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Sponsored post: The Other Side of the Coin: Expats Relocating to the UK

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When the topic is "expats", most UK media focus on Brits living abroad. But the UK is also home to a sizeable expat community. Plenty of well-qualified foreign nationals come to live and work in Britain every year – often lacking support during their relocation.

Demographic Growth through Migration

The government’s immigration figures for 2012 show a net migration of more than 176,000 people increasing the UK population. While over 300,000 residents left the UK behind – some British expats among them – almost 500,000 new arrivals planned to stay for a longer period. In addition to overseas students enrolling at boarding schools or universities, it’s particularly adults looking for further career opportunities who make up a considerable part of these newcomers.

The UK Border Agency reports that most visas for non-EU immigrants were issued to international students and to top-tier applicants for work visas: skilled workers, qualified professionals, employees on intra-company transfers, investors, entrepreneurs, etc. Between April 2012 and March 2013, hundreds of thousands of overseas residents registered for a National Insurance number.

Breaking down that data reveals that the largest contingent of expats relocated from Continental Europe, roughly in equal numbers from the EU15 member states and the relatively recent additions in Eastern Europe. Among the rest of the world, nationalities from Asia and the Middle East formed the largest group, with Africa, the Americas, and Australia & Oceania trailing behind.

Coping without Company Support

Regardless of their origin, expats often have one thing in common: they need to muddle through and sort out their relocation for themselves. Global mobility providers suggest that, even for many foreign assignees, the era of the full-service expat package is over. High-ranking executives, or transferees to “hardship” locations, still benefit from generous allowances and company support. Others are frequently left to their own devices – especially if they switch employers and start a new job in the UK.

If these new arrivals move for work-related reasons for the first time, they may underestimate the effort involved. After all, they speak the language, and they are familiar with Britain’s cultural exports, from award-winning novels to popular television shows. Or they have fond memories of their days as a visiting student or tourist exploring the British Isles.

But moving your household across borders and settling in another country just isn’t the same as hiking through Scotland or shopping in London’s trendy boutiques. Overseas students usually have a dedicated contact to turn to when they hit an emotional low or need practical help. Adult professionals are on their own.

In Need of Information on…

The urgent need for advice starts before the expats-to-be actually relocate to the UK. For new arrivals from the EU, it’s thankfully fairly easy to move between member states. Other nationals, however, have to cut through a bit of red tape and gather substantial visa and administration information on the UK.

Visa and Customs Regulations

General applicants for tier 2 work visa need to familiarize themselves with annual quota limits and the points system that may decide the success of their application. They’ll have to produce official paperwork to prove passing a labour market test, English language proficiency, their UK salary, academic qualifications, and financial solvency.

Once they are granted a visa, they have to figure out customs and import restrictions. No matter if they’d like to ship household goods from a non-EU country, bring along a beloved family pet, or pack a supply of prescription meds to tide them over till they find a GP – it’s more rules and regulations to tick off. Fortunately, the UK authorities, like the Border Agency or HMRC, provide very detailed guidelines online, but it’s a lot to take in.

Housing

Then there’s the one problem that affects all expats, from the EU or not. Since plenty of them look to the UK capital for their career options, it can be hard to find an affordable flat in the real estate bubble of the Greater London Area. This applies particularly to young professionals in entrance-level positions or skilled employees with lower salaries.

A quick Google search will result in websites like the popular Moveflat for flatmates, or the London Rents Map for accommodation costs. But do expats know which rights and responsibilities they have in case of a joint tenancy? Or are they aware how council tax bands might influence their cost of living?

Transport

If they work outside Greater London or similar urban areas, like Manchester, they might live somewhere quieter and cheaper – and more remote. Suddenly, a car is a must. It’s easy enough to get UK driving tips if you aren’t used to traffic on the “wrong” side of the road, or take a couple of lessons.

But if you’re tempted to bring your car, you will run into problems with local regulations. Even used cars from the EU must comply with technical requirements that might lead to extra repairs, while non-EU cars have to go through another complicated import procedure. Under the circumstances, it’s less of a hassle to lease a car or buy a used one in the UK.

That’s not even touching upon issues like finding the ideal childcare facility or school for expat kids, paying taxes in the UK, or getting the best deal from your utility provider. That’s why sharing tips and networking with other expats is essential, e.g. via the InterNations Communities in major destinations like London, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, or Brighton.

InterNations (www.internations.org) is the largest expatriate network worldwide, with over 1 million members in 390 cities around the globe. Members meet up at regular local events and activities; they exchange tips in forums and discussion groups, and online country and city guides offer valuable information about their new place of residence.

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Tory MPs' bad advice to Osborne: don't cut taxes for the poor

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Those Tories calling for an increase in the 40p tax threshold should remember that only the top 10 per cent of earners pay the rate.

After Nick Clegg's call for a "workers' bonus" in the form of a £500 increase in the income tax threshold to £10,500 (a suggestion likely to be taken up by George Osborne), the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs have issued their own demands to the Chancellor. 

In today's Times, Dominic Raab, one of the group's leading members, rightly notes that Clegg's proposal would not benefit the five million lowest-earners who do not pay income tax. But rather than suggesting progressive alternatives such as cutting VAT, or raising the National Insurance threshold (which currently stands at £7,748), he and others argue for tax cuts to be focused on "the middle classes". 

Nick de Bois comments: "If there’s going to be any reduction in the burden of taxation in the Budget, we should be looking at the squeezed middle, by raising the threshold into which people start paying the higher rate of tax. " Another Tory MP, Steve Barclay says: "We also need to be clear on what delivers the best bang for the buck, which includes not losing sight of the squeezed middle. It seems too much of the tax cutting is focused solely on those at the lowest end of the earnings spectrum."

But while living standards are falling across the income scale, it's worth noting that those who earn enough to pay the 40p tax rate (£41,451) are in the top 10 per cent of earners. It's those who earn around the median full-time salary of £26,500 who are the real squeezed middle. For both political and economic reasons, it makes sense to target tax cuts on the bottom half of the income scale. The poor are more likely to spend, rather than save, any gains they receive (stimulating the economy as a result) and the greatest challenge facing the Tories is need to win over this group, a point well made by Blue Collar modernisers such as Robert Halfon and Guy Opperman. 

The Tories should also be wary of Raab's call to "halve the number of Whitehall departments, strictly enforce public sector pay limits and introduce a three-year cash freeze on non-pension benefits." 

In his most recent Budget, George Osborne extended the 1% cap on public sector pay increases until 2015-16, entailing further real-terms cuts for workers. But with the return of growth, such austerity will become harder to justify; voters will want their share of an expanding cake.

If the Tories want to win over the voters they will need to remain the largest party in 2015, they would be wise to offer some relief to the public sector. As Renewal, the Conservative group aimed at broadening the party's appeal among working class, northern and ethnic minority voters, has noted, the majority of Tory target seats have a higher than average share of public sector workers, including 60% of Labour-held targets and half of the top 20 Lib Dem-held targets. While the Tories are likely to pledge to cut taxes for all workers, in the form of a £12,500 personal allowance, they should also consider easing the squeeze on the public sector.

Why your future becomes brilliant if you have a toilet

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In Madagascar, toilets can change the entire course of a woman's life, from time to cook to freedom from fear of rape and attack.

"Your future becomes brilliant if you have a toilet."

For many, the toilet is a necessary but everyday item that we take for granted.  For people like Madeleine Razafindramasy from Madagascar, it’s a treasured new life-saving item that has transformed her life.

Madeleine used to walk for 6km to go to the toilet in the open: “It was threatening and dirty. It was frightening too, so most of the time we went with friends. There are men who are not really nice. When they see lonely woman there they rape them or something like that. I know something like that already happened. I don’t want my daughter to go to that place. I’m teaching her to always use the toilet instead.”

Today is World Toilet Day, which has been marked since 2001 to raise awareness of the 2.5 billion people living without somewhere safe to go to the toilet. This year, for the first time, it is an official UN-recognised day, highlighting the huge role access to sanitation plays in reducing poverty and the need for greater collective action.

At WaterAid, we believe that ending the global sanitation crisis is one of the most urgent developmental challenges of the 21st century. It is a particularly pressing issue for women, with sanitation having a profound impact throughout their lives, as we show in our new report We Can’t Wait, which we are publishing on World Toilet Day in partnership with Unilever and the UN Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.

Across the world, 526 million women have no choice but to go to the toilet out in the open. Women and girls living without any toilets spend 97 billion hours each year finding a place to go. Their search for a private place to go makes them more vulnerable to the risk of shame, disease, harassment and violence. 

Living without a toilet has a detrimental effect on education, with diarrhoeal diseases forcing children to miss lessons and many girls dropping out of school altogether when they reach puberty if there is nowhere private for them to go to the toilet.

Similarly, a lack of facilities in the workplace can have an impact on absenteeism, affecting livelihoods, productivity levels and ultimately the economy. Dirty water and inadequate sanitation cost sub-Saharan Africa around 5% of its gross domestic product every year.

The human cost is even starker – 2,000 children under the age of five die every single day because of diarrhoeal diseases caused by drinking dirty water and having nowhere safe to go to the toilet.

Adequate sanitation and hygiene improves birth survival rates, with research showing that hand washing by birth attendants and mothers can increase newborn survival rates by up to 44 per cent.

Madeleine said: “The change in my life since I have the toilet here is that I can use the time I spent going to that place to do something else. I’m in charge of the household and have two children. Before, when my children needed the toilet I had to take them all the way to that place so I didn’t have the time for example to cook and clean. Now I have the time to prepare food and my mind is at ease.”

At the turn of the millennium, world leaders promised to halve the proportion of people living without access to a basic toilet by 2015. At current rates of progress, around half a billion people will have to wait another decade before they get this basic service they were promised. For the other 2 billion people in the world’s poorest communities, the wait will go on even longer.

It doesn’t have to be this way. At WaterAid, we believe that with strong commitments and concrete actions, it is possible to ensure that by 2030 everyone, everywhere has somewhere safe to go to the toilet and has access to clean drinking water. Tackling this requires a collaborative approach between governments, civil society and business – mutual action and mutual accountability. We can and should be doing better; as Madeleine’s story shows, toilets can transform lives.

Barbara Frost is the Chief Executive for WaterAid

Sidekicks in video games can be frustrating narrative devices, but not in Skyrim

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While there are many unique companions and sidekicks in video games, Skyrim's Lydia is good because she is so unremarkable.

Dagger in hand the Dragonborn stalks through the shadows, eyes on Necromancer. The Necromancer, for his part, is working away at something on an enchanting table, like they do. The assorted skeleton warriors in the room are comfortably oblivious to the danger, creaking quietly in the torchlight, weapons slung. By the normal run of things the skeletons would provide a screen, protecting the vulnerable mage while he summons more monsters and chucks fireballs around like a dragon with hiccups. In the enclosed space of the cave chaos would ensue, blood would be spilled. Not today though, this is going to be easy, at least easier than Skyrim usually is.

Suddenly an armoured figure barrels into the room - she’s running hunched over in what technically counts as sneaking according to the system of the game, though the result is as close to stealth as driving a car off a cliff is to parallel parking. Sword in hand, shield ready, clad in clanking steel armour, knocking pots and crockery off a table as she passes, apparently oblivious to the skeletons that have all immediately clocked her arrival, as she was oblivious to her previous instruction to wait. Her entrance could not be more awkward if she had toilet paper clinging to an armoured boot. She scuttles across the room, planting herself dutifully in file behind the Dragonborn, a trail of destruction in her wake, as the skeletons draw their swords and the Necromancer turns from his table, his hands bathed in magical flames.

Lydia has arrived.

Video games feature many companions. From the faithful hounds of Fable, Dragon Age: Origins and Call of Duty: Ghosts to the unobtrusive daughter figures of The Last of Us and Bioshock: Infinite to the hollow shells of absent co-op players in Gears of War and Resident Evil 5 to name but a few. But there is only one Lydia.

So what makes Lydia special? What could possibly make this outwardly generic warrior woman such an important part of the Skyrim world and so much more interesting than all the Elizabeths, Ellies and Rileys that have appeared this year?

The first thing that Bethesda got right in creating Lydia as opposed to many more recent companions is her character. It might seem odd to talk about her character as being particularly great given that she is not vital to the plot of Skyrim, has no quests or story elements attached to her and expresses few particular opinions throughout the game. However it is this mundane quality that makes her such agreeable company. Lydia is not the chosen one; she is not going to save the world due to some accident of birth or cosmic hiccup. She is a huskarl, a servant and soldier. She carries the loot that you can’t be bothered to carry, she can handle your household admin and, when needed to, she fights - that’s it. The fact that she is happy to cart all your excess gear around is important, because a good companion should always be useful, like the dog in Fable that would dig up items.

More games could benefit from this modest approach to characterisation. Skyrim, like all the Elder Scrolls games, is a story of a freed prisoner. Whatever destiny you choose to pursue, and it is absolutely a choice, you start at the very bottom of the social heap. Lydia being assigned to your service is a sign of your character gaining in social standing, but the fact that she is such an uncomplicated and brute force character also fits well with the idea that you are, usually at this point, just a grubby scrapper yourself. She is the Chewbacca to your Han Solo, the Watson to your Holmes and the Donk to your Nugget. The game recognises that the whole point of the sidekick is to augment the hero and not be more interesting than they are. Following around a character who is more interesting than you are just isn’t natural in a game. This design flaw is felt most painfully in Bioshock: Infinite, where the design of the game is so obviously in love with the character of Elizabeth that the role of the hero seems to be merely watching to see what amazing thing she’s going to do when you hit the next scripted event.

The second thing that the game got right with Lydia is her presentation and her skill set. She is not some sylphlike sorceress or an elegant rogue with a different knife for every occasion. She wears all the armour she can get her hands on and she fights by running up to the nearest opponent and systematically hacking them to pieces. Her directness is not really a product of characterisation so much as it is just the way characters with hand to hand weapons fight in Skyrim but that fact that she does this so well and so gamely gives her a singular charm.

Charming or not her limited set of skills can make her something of a liability: she has no aptitude for sneaking, and she cannot use magic at all. These flaws can be turned into assets with some inventiveness. For example, it is possible to use her to provoke guards into an attack while you remain hidden to ambush them, but this is not always possible, and also misfiring with a sneak attack is one of the best ways to kill her. Her flaws do not stop her being likeable, though - in fact they complete her. Lydia is clumsy, she is violent and she sometimes has to be told to sit and wait like an enthusiastic labrador if you want to attempt any action involving finesse. She is not the type of sidekick who will obediently weigh down a pressure plate for you or pick a lock.

Sometimes she’ll get antsy, or the AI will cough up a behavioural hairball and violence may ensue as a result, but that’s okay. Worst case scenario Lydia is easy to dismiss if not needed and easy to retrieve when she is. There is none of the awkward relationship balancing that was needed in the Dragon Age games where, like a football manager with a dressing room full of prima donnas, you would have to ensure everybody got a run out every so often lest they ask for a transfer.

Should Lydia die the world doesn’t end, though it might feel a lot emptier. The game is generally designed in such a robust way that there is no real lasting damage that Lydia can do if she screws up either, she might get you killed is all, but that’s what the saved games are for. In some games the death of a companion character, particularly if they are key to the plot, will be a mission failure. Lydia to her credit is entirely expendable.

The last thing that Skyrim did right by Lydia is giving her a degree of autonomy that you simply will not find in a heavily scripted game. The AI that powers Lydia is not necessarily a genius, indeed often it will do stupid things, but if anything it is the times when the AI is less than optimal that Lydia’s behaviour is the most endearing. Whether she is attempting to sneak, only to wake up an entire castle, or charging across an open field for a chance to shank a dragon, there is a sense of autonomy to her, a sense that decisions are being made, a feeling that she is actually alive in a way that you simply cannot get from scripted interactions, no matter how much the character has to say for themselves.

Lydia is bound to you, but she is also very much a creature of the game world, an entity within it and bound by its rules, and in this way she connectsthe player with the world. By having a part of the world that is on your side you feel a greater attachment to that world, it feels fairer, more welcoming and friendly, it feels like something you are immersed in rather than competing against or trying to beat.

Skyrim is a game not noted for its plot, or for its main characters, or its combat, or its systems, indeed it is so vastly superior to the sum of its parts it can be difficult to explain its success. But Lydia stands out as one of the parts that Bethesda got right. The long suffering shieldmaiden following millions of Dragonborn on millions of adventures, sworn to carry their burdens and oddly surprised by the caves they find, will be a hard sidekick to top.

Doris Lessing: Being Prohibited

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In this article written on 21 April 1956 Doris Lessing describes her experiences with immigration officers in South Africa in her youth and in 1956 when she was banned entry into the country.

Between 1956 and 1971, Doris Lessing wrote poetry, essays and reviews for the New Statesman. The following article, written 21 April 1956, was her first contribution to the magazine. In it, she describes her experiences when being refused entry into South Africa, a ban that would last 30 years. It is worth noting that Lessing was an committed member of the Communist Party during this time, however, she later renounced the Party calling the decision “crazy”.

Being Prohibited

A large number of my friends are locked out of countries and unable to return; locked into countries and unable to get out; have been deported, prohibited and banned. Among this select company I can now hold up my head. I am troubled, however, by secret doubts.

Before planning my trip to South Africa, it crossed my mind to wonder whether I should be allowed in; humility checked me. What have I, in fact, done to the Union government? In 1947 when I was holiday, I worked for the Guardian in Cape Town for two months, as a typist. The Guardian, like the Daily Worker now, was in permanent financial crisis; and that brave band of people, the finance committee, sat in almost continuous session, wondering how to pay for the next issue and muttering enviously about Moscow gold. I wrote a lot of letters for this committee.

In 1949, on my way through to England, I undeniably, consorted with people since named as Communists. Some were, some were not.

Of course, since I joined the Communist Party in England I have made no secret of the fact; but the idea that M.I.5 would send warnings to South Africa of my approach seems to border on megalomania. This state of mind was ably described by a friend of mine who not only believed that the sword was mightier than the pen, but acted on it – an admirable person, he said that his chief handicap as an agitator was that at moments of crisis he could never really believe he was about to be arrested, because he was obviously right in his views and surely everyone must agree with him when it came to the point. My friend also used to say that the main fault of the Left was that we continually ascribe our own intelligence and high-mindedness to our opponents. Apropos, I remember that once, by a series of mischances, I spent an evening with the backroom boys of the Nationalist Party. It was a salutary experience. I still find it hard to believe that such cynical oafs can keep a whole sub-continent in thrall.

Some weeks before leaving England this time, I was visited by two people, deported from South Africa, who told me I was mad to think I should be allowed in and that I was politically very naïve. Almost immediately afterwards, came another visitor, a political émigré of a superior kind who has for some years now been conducting a really epic fight with the Nationalists.

He said: “What’s this I hear? What makes you think you are so dangerous that you won’t be allowed in? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are on the official list of South African authors at South Africa House.” It will be seen why I was in a confused state of mind when I left England.

I had worked out a really cunning plot to enter the Union: it depended on an intimate knowledge of the habits of their immigration officials. This plot was received with amusement by my friends in Salisbury, who suggested I was suffering from a persecution complex. Not for one moment do I blame them for their attitude: the atmosphere of Southern Rhodesia, in contrast with the troubled territories north and south, is one of good humour. Everybody one meets says how efficient the C.I.D. is and that nothing one does ever escapes them; but it is rather as one speaks of a benevolent uncle. And I have it on the highest possible authority that the leaders of the Africans in that country are both “pleasant and sound”. No, I have no doubt that if I lived again in Salisbury, within six months I should be talking about trouble-makers and agitators with the best.

Lulled, therefore, into a state of innocence. I spent four days seeing old friends and reviving the sundowner habit before actually flying south. In the aircraft there was plenty of time for reminiscence: that first time, for instance, that I entered the Union , in 1937…

The border is Mafeking, a little dorp with nothing interesting about it but its name. The train waits (or used to wait) interminably on the empty tracks, while immigration and customs officials made their leisurely way through the coaches, and pale gritty dust settled over everything. Looking out, one saw the long stretch of windows, with the two, three, or four white faces at each; then at the extreme end, the single coach for “natives” packed tight with black humans; and, in between, two or three Indians or Coloured people on sufferance in the European coaches.

Outside, on the scintillating dust by the tracks, a crowd of ragged black children begged for bonsellas. One threw down sandwich crusts or bits of spoilt fruit and watched them dive and fight to retrieve them from the dirt.

I was sixteen, I was not, as one says, politically conscious; nor did I know the score. I knew no more, in fact, than which side my bread was buttered. But I had already felt uneasy about being a member of the Herrenvolk. When the immigration official reached me, I had written on the form: Nationality, British, Race, European; and it was the first time in my life I had to claim myself as a member of one race and disown the others. I remember distinctly that I had to suppress an impulse to write opposite Race: Human. Of course I was very young.

The immigration man had the sarcastic surliness which characterizes the Afrikaans official; and he looked suspiciously at my form for a long time before saying that I was in the wrong part of the train. I did not understand him. (I forgot to mention that where the form asked: Where were you born?, I had written Persia.)

“Asiatics,” said he, “have to go to the back of the train; and anyway you are prohibited from entry unless you have documents proving you conform to the immigration quota for Asians.”

“But,” I said, “I am not an Asiatic.”

The compartment had five other females in it; skirts were visibly being drawn aside. To prove my bona fides I should, of course, have exclaimed with outraged indignation at any such idea.

“You were born in Persia?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are an Asiatic. You know the penalty for filling in the form wrongly?”

This particular little imbroglio involved my being taken off the train, and escorted to an office and kept under watch while they telephoned Pretoria for a ruling.

When next I entered the Union it was 1939. Sophistication had set in in the interval, and it took me no more than five minutes to persuade the official that one could be born in a country without being its citizen. The next to times there was no trouble at all, although my political views had in the meantime become nothing less than inflammatory: in a word, I had learned to disapprove of the colour bar.

This time, two weeks ago, what happened was as follows: one gets off the plane, and sits for about fifteen minutes in the waiting-room while they check the plane list with a list, or lists, of their own. They called my name first, and took me to an office which had two tables in it. .At one sat a young man being pleasant to the genuine South African citizens. At the one where they made me sit, was a man I could have sworn I had seen before. He proceeded to go through me form item by item, as follows: “You say, Mrs. Lessing, that, etc. …” From time to time he let out a disbelieving laugh and exchanged ironical looks with a fellow official who was standing by. Sure enough, when he reached the point in my form when he had to say: “You claim that you are British; you say you were born in Persia,” I merely said “Yes,” and sat while he gave me a long, exasperated stare. Then he let out an angry exclamation in Afrikaans and went next door to telephone Pretoria. Ten minutes later I was informed I must leave at once. A plane was waiting and I must enter it immediately.

I did so with dignity. Since then I have been unable to make up my mind whether I should have made a scene or not. I never have believed in the efficacy of dignity.

On the plane I wanted to sit near the window, but was made to sit by myself and away from the window. I regretted infinitely that I had no accomplices hidden in the long grass by the airstrip, but, alas, I had not thought of it beforehand.

It was some time before it came home to me what an honour had been paid me. But now I am uneasy about the whole thing: suppose that I owe these attentions, not to my political views, but to the accident of my birthplace?

Mr. Donges was asked about the incident, but all he said was, “No comment”.

Labour targets Cameron's broken promises on Sure Start

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Before the election, Cameron said it was "a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this", but 579 of the childrens' centres have since closed.

Among the content erased from the Conservatives' site last week were David Cameron's pre-election pledges on Sure Start - and with good reason. The day before the general election, Cameron promised to protect the network of children's centres founded by Labour, telling one voter who asked "whether these centres will continue to receive funding": "Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this. He's the prime minister of this country but he's been scaring people about something that really matters."

Based on this answer, many reasonably assumed that Sure Start, like the NHS and foreign aid, would be ring-fenced from cuts. Indeed, at PMQs on 2 March 2011, Cameron told the House of Commons that Sure Start funding was protected and that "centres do not need to close". But the truth was otherwise. Shortly after the coalition came to power, the budget for the centres was amalgamated into a new "early intervention grant", which received a real-terms cut of 22.4 per cent.

The result, as I first revealed in 2011, is that centres soon began to close. Today, as Ed Miliband shifts his attention to childcare in the latest stage of his "cost of living" offensive, Labour is rightly highlighting figures showing that 578 have now closed since the election. The Department for Education has responded by insisting that just 45 have closed (which still represents a breach of Cameron's promise), butits ownfigures suggest otherwise.

Miliband said today: "Millions of parents are facing a childcare crunch. The cost of a nursery place is now the highest in history, at more than £100 a week to cover part-time hours. That means a typical parent doing a part time job would have to work from Monday until Thursday just to cover these costs of childcare. And average costs for a full time place are now rising up to £200 or even more.

"Rising prices have been matched only by falling numbers of places. And hundreds of Sure Start centres have been lost, contributing to a total of 35,000 fewer childcare places under David Cameron. All at a time when the number of children under-4s in England has risen by 125,000.

"Before the last election. David Cameron described Labour as a ‘disgrace’ for warning that the Tories would put Sure Start at risk. He added: 'Not only do we back Sure Start, but we will improve it.'

"This morning they were at it again, boasting that there were more than 3,000 Sure Start Centres across the country. 

"But let’s look at the official government statistics: there are, indeed, 3053 Sure Start Centres. But in April 2010 there were 3,631 Sure Start Centres. That is 578 fewer Sure Start Centres than before the election. That is an average of three Sure Start Centres being lost every single week of this government. And too many of those that remain have lower staffing levels and reduced services."

While the Lib Dems' failure to keep their pledge to vote against higher tuition fees means they are widely derided for their mendacity, the Conservatives have got off lightly so far.  By highlighting the extent to which Cameron misled the public over Sure Start, Labour is rightly seeking to change that.

Viral video philosopher Jason Silva: "We're going to cure ageing"

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It might seem like our greatest inventions have turned against us - the internet, climate change - but Jason Silva wants to challenge these assumptions with an unrelenting belief in technology as a fundamentally good thing.

“There’s mind everywhere, you see mind in nature. A seed is an information file that tells the soil around it to self-organise into a tree. Nature’s just nanotechnology that works, man!”

Jason Silva and I are sitting in the foyer of the Science Museum, between the exhibits about space travel and the industrial revolution. We are almost literally between two distinct eras of human civilisation, as marked by their defining technologies. It’s a good place to be, considering Silva - speaker, filmmaker, viral video philosopher - has an evangelical belief in the power of technological innovation, and progress, as a force for good.

"The linear perspective that we are privy to is a wiring issue, it’s an algorithm that’s written into our humanness," he explains. "Exponential growth requires a cognitive leap. Linear projections are reflexes, exponential projections have to be explained - you see the data, you see it’s true, and then you realise it’s completely counter-intuitive. Even to this day, if you’d told people in the past that 500 people would be flying through the air in a machine made of metal, and that you’d be able to send your thoughts from that machine made of metal to other people on the Earth instantaneously, they’d think you were fucking mad. Today, we take it for granted, and if the internet signal goes off we freak out."

"Even knowing that, knowing that this device allows me to engage in a form of technologically-mediated telepathy so my thoughts transcend the limits of time, space and distance, if I was to tell you that in 50 years this would be implanted in your brain and you’d be living in the Matrix, people would say 'no no, that’s impossible'. The reflex is the linear thing. When you tell them biology is about to become software, gene sequencing is going three times faster than Moore’s Law, people say 'no that’s impossible'. We’re going to cure ageing! Google just started a fucking company to arrest the ageing process!""

To speak with Silva is to be barraged with optimism. He doesn’t just believe in utopia, he believes in a “technologically-mediated” utopia, where “the full flourishing of biotechnology and nanotechnology will lead us to a world that can be rendered into existence the same way we render software into existence”.

Key to this is that it's completely false to claim that there's a dichotomy between nature and technology. We’re just waiting for “the flimsy distinction between user and world [to] disappear - at that point we’ll be living in a world that is all mind.”

His videos - like his Shots of Awe shorts, or his speeches with characteristic titles like “We Are The Gods Now” - skip over the little details to focus on the bigger, longer-term future, as he riffs on existential themes over b-roll footage of babies being born and galaxies burning out. Sometimes he’s hiking in the woods, or hanging out on a boat. He drops references so fast it feels he must have memorised every pop-sci book of the last two decades, but he clearly understands how to apply that knowledge - his fast-talking act isn't, as it were, an act.

For example:

Or:

The Atlanticdescribes him“a part-time filmmaker, and full-time walking, talking TEDTalk”. In another era, he would have curated the exhibits at a World’s Fair, or have been a writer for Dan Dare. In our time, he makes two-minute videos exploring philosophical themes in a way that gets millions of hits on YouTube. Russian Standard Vodka has just announced him as their new “collaborator”, and he’s appearing in their new ad campaign, rhapsodising on the confluence of nature and technology. He was once compared to Timothy Leary and that comparison doggedly follows him wherever he goes.

Despite his optimism, though, and despite his assurances, I put it to him that feels like our technology has turned on us. The internet has been turned into a surveillance tool, and climate change is driven by the same economic growth model that gives us rapid technological innovation.

“I think that technology has always been a double-edged sword,” Silva says. “If you look at the work of Steven Pinker, Better Angels Of Our Nature, the world has never been less violent than today. The chances of a man dying at the hands of another man have never been lower than today. If we can transcend our overactive amygdalas that are always focusing on the danger, you’ll find the world is getting better on a whole range of indicators.”

“There’s always been a terror about new technology. The same was said about the radio and television. There’s a great book by Steven Johnson - it’s called Everything Bad Is Good For You - he talks about how video games, for example, engage our problem-solving and strategy skills in an immense way. There are all these counter-intuitive examples of tools that we were afraid of, but at the end of the day it’s just evolution, man. Minds like ours were made for merger.”

Silva is also dismissive of the possibility that we’ll run out of resources, because “technology is a resource-liberating mechanism”. Nanotechnology will allow us to perform alchemy, reconfiguring materials on an atom-by-atom basis. Water wars are ridiculous because “we live on a water planet”, and advanced desalination technology “is going to give us more water than we ever could need”. Overpopulation is misdirection. Technology doesn’t hurt us, it brings us out of poverty and is our method of reaching a higher plane of existence. The little details don't matter when you realise that the big picture averages out as an overwhelming positive.

“People say these new technologies are only for the rich, I say, ‘yeah, just like cellphones’. Everyone in Africa has better communications technology than the US president had 25 years ago.” If anything, Silva appears to be arguing for a post-scarcity future of the sort written about by a range of economists and science fiction authors for decades, if not centuries. “The capitalist underpinnings of society would be completely transcended - people would be liberated,” he explains.

Silva is compelling when he argues for a future where humans and machines become one, and we move into a new, ethereal sort of existence. But, he is realistic to a degree about the technical “growing pains” on the way.

“One of my biggest issues is there’s so many signals competing for our attention these days,” he says, gesturing with his hand at our surrounding. “You’re walking into a museum and you’re looking at your phone, you’re not getting what you need. I think curation and managing our attention, and well-practiced, experienced design is going to be the key to consciousness of the 21st century.”

“Google Glass is still transitory, but I think eventually, dude, they have designs for contact lenses with LED screens. Our brains are behind two inches of skull. We only know the world through instrumentation of our senses. If everything is representation, it doesn’t matter if we create a dance between what is purposefully represented and what is just represented by our senses. I think eventually we will enter into universes of our own construction. Landscapes of mind, liminal zones that we’re all going to live in.”

These kinds of words justify the comparison with Timothy Leary, and I had to probe him about his experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. He’s frank about his fondness for marijuana and alcohol, but also admits that, for all his interest in expanding the human mind, he’s never done “the strong psychedelics”.

He said: “It’s perfectly natural for us to alter our chemistry, whether it’s using cognitive technologies, chemical technologies, or fasting, or yoga, whatever it may be. From what I gather, 99 percent of a psychedelic experience is conditioned by the set and setting anyway. These are psychic amplifiers, not to be taken lightly, not to be played with, but rather to explored in controlled environments and conditioned environments, to induce the types of experiences we want. I’m pro-more mediation, not less.”

In the 1960s, Leary’s more rigorous attitude towards psychedelics contrasted with the more chaotic West Coast hippies - like Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters - who felt compelled to drive across America in a school bus while high on LSD, drowning themselves deliberately in new experiences. That isn’t Silva’s style.

“People are like ‘oh the randomness, you should just take it’ - no, it’s conditioned experience. You could say an aeroplane is a tool that allows you to soar through the sky, but I don’t want anyone to fly the plane, I want a pilot who’s been trained."

The thought of expanding our minds, of becoming a new kind of human where the things we want are predicted before we know we want them, is frightening to some people. Silva doesn't see it that way at all.

"The word psychedelic means 'to manifest the mind'. When you think about technology, it has become the literalisation of the psychedelic dream of mind expansion. The dream of transcending our boundaries, of overcoming the limitations of mind, of distance, of space, has been literalised by our technologies."

He laughs. "At the end of the day, you know, the fact that a person in Africa can afford a piece of high-technology that a billionaire couldn’t have afforded 50 years ago is kind of astonishing."

You can watch Jason Silva's collaboration with Russian Standard Vodka here: http://www.youtube.com/user/RussianStandardTV

Cameron’s childcare crunch is hitting family finances and the economy

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Parents are struggling to cope with a triple whammy of rising nursery costs, plummeting childcare places and cuts to support. Labour is offering an alternative.

As a working mum myself, I know the impact of the cost of childcare on family budgets. New figures by the Labour Party released today underline the childcare crunch facing families. Already hit by a cost of living crisis of David Cameron’s making, mums and dads are struggling to cope with a triple whammy of rising nursery costs, plummeting childcare places and cuts to support through tax credits.

Under this government, parents have been hit by a nursery price hike of 30% since 2010 – five times faster than pay. The average bill for a part-time nursery place has rocketed to £107 per week, with parents working part-time on average wages having to work from Monday until Thursday before they pay their weekly childcare costs.

A crisis in childcare places is fuelling this rise in prices under Cameron and Clegg. Figures from Ofsted show that there are 35,000 fewer places since 2009. Many childcare providers are small businesses buffeted by the poor economic situation. David Cameron’s broken promises to back Sure Start meant that in many areas this vital service for children and families is withering away. There are 578 fewer children’s centres since May 2010, the equivalent of the loss of three centres a week.

The government are not just failing families on the childcare crunch; they’re failing the economy too. Fewer women with children in the UK work than in many of our leading competitor countries and a recent survey by Asda Mumdex found that 70% of stay at home mums said they would be worse off in the current climate if they worked because of the cost of childcare. The childcare crunch is trapping women at home who want to work and stifling their economic potential.

Labour is on the side of working parents. Today, Ed Miliband has reiterated our pledge to introduce a legal guarantee of access to wraparound care from 8am to 6pm at primary schools. By 2010, 99% of schools were providing access to before and after school childcare but David Cameron abandoned Labour’s extended schools programme and many parents face a logistical nightmare.

We will also extend free childcare for three and four year olds from 15 to 25 hours per week for working parents. The value of this extra childcare support is over £1,500 per child per year. The next Labour government will increase the bank levy rate to raise an extra £800m in order to meet the cost of this extra support for families.

The government has done nothing in this Parliament to help families with childcare costs. Labour’s bold new measures are a sign of intent. They will tackle the childcare crunch and make a difference for mums and dads.


How Duncan Smith misled MPs on child poverty

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The Work and Pensions Secretary claimed that "child poverty rose" under Labour; it fell by 800,000.

Iain Duncan Smith has acquired a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts and he was up to his tricks again at Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons this afternoon. Towards the end of the session, he declared that "child poverty rose" under the last government. But as so often, the data tells a different story. Under Labour, child poverty fell from 3.4m in 1997 to 2.6m in 2010, a net reduction of 800,000 and the lowest figure since the mid-1980s.

While child poverty has fallen under the coalition to 2.3m (largely due to the overall drop in average household incomes, which resulted in a relatively higher poverty threshold), it is projected to rise by 600,000 by 2015-16 as the government's welfare cuts take full effect. As the IFS has noted, "Despite the impact of universal credit, the overall impact of reforms introduced since April 2010 is to increase the level of income poverty in each and every year from 2010 to 2020." The forecast rise will reverse all of the reductions that took place under Labour between 2000-01 and 2010-11. Rather than slandering the last government, Duncan Smith would do well to turn his attention to that.

What are the fundamental principles of corporate governance?

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Board diversity and appointments make good headlines - but the basic principles required for successful board-led leadership are even simpler. It's time we stated them again.

In my last New Statesman blog in July 2013 I talked about the responsibilities of companies operating today; what these might be and why we think they are important, as we continue to examine what went wrong and led us to the global financial crisis.

In the light of this, our focus on the role of corporate boards heightened. They are the people who set a company’s strategic aims and provide the leadership needed to put them into effect. This is nothing new: company boards have always had this task. The UK Corporate Governance Code, which guides many businesses, states that the board sets the values of the company, and this is very different from running the business day-to-day.

For example, there is much discussion of who should be on the board. The diversity debate comes to mind immediately, but that is only one aspect. It makes a good news item when a novel appointment has been made from outside the usual candidates.

But this is not just about diversity. At the same time, there is a lot of support for getting people with extensive experience and competence on board. This could be particularly meaningful in highly specialised industries. But it might risk board members getting too close to the operational management of the company.

What board members need to remind themselves is that they are collectively responsible for the long-term success of their company. This may sound obvious but it is not always recognised.

Why do I feel the need to say this? Perhaps because the idea might feel slightly awkward in light of current concerns about the harm that dominant individuals on boards or a "group-think" mentality can do to decision making. Indeed, the challenge is for a board member to be independent, bringing in a different viewpoint and wider experience, but at the same time working together to achieve the same objective.

In a way, this is asking board members to deliver multiples of responsibilities. But then again, how different is it from us accepting the need to balance different – sometimes conflicting – responsibilities in our daily life? A good mix of people who can constructively challenge each other in the board room can help businesses to make meaningful decisions in rapidly changing markets.

Our suggestion is to get back to the fundamental principles of good governance which board members should bear in mind in carrying out their responsibilities. If there are just a few, simple and short principles, board members can easily refer to them when making decisions without losing focus. Such a process should be open and dynamic.

In ICAEW’s recent paper What are the overarching principles of corporate governance? we proposed five such principles of corporate governance.

·       Leadership

An effective board should head each company. The Board should steer the company to meet its business purpose in both the short and long term.

·       Capability

The Board should have an appropriate mix of skills, experience and independence to enable its members to discharge their duties and responsibilities effectively.

·       Accountability

The Board should communicate to the company’s shareholders and other stakeholders, at regular intervals, a fair, balanced and understandable assessment of how the company is achieving its business purpose and meeting its other responsibilities.

·       Sustainability

The Board should guide the business to create value and allocate it fairly and sustainably to reinvestment and distributions to stakeholders, including shareholders, directors, employees and customers.

·       Integrity

The Board should lead the company to conduct its business in a fair and transparent manner that can withstand scrutiny by stakeholders.

We kept them short, with purpose, but we also kept them aspirational. None of them should be a surprise – they might be just like you have on your board. Well, why not share and exchange our ideas - the more we debate, the better we remember the principles which guide our own behaviour.

Morning Call: pick of the papers

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The ten must-read comment pieces from this morning's papers.

1. China and Japan are heading for a clash (Financial Times)

It is hard to believe either side wants war – but posturing could spark accidental conflict, writes Gideon Rachman.

2. The Eds feud, but their party has moved on (Times)

Despite tensions at the top, shadow cabinet 'clean skins' have put Labour’s old factions behind them, says Rachel Sylvester.

3. Police are cracking down on students – but what threat to law and order is an over-articulate history graduate? (Guardian)

For most of my life student politics has been little more than a joke, writes Aditya Chakrabortty. Suddenly it's become both serious and admirable.

4. The baffling recovery of Teflon Labour and Unpopular Ed (Daily Telegraph)

Despite Falkirk and all its other failings, the party could still be heading back to No. 10, writes Benedict Brogan.

5. If you want a lesson in how to solve social mobility, try reading Harry Redknapp’s autobiography (Independent)

John Major’s solution to the problem of social mobility– a grammar school in every town – made matters worse, says Steve Richards.

6. If Obamacare fails, Obama’s vision dies too (Times)

American confidence in government will suffer if the President’s signature idea sinks, writes Justin Webb.

7. Whoever the 'middle class' are, they're about to be bribed with tax cuts (Guardian)

It's the autumn statement, so coalition factions are exchanging fire across the fiscal divide, writes Polly Toynbee. But their real target is the wealthy vote.

8. The British have met crisis with understatement (Financial Times)

The debate over austerity and stimulus was an elite dialogue that never got going among voters, writes Janan Ganesh.

9. For Pope Francis the liberal, this promises to be a very bloody Sunday (Guardian)

Francis is the poster pope for progressives, writes George Monbiot. But canonising a genocidal missionary like Junípero Serra epitomises the Catholic history problem.

10. The business rates burden must be eased (Daily Telegraph)

The Treasury has imposed onerous financial demands on a vulnerable yet crucial part of the economy, says a Telegraph editorial. 

The NHS crisis that none of the parties will discuss: how to pay for it

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With a £30bn funding gap, all parties need to decide whether they would raise taxes, cut spending elsewhere, or impose patient charges. But don't expect them to tell us.

If there's one NHS issue that none of the parties are prepared to confront, it's that of funding. The common view is that the health service has been shielded from austerity by having its budget ring-fenced, but in reality the reverse is the case. Owing to the above-average rate of inflation in the service, the NHS requires real-terms rises just to stand still. As a recent Social Market Foundation paper noted, "A ‘flat real’ settlement for the NHS is mot what it sounds like since it is defined with reference to an irrelevant price index. To keep up with rising input costs, growing demand, and the public’s expectations for an adequate healthcare system, growth in spending on health has historically outstripped GDP growth." 

By historic standards, the NHS is undergoing austerity. Since 1950, health spending has grown at an average annual rate of 4%, but over the current Spending Review it will rise by an average of just 0.5%. As a result, in the words of the SMF, there has been "an effective cut of £16bn from the health budget in terms of what patients expect the NHS to deliver". Should the NHS receive flat real settlements for the three years from 2015-16 (as seems probable), this cut will increase to £34bn or 23%.

If they wish to avoid a significant fall in the quality and quantity of services, this government and future ones are left with three choices: to raise taxes, to cut spending elsewhere, or to impose patient charges. The third of these is proposed by the think-tank Reform today, which calls for a £10 charge for GP consultations, £10 fines for missed appointments, the introduction of a means-tested system for end of life care and an increase in prescription charges from £7.85 to £10 (with exemptions for those on low-incomes). It estimates that these measures would raise around £3bn a year, with research director Thomas Cawston commenting: "Few will want to debate higher NHS charges but the funding outlook for the service makes it unavoidable. Prescription charges are the easiest route to new revenue, with exemptions for people on low incomes built in." If this seems heretical, it's worth remembering that our "free" health service hasn't been truly free since Labour chancellor Hugh Gaitskell introduced prescription charges for glasses and dentures in his 1951 Budget (although they have now been abolished in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

But perhaps unsurprisingly, the Department of Health has responded by dismissing the idea out of hand. A spokesman said: "We have been absolutely clear that the NHS should be free at the point of use, with access based on need. That is why we have increased health spending in real terms alongside £20bn of efficiency savings to make sure the NHS continues to provide excellent care."

Labour, meanwhile, spying an opportunity to cause political mischief, has commented: "Patients will be alarmed that friends of Number 10 want to see charges for GP appointments and hospital care.

"Labour froze prescription charges before the election, but they have increased year on year under David Cameron. They are now creeping towards £10, as these plans want, and are adding to the cost of living crisis.

"The Government must come clean on any plans to charge for NHS care. They have already lost people’s trust over the crisis in A&E and thousands of axed nursing jobs – this will only add to it."

But this merely defers the question of how we will ultimately pay for a health service of the standard the public both expect and deserve. Will any party grasp this nettle before 2015? Don't count on it. 

People who don’t forget can still be tricked with false memories

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Despite being able to remember minute details from every moment of their lives, the ability to never forget has other costs for some people.

“Time is the thief of memory,” wrote Stephen King in one of his many books. For some people, however, that is not true. They are gifted with what scientists call highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), which means they can remember in vivid detail every day of their life going back to childhood. But new research shows that even these special people are susceptible to forming false memories, sometimes more than normal people.

The first study of a person, later identified to be Jill Price, with this special ability was published as recently as 2006. Since then the database of HSAM individuals in the US has grown to about 30 people. It includes people like Bob Petrella, who can recall the date he met every one of his friends and acquaintances. Or Brad Williams, who can remember both what he did on any day and what significant world events occurred.

James McGaugh at the University of California Irvine was the author of the 2006 study, and for the past seven years he has been working to understand what makes HSAM individuals so special. A 2012 study showed, for instance, that HSAM individuals have different brain structures. They posses more white matter in areas linked to autobiographical memory. But because there are so few of them “we still don’t know enough to be able to draw robust conclusions”, says Martin Conway, a cognitive psychologist at City University London.

Knowing how HSAM people form memories would be a great leap in our understanding. With graduate student Lawrence Patihis, McGaugh set out to fill that gap. One way to do that would be to test if HSAM individuals are susceptible to false memories. After all, memories are easy to distort. It happens to everyone: the young, the old, the intelligent and the dumb. Now, in a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Patihis finds that HSAM individuals too can be tricked to possess false memories.

Not so perfect
For the study, Patihis recruited 20 out of the 30 known HSAM individuals in the US. They were matched, by sex and age, with 38 people with normal memory. All of the participants were then given three tests.

In the first test, each participant was shown a series of words that were all supposed to be connected to a “lure word”. So if the lure word was “lamp” then they will be shown words like light, table, shade and stand, but not the word lamp. After they have seen the list, they are asked if they saw the word lamp. People with normal memories got the answer wrong seven out of ten times. HSAM individuals too got it wrong just as much.

The second test was more elaborate. It showed a slideshow of photos depicting a crime. After 40 minutes, they were then shown words describing the crime with misinformation sprinkled in them. Then 20 minutes later they were tested to see how many people believed the misinformation to be true. This time HSAM individuals did worse than normal people. They were 73 percent more prone to false memories. “Maybe HSAM individuals form richer memories through absorption of more information and that is why they are also more susceptible to false ones too,” says Patihis.

Perhaps it is easy to manipulate recent memories. So in the third test Patihis looked to test long-term memory. All participants were asked to recall the September 11 terrorist attacks. They were then given irrelevant facts about that event, one of which was not true (someone captured the footage of United 93 in Pennsylvania). After 15 minutes, all participants were then asked whether they had see such a footage. Like the first test, normal people and HSAM individuals performed almost equally badly on this test.

“This shows that maybe people with superior memories form them just like normal people. Thus, in the process, they are also prone to making the same mistakes,” says Patihis. Equally, they may use a different process of forming superior memories, but one that has same problems as that of the normal process.

There is still contention among experts whether HSAM individuals are “special”. K Anders Ericsson of Florida State University says, "our work has pretty much concluded that differences in memory don’t seem to be the result of innate differences, but more the kinds of skills that are developed." To which McGaugh says, “you’d have to assume that every day they rehearse it ... The probability of these explanations dwindles as you look at the evidence."

Price had admitted that remembering everything meant bad memories were always around to trouble her. It led researchers to believe that such superior memory may come at a cognitive cost of lost abilities, or less happier lives. But research since has shown that not to be the case. HSAM individuals tend to have similar lives to normal people. With the latest study, McGaugh has shown one more task where HSAM individuals are normal. They too may be made to believe that as a kid they were lost in a shopping mall, even if that isn’t true.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.The Conversation

Should we be judging people by their looks?

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It's a terrifying thought, but phrenology could be making a comeback. A new study has revealed that you can judge a person by their appearance.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were prophets so wise they could tell a man’s character just by looking at the shape of his skull. Traits and flaws were spelt in the ridges and bumps of a head, and those who knew the ancient art of phrenology were able to read them, like braille. 

It sounds ridiculous now, and slipped utterly from the bounds of respected science at the end of the 19th century. And yet, with what we now know about development, the idea does make a sort of sense. Much of the way faces form is to do with quantities of particular hormones at crucial times, and as these wash through the system changing the shape of your cheekbones they are also changing the development of your brain. If inside was tied to outside in a readable way, this could also make evolutionary sense of our overblown reaction to beauty. We might, for example, have learned to like beautiful features because they signal beautiful characters, too.

We can’t prove this, because it would involve setting up a large experimental breeding programme for humans. And I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be something a little off about the idea. It has, however, as spotted by Dr Irene Elia in the most recent Quarterly Review of Biology, been done with foxes. And the results are pretty interesting.

A Russian geneticist, Dmitry Belyaev, started breeding friendly characteristics into silver foxes back in 1957. But as their personalities changed through the generations, (becoming tamer, more docile, more eager to please) so did their features. Their noses became smaller, their faces flatter, their foreheads rounded, their jaws reduced.

As Elia writes, these are the same features that make a human good looking, and have been sought after and selected for throughout history. She points to 33 studies which suggest people with attractive looks tend to be friendlier, better socially adjusted, and more intelligent. Is there an ugly truth about beauty, and are we starting to uncover it?

The truth might be even broader and more precise than that. It strikes me that it might be interesting here to bring in a study from a couple of years ago which wasn’t given much attention at the time.

In 2010, a study was published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology which linked personality to facial features with striking precision. The scientists took 63 women and took pictures of their faces, also scoring each of them for various personality traits. Composites of all the faces were then made for each characteristic (so that, as can be seen below we have a “neurotic” face, a “conscientious” face and so on).

 

Here’s the interesting thing though - when presented with these pictures and asked to rate them for each characteristic, volunteers unerringly picked the right face. It seemed they could read personality with disturbing accuracy. 

As you can see though, if you’ve looked at the faces, the case for beauty here is slightly obscured. For example, the “high agreeableness”  face (perhaps the more beautiful of the two) looks quite similar to the “low mental health” face. The study is small, but it throws an interesting angle on the Elias paper. If there is a link between face and personality, it might be more complicated than good looks = good character. “If there is a link...”. What a terrifying thought. Could phrenology be back? Can we judge a book by its cover? The heart says no, but science says yes, maybe, if you know how to do it.

The Tory right are wrong: the 0.7% aid target is not just moral but smart

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The aid recipients of today can become the trading partners of tomorrow. Cutting now would be a betrayal of the poor and our national interest.

The UN have compared the devastation in the Philippines to the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Red Cross described the scene as "bedlam", and hardened journalists on the ground say they have never seen anything like it before.

There is no question that the scene in Tacloban and much of the Philippines represents a full-blown humanitarian crisis – more than 4,000 dead, over 13 million affected and three million displaced. One week on, as aid slowly begins to trickle through, experts warn we are entering the peak danger zone for the spread of infectious diseases. And with sanitation and clean water scarce, dysentery, diarrhoea and E.Coli are now real and growing threats.

Here at home, the British people have once again responded with tremendous generosity. We all know times are tough, yet still the DEC appeal has already raised over £35m – and during a week in which Children in Need also raised over £30m. Of this we should all be proud.

And as sure as night follows day, as aid comes once again into the spotlight, it is no surprise that the siren voices of the Tory right are calling for a reduction in the help this country gives to those in desperate need. In a week when the British people have shown such extraordinary generosity that’s not just utterly out of touch – it’s wrong headed too.

It all comes down to a simple question. What sort of world do we want? Safe, prosperous and fair would be pretty near the top of most people’s lists. That is part of what international development is for.

In the five minutes it will take you to read this, more than 400 children will be immunised against preventable diseases thanks to projects supported by British aid. Because of that programme, 500,000 lives will be saved - 500,000 individual tragedies prevented. 

But a simple truth remains - far, far too many aren’t getting a fair chance in life. So the moral case for keeping our promise on overseas aid is overwhelming. Lives are saved, children are educated and communities get a fair chance thanks to the generosity of the British people. We should take great pride in that.

But giving aid isn’t just a moral choice - it’s the smart choice, too. The world today is interconnected like never before. Our national interest, our economy and our security, depends on the stability of many of those countries supported by DFID.

As a trading nation, we know exporting more will help us tackle some of the structural problems in our economy. And the aid recipients of today can become the trading partners of tomorrow. Where once we gave aid to South Korea, now they are one of our fastest growing markets. Helping South Korea, then, is helping us now.

That’s what international aid is about. Aid isn't about charity; it’s about human dignity. Reducing the need for aid in the future, helping countries create their own wealth and prosperity. More South Koreas, more trading partners and more opportunities for Britain.

And a fairer, more prosperous world is a safer world too. Depravation and inequality lead to desperation and illegality; conflict over scarce recourses and the vile trade in exploited people and a multitude of refugee crises. In many fragile states, youth unemployment runs at over 80%. In today’s globalised world, that’s not just a lack of human opportunity, but also a danger to us all.

As I’ve long argued, the best defence policy can sometimes be world class diplomacy. A more stable world means a safer UK. British aid supports fragile and conflict-ridden states, helps bring them out of the danger zone, and prevents the sort of conditions that breed radicalisation, violence and war. The right thing to do and the smart thing to do. How different could things be today if the world had invested more in securing Afghanistan and Somalia decades ago?

What happens in the rest of the world has an impact on us. That’s why the last Labour government led the international community in development. And we achieved a huge amount – we convinced the world to drop the debt at Gleneagles in 2005, and in 2008 we argued for and won new international commitments on malaria, food, education and health.

Under Labour, this country made a promise to the world that we would give 0.7% of our Gross National Income to overseas aid, a promise that David Cameron has rightly pledged to uphold. That’s not a commitment we can just walk away from - it wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t be in the national interest.

Britain’s commitment to 0.7% shouldn’t just be about a rebranding exercise for the Tories - it is deeper than that. It tells you about who we are as a country. 0.7% says we are committed to a safe, prosperous and fair world for everyone.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make sure every penny is well spent. Value for money is always important but in these difficult times iron discipline across every government department is absolutely vital - including at International Development. So Labour are clear - we will have a zero tolerance approach to failure, corruption and waste.

In a field where a few pence can save a life, we should seek not to waste a penny. As we build a new global covenant to replace the Millennium Development Goals, we must give what we promised, but we should go further - we must keep innovating, keep improving, and make sure every pound is spent wisely.

Jim Murphy is shadow international development secretary


Political announcements signal a greater role for the market in China

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President Xi Jinping's comments at the conclusion of the third plenum of the party’s 18th Central Committee signalled greater interest in protecting the private sector - but many risks still remain.

A "deepening" role for the market was proclaimed by China’s ruling elite as it concluded the third plenum of the party’s 18th Central Committee. While the final statement predictably lacked specificity, it reinforced the reformist agenda of President Xi Jinping and signalled a gradual diminution of state control of all aspects of the economy in favour market influenced prices.

The importance of the plenum was always about the message it would send about momentum in the reform agenda and the ability of the new leadership to overcome resistance to reform. Beginning with an anti-corruption campaign that effectively discredited political opponents, most notably Bo Xilai, and generated popular support, the government has progressed reforms in foreign direct investment policy and interest rate deregulation. It has also had the confidence to permit an economic slowdown. The board pronouncements from the plenum indicate that this momentum will be sustained.

The report signals the development of a more balanced policy towards the public and private sectors; the maintenance of government to commitment to state owned enterprises combined with the development of "fair, open and transparent" market rules for the economy.

Exceeding expectations, the texts from the plenum show the government understands that systemic reform is a pre-requisite for making China’s economic system more sustainable. Judicial structural reform is called for along with changes to the Party’s internal oversight processes, thereby enhancing the role of central Party authorities. Enhancing the power of the judiciary’s at local levels could provide the government with a more effective mechanism to address corruption and force local implementation of policy directives, which would be positive for reform in the medium to long term.

Impediments posed by the two-tier land ownership system and the concept of equal land rights were also raised. At present, farmers moving to urban areas are unable to sell their land, in contrast to urban dwellers who are able to buy and sell property. It is anticipated that the distinction between urban and rural land will be abolished, a significant reform, that will take China a step further towards an economy driven by market forces.

While businesses can take many positives from pledges, albeit ambiguous, to protect the private economy, the crucial issues of interest rates, the floating of the renminbi or banking sector reform, were not publicly mentioned. This shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign that no action will be taken; rather that the government is leaving itself significant room for manoeuvre to implement policy reform in accordance with political and economic necessity.

While the pledge of greater protection for the private sector is a positive announcement from the leaders of the world’s second largest economy, many risks remain inherent in transacting business in country that lacks an independent judiciary and vibrant civil society.

Five questions answered on the resignation of the Co-op’s Group chair

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Why exactly has Len Wardle resigned?

The Co-op Group chair Len Wardle announced today (18 November) that he will resign from his position due to "serious questions" that have been raised following allegations relating to a former banking chairman he appointed. We answer five questions about the resignation.

Why exactly has Len Wardle resigned?

Wardle said he felt it was "right" that he stepped down after a former Co-op banking chairman, Paul Flowers, who was appointed in 2010 by a board led by Wardle, was filmed by the Mail on Sunday allegedly buying cocaine.

The Co-op has said it is investigating these allegations.

The company added that Wardle had resigned as chairman and from the board "with immediate effect".

Wardle held the position since 2007 but announced last month that he would leave in May 2014.

What has Wardle said about his resignation?

In a statement he said:

The recent revelations about the behaviour of Paul Flowers, the former chair of the Co-operative Bank, have raised a number of serious questions for both the bank and the group.

I led the board that appointed Paul Flowers to lead the bank board and under those circumstances I feel that it is right that I step down now, ahead of my planned retirement in May next year.

I hope that the group now takes the chance to put in place a new democratic structure so we can modernise in the interests of all our members.

Who will Wardle be replaced by?

Wardle will be replaced by Ursula Lidbetter, who is the Co-op Group's deputy chairwoman and chief executive of the Lincolnshire Co-operative Society.

What are other people saying about Wardle’s resignation and the allegations against Flowers?

The allegations against Flowers, who is also accused of being incompetent during his time at the bank, which ran from 2010 to as recent as last June, has raised concerns about how senior banking candidates are appointed.

Conservative MP Brooks Newmark told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Clearly he was not fit to be in that position and while obviously his performance was lamentable, I also think unfortunately that the regulators should be held to account on this.”

"They should have done their due diligence to see whether Mr Flowers was fit and proper to run a major financial institution."

What kind of changes to the appointment of senior bank members have been suggested?

It has been suggested there could be further regulation around this area.

However, former director general of the CBI, Lord Digby Jones, told the programme: "The problem you have got if you bring in more regulation is will it serve its purpose?"

"To do more background checks, excellent. To ensure that you get the best, not necessarily British [bankers, and to] ensure that banking can be a force for good in the country - if that calls for more rigorous implementation of the rules that you have then I'm up for that."

A little more conversation and action: The business case for sustainable consumption

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In the sharing economy and the media, the business community doesn’t yet know how it will make money – and that’s what’s so great: the willingness to experiment with new, more sustainable business models.

The move towards a sustainable future is far too big for any single organisation, business or even government to tackle alone. Pioneering organisations can only get so far. We believe that the only way to create true transformation requires thinking and acting collaboratively – and a new role for business.

The good news is we are already on the right path. Collaborative consumption and the sharing economy are on the rise.  Airbnb is the poster child for the sharing economy – a site where you can rent out your spare room, allowing a guest to stay somewhere unique cheaply. It’s quickly seen unprecedented success: nearly 10m nights booked in 33,000 cities in 192 countries in just five years. The company’s founders claim the service attracted 416,000 new visitors to New York City in just one.

We’re also seeing leading businesses experiment with new business models. Take Kingfisher plc, the world’s principal DIY retailer, who understand that sustainable consumption isn’t about selling pieces of kit. They operate in a sector where waste is commonplace: the average DIY drill, for example, is used for less than 15 minutes in its entire lifetime! Kingfisher know that in order to maximise the use of a product and make the most of its embedded carbon and water, then leasing - and providing a service – is the far more sustainable option.

Kingfisher has bought the digital platform, Streetclub, which allows it to lease its goods – it also encourages a whole range of sharing by local communities and encourages new and positive community interactions. But the route to value creation is unclear; in other words, the business doesn’t yet know how it will make money – and that’s what’s so great: the willingness to experiment with new, more sustainable business models.

But there is also an increasingly watertight business case. Take M&S. From an initial £40m per annum investment in 2007 at the start of Plan A, came a total business benefit of £185m in Year 5. A cool 193 per cent return on investment.

Then there are studies such as this one by Iionis Ioannou and others, where they tracked the performance of low sustainability companies (those with no obvious sustainability policies) and high sustainability companies in the same sectors but with strong Environmental and Social Governance and CSR/sustainability policies. The high sustainability companies consistently out-performed the low sustainability companies.

So, why hasn’t sustainability mainstreamed? 

There are many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because of a lack of understanding of how change happens.

This is why we at Forum have developed a simple change model, which can work at an organisational, sector and whole system level. It starts with Step 1 - experiencing the need for change, moves through into what we call "pioneering practice", gains momentum until it reaches a tipping point and ends with a new mainstream.  It’s really important to understand where your business is on this kind of change curve. Have all parts of the business understood the need for change? Attempts to tool up departments to embrace sustainability will fail if there is no desire to do things differently. If this is the case, then the focus should be on creating the burning platforms that motivate people to think and act differently. Or are there pockets of pioneering practice flourishing in the business? If yes, then the focus should be on encouraging collaboration to move this practice towards a tipping point.

This change curve also helps us understand that there is no silver bullet. System change happens throughout this curve, but the major moments are between steps 2 (diagnosing the system) and 4 (creating a tipping point). We call this “system innovation” – and it results from a set of interventions working together: behaviour change, plus a new innovation, plus communication and influencing. Right now, the mainstreaming of sustainability in business is between steps 3 and 4.

This is why we need a big shift in collaborative thinking and action. Businesses need to think of themselves as system innovators, both innovating the core business, products and services, understanding their role in the wider system, and working to create the conditions in which they will be successful. One of the best system innovators out there is Unilever. The primary motivation for establishing the Marine Stewardship Council was securing future fish stocks (at a time when Unilever owned a frozen fish business). Unilever understood it couldn’t achieve the future sustainability of fish stocks on its own. The business case for being a system innovator is clear.

Tackling sustainability, creating a shifttowards sustainable consumption demands a system level approach. Not only do we all need to think differently, now is the time for businesses and brands to act differently. Join in the conversation with @forum4thefuture at #theBIGshift.

Nick Boles calls for new National Liberal-Conservative alliance

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The Tory moderniser proposes reviving the National Liberal Party and standing joint candidates with the Conservatives.

Back in the halcyon days of the coalition in 2010, Nick Boles was one of a handful of Tory MPs to call for an electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. At the time this was seen as an ingenious means of detoxifying the Tories' brand and of permanently realigning British politics in the centre-right's favour.

But as Boles explained in a speech to the liberal conservative group Bright Blue this lunchtime, he no longer supports the idea. The Tory moderniser cited two reasons for this. First, that he had "misjudged" the Lib Dems, whose instincts remain left-wing and "statist". In reference to Nick Clegg's recent attack on Michael Gove's "ideological" free school reforms, he accused Clegg of "a desperate attempt to position himself for coalition with a deeply illiberal Labour Party after the next election – and render himself a principle-free zone in the process. " Second, that he had "miscalculated" how the Tories would respond to coalition. Rather than moderating their ideological fixations, too many in the party had played up to the Lib Dem and media caricature of the party as "heartless extremists". 

The conclusion the planning minister drew was that "we [the Tories] must be our own liberals; we cannot rely on anyone else to do it for us. Trying to outsource liberalism from another party not only does not work; it risks reversing the fragile gains of modernisation." Now, rather than calling for the creation of a new pact, Boles is calling for the revival of an old one. In 1947, the National Liberal Party (formerly the Liberal National faction of the Liberal Party) merged with the Conservative Party at constituency level and maintained a separate national identity until it was fully incorporated in 1968.

Boles suggested that the Tories should now consider reviving the National Liberal Party, "or something like it", as an affiliate of the Conservatives, and standing joint candidates. He compared the proposed relationship to that between Labour and the Co-Operative Party, which does not run candidates separately from Labour and to which which 32 MPs belong. He added: "Existing MPs, councillors, candidates and party members of liberal views would be encouraged to join. And we could use it to recruit new supporters who might initially balk at the idea of calling themselves Conservative.In three-way marginals and the key target seats that we have to take off the Liberal Democrats, an explicit National Liberal pitch might make the difference between victory and defeat."

To me, this seems at best a distraction from the primary task of detoxifying the Tory brand. But unlike so many in his party, Boles is at least asking the right questions about how to widen the party's appeal.

How YouTube can save the world

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Janet Jackson's accidental breast exposure has led indirectly to earth avoiding deadly asteroids.

Will YouTube help to save humanity in the event of an asteroid impact?
Image: Getty

When Hollywood rewrites this story, it will become known as the day that Janet Jackson saved planet earth. According to company legend, YouTube was created after one of its inventors had trouble accessing a video of Jackson’s moment of “wardrobe malfunction” breast exposure during the 2004 Super Bowl. The video-sharing website’s latest achievement is to become the source of scientific data that might help us evade the next big asteroid threat.

You might remember the last big one: it exploded in the air 27 kilometres above Chelyabinsk in the Russian Urals on 15 February this year. The explosion was equivalent to the detonation of 500,000 tonnes of TNT – enough to damage buildings and injure several hundred people. Perhaps not enough to get itself a Hollywood re-enactment, though.

Fortunately, the asteroid’s passage through earth’s atmosphere made it glow far brighter than the early-morning sun, causing locals to whip out their phones and record its flight. The high incidence of insurance fraud in Russia also helped – many cars are equipped with dashboard cameras, which recorded the event.



On 6 November, a group of scientists published an analysis of these videos. They had discovered that our risk of being hit by similar asteroids is ten times higher than we thought. The researchers were able to deduce the asteroid’s mass from its flight path. It was twice as heavy as scientists’ initial estimates. We need to pay attention to the threat from orbiting objects much smaller than those we have been keeping an eye on.

Things were much easier when we only needed to worry about the larger rocks orbiting the sun. The cut-off used to be about one kilometre in diameter; we had concluded that anything smaller would most likely burn up in our atmosphere and inflict near-negligible damage. We know the orbits of all these big rocks; we don’t, however, have a clue where the millions of smaller rocks are, or whether they might hit earth at any point. The YouTube-derived data suggests that we should start to find out and is certain to inform the activities of the Nasa asteroid-tracking telescope due to come online in 2015.

Atlas (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System) will need broad shoulders: for the foreseeable future, it will be the only means by which we can reliably detect an imminent impact with these newly threatening smaller asteroids. Existing early-warning systems watch only certain patches of the sky and aren’t great at picking out objects that are smaller than one kilometre.

Nasa has plans to put an asteroid-hunting camera called NeoCam into orbit (no launch date yet) and a group of concerned citizens is raising money to build Sentinel, a similar eye in the sky. Until either of those are deployed, it’ll be down to Atlas.

Atlas will give us a week’s warning of any asteroid likely to collide with earth with an impact equivalent to the detonation of several megatonnes of TNT. If the asteroid is bigger, we should know about it three weeks in advance.

If you think that will give us time to send swarthy heroes up to attach a nuclear bomb to the asteroid and deflect it away from its collision course, think again. There is no agency on earth with the mandate to do this – and certainly no one with the necessary equipment or expertise. So all you can expect is plenty of time to charge your phone’s battery and ensure you are the first to get the video of its arrival on to YouTube. Then you have to hope there’ll still be some scientists around to appreciate your efforts.

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