vision Du Coeur

3.20
1

2.20
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Handicap Chase
(4,224: 3m 2f) (8)

P3-F2 GOODTOKNOW 16 R Lee 7-11-12

J Greenall
13-4P SPANISH ARCH 12 (B,C) M Keighley 8-11-8 T Bellamy (5)
224-5 TIME TO THINK 43 (V,C) J S Mullins 10-11-6
A Thornton
64-P6 SAFRAN DE COTTE 33 (BF) H Daly 9-11-6
R Johnson
F-32P JIMMY SHAN 47 (H) T Vaughan 7-11-6
D C Costello
P3P-4 TAKE THE MICK 40 Miss V Williams 8-10-13
A Coleman
5-421 BALLY BRAES 16 (P) N Twiston-Davies 7-10-11
S Twiston-Davies
32125 BALLYVONEEN 18 (D) N King 10-10-10
T Whelan

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

Mares' Novices' Hurdle

(4,224: 2m 5f) (14)

P-411 ABIGAIL LYNCH 27 (T) N Twiston-Davies 7-11-12

S Twiston-Davies
1-1P MOLO 44 D Pipe 5-11-6
C O'Farrell
062 BRIERY BELLE 50 H Daly 6-11-0
R Johnson
2/04 CHANCE TAKEN 27 (H) N Williams 7-11-0
J Banks (3)
CHECKETS A Hollingsworth 7-11-0
Mr T Wheeler (7)
0P GRANDE VITESSE 13 A Middleton 5-11-0
S W Quinlan
F- IWANABEBOBBIESGIRL 278P D Brace 5-11-0 Mr T David (5)
30 MIDNIGHT MINT 21 (T) J Scott 5-11-0
N Scholfield
-4223 MORELLO ROYALE 27 C Tizzard 5-11-0
N Fehily
SHOOFLY MILLY J Scott 6-11-0
L Heard
04 SHOWBIZ FLOOZY 35 John O'Neill 6-11-0
A Thornton
P-10 SILVER SCOTCH 36 B Pauling 6-11-0
J M Maguire
F3-0 SINGININTHEVALLEYS 92 Jonjo O'Neill 6-11-0 R McLernon
2-0 VODKA ISLAND 47 T Vaughan 6-11-0
A Johns (7)

5-2 Bally Braes, 4-1 Goodtoknow, 5-1 Safran De Cotte, 11-2 Take The Mick,
13-2 Jimmy Shan, 9-1 Ballyvoneen, 10-1 Spanish Arch, 12-1 Time To Think.

2-1 Abigail Lynch, 11-4 Briery Belle, 4-1 Morello Royale, 11-2 Molo, 16-1
Chance Taken, Midnight Mint, Silver Scotch, 33-1 others.

Wright choice: Goodtoknow is back up in trip after a good

second at Bangor Dangers: Take The Mick, Safran De Cotte

Wright choice: Briery Belle was a good second at Catterick on

her hurdling debut Dangers: Abigail Lynch, Morello Royale

Moore admits
Sire De Grugy
might need
Newbury run
Andy Stephens

Jump to it: Smad Place, right, who was upsides eventual winner OFaolains Boy
at the last in the RSA Chase last March, will be back at Cheltenham on Saturday

Chase, formerly known as the Game

Spirit, at Newbury on February 7.
The JP McManus-owned gelding
had Dodging Bullets, conqueror of
Sprinter Sacre, behind when winning at
Cheltenham in November but has since
disappointed in Ireland.
It was deep ground at Leopardstown
and he got taken on for the lead. He
didnt really operate, King said. Hes
come back in good order and, if the
ground improves, he could go for the

Bet of the day

(7,798: 3m 2f) (14)

U15-6 DOUBLE DOUBLE 20 (BF) P Bowen 9-11-12

D Devereux
U4-53 VANDROSS 12 N King 5-11-8
Miss B Andrews (7)
40-45 VICE ET VERTU 24 (C) H Daly 6-11-7
R Johnson
-3212 THE TOURARD MAN 33 (BF) A King 9-11-6 W Hutchinson
40311 VISION DU COEUR 9 Mrs F Kehoe 6-11-5
Sam Jones
-3516 KILMURVY 27 (T,P) J Scott 7-11-3
N Scholfield
U0P-P KUILSRIVER 34 (T,B) N Gifford 8-11-3
G Sheehan
50325 CANNON FODDER 5 (D) Sheena West 8-11-3 M Goldstein
01-64 HAWAII FIVE NIL 27 Jonjo O'Neill 7-11-1
R McLernon
56651 ADRENALIN FLIGHT 48 (V) J S Mullins 9-10-11 A Thornton
01-65 UPHAM ATOM 47 (D) Mrs K Buckett 12-10-9
K Edgar (5)
13135 OUR MAIMIE 33 G McPherson 9-10-9
P Moloney
2-636 JAUNTY JOURNEY 60 (V,D) N Twiston-Davies 12-10-6
B Hughes
14 4300- I AM COLIN 307 N Twiston-Davies 6-10-3 S Twiston-Davies

Rob Wrights choice: Alzammaar was unsuited by a slow

pace when third here
Dangers: Mantou, Ultimate Act

ALAN CROWHURST / GETTY IMAGES

Handicap Hurdle

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

5-2 Mantou, 4-1 Alzammaar, Tea In Transvaal, 9-2 Ultimate Act, 7-1 Solo
Hunter, 12-1 Very Intense, 16-1 Va Benny, 100-1 Tactical Strike.

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Extreme Supreme (2.10 Southwell)

This gelding has improved switched to Fibresand on

his past three starts, winning twice and then a good
second in better company last time. Able to race off
the same mark here, he will take plenty of beating

3.50
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Hunters' Chase (1,248: 3m 110y) (8)

4P20- POUNGACH 271 (P,D) S Morris 9-12-2

Mr J Bailey (5)
-5112 BEST SERVED COLD 11P (D) J O'Shea 9-11-12
Mr G Crow (3)
62/0U GOLFER'S CROSSING 24P Mrs S McPherson 12-11-12
Mr M Ennis (7)
42/2P KILLIMORE COTTAGE 15 F Hutsby 8-11-12 Mr T Ellis (3)
50P-1 OUT NOW 88P P Hobbs 11-11-12
Mr D Maxwell (5)
0P-41 SIR DU BEARN 24P (P) M Bowen 9-11-12
Mr W Biddick
020U- TEAFORTHREE 292 (D,BF) Miss R Curtis 11-11-12
Mr J J Codd
131-6 ONETWOBEAT 11P Mrs V Park 10-11-5
Mr E Glassonbury (3)

2-5 Teaforthree, 13-2 Poungach, 9-1 Out Now, 14-1 Killimore Cottage, Sir Du
Bearn, 25-1 Best Served Cold, 33-1 Golfer's Crossing, Onetwobeat.

Wright choice: Teaforthree, third in the 2013 Grand

National, should take this Dangers: Poungach, Sir Du Bearn

4.20
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

NH Flat Race (1,625: 2m) (10)

PP-51 TOP MAN MARTY 56 (D) Mrs S Humphrey 6-11-5

J Banks (3)
BALLYHENRY B Pauling 5-10-12
James Davies
2 BETTATOGETHER 41 A King 6-10-12
W Hutchinson
GEORGIAN HERO Keiran Burke 5-10-12
N Scholfield
5 MR JIM 27 T Symonds 6-10-12
Felix De Giles
5 NO CEILING 68 K Frost 5-10-12
B Hughes
NOMADIC LAD A Hollinshead 5-10-12
P Moloney
40- ROYAL VACATION 316 C Tizzard 5-10-12
D Jacob
0 THE BIG DIPPER 34 (T) D Dennis 6-10-12
N Fehily
GAYE TIME D Skelton 5-10-5
Miss B Andrews (7)

Game Spirit. Otherwise, we are thinking of going straight to Cheltenham.

Balder Succes is also engaged in
Champion Chase but the Ryanair
Chase, over five furlongs farther, is
more likely to be his Festival objective.
Ive thought for a while that he was
crying out for a bit farther and I think
that was confirmed [when he won] at
Kempton the other day, King said.
Hes come back full of himself and the
form is looking good.

Fakenham
Rob Wright

1.30 Baku Bay

3.00 Twentytwos Taken
2.00 Montaff
3.30 Alright Benny
2.30 Shinooki
4.00 Nellie The Elegant
Going: soft
7am inspection
At The Races

1.30

Novices' Hurdle

(3,899: 2m 7f 110y) (3)

Jack Doyle
1 -1521 BAKU BAY 9 (C) Ali Stronge 7-11-4
T Scudamore
2 6/121 RATHLIN ROSE 15 D Pipe 7-11-4
J Quinlan
3 012/P JOHNEY FOLEY 17 Mrs S Humphrey 11-10-12
4-7 Rathlin Rose, 13-8 Baku Bay, 14-1 Johney Foley.

2.00
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Conditional Jockeys' Handicap

Hurdle (3,249: 2m 4f) (10)

424 MONTAFF 14 (E) Richard Guest 9-11-12

T Cheesman (5)
00/44 ROYAL ETIQUETTE 85 (T,P) Mrs L Hill 8-11-3
C Deutsch
/6-45 GOLDEN GAMES 18 D C O'Brien 9-11-2
B Poste
/66-0 FINE JEWELLERY 38 (T) T Gretton 6-11-0 N De Boinville
560-6 HARRIET'S ARK 65 Julian Smith 8-10-11
J Bargary (5)
55522 RUNNING WOLF 7 A Hales 4-10-9
C Shoemark
P655F RISING TEAL 49 (P) Mrs L Wadham 6-10-6
L Ingram (10)
0-P15 RUBY VALENTINE 31 (CD) Jim Wilson 12-10-4 J Sherwood (3)
400P- WHATSUPJACK 403 Shaun Harris 8-10-3
Peter Carberry
P-3P0 ZELOS DIKTATOR 32 (P,D) C Fryer 9-10-0
M Hamill (5)

4-1 Rising Teal, Running Wolf, 9-2 Ruby Valentine, 6-1 Montaff, 8-1 Royal
Etiquette, Whatsupjack, 10-1 Golden Games, 14-1 Zelos Diktator, 22-1 others.

2.30

Handicap Chase

(6,498: 3m 110y) (5)

6-4 Royal Vacation, 3-1 Bettatogether, Top Man Marty, 16-1 others.

1 0314P FRONTIER SPIRIT 19 (V,C) N Twiston-Davies 11-11-12

R Hatch (5)
M Hamill (7)
2 UP111 FULL OV BEANS 32 (C) M Gates 11-11-5
K K Woods
3 22211 SHINOOKI 9 (P,CD) A Hales 8-11-0
B Powell
4 -B1P3 ALANJOU 31 (B) J Snowden 5-10-10
5 53465 THAT'S THE DEAL 77 (CD) J Cornwall 11-10-0 J Cornwall (5)

Wright choice: Royal Vacation, ninth in the Champion

Bumper, looks solid Dangers: Bettatogether, Top Man Marty

11-8 Shinooki, 7-2 Frontier Spirit, 4-1 Full Ov Beans, 13-2 Alanjou, 7-1 That's
The Deal.

Gary Moore has dismissed rumours

that Sire De Grugy is under a cloud but
admitted yesterday that his stable star
was not as fit as he would like him to be
before his belated return in the Betfair
Price Rush Chase at Newbury on
February 7.
Moore was scheduled to stage a
media visit next week helping to
promote the Newbury meeting but it
was cancelled on Monday, prompting
speculation that Sire De Grugy, kept off
the track this season by muscle
problems, might have suffered another
setback.
Someone said there must be
something wrong with him but I saw
him gallop this morning and he looked
good to me, Moore said at Lingfield
Park yesterday.
I would be lying if I said hes as
fit as Id like him at this stage.
He worked today, and he worked
well, but it did look like he needed it.
I dont think he will go to Newbury as
fit as he can be, but its not all about
Newbury, is it?
Asked if the champion two-mile
chaser was as good as last season,
when his triumph at the Cheltenham
Festival was the highlight of his six
victories, he said: I could not answer
that question truthfully but Id be very
disappointed and surprised if he
wasnt.
Moore was an interested observer at
Ascot on Saturday, where Dodging
Bullets lowered the colours of
Sprinter Sacre in the Clarence House
Chase.
Talking about the latter, previously
unbeaten in ten completed starts over
fences, he said: He didnt fill me with
any dread. He looked extremely fit, so I
cannot think he blew up. He was
probably just race-rusty.
3.00
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Mares' Maiden Hurdle

(3,574: 2m) (7)

50-4 COME ON HARRIET 32 (T) A Hales 6-11-4 C Shoemark (3)

3336 GLENARIFF 27 J S Mullins 6-11-4
Kevin Jones (7)
0 ILLUSIONARY STAR 250 Julian Smith 7-11-4
M D Grant
0-125 MIDNIGHT JAZZ 54 (D) B Case 5-11-4
K K Woods
-0115 TAMBURA 27 (D) G Maundrell 5-11-4
T Cannon
11-2 TWENTYTWO'S TAKEN 60 (H,D) D Pipe 7-11-4
T Scudamore
4 SWEET SUMMER 14 J Holt 4-10-7
J Quinlan

6-5 Twentytwo's Taken, 5-2 Midnight Jazz, 5-1 Come On Harriet, 9-1 Tambura,
14-1 Glenariff, 25-1 Sweet Summer, 40-1 Illusionary Star.

3.30

Handicap Chase

(3,249: 2m 5f 110y) (5)

1 212P1 ALRIGHT BENNY 21 (CD) Paul Henderson 12-11-12

Tom O'Brien
2 P2524 EPEE CELESTE 73 (B,CD) M Chapman 9-11-9
Miss A Mills (7)
3 -2FF5 CLARA PEGGOTTY 17 (P) T Gretton 8-11-2
Peter Carberry (3)
A Wedge
4 22-44 MONEYMIX 212 (P) Ali Stronge 8-10-5
J Cornwall (5)
5 P463P FLICHITY 73 J Cornwall 10-10-0
7-4 Alright Benny, 9-4 Epee Celeste, 7-2 Moneymix, 7-1 Clara Peggotty, 14-1
Flichity.

4.00

Handicap Hurdle (2,924: 2m) (7)

026 OGARITMO 72 (T) A Hales 6-11-12

C Shoemark (3)
1
C Deutsch (5)
2 0/000 CARROWBEG 44 (T,B) Mrs L Hill 7-11-9
M D Grant
3 555/5 MR SQUIRREL 41 (T) C Kellett 8-11-2
4 45523 NELLIE THE ELEGANT 65 (T) T Vaughan 4-10-11 M Byrne
A Wedge
5 6-300 ISDAAL 65 (P) K Morgan 8-10-7
T Cannon
6 -4222 NOUAILHAS 10 (P) D C O'Brien 9-10-5
7 4001P ZERO VISIBILITY 51 (BF) A Dunn 8-10-1 Mrs A Dunn (5)
100-30 Isdaal, Nellie The Elegant, 4-1 Nouailhas, 9-2 Zero Visibility, 5-1
Ogaritmo, 7-1 Carrowbeg, 100-1 Mr Squirrel.

Rob Wrights midday update

thetimes.co.uk/sportsbook

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

53

FGM

Sport

England aiming to
progress quietly in
Warners absence
Cricket

John Westerby Hobart

Life is a little quieter in Hobart, the

quaint, laid-back Tasmanian capital,
where every third shop is an antique
emporium. And it will remain quieter
than many had expected tomorrow at
the Bellerive Oval, where England will
play Australia, given that David Warner
will not be making his expected
appearance.
Cricket Australia has been keen to
emphasise that the opening batsman
will miss the game because of a hamstring strain, rather than sore knuckles
after the ticking off he received from
the governing bodys chief executive for
his confrontation with Rohit Sharma,
the India batsman, during Australias
victory in Melbourne on Sunday.
6 James Vince scored an unbeaten
152 as England Lions drew the
second unofficial Test against South
Africa A in Bloemfontein and the
series. The touring team had
resumed on the final morning on 212
for four in their second innings, only
51 runs ahead, but Vince, who batted
for more than six and a half hours,
found support from Adil Rashid (32)
and Mark Wood (44 not out) after
the Lions had lost Jonny Bairstow in
the seventh over of the day.

2.40

Southwell
Rob Wright

1.40 Lanai
3.10 Turning Times
2.10 ExtremeSupreme(nap) 3.40 Hot Right Now
2.40 Pancake Day
4.10 Different Scenario
Going: standard
Draw: no advantage At The Races

1.40
1
2
3
4
5

Maiden Stakes (3,881: 5f) (5)

4 CARRABAMABABE 14 J Jenkins 4-9-7

(2)
(5) 222-2 COME UPPENCE 14 (V) P D Evans 3-8-11
(3) 004-5 KYLLACH ME 9 B Smart 3-8-11
(4) 000- LADY VELLYN 34 D Haydn Jones 3-8-6
(1) 32- LANAI 244 T D Barron 3-8-6

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

(8)
(3)
(1)
(9)
(4)
(2)
(7)
(5)
(6)

Handicap (3-Y-O: 2,588: 6f) (9)

501-0 EXCELLING OSCAR 9 (P,C,BF) C Dore 9-7 Hayley Turner

000-6 ALDERAAN 14 T Coyle 9-4
B McHugh
540-3 POWERFULSTORM 20 (H) R Harris 9-4
L Jones
31-44 PANCAKE DAY 14 (CD) J Ward 9-2
A Elliott
560-2 CAPTAIN FUTURE 20 (B) B Smart 9-1
P Mulrennan
44-05 JUNIOR BEN 14 (V) D Shaw 8-7
P P Mathers
530-0 STRIKING STONE 9 (B) J Hughes 8-7
J Fanning
300-0 PRINCE ROFAN 10 (V) D Shaw 8-7
C Bishop
0000- MISU PETE 52 (E) M Usher 8-7
R Da Silva

2-1 Captain Future, 100-30 Pancake Day, 9-2 Excelling Oscar, 11-2 others.

C Beasley
J Egan
A Carter (5)
T Clark (5)
J Fanning

11-10 Come Uppence, 11-8 Lanai, 6-1 Carrabamababe, 20-1 Kyllach Me, 50-1
Lady Vellyn.

2.10

None of which means that England

and Australia will be pressing the mute
button for their tri-series game tomorrow, despite the ICCs concerns that
sledging is damaging the image of the
game. Players from both sides said yesterday that verbal aggression is part of
the game, provided it is kept in check.
Brad Haddin, the Australia wicketkeeper, said that his side are content
that their aggression has not been excessive, while James Anderson, the
England fast bowler, said that verbal
jousting, in the right context, adds to
the spectacle of the game.
We know the brand of cricket we
want to play and Davey [Warner] is no
different from all of us, Haddin said.
Were out there to compete. The umpires are there to do their job and theyll
adjudicate on anything they see thats
unfit and not in the spirit of the game.
Anderson, who took four wickets
against India on his return to international cricket in Brisbane on Tuesday, has attracted plenty of attention
for his loquaciousness in the past. He
has worked with Englands sports psychologist on channelling his aggression, explaining how, at 6ft 2in, he lacks
the physical presence that many fast
bowlers employ to their advantage.
I dont think theres any more
sledging than theres been [before], its
something thats gone on for years,
Anderson said. But theres a spotlight

Handicap (3,235: 5f) (10)

1 (3) 02-50 ALPHA TAURI 9 (CD) Charles Smith 9-9-7 J Haynes (3)
A McLean (7)
2 (6) 000-6 CLUBLAND 13 (CD) S R Bowring 6-9-4
3 (4) 23-31 THORPE BAY 2 (CD) M Appleby 6-9-10
Alistair Rawlinson (5)
4 (5) 000-0 FOXTROT JUBILEE 15 R Beckett 5-9-4 P C O'Donnell (7)
J Hart
5 (2) /445- FORTINBRASS 352 (C) J Balding 5-9-4
6 (1) 311-2 EXTREME SUPREME 9 (V,CD) D Shaw 4-9-3 P P Mathers
F Lynch
7 (8) 0615- RAMBO WILL 37 (CD) J Jenkins 7-9-3
8 (7) 000-6 BAPAK BANGSAWAN 9 (D) Miss A Stokell 5-8-13
Ann Stokell (5)
P McDonald
9 (10) 160-3 LUCKY TIMES 20 (D) M Brittain 4-8-9
T Eaves
10 (9) 014-1 INCOMPARABLE 20 (P,CD) S Dixon 10-8-8
9-4 Extreme Supreme, 4-1 Thorpe Bay, 11-2 Rambo Will, 7-1 Clubland,
Incomparable, Lucky Times, 8-1 Bapak Bangsawan, 12-1 others.

Blinkered first time: Chelmsford City 6.40 Lacock.

Fakenham 2.30 Alanjou. 4.00 Carrowbeg. Southwell 2.40
Junior Ben, Misu Pete. 3.40 Fleur Des Mers, Run Fat Lass
Run. 4.10 Company Secretary. Warwick 2.20 Time To
Think. 2.50 Kuilsriver.

3.10

Handicap (3-Y-O: 5,175: 1m) (4)

P Mulrennan
1 (1) 51- DANSEUR NOBLE 35 (C) J Tate 9-7
P Makin
2 (4) 01- CIAO CIELO 54 T D Barron 9-7
3 (2) 221-3 TURNING TIMES 12 (D) C Appleby 9-5
Alistair Rawlinson (5)
4 (3) 035-1 LYSANDER THE GREEK 16 (P,CD) R Beckett 8-11 G Lee
2-1 Turning Times, 5-2 Ciao Cielo, Danseur Noble, 9-2 Lysander The Greek.

3.40
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

(4)
(3)
(7)
(5)
(2)
(6)
(1)

Fillies' Handicap (3,235: 1m) (7)

4605- YOJOJO 48 (D) Miss G Kelleway 6-9-7

J Egan
/121- HOT RIGHT NOW 301 (CD) K Burke 5-9-0 J Vaughan (5)
/5-13 POPPY BOND 14 (C,BF) A Bailey 5-8-11
G Lee
241-4 QUEEN OF SKIES 9 (CD,BF) M Appleby 6-8-11
L Jones
02-30 FLEUR DES MERS 6 (V) R Fahey 4-8-9
T Eaves
003-3 SCHOTTISCHE 9 (V) D Haydn Jones 5-8-3
J Fanning
6000- RUN FAT LASS RUN 49 (B,D) C Dore 5-8-2
J Sullivan

11-4 Queen Of Skies, 100-30 Hot Right Now, 11-2 Schottische, 7-1 others.

4.10
1
2
3
4

(9)
(2)
(4)
(6)

5
6
7
8
9

(8)
(7)
(1)
(3)
(5)

Handicap (2,588: 1m 4f) (9)

400-5 CARLANDA 9 (D) M Appleby 5-9-10
L Jones
4110- MASTER OF SONG 31 (P,CD) S R Bowring 8-9-7 A McLean (7)
2265- COMPANY SECRETARY 34 (V) J Hughes 4-9-3 J Fanning
000-4 MERCHANT OF MEDICI 17 M D Hammond 8-9-3
N Farley (3)
00-21 DIFFERENT SCENARIO 9 (CD) M Brittain 4-9-1 P McDonald
/04-2 SALFORD DREAM 16 Pauline Robson 6-9-0 P Mulrennan
35-54 CASCADIA 9 (C,D) A Hutchinson 4-8-13
T Eaves
/00-0 ASTROWOLF 8 M Tompkins 4-8-10
B A Curtis
635-3 AMAZING BLUE SKY 9 (D) Mrs R Carr 9-8-10 J Sullivan

TIM WIMBORNE / REUTERS

Fisher leaves his rivals

reeling with birdie blitz
Golf Oliver Fisher recorded a
first-round 65, seven under par, to
lead the Commercial Bank Qatar
Masters in Doha by one stroke.
The Englishman had eight
birdies, including three in a row
from the 16th. Rafael CabreraBello, of Spain, was hot on
Fishers heels after a bogey-free
66, just ahead of a group of 11
players on five under. Justin Rose
was in a tie for 14th on four under.
6 Brooke Pancake, 24, a rising
star on the LPGA Tour, has made
the most of her unusual surname
by signing a deal with Waffle
House, a restaurant chain.

Summerhayes shines
Skiing Katie Summerhayes has
become the first British woman to
win a medal at the World
Freestyle Ski and Snowboard
Championships. The 19-year-old
from Sheffield took silver in the
ski slopestyle event in
Kreischberg, Austria, behind Lisa
Zimmermann, of Germany. Im
really stoked, Summerhayes,
seventh in the 2014 Winter
Olympics final in Sochi, said.

Non-aggression pact: Anderson does not believe sledging has got worse, but
says players must be extra careful with the spotlight on them more than ever

on it more, with stump mics and lots of

cameras. Guys have got to be a bit smart
about what is said on the field.
England flew down yesterday from
the bustle of Brisbane to the gentler
climes and lower temperatures of
Hobart. Warners absence tomorrow
improves Englands chances of building
on their encouraging nine-wicket
victory over India at the Gabba and
boosts their chances of reaching the
series final in Perth on Sunday week.
The previous time the sides met, in
Sydney last week, Warners innings of
127 from 115 balls helped Australia to a

bonus-point victory. Warner is

expected to be fit for his sides next
game, against India on Monday.
Australia will also still be without
Mitchell Johnson, absent for personal
reasons, while they are down to their
third choice of one-day captain, with
George Bailey suspended for a game.
Michael Clarke, the first choice, is still
recovering from a hamstring injury and
will miss Australias opening World Cup
match against England in Melbourne
on February 14. Into this gap steps Steve
Smith, who recently led the Test side
for three matches against India.

Chelmsford City

5.10

Rob Wright

4.40 Golden Highway

6.40 Lacock
5.10 Oratorios Joy
7.10 Majeyda
5.40 Realize
7.40 Valid Reason
6.10 Dynamo Walt
Going: standard Tote Jackpot meeting
Draw: no advantage At The Races

4.40
1
2
3
4
5
6

Maiden Auction Stakes

(3-Y-O: 2,911: 1m) (6)

(5) 04- ARKANSAS SLIM 25 C Hills 9-5

BRIDEY'S LETTUCE D Ivory 9-5
(2)
GOLDEN HIGHWAY M Appleby 9-5
(1)
(6) 600- SPECIAL CODE 25 (T) J Gosden 9-5
(4) 05- VALE OF IRON 22 John Best 9-5
3- VIRTUAL REALITY 34 P McBride 9-5
(3)

G Baker
R Winston
Luke Morris
N Mackay
S Drowne
T Marquand (7)

5-2 Arkansas Slim, 3-1 Special Code, Virtual Reality, 5-1 Golden Highway, 7-1
Vale Of Iron, 12-1 Bridey's Lettuce.

Course specialists
Chelmsford City: no qualifiers.
Fakenham: Trainers Ali Stronge, 4 from 8 runners,
50.0%; D Pipe, 3 from 7, 42.9%. Jockeys N De
Boinville, 4 from 9 rides, 44.4%; M Byrne, 3 from 8,
37.5%; A Wedge, 6 from 23, 26.1%.
Southwell: Trainers K Burke, 12 from 38, 31.6%; J
Tate, 16 from 62, 25.8%; T D Barron, 17 from 76,
22.4%. Jockeys Alistair Rawlinson, 15 from 59,
25.4%; P Makin, 29 from 121, 24.0%.
Warwick: Trainers Sheena West, 3 from 8, 37.5%; R
Lee, 4 from 15, 26.7%; T Vaughan, 3 from 12, 25.0%.
Jockeys G Sheehan, 5 from 16, 31.2%; R Johnson,
16 from 63, 25.4%; A Coleman, 11 from 59, 18.6%.

5-2 Different Scenario, 5-1 Master Of Song, 13-2 Cascadia, 7-1 others.

1
2
3
4
5

(1)
(2)
(3)
(5)
(4)

Handicap (2,911: 1m 5f 66y) (5)

0545- FLASHMAN 43 (B) G L Moore 6-9-10
G Baker
52/4- FAIR LOCH 59J (T) K Burke 7-9-10
J Haynes (3)
21-42 ORATORIO'S JOY 10 J Osborne 5-9-9
A Kirby
023-4 ROYAL BATTALION 10 S C Williams 4-9-2
M Harley
314-6 HESKA 10 (T,P) M Appleby 4-9-0
Luke Morris

15-8 Oratorio's Joy, 9-4 Royal Battalion, 9-2 Fair Loch, 6-1 Flashman, Heska.

5.40
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

(8)
(6)
(11)
(12)
(3)
(2)
(9)
(5)

9 (4)
10 (1)
11 (7)
12(10)

Handicap (5,175: 6f) (12)

0054- WHALEWEIGH STATION 26 (V) J Jenkins 4-9-7 G Baker

201-3 GUISHAN 9 (D) M Appleby 5-9-5
Luke Morris
000-0 RUFFORD 19 (D) L Carter 4-9-5
S Donohoe
0062- VIVA VERGLAS 26 T D Barron 4-9-4
A Kirby
1010- LADY BRIGID 31 (D) O Stevens 4-9-3
J Crowley
5253- DIAMOND LADY 25 (D) W Stone 4-9-2
F Tylicki
1010- REALIZE 40 (T,D,BF) K A Ryan 5-9-2
S A Gray (3)
0003- SECRET ASSET 31 (H,B,D) Jane Chapple-Hyam 10-9-2
Martin Dwyer
0040- BURNING BLAZE 31 (D) O Stevens 5-9-1 H Crouch (7)
0101- SOARING SPIRITS 25 (P,D) D Ivory 5-9-0
J Quinn
030-1 SPELLMAKER 12 (D) A G Newcombe 6-8-12 E J Walsh (5)
2200- MAC'S POWER 234 (D) W Musson 9-8-11
C Catlin

5-1 Guishan, Viva Verglas, 6-1 Soaring Spirits, Spellmaker, Whaleweigh

Station, 7-1 Diamond Lady, 8-1 Secret Asset, 12-1 others.

6.10

Handicap

(5,175: 5f) (11)

Gibson joins Saints

Rugby union Northampton Saints
have completed the signing of
Jamie Gibson, the Leicester Tigers
flanker, who will move to
Franklins Gardens at the end of
this season. Gibson, 24, joined
Leicester from London Irish in
2013 and quickly established
himself in the back row. He has
got a really big future, Dorian
West, the Northampton forwards
coach, said.
6.40
1
2
3
4

(6)
(10)
(4)
(8)

5 (2)
6 (3)
7 (7)
8 (11)
9 (5)
10(14)
11(12)
12(15)
13 (9)
14 (1)
15(13)

Handicap (2,588: 1m) (15)

0120- GRACEFILLY 31 (D) E Walker 4-9-7

Luke Morris
2100- OLIVERS MOUNT 37 (T,D) E Vaughan 5-9-7 P Cosgrave
6000- SAM SPADE 26 (V,D) D Shaw 5-9-7
P P Mathers
0466- CHOICE OF DESTINY 25 (D) P McBride 4-9-7
T Marquand (7)
005-3 BENNELONG 15 (B,D) L Carter 9-9-7
A Quinn
110-5 CADMIUM 15 (D) H Dunlop 4-9-7
D Probert
3605- LACOCK 36J (V) S Curran 4-9-6
L Keniry
5050- THE HAPPY HAMMER 25 (D) E Stanford 9-9-6 Doubtful
354-4 APPLEJACK LAD 10 (T,P,D) John Ryan 4-9-6
A Kirby
5600- STORM RUNNER 49 (D) G Margarson 7-9-6 R Powell (3)
310-6 CHANCEUSE 15 (D) G L Moore 4-9-5
G Baker
5003- MR SOPRANO 136 (BF) S C Williams 4-9-4
M Harley
404-3 MIAMI GATOR 21 (V,D) K Burke 8-8-13
J Haynes (3)
/04-0 GREY ODYSSEY 8 (T,P) D Ivory 4-8-13
R Winston
0600- BERRAHRI 92 John Best 4-8-12
S Drowne

11-2 Mr Soprano, 6-1 Miami Gator, 13-2 Applejack Lad, Bennelong, 8-1
Gracefilly, 10-1 Choice Of Destiny, Storm Runner, 11-1 Cadmium, 12-1 others.

7.10
1
2
3
4
5

(4)
(5)
(1)
(2)
(3)

Fillies' Conditions Stakes

(12,291: 1m) (5)

036-2 FASHION LINE 13 Michael Bell 5-9-0

Hayley Turner
024-1 LAMAR 6 J Tate 4-9-0
Luke Morris
106-6 MAGGIE PINK 13 M Appleby 6-9-0 Alistair Rawlinson
3602- MAJEYDA 55 (P,D,BF) C Appleby 4-9-0
A Kirby
PARADISE FOUND Pat Eddery 4-9-0
J Quinn

5-4 Majeyda, 15-8 Lamar, 7-2 Fashion Line, 12-1 Maggie Pink, 33-1 Paradise
Found.

M Harley
1 (9) 042-4 DOCTOR PARKES 11 (D) S C Williams 9-9-7
A Kirby
2 (7) 600-6 HANNAHS TURN 11 (D) C Dwyer 5-9-6
3 (8) 116-2 IT MUST BE FAITH 11 (D,BF) M Appleby 5-9-6
Luke Morris
G Baker
4 (10) 1600- GREGORI 61 (T,P,D) B Meehan 5-9-4
P Cosgrave
5 (11) 1222- CLEARING 61 (D) J Boyle 5-9-3
6 (6) 6310- DESERT STRIKE 25 (P,CD) C Dore 9-9-1 Hayley Turner
L Keniry
7 (5) 5040- DANGEROUS AGE 40 (D) J Moore 5-9-1
Martin Dwyer
8 (4) 2646- JOFRANKA 117 (D) T D Barron 5-8-13
5140ROYAL ACQUISITION 49 (P,D) R Cowell 5-8-10 J Crowley
9 (1)
P P Mathers
10 (2) 2013- DYNAMO WALT 55 (V,D) D Shaw 4-8-9
11 (3) 2036- HARROGATE FAIR 25 (P,D) M Squance 5-8-8 R Powell (3)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

5-2 It Must Be Faith, 9-2 Doctor Parkes, Jofranka, 13-2 Clearing, 10-1 Dynamo
Walt, 12-1 Dangerous Age, Harrogate Fair, 14-1 others.

11-4 Adili, 4-1 Valid Reason, 5-1 Keep Kicking, 11-2 Karam Albaari, 6-1 Reach
The Beach, 13-2 Moon Trip, 8-1 Bold Adventure.

7.40
(5)
(7)
(4)
(1)
(2)
(6)
(3)

Handicap

(2,911: 2m) (7)

603-3 KARAM ALBAARI 16 J Jenkins 7-9-12

A Kirby
/060- MOON TRIP 239 (D) G Deacon 6-9-11
G Baker
3/03- VALID REASON 34J (T,P) D Ivory 8-9-11
S Sanders
052-0 KEEP KICKING 13 (D) S Dow 8-9-10
J Crowley
023-4 ADILI 20 (BF) M Appleby 6-9-7
Luke Morris
0514- REACH THE BEACH 58 (T,P) B Powell 6-9-6 Martin Dwyer
4/53- BOLD ADVENTURE 211 (D) W Musson 11-9-2 C Catlin

Yesterdays racing results

Ayr

Going: heavy (soft in places)

12.40 (2m 110yd ch) 1, Ubaltique (J M Maguire,
4-1); 2, Trust Thomas (11-4 fav); 3, Plus Jamais
(4-1). 6 ran. 2Nl, 1Nl. D McCain.
1.15 (3m 110yd hdle) 1, Spring Over (G B
Watters, 33-1); 2, Solstice Dawn (11-1); 3,
Megamike (13-2). 6 ran. 14l, 36l. I Duncan.
1.50 (2m 4f 110yd hdle) 1, Warriors Tale (K
Renwick, 7-1); 2, Make It Happen (20-1); 3,
Grande Antarctique (6-5 fav). 11 ran.
NR: Areema. 5l, 10l. N Richards.
2.20 (3m 1f ch) 1, The Last Samuri (J M
Maguire, 6-5); 2, Island Heights (5-6 fav);
3, Finaghy Ayr (14-1). NR: Castle Goer. 2Nl, 86l.
D McCain.
2.50 (2m 110yd ch) 1, Cango (B Hughes, 3-1
fav); 2, Lukes Benefit (14-1); 3, The Orange
Rogue (20-1). 10 ran. 5l, 4Kl. M Smith.

3.25 (3m 1f ch) 1, No Through Road (T

Scudamore, 4-1); 2, Chavoy (7-2); 3, Harry The
Lemmon (6-1). Arc Warrior (pu) 11-4 fav. 8 ran.
2Ol, Kl. M Scudamore.
3.55 (2m 4f 110yd hdle) 1, Cape Arrow (B P
Harding, 13-2); 2, Northern Acres (8-1); 3,
Kilkenny Kim (7-4 fav). 6 ran. NR: Discoverie,
Higgs Boson, Mighty Cliche. 4Kl, sh hd.
F Murtagh.
Placepot: 415.40.
Quadpot: 13.40.

Catterick
Going: soft
1.00 (3m 1f 110yd hdle) 1, Desilvano (L
Treadwell, 1-2 fav); 2, Gone Forever (15-8);
3, Laird Of Monksford (20-1). 4 ran. 13l, 34l.
H Evans.

1.35 (3m 1f 110yd ch) 1, Over And Above (Henry

Brooke, 14-1); 2, Always Bold (8-1); 3, Wakhan
(3-1). Fromthetop (4th) 5-2 fav. 8 ran. Kl, 1Nl.
H Hogarth.
2.10 (2m 3f ch) 1, Yorkist (Danny Cook, 6-4);
2, Calculated Risk (7-1). Only two finished.
Tango De Juilley (ur) 8-11 fav. 3 ran. 23l.
B Ellison.
2.40 (2m 3f hdle) 1, Local Hero (A P McCoy, 7-2
jt-fav); 2, Dark Dune (6-1); 3, Conquisto (4-1).
Minella Fiveo (4th) 7-2 jt-fav. 8 ran. 3Kl, 4l.
S Gollings.
3.10 (2m ch) 1, Grate Fella (Danny Cook, 7-4
fav); 2, Russborough (13-2); 3, Vasco DYcy
(7-2). 7 ran. 6l, 6l. Mrs S Smith.
3.40 (2m hdle) 1, Deny (Adam Nicol, 7-2 fav);
2, Amtired (14-1); 3, Made Of Diamonds (9-2).
11 ran. 1Kl, 10l. H Hogarth.
Placepot: 75.60.
Quadpot: 14.80.

Lingfield Park
Going: standard

12.50 (1m 4f) 1, Deinonychus (A Kirby, 9-2); 2,

Violet Dancer (1-5 fav); 3, Leah Freya (33-1). 5
ran. Kl, 7l. W Knight.
1.25 (1m 5f) 1, Lucky Dottie (J F Egan, 7-2 jtfav); 2, Golly Miss Molly (7-2 jt-fav); 3, Qibtee
(8-1). 9 ran. NR: Ballyfarsoon, Daidaidai. Ol, Ol.
P Phelan.
2.00 (6f 1yd) 1, Ershaad (Jack Mitchell, 8-11
fav); 2, Dutchess Of Art (20-1); 3, China Club (74). 6 ran. NR: Leith Bridge. 1Ol, 2Nl. R Varian.
2.30 (7f 1yd) 1, Mr Bossy Boots (A Kirby, 6-4
fav); 2, Evening Attire (5-2); 3, Forceful Appeal
(5-1). 7 ran. NR: Saint Pois. 1Kl, 1Nl. R Beckett.
3.00 (1m 7f 169yd) 1, Anglophile (Martin Lane,
2-1); 2, Uramazin (16-1); 3, Castilo Del Diablo
(11-4). Dashing Star (5th) 7-4 fav. 6 ran. 4Kl, 3l.
C Appleby.

3.35 (1m 1yd) 1, Francos Secret (Charles

Bishop, 7-4 fav); 2, For Shia And Lula (20-1); 3,
Stormbound (7-1). 11 ran. 1Nl, Kl. P Hedger.
4.05 (7f 1yd) 1, Bertie Blu Boy (Kevin Lundie,
7-4 fav); 2, Tableforten (8-1); 3, Silent Pursuit
(7-1). 7 ran. 1Nl, 1Ol. Mrs L Williamson.
Placepot: 9.60.
Quadpot: 7.20.

Kempton Park
Going: standard
4.30 (6f) 1, Studfarmer (L P Keniry, 7-1);
2, Encapsulated (9-4 fav); 3, Littlecote Lady (81). 12 ran. Kl, 1Kl. P Gundry.
5.00 (7f) 1, Waldnah (R Havlin, 5-1); 2, Hollie
Point (2-1 fav); 3, Exentricity (12-1). 14 ran.
3l, 1l. J H M Gosden.
5.30 (1m 3f) 1, Buckenhill (Jim Crowley, 3-1);
2, Prairie Town (5-1); 3, Taweyla (8-1).

Millionaires Row (6th) 11-8 fav. 6 ran. Nk, 4Kl.

D M Simcock.
6.00 (1m 4f) 1, Sandy Cove (L Morris, 5-1);
2, Crown Pleasure (6-1); 3, Highsalvia Cosmos
(12-1). Arlecchino (6th) 2-1 fav. 11 ran. 2l, 1Ol.
J M P Eustace.
6.30 (6f) 1, Primrose Valley (F Tylicki, 7-1);
2, Harry Hurricane (11-8 fav); 3, Blue Aegean
(5-2). 7 ran. 1l, 3N. E F Vaughan.
7.00 (1m) 1, Le Rouquin (L Morris, 11-4 fav);
2, Courier (12-1); 3, Retro Valley (14-1). 13 ran.
NR: St Pauls Square. 6l, Kl. M L W Bell.
7.30 (1m) 1, Youm Jamil (L Morris, 11-4);
2, Beggers Luck (12-1); 3, Warbond (2-1 fav).
10 ran. 3l, hd. A W Carroll.
8.00 (1m) 1, Jackpot (P Cosgrave, 25-1);
2, Habeshia (7-4 fav); 3, Berrahri (7-1). 10 ran.
Hd, 1Kl. B G Powell.
Placepot: 105.80.
Quadpot: 35.70.

54

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Sport Comment

De Villiers hits theory of specialising for six

Mike Atherton Chief Cricket Correspondent

he reaction from Chris

Gayle said it all. The
modern-day master blaster
paid due homage when
AB de Villiers scored the
quickest and most brutal one-day
international century in history on
Sunday and, even if Gayle still has
plenty to offer, his mock bow could be
seen as a kind of passing of the baton
from the man who was the most
feared and destructive batsman, to
the man who is.
Reaction across the cricketing
world to the 31-ball hundred was
similarly disbelieving. Aakash Chopra,
the former India opening batsman,
demanded a DNA test, intimating
that what De Villiers had done was
superhuman, Michael Vaughan called
the South Africans innings the
definition of cricketing genius and
Dean Jones thought it crickets
equivalent of Bob Beamons long jump
at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics
a record that will not be bettered for a
long time.
No need to add to the array of
superlatives here, except to wonder
how accurate or limiting the term
cricketing genius really is. De
Villiers would seem to be much more
than that. He is the CB Fry of his day
the first among equals of sporting
all-rounders. And in his refusal as a
young man to specialise and narrow
his horizons, there is a good lesson for
all young sportsmen, their coaches
and sporting bodies who demand ever
more of their potential charges at
ever earlier ages.
De Villierss sporting CV is
remarkable. He was on the fringes of
national junior squads for hockey and
football at various ages; he captained
the South Africa junior rugby team;
he was quickest in his age group
nationally over 100 metres; he was a
member of the South Africa junior
tennis team; was an outstanding
badminton player and swimmer and
is now a scratch golfer. A good bloke,
too, they say. Bastard.
Such a sporting CV is beyond most
people, both from a time and ability
perspective. But many talented young
sportsmen are being actively
dissuaded from expanding their
horizons as widely as possible at a
young age by sporting bodies and
coaches who demand that their
charges specialise in one sport at
increasingly early ages. It is madness.
Where did this pressure to
specialise come from? Partly from the
sports themselves who fear, in a
competitive world, that they will miss
out on the most talented children if
they do not grab and keep them early.
With football academies poaching
young players as early as nine years of
age, other sports feel that they have
to compete. Partly also from the cult
of the coach, which has mushroomed
with the massive amount of money
flowing through professional sport.
What are coaches to do in the off
season, if not coach?
Partly, it is down to the
professionalisation of sport: the
notion that more and more training
and practice through the off season is
essential. (Many counties, bizarrely,
began their pre-season training before
Christmas, and that commitment is
mirrored down the system.) Partly it
is down to the pernicious effects of
the now widely held belief in the
10,000-hour rule that you have
to be constantly at it, otherwise you
will fall behind your peers and wont
get the hours in to become top-class.
All of this is baloney. Studies

JEKESAI NJIKIZANA / GETTY IMAGES

A man for all seasons: De Villiers was an outstanding young performer at many sports before choosing to focus on cricket

suggest that early specialisation is a

bad thing; that Tiger Woods is an
exception rather than the rule. In the
United States, 50 per cent of
paediatric sporting injuries came from
overuse and, more importantly, from

repetitive strain on the same

muscle/tendon/ligament group.
Overusing one muscle group because
of a commitment to a single sport
means underusing other muscle
groups, so that instead of rounded,

mature athletes, you get young bodies

who are ill-equipped to cope with the
rigours of professional sport later on.
James Duckers excellent analysis
last week of the problems
encountered in football academies

suggests strongly that limiting

options, and putting every egg into a
single sporting basket, is bad not just
for the body, but for the mind, too.
What to do and where to turn when
the countless hours and days of
striving at one sport come to nothing?
Many have little else to fall back on
when the tap on the shoulder comes.
Inevitably, and especially when
many schools regard a competitive
fixture list as an imposition rather
than a necessity, most children get
their initial taste of sport from their
parents. Parents enthusiasms and
interests are then reflected in their
offspring. But if choices are limited
and narrow, how can a talented
young player recognise that he may
prefer a different sport?
De Villierss background is
instructive. He excelled at tennis
initially, competing as a six-year-old
in tournaments for under-nines, and
beating in an early competitive match
a player who went on to be ranked
No 2 in South Africa. It was only
when he began to play team sports
that the tennis bug dimmed but,
crucially, this change of priorities
came naturally and from within.
I loved my tennis and the thing
about being the worlds best really
started on the tennis court . . . Id
dream of winning Wimbledon, he
has said. Then I started playing
rugby and cricket and I just enjoyed
these sports so much more. I loved
being with my mates and competing
in a team. My focus shifted gradually
and naturally. Team sports over
individual glory? Who can blame him.
That shift from tennis happened at
about 13 years of age, just as he went
to a sports-mad boarding school in
Pretoria, surrounded by other
sports-mad South African kids, such
as Faf du Plessis and Jacques
Rudolph. There are other interesting
aspects to De Villierss upbringing,
such as the four adjoining plots that
his family home lay on, and his two
older brothers, Jan and Wessels, who
made life tough for the young AB.
Space, good weather and a
competitive, if unstructured,
environment being key.
If his level of excellence, specific
and general, is beyond mere mortals,
the nature of his sporting upbringing
points the way: early participation but
not specialisation; loads of sport;
unstructured (albeit competitive) play
as important as structured play;
technical instruction taking a back
seat and a broad range of interests to
enable athletes to find the sport they
love the most. De Villiers is an athlete
who came to love cricket rather than
a young man who was developed
fanatically as a cricketer. And now he
is just about the worlds best.

Do not underestimate Finns wicket-taking capabilities

ood news comes in threes.

After Ian Bells massive
hundred in Canberra and
Eoin Morgans return to form in the
opening match of the tri-series
against Australia, there are now five
wickets for Steven Finn. After a grim
time for a year or two, in which he
has often cut a disconsolate and
forlorn figure, few would begrudge
him a moment in the sun again.
Finn may yet be an important
player in this World Cup, partly for
the reason that is suggested above
by the focus on AB de Villiers.

Run-scoring and destructive hitting

are so far off the charts now as to be
unrecognisable from even a few
short years ago. The lesson is that if
you dont get a player such as De
Villiers, Brendon McCullum, Chris
Gayle or any number of others out,
they will destroy you, helped by the
fielding restrictions that reduce the
effectiveness of, and options for,
bowlers and captains.
Wicket-takers are crucial. For all
the focus on Englands batting
before they decided to dispense with
the services of Alastair Cook, it

Finn claimed five for 33 against India

went largely unnoticed that the

bowling was just as much of a worry.
Leaking scores of 300-plus was
becoming a more regular
occurrence.
Finn may not start in Englands
first-choice XI and may not play in
every match, as conditions will
dictate the make-up of the attack.
But if he is confident, fit and
bowling quickly, he is an asset, not a
luxury. The greater destructiveness
of the modern batsman makes a
wicket-taking bowler more, not less,
valuable.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

55

FGM

Tennis Sport

Street-smart
Murray ensures
drama is kept
to a minimum
Australian Open

Making their Marques

The closest Andy Murray has come to

being knocked off balance in
Melbourne this week was when he was
asked if part of the thrill of life down
under was being two weeks ahead of
events in Neighbours.
Murray, it transpires, has always been
too busy with tennis to be a devotee of
the goings-on in Ramsay Street. The
first week of the Australian Open could
not be going more smoothly for the
No 6 seed and a third-round meeting
with a man who has never taken a set
off him promises to continue that trend.
If history is anything to go by, Joo
Sousa, of Portugal, should pose little
more threat than Marinko Matosevic,
the supposedly untamed Australian
whom Murray dispatched with
consummate ease. An emphatic 6-1,
6-3, 6-2 victory meant that he
maintained his 100 per cent record
against Australian opponents, which is
surely noteworthy for any British
sportsman.
Three previous matches against
Sousa, one in the second round at
Melbourne Park two years ago, have all
been relative strolls for Murray. The
Scot had expected to be facing Martin
Klizan, the No 32 seed, in the third
round but the Slovak succumbed to the
early-afternoon humidity and temperatures, which after a chilly first two
days, rose to 32C (90F). Ice towels
proliferated but they were not sufficient
to cool Klizan who, after nine double
faults, was forced to quit from overheating at two sets to one and 0-1 down.
Mindful that things could get more
demanding, and possibly hotter, in a
second week that, if successful, could
mean meeting Grigor Dimitrov, Roger
Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak
Djokovic in succession, Murray was
more than content to spend only one
hour and 42 minutes on court.
Turning his attentions to Sousa, the

6 Joo Sousa has a career-best

singles ranking of 35 and last year
reached finals in Metz and Bastad.
Before him the most famous mens
player in Portugal was Nuno
Marques, a tall left-hander who beat
Jeremy Bates and Mark Petchey in a
Davis Cup tie against Great Britain in
1994 and reached No 86 in the world
rankings a year later.

Barry Flatman Melbourne

6 Michelle Larcher de Brito, the

Portuguese who was schooled at
Nick Bollettieris academy in Florida,
enjoyed notoriety at the 2009
French Open when her grunting on
each shot caused Aravane Reza, her
French opponent, to complain to the
umpire.
6 The founding father of
Portuguese tennis was Rodrigo de
Castro Pereira, whose
great-grandfather was Pedro I, ruler
of Brazil, Portugal and the Algarves
in the 1820s. De Castro Pereira
played at the 1924 Olympics in Paris
and a year later competed at Roland
Garros and Wimbledon. He was also
a noted equestrian rider.
Words by Barry Flatman

world No 55, Murray cast his mind back

to that 2013 meeting, which he won for
the loss of just eight games. Hes
obviously improved a lot since then,
Murray said. He fights hard. He has a
great attitude. He doesnt have one
massive weapon, but he definitely gets
the most out of his game. Hes physically in very good shape and lasts the long
matches well. Hes had some decent
wins and will make it tough for me.
The Andy Murray Personalised
Player Guide, normally so accurate, for
once seems mistaken on this subject. In
the 13 matches Sousa has played
against top-20 players since losing to

SHUJI KAJIYAMA / AP

Turning up the heat: Sousa hits a forehand drive during his win over Klizan, a match ended abruptly by the temperature

the Scot here, the only victories he has

achieved came against David Ferrer
and Gal Monfils. Djokovic, Federer,
Stanislas Wawrinka and Tomas
Berdych all found him easy pickings
and Matosevic registered a straightsets win over him nine months ago.
Nevertheless Sousa, who shares the
same manager as Jos Mourinho and
Cristiano Ronaldo, his compatriots,
maintained that although he may not
be a special one, he is not bad. For
sure I feel a different player, he said. I
have much more confidence, much
more experience. Now Ive played a lot
of times against great players in big
stadiums. Ive been working hard to
raise my level and feel confident. Im
playing well.
Victory in the opening round over
Jordan Thompson, the Australian wild
card, a win by default over Klizan and a
year-opening, straight-sets defeat by
Steve Johnson in Auckland hardly
constitute a rich vein of form, but Sousa
said: I feel great, I feel fit. It is good to
be in the third round and for sure I will
give my best.
On the evidence of Murrays performance against Matosevic, that is the

very least he will need. With Murray

boasting an 85 per cent success ratio on
his first serve and only 12 unforced
errors throughout the match, there was
good reason for the pummelled Australian to praise his assailant, who has
reached three of the past five finals of
the first grand-slam of the year.
Admittedly, Matosevic may have
been guilty of making rash statements

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in the past, such as his assertion that

women such as Amlie Mauresmo can
never hope to coach top-flight male
players successfully. But there was
more than a trace of rationality when
he assessed Murray and said: He can
go all the way, for sure. Although he has
a really tough passage in the second
week with Federer, Nadal and whoever,
I think he can win it.
Murray certainly seems relaxed in
his first Australian Open under the
guidance of Mauresmo, who won the
womens singles title nine years ago.
Unlike his time with Ivan Lendl, Mauresmos predecessor, Murray is practising at Melbourne Park rather than
seeking privacy by finding a court elsewhere and he has split those advisers
with responsibility for tennis and physical conditioning. Theres a bunch of
things that weve done differently over
the past couple of months and thats
normal, he said. Im enjoying it.
However, the new regime does not
involve taking a half-hour out each day
in front of the television. With great
indignation, he insisted that he had
never watched Neighbours in his life
and had no intention of doing so.

Rafter tells Kyrgios to bring down curtain on wild child act

Barry Flatman

Nick Kyrgios moved into the third

round at Melbourne Park yesterday
with a 7-6, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 win over Ivo
Karlovic, of Croatia. However, the
19-year-old Australian, who appears to
delight in people noticing his
adolescent attitude and outlandish
appearance, has not impressed
everyone with his performances.
Pat Rafter, the two-time US Open
champion who is Australias Davis Cup
captain and starts as the countrys
director of performance on February 1,
has warned Kyrgios to improve his
behaviour on the court after he
received a code violation and a substan-

Inside today

Exposing the last great

taboo in womens sport
Pages 46, 47

tial fine for breaking a racket during his

five-set win against Federico Delbonis,
of Argentina, in the first round.
Ive had enough conversations with
him, and he doesnt want to keep
hearing the same message from me,
Rafter said. Im not going to go down
that path any more. Its important for
him to be a bit more level. Hes too
emotional and it shows up on the court.
Nicks cheeky, hes a funny kid and I
like his personality. But in terms of
mentoring him or tutoring, Ill only be
there if he wants to talk to me, because
he knows exactly how I feel.
This is not a kneejerk reaction from
Rafter, who has been frustrated by the
players attitude since he rose to
prominence last year by knocking
Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon en
route to reaching the quarter-finals.
His off-court demeanour will
certainly affect his on-court behaviour,
as well, and I think thats the whole
package that he still needs to get a lot
better at, so for him he needs to calm

Courting
controversy:
Kyrgios has
impressed with
his play, but
Rafter and Stolle
have told the
teenager to
improve his
behaviour

himself down and find a balance, and I

still dont think hes reached that yet.
Rafter found backing in his stance
from Fred Stolle, the 76-year-old old
school Australian who was trained in
the disciplined ways of Harry Hopman,
the legendary coach. Stolle, who won

the French and US Open in the 1960s,

was appalled at the sight of Kyrgios
smashing his racket. He said: He got a
point penalty the other night and I
dont think that Pat is going to put up
with that for too much longer. If you
want to call them antics or frustrations

or temper, thats an opinion. But its

something that hes got to get rid of.
After beating Karlovic, Kyrgios tried
to rationalise his actions. Its my last
grand slam as a teenager, he said. I
dont think Ill be doing this stuff when
Im 20. When asked about his relationship with Rafter, he added: Its pretty
good, as far as I know.
Nadal, the No 3 seed, had to survive
bouts of stomach cramps, nausea and
dizziness, before he overcame Tim
Smyczek, a qualifier from the United
States ranked No 112, 6-2, 3-6, 6-7, 6-3,
7-5. It was a terrible feeling, Nadal
said. For three and a half hours I
suffered too much on court. I feel lucky
to have the chance to finish the match,
and then to find a way to win.
Maria Sharapova, the No 2 seed, also
survived a scare, saving two match
points before beating Alexandra Panova, a qualifier from Russia, 6-1, 4-6, 7-5,
to reach the third round. Im happy to
get through, Sharapova said. I was
twice a point away from losing.

56

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

FGM

Sport Rugby union

Lancaster prepared
to enter wilderness
for the right players
Owen Slot says that
Danny Cipriani and
Nick Easter have been
given chance
to prove they
can deliver
pragmatic
style of play

tuart Lancaster unveiled a

revelatory England squad to
start the Six Nations campaign
yesterday, yet while the
inclusion of Danny Cipriani
and Nick Easter will prompt headlines
about the bad boys being back in town,
it is more a case of a new pragmatism
having arrived at Twickenham.
England look set to play more practical rugby this season, and if Lancaster
believes that either of the two players,
who have become accustomed in their
own ways to life in the international
wilderness, are the ones to deliver it,
then nothing certainly not crimes
and misdemeanours of the past will
stop him selecting them.
Yet while Easter and Cipriani come
together neatly packaged into the
World Cup story, they are far apart both
in their international prospects and the
levels of their perceived villainy.
Easter has an exceedingly decent
chance of playing a role in the Six
Nations, Cipriani does not; he has a
long-shot opportunity, although he has
at least been handed the invitation to
hit the target.
Conversely, Ciprianis rap sheet,
which is so often held against him
celebrity girlfriends, front-page boozing accidents, etc has been vastly
overemphasised as the cause of his

blacklisting. He is still not the most

straightforward of players to manage,
but the reason he has struggled to break
into the elite has been his defence and
his goalkicking success rate. The fact
that his goalkicking (73.2 per cent
success rate this season) remains
behind his rivals, George Ford (82.6),
Owen Farrell (79.2) and Stephen Myler
(75.8), is one reason why that pecking
order is unlikely to change.
Easter, meanwhile, does have
previous that has genuinely been held
against him. Although he neither threw
dwarfs nor jumped off ferries back in
the ill-fated World Cup campaign of
2011, he was very much identified
as the kind of senior gaffer
from the England culture of
the past who needed to be
left behind if Lancasters
England was to get a clean
break and a fresh start.
Of course Easters age
was also held against him.
When Lancasters regime
started, in 2012, it did not
seem unreasonable to doubt
whether Easter would still
be one of the best
No 8s in the country in his late
thirties. While
Easter, at 36,
has proved
those fears
wrong, he
would not
have been
welcomed
back
into
the
fold
were it not
for a meetingg
with Lancaster last week at
which
he
needed to persuade the England
head coach that he

would fall into line. In Lancasters own

words: He has convinced me that he
will buy into us as a group.
And he remains highly motivated. As
Lancaster said: He expressed his
desire at not finishing his England
career on the 2011 World Cup and to
come back and finish the story.
He has more of a chance than
Cipriani simply because he is in a
shorter queue. Cipriani is the
fourth-choice No 10; Easter is at
present second-choice No 8 behind
Billy Vunipola. Last autumn, when
Easter was not seriously considered, he
was also behind Ben Morgan, who is
out injured until the summer, and
Thomas Waldrom, who has
dropped back in the rankings and
has been picked in the Saxons
squad.
Englands first-choice back
row for the Wales game in
Cardiff a fortnight tomorrow
will most probably consist of
Vunipola with Chris Robshaw
and Tom Wood on the flanks
and James Haskell covering all three positions
from the bench.
Haskell could
conceivably
play
No 8,
however.
The previoustime that
England
played
in
Cardiff, two
years ago,
ye
they played
Easter
convinced
Lancaster,
left, that he
wanted to
come back
and finish
the story

England training squad

Winners

Losers

Jonathan Joseph
The Bath centre retains his
place in the squad, but he is
now there as a genuine
contender to face Wales
rather than to run as
opposition in training.

Marland Yarde
One of Englands best
performers in New Zealand,
but Yardes poor form since
has cost him a place in the
squad, replaced by Jack
Nowell.

Billy Twelvetrees
Winner or survivor? The
Gloucester captain has held
off pressure from Henry Slade
to retain his place in the
senior squad despite his
inconsistent form.

Front row
Matt Mullan, Rob Webber and
Kieran Brookes all impressed
in the autumn, but they have
been edged into the Saxons by
the return Alex Corbisiero,
Mako Vunipola, Tom Youngs
and Dan Cole.

Sam Burgess
Has played in five first-team
matches for Bath since
switching from rugby league,
but is in the Saxons squad and
will join up with England
during the Six Nations.

David Strettle
The Saracens wing could not
even force his way into the
Saxons set-up, despite scoring
seven tries in 15 matches this
season.

England Saxons

(v Ireland Wolfhounds, Cork, Jan 30)

Forwards: Kieran Brookes (Newcastle), Tom Croft (Leicester),
Christian Day (Northampton), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter), Dave
Ewers (Exeter), Matt Garvey (Bath), Ross Harrison (Sale), Maro
Itoje (Saracens), Matt Kvesic (Gloucester), Matt Mullan
(Wasps), Henry Thomas (Bath), Thomas Waldrom (Exeter), Alex
Waller (Northampton), Rob Webber (Bath).
Backs: Chris Ashton (Saracens), Sam Burgess (Bath), Elliot Daly
(Wasps), Ollie Devoto (Bath), Lee Dickson (Northampton), Chris
Pennell (Worcester), Joe Simpson (Wasps), Henry Slade (Exeter),
Marland Yarde (Harlequins), Christian Wade (Wasps).
Wood at No 8 and learnt to their cost
the dangers of going into such a game
without an out-and-out ball-carrying
No 8. For this reason, if injury were to
befall Vunipola, Easters long wait
would suddenly be over.
Easter, therefore, has the opportunity to establish himself in and around
the England camp for the entire two
months of the Six Nations. He can now
make a real statement.
The same is not necessarily true for
Cipriani. Unlike the other three No 10s,
he is not in the England elite player
squad. Nominally, he is in the training
squad for the Wales game as cover for
Kyle Eastmond, the Bath centre, who
picked up a knock at the weekend and
may not be fit for the start of the training camp.
Eastmonds injury is by-the-by and,
in the convoluted accounting system,

which limits the player numbers that

Lancaster is allowed to borrow from the
clubs, merely a means by which
Cipriani could be named in the squad.
Lancaster said that in an ideal world
he would have all four No 10s back
for another week, after the Wales
game, when England prepare to face
Italy
Yet Cipriani can make no assumptions as to how long he will be invited to
stay within the squad or whether
Lancaster will really want four No 10s
on his hands when he is immersed in
the nitty-gritty of preparing for Six
Nations matches.
Lancaster said yesterday of the competition for the No 10 shirt: All things
are now open. Stephen and Danny have
the opportunity to come in to prove
that they should be No 1.
The mind boggles at what kind of

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

57

FGM

Rugby union Sport

Nick Easter
Harlequins
Age 36
6ft 3in
17st 13lb
caps 47

Backs

Forwards
Dave Attwood (Bath, age 27,
height 6ft 7in, weight 18st 8lb):
caps 16
Calum Clark (Northampton,
25, 6ft 4in, 17st 5lb): caps 0
Dan Cole (Leicester, 27, 6ft 3in,
18st 8lb): caps 45
Alex Corbisiero (Northampton,
26, 6ft 1in, 18st 4lb): caps 19
Nick Easter (Harlequins, 36, 6ft
3in, 17st 13lb): caps 47
Dylan Hartley (Northampton,
28, 6ft, 17st): caps 61
James Haskell (Wasps, 29, 6ft
4in, 17st 13lb): caps 53
Graham Kitchener (Leicester,
25, 6ft 6in, 17st 9lb): caps 0
George Kruis (Saracens, 24, 6ft
6in, 18st 4lb): caps 4
Joe Marler (Harlequins, 24, 6ft,
17st 5lb): caps 26
Geoff Parling (Leicester, 31, 6ft
6in, 17st 5lb): caps 21
Chris Robshaw (Harlequins, 28,
6ft 2in, 17st 2lb): caps 32

Danny
Cipriani

Billy Vunipola (Saracens, 22,

6ft 2in, 19st 12lb): caps 12
Mako Vunipola (Saracens, 24,
5ft 11in, 18st 13lb): caps 15

Sale Sharks
Age 27
6ft 1in
14st 6lb
caps 9

David Wilson (Bath, 29, 6ft 1in,

19st 3lb): caps 41

Words by
Alex Lowe
proof Lancaster would need to lift
either player above Ford or Farrell. Yet
there is, at least, a lifeline being thrown
here. And Lancaster went so far as to
suggest that all four No 10s would be invited to join the broader squad for the
first World Cup training camp. So the
door is unlocked, albeit that it now
requires an extraordinary effort if
Cipriani is to force it open.
So Lancaster has the two men on
board who it seemed he had been loath
to select. He has been pragmatic and
England may benefit. There is a limit to
this pragmatism, though, and that
came with his one-word answer yesterday to the question about Steffon
Armitage, another widely admired
player left out in the cold.
Question: Were you tempted to use
the exceptional circumstance card?
Answer: No.

Brad Barritt (Saracens, 28, 6ft

1in, 15st 10lb): caps 22
Mike Brown (Harlequins, 29,
6ft, 14st 7lb): caps 33
Luther Burrell (Northampton,
27, 6ft 3in, 16st 5lb): caps 7
Danny Care (Harlequins, 28, 5ft
9in, 13st 10lb): caps 50
Danny Cipriani (Sale, 27, 6ft
1in,14st 5lb): caps 9
Kyle Eastmond (Bath, 25, 5ft
7in, 12st 13lb): caps 6
Owen Farrell (Saracens, 23, 6ft
2in, 15st 2lb): caps 29
George Ford (Bath, 21, 5ft 10in,
13st 3lb): caps 6
Alex Goode (Saracens, 26, 5ft
11in, 14st 5lb): caps 16
Jonathan Joseph (Bath, 23, 6ft,
14st 2lb): caps 6
Jonny May (Gloucester, 24, 6ft
2in, 14st 2lb): caps 11
Stephen Myler (Northampton,
30, 5ft 11in, 14st 13lb): caps 1
Jack Nowell (Exeter, 21, 5ft 11in,
13st 10lb): caps 5
Billy Twelvetrees (Gloucester,
26, 6ft 3in, 15st 10lb): caps 16
Anthony Watson (Bath, 20, 6ft
1in, 14st 7lb): caps 4

Tom Wood (Northampton, 28,

6ft 5in, 16st 12lb): caps 34

Richard Wigglesworth
(Saracens, 31, 5ft 9in, 13st 3lb):
caps 16

Tom Youngs (Leicester, 27, 5ft

9in, 15st 13lb): caps 17

Ben Youngs (Leicester, 25, 5ft

10in, 14st 7lb): caps 42

Head coach refuses to soft-soap Bath trio

Alex Lowe

Stuart Lancaster insists the solution to

Englands midfield conundrum is more
complicated than simply picking the
Bath trio of George Ford, Kyle
Eastmond and Jonathan Joseph en bloc
to face Wales in the opening game of
the RBS Six Nations Championship.
While England have used five
different centre partnerships in their
past seven internationals and too often
looked bereft of creativity, Eastmond
and Joseph have forged the most potent
attacking combination in the Aviva
Premiership.
With Ford directing operations at fly
half, the Bath triumvirate tore Toulouse

apart in the European Champions Cup

last weekend. Mike Ford, their head
coach, described Josephs performance
as world class.
However, Lancaster has never selected by club units and he is not about to
break that policy now, not when he also
sees merit in the claims of Brad Barritt,
who started all four internationals in
the autumn, and Luther Burrell.
We would never put selecting a club
combination as a priority, Lancaster,
the head coach, said. It is about selecting the best team and we are confident
they will adapt and work together,
whatever combinations we choose.
The way Bath played was a great
model of attack and you have to take

that it into consideration but you

also have the strengths of Northampton, of Leicester, who managed to
squeeze Bath not too long ago.
England, with Manu Tuilagi still
sidelined, are striving to find the combination that gives them the right mix of
creativity, physicality, with and without
the ball, and a big-game temperament.
Andy Farrell, the England backs
coach, said: It is [about] what is right
for the team. Luther Burrell was
impressive against Leicester in a big
game. Brad Barritt was pretty immense
against Australia. Youve got to look at
the combinations. Its about attitude
and character as well. Whos got the
character as well in big games?

Results
Football
Capital One Cup: Semi-final, first leg
Tottenham

(0) 1

Townsend 74 (pen)

Sheffield Utd

35,323

(0) 0

Sky Bet Championship

Brighton

(3) 3

Fulham

(3) 3

Baldock 19
Teixeira 38, 45+2
23,880

McCormack 7, 18, 35
15,512

Ipswich

Murphy 22
Sears 78

(1) 2

Nottm Forest (1) 2

Lansbury 45+1, 62

6 Table on page 76

FA Trophy: Second-round replay

Gateshead

(1) L

Grimsby

Chandler 27
McLaughlin 35
Curtis 71
Mackreth 88
605
(Extra time being played)

(1) L

Scottish Premiership
Celtic

(2) 4

Motherwell

(0) 0

Dundee

(1) 1

Stewart 19 (pen)

Kilmarnock

5,141

(0) 0

Partick Thistle (2) 5

Hamilton

(0) 0

Doolan 29, 44, 60, 62

Eccleston 89

St Mirren

McLean 39
2,511

(1) 1

2,138

Dundee United (1) 1

Armstrong 43

Bowls
Just Retirement World Indoor Championships
Hopton-on-Sea, Norfolk: Women: Singles: Semi-finals: K Rednall (Eng) bt V Bilson (Eng) 10-5, 8-4; L
Thomas (Wales) bt A Stanton (Eng) 12-2, 6-7, 2-0.

Cricket

FA Vase: Fourth round: Postponed: Worksop Town

v Glossop North End.

Van Dijk 26
Griffiths 42
Lustig 76, 81

P W D L F A GD Pts
Celtic......................21 15 3 3 42 12 30 48
Aberdeen...............22 15 2 5 36 20 16 47
Inverness CT..........22 14 2 6 32 21 11 44
Dundee United.......22 13 3 6 43 29 14 42
Hamilton ...............23 12 3 8 38 29 9 39
St Johnstone.........22 10 2 10 19 23 -4 32
Dundee...................23 7 8 8 34 36 -2 29
Kilmarnock.............22 8 3 11 21 28 -7 27
Partick Thistle.......21 6 6 9 30 25 5 24
Motherwell............22 5 2 15 14 42 -28 17
St Mirren...............23 4 3 16 18 39 -21 15
Ross County .......... 21 2 5 14 20 43 -23 11
Africa Cup of Nations: Group A: Equatorial Guinea 0
Burkina Faso 0; Gabon 0 Congo 1.

Third one-day international

South Africa v West Indies

East London (West Indies won toss): South Africa

beat West Indies by nine wickets
West Indies
(balls)
D R Smith c De Villiers b Philander
5 (7)
C H Gayle c De Villiers b Philander
1 (5)
N Deonarine c De Villiers b Steyn
10 (27)
M N Samuels c Rossouw b Tahir
26 (38)
D Ramdin b Steyn
2 (10)
J L Carter lbw b Tahir
18 (35)
A D Russell b Morkel
16 (25)
C R Brathwaite lbw b Tahir
4 (10)
*J O Holder not out
17 (24)
J E Taylor lbw b Philander
0 (2)
S J Benn st De Villiers b Tahir
18 (19)
Extras (lb 4, w 1)
5
Total (33.4 overs)
122
Fall of wickets: 1-5, 2-6, 3-33, 4-43, 5-52, 6-83, 7-87,
8-95, 9-96.

Bowling: Morkel 7-0-26-1; Philander 8-2-27-3;

Steyn 6-1-21-2; Duminy 3-0-11-0; Behardien
2-0-5-0; Tahir 7.4-0-28-4.
South Africa
(balls)
R R Rossouw c Deonarine b Holder
7 (14)
H M Amla not out
61 (63)
F du Plessis not out
51 (71)
Extras (lb 3, w 2)
5
Total (1 wkt, 24.4 overs)
124
*A B de Villiers, J P Duminy, D A Miller, F Behardien, V D Philander, D W Steyn, M Morkel and Imran
Tahir did not bat.
Fall of wicket: 1-27.
Bowling: Taylor 5-0-28-0; Benn 3-0-23-0; Holder
5-1-14-1; Russell 5-0-15-0; Deonarine 1-0-5-0;
Brathwaite 5-0-31-0; Gayle 0.4-0-5-0.
Umpires: J D Cloete and S Ravi (India).
6 South Africa lead five-match series 3-0
Tour match
Bloemfontein: Final day of four: England Lions
260 (A U Rashid 68, A Lyth 65) and 402-7 dec
(J M Vince 152 not out, I J L Trott 53); South Africa
A 421 (T B de Bruyn 161, T Bavuma 102, J L Ontong
54; W B Rankin 4 for 78). Match drawn.

Golf

Commercial Bank Qatar Masters

Doha GC: Leading first-round scores (Great Britain
and Ireland unless stated): 65: O Fisher. 66: R Cabrera Bello (Sp). 67: K Broberg (Swe), An Byeong Hun
(S Kor), B Grace (SA), D Fichardt (SA), M Lampert
(Ger), E Grillo (Arg), A Noren (Swe), Paul Lawrie, E
Els (SA), A Caizares (Sp), M Foster. 68: D McGrane,
G Coetzee (SA), J Morrison, S Jamieson, K Aphibarnrat (Thai), S Gallacher, J Rose, M Fitzpatrick.

Tennis

Australian Open
Melbourne Park: Men: Singles: Second round: D Sela
(Isr) bt L Rosol (Cz) 7-6, 5-7, 7-5, 6-3; N Kyrgios
(Aus) bt I Karlovic (Cro) 7-6, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4; A Murray
(GB) bt M Matosevic (Aus) 6-1, 6-3, 6-2; J Sousa
(Por) bt M Klizan (Slovakia) 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 1-0 ret;

S Groth (Aus) bt T Kokkinakis (Aus) 3-6, 6-3, 7-5,

3-6, 6-1; T Berdych (Cz) bt J Melzer (Austria) 7-6,
6-2, 6-2; K Anderson (SA) bt R Berankis (Lith) 6-2,
6-2, 7-6; R Gasquet (Fr) bt J Duckworth (Aus) 6-2,
6-3, 7-5; R Nadal (Sp) bt T Smyczek (US) 6-2, 3-6,
6-7, 6-3, 7-5; B Tomic (Aus) bt P Kohlschreiber (Ger)
6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6; G Dimitrov (Bul) bt L Lacko (Slovakia) 6-3, 6-7, 6-3, 6-3; A Seppi (It) bt J Chardy (Fr)
7-5, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1; M Jaziri (Tun) bt E Roger-Vasselin
(Fr) 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3; M Baghdatis (Cyp) bt D
Goffin (Bel) 6-1, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0; R Federer (Switz) bt
S Bolelli (It) 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2; V Troicki (Serbia) bt
L Mayer (Arg) 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-0. Doubles: First round:
J Murray (GB) and J Peers (Aus) bt M Gonzlez (Arg)
and J Mnaco (Arg) 6-1, 6-7, 6-4; D Inglot (GB) and
F Mergea (Rom) bt M Ebden (Aus) and M Reid (Aus)
6-2, 6-2; P Cuevas (Uru) and D Marrero (Sp) bt J Marray (GB) and S Stakhovsky (Ukr) 6-4, 7-6. Women:
Singles: Second round: M Sharapova (Russ) bt A
Panova (Russ) 6-1, 4-6, 7-5; Peng Shuai (China) bt M
Rybarikova (Slovakia) 6-1, 6-1 ; C Garcia (Fr) bt S
Vgele (Switz) 6-3, 6-4; J Grges (Ger) bt K Koukalova (Cz) 6-3, 4-6, 6-2; S Errani (It) bt S Soler Espinosa
(Sp) 7-6, 6-3; Y Shvedova (Kaz) bt M Puig (P Rico)
6-2, 7-6; L Hradecka (Cz) bt P Hercog (Slovenia) 4-6,
6-3, 6-2; C Witthft (Ger) bt C McHale (US) 6-3, 6-0;
E Makarova (Russ) bt R Vinci (It) 6-2, 6-4; E Bouchard (Can) bt K Bertens (Neth) 6-0, 6-3; B MattekSands (US) bt K Mladenovic (Fr) 7-6, 7-6; Y Wickmayer (Bel) bt L Arruabarrena (Sp) 6-4, 4-6, 6-4; Karolina Pliskova (Cz) bt O Dodin (Fr) 7-5, 5-7, 6-4; Z
Diyas (Kaz) bt A K Schmiedlova (Slovakia) 3-6, 6-2,
8-6; I-C Begu (Rom) bt K Siniakova (Cz) 7-5, 6-4; S
Halep (Rom) bt J Gajdosova (Aus) 6-2, 6-2.

Fixtures
Rugby union
European Challenge Cup (7.45): Pool five: Brive v
Gloucester; Oyonnax v Zebre.

Other sport

Bowls: Hopton-on-Sea, Norfolk: Just Retirement

World Indoor Championships.

Murderball to
be paraded at
Olympic Park
Rick Broadbent

Great Britains murderball squad will

host an international tournament in
the Olympic Park during the World
Cup.
The eight-team challenge is a result
of a new three-year agreement
between GB Wheelchair Rugby and
BT. The deal means that BT will
become the official partner of the sport,
which was one of the huge successes of
the 2012 Paralympics.
This could be transformational for
us, David Pond, the chief executive of
GB Wheelchair Rugby, said. When I
hear all this negative stuff about legacy,
it doesnt apply to us. We had a massive
bounce off London. The club game has
expanded from seven to 18 clubs since
2012, there are partnerships with
Leicester Tigers, Saracens, Gloucester
and Harlequins, and we are introducing
it into the military personnel recovery
units.
The sport was a big hit in London
with its brutal combat and numerous
crashes. Organisers expect the BT
World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge in
the Copper Box Arena from October
12-16 to be a sell-out.
Britain are ranked No 1 in Europe, but
will take on Australia, the world and
Paralympic champions, as well as
teams from New Zealand, South Africa,
France and the United States. GB
Wheelchair Rugby is also planning a
17-team knockout competition in May
at the Copper Box to decide the
national champions.
Murderball was the original name for
the sport, which was devised in Canada
in the 1970s and made its bow at the
Paralympics in 1996. It also spawned an
Oscar-nominated documentary called
Murderball.
Mike Brown, the England full back
and long-term supporter of the sport,
said: Its a brilliant idea. Its being
staged right in the middle of the World
Cup and will generate plenty of interest
at a vital time for the sport.
Brown was at Twickenham for the
launch of the tournament as the
England squad was being announced.
Eyeing the RBS Six Nations
Championship, he said that the squad
had ignored criticism. We dont pay
any attention to whats said outside the
camp, he said.

58

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Sport Special report

Dutch press
for refereeing
revolution to
end run of
video nasties
Exclusive Matt Dickinson speaks to the
men behind a plan to make the game
fairer by finally giving under-pressure
officials the benefit of television replays

elcome to the
future, Raymond
van Meenen says,
sliding open the
door of a white
Transit van. In a car park outside
Feyenoords De Kuip stadium, we step
inside footballs brave new world.
This nondescript van may end up in a
museum one day given that it houses
potentially one of the most notable
changes to football in a century: the
first serious exploration of refereeing
by video.
A revolution? Some people call it
that, Gijs de Jong, operations director
of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), says. We just think its
common sense.
He asks a simple question. When
millions can see replays of gamechanging incidents on television, and
thousands view it on a big screen or
smartphone in the stadium, why
deprive those in the middle who need
that information more than anyone?
De Jong talks of video refereeing as
an inevitability and inescapable
because, if you can make football
significantly fairer, why on earth not?
Ah yes, but it will ruin the game, some
say. It will slow down football. Change it
for ever. But how do they know? This is
what makes the Dutch experiment so
fascinating, because here they do not
deal in conjecture but evidence,
experience and the trial and error of 18
painstaking months.
Feyenoord against Twente on
Sunday was the 32nd Eredivisie game
in which the Dutch federation has run
this trial. A senior referee sits in the van
looking at screens and, while he is not
yet allowed to communicate his advice
to the man in the middle, he acts out the
protocol that will be presented next
month to the International Football
Association Board (IFAB), footballs
law-making body and which has
been seen by The Times.
6 The fifth official works like the other
assistants in providing guidance, but
the referee remains in charge and has
the final say. The referee can ask for
advice but it remains his game to run.
6 The video assistants role is limited to
advice on key decisions red-card
incidents, penalties and goalscoring
opportunities within 15 seconds of
them taking place. So, for example,
offsides and dives are only relevant if
directly involved in a goal.
6 The video assistant (VA) will only

Trial and errors

Under the KNVB experiment, at
least three decisions in the Barclays
Premier League this season would
have been overturned. From top:
Gabriel Agbonlahors red card
against Manchester United, Jan
Vertonghens disallowed goal and
Sergio Ageros caution for diving.

Eye of the storm: Twente players complain to the referee about his verdict during the match against Feyenoord, which was

advise the referee if he believes the

incident to be either clear-cut or that
the main official has made an obvious
mistake.
6 The VA can tell the referee if he has
missed a key incident such as a tackle
that warrants a red card but must do
so within 15 seconds.
6 There will be no appeal system for
managers. It was discussed but
abandoned because of concerns that it
would be used tactically.
The evidence of 24 matches last
season was that 76 incidents fitted the

protocol and the referees verdict would

have been overturned in 24 cases. That
is one big call a game a red card, a
penalty, perhaps a goal wrongly
disallowed when justice could have
been much better served by simple use
of television screens and software
provided by Hawk-Eye, the British
company, to enable instant replays.
In the Premier League this season,
Jan Vertonghens goal for Tottenham
Hotspur against Sunderland would not
have been disallowed by a wretched
offside decision. Sergio Agero would
have been awarded a penalty for Manchester City against Southampton
rather than being booked for diving.
Aston Villa would have played with 11
men against Manchester United rather
than losing Gabriel Agbonlahor to a red
card that was subsequently overturned
by the FA. We could go on.
The way the protocol works, we are
talking about only a few incidents per
game on average, Van Meenen, the
project leader and a former referee,
says. But it is those two or three
decisions that can change the game.
At the moment, the referee makes
around 95 per cent correct decisions in
a match. Our goal is to make that 97 per
cent. But in that 2 per cent you have the
decisions everyone talks about.
There are a few key points to
understand. The system will not end
arguments. It is still down to interpreta-

tion of the referee, his video assistant, or both. A questionable penalty

remains just that. A missed foul in the
build-up to a goal will stay missed.
After many rewrites, and advice from
different countries including England,
the protocol needs proper testing under
pressure. The KNVB is proposing a full
experiment in up to 25 games in the
Dutch Cup next season, including the
final. It wants to see if behaviour
changes. For example, will referees
duck a difficult call on a penalty,
passing the buck to the video official?
The referee can ask for help like he
already does from his assistants I
have a bad angle, did you see that?
Van Meenen says. But it is important
he does not lie back and wait for the
video to intervene. Thats not refereeing, not what we want.
This risk could particularly apply to

Tomorrow

Exclusive boot camp for

Premier League officials
Inside today

Time to exorcise errors

that haunt the game
Leading article, page 20

linesmen. There is an incentive to keep

their flag down because, if they miss an
offside and it leads directly to a goal, the
video assistant will call it back. But what
if that missed offside does not lead to a
goal but to a corner, from which a goal
is scored? These scenarios need to be
put under scrutiny.
We need to see it work under real
pressure, to see the human element,
Van Meenen says. For example, the
young referees who joined this project
pushed the button say 25 times, the
most
experienced
probably
a
maximum of five times. We identified
that already, the need for experience
and trust between the referee and video
assistant.
There will be glitches but the idea of
stopping now seems unthinkable.
Everyone understands that it has to
happen: it will happen, De Jong says.
The biggest thing for us was simply
saying, Right, lets make a start.
The logic seems so obvious that even
if the IFAB refuses to allow a live trial,
the KNVB says it will continue testing.
The rules are there to make sure the
game is played in a fair and attractive
way and this only helps to implement
those rules, De Jong says. Football
can be conservative but, really, this is
not so radical. There is nothing to be
afraid of.
Welcome to the future? You had
better believe it.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

59

FGM

Special report Sport

MICHAEL KOOREN / MICHAEL KOOREN PHOTOGRAPHY

If it saves us just
one big mistake,
then its worth it
Matt Dickinson
Chief Sports Correspondent

monitored as part of a trial that aims to give officials the support of video technology to improve their decision-making

It is the 35th minute inside a freezing

De Kuip stadium when Pol van Boekel
points to the spot, awarding a penalty to
Feyenoord for a trip on Karim El
Ahmadi. Sitting in a van in a car park
outside the stadium, Danny Makkelie
has already seen the incident live on
one monitor. A close call, he says,
perking up.
Immediately he turns to his left
where a bank of eight screens is showing the game on two-second delay. He
watches the foul again at real speed.
A
technician
has
already
bookmarked the moment, scrolling
back so that Makkelie can observe it in
slow motion from numerous different
angles. Within ten seconds, as the
Twente players continue their
complaints to the referee, the video
assistant has already seen the challenge
several times.
It is a 50-50 call. Contact is not
obvious but it was a reckless tackle.
Makkelie allows the penalty to stand,
adding, intriguingly, that he would also
have backed the referee if he had not
pointed to the spot.
Inside the van, it is a tense, fascinating moment that highlights a few
aspects of the video system, including
that a grey zone will always exist. There
will still be soft penalties, marginal
calls.
The incident demonstrates, too, that
the referee remains in charge. The
video assistant would only intervene
via a buzzer and a radio to communicate if the man in the middle was
clearly wrong.
It also throws up a question. Would
the referee have been less likely to give
the penalty if he had known there was
video back-up? Makkelie says it is an
interesting discussion and why the tests
need to be run in matches.
We need to see this system work
under real pressure, when there is a
decision to make and the seconds are
ticking away, he says. It is not hard to

Time for Blatter to make right decision

Analysis Matt Dickinson

he case for continuing the

Dutch experiment is
indisputable when you
think of the help a video
assistant can give to
under-pressure referees and the
injustices it could rectify.
Yet we should never
underestimate the forces of
conservatism in world football.
Men walked on the Moon decades
before football got around to
showing whether the ball had
crossed the line.
It is an obvious idea to pursue
but we are back to guessing the
political motives of Sepp
Blatter, right, who is not
only president of Fifa but
also chairman of the
International Football
Association Board, the
rule-making body
which will consider the
Dutch proposal at its
AGM in Belfast
between February 27
and March 1.
Blatter has

indicated in recent months that he

is open-minded to some form of
video assistance, specifically
mentioning an appeal system, but
he is not known for his consistency.
It leaves the Royal Dutch
Football Association (KNVB)
hopeful that its live trial will be
approved for next season, but
setting out a cautious protocol to
soothe traditionalists, narrowing
the system down to key incidents
and leaving the referee as the
man very much in charge.
Its protocol stresses that the
video assistant (VA) will not
slow down the game
and claims, justifiably,
that the VA will
reduce the pressure
on the referee as
well as increasing
the respect for
referees among the
general public,
which should be
wh
persuasive
arguments.
There is also a question

of value for money. There is only

one stadium with goalline
technology in the Eredivisie
because, at 330,000 (about
254,000), the KNVB could afford
only one system.
The new system is cheap. The
footage comes from broadcasters
and Hawk-Eye software gives the
video assistant the ability to scroll
through the film for whatever he
needs. Referees and their assistants
are already connected by radio
this would simply be adding one
more.
The most expensive element
would be paying a fifth official, but
that position could make good use
of recently retired referees,
harnessing their experience and
extending their careers.
It is just another reason why the
KNVB is so keen to press ahead
with the live trial, and it will take
stubbornness of ridiculous
proportions to stand in the way of
more testing. When it comes to use
of technology, football is already
years behind the curve.

Screen saver: If
referees had
the help of
video replays,
Makkelie, seen in
the Hawk-Eye van
during
the Dutch
experiment, says
it would be
appreciated
because it would
stop any criticism
they might
otherwise receive

imagine the stress for a video assistant

who must decide, within 15 seconds,
whether to intervene and make a big
call.
A stress test is necessary but as one of
Hollands leading officials and, at 31, the
youngest referee in the Champions
League, Makkelie is already certain
that the upsides will outweigh any
reservations.
The part-time policeman talks of the
confidence it will give to officials,
knowing someone is watching their
back. That can be empowering for the
referee, he says. Especially if you have
someone in your ear saying, Good
decision, keep going, when theyve
watched replays. And it gives the public
more confidence in referees.
He talks of being saved from those
horrible calls when even the best
officials can be made to look foolish.
Already this season, in a game
between Den Haag and Feyenoord,
Makkelie missed a clear red card for a
stamp because he had a bad angle. He
spent the rest of the game trying to
regain control. A video assistant could
have really helped me, he says.
He still cringes at awarding a penalty
against Utrecht for a foul clearly
outside the box. Utrecht lost and the
media killed me, he says. Another big
error that could have been put right in
seconds. Any referee, even the best,
will have incidents when he looks at the
tape and says, How did I miss that?
It is why he says the idea has the
unanimous support of Dutch officials.
I cant speak for all of Europe but every
referee in Holland is waiting to see if its
approved by Fifa and is ready to use it,
he says.
Its only good for us. If I miss a penalty, Im all over the front page. If Im at a
tournament, I can be sent home. If it
saves us just one big mistake, its worth
it.
As long as the media and the public
understand that its not 100 per cent
waterproof. There will still be arguments. This is only for black-and-white
cases but we can solve many problems.
Consider the biggest match on the
planet, the World Cup final. In 2006,
Zindine Zidane was sent off for a headbutt seen only by the fourth official on
a monitor the first, highly unofficial,
use of video assistance.
In the 2010 final, Howard Webb
infamously failed to send off Nigel de
Jong for his studs-up challenge on Xabi
Alonso.
This tackle of De Jong, we still talk
about it now five years later, Makkelie
says. We could have sorted it in five
seconds. People want referees to be
perfect. Its not possible but we can help
them. Im sure Howard would have
appreciated the help then.

60

FGM

Sport Football

Ipswich challenge damaged by Teixeira double

Cardiff City
Brighton

Campbell,
Baldock 18,21Teixeira 38, 45

West
Ipswich
Ham
Town
United

C
Murphy
Cole 42,
22,Noble
78 90+3

Sky Bet Championship

BRYN LENNON / GETTY IMAGES

3
0
2
1
2

Brighton & Hove Albion (4-2-3-1): D Stockdale

B Saltor, G Greer, A Hughes, J Bennett R Ince,
D Holla I Caldern, J Teixeira (sub: S March, 86min),
S Baldock C OGrady (sub: L Best, 77). Substitutes
not used: C Walton, A Colunga, A Chicksen, P McCourt,
G Rea.
Ipswich Town (4-4-2): B Bialkowski L Chambers,
T Smith, C Berra, T Mings P Anderson (sub: F Sears,
50), C Skuse, K Bru, J Tabb (sub: S Hunt, 74) N Hunt
(sub: T Bishop, 65), D Murphy. Substitutes not used:
P Kenny, J Parr, M Clarke, D Ambrose. Booked: N Hunt,
Bru.
Referee: K Stroud.

McCormack
finds his feet
for Fulham
Cardiff
Fulham City
Campbell,
McCormack
21 7, 18, 35

Jon West

Joo Teixeiras brace of impressive

goals were the highlight of a Brighton &
Hove Albion victory that moved them
away from the relegation places and
prevented the visiting team from
gaining the three points that would
have taken them to the Sky Bet
Championship summit last night.
The outcome was about right as
Ipswich Town did not look like a
Barclays Premier League side in
waiting. Brighton, who entertain
Arsenal in the FA Cup fourth round on
Sunday, did not look like a side in
danger of dropping down a level.
Ipswich created the first chance of
the game, Daryl Murphy heading a
corner from Cole Skuse over the bar,
but the visiting team were soon under
pressure when a ball across goal from
Chris OGrady had to be hastily
cleared.
Although David Stockdale, the
Brighton goalkeeper, was forced to tip a
header from Noel Hunt over after Jay
Tabb had crossed dangerously from the
left, this time the home sides response
was an opening goal of the highest
quality from Sam Baldock, who cut
inside from the left before firing a rising
shot across Bartosz Bialkowski.
Brighton were understandably lifted
and Teixeira was next to have a go,
striking a low drive at Bialkowski.
Ipswich, however, drew level within
three minutes, Murphy volleying in
Noel Hunts pacy cross to the near post.
The visiting side might have gone
ahead shortly afterwards when
Stockdale
punched
away
unconvincingly and Kevin Bru floated
a header just wide.
Chances were coming at both ends
and Noel Hunt, having seen Stockdale
block his shot, popped up on the
goalline at the other end to nod away

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

West
Nottm
Ham
Forest
United
C
Lansbury
Cole 42,45,
Noble
62 90+3

Ian Baker

Caldern, of Brighton, shields the ball from Mings on a night when Ipswich failed to take over the top position in the table

Rohan Inces header, with Aaron

Hughes heading over from the followup.
OGrady scooped a shot wastefully
high and Hughess next attempt, a
header similar to his previous effort,
was well saved by Bialkowski. It seemed
that a goal was coming and Teixeira
provided it, the on-loan Liverpool
midfielder eluding a series of
challenges on the edge of the penalty
area before unleashing a shot that
deflected off Skuse and past the
helpless Bialkowski.
Teixeira made it 3-1 in first-half
stoppage time, arriving at pace in the
box to lash in Joe Bennetts cross from
the left.
Bialkowski did well to adjust enough

to get behind a deflected OGrady

effort as Brighton started the second
period in swaggering style.
A chance for Baldock to put the game
beyond Ipswichs reach followed, but he
fired straight at Bialkowski.
Mick McCarthy, the Ipswich
manager, cut a frustrated figure on the
touchline and introduced Freddie
Sears, the new recruit from Colchester
United, and Teddy Bishop in the hope
of injecting some life into his side.
Ipswich were back in the game in the
77th minute, however, when Brus pass
allowed Sears to nip in and slot under
Stockdale.
The chance to equalise came
Murphys way, but the Irishman poked
wide with the goal at his mercy.

How they stand

P
Bournemouth...........27
Middlesbrough.........27
Ipswich.....................27
Derby........................26
Brentford ................. 26
Watford....................26
Norwich....................26
Wolves.....................26
Sheffield Wed..........26
Blackburn.................26
Birmingham ............. 26
Nottingham Forest..27
Cardiff......................27
Fulham ..................... 27
Bolton.......................26
Charlton ................... 26
Huddersfield ............ 26
Reading....................26
Brighton...................27
Leeds........................27
Rotherham...............26
Millwall....................26
Wigan.......................26
Blackpool..................26

W
15
14
14
14
14
13
12
12
9
9
9
8
9
10
9
6
8
8
6
7
5
5
4
3

D
6
8
8
6
4
5
7
7
10
9
8
10
7
4
6
13
7
6
11
8
11
8
9
8

L
6
5
5
6
8
8
7
7
7
8
9
9
11
13
11
7
11
12
10
12
10
13
13
15

F
57
42
46
48
42
49
49
31
21
36
31
37
36
40
29
24
34
31
30
28
21
25
26
19

A
28
18
27
25
35
29
32
33
23
35
39
39
40
47
33
34
45
42
35
38
33
44
35
43

GD
29
24
19
23
7
20
17
-2
-2
1
-8
-2
-4
-7
-4
-10
-11
-11
-5
-10
-12
-19
-9
-24

Pts
51
50
50
48
46
44
43
43
37
36
35
34
34
34
33
31
31
30
29
29
26
23
21
17

3
0
2
1
2

Stuart Pearce, the Nottingham Forest

manager, could not inspire his side to
the second miraculous comeback of the
week as Ross McCormacks first-half
hat-trick gave an improving Fulham
side a third win in the space of eight
days.
Forest had come back from 1-0 down
to beat Derby County, their bitter rivals,
at the weekend, but trailing 3-0 at Craven Cottage was too much of an ask
despite a Henri Lansbury brace.
McCormack had not scored the goals
that a 11 million transfer fee in the
summer promised before last night, but
he went from seven for his new club to
double figures in just 35 minutes.
The Scotland forward scored his first
on seven minutes, collecting Hugo
Rodallegas flick and powerfully beating Dorus de Vries, the goalkeeper,
before a second arrived in similar circumstances 11 minutes later when
McCormack found the net via a post.
Pearce took off Eric Lichaj, the
defender, for seemingly tactical
reasons, but it got worse after 35 minutes as McCormack profited from a
stroke of luck as his shot beat De Vries
via a wicked deflection.
But Forest rallied, with Lansbury
drilling home a free kick on the stroke
of half-time and, urged on no doubt by
words of wisdom from their manager,
looked a changed team in the second
half.
Lansbury pulled another one back
after 62 minutes, powering home from
Michail Antonios cross, but despite a
succession of missed chances for Britt
Assombalonga, Fulham held on to ensure that it was McCormack who could
take the plaudits.
Fulham (4-3-3): M Bettinelli J Grimmer,
S Hutchinson, N Bodurov, K Stafylidis S Parker (sub:
B Ruiz, 57min), S Fofana, R Tunnicliffe A Kacaniklic,
R McCormack, H Rodallega (sub: C Woodrow, 77).
Substitutes not used: G Kiraly, P Roberts, M Dembl,
G Williams, D Burn. Booked: Grimmer, Kacaniklic.
Nottingham Forest (4-5-1): D De Vries T Kane,
J Hobbs, K Wilson, E Lichaj (sub: S McLaughlin, 31)
M Antonio, H Lansbury, R Tesche, G Gardner, B Osborn
B Assombalonga. Substitutes not used: K Darlow,
L Veldwijk, J Lascelles, J Paterson, D Vaughan, C Burke.
Referee: A Haines.

Blind faith in system despite fans revolt

James Ducker
Northern Football Correspondent

It has become a familiar sight. A trio of

nervy centre halves hitting sideways
passes between them, inviting pressure
and then hurriedly and awkwardly
trying to move the ball to a midfield that
looks equally uncertain of what it is
supposed to be doing, while in front of
them a static forward line toils to little
effect.
Welcome to 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2,
3-3-2-2 and its other mutations
under Louis van Gaal at Manchester
United, a system that so far seems to
have inhibited rather than inspired a
group of players who are routinely
being used out of position and look all
the more dysfunctional for it.
Juan Mata and Wayne Rooney in
central midfield? ngel Di Mara as a
centre forward? Antonio Valencia at
wing back when he is as orthodox a
wide man as there is in the game?

Adnan Januzaj, on those rare occasions

the Belgium winger is selected, as an
odd-job man? Michael Carrick has
even found himself at centre half when
injuries have not necessitated such a
move.
Tired of watching their team labour
against Queens Park Rangers at Loftus
Road on Saturday, United supporters
called for a change to a more familiar
4-4-2. Their wish as good as granted,
United ran out 2-0 winners, the uplift
marked. Van Gaal has said that he
cannot listen to 600 million supporters
a light-hearted nod to Uniteds
purported global fanbase but
perhaps the Dutchman will start to pay
attention to the statistics.
United have won 60 per cent of their
matches in which they have played a
back four, collecting an average of two
points and two goals per game. With
three at the back, the win percentage
drops to 42 per cent, the points-pergame average to 1.7 and the goals-per-

game average to 1.3. As far as Daley

Blind is concerned, though, United fans
just need to be patient.
That might be difficult if Van Gaal
opts to persist with three at the back
against lowly Cambridge United, of Sky
Bet
League
Two, in the
FA
Cup
fourth
round
tomorrow,
but
the
United
midfielder is
adamant that
his fellow Dutchman will
get it right. It might not
look like it on the pitch,
but Blind insists the players have a very
clear understanding of what is expected
of them.
He [Van Gaal] is very honest and
direct in what he wants, Blind said.
We all understand what he wants. Of
course, if you have played another
system for a long time you have to get

used to a new one,

but that isnt a
problem.
There
are games we are
doing it very well,
but games when we
can do it better.
This is what
the manager
wants and
I agree
with it.
It

does
not
happen
overnight. You
cant
always
switch
something in a
day, but we are

improving. With three or five defenders

you have to play differently, but the
players are confident and feel
comfortable with both.
Blind encountered criticism of his
own when Gary Neville, the former
United defender and Sky Sports pundit,
accused him of playing far too many
square passes and taking the easy
option, but he is unfazed.
I listen to him [Neville], but I try to
play my own game, do what the
manager wants from me, and that is to
keep possession, he said.
If there is space forward then I will
play that ball, but sometimes I think it is
better to keep possession, to switch
from side to side and move the ball and
search for players who can make an
individual action. I am not a player who
does that. You have to wait for the right
moment.
Blind, left, has encountered criticism
from Neville but remains undaunted

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

61

FGM

Football Sport

Sterling making hay after the sunshine

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, BRADLEY ORMESHER

Tony Barrett

Raheem Sterling believes that he is

already reaping the benefits of being
allowed a winter break by Brendan
Rodgers, having scored the
equalising goal against Chelsea at
Anfield to keep alive Liverpools
hopes of lifting the Capital One Cup.
Sterling was given time off by the
manager this month and enjoyed a
week-long holiday in Jamaica,
missing Liverpools back-to-back
victories against AFC Wimbledon
and Sunderland, before returning to
the starting line-up for their win over
Aston Villa on Saturday.
The
wingers
outstanding
individual goal and impressive
overall display in the 1-1 draw with
Chelsea on Tuesday helped Liverpool to take a draw from the semifinal, first leg and like his manager
Sterling believes that they are
capable of winning next Tuesdays
second leg at Stamford Bridge to
reach the final.
The positive spin-offs of his sunshine break are clear to both the
player and Rodgers, but Sterling
accepts that his profile means there
will be scrutiny of the decision,
particularly after he was subjected to
heavy criticism for sitting out
Englands Euro 2016 qualifier against
Estonia in October after complaining of fatigue.
I knew I would get loads of stick
for being given the break, but the
manager did say at the start of the
season that this is what he would do,
Sterling said. It was all pre-planned
to have a break at some point. I have
played a lot of minutes for someone
my age, but I am not complaining
about that.
I think it will help me. I am back
now, refreshed and ready to go again.

Taken as red: Sterling is congratulated by his Liverpool team-mates after scoring an eye-catching equaliser against Chelsea

I am just focused on trying to help the

team as much as possible. I am
focused on where I need to be at,
which is helping the team by scoring
or providing assists.
Mentally, you feel it. I got a lot of
stick about the tired stuff with
England. But at the end of the day, it
was the manager who makes the
decisions. If he says take a week off,
who am I to say no?
Rodgers said: Hes a very young
talent, but you can see hes fresh.
Sometimes as a manager you have to
look at each individual player, and

hes come back refreshed and ready

for a big second half to the season.
It was not a physical rest, more a
mental rest for a young player that
has had so much thrown on him.
This is about the boys life and his
career. Plenty of people will probably
comment on it, but Im only worried
what we do for the kid.
Before his break, Sterling had
played more minutes than any other
Barclays Premier League player as
his role for both club and country
continued to grow, but he has
rejected suggestions that he is

Henderson row lights blue touchpaper

Tony Barrett

Jordan Henderson and Diego Costa

had an altercation in the players
tunnel after the 1-1 draw between
Liverpool and Chelsea at Anfield on
Tuesday night.
The players had already clashed
towards the end of the Capital One
Cup semi-final, first leg, when Martin
Atkinson, the referee, intervened to
defuse the situation.
However, their argument, which
had started when Henderson, the
Liverpool midfielder who took over
the captains armband after Steven
Gerrard was substituted, tangled
with Cesc Fbregas, continued as the

teams left the field at the final whistle

and the two squared up to each other
in the tunnel.
Although it is understood that no
punches were thrown by either man,
they traded verbal abuse and there
was also a brief bout of shoving before
they were separated by members of
the Liverpool staff.
The flashpoint will inevitably raise
tensions before the sides meet again
at Stamford Bridge in the second leg
on Tuesday night, a match in which
both are likely to be involved.
Jos Mourinho, the Chelsea
manager, has challenged his clubs
fans to match the partisan
atmosphere that the Liverpool

supporters created at Anfield by

turning Stamford Bridge into a
cauldron of noise. If Stamford
Bridge can give us 25 per cent of the
emotion Anfield gives Liverpool, I
think we can do it, Mourinho said.
Liverpool, instead of 40,000 fans,
they will have five or ten [thousand].
Chelsea, instead of 1,000, will have
40,000. I hope that can make a
difference in the atmosphere.
It was a two-leg semi-final, now
its a one-leg semi-final. That says a
lot. Two legs is difficult, Anfield is
difficult and, with this result, we
transform a two-leg semi-final into a
one-leg semi-final at Stamford
Bridge.

Chelsea eye Cuadrado and quadruple

Continued from back page

only appeared in the Europa League

for Fiorentina this season, Chelsea
may view it as a price worth paying.
Given their continuing need to
balance the books, Chelsea will
negotiate hard, however, and the
level of their final offer is likely to
depend on how much they can raise
from the sale of Salah.
Schrrle would command a higher
fee, with Wolfsburg willing to pay
23 million, but despite being
frustrated at Stamford Bridge, the
German also wants to stay until the
end of the season, when it is expected
that he will have more options.
Dortmunds interest is likely to be
more concrete in the summer when

the future of Marco Reus will be

resolved, with Chelsea, Manchester
City and Bayern Munich all
thought to be competing for his
signature.
Signing Cuadrado would
represent a significant coup for
Chelsea as they continue to
battle on four fronts. Mourinho
has done his best to play down
talk of a quadruple, but Thibaut
Courtois insisted yesterday
that Chelsea can win the lot.
We want to win everything, which
will be difficult, but I think we have
the team to do it, the clubs
goalkeeper said. We have
passed
through
all
competitions. Now we are in the

semi-final of the Capital One

Cup, are top of the Premier
League, there is an
important game in the
FA Cup on Saturday and soon we
will be playing
Paris
SaintGermain
in
the
Champions League. It
will be hard, but we have
the team that can win
everything.
Cuadrado was
in impressive
form for
Colombia at
the World Cup

becoming Liverpools main man,

despite emerging as arguably their
pivotal attacker.
I try not to think about that too
much, he said. Everyone in the
team contributes and I am no different. We are a team. As long as the
team wins and we get good performances, that is all that matters to me.
Sterling is targeting victory at
Stamford Bridge and a first visit to
Wembley with Liverpool, and he
believes that the way they performed
in the first leg should give them belief
that they can achieve their objective,
despite needing to defeat the
Premier League leaders on their own
ground.
It will help with our confidence
because we played our normal
game, he said. We did the things we
wanted to do. We were not forcing
our play. We probed when we needed
to probe, and attacked when we
needed to attack.
It will be difficult at Stamford
Bridge because obviously they
havent lost there this season, but if
we play the football that we know we
can play, I definitely think chances
will come. Then it is up to us to take
them.

62

FGM

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Sport Football

McEveley
hands Spurs
advantage
after going
for a spin
Cardiff CityHotspur
Tottenham

Campbell,
Townsend 21
74 (pen)

West
Sheffield
HamUnited
United

C Cole 42, Noble 90+3

Capital One Cup

0
1
2
1
0

Rory Smith

Sheffield United are clearly determined

to make their dreams of Wembley last
as long as possible. A delayed kick-off at
White Hart Lane last night meant the
first leg of their Capital One Cup
semi-final with Tottenham Hotspur
went on a little later than advertised,
and a dogged, disciplined performance
ensured that they will go into the return
leg at Bramall Lane next week with
their hopes intact.
True, Andros Townsends penalty
awarded after Jay McEveley had
clumsily handled the ball gives
Mauricio Pochettinos side an
advantage going into that game, one a
Barclays Premier League side will be
expected to maintain against lower
league opposition, but Nigel Cloughs

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team showed enough last night to

suggest that they will make a fight and
a fist of it.
That they could provide such
determined resistance after their
preparations were mired in chaos
indicates the depth of their resolve.
The source of the trouble was north
Londons snaking, snarled traffic.
Uniteds team bus became stationary,
Clough had to phone in his line-up
from the North Circular, and once it
became clear that they would not arrive
on time for the kick-off, the decision
was made to delay the game by a
quarter of an hour.
To his credit, Clough made it plain
that the delay had not had an impact on
his preparations particularly, and his
players gave no sign that it had served
to sap them of their energy. Cloughs
claim this week that his Sky Bet League
One team do better against a higher
calibre of opponent in the cups than
they do in the league may be founded
on shaky logic we lose games
because we are too good for the
opposition but that does not prevent
his players buying into it.
United, as their exploits in both this
competition and the FA Cup last season
amply demonstrate, do not really do
intimidation. They tore into Spurs from
the off, their frenetic pressing led by
Marc McNulty, Stefan Scougall and
Louis Reed, a 17-year-old in his first
year of senior football who did not seem
in the slightest bit fazed by his hosts
fame and fortune. Their travelling
support bellowed their approval; Spurs
were as quiet as the rest of White Hart
Lane.
It was only in the final third that the
visiting side were found somewhat
wanting. For all their industry, they
lacked the precision and the finesse to
carve out any real chances. There was
one ambitious, angled drive from Jamal

First blood: Townsend scores the only goal of the game from the penalty spot after McEveley, under pressure from Soldado,

Campbell-Ryce that flashed across the

face of Michel Vorms goal, and another
effort from Scougall after Ben
Davies had carelessly presented Reed
with the ball 20 yards out that fizzed
wide, but nothing more substantial.
That, perhaps, is the difference
between the tiers: Spurs did not even
need to find any fluency to create a

chance. Pochettino had not just

restored Emmanuel Adebayor to his
team in the hope of coaxing the best
from the enigmatic striker, but made
him captain too.
It was the sort of display of faith and
warmth that, it is commonly accepted,
is the only way of convincing the
reluctant Togolese to regard playing

football as more than a job, how I feed

my family. It did not work. Adebayor
barely troubled Uniteds back line,
firing the one opportunity he had
high and wide of Mark Howards
goal. His most notable contribution in
an anonymous first half was to be
booked for flailing an arm in Reeds
face.

Club may hope Adebayor jumps ship after miserable night as captain
Gary Jacob

A joke was doing the rounds at White

Hart Lane last night that the kick-off
was delayed by 15 minutes when
Sheffield Uniteds coach swerved off
the road with the news that Emmanuel
Adebayor had been named Tottenham
Hotspur captain for the night.
Gallows humour is still thriving in
north London, although for a large
chunk of the Spurs supporters the subject of the striker is no laughing matter.
Mauricio Pochettino made him joint
vice-captain at the start of the season,
behind Hugo Lloris, the goalkeeper.
From Arsenal to Manchester City to
Tottenham, wherever Adebayor has
been, he has polarised opinion of all

supporters. Ask Tottenham fans to trot

out a list of the most maddening players
to wear the clubs shirt and many will
include him with the likes of Hlder
Postiga, Ramon Vega and David
Bentley.
They view him as the clubs top
earner who has vanished without spelling out the reasons for two months this
season, who hardly travels abroad for
European matches and who looks lazy
when on the pitch.
They also remember that he was
menacing and aggressive in his first
season when on loan from City, but has
never reached the same heights since a
permanent move.
Adebayor jogged off to a smattering
of mild boos and some appreciative

cheers, having never looked fit or sharp

during his 64 minutes on the pitch on
his first start since his outburst against
the home supporters after a defeat by
Stoke City in November.
There were boos to greet his return to
the squad against Sunderland on Saturday and last night, he made just two
notable contributions. He perfectly
timed his run to bring down a long
ball with his left foot, but the ball got
away from him and he stretched
and shot over, an indication that
when he wants he can be as
menacing as many a striker.
The other was a loose arm that
Pochettinos decision attracted
criticism from Spurs supporters

caught the face of

Louis Reed and
had some jumping
around in anger.
While the club
try to find a
buyer,
Adebayor responds
that a
move
will be
on his
terms
and to a
big club
of
his
choice.

Unfortunately, there are few takers of

note or who can meet his 100,000-aweek wages.
During his absence, Harry Kanes
stature and assurance has risen exponentially. He is the boyhood fan who
gives everything for the team, is happy
to be played out of position and is one of
them.
As Adebayor was walking off for the
interval, Ledley King was in the tunnel
ready to reminisce about Tottenham
thumping Arsenal 5-1 in a corresponding semi-final not many moons ago.
They were cheering his name even
before he stepped on the pitch. King put
his heart and soul on the line for the
club. Many feel that Adebayors interests have always been elsewhere.

the times | Thursday January 22 2015

63

FGM

Football Sport

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, PAUL WEBB

Lampard gives City

fright in Abu Dhabi
with hip problem
James Ducker
Northern Football Correspondent

Manuel Pellegrini is confident that

Frank Lampard will be fit to face
Chelsea in Manchester Citys pivotal clash next week despite
suffering an injury scare
last night.
Lampard was substituted 20 minutes into
Citys 2-0 friendly victory
over Hamburg in Abu
Dhabi, where the Barclays
Premier League champions
are on a brief winter break.
The
former England
midfielder had
felt a hip
muscle
tighten during the warm-up
and, after asking to
play, the problem
worsened and he was withdrawn as
a precaution.
The prospect of Lampard missing
the game against Chelsea, his former
club, at Stamford Bridge a week on
Saturday would be a bitter blow to
the player and City, and remove the
possibility of a dramatic storyline
in the title race.
Lampard whose move to City
has been embroiled in controversy
has already scored against
Chelsea this season, in the 1-1 draw
at the Etihad Stadium in
September.
Pellegrini expects Lampard to be
available, though, and said he was even
hoping that the 36-year-old would be fit
to face Middlesbrough in the FA Cup
fourth round on Saturday.
Frank was injured in the warm-up,
Pellegrini said. He felt some problem
in his muscle, but I dont think it will be
very serious. We took him off just as a
precaution. I hope that he will be fit, not

had needlessly handled the ball. Tottenham dominated play but struggled to find a way past the tenacious League One side

Eric Dier, from Townsends whipped

free kicks, posed significantly more of a
threat, not once but twice: had he
caught the first with his head, rather
than his shoulder, he most likely would
have given Pochettinos team a lead
they did not particularly deserve; he
made a better connection on the
second, but his effort bounced narrowly past the post.
The issue was always likely to be
whether Cloughs side could maintain
their intensity as the game wore on,

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whether the fury with which they had

started the match would abate,
allowing Tottenham to exert their
authority.
As the second half wore on, there
were signs. Ryan Flynn misjudged a
pass, almost allowing Adebayor to slip
through. McEveley, unflustered until
then, thundered into a needless, reckless challenge on Townsend, the sort of
tackle that betrays a tired mind and
frayed nerves.
Still, though, Spurs lacked the wit to
cut their opponents open. The
Adebayor experiment lasted only a
little more than an hour, Pochettino
throwing on Roberto Soldado in his
stead, but even that brought no greater
menace. The host side would,
eventually, take the lead, but that they
did so owed considerably more to luck
that to judgment.
McEveley was the man at fault,
erroneously claiming that Soldado was
offside and then, his appeals denied,
finding himself scrambling to make up
ground when the Spaniard had
controlled a long ball inside the
six-yard box. As he attempted to usher
the ball out of play, the defender
involuntarily swung an arm at it; Neil
Swarbrick, pausing to savour the
drama, awarded the penalty. It was

cruel, but it was right. Townsend

stepped up and converted.
That should have been Spurss cue to
streak away and secure the tie, and with
it their place at Wembley; it should have
signalled the point at which Uniteds
brave resistance finally melted away.
That it did not said a lot about both
teams.
The host team could not muster the
urgency or intensity needed, even with
the boost provided by their lead, while
the visiting side are made of sufficiently
stern stuff not to come this far and then
throw it all away. They endured just two
heart-in-mouth moments, as first the
otherwise subdued Harry Kane and
then Paulinho, a late substitute, burst
into the box. United, on both occasions,
did enough to stifle them in time. To
Bramall Lane, then. Do not expect the
hosts there to be cowed.
Tottenham Hotspur (4-2-3-1): M Vorm K Walker,
E Dier, J Vertonghen, B Davies B Stambouli (sub:
Paulinho, 75min), R Mason (sub: M Dembl, 65)
A Townsend, H Kane, C Eriksen E Adebayor (sub:
R Soldado, 65). Substitutes not used: B Friedel, D Rose,
Y Kaboul, A Lennon. Booked: Adebayor.
Sheffield United (4-5-1): M Howard R Flynn,
J McEveley, C Basham, B Harris J Campbell-Ryce,
L Reed, M Doyle, S Scougall (sub: K Wallace, 87),
J Murphy M McNulty (sub: J Baxter, 83).
Substitutes not used: I Turner, C Alcock, M Higdon,
T Kennedy, C Adams. Booked: McEveley.
Referee: N Swarbrick.

only for Chelsea, but for the FA Cup. It

was just a small problem, but he asked
to try to play. After that he told us it was
impossible. but I dont think that it will
prove to be a very important injury and
we hope that we can have him for
Saturday.
City will fall eight points behind
Chelsea if they lose to the league
leaders. Pellegrini claimed in the wake
of Sundays 2-0 defeat by Arsenal that
the visit to Stamford Bridge would be
very decisive in the title race,
but he was adamant that
defeat would not spell the
end of his teams
championship bid.
I think its a
very important
game, but its not
the last one, he said.
If we dont win we will
continue fighting because
you never know what
happens in football.
The [training] camp
and the game against
Hamburg was very
useful for our team.
We had a break
from the Premier
League, we are working
well and we played a
good and useful friendly.

Lampard was
able to play
for only 20
minutes, but
Pellegrini is
hopeful he will
return swiftly

Morrisons troubled path

leads him into Italian job
Window watch
Gary Jacob

Ravel Morrison has reached agreement

on a deal with Lazio and could join the
Serie A club for a nominal fee when his
contract expires at West Ham United
this summer. The east London club
have effectively washed their hands of
the former Manchester United midfielder and hope that he moves on loan
to a Sky Bet Championship club for the
rest of the season.
6 Sampdoria have claimed their bid to
sign Samuel Etoo has stalled because
no one can figure out who is in charge
at Everton. Massimo Ferrero, the club
president, said: This is a weird working
environment. People say one thing and
then do another, but we are getting
[close] to a breakthrough.
6 West Bromwich Albion are on the
verge of signing Callum McManaman,
the 23-year-old Wigan Athletic winger,
for an improved 4 million initial offer.
6 Dani Osvaldo has rejected interest
from Queens Park Rangers. The Southampton striker wants to stay on loan in

Italy, although he has been suspended

by Inter Milan after an argument with
management.
6 Arsenal are considering taking
advantage of Jean-Kvin Augustin
entering the last six months of his
contract with Paris Saint-Germain.
The 17-year-old striker has also been
offered to West Ham United, Juventus,
Benfica and Porto.
6 Godfred Donsah, 18, the Cagliari
midfielder, is being watched by
Tottenham Hotspur.
6 Oriol Romeu, the Chelsea midfielder, has said that he could make a
permanent move to Stuttgart.
6 Luke Daniels, the goalkeeper, is
expected to move to Scunthorpe
United from West Bromwich Albion.
6 Boca Juniors have offered 3 million
for Bryan Ruiz but are unable to match
the midfielders Fulham wages. The
Argentine club may now harden their
interest in Gaston Ramrez, who is on
loan at Hull City from Southampton at
present.

Sport

Thursday January 22 2015 | the times

Refereeing revolution
Matt Dickinson is granted an exclusive
look at the experiment that may help
to end footballs great controversies
Special report, pages 58-59

thetimes.co.uk/sport

british press awards sports team of the year

Chelsea chase
Cuadrado for
quadruple tilt
Matt Hughes
Deputy Football Correspondent

Chelsea will redouble their efforts to

sign Juan Cuadrado from Fiorentina
after having a 20.6 million bid for the
Colombia forward rejected yesterday.
Although reluctant to meet the
26.8 million release clause in the
players contract with the Italian club,
Chelsea are increasingly hopeful of
securing his services this month in
what would be a powerful statement of
intent as Jos Mourinhos side chase an
historic quadruple.
Mourinho has insisted all season that
he does not want to buy or sell during
the January transfer window, but the
uncertainty over Mohamed Salah has
prompted a change of heart. The Egypt
winger has no long-term future at
Stamford Bridge after failing to start a
single Barclays Premier League match
this season and is increasingly keen to
leave this month amid interest from
Hull City, Roma, and Besiktas.
Salahs representatives are understood to have agreed a salary package
with Roma, but the clubs have yet to
agree on a fee. Romas preference is for
an initial loan deal with an option to
sign Salah for 12 million at the end of
the season.
Chelsea have also received interest
from Wolfsburg, Bayer Leverkusen and
Borussia Dortmund about Andr
Schrrle, but Mourinho wants to keep
the Germany World Cup winner and

STEFAN WERMUTH / REUTERS

has identified Cuadrado, 26, as a

potential replacement for Salah.
Like Schrrle, Cuadrado also shone
at the World Cup for a team who
reached the quarter-finals and is
comfortable playing in any of the three
attacking positions behind a central
striker, although it is believed that
Mourinho views him primarily as a
right winger, the role that has been
mostly filled by Willian this season.
Salah has made a minimal impact at
Chelsea since completing an 11 million
move from Basle last January as a
cut-price replacement for Juan Mata,
but it is his desire to leave rather than
Chelseas insistence on forcing him out
that has brought the situation to a head
and triggered the move for Cuadrado.
Salah, 22, has appeared in three
Premier League matches this season
and started only three games in other
competitions, two in the early rounds of
the Capital One Cup and a dead rubber
in the Champions League against
Sporting Lisbon.
Fiorentina have also asked about
taking Salah on loan as part of the
Cuadrado deal, but his preferred
destination is Roma and Chelsea are
insisting on a straight sale.
Cuadrado will not come cheap,
because he signed a new five-year deal
at Fiorentina in October after interest
from Manchester United and Barcelona, but given his eligibility to play in this
seasons Champions League, having
Continued on page 61

Times Crossword 26,002

1

17

12

14

15

16

18

19

20

21

24

25

27

10

11

13

28

22

23

26

Spot the winners: Andros Townsend takes off in celebration after scoring the penalty that earned Tottenham Hotspur a 1-0
victory over Sheffield United in the first leg of their Capital One Cup semi-final at White Hart Lane. Football, pages 58-63

across

down

1 First to detect hidden person in

social function (6,5)
7 For Cervantes, the female Robin
Goodfellow? (3)
9 Cheese Society to become old hat
(4,5)
10 According to son, impersonator
gets around (2,3)
11 Introduction omitted from sweet
piece for listeners (7)
12 Potentially boring English head
keeps Dalziels dictated letters (7)
13 Stagehand beginning to eat beef (5)
15 Society one might change for an
unknown (9)
17 Good-for-nothing turned on a cold
nobleman (2-7)
19 Traveller round sun bed that the
writer occupies (5)
20 Snake-haired creatures in Ireland,
the old South (7)
22 Sharp Conservative was deceitful
about double-parking (7)
24 State backing needed where
satellite orbits (5)
25 Departs city area in subtle desert
transport (9)
27 Ridicule person in shabby clothes
(3)
28 Force our boys to collect marines
pizza (4,7)

1 Conks out having expended energy

in soul venue (3)
2 Queen endlessly sent up in
Republic (5)
3 Back where witch lived, she
without heart (7)
4 Dad in French capital wants us
raised together (4,5)
5 On about short religious songs
word pattern (5)
6 Earliest known period in Troy idea
I must leave out (4,3)
7 Out of bed, on edge, in renovated
semi: its one for sex (9)
8 Fantastical horse gifted with ability
to predict (11)
11 Artfully contriving career for the
Brunels (11)
14 One girl cuddling another is
fancied (9)
16 Rough bike race forces doctor to
bridge (9)
18 Raise alarm falsely about railway
current surging back (3,4)
19 Share opinion with painter
producing wild idea (7)
21 Miserable husband initially upset
one choosing austerity (5)
23 Scottish John stops Pilot Officer in
quiet passage (5)
26 Beats Randle McMurphy all ends
up? Thats right (3)

Yesterdays solution 26,001

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